Evolution and Christianity

Cambridge Library CoLLeCtion
Books of enduring scholarly value
Religion
For centuries, scripture and theology were the focus of prodigious amounts
of scholarship and publishing, dominated in the English-speaking world
by the work of Protestant Christians. Enlightenment philosophy and
science, anthropology, ethnology and the colonial experience all brought
new perspectives, lively debates and heated controversies to the study of
religion and its role in the world, many of which continue to this day. This
series explores the editing and interpretation of religious texts, the history of
religious ideas and institutions, and not least the encounter between religion
and science.
Evolution and Christianity

Faced with the theories of scientists and philosophers, perhaps most
famously Charles Darwin’s, late-Victorian theologians were preoccupied with
the reconciliation of Christian teaching with their contemporaries’ ideas.
First published in 1894, this text forms part of a series introducing key areas
of Christian theology for the modern audience. Dr James Iverach examines
theories of the origins of both the universe and of life within it, finding in
intelligence, morality, faith and ethics a unifying and clarifying force that
he argues reveals the presence of God’s creative process in the history of the
universe. Nothing, he claims, occurs by chance, and natural selection simply
expresses that the sum total of causes, both internal and external, results in
the state in which only the forms of life now observable should exist. This
text provides an insight into the late-Victorian philosophy of Christian
Darwinism.
Cambridge University Press has long been a pioneer in the reissuing of
out-of-print titles from its own backlist, producing digital reprints of
books that are still sought after by scholars and students but could not be
reprinted economically using traditional technology. The Cambridge Library
Collection extends this activity to a wider range of books which are still of
importance to researchers and professionals, either for the source material
they contain, or as landmarks in the history of their academic discipline.
Drawing from the world-renowned collections in the Cambridge
University Library, and guided by the advice of experts in each subject area,
Cambridge University Press is using state-of-the-art scanning machines
in its own Printing House to capture the content of each book selected for
inclusion. The files are processed to give a consistently clear, crisp image,
and the books finished to the high quality standard for which the Press
is recognised around the world. The latest print-on-demand technology
ensures that the books will remain available indefinitely, and that orders for
single or multiple copies can quickly be supplied.
The Cambridge Library Collection will bring back to life books of enduring
scholarly value (including out-of-copyright works originally issued by other
publishers) across a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social
sciences and in science and technology.
Evolution and
Christianity
James Iverach
C a m b r I D G E U N I V E r sI t y P r E s s
Cambridge, New york, melbourne, madrid, Cape town, singapore,

são Paolo, Delhi, Dubai, tokyo
Published in the United states of america by Cambridge University Press, New york
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108000680
© in this compilation Cambridge University Press 2009
This edition first published 1894

This digitally printed version 2009
IsbN 978-1-108-00068-0 Paperback
This book reproduces the text of the original edition. The content and language reflect
the beliefs, practices and terminology of their time, and have not been updated.
Cambridge University Press wishes to make clear that the book, unless originally published
by Cambridge, is not being republished by, in association or collaboration with, or
with the endorsement or approval of, the original publisher or its successors in title.
THE
THEOLOGICAL EDUCATOR
Edited by the
REV. W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
Editor of " The Expositor
DR. JAMES IVERACH'S

EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY
HODDER AND STOUGHTON

27, PATERNOSTER ROW
MDCCCXCIV
Fcap. %voy clothe price 2s. 6d. each.
A Manual of Christian Evidences.
By the Rev. PREBENDARY ROW, M.A., D.D.
An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New
Testament.
By the Rev. Prof. B. B. WARFIELD, D.D.
A Hebrew Grammar.
By the Rev. W. H. LOWE, M.A.
A Manual of Church History.
By the Rev. A. C. JENNINGS, M.A.
Vol. I. From the First to the Tenth Century.
Vol. II. From the Tenth to the Nineteenth Century.
An Exposition of the Apostles' Creed.
By the Rev. J. E. YONGE, M.A.
The Prayer Book.
By the Rev. Prof. CHARLES HOLE, B.A.
An Introduction to the New Testament.
By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
The Language of the New Testament.
By the Rev. W. H. SIMCOX, M.A.
The Writers of the New Testament: Their Style and
Characteristics.
By the same Author.
An Introduction to the Old Testament.
By the Rev. C H. H. WRIGHT, D.D.
Outlines of Christian Doctrine.
By the Rev. H. C. G. MOULE, M.A.
The Theology of the Old Testament.
By the Rev. Prof. W. H. BENNETT, M.A.
The Theology of the New Testament.
By the Rev. Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
Evolution and Christianity.
By the Rev, Prof. IVERACH, D.D.
I
EVOLUTION
AND CHRISTIANITY
BY
JAMES IVERACH, M.A., D.D.

PROCESSOR OF APOLOGETICS AND EXEGESIS OF THE GOSPELS IN THE
FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, ABERDEEN
Author of " Is God Knowable ? " "Life of St. Paul," etc.
" Things are also Thoughts, and have a reference to the

Thought that set them there, and to the Thought that finds
them there."
HODDER AND STOUGHTON

27, PATERNOSTER ROW
MDCCCXCIV
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
EVOLUTION AND BEGINNINGS.
Evolution the working hypothesis of scientific men—
Evolution as a dogmatic faith—Truth of evolution—
The primitive nebulosity—Spectrum analysis—Star
systems—Professor Karl Pearson on lifeless chaotic
mass—Chaos unthinkable—Homogeneousness—Evo-
lution must commence somewhere—Its commence-
ment a relative unity '. 1
CHAPTER II.
EVOLUTION AND LAW.
Nature is what is fixed, stated, settled—Law and hypo-
thesis—The nebular theory—Its plausibilities and its
difficulties—The nebular theory and evolution—It
involves a rational system—The theistic argument—
Continuity—Evolution a real process—" Instability
of the homogeneous"—Multiplication of effects—
" Is the effect more complex than the cause ?"—
Criticism of this statement 17
CHAPTER III.
NATURE AND INTELLIGIBILITY.
Additional factors—Transition from physics to chemistry—
Chemical elements—Their character, relations, adap-
tations, periodicity—Rational character of these rela-
tions—Nature is intelligible, and therefore related to
intelligence—Attempts at explanation—The chemical
elements exist in the unity of one system . . .33
vi CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV.
THE STRIFE AGAINST PURPOSE.
Is the issue raised by evolution new or old ?—Scope of
evolution—Is evolution self-explanatory ?—Fiske on
teleology, against and for—Order and purpose—
Efficient and final causes—Caprice—Spinoza on final
c a u s e s — Mathematics — Purposiveness — The same
facts and laws appear from the point of view of cause
and of purpose—Chance or purpose . . . .50
CHAPTER V.
EVOLUTION AND CREATION.
History of the earth—Evolution as seen in geologic eras
—Continuity of the process—Succession—Advance
and preparation for advance—Physics and geology—
Home unsettled questions—Professor Caird on evolu-
tion from two points of view—At the beginning or
at the end, which ?—Is the issue arbitrary arrange-
ment versus evolution ?—No: creation by slow process
is creation—Illustrations—Mechanics and purpose
once more 69
CHAPTER VI.
ORGANIC EVOLUTION.
Statement by Professor Ray Lankester—New sets of terms

used in biology—Why are there new terms?—Dr.
Burdon Sanderson—Darwinism—Variation, struggle
for existence, natural selection, transmission—
Anthropomorphic character of the process—Malthu-
sianism—Utilitarianism—What is natural selection ?
—Comparision with the process of denudation in
geology by Mr. J. T. Cunningham—Darwin on the
eye—Professor Huxley's reproduction of chance—
Organic evolution likely true, but its factors not yet
discovered . . . . . . . . . 88
CONTENTS vii
CHAPTER VII.
ORGANIC EVOLUTION (continued}.
Biology before and after Darwin—Physical continuity of
life—Laws and conditions of life—Adequacy or
inadequacy of natural selection ?—Inter-relations of
life—Professor Geddes on anthropomorphism of the
nineteenth century and of the eighteenth—Weismann
—Natural selection is elimination of the unfit—
Oscillation between natural selection as negative
and as positive—Poulton, " that selection is examina-
tion'1—Teleology run mad—Mimicry -Search after
utility—Mutual benefit of species in co-operation—
Illustration—Struggle for existence thus modified—
Results 110
CHAPTER VIII.
SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION.
Controversy regarding heredity—Spencer and Weis-
mann—Machinery of evolution defective—Limits of
organic evolution—Man does not modify himself,
but modifies his environment—Survival of the fittest
explained by Huxley and by Spencer—Evolution
does not account for advance—Illustration of man's
power of modifying his environment—Results . . 132
CHAPTER IX.
EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOLOGY.
Human and animal intelligence—Rational self-con-
sciousness—Habit—Feelings, emotions, appetites in
rational beings and in irrational—Differences in
kind and in degree—Romanes and Spencer—Can
feelings make a consciousness?—The self—Genesis
of self according to Romanes and Spencer—Unity
of human nature—Russel Wallace's deistic view—
Creation is continuous—Results . . . .154
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTEK X.
EVOLUTION AND ETHICS.
Ethics of evolution—Professor Huxley's ethical ideal—
Whence derived?—Not from cosmic process, not
from Greek or Koman ethics, nor from ordinary
human ethics—Ethical life: what it is—Struggle
for existence partial in cosmos : at its fiercest in
human life—Spheres of human conduct non-
moralised — Moral ideals—Moral obligation—The
Christian ethical ideal—Its acknowledged supre-
macy—Its character—Ptecognition of it—Not derived
from evolution—Christian ethics both test and goal
of ethical evolution . . . . . . .178
CHAPTER XI.
EVOLUTION AND RELIGION.
The Christian religion—The Christian goal of life—
Fellowship with God—Christian religious ideal real-
ised in Jesus Christ—Immanence of God—Christ not
evolved—Evolution holds for all others—The ghost
theory of religion—Spencer's reconciliation of
science and religion—Criticism—Worship for an-
cestors distinguished from worship of ancestors—
Evolved conduct and evolved belief—Universality of
religion—Manifestations of religion—Correspond-
ence with reality—Eternal element in religious
emotion—Christianity and evolution—Analogy be-
tween evolution in all spheres and the evolution of
Christian life . . . . . . . . 204
CHAPTER I
EVOLUTION AND BEGINNINGS
Evolution the working hypothesis of scientific men—Evolu-
tion as a dogmatic faith—Truth of evolution—The
primitive nebulosity—Spectrum analysis—Star systems-
Professor Karl Pearson on lifeless chaotic mass—Chaos
unthinkable—Homogeneousness—Evolution must com-
mence somewhere—Its commencement a relative unity.
\\ 1 VOLUTION is the working hypothesis of most

-L-^ scientific men at the present time. In no
branch of science is it without influence, and in the
sciences which deal with life it is dominant. We
cannot escape from it. Its technical phrases have
become parts of current common speech; and such
words as " natural selection," the " struggle for
existence," and " the survival of the fittest " are on
the lips of every one. I t does not matter to what
sphere of human work we turn, for in all alike we
meet with the same mental atmosphere. Are we
students of physics or chemistry, we have no sooner
mastered the elements of the science than we are
plunged into questions which deal with the " evolu-
tion " of the " atom v or the " molecule" from
simpler forms of matter. Do we study mechanics.
then we are brought into a sphere where men talk
of the evolution of the steam engine or of some other
1
2 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION
machine which has slowly grown from less to more

till it has reached its present state. Are we students
of man, then we become accustomed to inquiries into
the evolution of the family, of marriage, of the com-
munity, of the state. Morality is evolved, religion
also. On all hands men are busy tracing out the
lines of evolution from the general to the particular,
from the simple to the complex, until it is affirmed
" that the whole world, living and not living, is the
result of the mutual interaction, according to definite
laws, of the powers possessed by the molecules of
which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was
composed" (Huxley, Life of Darwin, vol. ii., p. 210).
It is evident enough that, in these views of Professor
Huxley, evolution has passed beyond the stage of
a working hypothesis, and has become both a philo-
sophy and a dogmatic faith. We are restricted to
molecules, their powers, and the interactions of their
powers for the explanation of the universe; when
the molecules are given in their primitive nebulosity,
the whole result follows. There can be no incre-
ment from without, no guidance from above, nor any
leading along a definite line to a predetermined end.
The molecules and their interactions must be com-
petent to produce all that has come out in the process.
We need not say how great is the issue involved in
this claim, nor how strenuously it is to be resisted.
It is something gained, however, to have the claims
of evolution considered as a dogmatic faith stated so
clearly, and to know with what we have to deal.
Manifestly evolution as a working hypothesis and
evolution as a dogmatic faith mean very different
EVOLUTION AND BEGINNINGS 3
things. Even if we grant that it is more than a

working hypothesis—let us grant that it is the highest
scientific generalisation to which the human mind
has yet attained; that in it we have a law of the
widest working which is operative in all the realm
of nature, animate and inanimate—yet this concession
falls far short of the immeasurable demand which
Professor Huxley makes in the name of evolution.
Let us suppose it proved as a scientific generalisation,
and we may still say, with Professor Fraser, " evolu-
tion itself, if proved, would be only an expression of
physical causation—of phenomenal significance and
interpretability—though it may yet turn out to be
the most comprehensive of all merely phenomenal laws,
and the highest expression of the sense symbolism, a
physical causation, which Berkeley has so emphatically
contrasted with spiritual and transcendent causality "
{Fraser on Berkeley, p. 227). But the advocates of
evolution are not content with the concession that
it is the most comprehensive of all phenomenal laws;
they demand absolute submission. Evolution must
reign without a rival; everything must bend to its
sway.
The imperious demands which Professor Huxley,
Mr. Herbert Spencer, and others make in the name
of evolution must not be allowed, however, to
frighten us away from the name, or to blind us to
the truth which is contained in it. Extravagant
claims must not be allowed to discredit legitimate de-
mands. In fact, the real work done by evolution, the
truth set forth by it, the grandeur of its generalisation,
and its consistency with scientific truth generally,
make one sorry when the theory is pushed to an

extreme which makes it untrue and inadequate.
We are not surprised when the expounders of this
theory of the universe are filled with cosmic emotion
at the greatness and grandeur of the process they
describe; nor do we wonder that they are carried
away with the rapture into which they are thrown :
for no reader can withhold his sympathy and admira-
tion. It is grand and ennobling to sweep back in
thought across the hundred million years or so which
separate us from the time when our earth was only
vapour, and to be led on from that point of time,
through all the intervening ages, as one science after
another guides our footsteps, until we arrive at the
complex, differentiated, integrated world of the present
time, with its life, intelligence, ethics, religion, science,
art, and to have some understanding of the process
whereby this has come out of that. But we may still
have the rapture and the admiration : we may admire
and so far revere and be thankful for the work done
in the service of evolution, and yet withhold that
final sacrifice demanded in her name.
Almost every book on evolution and every magazine
article devoted to the subject tries to hark back to the
" primitive nebulosity." Not many of them, however,
commit themselves to any definite theory on the
question of the nebular view. Some, indeed, with a
courage which we cannot sufficiently admire, speak as
if Kant or Laplace had left nothing for their followers
to do. Mr. Fiske is quite sure on the matter. " In
the slow concentration of the matter constituting
this solar nebula," he says, "as both Kant and
Laplace have elaborately prove 1, the most prominent

peculiarities of the solar system find their complete
explanation" (Cosmic Philosophy, vol. i., p. 360).
We shall have something to say of this later on.
At present we may observe that Professor Huxley's
statement does not limit itself to the solar system ;
it extends to the universe. The progress of science
has made it much more probable that some form
of the nebular theory is true. While this is so, any
tenable view of the nebular hypothesis, or any view
consistent with facts, has presented that hypothesis
in a form which is not available for the purposes
of evolution. Professor Huxley assumes " a primitive
nebulosity of the universe." If this has any meaning,
we must try to imagine all the matter of the universe
dispersed equally through space, and in a uniform
physical condition. If we were to trace the process
backwards from the present hour, and try to follow
the various steps by which the star systems came
to their present condition, we should finally arrive
at the primitive nebulosity. But then we should
have to explain the fact that there are so many
systems that have not yet emerged from their first
estate.
Spectrum analysis has made us acquainted with
the physical condition of many kinds of stars. If we
study such works as Schellen's Spectrum Analysis, or
Miss Clerke's System of the Stars, we shall become
acquainted with worlds at all stages of their history.
" W e can indeed hesitate to admit neither the
fundamental identity of the material elements of
the universe, nor the nebulous origin of stars. The
transition from one to the other of the two great

families of the sidereal kingdom is so gradual as to
afford a rational conviction that what we see con-
temporaneously in different objects has been exhibited
successively in the same objects.1 Planetary nebulae
pass into gaseous stars on one side, into nebulous
stars on the other, the greater nebulae into clusters.
The present state of the Pleiades refers us inevitably
to an antecedent condition closely resembling that of
the Orion nebula; the Andromeda nebula may repre-
sent the nascent stage of a splendid collection of
suns. But even though stars without exception have
sprung from nebulae, it does not follow that nebulae
without exception grow into stars. The requisite
conditions need not invariably have been present.
Other ends than that of star production are perhaps
subserved by the chief part of the present nebulous
contents of the heavens. The contrast between
stellar and nebular distribution is intelligible only as
expressing a definitive separation of the life-histories
of the two classes—a divergence destined to be
perpetual along their lines of growth." {System of
the Stars, p. 396.) Thus we see how naturally
astronomy uses the language of evolution, and how
the new astronomy with the aid of the mighty
instrument of spectrum analysis has added to our
knowledge and increased our wonder. A cross
section seems to give us also the line of the life-
history of a star or a system of stars. And the
theory of Kant with regard to the solar system seems
to have reference also to the sidereal system. May
we by an act of faith go back to the primitive
nebulosity of the universe, and, assuming a primitive

nebulosity, with known qualities and laws, seek thus
to account for the universe ? We must start some-
where, and perhaps for some purposes a primitive
nebulosity is as good a starting-place as we can have.
But we should observe how many things we have
assumed, and how much we have taken for granted.
We have assumed " molecules possessed of definite
powers," that these powers work according to definite
laws, and that out of their mutual interaction a
definite world of order will arise. Now these are
large assumptions, and if granted have raised many
important questions. What has been assumed is
something definite, and yet the attempt is constantly
made to make it indefinite. There is nothing more
common than to call the " primitive nebulosity " chaos.
" Suppose," says Professor Karl Pearson, "the highly
developed reason of some future man to start, say,
with clear conceptions of the lifeless chaotic maps of
60,000,000 years ago, which now forms our planetary
system, then from these conceptions alone he will be
able to think out the 60,000,000 years' history of the
world with every finite phase which it had passed
through; each will have its necessary place, its
necessary course in this thought system. And this
total history he has thought out ? It will be identical
with the actual history of the world; for that history
has evolved in the sole way conceivable/' {The Ethics
of Freethought, p. 29.)
Apart from the other issues raised by this statement,
we concentrate attention on one aspect of it. This
we do mainly because Professor Karl Pearson is
here a representative writer. Many other people, of
less ability than he, speak of a primeval chaos out
of which somehow order must emerge. But may we
ask how we are to have " clear conceptions of a life-
less chaotic mass," whether we consider it as existing
a number of years ago or at the present hour ? We
can only conceive of it just in proportion as we think
the chaos away. A mass means something; it has a
certain bulk, a certain shape, a certain kind of con-
sistency ; and if it has these, to speak of it as chaotic
is mere rhetoric. A clear conception is possible only
if there is something clear to be apprehended; and
to speak of a clear conception of a chaos implies
something chaotic in the mind which speaks.
The primitive nebulosity, if it ever existed, was as
definite, as much subject to law, as clearly marked by
definite qualities, as the universe which is supposed to
have evolved out of it. At all events, it existed in a
definite material state ; it occupied space; molecules
or atoms, or the materialVhich afterwards aggregated
into atoms or molecules, were there. There were
definite laws at work, and there were mutual inter-
actions; and just in proportion as these existed, clear
conceptions of the so-called " lifeless chaotic" mass
are or were possible.
If the primitive nebulosity had any qualities what-
soever, then all the advantages which were gained by
calling it chaotic are lost. Somehow, I do not know
how, but there seems to be a hazy idea in the minds
of many, that if a start can be made in chaos,
and afterwards a cosmos appears, a solution of the
problem of creation has been obtained. Given a
chaotic primitive nebulosity, and given clear concep-

tions of it, then the universe must arise: such is the
problem and its solution. But we have no account of
the transition, nor any rational attempt to show why
and how chaos should cease and cosmos begin. This
difficulty besets the mechanical theory of the universe
as it besets every other theory. How to get our
starting-point is the perplexity. We cannot begin
with chaos; and if we begin with anything definite,
where have we got it ? We may place the elephant
on the back of the tortoise, but what will support the
tortoise ?
I t is amazing that those who assume the primitive
nebulosity fcdo not see that it raises precisely those
questions concerning order, its source, method, and
law, which are raised by the universe as at present
constituted. It raises these questions also in a form
more difficult of solution. We may not ask how
this nebulous mass came to be; if we did ask, we
should at once be told that we must not inquire
regarding origins. Leaving origins, then, we may
ask whether the mass is constituted so and so, and in
such a manner as to make a certain result inevitable.
If, as Professor Karl Pearson says, " the universe
is what it is because that is the only conceivable
fashion in which it could be—in which it could be
thought"—we may conclude that thought has gone
to the making of it. If thought has come out of the
universe, if the universe is a universe which can be
thought, then thought has had something to do with
it from the outset. There is thought in the primitive
nebulosity, and thought of the most marvellous kind.
But we can scarcely ascribe the thought to the

molecules, Whence has it come ? We humbly submit
that at this stage we require more thought to make
clear what we mean.
If instead of Professor Karl Pearson's chaotic mass
we take the indefinite, incoherent homogeneity of
Mr. Herbert Spencer, we have not made any advance.
Suppose we grant the possibility of such a homo-
geneity, we cannot get it to act. Mr. Spencer him-
self recognises this: " One stable homogeneity only is
hypothetically possible. If centres of force, absolutely
uniform in their powers, were diffused with absolute
uniformity through unlimited space, they would remain
in equilibrium. This, however, though a verbally
intelligible supposition, is one which cannot be repre-
sented in thought, since unlimited space is incon-
ceivable. But all finite forms of the homogeneous,
all forms of it which we can know or conceive, must
inevitably lapse into heterogeneity." {First Principles,
p. 429.) The homogeneity which his system demands
is dismissed as inconceivable, " since unlimited space
is inconceivable." And then he proceeds to speak of
" all finite forms of the homogeneous"; and by so
doing cuts down the only branch on which he can
sit. A finite form of the homogeneous is really
destructive of his hypothesis. For the finiteness of
the form postulates a difference between the homo-
geneous and its environment; and as that difference
is both continuous and active, it will not allow the
homogeneous to exist. The very notion of a finite
homogeneity is self-destructive.
Another result follows. The objection which is
brought against absolute homogeneity implies that the
absolute or the ultimate reality can manifest itself
only in finite forms. Any other than a finite mani-
festation, " though a verbally intelligible proposition,
is one that cannot be represented in thought, since
the unlimited is inconceivable." How contradictory
this is of many of Mr. Spencer's propositions we need
not here determine. But the remark t h a t " unlimited
space is inconceivable " does not hinder him from saying
on the same page, " The absolutely homogeneous must
lose its equilibrium," and yet " they would remain
in equilibrium." Hence we have this dilemma : If the
homogeneous is absolute, it will remain in equilibrium ;
if the equilibrium is disturbed, then the homogeneity
is not absolute.
How does evolution commence according to Mr.
Spencer? "All finite powers of the homogeneous—
all forms of it which we can know or conceive—must
inevitably lapse into heterogeneity. In three several
ways does the persistence of force necessitate this.
Setting external agencies aside, each unit of a
homogeneous whole must be differently affected from
any of the rest by the action of the rest on it. The
resultant force exercised by the aggregate on each
unit, being in no two cases alike in both amount and
direction, and usually not in either, any incident force,
even if uniform in amount and direction, cannot
produce like effects on the units. And the various
positions of the parts in relation to any incident force
preventing them from receiving them in uniform
amounts and directions, a further difference in the
effects wrought on them is inevitably produced."
(First Principles, p. 429.) Let any one try to
think out these propositions. " Each unit of a
homogeneous whole must be differently affected from
any of the rest by the aggregate action of the rest
on it." Why? The necessity is not apparent. If
a whole be homogeneous, then it would result that
each unit must be similarly affected by the aggregate
action of the rest on it. If it be differently affected,
whence the difference ? If the difference be one in
position, then homogeneity has vanished and hetero-
geneity has begun. Every attempt made by Mr.
Spencer to make a commencement postulates differ-
ence, and any difference is destructive of the homo-
geneity. At the beginning of all evolution he has
to bring in somehow actual differences, real adjust-
ments, and relations, and yet he endeavours to evolve
these out of an original simplicity. Evolution has to
begin, not from a minimum simplicity, but from what
looks like a rational, intelligible adjustment of means
to ends, and of qualities and properties in relation ;
and this is exactly the theistic position.
The primitive nebulosity of Professor Huxley, the
lifeless chaotic mass of Professor Karl Pearson, the
absolutely homogeneous of Mr. Spencer, and, we may
add, similar postulates of other writers, do not serve
the purpose of those who have introduced them to our
notice. They do not help us to pass from the indeter-
minate to the determinate, and they do not help us
to get intelligence out of what is not intelligent.
Every problem presented by the present complex
universe is presented also by the primitive nebulosity.
It is an attempt to get what is adjusted out of
what is not adjusted, relations out of what has
none, and differences out of that which has no
difference. Every step proceeds on what has been
formally denied, and the result is mere confusion
of thought; for evolution can commence only when
change begins, and the absolutely homogeneous, if
left to itself, cannot even begin to change. Thus we
are at the outset constrained to postulate some force
outside of the homogeneous in order that change may
begin ; or if the beginning of change is due to some-
thing within the homogeneous, then we have difference
to start with. There is no way of escape from the
thought of prearranged activities within the mass
which Professor Karl Pearson calls chaotic.
Prearranged activities, however, is the very sup-
position of which the writers in question seek to
get rid. They value the primitive nebulosity just in
proportion as it enables them to make a beginning,
and to get the work of intelligence without the help
of intelligence. I t is just the old attempt of trying
to get something out of nothing. We are not to ask
any question about the primitive nebulosity. We are
not to ask how it happened to be there, nor inquire
into its previous history, if it had a history. We are
to be willing to take it for granted. At a certain time,
many millions of years ago, there existed a primitive
nebulosity, an undifferentiated chaotic mass of matter,
in an extremely attenuated form, equally balanced
in all directions, and each part of it indistinguish-
able from every other part. I t is homogeneous
throughout. Let us suppose also that the mass is in
what may be called the pre-chemical state of matter.
H CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION
What is now known as atoms and molecules has
not yet come to be. The different chemical elements
have not yet aggregated together. There is one
stuff, and only one, and each part of it is identical
with every other part. Let us grant the supposition.
It is possible that such stuff has existed. The
experiments and reasonings of Mr. Norman Lockyer
have made it at least possible. The chemical elements
may be various combinations of one uniform stuff.
There may have been a time when matter was abso-
lutely homogeneous. But the supposition does not
help us. For somehow change has to begin and
change has to continue, and has to continue in
one direction. As soon as change has begun the
undifferentiated stuff becomes differentiated, the in-
determinate becomes determinate, and the chemical
elements appear. When once they are made they are
never unmade. It is not necessary for our purpose to
inquire as to whether science can trace the genesis of
the molecule; for all the kinds of matter we know are
gathered up into various limited sorts, and each of
these sorts is practically indestructible. " Though in
the course of ages catastrophes have occurred and
may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient systems
be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their
ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are
built, the foundation-stones of the material universe,
remain unbroken and unworn." So speaks Professor
Clerk Maxwell. Again he says: " There are im-
mense numbers of atoms of the same kind, and the
constituents of each of these atoms are incapable of
adjustment by any powers now in action. Each is
physically independent of all the others. Whether
or not the conception of a multitude of beings
existing from all eternity is in itself self-contradictory,
the conception becomes palpably absurd when we
attribute a relation of quantitative equality to all
these beings. We are then forced to look beyond
them to some common cause or common origin to
explain why this singular relation of equality exists,
rather than any of the infinite number of possible
relations of inequality. Science is incompetent to
reason on the creation of the world out of nothing.
We have reached the utmost limit of our thinking
faculties when we have admitted that, because matter
cannot be eternal and self-existent, it must have been
created." (Encyc. Brit., vol. iii., art. " Atom," p. 49,
9th ed.) We should like to ask whether the primitive
nebulosity is composed of definite atoms and molecules
or not. If it is in the pre-atomic stage pictured by
Mr. Norman Lockyer, then clearly its first work is
to become atomic. If it has become atomic, then we
have no longer to deal with a homogeneous kind of
stuff, but with a stuff that has got itself packed into
sixty or seventy different kinds—kinds which persist,
which no power can change, and no use can wear
out. The problem thus becomes infinitely more
complicated. It is not now a case of the absolutely
homogeneous losing its equilibrium, and thus in-
stituting a series of changes; but it becomes a problem
of how to obtain a unity out of sixty or seventy
different sets of things, each set of which is different
from all the others, and of each set there is an
incalculable number. The problem is not how to
obtain otherness out of unity, but to gather the
differences into a unity. An abstract unity will not
suffice. It is not enough to abstract from the
difference of each separate set of molecules, and
generalise them all under the common name of
matter; nor to abstract from the various energies at
work in the universe, and generalise them under the
common name of force: what is needed is a kind of
unity which shall keep the differences, and recognise
the special nature of each kind. And this is a unity
made up of relations. Thus at the very basis of the
material system there is evidence of rationality of
the very highest order. Given sixty or seventy
different kinds of stuff, each with its own proper
qualities and attributes, to make out of them a stable
and progressive universe—that is the problem; and it
is one evidently of a higher kind than that presented
to us by Mr. Spencer.
Thus we have the theistic problem and answer
before evolution can be said to have begun. Whether
these molecules have had a previous history or not,
at all events they have passed now out of any sphere
which can be influenced by the struggle for existence.
A molecule of hydrogen continues to be a molecule
of hydrogen wheresoever it may be, in whatsoever
combination it may exist, and whatsoever work it
may be doing. If it ever had to struggle for exist-
ence, it has long ago got past that stage. I t exists,
it cannot be changed, it does work, and about it
evolution has nothing to say. And yet the problem
of its existence and its qualities and its relations is as
great as those which evolution is called on to solve.
CHAPTER II
EVOLUTION AND LAW
Nature is what is fixed, stated, settled—Law and hypothesis
—The nebular theory—Its plausibilities and its diffi-
culties—The nebular theory and evolution—It involves
a rational system—The theistic argument—Continuity—
Evolution a real process—" Instability of the homogene-
ous "—Multiplication of effects—" Is the effect more com-
plex than the cause 1"—Criticism of this statement.
T HE unity of the primitive nebulosity must have

been, as we have seen, a unity of elements in
relation to one another. It is not undifferentiated
stuff, but definite molecules existing in definite
relations. It is not chaotic, but orderly, and existing
in relations which can be thought. Thus the unity
of the primitive nebulosity is already rational and
intelligible. If this is possible at the outset, then
the process of evolution will also be rational and
intelligible, and the outcome will also be rational.
I t is not for us to contend against the existence of a
primitive nebulosity either of the solar system or of
the sidereal. Nor have we any interest in contending
against the discovery of method, order, law in nature.
We are glad to sit at the feet of those who can show
us the widening bounds of order and law, who can
teach us to know the dominion of order and law
17 2
where we were once unable to discover it. We gladly
follow Mr. Herbert Spencer as he leads us on from
stage to stage of existence and of knowledge, and
shows us how every stage is under law, and that even
the very discovery of law is itself subject to law.
We may not agree with him either in the general or
in the particular, but we are grateful for the wide
outlook he has cast over the universe, and for a
possible interpretation of the order of nature. We
had learned from Bishop Butler that the meaning
of nature is what is fixed, settled, determined, and
that what is fixed and settled has had reference to
some cause which made it so.
Thus we were prepared in the interests of theology
to welcome every conquest of science and every fresh
proof of the universal reign of law. The Bishop
had taught us to look for the traces of the Divine
footsteps, not in what appears to be lawless and
capricious and arbitrary, but in that which was
fixed, steadfast, determined. Thus, on the principles
of Bishop Butler,—which are also the principles of
a true theology,—we are to wait for the instructions
of our masters in science. They are the true inter-
preters of nature, as they are also the discoverers of
its laws. They have proved that the law according
to which a stone falls to the ground is the law
according to which the planets describe their orbits
and the stars maintain their places. And if they
tell us that the earliest known form of the solar
system is that of a gaseous nebula, and if they can
prove this to be the fact—well, then we accept the
fact, and act accordingly. If they tell us that the
EVOLUTION AND LAW 19
widest law known to them is that of evolution, that

by the way of evolution the universe has come to be
what it is—well, if it is so, we see no more reason
why we should be disturbed by evolution than we
have been by gravitation. Neither gravitation nor
evolution is ultimate, and when science has done its
work something remains to be said.
Let us therefore without hesitation follow our
scientific teachers, with the sure belief that they do
us service whenever they can disclose to us order and
method and law in nature. They also will no doubt
tell us what has been proven and what is only
probable. They will observe, we hope, this distinction,
and will give us due notice when they leave the firm
ground of proof and take to speculation. And we
have a right to expect that they will keep hypothesis
separate from ascertained law. For the most part,
we have no reason to complain. We get sublime
speculation, but we also get profound calculation; and
as a rule these are kept separate. With reference to
the matter before us, the primitive nebulosity and
the nebular theory, for the most part competent men
deal with it as a speculation, and not as a certainty.
Laplace himself did so. He placed the nebular
hypothesis on a different footing from his statement
about the stability of the solar system. This was a
proof that all the changes of the solar system were
periodic, that if it is disturbed a little it will oscillate
and return to its old state. This demonstration
proceeded on the assumption that the planets were
rigid bodies, and on that assumption the demonstration
is complete. Corrections have to be made because
the planets are not rigid bodies; but these do not
concern us here. The point is that Laplace himself
threw out his suggestion of the nebular theory simply
as a speculation. The theory of the stability of the
solar system followed with inevitable certainty from
the theory of gravitation. But the nebular theory
could not be deduced from the theory of gravitation,
and must continue to rank only as a hypothesis. I t
has its difficulties, and it has its probabilities; but
as yet science does not affirm its truth.
Its probabilities are, to use the language of Sir
Robert S. Ball: " Many of the features in the solar
system harmonise with the supposition that the origin
of the system has been that suggested by the nebular
theory. We have already had occasion in an earlier
chapter to allude to the fact that all the planets
perform their revolution around the sun in the same
direction. It is also to be observed that the rotation
of the planets on their axes, as well as the movements
of the satellites around their primaries, are following
the same law, with one slight exception in the case of
the Uranian system. A coincidence so remarkable
naturally suggests the necessity for some physical
explanation. Such an explanation is offered by the
nebular theory. Suppose that countless ages ago a
mighty nebula was slowly rotating and slowly con-
tracting. In the process of contracting portions of
the condensed matter would be left behind. These
portions would still revolve round the central mass,
and each portion would rotate on its axis in the same
direction. As the process of contraction proceeded
it would follow from dynamical principles that the
velocity of rotation would increase; and thus at

length these portions would consolidate into masses,
while the central mass would gradually contract
to form the sun. By a similar process on a
smaller scale the systems of satellites were evolved
from the contracting primary. These satellites would
also revolve in the same direction, and thus the
characteristic features of the solar system could be
accounted for." (Story of the Heavens, p. 501.) The
language is exceedingly cautious. It is said " many
of the features in the solar system harmonise with
the supposition," " Thus the features of the solar
system could be accounted for." Sir Robert Ball does
not say, " They are accounted for." This is very dif-
ferent from the statement already quoted about the
primitive nebulosity, and very different from what is
required by the part which the nebular theory is made
to play in the theory of evolution. What was the
state of the nebula ] Was it hot or cold ? We must
think of the matter of it as in some state. Are we
to think of the matter of the nebula as consisting
of the same kinds of atoms as those we know to-day ?
Were these atoms arranged according to their specific
gravities ? If they were, the heaviest would gravitate
to the centre and the lighter would gather at the
circumference; but the whole business must somehow
arrange itself so that the earth, for example, may
start fair and have capital enough for all its ex-
penditure. A nebula abandoned to the influence of
gravity, and left to shape itself as it might, is yet
to be so conceived as to provide a suitable endow-
ment for each member of the family. It looks at
this stage as if the nebular hypothesis needed to be
supplemented.
" Suppose that countless ages ago a mighty nebula
was slowly rotating and slowly contracting." I t is
easy to make the supposition, and yet exceedingly
difficult to realise what is involved in it. The matter
of the nebula is exceedingly rare, so attenuated that
the matter of the solar system stretched beyond the
bounds of the orbit of the most distant planet.
Mr. Proctor declares that in such a system rotation
is impossible; and it is indeed difficult to conceive a
continuous rotation of such an attenuated body.
It is an essential part of the theory, in the use
made of it by evolution, that no help can be brought
to the nebula from without. I t is a self-contained
system, and all its energy is contained within itself,
and its quantity of energy cannot be increased or
diminished. Unless, however, we postulate action of
a force beyond the system, it is difficult to see how
there should be any rings cast off from the whirling
mass. As the mass contracts the gravitation in-
creases, and at the same time the rate of rotation
grows more rapid. The possibility of forming a ring,
or of detaching it from the main body, depends on
the relation between the centripetal and centrifugal
forces. The application of the theory to the present
solar system depends on the ability of the theory to
demonstrate that at the various orbits of the planets
the centrifugal forces increased by precisely so much
as to necessitate the breaking off of just such masses
and no more as make up the various planets from
Neptune to Mercury. Again, the theory would seem
to require that the orbits of the planets would bear

some relation to the orbit traced by the equator of -the
central body where each particular plajiet has broken
off. But there is really no relation between the two.
The nebular hypothesis has as yet afforded no
explanation of the distribution of matter throughout
the solar system, nor of the size of the planets, nor of
their relative density; as a mechanical explanation it
has so far failed, and if we are to have an explanation
of the solar system, we shall need something more
than can be given us by the primitive nebulosity.
" A mighty nebula slowly rotating and slowly con-
tracting" does not explain much. It will not explain,
for instance, the number of chemical elements in the
earth. Take, for example, what we know of the
constitution of the nebula in Orion. " We see that
it consists in part of stars, making up perhaps in
number for their deficiency in size. These stars are
bathed in and surrounded by a stupendous mass of
glowing gas, partly consisting of that gas which
enters so largely into the composition of our ocean,
namely, hydrogen. The wide distribution of this
substance, the lightest of all the known elements, is
one of the most striking facts in the material con-
stitution of the universe." {Story of the Heavens,
p. 462.) May not the reason why hydrogen is so
conspicuous in the spectrum of the nebula in Orion
simply be because it is the lightest of all the known
elements, and is thus farthest removed from the
centre of attraction? Might we not expect, then,
that the farthest distant of the planets would also be
the lightest? But the density of Saturn is less than
the density of Uranus, and the density of Venus is

less than that of the Earth. Be that as it may, our
present contention is, that the nebular hypothesis is
not of a kind to bear the weight laid on it by the
theory of universal evolution.
The nebular hypothesis is a very fascinating one,
and we need not be surprised that in the hands of
Mr. Fiske, for example, it is made to do large service
to his cosmic philosophy. Nor are we concerned to deny
whatsoever truth may be in it. We know that there
are nebulae in the universe, and that, for example, the
great nebula in Andromeda " is in a state of extensive
and majestic whirl"; we may also have some conception
of the relative distribution of stars and nebulae : but as
for a theory of the life-history of a star or of a system
of stars, science at present has none. Our astronomy
is so advanced just because we know so little about the
planets or the stars. That is to say, we have had to
do with planets in the mass, and have dealt only with
their masses, orbits, rotation, and other matters of
the same sort. But such mechanical knowledge is
altogether insufficient for the purpose for which it is
sometimes used. That purpose is mainly to show that
the mechanism of the heavens is self-explanatory.
The solar system is so far self-explanatory, if we are
allowed to postulate the stability of the system as an
end in view, and the various positions, sizes, and
relations of the planets as subservient to that end.
Apart from that end the various adjustments are
unintelligible and incalculable.
The nebular theory does not explain even the
mechanics of the system, far less does it explain the
life-history of it. By its vague and general terms,

and its wide and grand sweep, it has seemed to
accomplish much, and it falls in so well with the
general tendency, that we are not surprised to find it
bulk so largely in current literature. It advances
from the simple to the complex in so charming a way,
it seems to assume so little and accomplish so much,
that people are quite delighted with it. But when the
theory is adjusted to the facts, its simplicity is gone,
and what it has accomplished is not so great after all.
Thus, with regard to the nebular theory, we are brought
back to a position similar to that which confronted us
before. The unity we have to start with is not simple,
but complex. It is again a unity of related elements,
and thus a unity which is not merely material; it is
also rational. I t is not as if we could get a simplicity
to which we may add complexities, or out of which
we could evolve complexities, but something different.
If we have a naked simplicity, it will not work. But
the primitive nebulosity has many elements in it. It
has at least matter in a certain state; what that state
is we cannot well say. It has a certain rotation, slow
it may be, but with a certain momentum, which must
be equal to the sum of all the separate momenta exist-
ing in the solar system at the present hour. It has
a certain bent and direction, and the union of these
elements and tendencies has to be accounted for.
As with the elements of matter, so with the solar
system, the unity we have to start with is an ideal,
a rational unity, and the mere mechanics of the
system gives no rational explanation of the system.
The interest we have in the primitive nebulosity is
simply a scientific one. For the purpose of our argu-
ment it would make no difference if the theory were
as complete as the theory of the tides. Every one
knows, more or less, what has been done by Professor
G. H. Darwin with regard to the theory of the tides.
It is not our purpose to describe his theory of tidal
evolution, nor to sketch the history of investigation
with regard to the tides from the time of Newton
onwards. It is a fascinating story ; but the point in
view at present is this, that when you have completed
the mechanical theory of anything the explanation
is not ultimate. We are not of those who are con-
stantly looking about for imperfections in a mechani-
cal or other theory in order to find a chink through
which the theistic argument may enter. Such a
process would be a hopeless task. If that were our
position, the argument for theism would soon be a
fugitive and vagabond on the face of the earth ; each
advance of science, each discovery of law would simply
drive the theistic argument to seek a new refuge. On
the contrary, our position is that each new discovery is
a fresh testimony to theism, and each new law found
in phenomena is only a fresh argument for God,—for
intelligence as the source of order and the only ground
of law. Our argument so far has been to the effect
that the simplicity assumed by evolutionists as the
starting-point of evolution will not work. What is
required, even on their own theory, is the simplicity
of many elements in a related whole, and such a
unity is rational.
It is to be remembered also that the task ctf evolu-
tion is to deal with the process of evolution as a real
process, to describe real changes which take place, or

have taken place, or will take place in a real world.
There are some sciences in which no error need be
introduced by our beginning with abstractions. It
does no harm in geometry to assume points which
have position and not magnitude, lines which have
length and no breadth, and other abstractions which
have no place in a concrete world; for in applying
our mathematical deductions to a real world we make
allowances and supply the additional concrete condi-
tions which our abstractions formerly neglected. Nor
does it entail any serious consequences when in
mechanics we assume a perfectly rigid body, a perfectly
rigid lever, a perfect gas, or any other assumption of
the same kind ; for we know all the time that there
are no such bodies to be found. If we were compelled
to take account of every movement of a crowbar, no
calculus at our command is sufficient for the purpose.
We recognise that our physical and dynamical theories
are only of limited application, and we do not try to
deduce the phenomena of a real world from them.
We recognise that, though the orbits of the planets ap-
proximate to an ellipse, there are many perturbations.
For the sake of simplicity in our mathematical and
mechanical science we neglect many elements, but
when we apply our science to actual concrete condi-
tions we have to bring back the elements we formerly
neglected. In physics we neglect chemical conditions,
and in chemistry we neglect vital conditions; but no
problem is merely physical or mathematical. But
for a complete explanation we have to take all condi-
tions into account.
But this method is one which the evolutionist may

not use. He has a larger work than that of the
physicist, or the chemist, or the physiologist, or that
of the worker in any special department. He has
undertaken to explain everything, and to show how
change began, and how change went on from stage
to stage, necessarily and inevitably. From one stage
to another the process must be such as to admit of
no alternative. Chance must be eliminated, and the
result must be necessary. It will not do to use the
method which has been found so useful in mathematics
and physics. For we do not try to deduce the pro-
perties of matter from mathematical laws. From the
law of gravitation we do not try to deduce the particu-
lar states of the matter under gravitation. I t may be
solid, liquid, gaseous; but in whatever state it may be,
it is under the law which prescribes that the attraction
varies directly as the masses and inversely as the
square of the distance. But from this law we can infer
nothing as to the state of matter in any place or at
any time. It is different, however, with evolution.
It can neglect nothing, leave nothing out of account;
for it has to explain everything. Its primitive nebu-
losity must be more strictly defined, its absolute
homogeneity must have some other attributes in
addition to that absolute sameness if changes are to
flow from it. As described by the leading advocates
of evolution, the condition of things from which they
start is simply an abstraction, to be compared with the
points of geometry and the rigid bodies of mechanics.
These no doubt are useful things in their way, but
their usefulness has only a limited scope.
Similarly the persistence of force is a barren notion

until it is transformed into the particular energies
of the concrete world in which we live. The difficulty
is to make the transition, and certainly Mr. Herbert
Spencer has not made it. He labours as in the very
fire to bring his abstraction into relation with the
concrete world. He cannot deduce differences without
assuming the differences he seeks to deduce. His law
of the " Instability of the Homogeneous" is self-
contradictory ; for the two terms of the so-called
conception will not unite. If the homogeneous is
homogeneous it is stable, and if it is unstable it is
not homogeneous. Also when we read his chapter
on the " Multiplication of Effects," we see it might as
well have the name of the multiplication of causes.
" When a uniform aggregate is subject to a uniform
force we have seen that its constituents, being differ-
ently conditioned, are differently modified. But while
we have contemplated the various parts of the
aggregate as thus undergoing unlike changes, we have
not yet contemplated the unlike changes simul-
taneously produced on the various parts of the incident
force. These must be as numerous and important
as the others. Action and reaction being equal and
opposite, it follows that in differentiating the parts
on which it falls in unlike ways the incidental force
must itself be correspondingly differentiated. Instead
of being as before a uniform force, it must thereafter
be a multiform force—a group of dissimilar forces."
(First Principles, p. 431.)
Mr. Spencer proceeds to illustrate his principle.
We take one of his illustrations: "When one body
is struck against another, that which we usually
regard as the effect is a change of position or motion
in one or both bodies. But a moment's thought shows
that this is a very incomplete view of the matter.
Beside the visible mechanical result sound is pro-
duced ; or, to speak accurately, a vibration in one or
more bodies, and in the surrounding air. Moreover,
the air has not simply been made to vibrate, but has
had currents raised in it by the transit of the bodies.
Further, if there is not that great structural change
which we call fracture, there is a disarrangement
of the particles of the two bodies around their point
of collision; amounting in some cases to a visible
condensation. Yet more, this condensation is accom-
panied by disengagement of heat. In some cases
a spark—that is, light—results from the incan-
descence of a portion struck off; and consequently
this incandescence is associated with chemical com-
bination. Thus by the original mechanical force
expended in the collision, at least five, and often
more, different kinds of forces have been produced"
(pp. 432, 433). Out of one original uniform force
we seem to get a multitude of effects, and the law
of the multiplication of effects seems established.
Is it really so ? Can all these effects be considered
as the result of one cause? It is Mr. Spencer's
manner to try to get first a simplicity, and then to
get a complexity out of it. What is the simplicity
here? He has first assumed two bodies and a
collision between them. Then he fixes our thought
on the bare collision, and will allow us to think of
nothing else. But the collision cannot be considered
alone in such a case. I t is a problem of two bodies,

not of a single uniform force. Then he assumes the
constitution of the atmosphere; other assumptions
follow, with their results. The changes he describes
are not and cannot be truly described as the result
of one force. They are the resultant of many forces,
and the action of each of them has to be taken into
account in order to explain the resultant. He first
makes an artificial abstraction of the force expended
in the collision, and then tries to trace out its effects.
The fact is, that each effect described is simply the
combination of the one uniform force assumed, and
the other forces he has left out of sight.
" Universally, then, the effect is more complex than
the cause." Thus he states his conclusion—a very
useful conclusion for his purpose, but one which does
not seem to have a logical justification. I t does not
seem to consist with the law of causation. An
adequate cause is one which can completely account
for the effect. One of the gravest charges which
Mr. Spencer brings against certain thinkers is that
they have not a due regard to causation. But what
of himself ? If the effect is more complex than the
cause, whence has the complexity come? Can we
account for it? Certainly the illustrations drawn
from a collision and from a lighted candle do not
justify his universal law. The complexity is only
apparent. For in order to produce the complexity
he is compelled to set forth the collision as taking
place in a complex of relations, and it is through
these relations alone that the complexity is made
possible. With regard to the lighted candle, he is
compelled to place it in the midst of various surround-
ings, and the process of burning is in relation with
each of these. Take away the surroundings, and
the changes cannot take place. But surely, in any
possible view of a cause, we must take into account
all the conditions necessary for the production of the
effect. If we take these into account, we shall be
constrained to say the cause is as complex as the
effect. It is not logical first to place the cause in
isolated abstraction, and to set the effect in concrete
relations, and on the basis of this illogical procedure
gravely to set forth a universal law to the effect that
universally the effect is more complex than the cause.
It is well to call attention to this so-called law, for
it meets us everywhere in the course of the argument
for evolution. It lies at the basis of Mr. Spencer's
view of the persistence of force. I t gives strength,
the only strength it has, to the curious statements
about the primitive nebulosity so widely current
nowadays. It meets us in chemistry; it is present
in biology ; it is current in the application of evolution
to psychology, ethics, and religion. It is well to face
it frankly, and to estimate its value. For it seems to
me to be an attempt to get something out of nothing,
and in essence to be equivalent to the crudest notion
of creation ever present in the minds of men. The
cause of evolution must be at least as complex as
the result which has emerged. The principles of
cosmical multiplicity must lie in the power from
which all things have proceeded.
CHAPTER III
NATURE AND INTELLIGIBILITY
Additional factors—Transition from physics to chemistry
Chemical elements—Their character, relations, adapta-
tions, periodicity—-Rational character of these relations-
Nature is intelligible, and therefore related to intelligence
—Attempts at explanation—The chemical elements exist
in the unity of one system.
T HE maxim that the effect is more complex than

the cause may be briefly described as the method
of Mr. Spencer. At all the transition stages of his
great system it has impelled him to search for a new
starting period of sufficient simplicity out of which he
can evolve a complex effect. When he begins to deal
with biology, it leads him to accept the structureless
homogeneous cell as the beginning of organic life,
and out of it he obtains all the complexities of
animated being. The unit of consciousness consists
or begins with a sudden nerve shock. " Mind is
certainly in some cases, and probably in all, re-
solvable into nervous shocks " (Psychology, i., sect. 62);
and out of a simple nerve shock he tries to build up
mind. The primal simplicity of the phenomena of
religion he finds in ancestor worship. He has a way,
too, of manufacturing intuitions as he needs them.
We come to expect, as we turn from one of his treatises
33 3
to another, that at the opening of each we shall find a
simple cause and a number of complex effects. We an-
ticipate what is coming. The only surprise that awaits
us is the precise kind of simplicity which Mr. Spencer
will postulate. Some kind he is sure to have, but
whether it is an available kind is another question.
We may have to look at some of those simplicities
of his further on. Meanwhile let us try his method
at an early stage. How does his homogeneous stand
related to the chemical elements? We learn from
Clerk Maxwell that these chemical elements are
indestructible, and cannot be made to djecay. They
are as they were. We can call them all by the name
of matter, because they have properties in common;
but each one of them has its own peculiarities, and
also its peculiar relation to all the others. Dealing
with the classification of the sciences, Mr. Spencer
speaks thus: " Theoretically all the concrete sciences
are adjoining tracts of one science, which has for its
subject-matter the continuous transformation which
the universe undergoes. Practically, however, they
are distinguishable as successively more specialised
parts of the total science—parts further specialised by
the introduction of additional factors" {Psychology,
vol. i., p. 137). " The new factor which differentiates
chemistry from molecular physics is the heterogeneity
of the molecules with whose redistributions it deals "
(p. 140), The description may be accepted as so far
true as regards the distinctions between these two
sciences. But does Mr. Spencer also make a dis-
tinction in nature corresponding to the distinction
between physics and chemistry? « Physics," he tells
NATURE AND INTELLIGIBILITY 35
us truly, " deals with changes in the distribution of
matter and motion considered apart from unlikeness
of quality in the matter." But this may be inter-
preted in two ways. It may mean that we neglect
or do not take into account any unlikeness of quality
in the matter, while all the time we know that the
unlikeness is there. It may also mean that we deny
any unlikeness of quality, and proceed as if it were
altogether uniform. We have not been able to gather
from Mr. Spencer's writings which of these is meant
by him. Sometimes he seems to mean the one, some-
times the other. From his doctrine of homogeneity
he seems to postulate a matter without any unlike-
ness of quality, in which unlikeness would by-and-by
appear. That is, however, an assumption which
has not yet been proved, which chemists say has
been disproved. " We might perhaps be inclined to
conceive a chemical process in the following manner :
substances consist of indifferent matter, which during
any chemical process simply becomes invested with
different properties from those which it originally
possessed, without, however, itself undergoing any
real alteration. This conception was, as a matter of
fact, for a long time prevalent; but the following laws
empirically discovered are in discordance with i t : if
one substance is transformed into another, then the
masses of these two substances always bear a fixed
ratio to each other; such a transformation of one
substance into another of different mass can only
take place according to the first law when a second
substance participates in the reaction. The following
law, therefore, is in intimate connection with that
given above: if several substances react together,

then these masses, as well as those of the new bodies
formed, always bear fixed proportions to each other."
(Outlines of General Chemistry, by Wilhelm Ostwald,
English translation, p. 4.) Physics knows, however,
that it has to deal with elements of unlike qualities,
though it lays stress mainly on qualities which they
have in common. It knows that within limits all
gases obey Boyle's law, and curves have been con-
structed showing the paths of deviation from that
law taken by each particular gas. I t recognises
also, according to Avogadro's law, that " in equal
volumes of different gases there is under the same
conditions the same number of molecules." I t
recognises also different substances, and endeavours
to register the different temperatures at which each
particular body passes from the gaseous into the
liquid state. But on the whole, and generally,
physics abstracts from the particular unlikenesses
of quality between the different bodies, and leaves
that to be dealt with by its own particular science.
But the distinction between the sciences is simply
a matter of convenience. I t does not represent a
division in the nature of things.
The new factor in chemistry is simply that factor
which physics found it convenient to neglect; but
each atom of matter dealt with in physics had also its
chemical characters and relations. We find, indeed,
that Mr. Spencer did make an attempt to deal with
the question from this point of view. In the first
edition of the First Principles there was a chapter on
" The Conditions Essential to Evolution," which does
not appear in the subsequent editions of the work.

In it he said: " If it be assumed that what we call
chemical elements are absolutely simple (which is,
however, a hypothesis having no better warrant than
the opposite one), then it must be admitted that in
respect of the number of kinds of matter contained in
it the earth is not more heterogeneous than it was at
first—that in this respect it would be as heterogeneous
were all its undecomposable parts uniformly mixed,
as it is now, when they are arranged and combined
in countless different ways. But the increase of
heterogeneity with which we have to deal, and of
which alone our own senses can take cognisance, is
that produced from unity of distribution to variety
of distribution. Given an aggregate consisting of
several orders of primitive units that were unchange-
able, then these units may be so uniformly dispersed
among each other that any portion of the mass shall
be like any other portion in its sensible properties;
or they may be so segregated, simply and in encUess
combinations, that the various portions of the mass
shall not be like each other in their sensitive proper-
ties." (First edition, pp. 335, 336.) We do not mean to
dwell on this statement. We quote it merely for its
historic interest, and for the proof it gives that Mr.
Spencer had once present to his mind the problem of
the existence of a homogeneity made up of a number
of different kinds of units. Whether he has found
it would not work we cannot say; but we ought to
take his final statement as in his view the only adequate
one, and to deal with it.
We shall therefore not deal with that discarded
chapter, though the difficulty remains. We shall
look at the chemical aspects of the case, and see what
a wondrous world chemistry opens to our view—what
a rational world of order, adjustments, adaptations it
is. "There are different elements," says Faraday,
'' with the most manifold powers and the most
opposite tendencies. Some are so lazy and inert that
a superficial observer would take them for nothing in
the grand resultant of powers; and others, on the
contrary, possess such violent properties that they
seem to threaten the stability of the universe. But on
a deeper examination of the role which they play, one
finds that they agree with one another in a great
scheme of harmonic adaptation. The power of no
single element could be changed without at once
destroying the harmonious balance, and plunging the
whole into ruin." (Quoted by Professor Bowne, in
The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer, pp. 225, 226.
Phillips & Hunt: New York.) There are two possible
ways of dealing with this scheme of harmonious
adaptation. We may accept it as a fact, and deal
with it as ultimate; or we may ask for an explanation
of it. In the former event we may proceed to deal
with the various elements, seek to ascertain their
properties, and their relations to one another and to
the whole, and ask no ultimate questions about them.
This is precisely what the science of chemistry has
done, and is doing. It takes the different elements,
and it finds that they resist further decomposition.
It enumerates these elements. I t has found that
the total mass of the substances taking part in
any chemical process remains constant, and that the
substances consist of very small particles of different
kinds, which alter their arrangement and not their
nature during any chemical process. I t is driven
to assume that the atoms of every pure substance
are all alike among themselves. If every atom of
any given substance is like every other atom, then all
the relations of mass in chemical compounds must be
regulated by the masses of the several atoms. " All
substances consist of discrete particles of finite but
very small size—of atoms. Undecomposable substances
or elements contain atoms of the same nature, form,
mass. If chemical combination takes place between
several elements, the atoms of these so arrange them-
selves that a definite and usually small number of
atoms of the combining element form a compound
atom which we call a molecule. Every molecule of a
definite chemical compound (chemical species) contains
the same number of elementary atoms arranged in the
same way. If the same elements can unite to form
different compounds, the elementary atoms composing
the molecules of the latter are either present in different
numbers, or, if their number be the same, they are
differently arranged." (Ostwald, pp. 7, 8.)
Thus we have to deal not with the permutations
and combinations of sixty-seven (the number of
elements known at present) different bodies taken in
any order, but with something far more wonderful
and far more complex. The various elements insist
on conditions in choosing partners. With some they
refuse to combine at all, and they will never unite
with any except on certain terms, and these conditions
are fixed and unchangeable.
There is nothing arbitrary either in the elements
or in the conditions under which they act. The
proportions in which elements unite together are
definite and constant, and a given compound always
consists of the same elements united in the same
proportions. If the elements combine together in
several proportions, the several proportions in which
the one element unites with the other invariably bear
a simple relation to one another. This is the law of
combination in multiple proportions. The proportions
in which two elements combine with a third also
represent the proportion in which, or in some simple
multiple of which, they will themselves combine. This
is the law of reciprocal proportion.
These three laws, which have been deduced entirely
from experimental observations, may be considered
as themselves the consequences of the atomic theory.
Assume the atomic theory, and these laws can be
explained. It is not necessary to discuss the atomic
theory here, or even to describe it at any length.
The values of the atomic weights are determined only
relatively—that is, in reference to the atomic weight
of one of the elements assumed as unity. The
relative weights of many of the atoms have thus been
determined, and the result reveals a scheme of great
beauty and simplicity; for it appears that the pro-
perties of the elements are periodic functions of their
atomic weights. " I f all the elements are arranged
in the order of their atomic weights in a series,
their properties will so vary from member to member
that after a definite number of elements have been
passed either the first or very similar will recur"
(Ostwald, p. 35). In virtue of this law, and making
use of the regularities disclosed by it, Mendelejeff was
able to predict the properties of unknown elements
from those of their neighbours in the table of atomic
weights he had drawn up. " He gave especially a
somewhat detailed description of scandium, gallium,
germanium, and their components, none of which were
known at the time he wrote his memoir; and to him,
as well as to science in general, has been accorded the
triumph of seeing these predictions for the most part
fulfilled on the subsequent discovery of the elements "
(p. 37),—a work to be compared with that of Leverrier
and Adams in their discovery of the unknown planet.
As we follow the guidance of the chemists the
scheme of harmonic adaptation becomes ever more
wonderful; but we have taken quite enough for the
problem now in hand. The harmonious adaptation
is there, and every one can see it who chooses to look.
If the relation of equality so impressed Clerk Maxwell
as to cause him to give utterance to the remark
already quoted, what shall we say of the relations
now disclosed ? Shall we just accept them as facts,
work out their results, and say nothing further about
them ? That is one way, and a very useful way it
is. I t is quite a competent thing for a chemist to
do. He may legitimately decline to be troubled with
ultimate questions on the plea that he has quite
enough to do. I t is not a legitimate procedure on
the part of the evolutionist, unless he means to give
up his task at the outset. Here is the problem set to
him. Here are sixty-seven different kinds of bodies,
each of which possesses certain properties, each of
which is distinct from the rest, and yet related to
them in certain definite ways : how are we to account
for them ? They are simply given. We cannot make
them or unmake. If they were ever other than they
now are, that time is long past. They were there
when that process of change which men call evolution
began, and they are present and operative in every
further change: what, then, are we to say about
them ? They exist in rational relations, they form
combinations which can be thought, and these com-
binations increase till they form a world. Why
should they always unite in definite proportions, and
these proportions exist in an intelligible form ? Shall
we say they are so, and that we can give no further
account of the matter ? That is an intelligible
position. The position, however, cannot, we repeat,
be taken by any one who professes to give a rational
account of the world. If he takes these elements
simply as given, then he has failed. If he tries to
explain them, then the explanation must be adequate.
The persistence of force, the instability of the homo-
geneous, will not account for the elements in the
scheme, or for the scheme itself, as we have already
seen. " Abstract notions," said Bishop Butler, " can
do nothing "; and the persistence of force is simply an
abstract notion that can do nothing till it parts with
its abstraction and gets itself translated into the
concrete energies of the world as we know it. How
did the order, the intelligibility, the rationality of the
scheme get into the atoms? One can understand
how the order, the intelligibility, the rationality got
into the works on chemistry lying now on the table;
for the rationality is in Ostwald, in Williamson, in
Armstrong first, and in the books next; but the
order, the rationality, the intelligibility of the atoms
and the system they serve to produce are vastly
greater than those of the systems in the books. Are
we to say that the order of the universe is in no
way related to intelligence ? That is a large order.
Is it a great or an unjustifiable assumption to make,
that intelligibility is related to intelligence? We
know that the relation exists in our own case. The
intelligibility of the world is related to the intelligence
which understands it. The intelligibility of a book
has at least two references—one to the author of it,
and another to the reader of it. Shall we say that
the intelligibility of the world has only one reference,
namely, to the reader of it! On what grounds shall
we make the assertion ? It can be only on the ground
that we can explain the intelligibility apart from
intelligence.
What has to be accounted for is the unity of all
these chemical elements in one system. As conceived
by science it is a rational system. We shall not
attempt to measure the toil, the perseverance, the
intelligence of the successive generations of chemists
who have slowly built up the magnificent temple
known by the name of chemistry. No one questions
the fact that intelligence has built up science; but
it is to be observed that science has not made the
facts, nor the order, nor the system : it has simply
interpreted what it found. The order, the system,
the rationality are there, in the facts disclosed to
them in the chemical elements and their relations.
They did not make the facts, they found them. They
assumed the rationality of nature, and they found
on examination that it was there. What right had
men to assume the rationality of nature? Why
should they have presupposed that the irrational was
untrue, that the absurd was impossible ? and why
should the assumption turn out to be correct ?
The only answer is that nature is intelligible,
because intelligence was present in it from the
beginning.
This form of the argument is of a different kind
from the argument from final causes. Purpose we
shall have to look at by-and-by. But at present
we are engaged with efficient causes, with the facts
of order, of intelligibility, of interpretability; and one
proposition is that order implies intelligence. So
strongly is this felt by many minds at the present
hour, that we have any number of hypotheses to
account for it. We have Professor Clifford's hypo-
thesis of mind-stuff: " a moving molecule of inor-
ganic matter possesses a small piece of mind-stuff."
We have the supposition of the cell-soul, of un-
conscious will, of unconscious intelligence, of the
double-faced unity, and of many similar ways of
bringing in intelligence as the source of order. The
necessity is felt, and the schemes for bringing in in-
telligence in some form at some stage are vouched for
by the various liypotheses. The need is sufficiently
apparent. Not to speak, at this stage, of the fact
that intelligence has somehow emerged, we content
ourselves with the need of accounting for the in-
telligibility of the chemical system. To account for
its rational order apart from energising reason seems

a hopeless task.
We might here avail ourselves of the help of Mr.
Spencer did we know how to use it. We might use
that part of his philosophy which affirms the existence
of a Power, which is manifested in the universe, which
he calls " an infinite and eternal Energy from which
all things proceed" {Principles of Sociology, p. 843).
He tells us also " that the Power manifested through-
out the universe distinguished as material is the same
power which in ourselves wells up under the form
of consciousness " (p. 839). We also believe in that
Power. But that Power appears in Mr. Spencer's
system on very rare occasions. The actual changes
in the universe, which he calls by the name of evolu-
tion, are in the hands of deputies. The formula of
evolution reveals as much. " Evolution is an integra-
tion of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion,
during which the matter passes from an indefinite,
incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent hetero-
geneity ; and during which the retained motion under-
goes a parallel transformation" (First Principles,
p. 396). I t may be that matter and motion are them-
selves only symbolic, as Mr. Spencer says they are.
But the fact remains that they are the only symbols
through which the unknowable Power is permitted by
Mr. Spencer to act. All the process of evolution is
worked out by Mr. Spencer on these terms and by
these symbols. It is limited by them, and can use no
other Thus we can get no help from Mr. Spencer for
the solution of our limited problem. Granted that the
unknowable Power is the source of that complex order
which we find in the chemical system, yet that does
not carry us far; for we have no explanation of that
integration of matter which we have observed in the
chemical elements. They do not belong to the present
constitution of things. Nor have we any explanation
of the fact that these elements exist in relations which
can be thought. We get Power from Mr. Spencer,
but we get it simply as unknowable, and that is a
form, or want of form, which we cannot use. If,
however, Mr. Spencer postulates a Power behind the
process of evolution, if he can affirm the existence of
an infinite and eternal Energy from which all things
proceed, there is no reason why we should not follow
so good an example. We also have a right to assume
a Power behind or within the chemical elements,
which will help us to account for the orderly and
complex relations in which they exist. We .already
are acquainted with a power of that kind. We know
intelligence as the source of order ; we are acquainted
with the way in which a principle of intelligence
may be impressed on a number of efficient causes, and
may cause them to exist as an intelligible system.
At present we are not discussing the seat of the
intelligence impressed on a material system. The
intelligence may be within the system, or it may
be without the system ; it may be immanent or
transcendent; the discussion is quite irrelevant to
the main question, which is intelligence as the source
of order. We have a vera causa adequate to the
production of the result, and the alternative seems
to lie between this explanation and no explanation.
But, then, the system of chemistry does manifest
intelligence. In this fact lies our advantage, and we
mean to make full use of it, and to press it home.
We have adjustments, adaptations, relations, which
reveal themselves to the person who attends to them,
and these are not merely mechanical. The argument
becomes more stringent and more incisive as we pass
beyond the merely chemical world into the wider
world which it subserves. The more complex the
arrangements become, the greater does the demand
for intelligence become. One step beyond the atoms,
and we come to the phenomena presented by water.
I t is but a step, and yet what a step ! Oxygen and
hydrogen are the constituent elements of water.
They combine in certain proportions, which are in-
variable. The molecule of water is relatively stable,
and its two elements can be separated only when
work is done on them. Yet this material of water
evolved at one step has many of the most wonderful
properties—properties which fit it to play a great
part in the economy of the universe. Take its point
of maximum density, and observe how it is related
to the part which it plays in the world. From that
point 4° 0. it expands when heated, and expands also
when cooled. It takes more heat to warm it than
any other body, and can therefore give more heat out
when it cools. Archdeacon Wilson asks what would
an architect give for a heating apparatus which would
convey heat from one part of the world to another,
and itself remain cool. Yet he says aqueous vapour
is doing it every day of our lives. But all these
things flow from the properties of water! That is
exactly what we are saying. These properties are
given, with all their results, and they are in relation

to the material universe in which they are. They,
however, raise the question of how they became what
they are. The properties of oxygen and hydrogen
are unlike the properties of water. They have
separately properties which it has not, and it has
properties which they have not. We get no explana-
tion out of the physical powers by which water had
its origin. Even when we have traced its meaning,
we are still at a loss for the explanation. Is it not
evident that here again we must have recourse to
intelligence as the source of order?
As we follow our teachers in science from one
science to another, and watch the revelation of order
more and more involved and intricate, yet all, in the
end, embraced in the unity of one system, we are lost
in admiration and in awe. The rationality of the
system becomes the more apparent as we advance.
The world is a rational world, and we see no reason on
that account to deny rationality to the Power from
which all things proceed. If we grant intelligence to
that power, then evolution becomes luminous; refuse
to grant it, and we must simply regard the order as
an ultimate fact, and say no more about it.
But it may be said that here we are postulating a
cause less complex than the effect, and are, in short,
acting on the Spencerian maxim that the cause is
always iless complex than the effect. It is not so, for
intelligence is in itself not simple, but complex; and
besides, the objection does not apply to intelligence,
because of the very nature and work of it. I t is the
very nature of intelligence to bring many unrelated
elements into a synthetic unity. Even our own

intelligence brings all the objects of its experience
into the unity of one space and one time. Intelli-
gence can bring many elements into the unity of
one system. If intelligence of the limited order we
know in ourselves can impress itself on a number of
unrelated things, and make them exist in the unity
of one system, what may not an infinite intelligence
be able to accomplish !
CHAPTER IV
THE STRIFE AGAINST PURPOSE
Is the issue raised by evolution new or old ?—Scope of evolu-

tion—Is evolution self-explanatory?—Fiske on teleology,
against and for: order and purpose—Efficient and final
causes—Caprice—Spinoza on final causes—Mathematics
—Purposiveness—The same facts and laws appear from
the point of view of cause and of purpose—Chance or
purpose.
W E are to devote this chapter to the inquiry

whether the issue raised by evolution is one
which is new, or is the issue one which has been tried
over and over again during the history of human
thought ? We admit at once that the theory of evolu-
tion has cast new light on the universe, and has made
the problem at once more complex and more simple.
We have to reckon with evolution in every depart-
ment. Du Prel says : " In the progress of modern
science no principle has proved so fruitful as that of
evolution. All branches compete with one another in
its use, and have brought about by its aid the most
gratifying results. Geology interprets the significance
of superimposed, hardened strata of the earth's crust
in the sense of a history of the earth's development;
biology, in union with the study of fossils, arranges the
living and petrified specimens of plants and animals in
50
THE STRIFE AGAINST PURPOSE 51
their order, and constructs a history of the evolution

of organic life; philology prepares a genealogical tree
of languages, and finds in it signs which throw light
on prehistoric times and reveal facts forgotten for
thousands of years; anthropology discovers in the
form and expression of human beings rudimentary
signs that point to a theory of development from
lower forms; and finally history reveals the evolution
of civilisation in far-distant historic times; and in all
these branches it becomes apparent that we only then
understand phenomena when we have comprehended
their becoming." (Quoted from A Review of Evolu-
tional Ethics, by Charles Williams, pp. 274, 275.)
The description is not exaggerated. All workers in
science now simply assume evolution, on the hypothesis
of evolution they proceed, by the questions it raises
research and investigation are directed, and by the
light of it every fresh discovery is read. Thus by
the method it prescribes, by the questions it asks, and
by the results it has won, evolution holds the field.
While we clearly admit all this, we have still
something to say. There is still the question to
be asked, What is implied in evolution? Is it a
self-explanatory process ? Is it a process which can
dispense with a marshalling and directing agency?
Is it a system or a method which can get on without
the guidance of intelligence, or proceed without the
assumption of purpose ? We may take the statement
of the issue from Mr. Fiske : " From the dawn of philo-
sophic discussion, Pagan and Christian, Trinitarian
and Deist have appealed to the harmony pervading
nature as the surest foundation of their faith in an
intelligent and beneficent Kuler of the universe.
We meet with the argument in the familiar writings
of Xenophon and Cicero, and it is forcibly and
eloquently maintained by Voltaire as well as by Paley,
by Agassiz as well as by the authors of the Bridge-
water Treatises. One and all they challenge us to
explain, on any other hypothesis than that of creative
design, these manifold harmonies, these exquisite
adaptations of means to ends, whereof the world
is admitted to be full, and which are especially
conspicuous among the phenomena of life. Until the
establishment of the doctrine of evolution, the glove
thus thrown, age after age, into the arena of philosophic
controversy, was never triumphantly taken up. I t
was Mr. Darwin who first, by his discovery of natural
selection, supplied the champions of science with the
resistless weapon by which to vanquish, in this their
chief stronghold, the champions of theology." {Cosmic
Philosophy, vol. ii., pp. 396, 397.) Mr. Fiske was
enthusiastic and very confident when he wrote those
words. About twenty years ago some men were
enthusiastic about evolution. They felt they had
found the key to make every mystery plain, to solve
every problem, and they spent a good deal of time in
proving how triumphant they were. Some people also
were in a panic. They felt as if the old, old con-
troversy had come to an end, that they were left to a
universe in which there was no shaping intelligence,
no directing agency, nothing akin to themselves in
the vast spaces of the universe. By-and-by calmer
counsels prevailed. Enthusiasms wore out, and panic
died away. As they became better acquainted with
the claim and scope of evolution, they came to see
that matters were very much as of old. Professor
Huxley came to see and to say that theology had not
received its death-blow, and Mr. Fiske lived to write
as follows : " The teleological instinct in man cannot
be suppressed or ignored. The human soul shrinks
from the thought that it is without kith or kin in all
this wide universe. Our reason demands that there
shall be a reasonableness in the constitution of things.
This demand is a fact in our psychical nature as
positive and as irrepressible as our acceptance of
geometrical axioms and our rejection of whatever
controverts such axioms. No ingenuity of argument
can bring us to believe that the infinite Sustainer of
the universe will put us to permanent intellectual con-
fusion. There is in every earnest thinker a craving
after a final cause; and this craving can no more
be extinguished than our belief in objective reality.
Nothing can persuade us that the universe is a
farrago of nonsense. Our belief in what we call the
evidence of our senses is less strong than our faith in
the orderly sequence of events: there is a meaning
which our minds could fathom were they only vast
enough." {The Idea of God, pp. 137, 138.)
I t is curious to look back for twenty years, and
to read the literature of that time over again. The
tone of triumph is as marked on the one side as
the note of depression and of pain is on the other.
To-day, except in some quarters, the triumph and the
panic have both subsided, as it has done in former
instances of the same kind. We may note the same
kind of elation and depression following on every
great discovery in science. And it seemed to be

founded on the notion that wherever the presence of
law was discovered there was also proved the absence
of God. Strange to say, the discovery of gravitation
was held to be a disproof of the existence of God.
Physicists said it, and theologians feared it. In
connection with physics, in connection with the
advance of chemistry, with geology, and with the
advance of almost every science, there has been a
period of elation and of depression. So with evolu-
tion, which, if true, is the largest advance yet made
by the mind of man, and consequently enthusiasm
rose to a great height, and depression fell correspond-
ingly low.
The issue raised is really the old issue between the
atomists of Greece and those who postulated mind
as a true cause. It is the issue between Lucretius
on the one hand, and, say, Cicero on the other. I t is
raised also in its most classical form by Spinoza; and
it could not but be raised wherever order, regularity
have been discovered. The difference to-day is that
the issue is raised with more knowledge on either
side. On the one hand, science has a wider know-
ledge of law, a more accurate understanding of
physical causation, a more rigid adherence to the
persuasion that there is nothing in the universe which
is not under law, and law and order have a wider
meaning. But, on the other hand, theology has come
to understand better what it means by God. I t has
been able to separate from the idea of God every-
thing like caprice, arbitrariness, whimsicality. From
its idea of God it has banished those elements of
uncertainty which drove Lucretius to distraction and

tortured the higher mind of Greece. Both sides have
come to see that law, order, regularity are indis-
pensable ; and the question has come to be, What is
implied in the thought of an orderly universe, moving
under law ? Can order explain itself ? Can a system
of efficient causes account for itself ?
I t surely ought not to be difficult to come to an
understanding. Theologians can surely say with
Tyndall that theology as well as " science demands the
radical extirpation of caprice, and the absolute reliance
upon law in nature." Theology surely has no interest
in the maintenance of caprice. She is conscious
that her position is misrepresented by Leon Dumont,
if he means to say that her view is that which he
denounces. " If the existence of a superior intelli-
gence can be demonstrated by physical proofs, it is not
by the spectacle of order and regularity, but merely
by abnormal and contradictory facts, in a word, by
miracle." Another says : " The scientific sense of the
term law is utterly opposed to that of will. Will in the
only intelligible sense of which we have any knowledge,
namely, human will, is vengeful, arbitrary, variable,
capricious." Theologians have an interest in making
our scientific men know that by will they do not
mean caprice, that by purpose they do not mean
arbitrariness. The will they postulate as the ultimate
source of things is a will which is the cause of order
and law in the universe, a will which is steadfast and
unchangeable, conscious of itself and its purpose,
foreseeing the end, and taking means to bring it
about. When we speak of purpose, we do not mean
intermeddling with things for the sake of caprice.
When we speak of purpose in the universe, we just
imply that the universe has a meaning, that the
system of efficient causes is in the grasp of a final
cause.
The controversy which we have with such men as
Mr. Spencer, Mr. Fiske in his cosmic philosophy, is
merely that they have an inadequate notion of
causation, that they attribute to the effect more than
there is in the cause. They shut us out from any
consideration of purpose, and compel us to try to
deduce all things from the system of efficient causes,
even when these are plainly inadequate for the
purpose. Why should we be compelled to try to
understand the universe by a process which shuts out
more than one half of the best elements of our think-
ing ? We know no reason save the dread which the
scientific man has of caprice. But we have seen that
caprice can have no place in an infinite, eternal,
and unchangeable Mind, who knows itself and its
purpose. Why should we be forced to say where we
see a system of causes working out an intelligible end
that this end was neither foreseen nor intended ? But
perhaps we ought to look at the classical exposition of
the subject.
In the first book of the Ethics, Spinoza develops
the thesis that all things are predetermined by God,
not through His free will or absolute fiat, but from
the very nature of God as infinite power. Having
determined that all possible things are real, and all
real things are necessary, in the appendix he makes
a strenuous attack on the teleological exposition of the
world: that God directs all things to a definite goal.
" For it is said that God made all things for man, and
man that he might worship Him." He sets himself
first to show how this view obtains general credence,
and, second, he points out its falsity. Men are
conscious of their desires and volitions, and uncon-
scious of the causes which disposed them to wish and
desire. Men do all things for an end, and therefore
they only look for a knowledge of the final causes of
events; and when these are learned they are content,
as having no cause for further doubt. " Further, as
they find in themselves and outside themselves many
means which assist them not a little in their search
for what is useful—for instance, eyes for seeing, teeth
for chewing, herbs and animals for yielding food, the
sun for giving light, the sea for breeding fish, etc.—
they come to look on the whole of nature as a means
for obtaining such conveniences. Now, as they are
aware that they found such conveniences and did not
make them, they think they have cause for believing
that some other being has made them for their use.
As they look upon things as means, they cannot believe
them to be self-created \ and judging from the means
they are accustomed to prepare for themselves, they
are bound to believe in some ruler of the universe
endowed with human freedom, who has arranged and
adapted them for human use." (Elwes' translation,
vol. ii., p. 76.) Spinoza thinks that nature has no
particular goal in view, and that final causes are
human figments. There is another standard of verity,
and that is the standard set up by mathematics,
which considers solely the essence and properties of
figures without regard to their final causes. When

the notion of final cause is dismissed, along with it
go all those conceptions which presuppose the idea of
purpose, such as goodness, badness, order, confusion,
warmth, cold, beauty, and deformity. These are rooted
in the fortuitous interests and the varying tastes of
the individual, and are mere abstract notions framed
for the explanation of the nature of things.
These are some of the maxims by which Spinoza
sought to destroy the idea of purpose. Not since
Lucretius had such an assault been made on teleology.
The influence of Spinoza's assault can be traced, and
it has been operative from his day to ours. At the
same time, it may be questioned whether Spinoza has
put the case fairly, or rightly set forth the distinction
between mathematical and other knowledge. He
admits that men " come to look on the whole of
nature as a means for obtaining such conveniences,"
and men "found these conveniences and did not
make them"; in other words, there was some objective
justification for their taking that view. At present
we are not concerned with the adequacy of Spinoza's
representation of the teleological judgment. I t is
true that he has misrepresented i t ; but, even on his
own showing, there is a correspondence between the
nature of the world and man's way of looking at the
world teleologically. This is implied in the statement,
"they found these conveniences and did not make
them "; in other words, this way of looking at things
is related to reality.
His statement applies with much more force to
mathematics. At first wo do not know whether our
mathematical judgments have any relation to a real

world. They may be figments of the imagination;
for in all geometrical figures I actually make a bound-
ing of space by a rule of my own, and I do not know
that anything real corresponds to that bounding. I
assume that space may be bounded; but whether it
really can be thus bounded I do not know until I
ascertain. I imagine a point to move at the same
distance from a fixed point, and I call the boundary
thus traced out a circle. From it I can deduce any
number of propositions. It enables me to say that
the line joining the vertices of all triangles, having
the same base and the same vertical angle, is a
circle. We can deal with conic sections in the same
way. At first men could not say of what use such
studies might be. The old geometers proceeded with
such investigations, and never asked of what use their
propositions and deductions might be. They worked
out the properties of the parabola, the ellipse, and the
hyperbola, and they never asked where there were
any bodies in nature whose movements corresponded
to the curves whose properties they investigated.
They did not think that real bodies in space might
move in ellipses, nor that a central force varied
according to the inverse square of the distance. For
all they knew these curves might or might not have
a reference to reality. It was a science of imagination,
based on the intuition of space and time, and on the
laws of deductive logic. And mathematics has
not furnished the standard of verity which Spinoza
demanded. For in the first instance mathematics
reveals only the nature of the human mind with its
intuitions, its power of reasoning, and its conformity

to the laws of logic. Mathematics shows how the
human mind works when under few and simple
conditions. I t is a witness to the power and the
rationality of the human mind, and that is all that
can be said about it.
" I t is quite different if I meet with order and
regularity in complexes of things external to myself,
enclosed within real boundaries, as, e.g., in a garden
the order and regularity of the trees, flower-beds,
and walks. These I cannot expect to derive a priori
from my bounding of space made after a rule of my
own; for this order and regularity are existing things
which must be given empirically in order to be known,
and not a mere representation of myself determined
a priori according to a principle." (Kant, Kritik of
Judgment, Bernard's translation, p. 205.) Thus the
question is, How are we related to reality ? Mathe-
matics regards only what is possible; and after we have
elaborated it, the further question arises, How far
does reality conform to mathematics ? We have still
to ask, How far do things empirically given conform
to our way of looking at. them ? If concrete things,
real things in a real world, behave as our ideal points
behave when they describe the triangles, circles, conic
sections of our mathematics, then may we not say
that an intelligence is at work in the world akin to
the intelligence which was at work in the construction
of our mathematics ? If our intuition and our logic
are realised in nature, and if nature works out our
mathematics in a grander, more thorough way than
we can, then surely the inference is quite plain.
Nature is the work of an intelligence that knows
mathematics.
Is teleology, then, hostile to science ? Let us see
what the scientific interest is. The scientific interest
is in any given subject to find out not only what it is,
but why it is so and so. This interest is satisfied when
we can point out the causes through which it has
become. Science does not inquire into the origin of
causes, nor into the ground of their universal worth :
it is satisfied when the applicability of the given
causes to produce this particular result is shown.
What science presupposes is a given manifoldness
of things, substances, atoms, forces, etc., which have
definite and defined qualities, and these so related to
one another as to make the result necessary. When
two masses in space are at a particular distance from
one another, their movements necessarily follow from
their mass and their distance. When two bodies
strike against one another, the resulting movement
is determined by their weight, their velocity, their
elasticity. Causes therefore, according to science, are
things with their properties and forces, and these
are given. When these are given, results necessarily
follow; and necessity in nature corresponds to that
inner necessity with which we are acquainted, the
necessity by which a conclusion follows from given
premises. The necessity of nature is also an intel-
lectual necessity.
It is to be observed also that the point of departure
in science is always a defined group of things which
work and are worked on. Out of a thing considered
in itself no change can come; forces are the expression
of the changes of related substances; all causes for
science are external causes. Work done presupposes
a manifoldness of things in defined relations. From
the given condition at this moment we work back to
its condition some time before, and then comes a point
at which we must stop. Science has found its limit.
Our intuitions, our logical necessities have their
counterpart in nature. May not our way of looking
at things as means and ends have its counterpart
in nature just as our way of looking at things as
cause and consequence has ? May not purpose also
be a finer and more unique kind of necessity ?
The idea of purpose no doubt arises out of our
voluntary and practical activity. Our conscious
activity is determined by the thought of the future.
This thought influences our will, our will determines
our activity, which is directed towards the realisation
of our thought, and a course of conduct arises. This
relation to a future event to be realised in conduct
is the distinctive characteristic of purpose. Purpose
is, however, not merely subjective; it is not a mere
wish which does not issue in action : it sets itself to
find means to realise itself; it quickens the intelli-
gence, and sets itself to make use of real, efficient
causes, and so arrange them as to bring about the
foreseen result. Purpose remains mere wish until
it can link itself to the real working causes of the
world, and make use of or make a mechanism to
give it effect. Purpose, first a thought in the mind,
becomes active, and sets the mind and will to work;
it sets the mechanism of the body to work, and so
finally the mechanism of the mind is controlled, and
made to act in order to bring about a result which

mechanism could never of itself have produced. Pur-
pose, then, has a real place as far at least as human
action is regarded. Everywhere we see a purpose
impressed on systems of efficient causes. We see
machines, ships, steam engines, telephones, telegraphs,
everywhere at work, and they are possible because
systems of efficient causes are receptive of purpose.
There are two ways of considering a steam engine.
We may look at it as a system of efficient causes, and
investigate the properties and relations of the various
elements contained in it, and try to understand the
mechanical theory of the steam engine. We work
synthetically from the causes to the result. But we
may legitimately work from another point of view,
and take the result as our point of departure. We
may ask through which combination of causes was
this result produced; and from this point of view the
result appears as purpose, and the working causes
appear as means by which the purpose was realised.
We may look at the solar system, and regard the
stability of the system as the result of the move-
ments of the planets in the same direction, and so
on ; but it is also a legitimate way to look at the
stability of the system first, and at all the co-ordinated
movements as means which serve to realise that
end. Are we told that the postulating of such a
purpose is hypothetical ? But we cannot get rid of
the hypothetical element. One course of procedure
says, if such and such causes are given, then the
result must be so and so; and the other course says,
if this result has come, then the causes must be so
and so. The same laws and causes come into
observation from both points of view. If we look at
an event as a realised purpose, we bring also into
view the system of causes which was used to realise
the end, and the system of causes is the same as
that which brings about the event considered merely
as an event apart from purpose. Were our knowledge
more thorough, were it only complete, we might read
the order of the universe backwards and forwards—
backwards to a system of efficient causes, and for-
wards to a defined and predetermined end. But our
knowledge is far from complete, and therefore we
object to an arbitrary decision on the part of many,
a decision which shuts us out from a fruitful way of
looking at the universe, merely because we do not
know enough to carry out that view in its application
to all the details of the universe.
We may not be able to say what is the purpose of
an eclipse; we may rest content with the knowledge
that in certain relations of the movements of the
earth, the moon, and the sun, eclipses of the moon or
the sun will happen periodically. That is merely to
say that our knowledge is not great enough for us to
set all the events of the universe in the light of
purpose. I t might be possible for us to deny efficient
causation on the same ground, because there are
many spheres in which we have not yet been able to
say what the causation really is. But the denial of
purpose in nature is simply an appeal to ignorance;
or if our adversaries wish to be scornful, they call it
anthropomorphism. And they ask us, Are we to
conceive the power which rules the universe working
THE STRIFE AGAIXST PURPOSE 65
after the fashion of a man? We have dealt with
anthropomorphism elsewhere (Is God Knowable f
chap, iii.), and we shall not repeat here what we have
formerly written. Is not the mathematical thinking
of the universe done after the fashion of a man ?
Are not the ellipses, the parabolas of the Greek
geometers patterns according to which the planets
move ? Is not the necessity of nature paralleled by
the necessity of logic ? Both in nature and in logic
what is absurd is impossible. The system of efficient
causes which we find at work in the world is just as
anthropomorphic as the system of final causes is.
The spectacle of a human intelligence working for a
foreseen end, finding out what causes can be disposed
and in what way for the accomplishment of that
end, is as real, as grand, as much related to nature
and reality as is the same intelligence working out
its geometry, its algebra, its calculus by the laws of
logic, deducing its great propositions from a few
elementary axioms. If we accept the logical necessity
of the universe, even though it be anthropomorphic,
why on that ground deny its purposiveness ?
Given a certain state of matters, how may we
explain it ? Given a human work, be it a machine,
a song, a book, a theory of gravitation or of evolution,
and we can explain it by a reference to the author,
his intelligence, and his purpose. We may take into
account the material of which the machine is com-
posed, as we take into account the paper, type, ink,
etc., of which the book is composed ; we may inquire
into the qualities and laws of the given material; but
in the end we say the explanation of the product is
5
the author. In evolution the matter to be explained
is the universe. Is it best explained by purpose or
by mechanism ? As we have seen, mechanism cannot
explain it. Most certainly the primitive nebulosity
cannot explain i t ; for the nebulists are confronted
with the following dilemma : either the nebula was
originally more than a nebula, or it has been added
to, in the course of its development, from a source
beyond itself. The effect cannot be greater than the
cause. If the primitive nebulosity has become the
ordered cosmos with all its inhabitants, art, science,
philosophy, morality, religions must all have been
either in the nebula at first, or added to it from
without by a power adequate to the result. Power,
either within the nebula or from without, there
must have been, and power of a kind fitted to bring
about the end. Let it be observed that the chain
of ordered causes and results is the same, whether
we contemplate it from the point of view of physical
causation or from the point of view of purpose. In
the one case we contemplate it as bare result, in the
other case we look at it as intended, and the ordered
causes are grouped together with a view to accomplish
the end. In the last event we have a cause sufficient
to bring about the result; in the former case we have
no account whatever of the order, adaptation, and
method of the universe. We must go back to the
fortuitous concourse of atoms, and trust to c h a n c e -
to chance, now, be it remembered, not as a name for
a cause the operation and nature of which we do not
know now, but may hope to know by-and-by, but to
chance looked at as a real cause. I t may be allowed
to speak of chance as an element in a calculation of

probabilities simply to express ignorance; but it is
not allowable to speak of chance as a substitute for
causation, and to this we are brought if we deny
purpose in the universe.
But we give the universe over to confusion when
we deny purpose. " You would not see evidence of
purpose, we are told, much less of higher wisdom or
transcendent cleverness, in the conduct of a man who,
to kill a hare, fired a million pistols in all directions
over a vast meadow ; or who, to enter a locked room,
brought ten thousand random keys, and made trial
of them all; or who, to have a house, built a city,
and turned the superfluous houses over to the mercy
of wind and weather." And to this we are brought
by our antagonism to what Mr. Spencer calls the
Carpenter theory. Notwithstanding the description
of Lange just given, Mr. Spencer writes : " There is
an antagonistic hypothesis which does not propose
to honour the unknown Power manifested in the
universe by such titles as * the Master Builder/ or
' the great Artificer'; but which regards this un-
known Power as probably working after a method
quite different from that of human mechanics. And
the genealogy of this hypothesis is as high as that
of the other is low. It is begotten by that ever-
enlarging and ever-strengthening belief in the presence
of law which accumulated experiences have gradually
produced in the human mind. From generation to
-generation science has been proving uniformities of
relation among phenomena which were before thought
either fortuitous or supernatural in their origin—has
been showing an established order and a constant
causation where ignorance had assumed irregularity
and arbitrariness. Each farther discovery of law
has increased the presumption that law is everywhere
conformed to." {Essays, vol. i., p. 240.) Lange and
Professor Huxley would overthrow design by likening
the survival of the fittest to the chance shot which out
of a million happened to kill the hare. Mr. Spencer
would overthrow it by showing that law everywhere
prevails. But the idea of law and uniformity is
also quite consistent with the idea of purpose. In
fact, purpose excludes arbitrariness and irregularity,
and any assertion to the contrary is simply itself
capricious.
CHAPTER V
EVOLUTION AND CREATION
History of the earth—Evolution as seen in geologic eras—
Continuity of the process—Succession—Advance and
preparation for advance—Physics and geology—Some
unsettled questions—Professor Caird on evolution from
two points of view—At the beginning or at the end,
which ?—Is the issue arbitrary arrangement versus evolu-
tion ?—No : creation by slow process is creation—Illustra-
tions—Mechanics and purpose once more.
T HAT teleology is not hostile to efficient causes

we have already seen reason to believe. Still
less does it conflict with efficient causes combined in a
system. In fact, as we advance along the line of march
which science has taken, the idea of teleology becomes
more and more luminous, until in ethics and theology
it becomes indispensable. We quite admit that the
idea is anthropomorphic, that it does not quite enable
us to view all things sub specie eternitatis. We admit
that we are unable to rise to the great height of one
who is present at all the operations of the world, for
whom beginning and end are not, to whom all time
is a nunc stans. But, then, that objection applies to
every one who is compelled to think under the con-
ditions of space and time, and applies equally to those
who affirm causation of any kind. Efficient causes
09
also come under the condition of before and after;
and if to think of efficient causation is valid and
legitimate, final causation is also valid and legitimate.
We might therefore start with the state of the
earth as it now is, and might ask what are the
conditions under which rational life can exist at the
present time. We might analyse these conditions,
and the analysis would give us at least the various
sciences in the order in which they now exist. The
present condition would give us the previous conditions,
biological, geological, chemical, physical, ranged in
order and complexity, as each was analysed into
simpler and simpler elements, and not one of the laws
of nature would need to be altered in order to make
the arrangement. Nothing is changed save the
point of view. The difference is that we do not start
with the nebula, and endeavour, by successive dif-
ferentiations and integrations, to get out of it more
than is in it. We start with the present state of the
world as an intended result, and- look on all the
successive stages of the life-history of the earth as
means for the accomplishment of the end.
True, we are at a disadvantage here j for the
world is not finally made yet. It is only making,
and we can only dimly guess at the final outcome.
But, then, all schemes of thought are open to the
same objection. Evolution itself, in the hands of
Mr. Spencer, can only faintly guess at the final end
for which evolution works. And Hegel's theory of
evolution seemed to regard the Prussian of the
nineteenth century as the final outcome of the toil
of the Idea. We may hold, therefore, although we
EVOLUTION AND CREATION 71
do not know the final outcome of things, that the

power which has brought the nebula to the stage
where life with its thought, its morality, and religion
exists in the earth, will continue to work in such a
way as to bring it to further issues yet, and to an end
worth all the cost.
Apart from the thought of an end, we really get
no sufficient account of the various stages of the life-
history of the earth,. The path which the course of
things has taken seems really indeterminate. It does
not seem natural to say that it must have taken the
course it did, otherwise force would not have per-
sisted. The persistence of force does not explain the
direction in which it persisted. Force persists quite
as much in the moon as on the earth, as much in the
Sahara as in the city of London, as much in the sand
on the sea-shore as in Westminster Abbey. At every
point of transition the difficulty arises, Why should
the force take this particular path ? and apart from
intelligent direction and selection we get no answer.
If the nebula theory as a whole finds it difficult to
pass from the indeterminate to the determinate, that
part of it which applies to our own planet has ex-
perienced equal perplexity. We have no agreement
among scientists about the time when the earth broke
off from the central mass, nor when the earth began
to cool, nor when life became possible on its surface.
The question is of importance for evolution; for
evolution needs time, and a good deal of it. Apart,
however, from these difficulties, which we may look at
again, we may say geology makes out a magnificent
case for evolution. Starting from the earth as a
T2 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION
molten mass with a certain motion in its orbit and
a certain rotation around its axis, we look at it as
cooling according to the rules under which bodies still
lose their heat. It is subject to the usual stresses
which take place in a body which grows solid as it
cools. A crust is formed, and an atmosphere surrounds
it, and the older rocks are made. " We can imagine a
scum or crust forming at the surface; and from what
we know of the earth's interior, nothing is more likely
to have constituted that slaggy crust than the material
of our old gneisses. As to its bedded character, this
may have arisen in part from the addition of cooler
layers below, in part from the action of heated water
above, and in part from pressure or tension; while
wherever it cracked or became broken its interstices
would be injected with molten matter from beneath.
All this may be conjectured, but it is based on known
facts, and it is the only probable conjecture. If
correct, it would account for the fact that the gneissic
rocks are the lowest and oldest that we reach in any
part of the earth." (Salient Points in the Science of
the Earth, pp. 17, 18, by Sir J. William Dawson.)
Geology takes up the study of the earth, and
traces for us its evolution. It reveals to us a period
of its history when there was no life on its surface;
it shows the earth gradually cooling down, becoming
more and more differentiated and integrated under
physical laws the working of which is known; it
traces the formation of rocks, the separation of land
and water, the formation of an atmosphere, and
the gradual formation of these conditions which
make life possible. It reveals to us how complex
are these conditions, how exquisite are the correla-
tions, how manifold the relations which were needed
that this end might be accomplished. The slightest
difference in these correlations would make life for
ever impossible. Then it shows us the beginnings
of life. Life begins in the simplest possible form.
It goes on from more to more. Some forms, indeed,
remain unchanged almost from the beginning until
now. We have still with us the algee, the messes,
crustaceans, molluscs, and corals of the palaeozoic
period; and types which correspond to those forms
of life which characterise the mesozoic and the
tertiary periods. Under the guidance of science1
we see life pressing out in all directions, forming
new combinations, new types, until the possibility
of organic modifications seems exhausted, and a form
of being appears who develops a new power of
adaptation and does not need to modify himself
organically in order to adapt himself to the changing
environment. Were we present at all the stages of
the process, we should surely see that all the changes
were gradual, that the process was slow and con-
tinuous. Very likely there was nothing abrupt,
nothing catastrophic; everything was prepared for,
and every change introduced without violence.
We take the story of geology from our scientific
masters, and accept it as they give it. We follow
them with no misgiving as they unfold for us the
magnificent evolution of the earth's progress through-
out geologic time. We know of the difficulties and dis-
agreements between the physicists and the geologists.
We know that the iiniformitarian in geology demands
that the forces acting on the surface of the globe have
been in all times the same, both in kind and degree,
with those now in operation; and we know that if
this is so, a larger amount of time is needed than
the physicist can grant. Geologists, however, while
agreed as to the kind of forces in operation, are not
all uniformitarian with regard to the amount and
rate of work which these forces exerted in former
times; for if the theory of tidal evolution be true, then
the tides once exerted a force on the earth which was
immeasurably greater than they exert now. If the
earth was ever a molten mass, then the process of
cooling, with all the consequent stresses and strains,
must have caused effects greater by far than have
been experienced since man was upon the earth.
The assumption, then, that the forces operative now
were operative throughout all time in the same degree
must be departed from, and with it also will go the
vast periods of time which Lyall and Darwin demanded
as the primary condition of their theory. We are not
careful, however, to insist on these difficulties. We leave
the differences between physicist and geologist to be
settled between them and by them. We refer to them
here for the sake of uttering a caveat against the
dogmatism of science. The uniformitarian dogma in
geology and the partial theories of physicists have
been used, not by the masters themselves, but by
some others, for the purpose of making attacks on
theology and ethics, and it is therefore well to
point out that these attacks are premature. There
are unsettled questions about the rigidity of the
earth, the rate of geologic change, and the date of
the introduction of man on the earth; and we are

often brought face to face with apparently irre-
concilable opinions, held dogmatically by physicists
on the one hand and by geologists on the other, and
yet the controversial tyro uses these irreconcilable
views as if they were in agreement with each other,
and thinks he has shown that theology is absurd and
religion irrational. On the contrary, we say that
theology is prepared to receive whatever science has
been able to prove; and if evolution is the law of
life, theology will accept evolution as it has accepted
gravitation. We accept the fact that physical laws
are permanent, but we ask our scientific masters to
show us what were the conditions under which the
laws were exhibited; and if the conditions change,
then the effects will also change.
For the purposes of my argument it is not necessary,
however, to make much of these irreconcilable views.
Let us accept the general course of the evolution of the
earth's history as known. Let us assume that the
order was, as is outlined to us by physics and geology
so far as they are agreed, first a world without
life, next a world with life, then life more and more
developed, until we come to the complex life of
the present hour ; then the question arises,—the only
question that has really any significance in the present
argument,—How are we to interpret this order ? Are
we to take our point of view from the beginning or
from the end ? Are we to say with Professor Caird ?—
u
A principle of development necessarily manifests
itself most clearly in the most mature form of that
which develops; as we take our definition of man.
not from Hie embryo or the infant, but from the

grown man, who first shows what was hidden in both.
When, indeed, we turn back from the developed
organism to the embryo, from the man to the child,
we find that a study of the process of genesis casts no
little light upon the nature of the being which is its
result. The man becomes in a higher sense intel-
ligible when we trace him back to the child. But
primarily, and in the first instance, it is the developed
organism that explains the germ from which it grew;
and without having seen the former, we could have
made nothing of the latter. No examination of the
child could enable us to prophesy the man, if we had
not previously had some experience of mature man-
hood ; still less would an examination of the seed in
the embryo reveal to us the distinct lineaments of the
developed plant, or animal, or man. Nor would our
insight be greatly helped by a knowledge of the environ-
ment in which the process of development was to take
place. . . . Development is not simply the recurrence
of the same effects in similar circumstances, not simply
the maintenance of an identity under a variation
determined by external conditions. Hence it is impos-
sible, from the phenomena of one stage of a developing
being, to derive laws which will adequately explain the
whole course of its existence. The secret of the peculiar
nature of such a being lies just in the way of regular
transition in which, by constant interaction with
external influences, it widens the compass of its life,
unfolding continually new powers and capacities
powers and capacities latent in it from the first, but
not capable of being foreseen by one who had seen
only the beginning. It follows that, in the first

instance at least, we must read development backward
and not forward, we must find the key to the meaning
of the first stage in the last; though it is quite true
that, afterwards, we are enabled to throw new light
upon the nature of the last, to analyse and appreciate
it in a new way, by carrying it back to the first.''
{Evolution 0/'Beligion, vol. i., pp. 43-5.)
Thus we see there are two ways of interpreting
evolution. Limiting our view at piesent to the globe
on which we live, and looking at the history of the
earth as now read by science, are we to take our stand
at the present time, or are we to go back to the
primeval molten globe ? Taking our stand at the
beginning, we shall be under the necessity of bringing
out of the globe all that has since evolved. We shall
need an explanation of the tendency and direction
which its history really took. It will not suffice to
show that such and such events have happened. We
have taken on ourselves the burden of showing from
the nature of the glob^ that they could not have
happened otherwise. We must be prepared to show
that every stage of the process from the beginning
until now admits of no alternative. That, however, is
a burden too heavy for science to bear. The general
laws of matter will never account for particular
effects; and the particular arrangements are just
the things which need to be explained. Causes and
consequences have to be translated into a system of
means and ends, if we are to have any intelligible
understanding of the process.
The issue is often put thus : Arbitrary arrangement
versus evolution. But we do not accept the issue in
these terms, for there is no connection between arbi-
trariness and design. Speaking of the solar system,
Mr. Spencer says: " When gravitation came to dispense
with these celestial steersmen, there was begotten a
belief, less gross than its parent, but partaking of the
same essential nature, that the planets were launched
in their orbits from the Creator's hand" {Essays, i.,
p. 240). Dr. Romanes puts the issue thus: "Now it
would be proof positive of intelligent design if it could
be shown that all species of planets and animals were
created—that is, suddenly introduced into the complex
conditions of their life ; for it is quite inconceivable
that any cause other than intelligence could be
competent to adapt an organism to its environment
suddenly. On the other hand, it would be proof
presumptive of natural selection if it could be
shown that one species became slowly transmuted
into another—i.e., that one set of adaptations may be
gradually transformed into another set of adapta-
tions according as changing circumstances require.
This would be proof presumptive of natural selection,
because it would then become amply probable that
natural selection might have brought about many,
or most, of the cases of adaptations which we see;
and if so, the law of parsimony excludes the rival
hypothesis of intelligent design. Thus the whole
question as between natural selection and supernatural
design resolves itself into this : Were all the species of
plants and animals separately created, or were they
slowly evolved ? For if they were specially created, the
evidence of supernatural design remains irrefuted and
irrefutable ; whereas, if they were slowly evolved, that

evidence has been utterly and for ever destroyed." {The
Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution, pp. 12, 13.)
Reserving at present the question of the adequacy
of natural selection, we ask, Is the issue fairly
put by Dr. Romanes? Why should supernatural
design be regarded as possible only if it works
suddenly and with a stroke? or why should super-
natural design be limited only to special creations?
Supposing natwal selection true, what is it but another
way of indicating design ? We are not concerned at
present with the ways in which the design argument
was once put. It may have been stated inadequately
or erroneously, according to the knowledge and ways of
thinking at the time. Science has ever claimed the right
of restating its theories, the right of making them more
general and more consistent with fact. Why should
theology be debarred from the same privilege? Science
has often stated her case foolishly, and theology may
have done so also; and were we to play at the game of
resuscitating past ineptitudes, it is hard to say whether
science or theology has most to answer for. Let us
admit the doctrine of organic evolution, and we say
that Dr. Romanes has supplied us with an argument
for design much more magnificent than that based on
special creation, the evidence for which he says has
been utterly and for ever destroyed. He simply says
that the evidence for design is destroyed by that which
shows the presence of a vaster design; for design is
all the greater and the more intelligent just in pro-
portion to the complexity of the means and the length
of time it takes to bring it about. Professor Huxley
puts it thus: " Suppose that any one had been able to
show that the watch had not been made directly by
any person, but that it was the result of the modifica-
tion of another watch which kept time but poorly, and
that this again had proceeded from- a structure which
could hardly be called a watch at all, seeing that it
had no figures on the dial and the hands were rudi-
mentary, and that, going back and back in time, we
come at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest
traceable rudiment of the whole fabric ; and imagine
that it had been possible to show that all these
changes had resulted from a tendency in the structure
to vary indefinitely, and, secondly, from something in
the surrounding world which helped all variations in
the direction of an accurate time-keeper, and checked
all those in other directions : then it is obvious that
the force of Paley's argument is gone." {Origin of
Species', Appendix.)
On the contrary, it would appear all the greater, in
proportion as a rudimentary watch, which by constant
modification could produce other watches, is incom-
parably more wonderful than any watch made directly
by a person. Our friends seem to think that they
deny design when they show that the design is greater
and more wonderful than human designs ever are.
As we ponder on Professor Huxley's illustration, it
grows more wonderful under our vision. We have in
the rudimentary watch a tendency to vary indefinitely,
but that tendency is kept in one direction only by
something in the outward world. And Professor
Huxley cannot help bringing in teleology, even when he
strives with all his might to exclude it. The tendency
within controlled by the tendency without, co-

ordinated with a view towards the production of
" a n accurate time-keeper"! Well, a watchmaker
constructed the complicated system of wheels, levers,
escapement for the same useful end. Thus Professor
Huxley could not even state the proposition which
denies teleology without the use of language which
implied it. All that he has proved is that the in-
telligence which was needed to produce a watch which
evolved other watches was immeasurably greater than
that of Paley's watchmaker.
Of many other illustrations I shall refer only to
one; and I take it from Professor Lloyd Morgan,
whose works on evolution are so valuable and
suggestive. " Compare the engines of a modern ocean
steamer with even the highest achievement of the
age of Watt. Professor Shaw, in his paper on this
subject, gives a table to show the number of parts in
the engines of a first-class Atlantic liner. In that
table we see that no less than twenty-three auxiliary
engines minister to the efficiency of the main engine,
all being definitely connected together into one
complex system. There are no less than thirty-seven
separate levers, and a hundred and forty-seven dis-
tinct valves, and the total number of parts in the
main and auxiliary engines, including nuts, pins,
bolts, studs, and so forth, all of them necessary for
efficiency, durability, and security, is something
like a hundred thousand. . . . Evolution is not the
multiplication of similar structures, but the pro-
duction of one more complex structure which shall do
the work of many. Increase of efficiency, increase
6
of complexity, and increase of economy of space,
fuel, and material have all gone hand in hand."
{Springs of Conduct, pp. 159, 160.) The whole
section is written with clearness and method, and
is graphic and full of interest. We seem to see the
evolving of machines. We trace the steam engine
step by step, from Watt's somewhat rudimentary
engine, till we come to the engine of the Atlantic
liner. We are glad to have this illustration of evo-
lution, and we might put it alongside that of Professor
Huxley's watch, which was supposed to be able to
produce other watches.
It is just possible for us to confine our attention
to the series of engines which is brought before us
by Professor Lloyd Morgan. We may fix our thought
on engine after engine, and admire the successive
modifications and their great fitness for the end in
view, just as in nature we may fix our thought on
the successive modifications of living things from the
algse up to man. We may be so interested in these
as to ask no further question, or may look at them
as self-explanatory. We may give an explanation
of every improvement in the steam engine from
the point of view of the engine itself. We may
show how each change helped to make it more
effective, and we may also show its mechanical
fitness. With all this we may leave out of sight
the one sufficient explanation of the steam engine.
The cause of the engine is the intelligence, of the
engineer; every step in the evolution was the work
of intelligence, working by means and method, and
for a foreseen end. All the mechanics of an engine
EVOLUTION AND CREATION ^3
are means to an end, and the engine itself is a

means for a still further end, namely, swift and
safe communication between people and people, and
this end is for yet another end. We have to thank
Professor Lloyd Morgan for his illustration. To a
system of evolution which involves the same kind of
causes, methods, ends as are manifested in the evo-
lution of the steam engine we can have no possible
objection. It is just the very kind of evolution we
are in search of—an evolution that has reference to a
mind that can think and plan and foresee, devise ends,
and take means to accomplish the ends in view.
There is no human work which may not be looked
at merely in the light of efficient causes as Professor
Lloyd Morgan has looked at machines. It is wonder-
ful how much we may explain, without even referring
to an inventor or an author. A treatise on a steam
engine may not mention the name of Watt from first
to last; it may describe the elastic properties of
steam, and the laws of expansion and condensation,
may deal with the properties of metals, and the forms
of cranks, pistons, etc., and speak of all these things
just as we speak of the law of gravitation; every part
of the engine may thus be explained on mechanical
principles, and the work which the engine can do may
be calculated exactly to a foot-pound: but we know
that the engine had an intelligence as its maker, and
a final cause as its end.
In the same way we may study a dialogue of Plato
or a play of Shakespeare. Take any working edition
of a play of Shakespeare, and we may scarcely have
in it a reference to the author. We find notes on
philology, which deal in an impersonal way with the
history of words and their meaning; we find gram-
matical expositions, which deal mainly with the laws
of grammar; we may find all the resources of human
thought and ingenuity tasked to ascertain the mean-
ing of the play. In all these things we are dealing
with efficient causes, and we may give a sufficient
account of the play from certain points of view
without one reference to the author. We may take
it as it stands, and seek to understand the law of its
becoming, the conditions linguistic, ethical, social
which helped to make it what it is; and we may,
by an enlightened criticism, ascertain its meaning,
and contend plausibly that we have really exhausted
the whole matter of the play. Still, there does
arise the further question as to the revelation of
the author which is in the play, and the fact that
the meaning we find in the play was first put into
it by a mind like our own. We might run the
parallel still more closely. We migKt point out
that each word in the play has its own character
and its own particular history determined by law,
that each grammatical form of sentence is ruled by
logic, and that the connection of part and part may
also be closely woven together according to laws
which may be formulated; and we may entangle
the whole matter in such a complex of laws and
necessities as to find no need for a reference to
Shakespeare at all.
Now this is exactly parallel to the procedure of
those who limit our view of the world to the mere
working of efficient causes. We welcome their earnest
toil, and we sit at their feet while they unfold for

us the wondrous tale of science; we are grateful to
them as we are grateful to an expositor of Plato.
But when we have learned all that an expositor has
to tell us-of the laws of grammar, of philology, of
thought, we still have the knowledge that these were
plastic in the hands of Plato, and in the end the
work is his and his alone. In the same way we
may say to our masters in science, after they have
taught us all they know about the sequences of
things and the laws which govern them : Is this all ?
Is this web of life and its laws all you have to tell
us ] Have you given us any satisfactory account of
the meaning which you have found in the world?
You have explained to us the evolution of the steam
engine; will you allow us to postulate the same kind
of cause for the universe and the same kind of
purpose as we know had to do with the evolution of
the steam engine ? If not, why not ? Is it b; cause
the universe is so much greater than the engine,
because the final end is not yet in sight ? Well, the
answer to that is, to postulate an intelligence equal to
the task. The order and adaptation of the universe
are as patent as those of the engine ; but if the order
and adaptation of the engine are due to intelligence,
why make the order and adaptation of the universe
a reason for denying that intelligence had to do with
the making of it ? Consistency demands that we
should assert that the engine evolved itself.
These questions do not arise in connection with the
separate sciences. They have enough to do if they
deal adequately with their own problems, just as a
student will have enough to do if he is to master

the principles of construction of the steam engine
and the laws and properties of the material employed
in its construction. But we should make short work
of the contention of that student who asserted that
the construction of the engine is altogether due to
mechanical causes. The convergence of all these
into a system has to be explained. Our conten-
tion here is that those who wish to explain the
universe from mechanical causes alone are just as
rational as the supposed student of the steam engine
would be.
The evidence of intelligence is so much greater
that our opponents categorically deny it altogether.
They may, like Mr. Spencer, say that they deny
intelligence in the interests of something greater than
intelligence, and then strive as he does, through all the
pages of the volumes of the Synthetic Philosophy, to
explain the higher in terms of the lower; they may
take the order of the universe as an ultimate fact,
regarding which no question is to be asked; or they
may couch their denial in other terms, and urge it
for other reasons. But ultimately the argument
seems to come to this : there are so many evidences
of intelligence in the universe, that we must therefore
infer the absence of a guiding mind.
In truth, the argument from order to intelligence
is much more cogent than it was in Paley's time. No
one ever strengthened the argument as Darwin has
done. Evolution has widened it beyond measure, and
the universe, its history and its order, are seen to be
>vorthy of a presiding, guiding intelligence, even of
an infinite order. Let us hope that now, when the

rapture and the intoxication of the first discovery
of evolution have passed away, and sober reflection
has come back, that the denial of intelligence to
the source and ground of the universe will not be
persisted in.
CHAPTER V I
ORGANIC EVOLUTION
Statement by Professor Kay Lankester—New sets of terms

used in biology—Why are there new terms ?—Dr. Burdon
Sanderson—Darwinism—Variation, struggle for existence,
natural selection, transmission—Anthropomorphic char-
acter of the process—Malthusianism—Utilitarianism—
What is natural selection ?—Comparison with the process
of denudation in geology by Mr. J. T. Cunningham—
Darwin on the eye—Professor Huxley's reproduction of
chance—Organic evolution likely true, but its factors not
yet discovered.
HE task which evolution has set itself may

be described in the words of Professor E. Ray
Lankester: " I t is the aim or business of those occu-
pied with biology to assign living things, in all their
variety of form and activity, to the one set of forces
recognised by the physicist and chemist. Just as the
astronomer accounts for the heavenly bodies and their
movements by the laws of motion and the property of
attraction, as the geologist explains the present state
of the earth's crust by the long-continued action of
the same forces which at this moment are studied
and treated in the form of ' laws ' by physicists• and
chemists; so the biologist seeks to explain in all its
details the long process of the evolution of the in-
numerable forms of life now existing, or which have
88
ORGANIC EVOLUTION 89
existed in the past, as a necessary outcome, an auto-

matic product, of these same forces." {Encyc. Brit.,
vol. xxiv., p. 799a.) Again: " I t was reserved for
Charles Darwin, in the year 1859, to place the whole
theory of organic evolution on a new footing, and by
his discovery of a mechanical cause actually existing
and demonstrable by which organic evolution must
be brought about to entirely change the attitude in
regard to it of even the most rigid exponents of
the scientific method " (p. 8016). " The history of
zoology as a science is therefore the history of the
great doctrine of living things by the natural selection
of varieties in the struggle for existence, since that
doctrine is the one medium whereby all the phenomena
of life, whether of form or function, are rendered
capable of explanation by the laws of physics and
chemistry, and so made the subject-matter of a true
science or study of causes" (p. 799a). Professor
Lankester has not explained why in biology he and
those who agree with him have introduced a new set
of terms—terms which are not used in physics or
chemistry. In physics and in chemistry men <lo not
speak of "advantage," of "utility," of "interest."
But in the article quoted Professor Lankester says:
" Darwin's theory had as one of its results the refor-
mation and the rehabilitation of teleology. According
to that theory, every organ, every part, colour, and
peculiarity of an organism, must either be of benefit
to the organism itself, or have been so to its ancestors;
no peculiarity of structure or general conformation,
no habit or instinct in any organism, can be supposed
to exist for the benefit or amusement of another
organism, not even for the delectation of man himself.
Necessarily, according to the theory of natural selec-
tion, structures either are present because they are
selected as useful, or because they were still inherited
from ancestors to whom they were useful, though no
longer useful to the existing representatives of these
ancestors." (P. 8026.)
We know that men, even of the mental stature of
Professor Ray Lankester, sometimes do not co-ordinate
their notions, or ask whether one part even of a
short article is quite consistent with another. If the
phenomena of biology have been " rendered capable
of explanation by the laws of physics and chemistry,"
whence this new set of terms unused and unre-
cognised by these sciences ? We do not say in
chemistry that any combination must be of benefit
either to the molecule or its atoms; nor in mechanics
do we speak of "interest," "advantage," "benefit."
Do the terms used by Professor Lankester correspond
to facts presented by biology ? Can the theory of
Darwin be even stated without the use of language,
which introduces new conceptions not needed by
physics or chemistry? Of course every physical
body must be consistent with chemical and physical
laws; but it is not necessary for us to say that
organisms must be capable of explanation by them.
If the phenomena of life are to be explained by
chemical and physical laws, clearly we are shut out
from the use of language implying conception^ which
have no place in these sciences. Would it not be
well to recognise this, and either refrain from the use
of language fitted to mislead, or to admit that there is
something in life not to be explained by physical and

chemical laws ? If we reduce the phenomena of life
to physical and chemical laws, they have vanished; if
we recognise their distinctive characteristics, then they
are no longer explicable by chemical and physical
laws.
In his address to the British Association Dr.
Burdon Sanderson said : " The methods of investi-
gation being themselves physical or chemical, the
organism itself naturally came to be regarded as
a complex of such processes and nothing more. In
particular the idea of adaptation, which, as I have
endeavoured to show, is not a consequence of organism,
but its essence, was in a great measure lost sight of."
Again: " The specific energy of a part or organ . . . is
simply the special action which it normally presents,
its norma or rule of action being in each instance the
interest of the organism as a whole, of which it forms
a part." Could any statement be further removed
from the language of physics or chemistry? "The
interest of the organism " as a whole gives the norma
or rule to each organ; and yet even Dr. Burdon
Sanderson says in the same address: "The leading
notion was that, however complicated the conditions
under which vital energies manifest themselves, they
can be split into processes which are identical in
nature with those of the non-living world; and as a
corollary to this, that the analysing of a vital process
into its physical and chemical constituents, so as to
bring these constituents into measurable relations
with physical or chemical standards, is the only mode
of investigating them which can Lad to satisfactory
results." The statement is historical, but from the
general tenor of the address it would seem to be the
view which Dr. Sanderson himself holds. If this be
the only method which can lead to satisfactory results,
then the task of investigation might well end; for
when vital energies are split into processes like those
of the non-living world the essential nature of the
matter in hand is lost in the splitting.
While the organism in itself does not create energy
or matter, yet the transformation of energy and matter
in living organisms is quite different from that which
takes place in inanimate matter, and to endeavour to
explain the one by the other is to lose sight of the
initial difference. " The difference between the vital -
istic and mechanical schools might indeed be regarded
as one of words; it is, however, one of ideas. As one
of the speakers said, the tendency of the official physio-
logy of the text-book and the laboratory, the lecture-
room and the examination-hall, has been to narrow
its field to the investigation that requires the precise
instruments of physics and chemistry, and to ignore
the fruitful field now successfully tilled by the zoologist
and the botanist, whose results are expressible only in
the terminology of intelligent speech, not in grains,
centimeters, seconds, or degrees. This is the cause
of the aridity of so much modern physiology, almost
divorced from the study of protoplasmic life, of ex-
perimental embryology, and of heredity." (Marcus
Hartog, in Speaker, Sept. 3rd, 1893.) The truth of
the charge brought by Mr. Hartog is very evident,
and this comparative barrenness is due to the belief
held by many, and formulated by Professor Eay
Lankester, that the laws of chemistry and physics are
capable of explaining the phenomena of life. But
when the ideas of struggle, of advantage, of vitality,
and other ideas of the same order enter in, we have
passed from mechanics, and have entered a sphere
wherein new phenomena reign, and these phenomena
have laws peculiar to themselves. They may use the
powers of chemistry and physics, but they use them
in their own way and for new ends and purposes.
But we may try to obtain a real view of what Mr.
Darwin has done, and seek to understand what natural
selection is, and does, and can do. It is not necessary
for us to trace the history of this great conception, or
to dwell on the fact that there were evolutionists before
Darwin. Such histories there are in abundance : for
example, in the articles on " Evolution v by Professor
Huxley and Professor Sully, in the latest edition of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Darwin and Wallace,
however, turned an abstract speculation into a work-
ing hypothesis. They were able to show how evolution
might be brought about. They were able to point to
causes actually at work in the play of organic life
around us, and that if similar causes were at work
for a long period back then the web of life might be
understood and explained. As stated by Mr. A. R.
Wallace the great principles of Darwinism are these.
Two main classes of facts are apparent to us when we
look at life and its manifestations. The first is the
enormous increase of organisms. They tend to in-
crease in geometrical progression, while their means
of subsistence tend to increase in arithmetical
progression. Hence there must be a struggle for
existence, for the number of the offspring greatly

exceeds the number of the parents. They compete
with each other, they are destroyed also by cold and
hecat, rain and snow, floods and storm. "There is
thus a perpetual struggle among them which shall
live and which shall die ; and this struggle is tremen-
dously severe, because so few can possibly remain
alive" {Darwinism, p. 11). Along with the struggle
there is a second class of facts, which is summed up
under the names of variation and transmission.. There
are variations, for all individuals of a species are not
alike \ if they were alike, there would be no grounds
for the survival of one rather than another. But
individuals do vary, and vary in many ways. Some
may be stronger, swifter, more healthy, more cunning,
may have a colour which gives them a better chance
of hiding, may have keener sight, and any beneficial
variation will help the individual in the struggle, and
the fittest will be sure to survive.
Beneficial variations will be transmitted from
one generation to another, and the effect will be
cumulative. Natural selection will secure that
the variation best suited to its environment will
survive ; and as the action of natural selection is
constant, new variations will be selected; and thus,
in each generation, the fittest will survive, and so long
as the variations are beneficial they will go on and
will accumulate. Natural selection, acting on varia-
tions which somehow arise, accumulating the variations
and transmitting them from generation to generation,
is held to account for the origin and survival of all
the organic species now in existence on the earth.
Now it would be idle to deny the great merit of

Darwin's work, or the reality of the process which
he describes. Organisms are produced in such
abundance that it is impossible they can all survive.
Some of the plants and animals which are constantly
being produced must perish, and those perish which.
are least adapted and those survive which are best
adapted to the conditions of existence. Natural
selection is just the process by which the fittest are
picked out and the least fit are left to perish.
So far all is clear and intelligible. But it is
interesting to notice how much of ourselves and our
nature we have thus read into nature. We have
indeed, under the guidance of Darwin and Wallace,
explained nature in terms of human nature. We
do not object; for man is always the middle term in
our interpretation of the world. We expect nature
to be rational, to respond to our intelligence and to
our methods, and we find the correspondence does
exist and is real. We do, however, object to the
constant denunciation of anthropomorphism by men
who are the most anthropomorphic of any. The term
natural selection is in Darwin's own words: "This
preservation of favourable differences and variations,
and the destruction of those which are injurious, I
have called natural selection, or the survival of the
fittest." The term itself is borrowed from that
progressive selection practised by man in the rearing
of domesticated animals and cultivated plants. Slight
differences may be accumulated in one direction during
many generations until what looks like a new species
is produced. " The key," says Darwin, " is man's
power of accumulative selection ; nature gives succes-

sive variations; man adds them up in certain directions
useful to him." This kind of language is readily
understood, and every one may at once see what is
meant. It seems that the variations are already
given, and man selects those varieties which tend in
a certain direction, and leaves them free to breed
together. The breeder takes advantage of the ten-
dency to variation, and also of the tendency to the
accumulation of variations; but he is unable to
explain the variation or the accumulation. I t is to
be observed also that, so far as the action of the
breeder is concerned, we have had recourse to a
selecting agency beyond the organism itself. The
purpose is in the mind of the breeder, and not in
the organism or the environment.
What the breeder effects by conscious selection,
the struggle for existence is supposed to effect in
organic beings in a state of nature. Man selects
what is useful to man; Nature selects what is for
the good of the individual or the species, in the
competition with rivals. It is difficult to pass from
man's conscious selection to natural selection; if we
do, however, let us observe in passing how anthropo-
morphic we are. We may acknowledge that the
process is similar in both cases. Looking away for
the moment from man's selecting care, we observe
that the process consists in leaving those forms
which have certain peculiarities free to breed to-
gether. Other forms are removed by the agency of
the breeder. But there is also a selective breeding
due to the killing out of competing forms by the
struggle for existence. " A s man/' says Darwin,

"can produce a great result with his domestic animals
and plants by adding up in any given direction
individual differences, so could natural selection, but
far more easily from having incomparably longer
time for action." We note in passing the likening
of nature's work to man's, and we also note that
results are ascribed both to nature's work and to man's,
which they are not competent to produce. Darwin
admits that man " can neither originate varieties nor
prevent their occurrence." " He can only preserve
and accumulate such as do occur." He assumes that
man can accumulate, and proceeds to assume that
natural selection can also accumulate. " I t may
metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily
and hourly scrutinising throughout the world the
slightest variations, rejecting those that are bad and
adding up all that is good." Yes; but in the sequel
we pass from the metaphor, and we are made to
believe that we have referred the origin of species
to purely natural causation. When we examine the
metaphor somewhat closely, we find that all we have
got from Mr. Darwin is this: beings with the most
serviceable variations survive in the struggle for
existence.
Professor Huxley, in his animated and interesting
paper contributed to the Life of Darwin, says: " The
suggestion that new species may result from the
selective action of external conditions upon the varia-
tions from their specific type which individuals present
—and which we call ' spontaneous' because we are
ignorant of their causation—is as wholly unknown to
7
the historian of scientific ideas as it was to biological

specialists before 1858. But that suggestion is the
central idea of the Origin of Species, and contains
the quintessence of Darwinism." (Vol. ii., p. 195.)
" That which we were looking for and could not find
was a hypothesis respecting the origin of known
organic forms, which assumed the operation of no
causes but such as could be proved to be actually at
work. We wanted not to pin our faith to that or
any other speculation, but to get hold of clear and
definite conceptions which could be brought face to
face with facts, and have their validity tested. The
Origin provided us with the working hypothesis we
wanted. Moreover, it did the immense service of
freeing us for ever from the dilemma, Refuse to
accept the creation hypothesis, and what have you
to propose that can be accepted by any cautious
reasoner? In 1857 I had no answer ready, and I do
not think that any one else' had. A year later we
reproached ourselves with dulness for being perplexed
by such an inquiry. My reflection, when I first made
myself master of the central idea of the Origin, was
4
How extremely stupid not to have thought of that.'
. . . The facts of variability, of the struggle for
existence, of adaptation to conditions were notorious
enough; but none of us had suspected that the road
to the heart of the species problem lay through them,
until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness, and
the beacon-fire of the Origin guided the benighted."
(P. 197.)
The Professor is enthusiastic, and we do not wonder.
He had « got hold of clear and definite conceptions
which could be brought face to face with facts."

The conceptions, as we have seen, are not quite clear.
Hie appropriate machinery was largely metaphorical;
the struggle for existence was exaggerated. If we
want to have any principle of science or philosophy
pushed to an extreme, we always have recourse to
Mr. Grant Allen. "The baker does not fear the
competition of the butcher in the struggle for life ; it
is the competition of other bakers that sometimes
inexorably crushes him out of existence. . . . In this
way the great enemies of the individual herbivores
are not the carnivores, but the other herbivores. . . .
It is not so much the battle between the tiger and
the antelope, between the wolf and the bison, between
the snake and the bird, that ultimately results in
natural selection or survival of the fittest, as the
struggle between tiger and tiger, between bison and
bison, between snake and snake, between antelope and
antelope." (Quoted in The Study of Animal Life, by
J. Arthur Thomson, p. 38.) Thus Mr. Grant Allen, in
his anthropomorphic way, takes the struggle between
baker and baker, and makes it the typical struggle of
the universe. And the same may be said of natural
selection. So also we might see the extension of the
human analogy in the large part which " utility " has
played in the Darwinian theory. " Any being, if it
vary, however slightly, in any manner profitable to
itself, vfjU have a better chance of surviving, and thus
be naturally selected." Every structure either now
is or was formerly of some direct or indirect use
to its possessor. In fact, natural selection rests on
" utility," and this is nothing else than the extension
to the organic world of the national utilitarian

ethics.
Malthusianism and utilitarianism are main ele-
ments in the theory of Darwin. The principle of
utility, however, does not seem to have any relation
to the origin of species. The selection of the useful
in the struggle for existence does not explain the
origin of new characters. Utility is after all only a
relative conception, and it cannot possibly be the funda-
mental principle of the organic world. Utility is an
attribute of what is; a character or quality must first
exist before it can be useful. I t has no utility before it
existed, and it can have none during the period of its
formation. Utility leaves untouched the question of
the means by which it has been brought into existence.
" Selection, whether natural or artificial, is perfectly
analogous to the process of denudation in geology. I t
explains the extinction of innumerable forms, and the
consequent gaps and intervals which separate species,
families, orders, etc.; just as denudation explains the
want of continuity in the stratified rocks. But
geologists have never been blind enough to suppose that
the evolution of the structure of a given rock was due
to denudation; they have always believed that the
structure of each rock was due to the effects of the
forces which have acted upon it since its formation,
and they have devoted their energies to tracing by
observation and experiment the effects of the various
forces." (Preface to Eimer's Organic Evolution, by
J. T. Cunningham, p. xxi.)
With this view of the action of natural selection
Mr. Darwin seems himself to agree : " Several writers
have misapprehended or objected to the term ' natural

selection1; some have even imagined that natural
selection induces variability, whereas it implies only
the preservation of such variations as arise and are
beneficial to the being under its conditions of life"
{Origin of Species, p. 110). But does Mr. Darwin
himself always use the words in this sense ? On the
contrary, wefindthat he constantly speaks of natural
selection as able to " produce structures." Take his
description of the evolution of the eye: " When we
reflect on these facts, here given much too briefly, with
respect to the wide, diversified, and graduated range
of structure in the eyes of the lower animals; and when
we bear in mind how small the number of all living
forms must be in comparison with those which have
become extinct, the difficulty ceases to be very great
in believing that natural selection may haye converted
the simple apparatus of an optic nerve coated with
pigment and invested by transparent membrane into
an optical instrument as perfect as possessed by
any member of the Articulate Class" (sect. 275).
Further on there is a marvellous passage: "If we
must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we
ought in imagination to take a thick layer of trans-
parent tissue, with spaces filled with fluid, and with a
nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose
every part of this layer to be continually changing
slowly in density, so as to separate into layers of
different densities and thicknesses, placed at different
distances from each other, and with the surface of
each layer slowly changing in form. Further, we
must suppose that there is a power, represented by
natural selection or the survival of the fittest, always
intently watching each slight alteration in the trans-
parent layers; and carefully preserving each which,
under varied circumstances, in any way, or in any
degree, tends to produce a distincter image. We must
suppose each new state of the instrument to be multi-
plied by the million, each to be preserved until a
better one is produced, and then the old ones to be all
destroyed. In living bodies variation will cause the
slight alterations, generation will multiply them
almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out
with unerring skill each improvement. Let this
process go on for millions of years, and during each
year on millions of individuals of many kinds; and
may we not believe that a living optical instrument
might thus be formed, as superior to one of glass as
the works of the Creator are to those of man ?"
(Sect. 277.) " Reason tells me that, if numerous
gradations, from a simpler and imperfect eye to one
complex and perfect, can be shown to exist, each
grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly
the case; if, further, the eye ever varies, and the
variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the
case; and if such variations should be useful to
the animal under changing conditions of life, then
the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex
eye could be formed by natural selection, though
insuperable to our imagination, should not be
considered as subversive of the theory" (sect. 271).
"Formed by natural selection," "natural selection
always intently watching each slight alteration,"
"natural selection will pick out with unerring skill
each improvement." Truly the functions performed by

Natural Selection are great! At one time it watches,
then it picks out, then it accumulates, and lastly it has
a " productive " power. At one time Darwin claims
nothing for it but the power of eliminating the least
advantageous eyes, and suddenly this claim changes
into a claim to produce advantageous eyes. But
though natural selection may explain how a particular
eye came to be preserved, it tells us nothing of the
formation of any eye.
We are not concerned to deny the theory of organic
evolution, nor even to say that Darwin's account of
the evolution of the eye is improbable. What we
are concerned with is the bearing of his theory on
teleology. And we see that his view is not in-
compatible with design. He cannot dispense with
superintendence, nor with an agency which watches,
picks out, accumulates, and forms. The question is,
To whom or to what shall we ascribe this selecting
power? To foresight, to forethought, or to what?
One does not care to ascribe to learned and thoughtful
men views which they have earnestly repudiated. They
have denied most emphatically that they believe in
" chance " as a cause. They use the word because they
do not know the causes of variation. Still, they use
the word, and they use it not only as a name for the
action of causes which they do not know, but they use it
as if it produced something. Variation is fortuitous.
Variations are in all directions, and those which
happened to hit on a stable combination survived-
Bui this is chance. Variations, however, are not
indefinite* If variations are in definite directions, if
" a whale does not tend to vary in the direction of
producing feathers, nor a bird in the direction of pro-
ducing whalebone," then manifestly natural selection is
not incompatible with design. May we not say that
natural selection is design ? I t may, indeed, be said
that, though variation now proceeds in definite lines,
or in certain fixed directions, it was not always so.
There may have been a time when life proceeded
indefinitely in all directions, and reached positions
of temporary stable equilibrium only after a series of
trials and errors. But that is a mere speculation,
and is not worthy of the name of science. Life has
had a certain bent from the beginning of life; it
has proceeded along certain lines, and has grown in
certain directions, and the bent and set are just the
very things to be accounted for.
The issue to-day is, we repeat, not between " evo-
lution" and what our friends are pleased to call
" special creation." I t is between evolution under the
guidance of intelligence and purpose, and evolution
as a fortuitous result. " According to teleology, each
organism is like a rifle bullet fired straight at a mark;
according to Darwin organisms are like grape shot, of
which one hits something and the rest fall wide.
For the teleologist an organism exists for the con-
ditions in which it was found; for the Darwinian an
organism exists, because out of many of its kind it
is the only one which has been able to persist in the
conditions in which it was found." (Huxley, On the
Origin of Species, Appendix.) We do not accept
this account of teleology; nor do we know whence
Professor Huxley derived the notion. At all events,
what teleology demands is that we do recognise those

adaptations to purpose which are so manifest in the
universe, of which also the works of Darwin are so
full. It is not necessary to teleology to suppose that
"each organism is fired straight at a mark/' What
is necessary is that the organism hits the mark. If
the hittiDg of the mark is accomplished by a persistent
process prolonged throughout the centuries, implying
completeness of arrangement and adjustment of
means to ends in a complicated series, then the result
is not against teleology; on the contrary, it simply
heightens our view of the skill of the teleologist.
If we can in a measure understand the steps
of the process and the magnitude of the opera-
tion, as Darwin and Huxley enable us to do,
then our wonder is made all the greater, and
we fall prostrate before the unutterable wisdom of
the intelligence which made the world. Such a
teleology is not opposed to evolution; but it is
opposed to Professor Huxley's " grape-shot" view
of the universe. Yet in his article in the Life of
Darwin Professor Huxley is indignant with those
who " charge Mr. Darwin with having attempted to
reinstate the old pagan goddess Chance"; and he
adds: u Probably the best answer to those who talk
of Darwinism meaning the reign of ' Chance' is to
ask them what they themselves mean by ' chance/ Do
they believe that anything in this universe happens
without reason and without a cause ? Do they really
conceive that any event has no cause, or could not
have been predicted by any one who had a sufficient
insight into the order of nature?" (Life of Darwin,
pp. 200, 201.) Really Professor Huxley, by his descrip-

tion of Darwinism as a " method of trial and error "
and of organisms as being like " grape shot of which one
hits something and the rest fall wide," has done more
than anybody else to fasten the charge on Mr. Darwin
of having attempted to reinstate the old pagan
goddess Chance. He should restrain his indignation.
How does his grape-shot illustration agree with " the
one act of faith in the convert to science/' namely,
" the confession of the universality of order, and of
the absolute validity in all times and under all cir-
cumstances of the law of causation" ? Where is
the causation in the organism which hits and the
organisms which fall wide ? Could any one, however
great his insight into the order of nature, have pre-
dicted which one would hit and which would fall
wide ? Why should any organism hit anything in
the circumstances % Need we wonder that any one,
having read Professor Huxley on the origiti of
species, should come to the conclusion that the essence
of Darwinism was just this appeal to chance ? The
appeal to " lucky accidents" is made so often by
Mr. Darwin and his followers that one can hardly
help thinking of the " lucky accident" as having a
part to play in the constitution of things.
Leaving chance and accident out of account on
both sides, our contention is that teleology gives us
the only tenable explanation of the history of life on
the earth. The evidence of organic evolutipn is so
vast, so varied, that most people nowadays must
accept the conclusion to which it points. Naturalists
are convinced that the plants and animals of to-day
are descended from others of a simpler sort, and that

these are descended from others yet more simple,
and thus we may conceivably go back to the first
beginnings of life. The arguments of Darwin are
based on the distribution of animals in space, their
successive appearance in time, on actual variations
in domestication, cultivation, and in nature, on facts
of structure, and on embryology. The evidence
seems irresistible. Most scientific men accept i t ; and
they have their rights, and are bound to uphold,
vindicate, and expound what they believe to be true.
If organic evolution, then, be accepted as true, where
do we stand? Have we any interest in what is
called " special creations" ? If we believe in in-
telligence as the cause of order, then we should
expect that all organic forms have arisen in con-
formity with uniform laws, and not through breaches
of uniform law. We no longer believe—whatever
men did once believe—that plants and animals were
suddenly thrust into the complex conditions of their
life; that the complex of inner relations was suddenly
and in a moment adjusted to the complex of outer
relations; or that the actual concrete life of a plant
or an animal was thus originated and perpetuated.
But creation by evolution is still creation.
Evolution is opposed only to a particular theory of
creation, and that theory was as much scientific as
religious. There is a theory of special creation which
can be no longer held. The view was that each species
or kind was directly created by God at the beginning
of the world, and has gone on reproducing itself after
its kind. The clearest statement of this view is to be
found in the great botanist Linnaeus, who held that

" there are just so many species as there are different
forms created by the infinite Being; and these
different forms, according to the laws of reproduction
imposed on them, produced others, but always forms
like themselves." We have something like the same
view in Milton's Paradise Lost: lions, tigers, stags, all
ready-made, working their way out of the earth,—
" The tawny lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts," etc.
At the beginning of this century the belief was

universal, both among religious and scientific men, that
species were fixed and never passed into each other.
Now all this is altered, and most scientific men hold a
doctrine of descent, or evolution.
It is clear that the doctrine of special creation as
set forth, say, by Linnaeus, is inconsistent with the
doctrine of Darwin. And if organic evolution is true,
we have to ask, Are we committed to the doctrine
of special creation? or rather, Is the doctrine of
special creation as above defined an essential part
of theism or Christianity ? There was a time when
men earnestly contended for the immutability of
species, and thought that important consequences
would follow from the denial of it. But that time
is past, and the immutability of species happily
forms no part of the creed of Christendom nor of the
teaching of Scripture; for the creeds of Christendom
simply affirm that God is the Maker of the world and
all that is in it, and does not say anything about
the way and manner in which He made them. The
Scripture says that " He maketh the grass to grow

on the mountains " ; but says nothing about whether
He caused it to grow suddenly or otherwise, directly
or indirectly. The Scriptures teach a doctrine of
descent, and have no hesitation in saying that all the
races of men are descended from one father, and " God
hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth."
If all the races of men are modified descendants of
one primeval man, and if descent with modification
can account for all of them, where is the objection
on Scriptural and theological grounds to accepting
a theory which simply extends to the whole world
of organic life a principle which theology has always
contended for as true with respect to man ? Theology
has had its difficulties with regard to Traducianism
and Oreationism ; and the same difficulties, and no
greater, appear with respect to evolution and special
creation. What is essential is that we maintain and
vindicate the continued dependence of all creation on
its Maker, and that if things are made so as to
make themselves, God is their Maker after all; and
if evolution can tell us anything of the method of
creation and the order in which the different forms
of life appeared, then we ought to rejoice in it.
CHAPTER VII
ORGANIC EVOLUTION (Continued)
Biology before and after Darwin—Physical continuity of life

—Laws and conditions of life—Adequacy or inadequacy
of Natural Selection ?—Inter-relations of life—Professor
Geddes on anthropomorphism of the nineteenth century
and of the eighteenth—Weismann—Natural selection is
elimination of the unfit—Oscillation between natural
selection as negative and as positive—Poulton, "that
selection is examination"—Teleology run mad—Mimicry
—Search after utility—Mutual benefit of species in
co-operation—Illustration—Struggle for existence thus
modified—Results.
T I THE contrast between works on biology which

-L were written before the appearance of Darwin's
Origin of Species and those which have appeared
since that great work is most striking. There can
be no doubt that biologists have got hold of a most
fruitful hypothesis, and the conceptions introduced
by Darwin have shed a great light on the sciences
which deal with life. Things which seemed to be far
apart and isolated from one another have suddenly
been seen to be closely connected, and structures and
organisms are seen to be related to one another, and
to be parts of an intelligible whole. The full and
adequate appreciation of the worth of the facts
and of the laws can be grasped completely only by
no
those who are specially qualified; but one who is not

a specialist may apprehend the breadth and grandeur
of the conception which enables him to think of all
life as a unity and to trace the innumerable living
forms to slow variation from a single stock. This
conception leaves the mystery of life where it found
it: origins lie beyond the action of this conception.
Science tells us that life comes from life, and it is
powerless to explain the origin of life. Let life be given,
and science says it can trace its path of progress, and
understand some of the laws which have guided its
development. Clearly, then, we must give heed to the
statements of science, and endeavour to apprehend
their meaning. If all living forms are to be traced
back to some simple organism, and if there is a
physical continuity of life, what attitude are we to
assume with regard to this claim ? What is its
theological significance ? Has it any more significance
for theology than the claim which theology was wont
to make, and which science sometimes seemed to
deny, namely, that all the varieties of the human
family are descended from one pair ? If we can say
that mankind is one without falling into theological
ineptitude, why may we not admit that all life is
one, and has grown from the one simple form to the
varied forms which now teem upon the earth? If
the Negro and the Englishman are varieties of one
stock, why not also the vertebrate and the inverte-
brate ?
It is difficult indeed to imagine the course of de-
velopment, and difficult also to imagine the forces
which brought it about. Still, those who know the
subject and have studied it most thoroughly tell us,

with growing confidence, that the growth of species
by a process of slow development is an established
fact. They are entitled to speak; and the evidence
they produce is of the highest order, and we may
rest assured that questions of biology will be settled
by biology, on scientific grounds, and on these alone.
It seems a reasonable claim so far. It claims not
that it can show how life originated, but that, given
life, it has developed according to certain laws, and
that these laws have so far been discovered. There
does not seem to be anything here to which we can
object. That life has proceeded according to law is
as reasonable as is the supposition that the solar
system is ruled by law. The recognition of any law
in nature implies that law rules everywhere.
While there is agreement among the masters as to
the general doctrine of evolution that all the forms
of life have been evolved from some simpler form of
life, there is a wide difference of opinion as to what
the factors of evolution are. All are agreed as to
the weaving of the web of life, but by no means are
they agreed as to the factors or the agents by which
the web is woven. Some, of whom Russel Wallace
may be taken as the chief and the greatest, believe
in the adequacy of natural selection, and would shut
out all other agencies whatever. Sexual selection,
physiological selection he explains by means of
natural selection. On the other hand, Herbert
Spencer writes on the "Inadequacy of Natural
Selection," and lays great stress on other " factors of
evolution." Darwin himself said in 1876: " I n my
opinion the greatest error which I have committed

has been not allowing sufficient weight to the direct
action of the environment, i.e., food, climate, etc.,
independently of natural selection" {Life, vol. iii.,
p. 159). And Mr. Spencer has always laid great
stress on the direct action of the environment.
Almost all are agreed as to the fact of evolution;
but there is a wide difference as to the factors in
the process. It is still an open question what are
the primary factors in evolution; but whether stress
is laid on the organism itself, or on its function, or
on the environment, there need be no hesitation in
saying how great is the process, and how wide an
outlook it has given us over the whole field of life.
It is no longer possible for us to think of things and
of life in the old fixed static way. The adaptations,
the inter-relations, the incessant movement of life
revealed to us under the guidance of biologists are
simply marvellous. We may not yet know fully how
these adaptations and inter-relations are brought
about, but the fact of their existence is undoubted.
The world is much more wonderful than we know.
What can be more wonderful than the relation of
the insect to the flower, or the successive steps by
which they have wrought out their mutual form and
destiny 1 What more wonderful than the part which
is played in the world of nature by these invisible
germs, which at some times are destructive of the
more developed life, and at other times are indispens-
able to its continuance ? It would appear that with-
out the help of bacteria wheat could not be grown.
All the forms of life seem, indeed, to be related to each
8
other by innumerable ties, and the inter-relations are
simply more marvellous than up to the present time
have been suspected by man.
At the same time, we are not quite sure that we
have yet got into the sphere of pure science when we
have substituted Darwin for Paley. We have got
into a larger world, a world of more complex relations;
but are we not still in the world of anthropomor-
phism ? To quote Professor Geddes, one of the most
profound thinkers of our time, and one whose scientific
work is of the highest value: " Taking a larger instance,
the substitution of Darwin for Paley as the chief
interpreter of the order of nature is currently regarded
as the displacement of an anthropomorphic view for
a purely scientific one. A little reflection will show
that what has actually happened has been merely
the replacement of the anthropomorphism of the
eighteenth century for the anthropomorphism of the
nineteenth. For the place vacated by the logical and
metaphysical explanation has simply been occupied
by that suggested to Darwin and Wallace by Malthus
in terms of the prevalent severity of industrial com-
petition, and those phenomena of struggle for exist-
ence which the light of contemporary economic theory
has enabled us to discern, have thus come to be
temporarily exalted into a complete explanation of
the organic process." {Chambers' Encyclopaedia, art.
" Biology.") Professor Geddes believes in evolution,
but does not believe in the struggle for existence and
natural selection as primary factors of the process. For
myself I have tried to read with an open mind what
has been written on natural selection and I have not
been able to see that the writers in question have

succeeded in using the phrase in a consistent manner.
Darwin and Wallace have, in fact, left the problem
of the origin of variation alone, and have given their
strength to the establishing of the theory of the
origin of species by means of natural selection. It is
obvious, however, that we have not even approached
the question of the origin of species until we have
some definite notion of the causes of variation. In-
definite variation affords no solution, and the action
of natural selection can, as has frequently been
observed, produce nothing.
Perhaps the best illustration of the way in which
evolutionists pass unconsciously from the destructive
and eliminative action of natural selection to some-
thing which may be looked at as positive, constructive,
and productive may be found in the language of
Weismann: " To state my meaning more clearly,
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace have
taught us to understand by ' natural selection ' that
process of elimination effected by nature itself without
the aid of man. Inasmuch as far more individuals
are born than can possibly live, only the best are
fitted to survive, the best being those which are so
formed as to be the (fittest,' as we say, for the
conditions of life in which they are placed. As in
each generation only the fittest survive and propa-
gate the species, their qualities only are transmitted,
while the less useful qualities of the weaker individuals
die out. Each successive generation will therefore
consist of individuals better organised than those of
the preceding one, and thus useful characters will be
gradually intensified from generation to generation,
until the greatest possible degree of perfection is
reached. Probably this theory is far from new to
many of my readers. I t has been so often explained
in various well-known works and periodicals that any
further elucidation is unnecessary. What holds good
for the individual as a whole, also holds good for
each separate organ, inasmuch as the ability of an
animal to perform its allotted function depends on
the efficiency of each particular organ: hence by
means of the perpetual elimination of the unfit every
organ is brought to the highest perfection. On this
hypothesis, and on this only, is it possible to explain
the wonderful adaptability of the minutest details of
structure in animals and plants and the development
of the organic world through the operation of natural
forces. If this view be the true one, if adaptation
in all the parts of living forms be truly the result of
natural selection, then the same process which pro-
duced these adaptations will tend to preserve them,
and they will disappear directly natural selection
ceases to act." (Weismann on Heredity, vol. ii., p. 16,
English translation.)
Weismann has formerly defined natural selection as
a " process of elimination "; that is to say, a process
which is destructive and negative. Immediately it
changes in his hands into a process which is construc-
tive and positive. Let us substitute the definition of
natural selection in the last sentence for natural selec-
tion itself, and see how it reads. " If adaptation in
all its parts be the result of a < process of elimination/
then the same process which produced these results
will tend to presei've them, and they will disappear

directly the 'process of elimination' has ceased to
work." I t now reads like nonsense. There is surely
something fallacious in a process of reasoning which
defines a term and then changes the definition in the
course of a single paragraph.
Nor is this procedure peculiar to Weismann. It is
constantly being used by Russel Wallace, and by the
pure Darwinians of every shade. " Natural selection
has already pronounced a satisfactory verdict upon the
vast majority of animals which have reached matu-
rity. The male which has only just passed this test,
and is nevertheless accepted because of some superior
attraction, will soon succumb, and will leave far less
offspring than one of equal or perhaps inferior at-
tractions which is fitted to live for the natural term
of his life. Natural Selection is a qualifying examina-
tion, which must be passed by all candidates for
honours; Sexual Selection is an honours examination,
in which many who have passed the previous exami-
nation will be rejected." (The Colour of Animals,
by Edward Bagnall Poulton, p. 308.) We accept
Mr. Poulton's metaphor, and we wish that he had
used natural selection in this sense throughout. To
examine, however, is a different function from pro-
duction, and throughout his book he speaks of natural
selection not as examining but as preparing candidates
for examination. But we believe that neither in Oxford
nor in nature need the examiner and the trainer be
the same person. The examination reveals the fitness,
it does not make i t ; and yet Mr. Poulton continually
speaks as if the examination had prepared and made
the candidate who succeeds in passing it. There are

universities which do not teach, they only examine;
they simply test the knowledge of candidates, and leave
them to obtain that knowledge where they like. But
they have no claim to have made the fitness; they simply
say that the candidate is fit. It would be well if the
phrase " natural selection " were used in a consistent
manner, and were limited to the process of elimination
of the " unfit." As it is used it simply misleads, and
causes us to think that we have a true productive cause
when as a matter of fact we have none.
This double meaning of the phrase has also other
consequences theoretical and practical. For one thing,
it has set men to seek for possible advantages which
may accrue to the organism by any slight organic
modification. The literature of Darwinism abounds
with such processes of search and discovery. I t looks
sometimes as if here we had a teleology run mad.
No Bridgewater treatise is so teleological as almost
any Darwinian book we may happen to open. One
enthusiastic disciple of the older teleology is said to
have remarked that it was striking that all the large
rivers ran near large cities, and on the assumption
that the large towns were there first made many wise
reflections. The modern teleology has many remarks
quite as wise and as relevant. We have, for example,
the following from Mr. Poulton: " A very beautiful
and familiar illustration (of recognition markings
in animals) is given by Mr. Wallace—the white,
upturned tail of the rabbit, by which the young and
inexperienced or the least wary individuals are shown
the way to the burrow. . . . The tail of the rabbit
only becomes conspicuous when it is needed by other

individuals of the same species, and when the animal
is already alarmed and in full retreat for a place of
security." (Colour of Animals, p. 212.) Another inter-
pretation quite as plausible, though lacking in the
conspicuous element of utility to the rabbit, is that
the tail of the rabbit is of great advantage to the
dog who pursues it, for it directs his path straight
to the mark ; or to the sportsman, who knows
at once where to shoot. In these instances the
possession of a white tail is of disadvantage to the
rabbit.
As we turn over the pages of Mr. Poulton's most
interesting book, we are filled with admiration of the
wisdom, insight, and foresight of the creatures whose
colouring he describes. " I know," he says, " of no
more inspiring subject than the colour of birds' eggs.
The most superficial glance over a collection of eggs
reveals hosts of interesting problems which require
solution. I look forward to the time when any
description of colour and marking will be considered
incomplete unless supplemented by an account of their
meaning and importance in the life of the species."
(Pp. 66, 67.) The assumption is that every shade of
colour and every form of marking have a meaning,
and are of importance towards the life of jbhe species.
On this assumption Mr. Wallace and Mr. Poulton
have proceeded, and have made their illustrations.
Thus colours are of direct physiological value, or they
give protective or aggressive resemblance, or they have
protective and aggressive mimicry, or they give warn-
ing, or they have a significance of beauty in courtship.
Thus the colours of animals are always significant,
whatever that significance may be. Speaking of
mimicry, Mr. Poulton says : " I t not only supported
the doctrine of evolution, but it afforded strong con-
firmation of the theory of natural selection, by which
Darwin explained how it was that evolution took
place. Every step in the gradually increasing change
of the mimicking in the direction of specially protected
form would have an advantage in the struggle for
existence, while the elements out of which the re-
semblance was built exist in the individual variability
of the species, a variability which is hereditary."
(P. 220.) Here is the Darwinian theory in a nut-
shell, with all its plausibility and with all its
difficulty. The causes which produced the gradual
mimicking are not in the organism, nor in the
environment, nor even in the relations between or-
ganism and environment. Mr. Poulton quotes the
following from Mr. Skertchly, and describes it as
extraordinary. This theory "presupposes (a) that
clanger is universal; (b) that some butterflies escape
danger by secreting a nauseous fluid; (c) that other
butterflies noticed this immunity; (d) that they
copied it." His own view is that " t h e mimicry
alluded to in these pages is of course unconscious,
and has been gradually produced by the operation
of natural selection." What is it, then, which pro-
duces mimicry? We can learn from Mr. Poulton
that mimicry is useful when it has been produced.
He himself says that the volition of an animal
could not account for all the details of mimetic re-
semblance. Still, Mr. Poulton sometimes speaks as if
the volition of the animal meant something in the

process: " Such caterpillars terrify their enemies by
the suggestion of a cobra-like serpent; for the head of
a snake is not large, while its eyes are small and not
specially conspicuous. The cobra, however, inspires
alarm by the large eye-like 'spectacles' upon the
dilated hood, and thus oflFers an appropriate model for
the swollen anterior end of the caterpillar with its
terrifying markings." (P. 259.) The mode of speech is
peculiar. May we venture to ask about the " model "
and its " appropriateness " ? To whom or to what does
the model sit, and by what means is it imitated?
If we shut out the volition of the animal, what have
we left ? It may be answered that the language used is
metaphorical, descriptive, pictorial. But the answer
is that we have already had too much of the meta-
phorical in this department of science, and the theory
of natural selection has taken full advantage of what
is merely metaphorical. It has grown to be a kind
of dew ex machina, which seems to preside over all
changes of organisms, and which, belonging neither
to the organism nor its environment, but being in a
manner above both, gives to the evolutionist all the
advantages of a presiding intelligence without its dis-
advantages. Natural selection is itself described as a
metaphor; but as soon as we begin to work with it
its metaphorical character disappears, and it becomes
intensely real, and is quite capable of doing anything.
It has the character constantly ascribed to it both of
a directing agency and of a presiding intelligence;
and it does seem as if both were needed if evolution
is to be an intelligible process. " May not," asks
Mr. Arthur Thomson, " the similar surroundings and
habits of mimickers and mimicked have sometimes
something to do with their resemblance ? may it not
be that the presence of the mimicked has had a direct,
but of course very subtile, influence on the mimickers ?
is it altogether absurd to suppose that there may
be an element of consciousness in the resemblance
between oriole and friar-bird ?" {The Study of Animal
Life, p. 61.) Evidently to explain the colours of
animals we need something more than the action of
natural selection upon casual changes.
Mr. Poulton describes well the number of ways in
which the puss moth defends itself. I t resembles the
leaves of the willow and poplar, on which it feeds.
When disturbed it assumes a terrifying attitude
mimetic of a vertebrate appearance. The effect is
heightened by two pink whips which are swiftly
protruded from the prongs of the fork in which the
body terminates; it can also eject an irritant fluid.
And yet, with all these combined means of defence,
it fails to defend itself. " Any improvement in the
means of defence has been met by the greater in-
genuity or boldness of foes; and so it has come about
that many of the best-protected larvse are often those
which die in the largest numbers from the attacks of
enemies. The exceptional standard of defence has been
reached only by the pressure of an exceptional need."
(Colour of Animals, pp. 277, 278.) The last sentence
is unexpected. If the well-protected larvae are
often those which die in the largest numbers from
the attacks of enemies, we should have expected
Mr. Poulton to have congratulated the victor on the
success of the attack, and not the vanquished on the

failure of its attempts at protection.
The conflict here depicted reminds one of the race
between the builders of armoured vessels and the
manufacturers of guns. The heavier armour was met
by the production of larger, more powerful guns;
and it is now found that any armour that a ship
can carry may be penetrated by an Armstrong or a
Krupp gun. The limit of defence has been found on
that line. The conflict between defence and attack
receives an illustration from the work of Professor
Stahl on the conflict between snails and plants.
He shows that plants save themselves from being
eaten by snails in fifteen different kinds of ways, and
he interprets these various kinds of protection as if
they had been produced in order to protect the plants
from snails. Plants which were sweet were eaten,
and a plant that happened to be sour escaped.
Natural selection preserved the sour plant and pro-
pagated it j and, as Professor Geddes says, vegetation
tends to grow sourer to all eternity. " To give snails
credit for evolving plants with crystals, sourness, and
poison, to make cattle and the like responsible for
the thorns on plants, is like giving snakes the credit
of evolving boots which protect our heels. In all
these cases alike the possibility of some defensive
utility is undenied, nor even of some improvement
through selective agency. What is contended for is,
however, a change in our evolutionary perspective,
laying increased importance upon the definiteness
and cumulativeness of the internal variation, and
consequently a diminished stress upon the external
selection which plays on this." {Chapters in Modern
Botany, pp. 125, 126.)
The theory that makes natural selection all-sufficient
has thus bound itself to discover utilities everywhere.
It assumes that every modification has been of advan-
tage to the species. Dr. Romanes has gone so far as
to say for that species alone : " Amid all the millions
of mechanisms and instincts in the animal kingdom
there is no instance of a mechanism or instinct occur-
ring in the species for the exclusive benefit of another
species, although there are a few cases in which a
mechanism or instinct that is of benefit to its possessor
has come also to be utilised by other species. . . . How
magnificent a display of Divine beneficence would
organic nature have afforded if all, or even some,
species had been so inter-related as to minister to
each other's necessities ! " (The Scientific Evidences of
Organic Evolution, p. 75.) " Every species," he adds,
" is for itself, and for itself alone—an outcome of the
always and everywhere fiercely raging struggle for
life." This was written a dozen years ago, and we do
not know whether Dr. Romanes would write the same
words now; for a good deal has happened since then.
Many instances have been since discovered of beings
so inter-related as to minister to each other's necessities.
There is the discovery of " the intimate partnership
known as symbiosis, illustrated by the union of
algoid and fungoid elements to form a lichen, by
the occurrence of minute Algse as constant internal
associates and helpful partners of Radiolarians and
some Ccelenterates." The beautiful chapter in Professor
Geddes' little book Chapters in Modem Botany in
which he describes the " web of life " contains many

examples of this mutual co-operation, and of the
mutual benefit resulting from it. The partnership is
of benefit to both parties, and each is for the other.
Rrofessor Geddes quotes the following from De Bary:
u
As the result of my researches, all these growths
(lichens) are not simple plants, not individuals in the
ordinary sense of the word; they are rather colonies
consisting of hundreds and thousands of individuals,
among which, however, one predominates, while the
rest in perpetual captivity prepare the nutriment
for themselves and their masters. The master is a
fungus, a parasite which is accustomed to live upon
others' work; its slaves are green algae, which it has
sought out, or indeed caught hold of, and compelled
into its service. It surrounds them, as a spider its prey,
with a fibrous net of narrow meshes, which is gradu-
ally converted into an impenetrable covering; but
while the spider sucks its prey and leaves it dead, the
fungus incites the algae found in its net to more
rapid activity, indeed to more vigorous increase."
{Chapters in Modern Botany y p. 115.)
This is one instance of what Dr. Romanes desired, of
beings so inter-related as to minister to each other's
necessities. Do not the works of Darwin abound with
instances of the same kind? If insects have made
flowers, and flowers have made insects, have we not
another instance of the same kind ? As a matter of
fact, animal life is dependent on vegetable life, and
vegetable has to lift the food of animals to a higher
chemical level, or animal life could not exist. This,
however, may be an instance of what Dr. Romanes
calls " being utilised by another species." But it could

not have been utilised unless there was a fitness for use.
But the same thing cannot be said of the co-operation
between the bull's horn Acacia and the ants which
tenant it. There is a partnership between the ants ajid
the tree: the tree provides food and shelter for the ants,
and the ants defend it from its enemies. Instead of
the fiercely raging struggle for existence of which Dr.
Romanes speaks, and of the mere individualism and
selfishness of species which he describes as characteristic
of every species, another view is gaining ground—viz.,
that which looks on nature as a gigantic system of
mutual co-operation; each thing and species not for it-
self, but for others as well. Th e individual for the species
and the species for the genus is a view which seems to
be making way, as men are getting better acquainted
with the intricate inter-relations of the web of life.
Co-operation demonstrably abounds; and if it can be
shown to be true, we might again find that Dr. Romanes
has been brought over to the side of beneficent design
as a verifiable hypothesis. " The tendency of the day
is to recognise that most plants require the aid of some
lower organisms for assimilating nitrogen. Thus
B. Frank, who has been working for years in that
direction, has proved that the beech can thrive only
when a mantle of Mycorhiza-fungi develops over its
roots, and that these fungi are not parasites living
upon the substance of the roots, but real feeders of
the beech. They obtain their food from the soil, and
while so doing they yield a part of it to the roots of
the tree. Further experiments of the same botanist
have now shown that the same is true for the pine
which can only thrive in a soil already containing

germs of the little fungi, and when its roots become
covered with the mantle of fungi, while it leads but a
precarious existence in the opposite case.
" All these are but separate instances of a much more
general fact, which only recently became known under
the general name of ' symbiosis/ and appears to have
an immense significance in nature. Higher plants
depend upon lower fungi and bacteria for the supply
of that important part of their tissues, nitrogen.
Lowei fungi associate with unicellular algae to form
that great division of the vegetable world, the lichens.
More than a hundred different species of algae are
already known to live in the tissues of other plants,
and even in the tissues and oells of animals, and
to render each other mutual services. And so on.
Associations of high or low organisms are discovered
every day; and when the conditions of life are more
closely examined, the whole cycle of life changes its
aspect and acquires a much deeper signification."
(Prince Krapotkin in Nineteenth Century, August
1893.) It is to be hoped, as political economy is
changing its aspect in these latter days, and is learn-
ing to attach less importance to competition and more
to co-operation, that those conceptions which biology
has derived from political economy will also change.
As products may increase in a greater degree than the
people that produce them, so it may be in nature also;
and the struggle for existence may neither be so keen
nor so fierce as we have supposed it to be. We see in
many cases that species, instead of striving for itself,
may find its advantage in mutual co-operation.
I do not intend to say much on variation. I t

would appear that the idea of indefinite variation is
becoming antiquated, and that of definite variation
coming more and more to the front. But there
will apparently be some time ere the laws of definite
variation can be formulated. Professor Huxley says:
" The importance of natural selection will not be im-
paired, even if further inquiries should prove that
variability is definite, and is determined in certain
directions rather than in others by conditions inherent
in that which varies " (Darwiniana, p. 223). If the
inherent tendencies to variation be discovered, we
shall get rid of those appeals to fortuitous variation
which cause such perplexity. These laws of variation
will also help us to a new conception of order and
stability, and give a new meaning to design. I t was
in the interests of order, design, and purpose that
the doctrine of special creation was prized. But a
variation determined in certain directions will restore
more than the denial of special creations has taken
away. It leads us on to see the working out of the
wonderful unity of plan in the millions of diverse
living constructions, and the modifications of similar
apparatus to serve diverse ends. Such a unity of
plan certainly suggests the existence of thought
behind the unity and manifested in it.
Professor Huxley has shown that mechanism and
teleology are not mutually exclusive. He has said
that a primordial molecular arrangement may have
been intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe.
May we not go further, and say that the existence of
a plan implies not only a primordial arrangement by
which the plan can be realised, but also that the

Power to which the plan is due is never absent
from the working out of it ? A power present in the
world, who worts according to a plan, and by which
the plan can become real, gives us something which
we can understand, which also delivers us from the
tyranny of chance. The process of realising the plan
embodied in nature has been slow, and step by step;
but, then, the end has so far been accomplished. And
it is a curious result to which many have come, that
when we have discovered so far the means by which the
plan has been wrought out, we have therefore denied,
not that there is a plan, but that there is a mind, a
reason which made the plan and carried it out. It
is as if we denied the existence of the architect after
we had seen the stones and the timber, the mason,
the hodman, and the joiner at work. Or is it that
we deny the planning intelligence because the build-
ing has not sprung suddenly into existence? The
wise Bishop has depicted that state of mind in his
own inimitable way: " Men are impatient, and for
precipitating things; but the Author of nature appears
deliberate throughout His operations, accomplishing
His natural ends by slow successive steps " (Analogy,
Part II., chap. iv.).
Our friends and teachers have shown us innumer-
able adaptations; they have shown us that the
creatures work towards an end—an end not foreseen
by the individuals or the species concerned; we
therefore hold that it must have been foreseen
by some one, if causation is to have its due place.
We are constrained, on the other hypothesis, to
9
ask how unintelligent laws can work out intelligible
and intelligent results. We can never get an answer
to that question ; for the postulation of a Supreme
Intelligence cannot be tested by experiment, because
it is assumed by all experiments. Every experiment
assumes that we are in a rational universe, a universe
the working of which corresponds to the working of
an intelligence in ourselves. If the laws of nature
work out intelligent and rational results, then reason
is at work in them. We have not put the intelligi-
bility into the world; we find it there, and we strive
to understand and to express the working of the world
in rational terms,—an attempt which would be for
ever vain, if the intelligence at work in the world
were not of the same kind as the intelligence which
is at work in ourselves.
It may be true that the intelligence at work in
the world has not wrought in the fashion we had
supposed. Does that intelligence work by the way
of evolution, and not in the particular mode we
thought of ?—for a change of conception may not be
the destruction of the conception. The earth is a
part of the solar system—men once thought it the
centre of things; we no longer think of personal
spirits as guides and rulers of the stars—we think of
matter under gravitation ; we have been taught that
species did not arise through special acts of creation,
but were developed one after the other. Well, we
bow our heads in reverence, and say that God's
ways are not as our ways, and His thoughts are not
as our thoughts; but they are ways and thoughts
of God notwithstanding. If we trace the highest
results of the world to the humblest and most simple

beginnings, we do not destroy the value and interest
of anything when we know how it came about. The
more we learn of the methods of the world's develop-
ment, the more is our feeling of wonder enhanced,
and the larger does our conception grow of the Divine
method; for at every stage of the process we find
powers at work which were not at work in the lower
stage. From the mechanical we arrive at the
chemical, from the chemical to the organic, and from
the organic we reach the conscious stage of existence.
We confessedly cannot explain the chemical by the
physical, nor the organic by the chemical and the
mechanical, nor the conscious by what is unconscious.
If, then, we have arrived at the goal of conscious,
moral, social, religious life*, we have come to a stage
in which a philosophy, a science, a moral system, a
creed ought to be possible.
CHAPTER VIII
SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION
Controversy regarding heredity—Spencer and Weismann—

Machinery of Evolution defective—Limits of Organic
Evolution—Man does not modify himself, but modifies
his Environment—Survival of the Fittest explained by
Huxley and by Spencer—Evolution does not account for
advance—Illustration of man's power of modifying his
environment—Results.
I T is with some timidity that one ventures at the

present time to write the word " heredity." It
is one of the three great names which occur in
connection with evolution. " Variability," " natural
selection," transmission or " heredity," are words which
occur in every statement of the theory of evolution,
and both the meaning and causes of each are keenly
contested. At present the contest is keenly waged
as to the nature and the meaning and the factors of
heredity. The problem is, no doubt, a most complex
one, and there are great biological authorities who
widely differ as to what is transmitted and the
means of transmission. Are acquired qualities—that
is, qualities acquired in the lifetime of an individual
—transmitted to his offspring ? Weismann and
Lankester deny the transmissibility of acquired
qualities, and contend that only inborn, germinal,
132
SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 133
or constitutional variations are transmissible; while

Mr. Herbert Spencer emphatically says that " either
there has been inheritance of acquired characters, or
there has been no evolution " (Contemporary Review,
March 1893, p. 446). And again he says: " A right
answer to the question whether acquired characters
are or are not inherited underlies right beliefs, not
only in biology and psychology, but also in education,
ethics, and politics" (May 1893, p. 730). The ques-
tion, like many other questions, was raised by Darwin,
whose theory of pangenesis had the supreme merit,
not of solving the problem, but of showing how great,
complex, and intricate was the problem that needed
to be solved.
Not many have believed in pangenesis, but pan-
genesis has set men to inquire into the nature and
character of inheritance. What is the relation between
successive generations ? What is the character of the
organic continuity which all alike recognise as a fact ?
Have the experience, character, and aquirements of
individuals any chance of being transmitted to their
offspring ? It seems best to me to wait for an answer.
If a man of the scientific attainments of Dr. Romanes
can say, " Professor Weismann is not quite correct
in saying that I adhere to the doctrine of the trans-
mission of acquired characters. My position with
regard to this question is one of suspended judgment,"
one less expert may well be excused for remaining
in suspense. We may watch the evolution of the con-
troversy with interest. We may read the writings of
Professor Weismann as these are printed from year to
year; and whether his main contention is made out or
not, we always gain some knowledge from him. We
may listen with sympathy to the complaints of Mr.
J. T. Cunningham when he states that he has been
boycotted by Nature. " Nature" he says, " has em-
braced the principles of Weismann's Neo-Darwinism;
and while willing to devote plenty of space to favour-
able reviews of Weismann's essays written by under-
graduates, suppresses without a word of explanation
or apology contributions which argue against the
fashionable creed" (Translator's preface to Eimer's
Organic Evolution, p. xxii.). And we ask ourselves,
Has the odium theologicum been suddenly transferred
to science ? Or we may read the mild and reason-
able and able summary of the whole question in Mr.
Arthur Thomson's book The Study of Animal Life,
which is so clear and lucid that a non-specialist may
readily understand the issue. We may read the
controversy between Herbert Spencer and Professor
Weismann, their statements and replies and rejoinders
in the Contemporary Review of 1893, and mark the
keenness of the conflict and the fierceness of the
attack and defence, and be thankful that we can
stand aside and take no part in it. We may wait
until the controversy is settled, and apparently the
issue may be decided in the next century. Happily
for our purpose it is not necessary to wait for the
cessation of the controversy. I t is enough for us
that there is a relation of organic unity between
the generations, and it is not necessary for us to
decide for our purpose as to the precise machinery
by which the organic continuity is maintained. Mr.
Spencer is bound to fight hard for the transmission of
acquired characters; for it is on that supposition

that he has formulated his system of psychology and
ethics, and has propounded his scheme of reconcilia-
tion between a priori and a posteriori forms of know-
ledge. We need not here controvert his theory of
inheritance; for on our view, even if granted, it does
not prove his case. No doubt Weismann also, if he
ever reaches the study of psychology and ethics, would
have his explanation from his own point of view.
Meanwhile, while the machinery of evolution is so
far defective, and men are not agreed as to what
heredity is, we may at least assume as true that the
results won by organic modification have somehow been
preserved. Things have really made progress. Species
have been produced, and once produced they beget
others in their own likeness. Life may have gone
on irrespective of the experience of the individual, as
Weisrnann says ; or the experience and acquirements
of the individual have played a respectable part in
evolutionary progress, as Mr. Spencer says; still, life
has gone on, and has got itself sorted into certain
kinds.
Organic modification is, however, an expensive pro-
cess, and cannot go on for ever; for life to continue
to inscribe its experience in cells, be these cells and
their functions as varied and diversified as we please,
is a process which has a limit. We know not, and
scarcely any one can guess, what power and potency
may be in a living cell. It may carry within it the
potency of a Shakespeare or of a Newton. But our
aim at present is to show that the process of organic
change has become less and less as life has become
more and more complicated. Organically the difference
between unicellular and multicellular beings seems to
be greater than any subsequent organic change. Nor
have biologists yet been able to account for the trans-
mission from simple to complex organisms. Indeed,
it is sometimes hard to justify the kind of language
with which biologists describe certain beings. Accord-
ing to the Darwinian theory it is the fittest which
always survive. The unfit can never survive on that
view. But we constantly read of " degeneration," and
sometimes the hermit-crab receives a good deal of
abuse because it has ceased to produce its own shell.
Then parasites receive a good deal of abuse. On the
Darwinian theory all this is quite unjustifiable. The
survival of degraded forms, as they are called, and the
shift for a living which leads to parasitism are also
instances of the survival of the fittest.
On the one hand, the principle of Darwinism would
seem to shut us out from the use of words like de-
generation ; and on the other hand, it should also cause
us to avoid the use of " progress," and words of a similar
meaning. Our judgment on organisms must be ex-
pressed in terms of the theory; but on these terms a
good deal of Darwinian literature would require to be
re-written. For the idea of progress we need some
other criterion than is given us by the " survival of
the fittest "; for many lower organisms survive. The
scorpion has been in evidence ever since the coal
measures have been laid down; and others also survive.
Have we any explanation in the principle of the sur-
vival of the fittest of the appearance of the higher
races, as we call them? for the survival proves the
fitness, and it proves nothing more. Professor Huxley

ia plain on this matter, and Mr. Herbert Spencer is
also equally plain. Professor Huxley says: " ' Fittest'
has a connotation of ' best'; and about ' best' there
hangs a moral flavour. In cosmic nature, however,
what is fittest depends upon the conditions. Long
since I ventured to point out that if our hemisphere
were to cool again, the survival of the fittest might
bring about, in the vegetable kingdom, a population
of more and more stunted and humbler and humbler
organisms, until the fittest that survived might be
nothing but lichens, diatoms, and such microscopic
organisms as those which give red snow its colour;
while, if it became hotter, the pleasant valleys of the
Thames and Isis might be uninhabitable by any
animated beings save those that flourish in a tropical
jungle. They, as the fittest, the best adapted to the
changed conditions, might survive." (The Romanes
Lecture, 1893, p. 32.)
Mr. Spencer says: " Mr. Martineau speaks of the
' survivorship of the better,' as though that were the
statement of the law, and then adds that the alleged
result cannot be inferred ' except on the assumption
that whatever is better is stronger too.' But the words
he here uses are his own words, not the words of
those he opposes. The law is the survival of the
fittest Probably, in substituting ' better' for fittest,
Mr. Martineau did not suppose that he was changing
the meaning; though I dare say he perceived that the
meaning of the word fittest did not suit his argument
so well. Had he examined the facts he would have
found that the law is not the survival of the ' better '
or the ' stronger/ if we give to those words anything
like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of
those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under
the conditions in which they are placed; and very often
that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes
the survival. Superiority, whether in size, strength,
activity, or sagacity, is, other things equal, at the
cost of diminished fertility \ and when the life led by
a species does not demand these higher attributes, the
species profits by decrease of them and accompany-
ing increase of fertility. This is the reason why there
occur so many cases of retrograde metamorphosis
—this is the reason why parasites, internal or exter-
nal, are so commonly degraded forms of higher types.
Survival of the ' better' does not cover these cases,
though survival of the *fittest'does." (Essays, vol. iii.,
pp. 241, 242.) Many things might be said on these
two extracts. One thing to be noticed is the use of
language not derived from evolution. What is the
ground of judgment which warrants Professor Huxley
in speaking of " humbler and humbler organisms/'
and Mr. Spencer in speaking of a " retrograde meta-
morphosis" and of "inferiority"? In the "survival
of the fittest" we have the only criterion by which
we can judge, and to use other terms is to bring back
surreptitiously principles which we have discarded.
There is something else to be said which is more
relevant. On the theory as stated by Professor
Huxley and Mr. Spencer, there is no provision for
progress, nor any machinery provided which even can
seem to lead to that advance which life has made
from the protozoa up to man. The protozoa have
sulrvived because they are the fittest. Why, then, has

life advanced to other forms ? Surely a principle the
working of which is consistent with the survival
of all that have survived cannot explain why some
forms have survived unchanged and others have
changed! The same principle is inadequate for the
explanation of both. What, then, is the principle
which has secured advance? Variability in all
directions cannot account for it, for the likelihood
is that changes will cancel one another. Heredity
will not account for it, since changes must be of a
kind to survive before they can be perpetuated and
accumulated. Shall we not be driven back, by the
very principle of the survival of the fittest, to pos-
tulate some other principle which will ensure advance ?
Can we get that principle within the organism itself,
in laws of growth, in the nature of life itself, in the
interactions of life with the environment, or any other
of the means postulated by the biologist? At all
events, the principle has not yet been discovered, and
we may wait for its discovery with some patience.
It does not appear that for a rational understanding
of the progress which life has made we can yet
dispense with the hypothesis of Energising Reason
that foresees the end and goal, knows what it would
be at, and takes adequate means to secure its end.
Energising Reason is also one of the causes which can
be seen at work in the universe at present, and we
may ask our scientific friends to recognise its reality.
I t is one of the causes now at work in the universe;
and may we not say that it has always been at work,
since we find ourselves in a rational universe ?
On any view, however, man is the crown and goal

of the organic world, and in him the organic world
has come to know itself. At present we shall not
seek to look at the question of his descent, or rather
of his ascent, from the organic world to self-conscious-
ness. We shall look at him first in his relation to
and his contrast with the world beneath him; for
since man has been on the earth he has been dis-
tinctively man. " When we study this fossil man
of the quaternary period, who must, of course, have
stood comparatively near to our primitive ancestors
in the order of descent or ascent, we always find
a Man, just such as men are now" (Virchow, The
Freedom of Science, p. 60). As far back as we can
trace him man is man, and wherever we find him
we find that the method of advance by mere organic
modification has been distinctly limited; for the
organic differences between varieties of the human
family are insignificant in comparison with the
number of elements in which they are one. The
differences are only superficial and external, and a
savage may in the course of a single lifetime become
a civilised man. Physically, therefore, and also in
many other respects, man is one.
Physically, notwithstanding the great general like-
ness between man and the higher animals, there
is a distinct difference; for man has the power of
modifying his environment, and only in a slight
degree does he need to modify himself. He does not
need to develop defensive armour against the attacks
of wild beasts, does not require to don scales against
his enemy as the crocodile does, nor grow sharp teeth
and claws as the tiger does, nor to mimic offensive

and nauseous qualities as the butterflies seem to do.
He does not need to be so strong, or so swift, or so
cunning as other animals. He has found ways less
expensive than organic modification, and he has acted
on them. He does not need to lengthen or to strengthen
his arm in order to be able to lift heavy weights; he
has in effect done both by discovering and utilising
the lever. His eye is not so keen as the eye of the
eagle; but with an eye less keen he can see farther,
for he has discovered the telescope. His eye may not
be so fitted for microscopic vision as that of a fly; but
he can see things so small as to be invisible to the
eye of any other creature. He cannot spring so far
as a tiger can ; but he has discovered that a rifle bullet
is swifter than a tiger's leap and stronger than a
tiger's muscles. In short, he has ceased to modify his
physical organism, having found out that he can
succeed as well by modifying tools and weapons and
making them serve his purpose.
In winter many animals have to modify themselves
to protect themselves from cold. They put on a
thicker fleece of fur, and many of them change their
colour. Who can say what is the physiological cost of
the heavier fur ? or the amount of energy expended
in the organic change ? But man simply puts on a
thicker overcoat, which he can easily slip off* when
warmer weather comes—a process which involves no
physiological cost. Not many animals can modify
their environment. They build their nests, they seek
out dens and caves of the earth, or they may use
other means of a simpler sort to protect themselves.
But man has learnt to build houses, to warm them

with fire, to supply himself with light when the sun
goes down, and in a hundred other ways to make a
climate at his pleasure. He can cook his food, and
save a large part of the physiological labour of
digestion. He can also provide for the future—sow
seed in the spring, gather it in, harvest, and store
it up for future use. In this he has no doubt been
anticipated by the ants, but almost all other animals
live from day to day.
Not only has he ceased to modify himself, and
modifies his environment instead; he has pressed
the organic modifications of other animals into his
service. He has directed the modifications of certain
grasses until he has produced wheat. He has taken
animals and moulded them into a form which makes
them of greater use to him. He makes use of the
swiftness of the horse, and of the qualities of other
animals which he has tamed and made submissive to
his wishes. He has chained the light ning, he has
harnessed steam to his carriage, and there is hardly
any limit to the use he has made and is still making
of the agents and powers of the world.
These things he has done because he has been able
to rise above the necessity of organic modification
Other creatures are under the necessity of modifying
themselves to meet the changing conditions of life;
and if the modification succeeds, they transmit it to
the species. The whole process is organic, and unless
the modification becomes so organic as to be trans-
mitted it is lost. Memory with them seems also to
be organic. The experience of the individual does
not seem to count for much; what counts is that

habit that has got itself inwrought into their nature
and has become instinctive. While there are still
habit and instinct in man, they do not play so great a
part as in the lower stages of life. At all events, the
powers which animals have of recording their ex-
perience, profiting by it, and transmitting it are very
limited. As with tools and weapons and houses and
garments, so also with the power of recording and
transmitting experience, man has found a more excel-
lent and a more economic way. He does not inscribe
his experience in the convolutions of the brain; he
writes them in a book, and books are less expensive
than brains, and the supply of book-material is
much more ample and more easily procurable than
brain-matter. It is also more lasting; for brains
vanish with the individual, and books last for all time.
Hereditary transmission is precarious, and may not,
indeed cannot, hand down the largest and greatest of
human possessions. The greatest and most valuable
of human experiences may have belonged to a man
who had no offspring, and thus would inevitably have
been lost had man not found out a way of recording it.
Organic memory would not lead to much, and along
with other organic modifications tends to decrease in
man. But this new way of recording experience has
obvious advantages. Homer's song has lasted; but it
would have perished had organic memory been the
only link between the generations. The thoughts of
Plato and of Aristotle, the song of Dante, the Prin-
cipia of Newton are with us still, because man has
speech, and intelligence, and ways of recording and
transmitting that experience, apart from a series of

organic changes in the individual and in the species.
It is not needful to write more at length on this
point; for we have our art, our science, our litera-
ture, our architecture, our philosophy, our poetry,
our theology, each one of which, and much more all
of them together, tell us and prove to us that here
in man there is a new kind of life—a life that has
not changed with the changing environment, but
has so far altered the environment to suit its own
ends.
We have simply looked at man as a being who has
his place among other beings on this earth. We have
not denied his similarity to other animals. We have
not looked for structural, or physiological, or other
differences between him and other animated beings.
We have raised no question as to his origin, or his
relation to the world of life which preceded him. We
have simply looked at him and at them, in themselves,
in their actions, and in their results; and we have
found ourselves burdened with a load of distinctions
and differences, and we ask for an explanation of
them. We have found much instruction in the works
of Darwin on the Descent of Man and on the Expres-
sion of the Emotions. And we have read Dr. Romanes
with profit as he toils and struggles at an impossible
task, namely, to trace the evolution of intelligence
through animals up to man without a break. Dr.
Tylor's work also is full of interest as he strives to
trace for us the origin and growth of language, and
the rise and progress of the arts of life. But there
is a marked difference between this kind of evolution
and that kind with which we are familiar in the

organic world. Here it is not the physical organism
that is evolved; it is something else. No one will
say that there is a growth of the human brain
or the nervous system which proceeds pari passu
with the evolution of tools, of languages, of civilisa-
tion. Virchow's statement already quoted is de-
structive of that supposition. If in all physical
characteristics man is man from the time when he
first appears on the earth, then the evolution of arts,
science, civilisation has not been accompanied by
corresponding organic changes. It would be well to
recognise this, and for mental progress to devise a
formula of evolution not now expressed in terms of
matter and motion, but in terms of mind and reason.
Not that we can dispense with mind and reason in
the case of physical and organic development, for in
it are discovered all the principles of a rational order;
but in the latter kind of evolution both the order and
the method of it and the thing which is developed
can be expressed in terms of mind alone.
The essential note of difference appears at the point
where a being appears who can adapt himself to the
environment, not by changing himself, but by chang-
ing the environment. The beginning of the change
may be very small; but the main point to observe is
that a change has been begun. The lower animals
indeed have " rudiments of the implement-using
faculty. Orangs in the Durian trees furiously pelt
passers-by with the thorny fruit. The chimpanzee in
the forests is said to crack nuts with a stone." And
the first tools which man uses are likely those which
10
are ready-made or which can be finished for use. But
no animal, as far as we know, ever gives just the
finish, slight or great, which the tool requires to fit it
for use. When man first carried a pebble about with
him as a weapon of offence, when he used a sharp
stone to cut or scrape with, or shaped the branch of
a tree for use as a club, he made a new departure.
We may, if we like, trace the growing use of tools
and weapons, as Dr. Tylor does in his Anthropology,
and see how man learned to use better and better
material for his tools and weapons, and to make
better and better implements. We may trace the
improvements in the line of offence and defence, until
we pass from the stone weapon to an Armstrong
gun; or we may trace the development of industrial
implements from the first rude implement with which
man scratched the earth, until we come to the steam
plough and the reaping machine; or trace the
evolution of dwellings from the cave and the shelter
under a tree to the homes of the present day, with
their comfort, refinement, beauty; and we may also
trace other lines of development: but we ought always
to remember that this is a peculiar line of develop-
ment. It is the first step that counts, and the first
step was taken with the first tool which man fashioned,
with the first garment he wore, with the first shelter
he made for himself. For the lower animals, as for
man, the wealth of the world existed, if they could
use it. And they did use it after their fashion; but
they had to use their environment as it was, and
adapt themselves to it. Their weapons of offence and
defence were organic, and they could adapt themselves
to the conditions of life only with exceeding slowness.

This holds true even if we accept all that is told us of
the exceeding cunning of animals, and of the manifold-
ness of the shifts they have to make for a living.
Accept all that Mr. Poulton tells us about the colours
of animals, and his explanation of mimicry and its
advantages, and the remark yet holds good that
mimicry has succeeded just because it was so far
organic. The mimickers had to make the changes
which procured them an advantage by some modifica-
tion of shape, of colour, or of attitude, or in some way
they were physically modified. It may be true also
that the change was slight and did not become
structural; but the change was effected by a modifica-
tion of its own substance, and not by the use of
something else.
There are many instances, indeed, which look like an
anticipation of the unique power of man to modify his
environment. Mr. Poulton quotes from Mr. Bateson
as follows: " The crab takes a piece of weed in his
two chels9, and, neither scratching nor biting it, de-
liberately tears it across, as a man tears paper with
his hands. He then puts one end of it into his
mouth, and after chewing it up, presumably to soften
it, takes it out in the chelae and rubs it firmly on his
head or legs until it is caught by the peculiar curved
hairs which cover them. If the piece of weed is not
caught by the hairs, the crab puts it back in its
mouth and chews it up again. The whole proceeding
is most human and purposeful," {Colour of Animals,
pp. 78, 79.) There are other instances also of what
Mr. Arthur Thomson calls " masking," in which use
is made of external things for purposes of concealment
and protection ; and there may be other instances in
which animals may, without organic modification,
succeed in concealing and protecting themselves.
However these may be explained, it is broadly true
that one distinction between human life and other
life is this power of which we have spoken—the power
of making other things serve the purpose of life.
And this power has grown from more to more, until
we can really set no limit to the process of change
due to the action of man. There may come a time
when man may prepare his food directly from
inorganic elements, and may dispense with the
agency of plants and animals needed at present, in
order that his food may be raised to the chemical
level at which he is able to use it. Speaking broadly,
therefore, the power of modifying his environment,
and particularly the power of doing it progressively
and with ever-increasing success, belongs to man alone
of all the forms of life ^n the earth.
As there are limits set to the power of organic
modification, so also are there limits to the nature
of heredity in relation to man. Of the accumulated
intellectual, emotional, moral, and spiritual treasures
of humanity, not much is due to the cumulative power
of hereditary action. Parents do not transmit to
their children the knowledge which they have them-
selves obtained. Children have by slow and painful
methods to learn even to walk and to run, and much
more have they to learn grammar, arithmetic, mathe*
matics, the arts and sciences, ethics, and philosophy
Nor can it be said that even special aptitudes are
transmitted; for a mathematician may have sons who

are far from being mathematical. I t would seem
that, in the advance of humanity, education counts
for more than heredity. Besides on the new line
of advance which man has discovered, we find a
new distinction between man and the lower animals.
Their hereditary transmissions are limited to what
has become organic, and to what has come to them
by the particular line of their own ancestry. An ape
has no way of receiving the transmitted organised
experience of all apes; he obtains only what has
been handed down by his own direct predecessors.
There may be varieties of attainment among the
family of apes. One may be wiser, stronger, more
courageous than others; but, supposing that these can
be transmitted, they can be transmitted only to his
immediate and direct progeny. But with man, and
with the new means of transmission he has discovered,
nothing need be lost. What has been won by one
man may become the inheritance of the race; for
the race of man is one in a sense which can belong to
no other species. And the achievement of one race
may become the common property of all the races
of man. Whatever finer feelings or deeper cunning
may have belonged to an exceptional animal perishes
with him ; but the services rendered to humanity by
" the dead but sceptred sovrans who still rule our
spirits from their urns" are recorded and are living
and powerful to-day. Individual men differ from one
another in many respects, but all humanity is in
every man. Some may fall below the average, but
others rise high above it, and may reveal to us how
great humanity is. The great men of humanity

have given to it possessions which man will not
wittingly let die. They have lifted us up to the
heights of knowledge, of feeling, of volition. The
truth and beauty they have seen they have also
recorded, and succeeding men may live on what they
have handed down.
Organic modification seems to have no way of
preserving these exceptional experiences, and there-
fore the lower animals must be still subject to that
complex of conditions which serves to produce organic
changes. But these laws of variability, natural selec-
tion, and heredity have, in man, given place to other
and higher laws of development. How the thought of
one man may help to enable other men to be adapted
to environment let the history of civilisation testify.
One man thinks the steam engine, and suddenly the
conditions of modern life are changed for all men.
One might speak here of the poets and their gift of
song to the race, of the painters who have revealed
to their fellow-men the Divine quality of beauty in
the world, of the scientific leaders of the generations
who have wrested from nature the laws of her
movements both in the heavens above and in the earth
beneath, of the thinkers of philosophy who have
aspired to think in human thought and express in
human language the thought which is embodied in
the universe and in all its movements. Take the
great men of the world, who have been the mightiest
benefactors of their race, and we may say of them
and their influence that their exceptional might and
power and insight would have perished with them-
selves had the evolution of man been limited to the

natural selection, heredity, and adaptation which
seem to rule in the organic world. Happily, however,
in the evolution of mental life higher laws have been
found and wider results have been won than were
possible on the old lines of development. For the
exceptional men of the world of humanity have
served the race, but their service has been of the
spiritual sort, and the transmission of their thought
and emotion was by means which were not of an
organic and mechanical kind. Nor can it be said
of them that the struggle for existence had much
part in the production of their capacity, or in the
expression of their thought. These singers sang
because they could not do otherwise. These men of
science worked and toiled because they were urged on
by some mental desire to know the secret of the
action of nature in the particular sphere of their
observation, and so of the others. For they were
urged on by their love of beauty, their passion
for truth, their desire it may be to better their
fellow-men. It may be safely said that not one or
hardly any of those great men whose thoughts and
works have helped to develop the higher side of our
nature, the intelligence, the social and moral senti-
ments, have ever been pressed on to this kind of work
by the struggle for existence. They spoke and toiled
because a finer necessity was laid on them. Having
seen the vision they must speak it \ and they spoke,
and lifted men towards the heights on which they
dwelt. They revealed to others the depth and height
and possibility of human nature, and encouraged
ordinary human people to seek the heights where such

visions could be seen.
It is evident, therefore, that the study of man
must be directed differently and must recognisfe larger
principles than we find at work in other spheres of
knowledge. We do not at present raise the question
of the origin of man, or ask how we are to explain
the difference between him and the lower creation.
All we now do is to insist on the difference, and to
have some idea of what it is. The difference is there,
in whatever way we account for it. We may trace
the supposed path of progress from the lower organic
world to man, and add one infinitesimal difference
to another, and then suppose we have explained the
matter. Suppose we have traced the slow steps of
development, as we have not, yet the process does not
explain the outcome of the process. What has to be
explained, or simply accepted, is the change of method
when we pass from the lower world to man. Physically
the change is seen in the limitation of these laws of
organic life by laws which have a larger meaning
and a wider sweep. The laws of life seem to press
the laws of physics and chemistry into their service,
and control them for higher issues; so also the laws
of mental life seem to grasp all the complexes of
laws of physics, chemistry, organic life, and give
them a new transformation, and direct them to ends
unexpected and unforeseen, until the higher farm of
mental life appeared. The laws of the lower sphere
are not abrogated, and do not cease to operate, nor
are the properties and qualities of the lower spheres
changed; but they obtain a new significance, and the
unity of the universe gets a wider meaning, when all

its forces are seen to be serviceable, or at least in the
service of the mental life, which can see them, think
them anew, understand them, and transform them
with a more glorious significance. Thus we do not
endeavour to explain the higher by the lower, or the
effect by the cause. On the contrary, the lower can
never be rightly seen until it is set in the light of
what is higher; and the cause is never seen in its
breadth, and length, and depth, and height until we
see what it can do, and that we see only in the
effect.
CHAPTER IX
EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOLOGY
Human and animal intelligence—Rational Self-consciousness
—Habit—Feelings, Emotions, Appetites in rational beings
and irrational—Differences in Kind and in Degree—
Eomanes and Spencer—Can feelings make a conscious-
ness?—The Self-Genesis of self according to Romanes
and Spencer—Unity of human nature—Russel Wallace's
Deistic view—Creation is continuous—Kesults.
W HAT we have seen with regard to the action

of man in modifying his environment ap-
pears even more plainly when we consider his mental
life. From the consideration of his mental life we
shall gather that he is a unique being, with notes and
characteristics which are only foreshadowed in the
lower world of animals. That there are such fore-
shadowings it would be idle to deny. There are in
the lower creation adaptations which seem to be un-
conscious, such as the colours of animals, and many
others which cannot be ascribed to the purpose and
will of the animals concerned. But there are other
actions and adaptations of which the only explanation
is that they were purposely intended by the animals
who did them. Whoever reads such works as those
of Dr. Romanes on Animal Intelligence will at once
admit that the question is beyond dispute. Animals
are intelligent; but their intelligence is of a rudiinen-
154
EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOLOGY 155
tary kind. The only question which is of interest

here is, Can we explain human intelligence as if it
were the same in kind as the intelligence we see in the
ant and the elephant, and in other animals ? Can we
substitute for the higher nature the laws and processes
of the narrower non-human world, and explain the
higher by the lower ? We may say that the higher is
evolved from the lower. Suppose we do. It is just
the evolution that has to be explained; for when we
come to human nature we come to a nature which is
consciously rational. And when conscious reason has
appeared, there is a difference between the attitudes
and relations of the conscious being and those
which seem to be like them in the being which
is not rational. While the stimulus which gives
rise to sensation and the sensation itself may be
alike in the animal and the man, yet the reaction
against the stimulus is very different. The fact that
man is a rational and self-conscious being makes
every feeling, every emotion, every volition of a
different order. In the lower organisms the reaction
on stimulus is simple and uniform, and the appro-
priate action follows almost immediately. As
organisms advance in complexity, and as the nervous
system becomes more elaborate, the reaction gets to
be more slow and full of purpose, until we come to
the actions of the ant, or of the other more intelli-
gent animals; for every single being is a unity, and
capable of reaction to stimulus.
When we come to speak of a rational self-conscious
being, the reaction partakes of the whole nature of
the being; and an element of rationality enters
into every response which the rational being makes
to its environment. The stimulus is referred to the
self-conscious being, and the response is that of
the self-conscious being. This is true even when
the response has become automatic; for automatic
action seems for man to be a secondary product.
Actions learned with effort by continued and repeated
and conscious action of attention grow easier by
repetition, and are at length performed without any
attention at all. A large part of man's habitual action
is thus handed over, as it were, to mechanism, and
stimulus and reaction become so co-ordinated that
we can do our work without constant superintend-
ence. We are thus set free for further attainment.
Reason and attention have made the habit, and can
now proceed to something else.
It would take too much space to lead a detailed
proof of the statement that the feelings, the emotions,
even the appetites of a rational being, have taken into
themselves new elements which differentiate them from
the experiences of the animals which have not risen
to a consciousness of self. Take thei appetites them-
selves, and a little reflection will show that even here
a new element has entered in. Man can control his
appetites, can accustom himself to new kinds of food,
can make an element of reason enter into the prepara-
tion of his food. He can make it, or at least can so
modify it as to make it serve his purpose better.
The stimulus of hunger and of thirst physiologically
considered may be one in man, and in an animal the
response to it is different by all the breadth which
separates the rational nature from that which is
not rational. And if appetite becomes a new thing

with rational beings, much more is this true of the
emotions. Take the table prefixed by Dr. Romanes
to his works on Mental Evolution in Animals and
Mental Evolution in Mail, and let us assume that these
emotions are manifested by animals. He claims that
animals can manifest surprise, fear, parental affection,
jealousy, affection, sympathy, emulation, grief, revenge,
shame, and remorse; and he affirms that they resemble,
or that they are the same in kind, as those emotions
which are called by the same name in man. His
proof consists in an interpretation of the sign of
an emotion which appears when the animals are in
the state which seems to correspond to it. Thus he
interprets the sign of anger as he would interpret it
in man. Well, we are not to urge the difficulty of
interpreting these signs, inasmuch as we are not mere
animals, and cannot enter into the consciousness of
animals. Dr. Romanes knows this preliminary diffi-
culty, and has taken care to keep his interpretation
within the mark. Let us suppose that the signs of
fear, surprise, and all the other emotions are the
same in animals and in man, and also that the
feelings as mere feelings are identical; yet in the case
of man the feelings are taken up into the web of
conscious rational experience, and are shot through
with that quality that reason gives, while the experi-
ence of the other remains irrational. Let us remember
that feelings are a relation between the stimuli and
the being which has the feeling. A feeling is not
something in itself, unrelated, unrecognised ; it is the
response of the living being to the stimulus. And the
relation between different feelings is just the relation
which each has to the subject of them.
The emotion of surprise, to take the one lowest on
Dr. Romanes' list, is one thing with the lower animals
and another thing with man. What it is will depend
on the experience and wisdom of the being who
experiences it. In fact, the emotion of surprise
differs in man according to the culture, knowledge,
and experience of the man. We are not surprised at
the existence of railways, telegraphs, telephones; our
fathers would have felt the utmost surprise if they
had seen them. The ancients felt no surprise at the
notion of a hippocentaur; we should feel the utmost
surprise if we saw one. It is evident, therefore, that
the emotion of surprise has with man now a deeper
character, a more rational element than it had in former
ages. Where it does exist it has a wider meaning,
and has gathered into itself the wider knowledge, the
deeper experience of the rational man. If emotions
in the human family can thus be built up of more
complex elements as the ages pass on, shall we not
also say that the emotions of man are also more
complex than those of the irrational creatures ? We
cannot isolate the emotions, and think of them as if
they took place in a vacuum. The simplest feelings
partake of the complexity of the whole being.
It appears to me, therefore, that much of the writing
of Darwin in The Descent of Man and in The Ex-
pression of the Emotions is irrelevant to the purpose he
has in hand. He first would have to show that the
emotions in the lower animals are identical with those
in man. He has assumed without inquiring that, when
he has got the same muscular contraction, say, of

the forehead in the monkey and in man, he has also
got the same subjective state. But this is incapable of
proof; it seems, indeed, to be capable of disproof. The
outward signs may seem to be identical, but the
inward feeling may be as wide as the poles asunder.
That which is what it is in relation to a whole is to
be judged in relation to the whole of which it is a
part. And an emotion is to be judged in relation to
the being in whose experience it is a factor; and thus
the emotion partakes of the character of that being,
and will increase in complexity in proportion as the
experience consists of more or less elements in relation
to the whole. Thus the emotion of a being who has
not attained, and who never will attain, to self-con-
sciousness can scarcely, to any profit, be compared
with the emotions of a being who is potentially at
least self-conscious from the beginning.
If it is so with the emotions, a fortiori it is so with
the cognitions and the volitions of man. Comparative
psychology can make little progress for this very
reason, because the being who makes the comparison
is rational, and is apt to read his own rationality into
what he observes. It appears to us that Dr. Romanes
has not been able to avoid this cause of uncertainty.
In his able and interesting books already mentioned
he has done more than any other man in the
attempt to prove that the intelligence of animals is
the same in kind as the intelligence in man, though he
admits a difference in degree. It is not easy to make
out what Dr. Romanes means by a difference in kind,
or rather it is difficult to say whether Dr. Romanes
would admit that any difference is a difference in kind.
We have the following note from him : " I t is perhaps
desirable to explain from the first that by the words
' difference of kind,' as used in the above paragraph
and elsewhere throughout this treatise, I mean differ-
ence of origin. This is the only real distinction that
can be drawn between the terms ' difference of kind'
and ' difference of degree,' and I should have scarcely
have deemed it worth while to give the definition, had
it not been for the confused manner in which the
terms are used by some writers—e.g., Professor Sayce,
who says, while speaking of languages from a common
source,4 differences of degree become in time differences
of kind/ " (Mental Evolution in Man, p. 3 note.)
Can there be on Dr. Romanes' terms a difference of
kind ? On his own view, the view of evolution, any
distinction between species and species can never be a
distinction of kind, for it can never be a " difference
of origin." All the forms of animals have been modi-
fied to their present shape by slow changes—that is,
according to the teaching of Dr. Romanes. They
have one origin. Are we to say, then, that there
is no difference of kind between the vertebrate and
the invertebrate, between a salmon and an elephant,
between an ape and a man ? Are we to set down the
difference between species and species as a difference
in degree 1 If not, then Professor Sayce is right in
saying that a difference in degree may beeome a differ-
ence in kind. I t is also difficult to understand what
Dr. Romanes.means by a difference of origin. We
thought that evolution had given up the search after
origins, and had discovered that it must begin with
something. According to the theory of Mr. Spencer,

we begin with an Unknowable Power, and the first
form of its manifestation lay in the primitive nebu-
losity. If we take the more modest form of the
Darwinian hypothesis, we still begin with life, and all
life has only one origin according to him. If with
Haeckel we seek to unite the living with the non-
living and to bridge the chasm between the two, we
still begin somewhere, and according to the theory
of evolution there is one origin for everything.
I t is also the view of theology. Theologians also
have only one, know of only one origin for the universe,
and for all that is in it. They say in the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth. They believe,
in the words of a book which they revere and honour
and seek to obey, that " by the word of the Lord were
the heavens made, and all the host of them by the
breath of His mouth." They do not distinguish between
man and the lower animals by a difference of origin;
for all derived existence must, they believe, trace its
origin to God. If the Scripture says, " God created
man in His own image, in the image of God created He
him; male and female created He them "; if it says,
furthermore, " The Lord God formed man of the dust
of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life; and man became a living soul," it
also says, " Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are
created, and Thou renewest the face of the ground."
Thus, as far as the question of origin is concerned,
there is for the theologian no question of difference
of kind, all things owe their origin to the creative
power of God, and all things are sustained by Him.
11
Nor for the evolutionist can there be, on Dr. Romanes*

teaching, any difference of kind; for all things are
from the primal source of being whatever that may
be, and all things are what they are by the same kind
of process. If difference of kind means difference of
origin, then there can be no difference of kind; and
we must get for ourselves some new kind of classifica-
tion just to satisfy the caprice of Dr. Romanes.
What may amount to a difference in kind falls
therefore to be determined by a consideration, not of
the origin and history of a being, but by a considera-
tion of its present nature, character, and action. If
we can say that there is a specific difference between
one class of animals and another, we have in other
words established a difference of kind. Biologists do
not, as far as I can gather, refuse to recognise a
difference of kind between one species and another;
they do not deny a difference of species; the main ques-
tion for them has been, How came there to be a species ?
The problem of organic evolution is, given life, to show
how it has come to be sorted into different kinds. Will
Dr. Romanes help us to language which will enable us
to distinguish between one species and another ? We
shall not quarrel with him about phrases. If he
will give us a word which will express the difference
between species and species, we shall take i t ; but till
then we shall say with Professor Sayce and most other
people that a difference in degree may become so
great as ultimately to amount to a difference in kind.
It is somewhat perilous to disagree with Dr. Romanes,
for every now and then we come across phrases like
the following : " This is admitted by all my opponents
who understand the psychology of the subject." Of

course the assumption is, that if we do not admit his
view we are of those who do not understand the
psychology of the subject. Recognising the peril,
we still venture to doubt and to demur to many of
his psychological assumptions. We admit that Dr.
Romanes is in the succession of English psychologists.
He follows in the wake of Locke, Priestley, Hume,
the Mills, Bain, and he seems to think that it is
the only possible psychology. Mr. Herbert Spencer is
also in the same succession with a difference peculiar
to himself. I t is a psychology which builds largely
on physiology, which explores the nervous system for
physical concomitants of psychological events, which
is great in the cross-examination of babies, and of late
years has dealt largely with the possible experiences
of the primitive man. It is great in the natural
history of man, especially in the growing period of
babyhood, youth, and early manhood. It is always
of opinion that a process of becoming explains the
result. Many other wonderful things might be said
of it. Alliance with evolution has not improved it,
but the alliance has enabled it to do more wonderful
things than ever. It has enabled Mr. Spencer to
suppose that he can manufacture intuitions, and
produce necessary principles as they are needed, and
to explain how what is a priori to the individual
may be a posteriori to the race. As if repetition,
custom, habit could ever generate a belief in principles
that are universal and necessary ! Prolong human
experience or life-experience as much as you please,
it is still a particular experience of the particular,
and it can never enable us to affirm a proposition as

universal and necessary.
But perhaps the greatest feat ever performed in
psychology is performed by Mr. Spencer when he
affirms : " Not only do feelings constitute the inferior
tracts of consciousness, but feelings are in all cases
the materials out of which, in the superior tracts
of consciousness, intellect is evolved by structural
combination" {Psychology, vol. i., p. 192). That
is something worth knowing! Consciousness, Mr.
Spencer repeatedly says, is built up of individual
sensations and emotions. The simplest element
of consciousness is compared to a nervous shock.
Given a nervous shock, or repeated nervous shocks,
and by combining and recombining these in endless
ways consciousness is built u p ; for Mr. Spencer
sensation and feeling are equivalent expressions.
But, may we ask, what is it that is aware of the
nervous shock ? Make feeling as simple as we may,
before it becomes feeling, or when it becomes feel-
ing there is a something which is aware of it.
The lowest organism is one; it has a unitary centre
somewhere, which reacts against the stimulus and
the sensation. But Mr. Spencer deals with feelings
as if they existed apart from a creature whose feelings
they are. By a process of combining and recombining
them he endeavours to build up a consciousness; but
the consciousness is the condition of their existence.
Feeling presupposes consciousness, and yet it is
assumed that feeling makes consciousness.
Mr. Spencer speaks constantly of " relations between
feelings," and he has not explained how this is possible.
Feeling is itself a relation between the object and

the subject, and relations between feelings are just
relations between the several objects and the one
subject. With this understanding of the meaning
of the relations between feelings, we can follow Mr.
Spencer's exposition of the subject with interest.and
instruction. He has cast much light on the process
of the coalescence of feelings into larger wholes; but
he has not approached the goal he professedly has in
view—that of enabling us to understand how conscious-
ness is built up : " Clusters of clusters of feelings held
together by relations of an extremely involved kind."
Yes ; but the bond which holds them together is that
they are referred to the conscious subject which holds
them together in the unity of one self-consciousness.
But the one thing which English psychologists
have ever sought to avoid is just this unity of self-
consciousness. We get from them quite a number
of useful observations. We get endless disquisitions
on mind and body, on the nervous system and its
psychological accompaniments, on the laws of associa-
tion, on mental faculties, on the emotions and the
will, and on a thousand other topics; but they have
so dealt with all of them as to make us forget that the
feelings, emotions, volitions, associations belong to a
self, are those of a self-conscious rational being. The
self is lost amid the feelings, cognitions, and volitions;
and psychology proceeds as if these feelings, cognitions,
and volitions were separate and independent realities.
One might suppose that Professor Green, in his drastic
and dramatic Introduction to Hume, had made an end
of that kind of thing. But n o : English psychology
seems, like the Bourbons, to have learnt nothing and
to have forgotten nothing. I t is still alive, and has
been recently reinforced from abroad, both from
France and from Germany; and those who have
recently dealt with the matter, Eibot and Miinsterberg,
have reduced consciousness to a mere accompaniment
of physiological changes.
Notwithstanding this persistent view of psychology,
and the reinforcement brought to it from beyond the
sea, there is this to be said, that the presupposition
of all possible psychology is the possibility of self-con-
sciousness, to which all feelings, cognitions, volitions
are to be referred. You may make of it what you
please, but this much will remain, that it is the
central unity to which all possible experience is to be
referred. The self-conscious being stands over against
all possible objects of experience, and refuses to be
included among them. It is the self to which they
are related, and in which the experience finds its unity.
It was necessary to say so much, in view of the
attempt which is made to construct a natural history
of the self. We have to admit that Dr. Romanes
is aware of the problem, and that he says that in
the work before us it is not the problem he has in
hand. His is a problem of psychogenesis, and his
aim is to prove that the intelligence of the man is not
different in kind from that of the brute. We think
he has failed; but his has been the most serious
attempt that has been made, and the most valuable
even to those who disagree with him. He has not
made the attempt of building up mind from feelings
as if they were independent realities. He knows that
the organism is one connected whole, and that all

the parts of an organism are mutually related in the
unity of individual sensibility. "Every stimulus
supplied from without, every movement originating
from within, carries with it the character of belong-
ing to that which feels or moves" (p. 197). Thus
feelings are referred to their unifying centre; and
he maintains also that thus the foundations of self-
consciousness are largely laid in the fact that an
organism is one connected whole. I do not myself
see how this is consistent with the psychological pre-
suppositions he derives from Locke. Dr. Romanes
seems to assume that the only possible psychology is
that of the empirical school. He is no doubt aware
that the method and the conclusions of the empirical
school are keenly contested. We now point only to
Green's Introduction to Hume in witness of the fact.
Dr. Romanes—for we must be brief—defines u idea "
as follows : " The word * idea' I will use in the sense
defined in my previous work—namely, as a generic
term to signify indifferently any product of imagina-
tion, from the mere memory of a sensuous impression
up to the result of the most abstruse generalisation."
Then he describes what he means by " simple idea,"
" complex idea," and " general idea." Then the differ-
ent stages of ideation are given. Simple ideas he
calls percepts, general ideas are concepts, and for the
class which is between percepts and concepts he uses
the word "recepts "; and he thinks that every one is
likely to accept his classification. He thinks that in
" perception " and in " reception " the mind i* passive,
while in " conceptual " thought it is active. V»Te are
not quite sure what to say about "recepts." They
must either be particular, or they must be general. If
they are more than particular, they must be repre-
sentative; and if they are representative they are
useless, and simply serve to perplex. But the question
of the passivity of the mind until it reaches to general
ideas is the most perplexing. I t is this which we
cannot reconcile with the statement of Dr. Romanes :
" Every stimulus supplied from without, every move-
ment originating from within, carries with it the
character of belonging to that which feels and
moves." If this be true, as we believe it is, then even
in the lowest organism there is activity in response
to stimulus. Much more is it true when a higher
organism responds to stimulus. The activity may
manifest itself even in feeling, and perception is
activity. But this is not the only inconsistency into
which Dr. Romanes has fallen " I take it, then, as
established that true or conceptual self-consciousness
consists in paying the same kind of attention to
inward psychical consciousness as is habitually paid
to outward psychical processes ; that in the mind of
animals and infants there is a world of images stand-
ing as signs of outward objects, although we may
concede that for the most part they only admit of
being revived by sensuous association; that at this
stage of mental evolution the logic of recepts com-
prises an ejective as well as an objective world; and
that here we also have the recognition of individuality,
so far as this is dependent on what has been termed
an outward self-consciousness, or the consciousness
of self as a feeling and an active agent, without the
consciousness of self as an object of thought, and

therefore a subject" (p. 200).
This is really a wonderful passage. We have read
it again and again, and have read the passages which
lead up to it, and those which immediately follow it,
and with a wonder which grew and grew. What is
the meaning of it % I take note of the passage:
" Receptual or outward self-consciousness is the prac-
tical recognition of self as an active and a feeling agent;
while conceptual or inward self-consciousness is the
introspective recognition of self as an object of know-
ledge, and therefore as a subject. Hence the one form
of self-consciousness differs from the other in that it is
only objective and never subjective." But that state-
ment does not make the matter easier to understand.
Does the higher self-consciousness never exist until
it attains to the " recognition of itself as an object of
knowledge" ? But the recognition of it does not
make it. I t is already there and active. Besides,
Dr. Romanes would need to explain how the subject
can become an object, how that for which all objects
are, and to which all objects are presented, can be an
object. That certain states of the subject can be an
object can be readily understood, but not that the
subject can be an object to itself. If the subject can
be an object, how does it differ from other objects ?
and what becomes of the distinction between the
different forms of self-consciousness when the subject
becomes an object ?
Then, again, what has the power or stage of con-
ceptualism to do with the inward self-consciousness ?
Have we no power to recognise ourselves as thinking,
active, feeling beings until we have attained the stage
of making concepts ? or how do concepts help us to
recognise ourselves ? Is it that we must obtain the
power of making and using general conceptions before
we can recognise our own power of thinking ? Is it
that we can recognise the self as an object of know-
ledge only when we look at it under a general notion
or idea ? We submit in this case that the object of
knowledge is not the self, but the general notion.
This may perhaps be the meaning of Dr. Romanes, as
it falls in with his psychological position generally.
If it is, then psychology has again to pass through
the period and the stages of controversy which have
already been passed from Locke and Berkeley to
Hume and his successors; and we shall have to
discuss the question as to whether ideas are the only
objects of knowledge. But that is a task which we
may well decline.
At all events, Dr. Romanes has not made clear
what he means by conceptual self-consciousness. Nor
has he made good the distinction between outward
and inner self consciousness; for after one attains
to conceptual self-consciousness, he may live all his
life and do all his work without ever turning his mind
inward to contemplate itself. Dr. Romanes has him-
self the highest self-consciousness when he is occupied
so completely with the study of external objects as to
forget the inner self-consciousness altogether. Shall
we say that Newton and Darwin and other great
men, who hardly ever looked inward, but always
outward, have not attained to the higher self-con-
sciousness? That might be a plausible way of ex-
EVOLUTION AXD PSYCHOLOGY 171
plaining some of the remarks of Darwin, and might

help to explain why he thought of himself mainly as
an object among other objects. But even that ad-
vantage will not tempt us to admit the precarious
distinction which Dr. Romanes has drawn between
outer and inner self-consciousness. The emergence
of self-consciousness does not coincide with the emer-
gence of the power of forming general concepts. Nor
can we separate action and feeling from conception in
that sharp and abrupt way. Activity and feeling
are not separated from intelligence, and even the
feeling of a self-conscious being is touched with
rationality.
Now the interest of Dr. Romanes in this distinction
arose from the fact that here for him is the dividing
line between brutes and men. Following Locke, he
makes the power of forming abstract ideas to belong
only to man. " Therefore I think," says Locke,
" beasts compare not their ideas further than some
sensible circumstances annexed to the objects them-
selves. The other power of comparing, which may be
observed in man, belonging to general ideas, and
useful only in abstract reasonings, we may probably
conjecture brutes have not." This is certainly a
marked distinction between man and brutes, and
Dr. Romanes has set it forth with admirable clear-
ness. But is it psychologically the only distinction ?
Does not the distinction between conscious and self-
consciousness begin at an earlier stage? Is it not
manifested whenever the self is recognised as a feeling,
acting, thinking agent ? Is not the self consciously
there, even before the stage of introspection begins ?
To deny this is to deny self-consciousness to all who

are not in the way of practising introspection, and
this would involve the grotesque supposition that all
our scientific men—our physicists, chemists, biologists,
whose main work is to study facts and laws in their
objective order, without reference to themselves as sub-
jects—are destitute of the higher self-consciousness.
Apart, however, from any controversy about the
stage when self-consciousness begins to manifest itself,
let us accept Dr. Romanes' view that there is such a
thing as self-consciousness. However we may under-
stand the word, yet the fact that self-consciousness
makes a distinction between man and brute is im-
portant. I t serves to mark the position of man as
unique. The recognition of self as an active, feeling,
or, as Dr. Romanes says, as a thinking agent separates
man from the whole lower world. Can we call this a
distinction in kind ? or is it only in degree ? We shall
not quarrel about the phrase, if we get the thing. We
say it is a great distinction, call it as we please. It
does not seem possible to explain it by anything but
itself. We may say that " the foundations are laid in
the fact that the organism is one connected whole " ;
but so we might say that the foundations of water
are laid in oxygen and hydrogen, and the foundations
of life are laid in the chemical properties of matter,
but water and life have properties which cannot be
explained by the characteristics of the foundations.
So it appears to be with self-consciousness. I t is
unique; there is nothing like it in the world beneath ;
and as far as evolution is concerned, it is just bound
to accept it, and to accept it without explanation.
Whatever the explanation may be, it must fulfil

certain conditions. I t must be such as will not break
up the unity of human nature, and assign the origin
of his body to one set of causes and his mind to
another ; and it must not bring in a cause here which
operates only at this point or at a few other points
in the whole history of the earth. This is, however,
what Mr. Russel Wallace has done, and the result is
that he has advocated a certain kind of deism, as,
in fact, Mr. Darwin has also. But deism is a super-
annuated form of thought which cannot be resuscitated
at the present hour. Mr. Wallace tells us that " there
are at least three stages in the development of the
organic world when some new cause or power must
necessarily come into action. The first stage is the
change from organic to inorganic, when the first
vegetable cell, or the living protoplasm out of which
it arose, first appeared. . . . The next stage is still
more marvellous, still more completely beyond all
possibility of explanation by matter, its laws, and
forces. I t is the introduction of sensation or conscious-
ness, constituting the fundamental distinction between
the animal and vegetable kingdoms. . . . The third
stage is, as we have seen, the existence in man
of a number of his most characteristic and noblest
faculties, those which raise him furthest above the
brutes, and open up possibilities of almost indefinite
advancement. These faculties could not possibly
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 three distinct stages of progress
from the inorganic world of matter up to man point
clearly to an unseen universe, to a world of spirit, to
which the world of matter is altogether subordinate."
(Darvrinism, pp. 274-6.)
These are the positions, this is the attitude of
mind which we call deistic, and which, on grounds of
science, philosophy, and theology, we cannot accept.
Are we to hold that only at these three stages can we
find anything that points to a world of spirit ? Are
we to bring in the world of spirit only where our
favourite theory fails ? If there are breaks like these
in the theory of evolution, is it not time to revise our
theory ? For if it cannot explain these points of new
departure, it cannot really explain anything ] I t is
curious to notice how the deistic view has got itself
wrought into the very structure of Mr. Wallace's
mind. " The theory of ' continual interference' is a
limitation of the Creator's power. It assumes that he
could not work by pure law in the organic as he has
done in the inorganic world; it assumes that he could
not foresee the consequences of the laws of matter and
mind combined—that results would continually arise
which are contrary to what is best, and that he has
to change what would otherwise be the order of
nature, in order to produce that beauty and variety
and harmony which even we, with our limited intel-
lects, can conceive to be the result of self-adjustment
in a universe governed by unvarying law." (Natwral
Selection, p. 240.) Is there no way of conceiving the
action of the Divine presence and power in the world
save that of continual interference ? Why should we
with Mr. Wallace postulate the absence of God from
the world save only at these critical points where the

self-adjusting forces had failed and were unequal to
the new departure ? Having made the new departure
Mr. Wallace thinks that, having got such a start, the
world could again be left to self-adjusting, self-acting
laws. Might it not help Mr. Wallace if he were to
read Butler, and learn from him that the laws of
nature are just the uniform action of God ? It is not
possible to think that God is ever absent from His
creation, or we must think that He is always absent.
Theology cannot accept a mere deus ex machina.
Nor can we accept that view of Mr. Wallace which
asserts one origin for man's physical organism and
another for his spiritual nature. Such a view destroys
the unity of man, and simply makes him a highly
organised animal to which somehow a spiritual
nature has been superadded. It is surrounded with
difficulties. Man proceeds by ordinary generation;
how has this superadded spiritual nature been trans-
mitted? Man has a true body and a reasonable
soul j is each reasonable soul superadded to each in-
dividual as he comes into existence ? Is it not more
reasonable, as it is certainly more Scriptural, to trace
the origin of man, body, soul, spirit, as a unity, to
the creative power of God ? Certainly the Scripture
teaches that in the future, in another life, man in
his complete state will be an organic man, with a
spiritual body adequate to express his spiritual
nature. Are we, then, to deny even in the case of
man " special creation " ? Yes and no, as we under-
stand the meaning of the term. To me creation is
continuous. To me everything is as it is through the
continuous power of God; every law, every being, every
relation of being are determined by Him, and He is
the Power by which all things exist. I believe in
the immanence of God in the world, and I do not
believe that He comes forth merely at a crisis, as
Mr. Wallace supposes. Apart from the Divine action
man would not have been, or have an existence; but
apart from the Divine action nothing else would have
an existence.
We have seen, with the help of Dr. Romanes, that
the self-conscious man is a unique being in the world,
that there is none like him. Are we to think also that
this is a lonely kind of existence in this universe or
above this universe ? He is a being who can look be-
fore and after, who can think, and conceive the order
and method and evolution of the universe; and he
can gather up the wealth of his experience into the
unity of his self-consciousness. Is there any other
being like him, a Being in whose image he is, who
can speak to him, and to whom he can speak ? Man
has been able to look back on a world which was once
without life. But even in that world he was able to
recognise power, regulated power, which proceeded
rationally in a manner which can be understood by
man: power in the systems of the stars, power in
the solar system, power in the early history of the
lifeless earth; not a random power, but a power that
worked by law, by method, and in order. He saw
that the power he recognised proceeded stage by stage
until a world was made with conditions fit for life.
Is he wrong if he thinks that the power manifested
in the living world was a power to which life was
no stranger ? that the power was a living power ? Is

he wrong in thinking that the power he knows in
the living world as living, now that self-consciousness
has appeared, is not lacking in this respect ? Is he
not right in thinking that this power has in itself
all the endowments which have been manifested one
after another in the world of life, intelligence, self-
consciousness ? And it has these eternally. We
know that power, life, consciousness, self-consciousness
arose one after another, and we may be greatly exer-
cised about the method and manner of their appear-
ance. But will not the perplexity be greatly lessened
if we have reason to believe in a Power, living, intelli-
gent, self-conscious, to whose creative energy and
eternal wisdom all things owe their being and their
character ? But this is to postulate an eternal Self-
consciousness. Yes; and why not? It is a more
reasonable assumption than the assumption of an
eternal unconsciousness, out of which, in the process
of the ages, a self-consciousness should arise.
CHAPTER X
EVOLUTION AND ETHICS
Ethics of evolution—Professor Huxley's ethical ideal—
Whence derived?—Not from cosmic process, not from
Greek or Roman ethics, nor from ordinary human ethics
—Ethical life : what it is—Struggle for existence partial
in cosmos; at its fiercest in human life—Spheres of
human conduct non-moralised—Moral ideals—Moral
obligation—The Christian ethical ideal—Its acknow-
ledged supremacy—Its character—Recognition of it—
Not derived from evolution—Christian ethics both Test
and Goal of ethical evolution.
W ITH the advent of a self-conscious being into

the world, the world has taken on a new
meaning. Here is a being who can stand over
against the world, oppose himself to it, who can, say
1
' I," and distinguish himself from everything else.
The change thus made in the universe is of unspeak-
able importance; for here is a being who can, in
course of time, become the greatest factor in the
cosmos, can read the process of its becoming, and
forecast in a measure its final outcome. He is part
of the process; but in so far as he can oppose himself
to it he is greater than it, and can in a measure
control it. So far as we can limit our view of man
to the intellectual side, and regard him mainly as a
rational, self-conscious being, we are able to say that
178
EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 179
he is an immeasurable advance on all that has gone

before. All the intelligence formally manifested in
the cosmos, so far as consciousness has gone, is only
rudimentary. It is when we come to look at the
moral and social life of man that the strangest
phenomena appear. It is not our purpose here to
trace the history of the phenomena of ethics, or to
criticise the attempts that have been made to bring
them into line with the theory of evolution. We
have many such attempts. Mr. Spencer, Mr. Leslie
Stephen, Mr. Darwin, and others have sought to
trace the evolution of ethics. We have also many
contributions from the students of anthropology. A
full and critical account may be found in the work
of Mr. C. M. Williams, A Review of the Systems of
Ethics founded on the Theory of Evolution, who, after
giving us a valuable account of the systems of ethics
founded on evolution, himself adds one to the number.
Of all of them it may be said generally that the
explanation they give of the phenomena of the moral
life is inadequate, and these phenomena are for the
most part explained away.
That evolution is not inconsistent with the recog-
nition of moral ideals we may see by a reference to
the system of Mr. Spencer. We may see this also
by a reference to the latest and the most remarkable
of the writings of Professor Huxley. A great part
of the Romanes lecture {Evolution and Ethics) is of
such a kind as to make us inclined to forget many
of the fierce and bitter things which the Professor
has written in the course of his most controversial
life. " A s I have already said, the practice of
that which is ethically best—what we call goodness

or virtue—involves a course of conduct which, in
all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success
in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of
ruthless self-assertion, it demands self-restraint; in
place of thrusting aside or treading down all com-
petitors, it requires that the individual shall not
merely respect, but shall help his fellows; its influence
is directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest,
as to the fitting of as many as possible to survive.
It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence. It
demands that each man who enters into the enjoy-
ments of a polity shall be mindful of his debt to
those who have laboriously constructed it, and shall
take heed that no act of his weakens the fabric in
which he has been permitted to live. Laws and
moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing
the cosmic process, and reminding the individual of
his duty to the community, to the protection and
influence of which he owes, if not existence itself, at
least the life of something better than a brutal savage."
{Ethics and Evolution, pp. 33, 34.) " Let us under-
stand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society
depends, not in imitating the cosmic process, still less
in running away from it, but in combating it." Here
Professor Huxley sets forth an ethical ideal of a noble
order. From what source has he derived it %
I t is not from the cosmic process. Nor has he
found it in the ethical systems he has passed in review
in the previous part of his lecture. I t coincides in a
large degree with the ethics of the Sermon on the
Mount; and we may be glad that Professor Huxley
agrees with i t ; not so much for the sake of the

Sermon on the Mount as for his own sake. We are
not sure, however, as to whether on his own principles
Professor Huxley has a right to separate the ethical
from the cosmic process. On what ground does he
justify his moral ideal ? We hardly know. We are
too glad, however, to have these noble words of his
with respect to the moral ideal to inquire too curiously
into its sources and its sanction.
At the same time, we feel bound to ask whether
the cosmic process is what Professor Huxley has
described it to be, or whether it is not a kind of
anthropomorphism, whether it is not a reading of
man's practices into the cosmos. The struggle for
existence has been made to play a great part in the
theory of evolution. Is it not exaggerated ? In fact,
the typical form of the struggle for existence is not
cosmic, but human, and has its most perfect expression
in the science of political economy as that science
has been formerly expounded. In it self-interest is
regarded as the ruling motive, and from it as a
motive, with the fact of private property and freedom
of competition, the laws of the science are formulated.
Unlimited freedom of competition, baker against
baker, draper against draper, company against com-
pany, shipowner against shipowner, and one class
against another,—thus we have the struggle for exist-
ence in its highest form.
As we go back in history we find that the struggle
for existence which we see to-day pressed most keenly
in the industrial form has had other ways of mani-
festing itself in the world of man. There is war, and
the development of the warlike spirit. There is the
hostility between tribe and tribe, between city and
city, between kingdom and kingdom. From the
beginning of recorded history until now what Pro-
fessor Huxley has called the cosmic process has been
more fully realised in the world of man than in the
lower world. From one point of view it looks as if
the gift of self-conscious life, the power of reflection
and of conscious adaptation of means to ends, were
not a boon; for on the stage of history the self-
conscious being has largely shown himself to be a
being of the most selfish sort. " Man the animal,"
says Professor Huxley, " in fact, has worked his way
to the headship of the sentient world, and has become
the superb animal he is, in virtue of his success in
the struggle for existence. The conditions having
been of a certain order, man's organisation has
adjusted itself to them better than that of his com-
petitors in the cosmic strife. In the case of mankind,
the self-assertion, the unscrupulous seizing upon all
that can be grasped, the tenacious holding of all
that can be kept, which constitute the essence of
the struggle for existence, have answered. For his
successful progress as far as the savage state man
has been largely indebted to those qualities which he
shares with the ape and the tiger: his exceptional
physical organisation ; his cunning, his sociability, his
curiosity, and his imitativeness; his ruthless and
ferocious destructiveness when his anger is roused by
opposition." (Pp. 5, 6.)
Thus the appearance of a self-conscious! rational
being on the stage of life served only to accentuate
and to intensify the struggle for existence. It is a

striking and an appalling fact, which would seem to
require a more radical examination and a deeper
explanation than that given to it by Professor Huxley;
for from this point of view man is something worse
than the lower world. He has fallen from the level
of the higher animals, and reason in him has been
pressed into the service of selfishness, ruthlessness,
and ferocity; and the nature which is higher from
an intellectual point of view has, ethically regarded,
become lower. This fact would need to be explained,
and theology has an explanation, on which I do not
insist at present. The matter now in hand is to
press home the fact that the Darwinian notion of the
struggle for existence has been derived, not from the
cosmos, but from the more virulent form of human
competition; and if our thinking is to correspond to
fact, we must make allowance for the exaggeration ;
for the presence of reason, uncontrolled by conscience
and unguided by moral considerations, serves only to
make the possessor of it more selfish, and more power-
ful in his self-assertion. He has got into possession
of the most powerful of all instruments, and he uses
it without remorse for selfish ends. If a rational
being allows himself to be selfish, then he becomes
more intensely selfish than any other being of a
lower order. The desires of an ape and a tiger are
limited: if they can get sufficient food for the day
they are content for the day, and the struggle is only
for the day. The desires of a rational being are
practically unlimited, and every object may become
an object of desire. The competition between him
and his fellows is practically unlimited, and the

struggle for existence has no ending.
The cosmic struggle for existence is therefore partial
and limited. I t is neither so fierce nor so persistent
as is represented. It is modified also by co-operation,
and by many instances of mutual help and benefit.
There is the adumbration of self-sacrifice in the
lower world, though there it is in the region of instinct,
and not in that of conscious reflection and purpose.
The individual sacrifices itself for the species; and as
the species ascend in rank, the sacrifice becomes
greater and greater, until among them there is some-
thing like the appearance of family life. Then we
find such cases as are manifested in a law of mutual
helpfulness impressed on very different kinds for
the advantage of each. Instances might readily be
enumerated, and more and more of these beneficial
inter-relations are being discovered every day.
We are therefore driven to the conclusion that the
process against which ethics has to strive is not so
much a cosmic as it is a human process. For we do
find in the cosmic process the outlines and the rudi-
ments of that ethical doctrine set forth so eloquently
by Professor Huxley. We find the law of self-sacrifice
at work in the grain, and in the flower. We find the
law of social unity adumbrated in the vine and its
branches. We find the outline of a settled social state
in the community of the ant and the bee, where each
individual works not for its own benefit, but for the
benefit of the community. And in many other
instances also we have involuntary foreshadowings
of the ethical ideal.
Ethically the problem to be solved is, How is it that

in man we have the curious result of both the fiercest
insistence on the unethical cosmic process and the
most strenuous insistence on the necessity of combat-
ing it ? I t affords no solution of the problem to say
that man the animal has worked his way up in virtue
of his success in the struggle for existence; for we
have no evidence that man the mere animal ever
existed. And if he ever were only an animal, he
would not have persisted or survived in the struggle
for existence. A rational, self-conscious being ought,
as such, to have a moral consciousness and a rational
order in his moral life. As a matter of fact, we see
that there have been rational beings who really seem
to fight not against what Professor Huxley calls the
cosmic process, but against the moral order. They
have exaggerated all the selfish elements of the cosmic
process, and have become superbly selfish.
Nor can we solve the problem by saying that this
phase of development belongs to the time before men
passed from anarchy to civilisation. As a matter of
fact, the gladiatorial theory of existence was never
more in vogue than it is in the present hour. We see
it in the field of international relations, nations armed
to the throat, and each nation adding to its army
because its neighbour has made some movement of
the same kind. There are about twenty millions of
men in arms in Europe at the present hour; ships are
built; and the talk everywhere is not of duty, not of
principle, but of self-interest. Nor does a different
state of things meet our view in the industrial world.
In truth, over a wide field of human activity we find
that men are not combating the cosmic process, but

are imitating it, and are improving on the pattern,
and the cosmic process by becoming rational has
become ethically worse. Nor is this the worst; for
the problem is not merely that of the difference
between men and men: it is the difference within
the same man. All the week through men live
according to the cosmic process, and on Sunday they
profess to believe a religion, one main feature of which
is set forth in the Sermon on the Mount. On Monday
they buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest
market, and feel that their conduct is sanctioned by
the purest laws of political economy, and all the while
they profess to believe that he who saves his life shall
lose it, and he that loses his life shall save it.
From the point of view of evolution as manifested
in the cosmic process, we have no criterion of right or
wrong, nor of good and evil; for it is the fittest that
survive, and the survival proves the fitness. We are
not helped by the criterion of Mr. Spencer that right
conduct is the conduct that is most evolved. The
immoral sentiments are as evolved as the moral. There
is a great deal of definite, coherent heterogeneity in
the burglar and the thief. And the conduct of the
first Napoleon exhibits a great example of evolved
conduct; but his ethical character does not rise to the
standard set by Professor Huxley. In fact, as the
conditions of society get more and more complex, and
the struggle for existence becomes more and more keen,
conduct, whether it is good or bad, necessarily becomes
more evolved. Selfishness must become more cunning,
and must adapt itself to the conditions of existence.
I t seems necessary to lay stress on this sad fact of
our common humanity, as it is an aspect of human life
too much neglected in systematic ethical treatises.
Why has man been, why is man so unethical ? It is
a pleasant exercise for ethical writers to trace the
origin and progress of the ethical emotions, to show us
the first faint traces of sympathy, self-sacrifice, and
love in the lower creation, to point us to the evolu-
tion of motherhood and the growth of family life, to
show us the first growth of moral maxims, and their
increase in complexity and simplicity, until we get to
the moral code of to-day. But it might be well if
they traced also the history of the dark shadow that
has hung over human life from the beginning, and
try to understand and explain i t ; for side by side
with the evolution of good conduct there has gone the
evolution of evil conduct; and we cannot account for
this on the ground of any mere evolutionary process.
Even if we could trace the progress of evolved morality,
that will hardly give us a criterion of good conduct;
and we must obtain an explanation from some other
source.
I t seems a difficult task to account for the existence
of a moral ideal on the part of man when we look at
him as a product of the cosmic process. I t seems
difficult, when we look at the current maxims of con-
duct, to understand how or where Professor Huxley
has got his ethical ideal; for the maxims of common
conduct, such as business is business, England must
pursue her career and look after her interests, and
other maxims which in business life and national life
make self-interest the ruling motive, are quite opposed
to his high ideal. The two ideals are really incon-

sistent ; and it seems scarcely possible to account
for the existence of moral ideals, of the kind set
forth by Professor Huxley, as an unaided achieve-
ment of the human mind, or as the outcome of an
evolutionary process. For men are worse than they
ought to be, considered as products of evolution, and
men are also better; and both in their badness and
in their goodness they seem to transcend the cosmic
order.
In this connection it might be well to consider the
character of moral ideals, of moral institutions, and
of the moral sphere; for as a matter of history
moral ideals have changed from age to age, and
moral institutions and moral enactments have also
varied, while the strange thing with regard to morals
is the vast extent of human activity which seems to
lie outside of man's moral regard. Stress has been laid
by writers on the fact of obligation, and the moral
feeling implied in the words " ought" and " duty."
All are agreed that these are words which represent
ethical facts of the highest importance. Various ex-
planations are given both of the origin of them, their
character, and their sanctions ; but whatever these
may be, there is agreement as to the fact that man
somehow feels himself bound to aim at a moral life.
We accept the fact, then, of moral coerciveness ; but
the fact does not explain the differences in the moral
ideal which have appeared in the course of history
between man and man, between one generation and
another, and between nation and nation. Have we
not one ideal in India, another in Persia, another in
Greece, another in Rome? and to-day have we not

different ideals in modern life, and in modern nations ?
The obligation to do right, the feeling of " ought"
may be universal in man, as we do not doubt it is)
but how is a man to know what the moral ideal is,
and how is it to be embodied in his own life and in
social life ? One thing is sure, that when we look at
the contemporary life of to-day we find large tracts
of it which seem to lie outside of ethical action
properly regarded. How small is the sphere in
which duty appears to rule! While the feeling of
obligation is existent in every man, yet how narrow
is its scope ! It does not seem to reach beyond a
few conventional moralities. Hardly any one makes
the whole of his life an expression of goodwill and
right reason. Indifference to one's own health, in-
temperance in food and drink, abiding in ignorance
when knowledge can be attained,—these are as com-
mon as possible, and are scarcely ever visited with
the disapproval which they merit. Neglect of means
which are needed to save life, whether these be the
observance of sanitary laws, or the proper precautions
in order that work may be carried on in safety, and a
hundred other neglects of the same order, which issue
in the ill health and death of many, are scarcely
looked at as wrong at all. Then there is scarcely
any recognition of public duty, and often a man
who is sensitively conscientious in the discharge of
personal duty feels no responsibility and takes no
action in public matters; or if he takes action he
simply votes with his party. It is evident, therefore,
that there is a large sphere of human action into
which the thought of duty and responsibility has not

yet penetrated, nor will it penetrate until we learn
that the social order is the only thing which makes
individual growth in a moral life possible, and if
there is a low tone of public morality a high-toned
and moral life is scarcely possible.
Then, again, we have a formal claim set up, that
various human activities should proceed on their own
lines unhampered and unhindered by ethical considera-
tions. I t is scarcely possible to enumerate these, so
many have they been. Art has claimed that it has
a right to neglect morality, and to cultivate the
beautiful for its own sake. Literature also has had
its fleshly school and its realisms, which have not
lacked defenders at the present hour. Trade and
commerce make their claim that they have a right
to pursue their own end in their own way. Politics
also has become, or perhaps has always been, on a
non-moral basis, and party-spirit is sometimes so keen
that the facts can scarcely be seen in the mists of
controversy. A wide survey of the life of to-day leads
to the conclusion that the field of ethical action is
circumscribed to a strange degree. But it is evident
that if ethics is the art of true living—of ideal
living, shall we say?—then the ethical rules must be
universal, and no human activity can be left outside
its scope.
The shifting moral ideals of the past, and the utter
imperfection of moral institutions, as also the slight
extent to which human life has been moralised, all
tend to show us that the ethical ideal set forth by
Professor Huxley must have some other source than
that of mere human evolution. The ethical ideal

already quoted by him is, in some respects, identical
with that of the Sermon on the Mount and of
the New Testament generally. How different this
ethics was from contemporary ethics any one knows
who has given any attention to the subject. How
different was the view of the sacredness of human
life in Christian and in non-Christian ethics ! Plato
allowed infanticide as fitting in certain circumstances,
and Aiistotle viewed slavery as founded in the
very nature of things; but the New Testament
taught that God had made of one blood all the
nations of the earth, and looked on all men as alike
partakers of one human nature, and therefore all
alike entitled to equal justice. From the unity of
human nature, from the greatness of human destiny
and from a universal Divine redemption, conclusions
were drawn which contained in them implicitly the
reversal of many ethical judgments, and set forth an
ideal utterly subversive of a large amount of current
practice. There is no ethical ideal like the ideal of
Jesus of Nazareth, realised in His own life and set
forth in His teaching.
It seems a hard thing to say that this moral ideal
has never been sufficiently understood, or really and
seriously taken. Dr. Hatch says: " The ethics of the
Sermon on the Mount, which the earliest Christian
communities endeavoured to carry into practice, have
been transmuted by the slow alchemy of history into
the ethics of Koman law. The basis of Christian
society is not Christian, but Roman and Stoical. A
portion of the Koman conception of rights with the
Stoical conception of relations involving reciprocal
actions is in possession of practically the whole field
of civilised society. The transmutation is so complete
that the modern question is not so much whether the
ethics of the Sermon on the Mount are practicable,
as whether, if practicable, they would be desirable."
(Hibbert Lectures, pp. 169, 170.) I t would be well,
then, to go back to the Sermon on the Mount, to the
life and conduct and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth,
and to try in the first place to understand these. To
know plainly what these mean, apart from all questions
as to whether these precepts of His are practicable and
desirable, apart also from all questions as to their
origin and tendency, would seem to be one of the first
duties of this generation. For the study of them has
been hindered in many ways—hindered by prejudice
and preconceptions, by our bringing with us to the
study of them conceptions derived from Roman and
Stoic sources, and by current ethical conceptions of a
kind similar to the prevailing ideas of Greek ethics.
As to the interpretation of Christ's moral precepts,
there have been discussions as to whether they really
mean what they seem to mean, and for the most
part they are interpreted to mean something else. It
seems to be held that His words have something rash
about them, that they are stated too absolutely, that
they need to be toned down, guarded, attenuated in
some way, until they are brought more in accordance
with man's usual j udgments. Even Christian commen-
tators seem somehow to lose courage in the presence
of these broad, strong, ethical judgments of Jesus
Christ; as a consequence, the breadth and universality
and unconditional character of His teaching have been

obscured, and even the people who profess to follow
Him hardly ever get face to face with the moral
ideal of Jesus Christ without a veil between.
If this be largely so with regard to the understand-
ing of His teaching, much more is it so with regard to
the practice of it. No one, or but very few have had
the courage even to try to obey the commands of
Christ. Certainly no nation has tried to do so. In
fact, some Christian teachers have distinctly said that
it is not the duty of nations to obey the precepts of the
Sermon on the Mount. It may be acknowledged that
we are far from the time when men or nations are
likely seriously to try this way of life. Certainly men
will never seriously try it as long as the present attitude
of mind towards that teaching is maintained. As long
as that teaching is not taken seriously, as long as its
commands are looked at as mere counsels of perfection,
so long will the present lack of effort continue. Were,
however, the teaching of Christ and His example taken
as true, and binding, and authoritative, and were the
kind of moral life inculcated by Him taken as the
only kind of life fit for men to live, what a different
kind of world this world would become ! If self-
assertion were to pass out of existence, and poverty of
spirit take its place; if the hunger and thirst after
righteousness were to become as insistent, peremptory,
and imperative as the hunger and thirst after food
and drink for the body, and as imperiously demanded
satisfaction; if the purity of heart that can see
God were to become common, and the peacemakers
become as universal as man, is there any one who can
13
doubt that the things which now mar our peace and
trouble the prospects of humanity would speedily pass
away ? No one can doubt that, if the ethical ideal of
Jesus Christ were to be universally realised, we should
have a world wherein righteousness would reign ; and
this can be said of no other ethical ideal.
I t is a commonplace to say that He is the only
moral Teacher who ever realised His own ideal. What
He taught He lived, and what He commanded others
to do He first realised in His own conduct. In
this there is a great contrast; for whatever' a man's
moral ideal is, it may be safely said that his practice
comes short of it. Take a man wherever you may
find him, in ancient Greece, Rome, Persia, Egypt,
and you find in him a difference between the ideal life
and the*real, the life he feels he ought to live and the
life he actually does live. I t is in this connection
that the fact of moral obligation has its unique place.
Universally man's conception of duty is higher than
he can realise. The " ought" is always greater than
the reality. Video proboque meliora deteriora sequor
is an old saying universally recognised as true. It is
so when the ideal of moral life has not been wide,
or deep, or high j much more so, as the moral ideal
becomes higher, and as wider experience reveals the
infinite character of duty. The discrepancy between
the ideal and the real, between what ought to be and
what is, is largely present to the mind of every one.
The man of greatest attainments feels it most keenly,
and his sorrow at the fact is sometimes too deep for
expression.
That the ethical ideal of human life set forth in the
New Testament i3 the highest, purest, best, is a

proposition which is almost universally recognised as
true. I t has become the standard by which all other
ethical standards are measured and judged. It has
found its way in whole or in part into almost every
system of ethics, and the greatest task which ethical
students have is to find a way by which the ethical
ideal of Christianity can be brought into their systems
and harmonised with their leading principles. The
religion of humanity has given the new ethical
principle the name of Altruism ; Mr. Herbert Spencer
recognises it, and is disposed to complain that his
scientific basis for morals has been anticipated by the
ethical principles of Christianity; for the Hegelians
the principle of self-sacrifice has become the central
principle of their philosophy and religion; and
Kant's leading rules of ethics are but the abstract
form of what was concretely set forth in the New
Testament. It is not too much to say that the life
and teaching of Jesus Christ have penetrated to the
very centre of our modern theory in ethics, that they
have moulded the thoughts, and influenced the judg-
ment of the greatest writers on ethics, and have
given endless trouble to them; for they must make
the ethical conception of Christianity square in some
measure at least with their fundamental ideas.
Buchner tells us that " our present state of culture
has already long since left behind it all, and even
the highest, intellectual ideals elaborated by former
religions. The only correct, tenable moral principle
depends on the relation of reciprocity. There is
therefore no better guide to moral conduct than the
old and well-known proverb, ' What ye would not
have done to you that to others never do.' If we com-
plete the proverb with the addition, i Do to others as
ye would that they should do to you/ we have the
entire code of virtue and morals, and indeed in a
better and simpler form than could be furnished by
the thickest manuals of ethics, or the quintessence of
all the religious systems of the world." When Comte
sought to condense his ethical system into a sentence
he wrote, " I t is more blessed to give than to receive " ;
but this last sentence, which contains the essence of
positivist ethics, is already familiar to readers of the
New Testament: " Ye ought to help the weak, and
to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He
Himself said, I t is more blessed to give than to
receive " (Acts xx. 35). The entire code of ethics
according to Biichner is already found in the Sermon
on the Mount: "All things therefore whatsoever ye
would that men should do unto you, even so do ye
also unto them : for this is the law and the prophets "
(Matt. vii. 12).
Nor do we find any advance on the ideal of Christian
ethics in those maxims formulated by Kant, of which
it has been said that they occupy a place in ethics
corresponding to the place which the three laws of
motion have in the physical sciences: "(1) Act so
that the maxim of thy will may be capable of being
a universal law; (2) act so that thou mayest use the
humanity in thy own person, as well as in the person
of every other, always as an end, and never as a
means; (3) act according to maxims which at the
same time may be objectified as natural laws in a
system of universal legislation." These are but the

abstract expression of the commonplaces of Christian
ethics. The first maxim asks us to look at each
individual act in the light of a universal law. What
would be the result if every one acted so ? We may say
of the second that it could scarcely have been formu-
lated had not Christianity paved the way, and if the
Christian view of human life had not obtained recogni-
tion. I t simply says that a man must remain a man,
must not allow himself to become a mere tradesman,
engineer, politician, orator, or man of science. He
must be a man with all humanity in himself, and
must not make of himself or of others a means to an
end. How readily we may use ourselves as means to
an end need hardly be said. No better illustration
of this can be given than Darwin himself. How
readily also we use other people merely as means !
How easily we make a man an abstraction, look at
him only in one aspect, and that the aspect of him
which we can most easily use ! Soldiers for a general
are not men, but only so much fighting power, which
has to be kept in good order, and fit to be in a certain
place at a certain time to do certain work; for the
capitalist men are so much labour ; for the merchant
men are so many customers; and generally we are all
looked on by ourselves and others as means to an end.
In the third Kant asks, Would our maxims, if acted
on, maintain the moral order of the universe? or
would they throw the moral universe into confusion,
and let us judge accordingly ?
But the maxims of Kant are really different forms
of the teaching of Christ, and apart from the ethical
spirit of Christ would remain barren abstractions.
Christ embodied these maxims in a concrete life; of
Him alone could it be said that He always acted so, as
described in Kant's maxims. The basis of His actions
might at any moment be made universal, and at any
moment might adequately be made natural laws in a
system of universal legislation. He was the first, as
He is indeed the only one who taught the infinite
worth of man. Institutions were made for man,
not man for institutions. He alone saw the height
and depth and possibilities of humanity, and He alone
was able to penetrate beyond the differences between
races, nations, tribes, individuals, classes, and discern
the common human nature. He saw men in the
light of eternity, and thus He taught that all things
are for men, and man for God.
The ethical ideal set up by Christ, though im-
perfectly understood and only partially realised in
His followers, has obtained the victory. To be like
Christ, to live as He lived, to resolve that not pleasure
but service shall be the guide of life, that not self-
indulgence, but self-denial, self-sacrifice for great and
worthy ends shall be our motive, this is the ideal of
life which has won the approval of the best and
noblest of men. "We needs must love the highest
when we know it." And that Christ's ethical ideal
is the highest is almost universally recognised.
What is the bearing of these things on the ethics of
evolution, or on the evolution of ethics ? Well, this
much at least is implied: that at a certain period in
the world's history a certain ethical ideal arose, was
embodied in the life and conduct of its Founder, and
bet forth in His teaching ; an ethical ideal which was

to win slowly, and in the face of stern opposition, such
approval for itself, that by the more advanced people
it shall be recognised as the best and highest for man.
I t looks as if it had not been evolved by man, but
evolved for man; an ideal of true living which he did
not form for himself, but which he could recognise as
right and true and good when it was set before him.
It could scarcely have been formed by man, since it
reversed his usual ethical judgments, disapproved what
he had approved, and approved what he disapproved.
What is evolved must always bear some relation to
the process of evolution and to the lines on which
evolution proceeded.
This conclusion becomes even more stringent when
we consider not only the ethical ideals before Christ,
but the ethical ideals since His ideal has been before
men. His ethical ideal cannot be placed in the line
of evolution. It stands out from all others, distinct
in character and aim, in promise and in fulfilment.
It, unlike all other ethical speculations, has not taken
its place as a mere factor in ethical theory which
subsequent speculation has absorbed and transcended.
We can write a history of the evolution of ethics, and
can show something like relation between one stage
and another in every case except that of Christ.
Some relation and preparation there are between
before and after, save only here. But in this case a
moral ideal appears, which does not merely become a
platform for further devolopinent, which is not appro-
priated and transcended, which is largely misunder-
stood, and not acted on, which even to the present
hour remains an unapproachable standard of ideal
moral life, something which tests all other moral ideals,
and is itself beyond all tests. Evolution can deal
with such a problem in only two ways : it must either
show that the moral ideal of Christianity is just
what we ought to expect in the time and place and
circumstances of its origin, and that its origin and
character are not exceptional; or it must show that
it is not of a kind fitted to be the highest ideal of
humanity in every age and time. Either task seems
impossible. For Jesus Christ as a moral Person, as a
moral Influence, and as a moral Teacher infinitely
transcends, not only the men of His own time, but
the men of every time ; and the testimony of our best
ethical writers bears witness to the worth and value
of the Christian ideal of life.
In the Christian view of God and of His relation to
the world such an event as depicted is not unintelli-
gible. It means that the processes, laws, and opera-
tions of the world have not proceeded apart from
God. It means that God was making the world for a
purpose, and that He guided and ruled it by laws
appropriate to the nature of the things He has made;
that each higher grade of being manifests more
clearly and fully the nature of "the infinite and
eternal Energy from which all things proceed." It
means also that the infinite and eternal Energy not
only manifests Himself in the world, but manifests
Himself to the world as soon as there is a world
capable of apprehending the manifestation. Thus,
when by the slow processes of His creative power and
wisdom He had made a creature rational and self-
conscious, He began to manifest Himself to him in

ways he could apprehend. There is here also a
process of slow growth and evolution. " That is not
first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, then
that which is spiritual." It may take a long time
and much toil to make that which is spiritual; but
God is never absent from His creation, and never
ceases to be in living contact with it. We proceed on
the assumption that God is something for Himself.
Let us say, with Mr. Spencer, " t h a t the power
manifested throughout the universe distinguished as
material is the same power which in ourselves wells
up under the form of consciousness." Have we any
other affirmation to make of that power ? Mr. Spencer
himself distinguished between the power and its mani-
festations, though his distinction is that the power is
unknowable, while the manifestation may be known.
It might be more logical to say that the power is
known by its manifestations. May we not, however,
logically say that the power manifested within
consciousness and throughout the universe is not
exhausted by these manifestations—that the power is
something for itself, and if so may be manifested in
some other ways ? Why may not that power manifest
itself to man in some way which could not be accom-
plished either by welling up in consciousness or by
action in the material universe? Mr. Spencer dis-
misses as incredible the thought that " the cause to
which we can put no limit in space or time, and
of which our entire solar system is a relatively in-
finitesimal product, took the disguise of a man for
the purpose of covenanting with a shepherd chief in
Syria " {Principles of Sociology, " Ecclesiastical Insti-
tutions/ 7 p. 704). Exception might be taken to the
terms of the statement, but, waiving that, we look to
the merely quantitative terms of the comparison.
What if Abraham were of more value than the whole
material of the solar system ? What if the self-con-
scious, ethical, spiritual life of man were the end for
which the solar system is ? What if the proposition
which Mr. Spencer dismisses as incredible were to
be justified by his own example ? He has devoted a
lifetime to the production of the Synthetic Philosophy.
From the outset he has had in view the purpose of
providing a scientific basis for ethics and a scientific
guide to conduct. He is fond of speaking of the
naturally revealed end to which evolution tends. We
cannot suppose that the Power which works through
evolution is indifferent to the end in view. Why
should not the Power, "of which the entire solar
system is a relatively infinitesimal product/' reveal
Himself to Abraham, if by that revelation He could
bring about that ethical life which is the goal of
evolution, as that goal is shadowed forth in Mr.
Spencer's works ? Did Mr. Spencer hope to influence
moral conduct by his laborious life and by the results
of his thought and toil ? Is he to deny to the Power
of which he is himself a product the capacity of doing
what he has himself done ? Then there is something
in Mr. Spencer unaccounted for by the Power of which
he is a product? If Mr. Spencer can speak to his
fellow-men, and seek to influence them to the pursuit
of high and noble ends, why should not the Power
which wells up in his consciousness have the same
privilege? If the end to which evolution tends is

worthy, then the Power which manifests itself in evo-
lution may take direct means to effect that end. It
is but a manifestation of that Power in a form suited
to the end in view, and to the nature of the being to
whom it is manifested. We submit that what is
possible to Mr. Spencer is possible to God; and if the
production of moral life is a worthy outcome of the
toil manifested in evolution, then the production of
that kind of life will also give a sufficient ground for
Revelation.
CHAPTER XI
EVOLUTION AND RELIGION
The Christian religion—The Christian goal of life—Fellow-
ship with God—Christian religious ideal realised in Jesus
Christ—Immanence of God—Christ not evolved—Evolu-
tion holds for all others—The ghost theory of religion—
Spencer's reconciliation of science and religion—Criticism
—Worship for ancestors distinguished from worship of
ancestors—Evolved conduct and evolved belief—Univer-
sality of religion—Manifestations of religion—Correspond-
ence with reality—Eternal element in religious emotion
—Christianity and evolution—Analogy between evolution
in all spheres and the evolution of Christian life.
I N the life and teaching of Jesus Christ the ethical

ideal is subservient to a further end. With Him
the first and also the last is God. For Him God
is in the world, and everything reveals God. " Behold
the birds of the air, that they sow not, nor reap, nor
gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth
them. . . . Consider the lilies of the field, how they
grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say
unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed like one of these." It is God who clothes the
grass of the field with its incomparable beauty. A
Divine power so extensive that nothing can exist
apart from it, a Divine care so minute that not even
a sparrow can fall to the ground without "your
204
EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 205
Father," a Divine power from which all other power

is derived, and without the exertion of which no
power could exist,—such is the vision which Jesus
saw; and which of us shall say that His vision was
either wrong or inadequate ? For Jesus, neither the
fowls of the heaven, nor the lilies of the field, nor the
grass which grows on the mountains, have any being,
fitness, or beauty apart from God. They, after their
kind, and in their measure, are for God, live and move
and have their being in God.
As for man, well men are also for God, and they
cannot rest until they find their rest in Him. The
questions which men ask, the aims and desires which
burden them with anxiety, are of comparative un-
importance when looked at in this light. " Be not
therefore anxious, saying, What shall we eat ? or, What
shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
For after all these things do the Gentiles seek; for
your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of
these things." Man ought to have one aim, to be
filled with one desire, to bend all energies to the
attainment of one end. " Seek ye first His kingdom,
and His righteousness; and all these things shall be
added unto you."
Thus ethical duties and the ethical ideal of character
were insisted on by Him for this further end, that
without them men were not fit for the kingdom of
God. In truth, this is the burden of the Bible from
first to last. From the point of view of revelation
the most awful state a man can be in is to be separate
from God; and the greatest terror of the future is
to be in separation from God for ever. The greatest
blessedness a man can have is to be in fellowship

with God; and the teaching of Christ Jesus in
this respect is simply the culmination of all the
teaching of Scripture. When we regard His dealing
with ethical defects, we find they are looked at
by Him and are condemned by Him, not so much
because they are ruinous to man and marked in
their progress by desolation to society, as because
they unfitted men for the kingdom of God, and
made fellowship with God impossible. " Blessed are
the pure in heart, for they shall see God." And
the impure in heart are unblessed mainly in that
they shall not see God. Christ Jesus does not set
forth moral ideals or enforce moral precepts, as
ethical writers do, by a reference to a mere categorical
imperative, or to the consequences of immoral action,
or to the deteriorating effect of immoral action on
character. These are disastrous; but He enforces
them mainly because, apart from ethical purity and
attainment, man can never see God and never have
fellowship with Him. If a man cannot attain to
fellowship with God, he is lost, he has missed the aim
of this being, he is miserable.
In Christ's teaching, therefore, we have not a God
who is absent from His creation, or who interferes
now and then with its working, but a present living
God, to whom all things owe their becoming and
their being, who hath appointed for them the mode
and measure of their working, in whom they are;
and who is always striving to communicate Himself
to them as they are able to receive Him. To the
world without life He gives Himself as power and
wisdom; to the living world as life, impulse, guidance;

to the intelligent world as conscious reason and intel-
ligent self-reference; to the moral world as the source
of moral purity; and to the spiritual world as spiritual
life. Many hindrances there are on Christ's view to
the communication of God to His creation; but the
main hindrance is that men are not pure in heart.
In order to make men pure in heart, and to make
them fit for the communication of God, there have
been Divine toil, Divine labour through the ages;
there have been the revelation of God, the mission
of the Christ, and all the other Divine workings set
forth in revelation, on which I cannot now dwell.
Thus, if we accept evolution as a method of the
Divine working, a working by wise and adequate
methods for a foreseen end, revelation itself will be
seen to be of a piece with that process of evolution
which has for end and purpose the establishment of
the kingdom of God. Scripture also is an evolution,
growing from small beginnings to greater and greater
fulness and clearness until the end. It is impossible,
indeed, to place Christ in the midst of a process of
evolution; for He claims to be the First and the
Last and the Living One; and His exceptional claim
will be vindicated by all Christians, and must in
a measure be conceded by all men.
But evolution will hold for all others. Even if we
grant that the New Testament, the type of life
and the form of teaching in it, is the norm for all
succeeding ages, it may yet be affirmed that there
is still an evolution for all other men. It is now an
approach to a standard of life and thought set up
once, and once for all, a revealed ideal which forms
the real standard of attainment at which all men
ought to aim. In Christ we may see what humanity
ought to be, and what it may become; and through
Christ we may attain the standard and the fulness
of the stature of perfect men in Him.
The Christian view of the world assumes that God
is, and that God may be known. It is assumed that
there is a kingdom of God, for which all men ought
to be, and for the full realisation of which God is
ever working. It sets forth the character of that
kingdom, and the means by which men are being
made fit for that end. But here we are met with
the objection that God cannot be known, and that
we are unable to say whether the ultimate Reality is
personal or impersonal, moral or non-moral, spiritual
or unspiritual, conscious or unconscious; in short,
that we can say nothing further about it than this,
it simply is. Yet while Mr. Spencer denies all right
to others to say anything about the ultimate Reality,
he allows himself to call it " an infinite and eternal
Energy from which all things proceed." He speaks
of the Unknowable and its manifestations, and does
not see that if the Unknowable is manifested, so far
as it is manifested it can be known. It is quite true
that all our knowledge is related to our faculties;
true, also, that being without attributes or powers
of any kind is unknowable : but this does not inter-
fere with the fact that what knowledge our faculties
do give us is objectively real.
It is true, also, that in our process of explanation
we must ultimately be brought down to the in-
explicable. That there is an ultimate principle which

we cannot refer to anything more ultimate, we cannot
doubt; but that does not hinder us from knowing
the ultimate principle. For example, in physics we
cannot get beyond gravitation, and we know nothing
of its essential nature; but we know it as a fact, and
we know that it varies inversely as the square of the
distance, and that it is constant. We may know the
incomprehensible as a fact, and its laws and relations
may be a part of the knowledge.
We are not to touch the argumentation of Hamil-
ton and Mansel and Spencer about the absolute, the
infinite, the unconditioned. We have no interest in
an absolute out of all relation, in an infinite which
is the negation of the finite, or in an unconditioned
which has no reference to conditions. We leave them
all to Mr. Spencer to make of them what he pleases.
For the God we seek to know is the Cod who has
revealed and still reveals Himself in the universe, the
Author of its being and its glory, the Preserver of
its eternal order. The God of infinite purity and
holiness we may know, and with this we are content.
The living God we may know, and we do not care to
think of Him as being out of all relations, or apart
from all conditions. But we may think of Him as
the Maker of heaven and of earth, and as the source
and goal of all creation.
Mr. Spencer and those who follow him, because of
these metaphysical puzzles, have denied to religion all
objective validity. True he gives us a reconciliation
between religion and science. He hands over to
science all that is known, and to religion all that
U
is unknown. Religion can begin only where science
ends, and must be content with such worship of the
Unknowable as is possible in the circumstances. But
this would be the death of religion, which cannot live
on nescience, nor can it reverence a blank. We see
through a glass darkly, yet we see. The vision may
be dim and the knowledge imperfect, yet vision
and knowledge must be, or religion will perish. In
His presence we must feel awe and mystery, and
we may be possessed with a sense of what we do not
and cannot know. We may find that silence best
expresses our adoration, yet there must be a voice
which we can trust, or religion, with its emotion,
aspiration, hope, will die. In the God we worship
and adore there must be mystery and much that
we are unable to comprehend, but there must also be
manifestation and revelation. God can reach us, and
we can find God.
The full significance of the reconciliation proposed
by Mr. Spencer was not realised until he published
The Principles of Sociology. In Part I., " The
Data of Sociology," and in Part VI., " Ecclesiastical
Institutions," he has let us see what lot and in-
heritance he will allow to religion. He was bound
by the very terms of his reconciliation to refuse to
religion any share in knowledge; and he was also
bound to regard any attempt of religion to say what
the object of its adoration really was as illegitimate.
He knew that religion had beliefs, laid claim to
knowledge; and he elaborates a theory of religion
and its development which makes it an illusion from
first to last. Theologians rejected his " reconcilia-
tion" before they knew its practical illustration.

They will reject it all the more now.
From his point of view he must, he is bound to
give to religion an artificial character and an illusive
origin. He allows one germ of truth in religion, and
only one,—" the truth, namely, that the power which
manifests itself in consciousness is but a differently
conditioned form of the power which manifests itself
beyond consciousness" ("Ecclesiastieal Institutions,"
p. 838); or, as he again expresses it, " the ultimate
form of the religious consciousness is the final
development of a consciousness which at the outset
contained a grain of truth obscured by multitudinous
errors " (p. 839). As we toiled through the pages of
his Sociology, we had not found anything to lead us
to suppose that religion had any beneficial purpose
whatsoever, or any germ of truth whatsoever; and
the sentences quoted above had in them something
of a surprise to as. But we saw that on his system
it was impossible to assign any function to religion
save a recognition of the mystery of things and a
vague awe of the Unknowable.
There was the fact, however, that men had been
religious always, that they had a belief in unseen
powers, or a power on which they felt they de-
pended, and that this belief had prompted them
to acts of propitiation and worship. How is this
universal belief to be explained ? Mr. Spencer does
explain it in his own way. His explanation is that
" ancestor-worship is the root of every religion." He
will not allow that nature-worship is primitive.
Idol-worship, fetich-worship, animal-worship, plant*
worship, nature-worship, and the worship of deities

of all kinds are all modifications of ancestor-worship.
The explanations he gives of the process of develop-
ment are curious, but have not convinced any
impartial student. We do not propose to criticise
them here. We may observe, however, that if there
is such a thing as nature-worship his theory falls
to the ground. There is a striking difference between
his treatment of nature in relation to science and
in relation to religion. '• Absolute uniformities in
things have produced absolute uniformities in
thoughts "; and if he allowed nature to have any
relation to religion, he might have to admit that
religion does correspond with reality. Hence the
zeal with which he denies any direct influence of
nature on religion.
The one thing to be explained is, Whence is the
impulse, the universal tendency of man to worship ?
There is no tribe without a religion of some sort.
Mr. Spencer gives no explanation of this impulse, no
account of this tendency. Animals have it not; man
universally has. It does not help us much to give
us a hypothetic account of the primitive man, phy-
sical, emotional, intellectual, and to trace a supposed
genesis of belief in ghosts through sleep and dreams,
swoon, apoplexy, catalepsy, ecstasy, and so on; for
the thing left unexplained is, How did man come to
have an idea of a ghost at all? And the explana-
tion may be found in the pages of Mr. Spencer,
though he never uses it. " Every voluntary act
yields to the primitive man a proof of a source of
energy within him" (" Eccl. Inst.," p. 838). From
himself he derives his idea of energy, of spiritual

life, of continued existence after death. He must
have found in himself the sources of the idea of the
spiritual, or he would have never thought of it in
things outside.
Mr. Spencer's method of dealing with the primitive
man is peculiar. " Of the ideas current among men
now forming the rudest societies there are most likely
some which have descended by tradition from higher
states. These have to be discriminated from truly
primitive ideas, so that simple induction does not
suffice. To the deductive method there are obstacles
of another kind equally great. Comprehension of the
thoughts generated in the primitive man by converse
with the surrounding world can be had only by look-
ing at tho surrounding world from his standpoint."
But as this is declared by Mr. Spencer to be impos-
sible—"Though we are incapable of reaching the
conception by a direct process, we may approach to it
by an indirect process. The doctrine of evolution will
help us to delineate primitive ideas in some of their
leading traits. Having inferred, a priori, the char-
acters of those ideas, we shall be, as far as possible,
prepared to realise them in imagination, and to discern
them as actually existing" {Principles of Sociology,
vol. i., pp. 96-8)—it is scarcely necessary to make
any remark on the logical character of this procedure.
The primitive man will, of course, turn out to be the
kind of creature required by Mr. Spencer's theory of
evolution, and must be also of the kind which will fit
in with Mr. Spencer's view of psychology. There
are, however, evolutionists and evolutionists, and
214 CIIRISTIAXITY AND EVOLUTION
psychologists and psychologists, and Mr. Spencer's
view of both is peculiar.
We turn to the ghost theory of religion. We have
read the extracts in Mr. Spencer's Sociology descriptive
of the beliefs of savage tribes, and similar extracts in
other books of the same sort, and we are astonished
to find how many of them are not consistent with the
conclusion which is drawn. Mr. Spencer says : " The
primitive belief implies that the deceased will need
not only his weapons and implements, his clothing,
ornaments, and other movables, together with his
domestic animals; but also that he will want human
companionship and services. The attendance he had
before death must be renewed after death" (p. 186).
Mr. Spencer refers even to the Roman Catholic prac-
tice of masses for the dead as a proof of the ghost
theory. Many writers on anthropology constantly
refer to the things buried with the dead, will refer
even to the ceremonies of military funerals as sur-
vivals of ancestor-worship. Is it not obvious, however,
that the evidence points in a different direction ? The
relation is not one between the ghost and the person
who performs the funeral rites; but the relation is
between the ghost and the powers which rule in the
unseen world of the dead. The weapons, implements,
etc., are given in order to fit the deceased to deal
suitably with the unseen powers. They are for the
use of the ghost, and are not offerings to propitiate
the ghost. A large part of the evidence points to
this conclusion.
It is not denied that there is propitiation of dead
ancestors, but it seems to be secondary, not primary.
The return of the ghost was to be feared if it was

insufficiently equipped for the new existence in the
under-world. If it were imagined that he had re-
turned, any further offerings might have the double
aspect of propitiation of himself—an apology for former
neglect and a further and fitting equipment for the
other life. It is surprising that this distinction has
not occurred to Mr. Spencer, for he had both in
existence at the present hour, in masses for the dead
and in the worship of saints practised in the Roman
Catholic Church. We submit that the larger part of
his treatise is vitiated by not having regard to the
above distinction. If the view be true that funeral
offerings are for the use of the dead, then it follows
that ghosts are not thought of as the lords of the
unseen world, and Mr. Spencer's theory vanishes.
It is curious, also, how differently evolution acts,
say, with regard to ethics and to religion. With
Mr. Spencer evolved conduct is good conduct, and the
more evolved it is the better it is, until, when conduct
becomes completely evolved, it will be perfect. He
is careful to show that the development of religion
proceeds with due regard and in strict subordination
to the process and nature of evolution. But here
evolution does not sanction the result. Evolved
religious belief is no more true, nay, it may be more
untrue, than belief which is not evolved. Why should
evolution work out" such contrary results ? to produce
something wholly good in the one case and almost
wholly bad in the other case? It all arose, Mr.
Spencer testifies, from the fact that religion has
not been content with a mere negation, and has not
rested in the Unknowable. As religion has never

been able to do so in the past, it is not likely that
it will cease from striving in the future, to know
the Power which it worships, on which it depends, and
for which it longs. We are struck with the fact that,
as far as actual experience, observation, and know-
ledge go, religion is universal; the lower tribes have
it as well as the higher.
Religion existed-before science, before philosophy,
before theology. Even before definite thought was
possible to man he was religious, and bowed himself
in awe before the unseen and the eternal. And in
religion there is always the element of eternity. Man
could not believe that death was the end of all;
he believed that the dead had some relation to the
living, and that both were in some relation to the
Power on which both alike depended. The belief in
continued existence after death and the belief in the
continued relation to the unseen powers are there,
however we may interpret them. There is also the
unique character of the religious emotions to be
considered. There is something common to them
all, and the services they prompt have also common
elements. When a man bows himself down before
what to him is Divine, when he feels the power of
religious emotion, he is then most distinctly human.
But everywhere this religious emotion is the witness
of his consciousness that he is related to superhuman
and supernatural beings.
How are we to interpret this consciousness?—as
superstition? as illusion? as something which from
first to last has no root in reality and no reference
to objective truth ? That interpretation means that
what is deepest in man, that which is earliest and
latest, that which is most distinctively human, is also
that which has least truth in it. It would mean
that all the great emotions that have their root in
religion have no adequate cause, that all the great
thoughts that have clustered around the names of
God and immortality are simply thoughts in the air,
that the share which religion has confessedly had in
raising man to a higher character and to a noble view
of life has been due to a misplaced trust in man's
ability to know the Power on which he depends, and
the God he seeks to worship and to serve. If,
however, this is so, what dependence is to be placed
on any human faculty? On Mr. Spencer's terms
religion may have to disappear; but when it dis-
appears nothing will remain.
It is true, indeed, that in the history of religions
men have seemed to exhaust all possibilities in their
search after something which might adequately repre-
sent to them the Divine unseen powers. It is true
that there is hardly anything which has not been taken
for Divine, and pressed into the service of religion.
It is scarcely necessary to say anything here of the
evolution of religion or to trace its history. It is a
large and interesting subject, to which much thought
is given at present. To the modern spirit nothing
that men have ever believed is indifferent. We
have much inquiry into the manifestation of man's
beliefs, and of man's wa3rs of manifesting his conscious-
ness of relationship to the unseen powers. Nothing
is more wonderful than the elaborate and developed
systems of religion which existed among primitive

men. There are explanations of these elaborate
systems, quite as elaborate as they, to be had in
abundance at the present time. But the perplexity
is, that almost all of these explanations proceed on the
principle that the higher is to be explained by the
lower. It is the assumption that meets us all through.
To explain life by physics and chemistry, to explain
consciousness by accumulation of the unconscious, to
explain reason by instinct, and the higher mental life
of man by the lower life of the brutes, and finally to
explain the higher religion by the lower, has been the
consistent aim and avowed object of the evolutionist
of the type of Mr. Spencer. This much may be
conceded to them, that the higher is after the lower in
point of time. There was a time in the natural history
of the planet when the higher was not. But what is
last in time may have been first in order of causation;
for if the higher has somehow come into being, it
must have been involved in being from the beginning.
Take the idea of religion, then, as manifested in
man, and we find it universally thus, a consciousness
of relation to an unseen power, and this consciousness
has embodied itself in customs, rites, institutions.
We may trace the development of religion along both
lines. We may trace it in the deepening conscious-
ness of the man, until religion gathers to itself the
whole inner life, emotion, cognition, will, and until
the man becomes through and through religious; or
we may trace the evolution of religions objectively
in the institutions in which subjective religion has
obtained objective expression. These two factors are
always in inter-relation with one another; each

reacts on the other, and a development of the re-
ligious consciousness means also a development of
religious institutions. Thus the more advanced the
man's consciousness of religion became, the more
dissatisfied would he become with those customs
which at one time gave them adequate expression.
On the other hand, the objective factor in religion
would have its influence on the development of the
religious consciousness. He must affirm that the
religious consciousness is in touch with Reality ; and
the Reality here includes the action of the unseen
power or object of worship. Religion assumes the
activity of God. Take that conviction from it, and
it vanishes. Take from religion the persuasion that
there is an ear open to its prayers, and it will cease
to speak. But man speaks to the unseen Power, and
he believes that he is heard. The religious nature is
recognised as a universal fact, and as one which
cannot be ignored. The natural assumption in such
a case is that the objective reference of this fact
would be recognised as real at least until it is
disproved. Failing to do this, we have an instinct
without an object, an organ without a function, a
demand without a supply; and this is the position we
are landed in by Mr. Spencer's view.
In all religions, then, there is expressed the idea
of the relation of man to God and of God to man,
and the relation is real. It may be very imperfectly,
or even be very erroneously expressed. Man's con-
ception of God may be very rudimentary, very
inadequate, very erroneous; he may think of the
Divine Being as dwelling in an anointed stone, in a

lifeless bit of wood, in a plant or in an animal, in
sun, or moon, or stars; but as soon as he conceives the
Divine Being to dwell in a thing, that thing becomes
unique, takes on a new character, becomes for him
Divine. He may seek to express his adoration in
strange, impure, unholy ways; but he does express it,
and not without result. Shall we say that there is
nothing real, nothing helpful in this worship ? that
there is no trace of the Divine in this rude, ill-
informed, non-moral mode of worship ? Does not
Paul say, " Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship,
Him declare I unto you " ? It was worship, though
inadequate, ignorant, wrong. The thing to be in-
sisted on is the capacity for, the need and the
practice of, worship. Given these, and there is always
the hope that man will learn as he is taught to
worship rightly, and adequately.
At the same time it must be acknowledged that
there is no subject so intricate, so baffling to our
powers of explanation as that of religion. We
may trace a line of growth and advance in the
evolution of life, in the evolution of the arts and
sciences, in the evolution of morals, though there is
much here that is perplexing, and there is something
like an advance in civilisation generally. But in
religion the endeavour to trace anything like progress
is scarcely possible. We have no objection to evolu-
tion; indeed, would prefer to use it as a method if
we could. How can we apply it when we find in all
historical religions an ideal of purity and sublimity at
the outset and a degraded worship at the close ? We
have from the anthropologists a scheme of evolution

something like this—from animism, to fetichism, to
anthropomorphism, polytheism, theism ; yet we have
many historical religions in which the process seems
to have been reversed, and there is an evolution the
contrary way. Religion is the oldest and most
characteristic of the qualities of humanity, and yet
in religion it is that we find man at his lowest as
well as at his highest. Is there something here which
has prevented progress, which has made it possible to
lose what progress has been made, and which has
made the phenomena of degradation in religion which
are so apparent to every student of religion ? Is there
an element here which baffles calculation, and makes
speculation impossible? Is it possible that, along
with an irrepressible desire to worship, there goes
also a something which drives a man away from
worship? Is there aversion to God as well as a
hungering desire after Him? Is there a conscious-
ness of two tendencies in human life, one of which
urges man to God, and another away from Him ?
Is there a competition of two principles in his moral
and in his religious life ? It would seem so.
On the one hand a longing to be united with God,
and on the other hand a feeling of estrangement and
a desire to avoid any approach to Him. What is
the explanation of these opposite tendencies ? Here
a feeling of persistence, a consciousness of the con-
tinuance of the self, and there a yearning after non-
existence : how are we to explain these phenomena ?
A being in time, who is conscious of transcending
time; a being who needs eternity to realise his own
222 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION.
worth, and who is conscious of a moral defect, a
religious estrangement from the source of all good-
ness, which ever baffles his aims at goodness: how
are we to explain these things ? For these questions
are present to man wherever we find him, and they
press with the greatest force on those who have made
the greatest progress in religious life.
" Gone for ever 1 Ever ? No; for since our dying race began
Ever, ever, and for ever was the leading light of man.
Those that in barbarian burials killed the slave and slew the
wife
Felt within themselves the sacred passion of the second life ;
Truth for truth and good for good, the Good, the True, the
Pure, the Just
Take the charm ' for ever 7 from them, and they crumble
into dust.
Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good,

And Keversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud."
So Tennyson sung, as he sought to express the

changing moods of man and the burden of the
mystery of human life. On all hands it will be
acknowledged that in ethics and in religion there is
a departure from the ideal order of things. Man has
not been able to realise his own ideal, either in nature
or in religion. In the lowest man or tribe, as in the
highest, there is a wide breach between what man
knows he ought to be and what he is. How is the
chasm to be bridged? We shall get no help here
from merely natural processes or merely natural
results, for in both we have transcended nature. We
are now in a kingdom of freedom, in which persons,
with a power of making themselves to be something,

have to realise a character; a kingdom not formed by
pressure from behind, but beckoned on by a purpose
yet to be attained; a kingdom in which man is to
use all things in order to realise himself, and to
realise himself that he may attain to companionship
with God.
Man is in a world of things which ministers to and
serves a world of persons; and the world of things
has made room for him. It takes up new elements at
his bidding, makes new departures at his suggestion.
Man, however, finds insuperable difficulties in the way
of realising himself. It is not easy to make a world
of ethical spirits, or to realise a kingdom of persons
ethically and religiously perfect. On the supposition
that such a kingdom is a worthy end, that it is worth
all the toil of the universe, what might we expect?
May we not expect that the Power who has made all
will strive to remedy the departure from the ideal
order of things, and work such changes as are needed,
and as are not contained in the antecedent states of
the system? The system is being modified by human
action : may it not also be modified by Divine action ?
Effects may be thus produced which the system in
its accustomed movement could not have brought out.
Such effects involve no suspension of natural laws,
not even a breach of continuity.
Granting to the ultimate Reality such a power as
man wields, a power of modifying the world to suit
his purpose; grant to God the wish to help and guide
man, such a desire as we see in men to help their
fellows, and revelation becomes possible and piobable.
Rational beings have appeared on the earth, beings
with ideals, with motives, with aspirations; who have
to realise themselves; and they have missed their way,
have made mistakes about themselves, about nature,
about God. They have transgressed in all manners
of ways. Why should not God be free to help them 1
why should He not speak to them ? and seeing they
had formed wrong thoughts of Him, why should He
not set them right ?
To deny the possibility of this is simply to deny to
the ultimate Reality a power which is in daily exer-
cise in the world of men. If we grant the jDossibility
of such a revelation, the question then becomes one of
evidence as to whether there has been such a revelation.
Those who believe in revelation think they can
give good reasons for thinking so. They point to the
character of the revelation. They are able to point
to one people, who, not by speculation, not by science,
not by being accustomed to a world-wide government,
but by some other way, had come to believe in the unity
of man, in the unity of the world, and in the unity of
God. They believed that in the beginning God made
the heavens and the earth; and they believed that
man is one. Then, too, they had been able to form
a high ideal of man's ethical character and of man's
religious destiny. Above all, they had thought of
God in a way distinct and peculiar—not only in those
characteristics of Him which may be called meta-
physical, but they thought of Him as ethical; a
God whom the heaven of heavens could not contain,
but who could dwell with him who was of a humble
and contrite spirit.
They thought of the supreme Creator of the uni-

verse, not as One who dwelt far off from the world,
who had no interest in the world, no care for man;
but as One who cared for His creatures, toiled for
them, loved them, who strove to communicate Himself
to them, and to make them ever more fit for the
reception of Himself. They thought of themselves
as sinful, weak, ungrateful, and of God as caring for
them and loving them notwithstanding. For them
revelation came to mean redemption, and on that
view the course of their history is construed by them.
The new departures in revelation are conditioned
by the desire of God to help man to rectify those
departures from the ideal order of things, which man
by his mistakes had instituted.
Not suddenly, nor violently was the revelation
given, or the redemption made. Slowly and per-
sistently it seems to have grown from more to more,
and in accordance with the usual method of Divine
working. " By divers portions and in divers man-
ners " God spoke, and in slow progression the process
of revelation went on. As the people were able to
receive, so He gave here a little and there a little,
but in such a way that every part bore the Divine
stamp upon it, until at length appeared the full,
ethical, spiritual revelation of God manifested in
Christ Jesus and by Him. The character of God
manifested in Scripture is distinctly a revelation;
that is to say, God manifested Himself in another
and more personal way, as He could not manifest
Himself in nature or in history. At all events, man
has not elsewhere reached it. He has always reached
15
something else. Our increasing knowledge of the

history of religion has made this clear, that ethical
monotheism belongs only to three religions, and all
of these are directly and historically connected with
each other.
It is one thing to discover a truth, and another
thing to recognise a truth when it is made known.
And though man could not have, by himself, at-
tained to a knowledge of the true God, he is able
to recognise it as the highest and the best now that
God has manifested Himself to man; just as man did
not form for himself the true ethical ideal embodied
for him in the life of Christ, but was able to recognise
it as the highest and the best when once that ideal
was made real and manifested to man.
" And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds
More strong than all poetic thought."
The process of revelation was slow, evolutionary,
progressive. Revelation was always related to the
natural, proceeded on it, assumed, rectified it, and
transformed it to a higher character and use. Even
when, as Christians believe, revelation had been
complete and redemption had been in essence realised
in the work of Christ, then began again a slow course
of evolution, proceeding with many a backward curve,
with many a sad reversion, yet on the whole
upwards. This new evolution was with a view to
realise, in man and by man, a standard, actually,
historically, and concretely given in Jesus Christ, in
His character, in His relation to God, and in His
relation to man. It makes no difference to the

character of the process of evolution, looked at as
a process "ever climbing after some ideal end,"
whether we consider the end as one already given
and known, or as one not yet realised, and so far
unknown. The process of evolution of Christian life
is a process towards Christ. He is the aim, the goal,
the end towards which Christian life in the individual
and in society ever tends, and He is also the means
without which the end can never be reached.
There is thus a striking analogy between Christian
experience and all other experience. Christian ex-
perience begins, and it goes on from less to more.
I t is comparatively simple at the outset; it proceeds
through struggle; it is hindered by opposition from
within and from without; it wrestles, fights, and
conquers. Its ideal rises from day to day, just as
its practice becomes more consistent and more
uniform. At first it aims at a near ideal—there is
some one thing to do, some one bent to subdue ; but
soon it finds that to do one thing means to do many
things, to subdue one tendency means to control
many tendencies. The new aim of life must tend
in all directions, and it is found that every thought,
every imagination, every feeling, every desire, all our
knowledge, all our emotion, all our activity must
be controlled, directed, and guided by the new aim
implanted in us by Jesus Christ. To work out this
new evolution of character, and so to work it out
that all opposing forces shall either be absorbed or
cast out, is a task of enormous difficulty; for a
Christian soon learns that the new life is inconsistent
with all forms of selfishness, of evil, and of sin. This
is the peculiarity of the Christian ideal of life. Other
ideals are consistent with some form of defect, of
self-indulgence, of sin. All love purifies within its
range, and casts out what is opposed to it. Patriotism
will cast out all that is unpatriotic, and love of family
will not permit a man to do anything which he knows
to be opposed to love of purity; but these have no
relation to that which does not interfere with the
sphere of their operation. But the Christian ideal
will tolerate no selfishness, no cruelty, no impurity,
no defect whatsoever. It is opposed to all forms
of moral defect, to all forms of intellectual prejudice
and obscurity, to all forms of spiritual perversity.
It calls for moral purity, for intellectual insight, and
clearness of vision; it demands incessant spiritual
purity and progress. The Christian character is
bound to grow in breadth and depth, in length, in
height, until it attains all moral, intellectual, and
spiritual excellence, and removes all defect.
Here there is a new evolution, alike in general
outline to all the processes of evolution which have
gone before. It assumes all that has been attained in
the previous processes; but on the position gained in'all
the past outcome of the toil of evolution it makes
a new departure, and toils upwards towards another
and a greater end. He who has this new life is
conscious of his dependence, knows that he has
experienced a new beginning, and is dependent for
progress in this new way on the exercise of some
influence in him by the power and energy from
which his new life has proceeded. If he is allowed
to express his experience in his own way, he will say

that by God he has been made a new man in Christ,
and his progress in Christian life depends on the
^race of God. He feels that apart from Christ he
can do nothing, with Christ he can do all things.
The growth of Christian character depends on his
abiding in Christ.
In this new process of evolution, then, the factors
present in all evolution come into clear consciousness,
and all the work of God is seen to be on one plan and
of a piece. We may learn something of that plan by
having recourse to what science has had to tell us
in the lower spheres of evolution ; and science might
learn something of the factors of evolution by a study
of the New Testament and of the facts of Christian
life. We might learn from them not to think of the
becoming of things as sudden, abrupt, catastrophic,
but to think of them as slow, continuous, progressive.
But we might also learn not to think of these merely
in terms of second causes, apart from the Power by
Whom are all things and for Whom are all things.
Things are never removed from God, neither in them-
selves, nor in their working, nor in their progress.
Thus the process of pre-organic evolution will become
luminous, for it is working upwards under the guidance
of energising Reason to a higher end. They are
made to work according to their nature, and not
contrary to their nature. Thus there is one kind of
evolution in the pre-organic world. When after fit
preparation life appears, we have a different kind of
evolution, proceeding on different lines, to higher ends.
A new element enters in, and purpose rules. All
parts of the organism are for the organism, and no
part is for itself alone; and the more complex the
organism is the greater is the unity of the whole.
The inorganic world is in the service of the world
of life. One kind of life is also for another; there is
not only competition, there is co-operation.
Then there is conscious life, and self-conscious life.
And here also there is something new. Here we see
the world of things in the service of a world of
persons. This is the broad outcome of the cosmic
process. Can we say that this is accidental % a mere
fortuitous outcome of a process that has proceeded
without an aim, or without a purpose ? A rational
being can hardly think so. At all events, with the
advent of a self-conscious being we have a new line
of evolution; for the self-conscious being no longer
modifies himself organically, he modifies something
else.
But with the self-conscious being there appears to
be for the time an arrest on progress; for here we
come on phases of action which do, indeed, in some in-
stances indicate advance, but also in other examples
show the opposite. In moral and in religious conduct
there are, broadly speaking, mistakes of all kinds
made, and as we saw man was worse than any
animal, and more evil than any brute; but he was
also higher and better. In truth, he was on a different
plane altogether, both in good and in evil. All things
are ruled and guided according to their nature:
absolute necessity in the pre-organic world, relative
necessity in the organic world; but in the intellectual,
moral, and spiritual world we have government and
a kind of rule according to the law of freedom.

Thus the new kind of evolution takes on new factors,
and its method must widen itself accordingly. We
may try to translate freedom into necessity, and may
delude ourselves into thinking that we have done so ;
but the fact and the consciousness of freedom remain,
and also the fact of its co-relative responsibility.
The new problem of rational evolution is to persuade
rational beings to be wholly rational, moral beings
to be wholly moral, and religioas beings to be wholly
and adequately religious. The Christian view of the
world is the only view which does justice to all the
factors of evolution, and recognises all its complexity.
So much we can see; but we still see as through a
glass darkly. We see enough to be able to say,
" Of Him, and to Him, and through Him are all
things." But there is much that we cannot yet
understand about the " of " or the origin, much that
is dark also about the process indicated by the word
" through"; and the goal, though indicated in outline,
is yet only indicated in general terms. While we
therefore humbly bow our heads before the great
mystery, we cannot let go the conviction that there
has been an "of/' and there is a "to," as well as a
" through," for the processes of the world. Thankful
are we to all, be they who they may, who can enable
us to see more clearly the process which may be
summarised by the word " through "; but when they
have shown us all they can of the process, we claim
the right to look at all they discover not as something
which can be in itself and for itself. For it is mean-
ingless unless the " through" is related to an " of"
and a "to," or rather that the facts symbolised by

all three words are facts in relation to Him Who in
the beginning created the heavens and the earth,
Who is the beginning and the middle and the end;
by Whom are all things, and for Whom are all
things. To all that science teaches us, to all that
history proclaims, to all that philosophy in all its
branches can teach us, we add the further light
which revelation brings, and in that light all falls
into harmonious unity. For in Christ " are hid all
the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge," Christ,
" Who is the image of the invisible God, the first-
born of all creation; for in Him were all things
created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things
visible and things invisible, whether thrones or
dominions or principalities or powers; all things
have been created through Him, and unto Him; and
He is before all things, and in Him all things
consist."

Evolution and Christianity - James Iverach

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Evolution and Christianity - James Iverach

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Evolution and Christianity - James Iverach

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Cambridge Library CoLLeCtion

Books of enduring scholarly value

Cambridge, New york, melbourne, madrid, Cape town, singapore,

© in this compilation Cambridge University Press 2009

This edition first published 1894

IsbN 978-1-108-00068-0 Paperback

DR. JAMES IVERACH'S

HODDER AND STOUGHTON

JAMES IVERACH, M.A., D.D.

" Things are also Thoughts, and have a reference to the

HODDER AND STOUGHTON

Statement by Professor Ray Lankester—New sets of terms

\\ 1 VOLUTION is the working hypothesis of most

machine which has slowly grown from less to more

things. Even if we grant that it is more than a

make one sorry when the theory is pushed to an

Laplace have elaborately prove 1, the most prominent

transition from one to the other of the two great

nebulosity of the universe, and, assuming a primitive

chaotic primitive nebulosity, and given clear concep-

But we can scarcely ascribe the thought to the

T HE unity of the primitive nebulosity must have

widest law known to them is that of evolution, that

velocity of rotation would increase; and thus at

to require that the orbits of the planets would bear

the density of Uranus, and the density of Venus is

life-history of it. By its vague and general terms,

process, to describe real changes which take place, or

But this method is one which the evolutionist may

Similarly the persistence of force is a barren notion

alone in such a case. I t is a problem of two bodies,

T HE maxim that the effect is more complex than

given above: if several substances react together,

not appear in the subsequent editions of the work.

its rational order apart from energising reason seems

given, with all their results, and they are in relation

elements into a synthetic unity. Even our own

Is the issue raised by evolution new or old ?—Scope of evolu-

W E are to devote this chapter to the inquiry

their order, and constructs a history of the evolution

great discovery in science. And it seemed to be

uncertainty which drove Lucretius to distraction and

figures without regard to their final causes. When

mathematical judgments have any relation to a real

intuitions, its power of reasoning, and its conformity

made to act in order to bring about a result which

to speak of chance as an element in a calculation of

T HAT teleology is not hostile to efficient causes

do not know the final outcome of things, that the

the introduction of man on the earth; and we are

not from Hie embryo or the infant, but from the

only the beginning. It follows that, in the first

irrefutable ; whereas, if they were slowly evolved, that

within controlled by the tendency without, co-

are means to an end, and the engine itself is a

toil, and we sit at their feet while they unfold for

student will have enough to do if he is to master

an infinite order. Let us hope that now, when the