Science and Hebrew tradition

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SCIENCE AND

HEBREW TRADITION

ESSAYS

BY

THOMAS H. HUXLEY

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1899

Authorized Edition,

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PREFACE

For more than a thousand years, the great
majority of the most highly civilised and in-
structed nations in the world have confidently
believed and passionately maintained that certain
writings, which they entitle sacred, occupy a
unique position in literature, in that they possess
an authority, different in kind, and immeasur-
ably superior in weight, to that of all other books.
Age after age, they have held it to be an indis-
putable truth that, whoever may be the ostensible
writers of the Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan
scriptures, God Himself is their real author; and,
since their conception of the attribues of the Deity
excludes the possibility of error and — at least in
relation to this particular matter — of wilful de-
ception, they have drawn the logical conclusion
that the denier of the accuracy of any statement,
the questioner of the binding force of any com-
mand, to be found in these documents is not mere-
ly a fool, but a blasphemer. From the point of
view of mere reason he grossly blunders; from
that of religion he grievously sins.

V

vi PREFACE

But, if this dogma of Eabbinical invention is
well founded; if, for example, every word in our
Bible has been dictated by the Deity; * or even,
if it be held to be the Divine purpose that every
proposition should be understood by the hearer or
reader in the plain sense of the words employed
(and it seems impossible to reconcile the Divine
attribute of truthfulness with any other intention),
a serious strain upon faith must arise. More-
over, experience has proved that the severity of
this strain tends to increase, and in an even more
rapid ratio, with the growth in intelligence of
mankind and with the enlargement of the sphere
of assured knowledge among them.

It is becoming, if it has not become, impossible
for men of clear intellect and adequate instruction
to believe, and it has ceased, or is ceasing, to be
possible for such men honestly to say they believe,
that the universe came into being in the fashion
described in the first chapter of Genesis; or to
accept, as a literal truth, the story of the making
of woman, with the account of the catastrophe
which followed hard upon it, in the second chap-
ter; or to admit that the earth was repeopled
with terrestrial inhabitants by migration from

* " Whoso says that Moses wrote even a single verse [of the
Pentateuch] from his own knowledge, denies and contemns
the Word of God," hah Snnhedrin, 99a, cited bv Schtirer,
(rPfirhiekte des Jildischen Volkes, Bd. IT. p. 249. The account
of the death of Moses in the last eight verses of Deuteronomy
was, of course, dictated to and written by himself, like all the
rest. Admit prophetic inspiration and what becomes of the
difficulty ? Surely, a quite unanswerable argument.

PREFACE Yii

Armenia or Kurdistan, little more than 4,000
years ago, which is implied in the eighth chapter;
or finally, to shape their conduct in accordance
with the conviction that the world is haunted by
innumerable demons, who take possession of men
and may be driven out of them by exorcistic ad-
jurations, which pervades the Gospels.

Nevertheless, if there is any justification for
the dogma of plenary inspiration, the damnatory
prodigality of even the Athanasian Creed is still
too sparing. " Whosoever will be saved " must
believe, not only all these things, but a great
many others of equal repugnancy to common
sense and everyday knowledge.

The doctrine of biblical infallibility, which
involves these remarkable consequences, was
widely held by my countrymen within my recol-
lection: I have reason to think that many persons
of unimpeachable piety, a few of learning, and
even some of intelligence, yet uphold it. But I
venture to entertain a doubt whether it can pro-
duce any champion whose competency and au-
thority would be recognised beyond the limits of
the sect, or theological coterie, to which he be-
longs. On the contrary, apologetic effort, at
present, appears to devote itself to the end of
keeping the name of " Inspiration " to suggest the
divine source, and consequent infallibility, of more
or less of the biblical literature, while carefully
emptying the term of any definite sense. For
" plenary inspiration " we are asked to substitute

viii PREFACE

a sort of " inspiration with limited liability/' the
limit being susceptible of indefinite fluctuation in
correspondence with the demands of scientific .
criticism. Where this advances that at once
retreats.

This Parthian policy is carried out with some
dexterity; but, like other such manoeuvres in the
face of a strong foe, it seems likely to end in
disaster. It is easy to say, and sounds plausible,
that the Bible was not meant to teach anything
but ethics and religion, and that its utterances on
other matters are mere ohiter dicta; it is also a
specious suggestion that inspiration, filtering
through human brains, must undergo a kind of
fallibility contamination; and that this human
impurity is responsible for any errors, the exist-
ence of which has to be admitted, however
unwillingly.

But how does the apologist know what the bib-
lical writers intended to teach, and what they did
not intend to teach? And even if their authoritv
is restricted to matters of faith and morals, who is
prepared to deny that the story of the fabrication
of Eve, that of the lapse from innocence effected
by a talking snake, that of the Deluge and the
demonological legends, have exercised, and still
exercise, a profound influence on Christian theol-
ogy and Christian ethics? The very apologists
who put forth this plea are never weary of de-
claring that the Divine authority for the moral
law is the only safe foundation of ethics. But if

PKEFACB ix

several of the most important Pentatenclial narra-
tives prove to be utterly unworthy of credit, what
pretence is there for accepting other uncorrobo-
rated stories of a no less improbable character?
If the writers of the gospels have taken fiction
for truth, the survivals of pagan superstition for
religion, in one department of spiritual knowledge,
what guarantee have we for their infallibility in
other departments? If the "human element"
must be admitted to have already encroached so
largely beyond the bounds, erstwhile thought to
be set by Divine authority, what justification is
there for imagining that any limit can be set to
the discovery of further invasions?

The truth is that the pretension to infallibility,
by whomsoever made, has done endless mischief;
with impartial malignity it has proved a curse,
alike to those who have made it and those who
have accepted it; and its most baneful shape is
book infallibility. For sacerdotal corporations
and schools of philosophy are able, under due
compulsion of opinion, to retreat from positions
that have become untenable; while the dead hand
of a book sets and stiifens, amidst texts and for-
mulae, until it becomes a mere petrifaction, fit
only for that function of stumbling block, which
it so admirably performs. Wlierever bibliolatry
has prevailed, bigotry and cruelty have accom-
panied it. It lies at the root of the deep-seated,
sometimes disguised, but never absent, antagonism
of all the varieties of ecclesiasticism to the free-

X PREFACE

dom of thought and to the spirit of scientific in-
vestigation. For those who look upon ignorance
as one of the chief sources of evil; and hold ve-
racity, not merely in act, but in thought, to be the
one condition of true progress, whether moral or
intellectual, it is clear that the biblical idol must
go the way of all other idols. Of infallibility, in
all shapes, lay or clerical, it is needful to iterate
with more than Catonic pertinacity, Delenda est.

The essays contained in the present and the
following volume are, for the most part, intended
to contribute, in however slight a degree, to this
process of deletion. Unless I greatly err, the ar-
guments adduced go a long way to prove that the
accounts of the Creation and of the Deluge in
the Hebrew scriptures are mere legends; and fur-
ther, that the evidence for the existence and ac-
tivity of a demonic world, implicitly and explicitly
inculcated throughout the Christian scriptures,
and universally held by the primitive Churches,
is totally inadequate to justify the expressioa of
belief in it.

This much on the negative side of the discus-
sion. On the positive side, the essay on the " Evo-
lution of Theology," as I imagine, shows cause
for the conclusion that the Israelitic religion, in
the earliest phase of which anything is really
known, is neither more nor less rational, neither
better nor worse ethically, than the religions of
other nations in a similar state of civilisation;

PREFACE xi

that, in the natural course of its evolution, it
reached, in the prophetic age, an elevation and
an ethical purity which have never been surpassed;
and that, since the new birth of the prophetic
spirit, in the first century of our era, the course
of Christian dogmatic development, along its
main lines, has been essentially retrogressive. The
revived prophetic ideal was gradually overshad-
owed by the results of Jewish and Greek theo-
logical and metaphysical speculation, and buried
beneath old-world superstitions and liturgical
conjurations, gradually infiltrated from the pagan
surroundings of the new religion; until, in the
mediteval ''' ages of faith,^^ it was well-nigh smoth-
ered beneath the mionstrous agglomeration of spu-
rious doctrines and idolatrous practices.

The ordinarv reader, to whom these essavs
are addressed, will doubtless be surprised, if not
shocked, at the many passages which expressly,
or by implication, contradict the notions respect-
ing the age and authority of the Hebrew scrip-
tures, and especially of the Pentateuch, in which
he has been brought up, and which have, quite
recently, received high ecclesiastical sanction.
" Helps to the Study of the Bible," are proffered
to lay ignorance and simplicity, and those who
hunger for trustworthy information will undoubt-
edly find much wholesome food in the banquet
set forth by the Helpers. All the more pity that
some of the bread is so very full of stones. For ex-

xii PREFACE

ample, the commentary on the Pentateuch tells
the student that Moses wrote or compiled the book
of Genesis from documentary evidence extant in
his time; that the book of Exodus was written by
him, or under his immediate direction and author-
ity; that the book of Leviticus, if not written by
him, was compiled by authorised scribes under his
supervision; that the book of Numbers was drawn
up under his immediate oversight; that the book
of Deuteronomy, containing the last addresses of
the inspired legislator, specially recorded by offi-
cial writers, assumed its present form under the
hand of Joshua; and that the several books were
enriched with numerous notes, archaeological and
explanatory, from the hands of later editors and
revisers.*

Whether this view of the case implies plenary
inspiration, or not, is more than I presume to say;
nor do I wish to inquire whether there is, or is
not, any rational foundation for it. The singular-
ity that impresses me is the absence of the slight-
est hint to the ignorant layman that a large num-
ber of biblical scholars of the highest reputation,
of undeniable competency and sincerity, repudiate
every one of these propositions, and give an ac-
count of the origin of the Pentateuch, and of the
age and authorship of its various constituents
totally irreconciliable with it. There is no living
biblical scholar who can ignore authorities of the

* Tho Oxford Bible for Teachers, " Helps to the Study
of the Bible," i>. 10. New Edition, 1893.

PREFACE xiii

rank of Eeuss and Wellhausen, of Robertson
Smith and Kuenen, without gross presumption; I
might even say without raising a serious doubt of
his scientific integrity. But what is the general
result of the patient study which these men, and
many more such, have devoted, through long
years, to the elucidation of the difficult and com-
plicated problem of the origin of the first five
books of the Old Testament.

An excellent work, which has just made its
appearance, supplies an answer. I may be per-
mitted to say that it can hardly be ranked as a
" shallow infidel " publication; not the last, inso-
much as it is dedicated to the theological faculty
of the University of Giessen; not the first, since
its author. Dr. Smend, is a distinguished professor
in the University of Gottingen.

After pointing out the importance of the ques-
tion of the date of the priestly code (that is to
say the so-called Levitical Law, which occupies
so large a place in the books of Exodus, Leviti-
cus, and Numbers), Dr. Smend says, it may now
be considered to be proved, that this code " was
first made known by Esra, about 444 B. c, and
raised to the position of the fundamental law of
Judaism. The kernel of the priestly code may be
a few decades or even a century older; but it
assuredly did not exist before Deuteronomy. . . .
At the present day, it is almost universally ad-
mitted that there was no divine law book of pub-

xiv PREFACE

lie authority in Israel before Josiah; especially,
that the cultus and religious customs rested upon
no divine law book; and that the chosen repre-
sentatives of religion, before the exile, knew notli-
ins: whatever of such a law book.*

" Deuteronomy is the result of the reformatory
movement set afoot by the Prophets. In fact,
the Prophets, though unintentionally, became the
founders of Judaism and its religion of legality.
Therein lies their far-reaching historical influence.
But the Prophets stand in complete antagonism
to old Israel. They foretold the fall of kingdom
and people, and so commenced a bitter warfare
against the traditional conceptions of Israelitic
religion. On the other hand, they w^ere much
more than founders of the Jewish community:
they rise high above later Judaism; in them,
the religion of the Old Testament substantially
approaches Christianity " (I. c. p. 9).

If I were to publish " Helps to the Study of

Zoology " for popular use, in which the progress

of science in the last fifty years was ignored and

every recent authority passed over in silence, I

am afraid, and indeed hope, that I should get into

great trouble. But to be sure I should be judged

by mere lay standards of right and wrong.

T. H. H.

HoDESLEA, Eastbourne,
October 9th, 1893.

* Smend. Lehrhuch der Alfte.'ifnmpnflfrhen Eeh'gionfigrs-
chichte, 1893, p. 8. (Sammlung Theologischer Lehrbiicher.)

CONTENTS

I

PAGB
ON THE METHOD OF ZADIO [1880] 1

(Lecture at the Working Men's College,
Great Ormond Street.)

II

THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF PALAEONTOLOGY [1881] . 24

III
LECTURES ON EVOLUTION [NEW YORK, 1876] .... 46

IV

THE INTERPRETERS OF GENESIS AND THE INTERPRETERS

OF NATURE [1885] 139

XV

xvi CONTENTS

V

PAGE
MB. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS [188GJ 164

VI

THE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND THE LIGHT OF

SCIENCE [1890] . , 201

VII
HASISADRA's ADVENTURE [1891] 239

VIII

THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL

STUDY [1886] 287

ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG
[1880]

EETROSPECTIVE TROPHECY AS A FUNCTION OP

SCIENCE

"Une marque plus sure quetoutes celles de Zadig." — Cuvier.*

It is an usual and a commendable practice to
preface the discussion of the views of a philo-
sophic thinker by some account of tlie man and
of the circumstances which shaped his life and
coloured his way of looking at things; but, though
Zadig is cited in one of the most important chap-
ters of Cuvier's greatest work, little is known about
him, and that little might perhaps be better au-
thenticated than it is.

It is said that he lived at Babylon in the time
of King Moalxlar; but the name of Moabdar does
not appear in the list of Babylonian sovereigns

* "Disconrs sur les rovnlutions de la surface du irlobe."
Reclierches snr les Ossemens Fossiles, Ed. iv. t. i. p. 185.

90 1

2 ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG i

brought to light by the patience and the industry
of the decipherers of cuneiform inscriptions in
these later years; nor indeed am I aware that
there is any other authority for his existence than
that of the biographer of Zadig, one Arouet de
Voltaire, among whose more conspicuous merits
strict historical accuracy is perhaps hardly to be
reckoned.

Happily Zadig is in the position of a great
many other philosophers. What he was like when
he was in the flesh, indeed whether he existed at
all, are matters of no great consequence. What
w^e care about in a light is that it shows the way,
not whether it is lamp or candle, tallow or wax.
Our only real interest in Zadig lies in the concep-
tions of which he is the putative father; and his
biographer has stated these with so much clearness
and vivacious illustration, that we need hardly feel
a pang, even if critical research should prove King
Moabdar and all the rest of the story to be unhis-
torical, and reduce Zadig himself to the shadowy
condition of a solar myth.

Voltaire tells us that, disenchanted with life by
sundry domestic misadventures, Zadig withdrew
from the turmoil of Babylon to a secluded retreat
on the banks of the Euphrates, where he beguiled
his solitude hy the study of nature. The mani-
fold wonders of the world of life had a particular
attraction for the lonely student; incessant and
patient observation of the plants and animals

I ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG 3

about liim sharpened his naturally good powers
of observation and of reasoning; until, at length,
he acquired a sagacity which enabled him to per-
ceive endless minute differences among objects
which, to the untutored eye, appeared absolutely
alike.

It might have been expected that this enlarge-
ment of the powers of the mind and of its store of
natural knowledge could tend to nothing but the
increase of a man's own welfare and the good of
his fellow-men. But Zadig was fated to experi-
ence the vanity of such expectations.

" One (lay, walking near a little wood, he saw. hastening
that way, one of the Queen's chief eunuchs, followed by a
troop of officials, who appeared to be in the greatest anxiety,
running hither and thither like men distraught, in search of
some lost treasure.

" * Young man,' cried the eunuch, * have you seen the
Queen's dog?' Zadig answered modestly, 'A bitch, I think,
not a dog.' ' Quito right,' replied the eunuch ; and Zadig
continued, ' A very small spaniel who has lately had puppies;
she limps with the left foreleg, and has very long ears.' * Ah !
you have seen her then,' said the breathless eunuch. * No,'
answered Zadig, * I have not seen her ; and I really was not
aware that the Queen possessed a spaniel.'

" By an odd coincidence, at the very same time, the hand-
somest horse in the King's stables broke away from his groom
in the Babylonian plain. The grand huntsman and all his
staff were seeking the horse with as much anxiety as the eu-
nuch and his people the spaniel ; and the grand huntsman
asked Zadig if he had not seen the King's horse go that way.

" * A first-rate galloper, small-hoofed, five feet high ; tail
three feet and a half long ; cheek pieces of the bit of twenty-
three carat gold ; shoes silver?' said Zadig.

4 ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG. i

" * Which way did he go ? Where is he ? ' cried the grand
huntsman.

" ' I have not seen anything of the horse, and I never
heard of him before,' replied Zadig.

" The grand huntsman and the chief eunuch made sure
that Zadig had stolen both the King's horse and the Queen's
spaniel, so they haled him before the High Court of Destcr-
hara, which at once condemned him to the knout, and trans-
portation for life to Siberia. But the sentence was hardly
pronounced when the lost horse and spaniel were found. So
the judges were under the painful necessity of reconsidering
their decision : but they fined Zadig four hundred ounces of
gold for saying he had seen that which he had not seen.

" The first thing was to pay the fine ; afterwards Zadig
was permitted to open his defence to the court, which he did
in the following terms :

" ' Stars of justice, abysses of knowledge, mirrors of truth,
whose gravity is as that of lead, whose inflexibility is as that
of iron, who rival the diamond in clearness, and possess no
little aifinity with gold ; since I am permitted to address your
august assembly, I swear by Ormuzd that I have never seen
the respectable lady dog of the Queen, nor beheld the sacro-
sanct horse of the King of Kings.

" ' This is what happened. I was taking a walk towards
the little wood near which I subsequently had the honour to
meet the venerable chief eunuch and the most illustrious grand
huntsman, I noticed the track of an animal in the sand, and
it was easy to see that it was that of a small dog. Long faint
streaks upon the little elevations of sand between the foot-
marks convinced me that it was a she dog with pendent dugs,
showing that she must have had puppies not many days since.
Other scrapings of the sand, which always lay close to the
marks of the forepaws, indicated that she had very long ears ;
and, as the imprint of one foot was always fainter than those
of the other three, I judged that the lady dog of our august
Queen was, if I may venture to say so, a little lame.

" ' With respect to the horse of the King of Kings, permit

I ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG 5

me to observe that, wandering through the paths which trav-
erse the wood, I noticed the marks of liorse-shoes. They were
all equidistant. '* Ah ! " said I, " this is a famous galloper."
In a narrow alley, only seven feet wide, the dust upon the
trunks of the trees was a little disturbed at three feet and a
half from the middle of the path. " This horse," said I to
myself, " had a tail three feet and a half long, and, lashing
it from one side to the other, he has swept away the dust.''
Branches of the trees met overhead at the height of five feet,
and under them I saw newly fallen leaves ; so I knew that
the horse had brushed some of the branches, and was there-
fore five feet high. As to his bit, it must have been made of
twenty-three carat gold, for he had rubbed it against a stone,
which turned out to be a touchstone, with the properties of
which I am familiar by experiment. Lastly, by the marks
which his shoes left upon pebbles of another kind, I was led
to think that his shoes were of fine silver.'

" All the judges admired Zadig's profound and subtle dis-
cernment ; and the fame of it reached even the King and the
Queen. From the ante-rooms to the presence-chamber, Zad ig's
name was in everybody's mouth ; and, although many of the
nuigi were of opinion that he ought to be burnt as a sorcerer,
the King commanded that the four hundred ounces of gold
which he had been fined should be restored to him. So the
officers of the court went in state with the four hundred
ounces ; only they retained three hundred and ninety-eight
for legal expenses, and their servants expected fees."

Those who are interested in learning more of
the fateful history of Zadig must turn to the orig-
inal; we are dealing with him only as a philoso-
pher, and this brief excerpt suffices for the exem-
plification of the nature of his conclusions and
of the methods by which he arrived at them.

These conclusions may be said to be of the

6 ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG i

nature of retrospective prophecies; though it is
perhaps a little hazardous to employ phraseology
which perilously suggests a contradiction in terms
— the word " prophecy " being so constantly, in
ordinary use, restricted to " foretelling/' Strict-
ly, however, the term prophecy applies as much
to outspeaking as to foretelling; and, even in the
restricted sense of " divination," it is obvious that
the essence of the prophetic operation does not
lie in its backward or forward relation to the
course of time, but in the fact that it is the ap-
prehension of that which lies out of the sphere of
immediate knowledge; the seeing of that which,
to the natural sense of the seer, is invisible.

The foreteller asserts that, at some future time,
a properly situated observer will witness certain
events; the clairvoyant declares that, at this pres-
ent time, certain things are to be witnessed a thou-
sand miles away; the retrospective pro^^het (would
that there were such a word as " backteller! ")
afhrms that, so many hours or years ago, such and
such things were to be seen. In all these cases,
it is only the relation to time which alters — the
process of divination beyond the limits of possible
direct knowledge remains the same.

]^o doubt it was their instinctive recognition
of the analogy between Zadig's results and those
obtained by authorised inspiration which inspired
the Babylonian magi with the desire to burn the
j)liilosopher. Zadig admitted that he had never

I ON TUE METHOD OF ZADIG 7

either seen or heard of the horse of the king or of
the spaniel of the queen; and yet he ventured to
assert in the most positive manner that animals
answering to their description did actually exist
and ran about the plains of Babylon. If his
method was good for the divination of the course
of events ten hours old, why should it not be good
for those of ten years or ten centuries past; nay,
might it not extend ten thousand years and justify
the impious in meddling with the traditions of
Cannes and the fish, and all the sacred foundations
of Babylonian cosmogony?

But this was not the worst. There was an-
other consideration which obviously dictated to the
more thoughtful of the magi the propriety of
burning Zadig out of hand. His defence was
worse than his offence. It showed that his mode
of divination was fraught with danger to magian-
ism in general. Swollen with the pride of human
reason, he had ignored the established canons of
magian lore; and, trusting to what after all was
mere carnal common sense, he professed to lead
men to a deeper insight into nature than magian
wisdom, with all its lofty antagonism to every-
thing common, had ever reached. What, in fact,
lay at the foundation of all Zadig's arguments but
the coarse commonplace assumption, upon which
every act of our daily lives is based, that we may
conclude from an effect to the prc-existence of a
cause competent to' produce that effect?

8 ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG i

The tracks were exactly like those which clogs
and horses leaA^e; therefore they were the effects
of such animals as causes. The marks at the sides
of the fore-prints of the dog track were exactly
such as would be produced by long trailing ears;
therefore the dog's long ears were the causes of
these marks — and so on. Nothing can be more
hopelessly vulgar, more unlike the majestic devel-
opment of a system of grandly unintelligible con-
clusions from sublimely inconceivable premisses
such as delights the magian heart. In fact, Za-
dig's method was nothing but the method of all
mankind. Eetrospeetive prophecies, far more as-
tonishing for their minute accuracy than those of
Zadig, are familiar to those who have watched the
daily life of nomadic people.

From freshly broken twigs, crushed leaves, dis-
turbed pebbles, and imprints hardly discernible by
the untrained eye, such graduates in the Univer-
sity of Nature will divine, not only the fact that
a party has passed that way, but its strength, its
composition, the course it took, and the number of
hours or days which have elapsed since it passed.
But they are able to do this because, like Zadig,
they perceive endless minute differences where
untrained eyes discern nothing; and because
the unconscious logic of common sense com-
pels them to account for these effects by the
causes which they know to be competent to pro-
duce them.

I ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG 9

And such mere methodised savagery was to dis-
cover the hidden things of nature better than a
priori deductions from the nature of Ormuzd —
perhaps to give a history of the past, in whicli
Cannes would he altogether ignored! Decidedly
it were better to burn this man at once.

If instinct, or an unwonted use of reason, led
Moabdar's magi to this conclusion two or three
thousand years ago, all that can be said is that
subsequent history has fully justified them. For
the rigorous application of Zadig's logic to the
results of accurate and long-continued observation
has founded all those sciences which have been
termed historical or pala3tiological, because they
are retrospectively prophetic and strive towards
the reconstruction in human imagination of events
which have vanished and ceased to be.

History, in the ordinary acceptation of the
word, is based upon the interpretation of docu-
mentarv evidence: and documents would have no
evidential value unless historians were justified
in their assumJDtion that they have come into
existence by the operation of causes similar to
those of which documents are, in our present ex-
perience, the effects. If a written history can be
produced otherwise than by human agency, or if
the man who wrote a given document was actu-
ated by other than ordinary human motives, such
documents are of no more evidential value than
so many arabesques.

10 ON THE METHOD OP ZADIG i

Archaeology, which takes up the thread of his-
tory beyond the point at which documentary evi-
dence fails us, could have no existence, except for
our well grounded confidence that monuments
and works of art or artifice, have never been pro-
duced by causes different in kind from those to
which they now owe their origin. And geology,
which traces back the course of history beyond
the limits of archaeology, could tell us nothing
except for the assumption that, millions of years
ago, water, heat, gravitation, friction, animal and
vegetable life, caused effects of the same kind as
they now cause. Nay, even physical astronomy,
in so far as it takes us back to the uttermost
point of time which palaetiological science can
reach, is founded upon the same assumption. If
the law of gravitation ever failed to be true, even
to a small extent, for that period, the calculations
of the astronomer have no application.

The power of prediction, of prospective pro-
phecy, is that which is commonly regarded as the
great prerogative of physical science. And truly
it is a wonderful fact that one can go into a
shop and buy for a small price a book, the
" Nautical Almanac," which will foretell the ex-
act position to be occupied by one of Jupiter's
moons six months hence; nay, more, that, if it
were worth while, the Astronomer-Royal could
furnish us with as infallible a prediction applicable
to 1980 or 2980.

I ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG H

But astronomy is not less remarkable for its
power of retrospective prophecy.

Thales, oldest of Greek philosophers, the dates
of whose birth and death are uncertain, but who
flourished about 600 b. c, is said to have foretold
an eclipse of the sun which took place in his time
during a battle between the Medes and the
.Lydians. Sir George Airy has written a very
learned and interesting memoir * in which he
proves that such an eclipse was visible in Lydia
on the afternoon of the 28th of May in the year
585 B. c.

No one doubts that, on the day and at the
hour mentioned by the Astronomer-Royal, the
people of Lydia saw the face of the sun totally
obscured. But, though we implicitly believe this
retrospective prophecy, it is incapable of verifi-
cation. In the total absence of historical records,
it is impossible even to conceive any means of
ascertaining directly whether the eclipse of Thales
happened or not. All that can be said is, that
the prospective prophecies of the astronomer are
always verified; and that, inasmuch as his retro-
spective prophecies are the result of following
backwards, the very same method as that which
'invariably leads to verified results, when it is
worked forwards, there is as much reason for plac-
ing full confidence in the one as in the other. Eet-

* " On the Eclipses of Agathocles, Thales, and Xerxes,"
Philosophical Transactions^ vol. cxliii.

12 ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG i

rospective ])ropliecy is therefore a legitimate func-
tion of astronomical science; and if it is legitimate
for one science it is legitimate for all; the funda-
mental axiom on which it rests, the constancy of
the order of nature, being the common foundation
of all scientific thought. Indeed, if there can be
grades in legitimacy, certain branches of science
have the advantage over astronomy, in so far as
their retrospective prophecies are not only sus-
ceptible of verification, but are sometimes strik-
ingly verified.

Such a science exists in that application of the
principles of biology to the interpretation of the
animal and vegetable remains imbedded in the
rocks which compose the surface of the globe,
which is called Palaeontology.

At no very distant time, the question whether
these so-called " fossils," were really the remains
of animals and plants was hotly disputed. Very
learned persons maintained that they were noth-
ing of the kind, but a sort of concretion, or crys-
tallisation, Avhich had taken place within the stone
in which they are found; and which simulated
the forms of animal and vegetable life, Just as
frost on a window-pane imitates vegetation. At
the present day, it would probably be impossible
to find any sane advocate of this opinion; and
the fact is rather surprising, that among the
people from whom the circle-squarers, perpetual-
motioners, flat-earthed men and the like, are re-

I ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG 13

cruited, to say nothing of table-turners and spirit-
rappers, somebody has not perceived the easy
avenue to nonsensical notoriety open to any one
who will take up the good old doctrine, that fos-
sils are all Iusils naturce.

The position would be impregnable, inasmuch
as it is quite impossible to prove the contrary.
If a man choose to maintain that a fossil oyster
shell, in spite of its correspondence, down to
every minutest particular, with that of an oyster
fresh taken out of the sea, was never tenanted
by a living oyster, but is a mineral concretion,
there is no demonstrating his error. All that can
be done is to show him that, by a parity of rea-
soning, he is bound to admit that a heap of oyster
shells outside a fishmonger's door may also be
" sports of nature," and that a mutton bone in a
dust-bin may have had the like origin. And when
you cannot prove that people are wrong, but only
that they are absurd, the best course is to let them
alone.

The whole fabric of paloBontology, in fact, falls
to the ground unless we admit the validity of
Zadig's great principle, that like effects imply like
causes, and that the process of reasoning from a
shell, or a tooth, or a bone, to the nature of the
animal to which it belonged, rests absolutely on
the assumption that the likeness of this sliell, or
tooth, or bone, to that of some animal with which
we are already acquainted, is such that we are jus-

14 ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG i

tified in inferring a corresponding degree of like-
ness in the rest of the two organisms. It is on this
very simple principle, and not upon imaginary laws
of physiological correlation, about which, in most
cases, we know nothing whatever, that the so-
called restorations of the pala3ontologist are based.

Abundant illustrations of this truth will occur
to every one who is familiar with palaeontology;
none is more suitable than the case of the so-
called Belemnites. In the early days of the study
of fossils, this name was given to certain elon-
gated stony bodies, ending at one extremity in a
conical point, and truncated at the other, which
were commonly reputed to be thunderbolts, and
as such to have descended from the sky. They
are common enough in some parts of England;
and, in the condition in which they are ordinarily
found, it might be difficult to give satisfactory
reasons for denying them to be merely mineral
bodies.

They appear, in fact, to consist of nothing but
concentric layers of carbonate of lime, disposed in
subcrystalline fibres, or prisms, perpendicular to
the layers. Among a great number of s]3ecimens
of these Belemnites, however, it was soon observed
that some showed a conical cavity at the blunt
end; and, in still better preserved specimens, this
cavity appeared to be divided into chambers by
delicate saucer-shaped partitions, situated at
regular intervals one above the other. Now there

I ON THE METnOD OP ZADIQ 15

is no mineral body which presents any structure
comparable to this, and the conclusion suggested
itself that the Belemnites must be the effects of
causes other than those which are at work in
inorganic nature. On close examination, the
saucer-shaped partitions were proved to be all
perforated at one point, and the perforations being
situated exactly in the same line, the chambers
were seen to be traversed by a canal, or sipJiuncle,
which thus connected the smallest or aphical
chamber with the largest. There is nothing like
this in the vegetable world; but an exactly cor-
responding structure is met with in the shells of
two kinds of existing animals, the pearly Nautilus
and the Spirula, and only in them. These
animals belong to the same division — the
Cephalopoda — as the cuttle-fish, the squid, and
/ the octopus. But they are the only existing mem-

bers of the group which possess chambered, si-
phunculated shells; and it is utterly impossible to
trace any physiological connection between the
very peculiar structural characters of a cephalopod
and the presence of a chambered shell. In fact,
the squid has, instead of any such shell, a horny
" pen," the cuttle-fish has the so-called " cuttle-
bone,'' and the octopus has no shell, or, at most,
a mere rudiment of one.

ISTevertheless, seeing that there is nothing in
nature at all like the chambered shell of the
Belemnite, except the shells of the Nautilus and

16 ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG I

of the Spirilla, it was legitimate to })rophesy that
the animal from which the fossil proceeded must
have belonged to the group of the Cephalopoda.
Nautilus and Spirula are both very rare animals,
but the progress of investigation brought to light
the singular fact, that, though each has the char-
acteristic cephalopodous organisation, it is very
different from the other. The shell of Nautilus is
external, that of Spirula internal; Nautilus has
four gills, Spirula two; Nautilus has multi-
tudinous tentacles, Spirula has only ten arms beset
with horny-rimmed suckers; Spirula, like the
squids and cuttle-fishes, which it closely resembles,
has a bag of ink which it squirts out to cover its
retreat when alarmed; Nautilus has none.

No amount of physiological reasoning could
enable any one to say whether the animal which
fabricated the Belemnite was more like Nautilus,
or more like Spirula. But the accidental dis-
covery of Belemnites in due connection with black
elongated masses which were certainly fossilised
ink-bags, inasmuch as the ink could be ground up
and used for painting as well as if it were recent
sepia, settled the question; and it became perfectly
safe to prophesy that the creature which fabricated
the Belemnite was a two-gilled ceplialopod with
suckers on its arms, and with all the other essen-
tial features of our living squids, cuttle-fishes, and
Spiruloi. The palaeontologist was, by this time,
able to speak as confidently about the animal of the

I ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG I7

Belemnite, as Zadig was respecting the queen's
spaniel. He could give a very fair description
of its external appearance, and even enter pretty
fully into the details of its internal organisation,
and yet could declare that neither he, nor any one
else, had ever seen one. And as the queen's
spaniel was found, so happily has the animal of
the Belemnite; a few exceptionally preserved
specimens having been discovered, which com-
pletely verify the retrospective prophecy of
those who interpreted the facts of the case by due
application of the method of Zadig.

These Belemnites flourished in prodigious
abundance in the seas of the mesozoic, or second-
ary, age of the world's geological history; but no
trace of them has been found in any of the tertiary
deposits, and they appear to have died out to-
wards the close of the mesozoic epoch. The
method of Zadig, therefore, applies in full force to
the events of a period which is immeasurably
remote, which long preceded the origin of the
most conspicuous mountain masses of the present
world, and the deposition, at the bottom of the
ocean, of the rocks which form the greater part of
the soil of our present continents. The Euphrates
itself, at the mouth of which Cannes landed, is a
thing of yesterday compared with a Belemnite;
and even the liberal chronology of magian cos-
mogony fixes the beginning of the world only at a
time when other applications of Zadig's method
91

18 ON THE METHOD OP ZADIG i

afford convincing evidence that, could we have
been there to see, things would have looked very
much as they do now. Truly the magi were wise
in their generation; they foresaw rightly that
this pestilent application of the principles of
common sense, inaugurated by Zadig, would
be their ruin.

But it may be said that the method of Zadig,
which is simple reasoning from analogy, does not
account for the most striking feats of modern
palaeontology — the reconstruction of entire ani-
mals from a tooth or perhaps a fragment of a bone;
and it may be justly urged that Cuvier, the great
master of this kind of investigation, gave a very
different account of the process which yielded such
remarkable results.

Cuvier is not the first man of ability who has
failed to make his own mental processes clear to
himself, and he will not be the last. The matter
can be easily tested. Search the eight volumes of
the " Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles " from
cover to cover, and nothing but the application of
the method of Zadig will be found in the argu-
ments by which a fragment of a skeleton is made
to reveal the characters of the animal to which it
belonged.

There is one well-known case which may repre-
sent all. It is an excellent illustration of Cuvier's
sagacity, and he evidently takes some pride in
telling his story about it. A split slab of stone

I ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG 19

arrived from the quarries of Montmartre, the two
halves of which contained the greater part of the
skeleton of a small animal. On careful examina-
tions of the characters of the teeth and* of the
lower jaw, which happened to be exposed, Cuvier
assured himself that they presented such a very
close resemblance to the corresponding parts in the
living opossums that he at once assigned the fossil
to that genus.

Now the opossums are unlike most mammals in
that they possess two bones attached to the fore
part of the pelvis, which are commonly called
" marsupial bones." The name is a misnomer,
originally conferred because it was thought that
these bones have something to do with the support
of the pouch, or marsupium, with which some, but
not all, of the opossums are provided. As a
matter of fact, they have nothing to do with the
support of the pouch, and they exist as much in
those opossums which have no pouches as in those
which possess them. In truth, no one knows what
the use of these bones may be, nor has any valid
theory of their physiological import yet been
suggested. And if we have no knowledge of the
physiological importance of the bones themselves,
it is obviously absurd to pretend that we are able
to give physiological reasons why the presence of
these bones is associated with certain peculiarities
of the teeth and of the jaws. If any one knows
why four molar teeth and an inflected angle of the

20 ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG i

jaw are very generally found along with marsupial
bones, he has not yet communicated that knowl-
edge to the world.

If, however, Zadig was right in concluding
from the likeness of the hoof-prints which he ob-
served to be a horse's that the creature which made
them had a tail like that of a horse, Cuvier, seeing
that the teeth and jaw of his fossil were just like
those of an opossum, had the same right to con-
clude that the pelvis would also be like an opos-
sum's; and so strong was his conviction that this
retrospective prophecy, about an animal which he
had never seen before, and which had been dead
and buried for millions of years, would be verified,
that he went to work upon the slab which con-
tained the pelvis in confident expectation of find-
ing and laying bare the " marsupial bones," to the
satisfaction of some persons whom he had invited
to witness their disinterment. As he says: — "Cette
operation se fit en presence de quelques personnes
a qui j'en avals annonce d'avance le resultat, dans
Fintention de leur prouver par le fait la justice
de nos theories zoologiques; puisque le vrai
cachet d'une theorie est sans contredit la faculte
qu'elle donne de prevoir les phenomenes."

In the " Ossemens Fossiles " Cuvier leaves his
paper just as it first appeared in the " Annales
du Museum," as "a curious monument of the
force of zoological laws and of the use which may
be made of them."

I ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG 21

Zoological laws truly, but not physiological
laws. If one sees a live dog's head, it is extremely
probable that a dog's tail is not far off, though no-
body can say why that sort of head and that sort of
tail go together; what physiological connection
there is between the two. So, in the case of the
Montmartre fossil, Cuvier, finding a thorough
opossum's head, concluded that the pelvis also
would be like an opossum's. But, most assuredly,
the most advanced physiologist of the present day
could throw no light on the question why these
are associated, nor could pretend to affirm that the
existence of the one is necessarily connected with
that of the other. In fact, had it so happened
that the pelvis of the fossil had been originally
exposed, while the head lay hidden, the presence
of the " marsupial bones," though very like
an opossum's, would by no means have war-
ranted the prediction that the skull would turn
out to be that of the opossum. It might
just as well have been like that of some other
marsupial; or even like that of the totally dif-
ferent group of Monotremes, of which the only
living representatives are the Echidna and the
0 rn itJiorhyn chus .

For all practical purposes, however, the em-
pirical laws of co-ordination of structures, which are
embodied in the generalisations of morphology,
may be confidently trusted, if employed with due
caution, to lead to a just inter j)retation of fossil

22 ON THE METHOD OF ZADIQ 1

remains; or, in other words, we may look for the
verification of the retrospective prophecies which
are based upon them.

And if this be the case, the late advances which
have been made in palaeontological discovery open
out a new field for such prophecies. For it has
been ascertained with respect to many groups of
animals, that, as we trace them back in time,
their ancestors gradually cease to exhibit those
special modifications which at present characterise
the type, and more nearly embody the general plan
of the group to which they belong.

Thus, in the well-known case of the horse, the
toes which are suppressed in the living horse are
found to be more and more complete in the older
members of the group, until, at the bottom of the
Tertiary series of America, we find an equine
animal which has four toes in front and three
behind. No remains of the horse tribe are at
present known from any Mesozoic deposit. Yet
who can doubt that, whenever a sufficiently exten-
sive series of lacustrine and fluviatile beds of that
age becomes known, the lineage which has been
traced thus far will be continued by equine quad-
rupeds with an increasing number of digits, until
the horse type merges in the five-toed form to-
wards which these gradations point?

But the argument which holds good for the
horse, holds good, not only for all mammals, but
for the whole animal world. And as the study of

I ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG 23

the pedigrees, or lines of evolution, to which, at
present, we have access, brings to light, as it
assuredly will do, the laws of that process, we
shall be able to reason from the facts with which
the geological record furnishes us to those which
have hitherto remained, and many of which, per-
haps, may for ever remain, hidden. The same
method of reasoning which enables us, when
furnished with a fragment of an extinct animal, to
prophesy the character which the whole organism
exhibited, will, sooner or later, enable us, when
w^e know a few of the later terms of a genea-
logical series, to predict the nature of the earlier
terms.

In no very distant future, the method of Zadig,
applied to a greater body of facts than the present
generation is fortunate enough to handle, will
enable the biologist to reconstruct the scheme of
life from its beginning, and to speak as confidently
of the character of long extinct living beings, no
trace of which has been preserved, as Zadig did of
the queen's spaniel and the king's horse. Let us
hope that they may be better rewarded for their
toil and their sagacity than was the Babylonian
philosopher; for perhaps, by that time, the magi
also may be reckoned among the members of a
forgotten Fauna, extinguished in the struggle for
existence against their great rival, common sense.

II

THE EISE AND PROGEESS OF
PALEONTOLOGY

[1881]

That application of the sciences of biology
and geology, which is commonly known as palaeon-
tology, took its origin in the mind of the first
person who, finding something like a shell, or a
bone, naturally imbedded in gravel or rock, in-
dulged in speculations upon the nature of this
thing which he had dug out — this " fossil " — and
upon the causes which had brought it into such a
position. In this rudimentary form, a high anti-
quity may safely be ascribed to palaeontology, in-
asmuch as we know that, 500 years before the
Christian era, the philosophic doctrines of Xeno-
phanes were influenced by his observations upon
the fossil remains exposed in the quarries of
Syracuse. From this time forth not only the
philosophers, but the poets, the historians, the
geographers of antiquity occasionally refer to
fossils; and, after the revival of learning, lively

controversies arose respecting their real nature.
24

II PROGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY 25

But hardly more than two centuries have elapsed
since this fundamental problem was first exhaus-
tively treated; it was only in the last century
that the archoBological value of fossils — their im-
portance, I mean, as records of the history of the
earth — was fully recognised; the first adequate
investigation of the fossil remains of any large
group of vertebrated animals is to be found in
Cuvier's " Eecherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles/'
completed in 1822; and, so modern is strati-
graphical palifiontology, that its founder, "William
Smith, lived to receive the just recognition of his
services by the award of the first WoUaston Medal
in 1831.

But, although palaeontology is a comparatively
youthful scientific speciality, the mass of materials
wdth which it has to deal is already prodigious.
In the last fifty years the number of known fossil
remains of invertebrated animals has been trebled
or quadrupled. The w^ork of interpretation of
vertebrate fossils, the foundations of which were
so solidly laid by Cuvier, was carried on, with
wonderful vigour and success, by Agassiz in Swit-
zerland, by Von Meyer in Germany, and last, but
not least, by Owen in this country, while, in later
years, a multitude of workers have laboured in
the same field. In many groups of the animal
kingdom the number of fossil forms already
known is as great as that of the existing species.
In some cases it is much greater; and there are

26 PROGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY n

entire orders of animals of the existence of which
we should know nothing except for the evidence
afforded by fossil remains. With all this it may
be safely assumed that, at the present moment,
we are not acquainted with a tithe of the fossils
which will sooner or later be discovered. If we
may judge by the profusion yielded within the
last few years by the Tertiary formations of North
America, there seems to be no limit to the multi-
tude of mammalian remains to be expected from
that continent; and analogy leads us to expect
similar riches in Eastern Asia, whenever the
Tertiary formations of that region are as carefully
explored. Again, we have, as yet, almost every-
thing to learn respecting the terrestrial population
of the Mesozoic epoch; and it seems as if the
Western territories of the United States were
about to prove as instructive in regard to this
point as they have in respect of tertiary life. My
friend Professor Marsh informs me that, within
two years, remains of more than 160 distinct in-
dividuals of mammals, belonging to twenty species
and nine genera, have been found in a space not
larger than the floor of a good-sized room; while
beds of the same age have yielded 300 reptiles,
varying in size from a length of 60 feet or 80 feet
to the dimensions of a rabbit.

The task which I have set myself to-night is to
endeavour to lay before you, as briefly as possible,
a sketch of the successive steps by which our

n PROGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY 27

present knowledge of the facts of palasntology
and of those conclusions from them which are in-
disputable, has been attained; and I beg leave to
remind you, at the outset, that in attempting to
sketch the progress of a branch of knowledge to
which innumerable labours have contributed, my
business is rather with generalisations than with
details. It is my object to mark the epochs of
palaeontology, not to recount all the events of its
history.

That which I just now called the fundamental
problem of palaeontology, the question which has
to be settled before any other can be profitably
discussed, is this. What is the nature of fossils?
Are they, as the healthy common sense of the
ancient Greeks appears to have led them to
assume without hesitation, the remains of animals
and plants? Or are they, as was so generally
maintained in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seven-
teenth centuries, mere figured stones, portions of
mineral matter which have assumed the forms of
leaves and shells and bones, just as those portions
of mineral matter which we call crystals take on
the form of regular geometrical solids? Or, again,
are they, as others thought, the products of the
germs of animals and of the seeds of plants which
have lost their way, as it were, in the bowels
of the earth, and have achieved only an imperfect
and abortive development? It is easy to sneer at
our ancestors for being disposed to reject the first

28 PROGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY u

in favour of one or other of the last two hypo-
theses; but it is much more profitable to try to
discover why they, who were really not one whit
less sensible persons than our excellent selves,
should have been led to entertain views which
strike us as absurd. The belief in what is erro-
neously called spontaneous generation, that is to
say, in the development of living matter out of
mineral matter, apart from the agency of pre-
existing living matter, as an ordinary occurrence
at the present day — which is still held by some of
us, was universally accepted as an obvious truth
by them. They could point to the arborescent
forms assumed by hoar-frost and by sundry
metallic minerals as evidence of the existence in
nature of a " plastic force " competent to enable
inorganic matter to assume the form of organised
bodies. Then, as every one who is familiar with
fossils knows, they present innumerable grada-
tions, from shells and bones which exactly re-
semble the recent objects, to masses of mere stone
w^hich, however accurately they repeat the out-
ward form of the organic body, have nothing else
in common with it; and, thence, to mere traces
and faint impressions in the continuous substance
of the rock. What we now know to be the re-
sults of the chemical changes which take place in
the course of fossilisation, by which mineral is
substituted for organic substance, might, in the
absence of such knowledge, be fairly interpreted

n PROGHESS OF PALEONTOLOGY 29

as the expression of a process of development in
the opposite direction — from the mineral to the
organic. Moreover, in an age when it would have
seemed the most absurd of paradoxes to suggest
that the general level of the sea is constant, while
that of the solid land fluctuates up and down
through thousands of feet in a secular ground
swell, it may well have appeared far less hazardous
to conceive that fossils are sports of nature than
to accept the necessary alternative, that all the
inland regions and highlands, in the rocks of
which marine shells had been found, had once
been covered by the ocean. It is not so surpris-
ing, therefore, as it may at first seem, that
although such men as Leonardo da Vinci and
Bernard Palissy took just views of the nature of
fossils, the opinion of the majority of their con-
temporaries set strongly the other way; nor even
that error maintained itself long after the scientific
grounds of the true interpretation of fossils had
been stated, in a manner that left nothing to be
desired, in the latter half of the seventeenth
century. The person who rendered this good
service to palasontology was Nicolas Steno, pro-
fessor of anatomy in Florence, though a Dane by
birth. Collectors of fossils at that day were
familiar with certain bodies termed " glossopetra?,"
and speculation was rife as to their nature. In
the first half of the seventeenth century, Fabio
Colonna had tried to convince his colleagues of

30 PROGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY n

the famous Accademia dei Lincei that the glosso-
petrse were merely fossil sharks' teeth, but his
arguments made no impression. Fifty years later,
Steno re-opened the question, and, by dissecting
the head of a shark and pointing out the very
exact correspondence of its teeth with the glosso-
petraB, left no rational doubt as to the origin of
the latter. Thus far, the work of Steno went
little further than that of Colonna, but it for-
tunately occurred to him to think out the whole
subject of the interpretation of fossils, and the
result of his meditations was the publication, in
1669, of a little treatise with the very quaint
title of " De Solido intra Solidum naturaliter
contento." The general course of Steno's argu-
ment may be stated in a few words. Fossils are
solid bodies which, by some natural process, have
come to be contained within other solid bodies,
namely, the rocks in which they are embedded;
and the fundamental problem of palaeontology,
stated generally, is this: " Given a body endowed
with a certain shape and produced in accordance
with natural laws, to find in that body itself the
evidence of the 23lace and manner of its produc-
tion." * The only way of solving this problem
is by the application of the axiom that " like
effects imply like causes," or as Steno puts it, in

* De Solido intra Solidum, p. 5. — " Dato corpore certa
figurfi, praedito et juxta leges naturae producto, in ipso corporo
argumenta invenire locum et moduin productionis dete-
gentia."

II PROGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY 31

reference to this particular case, that "bodies
which are altogether similar have been produced
in the same way." * Hence, since the glossopetra}
are altogether similar to sharks' teeth, they must
have been produced by sharklike fishes; and
since many fossil shells correspond, down to the
minutest details of structure, with the shells of
existing marine or freshwater animals, they must
have been produced by similar animals; and the
like reasoning is applied by Steno to the fossil
bones of vertebrated animals, whether aquatic or
terrestrial. To the obvious objection that many
fossils are not altogether similar to their living
analogues, differing in substance while agreeing in
form, or being mere hollows or impressions, the
surfaces of which are figured in the same way as
those of animal or vegetable organisms, Steno
replies by pointing out the changes which take
place in organic remains embedded in the earth,
and how their solid substance may be dissolved
away entirely, or replaced by mineral matter,
until nothing is left of the original but a cast, an
impression, or a mere trace of its contours. The
principles of investigation thus excellently stated
and illustrated by Steno in 1669, are those which
have, consciously or unconsciously, guided the
researches of palaeontologists ever since. Even
that feat of palaeontology which has so powerfully

* " Corpora sibi invicem omnino similia simili etiam
modo producta sunt."

32 PROGRESS OF PALiEONTOLOGY n

imiDressed the poiDular imagmation, the recon-
struction of an extinct animal from a tooth or a
bone, is based upon the simplest imaginable appli-
cation of the logic of Steno. A moment's con-
sideration will show, in fact, that Steno's conclu-
sion that the glossopetr^ are sharks' teeth implies
the reconstruction of an animal from its tooth. It
is equivalent to the assertion that the animal of
which the glossopetrae are relics had the form and
organisation of a shark; that it had a skull, a
vertebral column, and limbs similar to those which
are characteristic of this group of fishes; that its
heart, gills, and intestines presented the pecu-
liarities which those of all sharks exhibit; nay,
even that any hard parts which its integument
contained were of a totally different character
from the scales of ordinary fishes. These conclu-
sions are as certain as any based upon probable
reasonings can be. And they are so, simply be-
cause a very large experience justifies us in be-
lieving that teeth of this particular form and
structure are invariably associated with the pecul-
iar organisation of sharks, and are never found
in connection with other organisms. ^Yhy this
should be we are not at present in a position even
to imagine; we must take the fact as an empirical
law of animal morphology, the reason of which
may possibly be one day found in the history of
the evolution of the shark tribe, but for which it
is hopeless to seek for an explanation in ordinary

II PROGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY 33

physiological reasonings. Every one practically
acquainted with palaeontology is aware that it is
not every tooth, nor every bone, which enables us
to form a judgment of the character of the animal
to which it belonged; and that it is possible to
possess many teeth, and even a large portion of
the skeleton of an extinct animal, and yet be
unable to reconstruct its skull or its limbs. It
is only when the tooth or bone presents peculi-
arities, which we know by previous experience to
be characteristic of a certain group, that we can
safely predict that the fossil belonged to an
animal of the same group. Any one who finds a
cow's grinder may be perfectly sure that it be-
longed to an animal which had two complete toes
on each foot and ruminated; any one who finds a
horse's grinder may be as sure that it had one
complete toe on each foot and did not ruminate;
but if ruminants and horses were extinct animals
of which nothing but the grinders had ever been
discovered, no amount of physiological reasoning
could have enabled us to reconstruct either
animal, still less to have divined the wide differ-
ences between the two. Cuvier, in the " Discours
sur les Kevolutions de la Surface du Globe,"
strangely credits himself, and has ever since been
credited by others, with the invention of a new
method of palseontological research. But if you
will turn to the " Eecherches sur les Ossemens
Fossiles" and watch Cuvier, not speculating, but
92

34 PROGRESS OP PALEONTOLOGY ii

working, you will find that his method is neither
more or less than that of Steno. If he was able
to make his famous prophecy from the jaw which
lay upon the surface of a block of stone to the
pelvis of the same animal which lay hidden in it,
it was not because either he, or any one else,
knew, or knows, why a certain form of jaw is, as a
rule, constantly accompanied by the presence of
marsupial bones, but simply because experience
has shown that these two structures are co-
ordinated.

The settlement of the nature of fossils led at
once to the next advance of palaeontology, viz. its
application to the deciphering of the history of
the earth. When it was admitted that fossils are
remains of animals and plants, it followed that, in
so far as they resemble terrestrial, or freshwater,
animals and plants, they are evidences of the ex-
istence of land, or fresh water; and, in so far
as they resemble marine organisms, they are
evidences of the existence of the sea at the time
at which they were parts of actually living animals
and plants. Moreover, in the absence of evidence
to the contrary, it must be admitted that the
terrestrial or the marine organisms implied the
existence of land or sea at the place in which they
were found while they were yet living. In fact,
such conclusions were immediately drawn by
everybody, from the time of Xenophanes down-
wards, who believed that fossils were really

II PROGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY 35

organic remains. Steno discusses their value as
evidence of repeated alteration of marine and
terrestrial conditions upon the soil of Tuscany in
a manner worthy of a modern geologist. The
speculations of De Maillet in the beginning of
the eighteenth century turn upon fossils; and
Buffon follows him very closely in those two re-
markable w^orks, the " Theorie de la Terre '' and
the " Epoques de la Nature " with which he com-
menced and ended his career as a naturalist.

The opening sentences of the " Epoques de la
Nature " show us how fully Buffon recognised the
analogy of geological with archaeological inquiries.
" As in civil history we consult deeds, seek for
coins, or decipher antique inscriptions in order to
determine the epochs of human revolutions and
fix the date of moral events; so, in natural history,
we must search the archives of the world, recover
old monuments from the bowels of the earth,
collect their fragmentary remains, and gather into
one body of evidence all the signs of physical
change which may enable us to look back upon
the different ages of nature. It is our only means
of fixing some points in the immensity of space,
and of setting a certain number of waymarks along
the eternal path of time."

Buffon enumerates five classes of thes^ monu-
ments of the past history of the earth, and
they are all facts of palaeontology. In the first
place, he says, shells and other marine productions

36 PROGHESS OF PALAEONTOLOGY n

are found all over tlie surface and in the interior
of the dry land; and all calcareous rocks are made
up of their remains. Secondly, a great many of
these shells which are found in Europe are not
now to be met with in the adjacent seas; and, in
the slates and other deep-seated deposits, there
are remains of fishes and of plants of which no
species now exist in our latitudes, and which are
either extinct, or exist only in more northern
climates. Thirdly, in Siberia and in other
northern regions of Europe and of Asia, bones
and teeth of elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippo-
potamuses occur in such numbers that these
animals must once have lived and multiplied m
those regions, although at the present day they
are confined to southern climates. The deposits
in which these remains are found are superficial,
while those which contain shells and other marine
remains lie much deeper. Eourthly, tusks and
bones of elephants and hippopotamuses are found
not only in the northern regions of the old world,
but also in those of the new world, although, at
present, neither elephants nor hippopotamuses
occur in America. Fifthly, in the middle of the
continents, in regions most remote from the sea, we
find an infinite number of shells, of which the most
part belong to animals of those kinds which still
exist in southern seas, but of which many others
have no living analogues; so that these species
appear to be lost, destroyed by some unknown

H f PROGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY 37

cause. It is needless to inquire how far these
statements are strictly accurate; they are suf-
ficiently so to justify Buffon's conclusions that
the dry land was once beneath the sea; that the
formation of the fossiliferous rocks must have
occupied a vastly greater lapse of time than that
traditionally ascribed to the age of the earth;
that fossil remains indicate different climatal
conditions to have obtained in former times, and
especially that the polar regions were once
warmer; that many species of animals and plants
have become extinct; and that geological change
has had something to do with geographical dis-
tribution.

But these propositions almost constitute the
frame-work of palaeontology. In order to com-
plete it but one addition was needed, and that
was made, in the last years of the eighteenth
century, by William Smith, whose work comes so
near our own times that many living men may
have been personally acquainted with him. This
modest land-surveyor, whose business took him
into many parts of England, profited by the
peculiarly favourable conditions offered by the
arrangement of our secondary strata to make a
careful examination and comparison of their
fossil contents at different points of the large area
over which they extend. The result of his
accurate and widely-extended observations was to
establish the important truth that each stratum

38 PEOGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY ii

contains certain fossils which are peculiar to it;
and that the order in which the strata^ character-
ised by these fossils, are super-imposed one upon
the other is always the same. This most im-
portant generalisation was rapidly verified and
extended to all parts of the world accessible to
geologists; and now it rests upon such an immense
mass of observations as to be one of the best
established truths of natural science. To the
geologist the discovery was of infinite importance
as it enabled him to identify rocks of the same
relative age, however their continuity might be
interrupted or their composition altered. But to
the biologist it had a still deeper meaning, for it
demonstrated that, throughout the prodigious
duration of time registered by the fossiliferous
rocks, the living population of the earth had
undergone continual changes, not merely by the
extinction of a certain number of the species
which had at first existed, but by the continual
generation of new species, and the no less constant
extinction of old ones.

Thus the broad outlines of palaeontology, in so
far as it is the common property of both the
geologist and the biologist, were marked out at
the close of the last century. In tracing its sub-
sequent progress I must confine myself to the
province of biology, and, indeed, to the influence
of pselontology upon zoological morphology. And
I accept this limitation the more willingly as the

n PROGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY 39

no less iin23ortant topic of the bearing of geology
and of palaeontology upon distribution has been
luminously treated in the address of the President
of the Geographical Section.*

The succession of the species of animals and
plants in time being established, the first question
which the zoologist or the botanist had to ask him-
self was, What is the relation of these successive
species one to another? And it is a curious cir-
cumstance that the most important event in the
history of palaeontology which immediately suc-
ceeded William Smith's generalisation was a dis-
covery which, could it have been rightly appreci-
ated at the time, would have gone far towards
suggesting the answer, which was in fact delayed
for more than half a century. I refer to Cuvier's
investigation of the mammalian fossils yielded by
the quarries in the older tertiary rocks of Mont-
martre, among the chief results of which was the
bringing to light of two genera of extinct hoofed
quadrupeds, the Anoplothei'ium and the Palceo-
therium. The rich materials at Cuvier's dis-
position enabled him to obtain a full knowledge of
the osteology and of the dentition of these two
forms, and consequently to compare their structure
critically with that of existing hoofed animals.
The effect of this comparison was to prove that
the Anoplotherium, though it presented many
points of resemblance with the pigs on the one

* Sir J. D. Hooker.

40 PROGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY ii

hand and with the ruminants on the other, differed
from both to such an extent that it could find a
place in neither group. In fact, it held, in some
respects, an intermediate position, tending to
bridge over the interval between these two groups,
which in the existing fauna are so distinct. In
the same way, the Palceotherium tended to connect
forms so different as the tapir, the rhinoceros, and
the horse. Subsequent investigations have brought
to light a variety of facts of the same order, the
most curious and striking of which are those which
prove the existence, in the mesozoic epoch, of a
series of forms intermediate between birds and
reptiles — two classes of vertebrate animals which
at present appear to be more widely separated
than any others. Yet the interval between them
is completely filled, in the mesozoic fauna, by
birds which have reptilian characters, on the one
side, and reptiles which have ornithic characters,
on the other. So again, while the group of fishes,
termed ganoids, is, at the present time, so distinct
from, that of the dipnoi, or mudfishes, that they
have been reckoned as distinct orders, the Devon-
ian strata present us with forms of which it is
impossible to say with certainty whether they are
dipnoi or whether they are ganoids.

Agassiz's long and elaborate researches upon
fossil fishes, published between 1833 and 1842,
led him to suggest the existence of another kind
of relation between ancient and modern forms of

n PROGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY 41

life. He observed that the oldest fishes present
many characters which recall the embryonic con-
ditions of existing fishes; and that^, not only among
fishes, but in several groups of the invertebrata
which have a long pala^ontological history, the
latest forms are more modified, more specialised,
than the earlier. The fact that the dentition of
the older tertiary ungulate and carnivorous mam-
mals is always complete, noticed by Professor
Owen, illustrated the same generalisation.

Another no less suggestive observation was
made by Mr. Darwin, whose personal investigations
during the voyage of the Beagle led him to remark
upon the singular fact, that the fauna, which im-
mediately precedes that at present existing in any
geographical province of distribution, presents the
same peculiarities as its successor. Thus, in
South America and in Australia, the later tertiary
or quaternary fossils show that the fauna which
immediately preceded that of the present day was,
in the one case, as much characterised by eden-
tates and, in the other, by marsupials as it is now,
although the species of the older are largely differ-
ent from those of the newer fauna.

However clearly these indications might point
in one direction, the question of the exact relation
of the successive forms of animal and ves^etable
life could be satisfactorily settled only in one way;
namely, by comparing, stage by stage, the series of
forms presented by one and the same type through-

42 PROGRESS OP PALEONTOLOGY n

out a long space of time. Within the last few
years this has been done fully in the case of the
horse, less completely in the case of the other
principal types of the ungulata and of the car-
nivora; and all these investigations tend to one
general result, namely, that, in any given series,
the successive members of that series present a
gradually increasing specialisation of structure.
That is to say, if any such mammal at present
existing has specially modified and reduced limbs
or dentition and complicated brain, its predecessors
in time show less and less modification and reduc-
tion in limbs and teeth and a less highly developed
brain. The labours of Gaudry, Marsh, and Cope
furnish abundant illustrations of this law from the
marvellous fossil wealth of Pikermi and the vast
uninterrupted series of tertiary rocks in the terri-
tories of North America.

I will now sum up the results of this sketch of
the rise and progress of palajontology. The whole
fabric of palaeontology is based upon two proposi-
tions: the first is, that fossils are the remains of
animals and plants; and the second is, that the
stratified rocks in which they are found are sedi-
mentary deposits; and each of these propositions
is founded upon the same axiom, that like effects
imply like causes. If there is any cause competent
to produce a fossil stem, or shell, or bone, except
a living being, then palaeontology has no founda-

n PROGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY 43

tion; if the stratification of tlie roclvs is not the
effect of such causes as at present produce stratifi-
cation, we liave no means of judging of the dura-
tion of past time, or of the order in whicli the
forms of life have succeeded one anotlier. But if
these two propositions are granted, there is no
escape, as it appears to me, from three very
important conclusions. The first is that living
matter has existed upon the earth for a vast length
of time, certainly for millions of years. The
second is that, during this lapse of time, the forms
of living matter have undergone repeated changes,
the effect of which has been that the animal and
vegetable population, at any period of the earth's
history, contains certain species which did not exist
at some antecedent period, and others which ceased
to exist at some subsequent period. The third is
that, in the case of many groups of mammals
and some of reptiles, in which one type can be
followed through a considerable extent of geologi-
cal time, the series of different forms by which the
type is represented, at successive intervals of this
time, is exactly such as it would be, if they had
been produced by the gradual modification of the
earliest forms of the series. These are facts of the
history of the earth guaranteed by as good evidence
as any facts in civil history.

Hitherto I have kept carefully clear of all the
hypotheses to which men have at various times
endeavoured to fit the facts of palaiontology, or by

4A: . PROGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY ii

which they have endeavoured to connect as many
of these facts as they happened to be acquainted
with. I do not think it would be a profitable
employment of our time to discuss conceptions
which doubtless have had their justification and
even their use, but which are now obviously incom-
patible with the well-ascertained truths of palae-
ontology. At 23resent these truths leave room for
only two hypotheses. The first is that, in the course
of the history of the earth, innumerable species of
animals and plants have come into existence, in-
dependently of one another, innumerable times.
This, of course, implies either that spontaneous
generation on the most astounding scale, and of
animals such as horses and elephants, has been
going on, as a natural process, through all the time
recorded by the fossiliferous rocks; or it necessi-
tates the belief in innumerable acts of creation re-
peated innumerable times. The other hypothesis is,
that the successive species of animals and plants
have arisen, the later by the gradual modification
of the earlier. This is the hypothesis of evolution;
and the pal^eontological discoveries of the last dec-
ade are so completely in accordance with the require-
ments of this hypothesis that, if it had not existed,
the paleontologist would have had to invent it.

I have always had a certain horror of presuming
to set a limit upon the possibilities of things.
Therefore I will not venture to say that it is im-
possible that the multitudinous species of animals

II PROGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY 45

and plants may have been produced, one separately
from the other, by spontaneous generation; nor
that it is impossible that they should have been in-
dependently originated by an endless succession of
miraculous creative acts. But I must confess that
both these hypotheses strike me as so astoundingly
improbable, so devoid of a shred of either scientific
or traditional support, that even if there were no
other evidence than that of palaeontology in its
favour, I should feel compelled to adopt the
hypothesis of evolution. Happily, the future of
palgeontology is independent of all hypothetical
considerations. Fifty years hence, whoever under-
takes to record the progress of palaeontology will
note the present time as the epoch in which
the law of succession of the forms of the higher
animals was determined by the observation of
palaeontological facts. He will point out that,
just as Steno and as Cuvier were enabled from
their knowledge of the empirical laws of co-exist-
ence of the parts of animals to conclude from a
part to the whole, so the knowledge of the law of
succession of forms empowered their successors to
conclude, from one or two terms of such a succes-
sion, to the whole series; and thus to divine the
' existence of forms of life, of which, perhaps, no
trace remains, at epochs of inconceivable remote-
ness in the past.

Ill

LECTURES ON EVOLUTION

[1876]
I

THE THREE HYPOTHESES RESPECTING THE
HISTORY OF NATURE

We live in and form part of a system of things

of immense diversity and perplexity, which we call

Nature; and it is a matter of the deepest interest

to all of US that we should form just conceptions

of the constitution of that system and of its past

history. With relation to this universe, man is,

in extent, little more than a mathematical point;

in duration but a fleeting shadow; he is a mere

reed shaken in the winds of force. But as Pascal

long ago remarked, although a mere reed, he is a

thinking reed; and in virtue of that wonderful

capacity of thought, he has the power of framing

for himself a symbolic conception of the universe,
46

ni LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 47

which, although doubtless highl}^ imperfect and
inadequate as a picture of the great whole, is yet
sufficient to serve him as a chart for the guidance
of his practical affairs. It has taken long ages of
toilsome and often fruitless labour to enable man
to look steadily at the shifting scenes of the phan-
tasmagoria of Nature, to notice what is fixed
among her fluctuations, and what is regular among
her apparent irregularities; and it is only compara-
tively lately, within the last few centuries, that
the conception of a universal order and of a definite
course of things, which we term the course of
Nature, has emerged.

But, once originated, the conception of the con-
stancy of the order of Nature has become the
dominant idea of modern thought. To any person
who is familiar with the facts upon which that
conception is based, and is competent to estimate
their significance, it has ceased to be conceivable
that chance should have any place in the universe,
or that events should depend upon any but the
natural sequence of cause and eifect. We have
come to look upon the present as the child of the
past and as the parent of the future; and, as we
have excluded chance from a place in the universe,
so we ignore, even as a possibility, the notion of
any interference with the order of Nature. A\Tiat-
ever may be men's speculative doctrines, it is quite
certain that every intelligent person guides his life
and risks his fortune upon the belief that the order

48 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

of Nature is constant, and that the chain of natural
causation is never broken.

In fact, no belief which we entertain has so
complete a logical basis as that to which I have just
referred. It tacitly underlies every process of
reasoning; it is the foundation of every act of the
will. It is based upon the broadest induction,
and it is verified by the most constant, regular,
and universal of deductive processes. But w^e
must recollect that any human belief, however
broad its basis, however defensible it may seem, is,
after all, only a probable belief, and that our
widest and safest generalisations are simply state-
ments of the highest degree of probability.
Though we are quite clear about the constancy of
the order of Nature, at the present time, and in
the present state of things, it by no means neces-
sarily follows that w^e are justified in expanding
this generalisation into the infinite past, and in
denying, absolutely, that there may have been a
time when Nature did not follow a fixed order,
when the relations of cause and effect were not
definite, and when extra-natural agencies inter-
fered with the general course of Nature. Cautious
men will allow that a universe so different from
that which we know may have existed; just as a
very candid thinker may admit that a world in
which two and two do not make four, and in which
two straight lines do inclose a space, may exist.
But the same caution which forces the admission of

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 49

sucli possibilities demands a great deal of evidence
before it recognises them to be anything more
substantial. And when it is asserted that, so
many thousand years ago, events occurred in a
manner utterly foreign to and inconsistent with
the existing laws of Nature, mcn^ who without
being particularly cautious, are simply honest
thinkers, unwilling to deceive themselves or de-
lude others, ask for trustworthy evidence of the
fact.

Did things so happen or did they not? This
is a historical question, and one the answer to
which must be sought in the same way as the
solution of any other historical problem.

So far as I know, there are only three hypothe-
ses which ever have been entertained, or which
well can be entertained, respecting the past history
of Nature. I will, in the first place, state the hy-
potheses, and then I will consider what evidence
bearing upon them is in our possession, and by
what light of criticism that evidence is to be in-
terpreted. ,

Upon the first hypothesis, the assumption is,
that phenomena of Nature similar to those ex-
hibited by the present world have always existed;
in other words, that the universe has existed, from
all eternity, in what may be broadly termed its
present condition.

The second hypothesis is that the present state
93

50 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

of things has had only a limited duration; and
that, at some period in the past, a condition of
the world, essentially similar to that which we now
know, came into existence, without any precedent
condition from which it could have naturally pro-
ceeded. The assumption that successive states of
Nature have arisen, each without any relation of
natural causation to an antecedent state, is a
mere modification of this second hypothesis.

The third hypothesis also assumes that the pres-
ent state of things has had hut a limited dura-
tion; but it supposes that this state has been
evolved by a natural process from an antecedent
state, and that from another, and so on; and, on
this hypothesis, the attempt to assign any limit to
the series of past changes is, usually, given up.

It is so needful to form clear and distinct no-
tions of what is really meant by each of these
hypotheses that I will ask you to imagine what,
according to each, would have been visible to a
spectator of the events which constitute the history
of the earth. On the first hypothesis, however far
back in time that spectator might be placed, he
w^ould see a world essentially, though perhaps not
in all its details, similar to that which now exists.
The animals which existed would be the ancestors
of those which now live, and similar to them; the
plants, in like manner, w^ould be such as we know;
and the mountains, plains, and waters would fore-
shadow the salient features of our present land

m LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 51

and water. This view was held more or less
distinctly, sometimes combined with the notion of
recurrent cycles of change, in ancient times; and
its influence has been felt down to the present day.
It is worthy of remark that it is a hypothesis
which is not inconsistent with the doctrine of
Uniformitarianism, with which geologists are
familiar. That doctrine was held by Hutton, and
in his earlier days by Lyell. Hutton was struck
by the demonstration of astronomers that the per-
turbations of the planetary bodies, however great
they may be, yet sooner or later right themselves;
and that the solar system possesses a self-adjusting
power by which these aberrations are all brought
back to a mean condition. Hutton imagined that
the like might be true of terrestrial changes;
although no one recognised more clearly than he
the fact that the dry land is being constantly
washed down by rain and rivers and deposited in
the sea; and that thus, in a longer or shorter time,
the inequalities of the earth's surface must be
levelled, and its high lands brought down to the
ocean. But, taking into account the internal
forces of the earth, which, upheaving the sea-bot-
tom give rise to new land, he thought that these
operations of degradation and elevation might com-
pensate each other; and that thus, for any assign-
able time, the general features of our planet might
remain what they are. And inasmuch as, under
these circumstances, there need be no limit to the

52 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION m

propagation of animals and plants, it is clear that
the consistent working out of the uniformitarian
idea might lead to the conception of the eternity
of the world. Not that I mean to say that either
Hutton or Lyell held this conception — assuredly
not; they would have been the first to repudiate
it. Nevertheless, the logical development of some
of their arguments tends directly towards this
hypothesis.

The second hypothesis supposes that the present
order of things, at some no very remote time, had
a sudden origin, and that the world, such as it
now is, had chaos for its phenomenal antecedent.
That is the doctrine which you will find stated
most fully and clearly in the immortal poem of
John Milton — the English Divina Commedia —
" Paradise Lost.'^ I believe it is largely to the
influence of that remarkable work, combined with
the daily teachings to which we have all listened
in our childhood, that this hypothesis owes its
general wide diifusion as one of the current beliefs
of English-speaking people. If you turn to the
seventh book of " Paradise Lost,'^ you will find
there stated the hypothesis to which I refer, which
is briefly this: That this visible universe of ours
came into existence at no great distance of time
from the present; and that the parts of which it is
composed made their appearance, in a certain defi-
nite order, in the space of six natural days, in
such a manner that, on the first of these days,

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 53

light appeared; that, on the second, the firma-
ment, or sky, separated the waters above, from
the waters beneath the firmament; that, on the
third day, the waters drew away from- the dry
land, and upon it a varied vegetable life,
similar to that which now exists, made its appear-
ance; that the fourth day was signalised by the
apparition of the sun, the stars, the moon, and
the planets; that, on the fifth day, aquatic animals
originated within the waters; that, on the sixth
day, the earth gave rise to our four-footed terres-
trial creatures, and to all varieties of terrestrial
animals except birds, which had appeared on the
preceding day; and, finally, that man appeared
upon the earth, and the emergence of the universe
from chaos was finished. Milton tells us, without
the least ambiguity, what a spectator of these
marvellous occurrences would have witnessed. I
doubt not that his poem is familiar to all of you,
but I should like to recall one passage to your
minds, in order that I may be justified in what I
have said regarding the perfectly concrete, definite,
picture of the origin of the animal world which
^lilton draws. He says: —

" The sixth, and of creation last, arose
With evening harp and matin, when God said,
* Let the earth bring forth soul living in her kind,
Cattle and creeping things, and beast of the earth.
Each in their kind ! ' The earth obeyed, and, straight
Opening her fertile worab, teemed at a birth
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms,

54 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION m

Limbed and full-grown. Out of the ground uprose,

As from his lair, the wild beast, where he wons

In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den ;

Among the trees in pairs they rose, they walked ;

The cattle in the fields and meadows green ;

Those rare and solitary ; these in flocks

Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung.

The grassy clods now calved ; now half appears

The tawny lion, pawing to get free

His hinder parts — then sju'ings, as broke from bonds,

And rampant shakes his brinded mane ; the ounce,

The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole

Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw

In hillocks ; the swift stag from underground

Bore up his branching head ; scarce from his mould

Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved

His vastness ; fleeced the flocks and bleating rose

As plants ; ambiguous between sea and land,

The river-horse and scaly crocodile.

At once came forth whatever creeps the ground,

Insect or worm."

There is no doubt as to the meaning of this
statement, nor as to what a man of Milton's
genius expected would have been actually visible
to an eye-witness of this mode of origination of
living things.

The third hypothesis, or the hypothesis of
evolution, supposes that, at any comparatively late
period of past time, our imaginary spectator would
meet with a state of things very similar to that
which now obtains; but that the likeness of the
past to the present would gradually become less
and less, in proportion to the remoteness of his

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 55

period of observation from the present day; that
the existing distribution of mountains and plains,
of rivers and seas, would show itself to be the
product of a slow process of natural change
operating upon more and more widely different
antecedent conditions of the mineral frame-work
of the earth; until, at length, in place of that
frame-work, he would behold only a vast nebulous
mass, representing the constituents of the sun
and of the planetary bodies. Preceding the
forms of life which now exist, our observer
would see animals and plants, not identical with
them, but like them, increasing their differences
with their antiquity and, at the same time, be-
coming simpler and simpler; until, finally, tlie
world of life would present nothing but that un-
differentiated protoplasmic matter which, so far
as our present knowledge goes, is the common
foundation of all vital activity.

The hypothesis of evolution supposes that in
all this vast progression there would be no breach
of continuity, no point at which we could say
" This is a natural process," and " This is not a
natural process;" but that the whole might be com-
pared to that wonderful operation of development
which may be seen going on every day under our
eyes, in virtue of which there arises, out of the
semi-fluid comparatively homogeneous substance
which we call an egg, the complicated organisa-
tion of one of the higher animals. That, in a

56 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

few words, is what is meant by the hypothesis of
evolution.

I have already suggested that, in dealing with
these three hypotheses, in endeavouring to form a
judgment as to which of them is the more worthy
of belief, or whether none is worthy of belief — in
which case our condition of mind should be that
suspension of judgment which is so difficult to all
but trained intellects — we should be indifferent
to all a 'priori considerations. The question is a
question of historical fact. The universe has come
into existence somehow or other, and the problem
is, whether it came into existence in one fashion,
or whether it came into existence in another; and,
as an essential preliminary to further discussion,
permit me to say two or three words as to the
nature and the kinds of historical evidence.

The evidence as to the occurrence of any event
in past time may be ranged under two heads
which, for convenience^ sake, I will speak of as
testimonial evidence and as circumstantial evi-
dence. By testimonial evidence I mean human
testimony; and by circumstantial evidence I
mean evidence which is not human testimony.
Let me illustrate by a familiar example what I
understand by these two kinds of evidence, and
what is to be said respecting their value.

Suppose that a man tells you that he saw a
person strike another and kill him; that is testi-
monial evidence of the fact of murder. But it is

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 57

possible to have circumstantial evidence of the
fact of murder; that is to say, you may find a
man dying with a wound upon his head having
exactly the form and character of the wound
which is made by an axe, and, with due care in
taking surrounding circumstances into account,
you may conclude with the utmost certainty that
the man has been murdered; that his death is
the consequence of a blow inflicted by another
man with that implement. We are very much in
the habit of considering circumstantial evidence
as of less value than testimonial evidence, and it
may be that, where the circumstances are not
perfectly clear and intelligible, it is a dangerous
and unsafe kind of evidence; but it must not be
forgotten that, in many cases, circumstantial is
quite as conclusive as testimonial evidence, and
that, not unfrequently, it is a great deal weightier
than testimonial evidence. For example, take
the case to which I referred just now. The cir-
cumstantial evidence may be better and more con-
vincing than the testimonial evidence; for it may
be impossible, under the conditions that I have
defined, to suppose that the man met his death
from any cause but the violent blow of an axe
wielded by another man. The circumstantial evi-
dence in favour of a murder having been com-
mitted, in that case, is as complete and as con-
vincing as evidence can be. It is evidence which
is open to no doubt and to no falsification. But

58 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION m

the testimony of a witness is open to multitudi-
nous doubts. He may have been mistaken. He
may have been actuated by malice. It has con-
stantly happened that even an accurate man has
declared that a thing has happened in this, that,
or the other way, when a careful analysis of the
circumstantial evidence has shown that it did not
happen in that way, but in some other way.

We may now consider the evidence in favour of
or against the three hypotheses. Let me first
direct your attention to what is to be said about
the hypothesis of the eternity of the state of
things in which we now live. What will first
strike you is, that it is a hypothesis which,
whether true or false, is not capable of verifica-
tion by any evidence. For, in order to obtain
either circumstantial or testimonial evidence suffi-
cient to prove the eternity of duration of the
present state of nature, you must have an eternity
of witnesses or an infinity of circumstances, and
neither of these is attainable. It is utterly im-
possible that such evidence should be carried
beyond a certain point of time; and all that
could be said, at most, would be, that so far
as the evidence could be traced, there was nothing
to contradict the hypothesis. But when you look,
not to the testimonial evidence — which, consider-
ing the relative insignificance of the antiquity of
human records, might not be good for much in
this case — but to the circumstantial evidence.

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 59

then you find that this hypothesis is absolutely
incompatible with such evidence as we have;
which is of so plain and so simple a character
that it is impossible in any way to escape from the
conclusions which it forces upon us.

You are, doubtless, all aware that the outer
substance of the earth, which alone is accessible
to direct observation, is not of a homogeneous
character, but that it is made up of a number of
layers or strata, the titles of the principal groups
of which are placed upon the accompanying
diagram. Each of these groups represents a
number of beds of sand, of stone, of clay, of slate,
and of various other materials.

On careful examination, it is found that the
materials of which each of these layers of more
or less hard rock are composed are, for the most
part, of the same nature as those which are at
present being formed under known conditions on
the surface of the earth. For example, the chalk,
which constitutes a great part of the Cretaceous
formation in some parts of the world, is prac-
tically identical in its physical and chemical
characters with a substance which is now being
formed at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, and
covers an enormous area; other beds of rock are
comparable with the sands which are being
formed upon sea-shores, packed together, and so
on. Thus, omitting rocks of igneous origin, it is
demonstrable that all these beds of stone, of

m. .Tost-Tertiary and Kecent.
. .Pliocene,

. . Miocene.

Eocene.

. .Cretaceous.

. .Jurassic or Oolitic.

1. .Triassic (New Red Sandstone).
.Permian.
.Carboniferous.

Devonian or Old Red Sandstone.

Silurian.

^^-^■^-^^ ^r^^^-^'^^^f^ . , Cambrian.

. . Huronian.
. .Laurentian.

Fig. 1.— Ideal Section op the Crust op the Earth.

Ill LECTURES ^ON EVOLUTION 61

which a total of not less than seventy thousand
feet is known, have been formed by natural
agencies, either ont of the waste and washing of
the dry land, or else by the accumulation of the
exuviffi of plants and animals. Many of these
strata are full of such exuviae — the so-called
" fossils." Eemains of thousands of species of
animals and plants, as perfectly recognisable as
those of existing forms of life which you meet
with in museums, or as the shells which you pick
up upon the sea-beach, have been imbedded in
the ancient sands, or muds, or limestones, just as
they are being imbedded now, in sandy, or clayey,
or calcareous subaqueous deposits. They furnish
us with a record, the general nature of which can-
not be misinterpreted, of the kinds of things that
have lived upon the surface of the earth during
the time that is registered by this great thickness
of stratified rocks. But even a superficial study of
these fossils shows us that the animals and plants
which live at the present time have had only a
temporary duration; for the remains of such mod-
ern forms of life are met with, for the most part,
only in the uppermost or latest tertiaries, and their
number rapidly diminishes in the lower deposits of
that epoch. In the older tertiaries, the places of
existing animals and plants are taken by other
forms, as numerous and diversified as those which
live now in the same localities, but more or less
different from them; in the mesozoic rocks, these

62 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

are replaced by others yet more divergent from
modern types; and, in the palaeozoic formations,
the contrast is still more marked. Thus the cir-
cumstantial evidence absolutely negatives the con-
ception of the eternity of the present condition of
things. We can say, with certainty, that the
present condition of things has existed for a com-
paratively short period; and that, so far as animal
and vegetable nature are concerned, it has been
preceded by a different condition. We can pursue
this evidence until we reach the lowest of the
stratified rocks, in which we lose the indications of
life altogether. The hypothesis of the eternity of
the present state of nature may therefore be put
out of court.

We now come to what I will term Milton's
hypothesis — the hypothesis that the present con-
dition of things has endured for a comparatively
short time; and, at the commencement of that
time, came into existence within the course of six
days. I doubt not that it may have excited some
surprise in your minds that I should have spoken
of this as Milton's hypothesis, rather than that I
should have chosen the terms which are more
customary, such as " the doctrine of creation," or
" the Biblical doctrine," or " the doctrine of
Moses," all of which denominations, as applied to
the hypothesis to which I have just referred, are
certainly much more familiar to you than the
title of the Miltonic hypothesis. But I have had

m LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 63

what I cannot but think are very weighty reasons
for taking the course which I have pursued. In
the first j^lace, I have discarded the title of the
" doctrine of creation/' because my present busi-
ness is not with the question why the objects
which constitute Nature came into existence, but
when they came into existence, and in what order.
This is as strictly a historical question as the
question when the Angles and the Jutes invaded
England, and whether they preceded or followed
the Eomans. But the question about creation is
a philosophical problem, and one which cannot
be solved, or even approached, by the historical
method. What we want to learn is, whether the
facts, so far as they are known, afford evidence
that things arose in the way described by Milton,
or whether they do not; and, when that question
is settled it will be time enough to inquire into
the causes of their origination.

In the second place, I have not spoken of this
doctrine as the Biblical doctrine. It is quite true
that persons as diverse in their general views as
Milton the Protestant and the celebrated Jesuit
Father Suarez, each put upon the first chapter of
Genesis the interpretation embodied in Milton's
poem. It is quite true that this interpretation is
that which has been instilled into every one of us
in our childhood; but I do not for one moment
venture to say that it can properly be called the
Biblical doctrine. It is not my business, and

64: LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

does not lie within my competency, to say wliat
the Hebrew text does, and what it does not
signify; moreover, were I to affirm that this is the
Biblical doctrine, I should be met by the authority
of many eminent scholars, to say nothing of men
of science, who, at various times, have absolutely
denied that any such doctrine is to be found in
Genesis. If we are to listen to many expositors of
no mean authority, we must believe that what
seems so clearly defined in Genesis — as if very
great pains had been taken that there should be
no possibility of mistake — is not the meaning of
the text at all. The account is divided into
periods that we may make just as long or as short
as convenience requires. We are also to under-
stand that it is consistent with the original text to
believe that the most complex plants and animals
may have been evolved by natural processes,
lasting for millions of years, out of structureless
rudiments. A person wdio is not a Hebrew
scholar can only stand aside and admire the mar-
vellous flexibility of a language which admits of
such diverse interpretations. But assuredly, in the
face of such contradictions of authority upon mat-
ters respecting which he is incompetent to form
any judgment, he will abstain, as I do, from giving
any opinion.

In the third place, I have carefully abstained
from speaking of this as the Mosaic doctrine,
because we are now assured upon the authority of

in LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 65

the highest critics, and even of dignitaries of the
Church, that there is no evidence that Moses wrote
the Book of Genesis, or knew anything about it.
You will understand that I give no judgment —
it would be an impertinence upon my part to
volunteer even a suggestion — upon such a sub-
ject. But, that being the state of opinion among
the scholars and the clergy, it is well for the un-
learned in Hebrew lore, and for the laity, to avoid
entangling themselves in such a vexed question.
Happily, Milton leaves us no excuse for doubting
what he means, and I shall therefore be safe in
speaking of the opinion in question as the Miltonic
hypothesis.

Now we have to test that hypothesis. For my
part, I have no prejudice one way or the other.
If there is evidence in favour of this view, I am
burdened by no theoretical difficulties in the way
of accepting it; but there must be evidence.
Scientific men get an awkward habit — no, I won't
call it that, for it is a valuable habit — of believing
nothing unless there is evidence for it; and they
have a way of looking upon belief which is not
based upon evidence, not only as illogical, but as
immoral. We will, if you please, test this view
by the circumstantial evidence alone; for, from
what I have said, you will understand that I do
not propose to discuss the question of what testi-
monial evidence is to be adduced in favour of it.
If those whose business it is to judge are not at
94

QQ LECTURES ON EVOLUTION m

one as to the authenticity of the only evidence of
that kind which is offered, nor as to the facts to
which it bears witness, the discussion of such evi-
dence is su2)erfluous.

But I may be permitted to regret this necessity
of rejecting the testimonial evidence the less,
because the examination of the circumstantial
evidence leads to the conclusion, not only that
it is incompetent to justify the hypothesis, but
that, so far as it goes, it is contrary to the
hypothesis.

The considerations upon which I base this
conclusion are of the simplest possible character.
The Miltonic hypothesis contains assertions of a
very definite character relating to the succession
of living forms. It is stated that plants, for
example, made their appearance upon the third
day, and not before. And you will understand that
what the poet means by plants are such plants
as now live, the ancestors, in the ordinary way of
propagation of like by like, of the trees and shrubs
which flourish in the present world. It must needs
be so; for, if they were difl'erent, either the exist-
ing plants have been the result of a separate origi-
nation since that described by Milton, of which we
have no record, nor any ground for supposition
that such an occurrence has taken place; or else
they have arisen by a process of evolution from the
original stocks.

In the second place, it is clear that there was

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 67

no animal life before the fifth day, and that, on
the fifth day, aquatic animals and birds appeared.
And it is further clear that terrestrial living
things, other than birds, made their appearance
upon the sixth day and not before. Hence, it
follows that, if, in the large mass of circumstantial
evidence as to what really has happened in the
past history of the globe we find indications of
the existence of terrestrial animals, other than
birds, at a certain period, it is perfectly certain
that all that has taken place, since that time, must
be referred to the sixth day.

In the great Carboniferous formation, whence
America derives so vast a proportion of her actual
and potential wealth, in the beds of coal which
have been formed from the vegetation of that
period, we find abundant evidence of the existence
of terrestrial animals. They have been described,
not only by European but by your own naturalists.
There are to be found numerous insects allied to
our cockroaches. There are to be found spiders
and scorpions of large size, the latter so similar to
existing scorpions that it requires the practised
eye of the naturalist to distinguish them. Inas-
much as these animals can be proved to have
been alive in the Carboniferous epoch, it is per-
fectly clear that, if the Miltonic account is to be
accepted, the huge mass of rocks extending from
the middle of the Palaeozoic formations to the
uppermost members of the series, must belong to

68 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

the day which is termed by Milton the sixth.
But, further, it is expressly stated that aquatic
animals took their origin on the fifth day, and not
before; hence, all formations in which remains of
aquatic animals can be proved to exist, and which
therefore testify that such animals lived at the
time when these formations were in course of de-
position, must have been deposited during or
since the period which Milton speaks of as the
fifth day. But there is absolutely no fossiliferous
formation in which the remains of aquatic animals
are absent. The oldest fossils in the Silurian
rocks are exuvise of marine animals; and if the
view which is entertained by Principal Dawson
and Dr. Carpenter respecting the nature of the
Eozoon be well-founded, aquatic animals existed
at a period as far antecedent to the deposition of
the coal as the coal is from us; inasmuch as the
Eozoon is met with in those Laurentian strata
which lie at the bottom of the series of stratified
rocks. Hence it follows, plainly enough, that the
whole series of stratified rocks, if they are to be
brought into harmony with Milton, must be re-
ferred to the fifth and sixth days, and that we
cannot hope to find the slightest trace of the
products of the earlier days in the geological
record. When we consider these simple facts, we
see how absolutely futile are the attempts that
have been made to draw a parallel between the
story told by so much of the crust of the earth

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 69

as is known to us and the story which Milton
tells. The whole series of fossiliferous stratified
rocks must be referred to the last two days; and
neither the Carboniferous, nor any other, for-
mation can afford evidence of the work of the
third day.

Not only is there this objection to any attempt
to establish a harmony between the Miltonic ac^
count and the facts recorded in the fossiliferous
rocks, but there is a further difficulty. According
to the Miltonic account, the order in which
animals should have made their appearance in
the stratified rocks would be thus: Fishes, in*
eluding the great whales, and birds; after them>
all varieties of terrestrial animals except birds.
Nothing could be further from the facts as we
find them; we know of not the slightest evidence
of the existence of birds before the Jurassic, or
perhaps the Triassic, formation; while terrestrial
animals, as we have just seen, occur in the Car-
boniferous rocks.

If there were any harmony between the Mil-
tonic account and the circumstantial evidence, we
ought to have abundant evidence of the existence
of birds in the Carboniferous, the Devonian, and
the Silurian rocks. I need hardly say that this is
not the case, and that not a trace of birds makes
its appearance until the far later period which I
have mentioned.

And again, if it be true that all varieties of

YO LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

fishes and the great whales, and the like, made
their appearance on the fifth day, we ought to find
the remains of tliese animals in the older rocks —
in those which were deposited before the Carbon-
iferous epoch. Fishes we do find, in considerable
number and variety; but the great whales are
absent, and the fishes are not such as now live.
Not one solitary species of fish now in existence is
to be found in the Devonian or Silurian forma-
tions. Hence we are introduced afresh to the
dilemma which I have already placed before you:
either the animals which came into existence on the
fifth day were not such as those which are found at
present, are not the direct and immediate ancestors
of those which now exist; in which case, either
fresh creations of which nothing is said, or a
process of evolution, must have occurred; or else
the whole story must be given up, as not only
devoid of any circumstantial evidence, but contrary
to such evidence as exists.

I placed before you in a few words, some little
time ago, a statement of the sum and substance of
Milton's hypothesis. Let me now try to state as
briefly, the effect of the circumstantial evidence
bearing upon the past history of the earth which
is furnished, without the possibility of mistake,
with no chance of error as to its chief features, by
the stratified rocks. What we find is, that the
great series of formations represents a period of
time of which our human chronologies hardly

m LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 71

afford us a unit of measure. I will not pretend
to say how we ought to estimate this time, in
millions or in billions of years. For my purpose,
the determination of its absolute duration is wholly
unessential. But that the time was enormous there
can be no question.

It results from the simplest methods of inter-
pretation, that leaving out of view certain patches
of metamorphosed rocks, and certain volcanic
products, all that is now dry land has once been
at the bottom of the waters. It is perfectly
certain that, at a comparatively recent period
of the world's history — the Cretaceous epoch —
none of the great physical features which at
present mark the surface of the globe existed.
It is certain that the Eocky Mountains were not.
It is certain that the Himalaya Mountains were
not. It is certain that the Alps and the Pyrenees
had no existence. The evidence is of the plainest
possible character and is simply this: — We find
raised up on the flanks of these mountains, ele-
vated by the forces of upheaval which have given
rise to them, masses of Cretaceous rock which
formed the bottom of the sea before those moun-
tains existed. It is therefore clear that the
elevatory forces which gave rise to the mountains
operated subsequently to the Cretaceous epoch;
and that the mountains themselves are largely
made up of the materials deposited in the sea
which once occupied their place. As we go back

72 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION m

in time, we meet with constant alternations of
sea and land, of estuary and open ocean; and,
in correspondence with these alternations, we ob-
serve the changes in the fauna and flora to which
I have referred.

But the inspection of these changes gives us
no right to believe that there has been any dis-
continuity in natural processes. There is no trace
of general cataclysms, of universal deluges, or
sudden destructions of a whole fauna or flora.
The appearances which were formerly interpreted
in that way have all been shown to be delusive,
as our knowledge has increased and as the blanks
which formerly appeared to exist between the dif-
ferent formations have been filled up. That there
is no absolute break between formation and
formation, that there has been no sudden dis-
appearance of all the forms of life and replacement
of them by others, but that changes have gone
on slowly and gradually, that one type has died
out and another has taken its place, and that
thus, by insensible degrees, one fauna has been
replaced by another, are conclusions strengthened
by constantly increasing evidence. So that within
the whole of the immense period indicated by the
fossiliferous stratified rocks, there is assuredly not
the slightest proof of any break in the uniformity
of Nature's operations, no indication that events
have followed other than a clear and orderly
sequence.

in LECTURES ON EVOLUTION Y3

That, I say, is the natural and obvious teaching
of the circumstantial evidence contained in the
stratified rocks. I leave you to consider how far,
by any ingenuity of interpretation, by any stretch-
ing of the meaning of language, it can be brought
into harmony with the Miltonic hypothesis.

There remains the third hypothesis, that of
which I have spoken as the hypothesis of evolu-
tion; and I purpose that, in lectures to come, wq
should discuss it as carefully as we have con-
sidered the other two hypotheses. I need not say
that it is quite hopeless to look for testimonial
evidence of evolution. The very nature of the
case precludes the possibility of such evidence, for
the human race can no more be expected to testify
to its own origin, than a child can be tendered as
a witness of its own birth. Our sole inquiry is,
what foundation circumstantial evidence lends
to the Iwpothesis, or whether it lends none, or
whether it controverts the hypothesis. I shall
deal with the matter entirely as a question of
history I shall not indulge in the discussion of
any speculative probabilities. I shall not attempt
to show that Nature is unintelligible unless we
adopt some such hypothesis. For anything I know
about the matter, it may be the way of Nature to
be unintelligible; she is often puzzling, and I have
no reason to suppose that she is bound to fit her-
self to our notions.

I shall place before you three kinds of evidence

74: LECTURES ON EVOLUTION m

entirely based upon what is known of the forms
of animal life which are contained in the series
of stratified rocks. I shall endeavour to show you
that there is one kind of evidence which is neutral,
which neither helps evolution nor is inconsistent
with it. I shall then bring forward a second kind
of evidence which indicates a strong probability in
favour of evolution, but does not prove it; and,
lastly, I shall adduce a third kind of evidence
which, being as complete as any evidence which
we can hope to obtain upon such a subject, and
being wholly and strikingly in favour of evolution,
may fairly be called demonstrative evidence of its
occurrence.

LECTUEES ON EVOLUTION

II

THE HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION. THE NEUTEAL
AND THE FAA^OURABLE EVIDENCE.

In the preceding lecture I pointed out that
there are three h3^potheses which may be enter-
tained, and which have been entertained, respecting
the past history of life upon the globe. According
to the first of these hypotheses, living beings, such
as now exist, have existed from all eternity upon
this earth. We tested that hypothesis by the cir-
cumstantial evidence, as I called it, which is fur-
nished by the fossil remains contained in the
earth's crust, and we found that it was obviously
untenable. I then proceeded to consider the sec-
ond hypothesis, which I termed the Miltonic hy-
pothesis, not because it is of any particular conse-
quence whether John Milton seriously entertained
it or not, but because it is stated in a clear and un-
mistakable manner in his great poem. I pointed
out to you that the evidence at our command as
completely and fully negatives that hypothesis as it

75

76 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

did the preceding one. And I confess that I had
too much respect for your intelligence to think it
necessary to add that the negation was equally
clear and equally valid, whatever the source from
which that hypothesis might be derived, or what-
ever the authority by which it might be supported.
I further stated that, according to the third hy-
pothesis, or that of evolution, the existing state
of things is the last term of a long series of states,
which, when traced back, would be found to show
no interruption and no breach in the continuity
of natural causation. I propose, in the present
and the following lecture, to test this hypothesis
rigorously by the evidence at command, and to
inquire how far that evidence can be said to be
indifferent to it, how far it can be said to be favour-
able to it, and, finally, how far it can be said to be
demonstrative.

From almost the origin of the discussions about
the existing condition of the animal and vegetable
worlds and the causes which have determined
that condition, an argument has been put forward
as an objection to evolution, which we shall have
to consider very seriously. It is an argument
which was first clearly stated by Cuvier in his
criticism of the doctrines propounded by his great
contemporary, Lamarck. The French expedition
to Egypt had called the attention of learned men
to the wonderful store of antiquities in that
country, and there had been brought back to

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 77

France nTimeroiis mummified corpses of the
animals which the ancient Egyptians revered and
preserved, and which, at a reasonable computa-
tion, must have lived not less than three or four
thousand years before the time at which they
were thus brought to light. Cuvier endeavoured
to test the hypothesis that animals have under-
gone gradual and progressive modifications of
structure, by comparing the skeletons and such
other parts of the mummies as were in a fitting
state of preservation, with the corresponding parts
of the representatives of the same species now liv-
ing in Egypt. He arrived at the conviction that
no appreciable change had taken place in these
animals in the course of this considerable lapse of
time, and the justice of his conclusion is not
disputed.

It is obvious that, if it can be proved that
animals have endured, without undergoing any
demonstrable change of structure, for so long a
period as four thousand years, no form of the
hypothesis of evolution which assumes that ani-
mals undergo a constant and necessary progressive
change can be tenable; unless, indeed, it be further
assumed that four thousand years is too short a
time for the production of a change sufficiently
great to be detected.

But it is no less plain that if the process of
evolution of animals is not independent of sur-
rounding conditions; if it may be indefinitely hast-

78 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

ened or retarded by variations in these conditions;
or if evolution is simply a process of accommoda-
tion to varying conditions; the argument against
the hypothesis of evolution based on the unchanged
character of the Egyptian fauna is worthless. For
the monuments which are coeval with the mum-
mies testify as strongly to the absence of change in
the physical geography and the general conditions
of the land of Egypt, for the time in question, as
the mummies do to the unvarying characters of its
living population.

The progress of research since Cuvier's time
has supplied far more striking examples of the
long duration of specific forms of life than
those which are furnished by the mummified
Ibises and Crocodiles of Egypt. A remarkable
case is to be found in your own country, in the
neighbourhood of the falls of Niagara In the
immediate vicinity of the whirlpool, and again
upon Goat Island, in the superficial deposits which
cover the surface of the rocky subsoil in those
regions, there are found remains of animals in
perfect preservation, and among them, shells be-
longing to exactly the same species as those which
at present inhabit the still waters of Lake Erie.
It is evident, from the structure of the country,
that these animal remains were deposited in the
beds in which they occur at a time when the lake
extended over the region in which they are found.
This involves the conclusion that they lived and

in LECTURES ON EVOLUTION '^'9

died before the falls had cut their way back
through the gorge of Niagara; and, indeed, it has
been determined that, when these animals lived, the
falls of Niagara must have been at least six miles
further down the river than they are at present.
Many computations have been made of the rate
at which the falls are thus cutting their way back.
Those computations have varied greatly, but I
believe I am speaking within the bounds of
prudence, if I assume that the falls of Niagara have
not retreated at a greater pace than about a
foot a year. Six miles, speaking roughly, are
30,000 feet; 30,000 feet, at a foot a year, gives
30,000 years; and thus we are fairly justified in
concluding that no less a period than this has
passed since the shell-fish, whose remains are left
in the beds to which I have referred, were living
creatures.

But there is still stronger evidence of the long
duration of certain types. I have already stated
that, as we work our way through the great series
of the Tertiary formations, we find many species
of animals identical with those which live at the
present day, diminishing in numbers, it is true,
but still existing, in a certain proportion, in the
oldest of the Tertiary rocks. Furthermore, when
we examine the rocks of the Cretaceous epoch,
we find the remains of some animals which the
closest scrutiny cannot show to be, in any im-
portant respect, difi!erent from those which live at

80 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

the present time. That is the case with one of
the cretaceous lamp-shells {Terebratula), which
has continued to exist unchanged, or with insignifi-
cant variations, down to the present day. Such
is the case with the Globigerince, the skeletons of
which, aggregated together, form a large propor-
tion of our English chalk. Those Glohigerince can
be traced down to the GloMgerince which live at
the surface of the present great oceans, and the
remains of which, falling to the bottom of the sea,
give rise to a chalky mud. Hence it must be
admitted that certain existing species of animals
show no distinct sign of modification, or trans-
formation, in the course of a lapse of time as
great as that w^hich carries us back to the Creta-
ceous period; and which, whatever its absolute
measure, is certainly vastly greater than thirty
thousand years.

There are groups of species so closely allied to-
gether, that it needs the eye of a naturalist to
distinguish them one from another. If we dis-
regard the small differences which separate these
forms, and consider all the species of such groups
as modifications of one type, we shall find that,
even among the higher animals, some types have
had a marvellous duration. In the chalk, for
example, there is found a fish belonging to the
highest and the most differentiated group of
osseous fishes, which goes by the name of Beryx.
The remains of that fish are among the most

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 81

beautiful and well-preserved of the fossils found
in our English chalk. It can be studied anatom-
ically, so far as the hard parts are concerned,
almost as well as if it were a recent fish. But
the genus Beryx is represented, at the present
day, by very closely allied species which are living
in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. We may go
still farther back. I have already referred to the
fact that the Carboniferous formations, in Europe
and in America, contain the remains of scorpions
in an admirable state of preservation, and that
those scorpions are hardly distinguishable from
such as now live. I do not mean to say that they
are not different, but close scrutiny is needed in
order to distinguish them from modern scorpions.
More than this. At the very bottom of the
Silurian series, in beds which are by some authori-
ties referred to the Cambrian formation, where the
signs of life begin to fail us — even there, among
the few and scanty animal remains which are dis-
coverable, we find species of molluscous animals
which are so closely allied to existing forms that,
at one time, they were grouped under the same
generic name. I refer to the well-known Lingula
of the Lingula flags, • lately, in consequence of
some slight differences, placed in the new genus
Lingulella. Practically, it belongs to the same
great generic group as the Lingula, which is to be
found at the present day upon your own shores
and those of many other parts of tlie world.
95

82 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

The same truth is exemphfied if we turn to
certain great periods of the earth's history — as,
for example, the Mesozoic epoch. There are
groups of reptiles, such as the Ichtliyosauria and
the Plesiosauria, which appear shortly after the
commencement of this epoch, and they occur in
vast numbers. They disappear with the chalk
and, throughout the whole of the great series of
Mesozoic rocks, they present no such modifications
as can safely be considered evidence of progressive
modification.

Facts of this kind are undoubtedly fatal to any
form of the doctrine of evolution which postulates
the supposition that there is an intrinsic necessity,
on the part of animal forms which have once
come into existence, to undergo continual modifi-
cation; and they are as distinctly opposed to any
view which involves the belief, that such modifi-
cation may occur, must take place, at the same
rate, in all the different types of animal or
vegetable life. The facts, as I have placed them
before you, obviously directly contradict any form
of the hypothesis of evolution which stands in need
of these two postulates.

But, one great service that has been rendered
by Mr. Darwin to the doctrine of evolution in
general is this: he has shown that there are two
chief factors in the process of evolution: one of
them is the tendency to vary, the existence of
which in all living forms may be proved by

in LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 83

observation; the other is the influence of sur-
rounding conditions upon what I may call the
parent form and the variations which are thus
evolved from it. The cause of the production of
variations is a matter not at all properly under-
stood at present. AYhether variation depends
upon some intricate machinery — if I may use the
phrase — of the living organism itself, or whether
it arises through the influence of conditions upon
that form, is not certain, and the question may,
for the present, be left open. But the important
point is that, granting the existence of the tend-
ency to the production of variations; then,
whether the variations which are produced shall
survive and supplant the parent, or whether the
parent form shall survive and supplant the varia-
tions, is a matter which depends entirely on those
conditions which give rise to the struggle for ex-
istence. If the surrounding conditions are such
that the parent form is more competent to deal
with them, and flourish in them than the derived
forms, then, in the struggle for existence, the par-
ent form will maintain itself and the derived forms
will be exterminated. But if, on the contrarj^,
the conditions are such as to be more favourable
to a derived than to the parent form, the parent
form will be extirpated and the derived form
will take its place. In the first case, there will be
no progression, no change of structure, through
any imaginable series of ages; in the second

84 LECTURES OiT EVOLUTION ni

place there will be modification of change and
form.

Thus the existence of these persistent types, as
I have termed them, is no real obstacle in the way
of the theory of evolution. Take the case of the
scorpions to which I have just referred. No
doubt, since the Carboniferous epoch, conditions
have always obtained, such as existed when the
scorpions of that epoch flourished; conditions in
which scorpions find themselves better off, more
competent to deal with the difficulties in their way,
than any variation from the scorpion type which
they may have produced; and, for that reason, the
scorpion type has persisted, and has not been sup-
planted by any other form. And there is no rea-
son, in the nature of things, why, as long as this
world exists, if there be conditions more favourable
to scorpions than to any variation which may arise
from them, these forms of life should not persist.

Therefore, the stock objection to the hypothesis
of evolution, based on the long duration of certain
animal and vegetable types, is no objection at all.
The facts of this character — and they are numer-
ous— belong to that class of evidence which I have
called indifferent. That is to say, they may afford
no direct support to the doctrine of evolution, but
they are capable of being interpreted in perfect
consistency with it.

There is another order of facts belonging to the
class of negative or indifferent evidence. The

in LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 85

great group of Lizards, which abound in the
present world, extends througli the whole series
of formations as far back as the Permian, or latest
Palaeozoic, epoch. These Permian lizards differ
astonishingly little from the lizards which exist
at the present day. Comparing the amount of
the differences between them and modern lizards,
with the prodigious lapse of time between the
Permian epoch and the present age, it may be
said that the amount of change is insignificant.
But, when we carry oUr researches farther back
in time, we find no trace of lizards, nor of any
true reptile whatever, in the whole mass of for^
mations beneath the Permian.

Now, it is perfectly clear that if our pala3onto-
logical collections are to be taken, even approxi-
mately, as an adequate representation of all the
forms of animals and plants that have ever lived;
and if the record furnished by the known series
of beds of stratified rock covers the whole series
of events which constitute the history of life on
the globe, such a fact as this directly contravenes
the hypothesis of evolution; because this hypoth-
esis postulates that the existence of every form
must have been preceded by that of Some form
little different from it. Here, however, we have
to take into consideration that important truth
so well insisted upon by Lyell and by Darwin —
the imperfection of the geological record. It can
be demonstrated that the geological record must

86 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION m

be incomplete, that it can only preserve remains
found in certain favourable localities and under
particular conditions; that it must be destroyed
by processes of denudation, and obliterated by
processes of metamorphosis. Beds of rock of any
thickness crammed full of organic remains, may
yet, either by the percolation of water through
them, or by the influence of subterranean heat,
lose all trace of these remains, and present the ap-
pearance of beds of rock formed under conditions
in which living forms were absent. Such meta-
morphic rocks occur in formations of all ages;
and, in various cases, there are very good grounds
for the belief that they have contained organic
remains, and that those remains have been abso-
lutely obliterated.

I insist upon the defects of the geological
record the more because those who have not
attended to these matters are apt to say, " It is
all very well, but, when you get into a difficulty
with your theory of evolution, you appeal to the
incompleteness and the imperfection of the geo-
logical record; ^' and I want to make it perfectly
clear to you that this imperfection is a great fact,
which must be taken into account in all our
speculations, or we shall constantly be going
wrong.

You see the singular series of footmarks, drawn
of its natural size in the large diagram hanging
up here (Fig. 2), which I owe to the kindness

m LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 87

of my friend Professor Marsh, with whom I had
the opportunity recently of visiting the precise
locality in Massachusetts in which these tracks
occur. I am, therefore, able to give you my own
testimony, if needed, that the diagram accurately
represents what we saw. The valley of the Con-
necticut is classical ground for the geologist. It
contains great beds of sandstone, covering many
square miles, which have evidently formed a part
of an ancient sea-shore, or, it may be, lake-shore.
For a certain period of time after their deposition,
these beds have remained sufficiently soft to

Fig. 2. — Tracks of Brontozoum.

«

receive the impressions of the feet of whatever
animals walked over them, and to preserve them
afterwards, in exactly the same way as such im-
pressions are at this hour preserved on the shores
of the Bay of Fundy and elsewhere. The dia-
gram represents the track of some gigantic
animal, which walked on its hind legs. You see
the series of marks made alternately by the right
and by the left foot; so that, from one impression
to the other of the three-toed foot on the same
side, is one stride, and that stride, as we meas-

88 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION m

ured it, is six feet nine inches. I leave you, there-
fore, to form an impression of the magnitude of
the creature which, as it walked along the ancient
shore, made these impressions.

Of such impressions there are untold thousands
upon these sandstones. Fifty or sixty different
kinds have been discovered, and they cover vast
areas. But, up to this present time, not a bone,
not a fragment, of any one of the animals which
left these great footmarks has been found; in
fact, the only animal remains which have been
met with in all these deposits, from the time of
their discovery to the present day — though they
have been carefully hunted over — is a fragmentary
skeleton of one of the smaller forms. What has
become of the bones of all these animals? You
see we are not dealing with little creatures, but
with animals that make a step of six feet nine
inches; and their remains must have been left
somewhere. The probability is, that they have
been dissolved away, and completely lost.

I have had occasion to work out the nature of
fossil remains, of which there was nothing left
except casts of the bones, the solid material of the
skeleton having been dissolved out by percolating
water. It was a chance, in this case, that the
sandstone happened to be of such a constitution
as to set, and to allow the bones to be afterward
dissolved out, leaving cavities of the exact shape
of the bones. Had that constitution been other

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 89

than what it was, the bones would have been dis-
solved, the layers of sandstone would have fallen
together into one mass, and not the slightest indica-
tion that the animal had existed would have been
discoverable.

I know of no more striking evidence than these
facts afford, of the caution which should be used
in drawing the conclusion, from the absence of
organic remains in a deposit, that animals or plants
did not exist at the time it was formed. I be-
lieve that, with a right understanding of the doc-
trine of evolution on the one hand, and a just
estimation of the importance of the imperfection
of the geological record on the other, all difficulty
is removed from the kind of evidence to which I
have adverted; and that we are justified in believ-
ing that all such cases are examples of what I
have designated negative or indifferent evidence
— that is to say, they in no way directly advance
the hypothesis of evolution, but they are not to be
regarded as obstacles in the way of our belief in
that doctrine.

I now pass on to the consideration of those
cases which, for reasons which I will point out to
you by and by, are not to be regarded as demon-
strative of the truth of evolution, but which are
such as must exist if evolution be true, and which
therefore are, upon the whole, evidence in favour
of the doctrine. If the doctrine of evolution be
true, it follows, that, however diverse the different

90 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

groups of animals and of plants may be, they
must all, at one time or other, have been con-
nected by gradational forms; so that, from the
highest animals, whatever they may be, down to
the lowest speck of protoplasmic matter in which
life can be manifested, a series of gradations,
leading from one end of the series to the other,
either exists or has existed. Undoubtedly that is
a necessary postulate of the doctrine of evolution.
But when we look upon living Nature as it is, we
find a totally different state of things. We find
that animals and plants fall into groups, the
different members of which are joretty closely
allied together, but which are separated by
definite, larger or smaller, breaks, from other
groups. In other words, no intermediate forms
wdiich bridge over these gaps or intervals are, at
present, to be met with.

To illustrate what I mean: Let me call your
attention to those vertebrate animals which are
most familiar to you, such as mammals, birds, and
reptiles. At the present day, these groups of
animals are perfectly well-defined from one
another. We know of no animal now living
which, in any sense, is intermediate between the
mammal and the bird, or between the bird and
the reptile; but, on the contrar}^, there are many
very distinct anatomical peculiarities, well-defined
marks, by which the mammal is separated from
the bird, and the bird from the reptile. The

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 91

distinctions are obvious and striking if you com-
pare the definitions of these great groups as they
now exist.

The same may be said of many of the sub-
ordinate groups, or orders, into which these great
classes are divided. At the present time, for ex-
ample, there are numerous forms of non-rumi-
nant pachyderms, or what we may call broadly,
the pig tribe, and many varieties of ruminants.
These latter have their definite characteristics,
and the former have their distinguishing peculi-
arities. But there is nothing that fills up the gap
between the ruminants and the pig tribe. The
two are distinct. Such also is the case in respect
of the minor groups of the class of reptiles. The
existing fauna shows us crocodiles, lizards, snakes,
and tortoises; but no connecting link between the
crocodile and lizard, nor between the lizard and
snake, nor between the snake and the crocodile,
nor between any two of these groups. They are
separated by absolute breaks. If, then, it could
be shown that this state of things had always
existed, the fact Avould be fatal to the doctrine of
evolution. If the intermediate gradations, which
the doctrine of evolution requires to have existed
between these groups, are not to be found any-
where in the records of the past history of the
globe, their absence is a strong and weighty
negative argument against evolution; while, on
the other hand, if such intermediate forms are to

92 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

be found, that is so much to the good of evolu-
tion; although, for reasons which I will lay before
you by and by, we must be cautious in our esti-
mate of the evidential cogency of facts of this
kind.

It is a very remarkable circumstance that, from
the commencement of the serious study of fossil
remains, in fact, from the time when Cuvier
began his brilliant researches upon those found in
the quarries of Montmartre, palaeontology has
shown what she was going to do in this matter,
and what kind of evidence it lay in her power to
produce.

I said just now that, in the existing Fauna, the
group of pig-like animals and the group of rumi-
nants are entirely distinct; but one of the first of
Cuvier's discoveries was an animal which he
called the Anoplotherium, and which proved to
be, in a great many important respects, inter^
mediate in character between the pigs, on the one
hand, and the ruminants on the other. Thus,
research into the history of the past did, to a
certain extent, tend to fill up the breach between
the group of ruminants and the group of pigs.
Another remarkable animal restored by the great
French palaeontologist, the Palceotherium^ similarly
tended to connect together animals to all appear-
ance so different as the rhinoceros, the horse, and
the tapir. Subsequent research has brought to
light multitudes of facts of the same order; and.

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 93

at the present day, the investigations of such
anatomists as Eiitimeyer and Gandry have tended
to fill up, more and more, the gaps in our existing
series of mammals, and to connect groups formerly
thought to be distinct.

But I think it may have an especial interest if,
instead of dealing with these examples, which
would require a great deal of tedious osteological
detail, I take the case of birds and reptiles ; groups
which, at the present day, are so clearly distin-
guished from one another that there are perhaps
no classes of animals which, in popular apprehen-
sion, are more completely separated. Existing
birds, as you are aware, are covered with feathers;
their anterior extremities, specially and peculiarly
modified, are converted into wings by the aid of
which most of them are able to fly; they walk up-
right upon two legs; and these limbs, when they
are considered anatomically, present a great num-
ber of exceedingly remarkable peculiarities, to
which I may have occasion to advert incidentally
as I go on, and which are not met with, even ap-
proximately, in any existing forms of reptiles. On
the other hand, existing reptiles have no feathers.
They may have naked skins, or be covered with
horny scales, or bony plates, or with both. They
possess no wings; they neither fly by means of
their fore-limbs, nor habitually walk upright upon
their hind-limbs; and the bones of their legs pre-
sent no such modifications as we find in birds. It

94: LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

is impossible to imagine any two groups more defi-
nitely and distinctly separated, notwithstanding
certain characters which they possess in common.
As we trace the history of birds back in time,
we find their remains, sometimes in great abun-
dance, throughout the whole extent of the tertiary
rocks; but, so far as our present knowledge goes,
the birds of the tertiary rocks retain the same
essential characters as the birds of the present day.
In other words, the tertiary birds come within the
definition of the class constituted by existing birds,
and are as much separated from reptiles as existing
birds are. Not very long ago no remains of birds
had been found below the tertiary rocks, and I am
not sure but that some persons were 23repared to
demonstrate that they could not have existed at an
earlier period. But, in the course of the last few
years, such remains have been discovered in Eng-
land; though, unfortunately, in so imperfect and
fragmentary a condition, that it is impossible to
say whether they differed from existing birds in
any essential character or not. In your country
the development of the cretaceous series of rocks is
enormous; the conditions under which the later
cretaceous strata have been deposited are highly
favourable to the preservation of organic remains;
and the researches, full of labour and risk, which
have been carried on by Professor Marsh in these
cretaceous rocks of Western America, have re-
warded him with the discovery of forms of birds of

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 95

which we had hitherto no conception. By his kind-
ness, I am enabled to place before you a restoration
of one of these extraordinary birds, every part of
which can be thoroughly justified by the more or
less complete skeletons, in a very perfect state of
preservation, which he has discovered. This Hes-
ter or nis (Fig. 3), which measured between five and
six feet in length, is astonishingly like our existing
divers or grebes in a great many respects; so like
them indeed that, had the skeleton of Ilesperornis
been found in a museum without its skull, it proba-
bly would have been placed in the same group of
birds as the divers and grebes of the present day.*
But Ilesperornis differs from all existing birds, and
so far resembles reptiles, in one important particu-
lar— it is provided with teeth. The long jaws are
armed with teeth which have curved crowns and
thick roots (Fig. 4), and are not set in distinct
sockets, but are lodged in a groove. In possessing
true teeth, the Ilesperornis differs from every ex-
isting bird, and from every bird yet discovered in
the tertiary formations, the tooth-like serrations of
the jaws in the Odontopteryx of the London clay
being mere processes of the bony substance of the
jaws, and not teeth in the proper sense of the word.
In view of the characteristics of this bird we are

* The absence of any keel on the breast-bone and some
other osteological peculiarities, observed by Professor Marsh,
however, suggest that Ilesperornis may be a modification of
a less specialised group of birds than that to which these
existing aquatic birds belong-

96

LECTURES ON EVOLUTION

III

therefore obliged to modify the definitions of the
classes of birds and reptiles. Before the discovery

Fig. 3. — Hesperornis regalis (Marsh).

of Hesperornisy the definition of the class Aves
based upon our knowledge of existing birds might

Fig. 4. — TTesperornis regalis (Marsh).

(Side and upper views of half the lower jaw ; side and end views
of a vertebra and a separate tooth.)

96

98 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iit

have been extended to all birds; it might have
been said that the absence of teeth was character-
istic of the class of birds; but the discovery of an
animal which, in every part of its skeleton, closely
agrees with existing birds, and yet possesses teeth,
shows that there were ancient birds which, in
respect of possessing teeth, approached reptiles
more nearly than any existing bird does, and, to
that extent, diminishes the hiatus between the two
classes.

The same formation has yielded another bird,
Ichthyornis (Fig. 5), which also possesses teeth;
but the teeth are situated in distinct sockets, while
those of Hesperornis are not so lodged. The lat-
ter also has such very small, almost rudimentary
wings, that it must have been chiefly a swimmer
and a diver like a Penguin; while Ichthyornis has
strong wings and no doubt possessed correspond-
ing powers of flight. Ichthyornis also differed in
the fact that its vertebrae have not the peculiar
characters of the vertebrae of existing and of all
known tertiary birds, but were concave at each
end. This discovery leads us to make a further
modification in the definition of the group of
birds, and to part with another of the characters
bv which almost all existinoj birds are distin-
guished from reptiles.

Apart from the few fragmentary remains from
the English greensand, to which I have referred,
the Mesozoic rocks, older than those in which

m--y*

Wl

iliSli

I

Fig. 5. — IcnTnYORNis Dispar (Marsh).

(Side and upper views of half the lower jaw; and side and end

views of a vertebra.;

100 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

Hesperornis and Ichtliyornis have been discovered,
have afforded no certain evidence of birds, with
the remarkable exception of the Solenhofen slates.
These so-called slates are composed of a fine-
grained calcareous mud which has hardened into
lithographic stone, and in which organic remains
are almost as well preserved as they would be if
they had been imbedded in so much plaster of
Paris. They have yielded the Arcliceopteryx, the
existence of which was first made known by the
finding of a fossil feather, or rather of the impres-
sion of one. It is wonderful enough that such a
perishable thing as a feather, and nothing more,
should be discovered; yet, for a long time, nothing
was known of this bird except its feather. But
by and by a solitary skeleton was discovered which
is now in the British Museum. The skull of this
solitary specimen is unfortunately wanting, and it
is therefore uncertain whether the Arcliceopteryx
possessed teeth or not.* But the remainder of the
skeleton is so well preserved as to leave jio doubt
respecting the main features of the animal, which
are very singular. The feet are not only alto-
gether bird-like, but have the special characters of
the feet of perching birds, while the body had a
clothing of true feathers. Nevertheless, in some
other respects, Arcliceopteryx is unlike a bird and
like a reptile. There is a long tail composed of

* A second specimen, discovered in 1877, and at present
in the Berlin museum, shows an excellently preserved skull
with teeth ; and three digits, all terminated by claws, in the
fore limb. 1893.

in LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 101

many vertebrae. The structure of the wing differs
in some very remarkable respects from that which
it presents in a true bird. In the latter, the end
of the wing answers to the thumb and two fingers
of my hand; but the metacarpal bones, or those
which answer to the bones of the fingers which lie
in the palm of the hand, are fused together into
one mass; and the whole apparatus, except
the last joints of the thumb, is bound up in
a sheath of integument, while the edge of the
hand carries the principal quill-feathers. In the
Archceopteryx, the upper-arm bone is like that of
a bird; and the two bones of the forearm are
more or less like those of a bird, but the fingers
are not bound together — they are free. What
their number mav have been is uncertain; but sev-
eral, if not all, of them were terminated by strong
curved claws, not like such as are sometimes found
in birds, but such as reptiles possess; so that, in
the Archceopteryx, we have an animal which, to
a certain extent, occupies a midway place between
a bird and a reptile. It is a bird so far as its
foot and sundry other parts of its skeleton are
concerned; it is essentially and thoroughly a
bird by its feathers; but it is much more prop-
erly a reptile in the fact that the region which
represents the hand has separate bones, with
claws resembling those which terminate the fore-
limb of a reptile. Moreover, it has a long rep-
tile-like tail with a fringe of feathers on each
side; while, in all true birds hitherto known.

102 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

the tail is relatively short, and the vertebrae which
constitute its skeleton are generally peculiarly
modified.

Like the Anoplotlierium and the Palceotlierium,
therefore, Archceopteryx tends to fill up the inter-
val between groups which, in the existing world,
are widely separated, and to destroy the value of
the definitions of zoological groups based upon our
knowledge of existing forms. And such cases as
these constitute evidence in favour of evolution,
in so far as they prove that, in former periods of
the world's history, there were animals which
overstepped the bounds of existing groups, and
tended to merge them into larger assemblages.
They show that animal organisation is more flexi-
ble than our knowledge of recent forms might
have led us to believe; and that many structural
permutations and combinations, of which the pres-
ent world gives us no indication, may nevertheless
have existed.

But it by no means follows, because the PalcEo-
tlierium has much in common with the horse, on
the one hand, and with the rhinoceros on the
other, that it is the intermediate form throus^h
which rhinoceroses have passed to become horses,
or vice versa; on the contrary, any such supposition
would certainly be erroneous. Nor do I think it
likely that the transition from the reptile to the
bird has been effected by such a form as ArcliCB-
opteryx. And it is convenient to distinguish these
intermediate forms between two groups, which do

m LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 103

not represent the actual passage from the one
group to the other, as intercalary types, from those
linear types which, more or less approximately, in-
dicate the nature of the steps by which the transi-
tion from one group to the other was effected.

I conceive that such linear forms, constituting
a series of natural gradations between the reptile
and the bird, and enabling us to understand the
manner in which the reptilian has been metamor-
phosed into the bird type, are really to be found
among a group of ancient and extinct terrestrial
reptiles known as the Ornithoscelida. The re-
mains of these animals occur throughout the series
of mesozoic formations, from the Trias to the
Chalk, and there are indications of their existence
even in the later Pala3ozoic strata.

Most of these reptiles, at present known, are of
great size, some having attained a length of forty
feet or perhaps more. The majority resembled
lizards and crocodiles in their general form, and
many of them were, like crocodiles, protected by
an armour of heavy bony plates. But, in others,
the hind limbs elongate and the fore limbs shorten,
until their relative proportions approach those
which are observed in the short-winged, flightless,
ostrich tribe among birds.

The skull is relatively light, and in some cases
the jaws, though bearing teeth, are beak-like at
their extremities and appear to have been envel-
oped in a horny sheath. In the part of the verte-
bral column which lies between the haunch bones

104: LECTURES ON EVOLUTION in

and is called the sacrum, a number of vertebra?
may unite together into one whole, and in this re-
spect, as in some details of its structure, the sa-
crum of these reptiles approaches that of birds.

But it is in the structure of the pelvis and of
the hind limb that some of these ancient reptiles
present the most remarkable approximation to
birds, and clearly indicate the way by which the
most specialised and characteristic features of the
bird may have been evolved from the correspond-
ing parts of the reptile.

In Fig. 6, the pelvis and hind limbs of a croco-
dile, a three-toed bird, and an ornithoscelidan are
represented side by side; and, for facility of com-
parison, in corresponding positions; but it must
be recollected that, while the position of the
bird's limb is natural, that of the crocodile is not
so. In the bird, the thigh bone lies close to the
body, and the metatarsal bones of the foot (ii.,
iii., iv.. Fig. 6) are, ordinarily, raised into a more
or less vertical position ; in the crocodile, the thigh
bone stands out at an angle from the body, and
the metatarsal bones (i., ii., iii., iv., Fig. 6) lie flat
on the ground. Hence, in the crocodile, the body
usually lies squat between the legs, while, in the
bird, it is raised upon the hind legs, as upon
pillars.

In the crocodile, the pelvis is obviously com-
posed of three bones on each side: the ilium (//•),
the pubis {Ph.), and the ischium (Is.). In the
adult bird there appears to be but one bone on

LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 105

each side. The examination of the pelvis of a
chick, however, shows that each half is made up
of three bones, which answer to those which re-
main distinct throughout life in the crocodile.
There is, therefore, a fundamental identity of plan
in the construction of the pelvis of both bird and
reptile; though the difference in form, relative
size, and direction of the corresponding bones in
the two cases are very great.

But the most striking contrast between the
two lies in the bones of the leg and of that part of
the foot termed the tarsus, which follows upon the
leg. In the crocodile, the fibula (F) is relatively
large and its lower end is complete. The tibia (T)
has no marked crest at its upper end, and its lower
end is narrow and not pulley-shaped. There are
two rows of separate tarsal bones {As., Ca., &c.)
and four distinct metatarsal bones, with a rudi-
ment of a fifth.

In the bird, the fibula is small and its lower
end diminishes to a point. The tibia has a strong
crest at its upper end and its lower extremity
passes into a broad pulley. There seem at first to
be no tarsal bones; and only one bone, divided at
the end into three heads for the three toes which
are attached to it, appears in the place of the
metatarsus.

In the young bird, however, the pulley-shaped
apparent end of the tibia is a distinct bone, which
represents the bones marked As., Ca., in the croco-
dile; while the apparently single metatarsal bone

106 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

consists of three bones, which early unite with one
another and with an additional bone, which repre-
sents the lower row of bones in the tarsus of the
crocodile.

In other words, it can be shown by the study
of develoj^nient that the bird's pelvis and hind
limb are simply extreme modifications of the same
fundamental plan as that upon which these parts
are modelled in reptiles.

On comparing the pelvis and hind limb of the
ornithoscelidan with that of the crocodile, on the
one side, and that of the bird, on the other (Fig.
6), it is obvious that it represents a middle term
between the two. The pelvic bones approach the
form of those of the birds, and the direction of the
pubis and ischium is nearly that which is charac-
teristic of birds; the thigh bone, from the direc-
tion of its head, must have lain close to the body;
the tibia has a great crest; and, immovably fitted
on to its lower end, there is a pulley-shaped bone,
like that of the bird, but remaining distinct. The
lower end of the fibula is much more slender,
proportionall}^, than in the crocodile. The meta-
tarsal bones have such a form that they fit to-
gether immovably, though they do not enter into
bony union; the third toe is, as in the bird, long-
est and strongest. In fact, the ornithoscelidan
limb is comparable to that of an unhatched chick.

Taking all these facts together, it is obvious
that the view, which was entertained by Mantell
and the probability of which was demonstrated by

in

LECTURES ON EVOLUTION

107

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your own distinguished anatomist, Leidy, while
much additional evidence in the same direction
has been furnished by Professor Cope, that some

108

LECTURES ON EVOLUTION

ni

of these animals may have walked upon their hind
legs as birds do, acquires great weight. In fact,
there can be no reasonable doubt that one of the
smaller forms of the Ornithoscelida, Coinpsogna-
ihus, the almost entire skeleton of which has been
discovered in the Solenhofen slates, was a bipedal
animal. The parts of this skeleton are somewhat

Fig. 7. — Restoration of Compsognathus Longipes.

twisted out of their natural relations, but the ac-
companying figure gives a just view of the gen-
eral form of Compsognathus and of the propor-
tions of its limbs; which, in some respects, are
more completely bird-like than those of other
Ornithoscelida.

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 109

We have had to stretch the definition of the
class of birds so as to include birds with teeth
and birds with paw-like fore limbs and long tails.
There is no evidence that Compsognathus possessed
feathers; but, if it did, it would be hard indeed to
say whether it should be called a reptilian bird or
an avian reptile.

As Compsognathus walked upon its hind legs,
it must have made tracks like those of birds. And
as the structure of the limbs of several of the
gigantic Ornitlioscelida, such as Iguanodon, leads
to the conclusion that they also may have con-
stantly, or occasionally, assumed the same attitude,
a peculiar interest attaches to the fact that, in the
Wealden strata of England, there are to be found
gigantic footsteps, arranged in order like those of
the Brontozoum, and which there can be no reason-
able doubt were made by some of the Ornitliosce-
lida, the remains of which are found in the same
rocks. And, knowing that reptiles that walked
upon their hind legs and shared many of the ana-
tomical characters of birds did once exist, it be-
comes a very important question whether the
tracks in the Trias of Massachusetts, to which I
referred some time ago, and which formerly used
to be unhesitatingly ascribed to birds, may not all
have been made by ornithoscelidan reptiles; and
whether, if we could obtain the skeletons of the
animals which made these tracks, we should
not find in them the actual steps of the evo-

110 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

lutional process by which reptiles gave rise to
birds.

The evidential value of the facts I have
brought forward in this Lecture must be neither
over nor under estimated. It is not historical
proof of the occurrence of the evolution of birds
from reptiles, for we have no safe ground for as-
suming that true birds had not made their appear-
ance at the commencement of the Mesozoic epoch.
It is, in fact, quite possible that all these more or
less avi-f orm reptiles of the Mesozoic epochs are not
terms in the series of progression from birds to
reptiles at all, but simply the more or less modi-
fied descendants of Palaeozoic forms through
which that transition was actually effected.

We are not in a position to say that the known
Ornithoscelida are intermediate in the order of
their appearance on the earth between reptiles and
birds. All that can be said is that, if independent
evidence of the actual occurrence of evolution is
producible, then these intercalary forms remove
every difficulty in the way of understanding what
the actual steps of the process, in the case of birds,
may have been.

That intercalary forms should have existed in
ancient times is a necessary consequence of the
truth of the hypothesis of evolution; and, hence,
the evidence I have laid before you in proof of
the existence of such forms, is, so far as it goes,
in favour of that hypothesis.

m LECTURES ON EVOLUTION m

There is another series of extinct reptiles
which may be said to be intercalary between rep-
tiles and birds, in so far as thev combine some
of the characters of both these groups; and which,
as they possessed the power of flight, may seem,
at first sight, to be nearer representatives of the
forms by which the transition from the rep-
tile to the bird was effected, than the Ornithosce-
lida.

These are the Pterosauria, or Pterodactyles,
the remains of which are met with throughout the
series of Mesozoic rocks, from the lias to the chalk,
and some of which attained a great size, their
wings having a span of eighteen or twenty feet.
These animals, in the form and proportions of the
head and neck relatively to the body, and in the
fact that the ends of the jaws were often, if not al-
ways, more or less extensively ensheathed in horny
beaks, remind us of birds. Moreover, their bones
contained air cavities, rendering them specifically
lighter, as is the case in most birds. The breast
bone was large and keeled, as in most birds and in
bats, and the shoulder girdle is strikingly similar
to that of ordinary birds. But, it seems to me,
that the special resemblance of pterodactyles to
birds ends here, unless I may add the entire
absence of teeth which characterises the great
pterodactyles (Pteranodon) discovered by Professor
Marsh. All other known pterodactyles have teeth
lodged in sockets. In the vertebral column and

112

LECTURES ON EVOLUTION

in

the hind limbs there are no special resemblances
to birds, and when we turn to the wings they are

Fig 8. — Pterodactylus Spectabilis (Von Meyer).

found to be constructed on a totally different prin-
ciple from those of birds.

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION II3

There are four fingers. These four fingers are
large, and three of them, those which answer to
the thumb and two following fingers in my hand
— are terminated by claws, while the fourth is
enormously prolonged and converted into a great
jointed style. You see at once, from what I have
stated about a bird's wing, that there could be
nothing less like a bird's wing than this is. It was
concluded by general reasoning that this finger
had the ofiice of supporting a web which extended
between it and the body. An existing specimen
proves that such was really the case, and that the
pterodactyles were devoid of feathers, but that the
fingers supported a vast web like that of a bat's
wing; in fact, there can be no doubt that this an-
cient reptile flew after the fashion of a bat.

Thus, though the ptcrodactyle is a reptile
which has become modified in such a manner as
to enable it to fly, and therefore, as might be
expected, presents some points of resemblance to
other animals which fly; it has, so to speak, gone
off the line which leads directly from reptiles to
birds, and has become disqualified for the changes
which lead to the characteristic organisation of the
latter class. Therefore, viewed in relation to the
classes of reptiles and birds, the pterodactyles ap-
pear to me to be, in a limited sense, intercalary
forms; but they are not even approximately linear,
in the sense of exemplifying those modifications
of structure through which the passage from the
reptile to the bird took place.
97

LECTURES ON EVOLUTION
III

THE DEMONSTRATIVE EVIDENCE OF EVOLUTION

The occurrence of historical facts is said to be
demonstrated, when the evidence that they hap-
pened is of such a character as to render the as-
sumption that they did not happen in the highest
degree improbable; and the question I now have
to deal with is, whether evidence in favour of the
evolution of animals of this degree of cogency is,
or is not, obtainable from the record of the suc-
cession of living forms which is presented to us
by fossil remains.

Those who have attended to the progress of
palaeontology are aware that evidence of the char-
acter which I have defined has been produced in
considerable and continually-increasing quantity
during the last few years. Indeed, the amount
and the satisfactory nature of that evidence are
somewhat surprising, when we consider the con-
ditions under which alone we can hope to ob-
tain it.

114

in LECTURES ON EVOLUTION II5

It is obviously useless to seek for such evidence
except in localities in which the physical condi-
tions have been such as to permit of the deposit
of an unbroken, or but rarely interrupted, series of
strata through a long period of time; in which the
group of animals to be investigated has existed in
such abundance as to furnish the requisite supply
of remains; and in which, finally, the materials
composing the strata are such as to ensure the
preservation of these remains in a tolerably per-
fect and undisturbed state.

It so happens that the case which, at present,
most nearly fulfils all these conditions is that of
the series of extinct animals which culminates in
the horses; by which term I mean to denote not
merely the domestic animals with which we are all
so well acquainted, but their allies, the ass, zebra,
quagga, and the like. In short, I use " horses "
as the equivalent of the technical name Equidw,
which is applied to the whole group of existing
equine animals.

The horse is in many ways a remarkable
animal; not least so in the fact that it presents
us with an example of one of the most perfect
pieces of machinery in the living world. In truth,
among the works of human ingenuity it cannot be
said that there is any locomotive so perfectly
adapted to its purposes, doing so much work with
so small a quantity of fuel, as this machine of
nature's manufacture — the horse. And, as a ne-

116 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

cessary consequence of any sort of perfection, of
mechanical perfection as of others, you find tliat
the horse is a beautiful creature, one of the most
beautiful of all land-animals. Look at the perfect
balance of its form, and the rhythm and force of
its action. The locomotive machinery is, as you
are aware, resident in its slender fore and hind
limbs; they are flexible and elastic levers, capable
of being moved by very powerful muscles; and,
in order to supply the engines which work these
levers with the force which they expend, the horse
is provided with a very perfect apparatus for
grinding its food and extracting therefrom the
requisite fuel.

Without attempting to take you very far into
the region of osteological detail, I must never-
theless trouble you with some statements respect-
ing the anatomical structure of the horse; and,
more especially, will it be needful to obtain a
general conception of the structure of its fore and
hind limbs, and of its teeth. But I shall only
touch upon those points which are absolutely es-
sential to our inquiry.

Let us turn in the first place to the fore-limb.
In most quadrupeds, as in ourselves, the fore-arm
contains distinct bones called the radius and the
ulna. The corresponding region in the horse
seems at first to possess but one ,bone. Careful
observation, however, enables us to distinguish in
this bone a part which clearly answers to the upper

in LECTURES ON EVOLUTION II7

end of the ulna. This is closely united with the
chief mass of the bone which represents the radius,
and runs out into a slender shaft which may be
traced for some distance downwards upon the back
of the radius, and then in most cases thins out and
vanishes. It takes still more trouble to make sure
of what is nevertheless the fact, that a small part
of the lower end of the bone of the horse's fore
arm, which is only distinct in a very young foal,
is really the lower extremity of the ulna.

What is commonly called the knee of a horse
is its wrist. The " cannon bone " answers to the
middle bone of the five metacarpal bones, which
support the palm of the hand in ourselves. The
" pastern," " coronary," and " coffin " bones of
veterinarians answer to the joints of our middle
fingers, while the hoof is simply a greatly enlarged
and thickened nail. But if what lies below the
horse's " knee " thus corresponds to the middle
finger in ourselves, what has become of the four
other fingers or digits? We find in the places of
the second and fourth digits only two slender
splint-like bones, about two-thirds as long as the
cannon bone, which gradually taper to their lower
ends and bear no finger joints, or, as they arc
termed, phalanges. Sometimes, small bony or
gristly nodules are to be found at the bases of
these two metacarpal splints, and it is probable
that these represent rudiments of the first and
fifth toes. Thus, the part of the horse's skeleton.

118 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

which corresponds with that of the human hand,
contains one overgrown middle digit, and at least
two imperfect lateral digits; and these answer, re-
spectively, to the third, the second, and the fourth
fingers in man.

Corresponding modifications are found in the
hind limb. In ourselves, and in most quadrupeds,
the leg contains two distinct bones, a large bone,
the tibia, and a smaller and more slender bone,
the fibula. But, in the horse, the fibula seems,
at first, to be reduced to its upper end; a short
slender bone united with the tibia, and ending in
a point below, occupying its place. Examination
of the lower end of a young foal's shin bone, how-
ever, shows a distinct portion of osseous matter,
which is the lower end of the fibula; so that the
apparently single, lower end of the shin bone is
really made up of the coalesced ends of the tibia
and fibula, just as the, apparently single, lower
end of the fore-arm bone is composed of the coa-
lesced radius and ulna.

The heel of the horse is the part commonly
known as the hock. The hinder cannon bone
answers to the middle metatarsal bone of the hu-
man foot, the pastern, coronary, and coffin bones,
to the middle toe bones; the hind hoof to the
nail; as in the fore-foot. And, as in the fore-foot,
there are merely two splints to represent the sec-
ond and the fourth toes. Sometimes a rudiment
of a fifth toe appears to be traceable.

in LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 119

The teeth of a horse are not less pecuHar than
its limbs. The living engine, like all others, must
be well stoked if it is to do its work; and the
horse, if it is to make good its wear and tear, and
to exert the enormous amount of force required
for its propulsion, must be well and rapidly fed.
To this end, good cutting instruments and power-
ful and lasting crushers are needful. According-
ly, the twelve cutting teeth of a horse are close-
set and concentrated in the fore-part of its mouth,
like so many adzes or chisels. The grinders or
molars are large, and have an extremely compli-
cated structure, being composed of a number of
different substances of unequal hardness. The
consequence of this is that they wear away at
different rates; and, hence, the surface of each
grinder is always as uneven as that of a good mill-
stone.

I have said that the structure of the grinding
teeth is very complicated, the harder and the
softer parts being, as it were, interlaced with one
another. The result of this is that, as the tooth
wears, the crown presents a peculiar pattern, the
nature of which is not very easily deciphered at
first; but which it is important we should under-
stand clearly. Each grinding tooth of the upper
jaw has an outer wall so shaped that, on the worn
crown, it exhibits the form of two crescents, one
in front and one behind, with their concave sides
turned outwards. From the inner side of the

120 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

front crescent, a crescentic front ridge passes in-
wards and backwards, and its inner face enlarges
into a strong longitudinal fold or pillar. From
the front part of the hinder crescent, a hach ridge
takes a like direction, and also has its pillar.

The deep interspaces or valleys between these
ridges and the outer wall are filled by bony sub-
stance, which is called cement, and coats the whole
tooth.

The pattern of the worn face of each grinding
tooth of the lower jaw is quite different. It ap-
pears to be formed of two crescent-shaped ridges,
the convexities of which are turned outwards.
The free extremity of each crescent has a pillar,
and there is a large double pillar where the two
crescents meet. The whole structure is, as it
were, imbedded in cement, Avhich fills up the val-
leys, as in the upper grinders.

If the grinding faces of an upper and of a
lower molar of the same side are applied together,
it will be seen that the opposed ridges are no-
where parallel, but that they frequently cross; and
that thus, in the act of mastication, a hard surface
in the one is constantly applied to a soft surface
in the other, and vice versa. They thus constitute
a grinding apparatus of great efficiency, and one
which is repaired as fast as it wears, owing to the
long-continued growth of the teeth.

Some other peculiarities of the dentition of the
horse must be noticed, as they bear upon what I

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 121

shall have to say by and by. Thus the crowns of
the cutting teeth have a peculiar deep pit, which
gives rise to the well-known ^^ mark " of the horse.
There is a large space between the outer incisors
and the front grinder. In this space the adult
male horse presents, near the incisors on each
side, above and below, a canine or " tush," which
is commonly absent in mares. In a young horse,
moreover, there is not unfrequently to be seen in
front of the first grinder, a very small tooth, which
soon falls out. If this small tooth be counted
as one, it will be found that there are seven teeth
behind the canine on each side; namely, the small
tooth in question, and the six great grinders,
among which, by an unusual peculiarity, the fore-
most tooth is rather larger than those which fol-
low it.

I have now enumerated those characteristic
structures of the horse which are of most impor-
tance for the purpose we have in view.

To any one who is acquainted with the mor-
phology of vertebrated animals, they show that
tlie horse deviates widely from the general
structure of mammals; and that the horse type
is, in many respects, an extreme modification of
the general mammalian plan. The least modified
mammals, in fact, have the radius and ulna, the
tibia and fibula, distinct and separate. They
have five distinct and complete digits on each
foot, and no one of these digits is very much

122 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION m

larger than the rest. Moreover, in the least modi-
fied mammals, the total number of the teeth is
very generally forty-four, while in horses, the
usual number is forty, and in the absence of the
canines, it may be reduced to thirty-six; the in-
cisor teeth are devoid of the fold seen in those
of the horse: the grinders regularly diminish in
size from the middle of the series to its front
end; while their crowns are short, early attain
their full length, and exhibit simple ridges or
tubercles, in place of the complex foldings of the
horse's grinders. •

Hence the general principles of the hypothesis
of evolution lead to the conclusion that the horse
must have been derived from some quadruped
which possessed five complete digits on each foot;
which had the bones of the fore-arm and of the
leg complete and separate; and which possessed
forty-four teeth, among which the crowns of the
incisors and grinders had a simple structure; while
the latter gradually increased in size from before
backwards, at any rate in the anterior part of the
series, and had short crowns.

And if the horse has been thus evolved, and
the remains of the different stages of its evolution
have been preserved, they ought to present us
with a series of forms in which the number of the
digits becomes reduced; the bones of the fore-arm
and leg gradually take on the equine condition;
and the form and arrangement of the teeth sue-

m LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 123

cessively approximate to those which obtain in ex-
isting horses.

Let us turn to the facts, and see how far they
fulfil these requirements of the doctrine of evolu-
tion.

In Europe abundant remains of horses are
found in the Quaternary and later Tertiary strata
as far as the Pliocene formation. But these
horses, which are so common in the cave-deposits
and in the gravels of Europe, are in all essential
respects like existing horses. And that is true of
all the horses of the latter part of the Pliocene
epoch. But, in deposits which belong to the ear-
lier Pliocene and later Miocene epochs, and which
occur in Britain, in France, in Germany, in
Greece, in India, we find animals which are
extremely like horses — which, in fact, are so
similar to horses, that you may follow descriptions
given in w^orks upon the anatomy of the horse
upon the skeletons of these animals — but which
differ in some important particulars. For example,
the structure of their fore and hind limbs is
somewhat different. The bones which, in the
horse, are represented by two splints, imperfect
below, are as long as the middle metacarpal and
metatarsal bones; and, attached to the extremity
of each, is a digit with three joints of the same
general character as those of the middle digit,
only very much smaller. These small digits are
so disposed that they could have had but very

124 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION in

little functional importance, and they must have
been rather of the nature of the dew-claws, such
as are to be found in many ruminant animals.
The Hipparion, as the extinct Euro^oean three-
toed horse is called, in fact, presents a foot similar
to that of the American Protohippus (Fig. 9),
except that, in the Hipparion^ the smaller digits
are situated farther back, and are of smaller pro-
portional size, than in the Protohippus.

The ulna is slightly more distinct than in the
horse; and the whole length of it, as a very
slender shaft, intimately united with the radius,
is completely traceable. The fibula appears to
be in the same condition as in the horse. The
teeth of the Hipparion are essentially similar
to those of the horse, but the pattern of the
grinders is in some respects a little more com-
plex, and there is a depression on the face of
the skull in front of the orbit, which is not seen
in existing horses.

In the earlier Miocene, and perhaps the later
Eocene deposits of some parts of Europe, another
extinct animal has been discovered, which Cuvicr,
who first described some fragments of it, con-
sidered to be a PalcBotherium. But as further
discoveries threw new light upon its structure,
it was recognised as a distinct genus, under the
name of AncMtherium.

In its general characters, the skeleton of Anclii-
tlicrium is very similar to that of the horse. In

ni LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 125

fact, Lartet and De Blainville called it Palceo-
therium equinum or hippoides; and De Christol,
in 1847, said that it differed from Hipparion in
little more than the characters of its teeth, and
gave it the name of Hipparitherium. Each foot
possesses three complete toes; while the lateral
toes are much larger in proportion to the middle
toe than in Hipparion, and doubtless rested on the
ground in ordinary locomotion.

The ulna is complete and quite distinct from
the radius, though firmly united with the latter.
The fibula seems also to have been complete.
Its lower end, though intimately united with that
of the tibia, is clearly marked off from the latter
bone.

There are forty-four teeth. The incisors have
no strong pit. The canines seem to have been
well developed in both sexes. The first of the
seven grinders, which, as I have said, is frequently
absent, and, when it does exist, is small in the
horse, is a good-sized and permanent tooth, while
the grinder which follows it is but little larger
than the hinder ones. The crowns of the grinders
are short, and though the fundamental pattern of
the horse-tooth is discernible, the front and back
ridges are less curved, the accessory pillars are
wanting, and the valleys, much shallower, are
not filled up with cement.

Seven years ago, when I happened to be look-
ing critically into the bearing of palaiontological

126 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

facts upon the doctrine of evolution, it appeared to
me that the Ancliitlierium, the Hipparion, and the
modern horses, constitute a series in which the
modifications of structure coincide with the order
of chronological occurrence, in the manner in
which they must coincide, if the modern horses
really are the result of the gradual metamor-
phosis, in the course of the Tertiary epoch, of
a less specialised ancestral form. And I found
by correspondence with the late eminent French
anatomist and palaeontologist, M. Lartet, that he
had arrived at the same conclusion from the same
data.

That the Anchitherium type had become meta-
morphosed into the Hipparion type, and the
latter into the Equine type, in the course of
that period of time which is represented by the
latter half of the Tertiary deposits, seemed to me
to be the only explanation of the facts for which
there was even a shadow of probability.*

And, hence, I have ever since held that these
facts afford evidence of the occurrence of evo-
lution, which, in the sense already defined, may
be termed demonstrative.

* I use the word " type " because it is highly probable
that many forms of A7ichif7i€rium-]ike and IIippario7i-\i]iQ
animals existed in the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, just
as many species of the horse tribe exist now ; and it is
highly improbable that the particular species of Anchi-
therium or Hipparion, which happen to have been discov-
ered, should be precisely those which have formed part of
the direct line of the horse's pedigree.

ni LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 127

All who have occupied themselves with the
structure of AncJiithei'ium, from Cuvier onwards,
have acknowledged its many points of likeness to
a well-known genus of extinct Eocene mammals,
Palceotherium. Indeed, as we have seen, Cuvier
regarded his remains of Ancliitherium as those
of a species of Palceotherium. Hence, in attempt-
ing to trace the pedigree of the horse beyond
the Miocene epoch and the Anchitheroid form,
I naturally sought among the various species of
Pala3otheroid animals for its nearest ally, and I
was led to conclude that the Palceotherium minus
(Plagiolophus) represented the next step more
nearly than any form then known.

I think that this opinion was fully justifiable;
but the progress of investigation has thrown an
unexpected light on the question, and has brought
us much nearer than could have been anticipated
to a knowledge of the true series of the progenitors
of the horse.

You are all aware that, when your country
was first discovered by Europeans, there were no
traces of the existence of the horse in any part
of the American Continent. The accounts of the
conquest of Mexico dwell upon the astonishment
of the natives of that country when they first
became acquainted with that astounding phe-
nomenon— a man seated upon a horse. Neverthe-
less, the investigations of American geologists
have proved that the remains of horses occur in

128 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

the most superficial deposits of both North and
South America, just as they do in Europe.
Therefore, for some reason or other — no feasible
suggestion on that subject, so far as I know, has
been made — the horse must have died out on
this continent at some period preceding the dis-
covery of America. Of late years there has been
discovered in your Western Territories that
marvellous accumulation of deposits, admirably
adapted for the preservation of organic remains,
to which I referred the other evening, and which
furnishes us with a consecutive series of records
of the fauna of the older half of the Tertiary
epoch, for which we have no parallel in Europe.
They have yielded fossils in an excellent state
of conservation and in unexampled number and
variety. The researches of Leidy and others
have shown that forms allied to the Hipparion
and the Ancliitherium are to be found among
these remains. But it is only recently that the
admirably conceived and most thoroughly and
patiently worked-out investigations of Professor
Marsh have given us a just idea of the vast fossil
wealth, and of the scientific importance, of these
deposits. I have had the advantage of glancing
over the collections in Yale Museum; and I can
truly say that, so far as my knowledge extends,
there is no collection from any one region and
series of strata comparable, for extent, or for the
care with which tlie remains have been <Tot to-

in LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 129

getlicr, or for their scientific importance, to the
series of fossils which he has deposited there.
This vast collection has yielded evidence bearing
upon the question of the pedigree of the horse
of the most striking character. It tends to show
that we must look to America, rather than to
Europe, for the original seat of the equine series;
and that the archaic forms and successive modifi-
cations of the horse's ancestry are far better pre-
served here than in Europe.

Professor Marsh's kindness has enabled me to
put before you a diagram, every figure in which is
an actual representation of some specimen which
is to be seen at Yale at this present time
(Fig. 9).

The succession of forms which he has brought

together carries us from the top to the bottom

of the Tertiaries. Firstly, there is the true horse.

Next we have the American Pliocene form of the

horse (Pliohippvs); in the conformation of its

limbs it presents some very slight deviations from

the ordinary horse, and the crowns of the grinding

teeth are shorter. Then comes the ProtohippuSf

which represents the European Hipparion, having

one large digit and two small ones on each foot,

and the general characters of the fore-arm and leg

to which I have referred. But it is more valuable

than the European Hipparion for the reason that

it is devoid of some of the peculiarities of that

form — peculiarities which tend to show that the
98

Fore Foot, Kind Foot. Forearm. Leg. Upper Molar. Lower Molar.

EECENT.

BQUU3.

PLIOCENE.

PLIOHIPPUS,

PROTOHIPPTJS.

{Hipparion),

MIOCENE.

MIOHIPPUS.

(^Anchitherium)

MESOHIPPUS.

EOCENE.

OROHIPPU3.

Fig. 9.

Ill • LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 131

European Hipparion is rather a member of a
collateral branch, than a form in the direct line of
succession. Next, in the backward order in time,
is the Miohippiis, which corresponds pretty nearly
with the Anchitherium of Europe. It presents
three complete toes — one large median and two
smaller lateral ones; and there is a rudiment of
that digit, which answers to the little finger of the
human hand.

The European record of the pedigree of the
horse stops here; in the American Tertiaries, on
the contrary, the series of ancestral equine forms
is continued into the Eocene formations. An older
Miocene form, termed Mesohippus, has three toes
in front, with a large splint-like rudiment repre-
senting the little finger; and three toes behind.
The radius and ulna, the tibia and the fibula, are
distinct, and the short crowned molar teeth are
anchitherioid in pattern.

But the most important discovery of all is the
Orohippus, which comes from the Eocene forma-
tion, and is the oldest member of the equine series,
as yet known. Here we find four complete toes on
the front limb, three toes on the hind limb, a w^ell-
developed ulna, a well-developed fibula, and short-
crowned grinders of simple pattern.

Thus, thanks to these important researches, it
has become evident that, so far as our present
knowledge extends, the history of the horse-type
is exactly and precisely that which could have been

132 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION • iii

predicted from a knowledge of the principles of
evolution. And the knowledge we now possess
justifies us completely in the anticipation, that
when the still lower Eocene deposits, and those
which belong to the Cretaceous epoch, have yielded
up their remains of ancestral equine animals, we
shall find, first, a form with four complete toes and
a rudiment of the innermost or first digit in front,
with, probably, a rudiment of the fifth digit in the
hind foot; * while, in still older forms, the series
of the digits will be more and more complete,
until we come to the five-toed animals, in which, if
the doctrine of evolution is well founded, the
whole series must have taken its origin.

That is what I mean by demonstrative evi-
dence of evolution. An inductive hypothesis is
said to be demonstrated when the facts are
shown to be in entire accordance with it. If
that is not scientific proof, there are no merely
inductive conclusions which can be said to be
proved. And the doctrine of evolution, at the
present time, rests upon exactly as secure a foun-
dation as the Copernican theory of the motions
of the heavenly bodies did at the time of its pro-
mulgation. Its logical basis is precisely of the

* Since this lecture was delivered, Professor Marsh has
discovered a new genus of equine mammals (^o^^}J/>us) from
the lowest Eocene deposits of the West, which corresponds
very nearly to this description. — American Journal of Sci-
ence, November, 1876.

m LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 133

same character — the coincidence of the observed
facts with theoretical requirements.

The only way of escape, if it be a way of escape,
from the conclusions which I have just indicated,
is the supposition that all these different equine
forms have been created separately at separate
epochs of time; and, I repeat, that of such an
hypothesis as this there neither is, nor can be, any
scientific evidence; and, assuredly, so far as I
know, there is none which is supported, or pretends
to be supported, by evidence or authority of any
other kind. I can but think that the time will
come when such suggestions as these, such obvious
attempts to escape the force of demonstration, will
be put upon the same footing as the supposition
made by some writers, who are I believe not com-
pletely extinct at present, that fossils are mere
simulacra, are no indications of the former exist-
ence of the animals to which they seem to belong;
but that they are either sports of Nature, or special
creations, intended — as I heard suggested the
other day — to test our faith.

In fact, the whole evidence is in favour of evo-
lution, and there is none against it. And I say
this, although perfectly well aware of the seeming
difficulties which have been built up upon what
appears to the uninformed to be a solid foun-
dation. I meet constantly with the argument
that the doctrine of evolution cannot be well
founded, because it requires the lapse of a very

134: LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

vast period of time; while tlie duration of life
upon the earth thus implied is inconsistent with
the conclusions arrived at by the astronomer and
the physicist. I may venture to say that I am
familiar with those conclusions, inasmuch as some
years ago, when President of the Geological
Society of London, I took the liberty of criti-
cising them, and of showing in what respects, as
it appeared to me, they lacked complete and
thorough demonstration. But, putting that point
aside, suppose that, as the astronomers, or some
of them, and some physical philosophers, tell us,
it is impossible that life could have endured upon
the earth for as long a period as is required by
the doctrine of evolution — supposing that to be
proved — I desire to be informed, what is the
foundation for the statement that evolution does
require so great a time? The biologist knows
nothing whatever of the amount of time which
may be required for the process of evolution. It
is a matter of fact that the equine forms which
I have described to you occur, in the order stated,
in the Tertiary formations. But I have not the
slightest means of guessing whether it took a
million of years, or ten millions, or a hundred
millions, or a thousand millions of years, to give
rise to that series of changes. A biologist has
no means of arriving at any conclusion as to the
amount of time which may be needed for a
certain quantity of organic change. He takes

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 135

his time from the geologist. The geologist, con-
sidering the rate at which deposits are formed and
the rate at which denudation goes on upon the
surface of the earth, arrives at more or less justi-
fiable conclusions as to the time which is required
for the deposit of a certain thickness of rocks;
and if he tells me that the Tertiary formations
required 500,000,000 years for their deposit, I
suppose he has good ground for what he says,
and I take that as a measure of the duration of the
evolution ' of the horse from the Orohippus up
to its present condition. And, if he is right,
undoubtedly evolution is a very slow process, and
requires a great deal of time. But suppose, now,
that an astronomer or a physicist — for instance,
my friend Sir William Thomson — tells me that
my geological authority is quite wrong; and that
he has weighty evidence to show that life could
not possibly have existed upon the surface of
the earth 500,000,000 years ago, because the
earth would have then been too hot to allow of
life, my reply is: " That is not my affair; settle
that with the geologist, and when you have come
to an agreement among yourselves I will adopt
your conclusion." We take our time from the
geologists and physicists; and it is monstrous
that, having taken our time from the physical
philosopher's clock, the physical philosopher
should turn round upon us, and say we are too
fast or too slow. What we desire to know is.

136 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION iii

is it a fact that evolution took place? As to the
amount of time which evolution may have occu-
pied, we are in the hands of the physicist and
the astronomer, whose business it is to deal with
those questions.

I have now, ladies and gentlemen, arrived at
the conclusion of the task which I set before
myself when I undertook to deliver these lectures.
My purpose has been, not to enable those among
you who have paid no attention to these subjects
before, to leave this room in a condition to decide
upon the validity or the invalidity of the hy-
pothesis of evolution; but I have desired to put
before you the principles upon which all hy-
potheses respecting the history of Nature must be
judged; and furthermore, to make apparent the
nature of the evidence and the amount of cogency
which is to be expected and may be obtained
from it. To this end, I have not hesitated to
regard you as genuine students and persons de-
sirous of knowing the truth. I have not shrunk
from taking you through long discussions, that
I fear may have sometimes tried your patience;
and I have inflicted upon you details which
were indispensable, but which may well have
been wearisome. But I shall rejoice — I shall
consider that I have done you the greatest service
which it was in my power to do — if I have
thus convinced you that the great question which

Ill LECTURES ON EVOLUTION 137

we have been discussing is not one to be dealt
with by rhetorical flourishes, or by loose and
superficial talk; but that it requires the keen
attention of the trained intellect and the patience
of the accurate observer.

When I commenced this series of lectures, I
did not think it necessary to preface them with
a prologue, such as might be expected from a
stranger and a foreigner; for during my brief
stay in your country, I have found it very hard
to believe that a stranger could be possessed of
so many friends, and almost harder that a
foreigner could express himself in your language
in such a way as to be, to all appearance, so
readily intelligible. So far as I can judge, that
most intelligent, and perhaps, I may add, most
singularly active and enterprising body, your
press reporters, do not seem to have been de-
terred by my accent from giving the fullest
account of everything that I happen to have
said.

But the vessel in which I take my departure
to-morrow morning is even now ready to slip
her moorings; I awake from my delusion that
I am other than a stranger and a foreigner. I
am ready to go back to my place and country;
but, before doing so, let me^ by way of epilogue,
tender to you my most hearty thanks for the
kind and cordial reception which you have ac-
corded to me; and let me thank you still more

138 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION m

for that which is the greatest compliment which
can be afforded to any person in my position —
the continuous and undisturbed attention which
you have bestowed upon the long argument which
I have had the honour to lay before you.

IV

THE INTEEPRETEES OF GENESIS AND
THE INTEEPEETEES OF NATUEE

[1885]

OuK fabulist warns " those who in quarrels in-
terpose " of the fate which is probably in store for
them; and in venturing to place myself between
so powerful a controversialist as Mr. Gladstone
and the eminent divine whom he assaults with
such vigour in the last number of this Eeview,* I
am fully aware that I run great danger of verify-
ing Gay's prediction. Moreover, it is quite possible
that my zeal in offering aid to a combatant so ex-
tremely well able to take care of himself as M.
Eeville may be thought to savour of indiscretion.

Two considerations, however, have led me to
face the double risk. The one is that though, in
my judgment, M. Eeville is wholly in the right in
that part of the controversy to which I propose to
restrict my observations, nevertheless he, as a for-

* The Nineteentli CenUiry.

140 GENESIS YERSUS NATURE iv

eigner, has very little chance of making the truth
prevail with Englishmen against the authority
and the dialectic skill of the greatest master of per-
suasive rhetoric among English-speaking men of
our time. As the Queen's proctor intervenes, in
certain cases, between two litigants in the in-
terests of justice, so it may be permitted me to
interpose as a sort of uncommissioned science proc-
tor. My second excuse for my meddlesomeness is,
that important questions of natural science —
respecting which neither of the combatants pro-
fesses to speak as an expert — are involved in the
controversy; and I think it is desirable that the
public should know what it is that natural science
really has to say on these topics, to the best belief
of one who has been a diligent student of natural
science for the last forty years.

The original " Prolegomenes de I'Histoire des
Religions '' has not come in my way; but I have
read the translation of M. Eeville's work, published
in England under the auspices of Professor Max
Miiller, with very great interest. It puts more
fairly and clearly than any book previously known
to me, the view which a man of strong religious
feelings, but at the same time possessing the in-
formation and the reasoning power which enable
him to estimate the strength of scientific methods
of inquiry and the weight of scientific truth, may
be expected to take of the relation between science
and religion.

IV GENESIS VERSUS NATURE 141

In the chapter on " The Primitive Revelation "
the scientific worth of the account of the Creation
given in the book of Genesis is estimated in terms
which are as unquestionably respectful as, in my
judgment, they are just; and, at the end of the
chapter on " Primitive Tradition," M. Eeville ap-
praises the value of pentateuchal anthropology in
a way which I should have thought sure of en-
listing the assent of all competent judges, even if it
were extended to the whole of the cosmogony and
biology of Genesis: —

As, however, the original traditions of nations sprang up
in an epoch less remote than our own from the primitive
life, it is indispensable to consult them, to compare them,
and to associate them with other sources of information
which are available. From this point of view, the traditions
recorded in Genesis possess, in addition to their own pecul-
iar charm, a value of the highest order ; but we cannot ulti-
mately see in them more than a venerable fragment, well-
deserving attention, of the great genesis of mankind.

Mr. Gladstone is of a different mind. He dis-
sents from M. Reville's views respecting the proper
estimation of the pentateuchal traditions, no less
than he does from his interpretation of those
Homeric myths which have been the object of his
own special study. In the latter case, Mr. Glad-
stone tells M. Reville that he is wrong on his
own authority, to which, in such a matter, all will
pay due respect: in the former, he affirms himself
to be " wholly destitute of that kind of knowledge
which carries authority," and his rebuke is

142 GEKESIS VERSUS NATURE iv

administered in the name and by the authority of
natural science.

An air of magisterial gravity hangs about the
following passage: —

But the question is not here of a lofty poem, or a skil-
fully constructed narrative : it is whether natural science,
in the patient exercise of its high calling to examine facts,
finds that the works of God cry out against what we have
fondly believed to be His word and tell another tale ; or
whether, in this nineteenth century of Christian progress, it
substantially echoes back the majestic sound, which, before
it existed as a pursuit, went forth into all lands.

First, looking largely at the latter portion of the narra-
tive, which describes the creation of living organisms, and
waiving details, on some of which (as in v. 24) the Septua-
gint seems to vary from the Hebrew, there is a grand four-
fold division, set forth in an orderly succession of times as
follows : on the fifth day

1. The water-population ;

2. The air-population ;
and, on the sixth day,

3. The land-population of animals ;

4. The land-population consummated in man.

Now this same fourfold order is understood to have been so
affirmed in our time by natural science, that it may be taken
as a demonstrated conclusion and established fact (p. 696.)

«

Understood?" By whom? I cannot bring
myself to imagine that Mr. Gladstone has made so
solemn and authoritative a statement on a matter
of this importance without due inquiry — without
being able to found himself upon recognised scien-
tific authority. But I wish he had thought fit to
name the source from whence he has derived his

IV GENESIS VERSUS NATURE 143

information, as, in that case, I could have dealt
with his authority, and I should have thereby
escaped the appearance of making an attack on Mr.
Gladstone himself, which is in every way distaste-
ful to me.

For 1 can meet the statement in the last para-
graph of the above citation with nothing but a
direct negative. If I know anything at all about
the results attained by the natural science of our
time, it is " a demonstrated conclusion and estab-
lished fact " that the " fourfold order " given by
Mr. Gladstone is not that in which the evidence at
our disposal tends to show that the water, air, and
land-populations of the globe have made their
appearance.

Perhaps I may be told that Mr. Gladstone does
give his authority — that he cites Cuvier, Sir John
Herschel, and Dr. Whewell in support of his case.
If that has been Mr. Gladstone's intention in men-
tioning these eminent names, I may remark that,
on this particular question, the only relevant
authority is that of Cuvier. But great as Cuvier
was, it is to be remembered that, as Mr. Gladstone
incidentally remarks, he cannot now be called a
recent authority. In fact, he has been dead more
than half a century; and the palaeontology of our
day is related to that of his, very much as the
geography of the sixteenth century is related to
that of the fourteenth. Since 1832, when Cuvier
died, not only a new world, but new worlds, of

144 GENESIS VERSUS NATURE iv

ancient life have been discovered; and those who
have most faithfully carried on the work of the
chief founder of palaeontology have done most to
invalidate the essentially negative grounds of his
speculative adherence to tradition.

If Mr. Gladstone's latest information on these
matters is derived from the famous discourse pre-
fixed to the " Ossemens Fossiles/' I can understand
the position he has taken up; if he has ever opened
a respectable modern manual of palasontology, or
geology, I cannot. For the facts which demolish
his whole argument are of the commonest noto-
riety. But before proceeding to consider the
evidence for this assertion we must be clear about
the meaning of the phraseology employed.

I apprehend that when Mr. Gladstone uses the
term " water-population " he means those animals
which in Genesis i. 21 (Eevised Version) are
spoken of as " the great sea monsters and every
living creature that moveth, which the waters
brought forth abundantly, after their kind." And
I presume that it will be agreed that whales and
porpoises, sea fishes, and the innumerable hosts of
marine invertebrated animals, are meant thereby.
So " air-population " must be the equivalent of
" fowl '' in verse 20, and " every winged fowl after
its kind," verse 21. I suppose I may take it for
granted that by " fowl " we have here to under-
stand birds — at any rate primarily. Secondarily,
it may be that the bats and the extinct pterodac-

IV GENESIS VERSUS NATURE I45

tyles, which were flying reptiles, come under the
same head. But whether all insects are " creeping
things '' of the land-population, or whether flying
insects are to he included under the denomination
of " winged fowl/' is a point for the decision of
Hebrew exegetes. Lastly, I suppose I may assume
that " land-population " signifies " the cattle "
and " the beasts of the earth," and " every creep-
ing thing that creepeth upon the earth," in verses
25 and 26; presumably it comprehends all kinds
of terrestrial animals, vertebrate and invertebrate,
except such as may be comprised under the head
of the " air-population."

Now what I want to make clear is this: that if
the terms " water-population," " air-population,"
and " land-population " are understood in the
senses here defined, natural science has nothing to
say in favour of the proposition that they suc-
ceeded one another in the order given by Mr. Glad-
stone; but that, on the contrary, all the evidence
we possess goes to prove that they did not.
Whence it will follow that, if Mr. Gladstone has
interpreted Genesis rightly (on which point I am
most anxious to be understood to offer no opinion),
that interpretation is wholly irreconcilable with
the conclusions at present accepted by the inter-
preters of nature — with everything that can be
called " a demonstrated conclusion and estab-
lished fact " of natural science. And be it ob-
served that I am not here dealing with a ques-
tion of speculation, but with a question of fact.
99

146 GENESIS VERSUS NATURE) iv

Either the geological record is sufFiciently com-
plete to afford us a means of determining the order
in which animals have made their appearance on
the globe or it is not. If it is, the determination
of that order is little more than a mere matter of
observation; if it is not, then natural science nei-
ther affirms nor refutes the " fourfold order/' but
is simply silent.

The series of the fossiliferous deposits, which
contain the remains of the animals which have
lived on the earth in past ages of its history, and
which can alone afford the evidence required by
natural science of the order of appearance of their
different species, may be grouped in the manner
shown in the left-hand column of the following
table, the oldest being at the bottom: —

Formations First known appearance of

Quaternary.
Pliocene.
Miocene.

Eocene . . Vertebrate m'r-population (Bats).

Cretaceous.
Jurassic . . Vertebrate «»V-population (Birds and

Pterodactyles).
Triassic.

Upper Palaeozoic.

Middle Palaeozoic . Vertebrate Zaw(^-population (Am-
phibia, Reptilia [?]).
Lower Palaeozoic.

Silurian . . Vertebrate water-populsition (Fishes).

Invertebrate air and la7id-popu.\sition

(Flying Insects and Scorpions).
Cambrian . Invertebrate ?t'a/er-population (much

earlier, if Eozoon is animal).

rv GENESIS VERSUS NATURE 147

In the right-hand colnmn I have noted the
group of strata in which, according to our present
information, the land, air, and wafer-populations
respectively appear for the first time; and in con-
sequence of the ambiguity about the meaning of
" fowl," I have separately indicated the first ap-
pearance of bats, birds, flying reptiles, and flying
insects. It will be observed that, if " fowl " means
only " bird," or at most flying vertebrate, then the
first certain evidence of the latter, in the Jurassic
epoch, is posterior to the first appearance of truly
terrestrial AmpMhia, and possibly of true reptiles,
in the Carboniferous epoch (Middle PalcBozoic) by
a prodigious interval of time.

The water-population of vertebrated animals
first appears in the Upper Silurian.* Therefore,
if we found ourselves on vertebrated animals and
take " fowl " to mean birds only, or, at most, flying
vertebrates, natural science says that the order of
succession was water, land, and air-population, and
not — as Mr. Gladstone, founding himself on Gene-
sis, says — water, air, land-population. If a chron-
icler of Greece affirmed that the age of Alexander
preceded that of Pericles and immediately suc-
ceeded that of the Trojan war, Mr. Gladstone
would hardly say that this order is " understood
to have been so affirmed by historical science that
it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and
established fact." Yet natural science " affirms "

* Earher, if more recent announcements are correct.

148 GENESIS VERSUS NATURE iv

his " fourfold order ^' to exactly the same extent
— neither more nor less.

Suppose, however, that " fowl " is to be taken
to include flying insects. In that case, the first
appearance of an air-population must be shifted
back for long ages, recent discovery having shown
that they occur in rocks of Silurian age. Hence
there might still have been hope for the fourfold
order, were it not that the fates unkindly deter-
mined that scorpions — " creeping things that
creep on the earth " par excellence — turned up in
Silurian strata nearly at the safme time. So that,
if the word in the original Hebrew translated
" fowl " should really after all mean " cockroach "
— and I have great faith in the elasticity of that
tongue in the hands of Biblical exegetes — the order
primarily suggested by the existing evidence —

2. Land and air-population;

1. Water-population;
and Mr. Gladstone's order —

3. Land-population;

2. Air-population;

1. Water-population;
can bv no means be made to coincide. As a mat-
ter of fact, then, the statement so confidently put
forward turns out to be devoid of foundation and
in direct contradiction of the evidence at present
at our disposal.*

* It may be objected that I have not put the ease fairly,
inasmuch as the solitary insect's wing which was discovered

IV GENESIS VERSUS NATURE 149

If, stepping beyond that which may be learned
from the facts of the successive appearance of the
forms of animal life upon the surface of the globe,
in so far as they are yet made known to us by
natural science, we apply our reasoning faculties
to the task of finding out what those observed
facts mean, the present conclusions of the inter-
preters of nature appear to be no less directly in
conflict with those of the latest interpreter of
Genesis.

Mr. Gladstone appears to admit that there is
some truth in the doctrine of evolution, and in-
deed places it under very high patronage.

I contend that evolution in its highest form has not been
a thing heretofore unknown to history, to philosophy, or to
theology. I contend that it was before the mind of Saint
Paul when he taught that in the fulness of time God sent
forth His Son, and of Eusebius when he wrote the " Prepa-
ration for the Gospel," and of Augustine when he composed
the " City of God " (p. 706).

twelve months ago in Silurian rocks, and which is, at present,
the sole evidence of insects older than the Devonian epoch,
came from strata of Middle Silurian age, and is therefore
older than the scorpions which, within the last two years, have
been found in Upper Silurian strata in Sweden, Britain, and
the United States. But no one who comprehends the nature
of the evidence afforded by fossil remains w^ould venture to
say that the non-discovery of scorpions in the Middle Silu-
rian strata, up to this time, affords any more ground for sup-
posing that they did not exist, than the non-discovery of
flying insects in the Upper Silurian strata, up to this time,
throws any doubt on the certainty that they existed, which is
derived from the occurrence of the wing in tlie Middle Silu-
rian. In fact. 1 have stretched a point in admitting that these
fossils afford a colourable pretext for the assumption that the
land and air-population were of contemporaneous origin.

150 GENESIS VERSUS NATURE iv

Has any one ever disjoiited the contention, thus
solemnly enunciated, that the doctrine of evolu-
tion was not invented the day before yesterday?
Has any one ever dreamed of claiming it as a
modern innovation? Is there any one so ignorant
of the history of philosophy as to be unaware that
it is one of the forms in which speculation em-
bodied itself long before the time either of the
Bishop of Hippo or of the Apostle to the Gen-
tiles? Is Mr. Gladstone, of all people in the
world, disposed to ignore the founders of Greek
philosophy, to say nothing of Indian sages to
whom evolution was a familiar notion ages before
Paul of Tarsus was born? But it is ungrateful
to cavil at even the most oblique admission of the
possible value of one of those affirmations of nat-
ural science which really may be said to be " a
demonstrated conclusion and established fact." I
note it with pleasure, if only for the purpose of
introducing the observation that, if there is any
truth whatever in the doctrine of evolution as ap-
plied to animals, Mr. Gladstone's gloss on Genesis
in the following passage is hardly happy: —

God created

(a) The water-population ;

(h) The air-population.

And they receive His benediction (v. 20-23).

6. Pursuinc: this regular progression from the lower to the
higher, from the simple to the complex, the text now gives us
the work of the sixth " day," which supplies the land-popula-
tion, air and water having been already supplied (pp. 695, 69G).

IV GENESIS VERSUS NATURE 151

The gloss to which I refer is the assumption
that the "air-population" forms a term in the
order of progression from lower to higher, from
simple to complex — the place of which lies be-
tween the water-population below and the land-
population above — and I speak of it as a " gloss/'
because the pentateuchal writer is nowise respon-
sible for it.

But it is not true that the air-population, as a
whole, is " lower " or less " complex " than the
land-population. On the contrary, every beginner
in the study of animal morphology is aware that
the organisation of a bat, of a bird, or of a
pterodactyle presupposes that of a terrestrial quad-
ruped; and that it is intelligible only as an ex-
treme modification of the organisation of a terres-
trial mammal or reptile. In the same way winged
insects (if they are to be counted among the " air-
population ") presuppose insects which were wing-
less, and, therefore, as " creeping things," were
part of the land-population. Thus theory is as
much opposed as observation to the admission that
natural science endorses the succession of animal
life which Mr. Gladstone finds in Genesis. On
the contrary, a good many representatives of nat-
ural science w^ould be prepared to- say, on theo-
retical grounds alone, that it is incredible that
the " air-population " should have appeared be-
fore the " land-population " — and that, if this as-
sertion is to be found in Genesis, it merely dem-

152 GENESIS VERSUS NATURE iv

onstrates the scientific wortlilessness of the story
of wliich it forms a part.

Indeed, we may go further. It is not even
admissible to say that the water-population, as a
whole, appeared before the air and the land-pop-
ulations. According to the Authorised Version,
Genesis especially mentions, among the animals
created on the fifth day, " great whales," in place
of which the Eevised Version reads " great sea
monsters." Far be it from me to give an opinion
which rendering is right, or whether either is
right. All I desire to remark is, that if whales
and porpoises, dugongs and manatees, are to be
regarded as members of the water-population (and
if they are not, what animals can claim the des-
ignation?), then that much of the water-popula-
tion has, as certainly, originated later than the
land-population as bats and birds have. For I
am not aware that any competent judge would
hesitate to admit that the organisation of these
animals shows the most obvious signs of their de-
scent from terrestrial quadrupeds.

A similar criticism applies to Mr. Gladstone's
assumption that, as the fourth act of that " or-
derly succession of times " enunciated in Genesis,
" the land-po^ilation consummated in man."

If this means simply that man is the final
term in the evolutional series of which he forms a
part, I do not suppose that any objection will be
raised to that statement on the part of students of

IV GENESIS VERSUS NATURE 153

natural science. But if the pentateuchal author
goes further than this^ and intends to say that
which is ascribed to him by Mr. Gladstone, I
think natural science will have to enter a caveat.
It is not by any means certain that man — I mean
the species Homo sapiens of zoological terminology
— has " consummated " the land-population in the
sense of appearing at a later period of time than
any other. Let me make my meaning clear by
an example. From a morphological point of view,
our beautiful and useful contemporary — I might
almost call him colleague — the horse {Equus
caballus), is the last term of the evolutional series
to which he belongs, just as Homo sapiens is the
last term of the series of which he is a member.
If I want to know whether the species Equus
cahaUus made its appearance on the surface of the
globe before or after Homo sapiens, deduction
from known laws does not help me. There is no
reason, that I know of, why one should have ap-
peared sooner or later than the other. If I turn
to observation, I find abundant remains of Equus
caballus in Quaternary strata, perhaps a little ear-
lier. The existence of Homo sapiens in the Qua-
ternary epoch is also certain. Evidence has been
adduced in favour of man's existence in the Plio-
cene, or even in the Miocene epoch. It does not
satisfy me; but I have no reason to doubt that
the fact may be so, nevertheless. Indeed, I think
it is quite possible that further research will show

154: GENESIS VERSUS NATURE iv

that Homo sapiens existed, not only before Equus
caballus, but before many other of the existing
forms of animal life; so that, if all the species of
animals have been separately created, man, in this
case, would by no means be the " consummation "
of the land-population.

I am raising no objection to the position of the
fourth term in Mr. Gladstone's '^ order " — on the
facts, as they stand, it is quite open to any one to
hold, as a pious opinion, that the fabrication of man
was the acme and final achievement of the process
of peopling the globe. But it must not be said
that natural science counts this opinion among her
" demonstrated conclusions and established facts,"
for there would be just as much, or as little, reason
for ranging the contrary opinion among them.

It may seem superfluous to add to the evidence
that Mr. Gladstone has been utterly misled in sup-
posing that his interpretation of Genesis receives
any support from natural science. But it is as
well to do one's work thoroughly while one is
about it; and I think it may be advisable to point
out that the facts, as they are at present known,
not only refute Mr. Gladstone's interpretation of
Genesis in detail, but are opposed to the central
idea on which it appears to be based.

There must be some position from which the
reconcilers of science and Genesis will not retreat,
some central idea the maintenance of which is vital
and its refutation fatal. Even if they now allow

IV GENESIS VEESUS NATURE I55

that the words " the evening and the -morning "
have not the least reference to a natural day, but
mean a period of any number of millions of years
that may be necessary; even if they are driven to
admit that the word " creation/' which so many
millions of pious Jews and Christians have held,
and still hold, to mean a sudden act of the Deity,
signifies a process of gradual evolution of one spe-
cies from another, extending through immeasur-
able time; even if they are willing to grant that
the asserted coincidence of the order of Nature
with the " fourfold order " ascribed to Genesis is
an obvious error instead of an established truth;
they are surely prepared to make a last stand upon
the conception which underlies the whole, and
which constitutes the essence of Mr. Gladstone's
^^ fourfold division, set forth in an order] v succes-
sion of times." It is, that the animal species
which compose the water-population, the air-popu-
lation, and the land-population respectively, origi-
nated during three distinct and successive periods
of time, and only during those periods of time.
This statement appears to me to be the inter-
pretation of Genesis which Mr. Gladstone sup-
ports, reduced to its simplest expression. " Period
of time " is substituted for " day "; " originated "
is substituted for "created"; and "any order re-
quired " for that adopted by Mr. Gladstone. It is
necessary to make this proviso, for if " day " may
mean a few million years, and " creation " may

156 GENESIS VERSUS NATURE iv

mean evolution, then it is obvious that the order

(1) water-poi3ulation, (2) air-population, (3) land-
population, may also mean (1) water-population,

(2) land-population, (3) air-population; and it
would be unkind to bind down the reconcilers to
this detail when one has parted with so many
others to oblige them.

But even this sublimated essence of the penta-
teuchal doctrine (if it be such) remains as discord-
ant with natural science as ever.

It is not true that the species composing any
one of the three populations originated during any
one of three successive periods of time, and not at
any other of these.

Undoubtedly, it is in the highest degree proba-
ble that animal life appeared first under aquatic
conditions; that terrestrial forms appeared later,
and flying animals only after land animals; but it
is, at the same time, testified by all the evidence
we possess, that the great majority, if not the
whole, of the primordial species of each division
have long since died out and have been replaced
by a vast succession of new forms. Hundreds of
thousands of animal species, as distinct as those
which now compose our water, land, and air-popu-
lations, have come into existence and died out
again, throughout the 83ons of geological time
which separate us from the lower Palaeozoic epoch,
when, as I have pointed out, our present evidence
of the existence of such distinct populations com-

IV GENESIS VERSUS NATURE I57

mences. If the species of animals have all been
separately created, then it follows that hundreds
of thousands of acts of creative energy have oc-
curred, at intervals, throughout the whole time
recorded by the fossiliferous rocks; and, during the
greater part of that time, the " creation " of the
members of the water, land, and air-populations
must have gone on contemporaneously.

If we represent the water, land, and air-popula-
tions by a, h, and c respectively, and take vertical
succession on the page to indicate order in time,
then the following schemes will roughly shadow
forth the contrast I have been endeavouring to
explain : —

Genesis (as interpreted by Nature fas interpreted by

Mr. Gladstone). natural science).

c c c c a^ ¥

aaa b a^ b

a a a

So far as I can see, there is only one resource
left for those modern representatives of Sisyphus,
the reconcilers of Genesis with science; and it has
the advantage of being founded on a perfectly
legitimate appeal to our ignorance. It has been
seen that, on any interpretation of the terms
water-population and land-population, it must be
admitted that invertebrate representatives of these
populations existed during the lower Palaeozoic
epoch. No evolutionist can hesitate to admit that
other land animals (and possibly vertebrates among

158 GENESIS VERSUS NATURE iv

tliem) may have existed during that time^ of the
history of which we know so little; and^ further,
that scorpions are animals of such high organisa-
tion that it is highly prohahle their existence in-
dicates that of a long antecedent land-population
of a similar character.

Then, since the land-population is said not to
have been created until the sixth day, it necessarily
follows that the evidence of the order in which
animals appeared must be sought in the record of
those older Palaeozoic times in which only traces of
the water-population have as yet been discovered.

Therefore, if any one chooses to say that the
creative work took place in the Cambrian or Lau-
rentian epoch, in exactly that manner which Mr.
Gladstone does, and natural science does not,
affirm, natural science is not in a position to dis-
prove the accuracy of the statement. Only one
cannot have one's cake and eat it too, and such
safety from the contradiction of science means the
forfeiture of her support.

Whether the account of the work of the first,
second, and third da3''s in Genesis would be con-
firmed by the demonstration of the truth of the
nebular hypothesis; whether it is corroborated by
what is known of the nature and probable rela-
tive antiquity of the heavenly bodies; whether,
if the Hebrew word translated " firmament " in
the Authorised Version really means " expanse,"
the assertion that the waters are partly under

IV GENESIS VERSUS NATURE I59

this " expanse " and partly above it would be any
more confirmed by the ascertained facts of physi-
cal geography and meteorology than it was before;
whether the creation of the whole vegetable world,
and especially of " grass, herb yielding seed after
its kind, and tree bearing fruit," before any kind
of animal, is " affirmed " by the apparently plain
teaching of botanical palaeontology, that grasses
and fruit-trees originated long subsequently to
animals — all these are questions which, if I mis-
take not, would be answered decisively in the
negative by those who are specially conversant
with the sciences involved. And it must be recol-
lected that the issue raised by Mr. Gladstone is
not whether, by some effort of ingenuity, the pen-
tateuchal story can be shown to be not disprov-
able by scientific knowledge, but whether it is sup-
ported thereby.

There is nothing, then, in the criticisms of Dr. Reville
but what rather tends to confirm than to impair the old-
fashioned belief that there is a revelation in the book of
Genesis (p. 694).

The form into which Mr. Gladstone has
thought fit to throw this opinion leaves me in
doubt as to its substance. I do not understand how
a hostile criticism can, under any circumstances,
tend to confirm that which it attacks. If, how-
ever, Mr. Gladstone merely means to express his
personal impression, " as one wholly destitute of
that kind of knowledge which carries authority,"

160 GENESIS VERSUS NATURE iv

that he has destroyed the value of these criticisms,
I have neither the wish nor the right to attempt
to disturb his faith. On the other hand, I mav
be permitted to state my own conviction, that, so
far as natural science is involved, M. Eeville's ob-
servations retain the exact value they possessed be-
fore Mr. Gladstone attacked them.

Trusting that I have now said enough to secure
the author of a wise and moderate disquisition
upon a topic which seems fated to stir unwisdom
and fanaticism to their depths, a fuller measure
of justice than has hitherto been accorded to him,
I retire from my self-appointed championship,
with the hope that I shall not hereafter be called
upon by M. Reville to apologise for damage done
to his strong case by imperfect or impulsive ad-
vocacy. But, perhaps, I may be permitted to add
a word or two, on my own account, in reference
to the great question of the relations between sci-
ence and religion; since it is one about which
I have thought a good deal ever since I have been
able to think at all; and about which I have
ventured to express my views publicly, more
than once, in the course of the last thirtv
years.

The antagonism between science and religion,
about which we hear so much, appears to me to
be purely factitious — fabricated, on the one hand,
by short-sighted religious people who confound a

IV GENESIS VERSUS NATURE 161

certain branch of science, theology, with religion;
and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scien-
tific people who forget that science takes for its
province only that which is susceptible of clear
intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the
boundaries of that province, they must be con-
tent with imagination, with hope, and with igno-
rance.

It seems to me that the moral and intellectual
life of the civilised nations of Europe is the
product of that interaction, sometimes in the way
of antagonism, sometimes in that of profitable
interchange, of the Semitic and the Aryan races,
which commenced with the dawn of history, when
Greek and Phoenician came in contact, and has
been continued by Carthaginian and Roman, by
Jew and Gentile, down to the present day. Our
art (except, perhaps, music) and our science are
the contributions of the Aryan; but the essence
of our religion is derived from the Semite. In
the eighth century b. c, in the heart of a world
of idolatrous polytheists, the Hebrew prophets
put forth a conception of religion which appears
to me to be as wonderful an inspiration of genius
as the art of Pheidias or the science of Aristotle.

" And what doth the Lord require of thee, but
to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk hum-
bly with thy God?"

If any so-called religion takes away from this
great saying of Micah, I think it wantonly muti-
100

162 GENESIS VERSUS NATURE iv

lates, while, if it adds thereto, I think it obscures,
the perfect ideal of religion.

But what extent of knowledge, what acuteness
of scientific criticism, can touch this, if any one
possessed of knoAvledge, or acuteness, could be
absurd enough to make the attempt? Will the
progress of research prove that justice is worth-
less and mercy hateful; will it ever soften the
bitter contrast between our actions and our as-
pirations; or show us the bounds of the universe,
and bid us say. Go to, now we comprehend the
infinite? A faculty of wrath lay in those ancient
Israelites, and surely the prophet's staff would
have made swift acquaintance with the head of
the scholar who had asked Micah whether, per-
adventure, the Lord further required of him an
implicit belief in the accuracy of the cosmogony
of Genesis!

What we are usually pleased to call religion
nowadays is, for the most part, Hellenised Juda-
ism; and, not unfrequently, the Hellenic element
carries with it a mighty remnant of old-world
paganism and a great infusion of the worst and
weakest products of Greek scientific speculation;
while fragments of Persian and Babylonian, or
rather Accadian, mythology burden the Judaic
contribution to the common stock.

The antagonism of science is not to religion,
but to the heathen survivals and the bad phi-
losophy under which religion herself is often well-

IV GENESIS VERSUS NATURE 163

nigh crushed. And, for my part, I trust that this
antagonism will never cease; but that, to the end
of time, true science will continue to fulfil one of
her most beneficent functions, that of relieving
men from the burden of false science which is
imposed upon them in the name of religion.

This is the work that M. Eeville and men such
as he are doing for us; this is the work which his
opponents are endeavouring, consciously or uncon-
sciously, to hinder.

MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS

[1886]

In controversy, as in courtship, the good old
rule to be off with the old before one is on with the
new greatly commends itself to my sense of
expediency. And, therefore, it appears to me
desirable that I should preface such observations
as I may have to offer upon the cloud of argu-
ments (the relevancy of which to the issue which
I had ventured to raise is not always obvious)
put forth by Mr. Gladstone in the January num-
ber of this review,* by an endeavour to make
clear to such of our readers as have not had the
advantage of a forensic education the present net
result of the discussion.

I am quite aware that, in undertaking this
task, I run all the risks to which the man who pre-
sumes to deal judicially with his own cause is lia-

* The Nineteenth Century, 1886.
164

V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 165

ble. But it is exactly because I do not shun that
risk but, rather, earnestly desire to be judged by
him who cometh after me, provided that he has
the knowledge and impartiality appropriate to a
judge, that I adopt my present course.

In the article on " The Dawn of Creation and
Worship," it will be remembered that Mr. Glad-
stone unreservedly commits himself to three
propositions. The first is that, according to the
writer of the Pentateuch, the " water-population,"
the " air-population," and the " land-population "
of the globe were created successively, in the
order named. In the second place, Mr. Gladstone
authoritatively asserts that this (as part of his
" fourfold order ") has been " so affirmed in our
time by natural science, that it may be taken as
a demonstrated conclusion and established fact."
In the third place, Mr. Gladstone argues that the
fact of this coincidence of the pentateuchal story
with the results of modern investigation makes it
" impossible to avoid the conclusion, first, that
either this writer was gifted with faculties passing
all human experience, or else his knowledge was
divine." And having settled to his own satisfac-
tion that the first " branch of the alternative is
truly nominal and unreal," Mr. Gladstone con-
tinues, " So stands the plea for a revelation of truth
from God, a plea only to be met by questioning its
possibility" (p. 697).

I am a simple-minded person, wholly devoid of

166 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS v

subtlety of intellect, so that I willingly admit that
there may be depths of alternative meaning in
these propositions out of all soundings attainable
by my poor plummet. Still there are a good
many people who suffer under a like intellectual
limitation; and, for once in my life, I feel that I
have the chance of attaining that position of a
representative of average opinion which appears to
be the modern ideal of a leader of men, when I
make free confession that, after turning the mat-
ter over in my mind, with all the aid derived
from a careful consideration of Mr. Gladstone's
reply, I cannot get away from my original convic-
tion that, if Mr. Gladstone's second proposition
can be shown to be not merely inaccurate, but
directly contradictory of facts known to every one
who is acquainted with the elements of natural
science, the third proposition collapses of itself.

And it was this conviction which led me to
enter upon the present discussion. I fancied that
if my respected clients, the people of average
opinion and capacity, could once be got distinctly
to conceive that Mr. Gladstone's views as to the
proper method of dealing with grave and difficult
scientific and religious problems had permitted
him to base a solemn " plea for a revelation of
truth from God " upon an error as to a matter of
fact, from which the intelligent perusal of a
manual of palaeontology would have saved him, I
need not trouble myself to occupy their time and

V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 167

attention with further comments upon his contri-
bution to apologetic literature. It is for others to
judge whether I have efficiently carried out my
project or not. It certainly does not count for
much that I should be unable to find any flaw in
my own case, but I think it counts for a good deal
that Mr. Gladstone appears to have been equally
unable to do so. He does, indeed, make a great
parade of authorities, and I have the greatest re-
spect for those authorities whom Mr. Gladstone
mentions. If he will get them to sign a joint
memorial to the effect that our present palaeonto-
logical evidence proves that birds appeared before
the *^ land-population " of terrestrial reptiles, I
shall think it my duty to reconsider my position —
but not till then.

It will be observed that I have cautiously used
the word " appears " in referring to what seems to
me to be absence of any real answer to my
criticisms in Mr. Gladstone's reply. For I must
honestly confess that, notwitlistanding long and
painful strivings after clear insight, I am still
uncertain whether Mr. Gladstone's " Defence "
means that the great " plea for a revelation from
God " is to be left to perish in the dialectic desert;
or whether it is to be withdrawn under the pro-
tection of such skirmishers as are available for
covering retreat.

In particular, the remarkable disquisition
which covers pages 11 to 14 of Mr. Gladstone's last

168 MI^. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS v

contribution has greatly exercised my mind.
Socrates is reported to have said of the works
of Heraclitus that he who attempted to com-
prehend them should be a " Delian swimmer,"
but that, for his part, what he could understand
was so good that he was disposed to believe in
the excellence of that which he found unintelli-
gible. In endeavouring to make myself master
of Mr. Gladstone's meaning in these pages, I have
often been overcome by a feeling analogous to
that of Socrates, but not quite the same. That
which I do understand has appeared to me so very
much the reverse of good, that I have sometimes
permitted myself to doubt the value of that which
I do not understand.

In this part of Mr. Gladstone's reply, in fact, I
find nothing of which the bearing upon my argu-
ments is clear to me, except that which relates to
the question whether reptiles, so far as they are
represented by tortoises and the great majority of
lizards and snakes, which are land animals, are
creeping things in the sense of the pentateuchal
writer or not.

I have every respect for the singer of the Song
of the Three Children (whoever he may have
been); I desire to cast no shadow of doubt upon,
but, on the contrary, marvel at, the exactness of
Mr. Gladstone's information as to the considera-
tions which " affected the method of the Mosaic
writer " ; nor do I venture to doubt that the

V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 169

inconvenient intrusion of these contemptible rep-
tiles— " a family fallen from greatness " (p. 14),
a miserable decayed aristocracy reduced to mere
" skulkers about the earth ^' {ibid.) — in conse-
quence, apparently, of difficulties about the occu-
pation of land arising out of the earth-hunger of
their former serfs, the mammals — into an apolo-
getic argument, which otherwise would run quite
smoothly, is in every way to be deprecated.
Still, the wretched creatures stand there, im-
portunately demanding notice; and, however
different may be the practice in that contentious
atmosphere with which Mr. Gladstone expresses
and laments his familiarity, in the atmosphere of
science it really is of no avail whatever to shut
one's eyes to facts, or to try to bury them out of
sight under a tumulus of rhetoric. That is my
experience of the " Elysian regions of Science,"
wherein it is a pleasure to me to think that a
man of Mr. Gladstone's intimate knowledge of
English life, during the last quarter of a century,
believes my philosophic existence to have been
rounded off in unbroken equanimity.

However reprehensible, and indeed contempt-
ible, terrestrial reptiles may be, the only question
which appears to me to be relevant to my argu-
ment is whether these creatures are or are not
comprised under the denomination of " everything
that creepeth upon the ground."

Mr. Gladstone speaks of the author of the

170 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS v

first chapter of Genesis as "the Mosaic writer";
I suppose, therefore, that he will admit that
it is equally proper to speak of the author of
Leviticus as the " Mosaic writer." Whether such
a phrase would be used by any one who had an
adequate conception of the assured results of
modern Biblical criticism is another matter;
but, at any rate, it cannot be denied that Leviticus
has as much claim to Mosaic authorship as Gene-
sis. Therefore, if one wants to know the sense
of a phrase used in Genesis, it will be well to see
what Leviticus has to say on the matter. Hence,
I commend the following extract from the eleventh
chapter of Leviticus to Mr. Gladstone's serious
attention: —

And these are they which are unclean unto you among
the creeping things that creep upon the earth ; the weasel,
and the mouse, and the great lizard after its kind, and the
gecko, and the land-crocodile, and the sand-lizard, and the
chameleon. These are they which are unclean to you
among all that creep (v. 29-31).

The merest Sunday-school exegesis therefore
suffices to prove that when the " Mosaic writer "
in Genesis i. 24 speaks of " creeping things," he
means to include lizards among them.

This being so, it is agreed, on all hands, that
terrestrial lizards, and other reptiles allied to
lizards, occur in the Permian strata. It is
further agreed that the Triassic strata were
deposited after these. Moreover, it is well

V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 171

known that, even if certain footprints are to be
taken as -unquestionable evidence of the exist-
ence of birds, they are not known to occur in
rocks earlier than the Trias, while indubitable
remains of birds are to be met with only much
later. Hence it follows that natural science does
not " affirm ^' the statement that birds were made
on the fifth day, and " everything that creepeth
on the ground " on the sixth, on which Mr. Glad-
stone rests his order; for, as is shown by Leviticus,
the " Mosaic writer " includes lizards among his
" creeping things."

Perhaps I have given myself superfluous
trouble in the preceding argument, for I find
that Mr. Gladstone is willing to assume (he does
not say to admit) that the statement in the
text of Genesis as to reptiles cannot " in all
points be sustained " (p. 16). But my position is
that it cannot be sustained in any point, so
that, after all, it has perhaps been as well to go
over the evidence again. And then Mr. Glad-
stone proceeds as if nothing had happened to tell
us that —

There remain great unshaken facts to be weighed. First,
the fact that such a record should have been made at all.

As most peoples have their cosmogonies, tliis
" fact " does not strike me as having much value.

Secondly, the fact that, instead of dwelling in generali-
ties, it has placed itself under the severe conditions of a
clironological order reaching from the first 7iisu8 of chaotic

1Y2 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS v

matter to the consummated production of a fair and goodly,
a furnished and a peopled world.

This " fact " can be regarded as of value only
by ignoring the fact demonstrated in my previous
paper, that natural science does not confirm the
order asserted so far as living things are con-
cerned; and by upsetting a fact to be brought
to light presently, to wit, that, in regard to the
rest of the pentateuchal cosmogony, prudent
science has very little to say one way or the
other.

Thirdly, the fact that its cosmogony seems, in the light
of the nineteenth century, to draw more and more of coun-
tenance from the best natural philosophy.

I have already questioned the accuracy of this
statement, and I do not observe that mere repe-
tition adds to its value.

And, fourthly, that it has described the successive origins
of the five great categories of present life with which human
experience was and is conversant, in that order which
geological authority confirms.

By comparison with a sentence on page 14,
in which a hvefold order is substituted for the
" fourfold order," on which the " plea for reve-
lation " was originally founded, it appears that
these five categories are " plants, fishes, birds,
mammals, and man," which, Mr. Gladstone
affirms, " are given to us in Genesis in the order
of succession in which they are also given by the
latest geological authorities.'

7^

V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 1^3

I must venture to demur to this statement.
I showed, in my previous paper, that there is no
reason to doubt that the term " great sea mon-
ster " (used in Gen. i. 21) includes the most con-
spicuous of great sea animals — namely, whales,
dolphins, porpoises, manatees, and dugongs; * and,
as these are indubitable mammals, it is impossible
to affirm that mammals come after birds, which
are said to have been created on the same day.
Moreover, I pointed out that as these Cetacea
and Sirenia are certainly modified land animals,
their existence implies the antecedent existence
of land mammals.

Furthermore, I have to remark that the term
" fishes," as used, teclmically, in zoology, by no
means covers all the moving creatures that
have life, which are bidden to " fdl the waters
in the seas " (Gen. i. 20-22.) Marine mollusks
and Crustacea, echinoderms, corals, and forami-
nifera are not technically fishes. But they are
abundant in the pala?ozoic rocks, ages upon
ages older than those in which the first evi-
dences of true fishes appear. And if, in a
geological book, Mr. Gladstone finds the quite
true statement that plants appeared before fishes,
it is only by a complete misunderstanding that
he can be led to imagine it serves his purpose.

* Both dolphins and dugongs occur in the Red Sea, por-
poises and dolphins in the Mediterranean ; so that the "Mo-
saic writer " may well have been acquainted with them.

174 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS V

As a matter of fact, at the present moment,
it is a question whether, on the bare evidence
afforded by fossils, the marine creeping thing
or the marine plant has the seniority. No
cautious palaeontologist would express a decided
opinion on the matter. But, if we are to read
the pentateuchal statement as a scientific docu-
ment (and, in spite of all protests to the contrary,
those who bring it into comparison with science
do seek to make a scientific document of it),
then, as it is quite clear that only terrestrial plants
of high organisation are spoken of in verses 11
and 12, no palaeontologist would hesitate to say
that, at present, the records of sea animal life
are vastly older than those of any land plant
describable as '^ grass, herb yielding seed or fruit-
tree."

Thus, although, in Mr. Gladstone's " Defence,"
the " old order passeth into new," his case is
not improved. The fivefold order is no more
" affirmed in our time by natural science " to be
" a demonstrated conclusion and established fact "
than the fourfold order was. Natural science ap-
pears to me to decline to have anything to do with
either; they are as wrong in detail as they are mis-
taken in principle.

There is another change of position, the value
of which is not so apparent to me, as it may
well seem to be to those who are unfamiliar
with the subject under discussion. Mr. Gladstone

V IR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 175

discards his three groups of "water-population,
"air-population," and "land-population," and
substitutes for them (1) fishes, (2) birds, (3) mam-
mals, (4) man. Moreover, it is assumed, m a
note, that " the higher or ordinary mammals "
alone were known to the " Mosaic writer " (p. 6).
No doubt it looks, at first, as if something were
gained by this alteration; for, as I have just
pointed out, the word " fishes " can be used in
two senses, one of which has a deceptive appear-
ance of adjustability to the " Mosaic " account.
Then the inconvenient reptiles are banished out
of sight; and, finally, the question of the exact
meaning of " higher " and " ordinary " in the
case of mammals opens up the prospect of a
hopeful logomachy. But what is the good of it
all in the face of Leviticus on the one hand and
of palaeontology on the other?

As, in my apprehension, there is not a shadow
of justification for the suggestion that when the
pentateuchal writer says " fowl " he excludes bats
(which, as we shall see directly, are expressly in-
cluded under " fowl " in Leviticus), and as I have
already shown that he demonstrably includes rep-
tiles, as well as mammals, among the creeping
things of the land, I may be permitted to spare
my readers further discussion of the " fivefold
order." On the whole, it is seen to be rather
more inconsistent with Genesis than its fourfold
predecessor.

176 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS V

But I have j^et a fresh order to face. Mr. Glad-
stone (p. 11) understands " the main statements of
Genesis in successive order of time, but with-
out any measurement of its divisions, to be as
follows: —

1. A period of land, anterior to all life (v. 9, 10).

2. A period of vegetable life, anterior to animal life (v
11, 12).

3. A period of animal life, in the order of fishes (v. 20).

4. Another stage of animal life, in the order of birds.

5. Another in the order of beasts (v. 24, 25).

6. Last of all, man (v. 26, 27).

Mr. Gladstone then tries to find the proof of
the occurrence of a similar succession in sundry
excellent works on geology.

I am really grieved to be obliged to say that
this third (or is it fourth?) modification of the
foundation of the " plea for revelation " originally
set forth, satisfies me as little as any of its pred-
ecessors.

For, in the first place, I cannot accept the
assertion that this order is to be found in Genesis.
With respect to No. 5, for example, I hold, as I
have already said, that " great sea monsters "
includes the Cetacea, in which case mammals
(which is what, I suppose, Mr. Gladstone means
by " beasts ") come in under head No. 3, and not
under No. 5. Again, " fowl " are said in Genesis
to be created on the same day as fishes; therefore
I cannot accept an order which makes birds sue-

V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 177

ceed fishes. Once more, as it is quite certain
that the term " fowl " includes the bats, — for in
Leviticus xi. 13-19 we read, " And these shall ye
have in abomination among the fowls . . . the
heron after its kind, and the hoopoe, and the
bat," — it is obvious that bats are also said to have
been created at stage No. 3. And as bats are
mammals, and their existence obviously presup-
poses that of terrestrial " beasts," it is quite clear
that the latter could not have first appeared as
No. 5. I need not repeat my reasons for doubting
whether man came " last of all."

As the latter half of Mr. Gladstone's sixfold
order thus shows itself to be wholly unauthorised
by, and inconsistent with, the plain language of
the Pentateuch, I might decline to discuss the ad-
missibility of its former half.

But I will add one or two remarks on this
point also. Does Mr. Gladstone mean to say that
in any of the works he has cited, or indeed any-
where else, he can find scientific warranty for the
assertion that there was a period of land — by
which I suppose he means dry land (for submerged
land must needs be as old as the separate exist-
ence of the sea) — "anterior to all life?"

It may be so, or it may not be so; but where
is the evidence which would justify any one in
making a positive assertion on the subject? Wliat
competent paleontologist will affirm, at this pres-
ent moment, that he knows anything about the
101

178 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS v

period at which life originated, or will assert more
than the extreme probability that such origin was
a long way antecedent to any traces of life at pres-
ent known? What physical geologist will affirm
that he knows when dry land began to exist, or
will say more than that it was probably very much
earlier than any extant direct evidence of terres-
trial conditions indicates?

I think I know pretty well the answers which
the authorities quoted by Mr. Gladstone would give
to these questions; but I leave it to them to give
them if they think fit.

If I ventured to speculate on the matter at all,
I should say it is by no means certain that sea is
older than dry land, inasmuch as a solid terrestrial
surface may very well have existed before the
earth was cool enougli to allow of the existence of
fluid water. And, in this case, dry land may
have existed before the sea. As to the first ap-
pearance of life, the whole argument of analogy,
whatever it may be w^orth in such a case, is in
favour of the absence of living beings until long
after the hot water seas had constituted them-
selves; and of the subsequent appearance of
aquatic before terrestrial forms of life. But
whether these " protoplasts " would, if we could
examine them, be reckoned among the lowest mi-
croscopic algae, or fungi; or among those doubt-
ful organisms which lie in the debatable land be-
tween animals and plants, is, in my judgment, a

V Mil. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 179

question on which a prudent biologist will reserve
his opinion.

I think that I have now disposed of those parts
of Mr. Gladstone's defence in which I seem to
discover a design to rescue his solemn " plea for
revelation.'' But a great deal of the " Proem to
Genesis " remains which I would gladly pass over
in silence, were such a course consistent with the
respect due to so distinguished a champion of the
" reconcilers."
, I hope that my clients — the people of average
opinions — have by this time some confidence in
me; for when I tell them that, after all, Mr.
Gladstone is of opinion that the " Mosaic record '^
was meant to give moral, and not scientific, in-
struction to those for whom it was written, they
may be disposed to think that I must be mis-
leading them. But let them listen further to
what Mr. Gladstone says in a compendious but
not exactly correct statement respecting my
opinions: —

He holds the writer responsible for scientific precision :
I look for nothing of the kind, but assign to him a statement
general, which admits exceptions ; popular, which aims
mainly at producing moral impression ; summary, which
cannot but be open to more or less of criticism of detail.
lie thinks it is a lecture. I think it is a sermon (p. 5).

I note, incidentally, that Mr. Gladstone appears
to consider that the differentia between a lecture

180 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS v

and a sermon is, that the former, so far as it deals
with matters of fact, may be taken seriously, as
meaning exactly what it says, while a sermon may
not. I have quite enough on my hands without
taking up the cudgels for the clergy, who will
probably find Mr. Gladstone's definition unflat-
tering.

But I am diverging from my proper business,
which is to say that I have given no ground for
the ascription of these opinions; and that, as a
matter of fact, I do not hold them and never have
held them. It is Mr. Gladstone, and not I, who
will have it that the pentateuchal cosmogony is to
be taken as science.

My belief, on the contrary, is, and long has
been, that the pentateuchal story of the creation
is simply a myth. I suppose it to be an hypothe-
sis respecting the origin of the universe which
some ancient thinker found himself able to rec-
oncile with his knowledge, or what he thought
was knowledge, of the nature of things, and there-
fore assumed to be true. As such, I hold it to
be not merely an interesting, but a venerable,
monument of a stage in the mental progress of
mankind; and I find it difficult to suppose that
any one who is acquainted with the cosmogonies
of other nations — and especially with those of the
Egyptians and the Babylonians, with whom the
Israelites were in such frequent and intimate
communication — should consider it to possess

V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 181

either more, or less, scientific importance tlian may
be allotted to these.

Mr. Gladstone's definition of a sermon permits
me to suspect that he may not see much difference
between that form of discourse and what I call a
myth; and I hope it may be something more than
the slowness of apprehension, to which I have
confessed, which leads me to imagine that a state-
ment which is " general " but " admits excep-
tions," which is " popular " and " aims mainly at
producing moral impression," " summary " and
therefore open to " criticism of detail," amounts
to a myth, or perhaps less than a myth. Put
algebraically, it comes to this, x =^ a -\- h -\- c; al-
ways remembering that there is nothing to show
the exact value of either a, or h, or c. It is true that
a is commonly supposed to equal 10, but there
are exceptions, and these may reduce it to 8, or 3,
or 0; h also popularly means 10, but being chiefly
used by the algebraist as a " moral " value, you
cannot do much with it in the addition or subtrac-
tion of mathematical values; c also is quite " sum-
mary," and if you go into the details of which it
is made up, many of them may be wrong, and their
sum total equal to 0, or even to a minus quantity.

Mr. Gladstone appears to wish that I should
(1) enter upon a sort of essay competition with the
author of the pentateuchal cosmogony; (2) that I
should make a further statement about some ele-
mentary facts in the history of Indian and Greek

182 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS v

philosophy; and (3) that I should show cause for
my hesitation in accepting the assertion that Gene-
sis is supported, at any rate to the extent of the
first two verses, by the nebular hypothesis.

A certain sense of humour prevents me from
accepting the first invitation. I would as soon
attempt to put Hamlet^s soliloquy into a more
scientific shape. But if I supjDosed the " Mosaic
writer " to be inspired, as Mr. Gladstone does, it
would not be consistent with my notions of respect
for the Supreme Being to imagine Him unable to
frame a form of words which should accurately, or,
at least, not inaccurately, express His own mean-
ing. It is sometimes said that, had the statements
contained in the first chapter of Genesis been sci-
entifically true, they would have been unintelli-
gible to ignorant people; but how is the matter
mended if, being scientifically untrue, they must
needs be rejected by instructed people?

With respect to the second suggestion, it would
be presumptuous in me to pretend to instruct Mr.
Gladstone in matters which lie as much within the
province of Literature and History as in that of
Science; but if any one desirous of further knowl-
edge will be so good as to turn to that most
excellent and by no means recondite source of in-
formation, the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," he
will find, under the letter E, the word " Evolu-
tion," and a long article on that subject. Now, I
do not recommend him to read the first half of the

V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 183

article; but the second half, by my friend Mr.
Sully, is really very good. He will there find
it said that in some of the philosophies of ancient
India, the idea of evolution is clearly expressed:
" Brahma is conceived as the eternal self-existent
being, which, on its material side, unfolds itself
to the world by gradually condensing itself to
material objects through the gradations of ether,
fire, water, earth, and other elements." And
again: " In the later system of emanation of
Sankh3^a there is a more marked approach to a
materialistic doctrine of evolution." What little
knowledge I have of the matter — chiefly derived
from that ver}^ instructive book, " Die Eeligion
des Buddha," by C. F. Koeppen, supplemented by
Hardy's interesting works — leads me to think that
Mr. Sully might have spoken much more strongly
as to the evolutionary character of Indian philos-
ophy, and especially of that of the Buddhists.
But the question is too large to be dealt with in-
cidentally.

And with respect to early Greek philosophy,*
the seeker after additional enlightenment need go
no further than the same excellent storehouse of
information: —

The early Ionian physicists, includinc^ Thales, Atiaximan-
der, and Anaximenes, seek to explain the world as generated

* I said nothing abont "the frreaternnmberof schools of
Greek philosophy." as IMr. Gladstone implies that I did. but
expressly spoke of the " founders of Greek philosophy."

IStt MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS v

out of a primordial matter which is at the same time the
universal support of things. This substance is endowed with
a generative or transmutative force by virtue of which it
passes into a succession of forms. They thus resemble mod-
ern evolutionists, since they regard the world, with its infi-
nite variety of forms, as issuing from a simple mode of matter.

Further oii;, Mr. Sully remarks that "Heraclitus
deserves a prominent place in the history of the
idea of evolution/' and he states, with perfect
justice, that Herachtus has foreshadowed some of
the special peculiarities of Mr. Darwin's views. It
is indeed a very strange circumstance that the
philosophy of the great Ephesian more than adum-
brates the two doctrines which have played leading
parts, the one in the development of Christian
dogma, the other in that of natural science. The
former is the conception of the word (Aoyos)
which took its Jewish shape in Alexandria, and
its Christian form * in that Gospel which is usu-
ally referred to an Ephesian source of some five
centuries later date; and the latter is that of the
struggle for existence. The saying that '' strife is
father and king of all " (7roAe//os ttolvtcdv /jlo/ irarrip

coTt, irdvTinv Se /SafnXev^), ascribed to Heraclitus,
would be a not inappropriate motto for the " Ori-
gin of Species."

I have referred only to Mr. Sully's article be-
cause his authority is quite sufficient for my pur-
pose. But the consultation of any of the more
elaborate histories of Greek philosophy, such as
* See Ileinze, Die Lehre vom Logos, p. 9 et seq.

V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 185

the great work of Zeller, for example, will only
bring out the same fact into still more striking
prominence. I have professed no " minute ac-
quaintance " with either Indian or Greek philos-
ophy, but I have taken a great deal of pains to
secure that such knowledge as I do possess shall
be accurate and trustworthy.

In the third place, Mr. Gladstone appears to
wish that I should discuss with him the question
whether tlie nebular hypothesis is, or is not, con-
firmatory of the pentateuchal account of the ori-
gin of things. Mr. Gladstone appears to be pre-
pared to enter upon this campaign with a light
heart. I confess I am not, and my reason for this
backwardness will doubtless surprise Mr. Glad-
stone. It is that, rather more than a quarter of a
century ago (namely, in February, 1859), when it
was my duty, as President of the Geological So-
ciety, to deliver the Anniversary Address,* I chose
a toj)ic which involved a very careful study of
the remarkable cosmogonical speculation, origi-
nally promulgated by Immanuel Kant and, sub-
sequently, by Laplace, w^hich is now known as the
nebular hypothesis. With the help of such little
acquaintance with the principles of physics and
astronomy as I had gained, I endeavoured to ob-
tain a clear understanding of this speculation in
all its bearings. I am not sure that I succeeded;
but of this I am certain, that the problems in-

* Reprinted in Lay Sermons^ Addresses^ and ReviewSy 1870.

186 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS v

volved are very difficult, even for those who pos-
sess the intellectual discipline requisite for dealing
with them. And it was this conviction that led me
to express my desire to leave the discussion of the
question of the asserted harmony between Genesis
and the nebular hypothesis to experts in the appro-
priate branches of knowledge. And I think my
course was a wise one; but as Mr. Gladstone
evidently does not understand how there can be
any hesitation on my part, unless it arises from a
conviction that he is in the right, I may go so far
as to set out my difficulties.

They are of two kinds — exegetical and scien-
tific. It appears to me that it is vain to discuss a
supposed coincidence between Genesis and science
unless we have first settled, on the one hand, what
Genesis says, and, on the other hand, what science
says.

In the first place, I cannot find any consensus
among Biblical scholars as to the meaning of the
words, " In the beginning God created the heaven
and the earth." Some say that the Hebrew word
hara, which is translated " create," means " made
out of nothing." I venture to object to that ren-
dering, not on the ground of scholarship, but
of common sense. Omnipotence itself can surely
no more make something " out of " nothing than
it can make a triangular circle. What is intended
by " made out of nothing " appears to be " caused
to come into existence," with the implication that

V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 187

nothing of the same kind previously existed. It
is further usually assumed that " the heaven and
the earth " means the material substance of the
universe. Hence the " Mosaic writer " is taken
to imply that where nothing of a material nature
previously existed, this substance appeared. That
is perfectly conceivable, and therefore no one can
deny that it may have happened. But there are
other very authoritative critics who say that the
ancient Israelite * who wrote the passage was not
likely to have been capable of such abstract
thinking; and that, as a matter of philology, hara
is commonly used to signify the " fashioning," or
" forming," of that which already exists. Now it
appears to me that the scientific investigator is
wholly incompetent to say anything at all about
the first origin of the material universe. The
whole power of his organon vanishes when he
has to step beyond the chain of natural causes
and effects. No form of the nebular hypothesis,
that I know of, is necessarily connected with any
view of the origination of the nebular substance.
Kant's form of it expressly supposes that the
nebular material from which one stellar system
starts may be nothing but the disintegrated sub-
stance of a stellar and planetary system which has

* " Ancient," doubtless, but his antiquity must not be
exaggerated. For example, there is no proof that the
" Mosaic " cosmogony was known to the Israelites of Solo-
mon's time.

188 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS V

just come to an end. Therefore, so far as I can
see, one who believes that matter has existed from
all eternity has just as much right to hold the
nebular hypothesis as one who believes that matter
came into existence at a specified epoch. In other
words, the nebular hypothesis and the creation
hypothesis, up to this point, neither confirm nor
oppose one another.

Next, we read in the revisers' version, in which
I suppose the ultimate results of critical scholar-
ship to be embodied: " And the earth was waste
[' without form,' in the Authorised Version] and
void." Most people seem to think that this
phraseology intends to imply that the matter out
of which the world was to be formed was a veri-
table " chaos," devoid of law and order. If
this interpretation is correct, the nebular hypoth-
esis can have nothing to say to it. The scien-
tific thinker cannot admit the absence of law and
order, anywhere or anywhen, in nature. Some-
times law and order are patent and visible to our
limited vision; sometimes they are hidden. But
every particle of the matter of the most fantastic-
looking nebula in the heavens is a realm of law
and order in itself; and, that it is so, is the essen-
tial condition of the possibility of solar and plane-
tary evolution from the apparent chaos.*

* When .Jeremiah (iv. 28) says. " I beheld the earth, and
lo, it was waste and void." he certainly does not mean to
imply that the form of the earth was less ^definite, or its
substance less solid, than before.

V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 189

" Waste " is too vague a term to be worth con-
sideration. " Without form/' intelligible enough
as a metaphor, if taken literally is absurd; for a
material thing existing in space must have a super-
ficies, and if it has a superficies it has a form.
The wildest streaks of marestail clouds in the sky,
or the most irregular heavenly nebulae, have
surely just as much form as a geometrical tetra-
hedron; and as for " void," how can that be void
which is full of matter? As poetry, these lines
are vivid and admirable; as a scientific statement,
which they must be taken to be if any one is
justified in comparing them with another scien-
tific statement, they fail to convey any intelligible
conception to my mind.

The account proceeds: " And darkness was
upon the face of the deep." So be it; but where,
then, is the likeness to the celestial nebulae, of the
existence of which we should know nothing unless
they shone with a light of their own? "And the
spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
I have met with no form of the nebular hypothesis
which involves anything analogous to this process.

I have said enough to explain some of the dif-
ficulties which arise in my mind, when I try to
ascertain whether there is any foundation for the
contention that the statements contained in the
first two verses of Genesis are supported by the
nebular hypothesis. The result does not appear
to me to be exactly favourable to that contention.

190 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS V

The nebular hypothesis assumes the existence of
matter, having definite properties, as its founda-
tion. Whether sueh matter was created a few
thousand years ago, or whether it has existed
through an eternal series of metamorphoses of
which our present universe is only the last stage,
are alternatives, neither of which is scientifically
untenable, and neither scientifically demonstrable.
But science knows nothing of any stage in which
the universe could be said, in other than a meta-
phorical and popular sense, to be formless or
empty; or in any respect less the seat of law and
order than it is now. One might as well talk of a
fresh-laid hen's egg being "without form and void,"
because the chick therein is potential and not
actual, as apply such terms to the nebulous mass
which contains a potential solar system.

Until some further enlightenment comes to
me, then, I confess myself wholly unable to un-
derstand the way in which the nebular hypothesis
is to be converted into an ally of the " Mosaic
writer." *

* In looking through the delightful volume recently
published by the Asti-onomer-Royal for Ireland, a day or
two ago, I find the following remarks on the nebular hy-
pothesis, which I should have been glad to quote in my text
if I had known them sooner :

" Nor can it be ever more than a speculation ; it cannot be
established by observation, nor can it be proved by calculation.
It is merely a conjecture, more or less plausible, but perhaps,
in some degree, necessarily true, if our present laws of heat,
as we understand them, admit of the extreme application
here required, and if the present order of things has reigned

V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 191

But Mr. Gladstone informs ns that Professor
Dana and. Professor Guj'ot are prepared to prove
that the "!first or cosmogonical portion of the
Proem not only accords with, but teaches, the
nebular hypothesis." There is no one to whose
authority on geological questions I am more
readily disposed to bow than that of my eminent
friend Professor Dana. But I am familiar with
what he has previously said on this topic in his
well-known and standard work, into which,
strangely enough, it does not seem to have oc-
curred to Mr. Gladstone to look before he set out
upon his present undertaking; and unless Pro-
fessor Dana's latest contribution (which I have
not yet met with) takes up altogether new ground,
I am afraid I shall not be able to extricate myself,
by its help, from my present difficulties.

It is a very long time since I began to think
about the relations between modern scientifically
ascertained truths and the cosmogenical specula-
tions of the writer of Genesis; and, as I think that
Mr. Gladstone might have been able to put his
case with a good deal more force, if he had thought
it worth while to consult the last chapter of
Professor Dana's admirable " Manual of Geology,"

for sufficient time without the intervention of any influence
at present known to ns" {The Story of the Heavens, p. 506).
Would any prudent advocate base a plea, either for or
af^ainst revelation, upon the coincidence, or want of coinci-
dence, of the declarations of the latter with the requirements
of an hypothesis thus guardedly dealt with by an astronomi-
cal expert %

192 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS v

so I think he micfht have been made aware that
he was undertaking an enterprise of which he had
not counted the cost, if he had chanced upon a
discussion of the subject which I published in
1877.*

Finally, I should like to draw the attention of
those who take interest in these topics to the
weighty words of one of the most learned and
moderate of Biblical critics: —

A propos de cette premiere page de la Bible, on a coutume
de nos jours de disserter, a perte de vue, sur I'accord du re-
cit mosaique avec les sciences naturelles; etcomraecelles-ci,
tout eloignees qu'elles sont encore de la perfection absolue,
ont rendu populaires et en quelque sorte irrefragables un
certain nombre de faits generaux ou de theses fondamentales
de la cosraologie et de la geologie, c'est le texte sacre qu'on
s'evertue a torturer pour le faire concorder avec ces don-
nees.f

In my paper on the " Interpreters of Nature
and the Interpreters of Genesis," while freely
availing myself of the rights of a scientific critic, I
endeavoured to keep the expression of my views
well within those bounds of courtesy which are
set by self-respect and consideration for others. I
am therefore glad to be favoured with Mr. Glad-
stone's acknowledgment of the success of my
efforts. I only wish that I could accept all the
products of Mr. Gladstone's gracious appreciation,
but there is one about which, as a matter of

* Lectures on Evolution delivered in New York (Amer-
ican Addresses).

f Reuss, L Histoire Sainte et la Loi, vol. i. p. 275.

V ME. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 193

honesty, I hesitate. In fact, if I had expressed my
meaning better than I seem to have done, I doubt
if this particular proffer of Mr. Gladstone's thanks
would have been made.

To my mind, whatever doctrine professes to be
the result of the application of the accepted rules
of inductive and deductive logic to its subject-
matter; and which accepts, within the limits
which it sets to itself, the supremacy of reason, is
Science. AVhether the subject-matter consists of
realities or unrealities, truths or falsehoods, is
quite another question. I conceive that ordinary
geometry is science, by reason of its method, and I
also believe that its axioms, definitions, and con-
clusions are all true. However, there is a geometry
of four dimensions, wdiich I also believe to be sci-
ence, because its method professes to be strictly
scientific. It is true that I cannot conceive four
dimensions in space, and therefore, for me, the
whole affair is unreal. But I have known men of
great intellectual powers who seemed to have no
difficulty either in conceiving them, or, at any rate,
in imagining how they could conceive them; and,
therefore, four-dimensioned geometry comes un-
der my notion of science. So I think astrology
is a science, in so far as it professes to reason
logically from principles established by just induc-
tive methods. To prevent misunderstanding, per-
haps I had better add that I do not believe one

whit in astrology; but no more do I believe in
102

194 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS v

Ptolemaic astronomy, or in the catastrophic
geology of my youth, although these, in their day,
claimed — and, to my mind, rightly claimed — the
name of science. If nothing is to be called science
but that which is exactly true from beginning to
end, I am afraid there is very little science in the
world outside mathematics. Among the ^^hysical
sciences, I do not know that any could claim more
than that it is true within certain limits, so narrow
that, for the present at any rate, they may be
neglected. If such is the case, I do not see where
the line is to be drawn between exactly true,
partially true, and mainly untrue forms of science.
And what I have said about the current theology
at the end of my paper [supra pp. 160-1G3]
leaves, I think, no doubt as to the category in
which I rank it. For all that, I think it would be
not only unjust, but almost impertinent, to refuse
the name of science to the " Summa " of St.
Thomas or to the " Institutes " of Calvin.

In conclusion, I confess that my supposed " un-
jaded appetite " for the sort of controversy in
which it needed not Mr. Gladstone's express dec-
laration to tell us he is far better practised than I
am (though probably, without another express
declaration, no one would have suspected that his
controversial fires are burning low) is already
satiated.

In " Elysium " we conduct scientific discus-

V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 195

sions in a different medium, and we are liable to
threatenings of asphyxia in that " atmosphere of
contention " in which Mr. Gladstone has been able
to live, alert and vigorous beyond the common race
of men, as if it were purest mountain air. I trust
that he may long continue to seek truth, under
the difficult conditions he has chosen for the
search, with unabated energy — I had almost said
fire —

May age not wither him, nor custom stale
His infinite variety.

But Elysium suits my less robust constitution
better, and I beg leave to retire thither, not sorry
for my experience of the other region — no one
should regret experience — but determined not to
repeat it, at any rate in reference to the " plea for
revelation."

Note on the Proper Sense of the " Mosaic " Narrative

OF THE Creation.

It has been objected to my argument from Leviticus
{supra p. 170) that the Hebrew words translated by " creep-
ing things " in Genesis i. 24 and Leviticus xi. 29, are differ-
ent : namely, " reh-mes " in the former, " sheh-retz " in the
latter. The obvious reply to this objection is that the ques-
tion is not one of words but of the meaning of words. To
borrow an illustration from our own language, if " crawling
things" had been used by the translators in Genesis and
" creeping things " in Leviticus, it would not have been
necessarily implied that they intended to denote different
groups of animals. "Sheh-retz" is employed in a wider
sense tnan " reh-mes." There are " sheh-retz " of the

196 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS v

waters of the earth, of the air, and of the land. Leviticus
speaks of land reptiles, among other animals, as " sheh-
retz"; Genesis speaks of all creeping land animals, among
which land reptiles are necessarily included, as "reh-mes."
Our translators, therefore, have given the true sense when
they render both "sheh-retz" and "reh-mes'' by "creep-
ing things."

Having taken a good deal of trouble to show what Gene-
sis i.-ii. 4 does not mean, in the preceding pages, perhaps it
may be well that I should briefly give my opinion as to
what it does mean. I conceive that the unknown author of
this part of the Hexateuchal compilation believed, and
meant his readers to believe, that his words, as they under-
stood them — that is to say, in their ordinary natural sense —
conveyed the " actual historical truth." When he says that
such and such things happened, I believe him to mean that
they actually occurred and not that he imagined or dreamed
them ; when he says " day," I believe he uses the word in
the popular sense; when he says "made" or "created," I
believe he means that they came into being by a process
analogous to that which the people whom he addressed
called " making " or " creating " ; and I think that, unless
we forget our present knowledge of nature, and putting
ourselves back into the position of a Phoenician or a Chal-
dean philosopher, start from his conception of the world,
we shall fail to grasp the meaning of the Hebrew writer.
"We must conceive the earth to be an immovable, more or
less flattened, body, with the vault of heaven above, the
watery abyss below and around. We must imagine sun,
moon, and stars to be " set " in a " firmament " with, or in,
which they move ; and above which is yet another watery
mass. We must consider " light " and " darkness " to be
things, the alternation of which constitutes day and night
independently of the existence of sun, moon, and stars.
We must further suppose that, as in the case of the story
of the deluge, the Hebrew writer was acquainted with a

V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS I97

Gentile (probably Chaldjean or Accadian) account of the
origin of things, in which he substantially believed, but
which he stripped of all its idolatrous associations by sub-
stituting " Elohim " for Ea, Anu, Bel, and the like.

From this point of view the first verse strikes the key-
note of the whole. In the beginning ** Elohim * created
the heaven and the earth." Heaven and earth were not
primitive existences from which the gods proceeded, as the
Gentiles taught ; on the contrary, the " Powers " preceded
and created heaven and earth. Whether by " creation " is
meant " causing to be where nothing was before " or " shap-
ing of something which pre-existed," seems to me to be an
insoluble question.

As I have pointed out, the second verse has an interest-
ing parallel in Jeremiah iv. 23 : "I beheld the earth, and,
lo, it was waste and void ; and the heavens, and they had
no light." I conceive that there is no more allusion to
chaos in the one than in the other. The earth-disk lay in
its watery envelope, like the yolk of an egg in the glaire^
and the spirit, or breath, of Elohim stirred the mass. Light
was created as a thing by itself ; and its antithesis " dark-
ness " as another thing. It was supposed to be the nature
of these two to alternate, and a pair of alternations consti-
tuted a " day " in the sense of an unit of time.

The next step was, necessarily, the formation of that
" firmament," or dome over the earth-disk, which was sup-
posed to support the celestial waters ; and in which sun,
moon, and stars were conceived to be set, as in a sort of
orrery. The earth was still surrounded and covered by the
lower waters, but the upper were separated from it by the
" firmament," beneath which what we call the air lay. A
second alternation of darkness and light marks the lapse
of time.

* For the sense of the term "Elohim," see the essav en-
titled "The Evolution of Theology" at the end of' this
volume.

198 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS v

After this, the waters which covered the earth-disk,
under the firmament, were drawn away into certain regions,
which became seas, while the part laid bare became dry
land. In accordance with the notion, universally accepted
in antiquity, that moist earth possesses the potentiality of
giving rise to living beings, the land, at the command of
Elohim, *' put forth " all sorts of plants. They are made
to appear thus early, not, I apprehend, from any notion
that plants are lower in the scale of being than animals
(which would seem to be inconsistent with the prevalence
of tree worship among ancient people), but rather because
animals obviously depend on plants ; and because, without
crops and harvests, there seemed to be no particular need of
heavenly signs for the seasons.

These were provided by the fourth day's work. Light
existed already ; but now vehicles for the distribution of
light, in a special manner and with varying degrees of in-
tensity, were provided. I conceive that the previous alter-
nations of light and darkness were supposed to go on ; but
that the " light " was strengthened during the daytime by
the sun, which, as a source of heat as well as of light, glided
up the firmament from the east, and slid down in the west,
each day. Very probably each day's sun was supposed to
be a new one. And as the light of the day was strengthened
by the sun, so the darkness of the night was weakened by
the moon, which regularly waxed and waned every month.
The stars are, as it were, thrown in. And nothing can
more sharply mark the doctrinal purpose of the author,
than the manner in which he deals with the heavenly
bodies, which the Gentiles identified so closely with their
gods, as if they were mere accessories to the almanac.

Animals come next in order of creation, and the general
notion of the writer seems to be that they were produced by
the medium in which they live ; that is to say, the aquatic
animals by the waters, and the terrestrial animals by the
land. But there was a difficulty about flying things, such

V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 199

as bats, birds, and insects. The cosmogonist seems to have
had no conception of "air" as an elemental body. His
" elements " are earth and water, and he ignores air as much
as he does fire. Birds " fly above the earth in the open
firmament " or " on the face of the expanse " of heaven.
They are not said to fly through the air. The choice of a
generative medium for flying things, therefore, seemed to
lie between water and earth; and, if we take into account
the conspicuousness of the great flocks of water-birds and
the swarms of winged insects, which appear to arise from
water, I think the preference of water becomes intelligible.
However, I do not put this forward as more than a prob-
able hypothesis. As to the creation of aquatic animals on
the fifth, that of land animals on the sixth day, and that of
man last of all, I presume the order was determined by the
fact that man could hardly receive dominion over the living
world before it existed ; and that the " cattle " were not
wanted until he was about to make his appearance. The
other terrestrial animals would naturally be associated with
the cattle.

The absurdity of imagining that any conception, anal-
ogous to that of a zoological classification, was in the mind
of the writer will be apparent, when we consider that the
fifth day's work must include the zoologist's Cetacea, Si-
renia, and seals,* all of which are Mammalia ; all birds,
turtles, sea-snakes and, presumably the fresh water Reptilia
and Amphibia ; with the great majority of Invertebrata.

The creation of man is announced as a separate act, re-
sulting from a particular resolution of Elohim to " make
man in our image, after our likeness." To learn what this
remarkable phrase means we must turn to the fifth chapter
of Genesis, the work of the same writer. " In the day that
Elohim created man, in the likeness of Elohim made he
him ; male and female created he them ; and blessed them

* Perhaps even hippopotamuses and otters I

200 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS v

and called their name Adam in the day when they were
created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years
and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image ;
and called his name Seth." I find it impossible to read
this passage without being convinced that, when the writer
says Adam was made in the likeness of Elohim, he means
the same sort of likeness as when he says that Seth was
begotten in the likeness of Adam. Whence it follows that
his conception of Elohim was completely anthropomorphic.

In all this narrative I can discover nothing which dif-
ferentiates it, in principle, from other ancient cosmogonies,
except the rejection of all gods, save the vague, yet anthro-
pomorphic, Elohim, and the assigning to them anteriority
and superiority to the world. It is as utterly irreconcilable
with the assured truths of modern science, as it is with the
account of the origin of man, plants, and animals given by
the writer of the second chief constituent of the Hexateuch
in the second chapter of Genesis. This extraordinary story
starts with the assumption of the existence of a rainless
earth, devoid of plants and herbs of the field. The creation
of living beings begins with that of a solitary man ; the
next thing that happens is the laying out of the Garden of
Eden, and the causing the growth from its soil of every
tree "that is pleasant to the sight and good for food";
the third act is the formation out of the ground of " every
beast of the field, and every fowl of the air " ; the fourth
and last, the manufacture of the first woman from a rib, ex-
tracted from Adam, while in a state of anaesthesia.

Yet there are people who not only profess to take this
monstrous legend seriously, but who declare it to be recon-
cilable with the Elohistic account of the creation !

VI

THE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND
THE LIGHT OF SCIENCE

[1890]

Theee are three ways of regarding any account
of past occurrences, whether delivered to us orally
or recorded in writing.

The narrative may be exactly true. That is to
say, the words, taken in their natural sense, and
interpreted according to the rules of grammar,
may convey to the mind of the hearer, or of the
reader, an idea precisely correspondent with one
which would have remained in the mind of a wit-
ness. For example, the statement that King
Charles the First was beheaded at Whitehall on
the oOtli day of January, 1649, is as exactly true as
any proposition in mathematics or physics; no one
doubts that any person of sound faculties, prop-
erly placed, who was present at Whitehall through-
out that day, and who used his eyes, would have

201

202 LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE vi

seen the King's head cut off; and that there would
have remained in his mind an idea of that occur-
rence which he would have put into words of the
same value as those which we use to express it.

Or the narrative may be partly true and partly
false. Thus, some histories of the time tell us
what the King said, and what Bishop Juxon said;
or report royalist conspiracies to effect a rescue; or
detail the motives which induced the chiefs of the
Commonwealth to resolve that the King should
die. One account declares that the King knelt
at a high block, another that he lay down with
his neck on a mere plank. And there are contem-
porary pictorial representations of both these
modes of procedure. Such narratives, while vera-
cious as to the main event, may and do exhibit
various degrees of unconscious and conscious mis-
representation, suppression, and invention, till
they become hardly distinguishable from pure fic-
tions. Thus, they present a transition to narra-
tives of a third class, in which the fictitious ele-
ment predominates. Here, again, there are all
imaginable gradations, from such works as Defoe's
quasi-historical account of the Plague year, which
probably gives a truer conception of that dreadful
time than any authentic history, through the his-
torical novel, drama, and epic, to the purely
phantasmal creations of imaginative genius, such
as the old " Arabian Nights " or the modern
" Shaving of Shagpat." It is not strictly needful

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 203

for my present purpose that I should say anything
about narratives which are professedly fictitious.
Yet it may be well, perhaps, if I disclaim any in-
tention of derogating from their value, when I
insist upon the paramount necessity of recollecting
that there is no sort of relation between the ethical
or the esthetic, or even the scientific importance
of such works, and their worth as historical docu-
ments. Unquestionably, to the poetic artist, or
even to the student of psychology, " Hamlet " and
^' Macbeth " may be better instructors than all the
books of a wilderness of professors of aesthetics or
of moral philosophy. But, as evidence of occur-
rences in Denmark, or in Scotland, at the times
and places indicated, they are out of court; the
profoundest admiration for them, the deepest
gratitude for their influence, are consistent with
the knowledge that, historically speaking, they are
worthless fables, in which any foundation of real-
ity that may exist is submerged beneath the im-
aginative superstructure.

At present, however, I am not concerned to
dwell upon the importance of fictitious literature
and the immensity of the work which it has
effected in the education of the human race. I
propose to deal with the much more limited in-
quiry: Are there two other classes of consecutive
narratives (as distinct from statements of indi-
vidual facts), or only one? Is there any known
historical work which is throughout exactly true.

204 LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE vi

or is there not? In the case of the great majority
of histories the answer is not doubtful: they are all
only partially true. Even those venerable works
which bear the names of some of the greatest of
ancient Greek and Eoman writers^ and -which have
been accepted by generation after generation, down
to modern times, as stores of unquestionable truth,
have been compelled by scientific criticism, after
a long battle, to descend to the common level, and
to confess to a large admixture of error. I might
fairly take this for granted; but it may be well
that I should entrench myself behind the very
apposite words of a historical authority who is cer-
tainly not obnoxious to even a suspicion of scepti-
cal tendencies.

Time was — and that not very long ago — when all the
relations of ancient authors concerning the old world were
received with a ready belief ; and an unreasoning and un-
critical faith accepted with equal satisfaction the narrative
of the campaigns of Cfesar and of the doings of Romulus,
the account of Alexander's marches and of the conquests of
Semiramis. We can most of us remember when, in this
country, the whole story of regal Rome, and even the legend
of the Trojan settlement in Latium, were seriously placed
before boys as history, and discoursed of as unhesitatingly
and in as dogmatic a tone as the tale of the Catiline Con-
spiracy or the Conquest of Britain. . . .

But all this is now changed. The last century has seen
the birth and growth of a new science — the Science of His-
torical Criticism. . . . The whole world of profane history
has been revolutionised. . . .*

* Bampton Lectures (1859), on ** The Historical Evi-
dences of the Truth of the Scripture Records stated anew,

Ti LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 205

If these utterances were true when they fell
from the lips of a Bampton lecturer in 1859, with
how much greater force do they appeal to us now,
when the immense labours of the generation now
passing away constitute one vast illustration of the
power and fruitfulness of scientific methods of in-
vestigation in history, no less than in all other
departments of knowledge!

At the present time, I suppose, there is no one
who doubts that histories which appertain to any
other people than the Jews, and their spiritual
progeny in the first century, fall within the second
class of the three enumerated. Like Goethe's
Autobiography, they might all be entitled " Wahr-
heit und Dichtung ''— " Truth and Fiction/' The
proportion of the two constituents changes indefi-
nitely; and the quality of the fiction varies
through the whole gamut of unveracity. But
" Dichtung " is always there. For the most acute
and learned of historians cannot remedy the im-
perfections of his sources of information; nor can
the most impartial wholly escape the infiuence of
the " personal equation " generated by his tem-
perament and by his education. Therefore, from
the narratives of Herodotus to those set forth in
yesterday's " Times," all history is to be read sub-
ject to the warning that fiction has its share there-
in. The modern vast development of fugitive

with Special Reference to the Doubts and Discoveries of
Modern Times," by the Rev. G. Rawlinson, M. A., pp. 5-6.

20G LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE vi

literature cannot be the unmitigated evil tnat some
do vainly say it is, since it has put an end to the
popular delusion of less press-ridden times, that
what appears in print must be true. We should
rather hope that some beneficent influence may cre-
ate among the erudite a like healthy suspicion of
manuscripts and inscriptions, however ancient; for
a bulletin may lie, even though it be written in
cuneiform characters. Hotspur's starling, that
was to be taught to speak nothing but " Morti-
mer " into the ears of King Henry the Fourth,
might be a useful inmate of every historian's
librarv, if " Fiction " were substituted for the
name of Harry Percy's friend.

But it was the chief object of the lecturer to
the congregation gathered in St. Mary's, Oxford,
thirty-one years ago, to prove to them, by evidence
gathered with no little labour and marshalled with
much skill, that one group of historical works was
exempt from the general rule; and that the nar-
ratives contained in the canonical Scriptures are
free from any admixture of error. With justice
and candour, the lecturer impresses upon his hear-
ers that the special distinction of Christianity,
among the religions of the world, lies in its claim
to be historical; to be surely founded upon events
which have happened, exactly as they are declared
to have happened in its sacred books; which are
true, that is, in the sense that the statement about
the execution of Charles the First is true.

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 207

Further, it is affirmed that the New Testament
presupposes the historical exactness of the Old
Testament; that the points of contact of ^^ sacred "
and " profane ^^ history are innumerable; and that
the demonstration of the falsity of the Hebrew
records, especially in regard to those narratives
which are assumed to be true in the New Testa-
ment, would be fatal to Christian theology.

My utmost ingenuity does not enable me to
discover a flaw in the argument thus briefly
summarised. I am fairly at a loss to comprehend
how any one, for a moment, can doubt that
Christian theology must stand or fall with the
historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scrip-
tures. The very conception of the Messiah, or
Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish
history; the identification of Jesus of Nazareth
with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation
of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures which have
no evidential value unless they possess the
historical character assigned to them. If the
covenant with Abraham was not made; if circum-
cision and sacrifices were not ordained by Jahveh;
if the " ten words " were not written by God's
hand on the stone tables; if Abraham is more or
less a mythical hero, such as Theseus; the story
of the Deluge a fiction; that of the Fall a legend;
and that of the Creation the dream of a seer; if
all these definite and detailed narratives of
apparently real events have no more value as

208 LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE yi

history than have the stories of the regal period
of Eome — what is to he said about the Messianic
doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated?
And what about the authority of the writers of
the books of the New Testament, who, on this
theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions
for solid truths, but have built the very founda-
tions of Christian dogma upon legendary quick-
sands?

But these may be said to be merely the carp-
ings of that carnal reason which the profane call
common sense; I hasten, therefore, to bring up
the forces of unimpeachable ecclesiastical author-
ity in support of my position. In a sermon
preached last December, in St. Paul's Cathedral,*
Canon Liddon declares: —

For Christians it will be enough to know that our Lord
Jesus Christ set the seal of His infallible sanction on the
whole of the Old Testament. He found the Hebrew Canon
as we have it in our hands to-day, and He treated it as an
authority which was above discussion. Nay more : He went
out of His way — if we may reverently speak thus — to sanc-
tion not a few portions of it which modern scepticism
rejects. When he would warn his hearers against the dan-
gers of spiritual relapse, He bids them remember "Lot's
wife." f When he would point out how worldly engage-
ments may blind the soul to a coming judgment, He re-

* The Worth of the Old Testament, a Sermon preached
in St. Paul's Cathedral on the Second Sunday in Advent,
8th Dec, 1889, by H. P. Liddon, D. D., D. C. L., Canon and
Chancellor of St. Paul's. Second edition, revised and with
a new preface, 1890.

t St. Luke xvii. 32.

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 209

minds them how men ate, and drank, and married, and were
given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the
ark, and the Flood came and destroyed them all.* If He
would put His finger on a fact in past Jewish history which,
by its admitted reality, would warrant belief in His own
coming Resurrection, He points to Jonah's being three days
and three nights in the whale's belly (p. 23).f

The preacher proceeds to brush aside the com-
mon— I had almost said vulgar — apologetic pre-
text that Jesus was using ad hominem arguments,
or " accommodating '' his better knowledge to
popular ignorance, as well as to point out the in-
admissibility of the other alternative, that he
shared the popular ignorance. And to those who
hold the latter view sarcasm is dealt out with no
niggard hand.

But they will find it difficult to persuade mankind that,
if He could be mistaken on a matter of such strictly re-
ligious importance as the value of the sacred literature of
His countrymen. He can be safely trusted about anything
else. The trustworthiness of the Old Testament is, in fact,
inseparable from the trustworthiness of our Lord Jesus
Christ ; and if we believe that He is the true Light of the
world, we shall close our ears against suggestions impairing
the credit of those Jewish Scriptures which have received
the stamp of His Divine authority (p. 25).

Moreover, I learn from the public journals that
a brilliant and sharply-cut view of orthodoxy, of
like hue and pattern, was only the other day
exhibited in that great theological kaleidoscope,
the pulpit of St. Mary's, recalling the time so

* St. Luke xvii. 27. f St. Matt. xii. 40.

103

210 LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE ti

long passed by, when a Barapton lecturer, in the
same place, performed the unusual feat of leaving
the faith of old-fashioned Christians undisturbed.
Yet many things have happened in the inter-
vening thirty-one years. The Bampton lecturer
of 1859 had to grapple only with the infant
Hercules of historical criticism; and he is now a
full-grown athlete, bearing on his shoulders the
spoils of all the lions that have stood in his path.
Surely a martyr^s courage, as well as a martyr's
faith, is needed by any one who, at this time, is
prepared to stand by the following plea for the
veracity of the Pentateuch: —

Adam, according to the Hebrew original, was for 243
years contemporary with Methuselah, who conversed for a
hundred years with Shem. Shera was for fifty years con-
temporary with Jacob, who probably saw Jochebed, Moses's
mother. Thus Moses might by oral tradition have obtained
the history of Abraham, and even of the Deluge, at third
hand; and that of the Temptation and the Fall at fifth
hand. . . .

If it be granted — as it seems to be — that the great and
stirring events in a nation's life will, under ordinary cir-
cumstances, be remembered (apart from all written me-
morials) for the space of 150 years, being handed down
through five generations, it must be allowed (even on mere
human grounds) that the account which Moses gives of the
Temptation and the Fall is to be depended upon, if it
passed through no more than four hands between him and
Adam.*

If " the trustworthiness of our Lord Jesus

Christ " is to stand or fall with the belief in the

* Bampton Lectures, 1859, pp. 50-51.

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 211

sudden transmutation of the chemical components
of a woman's body into sodium chloride, or on the
" admitted reality " of Jonah's ejection, safe and
sound, on the shores of the Levant, after three
days' sea-journey in the stomach of a gigantic
marine animal, what possible pretext can there be
for even hinting a doubt as to the precise truth of
the longevity attributed to the Patriarchs? Who
that has swallowed the camel of Jonah's journey
will be guilty of the affectation of straining at
such a historical gnat — nay, midge — as the sup-
position that the mother of Moses was told the
story of the Flood by Jacob; who had it straight
from Shem; who was on friendly terms with
Methuselah; who knew Adam quite well?

Yet, by the strange irony of things, the
illustrious brother of the divine who propounded
this remarkable theory, has been the guide and
foremost worker of that band of investigators of
the records of Assyria and of Babylonia, who have
opened to our view, not merely a new chapter,
but a new volume of primeval history, relating to
the very people who have the most numerous
points of contact with the life of the ancient
Hebrews. I^ow, whatever imperfections may yet
obscure the full value of the Mesopotamian
records, everything that has been clearly ascer-
tained tends to the conclusion that the assignment
of no more than 4000 years to the period between
the time of the origin of mankind and that of

212 LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE vi

Augustus Caesar, is wholly inadmissible. There-
fore the Biblical chronology, which Canon
Eawlinson trusted so implicitly in 1859, is
relegated by all serious critics to the domain of
fable.

But if scientific method, operating in the re-
gion of history, of philology, of archaeology, in
the course of the last thirty or forty years, has
become thus formidable to the theological dog-
matist, what may not be said about scientific
method working in the province of physical
science? For, if it be true that the Canonical
Scriptures have innumerable points of contact
with civil history, it is no less true that they have
almost as many with natural history; and their
accuracy is put to the test as severely by the latter
as by the former. The origin of the present state
of the heavens and the earth is a problem which
lies strictly within the province of physical
science; so is that of the origin of man among
living things; so is that of the physical changes
which the earth has undergone since the origin of
man; so is that of the origin of the various races
and nations of men, with all their varieties of
language and physical conformation. Whether
the earth moves round the sun or the contrary;
whether the bodily and mental diseases of men
and animals are caused by evil spirits or not;
whether there is such an agency as witchcraft or
not — all these are purely scientific questions;

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 213

and to all of them the Canonical Scriptures
profess to give true answers. And though
nothing is more common than the assumption
that these books come into conflict only with the
speculative part of modern physical science, no
assumption can have less foundation.

The antagonism between natural knowledge
and the Pentateuch would be as great if the
speculations of our time had never been heard of.
It arises out of contradiction upon matters of
fact. The books of ecclesiastical authority de-
clare that certain events happened in a certain
fashion; the books of scientific authority say they
did not. As it seems that this unquestionable
truth has not yet penetrated among many of
those who speak and write on these subjects, it
may be useful to give a full illustration of it.
And for that purpose I propose to deal, at some
length, with the narrative of the Noachian Deluge
given in Genesis.

The Bampton lecturer in 1859, and the Canon
of St. Paul's in 1890, are in full agreement that
this history is true, in the sense in which I have
defined historical truth. The former is of opinion
that the account attributed to Berosus records a
tradition —

not drawn from the Hebrew record, much less the founda-
tion of that record ; yet coinciding with it in the most re-
markable way. The Babylonian version is tricked out with

214: LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE vi

a few extravagances, as the monstrous size of the vessel and
the translation of Xisuthros ; but otherwise it is the Hebrew
history down to its minutice (p. 64).

Moreover, correcting Niebuhr, the Bampton

lecturer points out that the narrative of Berosus

implies the universality of the Flood.

It is plain that the waters are represented as prevailing
above the tops of the loftiest mountains in Armenia — a
height which must have been seen to involve the submer-
sion of all the countries with which the Babylonians were
acquainted (p. 66).

I may remark, in passing, that many people
think the size of Noah's ark " monstrous," consid-
ering the probable state of the art of shipbuilding
only 1600 years after the origin of man; while
others are so unreasonable as to inquire why the
translation of Enoch is less an " extravagance "
than that of Xisuthros. It is more important,
however, to note that the universality of the
Deluge is recognized, not merely as a part of
the story, but as a necessary consequence of some
of its details. The latest exponent of Anglican
orthodoxy, as we have seen, insists upon the
accuracy of the Pentateuchal history of the Flood
in a still more forcible manner. It is cited as one
of those very narratives to which the authority
of the Founder of Christianity is pledged, and
upon the accuracy of which " the trustworthiness
of our Lord Jesus Christ " is staked, just as others
have staked it upon the truth of the histories of
demoniac possession in the Gospels.

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 215

Now, when those who put their trust in
scientific methods of ascertaining the truth in
the province of natural history find themselves
confronted and opposed, on their own ground,
by ecclesiastical pretensions to better knowledge,
it is, undoubtedly, most desirable for them to
make sure that their conclusions, whatever they
may be, are well founded. And, if they put aside
the unauthorized interference with their business
and relegate the Pentateuchal history to the re-
gion of pure fiction, they are bound to assure
themselves that they do so because the plainest
teachings of Nature (apart from all doubtful
speculations) are irreconcilable with the assertions
which they reject.

At the present time, it is difficult to persuade
serious scientific inquirers to occupy themselves,
in any way, with the Noachian Deluge. They
look at you with a smile and a shrug, and say
they have more important matters to attend to
than mere antiquarianism. But it was not so in
my youth. At that time, geologists and biologists
could hardly follow to the end any path of inquiry
without finding the way blocked by Noah and his
ark, or by the first chapter of Genesis; and ^ it
was a serious matter, in this country at any rate,
for a man to be suspected of doubting the literal
truth of the Diluvial or any other Pentateuchal
history. The fiftieth anniversary of the founda-
tion of the Geological Club (in 1824) was, if I

216 LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE vi

remember riglitly, the last occasion on which the
^ • late Sir Charles Lyell spoke to even so small a

public as the members of that body. Our veteran
leader lighted up once more; and, referring to
the difilculties which beset his early efforts to
create a rational science of geology, spoke, with
his wonted clearness and vigour, of the social
ostracism w^hich pursued him after the publication
of the " Principles of Geology," in 1830, on ac-
count of the obvious tendency of that noble work
to discredit the Pentateuchal accounts of the Crea-
tion and the Deluge. If my younger contempo-
raries find this hard to believe, I may refer them to
a grave book, " On the Doctrine of the Deluge,"
published eight years later, and dedicated by its
author to his father, the then Archbishop of
York. The first chapter refers to the treatment
of the " Mosaic Deluge," by Dr. Buckland and
Mr. Lyell, in the following terms:

Their respect for revealed religion has prevented them
from arraying themselves openly against the Scriptural ac-
count of it — much less do they deny its truth — but they are
in a great hurry to escape from the consideration of it, and
evidently concur in the opinion of Linnaeus, that no proofs
whatever of the deluge are to be discovered in the structure
of the earth (p. 1).

And after an attempt to reply to some of
LyelFs arguments, which it would be cruel to re-
produce, the writer continues: —

When, therefore, upon such slender grounds, it is de-
termined, in answer to those who insist upon its univer-

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 217

sality, that the Mosaic Deluge must be considered a preter-
natural event, far beyond the reach of philosophical
inquiry; not only as to the causes employed to produce it,
but as to the effects most likely to result from it; that de-
termination wears an aspect of scepticism, which, however
much soever it may be unintentional in the mind of the
writer, yet cannot but produce an evil impression on those
who are already predisposed to carp and cavil at the evi-
dences of Revelation (pp. 8-9).

The kindly and courteous ^vl•ite^ of these curi-
ous passages is evidently unwilling to make the
geologists the victims of general opprobrium by
pressing the obvious consequences of their teach-
ing home. One is therefore pained to think of
the feelings with which, if he lived so long as to
become acquainted with the " Dictionary of the
Bible," he must have perused the article " Noah/'
written by a dignitary of the Church for that
standard compendium and published in 1863.
For the doctrine of the universality of the Deluge
is therein altogether given up; and I permit my-
self to hope that a long criticism of the story
from the point of view of natural science, with
which, at the request of the learned theologian
who wrote it, I supplied him, may, in some degree,
have contributed towards this happy result.

Notwithstanding diligent search, I have been
unable to discover that the universality of the
Deluge has any defender left, at least among those
who have so far mastered the rudiments of
natural knowledge as to be able to appreciate the

218 LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE vi

weight of evidence against it. For example, when
I turned to the " Si^eaker's Bible/' published
under the sanction of high Anglican authority, I
found the following judicial and judicious deliver-
ance, the skilful wording of which may adorn,
but does not hide, the completeness of the sur-
render of the old teaching: —

Without pronouncing too hastily on any fair inferences
from the words of Scripture, we may reasonably say that
their most natural interpretation is, that the whole race of
man had become grievously corrupted since the faithful had
intermingled with the ungodly ; that the inhabited world
was consequently filled with violence, and that God had
decreed to destroy all mankind except one single family ;
that, therefore, all that portion of the earth, perhaps as yet
a very small portion, into which mankind had spread was
overwhelmed with water. The ark was ordained to save
one faithful family; and lest that family, on the subsidence
of the waters, should find the whole country round them a
desert, a pair of all the beasts of the land and of the fowls
of the air were preserved along with them, and along with
them went forth to replenish the now desolated continent.
The words of Scripture (confirmed as they are by universal
tradition) appear at least to mean as much as this. They
do not necessarily mean more.*

In the third edition of Kitto's " Cyclopaedia of
Biblical Literature " (1876), the article " Deluge,''
written by my friend, the present distinguished
head of the Geological Survey of Great Britain,
extinguishes the universality doctrine as thorough-
ly as might be expected from its authorship; and
since the writer of the article " Noah " refers his
* Commentary on Genesis, by the Bishop of Ely, p. 77.

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 219

readers to that entitled " Deluge," it is to be
supposed, notwithstanding his generally orthodox
tone, that he does not dissent from its conclusions.
Again, the writers in Herzog's " Real-Encyclo-
padie " (Bd. X. 1882) and in Eiehm's " Handwor-
terbuch " (188-1) — both works with a conservative
leaning — are on the same side; and Diestel,* in
his full discussion of the subject, remorselessly re-
jects the universality doctrine. Even that staunch
opponent of scientific rationalism — may I say ra-
tionality?— Zockler,f flinches from a distinct de-
fence of the thesis, any opposition to which, well
within my recollection, was howled down by the
orthodox as mere " infidelity." All that, in his
sore straits. Dr. Zockler is able to do, is to pro-
nounce a faint commendation upon a particularly
absurd attempt at reconciliation, which would
make out the Noachian Deluge to be a catastrophe
which occurred at the end of the Glacial Epoch.
This hypothesis involves only the trifle of a physi-
cal revolution of which geology knows nothing;
and which, if it secured the accuracy of the Penta-
teuchal writer about the fact of the Deluge, would
leave the details of his account as irreconcilable
with the truths of elementary physical science as
ever. Thus I may be permitted to spare myself
and my readers the weariness of a recapitulation
of the overwhelming arguments against the

* Die Sintflut, 1876.

f Theologie und Naturicissenschaft, ii. 784-791 (1877).

220 LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE vi

university of the Deluge, which they will now
find for themselves stated, as fully and forcibly as
could be wished, by Anglican and other theo-
logians, whose orthodoxy and conservative tend-
encies have, hitherto, been above suspicion. Yet
many fully admit (and, indeed, nothing can be
plainer) that the Pentateuchal narrator means to
convey that, as a matter of fact, the whole earth
known to him was inundated; nor is it less ob-
vious that unless all mankind, with the excep-
tion of Noah and his family, were actually de-
stroyed, the references to the Flood in the New
Testament are unintelligible.

But I am quite aware that the strength of the
demonstration that no universal Deluge ever took
place has produced a change of front in the army
of apologetic writers. . They have imagined that
the substitution of the adjective " partial " for
"universal,'' will save the credit of the Pentateuch,
and permit them, after all, without too many
blushes, to declare that the progress of modern sci-
ence only strengthens the authority of Moses. No-
where have I found the case of the advocates of this
method of escaping from the difficulties of the actual
position better put than in the lecture of Professor
Diestel to which I have referred. After frankly
admitting that the old doctrine of universality in-
volves physical impossibilities, he continues: —

All these difficulties fall away as soon as we give up the
universality of the Deluge, and imagine a partial flooding

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 22^

of the earth, say in western Asia. But have we a right ta
do so ? The narrative speaks of " the whole earth." But
what is the meaning of this expression ? Surely not the
whole surface of the earth according to the ideas of modern
geographers, but, at most, according to the conceptions of
the Biblical author. This very simple conclusion, how-
ever, is never drawn by too many readers of the Bible. But
one need only cast one's eyes over the tenth chapter of
Genesis in order to become acquainted with the geograph-
ical horizon of the Jews. In the north it was bounded by
the Black Sea and the mountains of Armenia; extended
towards the east very little beyond the Tigris; hardly
reached the apex of the Persian Gulf; passed, then,
through the middle of Arabia and the Red Sea; went
southward through Abyssinia, and then turned westward
by the frontiers of Egypt, and inclosed the easternmost
islands of the Mediterranean (p. 11).

The justice of this observation must be ad-
mitted, no less than the further remark that, in
still • earlier times, the pastoral Hebrews very
probably had yet more restricted notions of what
constituted the " whole earth." Moreover, I, for
one, fully agree with Professor Diestel that the
motive, or generative incident, of the whole story
is to be sought in the occasionally excessive and
desolating floods of the Euphrates and the Tigris.

Let us, provisionally, accept the theory of a
partial deluge, and try to form a clear mental
picture of the occurrence. Let us suppose that,
for forty days and forty nights, such a vast
quantity of water was poured upon the ground
that the whole surface of Mesopotamia was covered
by water to a depth certainly greater, probably

222 LIGHTS OP THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE vi

much greater, than fifteen cubits, or t^Yenty feet
(Gen. vii. 20). The inundation prevails upon the
earth for one hundred and fifty days; and tlien
the flood gradually decreases, until, on the seven-
teenth day of the seventh month, the ark, which
had previously floated on its surface, grounds upon
the "' mountains of Ararat " * (Gen. viii. 34).
Then, as Diestel has acutely pointed out
(" Sintflut," p. 13), we are to imagine the further
subsidence of the flood to take place so gradually
that it was not until nearly two months and a-half
after this time (that is to say, on the first day of
the tenth month) that the " tops of the moun-
tains" became visible. Hence it follows that, if
the ark drew even as much as twenty feet of
water, the level of the inundation fell very slowly
— at a rate of only a few inches a day — until the
top of the mountain on which it rested became
visible. This is an amount of movement which,
if it took place in the sea, would be overlooked
by ordinary people on the shore. But the
Mesopotamian plain slopes gently, from an eleva-
tion of 500 or 600 feet at its northern end, to the
sea, at its southern end, with hardly so much as
a notable ridge to break its uniform flatness, for
300 to 400 miles. These being the conditions of
the case, the following inquiry naturally presents

* It is very doubtful if this means the region of the
Armenian Ararat. More probably it designates some part
either of the Kurdish range or of its south-eastern con-
tinuation.

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCiENCE 223

itself: not, be it observed, as a recondite problem,
generated by modern speculation, but as a plain
suggestion flowing out of that very ordinary and
archaic piece of knowledge that water cannot be
piled up in a heap, like sand; or that it seeks the
lowest level. When, after 150 days, "the foun-
tains also of the deep and the windows of heaven
were stopped, and the rain from heaven was
restrained " (Gen. viii. 2), what prevented the
mass of water, several, possibly very many,
fathoms deep, which covered, say, the present
site of Bagdad, from sweeping seaward in a furious
torrent; and, in a very few hours, leaving, not
only the " tops of the mountains,'^ but the whole
plain, save any minor depressions, bare? How
could its subsidence, by any possibility, be an
affair of weeks and months?

And if this difficulty is not enough, let any one
try to imagine how a mass of water several, per-
haps very many, fathoms deep, could be accumu-
lated on a flat surface of land rising well above
the sea, and separated from it by no sort of
barrier. Most people know Lord's Cricket-
ground. Would it not be an absurd contradiction
to our common knowledge of the properties of
water to imagine that, if all the mains of all the
waterworks of London were turned on to it, they
could maintain a heap of water twenty feet deep
over its level surface? Is it not obvious that the
water, whatever momentary accumulation might

224: LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE vi

take place at first, would not stop there, but that
it would dash, like a mighty mill-race, southwards
down the gentle slope which ends in the Thames?
And is it not further obvious, that whatever
depth of water might be maintained over the
cricket-ground so long as all the mains poured on
to it, anything which floated there would be
speedily whirled away by the current, like a cork
in a gutter when the rain pours? But if this is
so, then it is no less certain that Noah's deeply
laden, sailless, oarless, and rudderless craft, if by
good fortune it escaped capsizing in whirlpools, or
having its bottom knocked into holes by snags
(like those which prove fatal even to well-built
steamers on the Mississippi in our day), would
have speedily found itself a good way down the
Persian Gulf^ and not long after in the Indian
Ocean, somewhere between Arabia and Hindostan.
Even if, eventually, the ark might have gone
ashore, with other jetsam and flotsam, on the
coasts of Arabia, or of Hindostan, or of the Mal-
dives, or of Madagascar, its return to the " moun-
tains of Ararat " would have been a miracle more
stupendous than all the rest.

Thus, the last state of the would-be reconcilers
of the story of the Deluge with fact is worse than
the first. All that they have done is to transfer
the contradictions to established truth from the
region of science proper to that of common in-
formation and common sense. For, really, the

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 225

assertion that the surface of a body of deep water,
to which no addition was made, and which there
was nothing to stop from running into the sea,
sank at the rate of only a few inches or even feet
a day, simply outrages the most ordinary and
familiar teachings of every man's daily experience.
A child may see the folly of it.

In addition, I may remark that the necessary
assumption of the " partial Deluge " hypothesis (if
it is confined to Mesopotamia) that the Hebrew
writer must have meant low hills when he said
" high mountains," is quite untenable. On the
eastern side of the Mesopotamian plain, the snowy
peaks of the frontier ranges of Persia are visible
from Bagdad,* and even the most ignorant herds-
men in the neighbourhood of " Ur of the Chal-
dees," near its western limit, could hardly have
been unacquainted with the comparatively ele-
vated plateau of the Syrian desert which lay close
at hand. But, surely, we must suppose the Biblical
writer to be acquainted with the highlands of Pal-
estine and with the masses of the Sinaitic penin-
sula, which soar more than 8000 feet above the
sea, if he knew of no higher elevations; and, if so,
he could not well have meant to refer to mere
hillocks when he said that " all the high moun-
tains which were under the whole heaven were

* So Reclus {Nouvelle Geographie Universelle, ix. 386),
but I find the statement doubted by an authority of the
first rank.

104

22G LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE vi

f

covered " (Genesis vii. 19). Even the hill-country
of Galilee reaches an elevation of 4000 feet; and
a flood which covered it could by no possibility
have been other than universal in its superficial
extent. Water really cannot be got to stand at,
say, 4000 feet above the sea-level over Palestine,
without covering the rest of the globe to the same
height. Even if, in the course of Noah's six
hundredth year, some prodigious convulsion had
sunk the whole region inclosed within " the
horizon of the geographical knowledge " of the
Israelites by that much, and another had pushed
it up again, just in time to catch the ark upon
the " mountains of Ararat," matters are not much
mended. I am afraid to think of what would
have become of a vessel so little seaworthy as the
ark and of its very numerous passengers, under
the peculiar obstacles to quiet flotation which such
rapid movements of depression and upheaval would
have generated.

Thus, in view, not, I repeat, of the recondite
speculations of infidel philosophers, but in the face
of the plainest and most commonplace of ascer-
tained physical facts, the story of the Noachian
Deluge has no more claim to credit than has that
of Deucalion; and whether it was, or was not,
suggested by the familiar acquaintance of its origi-
nators with the effects of unusually great over-
flows of the Tigris and Euphrates, it is utterly
devoid of historical truth.

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 227

That is, in my judgment, the necessary result
of the application of criticism, based upon assured
physical knowledge, to the story of the Deluge.
And it is satisfactory that the criticism which is
based, not upon literary and historical specula-
tions, but upon well-ascertained facts in the
departments of literature and history, tends to
exactly the same conclusion.

For I find this much agreed upon by all
Biblical scholars of repute, that the story of the
Deluge in Genesis is separable into at least two
sets of statements; and that, when the statements
thus separated are recombined in their proper
order, each set furnishes an account of the event,
coherent and complete within itself, but in some
respects discordant with that afforded by the other
set. This fact, as I understand, is not disputed.
Whether one of these is the work of an Elohist,
and the other of a Jeh ovist narrator; whether
the two have been pieced together in this strange
fashion because, in the estimation of the compilers
and editors of the Pentateuch, they had equal
and independent authority, or not; or whether
there is some other way of accounting for it — arc
questions the answers to which do not affect the
fact. If possible I avoid a priori arguments.
But still, I think it may be urged, without impru-
dence, that a narrative having this structure is
hardly such as might be expected from a writer
possessed of full and infallibly accurate knowl-

228 LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE vi

edge. Once more, it would seem that it is not
necessarily the mere inclination of the sceptical
spirit to question everything, or the wilful blind-
ness of infidels, which prompts grave doubts as to
the value of a narrative thus curiously unlike the
ordinary run of veracious histories.

But the voice of archaeological and historical
criticism still has to be heard; and it gives forth
no uncertain sound. The marvellous recovery
of the records of an antiquity, far superior to any
that can be ascribed to the Pentateuch, which
has been effected by the decipherers of cuneiform
characters, has put us in possession of a series,
once more, not of speculations, but of facts, which
have a most remarkable bearing upon the question
of the trustworthiness of the narrative of the
Flood. It is established, that for centuries before
the asserted migration of Terah from Ur of the
Chaldees (which, according to the orthodox inter-
preters of the Pentateuch, took place after the
year 2000 b. c.) Lower Mesopotamia was the seat
of a civilisation in which art and science and
literature had attained a development formerly
unsuspected, or, if there were faint reports of it,
treated as fabulous. And it is also no matter of
speculation, but a fact, that the libraries of these
people contain versions of a long epic poem, one
of the twelve books of which tells a story of a
deluge, which, in a number of its leading features,
corresponds with the story attributed to Berosus,

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 229

110 less than with the story given in Genesis, with
curious exactness. Thus, the correctness of Canon
Eawlinson's conclusion, cited above, that the story
of Berosus was neither drawn from the Hebrew
record, nor is the foundation of it, can hardly be
questioned. It is highly probable, if not certain,
that Berosus relied upon one of the versions (for
there seem to haive been several) of the old Baby-
lonian epos, extant in his time; and, if that is
a reasonable conclusion, why is it unreasonable to
believe that the two stories, which the Hebrew
compiler has put together in such an inartistic
fashion, were ultimately derived from the same
source? I say ultimately, because it does not at
all follow that tlie two versions, possibly trimmed
by the Jehovistic writer on the one hand, and by
the Elohistic on the other, to suit Hebrew require-
ments, may not have been current among the
Israelites for ages. And they may have acquired
great authority before they were combined in the
Pentateuch.

Looking at the convergence of all these lines of
evidence to the one conclusion — that the story of
the Flood in Genesis is merely a Bowdlerised
version of one of the oldest pieces of purely
fictitious literature extant; that whether this is,
or is not, its origin, the events asserted in it to
have taken place assuredly never did take place;
further, that, in point of fact, the story, in the
plain and logically necessary sense of its words,

230 LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE vi

has long since been given up by orthodox and
conservative commentators of the Established
Church — I can but admire the courage and clear
foresight of the Anglican divine who tells us that
we must be prepared to choose between the
trustworthiness of scientific method and the
trustworthiness of that which the Church declares
to be Divine authority. For, to my mind, this
declaration of war to the knife against secular
science, even in its most elementary form; this
reflection, without a moment's hesitation, of any
and all evidence which conflicts with theological
dogma — is the only position which is logically
reconcilable with the axioms of orthodoxy. If the
Gospels truly report that which an incarnation of
the God of Truth communicated to the world, then
it surely is absurd to attend to any other evidence
touching matters about which he made any clear
statement, or the truth of which is distinctly
implied by his words. If the exact historical
truth of the Gospels is an axiom of Christianity,
it is as just and right for a Christian to say. Let
us " close our ears against suggestions " of scien-
tific critics, as it is for the man of science to refuse
to waste his time upon circle-squarers and flat-
earth fanatics.

It is commonly reported that the manifesto by
which the Canon of St. Paul's proclaims that he
nails the colours of the straitest Biblical infalli-
bility to the mast of the ship ecclesiastical, was

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 231

put forth as a counterblast to " Lux Mundi ";
and that the passages which I have more particu-
larly quoted are directed against the essay on
" The Holy Spirit and Inspiration " in that
collection of treatises by Anglican divines of high
standing, who must assuredly be acquitted of con-
scious " infidel " proclivities. I fancy that rumour
must, for once, be right, for it is impossible to im-
agine a more direct and diametrical contradiction
than that between the passages from the sermon
cited above and those which follow: —

What is questioned is that our Lord's words foreclose
certain critical positions as to the character of Old Testa-
ment literature. For example, does his use of Jonah's
resurrection as a type of His own depend in any real degree
upon whether it is historical fact or allegory? . . . Once
more, our Lord uses the time before the Flood to illustrate
the carelessness of men before His own coming. ... In
referring to the Flood He certainly suggests that He is
treating it as typical, for He introduces circumstances —
"eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage"
— which have no counterpart in the original narrative
(pp. 358-9).

While insisting on the flow of inspiration
through the whole of the Old Testament, the
essayist does not admit its universality. Here,
also, the new apologetic demands a partial
flood:

But docs the inspiration of the recorder guarantee the
exact historical truth of what he records'? And, in matter
of fact, can the record, with due regard to legitimate
historical criticism, be pronounced true ? Now, to the lat-

232 LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE vi

ter of these two questions (and they are quite distinct ques-
tions) we may reply that there is nothing to prevent our
believing, as our faith strongly disposes us to believe, that
the record from Abraham downward is, in substance, in the
strict sense historical (p. 351).

It would appear, therefore, that there is noth-
ing to prevent onr believing that the record, from
Abraham upward, consists of stories in the strict
sense unhistorical, and that the pre-Abrahamic
narratives are mere moral and religious " types "
and parables.

I confess I soon lose my way when I try
to follow those who walk delicately among
" types •" and allegories. A certain passion for
clearness forces me to ask, bluntly, whether the
writer means to say that Jesus did not believe
the stories in question, or that he did? When
Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that " the
Flood came and destroyed them all," did he
believe that the Deluge really took place, or not?
It seems to me that, as the narrative mentions
Noah's wife, and his sons' wives, there is good
scriptural warranty for the statement that the
antediluvians married and were given in marriage;
and I should have thought that their eating and
drinking might be assumed by the firmest
believer in the literal truth of the story. More-
over, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an
illustration of God's methods of dealing with sin,
has an account of an event that never happened?

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 233

If no Flood swept the careless people away, how
is the warning of more worth than the cry of
"Wolf" when there is no wolf? If Jonah's
three days' residence in the whale is not an " ad-
mitted reality," how could it " warrant belief "
in the " coming resurrection " ? If Lot's wife
was not turned into a pillar of salt, the bidding
those who turn back from the narrow path to
" remember " it is, morally, about on a level with
telling a naughty child that a bogy is coming to
fetch it away. Suppose that a Conservative
orator warns his hearers to beware of great
political and social changes, lest they end, as in
France, in the domination of a Eobespierre; what
becomes, not only of his argument, but of his
veracity, if he, personally, does not believe that
Eobespierre existed and did the deeds attributed
to him?

Like all other attempts to reconcile the results
of scientifically-conducted investigation with the
demands of the outworn creeds of ecclesiasticism,
the essay on Inspiration is just sucli a failure as
must await mediation, when the mediator is
unable properly to appreciate the weight of the
evidence for the case of one of the two parties.
The question of " Inspiration " really possesses no
interest for those who have cast ecclesiasticism
and all its works aside, and have no faith in any
source of truth save that which is reached by
the patient application of scientific methods.

234 LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE yi

Theories of inspiration are speculations as to the
means by which the authors of statements, in
the Bible or elsewhere, have been led to say what
they have said — and it assumes that natural
agencies are insufficient for the purpose. I
prefer to stop short of this problem, finding it
more profitable to undertake the inquiry which
naturally precedes it — namely, Are these state-
ments true or false? If they are true, it may be
worth while to go into the question of their
supernatural generation; if they are false, it cer-
tainly is not worth mine,

Now, not only do I hold it to be proven that
the story of the Deluge is a pure fiction; but I
have no hesitation in affirming the same thing of
the story of the Creation.* Between these two
lies the story of the creation of man and woman
and their fall from primitive innocence, which is
even more monstrously improbable than either of
the other two, though, from the nature of the case,
it is not so easily capable of direct refutation. It
can be demonstrated that the earth took longer

*So far as I know, the narrative of the Creation is not
now held to be true, in the sense in which I have defined
historical truth, by any of the reconcilers. As for the
attempts to stretch the Pentateuchal days into periods of
thousands or millions of years, the verdict of the eminent
Biblical scholar, Dr. Riehm {Der hihlische Schopfungs-
bericht, 1881, pp. 15, 16), on such pranks of " Auslegungs-
kunst" should be final. Why do the reconcilers take
Goethe's advice seriously ? —

"Im Auslegen seyd frisch und munter!
Legt ihr's nicht aus, so legt was unter,"

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 235

than six daj-s in the making, and that the Deluge,
as described, is a pliyjical impossibility; but there
is no proving, especially to those who are perfect in
the art of closing their ears to that which they do
not wish to hear, that a snake did not speak, or
that Eve was .not made out of one of Adam's ribs.

The compiler of Genesis, in its present form,
evidently had a definite plan in his mind. His
countrvmen, like all other men, were doubtless
curious to know how the world began; how men,
and especially wicked men, came into being, and
how existing nations and races arose among the
descendants of one stock; and, finally, what
was the history of their own particular tribe.
They, like ourselves, desired to solve the four
great problems of cosmogeny, anthropogeny,
ethnogeny, and geneogeny. The Pentateuch fur-
nishes the solutions which appeared satisfactory
to its author. One of these, as we have seen,
was borrowed from a Babylonian fable; and I
know of no reason to suspect any different origin
for the rest. Now, I would ask, is the story of
the fabrication of Eve to be regarded as one of
those pre-Abrahamic narratives, the historical
truth of which is an open question, in face of the
reference to it in a speech unhappily famous for
the legal oppression to which it has been wrong-
fully forced to lend itself?

Have ye not read, that he which made them from the
beginning, made them male and female, and said, For this

236 LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE vi

cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave
to his wife : and the twain shall become one flesh ? (Matt.
xix. 5).

If divine authority is not here claimed for the
twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter of
Genesis, what is the value of language? And,
again, I ask, if one may play fast and loose with
the story of the Fall as a " type " or " allegory,"
what becomes of the foundation of Pauline
theology? —

For since by man came death, by man came also the
resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also
in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Corinthians xv. 21, 22).

If Adam may be held to be no more real a
personage than Prometheus, and if the story of
the Fall is merely an instructive " type," com-
parable to the profound Promethean mythus, what
value has Paul's dialectic?

While, therefore, every right-minded man must
sympathise with the efforts of those theologians,
who have not been able altogether to close their
ears to the still, small voice of reason, to escape
from the fetters which ecclesiasticism has forged;
the melancholy fact remains, that the position
they have taken up is hopelessly untenable. It
is raked alike by the old-fashioned artillery of the
Churches and by the fatal weapons of precision
with which the enfants perdus of the advancing
forces of science are armed. They must surrender,
or fall back into a more sheltered position. And

VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 237

it is possible that they may long find safety in
such retreat.

It is, indeed, probable, that the proportional
number of those who will distinctly profess their
belief in the transubstantiation of Lot's wife, and
the anticipatory experience of submarine naviga-
tion by Jonah; in water standing fathoms deep
on the side of a declivity without anything to
hold it up; and in devils who enter swine — will
not increase. But neither is there ground for
much hope that the proportion of those who cast
aside these fictions and adopt the consequence of
that repudiation, are, for some generations, likely
to constitute a majority. Our age is a day of
compromises. The present and the near future
seem given over to those happily, if curiously,
constituted people who see as little difficulty in
throwing aside any amount of post-Abrahamic
Scriptural narrative, as the authors of " Lux
Mundi " see in sacrificing the pre-Abrahamic
stories; and, having distilled away every inconven-
ient matter of fact in Christian historv, continue
to pay divine honours to the residue. There really
seems to be no reason why the next generation
should not listen to a Bampton Lecture modelled
upon that addressed to the last: —

Time was — and that not very loncf ago — when all the
relations of Biblical authors concerning the whole world
were received with a ready belief; and an unreasoning and
uncritical faith accepted with equal satisfaction the narra-

238 LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE vi

tive of the Captivity and the doings of Moses at the court
of Pharaoh, the account of the Apostolic meeting in the
Epistle to the Galatians, and that of the fabrication of Eve.
We can most of us remember when, in this country, the
whole story of the Exodus, and even the legend of Jonah,
were seriously placed before boys as history, and discoursed
of in as dogmatic a' tone as the tale of Agincourt or the
history of the Norman Conquest.

But all this is now changed. The last century has seen
the growth of scientific criticism to its full strength. The
whole world of history has been revolutionised and the
mythology which embarrassed earnest Christians has van-
ished as an evil mist, the lifting of which has only more
fully revealed the lineaments of infallible Truth. No
longer in contact with fact of any kind, Faith stands now
and forever proudly inaccessible to the attacks of the
infidel.

So far tlie apologist of the future. Wliy not?
Caniabit vacuus.

VII

HASISADEA'S ADVENTUEE

[1891]

Some thousands of years ago there was a city
in Mesopotamia called Snrippak. One night a
strange dream came to a dweller therein, whose
name, if rightly reported, was Hasisadra. The
dream foretold the speedy coming of a great
flood; and it warned Hasisadra to lose no time
in building a ship, in which, when notice was
given, he, his family and friends, with their do-
mestic animals and a collection of wild creatures
and seed of plants of the land, might take refuge
and be rescued from destruction. Hasisadra
awoke, and at once acted upon the warning. A
strong decked ship was built, and her sides were
paid, inside and out, with the mineral pitch, or
bitumen, with which the country abounded; the
vessel's seaworthiness was tested, the cargo was
stowed away, and a trusty pilot or steersman

appointed.

239

2J:0 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vn

The i:)romised signal arrived. AVife and friends
embarked; Hasisadra^ following, prudently " shut
the door/^ or, as we should say, put on the
hatches; and Nes-Hea, the pilot, was left alone
on deck to do his best for the ship. Thereupon
a hurricane began to rage; rain fell in torrents;
the subterranean waters burst forth; a deluge
swept over the land, and the wind lashed it into
waves sky high; heaven and earth became
mingled in chaotic gloom. For six days and
seven nights the gale raged, but the good ship
held out until, on the seventh day, the storm
lulled. Hasisadra ventured on deck; and, seeing
nothing but a waste of waters strewed with
floating corpses and wreck, wept over the de-
struction of his land and people. Far away, the
mountains of Nizir were visible; the shij:) was
steered for them and ran aground upon the
higher land. Yet another seven days passed by.
On the seventh, Hasisadra sent forth a dove,
which found no resting place and returned; then
he liberated a swallow, which also came back;
finally, a raven was let loose, and that sagacious
bird, when it found that the water had abated,
came near the ship, but refused to return to it.
Upon this, Hasisadra liberated the rest of the
wild animals, which immediately dispersed in all
directions, while he, with his family and friends,
ascending a mountain hard by, offered sacrifice
upon its summit to the gods.

vn HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 241

The story thus given in summary abstract, told
in an ancient Semitic dialect, is inscribed in
cuneiform characters upon a tablet of burnt clay.
Many thousands of such tablets, collected by
Assurbanipal, King of Assyria in the middle of
the seventh century b. c, Avere stored in the
library of his palace at Nineveh; and, though in
a sadly broken and mutilated condition, they have
yielded a marvellous amount of information to
the patient and sagacious labour which modern
scholars have bestowed upon them. Among the
multitude of documents of various kinds, this
narrative of Hasisadra's adventure has been found
in a tolerably complete state. But Assyriologists
agree that it is only a copy of a much more
ancient work; and there are weighty reasons for
believing that the story of Hasisadra's flood was
well known in Mesopotamia before the year
2000 B. c.

No doubt, then, we are in presence of a
narrative wdiich has all the authority which
antiquity can confer; and it is proper to deal
respectfully with it, even though it is quite as
proper, and indeed necessary, to act no less
respectfully towards ourselves; and, before pro-
fessing to put implicit faith in it, to inquire what
claim it has to be regarded as a serious account of
an historical event.

It is of no use to appeal to contemporary

history, although the annals of Babylonia, no less
105

24:2 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vii

than those of Egypt, go much further back than
2000 B. c. All that can be said is, that the
former are hardly consistent with the supposition
that any catastrophe, competent to destroy all the
population, has befallen the land since civilisation
began, and that the latter are notoriously silent
about deluges. In such a case as this, however,
the silence of history does not leave the inquirer
wholly at fault. Natural science has something
to say when the phenomena of nature are in
question. Natural science may be able to show,
from the nature of the country, either that such
an event as that described in the story is
impossible, or at any rate highly improbable; or,
on the other hand, that it is consonant with
probability. In the former case, the narrative
must be suspected or rejected; in the latter, no
such summary verdict can be given: on the
contrary, it must be admitted that the story may
be true. And then, if certain strangely prevalent
canons of criticism are accepted, and if the
evidence that an event might have happened is
to be accepted as proof that it did happen,
Assyriologists will be at liberty to congratulate
one another on the " confirmation by modern
science '' of the authority of their ancient
books.

It will be interesting, therefore, to inquire how
far the physical structure and the other conditions
of the region in which Surippak was situated are

VII HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 243.

compatible with such a flood as is described in
the Assyrian record.

The scene of Hasisadra's adventure is laid in
the broad valley, six or seven hundred miles long,
and hardly anywhere less than a hundred miles
in width, which is traversed by the lower courses
of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, and which
is commonly known as the " Euphrates valley."
Eising, at the one end, into a hill country, which
gradually passes into the Alpine heights of
Armenia; and, at the other, dipping beneath the
shallow waters of the head of the Persian Gulf,
which continues in the same direction, from
north-west to south-east, for some eight hundred
miles farther, the floor of the valley presents a
gradual slope, from eight hundred feet above the
sea level to the depths of the southern end of the
Persian Gulf. The boundary between sea and
land, formed by the extremest mudflats of the
delta of the two rivers, is but vaguely defined;
and, year by year, it advances seaward. On the
north-eastern side, the western frontier ranges of
Persia rise abruptly to great heights; on the
south-western side, a more gradual ascent leads to
a table-land of less elevation, which, very broad
in the south, where it is occupied by the deserts
of Arabia and of Southern Syria, narrows, north-
wards, into the highlands of Palestine, and is con-
tinued by the ranges of the Lebanon, the Antileba-
non,and the Taurus, into the highlands of Armenia.

24:4: HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vii

The wide and gently inclined plain, thus in-
closed between the gulf and the highlands, on each
side and at its upper extremity, is distinguishable
into two regions of very different character, one of
which lies north, and the other south of the paral-
lel of Hit, on the Euphrates. Except in the imme-
diate vicinity of the river, the northern division is
stony and scantily covered with vegetation, except
in spring. Over the southern division, on the
contrary, spreads a deep alluvial soil, in which
even a pebble is rare; and which, though, under
the existing misrule, mainly a waste of marsh and
wilderness, needs only intelligent attention to be-
come, as it was of old, the granary of western Asia.
Except in the extreme south, the rainfall is small
and the air drv. The heat in summer is intense,
while bitterly cold northern blasts sweep the plain
in winter. Whirlwinds are not uncommon; and,
in the intervals of the periodical inundations, the
fine, dry, powdery soil is swept, even by moderate
breezes, into stifling clouds, or rather fogs, of dust.
Low inequalities, elevations here and depressions
there, diversify the surface of the alluvial region.
The latter are occupied by enormous marshes,
while the former support the permanent dwellings
of the present scanty and miserable population.

In antiquity, so long as the canalisation of the
country was properly carried out, the fertility of
the alluvial plain enabled great and prosperous
nations to have their home in the Euphrates

VII HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 245

valley. Its abundant clay furnished the materials
for the masses of sun-dried and burnt bricks, the
remains of which, in the shape of huge artificial
mounds, still testify to both the magnitude and the
industry of the population, thousands of years ago.
Good cement is plentiful, while the bitumen, which
wells from the rocks at Hit and elsewhere, not only
answers the same purpose, but is used to this day,
as it was in Hasisadra's time, to paint the inside
and the outside of boats.

In the broad lower course of the Euphrates,
the stream rarely acquires a velocity of more than
three miles an hour, while the lower Tigris attains
double that rate in times of flood. The water of
both great rivers is mainly derived from the
northern and eastern highlands in Armenia and
in Kurdistan, and stands at its lowest level in
early autumn and in January. But when the
snows accumulated in the upper basins of the great
rivers, during the winter, melt under the hot sun-
shine of spring, they rapidly rise,* and at length
overflow their banks, covering the alluvial plain
with a vast inland sea, interrupted only by the
higher ridges and hummocks which form islands
in a seemingly boundless expanse of water.

In the occurrence of these annual inundations

* Tn May 1849 the Ti^rris at Bagdad rose 22^ feet— 5 feet
above its usual rise — and nearly swept away the town. In
1831 a similarly exceptional flood did immense damage, de-
stroying 7000 houses. See Loftus, Ckaldta and Susiana^
p. 7. .

246 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vii

lies one of several resemblances between the valley
of the Euphrates and that of the Nile. But there
are important differences. The time of the annual
flood is reversed, the Nile being highest in autumn
and winter, and lowest in spring and early
summer. The periodical overflows of the Nile,
regulated by the great lake basins in the south,
are usually punctual in arrival, gradual in growth,
and beneficial in operation. No lakes are inter-
posed between the mountain torrents of the upper
basis of the Tigris and the Euphrates and their
lower courses. Hence, heavy rain, or an unusually
rapid thaw in the uplands, gives rise to the sudden
irruption of a vast volume of water w^hich not
even the rapid Tigris, still less its more sluggish
companion, can carry off in time to prevent violent
and dangerous overflows. Without an elaborate
system of canalisation, providing an escape for
such sudden excesses of the supply of w^ater, the
annual floods of the Euphrates, and especially of
the Tigris, must always be attended with risk, and
often prove harmful.

There are other peculiarities of the Euphrates
valley which may occasionally tend to exacerbate
the CAdls attendant on the inundations. It is very
subject to seismic disturbances; and the ordinary
consequences of a sharp earthquake shock might
be seriously complicated by its effect on a broad
sheet of water. Moreover the Indian Ocean lies
within the region of typhoons; and if, at the height

VII EASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 24:7

of an inundation, a hurricane from the south-east
swept up the Persian Gulf, driving its shallow
waters upon the delta and damming back the out-
flow, perhaps for hundreds of miles up-stream, a
diluvial catastrophe, fairly up to the mark of
Hasisadra's, might easily result.*

Thus there seems to be no valid reason for re-
jecting Hasisadra's story on physical grounds. I
do not gather from the narrative that the " moun-
tains of JSTizir " were supposed to be submerged, but
merely that they came into view above the distant
horizon of the waters, as the vessel drove in that
direction. Certainly the ship is not supposed to
ground on any of their higher summits, for Hasi-
sadra has to ascend a peak in order to offer his sac-
riflce. The country of Nizir lay on the north-
eastern side of the Euphrates valley, about the
courses of the two rivers Zab, which enter the
Tigris where it traverses the plain of Assyria some
eight or nine hundred feet above the sea; and, so
far as I can judge from maps f and other sources of
information, it is possible, under the circumstances
supposed, that such a ship as Hasisadra's might

* See the instructive chapter on Hasisadra's flood in
Suess, Das Antlitz der Erde, Abth. I. Only fifteen years
a^o a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal gave rise to a flood
which covered 3000 square miles of the delta of the Ganges,
3 to 45 feet deep, destroying 100,000 people, innumerable
cattle, houses, and trees. It broke inland, on the rising
ground of Tipperah, and may have swept a vessel from the
sea that far, though I do not know that it did.

f See Cernik's maps in Pefermanns MittJieilu'ngen, Er-
ganzungshefte 44 and 45, 1875-76.

24:8 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vii

drive before a southerly gale, over a continuously
flooded country, until it grounded on some of the
low hills between which both the lower and the
upper Zab enter upon the Assyrian plain.

The tablet which contains the story under
consideration is the eleventh of a series of twelve.
Each of these answers to a month, and to the
corresponding sign of the Zodiac. The Assyrian
year began with the spring equinox; consequently,
the eleventh month, called " the rainy," answers
to our January-February, and to the sign which
corresponds with our Aquarius. The aquatic
adventure of Hasisadra, therefore, is not inap-
propriately placed. It is curious, however, that
the season thus indirectly assigned to the flood is
not that of the present highest level of the rivers.
It is too late for the winter rise, and too early for
the spring floods.

I think it must be admitted that, so far, the
physical cross-examination to which Hasisadra has
been subjected does not break down his story. On
the contrary, he proves to have kept it in all
essential respects * within the bounds of probabil-
ity or possibility. However, we have not yet done
with him. For the conditions which obtained in
the Euphrates valley, four or five thousand years
ago, may have differed to such an extent from

* I have not cited the dimensions given to the ships in
most translations of the story, because there appears to be
a doubt about them. Haupt {Keilinschriftliche Sindfluth-
Bericht, p. 13) says that the figures are illegible.

VII HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 249

those which now exist that we should be able to
convict liim of having made up his tale. But
here again everything is in favour of his credibil-
ity. Indeed, he may claim very powerful support,
for it does not lie in the mouths of those who ac-
cept the authority of the Pentateuch to deny that
the Euphrates valley was what it is, even six thou-
sand years back. According to the book of Gene-
sis, Phrat and Hiddekel — the Euphrates and the
Tigris — are coeval with Paradise. An edition of
the Scriptures recently published under high
authority, with an elaborate apparatus of " Helps "
for the use of students — and therefore, as I am
bound to suppose, purged of all statements that
could by any possibility mislead the young —
assigns the year b. c. 400 i as the date of Adam's
too brief residence in that locality.

But I am far from depending on this authority
for the age of the Mesopotamian plain. On the
contrary, I venture to rely, with much more con-
fidence, on another kind of evidence, which tends
to show that the age of the great rivers must be
carried back to a date earlier than that at which
our ingenuous youth is instructed that the earth
come into existence. For, the alluvial deposit
having been brought down by the rivers, they
must needs be older than the plain it forms, as
navvies must needs antecede the embankment
painfully built up by the contents of their wheel-
barrows. For thousands of years, heat and cold.

250 UASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vn

rain, snow, and frost, the scrubbing of glaciers,
and the scouring of torrents laden with sand and
gravel, have been wearing down the rocks of the
upper basins of the rivers, over an area of many
thousand square miles; and these materials,
ground to line powder in the course of their long
journey, have slowly subsided, as the water which
carried them spread out and lost its velocity in
the sea. It is because this process is still going
on that the shore of the delta constantly en-
croaches on the head of the gulf * into which the
two rivers are constantly throwing the waste of
Armenia and of Kurdistan. Hence, as might be
expected, fluviatile and marine shells are common
in the alluvial deposit; and Loftus found strata,
containing subfossil marine shells of species now
living, in the Persian Gulf, at Warka, two hundred
miles in a straight line from the shore of the
delta, f It follows that, if a trustworthy estimate
of the average rate of growth of the alluvial
can be formed, the lowest limit (by no means the
highest limit) of age of the rivers can be deter-
mined. All such estimates are beset with sources

* It is probable that a slow movement of elevation of the
land at one time contributed to the result — perhaps does so
still.

f At a comparatively recent period, the littoral margin
of the Persian Gulf extended certainly 250 miles farther to
the northwest than the present embouchure of the Shatt-el
Arab. (Loftus, Quarterly Journal of the Geological So-
ciety, 1858. p. 251.) The actual extent of the mjirine deposit
inland cannot be defined, as it is covered by later fluviatilo
deposits.

VII HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 251

of error of very various kinds; and the best of
them can only he regarded as approximations to
the truth. But I tliink it will he quite safe to
assume a maximum rate of growth of four miles in
a century for the lower half of the alluvial plain.

Now, the cycle of narratives of which Hasisa-
dra's adventure forms a part contains allusions not
only to Surippak, the exact position of which is
doubtful, but to other cities, such as Erech. The
vast ruins at the present village of Warka have
been carefully explored and determined to be all
that remains of that once great and flourishing
city, " Erech the lofty." Supposing that the two
hundred miles of alluvial country, which separates
them from the head of the Persian Gulf at
present, have been deposited at the very high
rate of four miles in a century, it will follow that
4000 years ago, or about the year 2100 B.C., the
city of Erech still lay forty miles inland. Indeed,
the city might have been built a thousand years
earlier. Moreover, there is plenty of independent
archaeological and other evidence that in the
whole thousand years, 2000 to 3000 b. c, the
alluvial plain was inhabited by a numerous
people, among whom industry, art, and literature
had attained a very considerable development.
And it can be shown that the physical conditions
and the climate of the Euphrates valley, at that
time, must have been extremely similar to what
they are now.

252 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vn

Thus, once more, we reach the conclusion that,
as a question of physical probability, there is no
ground for objecting to the reality of Hasisadra's
adventure. It would be unreasonable to doubt
that such a flood might have happened, and that
such a person might have escaped in the way
described, any time during the last 5000 years.
And if the j^ostulate of loose thinkers in search of
scientific " confirmations '' of questionable narra-
tives— proof that an event may have happened is
evidence that it did happen — is to be accepted^
surely Hasisadra's story is " confirmed by modern
scientific investigation " beyond all cavil. How-
ever, it may be well to pause before adopting this
conclusion, because the original story, of which I
have set forth only the broad outlines, contains a
great many statements which rest upon just the
same foundation as those cited, and yet are hardly
likely to meet with general acceptance. The ac-
count of the circumstances which led up to the
flood, of those under which Hasisadra's adventure
was made known to his descendant, of certain
remarkable incidents before and after the flood,
are inseparably bound up with the details already
given. And I am unable to discover any justifi-
cation for arbitrarily picking out some of these
and dubbing them historical verities, while reject-
ing the rest as legendary fictions. They stand or
fall together.

Before proceeding to the consideration of these

VII HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 253

less satisfactory details, it is needful to remark
that Hasisadra's adventure is a mere episode in a
cycle of stories of which a personage, whose name
is provisionally read " Izdubar/' is the centre.
The nature of Izdubar hovers vaguely between
the heroic and the divine; sometimes he seems a
mere man, sometimes approaches so closely to the
divinities of fire and of the sun as to be hardly
distinguishable from them. As I have already
mentioned, the tablet which sets forth Hasisadra's
perils is one of twelve; and, since each of these
represents a month and l)ears a story appropriate
to the corresponding sign of the Zodiac, great
weight must be attached to Sir Henry Eawlin-
son's suggestion that the epos of Izdubar is a
poetical embodiment of solar mythology.

In the earlier books of the epos, the hero, not
content with rejecting the proffered love of the
Chaldaean Aphrodite, Istar, freely expresses his
very low estimate of her character; and it is
interesting to observe that, even in this early
stage of human experience, men had reached a
conception of that law of nature which expresses
the inevitable consequences of an imperfect appre-
ciation of feminine charms. The injured goddess
makes Izdubar's life a burden to him, until at
last, sick in body and sorry in mind, he is driven
to seek aid and comfort from his forbears in the
world of spirits. So this antitype of Odysseus
journeys to the shore of the waters of death, and

254 EASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vii

there takes ship with a Chaldcean Charon, who
carries him within hail of his ancestor Hasisadra.
That venerable j^ersonage not only gives Izdubar
instructions how to regain his health, but tells him,
somewhat a propos des hottes (after the manner
of venerable personages), the long story of his
perilous adventure; and how it befell that he, his
wife, and his steersman came to dwell among the
blessed gods, without passing through the portals
of death like ordinary mortals.

According to the full story, the sins of man-
kind had become grievous; and, at a council of the
gods, it w^as resolved to extirpate the whole race by
a great flood. And, once more, let us note the uni-
formity of human experience. It would appear
that, four thousand years ago, the obligations of
confidential intercourse about matters of state were
sometimes violated — of course from the best of
motives. Ea, one of the three chiefs of the Chal-
dagan Pantheon, the god of justice and of practical
wisdom, was also the god of the sea; and, yielding
to the temptation to do a friend a good turn,
irresistible to kindly seafaring folks of all ranks,
he warned Hasisadra of what was coming. When
Bel subsequently reproached him for this breach
of confidence, Ea defended himself by declaring
that he did not tell Hasisadra anything; he only
sent him a dream. This was undoubtedly sailing
very near the wind; but the attribution of a little
benevolent obliquity of conduct to one of the

VII HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 255

highest of the gods is a trifle compared with the
truly Homeric anthropomorphism which charac-
terises other parts of the epos.

The Chaldean deities are, in truth, extremely
human; and, occasionally, the narrator does not
scruple to represent them in a manner which is not
only inconsistent with our idea of reverence, but is
sometimes distinctly humorous.* When the storm
is at its height, he exhibits them flying in a state
of panic to Anu, the god of heaven, and crouch-
ing before his portal like frightened dogs. As the
smoke of Ilasisadra's sacrifice arises, the gods,
attracted by the sweet savour, are compared to
swarms of flies. I have already remarked that
the lady Istar's reputation is torn to shreds; while
she and Ea scold Bel handsomely for his ferocity
and injustice in destroying the innocent along with
the guilty. One is reminded of Here hung up
with weighted heels; of misleading dreams sent
by Zeus; of Ares howling as he flies from the
Trojan battlefield; and of the very questionable
dealings of Aphrodite with Helen and Paris.

But to return to the story. Bel was, at first,
excluded from the sacrifice as the author of all the
mischief; which really was somewhat hard upon
him, since the other gods agreed to his proposal.
But eventually a reconciliation takes place; the
great bow of Anu is displayed in the heavens; Bel

* Tiele {Bahylonisch-Assyrische OescMchte, pp. 572-3)
has some very just remarks on this aspect of the epos.

256 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vii

agrees that he will be satisfied with what war,
pestilence, famine, and wild beasts can do in the
way of destroying men; and that, henceforward,
he will not have recourse to extraordinary meas-
ures. Finally, it is Bel himself who, by way of
making amends, transports Hasisadra, his wife,
and the faithful Nes-Hea to the abode of the gods.
It is as indubitable as it is incomprehensible to
most of us, that, for thousands of years, a great
people, quite as intelligent as we are, and living in
as high a state of civilisation as that which had
been attained in the greater part of Europe a few
centuries ago, entertained not the slightest doubt
that Anu, Bel, Ea, Istar, and the rest, were real
personages, possessed of boundless powers for good
and evil. The sincerity of the monarchs whose
inscriptions gratefully attribute their victories to
Merodach, or to Assur, is as little to be questioned
as that of the authors of the hymns and peniten-
tial psalms which give full expression to the
heights and depths of religious devotion. An " in-
fidel " bold enough to deny the existence, or to
doubt the influence, of these deities probably did
not exist in all Mesopotamia; and even construc-
tive rebellion against their authority was apt to
end in the deprivation, not merely of the good
name, but of the skin of the offender. The adher-
ents of modern theological systems dismiss these
objects of the love and fear of a hundred genera-
tions of their equals, offhand, as " gods of the

vn HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 257

heathen/' mere creations of a wicked and idola-
trous imagination; and, along with them, they dis-
own, as senseless, the crude theology, with its gross
anthropomorphism and its low ethical conception
of the divinity, which satisfied the pious souls of
Chaldsea.

I imagine, though I do not presume to he sure,
that any endeavour to save the intellectual and
moral credit of Chalda^an religion, by suggesting
the application to it of that universal solvent of
absurdities, the allegorical method, would be
scouted; I will not even suggest that any inge-
nuity can be equal to the discovery of the antitypes
of the personifications effected by the religious im-
agination of later ages, in the triad Anu, Ea, and
Bel, still less in Istar. Therefore, unless some
plausible reconciliatory scheme should be pro-
pounded by a Neo-Chaldifian devotee (and, with
Neo-Buddhists to the fore, this supposition is not
so wild as it looks), I suppose the moderns will
continue to smile, in a superior way, at the griev-
ous absurdity of the polytheistic idolatry of these
ancient people.

It is probably a congenital absence of some

faculty which I ought to possess which withholds

me from adopting this summary procedure. But

I am not ashamed to share David Hume's want of

ability to discover that polytheism is, in itself,

altogether absurd. If we are bound, or permitted,

to judge the government of the world by human
106

258 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vii

standards, it appears to me that directorates are
proved, by familiar experience, to conduct the
largest and the most complicated concerns quite
as well as solitary despots. I have never been able
to see why the hypothesis of a divine syndicate
should be found guilty of innate absurdity. Those
Assyrians, in particular, who held Assur to be the
one supreme and creative deity, to whom all the
other supernal powers were subordinate, might
fairly ask that the essential difference between
their system and that which obtains among the
great majority of their modern theological critics
should be demonstrated. In my apprehension, it
is not the quantity, but the quality, of the persons,
among whom the attributes of divinity are distrib-
uted, which is the serious matter. If the divine
might is associated with no higher ethical attri-
butes than those which obtain among ordinary
men; if the divine intelligence is supposed to be
so imperfect that it cannot foresee the conse-
quences of its own contrivances; if the supernal
powers can become furiously angry with the crea-
tures of their omnipotence and, in their senseless
wrath, destroy the innocent along with the guilty;
or if they can show themselves to be as easily pla-
cated by presents and gross flattery as any oriental
or occidental despot; if, in short, they are only
stronger than mortal men and no better, as it must
be admitted Hasisadra's deities proved themselves
to be — then, surely, it is time for us to look some-

VII HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 259

what closely into their credentials, and to accept
none but conclusive evidence of their existence.

To the majority of my respected contempo-
raries this reasoning will doubtless appear feeble,
if not worse. However, to my mind, such are the
only arguments by which the Chalda^an theology
can be satisfactorily upset. So far from there be-
ing any ground for the belief that Ea, Anu, and
Bel are, or ever were, real entities, it seems to me
quite infinitely more probable that they are
products of the religious imagination, such as
are to be found everywhere and in all ages, so
long as that imagination riots uncontrolled by
scientific criticism.

It is on these grounds that I venture, at the
risk of being called an atheist by the ghosts of
all the principals of all the colleges of Babylonia,
or by their living successors among the Neo-
Chaldaeans, if that sect should arise, to express
my utter disbelief in the gods of Hasisadra.
Hence, it follows, that I find Hasisadra's account
of their share in his adventure incredible; and,
as the physical details of the flood are inseparable
from its theophanic accompaniments, and are
guaranteed by the same authority, I must let
them go with the rest. The consistency of such
details with probability counts for nothing. The
inhabitants of Chalda}a must always have been
familiar with inundations; probably no genera-
tion failed to witness an inundation which rose

260 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vii

unusually high, or was rendered serious by coin-
cident atmospheric or other disturbances. And
the memory of the general features of any
exceptionally severe and devastating flood, would
be preserved by popular tradition for long ages.
What, then, could be more natural than that a
ChaldaBan poet should seek for the incidents of
a great catastrophe among such phenomena? In
what other way than by such an appeal to their
experience could he so surely awaken in his
audience the tragic pity and terror? What
possible ground is there for insisting that he
must have had some individual flood in view,
and that his history is historical, in the sense
that the account of the effects of a hurricane in
the Bay of Bengal, in the year 1875, is his-
torical?

More than three centuries after the time of
Assurbanipal, Berosus of Babylon, born in the
reign of Alexander the Great, wrote an account
of the history of his country in Greek. The
work of Berosus has vanished; but extracts from
it — how far faithful is uncertain — ^have been pre-
served by later writers. Among these occurs the
well-known story of the Deluge of Xisuthros,
which is evidently built upon the same foundation
as that of Hasisadra. The incidents of the divine
warning, the building of the ship, the sending
out of birds, the ascension of the hero, betray

VII HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 2G1

their common origin. But stories, like Madeira,
acquire a heightened flavour with time and travel;
and the version of Berosus is characterised by
those circumstantial improbabilities which habitu-
ally gather round the legend of a legend. The
later narrator knows the exact day of the month
on which the flood began. The dimensions of
the ship are stated with Munchausenian precision
at five stadia by two — sa}^, half by one-fifth of
an English mile. The ship runs aground among
the " Gordaean mountains " to the south of Lake
Van, in Armenia, beyond the limits of any
imaginable real inundation of the Euphrates
valle}'; and, by way of climax, we have the
assertion, worthy of the sailor who said that he
had brought up one of Pharaoh's chariot wheels
on the fluke of his anchor in the Ked Sea, that
pilgrims visited the locality and made amulets of
the bitumen which they scraped oil: from the
still extant remains of the mighty ship of
Xisuthros.

Suppose that some later polyhistor, as devoid
of critical faculty as most of his tribe, had found
the version of Berosus, as well as another much
nearer the original story; that, having too much
respect for his authorities to make up a tertium
quid of his own, out of the materials offered, he
followed a practice, common enough among an-
cient and, particularly, among Semitic historians,
of dividing both into fragments and piecing these

262 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vn

together, without troubling himself very much
about the resulting repetitions and inconsistencies;
the product of such a primitive editorial operation
■would be a narrative analogous to that Avhich
treats of the Noachian deluge in the book of
Genesis. For the Pentateuchal story is indu-
bitably a patchwork, composed of fragments of at
least two different, and partly discrepant, narra-
tives, quilted together in such an inartistic fashion
that the seams remain conspicuous. And, in the
matter of circumstantial exaggeration, it in some
respects excels even the second-hand legend of
Berosus.

There is a certain practicality about the notion
of taking refuge from floods and storms in a ship
provided with a steersman; but, surely, no
one who had ever seen more water than he
could wade through would dream of facing even
a moderate breeze, in a huge three-storied coffer,
or box, three hundred cubits long, fifty wide and
thirty high, left to drift without rudder or pilot.*
Not content with giving the exact year of Noah's

* In the second volume of the Tlistory of the EupJirates
Expedition^ p. 637, Col. Chesney gives a very interesting
account of the simple and rapid manner in which the peo-
ple about Tekrit and in the marshes of Lemlum construct
large barges, and make them water-tight with bitumen.
Doubtless the practice is extremely ancient ; and as Colonel
Chesney suggests, may possibly have furnished the concep-
tion of Noah's ark. But it is one thing to build a barge
44ft. long by lift, wide and 4ft. deep in the way described ;
and another to get a vessel of ten times the dimensions, so
constructed, to hold together.

VII HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 263

age in which the flood began, the Pentateuchal
story adds the month and the day of the month.
It is the Deity himself who " shuts in " Noah.
The modest week assigned to the full deluge
in Hasisadra's story becomes forty days, in one
of the Pentateuchal accounts, and a hundred and
fifty in the other. The flood, which, in the
version of Berosus, has grown so high as to cast
the ship among the mountains of Armenia, is
improved upon in the Hebrew account until it
covers " all the high hills that were under the
whole heaven "; and, when it begins to subside,
the ark is left stranded on the summit of the
highest 2^t'ak, commonly identified with Ararat
itself.

While the details of Ilasisadra's adventure are,
at least, compatible with the physical conditions
of the Euphrates valley, and, as we have seen,
involve no catastrophe greater than such as might
be brought under those conditions, many of the
very precisely stated details of Noah's flood
contradict some of the best established results of
scientific inquiry.

If it is certain that the alluvium of the Meso-
potamian plain has been brought down by the
Tigris and the Euphrates, then it is no less
certain that the physical structure of the whole
valley has persisted, without material modifica-
tion, for many thousand years before the date
assigned to the flood. If the summits, even of

264: HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vn

the moderately elevated ridges which immediately
bound the valley, still more those of the Kurdish
and Armenian mountains, were ever covered by
water, for even forty days, that water must have
extended over the whole earth. If the earth was
thus covered, anywhere between 4000 and 5000
years ago, or, at any other time, since the higher
terrestrial animals came into existence, they must
have been destroyed from the whole face of it, as
the Pentateuchal account declares they were three
several times (Genesis vii. 21, 22, 23), in language
which cannot be made more emphatic, or more
solemn, than it is; and the present population
must consist of the descendants of emigrants from
the ark. And, if that is the case, then, as has often,
been pointed out, the sloths of the Brazilian
forests, the kangaroos of Australia, the great
tortoises of the Galapagos islands, must have
respectively hobbled, hopped, and crawled over
many thousand miles of land and sea from
" Ararat ^' to their present habitations. Thus, the
unquestionable facts of the geographical distribu-
tion of recent land animals, alone, form an
insuperable obstacle to the acceptance of the
assertion that the kinds of animals composing the
present terrestrial fauna have been, at any time,
universally destroyed in the way described in the
Pentateuch.

It is upon this and other unimpeachable
grounds, that, as I ventured to say some time ago,

VII HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 265

persons who are duly conversant with even the
elements of natural science decline to take the
ISToachian deluge seriously; and that, as I also
pointed out, candid theologians, who, without
special scientific knowledge, have appreciated the
weight of scientific arguments, have long since
given it up. But, as Goethe has remarked, there
is nothing more terrible than energetic igno-
rance; * and there are, even yet, very energetic
people, who are neither candid, nor clear-headed,
nor theologians, still less properly instructed in the
elements of natural science, who make prodigious
eft'orts to obscure the effect of these plain truths,
and to conceal their real surrender of the his-
torical character of Noah's deluge under cover of
the smoke of a great discharge of pseudoscientific
artillery. They seem to imagine that the proofs
which abound in all parts of the world, of large
oscillations of the relative level of land and sea,
combined with the probability that, when the
sea-level was rising, sudden incursions of the sea
like that which broke in over Holland and formed
the Zuyder Zee, may have often occurred, can be
made to look like evidence that something that,
by courtesy, might be called a general Deluge has
really taken place. Their discursive energy drags
misunderstood truth into their service; and " the
glacial epoch " is as sure to crop up among them

* *' Es ist nichts schrecklicher als eine thiitige Unwissen-
heit." Maximen unci Reflexionen, ill.

266 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vn

as King Charles's head in a famous memorial —
with about as much appropriateness. The old
story of the raised beach on Moel Tryfaen is
trotted out; though, even if the facts are as yet
rightly interpreted, there is not a shadow of
evidence that the change of sea-level in that
locality was sudden, or that glacial AVelshmen
would have known it was taking place.* Surely
it is difficult to perceive the relevancy of bringing
in something that happened in the glacial epoch
(if it did happen) to account for the tradition of a
flood in the Euphrates valley between 2000 and
3000 B. c. But the date of the Noachian flood is
solidly fixed by the sole authority for it; no
shuffling of the chronological data will carry it so
far back as 3000 b. c; and the Hebrew epos
agrees Avith the Chaldsean in placing it after the
development of a somewhat advanced civilisation.
The only authority for the Noachian deluge
assures us that, before it visited the earth, Cain
had built cities; Jubal had invented harps and
organs; while mankind had advanced so far
beyond the neolithic, nay even the bronze, stage
that Tubal-cain was a worker in iron. Therefore,
if the Noachian legend is to be taken for the
history of an event which happened in the glacial
epoch, we must revise our notions of pleistocene

* The well-known difiRciilties connected with this case
have recently been carefully discussed by Mr. Bell in the
Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow.

vn HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 267

civilisation. On the other hand, if the Penta-
teuchal story only means something quite dif-
ferent, that ha^Dpened somewhere else, thousands
of years earlier, dressed up, what becomes of its
credit as history? I wonder what would be said
to a modern historian who asserted that Pekin was
burnt down in 1886, and then tried to justify the
assertion by adducing evidence of the Great Fire
of London in 1666. Yet the attempt to save the
credit of the Noachian story by reference to some-
thing which is supposed to have happened in the
far north, in the glacial epoch, is far more pre-
posterous.

Moreover, these dust-raising dialecticians ig-
nore some of the most important and well-known
facts which bear upon the question. Anything
more than a parochial acquaintance with physical
geography and geology would suffice to remind its
possessor that the Holy Land itself offers a stand-
ing protest against bringing such a deluge as that
of Noah anywhere near it, either in historical
times or in the course of that pleistocene period,
of which the " great ice age " formed a part.

Judaea and Galilee, Moab and Gilead, occupy
part of that extensive tableland at the summit of
the western boundary of the Euphrates valley, to
which I have already referred. If that valley
had ever been filled with water to a height
sufficient, not indeed to cover a third of Ararat, in
the north, or half of some of the mountains of the

268 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vn

Persian frontier in the east, but to reach even
four or five thousand feet, it must have stood over
the Palestinian liog's back, and liave filled, up to
the brim, every depression on its surface. There-
fore it could not have failed to fill that remarkable
trench in which the Dead Sea, the Jordan, and
the Sea of Galilee lie, and which is known as the
" Jordan- Arabah " valley.

This long and deep hollow extends more than
200 miles, from near the site of ancient Dan in
the north, to the water-parting at the head of the
Wady Arabah in the south; and its deepest part,
at the bottom of the basin of the Dead Sea, lies
2500 feet below the surface of the adjacent
Mediterranean. The lowest portion of the rim of
the Jordan-Arabah valley is situated at the village
of El Fuleh, 257 feet above the Mediterranean.
Everywhere else the circumjacent heights rise to
a very much greater altitude. Hence, of the water
which stood over the Syrian tableland, when
as much drained off as could run away, enough
would remain to form a " Mere " without an out-
let 2757 feet deep, over the present site of the
Dead Sea. From this time forth, the level of the
Palestinian mere could be lowered only by evap-
oration. It is an extremely interesting fact,
which has happily escaped capture for the pur-
poses of the energetic misunderstanding, that the
valley, at one time, was filled, certainly within
150 feet of this height — probably higher. And it

VII HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 269

is almost equally certain, that the time at which
this great Jordan-Arabah mere reached its
highest level coincides with the glacial epoch.
But then the evidence which goes to prove this,
also leads to the conclusion that this state of things
obtained at a period considerably older than
even 4000 b. c, when the world, according to the
" Helps " (or shall we say " Hindrances '') pro-
vided for the simple student of the Bible, was
created; that it was not brought about by any
diluvial catastrophe, but was the result of a change
in the relative activities of certain natural opera-
tions which are quietly going on now; and that,
since the level of the mere began to sink, many
thousand years ago, no serious catastrophe of any
description has aifected the valley.

The evidence that the Jordan-Arabah valley
really was once filled with water, the surface of
which reached within 160 feet of the level of the
pass of Jezrael, and possibly stood higher, is this:
Remains of alluvial strata, containing shells of
the freshwater mollusks which still inhabit the
valley, worn down into terraces by waves which
long rippled at the same level, and furrowed by
the channels excavated by modern rainfalls, have
been found at the former height; and they are
repeated, at intervals, lower down, until the Ghor,
or plain of the Jordan, itself an alluvial deposit,
is reached. These strata attain a considerable
thickness; and they indicate that the epoch at

270 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vii

which the freshwater mere of Palestine reached
its highest level is extremely remote; that its
diminution has taken place very slowly, and with
periods of rest, during which the first formed
deposits were cut down into terraces. This con-
clusion is strikingly borne out by other facts. A
volcanic region stretches from Galilee to Gilead
and the Hauran, on each side of the northern end
of the valley. Some of the streams of basaltic
lava which have been thrown out from its craters
and clefts in times of which history has no record
have run athwart the course of the Jordan itself,
or of that of some of its tributary streams. The
lava streams, therefore, must be of later date than
the depressions they fill. And yet, where they
have thus temporarily dammed the Jordan and
the Jermuk, these streams have had time to cut
through the hard basalts and lay bare the beds,
over which, before the lava streams invaded them,
they flowed.

In fact, the antiquity of the present Jordan-
Arabah valley, as a hollow in a tableland, out of
reach of the sea, and troubled by no diluvial or
other disturbances, beyond the volcanic eruptions
of Gilead and of Galilee, is vast, even as estimated
by a geological standard. No marine deposits
of later than miocene age occur in or about it;
and there is every reason to believe that the Syro-
Arabian plateau has been dry land, throughout
the pliocene and later epochs, down to the present

vu HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 271

time. Eaised beaches, containing recent shells,
on the Levantine shores of the Mediterranean and
on those of the Eed Sea, testify to a geologically
recent change of the sea level to the extent of 250
or 300 feet, probably produced by the slow eleva-
tion of the land; and, as I have already remarked,
the alluvial plain of the Euphrates and Tigris
appears to have been affected in the same way,
though seemingly to a less extent. But of violent,
or catastrophic, change there is no trace. Even
the volcanic outbursts have flowed in even sheets
over the old land surface; and the long lines
of the horizontal terraces which remain, testify
to the geological insignificance of such earthquakes
as have taken place. It is, indeed, possible that the
original formation of the valley may have been de-
termined by the well-known fault, along which the
western rocks are relatively depressed and the east-
ern elevated. But, whether that fault was effected
slowly or c^uickly, and whenever it came into ex-
istence, the excavation of the valley to its present
width, no less than the sculpturing of its steep
walls and of the innumerable deep ravines which
score them down to the very bottom, are indubi-
tably due to the operation of rain and streams,
during an enormous length of time, without
interruption or disturbance of any magnitude.
The alluvial deposits which have been mentioned
are continued into the lateral ravines, and have
more or less filled them. But, since the waters

272 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vii

have been lowered, tliese deposits have been ciit
down to great depths, and are still being excavated
by the present tenaporary, or permanent, streams.
Hence, it follows, that all these ravines must
have existed before the time at which the valley
was occupied by the great mere. This fact acquires
a peculiar importance when we proceed to con-
sider the grounds for the conclusion that the old
Palestinian mere attained its highest level in the
cold period of the pleistocene epoch. It is well
known that glaciers formerly came low down on
the flanks of Lebanon and Antilebanon; indeed,
the old moraines are the haunts of the few sur-
vivors of the famous cedars. This implies a peren-
nial snowcap of great extent on Hermon; there-
fore, a vastly greater supply of water to the sources
of the Jordan which rise on its flanks; and, in
addition, such a total change in the general cli-
mate, that the innumerable Wadys, now traversed
only by occasional storm torrents, must have been
occupied by perennial streams. All this involves
a lower annual temperature and a moist and rainy
atmosphere. If such a change of meteorological
conditions could be effected now, when the loss
by evaporation from the surface of the Dead Sea
salt-pan balances all the gain from the Jordan
and other streams, the scale would be turned in
the other direction. The waters of the Dead Sea
would become diluted; its level would rise; it
would cover, first the plain of the Jordan, then the

vn HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 273

lake of Galilee, then the middle Jordan between
this lake and that of Huleh (the ancient Merom);
and, finally, it would encroach, northwards, along
the course of the upper Jordan, and, southwards,
up the Wady Arabah, until it reached some 260
feet above the level of the Mediterranean, when
it would attain a permanent level, by sending any
superfluity througli the pass of Jezrael to swell
the waters of the Kishon, and flow thence into
the Mediterranean.

Reverse the process, in consequence of the ex-
cess of loss by evaporation over gain by inflow,
which must have set in as the climate of Syria
changed after the end of the pleistocene epoch,
and (without taking into consideration any other
circumstances) the present state of things must
eventually be reached — a concentrated saline solu-
tion in the deepest part of the valley — water,
rather more charged with saline matter than ordi-
nary fresh water, in the lower Jordan and the lake
of Galilee — fresh waters, still largely derived from
the snows of Hermon, in the upper Jordan and in
Lake Huleh. But, if the full state of the Jordan
valley marks the glacial epoch, then it follows that
the excavation of that valley by atmospheric agen-
cies must have occupied an immense antecedent
time — a large part, perhaps the whole, of the plio-
cene epoch; and we are thus forced to the conclu-
sion that, since the miocene epoch, the physical

conformation of the Holy Land has been substan-
107

274 HASISADHA'S ADVENTUKB vii

tially what it is now. It has been more or less
rained upon, searched by earthquakes here and
there, partially overllowed by lava streams, slowly
raised (relatively to the sea-level) a few hundred
feet. But there is not a shadow of ground for sup-
posing that, throughout all this time, terrestrial
animals have ceased to inhabit a large part of its
surface; or that, in many parts, they have been, in
any respect, incommoded by the changes which
have taken i^lace.

The evidence of the general stability of the
physical conditions of Western Asia, which is
furnished by Palestine and by the Euphrates
valley, is only fortified if we extend our view
northwards to the Black Sea and the Caspian.
The Caspian is a sort of magnified replica of the
Dead Sea. The bottom of the deepest part of
this vast inland mere is about 3000 feet below the
level of the Mediterranean, while its surface is
lower by 85 feet. At present, it is separated, on the
west, by wide spaces of dry land from the Black
Sea, which has the same height as the Mediter-
ranean; and, on the east, from the Aral, 138 feet
above that level. The waters of the Black Sea,
now in communication with the Mediterranean by
the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, are salt, but
become brackish northwards, where the rivers of
the steppes pour in a great volume of fresh water.
Those of the shallower northern half of the Cas-
pian are similarly affected by the Volga and the

VII HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 275

Ural, while, in the shallow bays of the southern
division, they become extremely saline in con-
sequence of the intense evaporation. The Aral
Sea, though supplied by the Jaxartes and the
Oxus, has brackish water. There is evidence that,
in the pliocene and pleistocene periods, to go no
farther back, the strait of the Dardanelles did
not exist, and that the vast area, from the valley
of the Danube to that of the Jaxartes, was
covered by brackish or, in some parts, fresh water
to a height of at least 200 feet above the level
of the Mediterranean. At the present time, the
water-parting which separates the northern part
of the basin of the Caspian from the vast plains
traversed by the Tobol and the Obi, in their
course to the Arctic Ocean, appears to be less than
200 feet above the latter. It would seem, there-
fore, to be very probable that, under the climatal
conditions of part of the pleistocene period, the
valley of the Obi played the same part in relation
to the Ponto-Aralian sea, as that of the Kishon
may have done to the great mere of the Jordan
valley; and that the outflow formed the channel
by which the well-known Arctic elements of the
fauna of the Caspian entered it. For the fossil
remains imbedded in the strata continuously
deposited in the Aralo-Caspian area, since the
latter end of the miocene epoch, show no sign
that, from that time onward, it has ever been
covered by sea water. Therefore, the supposition

276 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vn

of a free inflow of the Arctic Ocean, which at one
time w^as generally received, as well as that of
various hypothetical deluges from that quarter,
must be seriously questioned.

The Caspian and the Aral stand in somewhat
the same relation to the vast basin of dry land in
which they lie, as the Dead Sea and the lake of
Galilee to the Jordan valley. They are the re-
mains of a vast, mostly brackish, mere, which
has dried up in consequence of the excess of
evaporation over supply, since the cold and damp
climate of the pleistocene epoch gave place to the
increasing dryness and great summer heats of
Central Asia in more modern times. The
desiccation of the Aralo-Caspian basin, which
communicated with the Black Sea only by a com-
paratively narrow and shallow strait along the
present valley of Manytsch, the bottom of which
was less than 100 feet above the Mediterranean,
must have been vastly aided by the erosion of the
strait of the Dardanelles towards the end of the
pleistocene epoch, or perhaps later. For the
result of thus opening a passage for the waters of
the Black Sea into the Mediterranean must have
been the gradual low^ering of its level to that of
the latter sea. When this process had gone so
far as to bring down the Black Sea water to
within less than a hundred feet of its present
level, the strait of Manytsch ceased to exist; and
the vast body of fresh water brought dowm by the

vn HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 277

Danube, the Dnie^oer, the Don, and other South
Eussian rivers was cut off from the Caspian, and
eventually delivered into the Mediterranean.
Thus, there is as conclusive evidence as one can
well hope to obtain in these matters, that, north
of the Euphrates valley, the physical geography
of an area as large as all Central Europe has
remained essentially unchanged, from the miocene
period down to our time; just as, to the west of
the Euphrates valley, Palestine has exhibited a
similar persistence of geographical type. To the
south, the valley of the Nile tells exactly the
same story. The holes bored by miocene mol-
lusks in the cliffs east and west of Cairo bear
witness that, in the miocene epoch, it contained
an arm of the sea, the bottom of which has since
been gradually filled up by the alluvium of the
Nile, and elevated to its present position. But
the higher parts of the Mokattam and of the
desert about Ghizeh, have been dry land from
that time to this. Too little is known of the
geology of Persia, at present, to allow any positive
conclusion to be enunciated. But, taking the
name to indicate the whole continental mass of
Iran, between the valleys of the Indus and the
Euphrates, the supposition that its physical geog-
raphy has remained unchanged for an immensely
long period is hardly rash. The country is, in
fact, an enormous basin, surrounded on all sides
by a mountainous rim, and subdivided within by

278 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vu

ridges into plateaus and hollows, the bottom of
the deepest of which, in the province of Seistan,
probably descends to the level of the Indian
Ocean. These depressions are occupied by salt
marshes and deserts, in which the waters of the
streams which flow down the sides of the basin
are now dissipated by evaporation. I am ac-
quainted with no evidence that the present
Iranian basin was ever occupied by the sea; but
the accumulations of gravel over a great extent
of its surface indicate long-continued water action.
It is, therefore, a fair presumption that large lakes
have covered much of its present deserts, and that
they have dried up by the operation of the same
changed climatal conditions as those which have
reduced the Caspian and the Dead Sea to their
present dimensions.*

Thus it would seem that the Euphrates valley,
the centre of the fabled Noachian deluge, is also
the centre of a region covering some millions of
square miles of the present continents of Europe,
Asia, and Africa, in which all the facts, relevant
to the argument, at present known, converge to
the conclusion that, since the miocene epoch, the
essential features of its physical geography have
remained unchanged; that it has neither been
depressed below the sea, nor swept by diluvial

* An instructive parallel is exhibited by the " Great
Basin " of North America. See the remarkable memoir on
Lake BonneviUe by Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of the United States
Geological Survey, just published.

vn HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 279

waters since that time; and tliat the Chaldsean
version of the legend of a flood in the Euphrates
valley is, of all those which are extant, the only
one which is even consistent with probability,
since it depicts a local inundation, not more severe
than one which might be brought about by a
concurrence of favourable conditions at the
present day; and which might probably have been
more easily effected when the Persian Gulf
extended farther north. Hence, the recourse to
the " glacial epoch " for some event which might
colourably represent a flood, distinctly asserted
by the only authority for it to have occurred in
historical times, is peculiarly unfortunate. Even
a Welsh antiquary might hesitate over the
supposition that a tradition of the fate of Mod
Tryfaen, in the glacial epoch, had furnished the
basis of fact for a legend which arose among
people whose own experience abundantly supplied
them with the needful precedents. Moreover, if
evidence of interchanges of land and sea are to be
accepted as " confirmations " of Noah^s deluge,
there are plenty of sources for the tradition to
be had much nearer than Wales,

The depression now filled by the Red Sea, for
example, appears to be, geologically, of very
recent origin. The later deposits found on its
shores, two or three hundred feet above the sea
level, contain no remains older than those of the
present fauna; while, as I have already mentioned.

280 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vii

the valley of the adjacent delta of the Nile was a
gulf of the sea in niiocene times. But there is
not a particle of evidence that the change of
relative level which admitted the waters of the
Indian Ocean between Arabia and Africa, took
place any faster than that which is now going on
in Greenland and Scandinavia, and which has left
their inhabitants undisturbed. Even more re-
markable changes were effected, towards the end
of, or since, the glacial epoch, over the region now
occupied by the Levantine Mediterranean and the
^Egean Sea. The eastern coast region of Asia
Minor, the western of Greece, and many of the
intermediate islands, exhibit thick masses of
stratified deposits of later tertiary age and of
purely lacustrine characters; and it is remarkable
that, on the south side of the island of Crete,
such masses present steep cliffs facing the sea, so
that the southern boundary of the lake in which
they were formed must have been situated where
the sea now flows. Indeed, there are valid
reasons for the supposition that the dry land once
extended far to the west of the present Levantine
coast, and not improbably forced the Nile to seek
an outlet to the north-east of its present delta — a
possibility of no small importance in relation to
certain puzzling facts in the geographical distri-
bution of animals in this region. At any rate,
continuous land joined Asia Minor with the
Balkan peninsula; and its surface bore deep fresh-

ra HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 281

water lakes, apparently disconnected with the
Ponto-Aralian sea. This state of things lasted
long enough to allow of the formation of the
thick lacustrine strata to which I have referred.
I am not aware that there is the smallest ground
for the assumption that the ^gean land was
broken up in consequence of any of the " catas-
trophes " which are so commonly invoked.* For
anything that appears to the contrary, the narrow,
steep-sided, straits between the islands of the
^gean archipelago may have been originally
brought about by ordinary atmospheric and stream
action; and may then have been filled from the
Mediterranean, during a slow submergence pro-
ceeding from the south northwards. The strait of
the Dardanelles is bounded by undisturbed pleisto-
cene strata forty feet thick, through which, to all
appearance, the present passage has been quietly
cut.

That Olympus and Ossa were torn asunder
and the waters of the Thessalian basin poured
forth, is a very ancient notion, and an often cited
" confirmation " of Deucalion's flood. It has not
yet ceased to be in vogue, apparently because
those who entertain it are not aware that modern
geological investigation has conclusively proved
that the gorge of the Peneus is as typical an

* It is true that earthquakes are common enough, but
they are incompetent to produce such changes as those
which have taken place.

2S2 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vii

example of a valley of erosion as any to be seen
in Auvergne or in Colorado.*

Thus, in the immediate vicinity of the vast
expanse of country which can be proved to have
been untouched by any catastrophe before, during,
and since the "glacial epoch,'' lie the great areas
of the ^Egean and the Bed Sea, in which, during
or since the glacial epoch, changes of the relative
positions of land and sea have taken place, in
comparison with which the submergence of Moel
Tryfaen, with all Wales and Scotland to boot,
does not come to much.

What, then, is the relevancy of talk about the
"glacial epoch" to the question of the historical
veracity of the narrator of the story of the
Noachian deluge? So far as my knowledge goes,
there is not a particle of evidence that destructive
inundations were more common, over the general
surface of the earth, in the glacial epoch than
they have been before or since. No doubt the
fringe of an ice-covered region must be always
liable to them; but, if we examine the records
of such catastrophes in historical times, those
produced in the deltas of great rivers, or in
lowlands like Holland, by sudden floods, combined
with gales of wind or with unusual tides, far excel
all others.

* See Teller, Geologische Beschreibung des sud-osf lichen
TJiesmlien : Denkschriften d. Akademic der Wissenschaf-
ten, Wieii, Bd. xl. p. 19y.

VII HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 283

With respect to such inundations as are the
consequences of earthquakes, and other slight
movements of the crust of the earth, I have
never heard of anything to show that they were
more frequent and severer in the quaternary or
tertiary epochs than they are now. In the
discussion of these, as of all other geological
problems, the appeal to needless catastrophes is
born of that impatience of the slow and painful
search after sufficient causes, in the ordinary
course of nature, which is a temptation to
all, though only energetic ignorance nowadays
completely succumbs to it.

POSTSCRIPT.

My best thanks are due to Mr. Gladstone for his cour-
teous withdrawal of one of the statements to which I have
thought it needful to take exception. The familiarity with
controversy, to which Mr. Gladstone alludes, will have ac-
customed him to the misadventures which arise when, as
sometimes will happen in the heat of fence, the buttons
come off the foils. I trust that any scratch which he may
have received will heal as quickly as my own flesh wounds
have done.

A contribution to the last number of this Review {TJie
Nineteenth Century) of a different order would be left un-
noticed, were it not that my silence would convert me into
an accessory to misrepresentations of a very grave char-
acter. However, I shall restrict myself to the barest possi-
ble statement of facts, leaving my readers to draw their own
conclusions.

In an article entitled " A Great Lesson," published in
this Review for September, 1887:

284 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vii

(1) The Duke of Argyll says the " overthrow of Darwin's
speculations " (p. 301) concerning the origin of coral reefs,
which he fancied had taken place, had been received by
men of science " with a grudging silence as far as public
discussion is concerned " (p. 301).

The truth is that, as every one acquainted with the lit-
erature of the subject was well aware, the views supposed
to have effected this overthrow had been fully and publicly
discussed by Dana in the United States ; by Geikie, Green,
and Prestwich in this country ; by Lapparent in France ;
and by Credner in Germany. •

(2) The Duke of Argyll says " that no serious reply has
ever been attempted " (p. 305).

The truth is that the highest living authority on the
subject, Professor Dana, published a most weighty reply,
two years before the Duke of Argyll committed himself to
this statement.

(3) The Duke of Argyll uses the preceding products of
defective knowledge, multiplied by excessive imagination,
to illustrate the manner in which " certain accepted opin-
ions " established " a sort of Reign of Terror in their own
behalf " (p. 307).

The truth is that no plea, except that of total ignorance
of the literature of the subject, can excuse the errors cited,
and that the " Reign of Terror " is a purely subjective phe-
nomenon.

(4) The letter in " Nature " for the 17th of November,
1887, to which I am referred, contains neither substantia-
tion, nor retraction, of statements 1 and 2. Nevertheless,
it repeats number 3. The Duke of Argyll says of his arti-
cle that it "has done what 1 intended it to do. It has
called wide attention to the influence of mere authority in
establishing erroneous theories and in retarding the progress
of scientific truth."

(5) The Duke of Argyll illustrates the influence of his
fictitious "Reign of Terror" by the statement that Mr.

VII HASISADRA'S ADVENTUEE 285

John Murray "was strongly advised against the publica-
tion of his views in derogation of Darwin's long-accepted
theory of the coral islands, and was actually induced to
delay it for two years " (p. 307). And in " Nature " for the
17th November, 1887, the Duke of Argyll states that he has
seen a letter from Sir Wyville Thomson in which he " urged
and almost insisted that Mr. Murray should withdraw the
reading of his papers on the subject from the Royal Society
of Edinburgh. This was in February, 1877." The next
paragraph, however, contains the confession : " No special
reason was assigned." The Duke of Argyll proceeds to give
a speculative opinion that '" Sir Wyville dreaded some in-
jury to the scientific reputation of the body of which he
was the chief." Truly, a very probable supposition ; but as
Sir Wyville Thomson's tendencies were notoriously anti-
Darwinian, it does not appear to me to lend the slightest
justification to the Duke of Argyll's insinuation that the
Darwinian "terror" influenced him. However, the ques-
tion was finally set at rest by a letter which appeared in
"Nature" (39th of December, 1887), in which the writer
says that :

talking with Sir Wyville about " Murray's new theory," I
asked what objection he had to its being brought before
the public ? The answer simply was : he considered that
the grounds of the theory had not, as yet, been sufficiently
investigated or sufficiently corroborated, and that therefore
any immature, dogmatic publication of it would do less than
little service either to science or to the author of the paper.

Sir Wyville Thomson was an intimate friend of mine,
and I am glad to have been afforded one more opportunity
of clearing his character from the aspersions which have
been so recklessly cast upon his good sense and his scien-
tific honour.

(6) As to the " overthrow " of Darwin's theory, which,
according to the Duke of -Argyll, was patent to every un-
prejudiced person four years ago, I have recently becomo

286 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vii

acquainted with a work, in which a really competent au-
thority * thoroughly acquainted with all the new lights
which have been thrown upon the subject during the last
ten years, pronounces the judgment; firstly, that some of
the facts brought forward by Messrs. Murray and Guppy
against Darwin's theory are not facts ; secondly, that the
others are reconcilable with Darwin's theory ; and, thirdly,
that the theories of Messrs. Murray and Guppy " are con-
tradicted by a series of important facts " (p. 18).

Perhaps I had better draw attention to the circumstance
that Dr. Langenbeck writes under shelter of the guns of
the fortress of Strasburg ; and may therefore be presumed
to be unaffected by those dreams of a " Reign of Terror "
which seem to disturb the peace of some of us in these
islands (April, 1891).

[See, on the subject of this note, the essay entitled "An
Episcopal Trilogy " in the following volume.]

* Dr. Langenbeck, Bie Theorien ilber die Entstehung
der Korallen-Inseln und Korallen-Rijfe (p. 13), 1890.

VIII

THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY: AN
ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY

[1886]

I coxcEiVE that the origin, the growth, the
decline, and the fall of those speculations re-
specting the existence, the powers, and the
dispositions of beings analogous to men, but
more or less devoid of corporeal qualities, which
may be broadly included under the head of
theology, are phenomena the study of which
legitimately falls within the province of the
anthropologist. And it is purely as a question
of anthropology (a department of biology to which,
at various times, I have given a good deal of
attention) that I propose to treat of the evolution
of theology in the following pages.

With theology as a code of dogmas which are
to be believed, or at any rate repeated, under
penalty of present or future punishment, or as a
storehouse of anaesthetics for those who find the
pains of life too hard to bear, I have nothing to

287

288 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

do; and, so far as it may be possible, I shall
avoid the expression of any opinion as to the
objective truth or falsehood of the systems of
theological speculation of which I may find
occasion to speak. From my present point of
view, theology is regarded as a natural product
of the operations of the human mind, under the
conditions of its existence, just as any other branch
of science, or the arts of architecture, or music,
or painting are such products. Like them,
theology has a history. Like them also, it is
to be met with in certain simple and rudimentary
forms; and these can be connected by a multitude
of gradations, which exist or have existed, among
people of various ages and races, with the most
highly developed theologies of past and present
times. It is not my object to interfere, even
in the slightest degree, with beliefs which
anybody holds sacred; or to alter the conviction
of any one who is of opinion that, in dealing
with theology, we ought to be guided by con-
siderations different from those which would be
thought appropriate if the problem lay in the
province of chemistry or of mineralogy. And if
l^eople of these ways of thinking choose to read
beyond the present paragraph, the responsibility
for meeting with anything they may dislike rests
with them and not with me.

We are all likely to be more familiar with the

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 289

tlieological history of the Israelites than with
that of any other nation. We may therefore fitly
make it the first object of our studies; and it
will be convenient to commence with that period
which lies between the invasion of Canaan and the
early days of the monarchy, and answers to the
eleventh and twelfth centuries B. c. or there-
abouts. The evidence on which any conclusion
as to the nature of Israelitic theology in those
days must be based is wholly contained in the
Hebrew Scriptures — an agglomeration of docu-
ments which certainly belong to very different
ages, but of the exact dates and authorship of
any one of which (except perhaps a few of the
prophetical writings) there is no evidence, either
internal or external, so far as I can discover, of
■ such a nature as to justify more than a con-
fession of ignorance, or, at most, an approxi-
mate conclusion. In this venerable record of
ancient life, miscalled a book, when it is really
a library comparable to a selection of works
from English literature between the times of
Beda and those of Milton, we have the stratified
deposits (often confused and even with their
natural order inverted) left by the stream of the
intellectual and moral life of Israel during many
centuries. And, embedded in these strata, there
are numerous remains of forms of thought which
once lived, and which, though often unfortunately

mere fragments, are of priceless value to the
108

290 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

anthropologist. Our task is to rescue these from
their relatively unimportant surroundings, and by
careful comparison with existing forms of theology
to make the dead world which they record live
again. In other words, our problem is palseon-
tological, and the method pursued must be the
same as that employed in dealing with other
fossil remains.

Among the richest of the fossiliferous strata
to which I have alluded are the books of Judges
and Samuel.* It has often been observed that
these writings stand out, in marked relief from
those which precede and follow them, in virtue
of a certain archaic freshness and of a greater
freedom from traces of late interpolation and
editorial trimming. Jephthah, Gideon and
Samson are men of old heroic stamp, who
would look as much in place in a Norse Saga
as where they are, and if the varnish-brush of
later respectability has passed over these memoirs
of the mighty men of a wild age, here and there,
it has not succeeded in effacing, or even in seri-

* Even the most sturdy believers in the popular theory
that the proper or titular names attached to the books of
the Bible are those of their authors will hardly be prepared
to maintain that Jephthah, Gideon, and their colleagues
wrote the book of Judges. Nor is it easily admissible that
Samuel wrote the two books which pass under his name,
one of which deals entirely with events which took place
after his death. In fact, no one knows who wrote either
Judges or Samuel, nor when, within the range of 100 years,
their present form was given to these books.

vni THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 291

ously obscuring, the essential characteristics of
the theology traditionally ascribed to their epoch.

There is nothing that I have met with in the
results of Biblical criticism inconsistent with the
conviction that these books give us a fairly
trustworthy account of Israelitic life and thought
in the times which they cover; and, as such,
apart from the great literary merit of many of
their episodes, they possess the interest of being,
perhaps, the oldest genuine history, as apart
from mere chronicles on the one hand and
mere legends on the other, at present accessible
to us.

But it is often said with exultation by writers
of one party, and often admitted, more or less
unwillingly, by their opponents, that these books
are untrustworthy, by reason of being full of
obviously unhistoric tales. , And, as a notable
example, the narrative of SauFs visit to the
so-called " witch of Endor " is often cited. As
I have already intimated, I have nothing to do
with theological partisanship, either heterodox or
orthodox, nor, for my present purpose, does it
matter very much whether the story is historically
true, or whether it merely shows what the writer
believed; but, looking at the matter solely from
the point of view of an anthropologist, I beg leave
to express the opinion that the account of Saul's
necromantic expedition is quite consistent with
probability. That is to say, I see no reason

292 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

whatever to doubt, firstly, that Saul made such
a visit; and, secondly, that he and all who were
present, including the wise woman of Endor
herself, would have given, with entire sincerity,
very much the same account of the business
as that which we now read in the twenty-eighth
chapter of the first book of Samuel; and I am
further of opinion that this story is one of the
most important of those fossils, to which I have
referred, in the material which it offers for the
reconstruction of the theology of the time. Let
us therefore study it attentively — not merely
as a narrative which, in the dramatic force of its
gruesome simplicity, is not surpassed, if it is
equalled, by the witch scenes in Macbeth — but as
a piece of evidence bearing on an important
anthropological problem.

We are told (1 Sam. xxviii.) that Saul, en-
camped at Gilboa, became alarmed by the strength
of the Philistine army gathered at Shunem. He
therefore " inquired of Jahveh," but " Jahveh
answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by
Urim, nor by prophets." * Thus deserted by
Jahveh, Saul, in his extremity, bethought him of
" those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards,''
whom he is said, at some previous time, to have
" put out of the land " ; but who seem, neverthe-
less, to "have been very imperfectly banished, since

* My citations are taken from the Eevised Version, but
for Lord and God 1 have substituted Jahveh and Elohim.

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 293

Saul's servants, in answer to his command to seek
him a woman " that hath a familiar spirit/' reply
without a sign of hesitation or of fear, " Behold,
there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at
Endor"; just as, in some parts of England, a
countryman might tell any one who did not look
like a magistrate or a policeman, where a " wise
woman " was to be met with. Saul goes to this
woman, who, after being assured of immunity,
asks, " Whom shall I bring up to thee " ? where-
upon Saul says, " Bring me up Samuel." The
woman immediately sees an apparition. But to
Saul nothing is visible, for he asks, " What seest
thou?" And the woman replies, "I see Elohim
coming up out of the earth." Still the spectre
remains invisible to Saul, for he asks, " What
form is he of ? " And she replies, " An old man
cometh up, and he is covered with a robe." So
far, therefore, the wise woman unquestionably
plays the part of a " medium," and Saul is de-
pendent upon her version of what happens.
The account continues : —

And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he bowed
with his face to the ground and did obeisance. And
Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me to bring
me up? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed: for
the Philistines make war against me, and Elohim is de-
parted from me and answereth me no more, neither by
prophets nor by dreams; therefore I have called thee that
thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do. And
Samuel said, Wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing

294 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

that Jahveh is departed from thee and is become thine ad-
versary"? And Jahveh hath wrought for himself as he
spake by me, and Jahveh hath rent the kingdom out of
thine hand and given it to thine neighbour, even to David.
Because thou obeyedst not the voice of David and didst not
execute his fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore hath Jahveh
done this thing unto thee this day. Moreover, Jahveh will
deliver Israel also with thee into the hands of the Philis-
tines ; and to-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me :
Jahveh shall deliver the host of Israel also into the hand of
the Philistines. Then Saul fell straightway his full length
upon the earth and was sore afraid because of the words of
Samuel . . . (v, 14-20).

The statement that Saul " perceived '' that it
was Samuel is not to be taken to imply that, even
now, Saul actually saw the shade of the prophet,
but only that the woman's allusion to the pro-
phetic mantle and to the aged appearance of
the spectre convinced him that it was Samuel.
Eeuss * in fact translates the passage " Alors Saul
reconnut que c'etait Samuel." ISTor does the
dialogue between Saul and Samuel necessarily, or
probably, signify that Samuel spoke otherwise
than by the voice of the wise woman. The Sept-
uagint does not hesitate to call her iyyaoTpL/xvOo^
that is to say, a ventriloquist, implying that it

* I need hardly say that I depend upon authoritative
Biblical critics, whenever a question of interpretation of the
text arises. As Reuss appears to me to be one of the most
learned, acute, and fair-minded of those whose works I have
studied, I have made most use of the commentary and dis-
sertations in his splendid French edition of the Bible. But
1 have also liad recourse to the works of Dillman. Kalisch,
Kuenen, Thenius, Tuch, and others, in cases in which an-
other opinion seemed desirable.

VIII THE EVOIiUTION OF THEOLOGY 295

was she who spoke — and this view of the matter
is in harmony with the fact that the exact sense
of the Hebrew words which are translated as " a
woman that hath a familiar spirit ^' is " a woman
mistress of 0&." Ob means primitively a leather
bottle, such as a wine skin, and is applied alike to
the necromancer and to the spirit evoked. Its
use, in these senses, appears to have been sug-
gested by the likeness of the hollow sound
emitted by a half-empty skin when struck, to
the sepulchral tones in which the oracles of the
evoked spirits were uttered by the medium. It
is most probable that, in accordance with the
general theory of spiritual influences which ob-
tained among the old Israelites, the spirit of
Samuel was conceived to pass into the body of
the wise woman, and to use her vocal organs to
speak in his own name — for I cannot discover that
they drew any clear distinction between possession
and inspiration.*

If the stor}^ of Saul's consultation of the occult
powers is to be regarded as an authentic narrative,
or, at any rate, as a statement which is perfectly
veracious so far as the intention of the narrator
goes — and, as I have said, I see no reason for re-
fusing it this character — it will be found, on
further consideration, to throw a flood of light,
both directly and indirectly, on the theology of

* See " Divination," by Hazoral, Journal of Anthrojmlogy^
Bombay, vol. i. No. 1.

296 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

Saul's countrymen — that is to say, upon their
beliefs respecting the nature and ways of spiritual
beings.

Even without the confirmation of other abun-
dant evidences to the same effect, it leaves no
doubt as to the existence, among them/ of the fun-
damental doctrine that man consists of a body and
of a spirit, which last, after the death of the body,
continues to exist as a ghost. At the time of
Saul's visit to Endor, Samuel was dead and
buried; but that his spirit would be believed to
continue to exist in Sheol may be concluded from
the well-known passage in the song attributed to
Hannah, his mother: —

Jahveh killeth and maketh alive ;

He bringeth down WSheol and bringeth up.

(1 Sam. ii. 6.)

And it is obvious that this Sheol was thought to
be a place underground in which Samuel's spirit
had been disturbed by the necromancer's summons,
and in which, after his return thither, he would
be joined by the spirits of Saul and his sons when
they had met with their bodily death on the hill
of Gilboa. It is further to be observed that the
spirit, or ghost, of the dead man presents itself as
the image of the man himself — it is the man, not
merely in his ordinary corporeal presentment (even
down to the prophet's mantle) but in his moral
and intellectual characteristics. Samuel, who had
begun as Saul's friend and ended as his bitter ene-

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 297

my, gives it to be understood that he is annoyed at
Saul's presumption in disturbing him ; and that, in
Sheol, he is as much the devoted servant of Jahveh
and as much empowered to speak in Jahveh's name
as he was during his sojourn in the upper air.

It appears now to be universally admitted that,
before the exile, the Israelites had no belief in
rewards and punishments after death, nor in any-
thing similar to the Christian heaven and hell;
but our story proves that it would be an error
to suppose that they did not believe in the
continuance of individual existence after death
by a ghostly simulacrum of life. Nay, I think it
would be very hard to produce conclusive evidence
that they disbelieved in immortality; for I am
not aware that there is anything to show that they
thought the existence of the souls of the dead in
Sheol ever came to an end. But they do not
seem to have conceived that the condition of the
souls in Sheol was in any way affected by
their conduct in life. If there was immortality,
there was no state of retribution in their theology.
Samuel expects Saul and his sons to come to him
in Sheol.

The next circumstance to be remarked is that
the name of Elohim is applied to the spirit which
the woman sees " coming up out of the earth,"
that is to say, from Sheol. The Authorised Ver-
sion translates this in its literal sense "gods." The
Revised Version gives " god " with " gods " in the

298 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY vm

5>

margin. Eeuss renders the word by " spectre,
remarking in a note that it is not quite exact;
but that the word Elohim expresses " something
divine, that is to say, superhuman, commanding
respect and terror" ("Histoire des Israelites,"
p. 321). Tuch, in his commentary on Genesis, and
Thenius, in his commentary on Samuel, express
substantially the same opinion. Dr. Alexander
(in Kitto's " Cyclopaedia " s. v. " God ") has the
following instructive remarks: —

[Elohim is] sometimes used vaguely to describe unseen
powers or superhuman beings that are not properly thought
of as divine. Thus the witch of Endor saw " Elohim ascend-
ing out of the earth" (1 Sam. xxviii. 13), meaning thereby
some beings of an unearthly, superhuman character. So
also in Zechariah xii. 8, it is said " the house of David shall
be as Elohim, as the angel of the Lord," where, as the
transition from Elohim to the angel of the Lord is a minori
ad majus, we must regard the former as a vague designa-
tion of supernatural powers.

Dr. Alexander speaks here of " beings "; but
there is no reason to suppose that the wise woman
of Endor referred to anything but a solitary
spectre; and it is quite clear that Saul under-
stood her in this sense, for he asks " What form
is HE of ? "

This fact, that the name of Elohim is applied
to a ghost, or disembodied soul, conceived as the
image of the body in which it once dwelt, is of no
little importance. For it is well known that the
same term was employed to denote the gods

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 209

of the heathen, who were thought to have definite
quasi-corporeal forms and to be as much real
entities as any other Elohim.* The difference
which was supposed to exist between the different
Elohim was one of degree, not one of kind.
Elohim was, in logical terminology, the genus of
which ghosts, Chemosh, Dagon, Baal, and Jahveh
were species. The Israelite believed Jahveh to be
immeasurably superior to all other kinds of
Elohim. The inscription on the Moabite stone
shows that King Mesa held Chemosh to be, as
unquestionably, the superior of Jahveh. But if
Jahveh was thus supposed to differ only in degree
from the undoubtedly zoomorphic or anthropo-
morphic " gods of the nations," why is it to be
assumed that he also was not thought of as hav-
ing a human shape? It is possible for those who
forget that the time of the great prophetic
writers is at least as remote from that of Saul as
our day is from that of Queen Elizabeth, to insist
upon interpreting the gross notions current in the
earlier age and among the mass of the people by
the refined conceptions promulgated by a few
select spirits centuries later. But if we take the
language constantly used concerning the Deity in

* See, for example, the message of Jophthah to the Kins;
of the Ammonites: "So now Jahveh, the Elohim of Israel,
hath dispossessed the Amorites from before his people
Israel, and shouldest thou possess them? Wilt not thou
possess that which Chemosh, thy Elohim, giveth thee to
possess?" (Jiid. xi. 28, 24). For Jephthuh, Chemosh is
obviously as real a personage as Jahveh.

300 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

the books of Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges,
Samuel, or Kings, in its natural sense (and I am
aware of no valid reason which can be given for
taking it in any other sense), there cannot, to my
mind, be a doubt that Jahveh was conceived by
those from whom the substance of these books is
mainly derived, to possess the appearance and the
intellectual and moral attributes of a man; and,
indeed, of a man of just that type with which the
Israelites were familiar in their stronger and
intellectually abler rulers and leaders. In a well-
known passage in Genesis (i. 27) Elohim is said to
have " created man in his own image, in the
image of Elohim created he him." It is " man "
who is here said to be the image of Elohim — not
man's soul alone, still less his " reason," but the
whole man. It is obvious that for those who call
a manlike ghost Elohim, there could be no
difficulty in conceiving any other Elohim under
the same aspect. And if there could be any doubt
on this subject, surely it cannot stand in the
face of what we find in the fifth chapter, where,
immediately after a repetition of the statement
that " Elohim created man, in the likeness of Elo-
him made he him," it is said that Adam begat
Seth " in his own likeness, after his image."
Does this mean that Seth resembled Adam only
in a spiritual and figurative sense? And if that
interpretation of the third verse of the fifth
chapter of Genesis is absurd, why does it be-

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 301

come reasonable in the first verse of the same
chapter ?

But let us go further. Is not the Jahveh who
^' walks in the garden in the cool of the day " ;
from whom one may hope to " hide oneself among
the trees "; of whom it is expressly said that
^^ Moses and Aaron, N"adab and Abihu, and
seventy of the elders of Israel/' saw the Elohim
of Israel (Exod. xxiv. 9-11); and that, although
the seeing Jahveh was understood to be a high
crime and misdemeanour, worthy of death, under
ordinary circumstances, yet, for this once, he " laid
not his hand on the nobles of Israel "; " that they
beheld Elohim and did eat and drink "; and that
afterwards Moses saw his back (Exod. xxxiii. 23)
— is not this Deity conceived as manlike in form?
Again, is not the Jahveh who eats with Abraham,
under the oaks at Mamre, who is pleased with the
^^ sweet savour " of Noah's sacrifice, to whom
sacrifices are said to be " food '' * — is not this
Deity depicted as possessed of human appetites?
If this were not the current Israelitish idea of
Jahveh even in the eighth century b. c, where is
the point of Isaiah's scathing admonitions to his
countrymen : " To what purpose is the multitude
of your sacrifices unto me? saith Jahveh: I am
full of the burnt-offerings of rams and the fat

* For example : '* My oblation, my food for my offerings
made by fire, of a sweet savour to me, shall ye observe to offer
unto me in their due season " (Num. xxviii. 2).

302 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of
bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats ^' (Isa. i. 11).
Or of Micah's inquiry, " Will Jahveh be pleased
with thousands of rams or with ten thousands of
rivers of oil?'^ (vi. 7). And in the innumerable
passages in which Jahveh is said to be jealous of
other gods, to be angry, to be appeased, and to
repent; in which he is represented as casting off
Saul because the king does not quite literally
execute a command of the most ruthless severity;
or as smiting Uzzah to death because the un-
fortunate man thoughtlessly, but naturally enough,
put out his hand to stay the ark from falling
— can any one deny that the old Israelites con-
ceived Jahveh not only in the image of a man,
but in that of a changeable, irritable, and, occa-
sionally, violent man? There appears to me,
then, to be no reason to doubt that the notion of
likeness to man, which was indubitably held of
the ghost Elohim, was carried out consistently
throughout the whole series of Elohim, and that
Jahveh-Elohim was thought of as a being of the
same substantially human nature as the rest, only
immeasurably more powerful for good and for evil.
The absence of any real distinction between
the Elohim of different ranks is further clearly
illustrated by the corresponding absence of any
sharp delimitation between the various kinds of
people who serve as the media of communication
between them and men. The agents through

VIII THE EVOLUTION OP THEOLOGY 303

whom the lower Elohim are consulted are called
necromancers, wizards, and diviners, and are
looked down upon b}^ the prophets and priests of
the higher Elohim ; but the " seer " connects the
two, and they are all alike in their essential
characters of media. The wise woman of Endor
was believed by others, and, I have little doubt,
believed herself, to be able to " bring up " whom
she would from Sheol, and to be inspired, whether
in virtue of actual possession by the evoked
Elohim, or otherwise, with a knowledge of hidden
things. I am unable to see that Saul's servant
took any really different view of Samuel's powers,
though he may have believed that he obtained
them by the grace of the higher Elohim. For
when Saul fails to find his father's asses, his
servant says to him —

Behold, there is in this city a man of Elohim, and he is
a man that is held in honour ; all that he saith cometh surely
to pass : now let us go thither ; perad venture he can tell us
concerning our journey whereon we go. Then said Saul to
his servant, But behold if we go, what shall we bring the
man"? for the bread is spent in our vessels and there is not
a present to bring to the man of Elohim. What have we ?
And the servant answered Saul again and said, Behold I
have in my hand the fourth part of a shekel of silver : that
will I give to the man of Elohim to tell us our way. (Before-
time in Israel when a man went to inquire of Elohim, then he
said, Come and let us go to the Seer : for he that is now called
a Prophet was beforetime called a Seer *) (1 Sam. ix. 6-10).

* In 2 Samuel xv, 27 David says to Zadok the priest,
** Art thou not a seer ? " and Gad is called David's seer.

304 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

In fact, when, shortly afterwards, Saul acci-
dentally meets Samuel, he says, " Tell me, I pray
thee, where the Seer's house is." Samuel answers,
" I am the Seer." Immediately afterwards Samuel
informs Saul that the asses are found, though
how he obtained his knowledge of the fact is not
stated. It will be observed that Samuel is not
spoken of here as, in any special sense, a seer or
prophet of Jahveh, but as a " man of Eloliim " —
that is to say, a seer having access to the
" spiritual powers," just as the wise woman of
Endor might have been said to be a ^' woman of
Elohim " — and the narrator's or editor's explana-
tory note seems to indicate that " Prophet " is
merely a name, introduced later than the time of
Samuel, for a superior kind of " Seer," or " man
of Elohim." *

Another very instructive passage shows that
Samuel was not only considered to be diviner,
seer, and prophet in one, but that he was also, to
all intents and purposes, priest of Jahveh — though,
according to his biographer, he was not a member
of the tribe of Levi. At the outset of their
acquaintance, Samuel says to Saul, " Go up before
me into the high place," where, as the young
maidens of the city had just before told Saul, the

* This would at first appear to be inconsistent with the
use of the word " prophetess " for Deborah. But it does
not follow because the writer of Judges applies the name to
Deborah that it was used in her day.

vm THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 305

Seer was going, " for the people will not eat till
he come, because he doth bless the sacrifice
(1 Sam. X. 12). The use of the word "bless
here — as if Samuel were not going to sacrifice, but
only to offer a blessing or thanksgiving — is curi-
ous. But that Samuel really acted as priest seems
plain from what follows. For he not only asks
Saul to share in the customary sacrificial feast,
but he disposes in Saul's favour of that portion of
the victim which the Levitical legislation, doubt-
less embodying old customs, recognises as the
priest's special property.*

Although particular persons adopted the pro-
fession of media between men and Elohim, there
was no limitation of the power, in the view of
ancient Israel, to any special class of the popu-
lation. Saul inquires of Jahveh and builds him
altars on his own account; and in the very re-
markable story told in the fourteenth chapter of
the first book of Samuel (v. 37-46), Saul appears
to conduct the whole process of divination,

* Samiipl tells tlie cook, " Brino: the portion which T c:ave
thee, of which T said to thee, Set it by thee." Tt was there-
fore Samuel's to give. "And the cook took up the thifjh
(or shoulder) and that which was upon it and set it before
Saul." But. in the Levitical reefulations, it is the thi^h (or
shoulder) which becomes the priest's own propertv. "And
the ricfht thi^h (or shoulder) shall ye give unto the priest
for an heave-offering." which is given along with the wave
breast "unto Aaron the priest and unto his sons as a due
for ever from the children of Israel " (Lev. vii. 31-34). Reuss
writes on this passage : " La cuisse n'est point agitee, mais
simplement prelevee sur cc que les convives mangeront."

109

306 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

although he has a priest at his elhow. David seems
to do the same.

Moreover, Elohim constantly appear in dreams
— which in old Israel did not mean that, as we
should say, the subject of the appearance
" dreamed he saw the spirit "; but that he
veritably saw the Elohim which, as a soul, visited
his soul while his body was asleep. And, in the
course of the history of Israel, Jahveh himself
thus appears to all sorts of persons, non-Israelites
as well as Israelites. Again, the Elohim possess,
or inspire, people against their will, as in the case
of Saul and Saul's messengers, and then these
people prophesy — that is to say, " rave " — and
exhibit the ungoverned gestures attributed by a
later age to possession by malignant spirits.
Apart from other evidence to be adduced by and
by, the history of ancient demonology and of
modern revivalism does not permit me to doubt
that the accounts of these phenomena given in
the history of Saul may be perfectly historical.

In the ritual practices, of which evidence is to
be found in the books of Judges and Samuel, the
chief part is played by sacrifices, usually burnt
offerings. Whenever the aid of the Elohim of
Israel is sought, or thanks are considered due to
him, an altar is built, and oxen, sheep, and goats
are slaughtered and offered up. Sometimes the
entire victim is burnt as a holocaust; more
frequently only certain parts, notal)ly the fat

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 307

about the kidneys, are burnt on the altar. The
rest is properly cooked; and, after the reservation
of a part for the priest, is made the foundation of
a joyous banquet, in which the sacrificer, his fam-
ily, and such guests as he thinks fit to invite,
participate.* Elohim was supposed to share in
the feast, and it has been alreadv shown that that
which was set apart on the altar, or consumed by
fire, was spoken of as the food of Elohim, who was
thought to be influenced by the costliness, or by
the pleasant smell, of the sacrifice in favour of the
sacrificer.

All this bears out the view that, in the mind of
the old Israelite, there was no difference, save one
of degree, between one Elohim and another. It
is true that there is but little direct evidence to
show that the old Israelite shared the widespread
belief of their own, and indeed of all times, that
the spirits of the dead not only continue to exist,
but are capable of a ghostly kind of feeding and
are grateful for such aliment as can be assimilated
by their attenuated substance, and even for clothes,
ornaments, and weapons, f That they were fa-

* See, for example, Elkanah's sacrifice, 1 Sam. i. 3-9.

f The ghost was not supposed to be capable of devouring
the gross material substance of the offering ; but his vapor-
ous body appropriated the smoke of the burnt sacrifice, the
visible and odorous exhalations of other offerings. The
blood of the victim was particularly useful because it was
thought to be the special seat of its soul or life. A West
African negro replied to an European sceptic : " Of course,
the spirit cannot eat corporeal food, but he extracts its

308 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

miliar with this doctrine in the time of the cap-
tivity is suggested by the well-known reference
of Ezekiel (xxxii. 27) to the "mighty that are
fallen of the nncircumcised, which are gone down
to [Sheol] hell with their weapons of war, and
have laid their swords under their heads/^ Per-
haps there is a still earlier allusion in the " giving
of food for the dead ^' spoken of in Deuteronomy
(xxvi. 14).*

It must be remembered that the literature of
the old Israelites, as it lies before us, has been
subjected to the revisal of strictly monotheistic
editors, violently opposed to all kinds of idolatry,
who are not likely to have selected from the
materials at their disposal any obvious evidence,
either of the practice under discussion, or of that

spiritual part, and, as we see, leaves the material part be-
hind " (Lipperfc, Seehncult, p. 16).

* It is further well worth consideration whether indica-
tions of former ancestor-worship are not to be found in the
singular weight attached to the veneration of parents in the
fourth commandment. It is the only positive command-
ment, in addition to those respecting the Deity and that
concerning the Sabbath, and the penalties for infringing it
were of the same character. In China, a corresponding rev-
erence for parents is part and parcel of ancestor-worship ;
so in ancient Rome and in Greece (where parents were even
called ^evr^poi koI iiriyeoi Oeoi). Tlie fifth commandment, as
it stands, would be an excellent compromise between an-
cestor-worship and monotheism. The larger hereditary
share allotted by Israelitic law -to the eldest son reminds
one of the privileges attached to primogeniture in ancient
Rome, which were closely connected with ancestor-worship.
There is a good deal to be said in favour of the speculation
that the ark of the covenant may have been a relic of an-
cestor-worship ; but that topic is too large to be dealt with
incidentally in this place.

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 309

ancestor-worship which is so closely related to it,
for preservation in the permanent records of their
people.

The mysterious objects known as Terapliim^
which are occasionally mentioned in Judges,
Samuel, and elsewhere, however, can hardly bo
interpreted otherwise than as indications of tliG
existence both of ancestor-worship and of image-
worship in old Israel. The teraphim were
certainly images of family gods, and, as such,
in all probability represented deceased ancestors^
Laban indignantly demands of his son-in-law,
" Wherefore hast thou stolen my Elohim? ^' which
Eachel, who must be assumed to have worshipped
Jacob's God, Jahveh, had carried off, obviously
because she, like her father, believed in their
divinity. It is not suggested that Jacob was in
any way scandalised by the idolatrous practices of
his favourite wife, whatever he may have thought
of her honesty when the truth came to light; for
the teraphim seem to have remained in his camp,
at least until he " hid " his strange gods " undei*
the oak that was by Shechem '^ (Gen. xxxv. 4).
And indeed it is open to question if he got rid
of them then, for the subsequent history of Israel
renders it more than doubtful whether the tera-
phim were regarded as " strange gods ^' even as late
as the eighth century b. c.

The writer of the books of Samuel takes it
quite as a matter of course that Michal, daughter

310 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY vin

of one royal Jahveh worshipper and wife of the
servant of Jahveh 'par excellence, the pious David,
should have her teraphim handy, in her and
David's chamber, when she dresses them up in
their bed into a simulation of her husband, for
the purpose of deceiving her father's messengers.
Even one of the early prophets, Hosea, when he
threatens that the children of Israel shall abide
many days without " ephod or teraphim" (iii. 4),
appears to regard both as equally proper appur-
tenances of the suspended worship of Jahveh, and
equally certain to be restored when that is
resumed. When we further take into considera-
tion that only in the reign of Hezekiah was the
brazen serpent, preserved in the temple and
believed to be the work of Moses, destroyed, and
the practice of offering incense to it, that is,
worshipping it, abolished — ^that Jeroboam could
set up " calves of gold " for Israel to worship,
with apparently none but a political object, and
certainly with no notion of creating a schism
among the worshippers of Jahveh, or of repelling
the men of Judah from his standard — it seems
obvious, either that the Israelites of the tenth
and eleventh centuries b. c. knew not the second
commandment, or that they construed it merely
as part of the prohibition to worship any supreme
god other than Jahveh, which precedes it.

In seeking for information about the teraphim,
I lighted upon the following passage in the

vm THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 311

valuable article on that subject by Archdeacon
Farrar, in Kitto's " C3'cIopa3dia of Biblical Litera-
ture," which is so much to the purpose of my argu-
ment, that I venture to quote it in full : —

The main and certain results of this review are that the
teraphiin were rude human images; that the use of them
was an antique Aramaic custom ; that there is reason to
suppose them to have been images of deceased ancestors;
that they were consulted oracularly ; that they were not
confined to Jews; that their use continued down to the
latest period of Jewish history ; and lastly, that although
the enlightened prophets and strictest later kings regarded
them as idolatrous, the priests were much less averse to such
images, and their cult was not considered in any way re-
pugnant to the pious worship of Elohim, nay, even to the
worship of him '' under the awful title of Jehovah." In
fact, they involved a monotheistic idolatry very different
indeed from polytheism; and the tolerance of them by
priests, as compared with the denunciation of them by the
prophets, offers a close analogy to the views of the Roman
Catholics respecting pictures and images as compared with
the views of Protestants. It was against this use of idola-
trous symbols and emblems in a monotheistic worship that
the second commandment was directed, whereas the first is
aimed against the graver sin of direct polytheism. But the
whole history of Israel shows hov?' utterly and how early the
law must have fallen into desuetude. The worship of the
golden calf and of the calves at Dan and Bethel, against
which, so far as we know, neither Elijah nor Elisha said a
single word; the tolerance of high places, teraphim and
betylia ; the offering of incense for centuries to the brazen
serpent destroyed by Hezekiah; the occasional glimpses of
the most startling irregularities sanctioned apparently even
in the temple worship itself, prove most decisively that a
pure monotheism and an independence of symbols was the

312 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

result of a slow and painful course of God's disciplinal deal-
ings among the noblest thinkers of a single nation, and not,
as is so constantly and erroneously urged, the instinct of
the whole Semitic race ; in other words, one single branch
of the Semites was under God's providence educated into
pure monotheism only by centuries of misfortune and series
of inspired men (vol. iii. p. 986).

It appears to me that the researches of the
anthropologist lead him to conclusions identical
in substance, if not in terms, with those here
enunciated as the result of a careful study of
the same subject from a totally different point of
view.

There is abundant evidence in the books of
Samuel and elsewhere that an article of dress
termed an epJiod was supposed to have a peculiar
efficacy in enabling the wearer to exercise
divination by means of Jahveh-Elohim. Great
and long continued have been the disputes as to
the exact nature of the ephod — whether it always
means something to wear, or whether it sometimes
means an image. But the probabilities are that
it usually signifies a kind of waistcoat or broad
zone, with shoulder-straps, which the person who
" inquired of Jahveh " put on. In 1 Samuel
xxiii. 2 David appears to have inquired without an
ephod, for Abiathar the priest is said to have
" come down with an ephod in his hand " only
subsequently. And then David asks for it before
inquiring of Jahveh whether the man of Keilah
would betray him or not. David's action is

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 313

obviously divination pure and simple; and it
is curious that he seems to have worn the ephod
himself and not to have employed Abiathar as a
medium. How the answer was given is not clear,
though the probability is that it was obtained by
casting lots. The Urim and Thummim seem to
have been two such lots of a peculiarly sacred
character, which were carried in the pocket of the
high priest's ^" breastplate." This last was worn
along with the ephod.

With the exception of one passage (1 Sam.
xiv. 18) the ark is ignored in the history of Saul.
But in this place the Septuagint reads " ephod "
for ark, while in 1 Chronicles xiii. 3 David says
that '^ we sought not unto it [the ark] in the days
of Saul." Nor does Samuel seem to have paid
any regard to the ark after its return from
Philistia; though, in his childhood, he is said to
have slept in " the temple of Jahveh, where the
ark of Elohim was " (1 Sam. iii. 3), at Shiloh,
and there to have been the seer of the earliest
apparitions vouchsafed to him by Jahveh. The
space between the cherubim or winged images on
the canopy or cover {Kapporetli) of this holy chest
was held to be the special seat of Jahveh —
the place selected for a temporary residence of
the Supreme Elohim who had, after Aaron and
Phineas, Eli and his sons for priests and seers.
And, when the ark was carried to the camp at
Eben-ezer, there can be no doubt that the

314 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY vni

Israelites, no less than the Philistines, held that
" Elohim is come into the camp " (iv. 7), and that
the one, as much as the other, conceived that
the Israelites had summoned to their aid a
powerful ally in " these (or this) mighty Elohim "
— elsewhere called Jahve-Sabaoth, the Jahveh of
Hosts. If the " temple '' at Shiloh was the
pentateuchal tabernacle, as is suggested by the
name of " tent of meeting " given to it in 1 Sam-
uel ii. 22, it was essentially a large tent, though
constituted of very expensive and ornate mate-
rials; if, on the other hand, it was a different
edifice, there can be little doubt that this "house
of Jahveh " was built on the model of an ordinary
house of the time. But there is not the slightest
evidence that, during the reign of Saul, any
greater importance attached to this seat of the
cult of Jahveh than to others. Sanctuaries, and
" high places ^' for sacrifice, were scattered all over
the country from Dan to Beersheba. And, as
Samuel is said to have gone up to one of these
high places to bless the sacrifice, it may be taken
for tolerably certain that he knew nothing of
the Levitical laws which severely condemn the
high places and those who sacrifice away from
the sanctuary hallowed by the presence of the
ark.

There is no evidence that, during the time
of the Judges and of Samuel, any one occupied
the position of the high priest of later days.

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 315

And persons who were neither priests nor Levites
sacrificed and divined or " inquired of Jahveh/'
when they pleased and where tliey pleased, with-
out the least indication that they, or any one else
in Israel at that time, knew they were doing wrong.
There is no allusion to any special observance of
the Sabbath; and the references to circumcision
are indirect.

Such are the chief articles of the theological
creed of the old Israelites, which are made known
to us by the direct evidence of the ancient record
to which we have had recourse, and they are
as remarkable for that which they contain as for
that which is absent from them. They reveal
a firm conviction that, when death takes place, a
something termed a soul or spirit leaves the body
and continues to exist in Sheol for a period of
indefinite duration, even though there is no proof
of any belief in absolute immortality; that such
spirits can return to earth to possess and inspire
the living; that they are, in appearance and in
disposition, likenesses of the men to whom they
belonged, but that, as spirits, they have larger
powers and are freer from physical limitations;
that they thus form a group among a number of
kinds of spiritual existences known as Elohim, of
whom Jahveh, the national God of Israel, is one;
that, consistently with this view, Jahveh was con-
ceived as a sort of spirit, human in aspect and in

316 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY vm

senses, and with many human passions, but with
immensely greater intelligence and power than
any other Elohim, whether human or divine.
Further, the evidence proves that this belief was
the basis of the Jahveh- worship to which Samuel
and his followers were devoted; that there is
strong reason for believing, and none for doubting,
that idolatry, in the shape of the worship of the
family gods or teraphim, was practised by sincere
and devout Jahveh- worshippers ; that the ark,
with its protective tent or tabernacle, was regard-
ed as a specially, but by no means exclusively,
favoured sanctuary of Jahveh; that the ephod
appears to have had a particular value for those
who desired to divine by the helj) of Jahveh; and
that divination by lots was practised before
Jahveh. On the other hand, there is not the
slightest evidence of any belief in retribution after
death, but the contrary; ritual obligations have
at least as strong sanction as moral; there are
clear indications that some of the most stringent
of the Levitical laws were unknown even to
Samuel; priests often appear to be superseded
by laymen, even in the performance of sacrifices
and divination; and no line of demarcation
can be drawn between necromancer, wizard, seer,
prophet, and priest, each of whom is regarded,
like all the rest, as a medium of communication
between the world of Elohim and that of living
men.

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 317

The theological system thus defined offers to
the anthropologist no feature which is devoid of a
parallel in the known theologies of other races of
mankind, even of those who inhabit parts of the
world most remote from Palestine. And the
foundation of the whole, the ghost theory, is
exactly that theological speculation which is the
most widely spread of all, and- the most deeply
rooted among uncivilised men. I am able to base
this statement, to some extent, on facts within my
own knowledge. In December, 1848, H. M. S.
Rattlesnahe, the ship to which I then belonged,
was anchored off Mount Ernest, an island in
Torres Straits. The people were few and well
disposed; and, when a friend of mine (whom I
will call B.) and I went ashore, we made ac-
quaintance with an old native, Paouda by name.
In course of time we became quite intimate witli
the old gentleman, partly by the rendering of
mutual good offices, but chiefly because Paouda
believed he had discovered that B. was his father-
in-law. And his grounds for this singular convic-
tion were very remarkable. We had made a long
stay at Cape York hard by; and, in accordance
with a theory which is widely spread among the
Australians, that white men are the reincarnated
spirits of black men, B. was held to be the ghost,
or narhi, of a certain Mount Ernest native, one
Antarki, who had lately died, on the ground of
some real or fancied resemblance to the latter.

318 THE EVOLUTION OF TEEOLOGY viii

Now PaoLida had taken to wife a dauglitcr of

Antarki's, named Domani, and as soon as B.

informed him that he was the ghost of Antarki,

Paouda at once admitted the relationship and

acted upon it. For, as all the women on the

island had hidden away in fear of the ship, and

we were anxious to see what they were like, B.

pleaded pathetically with Paouda that it would be

very unkind not to let him see his daughter and

grandchildren. After a good deal of hesitation

and the exaction of pledges of deep secrecy,

Paouda consented to take B., and myself as B.'s

friend, to see Domani and the three daughters, by

whom B. was received quite as one of the family,

while I was courteously welcomed on his account.

This scene made an impression upon me which

is not 3^et effaced. It left no question on my

mind of the sincerity of the strange ghost theory

of these savages, and of the influence which their

belief has on their practical life. I had it in my

mind, as well as many a like result of subsequent

anthropological studies, when, in 1869,* I wrote as

follows : —

There are savages without God in any proper sense of
the word, but none without ghosts. And the Fetishism.
Ancestor-worship. Hero-worship, and Demonology of primi-
tive savages are all, I believe, different manners of expres-
sion of their belief in ghosts, and of the anthropomorphic
interpretation of out-of-the-way events which is its con-

*"The Scientific Aspects of Positivism," Fortnightly
Review, 1869, republished in Lay Sermons.

vin THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 319

comitant. Witchcraft and sorcery are the practical expres-
sions of these beliefs ; and they stand in the same relation to
religious worship as the simple anthropomorphism of chil-
dren or savages does to theology.

I do not quote myself with any intention of

making a claim to originality in putting forth this

view; for I have since discovered that the same

conception is virtually contained in the great

" Discours sur THistoire Universelle " of Bossuet,

now more than two centuries old : —

Le culte des hommes morts faisoit presque tout le fond
de I'idolatrie : presque tous les hommes sacrifioient aux
manes, c'est-a-dire aux ames des morts. De si anciennes
erreurs nous font voir a la verite combien etoit aneienne la
croyance de I'immortalite de I'ame, et nous montrent qu'elle
doit etre rangee parmi les premieres traditions du genre
huraain. Mais I'homme, qui gatoit tout, en avoit etrange-
ment abuse, puisqu'elle le portoit a sacrifier aux morts. On
alloit meme jusqu'a cet exces, de leur sacrifier des hommes
vivans : on tuoit leurs esclaves, et meme leurs femmes, pour
les aller servir dans I'autre monde.*

Among more modern writers J. G. Miiller, in his
excellent " Geschichte der amerikanischen Urre-
ligionen '^ (1855), clearly recognises "gespenster-
hafter Geisterglaube " as the foundation of all
savage and semi-civilised theology, and I need do
no more than mention the important develop-
ments of the same view which are to be found
in Mr. Tylor's " Primitive Culture," and in the
writings of Mr. Herbert Spencer, especially his
recently-published " Ecclesiastical Institutions." f

*(Euvres de Bossuet, ed. 1808, t. xxxv. p. 282.

f 1 should like further to add the expression of my in-

320 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

It is a matter of fact that, whether we direct

our attention to the older conditions of civilised

societies, in Japan, in China, in Hindostan, in

Greece, or in Rome,* we find, underlying all other

theological notions, the belief in ghosts, with its

inevitable concomitant sorcery; and a primitive

cult, in the shape of a worship of ancestors, which

is essentially an attempt to please, or appease

their ghosts. The same thing is true of old

Mexico and Peru, and of all the semi-civilised or

savage peoples who have developed a definite cult;

and in those who, like the natives of Australia,

have not even a cult, the belief in, and fear of,

ghosts is as strong as anywhere else. The most

clearly demonstrable article of the theology of the

Israelites in the eleventh and twelfth centuries

B. c. is therefore simply the article which is to be

found in all primitive theologies, namely, the

belief that a man has a soul which continues to

exist after death for a longer or shorter time, and

may return, as a ghost, with a divine, or at least

demonic, character, to influence for good or evil

(and usually for evil) the affairs of the living.

But the correspondence between the old Israelitic

debtedness to two works by Herr Julius Lippert, Der See-
lencult in seinen Beziehungen zur alt-hehraischen Religi'o?!,
and Die Religionen der europdisclien CuUurvdlker, both
published in 1881. I have found them full of valuable
sug£:estions.

* See among others the remarkable work of Fustel de
Coulanges, La Cite atitigve, in which the social importance
of the old Roman ancestor- worship is brought out with great
clearness.

Tin THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 321

and other archaic forms of theology extends
to details. If, in order to avoid all chance of
direct communication, we direct our attention to
the theology of semi-civilised people, such as the
Polynesian Islanders, separated by the greatest
possible distance, and by every conceivable phys-
ical barrier, from the inhabitants of Palestine, we
shall find not merely that all the features of old-
Israelitic theology, which are revealed in the
records cited, are found among them; but that
extant information as to the inner mind of these
people tends to remove many of the difficulties
which those who have not studied anthropology
find in the Hebrew narrative.

One of the best sources, if not the best source,
of information on these topics is Mariner's Tonrja
Islands, which tells us of the condition of Cook's
"Friendly Islanders" eighty years ago, before
European influence was sensibly felt among them.
Mariner, a youth of fair education and of no in-
considerable natural alulity (as the work which
was drawn up from the materials he furnished
shows), was about fifteen years of age when his
ship was attacked and plundered by tlie Tongans:
he remained four years in the islands, familiarised
himself with the language, lived the life of the
people, became intimate with many of them, and
had every opportunity of acquainting himself with
their opinions, as well as with their habits and

customs. He seems to have been devoid of
110

322 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY vm

prejudices, theological or other, and the impression
of strict accuracy which his statements convey
has been justified by all the knowledge of
Polynesian life which has been subsequently
acquired.

It is desirable, therefore, to pay close attention
to that which Mariner tells us about the theo-
logical views of these people: —

The human soul,* after its separation from the body, is
termed a hotooa (a god or spirit), and is beUeved to exist
in the shape of the body ; to have the same propensities as
during life, but to be corrected by a more enlightened un-
derstanding, by which it readily distinguishes good from
evil, truth from falsehood, right from wrong; having the
same attributes as the original gods, but in a minor degree,
and having its dwelling for ever in the happy regions of
Bolotoo, holding the same rank in regard to other souls as
during this life; it has, however, the power of returning to
Tonga to inspire priests, relations, or others, or to appear in
dreams to those it wishes to admonish; and sometimes to
the external eye in the form of a ghost or apparition ; but
this power of reappearance at Tonga particularly belongs to
the souls of chiefs rather than of matabooles (vol. ii. p. 130).

The word " hotooa " is the same as that which
is usually spelt " atua " by Polynesian philologues,
and it will be convenient to adopt this spelling.
Now under this head of " Atuas or supernatural
intelligent beings" the Tongans include: —

* Supposed to be " the finer or more aeriform part of the
body," standing in "the same relation to the body as the
perfume and the more essential qualities of a flower do to
tbe more solid substances " (Mariner, vol. ii. p. 127).

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 323

1. The original gods. 2. The souls of nobles that have
all attributes in common with the first but inferior in
degree. 3. The souls of matabooles * that are still inferior,
and have not the power as the two first have of coming back
to Tonga to inspire the priests, though they are supposed to
have the power of appearing to ther relatives. 4. The
original attendants or servants, as it were, of the gods, who,
although they had their origin and have ever since existed
in Bolotoo, are still inferior to the third class. 5. The Atua
pow or mischievous gods. 6. 3Iooi, or the god that sup-
ports the earth and does not belong to Bolotoo (vol. ii. pp.
103, 104).

From this it appears that the " Atuas " of the
Polynesian are exactly equivalent to the " Elohim"
of the old Israelite.! They comprise everything
spiritual, from a ghost to a god, and from " the
merely tutelar gods to particular private families "
(vol. ii. p. 104), to Ta-li-y-Toobo6, who was the
national god of Tonga. The Tongans had no
doubt that these Atuas daily and hourly influenced
their destinies and could, conversely, be influenced
by them. Hence their " piety," the incessant
acts of sacrificial worship which occupied their
lives, and their belief in omens and charms.
Moreover, the Atuas were believed to visit par-
ticular persons, — their o^ti priests in the case
of the higher gods, but apparently anybody in
that of the lower, — and to inspire them by a

* A kind of "clients " in the Roman sense.

f It is worthy of remark that Sai/jiooi/ among the Greeks,
and Deiis among the Romans, had the same wide significa-
tion. The dii manes were ghosts of ancestors = Atuas of
the family.

324 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY thi

process which was conceived to involve the
actual residence of the god, for the time being, in
the person inspired, who was thus rendered
capable of prophesying (vol. ii. p. 100). For the
Tongan, therefore, inspiration indubitably was pos-
session.

When one of the higher gods was invoked,
through his priest, by a chief who wished to
consult the oracle, or, in old Israelitic phraseology,
to " inquire of," the god, a hog was killed and
cooked over night, and, together with plantains,
yams, and the materials for making the peculiar
drink Imva (of which the Tongans were very fond),
was carried next day to the priest. A circle, as
for an ordinary kava-drinking entertainment, was
then formed; but the priest, as the representative
of the god, took the highest place, while the chiefs
sat outside the circle, as an expression of humility
calculated to please the god.

As soon as they are all seated the priest is considered as
inspired, the god being supposed to exist within him from
that moment. He remains for a considerable time in
silence with his hands clasped before him, his eyes are cast
down and he rests perfectly still. During the time the
victuals are being shared out and the kava preparing, the
matabooles sometimes begin to consult him ; sometimes he
answers, and at other times not ; in either case he remains
with his eyes cast down. Frequently he will not utter a
word till the repast is finished and the kava too. When ho
speaks he generally begins in a low and very altered tone of
voice, which gradually rises to nearly its natural pitch,
though sometimes a little above it. All that he says is sup-

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 325

posed to be the declaration of the god, and he accordingly
speaks in the first person, as if he were the god. All this is
done generally without any apparent inward emotion of
outward agitation ; but, on some occasions, his countenance
becomes fierce, and as it were inflamed, and his whole
frame agitated with inward feeling; he is seized with an
universal trembling, the perspiration breaks out on his fore-
head, and his lips turning black are convulsed ; at length
tears start in floods from his eyes, his breast heaves with
great emotion, and his utterance is choked. These symp-
toms gradually subside. Before this paroxysm comes on,
and after it is over, he often eats as much as four hungry
men under other circumstances could devour. The fit being
now gone off, he remains for some time calm and then takes
up a club that is placed by him for the purpose, turns it
over and regards it attentively; he then looks up earnestly,
now to the right, now to the left, and now again at the club ;
afterwards he looks up again and about him in like manner,
and then again fixes his eyes on the club, and so on for
several times. At length he suddenly raises the club, and,
after a moment's pause, strikes the ground or the adjacent
part of the house with considerable force ; immediately the
god leaves him, and he rises up and retires to the back of
the ring among the people (vol. i. pp. 100, 101).

The phenomena thus described, in language
which, to any one who is familiar with the mani-
festations of abnormal mental states among
ourselves, bears the stamp of fidelity, furnish a
most instructive commentary upon the story of
the wise woman of Endor. As in the latter, we
have the possession by the spirit or soul (Atua,
Elohim), the strange voice, the speaking in the
first person. Unfortunately nothing (beyond the
loud cry) is mentioned as to the state of the wise

326 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

woman of Endor. But what we learn from other

sources {e. g. 1 Sam. x. 20-24) respecting the

physical concomitants of inspiration among the

old Israelites has its exact equiyalent in this and

other accounts of Polynesian prophetism. An

excellent authority, Moerenhout, who lived among

the people of the Society Islands many years and

knew them well, says that, in Tahiti, the role of

the prophet had very generally passed out of the

hands of the priests into that of private persons

who professed to represent the god, often assumed

his name, and in this capacity prophesied. I will

not run the risk of weakening the force of

Moerenhout's description of the prophetic state by

translating it: —

Un individu, dans cet etat, avait le bras gauche en-
veloppe d'un morceau d'etolle, signe de la presence de la
Divinite. II ne parlait que d'un ton imperieux et vehe-
ment. Ses attaques, quand il allait prophetiser, etaient
aussi effroyables qu'imposantes. II tremblait d'abord de
tous ses membres, la figure enflee, les yeux hagards, rouges
et etincelants d'une expression sauvage. II gesticulait,
articulait des mots vides de sens, poussait des oris horribles
qui faisaient tressaillir tous les assistants, et s'exaltait par-
fois au point qu'on n'osait pas I'approcher. Autour de lui,
le silence de la terreur et du respect. . . . C'est alors qu'il
repondait aux questions, annongait I'avenir, le destin des
batailles, la volonte des dieux ; et, chose etonnante ! au sein
de ce delire, de cet enthousiasme religieux, son langage etait
grave, imposant, son eloquence noble et persuasive.*

Just SO Saul strips off his clothes, " prophesies "
* Voyages aux ties du Grand Ocean, t. i. p. 482.

vm THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 327

before Samuel, and Hes down " naked all that day
and night /^

Both Mariner and Moerenhout refuse to have
recourse to the hypothesis of imposture in order
to account for the inspired state of the Polynesian
prophets. On the contrary, they fully believe in
their sincerity. Mariner tells the story of a
young chief, an acquaintance of his, who thought
himself possessed by the Atua of a dead woman
who had fallen in love with him, and who wished
him to die that he might be near her in Bolotoo.
And he died accordingly. But the most valuable
evidence on this head is contained in what the
same authority says about King Finow^s son.
The previous king, Toogoo Ahoo, had been
assassinated by Finow, and his soul, become an
Atua of divine rank in Bolotoo, had been pleased
to visit and inspire Finow's son — with what par-
ticular object does not appear.

When this young chief returned to Hapai, Mr. Mariner,
who was upon a footing of great friendship with him, one
day asked him how he felt himself when the spirit of Toogoo
Ahoo visited him ; he replied that he could not well describe
his feelings, but the best he could say of it was, that he felt
himself all over in a glow of heat and quite restless and un-
comfortable, and did not feel his own personal identity, as
it were, but seemed to have a mind different from his own
natural mind, his thoughts wandering upon strange and
unusual subjects, though perfectly sensible of surrounding
objects. He next asked him how he knew it was the spirit
of Toogoo Ahoof His answer was, " There's a fool ! How
can I tell you how I knew if? I felt and knew it was so by

328 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY vm

a kind of consciousness ; my mind told me that it was Too-
goo Ahoo " (vol. i. pp. 104, 105).

Finow's son was evidently made for a theologi-
cal disputant, and fell back at once on the inex-
pugnable stronghold of faith when other evidence
was lacking. " There's a fool! I know it is true,
because I know it," is the exemplar and epitome
of the sceptic-crushing process in otlier j)laces
than the Tonga Islands.

The island of Bolotoo, to which all the souls
(of the upper classes at any rate) repair after the
death of the body, and from which they return at
will to interfere, for good or evil, with the lives of
those whom they have left behind, obviously
answers to Sheol. In Tongan tradition, this place
of souls is a sort of elysium above ground and
pleasant enough to live in. But, in other parts of
Polynesia, the corresponding locality, which is
called Po, has to be reached by descending into
the earth, and is represented dark and gloomy
like Sheol. But it was not looked upon as a place
of rewards and punishments in any sense.
Whether in Bolotoo or in Po, the soul took the
rank it had in the flesh; and, a shadow, lived
among the shadows of the friends and houses and
food of its previous life.

The Tongan theologians recognised several
hundred gods; but there was one, already men-
tioned as their national god, whom they regarded
as far greater than any of the others, " as a great

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 329

chief from the top of the sky down to the bottom
of the earth '' (Mariner, vol. ii. p. 106). He was
also god of war, and the tutelar deity of the royal
family, whoever happened to be the incumbent of
the royal office for the time being. He had no
priest except the king himself, and his visits, even
to royalty, were few and far between. The name
of this supreme deity was Ta-li-y-Toobo6, the
literal meaning of which is said to be " Wait there,
Tooboo/' from which it would appear that the
peculiar characteristic of Ta-li-y-Toobo6, in the
eyes of his worshippers, was persistence of dura-
tion. And it is curious to notice, in relation to this
circumstance, that many Hebrew philologers have
thought the meaning of Jahveh to be best
expressed by the word " Eternal.^' It would
probably be difficult to express the notion of an
eternal being, in a dialect so little fitted to convey
abstract conceptions as Tongan, better than by
that of one who always " waits there."

The characteristics of the gods in Tongan
theology are exactly those of men whose shape
they are supposed to possess, only they have more
intelligence and greater power. The Tongan
belief that, after death, the human Atua more
readily distinguishes good from evil, runs parallel
with the old Israelitic conception of Elohim ex-
pressed in Genesis, " Ye shall be as Elohim,
knowing good from evil." They further agreed
with the old Israelites, that " all rewards for

330 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viu

virtue and punishments for vice happen to men
in this world only, and come immediately from
the gods " (vol. ii. p. 100). Moreover, they were
of opinion that though the gods approve of some
kinds of virtue, are displeased with some kinds
of vice, and, to a certain extent, protect or forsake
their worshippers according to their moral con-
duct, yet neglect to pay due respect to the
deities, and forgetfulness to keep them in good
humour, might be visited with even worse conse-
quences than moral delinquency. And those who
will carefully study the so-called " Mosaic code "
contained in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and
Numbers, will see that, though Jahveh's prohi-
bitions of certain forms of immorality are strict
and sweeping, his wrath is quite as strongly
kindled against infractions of ritual ordinances.
Accidental homicide may go unpunished, and
reparation may be made for wilful theft. On the
other hand, Nadab and Abihu, who " offered
strange fire before Jahveh, which he had not com-
manded them," were swiftly devoured by Jahveh's
fire; he who sacrificed anywhere except at the
allotted place was to be " cut off from his people ";
so was he who ate blood; and the details of the
upholstery of the Tabernacle, of the millinery of
the priests' vestments, and of the cabinet work of
the ark, can plead direct authority from Jahveh,
no less than moral commands.

Amongst the Tongans, the sacrifices were

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 331

regarded as gifts of food and drink offered to the
divine Atuas, just as the articles deposited by the
graves of the recently dead were meant as food
for Atuas of lower rank. A kava root was a
constant form of offering all over Polynesia. In
the excellent work of the Rev. George Turner,
entitled Nineteen Years in Polynesia (p. 241), I
find it said of the Samoans (near neighbours of
the Tongans): —

The offerings were principally cooked food. As in
ancient Greece so in Samoa, the first cup was in honour of
the god. It was either poured out on the ground or waved
towards the heavens, reminding us again of the Mosaic
ceremonies. The chiefs all drank a portion out of the same
cup, according to rank ; and after that, the food brought as
an offering was divided and eaten " i?iere before the Lord.'^

In Tonga, when they consulted a god who had
a priest, the latter, as representative of the god,
had the first cup; but if the god, like Ta-li-y-Too-
boo, had no priest, then the chief place was left
vacant, and was supposed to be occupied by the
god himself. When the first cup of kava was
filled, the mataboole who acted as master of the
ceremonies said, " Give it to your god," and it was
offered, though only as a matter of form. In
Tonga and Samoa there were many sacred places
or morais, with houses of the ordinary con-
struction, but which served as temples in
consequence of licing dedicated to various gods;
and there were altars on which tlie sacrifices were

332 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

offered; nevertheless there were few or no images.
Mariner mentions none in Tonga, and the Samoans
seem to have been regarded as no better than
atheists by other Polynesians because they had
none. It does not appear that either of these
peoples had images even of their family or ances-
tral gods.

In Tahiti and the adjacent islands, Moerenhout
(t. i. p. 471) makes the very interesting observa-
tion, not only that idols were often absent, but
that, where they existed, the images of the gods
served merely as depositories for the proper
representatives of the divinity. Each of these
was called a maro aurou, and v/as a kind of girdle
artistically adorned with red, yellow, blue, and
black feathers — the red feathers being especially
important — which were consecrated and kept as
sacred objects within the idols. They were worn
by great personages on solemn occasions, and con-
ferred upon their wearers a sacred and almost
divine character. There is no distinct evidence
that the maro aurou was supposed to have any
special efficacy in divination, but one cannot fail
to see a certain parallelism between this holy gir-
dle, which endowed its wearer with a particular
sanctity, and the ephod.

According to the Eev. E. Taylor, the New
Zealanders formerly used the word karakia (now
employed for " prayer ") to signify a " spell,
charm, or incantation," and the utterance of these

vm THE EVOLUTION OP THEOLOGY 333

karaldas constituted the chief part of their cult.
In the south, the officiating priest had a smaU
image, " about eighteen inches long, resembling a
peg with a carved head," which reminds one of
the form commonly attributed to the teraphim.

The priest first bandaged a fillet of red parrot feathers
under the god's chin, which was called his pahaii or beard ;
this bandage was made of a certain kind of sennet, which
was tied on in a peculiar way. When this was done it was
taken possession of by the Atua, whose spirit entered it. The
priest then either held it in the hand and vibrated it in the
air, whilst the powerful karakia was repeated, or he tied a
piece of string (formed of the centre of a flax leaf) round
the neck of the image and stuck it in the ground. He sat
at a little distance from it, leaning against a tuahu, a short
stone pillar stuck in the ground in a slanting position and,
holding the string in his hand, he gave the god a jerk to
arrest his attontion, lest he should be otherwise engaged,
like Baal of old, either hunting, fishing, or sleeping, and
therefore must be awaked. . . . The god is supposed to
make use of the priest's tongue in giving a reply. Image-
worship appears to have been confined to one part of the
island. The Atua was supposed only to enter the imago
for the occasion. The natives declare they did not worship
the image itself, but only the Atua it represented, and that
the image was merely used as a way of approaching him.*

This is the excuse for image-worship which the
more intelligent idolaters make all the world over;
but it is more interesting to observe that, in the
present case, we seem to have the equivalents of
divination by teraphim, with the aid of something
like an ephod (which, however, is used to sanctify

* Te Ika a Maui : New Zealand and its Inhabitants, p. 72.

334 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

the image and not the priest) mixed up together.
Many Hebrew archseologists have supposed that
the term " ephod " is sometimes used for an image
(particularly in the case of Gideon's epliod), and
the story of Micah, in the book of Judges, shows
that images were, at any rate, employed in close
association with the ephod. If the pulling of the
string to call the attention of the god seems as
absurd to us as it appears to have done to the
w^orthy missionary, who tells us of the practice, it
should be recollected that the high priest of Jah-
veh was ordered to wear a garment fringed with
golden bells.

And it shall be upon Aaron to minister; and the sound
thereof shall be heard when he goeth in unto the holy place
before Jahveh, and when he cometh out, that he die not
(Exod. xxviii. 35).

An escape from the obvious conclusion sug-
gested by this passage has been sought in the sup-
position that these bells rang for the sake of the
worshippers, as at the elevation of the host in the
Roman Catholic ritual; but then why should the
priest be threatened with the well-known penalty
for inadvisedly beholding the divinity?

In truth, the intermediate step between the
Maori practice and that of the old Israelites is
furnished by the Kami temples in Japan. These
are provided with bells which the worshippers who
present themselves ring, in order to call the atten-
tion of the ancestor-god to their presence. Grant

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 335

the fundamental assumption of the essentially
human character of the spirit, whether Atua,
Kami, or Elohim, and all these practices are
equally rational.

The sacrifices to the gods in Tonga, and else-
where in Polynesia, were ordinarily social gather-
ings, in which the god, either in his own person or
in that of his priestly representative, was supposed
to take part. These sacrifices were offered on every
occasion of importance, and even the daily meals
were prefaced by oblations and libations of food
and drink, exactly answering to those ofl^ered by
the old Romans to their manes, penates, and lares.
The sacrifices had no moral significance, but were
the necessary result of the theory that the god
was either a deified ghost of an ancestor or chief,
or, at any rate, a being of like nature to these. If
one wanted to get anything out of him, therefore,
the first step was to put him in good humour by
gifts; and if one desired to escape his wrath, which
might be excited by the most trifling neglect or
unintentional disrespect, the great thing was to
pacify him by costly presents. King Finow
appears to have been somewhat of a freethinker
(to the great horror of his subjects), and it was
only his untimely death which prevented him from
dealing with the priest of a god, who had not
returned a favourable answer to his supplications,
as Saul dealt with the priests of the sanctuary of
Jahveh at Nob. Nevertheless, Finow showed his

33G THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

practical belief in the gods during the sickness of

a daughter, to whom he was fondly attached, in a

fashion which has a close parallel in the history of

Israel.

If the gods have any resentment against us, let the whole
weight of vengeance fall on my head. I fear not their
vengeance — but spare ray child ; and I earnestly entreat
you, Toobo Total [the god whom he had evoked], to exert
all your influence with the other gods that I alone may
suffer all the punishment they desire to inflict (vol. i. p. 354).

So when the king of Israel has sinned by

" numbering the people/' and they are punished

for his fault by a pestilence which slays seventy

thousand innocent men, David cries to Jah-

veh : —

Lo, I have sinned, and I have done perversely : but these
sheep, what have they done ? let thine hand, I pray thee, bo
against me, and against my father's house (2 Sam. xxiv. 17).

Human sacrifices were extremely common in
Polynesia; and, in Tonga, the " devotion " of a
child by strangling was a favourite method of
averting the wrath of the gods. The well-known
instances of Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter
and of David's giving up the seven sons of Saul to
be sacrificed by the Gibeonites ^^ before Jahveh,"
appear to me to leave no doubt that the old
Israelites, even when devout worshippers of
Jahveh, considered human sacrifices, under certain
circumstances, to be not only permissible but
laudable. Samuel's hewing to pieces of the
miserable captive, sole survivor of his nation.

Yiii THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 337

Agag, " before Jaliveh," can hardly be viewed in
any other light. The life of Moses is redeemed
from Jahveh, who " sought to slay him/' by
Zipporah's symbolical sacrifice of her child, by the
bloody operation of circumcision. Jahveh expressly
affirms that the first-born males of men and beasts
are devoted to him; in accordance with that
claim, the first-born males of the beasts are duly
sacrificed; and it is only by special permission
that the claim to the first-born of men is waived,
and it is enacted that they may be redeemed
(Exod. xiii. 12-15). Is it possible to avoid the
conclusion that immolation of their first-born sons
would have been incumbent on the worshippers of
Jahveh, had they not been thus specially excused ?
Can any other conclusion be drawn from the
history of Abraham and Isaac? Does Abraham
exhibit any indication of surprise when he receives
the astounding order to sacrifice his son ? Is there
the slightest evidence that there was anything in
his intimate and personal acquaintance with the
character of the Deity, who had eaten the meat
and drunk the milk which Abraham set before him
under the oaks of Mamre, to lead him to hesitate
— even to wait twelve or fourteen hours for a
repetition of the command? !N'ot a whit. We
are told that " Abraham rose early in the morn-
ing " and led his only child to the slaughter, as if
it were the most ordinary business imaginable.

Whether the story has any historical foundation or
111

338 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

not, it is valuable as showing that the writer of it
conceived Jahveh as a deity whose requirement of
such a sacrifice need excite neither astonishment
nor suspicion of mistake on the part of his devotee.
Hence, when the incessant human sacrifices in
Israel, during the age of the kings, are put down
to the influence of foreign idolatries, we may fairly
inquire whether editorial Bowdlerising has not
prevailed over historical truth.

An attempt to compare the ethical standards
of two nations, one of which has a written code,
while the other has not, is beset with difficulties.
With all that is strange and, in many cases, repul-
sive to us in the social arrangements and opinions
respecting moral obligation among the Tongans,
as they are placed before us, with perfect candour,
in Mariner's account, there is much that indicates
a strong ethical sense. They showed great kindli-
ness to one another, and faithfulness in standing
by their comrades in war. No people could have
better observed either the third or the fifth com-
mandment; for they had a particular horror of
blasphemy, and their respectful tenderness towards
their parents and, indeed, towards old people in
general, was remarkable.

It cannot be said that the eicrhth command-
ment was generally observed, especially where Eu-
ropeans were concerned; nevertheless a well-bred
Tongan looked upon theft as a meanness to which
he would not condescend. As to the seventh com-

Yiii THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 339

mandment, any breach of it was considered
scandalous in women and as something to be
avoided in self-respecting men; but, among un-
married and widowed people, chastity was held
very cheap. Nevertheless the women were ex-
tremely well treated, and often showed themselves
capable of great devotion and entire faithful-
ness. In the matter of cruelty, treachery, and
bloodthirstiness, these islanders were neither bet-
ter nor worse than most peoples of antiquity.
It is to the credit of the Tongans that they par-
ticularly objected to slander; nor can covetous-
ness be regarded as their characteristic; for Mar-
iner says : —

When any one is about to eat, he always shares out
what he has to those about him, without any hesitation,
and a contrary conduct would be considered exceedingly
vile and selfish (vol. ii. p. 145).

In fact, they thought very badly of the English
when Mariner told them that his countrymen did
not act exactly on that principle. It further ap-
pears that they decidedly belonged to the school
of intuitive moral philosophers, and believed that
virtue is its own reward ; for

Many of the chiefs, on being asked by Mr. Mariner what
motives they had for conducting themselves with pro-
priety, besides the fear of misfortunes in this life, replied,
the agreeable and happy feeling which a man experiences
within himself when he does any good action or conducts
himself nobly and generously as a man ought to do; and
this question they answered as if they wondered such a
question should be asked (vol. ii. p. 161).

340 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

One may read from the beginning of the book
of Judges to the end of the books of Samuel with-
out discovering that the old Israelites had a moral
standard which differs, in any essential respect
(except perhaps in regard to the chastity of un-
married women), from that of the Tongans.
Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, and David are strong-
handed men, some of whom are not outdone by
any Polynesian chieftain in the matter of murder
and treachery; while Deborah^s jubilation over
Jael's violation of the primary duty of hospitality,
proffered and accepted under circumstances which
give a peculiarly atrocious character to the murder
of the guest; and her witch-like gloating over the
picture of the disappointment of the mother of
the victim —

The mother of Sisera cried through the lattice,
Why is his chariot so long in coming ? (Jud. v. 28.)

— would not have been out of place in the choral
service of the most sanguinary god in the Poly-
nesian pantheon.

With respect to the cannibalism which the
Tongans occasionally practised, Mariner says: —

Although a few young ferocious warriors chose to imi-
tate what they considered a mark of courageous fierceness
in a neighbouring nation, it was held in disgust by every-
body else (vol. ii. p. 171).

That the moral standard of Tongan life was
less elevated than that indicated in the " Book of
the Covenant" (Exod. xxi.-xxiii.) may be freely

vin THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 34I

admitted. But then the evidence that this Book
of the Covenant, and even the ten commandments
as given in Exodus, were known to the Israelites
of the time of Samuel and Saul, is (to say the
least) by no means conclusive. The Deuteronomic
version of the fourth commandment is hopelessly
discrepant from that which stands in Exodus.
Would any later writer have ventured to alter the
commandments as given from Sinai, if he had had
before him that which professed to be an accurate
statement of the " ten words " in Exodus ? And
if the writer of Deuteronomy had not Exodus
before him, what is the value of the claim of the
version of the ten commandments therein con-
tained to authenticity ? From one end to the other
of the books of Judges and Samuel, the only " com-
mandments of Jahveh " which are specially ad-
duced refer to the prohibition of the worship of
other gods, or are orders given ad hoc, and have
nothing to do with questions of morality.

In Polynesia, the belief in witchcraft, in the
appearance of spiritual beings in dreams, in pos-
session as the cause of diseases, and in omens,
prevailed universally. Mariner tells a story of a
woman of rank who was greatly attached to King
Finow, and who, for the space of six months after
his death, scarcely ever slept elsewhere than on
his grave, which she kept carefully decorated with
flowers : —

One day she went, with the deepest affliction, to the
house of Mo-oonga Toobo, the widow of the deceased chief,

342 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

to communicate what had happened to her at the fytoca
[grave] during several nights, and which caused her the
greatest anxiety. She. related that she had dreamed that
the late How [King] appeared to her and, with a counte-
nance full of disappointment, asked why there yet remained
at Vavaoo so ma ny evil-designing persons : for he declared
that, since he had been at Bolotoo, his spirit had been dis-
turbed * by the evil machinations of wicked men conspiring
against his son ; but he declared that " the youth " should
not be molested nor his power shaken by the spirit of re-
bellion ; that he therefore came to her with a warning voice
to prevent such disastrous consequences (vol. i. p. 424).

On inquiry it turned out that the charm of
tattao had been performed on Finow's grave, with
the view of injuring his son, the reigning king,
and it is to be presumed that it was this sorcerer's
work which had " disturbed " Finow's spirit. The
Eev. Eichard Taylor says in the work already
cited : " The account given of the witch of Endor
agrees most remarkably with the witches of I^ew
Zealand '' (p. 45).

The Tongans also believed in a mode of divi-
nation (essentially similar to the casting of lots)
the twirling of a cocoanut.

The object of inquiry ... is chiefly whether a sick per-
son will recover ; for this purpose the nut being placed on
the ground, a relation of the sick person determines that, if
the nut, when again at rest, points to such a quarter, the
east for example, that the sick man will recover ; he then
prays aloud to the patron god of the family that he will be
pleased to direct the nut so that it may indicate the truth ;

* Compare : " And Samuel said unto Saul, Why hast
thou disquieted me 'i " (1 Sam. xxviii. 15.)

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 343

the nut being next spun, the result is attended to with con-
fidence, at least with a full conviction that it will truly de-
clare the intentions of the gods at the time (vol. ii. p. 227).

Does not the action of Saul, on a famous occasion,
involve exactly the same theological presuppo-
sitions ?

Therefore Saul said unto Jahveh, the Elohim of Israel,
Shew the right. And Jonathan and Saul were taken hy lot :
but the people escaped. And Saul said, Cast lots between
me and Jonathan my son. And Jonathan was taken. And
Saul said to Jonathan, Tell me what thou hast done. . . .
And the people rescued Jonathan so that he died not (1
Sam. xiv. 41-45).

As the Israelites had great yearly feasts, so had
the Polynesians; as the Israelites practised cir-
cumcision, so did many Polynesian people; as the
Israelites had a complex and often arbitrary-
seeming multitude of distinctions between clean
and unclean things, and clean and unclean states
of men, to which they attached great importance,
so had the Polynesians their notions of ceremonial
purity and their tahu, an equally extensive and
strange system of prohibitions, violation of which
was visited by death. These doctrines of cleanness
and uncleanness no doubt may have taken their
rise in the real or fancied utility of the prescrip-
tions, but it is probable that the origin of many is
indicated in the curious habit of the Samoans
to make fetishes of living animals. It will be
recollected that these people had no " gods made
with hands/' but they substituted animals for
them.

344: THE EV0LUTI0:N' of theology VIII

At his birth

every Samoan was supposed to be taken under the care of
some tutelary god or aitu [=Atua] as it was called. The
help of perhaps half a dozen different gods was invoked in
succession on the occasion, but the one who happened to be
addressed just as the child was born was marked and de-
clared to be the child's god for life.

These gods were supposed to appear in some visible in-
carnatio7i, and the particular thing in which his god was
in the habit of appearing was, to the Samoan, an object of
veneration. It was in fact his idol, and he was careful
never to injure it or treat it with contempt. One, for in-
stance, saw his god in the eel, another in the shark, another
in the turtle, another in the dog, another in the owl, an-
other in the lizard ; and so on, throughout all the fish of
the sea and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping
things. In some of the shell-fish even, gods were supposed
to be present. A man would eat freely of what was re-
garded as the incarnation of the god of another man, but
the incarnation of his own particular god he would con-
sider it death to injure or eat.*

We have here that which appears to be the
origin, or one of the origins, of food prohibitions,
on the one hand, and of totemism on the other.
When it is remembered that the old Israelites
sprang from ancestors who are said to have resided
near, or in, one of the great seats of ancient
Babylonian civilisation, the city of Ur; that they
had been, it is said for centuries, in close contact
with the Egyptians; and that, in the theology of
both the Babylonians and the Egyptians, there is
abundant evidence, notwithstanding their advanced

* Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia^ p. 238.

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 345

social organisation, of the belief in spirits, with
sorcery, ancestor-worship, the deification of ani-
mals, and the converse animalisation of gods — it
obviously needs very strong evidence to justify the
belief that the rude tribes of Israel did not share
the notions from which their far more civilised
neighbours had not emancipated themselves.

But it is surely needless to carry the compari-
son further. Out of the abundant evidence at
command, I think that sufficient has been produced
to furnish ample grounds for the belief, that the
old Israelites of the time of Samuel entertained
theological conceptions which were on a level with
those current among the more civilised of the
Polynesian islanders, though their ethical code
may possibly, in some respects, have been more
advanced.*

A theological system of essentially similar char-
acter, exhibiting the same fundamental concep-
tions respecting the continued existence and inces-
sant interference in human affairs of disembodied
spirits, prevails, or formerly prevailed, among the
whole of the inhabitants of the Polynesian and
Melanesian islands, and among the people of
Australia, notwithstanding the wide differences in
pliysical character and in grade of civilisation
which obtain am.ong them. And the same propo-
sition is true of the people who inhabit the riverain

* See Lippcrt's excellent remarks on this subject, Der
ScelencuU, p. 89.

346 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY vm

shores of the Pacific Ocean, whether Dyaks, Ma-
lays, Indo-Chinese, Chinese, Japanese, the wild
tribes of America, or the highly civilised old Mexi-
cans and Peruvians. It is no less true of the Mon-
golic nomads of Northern Asia, of the Asiatic Ary-
ans and of the Ancient Greeks and Eomans, and it
holds good among the Dravidians of the Dekhan
and the negro tribes of Africa. No tribe of
savages, which has yet been discovered, has been
conclusively proved to have so poor a theological
equipment as to be devoid of a belief in ghosts,
and in the utility of some form of witchcraft, in
influencing those ghosts. And there is no nation,
modern or ancient, which, even at this moment,
has wholly given up the belief; and in which it
has not, at one time or other, played a great part
in practical life.

This sciotheism* as it might be called, is
found, in several degrees of complexity, in rough
correspondence with thg stages of social organisa-
tion, and, like these, separated by no sudden breaks.

In its simplest condition, such as may be met
with among the Australian savages, theology is a
mere belief in the existence, powers, and disposi-
tion (usually malignant) of ghostlike entities who
may be propitiated or scared away; but no cult

* Sciograpjiy has the authority of Cudworth, Intellectual
System, vol. ii. p. 836. Sciomancy {(TKioixavnia), which, in
the sense of divination by ghosts, "may be found in Bailey's
Dictionary (1751), also furnishes a precedent for my coin-
age.

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 347

can properly be said to exist. And, in this stage,
theology is wholly independent of ethics. The
moral code, such as is implied by public opinion,
derives no sanction from the theological dogmas,
and the influence of the spirits is supposed to be
exerted out of mere caprice or malice.

As a next stage, the fundamental fear of ghosts
and the consequent desire to propitiate them ac-
quire an organised ritual in simple forms of ances-
tor-worship, such as the Rev. Mr. Turner describes
among the people of Tanna (/. c. p. 88) ; and this
line of development may be followed out until it
attains its acme in the State-theology of China
and the Kami-theology * of Japan. Each of these
is essentially ancestor-worship, the ancestors being
reckoned back through family groups, of higher
and higher order, sometimes with strict reference
to the principle of agnation, as in old Rome; and,
as in the latter, it is intimately bound up with the
whole organisation of the State. There are no
idols; inscribed tablets in China, and strips of
paper lodged in a peculiar portable shrine in Ja-
pan, represent the souls of the deceased, or the
special seats which they occupy when sacrifices are
offered by their descendants. In Japan it is inter-
esting to observe that a national Kami — Ten-zio-
dai-zin — is worshipped as a sort of Jahveh by the
nation in general, and (as Lippert has observed) it

* " Kami " is used in the sense of Elohim ; and is also,
like our word " Lord," employed as a title of respect among
men, as indeed Elohim was.

34:8 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

is singular that his special seat is a portable litter-
like shrine, termed the Mikosi, in some sort analo-
gous to the Israelitic ark. In China, the emperor
is the representative of the primitive ancestors,
and stands, as it were, between them and the
supreme cosmic deities — Heaven and Earth — who
are superadded to them, and who answer to the
Tangaloa and the Maui of the Polynesians.

Sciotheism, under the form of the deification of
ancestral ghosts, in its most pronounced form, is
therefore the chief element in the theology of a
great moiety, possibly of more than half, of the
human race. I think this must be taken to be a
matter of fact — though various opinions may be
held as to how this ancestor-worship came about.
But on the other hand, it is no less a matter of fact
that there are very few people without additional
gods, who cannot, with certainty, be accounted for
as deified ancestors.

With all respect for the distinguished au-
thorities on the other side, I cannot find good
reasons for accepting the theory that the cosmic
deities — who are superadded to deified ancestors
even in China; who are found all over Polynesia,
in Tangaloa and Maui, and in old Peru, in the Sun
— are the product either of the " search after the
infinite," or of mistakes arising out of the confu-
sion of a great chief's name with the thing signified
by the name. But, however this may be, I think
it is again merely matter of fact that, among a

vrii THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 349

large portion of mankind, ancestor-worship is more
or less thrown into the background either by such
cosmic deities, or by tribal gods of uncertain
origin, who have been raised to eminence by the
superiority in warfare, or otherwise, of their wor-
shippers.

Among certain nations, the polytheistic theol-
ogy, thus constituted, has become modified by the
selection of some one cosmic or tribal god, as the
only god to whom worship is due on the part of
that nation (though it is by no means denied that
other nations have a right to worship other gods),
and thus results a worship of one God — monolatry,
as Wellhausen calls it — which is very different
from genuine monotheism.* In ancestral scio-
theism, and in this monolatry, the ethical code,
often of a very high order, comes into closer
relation with the theological creed. Morality is
taken under the patronage of the god or gods, who
reward all morally good conduct and punish all
morally evil conduct in this world or the next. At
the same time, however, they are conceived to be
thoroughly human, and they visit any shadow of
disrespect to themselves, shown by disobedience to
their commands, or by delay, or carelessness, in
carrying them out, as severely as any breach of
the moral laws. Piety means minute attention to
the due performance of all sacred rites, and covers

[* The Assyrians thus raised Assur to a position of pre-
eminence.]

350 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

any number of lapses in morality, just as cruelty,
treachery, murder, and adultery did not bar David's
claim to the title of the man after God's own
heart among the Israelites; crimes against men
may be expiated, but blasphemy against the gods
is an unpardonable sin. Men forgive all injuries
but those which touch their self-esteem; and they
make their gods after their own likeness, in their
own image make they them.

It is in the category of monolatry that I con-
ceive the theolosrv of the old Israelites must be
ranged. They were polytheists, in so far as they
admitted the existence of other Elohim of divine
rank beside Jahveh; they differed from ordinary
polytheists, in so far as they believed that Jahveh
was the supreme god and the one proper object of
their own national worship. But it will doubtless
be objected that I have been building up a ficti-
tious Israelitic theology on the foundation of the
recorded habits and customs of the people, when
they had lapsed from the ordinances of their great
lawgiver and prophet Moses, and that my conclu-
sions may be good for the perverts to Canaanitish
theology, but not for the true observers of the
Sinaitic legislation. The answer to the objection
is that — so far as I can form a judgment of that
which is well ascertained in the history of Israel —
there is very little ground for believing that we
know much, either about the theological and

VIII THE EVOLUTION OP THEOLOGY 351

social value of the influence of Moses, or about
what happened during the wanderings in the
Desert.

The account of the Exodus and of the occur-
rences in the Sinaitic peninsula; in fact, all the
history of Israel before the invasion of Canaan, is
full of wonderful stories, which may be true, in so
far as they are conceivable occurrences, but which
are certainly not probable, and which I, for one,
decline to accept until evidence, which deserves
that name, is offered of their historical truth. Up
to this time I know of none.* Furthermore, I see
no answer to the argument that one has no right to
pick out of an obviously unhistorical statement the
assertions which happen to be probable and to dis-
card the rest. But it is also certain that a primi-
tively veracious tradition may be smothered under
subsequent mythical additions, and that one has
no right to cast away the former along with the
latter. Thus, perhaps the fairest way of stating
the case may be as follows.

There can be no a priori objection to the sup-
position that the Israelites were delivered from
their Egyptian bondage by a leader called Moses,
and that he exerted a great influence over their
subsequent organisation in the Desert. There is
no reason to doubt that, during their residence in

* I refer those who wish to know the reasons which lead
me to take up this position to the works of Reuss and Well-
hausen, [and especially to Stade's Oeschichte des Volkea
Israel.]

352 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

the land of Goshen, the Israelites knew nothing
of Jahveh; but, as their own prophets declare (see
Ezek. XX.), were polytheistic idolaters, sharing in
the worst practices of their neighbours. As to
their conduct in other respects, nothing is known.
But it may fairly be suspected that their ethics
were not of a higher order than those of Jacob,
their progenitor, in which case they might derive
great profit from contact with Egyptian society,
which held honesty and truthfulness in the highest
esteem. Thanks to the Egyptologers, we now
know, with all requisite certainty, the moral
standard of that society in the time, and long
before the time, of Moses. It can be determined
from the scrolls buried with the mummified dead
and from the inscriptions on the tombs and
memorial statues of that age. For, though the
lying of epitaphs is proverbial, so far as their sub-
ject is concerned, they gave an unmistakable in-
sight into that which the writers and the readers
of them think praiseworthy.

In the famous tombs of Beni Hassan there is a
record of the life of Prince iSTakht, who served
Osertasen IL, a Pharaoh of the twelfth d3^nasty,
as governor of a province. The inscription speaks
in his name: " I was a benevolent and kindly gov-
ernor who loved his country. . . . Never was a
little child distressed nor a widow ill-treated by
me. I have never repelled a workman nor hindered
a shepherd. I gave alike to the widow and to

Yiii THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 353

the married woman, and have not preferred the
great to the small in my gifts/' And we have the
high authority of the late Dr. Samuel Birch for
the statement that the inscriptions of the twelfth
dynasty abound in injunctions of a high ethical
character. " To feed the hungry, give drink to the
thirsty, clothe the naked, bury the dead, loyally
serve the king, formed the first duty of a pious
man and faithful subject.'' * The people for whom
these inscriptions embodied their ideal of praise-
worthiness assuredly had no imperfect conception
of either justice or mercy. But there is a document
which gives still better evidence of the moral
standard of the Egyptians. It is the " Book of
the Dead," a sort of " Guide to Spiritland," the
whole, or a part, of which was buried with the
mummy of every well-to-do Egyptian, while ex-
tracts from it are found in innumerable inscrip-
tions. Portions of this work are of extreme
antiquity, evidence of their existence occurring as
far back as the fifth and sixth dynasties ; while the
125th chapter, Avhich constitutes a sort of book by
itself, and is known as the " Book of Redemption
in the Hall of the two Truths," is frequently in-
scribed upon coiHns and other monuments of the
nineteenth dynasty (that under which, there is
some reason to believe, the Israelites were op-
pressed and the Exodus took place), and it occurs,
more than once, in the famous tombs of the kings

* Bunsen. Egypfs Place, vol. v. p. 129, note.
112

354 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

of this and the preceding dynasty at Thebes. * This
" Book of Kedemption ^' is chiefly occupied by the
so-called "' negative confession '' made to the
forty-two Divine Judges, in which the soul of the
dead denies that he has committed faults of
various kinds. It is, therefore, obvious that the
Egyptians conceived that their gods commanded
them not to do the deeds which are here denied.
The " Book of Eedemption/' in fact, implies the
existence in the mind of the Egyptians, if not in
a formal writing, of a series of ordinances, couched,
like the majority of the ten commandments, in
negative terms. And it is easy to prove the
implied existence of a series which nearly answers
to the " ten words.^^ Of course a polytheistic and
image-worshipping people, who observed a great
many holy days, but no Sabbath, could have noth-
ing analogous to the first or the second and the
fourth commandments of the Decalogue; but an-
swering to the third, is " I have not blasphemed ; ''
to the fifth, " I have not reviled the face of the
king or my father; " to the sixth, " I have not
murdered ; " to the seventh, " I have not committed
adultery ; " to the eighth, " I have not stolen,^' " I
have not done fraud to man; '^ to the ninth, " I
have not told falsehoods in the tribunal of truth,'^
and, further, " I have not calumniated the slave to
his master." I find nothing exactly similar to the

* See Birch, in Egypt's Place, vol. v. ; and Brugsch, ^^s-
tory of Egypt.

vni THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 355

tenth commandment; but that the inward dispo-
sition of mind was held to be of no less importance
than the outward act is to be gathered from the
praises of kindliness already cited and the cry of
^^ I am pure," which is repeated by the soul on
trial. Moreover, there is a minuteness of detail in
the confession which shows no little delicacy of
moral appreciation—" I have jiot privily done evil
against mankind," " I have not afflicted men,"
" I have not withheld milk from the mouths of
sucklings," *^ I have not been idle," " I have not
played the hypocrite," " I have not told false-
hoods," " I have not corrupted woman or man,"
" I have not caused fear," " I have not multipled
words in speaking."

Would that the moral sense of the nineteenth
century a. d. were as far advanced as that of the
Egyptians in the nineteenth century b. c. in this
last particular! What incalculable benefit to man-
kind would flow from strict observance of the
commandment, " Thou shalt not multiply words in
speaking! " Nothing is more remarkable than
the stress which the old Egyptians, here and else-
where, lay upon this and other kinds of truthful-
ness, as compared wiih the absence of any such
requirement in the Israelitic Decalogue, in which
only a specific kind of untruthfulness is forbidden.

If, as the story runs, Moses was adopted by a
princess of the royal house, and was instructed in
all the wisdom of the Egyptians, it is surely in-

356 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY Yiii

credible that he should not have been familiar,
from his youth up, with the high moral code
imi^lied in the " Book of Eedemption/' It is
surely impossible that he should have been less
familiar with the complete legal system, and with
the method of administration of justice, which,
even in his time, had enabled the Egyptian people
to hold together, as a complex social organisation,
for a period far longer than the duration of old
Eoman society, from the building of the city to the
death of the last Caesar. Nor need we look to
Moses alone for the influence of Egypt upon Israel.
It is true that the Hebrew nomads who came into
contact with the Egyptians of Osertasen, or of
Eamses, stood in much the same relation to them,
in point of culture, as a Germanic tribe did to the
Eomans of Tiberius, or of Marcus Antoninus; or as
Captain Cook's Omai did to the English of George
the Third. But, at the same time, any difhculty
of communication which might have arisen out of
this circumstance was removed by the long pre-
existing intercourse of other Semites, of every
grade of civilisation, with the Egyptians. In
Mesopotamia and elsewhere, as in Phenicia, Se-
mitic people had attained to a social organisation
as advanced as that of the Egyptians; Semites had
conquered and occupied Lower Egypt for cen-
turies. So extensively had Semitic influences pene-
trated Egypt that the Egyptian language, during
the period of the nineteenth dynasty, is said by

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 357

Brugsch to be as full of Semitisms as German is
of Gallicisms; while Semitic deities had supplant-
ed the Egyptian gods at Heliopolis and else-
where. On the other hand, the Semites, as far as
Phenicia, were extensively influenced by Egypt.

It is generally admitted * that Moses, Phinehas
(and perhaps Aaron), are names of Egyptian origin,
and there is excellent authority for the statement
that the name Ahir, which the Israelites gave to
their golden calf, and w^hich is also used to signify
the strong, the heavenly, and even God,f is simply
the Egyptian Apis. Brugsch points out that the
god, Tum or Tom, who w^as the special object of
worship in the city of Pi-Tom, with which the
Israelites were only too familiar, was called Ankh
and the " great god," and had no image. Ankh
means " He who lives," ^^ the living one," a name
the resemblance of which to the " I am that I
am " of Exodus is unmistakable, whatever may be
the value of the fact. Every discussion of Israel-
itic ritual seeks and finds the explanation of its
details in the portable sacred chests, the altars,
the priestly dress, the breastplate, the incense,
and the sacrifices depicted on the monuments of
Egypt. But it must be remembered that these
signs of the influence of Egypt upon Israel are not
necessarily evidence that such influence was

* Even by Graetz, who, though a fair enough historian,
cannot bo accused of any desire to over-estimate the impor-
tance of Egyptian influence upon his people.

f Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, Bd. i, p. iJ70.

358 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

exerted before the Exodus. It may have come
much later, through the close connection of the
Israel of David and Solomon, first with Phenicia
and then with Egypt.

If we suppose Moses to have been a man of the
stamp of Calvin, there is no difficulty in conceiving
that he may have constructed the substance of
the ten words, and even of the Book of the
Covenant, which curiously resembles parts of
the Book of the Dead, from the foundation of
Egyptian ethics and theology which had filtered
through to the Israelites in general, or had been
furnished specially to himself by his early
education; just as the great Genevese reformer
built up a puritanic social organisation on so much
as remained of the ethics and theology of the
Roman Church, after he had trimmed them to his
liking.

Thus, I repeat, I see no a 'priori objection to
the assumption that Moses may have endeavoured
to give his people a theologico-political organisa-
tion based on the ten commandments (though cer-
tainly not quite in their present form) and the
Book of the Covenant, contained in our present
book of Exodus. But whether there is such evi-
dence as amounts to proof, or, I had better say, to
probability, that even this much of the Pentateuch
owes its origin to Moses is another matter. The
mythical character of the accessories of . the
Sinaitic history is patent, and it would take a

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 359

good deal more evidence than is afforded by the
bare assertion of an unknown writer to justify the
belief that the people who " saw the thunderings
and the lightnings and the voice of the trumpet
and the mountain smoking ^^ (Exod. xx. 18); to
wdiom Jahveh orders Moses to say, " Ye yourselves
have seen that I have talked with you from
heaven. Ye shall not make other gods with me;
gods of silver and gods of gold ye shall not make
unto you '' (ihid. 22, 23), should, less than six
weeks afterwards, have done the exact thing they
were thus awfully forbidden to do. Nor is the
credibility of the story increased by the statement
that Aaron, the brother of Moses, the witness and
fellow-worker of the miracles before Pharaoh, was
their leader and the artificer of the idol. And yet,
at the same time, Aaron was apparently so ignorant
of wrongdoing that he made proclamation, " To-
morrow shall be a feast to Jahveh," and the people
proceeded to offer their burnt-offerings and peace-
offerings, as if everything in their proceedings
must be satisfactory to the Deity with whom they
had just made a solemn covenant to abolish
image-worship. It seems to me that, on a survey
of all the facts of the case, only a very cautious
and hypothetical judgment is justifiable. It may
be that Moses profited by the opportunities
afforded him of access to . what was best in
Egyptian society to become acquainted, not only
with its advanced ethical and legal code, but with

360 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

the more or less pantheistic unification of the
Divine to which the speculations of the Egyptian
thinkers, like those of all polytheistic philosophers,
from Polynesia to Greece, tend; if indeed the
theology of the period of the nineteenth dynasty
was not, as some Egyptologists think, a modifica-
tion of an earlier, more distinctly monotheistic
doctrine of a long antecedent age. It took only
half a dozen centuries for the theology of Paul to
become the theology of Gregory the Great; and
it is possible that twenty centuries lay between
the theology of the first worshippers in the
sanctuary of the Sphinx and that of the priests of
Eamses Maimun.

It may be that the ten commandments and the
Book of the Covenant are based upon faithful
traditions of the efforts of a great leader to raise
his followers to his own level. For myself, as a
matter of pious opinion, I like to think so; as I
like to imagine that, between Moses and Samuel,
there may have been many a seer, many a herds-
man such as him of Tekoah, lonely amidst the
hills of Ephraim and Judah, who cherished and
kept alive these traditions. In the present results
of Biblical criticism, however, I can discover no
justification for the common assumption that,
between the time of Joshua and that of Eehoboam,
the Israelites were familiar with either the
Deuteronomic or the Levitical legislation; or that
the theology of the Israelites, from the king who

vm THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 361

eat on the throne to the lowest of his subjects, was
in any important respect different from that which
might naturally be expected from their previous
history and the conditions of their existence. But
there is excellent evidence to the contrary effect.
And, for my part, I see no reason to doubt that,
like the rest of the world, the Israelites had passed
through a period of mere ghost-worship, and had
advanced through Ancestor-worship and Fetishism
and Totemism to the theological level at which we
find them in the books of Judges and Samuel.

All the more remarkable, therefore, is the ex-
traordinary change which is to be noted in the
eighth century b. c. The student who is familiar
with the theology implied, or expressed, in the
books of Judges, Samuel, and the first book of
Kings, finds himself in a new world of thought,
in the full tide of a great reformation, when he
reads Joel, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, and
Jeremiah.

The essence of this change is the reversal of the
position which, in primitive society, ethics holds in
relation to theology. Originally, that which men
worship is a theological hypothesis, not a moral
ideal. The prophets, in substance, if not always
in form, preach the opposite doctrine. They are
constantly striving to free the moral ideal from the
stifling embrace of the current theology and its
concomitant ritual. Theirs was not an intellectual

362 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

criticism, argued on strictly scientific grounds; tlie
image-worshippers and the believers in the efficacy
of sacrifices and ceremonies might logically have
held their own against anything the prophets
have to say; it was an ethical criticism. From
the height of his moral intuition that the whole
duty of man is to do justice and to love mercy and
to bear himself as humbly as befits his insignifi-
cance in face of the Infinite — the prophet simply
laughs at the idolaters of stocks and stones and
the idolaters of ritual. Idols of the first kind, in
his experience, were inseparably united with the
practice of immorality, and they were to be ruth-
lessly destroyed. As for sacrifices and ceremonies,
whatever their intrinsic value might be, they might
be tolerated on condition of ceasing to be idols;
they might even be praiseworthy on condition of
being made to subserve the worship of the true
Jahveh — ^the moral ideal.

If the realm of David had remained undivided,
if the Assyrian and the Chaldean and the
Egyptian had left Israel to the ordinary course of
development of an Oriental kingdom, it is possible
that the effects of the reforming zeal of the proph-
ets of the eighth and seventh centuries might
have been effaced by the growth, according to its
inevitable tendencies, of the theology which they
combated. But the captivity made the fortune
of the ideas which it was the privilege of these
men to launch upon an endless career. With the

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 363

abolition of the Temple-services for more than half
a century, the priest must have lost and the scribe
gained influence. The puritanism of a vigorous
minority among the Babylonian Jews rooted out
polytheism from all its hiding-places in the the-
ology which they had inherited; they created the
first consistent, remorseless, naked monotheism,
which, so far as history records, appeared in the
world (for Zoroastrism is practically ditheism, and
Buddhism any-theism or no-theism); and they
inseparably united therewith an ethical code,
which, for its purity and for its efficiency as a
bond of social life, was and is unsurpassed. So I
think we must not judge Ezra and Nehemiah and
their followers too hardly, if they exemplified the
usual doom of poor humanity to escape from one
error only to fall into another; if they failed to
free themselves as completely from the idolatry of
ritual as they had from that of images and dogmas;
if they cherished the new fetters of the Levitical
legislation which they had fitted upon themselves
and their nation, as though such bonds had the
sanctity of the obligations of morality; and if they
led succeeding generations to spend their best
energies in building that " hedge round the
Torah " which was meant to preserve both ethics
and theology, but which too often had the effect of
pampering the latter and starving the former.
The world being what it was, it is to be doubted
whether Israel would have preserved intact the

364 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY vni

pure ore of religion, which the prophets had
extracted for the use of mankind as well as for
their nation, had not the leaders of the nation
been zealous, even to death, for the dross of the law
in which it was embedded. The struggle of the
Jews, under the Maccabean house, against the
Seleucidse was as important for mankind as that of
the Greeks against the Persians. And, of all the
strange ironies of history, perhaps the strangest
is that ^' Pharisee '' is current, as a term of re-
loroach, among the theological descendants of that
sect of Nazarenes who, without the martyr spirit of
those primitive Puritans, would never have come
into existence. They, like their historical suc-
cessors, our own Puritans, have shared the general
fate of the poor wise men who save cities.

A criticism of theology from the side of science
is not thought of by the prophets, and is at most
indicated in the books of Job and Ecclesiastes, in
both of which the problem of vindicating the ways
of God to man is given up, though on different
grounds, as a hopeless one. But with the ex-
tensive introduction of Greek thought among the
Jews, which took place, not only during the
domination of the Selucidas in Palestine, but in
the great Judaic colony which flourished in
Egypt under the Ptolemies, criticism, on both
ethical and scientific grounds, took a new depar-
ture.

In the hands of the Alexandrian Jews, as rep-

viii THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 365

resented by Philo, the fundamental axiom of later
Jewish, as of Christian monotheism, that the Deity
is intinitely perfect and infinitely good, worked
itself out into its logical consequence — agnostic
theism. Philo will allow of no point of contact
between God and a world in which evil exists.
For him God has no relation to space or to time,
and, as infinite, suffers no predicate beyond that
of existence. It is therefore absurd to ascribe to
Him mental faculties and affections comparable in
the remotest degree to those of men; He is in no
way an object of cognition; He is aTrotos and
(XKaraAr/KTos * — without quality and incomprehen-
sible. That is to say the Alexandrian Jew of
the first century had anticipated the reasonings of
Hamilton and Mansell in the nineteenth, and, for
him, God is the Unknowable in the sense in which
that term is used by Mr. Herbert Spencer. More-
over, Philo's definition of the Supreme Being
would not be inconsistent with that " substantia
constans infinitis attributis, quorum unumquodque
iBternam et infinitam essentiam exprimit," given by
another great Israelite, were it not that Spinoza's
doctrine of the immanence of the Deity in the
world puts him, at any rate formally, at the
antipodes of theological speculation. But the

* See the careful analysis of the work of the Alexan-
drian philosopher and theologian (who, it should be remem-
bered, was a most devout Jew, held in the highest esteem
bv his countrymen) in Siegfried's Philo von Alexnyidrieny
1875. [Also Dr. J. Drummond's Philo Judceus, 1888.]

366 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY vm

conception of the essential incognoscibility of the
Deity is the same in each case. However, Philo
was too thorough an Israelite and too much the
child of his time to be content with this agnostic
position. With the help of the Platonic and
Stoic philosophy, he constructed an apprehensible,
if not comprehensible, quasi-deity out of the
Logos; while other more or less personified divine
powers, or attributes, bridged over the interval
between God and man; between the sacred
existence, too pure to be called by any name which
implied a conceivable quality, and the gross and
evil world of matter. In order to get over the
ethical difficulties presented by the naive natural-
ism of many parts of those Scriptures, in the
divine authority of which he firmly believed,
Philo borrowed from the Stoics (who had been in
like straits in respect of Greek mythology), that
great Excalibur which they had forged with
infinite pains and skill — the method of allegorical
interpretation. This mighty " two-handed engine
at the door " of the theologian is warranted to
make a speedy end of any and every moral or
intellectual difficulty, by showing that, taken
allegorically or, as it is otherwise said, "poetically "
or, " in a spiritual sense," the plainest words mean
whatever a pious interpreter desires they should
mean. In Biblical plirase, Zeno (who probably
had a strain of Semitic blood in him) was the
" father of all such as reconcile." No doubt Philo

vm THE EVOLUTION OP THEOLOGY 367

and his followers were eminently religious men;
but they did endless injury to the cause of religion
by laying the foundations of a new theology, while
equipping the defenders of it with the subtlest
of all weapons of offence and defence, and with an
inexhaustible store of sophistical arguments of the
most plausible aspect.

The question of the real bearing upon theology
of the influence exerted by the teaching of Philo's
contemporary, Jesus of Nazareth, is one upon
which it is not germane to my present purpose to
enter. I take it simply as an unquestionable fact
that his immediate disciples, known to their
countrymen as " N'azarenes," were regarded as,
and considered themselves to be, perfectly ortho-
dox Jews, belonging to the puritanic or pharisaic
section of their people, and differing from the rest
only in their belief that the Messiah had already
come. Christianity, it is said, first became clearly
differentiated at Antioch, and it separated itself
from orthodox Judaism by denying the obligation
of the rite of circumcision and of the food pro-
hibitions, prescribed by the law. Henceforward
theology became relatively stationary among the
Jews,* and the history of its rapid progress in a

* I am not unaware of the existence of many and widely
divergent sects and schools among the Jews at all periods of
their history, since the dispersion. But I imagine that or-
thodox Judaism is now pretty much what it was in Philo's
time; while Peter and Paul, if they could return to life,
would certainly have to learn the catechism of either tho

368 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

new course of evolution is the history of the Chris-
tian Churches, orthodox and heterodox. The
steps in this evolution are obvious. The first is
the birth of a new theological scheme arising out
of the union of elements derived from Greek
philosophy with elements derived from Israelitic
theology. In the fourth Gospel, the Logos, raised
to a somewhat higher degree of personification
than in the Alexandrian theosophy, is identified
with Jesus of Nazareth. In the Epistles, especially
the later of those attributed to Paul, the Israelitic
ideas of the Messiah and of sacrificial atonement
coalesce with one another and with the embodi-
ment of the Logos in Jesus, until the apotheosis of
the Son of man is almost, or quite, effected. The
history of Christian dogma, from Justin to
Athanasius, is a record of continual progress in the
same direction, until the fair body of religion,
revealed in almost naked purity by the prophets,
is once more hidden under a new accumulation of
dogmas and of ritual practices of which the
primitive ISTazarene knew nothing; and which he
would probably have regarded as blasphemous if
he could have been made to understand them.

As, century after century, the ages roll on,
polytheism comes back under the disguise of
Mariolatry and the adoration of saints; image-
worship becomes as rampant as in old Egypt;

Roman, Greek, or Anglican Churches, if they desired to bo
considered orthodox Christians.

VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 369

adoration of relics takes the place of the old fetish-
worship; the virtues of the ephod pale before those
of holy coats and handkerchiefs; shrines and cal-
varies make up for the loss of the ark and of the
high places; and even the lustral fluid of paganism
is replaced by holy water at the porches of the
temples. A touching ceremony — the common
meal originally eaten in pious memory of a loved
teacher — becomes metamorphosed into a iiesh-and-
blood sacrifice, supposed to possess exactly that
redeeming virtue which the prophets denied to the
flesh-and-blood sacrifices of their day; while the
minute observance of ritual is raised to a degree of
punctilious refinement which Levitical legislators
might envy. And with the growth of this theology,
grew its inevitable concomitant, the belief in evil
spirits, in possession, in sorcery, in charms and
omens, until the Christians of the twelfth century
after our era were sunk in more debased and brutal
superstitions than are recorded of the Israelites in
the twelfth century before it.

The greatest men of the Middle Ages are un-
able to escape the infection. Dante's " Inferno "
would be revolting if it were not so often sublime,
so often exquisitely tender. The hideous pictures
which cover a vast space on the south wall of the
Campo Santo of Pisa convey information, as terri-
ble as it is indisputable, of the theological concep-
tions of Dante's countrvmen in the fourteenth cen-

tury, whose eyes were addressed by the painters of
113

370 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii

those disgusting scenes, and whose approbation
they knew how to win. A candid Mexican of
the time of Cortez, could he have seen this
Christian burial-]3lace, would have taken it for an
appropriately adorned Teocalli. The professed
disciple of the God of justice and of mercy might
there gloat over the sufferings of his fellowmen
depicted as undergoing every extremity of atro-
cious and sanguinary torture to all eternity, for
theological errors no less than for moral delin-
quencies; while, in the central figure of Satan,*
occupied in champing up souls in his capacious
and well-toothed jaws, to void them again for the
purpose of undergoing fresh suffering, we have the
counterpart of the strange Polynesian and Egyp-
tian dogma that there were certain gods who em-
ployed themselves in devouring the ghostly flesh of
the spirits of the dead. But in justice to the Poly-
nesians, it must be recollected that, after three such
operations, they thought the soul was purified and
happy. In the view of the Christian theologian
the operation was only a preparation for new tor-
tures continued for ever and aye.

* Dantf^'s description of Lucifer encfagerl in the eternal
mastication of Brutus, Cassius, and Judas Iscariot —
" Da ogni bocca dirompea co' denti
Un peccatore, a guisa di raaciulla,
Si che tre ne facea cosi dolenti.
A quel dinanzi il mordere era nulla,
Verso '1 graflRar, che tal volta la schiena
Rimanoa della pelle tutta brulla" —
is quite in harmony with the Pisan picture and perfectly
Polynesian in conception.

Till THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 371

With the growth of civilisation in Europe, and
with the revival of letters and of science in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the ethical and
intellectual criticism of theology once more recom-
menced, and arrived at a temporary resting-place
in the confessions of the various reformed Protes-
tant sects in the sixteenth century; almost all
of which, as soon as they were strong enough,
began to persecute those who carried criticism
beyond their own limit. But the movement was
not arrested by these ecclesiastical barriers, as
their constructors fondly imagined it would be; it
was continued, tacitly or openly, by Galileo, by
Hobbes, by Descartes, and especially by Spinoza,
in the seventeenth century; by the English Free-
thinkers, by Eousseau, by the French Encyclo-
paedists, and by the German Rationalists, among
whom Lcssing stands out a head and shoulders
taller than the rest, throughout the eighteenth
century; by the historians, the philologers, the
Biblical critics, the geologists, and the biologists
in the nineteenth century, until it is obvious to
all who can see that the moral sense and the
really scientific method of seeking for truth are
once more predominating over false science. Once
more ethics and theology are parting company.

It is my conviction that, with the spread of true
scientific culture, whatever may be the medium,
historical, philological, philosophical, or physical,
through which that culture is conveyed, and with

372 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY tih

its necessary concomitant, a constant elevation of
the standard of veracity, the end of the evolution
of theology will be like its beginning — it will
cease to have any relation to ethics. I suppose
that, so long as the human mind exists, it will not
escape its deep-seated instinct to personify its in-
tellectual conceptions. The science of the present
day is as full of this particular form of intellectual
shadow-worship as is the nescience of ignorant
ages. The difference is that the philosopher who
is worthy of the name knows that his personified
hypotheses, such as law, and force, and ether, and
the like, are merely useful symbols, while the
ignorant and the careless take them for adequate
expressions of reality. So, it may be, that the
majority of mankind may find the practice of
morality made easier by the use of theological
symbols. And unless these are converted from
symbols into idols, I do not see that science lias
anything to say to the practice, except to give an
occasional warning of its dangers. But, when
such symbols are dealt with as real existences, I
think the highest duty which is laid upon men of
science is to show that these dogmatic idols have
no greater value than the fabrications of men's
hands, the stocks and the stones, which they have
replaced.

END OF VOLUME IV.

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