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THE LOWELL LECTURES ON

THE ASCENT OF MAN

J

THE LOWELL LECTURES

ON

THE ASCENT OF MAN

BY

HENRY DRUMMOND

LIBRARY

FORTY-SECOND THOUSAND

SEP 30 1980

THE ONTARIO INSTITUTE
FOR STUDIES IN EDUCATION

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON MCMX

All rights reserved

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t * *

Glasgow: printed at thk university press
by robert maclehosk and co. ltd.

PREFACE

"npHE more I think of it," says Mr. Ruskin, "I
find this conclusion more impressed upon
me — that the greatest thing a human soul ever does
in this world is to see something, and tell what it
saw in a plain way." In these pages an attempt
is made to tell " in a plain way " a few of the
things which Science is now. seeing with regard to
the Ascent of Man. Whether these seeings are there
at all is another matter. But, even if visions, eveiy
thinking mind, through whatever medium, should
look at them. What Science has to say about himself
is of transcendent interest to Man, and the prac-
tical bearings of this theme are coming to be more
vital than any on the field of knowledge. The
thread which binds the facts is, it is true, but a
hypothesis. As the theory, nevertheless, with which

PREFACE

at present all scientific work is being done, it is
assumed in every page that follows.

Though its stand-point is Evolution and its sub-
ject Man, this book is far from being designed to
prove that Man has relations, compromising or
otherwise, with lower animals. Its theme is Ascent,
not Descent. It is a History, not an Argument.
And Evolution, in the narrow sense in which it is
often used when applied to Man, plays little part
in the drama outlined here. So far as the general
scheme of Evolution is introduced — and in the
Introduction and elsewhere this is done at length
— the object is the important one of pointing out
how its nature has been misconceived, indeed how
its greatest factor has been overlooked in almost
all contemporary scientific thinking. Evolution
was given to the modern world out of focus, was
first seen by it out of focus, and has remained out
of focus to the present hour. Its general basis has
never been re-examined since the time of Mr.
Darwin ; and not only such speculative sciences
as Teleology, but working sciences like Sociology
have been led astray by a fundamental omission.
An Evolution Theory drawn to scale, and with

PREFACE

the lights and shadows properly adjusted — adjusted
to the whole truth and reality of Nature and of
Man — is needed at present as a standard for
modern thought ; and though a reconstruction of
such magnitude is not here presumed, a primary
object of these pages is to supply at least the
accents for such a scheme.

Beyond an attempted readjustment of the accents
there is nothing here for the specialist — except, it
may be, the reflection of his own work. Nor,
apart from Teleology, is there anything for the
theologian. The limitations of a lecture-audience
made the treatment of such themes as might
appeal to him impossible ; while owing to the
brevity of the course, the Ascent had to be stopped
at a point where all the higher interest begins.
All that the present volume covers is the Ascent
of Man, the Individual, during the earlier stages
of his evolution. It is a study in embryos, in
rudiments, in installations ; the scene is the pri-
meval forest ; the date, the world's dawn. Tracing
his rise as far as Family Life, this history does
not even follow him into the Tribe ; and as it is
only then that social and moral life begin in

viii PREFACE

earnest, no formal discussion of these high themes
occurs. All the higher forces and phenomena with
which the sciences of Psychology, Ethics, and
Theology usually deal come on the world's stage
at a later date, and no one need be surprised if
the semi-savage with whom we leave off is found
wanting in so many of the higher potentialities of
a human being.

The Ascent of Mankind, as distinguished from
the Ascent of the Individual, was originally sum-
marized in one or two closing lectures, but this
stupendous subject would require a volume for itself,
and these fragments have been omitted for the
present Doubtless it may disappoint some that
at the close of all the bewildering vicissitudes
recorded here, Man should appear, after all, so
poor a creature. But the great lines of his youth
are the lines of his maturity, and it is only by
studying these, in themselves and in what they
connote, that the nature of Evolution and the
quality of Human Progress can be perceived.

HENRY DRUMMOND.

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION

PAGH

I. Evolution in General i

II. The Missing Factor in Current Theories - 15

III. Why was Evolution the Method Chosen? - 47

IV. Evolution and Sociology 53

CHAPTER I
The Ascent of the Body - . - 7s

CHAPTER 11
The Scaffolding Left in the Body - 98

CONTENTS

CHAPTER III

PAGB

The Arrest of the Body - . - 126

CHAPTER IV
The Dawn of Mind - • • .151

CHAPTER V
The Evolution of Language - . • rgs

CHAPTER V]
The Struggle for Life - - • .241

CHAPTER VII
The Struggle foe the Life of Others - 275

CHAPTER VHl
The Evolution of a Mother - . -342

CONTENTS

CHAPTER IX

PAGE

The Evolution of a Father - - - 374

CHAPTER X
Involution 4oiJ

THE ASCENT OF MAN

INTRODUCTION

I

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL

'THHE last romance of Science, the most daring
•^ it has ever tried to pen, is the Story of the
Ascent of Man. Withheld from all the wistful
eyes that have gone before, whose reverent ignor-
ance forbade their wisest minds to ask to see it,
this final volume of Natural History has begun to
open with our century's close. In the monographs
of His and Minot, the Embryology of Man has
already received a just expression ; Darwin and
Haeckel have traced the origin of the Animal-
Body ; the researches of Romanes mark a begin-
ning with the Evolution of Mind; Herbert Spencer
has elaborated theories of the development of
Morals ; Edward Caird of the Evolution of Re-
ligion. Supplementing the contributions of these

INTRODUCTION

authorities, verifying, criticizing, combating, rebut-
ting, there works a multitude of others who have
devoted their lives to the same rich problems,
and already every chapter of the bewildering
story has found its editors.

Yet, singular though the omission may seem, no
connected outline of this great drama has yet been
given us. These researches, preliminary reconnais-
sances though they be, are surely worthy of being
looked upon as a whole. No one can say that this
multitude of observers is not in earnest, nor their
work honest, nor their methods competent to the
last powers of science. Whatever the uncertainty
of the field, it is due to these pioneer minds to
treat their labour with respect. What they see in
the unexplored land in which they travel belongs
to the world. By just such methods, and by just
such men, the map of the world of thought is
filled in — here from the tracing up of some great
river, there from a bearing taken roughly in a
darkened sky, yonder from a sudden glint of the
sun on a far-off mountain-peak, or by a swift
induction of an adventurous mind from a momen-
tary glimpse of a natural law. So knowledge
grows ; and in a century which has added to the
sum of human learning more than all the centuries
th^t are past, it is not to be conceived that some

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL

further revelation should not await us on the
highest themes of all.

The day is for ever past when science need
apologize for treating Man as an object of natural
research. Hamlet's " being of large discourse, look-
ing before and after" is withal a part of Nature,
and can be made neither larger nor smaller, antici-
pate less nor prophesy less, because we investigate,
and perhaps discover, the secret of his past. And
should that past be proved to be related in un-
dreamed-of ways to that of all other things in
Nature, "all other things" have that to gain by
the alliance which philosophy and theology for
centuries have striven to win for them. Every
step in the proof of the oneness in a uni-
versal evolutionary process of this divine humanity
of ours is a step in the proof of the divinity
of all lower things. And what is of infinitely
greater moment, each footprint discovered in the
Ascent of Man is a guide to the step to be
taken next. To discover the rationale of social
progress is the ambition of this age. There is an
extraordinary human interest abroad about this
present world itself, a yearning desire, not from
curious but for practical reasons, to find some light
upon the course ; and as the goal comes nearer
the eagerness passes into suspense tP know the

INTRODUCTION

shortest and the quickest road to reach it. Hence
the Ascent of Man is not only the noblest prob-
lem which science can ever study, but the prac-
tical bearings of this theme are great beyond any
other on the roll of knowledge.

Now that the first rash rush of the evolutionary
invasion is past, and the sins of its youth atoned
for by sober concession. Evolution is seen to be
neither more nor less than the story of creation
as told by those who know it best. " Evolution,"
says Mr. Huxley, " or development is at present
employed in biology as a general name for the
history of the steps by which any living being
has acquired the morphological and the physio-
logical characters which distinguish it." Though
applied specifically to plants and animals this
definition expresses the chief sense in which Evolu-
tion is to be used scientifically at present. We
shall use the word, no doubt, in others of its
many senses ; but after all the blood spilt, Evolu-
tion is simply "history," a "history of steps," a
"general name" for the history of the steps by
which the world has come to be what it is. Ac-
cording to this general definition, the story of
Evolution is narrative. It may be wrongly told;
it may be coloured, exaggerated, over- or under-
* Encyclopedia Britannica^ 9th Ed.

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL

stated like the record of any other set of facts ;
it may be told with a theological bias or with
an anti-theological bias ; theories of the process
may be added by this thinker or by that; but
these are not of the substance of the story.
Whether history is told by a Gibbon or a Green
the facts remain, and whether Evolution be told
by a Haeckel or a Wallace we accept the narra-
tive so far as it is a rendering of Nature, and no
more. It is true, before this story can be fully
told, centuries still must pass. At present there
is not a chapter of the record that is wholly
finished. The manuscript is already worn with
erasures, the writing is often blurred, the very
language is uncouth and strange. Yet even now
the outline of a continuous story is beginning to
appear — a story whose chief credential lies in the
fact that no imagination of man could have de-
signed a spectacle so wonderful, or worked out a
plot at once so intricate and so transcendently
simple.

This story will be outlined here partly for the
story and partly for a purpose. A historian dare
not have a prejudice, but he cannot escape a pur-
pose— the purpose, conscious or unconscious, of
unfolding the purpose which lies behind the facts
which he narrates. The interest of a drama — the

INTRODUCTION

authorship of the play apart — is in the players,
their character, their motives, and the tendency of
their action. It is impossible to treat these players
as automata. Even if automata, those in the audi-
ence are not. Hence, where interpretation seems
lawful, or comment warranted by the facts, neither
will be withheld.

To give an account of Evolution, it need scarcely
be remarked, is not to account for it. No living
thinker has yet found it possible to account for
Evolution. Mr. Herbert Spencer's famous defini-
tion of Evolution as " a change from an inde-
finite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent
heterogeneity through continuous differentiations
and integrations " ^ — the formula of which the
Contemporary Reviewer remarked that "the uni-
verse may well have heaved a sigh of relief
when, through the cerebration of an eminent
thinker, it had been delivered of this account of
itself" — is simply a summary of results, and
throws no light, though it is often supposed to
do so, upon ultimate causes. While it is true,
as Mr. Wallace affirms in his latest work, that
" Descent with modification is now universally
accepted as the order of nature in the organic
world," there is everywhere at this moment the
^ Data of Ethics^ p. 65.

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL

most disturbing uncertainty as to how the Ascent
even of species has been brought about. The
attacks on the Darwinian theory from the outside
were never so keen as are the controversies now
raging in scientific circles, over the fundamental
principles of Darwinism itself. On at least two
main points — sexual selection and the origin of
the higher mental characteristics of man — Mr
Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer with Darwin
of the principle of Natural Selection though he
be, directly opposes his colleague. The powerful
attack of Weismann on the Darwinian assump-
tion of the inheritability of acquired characters
has opened one of the liveliest controversies of
recent years, and the whole field of science is hot
with controversies and discussions. In his * Germ-
Plasm,' the German naturalist believes himself to
have finally disposed of both Darwin's " gemmules "
and Herbert Spencer's " primordial units," while
Eimer breaks a lance with Weismann in defence
of Darwin, and Herbert Spencer replies for him-
self, assuring us that " either there has been in-
heritance of acquired characters or there has been
no evolution."

It is the greatest compliment to Darwinism
that it should have survived to deserve this
era of criticism. Meantime all prudent men can

8 INTRODUCTION

but hold their judgment in suspense both as to
that specific theory of one department of Evolu-
tion which is called Darwinism, and as to the
factors and causes of Evolution itself. No one
asks more of Evolution at present than per-
mission to use it as a working theory. Un-
doubtedly there are cases now before Science
where it is more than theory — the demonstration
from Yale, for instance, of the Evolution of the
Horse; and from Steinheim of the transmutation
of Planorbis. In these cases the missing links
have come in one after another, and in series so
perfect, that the evidence for their evolution is
irresistible. " On the evidence of Palaeontology,"
says Mr. Huxley in the Encyclopcedia Britannica^
" the evolution of many existing forms of animal
life from their predecessors is no longer an hypo-
thesis but an historical fact." And even as to
Man, most naturalists agree with Mr. Wallace who
" fully accepts Mr. Darwin's conclusion as to the
essential identity of Man's bodily structure with
that of the higher mammalia and his descent from
some ancestral form common to man and the an-
thropoid apes," for " the evidence of such descent
appears overwhelming and conclusive."^ But as
to the development of the whole Man it is suf-
"^ Darwinism y p. 461.

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL

ficient for the present to rank it as a theory, no
matter how impressive the conviction be that it
is more. Without some hypothesis no work can
ever be done, and, as everyone knows, many of
the greatest contributions to human knowledge
have been made by the use of theories either
seriously imperfect or demonstrably false. This
is the age of the evolution of Evolution. All
thoughts that the Evolutionist works with, all
theories and generalizations, have been themselves
evolved and are now being evolved. Even were
his theory perfected, its first lesson would be that
it was itself but a phase of the Evolution of
further opinion, no more fixed than a species, no
more final than the theory which it displaced.
Of all men the Evolutionist, by the very nature
of his calling, the mere tools of his craft, his
understanding of his hourly shifting place in this
always moving and ever more mysterious world,
must be humble, tolerant, and undogmatic.

These, nevertheless, are cold words with which
to speak of a Vision — for Evolution is after all
a Vision — which is revolutionizing the world of
Nature and of thought, and, within living memory,
has opened up avenues into the past and vistas
into the future such as science has never witnessed
before. While many of the details of the theory

lo INTRODUCTION

of Evolution are in the crucible of criticism, and
while the field of modern science changes with such
rapidity that in almost every department the text-
books of ten years ago are obsolete to-day, it is
fair to add that no one of these changes, nor all
of them together, have touched the general theory
itself except to establish its strength, its value, and
its universality. Even more remarkable than the
rapidity of its conquest is the authority with which
the doctrine of development has seemed to speak
to the most authoritative minds of our time. Of
those who are in the front rank, of those who by
their knowledge have, by common consent, the
right to speak, there are scarcely any who do not
in some form employ it in working and in think-
ing. Authority may mean little ; the world has
often been mistaken ; but when minds so different
as those of Charles Darwin and of T. H. Green, of
Herbert Spencer and of Robert Browning, build half
the labours of their life on this one law, it is im-
possible, and especially in the absence of any other
even competing principle at the present hour, to
treat it as a baseless dream. Only the peculiar
nature of this great generalization can account for
the extraordinary enthusiasm of this acceptance.
Evolution has done for Time what Astronomy has
done for Space. As sublime to the reason as the

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL

Science of the Stars, as overpowering to the imag-
ination, it has thrown the universe into a fresh
perspective, and given the human mind a new
dimension. Evolution involves not so much a
change of opinion as a change in man's whole
view of the world and of life. It is not the state-'
ment of a mathematical proposition which men are
called upon to declare true or false. It is a
method of looking upon Nature. Science for cen-
turies devoted itself to the cataloguing of facts and
the discovery of laws. Each worker toiled in his
own little place — the geologist in his quarry, the
botanist in his garden, the biologist in his labora-
tory, the astronomer in his observatory, the historian
in his library, the archaeologist in his museum.
Suddenly these workers looked up ; they spoke to
one another ; they had each discovered a law ; they
whispered its name. It was Evolution. Henceforth
their work was one, science was one, the world
was one, and mind, which discovered the oneness,
was one.

Such being the scope of the theory, it is essen-
tial that for its interpretation this universal charac-
ter be recognized, and no phenomenon in nature or
in human nature be left out of the final reckoning.
It is equally clear that in making that interpreta-
tion we must begin with the final product, Man.

12 INTRODUCTION

If Evolution can be proved to include Man, the
whole course of Evolution and the whole scheme
of Nature from that moment assume a new signifi-
cance. The beginning must then be interpreted
from the end, not the end from the beginning.
An engineering workshop is unintelligible until we
reach the room where the completed engine stands.
Everything culminates in that final product, is con-
tained in it, is explained by it. The Evolution of
Man is also the complement and corrective of all
other forms of Evolution. From this height only
is there a full view, a true perspective, a consistent
world. The whole mistake of naturalism has been
to interpret Nature from the standpoint of the atom
— to study the machinery which drives this great
moving world simply as machinery, forgetting that
the ship has any passengers, or the passengers any
captain, or the captain any course. It is as great
a mistake, on the other hand, for the theologian
to separate off the ship from the passengers as for
the naturalist to separate off the passengers from
the ship. It is he who cannot include Man among
the links of Evolution who has greatly to fear the
theory of development. In his jealousy for that
religion which seems to him higher than science, he
removes at once the rational basis from religion
and the legitimate crown from science, forgetting

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL 13

that in so doing he offers to the world an un-
natural religion and an inhuman science. The cure
for all the small mental disorders which spring up
around restricted applications of Evolution is to
extend it fearlessly in all directions as far as the
mind can carry it and the facts allow, till each
man, working at his subordinate part, is compelled
to own, and adjust himself to, the whole.

If the theological mind be called upon to make
this expansion, the scientific man must be asked
to enlarge his view in another direction. If he
insists upon including Man in his scheme of Evolu-
tion, he must see to it that he include the whole
Man. For him at least no form of Evolution is
scientific or is to be considered, which does not in-
clude the whole Man, and all that is in Man, and all
the work and thought and life and aspiration of
Man. The great moral facts, the moral forces so far
as they are proved to exist, the moral consciousness
so far as it is real, must come within its scope.
Human History must be as much a part of it as
Natural History. The social and religious forces
must no more be left outside than the forces of
gravitation or of life. The reason why the naturalist
does not usually include these among the factors in
Evolution is not oversight, but undersight. Some-
times, no doubt, he may take at their word those

14 INTRODUCTION

who assure him that Evolution has nothing to do
with those higher things, but the main reason is
simply that his work does not lie on the levels
where those forces come into play. The specialist is
not to be blamed for this ; limitation is his strength.
But when the specialist proceeds to reconstruct the
universe from his little corner of it, and especially
from his level of it, he not only injures science and
philosophy, but may fatally mislead his neighbours.
The man who is busy with the stars will never come
across Natural Selection, yet surely must he allow
for Natural Selection in his construction of the world
as a whole. He who works among star-fish will
encounter little of Mental Evolution, yet will he
not deny that it exists. The stars have voices, but
there are other voices ; the star-fishes have activities,
but there are other activities. Man, body, soul,
spirit, are not only to be considered, but are first
to be considered in any theory of the world. You
cannot describe the life of kings, or arrange their
kingdoms, from the cellar beneath the palace.
"Art," as Browning reminds us,

" Must fumble for the whole, once fixing on a part,
However poor, surpass the fragment, and aspire
To reconstruct thereby the ultimate entire."

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES .15

II

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES

But it is not so much in ignoring Man that
evolutionary philosophy has gone astray ; for of
that error it has seriously begun to repent. What
we have now to charge against it, what is a main
object of these pages to point out, is that it has
misread Nature herself. In " fixing on a part "
whereby to " reconstruct the ultimate," it has fixed
upon a part which is not the most vital part, and
the reconstructions, therefore, have come to be
wholly out of focus. Fix upon the wrong " part,"
and the instability of the fabric built upon it is
a foregone conclusion. Now, although reconstruc-
tions of the cosmos in the light of Evolution are
the chief feature of the science of our time, in
almost no case does even a hint of the true
scientific standpoint appear to be perceived. And
although it anticipates much that we should prefer
to leave untouched until it appears in its natural
setting, the gravity of the issues makes it essential
to summarize the whole situation now.

The root of the error lies, indirectly rather than
directly, with Mr. Darwin. In 1859, through the
publication of the Origin of Species, he offered to
the world what purported to b§ th? ^X\^\ Qlue to the

i6 INTRODUCTION

course of living Nature. That clue was the principle
of the Struggle for Life. After the years of storm
and stress which follow the intrusion into the world
of all great thoughts, this principle was universally
accepted as the key to all the sciences which deal
with life. So ceaseless was Mr. Darwin's emphasis
upon this factor, and so masterful his influence, that,
after the first sharp conflict, even the controversy
died down. With scarce a challenge the Struggle
for Life became accepted by the scientific world as
the governing factor in development, and the drama
of Evolution was made to hinge entirely upon its
action. It became the " part " from which science
henceforth went on " to reconstruct the whole," and
biology, sociology, and teleology, were built anew
on this foundation.

That the Struggle for Life has been a prominent
actor in the drama is certain. Further research has
only deepened the impression of the magnitude and
universality of this great and far-reaching law. But
that it is the sole or even the main agent in the
process of Evolution must be denied. Creation
is a drama, and no drama was ever put upon the
stage with only one actor. The Struggle for Life
is the " Villain " of the piece, no more ; and, like
the " Villain " in the play, its chief function is
to re-act upon the other players for higher ends.

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 17

There is, in point of fact, a second factor which
one might venture to call the Struggle for the
Life of Others, which plays an equally prominent
part. Even in the early stages of development,
its contribution is as real, while in the world's
later progress — under the name of Altruism —
it assumes a sovereignty before which the earlier
Struggle sinks into insignificance. That this second
form of Struggle should all but have escaped the
notice of Evolutionists is the more unaccountable
since it arises, like the first, out of those fundamental
functions of living organisms which it is the main
business of biological science to investigate. The
functions discharged by all living things, plant and
animal, are two ^ in number. The first is Nutrition,
the second is Reproduction. The first is the basis
of the Struggle for Life ; the second, of the Struggle
for the Life of Others. These two functions run
their parallel course — or spiral course, for they
continuously intertwine — from the very dawn of
life. They are involved in the fundamental nature
of protoplasm itself. They affect the entire round
of life; they determine the whole morphology of
living things ; in a sense they are life. Yet, in

* There is a third function— that of Co-relation — but, to avoid
confusing the immediate issue, this may remain at present in
the background.

1 8 INTRODUCTION

constructing the fabric of Evolution, one of these
has been taken, the other left.

Partly because of the limitations of its purely-
physical name, and partly because it has never
been worked out as an evolutionary force, the
function of Reproduction will require to be intro-
duced to the reader in some detail. But to realize
its importance or even to understand it, it will be
necessary to recall to our minds the supreme place
which function generally holds in the economy of
life.

Life to an animal or to a Man is not a random
series of efforts. Its course is set as rigidly as
the courses of the stars. All its movements and
changes, its apparent deflections and perturbations
are guided by unalterable purposes ; its energies
and caprices definitely controlled. What con-
trols it are its functions. These and these only
determine life ; living out these is life. Trace back
any one, or all, of the countless activities of an
animal's life, and it will be found that they are
at bottom connected with one or other of the
two great functions which manifest themselves in
protoplasm. Take any organ of the body —
hand or foot, eye or ear, heart or lung — or any
tissue of the body — muscle or nerve, bone or
cartilage — and it will be found to be connected

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 19

either with Nutrition or with Reproduction. Just
as everything about an engine, every bolt, bar,
valve, crank, lever, wheel, has something to do
with the work of that engine, everything about an
animal's body has something to do with the work
prescribed by those two functions. An animal, or
a Man, is a consistent whole, a rational production.
Now the rationale of living stands revealed to us in
protoplasm. Protoplasm sets life its task. Living
can only be done along its lines. There start the
channels in which all life must run, and though
the channels bifurcate endlessly as time goes on,
and though more life and fuller is ever coursing
through them, it can never overflow the banks
appointed from the beginning.

But this is not all. The activities even of the
higher life, though not qualitatively limited by the
lower, are determined by these same lines. Were
these facts only relevant in the domain of physi-
ology, they would be of small account in a study
of the Ascent of Man. But the more profoundly
the Evolution of Man is investigated the more
clearly is it seen that the whole course of his
development has been conducted on this funda-
mental basis. Life, all life, higher or lower, is an
organic unity. Nature may vary her effects, may
introduce qualitative changes so stupendous as to

20 INTRODUCTION

make their affinities with lower things unthinkable,
but she has never re-laid the foundations of the
world. Evolution began with protoplasm and ended
with Man, and all the way between, the develop-
ment has been a symmetry whose secret lies in
the two or three great crystallizing forces revealed
to us through this first basis.

Having realized the significance of the physio-
logical functions, let us now address ourselves to
their meaning and connotations. The first, the
function of Nutrition, on which the Struggle for
Life depends, requires no explanation. Mr. Darwin
was careful to give to his favourite phrase, the
Struggle for Life, a wider meaning than that which
associates it merely with Nutrition ; but this quali-
fication seems largely to have been lost sight of —
to some extent even by himself — and the principle
as it stands to-day in scientific and philosophical
discussion is practically synonymous with the
Struggle for Food. As time goes on this Struggle
— at first a conflict with Nature and the elements,
sustained by hunger, and intensified by competition
— assumes many disguises, and is ultimately known
in the modern world under the names of War and
Industry. In these later phases the early function
of protoplasm is obscured, but on the last analysis.
War and Industry — pursuits in which half the world

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 21

is now engaged — are seen to be simply its natural
developments.

The implications of the second function, Repro-
duction, lie further from the surface. To say that
Reproduction is synonymous with the Struggle
for the Life of Others conveys at first little
meaning, for the physiological aspects of the
function persist in the mind, and make even a
glimpse of its true character difficult. In two or
three chapters in the text, the implications of
this function will be explained at length, and
the reader who is sufficiently interested in the
immediate problem, or who sees that there is
here something to be investigated, may do well
to turn to these at once. Suffice it for the
moment to say that the physiological aspects of
the Struggle for the Life of Others are so over-
shadowed even towards the close of the Animal
Kingdom by the psychical and ethical that it is
scarcely necessary to emphasize the former at all.
One's first and natural association with the Struggle
for the Life of Others is with something done for
posterity — in the plant the Struggle to produce
seeds, in the animal to beget young. But this is
a preliminary which, compared with what directly
and indirectly rises out of it, may be almost
passed over. The significant note is ethical, the

INTRODUCTION

development of Other-ism, as Altruism — its imme-
diate and inevitable outcome. Watch any higher
animal at that most critical of all hours — for itself,
and for its species — the hour when it gives birth
to another creature like itself. Pass over the
purely physiological processes of birth ; observe the
behaviour of the animal-mother in presence of the
new and helpless life which palpitates before her.
There it lies, trembling in the balance between
life and death. Hunger tortures it ; cold threatens
it ; danger besets it ; its blind existence hangs by
a thread. There is the opportunity of Evolution.
There is an opening appointed in the physical
order for the introduction of a moral order. If
there is more in Nature than the selfish Struggle
for Life the secret can now be told. Hitherto,
the world belonged to the Food-seeker, the Self-
seeker, the Struggler for Life, the Father.
Now is the hour of the Mother. And, animal
though she be, she rises to her task. And that
hour, as she ministers to her young, becomes to
the world the hour of its holiest birth.

Sympathy, tenderness, unselfishness, and the
long list of virtues which make up Altruism, are
the direct outcome and essential accompaniment
of the reproductive process. Without some rudi-
mentary maternal solicitude for the ^g<g in the

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 23

humblest forms of life, or for the young among
higher forms, the living world would not only
suffer, but would cease. For a time in the life-
history of every higher animal the direct, personal,
gratuitous, unrewarded help of another creature is
a condition of existence. Even in the lowliest
world of plants the labours of Maternity begin,
and the animal kingdom closes with the creation
of a class in which this function is perfected to
its last conceivable expression. The vicarious prin-
ciple is shot through and through the whole vast
web of Nature ; and if one actor has played a
mightier part than another in the drama of the
past, it has been self-sacrifice. What more has
come into humanity along the line of the Struggle
for the Life of Others will be shown later. But
it is quite certain that, of all the things that
minister to the welfare and good of Man, of all
that make the world varied and fruitful, of all
that make society solid and interesting, of all that
make life beautiful and glad and worthy, by far
the larger part has reached us through the activi-
ties of the Struggle for the Life of Others.

How grave the omission of this supreme factor
from our reckoning, how serious the effect upon
our whole view of nature, must now appear. Time
was when the science of Geology was interpreted

24 INTRODUCTION

exclusively in terms of the action of a single force
— fire. Then followed the theories of an opposing
school who saw all the earth's formations to be
the result of water. Any Biology, any Sociology,
any Evolution, which is based on a single factor,
is as untrue as the old Geology. It is only when
both the Struggle for Life and the Struggle for the
Life of Others are kept in view, that any scientific
theory of Evolution is possible. Combine them,
contrast them, assign each its place, allow for their
inter-actions, and the scheme of Nature may be
worked out in terms of them to the last detail.
All along the line, through the whole course of
the development, these two functions act and
react upon one another ; and continually as they
co-operate to produce a single result, their specific
differences are never lost.

The first, the Struggle for Life, is, throughout,
the Self-regarding function; the second, the Other-
regarding function. The first, in lower Nature,
obeying the law of self-preservation, devotes its
energies to feed itself; the other, obeying the law
of species-preservation, to feed its young. While
the first develops the active virtues of strength
and courage, the other lays the basis for the passive
virtues, sympathy, and love. In the later world
one seeks its end in personal aggrandizement, the

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 25

Other in ministration. One begets competition, self-
assertion, war ; the other unselfishness, self-efface-
ment, peace. One is Individualism, the other,
Altruism.

To say that no ethical content can be put into
the discharge of either function in the earlier
reaches of Nature goes without saying. But
the moment we reach a certain height in the de-
velopment, ethical implications begin to arise.
These, in the case of the first, have been read into
Nature, lower as well as higher, with an exaggerated
and merciless malevolence. The other side has
received almost no expression. The final result is
a picture of Nature wholly painted in shadow — a
picture so dark as to be a challenge to its Maker,
an unanswered problem to philosophy, an abiding
offence to the moral nature of Man. The world
has been held up to us as one great battlefield
heaped with the slain, an Inferno of infinite suffering,
a slaughter-house resounding with the cries of a
ceaseless agony.

Before this version of the tragedy, authenticated
by the highest names on the roll of science,
humanity was dumb, morality mystified, natural
theology stultified. A truer reading may not wholly
relieve the first, enlighten the second, or re-instate
the third. But it at least re-opens the inquiry; and

26 INTRODUCTION

when all its bearings come to be perceived, the light
thrown upon the field of Nature by the second
factor may be more impressive to reason than the
apparent shadow of the first to sense.

To relieve the strain of the position forced
upon ethics by the one-sided treatment of the pro-
cess of Evolution, heroic attempts have been made.
Some have attempted to mitigate the amount of
suffering it involves, and assure us that, after
all, the Struggle, except as a metaphor, scarcely
exists. "There is," protests Mr. Alfred Russel
Wallace, '* good reason to believe . . . that the
supposed * torments ' and * miseries ' of animals have
little real existence, but are the reflection of the
imagined sensations of cultivated men and women in
similar circumstances ; and that the amount of
actual suffering caused by the Struggle for Exist-
ence among animals is altogether insignificant." ^
Mr. Huxley, on the other hand, will make no
compromise. The Struggle for Life to him is a
portentous fact, unmitigated and unexplained. No
metaphors are strong enough to describe the im-
placability of its sway. " The moral indifference of
nature " and " the unfathomable injustice of the
nature of things " everywhere stare him in the face.
" For his successful progress, as far as the savage
^ Darwinism^ p. 37.

■

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 27

state, Man has been largely indebted to those
qualities which he shares with the ape and the
tiger." ^ That stage reached, " for thousands and
thousands of years, before the origin of the oldest
known civilizations, men were savages of a very
low type. They strove with their enemies and
their competitors ; they preyed upon things weaker
or less cunning than themselves ; they were born,
multiplied without stint, and died, for thousands of
generations, alongside the mammoth, the urus, the
lion, and the hyaena, whose lives were spent in the
same way ; and they were no more to be praised
or blamed, on moral grounds, than their less erect
and more hairy compatriots. . . . Life was
a continual free fight, and beyond the limited and
temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian
war of each against all was the normal state of
existence. The human species, like others, plashed
and floundered amid the general stream of evolu-
tion, keeping its head above water as it best might,
and thinking neither of whence nor whither." ^

How then does Mr. Huxley act — for it is in-
structive to follow out the consequences of an
error — in the face of this tremendous problem ?
He gives it up. There is no solution. Nature is

* Evolution and Ethics^ p. 6.
^Nijieteenth Century, Feb., 1888.

28 INTRODUCTION

without excuse. After framing an indictment against
it in the severest language at his command, he turns
his back upon Nature — sub-human Nature, that is
— and leaves teleology to settle the score as best
it can. " The history of civilization," he tells us,
"is the record of the attempts of the human race
to escape from this position." But whither does
he betake himself? Is he not part of Nature, and
therefore a sharer in its guilt ? By no means. For
by an astonishing tour de force — the last, as his
former associates in the evolutionary ranks have
not failed to remind him, which might have been
expected of him — he ejects himself from the world-
order, and washes his hands of it in the name
of Ethical Man. After sharing the fortunes of
Evolution all his life, bearing its burdens and
solving its doubts, he abandons it without a pang,
and sets up an imperium in imperio, where, as a
moral being, the * cosmic ' Struggle troubles him
no more. " Cosmic Nature," he says, in a parting
shot at his former citadel, " is no school of virtue,
but the head-quarters of the enemy of ethical
nature." ^ So far from the Ascent of Man running
along the ancient line, " Social progress means a
checking of the cosmic process at every step and
the substitution for it of another, which may be
^Evolution and Ethics^ p. 27.

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 29

called the ethical process ; the end of which is not
the survival of those who may happen to be the
fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which
exist, but of those who are ethically the best." ^

The expedient, to him, was a necessity. Viewing
Nature as Mr. Huxley viewed it there was no other
refuge. The " cosmic process " meant to him the
Struggle for Life, and to escape from the Struggle
for Life he was compelled to turn away from the
world-order, which had its being because of it. As it
happens, Mr. Huxley has hit upon the right solution,
only the method by which he reaches it is wholly
wrong. And the mischievous result of it is obvious
— it leaves all lower Nature in the lurch. With
a curious disregard of the principle of Continuity, to
which all his previous work had done such homage,
he splits up the world-order into two separate halves.
The earlier dominated by the * cosmic ' principle —
the Struggle for Life ; the other by the ' ethical '
principle — virtually, the Struggle for the Life of
Others. The Struggle for Life is thus made to stop
at the * ethical ' process ; the Struggle for the Life
of Others to begin. Neither is justified by fact. The
Struggle for the Life of Others, as we have seen,
starts its upward course from the same protoplasm
as the Struggle for Life ; and the Struggle for Life
* Evolution ajtd Ethics, p. ^t,.

30 INTRODUCTION

runs on into the ' ethical ' sphere as much as the
Struggle for the Life of Others. One has only to
see where Mr. Huxley gets his * ethical ' world to
perceive the extent of the anomaly. For where
does he get it, and what manner of world is it ?
" The history of civilization details the steps by
which men have succeeded in building up an
artificial world within the cosmos."^ An artificial
world within the cosmos ?

This suggested breach between the earlier and the
later process, if indeed we are to take it seriously, is
scientifically indefensible, and the more unfortunate
since the same result, or a better, can be obtained
without it. The real breach is not between the
earlier and the later process, but between two
rival, or two co-operating processes, which have
existed from the first, which have worked together
all along the line, and which took on ' ethical '
characters at the same moment in time. The
Struggle for the Life of Others is sunk as deep in
the " cosmic process " as the Struggle for Life ; the
Struggle for Life has a share in the " ethical
process " as much as the Struggle for the Life of
Others. Both are cosmic processes; both are ethical
processes ; both are both cosmical and ethical pro-
cesses. Nothing but confusion can arise from a
^ Evolution and Ethics^ p. 35,

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 31

cross-classification which does justice to neither half
of Nature.

The consternation caused by Mr. Huxley's change
of front, or supposed change of front, is matter of
recent history. Mr. Leslie Stephen and Mr. Her-
bert Spencer hastened to protest ; the older school
of moralists hailed it almost as a conversion. But
the one fact everywhere apparent throughout the
discussion is that neither side apprehended either
the ultimate nature or the true solution of the
problem. The seat of the disorder is the same
in both attackers and attacked — the one-sided view
of Nature. Universally Nature, as far as the plant,
animal, and savage levels, is taken to be synony-
mous with the Struggle for Life. Darwinism held
the monopoly of that lower region, and Darwinism
revenged itself in a manner which has at least
shown the inadequacy of the most widely accepted
premise of recent science.

That Mr. Huxley has misgivings on the matter
himself is apparent from his Notes. " Of course,"
he remarks, in reference to the technical point,
" strictly speaking, social life and the ethical pro-
cess, in virtue of which it advances towards perfec-
tion, are part and parcel of the general process of
Evolution."^ And he gets a momentary glimpse
* Evolution and Ethics^ note 19.

INTRODUCTION

of the "ethical process" in the cosmos, which, if
he had followed it out, must have modified his
whole position. " Even in these rudimentary forms
of society, love and fear come into play, and enforce
a greater or less renunciation of self-will. To this
extent the general cosmic process begins to be
checked by a rudimentary ethical process, which is,
strictly speaking, part of the former, just as the

* governor' in a steam-engine is part of the
mechanism of the engine."^

Here the whole position is virtually conceded ;
and only the pre-conceptions of Darwinism and
the lack of a complete investigation into the
nature and extent of the " rudimentary ethical
process" can have prevailed in the face of such
an admission. Follow out the metaphor of the

* governor,' and, with one important modification,
the true situation almost stands disclosed. For
what appears to be the 'governor' in the rudi-
mentary ethical process becomes the 'steam-engine'
in the later process. The mere fact that it exists
in the "general cosmic process" alters the quality
of that process; and the fact that, as we hope to
show, it becomes the prime mover in the later
process, entirely changes our subsequent concep-
tion of it. The beginning of a process is to

^Evolution and Ethics^ note 19.

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 33

be read from the end and not from the beginning.
And if even a rudiment of a moral order be found
in the beginnings of this process it relates itself and
that process to a final end and a final unity.

Philosophy reads end into the earlier process by
a necessity of reason. But how much stronger
its position if it could add to that a basis in the
facts of Nature ? "I ask the evolutionist," per-
tinently inquires Mr. Huxley's critic, " who has
no other basis than the Struggle for existence, how
he accounts for the intrusion of these moral ideas
and standards which presume to interfere with the
cosmic process and sit in judgment upon its re-
sults."^ May we ask the philosopher how he accounts
for them ? As little can he account for them as
he who has " no other basis than the Struggle for
existence." Truly, the writer continues, the ques-
tion " cannot be answered so long as we regard
morality merely as an incidental result, a by-
product, as it were, of the cosmical system." But
what if morality be the main product of the
cosmical system — of even the cosmical system ?
What if it can be shown that it is the essential
and not the incidental result of it, and that so far
from being a by-product, it is ^wmorality that is
the by-product?

^Prof. Seth, Blackwood^ s Magazine^ Dec, 1893,
c

34 INTRODUCTION

These interrogations may be too strongly put.
'Accompaniments' of the cosmical system might
be better than 'products'; 'revelations through
that process' may be nearer the truth than 'results'
of it. But what it is intended to show is that the
moral order is a continuous line from the beginning,
that it has had throughout, so to speak, a basis in
the cosmos, that upon this, as a trellis-work, it has
climbed upwards to the top. The one — the trellis-
work — is to be conceived of as an incarnation ; the
other — the manifestation — as a revelation; the one
is an Evolution from below, the other an Involution
from above. Philosophy has long since assured us
of the last, but because it was never able to show
us the completeness of the first, science refused to
believe it. The defaulter nevertheless was not
philosophy but science. Its business was with
the trellis-work. And it gave us a broken trellis-
work, a ladder with only one side, and every
step on the other side resting on air. When
science tried to climb the ladder it failed ; the
steps refused to bear any weight. What did men
of science do? They condemned the ladder and,
balancing themselves on the side that was secure,
proclaimed their Agnosticism to philosophy. And
what did philosophy do? It stood on the other
half of the ladder, the half that was not there^ and

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 35

rated them. That the other half was not there
was of little moment. It was in themselves. It
ought to be there ; therefore it must be there. And
it is quite true; it is there. Philosophy, like Poetry,
is prophetic : " The sense of the whole," it says,
"comes first." ^

But science could not accept the alternative.
It had looked, and it was not there; from its
standpoint the only refuge was Agnosticism —
there were no facts. Till the facts arrived, there-
fore, philosophy was powerless to relieve her ally.
Science looked to Nature to put in her own ends,
and not to philosophy to put them in for her.
Philosophy might interpret them after they were
there, but it must have something to start from ;
and all that science had supplied her with mean-
time was the fact of the Struggle for Life. Working
from the standpoint of the larger Nature, Human
Nature itself, philosophy could put in other ends ;
but there appeared no solid backing for these in
facts, and science refused to be satisfied. The
position was a fair one. The danger of philosophy
putting in the ends is that she cannot convince
everyone that they are the right ones.

And what is the valid answer? Of course, that
Nature has put in her own ends if we would take the
* Prof. H. Jones, Browningy p. 28.

36 INTRODUCTION

trouble to look for them. She does not require them
to be secretly manufactured upstairs and credited to
her account. By that process mistakes might arise
in the reckoning. The philosophers upstairs might
differ about the figures, or at least in equating them.
The philosopher requires fact, phenomenon, natural
law, at every turn to keep him right; and without
at least some glimpse of these, he may travel far
afield. So long as Schopenhauer sees one thing
in the course of Nature and Rousseau another, it
will always be well to have Nature herself to act
as referee. The end as read in Nature, and the end
as re-read in, and interpreted by, the higher Nature
of Man may be very different things ; but nothing
can be dene till the End-in-the-phenomenon clears
the way for the End-in-itself — till science overtakes
philosophy with facts. When that is done, every-
thing can be done. With the finding of the other
half of the ladder, even Agnosticism may retire.
Science cannot permanently pronounce itself " not
knowing," till it has exhausted the possibilities of
knowing. And in this case the Agnosticism is
premature, for science has only to look again, and
it will discover that the missing facts are there.

Seldom has there been an instance on so large
a scale of a biological error corrupting a whole
philosophy. Bacon's aphorism was never more

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 37

true : " This I dare affirm in knowledge of
Nature, that a little natural philosophy, and the
first entrance into it, doth dispose the opinion to
atheism, but on the other side, much natural philo-
sophy, and wading deep into it, will bring about
men's minds to religion." ^ Hitherto, the Evolu-
tionist has had practically no other basis than the
Struggle for Life. Suppose even we leave that
untouched, the addition of an Other-regarding
basis makes an infinite difference. For when it is
then asked on which of them the process turns, and
the answer is given * On both,' we perceive that
it is neither by the one alone, nor by the other
alone, that the process is to be interpreted, but by
a higher unity which resolves and embraces all.
And as both are equally necessary to the antinomy,
even that of the two which seems irreconcilable
with higher ends is seen to be necessary. Viewed
simpliciter^ the Struggle for Life appears irrecon-
cilable with ethical ends, a prodigious anomaly in
a moral world ; but viewed in continuous reaction
with the Struggle for the Life of Others, it discloses
itself as an instrument of perfection the most subtle
and far-reaching that reason could devise.

The presence of the second factor therefore,
while it leaves the first untouched, cannot leave its
"^ Meditationes Sacrce^ X.

f

38 INTRODUCTION

implications untouched. It completely alters these
implications. It has never been denied that the
Struggle for Life is an efficient instrument of pro-
gress ; the sole difficulty has always been to justify
the nature of the instrument. But if even it be
shown that this is only half the instrument, tele-
ology gains something. If the fuller view takes
nothing away from the process of Evolution, it
imports something into it which changes the whole
aspect of the case. For even from the first that
factor is there. The Struggle for the Life ot
Others, as we have seen, is no interpolation at the
end of the process, but radical, engrained in the
world-order as profoundly as the Struggle for
Life. By what right, then, has Nature been inter-
preted only by the Struggle for Life ? With far
greater justice might science interpret it in the
light of the Struggle for the Life of Others. For,
in the first place, unless there had been this
second factor, the world could not have existed.
Without the Struggle for the Life of Others, ob-
viously there would have been no Others. In
the second place, unless there had been a Struggle
for the Life of Others, the Struggle for Life could
not have been kept up. As will be shown later
the Struggle for Life almost wholly supports
itself on the products of the Struggle for the

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 3^

Life of Others. In the third place, without the
Struggle for the Life of Others, the Struggle
for Life as regards its energies would have died
down, and failed of its whole achievement. It is
the ceaseless pressure produced by the exuberant
fertility of Reproduction that creates any valuable
Struggle for Life at all. The moment " Others "
multiply, the individual struggle becomes keen up
to the disciplinary point. It was this, indeed —
through the reading of Malthus on Over-popula-
tion— that suggested to Mr. Darwin the value of
the Struggle for Life. The law of Over-population
from that time forward became the foundation-
stone of his theory; and recent biological research
has made the basis more solid than ever. The
Struggle for the Life of Others on the plant
and animal plane, in the mere work of multiplying
lives, is a final condition of progress. Without
competition there can be no fight, and without
fight there can be no victory. In other words,
without the Struggle for tKe Life of Others there
can be no Struggle for Life, and therefore no
Evolution. Finally, and all the reasons already
given are frivolous beside it, had there been no
Altruism — Altruism in the definite sense of un-
selfishness, sympathy, and self-sacrifice for Others,
the whole higher world of life had perished as soon

ib tNTRODUCTIOl^

as It was created. For hours, or days, or weeks
in the early infancy of all higher animals, maternal
care and sympathy are a condition of existence.
Altruism had to enter the world, and any species
which neglected it was extinguished in a genera-
tion.

No doubt a case could be made out likewise for
the imperative value of the Struggle for Life. The
position has just been granted. So far from dis-
puting it, we assume it to be equally essential to
Nature and to a judgment upon the process ol
Evolution. But what is disputed is that the Struggle
for Life is either the key to Nature, or that it
is more important in itself than the Struggle for
the Life of Others. It is pitiful work pitting the
right hand against the left, the heart against the
head ; but if it be insisted that there is neither
right hand nor heart, the proclamation is necessary
not only that they exist, but that absolutely they
are as important and relatively to ethical Man of
infinitely greater moment than anything that func-
tions either in the animal or social organism.

But why, if all this be true of the Struggle for
the Life of Others, has a claim so imperious not
been recognized by science ? That a phenomenon
of this distinction should have attracted so little
attention suggests a suspicion. Does it really exist?

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 41

Is the biological basis sound ? Have we not at
least exaggerated its significance ? The biologist
will judge. Though no doubt the function of Re-
production is intimately connected in Physiology
with the function of Nutrition, the facts as stated
here are facts of Nature; and some glimpse of the
influence of this second factor will be given in the
sequel from which even the non-biological reader
may draw his own conclusions. Difficult as it
seems to account for the ignoring of an elemental
fact in framing the doctrine of Evolution, there are
circumstances which make the omission less un-
intelligible. Foremost, of course, there stands the
overpowering influence of Mr. Darwin. In spite of
the fact that he warned his followers against it,
this largely prejudged the issue. Next is to be
considered the narrowing, one had almost said the
blighting, effect of specialism. Necessary to the
progress of science, the first era of a reign of
specialism is disastrous to philosophy. The men
who in field and laboratory are working out the
facts, do not speculate at all. Content with slowly
building up the sum of actual knowledge in some
neglected and restricted province, they are too ab-
sorbed to notice even what the workers in the other
provinces are about. Thus it happens that while
there are many scientific men, there are few scientific

42 INTRODUCTION

thinkers. The complaint is often made that science
speculates too much. It is quite the other way.
One has only to read the average book of science
in almost any department to wonder at the wealth
of knowledge, the brilliancy of observation, and the
barrenness of idea. On the other hand, though
scientific experts will not think themselves, there is
always a multitude of onlookers waiting to do it
for them. Among these what strikes one is the
ignorance of fact and the audacity of the idea. The
moment any great half-truth in Nature is unearthed,
these unqualified practitioners leap to a generaliza-
tion ; and the observers meantime, on the track of
the other half, are too busy or too oblivious to
refute their heresies. Hence, long after its founda-
tions are undermined, a brilliant generalization will
retain its hold upon the popular mind ; and
before the complementary, the qualifying, or the
neutralizing facts can be supplied, the mischief is
done.

But while this is true of many who play with
the double-edged tools of science, it is not true of
a third class. When we turn to the pages of the
few whose science is adequate and whose sweep
IS over the whole vast horizon, we find, as we
should expect, some recognition of the altruistic
factor. Though Mr. Herbert Spencer, to whom

I

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 43

the appeal in this connection is obvious, makes
a different use of the fact, it has not escaped
him. Not only does the Other-regarding function
receive recognition, but he allots it a high place
in his system. Of its ethical bearings he is equally
clear. " What," he asks, " is the ethical aspect of
these [altruistic] principles ? In the first place, animal
life of all but the lowest kinds has been maintained
by virtue of them. Excluding the Protozoa^ among
which their operation is scarcely discernible, we see
that without gratis benefits to offspring, and earned
benefits to adults, life could not have continued.
In the second place, by virtue of them life has
gradually evolved into higher forms. By care of
offspring, which has become greater with advancing
organization, and by survival of the fittest in the
competition among adults, which has become more
habitual with advancing organization, superiority
has been perpetually fostered and further advances
caused." ^ Fiske, Littr^, Romanes, Le Conte, L.
Buchner, Miss Buckley, and Prince Kropotkin have
expressed themselves partly in the same direction ;
and Geddes and Thomson, in so many words, re-
cognize " the co-existence of twin-streams of egoism
and altruism, which often merge for a space with-
out losing their distinctness, and are traceable to a
'^Principles of Ethics^ Vol. il., p. 5.

44 INTRODUCTION

common origin in the simplest forms of life." ^ The
last named — doubtless because their studies have
taken them both into the fields of pure biology
and of bionomics — more clearly than any other
modern writers, have grasped the bearings of this
theme in all directions, and they fearlessly take
their standpoint from the physiology of proto-
plasm. Thus, " in the hunger and reproductive
attractions of the lowest organisms, the self-regard-
ing and other-regarding activities of the higher
find their starting-point. Though some vague con-
sciousness is perhaps co-existent with life itself, we
can only speak with confidence of psychical egoism
and altruism after a central nervous system has
been definitely established. At the same time, the
activities of even the lowest organisms are often dis-
tinctly referable to either category. . . . Hardly
distinguishable at the outset, the primitive hunger
and love become the starting-points of divergent
lines of egoistic and altruistic emotion and activity."^
That at a much earlier stage than is usually
supposed. Evolution visibly enters upon the " rudi-
mentary ethical" plane, is certain, and we shall
hope to outline the proof But even if the thesis
fails, it remains to challenge the general view that
the Struggle for Life is everything, and the Struggle
* The Evolution of Sex, p. 279. * Ibid.^ p. 279.

I

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 45

for the Life of Others nothing. Seeing not only
that the second is the more important, but also
this far more significant fact — which has not yet
been alluded to — that as Evolution proceeds the one
Struggle waxes^ and the other wanes^ would it not
be wiser to study the drama nearer its denoue-
ment before deciding whether it was a moral, a
non-moral, or an immoral play ?

Lest the alleged waning of the Struggle for Life
convey a wrong impression, let it be added that of
course the word is to be taken qualitatively. The
Struggle in itself can never cease. What ceases
is its so-called anti-ethical character. For nothing
is in finer evidence as we rise in the scale of life
than the gradual tempering of the Struggle for Life.
Its slow amelioration is the work of ages, may be
the work of ages still, but its animal qualities in
the social life of Man are being surely left be-
hind ; and though the mark of the savage and
the brute still mar its handiwork, these harsher
qualities must pass away. In that new social
order which the gathering might of the altru-
istic spirit is creating now around us, in that
reign of Love which must one day, if the course
of Evolution holds on its way, be realized, the
baser elements will find that solvent prepared for
them from the beginning in anticipation of a higher

4f INTRODUCTION

rule on earth. Interpreting the course of Evolution
scientifically, whether from its starting-point in the
first protoplasm, or from the rallying-point of its
two great forces in the social organism of to-day, it
becomes more and more certain that only from the
commingled achievement of both can the nature
of the process be truly judged. Yet, as one sees the
one sun set, and the other rise with a splendour the
more astonishing and bewildering as the centuries
roll on, it is impossible to withhold a verdict as to
which may be most reasonably looked upon as the
ultimate reality of the world. The path of progress
and the path of Altruism are one. Evolution is
nothing but the Involution of Love, the revela-
tion of Infinite Spirit, the Eternal Life returning
to Itself Even the great shadow of Egoism
which darkens the past is revealed as shadow
only because we are compelled to read it by
the higher light which has come. In the very
act of judging it to be shadow, we assume and
vindicate the light. And in every vision of the
light, contrariwise, we resolve the shadow, and per-
ceive the end for which both light and dark are
given.

" I can believe, this dread machinery
Of sin and sorrow, would confound me else,
Devised — all pain, at most expenditure
Of pain by Who devised pain — to evolve,

MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 47

By new machinery in counterpart,

The moral qualities of Man— how else ?—

To make him love in turn, and be beloved,

Creative and self-sacrificing too,

And thus eventually Godlike."*

Ill

WHY WAS EVOLUTION THE METHOD CHOSEN?

One seldom-raised yet not merely curious ques-
tion of Evolution is, why the process should be an
evolution at all ? If Evolution is simply a method
of Creation, why was this very extraordinary method
chosen? Creation tout d'un coup might have pro-
duced the same result ; an instantaneous act or an
age-long process would both have given us the
world as it is? The answer of modern natural
theology has been that the evolutionary method is
the infinitely nobler scheme. A spectacular act, it
is said, savours of the magician. As a mere ex-
hibition of power it appeals to the lower nature ;
but a process of growth suggests to the reason the
work of an intelligent Mind. No doubt this intel-
lectual gain is real. While a catastrophe puts the
universe to confusion at the start, a gradual rise
makes the beginning of Nature harmonious with
its end. How the surpassing grandeur of the new
* The Ring and the Book—Tht Pope, 1375.

48 INTRODUCTION

conception has filled the imagination and kindled
to enthusiasm the soberest scientific minds, from
Darwin downwards, is known to everyone. As the
memorable words which close the Origin of Species
recall : " There is a grandeur in this view of life,
with its several powers, having been originally
breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into
one ; and that whilst this planet has gone cycling
on, according to the fixed law of gravity, from so
simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful
and most wonderful have been, and are being
evolved." ^

But can an intellectual answer satisfy us any
more than the mechanical answer which it replaced?
As there was clearly a moral purpose in the end to
be achieved by Evolution, should we not expect to
find some similar purpose in the means? Can we
perceive no high design in selecting this particular
design, no worthy ethical result which should justify
the conception as well as the execution of Evolu-
tion ?

We go too far, perhaps, in expecting answers to
questions so transcendent. But one at least suggests
itself, whose practical value is apology enough for
venturing to advance it. Whenever the scheme was
planned, it must have been foreseen that the time
^ Origin of Species^ p. 429.

I

WI/V WAS EVOLUTION THE METHOD? 49

would come when the directing of part of the
course of Evolution would pass into the hands of
Man. A spectator of the drama for ages, too ignor-
ant to see that it was a drama, and too impotent
to do more than play his little part, the discovery-
must sooner or later break upon him that Nature
meant him to become a partner in her task, and
share the responsibility of the closing acts. It is
not given to him as yet to bind the sweet influences
of Pleiades, or to unloose the bands of Orion. In
part only can he make the winds and waves obey
him, or control the falling rain. But in larger part
he holds the dominion of the world of lower life.
He exterminates what he pleases ; he creates and
he destroys ; he changes ; he evolves ; his selection
replaces natural selection ; he replenishes the earth
with plants and animals according to his will. But
in a far grander sphere, and in an infinitely pro-
founder sense, has the sovereignty passed to him.
For, by the same decree, he finds himself the
guardian and the arbiter of his personal destiny,
and that of his fellow-men. The moulding of his
life and of his children's children in measure lie
with him. Through institutions of his creation,
through Parliaments, Churches, Societies, Schools,
he shapes the path of progress for his country and
his time. The evils of the world are combated by

50 INTRODUCTION

his remedies ; its passions are stayed, its wrongs
redressed, its energies for good or evil directed by
his hand. For unnumbered millions he opens or
shuts the gates of happiness, and paves the way
for misery or social health. Never before was it
known and felt with the same solemn certainty
that Man, within bounds which none can pass,
must be his own maker and the maker of the
world. For the first time in history not in-
dividuals only but multitudes of the wisest and
the noblest in every land take home to them-
selves, and unceasingly concern themselves with,
the problem of the Evolution of Mankind. Multi-
tudes more, philanthropists, statesmen, missionaries,
humble men and patient women, devote them-
selves daily to its practical solution, and every-
where some, in a God-like culmination of Altruism,
give their very lives for their fellow-men. Who is
to help these Practical Evolutionists — for those who
read the book of Nature can call them by no other
name, and those who know its spirit can call them
by no higher — who is to help them in their tremen-
dous task ? There is the will — where is the wisdom ?
Where but in Nature herself. Nature may have
entrusted the further building to Mankind, but the
plan has never left her hands. The lines of the
future are to be learned from her past, and her

WBV WAS EVOLUTION THE METHOD? 51

fellow-helpers can most easily, most loyally, and
most perfectly do their part by studying closely
the architecture of the earlier world, and continu-
ing the half-finished structure symmetrically to the
top. The information necessary to complete the
work with architectural consistency lies in Nature.
We might expect that it should be there. When
a business is transferred, or a partner assumed, the
books are shown, the methods of the business ex-
plained, its future developments pointed out. All
this is now done for the Evolution of Mankind.
In Evolution Creation has shown her hand. To
have kept the secret from Man would have im-
perilled the further evolution. To have revealed
it sooner had been premature. Love must come
before knowledge, for knowledge is the instrument
of Love, and useless till it arrives. But now that
there is Altruism enough in the world to begin the
new era, there must be wisdom enough to direct it.
To make Nature spell out her own career, to
embody the key to the development in the very
development itself, so that the key might be
handed over along with the work, was to make the
transference of responsibility possible and rational.
In the seventeenth century, Descartes, who with
Leibnitz already foresaw the adumbration of the
evolutionary process, almost pointed this out ; for

52

INTRODUCTION

speaking, in another connection, of the intellectual
value of a slow development of things he observes,
" their nature is much more easy to conceive when
they are seen originating by degrees in this way,
than when they are considered as entirely made."^
The past of Nature is a working-model of how
worlds can be made. The probabilities are there
is no better way of making them. If Man does as
well it will be enough. In any case he can only
begin where Nature left off, and work with such
tools as are put into his hands. If the new
partner had been intended merely to experiment
with world-making, no such legacy of useful law
had been ever given him. And if he had been
meant to begin de novo on a totally different plan,
it is unlikely either that that should not have been
hinted at, or that in his touching and beautiful
endeavour he should be embarrassed and thrown
off the track by the old plan. As a child set
to complete some fine embroidery is shown the
stitches, the colours, and the outline traced upon
the canvas, so the great Mother in setting their
difficult task to her later children provides them
with one superb part finished to show the pattern.

^ Discourse on Method.

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY 53

IV

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY

The moment it is grasped that we may have in
Nature a key to the future progress of Mankind,
the study of Evolution rises to an imposing rank
in human interest. There lies the programme of
the world from the first of time, the instrument,
the charter, and still more the prophecy of progress.
Evolution is the natural directory of the socio-
logist, the guide through that which has worked in
the past to what — subject to modifying influences
which Nature can always be trusted to give full
notice of — may be expected to work in the future.
Here, for the individual, is a new and impressive
summons to public action, a vocation chosen of
Nature which it will profit him to consider, for
thereby he may not only save the whole world,
but find his own soul. " The study of the his-
torical development of man," says Prof Edward
Caird, " especially in respect of his higher life, is
not only a matter of external or merely speculative
curiosity ; it is closely connected with the develop-
ment of that life in ourselves. For we learn to
know ourselves, first of all, in the mirror of the
world : or, in other words, our knowledge of our
own nature and of its possibilities grows and

54 INTRODUCTION

deepens with our understanding of what is without
us, and most of all with our understanding of
the general history of man. It has often been
noticed that there is a certain analogy between
the life of the individual and that of the race, and
even that the life of the individual is a sort of
epitome of the history of humanity. But, as Plato
already discovered, it is by reading the large letters
that we learn to interpret the small. ... It
is only through a deepened consciousness of the
world that the human spirit can solve its own
problem. Especially is this true in the region of
anthropology. For the inner life of the individual
is deep and full, just in proportion to the width of
his relations to other men and things ; and his
consciousness of what he is in himself as a spiritual
being is dependent on a comprehension of the
position of his individual life in the great secular
process by which the intellectual and moral life
of humanity has grown and is growing. Hence
the highest practical as well as speculative interests
of men are connected with the new extension of
science which has given fresh interest and meaning
to the whole history of the race." ^

If, as Herbert Spencer reminds us, " it is one
of those open secrets which seem the more secret
' The Evolution of Religion^ Vol. I., pp. 26, 29.

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY 55

because they are so open, that all phenomena
displayed by a nation are phenomena of Life, and
are dependent on the laws of Life," we cannot
devote ourselves to study those laws too earnestly
or too soon. From the failure to get at the heart
of the first principles of Evolution the old call to
" follow Nature " has all but become a heresy.
Nature, as a moral teacher, thanks to the Dar-
winian interpretation, was never more discredited
than at this hour ; and friend and foe alike agree
in warning us against her. But a further reading
of Nature may decide not that we must discharge
the teacher but beg her mutinous pupils to try
another term at school. With Nature studied in
the light of a true biology, or even in the sense
in which the Stoics themselves employed their
favourite phrase, it must become once more the
watchword of personal and social progress. With
Mr. Huxley's definition of what the Stoics meant
by Nature as " that which holds up the ideal of
the supreme good and demands absolute submission
of the will to its behests , . . which commands
all men to love one another, to return good for
evil, to regard one another as citizens of one great
state," ^ the phrase, " Live according to Nature," so
far from having no application to the modern world
* Evolution and Ethics ^ p. 27.

56 INTRODUCTION

or no sanction in modern thought, is the first com-
mandment of Natural Religion.

The sociologist has grievously complained of late
that he could get but little help from science. The
suggestions of Bagehot, the Synthetic Philosophy
of Herbert Spencer, the proposals of multitudes of
the followers of the last who announced the re-
demption of the world the moment they discovered
the " Social Organism," raised great expectations.
But somehow they were not fulfilled. Mr. Spencer's
work has been mainly to give this century, and
in part all time, its first great map of the field.
He has brought all the pieces on the board,
described them one by one, defined and explained
the game. But what he has failed to do with
sufficient precision, is to pick out the King and
Queen. And because he has not done so, some
men have mistaken his pawns for kings ; others
have mistaken the real kings for pawns ; every
is7n has found endorsement in his pages, and
men have gathered courage for projects as hostile
to his whole philosophy as to social order. Theories
of progress have arisen without any knowledge of
its laws, and the ordered course of things has
been done violence to by experiments which, unless
the infinite conservatism of Nature had neutralized
their evils, had been a worse disaster than they

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY 57

are. This inadequacy, indeed, of modern sociology
to meet the practical problems of our time, has
become a by-word. Mr. Leslie Stephen pronounces
the existing science " a heap of vague empirical
observation, too flimsy to be useful " ; and Mr.
Huxley, exasperated with the condition in which it
leaves the human family, protests that " if there is
no hope of a large improvement " he should " hail
the advent of some kindly comet which would
sweep the whole affair away."

The first step in the reconstruction of Sociology
will be to escape from the shadow of Darwinism —
or rather to complement the Darwinian formula of
the Struggle for Life by a second factor which will
turn its darkness into light. A new morphology
can only come from a new physiology, and vice
versa; and for both we must return to Nature.
The one-sided induction has led Sociology into a
wilderness of empiricism, and only a complete in-
duction can reinstate it among the sciences. The
vacant place is there awaiting it ; and every earnest
mind is prepared to welcome it, not only as the
coming science, but as the crowning Science of
all the sciences, the Science, indeed, for which it
will one day be seen every other science exists.
What it waits for meantime is what every science
has had to wait for, exhaustive observation of the

58 INTRODUCTION"

facts and ways of Nature. Geology stood still for
centuries waiting for those who would simply look
at the facts. Men speculated in fantastic ways as
to how the world could have been made, and the
last thing that occurred to them was to go and see
It making. Then came the observers, men who,
waiving all theories of the process, addressed them-
selves to the natural world direct, and in watching
its daily programme of falling rain and running
stream laid bare the secret for all time. Sociology
has had its Werners; it awaits its Huttons. The
method of Sociology must be the method of all the
natural sciences. It also must go and see the world
making, not where the conditions are already ab-
normal beyond recall, or where Man, by irregular
action, has already obscured everything but the
conditions of failure ; but in lower Nature which
makes no mistakes, and in those fairer reaches of
a higher world where the quality and the stability
of the progress are guarantees that the eternal
order of Nature has had her uncorrupted way.

It cannot be that the full programme for the
perfect world lies in the imperfect part. Nor can it
ever be that science can find the end in the be-
ginning, get moral out of non-moral states, evolve
human societies from ant-heaps, or philanthropies
from protoplasm. But in every beginning we get

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY 59

a beginning of an end ; in every process a key to
the single step to be taken next. The full corn is
not in the ear, but the first cell of it is, and
though ' it doth not yet appear ' what the million-
celled ear shall be, there is rational ground for
judging what the second cell shall be. The next
few cells of the Social Organism are all that are
given to Sociology to affect. And, in dealing with
them, its business is with the forces; the pheno-
mena will take care of themselves. Neither the
great forces of Nature, nor the great lines of Nature,
change in a day, and however apparently unrelated
seem the phenomena as we ascend — here animal,
there human ; at one time non-moral, at another
moral — the lines of progress are the same. Nature,
in horizontal section, is broken up into strata which
present to the eye of ethical Man the profoundest
distinctions in the universe; but Nature in the
vertical section offers no break, or pause, or flaw.
To study the first is to study a hundred unrelated
sciences, sciences of atoms, sciences of cells, sciences
of Souls, sciences of Societies ; to study the second
is to deal with one science — Evolution. Here, on
the horizontal section, may be what Geology calls
an unconformability ; there is overlap ; changes of
climate may be registered from time to time,
each with its appropriate reaction on the things

6o INTRODUCTION

contained ; upheavals, depressions, denudations, gla-
ciations, faults, vary the scene; higher forms of
fossils appear as we ascend ; but the laws of life
are continuous throughout, the eternal elements in
an ever temporal world. The Struggle for Life, and
the Struggle for the Life of Others, in essential
nature, have never changed. They find new ex-
pression in each further sphere, become coloured to
our eye with different hues, are there the rivalries
or the affections of the brute, and here the industrial
or the moral conflicts of the race ; but the factors
themselves remain the same, and all life moves in
widening spirals round them. Fix in the mind this
distinction between the horizontal and the vertical
view of Nature, between the phenomena and the law,
between all the sciences that ever were and the one
science which resolves them all, and the confusions
and contradictions of Evolution are reconciled. The
man who deals with Nature statically, who cata-
logues the phenomena of life and mind, puts on
each its museum label, and arranges them in their
separate cases, may well defy you to co-relate such
diverse wholes. To him Evolution is alike imposs-
ible and unthinkable. But these items that he
labels are not wholes. And the world he dis-
sects is not a museum, but a living, moving, and
ascending thing. The sociologist's business is with

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY 6i

the vertical section, and he who has to do with
this living, moving, and ascending thing must treat
it from the dynamic point of view.

The significant thing for him is the study of
Evolution on its working side. And he will find
that nearly all the phenomena of social and
national life are phenomena of these two prin-
ciples— the Struggle for Life, and the Struggle for
the Life of Others. Hence he must betake him-
self in earnest to see what these mean in Nature,
what gathers round them as they ascend, how each
acts separately, how they work together, and whither
they seem to lead. More than ever the method of
Sociology must be biological. More urgently than
ever " the time has come for a better understand-
ing and for a more radical method ; for the social
sciences to strengthen themselves by sending their
roots deep into the soil underneath from which
they spring ; and for the biologist to advance over
the frontier and carry the methods of his science
boldly into human society, where he has but to
deal with the phenomena of life, where he encounters
life at last under its highest and most complex
aspect." ^

Would that the brilliant writer whose words these
are, and whose striking work appears while these
* Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution^ p. 28.

62 INTRODUCTION

sheets are almost in the press, had " sent his roots
deep enough into biological soil " to discover the
true foundation for that future Science of Society
which he sees to be so imperative. No modern
thinker has seen the problem so clearly as Mr.
Kidd, but his solution, profoundly true in itself,
is vitiated in the eyes of science and philosophy
by a basis wholly unsound. With an emphasis
which Darwin himself has not excelled, he proclaims
the enduring value of the Struggle for Life. He
sees its immense significance even in the highest
ranges of the social sphere. There it stands with
its imperious call to individual assertion, inciting to
a rivalry which Nature herself has justified, and
encouraging every man by the highest sanctions
ceaselessly to seek his own. But he sees nothing
else in Nature ; and he encounters therefore the
difficulty inevitable from this standpoint. For to
obey this voice means ruin to Society, wrong and
anarchy against the higher Man. He listens for
another voice ; but there is no response. As a
social being he cannot, in spite of Nature, act on
his first initiative. He must subordinate himself
to the larger interest, present and future, of those
around him. But why, he asks, must he, since
Nature says "Mind thyself"? Till Nature adds the
further precept, " Look not every man on his own

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY 63

things, but also on the things of Others," there is
no rational sanction for morality. And he finds
no such precept. There is none in Nature. There
is none in Reason. Nature can only point him to a
strenuous rivalry as the one condition of continued
progress ; Reason can only endorse the verdict.
Hence he breaks at once with reason and with
Nature, and seeks an " ultra-rational sanction " for
the future course of social progress.

Here, in his own words, is the situation. " The
teaching of reason to the individual must always
be that the present time and his own interests
therein are all-important to him. Yet the forces
which are working out our development are pri-
marily concerned not with those interests of the
individual, but with those widely different interests
of a social organism subject to quite other condi-
tions and possessed of an indefinitely longer life.
. . . The central fact with which we are con-
fronted in our progressive societies is, therefore,
that the interests of the social organism and those
of the individuals comprising it at any time are
actually antagonistic ; they can never be reconciled ;
they are inherently and essentially irreconcilable."^
Observe the extraordinary dilemma. Reason not
only has no help for the further progress of
^Op. cit, p. 78.

64 INTRODUCTION

Society, but Society can only go on upon a
principle which is an affront to it. As Man can
only attain his highest development in Society, his
individual interests must more and more subor-
dinate themselves to the welfare of a wider whole.
" How is the possession of reason ever to be
rendered compatible with the will to submit to
conditions of existence so onerous, requiring the
effective and continual subordination of the indi-
vidual's welfare to the progress of a development
in which he can have no personal interest what-
ever?"^

Mr. Kidd's answer is the bold one that it is
not compatible. There is no rational sanction
whatever for progress. Progress, in fact, can only
go on by enlisting Man's reason against itself.
" All those systems of moral philosophy, which
have sought to find in the nature of things a
rational sanction for human conduct in society,
must sweep round and round in futile circles.
They attempt an inherently impossible task. The
first great social lesson of those evolutionary doc-
trines which have transformed the science of the
nineteenth century is, that there cannot be such a
sanction.' . , . The extraordinary character of
the problem presented by human society begins
» Op. cit., p. 64. » op. ciL, p. 79.

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY 65

thus slowly to come into view. We find man
making continual progress upwards, progress which
it is almost beyond the power of the imagination
to grasp. From being a competitor of the brutes
he has reached a point of development at which
he cannot himself set any limits to the possi-
bilities of further progress, and at which he is
evidently marching onwards to a high destiny.
He has made this advance under the sternest
conditions, involving rivalry and competition for
all, and the failure and suffering of great numbers.
His reason has been, and necessarily continues to
be, a leading factor in this development; yet,
granting, as we apparently must grant, the possi-
bility of the reversal of the conditions from which
his progress results, those conditions have not any
sanction from his reason. They have had no such
sanction at any stage of his history, and they con-
tinue to be as much without such sanction in the
highest civilizations of the present day as at any
past period."^

These conclusions will not have been quoted in
vain if they show the impossible positions to which
a writer, whose contribution otherwise is of pro-
found and permanent value, is committed by a false
reading of Nature. Is it conceivable, a priori^ that
1 op. at., pp. 77-^,

E

66 INTRODUCTION

the human reason should be put to confusion by
a breach of the Law of Continuity at the very
point where its sustained action is of vital moment?
The whole complaint, which runs like a dirge
through every chapter of this book, is founded on
a misapprehension of the fundamental laws which
govern the processes of Evolution. The factors of
Darwin and Weismann are assumed to contain an
ultimate interpretation of the course of things. For
all time the conditions of existence are taken as
established by these authorities. With the Struggle
for Life in sole possession of the field no one,
therefore, we are warned, need ever repeat the
gratuitous experiment of the past, of Socrates,
Plato, Kant, Hegel, Comte, and Herbert Spencer,
to find a sanction for morality in Nature. " All
methods and systems alike, which have endeavoured
to find in the nature of things any universal rational •
sanction for individual conduct in a progressive
society, must be ultimately fruitless. They are all
alike inherently unscientific in that they attempt
to do what the fundamental conditions of existence
render impossible." And Mr. Kidd puts a climax
on his devotion to the doctrine of his masters by
mourning over "the incalculable loss to English
Science and English Philosophy" because Herbert
Spencer's work "was practically complete before h

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY 67

intellect had any opportunity of realizing the full
transforming effect in the higher regions of thought,
and, more particularly, in the department of soci-
ology, of that development of biological science
which began with Darwin, which is still in full
progress, and to which Professor Weismann has
recently made the most notable contributions." ^
Whether Mr. Spencer's ignorance or his science has
been at the bottom of the escape, it is at least a
lucky one. For if Mr. Kidd had realized " the
full transforming effect" of the following para-
graph, much of his book could not have been
written. " The most general conclusion is that in
order of obligation, the preservation of the species
takes precedence of the preservation of the in-
dividual. It is true that the species has no exist-
ence save as an aggregate of individuals ; and it
is true that, therefore, the welfare of the species
is an end to be subserved only as subserving the
welfare of individuals. But since disappearance of
the species, implying absolute disappearance of all
individuals, involves absolute failure in achieving
the end, whereas disappearance of individuals,
though carried to a great extent, may leave out-
standing such numbers as can, by continuance
of the species^ make subsequent fulfilment of the
^ Op. cit., p. 80,

68 INTRODUCTION

end possible; the preservation of the individual
must, in a variable degree according to circum-
stances, be subordinated to the preservation of
the species, where the two conflict."^

What Mr. Kidd has succeeded, and splendidly
succeeded, in doing is to show that Nature as
interpreted in terms of the Struggle for Life con-
tains no sanction either for morality or for social
progress. But instead of giving up Nature and
Reason at this point, he should have given up
Darwin. The Struggle for Life is not " the
supreme fact up to which biology has slowly
advanced." It is the fact to which Darwin ad-
vanced ; but if biology had been thoroughly con-
sulted it could not have given so maimed an
account of itself. With the final conclusion reached
by Mr. Kidd we have no quarrel. Eliminate the
errors due to an unrevised acceptance of Mr.
Darwin's interpretation of Nature, and his work
remains the most important contribution to Social
Evolution which the last decade has seen. But
what startles us is his method. To put the future
of Social Science on an ultra-rational basis is
practically to give it up. Unless thinking men
have, some sense of the consistency of a method
they cannot work with it, and if there is no
'^Principles of Ethics^ Vol. II., p. 6.

i

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY 6g

guarantee of the stability of the results it would
not be worth while.

But all that Mr. Kidd desires is really to be
found in Nature. There is no single element even
of his highest sanction which is not provided for
in a thorough-going doctrine of Evolution — a doc-
trine, that is, which includes all the facts and all
the factors, and especially which takes into account
that evolution of Environment which goes on pari
passu with the evolution of the organism and
where the highest sanctions ultimately lie. With
an Environment which widens and enriches until
it includes — or consciously includes, for it has
never been absent — the Divine ; and with Man so
evolving as to become more and more conscious
that that Divine is there, and above all that it is
in himself, all the materials and all the sanctions
for a moral progress are for ever secure. None of
the sanctions of religion are withdrawn by adding
to them the sanctions of Nature. Even those sanc-
tions which are supposed to lie over and above
Nature may be none the less rational sanctions.
Though a positive religion, in the Comtian sense,
is no religion, a religion that is not in some degree
positive is an impossibility. And although religion
must always rest upon faith, there is a reason for
faith, and a reason not only in Reason, but in

70 INTRODUCTION

Nature herself. When Evolution comes to be
worked out along its great natural lines, it may be
found to provide for all that religion assumes, all
that philosophy requires, and all that science proves.
Theological minds, with premature approval, have
hailed Mr. Kidd's solution as a vindication of their
supreme position. Practically, as a vindication of
the dynamic power of the religious factor in the
Evolution of Mankind, nothing could be more
convincing. But as an apologetic, it only accen-
tuates a weakness which scientific theology never
felt more keenly than at the present hour. This
weakness can never be removed by an appeal to
the ultra-rational. Does Mr. Kidd not perceive
that anyone possessed of reason enough to encoun-
ter his dilemma, either in the sphere of thought or
of conduct, will also have reason enough to reject
any " ultra-rational " solution ? This dilemma is
not one which would occur to more than one in
a thousand ; it has tasked all Mr. Kidd's powers
to convince his reader that it exists ; but if excep-
tional intellect is required to see it, surely excep-
tional intellect must perceive that this is not the
way out of it. One cannot, in fact, think oneself
out of a difficulty of this kind ; it can only be
lived out. And that precisely is what Nature is
making all of us, in greater or less degree, do, and

I

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY 71

every day making us do more. By the time, indeed,
that the world as a whole is sufficiently educated
to see the problem, it will already have been solved.
There is little comfort, then, for apologetics in
this direction. Only by bringing theology into
harmony with Nature and into line with the rest
of our knowledge can the noble interests given it
to conserve retain their vitality in a scientific age.
The first essential of a working religion is that it
shall be congruous with Man ; the second that it
shall be congruous with Nature. Whatever its
sanctions, its forces must not be abnormal, but
reinforcements and higher potentialities of those
forces which, from eternity, have shaped the pro-
gress of the world. No other dynamic can enter
into the working schemes of those who seek to
guide the destinies of nations or carry on the
Evolution of Society on scientific principles. A
divorce here would be the catastrophe of reason,
and the end of faith. We believe with Mr. Kidd
that " the process of social development which has
been taking place, and which is still in progress, in
our Western civilization, is not the product of the
intellect, but the motive force behind it has had
its seat and origin in the fund of altruistic feeling
with which our civilization has become equipped."
But we shall endeavour to show that this fund

INTRODUCTION

of altruistic feeling has been slowly funded in the
race by Nature, or through Nature, and as the
direct and inevitable result of that Struggle for
the Life of Others, which has been from all
time a condition of existence. What religion has
done to build up this fund, it may not be within
the scope of this introductory volume to inquire ;
it has done so much that students of religion may
almost be pardoned the oversight of the stupendous
natural basis which made it possible. But nothing
is gained by protesting that " this altruistic de-
velopment, and the deepening and softening of
character which has accompanied it, are the direct
and peculiar product of the religious system." For
nothing can ever be gained by setting one half of
Nature against the other, or the rational against the
ultra-rational. To affirm that Altruism is a peculiar
product of religion is to excommunicate Nature from
the moral order, and religion from the rational
order. If science is to begin to recognize religion,
religion must at least end by recognizing science.
And so far from religion sacrificing vital distinc-
tions by allying itself with Nature, so far from
impoverishing its immortal quality by accepting
some contribution from the lower sphere, it thereby
extends itself over the whole rich field, and claims
all — matter, life, mind, space, time — for itself The

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY 7^

present danger is not in applying Evolution as a
method, but only in not carrying it far enough.
No man, no man of science even, observing the
simple facts, can ever rob religion of its due.
Religion has done more for the development of
Altruism in a few centuries than all the millen-
niums of geological time. But we dare not rob
Nature of its due. We dare not say that Nature
played the prodigal for ages, and reformed at the
eleventh hour. If Nature is the Garment of God,
it is woven without seam throughout ; if a revela-
tion of God, it is the same yesterday, to-day, and
for ever ; if the expression of His Will, there is in
it no variableness nor shadow of turning. Those
who see great gulfs fixed — and we have all begun
by seeing them — end by seeing them filled up.
Were these gulfs essential to any theory of the
universe or of Man, even the establishment of
the unity of Nature were a dear price to pay for
obliterating them. But the apparent loss is only
gain, and the seeming gain were infinite loss. For
to break up Nature is to break up Reason, and
with it God and Man.

CHAPTER 1
THE ASCENT OF THE BODY

'' I ^HE earliest home of Primitive Man was a
cave in the rocks — the simplest and most
unevolved form of human habitation. One day,
perhaps driven by the want within his hunting-
grounds of the natural cave, he made himself a
hut — an artificial cave. This simple dwelling-place
was a one-roomed hut or tent of skin and boughs,
and so completely does it satisfy the rude man's
needs that down to the present hour no ordinary
savage improves upon the idea. But as the hut
surrounds itself with other huts and grows into a
village, a new departure must take place. The
village must have its chief, and the chief, in virtue
of his larger life, requires a more spacious home.
Each village, therefore, adds to its one-roomed
huts, a hut with two rooms. From the two-
roomed hut we pass, among certain tribes, to

75

76 THE ASCENT OF MAN

three- and four-roomed huts, and finally to the
many-chambered lodge of the Head-Chief or King.

This passage from the simple cave to the many-
chambered lodge is an Evolution, and a similar
development may be traced in the domestic archi-
tecture of all civilized societies. The labourer's
cottage of modern England and the shieling of
the Highland crofter are the survivals of the one-
roomed hut of Primitive Man, scarcely changed
in any essential with the lapse of years. In the
squire's mansion also, and the nobleman's castle,
we have the representatives, but now in an im-
mensely developed form, of the many-roomed home
of the chief The steps by which the cottage
became the castle are the same as those by which
the cave in the rocks became the lodge of the
chief Both processes wear the hall-mark of all
true development — they arise in response to grow-
ing necessities, and they are carried out by the
most simple and natural steps.

In this evolution of a human habitation we have
an almost perfect type of the evolution of that
more august habitation, the complex tenement of
clay in which Man's mysterious being has its home.
The Body of Man is a structure of a million, or
a million million cells. And the history of the
unborn babe \s, in the first instance, a history of

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY 77

additions, of room being added to room, of organ
to organ, of faculty to faculty. The general pro-
cess, also, by which this takes place is almost as
clear to modern science as in the case of material
buildings. A special class of observers has care-
fully watched these secret and amazing meta-
morphoses, and so wonderful has been theii
success with mind and microscope that they can
almost claim to have seen Man's Body made.
The Science of Embryology undertakes to trace
the development of Man from a stage in which
he lived in a one-roomed house — a physiological
cell. Whatever the multitude of rooms, the millions
and millions of cells, in which to-day each adult
carries on the varied work of life, it is certain
that when he first began to be he v/as the simple
tenant of a single cell. Observe, it is not some
animal-ancestor or some human progenitor of Man
that lived in this single cell — that may or may
not have been — but the individual Man, the present
occupant himself. We are dealing now not with
phylogeny — the history of the race — but with
ontogeny — the problem of Man's Ascent from his
own earlier self. And the point at the moment
is not that the race ascends ; it is that each
individual man has once, in his own life-time, occu-
pied a single cell, and starting from th^t humble

78 THE ASCENT OF MAN

cradle, has passed through stage after stage of
differentiation, increase, and development, until the
myriad-roomed adult-form was attained. Whence
that first cradle came is at present no matter.
Whether its remote progenitor rocked among the
waves of primeval seas or swung from the boughs
of forests long since metamorphosed into coal does
not affect the question of the individual ascent of
Man. The answers to these questions are hypo-
theses. The fact that now arrests our wonder is
that when the earliest trace of an infant's organiza-
tion meets the eye of science it is nothing but a
one-celled animal. And so closely does its de-
velopment from that distant point follow the lines
of the evolution just described in the case of the
primitive savage hut, that we have but to make a
few changes in phraseology to make the one pro-
cess describe the other. Instead of rooms and
chambers we shall now read cells and tissues ;
instead of the builder's device of adding room to
room, we shall use the physiologist's term segmen-
tation ; the employments carried on in the various
rooms will become the functions discharged by the
organs of the human frame, and line for line the
history of the evolution will be found to be the
same.

The embryo of the future man begins life, like

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY 79

the primitive savage, in a one-roomed hut, a single
simple cell. This cell is round and almost micro-
scopic in size. When fully formed it measures
only one-tenth of a line in diameter, and with the
naked eye can be barely discerned as a very fine
point. An outer covering, transparent as glass,
surrounds this little sphere, and in the interior, em-
bedded in protoplasm, lies a bright globular spot.
In form, in size, in composition there is no apparent
difference between this human cell and that of any
other mammal. The dog, the elephant, the lion,
the ape, and a thousand others begin their widely
different lives in a house the same as Man's. At
an earlier stage indeed, before it has taken on its
pellucid covering, this cell has affinities still more
astonishing. For at that remoter period the earlier
forms of all living things, both plant and animal,
are one. It is one of the most astounding facts
of modern science that the first embryonic abodes
of moss and fern and pine, of shark and crab and
coral polyp, of lizard, leopard, monkey, and Man
are so exactly similar that the highest powers of
mind and microscope fail to trace the smallest dis-
tinction between them.

But let us watch the development of this one-
celled human embryo. Increase of rooms in archi-
tecture can be effected in either of two ways — by

8o THE ASCENT OF MAN

building entirely new rooms, or by partitioning old
ones. Both of these methods are employed in
Nature. The first, gemmation, or budding, is com-
mon among the lower forms of life. The second,
differentiation by partition, or segmentation, is the
approved method among higher animals, and is that
adopted in the case of Man. It proceeds, after
the fertilized ovum has completed the complex
preliminaries of karyokinesis, by the division of
the interior-contents into two equal parts, so that
the original cell is now occupied by two nucleated
cells with the old cell-wall surrounding them out-
side. The two-roomed house is, in the next de-
velopment, and by a similar process of segmentation,
developed into a structure of four rooms, and this
into one of eight, and so on.^ In a short time the

^When the multicellular globe, made up of countless off-
shoots or divisions of the original pair, has reached a certain
size, its centre becomes filled with a tiny lakelet of watery
fluid. This fluid gradually increases in quantity, and, pushing
the cells outward, packs them into a single layer, circum-
scribing it on every side as with an elastic wall. At one
part a dimple soon appears, which slowly deepens, until a
complete hollow is formed. So far does this invagination of
the sphere go on that the cells at the bottom of the hollow
touch those at the opposite side. The ovum has now become
an open bag or cup, such as one might make by doubling in
an india-rubber ball, and thus is formed the gastrula of biology.
The evolutional interest of this process lies in the fact that
probably ^U animals above the Protozoa pass through this gas-

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY 8i

number of chambers is so great that count is lost,
and the activity becomes so vigorous in every
direction that one ceases to notice individual cells
at all. The tenement in fact consists now of
innumerable groups of cells congregated together,
suites of apartments as it were, which have quickly
arranged themselves in symmetrical, definite, and
withal different forms. Were these forms not
different as well as definite we should hardly call
it an evolution, nor should we characterize the
resulting aggregation as a higher organism. A
hundred cottages placed in a row would never
form a castle. What makes the castle superior
to the hundred cottages is not the number of
its rooms, for they are possibly fewer ; nor their
difference in shape, for that is immaterial. It lies
in the number and nature and variety of useful

trula stage. That some of the lower Metazoa, indeed, never
develop much beyond it, a glance at the structure of the
humbler Coelenterates will show — the simplest of all illus-
trations of the fact that embryonic forms of higher animals
are often permanently represented by the adult forms of lower.
The chief thing however to mark here is the doubling-in of
the ovum to gain a double instead of a single wall of cells.
For these two different layers, the ectoderm and the endoderm,
or the animal layer and the vegetal layer, play a unique part
in the after-history. All the organs of movement and sensation
spring from the one, all the organs of nutrition and reproduc-
tion develop from the other.

r

82 THE ASCENT OF MAN

purposes to which the rooms are put, the perfection
with which each is adapted to its end, and the har-
monious co-operation among them with reference
to some common work. This also is the distinction
between a higher animal and a humble organism
such as the centipede or the worm. These creatures
are a monotony of similar rings, like a string of
beads. Each bead is the counterpart of the other ;
and with such an organization any high or varied
life becomes an impossibility. The fact that any
growing embryo is passing through a real develop-
ment is decided by the new complexity of structure,
by the more perfect division of labour, and of better
kinds of labour, and by the increase in range and
efficiency of the correlated functions discharged by
the whole. In the development of the human em-
bryo the differentiating and integrating forces are
steadily acting and co-operating from the first, so
that the result is not a mere aggregation of similar
cells, but an organism with different parts and
many varied functions. When all is complete
we find that one suite of cells has been specially
set apart to provide the commissariat, others have
devoted themselves exclusively to assimilation. The
ventilation of the house — respiration — has been
attended to by others, and a central force-pump
has been set up, and pipes and ducts for many

%

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY 83

purposes installed throughout the system. Tele-
graph wires have next been stretched in every
direction to keep up connection between the end-
less parts ; and other cells developed into bony
pillars for support. Finally, the whole delicate
structure has been shielded by a variety of protec-
tive coverings, and after months and years of further
elaboration and adjustment the elaborate fabric is
complete. Now all these complicated contrivances
— ^bones, muscles, nerves, heart, brain, lungs — are
made out of cells ; they are themselves, and in
their furthest development, simply masses or suites
of cells modified in various ways for the special
department of household work they are meant to
serve. No new thing, except building material, has
entered into the embryo since its first appearing.
It seized whatever matter lay to hand, incor-
porated it with its own quickening substance, and
built it in to its appropriate place. So the struc-
ture rose in size and symmetry, till the whole had
climbed, a miracle of unfolding, to the stature of a
Man.

But the beauty of this development is not the
significant thing to the student of Evolution ; nor is
it the occultness of the process nor the perfection
of the result that fill him with awe as he surveys
the finished work. It is the immense distance Man

84 THE ASCENT OF MAN

has come. Between the early cell and the infant's
formed body, the ordinary observer sees the un-
eventful passage of a few brief months. But the
evolutionist sees concentrated into these few months
the labour and the progress of incalculable ages.
Here before him is the whole stretch of time since
life first dawned upon the earth ; and as he watches
the nascent organism climbing to its maturity he
witnesses a spectacle which for strangeness and
majesty stands alone in the .field of biological re-
search. What he sees is not the mere shaping or
sculpturing of a Man. The human form does not
begin as a human form. It begins as an animal ;
and at first, and for a long time to come, there
is nothing wearing the remotest semblance of
humanity. What meets the eye is a vast pro-
cession of lower forms of life, a succession of
strange inhuman creatures emerging from a crowd
of still stranger and still more inhuman creatures ;
and it is only after a prolonged and unrecognizable
series of metamorphoses that they culminate in some
faint likeness to the image of him who is one of the
newest yet the oldest of created things. Hitherto
we have been taught to look among the fossilifer-
ous formations of Geology for the buried lives of
the earth's past. But Embryology has startled the
world by declaring that the ancient life of the

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY 85

earth is not dead. It is risen. It exists to-day in
the embryos of still-living things, and some of the
most archaic types find again a resurrection and a
life in the frame of man himself

It is an amazing and almost incredible story.
The proposition is not only that Man begins his
earthly existence in the guise of a lower animal-
embryo, but that in the successive transformations
of the human embryo there is reproduced before
our eyes a visible, actual, physical representation of
part of the life-history of the world. Human Em-
bryology is a condensed account, a recapitulation
or epitome of some of the main chapters in the
Natural History of the world. The same processes
of development which once took thousands of years
for their consummation are here condensed, fore-
shortened, concentrated into the space of weeks.
Each platform reached by the human embryo in its
upward course represents the embryo of some lower
animal which in some mysterious way has played
a part in the pedigree of the human race, which
may itself have disappeared long since from the
earth, but is now and for ever built into the inmost
being of Man. These lower animals, each at its
successive stage, have stopped short in their de-
velopment ; Man has gone on. At each fresh
advance his embryo is found again abreast of some

86 THE ASCENT OF MAN

other animal-embryo a little higher in organization
than that just passed. Continuing his ascent that
also is overtaken, the now very complex embryo
making up to one animal-embryo after another
until it has distanced all in its series, and stands
alone. As the modern stem-winding watch con-
tains the old clepsydra and all the most useful
features in all the timekeepers that were ever
made; as the Walter printing-press contains the
rude hand -machine of Gutenberg, and all the
best in all the machines that followed it ; as
the modern locomotive of to-day contains the
engine of Watt, the locomotive of Hedley, and
most of the improvements of succeeding years, so
Man contains the embryonic bodies of earlier and
humbler and clumsier forms of life. Yet in making
the Walter press in a modern workshop, the arti-
ficer does not begin by building again the press
of Gutenberg, nor in constructing the locomotive
does the engineer first make a Watt's machine
and then incorporate the Hedley, and then the
Stephenson, and so on through all the improving
types of engines that have led up to this. But
the astonishing thing is that, in making a Man,
Nature does introduce the framework of these
earlier types, displaying each crude pattern by it-
self before incorporating it in the finished work.

I

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY Bj

The human embryo, to change the figure, is a
subtle phantasmagoria, a living theatre in which
a weird transformation scene is being enacted, and
in which countless strange and uncouth characters
take part. Some of these characters are well-
known to science, some are strangers. As the
embryo unfolds, one by one these animal actors
come upon the stage, file past in phantom-like pro-
cession, throw off their drapery, and dissolve away
into something else. Yet, as they vanish, each
leaves behind a vital portion of itself, some original
and characteristic memorial, something itself has
made or won, that perhaps it alone could make or
win — a bone, a muscle, a ganglion, or a tooth —
to be the inheritance of the race. And it is only
after nearly all have played their part and dedi-
cated their gift, that a human form, mysteriously
compounded of all that has gone before, begins
to be discerned in their midst.

The duration of this process, the profound an-
tiquity of the last survivor, the tremendous height
he has scaled, are inconceivable by the faculties
of Maa But measure the very lowest of the suc-
cessive platforms passed in the ascent, and see
how very great a thing it is even to rise at all.
The single cell, the first definite stage which the
human embryo attains, is still the adult form of

88 THE ASCENT OF MAN

countless millions both of animals and plants.
Just as in modern England the millionaire's man-
sion— the evolved form — is surrounded by labourers'
cottages — the simple form — so in Nature, living
side by side with the many-celled higher animals,
is an immense democracy of unicellular artizans.
These simple cells are perfect living things. The
earth, the water, and the air teem with them every-
where. They move, they eat, they reproduce their
like. But one thing they do not do — they do
not rise. These organisms have, as it were, stopped
short in the ascent of life. And long as Evolution
has worked upon the earth, the vast numerical
majority of plants and animals are still at this low
stage of being. So minute are some of these
forms that if their one-roomed huts were arranged
in a row it would take twelve thousand to form a
street a single inch in length. In their watery
cities — for most of them are Lake-Dwellers — a
population of eight hundred thousand million could
be accommodated within a cubic inch. Yet, as
there was a period in human history when none
but cave-dwellers lived in Europe, so was there a
time when the highest forms of life upon the globe
were these microscopic things. See, therefore, the
meaning of Evolution from the want of it. In a
single hour or second the human embryo attains

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY 89

the platform which represents the whole life-
achievement of myriads of generations of created
things, and the next day or hour is immeasurable
centuries beyond them.

Through all what zoological regions the embryo
passes in its great ascent from the one-celled
forms, one can never completely tell. The changes
succeed one another with such rapidity that it is
impossible at each separate stage to catch the
actual likeness to other embryos. Sometimes a
familiar feature suddenly recalls a form well-known
to science, but the likeness fades, and the develop-
ing embryo seems to wander among the ghosts
of departed types. Long ago these crude ancestral
forms were again the highest animals upon the
earth. For a few thousand years they reigned
supreme, furthered the universal evolution by a
hair-breadth, and passed away. The material dust
of their bodies is laid long since in the Palaeozoic
rocks, but their life and labour are not forgotten.
For their gains were handed on to a succeeding
race. Transmitted thence through an endless series
of descendants, sifted, enriched, accentuated, still
dimly recognizable, they re-appeared at last in the
physical frame of Man. After the early stages of
human development are passed, the transformations
become so definite that the features of the con-

90 THE ASCENT OF MAN

tributory animals are almost recognizable. Here,
for example, is a stage at which the embryo in its
anatomical characteristics resembles that of the
Vermes or Worms. As yet there is no head, nor
neck, nor backbone, nor waist, nor limbs. A
roughly cylindrical headless trunk — that is all that
stands for the future man. One by one the higher
Invertebrates are left behind, and then occurs the
most remarkable change in the whole life-history.
This is the laying down of the line to be occupied
by the spinal chord, the presence of which hence-
forth will determine the place of Man in the
Vertebrate sub-kingdom. At this crisis, the eye
which sweeps the field of lower Nature for an
analogue will readily find it. It is a circumstance
of extraordinary interest that there should be living
upon the globe at this moment an animal repre-
senting the actual transition from Invertebrate to
Vertebrate life. The acquisition of a vertebral
column is one of the great marks of height which
Nature has bestowed upon her creatures ; and in
the shallow waters of the Mediterranean she has
preserved for us a creature which, whether degen-
erate or not, can only be likened to one of her
first rude experiments in this direction. This
animal is the Lancelet, or Amphioxus, and so
rudimentary is the backbone that it does not

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY

contain any bone at all, but only a shadow or
prophecy of it in cartilage. The cartilaginous
notochord of the Amphioxus nevertheless is the
progenitor of all vertebral columns, and in the
first instance this structure appears in the human
embryo exactly as it now exists in the Lancelet.
But this is only a single example. In living
Nature there are a hundred other animal character-
istics which at one stage or another the biologist
may discern in the ever-changing kaleidoscope of
the human embryo.

Even with this addition, nevertheless, the human
infant is but a first rough draft, an almost form-
less lump of clay. As yet there is no distinct
head, no brain, no jaws, no limbs ; the heart is
imperfect, the higher visceral organs are feebly
developed, everything is elementary. But gradually
new organs loom in sight, old ones increase in
complexity. By a magic which has never yet been
fathomed the hidden Potter shapes and re-shapes
the clay. The whole grows in size and symmetry.
Resemblances, this time, to the embryos of the
lower vertebrate series, flash out as each new step
is attained — first the semblance of the Fish, then
of the Amphibian, then of the Reptile, last of the
Mammal. Of these great groups the leading em-
bryonic characters appear as in a moving pano-

92 THE ASCENT OF MAN

rama, some of them pronounced and unmistakable,
others mere sketches, suggestions, likenesses of
infinite subtlety. At last the true Mammalian
form emerges from the crowd. Far ahead of all
at this stage stand out three species — the Tailed
Catarrhine Ape, the Tailless Catarrhine, and last,
differing physically from these mainly by an en-
largement of the brain and a development of the
larynx, Man.

Whatever views be held of the doctrine of
Evolution, whatever theories of its cause, these
facts of Embryology are proved. They have taken
their place in science wholly apart from the
discussion of theories of Evolution, and as the
result of laboratory investigation, made for quite
other ends. What is true for Man, moreover, is
true of all other animals. Every creature that
lives climbs up its own genealogical tree before it
reaches its mature condition. " All animals living,
or that ever have lived, are united together by
blood relationship of varying nearness or remote-
ness, and every animal now in existence has a
pedigree stretching back, not merely for ten or a
hundred generations, but through all geologic time
since life first commenced on the earth. The study
of development has revealed to us that each animal
bears the mark of its ancestry, and is compelled

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY 93

to discover its parentage in its own development ;
the phases through which an animal passes in its
progress from the Qgg to the adult are no acci-
dental freaks, no mere matters of developmental
convenience, but represent more or less closely, in
more or less modified manner, the successive an-
cestral stages through which the present condition
has been acquired." ^ Almost foreseen by Agassiz,
suggested by Von Baer, and finally applied by
Fritz Muller, this singular law is the key-note
of modern Embryology. In no case, it is true, is
the recapitulation of the past complete. Ancestral
stages are constantly omitted, others are over-
accentuated, condensed, distorted, or confused ;
while new and undecipherable characters occasion-
ally appear. But it is a general scientific fact, that
over the graves of a myriad aspirants the bodies
of Man and of all higher Animals have risen. No
one knows why this should be so. Science, at
present, has no rationale of the process adequate
to explain it. It was formerly held that the
entire animal creation had contributed something
to the anatomy of Man ; or that as Serres ex-
pressed it, " Human Organogenesis is a transitory
Comparative Anatomy." But though Man has not
such a monopoly of the past as is here inferred
* Marshall, Vertebrate Embryology^ p. 26.

94 THE ASCENT OF MAN

— other types having here and there diverged
and developed along lines of their own — it is
certain that the materials for his body have been
brought together from an unknown multitude of
lowlier forms of life.

Those who know the Cathedral of St. Mark's
will remember how this noblest of the Stones of
Venice owes its greatness to the patient hands of
centuries and centuries of workers, how every quar-
ter of the globe has been spoiled of its treasures
to dignify this single shrine. But he who ponders
over the more ancient temple of the Human Body
will find imagination fail him as he tries to think
from what remote and mingled sources, from what
lands, seas, climates, atmospheres, its various parts
have been called together, and by what innumer-
able contributory creatures, swimming, creeping,
flying, climbing, each of its several members was
wrought and perfected. What ancient chisel first
sculptured the rounded columns of the limbs ?
What dead hands built the cupola of the brain,
and from what older ruins were the scattered pieces
of its mosaic-work brought ? Who fixed the win-
dows in its upper walls ? What winds and weathers
wrought strength into its buttresses ? What ocean-
beds and forest glades worked up its colourings?
What Love and Terror and Night called forth the

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY 95

Music ? And what Life and Death and Pain and
Struggle put all together in the noiseless workshop
of the past, and removed each worker silently when
its task was done ? How these things came to be,
Biology is one long record. The architects and
builders of this mighty temple are not anonymous.
Their names, and the work they did, are graven
forever on the walls and arches of the Human
Embryo. For this is a volume of that Book in
which Man's members were written, which in con-
tinuance were fashioned, when as yet there was
none of them.

The Descent of Man from the Animal Kingdom
is sometimes spoken of as a degradation. It is an
unspeakable exaltation. Recall the vast antiquity
of that primal cell from which the human embryo
first sets forth. Compass the nature of the poten-
tialities stored up in its plastic substance. Watch
all the busy processes, the multiplying energies, the
mystifying transitions, the inexplicable chemistry of
this living laboratory. Observe the variety and in-
tricacy of its metamorphoses, the exquisite gradation
of its ascent, the unerring aim with which the one
type unfolds — never pausing, never uncertain of its
direction, refusing arrest at intermediate forms,
passing on to its flawless maturity without waste
or effort or fatigue. See the sense of motion at

96 THE ASCENT OF MAN

every turn, of purpose and of aspiration. Discover
how, with identity of process and loyalty to the
type, a hair-breadth of deviation is yet secured to
each so that no two forms come out the same,
but each arises an original creation, with features,
characteristics, and individualities of its own. Re-
member, finally, that even to make the first cell
possible, stellar space required to be swept of
matter, suns must needs be broken up, and planets
cool, the agents of geology labour millennium after
millennium at the unfinished earth to prepare a
material resting-place for the coming guest. Con-
sider all this, and judge if Creation could have a
sublimer meaning, or the Human Race possess a
more splendid genesis.

From the lips of the Prophet another version,
an old and beautiful story, was told to the child-
hood of the earth, of how God made Man ; how
with His own hands He gathered the Bactrian
dust, modelled it, breathed upon it, and it became
a living soul. Later, the insight of the Hebrew
Poet taught Man a deeper lesson. He saw that
there was more in Creation than mechanical pro-
duction. He saw that the Creator had different
kinds of Hands and different ways of modelling.
How it was done he knew not, but it was not
the surface thing his forefathers taught him. The

I

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY 97

higher divinity and mystery of the process broke
upon him. Man was a fearful and wonderful thing.
He was modelled in secret. He was curiously
wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. When
Science came, it was not to contradict the older
versions. It but gave them content and a still
richer meaning. What the Prophet said, and the
Poet saw, and Science proved, all and equally will
abide forever. For all alike are voices of the Un-
seen, commissioned to different peoples and for
different ends to declare the mystery of the Ascent
of Man.

CHAPTER II

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY

' I ^HE spectacle which we have just witnessed
■^ is invisible, and therefore more or less un-
impressive, except to the man of science. Embry-
ology works in the dark. Requiring not only the
microscope, but the comparative knowledge of
intricate and inaccessible forms of life, its all but
final contribution to the theory of Evolution carries
no adequate conviction to the general mind. We
must therefore follow the fortunes of the Body
further into the open day. If the Embryo in
every changing feature of its growth contains some
reminiscence of an animal ancestry, the succeed-
ing stages of its development may be trusted to
carry on the proof. And though here the evi-
dence is neither so beautiful nor so exact, we
shall find that there is in the adult frame, and

even in the very life and movement of the new-

98

I

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY 99

born babe, a continuous witness to the ancient
animal strain.

We are met, unfortunately, at the outset by one
of those curious obstacles to inquiry which have so
often barred the way of truth and turned discovery
into ridicule. It happens that the class of animals
in which Science, in the very nature of the case, is
compelled to look for the closest affinities to human
beings is that of the Apes. This simple circum-
stance has told almost fatally against the wide
acceptance of the theory of Descent. There is just
as much truth in the sarcasm that man is a " re-
formed monkey" as to prejudge the question to the
unscientific mind. But the statement is no nearer
the truth itself than if one were to say that a
gun is an adult form of the pistol. The connec-
tion, if any, between Man and Ape is simply that
the most Man-like thing in creation is the Ape, and
that, in his Ascent, Man probably passed through
a stage when he more nearly resembled the Ape
than any other known animal. Apart from that
accident. Evolution owes no more to the Ape than
to any other creature. Man and Ape are alike in
being two of the latest terms of an infinite series,
each member of which has had a share in making
up the genealogical tree. To single out the Ape,
therefore, and use the hypothetical relationship for

loo THE ASCENT OF MAN

rhetorical purposes is, to say the least, unscientific.
It is certainly the fact that Man is not descended
from any existing ape. The anthropoid apes
branched off laterally at a vastly remote period
from the nearest human progenitors. The chal-
lenge even to produce links between Man and the
living man-like apes is difficult to take seriously.
Should anyone so violate the first principles of
Evolution as to make it, it is only to be said that
it cannot be met. For an anthropoid ape could as
little develop into a Man as could a Man pass
backwards into an anthropoid ape. References to
a Simian stem play no necessary part in the
story of the Ascent of Man. In those pages the
compromising name will scarcely occur. If his-
torical sequence compels us to make an apparent
exception here at the very outset, it will be seen
that the allusion is harmless. For the analogy
we are about to make might with equal relevancy
have been drawn from a squirrel or a sloth.

On the theory that human beings were once
allied in habit as well as in body with some of
the apes, that they probably lived in trees, and
that baby-men clung to their climbing mothers as
baby-monkeys do to-day. Dr. Louis Robinson
prophesied that a baby's power of grip might
be found to be comparable in strength to that

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY lol

of a young monkey at the same period of de-
velopment. Having special facilities for such an
investigation, he tested a large number of just-
born infants with reference to this particular. Now
although most people have some time or other
been seized in the awful grasp of a baby, few have
any idea of the abnormal power locked up in the
tentacles of this human octopus. Dr. Robinson's
method was to extend to infants, generally of one
hour old, his finger, or a walking stick, to imitate
the branch of a tree, and see how long they
would hang there without, what the newspapers
call, " any other visible means of support." The
results are startling. Dr. Robinson has records of
upwards of sixty cases in which the children were
under a month old, and in at least half of these
the experiment was tried within an hour of birth :
"In every instance, with only two exceptions, the
child was able to hang on to the finger or a small
stick, three-quarters of an inch in diameter, by its
hands, like an acrobat from a horizontal bar, and
sustain the whole weight of its body for at least
ten seconds. In twelve cases, in infants under an
hour old, half a minute passed before the grasp
relaxed, and in three or four nearly a minute.
When about four days old, I found that the
strength had increased, and that nearly all, when

I02 THE ASCENT OF MAN

tried at this age, could sustain their weight for
half a minute. About a fortnight or three weeks
after birth the faculty appeared to have attained
its maximum, for several at this period succeeded
in hanging for over a minute and a half, two for
just over two minutes, and one infant of three
weeks old for two minutes thirty-five seconds. . .
In one instance, in which the performer had less
than one hour's experience of life, he hung by
both hands to my forefinger for ten seconds, and
then deliberately let go with his right hand (as
if to seek a better hold), and maintained his posi-
tion for five seconds more by the left hand only.
Invariably the thighs are bent nearly at right
angles to the body, and in no case did the lower
limbs hang down and take the attitude of the
erect position. This attitude, and the dispropor-
tionately large development of the arms compared
with the legs, give the photographs a striking
resemblance to a well-known picture of the cele-
brated Chimpanzee Sally at the Zoological Garden.
I think it will be acknowledged that the remark-
able strength shown in the flexor muscle of the
fore-arm in these young infants, especially when
compared with the flaccid and feeble state of the
muscular system generally, is a sufficiently striking
phenomenon to provoke inquiry as to its cause

I

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY 103

and origin. The fact that a three-week -old baby
can perform a feat of muscular strength that would
tax the powers of many a healthy adult is enough
to set one wondering. A curious point is that in
many cases no sign of distress is evident, and no
cry uttered until the grasp begins to give way." ^

Place side by side with this the following
account, which Mr. Wallace gives us in his Malay
Archipelago^ of a baby Orang-outang, whose mother
he happened to shoot :

" This little creature was only about a foot
long, and had evidently been hanging to its mother
when she first fell. Luckily it did not appear to
have been wounded, and after we had cleaned the
mud out of its mouth it began to cry out, and
seemed quite strong and active. While carrying
it home it got its hands in my beard, and grasped
so tightly that I had great difficulty in getting
free, for the fingers are habitually bent inward at
the last joint so as to form complete hooks. For
the first few days it clung desperately with all
four hands to whatever it could lay hold of, and
I had to be careful to keep my beard out of its
way, as its fingers clutched hold of hair more
tenaciously than anything else, and it was im-
possible to free myself without assistance. When
^Nineteenth Century, November, 189!.

104 THE ASCENT OF MAN

restless, it would struggle about with its hands
up in the air trying to find something to take
hold of, and when it had got a bit of stick or
rag in two or three of its hands, seemed quite
happy. For want of something else, it would
often seize its own feet, and after a time it would
constantly cross its arms and grasp with each hand
the long hair that grew just below the opposite
shoulder. The great tenacity of its grasp soon
diminished, and I was obliged to invent some
means to give it exercise and strengthen its limbs.
For this purpose I made a short ladder of three
or four rounds, on which I put it to hang for a
quarter of an hour at a time. At first it seemed
much pleased, but it could not get all four hands
in a comfortable position, and, after changing about
several times, would leave hold of one hand after
the other and drop on to the floor. Sometimes
when hanging only by two hands, it would loose
one, and cross it to the opposite shoulder, grasping
its own hair ; and, as this seemed much more
agreeable than the stick, it would then loose the
other and tumble down, when it would cross both
and lie on its back quite contentedly, never seem-
ing to be hurt by its numerous tumbles. Finding
it so fond of hair, I endeavoured to make an
artificial mother, by wrapping up a piece of

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY 105

buffalo-skin into a bundle, and suspending it about
a foot from the floor. At first this seemed to
suit it admirably, as it could sprawl its legs about
and always find some hair, which it grasped with
the greatest tenacity." ^

Whatever the value of these facts as evidence,
they form an interesting if slight introduction to
the part of the subject that lies before us. For
we have now to explore the Body itself for actual
betrayals — not mere external movements which
might have come as well from early Man as from
later animal ; but veritable physical survivals, the
material scaffolding itself — of the animal past. And-
the facts here are as numerous and as easily
grasped as they are authentic. As the traveller,
wandering in foreign lands, brings back all manner
of curios to remind him where he has been — clubs
and spears, clothes and pottery, which represent
the ways of life of those whom he has met — so
the body of Man, emerging from its age-long
journey through the animal kingdom, appears
laden with the spoils of its distant pilgrimage.
These relics are not mere curiosities ; they are
as real as the clubs and spears, the clothes and
pottery. Like them, they were once a part of
life's vicissitude ; they represent organs which have
^ Malay Archipelago^ 53-5.

ro6 THE ASCENT OF MAN

been outgrown ; old forms of apparatus long since
exchanged for better, yet somehow not yet de-
stroyed by the hand of time. The physical body
of Man, so great is the number of these relics,
is an old curiosity shop, a museum of obsolete
anatomies, discarded tools, outgrown and aborted
organs. All other animals also contain among
their useful organs a proportion which are long
past their work ; and so significant are these
rudiments of a former state of things, that anato-
mists have often expressed their willingness to
stake the theory of Evolution upon their presence
alone.

Prominent among these vestigial structures, as
they are called, are those which smack of the sea.
If Embryology is any guide to the past, nothing
is more certain than that the ancient progenitors
of Man once lived an aquatic life. At one time
there was nothing else in the world but water-
life ; all the land animals are late inventions. One
reason why animals began in the water is that it
is easier to live in the water — anatomically and
physiologically cheaper — than to live on the land.
The denser element supports the body better,
demanding a less supply of muscle and bone ; and
the perpetual motion of the sea brings the food to
the animal, making it unnecessary for the animal

A

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY 107

to move to the food. This and other correlated
circumstances call for far less mechanism in the
body, and, as a matter of fact, all the simplest
forms of life at the present day are inhabitants of
the water.

A successful attempt at coming ashore may be
seen in the common worm. The worm is still so
unacclimatized to land life that instead of living on
the earth like other creatures, it lives in it, as if it
were a thicker water, and always where there is
enough moisture to keep up the traditions of its
past. Probably it took to the shore originally by
exchanging first the water for the ooze at the
bottom, then by wriggling among muddy flats when
the tide was out, and finally, as the struggle for
life grew keen, it pushed further and further inland,
continuing its migration so long as dampness was
to be found.

More striking examples are found among the
molluscs, the sea-faring animals par excellence of
the past. A snail wandering over the earth with
a sea-shell on its back is one of the most anomal-
ous sights in nature — as preposterous as the spec-
tacle of a Red Indian perambulating Paris with a
birch canoe on his head. The snail not only
carries this relic of the sea everywhere with it, but
when it cannot get moisture to remind it of its

io8 THE ASCENT OF MAN

ancient habitat, it actually manufactures it. That
the creature itself has discovered the anomaly of
its shell is obvious, for in almost every class its
state of dilapidation betrays that its up-keep is no
longer an object of much importance. In nearly
every species the stony houses have already lost
their doors, and most have their shells so reduced
in size that not half of the body can get in. The
degeneration in their cousins, the slugs, is even more
pathetic. All that remains of the ancestral home
in the highest ranks is a limpet-like cap on the tip
of the tail ; the lowest are sans everything ; and in
the intermediate forms the former glory is ironic-
ally suggested by a few grains of sand or a tiny
shield so buried beneath the skin that only the
naturalist's eye can see it.

When Man left the water, however — or what
was to develop into Man — he took very much
more ashore with him than a shell. Instead of
crawling ashore at the worm stage, he remained in
the water until he evolved into something like a
fish ; so that when, after an amphibian interlude,
he finally left it, many " ancient and fish-like "
characters remained in his body to tell the tale.
The chief characteristic of a fish is its apparatus
for breathing the air dissolved in the water. This
consists of gills — delicate curtains hung on strong

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY 109

arches and dyed scarlet with the blood which con-
tinually courses through them. In many fishes
these arches are five or seven in number, and
communicating with them — in order to allow the
aerated water, which has been taken in at the
mouth, to pass out again after bathing the gills —
an equal number of slits or openings is provided
in the neck. Sometimes the slits are bare and
open so that they are easily seen on the fish's
neck — anyone who looks at a shark will see
them — but in modern forms they are generally
covered by the operculum or lid. Without these
holes in their neck all fishes would instantly perish,
and we may be sure Nature took exceptional care
in perfecting this particular piece of the mechanism.
Now it is one of the most extraordinary facts
in natural history that these slits in the fish's neck
are still represented in the neck of Man. Almost
the most prominent feature, indeed, after the head,
in every mammalian embryo, are the four clefts or
furrows of the old gill-slits. They are still known
in Embryology by the old name — gill-slits — and so
persistent are these characters that children are
known to have been born with them not only ex-
ternally visible — which is a common occurrence —
but open through and through, so that fluids taken
in at the mouth could pass through and trickle

no THE ASCENT OF MAN

out at the neck. This last fact was so astounding
as to be for a long time denied. It was thought
that, when this happened, the orifice must have
been accidentally made by the probe of the sur-
geon. But Dr. Sutton has recently met with actual
cases where this has occurred. "I have seen milk,"
he says, " issue from such fistulas in individuals
who have never been submitted to sounding." ^ In
the common case of children born with these ves-
tiges, the old gill-slits are represented by small
openings in the skin on the sides of the neck, and
capable of admitting a thin probe. Sometimes even
the place where they have been in childhood is
marked throughout life by small round patches of
white skin.

Almost more astonishing than the fact of their
persistence is the use to which Nature afterwards
put them. When the fish came ashore, its water-
breathing apparatus was no longer of any use to
it. At first it had to keep it on, for it took a
long time to perfect the air-breathing apparatus
destined to replace it. But when this was ready
the problem arose. What was to be done with the
earlier organ ? Nature is exceedingly economical,
and could not throw all this mechanism away. In
fact, Nature almost never parts with any structure
* Evolution and Disease^ p. 8i.

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY iii

she has once made. What she does is to change
it into something else. Conversely, Nature seldom
makes anything new ; her method of creation is to
adapt something old. Now, when Nature had done
with the old breathing-apparatus, she proceeded to
adapt it for a new and important purpose. She
saw that if water could pass through a hole in
the neck, air could pass through likewise. But it
was no longer necessary that air should pass through
for purposes of breathing, for that was already pro-
vided for by the mouth. Was there any other
purpose for which it was desirable that air should
enter the body ? There was, and a very subtle
one. For hearing. Sound is the result of a wave-
motion conducted by many things, but in a special
way by air. To leave holes in the head was to
let sound into the head. The mouth might have
done for this, but the mouth had enough to do as
it was, and, moreover, it must often be shut. In the
old days, certainly, sound was conveyed to fishes
in a dull way without any definite opening. But
animals which live in water do not seem to use
hearing much, and the sound-waves in fishes are
simply conveyed through the walls of the head to
the internal ear without any definite mechanism.
But as soon as land-life began, owing to the
changed medium through which sound-waves must

112 THE ASCENT OF MAN

now be propagated, and the new uses for sound
itself, a more delicate instrument was required. And
hence one of the first things attended to as the
evolution went on was the construction and im-
provement of the ear. And this seems to have
been mainly effected by a series of remarkable
developments of one of the now superfluous gill-
slits.

It has long been a growing certainty to Com-
parative Anatomy that the external and middle
ear in Man are simply a development, an im-
proved edition, of the first gill-cleft and its sur-
rounding parts. The tympano-Eustachian passage
is the homologue or counterpart of the spiracle
associated in the shark with the first gill-opening.
Prof. His of Leipsic has worked out the whole de-
velopment in minute detail, and conclusively demon-
strated the mode of origin of the external ear from
the coalescence of six rounded tubercles surround-
ing the first branchial cleft at an early period of
embryonic life.^

^ Haeckel has given an earlier account of the process in
the following words : — " All the essential parts of the middle
ear — the tympanic membrane, tympanic cavity, and Eustachian
tube— develop from the first gill- opening with its surrounding
parts, which in the Primitive Fishes (Selachii) remains through-
out life as an open blow-hole, situated between the first and
second gill-arches. In the embryos of higher Vertebrates it

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY 113

Now, bearing in mind this theory of the origin
of ears, an extraordinary corroboration confronts us.
Ears are actually sometimes found bursting out in
human beings half-way down the neck, in the exact
position — namely, along the line of the anterior'
border of the sterno-mastoid muscle — which the
gill-slits would occupy if they still persisted. In
some human families, where the tendency to retain
these special structures is strong, one member
sometimes illustrates the abnormality by possessing
the clefts alone, another has a cervical-ear, while a
third has both a cleft and a neck-ear — all these,
of course, in addition to the ordinary ears. This
cervical auricle has all the characters of the
ordinary ear, " it contains yellow elastic cartilage,

closes in the centre, the point of concrescence forming the
tympanic membrane. The remaining outer part of the first
gill-opening is the rudiment of the outer ear-canal. From the
inner part originates the tympanic cavity, and further inward,
the Eustachian tube. In connection with these, the three
bonelets of the ear develop from the first two gill-arches ;
the hammer and anvil from the first, and the stirrup from
the upper end of the second gill-arch. Finally, as regards
the external ear, the ear-shell (concha auris), and the outer
ear canal, leading from the shell to the tympanic membrane—
these parts develop in the simplest way from the skin-covering
which borders the outer orifice of the first gill-opening. At
this point the ear-shell rises in the form of a circular fold
of skin, in which cartilage and muscles afterwards form."
— Haeckel, Evolution of Man, Vol. il., p. 269.

114 THE ASCENT OF MAN

is skin-covered, and has muscle-fibre attached
to it"^ Dr Sutton calls attention to the fact that
on ancient statues of fauns and satyrs cervical
auricles are sometimes found, and he figures the
head of a satyr from the British Museum, carved
long before the days of anatomy, where a sessile
ear on the neck is quite distinct. A still better
illustration may be seen in the Art Museum at
Boston on a full-sized cast of a faun, belonging
to the later Greek period ; and there are other ex-
amples in the same building. One interest of
these neck-ears in statues is that they are not, as
a rule, modelled after the human ear, but taken
from the cervical-ear of the goat, from which the
general idea of the faun was derived. This shows
that neck-ears were common on the goats of that
period — as they are on goats to this day. The
occurrence of neck-ears in goats is no more than
one would expect. Indeed, one would look for
them not only in goats and in Man, but in all the
Mammalia, for so far as their bodies are concerned
all the higher animals are near relations. Observa-
tions on vestigial structures in animals are sadly
wanting ; but these cervical-ears are also certainly
found in the horse, pig, sheep, and others.

That the human ear was not always the squat
* Sutton, Evolution and Disease^ p. 87

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY 115

and degenerate instrument it is at present may be
seen by a critical glance at its structure, Mr.
Darwin records how a celebrated sculptor called
his attention to a little peculiarity in the external
ear, which he had often noticed both in men and
women. " The peculiarity consists in a little blunt
point, projecting from the inwardly folded margin
or helix. When present, it is developed at birth,
and, according to Professor Ludwig Meyer, more
frequently in man than in woman. The helix ob-
viously consists of the extreme margin of the ear
folded inwards ; and the folding appears to be in
some manner connected with the whole external ear
being permanently pressed backwards. In many
monkeys who do not stand high in the order, as
baboons and some species of macacus, the upper
portion of the ear is slightly pointed, and the
margin is not at all folded inwards ; but if the
margin were to be thus folded, a slight point
would necessarily project towards the centre." ^
Here then, in this discovery of the lost tip of the
ancestral ear, is further and visible advertisement of
Man's Descent, a surviving symbol of the stirring
times and dangerous days of his animal youth. It
is difficult to imagine any other theory than that of
Descent which could account for all these facts.
^ Descent of Man^ p. 1 5.

1 16 THE ASCENT OF MAN

That Evolution should leave such clues lying about
is at least an instance of its candour.

But this does not exhaust the betrayals of this
most confiding organ. If we turn from the out-
ward ear to the muscular apparatus for working
it, fresh traces of its animal career are brought to
light. The erection of the ear, in order to catch
sound better, is a power possessed by almost all
mammals, and the attached muscles are large and
greatly developed in all but domesticated forms.
This same apparatus, though he makes no use of
it whatever, is still attached to the ears of Man.
It is so long since he relied on the warnings of
hearing, that by a well-known law, the muscles
have fallen into disuse and atrophied. In many
cases, however, the power of twitching the ear is
not wholly lost, and every school-boy can point to
some one in his class who retains the capacity,
and is apt to revive it in irrelevant circumstances.

One might run over all the other organs of the
human body and show their affinities with animal
structures and an animal past. The twitching of
the ear, for instance, suggests another obsolete, or
obsolescent power — the power, or rather the set of
powers, for twitching the skin, especially the skin
of the scalp and forehead by which we raise the
eyebrows. Subcutaneous muscles for shaking off

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY 117

flies from the skin, or for erecting the hair of the
scalp, are common among quadrupeds, and these
are represented in the human subject by the still
functioning muscles of the forehead, and occasion-
ally of the head itself. Everyone has met persons
who possess the power of moving the whole scalp
to and fro, and the muscular apparatus for effect-
ing it is identical with what is normally found in
some of the Quadrumana.

Another typical vestigial structure is the plica
semi-lunariSy the remnant of the nictitating mem-
brane characteristic of nearly the whole vertebrate
sub-kingdom. This membrane is a semi-transparent
curtain which can be drawn rapidly across the ex-
ternal surface of the eye for the purpose of sweeping
it clean. In birds it is extremely common, but it
also exists in fish, mammals, and all the other
vertebrates. Where it is not found of any functional
value it is almost always represented by vestiges of
some kind. In Man all that is left of it is a little
piece of the curtain draped at the side of the eye.

Passing from the head to the other extremity of
the body one comes upon a somewhat unexpected
but very pronounced characteristic — the relic of
the tail, and not only of the tail, but of muscles
for wagging it. Everyone who first sees a human
skeleton is amazed at this discovery. At the end

ii8 THE ASCENT OF MAN

of the vertebral column, curling faintly outward in
suggestive fashion, are three, four, and occasion-
ally five vertebrae forming the coccyx, a true
rudimentary tail. In the adult this is always con-
cealed beneath the skin, but in the embryo, both
in Man and ape, at an early stage it is much
longer than the limbs. What is decisive as to
its true nature, however, is that even in the
embryo of Man the muscles for wagging it are
still found. In the grown-up human being these
muscles are represented by bands of fibrous tissue,
but cases are known where the actual muscles
persist through life. That a distinct external tail
should not still be found in Man may seem dis-
appointing to the evolutionist. But the want of
a tail argues more for the theory of Evolution
than its presence would have done. For all the
anthropoids most allied to Man have long since
also parted with theirs.

With regard to the presence of Hair on the
body, and its disposition and direction, some curious
facts may be noticed. No one, until Evolution
supplied the impulse to a fresh study of the com-
monplace, thought it worth while to study such
trifles as the presence of hair on the fingers and
hands, and the slope of the hair on the arms.
But now that attention is called to it, every detail

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY 119

is seen to be full of meaning. In all men the
rudimentary hair on the arm, from the wrist to the
elbow, points one way, from the elbow to the
shoulder it points the opposite way. In the first
case it points upwards from the wrist towards the
elbow, in the other downwards from the shoulder
to the elbow. This occurs nowhere else in the
animal kingdom, except among the anthropoid
apes and a few American monkeys, and has to
do with the arboreal habit. As Mr. Romanes,
who has pointed this out, explains it, " When
sitting on trees, the Orang, as observed by Wal-
lace, places its hands above its head with its
elbows pointing downwards ; the disposition of
hair on the arms and fore-arms then has the effect
of thatch in turning the rain. Again, I find that
in all species of apes, monkeys, and baboons which
I have examined (and they have been numerous),
the hair on the back of the hands and feet is con-
tinued as far as the first row of phalanges ; but
becomes scanty, or disappears altogether, on the
second row. I also find that the same peculiarity
occurs in man. We have all rudimentary hair on
the first row of phalanges, both of hands and feet ,
when present at all, it is more scanty on the
second row : and in no case have I been able to
find any on the terminal row. In all cases those

i2o THE ASCENT OF MAN

peculiarities are congenital, and the total absence
or partial presence of hair on the second phalanges
is constant in different species of Quadrumana.
. . . The downward direction of the hair on
the backs of the hands is exactly the same in
man as it is in all the anthropoid apes. Again, with
regard to hair, Darwin notices that occasionally
there appear in man a few hairs in the eyebrows
much longer than the others ; and that they seem
to be a representation of similarly long and scat-
tered hairs which occur in the chimpanzee, macacus,
and baboon. Lastly, about the sixth month the
human foetus is often thickly covered with some-
what long dark hair over the entire body, except
the soles of the feet and palms of the hands,
which are likewise bare in all quadrumanous ani-
mals. This covering, which is called the lanugo,
and sometimes extends even to the whole fore-
head, ears, and face, is shed before birth. So that
it appears to be useless for any purpose other than
that of emphatically declaring man a child of the
monkey."^ The uselessness of these relics, apart
from the remarkable and detailed nature of the
homologies just brought out, is a circumstance
very hard to get over on any other hypothesis
than that of Descent.

^ Darwin and After Darwin, pp. 89-92.

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY 121

Caution, of course, is required in deciding as to
the inutility of any character, since its seeming
uselessness may only mean that we do not know
its use. But there are undoubtedly cases where
we know that certain vestigial structures are not
only useless to Man but worse than useless.
Coming under this category is perhaps the most
striking of all the vestigial organs, that of the
Vermiform Appendix of the Caecum. Here is
a structure which is not only of no use to man
now, but is a veritable death-trap. In herbivorous
animals this " blind-tube " is very large — longer in
some cases than the body itself — and of great use
in digestion, but in Man it is shrunken into the
merest rudiment, while in the Orang-outang it is
only a little larger. In the human subject, owing
to its diminutive size, it can be of no use whatever,
while it forms an easy receptacle for the lodgment
of foreign bodies, such as fruit-stones, which set up
inflammation, and in various ways cause death. In
man this tube is the same in structure as the rest
of the intestine; it is "covered with peritoneum,
possesses a muscular coat, and is lined with mucous
membrane. In the early embryo it is equal in
calibre to the rest of the bowel, but at a certain
date it ceases to grow pari passu with it, and at
the time of birth appears as a thin tubular appendix

122 THE ASCENT OF MAN

to the caecum. In the newly-born child it is often
absolutely as long as in the full-grown man. This
precocity is always an indication that the part was
of great importance to the ancestors of the human
species." ^

So important is the key of Evolution to the
modern pathologist that in cases of malformation
his first resort is always to seek an explanation in
earlier forms of life. It is found that conditions
which are pathological in one animal are natural
in others of a lower species. When any eccentri-
city appears in a human body the anatomist no
longer sets it down as a freak of Nature. He
proceeds to match it lower down. Mr. Darwin
mentions a case of a man who, in his foot alone,
had no less than seven abnormal muscles. Each
of these was found among the muscles of lower
animals. Take, again, a common case of malforma-
tion— club-foot. All children before birth display
the most ordinary form of this deformity — that,
namely, where the sole is turned inwards and
upwards and the foot is raised — and it is only
gradually that the foot attains the normal adult
position. The abnormal position, abnormal that i^
in adult Man, is the normal condition of thing^
in the case of the gorilla. Club-foot, hence,
^ Sutton, Evolution afid Diseasey p. 65.

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY 123

simply gorilla-foot — a case of the arrested develop-
ment of a character which apparently came along
the line of the direct Simian stock. So simple is
this method of interpreting the present by the past,
and so fruitful, that the anatomist has been able
in many instances to assume the r61e of prophet.
Adult man possesses no more than twelve pair of
ribs ; the prediction was hazarded by an older
Comparative Anatomy that in the embryonic state
he would be found with thirteen or fourteen. This
prophecy has since been verified. It was also pre-
dicted that at this early stage he would be found
to possess the insignificant remnant of a very small
bone in the wrist, the so-called os centrale^ which
must have existed in the adult condition of his
extremely remote ancestors. This prediction has
also been fulfilled, as Weismann aptly remarks,
*just as the planet Neptune was discovered after
its existence had been predicted from the dis-
turbances induced in the orbit of Uranus."^

But the enumeration becomes tedious. Though
we are only at the beginning of the list, sufficient
has been said to mark the interest of this part of
the subject, and the redundancy of the proof,
In the human body alone, there are at least
seventy of these vestigial structures. Take away
^Weismann, Biological Memoirs^ p. 255.

124 THE ASCENT OF MAN

the theory that Man has evolved from a lower
animal condition, and there is no explanation what-
ever of any one of these phenomena. With
such facts before us, it is mocking human in-
telligence to assure us that Man has not some
connection with the rest of the animal creation, or
that the processes of his development stand un-
related to the other ways of Nature. To say that
Providence, in making a new being, should deliber-
ately have inserted these eccentricities, without their
having any real connection with the things they so
well imitate, or any working relation to the rest of
his body, is, with our present knowledge, simple
irreverence.

Were it the present object to complete a proof
of the descent of Man, one might go on to select
from other departments of science evidence not
less striking than that from vestigial structures.
From the side of palaeontology it might be shown
that Man appears in the earth's crust like any
other fossil, and in the exact place where science
would expect to find him. When born, he is
ushered into life like any other animal ; he is
subject to the same diseases ; he yields to the
same treatment. When fully grown there is
almost nothing in his anatomy to distinguish him
from his nearest allies among other animals —

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY 125

almost bone for bone, nerve for nerve, muscle for
muscle he is the same. There is in fact a body
of evidence now before science for the animal
origin of Man's physical frame which it is im-
possible for a thinking mind to resist. Up to
this point two only out of the many conspiring
lines of testimony have been drawn upon for their
contribution ; but enough has been said to en-
courage us, with this as at least a working theory,
to continue the journey. It is the Ascent of Man
that concerns us and not the Descent. And these
amazing facts about the past are cited for a larger .
purpose than to produce conviction on a point
which, after all, is of importance only in its higher
implications.

CHAPTER III

THE ARREST OF THE BODY

** /^^N the Earth there will never be a higher
^-^ Creature than Man."^ It is a daring pro-
phecy, but every probability of Science attests the
likelihood of its fulfilment. The goal looked for-
ward to from the beginning of time has been
attained. Nature has succeeded in making a Man;
she can go no further; Organic Evolution has done
its work.

This is not a conceit of Science, nor a reminis-
cence of the pre-Copernican idea that the centre of
the universe is the world, and the centre of the
world Man. It is the sober scientific probability
that with the body of Man the final fruit of the tree
of Organic Evolution has appeared; that the highest
possibilities open to fliesh and bone and nerve and

* Fiske, Destiny of Man, p. 26. What follows owes much to
this suggestive brochure^

126

THE ARREST OF THE BODY i2y

muscle have now been realized ; that in whatever
direction, and with whatever materials, Evolution
still may work, it will never produce any material
thing more perfect in design or workmanship ; that
in Man, in short, about this time in history, we
are confronted with a stupendous crisis in Nature,
— the Arrest of the Animal. The Man, the Animal
Man, the Man of Organic Evolution, it is at least
certain, will not go on. It is another Man who
will go on, a Man within this Man ; and that he
may go on the first Man must stop. Let us try
for a moment to learn what it is to stop. Nothing
could teach Man better what is meant by his
going on.

One of the most perfect pieces of mechanism
in the human body is the Hand. How long it
has taken to develop may be dimly seen by a
glance at the long array of less accurate instru-
ments of prehension which shade away with ever
decreasing delicacy and perfectness as we descend
the scale of animal life. At the bottom of that
scale is the Amoeba. It is a speck of protoplasmic
jelly, headless, footless, and armless. When it
wishes to seize the microscopic particle of food on
which it lives a portion of its body lengthens out,
and, moving towards the object, flows over it, en-
gulfs it, and melts back again into the body.

I

128 THE ASCENT OF MAN

This is its Hand. At any place, and at any
moment, it creates a Hand. Each Hand is extem-
porized as it is needed ; when not needed it is
not. Pass a little higher up the scale and observe
the Sea-Anemone. The Hand is no longer ex-
temporized as occasion requires, but lengthened
portions of the body are set apart and kept per-
manently in shape for the purpose of seizing food.
Here, in the capital of twining tentacles which
crowns the quivering pillar of the body, we get
the rude approximation to the most useful portion
of the human Hand — the separated fingers. It is
a vast improvement on the earlier Hand, but the
jointless digits are still imperfect ; it is simply the
Amoeba Hand cut into permanent strips.

Passing over a multitude of intermediate forms,
watch, in the next place, the Hand of an African
Monkey. Note the great increase in usefulness due
to the muscular arm upon which the Hand is now
extended, and the extraordinary capacity for varied
motion afforded by the three-fold system of joint-
ing at shoulder, elbow, and wrist. The Hand itself
is almost the human Hand ; there are palm and
nail and articulated fingers. But observe how one
circumstance hinders the possessor from taking full
advantage of these great improvements, — this Hand
has no thumb, or if it has. it is but a rudiment.

THE ARREST OF THE BODY \ic^

To estimate the importance of this apparently
insignificant organ, try for a moment without using
the thumb to hold a book, or write a letter, or
do any single piece of manual work. A thumb is
not merely an additional finger, but a finger so
arranged as to be opposable to the other fingers^ and
thus possesses a practical efificacy greater than all
the fingers put together. It is this which gives the
organ the power to seize, to hold, to manipulate,
to do higher work ; this simple mechanical device
in short endows the Hand of intelligence with all
its capacity and skill. Now there are animals,
like the Colobi, which have no thumb at all ; there
are others, like the Marmoset, which possess the
thumb, but in which it is not opposable ; and
there are others, the Chimpanzee for instance, in
which the Hand is in all essentials identical with
Man's. In the human form the thumb is a little
longer, and the whole member more delicate and
shapely, but even for the use of her highest
product, Nature has not been able to make
anything much more perfect than the hand of
this anthropoid ape.

Is the Hand then finished? Can Nature take
out no new patent in this direction ? Is the fact
that no novelty is introduced, in the case of Man
^ proof that the ultimate Hand has appeared?

I30 THE ASCENT OF MAN

By no means. And yet it is probable for other
reasons that the ultimate Hand has appeared ;
that there will never be a more perfectly handed
animal than Man. And why? Because the causes
which up to this point have furthered the evolu-
tion of the Hand have begun to cease to- act. In
the perfecting of the bodily organs, as of all other
mechanical devices, necessity is the mother of inven-
tion. As the Hand was given more and more to
do, it became more and more adapted to its work.
Up to a point, it responded directly to each new
duty that was laid upon it. But only up to a
point. There came a time when the necessities
became too numerous and too varied for adaptation
to keep pace with them. And the fatal day came,
the fatal day for the Hand, when he who bore it
made a new discovery. It was the discovery of
Tools. Henceforth what the Hand used to do, and
was slowly becoming adapted to do better, was to
be done by external appliances. So that if anything
new arose to be done, or to be better done, it was
not a better Hand that was now made but a better
tool. Tools are external Hands. Levers are the
extensions of the bones of the arm. Hammers are
callous substitutes for the fist. Knives do the work
of nails. The vice and the pincers replace the fin-
gers. The day that Cave-man first split the marrow

THE ARREST OF THE BODY 131

bone of a bear by thrusting a stick into it, and
striking it home with a stone — that day the doom
of the Hand was sealed.

But has not Man to make his tools, and will not
that induce the development of the Hand to an as
yet unknown perfection ? No. Because tools are
not made with the Hand. They are made with the
Brain. For a time, certainly, Man had to make his
tools, and for a time this work recompensed him
physically, and the arm became elastic and the
fingers dexterous and strong. But soon he made
tools to make these tools. In place of shaping
things with the Hand, he invented the turning-
lathe ; to save his fingers he requisitioned the
loom ; instead of working his muscles he gave out
the contract to electricity and steam. Man, there-
fore, from this time forward will cease to develop
materially these organs of his body. If he develops
them outside his body, filling the world everywhere
with artificial Hands, supplying the workshops with
fingers more intricate and deft than Organic Evolu-
tion could make in a millennium, and loosing energies
upon them infinitely more gigantic than his muscles
could generate in a life-time, it is enough. Evolution
after all is a slow process. Its great labour is to
work up to a point where Invention shall be possible,
and where, by the powers of the human mind, and

132 THE ASCENT OF MAN

by the mechanical utilization of the energies of the
universe, the results of ages of development may be
anticipated. Further changes, therefore, within the
body itself are made unnecessary. Evolution has
taken a new departure. For the Arrest of the Hand
is not the cessation of Evolution but its immense
acceleration, and the re-direction of its energies into
higher channels.

Take up the functions of the animal body one by
one, and it will be seen how the same arresting
finger is laid upon them all. To select an additional
illustration, consider the power of Sight. Without
pausing to trace the steps by which the Eye has
reached its marvellous perfection, or to estimate
the ages spent in polishing its lenses and adjusting
the diaphragms and screws, ask the simple question
whether, under the conditions of modern civilization,
anything now is being added to its quickening
efficiency, or range. Is it not rather the testimony
of experience that if anything its power has begun to
wane ? Europe even now affords the spectacle of at
least one nation so short-sighted that it might almost
be called a myopic race. The same causes, in fact,
that led to the Arrest of the Hand are steadily
working to stop the development of the Eye. Man,
when he sees with difficulty, does not now improve
his Eye ; he puts on a pince-nez. Spectacles — ex-

THE ARREST OF THE BODY 133

ternal eyes — have superseded the work of Evolution.
WJien his sight is perfect up to a point, and he
desires to examine objects so minute as to lie
beyond the limit of that point, he will not wait for
Evolution to catch up upon his demand and supply
him, or his children's children, with a more perfect
instrument. He will invest in a microscope. Or
when he wishes to extend his gaze to the moon and
stars, he does not hope to reach to-morrow the dis-
tances which to-day transcend him. He invents the
telescope. Organic Evolution has not even a chance.
In every direction the external eye has replaced the
internal, and it is even difficult to suggest where any
further development of this part of the animal can
now come in. There are still, and in spite of all
instruments, regions in which the unaided organs of
Man may continue to find a field for the fullest exer-
cise, but the area is slowly narrowing, and in every
direction the appliances of Science tempt the body
to accept those supplements of the Arts, which, being
accepted, involve the discontinuance of development
for all the parts concerned. Even where a mechani-
cal appliance, while adding range to a bodily sense,
has seemed to open a door for further improvement,
some correlated discovery in a distant field of
science, as by some remorseless fate, has suddenly
taken away the opportunity and offered to the body

134 THE ASCENT OF MAN

only an additional inducement for neglect. Thus it
might be thought that the continuous use of the tele-
scope, in the attempt to discover more and more
indistinct and distant heavenly bodies, might tend to
increase the efficiency of the Eye. But that expecta-
tion has vanished already before a further fruit of
Man's inventive power. By an automatic photo-
graphic apparatus fixed to the telescope, an Eye
is now created vastly more delicate and in many
respects more efficient than the keenest eye of Man.
In at least five important particulars the Photo-
graphic Eye is the superior of the Eye of Organic
Evolution. It can see where the human Eye, even
with the best aids of optical instruments, sees no-
thing at all ; it can distinguish certain objects with
far greater clearness and definition ; owing to the
rapidity of its action it can instantly detect changes
which are too sudden for the human eye to follow ;
it can look steadily for hours without growing tired ;
and it can record what it sees with infallible accuracy
upon a plate which time will not efface. How long
would it take Organic Evolution to arrive at an Eye
of such amazing quality and power ? And with such
a piece of mechanism available, who, rather than em-
ploy it even to the neglect of his organs of vision,
would be content to await the possible attainment of
an equal perfection by his descendants some million

THE ARREST OF THE BODY 135

years hence ? Is there not here a conspicuous testi-
mony to the improbability of a further Evolution
of the sense of Sight in civilized communities — in
other words, another proof of the Arrest of the
Animal ? What defiance of Evolution, indeed, what
affront to Nature, is this ? Man prepares a compli-
cated telescope to supplement the Eye created by
Evolution, and no sooner is it perfected than it
occurs to him to create another instrument to aid
the Eye in what little work is left for it to do. That
is to say, he first makes a mechanical supplement to
his Eye, then constructs a mechanical Eye, which is
better than his own, to see through it, and ends by
discarding, for many purposes, the Eye of Organic
Evolution altogether.

As regards the other functions of civilized Man,
the animal in almost every direction has reached
its maximum. Civilization — and the civilized state,
be it remembered, is the ultimate goal of every
race and nation — is always attended by deteriora-
tion of some of the senses. Every man pays a
definite price or forfeit for his taming. The sense
of smell, compared with its development among
the lower animals, is in civilized Man already all
but gone. Compared even with a savage, it is an
ascertained fact that the civilized Man in this re-
spect is vastly inferior. So far as hearing is con-

136 THE ASCENT OF MAN

cerned, the main stimulus — fear of surprise by
enemies — has ceased to operate, and the muscles
for the erection of the ears have fallen into dis-
use. The ear itself in contrast with that of the
savage is slow and dull, while compared with the
quick sense of the lower animals, the organ is
almost deaf. The skin, from the continuous use
of clothes, has forfeited its protective power.
Owing to the use of viands cooked, the muscles
of the jaw are rapidly losing strength. The teeth,
partly for a similar reason, are undergoing marked
degeneration. The third molar, for instance, among
some nations is already showing symptoms of sup-
pression, and that this threatens ultimate extinction
may be reasoned from the fact that the anthropoid
apes have fewer teeth than the lower monkeys,
and these fewer than the preceding generation
of insectivorous mammals.

In an age of vehicles and locomotives the lower
limbs find their occupation almost gone. For mere
muscle, that on which his whole life once de-
pended, Man has almost now no use. Agility,
nimbleness, strength, once a stern necessity, are
either a luxury or a pastime. Their outlet is the
cricket-field or the tennis-court. To keep them
up at all, artificial means — dumb-bells, parallel -bars,
clubs — have actually to be devised. Vigour of

THE ARREST OF THE BODY \yj

limb is not to be found in common life, we look
for it in the Gymnasium; agility is relegated to
the Hippodrome. Once all men were athletes ;
now you have to pay to see them. More or less
with all the animal powers it is the same. To
some extent at least some phonograph may yet
speak for us, some telephone hear for us, the type-
writer write for us, chemistry digest for us, and
incubation nurture us. So everywhere the Man as
Animal is in danger of losing ground. He has
expanded until the world is his body. The former
body, the hundred and fifty pounds or so of
organized tissue he carries about with him, is little
more than a mark of identity. It is not he who
is there, he cannot be there, or anywhere, for he is
everywhere. The material part of him is reduced
to a symbol ; it is but a link with the wider
framework of the Arts, a belt between machinery
and machinery. His body no longer generates,
but only utilizes energy; alone he is but a tool,
a medium, a turncock of the physical forces.

Now with what feelings do we regard all this?
Is not the crowning proof of the thesis under re-
view that we watch this evidence accumulating
against the body with no emotion and hear the
doom of our clay pronounced without a regret?
It is nothing to aspiring Man to watch the lower

138 THE ASCENT OF MAN

animals still perfecting their mechanism and put-
ting all his physical powers and senses to the
shame. It is nothing to him to be distanced in
nimbleness by the deer: has he not his bullet?
Or in strength by the horse : has he not bit and
bridle ? Or in vision by the eagle : his field-glass
out-sees it. How easily we talk of the body as
a thing without us, as an impersonal it. And
how naturally when all is over, do we advertise
its irrelevancy to ourselves by consigning its bor-
rowed atoms to the anonymous dust. The fact
is, in one aspect, the body, to Intelligence, is all
but an absurdity. One is almost ashamed to have
one. The idea of having to feed it, and exercise
it, and humour it, and put it away in the dark
to sleep, to carry it about with one everywhere,
and not only it but its wardrobe — other material
things to make this material thing warm or keep it
cool — the whole situation is a comedy. But judge
what it would be if this exacting organism went
on evolving, multiplied its members, added to its
intricacy, waxed instead of waned ? So compli-
cated is it already that one shrinks from contem-
plating a future race having to keep in repair an
apparatus more involved and delicate. The prac-
tical advantage is enormous of having all improve-
ments henceforth external, of having insensate

THE ARREST OF THE BODY 139

organs made of iron and steel rather than of
wasting muscle and palpitating nerve. For these
can be kept at no physiological cost, they cannot
impede the other machinery, and when that finally
comes to the last break-down there will be the
fewer wheels to stop.

So great indeed is the advantage of increasing
mechanical supplements to the physical frame rather
than exercising the physical frame itself, that this
will become nothing short of a temptation ; and
not the least anxious task of future civilization
will be to prevent degeneration beyond a legitimate
point, and keep up the body to its highest working
level. For the first thing to be learned from these
facts is not that the Body is nothing and must
now decay, but that it is most of all and more
than ever worthy to be preserved. The moment
our care of it slackens, the Body asserts itself. It
comes out from under arrest — which is the one
thing to be avoided. Its true place by the ordained
appointment of Nature is where it can be ignored;
if through disease, neglect, or injury it returns to
consciousness, the effect of Evolution is undone.
Sickness is degeneration; pain the signal to resume
the evolution. On the one hand, one must "reckon
the Body dead " ; on the other, one must think
of it in order not to think of it

I40 THE ASCENT OF MAN

This arrest of physical development at a specific
point is not confined to Man. Everywhere in the
organic world science is confronted with arrested
types. While endless groups of plant and animal
forms have advanced during the geological ages,
other whole groups have apparently stood still —
stood still, that is to say, not in time but in
organization. If Nature is full of moving things,
it is also full of fixtures. Thirty-one years ago
Mr. Huxley devoted the anniversary Address of
the Geological Society to a consideration of what
he called " Persistent Types of Life," and threw
down to Evolutionists a puzzle which has never
yet been fully solved. While some forms attained
their climacteric tens of thousands of years ago
and perished, others persevered, and, without ad-
vancing in any material respect, are alive to this
day. Among the most ancient Carboniferous plants,
for instance, are found certain forms generically
identical with those now living. The cone of the
existing Araucaria is scarcely to be distinguished
from that of an Oolite form. The Tabulate Corals
of the Silurian period are similar to those which
exist to-day. The Lamp-shells of our present seas
so abounded at the same ancient date as to give
their name to one of the great groups of Silurian
rocks — the Lingula Flags. Star-fishes and Sea-

THE ARREST OF THE BODY 141

urchins, almost the same as those which tenant
the coast-lines of our present seas, crawled along
what arc now among the most ancient fossiliferous
rocks. Both of the forms just named, the Brachio-
pods and the Echinoderms, have come down to us
almost unchanged through the nameless gap of
time which separates the Silurian and Old Red
Sandstone periods from the present era.

This constancy of structure reveals a conser-
vatism in Nature, as unexpected as it is wide-
spread. Does it mean that the architecture of
living things has a limit beyond which development
cannot go ? Does it mean that the morphological
possibilities along certain lines of bodily structure
have exhausted themselves, that the course of con-
ceivable development in these instances has actually
run out? In Gothic Architecture, or in Norman,
there are terminal points which, once reached, can
be but little improved upon. Without limiting
working efficiency, they can go no further. These
styles in the very nature of things seem to have
limits. Mr. Ruskin has indeed assured us that
there are only three possible forms of good archi-
tecture in the world ; Greek, the architecture of the
Lintel ; Romanesque, the architecture of the Rounded
Arch ; Gothic, the architecture of the Gable. " All
the architects in the world will never diJ'cover any

142 THE ASCENT OF MAN

Other way of bridging a space than these three, the
Lintel, the Round Arch, the Gable ; they may vary
the curve of the arch, or curve the sides of the
gable, or break them down ; but in doing this they
are merely modifying or sub-dividing, not adding
to the generic form."^

In some such way, there may be terminal
generic forms in the architecture of animals ; and
the persistent types just named may represent
in their several directions the natural limits of
possible modification. No further modification of a
radical kind, that is to say, could in these instances
be introduced without detriment to practical effici-
ency. These terminal forms thus mark a normal
maturity, a goal ; they represent the ends of the
twigs of the tree of life.

Now consider the significance of that fact.
Nature is not an interminable succession. It is
not always a becoming. Sometimes things arrive.
The Lamp-shells have arrived, they are part of the
permanent furniture of the world ; along that par-
ticular line, there will probably never be anything
higher. The Star-fishes also have arrived, and the
Sea-urchins, and the Nautilus, and the Bony
Fishes, the Tapirs, and possibly the Horse — all
these are highly divergent forms which have run
^Stones of Venice^ ii. 236.

THE ARREST OF THE BODY 143

out the length of their tether and can go no
further. When the plan of the world was made,
to speak teleologically, these types of life were
assigned their place and limit, and there they have
remained. If it were wanted to convey the im-
pression that Nature had some large end in view,
that she was not drifting aimlessly towards a
general higher level, it could not have been done
more impressively than by everywhere placing on
the field of Science these fixed points, these in-
numerable consummations, these clean-cut mountain
peaks, which for millenniums have never grown.
Even as there is a plan in the parts, there is a
plan in the whole.

But the most certain of all these " terminal
points " in the evolution of Creation is the body of
Man. Anatomy places Man at the head of all
other animals that were ever made ; but what is
infinitely more instructive, with him, as we have
just seen, the series comes to an end. Man is not
only the highest branch, but the highest possible
branch. Take as a last witness the testimony of
anatomy itself with regard to the human brain.
Here the fact is not only re-affirmed but the
rationale of it suggested in terms of scientific law.
" The development of the brain is in connection
with a whole system of development of the head

144 THE ASCENT OF MAN

and face which cannot be carried further than in
Man. For the mode in which the cranial cavity is
gradually increased in size is a regular one, which
may be explained thus : we may look on the skull
as an irregular cylinder, and at the same time that
it is expanded by increase of height and width it
also undergoes a curvature or bending on itself, so
that the base is crumpled together while the roof
is elongated. This curving has gone on in Man
till the fore end of the cylinder, the part on which
the brain rests above the nose, is nearly parallel
to the aperture of communication of the skull
with the spinal canal, i.e. the cranium has a curve
of I So** or a few degrees more or less. This
curving of the base of the skull involves change in
position of the face bones also, and could not go
on to a further extent without cutting off the nasal
cavity from the throat. , . Thus there is

anatomical evidence that the development of the
vertebrate form has reached its limit by com-
pletion in Man."^

This author's conception of the whole field of
living nature is so suggestive that we may continue
the quotation : " To me the animal kingdom appears
not in indefinite growth like a tree, but a temple

iProf. J. Cleland, M.D., F.R,S., Jowml of Anatomy, Vol,
;cviii., pp. 360-1.

THE ARREST OF THE BODY 145

with many minarets, none of them capable of being
prolonged — while the central dome is completed by
the structure of man. The development of the ani-
mal kingdom is the development of intelligence
chained to matter; the animals in which the nervous
system has reached the greatest perfection are the
vertebrates, and in Man that part of the nervous
system which is the organ of intelligence reaches, as I
have sought to show, the highest development pos-
sible to a vertebrate animal, while intelligence has
grown to reflection and volition. On these grounds,
I believe, not that Man is the highest possible in-
telligence, but that the human body is the highest
form of human life possible, subject to the condi-
tions of matter on the surface of the globe, and
that the structure completes the design of the animal
kingdom." ^

Never was the body of Man greater than with
this sentence of suspension passed on it, and never
was Evolution more wonderful or more beneficent
than when the signal was given to stop working
at Man's animal frame. This was an era in the
world's history. For it betokened nothing less than
that the cycle of matter was now complete, and the
one prefatory task of the ages finished. Henceforth
the Weltanschauung is for ever changed. From this
^ Journal of Anatomy, Vol. xviil., p. 362.

146 THE ASCENT OF MAN

pinnacle of matter is seen at last what matter is
for, and all the lower lives that ever lived appear
as but the scaffolding for this final work. The
whole sub-human universe finds its reason for ex-
istence in its last creation, its final justification in
the new immaterial order which opened with its
close. Cut off Man from Nature, and, metaphysical
necessity apart, there remains in Nature no divinity.
To include Man in Evolution is not to lower Man
to the level of Nature, but to raise Nature to his
high estate. There he was made, these atoms are
his confederates, these plant cells raised him from
the dust, these travailing animals furthered his
Ascent: shall he excommunicate them now that
their work is done ? Plant and animal have each
their end, but Man is the end of all the ends. The
latest science reinstates him, where poet and philo-
sopher had already placed him, as at once the
crown, the master, and the rationale of creation.
"Not merely," says Kant, "is he like all organized
beings an end in nature, but also here on earth
the last end of nature, in reference to whom all
other natural things constitute a system of ends."
Yet it is not because he is the end of ends, but the
beginning of beginnings, that the completion of the
Body marks a crisis in the past. At last Evolution
had culminated in a creation so complex and

THE ARREST OF THE BODY 147

exalted as to form the foundation for an incon-
ceivably loftier super-organic order. The moment
an organism was reached through which Thought
was possible, nothing more was required of matter.
The Body was high enough. Organic Evolution
might now even resign its sovereignty of the world ;
it had made a thing which was now its master.
Henceforth Man should take charge of Evolution
even as up till now he had been the one charge of
it. Henceforth his selection should replace Natural
Selection ; his judgment guide the struggle for life ;
his will determine for every plant upon the earth
whether it should bloom or fade, for every animal
whether it should increase, or change, or die. So
Man entered into his Kingdom.

Science is charged, be it once more recalled, with
numbering Man among the beasts, and levelling his
body with the dust. But he who reads for himself
the history of creation as it is written by the hand
of Evolution will be overwhelmed by the glory and
honour heaped upon this creature. To be a Man,
and to have no conceivable successor ; to be the
fruit and crown of the long past eternity, and the
highest possible fruit and crown ; to be the last vic-
tor among the decimated phalanxes of earlier exist-
ences, and to be nevermore defeated ; to be the best
that Nature in her strength and opulence can produce;

148 THE ASCENT OF MAN

to be the first of that new order of beings who by
their dominion over the lower world and their
equipment for a higher, reveal that they are made
in the Image of God — to be this is to be elevated
to a rank in Nature more exalted than any philo-
sophy or any poetry or any theology have ever given
to Man. Man was always told that his place was
high ; the reason for it he never knew till now ; he
never knew that his title deeds were the very laws
of Nature, that he alone was the Alpha and Omega
of Creation, the beginning and the end of Matter,
the final goal of Life.

Nature is full of new departures ; but never since
time began was there anything approaching in im-
portance that period when the slumbering animal.
Brain, broke into intelligence, and the Creature first
felt that it had a Mind. From that dateless moment
a higher and swifter progress of the world began.
Henceforth, Intelligence triumphed over structural
adaptation. The wise were naturally selected before
the strong. The Mind discovered better methods,
safer measures, shorter cuts. So the body learned
to refer to it, then to defer to it. As the Mind
was given more to do, it enlarged and did its work
more perfectly. Gradually the favours of Evolution —
exercise, alteration, differentiation, addition — which
were formerly distributed promiscuously among the

THE ARREST OF THE BODY 149

bodily organs — were now lavished mainly upon the
Brain. The gains accumulated with accelerating
velocity ; and by sheer superiority and fitness for its
work, the Intellect rose to commanding power, and
entered into final possession of a monopoly which
can never be disturbed.

Now this means not only that an order of higher
animals has appeared upon the earth, but that an
altogether new page in the history of the universe
has begun to be written. It means nothing less
than that the working of Evolution has changed its
course. Once it was a physical universe, now it is
a psychical universe. And to say that the working
of Evolution has changed its course, and set its
compass in psychical directions, is to call attention
to the most remarkable fact in Nature. Nothing so
original or so revolutionary has ever been given to
science to discover, to ponder, or to proclaim. The
power of this event to strike and rouse the mind
will depend upon one's sense of what the working
of Evolution has been to the world ; but those who
realize this even dimly will see that no emphasis of
language can exaggerate its significance. Let im-
agination do its best to summon up the past of
Nature. Beginning with the panorama of the
Nebular Hypothesis, run the eye over the field
of Palaeontology, Geology, Botany, and Zoology.

ISO THE ASCENT OF MAN

Watch the majestic drama of Creation unfolding,
scene by scene and act by act. Realize that one
power, and only one, has marshalled the figures
for this mighty spectacle; that one hand, and only
one, has carried out these transformations ; that one
principle, and only one, has controlled each sub-
sidiary plot and circumstance; that the same great
patient unobtrusive law has guided and shaped
the whole from its beginnings in bewilderment
and chaos to its end in order, harmony, and
beauty. Then watch the curtain drop. And as
it moves to rise again, behold the new actor
upon the stage. Silently, as all great changes
come. Mental Evolution has succeeded Organic.
All the things that have been now lie in the
far background as forgotten properties. And Man
stands alone in the foreground, and a new thing,
Spirit, strives within him.

CHAPTER IV
THE DAWN OF MIND

'T^HE most beautiful witness to the Evolution
-*- of Man is the Mind of a little child. The
stealing in of that inexplicable light — yet not more
light than sound or touch — called consciousness,
the first flicker of memory, the gradual governance
of will, the silent ascendancy of reason — these
are studies in Evolution the oldest, the sweetest,
and the most full of meaning for mankind. Evolu-
tion, after all, is a study for the nursery. It
was ages before Darwin or Lamarck or Lucretius
that Maternity, bending over the hollowed cradle
in the forest for a first smile of recognition
from her babe, expressed the earliest trust in the
doctrine of development. Every mother since then
is an unconscious Evolutionist, and every little child
a living witness to Ascent.

Is the Mind a new or an old thing in the world ?
151

152 THE ASCENT OF MAN

Is it an Evolution from beneath or an original gift
from heaven ? Did the Mind, in short, come down
the ages like the Body, and does the mother's faith
in the intellectual unfolding of her babe include a
remoter origin for all human faculty ? Let the
mother look at her child and answer. "It is the
very breath of God," she says ; " this Child-Life is
Divine." And she is right. But let her look again.
That forehead, whose is it? It is hers. And the
frown which darkened it just now ? Is hers also.
And that which caused the frown to darken, that
something or nothing, behind the forehead, that flash
of pride, or scorn, or hate ? Alas, it is her very own.
And as the years roll on, and the budding life un-
folds, there is scarcely a mood or gesture or emotion
that she does not know is borrowed. But whence in
turn did she receive them ? From an earlier mother.
And she ? From a still earlier mother. And she ?
From the savage-mother in the woods. And the
savage-mother ?

Shall we hesitate here ? We well may. So God-
like a gift is intellect, so wondrous a thing is con-
sciousness, that to link them with the animal world
seems to trifle with the profoundest distinctions in
the Universe. Yet to associate these supersensuous
things with the animal kingdom is not to identify
them with the animal-body. Electricity is linked

THE DA WN OF MIND 1 53

with metal rods, it is not therefore metallic. Life
is associated with protoplasm, it is not therefore
albuminous. Instinct is linked with matter, but
it is not therefore material ; Intellect with animal
matter, but is not therefore animal. As we rise in
the scale of Nature we encounter new orders of
phenomena, Matter, Life, Mind, each higher than
that before it, each totally and forever different, yet
each using that beneath it as the pedestal for its
further progress. Associated with animal-matter —
how associated no psychology, no physiology, no
materialism, no spiritualism, has even yet begun to
hint — may there not have been from an early dawn
the elements of a future Mind ? Do the wide ana-
logies of Nature not make the suggestion worthy at
least of inquiry? The fact, to which there is no
exception, that all lesser things evolve, the sugges-
tion, which is daily growing into a further certainty,
that there is a mental evolution among animals from
the Coelenterate to the Ape ; the fact that the unfold-
ing of the Child-Mind is itself a palpable evolution ;
the infinitely more significant circumstance that the
Mind in a child seems to unfold in the order in
which it would unfold if its mental faculties were
received from the Animal world, and in the order in
which they have already asserted themselves in the
history of the race. These seem formidable facts on

154 THE ASCENT OF MAN

the side of those consistent evolutionists who, in the
face of countless difficulties and countless prejudices,
still press the lawful inquiry into the development of
human faculty.

The first feeling in most minds when the idea
of mental evolution is presented, is usually one of
amusement. This not seldom changes, when the
question is seen to be taken seriously, into wonder
at the daring of the suggestion or pity for its folly.
All great problems have been treated in this way.
All have passed through the inevitable phases of
laughter, contempt, opposition. It ought to be so
And if this problem is " perhaps the most inter-
esting that has ever been submitted to the contem-
plation of our race," ^ its basis cannot be criticized
with too great care. But none have a right to
question either the sanity or the sanctity of such
investigations, still less to dismiss them idly on
a priori grounds, till they have approached the
practical problem for themselves, and heard at least
the first few relevant words from Nature. For one
has only to move for a little among the facts to
see what a world of interest lies here, and to be
forced to hold the judgment in suspense till the
sciences at work upon the problem have further
shaped their verdict. Thinkers who are entitled to
* Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man^ p. 2.

THE DA WN OF MIND 155

respect have even gone further. They include
mental evolution not only among the hypotheses
of Science but among its facts and its necessary
facts. "Is it conceivable," asks Mr. Romanes, "that
the human mind can have arisen by way of a
natural genesis from the minds of the higher
quadrumana? I maintain that the material now
before us is sufficient to show, not only that this
is conceivable, but inevitable." ^

It is no part of the present purpose to discuss
the ultimate origin or nature of Mind. Our subject
is its development. At the present moment the
ultimate origin of Mind is as inscrutable a mystery
as the origin of Life. It is sometimes charged
against Evolution that it tries to explain every-
thing and to rob the world of all its problems.
There does not appear the shadow of a hope that
it is about to rob it of this. On the contrary the
foremost scientific exponents of the theory of
mental evolution are ceaselessly calling attention
to the inscrutable character of the element whose
history they attempt to trace. " On the side of
its philosophy," says Mr. Romanes, " no one can
have a deeper respect for the problem of self-
consciousness than I have; for no one can be more
profoundly convinced than I am that the problem
'^ Op. city p. 213.

156 THE ASCENT OF MAN

on this side does not admit of solution. In other
words, so far as this aspect of the matter is con-
cerned, I am in complete agreement with the most
advanced idealist I am as far as any one can be
from throwing light upon the intrinsic nature of the
probable origin of that which I am endeavouring
to trace." ^ Mr. Darwin himself recoiled from a
problem so transcendent : " I have nothing to do
with the origin of the mental powers, any more
than I have with that of life itself." 2 "In what
manner," he elsewhere writes, " the mental powers
were first developed in the lowest organisms, is
as hopeless an inquiry as how life itself first
originated." ^

Notwithstanding his appreciation of the difficulty
of the ultimate problem, Mr. Darwin addressed
his whole strength to the question of the Evolution
of Mind — the Evolution as distinguished from its
origin and nature; and in 'this he has recently had
many followers, as well as many opponents. Among
the latter stand the co-discoverer with him of
Natural Selection, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, and
Mr. St. George Mivart. Mr. Wallace's opposition,
from a scientific point of view, is not so hostile,
however, as is generally supposed. While holding

^Mental Evolution in Man, pp. 194-5.

* Origin 0/ Specie s, p. 191. * Descent of Man, p. 66,

THE DA WN OF MIND 157

his own view as to the origin of Mind, what he
attacks in Mr. Darwin's theory of mental evolution
is, not the development itself, but only the sup-
position that it could have been due to Natural
Selection. Mr. Wallace's authority is frequently
quoted to show that the mathematical, the musical
and the artistic faculties could not have been
evolved, whereas all he has really emphasized is
that "they could not have been developed under
the law of Natural Selection." ^ In short the con-
clusion of Mr. Darwin which his colleague found
" not to be supported by adequate evidence, and to
be directly opposed to many well ascertained facts,"
was not a general theorem, but a specific one. And
many will agree with Mr. Wallace in doubting " that
man's entire nature and all his faculties, whether
moral, intellectual, or spiritual, have been derived
from their rudiments in the lower animals, in
the same tnanner and by the action of the same
general laws as his physical structure has been
derived." '

The more this problem has been investigated,
the difficulties of the whole field increase, and the
off-hand acceptance of any specific evolution theory
finds less and less encouragement. No serious
thinker, on whichever side of the controversy, has
"^ Darwinism^ p. 469. ^ Ibid.^ p. 461.

158 THE ASCENT OF MAN

succeeded in lessening to his own mind the in-
finite distance between the Mind of Man and
everything else in Nature, and even the most con-
sistent evolutionists are as unanimous as those
who oppose them, in their assertion of the unique-
ness of the higher intellectual powers. The con-
census of scientific opinion here is extraordinary.
" I know nothing," says Huxley, in the name of
biology, "and never hope to know anything, of
the steps by which the passage from molecular
movement to states of consciousness is effected." ^
"The two things," emphasizes the physicist, "are on
two utterly different platforms, the physical facts
go along by themselves, and the mental facts go
along by themselves." ^ "It is all through and for
ever inconceivable," protests the German physio-
logist, " that a number of atoms of Carbon, Hydro-
gen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, .and so on, shall be other
than indifferent as to how they are disposed and
how they move, how they were disposed and how
they moved, how they will be disposed and how
they will be moved. It is utterly inconceivable
how consciousness shall arise from their joint
action." 3 So impressed is even Mr. Lloyd Morgan,

^ Conteinporary Review y 187 1.
2 Clifford, Fortnightly Review^ 1 874.

^Du Bois-Reymond, Ueber die Grenzen des NaturerkennenSy
p. 42.

THE DAWN OF MIND 159

mental evolutionist though he be, with the gap
between the Minds of Man and brute that his
language is almost as strong : " I for one do not for
a moment question that the mental processes of man
and animals are alike products of evolution. The
power of cognizing relations, reflection and intro-
spection, appear to me to mark a new departure
in evolution,"^ and " I am not prepared to say
that there is a difference in kind between the mind
of man and the mind of a dog. This would
imply a difference in origin or a difference in the
essential nature of its being. There is a great and
marked difference in kind between the material
processes which we call physiological and the
mental processes we call psychical. They belong
to wholly different orders of being. I see no
reason for believing that mental processes in man
differ thus in kind from mental processes in
animals. But I do think that we have, in the
introduction of the analytic faculty, so definite
and marked a new departure that we should em-
phasize it by saying that the faculty of perception,
in its various specific grades, differs generically
from the faculty of conception. And believing,
as I do, that conception is beyond the power of
my favourite and clever dog, I am forced to
^C. Lloyd Morgan, Nature^ Sept. [, 1892, p. 417.

i6o THE ASCENT OF MAN

believe that his mind differs generically from my
own." ^

Should anyone feel it necessary either to his
view of Man or of the Universe to hold that a
great gulf lies here, it is open to him to cling to
his belief. The present thesis is simply that Man
has ascended. After all, little depends on whether
the slope is abrupt or gentle, whether Man reaches
the top by a uniform flight or has here and there
by invisible hands to be carried across a bridgeless
space. In any event it is Nature's staircase. To
say that self-consciousness has arisen from sensa-
tion, and sensation from the function of nutrition,
let us say, in the Mimosa pudica or Sensitive Plant,
may be right or wrong; but the error can only
be serious when it is held that that accounts either
for self-consciousness or for the transition. Mimosa
can be defined in terms of Man ; but Man cannot
be defined in terms of Mimosa. The first is pos-
sible because there is the least fraction in that
which is least in Man of that which is greatest in
Mimosa; the last is impossible because there is
nothing in Mimosa of that which is greatest in
Man. What the two possess in common, or seem
to possess, may be a basis for comparison, for
what it is worth ; but to include in the compari-
* C. Lloyd Morgan, Animal Life and Intelligence , p. 350,

THE DA WN OF MIND i6i

son the ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent of
what is over and above that common fraction is
by no sort of reasoning lawful. Man, in the last
resort, has self-consciousness, Mimosa sensation ;
and the difference is qualitative as well as quan-
titative.

If, however, it is a fallacy to ignore the qualita-
tive differences arising in the course of the transi-
tion, it may be a mistake, on the other hand, to
make nothing of the transition. If in the name
of Science the advocate of the Law of Continuity
demands that it be rectified, he may well make
the attempt. The partial truth for the present
perhaps amounts to this, that earlier phases of life
exhibit imperfect manifestations of principles which
in the higher structure and widened environment
of later forms are more fully manifested and ex-
pressed, yet are neither contained in the earlier
phases nor explained by them. At the same time,
everything that enters into Man, every sensation,
emotion, volition, enters with a difference, a differ-
ence due to the fact that he is a rational and
self-conscious being, a difference therefore which
no emphasis of language can exaggerate. The
music varies with the ear ; varies with the soul
behind the ear ; relates itself with all the music
that ear has ever heard before ; with the merQ

i62 THE ASCENT OF MAN

fact that what that ear hears, it hears as music;
that it hears at all ; that it knows that it hears.
Man differs from every other product of the
evolutionary process in being able to see that it
is a process, in sharing and rejoicing in its unity,
and in voluntarily working through the process
himself. If he is part of it he is also more than
part of it, since he is at once its spectator, its
director, and its critic. " Even on the hypothesis
of a psychic life in all matter we come to an
alteration indeed, but not an abolition, of the
contrast between body and soul. Of course on
that hypothesis they are distinguished by no
qualitative difference in their natures, but still
less do they blend into one ; the one individual
ruling soul always remains facing, in an attitude
of complete isolation, the homogeneous but minis-
trant monads, the joint multitude of which forms
the living body." ^

With these preliminary cautions, let us turn for
a little to the facts. The field here is so full of
interest in itself that apart from its forming a
possible chapter in the history of Man it is worth
a casual survey.

The difficulty of establishing even the general
(question of Ascent is of course obvious. After
* Lotze, Mkrgcpsmus^ p. 162.

THE DA WN OF MIND 163

Mind emerged from the animal state, for a long
time, and in the very nature of the case, no
record of its progress could come down to us.
The material Body has left its graduated impress
upon the rocks in a million fossil forms ; the Spirit
of Man, at the other extreme of time, has traced
its ascending curve on the tablets of civilization, in
the drama of history, and in the monuments of
social life ; but the Mind must have risen into its
first prominence during a long, silent and dateless
interval which preceded the era of monumental
records. Mind cannot be exhumed by Palaeon-
tology or fully embalmed in unwritten history, and
apart from the analogies of Embryology we have
nothing but inference to guide us until the time
came when it was advanced enough to leave some
tangible register behind.

But so far as knowledge is possible there are
mainly five sources of information with regard to
the past of Mind. The first is the Mind of a
little child; the second the Mind of lower animals;
the third, those material witnesses — flints, weapons,
pottery — to primitive states of Mind which are
preserved in anthropological museums; the fourth
is the Mind of a Savage ; and the fifth is
Language.

The first source — the Mind of a little child — has

i64 THE ASCENT OF MAN

just been referred to. Mind, in Man, does not
start into being fully ripe. It dawns ; it grows ; it
mellows ; it decays. This growing moreover is a
gradual growing, an infinitely gentle, never abrupt
unfolding — the kind of growing which in every
other department of Nature we are taught by
Nature to associate with an Evolution. If the
Mind of the infant had been evolved, and that not
from primeval Man, but from some more ancient
animal, it could not to more perfection have simul-
ated the appearance of having so come.

But this is not all. The Mind of a child not
only grows, but grows in a certain order. And
the astonishing fact about that order is that it is
the probable order of evolution of mental faculty
as a whole. Where Science gets that probable
order will be referred to by and by. Meantime,
simply note the fact that not only in the manner
but in the order of its development, the human
Mind simulates a product of Evolution. The Mind
of a child, in short, is to be treated as an unfolding
embryo ; and just as the embryo of the body re-
capitulates the long life-history of all the bodies
that led up to it, so this subtler embryo in running
its course through the swift years of early infancy
runs up the psychic scale through which, as
evidence from another field will show, Mind prob-

THE DA WN OF MIND 165

ably evolved. We have seen also that in the
case of the body, each step of progress in the
embryo has its equivalent either in the bodies, or
in the embryos of lower forms of life. Now each
phase of mental development in the child is also
permanently represented by some species among
the lower animals, by idiots, or by the Mind of
some existing savage.

Let us turn, however, to the second source of
information — Mind in the lower Animals.

That animals have "Minds" is a fact which prob-
ably no one now disputes. Stories of " Animal
Intelligence " and " Animal Sagacity " in dogs and
bees and ants and elephants and a hundred other
creatures have been told us from childhood with
redundant reiteration. The old protest that animals
have no Mind but only instinct has lost its point.
In addition to instincts, animals betray intelligence,
and often a high degree of intelligence ; they share
our feelings and emotions ; they have memories ;
they form percepts ; they invent new ways of satis-
fying their desires, they learn by experience. It is
true their Minds want much, and all that is highest;
but the point is that they actually have Minds,
whatever their quantity and whatever their quality.^

^ As to the exact point of the difference, Mr. Romanes draws
the line at the exclusive possession by Man of the power of

i66 THE ASCENT OF MAN

If abstraction, as Locke says, " is an excellency
which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain
to," we cannot on that account deny them Mind,
but only that height of Mind which men have, and
which Evolution would never look for in any living
thing but Man. An Evolutionist would no more
expect to find the higher rational characteristics in
a wolf or a bear than to unearth the modern turbine
from a Roman aqueduct.

Though the possession even of a few rudiments

introspective reflection in the light of self-consciousness.
"Wherein," he asks, "does the distinction truly consist? It
consists in the power which the human being displays of
objectifying ideas, or of setting one state of mind before an-
other state, and contemplating the relation between them. The
power to think is — or, as I should prefer to state it, the power
to think at all is — the power which is given by introspective
reflection in the light of self-consciousness. . . . We have
no evidence to show that any animal is capable of thus objectify-
ing its own ideas ; and, therefore, we have no evidence that any
animal is capable of judgment. Indeed, I will go further and
affirm that we have the best evidence which is derivable from
what are necessarily ejective sources, to prove that no animal
can possibly attain to these excellencies of subjective life." Mr.
Romanes proceeds to state the reason why. It is because of
" the absence in brutes of the needful conditions to the occur-
rence of those excellencies as they obtain in themselves . . .
the great distinction between the brute and the man really lies
behind the faculties both of conception and prediction ; it re-
sides in the conditions to the occurrence of either." — Mental
Evolution in Animals^ p. 175.

THE DA WN OF MIND 167

of Mind by animals is a sufficient starting point
for Mental Evolution, to say that they have only a
few rudiments is to understate the facts. But we
know so little what Mind is that speculation in this
region can only be done in the rough. On one
hand lies the danger of minimizing tremendous
distinctions, on the other, of pretending to know all
about these distinctions, because we have learned
to call them by certain names. Mind, when we
come to see what it is, may be one ; perhaps must
be one. The habit of unconsciously regarding the
powers and faculties of Mind as separate entities,
like the organs of the body, has its risks as well as
its uses ; and we cannot too often remind ourselves
that this is a mere device to facilitate thought and
speech.

It is mainly to Mr. Romanes that we owe the
working out of the evidence in this connection;
and even though his researches be little more than
a preliminary exploration their general results are
striking. Realizing that the most scientific way to
discover whether there are any affinities between
Mind in Animals and Mind in Man is to compare
the one with the other, he began a laborious study
of the Animal world. His conclusions are con-
tained in Animal Intelligence and Mental Evolu-
tion in Animals — volumes which no one can read

168

THE ASCENT OF MAN

without being convinced at least of the thorough-
ness and fairness of the investigation. That abund-
ant traces were found of Mind in the lower animals
goes without saying. But the range of mental
phenomena discovered there may certainly excite
surprise. Thus, to consider only one set of phe-
nomena— that of the emotions — all the following
products of emotional development are represented
at one stage or another of animal life :

Fear

Emulation

Benevolence

Surprise

Pride

Revenge

Affection

Resentment

Rage

Pugnacity

Emotion of the

Shame

Curiosity

Beautiful

Regret

Jealousy

Grief

' Deceitfulness

Anger

Hate

Emotion of the

Play

Cruelty

Ludicrous

Sympathy

••

But this list is something more than a bare cata-
logue of what human emotions exist in the animal
world. It is an arranged catalogue, a more or less
definite psychological scale. These emotions did
not only appear in animals, but they appeared
in this order. Now to find out order in Evolution
is of first importance. For order of events is his-
tory, and Evolution is history. In creatures very
far down the scale of life — the Annelids — Mr.
Romanes distinguished what appeared to him to

THE DA WN OF MIND 169

be one of the earliest emotions — Fear. Somewhat
higher up, among the Insects, he met with the
Social Feelings, as well as Industry, Pugnacity, and
Curiosity. Jealousy seems to have been born into
the world with Fishes ; Sympathy with Birds. Thq
Carnivora are responsible for Cruelty, Hate, and
Grief; the Anthropoid Apes for Remorse, Shame,
the Sense of the Ludicrous, and Deceit.

Now, when we compare this table with a similar
table compiled from a careful study of the emotional
states in a little child, two striking facts appear.
In the first place, there are almost no emotions in
the child which are not here — this list, in short,
practically exhausts the list of human emotions.
With the exception of the religious feelings, the
moral sense, and the perception of the sublime,
there is nothing found even in adult Man which
is not represented with more or less vividness in
the Animal Kingdom. But this is not all. These
emotions, as already hinted, appear in the Mind of
the growing child in the same order as they appear
on the animal scale. At three weeks, for instance.
Fear is perceptibly manifest in a little child. When
it is seven weeks old the Social Affections dawn.
At twelve weeks emerges Jealousy, with its com-
panion Anger. Sympathy appears after five months;
Pride, Resentment, Love of Ornament, after eight ;

I70 THE ASCENT OF MAN

Shame, Remorse, and Sense of the Ludicrous after
fifteen. These dates, of course, do not indicate in
any mechanical way the birthdays of emotions ;
they represent rather stages in an infinitely gentle
mental ascent, stages nevertheless so marked that
we are able to give them names, and use them as
landmarks in psychogenesis. Yet taken even as
representing a rough order it is a circumstance to
which some significance must be attached that the
tree of Mind as we know it in lower Nature, and
the tree of Mind as we know it in a little child,
should be the same tree, starting its roots at the
same place, and though by no means ending its
branches at the same level, at least growing them
so far in a parallel direction.

Do we read these, emotions into the lower ani-
mals or are they really there? That they are not
there in the sense in which we think them there is
probably certain. But that they are there in some
sense, a sense sufficient to permit us cautiously to
reason from, seems an admissible hypothesis. No
doubt it takes much for granted, — partly, indeed,
the very thing to be proved. But discounting even
the enormous limitations of the inquiry, there is
surely a residuum of general result to make it at
least worth making.

If we turn from emotional to intellectual develop-

THE DA WN OF MIND 171

ment, the parallelism though much moie fafnt is at
least shadowed. Again we find a list of intellectual
products common to both Animal and Man, and
again an approximate order common to both. It is
true, Man's development beyond the highest point
attained by any animal in the region of the intel-
lect, is all but infinite. Of rational judgment he has
the whole monopoly. Wherever the roots of Mind
be, there is no uncertainty as to where, and where
exclusively, the higher branches are. Grant that
the mental faculties of Man and Animal part
company at a point, there remains to consider
the vast distance — in the case of the emotions
almost the whole distance — where they run par-
allel with one another. Comparative psychology
is not so advanced a science as comparative
embryology; yet no one who has felt the force
of the recapitulation argument for the evolution of
bodily function, even making all allowances for the
differences of the things compared, will deny the
weight of the corresponding argument for the
evolution of Mind. Why should the Mind thus
recapitulate in its development the psychic life of
animals unless some vital link connected them ?

A singular complement to this argument has
been suggested recently — though as yet only in the
form of the vaguest hint — from the side of Mental

172 THE ASCENT OF MAN

Pathology. When the Mind is affected by certain
diseases, its progress downward can often be fol-
lowed step by step. It does not tumble down in
a moment into chaos like a house of cards, but in
a definite order, stone by stone, or storey by
storey. Now the striking thing about that order
is, that it is the probable order in which the
building has gone up. The order of descent, in
short, is the inverse of the order of ascent. The
first faculty to go, in many cases of insanity, is
the last faculty which arrived ; the next faculty is
affected next ; the whole spring uncoiling as it
were in thq order and direction in which, presum-
ably, it had been wound up. Sometimes even in
the phenomenon of old age the cycle may be
clearly traced. " Just as consciousness is slowly
evolved out of vegetative life, so is it, through
the infirmities of old age, the gradual approach of
death, and in advanced mental disease, again re-
solved into it. The highest, most differentiated
phenomena of consciousness are the first to give
way ; impulse, instinct, and reflex movements
become again predominant. The phrase ' to grow
childish ' expresses the resemblance between the
first stage and the stage of dissolution."^

That the highest part of man should totter first
* Hoffding, Psychology^ p. 92.

THE DA WN OF MIND 173

is what, on the theory of mental evolution, one
would already have expected. The highest part is
the latest added part, and the latest added part is
the least secured part. As the last arrival, it is
not yet at home; it has not had time to get last-
ingly embedded in the brain ; the competition of
older faculties is against it ; the hold of the will
upon it is slight and fitful ; its tenure as a tenant
is precarious and often threatened. Among the
older and more permanent residents, therefore, it
has little chance. Hence if anything goes wrong,
as the last added, the most complex, the least
automatic of all the functions, it is the first to
suffer.

We are but too familiar with cases where men
of lofty intellect and women of most pure mind,
seized in the awful grasp of madness, are trans-
formed in a few brief months into beings worse
than brutes. How are we to account, on any
other principle than this, for that most shocking
of all catastrophes the sudden and total break-up,
the devolution^ of a saint? That the wise man
should become a chattering idiot is inexplicable
enough, but that the saintly soul should riot in
blasphemy and immorality so foul that not among
the lowest races is there anything to liken to it —
these are phenornena so staggering that if Evolu-

174 THE ASCENT OF MAN

tion hold any key to them at all, its suggestion
must come as at least a partial relief to the
human mind. These are possibly cases of actual
reversion, cases where all the beautiful later build-
ings of humanity had been swept away and only
the elemental brute foundations left. Devolution
is thus assumed to be a co-relative of Evolution.
And as the morbid states of the Mind are more
and more studied in this relation, it may yet be
possible from the phenomena of insanity to lay
bare to some extent the outline of intellectual
ascent. In the present state both of psychology,
and especially of our knowledge of the brain,
nothing probably could be more precarious than
this as an argument. The very statement involves
modes of expression which exact science would
rule out of court. The best that can be said is
that it is a suggestion awaiting further light be-
fore it can even rank as a theory. Complex as
the source of knowledge is, the Mind itself must
ever be the final authority on its own biography.
Analogy from lower nature may do much to
confirm the reading ; the mental history of the
human race, from the rudiments of intellect in the
savage to its development in civilized life, may
contribute some closing chapters ; but unless the
Mind tell its own story it will never be fully told.

THE DA WN OF MIND 175

Yet should it ever thus be told, the mystery of
Mind itself would remain the same. For the most
this could do would be to replace one mystery by
a greater For what greater mystery could there
be than that within the mystery of the Mind itself
there should lie concealed the very key to unlock
its mystery?

To pass from this fascinating region to the
material contributions of Anthropology is a some-
what abrupt transition. But this third line of
approach to a knowledge of the earlier phases of
Mind need not detain us long.

So patient has been the search over almost the
whole world for relics of pre-historic Man, that vast
collections are now everywhere available where the
arts, industries, weapons, and, by inference, the mental
development, of the earlier inhabitants of this planet
can be practically studied. On the two main points
at issue in the discussion of mental evolution these
collections are unanimous. They reveal in the first
instance, traces of Mind of a very low order existing
from an unknown antiquity; and in the second place,
they show a gradual improving of this Mind as we
approach the present day. It may be that in some
cases the evidence suggests a degenerating rather
than an ascending civilization ; but perturbations of
this sort do not affect the main question, nor neu-

176 THE ASCENT OF MAN

tralize the other facts. Evolution is constantly con-
fronted with statements as to the former glory of
now decadent nations, as if that were an argu-
ment against the theory. Granting that nations
have degenerated, it still remains to account for
that from which they degenerated. That Egypt has
fallen from a great height is certain ; but the real
problem is how it got to that height. When a
boy's kite descends in our garden, we do not
assume that it came from the clouds. That it
went up before it came down is obvious, from all
that we know of kite-making. And that nations
went up before they came down is obvious from
all that we know of nation-making. The gravita-
tion, moreover, which brings down nations is just
as real as the gravitation which brings down kites ;
and instead of a falling nation being a stumbling
block to Evolution, it is a necessity of the theory.
The degeneration and extinction of the unfit are
as infallibly brought about by natural laws as the
survival of the fit. Evolution is by no means
synonymous with uninterrupted progress, but at
every turn means relapse, extinction, and decay.

It is pretty clear that, applying the old Argu-
ment from Design to the case of the most ancient
human relics, Man began the Ascent of Civilization
at zero, There h^s been a time in th^ history of

THE DA WN OF MIND 177

every nation when the only supplements to the
organs of the body for the uses of Man were the
stones of the field and the sticks of the forest. To
use these natural, abundant, and portable objects,
was an obvious resource with early tribes. If Mind,
dawned in the past at all, it is with such objects
that we should expect its first associations, and as
a matter of fact it seems everywhere to have been
so. Relics of a Stick Age would of course be
obliterated by time, but traces of a Stone Age
have been found, not in connection with the first
beginnings of a few tribes only, but with the first
beginnings — from the point that any representation
is possible — of probably every nation in the world.
The wide geographical use of stone implements is
one of the most striking facts in Anthropology.
Instead of being confined to a few peoples, and to
outlying districts, as is sometimes asserted, their
distribution is universal. They are found through-
out the length and breadth of Europe, and on all
its islands ; they occur everywhere in Western
Asia, and north of the Himalayas. In the Malay
Peninsula they strew the ground in endless num-
bers ; and again, in Australia, New Zealand, New
Caledonia, the New Hebrides, and the Coral Islands
of the Pacific. Known in China, they are scattered
broadcast throughout Japan, and the same is true

178 THE ASCENT OF MAN

of America, Mexico, and Peru. If a child playing
with a toy spade is a proof that it is a child, a
nation working with stone axes is proved to be a
child-nation. Erroneous conclusions may easily be
drawn, and indeed have been, from the fact of a
nation using stone, but the general law stands.
Partly, perhaps, by mutual intercourse, this use of
stone became universal ; but it arose, more likely,
from the similarity in primitive needs, and the
available means of gratifying them. Living under
widely different conditions, and in every variety of
climate, all early peoples shared the instincts of
humanity which first called in the use of tools and
weapons. All felt the same hunger ; all had the
instinct of self-preservation ; and the universality
of these instincts and the commonness of stone led
the groping Mind to fasten upon it, and make it
one of the first steps to the Arts. A Stone Age,
thus, was the natural beginning. In the nature of
things there could have been no earlier. If Mind
really grew by infinitely gradual ascents, the exact
situation the theory requires is here provided in
actual fact

The next step from the Stone Age, so far as
further appeal to ancient implements can guide us
is also exactly what one would expect. It is to a
better Stone Age. Two distinct grades of stone

THE DA WN OF MIND 179

implements are found, the rough and the smooth,
or the unground and the ground. For a long
period the idea never seems to have dawned that
a smooth stone made a better axe than a rough
one. Mind was as yet unequal to this small dis-
covery, and there are vast remains representing
long intervals of time where all the stone imple-
ments and tools are of the unground type. Even
when the hour did come, when savage vied with
savage in putting the finest polish on his flints,
his inspiration probably came from Nature. The
first lapidary was the sea ; the smoothed pebble
on the beach, or the rounded stone of a mountain
stream, supplied the pattern. There is no question
that the rough stone came earlier than the ground
stone. Thus the implements of the Drift Period,
those of the Danish Mounds, the Bone Caves, and
the gravels of St. Acheul are mostly unground,
while those of the later Lake-Dwellers are almost
wholly of the smooth type.

To follow the Stone Age upward into the Bronze
Period, and from that to the Age of Iron, is not
necessary for the present purpose. For at this
point the order of succession passes from shell-
mound and crannog, into living hands. There are
nations with us still who have climbed so short a
distance up the psychic scale as to be still in the

i8o THE ASCENT OF MAN

Age of Stone — peoples whose mental culture and
habits are often actual witnesses to the mental
states of early Man. These children of Nature take
up the thread of mental progress where the Trog-
lodyte and Drift Man left it ; and the modern
traveller, starting from the civilization of Europe
can follow Mind downwards step by step, in ever
descending order, tracing its shadings backwards to
a first simplicity, till he finds himself with the still
living Lake-dweller of Nyasaland or the Bushman
of the African forest. Time was when these
humble tribes, with their strange and artless ways,
were mere food for the curious. Now the study
of the lower native races has risen to the first
rank in comparative psychology ; and the student
of beginnings, whether they be the beginnings of
Art or of Ethics, of Language or of Letters, of
Law or of Religion, goes to seek the roots of his
science in the ways, traditions, faiths, and institu-
tions of savage life.

This leads us, however, to the fourth of the
sources from which we were to gather a hint or
two with regard to the past of Mind — the savage.
No one should pronounce upon the Evolution of
Mind till he has seen a savage. By this is not
meant the show savage of an Australian town,
or the quay Kaffir of a South African port, or

THE DA WN OF MIND i8i

the Reservation Indian of a Western State ; but
the savage as he is in reality, and as he may be
seen to-day by any who care to look upon so
weird a spectacle. No study from the life can
compare with this in interest or in pathos, nor
stir so many strange emotions in the mind of a
thoughtful man. To sit with this incalculable
creature in the heart of the great forest ; to live
with him in his natural home as the guest of
Nature; to watch his ways and moods and try to
resolve the ceaseless mystery of his thoughts — this,
whether the existing savage represents the primi-
tive savage or not, is to open one of the work«
shops of Creation and behold the half-finished pro-
duct from which humanity has been evolved.

The world is getting old, but the traveller who
cares to follow the daybreak of Mind for himself
can almost do so still. Selecting a region where
the wand of western civilization has scarcely
reached, let him begin with a cruise in the Malay
Archipelago or in the Coral Seas of the Southern
Pacific. He may find himself there even yet on
spots on which no white foot has ever trod, on
islands where unknown races have worked out their
destiny for untold centuries, whose teeming peoples
have no name, and whose habits and mode of
life are only known to the outer world through a

i82 THE ASCENT OF MAN

ship's telescope. As he coasts along, he will see
the dusky figures steal like shades among the trees,
or hurry past in their bark canoes, or crouch in
fear upon the coral sand. He can watch them
gather the bread-fruit from the tree and pull the
cocoa-nut from the palm and root out the taro for
a meal which, all the year round and all the cen-
turies through, has never changed. In an hour or
two he can compass almost the whole round of
their simple life, and realize the gulf between him-
self and them in at least one way — in the utter
impossibility of framing to himself an image of the
mental world of men and women whose only world
is this.

Let him pass on to the coast of Northern
Queensland, and, landing where fear of the white
man makes landing possible, penetrate the Australian
bush. Though the settlements of the European
have been there for a generation, he will find the
child of Nature still untouched, and neither by in-
tercourse nor imitation removed by one degree from
the lowest savage state. These aboriginal peoples
know neither house nor home. They neither sow
nor reap. Their weapons are those of Nature, a
pointed stick and a knotted club. They live like
wild things on roots and berries and birds and wal-
labies, and in the monotony of their life and the

THE DA WN OF MIND 183

uncouthness of their Mind represent almost the
lowest level of humanity.^

From these rudiments of mankind let him make
his way to the New Hebrides, to Tanna, and Santo,
and Ambrym, and Aurora. These islands, besides
Man, contain only three things, coral, lava, and trees.
Until but yesterday their peoples had never seen
anything but coral, lava, and trees. They did not
know that there was anything else in the world.
One hundred years ago Captain Cook discovered
these islanders and gave them a few nails. They
planted them in the ground that they might grow
into bigger nails. It is true that in other lands a
very rich life and a very wide world could be made
out of no more varied materials than coral, lava,
and trees ; but on these Tropical Islands Nature is
disastrously kind. All that her children need is
provided for them ready-made. Her sun shines on
them so that they are never either cold or hot ; she
provides crops for them in unexampled luxuriance,
and arranges the year to be one long harvest ; she
allows no wild animals to prowl among the forests ;

^ The situation is dramatic, that from end to end of the region
occupied by these tribes, there stretches the Telegraph connect-
ing Australia with Europe. But what is at once dramatic and
pathetic is that the natives know it only in its material relations
— as so much wire, the first metal they have ever seen, to cut
into lengths for spear-heads.

i84 THE ASCENT OF MAN

and surrounding them with the alienating sea she
preserves them from the attacks of human enemies.
Outside the struggle for life, they are out of life
itself. Treated as children, they remain children.
To look at them now is to recall the long holiday
of the childhood of the world. It is to behold
one's natural face in a glass.

Pass on through the other Cannibal Islands
and, apart from the improvement of weapons and
the construction of a hut, throughout vast regions
there is still no sign of mental progress. But
before one has completed the circuit of the Pacific
the change begins to come. Gradually there ap-
pear the beginnings of industry and even of art.
In the Solomon Group and in New Guinea, carving
and painting may be seen in an early infancy. The
canoes are large and good, fish-hooks are manu-
factured, and weaving of a rude kind has been
established. There can be no question at this stage
that the Mind of Man has begun its upward path.
And what now begins to impress one is not the
poverty of the early Mind, but the enormous poten-
tialities that lie within it, and the exceeding swiftness
of its Ascent towards higher things. When the
Sandwich Islands are reached, the contrast appears
in its full significance. Here, a century ago, Captain
Cook, through whom the first knowledge of their

THE DA WN OF MIND 185

existence reached the outer world, was killed and
eaten. To-day the children of his murderers have
taken their place among the civilized nations of the
world, and their Kings and Queens demand acknow-
ledgment at modern Courts.

Books have been given to the world on the
Mind of animals. It is strange that so little should
have been written specifically on the Mind of the
savage. But though this living mine has not yet
been drawn upon for its last contribution to science,
facts to suggest and sustain a theory of mental
evolution are everywhere abundant. Waiving in-
dividual cases where nations have fallen from a
higher intellectual level the proof indicates a rising
potentiality and widening of range as we pass from
primitive to civilized states. It is open to debate
whether during the historic period mere intellectual
advance has been considerable, whether more
penetrating or commanding intellects have ever
appeared than those of Job, Isaiah, Plato, Shak-
speare. But that is matter of yesterday. What
concerns us now to note is that the Mind of Man
as a whole has had a slow and gradual dawn :
that it has existed, and exists to-day, among cer-
tain tribes at almost the lowest point of develop-
ment with which the word human can be asso-
ciated ; and that from that point an Ascent of

i86 THE ASCENT OF MAN

Mind can be traced from tribe to nation in an ever
increasing complexity and through infinitely deli-
cate shades of improvement, till the highest civilized
states are reached. In the very nature of things we
should have expected such a result. For this is
not only a question of faculty. In a far more inti-
mate sense than we are apt to imagine, it is a ques-
tion of a gradually evolving environment. Every
infinitesimal enrichment of the soil for Mind to grow
in meant an infinitesimal enrichment of the Mind
itself. " It needs but to ask what would happen to
ourselves were the whole mass of existing knowledge
obliterated, and were children with nothing beyond
their nursery-language left to grow up without guid-
ance or instruction from adults, to perceive that
even now the higher intellectual faculties would be
almost inoperative, from lack of the materials and
aids accumulated by past civilization. And seeing
this, we cannot fail to see that development of
the higher intellectual faculties has gone on pari
passu with social advance alike as cause and con-
sequence ; that the primitive man could not evolve
these higher intellectual faculties in the absence of
a fit environment ; and that in this, as in other
respects, his progress was retarded by the absence
of capacities which only progress could bring." ^
* Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology ^ Vol. i., pp. 90, 91.

THE DA WN OF MIND 187

The last testimony is that of Language. It has
already been pleaded in excuse for the absence of
actual proof for mental evolution that Mind leaves
no material footprints by which the palaeontologist
can trace its upward path. Yet this is not wholly
true. The flints and arrow-heads, the celts and
hammers, of early Man are fossil intelligence ; the
remains of primitive arts and industries are petri-
fied Mind. But there is one mould into which
Mind has run more large and beautiful than any of
these. When its contents are examined they carry
us back not only to what men worked at with their
hands, but to what they said to one another as
they worked and what they thought as they spoke.
That mould is Language. Language, says Jean
Paul, is "ein Worterbuch erblasster Metaphern" —
a dictionary of faded metaphors. But it is much
more. A word is a counter of the brain, a
tangible expression of a mental state, an heir-
loom of the wealth of culture of a race. And
an old word, like an ancient coin, speaks to us
of a former currency of thought, and by its image
and superscription reveals the mental life and
aspiration of those who minted it. " Language is
the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle
thoughts have been safely embalmed and pre-
served. It is the embodiment, the incarnation, of

i*

i88 THE ASCENT OF MAN

the feelings and thoughts and experiences of a
nation, yea often of many nations, and of all
which through long centuries they have attained
to and won. It stands like the Pillars of Hercules,
to mark how far the moral and intellectual con-
quests of mankind have advanced, only not like
those pillars, fixed and immovable, but even itself
advancing with the progress of these. The mighty
moral instincts which have been working in the
popular mind have found therein their unconscious
voice ; and the single kinglier spirits that have
looked deeper into the heart of things have often-
times gathered up all they have seen into some
one word, which they have launched upon the
world, and with which they have enriched it for
ever — making in the new word a new region of
thought to be henceforward in some sort the com-
mon heritage of all."^

What then, when we open this marvellous
structure, is the revelation yielded us of the mental
states of those who lived at the dawn of speech ?
An impression of poverty, great and pathetic. All
fossils teach the same lesson — the lesson of life,
beauty, structure, waning into a poverty-stricken
past. Whether they be the shells which living
creatures once inhabited, or the bones of departed
> Trench, The Study of Words, p. 28.

THE DA WN OF MIND 189

vertebrate types, or the forms of words where
wisdom lay entombed, the structures became simpler
and simpler, cruder and cruder, less full of the
richness and abundance of life as we near the birth
of time. They tell of days when the world was
very young, when plants were flowerless and animals
backboneless, of later years when primeval Man
prowled the forest and chipped his flints and
chattered in uncouth syllables of battle and the
chase. No words entered at that time into human
speech except those relating to the activities, few
and monotonous, of an almost animal lot. These
were the days of the protoplasm of speech. There
was no differentiation between verbs or adverbs,
nouns or adjectives. The sentence as yet was not ;
each word was a sentence. There was no gram-
matical inflection but the inflection of the voice ;
the moods of the verb were uttered by intonation
or grimace. The pronouns "him" and "you" were
made by pointing at him and you. Man had even
no word for himself, for he had not yet discovered
himself. This fact, when duly considered, raises
the witness of Language to the Ascent of Mind to
an almost unique importance. Nothing more sig-
nificant could be said as to Man's mental past
than that there was a time when he was scarcely
conscious of himself, as a self. He knew himself,

I90 THE ASCENT OF MAN

not as subject, but like a little child, as one of the
objects of the external world. The words might
have been written historically of mankind, "When
I was a child, I spake as a child."

This evidence will meet us again in other forms
when we pass to consider the Evolution of Lan-
guage itself. Meantime let us close this chapter
by pointing out a relation of a much more signifi-
cant order between Language and the whole subject
of Mental Evolution. For the point is not only
of special interest, but it touches upon, and helps
to' solve, one of the vital problems of the Ascent
of Man.

The enormous distance travelled by the Mind of
Man beyond the utmost limit of intelligence reached
by any animal is a puzzling circumstance, a circum-
stance only equalled in strangeness by another —
the suddenness with which that rise took place.
Both facts are without a parallel in nature. Why,
of the countless thousands of species of animals,
each with some shadowy rudiment of a Mind,
all should have remained comparatively at the
same dead level, while Man alone shot past and
developed powers of a quality and with a speed
unknown in the world's history, is a question
which it is impossible not to raise. That by far
the greatest step in the world's history should not

THE DA WN OF MIND 191

only have been taken at the eleventh hour, but
that it took only an hour to do it — for compared
with the time when animals began their first
activities, the birth of Man is a thing of yesterday
— seems almost the denial of Evolution. What
was it in Man's case that gave his mental powers
their unprecedented start or facilitated a growth so
rapid and so vast?

The factors in all Evolution, and above all in
this, are too subtle to encourage one to speculate
with final assurance on so fine a problem. Never
theless, when it is asked, What brought about this
sudden rise of intelligence in the case of Man ?
there is a wonderful unanimity among men of
science as to the answer. It came about, it is
supposed, in connection with the acquisition by Man
of the power to express his mind, that is to speak.
Evolution, up to this time, had only one way of
banking the gains it won — heredity. To hand on
any improvement physically was a slow and pre-
carious work. But with the discovery of language
there arose a new method of passing on a step in
progress. Instead of sowing the gain on the wind
of heredity, it was fastened on the wings of words.
The way to make money is not only to accumu-
late small gains steadily, but to put them out at a
good rate of interest. Animals did the first with

192 THE ASCENT OF MAN

their mental acquisitions: Man did the second. At
a comparatively early date, he found out a first-rate
and permanent investment for his money, so that he
could not only keep his savings and put them out at
the highest rate of interest, but have a share in all
the gain that was made by other men. That dis-
covery was Language. Many animals had hit upon
an imperfect form of this discovery ; but Man alone
succeeded in improving it up to a really paying
point. The condition of all growth is exercise, and
till he could find a further field and a larger oppor-
tunity to work what little brains he had, he had
little chance of getting more. Speech gave him this
opportunity. He rapidly ran up a fortune in brain-
matter, because he had found out new uses for it,
new exercises of it, and especially a permanent in-
vestment for husbanding in the race each gain as it
was made in the individual. When he did anything
he could now say it ; when he learned anything he
could pass it on ; when he became wise wisdom did
not die with him, it was banked in the Mind of
humanity. So one man lent his mind to another.
The loans became larger and larger, the interest
greater and greater ; Man's fortune was secured. In
the mere Struggle for Life, his wits were sharpened
up to a point ; but unless he had learned to talk, he
could never have passed very far beyond the animal.

THE DA WN OF MIND 193

Apart from the saving of time and the facility
for increased knowledge, the acquisition of speech
meant a saving of brain. A word is a counter
for a thought. To use language is to make think-
ing easy. Hence the release of brain energy for
further developments in new directions. In these
and other ways speech became the main factor in
the intellectual development of mankind. Lan-
guage formed the trellis on which Mind climbed
upward, which continuously sustained the ripening
fruits of knowledge for later minds to pluck. Before
the savage's son was ten years old he knew all
that his father knew. The ways of the game, the
habits of birds and fish, the construction of traps
and snares — all these would be taught him. The
physical world, the changes of season, the location
of hostile tribes, the strategies of war, all the details
and interests of savage life would be explained.
And before the boy was in his teens he was
equipped for the Struggle for Life as his forefathers
had never been even in old age. The son, in
short, started to evolve where his father left off.
Try to realize what it would be for each of us to
begin life afresh, to be able to learn nothing by
the experiences of others, to live in a dumb and
illiterate world, and see what chance the animal
had of making pronounced progress until the ac-

N

194 THE ASCENT OF MAN

quisition of speech. It is not too much to say that
speech, if mental evolution is to come to anything
or is to be worth anything, is a necessary condi-
tion. By it alone, in any degree worth naming,
can the fruits of observation and experience of one
generation be husbanded to form a new starting-
point for a second, nor without it could there be
any concerted action or social life. The greatness
of the human Mind, after all, is due to the tongue,
the material instrument of reason, and to Language,
the outward expression of the inner life.

%

CHAPTER V
THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE

T F Evolution is the method of Creation, the
^ faculty of Speech was no sudden gift. Man's
mind is not to be thought of as the cylinder of
a phonograph to which ready-made words were
spoken and stored up for future use. Before Homo
sapiens was evolved he must necessarily have been
preceded for a longer or shorter period by Homo
alalus, the not-speaking man ; and this man had
to make his words, and beginning with dumb signs
and inarticulate cries to build up a body of Lan-
guage word by word as the body was built up cell
by cell.

The alternative theory of the origin of Language
universally held until lately, and expressed in so
many words even by the eighth edition of the
Encyclopcedia Britannica^ that " our first parents
received it by immediate inspiration," has the same

195

196 THE ASCENT OF MAN

relation to exact science as the view that the world
was made in six days by direct creative fiat. Both
are poetically true. But to science, seeking for
precise methods of operation, neither is an adequate
statement of now ascertained facts. The same
processes of research that made the poetic view
of creation untenable in the physical realm are
now slowly beginning to displace the older view
of the origin of speech. That Language should
be outside a law whose universality is being estab-
lished with every step of progress is itself improb-
able ; and now that the field is being exhaustively
explored, the proofs that it is no exception multiply
on every side. The living interest the mere sug-
gestion gives to the study of Language is obvious.
Evolution enters no region — dull, neglected, or re-
mote— of the temple of knowledge without trans-
forming it. Philology, since this wizard touched
it, has become one of the most entrancing of the
sciences. And Language, from a study which
interested only a few specialists, is disclosed as one
vast palimpsest, every word and phrase luminous
with the inner mind and soul of the past. To
penetrate far into this tempting region is beyond
our province now. The immediate object is to
give a simple sketch of the possible conditions
which first led Man to speak ; of the principles

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 197

which apparently guided the formation of his early
vocabulary ; and of the gradual refining of the
means of intercommunication between him and his
fellow-men as time passed on. Instead of be-
ginning with words, therefore, we shall begin with
Man. For the first condition for understanding
the Evolution of Speech is that we take it up as
a study from the life, that we place ourselves in
the primeval forest with early Man, in touch with
the actual scenes in which he lived, and note the
real experiences and necessities of such a lot. We
may indeed discover in this research small trace of
a miraculous inbreathing of formal words. But to
make Speech and fit it into a man, after all is
said, is less miraculous than to fit a man to make
Speech.

One of the earliest devices hit upon in the course
of Evolution was the principle of co-operation.
Long before men had learned to form themselves
into tribes and clans for mutual strength and
service, gregariousness was an established institu-
tion. The deer had formed themselves into herds,
and the monkeys into troops ; the birds were in
flocks, and the wolves in packs ; the bees in hives,
and the ants in colonies. And so abundant and
dominant in every part of the world are these
social types to-day that we may be sure the

198 THE ASCENT OF MAN

gregarious state has exceptional advantages in the
upward struggle.

One of these advantages, obviously, is the mere
physical strength of numbers. But there is another
and a much more important one — the mental
strength of a combination. Here is a herd of
deer, scattered, as they love to be, in a string,
quarter of a mile long. Every animal in the
herd not only shares the physical strength of all
the rest, but their powers of observation. Its fore-
sight in presence of possible danger is the foresight
of the herd. It has as many eyes as the herd,
as many ears, as many organs of smell, its nervous
system extends throughout the whole space covered
by the line ; its environment, in short, is not only
what it hears, sees, smells, touches, tastes, but what
every single member hears, sees, smells, touches,
tastes. This means an enormous advantage in the
Struggle for Life. What deer have to arm them-
selves most against is surprise. When it comes to
an actual fight, comrades are of little use. At that
crisis the others run away and leave the victims to
their fate. But in helping one another to avert
that crisis, the value of this mutual aid is so great
that gregarious animals, for the most part timid and
defenceless as individuals, have survived to occupy
in untold multitudes the highest places in Nature,

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 199

The success of the co-operative principle, how-
ever, depends upon one condition : the members of
the herd must be able to communicate with one
another. It matters not how acute the senses of each
animal may be, the strength of the column depends
on the power to transmit from one to another what
impressions each may receive at any moment from
without. Without this power the sociality of the
herd is stultified ; the army, having no signalling
department, is powerless as an army. But if any
member of the herd is able by motion of head or
foot or neck or ear, by any sign or by any sound,
to pass on the news that there is danger near, each
instantly enters into possession of the faculties of
the whole. Each has a hundred eyes, noses, ears.
Each has quarter of a mile of nerves. Thus num-
bers are strength only when strength is coupled
with some power of inter-communication by signs.
If one herd develops this signalling system and
another does not, its chances of survival will be
greater. The less equipped herds will be slowly
decimated and driven to the wall ; and those which
survive to propagate their kind will be those whose
signal-service is most efficient and complete. Hence
the Evolution of the signal-system. Under the
influence of Natural Selection its progress was in-
evitable. New circumstances and relations would

200 THE ASCENT OF MAN

in time arise, calling for additions, vocal, visible,
audible, to the sign-vocabulary. And as time went
on each set of animals would acquire a definite
signal-service of its own, elementary to the last
degree, yet covering the range of its ordinary ex-
periences and adequate to the expression of its
limited mental states.

Now what interests us with regard to these signs
is that they are Language. The evolution we have
been tracing is nothing less than the first stage
in the evolution of Speech. Any means by which
information is conveyed from one mind to another
is Language. And Language existed on the earth
from the day that animals began to live together.
The mere fact that animals cling to one another,
live together, move about together, proves that they
communicate. Among the ants, perhaps the most
social of the lower animals, this power is so perfect
that they are not merely endowed with a few
general signs but seem able to convey information
upon matters of detail. Sweeping across country
in great armies they keep up communication
throughout the whole line, and succeed in con-
veying to one another information as to the easiest
routes, the presence of enemies or obstacles, the
proximity of food supplies, and even of the num-
bers required on emergencies to leave the main

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 201

band for any special service. Everyone has ob-
served ants stop when they meet one another and
exchange a rapid greeting by means of their
waving antennae, and it is possibly through these
perplexing organs that definite intercourse between
one creature and another first entered the world.
The exact nature of the antenna-language is not
yet fathomed, but the perfection to which it is
carried proves that the idea of language generally
has existed in nature from the earliest time.
Among higher animals various outward expres-
sions of emotions are made, and these become of
service in time for the conveyance of information
to others. The howl of the dog, the neigh of the
horse, the bleat of the lamb, the stamp of the goat,
and other signs are all readily understood by other
animals. One monkey utters at least six different
sounds to express its feelings ; and Mr. Darwin has
detected four or five modulations in the bark of the
dog : " the bark of eagerness, as in the chase ;
that of anger as well as growling; the yelp or
howl of despair when shut up ; the baying at
night ; the bark of joy when starting on a walk
with his master ; and the very distinct one of de-
mand or supplication, as when wishing for a door
or window to be opened."^

^ Dai win, Descent of Man, p. 84.

h

202 THE ASCENT OF MAN

Now these signs are as much language as
spoken words. You have only to evolve this to
get all the language the dictionary-maker re-
quires. Any method of communication, as already
said, is Language, and to understand Language we
must fix in our minds the idea that it has no
necessary connection with actual words. In the
simple instances just given there are illustrations
of at least three kinds of Language. When a deer
throws up its head suddenly, all the other deer
throw up their heads. That is a sign. It means
" listen." If the first deer sees the object, which
has called its attention, to be suspicious, it utters
a low note. That is a word. It means " caution."
If next it sees the object to be not only sus-
picious but dangerous it makes a further use of
Language — intonation. Instead of the low note
" listen," it utters a sharp loud cry that means
" Run for your life." Hence these three kinds
of Language — a sign or gesture, a note or word,
an intonation.

Down to this present hour these are still the
three great kinds of Language. The movement
of foot or ear have been evolved into the modern
gesture or grimace ; the note or cry into a word,
and the intonation into an emphasis or inflexion
of the voice. These are still, indeed, not only th<

THE EVOLUTlbN OF LANGUAGE 203

main elements in Language but the only elements.
The eloquence which enthrals the legislators of St.
Stephen's, or the appeal which melts the wor-
shippers at St. Paul's, originated in the voices of
the forest and the activities of the ant-hill. To
those who have not realized the exceeding small-
ness of the beginnings of all new developments,
the suggestion of science as to the origin of Lan-
guage, like many of its other suggestions about
early stages, will seem almost ludicrous. But a
knowledge of two things warns one not to look
for surprises at the beginning of Evolution but at
the end. In the first place, it is all but a cardinal
principle that developments are brought about by
minute, slow and insensible degrees. The second
fact is even more important. The theatre of change
is the actual world, and the exciting cause some-
thing really happening in every-day life. New
departures are not made in the air. They arise
in connection with some commonplace event ; and
usually take the shape of some slightly new response.
In other connections, of course, the converse is
also true, but when a change occurs for the first
time in the life of an organism the exciting cause,
whatever the internal adaptation, or want of it,
is some change in the environment. Among the
events then, actually happening in the day's round,

204 THE ASCENT OF MAN

we are to seek for the exciting cause of the earhest
forms of speech.

The simplest Language open to Man was that
which we have already seen to mark the beginning
of all Language, the Language of gesture or sign.
To the word gesture, however, it is necessary to
attach a larger meaning than the term ordinarily
expresses to us. It is not to be limited, for ex-
ample, to visible movements of the limbs or facial
muscles. The ejaculations of the savage, the drum-
ming of the gorilla, the screech of the parrot, the
crying, growling, purring, hissing, and spitting of
other animals are all forms of gesture. Nor is it
possible to separate the Language of gesture from
the Language of intonation. These have grown
up side by side and can neither be distinguished
psychologically nor as to priority in the order of
Evolution. Intonation, though it has grown to be
infinitely the more delicate instrument of the two
and is still so important a part of some Languages
— the Chinese, for example — as to be an integral
part of them, has its roots in the same soil and
must be looked upon as, along with it, the earliest
form of Language.

That this Gesture-Language marked, if not the
dawn, at least a very early stage of Language in the
case of Man, there is abundant evidence. Apart

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 205

from analogy, there are at least three witnesses who
may be cited in proof not only of the fact, but of
the high perfection to which a Gesture-Language
may be carried. The first of these witnesses is
the homo alalus^ the not-speaking man, of to-day,
the deaf-mute. As an actual case of a human
being reduced as regards the power of speech to
the level of early Man his evidence, even with all
allowances for the high development of his mental
faculties, is of scientific value. The mere fact that
a deaf man is also a dumb man is almost a final
answer to the affirmation that the power of speech
is an original and intuitive faculty of Man. If it
were so, there is no reason why a deaf man should
not speak. The vocal apparatus in his case is
complete; all that is required to make him utter a
definite sound is to hear one. When he hears one,
but not till then, he can imitate it. Language, so
far as the testimony of the deaf-mute goes, is
clearly a matter of imitation. Unable to attain
the second stage of Language — words — he has to
content himself with the first — signs. And this
Language he has evolved to its last perfection. It
shows how little the mere utterance of words has
to do with Language, that the deaf-mute is able to
converse on every-day subjects almost as perfectly
as those who can speak. The permutations and

2o6 THE ASCENT OF MAN

combinations that can be produced with ten pliable
fingers, or with the varying expressions of the
muscles of the face, are endless, and everything
that he cares to know can be uttered or translated
to him by motion, gesture, and grimace. To give
an idea how far gestures can be made to do the
work of spoken words, the signs may be described
in which a deaf-and-dumb man once told a child's
story in presence of Mr. Tylor. " He began by
moving his hand, palm down, about a yard from the
ground, as we do to show the height of a child —
this meant that it was a child he was thinking of.
Then he tied an imaginary pair of bonnet-strings
under his chin (his usual sign for female), to make
it understood that the child was a little girl. The
child's mother was then brought on the scene in a
similar way. She bec^kons to the child and gives her
twopence, these being indicated by pretending to drop
two coins from one hand into the other ; if there
had been any doubt as to whether they were copper
or silver coins, this would have been settled by
pointing to something brown or even by one's con-
temptuous way of handling coppers which at once
distinguishes them from silver. The mother also
gives the child a jar, shown by sketching its shape
with the forefingers in the air, and going through
the act of handing it over. Then by imitating the

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 207

unmistakable kind of twist with which one turns
a treacle-spoon, it is made known that it is treacle
the child has to buy. Next, a wave of the hand
shows the child being sent off on her errand, the
usual sign of walking being added, which is made
by two fingers walking on the table. The turning
of an imaginary door-handle now takes us into the
shop, when the counter is shown by passing the
flat hands as it were over it. Behind this counter
a figure is pointed out ; he is shown to be a man
by the usual sign of putting one's hand to one's
chin and drawing it down where the beard is or
would be ; then the sign of tying an apron around
one's waist adds the information that the man is
the shopman. To him the child gives her jar,
dropping the money into his hand, and moving
her forefinger as if taking up treacle to show what
she wants. Then we see the jar put into an
imaginary pair of scales which go up and down ;
the great treacle-jar is brought from the shelf and
the little one filled, with the proper twist to take
up the last trickling thread ; the grocer puts the
two coins in the till, and the little girl sets off
with the jar. The deaf-and-dumb story-teller went
on to show in pantomime how the child, looking
down at the jar, saw a drop of treacle on the rim,
wiped it off with her finger, and put the finger in

2o8 THE ASCENT OF MAN

her mouth, how she was tempted to take mere
how her mother found her out by the spot of treacle
on her pinafore, and so forth." ^

A second witness is savage Man. Some of the
more primitive races, far as they have evolved past
the alalus stage, still cling to -the gesture-language
which bulked so largely in the intercourse of their
ancestors. No one who has witnessed a conversa-
tion— one says " witnessed," for it is more seeing
"' than hearing — between two different tribes of
Indians can have any doubt of the working
efficiency of this method of speech. After ten
minutes of almost pure pantomime each will have
told the other everything that it is needful to say.
Indians of different tribes, indeed, are able to com-
municate most perfectly on all ordinary subjects
with no more use of the voice than that required
for the emission of a few different kinds of grunts.
The fact that stranger tribes make so large a use
of gesture in expressing themselves to one another
does not, of course, imply that each has not a
word-language of its own. But few of the Lan-
guages of primitive peoples are complete without
the additions which gesture offers. There are gaps
in the vocabulary of almost all savage tribes due
to the fact that in actual speech the lacunce are
^ Tylor, Anthropology.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 209

bridged by signs, and many of their words belong
more to the category of signs than to that of
words.

The final witness is the first attempt at Lan-
guage of a little child. Universally an infant opens
communication with the mental world around it in
the primitive language of gesture and tone. Long
before it has learned to speak, without the use
of a single word it conveys information as to
fundamental wants, and expresses all its varying
moods and wishes with a vehemence and point
which are almost the envy of riper years. The
interesting thing about this is that it is spon-
taneous. In later childhood it has to be taught
to speak — because speech is a fine art — but to
utter the hereditary and primitive Language of
mankind requires no prompting. Words are con-
ventional, movements and sounds are natural. The
Language of the nursery is the native Language
of the forest, the inarticulate cry of the animal,
the intonation of the savage. To quote from
Mallery : — " The wishes and emotions of very
young children are conveyed in a small number
of sounds, but in a great variety of gestures and
facial expressions. A child's gestures are intelli-
gent long in advance of speech ; although very
early and persistent attempts are made to give

\

2T0 THE ASCENT OF MAN

it instruction in the latter but none in the former,
from the time when it begins risu cognoscere
matrem. It learns words only as they are taught,
and learns them through the medium of signs
which are not expressly taught. Long after famili-
arity with speech it consults the gestures and
facial expressions of its parents and nurses, as if
seeking them to translate or explain their words.
These facts are important in reference to the
biologic law that the order of development of the
individual is the same as that of the species. . . .
The insane understand and obey gestures when
they have no knowledge whatever of words. It
is also found that semi-idiotic children who cannot
be taught more than the merest rudiment of
speech can receive a considerable amount of infor-
mation through signs, and can express themselves
by them. Sufferers from aphasia continue to use
appropriate gestures. A stammerer, too, works his
arms and features as if determined to get his
thoughts out, in a manner not only suggestive of
the physical struggle, but of the use of gesture as
a hereditary expedient."^

The survival both of gesture and intonation in
modern adult speech, and especially the uncon-

^ First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology^ Washing-
ton, 1 88 1.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 211

sciousness of their use, illustrate how indelibly
these primitive forms of Language are embedded
in the human race. There are doubtless exceptions,
but it is probably the rule that gestures are mainly
called in to supplement expression when the
subject-matter of discourse does not belong to the
highest ranges of thought, or the speaker to the
loftiest type of oratory. The higher levels of
thought were reached when the purer forms of
spoken Language had become the vehicle of ex-
pression ; and, as has often been noticed, when
a speaker soars into a very lofty region, or allows
his mind to grapple intensely and absorbingly with
an exalted theme, he becomes more and more
motionless, and only resumes the gesture-language
when he descends to commoner levels. It is not
only that a fine speaker has a greater command
of words and is able to dispense with auxiliaries
— as a master of style can dispense with the
use of italics — but that, at all events, in the case
of abstract thought, it is untranslatable into ges-
ture-speech. Gestures are suggestions and re-
minders of things seen and heard. They are
nearly all attached to objects or to moods,
and rival words only when used of every-day
things. " No sign talker," Mr. Romanes reminds
us, '*with any amount of time at his disposal,

212 THE ASCENT OF MAN

could translate into the language of gesture a
page of Kant." ^

The next stage in the Evolution of Language
must have been reached as naturally as the Language
of gesture and tone. From the gesture-language
to mixtures of signs and sounds, and finally to the
specialization of sound into words, is a necessary
transition. Apart from the fact that gestures and
tones have limits, circumstances must often have
arisen in the life of early Man when gesture was
impossible. A sign Language is of no use when
one savage is at one end of a wood and his wife at
the other. He must now roar ; and to make his
roar explicit, he must have a vocabulary of roars,
and of all shades of roars. In the darkness of night
also, his signs are useless, and he must now whisper
and have a vocabulary of whispers. Nor is it
difficult to conceive where he got his first brief
list of words. Instead of drawing things in the
air with his finger, he would now try to imitate
their sounds. Everything around him that conveyed
any impression of sound would have associated with
it some self-expressive word, which all familiar withj
the original sound could instantly recognize. Im-
agine, for instance, a herd of buffalo browsing in a|
glade of the African forest. The vanguard, somei
* Mental Evolution^ p. 147.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 213

little distance from its neighbours, hears the low-
growl of a lion. That growl, of course, is Language,
and the buffalo understands it as well as we do when
the word " lion " is pronounced. Between the word
"lion" spoken, and the object lion growled, there is
no difference in the effect. Suppose, next, the buffalo
wished to convey to its comrades the knowledge that
a lion was near, a lion and not some other animal, it
might imitate this growl. It is not likely that it
would do so ; some other sign expressing alarm in
general would probably be used, for the discrimina-
tion of the different sources of danger is probably an
achievement beyond this animal's power. But if
Primitive Man was placed under the same circum-
stances, granting that he had begun in a feeble way
to exercise mind, he would almost certainly come in
time to denote a lion by an imitated growl, a wolf by
an imitated whine, and so on. The sighing of the
wind, the flowing of the stream, the beat of the surf,
the note of the bird, the chirp of the grasshopper,
the hiss of the snake, would each be used to express
these things. And gradually a Language would
be built up which included all the things in the
environment with which sound was either directly,
indirectly, or accidentally associated.

That this method of word-making is natural
is seen in the facility with which it is still used

214 THE ASCENT OF MAN

by children ; and from the early age at which
they begin to employ it, the sound Language is
clearly one of the very first forms of speech. All
a child's words are of course gathered through the
sense of hearing, but if it can itself pick up a
word direct from the object, it will use it long
before it elects to repeat the conventional name
taught it by its nurse. The child who says moo
for cow, or bow-wow for dog, or tick-tick for watch,
or puff-puff for train, is an authority on the origin
of human speech. Its father, when he talks of
the hum of machinery or the boom of the cannon,
when he calls champagne fizz or a less aristocratic
beverage pop^ is following in the wake of the in-
ventors of Language. Among savage peoples, and
especially those encountering the first rush of new
things and thoughts brought them by the advanc-
ing wave of civilization, word-making is still going
on ; and wherever possible the favourite principle
seems to be that of sound.^

^ Among the Coral Islands of the Pacific the savages every-
where speak cf the white residents in New Caledonia as the
Wee-wee men, or Wee-wees. Cannibals on a dozen different
islands, speaking as many languages, have all this name in
common. New Caledonia is a French Penal Settlement,
containing thousands of French convicts, and one's first crude
thought is that the Wee-wees are so named from their size.
A moment's reflection, however, shows that it is taken from
their sounds — that in fact we have here a very pretty example

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 215

How full all Languages are of these sound-words
is known to the philologist, though multitudes of
words in every Language have had their pedigree
effaced or obscured by time. " An Englishman
would hardly guess from the present pronunciation
and meaning of the word pipe what its origin
was ; yet when he compares it with the Low Latin
pipa, French pipe, pronounced more like our word
peep, to chirp, and meaning such a reed-pipe as
shepherds played on, he then sees how cleverly
the very sound of the musical pipe has been made
into a word for all kinds of tubes, such as tobacco-
pipes and water-pipes. Words like this travel like
Indians on the war-path, wiping out their foot-
marks as they go. For all we know multitudes
of our ordinary words may have thus been made
from real sounds, but have now lost beyond re-
covery the traces of their first expressiveness." ^
In the Chinuk language of the West Coast of
America, to cite a few more of Tylor's instances,
a tavern is called a " heehee-house" that is a laughter
house, or an amusement house, the word for

of modern onomatopoeia. These convicts, freed or escaped,
find their way over the Pacific group ; and the natives, seizing
at once upon their characteristic sound, know them as Oui-ouVs
— a name which has now become general for all Frenchmen in
the Southern Pacific.

^Tylor A7ithropology , p. 127.

2l6 THE ASCENT OF MAN

amusement being taken by an obvious association
from the laughter which it excites. How indirect
a derivation may be is illustrated by the word
which the Basutos of South Africa use for courtier.
The buzz of a certain fly resembles the sound ntsi-
ntsiy and they apply this word to those who buzz
round the chief as a fly buzzes round a piece
of meat. As everyone knows " papa " for father,
is evolved into papa the pope, and " abba " the
Hebrew for father into abbot. For plurals, a
doubling of the word is often used, but no doubt
at first quantity was expressed by gestures or by
numbering on the fingers. " Orang " is the Malay
for Man, " Orang-orang " for men, while "Orang-
utan " is wild man. Verbs are formed on the
same principle as nouns. In the Tecuna language
of Brazil the verb to sneeze is haitschu, while the
Welsh for a sneeze is tis. Other verbs which came
to have large and comprehensive meanings arose
out of the simple activities and occupations of
primitive life. Thus the first verb in the Bible,
the Hebrew " bara " now meaning create, was
originally used for cutting or hewing, the first step
in making things. In the Borneo language of
Africa, the verb " to make " comes from the word
tando, to weave. In English, "to suffer" meant to
bear as a burden, and to " apprehend an idea " was

I

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 217

originally to " catch hold " of some " sight." Even
Max M tiller, who opposes the onomatopoetic theory
with regard to the origin of most words, agrees
that the sounds of the occupation of men, and
especially of men working together, and making
special sounds at their task — such as builders,
soldiers, and sailors — are widely represented in
modern speech.

Though mimicry, sometimes exact, but probably
more often a mere echo or suggestion of the sound
to be recalled, is responsible for some of the material
of Language, multitudes of words appear to have no
such origin. There are infinitely more words than
sounds in the world ; and even things which have
very distinct sounds have been named without any
regard to them. The inventors of the word watch^
for instance, did not call it tick-tick but watch^ the
idea being taken from the watchman who walked
about at night and kept the time ; and when the
steam-engine appeared, instead of taking the obvi-
ous sound-name puff-puff^ it was called engine (Lat.
inge7tium)^ to signify that it was a work of genius.
These modern words, however, are the coinages of
an intellectual age, and it was to be expected that
the inventors should look deeper below the surface.
How those words which have no apparent associa-
tion with sound were formed in early times remains

2i8 THE ASCENT OF MAN

a mystery. With some the original sound-associa-
tion has probably been lost ; in the case of others,
the association may have been so indirect as to be
now untraceable. The sounds available in savage
life for word-making could never have been so
numerous as the things requiring names, and as
civilization advanced the old words would be used
in new connections, while wholly new terms must
have been coined from time to time. Both these
methods — the habit of generalizing unconsciously
from single terms, and the trick of coining new
words in a wholly conventional way — are still con-
tinually employed by savages as well as by children.
Thus, to take an example of the first, Mr. John
Moir, one of the earliest white men to settle in
East Central Africa, was at once named by the
natives Mandala^ which means " a reflection in still
water," because he wore on his eyes what looked
to them a still water (spectacles). Afterwards they
came to call not only Mr. Moir by that name,
but spectacles, and finally — when it entered the
country — glass itself Examples of generalization
among children abound in every nursery. A child
is taken to the window by his nurse to see the
moon. The easy monosyllable is caught up at once,
and for some time the child applies it indiscrimin-
ately to anything bright or shining — the gas, the

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 219

candle, the firelight are each " the moon." Mr.
Romanes records a case where a child made a
similar use of the word star — the gas, the candle,
the firelight were each " a star." If the makers of
Language proceeded on this principle, no wonder-
the philologist has riddles to read. How often
must the savage children of the world have started
off naming things from two such different points?
Mr. Romanes mentions a still more elaborate
example which was furnished him by Mr. Darwin :
"The child, who was just beginning to speak, called
a duck ' quack,' and, by special association, it also
called water ' quack.' By an appreciation of the
resemblance of qualities, it next extended the term

* quack ' to denote all birds and insects on the one
hand, and all fluid substances on the other. Lastly,
by a still more delicate appreciation of resemblance,
the child eventually called all coins * quack,' because
on the back of a French sou it had once seen the
representation of an eagle. Hence, to the child,
the sign * quack,' from having originally had a very
specialized meaning, became more and more ex-
tended in its significance, until it now seems to
designate such apparently different objects as ' fly,'

* wine,' and ' coin.' " ^

The instructiveness of this, in showing the reason
^ Mental Evolution^ p. 283.

220 THE ASCENT OF MAN

why philology is often so helplessly at a loss in
tracking far-strayed words to their original sense, is
plain. In the nature of the case, the onomatopoetic
theory can never be proved in more than a fraction
of cases. So cunning is the mind in associating
ideas, so swift in making new departures, that the
clue to multitudes of words must be obliterated by
time, even if the first forms and spellings of the
words themselves remain in their original integrity
— which rarely happens — to offer a feasible point
to start the search from.

But it is far from necessary to assume that all
words should have had a rational ancestry. On
the contrary many words are probably deliberate
artificial inventions. When not only every human
being, but every savage and every child has the
ability as well as the right to call anything it likes
by any name it chooses, it is vain in every case to
seek for any general principle underlying the often
arbitrary conjunctions of letters and sounds which
we call words. Words cannot all at least be
treated with the same scientific regard as we would
treat organic forms. When dissected, in the nature
of the case, they cannot be expected to reveal
specific structure such as one finds in a fern or a
cray-fish. A fern or a cray-fish is the expression
of an infinitely subtle and intricate adaptation,

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 221

while a word may be a mere caprice. Perhaps,
indeed, the greatest marvel about philology is that
there should be a philology at all — that Languages
should be so rich in association, so pregnant with
the history and poetry of the past. Into the prob-
lem, therefore, of how the infinite variety of words
in a Language was acquired it is unnecessary to
enter at length. Once the idea had dawned of
expressing meaning by sounds, the formation of
words and even of Languages is a mere detail.
We have probably all invented words. Almost
every family of children invents words of its own,
and cases are known where quite considerable
Languages have been manufactured in the nursery.
When boys play at brigands and pirates they in-
vent pass-words and names, and from mere love
of secrets and mysteries concoct vocabularies which
no one can understand but themselves.

This simple fact indeed has been used with great
plausibility to account for differences in dialect
among different tribes, and even for the partial
origin of new Languages. Thus the structure of
the Indian languages has long puzzled philologists.
Whitney informs us that as regards the material of
expression, there is " irreconcilable diversity " among
them. " There are a very considerable number of
groups between whose significant signs exist no

222 THE ASCENT OF MAN

more apparent correspondences than between those
of English, Hungarian, and Malay ; none namely
which may not be merely fortuitous." To account
for these dialects a suggestion, as interesting as
it is ingenious, has been advanced by Dr. Hale.
Imagine the case of a family of Red Indians,
father, mother, and half a dozen children, in the
vicissitudes of war, cut off from their tribe. Suppose
the father to be scalped and the mother soon to
die. The little ones left to themselves in some
lonely valley, living upon roots and herbs, would
converse for a time by using the few score words
they had heard from their parents. But as they
grew up they would require new words and would
therefore coin them. As they became a tribe they
would require more words, and so in time a Language
might arise, all the words expressive of the simpler
relations — father, mother, tent, fire — being common
to other Indian Languages, but all the later words
purely arbitrary and necessarily a standing puzzle
to philology. The curious thing is that this theory
is borne out by some most interesting geographical
facts. " If, under such circumstances, disease, or
the casualties of a hunter's life should carry off the
parents, the survival of the children would, it is
evident, depend mainly upon the nature of the
climate and the ease with which food could be

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 723

procured at all seasons of the year. In ancient
Europe, after the present climatal conditions were
established, it is doubtful if a family of children
under ten years of age could have lived through
a single winter. We are not, therefore, surprised
to find that no more than four or five linguistic
stocks are represented in Europe. Of North
America, east of the Rocky Mountains and north
of the tropics, the same may be said. The climate
and the scarcity of food in winter forbid us to
suppose that a brood of orphan children could have
survived, except possibly, by a fortunate chance,
in some favoured spot on the shore of the Mexican
Gulf, where shell-fish, berries, and edible roots are
abundant and easy of access. But there is one
region where Nature seems to offer herself as the
willing nurse and bountiful stepmother of the
feeble and unprotected. Of all countries on the
globe, there is probably not one in which a little
flock of very young children would find the means
of sustaining existence more readily than in Cali-
fornia. Its wonderful climate, mild and equable
beyond example, is well known. Half the months
are rainless. Snow and ice are almost strangers.
There are fully two hundred cloudless days in
every year. Roses bloom in the open air through
all seasons. Berries of many sorts are indigenous

r

224 THE ASCENT OF MAN

and abundant. Large fruits and edible nuts on
low and pendant boughs may be said in Milton's
phrase to * hang amiable.' Need we wonder that in
such a mild and fruitful region, a great number of
separate tribes were found speaking languages
which careful investigation has classed in nineteen
distinct linguistic stocks?"^ Even more striking is
the case of Oregon on the Californian border,
which is also a favoured and luxuriant land. " The
number of linguistic stocks in this narrow district
is more than twice as large as in the whole of
Europe." ^

* Dr. Hale. Cf. Romanes, Mental Evolution in Matt, p. 260.

2 The construction of the mouth and lips has of course
had something to do with differences in Languages, and
even with the possibility of language in the case of Man.
You must have your trumpet before you can get the sound of
a trumpet. One reason why many animals have no speech
is simply that they have not the mechanism which by any
possibility could produce it. They might have a Language,
but nothing at all like human Language. It is one of the
significant notes in Evolution that Man, almost alone among
vertebrates, has a material body so far developed as to make
it an available instrument for speech. There was almost cer-
tainly a time when this was to him a physical impossibility.

" The acquisition of articulate speech," says Prof. Macalister,
"became possible to man only when the alveolar arch and
palatine area became shortened and widened, and when his
tongue, by its accommodation to the modified mouth, became
shorter and more horizontally flattened, and the higher refine-
ments of pronunciation depend for their production upon the

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 225

In such ways as these we may conceive of early
Man building up the fabric of speech. In time his
vocabulary would enlarge and become, so far as
objects in the immediate environment were con-
cerned, fairly complete. As Man gained more
knowledge of the things around him, as he came
into larger relations with his fellows, as life became
more rich and complex, this accumulation of words
would go on, each art as it was introduced creating
new terms, each science pouring in contributions
to the fund, until the materials of human speech
became more and more complete. This process
was never finished. The evolution of Language is
still going on. No corroboration of the theory of
the evolution of Language could be more perfect
than the simple fact that it has gone on steadily
down to the present hour and is going on now.
Tens of thousands of words — no longer now ono-
matopoetic — have been evolved since Johnson com-
piled his dictionary, and every year sees additions
not only to technical terms but to the Language

more extensive modifications in the same direction." Even
for differences in dialect, as the same writer points out,
there is a physical basis. "With the macrodont alveolar
arch and the corresponding modified tongue, sibilation is a
difficult feat to accomplish, and hence the sibilant sounds
are practically unknown in all the Australian dialects." — British
Association : Anthropological Section. Edinb., 1891.

P

226 THE ASCENT OF MAN

of the people. The English Language is now being
grown on two or three different kinds of soil, and
the different fruits and flavours that result are
intercharged and mixed, to enrich, or adulterate, the
common English tongue. The mere fact that Lan-
guage-making is a living art at the present hour, if
not an argument against the theory that Language
is a special gift, at least shows that Man has a
special gift of making Language. If Man could
manufacture words in any quantity, there was
little reason why he should have been presented
with them ready-made. The power to manufacture
them is gift enough, and none the less a gift that
we know some of the steps by which it was given,
or at least through which it was exercised. But if
the very words were given him as they stand, it is
more than singular that so many of them should
bear traces of another origin. Even Trench at
this point succumbs to the theory of develop-
ment, and his testimony is the more valuable that
it is evidently so very much against the grain to
admit it. He begins by stating apparently the
opposite : — " The truer answer to the inquiry how
language arose is this : God gave man language
just as He gave him reason, and just because He
gave him reason ; for what is man's word but his
reason coming forth that it may behold itself?

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE '■z^-j

They are indeed so essentially one and the same
that the Greek language has one word for them
both. He gave it to him, because he could not
be man, that is, a social being, without it." Yet
he is too profound a student of words to fail
to qualify this, and had he failed to do so every
page in his well-known book had judged him.
" Yet," he continues, " this must not be taken to
affirm that man started at the first furnished with
a full-formed vocabulary of words, and as it were
with his first dictionary and first grammar ready-
made to his hands. He did not thus begin the
world with names ^ but with the power of naming :
for man is not a mere speaking machine ; God did
not teach him words, as one of us teaches a parrot,
from without ; but gave him a capacity, and then
evoked the capacity which He gave."^

If the theory just given as to the formation of
Language, or at least as to the possible formation
of Language, be more than a fairy tale, there is
another quarter in which corroboration of an im-
portant kind should lie. Hitherto we have examined,
as witnesses, the makers of words ; it may be
worth while for a moment to place in the witness-
box the words themselves. A chemist has two
methods of determining the composition of any

^Archbishop Trench, The Study of Words^ pp. 14, 15.

228 THE ASCENT OF MAN

body, analysis and synthesis. Having seen how-
words may be built up, it remains for us to see
whether on analysis they bear trace of having been
built up in the way, and from the elements,
suggested. Comparative Philology has now made
an actual investigation into the words and struc-
ture of all known Languages, and the information
sought by the evolutionist lies ready-made to his
hand. So far as controversy might be expected
to arise here on the theory of development itself,
there is none. For the first fact to interest us
in this new region is that every student of Language
seems to have been compelled to give in his adher-
ence to the general theory of Evolution. All agree
with Renan that " Sans doute les langues, comme
tout ce qui est organist, sont sujettes a la loi du
development graduel." And even Max Miiller, the
least thorough-going from an evolutionary point of
view of all philologists, asserts that " no student
of the science of Language can be anything but
an evolutionist, for, wherever he looks, he sees
nothing but evolution going on all around him."

The outstanding discovery of the dissector of
words is that, vast and complex as Languages
appear, they are really composed of few and simple
elements. Take the word " evolutionary." The ter-
mination "ary" is a late addition added to this

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 229

and to thousands of other words for a special
purpose ; the same applies to the syllable " tion."
The first letter e distinguishes evolution from con-
volution, revolution, involution, and is also a later
growth. None of these extra syllables is of first
importance ; by themselves they have almost no
meaning. The part which will not disappear or
melt away into mere grammar, on which the stress
of the sense hangs, is the syllable " vol " or " volv,"
and, so far as the English language is concerned,
it is to be looked upon as the root. By running
it to earth in older languages its source is found
in a still more radical word, and therefore it must
next be blotted out of the list of primitive words.
By patient comparison of all other words with all
other words, of Languages with Languages, and
apparent roots with apparent roots, the supposed
primitive roots of Language have been found.
Just as all the multifarious objects in the material
world — water, air, earth, flesh, bone, wood, iron,
paper, cloth — are resolvable by the chemist into
some sixty-eight elements, so all the words in each
of the three or four great groups of Language yield
on the last analysis only a few hundred original
roots. That still further analysis may break down
some or many of these is not impossible. But
the facts as they stand are all significant. The

230 THE ASCENT OF MAN

further we go back into the past the Languages
become thinner and thinner, the words fewer and
fewer, the grammar poorer and poorer. Of the
thousand known Languages it has been found pos-
sible to reduce all to three or four — probably three
— great families ; and each of these in turn is
capable of almost unlimited philological pruning.
In analyzing the Sanskrit language, Professor Max
Miiller reduces its whole vocabulary to 121 roots
— the 121 "original concepts." "These 121 concepts
constitute the stock-in-trade with which I maintain
that every thought that has ever passed through
the mind of India, so far as known to us in its
literature, has been expressed. It would have been
easy to reduce that number still further, for there
are several among them which could be ranged
together under more general concepts. But I leave
this further reduction to others, being satisfied as
a first attempt with having shown how small a
number of seeds may produce, and has produced,
the enormous intellectual vegetation that has covered
the soil of India from the most distant antiquity to
the present day." ^

That a " first attempt " should have succeeded in
reducing this vast family of Languages to 121
words is significant. The exhumation by philo-
* Science of Thought^ p. 549.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 231

logy of this early cluster reminds one of the dis-
covery of the segmented ovum in embryology.
Such clusters appear at an early stage in the
history of all developments. The processes which
precede this stage are of the utmost subtlety, but
in embryology they have yielded to the later
analysis of the microscope. So it may be one
day with the natural history of Language. We
may never, for obvious reasons, get back to the
actual beginning, but we may get nearer. When
the embryologist reached his cluster of cells in the
segmented ovum, he did not believe he had found
the dawn of life. What further the philologist may
find remains a mystery. Where these 121 words
came from may never be known. But the develop-
ment from that point sufficiently shows that words,
like everything else, have followed the universal law,
and that Languages, starting from small beginnings,
have grown in volume, intricacy, and richness, as
time rolled on. " All philologists," says Romanes,
"will now agree with Geiger — 'Language diminishes
the further we look back, in such a way that we
cannot forbear concluding it must once have had
no existence at all.'"

The history of progress for a long time hence-
forth is the history of the progress of Language
and the increase in intelligence which necessarily

232 THE ASCENT OF MAN

went along with it. From being able to say
what he knew, Man went on to write what he
knew. The Evolution of writing went through the
same general stages as the Evolution of Speech.
First there was the onomatopoetic writing — as it
were, the growl-writing — the ideograph, the imitation
of an actual object. This is the form we find fossil
in the Egyptian hieroglyphic. For a man a man
was drawn, for a camel a camel, for a hut a hut.
Then intonation was added — accents, that is, for
extra meaning or extra emphasis. Then to save time
the objects were drawn in shorthand — a couple of
dashes for the limbs and one across, as in the
Chinese for man ; a square in the same language for
a field ; two strokes at an obtuse angle, suggesting
the roof, for a house. To express further qualities,
these abbreviated pictures were next compounded in
ingenious ways. A man and a field together con-
veyed the idea of wealth, and because a man with
a field was rich, he was supposed to be happy, and
the same combination stood, and stands to this
day, for contentment. When a roof is drawn and
a woman beneath it — or the strokes which repre-
sent a roof and a woman — we have the idea of a
woman at home, a woman at peace, and hence the
symbol comes to stand for quietness and rest.
Chinese writing is picture-writing, with the pictures

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 233

degenerated into dashes — a lingual form of the
modern impressionism.

When writing was fully evolved, this height was
only the starting-point for some new development.
Every summit in Evolution is the base of some,
grander peak. Speech, whether by writing or by
spoken word, is too crude and slow to keep pace
with the needs of the now swiftly ascending mind.
Man's larger life demands a further specialization of
this power. He learned to speak at first because
he could not convey his thoughts to his wife at
the other side of the wood. It was Space that
made him speak. He now learns to speak better
because he cannot convey his thoughts to the other
end of the world. This new distance-language
began again at the beginning, just as all Language
does, by employing signs. Man invented the tele-
graph— a little needle which makes signs to some
one at the other side of the world. The telegraph
is a gesture-language, and is therefore only a primi-
tive stage. Man found this out and from signs went
on to sounds — he invented the telephone. By all the
traditions of Evolution this marvellous instrument
ought to be, and is even now on the verge of being,
the vehicle of the distance-language of the future.

Is this the end ? It is by no means likely.
The mind is feeling about already for more per-

234 THE ASCENT OF MAN

feet forms of human intercourse than telegraphed
or telephoned words. As there was a stage in
the ascent of Man at which the body was laid
dside as a finished product, and made to give way
to Mind, there may be a stage in the Evolution
of Mind when its material achievements — its body
— shall be laid aside and give place to a higher
form of Mind. Telepathy has already become a
word, not a word for thought-reading or muscle-
reading, but a scientific word. It means "the ability
of one mind to impress, or to be impressed by
another mind otherwise than through the recognized
channels of sense." ^ By men of science, adepts
in mental analysis, aware of all sources of error,
armed against fraud, this subject is now being made
the theme of exhaustive observation. It is too soon
to pronounce. Practically we are in the dark. But
there are those in this fascinating and mysterious
region who tell us that the possibilities of a more
intimate fellowship of man with man, and soul
with soul, are not to be looked upon as settled by
our present views of matter or of mind. How-
ever little we know of it, however remote we are
from it, whether it ever be realized or not, telepathy
is theoretically the next stage in the Evolution of
Language. As we have seen, the introduction of
^ Phantasms of the Living^ p. 6.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 235

speech into the world was delayed, not because the
possibilities of it were not in Nature, but because
the instrument was not quite ready. Then the
instrument came, and Man spoke. The develop-
ment of the organ and the development of the
function went on together, arrived together, were
perfected together. What delayed the gesture-
language of the telegraph was not that electricity
was not in Nature, but the want of the instrument.
When that came, the gesture-language came, and
both were perfected together. What delayed the
telephone was not that its principle was not in
Nature, but that the instrument was not ready.
What now delays its absolute victory of space is
not that space cannot be bridged, but that it is not
ready. May it not be that that which delays the
power to transport and drive one's thought as
thought to whatever spot one wills, is not the fact
that the possibility is withheld by Nature, but that
the hour is not quite come — that the instrument is
not yet fully ripe? Are there no signs, is the
feeling after it no sign, are there not even now
some facts, to warrant us in treating it, after all
that Evolution has given us, as a still possible gift
to the human race? What strikes one most in
running the eye up this graduated ascent is that
the movement is in the direction of what one can

236 THE ASCENT OF MAN

only call spirituality. From the growl of a lion
we have passed to the whisper of a soul ; from
the motive fear, to the motive sympathy ; from the
icy physical barriers of space, to a nearness closer
than breathing ; from the torturing slowness of time
to time's obliteration. If Evolution reveals any-
thing, if science itself proves anything, it is that
Man is a spiritual being and that the direction of
his long career is towards an ever larger, richer,
and more exalted life. On the final problem of
Man's being the voice of science is supposed to be
dumb. But this gradual perfecting of instruments,
and, as each arrives, the further revelation of what
lies behind in Nature, this gradual refining of the
mind, this increasing triumph over matter, this
deeper knowledge, this efflorescence of the soul, are
facts which even Science must reckon with. Per-
haps, after all, Victor Hugo is right : " I am the
tadpole of an archangel."

Before closing this outline two of the many
omitted points may be briefly referred to. In
thinking of Language as a " discovery," it is not
necessary to assume that that discovery involved
the pre-existence of very high mental powers.
These were probably developed pari passu with
Speech, but did not necessarily ante-date it to such

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 237

a degree as to make the preceding argument a
petitio principii. Obviously the discovery of Lan-
guage could not in the first instance have been
responsible for the Evolution of Mind since Man
must already have had Mind enough to discover it.
But this does not necessarily imply any very high
grade of intellect — very high, that is to say, as
compared with other contemporary animals — for it
is possible that a comparatively slight rise in intel-
ligence might have led to the initial step from which
all the others might follow in rapid succession.
An illustration, suggested by a remark of Cope's,
may help to make plain how a very slight cause
may initiate changes of an almost radical order
and on the most gigantic scale.

In part of the Arctic regions at this moment
there is no such thing as liquid. Matter is only
known there in the solid form. The temperature
may be thirty-one degrees below zero, or thirty-one
degrees above zero without making the slightest
difference ; there can be nothing there but ice,
glacier, and those crystals of ice which we call
snow. But suppose the temperature rose two
degrees, the difference would be indescribable.
While no change for sixty degrees below that
point made the least difference, the almost inap-
preciable addition pf two degrees changes the

238 THE ASCENT OF MAN

country into a world of water. The glaciers, under
the new conditions, retreat into the mountains, the
vesture of ice drops into the sea, a garment of
greenness clothes the land. So, in the animal
world, a very small rise beyond the animal maxi-
mum may open the door for a revolution. With
a brain of so many cubic inches, and so many
pounds of brain matter, we have animal intelligence.
Everything below that limit is animal, and the
number of inches or pounds below it makes no
difference. But pass to a brain not a few but
many pounds heavier, many cubic inches larger,
and very much more convoluted, and it is conceiv-
able that in passing from the lower to the higher
figures some such change might occur as that
which differentiates solid from liquid in the case of
water. What the chemist calls a " critical point "
might thus be passed, and from a condition associ-
ated with certain properties — though in the brain
we must speak of accompaniments rather than pro-
perties— a condition associated with certain other
properties might be the result. Thus, as Cope says,
"some Rubicon has been crossed, some flood-gate
has been opened, which marks one of Nature's
great transitions, such as have been called * expres-
sion-points' of progress." A slight rise in intelli-
gence might lead to the first acquisition of Speech,

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 239

and from this point the rise might be at once
exceedingly swift and in directions wholly new.
The illustration is not to be taken for more than
it seeks to illustrate — which is not the method of
transition as to qualitative detail, but simply the
fact that an apparently slight change may have
startling and indefinite results.

The last difficulty is this. If the connection
between Mind and Language is so vital, why do
not Birds, many of which apparently speak, emulate
Man in mental power? If his speech is largely
responsible for his intelligence, why have not Birds
— the parrot, for instance — attained the same in-
telligence? Several answers might be suggested
to the question, and several kinds of answers —
biological, physiological, philological, and psycho-
logical. But the real answer is the general one,
that to make animals human required a conspiracy
of circumstances which neither Birds nor any other
animal fell heir to. It was one chance in a
million that the multitude of co-operating con-
ditions which pushed Man onward were fulfilled ;
and though it may never be known what these
conditions were, it was doubtless from the failure
on the one hand to meet one or more of them,
and on the other from the success with which open-
ings in other directions were pursued by competing

240 THE ASCENT OF MAN

species, that Man was left alone during the later
aeons of his ascent.

The progenitors of Birds and the progenitors of
Man at a very remote period were probably one.
But at a certain point they parted company and
diverged hopelessly and for ever. The Birds took
one road, the Mammals another ; the Mammals for
the most part kept to the ground, the Birds took
to the air. One consequence of this expedient in
the case of the Birds was disastrous. For observe
the cost to them of the aerial mode of life. The
wing was made at the expense of the hand. With
this consummate organ buried in feathers, the use
which the higher Vertebrates made of it was
denied them. Birds have the bones for a hand,
could have had a hand, but they waived their right
to it. When it is considered how much Man owes
to the hand it may be conceived how much they
have lost by the want of it. Had Man not been
a "tool-using animal," he had probably never be-
come a Man ; the Bird, partly because it placed
itself out of the running here, has never been any-
thing but a Bird. To one organism only was it
given to keep on the path of progress from the
beginning to the end, and so fulfil without devia-
tion or relapse the final purpose of Evolution.

CHAPTER VI

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE

TV/TATTHEW Arnold, in a well - remembered
•^^ ■*- line, describes a bird in Kensington Gar-
dens '* deep in its unknown day's employ." But,
peace to the poet, its employ is all too certain.
Its day is spent in struggling to get a living ; and
a very hard day it is. It awoke at daybreak and
set out to catch its morning meal ; but another
bird was awake before it, and it lost its chance.
With fifty other breakfastless birds, it had to bide
its time, to scour the country; to prospect the trees,
the grass, the ground ; to lie in ambush ; to attack
and be defeated ; to hope and be forestalled. At
every meal the same programme is gone through,
and every day. As the seasons change the pres-
sure becomes more keen. Its supplies are ex-
hausted, and it has to take wing for hundreds and

thousands of miles to find new hunting-ground.
241 Q

242 THE ASCENT OF MAN

This is how birds live, and this is how birds are
made. They are the children of Struggle. Beak
and limb, claw and wing, shape, strength, all down
to the last detail, are the expressions of their mode
of life.

This is how the early savage lived, and this is
how he was made. The first practical problem in
the Ascent of Man was to get him started on his
upward path. It was not enough for Nature to
equip him with a body, and plant his foot on the
lowest rung of the ladder. She must introduce into
her economy some great principle which should
secure, not for him alone but for every living thing,
that they should work upward toward the top.
The inertia of things is such that without compul-
sion they will never move. And so admirably has
this compulsion been applied that its forces are
hidden in the very nature of life itself — the very
act of living contains within it the principles of
progress. An animal cannot be without beco7ning.

The first great principle into the hands of which
this mighty charge was given is the Struggle
for Life. It is one of the chief keys for un-
locking the mystery of Man's Ascent, and so im-
portant in all development that Mr. Darwin assigns
it the supreme rank among the factors in Evolution.
" Unless," he says, " it be thoroughly engrained in

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 243

the mind, the whole economy of Nature, with every
fact on distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction,
and variation, will be dimly seen or quite misun-
derstood." How, under the pressures of this great
necessity to work for a living, the Ascent of Man
has gone on, we have now to inquire. Though
not to the extent that is usually supposed, yet in
part under this stimulus, he has slowly emerged
from the brute-existence, and, entering a path where
the possibilities of development are infinite, has been
pushed on from stage to stage, without premedita-
tion, or design, or thought on his part, until he
arrived at that further height where, to the uncon-
scious compulsions of a lower environment, there
were added those high incitements of conscious
ideals which completed the work of creating him a
Man.

Start with a comparatively unevolved savage,
and see what the Struggle for Life will do for
him. When we meet him first he is sitting, we
shall suppose, in the sun. Let us also suppose —
and it requires no imagination to suppose it — that
he has no wish to do anything else than sit in
the sun, and that he is perfectly contented, and
perfectly happy. Nature around him, visible and
invisible, is as still as he is, as inert apparently,
as unconcerned. Neither molests the other ; they

244 THE ASCENT OF MAN

have no connection with each other. Yet it is
not so. That savage is the victim of a con-
spiracy. Nature has designs upon him, wants to
do something to him. That something is to move
him. Why does it wish to move him ? Because
movement is work, and work is exercise, and
exercise may mean a further evolution of the part
of him that is exercised. How does it set about
moving him ? By moving itself. Everything else
being in motion, it is impossible for him to resist.
The sun moves away to the west and he must
move or freeze with cold. As the sun continues
to move, twilight falls and wild animals move from
their lairs and he must move or be eaten. The
food he ate in the morning has dissolved and
moved away to nourish the cells of his body, and
more food must soon be moved to take its place
or he must starve. So he starts up, he works, he
seeks food, shelter, safety ; and those movements
make marks in his body, brace muscles, stimulate
nerves, quicken intelligence, create habits, and he
becomes more able and more willing to repeat these
movements and so becomes a stronger and a higher
man. Multiply these movements and you multiply
him. Make him do things he has never done
before, and he will become what he never was
before. Let the earth move round in its orbit

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 24";

till the sun is far away and the winter snows begin
to fall. He must either move away, and move
away very fast, to find the sun again ; or he must
chase, and also very fast, some thick-furred animal,
and kill it, and clothe himself with its skin. Thus
from a man he has become a hunter, a different
kind of a man, a further man. He did not wish
to become a hunter ; he had to become a hunter.
All that he wished was to sit in the sun and be
let alone, and but for a Nature around him which
would not rest, or let him alone, he would have
sat on there till he died. The universe has to be so
ordered that that which Man would not have done
alone he should be compelled to do. In other
words it was necessary to introduce into Nature,
and into Human Nature, some such principle as
the Struggle for Life. For the first law of Evolu-
tion is simply the first law of motion. " Every
body continues in a state of rest, or of uniform
motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled
by impressed forces to change that state." Nature
supplied that savage with the impressed forces, with
something which he was compelled to respond to.
Without that, he would have continued for ever
as he was.

Apart from the initial appetite. Hunger, the
stimulus of Environment — that which necessitates

246 THE ASCENT OF MAN

Man to struggle for life — is two-fold. The first
is inorganic nature, including heat and cold, climate
and weather, earth, air, water — the material world.
The second is the world of life, comprehending all
plants and animals, and especially those animals
against whom primitive Man has always to struggle
most — other primitive Men. All that Man is, all
the arts of life, all the gifts of civilization, all the
happiness and joy and progress of the world, owe
much of their existence to that double war.

Follow it a little further. Go back to a time
when Man was just emerging from the purely animal
state, when he was in the condition described by
Mr. Darwin, "a tailed quadruped probably arboreal
in its habits," and when in his glimmering con-
sciousness mind was feeling about for its first uses
in snatching some novel success in the Struggle
for Life. This hypothetical creature, so far as
bodily structure was concerned, was presumably
not very vigorous. Had he been more vigorous
he might never have evolved at all ; as it was,
he fled for refuge not to his body but to a
stratagem of the Mind When threatened by a
comrade, or pressed by an alien-species, he called
in a simple foreign aid to help him in the
Struggle — the branch of a tree. Whether the
discovery was an accident ; whether the idea was

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 247

caught from the falling of a bough, or a blow from
a branch waving in the wind, is of no consequence.
This broken branch became the first weapon. It
was the father of all clubs. The day this discovery
was made, the Struggle for Life took a new
departure. Hitherto animals fought with some
specialized part of their own bodies — tooth, limb,
claw. Now they took possession of the armoury of
material Nature.

This invention of the club was soon followed by
another change. To use a club effectively, or to
keep a good look-out for enemies or for food, a
man must stand erect. This alters the centre of
gravity of the body, and as the act becomes a
habit, subsidiary changes slowly take place in other
parts. In time the erect position becomes con-
firmed. Man owes what Burns calls his " heaven-
erected face" to the Struggle for Life. How
recent this change is, how new the attitude still
is to him, is seen from the simple fact that even
yet he has not attained the power of retaining
the erect position long. Most men sit down when
they can, and so unnatural is the standing position,
so unstable the equilibrium, that when slightly sick
or faint, Man cannot stand at all.

Possibly both the erect position and the Club
had another origin, but the detail is immaterial.

248 THE ASCENT OF MAN

This " hairy-tailed quadruped, arboreal in its habits "
must sometimes have wandered or been driven into
places where trees were few and far between. It
is conceivable that an animal, accustomed to get
along mainly by grasping something, should have
picked up a branch and held it in its hand, partly
to use as a crutch, partly as a weapon, and partly
to raise itself from the ground in order to keep a
better look-out in crossing treeless spaces. An
Orang-outang may now be seen in the Zoological
gardens in Java which promenades about its bower
continually with the help of a stick, and seems
to prefer the erect position so long as the stick
or any support is at hand.

The next stage after the invention of anything
is to improve upon it, or to make a further use
of it. Both these things now happened. One
day the stick, wrenched rapidly from the tree,
happened to be left with a jagged end. The
properties of the point were discovered. Now there
were two classes of weapons in the world — the
blunt stick and the pointed stick — that is to say,
the Club and the Spear.

In using these weapons at first, neither prob-
ably was allowed to leave the hand. But already
their owners had learned to hurl down branches
from the tree-tops, and bombard their enemies

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 249

with nuts and fruits. Hence they came to throw
their clubs and spears, and so missiles were intro-
duced. Under this new use the primitive weapons
themselves received a further specialization. From
the heavy bludgeon would arise on the one hand
the shaped war-club, and on the other the short
throwing club, or waddy. The spear would pass
into the throwing assegai, or the ponderous weapon
such as the South Sea Islanders use to-day. From
the natural point of a torn branch to the sharpen-
ing of a point deliberately is the next improvement.
From rubbing the point against the sharp edge of
a large stone, to picking up a sharp-edged small
stone and using it as a knife, is but a step. So,
by the mere necessities of the Struggle for Life,
development went on. Man became a tool-using
animal, and the foundations of the Arts were laid.
Next, the man who threw his missile furthest, had
the best chance in the Struggle for Life. To
throw to still greater distances, and with greater
precision, he sought out mechanical aids — the bow,
the boomerang, the throwing-stick, and the sling.
Then instead of using his own strength he bor-
rowed strength from nature, mixed different kinds
of dust together and invented gunpowder. All our
modern weapons of precision, from the rifle to the
long range gun, are evolutions from the missiles

250 THE ASCENT OF MAN

of the savage. These suggestions are not mere
fancies ; in savage tribes existing in the world
to-day these different stages in Evolution may
still be seen.

After weapons of offence came weapons of de-
fence. At first the fighting savage sheltered him-
self at the back of a tree. Then when he wished
to pass to another tree he tore off part of the
bark, took it with him, and made the first shield.
Where the trees were without suitable bark, he
would plait his shield from canes, grasses, and
the midribs of the leaves, or construct them from
frameworks of wood and skins. In times of peace
these hollow shields, lying idly about the huts,
would find new uses — baskets, cradles, and, in an
evolved form, coracles or boats. In leisure hours
also, new virtues discovered themselves in the
earlier implements of war and of the chase. The
twang of his bow suggested memories that were
pleasant to his ear ; he kept on twanging it,
and so made music. Because two bows twanged
better than one, he twanged two bows ; then he
made himself a two-stringed bow from the first,
and ended with a " ten-stringed instrument." By
and by came the harp ; later, the violin.
The whistling of the wind in a hollow reed pre-
pared the way for the flute ; a conch-shell, broken

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 251

at the helix, gave him the trumpet. Two flints
struck together yielded fire.

Trifling, almost puerile, as these beginnings look to
us now, remember they were once the serious realities
of life. The club and spear of the savage are toys
to us to-day ; but we forget that the rude shafts
of wood which adorn our halls were all the world
to early Man, and represented the highest expression
and daily instrument of his evolution. These primi-
tive weapons are the pathetic expression of the
world's first Struggle. As the earliest contribution
of mankind to solve its still fundamental difficulty
— the problem of Nutrition — they are of enduring
interest to the human race. So far from being,
as one might suppose, mere implements of de-
struction, they are implements of self-preservation;
they entered the world not from hate of Man but for
love of life. Why was the spear invented, and the
sling, and the bow ? In the first instance because
Man needed the bird and the deer for food. Why
from implements of the chase did they change i ito
implements of war? Because other men warued
the bird and the deer, and the first possessor, as
populations multiplied, must protect his food-supply.
The parent of all industries is Hunger : the creator
of civilization in its earlier forms is the Struggle
for Life.

252 THE ASCENT OF MAN

By hollowing a pit in the ground, planting his
spear, or a pointed stake, upright in the centre, and
covering the mouth with boughs, Man could trap
even the largest game. When the climate became
cold, he stripped off the skin and became the
possessor of clothes. With a stone for a hammer,
he broke open molluscs on the shore, or speared
or trapped the fish in the shoals. Digging for roots
with his pointed stick in time suggested agriculture.
From imitating the way wild fruits and grains were
sown by Nature he became a gardener and grew
crops. To possess a crop means to possess an
estate, and to possess an estate is to give up
wandering and begin that more settled life in which
all the arts of industry must increase. Catching
the young of wild animals and keeping them, first
as playthings, then for supplies of meat or milk,
or in the case of the dog for helping in the chase,
he perceived the value of domestic animals. So
Man slowly passed from the animal to the savage,
so his mind was tamed, and strengthened, and
brighteoed, and heightened ; so the sense of power
grew strong, and so virtus^ which is to say virtue,
was born.

In struggling with Nature, early Man not only
found material satisfactions : he found himself. It
was this that made him, body, mind, character, and

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 253

disposition ; and it was this largely that gave to
the world different kinds of men, different kinds of
bodies, minds, characters, and dispositions. The first
moral and intellectual diversifiers of men are to be
sought for in geography and geology — in the factors
which determine the circumstances in which men
severally conduct their Struggle for Life. If the
land had been all the same the Struggle for Life
had been all the same, and if the Struggle for Life
had been all the same, life itself had been all the
same. But to no two sets of men is the world ever
quite the same. The theatre of struggle varies with
every degree of latitude, with every change of alti-
tude, with every variation of soil. In most countries
three separate regions are found — a maritime region,
an agricultural region, a pastoral region. In the
first, the belt along the shore, the people are fisher-
men ; in the second, the lowlands and alluvial plains,
the people are farmers ; in the third, the highlands
and plateaux, they are shepherds. As men are
nothing but expressions of their environments, as
the kind of life depends on how men get their
living, each set of men becomes changed in different
ways. The fisherman's life is a precarious life ; he
becomes hardy, resolute, self-reliant. The farmer's
life is a settled life ; he becomes tame, he loves home,
he feeds on grains and fruits which take the heat

254 THE ASCENT OF MAN

out of his blood and make him domestic and quiet.
The shepherd is a wanderer ; he is much alone ;
the monotonies of grass make him dull and moody;
the mountains awe him : the protector of his flock,
he is a man of war. So arise types of men, types
of industries ; and by and bye, by exogamous mar-
riage, blends of these types, and further blends of
infinite variety. " It is so ordered by Nature, that
by so striving to live they develop their physical
structure ; they obtain faint glimmerings of reason ;
they think and deliberate ; they become Man. In
the same way, the primeval men have no other
object than to keep the clan alive. It is so ordered
by Nature that in striving to preserve the existence
of the clan, they not only acquire the arts of agri-
culture, domestication, and navigation ; they not
only discover fire, and its uses in cooking, in war,
and in metallurgy ; they not only detect the hidden
properties of plants, and apply them to save their
own lives from disease, and to destroy their enemies
in battle ; they not only learn to manipulate Nature
and to distribute water by machinery ; but they
also, by means of the life-long battle, are developed
into moral beings." ^ Nature being " everything
that is," and Man being in every direction immersed
in it and dependent on it, can never escape its
* Win wood Reade, Martyrdom of Man^ p. 464.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 255

continuous discipline. Some environment there must
always be ; and some change of environment, no
matter how minute, there must always be ; and
some change, no matter how imperceptible, must be
always wrought in him.

We now see, perhaps, more clearly why Evolu-
tion at the dawn of life entered into league with so
strange an ally as Want. The Evolution of Man-
kind was too great a thing to entrust to any un-
certain hand. The advantage of attaching human
progress to the Struggle for Life is that you can
always depend upon it. Hunger never fails. All
other human appetites have their periods of activity
and stagnation ; passions wax and wane ; emotions
are casual and capricious. But the continuous dis-
charge of the function of Nutrition is interrupted
only by the final interruption — Death. Death
means, in fact, little more than an interference
with the function of Nutrition; it means that the
Struggle for Life having broken down, there can
be no more life, no further evolution. Hence, it
has been ordained that Life and Struggle, Health
and Struggle, Growth and Struggle, Progress and
Struggle, shall be linked together; that whatever
the chances of misdirection, the apparent losses, the
mysterious accompaniments of strife and pain, the
Ascent of Man should be bound up with living.

2S6 THE ASCENT OF MAN

When it is remembered that, at a later day,
Morality and Struggle, and even Religion and
Struggle, are bound so closely that it is impossible
to conceive of them apart, the tremendous value of
this principle and the necessity for providing it
with indestructible foundations, will be perceived.

This association of the Struggle for Life with
the physiological function of Nutrition must be con-
tinually borne in mind. For the essential nature
of the principle has been greatly obscured by the
very name which Mr. Darwin gave to it. Prob-
ably no other was possible ; but the effect has
been that men have emphasized the almost ethical
substantive * Struggle ' and ignored the biological
term * Life.' A secondary implication of the pro-
cess has thus been elevated into the prime one ;
and this, exaggerated by the imagination, has led
to Nature being conceived of as a vast murderous
machine for the annihilation of the majority and
the survival of the few. But the Struggle for Life, in
the first instance, is simply living itself ; at the best,
it is living under a healthily normal maximum of
pressure; at the worst, under an abnormal maximum.
As we have seen, initially, it is but another name
for the discharge of the supreme physiological
function of Nutrition. If life is to go on at all,
this function must be discharged, and continuously

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 257

discharged. The primary characteristic of proto-
plasm, the physical basis of all life, is Hunger, and
this has dictated the first law of being — " Thou
shalt eat." What distinguishes scientifically the
organic from the inorganic, the animal from the
stone ? That the animal eats, the stone does
not. Almost all achievement in the early history
of the living world has been due to Hunger. For
millenniums nearly the whole task of Evolution was
to perfect the means of satisfying it, and in so
doing to perfect life itself. The lowest forms of
life are little more than animated stomachs, and in
higher groups the nutritive system is the first to
be developed, the first to function, and the last to
cease its work. Almost wholly, indeed, in the
earlier vicissitude of the race, and largely in the
more ordered course of later times, Hunger rules
the life and work and destiny of men ; and so pro-
foundly does this mysterious deity still dominate
the round of even the highest life that the noblest
occupations which engage the human mind must
be interrupted two or three times a day to do it
homage.

Whatever Man came ultimately to wish and to
achieve for himself, it was essential at first that
such arrangements should be made for him. The
machinery for his development had not only to be

258 THE ASCENT OF MAN

put into Nature, but he had to be placed in the
machine and held there, and brought back there as
often as he tried to evade it. To say that man
evolved himself, nevertheless, is as absurd as to say
that a newspaper prints itself. To say even that
the machinery evolved him is as preposterous as
to say of a poem that the printing-press made it
The ultimate problem is. Who made the machine ?
and Who thought the poem that was to be
printed ?

If you say that you do not unreservedly ap-
prove of the machine, that it lacerates as well
as binds, the difficulty is more real. But it is a
principle in the study of history to suspend judg-
ment both of the meaning and of the value of a
policy until the chain of sequences it sets in motion
should be worked out to its last fulfilment. When
the full tale of the Struggle for Life is told,
when the record of its victories is closed, when the
balance of its gains and losses has been struck, and
especially when it is proved that there actually
have been losses, it will be time to pass judgment
on its moral value. Of course this principle cuts
both ways ; it warns off a favourable as well as an
unfavourable verdict on the beneficence of the
system of things. But Evolution is a study in
history, and its results are largely known. And it

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 259

would be affectation to deny that on the whole
these results are good, and appear the worthier the
more we penetrate into their inner meaning. Men
forget when they denounce the Struggle for Life,
that it is to be judged not only on the ground of
sentiment but of reason, that not its local or sur-
face effects only, but its permanent influence on the
order of the world, must be taken into account.

Even on the lower ranges of Nature the unfav-
ourable implications of the Struggle for Life have
probably been exaggerated. While it is essential to
an understanding of the course of evolution to
retain in the imagination a vivid sense of the
Struggle itself, we must beware of over-colouring
the representation, or flooding it with accompani-
ments of emotion borrowed from our own sensations.
The word Struggle at all in this connection is little
more than a metaphor. When it is said that an
animal struggles, all that is really meant is that
it lives. An animal, that is to say, does not, in
addition to all its other activities, have to employ
a vast number of special activities, to the exercise
of which the term Struggle is to be applied. It
is Life itself which is the Struggle : and the whole
Life, and the whole of the activities and powers
which make up Life are involved in it. To speak
of Struggle in the sense of some special and sepa-

26o THE ASCENT OF MAN

rate struggle, to conceive of battle, or even a series
of battles, is misleading, where all is struggle and
where all is battle. Especially must we beware
of reading into it our personal ideas with regard
to accompaniments of pain. The probabilities are
that the Struggle for Life in the lower creation is,
to say the least, less painful than it looks. Whether
we regard the dulness of the states of consciousness
among lower animals, or the fact that the condition
of danger must become habitual, or that death when
it comes is sudden, and unaccompanied by that
anticipation which gives it its chief dread to Man,
we must assume that whatever the Struggle for
Life subjectively means to the lower animals, it can
never approach in terror what it means to us. And
as to putting any moral content into it, until a
late stage in the world's development, that is
not to be thought of. Judged of even by later
standards there is much to relieve one's first
unfavourable impression. With exceptions, the
fight is a fair fight. As a rule there is no hate
in it, but only Hunger. It is seldom prolonged,
and seldom wanton. As to the manner of death,
it is generally sudden. As to the fact of death,
all animals must die. As to the meaning of
an existence prematurely closed, it is better to be
to be eaten than not to be at all. And, as to

i

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 261

the last result, it is better to be eaten out of the
world and, dying, help another to live, than pollute
the world by lingering decay. The most, after all,
that can be done with life is to give it to others.
Till Nature taught her creatures of their own free
will to offer the sacrifice, is it strange that she took
it by force ?

There are those indeed who frown upon Science
for predicating a Struggle for Life in Nature at all,
lest the facts should impugn the beneficence of the
universe. But Science did not invent the Struggle
for Life. It is there. What Science has really
done is to show not only its meaning but its great
moral purpose. There are others, again, like Mill,
who, seeing the facts, but not seeing that moral
purpose, impugn natural theology for still believing
in the beneficence of that purpose. Neither attitude,
probably, is quite worthy of the names with which
these conclusions are associated. Much more reason-
able are the verdicts of the two men who are first
responsible for bringing the facts before the world,
Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace and Mr. Darwin. "When
we reflect," says Mr. Darwin, "on this struggle, we
may console ourselves with the full belief that the
war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that
death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous,
the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply."

262 THE ASCENT OF MAN

And in much stronger language Mr. Wallace: "On
the whole, the popular idea of the struggle for
existence entailing misery and pain on the animal
world is the very reverse of the truth. What it really
brings about is the maximum of life and of the enjoy-
ment of life, with the minimum of suffering and pain.
Given the necessity of death and reproduction, and
without these there could have been no progressive
development of the organic world — and it is diffi-
cult even to imagine a system by which a greater
balance of happiness could have been secured." ^

We may safely leave Nature here to look after her
own ethic. That a price, a price in pain, and assuredly
sometimes a very terrible price, has been paid for
the evolution of the world, after all is said, is certain.
There may be difference of opinion as to the amount
of this price, but on one point there can be no
dispute — that even at the highest estimate the thing
which was bought with it was none too dear. For
that thing was nothing less than the present pro-
gress of the world. The Struggle for Life has been
a victorious struggle ; it has succeeded in its stu-
pendous task ; and there is nothing of order or
beauty or perfection in living Nature that does not
owe something to its having been carried on. The
first duty of those who demur to the cost of pro-
^ Darwinism^ pp. 30-40

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 263

gress is to make sure that they comprehend in all
its richness the infinity of the gift this sacrifice has
purchased for humanity. The end of the Struggle
for Life is not battle ; it is not even victory, it is
evolution. The result is not wounds, it is health.
Nature is a vast and complicated system of devices
to keep things changing, adjusting, and, as it seems,
progressing. The Struggle for Life is a species of
necessitated aspiration, the vis a tergo which keeps
living things in motion. It does not follow, of
course, that that motion should be upward ; that is
dependent on other considerations. But the point
to mark is, that without the struggle for food and
the pressure of want, without the conflict with foes
and the challenge of climate, the world would be
left to stagnation. Change, adventure, temptation,
vicissitude even to the verge of calamity, these are
the life of the world.

There is another side to this principle from which
its higher significance becomes still more apparent.
It follows from the Struggle for Life that those
animals which struggle most successfully will pros-
per, while the less successful will disappear — hence
the well-known principle of Natural Selection or
the Survival of the Fittest. Waiving the discussion
of this law in general, and the varying meanings
which " fitness " assumes as we rise in the scale of

264 THE ASCENT OF MAN

being, observe the r61e it plays in Nature. The
object of the Survival of the Fittest is to produce
fitness. And it does so both negatively and posi-
tively. In the first place it produces fitness by
killing off the unfit. Without the rigorous weeding
out of the imperfect the progress of the world had
not been possible. If fit and unfit indiscriminately
had been allowed to live and reproduce their kind,
every improvement which any individual might
acquire would be degraded to the common level in
the course of a few generations. Progress can only
start by one or two individuals shooting ahead of
their species ; and their life-gain can only be con-
served by their being shut off from their species
— or by their species being shut off from them.
Unless shut off from their species their acquisition
will either be neutralized in the course of time
by the swamping effect of inter-breeding with the
common herd, or so diluted as to involve no real
advance. The only chance for Evolution, then, is
either to carry off these improved editions into
" physiological isolation," or to remove the unim-
proved editions by wholesale death. The first of
these alternatives is only occasionally possible ; the
second always. Hence the death of the unevolved,
or of the unadapted in reference to some new and
higher relation with environment, is essential to

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 265

the perpetuation of a useful variation. Although
Natural Selection by no means invariably works in
the direction of progress, — in parasites it has con-
summated almost utter degeneration, — no progress
can take place without it. It is only when one
considers the working of the Struggle for Life on
the large scale, and realizes its necessity to the
Evolution of the world as a whole, that one can
even begin to discuss its ethical or teleological
meanings. To make a fit world, the unfit at every
stage must be made to disappear; and if any self-
acting law can bring this about, though its bear-
ing upon this or that individual case may seem
unjust, its necessity for the world as a whole is
vindicated. If more of any given species are born
into the world than can possibly find food, and if
a given number must die, that number must be
singled out upon some principle ; and we can-
not quarrel with the principle in Physical Nature
which condemns to death the worst. By placing
the death-penalty upon the slightest shortcoming,
Natural Selection so discourages imperfection as
practically to eliminate it from the world. The
fact that any given animal is alive at all is
almost a token of its perfectness. Nothing living
can be wholly a failure. For the moment that
it fails, it ceases to live. Something more fit,

266 THE ASCENT OF MAN

were it even by a hairbreadth, secures its place ; so
that all existing lives must, with reference to their
environment, be the best possible lives. Natural
Selection is the means employed in Nature to bring
about perfect health, perfect wholeness, perfect
adaptation, and in the long run the Ascent of all
living things.

This being so, the Law of the Struggle for Life
is elevated to a unique place in Nature as a first
necessity of progress. It involves that every living
thing in Nature shall live its best, that every resource
shall be called out to its utmost, that every indi-
vidual faculty shall be kept in the most perfect
order and work up to its fullest strength. So far
from being a drag on life, it is the one thing which
not only makes life go on at all, but which in
the very act perfects it. The result may sometimes
involve the dethroning of a species, or its entire
extinction : it may lead in the case of others to
degeneration ; but in the end it must result in the
gradual perfecting of organisms upon the whole,
and the steady advance of the final type. In
fixing the eye on the murderous side of this
Struggle, it is therefore well to remember to
what it leads. There could be no higher end
in the universe than to make a perfect world,
and no more perfect law than that which at the

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 267

same moment eliminates the unfit and establishes
the fit. Too frequently the moralist's attention is
diverted to the negative side, to what seems the
quite immoral spectacle of the massacre of the
innocent, the rout and murder of the unfit. But
in earlier Nature there is no such word as inno-
cent; and no ethical meaning at that stage can
attach itself to the term * unfit' Fitness in the
stormy days of the world's animal youth was neces-
sarily fighting-fitness ; no higher end was present
anywhere than simply to gain for life a footing in
the world, and perfect it up to the highest physical
form. The creature which did that fulfilled its
destiny, and no higher destiny was possible or con-
ceivable. The Survival of the Fittest, of course, does
not mean the survival of the strongest. It means
the Survival of the Adapted — the survival of the
most fitted to the circumstances which surround
it. A fish survives in water when a leaking iron-
clad goes to the bottom, not because it is stronger
but because it is better adapted to the element
in which it lives. A Texas bull is stronger than
a mosquito, but in an autumn drought the bull
dies, the mosquito lives. Fitness to survive is
simply fittedness, and has nothing to do with
strength or courage, or intelligence or cunning as
such, but only with adjustments as fit or unfit to

268 THE ASCENT OF MAN

the world around. A prize-fighter is stronger than
a cripple ; but in the environment of modern life
the cripple is cared for by the people, is judged
fit to live by a moral world, while the pugilist,
handicapped by his very health, has to conduct
his own struggle for existence. Physical fitness
here is actually a disqualification ; what was once
unfitness is now fitness to survive. As we rise
in the scale, the physical fitness of the early world
changes to fitness of a different quality, and this
law becomes the guardian of a moral order. In
one era the race is to the swift, in another the
meek inherit the earth. In a material world social
survival depends on wealth, health, power ; in a
moral world the fittest are the weak, the pitiable,
the poor. Thus there comes a time when this
very law, in securing survival for those who would
otherwise sink and fall, is the minister of moral
ends.

When we pass from the animal and the savage
states to watch the working of the Struggle for
Life in later times, the impression deepens that,
after all, the " gladiatorial theory " of existence has
much to say for itself. To trace its progress fur-
ther is denied us for the present, but observe before
we close what it connotes in modern life. Its
lineal descendants are two in number, and they

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 2t^

have but to be named to show the enormous place
this factor has been given to play in the world's
destiny. The first is War, the second is Industry.
These in all their forms and ramifications are simply
the primitive Struggle continued on the social and
political plane. War is not a casual thing like a
thunderstorm, nor a specific thing like a battle.
It is that ancient Struggle for Life carried over
from the animal kingdom, which, in the later
as in the earlier world, has been so perfect an
instrument of evolution. Along with Industry, and
for a time before it, War was the foster-mother
of civilization. The patron of the heroic virtues,
the purifier of societies, the solidifier of states,
the military form of this Struggle — despite the
awful balance on the other side — stands out on
every page of history as the maker and educator
of the human race. Industry is but the same
Struggle in another disguise. The industrial
conflict of to-day is the old attempt of primitive
Man to get the most out of Nature — to grow
foods, to find clothes, to raise fuel, to gain
wealth. Owing to the ever-increasing number
of the Strugglers the supplies fall short of the
demands, with the result of perpetuating on the
industrial plane, and often in hard and degrading
forms, the primitive Struggle for Life. When

270 THE ASCENT OF MAN

society wonders at its labour troubles it forgets that
Industry is a stage but one or two removes from
the purely animal Struggle. And when morality
impugns the Struggle for Life, it forgets that nearly
the whole later fabric of civilization is its creation.
But one has only to look at these further phases
of the Struggle to observe the most important fact
of all — the change that passes over the principle
as time goes on. Examine it on the higher levels
as carefully as we have examined it on the lower,
and though the crueler elements persist with fatal
and appalling vigour, there are whole regions, and
daily enlarging regions, where every animal feature
is discredited, discouraged, or driven away. Already,
with the social tragedy still at its height around
us, the amelioration in many directions makes
constant progress ; and partly through the rise of
opposing forces, and partly through the very
civilization which it has helped to create, the
maligner power must disappear. The Struggle
for Life, as life's dynamic, can never wholly cease.
In the keenness of its energies, the splendour of
its stimulus, its bracing effect on character, its
wholesome tensions throughout the whole range
of action, it must remain with us to the end.
But in the virulence of its animal qualities it
must surely pass away. There are those who,

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 271

without reflecting on this quahtative change, would
govern Society by the merely animal Struggle ;
those who claim for this the sanction of Nature,
and lay down the principle of selfishness as the
eternally working law. The eternal law, as we
shall presently see, is unselfishness. But even the
selfishness of early Nature loses its sting with time ;
the self that is in it becomes a higher self; and
the world in which it acts is so much a better
world that if self gave full rein to the animal it
would be instantly extinguished.

The amelioration of the Struggle for Life is
the most certain prophecy of Science. If this
universe is a moral universe, it was a necessity
that sooner or later this conflict should abate, that
in the course of Evolution this particular change
should come, that there should be put into the very
machinery of Nature that which should bring it
about. And what do we find? We find the Animal
side of the Struggle for Life attacked in such
directions, and with such weapons, that its defeat
is sure. These weapons are in the armoury of
Nature ; they have been there from the begin-
ning ; and they are now engaged upon the enemy
so hotly and so openly that we can discover
what some of them are. The first is one which
has begun to mine the Struggle for Life at its

272 THE ASCENT OF MAN

roots. Essentially, as we have seen, the Struggle
for Life is the attempt to solve the fundamental
problem of all life — Nutrition. If that could be
solved apart from the Struggle for Life, its occu-
pation would be gone. Now, it is more than
probable that that problem will be otherwise solved.
It will be solved by science. At the present moment
Chemistry is devoting itself to the experiment of
manufacturing nutrition^ and with an enthusiasm
which only immediate hope begets. It is not the
visionaries who have dared to prophesy here.
In a hundred laboratories the problem is being
practically worked out, and, as one of the highest
authorities assures us, " The time is not far distant
when the artificial preparation of articles of food
will be accomplished." ^ Already, through the
labours of other sciences, the Struggle for Food
has been made infinitely easier than it was ; but
when the immediate quest succeeds, and the food
of Man is made direct from the elements, the
Struggle in all its coarser forms will practically
be abolished. Civilization cannot ease the whole
burden at once ; the Struggle for Life will go on,
but it will be the Struggle with its fangs drawn.

But there is a higher hope than Science. At-
tacked from below by Man's intellect, the final
* Prof. Remsen, M^'Clur^s Magazine^ Jan., 1894.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 273

blow will be struck from a deeper source. It is
impossible to conceive that the Ascent of Man
should always depend upon his appetites, that " in
God's world there should be nothing better to
attract him than food and raiment, that he should
take no single step towards a higher life, except
when driven to it. As there comes a time in a
child's life when coercion gives place to free and
conscious choice, the day comes to the world
when the aspirations of the spirit begin to com-
pete with, to neutralize, and to supplant the
compulsions of the body. Against that day, in
the heart of humanity, Nature had made full
provision. For there, prepared by a profounder
chemistry than that which was to relieve the
strain on the physical side, had gathered through
the ages a force in whose presence the energies
of the Animal Struggle are as naught. Beside
the Struggle for the Life of Others the Struggle
for Life is but a passing phase. As old, as
deeply sunk in Nature, this further force was
destined from the first to replace the Struggle
for Life, and to build a nobler superstructure
on the foundations which it laid. To establish
these foundations was all that the Animal
Struggle was ever designed to do. It has laid
them well ; yet it is only when the Struggle

274 THE ASCENT OF MAN

for Life stands projected against the larger
influence with which all through history — and in
an infinitely profound sense through moral history
— it has been allied, that at once its worth and
its ignominy are seen.

I

CHAPTER VII

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF
OTHERS

\T TE now open a wholly new, and by far the
' ^ most important, chapter in the Evolution
of Man. Up to this time we have found for him
a Body, and the rudiments of Mind. But Man is
not a Body, nor a Mind. The temple still awaits
its final tenant — the higher human Soul.

With a Body alone, Man is an animal: the high-
est animal, yet a pure animal; struggling for its own
narrow life, living for its small and sordid ends.
Add a Mind to that and the advance is infinite.
The Struggle for Life assumes the august form of
a struggle for light : he who was once a savage,
pursuing the arts of the chase, realizes Aristotle's
ideal man, " a hunter after Truth." Yet this is not
the end. Experience tells us that Man's true life
is neither lived in the material tracts of the body,

275

276 THE ASCENT OF MAN

nor in the higher altitudes of the intellect, but
in the warm world of the affections. Till he is
equipped with these, Man is not human. He reaches
his full height only when Love becomes to him the
breath of life, the energy of will, the summit of
desire. There at last lies all happiness, and good-
ness, and truth, and divinity :

"For the loving worm within its clod
Were diviner than a loveless God."

That Love did not come down to us through
the Struggle for Life, the only great factor in
Evolution which up ' to this time has been dwelt
upon, is self-evident. It has a lineage all its own.
Yet inexplicable though the circumstance be, the
history of this force, the most stupendous the world
has ever known, has scarcely even begun to be
investigated. Every other principle in Nature has
had a thousand prophets ; but this supreme dynamic
has run its course through the ages unobserved ; its
rise, so far as science is concerned, is unknown; its
story has never been told. But if any phenomenon
or principle in Nature is capable of treatment under
the category of Evolution, this is. Love is not a
late arrival, an after-thought, with Creation. It is
not a novelty of a romantic civilization. It is not
a pious word of religion. Its roots began to grow
with the first cell of life which budded on this

%

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 277

earth. How great it is the history of humanity
bears witness ; but how old it is and how solid,
how bound up with the very constitution of the
world, how from the first of time an eternal part of
it, we are only now beginning to perceive. For the
Evolution of Love is a piece of pure Science. Love
did not descend out of the clouds like rain or snow.
It was distilled on earth. And few of the romances
which in after years were to cluster round this im-
mortal word are more wonderful than the story of
its birth and growth. Partly a product of crushed
lives and exterminated species, and partly of the
choicest blossoms and sweetest essences that ever
came from the tree of life, it reached its spiritual
perfection after a history the most strange and
chequered that the pages of Nature have to
record. What Love was at first, how crude and
sour and embryonic a thing, it is impossible to
conceive. But from age to age, with immeasurable
faith and patience, by cultivations continuously re-
peated, by transplantings endlessly varied, the un-
recognizable germ of this new fruit was husbanded
to its maturity, and became the tree on which
humanity, society, and civilization were ultimately
borne.

As the story of Evolution is usually told, Love —
the evolved form, as we shall see, of the Struggle

278 THE ASCENT OF MAN

for the Life of Others — has not even a place. Al-
most the whole emphasis of science has fallen upon
the opposite — the animal Struggle for Life. Hunger
was early seen by the naturalists to be the first and
most imperious appetite of all living things, and the
course of Nature came to be erroneously interpreted
in terms of a never-ending strife. Since there are
vastly more creatures born than can ever survive,
since for every morsel of food provided a hundred
claimants appear, life to an animal was described to
us as one long tragedy ; and Poetry, borrowing the
imperfect creed, pictured Nature only as a blood-
red fang. Before we can go on to trace the
higher progress of Love itself, it is necessary to
correct this misconception. And no words can be
thrown away if they serve, in whatever imperfect
measure, to restore to honour what is in reality the
supreme factor in the Evolution of the world. To
interpret the whole course of Nature by the
Struggle for Life is as absurd as if one were to
define the character of St. Francis by the tempers of
his childhood. Worlds grow up as well as infants ;
their tempers change, the better nature opens
out, new objects of desire appear, higher activi-
ties are added to the lower. The first chapter or
two of the story of Evolution may be headed the
Struggle for Life; but take the book as a whole

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 279

and it is not a tale of battle. It is a Love-
story.

The circumstances, as has been already pointed
out in the Introduction, under which the world at
large received its main impression of Evolution,
obscured these later and happier features. The
modern revival of the Evolution theory occurred
almost solely in connection with investigations in the
lower planes of Nature, and was due to the stim-
ulus of the pure naturalists, notably of Mr. Darwin.
But what Mr. Darwin primarily undertook to ex-
plain was simply the Origin of Species. His work
was a study in infancies, in rudiments ; he em-
phasized the earliest forces and the humblest phases
of the world's development. The Struggle for Life
was there the most conspicuous fact — at least, on
the surface ; it formed the key-note of his teaching ;
and the tragic side of Nature fixed itself in the
popular mind. The mistake the world made was
two-fold : it mistook Darwinism for Evolution —
a specific theory of Evolution applicable to a
single department for a universal scheme ; and
it misunderstood Mr. Darwin himself That the
foundations of Darwinism — or what was taken for
Darwinism — were the foundations of all Nature was
assumed. Dazzled with the apparent solidity of
this foundation, men made haste to run up a

28o THE ASCENT OF MAN

Structure which included the whole vast range of
life — vegetal, animal, social — based on a law which
explained but half the facts, and was only relevant,
in the crude form in which it was universally stated,
for the childhood of the world. It was impossible
for such an edifice to stand. Natural history cannot
in any case cover the whole facts of human history,
and, so interpreted, can only fatally distort them.
The mistake had been largely qualified had Mr.
Darwin's followers even accepted his foundation
in its first integrity ; but, perhaps because the
author of the theory himself but dimly apprehended
the complement of his thesis, few seem to have
perceived that anything was amiss. Mr. Darwin's
sagacity led him distinctly to foresee that narrow
interpretations of his great phrase " Struggle for
Existence" were certain to be made; and in the
opening chapters of the Origin of Species^ he
warns us that the term must be applied in its
" large and metaphorical sense, including depend-
ence of one being on another, and including (which
is more important) not only the life of the individual,
but success in leaving progeny." ^ In spite of this
warning, his overmastering emphasis on the individ-
ual Struggle for Existence seems to have obscured,
if not to his own mind, certainly to almost all his
' Origin of Species^ 6th edition, p. 50.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 281

followers, the truth that any other great factor in
Evolution existed.

The truth is there are two Struggles for Life in
every living thing — the Struggle for Life, and the
Struggle for the Life of Others. The web of life
is woven upon a double set of threads, the second
thread distinct in colour from the first, and giving
a totally different pattern to the finished fabric.
As the whole aspect of the after-world depends
on this distinction of strands in the warp, it
is necessary to grasp the distinction with the
utmost clearness. Already, in the introductory
chapter, the nature of the distinction has been
briefly explained. But it is necessary to be ex-
plicit here, even to redundancy. We have arrived
at a point from which the Ascent of Man takes a
fresh departure, a point from which the course of
Evolution begins to wear an entirely altered as-
pect. No such consummation ever before occurred
in the progress of the world as the rise to potency
in human life of the Struggle for the Life of
Others. The Struggle for the Life of Others is
the physiological name for the greatest word of
ethics — Other-ism, Altruism, Love. From Self-ism
to Other-ism is the supreme transition of history.
It is therefore impossible to lodge in the mind
with too much solidity the simple biological fact

282 THE ASCENT OF MAN

on which the Altruistic Struggle rests. Were this
a late phase of Evolution, or a factor applicable
to single genera, it would still be of supreme
importance ; but it is radical, universal, involved
in the very nature of life itself. As matter is to
be interpreted by Science in terms of its properties,
life is to be interpreted in terms of its functions.
And when we dissect down to that form of matter
with which all life is associated, we find it already
discharging, in the humblest organisms visible by
the microscope, the function on which the stupen-
dous superstructure of Altruism indirectly comes to
rest. Take the tiniest protoplasmic cell, immerse
it in a suitable medium, and presently it will
perform two great acts — the two which sum up
life, which constitute the eternal distinction be-
tween the living and the dead — Nutrition and
Reproduction. At one moment, in pursuance of
the Struggle for Life, it will call in matter from
without, and assimilate it to itself ; at another
moment, in pursuance of the Struggle for the Life
of Others, it will set a portion of that matter
apart, add to it, and finally give it away to form
another life. Even at its dawn life is receiver and
giver ; even in protoplasm is Self-ism and Other-
ism. These two tendencies are not fortuitous.
They have been lived into existence. They are

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 283

not grafts on the tree of life, they are its nature,
its essential life. They are not painted on the
canvas, but woven through it.

The two main activities, then, of all living things
are Nutrition and Reproduction. The discharge of
these functions in plants, and largely in animals,
sums up the work of life. The object of Nutrition
is to secure the life of the individual ; the object of
Reproduction is to secure the life of the Species.
These two objects are thus wholly different. The
first has a purely personal end ; its attention is
turned inwards ; it exists only for the present.
The second in a greater or less degree is im-
personal ; its attention is turned outwards ; it lives
for the future. One of these objects, in other
words, is Self-regarding; the other is Other-regard-
ing. Both, of course, at the outset are wholly
selfish ; both are parts of the Struggle for Life.
Yet see already in this non-ethical region a parting
of the ways. Selfishness and unselfishness are two
supreme words in the moral life. The first, even
in physical Nature, is accompanied by the second.
In the very fact that one of the two mainsprings
of life is Other-regarding there lies a prophecy, a
suggestion, of the day of Altruism. In organiz-
ing the physiological mechanism of Reproduction
in plants and animals Nature was already laying

284 THE ASCENT OF MAN

wires on which, one far-off day, the currents of all
higher things might travel.

In itself, this second Struggle, this effort to main-
tain the life of the species, is not less real than the
first ; the provisions for effecting it are not less
wonderful ; the whole is not less a part of the
system of things. And, taken prophetically, the
function of Reproduction is as much greater than
the function of Nutrition as the Man is greater
than the Animal, as the Soul is higher than the
Body, as Co-operation is stronger than Competition,
as Love is stronger than Hate. If it were ever to
be charged against Nature that she was wholly
selfish, here is the refutation at the very start.
One of the two fundamental activities of all life,
whether plant or animal, is Other-regarding. It is
not said that the function of Reproduction, say in
a fern or in an oak, is an unselfish act, yet in a
sense, even though begotten of self, it is an other-
regarding act. In the physical world, to speak of
the Struggle for Food as selfish, or to call the
Struggle for Species unselfish, are alike incongruous.
But if the morality of Nature is impugned on the
ground of the universal Struggle for Life, it is at
least as relevant to refute the charge by putting
moral content into the universal Struggle for Species.
No true moral content can be put into either, yet

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 285

the one marks the beginning of Egoism, the other
of Altruism. Almost the whole self-seeking side of
things has come down the line of the individual
Struggle for Life ; almost the whole unselfish side
of things is rooted in the Struggle to preserve
the life of others.

That an Other-regarding principle should sooner
or later appear on the world's stage was a necessity
if the world was ever to become a moral world.
And as everything in the moral world has what
may be called a physical basis to begin with, it is
not surprising to find in the mere physiological
process of Reproduction a physical forecast of the
higher relations, or, more accurately, to find the
higher relations manifesting themselves at first
through physical relations. The Struggle for the
Life of Others formed an indispensable stepping-
stone to the development of the Other-regarding
virtues. Nature always works with long roots.
To conduct Other-ism upward into the higher
sphere without miscarriage, and to establish it
there for ever. Nature had to embed it in the most
ancient past, so organizing and endowing proto-
plasm that life could not go on without it, and
compelling its continuous activity by the sternest
physiological necessity.

To say that there is a certain protest of the

286 THE ASCENT OF MAN

mind against associating the highest ethical ends
with forces in their first stage almost physical, is
to confess a truth which all must feel. Even
Haeckel, in contrasting the tiny rootlet of sex-
attraction between two microscopic cells with the
mighty after-efflorescence of love in the history of
mankind, is staggered at the audacity of the thought,
and pauses in the heart of a profound scientific
investigation to reflect upon it After a panegyric
in which he says, " We glorify love as the source of
the most splendid creations of art ; of the noblest
productions of poetry, of plastic art and of music ; we
reverence in it the most powerful factor in human
civilization, the basis of family life, and, conse-
quently, of the development of the state"; . . .
he adds, " So wonderful is love, and so immeasur-
ably important is its influence on mental life, that
in this point, more than in any other, 'supernatural'
causation seems to mock every natural explana-
tion." It is the mystery of Nature, that between
the loftiest spiritual heights and the lowliest phys-
ical depths, there should seem to run a pathway
which the intellect of Man may climb. Haeckel
has spoken, and rightly, from the standpoint of
humanity ; yet he continues, and with equal right,
from the standpoint of the naturalist. " Notwith-
standing all this, the comparative history of evclu-

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 287

tion leads us back very clearly and indubitably to
the oldest and simplest source of love, to the elect-
ive affinity of two differing cells." ^

SELF-SACRIFICE IN NATURE

It is not, however, in Haeckel's " elective affinity
of differing cells" that we must seek the physical
basis of Altruism. That may be the physical
basis of a passion which is frequently miscalled
Love ; but Love itself, in its true sense as Self-
sacrifice, Love with all its beautiful elements of
sympathy, tenderness, pity, and compassion, has
come down a wholly different line. It is well to
be clear about this at once, for the function of
Reproduction suggests to the biological mind a
view of this factor which would limit its action to
a sphere which in reality forms but the merest seg-
ment of the whole. The Struggle for the Life of
Others has certainly connected with it sex relations,
as we shall see ; but we can only use it scientifically
in its broad physiological sense, as literally a Strug-
gling for Others, a giving up self for Others. And
these others are not Other-sexes. They have noth-
ing to do with sex. They are the fruits of Repro-
duction— the egg^ the seed, the nestling, the little
^ Haeckel, Evolution of Man, Vol. 11., p. 394.

288 THE ASCENT OF MAN

child. So far from its chief manifestation being
within the sphere of sex it is in the care and
nurture of the young, in the provision everywhere
throughout Nature for the seed and ^%g^ in the
endless and infinite self-sacrifices of Maternity, that
Altruism finds its main expression.

That this is the true reading of the work of
this second factor appears even in the opening act
of Reproduction in the lowest plant or animal.
Pledged by the first law of its being — the law of
self-preservation — to sustain itself, the organism is
at the same moment pledged by the second law to
give up itself Watch one of the humblest uni-
cellular organisms at the time of Reproduction.
The cell, when it grows to be a certain size, divides
itself into two, and each part sets up an independent
life. Why it does so is now known. The proto-
plasm inside the cell — the body as it were — needs
continually to draw in fresh food. This is secured
by a process of imbibition or osmosis through the
surrounding wall. But as the cell grows large,
there is not wall enough to pass in all the food
the far interior needs, for while the bulk increases
as the cube of the diameter the surface increases
only as the square. The bulk of the cell, in
short, has outrun the absorbing surface; its hunger
has outgrown its satisfactions ; and unless the cell

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 289

can devise some way of gaining more surface it
must starve. Hence the splitting into two smaller
cells. There is now more absorbing surface than
the two had when combined. When the two
smaller cells have grown as large as the original
parent, income and expenditure will once more
balance. As growth continues, the waste begins
to exceed the power of repair and the life of
the cell is again threatened. The alternatives are
obvious. It must divide, or die. If it divides,
what has saved its life ? Self-sacrifice. By giving
up its life as an individual it has brought forth
two individuals, and these will one day repeat the
surrender. Here, with differences appropriate to
their distinctive spheres, is the first great act of the
moral life. All life, in the beginning, is self-con-
tained, self-centred, imprisoned in a single cell. The
first step to a more abundant life is to get rid of
this limitation. And the first act of the prisoner
is simply to break the walls of its cell. The plant
does this by a mechanical or physiological process;
the moral being by a conscious act which means
at once the breaking-up of Self-ism and the re-
covery of a larger self in Altruism. Biologically,
Reproduction begins as rupture. It is the release
of the cell, full-fed, yet unsatiated, from itself
" Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and

290 THE ASCENT OF MAN

die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it bringeth
forth much fruit."

These facts are not coloured to suit a purpose.
There is no other language in which science itself
can state them. " Reproduction begins as rupture.
Large cells beginning to die, save their lives by
sacrifice. Reproduction is literally a life-saving
against the approach of death. Whether it be the
almost random rupture of one of the more primitive
forms such as SchizogeneSy or the overflow and
separation of multiple buds as in Arcella^ or the
dissolution of a few of the Infusorians, an organism,
which is becoming exhausted, saves itself and multi-
plies in reproducing."^ There is no Reproduction
in plant, animal, or Man which does not involve
self-sacrifice. All that is moral, and social, and
other-regarding has come along the line of this
function. Sacrifice, moreover, as these physiological
facts disclose, is not an accident, nor an accom-
paniment of Reproduction, but an inevitable part
of it. It is the universal law and the universal
condition of life. The act of fertilization is the
anabolic restoration, renewal, and rejuvenescence of
a katabolic cell : it is a resurrection of the dead
brought about by a sacrifice of the living, a dying
of part of life in order to further life.
* Thf EvQlution of Sex^ page 232.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 291

Pass from the unicellular plant to one of the
higher phanerogams, and the self-sacrificing function
is seen at work with still greater definiteness, for
there we have a clearer contrast with the other
function. To the physiologist a tree is not simply
a tree, but a complicated piece of apparatus for
discharging, in the first place, the function of Nutri-
tion. Root, trunk, branch, twig, leaf, are so many
organs — mouths, lungs, circulatory-system, aliment-
ary canal — for carrying on to the utmost perfection
the Struggle for Life. But this is not all. There
is another piece of apparatus within this apparatus
of a wholly different order. It has nothing to do
with Nutrition. It has nothing to do with the
Struggle for Life. It is the flower. The more its
parts are studied, in spite of all homologies, it
becomes more clear that this is a construction of a
unique and wonderful character. So important has
this extra apparatus seemed to science, that it has
named the great division of the vegetable kingdom
to which this and all higher plants belong, the
Phanerogams — the flowering plants ; and it recog-
nizes the complexity and physiological value of
this reproductive specialty by giving them the place
of honour at the top of the vegetable creation.
Watch this flower at work for a little, and behold
a miracle. Instead of struggling for life it lays

292 THE ASCENT OF MAN.

down its life. After clothing itself with a beauty
which is itself the minister of unselfishness, it
droops, it wastes, it lays down its life. The tree
still lives ; the other leaves are fresh and green ;
but this life within a life is dead. And why ?
Because within this death is life. Search among
the withered petals, and there, in a cradle of cunning
workmanship, are a hidden progeny of clustering
seeds — the gift to the future which this dying
mother has brought into the world at the cost of
leaving it. The food she might have lived upon
is given to her children, stored round each tiny
embryo with lavish care, so that when they waken
into the world the first helplessness of their hunger
is met. All the arrangements in plant-life which
concern the flower, the fruit, and the seed are the
creations of the Struggle for the Life of Others.
No one, though science is supposed to rob all
the poetry from Nature, reverences a flower like the
biologist. He sees in its bloom the blush of the
young mother ; in its fading, the eternal sacrifice of
Maternity. A yellow primrose is not to him a
yellow primrose. It is an exquisite and complex
structure added on to the primrose plant for the
purpose of producing other primrose plants. At
the base of the flower, packed in a delicate casket,
lie a number of small white objects no larger than

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 293

butterflies' eggs. These are the eggs of the primrose.
Into this casket, by a secret opening, filmy tubes
from the pollen grains — now enticed from their
hiding-place on the stamens and clustered on the
stigma — enter and pour their fertilizing fovilla
through a microscopic gateway which opens in the
wall of the Ggg and leads to its inmost heart.
Mysterious changes then proceed. The embryo of
a future primrose is born. Covered with many
protective coats, it becomes a seed. The original
casket swells, hardens, is transformed into a rounded
capsule opening by valves or a deftly constructed
hinge. One day this capsule, crowded with seeds,
breaks open and completes the cycle of Reproduc-
tion by dispersing them over the ground. There,
by and by, they will burst their enveloping coats,
protrude their tiny radicles, and repeat the cycle
of their parents' sacrificial life.

With endless variations in detail, these are the
closing acts in the Struggle for the Life of Others
in the vegetable world. We have illustrated the
point from plants, because this is the lowest region
where biological processes can be seen in action,
and it is essential to establish beyond dispute the
fundamental nature of the reproductive function.
From this level onwards it might be possible to
trace its influence, and growing influence, through-

294 THE ASCENT OF MAN

out the whdie range of the animal kingdom until
it culminates in its most consummate expression —
a human mother. Some of the links in this un-
broken ascent will be filled in at a later stage —
for the Evolution of Maternity is so wonderful and
so intricate as to deserve a treatment of its own
— but meantime we must pass on to notice a few
of the other gifts which Reproduction has bestowed
upon the world. In a rigid sense, it is impossible
to separate the gains to humanity from the Repro-
ductive function as distinguished from those of the
Nutritive. They are co-operators, not competitors,
and their apparently rival paths continuously inter-
twine. But mark a few of the things that have
mainly grown up around this second function, and
decide whether or not it be a worthy ally of the
Struggle for Life in the Evolution of Man.

To begin at the most remote circumference, con-
sider what the world owes to-day to the Struggle
for the Life of Others in the world of plants.
This is the humblest sphere in which it can offer
any gifts at all, yet these are already of such a
magnitude that without them the higher world would
not only be inexpressibly the poorer, but could
not continue to exist. As we have just seen, all
the arrangements in plant life which concern the
flower are the creations of the Struggle for the

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 295

Life of Others. For Reproduction alone the flower
is created ; when the process is over it returns to
the dust. This miracle of beauty is a miracle
of Love. Its splendour of colour, its variegations,
its form, its symmetry, its perfume, its honey, its
very texture, are all notes of Love — Love-calls or
Love-lures or Love-provisions for the insect world,
whose aid is needed to carry the pollen from anther
to stigma, and perfect the development of its young.
Yet this is but a thing thrown in, in giving some-
thing else. The Flower, botanically, is the herald
of the Fruit. The Fruit, botanically, is the cradle
of the Seed. Consider how great these further
achievements are, how large a place in the world's
history is filled by these two humble things — the
Fruits and Seeds of plants. Without them the
Struggle for Life itself would almost cease. The
animal Struggle for Life is a struggle for what?
For Fruits and Seeds. All animals in the long run
depend for food upon Fruits and Seeds, or upon
lesser creatures which have utilized Fruits and Seeds.
Three-fourths of the population of the world at
the present moment subsist upon rice. What is
rice ? It is a seed ; a product of Reproduction.
Of the other fourth, three-fourths live upon grains —
barley, wheat, oats, millet. What are these grains ?
Seeds — stores of starch or albumen which, in the

296 THE ASCENT OF MAN

perfect forethought of Reproduction, plants bequeath
to their offspring. The foods of the world, especi-
ally the children's foods, are the foods of the
children of plants, the foods which unselfish activi-
ties store round the cradles of the helpless, so
that when the sun wakens them to their new
world they may not want. Every plant in the
world lives for Others. It sets aside something,
something costly, cared for, the highest expression
of its nature. The Seed is the tithe of Love, the
tithe which Nature renders to Man. When Man
lives upon Seeds he lives upon Love. Literally,
scientifically. Love is Life. If the Struggle for
Life has made Man, braced and disciplined him,
it is the Struggle for Love that sustains him.

Pass from the foods of Man to drinks, and the
gifts of Reproduction once more all but exhaust
the list. This may be mere coincidence, but a
coincidence which involves both food and drink
is at least worth noting. The first and universal
food of the world is milk, a product of Reproduc-
tion. All distilled spirits are products of Re-
production. All malted liquors are made from
the embryos of plants. All wines are juices of
the grape. Ev^en on the plane of the animal
appetites, in mere relation to Man's hunger and
his thirst, the factor of Reproduction is thus seen

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 297

to be fundamental. To interpret the course of
Evolution without this would be to leave the richest
side even of material Nature without an explanation.
Retrace the ground even thus hastily travelled
over, and see how full Creation is of meaning, of
anticipation of good for Man, how far back begins
the undertone of Love. Remember that nearly
all the beauty of the world is Love-beauty —
the corolla of the flower and the plume of the
grass, the lamp of the firefly, the plumage of
the bird, the horn of the stag, the face of a
woman ; that nearly all the music of the natural
world is Love-music — the song of the nightingale,
the call of the mammal, the chorus of the insect,
the serenade of the lover ; that nearly all the foods
of the world are Love-foods — the date and the
raisin, the banana and the bread-fruit, the locust
and the honey, the eggs, the grains, the seeds,
the cereals, and the legumes ; that all the drinks
of the world are Love-drinks — the juices of the
sprouting grain and the withered hop, the milk
from the udder of the cow, the wine from the
Love-cup of the vine. Remember that the Family,
the crown of all higher life, is the creation of
Love ; that Co-operation, which means power,
which means wealth, which means leisure, which
therefore means art and culture, recreation and

298 THE ASCENT OF MAN

education, is the gift of Love. Remember not
only these things, but the diffusions of feeling
which accompany them, the elevations, the ideals,
the happiness, the goodness, and the faitt in more
goodness, and ask if it is not a world of Love in
which we live.

CO-OPERA TION IN NA TURK

Though Co-operation is not exclusively the gift
of Reproduction, it is so closely related to it that
we may next observe a few of the fruits of
this most definitely altruistic principle. For here
is a principle, not merely a series of interesting
phenomena, profoundly rooted in Nature and
having for its immediate purpose the establishment
of Other-ism. In innumerable cases, doubtless,
Co-operation has been induced rather by the action
of the Struggle for Life — a striking circumstance
in itself, as showing how the very selfish side of
life has had to pay its debt to the larger law
— but in multitudes more it is directly allied with
the Struggle for the Life of Others.

For illustrations of the principle in general we
may begin with the very dawn of life. Every life
at first was a single cell. Co-operation was un-
known. Each cell was self-contained and self-suflfi-

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 299

cient, and as new cells budded from the parent they
moved away and set up life for themselves. This
self-sufficiency leads to nothing in Evolution. Uni-
cellular organisms may be multiplied to infinity,
but the vegetable kingdom can never rise in height,
or symmetry, or productiveness without some radical
change. But soon we find the co-operative principle
beginning its mysterious integrating work. Two,
three, four, eight, ten cells club together and form
a small mat, or cylinder, or ribbon — the humblest
forms of corporate plant-life — in which each indi-
vidual cell divides the responsibilities and the gains
of living with the rest. The colony succeeds ; grows
larger ; its co-operations become more close and
varied. Division of labour in new directions arises
for the common good ; leaves are organized for
nutrition, and special cells for reproduction. All
the organs increase in specialization ; and the time
arrives when from cryptogams the plant world
bursts into flowers. A flower is organized for
Co-operation. It is not an individual entity, but
a commune, a most complex social system. Sepal,
petal, stamen, anther, each has its separate r61e in
the economy, each necessary to the other and to
the life of the species as a whole. Mutual aid
having reached this stage can never be arrested
short of the extinction of plant-life itself

300 THE ASCENT OF MAN

Even after this stage, so triumphant is the success
of the Co-operative Principle, that having exhausted
the possibilities of further development within the
vegetable kingdom, it overflowed these boundaries
and carried the activities of flowers into regions
which the plant-world never invaded before. With
a novelty and audacity unique in organic Nature,
the higher flowering plants, stimulated by Co-oper-
ation, opened communication with two apparently
forever unrelated worlds, and established alliances
which secured from the subjects of these distant
states a perpetual and vital service. The history
of these relations forms the most entrancing chapter
in botanical science. But so powerfully has this
illustration of the principle appealed already to the
popular imagination that it becomes a mere form
to re-state it. What interests us anew in these
novel enterprises, nevertheless, is that they are
directly connected with the Reproductive Struggle.
For it is not for food that the plant-world voyages
into foreign spheres, but to perfect the supremer
labour of its life.

The vegetable world is a world of still life. No
higher plant has the power to move to help its
neighbour, or even to help itself, at the most critical
moment of its life. And it is through this very
helplessness that these new Co-operations are called

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 301

forth. The fertilizing pollen grows on one part of
the flower, the stigma which is to receive it grows
on another, or it may be on a different plant.
But as these parts cannot move towards one an-
other, the flower calls in the aid of moving things.
Unconscious of their vicarious service, the butterfly
and the bee, as they flit from flower to flower, or
the wind as it blows across the fields, carry the
fertilizing dust to the waiting stigma, and complete
that act without which in a generation the species
would become extinct. No flower in the world,
at least no entomophalous flower, can continuously
develop healthy offspring without the Co-operations
of an insect ; and multitudes of flowers without such
aid could never seed at all. It is to these Co-
operations that we owe all that is beautiful and
fragrant in the flower-world. To attract the insect
and recompense it for its trouble, a banquet of honey
is spread in the heart of the flower ; and to enable
the visitor to find the nectar, the leaves of the
flower are made showy or conspicuous beyond all
other leaves. To meet the case of insects which
love the dusk, many flowers are coloured white ;
for those which move about at night and cannot
see at all, the night-flowers load the darkness with
their sweet perfume. The loveliness, the variega-
tions of shade and tint, the ornamentations, the

302 THE ASCENT OF MAN

scents, the shapes, the sizes of flowers, are all the
gifts of Co-operation. The flower in every detail, in
fact, is a monument to the Co-operative Principle.

Scarcely less singular are the Co-operations
among flowers themselves, the better to attract the
attention of the insect world. Many flowers are so
small and inconspicuous that insects might not con-
descend to notice them. But Altruism is always
inventive. Instead of dispersing their tiny florets
over the plant, these club together at single points,
so that by the multitude of numbers an imposing
show is made. Each of the associating flowers in
these cases preserves its individuality, and — as we
see in the Elder or the Hemlock — continues to
grow on its own flower-stalk. But in still more
ingenious species the partners to a floral advertise-
ment sacrifice their separate stems and cluster close
together on a common head. The Thistle, for
example, is not one flower, but a colony of flowers,
each complete in all its parts, but all gaining the
advantage of conspicuousness by densely packing
themselves together. In the Sunflowers and many
others the sacrifice is carried still further. Of the
multitude of florets clustered together to form the
mass of colour, a few cease the development of
the reproductive organs altogether, and allow their
whole strength to go towards adding visibility to

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 303

the mass. The florets in the centre of the group,
packed close together, are unable to do anything in
this direction; but those on the margin expand the
perianth into a blazing circle of flame, and leave the
deep work of Reproduction to those within. What
are the advantages gained by all this mutual aid ?
That it makes them the fittest to survive. These
Co-operative Plants are among the most numerous,
most vigorous, and most widely diffused in Nature.
Self-sacrifice and Co-operation are thus recognized
as sound in principle. The blessing of Nature falls
upon them. The words themselves, in any more
than a merely physical sense, are hopelessly out
of court in any scientific interpretation of things.
But the point to mark is, that on the mechanical
equivalents of what afterwards come to have ethical
relations Natural Selection places a premium. Non-
co-operative or feebly co-operative organisms go to
the wall. Those which give mutual aid survive
and people the world with their kind.

Without pausing to note the intricate Co-oper-
ations of flowers which reward the eye of the
specialist — the subtle alliance with Space in Dioe-
cious flowers ; with Time in Dichogamous species,
and with Size in the Dimorphic and Trimorphic
forms — consider for a moment the extension of
the principle to the Seed and Fruit. Helpless,

304 THE ASCENT OF MAN

single-handed, as is a higher plant, with regard to
the efficient fertilizing of its flowers, an almost
more difficult problem awaits it when it comes
to the dispersal of its seeds. If each seed fell
where it grew, the spread of the species would
shortly be at an end. But Nature, working on
the principle of Co-operation, is once more redun-
dant in its provisions. By a series of new alli-
ances the offspring are given a start on distant
and unoccupied ground ; and so perfect are the
arrangements in this department of the Struggle
for the Life of Others that single plants, immov-
ably rooted in the soil, are yet able to distribute
their children over the world. By a hundred
devices the fruits and seeds when ripe are en-
trusted to outside hands — provided with wing or
parachute and launched upon the wind, attached
by cunning contrivances to bird and beast, or
dropped into stream and wave and ocean-current,
and so transported over the earth.

If we turn to the Animal Kingdom, the Principle
of Co-operation everywhere once more confronts us.
It is singular that, with few exceptions, science
should still know so little of the daily life of even
the common animals. A few favourite mammals,
some birds, three or four of the more picturesque
and clever of the insects — these almost exhaust

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 305

the list of those whose ways are thoroughly known.
But, looking broadly at Nature, one general fact
is striking — the more social animals are in over-
whelming preponderance over the unsocial. Mr.
Darwin's dictum, that " those communities which
included the greatest number of the most sym-
pathetic members would flourish best" is wholly
proved. Run over the names of the commoner or
more dominant mammals, and it will be found that
they are those which have at least a measure of
sociability. The cat-tribe excepted, nearly all live
together in herds or troops — the elephant, for in-
stance, the buffalo, deer, antelope, wild-goat, sheep,
wolf, jackal, reindeer, hippopotamus, zebra, hyena,
and seal. These are mammals^ observe — an associa-
tion of sociability in its highest developments with
reproductive specialization. Cases undoubtedly exist
where the sociability may not be referable primarily
to this function ; but in most the chief Co-operations
are centred in Love. So advantageous are all forms
of mutual service that the question may be fairly
asked, whether after all Co-operation and Sympathy
— at first instinctive, afterwards reasoned — are not
the greatest facts even in organic Nature? To quote
the words of Prince Kropotkin : "As soon as we
study animals — not in laboratories and museums
only, but in the forest and the prairie, in the steppes

3o6 THE ASCENT OF MAN

and the mountains — we at once perceive that though
there is an immense amount of warfare and ex-
termination going on amidst various species, and
especially amidst various classes of animals, there
is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps more, of
mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defence,
amidst animals belonging to the same species or,
at least, to the same society. Sociability is as
much a law of Nature as mutual struggle.
If we resort to an indirect test and ask Nature
* Who are the fittest : those who are continually at
war with each other, or those who support one
another ? ' we at once see that those animals which
acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the
fittest. They have more chances to survive, and
they attain, in their respective classes, the highest
development of intelligence and bodily organ-
ization. If the numberless facts which can
be brought forward to support this view are
taken into account, we may safely say that
mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as
mutual struggle ; but that, as a factor of evolu-
tion, it most probably has a far greater import-
ance, inasmuch as it favours the development
of such habits and character as ensure the main-
tenance and further development of the species,
together with the greatest amount of welfare and

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 307

enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least
waste of energy." ^

In the large economy of Nature, almost more
than within these specific regions, the interdepend-
ence of part with part is unalterably established.
The system of things, from top to bottom, is an
uninterrupted series of reciprocities. Kingdom
corresponds with kingdom, organic with inorganic.
Thus, to carry on the larger agriculture of Nature,
myriads of living creatures have to be retained in
the earth itself — in the earth — and to prepare and
renew the soils in which the otherwise exhausted
ground may keep up her continuous gifts of vege-
tation. Ages before Man appeared with his tools
of husbandry, these agriculturists of Nature — in
humid countries the Worm, in sub-tropical regions
the White Ant — ploughed and harrowed the earth,
so that without the Co-operations of these most
lowly forms of life, the higher beauty and fruit-
fulness of the world had been impossible. The
very existence of animal life, to take another case
of broad economy, is possible only through the
mediation of the plant. No animal has the power
to satisfy one single impulse of hunger without
the Co-operation of the vegetable world. It is
one of the mysteries of organic chemistry that the
^ Nineteenth Century^ 1 890, p. 340.

3o8 THE ASCENT OF MAN

Chlorophyll contained in the green parts of plants
alone among substances has the power to break
up the mineral kingdom and utilize the products
as food. Though detected recently in the tissues
of two of the very lowest animals, Chlorophyll is
the peculiar possession of the vegetable kingdom,
and forms the solitary point of contact between
Man and all higher animals and their supply of
food. Every grain of matter therefore eaten by
Man, every movement of the body, every stroke
of work done by muscle or brain, depends upon
the contribution of a plant, or of an animal
which has eaten a plant. Remove the vegetable
kingdom, or interrupt the flow of its unconscious
benefactions, and the whole higher life of the
world ends. Everything, indeed, came into being
because of something else, and continues to be
because of its relations to something else. The
matter of the earth is built up of co-operating
atoms ; it owes its existence, its motion, and its
stability to co-operating stars. Plants and animals
are made of co-operating cells, nations of co-
operating men. Nature makes no move. Society
achieves no end, the Cosmos advances not one
step that is not dependent on Co-operation ; and
while the discords of the world disappear with
growing knowledge. Science only reveals with

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 309

increasing clearness the universality of its reci-
procities.

But to return to the more direct effects of Re-
production. After creating Others there lay before
Evolution a not less necessary task — the task of
uniting them together. To create units in inde-
finite quantities and scatter them over the world
is not even to take one single step in progress.
Before any higher evolution can take place these
units must by some means be brought into relation
so as not only to act together, but to react upon
each other. According to well-known biological
laws, it is only in combinations, whether of atoms,
cells, animals, or human beings, that individual
units can make any progress, and to create such
combinations is in every case the first condition
of development. Hence the first commandment
of Evolution everywhere is " Thou shalt mass,
segregate, combine, grow large." Organic Evol-
ution, as Mr. Herbert Spencer tells us, " is pri-
marily the formation of an aggregate." No doubt
the necessities of the Struggle for Life tended
in many ways to fulfil this condition, and the
organization of primitive societies, both animal and
human, are largely its creation. Under its influence
these were called together for mutual protection and
mutual help ; and Co-operations induced in this

310 THE ASCENT OF MAN

way have played an important part in Evolution.
But the Co-operations brought about by Repro-
duction are at once more radical, more universal,
and more efficient. The Struggle for Life is in
part a disruptive force. The Struggle for the
Life of Others is wholly a social force. The
social efforts of the first are secondary; those of
the last are primary. And had it not been for
the stronger and unbreakable bond which the
Struggle for the Life of Others introduced into
the world, the organization of Societies had never
even been begun. How subtly Reproduction effects
its purpose an illustration will make plain. And
we shall select it again from the lowest world of
life, so that the fundamental nature of this factor
may be once more vindicated on the way.

More than two thousand years ago Herodotus
observed a remarkable custom in Egypt. At a
certain season of the year the Egyptians went
into the desert, cut off branches from the wild
palms, and, bringing them back to their gardens,
waved them over the flowers of the date-palm.
Why they performed this ceremony they did not
know ; but they knew that if they neglected it
the date crop would be poor or wholly lost.
Herodotus offers the quaint explanation that along
with these branches there came from the desert

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 311

certain flies possessed of a " vivific virtue," which
somehow lent an exuberant fertility to the dates.
But the true rationale of the incantation is now
explained. Palm trees, like human beings, are male
and female. The garden plants, the date bearers,
were females ; the desert plants were males ; and
the waving of the branches over the females meant
the transference of the fertilizing pollen dust from
the one to the other.

Now consider, in this far away province of the
vegetable kingdom, the strangeness of this pheno-
menon. Here are two trees living wholly different
lives, they are separated by miles of desert sand ;
they are unconscious of one another's existence ;
and yet they are so linked together that their
separation into two is a mere illusion. Physiologi-
cally they are one tree; they cannot dwell apart.
It is nothing to the point that they are neither
dowered with locomotion nor the power of conscious
choice. The point is that there is that in Nature
which unites these seemingly disunited things,
which effects combinations and co-operations where
one would least believe them possible, which
sustains by arrangements of the most elaborate
kind inter-relations between tree and tree. By a
device the most subtle of all that guard the
higher Evolution of the world — the device of Sex

312 THE ASCENT OF MAN

— Nature accomplishes this task of throwing irre-
sistible bonds around widely separate things, and
establishing such sympathies between them that
they must act together or forfeit the very life of
their kind. Sex is a paradox ; it is that which
separates in order to unite. The same mysterious
mesh which Nature threw over the two separate
palms, she threw over the few and scattered units
which were to form the nucleus of Mankind.

Picture the state of primitive Man ; his fear of
other primitive Men ; his hatred of them ; his
unsociability ; his isolation ; and think how great
a thing was done by Sex in merely starting the
crystallization of humanity. At no period, indeed,
was Man ever utterly alone. There is no such
thing in nature as a man^ or for the matter of
that as an animal, except among the very humblest
forms. Wherever there is a higher animal there is
another animal ; wherever there is a savage there
is another savage — the other half of him, a female
savage. This much, at least, Sex has done for the
world — it has abolished the numeral one. Observe,
it has not simply discouraged the existence of
one ; it has abolished the existence of one. The
solitary animal must die, and can leave no successor.
Unsociableness, therefore, is banished out of the
world : it has become the very condition of con-

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 313

tinued existence that there should always be a
family group, or at least pair. The determination
of Nature to lay the foundation stone of corporate
national life at this point, and to embed Sociability
for ever in the constitution of humanity, is only
obvious when we reflect with what extraordinary
thoroughness this Evolution of Sex was carried
out. There is no instance in Nature of Division
of Labour being brought to such extreme special-
ization. The two sexes were not only set apart
to perform different halves of the same function,
but each so entirely lost the power of perform-
ing the whole function that, even with so great
a thing at stake as the continuance of the
species, one could not discharge it. Association,
combination, mutual help, fellowship, affection —
things on which all material and moral progress
would ultimately turn — were thus forced upon the
world at the bayonet's point.

This hint, that the course of development is
taking a social, rather than an individual, direction,
is of immense significance. If that can be brought
about by the Struggle for the Life of Others — and
in the next chapters we shall see that it has been
— there can be no dispute about the rank of the
factor which consummates it. Along the line of the
physiological function of Reproduction, in associa-

314 THE ASCENT OF MAN

tion with its induced activities and relations, not
only has Altruism entered the world, but along
with it the necessary field for its expansion and
full expression. If Nature is to be read solely
in the light of the Struggle for Life, these ethical
anticipations — and as yet we are but at the begin-
ning of them — for a social world and a moral life,
must remain the stultification both of science and
of teleology.

THE ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF SEX

Next among the gifts of Reproduction fall to
be examined some further contributions yielded by
the new and extraordinary device which a moment
ago leaped into prominence — Sex. The direct,
and especially the collateral, issues here are of
such significance that it will be essential to study
them in detail. Realize the novelty and originality
of this most highly specialized creation, and it will
be seen at once that something of exceptional
moment must lie behind it. Here is a phenomenon
which stands absolutely alone on the field of Nature.
There is not only nothing at all like it in the world,
but while everything else has homologues or ana-
logues somewhere in the cosmos, this is without any
parallel. Familiarity has so accustomed us to it

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 315

that we accept the sex separation as a matter of
course ; but no words can do justice to the wonder
and novelty of this strange line of cleavage which
cuts down to the very root of being in everything
that lives.

No theme of equal importance has received less
attention than this from evolutionary philosophy.
The single problems which sex suggests have been
investigated with a keenness and brilliance of
treatment never before brought to bear in this
mysterious region ; and Mr, Darwin's theory of
sexual selection, whether true or false, has called
attention to a multitude of things in living Nature
which seem to find a possible explanation here.
But the broad and simple fact that this division
into maleness and femaleness should run between
almost every two of every plant and every animal
in existence, must have implications of a quite ex-
ceptional kind.

How deep, from the very dawn of life, this
rent between the two sexes yawns is only now
beginning to be seen. Examine one of the hum-
blest water weeds — the Spirogyra. It consists of
waving threads or necklaces of cells, each plant
to the eye the exact duplicate of the other. Yet
externally alike as they seem, the one has the
physiological value of the male, the other of

3i6 THE ASCENT OF MAN

the female. Though a primitive method of Re-
production, the process in this case foreshadows the
law of all higher vegetable life. From this point
upwards, though there are many cases where Re-
production is asexual, in nearly every family of
plants a Reproduction by spores takes place, and
where it does not take place its absence is abnor-
mal, and to be accounted for by degeneration.
When we reach the higher plants the differences
of sex become as marked as among the higher
animals. Male and female flowers grow upon sepa-
rate trees, or live side by side on the same branch,
yet so unlike one another in form and colour that
the untrained eye would never know them to be
relatives. Even when male and female are grown
on the same flower-stalk and enclosed in a common
perianth, the hermaphroditism is generally but
apparent, owing to the physiological barriers of
heteromorphism and dichogamy. Sex-separation,
indeed, is not only distinct among flowering plants,
but is kept up by a variety of complicated de-
vices, and a return to hermaphroditism is pre-
vented by the most elaborate precautions.

When we turn to the animal kingdom again, the
same great contrast arrests us. Half a century
ago, when Balbiani described the male and female
elements in microscopic infusorians, his facts were

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 317

all but rejected by science. But further research
has placed it beyond all doubt that the begin-
nings of sex are synchronous almost with those
shadowings in of life. From a state marked by a
mere varying of the nuclear elements, a state which
might almost be described as one antecedent to
sex, the sex-distinction slowly gathers definition,
and passing through an infinite variety of forms,
and with countless shades of emphasis, reaches at
last the climax of separateness which is observed
among birds and mammals. Often, even in the
Metazoa, this separateness is outwardly obscured, as
in star-fishes and reptiles ; often it is matter of
common observation ; while sometimes it is carried
to such a pitch of specialization that only the
naturalist identifies the two wholly unlike creatures
as male and female. Through the whole wide field
of Nature then this gulf is fixed. Each page of
the million-leaved Book of Species must be as it
were split in two, the one side for the male, the
other for the female. Classification naturally takes
little note of this distinction ; but it is funda-
mental. Unlikenesses between like things are
more significant than unlikenesses of unlike things.
And the unlikenesses between male and female are
never small, and almost always great. Though the
fundamental difference is internal the external form

31 8 THE ASCENT OF MAN

varies; size, colour, and a multitude of more or less
striking secondary sexual characteristics separate
the one from the other. Besides this, and more im-
portant than all, the cycle of a year's life is never
the same for the male as for the female ; they are
destined from the beginning to pursue different
paths, to live for different ends.

Now what does all this mean ? To say that
the sex-distinction is necessary to sustain the exist-
ence of life in the world is no answer, since it is
at least possible that life could have been kept
up without it. From the facts of Parthenogenesis,
illustrated in bees and termites, it is now certain
that Reproduction can be effected without fertiliza-
tion ; and the circumstance that fertilization is
nevertheless the rule, proves this method of Re-
production, though not a necessity, to be in some
way beneficial to life. It is important to notice
this absence of necessity for sex having been
created — the absence of any known necessity —
from the merely physiological standpoint. Is it
inconceivable that Nature should sometimes do
things with an ulterior object, an ethical one, for
instance? To no one with any acquaintance with
Nature's ways will it be possible to conceive of
such a purpose as the sole purpose. In these early
days when sex was instituted it was a physical

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 319

universe. Undoubtedly sex then had physio-
logical advantages ; but when in a later day the
ethical advantages become visible, and rise to such
significance that the higher world nearly wholly
rests dpon them, we are entitled, as viewing the
world from that higher level, to have our own
suspicions as to a deeper motive underlying the
physical.

Apart from bare necessity, it is further remark-
able that no very clear advantage of the sex-
distinction has yet been made out by Science.
Hensen and Van Beneden are able to see in con-
jugation no more than a Verjiingung or rejuven-
escence of the species. The living machinery in
its wearing activities runs down and has to be
wound up again ; to keep life going some fresh
impulse must be introduced from time to time; or
the protoplasm, exhausting itself, seeks restoration in
fertilization and starts afresh.^ To Hatschek it is
a remedy against the action of injurious variations;
while to Weismann it is simply the source of
variations. " I do not know," says the latter,
" what meaning can be attributed to sexual repro-
duction other than the creation of hereditary indi-
vidual characters to form the material on which
natural selection may work. Sexual reproduction

^Geddes and Thomson, The Evolution of Sex, p. 163.

320 THE ASCENT OF MAN

\s so universal in all classes of multicellular organ-
isms, and nature deviates so rarely from it, that
it must necessarily be of pre-eminent importance.
If it be true that new species are produced by
processes of selection, it follows that the develop-
ment of the whole organic world depends on these
processes, and the part that amphigony has to play
in nature, by rendering selection possible among
multicellular organisms, is not only important, but
of the very highest imaginable importance." ^

These views may be each true ; and probably, in
a measure, are ; but the fact remains that the
later psychical implications of sex are of such
transcendent character as to throw all physical
considerations into the shade. When we turn to
these, their significance is as obvious as in the
other case it was obscure. This will appear if we
take even the most distinctively biological of these
theories — that of Weismann. Sex, to him, is the
great source of variation in Nature, in plainer
English, of the variety of organisms in the world.
Now this variety, though not the main object of
sex, is precisely what it was essential for Evolution
by some means to bring about. The first work of
Evolution always is, as we have seen, to create a
mass of similar things — atoms, cells, men — and the
* Biolof^cal Memoirs^ p. 281.

THE STRUGGLE EOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 321

second is to break up that mass into as many differ-
ent kinds of things as possible. Aggregation masses
the raw material, collects the clay for the potter ;
differentiation destroys the featureless monotonies,
as fast as they are formed, and gives them back in
new and varied forms. Now if Evolution designed,
among other things, to undertake the differentiation
of Mankind, it could not have done it more effec-
tively than through the device of sex. To the
blending, or to the mosaics, of the different character-
istics of father and mother, and of many previous
fathers and mothers, under the subtle wand of
heredity, all the varied interest of the human world
is due. When one considers the passing on, not
so much of minute details of character and disposi-
tion, but of the dominant temperament and type ;
the new proportion in which already inextricably
mingled tendencies are re-arranged, and the changed
environment in which, with each new generation,
they must unfold ; it is seen how perfect an instru-
ment for variegating humanity lies here. Had sex
done nothing more than make an interesting world,
the debt of Evolution to Reproduction had been
incalculable.

322 THE ASCENT OF MAN

THE ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF MATERNITY

But let us not be diverted from the main stream
by these secondary results of the sex-distinction.
A far more important implication lies before us.
The problem that remains for us to settle is as to
how the merely physical forms of Other-ism began
to be accompanied or overlaid by ethical characters.
And the solution of this problem requires nothing
more than a consideration of the broad and funda-
mental fact of sex itself In what it is, and in
what it necessarily implies, we shall find the clue
to the beginnings of the social and moral order of
the world. For, rising on the one hand out of
maleness and on the other hand out of femaleness,
developments take place of such a kind as to con-
stitute this the turning-point of the world's moral
history. Let it be said at once that these develop-
ments are not to be sought for in the direction in
which, from the nature of the factors, one might
hastily suppose that they lay. What seems to be im-
minent at this stage, and as the natural end to
which all has led up, is the institution of affection in
definite forms between male and female. But we are
on a very different track. Affection between male
and female is a later, less fundamental, and, in its
beginnings, less essential growth ; and long prior

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 323

to its existence, and largely the condition of it, is
the even more beautiful development whose pro-
gress we have now to trace. The basis of this
new development is indeed far removed from the
mutual relations of sex with sex. For it lies
in maleness and femaleness themselves, in their
inmost quality and essential nature, in what they
lead to and what they become. The superstruc-
ture, certainly, owes much to the psychical relations
of father and mother, husband and wife, but the
Evolution of Love began ages before these were
established.

What exactly maleness is, and what femaleness,
has been one of the problems of the world. At
least five hundred theories of their origin are already
in the field, but the solution seems to have baffled
every approach. Sex has remained almost to the
present hour an ultimate mystery of creation, and
men seem to know as little what it is as whence
it came. But among the last words of modern
science there are one or two which spell out a
partial clue to both of these mysterious problems.
The method by which this has been reached is
almost for the first time a purely biological one,
and if its inferences are still uncertain, it has at
least established some important facts.

Starting with the function of nutrition as the

324 THE ASCENT OF MAN

nearest ally of Reproduction, the newer experimen-
ters have discovered cases in which sex apparently
has been determined by the quantity and quality
of the food-supply. And in actual practice it has
been found possible, in the case of certain organisms,
to produce either maleness or femaleness by simply
varying their nutrition — femaleness being an ac-
companiment of abundant food, maleness of the
reverse. When Yung, to take an authentic experi-
ment, began his observations on tadpoles, he ascer-
tained that in the ordinary natural condition the
number of males and females produced was not far
from equal — the percentage being about 57 female
to 43 male, thus giving the females a preponderance
of seven. But when a brood of tadpoles was
sumptuously fed the percentage of females rose to
78, and when a second brood was treated even
more liberally, the number amounted to 81. In a
third experiment with a still more highly nutritious
diet, the result of the high feeding was more remark-
able, for in this case 92 females were produced and
only 8 males. In the case of butterflies and moths,
it has been found that if caterpillars are starved
before entering the chrysalis state the offspring
are males, while others of the same brood, when
highly nourished, develop into females. A still more
instructive case is that of the aphides, the familiar

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 325

plant-lice of our gardens. During the warmth
of summer, when food is abundant, these insects
produce parthenogenetically nothing but females,
while in the famines of later autumn they give birth
to males. In striking confirmation of this fact it
has been proved that in a conservatory where the
aphides enjoy perpetual summer, the parthenogenetic
succession of females continued to go on for four
years and stopped only when the temperature
was lowered and food diminished. Then males
were at once produced.^ It will no longer be said
that science is making no progress with this unique
problem when it is apparently able to determine
sex by turning off or on the steam in a green-
house. With regard to bees the relation between
nutrition and sex seems equally established. "The
three kinds of inmates in a bee-hive are known to
everyone as queens, workers, and drones ; or, as
fertile females, imperfect females, and males. What
are the factors determining the differences between
these three forms ? In the first place, it is believed
that the eggs which give rise to drones are not
fertilized, while those that develop into queens and
workers have the normal history. But what fate
rules the destiny of the two latter, determining
whether a given ovum will turn out the possible
^ J'he Evolution of Sex^ pp. 41-6.

326 THE ASCENT OF MAN

mother of a new generation, or remain at the lower
level of a non-fertile working female ? It seems
certain that the fate mainly lies in the quantity and
quality of the food. Royal diet, and plenty of it,
develops the future queens . . Up to a certain
point the nurse bees can determine the future
destiny of their charge by changing the diet, and
this in some cases is certainly done. If a larva on
the way to become a worker receive by chance some
crumbs from the royal superfluity, the reproductive
function may develop, and what are called * fertile
workers,' to a certain degree above the average
abortiveness, result ; or, by direct intention, a worker
grub may be reared into a queen bee."^

It is unnecessary to prolong the illustration, for
the point it is wished to emphasize is all but in
sight. As we have just witnessed, the tendency
of abundant nutrition is to produce females, while
defective nutritive conditions produce males. This
means that in so far as nutrition reacts on the
bodies of animals — and nothing does so more —
there will be a growing difference, as time begins
to accumulate the effects, between the organiza-
tion and life-habit of male and female respectively.
In the male, destructive processes, a preponder-
ance of waste over repair, will prevail ; the result
^ The Evolution of Sex^ p. 42. See also pp. 4 1 -46.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 327

will be a katabolic habit of body ; in the female
the constructive processes will be in the ascendant,
occasioning an opposite or anabolic habit. Trans-
lated into less technical language, this means that
the predominating note in the male will be energy,
motion, activity ; while passivity, gentleness, repose,
will characterize the female. These words, let it be
noticed, psychical though they seem, are yet here
the coinages of physiology. No other terms indeed
would describe the difference. Thus Geddes and
Thomson : " The female cochineal insect, laden with
reserve-products in the form of the well-known pig-
ment, spends much of its life like a mere quiescent
gall on the cactus plant. The male, on the other
hand, in his adult state, is agile, restless, and short-
lived. Now this is no mere curiosity of the ento-
mologist, but in reality a vivid emblem of what is
an average truth throughout the world of animals —
the preponderating passivity of the females, the free-
domness and activity of the males." Rolph's words,
because he writes neither of men nor of animals,
but goes back to the furthest recess of Nature and
characterizes the cell itself, are still more signi-
ficant : " The less nutritive and therefore smaller,
hungrier, and more mobile organism is the male ;
the more nutritive and usually more quiescent is
the female."

328 THE ASCENT OF MAN

Now what do these facts indicate ? They in-
dicate that maleness is one thing and femaleness
another, and that each has been specialized from
the beginning to play a separate role in the drama
of life. Among primitive peoples, as largely in
modern times, " The tasks which demand a power-
ful development of muscle and bone, and the
resulting capacity for intermittent spurts of energy,
involving corresponding periods of rest, fall to the
man ; the care of the children and all the various
industries which radiate from the hearth, and
which call for an expenditure of energy more con-
tinuous, but at a lower tension, fall to the woman." ^
Whether this or any theory of the origin of Sex
be proved or unproved, the fact remains, and is
everywhere emphasized in Nature, that a certain
constitutional difference exists between male and
female, a difference inclining the one to a robuster
life, and implanting in the other a certain mysteri-
ous bias in the direction of what one can only
call the womanly disposition.

On one side of the great line of cleavage have
grown up men — those whose lives for generations
and generations have been busied with one par-
ticular set of occupations ; on the other side have
lived and developed women — those who for gener-
^ Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman^ p. 2.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 329

ations have been busied with another and a widely
different set of occupations. And as occupations
have inevitable reactions upon mind, character, and
disposition, these two have slowly become different
in mind and character and disposition. That cleav-
age therefore, which began in the merely physical
region, is now seen to extend into the psychi-
cal realm, and ends by supplying the world with
two great and forever separate types. No efforts,
or explanations, or expostulations can ever break
down that distinction between maleness and female-
ness, or make it possible to believe that they were
not destined from the first of time to play a different
part in human history. Male and female never
have been and never will be the same. They are
different in origin ; they have travelled to their
destinations by different routes ; they have had
different ends in view. The result is that they
are different, and the contribution therefore of each
to the evolution of the human race is special and
unique. By and by it will be our duty to mark
what Man, in virtue of his peculiar gift, has done
for the world ; part indeed of his contribution has
been already recorded here. To him has been
mainly assigned the fulfilment of the first great
function — the Struggle for Life. Woman, whose
higher contribution has not yet been named, is the

330 THE ASCENT OF MAN

chosen instrument for carrying on the Struggle for
the Life of Others. Man's life, on the whole, is
determined chiefly by the function of Nutrition ;
Woman's by the function of Reproduction. Man
satisfies the one by going out into the world, and
in the rivalries of war and the ardours of the chase,
in conflict with Nature, and amid the stress of
industrial pursuits, fulfilling the law of Self-preser-
vation ; Woman completes her destiny by occupying
herself with the industries and sanctities of the home,
and paying the debt of Motherhood to her race.

Now out of this initial difference — so slight at
first as to amount to no more than a scarcely per-
ceptible bias — have sprung the most momentous
issues. For by every detail of their separate
careers the two original tendencies — to outward
activity in the man ; to inward activity, miscalled
passivity, in the woman — became accentuated as
time went on. The one life tended towards sel-
fishness, the other towards unselfishness. While
one kept Individualism alive, the other kept
Altruism alive. Blended in the children, these two
master-principles from this their starting-point acted
and reacted all through history, seeking that mean
in which true life lies. Thus by a Division of
Labour appointed by the will of Nature, the
conditions for the Ascent of Man were laid.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 331

But by far the most vital point remains. For
we have next to observe how this bears directly
on the theme we set out to explore — the Evolu-
tion of Love. The passage from mere Other-ism,
in the physiological sense, to Altruism, in the
moral sense, occurs in connection with the due
performance of her natural task by her to whom
the Struggle for the Life of Others is assigned.
That task, translated into one great word, is Mater-
nity— which is nothing but the Struggle for the
Life of Others transfigured, transferred to the moral
sphere. Focused in a single human being, this
function, as we rise in history, slowly begins to
be accompanied by those heaven-born psychical
states which transform the femaleness of the older
order into the Motherhood of the new. When
one follows Maternity out of the depths of lower
Nature, and beholds it ripening in quality as it
reaches the human sphere, its character, and the
character of the processes by which it is evolved,
appear in their full divinity. For of what is Mater-
nity the mother ? Of children ? No ; for these are
the mere vehicle of its spiritual manifestation. Of
affection between female and male ? No ; for that,
contrary to accepted beliefs, has little to do in the
first instance with sex-relations. Of what then ? Of
Love itself, of Love as Love^ of Love as Life, of

332 THE ASCENT OF MAN

Love as Humanity, of Love as the pure and un-
defiled fountain of all that is eternal in the world.
In the long stillness which follows the crisis of
Maternity, witnessed only by the new and helpless
life which is at once the last expression of the
older function and the unconscious vehicle of
the new, Humanity is born. By an alchemy
which remains, and must ever remain, the secret
of Nature, the physiological forces give place to
those higher principles of sympathy, solicitude, and
affection which from this time onwards are to
change the course of Evolution and determine a
diviner destiny for a Human Race:

" Earth's insufficiency
Here grows to event ;
The indescribable
Here it is done;
The woman-soul leadeth us
Upward and on."^

So stupendous is this transition that the mere
possibility staggers us. Separated by the whole
diameter of conscious intelligence and will, what
possible affinities can exist between the Reproduc-
tive and the Altruistic process ? What analogy can
ever exist between the earlier physiological Struggle
for the Life of Others and the later Struggle of
Love ? Yet, different though their accompani-
^ Faust, Pt II. Bayard Taylor's tr.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 333

ments may be, when closely examined they are
seen, at every essential point, running parallel with
each other. The object in either case is to con-
tinue the life of the Species ; the essence of
both is self-sacrifice ; the first manifestation of
the sacrifice is to make provision for Others by
helping them to draw the first few breaths of
life. But what has Love to do with Species ?
Can Altruism have reference to mere life ? The
answer is, that in its first beginnings it has
almost nothing to do with anything else. For,
consider the situation. Reproduction, let us sup-
pose, has done its most perfect work on the
physiological plane : the result is that a human
child is born into the world. But the work of Re-
production being to Struggle for the Life of the
Species, its task is only complete when it secures
that the child, representing the Species, shall live.
If the child dies. Reproduction has failed ; the
Species, so far as this effort is concerned, comes to
an end. Now, can Reproduction as a merely phy-
siological function complete this process? It can
not. What can ? Only the Mother's Care and
Love. Without these, in a few hours or days, the
new life must perish ; the earlier achievement of
Reproduction is in vain. Hence there comes a
moment when these two functions meet, when

334 THE ASCENT OF MAN

they act as complements to each other ; when Phy-
siology hands over its unfinished task to Ethics;
when Evolution — if for once one may use a false
distinction — depends upon the 'moral' process
to complete the work the ' cosmic ' process has
begun.

At what precise stage of the Ascent, in asso-
ciation with what class of animals, Other-ism began
to shade into Altruism in the ethical sense, is im-
material. Whether the Altruism in the early stages
is real or apparent, profound or superficial, volun-
tary or automatic, does not concern us. What
concerns us is that the Altruism is there ; that the
day came when, even though a rudiment, it was
a reality ; above all that the arrangements for
introducing and perfecting it were realities. The
prototype, for ages, may have extended only to
form, to the outward relation ; for further ages no
more Altruism may have existed than was abso-
lutely necessary to the preservation of the species.
But to fix the eye upon it at that remote stage
and assert that, because it was apparently then
automatic, it must therefore have been automatic
ever after, is to forget the progressive character of
Evolution as well as to ignore facts. While many
of the apparent Other-regarding acts among animals
are purely selfish and purely automatic, undoubtedly

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 335

there are instances where more is involved. Apart
from their own offspring — in relation to which there
may always be the suspicion of automatism ; and
apart from domestic animals — which are open to
the further suspicion of having been trained to it —
animals act spontaneously towards other animals ;
they have their playmates ; they make friendships,
and very attached friendships. Much more, indeed,
has been claimed for them ; but it is not necessary
to claim even this much. No evolutionist would
expect among animals — domestic animals always
excepted — any considerable development of Altru-
ism, because the physiological and psychical con-
ditions which directly led to its development in
Man's case were fulfilled in no other creature. ^

*The answer to the argument in favour of automatism is
thus summarized by C. M. Williams: "(i) That functions
which are preserved and inherited must evidently be, not only
in animals and plants, but also and equally in man, such as
favour the preservation of the species ; those which do not so
favour it must perish with the individuals or species to which
they belong ; (2) that it cannot, indeed, be assumed that a
result which has never come within the experience of the
species can be willed as an end, although, with the species,
function securing results which, from a human point of view,
might be regarded as such, may be preserved ; but (3) that,
as far as we assume the existence of consciousness at all in
any species or individual, we must assume pleasure and pain,
pleasure in customary function, pain in its hindrance ; and (4)
that, as far as we can assume memory, we may also feel

336 THE ASCENT OF MAN

Simple as seems the method by which the first
few sparks of Love were nursed into flame in the
bosom of Maternity, the details of the evolution are
so intricate as to require a chapter to themselves.
But the emphasis which Nature puts on this pro-
cess may be judged of by the fact that one half
the human race had to be set apart to sustain and
perfect it. To the evolutionist who discerns the
true proportions of the forces which made for the
Ascent of Man, one of the two or three great
events in the natural history of the world was the
institution of sex. It is here that the master- forces
which were to dominate the latest and highest
stages of the process start; here, specialized into
Egoism and Altruism, they part ; and here, each
having run its different course, they meet to distri-
bute their gains to a succeeding race. With the
initial impulses of their sex strengthened by the
different life-routine to which each led, these two
forces ran their course through history, determining
by their ceaseless reactions the order and progress
of the world, or when wrongly balanced, its disorder
and decay. According to evolutional philosophy

authorized to assume that a remembered action may be asso-
ciated with remembered results that come within the experience
of the animal, some phases of which may thus become, as
combined with pleasure or pain, ends to seek or consequences
to avoid." — Evolutional Ethics^ p. 386,

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 337

there are three great marks or necessities of all
true development — Aggregation, or the massing of
things ; Differentiation, or the varying of things ;
and Integration, or the re-uniting of things into
higher wholes. All these processes are brought
about by sex more perfectly than by any other
factor known. From a careful study of this one
phenomenon, science could almost decide that
Progress was the object of Nature, and that Al-
truism was the object of Progress.

This vital relation between Altruism in its early
stages and physiological ends, neither implies that
it is to be limited by these ends nor defined in
terms of them. Everything must begin somewhere.
And there is no aphorism which the labours of
Evolution, at each fresh beginning, have tended
more consistently to endorse than " first that which
is natural, then that which is spiritual." How this
great saying also disposes of the difficulty, which
appears and reappears with every forward step in
Evolution, as to the qualitative terms in which
higher developments are to be judged, is plain.
Because the spiritual to our vision emerges from
the natural, or, to speak more accurately, is con-
voyed upwards by the natural for the first stretches
of its ascent, it is not necessarily contained in that
natural, nor is it to be defined in terms of it.

338 THE ASCENT OF MA IV

What comes " first " is not the criterion of what
comes last. Few things are more forgotten in
criticism of Evolution than that the nature of a
thing is not dependent on its origin, that one's
whole view of a long, growing, and culminating pro-
cess is not to be governed by the first sight the
microscope can catch of it. The processes of
Evolution evolve as well as the products ; evolve
with the products. In the Environments they help
to create, or to make available, they find a field for
new creations as well as further reinforcements for
themselves. With the creation of human children
Altruism found an area for its own expansion such
as had never before existed in the world. In this
new soil it grew from more to more, and reached
a potentiality which enabled it to burst the tram-
mels of physical conditions, and overflow the world
as a moral force. The mere fact that the first uses
of Love were physical shows how perfectly this
process bears the stamp of Evolution. The later
function is seen to relieve the earlier at the
moment when it would break down without it,
and continue the ascent without a pause.

If it be hinted that Nature has succeeded in
continuing the Ascent of Life in Animals without
any reinforcement from psychical principles, the
first answer is that owing to physiological con-

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 339

editions this would not have been possible in the
case of Man. But even among animals it is not
true that Reproduction completes its work apart
from higher principles, for even there, there are
accompaniments, continually increasing in definite-
ness, which at least represent the instincts and
emotions of Man. It is no doubt true that in
animals the affections are less voluntarily directed
than in the case of a human mother. But in either
case they must have been involuntary at first. It
can only have been at a late stage in Evolution
that Nature could trust even her highest product to
carry on the process by herself. Before Altruism was
strong enough to take its own initiative, necessity
had to be laid upon all mothers, animal and human,
to act in the way required. In part physiological,
this necessity was brought about under the ordinary
action of that principle which had to take charge
of everything in Nature until the will of Man ap-
peared— Natural Selection. A mother who did not
care for her children would have feeble and sickly
children. Their children's children would be feeble
and sickly children. And the day of reckoning
would come when they would be driven off the
field by a hardier, that is a better-mothered, race.
Hence the premium of Nature upon better mothers.
Hence the elimination of all the reproductive fail-

340 THE ASCENT OF MAN

ures, of all the mothers who fell short of completing
the process to the last detail. And hence, by the
law of the Survival of the Fittest, Altruism, which
at this stage means good-motherism, is forced upon
the world.

This consummation reached, the foundations of
the human world are finished. Nothing foreign
remains to be added. All that need happen hence-
forth is that the Struggle for the Life of Others
should work out its destiny. To follow out the
gains of Reproduction from this point would be to
write the story of the nations, the history of civiliza-
tion, the progress of Social Evolution. The key
to all these processes is here. There is no intelli-
gible account of the world which is not founded
on the realization of the place of this factor in
development. Sociology, practically, can only beat
the air, can make no step forward as a science,
until it recognizes this basis in biology. It is the
failure, not so much to recognize the supremacy
of this second factor, but to see that there is any
second factor at all, that has vitiated almost every
attempt to construct a symmetrical social philosophy.
It has long, indeed, been perceived that society is
an organism, and an organism which has grown
by natural growth like a tree. But the tree to
which it is usually likened is such a tree as never

THE STRUGGLE FOR TH£ LIFE OF OTHERS 341

grew on this earth. For it is a tree without
flowers ; a tree with nothing but stem and leaves ;
a tree that performed the function of Nutrition, and
forgot all about Reproduction. The great unrecog-
nized truth of social science is that the Social
Organism has grown and flowered and fruited in
virtue of the continuous activities and inter-relations
of the two co-related functions of Nutrition and
Reproduction, that these two dominants being at
work it could not but grow, and grow in the way-
it has grown. When the dual nature of the
evolving forces is perceived ; when their reactions
upon one another are understood ; when the changed
material with which they have to work from time
to time, the further obstacles confronting them at
every stage, the new Environments which modify
their action as the centuries add their growths
and disencumber them of their withered leaves, —
when all this is observed, the whole social order
falls into line. From the dawn of life these two
forces have acted together, one continually separat-
ing, the other continually uniting ; one continually
looking to its own things, the other to the things
of Others. Both are great in Nature — but " the
greatest of these is Love."

CHAPTER VIII
THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER

'^ I ^HE Evolution of a Mother, in spite of its
■^ half-humorous, half-sacrilegious sound, is a
serious study in Biology. Even on its physical side
this was the most stupendous task Evolution ever
undertook. It began when the first bud burst from
the first plant-cell, and was only completed when
the last and most elaborately wrought pinnacle of
the temple of Nature crowned the animal creation.
What was that pinnacle ? There is no more
instructive question in science. For the answer
brings into relief one of the expression-points of
Nature — one of these great teleological notes of
which the natural order is so full, and of which this
is by far the most impressive. Run the eye for a
moment up the scale of animal life. At the bottom
are the first animals, the Protozoa. The Coelenter-
ates follow, then in mixed array, the Echinoderms,

342

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 343

Worms, and Molluscs. Above these come the
Pisces, then the Amphibia, then the Reptilia, then
the Aves, then — What? The Mammalia, The
Mothers. There the series stops. Nature has never
made anything since.

Is it too much to say that the one motive of
organic Nature was to make Mothers ? It is at
least certain that this was the chief thing she did.
Ask the Zoologist what, judging from science alone,
Nature aspired to from the first, he could but
answer Mammalia — Mothers. In as real a sense
as a factory is meant to turn out locomotives or
clocks, the machinery of Nature is designed in the
last resort to turn out Mothers. You will find
Mothers in lower Nature at every stage of im-
perfection ; you will see attempts being made to
get at better types; you find old ideas abandoned
and higher models coming to the front. And
when you get to the top you find the last great
act was but to present to the world a physio-
logically perfect type. It is a fact which no human
Mother can regard without awe, which no man can
realize without a new reverence for woman and a
new belief in the higher meaning of Nature, that
the goal of the whole plant and animal kingdoms
seems to have been the creation of a family, which
the very naturalist has had to call Mammalia.

344 THE ASCENT OF MAN

That care for others, from which the Mammalia
take their name, though reaching its highest ex-
pression there, is introduced into Nature in cruder
forms almost from the dawn of life. In the vege-
table kingdom, from the motherlessness of the
early Cryptogams, we rise to find a first maternity
foreshadowed in the flowering tree. It elaborates
a seed or nut or fruit with infinite precaution,
surrounding the embryo with coat after coat of
protective substance, and storing around it the
richest foods for its future use. And rudimentary
though the manifestation be, when we remember
that this is not an incident in the tree's life but
its whole blossom and crown, it is impossible
but to think of this solicitude and Motherhood
together. So exalted in the tree's life is this pro-
vision for others that the Botanist, like the Zoo-
logist, places the mothering plants at the top of
his department of Nature. His highest division
is the Phanerogams — named, literally, in terms of
their reproductive specialization.

Crossing into the animal kingdom we observe
the same motherless beginning, the same cared-for
end. All elementary animals are orphans ; they
know neither home nor care ; the earth is their
only mother or the inhospitable sea ; they waken
to isolation, to apathy, to the attentions only of

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 345

those who seek their doom. But as we draw nearer
the apex of the animal kingdom, the spectacle of
a protective Maternity looms into view. At what
precise point it begins it is difficult to say. But
that it does not begin at once, that there is a
long and gradual Evolution of Maternity, is clear.
From casual observation, and from popular books,
it might be inferred that care of offspring — we can-
not yet speak of affection — is characteristic of the
whole field of Nature. On the contrary, it is
doubtful whether in the Invertebrate half of Nature
it exists at all. If it does it is very rare ; and in
the Vertebrates it is met with only exceptionally
till we reach the two highest classes. What does
exist, and sometimes in marvellous perfection, is
care for eggs ; but that is a wholly different thing,
both in its physical and psychical aspect, from love
of offspring. The truth is, Nature so made animals
in the early days that they did not need Mothers.
The moment they were born they looked after
themselves, and were perfectly able to look after
themselves. Mothers in these days would have been
a superfluity. All that Nature worked at at that
dawning date was Maternity in a physical sense —
Motherhood came as a later and a rarer growth.
The children of those days were not really children
at all ; they were only offspring, springers off,

346 THE ASCENT OF MAN

deserters from home. At one bound they were out
into life on their own account, and she who begat
them knew them no more. That early .world,
therefore, for millions and millions of years was a
bleak and loveless world. It was a world without
children and a world without Mothers. It is good
to realize how heartless Nature was till these arrived.
In the lower reaches of Nature, things remain
still unchanged. The rule is not that the Mother
ignores, but that she never sees her child. The
land-crabs of the West Indies descend from their
homes in the mountains once a year, march in pro-
cession to the sea, commit their eggs to the waves,
and come away. The burying-beetles deposit their
fragile capsules in the dead carcase of a mouse or
bird, plant all together in the earth, and leave
them to their fate. Myriads of other creatures
are born into the world, and ordained so to be
born, whose Mothers are dead before they begin
to live. The moment of birth with the Ephe-
meridae is also the moment of death. These are
not cases nevertheless where there has been no
care. On the contrary, there is a solicitude for
the Ggg of the most extreme kind — for its being
placed exactly in the right spot, at the right time,
protected from the weather, shielded from enemies,
and provided with a first supply of food. The

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 347

butterfly places the eggs of its young on the
very leaf which the coming caterpillar likes
the most, and on the under side of the leaf,
where they will be least exposed — a case which
illustrates in a palpable way the essential differ-
ence between Motherhood and Maternity. Mater-
nity here, in the restricted sense of merely
adequate physical care, is carried to its utmost
perfection. Everything that can be done for the
^^'g is done. Motherhood, on the other hand, is
non-existent, is even an anatomical impossibility.
If a butterfly could live till its ^g'g was hatched
— which does not happen — it would see no butter-
fly come out of the ^%%y no airy likeness of itself,
but an earth-bound caterpillar. If it recognized
this creature as its child, it could never play the
Mother to it. The anatomical form is so different
that were it starving it could not feed it, were
it threatened it could not save it, nor is it possible
to see any direction in which it could be of the
slightest use to it. It is obvious that Nature
never intended to make a Mother here ; that all
that she desired as yet was to perfect the first
maternal instinct. And the tragedy of the situa-
tion is that on that day when its training to be
a true Mother should begin, the butterfly passes
out of the world.

348 THE ASCENT OF MAN

But there is another reason, in addition to the
precocity of the offspring, why parental care is a
drug in the market in lower Nature. There are
such multitudes of these creatures that it is scarcely
worth caring for them. The humbler denizens of
the world produce offspring, not by units or tens,
but by thousands and millions ; and with popu-
lations so vast, maternal protection is not required
to sustain the existence of the species. It was
probably on the whole a better arrangement to
produce a million and let them take their chance,
than to produce one and take special trouble with
it. It was easier, moreover, a thousand times
easier, for Nature to make a million young than
one Mother. But the ethical effect, if one may use
such a term here, of this early arrangement was
nil. All this saving of Motherly trouble meant
for a long space in Nature complete absence of
maternal training. With children of this sort
Motherhood had no chance. There was no time
to love, no opportunity to love, and no object
to love. It was a period of physical installations;
and of psychical installations only as establishing
the first stages of the maternal instinct — the prenatal
care of the Q^'g. This is a necessary beginning,
but it is imperfect ; it arrests itself at the critical
point — where care can react upon the Mother.

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 349

Now, before Maternal Love can be evolved out
of this first care, before Love can be made a
necessity, and carried past the unhatched ^^^ to
the living thing which is to come out of it, Nature
must alter all her ways. Four great changes at
least must be introduced into her programme. In
the first place, she must cause fewer young to be
produced at a birth. In the second place, she
must have these young produced in such out-
ward form that their Mothers will recognize them.
In the third place, instead of producing them in
such physical perfection that they are able to go
out into life the moment they are born, she must
make them helpless, so that for a time they must
dwell with her if they are to live at all. And
fourthly, it is required that she shall be made to
dwell with them ; that in some way they also
should be made necessary — physically necessary —
to her to compel her to attend to them. All these
beautiful arrangements we find carried out to the
last detail. A mother is made, as it were, in
four processes. She requires, like the making of a
coloured picture, four separate printings, each adding
some new thing to the effect. Let us note the way
in which woman — savage woman — became care
taker, and watcher, and nurse, and passed from
femaleness to the higher heights of Motherhood.

350 THE ASCENT OF MAN

The first great change that had to be intro-
duced into Nature was the diminishing of the
number of young produced at a birth. As we
have seen, nearly all the lower animals produce
scores, or hundreds, or thousands, or millions, at
one time. Now, no mother can love a million.
Clearly, if Nature wishes to make care-takers, she
must moderate her demands. And so she sets to
work to bring down the numbers, reducing them
steadily until so few remain that Motherhood be-
comes a possibility. How great this change is can
only be understood when one realizes the almost
incalculable fecundity of the first created forms of
life. When we examine the progeny of the lowest
plants we find ourselves among figures so high
that no microscope can count them. The Pro-
tococcus Nivalis shows its exuberant reproductive
power by reddening the Arctic landscape with
its offspring in a single night. When we break or
shake the Puff-ball of the well-known fungus, the
cloud of progeny darkens the air with a smoke
made up of uncountable millions of spores. Hyda-
tina Senta, one of the Rotifera, propagates four
times in thirty-four hours, and in twelve days is
the parent of sixteen million young. Among fish
the number is still very great. The herring and
the cod give birth to a million ova, the frog spawns

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 351

eggs by the thousand, and most of the creatures
at and below that level in a like degree. Then
comes a gradual change. When we pass on to the
Reptiles, the figures fall into hundreds. On reach-
ing the birds the young are to be counted by
tens or units. In the highest of Mammals the
rule is one. This bringing down of the numbers
is a remarkable circumstance. It means the calling
in of a diffused care, to focus it upon one, and
concentrate it into Love.

The next thing was to make it possible for the
parent to recognize its young. If it was difficult to
love a million it was impossible to love an embryo.
In the lower reaches the young are never in the
smallest degree like their parents, and, granting the
highest power of recognition to the Mother, it is
impossible that she should recognize her own off-
spring. For generations even Science was imposed
upon here, for many forms of life were described
and classified as distinct species which have turned
out to be simply the young of other species. It
may be useless to contrast so striking a case as the
ciliated P lunula with the adult Aurelia — vagaries of
form which for generations deceived the naturalist —
for it is doubtful whether creatures of the Medusoid
type have eyes ; but in the higher groups where
power of recognition is more certain, the unlikeness

352 THE ASCENT OF MAN

of progeny to parent is often as decided. The
larval forms of the Star-fish or the Sea Urchin, or
their kinsman the Holothurian, are disguised past
all recognition; and among the Insects the relation
between Butterflies and Moths and their respective
caterpillars is beyond any possible clue. No doubt
there are other modes of recognition in Nature
than those which depend on the sense of sight.
But looked at on every side, the fact remains
that the power to identify their young is all but
absent until the higher animals appear.

The next work of Nature, therefore, was to make
the young resemble the parent, to make, in short,
the children presentable at birth. And the means
taken to effect this are worth noting. Nature always
makes her changes with a marvellous economy,
and generally, as in this case, with a quite start-
ling simplicity. To start making a new kind of
embryo, a plan obvious to us, was not thought
of. That would have been to have lost all the
time spent on them already. If Nature begins
a thing and wishes to make a change, she never
goes back to the beginning ' and starts de novo.
Her respect for her own work is profound. To
begin at the beginning again would not only be
lost work, but waste of future time ; and Evolution,
slow as it may seem, never fails to take the quickest

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 353

path. She did not then start making new embryos.
She did not even touch up the old embryos. All
that she did was to keep the^n hidden till they
grew more presentable. She left them exactly as
they were, only she drew a veil over them. Instead
of saying " Let us re-create these little things," she
passed the word " Let us delay them till they are
fair to see." And from the day that word was
passed, the embryos were hindered in the eggs,
and the eggs were hindered in the nest, and the
young were hindered in the body, retained in the
dark for weeks and months, so that when first they
caught the Mother's eye they were " strong and
of a good liking."

Though in no case in higher Nature is the young
an exact reproduction of its parent, it will be
admitted that the likeness is very much greater
than among any of the lower animals. The young
of many birds are at least a colourable imitation
of their parents ; Nature's young geese are at least
like enough geese not to be mistaken for swans ;
no dog could be misled into mistaking — even apart
from the sense of smell — a kitten for a puppy, nor
would a hare ever be taken in by the young of
a rabbit. Among domestic animals like the sheep
and cow there is a culmination of adaptation in
this direction, the lamb and the calf when born

354 THE ASCENT OF MAN

being almost fac-similes of their Mothers. But
this point need not be dwelt on. It is of insig-
nificant importance, and belongs to the surface.
The idea of Nature going out of her way to make
better family likenesses will not stand scrutiny as
a final end in physiology. These illustrations are
simply adduced to confirm the impression that
Nature is working not aimlessly, not even mysteri-
ously, but in a specific direction ; that somehow
the idea of Mothers is in her mind, and that she
is trying to draw closer and closer the bonds
which are to unite the children of men. It will
be enough if we have gathered from this paren-
thesis that some time in the remote past, parent
and child came to be introduced to one another;
that the young when born into the world gradually
approached the parental form, that they no longer
" shocked them by their larval ugliness " ; so that
" the first human mother on record, seeing her
first-born son, exclaimed : ' I have gotten a Man
from the Lord.' " ^

If this second process in the Evolution of
Motherhood is of minor importance, the necessity
for the third will not be doubted. What use is
there for perfecting the power of recognition be-
tween parent and child if the latter act like the
^Mammalian Descent^ Prof. W. P. Parker, F.R.S., p. 14.

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 355

run of offspring in lower nature — spring off into
independent life the moment they are born ? If
the Mother is to be taught to know her progeny,
surely the progeny also must be taught not to
abandon their Mother. And hence Nature had to
set about a somewhat novel task — to teach the
youth of the world the Fifth Commandment.
Glance once more over the Animal series and see
how thoroughly she taught them the lesson. It is
sometimes said that Nature has no imperatives.
In reality it is all imperative. This Commandment
was thrust upon the early world under penalties
for disobedience the most exacting that could be
devised — the threat of death. Pick out a few
children and inspect them. Take one from the
bottom of Nature, one from the middle, and one
from the top, and see if any progress in filial duty
is visible as we ascend. The first, — the young of
Aurelia will do, or a ciliated Infusorian, — represent-
ing countless millions like itself, is the Precocious
Child. The moment this embryo is born it leaves
the domestic hearth ; the chances are it has never
seen its parents. If it has, it disowns them on the
spot. A better swimmer in many cases — for many
of the parents have forgotten how to swim — it can-
not be overtaken. It ignores its Mother and
despises her. The second is the Good Intentioned

356 THE ASCENT OF MAN

Child. This child — a bird, let us say — begins well,
stays much at home in the early days, but plays
the prodigal towards the close. For some weeks
it remains quietly in the ^^'g ; for more weeks it
remains — not quite so quietly — in the nest ; and
for more weeks still — but with an obvious itching
to be off — in the neighbourhood of the nest. This,
nevertheless, is a good subject. It is really a
kind of child, and its Mother is truly a Mother.
The third is the Model Child — the Mammal. In
this child, which is only found in the high places
of Nature, infancy reaches its last perfection^
Housed, protected, sumptuously fed, the luxurious
children keep to their Mother's side for months
and years, and only quit the parental roof when
their filial education is complete.

On a casual view of the Examiner's Report on
these various children of Nature, the physiologist,
as distinguished from the educationalist, might ob-
ject that so far from being the subject of con-
gratulation it is a clear case for censure. If early
Nature could turn out ready-made animals in a
single hour, is it not a retrograde move to have to
take so long about it later on ? When one con-
trasts the free swimming embryo of a Medusa,
dashing out into its heroic life the moment it is
born, with the helpless kitten or the sightless pup,

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 357

is it unfair to ask if Nature has not lost the trick
of making lusty lives ? Is she not trying the new
experiment at the risk of blundering the old one,
and why cannot she continue the earlier and more
brilliant device of making her children knight-
errants from the first ? Because brilliance is not
her object. Her object is ethical as well as physio-
logical ; and though when we look below the
surface a purely physiological explanation of the
riddle will appear, the ethical gain is not less clear.
By curbing them she is educating them, taming
them, rescuing them from a wild and lawless life.
These roving embryos are mere bandits ; their
nature and habits must be changed ; not a sterner
race but a gentler race must be born. New words
must come into the world — Home, Love, Mother.
And these imperceptibly slow drawings together
of parent and child are the inevitable preliminaries
of the domestication of the Human Race. Re-
garded from the ethical point of view there are
few things more significant than this reining-in of
the world's rampant youth, this tightening the
bonds of family life, this most gentle introduction
of gentleness into a world cold with motherless
children and heartless with childless mothers.

The personal tie once formed between parent
and offspring could never be undone, and from

358 THE ASCENT OF MAN

this moment onwards must grow from more to
more. For observe what has happened. A gener-
ation has grown up to whom this tie is the necessity
of existence. Every Mammalian child born into
the world must come to be fed, must, for a given
number of hours each day, be in the maternal
school, and whether it like it or not, learn its
lessons. No young of any Mammal can nourish
itself. There is that in it therefore at this stage
v/hich compels it to seek its Mother ; and there
is that in the Mother which compels it even physi-
cally— and this is the fourth process, on which it
is needless to dwell — to seek her child. On the
physiological side, the name of this impelling power
is lactation ; on the ethical side, it is Love. And
there is no escape henceforth from communion
between Mother and child, or only one — death.
Break this new bond and the Mammalia become
extinct. Nature is in earnest here, if anywhere.
The training of Humanity is seen to be under a
compulsory education act. It is in the severity
and dread of her penalties, coupled with the im-
possibility of evading the least of them, that the
will of Nature and the seriousness of her purposes
are most declared. For the physiological gains
which underlie these ethical relations are all-
important. It is largely owing to them that the

THE EVOLUTION OP- A MOTHER 359

Mammalia have taken their place in the van of
the procession of life. Under the earlier system
life had a bad start ; each animal had to push its
way upward single-handed from the ^g'g. It was
planted, so to speak, on the first rung of the ladder,
and as the risks of life are immeasurably great
in infancy, it had all these risks to take. Under the
new system it is launched into the battle already
nourished and strong, and passed scatheless through
the first vicissitudes of youth. In the higher Mam-
malia, in virtue of the possession by this group of
a placenta in addition to the ordinary Mammalian
characteristics, the young have a double chance of
a successful start. The development, in fact, of
higher forms of life on the earth has depended on
the physical perfecting of Mothers, and of the
physiological ties which bind them to their young.
With the immense structural advance of the Mam-
malia, an order of being was introduced into Natures
whose continuity as an all but immortal series could
never be broken. Thus whatever moral relations
underlie the extraordinary physical characteristic
of this highest class of animals, there is the added
guarantee that they can never be destroyed.

With the physical programme carried out to the
last detail, the ethical drama opened. An early
result, partly of her sex, and partly of her passive

36o THE ASCENT OF MAN

Strain, is the founding through the instrumentality
of the first savage Mother of a new and a beautiful
social state — Domesticity. While Man, restless,
eager, hungry, is a wanderer on the earth. Woman
makes a Home. And though this Home be but a
platform of sticks and leaves, such as th« gorilla
builds on a tree, it becomes the first great school-
room of the human race. For one day there
appears in this roofless room that which is to
teach the teachers of the world — a Little Child.

No greater day ever dawned for Evolution than
this on which the first human child was born. For
there entered then into the world the one thing
wanting to complete the Ascent of Man — a tutor
for the affections. It may be that a Mother teaches
a Child, but in a far deeper sense it is the Child
who teaches the Mother. Millions of millions of
Mothers had lived in the world before this, but the
higher affections were unborn. Tenderness, gentle-
ness, unselfishness, love, care, self-sacrifice — these as
yet were not, or were only in the bud. Maternity
existed in humble forms, but not yet Motherhood.
To create Motherhood and all that enshrines itself
in that holy word required a human child. The
creation of the Mammalia established two schools
in the world — the two oldest and surest and best
equipped schools of Ethics that have ever been in

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 361

it — the one for the Child, who must now at least
know its Mother, the other for the Mother, who must
as certainly attend to her Child. The only thing
that remains now is to secure that they shall both
be kept in that school as long as it is possible to
detain them. The next effort of Evolution, there-
fore— the fifth process as one might call it — is to
lengthen out these school days, and give affection
time to grow.

No animal except Man was permitted to have
his education thus prolonged. Many creatures were
allowed to stay at school for a few days or weeks,
but to one only was given a curriculum complete
enough to accomplish its exalted end. Watch two
of the highest organisms during their earliest youth,
and observe the striking contrast in the time they
are made to remain at their Mother's side. The
first is a human infant; the second, born, let us
suppose, on the same day is a baby monkey. In
a few days or weeks the baby monkey is almost
able to leave its Mother. Already it can climb,
and eat, and chatter like its parents ; and in a few
weeks more the creature is as independent of them
as the winged-seed is of the parent tree. Mean-
time, and for many months to come, its little twin
is unable to feed itself, or clothe itself, or protect
itself ; it is a mere semi-unconscious chattel, a

•v-.

362 THE ASCENT OF MAN

sprawling ball of helplessness, the world's one type
of impotence. The body is there in all its parts,
bone for bone and muscle for muscle, like the
other. But somehow this body will not do its
work. Something as yet hangs fire. The body
has eyes but they see not, ears but they hear not,
limbs but they walk not. This body is a failure.
Why does the human infant lie like a log on the
forest-bed while its nimble prototype mocks it
from the bough above ? Why did that which is
not human step out into life so long before that
which is ?

The question has been answered for us by Mr.
John Fiske, and the world here owes to him one
of the most beautiful contributions ever made to
the Evolution of Man. We know what this delay
means ethically — it was necessary for moral train-
ing that the human child should have the longest
possible time by its Mother's side — but what deter-
mines it on the physical side? The thing that
constitutes the difference between the baby monkey
and the baby man is an extra piece of machinery
which the last possesses and the first does not.
It is this which is keeping back the baby man.
What is that piece of machinery? A brain, a
human brain. The child, nevertheless, is not using it.
Why? Because it is not quite fitted up. Nature

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 363

is working hard at it ; but owing to its intricacy
and delicacy the process requires much time, and
till all is ready the babe must remain a thing.
And why does the monkey-brain get ready first ?
Because it is an easier machine to make. And
why should it be easier to make ? Because it is
only required to do the life-work of an Animal; the
other has to do the life-work of a Man. Mental
Evolution, in fact, here steps in, and makes an
unexpected contribution to the ethical development
of the world.

An apparatus for controlling one of the lower
animals can be turned out from the workshop of
Nature sometimes in a day. The wheels are few,
the works are simple, the connections require little
time for adjustment or correction. Everything that
a humble organism will do has been done a million
times by its parents, and already the faculties have
been carefully instructed by heredity and will auto-
matically repeat the whole life and movement of
their race. But when a Man is made, it is not an
automaton that is made. This being will do new
things, think new thoughts, originate new ways of
life. His immediate ancestors have done the same,
but done some of them so seldom, and others of
them for so short a time, that heredity has failed
to notice them. For half the life therefore that

364 THE ASCENT OF MAN

lies before the human offspring no storage of habit
has been handed down from the past. Each
descendant must carve a way through the world for
itself, and learn to comport itself through all the
varying incidents of life as best it can. Now the
equipment for this is very complex. Into the
infant's frame must be fitted not only the apparatus
for automatic repetition of what its parents have
done, but the apparatus for intelligent initiation ;
not only the machinery for carrying on the involun-
tary and reflex actions — involuntary and reflex
because they have been done so often by its
ancestors as to have become automatic — but for
the voluntary and self-conscious life which will do
new things, choose fresh alternatives, seek higher
and more varied ends. The instrument which will
attend to breathing even when we forget it ; the
apparatus which will make the heart beat even
though we try to stop it ; the self-acting spring
which makes the eyelid close the moment it is
threatened — these and a hundred others are old
and well-tried inventions which, from ceaseless prac-
tice generation after generation, work perfectly in
each new individual from the start. Nature there-
fore need waste no time at this late day on their
improvement. But the higher brain is compara-
tively a new thing in the world. It has to

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 365

undertake a vaster range of duties, often totally
new orders of duties ; it has to do things which
its forerunners had not quite learned to do, or had
not quite learned to do unthinkingly, and the in-
conceivably complex machinery requires time to
settle to its work. The older brain-processes have
been greatly accelerated even now, and appear in
full activity at an early stage in the infant's life,
but the newer and the higher are in perfect order
only after a considerable interval of adjustment and
elaboration.

Now Infancy, physiologically considered, means
the fitting up of this extra machinery within the
brain ; and according to its elaborateness will be
the time required to perfect it. A sailing vessel
may put to sea the moment the rigging is in ; a
steamer must wait for the engines. And the com-
pensation to the steamer for the longer time in
dock is discovered by and by in its vastly greater
usefulness, its power of varying its course at will,
and in its superior safety in time of war or storm.
For its greater after-usefulness also, its more varied
career, its safer life, humanity has to pay tribute to
Evolution by a delayed and helpless Infancy, a
prolonged and critical constructive process. Child-
hood in its early stage is a series of installations
and trials of the new machinery, a slow experi-

L

366 THE ASCENT OF MAN

meriting with powers and faculties so fresh that
heredity in handing them down has been unable
to accompany them with full directions as to their
use.

The Brain of Man, to change the figure — if
indeed any figure of that marvellous molecular
structure can be attempted without seriously mis-
leading— is an elevated table-land of stratified ner-
vous matter, furrowed by deep and sinuous canons,
and traversed by a vast net-work of highways along
which Thoughts pass to and fro. The old and
often-repeated Thoughts, or mental processes, pass
along beaten tracks ; the newer Thoughts have
less marked footpaths; the newer still are compelled
to construct fresh Thought-routes for themselves.
Gradually these become established thoroughfares;
but in the increasing traffic and complexity of
life, new paths in endless multitudes have to be
added, and bye lanes and loops between the older
highways must be thrown into the system. The
stations upon these roads from which the travellers
set out are cells ; the roads are transit fibres ;
the travellers themselves are in physiological lan-
guage nervous discharges, in psychological language
mental processes. Each new mental process in-
volves a new redistribution of nervous matter
among the cells, a new travelling of nervous dis-

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 367

charge along one or many of the transit fibres.
Now in every new connection of ideas multi-
tudes of cells and even multitudes of groups
of cells may be concerned, so that should it i^^
happen that a combination of these precise centres ^
had never been made before, it is obvious that no
routes could possibly exist between them, and these
must then and there be prospected. Each new
Thought is therefore a pioneer, a road-maker, or
road-chooser, through the brain ; and the exhaust-
less possibilities of continuous development may be
judged from the endlessness of the possible com-
binations. In the oldest and most-used brain there
must always remain vast territories still to be
explored, and, as it were, civilized ; and in all men
multitudes of possible connections continue to the
last unrealized. When it is remembered, indeed,
that the brain itself is very large, the largest mass
of nerve-matter in the organic world ; when it is
further realized that each of the cells of which it
is built up measures only one ten-thousandth of
an inch in diameter, that the transit fibres which
connect them are of altogether unimaginable fine-
ness, the limitlessness of the powers of Thought
and the inconceivable complexity of these processes
will begin to be understood.

Now it is owing to the necessity for having a

J

368 THE ASCENT OF MAN

certain number of the more useful routes established
before the babe can be trusted from its Mother's
side, that the delay of Infancy is required. And
even after the child has begun to practise the art
of living for itself, time has still to be granted for
many purposes — for new route-making, for becoming
familiar with established thoroughfares, for practising
upon obstacles and gradients, for learning to perform
the journeys quickly and without fatigue, for allow-
ing acts repeated to accelerate and embody them-
selves as habits. In the savage state, where the
after-life is simple, the adjustments are made with
comparative ease and speed ; but as we rise in the
scale of civilization the necessary period of Infancy
lengthens step by step until in the case of the
most highly educated man, where adjustments must
be made to a wide intellectual environment, the
age of tutelage extends for almost a quarter of a
century.

The use of all this to morals, the reactions
especially upon the Mother, are too obvious to
dwell on. Till the brain arrived, everything was too
brief, too rapid for ethical achievements ; animals
were in a hurry to be born, children thirsted to
be free. There was no helplessness to pity, no
pain to relieve, no quiet hours, no watching; to
the Mother no moment of suspense — the inost

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 369

educative moment of all — when the spark of life
in her little one burned low. Parents could be no
use to their offspring physically, and the offspring
could be no use to their parents psychically. Th(
young required no Infancy ; the old acquired no'
Sympathy. Even among the other Mammalia or
the Birds the Mother's chance was small. There
Infancy extends to a few days or weeks, yet is but
an incident in a life preoccupied with sterner tasks.
A lioness will bleed for her cub to-day, and in to-
morrow's struggle for life contend with it to the
death. A sheep knows its lamb only while it is a
lamb. The affection in these cases, fierce enough
while it lasts, is soon forgotten, and the traces it
left in the brain are obliterated before they have
furrowed into habit. Among the Carnivora it is
instructive to observe that while the brief span of
infancy admits of the Mother learning a little Love,
the father, for want of even so brief a lesson, remains
untouched, so wholly untouched indeed that the
Mother has often to hide her offspring from him
lest they be devoured. Love then had no chance
till the Human Mother came. To her alone was
given a curriculum prolonged enough to let her
graduate in the school of the affections. Not for
days or weeks, but for months, as the cry of her
infant's helplessness went forth, she must stand

2 A

370 THE ASCENT OF MAN

between the flickering flame and death ; and for
years to come, until the budding intellect could
take its own command, this Love dare not grow
.cold, or pause an hour in its unselfish ministry.

Begin at the beginning again and recall the
fact of woman's passive strain. A tendency to
passivity means, among other things, a capacity
to sit still. Be it but for a minute or an hour
does not matter ; the point is that the faintest
possible capacity is there. For this is the embryo
of Patience, and if much and long nursed a fully
fledged Patience will come out of it. Supply next
to this new virtue some definite object on which
to practise, let us say a child. When this child
is in trouble the Mother will observe the signs of
pain. Its cry will awaken associations, and in
some dull sense the Mother will feel with it. But
" feeling with another " is the literal translation
of the name of a second virtue — Sympathy.
From feeling with it, the parent will sooner or
later be led to do something to help it ; then
it will do more things to help it ; finally it will
be always helping it. Now, to care for things
is to become Careful ; to tend things is to become
Tender. Here are four virtues — Patience, Sym-
pathy, Carefulness, Tenderness — already dawning
upon mankind

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 371

On occasion Sympathy will be called out in
unusual ways. Crises will occur — dangers, famines,
sicknesses. At first the Mother will be unable
to meet these . extreme demands — her fund o^.
Sympathy is too poor. She cannot take anyV
exceptional trouble, or forget herself, or do any-
thing very heroic. The child, unable to breast the
danger alone, dies. It is well that this should be
so. It is the severity and righteous justice of
Nature — the tragedy of Iv^n Ivanovitch antici-
pated by Evolution. A Mother who has failed
in helpfulness must leave no successor to per-
petuate her unworthiness in posterity. Somewhere
else, however, developing along similar lines, there
is another fractionally better Mother. When the
emergency occurs, she rises to the occasion. For
one hour she transcends herself That day a
cubit is added to the moral stature of mankind ;
the first act of Self-Sacrifice is registered in favour
of the human race. It may or may not be that
the child will acquire its Mother's virtue. But un-
selfishness has scored ; its child has proved itself
fitter to survive than the child of Selfishness. It
does not follow that in all circumstances the nobler
will be always victorious : but it has a great
chance. A few score more of centuries, a few
more millions of Mothers, and the germs of Pati-

372 THE ASCENT OF MAN

ence, Carefulness, Tenderness, Sympathy, and Self-
Sacrifice will have rooted themselves in Humanity.
See then what the Savage Mother and her Babe
lave brought into the world. When the first
'^Mother awoke to her first tenderness and warmed
her loneliness at her infant's love, when for a
moment she forgot herself and thought upon its
weakness or its pain, when by the most imper-
ceptible act or sign or look of sympathy she ex-
pressed the unutterable impulse of her Motherhood,
the touch of a new creative hand was felt upon
the world. However short the earliest infancies,
however feeble the sparks they fanned, however
long heredity took to gather fuel enough for a
steady flame, it is certain that once this fire began
to warm the cold hearth of Nature and give
humanity a heart, the most stupendous task of the
past was accomplished. A softened pressure of an
uncouth hand, a human gleam in an almost animal
eye, an endearment in an inarticulate voice — feeble
things enough. Yet in these faint awakenings lay
the hope of the human race. " From of old we
have heard the monition, ' Except ye be as babes
ye cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven ' ; the
latest science now shows us — though in a very
different sense of the words — that unless we had
been as babes, the ethical phenomena which give

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 373

ail its significance to the phrase * Kingdom of
Heaven * would have been non-existent for us.
Without the circumstances of Infancy we might
have become formidable among animals throughf
sheer force of sharp-wittedness. But except for
these circumstances we should never have compre-
hended the meaning of such phrases as * self-
sacrifice ' or * devotion.' The phenomena of social
life would have been omitted from the history of
the world, and with them the phenomena of ethics
and religion." ^

^ Fiske, Cosmic Philosophy^ Vol. 11., p. 363.

^f

CHAPTER IX
THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER

T N last chapter we watched the beautiful experi-
''" ment of Nature making Mothers. We saw
how the young produced at one birth were grad-
ually reduced in numbers until it was possible for
affection to concentrate upon a single object ; how
that object was delayed in birth till it was a
likeable and presentable thing ; how it was tied to
its mother's side by physical bonds, and hindered
there for years to give time for the Mother's care
to ripen into love. We saw, what was still more
instructive, that Nature, when she had laid the train
for perfecting these arrangements, gave up making
any more animals ; and that there were physio-
logical reasons why this well-mothered class should
survive beyond all others, and, by sheer physio-
logical fitness, henceforth dominate the world.

But there was still a crowning task to accomplish.
374

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 375

The world was now beginning to fill with Mothers,
but there were no Fathers. During all this long
■ process the Father has not even been named.
Nothing that has been done has touched or con- ^
cerned him almost in the least degree. He has
gone his own way, lived outside all these changes ;
and while Nature has succeeded in moulding a
human Mother and a human child, he still wanders
in the forest a savage and unblessed soul.

This time for him, nevertheless, is not lost. In
his own way he is also at school, and learning
lessons which will one day be equally needed by
humanity. The acquisitions of the manly life are
as necessary to human character as the virtues
which gather their sweetness by the cradle ; and
these robuster elements — strength, courage, manli-
ness, endurance, self-reliance — could only have been
secured away from domestic cares. Apart from
that, it was not necessary to put the Father through
the same mill as the Mother. Whatever the Mother
gained would be handed on to her boys as well as
to her girls, and with the law of heredity to
square accounts, it was unnecessary for each of
the two great sides of humanity to make the same
investments. By one acquiring one set of virtues
and the other another, the blend in the end
would be the richer; and, without obliterating the

376 THE ASCENT OF MAN

eternal individualities of each, the measure of com-
pleteness would be gained more quickly for the
race. Before heredity, however, could do its work
upon the Father a certain basis had to be laid.
With his original habits he would squander the
hereditary gains as fast as he received them, and
unless some change was brought about in his mode
of life the old wild blood in his veins would coun-
teract the gentler influence, and leave all the
Mother's work in vain. Hence Nature had to set
about another long and difficult process — to make
the savage Father a reformed character.

The Evolution of a Father is not so beautiful
a process as the Evolution of a Mother, but it was
almost as formidable a problem to attack. As
much depended on it, as we shall see, as the
training of the mother ; and though it began later,
it required the bringing about of one or two
changes in Nature as novel as any that preceded
it. When the work was begun, the Father was
in a much worse plight, so far as training for
family life was concerned, than the Mother. If
Maternity was at a feeble level in the lower
reaches of Nature, Paternity was non-existent.
Among a few Invertebrates the male parent took
a passing share in the care of the ^g^, but it is
not until we are all but at the top that fatherly in-

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 377

terest finds any real expression. Among the Birds,
the parents unite together in most cases to build
the nest, the Father doing the rough work of
bringing in moss and twigs, while the more trusty-
Mother does the actual work. When the eggs are
laid, the male parent also takes his turn at incuba-
tion ; supplies food and protection ; and lingers
round the place of birth to defend the fledglings
to the last. When we leave the Birds, however,
and pass on to the Mammals, the Fathers are
nearly all backsliders. Many are not only indif-
ferent to their young, but hostile : and among the
Carnivora the Mothers have frequently to hide their
little ones in case the father eats them.

We have another and a more serious count
against early Fatherhood. If the Love of Father
for child was in this backward state, infinitely
more grave was the condition of things between
him and the Mother. Probably we have all taken
it for granted that husbands and wives have
always loved one another. Evolution takes noth-
ing for granted. The affection between husband
and wife is, of all the immeasurable forms of
Love, the most beautiful, the most lasting, and the
most divine : yet up to this time we have not
been able even to record its existence. The
finished results of Evolution appear so natural to

378 THE ASCENT OF MAN

us, looking back from this late day, that we con-
tinually ignore the difficulties it had to meet, and
forget how every single step in progress from the
lowest to the highest had to be carried at the
bayonet's point. The most informed naturalist
probably has never given Nature credit for a
thousandth part of the work she has done, or
has succeeded in presenting to his mind more
than a surface outline of the gigantic series of
problems she had to solve. In lower Nature, as
a simple fact, male and female do not love one
another ; and in the lower reaches of Human
Nature, husband and wife do not love one another.
Among exceptional nations, for the last few hours
of the world's history, husbands and wives have
truly loved ; but for the vast mass of Mankind,
during the long ages which preceded historic times,
conjugal love was probably all but unknown.

Now here is a very pretty problem for Evolu-
tion. She has at once to make good Husbands
and good Fathers out of lawless savages. Unless
this problem is solved the higher progress of the
world is at an end. It is the mature opinion of
every one who has thought upon the history of
the world, that the thing of highest importance for
all times and to all nations is Family Life. When
the Family was instituted, and not till then, the

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 379

higher Evolution of the world was secured. Hence
the exceptional value of the Father's development.
As the other half of the arch on which the whole
higher world is built, his taming, his domestication,
his moral discipline, are vital ; and in the nature
of things this was the next great operation under-
taken by Evolution.

The first step in the transition was to relate him,
definitely and permanently, to the Mother. And
here a formidable initial obstacle had to be en-
countered. The apathy and estrangement between
husband and wife in the animal world is radical
and universal. There is almost no such thing
there as married life. Marriage, in anthropology,
is not a word for an occasion, but for a state ; it
is not, that is to say, a wedding, but a dwelling
together throughout life of husband and wife. Now
when Man emerged from the animal creation this
institution of conjugal life had not been arrived
at. Marriage like everything else has been slowly
evolved, and until it was evolved, until they learned
to dwell continually together, there was no chance
for mutual love to spring up between male and
female. In Nature the pairing season is usually
but an incident. It lasts only a very short time,
and during the rest of the year, with some excep-
tions, the sexes remain apart. From the invest!-

38o THE ASCENT OF MAN

gations of Westermarck, who has lately contributed
to sociology the most masterly account of the
Evolution of Marriage we possess — it appears more
than probable that the earliest progenitors of Man
had also a pairing season, and that the young were
born at a particular time of the year, and never
at any other time. All the animals nearest to
Man in Nature have such a season, and there
are only a few known — the elephant for instance,
and some of the whales — which have none. Now
the brevity of this period in the father's case must
have told against his developing any real affection.
If he is to run away a few days after the young
are born he will miss all the discipline of the home,
and as this discipline is essential, as this is the only
way in which love can be acquired, or inherited love
developed, some method must be adopted in his
case to extend the period of home life during which
it can act.

Now let us see how this was done. The problem
being to give Love time, the solution was in some
way to alter the circumstances which confined the
pairing season to a specific date — to abolish, in
fact, the pairing season in the case of Man, and
lengthen out the time in which husband and wife
should stay together. And as this was actually
the method adopted, we have first to ask what

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 381

these special circumstances were. Why should
animals have specific dates at all ? The clue will
be found if we examine carefully what these dates
are and the reasons Nature has had for choosing
them. Some wise principle must underlie this, or
it would not be the universal rule it is. The pairing
time with Birds, as everyone knows, occurs in the
Spring. With Reptiles this is also the case ; but
among Mammals each species has a season peculiar
to itself, every separate month being selected by
one or other, and invariably adhered to. " The
bat pairs in January and February ; the wild camel
in the desert to the east of Lake Lob-nor, from the
middle of January nearly to the end of February ;
the Canis Azarae and the Indian bison in winter ;
the weasel in March ; the kulan from May to July ;
the musk-ox at the end of August ; the elk, in the
Baltic Provinces, at the end of August, and, in
Asiatic Russia, in September or October ; the wild
Yak in Tibet in September; the reindeer in Norway
at the end of September ; the badger in October ;
the Capra pyrenaica in November ; the chamois,
the musk-deer, and the orongo-antelope in Novem-
ber and December ; the wolf, from the end of
December to the middle of February."^ It might
seem that no law governed these various dates,
1 Westermarck's History of Human Marriage, p. 26.

382 THE ASCENT OF MAN

but their very variety is the proof of an under-
lying principle. For these dates show that each
animal in each particular country chooses that time
of the year to give birth to her young when they will
have the best chance of surviving — that is to say,
when the climate is mildest, food most abundant,
and the prospects of life on the whole most favour-
able. The dormouse thus brings forth its young in
August, when the nuts begin to ripen ; and the
young deer sees the light just before the first grass
shoots into greenness. Because those born at this
season survived and those born out of it perished, by
the prolonged action of Natural Selection these
dates in time probably became engrained in the
species, and would only alter with climate itself

But when Man's Evolution made a certain pro-
gress, and when the Mother's care reached mature
perfection, it was no longer imperative for children
to be born only when the sun was shining, and the
fruits grew ripe. The parents could now make
provision for any weather and for any dearth.
They could give their little ones clothes when nights
grew cold ; they could build barns and granaries
against times of famine. In any climate, and at
any time, their young were safe ; and the old
marriage dates, with their subsequent desertions,
were struck from the human calendar. So arose, or

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 383

at least was inaugurated, Family Life, the first and
the last nursery of the higher sympathies, and the
home of all that was afterwards holy in the world.
One could not find a simpler instance of the grow-
ing sovereignty of Mind over the powers of Nature.
So remote a cause as the inclination of the earth's
axis, and the consequent changes of the seasons,
determines the time of Marriage for almost the
whole animal creation, while Man, and a few other
forms of life whose environment is exceptional, are
able to refuse all such dictations. It was when
Man's mind became capable of making its own
provisions against the weather and the crops that
the possibility of Fatherhood, Motherhood, and the
Family were realized.

The supporters of the hypothesis of promiscuity
have tried to show, what would almost follow from
their theory, that the children in primitive times
belonged rather to the tribe. But it is not likely
that this was the case. The hypothesis of pro-
miscuity itself, notwithstanding its support from
McLennan, Morgan, Lubbock, Bastian, Post, and
other authorities, has probably received its death-
blow ; and the ancientness of the family as well as
of the institution of Marriage are both vindicated
by later facts. " Everywhere," writes Westermarck,
**we find the tribes or gl?Lti§ ggmposed of several

334 THE ASCENT OF MAN

families, the members of each family being more,
closely connected with one another than with the
rest of the tribe. The Family, consisting of
parents, children, and often also their next de-
scendants, is a universal institution among existing
people. And it seems extremely probable that
among our early human ancestors, the Family
proved, if not the Society itself, at least the
nucleus of it. I do not, of course, deny that the
tie which bound the children to the Mother was
much more intimate and more lasting than that
which bound them to the Father ; but it seems
to me that the only result to which a critical in-
vestigation of facts can lead us is, that in all
probability there has been no stage of human
development where marriage has not existed, and
that the father has always been, as a rule, the
protector of his Family." ^

But the process is not yet quite completed.
With the longer time together husband and wife
may get to know and lean upon one another a
little, but the time is still too short for deep
affection, and there remain one or two serious
obstacles to remove. Indeed, unless some further
steps are taken, this first achievement must end
in failure. As a matter of fact, it has often ended
* Op. cit.^ pp. 42-50,

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 385

in failure, and there have been and still are tribes
and nations where love between husband and wife
is non-existent. Among the Hovas, we are assured
by authorities, the idea of love between husband
and wife is " hardly thought of" ; that at Win-
nebah " not even the appearance of affection "
exists between them ; that among the Beni-Amer
it is " considered even disgraceful for a wife to
show any affection for her husband " ; that the
Chittagong Hill tribes have " no idea of tenderness
nor of chivalrous devotion " ; and that the Eskimo
treat their wives " with great coldness and neglect."
The savage cruelty with which wives are treated
by the Australian aborigines is indicated even in
their weapons. The very names " Servant, Slave,"
by which the Brahman address their wives, and the
wife's reply, " Master, Lord," symbolize the gulf
between the two. There are exceptions, it is true,
and often touching exceptions. Travellers cite
instances of constancy among savage peoples which
reach the region of romance. Probably there
never was a time, indeed, nor a race, when some
measure of sympathy did not stir between hus-
band and wife. But when we consider all the facts,
it is impossible to doubt that in the region of all
the higher affections the savage wife and the savage
husband were all but strangers to each other.

2 B

386 THE ASCENT OF MAN

What then was wanting for the perfecting of
the domestic tie, and how did Evolution secure it?
In the animal creation, we have already witnessed
the methods which Nature took to get more care
out of little care, to make a short-lived sympathy
grow into a great sympathy. Her method was
first, concentration ; and second, extension of time.
By giving a Mother one or two young to care for
instead of a hundred, she made care practicable,
and by lengthening the period of infancy from
hours to years she made it inevitable. And these
are again her methods in perfecting love between
man and wife. By abolishing the pairing season
she lengthened the time for love to grow in ;
the next step is to perfect the object on which it
shall focus. For there was again the same sort of
barrier to a full-blown love which we saw before in
the animal kingdom. An animal mother could not
truly love in the early days because she had a
hundred or a thousand young. Man could not
love in the early days because he had a dozen
wives. This love was too diluted to come to
anything. What Evolution next worked at
was to get a quintessence. Polygamy, in other
words, the scattered love of many, must, from this
time forward, be changed into monogamy — the
absorbing love of one. And this transposition was

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 387

gradually introduced. A few polygamous people,
a very few at first, become monogamous. The new
system worked better, it spread, and was finally
adopted by those higher nations which it also
helped to create. It is an instance, nevertheless,
of the slowness with which radical changes succeed
in leavening great masses of mankind, that the
older system, with the ban of Evolution upon it,
still survives in Modern Europe. Yet there are
signs, even among the uncivilized, that polygamy
is passing away. Among some almost savage
tribes it is unknown ; among others prohibited.
Even in a polygamous community it is usually
only a minority who have more wives than one.
And where the plural system is in full force, the
tendency — the Evolutionist would say the transition
— to monogamy is plainly marked, for among the
many wives possessed by any individual, there is
generally one who is first favourite and ranks as
helpmeet or wife. The stress just laid upon the
ethical gains of the monogamous state as contrasted
with the polygamous, of course only emphasizes
one side of the question, and by the pure naturalist
might be ruled out of court. Were the physiologist
to go over the same ground he could give a parallel
account of the development, and show that on the
merely physiological plane the transition to mono-

388 THE ASCENT OF MAN

gamy and the rise of the Family was a likely if
not an inevitable result. It is at least certain
that during those later stages of social Evolution
in which Monogamy has prevailed, the change has
been in the best physical interests alike of the
parents, the offspring, and of society.

This barrier removed. Evolution had still much
to do to the other — the brevity of the time during
which husband and wife remained together. What
short work Nature had already made of this ob-
stacle— by abolishing the pairing season — we have
just seen. But that requires supplementing. It is
not enough to give time for mutual knowledge and
affection after marriage. Nature must deepen the
result by extending it to the time before marriage.
In primitive times there was no such thing as court-
ship. Men secured their wives in three ways, and
in uncivilized nations so find them still. Among
barbarous nations marriage is not a case of love,
but of capture ; among the semi-barbarous it is a
case of barter; and among the imperfectly civilized —
among whom we must often include ourselves — a
matter of convention. The second of these, the
purchase system — a slightly evolved form of mar-
riage by capture — is probably one through which
all human Marriage has passed ; and relics of it still
exist in the dos and other symbols among nations

TMk EVOLUTION OP A FATHER 389

with whom the custom of buying a bride has long
since passed away. By degrading the object of
barter to the level of a chattel, this system is a
barrier to high affection. But in most cases this is
heightened by the impossibility of that preliminary
courtship which leads to mutual knowledge and in-
telligent love. The bride and bridegroom, in the
extremer cases, meet as total strangers ; and though
affection may bud in after years, the mingling of
unknown temperaments, together with the destruc-
tion of reverence for woman by treating her as
an article of barter, make the chances small of it
blossoming into a flower.

Courtship, with its vivid perceptions and quickened
emotions, is a great opportunity for Evolution ; and
to institute and lengthen reasonably a period so rich
in impression is one of its latest and highest efforts.
To give love time, indeed, has been all along, and
through a great variety of arrangements, the chief
means of establishing it on the earth. Unfortunately,
the lesson of Nature here is being all too slowly
learned, even among nations with its open book
before them. In some of the greatest of civilized
countries real mutual knowledge between the youth
of the sexes is unattainable ; marriages are made
only by a higher kind of purchase, and the supreme
step in life is taken in the dark. Whatever safe-

390 THE ASCENT OF MAN

guards this method provides, it cannot be final, nor
can those nations rise to any exalted social height
or moral greatness till some change occurs. It has
been given especially to one nation to lead the world
in its assault upon this mistaken law, and to demon-
strate to mankind that in the unconstrained and
artless relations of youth lie higher safeguards than
the polite conventions of society can afford. The
people of America have proved that the blending
of the sweet currents of different family-lives in
social intercourse, in recreation, and — most original
of all — in education, can take place freely and joy-
ously without any sacrifice of man's reverence for
woman, or woman's reverence for herself ; and,
springing out of these naturally mingled lives, there
must more and more come those sacred and happy
homes which are the surest guarantees for the moral
progress of a nation. So long as the first concern
of a country is for its homes, it matters little what it
seeks second or third. Long before Evolution showed
its scientific interest in this first social aggregate, and
proclaimed it the strategic point in moral progress,
poetry, philosophy, and history assigned the same
great place to Family-life. The one point, indeed,
where all students of the past agree, where all pro-
phets of the future meet, where all the sciences from
biology to ethics are enthusiastically at one, is in

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 39:

their faith in the imperishable potentialities of this
yet most simple institution.

With all these barriers removed it might now be
supposed that the process was at last complete.
But one of the surprises of Evolution here awaits
us. All the arrangements are finished to fan the
flame of love, yet out of none of them was
love itself begotten. The idea that the existence
of sex accounts for the existence of love is untrue.
Marriage among early races, as we have seen, has
nothing to do with love. Among savage peoples
the phenomenon everywhere confronts us of wedded
life without a grain of love. Love then is no neces-
sary ingredient of the sex relation ; it is not an
outgrowth of passion. Love is love, and has
always been love, and has never been anything
lower. Whence, then, came it? If neither the
Husband nor the Wife bestowed this gift upon
the world, Who did ? It was A Little Child. Till
this appeared, Man's affection was non-existent ;
Woman's was frozen. The Man did not love the
Woman ; the Woman did not love the Man. But
one day from its Mother's very heart, from a shrine
which her husband never visited nor knew was there,
which she herself dared scarce acknowledge, a Child
drew forth the first fresh bud of a Love which was
not passion, a Love which was not selfish, a Love

392 THE ASCENT OF MAN

which was an incense from its Maker, and whose
fragrance from that hour went forth to sanctify the
world. Later, long later, through the same tiny
and unconscious intermediary, the father's soul
was touched. And one day, in the love of a
little child. Father and Mother met.

That this is the true lineage of love, that it
has descended not from Husbands and Wives but
through children, is proved by the simplest study
of savage life. Love for children is always a prior
and a stronger thing than love between Father and
Mother. The indifference of the Husband to his
Wife — though often greatly exaggerated by anthro-
pology— is all too manifest, and throughout whole
regions the Wife does not love but only fears
her Husband. For the children on the other hand
both parents have almost always a regard. The
universality of a Mother's Love is one of the reve-
lations of travel. Even among cannibals, where
the shocking treatment of Wives by their Husbands
is in daily evidence, a case of cruelty to children
from the Mother's side — apart from infanticide,
which has a rationale of its own — is rarely heard
of. The status of children if not ideal forms a
most striking contrast to the general moral and
social level : and one cannot but decide that they
have been unconsciously the true moral teachers

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 393

of the world. Had the institution of the Family
depended on Sex and not on affection it would
probably never have endured for any time. Love
is eternal ; Sex, transient. Its unbridled expres- .
sion in individual natures, and its recklessness when
thwarted, have given rise to exaggerated ideas of
its power. In all uncontrolled forms, however,
it becomes so immediate a menace to social order
that if it does not die out in self-destruction it is
checked by the community and forced into lawful
channels. The only thing that could bear the
heavy burden of social order and adapt itself to
every change and fresh demand was the inde-
structibly solid, yet elastic, strength of love. The
care and culture of love therefore became thence-
forth the first great charge of Evolution, and
every obstruction to its path began to be swept
away. Whatever facilities could further its career
were gradually adopted, and changes which soon
began to pass over the face of all human societies
seemed but parts of one great conspiracy to hasten
its final reign.

For a prolonged and protective Fatherhood, once
introduced into the world, was immediately taken
charge of by Natural Selection. The children who
had fathers to fight for them grew up ; those who
had not were killed or starved. The lengthening

394 THE ASCENT OF MAN

of the period during which Father and Mother kept
together meant double protection for the little ones ;
and the more they kept together for the first few
days or weeks, and the more the Father helped to
defend mother and child, the more chance for all
three in the end. The picture which Koppenfells
draws of the female Gorilla and her young en-
sconced in a nest upon the fork of a tree, while
Gorilla pkre sat all night at the foot with his back
against the trunk to protect them from the leopards,
is a fair object-lesson in the first or protective stage
of the Father's Evolution. When Man passed,
however, as he probably did, from the frugivorous
to the carnivorous state, the Father had the addi-
tional responsibility of keeping his family in food.
It would be impossible for a Mother to hunt lor
game and attend to her young ; and for a long time
the young themselves were useless in the chase,
and must be entirely dependent on their parents'
bounty. But this means promotion to the Father.
He is not only protector but food-provider. It
is impossible to believe that in process of time
the discharge of this office did not bring some
faint satisfactions to himself, that the mere sight of
his offspring fed instead of famished did not give
him a certain pleasure. And though the pleasure
at first may have been no more than the absence

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 395

of the annoyance they caused by the clamorousness
of their want, it became a stimulus to exertion, and
led in the end to rudimentary forms of sympathy
and self-denial.

Once established in the world as a winning force,
love could only yield to a greater force than itself,
and greater force there is none. In the hands
of Natural Selection, therefore, it ran its course.
Whatever physiological adjustments continued to
go on beneath the surface, ethical factors now
determined extinction or survival. Bad parents
mean starved children, and starved children will be
replaced in the Struggle for Life by full-fed chil-
dren, and ere a few generations parents without
love will exist no more. The child, on the other
hand, which has drunk most deeply of its Father's
or its Mother's love lives to hand on that which
has spared it to a succeeding race. How much of
affection is handed on, or how little, matters not,
for Heredity works with the finest microscope, and
sees, and seizes, the invisible. In a second child,
reared by parents one degree more loving than the
last, this ultimate particle of love will grow a
little more, and each succeeding Family in this
royal line will be richer in the elements which
make for progress than the last.

When we reach the human Family, we find that

396 THE ASCENT OF MAN

this simple combination was already strong enough
to become the nucleus of the social and national
life of the world. For the moment the new
forces of Sympathy, Brotherhood, Self-denial, or
Love, began to work among the isolated units
which made up primitive Man, the whole com-
position and character of the aggregate began to
change. Sooner or later in the recurring neces-
sities of savage existence there came an oppor-
tunity for the members of the first combination,
the little group of Father, Mother, and Sons,
to act together. However unworthily this primi-
tive group merited the name of Family, there was
here what at that time was of final importance —
the elements of physical strength. He who formerly
stood alone in the Struggle for Life now found him-
self backed on occasion by an inner circle. Those
who outside this circle ventured to oppose or offend
an individual within it had the Family to reckon
with. Ends were gained by the new alliance which
were unattainable single-handed by any individual
member of the tribe, and whether enlisted to evade
disaster or secure a prey, to resist an injustice or
avenge a wrong, the odds henceforth and always
were in favour of the combination. When it is re-
membered how, owing to the comparative equality
of the competitors in the conflict of savage exist-

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 397

ence, even an infinitesimal advantage on one side or
the other determines health or starvation, survival or
extinction, the importance of the first feeble effort at
federation must be recognized. Shoulder to shoulder
has been the watchword all through history of
national development. Almost from the very first,
indeed, the Family and not the individual must
have been the unit of Tribal life ; and as Families
grew more and more definite, they became the
recognized piers of the social structure and gave a
first stability to the race of men.

But great as are the physical advantages of
the Family, the ethical uses, even in the early
days of its existence, place this institution at
the head of all the creations of Evolution. For
the F'.mily is not only its greatest creation, but
its greatest instrument for further creation. The
ethical changes begin almost the moment it is
formed. One immediate effect, for instance, of the
formation of Family groups was to take off from
any single individual the perpetual strain of the
Struggle for Life. The Family as a whole must
sometimes fight, but the responsibility and the
duty are now distributed, and those who were once
solely preoccupied with the personal struggle will
have respites, during which other things will
occupy their minds. Attention thus called off from

398 THE ASCENT OF MAN

environing enemies, the members of the Family will,
as it were, discover one another. New relations
among them will spring up, new adjustments to
one another's presence and to one another's needs,
and hitherto unknown elements of character will
be gradually called to the surface. That unselfish-
ness, in some rude form, should now grow up is
a necessity of living together. A man cannot be
a member of a Family and remain an utter egoist.
His interests are perforce divided, and though the
Family group is a small surface for unselfishness
to spread to and to practise on, no greater feat
could as yet be attempted, and Evolution never
runs risks of too rapid development or over-strain.
With the incorporation of the Family into a Clan
or Tribe the area will presently be extended,
and the necessity of controlling self-interest more
thoroughly, or merging it in a wider interest,
become more obligatory. But to prepare the
altruistic sentiment for so great an abnegation,
the simpler discipline of the Family was required.
How firmly Families in time became welded together
in mutual interest and support, and how much
crude Altruism this implies, is evident from the
place of Family feuds and the power of great
Families and Houses both in ancient and modern
history. A striking instance is the Vendetta. To

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 399

avenge a Family insult in countries where this pre-
vails was a sacred duty to all the relatives, and
even the last surviving member willingly gave up
his life to vindicate its honour. So strong indeed
sometimes has grown the power of individual
Families that the more desirable spread of Altruism
to the Nation was threatened, and wider interests
so much forgotten that the Family became the
enemy of the State. Nothing could more forcibly
show the tremendous power of self-development
contained within the Family circle, and the solidity
and strength to which it can grow, than that, time
after time in history, it has had to be crushed
and broken up by all the forces of the State.

Among other elements in human nature fostered
in the Family is one of exceptional interest. The
attempt has been made to show that from the
inevitable relations of early Family life, the sense
of Duty first dawned upon the world. The theme
is too great, too intricate, and too dangerous to
open under the limitations of the present inquiry,
for these deny us the appeal to Society, to Re-
ligion, and even to the Conscience of the higher
Man. But it is due to the Father, whose Evolu-
tion we are tracing, that the share he is sup-
posed by some authorities to take in it should
be at least named.

4C50 THE ASCENT OF MAN

That morality in general has something to do
with the relations of people to one another is
evident, as everyone knows, from the mere deriva-
tion of the word. Mores^ morals are in the first
instance customs^ the customs or ways which
people have when they are together. Now, the
Family is the first occasion of importance where
we get people together. And as there are not
only a number of people in a Family, but different
kinds of people, there will be a variety in the re-
lations subsisting between them, in the customs
which stereotype the most frequently repeated
actions necessitated by these relations, and in the
moods and attitudes of mind accompanying them.
Leaving out of sight differences of kind among
brothers and sisters, consider the probably more
divergent and certainly more dominant influences
of Father and Mother. What the relation of child
to Mother has crystallized into we have suflficiently
marked — it is a relation of direct dependence, and
its product is Love. But the Father is a wholly
different influence. What attitude does the Child
take up in this austerer presence, and what ways
of acting, what customs, mores^ morals, are en-
grained in the child's mind through it ? The
acknowledged position of the Father in most early
tribes is head of the Family. To the children,

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 401

and generally even to the Mother, he represents
Authority. He is the children's chief. Bachoven
•has familiarized. us with the idea of a Matriarchate,
or Maternal Family ; but although exceptional-
tribes have given supremacy to the Mother, the
rule is for the Father to be supreme. As head of
the Family, therefore, it was his business to make
the Family laws. No doubt the Mother also
made laws ; but the Father, as the more terrible
person, exacted obedience with greater severity, and
his laws acquired more force. To do what was
pleasing in his eyes was a necessity with the
children, and his favour or his frown became stand-
ards of what was " good " and what was " bad."
Low as this standard was — the fear or favour of a
savage Father — it was a beginning of right moreSy
good conduct, proper manners. Plant in the mind,
or evoke from it, the idea of acting in a given
way with reference to some half-dozen daily trifles
when done in the presence of one authoritative
individual, and Evolution has already found some-
thing to work on. The children have got six, if
not ten commandments. Extend the half-dozen
things done rightly to a whole dozen, and then to
a score, and then to a hundred ; and let it become
habitual to do these things rightly. When the

right doing of these things commends the doer to

2 c

402 THE ASCENT OF MAN

one person, he will next be apt to commend him-
self by similar conduct to other persons, if their
standard happens to be the same. Whether good
behaviour purchases favour or simply succeeds in
evading penalties is at first immaterial. All that
is required, under whatever sanctions, is that some
standard of good or bad shall arise. No abstract
sense of duty, of course, here exists ; no perfect
law ; it is a purely personal and local code ; but
the word duty has at least received a first imper-
fect meaning ; and the Father, in some rough way,
forms an external conscience to those beneath
him.

Such is the tentative theory of the advocates
of Evolutional Ethics. It may or may not be
a possible account of the rise of a sense of
obligation, but it is certain that it does not
account for the whole of it. Why, also, that
particular thing should be elicited under the
circumstances described is an unanswered question.
In attempting to trace its rise, no rationale ap-
pears of its origin ; all proofs, in short, of its
evolution take for granted its previous existence.
A latent thing has become active ; an invisible
thing has become apparent. In one sense a rela-
tion has been created, in another sense a quality
in that relation has been revealed. A new experi-

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 403

ment upon human nature has been tried ; a
new discovery of its properties has been the
result.

That these moral elements, on the other hand,
must have a beginning somewhere in space and
time is certain enough. Not less necessary to the
world than the Mother's gift of Love is the twin
offering of the Father — Righteousness. And if,
almost before the soul is born, the shadowy outline
of a moral order should begin to loom out in his-
tory, the later phases and the later sanctions lose
nothing of their quality, are all the more wonderful
and all the more divine, because met by moral
adumbrations in the distant past. If the later
children had their ten commandments given them
in one way, they cannot grudge that the world's
earlier children should have been given their two
or three commandments in another way — another
way which, nevertheless, did we know all, might
turn out to be but another phase of the same
way. But it is impossible even to approach the
Evolution of Morality until we have carried Man
some stages further up his Ascent. It is only
when he reaches the social stage, when he becomes
aggregated into clans, tribes, and nations, that this
problem opens. For the present we must content
ourselves with having witnessed his arrival in the

404 THE ASCENT OF MAN

Human Family — the starting-point and threshold
of the true moral life.

For a long time, it is true, the Family circle,
as a circle, was incomplete. Machinery must itself
evolve before its products evolve. Scarcely defined
at all, broken as soon as formed, the earlier circles
allowed their strongest forces to escape almost at
the moment they generated. But the walls grew
higher and higher with the advance of history.
The leakage became less and less. With the
Christian era the machinery was complete ; the
circle finally closed in, and became a secluded
shrine where the culture of everything holy and
beautiful was carried on. The path by which this
ideal consummation was reached was not, as we
have seen, a straight path ; nor has the integrity
of the institution been always preserved through
the later centuries. The difficulty of realizing the
ideal may be judged of by the fewness of the
nations now living who have reached it, and by
the multitude of peoples and tribes who have
vanished from the earth without attaining. From
the failure to fulfil some one or other of the re-
quired conditions people after people and nation
after nation have come together only to disperse,
and leave no legacy behind except the lesson — as
yet in few cases understood — of why they failed.

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 405

Yet whether the road be straight or devious is of
little moment. The one significant thing is that it
rises. We have reached a stage in Evolution at
which physiological gains are guarded and accent-'
uated, if not in an ethical interest, at least by-
ethical factors becoming utilized by natural selec-
tion. Henceforth affection becomes a power in
the world ; and whatever physiological adjustments
continue to perfect themselves, the most attached
Families will have a better chance of surviv-
ing and of transmitting their moral character-
istics to succeeding generations. The completion
of the arch of Family Life forms one of the
great, if not the greatest of the landmarks of
history. If the crowning work of Organic Evolu-
tion is the Mammalia, the consummation of
the Mammalia is the Family. Physically, psy-
chically, ethically, the Family is the masterpiece
of Evolution. The creation of Evolution, it was
destined to become the most active instrument
and ally which Evolution has ever had. For
what is its evolutionary significance? It is the
generator and the repository of the forces which
alone can carry out the social and moral pro-
gress of the world. There they rally when
they become enfeebled, there their excesses
are counterbalanced, and thence they radiate

4o6 THE ASCENT OF MAN

out, refined and reinforced, to do their holy
work.

Looking at the mere dynamics of the question,
the Family contains all the machinery, and nearly
all the power, for the moral education of mankind.
Feebly, but adequately, in the early chapters of
Man's history it fulfilled its function of nursing
Love, the Mother of all morality, and Righteous-
ness, the Father of all morality, so preparing a
parentage for all the beautiful spiritual children
which in later years should spring from them. If
life henceforth is to go on at all, it must be a better
life, a more loving life, a more abundant life ; and
this premium upon Love means — if it means any-
thing— that Evolution is taking henceforth an ethical
direction. It is no more possible to interpret Nature
physically from this point than to interpret a ** Holy
Family " of Raphael's in terms of the material struc-
ture of canvas or the qualities of pigments. Canvas
may be coarse or fine, pigments may be vegetable
or mineral ; but whether the colours be crushed out
of madder or ground out of arsenic or lead is of
no importance now. Once these things were im-
portant ; by infinitely slow processes Nature formed
them ; by clever arts the colourman prepared them.
But the " Holy Family " did not lie potentially in
the madder-bud, nor in the earth with the lead and

THE EVOLUTION OP A FATHER 407

arsenic, nor in the laboratory with the colourman.
He who claims Nature for Matter and Physical
force makes the same assumption that these would
do if they claimed the painting. In a far truer
sense than Raphael produced his " Holy Family "
Nature has produced a Holy Family. Not for
centuries but for millenniums the Family has sur-
vived. Time has not tarnished it ; no later
art has improved upon it ; nor genius discovered
anything more lovely ; nor religion anything more
divine. From the bee's cell and the butterfly's
wing men draw what they call the Argument
from Design ; but it is in the kingdoms which
come without observation, in these great imma-
terial orderings which Science is but beginning to
perceive, that the purposes of Creation are
revealed.

CHAPTER X
INVOLUTION

TV yr ANY years ago, in the clay which in every
-^^ -^ part of the world is found underlying
beds of coal, a peculiar fossil was discovered and
named by science Stigmaria. It occurred in great
abundance and in many countries, and from the
strange- way in which it ramified through the clay
it was supposed to be some extinct variety of a
gigantic water- weed. In the coal itself another
fossil was discovered, almost as abundant but far
more beautiful, and from the exquisite carving
which ornamented its fluted stem it received the
name of Sigillaria. One day a Canadian geologist,
studying Sigillaria in the field, made a new dis-
covery. Finding the trunk of a Sigillaria standing
erect in a bed of coal, he traced the column down-
wards to the clay beneath. To his surprise he

found It ended in Stigmaria. This branching fossil

40&

INVOLUTION 409

in the clay was no longer a water-weed. It was the
root of which Sigillaria was the stem, and the clay-
was the soil in which the great coal-plant grew.

Through many chapters, often in the dark, every-
where hampered by the clay, we have been working
among roots. Of what are they the roots ? To
what order do they belong ? By what process
have they grown ? What connection have they
with the realm above, or the realm beneath ? Is
it a Stigmaria or a Sigillaria world ?

Till yesterday Science did not recognize them
even as roots. They were classified apart. They
led to nothing. No organic connection was known
between lower Nature and that wholly separate
and all but antagonistic realm, the higher world of
Man. Atoms, cells, plants, animals were the mate-
rial products of a separate creation, the clay from
which Man took his clay-body, and no more. The
higher world, also, was a system by itself. It rose
out of nothing ; it rested upon nothing. Clay,
where the roots lay, was the product of inorganic
forces ; Coal, which enshrined the tree, was a
creation of the sunlight. What fellowship had
light with darkness ? What possible connection
could exist between that beautiful organism which
stood erect in the living, and that which lay
prone in the dead ? Yet, by a process doubly

' 410 THE ASCENT OF MAN

verified, the organic connection between these
two has now been traced. Working upwards
through the clay the biologist finds what he
took to be an organism of the clay leaving
his domain and passing into a world above
—a world which he had scarcely noticed before,
and into which, with such instruments as he em-
ploys, he cannot follow it. Working downward
through the higher world, the psychologist, the
moralist, the sociologist, behold the even more won-
derful spectacle of the things they had counted a
peculiar possession of the upper kingdom, burying
themselves in ever attenuating forms in the clay
beneath. What is to be made of this discovery ?
Once more. Is it a Stigmaria or a Sigillaria
world ? Is the biologist to give up his clay or
the moralist his higher kingdom ? Are Mind,
Morals, Men, to be interpreted in terms of roots,
or are atoms and cells to be judged by the flowers
and fruits of the tree ?

The first fruit of the discovery must be that
each shall explore with new respect the other's
world, and, instead of delighting to accentuate their
contrasts, strive to magnify their infinite harmonies.
Old as is the world's vision of a cosmos, and
universal as has been its dream of the unity of
Nature, neither has ever stood before the imagina-

INVOLUTION 41 ij

tion complete. Poetry felt, but never knew, that
the universe was one ; Biology perceived the pro-
found chemical balance between the inorganic and
organic kingdoms, and no more ; Physics, discover-
ing the correlation of forces, constructed a cosmos
of its own ; Astronomy, through the law of gravi-
tation, linked us, but mechanically, with the stars.
But it was reserved for Evolution to make the final
revelation of the unity of the world, to comprehend
everything under one generalization, to explain
everything by one great end. Its omnipresent
eye saw every phenomenon and every law. It
gathered all that is and has been into one last
whole — a whole whose very perfection consists in
the all but infinite distinctions of the things which
it unites.

What is often dreaded in Evolution — the danger of
obliterating distinctions that are vital — is a ground-
less fear. Stigmaria can never be anything more
than root, and Sigillaria can never be anything
less than stem. To show their connection is not to
transpose their properties. The wider the distinctions
seen among their properties the profounder is the
Thought which unites them, the more rich and
rational the Cosmos which comprehends them.
For " the unity which we see in Nature is that kind
of Unity which the Mind recognizes as the result

^12 THE ASCENT OF MAN

of operations similar to its own — not a unity which
consists in mere sameness of material, or in mere
identity of composition, or in mere uniformity of
structure ; but a unity which consists in the sub-
ordination of all these to similar aims, not to similar
principles of action — that is to say, in like methods
of yoking a few elementary forces to the discharge
of special functions, and to the production, by ad-
justment, of one harmonious whole."^

Yet did Sigillaria grow out of Stigmaria? Did
Mind, Morals, Men, evolve out of Matter? Surely
if one is the tree and the other the root of
that tree, and if Evolution means the passage of
the one into the other, there is no escape from
this conclusion — no escape therefore from the
crassest materialism ? If this is really the situ-
ation, the lower must then include the higher, and
Evolution, after all, be a process of the clay ?
This is a frequent, a natural, and a wholly unreflect-
ing inference from a very common way of stating
the Evolution theory. It arises from a total mis-
conception of what a root is. Because a thing is
seen to have roots, it is assumed that it has grown
out of these roots, and must therefore belong to the
root-order. But neither of these things is true in
Nature. Are the stem, branch, leaf, flower, fruit
* Duke of Argyll, The Unity of Nature^ p. 44.

f

INVOLUTION 413J

of a tree roots ? Do they belong to the root-
order ? They do not. Their whole morphology is
■ different ; their whole physiology is different ; their
reactions upon the world around are different;
But it must be allowed that they are at least
contained in the root? No single one of them is
contained in the root. If not in the root, then in
the clay ? Neither are they contained in the clay.
But they grow out of clay, are they not made
out of clay? They do not grow out of clay, and
they are not made out of clay. It is astounding
sometimes how little those who venture to criticize
biological processes seem to know of its simplest
facts. Fill a flower-pot with clay, and plant in it a
seedling. At the end of four years it has become a
small tree ; it is six feet high ; it weighs ten pounds.
But the clay in the pot is still there ? A moiety of
it has gone, but it is not appreciably diminished ;
it has not, except the moiety, passed into the tree ;
the tree does not live on clay nor on any force
contained in the clay. It cannot have grown out
of the seedling, for the seedling contained but a
grain for every pound contained in the tree. It
cannot have grown from the root, because the root
is there now, has lost nothing to the tree, has itself
gained from the tree, and at first was no more
there than the tree.

P 414 T//E ASCENT OF MAN

Sigillaria, then, as representing the ethical order,
did not grow out of Stigmaria as representing
the organic or the material order. Trees not only-
do not evolve out of their roots, but whole classes
in the plant world — the sea-weeds for instance —
have no roots at all. If any possible relation
exists it is exactly the opposite one — it is the root
which evolves from the tree. Trees send down
roots in a far truer sense than roots send up trees.
Yet neither is the whole truth. The true function
of the root is to give stability to the tree, and to
afford a medium for conveying into it inorganic
matter from without. And this brings us face to
face with the real relation. Tree and root — the
seed apart — find their explanation not in one
another nor in something in themselves, but mainly
in something outside themselves. The secret of
Evolution lies, in short, with t/te Environment. In
the Environment, in that in which things live and
move and have their being, is found the secret of
their being, and especially of their becoming. And
what is that in which things live and move and
have their being? It is Nature, the world, the
cosmos — and something more, some One more,
an Infinite Intelligence and an Eternal Will.
Everything that lives, lives in virtue of its cor-
respondences with this Environment. Evolution is

INVOLUTION 4 m

not to unfold from within ; it is to infold from
without. Growth is no mere extension from
a root but a taking possession of, or a being
possessed by, an ever widening Environment, a
continuous process of assimilation of the seen
or Unseen, a ceaseless redistribution of energies
flowing into the evolving organism from the Uni-
verse around it. The supreme factor in all de-
velopment is Environment. Half the confusions
which reign round the process of Evolution, and
half the objections to it, arise from considering the
evolving object as a self-sufficient whole. Produce
an organism, plant, animal, man, society, which will
evolve in vacuo and the right is yours to say that
the tree lies in the root, the flower in the bud,
the man in the embryo, the social organism in the
family of an anthropoid ape. If an organism is to
be judged in terms of the immediate Environment
of its roots, the tree is a clay tree ; but if it is to
be judged by stem, leaves, fruit, it is not a clay
tree. If the moral or social organism is to be
judged in terms of the Environment of its roots,
the moral and social organism is a material or-
ganism ; but if it is to be judged in terms of the
higher influences which enter into the making of its
stem, leaves, fruit, it is not a material organism.
Everything that lives, and every part of everything

ili6 THE ASCENT OF MAN

thit lives, enters into relation with different parts
of the Environment and with different things in the
Environment ; and at every step of its Ascent it
compasses new ranges of the Environment, and is
acted upon, and acts, in different ways from those
in which it was acted upon, or acted, at the pre-
vious stage.

For what is most of all essential to remember
is that not only is Environment the prime factor
in development, but that the Environment itself
rises with every evolution of any form of life. To
regard the Environment as a fixed quantity and a
fixed quality is, next to ignoring the altruistic
factor, the cardinal error of evolutional philo-
sophy. With every step a climber rises up a
mountain side his Environment must change. At
a thousand feet the air is lighter and purer than
at a hundred, and as the effect varies with the
cause, all the reactions of the air upon his body
are altered at the higher level. His pulse
quickens ; his spirit grows more buoyant ; the
energies of the upper world flow in upon him.
All the other phenomena change — the plants
are Alpine, the animals are a hardier race, the
temperature falls, the very world he left behind
wears a different look. At three thousand feet the
causes, the effects, and the phenomena change

INVOLUTION 417

again. The horizon is wider, the light intenser,
the air colder, the top nearer ; the nether world
recedes from view. At six thousand feet, if we
may accentuate the illustration till it contains more
of the emphasis of the reality, he enters the region
of snow. Here is a change brought about by a
small and perfectly natural rise which yet amounts
to a revolution. Another thousand feet and there
is another revolution — he is ushered into the domain
of mist. Still another thousand, and the climax
of change has come. He stands at the top, and,
behold, the Sun. None of the things he has en-
countered in his progress toward the top are new
things. They are the normal phenomena of alti-
tude— the scenes, the energies, the correspondences,
natural to the higher slopes. He did not create any
of these things as he rose ; they were not created
as he rose ; they did not lie potentially in the plains
or in the mountain foot. What has happened is
simply that in rising he has encountered them —
some for the first time, which are therefore wholly
new to him ; others which, though known before,
now flow into his being in such fuller measure, or
enter into such fresh relations among themselves,
or with the changed being which at every step he
has become, as to be also practically new.

Man, in his long pilgrimage upwards from the
2 D

4i8 THE ASCENT OF MAN

clay, passes through regions of ever varying char-
acter. Each breath drawn and utilized to make
one upward step brings him into relation with a
fractionally higher air, a fractionally different world.
The new energies he there receives are utilized, and
in virtue of them he rises to a third, and from a
third to a fourth. As in the animal kingdom the
senses open one by one — the eye progressing from
the mere discernment of light and darkness to the
blurred image of things near, and then to clearer
vision of the more remote ; the ear passing from
the tremulous sense of vibration to distinguish with
ever increasing delicacy the sounds of far-off things
— so in the higher world the moral and spiritual
senses rise and quicken till they compass qualities
unknown before and impossible to the limited facul-
ties of the earlier life. So Man, not by any innate
tendency to progress in himself, nor by the energies
inherent in the protoplasmic cell from which he first
set out, but by a continuous feeding and reinforc-
ing of the process from without, attains the higher
altitudes, and from the sense-world at the mountain
foot ascends with ennobled and ennobling faculties
until he greets the Sun.

What is the Environment of the Social tree ?
It is all the things, and all the persons, and all
the influences, and all the forces with which, at

INVOLUTION 419

each successive stage of progress, it enters into
correspondence. And this Environment inevitably
expands as the Social tree expands and extends
its correspondences. At the savage stage Man
compasses one set of relations, at the rude social
stage another, at the civilized stage a third,
and each has its own reactions. The social,
the moral, and the religious forces beat upon
all social beings in the order in which the
capacities for them unfold, and according to the
measure in which the capacities themselves are
fitted to contain them. And from what ulti-
mate source do they come? There is only one
source of everything in the world. They come
from the same source as the Carbonic Acid Gas,
the Oxygen, the Nitrogen, and the Vapour of
Water, which from the outer world enter into the
growing plant. These also visit the plant in the
order in which the capacities for them unfold, and
according to the measure in which these capacities
can contain them.

The fact that the higher principles come from
the same Environment as those of the plant, never-
theless does not imply that they are the same as
those which enter into the plant. In the plant
they are physical, in Man spiritual. If anything
is to be implied it is not that the spiritual energies

420 THE ASCENT OF MAN

are physical, but that the physical energies are
spiritual. To call the things in the physical world
"material" takes us no nearer the natural, no further
away from the spiritual. The roots of a tree may
rise from what we call a physical world ; the leaves
may be bathed by physical atoms ; even the energy
of the tree may be solar energy, but the tree is
itself. The tree is a Thought, a unity, a rational
purposeful whole ; the " matter " is but the medium
of their expression. Call it all — matter, energy, tree
— a physical production, and have we yet touched
its ultimate reality? Are we even quite sure that
what we call a physical world is, after all, a physical
world ? The preponderating view of science at
present is that it is not. The very term " material
world," we are told, is a misnomer; that the world
is a spiritual world, merely employing " matter "
for its manifestations.

But surely there is still a fallacy. Are not these
so-called social forces the effect of Society and not
its cause? Has not Society to generate them be-
fore they regenerate Society? True, but to gener-
ate is not to create. Society is machinery, a
medium for the transmission of energy, but no
more a medium for its creation than a steam
engine is for the creation of its energy. Whence
then the social energies ? The answer is as before,

INVOLUTION 421

Whence the physical energies ? And Science has
only one answer to that. " Consider the posi-
tion into which Science has brought us. We are
led by scientific logic to an unseen, and by scientific,
analogy to the spirituality of this unseen. In fine,
our conclusion is, that the visible universe has been
developed by an intelligence resident in the Un-
seen." ^ There is only one theory of the method
of Creation in the field, and that is Evolution ;
but there is only one theory of origins in the field,
and that is Creation. Instead of abolishing a cre-
ative Hand, Evolution demands it. Instead of
being opposed to Creation, all theories of Evolution
begin by assuming it. If Science does not formally
posit it, it never posits anything less. " The
doctrine of Evolution," writes Mr. Huxley, " is
neither theistic nor anti-theistic. It has no more
to do with theism than the first book of Euclid
has. It does not even come in contact with
theism considered as a scientific doctrine." But
when it touches the question of origins, it is
either theistic or silent. " Behind the co-operating
forces of Nature," says Weismann, " which aim
at a purpose, we must admit a cause, . . .
inconceivable in its nature, of which we can

^ Balfour Stewart and Tait, The Unseen Universe^ 6th
edition, p. 221.

422 THE ASCENT OF MAN

only say one thing with certainty, that it must be
theological."

The fallacy of the merely quantitative theory
of Evolution is apparent. To interpret any
organism in terms of the organism solely is to
omit reference to the main instrument of its
Evolution, and therefore to leave the process,
scientifically and philosophically, unexplained. It
is as if one were to construct a theory of the
career of a millionaire in terms of the pocket-
money allowed him when a schoolboy. Disregard
the fact that more pocket-money was allowed the
schoolboy as he passed from the first form to the
sixth; that his allowance was increased as he came
of age ; that now, being a man, not a boy, he was
capable of more wisely spending it; that being wise
he put his money to paying uses ; and that in-
terest and capital were invested and re-invested as
years went on — disregard all this and you cannot
account for the rise of the millionaire. As well
construct the millionaire from the potential gold
contained in his first sixpence — a sixpence which
never left his pocket — as construct a theory of
the Evolution of Man from the protoplasmic cell
apart from its Environment. It is only when
interpreted, not in terms of himself, but in terms
of Environment, and of an Environment increas-

INVOLUTION 423

ingly appropriated, quantitatively and qualitatively,
with each fresh stage of the advance, that a con-
sistent theory is possible, or that the true nature
of Evolution can appear.

A child does not grow out of a child by
spontaneous unfoldings. The process is fed from
without. The body assimilates food, the mind
assimilates books, the moral nature draws upon
affection, the religious faculties nourish the higher
being from Ideals. Time brings not only more
things, but new things ; the higher nature inaugu-
rates possession of, or by, the higher order. "It
lies in the very nature of the case that the
earliest form of that which lives and develops is
the least adequate to its nature, and therefore that
from which we can get the least distinct clue to
the inner principle of that nature. Hence to trace
a living being back to its beginning, and to ex-
plain what follows by such beginning, would be
simply to omit almost all that characterizes it,
and then to suppose that in what remains we
have the secret of its existence. That is not
really to explain it, but to explain it away ; for
on this method, we necessarily reduce the features
that distinguish it to a minimum^ and, when we
have done so, the remainder may well seem to be
itself reducible to something in which the principle

424 THE ASCENT OF MAN

in question does not manifest itself at all. If we
carry the animal back to protoplasm, it may
readily seem possible to explain it as a chemical
compound. And, in like manner, by the same
minimizing process, we may seem to succeed in
reducing consciousness and self-consciousness in its
simplest form to sensation, and sensation in its
simplest form to something not essentially different
from the nutritive life of plants. The fallacy of
the sorites may thus be used to conceal all quali-
tative changes under the guise of quantitative
addition or diminution, and to bridge over all
difference by the idea of gradual transition. For,
as the old school of etymologists showed, if we
are at liberty to interpose as many connecting
links as we please, it becomes easy to imagine
that things the most heterogeneous should spring
out of each other. While, however, the hypothesis
of gradual change — change proceeding by infinitesi-
mal stages which melt into each other so that
the eye cannot detect where one begins and the
other ends — makes such a transition easier for
imagination^ it does nothing to diminish the diffi-
culty or the wonder of it for thoughtr^

The value of philosophical criticism to science
has seldom appeared to more advantage than in
' Edward Caird, The Evolution of Religion, Vol. I., pp. 49-50.

INVOLUTION 425

these words of the Master of Balliol. The follow-
ing passage from Martineau may be fitly placed
beside them : — " In not a few of the progressionists
the weak illusion is unmistakable, that, with time
enough, you may get everything out of next-to-
nothing. Grant us, they seem to say, any tiniest
granule of power, so close upon zero that it is not
worth begrudging — allow it some trifling tendency
to infinitesimal movement — and we will show you
bow this little stock became the kosmos, without
ever taking a step worth thinking of, much less
constituting a case for design. The argument is a
mere appeal to an incompetency in the human
imagination, in virtue of which magnitudes evading
conception are treated as out of existence ; and an
aggregate of inappreciable increments is simul-
taneously equated, — in its cause to nothings in its
effect to the whole of things. You manifestly want
the same causality, whether concentrated in a
moment or distributed through incalculable ages ;
only in drawing upon it a logical theft is more
easily committed piecemeal than wholesale. Surely
it is a mean device for a philosopher thus to crib
causation by hair-breadths, to put it out at com-
pound interest through all time, and then disown
the debt."i
* Martineau, Essays ^ Philosophical and Theological^ p. 141.

426 THE ASCENT OF MAN

It is not said that the view here given of the
process of Evolution has been the actual process.
The illustrations have been developed rather to
clear up difficulties than to state a theory. The
time is not ripe for daring to present to our
imaginations even a partial view of what that
transcendent process may have been. At present
we can only take our ideas of growth from the
growing things around us, and in this analogy
we have taken no account of the most essential
fact — the seed. Nor is it asserted, far as these
illustrations point in that direction, that the course
of Evolution has been a continuous, uninterrupted,
upward rise. On the whole it has certainly been
a rise ; but whether a rise without leap or break
or pause, or — what is more likely — a progress in
rhythms, pulses, and waves, or — what is unlikely —
a cataclysmal ascent by steps abrupt and steep,
may possibly never be proved.

There are reverent minds who ceaselessly scan the
fields of Nature and the books of Science in search
of gaps — gaps which they will fill up with God.
As if God lived in gaps ? What view of Nature
or of Truth is theirs whose interest in Science is
not in what it can explain but in what it cannot,
whose quest is ignorance not knowledge, whose
daily dread is that the cloud may lift, and who, as

INVOLUTION 427

darkness melts from this field or from that, begin
to tremble for the place of His abode ? What
needs altering in such finely-jealous souls is at
once their view of Nature and of God. Nature
is God's writing, and can only tell the truth ; God
is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

If by the accumulation of irresistible evidence
we are driven — may not one say permitted — to
accept Evolution as God's method in creation, it is
a mistaken policy to glory in what it cannot account
for. The reason why men grudge to Evolution
each of its fresh claims to show how things have
been made is the groundless fear that if we dis-
cover how they are made we minimize their divinity.
When things are known, that is to say, we conceive
them as natural, on Man's level ; when they are
unknown, we call them divine — as if our ignorance
of a thing were the stamp of its divinity. If God
is only to be left to the gaps in our knowledge,
where shall we be when these gaps are filled up?
And if they are never to be filled up, is God only
to be found in the dis-orders of the world ? Those
who yield to the temptation to reserve a point
here and there for special divine interposition are
apt to forget that this virtually excludes God from
the rest of the process. If God appears periodi-
cally, He disappears periodically. If He comes

428 THE ASCENT OF MAN

upon the scene at special crises, He is absent from
the scene in the intervals. Whether is all-God or
occasional-God the nobler theory? Positively, the
idea of an immanent God, which is the God of
Evolution, is infinitely grander than the occasional
wonder-worker, who is the God of an old theology.
Negatively, the older view is not only the less
worthy, but it is discredited by science. And as to
facts, the daily miracle of a flower, the courses of
the stars, the upholding and sustaining day by day
of this great palpitating world, need a living Will
as much as the creation of atoms at the first. We
know growth as the method by which things are
made in Nature, and we know no other method.
We do not know that there are not other methods;
but if there are, we do not know them. Those
cases which we do not know to be growths, we do
not know to be anything else, and we may at least
suspect them to be growths. Nor are they any
the less miraculous because they appear to us as
growths. A miracle is not something quick. The
doings of these things may seem to us no
miracle, nevertheless it is a miracle that they have
been done.

But, after all, the miracle of Evolution is not
the process but the product. Beside the wonder
of the result, the problem of the process is a mere

INVOLUTION 429

curiosity of Science. For what is the product? It
is not mountain and valley, sky and sea, flower
and star, this glorious and beautiful world in which
Man's body finds its home. It is not the god-like
gift of Mind nor the ordered cosmos where it
finds so noble an exercise for its illimitable powers.
It is that which of all other things in the
universe commends itself, with increasing sure-
ness as time goes on, to the reason and to the
heart of Humanity — Love. Love is the final
result of Evolution. This is what stands out in
Nature as the supreme creation. Evolution is not
progress in matter. Matter cannot progress. It
is a progress in spirit, in that which is limitless, in
that which is at once most human, most rational,
and most divine. Whatever controversy rages as
to the factors of Evolution, whatever mystery en-
shrouds its steps, no doubt exists of its goal. The
great landmarks we have passed, and we are not
yet half-way up the Ascent, each separately and
all together have declared the course of Nature to
be a rational course, and its end a moral end. At
the furthest limit of time, in protoplasm itself, we
saw start forth the two great currents which by
their action and reaction, as Selfishness and Unsel-
fishness, were to supply in ever accentuating clear-
ness the conditions of the moral life. Following

430 THE ASCENT OF MAN

their movements upward through the organic king-
dom, we watched the results which each achieved
— always high, and always waxing higher ; and
though what we call Evil dogged each step with
sinister and sometimes staggering malevolence, the
balance when struck was always good upon the
whole. Then came the last great act of the
organic process, the act which finally revealed
to teleology its hitherto obscured end, the organi-
zation of the Mammalia, the Kingdom of the
Mothers. So full of ethical possibility is this single
creation that one might stake the character of
Evolution upon the Mammalia alone. On the
biological side, as we have seen, the Evolution of
the Mammalia means the Evolution of Mothers ;
on the sociological side, the Evolution of the
Family; and on the moral side, the Evolution of
Love. How are we to characterize a process which
ripened fruits like these? That the very animal
kingdom had for its end and crown a class of
animals who owe their name, their place, and
their whole existence to Altruism ; that through
these Mothers society has been furnished with an
institution for generating, concentrating, purifying,
and redistributing Love in all its enduring
forms ; that the perfecting of Love is thus not an
incident in Nature but everywhere the largest part

INVOLUTION 431

of her task, begun with the first beginnings of
life, and continuously developing quantitatively and
qualitatively to the close — all this has been read
into Nature by our own imaginings, or it is the
revelation of a purpose of benevolence and a God
whose name is Love. The sceptic, we are some-
times reminded, has presented crucial difficulties
to the theist founded on the doctrine of Evolution.
Here is a problem which the theist may leave with
the sceptic. That that which has emerged has
the qualities it has, that even the Mammalia should
have emerged, that that class should stand related
to the life of Man in the way it does, that Man
has lived because he loved, and that he lives to
love — these, on any theory but one, are insoluble
problems.

Forbidden to follow the Evolution of Love into
the higher fields of history and society, we take
courage to make a momentary exploration in a
still lower field — a field so far beneath the plant
and animal level that hitherto we have not dared
to enter it. Is it conceivable that in inorganic
Nature, among the very material bases of the
world, there should be anything to remind us of
the coming of this Tree of Life ? To expect
even foreshadowings of ethical characters there
were an anachronism too gre^^t fgy expression*

432 THE ASCENT OF MAN

Yet there is something there, something which is
at least worth recalling in the present connection.

The earliest condition in which Science allows
us to picture this globe is that of a fiery mass
of nebulous matter. At the second stage it
consists of countless myriads of similar atoms,
roughly outlined into a ragged cloud-ball, glow-
ing with heat, and rotating in space with
inconceivable velocity. By what means can
this mass be broken up, or broken down, or
made into a solid world ? By two things —
mutual attraction and chemical affinity. The
moment when within this cloud-ball the con-
ditions of cooling temperature are such that
two atoms could combine together the cause of
the Evolution of the Earth is won. For this
pair of atoms are chemically " stronger " than
any of the atoms immediately surrounding them.
Gradually, by attraction or affinity, the primitive
pair of atoms — like the first pair of savages —
absorb a third atom, and a fourth, and a fifth,
until a " Family " of atoms is raised up which
possesses properties and powers altogether new,
and in virtue of which it holds within its grasp
the conquest and servitude of all surrounding
units. From this growing centre, attraction radi-
ates on every side, until a larger aggregate, a

INVOLUTION 433

family group — a Tribe — arises and starts a more
powerful centre of its own. With every addi-
tional atom added, the power as well as the
complexity of the combination increases. As the
process goes on, after endless vicissitudes, repul-
sions, and readjustments, the changes become
fewer and fewer, the conflict between mass and
mass dies down, the elements passing through
various stages of liquidity finally combine in the
order of their affinities, arrange themselves in the
order of their densities, and the solid earth is
finished.

Now recall the names of the leading actors in
this stupendous reformation. They are two in num-
ber, mutual attraction and chemical affinity. Notice
these words — Attraction, Affinity. Notice that the
great formative forces of physical Evolution have
psychical names. It is idle to discuss whether
there is or can be any identity between the thing
represented in the one case and in the other.
Obviously there cannot be. Yet this does not
exhaust the interest of the analogy. In reality,
neither here nor anywhere, have we any knowledge
whatever of what is actually meant by Attraction ;
nor, in the one sphere or in the other, have we
even the means of approximating to such know-
ledge. To Newton himself the very conception

2 E

434 THE ASCENT OF MAN

of one atom or one mass, attracting through empty
space another atom or another mass, put his mental
powers to confusion. And as to the term Affinity,
the most recent Chemistry, finding it utterly un-
fathomable in itself, confines its research at present
to the investigation of its modes of action. Science
does not know indeed what forces are ; it only
classifies them. Here, as in every deep recess of
physical Nature, we are in the presence of that
which is metaphysical, that which bars the way
imperiously at every turn to a materialistic inter-
pretation of the world. Yet name and nature of
force apart, what affinity even the grossest, what
likeness even the most remote, could one have
expected to trace between the gradual aggregation
of units of matter in the condensation of a welter-
ing star, and the slow segregation of men in the
organization of societies and nations ? However
different the agents, is there no suggestion that
they are different stages of a uniform process, dif-
ferent epochs of one great historical enterprise,
different results of a single evolutionary law ?

Read from the root, we define this age-long
process by a word borrowed from the science of
roots — a word from the clay — Evolution. But read
from the top. Evolution is an impossible word to
describe it. The word is Involution. It is not a

INVOLUTION 435

Stigmaria world, but a Sigillaria world ; a spiritual,
not a material universe. Evolution is Advolution;
better, it is Revelation — the phenomenal expression
of the Divine, the progressive realization of the
Ideal, the Ascent of Love. Evolution is a doctrine
of unimaginable grandeur. That Man should discern
the prelude to his destiny in the voices of the
stars ; that the heart of Nature should be a so
human heart ; that its eternal enterprise should be
one with his ideals ; that even in the Universe
beyond, the Reason which presides should have
so strange a kinship with that measure of it which
he calls his own ; that he, an atom in that Uni-
verse, should dare to feel himself at home within it,
should stand beside Immensity, Infinity, Eternity,
unaffrighted and undismayed — these things bewilder
Man the more that they bewilder him so little.

But one verdict is possible as to the prac-
tical import of this great doctrine, as to its
bearing upon the individual life and the future of
the race. Evolution has ushered a new hope into
the world. The supreme message of science to
this age is that all Nature is on the side of the
man who tries to rise. Evolution, development,
progress are not only on her programme, these are
her programme. For all things are rising, all
worlds, all planets, all stars and suns. An ascending

436 THE ASCENT OF MAN

energy is in the universe, and the whole moves
on with one mighty idea and anticipation. The
aspiration in the human mind and heart is but the
evolutionary tendency of the universe becoming
conscious. Darwin's great discovery, or the dis-
covery which he brought into prominence, is the
same as Galileo's — that the world moves. The
Italian prophet said it moves from west to east ;
the English philosopher said it moves from low to
high. And this is the last and most splendid
contribution of science to the faith of the world.

The discovery of a second motion in the earth
has come into the world of thought only in time
to save it from despair. As in the days of Galileo,
there are many even now who do not see that the
world moves — men to whom the earth is but an
endless plain, a prison fixed in a purposeless uni-
verse where untried prisoners await their unknown
fate. It is not the monotony of life which destroys
men, but its pointlessness ; they can bear its weight,
its meaninglessness crushes them. But the same
great revolution that the discovery of the axial rota-
tion of the earth effected in the realm of physics,
the announcement of the doctrine of Evolution
makes in the moral world. Already, even in these
days of its dawn, a sudden and marvellous light
has fallen upon earth and heaven. Evolution is

INVOLUTION 437

less a doctrine than a light ; it is a light revealing
in the chaos of the past a perfect and growing
order, giving meaning even to the confusions of the
present, discovering through all the deviousness
around us the paths of progress, and flashing its
rays already upon a coming goal. Men begin to
see an undeviating ethical purpose in this material
world, a tide, that from eternity has never turned,
making for perfectness. In that vast progression
of Nature, that vision of all things from the first
of time moving from low to high, from incom-
pleteness to completeness, from imperfection to
perfection, the moral nature recognizes in all its
height and depth the eternal claim upon itself.
Wholeness, perfection, love — these have always been
required of Man. But never before on the natural
plane have they been proclaimed by voices so
commanding, or enforced by sanctions so great and
rational.

Is Nature henceforth to become the ethical
teacher of the world ? Shall its aims become the
guide, its spirit the inspiration of Man's life? Is
there no ground here where all the faiths and all
the creeds may meet — nay, no ground for a final
faith and a final creed ? For could but all men see
the inner meaning and aspiration of the natural
order should we not find at last the universal

438 THE ASCENT OF MAN

religion — a religion congruous with the whole past
of Man, at one with Nature, and with a working
creed which Science could accept?

The answer is a simple one : We have it
already. There exists a religion which has
anticipated all these requirements — a religion
which has been before the world these eighteen
hundred years, whose congruity with Nature and
with Man stands the tests at every point. Up to
this time no word has been spoken to recon-
cile Christianity with Evolution, or Evolution with
Christianity. And why ? Because the two are
one. What is Evolution ? A method of creation.
What is its object ? To make more perfect living
beings. What is Christianity ? A method of
creation. What is its object ? To make more
perfect living beings. Through what does Evolu-
tion work? Through Love. Through what does
Christianity work ? Through Love. Evolution and
Christianity have the same Author, the same end,
the same spirit. There is no rivalry between
these processes, Christianity struck into the Evolu-
tionary process with no noise or shock ; it upset
nothing of all that had been done; it took all the
natural foundations precisely as it found them ; it
adopted Man's body, mind, and soul at the exact
level where Organic Evolution was at work upon

INVOLUTION 439

them ; it carried on the building by slow and
gradual modifications ; and, through processes
governed by rational laws, it put the finishing
touches to the Ascent of Man.

No man can run up the natural lines of Evolu-
tion without coming to Christianity at the top.
One holds no brief to buttress Christianity in this
way. But science has to deal with facts and with
all facts, and the facts and processes which have
received the name of Christian are the continua-
tions of the scientific order, as much the suc-
cessors of these facts and the continuations of these
processes — due allowances being made for the
differences in the planes, and for the new factors
which appear with each new plane — as the facts
and processes of biology are of those of the
mineral world. We land here, not from choice,
but from necessity. Christianity — it is not said
any particular form of Christianity — but Christianity,
is the Further Evolution.

" The glory of Christianity," urged Jowett, " is not
to be as unlike other religions as possible, but to
be their perfection and fulfilment." The divinity
of Christianity, it might be added, is not to be as
unlike Nature as possible, but to be its coronation ;
the fulfilment of its promise ; the rallying point of
its forces ; the beginning not of a new end, but of

440 THE ASCENT OF MAN

an infinite acceleration of the processes by which
the end, eternal from the beginning, was henceforth
to be realized. A religion which is Love and a
Nature which is Love can never but be one. The
infinite exaltation in quality is what the progressive
revelation from the beginning has taught us to ex-
pect. Christianity, truly, has its own phenomena:
its special processes ; its factors altogether unique.
But these do not excommunicate it from God's
order. They are in line with all that has gone
before, the latest disclosure of Environment. Most
strange to us and new, most miraculous and super-
natural when looked at from beneath, they are
the normal phenomena of altitude, the revelation
natural to the highest height. While Evolution
never deviates from its course, it assumes new
developments at every stage of the Ascent ; and
here, as the last and highest, these specializations,
accelerations, modifications, are most revolutionary
of all. For the evolving products are now no
longer the prey and tool of the Struggle for
Life — the normal dynamic of the world's youth.
For them its appeal is vain ; its force is spent ;
a quicker road to progress has been found.
No longer driven from below by the Animal
Struggle, they are drawn upward from above ;
no longer compelled by hate or hunger, by rivalry

INVOLUTION 441

or fear, they feel impelled by Love ; they realize the
dignity reserved for Man alone in evolving through
Ideals. This development through Ideals, the Per-
fect Ideal through which all others come, are the
unique phenomena of the closing act — unique not
because they are out of relation to what has
gone before, but because the phenomena of the
summit are different from the phenomena of the
plain. Apart from these, and not absolutely apart
from these — for nothing in the world can be ab-
solutely apart from anything else, there is nothing
in Christianity which is not in germ in Nature.
It is not an excrescence on Nature but its efflores-
cence. It is not a side track where a few
enthusiasts live impracticable lives on impossible
ideals. It is the main stream of history and of
science, and the only current set from eternity
for the progress of the world and the perfecting
of a human race.

We began these chapters with the understanding
that Evolution is history, the scientific history of
the world. Christianity is history, a history of some
of the later steps in the Evolution of the world.
The continuity between them is a continuity of
spirit ; their forms are different, their forces con-
fluent. Christianity did not begin at the Christian
era. it is as old as Nature ; did not drop like a

442 THE ASCENT OF MAN

bolt from Eternity, came in the fulness of Time.
The attempt to prove an alibi for Christianity, to
show that it was in the skies till the Christian era
opened, is as fatal to its acceptance by Science
as it is useless for defence to Theology. What
emerges from Nature as the final result of Creation
is none other than that immortal principle which,
reinforced, is the instrument and end of the new
Creation.

The attempt of Science, on the other hand, to
hold itself aloof from the later phases of develop-
ments which in their earlier stages it so devotes
itself to trace, is either ignorance or sheer affec-
tation. For that Altruism which we found strug-
gling to express itself throughout the whole course
of Nature, What is it ? " Altruism is the new and
very affected name for the old familiar things which
we used to call Charity, Philanthropy, and Love." ^
Only by shutting its eyes can Science evade the
discovery of the roots of Christianity in every
province that it enters ; and when it does discover
them, it is only by disguising words that it can
succeed in disowning the relationship. There is
nothing unscientific in accepting that relationship;
there is much that is unscientific in dishonouring it.
The Will behind Evolution is not dead ; the heart
* Duke of Argyll, Edinburgh Rei/iew^ April, 1894.

INVOLUTION 443

beneath Nature is not stilled. Love not only was ;
it is ; it moves ; it spreads. To ignore the later
and most striking phases is to fail to see what the
earlier process really was, and to leave the ancient
task of Evolution historically incomplete. That
Christian development, social, moral, spiritual,
which is going on around us, is as real an evolu-
tionary movement as any that preceded it, and at
least as capable of scientific expression. A system
founded on Self-Sacrifice, whose fittest symbol is
the Leaven, whose organic development has its
natural analogy in the growth of a Mustard Tree,
is not a foreign thing to the Evolutionist ; and
that prophet of the Kingdom of God was no less
the spokesman of Nature who proclaimed that the
end of Man is " that which we had from the begin-
ning, that we lover «

In the profoundest sense, this is scientific doctrine.
The Ascent of Man and of Society is bound up
henceforth with the conflict, the intensification, and
the diffusion of the Struggle for the Life of Others.
This is the Further Evolution, the page of history
that lies before us, the closing act of the drama
of Man. The Struggle may be short or long ;
but by all scientific analogy the result is sure.
All the other Kingdoms of Nature were completed ;
Evolution always attains ; always rounds off its

444 THE ASCENT OF MAN

work. It spent an eternity over the earth, but
finished it. It struggled for millenniums to bring
the Vegetable Kingdom up to the Flowering Plants,
and attained. In the Animal Kingdom it never
paused until the possibilities of organization were
exhausted in the Mammalia. Kindled by this
past, Man may surely say, " I shall arrive." The
succession cannot break. The Further Evolution
must go on, the Higher Kingdom come — first the
blade, where we are to-day ; then the ear, where
we shall be to-morrow ; then the full corn in the
ear, which awaits our children's children, and which
we live to hasten.

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Life,' and 'Classification,' to say nothing of the others in this volume, will
fail to recognise in Mr. Drummond a new and powerful teacher, impressive
both from the scientific calmness and accuracy of his view of law, and from the
deep religious earnestness with which he traces the workings of law in the moral
and spiritual sphere." — Spectator.

Crown Svo, Cloth. 35. dd.

Tropical Africa

With Map and Illustrations.
Thirteenth Edition, completing 43,000.

"Professor Drummond is here at his very best. The article on mimicry
especially is worthy to rank with anything ever written by Wallace, Bates, or
Darwin himself on this fascinating subject. In the presence of such perfect
form, such graphic description of details, such genial humour and subtle
reasoning, the critic has nothing to do but quote. The only difficulty is to
find one passage more suitable than another for the purpose." — Academy.

" Professor Drummond is a clear and accurate observer, and as he has had
a sound scientific training, and has a real interest in the human side of African
life, he is able to present us with pictures of a distinctness and originality not
often met with in books of African travel." — Times.

"It is a charmingly written book. . . . Professor Drummond has not
inflicted the entire contents of his note-books upon a long-suffering public ; he
has been content with valuable and suggestive results, to compress the sum of
his observations into a few well-weighed and well-written pages." — Saturday
Review.

"Professor Drummond has undoubtedly succeeded in conveying to the
unlearned multitude a vivid and entertaining picture of the country he deals
with." — Athenceum.

London: HODDER & STOUGHTON.

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

FourteenthTvdition, completing 50,000.
Crown Stjo, Cloth, 6^.

The Ideal Life

AND OTHER UNPUBLISHED ADDRESSES.

With Introductory Sketches by
W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, LL.D., AND IAN MACLAREN.

"The great principles and main facts of the Christian religion seem not only
more attractive, but more real and more reasonable while he speaks of them ;
and one recognises and owns the persuasiveness which characterised his speak-
ing. Whether these addresses find the reception of his earlier books or not,
they are likely to make a profounder and more enduring impression." — Dr.
Marcus Dods.

"These addresses are written in a singularly beautiful style, and contain
much beautiful thinking, showing that the writer had pondered deeply on some
of the most spiritual aspects of religion. They will, we are sure, be much prized
by the many admirers of the author." — Glasgow Herald.

Cloth, IS. 6d. nett; Leather, 2S. 6d.

The Golden Bcx^k of Henry Drummond

fn Red Leather, zs. 6d. nett.

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD

AND OTHER ADDRESSES.

Containing : The Greatest Thing in the World— The Programme
of Christianity— The City without a Church— Pax Vobiscum

THIRD EDITION.

NYASSALAND

Travel Sketches in our New Protectorate.

selected from "tropical africa."

Sewed. Price is.

PROFESSOR DRUMMOND'S BOOKLETS.

^J

White Leatherette, I5. ; Cloth, Gilt Edges, is. 6d.

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD

Thirty-fourth Edition, completing 385,000.
White Leatherette. Price is. nett.

PAX VOBISCUM

Third Edition, completing 122,000.
White Leatherette, \s. ; Cloth, Gilt Edges, is. 6d.

THE CHANGED LIFE

Ninth Edition, completing 93,000.
White Leatherette, is. ; Cloth, Gilt Edges, 2s. 6d.

THE PROGRAMME OF CHRISTIANITY

Second Edition, completing 80,000.
White Leatherette, is. ; Cloth, Gilt Edges, is. 6d.

THE CITY WITHOUT A CHURCH

Second Edition, completing 60,000.
POPULAR EDITION, ed. nett.

BAXTER'S SECOND INNINGS

Eighth Edition.
White Leatherette, is. nett.

THE WILL OF GOD

White Leatherette, is. nett.

THINGS UNSEEN

London: HODDER & STOUGHTON.

Popular Edition.

I

With Portrait. Crmvn 8w, Cloth. 35. dd,

thW life of
HENRY DRUMMOND, F.R.S.E.

By GEORGE ADAM SMITH, D.D., LL.D.

Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis,
Free Church College, Glasgow.

Contents : As we knew him — School and College — Preparation
for the Ministry— The Great Mission, 1873-1875 — Back to
College — Science and Religion — Diaries of Travel : (i) The
Rocky Mountains — Diaries of Travel : (2) Central Africa —
The Fame of " Natural Law " — Evolution and Revelation —
— 1 884- 1 890 — The Student Movement, 1 884- 1 894 — The
American Colleges, 1887 — Australia and the Australian
Colleges, 1890 — Diaries of Travel : (3) The New Hebrides —
1 89 1- 1 895— "The Ascent of Man"— Boys and the Boys'
Brigade — The End.

"Dr. George Adam Smith has not only made the story of his hero interest-
ing, but he has written a book which will be read with avidity for its own sake."
— Daily News.

" It is an admirably written, well condensed, judicious, and yet enthusiastic
biography. " — Literature.

"A very large audience may safely be predicted for this biography. The
work is well done. ... A more devout life has rarely been portrayed, a
cleaner soul has not often been unveiled." — Spectator.

"Mr. Smith has intelligence, enthusiasm, cultivation, and he has made a
very readable and attractive biography." — Academy.

"A book which may be read with pleasure and profit by Christians of all
denominations, and which may be reviewed with sympathy even in quarters
where the work that made Mr. Drummond's literary fame necessarily met with
adverse criticism." — Guardian.

" The best of all biographies is that which is interleaved and extra illustrated
by love, and of this kind is the life of Henry Drummond." — Ian MacLareN
in the British Weekly.

London: HODDER & STOUGHTON.

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