, v , MCTfwjv; - i ; i iNGUAG it .iiii i, ii ,n, ) , ii \\nmmMmmF , iF , »*» mmt » m » m ■■ .. m i lllM H — II WH WHWWWftAV* tftf* - A ^ Z]mU ^ «5k % PRINCETON, N. J. BL 263 .B36 1877 Bateman, Frederick, 1824- 1904. s**y. . Darwinism tested by languag DARWINISM TESTED BY LANGUAGE FREDERIC BATEMAN, M.D. FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS; PHYSICIAN TO THE NORFOLK AND NORWICH HOSPITAL; CONSULTING PHYSICIAN TO THE EASTERN COUNTIES' ASYLUM FOR IDIOTS; FOREIGN ASSOCIATE OF THE MEDICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL SOC.ETY OF PARI? AUTHOR OF "APHASIA AND THE LOCALISATION OF THE FACULTY OF LANGUAGE." WITH A PREFACE BY EDWARD MEYRICK GOULBURN, D.D., DEAN OF NORWICH. RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE, LOXDON, ©ifortf nuti Cnambrfogc. STACY, 2, RATMARKET, XORWICTI. MIXI.CLX.XVI1. PREFACE, There are two contrary intellectual tendencies, which characterize minds of different orders, and, when indulged to excess, become intellectual vices. The one is the tendency to see a distinction where there is no real difference. This is the snare of cultivated (or perhaps of over-cultivated) minds, whose constitution may never have been robust, and what vigour they once had has been refined away by speculation. To see a distinction without a difference is the vice of the trained and subtle thinker. Opposed to this is the tendency to ignore real differences; to bring rapidly under the same category two cases which have one IV. PREFACE. or more superficial features of resemblance, but which are so fundamentally unlike that they cannot with any justice be classed together. It may have often happened to us to meet with a stranger, who has some one common feature with a person of our acquaintance. In virtue of his having such a feature he reminds us for a moment of that person ; but, when we take a second look, we see that the re- semblance is only on the surface; the whole head and bust are of a different type altogether. But in matters intel- lectual, a resemblance sometimes seems so captivating (especially if our own researches have brought it to light), that we do not take the trouble to look at the plain and deep-seated differences, but treat it as a real analogy, and rest the weight of a whole theory upon it. It must be, one PRE!.. t. would think, under the power of some hallucination of this kind, that the disciples of Evolution venture to deny the existence in man of a new and distiD squishing' © © element, over and above the nature which he has in common with the lower animals. How this distinction can be matter of doubt to any one, except under the fasci- nation of a favourite theory which blinds the mind to every thing subversive of itself, is truly surprising. The prerogative of man is not an assertion of theology merely. It is written not more clearly on the pages of the Bible than on the common sense and experience of all the world. There seems to be a wide gulf even between vegetable life and brute matter; a wider still between the sensi- bility and instinct of animals and vegetable life; and a gulf perfectly impassable VI. PREFACE. between this sensibility and instinct, and the conscience, reason, and capability of civilization, which we find in man. We need not deny or undervalue the discovery that certain higher and more advanced forms of vegetable and animal life developed themselves originally out of lower and more rudimentary forms, according to certain laws supposed to be ascertained by Mr. Darwin and others — struggle for existence, survival of the fittest, developement of resources under pressure of necessity, &c, &c. ; but, carry back the series as far as you will, must not the earliest germ of vegetable and still more of animal life have been a new introduc- tion into the system, which nothing that existed previously could have given rise to ? Out of a piece of ore, out of a clod of earth, can you generate life? And PREFACE. Vll. when we look at man, the differences that part him off from the lower animal creation are so trenchant and so sig- nificant, that one would think that those philosophers, who maintain that he is merely an animal, with its powers developed to the highest degree, can never have looked them full in the face, under the conviction that to do so would disturb their theory. These differences may be briefly stated as three. Man can speak ; he can make improvements in his own condition, to which it is difficult to set limits ; and he can worship. The first (and perhaps the most funda- mental) of these differences Dr. Bateman has exhibited very ably and pointedly in the work which is now presented to the reader. He aims at illustrating the truth in " the grand old book," that " God VI 11. PREFACE. made man in his own imacre : in the image of God created he him ; " and with this view he shows that (just as in the precinct of the Divine Nature the Word, or Second Person, represents the Father, and reveals the Father to the creatines, so) the word is mans distinguishing characteristic, represents him, is the great medium whereby he throws into other minds the thoughts conceived in his own. Language is unquestionably the great outcome of Reason; indeed it is the Reason, not indeed IvciaCero?, (viewed as latent in the mind), but TrpocpopiKo?, (ex- pressing itself outwardly,. Let it be considered how much classification there is even in the humblest sorts of language ; how the mere use of an appellative, like gate, look, fell, to denote a whole class of objects, is the result of a classification, PREFACE. IX. in order to arrive at which individual differences must be overlooked, and a general idea formed in the mind ; how epithets denote qualities, and the idea of qualities is formed by the mental power of abstraction, which strips off from several objects some particular feature in which they agree — let this be con- sidered, and it will be seen at once that Language is a popular philosophy, and surely (as such) entirely out of the reach of the lower animals, the most sagacious of which can never be supposed competent to such mental processes as abstraction and generalization. Dr. Bateman shows, by describing an interesting case which came under his own notice at Paris, (P. 108) that mere phonetic mimicry is not language ; there is no mind in it : it is a trick of the ear. The evidence which X. PREFACE. he has amassed and advances to show that all men have the faculty of language (at least in the germ), and that no creatures but men have, seems to be thoroughly satisfactory and conclusive. The present work being rather of a scientific than a general character, the author has chiefly exhibited the Reason in its most primary and pure operation, as giving birth to language, and has not gone on to consider it in its application to the life of man, and in the various reliefs of his present condition which it affords. This is the second difference which parts us off from the lower animals ; and it is a difference quite capable of being appreciated by the most unscientific of minds. Brutes have never made the smallest approach towards civilization. Of arts, whether useful or ornamental, PREFACE. XI. not a trace has been ever found among them. Never have they been known to manifest a single glimmer of that faculty by which one generation of mankind takes up the discoveries and researches of its forefathers, and makes them the basis of a material advance in the arts of life, and a stage in human progress. This was what the subtle and profound Blaise Pascal pointed out so well long ago; and assuredly no subsequent ex- perience of men or animals has obliterated the distinction which he expounds so luminously. " N'est-ce pas Ik tr alter indignement la raison de Phomme, et la mettre en parallele avec P instinct des animaux, puisqu'on en 6te la principale difference, qui consiste en ce que les effets du raisonnement aug- mentent sans cesse : au lieu que Pinstinct Xll. PREFACE. demeure toujours dans un etat egal ? Les ruches des abeilles etaient aussi bien niesurees il y a mille ans qu'aujourd'kui, et chacune d'elles forme cet liexagone aussi exactement la premiere fois que la dernier e. II en est de menie de tout ce que les animaux rjroduisent par ce mouvement occult c. La nature les instruit a m es are que la necessity les presse ; mais cette science fragile se perd avec les besoins qu'ils en ont : comme ils la re- ^oivent sans etude, ils n'ont pas le bonlieur de la conserver ; et toutes les fois qu'elle leur est donne'e, elle leur est nouvclle, puisque la nature n'ayant pour objet que de maintenir les animaux dans un ordre de perfection bornee, elle leur inspire cette science simplement necessaire et toujours egale, de peur qu'ils ne tombent dans le deperissement, et ne permet pas qu'ils y PREFACE. Xlll. ajoutent, de peur qu'ils ne passent les liniites qu'elle leur a prescrites. II n'en est pas ainsi de Fhomme, qui n'est produit que pour Finfinite'. II est dans Fignorance au premier age de sa vie ; rnais il s'instruit sans cesse dans son progres: car il tire avantage non seule- rnent de sa propre experience, mais encore de celle de ses pred^cesseurs ; parce qu' il garde toujours dans sa mdmoire les connaissances qu'il s'est une fois acquises, et que celles des anciens lui sont toujours pre'sentes dans les livres qu'ils en ont laisses. Et comme il conserve ces con- naissances, il peut aussi les augmenter facilement; de sorte que les hommes sont aujourd'hui en quelque sorte dans le rueme £tat ou se trouveraient ces anciens philosophes, s'ils pouvaient avoir vieilli jusqu' h present, en ajoutant aux XIV. PREFACE. connaissances qu'ils avaient, celles que leurs etudes auraient pu leur acqu^rir h, la faveur de tant de siecles. De la vient que par tine prerogative particuliere, non-seule- ment cliacun des homines s'avance de jour en jour dans les sciences, mais que tous les homines ensemble y font un continuel progres, a mesure que Funivers vieillit, parce que la meme chose arrive dans la succession des homines que dans les ages differents d'un particulier. De sorte que toute la suite des hommes, pendant le cours de tant de siecles, doit etre consideree comme un meme homme qui subsiste toujours, et qui apprend continuellelnent.' , This noble passage, while it is an utterance of one of the most acute and philosophical minds which ever existed, is not less the dictate of common sense ; and it is to be wished that our modern men of PREFACE. XV. science would lay to heart what so luminous and profound a writer says, as to its being an unworthy treatment of human reason to put it on a level with the instinct of animals, and as to man's corporate inherit- ance of the treasures of knowledge being a prerogative particular e of our race. But the third obvious and fundamental distinction between man and the inferior animals consists in the conscience or religious instinct. Holy Scripture, in enumerating the different parts of our nature, distinguishes between the spirit and soul of man (1 Thes. v. 23), and shows that this distinction is a real one, and that the two words are not used together as a periphrasis for the immortal part of man, by speaking in sharp contrast of the man of the soul (ylvyjLKo?) and the man of the spirit {irvevixarih 09), XVI. PREFACE. (1 Cor. ii. 14, 15); of the body which is the organ of the soul (aw pa ^ir^ih-ov) and the body (to be brought into existence at the Eesurrection) which shall be the organ of the spirit (o-w/xa 7rm> /jlcltikov), (1 Cor. xv. 44). We shall not probably err much if we regard the soul (in this precise and accurate sense of the term) as, no less than the body, attaching to animals in common with man. Many animals manifest in a remarkable degree that lower species of intelligence to which Coleridge, following in the wake of the German philosophers, gives the name of understanding as distinct from reason ; and they undoubtedly are sharers in many of the affections, — fear, emulation, pity, and the parental instinct, — all of which are seen in man also, but in him are dignified and raised to a loftier platform, PREFACE, XV11. as being kneaded up in the same person- ality with the immortal spirit. This immortal spirit has two operations, the intellectual, (with its powers of induction and deduction), and the moral or de- votional, — the one giving us assurance of the being of a God, the other recognising Him as Lord of our consciences, and leading us to yield Him worship. Where among animals is there the faintest glimpse of so sublime a faculty ? Take the faculty in the utmost state of degradation and debasement, in which it has been ever found. Let the only things correspondent to the religion and worship of the highly civilised man be a superstitious regard to some fetish, supposed to exercise a power of blight over harvests, and over the lives of men and cattle, and a number of foolish (and perhaps bloody) rites designed to XV111. PREFACE. break the spell, — let the religious instinct be plunged as low as this in darkness and bondage, — yet where will the least parallel or approach to such sentiments and usages be found among the inferior animals ? It may be conceived that even out of a faculty so debased, there might be pro- duced, by pouring the light of Divine truth upon it, and raising the general civilization of the whole man, a conscience which should recognise the true God as its Judge, and the atonement of the true Saviour as its hope, and make itself the controlling principle of the entire moral life ; but round what nucleus in the intelligence and feelings of an animal such sentiments could form, we must leave it to the professors of " Evolution " to explain. Ordinary, minds are unequal to the task. PREFACE. XIX. Dr. Batenian, arguing the question, as a man of science, chiefly on scientific grounds, has only briefly alluded to this branch of the subject. Still, as a Christian in something more than the name, he has felt that his Essay would be incomplete without the notice of the religious instinct, and has devoted to this differentia of man some of his ablest and most interesting remarks (Pp. 208—217). The reader will be of opinion that he has compressed into a very brief compass a large amount of weighty and telling argument. It is to be hoped his argument may have its effect against the crude theories and unsupported hypotheses of the disciples of Evolution. For assuredly it is something more than a mere speculative view of man's origin which is at stake. To degrade man in theory, to instil into him that he is no more XX. PREFACE. than a superior and highly cultivated animal, and to obscure or throw out of sight his distinguishing relation to the Father of spirits, is the surest way to degrade him morally; and, should such teaching ever take a strong hold of the public mind and prevail extensively (which is hardly probable), would surely achieve that end. This self- degradation of man has been his tendency from the first beginning of his history. Idolatry made the primitive races of mankind bow down before the visible objects of Nature, before the creatures brought into existence to do them service, and even before the effigies of these. And now that a Christianized civilization has rendered this gross form of idolatry impossible, the tendency to self-debasement re-appears in the shape of a scientific speculation, the scope of which PREFACE, XXI, is to veil all man's higher affinities and instincts, and to throw into strong relief his affinities with the creatures below him, — a new and weird fulfilment of the old complaint lodged against God's people, Thus they turned their glory into the similitude of a calf that eateth hay, a fulfilment impressing that old lesson, which is one of the keys to History, that, while manners shift, and the fashion of this world passeth away, men are still, in their fundamental weaknesses and temptations, what they ever were. E. M. GOULBURN, The Deanery, Norwich, August 1st, 1877. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Page Preliminary remarks — Darwinism denned — Man's Genealogical Tree — The " Missing Link " between Man and the Man-like Ape — Professor HaeckeFs Natural History of Creation — Lemuria, the birth-place of the Ape-like Man — The Ascidian, Man's remote ancestor — Dean of Canterbury's reflections . on the Ascidian descent of Man — Ilaeckel's Moner — The Pegnum Protisticum or Kingdom of Primitive Forms 1 CHAPTER II. Evolution theory contrasted with the Scriptural account of the origin of Man — The Monistic and Dualistic hypotheses — The Primordial Germ — What brought it into existence ?— Archdeacon Pratt's and Dr. Eeichel's views — Mr. Disraeli on Evolution 41 H. CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. Page Sentimental opposition deprecated — Broca, Max Miiller— No evidence of the transmu- ,n of species within the historic period — Flourens — Animal kingdom of Aristotle, the Bame as that of our day. Plea of the [mperfection of the Geological Kecord con- sidered— Haeckel, Duke of Argyll, and Mivart — Professor Agassiz on the Immate- rial Principle — The Brain of Man compared with that of the Orang, Chimpanzee, and Gorilla 55 CHAPTER IV. nt ion of Language — Stoddart, Trench, Whitney, and Farrar — Language, a Distinctive Attribute of Man — The so- called language of the Parrot considered — Connection between Ideas and Words — I j of Eeterophasia or Perversion of the ilty of Language 87 CHAPTER Y. The Anatomical Scat of Speech — Role of the bra! Convolutions; Flourens, Maudsley —Gall's Phrenological System — Destruction of the anterior Lobes of the brain without CONTENTS. 111. Page impairment of the power of speech — Com- parative development of the third frontal convolution in Man and in the Ape — Speech is a barrier the brute is not destined to pass. 116 CHAPTER VI. Language is a Distinctive Attribute of Man — Man versus Ape controversy — On the Universality of Language — Is there a Speechless Tribe ? — The Fuegians and the Yeddahs of Ceylon — Tylor, Lubbock, Whitney, and Trench — The so-called speechless wild Men were probably Apes — Evidence of the great travellers of the day ■ — The Soko of Dr. Livingstone, and the Orang Outangs of Lord Monboddo 147 CHAPTER TIL The Immateriality of the Faculty of Speech — The Brain a mere Instrument — The Electric Telegraph and its Language — Inconsistencies of the Evolutionists — The Odium Antitheologicum — The Modern Anthropological Creed — American Writers on Evolution — The Tripartite Nature of Man — The German Neologists on Life, Matter, and Force—The Mystery of Life- Conclusion 178 ILLUSTRATIONS. Page The Man-like Ape 9 Catarrhine or Old World Monkey (Macacus) 19 The Ascidian. Our Pre- Historic Ancestor 24 Tin Moner. Man's First Ancestor 31 Tin- Second Group of the Protistic Kingdom 35 A Flagellate 37 Brain of Man (Homo) 84 Orang (Simla) 84 Convex Surface of the Left Hemisphere, showing the Disposition and Arrangement of the Cerebral Convolutions 127 CHAPTER L " To whom the winged hierarch replied : Adam, one Almighty is, from whom All things proceed, and up to him return, Endued with various forms, various degrees Of substance, and, in things that live, of life." Paradise Lost. Preliminary Remarks— Darwinism defined — Man's Genealogical Tree — The "Missing Link" between Man and the Man-like Ape— No fossil remains of the Ape-like Man — The Ascidian, man's remote ancestor — Dean of Canterbury's reflections on the Ascidian descent of Man—Haeckel's Moner—The Protistic Kingdom. Perhaps no works in modern times have been so largely read and so freely criticised, and have exercised so great an influence for good or for evil, as the " Origin of Species" and the " Descent of Man." 2 DARWINISM TESTED BY LANGUAGE. The subject of which they treat is one of such absorbing personal interest, as tending to gratify the ardent desire for knowledge of the " where, the whence, and the whither" of the human race, that these books have been received and perused with avidity, not only by professed naturalists, theo- logians, and men of science, but by a far wider circle of general readers. It has been said of Luther that he was the monk that shook the world. It may with equal propriety be said that Mr. Darwin is the naturalist, who, by a hypothesis so strangely at variance with our traditions, has threatened to shake the foundations of the religious world. The theory enunciated in his writings, trenching as it does upon questions of the last importance and of the most absorbing interest to man, has been welcomed by DARWINISM TESTED BY LANGUAGE. 6 acclamation by some, anathematized by others ; and so numerous have been the publications of the opposing parties, that a whole special literature may be said to have sprung up, having for its key-note, the Evolution Theory. During the last few years, there has been an increasing desire, on the part of the earnest and thoughtful members of the community, to investigate apparent discrepancies between Christianity and Science, and to deal with some of the modern forms of supposed antagonism between Science and Scripture, and, as in my opinion, the Darwinian hypothesis of the origin of man is directly opposed to the teaching of Kevealed Religion, I pur- pose making a calm, dispassionate, and unprejudiced inquiry into the value and truth of those doctrines as to man's relation- 4 DARWINISM TESTED BY LANGUAGE, ship to the Simian families, which, during the last ten years, have acquired such a rapid, but, as I believe, undue, develop- ment amongst large classes of society both in Germany and England. The novelty of Mr. Darwin's views has had something to do with the ready reception of them by the rising generation, who, in this age of electric telegraphy arid underground rail- roads, are always seeking the sensational and the marvellous, the tendency of whose mind is to consider those who differ from them as standing upon a lower intellectual platform than themselves. It is not my intention to dwell at any length on the peculiar scientific views which we understand by the term, Darwin- ism, but, as I have reason to believe that there are still many persons who have but an imperfect idea of what the doctrine of THE THEORY DEFINED. evolution really means, I will very briefly give a definition of it. In his work on the " Origin of Species by Natural Selection," Mr. Darwin promul- gated the theory, which had been previ- ously put forth by the French Zoologist, Lamarck,* that all species, instead of having been independently created, and possessing an independent existence, had been gradually developed out of other forms, and that all organic beings that have ever lived on this earth have probably descen- ded from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed by the Cre- ator ■(* In this treatise he merely hinted * Philosophic zoologique, ou exposition des considera- tions relatives a l'histoire naturelle des animaux. Paris, 1809. f " I believe that animals have descended from at most only fonr or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number. Analogy would lead me one step 6 DARWINISM TESTED BY LANGUAGE. at the application of his hypothesis to man, remarking that in the distant future he saw open fields for far more important researches ; that psychology would be based on a new foundation, and light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history, but in his recently published work, he accepts the responsibility of the application of his theory to the human race, to which he applies all the conse- quences of his doctrine ; and he does not hesitate to assert that Man, the wonder and glory of the universe, is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits ; in fact that he is descended from the old-world monkeys, that he must further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype." lt Origin of Species," P. 484. THE THEORY DEFINED. be classed with the quadrumana, the most immediate ancestor from which this des- cent can be traced, being an anthropomor- phous Ape ! * Mr. Darwin having traced our descent from the Ape, carries us back for a count- less number of ages, through Marsupials, Reptiles, Birds, Fishes, till he at last arrives at our most ancient progenitors, which he says resemble the young of Ascidians — the Ascidians being scarcely animals at all ; they have recently been classed by some naturalists amongst the Vermes or Worms; their larvse or young somewhat resemble * "The early progenitors of man were no doubt once covered with hair, both sexes having beards ; their ears were pointed and capable of movement ; and their bodies were provided with a tail having the proper muscles. The males were provided with great canine teeth, which served them as formidable weapons." "Descent of Man," Vol. L, Pp. 206, 207. MAX's GEXEALOGICAL TREE. tadpoles in shape, and have the power of swimming freely about. The following may be considered as a logical description of Mr. Darwin's Genea- logical Tree: — At the bottom is Man, who may be described as an animal belonging to the Class Mammalia, of the Order of the Pri- mates, of which he is placed at the head, in the family of the Hominidse or Bimana. He forms the only genus of the family, and there is but one species of this genus — Homo Sapiens, u the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals." The third stage of descent, or rather of ascent, is the Man-like Ape, represented by the Simia Satyrus or Orang Outang, a hairy animal, that is unable to hold itself upright except by clutching to the branches Fig. I. — The Han-like Ape. THE MAN-LIKE APE. 11 of a tree. It inhabits the low swampy districts of Borneo and Sumatra^ where it lives exclusively on fruits. When full- grown, it attains a height of about four feet four inches ; its legs are very short, whilst its arms, on the contrary, are exceedingly long, reaching down to the ankles. Its facial angle is only 30°, and like all the true Apes, it has no tail.* * I need not say that the Gorilla, the Chimpanzee, of the Gibbon, would equally well represent the Man- like Ape, as they, together with the Orang, are spoken of as the "anthropoid or latisternal apes." I have, however, selected the Orang, because, although diverging more from man, as regards the skeleton, than does any other anthropoid ape, he appears nearest to man as far as the brain is concerned, in which most important organ the Orang is man's nearest ally, as shown by the relative height of the cerebrum, the large proportion of its frontal lobe, and the high and rounded form of the skull. Those who may desire further information as to the points of resemblance and points of difference between the anthropoid apes and ourselves, I would refer to 12 THE MISSING LINK. But between the first and third branches of this tree, that is, between the Man-like Ape and ourselves, there is a " missing link" — an inferred organism, for Mr. Darwin assumes that some hundreds of thousands of years ago, there was an Ape-like Man. Yes, Mr. Darwin, looking back through the dim vistas of untold ages, traverses the corridors of time, and plunging into a bygone eternity, from the dark recesses and chasms of which, lighted up only by Mr. St. George Mivart's interesting work entitled " Man and Apes," in which the structural peculiarities of the Anthropoidea are described with great minute- ness, t may, however, observe that the apes are divided into two families ; Simiada), or apes of the Old "World, and Cebidac, which are exclusively confined to tropical America. The Simiadae are again sub-divided into three smaller groups or sub-families :— 1° Simiina) ; 2° Somnopithecinac ; 3° Cynopithecina). The first of these sub-divisions contains the Gorilla, the Chimpanzee, the Orang, and the Gibbon; these creatures being the apes which, on the whole, are most like man. THE APE-LIKE MAN. 13 the beams from his own distorted imagina- tion, he drags into existence this monster of his own creation — this Ape-like Man ! Professor Haeckel, of Jena, in a work entitled " The Natural History of Crea- tion," * has entered into very minute particulars in reference to this hypo- thetical being — our direct ancestor — this Homo primigenius, who, having sprung * Natiirliche Schopfungsgeschichte, von Ernst Haeckel, Fiinfte A linage, Berlin, 1874. Dr. Haeckel, Professor of Zoology, in the University of Jena, is justly regarded as the most eminent living representative of the doctrine of Evolution in Germany. He is a most enthusiastic admirer and devoted disciple of Mr. Darwin, whose theory he considers as " one of the greatest conquests of the human mind, and worthy to rank with the Newtonian theory of gravitation." Professor Haeckel' s remarkable work has already reached a fifth edition in Germany, but as I have reason to believe that the majority of English readers are unacquainted with the peculiar views therein set forth, I shall deem it desirable to make a frequent allusion to this elaborate treatise in the following pages. 14 THE CRADLE OF THE HUMAN RACE. by evolution from the Anthropoid Apes, lived in the pliocene period of the tertiary age, his birthplace being a continent in Southern Asia, called Lemuria, long since submerged by the Indian Ocean! This hallowed spot he speaks of as the " so- called Paradise, the cradle of the human race" (das sogenannte Paradies, die Wiege des Menschengeschlechts.) Of this primitive man, (Der Urmensch) he says, we as yet possess no fossil remains, but there is such an analogy between the lowest woolly-haired men (Ulotriches), and the highest Anthropoids (Menschen- affen) that it requires no great effort of the imagination to describe an intermediate type, an approximate portrait of the conjectural primitive Ape-like Man. (muthmasslich Urmensch oder Affen- mensch). haeckel's speechless primitive man. 15 " This primitive man was very dolicephalic and prognathous; he had woolly hair, and a black or brown skin, and his body was more abundantly covered with hair than in any existing race; his arms were longer and more robust, whilst his legs were shorter and more slender than the corresponding limbs of his immediate descendant, the Homo Sapiens of the present day. When standing, his position was only semi-vertical, with the knees much bent ; and he was without articulate language." "We are therefore justified," says Haeckel, "in admitting into the human pedigree, as representing the twenty- first link, the Speechless Man, (Alalus,) or the Ape-like Man, (Pithecanthropus,) a being endowed with all the essential 16 NO FOSSIL REMAINS OF THE characteristics of man, except articulate language."* Now, it is important to remember that this assumed connecting link between Man and the Ape, is the very key-stone of the Darwinian structure. There is, however, no evidence of the existence, nor have any fossil remains ever been discovered, of this Ape-like Man ; the petrified relics of extinct animals that have lived in by-gone ages have been examined, but these " material archives of the creation" have been searched in vain ; there is no voice in the stone book of the past, not one single footprint on the sands of time, that can justify Man in his pride and presumption in attempting to bridge over the impas- sable gulf which separates the howling * Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte, Pp. 597, 620. PRIMITIVE APE-LIKE MAN, 17 monkey from, the being who we are told was formed in the image of his God.* * Mr. Darwin tackles this difficulty in the following specious terms. (" Descent of Man," Yol. L, P. 200.) " The great break in the organic chain between Man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form ; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, convinced by general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution." It will be observed that by this line of argument, Mr. Darwin takes for granted, the theory to be proved. Further on, at P. 201, Mr. Darwin says :— " With respect to the absence of fossil remains, serving to con- nect man with his ape-like progenitors, no one will lay much stress on this fact, who will read Sir C. LyelPs discussion, in which he shows, that in all vertebrate classes, the discovery of fossil remains has been an extremely slow and fortuitous process. Nor should it be forgotten that those regions which are the most likely to afford remains connecting man with some extinct ape-like creature, have not as yet been searched by geologists." Archdeacon Pratt, animadverting on the above passage, remarks :— " If we knew that the theory is 18 man's genealogical tree. And, forsooth, it is upon evidence like this, that we are asked to forego the cherished traditions of our forefathers, and to substitute the audacious theories of yesterday for a record of creation which, for more than thirty long centuries, has successfully resisted the battering-ram of infidelity and unbelief, and for three thousand years, has braved the battle and the breeze of scepticism and doubt. Let us now continue the study of our Genealogical Tree. From the man-like Ape, we are carried up to the Catarrhine or Old World Monkeys, a good specimen of which is seen in the Macacus Eadiatus, or Bonnet Monkey, a member of the true, we should be sanguine that, some day, proof would he found in fossils ; but as the whole is a gratuitous hypothesis, the entire absence of fossil proof is a stern rebuke to the speculators." « Pig. II.— Catarrhine or Old World Monkey. (Macacus.) Figures I, II, VII, and VIII, are reproduced with permission from Mr. St. George Mivart's work, "Man and Apes." THE OLD WORLD MONKEY. 21 third sub-family or Cynopithecinse, a crea- ture well known in this country, being frequently brought over by soldiers and sailors. It is less gentle and docile than some other monkeys, being a snappish, irritable animal, and when not indulged, is given to mischievous and spiteful tricks ; it is provided with a tail. Mr. Darwin next traces us to the Macropus Major, or Kangaroo, one of the Marsupials, and from this dignified beast, he carries us through reptiles and other organisms to the fishes, which we may suppose to be represented by the Sturgeon, Acipenser Sturio, when our ancestors swam in proud majesty in the azure waters of the sea. From the Sturgeon, we are conducted to the Amphioxus or Lancelet, the lowest known vertebrate animal, a creature looking very much like 22 THE AMPHIOXUS OK LANCELET. a piece of jelly. This little animal is remarkable for its negative properties, having neither brain, head, nor heart ; it has been described by a modern anatomist as a " headless, heartless fish, without red blood."* Professor Haeckel evidently regards the Amphioxus as representing one of the most important stages in man's pedigree, remarking that " the study of this interesting little animal throws great light upon the roots of our genealogical tree, forming as it does the line of demarcation between the vertebrates and the invertebrates." He calls it the last of the Mohicans, (der letzte Mohicaner) and * " The possession of a heart and of red blood is common to all vertebrates as well as to man, with one solitary exception, the Amphioxus or Lancelet alone having colourless blood and a simple cylindrical vessel in place of a heart." " Mivart, Lessons in Elementary Anatomy," P. 12. THE ASCIDIAN. 23 says that " the study of its comparative anatomy and ontogenesis proves to a cer- tainty the former existence of animals without a skull and without a brain amongst the ancestors of Man ! " * By the next and last step of the Dar- winian ladder, we are carried up to the Ascidian, which is described as an inverte- brate hermaphrodite marine creature, permanently attached to a support, and immovably fixed at the bottom of the sea by root-like appendages, whereas its near relative, the Amphioxus, can swim freely like a fish. It belongs to the Molluscoida of Huxley, a lower division of the great kingdom of Mollusca. The Ascidian (ao-A-or, a skin bottle) consists of a simple tough leathery sac, with two small pro- jecting orifices, and its appearance very * Haeckel op cit, Pp. 508, 584. 24 THE ASC1DIAN, much resembles a double-necked jar. " At first sight, " says Professor Huxley, "you might hardly suspect the animal nature of one of these singular organisms, when freshly taken from the sea; but if you touch it, the stream of water which it Fig. III.— The Ascidian. Our Pre-Historic Ancestor. squirts out of each aperture reveals the existence of a great contractile power within." Of the two apertures, A serves as a mouth, and is often surrounded by a circle of tentacles ; B is the anal orifice, man's remote ancestor. 25 and C is the base of attachment, by which the animal fastens itself to a bit of sea- weed or to a rock. This interesting creature is here represented, in order to enable one to form some idea of man's very remote ancestors.* The engraving is taken from Professor Huxley's " Elements of Comparative Anatomy," the author having kindly permitted me to copy it. Thus the lofty faculties of Man were once in embryo in a thing like a tadpole! The mind of Newton once lay hid in a creature which " hardly appeared like an * I have not thought it desirable minutely to describe the long line of diversified forms through which Mr. Darwin ultimately traces us up to our common ancestor, the Ascidian ; for a more detailed description of Man's Genealogy from the Darwinian point of view, I would refer the reader to an interesting and highly scientific treatise, by Dr. Eree, of Colchester, entitled " Fallacies of Darwinism," from which I have obtained most valuable information in the compilation of this work. 20 THE ASC1DIAN DESCENT OF MAN. animal — which consisted merely of a simple tough leathery sac, and which stuck to a bit of sea-weed that it might not be carried away by the tide." * Thus far Mr. Darwin, but my descrip- tion of the object, aim, and end of the Evolution theory, as applied to the descent * Dr. Payne Smith, Dean of Canterbury, has the following reflections upon the Ascidian descent of man. " What an alarming thought, that at a period separated from us by such vast geologic ages, that, according to the nebular hypothesis, held by so many of our leading astronomers as a probable theory, this whole universe was a mass of heated vapour ; what an alarming thought that the very existence of man should have depended upon a jelly bag sticking to a stone and sucking up water ! Alas ! there was then no water, no stones, no jelly bags, and therefore there are now no men ! Man escapes, poor thing, from his humble parentage: he need not feel his ears to find the proof of his monkey- hood : but his escape costs him dear. What with astronomy and biology, men of science between them have cleared us out of existence. Scientifically, man is no more." " Modern Scepticism/' P. 150. PROFESSOR HAECKEl/s MONER. 27 of man, would be incomplete without a fur- ther reference to Professor HaeckeFs views. Mr. Darwin, as we have seen, is content with tracing man's descent from an As- cidian Mollusk, and he is also satisfied with deriving all animals and plants from about eight or ten progenitors, whereas, his most valiant disciple, Professor Haeckel, goes much further back, through a com- plete family tree of twenty -two branches, and having reached Mr. Darwin's Ascidian, he carries us seven stages higher up, through sponges, diatoms, worms, and other organisms, till he eventually traces us all to one primordial germ — a Moner, produced by self generation (Archigony) from inorganic matter during the Lauren- tian period. This Moner— ^owj/wp— the lowest imagin- able grade of organic individuality, he 28 THE FORMLESS SLIMY ATOM. describes as a formless, structureless, slimy atom, (Sclileimkliimpchen) composed of an albuminoid carbonaceous matter, as homo- geneous as an inorganic crystal. Although when in a state of repose, it only consists of a little ball of slime or mucus, either invisible to the naked eye, or if visible, only of the size of a pin's head, still it is endowed with the two fundamental organic functions of nutrition and reproduction. " These first ancestors of man," says Haeckel, " were as simple as possible. They were organisms without organs, like our present monera, consisting merely of little shapeless lumps of a slimy albu- minous material (protoplasm). These organisms never attained to the form of a cell, but were always mere l cytodes,' being devoid of any nucleus. The first of these monera sprang by spontaneous generation, man's first ancestors, the monera. 29 (Urzeugung) at the commencement of the Laurentian period, from inorganic com- pounds—simple combinations of Carbon, Carbonic Acid, Hydrogen, and Nitrogen."* The Monera are further described as being neither plants nor animals, but belonging to a third primary division of the living world, to which Haeckel has given the name of Protista. As the history of the Protistic kingdom may be a novelty to many of my readers, I shall not deem it irrelevant to my sub- ject to enter into some details in reference to it. The Protista form an organic group which cannot naturally be classed either in the animal or vegetable kingdom ; there being in their exterior form, in their intimate structure, and in their vital phenomena, such a singular mixture of * Natiirliche Schopfungsgeschichte, P. 578. 30 THE REGNUM PROTISTICUM, OR aniinal and vegetable properties, that they have been respectively claimed both by the botanist and by the zoologist. The Primordial organisms which con- stitute the Protistic kingdom are divided into the following eight groups : — 1°, The Monera. 2°, The Amceboida or Protoplasta. 3°, The Flagellata. 4°, The Catallacta. 5 & , The Labyrinthulae. 6°, The Diatomacea3. 7°, Tho Myxomycetes or mucus-fungi. 8°, The Rhizopoda. The accompanying illustration (Fig. IV) represents the most interesting member of this Protistic kingdom, The Moner, "the first ancestor of Man," and also shows the mode of reproduction observable in these elementary organisms, which is by seg- mentation ; that is, when one of these little corpuscles lias acquired a certain size by the absorption of albuminoid matter, it KINGDOM OF PRIMITIVE FORMS. 31 begins to show a tendency to divide into two parts; a central constriction occurs, resulting eventually in a separation into two halves, each half becoming hence- forth a distinct individual, possessed of all the properties of the parent Moner. Fig. IV. — The Moner. Man's First Ancestor. A. Is the entire Moner. B. The same corpuscle divided into two halves by a median furrow. Ca. Cb. The two halves have become separated from each other, and now constitute distinct and indepen- dent individuals, manifesting the same 32 THE REGNUM PROTISTICCM, OR vital phenomena of nutrition and repro- duction as the organism of which they originally formed a part. " In certain instances," says Haeckel, 11 the Monera sub-divide into more than two parts, and in some species they separate into a great number of mucous globules, which by simple growth acquire the volume of their parents." He then goes on to say that "this most simple mode of reproduction, by scissiparity or self-division, is the same by which cells are re-produced — those rudimentary organic units, by the agglomeration of which almost all organisms are constituted, not excepting even the human body. Each organic individual is always composed of a great number of cells, and each cell is, to a certain extent, an individual organism — a being of primal order." KINGDOM OF PRIMITIVE FORMS. 33 Fig. V represents the second group of the Protistic kingdom — the Ainceboida or Protoplasta. Here it will be observed we have advanced a step, and have attained to the dignity of a true cell, the Amoeba being a monocellular organism containing a nucleus. The mode of reproduction differs from that which obtains in the Monera, for although occurring by scissi- parity or self-division, it is the nucleus itself which separates into two halves ; the cell substance eventually divides, thus forming two new cells resembling the mother-cell. Under certain conditions of rest, etc., the Amoeba assumes a globular form, and becomes invested with a cell- membrane or cyst, as is shown in the accompanying engraving. * * The engravings Nos. 4, 5, and 6 are taken from Haeckel's original work, the Professor having most 34 THE REGNUM PROTISTICUM, OR A is the Amoeba, a simple spherical cell, consisting of protoplasm (c), containing a nucleus (b), and a nucleolus (a), the whole organism being enclosed in a cell- membrane (d). B. The Amoeba has ruptured and escaped from the cyst. C. The nucleus has separated into two nuclei, and the Amoeba itself is constricted by a median furrow. D. The division is com- plete, and two independent cells are formed, each with its proper nucleus. (Da Db). The white corpuscles of the blood of man and of animals, says Haeckel, cannot be distinguished from these Amoebae. The study of this elementary form has evidently great attraction for the German Professor who says that, after the Monera, the Amoebae are the most important of all courteously permitted me to reproduce them from blocks supplied to me by his publisher at Berlin. k> x> a 1 53 es d (=u 03 O ; BSlB B^B . . -1 ° £ ~< XlHHSiiiii&i C3 f- ° M^Wffr^mrrwrT^^BninB "2 o d ^3 03 5 PK^^^m^^^'W Si 'd O .fJ m | .' ■ ,'Mi^ /*.?: o o d pfi 1 1 i ^PVvE^H cS <1 d o - WBfflmXS^^ii^&wiM ■- 1 x ~ ^^^%K'"^^B d *• .2 ^ o , h ■K^fl Hll£| d ? h HHB^^B^^^^lHi 'd <£ o K*'^^TC s- 'X* Ph o. E £ "g H c 1 ^k0-'<^^^^^sl H3 o3 55 I W^^jtf^tswB O a d v) W QB | Kj .v.., 1 ' ,.> I « .2 ,£3 CO a EH£ K^K2P 33 • ffi ■+* "j> HHPHH 1 : * 2 "" i HBI v l?. J ' H O Jw '• I5MH51H rd O) CO cfi > l|Kf^!pg|KI &D (-" .1 2 mp ,b - w$ ^ ' & i 'S d ^ H 1 ^b^^^^p^^^B" 03 o 60 ^ « d 0) 03 r-> > d o bo £i Oi bs k Q X H KINGDOM OF PRIMITIVE FORMS. 37 organisms in a biological, and especially in a genealogical, point of view. The third group of this kingdom of Primitive Forms is that of the Flagellata, which are organisms consisting of simple cells, living in fresh or in salt water. Fig. VI. — A Flagellate. They are characterised by a flagelliform appendage, such as is represented in figure VI., which serves for the purpose of 38 THE PROTISTIC KINGDOM. rapid movement in the water ; they pos- sess also a nucleus and a nucleolus, as is shown in the engraving. It is to these organisms that is due, in a great measure, the phosphorescence of the. sea, and their presence in large numbers imparts a green colour to our ponds. I do not propose giving details of the five other groups of the Protistic Kingdom, the description of which forms one of the most interesting features of Professor HaeckePs elaborate treatise. The greater part of the Protista, he says, live in the sea, some swimming on the surface, others crawling at the bottom, or permanently attaching themselves to rocks, shells, or plants. They are so small that, for the most part, they can only be discerned by the aid of the microscope. I must not omit the startling assertion that " all the THE SOUL OF THE PROTISTA. 39 Protista have a soul (eine Seele) as well as all animals and all plants !"* In tracing man's pedigree, Haeckel divides the earth's history into five great periods. The first is the Archolithic or Primordial Age, during the early part of which, our first ancestor, the Moner, appeared. After passing through various successive elementary forms, at the eighth stage of descent, he reaches the Ascidian, at which point, the ancestors of man pass from the invertebrate to the vertebrate type; * Eine Seele besitzen alle Protisten, so gut wie alle Thiere und wie alle Pflanzen. Die Seelenthatigkeit der Protisten, auszert sich in ihrer Keizbarkeit, d. h. in den Bewegungen und anderen Veranderungen, welche in Folge von mechanischen, elektrischen, chemischen Reizen u. s. w. in ihrem contraction Protoplasma eintreten. Wie bei alien iibrigen Organismen, so sind auch bei den Protisten die Seclenthatigkeiten auf Molekular-Bewegungen im Protoplasma zuruckzufuhren. Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte, P. 393. 40 HAECKEl/s HUMAN PEDIGREE. three more evolutionary changes, however, are observed during this first period, and at the eleventh stage, the Moner has become developed into a Selacian or shark-like fish. Then begins the second or Palaeo- lithic Age, during which, on reaching the fourteenth stage, he has attained the dignity of a Triton. In the third or Mesolithic Age, he moves three steps higher up, and becomes a Kangaroo. In the course of the fourth or Cainolithic Age, four more stages are passed through, and he successively assumes the form of the Lemur, the Old World Monkey, the Anthropoid Ape, and the Speechless or Ape-like Man. In the fifth or Quaternary Age, or period of human civilisation, we arrive at the twenty-second stage of evolution, represented by Man endowed with the faculty of Articulate Language. CHAPTER II. " Non enim est e saxo sculptus aut e robore dolatus, habet corpus, habet animura, movetur mente, movetur sensibus." Ciceko. Acad. Prior, ii. 36. Evolution theory contrasted with the Scriptural account of the origin of Man — The Monistic and Dualistic hypotheses — The Primordial Germ — What brought ii into existence ? — Archdeacon Pratt's and Dr. ReicheVs views — Mr. Disraeli on Evolution. In the preceding chapter, I have endeavoured to epitomise the views of Mr. Darwin and of Professor Haeckel as to the origin of the human race ; the former tracing man's pedigree up to the Ascidian Mollusk, whilst, according to the German naturalist, the first ancestor of man was a much more simple organism — 42 THE EVOLUTION THEORY. a shapeless, structureless, slimy Atom, pro- duced by spontaneous generation. The theory of Evolution abolishes the idea of creation, in the ordinary sense of the term. It, at most, concedes to Nature the faculty of causing one species to spring from another, and it consequently excludes all direct, personal, and miraculous inter- vention of a creating power. Instead of assigning existing species to the creative act of the Maker of all things, the Evolutionist imagines them to be derived by natural causes out of previous forms, and these again out of others, up to an original germ or protoplasm. Evolution, m fact, means that a system of laws and forces has been set in motion which produces certain results without any interference or assistance from a superin- tending power. It assumes that advances THE SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT. 43 in development have taken place not by design, but by accident, or the force of circumstances. Its fundamental proposi- tion, according to Huxley, is, that " the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed." It may be well to contrast the Evolution theory, with the Scriptural account of the origin of Man, which may be thus summarised : — 1° — The universe with all it contains owes its existence to the will and power of God ; matter is not eternal, nor is life self-originating. The Deity has endowed matter with properties and forces, which He upholds, and in accordance with which 44 THE SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT OF CREATION. He works in all the ordinary operations of His providence. 2 — Man's body was formed by the immediate intervention of God. It did not grow; nor was it produced by any process of development. 8° — The soul was derived from God. He breathed into Man "the breath of Life," * that is that life which constituted * Whilst this chapter is passing through the press, a learned Hebrew scholar, and one of the great theological writers of the day, has reminded me that in the original of Genesis ii. 7, the words are nishmath hayim, breath of lives, not of life. "Most ancient commentators," he says, "notice the force of the plural, as intimating that not only the animal, but the intellectual and moral life of man were conveyed by that Divine insufflation ; and Josephus himself (rather an interpreter of a rationalistic caste of thought) says, that both soul and spirit were breathed into the body of man. If the animal life of man could possibly be conceived to have been developed from the life of lower Bpedes, whence did his intellectual and still more his moral life come ? " THE SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 45 him a man — a living being bearing the image of God. 4° — Of the various creatures summoned into existence prior to the creation of Man, each is said to be " after his kind" words which seem to imply that, from the first, each species was distinct from the other. " It was a kind" by itself. The above view of creation has been called the dualistic hypothesis, according to which, organic matter is considered to be the premeditated work of a Creator, acting in accordance with a fixed plan, and man, at the very first moment of his existence, was separated from the highest brute by as impassable a gulf as that which exists between them at the present time. The theory of Evolution, which has also been termed the monistic hypothesis, attributes all vital phenomena to mechanical 46 THE PRIMORDIAL GERM. causes, either physical or chemical; all animal and vegetable species of the present and of past ages are merely " the posterity slowly modified and transformed of one or more very simple original ancestral forms, issued by spontaneous generation from in- organic matter." * A primordial germ, with no inherent intelligence, and by the slow operation of unintelligent physical causes, develops, under purely natural influences, into all the infinite variety of vegetable and animal organisms, with all their compli- cated relations to each other, and to the world around them. All living things, * Natiirliche Schopfungsgeschichte, P. 106. Haeckel calls the monistic hypothesis mechanical or causal, as distinguished from the dualistic, which he calls teleo- logical or vital, according to which, each animal and vegetable species is the product of an " incarnate creative thought." (verkorperten Schopfungsgedanken.) HOW CAME THIS GERM INTO EXISTENCE ? 47 from the lowly violet to the giant red- woods of California, from the microscopic animalcule to the Mastodon and the Dinotheriurn, one and all have sprung from this same primordial germ.* The * A recent theological writer inquires : — " What brought this primordial form into existence ? The pushing back of its first appearance further and further into past time, ages before ages, and ages before them, does not get rid of the question, How came this form into existence ? A form, too, possessing such marvellous properties, as to give birth to all the varieties of organisation which the vegetable and animal kingdoms exhibit. God must have created it. If, then, the Almighty created one such form, why could He not have created several ? What necessity is there in the nature of things for tracing up the genealogy of all organic beings to one form only?" "Scripture and Science not at Variance," by J. H. Pratt, Archdeacon of Calcutta, P. 228. Dr. Reichel, in further development of this subject, after ridiculing the idea of the Hindoo who says that the world rests on an elephant, and the elephant upon a tortoise, and then thinks that he has given a sufficient account of things without telling us what the tortoise rests on, 4^ THE EVOLUTION THEORY. Evolutionist not only asserts that all this is due to natural causes, without purpose or without design, but he argues against the intervention of mind anywhere in the process. God, says Lamarck, created matter; God, says the Evolutionist, created the unintelligent living cell ; both say that after the first step, all else follows by natural law, without purpose and without design. From certain primary elements, such as goes on to say : — " make the chain of finite causes as long as you like; multiply its links (each link a Universe) as often as you please ; this chain must have an end ; and by the very necessities of thought you are driven to acknowledge that at its end there must be one ultimate cause, different from all other causes, existing by the necessity of its own nature before all other causes, and which, because it exists by inherent necessity, can never cease to exist. Thus arrangement, plan, design, are only pushed a little further back by the evolution theory : they are not got rid of." " Norwich Cathedral Argumentative Discourses," Series vi., Pp. 8, 12. PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 49 soil, and stream, and wind, the solar heat, it seems, would be sufficient to undulate matter into Man, and out of such airy materials as Oxygen and Hydrogen, Carbon and Nitrogen, with a little Phosphorus and Lime thrown in, the Evolutionist would erect society, with its science and its government, its art and its religion ! "Many who hold the evolution hy- pothesis," says Tyndall, " would probably assent to the position, that at the present moment, all our philosophy, all our poetry, all our science, all our art — Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Kaphael — are potential in the fires of the sun." God, it would seem, hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of millions of years ago, called this primordial germ into existence, and since that time, has had no more to do 50 THE EVOLUTION THEORY. with the universe than if He did not exist. According to this theory, the Supreme Being would be regarded in the light of a .skilful mechanician, who, after constructing the universe, and setting it at work, withdrew himself thenceforth from all interference with it, as completely as a clockmaker does, in the instance of a clock which he exports to a foreign country, or as a ship-builder after the ship is constructed, launched, and is far away on the wide ocean. The Deity having created matter, and endowed it with certain properties, does nothing more, retires into inactivity, and without any control or interference on his part, hands over this product of his creative power to the guidance of physical laws. "Human nature exists potentially in mere inorganic matter, and a chain of spontaneous THE EVOLUTION THEORY. 51 derivation connects incandescent mole- cules or star-dust with the world and man himself." Everything in creation has arisen from a fortuitous concourse of atoms, and life itself is said to be the product of a certain disposition of material molecules, the matter of life being composed of ordinary matter, and differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms are aggregated. Thus, life, mind, and all the infinite diversities and marvellous organ- isms of plants and animals, from the lowest to the highest, are due to the operation of unintelligent physical causes. The earth is assumed to be pregnant with the germs of all living organisms, which are quickened into life under favourable circumstances ; in the bosom of inorganic nature are various dormant forces, which, at certain times and under certain 52 MAN. THE FINAL PRODUCT OF NATURES LAWS. conditions, spring- into action and develop into a plant or an animal, just as we see a crystal formed by virtue of certain chemical affinities; and at a particular conjuncture in the world's history, and from the coincidence of certain special conditions, Man appeared as the final product of the operation of nature's laws.* Our great statesman-novelist, Mr. Disraeli, in the conversation between Lothair and the Syrian, as they sat gazing on the wondrous scene afforded by the morning view of Jerusalem from the * In the above summary, I have endeavoured impartially to represent the views of the different leaders of modern thought. I am quite aware that my description applies rather to the Darwinian school than to its founder, whose doctrine, as originally promulgated, merely implies a belief in the origin of species by Natural Selection, but as the words Evolution and Darwinism are now used interchangeably, it is convenient to adopt the latter as a generic term. MR. DISRAELI ON EVOLUTION. 53 Mount of Olives, lias beautifully demon- strated the absurdity of the above position, remarking that nothing can be more monstrous than to represent a Creator as unconscious of creating. " There must be design," says the Syrian, " or all we see would be without sense, and I do not believe in the unmeaning. As for the natural forces to which all creation is now attributed, we know they are unconscious, while consciousness is as inevitable a portion of our existence as the eye or the hand. The conscious cannot be derived from the unconscious." Lothair having expressed a wish that he could assure himself of the personality of the Creator, but that he had been told that such an idea was unphilosophical, the Syrian thus replies: — "Is it more unphilosophical to believe in a personal God, omnipotent and 64 MR. DISRAELI ON EVOLUTION. omniscient, than in natural forces uncon- scious and irresistible? Is it unphiloso- phical to combine power with intelligence? Goethe, a Spinozist who did not believe in Spinoza, said that he could bring his mind to the conception that, in the centre of space, w r e might meet with a monad of pure intelligence. What may be the centre of space I leave to the daedal imagination of the author of i Faust ; ' but a monad of pure intelligence, is that more philosophical than the truth, first revealed to man amid these everlasting hills — that God made man in His own image ? " * * Lothair, Vol. III., Pp. 179, 183. CHAPTER III. "Ceuxqui out dit qu'une fatalite aveugle a produit tous les efFets que nous voyons dans le m.onde ont dit une grande absurdite ; car quelle plus grande absurdite qu'une fatalite aveugle qui aurait produit des etres intelligents." Montesquieu, De L Esprit des Lois. Sentimental opposition deprecated — Broca, Max Midler— No evidence of transmutation of species within the historic period — Flour ens— Animal Kingdom of Aristotle, the same as that of oar day. Plea of the Imperfection of the Geological Record considered— HaecM, Duke of Argyll, and Mivart — Professor Agassiz on the Immaterial Principle. In considering the validity of the arguments which can be adduced for or against the theory of Evolution, I desire to approach the subject in a spirit of toleration and impartiality, and I trust I shall say nothing in this essay to justify 56 DARWINISM TESTED BY LANGUAGE. my being classed amongst those whom Mr. Darwin describes as " curiously illus- trating the blindness of pre-conceived opinion," or amongst those whom Professor Huxley represents as " contenting them- selves with smothering the investigating spirit under the feather-bed of respected and respectable tradition." I deprecate all idea of stirring up the odium theologicum, being fully conscious of the futility of attempting to check an unwelcome and distasteful theory by means of ecclesiastical censures. I consider the doctrine of Evolu- tion as a legitimate subject for scientific inquiry ; I recognise the deep knowledge of natural history which the " Descent of Man " displays ; I fully endorse the terms of high commendation in which its literary merit has been acknowledged, and from its charm of style and elegance of SENTIMENTAL OPPOSITION DEPRECATED. 57 diction, I am not surprised that it has become equally popular in the drawing- room of the votary of fashion, as in the study of the naturalist and the theologian. I should not reject the Darwinian view of the origin of man, from any fancied notion that its adoption was derogatory to our dignity, and inconsistent with Man's position in the order of Nature, a notion which was evidently held by the poor deluded creature whose suicide was lately recorded in the public papers, and upon whose person was found a document, stating that his existence was no longer to be tolerated, since Mr. Darwin's discovery that he was descended from a monkey. Instead of sympathizing with the views of this unhappy victim of prejudice and folly, I fully echo the sentiment of the naturalist who said that he would prefer 58 PROFESSOR PAUL BROCA. being descended from a good honest monkey, to being obliged to avow himself the offspring of certain fanatical enemies of scientific knowledge and progress.* ^Professor Broca, of Paris, has developed the above idea in the following terse and eloquent language, the force of which I will not impair by a translation: — "Je ne suis pas de ceux qui meprisent les parvenus. Je trouve plus de gloire a monter qu' a descendre, et si j'admettais l'intervention des impressions sentimentales dans les sciences, je dirais, comme M. Clarapede, que j'aimerais mieux etre un singe perfectionne qu' un Adam degenere. Oui, s'il m'etait demontre que mes humbles ancetres furent des animaux inclines vers la terre, des herbivores arboricoles, freres ou cousins de ceux qui furent les ancetres des singes, loin de rougir pour mon espece de cette genealogie et de cette parente, je serais tier de revolution qu 'elle a accomplie, de l'ascension continue qui 1' a conduite au premier rang, des triomphes successifs qui Tout rendue si superieure a toutes les autres. Je me rejouirais en songeant que mes descendants, poursuivant indefiniment l'ceuvre 8plendide du progres, pourraient s'elever au-dessus de moi autant que je m'eleve au dessus des singes, et r6aliser enfin cette promesse du serpent de la Gene'se : JSritia sicut deos ! " " Sur le Transformisme," P. 2. PROFESSOR MAX MTJLLER. 59 After all, the question is not whether the theory of the Simian descent of man is palatable, or in accordance with our conventional notions, but simply and solely whether it is true. " Appeals to the pride or humility of man " says Professor Max Midler, " to scientific courage or religious piety, are all equally out of place. If it could be proved that our bodily habitat had not been created in all its perfection at the first, but had been allowed to develop for ages before it became fit to hold a human soul, should we have any right to complain ? Do we complain of the injustice of our having individually to be born or to die ; of our passing through the different stages of embryonic life ; our being made of dust, that is, of exactly the same chemical materials from which the bodies of animals are built up ? Fact against 60 DARWINISM TESTED BY LANGUAGE. fact, argument against argument, that is the rule of scientific warfare, a warfare in which to confess oneself convinced or vanquished by truth is often far more honourable than victory." * Whatever, moreover, may have been the remote origin of man, we can cheer ourselves with the thought, that for ages he has possessed a history of his own ; he has filled the world with monuments of his ambition, skill, and genius ; and he is the sole actor in a drama where other animal beings play only an accessory part. In my description of Man's Genealogical Tree, I had occasion to speak of the "Missing Link," or the absence of the intermediate forms between man and his * Lectures on Mr. Darwin's Philosophy of Language. "Frazer's Magazine," June, 1873, P. 665. THE ENGIS SKULL. 61 supposed progenitors, either in a living state or in a fossil condition. In further development of this subject, I would observe, that, in the earliest description we have of man, we find him separated from the highest brute by as wide a gulf as that which now exists between them ; the oldest human skulls are not materially inferior in capacity to those of man at the present day, as may be seen by a visit to the Anthropological department of our museums; and Professor Huxley in describing the Engis skull, which accord- ing to Sir Charles Lyell belonged to a contemporary of the Mammoth, says, that " It is a fair average skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage." * * " Man's Place in Nature," P. 156. 62 THE ANIMAL KINGDOM OF The embalmed records of three thousand years, the figures of animals and birds engraved upon the ancient Egyptian tombs and obelisks, "those hoary monuments of early science," show that there has been no beginning of a transition of species during the long space of thirty centuries. During the whole of the historical pjeriod, species have remained unchanged, they are pre- cisely what they were thousands of years ago ; there is not the slightest indication of one passing into another, or of a lower advancing to a higher ; moreover, each species has manifested in its capabilities, as well as in its organisation, certain indelible peculiarities, which have been transmitted from age to age. There is an entire and acknowledged absence of all evidence of transmutation, and none of the transition points or links of connection between one ARISTOTLE, THE SAME AS THAT OF OUR DAY. 63 species and another are anywhere discover- able, thus verifying the aphorism of M. Flourens. ' i Les especes ne ialterent point; ne passent point de Vune a V autre ; les especes sont fixes" In justification of the above state- ment, M. Flourens says, " It is two thousand years since Aristotle lived ; guided by com- parative anatomy, Aristotle divided the animal kingdom as Cuvier has done in our own day. There were in it viviparous quadrupeds or mammals, birds, oviparous quadrupeds or reptiles; there were also fish, insects, Crustacea, mollusks, radiates, or zoophytes. The animal kingdom of Aristotle is the animal kingdom of to-day. The animals which Aristotle has described, are recognized in the present time, even to the minutest particular."* * Examen du livre deM. Darwin surl'origine des especes par P. .Flourens, Merubre de l'Academie Franchise, P. 22. 64 IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL The only answer to the difficulty thus presented is, that the change of species is so slow a ])rocess, that no indications can he reasonably exjDected in the few thou- sands of years within the limits of history. When it is objected that geology presents the same difficulty, and that the genera and species of fossil animals are just as distinct as those now living, we are told that the records of Geology are too imperfect to give us full knowledge on this subject, and that innumerable intermediate and transitional forms may have passed away, leaving no trace of their existence ; or, forsooth, the fossil remains of tradi- tional links may still be entombed in some undisturbed portion of the crust of the earth, indeed, Mr. Darwin lays great stress on the fact that those regions which are the most likely to afford remains record : haeckel's views thereon. 65 connecting man with some extinct ape- like creature, have not as yet been searched by geologists. Professor Haeckel dilates at considerable length upon this imperfec- tion of the Geological Record, but whilst admitting that the " archives of creation," (Schopfungsurkunde) are most incomplete, he endeavours to explain that the palaeonto- logical gaps are due to the fact that but a small portion, perhaps not a thousandth part, of the surface of the globe has been geologically explored. He reminds us that three-fifths of the surface of the globe is submerged, and that con- sequently we can never know what fossils of primitive ages maybe buried at the bottom of the sea, although possibly they may be studied many thousand years hence, when, by reason of gradual changes, the bottoms of the present seas shall have become 66 THE DUKE OF ARGYLL'S VIEWS. dry ground.* If we say that the Ape, during the historical period, extending over thou- sands of years, has not made the slightest approximation towards becoming a man, we are told, Ah ! but you do not know what he will be in ten millions of years ; * Natiirliche Schopfungsgeschichte, Pp. 355, 356. The Duke of Argyll takes a much more logical and practical view of this subject : — " It is true," says he, "that the geological record is imperfect, but as Sir Roderick Murchison has long ago proved, there are parts of that record which are singularly complete, and in those parts we have the proofs of Creation without any indication of Development. The Silurian rocks, as regards Oceanic life, are perfect and abundant in the forms they have preserved, yet there are no Fish. The Devonian Age followed, tranquilly and without break; and in the Devonian Sea, suddenly Fish appear — appear in shoals, and in forms of the highest and most perfect type. There is no trace of links or transitiona forms between the great class of Mollusca and the great class of Fishes. There is no reason whatever to suppose that such forms, if they had existed, can have been destroyed in deposits which have preserved in wonderful perfection the minutest organisms. So much for the Past." "Primeval Man." P. 44. MR. ST. GEORGE MIVART's VIEWS. 67 to which surely, a suitable rejoinder would be, to ask, how much is ten millions time nothing ?* There is one consideration in connection with this branch of the subject which has been urged with great force by the author of Homo versus Darwin: — "Why are enormous periods of time required for the production of new species, but that there may be successive generations, each of * ITr. St. George ATivart in discussing the relation of species to time observes :— " The mass of palaeon- tological evidence is indeed overwhelmingly against minute and gradual modification. Not only are minutely transitional forms generally absent, but they are absent in cases where we might certainly a priori have expected them to be present. Had such a slow mode of origin, as Darwinians contend for, operated exclusively in all cases, it is absolutely incredible that birds, bats, and pterodactyles should have left the remains they have, and yet not a single relic be preserved, in any one instance, of any of these different forms of wing in their incipient and relatively imperfect 68 COMPARATIVE ANATOMY AS which may be supposed to have advanced on its predecessors ? Now it is clear that, in the case of numerous animals, the period of time required for this purpose would be much less than in the case of Man. We may suppose that three gene- rations of men are produced in a century. This would give ninety generations in 3,000 years, which may be regarded as the historic period in connection with this subject. But, within the same period, we functional condition ! Thus we find a wonderful (and on Darwinian principles an all but inexplicable) absence of minutely transitional forms. All the most marked groups, bats, pterodactyles, chelonians, ichthyosauria, anoura, &c, appear at once upon the scene. Even the horse, the animal whose pedigree has been probably best preserved, affords no conclusive evidence of specific origin by infinitesimal, fortuitous variations ; while some forms as the labyrinthodonts and trilobites, which seemed to exhibit gradual change, are shown by further investigation to do nothing of the sort." " Genesis of Species," Pp. 128, 129, 142. APPLIED TO THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. 69 must have had not less than 3,000 genera- tions of those numerous species of creatures which produce a fresh progeny every year, or even oftener than that. There have thus been 3,000 successive generations of many of the lower animals within a period during which men may have been expected to observe and record any remarkable changes occurring among them. What then is the sum of the changes which Mr. Darwin is able to point to within the historic period as tending to prove his hypothesis? It amounts absolutely to nothing ! Take the case of any species of animal which produces young within a year of its birth. We have reference in the writings of ancient naturalists to many of them. We have pictures of them on ancient monu- ments. We find skeletons of them in '0 EVIDENCE FROM COMPARATIVE ANATOMY. ancient tombs, and in mounds and caves. There are thus many animals living now, which can be compared with their progeni- tors of the 3,000th generation back.* Can Mr. Darwin show, then, in the case of any- one of them 3 that, by successive variations accumulated during 3,000 generations, it * Professor Haughton, in a lecture recently delivered at Trinity College, Dublin, appealed to his knowledge of natural history in corroboration of the above view, selecting for illustration two animals, about which he said Mr. Darwin's mind seemed to be particularly troubled — the Goose and the Cat. " The Assyrian inscrip- tions," he says, " show that the goose of that period was identically the same as that which we now eat for our Christmas dinner. The cat in 5,000 years has not varied in the slightest degree. Geology also is opposed to the evolution theory, for monkeys found in the fossil strata were as perfect monkeys as those now roaming the forests of Africa, the physical structure of these fossil monkeys being the same as their successors of the present day. There is, in fact, no proof that variation has ever gone on until it has resulted in the production of a new species." EVIDENCE FROM COMPARATIVE ANATOMY. 71 has sensibly advanced towards some higher form ? Can he show that 3,000 generations have in any instance, done aught towards proving the truth of his hypothesis? It appears that he cannot point to a single case as yielding him support. Three thousand generations have done literally nothing for his hypothesis. If so, neither would 30,000 nor 300,000, for if you multiply nothing by a million, it will be nothing still."* I see nothing in the doctrine of evolution, as applied to the origin of man, that is inconsistent with Natural Eeligion. We know that in intra-uterine life, we pass through a preparatory stage which we can but imperfectly realise and understand, and therefore we can readily admit that *"Homo versus Darwin," by "W. P. Lyon, B.A., P. 138; a most thoughtful, logical, and philosophical contribution to the Anti-Darwinian literature. F 72 EVOLUTION AND REVEALED RELIGION. the Creator, if He had chosen, could have endowed us with a previous existence in the form of a less perfect animal than man ; I say, the Darwinian hypothesis of the origin of man is not inconsistent with Natural Religion, but it is directly opposed to Revealed Religion, which tells us that " God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Moreover, a belief in the progressive development of man from any inferior animal whatever, is absolutely incom- patible with a belief of the existence in man of an immortal spirit ; for, as stated by a thoughtful writer, " by no conceivable process, can that which is essentially not material, be developed from any combina- tion of mere material elements." * * "Faith and Free Thought/' P. 57. DARWINISM TESTED BY LANGUAGE. 73 My intention is not to attempt to enter into a general criticism of the validity of the arguments which can be adduced for or against the Darwinian theory ; this would lead me far beyond the limits within which I propose to confine this essay ; moreover, this has been done over and over again by far abler hands than mine. I propose to test Darwinism mainly, how- ever, in reference to its bearings upon the faculty of Articulate Language. Before entering upon the subject of Language, it is desirable to make a brief review of the "Descent of Man" itself, for although I have already discussed its author's doctrine in general terms, it is important to analyse a little more closely the exact line of argument adopted in this work. Those who have read the " Descent of 74 ANALOGY BETWEEN MAN AND Man," will remember that the author begins by saying that he who wishes to decide whether man is the modified descen- dant of some pre-existing form, would probably first inquire whether man varies, however slightly, in bodily structure, and in mental faculties ; and if so, whether the variations are transmitted to his offspring in accordance with the laws which prevail with the lower animals. He then proceeds to compare the bodily structure of man and that of the lower animals, remarking that all the bones in his skeleton can be compared with the corresponding bones in the monkey, bat, or seal ; that it is the same with his muscles, nerves, blood- vessels, and viscera, — in fact, he shows that there is a remarkable correspondence between man and the higher mammals, especially the ape, in the structure of the ANIMALS IN PHYSICAL STRUCTURE. 75 brain and other parts of the body. He then calls attention to the fact that man is liable to receive from the lower animals, and to communicate to them, certain diseases, as hydrophobia, small-pox, the glanders, &c, a fact which he says proves the close similarity of their tissues and blood, both in minute structure and com- position, far more plainly than does their comparison under the best microscope, or by the aid of tbe best chemical analysis. He then points out the resemblance between man and other animals in their embryonic condition, remarking that man is developed from an ovule, about the 125th of an inch in diameter, which differs in no respect from the ovules of other animals, and that the embryo itself at a very early period can hardly be distinguished from that of other members of the vertebrate 76 VIEWS OF HODGE AND AGASS1Z. kingdom.* It is, in short, says lie, scarcely possible to exaggerate the close corres- pondence in general structure, in the minute structure of the tissues, in chemical composition and in constitution, between * It is an established fact in natural history, that all animals may be traced to an ovule or simple little cell ; but although no difference between these various cells may be discernible by our present means of investiga- tion, the issue clearly shows that there must be an essential difference, for the ovum of a dog invariably becomes a dog ; that of an ape becomes an ape ; and that of a man becomes a man. Professor Hodge, in speaking of this subject, says " the germs of a fish and of a bird are indistinguishable by the microscope or by chemical analysis ; yet the one, under all conditions, develops into a fish and the other into a bird. Why is this ? There is no physical force, whether light, heat, electricity, or anything else, which makes the slightest approximation to accounting for this result " Another American philosopher, Professor Agassiz, in explanation of the above facts, says, " that an immaterial principle, which no external influence can prevent or modify, is present, and determines its future form, so that the egg of a hen can produce only a chicken, and the egg of a codfish only a cod." THE MENTAL POWERS OF MAN AND ANIMALS. 77 man and the higher animals, especially the anthropomorphous apes. Having cited various authorities to prove the truth of the above statements, he finishes his introductory chapter by saying, that time will before long come, when it will be thought wonderful that naturalists, who were well acquainted with the comparative structure of man and other mammals, should have believed that each was the work of a separate act of creation. Having shown that there is no essential difference between man and the higher mammals in their corporeal organisation, he then passes on to the consideration of the mental qualities, where, of course, a much wider gulf would be expected to exist; and even here, he points out that the germs of all our intellectual character- istics, and some of our moral, are to be 78 COMPARISON OF MENTAL POWERS. found among the lower animals. He argues that man and the higher animals, especially the primates, have the same senses, intuitions, and sensations ; similar passions, affections, and emotions ; that they feel wonder and curiosity ; that they possess the same faculties of imitation, attention, memory, love, imagination, and even reason, though in different degrees. Having admitted that this difference is enormous — even if we compare the mind of one of the lowest savages, who has no words to express any number higher than four, and who uses no abstract terms for the commonest objects or affections, with that of the most highly organised ape — he insists, nevertheless, that the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, is certainly one of degree and not of hind. 79 The main conclusion arrived at by Mr. Darwin is, that man is descended from some lowly -organised form, and that " with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system — with all these exalted powers — Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."* I wish here to make a brief comment upon a most able notice of the " Descent of Man," which appeared in the British Quarterly Review for October, 1871. Agreeing as I do with the general tenor of the writer's remarks, I most entirely differ * " Descent of Man," Vol. II., P. 405. 80 MINUTE STRUCTURE OF MAN AND ANIMALS. from him in one essential point. After disputing the truth of Mr. Darwin's assumed similarity between the minute structure of man and animals, he goes on to say, "If it could be shown that in their minute anatomy the tissues of an ape so closely resembled those of a dog on the one hand, and of a man on the other, as that they could not be distinguished by the microscope, the fact would be of the highest importance, and would add enor- mously to the evidence already adduced by Mr. Darwin." I cannot agree with the inference here drawn by the able reviewer, who seems to imply that Mr. Darwin's theory is unassailable if he can prove his assertion as to the close similarity in the minute structure of man and animals. I am ready to admit this similarity ; I will even strengthen Mr. Darwin's position by DR. J. C. RICHARDSON ON BLOOD-STAINS, 81 admitting that there is a remarkable correspondence in the vital properties of the blood of man and animals, as shown by the fact that in the case of apparent death in man from loss of blood, resuscita- tion has taken place in consequence of the transfusion into the system of the blood of an animal, as the sheep or the calf.* It is * This analogy, however, in the vital properties of the blood must not be supposed to imply identity in the chemical composition. On the contrary, the microscope and chemical analysis have shown not only that the blood of man differs from that of the lower animals, but that the blood of each species of animal differs from that of every other species. It is stated even in our modern treatises on Medical Jurisprudence, that the microscope can merely determine whether blood is derived from the class Mammalia, or from a bird, fish, or reptile ; but an American writer, Dr. J. C. Kichardson, in an able and elaborate forensic essay on the diagnosis of blood- stains, has recently shown that the red blood- discs of animals with rounded corpuscles, are just as distinct in different animals as are different kinds of shot, and that we are now able, by the aid of high 82 BRAIN OF MAN COMPARED WITH THAT idle to attempt to shirk the import of these physiological results. I admit the force of them. I do not deny that man is an animal, and that he has the essential properties of a highly organised one ; he is constructed on the same general type or model as other mammals. All vertebrate animals have many characteristics in common, chemical composition, cellular structure, laws of reproduction, growth, decay, and death ; and the resemblance may even be extended to the Brain, where powers of the microscope, and under favourable circum- stances, to positively distinguish stains produced by human blood from those caused by the blood of various other animals, and this even after the lapse of five years from the date of their primary produjtion! The facts upon which these statements are founded are fully discussed in the British Quarterly for October, 1871, and in the American Journal of Medical Sciences for July, 1874, to which periodicals I would refer the reader for much valuable information upon this important subject. Fig. VII. — Bkain of Man (Homo). Fig. VIIT. — ]^kain of Orang fSimia). OF THE ORANG, CHIMPANZEE, AND GORILLA. 85 every chief fissure and fold in Man has its analogy in the Orang, the Chimpanzee , and the Gorilla, as may be seen by comparing the Brain of Man with that of the Orang, as represented in Figures 7 and 8. I admit all this, and I agree with Hallam that " the framework of the body of him who has weighed the stars, and made the lightning his slave, approaches to that of the speechless brute that wanders in the forests of Sumatra." Whilst, however, conceding that Man, in his purely physical nature, is closely allied to certain members of the brute creation, I entirely repudiate the inference drawn from this analogy by Mr. Darwin and other writers of the modern school of thought ; for supposing it to be proved to a mathe- matical demonstration, that Man is like an Ape, bone for bone, muscle for muscle, 86 LANGUAGE A DIFFERENCE OF KIND. nerve for nerve, what then? What does this prove, if it can be shown that Man possesses a distinctive attribute, of which not a trace can be found in the Ape, — an attribute of such a nature as to create an immeasurable gulf between the two ? This attribute I assert to be the faculty of Articulate Language, which I maintain to be a difference, not only of degree, but of hind. CHAPTER IV. Ta he gtooTOKa iced reTpa7roha ^wa aWo aWrjv a} 7 and the irveviia or organ of God-consciousness, which last differentiates him from the brute which only possesses the awfxa and the -^%/y. For much valuable information on this im- portant subject I would refer the reader to Mr. Heard's Treatise on The Tripartite Nature of Man, also to some interesting remarks by Sir Tilson Marsh in the Transactions of the Victoria Institute, Vol. V., P. 287. There is another class of reasoners, who soaring higher into the sphere of 1 transcendental obscurantism,' affect the scepticism of the Pyrrhonist school, who 210 THE GERMAN GEOLOGISTS ON maintained that there was no criterion in truth, and whose formula was " We assert nothing — no, not even that we assert nothing." But although they are sceptical upon every other point, they have no doubts whatever about the origin of matter and the genesis of species. Evolution, they cry, magical word, gives us the key to all the mysteries that surround us, enabling us to stride the so-called gulf between mind and matter, and to sweep away the intellectual cobwebs woven by men who lived before the age of enlighten- ment. Natural Science now teaches us that the difference between so-called organic and in-organic nature is altogether arbitrary, and vital force, as commonly conceived, is a chimera.* There is no distinction between living and dead * Du Bois ReymoncL LIFE, MATTER, AND FORCE. 211 matter, and vitality is a metaphysical ghost, (ein metaphysisches Gespenst). 'Life,' says Virchow, ' is only a special, and the most complicated act of mechanics; a portion of the sum-total of matter emerges from time to time out of the usual course of its movements, enters into special organico-chemical combinations, and after having continued therein for a certain time, again reverts to the general modes of motion.' * The brain produces thought just as the liver secretes bile, or as oxygen and sulphur * 'Das Leben ist nur eine besondre, imd zwar die cornplicirteste xlct der Mechanik ; ein Theil der Gesanimtinaterie tritt von Zeit zu. Zeit aus dem gewohnlichen Gange ihrer Bewegungen heraus in besondre organisch — chemische Yerbindungen, und nachdem er eine Zeit lang darin verharrt hat, kehrt er wieder zu den allgemeinen Bewegungsverhaltnissen zuriick.' Gesatnmtte Alhandlungen zu wissenschaftlicher Medicin s. 25. Yon R. Yirchow. 212 VIEWS OF THE GERMAN GEOLOGISTS. produce sulphuric acid ; in fact, all the varied phenomena of nature are nothing but the molecular changes of matter, and volition and consciousness are mere physical manifestations ; give us matter and motion and we will make a Universe ! ' If,' says Haeckel, l anybody feels the necessity of representing the origin of matter as the work of a supernatural creative force independent of matter itself, I would remind him that this idea of an immaterial force creating matter in the first instance, is an article of faith which has nothing to do with human science. Where Faith begins, Science ends.' (Wo der Grlaube anfangt, hort die Wissenschaft auf.)* In the above extravagant passage, Professor Haeckel is not consistent with * "Natiirliche Schopfungsgeschichte," s. 8. VIEWS OF THE GERMAN NEOLOGISTS. 213 himself, for in the last page of his History of the Creation, he repeats the cry of the philosopher of antiquity, TvwOi oeavTov, Know thyself. Now let me ask of Professor Haechel, does he know himself? Can he understand the mysteries of his own existence, and yet he knows and feels that he lives, although he may not get beyond the formula of Descartes when he said, " Cogito, ergo sum." Can he say that his own existence is merely ' the product of poetic imagination] for that is his definition of Faith ? His text-books of physiology will explain to him all that science can tell him about ontogeny, or the process by which the young of living bodies are produced and their species continued ■ — how the young owe their origin to the evolution of a complex organised structure termed an egg, and 214 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE. how from this egg, under the influence of certain favourable circumstances, the young animal is produced, by an intricate process of vital growth ; when all this is learnt, there still remains the Mystery of Life, and man in his perplexity may well say with Coleridge : — ' What is there in thee, Man, that can be known ? Dark fluxion, all unfixable by thought, A phantom dim of past and future wrought, Vain sister of the worm — life, death, soul, clod, Ignore thyself, and strive to know thy God ! ' Take, again, the vegetable world ; a seed which has been for three thousand years buried in the tomb of an Egyptian mummy, is suddenly extricated from its charnel-house, exposed to the influence of atmospheric air and other favourable circumstances, and in due course it becomes a living plant. Now all that science can tell us about this is, that under certain THE MYSTERY OF LIFE. 215 altered physical conditions, the seed has been able to ' germinate. 1 Now, what is it that enables the seed to germinate, whilst the stone remains inactive ? What, in short, is the Mystery of Life ? Unlike the philosophers of the present day, the great Sir Isaac Newton, on being asked a similar question, as to why an apple fell to the ground — a fact upon which he founded his grand discovery of the law of gravitation — he replied, f It is beyond the limit of human reason, it is the will of God.' One of the most distinguished phy- siologists of the day, Dr. Beale, in writing upon this subject says, l there is a mystery in life — a mystery which has never been fathomed, and which appears greater the more deeply the phenomena of life are studied and contemplated. In 216 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE. living centres — far more central than the centre is seen by the highest magnifying powers — in centres of living matter, where the eye cannot penetrate but towards which the understanding may tend — proceed changes of the nature of which the most advanced physicists and chemists fail to afford us the faintest conception, nor is there the slightest reason to think that the nature of these changes will ever be ascertained by physical investigation; inasmuch as they are certainly of an order or nature totally distinct from that to which any other phenomenon known to us can be relegated.'* In their attempts to gauge the depths of the Universe and to solve the various problems by which they are surrounded, * " The Mystery of Life," P. 55, 1871. THE MYSTERY OF LIFE. 217 philosophers have groped with the taper of science into the dark caverns from whence seem to issue the springs of humanity, but they have failed to explain the Mystery of Life — a theme essentially beyond the grasp of human intellect, and which will not be understood by the loftiest mind in far distant ages, when the scien- tists of the present day ' like streaks of morning cloud, shall have melted into the infinite azure of the past.' The question of the origin of the human race has been treated too much as a zoological subject, ignoring the testimony of history, of language, and of other branches of knowledge ; Haeckel even forbids the right to speak on this topic to all who are not thoroughly versed in Biology, which he makes the final court of appeal in all scientific matters. 218 plato versus darwin. The nineteenth century seems disposed to stake all its hopes on Natural Science, heedless of the fact that Science is ever varying, and that the science of one age becomes the nonsense of the next. I need scarcely add that the Transmutation theory itself is nothing new, for, under the name of metempsychosis, it was in vogue in the earliest times. It is well known that the Egyptians believed that the soul, on leaving the body, passed into the form of some animal, after- wards through the forms of birds and fishes, till it again entered a human frame. Plato, in his Tima3us, makes animals derive their origin from man by successive degradations, the first transition being from man into woman, women being considered as degenerate and effeminate IS THE APE A DEGENERATE MAN? 219 men ! The race of quadrupeds sprang from men who had no philosophy, and as they never looked up to the heavens nor cared for celestial objects, their anterior limbs became dragged down to the earth by the force of affinity, and as a necessary consequence of their tastes and occupations. The race of birds was created out of innocent, light-minded men, whose hair became transmuted into feathers and wings. He then enumerates the laws by which animals pass into one another, according to their degrees of knowledge or ignorance. It will be seen, therefore, that Plato made animals to come into being by degradation from man, and according to him an Ape would be a degenerate Man, instead of Man being an improved Ape, as some of our modern philosophers 220 THE VARIATIONS IN SCIENCE. would have us believe. I venture to affirm that there is quite as much evidence in favour of one view as of the other. In thus commenting on the ever varying tendencies of science,* I need not say that nothing can be further from my intention than to discourage scientific study and research. I have been engaged in the pursuit of science during the greater part of my life, and I yield to none in my full recognition of the incalculable benefits accruing to mankind from the results of * The Variations in Science, under the different heads of Astronomy, Geology, Anthropology, Egyptology, and Theology, are well set forth by the Key. B. "W". Savile, in a very erudite work entitled "The Truth of the Bible," in which the author deprecates the notion that Scripture, rightly understood, is opposed to the teachings of Science. He boldly asserts that the Book of Nature and the Book of Revelation equally lie open to our inspection, and that Religion has nothing to fear but everything to hope from the progress of real Science. THE TRIUMPHS OF SCIENCE. 221 modern scientific discoveries. Science has conquered the elements ; it has annihilated distnnce ; it says to the Light — paint me that picture on that piece of glass; it says to Electricity — flash me that message with the speed of lightning to yon distant clime ; it says to the Lightning itself — come thou clown that rod and bury thyself in the earth! I hail these achievements as triumphs of human intellect, and I should as soon attempt to stop the progress of the avalanche which has become dislodged from the mountain top, as to try and bar the path of scientific progress and discovery. I am prepared to welcome light and knowledge from whatever quarter it may come, being fully convinced that all systems and theories irreconcilable with truth are built upon the sand and must ultimately be swept 222 EXCELSIOR. away. Nay more, I would not have scientists linger with complacency on the heights ahead}- attained, but with the confident assurance that fresh trophies are within their reach, and that fresh benefits are to be conferred on mankind, I would emblazon their scientific banner with the motto Excelsior, warning them, however, against the prevailing tendency to erect Science into an idol, to ignore the innate faculties of manidnd, and to over-rule the dictates of common sense, In conclusion, I desire to say that I entertain no preconceived hostility, no prejudice whatever, against Mr. Darwin and those who share his views, and I most certainly decline to be classed among those who would reject the doctrine of evolution simply from any fancied notion THE IMPERISHABLE EGO. 223 that its adoption is derogatory to man's position in the scheme of nature, for as Mr. Froude philosophically remarks "it is nothing to me how the Maker of me has been pleased to construct the organised substance which I call my body, It is mine, but it is not I. The vov?, the intellectual spirit, being an ovala — an essence — I believe to be an imperishable something which has been engendered in me from another source." Nor should I reject the evolution theory on the ground of any antagonism between it and the power of the Deity, for the same Power that planned the glorious temple of Nature, which has ' the earth for its emerald floor; its roof the sapphire firmament; the sun and stars its pendent lamps ; its music the murmur of streams, the pealing thunder, and the everlasting 224 CONCLUSION. roar of ocean/ — I say this same power could easily, during countless aeons of geological ages, have caused us to pass through the probationary stages of ascidian, fish, reptile, monkey, and on to man, if it had so willed it; but as science has failed to show that it is so, I pin my faith to the story in the Grand Old Book, which tells us that man was created in the divine image, and I accept the tradition that Man sprang as Man direct from the hands of his God. THE END. Printed by Henry Jr. Stacy, Norwich. / ton Theological Seminary-Spee 1 1012 01089 9047 DATE DUE "'^flMHtt DEMCO 38-297 _