•CD
I IT

EVOLUTION

AS RELATED TO

REVELATION AND SCIENCE

PRINTED BY

•POTTISWOODE ANU CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON

MODERN IDEAS

OF

EVOLUTION

AS RELATED TO

REVELATION AND SCIENCE

BY

SIR J. WILLIAM DAWSON, C.M.G. LLD. F.R.S. &c.

AUTHOR OF

'ACADIAN. GEOLOGY' 'THE CHAIN OF LIFE IN GEOLOGICAL TIME'

'EGYPT AND SYRIA, THEIR PHYSICAL FEATURES IN

RELATION TO BIBLE HISTORY ' ETC.

FOURTH EDITION

(LIBRARY]

v '- 7*1* - <**^ /

LONDON
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY

56 PATERNOSTER Row, 65 ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD
AND 164 PICCADILLY

PREFACE

THE object of this work is to examine in a popular
manner, and to test by scientific facts and principles,
the validity of that multiform and brilliant philosophy
of the universe which has taken so deep hold of the
science and literature of our time. The task is a
somewhat ungracious one, especially in England,
whose people are naturally proud of discoveries and
generalisations which, originating among themselves,
have taken the world by storm. It is also extremely
difficult, because of the dazzling and attractive nature
of the hypothesis of evolution, the dashing and plau
sible character of the arguments by which it is sus
tained, and its all-embracing scope, which enables it
to account for everything that has previously been
mysterious. Besides this, it is of the nature of this
protean philosophy that it should itself be in process
of evolution from day to day, and thus to be in so

6 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

rapid motion that it changes its features momentarily
while one endeavours to sketch it.

Why then attempt such a task ? The answer is
two-fold — general and personal. First, the world of
general readers is captivated, dazzled and perplexed
by the new philosophy, and greatly needs some clear
and intelligible exposition of its nature and tendency,
some classification of its variations, and some attempt
to explain its agreement or discordance with science
and religion. Secondly, the writer of the following
pages has of late years been besieged by so many
letters and inquiries respecting this subject, to which
he has incidentally referred in popular books on
science, that it becomes necessary in self-defence and
to save time to prepare an answer which may meet
all demands of this kind.

The conclusions which he has reached as the result
of much reading and reflection, as well as of a
long-continued and somewhat wide and varied study
of nature, may not satisfy the present excitement of
enthusiastic specialists and lovers of novelty, but they
may serve somewhat to mitigate present extremes of
feeling and belief, and may accord with the sober
second thoughts which sometimes follow sudden revo
lutions.

J. W. D.
1890.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. PRESENT ASPECTS OF THE QUESTION 9

II. WHAT IS EVOLUTION ?

III. THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

IV. THE APPARITION OF SPECIES IN GEOLOGICAL

TIME . . 9°

V. MONISTIC EVOLUTION II8

VI. AGNOSTIC EVOLUTION . 1S1

VII. THEISTIC EVOLUTION l6z

VIII. GOD IN NATURE. • • T7r

IX. MAN IN NATURE . • 2O2

X. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

APPENDIX I. — WEISMANN ON HEREDITY 235

APPENDIX II. — DR. MCCOSH ON EVOLUTION . . . 239

MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

CHAPTER I

PRESENT ASPECTS OF THE QUESTION

THE great fabric of the Darwinian evolution may be
said to have attained to its completion. Its chief
corner-stone has been laid with shouting by its jubilant
adherents, and it is presented to us as a permanent
and finished structure, fitted to withstand all the
attacks of time and chance. We are even asked to
regard its architect as the Newton of Natural Science,
and to believe in the finality and completeness of the
structure which he has raised.

In seeming contrast with this, we find that the
disciples of the great teacher are already beginning to
diverge widely in their beliefs, and to found new
schools, some of which are tending toward the old
and discarded theory of Lamarck, or to a modification
of it known as Neo-Lamarckianism, while others
boast that they maintain the pure Darwinian doctrine,
though even among these there are diverse shades of

io MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

belief. Thus, like other hypotheses and philosophical
systems which have preceded it, Darwinism seems to
have entered on a process of disintegration, and it is
not easy to divine in what form or forms it may be
handed down to our successors.

While thus liable to different interpretations within
itself, the Darwinian evolution has still more varied
aspects when we regard it in relation to the other
beliefs and interests of humanity. The hypothesis
has been applied to all sorts of uses in relation to
physical and natural science, as well as to history and
sociology, and it has been made a means of revolu
tionising our classifications and our ideas of species
and other groups. It is sometimes monistic or posi-
tivist, and scarcely distinguishable from the old-
fashioned atheism and materialism. Sometimes it
assumes the newer form of agnosticisnij and poses as
neutral and indifferent with regard to those spiritual
interests of man which are important beyond all
others. Again, it becomes theistic, and here we have
adherents of the new system ranging from those who
are content to reconcile it with a theistic belief, which
recognises a God very far off and shorn of His more
important attributes, to those who accept evolution
as a new gospel, adding fresh light to that which
shines in the teaching of Jesus Christ. At a lower
level it is evident that the ideas of struggle for exis
tence and survival of the fittest, introduced by the
new philosophy, and its resolution of man himself

PRESENT ASPECTS OF THE QUESTION n

into a mere spontaneous improvement of brute
ancestors, have stimulated to an intense degree that
popular unrest, so natural to an age discontented
with its lot, because it has learned what it might do
and have, without being able to realise its expecta
tions, and which threatens to overthrow the whole
fabric of society as at present constituted.

In these circumstances it seems desirable that
science, and especially natural and physical science,
which may in some degree be held responsible for
this movement, should define its own position, and do
what it can to remove the difficulties and relieve the
fears which have been engendered by the use or mis
use of its facts and principles.

Science will in this way best consult its true
interests ; since, if it commits itself to a philosophy
professing finality, it is pretty certain to suffer in
the inevitable reaction. On the other hand, if it will
carefully sift that which is true from that which is
false or hypothetical, it may ultimately fall heir to
anything that may be valuable or permanent in the
new philosophy without suffering from its mistakes.

We must bear in mind in this connection, that
systems of philosophy which endeavour to explain
everything by one idea, as they have appeared from
time to time, though they have sprung into the field
like boastful Goliaths, cowing too many good men for
a time into silence or retreat, have soon proved vul
nerable to mere pebbles from the armoury of nature.

12 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

Those especially whose studies of philosophy began
half a century ago, and who have seen several such
systems wax and wane, besides knowing that the
same process has been going on ever since the time of
Thales of Miletus, have lost confidence in the infal
libility of such all-embracing generalisations, and may
be pardoned for at least cautioning their younger col
leagues against sacrificing science to speculation, and
against the tendency to become merely scientific spe
cialists without breadth or sympathy for higher things.
The example of the great apostle of evolution
himself should warn us as to this. Darwin, as he sits
in marble on the staircase of the British Museum,
represents a noble figure, made in the image of God,
and capable of grasping mentally the heaven above
as well as the earth beneath. As he appears in his
recent biography, we see the same man paralysed by
a spiritual atrophy, blinded and shut up in prison and
chained to the mill of a materialistic philosophy where,
like a captive Samson, he is doomed to grind all that
is fair and beautiful in nature into a dry and formless
dust. Would that he had lived to pull down the
temple of Dagon with his own hands, even if an
ephemeral reputation had perished in the ruins, and
to avenge himself of the cruel enemies that had put
out the eyes of his higher nature !

This depth of unscientific and unspiritual degene
ration, into which the mind may be thrown by the
excessive pursuit of evolutionary ideas, is well shown

PRESENT ASPECTS OF THE QUESTION 13

by Darwin himself in a letter written a year before his
death. With reference to his doubts as to the exis
tence of God, he asks — ' Can one trust to the convic-j/
tions of a monkey's mind ? ' But if the idea of God
may be a phantom of an ape-like brain, can we trust
to reason or conscience in any other matter ? May
not science and philosophy themselves be similar
fantasies, evolved by mere chance and unreason ? In
any case, does not this deprive science of the ennobling
idea that nature is the development of Divine Mind,
and so reduce it to mere drudgery, pursued only for
its useful applications or for self-interest ?

This seems a serious indictment against evolution,

at least in its extreme forms, but its validity seems to

be proved by a careful scrutiny of the developments

that have followed the publication of the Origin of

Species, and which, despite the efforts of so-called

theistic and Christian evolutionists, may be held to

have tended constantly to a lower and lower depth of

materialistic agnosticism, and, at the same time, of

debasement of natural science into a jumble of false

classifications and visionary speculations. Neither

science nor theology need, however, slide hopelessly

into this gulf, and it may even be possible to stand

near to the treacherous margin and to rescue some

grains of truth from this ' confused movement of the

mind of our age,' as it has been called by a recent

German writer.1

1 Wiegand, Darwinismus, notice in the Academy, Aug. 25, 1877.

M MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

In endeavouring to secure this desirable result, we
must not take for granted the truth of the assertion
so often confidently made, that science is hostile to
religion. It is no doubt true that monistic and
agnostic evolution, and those forms of Darwinism
which follow the author of the system in negation of
the living God, are inconsistent with religion as well
as with all the higher interests of men. There may,
however, be a theistic principle of development ap
parent in all nature, and which represents what we
can perceive of the plan and methods of creation,
understanding by that word the making of all things
by Almighty Power, whether immediately or mediately,
through means of things already made, and laws
previously established. It may be said in favour of
this view that it gives an inexpressible dignity to man
and to science. It shows that the human reason
must be after the model of the infinite Divine reason,
that in scientific inquiry we are studying God's laws
and revelation of Himself in nature. Nay, more, if we
regard Christ as an incarnation of the Creator, we have
in Christianity itself a higher revelation of God, which
must be in harmony with nature ; and we shall have
a right to hold that the scientific investigator is doing
Christ's work and God's work, and, on the other hand,
that those qualities of humility, faith, sincerity, and
love of truth which God requires of His followers are
also those most profitable in scientific study, while
scientific habits of thought are of the utmost value in

PRESENT ASPECTS OF THE QUESTION 15

the study of revelation and in the difficulties of the
Christian life.

It is also to be observed that even the positivist
and agnostic admit, as appears in recent controver
sies, that some religion or substitute for it is necessary
to the highest perfection of man. For example,^
Harrison, in a recent paper,1 believes as a positivist in
what he calls the religion of humanity, that is, in set
ting up an ideal standard of human nature, based on
historical examples, as something to live up to. His
opponent Huxley, from the point of view of an
agnostic, thinks this futile — stigmatises man as a
failure, and as a 'wilderness of apes' — and would4
adore the universe in all its majesty and grandeur.

In this they rehabilitate very old forms of religion,
for it is evident that the most ancient idolatries con
sisted in lifting up men's hearts to the sun and moon
and stars, and in worshipping patriarchs and heroes.
Thus we find that there can be no form of infidelity
without some substitute for God, and this necessarily!
less high and perfect than the Creator Himself, while
destitute of His fatherly attributes. ^Further, our
agnostic and positivist friends even admit their need
of a saviour, since they hold that there must be some
elevating influence to raise us from our present evils
and failures. Lastly, when we find the ablest advo
cates of such philosophy differing hopelessly among \
themselves, we may well see in this an evidence of the

1 Nineteenth Century,

16 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

need of a divine revelation. Now, all this is precisely
what the Bible has given us in a better way. If we
look up with adoring wonder to the material universe,
' the Bible leads us to see in this the power and God
head of the Creator, and the Creator as the living
God, our Heavenly Father. If we seek for an ideal
humanity to worship, the Bible points us to Jesus
Christ, the perfect man, and at the same time the
manifestation of God, the Good Shepherd giving His
life for the sheep, God manifest in the flesh and bring
ing life and immortality *to light. Thus the Bible
gives us all that these modern ideas desiderate, and
infinitely more. Nor should we think little of the
older part of revelation, for it shows the historical
development of God's plan, and is eminently valuable
for its testimony to the unity of nature and of God.

tfTt is in religion what the older formations are in

fgeology. Their conditions and their life may have
been replaced by newer conditions and living beings,
but they form the stable base of the later formations'

( which not only rest upon them, but which without
them would be incomplete and unintelligibleT]

The lesson of these facts is to hold to the old
faith, to fear no discussion, and to stand fast for this
world and the future on the grand declaration of
Jesus—' God so loved the world that He gave His
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him

t should not perish, but have everlasting life.'

It is somewhat reassuring that the controversies

PRESENT ASPECTS OF THE QUESTION 17

respecting evolution centre around the Bible, which is

thus shown to be a formidable power in the world, and

not a thing of the past, as some would have us suppose.

{Jn this connection it is to be observed that the atti

tude of the Bible is often misrepresented, since, though

it affirms distinctly the creation of all things by the

living God, it does not commit itself either as to the

limits of species or as to any special doctrine with

respect to the precise way in which it pleased God to

make them. When we look at the details of the

narrative of creation, we are struck with the manner

in which the Bible includes, in a few simple words, all

the leading causes and conditions which science has

been able to discover^

For example, the production of the first animals is
announced in the words : ' God said, Let the waters'
swarm with swarmers.' l A naturalist here recognises
not only the origination of animal life in the waters,
but also three powers or agencies concerned in its
introduction, or rather, perhaps, one power and two
conditions of its exercise. First, there are the Divine
power and volition contained in the words, ' God said/
Secondly, there is a medium or environment previously
prepared and essential to the production of the result
-'the waters.' Thirdly, there is the element of vital
continuity in the term ' swarmers ' — that reproductive
element which hands down the organism with all its*

1 This is, perhaps, the best word to express the meaning of the term
tforetg*m—T&pidly multiplying or dividing creatures.

B

1 8 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

powers from generation to generation, from age to
age. If we ask modern science what are the agencies
and conditions implied in the introduction on the
earth of the multitudinous forms of humble marine
life which we find in the oldest rocks, its answer is in
no essential respect different It says that these
creatures, endowed with powers of reproduction and
possibly of variation, increased and multiplied and
filled the waters with varied forms of life ; in other
words, they were sheretzim, or swarmers. It further
says that their oceanic environment supplied the ex
ternal conditions of their introduction and continu
ance, and all the varieties of station suited to their
various forms — 'the waters brought them forth.1
Lastly, since biology cannot show any secondary
cause adequate to produce out of dead matter even
the humblest of these swarmers, it must here either
confess its ignorance, and say that it knows nothing
of such ' abiogenesis,' ! or must fall back on the old
formula, * God said.'

Let it be further observed that creation or making,
as thus stated in the Bible, is not of the nature of what
some are pleased to call an arbitrary intervention and
miraculous interference with the course of nature. It
leaves quite open the inquiry how much of the vital

1 It is sometimes urged against the idea of creation that it implies
abiogenesis or production without previous life. But there must have
been abiogenesis at some time, and probably more than once, else no
living thing could have existed.

PRESENT ASPECTS OF THE QUESTION 19

phenomena which we perceive may be due to the
absolute creative fiat, to the prepared environment, or
the reproductive power. The creative work is itself
a part of Divine law, and this in a three-fold aspect :
First, the law of the Divine will or purpose ; second,
the laws impressed on the medium or environment
third, the laws of the organism itself, and of its con
tinuous multiplication, either with or without modifi
cations.

While the Bible does not commit itself to any
hypotheses of evolution, it does not exclude these up<
to a certain point. It even intimates in the varying
formulae, ' created,' ' made,' ' formed,' caused to ' bring
forth,' that different kinds of living beings may have
been introduced in different ways, only one of which
is entitled to be designated by the higher term ' create.'
The scientific evolutionist may, for instance, ask
whether different species, when introduced, may not
under the influence of environment change in process
of time, or by sudden transitions, into new forms not
distinguishable by us from original products of crea
tion. Such questions may never admit of any certain
or final solution, but they resemble in their nature
those of the chemist, when he asks how many of the
kinds of matter are compounds produced by the union
of simple substances, and how many are elementary,
and can be no further decomposed. If the chemist has
to recognise, say, seventy substances as elementary,
these are to him manufactured articles, products of!

B 2

20 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

(creation. If he should be able to reduce them to a
much smaller number, even ultimately to only one
kind of matter, he would not by such discovery be
enabled to dispense with a Creator, but would only
have penetrated a little more deeply into His methods
of procedure. The biological question is, no doubt,
much more intricate and difficult than the chemical,
but is of the same general character. On the prin
ciples of Biblical theism, it may be stated in this way:
God has created all living beings according to their
kinds or species, but with capacities for variation and
change under the laws which He has enacted for them.
Can we ascertain any of the methods of such creation
or making, and can we know how many of the forms
which we have been in the habit of naming as distinct
species coincide with His creative species, and how
many are really results of their variations under the
laws of reproduction and heredity, and the influence
of their surroundings ?

I may add that this introductory chapter is neces
sarily a very general summary of the questions to
which it relates, and that its positions will be much
strengthened by our detailed consideration of those
marvellous structures and functions of animals and
plants which modern science has revealed to us, and
their wonderful history in geological time. These are
facts so stupendous in their intricacy and vastness
that they make the relation of God to the origination
and history of any humble animal or plant as grand

PRESENT ASPECTS OF THE QUESTION 21

and inscrutable as His relation to the construction of
the starry universe itself.

It is plainly shown by recent controversies, as,
for example, those which have appeared in the Nine
teenth Century for 1889, that the agnostic evolution
and the acceptance of the results of German criticism
in disintegrating the earlier books of the Bible, are at
the moment combining their forces in the attack on
Evangelical Christianity. They present a very
formidable front, but if met in a spirit at once fair
and firm, and with an intelligent knowledge of
nature and revelation, the evil which they may do
will be only temporary, and may lead in the future
to a more robust and enlightened faith.

22 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

CHAPTER II
WHAT IS EVOLUTION?

IT is quite necessary to ask this question, since under
the name Evolution so many things are vaguely
included that, without care, we may involve ourselves
in mental confusion.

1. Evolution sometimes professes to explain the
origins of things ; but of this it knows absolutely no
thing. Evolution can take place only where there is
something to be evolved, and something out of which
it can be evolved, with adequate causes for the evolu
tion. This is admitted in terms by Darwin and his
followers, but constantly overlooked in their reasoning,
in which evolution is spoken of as if it were, or could
be, an efficient cause. The title Origin of Species
was itself a misnomer as used by Darwin. The book
treated not of the origin of species, but of the trans
mutations of species already in existence.

2. The term Evolution as popularly used may
thus include processes either modal or causal. The
former implies development under adequate causes,
and this is rational evolution. The latter assumes

WHA T IS E VOL UTION? 23

to be itself a cause, which is in the nature of things
impossible. The causes of development must always
be distinguished from the evolution itself. It has
been the fashion to use the expression ' factors of
evolution ' to cover the causes ; but it would be more
honest to admit at once that there must be efficient
and adequate causes for every development.

3. The term Evolution is used to express in
differently all changes of the nature of development,
however different in kind from each other. Spencer's
definition that evolution is the 'transformation of the ^:
homogeneous through successive differentiations into^
the heterogeneous' would cover creation as well as
development, in the sense in which he understands it,
and it does not cover those developments in which
the complex becomes more simple, as in what is
termed retrograde development in plants and animals.
But this definition covers, as used by Spencer and
Darwin, even with reference to organisms alone, three
distinct things : (i) Direct development of structures
previously prepared and subjected to the action of
adequate causes, as heat, moisture, air, &c. Of this
kind is the development of seeds and eggs into perfect
plants and animals. This is the only kind which can
be termed spontaneous, and this term can be applied
only in a very limited sense, because it implies a
previous laying up, potentially or structurally, in the
germ, of all that is to be developed from it. (2) In
direct development, or that which takes place under

24 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

the power and guidance of an external will. Such is
the production of varieties of animals and plants by
selection and other means, and such would be creation
if carried out by a Supreme Being using His own
materials and laws. This, be it observed, is the only
sense in which there can be such a thing as natural
selection. Nature is either a purely imaginary being,
a mere figure of speech, or another name for a creative
will. (3) The supposed development of new kinds
or species of animals and plants from others by descent,
with modification — a process as yet unknown except
hypothetically and inferentially, and which is what
the doctrine of evolution is contrived to establish, in
so far as specific types are concerned, though it is
well known in the case of mere varieties. (4) The

(supposed evolution of living organisms from dead
matter, also a process unknown to science — a creative
fact, which must have occurred at some time, but of
the nature and secondary causes of which we know
nothing. We may be certain, however, that if it was
in any sense of the nature of a development, this
must have been different from anything known to us
as occurring at present.

All these entirely distinct kinds of change are
mixed up by evolutionists in treating of organic evo
lution ; and they freely extend the same term to things
so different as the physical changes by which the
earth assumed its present form, the improvement of
arts and social institutions, the growth of nations by

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 25

human agency, and even the supposed development
of the mind of man himself from the powers of lower
animals. In these circumstances, if we are to under
stand anything of this confused and multiform philo
sophy, we must perpetually question its advocates
and exponents as to the kind of development of
which they are speaking, and as to the causes to
which such alleged development may be attributed.
We must also be especially cautious in scrutinising
any analogies presented to us, as, for example, that
between the development of an embryo into a perfect
animal, and the succession of animals in geological
time. In such a case we must inquire not only if the
alleged developments are really similar, but if they
take place in similar conditions and under the influ
ence of similar causes — in other words, whether the
analogy is real or only apparent.

So dangerous is this use of the term evolution,
that it may become necessary to abandon the word
altogether in purely scientific discussions, and to in
sist on the terms causation and development, as cover
ing the two distinct ideas now mixed up under evo
lution. It is at least necessary in discussions on this
subject to be constantly on our guard as to the kind
of evolution in question, whether modal evolution of
a direct or indirect, literal or figurative character, or
the mere figment of a causal evolution.

With reference to the Darwinian system proper,
this kind of definition is not difficult. Darwin's

26 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

natural turn of mind and his scientific training were
not of such a character as to lead him to seek for ulti
mate causes. He was content with a mojJal evolution.
He took matter and force and their existing laws as
he found them. He presupposed also life and orga
nisation with all their powers, and even seemed to
postulate certain species of animals and plants as
necessary raw material wherewith to begin his pro
cess of evolution. How all this vast and complex
machinery came into being he did not concern him
self, and was content to leave it as something beyond
his ken. Thus, as it appears in the Origin of Species^
evolution is merely a modification of specific forms,
and Darwin was content to explain this by an imagi
nary struggle for existence, and a supposed natural
or spontaneous selection exercised in an indefinite
way by external forces and conditions. Thus it really
did not touch the question of how the first species
originated, but only that of their subsequent modifi
cation ' by means of natural selection,' or ' preservation
:of favoured races in the struggle of life.'

Darwin thus did not concern himself much with
causal evolution, or the origin of things properly so-
called. Indeed, when questioned on these points, he
appears to the last to have been in uncertainty and to
have desired not to commit himself. To men whose
minds are not under the influence of positive theism,
or of a belief in Divine revelation, and who attain to
large acquaintance with nature, it either resolves it-

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 27

self into a cosmos which manifests the power and
divinity of a creative will, or it becomes disintegrated
into a chaos of confused and conflicting forces battling
with one another. Darwin's view was of the latter
kind, and hence to him the life of organised beings
was a struggle for existence, or, at least, this appeared
to him far more potent than the opportunity and desire
to improve and advance, on which the great French
naturalist, Lamarck, based his theory of evolution.

It is evident that such a view of nature has the
appearance, at first sight, of being wholly subjective
and illusory. It does not touch the question of
origins, fit assigns no adequate causes for either the
movement or the uniform direction of the supposed
development. It seems to enthrone chance or accident
or necessity as Lord and Creator, and to reduce the
universe to a mere drift, in which we are embarked as
in a ship without captain, crew, rudder, or compass,
and without any guiding chart or star. |

Let us inquire, however, how Darwin justified a
position apparently so unscientific. He took his
initial stand on the idea that, as he expresses it, * a
careful study of domesticated animals and plants
would offer the best chance of making out this obscure
problem ' of the introduction of new species. Hence
he was led to study the variation of animals and
plants under domestication, and to infer similar effects
as taking place in nature by a spontaneous power of
* natural selection ' exercised by the environment.

28 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

Thus, by a striking inversion of ordinary probabilities,
inanimate nature was made to rule, determine, and
elevate that which lives and wills. Singular though it
may appear, this apparent paradox is one of the great
charms of the doctrine to the general mind, which
is excited by the strange and marvellous, especially
when this is supposed to be countenanced by science.
This leading idea Darwin supported by several
collateral considerations, such as the ascertained suc
cession of animal and vegetable life in geological
time, the analogy with this of the stages of the embryo
in its development in the higher animals, the supposed
power of sexual selection and the influence of geo
graphical distribution. All these influences, including
natural selection, were supposed to operate in a very
slow and gradual manner, so much so that the obser
vation of the apparent permanence of species within
the human period should not be regarded as an ob
jection.

fc The Darwinian system thus embraced a modal
evolution or development of living beings, with certain
alleged causes keeping up the movement and giving
it direction ; and all this with or without a superin
tending will and creative power behind it. Presented
in an attractive and popular manner, and with a great
mass of facts supposed to sustain it, and concurring
with the popular evolutionary philosophy of Herbert
Spencer, it was at once accepted by a great number
of scientific and literary men^Vand applied in varied

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 29

ways to the solution of many questions more or less
analogous to that of the origin of species, while, as was
natural, it has been pushed in a vast number of wild
and extreme directions by popular writers not con
versant with science in a practical manner. It has,
however, been seriously canvassed by the more
cautious and conservative men of science, and has
been found to fit in so badly with what is actually
known of nature, that it has gradually been obliged to
modify its claims ; and ultimately its adherents have
become divided into distinct schools, differing materi
ally from each other and from the original Darwinism,
though all agree in claiming Darwin as a master and
in upholding his merit as a great discoverer. These
various schools are divided: (i) As to the primary
causes of the development ; (2) As to the secondary
causes ; (3) As to the mode or modes.

With reference to the first, there are some evolu
tionists who are agnostic like Spencer, monistic like
Haeckel, or merely negatively materialistic, like a
large number of the younger naturalists. On the other
hand, there are advocates of evolution who profess to
see in it the manifestation of Divine creative power,
and with whom evolution is merely the manner in
which the will of God manifests itself.

With reference to the secondary causes supposed
to be at work, observation and experiment have
shown that, if development of new species has taken
place, other causes than those alleged by Darwin

30 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

must have been operative, although many able Dar
winians, like Weismann and Wallace, profess to regard
natural selection as the sole operative cause. The
influence of an innate tendency to vary has been
claimed by some, as if in the original creation of
living beings they had been so wound up as to
go first in one direction and then in another,
without any external cause, or when acted upon
by varying causes. The influence of favourable
conditions and room for expansion has been alleged
by others, in accordance with the old view of Lamarck.
The tendency of some lower animals, under unfavour
able conditions, to become reproductive before they
have attained to full maturity, while more favourable
circumstances elevate the standing to which the
animal attains before producing young, is also a con
sideration which, under the name of reproductive
acceleration or retardation, has attracted some atten
tion. Various causes of abrupt or sudden change
have also been invoked, as, for instance, those obscure
agencies which determine the appearance of monstro
sities or varietal forms among domesticated animals.
The question of efficient cause has thus become
very complicated, and the only points on which all
are united are the possibility of varieties or races in
some way overleaping the bounds of specific fixity
and becoming new species, and the further doctrine
that changes acquired in any way may become per
manent as an inheritance in such new species. This

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 31

last tenet of heredity has, however, of late been greatly
shaken by the investigations of Weismann, which
have thrown doubt on the possibility of inheritance of
some characters acquired by the individual. We shall
see that if these new views are established, the whole
aspect of the question of specific modification will be
greatly changed. Since, however, no case establish
ing any one of the alleged factors of new species is
actually known to have occurred, these doctrines of
modification and heredity, as applied to the origin of
species, are, as yet, articles of faith and not of scientific
certainty, and the whole question of causation in evo
lution may be said to be in an uncertain and transi
tion state.

In these circumstances the questions as to possible
modes of development may seem to lose much of
their importance ; but the disciples of Darwin inform
us that, independently of known and ascertained
causes, the probability of development which arises
from embryonic analogy and the affinities of animals
and plants among themselves, is so great that the
doctrine must nevertheless be credited or at least
treated with respect. Farther, the modes of develop
ment are, as we have akeady seen, the only points on
which certain evidence can be obtained. It is neces
sary, therefore, to consider these.

Here we must admit, in the first place, that
though we can study modes of variation of species,
no case has actually occurred under the observation!

32 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

lJ of naturalists of the development of a new species.
We must also admit that such is the fixity of specific
forms at present, and the nice equilibrium of all their
parts, that the changes effected under domestication
and by artificial selection seriously unsettle their
stability, and cause the varieties and races produced
to exist under a condition of tension and unstable
balance, which renders them infertile and otherwise

( unlikely to survive if left to themselves. They have,
[farther, in favourable circumstances a strong tendency

,|to revert to the original types. Again, we must admit
that on the supposition of slow and piecemeal altera
tion in a complex organism, we meet with endless
difficulties in relation to the origin of each change,
its fitting in with the other parts of the organism and
its maintenance while still too imperfect to be of use.
These difficulties are specially formidable when the
whole depends on favouring accidents in the absence
of a guiding will like that of the human breeder. We
also find that in the past history of life in geological
time, there are several great difficulties in the way of
the idea of slow and gradual modification.

One arises from the fact that we can trace most of
!the leading types so far back that they seem to con
stitute parallel rather than diverging lines, and show
no certain evidence of branching. The continuance

I of the Lingulae and other Brachiopods, and of the
silicious sponges and the Foraminifera, from the
Cambrian to the modern, and more lately the history

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 33

of the oysters, which have continued from the Carbo
niferous age to the present, and that of the scorpions,
which have continued from the Silurian, in both cases
with scarcely any more differences than their succes
sors present at the present day, may be taken as
examples. With this must be connected the further
fact that nearly all the early types of life seem very
long ago to have reached stages so definite and fixed
that they became apparently incapable of further
development, constituting what have recently been
called ' terminal forms.' ]

A further difficulty arises from our failure to find
satisfactory examples of the almost infinite alleged
connecting links which must have occurred in a
gradual development. This, it may be said, proceeds
from the imperfection of the record ; but when we
find abundance of examples of the young and old of
many fossil species, and can trace them through their
ordinary embryonic development, why should we not
find examples of the links which bound the species
together ? An additional difficulty is caused by the
fact that in most types we find a great number of
kinds in their earlier geological history, and that they
dwindle rather than increase as they go onward. This
fact, established in so many cases as to constitute an
actual law of palaeontology, is altogether independent
of the alleged imperfection of the record.

Objections of this kind appear to be fatal to the

1 Clelland, Journal of Anatomy and Physiology.

C

34 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

Darwinian idea of slow modifications, proceeding
throughout geological time, and to throw us back on
a doctrine of sudden appearance of new forms, occur
ring at certain portions of geological time rather than
at others, and in the earlier history of animal and
vegetable types rather than in their later history,
and in early geological times, rather than in those
more recent. This doctrine, however, of critical or
i spasmodic evolution is essentially different from
1 Darwinism, and approaches to that which has been
Wiled mediate creation, or creation under natural

"law.

With respect to the origin of man himself, which
is, no doubt, the most important point to us, these
difficulties are enormous. We can trace man only a
little way back in geological history, not farther than
the Pleistocene period, and the earliest men are still
men in all essential points, and separated from other
animals, recent and fossil, by a gap as wide as that
which exists now. Farther, if from the Pleistocene
to the modern period man has continued essentially
the same, this, on the principle of gradual develop
ment, would remove his first appearance not only far
beyond the existence of any remains of man or his
works, but beyond the time when any animals nearly
approaching to him are known to have existed. This
is independent altogether of the farther difficulties
which attend the spontaneous origination of the

|| mental and moral nature of our species. It would

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 35

seem, then, that man must have been introduced, not ?
by a process of gradualjevelopment, but in some*
abrupt and sudden way^Even Wallace, who has all
along adhered to the doctrine of natural selection in
its integrity, while he agrees with Darwin that man
must be a descendant of apes as to his bodily frame,1
maintains that his higher mental and moral faculties
must have had another original

These considerations have led many of the more
logical and thoughtful of the followers of Darwin to
the position of supposing, not a gradual, but an inter
mittent and sudden development, and this, in the
main, in the earliest periods of the history of living
beings. In a very able essay by Dr. Alpheus Hyatt,
in the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural
History, this view is very fully stated in its applica
tion to animals. On the one hand, Hyatt holds that
the biological facts and the geological evidence as it
has been stated by Marcou, Le Conte, Barrande,
Davidson, and by the author of this work, precludes
the idea of slow and uniform change proceeding
throughout geological time, and he holds justly that
the idea of what he calls 'a concentrated and accele
rated process of evolution,' in early geological times,
brings the doctrine of development nearer to the posi
tion of those great naturalists like Cuvier, Louis |
Agassiz, and Gegenbauer, who have denied any genetic!
connection between the leading animal types. He
1 Darwinism t p. 461.

c 2

36 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

quotes Cope and Packard in support of his view on
this point. The latter we shall have occasion to refer
to in the sequel in connection with cave animals.
Cope has, in a series of brilliant essays,1 endeavoured
to illustrate what he terms * causes of the origin of the
fittest.' Of this kind are growth-force modified by
retardation or acceleration of development produced
by unfavourable or favouring conditions, the effects of
use and disuse on modifying structures, the law of
correlation of parts and the effects of animal intelli
gence. These are all causes ignored by the genuine
Darwinian. Nevertheless they exist in nature, though
rather as causes of mere adaptive variation than of
specific difference.

Another modification of orthodox Darwinism is
that of Romanes, who may almost be regarded as
Darwin's most prominent successor. He has intro
duced the idea of physiological selection, that is, of
the occurrence accidentally or from unknown causes
of reproductive changes which render certain indi
viduals of a species infertile with others. The effect
of this would be an isolation amounting to the erection
of two forms not reproductive with each other ; or, in
other words, of two species not gradually differentiated,
but distinct from the first. This is really an inversion
of Darwin's theory, in which the initial stage of
Romanes is necessarily the culmination of the develop
ment. It differs also essentially in eliminating the

1 ' Origin of the Fittest,' American Naturalist.

WHA T IS E VOL UTION f 37

idea of use and adaptation to change implied in the
theory of natural selection.

Romanes even goes so far as to stigmatise the
adherence to natural selection pure and simple as
{ Wallaceism,' in contradistinction to Darwinism, while
he admits that Wallace has a good right to adhere to
this view, as having in some sense antedated Darwin
in asserting the dominant influence of natural selec
tion. It is fair to say, with regard to Romanes, that
while advocating the importance of ' Physiological
Selection/ he claims that Darwin admitted, or would
have admitted, this factor, since he believed that in
the absence of infertility to prevent intercrossing,
natural selection would fail to produce new species.
It is worthy of remark here that both Romanes and
Wallace seem to be aware that this admission might
be fatal to the doctrine of natural selection, unless
they can show some other cause capable of producing
infertility.

In the meantime, Weismann in Germany has, in
the name of what has been called pure Darwinism,
introduced into the discussion facts and considerations
as destructive to the usual doctrine as Puritanism
would be to High Churchism. He contends that al
evidence is against the perpetuation by heredity o
characters acquired by the individual. Only characters,
born with him can be perpetuated. For example, a|
man born with six fingers on his hand may have six-*
fingered children, but a man who acquires in his Iife4

I!

38 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

time manual dexterity, or who loses a finger by
accident, will not transmit either peculiarity. Weis-
mann has undoubtedly made out a strong case in
favour of this contention, which would at once over
throw the Lamarckian theory of evolution, and would
remove one of the subsidiary props of Darwinism,
throwing it back entirely on the natural selection of
fortuitous congenital variations. Purified in this way,
and reduced to chance variation, perpetuated by ac
cidental action of favouring circumstances, Darwinism
would, according to some of its adherents, evaporate
without leaving any residuum. Nor has it escaped
notice that the theory of Weismann implies profound
and far-reaching considerations respecting the indepen
dence of the germinal matter of animals of individual
peculiarities, and its constancy to the ideal plan of
the species, which would help us to account for the
wonderful permanence of types in geological time,
while it would oppose change, except when this arises
from causes directly affecting the reproductive func
tion.

Another important point involved in Weismann's
results is the probability that, while asexual reproduc
tion, as, for instance, that of budding, tends to per
petuate individual peculiarities, whether of advance or
retrogression, ordinary reproduction tends to eliminate
all variations, whether produced by habit and use or
by obscure causes affecting the individual in its life
time. Thus there is a strong barrier set up, especially

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 39

in the higher organisms, against either degradation or
elevation.

Advantage has been taken of this by some specu
lators to suggest that new species may have originated \
by parthenogenesis, that is to say, by what theologians!
would call miraculous conception, and this idea hasf
by some of them been connected even with the nativity
of our Lord on the earth. But such speculations are
very far removed from even the borders of science.
These speculations may, however, raise the question
whether man is to be succeeded by any improved
species. If it had pleased God at any time to produce
several individuals of a new race as superior to ordi
nary humanity as was Jesus of Nazareth, and to
isolate and protect from admixture this new departure,
the world might have entered on a new stage as
superior to the present as man himself is to the pre-
daceous beasts which the nations of the earth delight
to use as their emblems. This idea presented itself
to the Prophet Daniel when he saw the successive^
conquering empires of the world represented by a
series of ferocious beasts, and saw these replaced by
one 'like unto the Son of Man/ a truly human per
sonage, descending from heaven to reign on earth.!
The same figure is in the mind of Christ when He
calls Himself distinctively the c Son of Man/ not as
merely human or in comparison with God, but as
contrasted with the lower powers of earth, and as re
presenting the heaven-descended man of Daniel.

40 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

Jesus, however, assures us that not a new species of
homo, but man himself, in a redeemed, sanctified, and
spiritual state, is to be the heir of the coming ages.

A curious point, little thought of by most evolu
tionists, but deserving consideration here, is that to
which Herbert Spencer has given the name ' direct
equilibration,' or the balance of parts and forces with
in the organism itself. The body of an animal, for
example, is a very complex machine, and if its parts
have been put together by chance, and are drifting
onwards on the path of evolution, there must neces
sarily be a continual struggle going on between the
different organs and functions of the body, each tend
ing to swallow up the other, and each struggling for
its own existence. This resolution of the body of any
animal into a house divided against itself, is at first
sight so revolting to common sense, and so hideous to
right feeling, that few like to contemplate it ; but it
has been brought into prominence by Roux and other
recent writers, especially in Germany, and it is no
doubt a necessary outcome of the evolutionary idea.
For why should not the struggle of species against
species extend to the individuals and the parts of the
individual ? On this view, the mechanism of an animal
ceases even to be a machine, and becomes a mere
mass of conflicting parts thrown together at random,
and depending for its continued existence on a chance
balance of external forces. It is well for us that we
have not in human machinery to deal with such un-

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 41

stable and dangerous combinations, else no one's life
would be for a moment safe.

Fortunately, ^geological history so completely,
negatives this idea, by showing the extreme perma
nence of many forms of life which have continued to
propagate themselves through almost immeasurable
ages and great changes of environment, without
material variation, and the apparent fixity of these in
their final forms,\that we are relieved from the dread
which this nightmare of German brains tends tof
create.

Viewed rightly, the direct equilibration of the
parts of animals and plants is so perfect and so stable,
and such great evils arise from the slightest disturb
ance of it by the selective agency of man, that it be
comes one of the strongest arguments against the

"~

production of new species by variation. \This has
been well shown by Mr. T. Warren O'Neill, of Phila
delphia,1 who adduces a great number of facts, detailed
by Darwin himself, to show that when the stability of
an organism is artificially altered by man in his
attempt to establish new breeds, infertility and death
of these varieties or breeds results ; and if this hap
pens under the fortuitous selection supposed to occur
in nature, any considerable variation would result
either in speedy return to the original type or in
speedy extinction. In other words, so beautifully
balanced is the organism, that an excess or deficiency

1 Refutation of Darwin. Philadelphia, 1880.

42 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

in any of its parts, when artificially or accidentally
introduced, soon proves fatal to its existence as a
species ; so that, unless nature is a vastly more skilful
breeder and fancier than man, the production of new
species by natural selection is an impossibility^]

Two remarkable books by two of the ablest ex
ponents of the Darwinian theory of evolution have
recently appeared, which may be taken as specimens of
the evolutionary method, and may be commended to
those who desire to know this theory as defended and
extended by its friends.1 One of these works is by
Alfred Wallace, who may be truly said to have anti
cipated Darwin in the theory of natural selection —
the other by Dr. Romanes, Darwin's successor. Both
claim to be orthodox Darwinians, though each accuses
the other of some heresy. Wallace's book may, how
ever, be accepted as the best English exposition of
Darwinism in general, that of Romanes as the ablest
attempt to explain on this theory the evolution of the
higher faculties of man. Neither professes to explain
the origin of life, but both profess, life and species of
animals being given, to explain their development
as high as man himself, though they differ materially
as to this highest stage of evolution, and also as to
the omnipotence of natural selection. The judicious
reader will, however, observe that both take for granted
what should be proved ; in other words, reason con-

1 Darwinism ^ by Wallace ; Mental Evolution in Man, by
Romanes.

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 43

stantly in a narrow circle, and constantly use such
formulae as ' we may well suppose,' instead of argu
ment

We may take as an example from Wallace the
history of the evolution of the water-ouzel or dipper.
It may serve as an example of the questions which
are raised by the Darwinian evolution, and which, if
they have no other advantage, tend to promote the
minute observation of nature, of which Wallace's book
shows many interesting examples. It serves, at the
same time, to illustrate that peculiar style of reasoning
in a circle which is characteristic of this school of
thought. I have chosen this special illustration from
Wallace because it is one in which the idea of adapta
tion to fill a vacant space — an idea as much Lamarckian
as Darwinian — is introduced.

An excellent example of how a limited group of species
has been able to maintain itself by adaptation to one of
these ' vacant places ' in nature is afforded by the curious
little birds called dippers or water-ouzels, forming the genus
Cinclus of the family Cindidcz of naturalists. These birds are
something like small thrushes, with very short wings and
tail and very dense plumage. They frequent, exclusively,
mountain torrents in the northern hemisphere, and obtain
their food entirely in the water, consisting, as it does, of
water-beetles, caddis-worms, and other insect larvae, as well
as numerous small fresh-water shells. These birds, although
not far removed in structure from thrushes and wrens, have
the extraordinary power of flying under water ; for such,
according to the best observers, is their process of diving
in search of their prey, their dense and somewhat fibrous

44 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

plumage retaining so much air that the water is prevented
from touching their bodies, or even from wetting their feathers
to any great extent. Their powerful feet and long curved
claws enable them to hold on to stones at the bottom, and
thus to retain their position while picking up insects, shells,
&c. As they frequent chiefly the most rapid and boisterous
torrents, among rocks, waterfalls, and huge boulders, the
water is never frozen over, and they are thus able to live
during the severest winters. Only a very few species of
dipper are known, all those of the old world being so
closely allied to our British bird that some ornithologists
consider them to be merely local races of one species ;
while in North America and the Northern Andes there are
two other species.

Here, then, we have a bird, which, in its whole structure,
shows a close affinity to the smaller typical perching birds,
but which has departed from all its allies in its habits and
mode of life, and has secured for itself a place in nature
where it has few competitors and few enemies. We may
well suppose that, at some remote period, a bird which was
perhaps the common and more generalised ancestor of most
of our thrushes, warblers, wrens, &c. had spread widely
over the great northern continent, and had given rise to
numerous varieties adapted to special conditions of life.
Among these some took to feeding on the borders of clear
streams, picking out such larvae and molluscs as they could
reach in shallow water. When food became scarce they
would attempt to pick them out of deeper and deeper water,
and while doing this in cold weather many would become
frozen and starved. But any which possessed denser and
more heavy plumage than usual, which was able to keep
out the water, would survive ; and thus a race would be
formed which would depend more and more on this kind of
food. Then, following up the frozen streams into the
mountains, they would be able to live there during winter ;

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 45

and as such places afforded them much protection from
enemies and ample shelter for their nests and young, further
adaptations would occur, till the wonderful power of diving
and flying under water was acquired by a true land-bird.1

Here it will be seen that a bird, distinctly marked
off by important structures and habits from others, is
supposed to have originated from a different species
at some remote period, by efforts to obtain food in
what, to it, must have been an unnatural way ; and the
sole proof of this is the expression, ' we may well sup
pose.' Why may we not as well suppose that all the
perching birds were at first like water-ouzels, which
would accord with the early appearance of aquatic
birds, and that they gained their diverse forms by
availing themselves of the better circumstances and
more varied food to be found in the woods and fields,
so that our water-ouzel may be a survival of a primi
tive type ? Neither theory can be proved, and the one
is as likely as the other, perhaps the latter, of the two,
the more likely, and neither actually explains any
thing. It is to be observed, also, as already hinted,
that the kind of evolution in this, as in some other
cases supposed by Wallace, is rather Lamarckian than
Darwinian.

It is interesting to note that, though wedded to
that strange mode of reasoning of which the extract
above given furnishes an example, Wallace frankly
.and fully admits three of the great breaks in the con-

1 Darwinism, pp. 116, 117.

46 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

tinuity of evolution. First, he admits that we cannot
ccount for the introduction of life at first, because we
now no way in which mere chemical combination
can produce living protoplasm. Here, he says, * we
have indications of a new power at work which we
may call Vitality.' Secondly, he sees no cause in the
([continuous evolution for the introduction of animal
.•/sensation and consciousness. No attempt at expla-
"nation by any modification of protoplasm can here
' afford any mental satisfaction, or help us in any way
to a solution of the mystery.' He sees a similar
break of continuity in the introduction of the higher
faculties of man. ' These faculties could not have
been developed by means of the same laws which
have determined the progressive development of the
organic world in general and also of man's physical
organism.' These he refers to an unseen universe—
to a world of spirit to which the world of matter is
altogether subordinate. ^Jf we refer these three great
steps to a spiritual Creator, and eliminate, on the other
side, the known development of varietal forms, the
field for the Darwinian evolution becomes greatly
narrowedj

Romanes, the author of the other work, will listen
to no such compromises ; but, on the other hand, is
willing to admit a union of the Darwinian and
Lamarckian doctrines, besides sexual selection and
other factors, which are admitted also by Spencer.
His latest work is devoted to the bridging over the

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 47

third of the gaps above mentioned, as in a previous
work he had dealt with the second. He does not
affirm that he has fully succeeded, but that, by con
sidering the case of savages and of prehistoric man,
we ' are brought far on the way towards bridging the
psychological distance which separates the gorilla|j
from the gentleman.' It is one thing, however, to be
on the way to a chasm, and another to be assured that
there is a good bridge over it. If we succeed in cross
ing with him from instinct to animal intelligence, from
this to rational thought, from this to ethical judg
ments and to the belief in God and immortality, and
along with all this to speech, we have the following
to reward us in regard to one step of our progress :
' I believe that this most interesting creature (speech
less man) lived for an inconceivably long time before
his faculty of articulate sign-making had developed
sufficiently far to begin to starve out the more primi
tive and more natural systems ; and I believe that
even after this starving-out process did begin, another
inconceivable lapse of time must have been required'
to have eventually transformed Homo alalus into
Homo sapiens' A process which thus requires two
eternities in which to pass through two of its stages
may well stagger the credulity of ordinary specimens
of Homo sapiens, and may surely be dismissed as 'I
itself ' inconceivable.'

While, however, the conclusions of Romanes are
thus somewhat unsatisfactory, his book contains much

48 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

that is valuable, more especially with reference to the
perfectly legitimate questions relating to the develop
ment of civilisation, and of new ideas and inventions
in human history. Man is not confined, like the lower
animals, within the range of unvarying instinct. He
is gifted with inventive and progressive powers, and
in the study of the progress of these there is scope for
much psychological inquiry and discussion, though it
is evident that human progress is not of the nature of
'• a slow and gradual evolution, but rather by sudden
leaps under the influence of superior genius and mental
I power, and it is all within the specific limits of man,
and in no respect tends to the production of a new
species.

This general view of evolution will enable us to
have some definite idea of the doctrine as presented
by Darwin and his followers ; but perhaps it may be
well before proceeding farther to consider what bear
ing it may have on theology, or more properly whether
it accords with or contradicts the idea of divine crea
tion as maintained in Revelation. As to this, little
apprehension need be entertained on the part of
Christianity, and it may safely leave such questions
as those above discussed to exhaust themselves,
. except in so far as they may affect the interest of
individual unstable souls. This last is, however, an
, important matter, and it may be well to scrutinise it
I more closely.

I The modern hypotheses of evolution present them-

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 49

selves to the Christian under two aspects — thetheistic
and the atheistic or agnostic, for the two last are
practically the same. The theistic evolutionist holds
that God creates, but that created things may have
powers of spontaneous evolution, under laws whereby
they may pass into new and higher forms. The
atheist and the agnostic eliminate the idea of a
Creator, and reduce everything to the action of atoms
and forces supposed to be practically and inherently
omnipotent. They thus make of these atoms and
forces a supreme god, attributing to them the same
powers assigned by the theist to the Creator. It is
obvious, however, that many adherents of evolution
have no clear perception of the distinction between
these phases, or find it convenient to overlook its
existence, since we often find them hovering in
thought between the one and the other, or occupying
one or the other position indifferently, as the exigen-'
cies of debate may require.

It is also to be observed that either of these phases
of evolution may admit of modifications. One of the
most important of these arises from the distinction
between the idea of slow and uniform development
maintained by Darwin and others, and that of sudden
or intermittent evolution advocated by such evolu
tionists as Mivart and Le Conte.

Viewing the matter in this light, it is evident that
neither the theological idea of creation nor the evo
lutionist notion, in either of its phases, can have any

D

5o MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

close dependence on biological and geological science,
which studies the nature and succession of organic
forms without ascertaining their origin ; either hypo
thesis, may, however, appeal to scientific facts as more
or less according with the consequences which might
be expected to follow from the origins supposed.
It is further evident that, should evolutionists be
driven by natural facts to admit the sudden apparition
of organic forms rather than their gradual develop
ment, there may be no apparent difference, as to
matter of fact, between such sudden apparition and
creation, so that science may become absolutely silent
on the question.

Paleontology has indeed recently tended to bring
the matter into this position, as Barrande and others
have well shown, fl have myself elsewhere adduced
the advent of the Cambrian trilobites, of the Silurian
cephalopods, of the Devonian fishes, of the Carboni
ferous batrachians, land snails and myriapods, of the
marsupial mammals of the Mesozoic and the placental
mammals of the Eocene, and of the Palaeozoic and
modern floras, as illustrations of the sudden swarm
ing in of forms of life over the world, in a manner in
dicating flows and ebbs of the creative action, incon
sistent with Darwinian uniformity, and perhaps un
favourable to any form of evolution ordinarily heldjf

1 In England, Davidson, Jeffreys, Williamson, Carruthers, and
other eminent naturalists have strongly insisted on the tendency of
palseontological facts to prove permanence of type and inteimittent

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 51

This neutral attitude of science has been strongly
insisted on by Dr. Wigand l in his elaborate work
Darwinismus, in which he holds that this doctrine
does not represent a definite and consistent scientific
effort and result, but merely an ' indefinite and con
fused movement of the mind of the age/ and that
science may ultimately prove its most dangerous foe.
In like manner the veteran German physiologist
Virchow, in an able address before the Assembly
of German Naturalists at Munich,2 taking the spon
taneous generation of organisms and the descent of
man from ape-like ancestors as test questions, argues
in the most conclusive manner that neither can be
held as a result of scientific investigation, but that
both must be regarded as problems as yet unsolved.

But in the face of such opinions as these, we are
struck with the fact that eminent men of science in
England and America inform us that science demands
our belief in the theory of evolution, and this in its
atheistic as well as its theistic phase. When, how
ever, we ask reasons for this demand, we find that
those who make it are themselves obliged to admit
the absence of a scientific basis for the doctrine.

For example, I may refer to the able and elaborate
address delivered a few years ago before the American
Association by its President, Professor Marsh. He

introduction of new forms, as distinguished from descent with gradual
modification.

1 Dr. Albert Wigand, Darwinismus, 1875-7.

2 On the « Liberty of Science,' 1877.

D2

52 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

says : c I need offer no argument for evolution, since

tto doubt evolution is to doubt science, and science is
only another name for truth.' In the sequel of the
address he limits himself to the evolution of the ver
tebrate animals, admitting that he knows nothing of
the absolute origin of the first of them, and basing his
conclusions mainly on the succession, in distant times,
and often in distant places, of forms allied to each
other, and advancing in the scale of complexity.
Such succession obviously falls far short of scientific
proof of evolution ; and other than this no evidence
is offered for the strong assertion above quoted. In
the conclusion of the address he asserts that life may
be a form of some other force, presumably physical
force ; but admits in the same breath that we are
ignorant of its origin ; and finally he makes an appeal,
not to facts, but to faith : ' Possibly the great mystery
of life may thus be solved ; but whether it be or not,
a true faith in science knows no limit to its search for
truth.' Plainly, if this is all that can be said as to
scientific results concerning the origin of life, if this
origin is still an unsolved problem, a ' great mystery/
it is a somewhat strong demand on our faith to ask
us to believe even that science will in the future suc
ceed in effecting the solution of this problem, and we
should not have been told that to doubt evolution is to
doubt science. This style of treating the subject is
indeed much to be deprecated in the interest of science
itself.

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 53

Another eminent apostle of evolution, Professor
Tyndall, tells us, in a recent public address, that ' it is,
now very generally admitted that the man of to-day
is the child and product of incalculable antecedent
time. His physical and intellectual textures have
been woven for him through phases of history and
forms of existence which lead the mind back to an
abysmal past.5 But, however generally this may be
1 admitted,' it is nevertheless true that the oldest
known men are as truly human in their structures as
those now living, and that no link between them and
lower animals is known. In a previous address he
had gone further back still, and affirmed that in mate
rial atoms reside the ' promise and potency of life ' ;|
yet in his capacity of physicist he has by rigid ex
periments in his laboratory done as much as any man
living to convince us that science knows no possibility
of producing the phenomena of life from dead
matter.

Perhaps no example could more vividly portray
the contrast between exact science and evolutionist
speculations than the careful experiments on germs
suspended in the atmosphere made by Tyndall in
the laboratory of the Royal Institution — experiments
so complete, so convincing, and so eminently practical
in their bearing on the conditions of health and dis
ease—as compared with the quaint and crude ima
ginings of the same mind when, in the presence of
popular audiences, it speculates on evolution.

54 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

But we should not too strongly denounce these
speculative tendencies of scientific minds. They may
point the way to new truths, and in any case they
have an intense subjective interest. Nothing can be
more interesting in a psychological point of view
than to watch the manner in which some of the
strongest and most subtle minds of our time exhaust
their energies in the attempt to solve impenetrable
mysteries, to force or pick the lock of natural secrets
to which science has furnished no key. The objec
tionable feature of the case is the representation that
such efforts have any real scientific basis.

Whence, then, arise these strange inconsistencies
and contradictions which infest modern science like
parasites ? The expression I have already quoted is
the only solution. They represent ' a confused move
ment of the mind of the age ' — of an age strong in
material discoveries, but weak in self-control and
higher consciousness. The mind of our time is un
settled and restless. It has a vague impression that
science has given it the power to solve all mysteries.
It is intoxicated with its physical successes, and has
no proper measure of its own powers. It craves a
constant succession of exciting and sensational gene
ralisations. Yet all this frenzy is no more the
legitimate outcome of science than the many fantastic
tricks which men play in the name of religion are the
proper results of revelation or theology.

The true remedy for these evils is twofold. First,

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 55

to keep speculation in its proper place as distinct
from science ; and secondly, to teach the known facts
and principles of science widely, so that the general
mind may bring its common-sense to bear on any
hypothesis which may be suggested. Speculations as
to origins may have some utility if they are held
merely as provisional or suggestive hypotheses. They
become mischievous when they are introduced into
text-books and popular discourses, and are thus
palmed off on the ignorant and unsuspecting for what
they are not.

The man who, in a popular address or in a text
book, introduces the ' descent of species ' as a proved
result of science, to be used in framing classifications
and in constructing theories, is leaving the firm
ground of nature and taking up a position which ex
poses him to the suspicion of being a dupe or a
charlatan.1 He is uttering counterfeits of nature's
currency. It should not be left to theologians to
expose him , for it is as much the interest of the
honest worker in science to do this as it is that of the
banker or merchant to expose the impostor who has
forged another's signature. In the true interests of

1 I am glad to observe that Huxley, in the preface to the Manual
of the Anatomy of the Invertebrated Animals (1878), has taken this
ground. He says : * I have abstained from discussing questions of
aetiology, not because I underestimate their importance, or am in
sensible to the interest of the great problem of evolution, but because,
in my mind, the growing tendency to mix up setiological speculations
with morphological generalisations will, if unchecked, throw biology
into confusion.'

56 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

science we are called on to follow the weighty advice
of Virchow : ' Whoever speaks or writes for the public
ought, in my opinion, doubly to examine just now
how much of that which he says is objective truth.
He ought to try as much as possible to have all in
ductive extensions which he makes, all conclusions
arrived at by the laws of analogy, however probable
they may seem, printed in small type under the
general text, and to put into the latter only that
which is objective truth.' To practise such teaching
tmay require much self-denial, akin to that which the
preacher must exercise who makes up his mind to
forego his own thoughts, and, like Paul, to know no
thing among men but God's truth in its simplicity.
The mischief which may be done to science by an
opposite course is precisely similar to that which is
done to religion by sensational preaching founded on
distortions of scriptural truth, or on fragments of
texts taken out of their connection and used as
jnottoes for streams of imaginative declamation.

To render such evils impossible, we must have a
more general and truthful teaching of science. It is
a great mistake here to suppose that a little knowledge
is dangerous ; every grain of pure truth is precious,
and will bear precious fruit. The danger lies in mis
using the little knowledge for purposes which it can
not serve ; and this is most likely to take place when
facts are not known at all, or imperfectly compre
hended, or so taught as to cause a part of the truth

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 57

to be taken for the whole. Let the structures of
animals and plants in some of their more prominent
forms be well known, along with their history in geo
logical time, and the attempt to explain their origin
by any crude and simple hypotheses like those now
current will become unreal as a dream. These
.general statements must, however, be tested in the
subsequent chapters by an appeal to facts in connec
tion with the more important questions raised by
modern evolution.

58 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

CHAPTER III
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

IT has been remarked as a somewhat significant
circumstance that the title of that remarkable work
The Origin of Species by Natural Selection, which
has so deeply impressed the mind of our age, contains
in itself the elements of the refutation of its own
leading principle.

Of the origin of species the book tells us nothing.
It merely discusses certain possible modes of ' descent
with modification ' whereby new species may be de
rived from those previously existing. Of species it
tells us nothing, except that if its contentions be
maintained there can be no permanent kinds of
animals or plants, or true species, in the old sense of
the term, but only an indefinite shading of forms into
one another, and a perpetual flux, by which what may
be called a species at one period will be something
different at another. Natural selection again, if there
is such a thing, can take place only after species
already exist with numerous individuals to be selected
from ; and unless it is merely another name for

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 59

chance, it implies also an intelligent selecting power
or agency. Farther, though put forward by Darwin
as an efficient cause, it is now admitted by many of
the ablest of his followers l to be merely a mode, and
only one of several modes by which species may be"
modified.

(/This error in statement proceeds from a funda
mental confusion in the mind of the author, who,
though of transcendent gifts as an observer, was very
defective as a reasonerj He does not clearly dis-.
criminate between the origin, beginning, or develop
ment of living beings and the nature of the forms'
under which they present themselves in our more or'
less arbitrary systems of classification. This con
fusion pervades the whole work, and is accompanied
by a like confusion between causation and develop
ment — ideas which are variously combined under the*
complex notion of evolution — so that such factors as
struggle for existence and natural selection may be
viewed sometimes as true, efficient powers and some
times as mere modes or processes.

The initial question before us in this matter is :
How did that which possesses organisation and life
originate from that which is destitute of these
properties ? If we can answer this question, that of i
modification may follow in due course. If we cannot i
solve the problem of the origin of the life, the other,
question as to specific forms becomes of secondary*

1 Spencer, Romanes, Packard, Cope, &c.

60 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

significance. To those who are impressed with the
necessity of an almighty creative will as the primary
cause of all things, the formula ' God created ' may
be a sufficient answer ; and it is perfectly true that
we cannot expect the methods of science to go back
to origins. It deals rather with laws and modes, and
must necessarily always start from certain axioms,
postulates, or powers of unknown origin. Still we
must bear in mind that revelation itself invites us to
think of such questions. It does not merely say that
God created all things. It informs us that God said,
' Let the land bring forth plants, let the waters swarm
with living things,' and it speaks of the bodily frame
of man as made of the dust, that is, of the common
material of the earth, and of an inspiration of the
Almighty, an inbreathing of the breath of life to give
him understanding.

These statements invite us from the side of reve
lation as well as of science to consider the antecedents
and materials of life. ' In the beginning God created
'the heavens and the earth.' Here we have a funda
mental statement which demands no proof, because
we can substitute nothing else for it. If we say,
* There was no beginning, the Universe is eternal,'
we have a proposition unthinkable by us, because we
cannot imagine an eternal succession, and such a suc
cession, if conceivable, would preclude all develop
ment. If we say, ' In the beginning the heavens and
the earth were self-created,' we have a proposition

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 61

which is a contradiction in terms. It remains as the
only possible alternative that all things were created
by the Almighty Intelligent Will whom we call God.
But having settled so much, we have presented to
us a group of primary factors for the subsequent de
velopment. There are here, first, duration and ex
tension — time and space, as we usually call them.
We say we believe in time and space, because we
know that we exist in them, but abstractly they are
as inconceivable to us as the Being who exists from
everlasting to everlasting, to whom one day is as a -\ -
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,
whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain. Our
definite ideas of these mysterious entities are based
on things that extend and move. Time we may
know by the succession of our own thoughts or the
changes of external objects, space by the extension
of the visible universe. Matter and motion are
therefore our measures of extension and duration,
and apart from these we may hold with Kant that
time and space have no objective existence. But
matter and motion must have had a beginning, and
before that beginning time and space existed only in
the Infinite mind, while to us the bodies that consti
tute the visible heavens are for times and for seasons,
for days and for years ; yet without time and space
what remains to us except an immovable mathe
matical point ? In regard to time and space, there
fore, we may be agnostics if we please, for they are

62 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

unknowable, but in connection with matter and
motion we know them intimately, and cannot dis
sociate them from our thoughts. PracticallyJ__to_us
time and space begin with that beginning when God
created the heavens and the earth.

We must next assume as factors in the develop
ment of the Divine plan a triad of things and powers
existing in space and time — matter, ether, energy.
What is matter? An aggregate of atoms, invisible
and impalpable, yet believed in, and known to have
different properties, dividing them into very dissimilar
kinds or species, which, though related to each other
with great regularity by definite gradations and
numerical connections, cannot (so far as we know) be
changed. They are species which seem to have no
descent, and are not capable of modification. They
are held together by equally inscrutable forces of
affinity and cohesion, constituting what we call bodies,
which, however solid, are permeable indefinitely by
ethereal undulations.

Ether, again, is, so to speak, an immaterial matter,
existing everywhere, yet incapable of perception — an
inconceivable, all-pervading something, ministering to
every sensation and action, yet itself imperceptible and
inert. Next we have energy, manifesting itself by
motion of different kinds, whether in ether or ordinary
matter, and actuating all things, sometimes in one
way, sometimes in another, yet under intelligible laws,
which limit the freedom of energy and enable us to

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 63

distinguish its different kinds or modes of manifesta
tion.

All these things — space, time, matter, ether,
energy — are to us inscrutable in their origin, and
incapable of annihilation, yet in our power to deal
with, according to certain laws which we have ascer
tained, and, no doubt, capable of endless changes
and interactions as yet beyond our ken. Those that
we do know constitute the subject matter of the vast
and complicated sciences of physics and chemistry.

All this must have been present in the world, and
as perfectly and regularly arranged as it is now, be
fore there could be life. We may even say that all
this must have been fully perfected, so as to admit of
no farther improvement or change, before the origin
of life. This is overlooked by those who unthink
ingly tell us that we must believe in the evolution of
the physical world, whether we believe in that cf life
or not. The development, in so far as the physical
world is concerned, consisted in the arrangement and
determination of matter and energy in such a manner
as to fit the world for being the abode of life.

A vaporous world, a mere cloud or nebula of fire
mist, a liquid incandescent world, a world with a
hardened crust and a vaporous atmosphere, a world
with a universal ocean covering its surface, a world
with land and water, mountain and valley — all these
may have existed (probably did exist) for untold ages
before the origin of life. We know that in the earlier •

64 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

of these stages the earth would be altogether unsuit
able for any forms of life known to us ; but we do
not know precisely at what point of the later stages
it would be in precisely the best state for the begin
nings of life. Let it be observed here, however, that
the materials of the physical world are to us manu
factured or created products, and that the progress of
the development is the result of the properties and
laws impressed upon them at first, correlated and
regulated to a definite end. We shall find that there
is an analogy with this in the origin and development
of life.

But though all this material of the physical world
is necessary to life, it manifests in itself no indication
of that mysterious power ; for it we require something

more namely, the substance protoplasm, which, so

far as we know, does not exist in dead nature, and
which thus far has baffled all attempts to construct it
artificially from its elements. In addition to this we
require some form of that complex machinery which
we call an organism, though this also, in our present
experience, cannot be formed without life. Yet
protoplasm and an organism must be present before
life can manifest itself.

Here we have another triad whose relations are
enshrouded in mystery. Just as we know nothing of
matter, ether, and energy, independently of each other,
so we know nothing of protoplasm, organism, and life,
except as existing together. We cannot imagine one

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 65

of them to originate without the other ; nor can we
imagine either of them to exist in nature in isolation
from the others. All three are beyond our power to
produce, and we have never witnessed their produc
tion spontaneously or by artificial means. Our in
quiries so far have only brought us into the presence
of two inscrutable and miraculous natural trinities.
I say miraculous in the true sense of the term, be
cause beyond our power and comprehension.

Protoplasm has been called the * physical basis of/
life ' ; but this is merely a form of words to conceal
ignorance. The substance is no doubt physical in
the sense of being material and existing in nature,
but it is not physical in the sense of being procurable
or persistent under ordinary physical powers or con
ditions ; and it is no more the basis of life and organi
sation than they are its basis. An egg is mainly \
composed of protoplasm — pure in the white, mixed j
with some other things in the yolk. It is also an [
example of dead or non-living protoplasm, though ••
produced in the body of a living animal. But if fer
tilised it has in it a living and organised germ, also
protoplasmic ; and this germ can grow and assimilate
the remainder of the protoplasm, and produce out of
it all the parts of an animal even so complex as a
bird. The animal so produced may have all the
parts of a highly complex organic machine, made up
of a number of special tissues, all of which wer
potentially, though not actually, present in the germ.

E

66 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

The protoplasm itself is a highly complex sub
stance, consisting of carbon or charcoal, combined
with three gases (oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen)
and with minute quantities of sulphur and phos
phorus, in molecules so complex that more than
eight hundred atoms are supposed to be necessary to
constitute one of them. But protoplasm alone imme
diately decays and disappears, being resolved into
ordinary inorganic compounds. Only as part of a
living organism can it be in any sense a basis or sup
porter of life. Life itself thus remains as an energy,
or combination of energies, differing from all others
in that while they actuate ordinary matter, it will only
actuate organised and protoplasmic matter.

But it may be said, ' This is after all a familiar
thing. We see an egg, or a spore, or a seed made
up of a little protoplasm and a few other substances,
and it proceeds of itself to grow and shape itself into
a complex organism, passing spontaneously through
many processes and changes to that end.' This is
true ; but do we ever find such a germ occurring in
any other way than as a product of a previous living
organism ? We can no more obtain the smallest or
simplest egg or spore or the simplest animal or plant
directly from dead Nature than we can make a world
out of nothing. The previous statements give us
some idea of the reason of this. In such a process
all would be implied that constitutes the material of
the whole of the physical sciences and an unknown

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 67

quantity beyond, which we can only express as the
undiscovered residue of the infinite power and
divinity that lie beyond nature. Whether sciences
will ever go so far as to enable us to create living)
things, or when dead to restore them to life, we;
cannot tell. That these things are possible, we know,
and we may be certain that at some period or periods*
in the history of the earth living beings originated.
We may also be certain that when they originated
all the previous arrangements of inorganic nature
had been completed and combined to that end ; but
what were the details of this we have not at present
the means of knowing.

If, then, we find in the little dot of protoplasm that
constitutes the egg of an insect the power to develop
itself into the parts and structures of the perfect
insect, and if one should find that the insect so de
veloped has the further power to modify itself into
varietal forms, we may have a vast and interesting
field of biological study, but we may still remain
ignorant of the origin of the mysterious potencies in
the egg, and of the creative processes, extending
through untold ages, and of inscrutable complexity
and stupendous magnitude, which were necessary to
render possible the existence of the egg or the insect.
Such is the problem presented to us by the origin
of life ; and it is not too much to say that our modern
hypotheses of development, however captivating to
the love of simplicity which actuates the general

E 2

68 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

mind, and however useful as helping to fix the laws
and limits of the variation of living beings, have not
brought us perceptibly nearer to the solution of the
great question, still less to the possibility of solving
it without the power and divinity that lie behind it.
It is of some value, however, to understand the
nature of a question of this kind, even if we cannot
answer it, and we may perhaps best attain to this
kind of information by considering some plain and

simple cases.

Parry, in his Arctic voyages, describes and i
a remarkable phenomenon witnessed in Greenland
and in other polar and alpine regions, and also to a
modified extent in more temperate climates— that of
the growth of the red snow-plant (Protococcus

Large tracts of melting snow on the Greenla
coast are sometimes seen to be coloured with this
humble plant, giving to the previously pure snow a
bright blood-red tint, and often penetrating to some
depth into its mass. Parry informs us that on taking
a bucketful of this snow on board his ship, and
allowing it to melt, the water was seen to contain a
delicate gelatinous matter full of minute
which, under the microscope, resolved themselves
into globular cells with a thin transparent outer wall,
containing a colourless liquid sap, within which was

> Sometimes referred to genus Palmella or to Chlamydococcus, and
included by Bennett in his family Protococcace*.

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 69

a central protoplasmic mass of a deep red colour,
and often divided into still more minute globes, be
lieved to be reproductive germs. Each of these
bodies, only one-twelve-thousandth of an inch in
diameter, is a perfect plant, capable of performing all
the functions of vegetable life and of multiplying in
an astonishing manner at a temperature scarcely
above the freezing point, and supplied with nourish
ment and energy by the snow-water and by the
solar light and heat. It uses, in short, the power of
the solar light and heat to enable it to decompose
the small amount of carbonic dioxide and ammonia
contained in the melting snow, and to construct from
their materials and from water the protoplasm and
mucilage and colouring matter necessary to form its
own substance. Thus it grows in magnitude, and
when mature produces many microscopical germs,
which, being discharged from the parent sac, spread
themselves on the snow, till from a single germ acres
or miles of this may be filled with these tiny organ
isms.

Here is a low form of plant life existing under
what appear to us as unfavourable conditions ; but
observe how much it implies. We must have in the
first place a pre-existing germ of marvellous potencies,
and containing a great number of the complex mole
cules of protoplasm, and this endowed with life. Next
we find this germ possessing chemical powers of a
most extraordinary character. The most essential of

70 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

these, that of decomposing carbon dioxide at a low
temperature and with only the help of solar radiation,
is thus far impossible to the chemist, and so is also
the union of the nascent carbon with other substances
to form the mucilage and protoplasm of the sap and
the red colouring matter which adorns it. Here is a
miracle in the true sense — a mighty work transcending
our power and comprehension, and performed by
means of an organism the most feeble and apparently
inefficient.

If we ask what is the use of this plant, the answer
must be — the same with that of the grass of the field.
To the few minute animals which can live on melting
snow it may serve as food, and washed down into the
streams and the sea it helps to sustain the swarming
hosts of minute animals of the waters which must
have their food provided by the bountiful hand of
— ^Nature. But Nature in this sense is only another
name for God, whose power and divinity arc mani
fested in every cell of the red snow-plant.

Something, however, may be learnt from the
reproduction of this plant. It belongs to a humble
group of organisms which must have existed since the
dawn of life on our planet, and have continued to
propagate themselves throughout the geological ages.
Their germs abound in all natural waters and in the
air, and are ready to develop themselves whenever the
proper conditions can be found. Each set of conditions
has also its own special kinds of protophytes fitted

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 71

for these various conditions, so that there are many
genera and species differing in habitat and properties.
Even in Greenland, we are informed by Berggren
and Dickie, three other species of protophytes are
found growing in company with Protococcus nivalis,
on the ice or the mud and stones upon it. Every
where these plants form a basis for other and higher
kinds of life. When the great eruption of Krakatao
had destroyed every living thing, and covered the
whole island with barren cinders, the spores of these
minute plants, borne to it by the winds and nourished
by the rains, developed a coating of vegetation of this
kind, on which other and higher plants whose spores
and seeds had also been wind- or water-borne imme
diately developed themselves, presenting an epitome
of the first vegetation which clothed our once life
less continents when the creative fiat, c Let the earth
bring forth plants/ first went forth, but giving no
evidence as to the origin of any species of plant
de novo.

But what of the evolution of the red snow-plant
and its congeners ? Though there are plants even
more simple than the adult red snow-plant, I am
not aware that we know any other organism more
simple than the microscopic germs or spores of these
plants from which they could be derived, and we may
as well consider ourselves here face to face with the
problem, how can a living cell be produced from
inorganic matter, say, from snow-water and the

72 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

carbonic dioxide and ammonia of the atmosphere,
with the aid of solar energy? This problem has
been practically solved perhaps many times and
under different conditions by creative power, but no
evolutionist has yet explained it, and the careful
experiments of Pasteur and Tyndall have given only
negative results.

These plants are, however, capable of certain
variations. The Protococcus may differ somewhat in
colour, or in proportion of parts in different circum
stances, and it is not impossible that some of the
forms which have been described as distinct species
arc really merely varieties of this kind. This might
of course enable a botanist to speak of different
species of Protococcus as having originated by descent
with modification ; but if the different forms could be
shown to be merely the result of changed conditions,
and to be capable of returning in suitable circum
stances to the normal properties of the plant, they
could not be regarded as true species. He might,
however, farther argue that under circumstances
of isolation, and where external influences permitted
only one form to exist, this might become fixed and
continuously reproductive as a distinct species ; but
in that case the burden of proof would rest with him,
and such proof has not yet been obtained. Until it
has, the independent origin of such forms remains
quite as possible. If a one-celled alga could be pro
duced de novo on the surface of Greenland snow, why

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 73

might not another be independently developed on
moist earth or in the water, and why is it necessary
to affirm without proof that they have varied from
one original ?

It is equally impossible to show that these plants
have at any time ascended to higher grades. They
remain as they were, humble one-celled plants, and
may have so continued since the dawn of life on our
planet. Even on Krakatao no one supposes that the
algoid plants which first took possession changed into
higher forms. They only formed a basis on which the
spores and seeds of other plants could germinate.
Evidently they bring us no nearer to the origin of
life, which, as far as they are concerned, is something
as primitive and original as that of an atom of oxygen
or hydrogen or the force of chemical affinity.
Examples of the same kind might be drawn from
any of the lower forms of life. None of them give us
any mode of transition from the non-living and un
organised to the living and organised, nor do they
show any evidence of transition from one grade of
organised existence to another.

Something may perhaps be learnt as to the
origin of life by a consideration of the probable
beginning of some of the organs of animals or plants.
I remember when a little boy being suddenly struck
on looking at myself in a mirror by the question,
How is it that I can see ; is not sight a very
wonderful thing ? I could not answer the question

74 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

then, and though I have since learnt much as
to the laws of light and the physiology of vision, I
have not yet fathomed the mysteries of the action of
light on nerve-cells and of the transmission of visual
impressions to the mind. The eye is indeed one of
those wonderful instances of correlation of distinct
and distant things which strike us so much in nature.
It embodies a vast variety of optical and vital struc
tures and powers, and through the medium of ethereal
undulations connects the sentient being with the
most distant luminous bodies in the universe.

The eye even in its simplest form is a self-acting
and registering instantaneous photographic camera,
and having its plates so prepared as to represent
colours as well as forms, and it must to this end
possess at least a clear refractive medium, photo
graphic pigment-cells, and a nervous apparatus
capable of receiving the impressions produced and
conveying them to the sensorium. There must have
been a time when eyes did not exist. There may
have been a time after animals existed when none of
them possessed eyes. We have been informed by a
leading agnostic evolutionist that we may imagine
the eye to have originated spontaneously in some
low and simple form, and then ' by the operation of
infinite adjustments' (through infinite time and with
out any adjuster) to have reached 'the perfection of
the eye of the eagle.' Yet this is so little satisfactory
that we can well understand the saying of Darwin

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 75

that the thought of the origin of the eye c gave him a \
cold shiver.'

The first appearance of eyes dates very far back}
in geological time. In the lowest Cambrian rocks,
where, for the first time, we find a varied marine
fauna, there are crustaceans of the family of trilo-
bites with eyes, while there are others in which eyes!
are not present, or have not been detected. This is"
parallel with the fact shown in the results of the
dredgings of the Challenger, that in the deep sea at
present there are some crustaceans furnished with
very large eyes, to suit the dim light of the ocean
depths, while others living in similar depths are
destitute of eyes. Here we have two remarkable'1
facts. First, that in the oldest seas, as well as now,
some crustaceans possessed eyes, while others appar
ently living in similar conditions were not so endowed.
Secondly, that, so far as known, the eyes of the oldest
crustaceans were as complete as those of their modern
relatives and on the same plan. With reference to
the last statement it is necessary to mention that the
eyes of the compound or facetted type which we have
in modern crustaceans and insects, and which are
of remarkably complex structure, are the oldest known
to us. Burmeister long ago showed that the eyes of
the ancient trilobites must have possessed all the
apparatus found in those of their modern successors,
and I have myself seen under the microscope eyes of
trilobites of the genus PJiacops in which the remains

76 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTIOX

of the separate tubes for the several ocelli of the com
pound eye were plainly discernible. Let it be
observed also that the simple or single eye which
culminates in the vertebrate animals probably existed
as far back as the compound eye, since we have no
reason to suppose that the gastropod and cephalopod
molluscs which abounded in the Cambrian age were
blind, and their eyes must have been of a type distinct
in plan from those of the trilobites. The difference
between these two kinds of eyes is not in general
principle, but in details of plan. In the one a
number of small and comparatively simple eyes are
grouped together, radiating from a centre, so as to
command a wide range of vision without indistinct
ness in any part. In the other there is but one organ
of larger size, and with greater complexity in its
apparatus for adjustment to distance and direction.
Both these types of eye existed in the Cambrian
period with all their essential parts, though perhaps
the first mentioned had precedence to some small
extent in time. In that early period they were sub
stantially perfected, in so far at least as vision in
water is concerned ; and if this perfection arose by
< infinite adjustments,' these must have been made in
those pre-Cambrian ages in which we have no evi
dence of the existence of any creatures requiring to
have eyes. Farther, the two types of eyes above re
ferred to must have come in independently. The one
could not have originated from the other. It is also

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 77

to be observed that though the vertebrate eye is on
the same general plan with that of the higher
molluscs, it differs in some very important details.
These vertebrate eyes appeared with the fishes in the
Silurian, and I have shown from the structure of an
unusually well-preserved eye of a Lower Carboniferous
fish (Palaoniscus) that in the Palaeozoic some of the
most minute and delicate arrangements of the eye of the
fish already existed.1 Thus the origin of such organs
as the eye becomes as inexplicable on the principle
of spontaneous evolution as that of the animal itself.

But while we cannot explain how eyes may be

acquired, we know something as to the causes of

their being lost, which may perhaps throw light on

their origin. A remarkable illustration of this, and

also of transmutation as distinguished from origin,

and of the equivocal value of the term species as

used by evolutionists, is furnished by the cave

animals of the great caverns of Kentucky and

Virginia, recently so ably described by Packard.2

These creatures are acknowledged to be merely

varietal forms, which by virtue of living for many

generations, or it would appear sometimes in a few

generations, in the darkness of caverns, have lost the

power of vision, and even dispense with eyes, while

they have been modified in other respects, as, for

example, in the better development of their organs

1 Acadian Geology, Supplement, p. 101.

2 ' Cave Fauna,' Memoirs National Academy of Sciences (U.S.A.),
vol. iv.

78 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

of touch. No one doubts that they are merely
varieties of species living outside the caves, and that,
if gradually accustomed to sunlight, they might
regain the powers they have lost. They are there
fore in no respect truly distinct species, and some of
them even pass by imperceptible gradations into the
ordinary types from which they arose ; yet for con
venience of reference distinct specific and even
generic names have been given them, and in this way
a long list of names of cave fishes, crustaceans,
insects, &c, can be made out. These curious
creatures cannot therefore be taken as evidence of
the origin of new species. (Jhey are no more distinct
species of cray-fish, insects, &c. than a blind man is
a distinct species of the genus Homo. They are
clearly merely varietal forms. They cannot be con
sidered to be products of natural selection, but of
disuse of certain organs and special demands on
others. They have, in short, varied, as Packard
explains to us, on the Lamarckian, not on the Dar
winian principle^ They show the effects of change
of conditions of life, and they show great powers of
adaptation to new circumstances, acting along with
isolation, and the tendency to transmit acquired
characters to offspring. Packard even shows reason
to believe that they are reproductive with individuals
of the ordinary forms of those species which may
stray or be carried by floods into these caverns. At
the same time many of their peculiarities, as, for

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 79

instance, the want of colouring matters, are mere
physical consequences of the absence of the chemical
action of light, and may be induced in the lifetime
of an individual, just as a plant may be blanched.
Though there is scope for animal life in these caverns,
nothing has originated to take advantage of it. Only
certain common animals of the daylight, better
adapted than others for such conditions, have
colonised these recesses, and have undergone certain
changes in consequence, which no one can reasonably
pretend to be more than varietal. The changes are
no more specific than those which certain Arctic
animals experience on the approach of winter, and
which disappear on the return of spring.

To understand this, let us suppose that at some
point in geological time the light of the sun had been
gradually extinguished without the entire loss of heat,
so that a period of darkness supervened. Under such
circumstances many species, both animal and vege
table, might perish. Others, like the cave animals,
might survive, and adapt themselves to their new
circumstances, becoming colourless, losing their now
useless eyes, or portions of them, and improving in
delicacy of touch. For generations the whole earth
might thus be tenanted by animals like those of the
caves. But let us suppose that light was again
gradually restored, and that these blind animals
recovered the powers and properties they had lost, so
that the survivors would present the same appearance

So MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

as before the period of darkness ; would we have any
right to recognise this as the origin of new species ?
Would it not rather be a convincing proof of the
permanence of specific types ?

Similar evidence to this has been adduced by
Darwin himself in the case of pigeons, which after
generations of enforced varietal divergence show the
capacity to resume even the colouring of the wild
original ; and the writer has shown that changes of
this kind have passed upon certain marine animals
in the Glacial period, and that when this had passed
away they resumed their normal characters.1

The discussion of the cave animals throws light
on the nature of the blind species found in the
abysmal depths of the ocean, and also on the strange
modifications which befall some common crustaceans
when obliged to live in saline waters. It is instruc
tive to note that all these are of the nature of deterio
ration caused by unfavourable conditions of life.

The same truths apply to the origin of organs in

plants. It has been broadly stated by evolutionists

jthat the beauty of flowers is due to the selective

'.action of insects in search of honey. Darwin has

•jsaid : ' Hence we may conclude that if insects had

not been developed on the earth our plants would

not have been decked with beautiful flowers, but

would have produced only such poor flowers as we

see on our fir, oak, nut, and ash trees, on grasses,

1 Canadian Record of Science, January, 1889.

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE Si

docks, and nettles, which are all fertilised through the
agency of the wind.' As Gray has well observed,
this at best cannot give us an origin for either flowers
or honey-seeking insects. Both must have originated
in some different way. All that it can pretend to
account for is a certain amount of subsequent change.
It fails even to account for this, since the gay flowers
are correlated with a vast number of other properties
of the plants in question, with which the insects could
have nothing to do, and without which they might as
well have continued to be fertilised by the wind.
Why, indeed, should not the wind be the cause of
wind-fertilisation as well as the insects the cause of
gay flowers ? And, further, why may not the honey,
which in some mysterious way is associated with the
gay flowers, be the cause of the suctorial proboscis of
the insects, since it surely existed before there were
honey-feeding insects, though to a wind-fertilised
plant the honey must have been a loss and injury,
until it could attract insects by the gay flowers, on
the hypothesis, as yet non-existent? Such hypo
theses of natural selection, in short, amount to
nothing more than a confusion of correlated natural
agencies with causation.

Still another curious question arises with referent
to the use of cross-fertilisation. There can be no
question that the use of this in nature is not merely
to increase the fertility of the individual plants, but
so to intermix individual varieties as to keep the

F

82 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

species true to its characters. The gardener finds
this when he endeavours to select and perpetuate
particular varieties. He not only finds that thes,
become less fertile by breeding in and in, so as t
tend toward extinction, but that if exposed to the
action of the pollen of the normal form, or of another
variety, they rapidly return to the type of the spec.es.
Thus the processes of wind-fertilisation and mse
fertilisation, which evolution relies on in the interest
of descent with modification, are precisely those
which the Author of Nature has established to prevent
such modification. It would appear that the study
of separate organs, whether in plants or animals, as
little helps us to any origin, other than that of Divme
power, as the study of the organisms as a whole.

It may be said that the result of our inquiry has
been eminently unsatisfactory, as failing to show
clearly any other origin of species than that ultimate
one of the Divine Creative Will. This may be ad
mitted, though what has been said may be held
indicate the path for farther investigation as to the
methods of the Creator's action. That evolution ,
equally powerless in the matter may be shown by t
following extract from Darwin :-

Throughout whole classes various structures are formed
on the same pattern, and at a very early age the embryos
closelv resemble each other. Therefore I cannot doub
that the theory of descent with modification embraces all
the members of the same great class or kingdom.

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 83

believe that animals are descended from at most only
four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser
number. Analogy would lead me one step further, namely,
to the belief that all animals and plants are descended from
some one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide. |

Here similarity of plan and early embryonic
similarity are taken as evidence of common ancestry.
But this is entirely gratuitous, for the first may repre
sent a planning mind following the same ideas in
different works ; the second may depend merely on
the fact that all ordinary organic development is
from the more simple to the more complex. But
even if this be granted, the great apostle of evolution
still demands four or five primitive species for animals,
and about the same for plants. Whence these are to
be obtained he cannot tell. Analogy, he says, would
lead to one common prototype, but admits that
analogy may deceive. It is certain to do so when it
proceeds on such data as those he has given ; and
even if followed as reliable we have still to ask :
Whence, and of what nature, is this prototype, holding
within itself the promise and potency of all living
things, which are to be unrolled from its almost
boundless capacities ?

The questions we have just been considering have
led us to think of those ancient animals whose re
mains are preserved in the rocky strata of the earth,
and among which, if anywhere, we should find evi
dence of the origin of life. I have elsewhere shown

F 2

84 MODERN IDEAS OP EVOLUTION

that the geological record does not justify us in
accepting any of the received theories of descent with
modification. The subject is too large for discussion
here, but a single illustration from a very familiar
animal may show the results to which it leads when
we follow the actual guidance of facts, without inter
calating, as is the wont of evolutionists, a constant
succession of suppositions.

The oyster belongs to the great and ubiquitous
class of the bivalve molluscs, and we know representa
tives of the genus all the way from the Carboniferous
to the Modern time, while we know very well the
changes of the individual animal from the egg to the
perfect form.1 The oyster begins life as a free-
moving creature, without shell, and with those curious
movable threads called cilia, by means of which so
many humble animalculae move in the water. In
this state it shows little evidence of its future de
velopment. When it first assumes a shell, this has
already two valves placed on the right and left sides of
the animal, but quite different from those of the adult.
They are nearly circular, smooth, and marked with
regular concentric lines of growth. This is their
condition when about a tenth of an inch in diameter.
At this stage they resemble the valves of a cockle or
a venus shell much more than those of an oyster.
Another curious point here is that, while the oyster

1 Jackson, ' Development of the Oyster,' Proc. Boston Soc. Nat.
Hist. 1 888.

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 85

has only one muscle wherewith to close its shell, and
many other bivalves have two, the young oyster begins
with one, then as it grows a little larger develops two,
and later drops one and returns to a single one. The
rationale of this is that in the young animal the only
muscle needed is the anterior or front one. A little
later, as the shell becomes wider, a second, the
posterior, is needed. Later still the form and hinge
are such that one is sufficient, and the anterior — the
one first developed — becomes abortive, while the
posterior remains. Other changes might be noticed,
but let us think of the significance of these. The egg
of the oyster is absolutely undistinguishable from
that of any other invertebrate animal. Still it must
have within it structures or predetermined powers
which denote the animal that is to result from it.
The next stage, that of the early embryo, presents a
form which we could perhaps decide from its structures
to be molluscan ; but we could not tell previous to
experience whether, for instance, it would be a uni
valve or a bivalve. The next stages determine it to
be a bivalve, but rather one of those with rounded
and smooth shells and two muscles than those like
the oyster. Here it is to be observed that this dis
tinction of one or two muscles is used to divide
the whole of the bivalves into two great groups, so
that in this early stage our oyster might be either a
monomyarian or a dimyarian. In this stage it becomes
fixed, and begins to spread out its valves into the

86 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

plaited and unequally valved condition of the
adult.

Hence we might make such statements as that
the oyster was originally a monomyarian with anterior
adductor ; but no such mollusc is known in an adult
state ; then it was a dimyarian with smooth equivalve
shell, and of this form are many adult bivalves, both
ancient and modern. This is the history of the in
dividuals ; but have we any evidence that it is the
history of oysters in geological time ? We know
fossil oysters of the ordinary style, though small, as
far back as the Carboniferous age, but we know no
earlier bivalves having precisely the properties of the
early stage. So, though the young spat of these
primitive oysters may have been like that of the
modern ones, we cannot believe that it came from
the eggs of any species known earlier. Still this is
possible. Some bivalve of the pre-Carboniferous
or Carboniferous age, a Pterinea for example, may
have produced eggs which, when hatched, attached
themselves, and, unlike their parents, produced
irregular one-sided shells like the oyster, and their
progeny may have continued to do the same. If so,
they showed a miraculous persistency in this course
of degradation ; and not only so, but in pretty early
times, the Jurassic age for example, they had plaited
themselves up to an extreme degree of plication and
irregularity not surpassed in any subsequent time.
Since the Carboniferous, when two so-called species

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 87

of oysters appear, one in Europe and one in America,
so far as we know, these molluscs have not ceased to
exist, and at least 200 species are reckoned as known
in the fossil state. With respect, then, to these oysters,
there may be such suppositions as the following,
none of which, however, we can prove.

All these species may have proceeded from one
origin, by descent with modification, or the same
causes which led to their origination in the Car
boniferous may have operated again and again. In
like manner the closely allied genera Exogyra and
Grypliea, which existed in the Mesozoic age, may
have originated from oysters or may have originated
independently. The different so-called species of
oysters, which are all very variable, and many of
which are scarcely distinguishable, may have had, or
some of them may have had, independent origins, or
they may be all descendants of the same primeval
stock, modifying itself from time to time to suit
changed conditions. Thus the oyster is equally to
us a miracle, whether it has continued to propagate
itself without varying beyond the characters of an
oyster through all these vast ages, in which case it
is a miracle of heredity ; or if from causes to us un
known it has been from time to time developed from
animals of some other kind or kinds, in which case it
is a miracle of transmutation ; or if it has been pro
duced repeatedly without any mediate agency, in
which case it is a miracle of creation. It is evident

MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

that, while we may imagine any of these possibilities,
we cannot establish one more than another, though
it is easy, as has been done in the case of the horse
and other animals, to forge a chain of derivation by
putting together arbitrarily such links as we may
select.1

In closing this part of our discussion, it is well to
observe that we should not be misled in a subject of
this kind by vague and general assertions. It is easy
to affirm that the lowest animals and the lowest
plants are but protoplasm, which is only another
name for the chemical compound albumen, and that
if we can conceive this to originate from the inorganic
union of its elements, we shall have a low form of
life from which we can deduce all the higher forms of
vital action. In making such affirmation we must
take for granted several things, none of which we can
yet prove: — (i) That vital force is merely a modifi
cation of some of the forces acting on unorganised
matter. (2) That such force can be spontaneously origi
nated from other forces without the previous existence
of organisation. (3) That, being originated, it has the
power to form albumen and other organic com
pounds. Or, if we prefer another alternative, we may
take the following : — (i) That albuminous matter can
be produced by the union of its chemical elements
without life or organisation. (2) That, being so pro-

1 See Story of the Earth and Chain of Life in Geological Times > by
ihe Author.

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 89

duced, it can develop vital forces and organisation,
including such phenomena as reproduction, sensation,
volition, &c. To believe either of these doctrines in
the present state of science is simply an act of faith,
not of that kind which is based on testimony or
evidence, however slight, but of that unreasoning
kind which we usually stigmatise as mere credulity
and superstition.

In conclusion, it is a relief to turn from these
obscure and uncertain questions to the calm, clear,
and decisive statements of revelation already referred
to in the first chapter, which, while they give no
scientific details and do not in any way hamper the
progress of scientific inquiry and discussion, indicate
the ultimate conclusions at which this must finally
arrive. These we may now further consider in the
next chapter, in connection with the origin and
development of species in geological time.

90 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

CHAPTER IV
THE APPARITION OF SPECIES IN GEOLOGICAL TIME

TllE doctrine of organic evolution, whether on the
principle of struggle for existence and natural selec
tion, or on the converse principles of physiological
selection and of progressive adaptation to external
conditions, is essentially biological rather than geo
logical, and has been much more favoured by biolo
gists than by those whose studies lead them more
specially to consider the succession of animals and
plants revealed by the rocks of the earth. These
have for the most part been content to observe the
' apparition,' or first appearance of species, without
inquiry as to their origin or the ultimate causes of
their introduction. Evolutionists, however, require a
great lapse of time for their processes, and thus
come into the discussions of geology. Their de
mands in this matter have been put in so terse and
clear a manner by a recent advocate that I shall
quote his words as a text or motto for this chapter :
4 If art can in a few years effect so great changes in

APPARITION OF SPECIES 91

varietal forms, how much more must Nature be able
to effect in the unlimited time at her disposal ? ' !

In this short sentence we have an epitome of the
methods of this interesting philosophy. The writer
first assumes what has to be proved, namely, the
identity of species and varietal forms. Having thus
stolen a march upon us, he next makes the quite
unfounded assertion that unlimited time is available
for varietal changes. Geologists, no doubt, make
large demands on time ; but these are not unlimited.
Then we have the human thought and action implied
in the word ' art ' placed in comparison with an
imaginative personification of Nature, which means
nothing unless it is understood to be equal to a
personal Creator, who, on the hypothesis, might
possibly be dispensed with.

But if the geologist is not convinced by this
argument he is asked to consider that in geological
time animals and plants have proceeded from more
simple to more complex states, and from more
generalised forms to those that are more specialised,
and that this is in accordance with the analogy of
the development from the embryo. He is even
accused of stupidity if he fails to be convinced by
this analogy, or if he objects that there can be no
true analogy between a germ developing from or in
a parent, and under special conditions, and an
adult animal or series of adult animals supposed

1 Le Conte, Evolution, &c., 1889.

92 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

to undergo a similar development under entirely
different conditions. It is scarcely too much to say
that these preposterous demands are usually made,
and tacitly assumed to be granted, in most dis
cussions as to the development of living beings in
geological time.

But even if we were to grant these postulates, it
would be extremely difficult to fit the actual geo
logical succession into the mould thus arbitrarily
prepared for it ; and this we may perhaps be able to
illustrate by a few general statements and examples,
though its full elucidation would require an extended
treatise.1 We shall, however, be able to see how far
this argument falls short of the force of 'demon
stration ' which has been claimed for it, and shall find
some grounds for the doubt with which it has been
viewed by many able palaeontologists. The com
plexity of the problems involved has indeed induced
many of those most familiar with the succession of
life to hold that, while we do not fully know its laws,
those that we do comprehend induce the belief that
they imply something very different from a continuous
and spontaneous evolution. The general truths that
we know on this great and complicated subject may
be shortly summed up as follows :—

I. Life originated very long ago. If in the Lau-
[rentian, or even in the early Cambrian, we can be sure

1 See Story of the Earth and Chain of Life, by the Author.

APPARITION OF SPECIES 93

that it is millions of years since the first plant or
animal came into existence.

2. The first forms were of low grades, though of
high and perfect types within those grades.

3. Many types of animals and plants, perhaps
most of the leading groups, have continued without
any very manifest change or improvement — have
been, in short, fixed or stationary types.

4. Elevation and improvement have taken place
by the introduction, apparently in many places
simultaneously, of new types, accompanied with, or
preceded by, the extinction or degradation of lower*
forms.

5. Many new forms appear to be introduced at
one time and apparently suddenly, so that such
groups as the ferns and club-mosses and mares' tails
among plants, and at a later date the more perfect
fruit-bearing trees, the coral animals, the lamp-shells,
the crinoids, the amphibians, the reptiles, the higher
mammals enter on the scene abruptly and in large
numbers. Thus the impression left on our minds by
this grand procession of living beings in geological
time is not that of a mere continuous flow, but that
of a co-operation of physical agencies toward a par
ticular preparation of our planet, and then the intro
duction at once and in great force of suitable in- *
habitants to the abode prepared for them.

This indicates not a mere spontaneous evolution,
but a progressive plan carried on by a great variety

94

MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

of causes, some of which we can conjecture, but the
greater part of which are still hidden from us, and
are only partially and inaccurately presented to us

TABULAR VIEW OF GEOLOGICAL PERIODS AND OF
LIFE-EPOCHS.

Geological Period

Animal Life

Vegetable Life

5

/to/- Tertiary

Age of Man and Mo

Age of Angiosperms

<S ^

dern Mammals

and Palms.

o o

Tertiary . .

Age of Extinct Mam

» >j

oo

mals. (Earliest

(

Placental Mam

! *

mals. )

Cretaceous

Age of Reptiles and

(Earliest Modern

a

Birds

Trees.) Age of

Cycads and Pines.

1

Jurassic . .
^ Triassic . .

(Earliest Marsupial

;;

Mammals. )

Permian .

(Earliest True Rep

Age ofAcrogens and

tiles.)

Gymnosperms.

Carboniferous

Age of Amphibians

,, ,,

o

and fishes

o

1

<, Erian or De

,,

5 > >*

vonian

<

Silurian . .

Age of Molluscs, Co

(Earliest Land

HH

rals, and Crusta

Plants.) Age of

ceans

Alga.

Cambrian

„

,,

IHuronian

Age of Protozoa.

Indications of Plants

o

(First Animal Re

not determinable.

mains.)

0

a

Laurent ian .

»

by any scheme of evolution yet proposed. If in the
table above we were to represent diagrammatically

APPARITION OF SPECIES 95

the development of animals and plants, this would
appear not as a smooth and continuous stream, but
as a series of great waves, each rising abruptly, and
then descending and flowing on at a lower level along
with the remains of those preceding it. This will be
explained more in detail in the following pages, in
which it may be necessary to mention briefly some of
the leading facts ascertained by geology.

Geological investigation has disclosed a great
series of stratified rocks composing the crust of the
earth, and formed at successive times, chiefly by the
agency of water. These can be arranged in chrono
logical order ; and, so arranged, they constitute the
physical monuments of the earth's history. We must
here take for granted, on the testimony of geology,
that the accumulation of this series of deposits has
extended over a vast lapse of time, and that the suc
cessive formations contain remains of animals and
plants, from which we can learn much as to the order
of introduction of life on the earth. Without entering
into geological details, it may be sufficient to present
in the condensed table on the opposite page this
grand series of formations, with the general history of
life as ascertained from them.

In the oldest rocks known to geologists — those of
the Eozoic time — some indications of the presence of
life are found. Great beds of limestone are contained
in these formations, vast quantities of carbon in the
form of graphite, and thick beds of iron-ore. All

96 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

these are supposed, from their mode of occurrence in
later deposits, to be results, direct or indirect, of the
agency of life ; and if they afforded no traces of
organic forms, still their chemical character would
convey a presumption of their organic origin. But
additional evidence has been obtained in the presence
of certain remarkable laminated forms penetrated by
microscopic tubes and canals, and which are supposed
to be the remains of the calcareous skeletons of
humbly-organised animals akin to the simplest of
those now living in the sea. Such animals — little
more than masses of living animal jelly — now abound
in the waters, and protect themselves by secreting
calcareous skeletons, often complex and beautiful and
penetrated by pores, through which the soft animal
within can send forth minute thread-like extensions
of its body, which serve instead of limbs. The
— ((tfLaurentian fossil known as Eozoon Canadense may
have been the skeleton of such an animal ; and if so,
it is the oldest living thing that we know. But if
really the skeleton or covering of such an animal,
Eozoon is larger than any of its successors, and quite
as complex as any of them. There is nothing to
show that it could have originated from dead matter
by any spontaneous action, any more than its modern
representatives could do so. There is no evidence
of its progress by evolution into any higher form, and
the group of animals to which it belongs has con
tinued to inhabit the ocean throughout geological

APPARITION OF SPECIES 97

time without any perceptible advance in rank or com
plexity of structure. If, then, we admit the animal
nature of this earliest fossil, we can derive from it
no evidence of spontaneous evolution ; and if we
deny its animal nature, we are confronted with a
still graver difficulty in the next succeeding forma
tions.

Between the rocks which contain Eozoon and the
next in which we find any abundant remains of life
there is a gap in geological history either destitute of
evidence of life or showing nothing materially in
advance of Eozoon. In the Cambrian age, however,
we obtain a vast and varied accession of living things,
which appear at once, as if by a sudden and simul
taneous production of many kinds of animals. Here
we find evidence that the sea swarmed with living
creatures near akin to those which still inhabit it, and
nearly as varied. Referring merely to leading groups,
we have many species of the soft shellfishes, or crus
taceans, and the worms, the ordinary shellfishes, the
sea-stars, and the sponges.1 In short, had we been
able to drop our dredge into the Cambrian or Silurian
ocean, we should have brought up representatives of
all the leading types of invertebrate life that exist in
the modern seas — different, it is true, in details of
structure from those now existing, but constructed on

1 From the lowest Cambrian beds in which definite and abundant
forms of life are first met with we have all the leading types of marine
invertebrate life, represented by at least 165 species and 67 genera,
according to Walcott.

G

98 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

the same principles, and filling the same places in
nature.

If we inquire as to the history of this swarming
marine life of the early Palaeozoic, we find that its
several species, after enduring for a longer or a
shorter time, one by one became extinct, and were
replaced by others belonging to the same groups.
Thus there is in each great group a succession of
new forms, distinct as species, but not perceptibly
elevated in the scale of being. In many cases, in
deed, the reverse seems to be the case ; for it is not
unusual to find the successive dynasties of life in any
one family manifesting degradation rather than ele
vation. New, and sometimes higher, forms, it is true,
appear in the progress of time, but it is impossible,
except by violent suppositions, to connect them
genetically with any predecessors. The succession
throughout the Palaeozoic presents the appearance
rather of the unchanged persistence of each group
under a succession of specific forms, and the intro
duction from time to time of new groups, as if to
replace others which were in process of decay and
disappearance.

In the latter half of the Palaeozoic we find a
number of higher forms breaking upon us with the
same apparent suddenness as in the case of the early
Cambrian animals. Fishes appear, and soon abound
in a great variety of species, representing types of no
mean rank, but, singularly enough, belonging, in

APPARITION OF SPECIES 99

many cases, to groups now very rare; while the
commoner tribes of modern fish do not appear. On
the land batrachian reptiles now abound, some of them
very high in the sub-class to which they belong.
Scorpions, spiders, insects, and millipedes appear, as
well as land-snails ; and this not in one locality only,
but over the whole northern hemisphere. At the
same time the land was clothed with an exuberant
vegetation— not of the lowest types nor of the highest,
but of intermediate forms, such as those of the pines,
the club-mosses, and the ferns, all of which attained
in those days to magnitudes and numbers of species
unsurpassed, and in some cases unequalled, in the
modern world. Nor do they show any signs of an
unformed or imperfect state. Their seeds and spores,
their fruits and spore-cases, are as elaborately con
structed, the tissues and forms of their stems and
leaves as delicate and beautiful, as in any modern
plants. Nay, more ; the cryptogamous plants of this
age show a complexity and perfection of structure
not attained to by their modern successors. So with
the compound eyes and filmy wings of insects, the
teeth, bones, and scales of batrachians and fishes ; all
are as perfectly finished, and many quite as complex
and elegant, as in the animals of the present day.

This wonderful Palaeozoic age was, however, but
a temporary state of the earth. It passed away, and
was replaced by the Mesozoic, emphatically the reign
of reptiles, when animals of that type attained to

G 2

ioo MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

colossal magnitude, to variety of function and struc
ture, to diversity of habitat in sea and on land, alto
gether unexampled in their degraded descendants of
modern times. Sea-lizards of gigantic size swarmed
everywhere in the waters. On land huge quadrupeds
like Atlantosaurus and Iguanodon and Megalosaurus
greatly exceeded the elephants of later times, and
possessed frames and structures now altogether with
drawn from the reptiles, and possessed only by
mammals and birds. Some of them walked erect on
their hind feet, others had true horns like the modern
oxen or snout horns like the rhinoceros.' Winged
reptiles — some of them of small size, others with
wings twenty feet in expanse — flitted in the air.
Strangely enough, with these reptilian lords appeared
a few small and lowly mammals, forerunners of the
coming age. Birds also make their appearance, and
at the close of the period forests of broad-leaved trees,
altogether different from those of the Palaeozoic age,
and resembling the species of our modern woods,
appear for the first time over great portions of the
northern hemisphere.

The Kainozoic, or Tertiary, is the age of mammals
and of man. In it the great reptilian tyrants of the
Mesozoic disappear, and are replaced on land and sea
by mammals or beasts of the same orders with those
now living, though differing as to genera and species.
So greatly indeed did mammalian life abound in this

1 Ceralopsidcc of Marsh, Am. Jl. Sci, 1889.

APPARITION OF SPECIES 101

period that in the middle part of the Tertiary most of
the leading groups were represented by more nume
rous species than at present, while many types then
existing have now no representatives. At the close
of this great and wonderful procession of living beings
comes man himself — the last and crowning triumph
of creation, the head, thus far, of life on the earth.

If we imagine this great chain of life, extending
over periods of enormous duration in comparison with
the short span of human history, presenting to the
naturalist hosts of strange forms which he could
scarcely have imagined in his dreams, we may under
stand how exciting have been these discoveries
crowded within the lives of two generations of geo
logists. Further, when we consider that the general
course of this great development of life, beginning
with Protozoa and ending with man, is from below
upward — from the more simple to the more complex
—and that there is of necessity in this grand growth
of life through the ages a likeness or parallelism to
the growth of the individual animal from its more
simple to its more complex state, we can understand
how naturalists should fancy that here they have
been introduced to the workshop of Nature, and that
they can discover how one creature may have been
developed from another by spontaneous evolution.

We need not be astonished that many naturalists
are quite carried away by this analogy, and appear
unable to perceive that it is merely a general resem-

102 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

blance between processes altogether different in their
nature, and therefore in their causes. The greater
part, however, of the more experienced palaeontolo
gists, or students of fossils, have long ago seen that
in the larger field of the earth's history there is very
much that cannot be found in the narrower field of
the development of the individual animal ; and they
have endeavoured to reduce the succession of life to
such general expressions as shall render it more com
prehensible, and may at length enable us to arrive at
explanations of its complex phenomena. Of these
general expressions or conclusions I may state a few
here, as apposite to our present subject, and as show
ing how little of real support the facts of the earth's
history give to the pseudo-gnosis of agnostic and
monistic evolution.

I. The chain of life in geological time presents a
wonderful testimony to the reality of a beginning.
Just as we know that any individual animal must
have had its birth, its infancy, and its maturity, and
will reach an end of life, so we trace species and
groups of species to their beginning, watch their cul
mination, and perhaps follow them to their extinction.
It is true that there is a sense in which geology shows
' no sign of a beginning, no prospect of an end ' ; but
this is manifestly because it has reached only a little
way back toward the beginning of the earth as a
whole, and can see in its present state no indication
of the time or manner of the end. But its revelation

APPARITION OF SPECIES 103

of the fact that nearly all the animals and plants of
the present day had a very recent beginning in geo
logical time, and its disclosure of the disappearance
of one form of life after another as we go back in
time, till we reach the comparatively few forms of
life of the Lower Cambrian, and finally have to rest
over the solitary grandeur of Eozoon, oblige it to say
that no living thing known to it is self-existent and
eternal.

2. The geological record informs us that the
general laws of nature have continued unchanged
from the earliest periods to which it relates until the
present day. This is the true ' uniformitarianism '
of geology, which holds to the dominion of existing
causes from the first. But it does not refuse to admit
variations in the intensity of these causes from time
to time, and cycles of activity and repose, like those
that we see on a small scale in the seasons, the occur
rence of storms, or the paroxysms of volcanoes.
When we find the eyes of the old trilobites to have
lenses and tubes similar to those in the eyes of modern
crustaceans, we have evidence of the persistence of
the laws of light. When we see the structures of
Palaeozoic leaves identical with those of our modern
forests, we know that the arrangements of the soil,
the atmosphere, the sunshine, and the rain were the
same at that ancient time as at present. Yet, with
all this, we also find evidence that long-continued
periods of physical quiescence were followed by great

104 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

crumplings and foldings of the earth's crust, and we
know that this also is consistent with the operation
of law ; for it often happens that causes long and
quietly operating prepare for changes which may be
regarded as sudden and cataclysmic.

3. Throughout the geological history there is pro
gress toward greater complexity and higher grade,
along with degradation and extinction. Though ex
perience shows that it may be quite possible that
new discoveries may enable us to trace some of the
higher forms of life farther back than we now find
them, yet there can be no question that in the pro
gress of geological time lower types have given place
to higher, less specialised to more specialised. Curi
ously enough, no evidence proves this more clearly
than that which relates to the degradation of old
forms. When, for example, the reptiles of the Meso-
zoic age were the lords of creation, there was appa
rently no place for the larger mammalia which appear
at the close of the reptile dynasty. So in the Palaeo
zoic, when trees of the cryptogamous type predomi
nated, there seems to have been no room in nature
for the forests of modern type which succeeded them.
Thus the earth at every period was fully peopled
with living beings — at first with low and generalised
structures which attained their maxima at early stages
and then declined, and afterward with higher forms
which took the places of those that were passing
away. These latter, again, though their dominion

APPARITION OF SPECIES 105

was taken from them, were continued in lower posi
tions under the new dynasties. Thus none of the
lower types of life introduced was finally abandoned,
but, after culminating in the highest forms of which
it was capable, each was still continued, though with
fewer species and a lower place. Examples of this
abound in the history of all the leading groups of
animals and plants.

4. There is thus a continued plan and order in
the history of life, which cannot be fortuitous, and
which is coincident with the gradual perfection of the
physical conditions of the earth itself. The chance
interaction of organisms and their environment, even
if we assume the organisms and environment as given
to us, could never produce an orderly continuous pro
gress of the utmost complexity in its detail, and ex
tending through an enormous lapse of time. It has
been well said that if a pair of dice were to turr up
aces a hundred times in succession, any reasonable
spectator would conclude that they were loaded dice ;
so if countless millions of atoms and thousands of
species, each including within itself most complex
arrangements of parts, turn up in geological time in
perfectly regular order and a continued gradation of
progress, something more than chance must be im
plied. It is to be observed here that every species
of animal or plant, of however low grade, consists ofl
many co-ordinated parts in a condition of the nicest
equilibrium. Any change occurring which produces

io6 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

unequal or disproportionate development, as the ex
perience of breeders of abnormal varieties of animals
and plants abundantly proves, imperils the continued
existence of the species. Changes must, therefore,
in order to be profitable, affect the parts of the
organism simultaneously and symmetrically, and
must be correlated with all the agencies in heaven
and earth that act upon the complex organism and
its several parts. The chances of this may well be
compared to the casting of aces a hundred times in
succession, and are so infinitely small as to be in
credible under any other supposition than that of
intelligent design.

5. The progress of life in geological time has not
been uniform and uninterrupted. Just as the growth
of trees is promoted or arrested by the vicissitudes of
summer and winter, so in the course of the geological
history there have been periods of pause and accelera
tion in the work of advancement. This is in accord
ance with the general analogy of the operations of
nature, and is in no way at variance with the doctrine
of uniformity already referred to. Nor has it any
thing in common with the unfounded idea, at one
time entertained, of successive periods of entire de
struction and restoration of life. Prolific periods of
this kind appear in the marine invertebrates of the
early Cambrian, the plants and fishes of the Devonian,
the batrachians of the Carboniferous, the reptiles of
the Trias, the broad-leaved trees of the Cretaceous,

APPARITION OF SPECIES 107

and the mammals of the early Tertiary. A remark
able contrast is afforded by the later Tertiary and
modern time, in which, with the exception of man
himself, and perhaps a very few other species, no new
forms of life have been introduced, while many old
forms have perished. This is somewhat unfortunate,
since in such a period of stagnation as that in which
we live we can scarcely hope to witness either the
creation or the evolution of a new species. Evolu
tionists themselves — those, at least, who are willing
to allow their theory to be at all modified by facts —
now perceive this ; and hence we have the doctrine,
advanced by Mivart, Le Conte, and others, of ' critical!
periods,' or periods of rapid evolution alternating withj
Bothers of greater quiescence. It is further to be ob
served here that in a limited way and with reference
to certain forms of life we can see a reason for these
intermittent creations. The greater part of the
marine fossils known to us are from rocks now raised
up in our continents, and they lived at periods when
the continents were submerged. Now, in geological
time these periods of submergence alternated with
others of elevation ; and it is manifest that each
period of continental submergence gave scope for
the introduction of numbers of new marine species,
while each continental elevation, on the other hand,
gave opportunity for the increase of land life. Fur-|
ther, periods when a warm climate prevailed in the
Arctic regions — periods when plants such as now live

loS MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

in temperate regions could enjoy six months of con
tinuous sunshine — were eminently favourable to the
development of such plants, and were utilised for
the introduction of new floras, which subsequently
spread to the southward. Thus we see physical
changes occurring in an orderly succession and made
subservient to the progress of life, and we also sec
that, not the adverse conditions of struggle for exist
ence, but the favouring conditions of scope for ex
pansion, were, as might rationally be expected, the
accompaniments and secondary causes of new inbursts
of life.

6. There is no direct evidence that in the course
of geological time one species has been gradually or
suddenly changed into another. Of the latter we
could scarcely expect to find any evidence in fossils ;
but of the former, if it had occurred, we might expect
to find indications in the history of some of the
numerous species which have been traced through
successive geological formations. Species which thus
continue for a great length of time usually present
numerous varietal forms, which have sometimes been
described as new species ; but when carefully scru
tinised they are found to be merely local and tem
porary, and to pass into each other. On the other
hand, we constantly find species replaced by others
entirely new, and this without any transition. The
two classes of facts are essentially different, though
often confounded by evolutionists ; and though it is

APPARITION OF SPECIES 109

possible to point out in the newer geological forma
tions some genera and species allied to others which
have preceded them, and to suppose that the later
forms proceeded from the earlier, still, as the con
necting links cannot be found, this is mere supposition,
not scientific certainty. Further, it proceeds on the
principle of arbitrary choice of certain forms out of
many, without any evidence of genetic connection.

The worthlessness of such derivation is well shown
in a case which has often been paraded as an illustra
tion of evolution — the supposed genealogy of the
horse. In America a series of horse-like animals has
been selected, beginning with the EoJiippus of the
Eocene — an animal the size of a fox, and with four
toes in front and three behind — and these have been
marshalled as the ancestors of the fossil horses of
America ; for there are no native horses in America
in the modern period, the result of the long series
of improvements having apparently been extinction.
Yet all this is purely arbitrary, and dependent
merely on a succession of genera more and more
closely resembling the modern horse being procur
able from successive Tertiary deposits often widely
separated in time and place. In Europe, on the
other hand, the ancestry of the horse has been traced
back to PalceotJierium — an entirely different form —
by just as likely indications, the truth being that as
the group to which the horse belongs culminated in
the early Tertiary times, the animal has too many

i io MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

imaginary ancestors. Both genealogies can scarcely
be true, and there is no actual proof of either. The
existing American horses, which are of European
parentage, are, according to the theory, descendants
of PalczotJierium, not of EoJiippus ; but if we had not
known this on historical evidence, there would have
been nothing to prevent us from tracing them to the
latter animal. This simple consideration alone is
sufficient to show that such genealogies are not of
the nature of scientific evidence.

This genealogy of the horse has been made so
much of, that perhaps it may be useful to look a
little more minutely into its merits as a 'demonstra
tion ' of evolution, and to consider what we really
know of the origin and history of this useful quadru
ped, so peculiar in some points of structure, and so
eminently the friend and companion of man. It was
immediately preceded in the Tertiary period (Miocene
and Pliocene) by a horse-like animal, the Hipparion,
which, among other things, differed from its modern
representative in having its splint bones represented
by two side toes, a conformation supposed to adapt it
to locomotion on soft and swampy ground. The
Hipparion was preceded in the earlier European Ter
tiary (Eocene) by the Palceotherium, and in America
by EoJiippus and Oroliippus, in which the side toes
were still further developed so as to touch the ground,
giving the foot a tridactyl character. These relations
have induced the belief that these forms may be an

APPARITION OF SPECIES in

actual genetic series, the species of Palceotlierium or
Eohippus passing through a succession of changes
into the modern horse. Perhaps this case affords as
fair an example as \ve can obtain of the bearing of a
derivative hypothesis. The three genera in question
are closely allied. They succeed each other regularly
in geological time. The horse shows in his splint
bones rudiments of organs, which, serving little ap
parent purpose in him, were more fully developed and
of manifest use in his predecessors. Modern horses
have occasionally shown a tendency to develop the
side toes, as if returning to the primitive type.
Taking this as a fair example of derivation, and
admitting, for the sake of argument, its probability,
let us consider shortly some of the questions that
may be raised with regard to it. These are princi
pally two : —

1. What limits, if any, must necessarily be set to
such an hypothesis, and what relations does it bear to
the origin of life at first, and to the succession of
animals in geological time ?

2. What causes may be supposed to have led to
such derivation ?

Under the first head we have to inquire as to the
limits set to derivation by the structure of organic
beings themselves, and by the physical conditions
and changes which may affect them. It will be
convenient to consider these together.

Supposing that Palceotlierimn, Hipparion, and

ii2 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

Equus, or EoJiippus and its successors in America are
links in a chain extending from the Eocene Tertiary
to the present time, can we suppose that by tracing
the same series further back it might include any
placcntal mammal ? We must answer, Decidedly
not, for if the whole time from the Eocene to the pre
sent has been required to produce the comparatively
small change from Palczotherium to horse, the same
rate in other cases would carry us back to the
Mesozoic period, long before we have any evidence
of the existence of ' placental mammals.' In other
words, the Tertiary and Modern periods will give us
time enough only to effect changes of mammals within
the order Ungulata, and perhaps in only one section of
that order. The other orders must therefore consti
tute separate series, and these series must have been
advancing abreast of each other. Had each series a
separate origin, or is there any mammalian stock in
the Mesozoic from which, at the beginning of the
Tertiary, these several lines of types may have
diverged ? Here our information fails. We know
only small marsupial and insectivorous mammals in
the Mesozoic. On our hypothesis it is possible that
these may have been the progenitors of the more
varied and advanced marsupials and insectivora of
the Tertiary and Modern periods, but scarcely of the
placental mammals of the Eocene. There may have
been placental mammals, unknown to us, in the
Mesozoic, which may constitute the required stock.

APPARITION OF SPECIES 113

The reptiles of the Mesozoic utterly fail to give us
the necessary links. If they were changing into any
thing, it was into birds, not into mammals.

Again, the time in which the horse and its sup
posed progenitors have lived is one of continuous,
unbroken succession of species. More especially in
the later Tertiary there seems the best evidence of
gradual extinction and introduction of species, with
out any very widespread and wholesale destruction,
and this notwithstanding the intervention of that
period of cold and of submergence of land in the
northern hemisphere which has given rise to all the
much-agitated glacial theories of our time. Can we
affirm that such piecemeal work has continued
throughout geological time? At this point opens
the battle between the catastrophists and uniformi-
tarians in geology, a battle which I am not about to
fight over again here. I have elsewhere stated reasons
for the belief that neither view can be maintained
without the other, and that geological time has con
sisted of alternations of long periods of physical re- "
pose and slow subsidence, in which our more important
fossiliferous formations have been deposited, with
others of physical disturbance and elevation, with
extinction of species. Dana has well shown how
completely this view is established by the series of
geological formations as seen on the broad area of
the American continent. Now the question arises,
How would the law of derivation operate in these two

H

ii4 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

different states of our planet ? Let us suppose a state
of things in which far more forms were being destroyed
than were reproduced, another in which introduction
of species was more rapid than extinction. In the
latter case we may suppose an exuberance of new
species to have been produced. In the former there
would be a great clearance of these, and perhaps only
a few types left to begin new series. Do we now
live in one of the periods of diminution or of increase?
Perhaps in the former, since there seems to have been,
in the case of the mammalia of the Post-Pliocene, an
enormous amount of extinction of the grandest forms
of life, apparently without their replacement by new
forms. If so, how far can we judge from our own
time of those which preceded it ? They may have
been far more fertile in new forms, or perhaps farther
in excess in the work of extinction. The question is
further complicated with that which asks if these
differences arise from merely physical agencies acting
on organic beings from without, or if there is in the
organic world itself some grand law of cycles inde
pendent of external influences. The answers to such
questions are being slowly and laboriously worked
out by geologists and naturalists, and all the more
slowly that so many inevitable errors occur as to the
specific or varietal value of fossils and the relative
importance of geological facts, while the great gaps
in the monumental history are only little by little
being filled up.

APPARITION OF SPECIES 115

The application of these questions to the animals
referred to will serve farther to show their significance
as to limitations of derivation. Pictet catalogues
eleven species of Eocene PalceotJieria. Without
inquiry as to the origin of these, let us confine our
selves to their progress. Under the hypothesis of
derivation, each of these had capacities for improve
ment, probably all leading to that line of change
ending in the production of the horse. If so, then
each of our Palezotheria, passing through intermediate
changes, may be the predecessor of some of the equine
animals of the Post-Pliocene and Modern periods.
But if, as seems probable, the time intervening be
tween the Eocene and the Modern was unfavourable
to the multiplication of such species, then several may
have perished utterly in the process, and all might
have perished. Supposing, on the contrary, the time
to have been favourable to the increase of such
creatures, we might have had hundreds of species of
equine animals instead of the small number extant at
present. Again, what possibilities of change remain
in the horse ? Can he be supposed capable of going
on still farther in the direction of his progress from
Palceotheriwn or EoJiippus, or has he attained a point
at which further change is impossible ? Will he then,
in process of time, wheel round in his orbit, and re
turn to the point from which he set out ? Or will he
continue unchanged until he becomes extinct ? Or
can he at a certain point diverge into a new series of

H 2

ii6 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

changes ? We do not know any equine animal before
the Eocene. Is it not possible that they may have
originated in some way different from that slow
change by which they are supposed to have been
transmuted into horses, and that in their first origin
they were more plastic than after many changes had
happened to them ? May it not be that the origin of
forms or types is after all something different from
derivative changes, and that new forms are at first plas
tic, afterwards comparatively fixed — at first fertile in
derivative species, and afterward comparatively barren?
Certainly, unless something of this kind is the case, we
fail to find in the modern world a sufficient number
of representatives of the Palczotheria, Anoplotheria,
LopJiiodons, Coryplwdon, elephants, and mastodons
of the Tertiary. On the other hand, it is scarcely
possible to find a sufficient starting point in the
Eocene for the multitude of cetaceans, carnivores,
ruminants, and quadrumana of the modern time.

The conclusion of this special discussion of the
case of the horse must, I think, be the same as that
arising from our general summary of palaeontological
facts, namely, that on the one hand we may not
be justified in affirming that every race of fossil
animals or plants which we may name as a species is
really a distinct product of creation, and that on the
other hand the introduction and extinction of species,
and even of races and varieties, depends on the inter
action of causes too numerous and complicated to be

APPARITION OF SPECIES 117

covered by any existing hypotheses of evolution. We
may also conclude that the settlement in very early
times of so many great principles of construction, and
the majestic march of life along determinate paths
throughout the vast lapse of geological ages, and
along with so many great physical changes, cannot
be fortuitous, but must represent a great creative
plan conceived in the beginning, and carried out with
unchanging consistency.

MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

CHAPTER V

MONISTIC EVOLUTION !

WE have already seen that modern evolution in some
of its phases is not inconsistent with theism, or even
with Christian belief. It is indeed regarded by some of
its advocates as a reverent recognition of the mode of
development of the plans of Eternal Wisdom, and as
capable of throwing light on these plans in the
domain of the spiritual as well as in that of the
natural. But many of its most ardent advocates,
whether scientific or popular, go far beyond the
bounds of theism, and enter on atheistic or agnostic
speculations, which they regard as the logical and
legitimate outcome of the hypothesis of evolution.
Perhaps the most eminent advocate of this extreme
school is Ernst Haeckel, of Jena, whose views have
been presented to the world in his works on The
History of Creation and The Evolution of Man, as
well as in many addresses and papers. They may be

1 This chapter has already been published in part in the Princeton
Review for 1880, p. 444.

MONISTIC EVOLUTION 119

taken as the best presentation of monistic, that is,
atheistic and materialistic, evolution.

Haeckel is an eminent comparative anatomist and
physiologist, who has earned a wide and deserved
reputation by his able and laborious studies of the
calcareous sponges, the radiolarians, and other low
forms of life. In his work on The Evolution of Man,
he applies this knowledge to the solution of the
problem of the origin of humanity, and sets himself
not only to illustrate but to ' prove ' the descent of
our species from the simplest animal types, and even
to overwhelm with scorn every other explanation of
the appearance of man, except that of spontaneous
evolution. The book is full of important facts well
stated. The great reputation of the author has given
it a wide currency, and it has been translated and
reprinted both in England and America, and there
can be little doubt that it has exercised an important
influence, more especially upon young men of the
educated classes, while it has furnished the armoury
of many lesser combatants on the same side. It
merits, therefore, a careful examination, both as to its
data and the manner of treatment of the subject. To
understand the latter, it will be necessary in the first
place to glance at Haeckel's personal position with
reference to the study of Nature.

He is not merely an evolutionist, but what he terms
a ' monist/ and the monistic philosophy, as defined
by him, includes certain negations and certain positive

120 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

principles of a most comprehensive and important
character. It implies the denial of all spiritual or
immaterial existence. Man is to the monist
merely a physiological machine, and nature is only a
greater self-existing and spontaneously-moving aggre
gate of forces. Monism can thus altogether dispense
with a Creative Will, as originating nature, and adopts
the other alternative of self-existence or causelessness
for the universe and all its phenomena. Again, the
monistic doctrine necessarily implies that man, the
animal, the plant, and the mineral are only successive

, stages of the evolution of the same primordial matter,
constituting thus a connected chain of being, all the
parts of which sprang spontaneously from each other.
Lastly, as the admixture of primitive matter and

i force would itself be a sort of dualism, Haeckel
regards these as ultimately one, and apparently
resolves the origin of the universe into the operation
of a self-existing energy having in itself the potency
of all things. After all, this may be said to be an
approximation to the idea of a Creator, but not a
living and willing Creator. Monism is thus not
identical with pantheism, but is rather a sort of
atheistic monotheism, if such a thing is imaginable,
and vindicates the assertion attributed to a late

j lamented physical philosopher, that he had found no

(atheistic philosophy which had not a God somewhere.
^ Haeckel's own statement of this aspect of his
philosophy is somewhat interesting. He says : —

MONISTIC EVOLUTION 121

The opponents of the doctrine of evolution are very
fond of branding the monistic philosophy grounded upon it
as 'materialism,' by comparing philosophical materialism
with the wholly different and censurable moral materialism.
Strictly, however, our own ' monism ' might as accurately or
as inaccurately be called spiritualism as materialism. The
real materialistic philosophy asserts that the phenomena of
vital motion, like all other phenomena of motion, are effects
or products of matter. The other opposite extreme, spiritual
istic philosophy, asserts on the contrary that matter is the
product of motive force, and that all material forms are
produced by free forces entirely independent of the matter
itself. Thus, according to the materialistic conception of
the universe, matter precedes motion or active force ; ac
cording to the spiritualistic conception of the universe, on
the contrary, active force or motion precedes matter. Both
views are dualistic, and we hold them both to be equally
false. A contrast to both is presented in the monistic
philosophy, which can as little believe in force without
matter as in matter without force.

It is evident that if Haeckel limits himself and his
opponents to matter and^force as the sole possible
explanations of the universe, he may truly say that
matter is inconceivable without force, and force in
conceivable without matter. ;!}But the question arises,
What is the monistic power beyond these, the ' Power
behind Nature ' ? and as to the true nature of this the
Jena philosopher gives us only vague generalities,
though it is quite plain that he cannot admit a
spiritual Creator. Further, as to the absence of any
spiritual element from the nature of man, he does not
leave us in doubt as to what he means ; for, imme-

122 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

diately after the above paragraph, he informs us that
,€ the " spirit " and " mind " of man are but forces which
(are inseparably connected with the material substance
of our bodies.' Just as the motive power of our flesh
is involved in the muscular form-element, so is the
thinking force of our spirit involved in the form-
element of the brain.' In a note appended to the
passage he says that monism 'conceives nature as
one whole, and nowhere recognises any but mechani-
jcal causes.' These assumptions as to man and nature
pervade the whole book, and of course greatly simplify
the task of the writer, as he does not^eajjire to account
for the primary_origin of nature, or for anything in
man except his^physical frame, and even this he can
regard as a thing altogether mechanical.

It is plain that we might here enter our dissent

from Haeckel's method, for he requires us to assume

many things which he cannot prove, before we can

proceed a single step in the evolution of man. What

^evidence is there, for example, of the possibility of

the development of the rational and moral nature of

man from the intelligence and instinct of the lower

animals, or of the necessary dependence of the

phenomena of mind on the structure of brain-cells ?

*The evidence, as far as it goes, seems to tend the

Bother way. What proof is there of the spontaneous

evolution of living forms from inorganic matter?

^Experiment so far negatives the possibility of this.

Even if we give Haeckel, to begin with, a single living

MONISTIC EVOLUTION 123

cell or granule of protoplasm, we know that this pro
toplasm must have been produced by the agency of
a living vegetable cell previously existing, and we
have no proof that it can be produced in any other
way. Again, what particle of evidence have we that
the atoms or the energy of an incandescent fire-mist
have in them anything of the power or potency of
life ? We must grant the monist all these postulates
as pure matters of faith before he can begin his
demonstration ; and as none of them are axiomatic
truths, it is evident that so far he is simply a believer
in the dogmas of a philosophic creed, and weak as
other men whom he affects to despise.

We may here place over against his authority
that of another eminent physiologist of more philo
sophic mind, the late Dr. Carpenter, who has said : —

As a physiologist I must fully recognise the fact that
the physical force exerted by the body of man is not gene
rated de novo by his will, but is derived directly from the
oxidation of the constituents of his food. But holding it as
equally certain, because the fact is capable of verification
by everyone as often as he chooses to make the experiment,
that in the performance of every volitional movement physi
cal force is put in action, directed, and controlled by the
individual personality or ego, I deem it as absurd and illo
gical to affirm that there is no place for a God in nature,
originating, directing, and controlling its forces by His will,
as it would be to assert that there is no place in man's body
for his conscious mind.

Taking Haeckel on his own ground, as above

124 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

defined, we may next inquire as to the method which
he employs in working out his argument This may
be referred to three leading modes of treatment,
which, as they are somewhat diverse from those
ordinarily familiar to logicians, and are extensively
used by evolutionists, deserve some illustration, more
especially as Haeckel is a master in their use.

An eminent French professor of the art of sleight-
of-hand has defined the leading principle of jugglers
to be that of ' appearing and disappearing things ' ;
and this is the best definition that occurs to me of
one method of reasoning largely used by Haeckel, and
of which we need to be on our guard when we find
him employing, as he does in almost every page, such
phrases as ' it cannot be doubted/ 'we may there
fore assume,' ' we may readily suppose,' ' this after
wards assumes or becomes,' * we may confidently
Kassert/ ' this developed directly,' and the like, which
in his usage are equivalent to the presto of the con
juror, and which, while we are looking at one structure
or animal, enable him to persuade us that it has been
suddenly transformed into something else.

In tracing the genealogy of man he constantly
employs this kind of sleight-of-hand in the most adroit
manner. He is perhaps describing to us the embyro
of a fish or an amphibian, and as we become interested
in the curious details, it is suddenly by some clever
' phrase transformed into a reptile or a bird ; and yet
without rubbing our eyes and reflecting on the

MONISTIC EVOLUTION 125

differences and difficulties which he neglects to state,
we can scarcely doubt that it is the same animal
after all.

The little lancelet, or Amfl/tioxus. of the European
seas, a creature which was at one time thought to be
a sea-snail, but is really more akin to fishes, forms
his link of connection between our * fish ancestors '
and the invertebrate animals. So important is it in
this respect that our author waxes eloquent in ex
horting us to regard it ' with special veneration,' as
representing our ' earliest Silurian vertebrate ances
tors,' as being of ' our own flesh and blood,' and as
better worthy of being an object of * devoutest
reverence ' than the ' worthless rabble of so-called«i
"saints."' In describing this animal he takes pains
to inform us that it is more different from an ordinary
fish than a fish is from a man. Yet as he illustrates
its curious and unique structure, before we are aware
the lancelet is gone, and a fish is in its place, and this
fish with the potency to become a man in due time.
Thus a creature intermediate in some respects be
tween fishes and molluscs, or between fishes and
worms, but so far apart from either that it seems but
to mark the width of the gap between them, becomes
an easy stepping-stone from one to the other.

In like manner the ascidians, or sea-squirts, mol
luscs of low grade, or, as Haeckel prefers to regard
them, allied to worms, are most remote in almost
every respect from the vertebrates. But in the young

126 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

state of some of these creatures, and in the adult
condition of one animal referred to this group
(Appendicularid)) they have a sort of swimming tail,
which is stiffened by a rod of cartilage to enable it to
perform its function, and which for a time gives them
a certain resemblance to the lancelet or to embryo
fishes ; and this usually temporary contrivance,
curious as an imitative adaptation, but of no other
significance, becomes, by the art of ' appearing and
disappearing/ a rudimentary backbone, and enables
us at once to recognise in the young ascidian an
embryo man.

A second method characteristic of the book, and
furnishing indeed the main basis of its argument, is
that of considering analogous processes as identical,
without regard to the difference of the conditions
under which they may be carried on. The great
leading use of this argument is in inducing us to
regard the development of the individual animal as
the precise equivalent of the series of changes by
which the species was developed in the course of
geological time. These two kinds of development
are distinguished by appropriate names. Ontogenesis
is the embryonic development of the individual
animal, and is of course a short process, depending
on the production of a germ by a parent animal or
parent pair, and the further growth of this germ in
connection more or less with the parent or with pro
vision made by it. This is, of course, a fact open to

MONISTIC EVOLUTION I27

observation and study, though some of its processes
are mysterious and yet involved in doubt and uncer
tainty. Phylogenesis is the supposed development of
a species in the course of geological time, and by the
intervention of long series of species, each in its time
distinct, and composed of individuals each going
regularly through a genetic circle of its own.

The latter is a process not open to observation
within the time at our command ; purely hypothe
tical, therefore, and of which the possibility remains
to be proved, while the causes on which it must
depend are necessarily altogether different from those
at work in ontogenesis ; and the conditions of a long
series of different kinds of animals, each perfect in its
kind, are equally dissimilar from those of an animal
passing through the regular stages from infancy to
maturity. The similarity in some important respects
of ontogenesis to phylogenesis was inevitable, pro
vided that animals were to be of different grades of
complexity, since the development of the individual
must necessarily be from a more simple to a more
complex condition. On any hypothesis, the parallel
ism between embryological facts and the history of
animals in geological time affords many interesting
and important coincidences. Yet it is perfectly
obvious that the causes and conditions of these two
successions cannot have been the same. Further,
when we consider that the embryo cell which deve
lops into one animal must necessarily be originally

128 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

distinct in its properties from that which develops
into another kind of animal, even though no obvious
difference appears to us, we have no ground for sup
posing that the early stages of all animals are alike ;
and when we rigorously compare the development of
any animal whatever with the successive appearance
of animals of the same or similar groups in geological
time, we find many things which do not correspond,
not merely in the want of links which we might
expect to find, but in the more significant appearance,
prematurely or inopportunely, of forms which we
would not anticipate. Yet the main argument of
Haeckel's book is the quiet assumption that anything
found to occur in ontogenetic development must also
have occurred in phylogenesis, while manifest diffi
culties are got rid of by assuming atavisms and
abnormalities.

A third characteristic of the method of the book
is the use of certain terms in peculiar senses, and as
implying certain causes which are taken for granted,
though their efficacy and mode of operation are
unknown. The chief of the terms so employed are
' heredity ' and ' adaptation.' Heredity is usually
understood as expressing the power of permanent
transmission of characters from parents to offspring,
and in this aspect it expresses the constancy of
specific forms. But as used by Haeckel it means the
transmission by a parent of any exceptional cha
racters which the individual may have accidentally

MONISTIC EVOLUTION 129

assumed. Adaptation has usually been supposed to
mean the fitting of animals for their place in nature,
however that came about. As used by Haeckel, it
imports the power of the individual animal to adapt
itself to changed conditions, and to transmit these
changes to its offspring. Thus in this philosophy
the rule is made the exception, and the exception the
rule, by a skilful use of familiar terms in new senses ;
and heredity and adaptation are constantly paraded
as if they were two potent divinities employed in
constantly changing and improving the face of nature.

It is scarcely too much to say that the conclusions
of the book are reached almost solely by the applica
tion of the above-mentioned peculiar modes of rea
soning to the vast store of facts at command of the
author, and that the reader who would test these
conclusions by the ordinary methods of judgment
must be constantly on his guard. Still, it is not
necessary to believe that Haeckel is an intentional
deceiver. Such fallacies are those which are espe
cially fitted to mislead enthusiastic specialists, to be
identified by them with proved results of science, and
to be held in an intolerant and dogmatic spirit.

Having thus noticed Haeckel's assumptions and
his methods, we may next shortly consider the
manner in which he proceeds to work out the phylo-
geny of man. Here he pursues a purely physio
logical method, only occasionally and slightly refer
ring to geological facts. He takes as a first principle

I

1 30 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

•the law long ago formulated by Harvey, Omne vivum
ex ovo — a law which modern research has amply
[confirmed, showing that every animal, however com
plex, can be traced back to an egg, which in its
simplest state is no more than a single cell, though
this cell requires to be fertilised by the addition of
the contents of another dissimilar cell, produced
either in another organ of the same individual or in a
distinct individual. This process of fertilisation
Haeckel seems to regard as unnecessary in the lowest
forms of life ; but though there are some simple
animals in which it has not been recognised, analogy
would lead us to believe that in some form it is
necessary in all. Haeckel's monistic view, however,
requires that in the lowest forms it should be absent,
and should have originated spontaneously, though
how does not seem to be very clear, as the explana
tion given of it amounts to little more than the
statement that it must have occurred. Still, as a
1 dualistic ' process it is very significant with reference
to the monistic theory.

Much space is, of course, devoted to the tracing
of the special development or ontogenesis of man,
and to the illustration of the fact that in the earlier
stages of this development the human embryo is
scarcely distinguishable from that of lower animals.
We may, indeed, affirm that all animals start from
cells which, in so far as we can see, are similar to
each other, yet which must include potentially the

MONISTIC EVOLUTION 131

various properties of the animals which spring from
them. As we trace them onward in their develop
ment, we see these differences manifesting themselves.
At first all pass, according to Haeckel, through a
stage which he calls the gastrula, in which the whole
body is represented by a sort of sac, the cavity of
which is the stomach, and the walls consist of two
layers of cells. It should be stated, however, that
many eminent naturalists dissent from this view, and
maintain that even in the earliest stages material
differences can be observed. In this they are pro
bably right, as even Haeckel has to admit some
degree of divergence from this all-embracing
' gastraea ' theory. Admitting, however, that such
early similarity exists within certain limits, we find
as the embryo advances that it speedily begins to
indicate whether it is to be a coral animal, a snail, a
worm, or a fish. Consequently the physiologist who
wishes to trace the resemblances leading to mammals
and to man has to lop off, one by one, the several
branches which lead in other directions, and to follow
that which conducts by the most direct course to the
type which he has in view. In this way Haeckel can
show that the embryo Homo sapiens is in successive
stages so like to the young of the fish, the reptile
the bird, and the ordinary quadruped that he can
produce for comparison figures in which the cursory
observer can detect scarcely any difference.

All this has long been known, and has been re-

I 2

1 32 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

gardcd as a wonderful evidence of the homology or
unity of plan which pervades nature, and as consti
tuting man the archetype of the animal kingdom—
the highest realisation of a plan previously sketched
by the Creator in many ruder and humbler forms.
It also teaches that it is not so much in the mere
bodily organism that we are to look for the distinguish
ing characters of humanity as in the higher rational
and moral nature.

i~feut Haeckel, like other evolutionists of the monis
tic and agnostic schools, goes far beyond this. The
ontogeny, on the evidence of analogy, as already ex
plained, is nothing less than a miniature representa
tion of the phylogenyT7 Man must in the long ages
of geological time have arisen from a monad, just as
the individual man has in his life-history arisen from
an embryo-cell, and the several stages through which
the individual passes must be parallel to those in the
history of the race. True, the supposed monad must
have been wanting in all the conditions of origin,
sexual fertilisation, parental influence, and surround
ings. There is no perceptible relation of cause and
effect, any more than between the rotation of a car
riage-wheel and that of the earth on its axis. The
analogy might prompt to inquiries as to common
laws and similarities of operation, but it proves
nothing as to causation.

In default of such proof, Haeckel favours us
with another analogy derived from the science of

MONISTIC EVOLUTION 133

language. All the Indo-European languages are
believed to be descended from a common ancestral
tongue, and this is analogous to the descent of all
animals from one primitive species. But unfortunately
the languages in question are the expressions of the
voice and thought of one and the same species. The
individuals using them are known historically to have
descended by ordinary generation from a common
source, and the connecting links of the various dia
lects are unbroken. The analogy fails altogether in
the .case of species succeeding each other in geological
time, unless the very thing to be proved is taken
for granted in the outset.

The actual proof that a basis exists in nature for
the doctrine of evolution founded on these analogies
might be threefold. First, there might be changes
of the nature of phylogenesis going on under our own
observation ; and even a very few of these would be
sufficient to give some show of probability. Elabo
rate attempts have been made to show that variations
as existing in the more variable and the domesticated
species lead in the direction of such changes ; but the
results have been unsatisfactory, and our author
scarcely condescends to notice this line of proof.
He evidently regards the time over which human
history has extended as too short to admit of this
kind of demonstration. Secondly, there might be in
the existing system of nature such a close connection
or continuous chain of species as might at least

134 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

strengthen the argument from analogy ; and un
doubtedly there are many groups of closely allied
species, or of races confounded with true specific
types, which it might not be unreasonable to suppose
of common origin. These are, however, scattered
widely apart, and the contrary fact of extensive gaps
in the scries is so frequent that Haeckel is constantly
under the necessity of supposing that multitudes of
species and even of larger groups have perished, just
where it is most important to his conclusion that they
should have remained. This is of course unfortunate
for the theory, but then, as Haeckel often remarks,
< we must suppose ' that the missing links once existed.
But thirdly, these gaps which now unhappily exist
may be filled up by fossil animals ; and if in the suc
cessive geological periods we could trace the actual
phylogeny of even a few groups of living creatures,
we might have the demonstration desired. But here
again the gaps are so frequent and serious that
Haeckel scarcely attempts to use this argument further
than by giving a short and somewhat imperfect sum
mary of the geological succession in the beginning of
his second volume. In this he attempts to give
a series of the ancestors of man as developed in
geological time ; but of twenty-one groups which he
arranges in order from the beginning of the Lauren-
tian to the Modern period, at least ten are not known
at all as fossils, and others do not belong, so far as
known, to the ages to which he assigns them. This

MONISTIC EVOLUTION 135

necessity of manufacturing facts does not speak well
for the testimony of geology to the supposed phy-
logeny of man. In point of fact, it cannot be disguised
that, though it is possible to pick out some series of
animal forms, like the horses already referred to,
which simulate a genetic order, the general testimony
of palaeontology is on the whole adverse to the
ordinary theories of evolution, whether applied to the
vegetable or to the animal kingdom.1

Thus the utmost value which can be attached to
Haeckel's argument from analogy would be that it
suggests a possibility that the processes which we see
carried on in the evolution of the individual may, in
the laws which regulate them, be connected in some
way more or less close with those creative processes
which on the wider field of geological time have been
concerned in the production of the multitudinous
forms of animal life. That Haeckel's philosophy goes
but a very little way toward any understanding of
such relations, and that our present information, even
within the more limited scope of biological science, is
too meagre to permit of safe generalisation, will
appear from the consideration of a few facts taken
here and there from the multitude employed in these
volumes to illustrate the monistic theory.

When we are told that a monad or an embryo-

1 Those who wish to understand the real bearings of paleontology
on evolution should study Barraude's Memoirs on the Silurian Trilo-
bites, Cephalopoda, and Brachiopods,

136 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

cell is the early stage of all animals alike, we natu
rally ask, Is it meant that all these cells are really
similar, or is it only that they appear similar to us,
and may actually be as profoundly unlike as the
animals which they are destined to produce ? To
make this question more plain, let us take the case as
formally stated : ' From the weighty fact that the egg
j of the human being, like the egg of all other animals,
!is a simple cell, it may be quite certainly inferred
that a one-celled parent form once existed, from
.which all the many-celled animals, man included,
Ideveloped.'

Now let us suppose that we have under our
microscope a one-celled animalcule quite as simple in
structure as our supposed ancestor. Along with this
we may have on the same slide another cell which is
the embryo of a worm, and a third which is the em
bryo of a man. All these, according to the hypothe
sis, are similar in appearance, so that we can by no
means guess which is destined to continue always an
animalcule, or which will become a worm or may
develop into a poet or a philosopher. Is it meant that
the things are actually alike, or only apparently so ?
If they are really alike, then their destinies must
depend on external circumstances. Put either of
them into a pond, and it will remain a monad. Put
either of them into the ovary of a complex animal
and it will develop into the likeness of that animal.
But such similarity is altogether improbable, and it

MONISTIC EVOLUTION 137

would destroy the argument of the evolutionist. In
this case, he would be hopelessly shut up to the con
clusion that * hens were before eggs ; ' and Haeckel
elsewhere informs us that the exactly opposite view
is necessarily that of the monistic evolutionist. Thus,
though it may often be convenient to speak of these
three kinds of cells as if they were perfectly similar,
the method of ' disappearance ' has immediately to
be resorted to, and they are shown to be in fact quite
dissimilar. There is indeed the best ground to suppose
that the one-celled animals and embryo-cells referred
to have little in common except their general form.
We know that the most minute cell must include
a sufficient number of molecules of protoplasm to ad
mit of great varieties of possible arrangement, and
that these may be connected with most varied possi
bilities as to the action of forces. Further, the em
bryo-cell which is produced by a particular kind of
animal, and whose development results in the repro
duction of a similar animal, must contain potentially
the parts and structures which are evolved from it ;
and fact shows that this may be affirmed of both the
embryo and sperm-cells, where there are two sexes.
Therefore it is in the highest degree probable that
the eggs of a snail and of ak man, though possibly
alike to our coarse methods of investigation, are as
dissimilar as the animals that result from them. If
so, the ' egg may be before the hen ' ; but it is as
difficult to imagine the spontaneous production of

1 38 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

the egg, which is potentially the hen, as of the hen
itself. Thus the similarity of the eggs and early em
bryos of animals of different grades is apparent only ;
and this fact, which embodies a great and perhaps in
soluble mystery, invalidates the whole of Haeckel's
reasoning on the alleged resemblances of different
kinds of animals in their early stages.

A second difficulty arises from the fact that the
simple embryo-cell of any of the higher animals
rapidly produces various kinds of specialised cells,
different in structure and appearance and capable of
performing different functions, whereas in the lower
forms of life such cells may remain simple, or may
merely produce several similar cells little or not at all
differentiated. This objection, whenever it occurs,
Haeckel endeavours to turn by the assertion that a
complex animal is merely an aggregate of inde
pendent cells, each of which is a sort of individual.
He thus tries to break up the integrity of the com
plex organism and to reduce it to a mere swarm of
monads. He compares the cells of an organism to
the ' individuals of a savage community,' who, at first
separate and all alike in their habits and occupations,
at length organise themselves into a community and
assume different avocations. Single cells, he says, at
first were alike, and each performed the same simple
offices as the others : ' At a later period isolated
cells gathered into communities, groups of simple
cells, which had arisen from the continued division of

MONISTIC EVOLUTION 139

a single cell, remained together, and now began
gradually to perform different offices of life.'

But this is a mere vague analogy. It does not
represent anything actually occurring in nature,
except in the case of an embryo produced by some
animal which already shows all the tissues which its
embryo is destined to reproduce. Thus it establishes
no probability of the evolution of complex tissues
from simple cells, and leaves altogether unexplained
that wonderful process by which the embryo-cell not
only divides into many cells, but becomes developed
into all the variety of dissimilar tissues evolved from
the homogeneous egg, but evolved from it, as we
naturally suppose, because of the fact that the egg
represents potentially all these tissues as existing
previously in the parent organism.

But if we are content to waive these objections,
or to accept the solutions given of them by the
' appearance and disappearance ' argument, we still
find that the phylogeny, unlike the ontogenesis, is full
of wide gaps, only to be passed per saltum, or to be
accounted for by the disappearance of a vast number
of connecting links. Of course it is easy to suppose
that these intermediate forms have been lost through
time and accident ; but why this has happened to
some rather than to others cannot be explained. In
the phylogeny of man, for example, what a vast hiatus
yawns between the ascidian and the lancelet, and
another between the lancelet and the lamprey ! It is|j

MO MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

true that the missing links may have consisted of
animals little likely to be preserved as fossils ; but
why, if they ever existed, do not some of them
remain in the modern seas ? Again, when we have
so many species of apes and so many races of men,
why can we find no trace, recent or fossil, of that
' missing link ' which we are told must have existed,
the * ape-like men,' known to Haeckel as the ' Alali,'
or speechless men ?

A further question which should receive considera
tion from the monist school is that very serious one :
Why, if all is ' mechanical ' in the development and
actions of living beings, should there be any progress
whatever ? Ordinary people fail to understand why
a world of mere dead matter should not go on to all
eternity obeying physical and chemical laws without
developing life ; or why, if some low form of life were
introduced capable of reproducing simple one-celled
organisms, it should not go on doing so.

Further, even if some chance deviations should
occur, we fail to perceive why these should go on in a
definite manner, producing not only the most com
plex machines, but many kinds of such machines on
different plans, each perfect in its way. Haeckel
is never weary of telling us that to monists organisms
are mere machines. Even his own mental work is
merely the grinding of a cerebral machine. But he
seems not to perceive that to such a philosophy the
homely argument which Paley derived from the

MONISTIC EVOLUTION 141

structure of a watch would be fatal. ' The question
is whether machines (which monists consider all
animals to be, including themselves) infinitely more
complicated than watches could come into existence
without design somewhere ;' l that is, by mere chance.
Common-sense is not likely to admit that this is
possible.

The difficulties above referred to relate to the
introduction of life and of new species on the monistic
view. Others might be referred to in connection
with the production of new organs. An illustration
is afforded, among others, by the discussion of the
introduction of the five fingers and toes of man, which
appear to descend to us unchanged from the amphi
bians or batrachians of the Carboniferous period. In
this ancient age of the earth's geological history feet
with five toes appear in numerous species of reptilians
of various grades. They are preceded by no other
vertebrates than fishes, and these have numerous fin-
rays instead of toes. There are no properly transi
tional forms, either fossil or recent, the nearest
pectoral fins to fore limbs being those of certain
Devonian and Carboniferous fishes; but they fail to
show the origin of fingers. How were the five-fingered
limbs acquired in this abrupt way ? Why were they
five rather than any other number ? Why, when once
introduced, have they continued unchanged up to the

1 Beckett, Origin of the Laws of Nature.

i42 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

present day? Haeckel's answer is a curious example
of his method—

The great significance of the five digits depends on the
fact that this number has been transmitted from the am
phibia to all higher vertebrates. It would be impossible to
discover any reason why in the lowest amphibia, as well as
in reptiles and in higher vertebrates up to man, there should
always originally be five digits on each of the anterior and
posterior limbs, if we denied that heredity from a common
five-fingered parent form is the efficient cause of this pheno
menon ; heredity can alone account for it. In many am
phibia certainly, as well as in many higher vertebrates, we
find less than five digits. But in all these cases it can be
shown that separate digits have retrograded, and have
finally been completely lost. The causes which affected
the development of the five-fingered foot of the higher ver
tebrates in this amphibian form from the many-fingered
foot (or properly fin) must certainly be found in the adapta
tion to the totally altered functions which the limbs had to
discharge during the transition from an exclusively aquatic
life to one which was partially terrestrial. While the many-
fingered fins of the fish had previously served almost exclu
sively to propel the body through the water, they had now
also to afford support to the animal when creeping on the
land. This effected a modification both of the skeleton and
of the muscles of the limbs. The number of fin-rays was
gradually lessened, and was finally reduced to five. These
five remaining rays were, however, developed more vigo
rously. The soft cartilaginous rays became hard bones ; the
rest of the skeleton also became considerably more firm ;
the movements of the body became not only more vigorous
but also more varied —

and the paragraph proceeds to state other ameliora
tions of muscular and nervous system supposed to be

MONISTIC EVOLUTION 143

related to or caused by the improvement of the
limbs.

It will be observed that in the above extract,
under the formula * the causes . . . must certainly be
found,' all that other men would regard as demanding
proof is quietly assumed, and the animal grows before
our eyes from a fish to a reptile as under the wand of
a conjuror. Further, the transmission of the five toes
is attributed to heredity or unchanged reproduction ;
but this, of course, gives no explanation of the original
formation of the structure, nor of the causes which
prevented heredity from applying to the fishes which
became amphibians, and acquired five toes, or to the
amphibians which faithfully transmitted their five toes,
but not their other characteristics.

It is perhaps scarcely necessary to follow further
the criticism of this extraordinary book. It may be
necessary, however, to repeat that it contains clear,
and in the main accurate, sketches of the embryology
of a number of animals, only slightly coloured by the
tendency to minimise differences. It may also be
necessary to say that in criticising Haeckel we take
him on his own ground — that of a monist — and have
no special reference to those many phases which the
philosophy of evolution assumes in the minds of
other naturalists, many of whom accept it only par
tially or as a form of mediate creation more or less
reconcilable with theism. To these more moderate
views no reference has been made, though there can be

144 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

no doubt that many of them are quite as assailable as
the position of Haeckel in point of argument. It
may also be observed that Haeckel's argument is
almost exclusively biological, and confined to the
animal kingdom, and to the special line of descent
attributed to man. The monistic hypothesis be
comes, as already stated, still less tenable when
tested by the facts of palaeontology. Hence, most
of the palaeontologists who favour evolution appear
to shrink from the extreme position of Haeckel.
Gaudry, one of the ablest of this school, in his
work on the development of the mammalia,
candidly admits the multitude of facts for which
derivation will not account, and perceives in the grand
succession of animals in time the evidence of a wise
and far-reaching creative plan, concluding with the
words : ' We may still leave out of the question the
processes by which the Author of the world has pro
duced the changes of which palaeontology presents the
picture.' In like manner the Count de Saporta, in his
World of Plants, closes his summary of the periods of
vegetation with the words : —

But if we ascend from one phenomenon to another,
beyond the sphere of contingent and changeable appear
ance, we find ourselves arrested by a being unchangeable
and supreme, the first expression and absolute cause of all
existence, in whom diversity unites with unity, an eternal
problem insoluble to science, but ever present to the human
consciousness. Here we reach the true source of the idea
of religion, and there presents itself distinctly to the mind

MONISTIC EVOLUTION I45

that conception to which we apply instinctively the name of
God.

Thus these evolutionists, like many others in
America and in England, find a modus vivendi be
tween evolution and theism. They have committed
themselves to an interpretation of Nature which may
prove fanciful and evanescent, and which certainly
up to this time remains an hypothesis, ingenious and
captivating, but not fortified by the evidence of facts.
But in doing so they are not prepared to accept the
purely mechanical creed of the monist or to separate
themselves from those ideas of morality, of religion,
and of sonship to God which have hitherto been the
brightest gems in the crown of man as the lord of
this lower world. Whether they can maintain this
position against the monists, and whether they will
be able in the end to retain any practical form of
religion along with the doctrine of the derivation of
man from the lower animals, remains to be seen
Possibly before these questions come to a final issue
the philosophy of evolution may itself have been
1 modified ' or have given place to some new phase of
thought.

In some places there are in Haeckel's book
touches of a grim humour which are not without
interest, as showing the subjective side of the monis
tic theory, and illustrating the attitude of its professors
to things held sacred by other men. For example,
the following is the introduction to the chapter headed

K

146 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

' From the Primitive Worm to the Skulled Animal/
and which has for its motto the lines of Goethe
beginning —

Not like the gods am I ! full well I know ;
But like the worms which in the dust must go.

Both in prose and poetry man is very often compared
to a worm ; ' a miserable worm,' ' a poor worm/ are com
mon and also compassionate phrases. If we cannot detect
any deep phylogenetic reference in this zoological metaphor,
we might at least safely assert that it contains an unconscious
comparison with a low condition of animal development,
which is interesting in its bearing on the pedigree of the
human race.

If Haeckel's reading of Scripture had been suffi
ciently thorough, he might have quoted here the
melancholy confession of the man of Uz : ' I have
said to the worm, Thou art my mother and my
sister/ But though Job, like the German professor,
could humbly say to the worm, 'Thou art my mother/
he could still hold fast his integrity, and believe in
the fatherhood of God.

The moral bearing of monism is further illus
trated by the following extract, \vhich refers to a
more advanced step of the evolution — that from the
ape to man, and which shows the honest pride of the
worthy professor in his humble parentage :—

/ Just as most people prefer to trace their pedigree from
a decayed baron, or if possible from a celebrated prince,
rather than from an unknown humble peasant, so they
prefer seeing the progenitor of the human race in an Adam

MONISTIC EVOLUTION I47

degraded by the fall rather than in an ape capable of higher
development and progress. It is a matter of taste, and such
genealogical preferences do not therefore admit of discus
sion. It is more to my individual taste to be the more
highly developed descendant of an ape, who in the struggle
tor existence had developed progressively from lower mam
mals as they from still lower vertebrates, than the degraded
descendant of an Adam, God-like but debased by the fall
who was formed from a clod of earth, and of an Eve created
from a rib of Adam. As regards the celebrated < rib,' I
must here expressly add, as a supplement to the history of
the development of the skeleton, that the number of ribs is
the same in man and in woman.1 In the latter as well as
in the former the ribs originate from the skin-fibrous layer,
and are to be regarded phylogenetically as lower or ventral 4
vertebra.2

There is no accounting for tastes, yet we may be
pardoned for retaining some preference for the first
link of the old Jewish genealogical table— 'which was
the son of Adam, which was the son of God.' As to
the 'debasement' of the fall, it is to be feared that the
aboriginal ape would object to bearing the blame of
existing human iniquities as having arisen from any
improvement in his nature and habits; and it is
scarcely fair to speak of Adam as 'formed from a clod
of earth,' which is not precisely in accordance with the
record. As to the 'rib/ which seems so offensive to
Haeckel, one would have thought that he would, as
an evolutionist, have had some fellow-feeling in this

1 It was scarcely necessary to refer to this childish conception,
unless the individual skeleton of Adam had been in question.
'-' Kathtr, ' vertebral arches.'

K 2

148 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

with the writer of Genesis. The origin of sexes is
one of the acknowledged difficulties of the hypothesis,
and, using his method, we might surely ' assume,' or
even ' confidently assert,' the possibility that, in some
early stage of the development, the unfinished verte
bral arches of the 'skin-fibrous layer' might have
produced a new individual by a process of budding
or gemmation. Quite as remarkable suppositions are
contained in some parts of his own volumes, without
any special divine power for rendering them practi
cable. Further, if only an individual man originated
lin the first instance, and if he were not provided with
!a suitable spouse, he might have intermarried with
the unimproved anthropoids, and the results of the
evolution would have been lost. Such considerations
should have weighed with Haeckel in inducing him
to speak more respectfully of Adam's rib, especially
in view of the fact that in dealing with the hard
question of human origin the author of Genesis had
not the benefit of the researches of Baer and Haeckel.
He had no doubt the advantage of a firm faith in the
reality of that Creative Will which the monistic
prophets of the nineteenth century have banished
from their calculations. Were Haeckel not a monist,
he might also be reminded of that grand doctrine of
the lordship and superiority of man based on the
fact that there was no ' helpmeet for him ' ; and the
foundation of the most sacred bond of human society
on the saying of the first man : ' This is now bone of

MONISTIC EVOLUTION 149

my bones, and flesh of my flesh.' But monists prob
ably attach little value to such ideas.

It may be proper to add here that, in his refer
ences to Adam, Haeckel betrays a weakness, not
unusual with his school, in putting a false gloss on
the old record of Genesis. The statement that man.
was formed from the dust of the ground implies no
more than the production of his body from the com
mon materials employed in the construction of other
animals ; this also in contradistinction from the
higher nature derived from the inbreathing or in
spiration of God. The precise nature of the method
by which man was made or created is not stated by
the author of Genesis. Further, it would have been
as easy for divine power to create a pair as an indi
vidual. If this was not done, and if after the lesson
of superiority taught by the inspection of lower
animals, and the lesson of language taught by nam
ing them, the first man in his ' deep sleep ' is con
scious of the removal of a portion of his own flesh, and
then on awaking has the woman ' brought ' to him—
all this is to teach a lesson not to be otherwise learnt.
The Mosaic record is thus perfectly consistent with
itself and with its own doctrine of creation by
Almighty Power.

I have quoted the above passages as examples of
the more jocose vein of the Jena physiologist ; but
they constitute also a serious revelation of the in
fluence of his philosophy on his own mind and heart

150 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

' in lowering both to a cold, mechanical, and unsym
pathetic view of man and nature. This is especially
serious when we remember how earnestly, in an
address before the Association of German Natural
ists, he advocated the teaching of the methods and
results of this book as those which, in the present
state of knowledge, should supersede the Bible in our
schools. We may well say, with his great opponent
on that occasion, that if such doctrines should be
proved to be true, the teaching of them might become
a necessity, but one that would bring us face to face
with the darkest and most dangerous moral problem
that has ever beset humanity ; and that so long as
they remain unproved it is unwise as well as criminal
to propagate them among the mass of men as con
clusions demonstrated by science.

CHAPTER VI

AGNOSTIC EVOLUTION

BETWEEN the position of the materialistic or ener-
gistic monist and that of the theist there are several
stages of so-called agnosticism. The agnostic de
clines to be called an infidel or an atheist, yet in some
respects he occupies a position more advanced than
either, though expressed in a less offensive way. In
the Christian or New Testament sense an infidel is
merely one who has no faith in Jesus Christ as his
Saviour. He may believe in a God or in many gods.
An atheist may take the farther step of denying the
existence of any god, but may still be open to argue
on the subject. An agnostic may occupy a variety
of positions between that of admitting the possibility
or probability of a First Cause without committing
himself to the doctrine of a personal or living God,
and that of maintaining that it is impossible to have
any knowledge of God, and thereby going beyond
even the standpoint of the atheist. All varieties of
the agnostic creed, or want of creed, necessarily agree
in holding to the spontaneous evolution of the urn-

152 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

verse, so that practically agnosticism in some form
and evolution are usually found together.

A recent explanation of Professor Huxley '
places agnosticism in the most favourable light in
which it is possible to regard its tenets. He
says : —

Positively the principle may be expressed : In matters of
the intellect follow your reason as far as it will take you
without regard to any other consideration. And nega
tively : In matters of the intellect do not pretend that
conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or
demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith,
which if a man keep whole and undefiled he shall not be
ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the
* future may have in store for him.

To this creed or ' faith/ in so far as intellectual
^ conclusions are concerned, anyone might subscribe,
but with two reservations, one of them applicable to
each of its clauses. The expression 'follow your
reason' must be taken with the qualification that
there are many cases in which to follow our indi
vidual reason against the testimony of those who may
be better informed would be madness ; and the ex
pression ' demonstrated ' must be taken with the
qualification that there are in most things different
degrees of probable proof, and that in the majority
of cases we can only adopt the most probable alter-
K native, without insisting on absolute demonstration.

1 Nineteenth Century, February, 1889.

AGNOSTIC EVOLUTION 153

It is farther to be observed that this agnostic
creed is often held with the mental reservation that
nothing must be admitted on any other evidence than
that of the senses, and that consequently there are
no data for the ascertaining of anything spiritual.
This is sometimes put in the offensive form of the
statement that science disproves or cannot prove the
existence of God, or the spiritual nature and immor
tality of man. If by this physical science alone is
meant, the statement is as foolish as if I were to
say that I cannot prove the existence of God
by a sum in addition, or the immortality of man
by any proposition in the first book of Euclid.
Physical science in one aspect of it has nothing
to do with such questions. It can, however,
supply facts and principles important in ans.vering
them.

It is unfortunately this reservation, not explicitly
expressed in Professor Huxley's creed, which con
stitutes the practically important part of the whole
matter, and it really amounts to the addition of a
third article, to the effect that reason, as informed
by natural facts, cannot obtain any demonstration of
the existence of God, or of the spiritual nature of
man as related to God.

It is my purpose in the following pages to show
that physical and natural science perfectly agree with
what Christians accept as Divine revelation in esta
blishing the existence and some of the attributes of

154 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

God as the living, wise, and almighty Creator, and
the loving Father of man.

Herbert Spencer informs us that the ' verbally
intelligent ' suppositions respecting the origin of the
universe are three: (i) It is self-existent. (2) It is
self-created. (3) It is created by an external agency.
Of the first and second of these suppositions it can
scarcely be affirmed that they are even ' verbally
intelligent ' or conceivable as possible alternatives.
That which is self-existent cannot properly be said
to have an origin, and an eternal succession of
material things is wholly unthinkable. That anything
can be self-created seems to be a contradiction in
terms. The third supposition is therefore alone tena
ble, but it is imperfectly expressed, since the cause
or agency which produced the universe need not
necessarily be ' external,' but may be operative within
all its parts as well as without.

If, then, we understand Spencer's third alternative
to mean that the ' hypothesis of a First Cause,' to
which he elsewhere truly says * we must commit our
selves,' implies that the universe was created by a
power all pervading, and while not limited by the
universe still in it as well as without, it comes into
exact harmony with the first verse of Genesis, 'In
the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth.' The writer of that sentence knew that the
universe cannot be eternal or self-existent. He
knew that it cannot have produced itself. To him,

AGNOSTIC EVOLUTION 155

as to Spencer, the only rational alternative was that it
had been created ; and the name he gives to the Creator,
implying plurality or even infinity in unity, shows
that he regarded this Divine Being as infinite in
power and wisdom, and to him, therefore, known
only in part. It is satisfactory to find that the evo
lutionist philosopher is shut up by his own method
to the same conclusion with which we have so lono-

o

been familiar in the first verse of the Bible, though
he may decline to express it in the same terms, or to
admit the farther teaching of the book.

But from this point the two authorities diverge.
The Bible goes on to give us much information
respecting God and His relations to man. Spencer
stops our way with the dictum that to human reason
the First Cause must be * wholly inscrutable.' He
thus places us in the dilemma of being obliged to
' commit ourselves ' to the existence of a First Cause,
which must in some way include the potentiality of
all things, but which we cannot even prove to exist.

In this difficulty we may appeal from the agnostic
philosophy, not to revelation, but to natural science.
To science the universe presents phenomena ; but it is
not content to register phenomena. It holds that
' behind every phenomenon there must be a cause,'
and it is of the very essence of science to investigate
these causes. But how can causes be known ? Only
by their effects. We study the phenomena, and from
them we learn the nature and laws of their cause or

156 MODERN I DP: AS OF EVOLUTION

causes. If, then, there is a First Cause behind all
material things and energies, it is impossible that we
can be wholly ignorant of the properties of that
cause. We may be sure, not only that it exists, but
that it includes in it potentially all the phenomena
which flow from it. Thus if we know that there is a
cause behind all phenomena, we cannot be agnostics
in reference to that cause. We must be thcists, un
less we prefer to call ourselves monists or pantheists.

Yet it is not necessary that we should know
everything about the First Cause. Nay, it is impossible
that we should do so unless we first attain to perfect
knowledge of all that it has produced, and this we
know to be impossible. Here, again, revelation is at
one with science. We cannot ' by searching find
out God ' ; we can know only ' parts of His ways' ;
He is ' unsearchable.' ' No man hath seen God at
any time.' It is not in that way that we can know
Him, but only in so far as He may have revealed
Himself to us. Yet we have held out to us the grand
and inviting prospect that a time may come when
we shall know even as we are known.

The question remains, How much can we know
of God from nature? In scientific investigations as
to causes, our knowledge of these depends on the
extent of our knowledge of their effects. In the case,
for example, of light and electricity, we have accumu
lated great stores of observed and experimental facts :
these enable us to arrive at the laws of the energies

AGNOSTIC EVOLUTION 157

which lie behind the facts, and to this extent we can
know them ; but we cannot know anything as to their
essence, and can only conjecture or calculate their
probable effects in circumstances different from those
of our observations or experiments. We rise to a
higher domain of causation when we investigate the
effects of the free will of intelligent beings like men.
Human will is no doubt a true and most efficient
cause, and it has no doubt ethical laws which regu
late its action ; but the difficulties here are greater,
and there is perhaps no higher effort of thought than
that which relates to the penetration of the plans
and counsels of our fellow men, and the principles
which actuate them. We rise to a higher plane in
the study of God, and need not wonder that here we
can know only in part, a mere ' whisper of His »vays,'
compared with the thunder of His power, as we have
it put in that wonderful effort to penetrate the plans
of God by the consideration of His dealings with men
and things, presented to us by some ancient sage in
the Book of Job.

Questions of this kind are not new, though the
agnostic philosophy may be a recent phase of human
thought ; and it may be interesting to note the way
in which the matter is presented to us by a man
to whom, as the ' Apostle of the Gentiles,' we owe
very much of our modern enlightenment. In that
remarkable discussion of the relative degrees of
responsibility of the Jew and the heathen, in the early

158 MODERX IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, Paul affirms
with respect to the latter that ' the invisible things of
God, even His eternal power and divinity, can be per
ceived by them, being understood by the things that
are made.' It will be observed here that the Apostle
refers only to attributes or properties of God as
knowable by us. Of His essence we can know
nothing, any more than we can of the essence of
material things. He also admits that these attributes
arc invisible, not objects of sensuous perception, but
only of mental study. He affirms, however, that to
a certain extent they can be known ; and the amount
of the knowledge he expresses by the two terms
power and divinity, the one referring to the energy
manifested in nature, the other to the superhuman
skill and contrivance which it presents to our investi
gation. This is all that the material universe can
directly teach us of God ; but from this, as he proceeds
to explain, we can inferentially learn more.

This doctrine of Paul has the advantage that it
can appeal to an actual fact in human history, namely,
that men have inferred power and energy as behind
Nature, and that they have usually perceived in its
combinations of means to ends intelligence as well.
If we regard the universe as a mere machine exceed
ing all our powers of calculation in its magnitude
and gigantic forces, it seems to the last degree absurd
to deny that it presents a manifestation of power.
As the late Dr. Carpenter has well said, an agnostic

AGNOSTIC EVOLUTION 159

is in this respect in the position of a man who, after
examining the machinery of a great mill, and finding
that the whole is moved by a shaft proceeding from
a brick wall, should infer that the shaft is a sufficient
cause for what he sees, and that there is no moving
power behind it. In like manner, when we consider
the variety and intricacy of the parts of the universe,
and the manner in which they are co-ordinated to
produce certain effects — and this in a way not only
beyond our control but beyond our comprehension —
we cannot refer this to mere chance, but must admit
contrivance and, if so, superhuman skill, and so
divinity. This is Paul's contention ; and it is so
obvious that even agnostics are sometimes inad
vertently found to admit it, and are obliged, in spite
of themselves, to speak of selection, adaptation, com
bination, and contrivance in nature. Nature, in
short, forces them to speak of divinity in her own
language, and not in that of their philosophy.

Farther, since the existence of the universe goes
back in time beyond our powers of calculation, we
affirm that the power and divinity which it manifests
are, as Paul says, ' eternal ' ; and since this ultimate
power can have nothing to determine its action but
its own will, we conclude that we are in presence not
of brute force, but of what we usually call a personal,
but what Paul and the other Bible writers prefer to
call a ' living ' God. Thus Paul's short statement
contains no verbal inaccuracies or inconsistencies, but

160 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

leads us at once to what must necessarily be the
kernel of the whole matter, while implying that the
God so well known in some of His attributes cannot
be fully comprehended by us.

A remarkable and curious development of modern
agnosticism, referred to in a previous chapter, is its
attempt to devise some substitute for the religious
beliefs of humanity, which it so inexorably tries to
overthrow and trample on. Two alternatives are
open to it in this direction. One is to make man, as
the head of creation in this world, his own god. This
has been called the religion of humanity. The other
is to turn our attention to the universe as a whole,
and to make it our object of adoration and source of
elevating and ennobling ideas and aspirations. It is
worthy of note that these have been the resources of
mankind in similar circumstances from the earliest
times, for apart from revelation the worship of men
has constantly been given either to deified kings and
heroes or to natural objects, especially to the starry
heavens and the sun. Thus, not knowing the true
God, ancient idolatry and modern agnosticism meet
and worship in the same fane.

It is quite likely that the hero- and star-worship
of primitive humanity was devised by great and good
men of the olden time, relatively as able as our modern
agnostics. Their aim may have been to elevate their
contemporaries and to prepare for a coming age. It
was the grossness and sensuality of the mob that

AGNOSTIC EVOLUTION !6i

caused their well-meant efforts to degenerate into
stupid superstitions. A similar fate may befall the
new religions of our agnostics. But these newer
religions have a higher connection. Professor Huxley
willingly admits that Jesus Christ is the 'noblest:
ideal of humanity which mankind has yet worshipped.'!
If so, why not merge the religion of humanity in the
religion of Christ, not in its more debased and de
generate forms, but on the high conception of the
New Testament? Spencer believes that we mustjj
admit a First Cause, while Huxley, who speaks con
temptuously of the religion of humanity, would make
the grandeur of the material universe his highest"
object of adoration. The further admission that this
First Cause may be the Almighty Father of mankind
would elevate the religion of the universe into theism.
Thus it may happen that with larger and more liberal
views, even agnosticism may in the future return to
the paths of Christian theism, rather than degenerate
into a barbarous paganism. The many able men
who now profess themselves agnostics have a great
and serious responsibility in this matter, for, while
many feebler minds may be found to be nearer to '
the kingdom of heaven than they, others may be en
ticed into paths where, destitute of Divine guidance,
they may be led to darkness and destruction.

162 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

CHAPTER VII

THEISTIC EVOLUTION

Tins, in its highest sense, can be nothing less than
the development of the divine plan in the construc
tion of the universe ; and as it implies the action of
an infinite power behind nature, under the guidance
of an omniscient mind, it supplies a full and satis
factory ultimate explanation of phenomena, leaving
only for consideration the methods of the develop
ment as carried on in time and by such secondary
causes as may have been arranged by God.

But such theistic evolution is held in many differ
ent ways and in many grades of connection with
the Darwinian and other theories. I may select here
as one of its latest and ablest exponents Professor
Joseph Le Conte, of California, a geologist of some
repute and a clear thinker, who aims to combine the
various divergent schools of evolution, whether Dar
winian or Lamarckian, and to reconcile the whole
with theistic beliefs.1 His proofs of evolution as a
law of continuous development of objects and living

1 Evolution and its Relation to Religioiis Thought, 1889.

THEISTIC EVOLUTION • l63

beings from one another are not unlike those we have
already criticised, and are not so much based on his
own science as on the supposed analogies between |
the development of the individual and the species inj
biology. We need not deal with these, but may*
rather notice what is special and peculiar in his view
of the matter.

His definition of evolution is somewhat different
from that of Spencer and the ordinary Darwinians.
Evolution, he says, is (i) continuous progressive*
change; (2) this is according to certain laws; (3) it A
is by means of re^nfjorccs, that is, forces natural
to or inherent in the object and its environment.*
These are, however, forces emanating primarily from A
a divine rjovver.

Under his first head he unfortunately appears to
involve himself in the confusion of the ordinary
evolutionists. He states that there are in regard to
organic beings three kinds of progressive development.
The first is that of the individual from a simple uni
cellular germ. The second is that implied in the
similar gradation from the simplest to the most com
plex adult animals and plants. The third is that in
geological time from the earliest to the modern living
beings. It seems here to be taken for granted that
all three are similar instances of progressive change
of one being into another. Admitting this, of course
we at once, as we have already seen, concede all that
the evolutionist should fairly be required to prove.

1 64 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

In this Lc Conte follows the usual methods of Spencer
and Darwin.

Under his second head he notices three laws
which he believes to be common to the above kinds
of development : (i) The law of differentiation is the
same with Spencer's law of progress from the homo
geneous to the heterogeneous, and is, though in dif
ferent ways and degrees, characteristic of development
in general. (2) The second law is really a partial ex
ception to the first, and is called the law of progress
of the whole, the meaning being that, while on the
whole there is progress, a vast number of the lines of
development do not rise, but remain stationary or
retrograde. This law, be it observed, is one of those
which emphasise the difference between the natural
development of the embryo and those things with
which it is supposed to be analogous ; since, except
in rare cases of retrograde development, it docs not
occur in that of the individual, but it is so frequent
in the geological development, as to seem the rule
rather than the exception. (3) The third law is
applicable only to the third of the great kinds of de
velopment, and marks one of its distinctive characters.
It is that of rapid culmination and subsequent deca
dence of the great types of life. A diagram which
the author gives to show this is a curious illustration
to the eye of the fallacy of the doctrine of gradual
and continuous evolution as applied to geological
time. It represents, so to speak, successive waves in

THEISTIC EVOLUTION 165

the development which, as already explained, are
very manifest in the geological history, and most in
structive, as showing the complex and intermittent
progress of organic beings in geological time.1

With reference to the third general statement, that
the forces causing evolution are resident, the meaning
seems to be that they are in some sense natural to or
inherent in the being which is in process of modifi
cation, or in the objects which environ and act upon
it. In one sense — that is, if we include divine action —
this is merely asserting the operation of the properties
of things, without in any way accounting for them.
In another sense, it may be regarded by the monistic
and agnostic Darwinian as a surrender of the whole
position to their idea of spontaneous and uncaused
development. This Le Conte does not intend to do.

In all this we have, though with some important
variations, a restatement of the ordinary principles
of evolution, and without any adequate analysis of the
constituent parts of the diverse supposed kinds of the
process. It is scarcely to be wondered at that with
these premises Le Conte arrives at the conclusion that
evolution is a legitimate induction from the facts of
biology, and that it is ' absolutely certain.' We are
informed, however, that this absolutely certain evolu
tion is not that of any of the now conflicting schools
of thought, but evolution * as a law of derivation of

1 Such a view is, of course, very different from the theory of gradual
and slow evolution held by Darwinians.

1 66 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

forms from previous forms, as a law of continuity, as
a universal law of becoming. In this sense it is not
only certain, but axiomatic. It is only necessary to
conceive it clearly, to see that it is a necessary truth.'
In so far as there is any validity in this statement of
the case, it approaches as nearly as theism can to
Spencer's hypothesis that all things are self-created.
It practically amounts to saying that since, so far as
we know, eggs have been produced from birds, and
birds from eggs, from time immemorial, it is an
axiomatic truth that all things have been thus con
tinuously produced one from another. It is thus
evident that Le Conte goes so far, notwithstanding
his previous caution, as to place himself at the mercy
of the agnostics, who may say that the continuous
evolution of things from one another by * resident
force J requires no intervention of a creative power.

Notwithstanding all this Le Contc is a firm
believer in God. In his concluding chapters there
are some valuable thoughts on the relation of God
to nature, and he derives the higher nature of man
not from below, but from above. He sees clearly that
the forces of nature are ultimately only manifesta
tions of the omnipresent divine energy. He also
perceives, what so few seem to comprehend, that this
divine energy operates on different planes of being,
and limits itself, so to speak, by the prescribed condi
tions of each, while it can ascend as by a series of steps
from its lowest manifestations in dead matter and

THEISTIC EVOLUTION 167

in the humbler forms of life up to man himself, in
whom the image and likeness of God is still limited
by his earthly relations and material frame. This
great idea of God manifest in nature, but more or less
completely in its different grades of being, is the true
basis of the doctrine of theistic development. This
being understood, the methods by which these different
planes of being have been raised one above another
and perfected, whether by the complex action of a
vast number of co-ordinated secondary causes or by
simpler acts of spiritual power, become fair subjects
of investigation, whether by science or philosophy,
though it is quite likely that they never can be com
pletely understood by finite beings. Man himself
occupies merely one plane or grade in the great sys
tem, and there may be far higher and more intelligent
grades above him. He can hope to know something
of the planes that are below him, but not, except by
revelation or mere speculation, of those above ; and
his comprehension even of those below as compared
with that of the Creator Himself must be crude and
imperfect.

It further follows that if we regard nature as a
manifestation of God, we must not expect to reduce
its many lines of progress and advancement to one
simple cause or mode. The methods of action of
divine power are to our view infinite in variety ; and
though we can ascertain their laws and the secondary
causes employed, we can know these only in part,

168 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

and we know enough to be assured that in the
origin and development of even the humbler
forms of life they may be vastly more multiform and
complex than those employed in the most complicated
combinations of machinery or of process in the works
of man. Newton felt himself to be like a child play
ing with the sands on the shore of a boundless ocean ;
and in the presence of any organised being we are but
as infants gazing on the mysterious movements of
some intricate machine, and whose thoughts as to its
origin, operation, and uses may be of the crudest
character. Yet one great advantage we have as
thcists is that we can hold by the hand of a Father
who knows all the secrets of the mighty fabric which
perplexes us, and can explain to us, little by little, so
much of it as it may be useful to us to know. Thus,
however much we may be mistaken in our first im
pressions, we may hope to arrive at some measure of
truth, and can find relief from the difficulties of our
own imperfections and of the pressure of our environ
ment, in faith in the loving and all-wise Father of our
spirits.

Le Conte sums up this view of the matter in a
short chapter, which clearly sets forth the compati
bility of the spiritual world and revelation ; not with
any of the usual theories of evolution, but with
natural law, on the supposition of the divine energy
operating on different planes of being ; and this rela
tion of the natural and spiritual holds equally good

THE '1 'STIC EVOLUTION 169

whether we suppose God to have proceeded in His
great work by the method of direct development, or,
as is more likely, by many methods, more or less
diverse : —

If man be indeed something more than a higher species
of animal ; if man's spirit be indeed a spark of Divine
energy individuated to the point of self-consciousness and
recognition of his relation to God ; if spirit-embryo develop
ing in the womb of Nature through all geological time came
to birth and independent spirit-life in man, and thus man
alone is a child of God as well as a product of Nature — if all
this be true, then it is evident that this wholly new relation
requires also a wholly different mode of Divine operation.
If God operates on Nature only by regular processes, which
we call natural laws, then He must operate on spirit in a
different and a more direct way, and this we call revelation.
If to the student of nature it is inconceivable that He
should operate on nature except by natural laws (for this is
the name we give to His chosen mode of operation there),
then to the student of theology it is equally inconceivable, if
our view of man be true, that He should not operate on
spirit in some more direct and higher way, i.e. by reve
lation.

But some will ask, Is not this a palpable violation of
law ? I think not. All Divine operations are, must be, ac
cording to reason, i.e. according to law. The operation of
the divine on the human spirit, i.e. revelation, must there
fore be according to law, but a higher law than that which
governs Nature, and, therefore, from the point of view of
Nature, supernatural. There is nothing wholly unique in
this. Life is a higher form of force than the physical and
chemical. Life phenomena are therefore superphysical,
and if we confined the term nature to dead nature, they
would be supernatural. So the free, self-determined acts of

170 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

spirit on spirit, even of the spirit of man on the spirit of
man, much more the Spirit of God on the spirit of man,
may be according to law, and yet from the natural point of
view be supernatural. It is true that in the complex phe
nomena, material and spiritual inextricably woven together,
which go to make up human life Science must ever strive
to reduce as much as possible to material laws, for this is
her domain, and she is bound to extend it ; but, if our
view of man be true, there will always remain a large
residuum of phenomena— a whole world of phenomena—
which will never yield, because clearly beyond her domain.
Standing on the lower material plane, these phenomena are
wholly supermaterial, and therefore incomprehensible from
the material point of view. We must rise and stand on the
higher plane before these also are reduced to law, but a
higher law than that operating on the lower plane. If,
therefore, Science insists on banishing the supernatural
from the realm of nature, theology may reasonably insist
on its necessity, in this sense, in the realm of morals and
religion.

CHAPTER VIII
GOD IN NATURE

IN discussing the attitude of agnostic evolution, we
have seen that its position is rendered untenable by
the fact that it has no better evidence of matter and
energy in which it believes than of God in whom it
declines to believe. Spencer admits that our con
ception of matter is ' built up or extracted from our
experiences of force/ and that it is only by energy
that matter ' demonstrates itself as existing.' This
second-hand demonstration is, however, perfectly
satisfactory to all men, and they never, when of
sound mind, refuse to act on their belief. But science
must, in considering well its own principles, go much
farther than this general creed as to matter. It must
believe in different kinds of matter, atoms of different
weights, an all-pervading ether, and multitudes of
other entities of which it has no better evidence than
their observed effects. Science therefore may apply
the same reasoning to the human will, to the unseen
spiritual world, and to God Himself, if only it can dis
cover effects resulting from their action. It may be

r?2 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

profitable to consider here this positive evidence in
some of its departments.

The agnostic may say that he is content to regard
all nature as a product of law, and that this, being
inexorable and unchangeable, excludes the idea of a
personal will. A little reflection will show that this
position is altogether untenable. The laws of nature
are in reality not powers or forces at all, but merely
j the ways in which energy has been found to act.
' They are mental generalisations of our own ; and the
fact that we are able to form these and to understand
nature by their means goes to show the harmony
between our mental nature and that of their Author,
and so to tell us something of Him. They do not
reveal to us the ultimate nature of energy, but merely
the mode of its action in whatever way it may have
been determined at first.

Nor are such laws necessary. We can imagine
them to have been different. They may be different
in parts of the universe inaccessible to us. They may
even change in process of time. Nor is law at all
the reverse of rational will. On the contrary, a world
without law or regulated by caprice would be intoler
able to rational beings.

Viewed in this way, the theistic conception of law
is that it is a voluntary limitation of the power of the
Creator in the interest of His creatures. To secure
this end, nature must be a perfect machine, all the
parts of which are adjusted for permanent and har-

GOD IN NATURE 173

monious action. Nay, rather, it may be compared to
a series of machines, each running independently, like
the trains of a railway, but all regulated and connected
by an invisible guidance, which determines the times
and distance of each, and ordains which shall wait
and give place to others. Even this simile, how
ever, gives us the faintest possible conception of the
countless interactions and interdependencies of natural
laws. Thus the conception of natural law rightly
understood becomes the highest evidence of power
and divinity, and the highest realisation of the plans
of superhuman intelligence.

The notion that when anything has been referred
to natural law the action of God may be dispensed
with in relation to that thing, is merely the survival
of a superstition that God must be capricious and
changeable. On the one hand, while by natural law
God limits His freedom of action in the interest of
the Cosmos and of its intelligent inhabitants, and
while He permits us as rational beings to understand
and utilise in our limited way portions of His plans,
the interactions and adjustments of laws of different
grades are so varied and complex in their scope and
application, and in the combinations of which they
are capable, that it is often impossible for finite minds
to calculate their results, while it is entirely beyond
human power to interfere with their majestic action.
Hence the will, the power, and the divinity of the
Creator and His absolute mastery over His creatures

174 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

must ever remain unimpaired by natural law. Further,
since we can know so little of law, and have so little
power to control the resistless energy embodied in
nature, it follows that scope for dependence on God,
for miracle and prayer, and for what we in our
ignorance call the supernatural, which, though not
understood by us, may still be most natural, in the
sense of being part of the Divine plan, is practically
infinite.

The objection to theism based on natural law may
indeed be very well met by Dr. Carpenter's figure of
the moving power of the mill referred to in a previous
chapter. The man who is content to know that a
great shaft passing through a brick wall moves all the
machinery, might, if it could be shown that this shaft
turns constantly and has always so turned, have some
ground for the belief that its motion is spontaneous
and uncaused. He might at least assume the position
of the agnostic, and say that he was entirely ignorant
of any moving power beyond the brick wall. But if
it were pointed out to him that the motion of the
shaft obeyed certain laws — that it stopped at a certain
hour every evening, and renewed work at a certain hour
every morning ; that it ceased moving at dinner hour
and on Sundays — his agnosticism respecting any power
or agency beyond the brick wall would become in
finitely more unreasonable ; and this would not be
mitigated by the regularity of the several changes
or by the possibility of formulating their laws.

GOD IN NATURE

175

Nor can he escape by the magisterial denunciation
of theistic ideas as ' anthropomorphic ' fancies. All
science must in this sense be anthropomorphic, for it
consists of what nature appears to us to be, when
viewed through the medium of our senses, and of
what we think of nature as so presented to us. The
only difference is this, that if agnostic evolution is
true, science itself only represents a certain stage of
the development, and can have no actual or perma
nent truth ; while, if the theistic view is correct, then
the fact that man himself belongs to the unity of
nature, and is in harmony with its other parts, gives
us some guarantee for the absolute truth of scientific
facts and principles.

The idea that nature is a manifestation of mind
is so ancient and general that it may almost be
considered as an intuition, born spontaneously of our
own consciousness of will. It proceeds in any case
naturally from the analogy between the operations of
nature and those which originate in our own will
and contrivance. When men begin to think more
accurately, this idea acquires a deeper foundation in
the conclusion that nature, in all its varied mani
festations, is one vast machine or congeries of
machines, too great and complex for us to compre
hend, and implying a primary energy infinitely beyond
that of man ; and thus the unity of nature points to
one Creative Mind.

Even to the savage peoples, in whose minds the

176 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

idea of unity has not germinated, or from whose
traditions it has been lost, a spiritual essence appears
to underlie all natural phenomena, though they may
regard this as consisting of a separate spirit or
Manitou for every material thing. In all the more
cultivated races the ideas of natural religion have
taken more definite forms in their theology and
philosophy. Dugald Stewart has well expressed the
more scientific form of this idea in two short state
ments :—

' i. Every effect implies a cause.

2. Every combination of means to an end implies
intelligence.'

Unless, then, we are prepared to refer the universe
and all its laws and arrangements to mere chance or
to absolute necessity, efther of which views would be
not only irrational, but would involve actual mental
confusion, we have no escape from the doctrine of
design and the Pauline conclusion that power and
divinity are manifested in nature.

It may be profitable to illustrate this great truth
under a few definite propositions, and with reference
as we proceed to the bearing of these on the various
current hypotheses of evolution, but more especially
on the evidence of what may be termed ' Mind in
Nature ' as an evidence of the power and divinity of
its Author.

I. It may be maintained that Nature is an exhi
bition of regulated and determined power. The first

GOD IN NATURE I?7

impression of Nature presented to a mind uninitiated
in its mysteries is that it is a mere conflict of
opposing forces; but so soon as we study any
natural phenonema in detail we see that this is an
error, and that everything is balanced in the nicest
way by the most subtle interactions of matter and
force. We find also that, while forces are mutually
convertible and atoms susceptible of vast varieties of
arrangement, all this is determined by fixed law, and
carried out with invariable regularity and constancy.

The vapour of water, for example, diffused in the
atmosphere is condensed by extreme cold and falls
to the ground in snowflakes. In these, particles of
water, previously kept asunder by heat, are united by
cohesive force, and the heat has gone on other
missions. But these particles do not merely unite ;
they geometrise. Like well-drilled soldiers, arranging
themselves in ranks, they form themselves, according
to regular axes of attraction, in lines diverging at an
angle of sixty degrees ; and thus the snowflakes are
hexagonal plates and six-rayed stars, the latter often
growing into very complex shapes, but all based on
the law of attraction under the same angles. The
frost on the window-panes observes the same law,
and so does every crystallisation of water, where it
has scope to arrange itself in accordance with its own
geometry. But this law of crystallisation gives to
snow and ice their mechanical properties, and is con
nected with a multitude of adjustments of water in a

i78 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

solid state to its place in nature. The same law,
varied in a vast number of ways in every distinct
substance, builds up crystals of all kinds of minerals
and crystalline rocks, and is connected with countless
adaptations of different kinds of matter to mechanical
and chemical uses in the arts. It is easy to see that
all this must have been otherwise, but for the institu
tion of many and complex laws.

A lump of coal at first suggests little to excite
. interest or imagination ; but the student of its com-
' position and microscopic structure finds that it is an
accumulation of vegetable matter representing the
j action of the solar light on the leaves of trees of the
Paleozoic age. It thus calls up images of these
'perished forests, and of the causes concerned in their
'production and growth, and in the accumulation and
preservation of their buried remains. It further
suggests the many ways in which this solar energy,
so^long sealed up, can be recalled to activity in heat,
gas light, steam, and electric light, and how remark
ably these things have been related to the wealth and
/the civilisation of modern nations. I may quote here
a graphic passage from a popular paper by Huxley,
which admirably draws the picture of provision for
man, but unfortunately leaves out the Provider :-

Nature is never in a hurry, and seems to have had
always before her eyes the adage, ' Keep a thing long enough,
and you will find a use for it.' She has kept her beds of
coal for millions of years without being able to find a use

GOD IN NATURE I?9

for them ; she has sent them beneath the sea, and the sea-
beasts could make nothing of them ; she has raised them
up into dry land and laid the black veins bare, and still for
ages and ages there was no living thing on the face of the
earth that could see any sort of value in them ; and it was
only the other day, so to speak, that she turned a new
creature out of her workshop, who by degrees acquired
sufficient wits to make a fire, and then to discover that the
black rock would burn.

I suppose that nineteen hundred years ago, when
Julius Caesar was good enough to deal with Britain as we
have dealt with New Zealand, the primeval Briton, blue
with cold and woad, may have known that the strange black
stone which he found here and there in his wanderings
would burn, and so help to warm his body and cook his
food. Saxon, Dane, and Norman swarmed into the land.
The English people grew into a powerful nation, and Nature
still waited for a return for the capital she had invested in
ancient club-mosses. The eighteenth century arrived, and
with it James Watt. The brain of that man was the spore
out of which was developed the steam engine and all the
prodigious trees and branches of modern industry whicn
have grown out of this. But coal is as much an essential
of this growth and development as carbonic acid is of a
club-moss. Wanting the roal, we could not have smelted
the iron needed to make our engines, nor have worked our
engines when we got them. But take away the engines, and
the great towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire vanish like a
dream. Manufactures give place to agriculture and pasture,
and not ten men could live where now ten thousand are
amply supported.

Thus all this abundant wealth of money and of vivid
life is Nature's investment in club-mosses and the like so
long ago. But what becomes of the coal which is burnt in
yielding the interest ? Heat comes out of it, light comes

M 2

iSo MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

out of it, and if we could gather together all that goes up
the chimney and all that remains in the grate of a thoroughly
burnt coal fire, we should find ourselves in possession of a
quantity of carbonic acid, water, ammonia, and mineral
matters exactly equal in weight to the coal. But these
are the very matters with which Nature supplied the club-
mosses which made coal She is paid back principal and
interest at the same time j and she straightway invest
carbonic acid, the water, and the ammonia in new forms of
life, feeding with them the plants that now live. Thrifty
Nature, surely ! no prodigal, but the most notable of house-
* keepers,1

All this is true and well told ; but who is Nature,
this goddess, who, since the far-distant Carboniferous
age, has been planning for man ? Is this not another
name for that Almighty Maker who foresaw and
arranged all things for H is people * before the founda
tion of the world * ? If Huxley did not assure us
that he is an agnostic, we might suspect him from
this passage to be a devout theist, and even an
orthodox Calvinist,

It is plain that l Nature ' in such a connection re
presents either a poetical fiction, a superstitious
fancy, or an intelligent creative mind It is further
evident that such creative mind must be in harmony
with that of man, though vastly greater in its scope
and grasp in time and space. This conclusion might
be strengthened by many other examples of the
mute prophecies of past geological periods.

Even the numerical relations observed in nature

1 Contemporary Review t 1871^

GOD IN NATURE 181

teach the same lesson. The leaves of plants are not
arranged at random, but in a series of curiously-related
spirals, differing in different plants, but always the
same in the same species, and regulated by different
laws. Similar definiteness regulates the ramification
of plants, which depends primarily on the arrange
ment of the leaves. The angle of ramification of the
veins of the leaf is settled for each species of plant ;
so are the numbers of parts in the flower and the
angular arrangement of these parts.

It is the same in the animal kingdom, such
numbers as five, six, eight, ten being selected to
determine the parts in particular animals and portions
of animals. Once settled, these numbers are won
derfully permanent in geological time. The first
known land reptiles appearing in the Carboniferous
period have five toes : these appear in the earliest
known species in the lowest, as already stated,
beds of the Carboniferous. Their predecessors, the
fishes, had numerous fin-rays ; but when limbs for
locomotion on land were contrived the number five
was adopted as the typical one. It still exists in the
five toes and fingers of man himself. From these, as
is well known, our decimal notation is derived. It
did not originate in any special fitness of the number
ten, but in the fact that men began to reckon by
counting their ten fingers. Thus the decimal system
of arithmetic, with all that follows it, was settled
millions of years ago, in the Carboniferous period,

1 82 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

either by certain low-browed and unintelligent batra-
chians or by their Maker.

2. Nature presents to us very remarkable co-

Aopcrations of dissimilar and widely separated matters
and forces. I have referred to the numerical arrange
ments of the leaves of plants ; but the leaf itself, in
its structure and functions, is one of the most remark
able things in nature. Composed of layers of loosely-
placed living cells, with air-spaces between them ;
/ enclosed above and below with a transparent epi-

^dermis, the spaces between the cells communicating
with the atmosphere without, by means of micro
scopic pores, guarded by cunningly contrived valves,
opening or closing according to the hygrometric state
of the air ; connected with the stem of the plant by a
system of tubes strengthened with spiral fibres or
thickening of their walls within— the structure of the
leaf is, mechanically considered, of extreme beauty

^ and complexity.

But its living functions are still more wonderful.
^Receiving the water from the soil with such materials
as it brings thence in solution, and absorbing carbonic
H dioxide and ammonia from the air, the living proto
plasm of the leaf-cells has the power of chemically
changing all these substances, and of producing from
them those complicated and otherwise inimitable
^organic compounds, of which the tissues of the plant
are built up, and which they also prepare for other
tpurposes in the plant. The force by which this is

GOD IN NATURE 183

done is that of the solar heat and light, both admitted
freely into the interior of the leaf through the trans
parent epidermis, and therein imprisoned, so as to
constitute a powerful storehouse of evaporative and
chemical energy. In this way all the materials avail
able for the maintenance of life, whether vegetable or
animal, are produced, and no other structure than the
living vegetable cell, as it exists in the leaf, has the
power to effect these miracles of transmutation.

Here, let it be observed, we have the vegetable
cell placed in relation with the system of the plant,
with the soil, with the atmosphere and its waters, with
the distant sun itself, and the properties of its emitted
energies. Let it further be observed that, on the one
hand, the chemistry involved in this is of a character
altogether different from that which applies to inor
ganic matter, and, on the other, the products derived
from a very few elements embrace all that vast variety
of compounds which we observe in plants and animals,
and which constitute the material of one of the most
complex of sciences, that of organic chemistry.
Finally, these complicated structures were produced,
and all their relations set up at a very early geological
period. In so far as we can judge from their remains
and the results effected, the leaves of the Paleozoic
period were functionally as perfect as their modern

successors.

Of course, the agnostic evolutionist may, if he
pleases, attribute all this to fortuitous interactions of

i84 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

the sun, the atmosphere, and the earth, and may
provide for what these fail to explain by the assump
tion of potentialities equivalent to the things pro
duced. But the probability of such an hypothesis
becomes infinitely small when we consider the variety
and the diversity of things and forces which must
have conspired to produce the results observed, and
to maintain them so constantly, and yet with so much
difference in circumstances and details. It is a relief
to turn from such bewildering and gratuitous sup
positions to the theory which supposes a designing
creative mind.

From the boundless variety of illustrations which
the animal kingdom presents I may select one — the
contrivances by means of which marine animals are
enabled to balance themselves in the waters. In that

vwonderful hymn of creation, Psalm civ., at whose

' compass and truth and grandeur the great Humboldt
expressed his astonishment, we find in one of the
verses mention of the great and wide sea wherein are
' moving things innumerable, small and great animals.

VThere go the ships : there is that leviathan Thou hast
made to play therein.' I believe that in this passage
the ' ships ' are not those of man, but God's floating

. things whose home is on the sea. In any case, these
floaters are marvellous examples of cunning contri-
,yance. The pearly nautilus is an eminent example.1

1 The uses of the chambers of the nautilus shell have been doubted
by some recent observers, but the character of the structures would
seem to admit of no other interpretation.

GOD IN NATURE 185

Its coiled shell is divided by partitions into air-
chambers so proportioned that the buoyancy of the
air is sufficient to counterpoise in sea-water the weight
of the animal. There are also contrivances by which
the density of the contained air and of the body of
the animal can be so modified as slightly to disturb
this equilibrium and to enable the creature to rise or
sink in the waters. It would be tedious to describe, ,
without adequate illustrations, all the machinery con
nected with these adjustments. It is sufficient for
our purpose to know that they are provided in such
a manner that the animal is practically exempted
from the operation of the force of gravity. In the
modern seas these provisions are enjoyed by only a
few species of the genera Nautilus and Spirula, but
in past geological ages far more complex forms
existed. Further, this contrivance is very old. We
find in the Orthoceratites and their allies of the earliest
formations these arrangements in their full perfection,
and in some forms even more complex than in later
types.

The peculiar contrivances observed in the nautilus
and its allies are possessed by no other molluscs ; but
there is another group of somewhat lower grade, that
of the Ianthincsy or violet snails, in which flotation
is provided for in a different way. In these animals
the shell is perfectly simple, though light, and the
floating apparatus consists in a series of horny air-
vesicles attached to what is termed the ' foot ' of the

1 86 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

animal, and which are increased in number to suit its
increasing weight as it grows in size. There are
some reasons to believe that this entirely different
contrivance is as old in geological time as the cham
bered shell of the nautiloid animals. It was, indeed,
in all probability, more common and adapted to larger
animals in the Silurian period than at present.

Another curious instance not, so far as yet known,
existing at all in the modern world, is that of the re
markable stalked star-fish described by Professor Hall
under the name Camerocrinus, and whose remains are
found in the Silurian rocks. The crinoids, or feather-
stars, are well-known inhabitants of the seas both in
ancient and modern times, but previous to Professor
Hall's discovery they were known only as animals
attached by flexible stems to the sea-bottom or
creeping slowly by means of their radiating arms.
It was not suspected that any of them had committed
themselves to the mercy of the currents suspended
from floats. It appears, however, that this was actually
realised in the Silurian period, when certain animals
of this group developed a hollow calcareous balloon-
shaped vesicle, from which they could hang suspended
in the water and float freely. So far as known, this
remarkable contrivance was temporary, and probably
adapted to some peculiarities of the habits and food
of these animals, occurring only in the geological
period in which they existed.

Examples of this sort of adjustment are found in

GOD IN NATURE 187

other types of animal life. In the beautiful Portu
guese man-of-war (Physalid) and its allies, flotation
is provided for by membranous or cartilaginous sacs
or vesicles filled with air, and which are the common
support of numerous individuals which hang down
from them. In some allied creatures the buoyancy
required is secured by little sacs filled with oil secreted
by the animals themselves, and in ancient zoophytes,
known as graptolites, flotation seems to have been
effected in some species by air-vesicles supporting a
community of animals.

In each of these cases we have a skilful adaptation
of means to ends. The float is so constructed as to
avail itself of the properties of gases and liquids, and
the apparatus is framed on the most scientific prin
ciples and in the most artistic manner. That this
apparatus is not mechanically put together, and that
in each case the instincts and the habits of the animal
have been correlated with it, can scarcely be held by
the most obtuse intellect to invalidate the evidence of
intelligent design.

3. Structures apparently the most simple and
often heedlessly spoken of as if they involved no
complexity prove, on examination, to be intricate
and complex almost beyond conception. In nothing,
perhaps, is this better seen than in that much-abused
' protoplasm ' which has been made to do duty for
God in the origination of life, but which is itself a
most laboriously manufactured material. Albumen,

1 88 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

or white of egg — which is otherwise named proto
plasm — is a very complicated substance chemically,
and in its molecular arrangements, and when endowed
with life, it presents properties altogether inscrutable.
It is easy to say that the protoplasm of an egg or of
some humble animalcule or microscopic embryo is
little more than a mass of structureless jelly, yet
in the case of the embryo a microscopic dot of this
apparently structureless jelly must contain all the
parts of, say, a bird or a mammal ; but how we may
Nnever know, and certainly cannot yet comprehend.

There are minute animalcules belonging to the
group of flagellate infusoria, some of which, under
ordinary microscopic powers, appear merely as moving
specks, and show their actual structures only under
the highest powers ; yet these animals can be seen to
have an outer skin and an inner mass, to have pul
sating sacs and reproductive organs, and threadlike
flagella wherewith to swim. Their eggs are, of course,
much smaller than themselves, so much so that some
of them are probably invisible under the highest
powers employed. Each of them is potentially an
animal, with all its parts represented structurally in
the same way.

Nor need we wonder at this. It has been calcu
lated that a speck scarcely visible under the most
powerful microscope may contain two million four
hundred thousand molecules of protoplasm. If each
of these molecules were a brick, there would be enough

GOD IN NATURE iSg

of them to build a terrace of twenty-five good dwell
ing houses, But this is supposing them to be all'
alike ; whereas we know that the molecules of albu
men are capable of being of various kinds. Each of
these molecules really contains eight hundred and
eighty-two atoms, namely four hundred of carbon,
three hundred and ten of hydrogen, one hundred and
twenty of oxygen, fifty of nitrogen, and two of sulphur
and phosphorus.

Now, we know that these atoms may be differently
arranged in different molecules, producing consider
able difference of properties. Let us try to calculate
of how many differences of arrangement the atoms
of one molecule of protoplasm are susceptible, and
then to calculate of how many changes these differ
ent assemblages are capable in a microscopic dot
composed of two million four hundred thousand of
them. It is scarcely necessary to say that such a
calculation, in the multitudes of possibilities involved,
transcends human powers of imagination; yet it
raises questions of mechanical and chemical grouping
merely, without any reference to the additional

mystery of life.

Let it be observed further that this vastly complex
material is assumed as if there were nothing remark
able in it by many of the theorists who plausibly
explain to us the spontaneous origin of living things.
But Nature, in arranging all the parts of a compli
cated animal beforehand in an apparently structure-

190 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

less microscopic ovum, has all these vast numbers to
deal with in working out the exact result, and this
not in one case merely, but in multitudes of cases
involving the most varied combinations. We can
scarcely suppose the atoms themselves to have the
power of thus unerringly marshalling themselves to
work out the structures of organisms infinitely varied,
yet all alike after their kinds. If not, then * Nature'
must be a goddess gifted with superhuman powers of
calculation and marvellous deftness in arranging in
visible atoms.

4. The beauty of form, proportion, and colouring
that abounds in nature affords evidence of mind.
Herculean efforts have been made by modern
agnostic evolutionists to eliminate altogether the
idea of beauty from nature by theories of sexual
selection and the like, and to persuade us that beauty
is merely utility in disguise, and even then only an
accidental coincidence between our perceptions and
certain external things. But in no part of their
argument have they more signally failed in account
ing for the observed facts, and in no part have they
more seriously outraged the common-sense and
natural taste of men. In point of fact, we have here
one of those great correlations belonging to the unity
of nature — that indissoluble connection which has
been established between the senses and the aesthetic
sentiments of man and certain things in the external
world. But there is more in beauty than this merely

GOD IN NATURE 191

anthropological relation. Certain forms, for example,
adopted in the skeletons of the lower animals are
necessarily beautiful because of their geometrical
proportions. Certain styles of colouring are neces
sarily beautiful because of harmonies and contrasts
which depend on the essential properties of the waves
of light. Beauty is thus, in a great measure, inde
pendent of the taste of the spectator. It is also inde
pendent of mere utility, since, even if we admit that
all these combinations of forms, motions, and colours
which we call beautiful are also useful, it is easy to
perceive that the end could often be attained
without beauty.

It is a curious fact that some of the simplest
animals— as, for example, sponges and foraminifera—
are furnished with most beautiful skeletons. Nothing
can exceed the beauty of form and proportion in the
shells of some foraminifera and polycistina, or in
the skeletons of some silicious sponges, while it is
obvious that these humble creatures, without brains
and external senses, can neither contrive nor appre
ciate the beauty with which they are clothed.

Here I may pause to remark that no feature of
the current evolution seems more objectionable than
that which refers beauty to low forms of utility, and
to selection exercised by animals which can have no
intelligent knowledge even of that which attracts
them. To an insect a bright spot of any kind would
have been as effectual a mark of a honey-bearing

r
192 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

flower as the most delicate and elaborate pencilling
of colour. To attribute the marvellous beauty of an
Argus pheasant or of a bird of Paradise to the taste of
the hen bird can scarcely be characterised as any
thing short of a base superstition ; while it is abso
lutely irrational as a matter of science, since it is
attributing an effect to that which cannot be an
efficient cause.

Most persons have seen the beautiful Etiplcctella
aspergillum, or * Venus' flower-basket,' now somewhat
common in museums and private collections, but few
perhaps have minutely examined its structure. A
little observation enables us to see its regular cylin
drical form and graceful cornucopia-like curves, com
bining strength with beauty ; its framework of
delicate silicious threads, some regularly placed in
vertical bundles, others crossing them, so as to form
rectangular meshes, and still others placed diagonally,
so as to convert the square meshes into a lace-like
pattern. Without this framework are accessory spi-
cules placed in spiral frills, and at the top is a singular
network of silicious fibres closing the aperture, while
there are long silky threads forming roots below.
This structure, so marvellous in the mechanical and
aesthetic principles embodied in it, is the skeleton of
a sponge ; a soft, slimy, almost structureless creature,
which we find it difficult to believe in as a veritable
animal ; yet it is the law of this creature, developed
from a little oval or sac-like germ, destitute of all

GOD IN NATURE I93

trace of the subsequent structures, to produce this
wonderful framework. Can anyone who studies such
an organism summon faith enough in atoms and
forces to believe that their insensate action is the sole
cause of its being ? But our Euplectella aspergillum
is only one of several species, and there are other
genera more or less resembling it, most of them in
habiting the depths of the sea. All of these build
up silicious skeletons on what is termed the hex-
actinellid plan, but with differences of detail perfectly
constant in each species, though we cannot trace these
differences to anything corresponding in the animals,
nor can we assign them to any property of silica,
since the material of the spicules is in a colloidal or
uncrystalline state, and the forms are quite different
from the crystalline forms of silica.

These hexactinellid sponges have a history. They
are widely diffused in our present seas. The chalk
formation of Europe abounds with them, and presents
forms even more varied and beautiful than those now
existing, but which must have lived at a time when
large parts of our present continents were in the
depths of the ocean. Still further back, in the
Silurian age, they seem to have been nearly equally
abundant. I have recently studied the microscopic
structures of a large collection from the Niagara
limestone, consisting of many species, each of which
presents arrangements of spicules as beautiful and
complex as those of the modern kinds. Still farther

. N

I94 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

back, in the rocks of the Levis division of the Siluro-
Cambrian system in Canada, I have found in a single
thin bed of shale, representing a muddy sea-bottom
of that age, a dozen species of several genera, all
bearing testimony to the perfection of this plan of
structure at that early date. Salter and Matthew
have found in still older Cambrian rocks species of
these sponges having delicate spicules still retaining
their arrangement, and showing that this beautiful
contrivance for the support of a gelatinous animal
existed in all its perfection almost at the dawn of
life. Through all these vast periods of geological
time the hexactinellids have continued side by side
with the lithistid sponges, their allies ; and contem
poraneously with them the rhizopods and radio-
larians, still more simple forms, have built up other
styles of skeletons equally wonderful and inexplicable,
and embodying other mechanical plans and other
types of beauty.

It is scarcely too much to say that no sane mind
having presented to it, not as above merely in a few
words, but in the actual facts as they might be illus
trated with specimens and figures, all this unity and
variety, mechanical contrivance and varied beauty,
associated with so little of vitality and complexity in
the animals concerned, could doubt for a moment
the action of a creative intelligence in the initiation
of such phenomena, or could believe that they have
resulted from the fortuitous interaction of atoms.

GOD IN NATURE 195

Still, admitting this, we are not prevented from
attributing something to environment and to repro
ductive continuity. The waters { brought forth ' these
animals of old, and it is true we cannot conceive of
creatures so constructed as living out of the waters.
The sea also furnished to them the material out of
which to construct their skeletons, either directly or
through the medium of still simpler organisms. All
this and much more respecting the surrounding
medium science can understand, though it does not
thereby learn the origin of these forms or the reason
of their complexity and variety. These do not
depend on the properties either of the waters or the
silica.

Further, our sponge has the power of increasing
and multiplying to replenish the waters. It begets
new organisms in its own likeness, and with all its
own wonderful powers of unconscious construction.
Nay, more, we can see that in this continuous repro
duction it has a certain versatility, enabling it to con
form to circumstances, and so to present individual
and race characters within the species. May not,
then, the creative act have been limited to the pro
duction of the first hexactinellid, and may not the
others have originated by ordinary generation ?
Here we may admit that, for aught that we know,
not only varietal forms, but even some of those which,
as met with in successive geological formations, we
regard as species may have had a common origin m

N 2

196 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION \

this way ; but we have no right to affirm this till we
have proved it, and we have no right even then to
affirm it of other and distinct lines of being, which
have gone on parallel with our hexactinellids for
indefinite times, and which the very fact of the per
sistence of the latter within their own cycle of cha
racters would tend to refer to independent origins.

Such, in short, would be the bearing, not of
metaphysical arguments, but of the testimony of
facts as presented by the structures and history of
any group of the lower animals.

5. The instincts of the lower animals imply a
higher intelligence. Instinct, on the theistic view of
nature, can be nothing less than a divine inspiration,
placing the animal in relations to other things and
processes of the most complex character, and which
it could not have designed itself. Further, instinct is
by its very nature a thing unimprovable. Like the
laws of nature, it operates invariably, and if diminished
or changed it would prove useless for its purpose. It
is not like human inventions, slowly perfected under
the influence of thought and imagination, and
laboriously taught by each generation to its suc
cessors. It is inherited by each generation in all its
perfection, and from the first goes directly to its end
as if it were a merely physical cause.

The favourite explanation of instinct from the
side of agnostic evolution is that it originated in the
struggle for existence of some previous generation,

GOD IN NATURE 197

and was then perpetuated as an inheritance. But,
like most of the other explanations of this school, this
quietly takes for granted what should be proved.
That instinct is hereditary is true ; but the question
is how it began, and to say simply that it did begin
at some time is to tell us nothing. From a scientific
point of view the invariable operation of any natural
law affords no evidence of any gradual or sudden
origin of it at some point of past time ; and when
such law is connected with a complex organism and
various other laws and processes of the external
world, the supposition of its slowly arising from
nothing through many generations of animals be
comes absurd in its inefficiency and complexity.
Instinct must have originated in a perfect condition,
and with the organism and its environment already
established. A consideration of any of the almost
countless modifications of instinct in the lower
animals would show this. I shall borrow a very
apposite one from the remarkable work of the Duke
of Argyll on the Unity of Nature, which deserves
careful study by everyone who values common-sense
views on the subject : —

On a secluded lake in one of the Hebrides I observed
a dun-diver, or female of the red-breasted merganser (Her-
gus serrator\ with her brood of young ducklings. On giving
chase in the boat, we soon found that the young, although
not above a fortnight old, had such extraordinary powers ol
swimming and diving that it was almost impossible t
ture them. The distance they went under water and the

198 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

unexpected places from which they emerged, baffled all our
efforts for a considerable time. At last one of the brood
made for the shore, with the object of hiding among the
grass and heather which fringed the lake. We pursued it
as closely as we could ; but when the little bird gained the
shore our boat was still about twenty yards off. Long
drought had left a broad margin of small flat stones and
mud between the water and the usual bank. I saw the little
bird run up a couple of yards from the water and then sud
denly disappear. Knowing what was likely to be enacted,
I kept my eye fixed on the spot, and when the boat was run
upon the beach I proceeded to find and pick up the chick.
But on reaching the place of disappearance no sign of the
young merganser was to be seen. The closest scrutiny, with
the certain knowledge that it was there, failed to enable me
to detect it. Proceeding cautiously forward, I soon became
convinced that I had already overshot the mark, and on
turning round it was only to see the bird rise like an appa
rition from the stones, and, dashing past the stranded boat,
regain the lake, where, having now recovered its wind, it
instantly dived and disappeared. The tactical skill of the
whole of this manoeuvre and the success with which it was
executed were greeted with loud cheers from the party ; and
our admiration was not diminished when we remembered
that some two weeks before that time the little performer
had been coiled up inside the shell of an egg, and that
about a month before it was apparently nothing but a mass
of albumen and of fatty oils.

On this the Duke very properly remarks that all
idea of training and experience is absolutely ex
cluded, because it * assumes the pre-existence of the
very powers for which it professes to account ' ! He
then turns to the idea that animals are automata, or
4 machines.' Here it is to be observed that the essen-

GOD IN NA TURK 199

tial conception of a machine is twofold. First, it is
a merely mechanical structure, put together to do
certain things ; secondly, it must be related to a
combiner and constructor. If we think proper to
call the young merganser a machine, we cannot ad
mit the first of these characters without also admitting
the second — more especially as the bird is in every
way a more complex and marvellous machine than
any of human contrivance. He concludes his notice
of this attempt at explanation in the following sugges
tive words : —

Passing now from explanations which explain nothing,
is there any light in the theory that animals are 'automata'?
Was my little dipper a diving machine? It seems to me
that there is at least a glimmer shining through this idea— a
glimmer as of a real light struggling through a thick fog.
The fog arises out of the mists of language—the ^confound
ing and confusion of meanings literal with meanings meta
phorical, the mistaking of partial for complete analogies.
' Machine ' is the word by which we designate those com
binations of mechanical force which are contrived and put
together by man to do certain things. One essential
characteristic of them is that they belong to the world of
the not living ; they are destitute of that which we k
life, and of all the attributes by which it is distinguished
Machines have no sensibility. When we say of anything
that it has been done by a machine, we mean that it has b<
done by something which is not alive. In this literal signi
fication it is therefore pure nonsense to say that any giving
being is a machine. It is simply a misapplicati on- of lan
guage to the extent of calling one thing by the name
L?h r thing, and that other so different as to be its oo^

MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

site or contradictory. There can be no reasoning, no clear
ing up of truth, unless we keep definite words for definite
ideas. Or if the idea to which a given word has been ap
propriated be a complex idea, and we desire to deal with one
element only of the meaning separated from the rest, then
indeed we may continue to use the word for this selected
portion of its meaning, provided always that we bear in
mind what it is that we are doing. This may be, and often
is, a necessary operation, for language is not rich enough to
furnish separate words for all the complex elements which
enter into ideas apparently very simple; and so of this word
machine. There is an element in its meaning which is
always very important, which in common language is
often predominant, and which we may legitimately choose
to make exclusive of every other. This essential element in
our idea of a machine is that its powers, whatever they may
be, are derived, and not original. There may be great
knowledge in the work done by a machine, but the know
ledge is not in it ; there may be great skill, but the skill is
not in it ; great foresight, but foresight is not in it ; in short,
great exhibition of all the powers of mind, but the mind is
not in the machine itself. Whatever it does is done in
virtue of its construction, which construction is due to a
mind which has designed it for the exhibition of certain
powers and the performance of certain functions. These
may be very simple, or they may be very complicated ; but
whether simple or complicated the whole play of its opera
tions is limited and measured by the intentions of its con
structor. If he be himself limited, either in opportunity or
knowledge or in power, there will be a corresponding limi
tation in the things he invents and makes. Accordingly, in
regard to man, he cannot make a machine which has any of
the gifts or powers of life. He can construct nothing which
has sensibility or consciousness, or any other of even the
lowest attributes of living creatures. And this absolute de
stitution of even apparent originality in a machine, this entire

GOD IN NATURE 201

absence of any share of consciousness, or of sensibility, or of
will, is one part of our very conception of it. But that other
part of our conception of a machine which consists in its
relation to a contriver and constructor is equally essential,
and may, if we choose, be separated from the rest, and may
be taken as a representative of the whole. If, then, by any
agency in nature, or outside of it, which can contrive and
build up structures endowed with the gifts of life ; structures
which shall not only digest but which shall also feel and see ;
which shall be sensible of enjoyment from things condu
cive to their welfare, and of alarm on account of things
which are dangerous to the same — then such structures
have the same relation to that agency which machines have
to man ; and in this aspect it may be a legitimate figure
of speech to call them living machines. What these
machines do is different in kind from the things which
human machines do, but both are alike in this — that what
ever they do is done in virtue of their construction and of
the powers which have been given to them by the mind
which made them.

Lastly, the reason of man himself is an actual
illustration of mind and will as an efficient power in
nature, and implies a creative mind. We cannot
imagine the development of reason from that which has
no reason, and must admit that only the ' inspiration
of the Almighty' could have given understanding.
The inherent absurdity of the evolution of powers
and properties from things in which they are not even
potentially contained appears nowhere more clearly
than here. The subject is, however, sufficiently im
portant to demand a separate chapter.

202

MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

CHAPTER IX '

MAN IN NATURE

FEW words arc used among us more loosely than
' nature.' Sometimes it stands for the material uni
verse as a whole. Sometimes it is personified as a
sort of goddess, working her o\vn sweet will with
material things. Sometimes it expresses the forces
which act on matter, and again it stands for material
things themselves. It is spoken of as subject to law,
but just as often natural law is referred to in terms
which imply that nature itself is the lawgiver. It is
supposed to be opposed to the equally vague term
' supernatural ' ; but this term is used not merely to
denote things above and beyond nature, if there are
such, but certain opinions held respecting natural
things. On the other hand, the natural is contrasted
with the artificial, though this is always the outcome
of natural powers and is certainly not supernatural.
Again, it is applied to the inherent properties of beings
for which we are unable to account, and which we are
content to say constitute their nature. We cannot
look into the works of any of the more speculative
1 The substance of this chapter was first published in the Princeton
Review*

MAN IN NA TURE 20'-

writers of the day without meeting with all these uses
of the word, and have to be constantly on our guard,
lest by a change of its meaning we shall be led to
assent to some proposition altogether unfounded.

For illustrations of this convenient though dan
gerous ambiguity, I may turn at random to almost
any page in Darwin's Origin of Species. In the
beginning of Chapter III. he speaks of animals ' in a
state of nature/ that is, not in a domesticated or arti
ficial condition, so that here nature is opposed to the
devices of man. Then he speaks of species as * arising
in nature,' that is, spontaneously produced in the
midst of certain external conditions or environment
outside of the organic world. A little farther on he
speaks of useful varieties as given to man by 'the
hand of Nature,' which here becomes an imaginary
person ; and it is worthy of notice that in this place
the printer or proof-reader has given the word an
initial capital, as if a proper name. In the next
section he speaks of the 'works of nature' as superior
to those of art. Here the word is not only opposed
to the artificial, but seems to imply some power above
material things and comparable with or excelling the
contriving intelligence of man. I do not mean by
these examples to imply that Darwin is in this
respect more inaccurate than other writers. On the
contrary, he is greatly surpassed by many of his con
temporaries in the varied and fantastic uses of this
versatile word. An illustration which occurs to me

204 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

here, as at once amusing and instructive, is an ex
pression used by Romanes, and which appears to him
to give a satisfactory explanation of the mystery of
elevation in nature. He says, ' Nature selects the
best individuals out of each generation to live.' Here
nature must be an intelligent agent, or the statement
is simply nonsensical. The same alternative applies
to much of the use of the favourite term ' natural
selection.' In short, those who use such modes of
expression would be more consistent if they were at
once to come back to the definition of Seneca, that

I nature is * a certain divine purpose manifested in the
world.'

The derivation of the word gives us the idea of
something produced or becoming, and it is curious
that the Greek pJiysis, though etymologically distinct,
conveys the same meaning — a coincidence which may
perhaps lead us to a safe and serviceable definition.
Nature rightly understood is, in short, an orderly
system of things in time and space, and this not in
variable, but in a state of constant movement and
progress, whereby it is always becoming something
different from what it was. Now man is placed in
the midst of this orderly, law-regulated yet ever-pro
gressive system, and is himself a part of it ; and if
we can understand his real relations to its other parts,
we shall have made some approximation to a true
philosophy. If, with Tyndall, we were to place man
outside of nature, then the human mind would at once

MAN IN NATURE

205

become to us a supernatural intelligence. But truth for
bids such a conclusion. The reason of man, though far
beyond the intelligence of other animals, so harmonises
with natural laws, and acts in such uniformity with
these, that it is evidently a part of the great unity of
nature, and we cannot, without violence, dissociate man
from nature. If we could do so, we should have good
ground to distrust all the conclusions of our own
reason, in so far as they relate to the material uni
verse. In short, we should cut away the foundations
of science, and what remained of religion would be
preternatural, in the bad sense of destroying the unity
of nature, and with it our confidence in the unity of
God.

It may be well to remark here that this considera
tion limits and defines our use of the much-abused
word ' supernatural/ which perhaps it would be well
for us to follow the example of our Christian Scrip
tures in avoiding altogether as a misleading term. If
by supernatural we mean something outside of and
above nature and natural law, there is really no such
thing in the universe. There is no doubt that which is
' spiritual,' as distinguished from that which is natural
in the material sense, but the spiritual has its own
laws, which are not in conflict with those of the1
natural. Even God cannot in this sense be said to
be supernatural, since His will is in strict conformity
with natural law. Yet this absurd sense of the term
supernatural is constantly employed both by the-

2o6 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

i enemies and friends of religion, to the disgust of
all clear thinkers. The only true sense in which any
being or thing can be said to be supernatural is that
in which we use it with reference to the creation of
matter or energy or the constitution of natural law.

I The power which caused these things is above nature,
but not outside of nature, for matter, energy, and
law must be included in, and in harmony with, the

i creative will.

To return from this digression, if man is a part
of nature, then we see how not only his bodily or
ganism conforms to natural structures and laws, but
how his mind is in harmony with the external world,
so that he can comprehend it, enter into it, and
utilise it for his own purposes. Even his moral and
religious ideas must in this case be more or less
adapted to his conditions of existence as a part of
nature. We have here also a sure guarantee for the
correctness of our perceptions and of our conclusions
respecting the laws of nature. In like manner, there
is here a sense in which man is above nature, because
he is placed at the head of it. In another sense he
is inferior to the aggregate of nature, because, as
Agassiz well puts it, there is in the universe a 'wealth
of endowment of the most comprehensive mental
manifestations ' which he can never fully compre
hend.

Still further, if the universe has been created, then
just as its laws must be in harmony with the will of

MAN IN NATURE 207

the Creator, so must our mental constitution ; and
man as a reasoning and conscious being must be made
in the image of his Maker. If we discard the idea of
an intelligent Creator, then mind and all its powers
must be potentially in the atoms of matter or in the
forces which move them ; but this is a mere form of
words, and most unscientific, since it requires us to
attribute to matter properties which experiment does
not show it to possess. Thus the existence of man
is not only a positive proof of mind in nature, but
affords the strongest possible evidence of a higher
creative mind, from which that of man emanates.
YEven on the principle of evolution, no lower power
could have produced the universe than the mind
which has been evolved from it, and the power which
did this must have been at least as much greater, and
more intelligent, as the universe exceeds human power
and human capacities to fathom its mysteries. Thus?,
we return to the Pauline idea that the power and
divinity of the Creator are proved by the works
which He has made. Legitimate science can say
nothing more and nothing lessj

But even Science may be permitted to point to
what lies beyond her domain, and to indicate the
probability that the God who has in the long geologic
ages fitted the earth for man, and endowed it with so
many evidences of His own power and wisdom, and
who has made us in His own image, has not left us as
orphans, but has given us a revelation of His will, and

208 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

has provided for us a Saviour from all the sins and
evils that afflict humanity.

Regarding man, then, as a part of nature, we must
hold to his entering into the grand unity of the
natural system, and must not set up imaginary anta
gonisms between man and nature, as if he were out
side of it. An instance of this appears in TynctelPs
celebrated Belfast address, where he says, in explana
tion of the errors of certain of the older philosophers,
that ' the experiences which formed the weft and
woof of their theories were chosen not from the study
of nature, but from that which lay much nearer to
them — the observation of Man ' ; a statement this
which would make man a supernatural or at least a
preternatural being. i Again, it does not follow that
because man is a partxH nature that he must be pre
cisely on a level with its other parts. There are in
nature many planes of existence, and man is no doubt
on one of its higher planes and possesses distinguish
ing powers and properties of his own. Nature, like a
perfect organism, is not all eye or all hand, but in
cludes various organs, and, so far as we sec it in our
planet, man is its head, though we can easily conceive
that there may be higher beings in other parts of the
universe beyond our ken.X*

r—

!jjhe view which we may take of man's position
relatively to the beings which are nearest to him,
namely, the lower animals, will depend on our point
of sight — whether that of mere anatomy and physio-

MAN IN NATURE 209

logy,_or that of psychology and pneumatology as
well, f This distinction is the more important, since
under the somewhat delusive term * biology ' it has
been customary to mix up all these considerations ;
while on the other hand those anatomists who regard
all the functions of organic beings as mechanical
and physical, do not scruple to employ this term
biology for their science, though on their hypothesis
there can be no such thing as life, and consequently
the use of the word by them must be either supersti
tious or hypocritical.

/fi| Anatomically considered, man is an animal of the
class Mammalia. In that class, notwithstanding the
heroic efforts of some modern detractors from his
dignity to place him with the monkeys in the order
Primates, he undoubtedly belongs to a distinct crder.
I have elsewhere argued that if he were an extinct
animal, the study of the bones of his hand or of his
head would suffice to convince any competent palaeon
tologist that he represents a distinct order, as far
apart from the highest apes as they are from the car-
nivora. That he belongs to a distinct family no
anatomist denies, and the same unanimity of course
obtains as to his generic and specific distinctness.
On the other hand, no zoological systematist now/j
doubts that all the races of men are specifically iden-JJ
tical. Thus we have the anatomical position of man
firmly fixed in the system of nature, and he must be
content to acknowledge his kinship not only with the

O

2io MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

higher animals nearest to him, but with the humblest
animalcule. With all he shares a common material,
and many common features of structur J~jf

When we ascend to the somewhat higher plane of
physiology we find in a general way the same relation
ship to animals. Of the four grand leading functions
of the animal — nutrition, reproduction, voluntary
motion, and sensation — all are performed by man as
by other animals. Here, however, there are some
marked divergences connected with special anatomi
cal structures on the one hand and with his higher
endowments on the other. With regard to food, for
example, man might be supposed to be limited by his
masticatory and digestive apparatus to succulent vege
table substances. But by virtue of his inventive
faculties he is practically unlimited, being able by
artificial processes to adapt the whole range of vege
table and animal food substances to his use. He is very
poorly furnished with natural tools to aid in procuring
food, as claws, tusk, &c., but by invented implements
he can practically surpass all other creatures. The
long time of helplessness in infancy, while it is neces
sary for the development of his powers, is a practical
disadvantage which leads to many social arrange
ments and contrivances specially characteristic of man.
Man's sensory powers, while inferior in range to those
of many other animals, are remarkable for balance
and completeness, leading to perceptions of differences
in colours, sounds, &c. which lie at the foundation

MAN IN NATURE 211

of art. The specialisation of the hand again connects
itself with contrivances which render an animal natu
rally defenceless the most formidable of all, and an
animal naturally gifted with indifferent locomotive
powers able to outstrip all others in speed and
range of locomotion. Thus the physiological endow
ments of man, while common to him with other
animals, and in some respects inferior to theirs, present,
in combination with his higher powers, points of
difference which lead to the most special and unex
pected results.

In his psychical relations, using this term in its
narrower sense, we may see still greater divergences
from the line of the lower animals. These may no
doubt be connected with his greater volume of brain ;
but recent researches seem to show that brain has
more to do with motor and sensory powers than
with those that are intellectual, and thus that a larger
brain is only indirectly connected with higher mental
manifestations. Even in the lower animals it is clear
that the ferocity of the tiger, the constructive instinct
of the beaver, and the sagacity of the elephant depend
on psychical powers which are beyond the reach of the
anatomist's knife ; and this is still more markedly the
case in man. Following in part the ingenious
analysis of Mivart, we may regard the psychical
powers of man as reflex, instinctive, emotional, and
intellectual ; and in each of these aspects we shall
find points of resemblance to other animals and of

212 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

divergence from them. In regard to reflex actions,
or those which are merely automatic, inasmuch as
they are intended to provide for certain important
functions without thought or volition, their develop
ment is naturally in the inverse ratio of psychical ele
vation, and man is consequently in this respect in no
way superior to lower animals.

The same may be said with reference to instinc
tive powers, which provide often for complex actions
in a spontaneous and unreasoning manner. In these
also man is rather deficient than otherwise ; and
since from their nature they limit their possessors to
narrow ranges of activity, and fix them within a
definite scope of experience and efficiency, they would
be incompatible with those higher and more versatile
inventive powers which man possesses. The comb-
building instinct of the bee, the nest-weaving instinct
of the bird, are fixed and invariable things, obviously
incompatible with the varied contrivance of man ; and
while instinct is perfect within its narrow range, it
cannot rise beyond this into the sphere of unlimited
thought and contrivance. Higher than mere instinct
are the powers of imagination, memory, and associa
tion, and here man at once steps beyond his animal
associates, and develops these in such a variety of
ways that even the rudest tribes of men, who often
appear to trust more to these endowments than to
higher powers, rise into a plane immeasurably above
that of the highest and most intelligent brutes, and

MAN IN NATURE 213

toward which they are unable, except to a very
limited degree, to raise those of the more domesticable
animals which they endeavour to train into com
panionship with themselves. It is, however, in these
domesticated animals that we find the highest degree
of approximation to ourselves in emotional develop
ment, and this is perhaps one of the points that fits
them for such human association. In approaching
the higher psychical endowments, the affinity of man
and the brute appears to diminish and at length to
cease, and it is left to him alone to rise into the
domain of the rational and ethical.

Those supreme endowments of man we may,
following the nomenclature of ancient philosophy
and of our sacred Scriptures, call ' pneumatical ' or
spiritual. They consist of consciousness, reason, and
moral volition. That man possesses these powers
everyone knows ; that they exist or can be developed
in lower animals no one has succeeded in proving.
\ Here at length we have a severance between man and
material nature. Yet it does not divorce him from
the unity of nature, except on the principles of
atheism. For if it separates him from animals it
] allies him with the Power who made and planned the
! animals. To the naturalist the fact that such capaci
ties exist in a being who in his anatomical structure
so closely resembles the lower animals, constitutes an
evidence of the independent existence of those
powers, and of their spiritual character and rela-

214 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

tion to a higher power, which, I think, no metaphysi
cal reasoning or materialistic scepticism will suffice to
invalidate. It would be presumption, however, from
the standpoint of the naturalist to discuss at length
the powers of man's spiritual being. I may refer
merely to a few points which illustrate at once his
connection with other creatures, and his superiority to
them as a higher member of natures

And first we may notice those axiomatic beliefs
which lie at the foundation of human reasoning, and
which, while apparently in harmony with nature, do not
admit of verification except by an experience impos
sible to finite beings. Whether these are ultimate
truths, or merely results of the constitution bestowed
on us, or effects of the direct action of the creative mind
on ours, they are to us like the instincts of animals —
infallible and unchanging. Yet just as the instincts of
animals unfailingly connect them with their surround
ings, our intuitive beliefs fit us for understanding
nature and for existing in it as our environment.
These beliefs also serve to connect man with his fel
low man ; and in this aspect we may associate with
them those universal ideas of right and wrong, of
immortality, and of powers above ourselves, which
pervade humanity.

Another phase of this spiritual constitution is
illustrated by the ways in which man, starting from
powers and contrivances common to him and animals,
develops them into new and higher uses and results.

MAN IN NATURE 215

) This is markedly seen in the gift of speech. Man,
*like other animals, has certain natural utterances ex
pressive of emotions or feelings. He can also, like
some of them, imitate the sounds produced by ani
mate or inanimate objects, and he has better mechani
cal powers of articulation than other animals. But
when he develops these gifts into a system of speech,
expressing not mere sounds occurring in nature, but,
by association and analogy with these, properties and
relations of objects, and general and abstract ideas, he
rises into the higher sphere of the spiritual. He thus
elevates a power of utterance common to him with
animals to a higher plane, and, connecting it with his
capacity for understanding nature and arriving at
general truths, asserts his kinship to the great creative
mind, and furnishes a link of connection between the
material universe and the spiritual Creator^

The mode of existence of man in nature is as
well illustrated by his arts and inventions as by any
thing else ; and these serve also to enlighten us as to
the distinction between the natural and the artificial.
Naturalists often represent man as dependent on
nature for the first hints of his useful arts. There
are in animal nature tailors, weavers, masons, potters,
carpenters, miners, and sailors, independently of man,
and many of the tools, implements, and machines which
he is said to have invented were perfected in the struc
tures of lower animals long before he came into exist
ence. In all these things man has been an assiduous

2i6 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

learner from nature, though in some of them, as for
example in the art of aerial navigation, he has striven
in vain to imitate the powers possessed by other ani
mals. But it may well be doubted whether man is in
this respect so much an imitator as has been supposed,
and whether the resemblance of his plans to those
previously realised in nature docs not depend on that
general fitness of things which suggests to rational
minds similar means to secure similar ends. But in say
ing this we in effect say that man is not only a part of
nature, but that his mind is in harmony with the plans
of nature, or, in other words, with the methods of
the creative mind. Man is also curiously in harmony
with external nature in the combination in his works
of the ideas of plan and adaptation, of ornament and
use. In architecture, for example, devising certain
styles or orders, and these for the most part based on
imitations of natural things, he adapts these to his
ends, just as in nature types of structure are adapted
to a great variety of uses ; and he strives to combine,
as in nature, perfect adaptation to use with conformity
to type or style. So in his attempts at ornament he
copies natural forms, and uses these forms to decorate
or conceal parts intended to serve essential purposes
in the structure. This is at least the case in the
purer styles of construction. It is in the more debased
styles that arches, columns, triglyphs, or buttresses
are placed where they can serve no useful purpose,
and become mere excrescences. But in this case the

MAN IN NATURE 217

abnormality resulting breeds in the beholder an un-
pleasing mental confusion, and causes him, even when
he is unable to trace his feelings to their source, to be
dissatisfied with the result. Thus man is in harmony
with that arrangement of nature which causes every
ornamental part to serve some use, and which unites
adaptation with plan.

The following of nature must also form the basis
of those fine arts which are not necessarily connected
with any utility ; and in man's pursuit of art of this
kind we see one of the most recondite and at first
sight inexplicable of his correspondences with the
other parts of nature, for there is no other creature
that pursues art for its own sake. Modern archaeo
logical discovery has shown that the art of sculpture
began with the oldest known races of man, and that
they succeeded in producing very accurate imitations
of natural objects. But from this primitive starting-
point two ways diverge. One leads to the conven
tional and the grotesque, and this course has been
followed by many semi-civilised nations. Another
leads to accurate imitation of nature, along with new
combinations arising from the play of intellect and
imagination. Let us look for a moment at the actual
result of the development of these diverse styles of art,
and at their effect on the culture of humanity as exist
ing in nature. We may imagine a people who have
wholly discarded nature in their art, and have devoted
themselves to the monstrous and the grotesque. Such a

218 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

people, so far as art is concerned, separates itself
widely from nature and from the mind of the Creator,
and its taste and possibly its morals sink to the level
of the monsters it produces. Again, we may imagine
a people in all respects following nature in a literal
and servile manner. Such a people would probably
attain to but a very moderate amount of culture but
having a good foundation, it might ultimately build
up higher things. Lastly, we may fancy a people
who, like the old Greeks, strove to add to the copying
of nature a higher and ideal beauty, by combining in
one the best features of many natural objects, or
devising new combinations not found in nature itself.
In the first of these conditions of art we have a falling
away from or caricaturing of the beauty of nature. In
the second we have merely a pupilage to nature. In
the third we find man aiming to be himself a creator,
but basing his creations on what nature has given
him. Thus all art worthy of the name is really a
development of nature. It is true the eccentricities
of art and fashion are so erratic that they may often
seem to have no law. Yet they are all under the rule
of nature ; and hence even uninstructed common-
sense, unless dulled by long familiarity, detects in some
degree their incongruity, and though it may be amused
for a time, at length becomes wearied with the mental
irritation and nervous disquiet which they produce.

I may be permitted to add that all this applies
with still greater force to systems of science and

MAN IN NATURE 219

philosophy. Ultimately these must all be tested by
the verities of nature to which man necessarily sub
mits his intellect, and he who builds for aye must
build on the solid ground of nature. The natural
environment presents itself in this connection as an
educator of man. From the moment when infancy
begins to exercise its senses on the objects around,
this education begins— training the powers of ob
servation and comparison, cultivating the conception
of the grand and beautiful, leading to analysis and
abstract and general ideas. Left to itself, it is true
this natural education extends but a little way, and
ordinarily it becomes obscured or crushed by the
demands of a hard utility, or by an artificial literary
culture, or by the habitude of monstrosity and unfit-
ness in art. Yet when rightly directed it is capable
of becoming an instrument of the highest culture,
intellectual, aesthetic, and even moral. I have in
writing on evolution in education insisted on the
importance of following nature in the education of
the young, and of dropping much that is arbitrary
and artificial. Here I would merely remark that
when we find that the accurate and systematic study
of nature trains most effectually some of the more
practical powers of mind, and leads to the highest
development of taste for beauty in art, we see in t
relation the unity of man and nature, and the unity
of both with something higher than either.

It may, however occur to us here that when we

220 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

consider man as an improver and innovator in the
world, there is much that suggests a contrariety be
tween him and nature, and that instead of being the
pupil of his environment he becomes its tyrant. In
this aspect man, and especially civilised man, appears
as the enemy of wild nature, so that in those districts
which he has most fully subdued many animals and
plants have been exterminated, and nearly the whole
surface has come under his processes of culture, and
has lost the characteristics which belonged to it in its
primitive state. Nay, more, we find that by certain
kinds of so-called culture man tends to exhaust and
impoverish the soil, so that it ceases to minister to
his comfortable support and becomes a desert. Vast
regions of the earth are in this impoverished con
dition, and the westward march of exhaustion warns
us that the time may come when even in compara
tively new countries like America the land will cease
to be able to sustain its inhabitants. Behind this
stands a still farther and portentous possibility. The
resources of chemistry are now being taxed to the
utmost to discover methods by which the materials of
human food may be produced synthetically ; and we
may possibly at some future time find that albumen
and starch may be manufactured cheaply from their
elements by artificial processes. Such a discovery
might render man independent of the animal and
vegetable kingdoms. Agriculture might become an
unnecessary and unprofitable art. A time might

MAN IN NATURE 221

come when it would no longer be possible to find
a green field, a forest, or a wild animal ; and when
the whole earth would be one great factory, in which
toiling millions were producing all the materials
of food, clothing, and shelter. Such a world may
never exist, but its possible existence may be
imagined, and its contemplation brings vividly
before us the vast powers inherent in man as a
subverter of the ordinary course of nature. Yet even
this ultimate annulling of wild nature would be
brought about, not by anything preternatural in man,
but simply by his placing himself in alliance with
certain natural powers and agencies, and by their
means attaining dominion over the rest.

Here there rises before us a spectre which science
and philosophy appear afraid to face, and which asks
the dread question, What is the cause of the apparent
abnormality in the relations of man and nature ? In
attempting to solve this question we must admit
that the position of man even here is not without
natural analogies. \J he stronger preys upon the
weaker, the lower form gives place to the higher, and
in the progress of geological time old species have
died out in favour of newer, and old forms of life have,
been exterminated by later successors. Man, as the
newest and highest of all, has thus the natural right
to subdue and rule the world. \ Yet there can be little
doubt that he uses this right unwisely and cruelly,
and these terms themselves explain why he does so,

222 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

t because they imply freedom of will. Given a system
of nature destitute of any being higher than the
instinctive animal, and introduce into it a free rational
agent, and you have at once an element of instability.

, So long as his free thought and purpose continue in
unison with the arrangements of his environment,
so long all will be harmonious ; but the very hypothesis
of freedom implies that he can act otherwise ; and so
perfect is the equilibrium of existing things that one
wrong or unwise action may unsettle the nice balance,
and set in operation trains of causes and effects pro
ducing continued and ever-increasing disturbance.
This ' fall of man/ we know as a matter of ob
servation and experience, has actually occurred ; and
it can be retrieved only by casting man back again
into the circle of merely instinctive action, or by
carrying him forward until by growth in wisdom and
knowledge he becomes fitted to be the lord of creation.
The first method has been proved unsuccessful by the
rebound of humanity against all the attempts to curb
and suppress its liberty. The second has been the
effort of all reformers and philanthropists since the
world began ; and its imperfect success affords a strong
ground for clinging to the theistic view of nature, for
soliciting the intervention of a Power higher than
man, and for hoping for a final restitution of aUthings
through the intervention of that PowerJ^Mere
materialistic evolution must ever and necessarily fail
to account for the higher nature of man, and also for

MAN IN NATURE 223

his moral aberrations. These only come rationally
into the system of nature under the supposition of a
Higher Intelligence, from whom man emanates and
whose nature he shares. ^.

But on this theistic view we are introduced to a
kind of unity and of evolution for a future age, which
is the great topic of revelation, and is not unknown
to science and philosophy, in connection with the law
of progress and development deducible from the
geological history, in which an ascending series of
lower animals culminates in man himself. Why
should there not be a new and higher plane of exist
ence to be attained to by humanity— a new geological
period, so to speak, in which present anomalies shall
be corrected, and the grand unity of the universe and
its harmony with its Maker fully restored? This isr
what Paul anticipates when he tells us of a ' pneu-
matical ' or spiritual body to succeed to the present
natural or ' psychical' one, or what Jesus Himself
tells us when He says that in the future state we shall,
be like to the angels. Angels are not known to us asj
objects of scientific observation, but such an order of
beings is quite conceivable, and this not as super-,
natural, but as part of the order of nature. They are
cratted beings like ourselves, subject to the laws of
the universe, yet free and intelligent and liable to
error, in bodily constitution freed from many of the
limitations imposed on us, mentally having higher
ran-e and grasp, and consequently masters of natural

224 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

powers not under our control. In short, we have
here pictured to us an order of beings forming a
part of nature, yet in their powers as miraculous to
us as we might be supposed to be to lower animals,
could they think of such things.

This idea of angels bridges over the otherwise
impassable gulf between humanity and deity, and
illustrates a higher plane than that of man in his
present state, but attainable in the future. Dim
perceptions of this would seem to constitute the
substratum of the ideas of the so-called polytheistic
religions. Christianity itself is in this aspect not so
much a revelation of the supernatural as the highest
bond of the great unity of nature. It reveals to us
the perfect man who is also one with God, and the
mission of this divine man to restore the harmonies
of God and humanity, and consequently also of man
with his natural environment in this world, and with
his spiritual environment in the higher world of the
future. If it is true that nature now groans because
of man's depravity, and that man himself shares in
the evils of this dis-harmony with nature around him,
it is clear that if man could be restored to his true
place in nature he would be restored to happiness
and to harmony with God ; and if, on the other hand;
he can be restored to harmony with God, he will then
be restored also to harmony with his natural environ
ment, and so to life and happiness and immortality.
It is here that the old story of Eden, and the teaching

MAN IN NATURE 225

of Christ, and the prophecy of the New Jerusalem
strike the same note which all material nature gives
forth when we interrogate it respecting its relations to
man. The profound manner in which these truths
appear in the teaching of Christ has perhaps not been
appreciated as it should, because we have not sought
in that teaching the philosophy of nature which it
contains. When He points to the common weeds of
the fields, and asks us to consider the garments more
gorgeous than those of kings in which God has clothed
them, and when He says of these same wild flowers,
so daintily made by the Supreme Artificer, that to-day
they are, and to-morrow are cast into the oven, He
gives us not merely a lesson of faith, but a deep
insight into that want of unison which, centring in
humanity, reaches all the way from the wild flower
to the God who made it, and requires for its rectifica
tion nothing less than the breathing of that Divine
Spirit which first evoked order and life out of primeval
chaos. When He points out to us the growth of these
flowers without any labour of their own, He opens up
one of the most profound analogies between the
growth of the humblest living thing and that of the
new spiritual nature which may be planted in man by
that same Divine Spirit.

226 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

CHAPTER X

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

WE have already seen that, agnostics themselves
being judges, man must have a religion, and that if
he makes the material universe the highest object of
veneration this must be to him his God, while if he
is content to take humanity as his highest ideal, he
must look for the best possible manifestations of
human nature, else his religion can have no elevating
power. To the theist the universe is not in itself
God, but may testify to God as its Creator ; to the
Christian the noblest ideal of humanity along with
divinity is the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is evident, however, that the current Darwinian
and Neo-Lamarckian forms of evolution fall entirely
short of what even the agnostic may desiderate as
religion.

yjf the universe is causeless and a product of for
tuitous variation and selection, and if there is no
design or final cause apparent in it, it becomes lite
rally the enthronement of unreason, and can have no
claims to the veneration or regard of an intelligent

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 227

being. If man is merely an accidentally improved
descendant of apes, his intuitions and decisions as to
things unseen must be valueless and unfounded.
Hence it is a lamentable fact that the greater part of
evolutionist men of science openly discard all religious
belief, and teach this unbelief to the multitude who
cannot understand the processes by which it is arrived
at, but who readily appreciate the immoral results
to which it leads in the struggle for existence or the
stretching after material advantages?!

It is true that there may be a theistic form of
evolution, but let it be observed that this is essentially
distinct from Darwinism or Neo-Lamarckianism. It
postulates a Creator, and regards the development of
the universe as the development of His plans by
secondary causes of His own institution. It neces-l
sarily admits design and final cause. It can even set
up plausible analogies between the supposed material
development and that which is moral and spiritual,
many of which are, however, based on misstatements
as to natural facts. The weakness of this position
consists in the objections to the doctrine of evolution
itself as a means of explaining nature, and in the in
congruity between the methods supposed by evolution
and the principles of design, finality, and ethical purity
inseparable from a true and elevating religion. The
theistic evolutionists have also before them the danger
that in the constant flux of philosophic opinion
they will find their system of theology, which at

p 2

228 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

present rides so triumphantly on the flood -tide of a
popular movement, eventually stranded, as so many
older ones have been, on the sandbanks of the
ebb.

ClTwill therefore be the safest as well as the most
cancTTd and truthful course, both for the scientific
worker and the theologian, to avoid committing him
self to any of the current forms of evolution^ The
amount of assumption and reasoning in a vicious
circle involved in these renders it certain that none
of them can long survive. On the other hand, the
extensive investigations as to facts, and the varied
discussions which have arisen out of Darwinism, can
not fail to leave an impress on science and to increase
our knowledge, at least as to the modes of creative
development. The winnowing process has already
begun, and our immediate successors may be able to
secure the pure grains of truth after the chaff of un
proved hypotheses has been swept away.

Looking to this desirable result, there are certain
principles that arise out of the previous discussion to
which we may firmly hold without fear of being dis
lodged by any assailant.

i. No system of the universe can dispense with
a First Cause, eternal and self-existent ; and the First
Cause must necessarily be the living God, whose will
is the ultimate force and the origin of natural law.
Our knowledge of God cannot be direct, but must be
mediate, either through His works as Creator or

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 229

through such revelation as He may have made of
Himself to the human mind.

2. In studying natural things we must keep before
our minds the certainty that the laws which we can
ascertain have no validity except as expressions of
the power behind nature. Consequently the reference
of any effect to a secondary cause or the ascertaining
of the law of operation of such cause in no respect dimi-
niJpTes the dependence of the whole on the Divine will.

3. While we are justified in taking an anthropo
morphic view of the operations of God as being our
selves spiritually in His image, we must bear in mind
that in many important respects He must infinitely
transcend us and our modes of thought. To Him
time and space are not limitations as to us, and the
microscopically small may be relatively as great as
that which seems to us almost infinitely large. It is
sometimes represented as derogatory to God that He
should paint the petals of flowers ; but with Him this
is not painting. He deals with things invisible to the
human painter, with the individual cells, with the
pigment which they contain, with the arrangement of
the atoms and molecules that make the pigment.
To Him the arrangement of a multitude of atoms to
make a microscopic dot of pigment must be neither
a greater nor less work than the ordering of a system
of worlds. The immensity of the universe can in no
respect distract His attention from the humblest
atom, because He is present and efficient in all.

2 3o MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

^ 4. We have already seen that it results from this
that material nature cannot fully reveal God to us.
Our present knowledge of nature is, as we too well
know, relatively very small. But even if we could
know, and have distinctly before our minds every
fact and law of the whole universe and all their rela
tions and interactions, we should on the whole have
only one set of possibilities out of an infinite number ;
and, as we have already seen, the manifestation of
God would be in a manner which must be in many
respects the converse of His essential properties. A
photograph represents to me a friend, but it is not
the friend himself; a building represents an archi
tect, but it is not the architect. It would seem as if
in many current arguments respecting agnosticism
these simple principles were altogether overlooked.

^5. Creation was not an instantaneous process, but

extended through periods of vast duration. In every
stage we may rest assured that God, like a wise
builder, used every previous course as a support for
the next ; that He built each succeeding storey of the
wonderful edifice on that previously prepared for it ;
and that His plan developed itself as His work pro
ceeded. So far, there must have been evolution and
development. But the attempt to narrow this plan
to any one little principle that we have laboriously
worked out must be futile. Such analogies, even if
well founded in nature, can only be partial and
limited in application, and nothing can be really

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 231

gained by an enthusiastic application of them beyond
their legitimate bounds. The present condition of
the Darwinian doctrine of natural selection clearly
proves this, and the various substitutes for it, or
additions to it, now proposed are all equally partial.
Instead of regarding any of these theories as final or
sufficient, we should scrutinise them as to their
validity and extent of application, and we shall find
that, in so far as any of them have reality, they cover
only a few facts, and still leave a boundless region to
be explored, even with reference to the modes of the
development.

6. Even our ideas of design and final cause must
be held in subjection to the infinite nature of God.
Crude views on these subjects have, perhaps, aided in
producing present scepticism as to natural theology.
When Hegel says that all nature is final cause, and
that it isjHDt necessary to conceive of final cause as
it exists in our consciousness, he does not necessarily
imply that nature itself is God, but that God's design
.as manifested in nature is only in a small part inte
ligible to us. We are constantly discovering new
uses and adaptations previously unknown ; and in ti
Divine mind there must be infinite designs and
objects as yet quite inaccessible to us. We may learn
this by a moment's thought of the development
geological time. An intelligent observer introduce
to the earth when tenanted only by aquatic mverte
brates would reason as to this as a finality ; but

232 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

might by no means be able to divine the plan and
design of the Creator to be afterwards realised in the
vertebrate animals and in man. Thus both in
amount and in time the design and final cause in
nature would be very partially conceivable by him.
This is what the Bible means when it points to the
glory of God Himself as the final cause ; and we can
well imagine that this glory may shine with infinitely
greater effulgence before the minds of higher intelli
gences, or before our own minds in the future.

The same consideration helps us to understand
how we may be disposed even to condemn as im
perfect the arrangements of nature. The time was
when ferocious wild beasts were the lords of the
earth ; but they and their doings arc to be judged by
the laws of their own order, not by the higher ideal
of our sentiments or of the nature of God, and their
uses are to be gauged by the future that \v>s to
succeed them as well as by their own timeA Man
himsel£Jias faijed so far to realise the highesVldeal
embodied in his nature and capacities ; but God has
farther designs with humanity, to be realised in the
< manifestation of the sons of God^ We may thus
learn that, while God gives life, there is a struggle, not
for existence, but against evil ; and we may have
faith that the fit will survive in the highest and best
sense of an approving conscience now and in the
coming glory hereafter. Thus far our own conscience
and natural religion may carry us.

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 233

7. It follows that the material universe, while, by
the power and divine attributes present in it, our
minds may be enlarged and elevated, cannot fully
satisfy the demands of our religious life. However we
may be instructed and elevated by the marvellous
exhibition of divinity in nature ; however God may
shine within ourselves by the light of conscience, we
must find ourselves surrounded by those inscrutable
mysteries with which the great minds of antiquity
so manfully strove, and which are so clearly presented
to us in the discussions of Job with his friends.
Rightly regarded, even these mysteries may, by
analogy with God's natural procedure, be to some
extent solved, as they were by the patriarch of Uz,
when, in contemplating the marvellous works of
nature, he humbled^himself before God and repented
in dust and ashes. \jjt is plain that if it has pleased
God to reveal Himself directly to man, in addition to
the indirect revelation of nature, and to the testimony
of our own moral intuitions, this must be a great
gain. Hence men have yearned for such revelation,
and have believed that it has been given by the Spirit
of God in the visions of prophets and the narratives
of holy men of old, and in these last times by the
divine Son of God Himself To Jesus Christ all men
must turn, trusting to Him for salvation, and looking
forward to the ultimate finality in His coming king
dom, in which only can be perfectly manifested the
great designs of the Almighty Fatheij

APPENDIX I

WEISMANN ON HEREDITY

THE new views advanced by Weismann have, while these
pages were going through the press, been subjects of warm dis
cussion in England, where his essays have been translated and
republished ; but the subject has been so beclouded with
technicalities and references to obscure facts of reproduction,
that it is scarcely intelligible to non-technical readers. An
explanation of the actual nature and bearing of these views
may therefore be useful.

The subject may be regarded from the point of view
either (i) of the facts of reproduction, or (2) of observed
phenomena of inheritance.

i. With reference to the first of these, nothing is mor
certain than that in all animals, except a few of the lowest,
there are special organs of reproduction, and that in these
organs alone resides the power of permanent continuance of
the species. The facts of budding and spontaneous division
in some animals of low grade may be regarded as of only
temporary importance. Farther, the organ of reproduction
resolves itself into a single microscopic embryo cell or germ
a minute vesicle containing protoplasmic matter, fertil
by another or sperm-cell, and finally into the speck of proto

236 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

plasm constituting the nucleus of this embryo cell. This
minute living speck must contain in it potentially all the
parts and organs that are produced from it. Weismann
illustrates this in a clear manner by the observed fact of the
spontaneous division of this nucleus into a vast number of
separate granules, each of which plays a part in the formation
of some portion of the embryo animal.

From this simple statement it follows beyond controve
that any cause which effects a change in the structure
properties of the future individual must pre-exist in t.
germ, and that any effect of external causes on the adi j
animal can have no effect in this respect unless it has modi
fied the germ or germs of the new generation.

This conclusion, to which no physiologist can reasonably
object, if it does not altogether subvert, as some think, the
Darwinian and Lamarckian doctrines of evolution, at least
weakens their force and diminishes their extent, and besides
goes quite behind them into a region of antecedent causes,
and shows that they must be of secondary value and im
portance. Weismann also insists very strongly on what he
calls the * immortality ' — or properly, perpetuity — of germinal
matter embodying the characters of the species— a very
important and valuable idea.

All this leads us, however, not so much to deny that any
causes acting on the adult can modify its progeny, as to
inquire what causes, if any, can so profoundly affect the
organism as to modify its germinal matter.

On this question we may first remark that such causes
seem often to be psychical rather than material — that is, causes
affecting the imagination and emotions. This has been
known at least since the time of Jacob's experiment with
Laban's cattle, and probably long before. It is still a matter
of every-day experience both in man and animals, and opens
a wide and inviting field of study, leading, perhaps, to more

APPENDIX I 237

profound views of the causes of variation than any heretofore
promulgated.

Again, since the germinal matter itself must be nourished
by the common blood of the animal, it is possible that it may
be influenced by any change by which this may be effected.
Popular speech recognises this by speaking of certain ten
dencies as being in the blood of certain races of animals.
, 2. Into the second field— that of study of actual pheno-
jna— Weismann has largely entered as a matter of experi-
tent and observation, and his conclusion is that, as a rule,
fraracters impressed on the individual by accident or
external influences are not perpetuated. Those that are
congenital, being those that have originated in the germinal
matter of the parent, have alone the power to affect the ger
minal matter of the offspring. If, for example, an infant
from some cause, probably unknown to us, is born with
six fingers instead of five, this peculiarity, whether useful to
it or not, is likely to be perpetuated in some individuals at
least of the next generation. But if the child loses one of
its fingers by accident, its children are no more likely on
that account to be born with only four fingers ; or if it is
trained to use its fingers deftly in playing on an instrument
or working at any mechanical art, its children will not on
that account have more lissom fingers than others. This last
statement, however, should perhaps be taken with the limi
tation that if the use of the fingers is of such a character as
to act strongly on the mental or psychical nature of the adult,
or on the general system, it may in that case so affect its
terminal matter as to act on the offspring. This kind of
inheritance, as the Duke of Argyll has pointed out, is very
apparent in some domestic animals, as in dogs.

It is curious that these conclusions of Weismann equally
affect Darwinism and Lamarckianism. They indeed bring
both these doctrines together, as mere modifications of one

238 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

superficial view, not reaching to the actual origin of varietal
difference. If Weismann is right, we can no longer speak
of an herbivorous quadruped as making efforts to reach food
above its head, and so acquiring a tendency to elongation of
neck which may be transmitted to its offspring, so that they
may become giraffes. Nor can we be content merely to
suppose an accidental elongation in one individual to give it
such advantage in the struggle for existence as to cause it
alone to survive in times of scarcity, and to propagate its
kind. Such suppositions must be altogether gratuitous and
trifling, and we must look for deeper causes capable of
affecting the germinal matter, if we wish to establish the pos
sibility of such changes. At present, as already hinted, the
only causes of this kind certainly known in higher animals
are those of a psychical character, and this is perhaps one
reason of the liability of the more intelligent and shifty
animals to varietal change. The similar capacity of some
animals low in the scale may depend merely on the wider
scope of vital work in less differentiated organisms, or on the
greater liability of the whole organism to be affected by any
change.

Whatever may be the ultimate amount of acceptance of
these remarkable and ingenious views of the German physio
logist, they no doubc open a vista which extends far beyond
the crude ideas of evolution at present current.

It is farther to be observed in this connection that the
discussions above referred to relate to variation rather than
to origin of species, that they do not establish any hard-and-
fast line separating congenital from acquired characters, and
that they strongly emphasise the objections against mere
accident as a cause of variation, and show the necessity, in
order to the origin and perpetuation of varieties, not merely
of one change, but of many correlated changes. They also
show that the changes supposed must take place by anticipa-

APPENDIX I 239

tion in the germinal matter before their utility or inutility
can be proved, and they emphasise the obstacles set up by
sexual reproduction against unlimited divergence from the
specific type. All these points are being developed in the dis
cussions now in progress, and they must, ere long, pro
foundly modify the views of biologists as to the existing
theories of evolution.

APPENDIX II

£>R. McCOSH ON EVOLUTION

THE/ venerable ex-president of Princeton has just issued
(185(0) a second edition of his little work, The Development
Hypothesis under d new name : The Religious Aspect of
Evolution. The work makes no serious attempt to prove
&e validity of any of those various and often conflicting
.theories of evolution, the insufficiency of which, regarded
•in the light of scientific causation, I have endeavoured to
show in the preceding pages. It assumes them all as
established scientific results, and then proceeds to show
that they can be received up to a certain point without
destroying our belief in God. Perhaps it would be correct
to say that the actual thesis of the work is that the belief in
secondary causes in creation is perfectly consistent with a
belief in a Divine First Cause. This is very clearly stated,
and with much interesting illustration ; and as setting forth
this great principle the work is of value, and its use in this
respect will remain, even if all those imaginary and partial
causes of development on which it relies should be swept
away as of no scientific validity, and replaced by more

240 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION

rational views of the vastly complicated and still mysterious
causes which have no doubt conspired under Creative!
guidance to bring about the succession of living beings in
geological time. In this respect the work is similar in its
tendency to Drummond's Natural Law in the Spiritual
IVorld ; and in another aspect both may be regarded as1
examples of the tendency of theology to conform itself to
the philosophical and scientific hypotheses which are ever
cropping up and disappearing. For a time such conformity
carries all before it, but it incurs the danger that when th<
false or partial hypotheses have been discarded the high
truths imprudently connected with them may be disc
also.

I am reminded here, however, to express one
obligation which the world owes, not so much to a
ing system of evolution, as to the discussion and o
those systems. It is that attention has been direct
manner never before witnessed, to the power of heret ^
environment, of use and disuse in improving or deterior.
humanity. The bearing of this on the physical, me.
and moral education and advancement of man is of i
practical importance, and merits a more full discussion th
it has yet received on the part of those who are not ev
lutionists in the ordinary sense of the term, but who believe
in development and in causation.

PRINTED BY

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON

'HE
[89