The Ascent Of Man

THE ASCENT OF MAN.

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THE LOWELL LECTURES

ON

THE ASCENT OF MAN

BY

HENRY DRUMMOND, 
Dee ahs RaStE een Gus

FOURTH EDITION.

NEW YORK 
JAMES POTT & CO., PUBLISHERS 
114 FIFTH AVENUE 
1894.

COPYRIGHTED 1894 
BY 
HENRY DRUMMOND.

Press of J. J. Little & Co, 
Astor Place, New York

PREFACE.

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

Though its stand-point is Evolution and its subject 
Man, this book is far from being designed to prove  that Man has relations, compromising or otherwise,  with lower animals. Its theme is Ascent, not Descent, 
It is a Story, not an Argument. And Evolution, in

vi PREFACE.

the narrow sense in which it is often used when ap-  plied to Man, plays little part in the drama outlined  here. So far as the general scheme of Evolution is  introduced—and in the Introduction and elsewhere  this is done at length—the object is the important one  of pointing out how its nature has been misconceived,  indeed how its greatest factor has been overlooked in  almost all contemporary scientific thinking. Evo-  lution -was given to the modern world out of focus,  was first seen by it out of focus, and has remained  out of focus to the present hour. Its general basis  has never been re-examined since the time of Mr. 
Darwin; and not only such speculative sciences as 
Teleology, but working sciences like Sociology, have  been led astray by a fundamental omission. An Evo-  lution Theory drawn to scale, and with the lights and  shadows properly adjusted—adjusted to the whole  truth and reality of Nature and of Man—is needed at  present as a standard for modern thought; and though  a reconstruction of such magnitude is not here pre-  sumed, a primary object of these pages is to supply  at least the accents for such a scheme.

Beyond an attempted re-adjustment of the accents  there is nothing here for the specialist—except, it may  be, the reflection of his own work. Nor, apart from 
Teleology, is there anything for the theologian. The  limitations of a lecture-audience made the treatment  of such themes as might appeal to him impossible ;  while owing to the brevity of the course, the Ascent  had to be stopped at a point where all the higher in-  terest begins. All that the present volume covers is  the Ascent of Man, the Individual, during the earlier  stages of his evolution. It is a study in embryos, mn

PREFACE. vii

rudiments, in installations; the scene is the primeval  forest; the date, the world’s dawn. Tracing his rise  as far as Family Life, this history does not even  follow him into the Tribe; and as it is only then that  social and moral life begins in earnest, no formal dis-  cussion of these high themes occurs. All the higher  forces and phenomena with which the sciences of 
Psychoiogy, Ethics, and Theology usually deal come  on the world’s stage at a later date, and no one need  be surprised if the semi-savage with whom we leave  off is found wanting in so many of the higher poten-  tialities of a human being.

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

HENRY DRUMMOND.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

PE VOLURION SUN Gad NER Ader iret aise ers eee 
Il. THe Missing Factor IN CURRENT THEORIES.... 
Ill. WHy was EVOLUTION THE METHOD CHOSEN.....

Ve VOU PIO NEAINID NS © OLO OG Nae sensi ete wera lens! clsieeile

CHAPTER I.

DEEPA SCHNG OHS TED) BODY “yivic. +. rdoonnsobodees

CHAPTER II.

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.....,.....

xe CONTENTS.

CHAPTER III.

PAGE 
THE ARREST OF THE BODY..........essereeceeesceos 99 
CHAPTER, LY.

(BES) IDYAMWIN! @e’ MMDNIO). coosononecaonutdonnpsnowuoouoK0ds 119 
CHAPTER V.

(S05) MOWAT Ol WAIN CHU NEUS so06 co rooboaaaseoacc 153 
CHAPTER VI.

DAES TRU GG LHe HORSUE Es precise emeecctteeisetiete 189

CHAPTER VII.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 215

CONTENTS. <a

CHAPTER VIII.

PAGE 
MBN a, TIN KONDOMUKONS, Ola ANG WKOMMEIDIN Sa o5 oo camadanoooodas 267 
CHAPTER IX.

SUE, IO SCOWAUMM COIN) OI GAY AMMEWDIs Goeunnee eyek cooote 292

CHAPTER X.

TENG @ TEU DUO IN rao ctarciece iors srspotelinrahaieatayerste ooh lerauetter sy akereretone cel 319

INTRODUCTION.

if

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL.

Tue last romance of Science, the most daring it has  ever tried to pen, is the Story of the Ascent of Man. 
Withheld from all the wistful eyes that have gone be-  fore, whose reverent ignorance forbade their wisest  minds to ask to see it, this final volume of Natural 
History has begun to open with our century’s close. 
In the monographs of His and Minot, the Embryology  of Man has already received a just expression; Darwin  and Haeckel have traced the origin of the Animal- 
Body; the researches of Romanes mark a beginning  with the Evolution of Mind; Herbert Spencer has  elaborated theories of the development of Morals; 
Edward Caird of the Evolution of Religion. Supple-  menting the contributions of these authorities, verify-  ing, criticising, combating, rebutting, there works a  multitude of others who have devoted their lives to  the same rich problems, and already every chapter of  the bewildering story has found its editors.

Yet, singular though the omission may seem, no  connected outline of this great drama has yet been

2 INTRODUCTION.

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

The day is forever past when science need apolo-  gize for treating Man as an object of natural research. 
Hamlet’s “ being of large discourse, looking before and  after” is withal a part of Nature, and can neither be  nade larger nor smaller, anticipate less nor prophesy  less, because we investigate, and perhaps discover, the  secret of his past. And should that past be proved to  be related in undreamed-of ways to that of all other  things in Nature, “all other things” have that to gain  by the alliance which philosophy and theology for  centuries have striven to win for them. Every step  in the proof of the oneness in a universal evolutionary  process of this divine humanity of ours is a step in the

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL.

oo

proof of the divinity of all lower things. And what is  of infinitely greater moment, each footprint discovered  in the Ascent of Man is a guide to the step to be  taken next. To discover the rationale of social prog-  ress is the ambition of this age. There is an extraor-  dinary human interest abroad about this present  world itself, a yearning desire, not from curious but  for practical reasons, to find some light upon the  course; and as the goal comes nearer the eagerness  passes into suspense to know the shortest and the  quickest road to reach it. Hence the Ascent of Man  is not only the noblest problem which science can ever  study, but the practical bearings of this theme are  great beyond any other on the roll of knowledge.

Now that the first rash rush of the evolutionary  invasion is past, and the sins of its youth atoned for  by sober concession, Evolution is seen to be neither  more nor less than the story of creation as told by  those who know it best. “Evolution,” says Mr. 
Huxley, “or development is at present employed in  biology as a general name for the history of the steps  by which any living being has acquired the morpho-  logical and the physiological characters which dis-  tinguish it.’? Though applied specifically to plants  and animals this definition expresses the chief sense  in which Evolution is to be used scientifically at  present. We shall use the word, no doubt, in. others  of its many senses ; but after all the blood spilt, Evo-  lution is simply “history,” a “history of steps,” a 
“ veneral name,” for the history of the steps by which  the world has come to be what it is. According to  this general definition, the story of Evolution is nar-

? Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th Ed.

4 INTRODUCTION.

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

This story will be outlined here partly for the story  and partly for a purpose. <A historian dare not have  a prejudice, but he cannot escape a purpose—the pur-  pose, conscious or unconscious, of unfolding the pur-  pose which lies behind the facts which he narrates. 
The interest of a drama—the authorship of the play  apart—is inthe players, their character, their motives,  and the tenaency of their action. It is impossible to  treat these players as automata. Even if automata,  those in the audience are not. Hence, where inter-  pretation seems lawful, or comment warranted by the  facts, neither will be withheld.

To give an account of Evolution, it need scarcely be

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL. 5

remarked, is not to account for it. No living thinker  has yet found it possible to account for Evolution. 
Mr. Herbert Spencer’s famous definition of Evolution  as “fa change from an indefinite incoherent homogene-  ity to a definite coherent heterogeneity through contin-  uous differentiations and integrations ” !—the formula  of which the Contemporary Reviewer remarked that 
“the universe may well have heaved a sigh of relief  when, through the cerebration of an eminent thinker,  it had been delivered of this account of itself ”—is  simply a summary of results, and throws no light,  though it is often supposed to do so, upon ultimate  causes. While it is true, as Mr. Wallace affirms in his  latest work, that “Descent with modification is now  universally accepted as the order of nature in the  organic world,” there is everywhere at this moment  the most disturbing uncertainty as to how the Ascent  even of species has been brought about. The attacks  on the Darwinian theory from the outside were never  so keen as are the controversies now raging in scien-  tific circles, over the fundamental principles of Dar-  winism itself. On at least two main points—sexual  selection and the origin of the higher mental charac-  teristics of man—Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, co-dis-  coverer with Darwin of the principle of Natural Selec-  tion though he be, directly opposes his colleague. 
The powerful attack of Weismann on the Darwinian  assumption of the inheritability of acquired characters  has opened one of the liveliest controversies of recent  years, and the whole field of science is hot with con-  troversies and discussions. In his “ Germ-Plasm,” the 
German naturalist believes himself to have finally 
1 Data of Ethics, p. 65.

6 INTRODUCTION.

disposed of both Darwin’s “gemmules ” and Herbert 
Spencer’s “primordial units,” while Eimer breaks a  lance with Weismann in defence of Darwin, and 
Herbert Spencer replies for himself, assuring us that 
“either there has been inheritance of acquired charac-  ters or there has been no evolution.”

It is the greatest compliment to Darwinism that it  should have survived to deserve this era of criticism. 
Meantime all prudent men can do no other than hold  their judgment in suspense both as to that specific  theory of one department of Evolution which is called 
Darwinism, and as to the factors and causes of Evolu-  tion itself. No one asks more of Evolution at present  than permission to use it as a working theory. Un-  doubtedly there are cases now before Science where it  is more than theory—the demonstration from Yale,  for instance, of the Evolution of the Horse; and from 
Steinheim of the transmutation of Planorbis. In these  cases the missing links have come in one after an-  other, and in series so perfect, that the evidence for  their evolution is irresistible. “On the evidence of 
Paleontology,” says Mr. Huxley in the Hneyclopedia 
Britannica, “the evolution of many existing forms of  animal life from their predecessors is no longer an hy-  pothesis but an historical fact.” And even as to Man,  most naturalists agree with Mr. Wallace who “fully  accepts Mr. Darwin’s conclusion as to the essential  identity of Man’s bodily structure with that of the  higher mammalia and his descent from some ancestral  form common to man and the anthropoid apes,” for 
“the evidence of such descent appears overwhelming  and conclusive.” ? But as to the development of the

1 Darwinism, p. 451.

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL. a

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

These, nevertheless, are cold words with which to  speak of a Vision—for Evolution is after all a 
Vision—which is revolutionizing the world of Nature  and of thought, and, within living memory, has opened  up avenues into the past and vistas into the future  such as science has never witnessed before. While  many of the details of the theory of Evolution are in  the crucible of criticism, and while the field of modern  science changes with such rapidity that in almost  every department the text-books of ten years ago are  obsolete to-day, it is fair to add that no one of these  changes, nor all of them together, have touched the  general theory itself except to establish its strength,  its value, and its universality. Even more remarkable

8 INTRODUCTION.

than the rapidity of its conquest is the authority with  which the doctrine of development has seemed to  speak to the most authoritative minds of our time. 
Of those who are in the front rank, of those who by  their knowledge have, by common consent, the right to  speak, there are scarcely any who do not in some form  employ it in working and in thinking. Authority  may mean little; the world has often been mistaken ;  but when minds so different as those of Charles 
Darwinandof T. H. Green, of Herbert Spencer and of 
Robert Browning, build half the labors of their life on  this one law, it is impossible, and especially in the ab-  sence of any other even competing principle at the pres-  ent hour, to treat it as a baseless dream. Only the  peculiar nature of this great generalization can account  for the extraordinary enthusiasm of this acceptance. 
Evolution has done for Time what Astronomy has  done for Space. As sublime to the reason as the 
Science of the Stars, as overpowering to the imagina-  tion, it has thrown the universe into a fresh perspec-  tive, and given the human*mind a new dimension. 
Eyolution involves not so much a change of opinion as  a change in man’s whole view of the world and of life. 
It is not the statement of a mathematical proposition  which men are called upon to declare true or false. It  is a method of looking upon Nature. Science for cent-  uries devoted itself to the cataloguing of facts and  the discovery of laws. Each worker toiled in his own  little place—the geologist in his quarry, the botanist  in his garden, the biologist in his laboratory, the  astronomer in his observatory, the historian in his  library, the archeologist in his museum. Suddenly  these workers looked up; they spoke to one another ;

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL. 9

they had each discovered a law; they whispered its  name. It was Evolution. Henceforth their work was  one, science was one, the world was one, and mind,  which discovered the oneness, was one.

Such being the scope of the theory, it is essential that  for its interpretation this universal character be rec-  ognized, and no phenomenon in nature or in human  nature be left out of the final reckoning. It is equally  clear that in making that interpretation we must begin  with the final product, Man. If Evolution can be  proved to include Man, the whole course of Evolution  and the whole scheme of Nature from that moment  assume a hew significance. The beginning must then  be interpreted from the end, not the end from the  beginning. An engineering workshop is unintelligible  until we reach the room where the completed engine  stands. Everything culminates in that final product,  is contained in it, isexplained by it. The Evolution of 
Man is also the complement and corrective of all other  forms of Evolution. From this height only is there a  full view, a true perspective, a consistent world. The  whole mistake of naturalism has been to interpret 
Nature from the stand-point of the atom—to study  the machinery which drives this great moving world  simply as machinery, forgetting that the ship has any  passengers, or the passengers any captain, or the  captain any course. It is as great a mistake, on  the ‘other hand, for the theologian to separate off  the ship from the passengers as for the naturalist to  separate off the passengers from the ship. It is he  who cannot include Man among the links of Evolution  who has greatly to fear the theory of development. 
In his jealousy for that religion which seems to him

10 INTRODUCTION.

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

If the theological mind be called upon to make this  expansion, the scientific man must be asked to enlarge  his view in another direction. If he insists upon  including Man in his scheme of Evolution, he must  see to it that he include the whole Man. For him  at least no form of Evolution is scientific, or is to be  considered, which does not include the whole Man,  and all that is in Man, and all the work and thought  and life and aspiration of Man. The great moral facts,  the moral forces so far as they are proved to exist, the  moral consciousness so far as it is real, must come  within its scope. Human History must be as much a  part of it as Natural History. The social and religious  forces must no more be left outside than the forces  of gravitation or of life. The reason why the natural-  ist does not usually include these among the factors in 
Evolution is not oversight, but undersight. Some-  times, no doubt, he may take at their word those who  assure him that Evolution has nothing to do with  those higher things, but the main reason is simply that  his work does not lie on the levels where those forces  come into play. The specialist is not to be blamed for  this ; limitation is his strength. But when the special-

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 11

ist proceeds to reconstruct the universe from his little  corner of it, and especially from his level of it, he not  only injures science and philosophy, but may fatally  mislead his neighbors. The man who is busy with  the stars will never come across Natural Selection, yet  surely must he allow for Natural Selection in his con-  struction of the world as a whole. He who works  among star-fish will encounter little of Mental Evolu-  tion, yet will he not deny that it exists. The stars  have voices, but there are other voices; the star-fishes  have activities, but there are other activities. Man,  body, soul, spirit, are not only to be considered, but  are first to be considered in any theory of the world. 
You cannot describe the life of kings, or arrange their  kingdoms, from the cellar beneath the palace. “ Art,”  as Browning reminds us,

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

Tl. 
THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES.

But it is not so much in ignoring Man that evo-  lutionary philosophy has gone astray; for of that  error it has seriously begun to repent. What we  have now to charge against it, what is a main object  of these pages to point out, is that it has misread 
Nature herself. In “fixing on a part” whereby to 
“reconstruct the ultimate,” it has fixed upon a part

12 INTRODUCTION.

which is not the most vital part, and the reconstruc-  tions, therefore, have come to be wholly out of focus. 
Fix upon the wrong “ part,” and the instability of the  fabric builé upon it is a foregone conclusion. Now,  although reconstructions of the cosmos in the light of 
Evolution are the chief feature of the science of our  time, in almost no case does even a hint of the true  scientific stand-point appear to be perceived. And  although it anticipates much that we should prefer  to leave untouched until it appears in its natural set-  ting, the gravity of the issues makes it essential to  summarize the whole situation now.

The root of the error hes, indirectly rather than  directly, with Mr. Darwin. In 1859, through the  publication of the Origin of Species, he offered to the  world what purported to be the final clue to the  course of living Nature. That clue was the principle  of the Struggle for Life. After the years of storm  and stress which follow the intrusion into the world  of all great thoughts, this principle was universally  accepted as the key to all the sciences which deal  with life. So ceaseless was Mr. Darwin’s emphasis  upon this factor, and so masterful his influence, that,  after the first sharp conflict, even the controversy died  down. With scarce a challenge the Struggle for Life  became accepted by the scientific world as the govern-  ing factor in development, and the drama of Evolution  was made to hinge entirely upon its action. It  became the “part” from which science benceforth  went on “to reconstruct the whole,” and _ biology,  sociology, and teleology, were built anew on_ this  foundation.

That the Struggle for Life has been a prominent

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 13

actor in the drama is certain. Further research has  only deepened the impression of the magnitude and  universality of this great and far-reaching law. But  that it is the sole or even the main agent in the  process of Evolution must be denied. Creation is  a drama, and no drama was ever put upon the  stage with only one actor. The Struggle for Life is  the “ Villain” of the piece, no more; and, like the 
“ Villain” in the play, its chief function is to re-act  upon the other players for higher ends. There is, in  point of fact, a second factor which one might venture  to call the Struggle for the Life of Others, which plays  an equally prominent part. Even in the early stages  of development, its contribution is as real, while in the  world’s later progress—under the name of Altruism—  it assumes a sovereignty before which the earlier 
Struggle sinks into insignificance. That this second  form of Struggle should all but have escaped the  notice of Evolutionists is the more unaccountable  since it arises, like the first, out of those fundamental  functions of living organisms which it is the main  business of biological science to investigate. The  functions discharged by all living things, plant and  animal, are two! in number. The first is Nutrition,  the second is Reproduction. The first is the basis of  the Struggle for Life; the second, of the Struggle for  the Life of Others. These two functions run their  parallel course—or spiral course, for they con-  tinuously intertwine—from the very dawn of life. 
They are involved in the fundamental nature of proto-

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

14 | INTRODUCTION.

plasm itself. They affect the entire round of life; they  determine the whole morphology of living things; in a  sense they are life. Yet, in constructing the fabric of 
Evolution, one of these has been taken, the other left.

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

Life to an animal or to a Man is not a random series  of efforts. Its course is set as rigidly as the courses  of the stars. All its movements and changes, its  apparent deflections and perturbations are guided by  unalterable purposes ; its energies and caprices defi-  nitely controlled. What controls it are its functions. 
These and these only determine life; living out these  is life. Trace back any one, or all, of the. countless  activities of an animal’s life, and it will be found that  they are at bottom connected with one or other of  the two great functions which manifest themselves in  protoplasm. Take any organ of the body—hand or  foot, eye or ear, heart or lung—or any tissue of the  body—muscle or nerve, bone or cartilage—and it will  be found to be connected either with Nutrition or with 
Reproduction. Just as everything about an engine,  every bolt, bar, valve, crank, lever, wheel, has some-  thing to do with the work of that engine, everything  about an animal’s body has something to do with the  work prescribed by those two functions. An animal,  or a Man, is a consistent whole, a rational production.

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 15

Now the rationale of living is revealed for us in proto-  plasm. Protoplasm sets life its task. Living can only  be done along its lines. There start the channels in  which all life must run, and though the channels bi-  furcate endlessly as time goes on, and though more life  and fuller is ever coursing through them, it can never  overflow the banks appointed from the beginning.

But this is not all. The activities even of the  higher life, though not qualitatively limited by the  lower, are determined by these same lines. Were  these facts only relevant in the domain of physiology,  they would be of small account in a study of the 
Ascent of Man. But the more profoundly the Evo-  lution of Man is investigated the more clearly is it  seen that the whole course of his development has  been conducted on this fundamental basis. Life, all  life, higher or lower, is an organic unity. Nature may  vary her effects, may introduce qualitative changes so  stupendous as to make their affinities with lower  things unthinkable, but she has never re-laid the  foundations of the world. Evolution began with  protoplasm and ended with Man, and all the way be-  tween, the development has been a symmetry whose  secret lies in the two or three great crystallizing  forces revealed to us through this first basis.

Having realized the significance of the physiological  functions, let us now address ourselves to their mean-  ing and connotations. The first, the function of 
Nutrition, on which the Struggle for Life depends,  requires no explanation. Mr. Darwin was careful to  give to his favorite phrase, the Struggle for Life, a  wider meaning than that which associates it merely  with Nutrition; but this qualification seems largely to

16 INTRODUCTION.

have been lost sight of—to some extent even by him-  self—and the principle as it stands to-day in scientific  and philosophical discussion is practically synony-  mous with the Struggle for Food. As time goes on  this Struggle—at first a conflict with Nature and the  elements, sustained by hunger, and intensified by  competition—assumes many disguises, and is ulti-  mately known in the modern world under the names  of War and Industry. In these later phases the early  function of protoplasm is obscured, but on the last  analysis, War and Industry—pursuits in which half  the world is now engaged—are seen to be simply its  natural developments.

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

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIE». 17

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

Sympathy, tenderness, unselfishness, and the long  list of virtues which make up Altruism, are the direct  outcome and essential accompaniment of the repro-  ductive process. Without some rudimentary mater-  nal solicitude for the egg in the humblest forms of  life, or for the young among higher forms, the living  world would not only suffer, but would cease. For a  time in the life-history of every higher animal the  direct, personal, gratuitous, unrewarded help of an-

“a

18 INTRODUCTION.

other creature is a condition of existence. Even in  the lowliest world of plants the labors of Maternity  begin, and the animal kingdom closes with the crea-  tion of a class in which this function is perfected to  its last conceivable expression. The vicarious prin-  ciple is shot through and through the whole vast web  of Nature; and if one actor has played a mightier  part than another in the drama of the past, it has  been self-sacrifice. What more has come into human-  ity along the line of the Struggle for the Life of 
Others will be shown later. But it is quite certain  that, of all the things that minister to the welfare and  good of Man, of all that make the world varied and  fruitful, of all that make society solid and interesting,  of all that make life beautiful and glad and worthy, by  far the larger part has reached us through the activi-  ties of the Struggle for the Life of Others.

How grave the omission of this supreme factor from  our reckoning, how serious the effect upon our whole  view of nature, must now appear. Time was when  the science of Geology was interpreted exclusively in  terms of the action of a single force—fire. Then  followed the theories of an opposing school who saw  all the earth’s formations to be the result of water. 
Any Biology, any Sociology, any Evolution, which is  based on a single factor, is as untrue as the old Geol-  ogy. It is only when both the Struggle for Life and  the Struggle for the Life of Others are kept in view,  that any scientific theory of Evolution is possible. 
Combine them, contrast them, assign each its place,  allow for their inter-actions, and the scheme of Nature  may be worked out in terms of them to the last detail. 
All along the line, through the whole course of the

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 19

development, these two functions act and react upon  one another ; and continually as they co-operate, to  produce a single result, their specific differences are  never lost.

The first, the Struggle for Life, is, throughout, the 
Self-regarding function ; the second, the Other-regard-  ing function. The first, in lower Nature, obeying the  law of self-preservation, devotes its energies to feed  itself; the other, obeying the law of species-preserva-  tion, to feed its young. While the first develops the  active virtues of strength and courage, the other lays  the basis for the passive virtues, sympathy, and love. 
In the later world one seeks its end in personal ag-  grandizement, the other in ministration. One begets  competition, self-assertion, war; the other unselfish-  ness, self-effacement, peace. One is Individualism,  the other, Altruism.

To say that no ethical content can be put into the  discharge of either function in the earlier reaches of 
Nature goes without saying. But the moment we  reach a certain height in the development, ethical  implications begin to arise. These, in the case of the  first, have been read into Nature, lower as well as  higher, with an exaggerated and merciless malevo-  lence. The other side has received almost no expres-  sion. The final result is a picture of Nature wholly  painted in shadow—a picture so dark as to be a chal-  lenge to its Maker, an unanswered problem to philoso-  phy, an abiding offence to the moral nature of Man. 
The world has been held up to us as one great battle-  field heaped with the slain, an Inferno of infinite suf-  fering, a slaughter-house resounding with the cries of

a ceaseless agony.

20 INTRODUCTION.

Before this version of the tragedy, authenticated by  the highest names on the roll of science, humanity  was dumb, morality mystified, natural theology stulti-  fied. A truer reading may not wholly relieve the  first, enlighten the second, or re-instate the third. 
But it at least re-opens the inquiry; and when all its  bearings come to be perceived, the light thrown upon  the field of Nature by the second factor may be more  impressive to reason than the apparent shadow of the  first to sense.

To relieve the strain of the position forced upon  ethics by the one-sided treatment of the process of 
Evolution heroic attempts have been made. Some  have attempted to mitigate the amount of suffering it  involves, and assure us that, after all, the Struggle,  except as a metaphor, scarcely exists. “There is,”  protests Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, “ good reason to  believe that the supposed ‘torments’ and ‘miseries’  of animals have little real existence, but are the reflec-  tion of the amagined sensations of cultivated men and  women in similar circumstances ; and that the amount  of actual suffering caused by the Struggle for Exist-  ence among animals is altogether insignificant.”1 Mr. 
Huxley, on the other hand, will make no compromise. 
The Struggle for Life to him is a portentous fact, un-  mitigated and unexplained. No metaphors are strong  enough to describe the implacability of its sway. 
“The moral indifference of nature”. and “the un-  fathomable injustice of the nature of things” every-  where stare him in the face. “ For his successful prog-  ress as far as the savage state, Man has been largely  indebted to those qualities which he shares with the

1 Darwinism, p. 37.

THE MISSING FACTOR (N CURRENT THEORIES. 21

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

How then does Mr. Huxley act—for it is instructive  to follow out the consequences of an error—in the face  of this tremendous problem? He gives it up. There  is no solution. Nature is without excuse. After  framing an indictment against it in the severest lan-  guage at his command, he turns his back upon Nature 
—sub-human Nature, that is—and leaves teleology to  settle the score as best it can. “The history of civili-  zation,” he tells us, “is the record of the attempts of  the human race to escape from this position.” But  whither does he betake himself? Is he not part of 
Nature, and therefore a sharer in its guilt? By no

1 Evolution and Ethics, p. 6. 
2 Nineteenth Century, Feb., 1888.

22, INTRODUCTION.

means. For by an astonishing towr de force—the last,  as his former associates in the evolutionary ranks  have not failed to remind him, which might have been  expected of him—he ejects himself from the world-  order, and washes his hands of it in the name of Ethi-  cal Man. After sharing the fortunes of Evolution all  his life, bearing its burdens and solving its doubts, he  abandons it without a pang, and sets up an imperium  in imperio, Where, as a moral being, the “ cosmic ” 
Struggle troubles him no more. “ Cosmic Nature,” he  says, in a parting shot at his former citadel, “is no  school of virtue, but the headquarters of the enemy of  ethical nature.”+ So far from the Ascent of Man run-  ning along the ancient line, “ Social progress means a  checking of the cosmic process at every step, and the  substitution for it of another, which may be called the  ethical process; the end of which is not the survival  of those who may happen to be fittest, in respect of  the whole of the conditions which exist, but of those  who are ethically the best. ?”

The expedient, to him, was a necessity. Viewing 
Nature as Mr. Huxley viewed it there was no other  refuge. The “cosmic process” meant to him the 
Struggle for Life, and to escape from the Struggle  for Life he was compelled to turn away from the  world-order, which had its being because of it. As it  happens, Mr. Huxley has hit upon the right solution,  only the method by which he reaches it is wholly  wrong. And the mischievous result of it is obvious 
—it leaves all lower Nature in the lurch. With  a curious disregard of the principle of Continuity, to

1 Evolution and Ethics, p. 27. 2 TUBE. 50, 8%

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 23

which all his previous work had done such homage,  he splits up the world-order into two separate halves. 
The earlier dominated by the “cosmic” principle—  the Struggle for Life; the other by the “ethical”  principle—virtually, the Struggle for the Life of 
Others. The Struggle for Life is thus made to stop  at the “ethical” process; the Struggle for the Life  of Others to begin. Neither is justified by fact. The 
Struggle for the Life of Others, as we have seen,  starts its upward course from the same protoplasm  as the Struggle for Life; and the Struggle for Life  runs on into the “ethical” sphere as much as the 
Struggle for the Life of Others. One has only to see  where Mr. Huxley gets his “ethical” world to per-  ceive the extent of the anomaly. For where does he  get it, and what manner of world is it? “ The history  of civilization details the steps by which men have  succeeded in building up an artificial world within the  cosmos.” ? An artificial world within the cosmos ? 
This suggested breach between the earlier and the  later process, if indeed we are to take it seriously, is  scientifically indefensible, and the more unfortunate  since the same result, or a better, can be obtained  without it. The real breach is not between the  earlier and the later process, but between two rival,  or two co-operating processes, which have existed  from the first, which have worked together all along  the line, and which took on “ethical” characters at  the same moment in time. The Struggle for the Life  of Others is sunk as deep in the “cosmic process” as  the Struggle for Life; the Struggle for Life has a  share in the “ethical process” as much as the Strug-

1 Hvolution and Ethics, p. 35.

94 INTRODUCTION.

gle for the Life of Others. Both are cosmic processes ;  both are ethical processes; both are both cosmical  and ethical processes. Nothing but confusion can  arise from a cross-classification which does justice to  neither half of Nature.

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

That Mr. Huxley has misgivings on the matter  himself is apparent from his Notes. “Of course,”  he remarks, in reference to the technical point, 
“strictly speaking, social life and the ethical process  in virtue of which it advances towards perfection are  part and parcel of the general process of Evolution.” } 
And he gets a momentary glimpse of the “ ethical  process ” in the cosmos, which, if he had followed it  out, must have modified his whole position. “Even  in these rudimentary forms of society, love and fear  come into play, and enforce a greater or less renun-

* Evolution and Ethics, note 19.

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 25

ciation of self-will. To this extent the general cosmic  process begins to be checked by a rudimentary ethical  process, which is, strictly speaking, part of the former,  just as the ‘governor’ in a steam-engine is part of  the mechanism of the engine.” }

Here the whole position is virtually conceded ; and  only the pre-conceptions of Darwinism and the lack  of a complete investigation into the nature and extent  of the “rudimentary ethical process” can have pre-  vailed in the face of such an admission. Follow out  the metaphor of the “ governor,” and, with one im-  portant modification, the true situation almost stands  disclosed. For what appears to be the “governor ” in  the rudimentary ethical process becomes the “ steam-  engine” in the later process. The mere fact that it  exists in the “general cosmic process” alters the  quality of that process; and the fact that, as we hope  to show, it becomes the prime mover in the later  process, entirely changes our subsequent conception of  it. The beginning of a process is to be read from the  end and not from the beginning. And if even a rudi-  ment of a moral order be found in the beginnings of  this process it relates itself and that process to a final  end and a final unity.

Philosophy reads end into the earlier process by a  necessity of reason. But how much stronger its posi-  tion if it could add to that a basis in the facts of 
Nature? “I ask the evolutionist,” pertinently in-  quires Mr. Huxley’s critic, who has no other basis  than the Struggle for existence how he accounts for  the intrusion of these moral ideas and standards  which presume to interfere with the cosmic process

Evolution und Ethics, note 19.

26 INTRODUCTION.

and sit in judgment upon its results.”? May we ask  the philosopher how fe accounts for them? As little  can he account for them as he who has “no other  basis than the Struggle for existence.” Truly, the  writer continues, the question “ cannot be answered so  long as we regard morality merely as an incidental re-  sult, a by-product, as it were, of the cosmical system.” 
But what if morality be the main product of the cos-  mical system—of even the cosmical system? What if  it can be shown that it is the essential and not the in-  cidental result of it, and that so far from being a by-  product, it is “morality that is the by-product ? 
These interrogations may be too strongly put. 
“ Accompaniments” of the cosmical system might be  better than “products”; “revelations through that  process” may be nearer the truth than “results” of it. 
But what is intended to show is that the moral order  is a continuous line from the beginning, that it has  had throughout, so to speak, a basis in the cosmos,  that upon this, as a trellis-work, it has climbed up-  wards to the top. The one—the trellis-work—is to be  conceived of as an incarnation; the other—the mani-  festation—as a revelation; the one is an Evolution  from below, the other an Involution from above. 
Philosophy has long since assured us of the last, but  because it was never able to show us the completeness  of the first, science refused to believe it. The de-  faulter nevertheless was not philosophy but science. 
Its business was with the trellis-work. And it gave  us a broken trellis-work, a ladder with only one side,  and every step on the other side resting on air. When  science tried to climb the ladder it failed; the steps

1 Prof. Seth, Blackwood’s Magazine, Dec., 1893.

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 27

refused to bear any weight. What did men of science  do? They condemned the ladder and, balancing  themselves on the side that was secure, proclaimed  their Agnosticism to philosophy. And what did phi-  losophy do? It stood on the other half of the ladder,  the half that was not there, and rated them. That the  other half was not there was of little moment. It  was in themselves. It ought to be there; therefore  it must be there. And it is quite true; it is there. 
Philosophy, like Poetry, is prophetic: “The sense of  the whole,” it says, “comes first.” ?

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

And what is the valid answer? Of course, that 
Nature has put in her own ends if we would take the  trouble to look for them. She does not require them  to be secretly manufactured upstairs and credited to

1 Prof. H. Jones, Browning, p. 28.

28 INTRODUCTION.

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

Seldom has there been an instance on so large a  scale of a biological error corrupting a whole philoso-  phy. Bacon’s aphorism was never more true: 
“This I dare affirm in knowledge of Nature, that a  little natural philosophy, and the first entrance into  it, doth dispose the opinion to atheism, but on the  other side, much natural philosophy, and wading deep  into it, will bring about men’s minds to religion.”? 
Hitherto, the Evolutionist has had practically no other  basis than the Struggle for Life. Suppose even we

1 Meditationes Sacrw, X.

—="

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT TUEORIES. 29

leave that untouched, the addition of an Other-  regarding basis makes an infinite difference. For  when it is then asked on which of them the process  turns, and the answer is given “On both,” we perceive  that itis neither by the one alone, nor by the other  alone, that the process is to be interpreted, but by a  higher unity which resolves and embraces all. And  as both are equally necessary to this antinomy, even >  that of the two which seems irreconcilable with  higher ends is seen to be necessary. Viewed sim-  pliciter, the Struggle for Life appears irreconcilable 
_ with ethical ends, a prodigious anomaly in a moral  world ; but viewed in continuous reaction with the 
Struggle for the Life of Others, it discloses itself as an  instrument of perfection the most subtle and far-  reaching that reason could devise.

The presence of the second factor, therefore, while  it leaves the first untouched, cannot leave its implica-  tions untouched. Jt completely alters these implica-  tions. It has never been denied that the Struggle for 
Life is an efficient instrument of progress; the sole  difficulty has always been to justify the nature of the  instrument. But if even it be shown that this is only  half the instrument, teleology gains something. If  the fuller view takes nothing away from the process of 
Evolution, it imports something into it which changes  the whole aspect of the case. For even from the first  that factor is there. The Struggle for the Life of 
Others, as we have seen, is no interpolation at the end  of the process, but radical, engrained in the world-  order as profoundly as the Struggle for Life. By  what right, then, has Nature been interpreted only by  the Struggle for Life? With far greater justice might

30 INTRODUCTION.

science interpret it in the light of the Struggle for the 
Life of Others. For, in the first place, unless there  had been this second factor, the world could not have  existed. Without the Struggle for the Life of Others,  obviously there would have been no Others. In the  second place, unless there had been a Struggle for the 
Life of Others, the Struggle for Life could not have  been kept up. As will be shown later the Struggle  for Life almost wholly supports itself on the products  of the Struggle for the Life of Others. In the third  place, without the Struggle for the Life of Others, the 
Struggle for Life as regards its energies would have  died down, and failed of its whole achievement. It is  the ceaseless pressure produced by the exuberant fer-  tility of Reproduction that creates any valuable Strug-  gle for Life at all. The moment “Others” multiply,  the individual struggle becomes keen up to the dis-  ciplinary point. It was this, indeed—through the  reading of Malthus on Over-population—that sug-  gested to Mr. Darwin the value of the Struggle for 
Life. The law of Over-population from that time for-  ward became the foundation-stone of his theory; and  recent biological research has made the basis more  solid than ever. The Struggle for the Life of Others  on the plant and animal plane, in the mere work of  inultiplying lives, is a final condition of progress. 
Without competition there can be no fight, and with-  out fight there can be no victory. In other words;  without the Struggle for the Life of Others there can  be no Struggle for Life, and therefore no Evolution. 
Tinally, and all the reasons already given are frivolous  beside it, had there been no Altruism— Altruism in  the definite sense of unselfishness, sympathy, and self-

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 31

sacrifice for Others, the whole higher world of life had  perished as soon as it was created. For hours, or  days, or weeks in the early infancy of all higher  animals, maternal care and sympathy are a condition  of existence. Altruism had to enter the world, and  any species which neglected it was extinguished in a  generation.

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

But why, if all this be true of the Struggle for  the Life of Others, has.a claim so imperious not  been recognized by science? That a phenomenon  of this distinction should have attracted so little  attention suggests a suspicion. Does it really exist? 
Is the biological basis sound? Have we not at least  exaggerated its significance? The biologist will  judge. Though no doubt the function of Repro-  duction is intimately connected in Physiology with  the function of Nutrition, the facts as stated here are  facts of Nature; and some glimpse of the influence of

32 "INTRODUCTION.

this second factor will be given in the sequel from  which even the non-biological reader may draw his  own conclusions. Difficult as it seems to account for  the ignoring of an elemental fact in framing the  doctrine of Evolution, there are circumstances which  make the omission less unintelligible. Foremost, of  course, there stands the overpowering influence of 
Mr. Darwin. In spite of the fact that he warned his  followers against it, this largely prejudged the issue. 
Next is to be considered the narrowing, one had al-  most said the blighting, effect of specialism. Neces-  sary to the progress of science, the first era of a reign  of specialism is disastrous to philosophy. The men  who in field and laboratory are working out the facts,  do not speculate at all. Content with slowly building  up the sum of actual knowledge in some neglected and  restricted province, they are too absorbed to notice  even what the workers in the other provinces are  about. Thus it happens that while there are many  scientific men, there are few scientific thinkers. The  complaint is often made that science speculates too  much. Itis quite the other way. One has only to  read the average book of science in almost any de-  partment to wonder at the wealth of knowledge, the  brilliancy of observation, and the barrenness of idea. 
On the other hand, though scientific experts will not  think themselves, there is always a multitude of on-  lookers waiting to do it for them. Among these what  strikes one is the ignorance of fact and the audacity of  the idea. The moment any great half-truth in Nature  is unearthed, these unqualified practitioners leap toa  generalization ; and the observers meantime, on the  track of the other haif, are too busy or too oblivious to

wae

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 33

refute their heresies. Hence, long after its founda-  tions are undermined, a brilliant generalization will  retain its hold upon the popular mind; and before the  complementary, the qualifying, or the neutralizing  facts can be supplied, the mischief is done.

But while this is true of many who play with the  double-edged tools of science, it is not true of a third  class. When we turn to the pages of the few whose  science is adequate and whose sweep is over the whole  vast horizon, we find, as we should expect, some  recognition of the altruistic factor. Though Mr. 
Herbert Spencer, to whom the appeal in this connec-  tion is obvious, makes a different use of the fact, it  has not escaped him. Not only does the Other-re-  garding function receive recognition, but he allots it  a high place in his system. Of its ethical bearings he  is equally clear. “ What,” he asks, “is the ethical as-  pect of these altruistic principles ? In the first place,  animal life of all but the lowest kinds has been main-  tained by virtue of them. Excluding the Protozoa,  among which their operation is scarcely discernible,  we see that without gratis benefits to offspring, and  earned benefits to adults, life could not have con-  tinued. In the second place, by virtue of them life  has gradually evolved into higher forms. By care of  offspring which has become greater with advancing  organization, and by survival of the fittest in the com-  petition among adults, which has become more habitual  with advancing organization, superiority has been  perpetually fostered and further advances caused.” ! 
Fiske, Littré, Romanes, Le Conte, L. Biichner, Miss 
Buckley, and Prince Kropotkin have expressed them-

1 Principles of Ethics, Vol. 11., p. 5. 
2 
17)

34 INTRODUCTION.

selves partly in the same direction; and Geddes and 
Thomson, in so many words, recognize “the co-exist-  ence of twin-streams of egoism and altruism, which  often merge for a space without losing their distinct-  ness, and are traceable to a common origin in the  simplest forms of life.” The last named—doubtless  because their studies have taken them both into the  fields of pure biology and of bionomics—more clearly  than any other modern writers, have grasped the  bearings of this theme in all directions, and they fear-  lessly take their stand-point from the physiology of  protoplasm. Thus, “in the hunger and reproductive  attractions of the lowest organisms, the self-regarding  and other-regarding activities of the higher find their  starting-point. Though some vague consciousness is  perhaps co-existent with life itself, we can only speak  with confidence of psychical egoism and altruism  after a central nervous system has been definitely es-  tablished. At the same time, the activities of even the  lowest organisms are often distinctly referable to  either category. . . . Hardly distinguishable at  the outset, the primitive hunger and love become the  starting-points of divergent lines of egoistie and altru-  istic emotion and activity.” ?

That at a much earlier stage than is usually sup-  posed, Evolution visibly enters upon the “rudiment-  ary ethical” plane, is certain, and we shall hope to  outline the proof. But even if the thesis fails, it re-  mains to challenge the general view that the Struggle  for Life is everything, and the Struggle for the Life  of Others nothing. Seeing not only that the second is  the more important; but also this far more significant

1 The Evolution of Sex, p. 279, SINMODC Is 1 PAE)

THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 35

fact—which has not yet been alluded to—that as 
Evolution proceeas the one Struggle waxes, and the other  wanes, would it not be wiser to study the drama  nearer its dénouement before deciding whether it was  a moral, a non-moral, or an immoral play ?

Lest the alleged waning of the Struggle for Life  convey a wrong impression, let it be added that of  course the word is to be taken qualitatively. The 
Struggle in itself can never cease. What ceases is its  so-called anti-ethical character. For nothing is in  finer evidence as we rise in the scale of life than the  gradual tempering of the Struggle for Life. Its slow  amelioration is the work of ages, may be the work of  ages still, but its animal qualities in the social life of 
Man are being surely left behind; and though the  mark of the savage and the brute still mar its handi-  work, these harsher qualities must pass away. In that  new social order which the gathering might of the  altruistic spirit is creating now around us, in that  reign of Love which must one day, if the course of 
Evolution holds on its way, be realized, the baser  elements will find that solvent prepared for them from  the beginning in anticipation of a higher rule on earth. 
Interpreting the course of Evolution scientifically,  whether from its starting-point in the first protoplasm,  or from the rallying-point of its two great forces in the  social organism of to-day, it becomes more and more  certain that only from the commingled achievement of  both can the nature of the process be truly judged. 
Yet, as one sees the one sun set, and the other rise  with a splendor the more astonishing and bewildering  as the centuries roll on, it is impossible to withhold a  verdict as to which may be most reasonably looked

36 INTRODUCTION.

upon as the ultimate reality of the world. The path  of progress and the path of Altruism are one. Evolu-  tion is nothing but the Involution of Love, the revela-  tion of Infinite Spirit, the Eternal Life returning  to Itself. Even the great shadow of Egoism which  darkens the past is revealed as shadow only because  we are compelled to read it by the higher light which  has come. In the very act of judging it to be shadow,  we assume and vindicate the light. And in every  vision of the light, contrariwise, we resolve the  shadow, and perceive the end for which both light  and dark are given.

‘““T can believe, this dread machinery 
Of sin and sorrow would confound me else. 
Devised—all pain, at most expenditure 
Of pain by Who devised pain—to evolve, 
By new machinery in counterpart, 
The moral qualities of Man—how else ?— 
To make him Jove in turn, and be beloved, 
Creative and self-sacrificing too, 
And thus eventually Godlike.”’ 1

TUE 
WHY WAS EVOLUTION THE METUOD CHOSEN.

One seldom-raised yet not merely curious question  of Evolution is, why the process should be an evolu-  tion at all? If Evolution, is simply a method of Crea-  tion, why was this very extraordinary method chosen ? 
Creation tout @un coup might have produced the same  result; an instantaneous act or an age-long process

The Ring and the Book—The Pope, 1375.

WHY WAS EVOLUTION THE METHOD CHOSEN. 37

would both have given us the world as it is? The  answer of modern natural theology has been that the  evolutionary method is the infinitely nobler scheme. 
A spectacular act, it is said, savors of the magician. 
As a mere exhibition of power it appeals to the lower  nature; but a process of growth suggests to the  reason the work of an intelligent Mind. No doubt  this intellectual gain is real. While a catastrophe  puts the universe to confusion at the start, a gradual  rise makes the beginning of Nature harmonious with  its end. How the surpassing grandeur of the new  conception has filled the imagination and kindled to  enthusiasm the soberest scientific minds, from Darwin  downwards, is known to every one. As the memo-  rable words which close the Origin of Species recall: 
“ There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its sev-  eral powers, having been originally breathed by the 
Creator into a few forms or into one; and that whilst  this planet has gone cycling on, according to the fixed  law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless  forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been,  and are being evolved.” ?

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

We go too far, perhaps, in expecting answers to  questions so transcendent. But one at least suggests

1 Origin of Species, p. 429.

38 INTRODUCTION.

itself, whose practical value is apology enough for  venturing to advance it. Whenever the scheme was  planned, it must have been foreseen that the time  would come when the directing of part of the course  of Evolution would pass into the hands of Man. A  spectator of the drama for ages, too ignorant to see  that it was a drama, and too impotent to do more than  play his little part, the discovery must sooner or later  break upon him that Nature meant him to become a  partner in her task, and share the responsibility of the  closing acts. It is not given to him as yet to bind the  sweet influences of Pleiades, or to unloose the bands of 
Orion. In part only can he make the winds and waves  obey him, or control the falling rain. But in larger  part he holds the dominion of the world of lower life. 
He exterminates what he pleases; he creates and he  destroys; he changes; he evolves; his selection re-  places natural selection; he replenishes the earth with  plants and animals according to his will. But in a far  grander sphere, and in an infinitely profounder sense,  has the sovereignty passed to him. For, by the same  decree, he finds himself the guardian and the arbiter  of his personal destiny, and that of his fellow-men. 
The moulding of his. life and of his children’s children  in measure lie with him. Through institutions of his  creation, through Parliaments, Churches, Societies, 
Schools, he shapes the path of progress for his country  and his time. The evils of the world are combated by  his remedies ; its passions are stayed, its wrongs re-  dressed, its energies for good or evil directed by his  hand. For unnumbered millions he opens or shuts the  gates of happiness, and paves the way for misery or  social health. Never before was it known and _ felt

WHY WAS EVOLUTION THE METHOD CHOSEN. 39

with the same solemn certainty that Man, within  bounds which none can pass, must be his own maker  and the maker of the world. For the first time in  history not individuals only but multitudes of the  wisest and the noblest in every land take home to  themselves, and unceasingly concern themselves with  the problem of the Evolution of Mankind. Multitudes  more, philanthropists, statesmen, missionaries, humble  men and patient women, devote themselves daily to  its practical solution, and everywhere some, in a God-  like culmination of Altruism, give their very lives for  their fellow-men. Who is to help these Practical Evo-  lutionists—for those who read the book of Nature can  call them by no other name, and those who know its  spirit can call them by no higher—who is to help them  in their tremendous task? There is the will—where  is the wisdom ?

Where but in Nature herself. Nature may have  entrusted the further building to Mankind, but the  plan has never left her hands. The lines of the future  are to be learned from her past, and her fellow-helpers  can most easily, most loyally, and most perfectly do  their part by studying closely the architecture of  the earlier world, and continuing the half-finished  structure symmetrically to the top. The information  necessary to complete the work with architectural  consistency lies in Nature. We might expect that it  should be there. When a business is transferred, or a  partner assumed, the books are shown, the methods of  the business explained, its future developments pointed  out. All this is now done for the Evolution of Man-  kind. In Eyolution Creation has shown her hand. 
To have kept the secret from Man would have in-

40 INTRODUCTION.

perilled the further evolution. To have revealed it  sooner had been premature. Love must come before  knowledge, for knowledge is the instrument of Love,  and useless till it arrives. But now that there is 
Altruism enough in the world to begin the new era,  there must be wisdom enough to direct it. To make 
Nature spell out her own career, to embody the key to  the development in the very development itself, so that  the key might be handed over along with the work,  was to make the transference of responsibility possible  and rational. In the seventeenth century, Descartes,  who with Leibnitz already foresaw the adumbration of  the evolutionary process, almost pointed this out;  for speaking, in another connection, of the intellectual  value of a slow development of things he observes, 
“their nature is much more easy to conceive when  they are seen originating by degrees in this way, than  when they are considered as entirely made.” ?

The past of Nature is a working-model of how  worlds can be made. The probabilities are there is no  better way of making them. If Man does as well it  will be enough. In any case he can only begin where 
Nature left off, and work with such tools as are put  into his hands. If the new partner had been intended  merely to experiment with world-making, no such  legacy of useful law had been ever given him. And if  he had been meant to begin de novo ona totally different  plan, it is unlikely either that that should not have  been hinted at, or that in his touching and beautiful  endeavor he should be embarrassed and thrown off  the track by the old plan. As a child set to complete  some fine embroidery is shown the stitches, the

1 Discourse on Method.

HVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. Al

colors, and the outline traced upon the canvas, so  the great Mother in setting their difficult task to her  later children provides them with one superb part  finished to show the pattern.

IV; 
EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY.

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

42 INTRODUCTION.

our understanding of what is without us, and most of  all with our understanding of the general history of  man. It has often been noticed that there is a certain  analogy between the life of the individual and that of  the race, and even that the life of the individual is a  sort of epitome of the history of humanity. But, as 
Plato already discovered, it is by reading the large  letters that we learn to interpret the small. . . . 
It is only through a deepened consciousness of the  world that the human spirit can solve its own prob-  lem. Especially is this true in the region of anthro-  pology. For the inner life of the Individual is deep  and full just in proportion to the width of his relations  to other men and things; and his consciousness of  what he is in himself as a spiritual being is dependent  on a comprehension of the position of his individual  life in the great secular process by which the intel-  lectual and moral life of humanity has grown and is  growing. Hence the highest practical, as well as spee-  ulative, interests of men are connected with the new  extension of science which has given fresh interest and  meaning to the whole history of the race’? If, as 
Herbert Spencer reminds us, “ it is one of those open  secrets which seem the more secret because they are  so open, that all phenomena displayed by a nation are  phenomena of Life, and are dependent on the laws of 
Life,” we cannot devote ourselves to study those laws  too earnestly or too soon. From the failure to get at  the heart of the first principles of Evolution the old  eall to “follow Nature” has all but become a heresy. 
Nature, as a moral teacher, thanks to the Darwinian  interpretation, was never more diseredited than at 
1 The Evolution ef Religion, Vol. 1, pp. 25, 2

me,

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 43

this hour; and friend and foe alike agree in warning  us against her. But a further reading of Nature may  decide not that we must discharge the teacher but beg  her mutinous pupils to try another term at school. 
With Nature studied in the light of a true biology, or  eyen in the sense in which the Stoics themselves em-  ployed their favorite phrase, it must become once  more the watchword of personal and social progress. 
With Mr. Tfuxley’s definition of what the Stoics  meant by Nature as “that which holds up the ideal of  the supreme good and demands absolute submission of  the will to its behests. .. which commands all men  to love one another, to return good for evil, to regard  one another as citizens of one great state,” + the  phrase, “Live according to Nature,” so far from hav-  ing no application to the modern world or no sanc-  tion in modern thought, is the first commandment of 
Natural Religion.

The sociologist has grievously complained of late  that he could get but little help from science. The  suggestions of Bagehot, the Synthetic Philosophy of 
Iferbert Spencer, the proposals of multitudes of the  followers of the last who announced the redemption  of the world the moment they discovered the “Social 
Organisms,” raised great expectations. But somehow  they were not fulfilled. Mr. Spencer’s work has been  mainly to give this century, and in part all time, its  first great map of the field. He has brought all the  pieces on the board, described them one by one, de-  fined and explained the game. But what he has  failed to do with sufficient precision, is to pick out the 
King and Queen. And because he has not done so,

1 Evolution and Ethics, p. 27.

44 INTRODUCTION.

some men have mistaken his pawns for kings; others  have mistaken the real kings for pawns; every ism  has found endorsement in his pages, and men have  gathered courage for projects as hostile to his whole  philosophy as to social order. Theories of progress  have arisen without any knowledge of its laws, and  the ordered course of things has been done violence to  by experiments which, unless the infinite conserva-  tism of Nature had neutralized their evils, had been  a worse disaster than they are. This inadequacy, in-  deed, of modern sociology to meet the practical prob-  lems of our time, has become a by-word. Mr. Leslie 
Stephen pronounces the existing science “a heap of  vague empirical observation, too flimsy to be useful” ;  and Mr. Huxley, exasperated with the condition in  which it leaves the human family, prays that if 
“there is no hope of a large improvement ” he should 
“hail the advent of some kindly comet which would  sweep the whole affair away.”

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

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 45

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

It cannot be that the full programme for the perfect  world lies in the imperfect part. Nor can it ever be  that science can find the end in the beginning, get  moral out of non-moral states, evolve human societies  from ant-heaps, or philanthropies from protoplasm. 
But in every beginning we get a beginning of an end;  in every process a key to the single step to be taken  next. The full corn is not in the ear, but the first cell  of it is, and though “it doth not yet appear” what  the million-celled ear shall be, there is rational ground  for judging what the second cell shall be. The next

46 INTRODUCTION.

few cells of the Social Organism are all that are given  to Sociology to affect. And, in dealing with them, its  business is with the forces; the phenomena wili  take care of themselves. Neither the great forces  of Nature, nor the great lines of Nature, change in a  day, and however apparently unrelated seem the phe-  nomena as we ascend—here animal, there human; at  one time non-moral, at another moral—the lines of  progress are the same. Nature, in horizontal section,  is broken up into strata which present to the eye of  ethical Man the profoundest distinctions in the uni-  verse; but Nature in the vertical section offers no  break, or pause, or flaw. To study the first is to study  a hundred unrelated sciences, sciences of atoms, sci-  ences of cells, sciences of Souls, sciences of Societies ;  to study the second is to deal with one science—Evo-  lution. Here, on the horizontal section, may be what 
Geology calls an unconformability ; there is overlap;  changes of climate may be registered from time to  time each with its appropriate re-action on the things  contained ; upheavals, depressions, denudations, glacia-  tions, faults, vary the scene; higher forms of fossils  appear as we ascend; but the laws of life are con-  tinuous throughout, the eternal elements in an ever  temporal world. The Struggle for Life, and the 
Struggle for the Life of Others, in essential nature  have never changed. They find new expression in  each further sphere, become colored to our eye with  different hues, are there the rivalries or the affections  of the brute, and here the industrial or the moral  conflicts of the race; but the factors themselves re-  main the same, and all life moves in widening spirals  zound them, Fix in the mind this distinction between

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. AT

the horizontal and the vertical view of Nature, be-  tween the phenomena and the law, between all the  sciences that ever were and the one science which  resolves them all, and the confusions and contra-  dictions of Evolution are reconciled. The man who  deals with Nature statically, who catalogues the  phenomena of life and mind, puts on each its museum  label, and arranges them in their separate cases, may  well defy you to co-relate such diverse wholes. To  him Evolution is alike impossible and unthinkable. 
But these items that he labels are not wholes. And  the world he dissects is not a museum, but a living,  moving and ascending thing. The sociologist’s bus-  iness is with the vertical section, and he who has to  do with this living, moving, and ascending thing  must treat it from the dynamic point of view.

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

48 INTRODUCTION.

with the phenomena of life, where he encounters life  at last under its highest and most complex aspect.” + 
Would that the brilliant writer whose words these  are, and whose striking work appears while these  sheets are almost in the press, had “sent his roots  deep enough into biological soil” to discover the true  foundation for that future Science of Society which he  sees to be so imperative. No modern thinker has seen  the problem so clearly as Mr. Kidd, but his solution,  profoundly true in itself, is vitiated in the eyes of  science and philosophy by a basis wholly unsound. 
With an emphasis which Darwin himself has not ex-  celled, he proclaims the enduring value of the Struggle  for Life. He sees its immense significance even in the  highest ranges of the social sphere. There it stands  with its imperious call to individual assertion, inciting  to a rivalry which Nature herself has justified, and  encouraging every man by the highest sanctions  ceaselessly to seek his own. But he sees nothing else  in Nature; and he encounters therefore the difficulty  inevitable from this stand-point. For to obey this voice  means ruin to Society, wrong and anarchy against the  higher Man. He listens for another voice; but there  is no response. Asa social being he cannot, in spite of 
Nature, act on his first initiative. He must subordi-  nate himself to the larger interest, present and future,  of those around him. But why, he asks, ms¢ he, since 
Nature says “Mind thyself?” Till Nature adds the  further precept, “Look not every man on his own  things, but also on the things of Others,” there is no  rational sanction for morality. And he finds no such

1 Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution, p. 28.

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 49

precept. There is none in Nature. There is none in 
Reason. Nature can only point him to a strenuous  rivalry as the one condition of continued progress ; 
Reason can only endorse the verdict. Hence he breaks  at once with reason and with Nature, and seeks an 
“ultra-rational sanction” for the future course of  social progress.

Here, in his own words, is the situation. “The  teaching of reason to the individual must always be  that the present time and his own interests therein  are all-important to him. That the forces which are  working out our development are primarily concerned  not with those interests of the individual, but with  those widely different interests of a social organism  subject to quite other conditions and possessed of an  indefinitely longer life. . . . The central fact with  which we are confronted in our progressive societies  is, therefore, that the interests of the social organism  and those of the individuals comprising it at any time  are actually antagonistic; they can never be recon-  ciled; they are inherently and essentially irreconcil-  able.” ! Observe the extraordinary dilemma. Reason  not only has no help for the further progress of 
Society, but Society can only go on upon a principle  which is an affront to it. As Man can only attain his  highest development in Society, his individual in-  terests must more and more subordinate themselves  to the welfare of a wider whole. “ How is the posses-  sion of reason ever to be rendered compatible with the  will to submit the conditions of existence so onerous,  requiring the effective and continual subordination of  the individual’s welfare to the progress of a develop-

1 Op. cit., p. 78. 
4

50 INTRODUCTION.

ment in which he can have no personal interest what:-  ever?”

Mr. Kidd’s answer is the bold one that it is not com-  patible. There is no rational sanction whatever for  progress. Progress, in fact, can only go on by enlist-  ing Man’s reason against itself. “All those systems  of moral philosophy, which have sought to find in the  nature of things a rational sanction for human conduct  in society, must sweep round and round in futile  circles. They attempt an inherently impossible task. 
The first great social lesson of those evolutionary doc-  trines which have transformed the science of the nine-  teenth century is, that there cannot be sucha sanc-  tion2 . . . The extraordinary character of the  problem presented by human society begins thus  slowly to come into view. We find man making con-  tinual progress upwards, progress which it is almost  beyond the power of the imagination to grasp. From  being a competitor of the brutes he has reached a  point of development at which he cannot himself set  any limits to the possibilities of further progress, and  at which he is evidently marching onwards to a high  destiny. He has made this advance under the stern-  est conditions, involving rivalry and competition for  all, and the failure and suffering of great numbers. 
Tlis reason has been, and necessarily continues to be, a  leading factor in this development; yet, granting, as  we apparently must grant, the possibility of the re-  versal of the conditions from which his progress  results, those conditions have not any sanction from  his reason. They have had no such sanction at any  stage of his history, and they continue to be as much

SOD, bliss 10 HE 2 Op. cit., p. 19.

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. ol

without such sanction in the highest civilization of the  present day as at any past period.” }

These conclusions will not have been quoted in vain  if they show the impossible positions to which a  writer, whose contribution otherwise is of profound  and permanent value, is committed by a false reading  of Nature. Is it conceivable, a priori, that the human  reason should be put to confusion by a breach of the 
Law of Continuity at the very point where its sus-  tained action is of vital moment? The whole com-  plaint, which runs like a dirge through every chapter  of this book, is founded on a misapprehension of the  fundamental laws which govern the processes of 
Evolution. The factors of Darwin and Weismann  are assumed to contain an ultimate interpretation of  the course of things. For all time the conditions of  existence are taken as established by these authorities. 
With the Struggle for Life in sole possession of the  field no one, therefore, we are warned, need ever  repeat the gratuitous experiment of the past, of 
Socrates, Plato, Kant, Hegel, Comte, and Herbert 
Spencer, to find a sanction for morality in Nature. 
“ All methods and systems alike, which have endeay-  ored to find in the nature of things any universal  rational sanction for individual conduct in a progress-  ive society, must be ultimately fruitless. They are  all alike inherently unscientific in that they attempt  to do what the fundamental conditions of existence  render impossible.” And Mr. Kidd puts a climax on  his devotion to the doctrine of his masters by mourn-  ing over “the incalculable loss to English Science  and English Philosophy” because Herbert Spencer’s

1 Op. cit., pp. TT-78.

52 INTRODUCTION.

work “was practically complete before his intellect  had any opportunity of realizing the full transform-  ing effect in the higher regions of thought, and, more  particularly, in the department of sociology, of that  development of biological science which began with 
Darwin, which is still in full progress, and to which 
Professor Weismann has recently made the most  notable contributions.” ! Whether Mr. Spencer’s  ignorance or his science has been at the bottom of  the escape, it is at least a lucky one. For if Mr. 
Kidd had realized “the full transforming effect”  of the following paragraph, much of his book could  not have been written. “The most general conclusion  is that in order of obligation, the preservation of the  species takes precedence of the preservation of the  individual. It is true that the species has no existence  save as an aggregate of individuals; and it is true that,  therefore, the welfare of the species is an end to be  subserved only as subserving the welfare of individ-  uals. But since disappearance of the species, imply-  ing absolute disappearance of all individuals, involves  absolute failure in achieving the end, whereas disap-  pearance of individuals though carried to a great  extent, may leave outstanding such numbers as can,  by continuance of the species, make subsequent fulfil-  ment of the end possible; the preservation of the  individual must, in a variable degree according to  circumstances, be subordinated to the preservation of  the species, where the two conflict.” 2

What Mr. Kidd has succeeded, and splendidly  succeeded, in doing is to show that Nature as inter-  preted in terms of the Struggle for Life contains no

1 Op. cit., p. 80 ? Principles of Ethics, Vol. 1, p. 6.

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 53

= —

sanction either for morality or for social progress. 
But instead of giving up Nature and Reason at this  point, he should have given up Darwin. The Struggle  for Life is not “the supreme fact up to which biology  has slowly advanced.” It is the fact to which Darwin  advanced; but if biology had been thoroughly con-.  sulted it could not have given so maimed an account  of itself. With the final conclusion reached by Mr. 
Kidd we have no quarrel. Eliminate the errors due  to an unrevised acceptance of Mr. Darwin’s interpret-  ation of Nature, and his work remains the most  important contribution to Social Evolution which the  last decade has seen. But what startles us is his  method. To put the future of Social Science on an  ultra-rational basis is practically to give it up. Un-  less thinking men have some sense of the consistency  of a method they cannot work with it, and if there is  no guarantee of the stability of the results it would  not be worth while.

But all that Mr. Kidd desires is really to be found  in Nature. There is no single element even of his  highest sanction which is not provided for in a  thorough-going doctrine of Evolution—a_ doctrine,  that is, which includes all the facts and all the factors,  and especially which takes into account that evolution  of Environment which goes on pari passu with the  evolution of the organism and where the highest sanc-  tions ultimately lie. With an Environment which  widens and enriches until it includes—or consciously  includes, for it has never been absent—the Divine;  and with Man so evolving as to become more and  more conscious that that Divine is there, and above  all that it is in himself, all the materials and all the

54 INTRODUCTION.

sanctions for a moral progress are forever secure. 
None of the sanctions of religion are withdrawn by  adding to them the sanctions of Nature. Even those  sanctions which are supposed to lie over and above 
Nature may be none the less rational sanctions. 
Though a positive religion, in the Comtian sense, is  no religion, a religion that is not in some degree posi-  tive is an impossibility. And although religion must  always rest upon faith, there is a reason for faith, and  a reason not only in Reason, but in Nature herself. 
When Evolution comes to be worked out along its  great natural lines, it may be found to provide for all  that religion assumes, all that philosophy requires,  and all that science proves.

Theological minds, with premature approval, have  hailed Mr. Kidd’s solution as a vindication of their  supreme position. Practically, as a vindication of the  dynamic power of the religious factor in the Evolution  of Mankind, nothing could be more convincing. But  as an apologetic, it only accentuates a weakness which  scientific theology never felt more keenly than at the  present hour. This weakness can never be removed  by an appeal to the ultra-rational. Does Mr. Kidd  not perceive that any one possessed of reason enough  to encounter his dilemma, either in the sphere of  thought or of conduct, will also have reason enough  to reject any “ultra-rational” solution? This di-  lemma is not one which would occur to more than one  ina thousand ; it has tasked all Mr. Kidd’s powers to  convince his reader that it exists; but if exceptional  intellect is required to see it, surely exceptional in-  tellect must perceive that this is not the way out of it. 
One cannot, in fact, tink oneself out of a difficulty of

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 55

this kind ; it can only be dived out. And that precisely  is what Nature is making all of us, in greater or less  degree, do, and every day making us do more. By  the time, indeed, that the world as a whole is suffi-  ciently educated to see the problem, it will already  have been solved. There is little comfort, then, for  apologetics in this direction. Only by bringing theol-  ogy into harmony with Nature and into line with the  rest of our knowledge can the noble interests given it  to conserve retain their vitality in a scientific age. 
The first essential of a working religion is that it shall  be congruous with Man; the second that it shall be  congruous with Nature. Whatever its sanctions, its  forces must not be abnormal, but reinforcements and  higher potentialities of those forces which, from eter-  nity, have shaped the progress of the world. No  other dynamic can enter into the working schemes of  those who seek to guide the destinies of nations or  carry on the Evolution of Society on scientific princi-  ples. A divorce here would be the catastrophe of  reason, and the end of faith. We believe with Mr. 
Kidd that “the process of social development which  has been taking place, and which is still in progress,  in our Western civilization, is not the product of the  intellect, but the motive force behind it has had its  seat and origin in the fund of altruistic feeling with  which our civilization has become equipped.” But we  shall endeavor to show that this fund of altruistic  feeling has been slowly funded in the race by Nature,  or through Nature, and as the direct and inevitable  result of that Struggle for the Life of Others, which  has been from all time a condition of existence. 
What religion has done to build up this fund,

56 INTRODUCTION.

it may not be within the scope of this introduc-  tory volume to inquire; it has done so much that  students of religion may almost be pardoned the over-  sight of the stupendous natural basis which made it  possible. But nothing is gained by protesting that 
“this altruistic development, and the deepening and  softening of character which has accompanied it, are  the direct and peculiar product of the religious  system.” For nothing can ever be gained by setting  one half of Nature against the other, or the rational  against the ultra-rational. To affirm that Altruism is  a peculiar product of religion is to excommunicate 
Nature from the moral order, and religion from the  rational order. If science is to begin to recognize  religion, religion must at least end by recognizing  science. And so far from religion sacrificing vital  distinctions by allying itself with Nature, so far from  impoverishing its immortal quality by accepting some  contribution from the lower sphere, it thereby extends  itself over the whole rich field, and claims all—matter,  life, mind, space, time—for itself. The present danger  is not in applying Evolution as a method, but only in  not carrying it far enough. No man, no man of sci-  ence even, observing the simple facts, can ever rob  religion of its due. Religion has done more for the  development of Altruism in a few centuries than all  the millenniums of geological time. But we dare not  rob Nature of its due. We dare not say that Nature  played the prodigal for ages, and reformed at the  eleventh hour. If Nature is the Garment of God, it is  woven without seam throughout; if a revelation of 
God, it is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; if  the expression of His Will, there is in it no variable-

EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 57

hess nor shadow of turning. Those who see great  gulfs fixed—and we have all begun by seeing them—  end by seeing them filled up. Were these gulfs es-  sential to any theory of the universe or of Man, even  the establishment of the unity of Nature were a dear  price to pay for obliterating them. But the apparent  loss is only gain, and the seeming gain were infinite  loss. For to break up Nature is to break up Reason,  and with it God and Man.

CEAPTHR I. 
THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

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

This passage from the simple cave to the many-  chambered lodge is an Evolution, and a similar devel-  opment may be traced in the domestic architecture of

all civilized societies. The laborer’s cottage of mod- 
59

60 THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

ern England and the shieling of the Highland crofter  are the survivals of the one-roomed hut of Primitive 
Man, scarcely changed in any essential with the lapse  of years. In the squire’s mansion also, and the noble-  man’s castle, we have the representatives, but now in  an immensely developed form, of the many-roomed  home of the chief. The steps by which the cottage  became the castle are the same as those by which the  cave in the rocks became the lodge of the chief. 
Both processes wear the hall-mark of all true devel-  opment—they arise in response to growing necessi-  ties, and they are carried out by the most simple and  natural steps.

Tn this evolution of a human habitation we have an  almost perfect type of the evolution of that more  august habitation, the complex tenement of clay in  which Man’s mysterious being has its home. The 
Body of Man is a structure of a million, or a million  million cells. And the history of the unborn babe is,  in the first instance, a history of additions, of room  being added to room, of organ to organ, of faculty to  faculty. The general process, also, by which this  takes place is almost as clear to modern science as in  the case of material buildings. <A special class of ob-  servers has carefully watched these secret and amaz-  ing metamorphoses, and so wonderful has been their  success with mind and microscope that they can al-  most claim to have seen Man’s Body made. The Sci-  ence of Embryology undertakes to trace the devyelop-  ment of Man from a stage in which he lived in a one-  roomed house—a physiological cell. Whatever the  multitude of rooms, the millions and millions of cells,  in which to-day each adult carries on the varied work

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY. 61

of life, it is certain that when he first began to be he  was the simple tenant ofa single cell. Observe, it is  not some animal-ancestor or some human progenitor  of Man that lived in this single cell—that may or may  not have been—but the individual Man, the present  occupant himself. We are dealing now not with phy-  logeny—the history of the race—but with ontogeny—  the problem of Man’s Ascent from his own earlier self. 
And the point at the moment is not that the race as-  cends; it is that each individual man has once, in his  own life-time, occupied a single cell, and starting from  that humble cradle, has passed through stage after  stage of differentiation, increase, and development,  until the myriad-roomed adult-form was attained. 
Whence that first cradle came is at present no matter. 
Whether its remote progenitor rocked among the  waves of primeval seas or swung from the boughs of  forests long since metamorphosed into coal does not  affect the question of the individual ascent of Man. 
The answers to these questions are hypotheses. The  fact that now arrests our wonder is that when the ear-  liest trace of an infant’s organization meets the eye  of science it is nothing but a one-celled animal. And  so closely does its development from that distant  point follow the lines of the evolution just described  in the case of the primitive savage hut, that we have  but to make a few changes in phraseology to make the  one process describe the other. Instead of rooms and  chambers we shall now read cells and tissues; instead  of the builder’s device of adding room to room, we  shall use the physiologist’s term segmentation; the  employments carried on in the various rooms will be-  come the functions discharged by the organs of the

62 ; THE ASCENT Of THE BODY.

human frame, and line for line the history of the evo-  lution will be found to be the same.

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

But let us watch the development of this one-celled  human embryo. Increase of rooms in architecture can  be effected in either of two ways—by building entirely  new rooms, or by partitioning old ones. Both of these  methods are employed in Nature. The first, gemma-  tion, or budding, is common among the lower forms of  life. The second, differentiation by partition, or seg-

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY. 63

mentation, is the approved method among higher  animals, and is that adopted in the case of Man. It  proceeds, after the fertilized ovum has completed the  complex preliminaries of karyokinesis, by the division  of the interior-contents into two equal parts, so that  the original cell is now occupied by two nucleated cells  with the old cell-wall surrounding them outside. The  two-roomed house is, in the next development, and by  a similar process of segmentation, developed into a  structure of four rooms, and this into one of eight, and  soon.’ Ina short time the number of chambers is so

1 When the multicellular globe, made up of countless offshoots  or divisions of the original pair, has reached a certain size, its  centre becomes filled with a tiny lakelet of watery fluid. This  fluid gradually increases in quantity and, pushing the cells out-  ward, packs them into a single layer, circumscribing it on every  side as with an elastic wall. At one part a dimple soon appears,  which slowly deepens, until a complete hollow is formed. So far  does this invagination of the sphere go on that the cells at the  bottom of the hollow touch those at the opposite side. The ovum  has now become an open bag or cup, such as one might make by  doubling in an india-rubber ball, and thus is formed the gastrula  of biology. The evolutional interest of this process lies in the  fact that probably all animals above the Protozoa pass through  this gastrula stage. That some of the lower Metazoa, indeed,  never develop much beyond it, a glance at the structure of the  humbler Coelenterates will show—the simplest of all illustra-  tions of the fact that embryonic forms of higher animals are often  permanently represented by the adult forms of lower. The chief  thing however to mark here is the doubling-in of the ovum to  gain a double instead of a single wall of cells. For these two  different layers, the ectoderm and the endoderm, or the animal  layer and the vegetal layer, play a unique part in the after-  history. All the organs of movement and sensation spring from  the one, all the organs of nutrition and reproduction develop from

the other.

64 THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

great that count is lost, and the activity becomes so  vigorous in every direction that one ceases to notice  individual cells at all. The tenement in fact consists  now of innumerable groups of cells congregated to-  gether, suites of apartments as it were, which have  quickly arranged themselves in symmetrical, definite,  and withal different forms. Were these forms not  different as well as definite we should hardly call it an  evolution, nor should we characterize the resulting  aggregation as a higher organism. A hundred cot-  tages placed in a row would never form a castle. 
What makes the castle superior to the hundred cot-  tages is not the number of its rooms, for they are pos-  sibly fewer; nor their difference in shape, for that is  immaterial. It lies in the number and nature and  variety of useful purposes to which the rooms are put,  the perfection with which each is adapted to its end,  and the harmonious co-operation among them with  reference to some common work. This also is the dis-  tinction between a higher animal and a humble organ-  ism such as the centipede or the worm. These  creatures are a monotony of similar rings, like a string  of beads. Each bead is the counterpart of the other;  and with such an organization any high or varied life  becomes an impossibility. The fact that any growing  embryo is passing through a real development is de-  cided by the new complexity of structure, by the more  perfect division of labor, and of better kinds of labor,  and by the increase in range and efficiency of the cor-  related functions discharged by the whole. In the  development of the human embryo the differentiating  and integrating forces are steadily acting and co-oper-  ating from the first, so that the result is not a mere

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY. 65

aggregation of similar cells, but an organism with  different parts and many varied functions. When all  is complete we find that one suite of cells has been  especially set apart to provide the commissariat,  others have devoted themselves exclusively to assimi-  lation. The ventilation of the house—respiration—  has been attended to by others, and a central force-  pump has been set up, and pipes and ducts for many  purposes installed throughout the system. Telegraph  wires have next been stretched in every direction to  keep up connection between the endless parts; and  other cells developed into bony pillars for support. 
Finally, the whole delicate structure has been shielded  by a variety of protective coverings, and after months  and years of further elaboration and adjustment the  elaborate fabric is complete. Now all these com-  plicated contrivances—bones, muscles, nerves, heart,  brain, lungs—are made out of cells; they are them-  selves, and in their furthest development, simply  masses or suites of cells modified in various ways for  the special department of household work they are  meant to serve. No new thing, except building  material, has entered into the embryo since its first  appearing. It seized whatever matter lay to hand,  incorporated it with its own quickening substance, and  built it in to its appropriate place. So the structure  rose in size and symmetry, till the whole had climbed,  a miracle of unfolding, to the stature of a Man.

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

5

66 THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

Between the early cell and the infant’s formed body,  the ordinary observer sees the uneventful passage of  a few brief months. But the evolutionist sees con-  centrated into these few months the labor and the  progress of incalculable ages. Here before him is the  whole stretch of time since life first dawned upon the  earth; and as he watches the nascent organism climb-  ing to its maturity he witnesses a spectacle which for  strangeness and majesty stands alone in the field of  viological research. What he sees is not the mere  shaping or sculpturing of a Man. The human form  does not begin as a human form. It begins as an  animal; and at first, and for a long time to come there  is nothing wearing the remotest semblance of human-  ity. What meets the eye is a vast procession of lower  forms of life, a succession of strange inhuman creat-  ures emerging from a crowd of still stranger and still  more inhuman creatures; and it is only after a pro-  longed and unrecognizable series of metamorphoses  that they culminate in some faint likeness to the im-  age of him who is one of the newest yet the oldest of  created things. Hitherto we have been taught to look  among the fossiliferous formaticns of Geology for the  buried lives of the earth’s past. But Embryology has  startled the world by declaring that the ancient life of  the earth is not dead. It is risen. It exists to-day in  the embryos of still-living things, and some of the  most archaic types find again a resurrection and a life  in the frame of man himself.

It is an amazing and almost incredible story. The  proposition is not only that Man begins his earthly  existence in the guise of a lower animal-embryo, but  that in the successive transformations of the human

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY. 67

embryo there is reproduced before our eyes a visible,  actual, physical representation of part of the life-  history of the world. Human Embryology is a con-  densed account, a recapitulation or epitome of some of  the main chapters in the Natural History of the world. 
The same processes of development which once  took thousands of years for their consummation are  here condensed, foreshortened, concentrated into the  space of weeks. Each platform reached by the human  embryo in its upward course represents the embryo of  some lower animal which in some mysterious way has  played a part in the pedigree of the human race, which  may itself have disappeared long since from the earth,  but is now and forever built into the inmost being of 
Man. These lower animals, each at its successive  stage, have stopped short in their development ; Man  has gone on. A’ each fresh advance his embryo is  found again abreast of some other animal-embryo a  little higher in organization than that just passed. 
Continuing his ascent that also is overtaken, the now  very complex embryo making up to one animal-em-  bryo after another until it has distanced all in its series  and stands alone. As the modern stem-winding watch  contains the old clepsydra and all the most useful  features in all the timekeepers that were ever made;  as the Walter printing-press contains the rude hand-  machine of Gutenberg, and all the best in all the  machines that followed it ; as the modern locomotive  of to-day contains the engine of Watt, the locomotive  of Hedley, and most of the improvements of succeeding  years, so Man contains the embryonic bodies of earlier  and humbler and clumsier forms of life. Yet in  making the Walter press in a modern workshop, the

68 THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

artificer does not begin by building again the press of 
Gutenberg, nor in constructing the locomotive does  the engineer first make a Watt’s machine and then  incorporate the Hedley, and then the Stephenson, and  so on through all the improving types of engines that  have led up to this. But the astonishing thing is that,  in making a Man, Nature does introduce the frame-  work of these earlier types, displaying each crude  pattern by itself before incorporating it in the finished  work. The human embryo, to change the figure, is a  subtle phantasmagoria, a living theatre in which a  weird transformation scene is being enacted, and in  which countless strange and uncouth characters take  part. Some of these characters are well-known to  science, some are strangers. As the embryo unfolds,  one by one these animal actors come upon the stage,  file past in phantom-like procession, throw off their  drapery, and dissolve away into something else. Yet,  as they vanish, each leaves behind a vital portion of  itself, some original and characteristic memorial, some-  thing itself has made or won, that perhaps it alone  could make or win—a bone, a muscle, a ganglion, or a  tooth—to be the inheritance of the race. And it is  only after nearly all have played their part and dedi-  cated their gift, that a human form, mysteriously  compounded of all that has gone before, begins to be  discerned in their midst.

The duration of this process, the profound antiquity  of the last survivor, the tremendous height he has  scaled, are inconceivable by the faculties of Man. But  measure the very lowest of the successive platforms.  passed in the ascent, and see how very great a thing  it is even to rise at all. The single cell, the first

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY. 68

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

Through all what zoological regions the embryo  passes in its great ascent from the one-celled forms,

70 THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

one can never completely tell. The changes succeed  one another with such rapidity that it is impossible  at each separate stage, to catch the actual likeness  to other embryos. Sometimes a familiar feature sud-  denly recalls a form well-known to science, but the  likeness fades, and the developing embryo seems to  wander among the ghosts of departed types. Long  ago these crude ancestral forms were again the high-  est animals upon the earth. For a few thousand  years they reigned supreme, furthered the universal  evolution by a hair-breadth, and passed away. The  material dust of their bodies is laid long since in the 
Paleozoic rocks, but their life and labor are not  forgotten. For their gains were handed on to a suc-  ceeding race. Transmitted thence through an endless  series of descendants, sifted, enriched, accentuated,  still dimly recognizable, they re-appeared at last in  the physical frame of Man. After the early stages of  human development are passed, the transformations  become so definite that the features of the contrib-  utory animals are almost recognizable. Here, for  example, is a stage at which the embryo in its ana-  tomical characteristics resembles that of the Vermes  or Worms. As yet there is no head, nor neck, nor  backbone, nor waist, nor limbs. <A roughly eylindri-  cal headless trunk—that is all that stands for the  future man. One by one the higher Invertebrates are  left behind, and then occurs the most remarkable  change in the whole life-history. This is the laying  down of the line to be occupied by the spinal chord,  the presence of which henceforth will determine the  place of Man in the Vertebrate sub-kingdom. At this  crisis, the eye which sweeps the field of lower Nature

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY. ah

for an analogue will readily find it. It is a circum-  stance of extraordinary interest that there should be  living upon the globe at this moment an animal  representing the actual transition from Invertebrate  to Vertebrate life. The acquisition of a vertebral  column is one of the great marks of height which 
Nature has bestowed upon her creatures; and in the  shallow waters of the Mediterranean she has _ pre-  served for us a creature which, whether degenerate  or not, can only be likened to one of her first rude  experiments in this direction. This animal is the 
Lancelet, or Amphioxus, and so rndimentary is the  backbone that it does not contain any bone at all, but  only a shadow or prophecy of it in cartilage. The  cartilaginous notochord of the Amphioxus nevertheless  is the progenitor of all vertebral columns, and in the  first instance this structure appears in the human  embryo exactly as it now exists in the Lancelet. But  this is only a single example. In living Nature there  are a hundred other animal characteristics which at  one stage or another the biologist may discern in the  ever-changing kaleidoscope of the human embryo. 
Even with this addition, nevertheless, the human  infant is but a first rough draft, an almost formless  lump of clay. As yet there is no distinct head, no  brain, no jaws, no limbs; the heart is imperfect, the  higher visceral organs are feebly developed, every-  thing is elementary. But gradually new organs loom  in sight, old ones increase in complexity. By a magic  which has never yet been fathomed the hidden Potter  shapes and re-shapes the clay. The whole grows in  size and symmetry. Resemblances, this time, to  the embryos of the lower vertebrate series, flash out as

ie THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

each new step is attained—first the semblance of the © 
Fish, then of the Amphibian, then of the Reptile, last  of the Mammal. Of these great groups the leading  embryonic characters appear as in a moving pano-  rama, some of them pronounced and unmistakable,  others mere sketches, suggestions, likenesses of infinite  subtlety. At last the true Mammalian form emerges  from the crowd. Far ahead of all at this stage stand  out three species—the Tailed Catarrhine Ape, the Tail-  less Catarrhine, and last, differmg physically from  these mainly by an enlargement of the brain and a  development of the larynx, Man.

Whatever views be held of the doctrine of Evolu-  tion, whatever theories of its cause, these facts of 
Embryology are proved. They have taken their place  in science wholly apart from the discussion of theories  of Evolution, and as the result of laboratory investi-  gation, made for quite other ends. What is true for 
Man, moreover, is true of all other animals. Every  creature that lives climbs up its own genealogical tree  before it reaches its mature condition. “ All animals  living, or that ever have lived, are united together by  blood relationship of varying nearness or remoteness,  and every animal now in existence has a pedigree  stretching back, not merely for ten or a hundred  generations, but through all geologic time since life  first commenced on the earth. The study of develop-  ment has revealed to us that each animal bears the  mark of its ancestry, and is compelled to discover its  parentage in its own development; the phases through  which an animal passes in its progress from the egg to  the adult are no accidental freaks, no mere matters of  developmental convenience, but represent more or less

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY. is

closely, in more or less modified manner, the suc-  cessive ancestral stages through which the present  condition has been acquired.” Almost foreseen by 
Agassiz, suggested by Von Baer, and finally applied  by Fritz Miller, this singular law is the key-note of  modern Embryology. In no ease, it is true, is the  recapitulation of the past complete. Ancestral stages  are constantly omitted, others are ovér-accentuated,  condensed, distorted, or confused ; while new and un-  decipherable characters occasionally appear. But it is  a general scientific fact, that over the graves of a  myriad aspirants the bodies of Man and of all higher 
Animals have risen. No one knows why this should  be so. Science, at present, has no rationale of the  process adequate to explain it. It was formerly held  that the entire animal creation had contributed some-  thing to the anatomy of Man; or that as Serres ex-  pressed it, “Human Organogenesis is a_ transitory 
Comparative Anatomy.” But though Man has not  such a monopoly of the past as is here inferred— 
_ other types having here and there diverged and devel-  oped along lines of their own—it is certain that the  materials for his body have been brought together  from an unknown multitude of lowlier forms of life. 
Those who know the Cathedral of St. Mark’s will re-  member how this noblest of the Stones of Venice owes  its greatness to the patient hands of centuries and  centuries of workers, how every quarter of the globe  has been spoiled of its treasures to dignify this single  shrine. But he who ponders over the more ancient  temple of the Human Body will find imagination fail

1 Marshall, Vertebrate Embryology, p. 26.

74 THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

him as he tries to think from what remote and min-  gled sources, from what lands, seas, climates, atmos-  pheres, its various parts have been called together,  and by what innumerable contributory creatures,  swimming, creeping, flying, climbing, each of its  several members was wrought and perfected. What  ancient chisel first sculptured the rounded columns of  the limbs ? What dead hands built the cupola of the  brain, and from what older ruins were the scattered  pieces of its mosaic-work brought? Who fixed the  windows in its upper walls? What winds and  weathers wrought strength into its buttresses? What  ocean-beds and forest glades worked up its colorings ? 
What Love and Terror and Night called forth the 
Music? And what Life and Death and Pain and 
Struggle put all together in the noiseless workshop of  the past, and removed each worker silently when its  task was done? How these things came to be Biology  is one long record. The architects and builders of  this mighty temple are not anonymous. Their names,  and the work they did, are graven forever on the walls  and arches of the Human Embryo. For this is a  volume of that Book in which Man’s members were  written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as  yet there was none of them.

The Descent of Man from the Animal Kingdom is  sometimes spoken of as a degradation. It is an un-  speakable exaltation. Recall the vast antiquity of  that primal cell from which the human embryo first  sets forth. Compass the nature of the potentialities  stored up in its plastic substance. Watch all the  busy processes, the multiplying energies, the mystify-  ing transitions, the inexplicable chemistry of this liy-

THE ASCENT OF THE BODY. 75

ing laboratory. Observe the variety and_intricacy of  its metamorphoses, the exquisite gradation of its as-  cent, the unerring aim with which the one type un-  folds—never pausing, never uncertain of its direction,  refusing arrest at intermediate forms, passing on to  its flawless maturity without waste or effort or  fatigue. See the sense of motion at every turn, of  purpose and of aspiration. Discover how, with iden-  tity of process and loyalty to the type, a hair-breadth  of deviation is yet secured to each so that no two  forms come out the same, but each arises an original  creation, with features, characteristics, and individual-  ities of its own. Remember, finally, that even to  make the first cell possible, stellar space required to  be swept of matter, suns must needs be broken up,  and planets cool, the agents of geology labor millen-  nium after millennium at the unfinished earth to pre-  pare a material resting-place for the coming guest. 
Consider all this, and judge if Creation could have a  sublimer meaning, or the Human Race possess a more  splendid genesis.

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

higher divinity and mystery of the process broke upon

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76 THE ASCENT OF THE BODY.

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

CHAPTER II. 
THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

Tue spectacle which we have just witnessed is in-  visible, and therefore more or less unimpressive, ex-  cept to the man of science. Embryology works in the  dark. Requiring not only the microscope, but the  comparative knowledge of intricate and inaccessible  forms of life, its all but final contribution to the  theory of Evolution carries no adequate conviction to  the general mind. We must therefore follow the fort-  unes of the Body further into the open day. If the 
Embryo in every changing feature of its growth con-  tains some reminiscence of an animal ancestry, the  succeeding stages of its development may be trusted  to carry on the proof. And though here the evidence  is neither so beautiful nor so exact, we shall find that  there is in the adult frame, and even in the very life  and movement of the new-born babe, a continuous  witness to the ancient animal strain.

We are met, unfortunately, at the outset by one of  those curious obstacles to inquiry which have so often  barred the way of truth and turned discovery into  ridicule. It happens that the class of animals in

which Science, in the very nature of the case, is com- 
(Mt

78 THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

pelled to look for the closest affinities to human beings  is that of the Apes. This simple circumstance has  told almost fatally against the wide acceptance of the  theory of Descent. There is just as much truth in the  sarcasm that man is a “reformed monkey” as to pre-  judge the question to the unscientific mind. But the  statement is no nearer the truth itself than if one were  to say that a gun is an adult form of the pistol. The  connection, if any, between Man and Ape is simply  that the most Man-like thing in creation is the Ape,  and that, in his Ascent, Man probably passed through  a stage when he more nearly resembled the Ape than  any other known animal. Apart from that accident, 
Evolution owes no more to the Ape than to any other  creature. Man and Ape are alike in being two of the  latest terms of an infinite series, each member of  which has had a share in making up the genealogical  tree. To single out the Ape, therefore, and use the  hypothetical relationship for rhetorical purposes is, to  say the least, unscientific. It is certainly the fact  that Man is not descended from any existing Ape. 
The <Anthropoid Apes branched off laterally at a  vastly remote period from the nearest human progen-  itors. The challenge even to produce links between 
Man and the living man-like Apes is difficult to take  seriously. Should any one so violate the first princi-  ples of Evolution as to make it, it is only to be said  that it cannot be met. For an Anthropoid Ape could  as little develop into a Man as could a Man pass back-  wards into an Anthropoid Ape. References to a Sim-  ian stem play no necessary part in the story of the 
Ascent of Man. In those pages the compromising  name will scarcely occur. If historical sequence com-

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY. ~-79

pels us to make an apparent exception here at the  very outset, it will be seen that the allusion is harm-  less. For the analogy we are about to make might  with equal relevancy have been drawn from a squirrel  or a sloth.

On the theory that human beings were once allied  in habit as well as in body with some of the Apes, that  they probably lived in trees, and that baby-men clung  to their climbing mothers as baby-monkeys do to-day, 
Dr. Louis Robinson prophesied that a baby’s power of  grip might be found to be comparable in strength to  that of a young monkey at the same period of develop-  ment. Having special facilities for such an investiga-  tion, he tested a large number of just-born infants  with reference to this particular. Now although most  people have some time or other been seized in the  awful grasp of a baby, few have any idea of the abnor-  mal power locked up in the tentacles of this human  octopus. Dr. Robinson’s method was to extend to  infants, generally of one hour old, his finger, or a  walking stick, to imitate the branch of a tree, and see  how long they would hang there without, what the  newspapers call, “any other visible means of support.” 
The results are startling. Dr. Robinson has records  of upwards of sixty cases in which the children were  under a month old, and in at least half of these the ex-  periment was tried within an hour of birth: “In every  instance, with only two exceptions, the child was able  to hang on to the finger or a small stick, three-  quarters of an inch in diameter, by its hands, like an  acrobat from a horizontal bar, and sustain the whole  weight of its body for at least ten seconds. In twelve  cases, in infants under an hour old, half a minute

80 THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

passed before the grasp relaxed, and in three or four  nearly a minute. When about four days old, I found  that the strength had increased, and that nearly all,  when tried at this age, could sustain their weight for  half a minute. About a fortnight or three weeks after  birth the faculty appeared to have attained its maxi-  mum, for several at this period succeeded in hanging  for over a minute and a half, two for just over two  minutes, and one infant of three weeks old for two  minutes thirty-five seconds. ... In one instance, in  which the performer had less than one hour’s expe-  rience of life, he hung by both hands to my forefinger  for ten seconds, and then deliberately let go with his  right hand (as if to seek a better hold), and main-  tained his position for five seconds more by the left  hand only. Invariably the thighs are bent nearly at  right angles to the body, and in no case did the lower  limbs hang down and take the attitude of the erect  position. This attitude, and the disproportionately  large development of the arms compared with the legs,  give the photographs a striking resemblance to a well-  known picture of the celebrated Chimpanzee Sally at  the Zoological Garden. I think it will be acknowl-  edged that the remarkable strength shown in the  flexor muscle of the fore-arm in these young infants,  especially when compared with the flaccid and feeble  state of the muscular system generally, is a suffi-  ciently striking phenomenon to provoke inquiry as to  its cause and origin. The fact that a three-week old  baby can perform a feat of muscular strength that  would tax the powers of many a_ healthy adult  is enough to set one wondering. A curious point is  that in many cases no sign of distress is evident,

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY. 81

and no cry uttered until the grasp begins to give  way.” 3

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

“This little creature was only about a foot long,  and had, evidently been hanging to its mother when  she first fell. Luckily it did not appear to have been  wounded, and after we had cleaned the mud out of its  mouth it began to cry out, and seemed quite strong  and active. While carrying it home it got its hands  in my beard, and grasped so tightly that I had great  difficulty in getting free, for the fingers are habitually  bent inward at the last joint so as to form complete  hooks. For the first few days it clung desperately  with all four hands to whatever it could lay hold of,  and I had to be careful to keep my beard out of its  way, as its fingers clutched hold of hair more tena-  ciously than anything else, and it was impossible to  free myself without assistance. When restless, it  would struggle about with its hands up in the air try-  ing to find something to take hold of, and when it had  got a bit of stick or rag in two or three of its hands,  seemed quite happy. For want of something else, it  would often seize its own feet, and after a time it  would constantly cross its arms and grasp with each  hand the long hair that grew just below the opposite  shoulder. The great tenacity of its grasp soon dimin-  ished, and I was obliged to invent some means to give  it exercise and strengthen its limbs. For this purpose

1 Nineteenth Century, November, 1891.

82 THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

I made a short ladder of three or four rounds, on  which I put it to hang for a quarter of an hour at a  time. At first it seemed much pleased, but it could  not get all four hands in a comfortable position, and,  after changing about several times, would leave hold  of one hand after the other and drop on to the floor. 
Sometimes when hanging only by two hands, it would  loose one, and cross it to the opposite shoulder, grasp-  ing its own hair; and, as this seemed much more  agreeable than the stick, it would then loose the other  and tumble down, when it would cross both and lie  on its back quite contentedly, never seeming to be  hurt by its numerous tumbles. Finding it so fond  of hair, I endeavored to make an artificial mother, by  wrapping up a piece of buffalo-skin into a bundle, and  suspending it about a foot from the floor. At first  this seemed to suit it admirably, as it could sprawl  its legs about and always find some hair, which it  grasped with the greatest tenacity.” 4

Whatever the value of these facts as evidence, they  form an interesting if slight introduction to the part  of the subject that lies before us. For we have now  to explore the Body itself for actual betrayals—not  mere external movements which might have come as  well from early Man as from later animal; but ver-  itable physical survivals, the material scaffolding  itsel{—of the animal past. And the facts here are as  numerous and as easily grasped as they are authentic. 
As the traveller, wandering in foreign lands, brings  back all manner of curios to remind him where he has  been—clubs and spears, clothes and pottery, which

1 Malay Archipelago, 53-5.

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY. 83

represent the ways of life of those whom he has met—  so the body of Man, emerging from its age-long jour-  ney through the animal kingdom, appears laden with  the spoils of its distant pilgrimage. These relics are  not mere curiosities ; they are as real as the clubs and  spears, the clothes and pottery. Like them, they were  once a part of life’s vicissitude ; they represent organs  which have been outgrown ; old forms of apparatus  long since exchanged for better, yet somehow not yet  destroyed by the hand of time. The physical body of 
Man, so great is the number of these relics, is an old  curiosity shop, a museum of obsolete anatomies, dis-  carded tools, outgrown and aborted organs. All other  animals also contain among their useful organs a  proportion which are long past their work ; and so  significant are these rudiments of a former state of  things, that anatomists have often expressed their  willingness to stake the theory of Evolution upon their  presence alone.

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

84 THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

stances calls for far less mechanism in the body, and,  as a matter of fact, all the simplest forms of life at  the present day are inhabitants of the water.

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

More striking examples are found among the mol-  luses, the sea-faring animals par eacellence of the past. 
A snail wandering over the earth with a sea-shell on  its back is one of the most anomalous sights in nature 
—as preposterous as the spectacle of a Red Indian  perambulating Paris with a birch canoe on his head. 
The snail not only carries this relic of the sea every-  where with it, but when it cannot get moisture to  remind it of its ancient habitat, it actually manufact-  ures it. That the creature itself has discovered the  anomaly of its shell is obvious, for in almost every  class its state of dilapidation betrays that its up-keep  is no longer an object of much importance. In nearly  every species the stony houses have already lost their  doors, and most have their shells so reduced in size  that not half of the body can get in. The degenera-  tion in their cousins, the slugs, is even more pathetic. 
All that remains of the ancestral home in the highest

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY. 85

ranks is a limpet-like cap on the tip of the tail; the  lowest are sans everything; and in the intermediate  forms the former glory is ironically suggested by a  few grains of sand or a tiny shield so buried beneath  the skin that only the naturalist’s eye can see it.

When Man left the water, however—or what was to  develop into Man—he took very much more ashore  with him than a shell. Instead of crawling ashore at  the worm stage, he remained in the water until he  evolved into something like a fish; so that when,  after an amphibian interlude, he finally left it, many 
“ancient and fish-like” characters remained in his  body to teil the tale. The chief characteristic of a  fish is its apparatus for breathing the air dissolved in  the water. This consists of gills—delicate curtains  hung on strong arches and dyed scarlet with the blood  which continually courses through them. In many  fishes these arches are five or seven in number, and  communicating with them—in order to allow the  aerated water, which has been taken in at the mouth,  to pass out again after bathing the gills—an equal  number of slits or openings is provided in the neck. 
Sometimes the slits are bare and open so that they are  easily seen on the fish’s neck—any one who looks at a  shark will see them—but in modern forms they are  generally covered by the operculum or lid. Without  these holes in their neck all fishes would instantly  perish, and we may be sure Nature took exceptional  care in perfecting this particular piece of the  mechanism.

Now it is one of the most extraordinary facts in  natural history that these slits in the fish’s neck are  still represented in the neck of Man. Almost the

86 THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

most prominent feature, indeed, after the head, in  every mammalian embryo, are the four clefts or fur-  rows of the old gill-slits. They are still known in 
Embryology by the old name—gill-slits—and so per-  sistent are these characters that children are known  to have been born with them not only externally  visible—which is a common occurrence—but open  through and through, so that fluids taken in at the  mouth could pass through and trickle out at the neck. 
This last fact was so astounding as to be for a long  time denied. It was thought that, when this hap-  pened, the orifice must have been accidentally made  by the probe of the surgeon. But Dr. Sutton has  recently met with actual cases where this has  occurred. “I have seen milk,” he says, “issue from  such fistule in individuals. who have never been  submitted to sounding.”? In the common ease of  children born with these vestiges, the old gill-slits are  represented by small openings in the skin on the sides  of the neck, and capable of admitting a thin probe. 
Sometimes even the place where they have been in  childhood is marked throughout life by small round  patches of white skin.

Almost more astonishing than the fact of their  persistence is the use to which Nature afterwards put  them. When the fish came ashore, its water-breath-  ing apparatus was no longer of any use to it. At first  it had to keep it on, for it took a long time to perfect  the air-breathing apparatus destined to replace it. 
But when this was ready the problem arose, What  was to be done with the earlier organ? Nature is

1 Evolution and Disease, p. 81.

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY. 87

exceedingly economical, and could not throw all this  mechanism away. In fact, Nature almost never parts  with any structure she has once made. What she  does is to change it into something else. Conversely, 
Nature seldom makes anything new; her method  of creation is to adapt something old. Now, when 
Nature had done with the old breathing-apparatus,  she proceeded to adapt it for a new and important  purpose. She saw that if water could pass through  a hole in the neck, air could pass through likewise. 
But it was no longer necessary that air should pass  through for purposes of breathing, for that was  already provided for by the mouth. Was there any  other purpose for which it was desirable that air  should enter the body ? There was, and a very subtle  one. For hearing. Sound is the result of a wave-  motion conducted by many things, but in a special  way by air. To leave holes in the head was to let  sound into the head. The mouth might have done for  this, but the mouth had enough to do as it was, and,  moreover, it must often be shut. In the old days,  certainly, sound was conveyed to fishes in a dull way  without any definite opening. But animals which  live in water do not seem to use hearing much, and  the sound-waves in fishes are simply conveyed  through the walls of the head to the internal ear with-  out any definite mechanism. But as soon as land-life  began, owing to the changed medium through which  sound-waves must now be propagated, and the new  uses for sound itself, a more delicate instrument was  required. And hence one of the first things attended  to as the evolution went on was the construction and  improvement of the ear. And this seems to have been

88 THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY.

mainly effected by a series of remarkable develop-  ments of one of the now superfluous gill-slits.

It has long been a growing certainty to Comparative 
Anatomy that the external and middle ear in Man are  simply a development, an improved edition, of the  first gill-cleft and its surrounding parts. The tym-  pano-Eustachian passage is the homologue or counter-  part of the spiracle associated in the shark with the  first gill-opening. Prof. His of Leipsic has worked  out the whole development in minute detail, and con-  clusively demonstrated the mode of origin of the  external ear from the coalescence of six rounded  tubercles surrounding the first branchial cleft at an  early period of embryonic life.*

1 Haeckel has given an earlier account of the process in the  following words :—‘‘ All the essential parts of the middle ear—the  tympanic membrane, tympanic cavity, and Eustachian tube—  develop from the first gill-opening with its surrounding parts,  which in the Primitive Fishes (Selachii) remains throughout life  as an open blow-hole, situated between the first and second gill-  arches. In the embryos of higher Vertebrates it closes in the  centre, the point of concrescence forming the tympanic mem-  brane. The remaining outer part of the first gill-opening is the  rudiment of the outer ear-canal. From the inner part originates  the tympanic cavity, and further inward, the Eustachian tube. 
In connection with these, the three bonelets of the ear develop  from the first two gill-arches; the hammer and anvil from the  first, and the stirrup from the upper end of the second gill-arch. 
Finally, as regards the external ear, the ear-shell (concha auris),  and the outer ear canal, leading from the shell to the tympanic  membrane—these parts develop in the simplest way from the skin  covering which borders the outer orifice of the first gill-opening. 
At this point the ear-shell rises in the form of a circular fold of  skin, in which cartilage and muscles afterwards form.’’—Haeckel, 
Evolution of Man, Vol, 11, p. 269.

_ee

THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY. 89

Now, bearing in mind this theory of the origin  of ears, an extraordinary corroboration confronts us. 
Ears are actually sometimes found bursting out in  human beings half-way down the neck, in the exact  position—namely, along the line of the anterior  border of the sterno-mastoid muscle—which the  gill-slits would occupy if they still persisted. In  some human families, where the tendency to retain  these special structures is strong, one member  sometimes illustrates the abnormality by possessing  the clefts alone, another has a cervical ear, while a  third has both a ‘cleft and a neck-ear—all these,  of course, in addition to the ordinary ears. This  cervical auricle has all the characters of the  ordinary ear, “it contains yellow elastic cartilage,  is skin-covered, and has muscle-fibre attached to  it.”? Dr. Sutton calls attention to the fact that on  ancient statues of fauns and satyrs cervical auricles  are sometimes found, and he figures the head of a  satyr from the British Museum, carved long before  the days of anatomy, where a sessile ear on the neck ¥  is quite distinct. <A still better illustration may be  seen in the Art Museum at Boston on a fuli-sized  cast of a faun, belonging to the later Greek period;  and there are other examples in the same building. 
One interest of these neck-ears in statues is that they  are not, as a rule, modelled after the human ear, but  taken from the cervical ear of the goat, from which  the general idea of the faun was derived. This shows  that neck-ears were common on the goats of that  period—as they are on goats to this day. ‘The occur-

1Sutton, Evolution and Disease, p. 87.

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rence of neck-ears in goats is no more than one would  expect. Indeed, one would look for them not only in  goats and in Man, but in all the Mammalia, for so far  as their bodies are concerned all the higher animals are  near relations. Observations on vestigial structures  in animals are sadly wanting ; but these cervical ears  are also certainly found in the horse, pig, sheep, and  others.

That the human ear was not always the squat and  degenerate instrument it is at present may be seen by  a critical glance at its structure. Mr. Darwin records  how a celebrated sculptor called his attention to a lit-  tle peculiarity in the external ear, which he had often  noticed both in men and women. “The peculiarity  consists in a little blunt point, projecting from the  inwardly folded margin or helix. When present, it is  developed at birth, and, according to Professor Ludwig 
Meyer, more frequently in man than in woman. The  helix obviously consists of the extreme margin of the  ear folded inwards ; and the folding appears to be in  some manner connected with the whole external ear  being permanently pressed backwards. In many  monkeys who do not stand high in the order, as  baboons and some species of macacus, the upper por-  tion of the ear is slightly pointed, and the margin  is not at all folded inwards; but if the margin were to  be thus folded, a slight point would necessarily project  towards the centre.”* Here, then, in this discovery of  the lost tip of the ancestral ear, is further and visible  advertisement of Man’s Descent, a surviving symbol of  the stirring times and dangerous days of his animal

1 Descent of Man, p. 15.

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youth. It is difficult to imagine any other theory than  that of Descent which could account for all these facts. 
That Evolution should leave such clues lying about is  at least an instance of its candor.

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

One might run over all the other organs of the  human body and show their affinities with animal  structures and an animal past. The twitching of the  ear, for instance, suggests another obsolete, or obso-  lescent power—the power, or rather the set of powers,  for twitching the skin, especially the skin of the scalp  and forehead by which we raise the eyebrows. Sub-  cutaneous muscles for shaking off flies from the skin,  or for erecting the hair of the scalp, are common  among quadrupeds, and these are represented in the  human subject by the still functioning muscles of the  forehead, and occasionally of the head itself. Every  one has met persons who possess the power of moving

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the whole scalp to and fro, and the muscular apparatus  for effecting it is identical with what is normally found  in some of the Quadrumana.

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

Passing from the head to the other extremity of the  body one comes upon a somewhat unexpected but  very pronounced characteristic—the relic of the tail,  and not only of the tail, but of muscles for wagging it. 
Every one who first sees a human skeleton is amazed  at this discovery. At the end of the vertebral column,  curling faintly outward in suggestive fashion, are  three, four, and occasionally five vertebra forming the  coccyx, a true rudimentary tail. In the adult this is  always concealed beneath the skin, but in the embryo,  both in Man and ape, at an early stage it is much  longer than the limbs. What is decisive as to its true  nature, however, is that even in the embryo of Man  the muscles for wagging it are still found. In the  grown-up human being these muscles are represented  by bands of fibrous tissue, but cases are known where  the actual muscles persist through life. That a dis-  tinct external tail should not still be found in Man

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may seem disappointing to the evolutionist. But the  want of a tail argues more for the theory of Evolution  than its presence would have done. For all the  anthropoids most allied to Man have long since also  parted with theirs.

With regard to the presence of Hair on the body,  and its disposition and direction, some curious facts  may be noticed. No one, until Evolution supplied the  impulse to a fresh study of the commonplace, thought  it worth while to study such trifles as the presence of  hair on the fingers and hands, and the slope of the  hair on the arms. But now that attention is called to  it, every detail is seen to be full of meaning. In all  men the rudimentary hair on the arm, from the wrist  to the elbow, points one way, from the elbow to the  shoulder it points the opposite way. In the first case  it points upwards from the wrist towards the elbow,  in the other downwards from the shoulder to the  elbow. This occurs nowhere else in the animal king-  dom, except among the anthropoid apes and a few 
American monkeys, and has to do with the arboreal  habit. As Mr. Romanes, who has pointed this out,  explains it, “When sitting on trees, the Orang, as  observed by Wallace, places its hands above its head  with its elbows pointing downwards; the disposition  of hair on the arms and fore-arms then has the effect  of thatch in turning the rain. Again, I find that in  all species of apes, monkeys, and baboons which IT  have examined (and they have been numerous), the  hair on the back of the hands and feet is continued as  far as the first row of phalanges ; but becomes scanty,  or disappears altogether, on the second row. I also  find that the same peculiarity occurs in man. We

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have all rudimentary hair on the first row of pha-  langes, both of hands and feet ; when present at all, it  is more scanty on the second row: and in no case  have I been able to find any on the terminal row. In  all cases those peculiarities are congenital, and the  total absence or partial presence of hair on the second  phalanges is constant in different species of Quad-  rumana. ... The downward direction of the hair on  the backs of the hands is exactly the same in man as  it is in all the anthropoid apes. Again, with regard  to hair, Darwin notices that occasionally there appear  in man a few hairs in the eyebrows much longer than  the others; and that they seem to be a representation  of similarly long and scattered hairs which occur in  the chimpanzee, macacus, and baboon. Lastly, about  the sixth month the human foetus is often thickly  covered with somewhat long dark hair over the entire  body, except the soles of the feet and palms of the  hand, which are likewise bare in all quadrumanous  animals. This covering, which is called the lanugo,  and sometimes extends even to the whole forehead,  ears, and face, is shed before birth. So that it  appears to be useless for any purpose other than that  of emphatically- declaring man a child of the  monkey.”? The wselessness of these relics, apart from  the remarkable and detailed nature of the homolo-  gies just brought out, is a circumstance very hard  to get over on any other hypothesis than that of 
Descent.

Caution, of course, is required in deciding as to the  inutility of any character since its seeming uselessness

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

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may only mean that we do not know its use. But  there are undoubtedly cases where we know that cer-  tain vestigial structures are not only useless to Man  but worse than useless. Coming under this category  is perhaps the most striking of all the vestigial organs,  that of the Vermiform Appendix of the Cecum. Here  is a structure which is not only of no use to man now,  but is a veritable death-trap. In herbivorous animals  this “ blind-tube ” is very large—longer in some cases  than the body itself—and of great use in digestion, but  in Man it is shrunken into the merest rudiment, while  in the Orang-outang it is only a little larger. In the  human subject, owing to its diminutive size, it can be  of no use whatever, while it forms an easy receptacle  for the lodgment of foreign bodies, such as_ fruit-  stones, which set up inflammation, and in various  ways cause death. In Man this tube is the same in  structure as the rest of the intestine; it is “ covered  with peritoneum, possesses a muscular coat, and is  lined with mucous membrane. In the early embryo it  is equal in calibre to the rest of the bowel, but at a  certain date it ceases to grow pari passu with it, and  at the time of birth appears as a thin tubular appendix  to the cecum. In the newly-born child it is often  absolutely as long as in the full-grown man. This  precocity is always an indication that the part was  of great importance to the ancestors of the human  species.” ?

So important is the key of Evolution to the modern  pathologist that in cases of malformation his first  resort is always to seek an explanation in earlier

1 Sutton, Evolution and Disease, p. 69,

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forms of life. It is found that conditions which are  pathological in one animal are natural in others of a  lower species. When any eccentricity appears in a  human body the anatomist no longer sets it down as  a freak of Nature. He proceeds to match it lower  down. Mr. Darwin mentions a case of a man who,  in his foot alone, had no less than seven abnormal  muscles. Each of these was found among the muscles  of lower animals. Take, again, a common case of mal-  formation—club-foot. All children before birth dis-  play the most ordinary form of this deformity—that,  namely, where the sole is turned inwards and upwards  and the foot is raised—and it is only gradually that  the foot attains the normal adult position. The ab-  normal position, abnormal that is in adult Man, is the  normal condition of things in the case of the gorilla. 
Club-foot, hence, is simply gorilla-foot—a case of the  arrested development of a character which apparently  came along the line of the direct Simian stock. Se  simple is this method of interpreting the present by  the past, and so fruitful, that the anatomist has been  able in many instances to assume the réle of prophet. 
Adult man possesses no more than twelve pair of ribs;  the prediction was hazarded by an older Comparative 
Anatomy that in the embryonic state he would be  found with thirteen or fourteen. This prophecy has  since been verified. It was also predicted that at this  early stage he would be found to possess the insignifi-  cant remnant of a very small bone in the wrist, the  so-called os centrale, which must have existed in the  adult condition of his extremely remote ancestors. 
This prediction has also been fulfilled, as Weismann  aptly remarks, “just as the planet Neptune was dis-

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covered after its existence had been predicted from  the disturbances induced in the orbit of Uranus.”

But the enumeration becomes tedious. Though we  are only at the beginning of the list, sufficient has  been said to mark the interest of this part of the sub-  ject, and the redundancy of the proof. In the human  body alone, there are at least seventy of these vesti-  gial structures. Take away the theory that Man has  evolved from a lower animal condition, and there is  no explanation whatever of any one of these phe-  nomena. With such facts before us, it is mocking 
‘human intelligence to assure us that Man has not  some connection with the rest of the animal creation,  or that the processes of his development stand unre-  lated to the other ways of Nature. That Providence,  in making a new being, should deliberately have  inserted these eccentricities, without their having any  real connection with the things they so well imitate,  or any working relation to the rest of his body is,  with our present knowledge, simple irreverence.

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

1 Weismann, Biological Memoirs, p. 255.

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

r r 
—_—

CHAPTER III. 
THE ARREST OF THE BODY.

“Own the Earth there will never be a higher Creat-  ure than Man.”? It is a daring prophecy, but every  probability of Science attests the likelihood of its ful-  filment. The goal looked forward to from the begin-  ning of time has been attained. Nature has succeeded  in making a Man; she can go no further; Organic 
Evolution has done its work.

This is not a conceit of Science, nor a reminiscence  of the pre-Copernican idea that the centre of the  universe is the world, and the centre of the world 
Man. It is the sober scientific probability that with  the body of Man the final fruit of the tree of Organic 
Evolution has appeared ; that the highest possibilities  open to flesh and bone and nerve and muscle have  now been realized; that in whatever direction, and  with whatever materials, Evolution still may work, it  will never produce any material thing more perfect in  design or workmanship; that in Man, in short, about  this time in history, we are confronted with a stupen-  dous crisis in Nature,—the Arrest of the Animal.

1 Fiske, Destiny of Man, p. 26. What follows owes much to this  suggestive brochure, 
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The Man, the Animal Man, the Man of Organic Evo-  lution, it is at least certain, will not go on. It is  another Man who will go on, a Man within this Man;  and that he may go on the first Man must stop, Let  us try for a moment to learn what it is to stop. 
Nothing could teach Man better what is meant by  his going on.

One of the most perfect pieces of mechanism in the  human body is the Hand. How long it has taken to  develop. may be dimly seen by a glance at the long  array of less accurate instruments of prehension  which shade away with ever decreasing delicacy and  perfectness as we descend the scale of animal life. At  the bottom of that scale is the Amoeba. It is a speck  of protoplasmic jelly, headless, footless, and armless. 
When it wishes to seize the microscopic particle of  food on which it lives a portion of its body lengthens  out, and, moving towards the object, flows over it, en-  gulfs it, and melts back again into the body. This  is its Hand. At any place, and at any moment, it  creates a Hand. Each Hand is extemporized as it is  needed; when not needed it is not. Pass a little  higher up the scale and observe the Sea-Anemone. 
The Hand is no longer extemporized as occasion re-  quires, but lengthened portions of the body are set  apart and kept permanently in shape for the purpose  of seizing food. Here, in the capital of twining ten-  tacles which crowns the quivering pillar of the body,  we get the rude approximation to the most useful por-  tion of the human Hand—the separated fingers. It is  a vast improvement on the earlier Hand, but the  jointless digits are still imperfect; it is simply the 
Amoeba Hand cut into permanent strips.

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Passing over a multitude of intermediate forms,  watch, in the next place, the Hand of an African 
Monkey. Note the great increase in usefulness due to  the muscular arm upon which the Hand is now  extended, and the extraordinary capacity for varied  motion afforded by the threefold system of jointing  at shoulder, elbow, and wrist. The Hand itself is  almost the human Hand; there are palm and nail and  articulated fingers. But observe how one circum-  stance hinders the possessor from taking full advan-  tage of these great improvements,—this Hand has no  thumb, or if it has, it is but a rudiment. To estimate  the importance of this apparently insignificant organ,  try fora moment without using the thumb to hold a  book, or write a letter, or do any single piece of man-  ual work. <A thumb is not merely an additional  finger, but a finger so arranged as to be opposable to  the other fingers, and thus possesses a practical efficacy  greater than all the fingers put together. It is this  which gives the organ the power to seize, to hold, to  manipulate, to do higher work; this simple mechan-  ical device in short endows the Hand of intelligence  with all its capacity and skill. Now there are ani-  mals, like the Colobi, which have no thumb at all;  there are others, like the Marmoset, which possess the  thumb, but in which it is not opposable; and there  are others, the Chimpanzee for instance, in which the 
Hand is in all essentials identical with Man’s. In the  human form the thumb is a little longer, and the  whole member more delicate and shapely, but even  for the use of her highest product, Nature has not  been able to make anything much more perfect than  the hand of this anthropoid ape.

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Is the Hand then finished? Can Nature take out  no new patent in this direction? Is the fact that no  novelty is introduced in the case of Man a proof that  the ultimate Hand has appeared? By no means. 
And yet it is probable for other reasons that the  ultimate Hand has appeared; that there will never be  a more perfectly handed animal than Man. And  why? Because the causes which up to this point  have furthered the evolution of the Hand have begun  to cease to act. In the perfecting of the bodily  organs, as of all other mechanical devices, necessity is  the mother of invention. As the Hand was given  more and more to do, it became more and more  adapted to its work. Up to a point, it respond-  ed directly to each new duty that was laid upon  it. But only up to a point. There came a time  when the necessities became too numerous and too  varied for adaptation to keep pace with them. And  the fatal day came, the fatal day for the Hand, when  he who bore it made a new discovery. It was the  discovery of Tools. Henceforth what the Hand used  to do, and was slowly becoming adapted to do better,  was to be done by external appliances. So that if  anything new arose to be done, or to be better done,  it was not a better Hand that was now made but a  better tool. Tools are external Hands. Levers are  the extensions of the bones of the arm. Hammers are  callous substitutes for the fist. Knives do the work  of nails. The vice and the pincers replace the fin-  gers. The day that Cave-man first split the marrow  bone of a bear by thrusting a stick into it, and strik-  ing it home with a stone—that day the doom of the 
Hand was sealed.

THE ARREST OF THE BODY. 103

But has not Man to make his tools, and will not  that induce the development of the Hand to an as yet  unknown perfection? No. Because tools are not  made with the Hand. They are made with the Brain. 
For a time, certainly, Man had to make his tools, and  for a time this work recompensed him physically, and  the arm became elastic and the fingers dexterous and  strong. But soon he made tools to make these tools. 
In place of shaping things with the Hand, he invented  the turning-lathe; to save his fingers he requisitioned  the loom; instead of working his muscles he gave out  the contract to electricity and steam. Man, therefore,  from this time forward will cease to develop materi-  ally these organs of his body. If he develops them  outside his body, filling the world everywhere with  artificial Hands, supplying the workshops with fingers  more intricate and deft than Organic Evolution could  make in a millennium, and loosing energies upon them  infinitely more gigantic than his muscles could gener-  ate in a lifetime, it is enough. Evolution after all is a  slow process. Its great labor is to work up to a point  where Invention shall be possible, and where, by the  powers of the human mind, and by the mechanical  utilization of the energies of the universe, the results  of ages of development may be anticipated. Further  changes, therefore, within the body itself are made  unnecessary. Evolution has taken a new departure. 
For the Arrest of the Hand is not the cessation of 
Evolution but its immense acceleration, and the re-  direction of its energies into higher channels.

Take up the functions of the animal body one by  one, and it will be seen how the same arresting finger  is laid upon them all. To select an additional illus-

104 THE ARREST OF THE BODY.

tration, consider the power of Sight. Without paus-  ing to trace the steps by which the Eye has reached  its marvellous perfection, or to estimate the ages spent  in polishing its lenses and adjusting the diaphragms  and screws, ask the simple question whether, under  the conditions of modern civilization, anything now is  being added to its quickening efficiency, or range. Is  it not rather the testimony of experience that if any-  thing its power has begun to wane? Europe even  now affords the spectacle of at least one nation so  short-sighted that it might almost be called a myopic  race. The same causes, in fact, that led to the Arrest  of the Hand are steadily working to stop the develop-  ment of the Eye. Man, when he sees with difficulty,  does not now improve his Eye; he puts on a pince-nez. 
Spectacles—external eyes—have superseded the work  of Evolution. When his sight is perfect up to a point,  and he desires to examine objects so minute as to lie  beyond the limit of that point, he will not wait for 
Evolution to catch up upon his demand and supply  him, or his children’s children, with a more perfect  instrument. He will invest in a microscope. Or  when he wishes to extend his gaze to the moon and  stars, he does not hope to reach to-morrow the dis-  tances which to-day transcend him. He invents the  telescope. Organic Evolution has not even a chance. 
In every direction the external eye has replaced the  internal, and it is even difficult to suggest where any  further development of this part of the animal can  now come in. There are still, and in spite of all  instruments, regions in which the unaided organs of 
Man may continue to find a field for the fullest exer-  cise, but the area is slowly narrowing, and in every

——

THE ARREST OF THE BODY. 105

direction the appliances of Science tempt the body to  accept those supplements of the Arts, which, being  accepted, involve the discontinuance of development  for all the parts concerned. Even where a mechanical  appliance, while adding range to a bodily sense, has  seemed to open a door for further improvement, some  correlated discovery in a distant field of science, as by  some remorseless fate, has suddenly taken away the  opportunity and offered to the body only an additional  inducement for neglect. Thus it might be thought  that the continuous use of the telescope, in the at-  tempt to discover more and more indistinct and dis-  tant heavenly bodies, might tend to increase the effi-  ciency of the Eye. But that expectation has vanished  already before a further fruit of Man’s inventive  power. By an automatic photographic apparatus  fixed to the telescope, an Eye is now created vastly  more delicate and in many respects more efficient than  the keenest eye of Man. In at least five important  particulars the Photographic Eye is the superior of  the Eye of Organic Evolution. It can see where the  human Eye, even with the best aids of optical instru-  ments, sees nothing at all; it can distinguish certain  objects with far greater clearness and definition ;  owing to the rapidity of its action it can instantly de-  tect changes which are too sudden for the human eye  to follow; it can look steadily for hours without grow-  ing tired; and it can record what it sees with infal-  lible accuracy upon a plate which time will not efface. 
How long would it take Organic Evolution to arrive  at an Eye of such amazing quality and power? And  with such a piece of mechanism available, who, rather  than employ it even to the neglect of his organs of

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er

vision, would be content to await the possible attain-  ment of an equal perfection by his descendants some  million years hence? Is there not here a conspicuous  testimony to the improbability of a further Evolution  of the sense of Sight in civilized communities—in  other words, another proof of the Arrest of the 
Animal? What defiance of Evolution, indeed, what  affront to Nature, is this? Man prepares a compli-  cated telescope to supplement the Eye created by Evo-  lution, and no sooner is it perfected than it occurs to  him to create another instrument to aid the Eye in  what little work is left for it to do. That is to say,  he first makes a mechanical supplement to his Eye,  then constructs a mechanical Eye, which is better  than his own, to see through it, and ends by discard-  ing, for many purposes, the Eye of Organic Evolution  altogether.

As regards the other functions of civilized Man,  the animal in almost every direction has reached  its maximum. Civilization—and the civilized state, be  it remembered, is the ultimate goal of every race and  nation—is always attended by deterioration of some  of the senses. Every man pays a definite price or  forfeit for his taming. The sense of smell, compared  with its development among the lower animals, is in  civilized Man already all but gone. Compared even  with a savage, it is an ascertained fact that the civil-  ized Man in this respect is vastly inferior. So far as  hearing is concerned, the main stimulus—fear of sur-  prise by enemies—has ceased to operate, and the  muscles for the erection of the ears have fallen into  disuse. The ear itself in contrast with that of the  savage is slow and dull, while compared with the

THE ARREST OF THE BODY. 107

quick sense of the lower animals, the organ is almost  deaf. The skin, from the continuous use of clothes,  has forfeited its protective power. Owing to the use  of viands cooked, the muscles of the jaw are rapidly  losing strength. The teeth, partly for a similar  reason, are undergoing marked degeneration. The  third molar, for instance, among some nations is  already showing symptoms of suppression, and that  this threatens ultimate extinction may be reasoned  from the fact that the anthropoid apes have fewer  teeth than the lower monkeys, and these fewer than  the preceding generation of insectivorous mammals. 
In an age of vehicles and locomotives the lower  limbs find their occupation almost gone. For mere  muscle, that on which his whole life once depended, 
Man has almost now no use. Agility, nimbleness,  strength, once a stern necessity, are either a luxury  ora pastime. Their outlet is the cricket-field or the  tennis-court. To keep them up at all artificial means 
—dumb-bells, parallel-bars, clubs—have actually to be  devised. Vigor of limb is not to be found in com-  mon life, we look for it in the Gymnasium; agility  is relegated to the Hippodrome. Once all men were  athletes ; now you have to pay to see them. More or  less with all the anirnal powers it is the same. To  some extent at least some phonograph may yet speak  for us, some telephone hear for us, the typewriter  write for us, chemistry digest for us, and incubation  nurture us. So everywhere the Man as Animal is in  danger of losing ground. He has expanded until the  world is his body. The former body, the hundred  and fifty pounds or so of organized tissue he carries  about with him, is little more than a mark of identity.

108 THE ARREST OF THE BODY.

It is not he who is there, he cannot be there, or any-  where, for he is everywhere. The material part of  him is reduced to a symbol; it is but a link with the  wider framework of the Arts, a belt between ma-  chinery and machinery. His body no longer gener-  ates, but only utilizes energy ; alone he is but a tool,  a medium, a turncock of the physical forces.

Now with what feelings do we regard all this? Is  not the crowning proof of the thesis under review that  we watch this evidence accumulating against the body  with no emotion and hear the doom of our clay  pronounced without a regret? It is nothing to aspir-  ing Man to watch the lower animals still perfecting  their mechanism and putting all his physical powers  and senses to the shame. It is nothing to him to be  distanced in nimbleness by the deer: has he not his  bullet? Or in strength by the horse: has he not bit  and bridle? Or in vision by the eagle: his field-glass  out-sees it. How easily we talk of the body as a  thing without us, as an impersonal 7¢. And how nat-  urally when all is over, do we advertise its irrelevancy  to ourselves by consigning its borrowed atoms to the  anonymous dust. The fact is, in one aspect, the body,  to Intelligence, is all but an absurdity. One is almost  ashamed to have one. The idea of having to feed it,  and exercise it, and humor it, and put it away in the  dark to sleep, to carry it about with one everywhere,  and not only it but its wardrobe—other material  things to make this material thing warm or keep it  cool—the whole situation is a comedy. But judge  what it would be if this exacting organism went on  evolving, multiplied its members, added to its in-  tricacy, waxed instead of waned? So complicated is

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it already that one shrinks from contemplating a  future race having to keepin repair an apparatus  more involved and delicate. The practical advantage  is enormous of having all improvements henceforth  external, of having insensate organs made of iron and  steel rather than of wasting muscle and palpitating  nerve. For these can be kept at no physiological cost,  they cannot impede the other machinery, and when  that finally comes to the last break-down there will be  the fewer wheels to stop.

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

This arrest of physical development at a specific  point is not confined to Man. Everywhere in the  organic world science is confronted with arrested

110 THE ARREST OF THE BODY.

types. While endless groups of plant and animal  forms have advanced during the geological ages, other  whole groups have apparently stood still—stood still,  that is to say, not in time but in organization. If 
Nature is full of moving things, it is also full of fix-  tures. Thirty-one years ago Mr. Huxley devoted the  anniversary Address of the Geological Society to a  consideration of what he called “ Persistent Types of 
Life,” and threw down to Evolutionists a puzzle which  has never yet been fully solved. While some forms  attained their climacteric tens of thousands of years  ago and perished, others persevered, and, without ad-  vancing in any material respect, are alive to this day. 
Among the most ancient Carboniferous plants, for in-  stance, are found certain forms generically identical  with those now living. The cone of the existing Arau-  caria is scarcely to be distinguished from that of an 
Oolite form. The Tabulate Corals of the Silurian  period are similar to those which exist to-day. The 
Lamp-shells of our present seas so abounded at the  same ancient date as to give their name to one of the  great groups of Silurian rocks—the Lingula Flags. 
Star-fishes and Sea-urchins, almost the same as those  which tenant the coast-lines of our present seas,  crawled along what are now among the most ancient  fossiliferous rocks. Both of the forms just named,  the Brachiopods and the Echinoderms, have come  down to us almost unchanged through the nameless  gap of time which separates the Silurian and Old Red 
Sandstone periods from the present era.

This constancy of structure reveals a conservatism  in Nature, as unexpected as it is wide-spread. Does it  mean that the architecture of living things has a limit

THE ARREST OF THE BODY. ii

~

beyond which development cannot go? Does it mean  that the morphological possibilities along certain lines  of bodily structure have exhausted themselves, that  the course of conceivable development in these in-  stances has actually run out? In Gothic Architec-  ture, or in Norman, there are terminal points which,  once reached, can be but little improved upon. With-  out limiting working efficiency, they can go no further. 
These styles in the very nature of things seem to have  limits. Mr. Ruskin has indeed assured us that there  are only three possible forms of good architecture in  the world; Greek, the architecture of the Lintel; 
Romanesque, the architecture of the Rounded Arch; 
Gothic, the architecture of the Gable. “ All the archi-  tects in the world will never discover any other way  of bridging a space than these three, the Lintel, the 
Round Arch, the Gable; they may vary the curve of  the arch, or curve the sides of the gable, or break  them down; but in doing this they are merely modi-  fying or sub-dividing, not adding to the generic  form.” ?

In some such way, there may be terminal generic  forms in the architecture of animals; and the persist-  ent types just named may represent in their several  directions the natural limits of possible modification. 
No further modification of a radical kind, that is to  say, could in these instances be introduced with-  out detriment to practical efficiency. These termi-  nal forms thus mark a normal maturity, a goal;  they represent the ends of the twigs of the tree of  life.

Now consider the significance of that fact. Nature

1Stones of Venice, u. 236,

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is not an interminable succession. It is not always a  becoming. Sometimes things arrive. The Lamp-  shells have arrived, they are part of the permanent  furniture of the world; along that particular line,  there will probably never be anything higher. The 
Star-fishes also have arrived, and the Sea-urchins, and  the Nautilus, and the Bony Fishes, the Tapirs, and  possibly the Horse—all these are highly divergent  forms which have run out the length of their tether  and can go no further. When the plan of the world  was made, to speak teleologically, these types of life  were assigned their place and limit, and there they  have remained. If it were wanted to convey the im-  pression that Nature had some large end in view, that  she was not drifting aimlessly towards a general  higher level, it could not have been done more im-  pressively than by everywhere placing on the field of 
Science these fixed points, these innumerable consum-  mations, these clean-cut mountain peaks, which for  millenniums have never grown. Even as there is a  plan in the parts, there is a plan in the whole.

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

THE ARREST OF THE BODY. 113

head and face which cannot be carried further than  in Man. For the mode in which the cranial cavity is  gradually increased in size is a regular one, which  may be explained thus: we may look on the skull as  an irregular cylinder, and at the same time that it is  expanded by increase of height and width it also  undergoes a curvature or bending on itself, so that the  base is crumpled together while the roof is elongated. 
This curving has gone on in Man till the fore end of  the cylinder, the part on which the brain rests above  the nose, is nearly parallel to the aperture of com-  munication of the skull with the spinal canal, 7. ¢., the  cranium has a curve of 180° or a few degrees more or  less. This curving of the base of the skull involves  change in position of the face bones also, and could  not go on toa further extent without cutting off the  nasal cavity from the throat . . . Thus there is  anatomical evidence that the development of the ver-  tebrate form has reached its limit by completion in 
Man.” }

This author’s conception of the whole field of living  nature is so suggestive that we may continue the quo-  tation: “To me the animal kingdom appears not in  indefinite growth like a tree, but a temple with many  minarets, none of them capable of being prolonged—  while the central dome is completed by the structure  of man. The development of the animal kingdom is  the development of intelligence chained to matter ;  the animals in which the nervous system has reached  the greatest perfection are the vertebrates, and in Man  that part of the nervous system which is the organ of

1 Prof. J. Cleland, M.D., F.R.S., Journal of Anatomy, Vol. 
XVUIL., pp. 360-1, 
8

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intelligence reaches, as I have sought to show, the  highest development possible to a vertebrate animal,  while intelligence has grown to reflection and volition. 
On these grounds, I believe, not that Man is the  highest possible intelligence, but that the human body  is the highest form of human life possible, subject to  the conditions of matter on the surface of the globe,  and that the structure completes the design of the ani-  mal kingdom.” !

Never was the body of Man greater than with this  sentence of suspension passed on it, and never was 
Evolution more wonderful or more beneficent than  when the signal was given to stop working at Man’s  animal frame. This was an era in the world’s history. 
For it betokened nothing less than that the cycle of  matter was now complete, and the one prefatory task  of the ages finished. Henceforth the Weltanschauung  is forever changed. From this pinnacle of matter is  seen at last what matter is for, and all the lower lives  that ever lived appear as but the scaffolding for this  final work. The whole sub-human universe finds its  reason for existence in its last creation, its final justifi-  cation in the new immaterial order which opened with  its close. Cut off Man from Nature, and, metaphys-  ical necessity apart, there remains in Nature no  divinity. To include Man in Evolution is not to lower 
Man to the level of Nature, but to raise Nature to his  high estate. There he was made, these atoms are his  confederates, these plant cells raised him from the  dust, these travailing animals furthered his Ascent:  shall he excommunicate them now that their work is  done? Plant and animal have each their end, but

1 Journal of Anatomy, Vol. xvitt., p. 362.

THE ARREST OF THE BODY. ik)

Man is the end of all the ends. The latest science re-  instates him, where poet and philosopher had already  placed him, as at once the crown, the master, and the  rationale of creation. “Not merely,” says Kant, “is  he like all organized beings an end in nature, but also  here on earth the last end of nature, in reference to  whom all other natural things constitute a system of  ends.” Yet itis not because he is the end of ends,  but the beginning of beginnings, that the completion  of the Body marks a crisis in the past. At last Evolu-  tion had culminated in a creation so complex and ex-  alted as to form the foundation for an inconceivably  loftier super-organic order. The moment an organism  was reached through which Thought was_ possible,  nothing more was required of matter. The Body was  high enough. Organic Evolution might now even  resign its sovereignty of the world; it had made a  thing which was now its master. Henceforth Man  should take charge of Evolution even as up till now  he had been the one charge of it. Henceforth his  selection should replace Natural Selection; his judg-  ment guide the struggle for life; his will determine  for every plant upon the earth, whether it should  bloom or fade, for every animal whether it should in-  crease, or change, or die. So Man entered into his 
Kingdom.

Science is charged, be it once more recalled, with  numbering Man among the beasts, and levelling his  body with the dust. But he who reads for himself  the history of creation as it is written by the hand  of Evolution will be overwhelmed by the glory and  honor heaped upon this creature. To be a Man, and  to have no conceivable successor; to be the fruit and

116 THE ARREST OF THE BODY.

crown of the long past eternity, and the highest pos-  sible fruit and crown; to be the last victor among the  decimated phalanxes of earlier existences, and to be  nevermore defeated ; to be the best that Nature in her  strength and opulence can produce; to be the first of  that new order of beings who by their dominion over  the lower world and their equipment for a higher,  reveal that they are made in the Image of God—to be  this is to be elevated to a rank in Nature more exalted  than any philosophy or any poetry or any theology  have ever given to Man. Man was always told that  his place was high; the reason for it he never knew  till now; he never knew that his title deeds were the  very laws of Nature, that he alone was the Alpha and 
Omega of Creation, the beginning and the end of 
Matter, the final goal of Life.

Nature is full of new departures; but never since  time began was there anything approaching in impor-  tance that period when the slumbering animal, Brain,  broke into intelligence, and the Creature first felt that  it hada Mind. From that dateless moment a higher  and swifter progress of the world began. Henceforth, 
Intelligence triumphed over structural adaptation. 
The wise were naturally selected before the strong. 
The Mind discovered better methods, safer measures,  shorter cuts. So the body loarned to refer to it, then  to defer to it. As the Mind was given more to do, it  enlarged and did its work more perfectly. Gradually  the favors of Evolution—exercise, alteration, dif-  ferentiation, addition—which were formerly distrib-  uted promiscuously among the bodily organs—were  now lavished mainly upon the Brain. The gains  accumulated with accelerating velocity ; and by sheer

THE ARREST OF THE BODY. ily

superiority and fitness for its work, the Intellect rose  to commanding power, and entered into final posses-  sion of a monopoly which can never be disturbed. 
Now this means not only that an order of higher  animals has appeared upon the earth, but that an  altogether new page in the history of the universe has  begun to be written. It means nothing less than that  the working of Evolution has changed its course. 
Once it was a physical universe, now it is a psychical  universe. And to say that the working of Evolution  has changed its course, and set its compass in psy-  chical directions, is to call attention to the most  remarkable fact in Nature. Nothing so original or so  revolutionary has ever been given to science to dis-  cover, to ponder, or to proclaim. The power of this  event to strike and rouse the mind will depend upon  one’s sense of what the working of Evolution has  been to the world; but those who realize this even  dimly will see that no emphasis of language can exag-  gerate its significance. Let imagination do its best to  summon up the past of Nature. Beginning with the  panorama of the Nebular Hypothesis, run the eye over  the field of Paleontology, Geology, Botany, and 
Zoology. Watch the majestic drama of Creation  unfolding, scene by scene and act by act. Realize  that one power, and only one, has marshalled the  figures for this mighty spectacle; that one hand, and  only one, has carried out these transformations ; that  one principle, and only one, has controlled each sub-  sidiary plot and circumstance; that the same great  patient unobtrusive law has guided and shaped the  whole from its beginnings in bewilderment and chaos  to its end in order, harmony, and beauty. Then watch

118 THE ARREST OF THE BODY.

the curtain drop. And as it moves to rise again,  behold the new actor upon the stage. Silently, as all  great changes come, Mental Evolution has succeeded 
Organic. All the things that have been now lie in the  far background as forgotten properties. And Man  stands alone in the foreground, and a new thing, 
Spirit, strives within him,

CHAPTER LV. 
THE DAWN OF MIND.

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

Is the Mind a new or an old thing in the world? Is  it an Evolution from beneath or an original gift from  heaven? Did the Mind, in short, come down the ages  like the Body, and does the mother’s faith in the in-  tellectual unfolding of her babe include a remoter  origin for all human faculty? Let the mother look at  her child and answer. “It is the very prey Fi God,”

120 THE DAWN OF MIND.

she says; “this Child-Life is Divine.” And she is  right. But let her look again. That forehead, whose  is it? Itis hers. And the frown which darkened it  just now? Is hers also. And that which caused the  frown to darken, that something or nothing, behind  the forehead, that flash of pride, or scorn, or hate? 
Alas, it is her very own. And as the years roll on,  and the budding life unfolds, there is scarcely a mood  or gesture or emotion that she does not know is bor-  rowed. But whence in turn did she receive them? 
From an earlier mother. And she? From a still  earlier mother. And she? From the savage-mother  in the woods. And the savage-mother ?

Shall we hesitate here? We well may. So God-  like a gift is intellect, so wondrous a thing is con-  sciousness, that to link them with the animal world  seems to trifle with the profoundest distinctions in the  universe. Yet to associate these supersensuous things  with the animal kingdom is not to identify them with  the animal-body. Electricity is linked with metal  rods, it is not therefore metallic. Life is associated with  protoplasm, it is not therefore albuminous. Instinct is  linked with matter, but it is not therefore material ; 
Intellect with animal matter, but is not therefore  animal. As we rise in the scale of Nature we en-  counter new orders of phenomena, Matter, Life, Mind,  each higher than that before it, each totally and for-  ever different, yet each using that beneath it as the  pedestal for its further progress. Associated with  animal-matter—how associated no psychology, no  physiology, no materialism, no spiritualism, has even  yet begun to hint—may there not have been from an  early dawn the elements of a future Mind? Do the

shed

THE DAWN OF MIND. 121

wide analogies of Nature not make the suggestion  worthy at least of inquiry? The fact, to which there  is no exception, that all lesser things evolve, the  suggestion, which is daily growing into a further cer-  tainty, that there is a mental evolution among animals  from the Coelenterate to the Ape; the fact that the  unfolding of the Child-Mind is itself a palpable evolu-  tion ; the infinitely more significant circumstance that  the Mind ina child seems to unfold in the order in  which it would unfold if its mental faculties were  received from the Animal world, and in the order in  which they have already asserted themselves in the  history of the race. These seem formidable facts on  the side of those consistent evolutionists who, in the  face of countless difficulties and countless prejudices,  still press the lawful inquiry into the development  of human faculty.

The first feeling in most minds when the idea of  mental evolution is presented, is usually one of amuse-  ment. This not seldom changes, when the question is  seen to be taken seriously, into wonder at the daring  of the suggestion or pity for its folly. All great prob-  lems have been treated in this way. All have passed  through the inevitable phases of laughter, contempt,  opposition. It ought to be so. And if this problem is 
“ perhaps the most interesting that has ever been sub-  mitted to the contemplation of our race,” ? its basis  cannot be criticised with too great care. But none  have.a right to question either the sanity or the  sanctity of such investigations, still less to dismiss  them idly on a@ priori grounds, till they have ap-  proached the practical problem for themselves, and

1 Romanes, Mental Hvolution in Man, p. 2.

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heard at least the first few relevant words from 
Nature. For one has only to move for a little among  the facts to see what a world of interest lies here, and  to be forced to hold the judgment in suspense till  the sciences at work upon the problem have further  shaped their verdict. Thinkers who are entitled to  respect have even gone further. They include mental  evolution not only among the hypotheses of Science  but among its facts and its necessary facts. “Is it  conceivable,” asks Mr. Romanes, “ that the human  mind can have arisen by way of a natural genesis from  the minds of the higher quadrumana? I maintain  that the material now before us is sufficient to  show, not only that this is conceivable, but inevi-  table.” 7

It is no part of the present purpose to discuss the  ultimate origin or nature of Mind. Our subject is its  development. At the present moment the ultimate  origin of Mind is as inscrutable a mystery as the  origin of Life. It is sometimes charged against 
Evolution that it tries to explain everything and to  rob the world of all its problems. There does not  appear the shadow of a hope that it is about to rob  it of this. On the contrary the foremost scientific  exponents of the theory of mental evolution are cease-  lessly calling attention to the inscrutable character of  the element whose history they attempt to trace. 
“On the side of its philosophy,” says Mr. Romanes, 
“no one can have a deeper respect for the problem  of self-consciousness than I have; for no one ean be  more profoundly convinced than I am that the prob-  lem on this side does not admit of solution. In other

LOD. City De 2los

«bbe a

THE DAWN OF MINY. 123

words, so far as this aspect of the matter is concerned, 
I am in complete agreement with the most advanced  idealist. I am as far as any one can be from throwing  light upon the intrinsic nature of the probable origin  of that which I am endeavoring to trace.” * Mr. Darwin  himself recoiled from a problem so transcendent: ‘I  have nothing to do with the origin of the mental  powers, any more than I have with that of life itself.” ? 
“In what manner,” he elsewhere writes, “ the mental  powers were first developed in the lowest organisms,  is as hopeless an inquiry as how life itself first  originated.” ®

Notwithstanding his appreciation of the difficulty  of the ultimate problem, Mr. Darwin addressed his  whole strength to the question of the Evolution of 
Mind—the Evolution as distinguished from its origin  and nature; and in this he has recently had many  followers, as well as many opponents. Among the  latter stand the co-discoverer with him of Natural 
Selection, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, and Mr. St. 
George Mivart. Mr. Wallace’s opposition, from a  scientific point of view, is not so hostile, however, as  is generally supposed. While holding his own view  as to the origin of Mind, what he attacks in Mr. 
Darwin’s theory of mental evolution is, not the de-  velopment itself, but only the supposition that it  could have been due to Natural Selection. Mr. Wal-  lace’s authority is frequently quoted to show that the  mathematical, the musical and the artistic faculties  could not have been evolved, whereas all he has really  emphasized is that “they could not have been devel-

1 Mental Evolution in Man, pp. 194-5. 
2 Origin of Species, p. 191. 3 Descent of Man, p. 66.

124 THE DAWN OF MIND.

oped under the law of Natural Selection.”* In short,  the conclusion of Mr. Darwin which his colleague  found “not to be supported by adequate evidence, and  to be directly opposed to many well-ascertained facts,”  was not a general theorem, but a specific one. And  many will agree with Mr. Wallace in doubting “ that  man’s entire nature and all his faculties, whether  moral, intellectual, or spiritual, have been derived  from their rudiments in the lower animals, én the same  manner and by the action of the same general laws as  his physical structure has been derived.” ?

The more this problem has been investigated, the  difficulties of the whole field increase, and the off-hand  acceptance of any specific evolution theory finds less  and less encouragement. No serious thinker, on  whichever side of the controversy, has succeeded in  lessening to his own mind the infinite distance be-  tween the Mind of Man and everything else in Nature,  and even the most consistent evolutionists are as  unanimous as those who oppose them, in their asser-  tion of the uniqueness of the higher intellectual  powers. The consensus of scientific opinion here is  extraordinary. “I know nothing,” says Huxley, in  the name of biology, “and never hope to know  anything, of the steps by which the passage from  molecular movement to states of consciousness is  effected.” * “The two things,” emphasizes the physi-  cist, “are on two utterly different platforms, the  physical facts go along by themselves, and the men-  tal facts go along by themselves.” * “It is all through

1 Darwinism, p. 469. 2 Tbid., p. 461.

3 Contemporary Review, 1871.

‘ Olifford, Fortnightly Review, 1874.

_—_: =

THE DAWN OF MIND. 125

and forever inconceivable,” protests the German  physiologist, “that a number of atoms of Carbon, 
Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and so on, shall be other  than indifferent as to how they are disposed and how  they move, how they were disposed and how they  moved, how they will be disposed and how they will  be moved. It is utterly inconceivable how conscious-  ness shall arise from their joint action.” 1 So im-  pressed is even Mr. Lloyd Morgan, mental evolutionist  though he be, with the gap between the Minds of Man  and brute that his language is almost as strong: “I  for one do not for a moment question that the mental  processes of man and animals are alike products of  evolution. The power of cognizing relations, reflection  and introspection, appear to me to mark a new de-  parture in evolution,” ? and “ I am not prepared to say  that there is a difference in kind between the mind of  man and the mind of a dog. This would imply a dif-  ference in origin or a difference in the essential nature  of its being. There is a great and marked difference  in kind between the material processes which we call  physiological and the mental processes we call psychi-  cal. They belong to wholly different orders of being. 
T see no reason for believing that mental processes in  man differ thus in kind from mental processes in ani-  mals. But I do think that we have, in the introduc-  tion of the analytic faculty, so definite and marked a  new departure that we should emphasize it by saying  that the faculty of perception, in its various specific  grades, differs generically from the faculty of concep-

1Du Bois-Reymond, Ueber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens,

p. 42. 
20, Lloyd Morgan, Nature, Sept. 1, 1892, p. 417,

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tion. And believing, as I do, that conception is be-  yond the power of my favorite and clever dog, I am  forced to. believe that his mind differs generically from  my own.” !

Should any one feel it necessary either to his view  of Man or of the Universe to hold that a great gulf lies  here, it is open to him to cling to his belief. The pres-  ent thesis is simply that Man has ascended. After all,  little depends on whether the slope is abrupt or gentle,  whether Man reaches the top by a uniform flight or  has here and there by invisible hands to be carried  across a bridgeless space. In any event it is Nature’s  staircase. To say that self-consciousness has arisen  from sensation, and sensation from the function of nu-  trition, let us say, in the Mimosa pudica or Sensitive 
Plant, may be right or wrong; but the error can only  be serious when it is held that that accounts either for  self-consciousness or for the transition. Mimosa can  be defined in terms of Man; but Man cannot be de-  fined in terms of Mimosa. The first is possible because  there is the least fraction in that which is least in Man  of that which is greatest in Mimosa; the last is impos-  sible because there is nothing in Mimosa of that which  is greatest in Man. What the two possess in common,  or seem to possess, may be a basis for comparison,-for  what it is worth; but to include in the comparison the  ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent. of what is over  and above that common fraction is by no sort of rea-  soning lawful. Man, in the last resort, has self-con-  sciousness, Mimosa sensation; and the difference is  qualitative as well as quantitative.

If, however, it is a fallacy to ignore the qualitative

1C, Lloyd Morgan, Animal Life and Intelligence, p. 350.

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differences arising in the course of the transition, it  may be a mistake, on the other hand, to make nothing  of the transition. If in the name of Science the  advocate of the Law of Continuity demands that it be  rectified, he may well make the attempt. The partial  truth for the present perhaps amounts to this, that  earlier phases of life exhibit imperfect manifestations  of principles which in the higher structure and  widened environment of later forms are more fully  manifested and expressed, yet are neither contained in  the earlier phases nor explained by them. At the  same time, everything that enters into Man, every  sensation, emotion, volition, enters with a difference, a  difference due to the fact that he is a rational and  self-conscious being, a difference therefore which no  emphasis of language can exaggerate. The music  varies with the ear; varies with the soul behind the  ear; relates itself with all the music that ear has ever  heard before; with the mere fact that what that ear  hears, it hears as music; that it hears at all; that it  knows that it hears. Man differs from every other  product of the evolutionary process in being able to  see that it is a process, in sharing and rejoicing in its  unity, and in voluntarily working through the process  himself. If he is part of it he is also more than part  of it, since he is at once its spectator, its director, and  its critic. “Even on the hypothesis of a psychic life  in all matter we come to an alteration indeed, but not  an abolition, of the contrast between body and soul. 
Of course on that hypothesis they are distinguished  by no qualitative difference in their natures, but still  less do they blend into one; the one individual ruling  soul always remains facing, in an attitude of complete

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isolation, the homogeneous but ministrant monads,  the joint multitude of which forms the living body.” *

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

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

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

! Lotze, Microcosmus, p. 162,

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

But this is not all. The Mind of a child not only  grows, but grows in a certain order. And the aston-  ishing fact about that order is that it is the probable  order of evolution of mental faculty as a whole. Where 
Science gets that probable order will be referred to by  and by. Meantime, simply note the fact that not  only in the manner but in the order of its develop-  ment, the human Mind simulates a product of Evolu-  tion. The Mind of a child, in short, is to be treated as  an unfolding embryo; and just as the embryo of the  body recapitulates the long life-history of all the  bodies that led up to it, so this subtler embryo in  running its course through the swift years of early  infancy runs up the psychic scale through which, as  evidence from another field will show, Mind probably  evolved. We have seen also that in the case of the  body, each step of progress in the embryo has its  equivalent either in the bodies or in the embryos of  lower forms of life. Now each phase of mental devel-  opment in the child is also permanently represented  by some species among the lower animals, by idiots,  or by the Mind of some existing savage.

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

That animals have “Minds” is a fact which prob-  ably no one now disputes. Stories of “ Animal Intelli-  gence” and “ Animal Sagacity” in dogs and bees and  ants and elephants and a hundred other creatures  have been told us from childhood with redundant re-  iteration. The old protest that animals have no Mind  but only instinct has lost its point. In addition to  instincts, animals betray intelligence, and often a  high degree of intelligence; they share our feelings  and emotions; they have memories; they form per-  cepts; they invent new ways of satisfying their  desires, they learn by experience. It is true their 
Minds want much, and all that is highest; but the  point is that they actually have Minds, whatever their  quantity and whatever their quality.t If abstraction,  as Locke says, “is an excellency which the faculties of  brutes do by ho means attain to,” we cannot on that  account deny them Mind, but only that height of 
Mind which men have, and which Evolution would  never look for in any living thing but Man. An

1As to the exact point of the difference, Mr. Romanes draws  the line at the exclusive possession by Man of the power of intro-  spective reflection in the light of self-consciousness. ‘‘ Wherein,”  he asks, ‘‘ does the distinction truly consist ? It consists in the  power which the human being displays of objectifying ideas, or of  setting one state of mind before another state, and contemplating  the relation between them. The power to think is—or, as I  should prefer to state it, the power to think at all—is the power  which is given by introspective reflection in the light of self-con-  sciousness. . . . We have no evidence to show that any  animal is capable of thus objectifying its own ideas ; and, there-  fore, we have no evidence that any animal is capable of judg-

THE DAWN OF MIND. 15st

Evolutionist would no more expect to find the higher  rational characteristics in a wolf or a bear than to  unearth the modern turbine from a Roman aqueduct.

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

It is mainly to Mr. Romanes that we owe the work-  ing out of the evidence in this connection; and even  though his researches be little more than a_prelimi-  nary exploration, their general results are striking. 
Realizing that the most scientific way to discover

ment. Indeed, I will go further and affirm that we have the best  evidence which is derivable from what are necessarily ejective  sources, to prove that no animal can possibly attain to these  excellencies of subjective life.’ Mr, Romanes proceeds to state  the reason why. It is because of ‘‘ the absence in brutes of the  needful conditions to the occurrence of those excellencies as they  obtain in themselves . . . the great distinction between the  brute and the man really lies behind the faculties both of concep-  tion and prediction ; it resides in the conditions to the occurrence  of either.’”’—Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 17.

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whether there are any affinities between Mind in Ani-  mals and Mind in Man is to compare the one with the  other, he began a laborious study of the Animal  world. His conclusions are contained in “ Animal 
Intelligence ” and “Mental Evolution in Animals ”—  volumes which no one can read without being con-  vinced at least of the thoroughness and fairness of the  investigation. That abundant traces were found of 
Mind in the lower animals goes without saying. But  the range of mental phenomena discovered there may  certainly excite surprise. Thus, to consider only one  set of phenomena—that of the emotions—all the fol-  lowing products of emotional development are repre-  sented at one stage or another of animal life :

FEAR EMULATION BENEVOLENCE 
SURPRISE PRIDE REVENGE 
AFFECTION RESENTMENT Race

PUGNACITY EmMorioN OF THE SHAME 
CurRIosiIry BEeautiruL REGRET 
JEALOUSY GRIEF D&EcCEITFULNESS 
ANGER Hate EMOTION OF THE 
Puay CRUELTY Lupicrous 
SYMPATHY

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

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scale of life—the Annelids—Mr. Romanes  distin-  guished what appeared to him to be one of the earliest  emotions—Fear. Somewhat higher up, among the 
Insects, he met with the Social Feelings, as well as 
Industry, Pugnacity, and Curiosity. Jealousy seems  to have been born into the world with Fishes; Sym-  pathy with Birds. The Carnivora are responsible for 
Cruelty, Hate, and Grief; the Anthropoid Apes for 
Remorse, Shame, the Sense of the Ludicrous, and 
Deceit.

Now, when we compare this table with a similar  table compiled from a careful study of the emotional  states in a little child, two striking facts appear. In  the first place, there are almost no emotions in the  child which are not here—this list, in short, practi-  cally exhausts the list of human emotions. With the  exception of the religious feelings, the moral sense,  and the perception of the sublime, there is nothing  found even in adult Man which is not represented  with more or less vividness in the Animal Kingdom. 
But this is not all. These emotions, as already  hinted, appear in the Mind of the growing child in the  same order as they appear on the animal scale. At  three weeks, for instance, Fear is perceptibly manifest  in a little child. When it is seven weeks old the 
Social Affections dawn. At twelve weeks emerges 
Jcalousy, with its companion Anger. Sympathy ap-  pears after five months; Pride, Resentment, Love of 
Ornament, after eight ; Shame, Remorse, and Sense of  the Ludicrous after fifteen. These dates, of course,  do not indicate in any mechanical way the birthdays  of emotions; they represent rather stages in an infi-  nitely gentle mental ascent, stages nevertheless so

134 THE DAWN OF MIND.

marked that we are able to give them names, and use  them as landmarks in psychogenesis. Yet taken even  as representing a rough order it is a circumstance to  which some significance must be attached that the  tree of Mind as we know it in lower Nature, and the  tree of Mind as we know it in a little child, should be  the same tree, starting its roots at the same place, and  though by no means ending its branches at the same  level, at least growing them so far in a parallel direc-  tion.

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

If we turn from emotional to intellectual develop-  ment, the parallelism though much more faint is at  least shadowed. “Again we find a list of intellectual  products common to both Animal and Man, and, again  an approximate order common to both. It is true, 
Man’s development beyond the highest point attained  by any animal in the region of the intellect, is all but  infinite. Of rational judgment he has the whole mo-  nopoly. Wherever the roots of Mind be, there is no  uncertainty as to where, and where exclusively, the  higher branches are. Grant that the mental faculties  of Man and Animal part company at a point, there

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remains to consider the vast distance—in the case of  the emotions almost the whole distance—where they  run parallel with one another. Comparative psy-  chology is not so advanced a science as comparative  embryology ; yet no one who has felt the force of the  recapitulation argument for the evolution of bodily  function, even making all allowances for the differ-  ences of the things compared, will deny the weight of  the corresponding argument for the evolution of Mind. 
Why should the Mind thus recapitulate in its devel-  opment the psychic life of animals unless some vital  link connected them ?

A singular complement to this argument has been  suggested recently—though as yet only in the form  of the vaguest hint—from the side of Mental Pathol-  ogy. When the Mind is affected by certain diseases,  its progress downward can often be followed step by  step. It does not tumble down in a moment into  chaos like a house of cards, but in a definite order,  stone by stone, or story by story. Now the striking  thing about that order is, that it is the probable order  in which the building has gone up. The order of  descent, in short, is the inverse of the order of ascent. 
The first faculty to go, in many cases of insanity, is  the last faculty which arrived; the next faculty is  affected next; the whole spring uncoiling as it were  in the order and direction in which, presumably, it  had been wound up. Sometimes even in the phe-  nomenon of old age the cycle may be clearly traced. 
“ Just as consciousness is slowly evolved out of vege-  tative life, so is it, through the infirmities of old age,  the gradual approach of death, and in advanced men-  tal disease, again resolved into it. The highest, most

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differentiated phenomena of consciousness are the first  to give way; impulse, instinct, and reflex movements  become again predominant. The phrase ‘to grow  childish’ expresses the resemblance between the first  stage and the stage of dissolution.” 1

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

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

1 Hoffding, Pyschology, p. 92.

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

To pass from this fascinating region to the material  contributions of Anthropology is a somewhat abrupt

138 THE DAWN OF MIND.

transition. But this third line of approach to a  knowledge of the earlier phases of Mind need not  detain us long.

So patient has been the search over almost the  whole world for relics of pre-historic Man, that vast  collections are now everywhere available where the  arts, industries, weapons, and, by inference, the men-  tal development, of the earlier inhabitants of this  planet can be practically studied. On the two main  points at issue in the discussion of mental evolution  these collections are unanimous. They reveal in the  first instance, traces of Mind of a very low order exist-  ing from an unknown antiquity; and in the second  place, they show a gradual improving of this Mind as  we approach the present day. It may be that in some  cases the evidence suggests a degenerating rather  than an ascending civilization; but perturbations of  this sort do not affect the main question, nor neu-  tralize the other facts. Evolution is constantly con-  fronted with statements as to the former glory of now  decadent nations, as if that were an argument against  the theory. Granting that nations have degenerated,  it still remains to account for that from which they  degenerated. That Egypt has fallen from a great  height is certain; but the real problem is how it got  to that height. When a boy’s kite descends in our  garden, we do not assume that it came from the  clouds. That it went up before it came down is  obvious from all that we know of kite-making. And  that nations went up before they came down is ob-  vious from all that we know of nation-making. The  gravitation, moreover, which brings down nations is  just as real as the gravitation which brings down

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kites; and instead ofa falling nation being a stum-  bling block to Evolution, it is a necessity of the theory. 
The degeneration and extinction of the unfit are as  infallibly brought about by natural laws as the sur-  vival of the fit. Evolution is by no means synony-  mous with uninterrupted progress, but at every turn  means relapse, extinction, and decay.

It is pretty clear that, applying the old Argument  from Design to the case of the most ancient human  relics, Man began the Ascent of Civilization at zero. 
There has been a time in the history of every nation 
When the only supplements to the organs of the body  for the uses of Man were the stones of the field and  the sticks of the forest. To use these natural, abun-  dant, and portable objects, was an obvious resource  with early tribes. If Mind dawned in the past at all,  it is with such objects that we should expect its first  associations, and as a matter of fact it seems every-  where to have been so. Relics of a Stick Age would  of course be obliterated by time, but traces of a Stone 
Age have been found, not in connection with the first  beginnings of a few tribes only, but with the first  beginnings—from the point that any representation  is possible—of probably every nation in the world. 
The wide geographical use of stone implements is  one of the most striking facts in Anthropology. 
Instead of being confined to a few peoples, and to  outlying districts, as is sometimes asserted, their dis-  tribution is universal. They are found throughout  the length and breadth of Europe, and on all its  islands; they occur everywhere in Western Asia, and  north of the Himalayas. In the Malay Peninsula they  strew the ground in endless numbers; and again, in

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

The next step from the Stone Age, so far as further  appeal to ancient implements can guide us, is also  exactly what one would expect. It is to a better Stone 
Age. Two distinct grades of stone implements are  found, the rough and the smooth, or the unground  and the ground. For a long period the idea never  seems to have dawned that a smooth stone made a  better axe than a rough one. Mind was as yet un-

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equal to this small discovery, and there are vast  remains representing long intervals of time where all  the stone implements and tools are of the unground  type. Even when ‘the hour did come, when savage  vied with savage in putting the finest polish on his  flints, his inspiration probably came from Nature. 
The first lapidary was the sea; the smoothed pebble  on the beach, or the rounded stone of the mountain  stream, supplied the pattern. There is no question  that the rough stone came earlier than the ground  stone. Thus the implements of the Drift Period,  those of the Danish Mounds, the Bone Caves, and the  gravels of St. AcLeul are mostly unground, while  those of the later Lake-Dwellers are almost wholly of  the smooth type.

To follow the Stone Age upward into the Bronze 
Period, and from that to the Age of Iron is not neces-  sary for the present purpose. For at this point the  order of succession passes from shell-mound and  crannog, into living hands. There are nations with  us still who have climbed so short a distance up the  psychic scale as to be still in the Age of Stone—  peoples whose mental culture and habits are often  actual witnesses to the mental states of early Man. 
These children of Nature take up the thread of mental  progress where the Troglodyte and Drift-Man left it;  and the modern traveller, starting from the civili-  zation of Europe can follow Mind downwards step by  step, in ever descending order, tracing its shadings  backwards to a first simplicity till he finds himself  with the still living Lake-dweller of Nyasaland or  the Bushman of the African forest. Time was when  these humble tribes, with their strange and artless

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ways, were mere food for the curious. Now the  study of the lower native races has risen to the first  rank in comparative psychology ; and the student of  beginnings, whether they be the beginnings of Art  or of Ethics, of Language or of Letters, of Law or of 
Religion, goes to seek the roots of his science in the  ways, traditions, faiths, and institutions of savage  life.

This leads us, however, to the fourth of the sources  from which we were to gather a hint or two with  regard to the past of Mind—the savage. No one  should pronounce upon the Evolution of Mind till  he has seen a savage. By this is not meant the  show savage of an Australian town, or the quay 
Kaffir of a South African port, or the Reservation 
Indian of a Western State; but the savage as he is  in reality, and as he may be seen to-day by any who  care to look upon so weird a spectacle. No study  from the life can compare with this in interest or in  pathos, nor stir so many strange emotions in the  mind of a thoughtful man. To sit with this ineal-  culable creature in the heart of the great forest; to  live with him in his natural home as the guest of 
Nature, to watch his ways and moods and try to  resolve the ceaseless mystery of his thoughts—this,  whether the existing savage represents the primitive 
Savage or not, is to open one of the workshops of 
Creation and behold the half-finished product from  which humanity has been evolved.

The world is getting old, but the traveller who  cares to follow the daybreak of Mind for himself can  almost do so still. Selecting a region where the  wand of western civilization has scarcely reached,

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let him begin with a cruise in the Malay Archipelago  or in the Coral Seas of the Southern Pacific. He may  find himself there even yet on spots on which no  white foot has ever trod, on islands where unknown  races have worked out their destiny for untold cent-  uries, Whose teeming peoples have no name, and  whose habits and mode of life are only known to the  outer world through a ship’s telescope. As he coasts  along, he will see the dusky figures steal like shades  among the trees, or hurry past in their bark canoes,  or crouch in fear upon the coral sand. He can watch  them gather the bread-fruit from the tree and pull  the cocoa-nut from the palm and root out the taro  for a meal which, all the year round and all the  centuries through, has never changed. In an hour  or two he can compass almost the whole round of  their simple life, and realize the gulf between himself  and them in at least one way—in the utter im-  possibility of framing to himself an image of the  mental world of men and women whose only world  is this.

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

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in the monotony of their life and the uncouthness of  their Mind represent almost the lowest level of hu-  manity.?

From these rudiments of mankind let him make his  way to the New Hebrides, to Tana, and Santo, and 
Ambrym, and Aurora. These islands, besides Man,  contain only three things, coral, lava, and trees. Un-  til but yesterday their peoples had never seen any-  thing but coral, lava, and trees. They did not know  that there was anything else in the world. One hun-  dred years ago Captain Cook discovered these island-  ers and gave them a few nails. They planted them in  the ground that they might grow into bigger nails. 
It is true that in other lands a very rich life and a  very wide world could be made out of no more varied  materials than coral, lava and trees; but on these 
Tropical Islands Nature is. disastrously kind. All  that her children need is provided for them ready-  made. Her sun shines on them so that they are never  either cold or hot; she provides crops for them in un-  exampled luxuriance, and arranges the year to be one  long harvest; she allows no wild animals to prowl  among the forest; and surrounding them with the  alienating sea she preserves them from the attacks of  human enemies. Outside the struggle for life, they  are out of life itself. Treated as children, they re-  main children. To look at them now is to recall the

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

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long holiday of the childhood of the world. It is to  behold one’s natural face in a glass.

Pass on through the other Cannibal Islands and,  apart from the improvement of weapons and the con-  struction of a hut, throughout vast regions there is  still no sign of mental progress. But before one has  completed the circuit of the Pacific the change begins  to come. Gradually there appear the beginnings of  industry and even of art. In’ the Solomon Group and  in New Guinea, carving and painting may be seen in  an early infancy. The canoes are large and good, fish-  hooks are manufactured and weaving of a rude kind  has been established. There can be no question at  this stage that the Mind of Man has begun its upward  path. And what now begins to impress one is net the  poverty of the early Mind, but the enormous poten-  tialities that lie within it, and the exceeding swiftness  of its Ascent towards higher things. When the Sand-  wich Islands are reached, the contrast appears in its  full significance. Here, a century ago, Captain Cook,  through whom the first knowledge of their existence  reached the outer world, was killed and eaten. To-  day the children of his murderers have taken their  place among the civilized nations of the world, and  their Kings and Queens demand acknowledgment at  modern Courts.

Books have been given to the world on the Mind of  animals. It is strange that so little should have been  written specifically on the Mind of the savage. But  though this living mine has not yet been drawn upon  for its last contribution to science, facts to suggest  and sustain a theory of mental evolution are every-  where abundant. Waiving individual cases where

10

146 THE DAWN OF MIND.

nations have fallen from a higher intellectual level the  proof indicates a rising potentiality and widening of  range as we pass from primitive to civilized states. It  is open to debate whether during the historic period  mere intellectual advance has been considerable,  whether more penetrating or commanding intellects  have ever appeared than those of Job, Isaiah, Plato, 
Shakspeare. But that is matter of yesterday. 
What concerns us now to note is that the Mind of 
Man as a whole has hada slow and gradual dawn ;  that it has existed, and exists to-day, among certain  tribes at almost the lowest point of development with  which the word human can be associated ; and that  from that point an Ascent of Mind can be traced from  tribe to nation in an ever increasing complexity and  through infinitely delicate shades of improvement, till  the highest civilized states are reached. In the very  nature of things we should have expected such a re-  sult. For this is not only a question of faculty. In  a far more intimate sense than we are apt to imagine,  it is a question of a gradually evolving environment. 
Every infinitesimal enrichment of the soil for Mind to  grow in meant. an infinitesimal enrichment of the 
Mind itself. “ It needs but to ask what would happen  to ourselves were the whole mass of existing knowl-  edge obliterated, and were children with nothing be-  yond their nursery-language left to grow up without  guidance or instruction from adults, to perceive that  even now the higher intellectual faculties would be  almost inoperative, from lack of the materials and  aids accumulated by past civilization. And seeing  this, we cannot fail to see that development of the  higher intellectual faculties has gone on pari passu

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with social advance alike as cause and consequence ;  that the primitive man could not evolve these higher  intellectual faculties in the absence of a fit environ-  ment; and that in this, as in other respects, his prog-  ress was retarded by the absence of capacities which  only progress could bring.” 4

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

1 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. 1., p. 90, 1.

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and experiences of a nation, yea often of many nations,  and of all which through long centuries they have  attained to and won. It stands like the Pillars of 
Hercules, to mark how far the moral and intellectual  conquests of mankind have advanced, only not like  those pillars, fixed and immovable, but even itself  advancing with the progress of these. The mighty  moral instinets which have been working in the popu-  lar mind have found therein their unconscious voice ;  and the single kinglier spirits that have looked deeper  into the heart of things have oftentimes gathered up  all they have seen into some one word, which they  have launched upon the world, and with which they  have enriched it forever—making in the new word a  new region of thought to be henceforward in some  sort the common heritage of all.” 4

What then, when we open this marvellous struct-  ure, is the revelation yielded us of the mental states  of those who lived at the dawn of speech? An im-  pression of poverty, great and pathetic. All fossils  teach the same lesson—the lesson of life, beauty,  structure, waning into a_ poverty-stricken past. 
Whether they be the shells which living creatures  once inhabited, or the bones of departed vertebrate  types, or the forms of words where wisdom lay en-  tombed, the structures became simpler and simpler  cruder and cruder, less full of the richness and  abundance of life as we near the birth of time. They  tell of days when the world was very young, when  plants were flowerless and animals back-boneless, of  later years when primeval Man prowled the forest and  chipped his flints and chattered in uncouth syllables

1'Trench, The Study of Words, p. 28.

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of battle and the chase. No words entered at that  time into human speech except those relating to the  activities, few and monotonous, of an aimost animal  lot. These were the days of the protoplasm of speech. 
There was no differentiation between verbs or ad-  verbs, nouns or adjectives. The sentence as yet was  not; each word was a sentence. There was no gram-  matical inflection but the inflection of the voice; the  moods of the verb were uttered by intonation or  grimace. The pronouns “him” and “you” were  made by pointing at him and you. Man had even  no word for himself, for he had not yet discovered  himself. This fact, when duly considered, raises the  witness of Language to the Ascent of Mind to an  almost unique importance. Nothing more significant  could be said as to Man’s mental past than that  there was a time when he was scarcely conscious  of himself, as a self. Tle knew himself, not as subject,  but like a little child, as one of the objects of the  external world. The words might have been written  historically of mankind, “ When I was a child, I  spake as a child.”

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

The enormous distance travelled by the Mind of 
Man beyond the utmost limit of intelligence reached  by any animal is a puzzling circumstance, a circum-

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stance only equalled in strangeness by another—  the suddenness with which that rise took place. Both  facts are without a parallel in nature. Why, of the  countless thousands of species of animals, each with  some shadowy rudiment of a Mind, all should have  remained comparatively at the same dead level,  while Man alone shot past and developed powers of  a quality and with a speed unknown in the world’s  history, is a question which it is impossible not to  raise. That by far the greatest step in the world’s  history should not only have been taken at the  eleventh hour, but that it took only an hour to do  it—for compared with the time when animals began  their first activities, the birth of Man is a thing of  yesterday—seems almost the denial of Evolution. 
What was it in Man’s case that gave his mental  powers their unprecedented start or facilitated a  growth so rapid and so vast?

The factors in all Evolution, and above all in this,  are too subtle to encourage one to speculate with  final assurance on so fine a problem. Nevertheless,  when it is asked, What brought about this sudden  rise of intelligence in the case of Man, there is a  wonderful unanimity among men of science as to the  answer. It came about, it is supposed, in connection  with the acquisition by Man of the power to express  his mind, that is to speak. Evolution, up to this time,  had only one way of banking the gains it won—hered-  ity. To hand on any improvement physically was  a slow and precarious work. But with the discovery  of language there arose a new method of passing on a  step in progress. Instead of sowing the gain on the  wind of heredity, it was fastened on the wings of

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

Apart from the saving of time and the facility for  increased knowledge, the acquisition of speech meant  a saving of brain. A word is a counter for a thought.

152 THE DAWN OF MIND.

To use language is to make thinking easy. Hence  the release of brain energy for further developments  in new directions. In these and other ways speech  became the main factor in the intellectual develop-  ment of mankind. Language formed the trellis on  which Mind climbed upward, which continuously sus-  tained the ripening fruits of knowledge for later  minds to pluck. Before the savage’s son was ten  years old he knew all that his father knew. The  ways of the game, the habits of birds and fish, the  construction of traps and snares—all these would be  taught him. The physical world, the changes of  season, the location of hostile tribes, the strategies of  war, all the details and interests of savage life would  be explained. And before the boy was in his teens he  was equipped for the Struggle for Life as his fore-  fathers had never been even in old age. The son, in  short, started to evolve where his father left off. Try  to realize what it would be for each of us to begin life  afresh, to be able to learn nothing by the experiences  of others, to live ina dumb and illiterate world, and  see what chance the animal had of making pro-  nounced progress until the acquisition of speech. | It  is not too much to say that speech, if mental evolution  is to come to anything or is to be worth anything, is a  necessary condition. By it alone, in any degree worth  naming, can the fruits of observation and experience  of one generation be husbanded to form a new start-  ing-point for a second, nor without it could there be  any concerted action or social life. The greatness of  the human Mind, after all, is due to the tongue, the  material instrument of reason, and to Language the  outward expression of the inner life.

CHAPTER. 
THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

Ir Evolution is the method of Creation, the faculty  of Speech was no sudden gift. Man’s mind is not to  be thought of as the cylinder of a phonograph to  which ready-made words were spoken and stored up  for future use. Before //omo sapiens was evolved he  must necessarily have been preceded for a longer or  shorter period by Z/omo alalus, the not-speaking man 5  and this man had to make his words, and beginning  with dumb signs and inarticulate cries to build up  a body of Language word by word as the body was  built up cell by cell.

The alternative theory of the origin of Language  universally held until lately, and expressed in so  many words even by the eighth edition of the 
Encyclopedia Britannica, that “our first parents  received it by immediate inspiration,” has the same  relation to exact science as the view that the world  was made in six days by direct creative fiat. Both are  poetically true. But to science, seeking for precise  methods of operation, neither is an adequate statement  of now ascertained facts. The same processes of re-  search that made the poetic view of creation unten-

able in the physical realm are now slowly beginning 
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154 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

to displace the older view of the origin of speech. 
That Language should be outside a law whose univer-  sality is being established with every step of progress,  is itself improbable; and now that the field is being  exhaustively explored the proofs that it is no excep-  tion multiply on every side. The living interest the  mere suggestion gives to the study of Language is  obvious. Evolution enters no region—dull, neglected,  or remote—of the temple of knowledge without trans-  forming it. Philology, since this wizard touched it,  has become one of the most entrancing of the sciences. 
And Language, from a study which interested only a  few specialists, is disclosed as one vast palimpsest,  every word and phrase luminous with the inner mind  and soul of the past. To penetrate far into this  tempting region is beyond our province now. ‘The  immediate object is to give a simple sketch of the  possible conditions which first led Man to speak; of  the principles which apparently guided the formation  of his early vocabulary ; and of the gradual refining of  the means of intercommunication between him and his  fellow-men as time passed on. Instead of beginning  with words, therefore, we shall begin with Man. For  the first condition for understanding the Evolution of 
Speech is that we take it up as a study from the life,  that we place ourselves in the primeval forest with  early Man, in touch with the actual scenes in which  he lived, and note the real experiences and necessities  of such a lot. We may indeed discover in this re-  search small trace of a miraculous inbreathing of  formal words. But to make Speech and fit it into  a man, after all is said, is less miraculous than to fit a  man to make Speech.

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

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

156 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

animals, for the most part timid and defenceless as  individuals, have survived to occupy in untold multi-  tudes the highest places in Nature.

The success of the co-operative principle, however,  depends upon one condition: the members of the herd  must be able to communicate with one another. It  matters not how acute the senses of each animal may  be, the strength of the column depends on the power  to transmit from one to another what impressions  each may receive at any moment from without. 
Without this power the sociality of the herd is stulti-  fied; the army, having no signalling department, is  powerless as an army. But if any member of the  herd is able by motion of head or foot or neck or ear,  by any sign or by any sound, to pass on the news that  there is danger near, each instantly enters into posses-  sion of the faculties of the whole. Each has a hun-  dred eyes, noses, ears. Each has quarter of a mile  of nerves. Thus numbers are strength only when  strength is coupled with some power of intercom-  munication by signs. If one herd develops this sig-  nalling system and another does not, its chances of  survival will be greater. The less equipped herds will  be slowly decimated and driven to the wall; and  those which survive to propagate their kind will be  those whose signal-service is most efficient and com-  plete. Hence the Evolution of the signal-system. 
Under the influence of Natural Selection its progress  was inevitable. New circumstances and relations  would in time arise, calling for additions, vocal, visi-  ble, audible, to the sign-vocabulary. And as time  went on each set of animals would acquire a definite  signal-service of its own, elementary to the last

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 157

degree, yet covering the range of its ordinary expe-  riences and adequate to the expression of its limited  mental states.

Now what interests us with regard to these signs  is that they are Language. The evolution we have  been tracing is nothing less than the first stage in  the evolution of Speech. Any means by which infor-  mation is conveyed from one mind to another is 
Language. And Language existed on the earth from  the day that animals began to live together. The  mere fact that animals cling to one another, live  together, move about together, proves that they com-  municate. Among the ants, perhaps the most social  of the lower animals, this power is so perfect that  they are not merely endowed with a few general signs  but seem able to convey information upon matters of  detail. Sweeping across country in great armies they  keep up communication throughout the whole line,  and succeed in conveying to one another information  as to the easiest routes, the presence of enemies or  obstacles, the proximity of food supplies, and even of  the numbers required on emergencies to leave the  main band for any special service. Every one has  observed ants stop when they meet one another and  exchange a rapid greeting by means of their waving  antenne, and it is possibly through these perplexing  organs that definite intercourse between one creature  and another first entered the world. The exact  nature of the antenna-language is not yet fathomed,  but the perfection to which it is carried proves that  the idea of language generally has existed in  nature from the earliest time. Among higher animals  various outward expressions of emotions are made, and

158 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

these become of service in time for the conveyance of  information to others. The howl of the dog, the  neigh of the horse, the bieat of the lamb, the stamp  of the goat, and other signs are all readily understood  by other animals. One monkey utters at least six  different sounds to express its feelings; and Mr. 
Darwin has detected four or five modulations in the  bark of the dog: “the bark of eagerness, as in the  chase; that of anger as well as growling; the yelp or  howl of despair when shut up; the baying at night;  the bark of joy when starting on a walk with his  master; and the very distinct one of demand or sup-  plication, as when wishing for a door or window to be  opened.” ?

Now these signs are as much language as spoken  words. You have only to evolve this to get all the  language the dictionary-maker requires. Any method  of communication, as already said, is Language, and  to understand Language we must fix in our minds the  idea that 1t has no necessary connection with actual  words. In the simple instances just given there are  illustrations of at least three kinds of Language. 
When a deer throws up its head suddenly, all the  other deer throw up their heads. Thatisa sign. It  means “listen.” If the first deer sees the object,  which has called its attention, to be suspicious, it  utters a low note. That is a word. It means “cau-  tion.” If next it sees the object to be not only sus-  picious but dangerous, it makes a further use of 
Language—intonation. Instead of the low note 
“listen,” it utters a sharp loud cry that means 
“Run for your life”’ Hence these three kinds of

1 Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 84.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 159

Language—a sign or gesture, a note or word, an in.  tonaticn.

Down to this present hour these are still the  three great kinds of Language. The movement  of foot or ear has been evolved into the modern  gesture or grimace; the note or cry into a word,  and the intonation into an emphasis or inflection  of the voice. These are still, indeed, not only the  main elements in Language but the only elements. 
The eloquence which enthralls the legislators of St. 
Stephen’s, or the appeal which melts the worshippers at 
St. Paul’s, originated in the voices of the forest and the  activities of the ant-hill. To those who have not  realized the exceeding smallness of the beginnings of  all new developments, the suggestion of science as to  the origin of Language, like many of its other sugges-  tions about early stages, will seem almost Iudicrous. 
But a knowledge of two things warns one not to look  for surprises at the beginning of Evolution but at the  end. In the first place, itis all but a cardinal principle  that developments are brought about by minute, slow  and insensible degrees. The second fact is even more  important. The theatre of change is the actual world,  and the exciting cause something really happening in  every-day life. New departures are not made in the  air. They arise in connection with some commonplace  event; and usually take the shape of some slightly  newresponse. In other connections, of course, the con-  verse is also true, but when a change occurs for the  first time in the life of an organism the exciting cause,  whatever the internal adaptation, or want of it, is  some change in the environment. Among the events  then, actually happening in the day’s round, we are

160 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

to seek for the exciting cause of the earliest forms of  speech.

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

That this Gesture-Language marked, if not the dawn,  at least a very early stage of Language in the case of 
Man, there is abundant evidence. Apart from analogy,  there are at least three witnesses who may be cited in  proof not only of the fact, but of the high perfection to  which a Gesture-Language may be carried. The first  of these witnesses is the homo alalus, the not-speaking  man, of to-day, the deaf mute. As an actual case of a  human being reduced as regards the power of speech to  the level of early Man his evidence, even with ail allow-  ances for the high development of his mental faculties,

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 161

is of scientific value. The mere fact that a deaf man  is also a dumb man is almost a final answer to the  affirmation that the power of speech is an original and  intuitive faculty of Man. If it were so, there is no  reason why a deaf man should not speak. The vocal  apparatus in his case is complete; all that is required  to make him utter a definite sound is to hear one. 
When he hears one, but not till then, he can imitate it. 
Language, so far as the testimony of the deaf-mute  goes, is clearly a matter of imitation. Unable to attain  the second stage of Language—words—he has to con-  tent himself with the first—signs. And this Language  he has evolved to its last perfection. It shows how  little the mere utterance of words has to do with Lan-  guage, that the deaf-mute is able to converse on every-  day subjects almost as perfectly as those who can  speak. The permutations and combinations that can  be produced with ten pliable fingers, or with the vary-  ing expressions of the muscles of the face, are endless,  and everything that he cares to know can be uttered or  translated to him by motion, gesture, and grimace. 
To give an idea how far gestures can be made to do the  work of spoken words, the signs may be described in  which a deaf-and-dumb man once told a child’s story in  presence of Mr. Tylor. “He began by moving his  hand, palm down, about a yard from the ground, as we  do to show the height of a child—this meant that it  was a child he was thinking of. Then he tied an  imaginary pair of bonnet-strings under his chin (his  usual sign for female), to make it understood that the  child was a little girl. The child’s mother was then  brought on the scene in a similar way. She beckons to

the child and gives her twopence, these being indicated 
11

162 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

by pretending to drop two coins from one hand into the  other; if there had been any doubt as to whether they  were copper or silver coins, this would have been settled  by pointing to something brown or even by one’s con-  temptuous way of handling coppers which at once dis-  tinguishes them from silver. The mother also gives  the child a jar, shown by sketching its shape with the  forefingers in the air, and going through the act of  handing it over. Then by imitating the unmistakable  kind of twist with which one turns a treacle-spoon, it  is made known that it is treacle the child has to buy. 
Next, a wave of the hand shows the child being sent  off on her errand, the usual sign of walking being  added, which is made by two fingers walking on the  table. The turning of an imaginary door-handle now  takes us into the shop, when the counter is shown by  passing the flat hands as it were over it. Behind this  counter a figure is pointed out; he is shown to be a  man by the usual sign of putting one’s hand to one’s  chin and drawing it down where the beard is or would  be; then the sign of tying an apron around one’s waist  adds the information that the man is the shopman. 
To him the child gives her jar, dropping the money into  his hand, and moving her forefinger as if taking up  treacle to show what she wants. Then we see the jar  put into an imaginary pair of scales which go up and  down; the great treacle-jar is brought from the shelf  and the little one filled, with the proper twist to take  up the last trickling thread; the grocer puts the two  coins in the till, and the little girl sets off with the jar. 
The deaf-and-dumb story-teller went on to show in  pantomime how the child, looking down at the jar, saw  a drop of treacle on the rim, wiped it off with her

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 163

finger, and put the finger in her mouth, how she was  tempted to take more, how her mother found her out  by the spot of treacle on her pinafore, and so forth.” !

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

The final witness is the first attempt at Language of  a little child. Universally an infant opens communi-  cation with the mental world around it in the primi-  tive language of gesture and tone. Long before it has  learned to speak, without the use of a single word it

1 Tylor, Anthropology.

164 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

conveys information as to fundamental wants, and  expresses all its varying moods and wishes with a  vehemence and point which are almost the envy of  riper years. The interesting thing about this is that  it is spontaneous. In later childhood it has to be  taught to speak—because speech is a fine art—but to  utter the hereditary and primitive Language of man-  kind requires no prompting. Words are conven-  tional, movements and sounds are natural. The Lan-  guage of the nursery is the native Language of the  forest, the inarticulate cry of the animal, the into-  nation of the savage. To quote from Mallery :—“ The  wishes and emotions of very young children are con-  veyed in a small number of sounds, but in a great  variety of gestures and facial expressions. <A child’s  gestures are intelligent long in advance of speech ; al-  though very early and persistent attempts are made to  give it instruction in the latter but none in the for-  mer, from the time when it begins risus cognoscere  matrem. It learns words only as they are taught,  and learns them through the medium of signs which  are not expressly taught. Long after familiarity with  speech it consults the gestures and facial expressions  of its parents and nurses, as if seeking them to trans-  late or explain their words. These facts are im-  portant in reference to the biologic law that the order  of development of the individual is the same as that  of the species: . . . The insane understand and  obey gestures when they have no knowledge whatever  of words. It is also found that semi-idiotice children  who cannot be taught more than the merest rudiment  of speech can receive a considerable amount of infor-  mation through signs, and can express themselves

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 165

by them. Sufferers from aphasia continue to use  appropriate gestures. A stammerer, too, works his  arms and features as if determined to get his thoughts  out, ina manner not only suggestive of the physical  struggle, but of the use of gesture as a hereditary  expedient.” ?

The survival both of gesture and intonation in  modern adult speech, and especially the unconscious-  ness of their use, illustrate how indelibly these  primitive forms of Language are embedded in the  human race. There are doubtless exceptions, but it is  probably the rule that gestures are mainly called in  to supplement expression when the subject-matter of  discourse does not belong to the highest ranges of  thought, or the speaker to the loftiest type of oratory. 
The higher levels of thought were reached when the  purer forms of spoken Language had become the  vehicle of expression; and, as has often been noticed,  when a speaker soars into a very lofty region, or  allows his mind to grapple intensely and absorbingly  with an exalted theme, he becomes more and more  motionless, and only resumes the gesture-language  when he descends to commoner levels. It is not only  that a fine speaker has a greater command of words  and is able to dispense with auxiliaries—as a master  of style can dispense with the use of italics—but that,  at all events, in the case of abstract thought, it is  untranslatable into gesture-speech. Gestures are sug-  gestions and reminders of things seen and heard. 
They are nearly all attached to objects or to moods,  and rival words only when used of every-day things.

1 First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washing-  ton, 1881.

166 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

“No sign talker,” Mr. Romanes reminds us, “with  any amount of time at his disposal, could translate  into the language of gesture a page of Kant.” *

The next stage in the Evolution of Language must  have been reached as naturally as the Language of  gesture and tone. From the gesture-language to  mixtures of signs and sounds, and finally to the  specialization of sound into words, is a necessary  transition. Apart from the fact that gestures and  tones have limits, circumstances must often have  arisen in the life of early Man when gesture was im-  possible. A sign Language is of no use when one_  savage is at one end of a wood and his wife at the  other. He must now roar; and to make his roar ex-  plicit, he must have a vocabulary of roars, and of all  shades of roars. In the darkness of night also, his  signs are useless, and he must now whisper and have  a vocabulary of whispers. Nor is it difficult to con-  ceive where he got his first brief list of words. 
Instead of drawing things in the air with his finger,  he would now try to imitate their sounds. Every-  thing around him that conveyed any impression of  sound would have associated with it some self-ex-  pressive word, which all familiar with the original  sound could instantly recognize. Imagine, for in-  stance, a herd of buffalo browsing in a glade of the 
African forest. The vanguard, some little distance  from its neighbors, hears the low growl of a lion. 
That growl, of course, is Language, and the buffalo  understands it as well as we do when the word “lion”  is pronounced. Between the word “lion” spoken,  and the object lion growled, there is no difference in

1 Mental Evolution, p- 147.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 167

the effect. Suppose, next, the buffalo wished to con-  vey to its comrades the knowledge that a lion was  near, a lion and not some other animal, it might  imitate this growl. It is not likely that it would do  so; some other sign expressing alarm in general  would probably be used, for the discrimination of the  different sources of danger is probably an achieve-  ment beyond this animal’s power. But if Primitive 
Man was placed under the same circumstances, grant-  ing that he had begun in a feeble way to exercise  mind, he would almost certainly come in time to  denote a lion by an imitated growl, a wolf by an  imitated whine, and so on. The sighing of the wind,  the flowing of the stream, the beat of the surf, the  note of the bird, the chirp of the grasshopper, the hiss  of the snake, would each be used to express these  things. And gradually a Language would be built up  which included all the things in the environment with  which sound was either directly, indirectly, or acci-  dentally associated.

That this method of word-making is natural is seen  in the facility with which it is still used by children;  and from the early age at which they begin to employ  it, the sound Language is clearly one of the very first  forms of speech. All a child’s words are of course  gathered through the sense of hearing, but if it can  itself pick up a word direct from the object, it will use  it long before it elects to repeat the conventional  name taught it by its nurse. The child who says moo  for cow, or bow-wow for dog, or tick-tick for watch, or  puff-puff for train, is an authority on the origin of  human speech. Its father, when he talks of the hum  of machinery or the 400m of the cannon, when he calls

168 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

champagne fizz or a less aristocratic beverage pop, is  following in the wake of the inventors of Language. 
Among savage peoples, and especially those en--  countering the first rush of new things and thoughts  brought them by the advancing wave of civilization,  word-making is still going on; and wherever possible  the favorite principle seems to be that of sound.’

How full all Languages are of these sound-words is  known to the philologist, though multitudes of words  in every Language have had their pedigree effaced or  obscured by time. “An Englishman would hardly  guess from the present pronunciation and meaning of  the word pipe what its origin was; yet when he  compares it with the Low Latin pipa, French pipe,  pronounced more like our word peep, to chirp, and  meaning such a reed-pipe as shepherds played on, he  then sees how cleverly the very sound of the musical  pipe has been made into a word for all kinds of tubes,  such as tobacco-pipes and water-pipes. Words like  this travel like Indians on the war-path, wiping out  their footmarks as they go. For ali we know multi-

1 Among the Coral Islands of the Pacific the savages every-  where speak of the white residents in New Caledonia as the 
Wee-wee men, or Wee-wees. Cannibals on a dozen different  islands, speaking as many languages, have all this name in com-  mon, New Caledonia is a French Penal Settlement, containing  thousands of French convicts, and one’s first crude thought is that  the Wee-wees are so named from their size. A moment’s re-  flection, however, shows that it is taken from their sounds—that  in fact we have here a very pretty example of modern onomato-  poeia. These convicts, freed or escaped, find their way over the 
Pacific group ; and the natives, seizing at once upon their  characteristic sound, know them as OQOui-oui’s—a name which

has now become general for all Frenchmen in the Southern 
Pacific.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 169

tudes of our ordinary words may have thus been made  from real sounds, but have now lost beyond recovery  the traces of their first expressiveness.”! In the 
Chinuk language of the West Coast of America, to cite  afew more of Tylor’s instances, a tavern is called a 
“ heehee-house,” that is a laughter house, or an amuse-  ment house, the word for amusement being taken by  an obvious association from the laughter which it ex-  cites. How indirect a derivation may be is illustrated  by the word which the Basutos of South Africa use  for courtier. The buzz of a certain fly resembles the  sound ntsi-nts7, and they apply this word to those who  buzz round the chief as a fly buzzes round a piece of  meat. As every one knows “ papa” for father, is  evolved into papa the pope, and “abba” the Hebrew  for father into abbot. For plurals, a doubling of the  word is often used, but no doubt at first quantity was  expressed by gestures or by numbering on the fingers. 
“Orang” is the Malay for Man, “ Orang-orang” for  men while “Orang-utan” is wild man. Verbs are  formed on the same principle as nouns. In the 
Tecuna language of Brazil the verb to sneeze is  haitschu, while the Welsh for a sneeze is tis. Other  verbs which came to have large and comprehensive  meanings arose out of the simple activities and oc-  cupations of primitive life. Thus the first verb in the 
Bible, the Hebrew “bara” now meaning create, was  originally used for cutting or hewing, the first step in  making things. In the Borneo language of Africa, the  verb “to make” comes from the word tando, to weave. 
In English, “to suffer” meant to bear as a burden,  and to “apprehend an idea” was originally to “catch 
1 Tylor, Anthropology, p. 127.

170 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

hold” of some “sight.” Even Max Miller who op-  poses the onomatopoetic theory with regard to the  origin of most words, agrees that the sounds of the  occupation of men, and especially of men working  together, and making special sounds at their task—  such as builders, soldiers, and sailors—are widely rep-  resented in modern speech.

Though mimicry, sometimes exact, but probably  more often a mere echo or suggestion of the sound to  be recalled, is responsible for some of the material of 
Language, multitudes of words appear to have no such  origin. There are infinitely more words than sounds  in the world; and even things which have very dis-  tinct sounds have been named without any regard to  them. The inventors of the word watch, for instance,  did not call it tick-tick but watch, the idea being taken  from the watchman who walked about at night and  kept the time; and when the steam-engine appeared,  instead of taking the obvious sound-name puff-puff, it  was called engine (Lat. ingenium), to signify that it  was a work of genius. These modern words, however,  are the coinages of an intellectual age, and it was to  be expected that the inventors should look deeper  below the surface. How those words which have no  apparent association with sound were formed in early  times remains a mystery. With some the original  sound-association has probably been lost; in the case  of others, the association may have been so indirect as  to be now untraceable. The sounds available in say-  age life for word-making could never have been so  numerous as the things requiring names, and as civili-  zation advanced the old words would be used in new  connections, while wholly new terms must have been

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. a yg

coined from time to time. Both these methods—the  habit of generalizing unconsciously from single terms,  and the trick of coining new words in a wholly con-  ventional way—are still continually employed by sav-  ages as well as by children. Thus, to take an example  of the first, Mr. John Moir, one of the earliest white  men to settle in East Central Africa, was at once  named by the natives Mandala, which means “a re-  flection in still water,” because he wore on his eyes  what looked to them a still water (spectacles). After-  wards they came to call not only Mr. Moir by that  name, but spectacles, and finally—when it entered  the country—glass itself. Examples of generalization  among children abound in every nursery. A child is  taken to the window by his nurse to see the moon. 
The easy monosyllable is caught up at once, and for  some time the child applies it indiscriminately to any-  thing bright or shining—the gas, the candle, the fire-  light are each “the moon.” Mr. Romanes records a  case where a child made a similar use of the word star 
—the gas, the candle, the firelight were each “a star.” 
If the makers of Language proceeded on this principle,  no wonder the philologist has riddles to read. How  often must the savage children of the world have  started off naming things from two such different  points ? Mr. Romanes mentions a still more elaborate  example which was furnished him by Mr. Darwin: 
‘The child, who was just beginning to speak, called a  duck ‘ quack,’ and, by special association, it also called  water ‘quack.’ By an appreciation of the resemblance  of qualities, it next extended the term ‘quack’ to  denote all birds and insects on the one hand, and all  fluid substances on the other. Lastly, by a still more

172 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

delicate appreciation of resemblance, the child eventu-  ally called all coins ‘ quack,’ because on the back of a 
French sou it had once seen the representation of an  eagle. Hence, to the child, the sign ‘quack, from  liaving originally had a very specialized meaning, be-  came more and more extended in its significance, until  it now seems to designate such apparently different  objects as ‘fly,’ ‘wine’ and ‘coin.’” ?

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

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

1 Mental Evolution, p. 283.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 178

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

This simple fact indeed has been used with great  plausibility to account for differences in dialect among  different tribes, and even for the partial origin of new 
Languages. Thus the structure of the Indian lan-  guages has long puzzled philologists. Whitney in-  forms us that as regards the material of expression,  there is “irreconcilable diversity” among them. 
“There are a very considerable number of groups  between whose significant signs exist no more appar-  ent correspondences than between those of English, 
Hungarian, and Malay; none namely which may not  be merely fortuitous.” To account for these dialects  a suggestion, as interesting as it is ingenious, has been

174 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

advanced by Dr. Hale. Imagine the case of a family  of Red Indians, father, mother, and half a dozen  children, in the vicissitudes of war, cut off from their  tribe. Suppose the father to be scalped and the  mother soon to die. The little ones left to themselves  in some lonely valley, living upon roots and herbs,  would converse for a time by using the few score  words they had heard from their parents. But as  they grew up they would require new words and  would therefore coin them. As they became a tribe  they would require more words, and so in time a Lan-  guage might arise, all the words expressive of the  simpler relations—father, mother, tent, fire—being  common to other Indian Languages, but all the later  words purely arbitrary and necessarily a standing  puzzle to philology. The curious thing is that this  theory is borne out by some. most interesting geo-  graphical facts. “If, under such circumstances, dis-  ease, or the casualties of a hunter’s life should carry  off the parents, the survival of the children would, it  is evident, depend mainly upon the nature of the  climate and the ease with which food could be pro-  cured at all seasons of the year. In ancient Europe,  after the present climatal conditions were established,  it is doubtful if a family of children under ten years  of age could have lived through a single winter. We  are not, therefore, surprised to find that no more than  four or five linguistic stocks are represented in 
Europe. Of North America, east of the Rocky Mount-  ains and north of the tropics, the same may be said. 
The climate and the scarcity of food in winter forbid  us to suppose that a brood of orphan children could  have survived, except possibly, by a fortunate chance,

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 175

in some favored spot on the shore of the Mexican Gulf,  where shell-fish, berries, and edible roots are abundant  and easy of access. But there is one region where 
Nature seems to offer herself as the willing nurse and  bountiful stepmother of the feeble and unprotected. 
Of all countries on the globe, there is probably not  one in which a little flock of very young children  would find the means of sustaining existence more  readily than in California. Its wonderful climate,  mild and equable beyond example, is well known. 
Half the months are rainless. Snow and ice are  almost strangers. There are fully two hundred cloud-  less days in every year. Roses bloom in the open air  through all seasons. Berries of many sorts are in-  digenous and abundant. Large fruits and edible nuts  on low and pendant boughs may be said in Milton’s  phrase to ‘hang amiable. Need we wonder that in  such a mild and fruitful region, a great number of  separate tribes were found speaking languages which  careful investigation has classed in nineteen distinct  linguistic stocks?” 1 Even more striking is the case  of Oregon on the Californian border, which is also a  favored and luxuriant land. The number of linguistic  stocks in this narrow district is more than twice as  large as in the whole of Europe.’

1Dr. Hale. Cf. Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, p. 260.

2The construction of the mouth and lips has of course had  something to do with differences in Languages, and even with  the possibility of language in the case of Man. You must have  your trumpet before you can get the sound of a trumpet. One  reason why many animals have no speech is simply that they  have not the mechanism which by any possibility could produce  it. They might have a Language, but nothing at all like human 
Language. It is one of the significant notes in Evolution that

176 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

In such ways as these we may conceive of early 
Man building up the fabric of speech. In time his  vocabulary would enlarge and become, so far as ob-  jects in the immediate environment were concerned,  fairly complete. As Man gained more knowledge of  the things around him, as he came into larger relations  with his fellows, as life became more rich and com-  plex, this accumulation of words would go on, each  art as it was introduced creating new terms, each  science pouring in contributions to the fund, until the  materials of human speech became more and more  complete. This process was never finished. The  evolution of Language is still going on. No corrobo-  ration of the theory of the evolution of Language could  be more perfect than the simple fact that it has gone  on steadily down to the present hour and is going on  now. Tens of thousands of words—no longer now  onomatopoetic—have been evolved since Johnson com-

Man, almost alone among vertebrates, has a material body so far  developed as to make it an available instrument for speech. 
There was almost certainly a time when this was to him a physi-  cal impossibility.

“The acquisition of articulate speech,” says Prof. Macalaster, 
‘‘became possible to man only when the alveolar arch and pala-  tine area became shortened and widened, and when his tongue,  by its accommodation to the modified mouth, became shorter  and more horizontally flattened, and the higher refinements of  pronunciation depend for their production upon the more exten-  sive modifications in the same direction.’’ Even for differences  in dialect, as the same writer points out, there is a physical basis. 
“With the macrodont alveolar arch and the corresponding modi-  fied tongue, sibilation is a difficult feat to accomplish, and hence  the sibilant sounds are practically unknown in all the Austra-  lian dialects.’’—British Association : Anthropological Section. 
Edinb., 1891.

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 177

piled his dictionary, and every year sees additions not  only to technical terms but to the language of the  people. The English Language is now being grown  on two or three different kinds of soil, and the differ-  ent fruits and flavors that result are intercharged and  mixed, to enrich, or adulterate, the common English  tongue. The mere fact that Language-making is a liv-  ing art at the present hour, if not an argument against  the theory that Language is a special gift, at least  shows that Man has aspecial gift of making Language. 
If Man could manufacture words in any quantity, there  was little reason why he should have been presented  with them ready-made. The power to manufacture  them is gift enough, and none the less a gift that we  know some of the steps by which it was given, or at  least through which it was exercised. But if the very  words were given him as they stand, it is more than  singular that so many of them should bear traces of  another origin. Even Trench at this point succumbs  to the theory of development, and his testimony is the  more valuable that it is evidently so very much against  the grain to admit it. He begins by stating appar-  ently the opposite :—“The truer answer to the inquiry  how language arose is this: God gave man language  just as He gave him reason, and just because He gave  him reason; for what is man’s word but his reason  coming forth that it may behold itself? They are in-  deed so essentially one and the same that the Greek  language has one word for them both. He gave it to  him, because he could not be man, that is, a social be-  ing, without it.” Yet he is too profound a student of  words to fail to qualify this, and had he failed to do so  every page in his well-known book had judged him, 
12

178 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

“ Yet,” he continues, “this must not be taken to affirm  that man started at the first furnished with a full-  formed vocabulary of words, and as it were with his  first dictionary and first grammar ready-made to  his hands. He did not thus begin the world with  names, but with the power of naming. for man is not a  mere speaking machine; God did not teach him  words, as one of us teaches a parrot, from without;  but gave him a capacity, and then evoked the capacity  which he gave.!”

If the theory just given as to the formation of 
Language, or at least as to the possible formation of 
Language, be more than a fairy tale, there is another  quarter in which corroboration of an important kind  should lie. Hitherto we have examined as witnesses,  the makers of words; it may be worth while for a  moment to place in the witness-box the words them-  selves. A chemist has two methods of determining  the composition of any body, analysis and synthesis. 
Having seen how words may be built up, it remains  for us to see whether on analysis they bear trace of  having been built up in the way, and from the ele-  ments, suggested. Comparative Philology has now  made an actual investigation into the words and  structure of all known Languages, and the informa-  tion sought by the evolutionist lies ready-made to his  hand. So far as controversy might be expected to  arise here on the theory of development itself, there  is none. For the first fact to interest us in this new  region is that every student of Language seems to  have been compelled to give in his adherence to the  general theory of Evolution. All agree with Renan

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

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. ig

that “Sans doubte les langues, comme tout ce qui  est organisé, sont sujettes a la loi du dévelopment  graduel.” And even Max Miller, the least thorough-  going from an evolutionary point of view of all philol-  ogists, asserts that “no student of the science of Lan-  guage can be anything but an evolutionist, for, wher-  ever he looks, he sees nothing but evolution going on  all around him.”

The outstanding discovery of the dissector of  words is that, vast and complex as Languages ap-  pear, they are really composed of few and simple  elements. Take the word “evolutionary.” The ter-  mination “ary” is a late addition added to this and  to thousands of other ,words for a special purpose ;  the same applies to the syllable “tion.” The first  letter e distinguishes evolution from convolution,  revolution, involution, and is also a later growth: 
None of these extra syllables is of first importance;  by themselves they have almost no meaning. The  part which will vot disappear or melt away into mere  grammar, on which the stress of the sense hangs, is  the syllable “vol” or “volv,” and, so far as the English  language is concerned, it is to be looked upon as the  root. By running it to earth in older languages its  source is found in a still more radical word, and  therefore it must next be blotted out of the list of  primitive words. By patient comparison of all other  words with all other words, of Languages with 
Languages, and apparent roots with apparent roots,  the supposed primitive roots of Language have been  found. Just as all the multifarious objects in the  material world—water, air, earth, flesh, bone, wood,  iron, paper, cloth—are resolvable by the chemist into

180 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

some sixty-eight elements, so all the words in each  of the three or four great groups of Language yield  on the last analysis only a few hundred original roots. 
That still further analysis may break down some or  many of these is not impossible. But the facts as  they stand are all significant. The further we go  back into the past the Languages become thinner and  thinner, the words fewer and fewer, the grammar  poorer and poorer. Of the thousand known Lan-  guages it has been found possible to reduce all to three  or four—probably three—great families; and each of  these in turn is capable of almost unlimited philo-  logical pruning. In analyzing the Sanskrit language, 
Professor Max Miiller reduces its whole vocabulary to 
121 roots—the 121 “original concepts.” “These 121  concepts constitute the stock-in-trade with which I  maintain that every thought that has ever passed  through the mind of India, so far as known to us in  its literature, has been expressed. It would have been  easy to reduce that number still further, for there are  several among them which could be ranged together  under more general concepts. But I leave this  further reduction to others, being satisfied as a first  attempt with having shown how small a number of  seeds may produce, and has produced, the enormous  intellectual vegetation that has covered the soil of 
India from the most distant antiquity to the present  davon

That a “first attempt” should have succeeded in  reducing this vast family of Languages to 121 words  is significant. The exhumation by philology of this  early cluster reminds one of the discovery of the seg-

Science of Thought, p. 549,

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 181

mented ovum in embryology. Such clusters appear  at an early stage in the history of all developments. 
The processes which precede this stage are of the  utmost subtlety, but in embryology they have yielded  to the latter analysis of the microscope. So it may be  one day with the natural history of Language. We  may never, for obvious reasons, get back to the actual  beginning, but we may get nearer. When the em-  bryologist reached his cluster of cells in the segmented  ovum, he did not believe he had found the dawn of  life. What further the philologist may find remains  a mystery. Where these 121 words came from may  never be known. But the development from that  point sufficiently shows that words, like everything  else, have tollowed the universal law, and that Lan-  guages, starting from small beginnings, have grown  in volume, intricacy, and richness, as time rolled on. 
“ All philologists,” says Romanes, “will now agree  with Geiger—‘ Language diminishes the further we  look back, in such a way that we cannot forbear con-  cluding it must once have had no existence at all.” 
The history of progress for along time henceforth  is the history of the progress of Language and the  increase in intelligence which necessarily went along  with it. From being able to say what he knew, Man  went on to write what he knew. The Evolution of  writing went through the same general stages as the 
Evolution of Speech. First there was the onomato-  poetic writing—as it were, the growl-writing—the ideo-  graph, the imitation of an actual object. This is the  form we find fossil in the Egyptian hieroglyphic. For  a man a man was drawn, for a camel a camel, for a  hut a hut. Then intonation was added—accents, that

182 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

is, for extra meaning or extra emphasis. Then to  save time the objects were drawn in shorthand—a  couple of dashes for the limbs and one across, as in  the Chinese for man; a square in the same language  for a field; two strokes at an obtuse angle, suggesting  the roof, for a house. To express further qualities,  these abbreviated pictures were next compounded in  ingenious ways. A man and a field together conveyed  the idea of wealth, and because a man with a field was  rich, he was supposed to be happy, and the same com-  bination stood, and stands to this day, for content-  ment. When a roof is drawn and a woman beneath  it—or the strokes which represent a roof and a woman 
—we have the idea of a woman at home, a woman at  peace, and hence the symbol comes to stand for quiet-  ness and rest. Chinese writing is picture-writing,  with the pictures degenerated into dashes—a lingual  form of the modern impressionism.

When writing was fully evolved, this height was  only the starting-point for some new development. 
Every summit in Evolution is the base of some  grander peak. Speech, whether by writing or by  spoken word, is too crude and slow to keep pace with  the needs of the now swiftly ascending mind. Man’s  larger life demands a further specialization of this  power. He learned to speak at first because he  could not convey his thoughts to his wife at the other  side of the wood. It was Space that made him speak. 
Ife now learns to speak better because he cannot con-  vey his thoughts to the other end of the world. This  new distance-language began again at the beginning,  just as all Language does, by employing signs. Man  invented the telegraph—a little needle which makes

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 183

signs to some one at the other side of the world. The  telegraph is a gesture-language, and is therefore only  a primitive stage. Man found this out and from signs  went on to sounds—he invented the telephone. By  all the traditions of Evolution this marvellous instru-  ment ought to be, and is even now on the verge of be-  ing, the vehicle of the distance-language of the future.

Is this the end? It is by no means likely. The  mind is feeling about already for more perfect forms  of human intercourse than telegraphed or telephoned  words. <As there was a stage in the ascent of Man at  which the body was laid aside as a finished product,  and made to give way to Mind, there may be a stage  in the Evolution of Mind when its material achieve-  ments—its body—shall be laid aside and give place  to a higher form of Mind. Telepathy has already  become a word, not a word for thought-reading or  muscle-reading, but a scientific word. It means “the  ability of one mind to impress, or to be impressed by  another mind otherwise than through the recognized  channels of sense.”? By men of science, adepts in  mental analysis, aware of all sources of error, armed  against fraud, this subject is now being made the  theme of exhaustive observation. It is too soon to  pronounce. Practically we are in the dark. But  there are those in this fascinating and mysterious  region who tell us that the possibilities of a more in-  timate fellowship of man with man, and soul with  soul, are not to be looked upon as settled by our pres-  ent views of matter or of mind. However little we  know of it, however remote we are from it, whether it  ever be realized or not, telepathy is theoretically the

1 Phantasms of the Living, p. 6.

184 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

next stage in the Evolution of Language. As we have  seen, the introduction of speech into the world was  delayed, not because the possibilities of it were not in 
Nature, but because the instrument was not quite  ready. Then the instrument came, and Man spoke. 
The development of the organ and the development of  the function went on together, arrived together, were  perfected together. What delayed the gesture-lan-  guage of the telegraph was not that electricity was  not in Nature, but the want of the instrument. 
When that came, the gesture-language came, and both  were perfected together. What delayed the telephone  was not that its principle was not in Nature, but that  the instrument was not ready. What now delays its  absolute victory of space is not that space cannot be  bridged, but that it is not ready. May it not be that  that which delays the power to transport and drive  one’s thought as thought to whatever spot one wills,  is not the fact that the possibility is withheld by 
Nature, but that the hour is not quite come—that the  instrument is not yet fully ripe? Are there no signs,  is the feeling after it no sign, are there not even now  some facts, to warrant us in treating it, after all that 
Evolution has given us, as a still possible gift to the  human race? What strikes one most in running the  eye up this graduated ascent is that the movement is  in the direction of what one can only call spirituality. 
From the growl of a lion we have passed to the  whisper of a soul; from the motive fear, to the motive  sympathy; from the icy physical barriers of space, to  a nearness closer than breathing; from the torturing  slowness of time to time’s obliteration. If Evolution  reveals anything, if science itself proves anything, it

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE, 185

is that Man is a spiritual being and that the direction  of his long career is towards an ever larger, richer,  and more exalted life. On the final problem of Man’s  being the voice of science is supposed to be dumb. 
But this gradual perfecting of instruments, and, as  each arrives, the further revelation of what lies be-  hind in Nature, this gradual refining of the mind, this  increasing triumph over matter, this deeper knowl-  edge, this efflorescence of the soul, are facts which even 
Science must reckon with. Perhaps, after all, Victor 
IIugo is right: “Iam the tadpole of an archangel.”

Before closing this outline two of the many omit-  ted points may be briefly referred to. In thinking of 
Language as a “discovery,” if is not necessary to as-  sume that that discovery involved the pre-existence  of very high mental powers. These were probably  developed pari passu with Speech, but did not neces-  sarily ante-date it to such a degree as to make the  preceding argument a petitio principii. Obviously the  discovery of Language could not in the first instance  have been responsible for the Evolution of Mind, since 
Man must already have had Mind enough to discover  it. But this does not necessarily imply any very high  grade of intellect—very high, that is to say, as com-  pared with other contemporary animals—for it is pos-  sible that a comparatively slight rise in intelligence  might have led to the initial step from which all the  others might follow in rapid succession. An illustra-  tion, suggested by a remark of Cope’s, may help to  make plain how a very slight cause may initiate  changes of an almost radical order and on the most  gigantic scale.

186 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

In part of the Arctic regions at this moment there  is no such thing as liquid. Matter is only known  there in the solid form. The temperature may be  thirty-one degrees below zero, or thirty-one degrees  above zero without making the slightest difference;  there can be nothing there but ice, glacier, and those  erystals of ice which we call snow. But suppose the  temperature rose two degrees, the difference would be  indescribable. While no change for sixty degrees  below that point made the least difference, the almost  inappreciable addition of two degrees changes the  country into a world of water. The glaciers, under  the new conditions, retreat into the mountains, the  vesture of ice drops into the sea, a garment of green-  ness clothes the land. So, in the animal world, a very  small rise beyond the animal maximum may open the  door for a revolution. With a brain of so many cubic  inches, and so many pounds of brain matter, we have  animal intelligence. Everything below that limit is  animal, and the number of inches or pounds below it  makes no difference. But pass to a brain not a few  but many pounds heavier, many cubic inches larger,  and very much more convoluted, and it is conceivable  that in passing from the lower to the higher figures  some such change might occur as that which differ-  entiates solid from liquid in the case of water. What  the chemist calls a “critical point” might thus be  passed, and from a condition associated with certain  properties—though in the brain we must speak of  accompaniments rather than properties—a condition  associated with certain other properties might be the  result. Thus, as Cope says, “ some Rubicon has been  crossed, some flood-gate has been opened, which marks

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 187

one of Nature’s great transitions, such as have been  called ‘expression-points’ of progress.” A slight rise  in intelligence might lead to the first acquisition of 
Speech, and from this point the rise might be at once  exceedingly swift and in directions wholly new. The  illustration is not to be taken for more than it seeks  to illustrate—which is not the method of transition as  to qualitative detail, but simply the fact that an ap-  parently slight change may have startling and indefi-  nite results.

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

The progenitors of Birds and the progenitors of 
Man at a very remote period were probably one. But  at a certain point they parted company and diverged

188 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.

hopelessly and forever. The Birds took one road, the 
Vertebrates another; the Vertebrates kept to the  ground, the Birds took to the air. The consequences  of this expedient in the case of the Birds were fatal. 
They forever forfeited the possibility of becoming  human. For observe the cost to them of the aerial  mode of life. The wing was made at the expense of  the hand. With this consummate organ buried in  feathers, the use which the higher Vertebrates made  of it was denied them. Birds have the bones fora  hand, could have had a hand, but they waived their  right to it. When it is considered how much Man  owes to the hand it may be conceived how much they  have lost by the want of it. Had Man not been a 
“tool-using animal,” he had probably never become  aman; the Bird, partly because it placed itself out of  the running here, has never been anything but a Bird. 
To one organism only was it given to keep on the  path of progress from the beginning to the end, and  so fulfil without deviation or relapse the final purpose  of Evolution.

CHAPTHR: V1. 
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

Matruew Arnotp, in a well-remembered line, de-  scribes a bird in Kensington Gardens “deep in its un-  known day’s employ.” But, peace to the poet, its  employ is all too certain. Its day is spent in strug-  gling to get a living; anda very hard day it is. It  awoke at daybreak and set out to catch its morning  meal; but another bird was awake before it, and it  lost its chance. With fifty other breakfastless birds,  it had to bide its time, to scour the country; to pros-  pect the trees, the grass, the ground; to hein ambush;  to attack and be defeated; to hope and be forestalled. 
At every meal the same programme is gone through,  and every day.. As the seasons change the pressure  becomes more keen. Its supplies are exhausted, and  it has to take wing for hundreds and thousands of  miles to find new hunting-ground. This is how birds  live, and this is how birds are made. They are the  children of Struggle. Beak and limb, claw and wing,  shape, strength, all down to the last detail, are the ex-  pressions of their mode of life.

This is how the early savage lived, and this is how

he was made. The first practical problem in the 
189

190 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

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

The first great principle into the hands of which  this mighty charge was given is the Struggle for Life. 
It is one of the chief keys for unlocking the mystery  of Man’s Ascent, and so important in all development  that Mr. Darwin assigns it the supreme rank among  the factors in Evolution. “Unless,” he says, “it be  thoroughly engrained in the mind, the whole economy  of Nature, with every fact on distribution, rarity,  abundance, extinction, and variation, will be dimly  seen or quite misunderstood.” How, under the press-  ures of this great necessity to work for a living, the 
Ascent of Man has gone on, we have now to inquire. 
Though not to the extent that is usually supposed, yet  in part under this stimulus, he has slowly emerged  from the brute-existence, and, entering a path where  the possibilities of development are infinite, has been  pushed on from stage to stage, without premedita-  tion, or design, or thought on his part, until he  arrived at that further height where, to the uncon-  scious compulsions of a lower environment, there  were added those high incitements cf conscious

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 191

ideals which completed the work of creating him a 
Man.

Start with a comparatively unevolved savage, and  see what the Struggle for Life will do for him. When  we meet him first he is sitting, we shall suppose, in  the sun. Let us also suppose—and it requires no  imagination to suppose it—that he has no wish to do  anything else than sit in the sun, and that he is per-  fectly contented, and perfectly happy. Nature around  him, visible and invisible, is as still as he is, as inert  apparently, as unconcerned. Neither molests the other;  they have no connection with each other. Yet it is  not so. That savage is the victim of a conspiracy. 
Nature has designs upon him, wants to do something  to him. That something is to move him. Why does  it wish to move him? Because movement is work, and  work is exercise, and exercise may mean a further  evolution of the part of him that is exercised. How  does it set about moving him? By moving itself. 
Everything else being in motion, it is impossible for  him to resist. The sun moves away to the west and  he must move or freeze with cold. As the sun con-  tinues to move, twilight falls and wild animals move  from their lairs and he must move or be eaten. The  food he ate in the morning has dissolved and moved  away to nourish the cells of his body, and more food  must soon be moved to take its place or he must  starve. So he starts up, he works, he seeks food,  shelter, safety ; and those movements make marks in  his body, brace muscles, stimulate nerves, quicken  intelligence, create habits, and he becomes more able  and more willing to repeat these movements and so  becomes a stronger and a higher man,. Multiply these

vs

192 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

movements and you multiply him. Make him do  things he has never done before, and he will become  what he never was before. Let the earth move round  in its orbit till the sun is far away and the winter  snows begin to fall. He must either move away, and  move away very fast, to find the sun again ; or he must  chase, and also very fast, some thick-furred animal,  and kill it, and clothe himself with its skin. Thus  from aman he has become a hunter, a different kind  of aman, a further man. He did not wish to become  a hunter; he had to become a hunter. All that he  wished was to sit in the sun and be let alone, and but  for a Nature around him which would not rest, or let  him alone, he would have sat on there till he died. 
The universe has to be so ordered that that - which Man  would not have done alone he should be compelled to  do. In other words it was necessary to introduce into 
Nature, and into Human Nature, some such principle  as the Struggle for Life. For the first law of Evolu-  tion is simply the first law of motion. “ Every body  continues in a state of rest, or of uniform motion in a  straight line, unless it is compelled by impressed forces  to change that state.” Nature supplied that savage  with the impressed forces, with something which he  was compelled to respond to. Without that, he would  have continued forever as he was.

Apart from the initial appetite, Hunger, the stimu-  lus of Environment—that which necessitates Man to  struggle for life—is twofold. The first is inorganic  nature, including heat and cold, climate and weather,  earth, air, water—the material world. The second is  the world of life, comprehending all plants and ani-  mals, and especially those animals against whom prim-

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 193

itive Man has always to struggle most—other primi-  tive Men. All that Man is, all the arts of life, all the  gifts of civilization, all the happiness and joy and prog-  ress of the world, owe much of their existence to that  double war.

Follow it a little further. Go back to a time when 
Man was just emerging from the purely animal state,  when he was in the condition described by Mr. Dar-  win, “a tailed quadruped probably arboreal in its  habits,” and when in his glimmering consciousness  mind was feeling about for its first uses in snatching  some novel success in the Struggle for Life. This  hypothetical creature, so far as bodily structure was  concerned, was presumably not very vigorous. Had  he been more vigorous he might never have evolved at  all; as it was, he fled for refuge not to his body but to  a stratagem of the Mind. When threatened by a com-  rade, or pressed by an alien-species, he called in a  simple foreign aid to help him in the Struggle—the  branch of a tree. Whether the discovery was an acci-  dent ; whether the idea was caught from the falling of  a bough, or a blow from a branch waving in the wind,  is of no consequence. This broken branch became the  first weapon. It was the father of all clubs. The day  this discovery was made, the Struggle for Life took a  new departure. Hitherto animals fought with some  specialized part of their own bodies—tooth, limb, claw. 
Now they took possession of the armory of material 
Nature.

This invention of the club was soon followed by  another change. To use a club effectively, or to keep  a good look-out for enemies or for food, a man must  stand erect. This alters the centre of gravity of the

13

194 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

body, and as the act becomes a habit, subsidiary  changes slowly take place in other parts. In time the  erect position becomes confirmed. Man owes what 
Burns calls his “ heaven-erected face” to the Struggle  for Life. How recent this change is, how new the  attitude still is to him, is seen from the simple fact  that even yet he has not attained the power of retain-  ing the erect position long. Most men sit down when  they can, and so unnatural is the standing position, so  unstable the equilibrium, that when slightly sick or  faint, Man cannot stand at all.

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

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

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 195

in the world—the blunt stick and the pointed stick—  that is to say, the Club and the Spear.

In using these weapons at first, neither probably  was allowed to leave the hand. But already their  owners had learned to hurl down branches from the  tree-tops, and bombard their enemies with nuts and  fruits. Hence they came to throw their clubs and  spears, and so missiles were introduced. Under this  new use, the primitive weapons themselves received  a further specialization. From the heavy bludgeon  would arise on the one hand the shaped war-club, and  on the other the short throwing club, or waddy. The  spear would pass into the throwing assegai, or the  ponderous weapon such as the South Sea Islanders  use to-day. From the natural point of a torn branch  to the sharpening of a point deliberately is the next  improvement. From rubbing the point against the  sharp edge of a large stone, to picking up a sharp-  edged small stone and using it as a knife, is but a  step. So, by the mere necessities of the Struggle for 
Life, development went on. Man became a tool-using  animal, and the foundations of the Arts were laid. 
Next, the man who threw his missile furthest, had the  best chance in the Struggle for Life. To throw to  still greater distances, and with greater precision, he  sought out mechanical aids—the bow, the boomerang,  the throwing-stick, and the sling. Then instead of  using his own strength he borrowed strength from  nature, mixed different kinds of dust together and  invented gunpowder. All our modern weapons of  precision, from the rifle to the long range gun, are  evolutions from the missiles of the savage. These  suggestions are not mere fancies; in savage tribes

ey

196 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

existing in the world to-day these different stages in 
Evolution may still be seen.

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

Trifling, almose puerile, as these beginnings look to  us now, remember they were once the serious realities  of life. The club and spear of the savage are toys to  us to-day ; but we forget that the rude shafts of wood  which adorn our halls were all the world to early Man  and represented the highest expression and daily in-  strument of his evolution. These primitive weapons  are the pathetic expression of the world’s first Strug-

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 1o%

gle. As the earliest contribution of mankind to solve  its still fundamental difficulty—the problem of Nutri-  tion—they are of enduring interest to the human race. 
So far from being, as one might suppose, mere imple-  ments of destruction, they are implements of self-  preservation ; they entered the world not from hate  of Man but for love of life. Why was the spear in-  vented, and the sling, and the bow? In the first  instance because Man needed the bird and the deer for  food. Why from implements of the chase did they  change into implements of war? Because other men  wanted the bird and the deer, and the first possessor,  as populations multiplied, must protect his food-  supply. The parent of all industries is Hunger: the  creator of civilization in its earlier forms is the Strug-  gle for Life.

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

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the chase, he perceived the value of domestic animals. 
So Man slowly passed from the animal to the savage,  so his mind was tamed, and strengthened, and bright-  ened, and heightened; so the sense of power grew  strong, and so virtus, which is to say virtue, was  born.

In struggling with Nature, early Man not only  found material satisfactions: he found himself. It  was this that made him, body, mind, character, and  disposition; and it was this largely that gave to the  world different kinds of men, different kinds of bodies,  minds, characters, and dispositions. The first moral  and intellectual diversifiers of men are to be sought for  in geography and geology—in the factors which deter-  mine the circumstances in which men severaliy con-  duct their Struggle for Life. If the land had been all  the same, the Struggle for Life had been all the same,  and if the Struggle for Life had been all the same, life  itself had been all the same. But to no two sets of  men is the world ever quite the same. The theatre  of struggle varies with every degree of latitude, with  every change of altitude, with every variation of soil. 
In most countries three separate regions are found—  a maritime region, an agricultural region, a pastoral  region. In the first, the belt along the shore, the  people are fishermen; in the second, the lowlands  and alluvial plains, the people are farmers; in the  third, the highlands and plateaux, they are shepherds. 
As men are nothing but expressions of their en-  vironments, as the kind of life depends on how men  get their living, each set of men becomes changed  in different ways. The fisherman’s life is a pre-  carious life; he becemes hardy, resolute, self-re-

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liant. The farmer’s life is a settled life; he becomes  tame, he loves home, he feeds on grains and fruits  which take the heat out of his blood and make him  domestic and quiet. The shepherd is a wanderer; he  is much alone; the monotonies of grass make him  dull and moody ; the mountains awe him: the protec-  tor of his flock, he is a man of war. So arise types of  men, types of industries; and by and bye, by exoga-  mous marriage, blends of these types, and further  blends of infinite variety. “It is so ordered by 
Nature, that by so striving to live they develop their  physical structure; they obtain faint glimmerings of  reason; they think and deliberate; they become Man. 
In the same way, the primeval men have no other  object than to keep the clan alive. It is so ordered by 
Nature that in striving to preserve the existence of  the clan, they not only acquire the arts of agriculture,  domestication, and navigation: they not only discover  fire, and its uses in cooking, in war, and in metal-  lurgy ; they not only detect the hidden properties of  plants, and apply them to save their own lives from  disease, and to destroy their enemies in battle; they  not only learn to manipulate Nature and to distribute  water by machinery; but they also, by means of the  life-long battle, are developed into moral beings.” ! 
Nature being “everything that is,’ and Man being in  every direction immersed in it and dependent on it,  can never escape its continuous discipline. Some en-  vironment there must always be; and some change  of environment, no matter how minute, there must  always be; and some change, no matter how imper-  ceptible, must be always wrought in him. 
1 Winwood Reade, Martyrdom of Man, p. 464.

Jf

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200 TURE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

We now see, perhaps, more clearly why Evolution  at the dawn of life entered into league with so strange  an ally as Want. The Evolution of Mankind was too  great a thing to entrust to any uncertain hand. The  advantage of attaching human progress to the Strug-  gle for Life is that you can always depend upon it. 
Hunger never fails. All other human appetites have  their periods of activity and stagnation ; passions wax  and wane; emotions are casual and capricious. But  the continuous discharge of the function of Nutrition  is interrupted only by the final interruption—Death. 
Death means, in fact, little more than an interference  with the function of Nutrition; it means that the 
Struggle for Life having broken down, there can be  no more life, no further evolution. Hence, it has been  ordained that Life and Struggle, Health and Struggle, 
Growth and Struggle, Progress and Struggle, shall be  linked together; that whatever the chances of mis-  direction, the apparent losses, the mysterious ac-  companiments of strife and pain, the Ascent of Man  should be bound up with living. When it is remem-  bered that, at a later day, Morality and Struggle, and  even Religion and Struggle, are bound so closely that  it is impossible to conceive of them apart, the tre-  mendous value of this principle and the necessity for  providing it with indestructible foundations, will be  perceived.

This association of the Struggle for Life with the  physiological function of Nutrition must be con-  tinually borne in mind. For the essential nature of  the principle has been greatly obscured by the very  name which Mr. Darwin gave to it. Probably no other  was possible ; but the effect has been that men have

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emphasized the almost ethical substantive “ Struggle”  and ignored the biological term “ Life.” A secondary  implication of the process has thus been elevated into  the prime one; and this, exaggerated by the imagi-  nation, has led to Nature being conceived of as a vast  murderous machine for the annihilation of the  majority and the survival of the few. But the Strug-  gle for Life, in the first instance, is simply living  itself; at the best, it is living under a healthily nor-  mal maximum of pressure; at the worst, under an  abnormal maximum. As we have seen, initially, it is  but another name for the discharge of the supreme  physiological function of Nutrition. If life is to go  on at all, this function must be discharged, and con-  tinuously discharged. The primary characteristic of  protoplasm, the physical basis of all life, is Hunger,  and this has dictated the first law of being—“ Thou  shalt eat.” What distinguishes scientifically the 
‘organic from the inorganic, the animal from the stone? 
That the animal eats, the stone does not. Almost all  achievement in the early history of the living world  has been due to Hunger. For millenniums nearly the  whole task of Evolution was to perfect the means of  satisfying it, and in so doing to perfect life itself. 
The lowest forms of life are little more than animated  stomachs, and in higher groups the nutritive system  is the first to be developed, the first to function, and  the last to cease its work. Almost wholly, indeed, in  the earlier vicissitude of the race, and largely in the  more ordered course of later times, Hunger rules the  life and work and destiny of men; and so profoundly  does this mysterious deity still dominate the round of  even the highest life that the noblest occupations

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which engage the human mind must be interrupted  two or three times a day to do it homage.

Whatever Man came ultimately to wish and to  achieve for himself, it was essential at first that such  arrangements should be made for him. The ma-  chinery for his development had not only to be put  into Nature, but he had to be placed in the machine  and held there, and brought back there as often as he  tried to evade it. To say that man evolved himself,  nevertheless, is as absurd as to say that a newspaper  prints itself. To say even that the machinery evolved  him is as preposterous as to say of a poem that the  printing-press made it. The ultimate problem is, Who  made the machine? and Who thought the poem that  was to be printed ?

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

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 2038

penetrate into their inner meaning. Men forget when  they denounce the Struggle for Life, that it is to be  judged not only on the ground of sentiment but of  reason, that not its local or surface effects only, but  its permanent influence on the order of the world,  must be taken into account.

Even on the lower ranges of Nature the unfavorable  implications of the Struggle for Life have probably  been exaggerated. While it is essential to an under-  standing of the course of evolution, to retain in the  imagination a vivid sense of the Struggle itself, we  must beware of over-coloring the representation, or  flooding it with accompaniments of emotion borrowed  from our own sensations. The word Struggle at all  in this connection is little more than a metaphor. 
When it is said that an animal struggles, all that is  really meant is that it lives. An animal, that is to  say, does not, in addition to all its other activities,  have to employ a vast number of special activities, to  the exercise of which the term Struggle is to be  applied. It is Life itself which is the Struggle: and  the whole Life, and the whole of the activities and  powers which make up life are involved in it. To  speak of Struggle in the sense of some special and  separate struggle, to conceive of battle, or even a  series of battles, is misleading, where all is struggle  and where all is battle. Especially must we beware  of reading into it our personal ideas with regard to  accompaniments of pain. The probabilities are that  the Struggle for Life in the lower creation is, to say  the least, less painful than it looks. Whether we  regard the dulness of the states of consciousness  among lower animals, or the fact that the condition

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of danger must become habitual, or that death when  it comes is sudden, and unaccompanied by that an-  ticipation which gives it its chief dread to Man, we  must assume that whatever the Struggle for Life  subjectively means to the lower animals, it can never  approach in terror what it means to us. And as to  putting any moral content into it, until a late stage  in the world’s development, that is not to be thought  of. Judged of even by later standards there is much  to relieve one’s first unfavorable impression. With  exceptions, the fight is a fair fight. As a rule there is  no hate in it, but only Hunger. It is seldom pro-  longed, and seldom wanton. As to the manner of  death, it is generally sudden. As to the fact of  death, all animals must die. As to the meaning of an  existence prematurely closed, it is better to be to be  eaten than not to be at-all...And, as to the last  result, it is better to be eaten out of the world  and, dying, help another to live, than pollute the  world by lingering decay. The most, after all, that  can be done with life is to give it to others. Till 
Nature taught her creatures of their own free will to  offer the sacrifice, is it strange that she took it by  force ?

There are those indeed who frown upon Science  for predicating a Struggle for Life in Nature at all,  lest the facts should impugn the beneficence of the  universe. But Science did not invent the Struggle  for Life. Itis there. What Science has really done  is to show not only its meaning but its great moral  purpose. There are others, again, like Mill, who, see-  ing the facts, but not seeing that moral purpose,  impugn natural theology for still believing in the

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beneficence of that purpose. Neither attitude, prob-  ably, is quite worthy of the names with which these  conclusions are associated. Much more reasonable are  the verdicts of the two men who are first responsible  for bringing the facts before the world, Mr. Alfred 
Russel Wallace and Mr. Darwin. “ When we reflect,”  says Mr. Darwin, “on this struggle, we may console  ourselves with the full belief that the war of nature  is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is  generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy,  and the happy survive and multiply.” And in much  stronger language Mr. Wallace: “On the whole, the  popular idea of the struggle for existence entailing  misery and pain on the animal world is the very  reverse of the truth. What it really brings about  is the maximum of life and of the enjoyment of life,  with the minimum of suffering and pain. Given the  necessity of death and reproduction, and without  these there could have been no progressive develop-  ment of the organic world—and it is difficult even to  imagine a system by which a greater balance of  happiness could have been secured.” !

We may safely leave Nature here to look after  her own ethic. That a price, a price in pain, and  assuredly sometimes a very terrible price, has been  paid for the evolution of the world, after all is said, is  certain. There may be difference of opinion as to the  amount of this price, but on one point there can be no-  dispute—that even at the highest estimate the thing  which was bought with it was none too dear. For  that thing was nothing less than the present progress  of the world. The Struggle for Life has been a vic-

' Darwinism, pp. 30-40.

206 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

torious struggle; it has succeeded in its stupendous  task; and tuere is nothing of order or beauty or per-  fection in living Nature that does not owe something  to its having been carried on. The first duty of those  who demur to the cost of progress is to make sure  that they comprehend in all its richness the infinity of  the gift this sacrifice has purchased for humanity. 
The end of the Struggle for Life is not battle; it is  not even victory, it is evolution. The result is not  wounds, it is health. Nature is a vast and com-  plicated system of devices to keep things changing,  adjusting, and, as it seems, progressing. The 
Struggle for Life is a species of necessitated aspira-  tion, the vis a tergo which keeps living things in  motion. It does not follow, of course, that that  motion should be upward; that is dependent on other  considerations. But the point to mark is that without  the struggle for food and the pressure of want, with-  out the conflict with foes and the challenge of climate,  the world would be left to stagnation. Change,  adventure, temptation, vicissitude even to the verge  of calamity, these are the life of the world.

There is another side to this principle from which  its higher significance becomes still more apparent. 
It follows from the Struggle for Life that those ani-  mals which struggle most successfully will prosper,  while the less successful will disappear—hence the  well-known principle of Natural Selection or the Sur-  vival of the Fittest. Waiving the discussion of this  law in general, and the varying meanings which “ fit-  ness” assumes as we rise in the scale of being, observe  the role it plays in Nature. The object of the Sur-  vival of the Fittest is to produce fitness. And it does

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 207

so both negatively and positively. In the first place  it produces fitness by killing off the unfit. Without  the rigorous weeding out of the imperfect the progress  of the world had not been possible. If fit and unfit in-  discriminately had been allowed to live and reproduce  their kind, every improvement which any individual  might acquire would be degraded to the common level  in the course of a few generations. Progress can only  start by one or two individuals shooting ahead of their  species ; and their life-gain can only be conserved by  their being shut off from their species—or by their  species being shut off from them. Unless shut off  from their species their acquisition will either be neu-  tralized in the course of time by the swamping effect  of inter-breeding with the common herd, or so diluted  as to involve no real advance. The only chance for 
Evolution, then, is either to carry off these improved  editions into “ physiological isolation,” or to remove  the unimproved editions by wholesale death. The  first of these alternatives is only occasionally possible ;  the second always. Hence the death of the unevolved,  or of the unadapted in reference to some new and  higher relation with environment, is essential to the  perpetuation of a useful variation. Although Natural 
Selection by no means invariably works in the direc-  tion of progress,—in parasites it has consummated al-  most utter degeneration,—no progress can take place  without it. It is only when one considers the work-  ing of the Struggle for Life on the large scale, and  realizes its necessity to the Evolution of the world as  a whole, that one can even begin to discuss its ethical  or teleological meanings. To make a fit world, the  unfit at every stage must be made to disappear; and

208 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

if any self-acting law can bring this about, though its  bearing upon this or that individual case may seem  unjust, its necessity for the world as a whole is vindi-  cated. If more of any given species are born into the  world than can possibly find food, and if a given num-  ber must die, that number must be singled out upon  some principle; and we cannot quarrel with the  principle in Physical Nature which condemns to death  the worst. By placing the death-penalty upon the  slightest short-coming, Natural Selection so discour-  ages imperfection as practically to eliminate it from  the world. The fact that any given animal is alive  at all is almost a token of its perfectness. Nothing  living can be wholly a failure. For the moment that  it fails, it ceases to live. Something more fit, were it  even by a hairbreadth, secures it place; so that all  existing lives must, with reference to their environ-  ment, be the best possible lives. Natural Selection is  the means employed in Nature to bring about perfect  health, perfect wholeness, perfect adaptation, and in  the long run the Ascent of all living things.

This being so, the Law of the Struggle for Life is  elevated to a unique place in Nature as a first neces-  sity of progress. It involves that every living thing  in nature shall live its best, that every resource shall  be called out to its utmost, that every individual  faculty shall be kept in the most perfect order and  work up to its fullest strength. So far from being a  drag on life, it is the one thing which not only makes  life go on at all, but which in the very act perfects it. 
The result may sometimes involve the dethroning of a  species, or its entire extinction: it may lead in the  case of others to degeneration; but in the end it must

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 209

result in the gradual perfecting of organisms upon the  whole, and the steady advance of the final type. In  fixing the eye on the murderous side of this Struggle,  it is therefore well to remember to what it leads. 
There could be no higher end in the universe than to  make a perfect world, and no more perfect law than  that which at the same moment eliminates the unfit  and establishes the fit. Too frequently the moralist’s  attention is diverted to the negative side, to what  seems the quite immoral spectacle of the massacre of  the innocent, the rout and murder of the unfit. But  in earlier Nature there is no such word as innocent;  and no ethical meaning at that stage can attach itself  to the term “unfit.” Fitness in the stormy days of  the world’s animal youth was necessarily fighting-  fitness; no higher end was present anywhere than  simply to gain for life a footing in the world, and per-  fect it up to the highest physical form. The creature  which did that fulfilled its destiny, and no higher  destiny was possible or conceivable. The Survival of  the Fittest, of course, does not mean the survival of  the strongest. It means the Survival of the Adapted 
—the survival of the most fitted to the circumstances  which surround it. A fish survives in water when a  leaking ironclad goes to the bottom, not because it is  stronger but because it is better adapted to the ele-  ment in which it lives. A Texas bull is stronger than  a mosquito, but in an autumn drought the bull dies,  the mosquito lives. Fitness to survive is simply fit-  tedness, and has nothing to do with strength or cour-  age, or intelligence or cunning as such, but only with  adjustments as fit or unfit to the world around. A  prize-fighter is stronger than a cripple; but in the 
14

210 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

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

When we pass from the animal and the savage  states to watch the working of the Struggle for Life  in later times, the impression deepens that after all,  the “gladiatorial theory” of existence has much to  say for itself. To trace its progress further is denied  us for the present, but observe before we close what  it connotes in modern life. Its lineal descendants are  two in number, and they have but to be named to  show the enormous place this factor has been given  to play in the world’s destiny. The first is War, the  second is Industry. These in all their forms and  ramifications are simply the primitive Struggle con-  tinued on the social and political plane. War is nota  casual thing like a thunderstorm, nor a specific thing  like a battle. It is that ancient Struggle for Life car-  ried over from the animal kingdom, which, in the later  as in the earlier world, has been so perfect an instru-

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ment of evolution. Along with Industry, and for a  time before it, War was the foster-mother of civiliza-  tion. The patron of the heroic virtues, the purifier of  societies, the solidifier of states, the military form of  this Struggle—despite the awful balance on the other  side—stands out on every page of history as the  maker and educator of the human race. Industry is  but the same Struggle in another disguise. The in-  dustrial conflict of to-day is the old attempt of primi-  tive Man to get the most out of Nature—to grow  foods, to find clothes, to raise fuel, to gain wealth. 
Owing to the ever-increasing number of the Strug-  glers the supplies fall short of the demands, with the  result of perpetuating on the industrial plane, and  often in hard and degrading forms, the primitive 
Struggle for Life. When society wonders at its  labor troubles it forgets that Industry is a stage but  one or two removes from the purely animal Struggle. 
And when morality impugns the Struggle for Life, it  forgets that nearly the whole later fabric of civiliza-  tion is its creation.

But one has only to look at these further phases  of the Struggle to observe the most important fact  of all—the change that passes over the principle as  time goes on. Examine it on the higher levels as  carefully as we have examined it on the lower, and  though the crueler elements persist with fatal and  appalling vigor, there are whole regions, and daily  enlarging regions, where every animal feature is dis-  credited, discouraged, or driven away. Already, with  the social tragedy still at its height around us, the  amelioration in many directions makes constant prog-  ress; and partly through the rise of opposing forces,

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and partly through the very civilization which it has  helped to create, the maligner power must disappear. 
The Struggle for Life, as life’s dynamic, can never  wholly cease. In the keenness of its energies, the  splendor of its stimulus, its bracing effect on char-  acter, its wholesome tensions throughout the whole  range of action, it must remain with us to the end. 
But in the virulence of its animal qualities it must  surely pass away. There are those who, without  reflecting on this qualitative change, would govern 
Society by the merely animal Struggle; those who  claim for this the sanction of Nature, and lay down  the principle of selfishness as the eternally working  law. The eternal law, as we shall presently see,  is unselfishness. But even the selfishness of early 
Nature loses its sting with time; the self that is in it  becomes a higher self; and the world in which it acts  is so much a better world that if self gave full rein to  the animal it would be instantly extinguished.

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

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 2138

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

But there is a higher hope than Science. Attacked  from below by Man’s intellect, the final blow will be  struck from a deeper source. It is impossible to con-  ceive that the Ascent of Man should always depend  upon his appetites, that in God’s world there should  be nothing better to attract him than food and rai-  ment, that he should take no single step towards a  higher life except when driven to it. As there comes

1 Prof. Remsen, M’Clure’s Magazine, Jan., 1894.

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a time in a child’s tife when coercion gives place to  free and conscious choice, the day comes to the world  when the aspirations of the spirit begin to compete  with, to neutralize, and to supplant the compulsions  of the body. Against that day in the heart of human-  ity, Nature had made full provision. For there, pre-  pared by a profounder chemistry than that which was  to relieve the strain on the physical side, had gathered  through the ages a force in whose presence the ener-  gies of the Animal Struggle are as naught. Beside  the Struggle for the Life of Others the Struggle for 
Life is but a passing phase. As old, as deeply sunk in 
Nature, this further force was destined from the first  to replace the Struggle for Life, and to build a nobler  superstructure on the foundations which it laid. To  establish these foundations was all that the Animal 
Struggle was ever designed to do. It has laid them  well; yet it is only when the Struggle for Life stands  projected against the larger influence with which all  through history—and in an infinitely profound sense  through moral history—it has been allied, that at once  its worth and its ignominy are seen.

CHAPTER, VII. 
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

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

With a Body alone, Man is an animal: the highest  animal, yet a pure animal; struggling for its own nar-  row life, living for its small and sordid ends. Add a 
Mind to that and the advance is infinite. The Strug-  gle for Life assumes the august form of a struggle for  light : he who was once a savage, pursuing the arts of  the chase, realizes Aristotle’s ideal man, “a hunter  after Truth.” . Yet this is not the end. Experience  tells us that Man’s true life is neither lived in the  material tracts of the body, nor in the higher altitudes  of the intellect, but in the warm world of the affec-  tions. ‘Till he is equipped with these Man is not hu-  man. He reaches his full height only when Love be-  comes to him the breath of life, the energy of will, the  summit of desire. There at last lies all happiness,

and goodness, and truth and divinity: 
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‘For the loving worm within its clod 
Were diviner than a loveless God.”’

That Love did not come down to us through the 
Struggle for Life, the only great factor in Evolution  which up to this time has been dwelt upon, is self-evi-  dent. It has a lineage all its own. Yet inexplicable  though the circumstance be, the history of this force,  the most stupendous the world has ever known, has  scarcely even begun to be investigated. Every other  principle in Nature has had a thousand prophets ; but  this supreme dynamic has run its course through the  ages unobserved; its rise, so far as science is con-  cerned, is unknown; its story has never been told. 
But if any phenomenon or principle in Nature is capa-  ble of treatment under the category of Evolution, this  is. Love is not a late arrival, an after-thought, with 
Creation. It is not a novelty of a romantic civiliza-  tion. It is not a pious word of religion. Its roots be-  gan to grow with the first cell of life which budded on  this earth. How great it is, the history of humanity  bears witness: but how old it is and how solid, how  bound up with the very constitution of the world,  how from the first of time an eternal part of it, we are  only now beginning to perceive. For the Evolution of 
Love is a piece of pure Science. Love did not descend  out of the clouds like rain or snow. It was distilled  on earth. And few of the romances which in after  years were to cluster round this immortal word are  more wonderful than the story of its birth and  growth. Partly a product of crushed lives and exter-  minated species, and partly of the choicest blossoms  and sweetest essences that ever came from the tree of  life, it reached its spiritual perfection after a history

. THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 217

the most strange and checkered that the pages of 
Nature have to record. What Love was at first, how  crude and sour and embryonic a thing, it is impossible  to conceive. But from age to age, with immeasurable  faith and patience, by cultivations continuously re-  peated, by transplantings endlessly varied, the un-  recognizable germ of this new fruit was husbanded to  its maturity, and became the tree on which humanity,  society, and civilization were ultimately borne.

As the story of Evolution is usually told, Love—the  evolved form, as we shall see, of the Struggle for the 
Life of Others—has not even a place. Almost the  whole emphasis of science has fallen upon the oppo-  site—the animal Struggle for Life. Munger was early  seen by the naturalists to be the first and most impe-  rious appetite of all living things, and the course of 
Nature came to be erroneously interpreted in terms of  a never-ending strife. Since there are vastly more  creatures born than can ever survive, since for every  morsel of food provided a hundred claimants appear,  life to an animal was described to us as one long  tragedy ; and Poetry, borrowing the imperfect creed,  pictured Nature only as a blood-red fang. Before we  can go on to trace the higher progress of Love itself, it  is necessary to correct this misconception. And no  words can be thrown away if they serve, in whatever  imperfect measure, to restore to honor what is in  reality the supreme factor in the Evolution of the  world. To interpret the whole course of Nature by  the Struggle for Life is as absurd as if one were to  define the character of St. Francis by the tempers of  his childhood. Worlds grow up as well as infants ;  their tempers change, the better nature opens out,

2918 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

new objects of desire appear, higher activities are  added to the lower. The first chapter or two of the  story of Evolution may be headed the Struggle for 
Life; but take the book as a whole and it is not a tale  of battle. It is a Love-story.

The circumstances, as has been already pointed out  in the Introduction, under which the world at large  received its main impression of Evolution, obscured  these later and happier features. The modern revival  of the Evolution theory occurred almost solely in  connection with investigations in the lower planes of 
Nature, and was due to the stimulus of the pure  naturalists, notably of Mr. Darwin. But what Mr. 
Darwin primarily undertook to explain was simply  the Origin of Species. His work was a study in in-  fancies, in rudiments; he emphasized the earliest  forces and the humblest phases of the world’s develop-  ment. The Struggle for Life was there the most con-  spicuous fact—at least, on the surface; it formed the  key-note of his teaching; and the tragic side of Nature  fixed itself in the popular mind. The mistake the  world made was twofold: it mistook Darwinism for 
Evolution—a specific theory of Evolution applicable  to a single department, for a universal scheme; and  it misunderstood Mr. Darwin himself. That the  foundations of Darwinism—or what was taken for 
Darwinism-—were the foundations of all Nature was  assumed. Dazzled with the apparent solidity of this  foundation, men made haste to run up a structure  which included the whole vast range of life—vegetal,  animal, social—based on a law which explained but  half the facts, and was only relevant, in the crude  form in which it was universally stated, for the child-

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 219

hood of the world. It was impossible for such an  edifice to stand. Natural history cannot in any case  cover the whole facts of human history, and, so inter-  preted, can only fatally distort them. The mistake  had been largely qualified had Mr. Darwin’s followers  even accepted his foundation in its first integrity;  but, perhaps because the author of the theory himself  but dimly apprehended the complement of his thesis,  few seem to have perceived that anything was amiss. 
Mr. Darwin’s sagacity led him distinctly to foresee that  narrow interpretations of his great phrase “Struggle  for Existence” were certain to be made; and in the  opening chapters of the Origin of Species, he warns  us that the term must be applied in its “large and  metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being  on another, and including (which is more important)  not only the life of the individual, but success in leay-  ing progeny.”? Inspite of this warning, his over-  mastering emphasis on the individual Struggle for 
Existence seems to have obscured, if not to his own  mind, certainly to almost all his followers, the truth  that any other great factor in Evolution existed.

The truth is there are #vo Struggles for Life in  every living thing—the Struggle for Life, and the 
Struggle for the Life of Others. The web of life is  woven upon a double set of threads, the second thread  distinct in color from the first, and giving a totally  different pattern to the finished fabric. As the whole  aspect of the after-world depends on this distinction  of strands in the warp, it is necessary to grasp the  distinction with the utmost clearness. Already, in  the introductory chapter, the nature of the distinction

1 Origin of Species, 6th edition, p. 50.

990 THE STRUGGLE FOL THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

has been briefly explained. But it is necessary to be  explicit here, even to redundancy. We have arrived  at a point from which the Ascent of Man takes a fresh  departure, a point from which the course of Evolution  begins to wear an entirely altered aspect. No such  consummation ever before occurred in the progress of  the world as the rise to potency in human life of the 
Struggle for the Life of Others. The Struggle for the 
Life of Others is the physiological name for the  greatest word of ethics—Other-ism, Altruism, Love. 
From Self-ism to Other-ism is the supreme transition  of history. It is therefore impossible to lodge in the  mind with too much solidity the simple biological fact  on which the Altruistic Struggle rests. Were this a  late phase of Evolution, or a factor applicable to single  genera, 1t would still be of supreme importance ; but  it is radical, universal, involved in the very nature of  life itself. As matter is to be interpreted by Science  in terms of its properties, life is to be interpreted in  terms of its functions. And when we dissect down to  that form of matter with which all life is associated,  we find it already discharging in the humblest organ-  isms visible by the microscope the function on which  the stupendous superstructure of Altruism indirectly  comes to rest. Take the tiniest protoplasmic cell,  immerse it in a suitable medium, and presently it will  perform two great acts—the two which sum up life,  which constitute the eternal distinction between the  living and the dead—Nutrition and Reproduction. 
At one moment, in pursuance of the Struggle for Life,  it will call in matter from without, and assimilate it  to itself; at another moment, in pursuance of the 
Struggle for the Life of Others, it will set a portion of

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that matter apart, add to it, and finally give it away  to form another life. Even at its dawn life is receiver  and giver; even in protoplasm is Self-ism and Other-  ism. These two tendencies are not fortuitous. They  have been lived into existence. They are not grafts  on the tree of life, they are its nature, its essential  life. They are not painted on the canvas, but woven  through it.

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

In itself, this second struggle, this effort to main-

992 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

tain the life of the species, is not less real than the  first; the provisions for effecting it are not less won-  derful; the whole is not less a part of the system of  things. And, taken prophetically, the function of 
Reproduction is as much greater than the function of 
Nutrition as the Man is greater than the Animal, as  the Soul is higher than the Body, as Co-operation is  stronger than Competition, as Love is stronger than 
Hate. If it were ever to be charged against Nature  that she was wholly selfish, here is the refutation  at the very start. One of the two fundamental activ-  ities of all life, whether plant or animal, is Other-re-  garding. It is not said that the function of Repro-  duction, say in a fern or in an oak, is an unselfish act,  yet in a sense, even though begotten of self, it is an  other-regarding act. In the physical world, to speak  of the Struggle for Food as selfish, or to call the Strug-  gle for Species unselfish, are alike incongruous. But  if the morality of Nature is impugned on the ground  of the universal Struggle for Life, it is at least as rel-  evant to refute the charge by putting moral content  into the universal Struggle for Species. No true  moral content can be put into either, yet the one  marks the beginning of Egoism, the other of Altruism. 
Almost the whole self-seeking side of things has come  down the line of the individual Struggle for Life; al-  most the whole unselfish side of things is rooted in the 
Struggle to preserve the life of others.

That an Other-regarding principle should sooner or  later appear on the world’s stage was a necessity if  the world was ever to become a moral world. And as  everything in the moral world has what may be called  a physical basis to begin with, it is not surprising to

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 223

find in the mere physiological process of Reproduction  a physical forecast of the higher relations, or, more  accurately, to find the higher relations manifesting  themselves at first through physical relations. The 
Struggle for the Life of Others formed an indispen-  sable stepping-stone to the development of the Other-  regarding virtues. Nature always works with long  roots. To conduct Other-ism upward into the higher  sphere without miscarriage, and to establish-it there  forever, Nature had to embed it in the most ancient  past, so organizing and endowing protoplasm that life  could not go on without it, and compelling its contin-  uous activity by the sternest physiological necessity. 
To say that there is a certain protest of the mind  against associating the highest ethical ends with forces  in their first stage almost physical, is to confess a  truth which all must feel. Even Haeckel, in contrast-  ing the tiny rootlet of sex-attraction between two  microscopic cells with the mighty after-efflorescence ot  love in the history of mankind, is staggered at the  audacity of the thought, and pauses in the heart of  a profound scientific investigation to reflect upon it. 
After a panegyric in which he says, “ We glorify love  as the source of the most splendid creations of art; of  the noblest productions of poetry, of plastic art, and of  music; we reverence in it the most powerful factor in  human civilization, the basis of family life, and, conse-  quently, of the development of the state;” ... he  adds, “So wonderful is love, and so immeasurably  important is its influence on mental life, that in this  point, more than in any other, ‘supernatural’ causa-  tion seems to mock every natural explanation.” It is  the mystery of Nature, that between the loftiest

994 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

spiritual heights, and the lowliest physical depths,  there should seem to run a pathway which the intel-  lect of Man may climb. Haeckel has spoken, and  rightly, from the stand-point of humanity ; yet he con-  tinues, and with equal right, from the stand-point of  the naturalist. “ Notwithstanding all this, the com-  parative history of evolution leads us back very clearly  and indubitably to the oldest and simplest source of  love, to the elective affinity of two differing cells.” 3

SELF-SACRIFICE IN NATURE.

It is not, however, in Haeckel’s “elective affinity  of differing cells” that we must seek the physical  basis of Altruism. That may be the physical basis  of a passion which is frequently miscalled Love; but 
Love itself, in its true sense as Self-sacrifice, Love  with all its beautiful elements of sympathy, tender-  ness, pity, and compassion, has come down a wholly  different line. It is well to be clear about this at  once, for the function of Reproduction suggests to the  biological mind a view of this factor which would  limit its action to a sphere which in reality forms  but the merest segment of the whole. The Struggle  for the Life of Others has certainly connected with it  sex-relations, as we shall see; but we can only use  it scientifically in its broad physiological sense, as  literally a Struggling for Others, a giving up self for 
Others. And these others are not Other-sexes. They  have nothing to do with sex. They are the fruits of 
Reproduction—the egg, the seed, the nestling, the  little child. So far from its chief manifestation being

1 Haeckel, Evolution of Man, Vol. 11., p. 894.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 225

within the sphere of sex it is in the care and nurt-  ure of the young, in the provision everywhere  throughout Nature for the seed and egg, in the  endless and infinite self-sacrifices of Maternity. that 
Altruism finds its main expression.

That this is the true reading of the work of this  second factor appears even in the opening act of 
Reproduction in the lowest plant or animal. Pledged  by the first law of its being—the law of self-pres-  ervation—to sustain itself, the organism is at the  same moment pledged by the second law to give up  itself. Watch one of the humblest unicellular  organisms at the time of Reproduction. The cell,  when it grows to be a certain size, divides itself into  two, and each part sets up an independent life. Why  it does so is now known. The protoplasm inside the  cell—the body as it were—needs continually to draw  iaeeiresh= tood, — Thismis “secured by a “process Gr  imbibition or osmosis through the surrounding wall. 
But as the cell grows large, there is not wall enough  to pass in all the food the far interior needs, for while  the bulk increases as the cube of the diameter, the  surface increases only as the square. The bulk of the  eell, in short, has outrun the absorbing surface; its  hunger has outgrown its satisfactions ; and unless the  cell can devise some way of gaining more surface it  must starve. Hence the splitting into two smaller  cells. There is now more absorbing surface than the  two had when combined. When the two smaller cells  have grown as large as the original parent, income  and expenditure will once more balance. As growth  continues, the waste begins to exceed the power of  repair and the life of the cell is again threatened.

15

996 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS,

The alternatives are obvious. It must divide, or die. 
If it divides, what has saved its life! Self-sacrifice. 
By giving up its life as an individual, it has brought  forth two individuals and these will one day repeat  the surrender. Here, with differences appropriate to  their distinctive spheres, is the first great act of the  moral life. All life, in the beginning, is selif-con-  tained, self-centred, imprisoned in a single cell. The  first step to a more abundant life is to get rid of this  limitation. And the first act of the prisoner is simply  to break the walls of its cell. The plant does this by  a mechanical or physiological process; the moral  being by a conscious act which means at once the  breaking-up of Self-ism and the recovery of a larger  self in Altruism. Biologically, Reproduction begins  as rupture. It is the release of the cell, full-fed, yet  unsatiated, from itself. “ Except a corn of wheat fall  into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it  die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

These facts are not colored to suit a purpose. 
There is no other language in which science itself can  state them. “Reproduction begins as rupture. Large  cells beginning to die, save their lives by sacrifice. 
Reproduction is literally a life-saving against the  approach of death. Whether it be the almost random  rupture of one of the more primitive forms such as 
Schizogenes, or the overflow and separation of multiple  buds as in Arcella, or the dissolution of a few of the 
Infusorians, an organism, which is becoming ex-  hausted, saves itself and multiplies in reproducing.” } 
There is no Reproduction in plant, animal, or Man  which does not involve self-sacrifice. All that is

1 The Evolution of Sea, page 232.

as

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 227

moral, and social, and other-regarding has come along  the line of this function. Sacrifice, moreover, as these  physiological facts disclose, is not an accident, nor  an accompaniment of Reproduction, but an inevitable  part of it. It is the universal law and the universal  condition of life. The act of fertilization is the  anabolic restoration, renewal, and rejuvenescence of  a katabolic cell: it is a resurrection of the dead  brought about by a sacrifice of the living, a dying of  part of life in order to further life.

Pass from the unicellular plant to one of the higher  phanerogams, and the self-sacrificing function is seen  at work with still greater definiteness, for there we  have a clearer contrast with the other function. To  the physiologist a tree is not simply a tree, but a com-  plicated piece of apparatus for discharging, in the first  place, the function of Nutrition. Root, trunk, branch,  twig, leaf, are so many organs—mouths, lungs, cir-  culatory-system, alimentary canal—for carrying on to  the utmost perfection the Struggle for Life. But this  is not all. There is another piece of apparatus within  this apparatus of a wholly different order. It has  nothing to do with Nutrition. It has nothing to do  with the. Struggle for Life. It.is the flower. The  more its parts are studied, in spite of all homol-  ogies, it becomes more clear that this is a construc.  tion of a unique and wonderful character. So im-  portant has this extra apparatus seemed to science,  that it has named the great division of the vegetable  kingdom to which this and all higher plants belong,  the Phanerogams—the flowering plants; and _ it  recognizes the complexity and physiological value of  this reproductive specialty by giving them the place

998 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

of honor at the top of the vegetable creation. Watch  this flower at work for a little, and behold a miracle. 
Instead of struggling for life it lays down its life. 
After clothing itself with a beauty which is itself the  minister of unselfishness, it droops, it wastes, it lays  down its life. The tree still lives; the other leaves  are fresh and green; but this life within a life is  dead. And why? Because within this death is life. 
Search among the withered petals, and there, in a  cradle of cunning workmanship, are a hidden pro-  zeny of clustering seeds—the gift to the future which  this dying mother has brought into the world at the  cost of leaving it. The food she might have lived  upon is given to her children, stored round each tiny  embryo with lavish care, so that when they waken  into the world the first helplessness of their hunger  is met. All the arrangements in plant-life which  concern the flower, the fruit, and the seed are the  creations of the Struggle for the Life of Others.

No one, though science is supposed to rob all the  poetry from Nature, reverences a flower like the  biologist. He sees in its bloom the blush of the young  mother ; in its fading, the eternal sacrifice of Mater-  nity. A yellow primrose is not to him a yellow prim-  rose. It is an exquisite and complex structure added  on to the primrose plant for the purpose of producing  other primrose plants. At the base of the flower,  packed in a delicate casket, lie a number of small  white objects no larger than butterflies’ eggs. These  are the eggs of the primrose. Into this casket, by a  secret opening, filmy tubes from the pollen grains—  now enticed from their hiding-place on the stamens  and clustered on the stigma—enter and pour their

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 229

fertilizing fovilla through a microscopic gateway which Y  opens in the wall of the egg and leads to its inmost  heart. Mysterious changes then proceed. The em-  bryo of a future primrose is born. Covered with  many protective coats, it becomes a seed. The orig-  inal casket swells, hardens, is transformed into a  rounded capsule opening by valves or a deftly con-  structed hinge. One day this capsule, crowded with  seeds, breaks open and completes the cycle of Repro-  duction by dispersing them over the ground. There,  by and bye, they will burst their enveloping coats,  protrude their tiny radicles, and repeat the cycle of  their parents’ sacrificial life.

With endless variations in detail, these are the  closing acts in the Struggle for the Life of Others in  the vegetable world. We have illustrated the point  from plants, because this is the lowest region where  biological processes can be seen in action, and it is  essential to establish beyond dispute the fundamental  nature of the reproductive function. From this level  onwards it might be possible to trace its influence,  and growing influence, throughout the whole range of  the animal kingdom until it culminates in its most  consummate expression—a human mother. Some of  the links in this unbroken ascent will be filled in at  a later stage—for the Evolution of Maternity is so  wonderful and so intricate as to deserve a treatment  of its own—but meantime we must pass on to notice  a few of the other gifts which Reproduction has be-  stowed upon the world. In a rigid sense, it is im-  possible to separate the gains to humanity from the 
Reproductive function as distinguished from those  of the Nutritive. They are co-operators, not compet:

930 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

itors, and their apparently rival paths continuously  intertwine. But mark a few of the things that have  mainly grown up around this second function and  decide whether or not it be a worthy ally of the 
Struggle for Life in the Evolution of Man.

To begin at the most remote circumference, con-  sider what the world owes to-day to the Struggle for  the Life of Others in the world of plants. This is the  humblest sphere in which it can offer any gifts at all,  yet these are already of such a magnitude that with-  out them the higher world would not only be inex-  pressibly the poorer, but could not continue to exist. 
As we have just seen, all the arrangements in plant  life which concern the flower are the creations of the 
Struggle for the Life of Others. For Reproduction  alone the flower is created ; when the process is over  it returns to the dust. This miracle of beauty is a  miracle of Love. Its splendor of color, its variega-  tions, its form, its symmetry, its perfume, its honey,  its very texture, are all notes of Love—Love-calls or 
Love-lures or Love-provisions for the insect world,  whose aid is needed to carry the pollen from anther  to stigma, and perfect the development of its young. 
Yet this is but a thing thrown in, in giving something  else. The Flower, botanically, is the herald of the 
Fruit. The Fruit, botanically, is the cradle of the 
Seed. Consider how great these further achievements  are, how large a place in the world’s history is filled  by these two humble things—the Fruits and Seeds of  plants. Without them the Struggle for Life itself  would almost cease. The animal Struggle for Life is  a struggle for what? For Fruits and Seeds. All an-  imals in the long run depend for food upon Fruits

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 23}

and Seeds, or upon lesser creatures which have util.  ized Fruits and Seeds. Three-fourths of the popu.  lation of the world at the present moment subsist  upon rice. What is rice? It is a seed; a product of 
Reproduction. Of the other fourth, three-fourths  live upon grains—barley, wheat, oats, millet. What  are these grains? Seeds—stores of starch or albumen  which, in the perfect forethought of Reproduction,  plants bequeath to their offspring. The foods of the  world, especially the children’s foods, are the foods  of the children of plants, the foods which unselfish  activities store round the cradles of the helpless, so  that when the sun wakens them to their new world  they may not want. Every plant in the world lives  for Others. It sets aside something, something costly,  eared for, the highest expression of its nature. The 
Seed is the tithe of Love, the tithe which Nature  renders to Man. When Man lives upon Seeds he  lives upon Love. Literally, scientifically, Love is Life. 
If the Struggle for Life has made Man, braced and  disciplined him, it is the Struggle for Love that sus- |  tains him. a

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

932 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

fundamental. To interpret the course of Evolution  without this would be to leave the richest side even  of material Nature without an explanation. Retrace  the ground even thus hastily travelled over, and see  how full Creation is of meaning, of anticipation, of  good for Man, how far back begins the undertone of 
Love. Remember that nearly all the beauty of the  world is Love-beauty—the corolla of the flower and  the plume of the grass, the lamp of the fire-fly, the  plumage of the bird, the horn of the stag, the face of  a woman; that nearly all the music of the natural  world is Love-music—the song of the nightingale, the  call of the mammal, the chorus of the insect, the  serenade of the lover; that nearly all the foods of the  world are Love-foods—the date and the raisin, the  banana and the bread-fruit, the locust and the honey,  the eggs, the grains, the seeds, the cereals, and the  legumes ; that all the drinks of the world are Love-  drinks—the juices of the sprouting grain and the  withered hop, the milk from the udder of the cow,  the wine from the Love-cup of the vine. Remember  that the Family, the crown of all higher life, is the  creation of Love; that Co-operation, which means  power, which means wealth, which means leisure,  which therefore means art and culture, recreation and  education, is the gift of Love. Remember not only  these things, but the diffusions of feeling which ac-  company them, the elevations, the ideals, the happi-  ness, the goodness, and the faith in more goodness,  and ask if it is not a world of Love in which we live.

> ah CO-OPERATION IN NATURE.

Though Co-operation is not exclusively the gift of

\

\

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

For illustrations of the principle in general we may  begin with the very dawn of life. Every life at first  was a single cell. Co-operation was unknown. Each  cell was self-contained and self-sufficient, and as new  cells budded from the parent they moved away and  set up life for themselves. This _ self-sufficiency  leads to nothing in Evolution. Unicellular organ-  isms may be multiplied to infinity, but the vegetable  kingdom can never rise in height, or symmetry, or  productiveness without some radical change. But  soon we find the co-operative principle beginning its  mysterious integrating work. Two, three, four, eight,  ten cells club together and form a small mat, or  eylinder, or ribbon—the humblest forms of corporate  plant-life—in which each individual cell divides the  responsibilities and the gains of living with the rest. 
The colony succeeds; grows larger; its co-operations  become more close and varied. Division of labor in  new directions arises for the common good; leaves  are organized for nutrition, and special cells for re-  production. All the organs increase in specialization ;

934 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

and the time arrives when from cryptogams the plant-  world bursts into flowers. A flower is organized for 
Co-operation. It is not an individual entity, but a  commune, a most complex social system. Sepal,  petal, stamen, anther, each has its separate réle in the  economy, each necessary to the other and to the life of  the species as a whole. Mutual aid having reached  this stage can never be arrested short of the extinction  of plant-life itself.

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

The vegetable world is a world of still life. No  higher plant has the power to move to help its neigh-  bor, or even to help itself, at the most critical

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moment of its life. And itis through this very help-  lessness that these new Co-operations are called forth. 
The fertilizing pollen grows on one part of the flower,  the stigma which is to receive it grows on another, or it  may be on a different plant. But as these parts can-  not move towards one another, the flower calls in the  aid of moving things. Unconscious of their vicarious  service, the butterfly and the bee, as they flit from  flower to flower, or the wind as it blows across the  fields, carry the fertilizing dust to the waiting stigma,  and complete that act without which in a generation  the species would become extinct. No flower in the  world, at least no entomophilous flower, can contin-  uously develop healthy offspring without the Co-oper-  ations of an insect; and multitudes of flowers without  such aid could never seed atall. Itis to these Co-  operations that we owe all that is beautiful and  fragrant in the flower-world. To attract the insect  and recompense it for its trouble, a banquet of honey  is spread in the heart of the flower; and to enable the  visitor to find the nectar, the leaves of the flower are  made showy or conspicuous beyond all other leaves. 
To meet the case of insects which love the dusk, many  flowers are colored white; for those which move  about at night and cannot see at all, the night-flowers  load the darkness with their sweet perfume. The  loveliness, the variegations of shade and tint, the  ornamentations, the scents, the shapes, the sizes of  flowers, are all the gifts of Co-operation. The flower  in every detail, in fact, is a monument to the Co-oper-  ative Principle.

Scarcely less singular are the Co-operations among  flowers themselves the better to attract the attention

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of the insect world. Many flowers are so small and  inconspicuous that insects might not condescend to  notice them. But Altruism is always inventive. In-  stead of dispersing their tiny florets over the plant,  these club together at single points, so that by the  multitude of numbers an imposing show is made. 
Each of the associating flowers in these cases pre-  serves its individuality, and—as we see in the Elder or  the Hemlock—continues to grow on its own flower  stalk. But in still more ingenious species the part-  ners to a floral advertisement sacrifice their separate  stems and cluster close together on a common head. 
The Thistle, for example, is not one flower, but a  colony of flowers, each complete in all its parts, but  all gaining the advantage of conspicuousness by dense-  ly packing themselves together. In the Sun-flowers  and many others the sacrifice is carried still further. 
Of the multitude of florets clustered together to form  the mass of color, a few cease the development of the  reproductive organs altogether, and allow their whole  strength to go towards adding visibility to the mass. 
The florets in the centre of the group, packed close  together, are unable to do anything in this direction ;  but those on the margin expand the perianth into a  blazing circle of flame, and leave the deep work of  teproduction to those within. What are the advan-  tages gained by all this mutual aid? That it makes  them the fittest to survive. These Co-operative 
Plants are among the most numerous, most vigorous,  and most widely diffused in Nature.  Self-sacrifice  and Co-operation are thus recognized as sound in  principle. The blessing of Nature falls upon them. 
The words themselves, in any more than a merely

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physical sense, are hopelessly out of court in any  scientific interpretation of things. But the point to  mark is that on the mechanical equivalent of what  afterwards come to have ethical relations Natural Se-  lection places a premium. Non-co-operative or feebly  co-operative organisms go to the wall. Those which  give mutual aid survive and people the world with  their kind. Without pausing to note the intricate 
Co-operations of flowers which reward the eye of  the specialist—the subtle alliance with Space in 
Dicecious flowers ; with Time in Dichogamous species,  and with Size in the Dimorphie and Trimorphic forms 
—consider for a moment the extension of the principle  to the Seed and Fruit. Helpless, singlehanded, as is a  higher plant, with regard to the efficient fertilizing of  its flowers, an almost more difficult problem awaits it  when it comes to the dispersal of its seeds. If each  seed fell where it grew, the spread of the species  would shortly be at an end. But Nature, working on  the principle of Co-operation, is once more redundant  in its provisions. By a series of new alliances the  offspring are given a start on distant and unoccupied  ground; and so perfect are the arrangements in this  department of the Struggle for the Life of Others that  single plants, immovably rooted in the soil, are yet  able to distribute their children over the world. By a  hundred devices the fruits and seeds when ripe are  entrusted to outside hands—provided with wing or  parachute and launched upon the wind, attached by  cunning contrivances to bird and beast, or dropped  into stream and wave and ocean-current, and so trans-  ported over the earth.

If we turn to the Animal Kingdom, the Principle of

938 TUE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

Co-operation everywhere once more confronts us. It  is singular that, with few exceptions, science should  still know so little of the daily life of even the com-  mon animals. A few favorite mammals, some birds,  three or four of the more picturesque and clever of the  insects—these almost exhaust the list of those whose  ways are thoroughly known. But, looking broadly at 
Nature, one general fact is striking—the more social  animals are in overwhelming preponderance over the  unsocial. Mr. Darwin’s dictum, that “those commu-  nities which included the greatest number of the most  sympathetic members would flourish best,” is wholly  proved. Run over the names of the commoner or  more dominant mammals, and it will be found that  they are those which have at least a measure of socia-  bility. The cat-tribe excepted, nearly all live together  in herds or troops—the elephant, for instance, the  buffalo, deer, antelope, wild-goat, sheep, wolf, jackal,  reindeer, hippopotamus, zebra, hyena, and _ seal. 
These are mammals, observe—an association of socia-  bility in its highest developments with reproductive  specialization. Cases undoubtedly. exist where the  sociability may not be referable primarily to this func-  tion ; but in most the chief Co-operations are centred  in Love. So advantageous are all forms of mutual  service that the question may be fairly asked whether  after all Co-operation and Sympathy—at first instinc-  tive, afterwards reasoned—are not the greatest facts  even in organic Nature? To quote the words of 
Prince Kropotkin: “ As soon as we study animals—  not in laboratories and museums only, but in the for-  est and the prairie, in the steppes and the mountains 
—we at once perceive that though there is an im-

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 239

mense amount of warfare and extermination going on  amidst various species, and especially amidst various  classes of animals, there is, at the same time, as much,  or perhaps more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and  mutual defence, amidst animals belonging to the same  species or, at least, to the same society. Sociability is  as much a law of Nature as mutual struggle. . . . 
If we resort to an indirect test and ask Nature ‘ Who  are the fittest: those who are continually at war with  each other, or those who support one another ?’ we at  once see that those animals which acquire habits of  mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have  more chances to survive, and they attain, in their re-  spective classes, the highest development of intelli-  gence and bodily organization. If the numberless  facts which can be brought forward to support this  view are taken into account, we may safely say that  mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual  struggle ; but that, as a factor of evolution, it most  probably has a far greater importance, inasmuch as it  favors the development of such habits and character  as insure the maintenance and further development of  the species, together with the greatest amount of wel-  fare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the  least waste of energy.” }

In the large economy of Nature, almost more than  within these specific regions, the inter-dependence of  part with part is unalterably established. The sys-  tem of things, from top to bottom, is an uninterrupted  series of reciprocities. Kingdom corresponds with  kingdom, organic with inorganic. Thus, to carry on  the larger agriculture of Nature, myriads of living

4 Nineteenth Century, 1890, p. 340.

940 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

creatures have to be retained in the earth itseli—in  the earth—and to prepare and renew the soils in  which the otherwise exhausted ground may keep up  her continuous gifts of vegetation. Ages before Man  appeared with his tools of husbandry, these agricultur-  ists of Nature—in humid countries the Worm, in sub-  tropical regions the White Ant—ploughed and har-  yowed the earth, so that without the Co-operations of  these most lowly forms of life, the higher beauty and  fruitfulness of the world had been impossible. The  very existence of animal life, to take another case of  broad economy, is possible only through the media-  tion of the plant. No animal has the power to satisfy  one single impulse of hunger without the Co-operation  of the vegetable world. itis one of the mysteries of  organic chemistry that the Chlorophyll contained in  the green parts of plants, alone among substances, has  the power to break up the mineral kingdom and  utilize the products as food. Though detected re-  cently in the tissues of two of the very lowest ani-  mals, Chlorophyll is the peculiar possession of the  vegetable kingdom, and forms the solitary point of  contact between Man and all higher animals and their  supply of food. - Every grain of matter therefore eaten  by Man, every movement of the body, every stroke of  work done by muscle or brain, depends upon the con-  tribution of a plant, or of an animal which has eaten  a plant. Remove the vegetable kingdom, or interrupt  the flow of its unconscious benefactions, and the whole  higher life of the world ends. Everything, indeed,  came into being because of something else, and con-  tinues to be because of its relations to something else. 
The matter of the earth is built up of co-operating

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 241

atoms ; it owes its existence, its motion, and its stabil-  ity to co-operating stars. Plants and animals are  made of co-operating cells, nations of co-operating  men. Nature makes no move, Society achieves no  end, the Cosmos advances not one step, that is not de-  pendent on Co-operation ; and while the discords of  the world disappear with growing knowledge, Science  only reveals with increasing clearness the universality  of its reciprocities.

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

16

949 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

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

More than two thousand years ago Herodotus ob-  served a remarkable custom in Egypt. At a certain  season of the year, the Egyptians went into the desert,  cut off branches from the wild palms, and, bringing  them back to their gardens, waved them over the  flowers of the date-palm. Why they performed this  ceremony they did not know; but they knew that if  they neglected ~it, the date crop would be poor or  wholly lost. Herodotus offers the quaint explanation  that along with these branches there came from the  desert certain flies possessed of a “ vivific virtue,”  which somehow lent an exuberant fertility to the  dates. But the true rationale of the incantation is  now explained. Palm-trees, like human beings, are  male and female. The garden plants, the date-  bearers, were females ; the desert plants were males ;  and the waving of the branches over the females

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 243

meant the transference of the fertilizing pollen dust  from the one to the other.

Now consider, in this far-away province of the  vegetable kingdom, the strangeness of this phenom-  enon. Here are two trees living wholly different  lives, they are separated by miles of desert sand ;  they are unconscious of one another’s existence ; and  yet they are so linked together that their separation  into two is a mere illusion. Physiologically they are  one tree; they cannot dwell apart. It is nothing to  the point that they are neither dowered with locomo  tion nor the power of conscious choice. The point  is that there is that in Nature which unites these  seemingly disunited things, which effects combina-  tions and co-operations where one would least believe  them possible, which sustains by arrangements of the  most elaborate kind inter-relations between tree and  tree. By a device the most subtle of all that guard  the higher Evolution of the world—the device of Sex 
—Nature accomplishes this task of throwing irre-  sistible bonds around widely separate things, and  establishing such sympathies between them _ that  they must act together or forfeit the very life of  their kind. Sex is a paradox; it is that which sepa-  rates in order to unite. The same mysterious mesh  which Nature threw over the two separate palms, she  threw over the few and scattered units which were to  form the nucleus of Mankind.

Picture the state of primitive Man; his fear of  other primitive Men; his hatred of them; his un-  sociability ; his isolation; and think how great a  thing was done by Sex in merely starting the crystal-  lization of humanity. At no period, mdeed, was Man

944 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

ever utterly alone. There is no such thing in nature  as a man, or for the matter of that as an animal,  except among the very humblest forms. Wherever  there is a higher animal there is another animal ;  wherever there is a savage there is another savage—  the other half of him, a female savage. This much, at  least, Sex has done for the world—it has abolished  the numeral one. Observe, it has not simply discour-  aged the existence of one; it has abolished the exist-  ence of one. The solitary animal must die, and can  leave no successor. Unsociableness, therefore, is ban-  ished out of the world; it has become the very con-  dition of continued existence that there should always  be a family group, or at least pair. The determi-  nation of Nature to lay the foundation stone of corpo-  rate national life at this point, and to embed Socia-  bility forever in the constitution of humanity, is only  obvious when we reflect with what extraordinary  thoroughness this Evolution of Sex was carried out. 
There is no instance in Nature of Division of Labor  being brought to such extreme specialization. The  two sexes were not only set apart to perform different  halves of the same function, but each so entirely lost  the power of performing the whole function that even  with so great a thing at stake as the continuance of  the species one could not discharge it. Association,  combination, mutual help, fellowship, affection—things  on which all material and moral progress would  ultimately turn—were thus forced upon the world  at the bayonet’s point.

This hint, that the course of development is taking  a social rather than an individual direction, is of im-  mense significance, If that can be brought about by

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 245

the Struggle for the Life of Others—and in the next  chapters we shall see that it has been—there can be  no dispute about the rank of the factor which con-  summates it. Along the line of the physiological  function of Reproduction, in association with its in-  duced activities and relations, not only has Altruism  entered the world, but along with it the necessary  field for its expansion and full expression. If Nature  is to be read solely in the light of the Struggle for 
Life, these ethical anticipations—and as yet we are  but at the beginning of them—for a social world and  a moral life, must remain the stultification both of  science and of teleology.

THE ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF SEX. lies

Next among the gifts of Reproduction fall to be  examined some further contributions yielded by the  new and extraordinary device which a moment ago  leaped into prominence—Sex. ‘The direct, and es-  pecially the collateral, issues here are of such signifi-  cance that it will be essential to study them in detail. 
Realize the novelty and originality of this most highly  specialized creation, and it will be seen at once that  something of exceptional moment must lie behind it. 
Ifere is a phenomenon which stands absolutely alone  on the field of Nature. There is not only nothing at  all like it in the world, but while everything else has  homologues or analogues somewhere in the cosmos,  this is without any parallel. Familiarity has so ac-  customed us to it that we accept the sex separation  as a matter of course; but no words can do justice to  the wonder and noyelty of this strange line of cleay-

246 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

age which cuts down to the very root of being in  everything that lives.

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

How deep, from the very dawn of life, this rent  between the two sexes yawns is only now beginning  to be seen. Examine one of the humblest water  weeds—the Spirogyra. It consists of waving threads  or necklaces of cells, each plant to the eye the exact  duplicate of the other. Yet externally alike as they  seem, the one has the physiological valne of the male,  the other of the female. Though a primitive method  of Reproduction, the process in this case foreshadows  the law of all higher vegetable life. From this point  upwards, though there are many cases where repro-  duction is asexual, in nearly every family of plants a 
Reproduction by spores takes place, and where it does  not take place its absence is abnormal, and to be  accounted for by degeneration. When we reach the  higher plants the differences of sex become as marked  as among the higher animals. Male and female  flowers grow upon separate trees, or live side by side

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 247

on the same branch, yet so unlike one another in form  and color that the untrained eye would never know  them to be relatives. Even when male and female are  grown on the same flower-stalk and enclosed in a  common perianth, the hermaphroditism is generally  but apparent, owing to the physiological barriers of  heteromorphism and dichogamy. Sex-separation, in-  deed, is not only distinct among flowering plants, but  is kept up by a variety of complicated devices, and a  return to hermaphroditism is prevented by the most  elaborate precautions.

When we turn to the animal kingdom again, the  same great contrast arrests us. Half a century ago,  when Balbiani described the male and female elements  in microscopic infusorians, his facts were all but  rejected by science. But further research has placed  it beyond all doubt that the beginnings of sex are  synchronous almost with those shadowings in of life. 
From a state marked by a mere varying of the nuclear  elements, a state which might almost be described as  one antecedent to sex, the sex-distinction slowly  gathers definition, and passing through an_ infinite  variety of forms, and with countless shades of  emphasis, reaches at last the climax of separateness  which is observed among birds and mammals. Often,  even in the Metazoa, this separateness is outwardly  obscured, as in star-fishes and reptiles; often it is  matter of common observation ; while sometimes it is  carried to such a pitch of specialization that only the  naturalist identifies the two wholly unlike creatures  as male and female. Through the whole wide field  of Nature then this gulf is fixed. Each page of the  million-leaved Book of Species must be as it were split

948 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

in two, the one side for the male, the other for the  female. Classification naturally takes little note of  this distinction; but it is fundamental. Unlikenesses  between like things are more significant than unlike-  nesses of unlike things. And the unlikenesses be-  tween male and female are never sinall, and almost  always great. Though the fundamental difference is  internal the external form varies; size, color, and a  multitude of more or less striking secondary sexual  characteristics separate the one from the other. Be-  sides this, and more important than all, the cycle ofa  year’s life is never the same for the male as for the  female; they are destined from the beginning to pur-  sue different paths, to live for different ends.

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

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 249

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

Apart from bare necessity, it is further remarkable  that no very clear advantage of the sex-distinction has  yet been made out by Science. Hensen and Van 
Beneden are able to see in conjugation no more than a 
Verjiingung or rejuvenescence of the species. The  living machinery in its wearing activities runs down  and has to be wound upagain; to keep life going some  fresh impulse must be introduced from time to time;  or the protoplasm, exhausting itself, seeks restoration  in fertilization and starts afresh.t To Hatschek it is  a remedy against the action of injurious variations ;  while to Weismann it is simply the source of varia-  tions. “Ido not know,” says the latter, “ what mean-  ing can be attributed to sexual reproduction other  than the creation of hereditary individual characters  to form the material on which natural selection may  work. Sexuai reproduction is so universal in all  classes of multicellular organisms, and nature deviates  so rarely fron. it, that it must necessarily be of pre-  eminent importance, If it be true that new species  are produced by processes of selection, it follows that  the deveiopment of the whole organic world depends  on these processes, and the part that amphigony  has to play in nature, by rendering selection  possible among multicellular organisms, is not only

1 Geddes and Thomson, The Evolution of Sex, p. 168.

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important, but of the very highest imaginable impor-  tance.’

These views may be each true; and probably, in a  measure, are; but the fact remains that the later  psychical implications of sex are of such transcendent  character as to throw all physical considerations into  the shade. When we turn to these, their significance  is as obvious as in the other case it was obscure. 
This will appear if we take even the most dis-  tinetively biological of these theories—that of Weis-  mann. Sex, to him, is the great source of variation in 
Nature, in plainer English, of the variety of organisms  in the world. Now this variety, though not the main  object of sex, is precisely what it was essential for 
Evolution by some means to bring about. The first  work of Evolution always is, as we have seen, to  create a mass of similar things—atoms, cells, men—  and the second is to break up that mass into as many  different kinds of things as possible. Aggregation  masses the raw material, collects the clay for the pot-  ter; differentiation destroys the featureless monotonies  as fast as they are formed, and gives them back in  new and varied forms. Now if Evolution designed,  wunong other things, to undertake the differentiation of 
Mankind, it could not have done it more effectively  than through the device of sex. To the blending, or to  the mosaics, of the different characteristics of father  and mother, and of many previous fathers and  mothers, under the subtle wand of heredity, all the  varied interests of the human world is due. When  one considers the passing on, not so much of minute  details of character and disposition, but of the domi-

1 Biological Memoirs, p. 281.

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nant temperament and type, the new proportion in  which already inextricably mingled tendencies are re-  arranged, and the changed environment in which,  with each new generation, they must unfold; it is  seen how perfect an instrument for variegating  humanity lies here. Ilad sex done nothing more than  make ar iiteresting world, the debt of Evolution to  reproduction had been incalculable.

HH ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF MATERNITY.

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

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and female is a later, less fundamental, and, in its  beginnings, less essential growth; and long prior to  its existence, and largely the condition of it, is the  even more beautiful development whose progress we  have now to trace. The basis of this new develop-  ment is indeed far removed from the mutual relations  of sex with sex. For it lies in maleness and female-  ness themselves, in their inmost quality and essen-  tial nature, in what they lead to and what they be-  come. The superstructure, certainly, owes much to  the psychical relations of father and mother, husband  and wife, but the Evolution of Love began ages before  these were established

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

Starting with the function of nutrition as the nearest  ally of Reproduction, the newer experimenters have  discovered cases in which sex apparently has been de-  termined by the quantity and quality of the food-sup-  ply. And in actual practice it has been found possible,  in the case of certain organisms, to produce either  maleness or femaleness by simply varying their nutri-

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tion—femaleness being an accompaniment of abundant  food, maleness of the reverse. When Yung, to take  an authentic experiment, began his observations on  tadpoles, he ascertained that in the ordinary natural]  condition the number of males and females produced  was not far from equal--the percentage being about 
57 female to 43 male, thus giving the females a pre-  ponderance of seven. But when a brood of tadpoles 
Was sumptuously fed the percentage of females rose to 
78, and when a second brood was treated even more  liberally, the number amounted to 81. In a third  experiment with a still more highly nutritious diet,  the result of the high feeding was more remarkable,  for in this case 92 females were produced and only 8  males. In the case of butterflies and moths, it has  been found that if caterpillars are starved before en-  tering the chrysalis state the offspring are males,  while others of the same brood, when highly nourished,  develop into females. A still more instructive case  is that of the aphides, the familiar plant-lice of our  gardens. During the warmth of summer, when food  is abundant, these insects produce parthenogenetically  nothing but females, while in the famines of later  autumn they give birth to males. In striking confir-  mation of this fact it has been proved that in a con-  servatory where the aphides enjoy perpetual summer,  the parthenogenetic succession of females continued  to go on for four years and stopped only when the  temperature was lowered and food diminished. Then  males were at once produced.’ It will no longer be  said that science is making no progress with this  unique problem when it is apparently able to deter- 
1 The Evolution of Sex, pp. 41-46,

954 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

mine sex by turning off or on the steam in a green-  house. With regard to bees the relation between  nutrition and sex seems equally established. “ The  three kinds of inmates in a bee-hive are known to  every one as queens, workers, and drones; or, as fertile  females, imperfect females, and males. What are the  factors determining the differences between these three  forms? In the first place, it is believed that the eggs  which give rise to drones are not fertilized, while those  that develop into queens and workers have the normal  history. But what fate rules the destiny of the two  latter, determining whether a given ovum will turn out  the possible mother of a new generation, or remain at  the lower level of a non-fertile working female? It  seems certain that the fate mainly hes in the quantity  and quality of the food. Royal diet, and plenty of it,  develops the future queens. . . . Up toacertain point  the nurse bees can determine the future destiny of  their charge by changing the diet, and this in some  cases is certainly done. Ifa larva on the way to be-  come a worker receive by chance some crumbs from  the royal superfluity, the reproductive function may  develop, and what are called ‘fertile workers,’ to a  certain degree above the average abortiveness, result ;  or, by direct intention, a worker grub may be reared  into a queen bee.” !

It is unnecessary to prolong the illustration, for the  point it is wished to emphasize is all but in sight. As  we have just witnessed, the tendency of abundant  nutrition is to produce females, while defective nutri-  tive conditions produce males. This means that in so  far as nutrition re-acts on the bodies of animals—and

1 TheEvolution of Sex, p. 42. See also pp. 41-46.

\

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nothing does so more—there will be a growing dif-  ference, as time begins to accumulate the effects, be-  tween the organization and life-habit of male and  female respectively. In the male, destructive processes,  a preponderance of waste over repair, will prevail; the  result will be a katabolic habit of body; in the female  the constructive processes will be in the ascendant,  occasioning an opposite or anabolic habit. Translated  into less technical language, this means that the pre-  dominating note in the male will be energy, motion,  activity ; while passivity, gentleness, repose, will char-  acterize the female. These words, let it be noticed,  psychical though they seem, are yet here the coinages  of physiology. No other terms indeed would describe  the difference. Thus Geddes and Thomson: “The  female cochineal insect, laden with reserve-products in  the form of the well-known pigment, spends much of  its life ike a mere quiescent gall on the cactus plant. 
The male, on the other hand, in his adult state, is  agile, restless, and short-lived. Now this is no mere  curiosity of the entomologist, but in reality a vivid  emblem of what is an average truth throughout the  world of animals—the preponderating passivity of the  females, the freedomness and activity of the males.” 
Rolph’s words, because he writes neither of men nor  of animals, but goes back to the furthest recess of 
Nature and characterizes the cell itself, are still more  significant : ‘‘ The less nutritive and therefore smaller,  hungrier, and more mobile organism 1s the male ;  the more nutritive and usually more quiescent is the  female.”

Now what do these facts indicate? They indicate  that maleness is one thing and femaleness another,

956 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

and thet each has been specialized from the beginning  to play a separate réle in the drama of life. Among  primitive peoples, as largely in modern times, “The  tasks which demand a powerful development of  muscle and bone, and the resulting capacity for inter-  mittent spurts of energy, involving corresponding  periods of rest, fall to the man; the care of the chil-  dren and all the various industries which radiate from  the hearth, and which call for an expenditure of  energy more continuous, but at a lower tension, fall  to the woman.” + Whether this or any theory of the  origin of Sex be proved or unproved, the fact remains,  and is everywhere emphasized in Nature, that a cer-  tain constitutional difference exists between male and  female, a difference inclining the one to a robuster  life and implanting in the other a certain mysterious  bias in the direction of what one can only call the  womanly disposition.

On one side of the great line of cleavage have grown  up men—those whose lives for generations and gener-  ations have been busied with one particular set of  occupations ; on the other side have lived and devel-  oped women—those who for generations have been  busied with another and a widely different set of  occupations. And as occupations have inevitable  reactions upon mind, character, and disposition, these  two have slowly become different in mind and char-  acter and disposition. That cleavage, therefore, which  began in the merely physical region, is now seen to  extend into the psychical realm, and ends by supply-  ing the world with two great and forever separate  types. No efforts, or explanations, or expostulations

1 Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, p. 2

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 257

can ever break down that distinction between male-  ness and femaleness, or make it possible to believe  that they were not destined from the first of time to  play a different part in human history. Male and  female never have been and never will be the same. 
They are different in origin; they have travelled to  their destinations by different routes; they have had  different ends in view. The result is that they are  different, and the contribution therefore of each to the  evolution of the human race is special and unique. 
By and bye it will be our duty to mark what Man, in  virtue of his peculiar gift, has done for the world;  part indeed of his contribution has been already re-  corded here. To him has been mainly assigned the  fulfilment of the first great function—the Struggle for 
Life. Woman, whose higher contribution has not yet  been named, is the chosen instrument for carrying on  the Struggle for the Life of Others. Man’s life, on  the whole, is determined chiefly by the function of 
Nutrition; Woman’s by the function of Reproduction. 
Man satisfies the one by going out into the world, and  in the rivalries of war and the ardors of the chase, in  conflict with Nature, and amid the stress of industrial  pursuits, fulfilling the law of Self-preservation ; 
Woman completes her destiny by occupying herself  with the industries and sanctities of the home, and  paying the debt of Motherhood to her race.

Now out of this initial difference—so slight at first  as to amount to no more than a scarcely perceptible  bias—have sprung the most momentous issues. For  by every detail of their separate careers the two  original tendencies—to outward activity in the man;  to inward activity, miscalled passivity, in the woman

17.

258 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

—became accentuated as time went on. The one life  tended towards selfishness, the other towards unself-  ishness. While one kept Individualism alive, the  other kept Altruism alive. Blended in the children,  these two master-principles from this their starting-  point acted and re-acted all through history, seeking  that mean in which true life hes. Thus by a Division  of Labor appointed by the will of Nature, the condi-  tions for the Ascent of Man were laid.

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

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS, 259

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

** Harth’s insufficiency 
Here grows to event; 
The indescribable 
Here it is done; 
The woman-soul leadeth us 
Upward and on.”’ !

So stupendous is this transition that the mere possi-  bility staggers us. Separated by the whole diameter  of conscious intelligence and will, what possible affin-  ities can exist between the Reproductive and the 
Altruistic process? What analogy can ever exist  between the earlier physiological Struggle for the Life  of Others and the later Struggle of Love? Yet, dif-  ferent though their accompaniments may be, when  closely examined they are seen, at every essential  point, running parallel with each other, The object  in either case is to continue the life of the Species;

1 Faust, Pt. 1. Bayard Taylor’s tr.

960 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

the essence of both is self-sacrifice ; the first manifest-  ation of the sacrifice is to make provision for Others  by helping them to draw the first few breaths of life. 
But what bas Love to do with Species? Can Altru-  ism have reference to mere life? The answer is, that  in its first beginnings it has almost nothing to do  with anything else. For, consider the situation. Re-  production, let us suppose, has done its most perfect  work on the physiological plane: the result is that a  human child is born into the world. But the work of 
Reproduction being to Struggle for the Life of the 
Species, its task is only complete when it secures that  the child, representing the Species, shall live. If the  child dies, Reproduction has failed; the Species, so  far as this effort is concerned, comes to an end. Now,  can Reproduction as a merely physiological function  complete this process? It cannot. What can? 
Only the Mother’s Care and Love. Without these,  in a few hours or days, the new life must perish; the  earlier achievement of Reproduction is in vain. 
Hence there comes a moment when these two func-  tions meet, when they act as complements to each  other; when Physiology hands over its unfinished  task to Ethics; when Evolution—if for once one may  use a false distinction—depends upon the “moral”  process to complete the work the “cosmic” process  has begun.

At what precise stage of the Ascent, in association  with what class of animals, Other-ism began to shade  into Altruism in the ethical sense, is immaterial. 
Whether the Altruism in the early stages is real or  apparent, profound or superficial, voluntary or auto-  matic, does not concern us. What concerns us is that

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 261

the Altruism is there; that the day came when, even  though a rudiment, it was a reality; above all that  the arrangements for introducing and perfecting it  were realities. The prototype, for ages, may have  extended only to form, to the outward relation; for  further ages no more Altruism may have existed than  was absolutely necessary to the preservation of the 
Species. But to fix the eye upon it at that remote  stage and assert that, because it was apparently then  automatic, it must therefore have been automatic ever  after, is to forget the progressive character of Evolu-  tion as well as to ignore facts. While many of the  apparent Other-regarding acts among animals are  purely selfish and purely automatic, undoubtedly  there are instances where more is involved. Apart  from their own offspring—in relation to which there  may always be the suspicion of automatism; and  apart from domestic animals—which are open to the  further suspicion of having been trained to it—ani-  mals act spontaneously towards other animals; they  have their playmates; they make friendships and  very attached friendships. Much more, indeed, has  been claimed for them; but it is not necessary to  claim even this much. No evolutionist would expect  among animals—domestic animals always excepted—  any considerable development of Altruism, because  the physiological and psychical conditions which di-  rectly led to its development in Man’s case were fulfilled  in no other creature.’

1The answer to the argument in favor of automatism is thus  summarized by C. M. Williams: ‘‘(1) That functions which are  preserved and inherited must evidently be, not only in animals  and plants, but also and equally in man, such as favor the preser-

262 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

Simple as seems the method by which the first few  sparks of Love were nursed into flame in the bosom of 
Maternity, the details of the evolution are so intricate  as to require a chapter to themselves. But the  emphasis which Nature puts on this process may be  judged of by the fact that one-half the human race  had to be set apart to sustain and perfect it. To the  evolutionist who discerns the true proportions of the  forces which made for the Ascent of Man, one of the  two or three great events in the natural history of the  world was the institution of sex. It is here that the  master-forces which were to dominate the latest and  highest stages of the process start; here, specialized  into Kgoism and Altruism, they part; and here, each  having run its different course, they meet to distrib-  ute their gains to a succeeding race. With the  initial impulses of their sex strengthened by the  different life-routine to which each led, these two  forces ran their course through history, determining  by their ceaseless reactions the order and progress of  vation of the species ; those which do not so fayor it must perish  with the individuals or species to which they belong ; (2) that it  cannot, indeed, be assumed that a result which has never come  within the experience of the species can be willed as an end, al-  though, with the species, function securing results which, from a  human point of view, might be regarded as such, may be pre-  served; but (8) that, as far as we assume the existence of con-  sciousness at all in any species or individual, we must assume  pleasure and pain, pleasure in customary function, pain in its  hindrance; and (4) that, as far as we can assume memory, we  may also feel authorized to assume that a remembered action  may be associated with remembered results that come within the  experience of the animal, some phases of which may thus become,

as combined with pleasure or pain, ends to seek or consequences  to avoid.’”’—Evolutional Ethics, p. 386.

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the world, or when wrongly balanced, its disorder and  decay. According to evolutional philosophy there are  three great marks or necessities of all true develop-  ment—Ageregation, or the massing of things; Differ-  entiation, or the varying of things; and Integration,  or the re-uniting of things into higher wholes. All  these processes are brought about by sex more per-  fectly than by any other factor known. From a care-  ful study of this one phenomenon, science could  almost decide that Progress was the object of Nature,  and that Altruism was the object of Progress.

This vital relation between Altruism im its early  stages and physiological ends, neither implies that it  is to be limited by these ends nor defined in terms of  them. Everything must begin somewhere. And  there is no aphorism which the labors of Evolution, at  each fresh beginning, have tended more consistently  to endorse than “first that which is natural, then that  which is spiritual.” How this great saying also dis-  poses of the difficulty, which appears and reappears  with every forward step in Evolution, as to the quali-  tative terms in which higher developments are to be  judged, is plain. Because the spiritual to our vision  emerges from the natural, or, to speak more accu-  rately, is convoyed upwards by the natural for the  first stretches of its ascent, it is not necessarily con-  tained in that natural, nor is it to be defined in terms  of it. What comes “first” is not the criterion of what  comes last. Few things are more forgotten in criti-  cism of Evolution than that the nature of a thing is  not dependent on its origin, that one’s whole view of  a long, growing, and culminating process is not to be  eoverned by the first sight the microscope can catch

. . 
064° THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS,

of it. The processes of Evolution evolve as well as  the products; evolve with the products. In the 
Environments they help to create, or to make avail-  able, they find a field for new creations as well as  further reinforcements for themselves. With the  creation of human children Altruism found an area  for its own expansion such as had never before existed  in the world. In this new soil it grew from more to  more, and reached a potentiality which enabled it to  burst the trammels of physical conditions, and over-  flow the world as a moral force. The mere fact that  the first uses of Love were physical shows how per-  fectly this process bears the stamp of Evolution. The  later function is seen to relieve the earlier at the  moment when it would break down without it, and  continue the ascent without a pause.

If it be hinted that Nature has succeeded in  continuing the Ascent of Life in Animals without  any reinforcement from psychical principles, the  first answer is that owing to physiological con-  ditions this would not have been possible in the case  of Man. But even among animals it is not true that  teproduction completes its work apart from higher  principles, for even there, there are accompaniments,  continually increasing in definiteness, which at least  represent the instincts and emotions of Man. It is no  doubt true that in animals the affections are less  voluntarily directed than in the case of a human  mother. But in either case they must have been  involuntary at first. It can only have been at a late  stage in Evolution that Nature could trust even her  highest product to carry on the process by herself. 
Before Altruism was strong enough to take its own

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initiative, necessity had to be laid upon all mothers,  animal and human, to act in the way required. In  part physiological, this necessity was brought about  under the ordinary action of that principle which had  to take charge of everything in Nature until the will of 
Man appeared—Natural Selection. A mother who did  not care for her children would have feeble and sickly  children. Their children’s children would be feeble  and sickly children. And the day of reckoning would  come when they would be driven off the field by a  hardier, that is a better-mothered, race. Hence the  premium of Nature upon better mothers. Hence the  elimination of all the reproductive failures, of all the  mothers who fell short of completing the process to the  last detail. And hence, by the law of the Survival of  the Fittest, Altruism, which at this stage means good-  motherism, is forced upon the world

This consummation reached, the foundations of the  human world are finished. Nothing foreign remains  to be added. All that need happen henceforth is that  the Struggle for the Life of Others should work out its  destiny. To follow out the gains of Reproduction from  this point would be to write the story of the nations,  the history of civilization, the progress of Social Evolu-  tion. The key to all these processes is here. There  is no intelligible account of the world which is not  founded on the realization of the place of this factor  in development. Sociology, practically, can only beat  the air, can make no step forward as a science, until it  recognizes this basis in biology. It is the failure, not  so much to recognize the supremacy of this second  factor, but to see that there is any second factor  at all, that has vitiated almost every attempt to

966 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS.

construct a symmetrical social philosophy. It has  long, indeed, been perceived that society is an organ-  ism, and an organism which has grown by natural  growth like a tree. But the tree to which it is  usually likened is such a tree as never grew on this  earth. For it is a tree without flowers; a tree with  nothing but stem and leaves; a tree that performed  the function of Nutrition, and forgot all about Repro-  duction. The great unrecognized truth of social  science is that the Social Organism has grown and  flowered and fruited in virtue of the continuous activ-  ities and inter-relations of the two co-related functions  of Nutrition and Reproduction, that these two domi-  nants being at work it could not but grow, and grow in  the way it has grown. When the dual nature of the  evolving forces is perceived; when their reactions  upon one another are understood; when the changed  material with which they have to work from time to  time, the further obstacles confronting them at every  stage, the new Environments which modify their  action as the centuries add their growths and disen-  cumber them of their withered leaves,—when all this  is observed, the whole social order falls into line. 
From the dawn of life these two forces have acted  together, one continually separating, the other contin-  ually uniting; one continually looking to its own  things, the other to the things of Others. Both are  great in Nature—but “the greatest of these is Love.”

CHAPTHE VIL 
THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. ~

Tue Evolution of a Mother, in spite of its half.  humorous, half-sacrilegious sound, is a serious study  in Biology. Even on its physical side this was the  most stupendous task Evolution ever undertook. It  began when the first bud burst from the first plant-  cell, and was only completed when the last and most  elaborately wrought pinnacle of the temple of Nature  crowned the animal creation.

What was that pinnacle? There is no more in-  structive question in science. For the answer brings 
/ into relief one of the expression-points of Nature—one  of these great teleological notes of which the natural  order is so full, and of which this is by far the most  impressive. Run the eye fora moment up the scale  of animal life. At the bottom are the first animals,  the Protozoa. The Coelenterata follow, then in mixed  array, the Echinoderms, Worms, and Molluses. Above  these come the Pisces, then the Amphibia, then the 
Reptilia, then the Aves, then—What? The Mam-  malia, THe Moruers. ‘There the series stops. 
Nature has never made anything since.

Is it too much to say that the one motive of organic 
267

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Nature was to make Mothers? It is at least certain  that this was the chief thing she did. Ask the 
Zoologist what, judging from science alone, Nature  aspired to from the first, he could but answer Mam-  malia—Mothers. In as real a sense as a factory  is meant to turn out locomotives or clocks, the  machinery of Nature is designed in the last resort to  turn out Mothers. You will find Mothers in lower  nature at every stage of imperfection; you will  see attempts being made to get at better types;  you find old ideas abandoned and higher models  coming to the front. And when you get to the  top you find the last great act was but to present to  the world a physiologically perfect type. It is a fact  which no human Mother can regard without awe,  which no man ¢an realize without a new reverence for  woman and a new belief in the higher meaning of 
Nature, that the goal of the whole plant and animal  kingdoms seems to have been the creation of a family,  which the very naturalist has had to call Mammalia. 
That care for others, from which the Mammaiia  take their name, though reaching its highest expres-  sion there, is introduced into Nature in cruder forms  almost from the dawn of life. In the vegetable king-  dom, from the motherlessness of the early Crypto-  gams, we rise to find a first maternity foreshadowed  in the flowering tree. It elaborates a seed or nut or  fruit with infinite precaution, surrounding the embryo  with coat after coat of protective substance, and stor-  ing around it the richest foods for its future use. 
And rudimentary though the manifestation be, when  we remember that this is not an incident in the tree’s  life but its whole blossom and crown, it is impossible

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but to think of this solicitude and~ Motherhood to-  gether. So exalted in the tree’s life is this provision  for others that the Botanist, like the Zoologist, places  the mothering plants at the top of his department of 
Nature. His highest division is the Phanerogams 
—named, literally, in terms of their reproductive  specialization.

Crossing into the animal kingdom we observe the  same motherless beginning, the same cared-for end. 
All elementary animals are orphans; they know  neither home nor care; the earth is their only mother  or the inhospitable sea; they waken to isolation, to  apathy, to the attentions only of those who seek their  doom. But as we draw nearer the apex of the animal  kingdom, the spectacle of a protective Maternity  looms into view. At what precise point it begins it  is difficult to say. But that it does not begin at once,  that there is a long and gradual Evolution of Mater-  nity, is clear. From casual observation, and from pop-  ular books, it might be inferred that care of offspring 
—we cannot yet speak of affection—is characteristic  of the whole field of Nature. On the contrary, it is  doubtful whether in the Invertebrate half of Nature it  exists at all. If it does it is very rare; and in the 
Vertebrates it is met with only exceptionally till we  reach the two highest classes. What does exist, and  sometimes in marvellous perfection, is care for eggs ;  but that is a wholly different thing, both in its phys-  ical and psychical aspect, from love of offspring. The  truth is Nature so made animals in the early days  that they did not need Mothers. The moment they  were born they looked after themselves, and were per-  fectly able to look after themselves. Mothers in these

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days would have been a superfluity. All that Nature  worked at at that dawning date was Maternity ina  physical sense—Motherhood came as a later and a  rarer growth. The children of those days were not  really children at all; they were only offspring,  springers off, deserters from home. At one bound  they were out into life on their own account, and she  who begat them knew them no more. That early  world, therefore, for millions and millions of years was  a bleak and loveless world. It was a world without  children and a world without Mothers. It is good to  realize how heartless Nature was till these arrived.

In the lower reaches of Nature, things remain still  unchanged. The rule is not that the Mother ignores,  but that she never sees her child. The land-crabs of  the West Indies descend from their homes in the  mountains once a year, march in procession to the  sea, commit their eggs to the waves, and come away. 
The burying-beetles deposit their fragile capsules in ,  the dead carcase of a mouse or bird, plant all together  in the earth, and leave them to their fate. Myriads of  other creatures are born into the world, and ordained  so to be born, whose Mothers are dead before they  begin to live. The moment of birth with the Ephem-  eride is also the moment of death. These are not  cases nevertheless where there has been no care. On  the contrary, there is a solicitude for the egg of the  most extreme kind—for its being placed exactly in  the right spot, at the right time, protected from the  weather, shielded from enemies, and provided with a  first supply of food. The butterfly places the eggs of  its young on the very leaf which the coming cater-  pillar likes the most, and on the under side of the leaf

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where they will be least exposed—a ease which illus-  trates in a palpable way the essential difference  between Motherhood and Maternity. Maternity here,  in the restricted sense of merely adequate physical  care, is carried to its utmost perfection. Everything  that can be done for the egg is done. Motherhood,  on the other hand, is non-existent, is even an anatom-  ical impossibility. If a butterfly could live till its  egg was hatched—which does not happen—it would  see no butterfly come out of the egg, no airy likeness  of itself, but an earth-bound caterpillar. If it rec-  ognized this creature as its child, it could never  play the Mother to it. The anatomical form is so  different that were it starving it could not feed it,  were it threatened it could not save it, nor is it  possible to see any direction in which it could be  of the slightest use to it. It is obvious that Nature  never intended to make a Mother here; that all that  she desired as yet was to perfect the first maternal  instinct. And the tragedy of the situation is that  on that day when her training to be a true Mother  should begin, she passes out of the world.

But there is another reason, in addition to the pre-  cocity of the offspring, why parental care is a drug in  the market in lower Nature. There are such multi-  tudes of these creatures that it is scarcely worth  caring for them. The humbler denizens of the world  produce offspring, not by units or tens, but by thou-  sands and millions; and with populations so vast,  maternal protection is not required to sustain the ex-  istence of the species. It was probably on the whole a  better arrangement to produce a million and let them  take their chance, than to produce one and take special

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trouble with it. It was easier, moreover, a thousand  times easier, for Nature to make a millicn young than  one Mother. But the ethical effect, if one may use  such a term here, of this early arrangement was nil. 
All this saving of Motherly trouble meant for a long  space in Nature complete absence of maternal train-  ing. With children of this sort, Motherhood had no  chance. There was no time to love, no opportunity to  love, and no object to love. It was a period of physi-  cal installations; and of psychical installations only as  establishing the first stages of the maternal instinct 
—the prenatal care of the egg. This is a necessary  beginning, but it is imperfect ; it arrests itself at the  critical point—where care can react upon the Mother. 
Now, before Maternal Love can he evolved out of  this first care, before Love can be made a necessity,  and carried past the unhatched egg to the living thing  which is to come out of it, Nature must alter all her  ways. Four great changes at least must be introduced  into her programme. In the first place, she must  cause fewer young to be produced ata birth. Jn the  second place, she must have these young produced in  such outward form that their Mothers will recognize  them. In the third place, instead of producing them  in such physical perfection that they are able to go  out into hfe the moment they are born, she must  make them helpless, so that for a time they must  dwell with her if they are to live at all. And fourth-  ly, it is required that she shall be made to dwell with  them ; that in some way they also should be made  necessary—physically necessary—to her to compel her  to attend to them. All these beautiful arrangements  we Gnd carried out to the last detail. A mother is

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made, as it were, in four processes. She requires, like  the making of a colored picture, four separate paint-  ings, each adding some new thing to the effect. Let  us note the way in which woman—savage woman—  became caretaker, and watcher, and nurse, and passed  from femaleness to the higher heights of Mother-  hood.

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

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

The next thing was to make it possible for the par-  ent to recognize its young. If it was difficult to love  a million it was impossible to love an embryo. In the  lower reaches the young are never in the smallest  degree like their parents, and, granting the highest  power of recognition to the Mother, it is impossible  that she should recognize her own offspring. For  generations even Science was imposed upon here, for  many forms of life were described and classified as  distinct species which have turned out to be simply  the young of other species. It may be useless to con-  trast so striking a case as the ciliated Planula with  the adult Awrelia—vagaries of form which for gen-  erations deceived the naturalist—for it is doubtful  whether creatures of the Medusoid type have eyes ;  but in the higher groups, where power of recognition  is more certain, the unlikeness of progeny to parent is  often as decided. The larval forms of the Star fish,  or the Sea Urchin, or their kinsman the Holothurian  are disguised past all recognition; and among the 
Insects the relation between Butterflies and Moths  and their respective caterpillars is beyond any possible  clue. No doubt there are other modes of recognition  in Nature than those which depend on the sense of  sight. But looked at on every side, the fact remains

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that the power to identify their young is all but absent  until the higher animals appear.

The next work of Nature, therefore, was to make  the young resemble the parent, to make, in short, the  children presentable at birth. And the means taken  to effect this are worth noting. Nature always makes  her changes with a marvellous economy, and generally,  as in this case, with a quite startling simplicity. To  start making a new kind of embryo, a plan obvious to  us, was not thought of. That would have been to  have lost all the time spent on them already. If 
Nature begins a thing and wishes to make a change,  she never goes back to the beginning and starts de  novo. Her respect for her own work is profound. To  begin at the beginning again would not only be lost  work, but waste of future time; and Evolution, slow  as it may seem, never fails to take the quickest path. 
She did not then start making new embryos. She did  not even touch up the old embryos. All that she did  was to keep them hidden till they grew more present-  able. She left them exactly as they were, only she  drew a veil over them. Instead of saying “ Let us re-  create these little things,” she passed the word “ Let us  delay them till they are fair to see.’ And from the  day that word was passed, the embryos were hindered  in the eggs, and the eggs were hindered in the nest,  and the young were hindered in the body, retained in  the dark for weeks and months, so that when first  they caught the Mother’s eye they were “strong and  of a good liking.”

Though in no case in higher Nature is the young an  exact reproduction of its parent, it will be admitted  that the likeness is very much greater than among

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any of the lower animals. The young of many birds  are at least a colorable imitation of their parents ; 
Nature’s young geese are at least like enough geese  not to be mistaken for swans ; no dog could be misled  into mistaking—even apart from the sense of smell—a  kitten for a puppy, nor would a hare ever be taken in  by the young of a rabbit. Among domestic animals  like the sheep and cow there is a culmination of  adaptation in this direction, the lamb and the calf  when born being almost fac-similes of their Mothers. 
3ut this point need not be dwelt on. It is of insignif-  icant importance, and belongs to the surface. The  idea of Nature going out of her way to make better  family likenesses will not stand scrutiny as a final end  in physiology. These illustrations are simply adduced  to confirm the impression that Nature is working not  aimlessly, not even mysteriously, but in a specific  direction ; that somehow the idea of JZothers is in her  mind, and that she is trying to draw closer and closer  the bonds which are to unite the children of men. It  will be enough if we have gathered from this paren-  thesis that some time in the remote past, parent and  child came to be introduced to one another; that the  young when born into the world gradually approached  the parental form, that they no longer “shocked them  by their larval ugliness”; so that “the first human  mother on record, seeing her first-born son, exclaimed - 
‘fT have gotten a Wan from the Lord.’ ” !

If this second process in the Evolution of Mother-  hood is of minor importance, the necessity for the  third will not be doubted. What use is there for per-  fecting the power of recognition between parent and

1 Mammalian Descent, Prof. W. P. Parker, F.R.S., p. 14.

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child if the latter act like the run of offspring in lower  nature—spring otf into independent life the moment  they are born? If the Mother is to be taught to know  her progeny, surely the progeny also must be taught  not to abandon their Mother. And hence Nature had  to set about a somewhat novel task—to teach the  youth of the world the Fifth Commandment. Glance  once more over the Animal series and see how thor-  oughly she taught them the lesson. It is sometimes  said that Nature has no imperatives. In reality it is  all imperative. This Commandment was thrust upon  the early world under penalties for disobedience the  most exacting that could be devised—-the threat of  death. Pick out a few children and inspect them. 
Take one from the bottom of Nature, one from the  middle, and one from the top, and see if any progress  in filial duty is visible as we ascend. The first,--the  young of Aurelia will do, or a ciliated Infusorian,—  representing countless millions like itself, is the 
Precocious Child. The moment this embryo is born  it leaves the domestic hearth ; the chances are it has  never seen its parents. Ifit has it disowns them on  the spot. A better swimmer in many cases—for many  of the parents have forgotten how to swim—it cannot  be overtaken. It ignores its Mother and despises her. 
The second is the Good Intentioned Child. his child 
—a bird, let us say—begins well, stays much at home  in the early days, but plays the prodigal towards the  close. For some weeks it remains quietly in the egg;  for more weeks it remains—not quite so quietly—in  the nest; and for more weeks still—but with an ob-  vious itching to be off—in the neighborhood of the  nest. This, nevertheless, is a good subject. It is

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really a sort of a child, and has really a sort of a 
Mother. The third is the Model Child—the Mammal. 
In this child, which is only found in the high places of 
Nature, infancy reaches its last perfection. Housed,  protected, sumptuously fed, the luxurious children  keep to their Mother’s side for months and years, and  only quit the parental roof when their filial education  is complete.

On a casual view of the Examiner’s Report on these  various children of Nature the physiologist, as dis-  tinguished from the educationalist, might object that  so far from being the subject of congratulation it is a  clear case for censure. If early Nature could turn out  ready-made animals in a single hour, is it not a retro-  grade move to have to take so long about it later on? 
When one contrasts the free swimming embryo of a 
Medusa, dashing out into its heroic life the moment it  is born, with the helpless kitten or the sightless pup,  is it unfair to ask if Nature has not lost the trick of  making lusty lives? Is she not trying the new exper-  iment at the risk of blundering the old one, and why  cannot she continue the earlier and more brilliant  device of making her children knight-errants from the  first? Because brilliance is not her object. Her ob-  ject is ethical as well as physiological; and though  when we look below the surface a purely physiological  explanation of the riddle will appear, the ethical gain  is not less clear. By curbing them she is educating  them, taming them, rescuing them from a wild and  lawless life. These roving embryos are mere bandits;  their nature and habits must be changed; not a  sterner race but a gentler race must be born. New  words must come into the world—~-Home, Loye,

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Mother. And these imperceptibly slow drawings to-  gether of parent and child are the inevitable prelimi-  naries of the domestication of the Human Race. Re-  garded from the ethical point of view there are few  things more significant than this reining-in of the  world’s rampant youth, this tightening the bonds of  family life, this most gentle introduction of gentleness  into a world cold with motherless children and heart-  less with childless mothers.

The personal tie once formed between parent and  offspring could never be undone, and from this  moment onwards must grow from more to more. For  observe what has happened. A generation has grown  up to whom this tie is the necessity of existence. 
Every Mammalian child born into the world must  come to be fed, must, for a given number of hours  each day, be in the maternal school, and whether it  like it or not, learn its lessons. No young of any 
Mammal can nourish itself. There is that in it there-  fore at this stage which compels it to seek its Mother ;  and there is that in the Mother which compels it even  physically—and this is the fourth process, on which  it is needless to dwell—to seek her child. On the  physiological side, the name of this impelling power  is lactation; on the ethical side, it is Love. And  there is no escape henceforth from communion be-  tween Mother and child, or only one—death. Break  this new bond and the Mammalia become extinct. 
Nature is in earnest here, if anywhere. The training  of Humanity is seen to be under a compulsory educa-  tion act. It is in the severity and dread of her penal-  ties, coupled with the impossibility of evading the  least of them, that the will of Nature and the serious-

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

With the physical programme carried out to the  last detail, the ethical drama opened. An~ early  result, partly of her sex, and partly of her passive  strain, is the founding through the instrumentality of  the first savage Mother of a new and a beautiful social  state—Domesticity. While Man, restless, eager,

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hungry, is a wanderer on the earth, Woman makes a 
.Home. And though this Home be but a platform of  sticks and leaves, such as the gorilla builds on a tree,  it becomes the first great school-room of the human  race. For one day there appears in this roofless room  that which is to teach the teachers of the world—a 
Little Child.

No greater day ever dawned for Evolution than this  on which the first human child was born. For there  entered then into the world the one thing wanting  to complete the Ascent of Man—a tutor for the  affections. It may be that a Mother teaches a Child,  but in a far deeper sense it is the Child who teaches  the Mother. Millions of millions of Mothers had lived  in the world before this, but the higher affections were  unborn. Tenderness, gentleness, unselfishness, love,  care, self-sacrifice—these as yet were not, or were only  in the bud. Maternity existed in humble forms, but  not yet Motherhood. To create Motherhood and all  that enshrines itself in that holy word required a  human child. The creation of the Mammalia estab-  lished two schools in the world—the two oldest and  surest and best equipped schools of Ethics that have  ever been in it—the one for the Child, who must now  at least know its Mother, the other for the Mother,  who must as certainly attend to her Child. The only  thing that remains now is to secure that they shall  both be kept in that school as long as it is possible to  detain them. The next effort of Evolution, therefore 
—the fifth process as one might call it—is to  lengthen out these school days, and give affection  time to grow.

No animal except Man was permitted to have his

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education thus prolonged. Many creatures were al-  lowed to stay at school for a few days or weeks, but  to one only was given a curriculum complete enough  to accomplish its exalted end. Watch two of the  highest organisms during their earliest youth, and  observe the striking contrast in the time they are made  to remain at their Mother’s side. The first is a human  infant; the second, born, let us suppose, on the same  day, is a baby monkey. Inafew days or weeks the  baby monkey is almost able to leave its Mother. A\l-  ready it can climb, and eat, and chatter like its  parents; and in a few weeks more the creature is as  independent of them as the winged-seed is of the  parent tree. Meantime, and for many months to come,  its little twin is unable to feed itself, or clothe itself,  or protect itself; it is a mere semi-unconscious chattel,  a sprawling ball of helplessness, the world’s one type  of impotence. The body is there in all its parts, bone  for bone and muscle for muscle, like the other. But  somehow this body will not do its work. Something  as yet hangs fire. The body has eyes but they see not,  ears but they hear not, limbs but they walk not. This  body is a failure. Why does the human infant lie like  a log on the forest-bed while its nimble prototype  mocks it from the bough above? Why did that which  is not human step out into life so long before that  which is?

The question has been answered for us by Mr. John 
Fiske, and the world here owes to him one of the most  beautiful contributions ever made to the Evolution of 
Man. We know what this delay means ethically—it  was necessary for moral training that the human child  should have the longest possible time by its Mother’s

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side—but what determines it on the physical side? 
The thing that constitutes the difference between the  baby monkey and the baby man is an extra piece of  machinery which the last possesses and the first does  not. It is this which is keeping back the baby man. 
What is that piece of machinery? <A brain, a human  brain. The child, nevertheless, is not using it. Why ? 
Because it is not quite fitted up. Nature is working  hard at it; but owing to its intricacy and delicacy the  process requires much time, and till all is ready the  babe must remain a thing. And why does the monkey  brain get ready first? Because it is an easier machine  to make. And why should it be easier to make? 
Because it is only required to do the life-work of an 
Animal; the other has to do the life-work of a Man. 
Mental Evolution, in fact, here steps in, and makes an  unexpected contribution to the ethical development of  the world.

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

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that lies before the human offspring no storage of  habit has been handed down from the past. Each  descendant must carve a way through the world for  itself, and learn to comport itself through all the vary-  ing incidents of life as best it can. Now the equip-  ment for this is very complex. Into the infant’s frame  must be fitted not only the apparatus for automatic  repetition of what its parents have done, but the ap-  paratus for intelligent initiation; not only the machin-  ery for carrying on the involuntary and reflex actions—  involuntary and reflex because they have been done  so often by its ancestors as to have become auto-  matic—but for the voluntary and self-conscious life  which will do new things, choose fresh alternatives,  seek higher and more varied ends. The instrument  which will attend to breathing even when we forget  it; the apparatus which will make the heart beat even  though we try to stop it; the self-acting spring which  makes the eyelid close the moment it is threatened—  these and a hundred others are old and well-tried in-  ventions which, from ceaseless practice generation  after generation, work perfectly in each new individual  from the start. Nature therefore need waste no time  at this late day on their improvement. But the higher  brain is comparatively a new thing in the world. It  has to undertake a vaster range of duties, often totally  new orders of duties; it has to do things which its  forerunners had not quite learned to do, or had not  quite learned to do unthinkingly, and the inconceiy-  ably complex machinery requires time to settle to its  work. The older brain-processes have been greatly  accelerated even now, and appear in full activity at  an early stage in the infant’s life, but the newer and

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the higher are in perfect order only after a consider.  able interval of adjustment and elaboration.

Now Infancy, physiologically considered, means the  fitting up of this extra machinery within the brain;  and according to its elaborateness will be the time  required to perfect it. A sailing vessel may put  to sea the moment the rigging is in; a steamer must  wait for the engines. And the compensation to the  steamer for the longer time in dock is discovered by  and bye in its vastly greater usefulness, its power of  varying its course at will, and in its superior safety in  time of war or storm. For its greater after-usefulness  also, its more varied career, its safer life, humanity has  to pay tribute to Evolution by a delayed and helpless 
Infancy, a prolonged and critical constructive process. 
Childhood in its early stage is a series of installations  and trials of the new machinery, a slow experimenting  with powers and faculties so fresh that heredity in  handing them down has been unable to accompany  them with full directions as to their use.

The Brain of Man, to change the figure—if indeed  any figure of that marvellous molecular structure can  be attempted without seriously misleading—is an  elevated table-land of stratified nervous matter, fur-  rowed by deep and sinuous cafions, and traversed by a  vast net-work of highways along which Thoughts pass  to and fro. The old and often-repeated Thoughts, or  mental processes, pass along beaten tracks ; the newer 
Thoughts have less marked footpaths ; the newer still  are compelled to construct fresh Thought-routes for  themselves. Gradually these become established thor-  oughfares; but in the increasing traffic and complexity  of life, new paths in endless multitudes have to be

286 THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER.

added, and bye lanes and loops between the older high-  ways must be thrown into the system. The stations  upon these roads from which the travellers set out  are cells; the roads are transit fibres; the travellers  themselves are in physiological language nervous dis-  charges, in psychological language mental processes. 
Each new mental process involves a new redistribu-  tion of nervous matter among the cells, a new travel-  ling of nervous discharge along one or many of the  transit fibres. Now in every new connection of ideas  multitudes of cells and even multitudes of groups of  cells may be concerned, so that should it happen that  a combination of these precise centres had never been  made before, it is obvious that no routes could pos-  sibly exist between them, and these must then and  there be prospected. Each new Thought is therefore  a pioneer, a road-maker, or road-chooser, through the  brain; and the exhaustless possibilities of continuous  development may be judged from the endlessness of  the possible combinations. In the oldest and most-  used brain there must always remain vast territories  still to be explored, and as it were civilized; and in all  men multitudes of possible connections continue to the  last unrealized When it is remembered, indeed, that  the brain itself is very large, the largest mass of  nerve-matter in the organic world; when it is further  realized that each of the cells of which it is built up  measures only one tenth-thousandth of an inch in  diameter, that the transit fibres which connect them  are of altogether unimaginable fineness, the limitless-  ness of the powers of Thought and the inconceivable  complexity of these processes will begin to be under-  stood.

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 287

Now it is owing to the necessity for having a cer-  tain number of the more useful routes established be-  fore the babe can be trusted from its Mother’s side,  that the delay of Infancy is required. And even after  the child has begun to practise the art of living for  itself, time has still to be granted for many purposes 
—for new route-making, for becoming familiar with  established thoroughfares, for practising upon obsta-  cles and gradients, for learning to perform the jour-  neys quickly and without fatigue, for allowing acts re-  peated to accelerate and embody themselves as habits. 
In the savage-state, where the after-life is simple, the  adjustments are made with comparative ease and  speed; but as we rise in the scale of civilization the  necessary period of Infancy lengthens step by step,  until in the case of the most highly educated man,  where adjustments must be made to a wide intellect-  ual environment, the age of tutelage extends for al-  most a quarter of a century.

The use of all this to morals, the reactions espe-  cially upon the Mother, are too obvious to dwell  on. Till the brain arrived, everything was too  brief, too rapid for ethical achievements; animals  were in a hurry to be born, children thirsted to  be free. There was no helplessness to pity, no  pain to relieve, no quiet hours, no watching; to  the Mother, no moment of suspense —the most  educative moment of all—when the spark of life in  her little one burned low. Parents could be no use  to their offspring physically, and the offspring could  be no use to their parents psychically. The young  required no Infancy; the old acquired no Sympathy. 
Even among the other Mammalia or the Birds the

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Mother’s chance was small. There, Infancy extends  to a few days or weeks, yet is but an incident in a life  preoccupied with sterner tasks. A lioness will bleed  for her cub to-day, and in to-morrow’s struggle for life  contend with it to the death. A sheep knows its  lamb only while it is alamb. The affection in these  cases, fierce enough while it lasts, is soon forgotten,  and the traces it left in the brain are obliterated be-  fore they have furrowed into habit. Among the Car-  nivora it is instructive to observe that while the brief  span of infancy admits of the Mother learning a little 
Love, the father, for want of even so brief a lesson, re-  mains untouched, so wholly untouched indeed that  the Mother has often to hide her offspring from him  lest they be devoured. Love then had no chance till  the Human Mother came. To her alone was given a  curriculum prolonged enough to let her graduate in  the school of the affections. Not for days or weeks,  but for months, as the cry of her infant’s helplessness  went forth, she must stand between the flickering  flame and death; and for years to come, until the bud-  ding intellect could take its own command, this Love  dare not grow cold, or pause an hour in its unselfish  ministry.

Begin at the beginning again and recall the fact  of woman’s passive strain. A tendency to passivity  means, among other things, a capacity to sit still. Be  it but for a minute or an hour does not matter; the  point is that the faintest possible capacity is there. 
For this is the embryo of Patience and if much and  long nursed a fully fledged Patience will come out of  it. Supply next to this new virtue some definite ob-  ject on which to practise, let us say a child. When

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 289

this child is in trouble the Mother will observe the  signs of pain. Its cry will awaken associations, and  in some dull sense the Mother will feel with it. But 
“feeling with another” is the literal translation of  the name of a second virtue—Sympathy. From feel-  ing with it, the parent will sooner or later be led to do  something to help it; then it will do more things to  help it; finally it will be always helping it. Now, to  care for things is to become Careful; to tend things is  to become Tender. Here are four virtues—Patience, 
Sympathy, Carefulness, Tenderness—already dawning  upon mankind.

On occasion Sympathy will be called out in unusual  ways. Crises will occur—dangers, famines, sick-  nesses. At first the Mother will be unable to meet  these extreme demands—her fund of Sympathy is too  poor. She cannot take any exceptional trouble, or for-  get herself, or do anything very heroic. The child,  unable to breast the danger alone, dies. It is well  that this should be so. It is the severity and right-  eous justice of Nature—the tragedy of Ivan Ivan-  ovitch anticipated by Evolution. A Mother who hag  failed in helpfulness must leave no successor to per-  petuate her unworthiness in posterity. Somewhere  else, however, developing along similar lines, there is  another fractionally better Mother. When the emer-  gency occurs, she rises to the occasion. For one hour  she transcends herself. That day a cubit is added to  the moral stature of mankind; the first act of Self- 
Sacrifice is registered in favor of the human race. It  may or may not be that the child will acquire its 
Mother’s virtue. But unselfishness has scored; its  child has proved itself fitter to survive than the child

19

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of Selfishness. It does not follow that in all circum-  stances the nobler will be always victorious: but it  has a great chance. A few score more of centuries,  a few more millions of Mothers, and the germs of 
Patience, Carefulness, Tenderness, Sympathy, and 
Self-Sacrifice will have rooted themselves in Hu-  manity.

See then what the Savage Mother and her Babe  have brought into the world. When the first Mother  awoke to her first tenderness and warmed her loneli-  ness at her infant’s love, when for a moment she for-  got herself and thought upon its weakness or its pain,  when by the most imperceptible act or sign or look of  sympathy she expressed the unutterable impulse of  her Motherhood, the touch of a new creative hand was  felt upon the world. However short the earliest in-  fancies, however feeble the sparks they fanned, how-  ever long heredity took to gather fuel enough for a  steady flame, it is certain that once this fire began to  warm the cold hearth of Nature and give human-  ity a heart, the most stupendous task of the past was  accomplished. A softened pressure of an uncouth  hand, a human gleam in an almost animal eye, an  endearment in an inarticulate voice—feeble things  enough. Yet in these faint awakenings lay the hope  of the human race. “From of old we have heard the  monition, ‘ Except ye be as babes ye cannot enter the  kingdom of Heaven’; the latest science now shows  us—though in a very different sense of the words—  that unless we had been as babes, the ethical phe-  nomena which give all its significance to the phrase 
‘Kingdom of Heaven’ would have been non-exist-  ent for us. Without the circumstances of Infancy,

THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 291

we might have become formidable among animals  through sheer force of sharp-wittedness. But except  for these circumstances we should never have com-  prehended the meaning of such phrases as ‘ self-sacri-  fice’ or ‘devotion. The phenomena of social life  would have been omitted from the history of the  world, and with them the phenomena of ethics and  religion. *

1 Fiske, Cosmic Philosophy Vol. I1., p. 363.

CHAPTER IX. 
THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

In last chapter we watched the beautiful experi-  ment of Nature making Mothers. Wesaw how the  young produced at one birth were gradually reduced  in numbers until it was possible for affection to con-  centrate upon a single object; how that object was  delayed in birth till it was a likeable and presentable  thing; how it was tied to its mother’s side by phys-  ical bonds, and hindered there for years to give time  for the Mother’s care to ripen into love. We saw,  what was still more instructive, that Nature, when  she had laid the train for perfecting these arrange-  ments, gave up making any more animals; and that  there were physiological reasons why this well-  mothered class should survive beyond all others, and,  by sheer physiological fitness, henceforth dominate  the world.

But there was still a crowning task to accomplish. 
The world was now beginning to fill with Mothers,  but there were no Fathers. During all this long  process the Father has not even been named. Noth-  ing that has been done has touched or concerned him  almost in the least degree, He has gone his own way

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lived outside all these changes ; and while Nature has  succeeded in moulding a human Mother and a human  child, he still wanders in the forest a savage and  unblessed soul.

This time for him, nevertheless, is not lost. In  his own way he is also at school, and learning lessons  which will one day be equally needed by humanity. 
The acquisitions of the manly life are as necessary  to human character as the virtues which gather their  sweetness by the cradle; and these robuster elements 
—strength, courage, manliness, endurance, self-reli-  ance—could only have been secured away from  domestic cares. Apart from that, it was not neces-  sary to put the Father through the same mill as the 
Mother. Whatever the Mother gained would be  handed on to her boys as well as to her girls, and  with the law of heredity to square accounts, it was  unnecessary for each of the two great sides of human-  ity to make the same investments. By one acquiring  one set of virtues and the other another, the blend in  the end would be the richer; and, without obliter-  ating the eternal individualities of each, the measure  of completeness would be gained more quickly for the  race. Before heredity, however, could do its work  upon the Father a certain basis had to be laid. With  his original habits he would squander the hereditary  gains as fast as he received them, and unless some  change was brought about in his mode of life the old  wild blood in his veins would counteract the gentler  influence, and leave all the Mother’s work in vain. 
Hence Nature had to set about another long and diffi-  cult process—to make the savage Father a reformed

character.

294 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

The Evolution of a Father is not so beautiful a pro-  cess as the Evolution of a Mother, but it was almost  as formidable a problem to attack. As much de-  pended on it, as we shall see, as the training of the  mother; and though it began later it required the  bringing about of one or two changes in Nature as  novel as any that preceded it. When the work was  begun, the Father was in a much worse plight, so far  as training for family life was concerned, than the 
Mother. If Maternity was at a feeble level in the  lower reaches of Nature, Paternity was non-existent. 
Among a few Invertebrates the male parent took a  passing share in the care of the egg, but it is not until  we are all but at the top that fatherly interest finds  any real expression. Among the Birds, the parents  unite together in most cases to build the nest, the 
Father doing the rough work of bringing in moss and  twigs, while the more trusty Mother does the actual  work. When the eggs are laid, the male parent also  takes his turn at incubation; supplies food and pro-  tection ; and lingers round the place of birth to defend  the fledglings to the last. When we leave the Birds,  however, and pass on to the Mammals, the Fathers  are nearly all backsliders. Many are not only indif-  ferent to their young, but hostile: and among the 
Carnivora the Mothers have frequently to hide their  little ones in case the father eats them.

We have another and a more serious count against  early Fatherhood. If the Love of Father for child  was in this backward state, infinitely more grave was  the condition of things between him and the Mother. 
Probably we have all taken it for granted that hus-  bands and wives have always loved one another.

‘

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Evolution takes nothing for granted. The affection  between husband and wife is, of all the immeasurable  forms of Love, the most beautiful, the most lasting,  and the most divine ; yet up to this time we have  not been able even to record its existence. The  finished results of Evolution appear so natural to  us, looking back from this late day, that we contin-  ually ignore the difficulties it had to meet, and forget  how every single step in progress from the lowest to  the highest had to be carried at the bayonet’s point. 
The most informed naturalist probably has never  given Nature credit for a thousandth part of the work  she has done, or has succeeded in presenting to his  mind more than a surface outline of the gigantic  series of problems she had to solve. In lower Nature,  as a simple fact, male and female do not love one  another; and in the lower reaches of Human Nature,  husband and wife do not love one another. Among  exceptional nations, for the last few hours of the  world’s history, husbands and wives have truly loved;  but for the vast mass of Mankind, during the long  ages which preceded historic times, conjugal love was  probably all but unknown.

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

296 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

development. As the other half of the arch on which  the whole higher world is built, his taming, his do-  mestication, his moral discipline, are vital; and in the  nature of things this was the next great operation 
‘undertaken by Evolution.

The first step in the transition was to relate him,  definitely and permanently, to the Mother. And here  a formidable initial obstacle had to be encountered. 
The apathy and estrangement between husband and  wife in the animal world is radical and universal. 
There is almost no such thing there as married life. 
Marriage, in anthropology, is not a word for an oc-  casion, but for a state; it is not, that is to say, a  wedding, but a dwelling together throughout life of  husband and wife. Now when Man emerged from the  animal creation this institution of conjugal life had  not been arrived at. Marriage like everything else  has been slowly evolved, and until it was evolved,  until they learned to dwell continually together, there  was no chance for mutual love to spring up between  male and female. In Nature the pairing season is  usually but an incident. It lasts only a very short  time, and during the rest of the year, with some ex-  ceptions the sexes remain apart. From the investi-  gations of Westermarck,—who has lately contributed to  sociology the most masterly account of the Evolu-  tion of Marriage we possess—it appears more than  probable that the earliest progenitors of Man had also  a pairing season, and that the young were born ata  particular time of the year, and never at any other  time. All the animals nearest to Man in Nature have  such a season, and there are only a few known—the  elephant for instance, and some of the whales—which

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 297

have none. Now the brevity of this period in the  father’s case must have told against his developing  any real affection. If he is to run away a few days  after the young are born he will miss all the disci-  pline of the home, and as this discipline is essential, as  this is the only way in which love can be acquired,  or inherited love developed, some method must be  adopted in his case to extend the period of home life  during which it can act.

Now let us see how this was done. The problem  being to give Love time, the solution was in some way  to alter the circumstances which confined the pairing  season to a specific date—to abolish, in fact, the  pairing season in the case of Man, and lengthen  out the time in which husband and wife should stay  together. And as this was actually the method  adopted, we have first to ask what these special  circumstances were. Why should animals have speci-  fic dates at all? The clue will be found if we examine  carefully what these dates are and the reasons Nature  has had for choosing them. Some wise principle  must underlie this, or it would not be the universal  rule itis. The pairing time with Birds, as every one  knows, occurs in the Spring. With Reptiles this is  also the case; but among Mammals each species has a  season peculiar to itself, every separate month being  selected by one or other, and invariably adhered to. 
“The bat pairs in January and February; the wild  camel in the desert to the east of Lake Lob-nor, from  the middle of January nearly to the end of February ;  the Canis Azare and the Indian bison in winter; the  weasel in March; the kulan from May to July; the  musk-ox at the end of August; the elk, in the Baltic

298 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

Provinces, at the end of August, and, in Asiatic Rus-  sia, in September or October ; the wild Yak in Tibet  in September; the reindeer in Norway at the end of 
September; the badger in October; the Capra pyre-  naica in November; the chamois, the musk-deer, and  the orongo-antelope in November and December; the  wolf, from the end of December to the middle of 
February.’? It might seem that no law governed  these various dates, but their very variety is the proof  of an underlying principle. For these dates show  that each animal in each particular country chooses  that time of the year to give birth to her young when  they will have the best chance of surviving—that is to  say, when the climate is mildest, food most abundant,  and the prospects of life on the whole most favor-  able. The dormouse thus brings forth its young in 
August, when the nuts begin to.ripen; and the young  deer sees the light just before the first grass shoots  into greenness. Because those born at this season  survived and those born out of it perished, by the  prolonged action of Natural Selection these dates in  time probably became engrained in the species, and  would only alter with climate itself.

But when Man’s Evolution made a certain progress,  and when the Mother’s care reached mature perfec-  tion, it was no longer imperative for children to be  born only when the sun was shining, and the fruits  grew ripe. The parents could now make provision  for any weather and for any dearth. They could give  their little ones clothes when nights grew cold; they  could build barns and granaries against times of  famine. In any climate, and at any time, their young

1 Westermarck’s History of Human Marriage, p. 26.

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 299

were safe; and the old marriage dates, with their sub-  sequent desertions, were struck from the human cal-  endar. So arose, or at least was inaugurated, Family 
Life, the first and the last nursery of the higher sym-  pathies, and the home of all that was afterwards holy  in the world. One could not find a simpler instance  of the growing sovereignty of Mind over the powers  of Nature. So remote a cause as the inclination of  the earth’s axis, and the consequent changes of the  seasons, determines the time of Marriage for almost  the whole animal creation, while Man, and a few other  forms of hfe whose environment is exceptional, are  able to refuse all such dictations. It was when Man’s  mind became capable of making its own provisions  against the weather and the crops that the possibility  of Fatherhood, Motherhood, and the Family were re-  alized.

The supporters of the hypothesis of promiscuity  have tried to show, what would almost follow from  their theory, that the children in primitive times be-  longed rather to the tribe. But itis not likely that  this was the case. The hypothesis of promiscuity  itself, notwithstanding its support from M’Lennan, 
Morgan, Lubbock, Bastian, Post and other authorities,  has probably received its deathblow; and the ancient-  ness of the family as well as of the institution of Mar-  riage are both vindicated by later facts. “ Every-  where,” writes Westermarck, “we find the tribes or  clans composed of several families, the members of  each family being more closely connected with one  another than with the rest of the tribe. The amily,  consisting of parents, children, and often also their  next descendants, is a universal institution among ex-

300 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

isting people. And it seems extremely probable that  among our early human ancestors, the Family proved,  if not the Society itself, at least the nucleus of it. I  do not, of course, deny that the tie which bound the  children to the Mother was much more intimate and  more lasting than that which bound them to the 
Father; but it seems to me that the only result to  which a critical investigation of facts can lead us is,  that in all probability there has been no stage of  human development where marriage has not existed,  and that the father has always been, as a rule, the  protector of his Family.” ?

But the process is not yet quite completed. With  the longer time together husband and wife may get  to know and lean upon one another a little, but the  time is still too short for deep affection, and there  remain one or two serious obstacles to remove. In-  deed, unless some further steps are taken, this first  achievement must end in failure. As a matter of fact,  it has often ended in failure, and there have been and  still are tribes and nations where love between hus-  band and wife is non-existent. Among the Hoyas, we  are assured by authorities, the idea of love between  husband and wife is “hardly thought of”; that at 
Winnebah “not even the appearance of affection ”  exists between them; that among the Beni-Amer it is 
“considered even disgraceful for a wife to show any  affection for her husband”; that the Chittagong Hill  tribes have “no idea of tenderness nor of chivalrous  devotion”; and that the Eskimo treat their wives 
“with great coldness and neglect.” The savage  cruelty with which wives are treated by the Aus-

1 Op. cit., pp. 42-50.

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATUER. S01

tralian aborigines is indicated even in their weapons. 
The very names “Servant, Slave,’ by which the 
Brahman address their wives, and the wife’s reply, 
“ Master, Lord,” symbolize the gulf between the two. 
There are exceptions, it is true, and often touching  exceptions. Travellers cite instances of constancy  among savage peoples which reach the region of  romance. Probably there never was a time, indeed,  nor a race, when some measure of sympathy did not  stir between husband and wife. But when we con-  sider all the facts, it is impossible to doubt that in the  region of all the higher affections the savage wife and  the savage husband were all but strangers to each  other.

What then was wanting for the perfecting of the  domestic tie, and how did Evolution secure it? In  the animal creation, we have already witnessed the  methods which Nature took to get more care out of  little care, to make a short-lived sympathy grow into  a great sympathy. Her method was first, concen-  tration; and second, extension of time. By giving a 
Mother one or two young to care for instead of a  hundred, she made care practicable, and by lengthen-  ing the period of infancy from hours to years she  made it inevitable. And these are again her methods  in perfecting love between man and wife. By abolish-  ing the pairing season she lengthened the time for  love to grow in; the next step is to perfect the object  on which it shall focus. For there was again the  same sort of barrier to a full-blown love which we  saw before in the animal kingdom. An animal  mother could not truly love in the early days because  she had a hundred or a thousand young. Man could

302 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

not love in the early days because he had a dozen  wives. This love was too diluted to come to any-  thing. What Evolution next worked at was to get  a quintessence. Polygamy, in other words the scat-  tered love of many, must, from this time forward, be  changed into monogamy—the absorbing love of one. 
And this transposition was gradually introduced. A  few polygamous people, a very few at first, become  monogamous. The new system worked better, it  spread, and was finally adopted by those higher  nations which it also helped to create. It is an  instance, nevertheless, of the slowness with which  radical changes succeed in leaving great masses of  mankind, that the older system, with the ban -of 
Evolution upon it, still survives in Modern Europe. 
Yet there are signs, even among the uncivilized, that  polygamy is passing away. Among some almost  savage tribes it is unknown; among others prohibited. 
Even in a polygamous community it is usually only a  minority who have more wives than one. And where  the plural system is in full force, the tendency—the 
Evolutionist would say the transition—to monogamy  is plainly marked, for among the many wives pos-  sessed by any individual, there is generally one who  is first favorite and ranks as helpmeet or wife. The  stress just laid upon the ethical gains of the monog-  amous state as contrasted with the polygamous, of  course only emphasizes one side of the question, and  by the pure naturalist might be ruled out of court. 
Were the physiologist to go over the same ground he  could give a parallel account of the development, and  show that on the merely physiological plane the tran-  sition to monogamy and the rise of the Family was

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 303

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

This barrier removed, Evolution had still much to  do to the other—the brevity of the time during which  husband and wife remained together. What short  work Nature had already made of this obstacle—by  abolishing the pairing season—we have just seen. 
But that requires supplementing. It is not enough to  give time for mutual knowledge and affection after  marriage. Nature must-deepen the result by extend-  ing it to the time before marriage. In primitive times  there was no such thing as courtship. Men secured  their wives in three ways, and in uncivilized nations  so find them still. Among barbarous nations mar-  riage is not a case of love, but of capture; among the  semi-barbarous it is a case of barter; and among the  imperfectly civilized—among whom we must often in-  clude ourselves—a matter of convention. The second  of these, the purchase system—a slightly evolved form  of marriage by capture—is probably one through  which all human Marriage has passed; and relics of it  still exist in the dos and other symbols among nations  with whom the custom of buying a bride has long  since passed away. By degrading the object of barter  to the level of a chattel, this system is a barrier to  high affection. But in most cases this is heightened  by the impossibility of that preliminary courtship  which leads to mutual knowledge and intelligent love. 
The bride and bridegroom, in the extremer cases, meet  as total strangers; and though affection may bud in

304 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

after years, the mingling of unknown temperaments,  together with the destruction of reverence for woman  by treating her as an article of barter, make the  chances small of it blossoming into a flower. 
Courtship, with its vivid perceptions and quickened  emotions, is a great opportunity for Evolution; and to  institute and lengthen reasonably a period so rich in  impression is one of its latest and highest efforts. To  give love time, indeed, has been all along, and through  a great variety of arrangements, the chief means of  establishing it on the earth. Unfortunately, the lesson  of Nature here is being all too slowly learned even  among nations with its open book before them. In  some of the greatest of civilized countries, real mutual  knowledge between the youth of the sexes is unattain-  able; marriages are made only by a higher kind of  purchase, and the supreme step in life is taken in the  dark. Whatever safeguards this method provides it  cannot be final, nor can those nations rise to any ex-  alted social height or moral greatness till some change  occurs. It has been given especially to one nation to  lead the world in its assault upon this mistaken law,  and to demonstrate to mankind that in the uncon-  strained and artless relations of youth lie higher safe-  guards than the polite conventions of society can  afford. The people of America have proved that the  blending of the sweet currents of different family-lives  in social intercourse, in recreation, and—most original  of all—in education, can take place freely and joyously  without any sacrifice of man’s reverence for woman, or  womas reverence for herself; and, springing out of  these naturally mingled lives, there must more and  more come those sacred and happy homes which are

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 305

the surest guarantees for the moral progress of a 
_hation. So long as the first concern of a country is  for its homes, it matters little what it seeks second or  third. Long before Evolution showed its scientific  interest in this first social aggregate, and proclaimed  it the strategic point in moral progress, poetry, philos-  ophy, and history assigned the same great place to 
Family-life. The one point, indeed, where all students  of the past agree, where all prophets of the future  meet, where all the sciences from biology to ethics are  enthusiastically at one, is in their faith in the im-  perishable potentialties of this yet most simple insti-  tution.

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

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306 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

never visited nor knew was there, which she herself  dared scarce acknowledge, a Child drew forth the first  fresh bud of a Love which was not passion, a Love  which was not selfish,a Love which was an incense  from its Maker, and whose fragrance from that hour  went forth to sanctify the world. Later, long later,  through the same tiny and unconscious intermediary,  the father’s soul was touched. And one day, in the  love of a little child, Father and Mother met.

That this is the true lineage of love, that it has  descended not from Husbands and Wives but through  children, is proved by the simplest study of savage  life. Love for children is always a prior and a  stronger thing than love between Father and Mother. 
The indifference of the Husband to his Wife—though  often greatly exaggerated by anthropology—is all too  manifest, and throughout whole regions the Wife does  not love but only fears her Husband. For the  children on the other hand both parents have almost  always aregard. The universality of a Mother’s Love  is one of the revelations of travel. Even among  cannibals, where the shocking treatment of Wives by  their Husbands is in daily evidence, a case of cruelty  to children from the Mother’s side—apart from in-  fanticide which has a rationale of its own—is rarely  heard of. The status of children if not ideal forms a  most striking contrast to the general moral and social  level ; and one cannot but decide that they have been  unconsciously the true moral teachers of the world. 
Had the institution of the Family depended on Sex  and not on affection it would probably never have  endured for any time. Love is eternal; Sex, tran-  sient. Its unbridled expression in individual natures,

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 307

and its recklessness when thwarted, have given rise  to exaggerated ideas of its power. In all uncontrolled  forms, however, it becomes so immediate a menace to  social order, that if it does not die out in self-destruc-  tion it is checked by the community and forced into  lawful channels. The only thing that could bear the  heavy burden of social order and adapt itself to every  change and fresh demand was the indestructibly solid  yet elastic, strength of love. The care and culture  of love therefore became thenceforth the first great  charge of Evolution, and every obstruction to its path  began to be swept away. Whatever facilities could  further its career were gradually adopted, and changes  which soon began to pass over the face of all human  societies seemed but parts of one great conspiracy to  hasten its final reign.

For a prolonged and protective Fatherhood, once  introduced into the world, was immediately taken  charge of by Natural Selection. The children who  had fathers to fight for them grew up ; those which  had not, were killed or starved. The lengthening of  the period during which Father and Mother kept to-  gether meant double protection for the little ones ;  and the more they kept together for the first few  days or weeks, and the more the Father helped to  defend mother and child, the more chance for all three  in the end. The picture which Koppenfells draws of  the female Gorilla and her young ensconced in a nest  upon the fork of a tree, while Gorilla pére sat all  night at the foot with his back against the trunk  to protect them from the leopards, is a fair object-  lesson in the first or protective stage of the Father’s 
Evolution. When Man passed, however, as he prob-

808 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

ably did, from the frugivorous to the carnivorous  state, the Father had the additional responsibility of  keeping his family in food. It would be impossible  for a Mother to hunt for game and attend to her  young; and for a long time the young themselves  were useless in the chase, and must be entirely de-  pendent on their parents’ bounty. But this means  promotion to the Father. He is not only protector  but food-provider. It is impossible to believe that in  process of time the discharge of this office did not  bring some faint satisfactions to himself, that the mere  sight of his offspring fed instead of famished did not  give him a certain pleasure. And though the pleasure  at first may have been no more than the absence of  the annoyance they caused by the clamorousness of  their want, it became a stimulus to exertion, and led  in the end to rudimentary forms of sympathy and  self-denial.

Once established in the world as a winning force,  love could only yield to a greater force than itself and  greater force there is none. In the hands of Natura 
Selection, therefore, it ran its course. Whatever phys-  iological adjustments continued to go on beneath the  surface, ethical factors now determined extinction or  survival. Bad parents mean starved children, and  starved children will be replaced in the Struggle for 
Life by full-fed children, and ere a few generations  parents without love will exist no more. The child,  on the other hand, which has drunk most deeply of  its Father’s or its Mother’s love lives to hand on that  which has spared it to a succeeding race. How much  of affection is handed on, or how little, matters not,  for Heredity works with the finest microscope, and

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 809

sees, and seizes, the invisible. In a second child,  reared by parents one degree more loving than the  last, this ultimate particle of love will grow a little  more, and each succeeding Family in this royal line  will be richer in the elements which make for prog-  ress than the last.

When we reach the human Family, we find that  this simple combination was already strong enough to  become the nucleus of the social and national life of  the world. For the moment the new forces of Sym-  pathy, Brotherhood, Self-denial, or Love, began to  work among the isolated units which made up primi-  tive Man, the whole composition and character of the  aggregate began to change. Sooner or later in the  recurring necessities of savage existence there came  an opportunity for the members of the first combina-  tion, the little group of Father, Mother, and Sons,  to act together. However unworthily this primitive  group merited the name of Family, there was here  what at that time was of final importance—the ele-  ments of physical strength. He who formerly stood  alone in the Struggle for Life now found himself  backed on occasion by an inner circle. Those who  outside this circle ventured to oppose or offend an  individual within it had the Family to reckon with. 
Ends were gained by the new alliance which were un-  attainable single-handed by any individual member of  the tribe, and whether enlisted to evade disaster or  secure a prey, to resist an injustice or avenge a wrong,  the odds henceforth and always were in favor of the  combination. When it is remembered how, owing to  the comparative equality of the competitors in the  conflict of savage existence, even an infinitesimal

310 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

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

But great as are the physical advantages of the 
Family, the ethical uses, even in the early days of its  existence, place this institution at the head of all the  creations of Evolution. For the Family is not only  its greatest creation, but its greatest instrument for  further creation. The ethical changes begin almost  the moment it is formed. One immediate effect, for  instance, of the formation of Family groups was to  take off from any single individual the perpetual  strain of the Struggle for Life. The Family as a  whole must sometimes fight, but the responsibility  and the duty are now distributed, and those who were  once solely pre-occupied with the personal struggle  will have respites, during which other things will  occupy their minds. Attention thus called off from  environing enemies, the members of the Family will,  as it were, discover one another. New relations  among them will spring up, new adjustments to one  another’s presence and to one another’s needs, and  hitherto unknown elements of character will be grad-  ually called to the surface. That unselfishness, in  some rude form, should now grow up is a necessity of  living together. A man cannot be a member of a

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 311

Family and remain an utter egoist. His interests are  perforce divided, and though the Family group is a  small surface for unselfishness to spread to and to  practise on, no greater feat could as yet be attempted,  and Evolution never runs risks of too rapid develop-  ment or oyer-strain. With the incorporation of the 
Family into a Clan or Tribe the area will presently  be extended, and the necessity of controlling self-  interest more thoroughly, or merging it in a wider  interest, become more obligatory. But to prepare the  altruistic sentiment for so great an abnegation, the  simpler discipline of the Family was required. How  firmly Families in time became welded together in  mutual interest and support, and how much crude 
Altruism this implies, is evident from the place of 
Family feuds and the power of great Families and 
Houses both in ancient and modern history. <A strik-  ing instance is the Vendetta. To avenge a Family  insult in countries where this prevails was a sacred  duty to all the relatives, and even the last surviving  member willingly gave up his life to vindicate its  honor. So strong indeed sometimes has grown the  power of individual Families that the more desirable  spread of Altruism to the Nation was threatened, and  wider interests so much forgotten that the Family  became the enemy of the State. Nothing could more  forcibly show the tremendous power of self-develop-  ment contained within the Family circle, and the  solidity and strength to which it can grow, than  that, time after time in history, it has had to be  crushed and broken up by all the forces of the 
State.

Among other elements in human nature fostered in

812 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

the Family is one of exceptional interest. The at-  tempt has been made to show that from the inevitable  relations of early Family life, the sense of Duty first  dawned upon the world. The theme is too great, too  intricate, and too dangerous to open under the limita-  tions of the present inquiry, for these deny us the  appeal to Society, to Religion, and even to the Con-  science of the higher Man. But it is due to the 
Father, whose Evolution we are tracing, that the  share he is supposed by some authorities to take in it,  should be at least named.

That morality in general has something to do with  the relations of people to one another is evident, as  every one knows, from the mere derivation of the  word. Mores, morals, are in the first instance cus-  toms, the customs or ways which people have when  they are together. Now, the Family is the first occa-  sion of importance where we get people together. 
And as there are not only a number of people in a 
Family, but different kinds of people, there will bea  variety in the relations subsisting between them, in  the customs which stereotype the most frequently re-  peated actions necessitated by these relations, and in  the moods and attitudes of mind accompanying them. 
Leaving out of sight differences of kind among broth-  ers and sisters, consider the probably more divergent  and certainly more dominant influences of Father and 
Mother. What the relation of child to Mother has  crystallized into we have sufficiently marked—it is a  relation of direct dependence, and its product is Love. 
But the Father is a wholly different influence. What  attitude does the Child take up in this austerer pres-  ence, and what ways of acting, what customs, mores,

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 318

morals, are engrained in the child’s mind through it ? 
The acknowledged position of the Father in most early  tribes is head of the Family. To the children, and  generally even to the Mother, he represents Author-  ity. He is the children’s chief. Bachoven has famil-  iarized us with the idea of a Matriarchate, or Maternal 
Family; but although exceptional tribes have given  supremacy to the Mother, the rule is for the Father to  be supreme. As head of the Family, therefore, it was  his business to make the Family laws. No doubt the 
Mother also made laws; but the Father, as the more  terrible person, exacted obedience with greater sever-  ity, and his laws acquired more force. To do what  was pleasing in his eyes was a necessity with the  children, and his favor or his frown became standards  of what was “good” and what was “bad.” Low as  this standard was—the fear or favor of a savage 
Father—it was a beginning of right mores, good con-  duct, proper manners. Plant in the mind, or evoke  from it, the idea of acting ina given way with refer-  ence to some half-dozen daily trifles when done in the  presence of one authoritative individual, and Evolu-  tion has already found something to work on. The  children have got six, if not ten commandments. Ex-  tend the half-dozen things done rightly to a whole  dozen, and then to a score, and then to a hundred;  and let it become habitual to do these things rightly. 
When the right doing of these things commends the  doer to one person, he will next be apt to commend  himself by similar conduct to other persons, if their  standard happens to be the same. Whether good be-  havior purchases favor or simply succeeds in evading  penalties is at first immaterial. All that is required,

814 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

under whatever sanctions, is that some standard of  good or bad shall arise. No abstract sense of duty, of  course, here exists ; no perfect law; it is a purely per-  sonal and local code; but the word duty has at least  received a first imperfect meaning; and the Father, in  some rough way, forms an external conscience to  those beneath him.

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

That these moral elements, on the other hand, must  have a beginning somewhere in space and time is cer-  tain enough. Not less necessary to the world than  the Mother’s gift of Love is the twin offering of the 
Father—Righteousness. And if, almost before the  soul is born, the shadowy outline of a moral order  should begin to loom out in history, the later phases  and the later sanctions lose nothing of their quality,  are all the more wonderful and all the more divine,  because met by moral adumbrations in the distant  past. If the later children had their ten command-

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 315

ments given them in one way, they cannot grudge  that the world’s earlier children should have been  given their two or three commandments in another 
Wway—another way which, nevertheless, did we know  all, might turn out to be but another phase of the  same way. But it is impossible even to approach the 
Evolution of Morality until we have carried Man some  stages further up his Ascent. It is only when he  reaches the social stage, when he becomes aggregated  into clans, tribes, and nations, that this problem  opens. For the present we must content ourselves  with having witnessed his arrival in the Human 
Family—the starting-point and threshold of the true  moral life.

For a long time, it is true, the Family circle, as a  circle, was incomplete. Machinery must itself evolve  before its products evolve. Scarcely defined at all,  broken as soon as formed, the earlier circles allowed  their strongest forces to escape almost at the moment  they generated. But the walls grew higher and  higher with the advance of history. The leakage  became less and less. With the Christian era the  machinery was complete; the circle finally closed in,  and became a secluded shrine where the culture of  everything holy and beautiful was carried on. The  path by which this ideal consummation was reached  was not, as we have seen, a straight path; nor has the  integrity of the institution been always preserved  through the later centuries. The difficulty of realiz-  ing the ideal may be judged of by the fewness of the  nations now living who have reached it, and by the  multitude of peoples and tribes who have vanished  from the earth without attaining. From the failure

316 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

to fulfil some one or other of the required conditions  people after people and nation after nation have come  together only to disperse, and leave no legacy behind  except the lesson—as yet in few cases understood—of  why they failed.

Yet whether the road be straight or devious is of  little moment. The one significant thing is that it  rises. We have reached a stage in Evolution at  which physiological gains are guarded and accent-  uated, if not in an ethical interest, at least by eth-  ical factors becoming utilized by natural selection. 
Henceforth affection becomes a power in the world;  and whatever physiological adjustments continue to  oo on beneath the surface, the most attached Families  will have a better chance of surviving and of trans-  mitting their moral characteristics to succeeding gen-  erations. The completion of the arch of Family Life  forms one of the great, if not the greatest of the land-  marks of history. If the crowning work of Organic 
Evolution is the Mammalia; the consummation of  the Mammalia is the Family. Physically, psychi-  cally, ethically, the Family is the masterpiece of 
Evolution. The creation of Evolution, it was destined  to become the most active instrument and ally which 
Evolution has ever had. For what is its evolutionary  significance? It is the generator and the repository of  the forces which alone can carry out the social and  moral progress of the world. There they rally when  they become enfeebled, there their excesses are coun-  terbalanced, and thence they radiate out, refined and  reinforced, to do their holy work.

Looking at the mere dynamics of the question, the 
Family contains all the machinery, and nearly all the

THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 317

Ee ~

power, for the moral education of mankind. Feebly,  but adequately, in the early chapters of Man’s history  it fulfilled its function of nursing Love, the Mother of  all morality; and Righteousness, the Father of all  morality, so preparing a parentage for all the beauti-  ful spiritual children which in later years should  spring from them. If life henceforth is to go on at  all, it must be a better life, a more loving life, a more  abundant life; and this premium upon Love means—  if it means anything—that Evolution is taking hence-  forth an ethical direction. It is no more possible to  interpret Nature physically from this point than to  interpret a “Holy Family ” of Raphael’s in terms of  the material structure of canvas or the qualities of  pigments. Canvas may be coarse or fine, pigments  may be vegetable or mineral; but whether the colors  be crushed out of madder or ground out of arsenic or  lead is of no importance now. Once these things  were important; by infinitely slow processes Nature  formed them; by clever arts the colorman prepared  them. But the “Holy Family” did not lie potentially  in the madder-bud, nor in the earth with the lead and  arsenic, nor in the laboratory with the colorman. He  who claims Nature for Matter and Physical force  makes the same assumption that these would do if  they claimed the painting. In a far truer sense than 
Raphael produced his “Holy Family” Nature has  produced a Holy Family. Not for centuries but for  millenniums the Family has survived. Time has not  tarnished it; no later art has improved upon it; nor  genius discovered anything more lovely ; nor religion  anything more divine. From the bee’s cell and the  butterfly’s wing men draw what they call the Argu-

318 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER.

ment from Design; but it is in the kingdoms which  come without on ccranane in these great immaterial  orderings which Science is but beginning to perceive,  that the purposes of Creation are revealed.

CHAPTER X. 
INVOLUTION.

Many years ago, in the clay which in every part of  the world is found underlying beds of coal, a peculiar  fossil was discovered and named by science Stigmaria. 
It occurred in great abundance and in many countries,  and from the strange way in which it ramified  through the clay it was supposed to be some extinct  variety of a gigantic water-weed. In the coal itself  another fossil was discovered, almost as abundant but  far more beautiful, and from the exquisite carving  which ornamented its fluted stem it received the name  of Sigillaria. One day a Canadian geologist, studying 
Sigillaria in the field, made a new discovery. Finding  the trunk of a Sigillaria standing erect in a bed of  coal, he traced the column downwards to the clay  beneath. To his surprise he found it ended in Stig-  maria. This branching fossil in the clay was no  longer a water-weed. It was the root of which Sigil  laria was the stem, and the clay was the soil in which  the great coal-plant grew.

Through many chapters, often in the dark, every-  where hampered by the clay, we have been working

among roots. Of what are they the roots? To what 
319

320 INVOLUTION.

order do they betong? By what process have they  grown? What connection have they with the realm  above, or the realm beneath? Is it a Stigmaria or a 
Sigillaria world ?

Till yesterday Science did not recognize them even  as roots. They were classified apart. They led to  nothing. No organic connection was known between  lower Nature and that wholly separate and all but  antagonistic realm, the higher world of Man. Atoms,  cells, plants, animals were the material products of a  separate creation, the clay from which Man took his  clay-body, and no more. The higher world, also, was  a system by itself. It rose out of nothing; it rested  upon nothing. Clay, where the roots lay, was the  product of inorganic forces; Coal, which enshrined  the tree, was a creation of the sunlight. What fellow-  ship had light with darkness? What possible connec-  tion could exist between that beautiful organism  which stood erect in the living, and that which lay  prone in the dead? Yet, by a process doubly verified,  the organic connection between these two has now  been traced. Working upwards through the clay the  biologist finds what he took to be an organism of the  clay leaving his domain and passing into a world  above—a world which he had scarcely noticed before,  and into which, with such instruments as he employs,  he cannot follow it. Working downward through the  higher world, the psychologist, the moralist, the soci-  ologist, behold the even more wonderful spectacle of  the things they had counted a peculiar possession of  the upper kingdom, burying themselves in ever at-  tenuating forms in the clay beneath. What is to be  made of this discovery? Once more, Is it a Stigmaria

INVOLUTION. 321

or a Sigillaria world? Is the biologist to give up his  clay or the moralist his higher kingdom? Are Mind, 
Morals, Men, to be interpreted in terms of roots, or  are atoms and cells to be judged by the flowers and  fruits of the tree?

The first fruit of the discovery must be that each  shall explore with new respect the other’s world, and,  instead of delighting to accentuate their contrasts,  strive to magnify their infinite harmonies. Old as is  the world’s vision of a cosmos, and universal as has  been its dream of the unity of Nature, neither has  ever stood before the imagination complete. Poetry  felt, but never knew, that the universe was one; 
Biology perceived the profound chemical balance  between the inorganic and organic kingdoms, and no  more; Physics, discovering the correlation of forces,  constructed a cosmos of its own; Astronomy, through  the law of gravitation, linked us, but mechanically,  with the stars. Butit was reserved for Evolution to  make the final revelation of the unity of the world, to  comprehend everything under one generalization, to  explain everything by one great end. Its omnipresent  eye saw every phenomenon and every law. It  gathered all that is and has been into one last whole 
—a whole whose very perfection consists in the all  but infinite distinctions of the things which it unites.

What is often dreaded in Evolution—the danger of  obliterating distinctions that are vital—is a ground-  less fear. Stigmaria can never be anything more than  root, and Sigillaria can never be anything less than  stem. To show their connection is not to transpose  their properties. The wider the distinctions seen  among their properties the profounder is the Thought 
ai

322) INVOLUTION.

which unites them, the more rich and rational the 
Cosmos which comprehends them. For “the unity  which we see in Nature is that kind of Unity which  the Mind recognizes as the result of operations similar  to its own—not a unity which consists in mere same-  ness of material, or in mere identity of composition,  or in mere uniformity of structure; but a unity which  consists in the subordination of all these to similar  aims, not to similar principles of action—that is to  say, in like methods of yoking a few elementary forces  to the discharge of special functions, and to the pro-  duction, by adjustment, of one harmonious whole.” 4 
Yet did Sigillaria grow out of Stigmaria? Did Mind, 
Morals, Men, evolve out of Matter? Surely if one is  the tree and the other the root of that tree, and if 
Evolution means the passage of the one into the other,  there is no escape from. this conclusion—no escape  therefore from the crassest materialism? If this is  really the situation, the lower must then include the  higher, and Evolution, after all, be a process of the  clay? This is a frequent, a natural, and a wholly  unreflecting inference from a very common way of  stating the Evolution theory. It arises from a total  misconception of what a root is. Because a thing is  seen to have roots, it is assumed that it has grown out  of these roots, and must therefore belong to the root-  order. But neither of these things is true in Nature. 
Are the stem, branch, leaf, flower, fruit of a tree roots ? 
Do they belong to the root-order? They do not. 
Their whole morphology is different; their whole  physiology is different; their reactions upon the world  around are different. But it must be allowed that 
1 Duke of Argyll, The Unity of Nature, p. 44.

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

Sigillaria, then, as representing the ethical order,  did not grow out of Stigmaria as representing the  organic or the material order. ‘Trees not only do not  evolve out of their roots, but whole classes in the  plant world—the sea-weeds for instance—have no roots  at all. If any possible relation exists it is exactly  the opposite one—it is the root which evolves from the  tree. ‘Trees send down roots in a far truer sense than  roots send up trees. Yet neither is the whole truth. 
The true function of the root is to give stability to the  tree, and to afford a medium for conveying into it  inorganic matter from without. And this brings us

324. INVOLUTION.

face to face with the real relation. ‘Tree and root—the  seed apart—find their explanation not in one another  nor in something in themselves, but mainly in some-  thing outside themselves. The secret of Evolution lies,  in short, with the Environment. In the Environment,  in that in which things live and move and _ have  their being, is found the secret of their being, and  especially of their becoming. And what is that in  which things live and move and have their being? It  is Nature, the world, the cosmos—and something  more, some One more, an Infinite Intelligence and an 
Eternal Will. Everything that lives, lives in virtue  of its correspondences with this Environment. Evolu-  tion is not to unfold from within; it is to infold from  without. Growth is no mere extension from a root  but a taking possession of, or a being possessed by, an  ever widening Environment, a continuous process of  assimilation of the seen or Unseen, a ceaseless re-dis-  tribution of energies flowing into the evolving organ-  ism from the Universe around it. The supreme factor  in all development is Environment. Half the con-  fusions which reign round the process of Evolution,  and half the objections to it, arise from considering  the evolving object as a self-sufficient whole. Produce  an organism, plant, animal, man, society, which will  evolve in vacuo and the right is yours to say that the  tree lies in the root, the flower in the bud, the man in  the embryo, the social organism in the family of an  anthropoid ape. If an organism is to be judged in  terms of the immediate Environment of its roots, the  tree is a clay tree; but if it is to be judged by stem,  leaves, fruit, it is not a clay tree. If the moral or  social organism is to be judged in terms of the Envi-

INVOLUTION. 325

ronment of its roots, the moral and social organism is  a material organism ; but if it is to be judged in terms  of the higher influences which enter into the making  of its stem, leaves, fruit, it is not a material organism. 
Everything that lives, and every part of everything  that lives, enters into relation with different parts of  the Environment and with different things in the 
Environment; and at every step of its Ascent it com-  passes new ranges of the Environment, and is acted  upon, and acts, in different ways from those in which  it was acted upon, or acted, at the previous stage.

For what is most of all essential to remember is  that not only is Environment the prime factor in de-  velopment, but that the Environment itself rises with  every evolution of any form of life. To regard the 
Environment asa fixed quantity and a fixed quality  is, next to ignoring the altruistic factor, the cardinal  error of evolutional philosophy. With every step a  climber rises up a mountain side his Environment  must change. Ata thousand feet the air is lighter  and purer than at a hundred, and as the effect varies  with the cause, all the reactions of the air upon his  body are altered at the higher level. His pulse  quickens; his spirit grows more buoyant; the en-  ergies of the upper world flow in upon him. All the  other phenomena change—the plants are Alpine, the  animals are a hardier race, the temperature falls,  the very world he left behind wears a different look. 
At three thousand feet the causes, the effects, and  the phenomena change again. The horizon is wider,  the light intenser, the air colder, the top nearer ;  the nether world recedes from view. At six thousand  feet, if we may accentuate the illustration till it

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

Man, in his long pilgrimage upwards from the clay,  passes through regions of ever-varying character. 
Each breath drawn and utilized to make one upward  step brings him into relation with a fractionally  higher air, a fractionally different world. The new  energies he there receives are utilized, and in virtue of  them he rises to a third, and from a third to a fourth. 
As in the animal kingdom the senses open one by one 
—the eye progressing from the mere discernment of  light and darkness to the blurred image of things  near, and then to clearer vision of the more remote ;

INVOLUTION. 327

the ear passing from the tremulous sense of vibration  to distinguish with ever-increasing delicacy the  sounds of far-off things—so in the higher world the  moral and spiritual senses rise and quicken till they  compass qualities unknown before and impossible to  the limited faculties of the earlier life. So Man, not  by any innate tendency to progress in himself, nor by  the energies inherent in the protoplasmic cell from  which he first set out, but by a continuous feeding and  reinforcing of the process from without, attains the  higher altitudes, and from the sense-world at the  mountain foot ascends with ennobled and ennobling  faculties until he greets the Sun.

What is the Environment of the Social tree? It is  all the things, and all the persons, and all the in-  fluences, and all the forces with which, at each suc-  cessive stage of progress, it enters into correspond-  ence. And this Environment inevitably expands as  the Social tree expands and extends its correspond-  ences. At the savage stage Man compasses one set  of relations, at the rude social stage another, at the  civilized stage a third, and each has its own re-  actions. The social, the moral, and the religious  forces beat upon all social beings in the order in which  the capacities for them unfold, and according to the  measure in which the capacities themselves are fitted  to contain them. And from what ultimate source do  they come? There is only one source of everything  in the world. They come from the same source as the 
Carbonic Acid Gas, the Oxygen, the Nitrogen, and the 
Vapor of Water, which from the outer world enter  into the growing plant. These also visit the plant in  the order in which the capacities for them unfold, and

828 INVOLUTION.

according to the measure in which these capacities can  contain them.

The fact that the higher principles come from the  same Environment as those of the plant, neverthe-  less does not imply that they are the same as those  which enter into the plant. In the plant they are  physical, in Man spiritual. If anything is to be im-  plied it is not that the spiritual energies are physical,  but that the physical energies are spiritual. To call  the things in the physical world “ material” takes us  no nearer the natural, no further away from the  spiritual. The roots of a tree may rise from what  we calla physical world; the leaves may be bathed  by physical atoms; even the energy of the tree may  be solar energy, but the tree is itself. The tree isa 
Thought, a unity, a rational purposeful whole; the 
“matter ” is but the medium of their expression. 
Call it all—matter, energy, tree—a physical produc-  tion, and have we yet touched its ultimate reality ? 
Are we even quite sure that what we call a phys-  ical world is, after all, a physical world? The pre-  ponderating view of science at present is that it  is not. The very term “material world,” we are  told, is a misnomer; that the world is a spiritual  world, merely employing “ matter” for its manifesta-  tions.

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

INV OLUTION. 329

energy. Whence then the social energies? The  answer is as before. Whence the physical energies? 
And Science has only one answer to that. “Consider  the position into which Science has brought us. We  are led by scientific logic to an unseen, and by scienti-  fic analogy to the spirituality of this unseen. In fine,  our conclusion is, that the visible universe has been  developed by an intelligence resident in the Unseen.” ! 
There is only one theory of the method of Creation in  the field, and that is Evolution; but there is only one  theory of origins in the field, and that is Creation. 
Instead of abolishing a creative Hand, Evolution de-  mands it. Instead of being opposed to Creation, all  theories of Evolution begin by assuming it. - If Science  does not formally posit it, it never posits anything  less. “The doctrine of Evolution,” writes Mr. Huxley, 
“jig neither theistic nor anti-theistic. It has no more  to do with theism than the first book of Euclid has. 
It does not even come in contact with theism con-  sidered as a scientific doctrine.” But when it touches  the question of origins, it is either theistic or silent. 
“ Behind the co-operating forces of Nature,” says 
Weismann, “ which aim at a purpose, we must admit  acause, . . . inconceivable in its nature, of which  we can only say one thing with certainty, that it must  be theological.”

The fallacy of the merely quantitative theory of 
Evolution is apparent. To interpret any organism in  terms of the organism solely is to omit reference to  the main instrument of its Evolution, and therefore to  leave the process, scientifically and philosophically,

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

330 INVOLUTION.

unexplained. It is as if one were to construct a theory  of the career of a millionaire in terms of the pocket-  money allowed him when a schoolboy. Disregard the  fact that more pocket-money was allowed the school-  boy as he passed from the first form to the sixth; that  his allowance was increased as he came of age; that  now, being a man, not a boy, he was capable of more  wisely spending it; that being wise he put his money  to paying uses; and that interest and capital were in-  vested and re-invested as years went on—disregard  all this and you cannot account for the rise of the mill-  ionaire. As well construct the millionaire from the  potential gold contained in his first sixpence—a six-  pence which never left his pocket—as construct a  theory of the Evolution of Man from the protoplasmic  cell apart from its Environment. It is only when in-  terpreted, not in terms of himself, but in terms of 
Environment, and of an Environment increasingly  appropriated, quantitatively and qualitatively, with  each fresh stage of the advance, that a consistent  theory is possible, or that the true nature of Evolu-  tion can appear.

A child does. not grow out of a child by spon-  taneous unfoldings. The process is fed from with-  out. The body assimilates food, the mind assimi-  lates books, the moral nature draws upon affection,  the religious faculties nourish the higher being from 
Ideals. Time brings not only more things, but new  things; the higher nature inaugurates possession  of, or by, the higher order. “It lies in the very  nature of the case that the earliest form of that  which lives and develops is the least adequate to  its nature, and therefore that from which we ean

INV OLUTION. 331

+

get the least distinct clue to the inner principle  of that nature. Hence to trace a living being back  to its beginning, and to explain what follows by  such beginning, would be simply to omit almost  all that characterizes it, and then to suppose that in  what remains we have the secret of its existence. 
That is not really to explain it, but to explain  it away; for on this method, we necessarily re-  duce the features that distinguish it to a minimum,  and, when we have done so, the remainder. may  well seem to be itself reducible to something in  which the principle in question does not mani-  fest itself at all. If we carry the animal back  to protoplasm, it may readily seem possible to ex- 
“plain it as a chemical compound. And, in like  manner, by the same minimizing process, we may  seem to succeed in reducing consciousness and  self-consciousness in its simplest form to sensation,  and sensation in its simplest form to something  not essentially different from the nutritive life of  plants. The fallacy of the sorites may thus be  used to conceal all gwalitative changes under the  guise of quantitative addition or diminution, and  to bridge over all difference by the idea of gradual  transition. For, as the old school of etymologists  showed, if we are at liberty to interpose as many  connecting links as we please, it becomes easy to  imagine that things the most heterogeneous should  spring out of each other. While, however, the hy-  pothesis of gradual change—change proceeding by  infinitesimal stages which melt into each other so  that the eye cannot detect where one begins and the  other ends—imakes such a transition easier for dmagi-

332 INVOLUTION.

nation, it does nothing to diminish the difficulty or  the wonder of it for thought.” +

The value of philosophical criticism to science has  seldom appeared to more advantage than in these  words of the Master of Balliol. The following passage  from Martineau may be fitly placed beside them :— 
“In not a few of the progressionists the weak illusion  is unmistakable, that, with time enough, you may get  everything out of next to nothing. Grant us, they  seem to say, any tiniest granule of power, so close up-  on zero that itis not worth begrudging—allow it some  trifling tendency to infinitesimal movement—and we  will show you how this little stock became the  kosmos, without ever taking a step worth thinking  of, much less constituting a case for design. The  argument is a mere appeal to an incompetency in the  human imagination, in virtue of which magnitudes  evading conception are treated as out of existence ;  and an aggregate of inappreciable increments is simul-  taneously equated,—in its cause to nothing, in its  effect to the whole of things. You manifestly want  the same causality, whether concentrated in a  moment or distributed through incalculable ages;  only in drawing upon it a logical theft is more  easily committed piecemeal than wholesale. Surely it  is a mean device for a philosopher thus to crib causa-  tion by hairs-breadths, to put it out at compound  interest through all time, and then disown the debt.” 2

It is not said that the view here given of the process  of Evolution has been the actual process. The illus-  trations have been developed rather to clear up dif-

1 Edward Caird, The Evolution of Religion, Vol. 1., pp. 49-50.

? Martineau, Essays, Philosophical and Theological, p. 141.

INVOLUTION. 333

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

There are reverent minds who ceaselessly scan the  fields of Nature and the books of Science in search of  gaps—gaps which they will fill up with God. As if 
God lived in gaps? What view of Nature or of 
Truth is theirs whose interest in Science is not in  what it can explain but in what it cannot, whose quest  is ignorance not knowledge, whose daily dread is that  the cloud may lift, and who, as darkness melts from  this field or from that, begin to tremble for the place  of His abode? What needs altering in such finely  jealous souls is at once their view of Nature and of 
God. Nature is God’s writing, and can only tell the  truth; God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

If by the accumulation of irresistible evidence we  are driven—may not one say permitted—to accept 
Evolution as God’s method in creation, it is a mistaken  policy to glory in what it cannot account for. The  reason why men grudge to Evolution each of its fresh

334 INVOLUTION.

claims to show how things have been made is the  groundless fear that if we discover how they are made  we minimize their divinity. When things are known,  that is to say, we conceive them as natural, on Man’s  level; when they are unknown, we call them divine—  as if our ignorance of a thing were the stamp of its  divinity. If God is only to be left to the gaps in our  knowledge, where shall we be when these gaps are  filed up? And if they are never to be filled up, is 
God only to be found in the disorders of the world? 
Those who yield to the temptation to reserve a point  here and there for special divine interposition are apt  to forget that this virtually excludes God from the  rest of the process. If God appears periodically, he  disappears periodically. If he comes upon the scene at  special crises he is absent from the scene in the inter-  vals. Whether is all-God or occasional-God the no-  bler theory? Positively, the idea of an immanent God,  which is the God of Evolution, is infinitely grander  than the occasional wonder-worker who is the God of  an old theology. Negatively, the older view is not  only the less worthy, but it is discredited by science. 
And as to facts, the daily miracle of a flower, the  courses of the stars, the upholding and sustaining day  by day of this great palpitating world, need a living 
Will as much as the creation of atoms at the first. We  know growth is the method by which things are made  in Nature, and we know no other method. We do not  know that there are not other methods; but if there  are we do not know them. Those cases which we  do not know to be growths, we do not know to be  anything else,and we may at least suspect them to  be growths. Nor are they any the less miraculous

INVOLUTION. 335

because they appear to us as growths. A miracle is  not something quick. The doings of these things may  seem to us no miracle, nevertheless it is a miracle that  they have been done.

But, after all, the miracle of Evolution is not the  process, but the product. Beside the wonder of the  result, the problem of the process is a mere curiosity  of Science. For what is the product? It is not mount-  ain and valley, sky and sea, flower and star, this  glorious and beautiful world in which Man’s body  finds its home. It is not the god-like gift of Mind  nor the ordered cosmos where it finds so noble an exer-  cise for its illimitable powers. It is that which of all  other things in the universe commends itself, with  increasing sureness as time goes on, to the reason and  to the heart of Humanity—Love. Love is the final  result of Evolution. This is what stands out in Nat-  ure as the supreme creation. Evolution is not prog-  ress in matter. Matter cannot progress. It is a  progress in spirit, in that which is limitless, in that  which is at once most human, most rational, and most  divine. Whatever controversy rages as to the factors  of Evolution, whatever mystery enshrouds its steps,  no doubt exists of its goal. The great landmarks we  have passed, and we are not yet half-way up the 
Ascent, each separately and all together have declared  the course of Nature to be a rational course, and its  end a moral end. At the furthest limit of time, in  protoplasm itself, we saw start forth the two great  currents which, by their action and reaction, as Self-  ishness and Unselfishness, were to supply in ever  accentuating clearness the conditions of the moral  life. Following their movements upward through the

336 INVOLUTION.

organic kingdom, we watched the results which each  achieved—always high, and always waxing higher;  and though what we called Evil dogged each step with  sinister and sometimes staggering malevolence, the  balance when struck, was always good upon the  whole. Then came the last great act of the organic  process, the act which finally revealed to teleology its  hitherto obscured end, the organization of the Mam-  malia, the Kingdom of the Mothers. So full of ethical  possibility is this single creation that one might stake  the character of Evolution upon the Mammalia alone. 
On the biological side, as we have seen, the Evolution  of the Mammalia means the Evolution of Mothers; on  the sociological side, the Evolution of the Family ; and  on the moral side, the Evolution of Love. How are  we to characterize a process which ripened fruits like  these? That the very animal kingdom had for its end 
-and crown a class of animals who owe their name,  their place, and their whole existence to Altruism;  that through these Mothers society has been furnished  with an institution for generating, concentrating,  purifying, and re-distributing Love in all its enduring  forms; that the perfecting of Love is thus not an inci-  dent in Nature, but everywhere the largest part of her  task, begun with the first beginnings of life, and con-  tinuously developing quantitatively and qualitatively  to the close—all this has been read into Nature by our  own imaginings, or it is the revelation of a purpose  of benevolence and a God whose name is Love. The  sceptic, we are sometimes reminded, has presented  crucial difficulties to the theist founded on the  doctrine of Evolution. Here is a problem which the  theist may leave with the sceptic. That that which

INVOLUTION. 997

has emerged has the qualities it has, that even the 
Mammalia should have emerged, that that class should  stand related to the life of Man in the way it does,  that Man has lived because he loved, and that he lives  to love—these, on any theory but one, are insoluble  problems.

Forbidden to follow the Evolution of Love into the  higher fields of history and society, we take courage to  make a momentary exploration in a still lower field—  a field so far beneath the plant and animal level that  hitherto we have not dared to enter it. Is it conceiv-  able that in inorganic Nature, among the very mate-  rial bases of the world, there should be anything to re-  mind us of the coming of this Tree of Life? To ex-  pect even foreshadowings of ethical characters there  were an anachronism too great for expression. Yet  there is something there, something which is at least  worth recalling in the present connection.

The earliest condition in which Science allows us to  picture this globe is that of a fiery mass of nebulous  matter. At the second stage it consists of countless  myriads of similar atoms, roughly outlined into a rag-  ged cloud-ball, glowing with heat, and rotating in  space with inconceivable velocity. By what means  can this mass be broken up, or broken down, or made  into a solid world? By two things—mutual attrac-  tion and chemical affinity. The moment when within  this cloud-ball the conditions of cooling temperature  are such that two atoms could combine together  the cause of the Evolution of the Earth is won. For  this pair of atoms are chemically “stronger” than any  of the atoms immediately surrounding them. Gradu-  ally, by attraction or affinity, the primitive pair of

22

338 INVOLUTION.

atoms—like the first pair of savages—absorb a third  atom, and a fourth, and a fifth, until a “Family” of  atoms is raised up which possesses properties and  powers altogether new, and in virtue of which it holds  within its grasp the conquest and servitude of all  surrounding units. From this growing centre, attrac-  tion radiates on every side, until a larger aggregate, a  family group—a Tribe—arises and starts a more  powerful centre of its own. With every additional  atom added, the power as well as the complexity of the  combination increases. As the process goes on, after  endless vicissitudes, repulsions, and readjustments,  the changes become fewer and fewer, the conflict be-  tween mass and mass dies down, the elements passing  through various stages of liquidity finally combine in  the order of their affinities, arrange themselves in the  order of their densities, and the solid earth is finished.

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

INVOLUTION. 339

to confusion. And as to the term Affinity, the most  recent Chemistry, finding it utterly unfathomable in  itself, confines its research at present to the investiga-  tion of its modes of action. Science does not know  indeed what forces are; it only classifies them. Here,  as in every deep recess of physical Nature, we are in  the presence of that which is metaphysical, that which  bars the way imperiously at every turn to a material-  istic interpretation of the world. Yet name and  nature of force apart, what affinity even the grossest,  what likeness even the most remote, could one have  expected to trace between the gradual aggregation of  units of matter in the condensation of a weltering  star, and the slow segregation of men in the organi-  zation of societies and nations? However different the  agents, is there no suggestion that they are different  stages of a uniform process, different epochs of one  great historical enterprise, different results of a single  evolutionary law ?

Read from the root, we define this age-long process  by a word borrowed from the science of roots—a word  from the clay—Evolution. But read from the top, 
Evolution is an impossible word to describe it. The  word is Involution. It is not a Stigmaria world, but  a Sigillaria world; a spiritual, not a material universe. 
Evolution is Advolution ; better, it is Revelation—the  phenomenal expression of the Divine, the progressive  realization of the Ideal, the Ascent of Love. Evolu-  tion is a doctrine of unimaginable grandeur. That 
Man should discern the prelude to his destiny in the  voices of the stars; that the heart of Nature should be  a so human heart; that its eternal enterprise should  be one with his ideals; that even in the Universe

340 INVOLUTION.

beyond, the Reason which presides should have so  strange a kinship with that measure of it which he  calls his own; that he, an atom in that Universe,  should dare to feel himself at home within it, should  stand beside Immensity, Infinity, Eternity, unaf-  frighted and undismayed—these things bewilder Man  the more that they bewilder him so little.

But one verdict is possible as to the practical import  of this great doctrine, as to its bearing upon the in-  dividual life and the future of the race. Evolution  has ushered a new hope into the world. The supreme  message of science to this age is that all Nature is on  the side of the man who tries to rise. Evolution,  development, progress are not only on her programme,  these are her programme. For all things are rising,  all worlds, all planets, all stars and suns. An ascend-  ing energy is in the universe, and the whole moves on  with one mighty idea and anticipation. The aspira-  tion in the human mind and heart is but the evolu-  tionary tendency of the universe becoming conscious. 
Darwin’s great discovery, or the discovery which he  brought into prominence, is the same as Galileo’s—  that the world moves. The Italian prophet said it  moves from west to east ; the English philosopher said  it moves from low to high. And this is the last and  most splendid contribution of science to the faith of  the world.

The discovery of a second motion in the earth has  come into the world of thought only in time to save  it from despair. As in the days of Galileo, there are  many even now who do not see that the world moves 
—men to whom the earth is but an endless plain, a  prison fixed in a purposeless universe where untried

INV OLUTION. 341

prisoners await their unknown fate. It is not the  monotony of life which destroys men, but its point-  lessness ; they can bear its weight, its meaninglessness  crushes them. But the same great revolution that  the discovery of the axial rotation of the earth effected  in the realm of physics, the announcement of the  doctrine of Evolution makes in the moral world. 
Already, even in these days of its dawn, a sudden and  marvellous light has fallen upon earth and heaven. 
Evolution is less a doctrine than a light; it isa light  revealing in the chaos of the past a perfect and grow-  ing order, giving meaning even to the confusions of the  present, discovering through all the deviousness  around us the paths of progress, and flashing its rays  already upon a coming goal. Men begin to see an  undeviating ethical purpose in this material world, a  tide, that from eternity has never turned, making for  perfectness. In that vast progression of Nature, that  vision of all things from the first of time moving from  low to high, from incompleteness to completeness,  from imperfection to perfection, the moral nature rec-  ognizes in all its height and depth the eternal claim  upon itself. Wholeness, perfection, love—these have  always been required of Man. But never before on  the natural plane have they been proclaimed by voices  so commanding, or enforced by sanctions so great and  rational.

Is Nature henceforth to become the ethical teacher  of the world? Shall its aims become the guide, its  spirit the inspiration of Man’s life? Is there no  ground here where all the faiths and all the creeds  may meet—nay, no ground for a final faith and a final  ereed? If all men could see the inner meaning and

842 INVOLUTICN.

aspiration of the natural order should we not find at  last a universal religion—a religion congruous with  the whole past of Man, at one with Nature, and with  a working creed which Science could accept ?

The answer is a simple one: We have it already. 
There exists a religion which has anticipated all these  requirements—a religion which has been before the  world these eighteen hundred years, whose congruity  with Nature and with Man stands the tests at every  point. Up to this time no word has been spoken to  reconcile Christianity with Evolution, or Evolution  with Christianity. And why? Because the two are  one. What is Evolution? A method of creation. 
What is its object? To make more perfect living  beings. What is Christianity? A method of crea-  tion. What is its object? To make more perfect  living beings. Through what does Evolution work? 
Through Love. Through what does Christianity  work? Through Love. Evolution and Christianity  have the same Author, the same end, the same spirit. 
There is no rivalry between these processes. Chris-  tianity struck into the Evolutionary process with no  noise or shock; it upset nothing of all that had  been done; it took all the natural foundations pre-  cisely as it found them ; it adopted Man’s body, mind,  and soul at the exact level where Organic Evolution  was at work upon them; it carried on the building by  slow and gradual modifications; and, through pro-  cesses governed by rational laws, it put the finishing  touches to the Ascent of Man.

No man can run up the natural lines of Evolution  without coming to Christianity at the top. One holds  no brief to buttress Christianity in this way. But

INVOLUTION. 343

science has to deal with facts and with all facts, and  the facts and processes which have received the name  of Christian are the continuations of the scientific  order, as much the successors of these facts and the  continuations of these processes—due allowances be-  ing made for the differences in the planes, and for the  new factors which appear with each new plane—as  the facts and processes of biology are of those of the  mineral world. We land here, not from choice, but  from necessity. Christianity—it is not said any par-  ticular form of Christianity—but Christianity, is the 
Further Evolution.

“The glory of Christianity,” urged Jowett, “is not  to be as unlike other religions as possible, but to  be their perfection and fulfi:ment.” The divinity of 
Christianity, it might be added, is not to be as unlike 
Nature as possible, but to be its coronation; the ful-  filment of its promise; the rallying point of its forces ;  the beginning not of a new end, but of an infinite  acceleration of the processes by which the end, eternal  from the beginning, was henceforth to be realized. 
A religion which is Love and a Nature which is Love  can never but be one. The infinite exaltation in qual-  ity is what the progressive revelation from the begin-  ning has taught us to expect. Christianity, truly, has  its own phenomena, its special processes, its factors  altogether unique. But these do not excommunicate  it from God’s order. They are in line with all that  has gone before, the latest disclosure of Environment. 
Most strange to us and new, most miraculous and  supernatural when looked at from beneath, they  are the normal phenomena ot altitude, the revelation  natural to the highest height. While Hyolution never

844 INVOLUTION.

deviates from its course, it assumes new developments  at every stage of the Ascent; and here, as the last and  highest, these specializations, accelerations, modifica-  tions, are most revolutionary of all. For the evolving  products are now no longer the prey and tool of the 
Struggle for Life—the normal dynamic of the world’s  youth. For them its appeal is vain; its force is  spent; a quicker road to progress has been found. 
No longer driven from below by the Animal Struggle,  they are drawn upward from above; no longer com-  pelled by hate or hunger, by rivalry or fear, they feel  impelled by Love; they realize the dignity reserved  for Man alone in evolving through Ideals. This de-  velopment through Ideals, the Perfect Ideal through  which all others come, are the unique phenomena of  the closing act—unique not because they are out of  relation to what has gone before, but because the  phenomena of the summit are different from the  phenomena of the plain. Apart from these, and not  absolutely apart from these—for nothing in the world  can be absolutely apart from anything else, there is‘  nothing in Christianity which is not in germ in Nat-  ture. It is not an excrescence on Nature but its efflo-  rescence. It is nota side track where a few enthu-  siasts live impracticable lives on impossible ideals. It  is the main stream of history and of science, and the  only current set from eternity for the progress of the  world and the perfecting of a human race.

We began these chapters with the understanding  that Evolution is history, the scientific history of  the world. Christianity is history, a history of some  of the later steps in the Evolution of the world. The  continuity between them is a continuity of spirit;

INVOLUTION. 345

their forms are different, their forces confluent. 
Christianity did not begin at the Christian era, it  is as old as Nature; did not drop like a bolt from 
Eternity, came in the fulness of Time. The attempt  to prove an alibi for Christianity, to show that it was  in the skies till the Christian era opened, is as fatal to  its acceptance by Science as it is useless for defence to 
Theology. What emerges from Nature as the final  result of Creation is the lower potentiality of the same  principle which is the instrument and end of the new 
Creation.

The attempt of Science, on the other hand, to hold  itself aloof from the later phases of developments  which in their earlier stages it so devotes itself to  trace, is either ignorance or affectation. For that 
Altruism which we found struggling to express itself  throughout the whole course of Nature, what is it? 
“ Altruism is the new and very affected name for the  old familiar things which we used to call Charity, 
Philanthropy, and Love.” + Only by shutting its eyes  can Science evade the discovery of the roots of Chris-  tianity in every province that it enters; and when it  does discover them, only by disguising words can it  succeed in disowning the relationship. There is noth-  ing unscientific in accepting that relationship; there  is much that is unscientific in dishonoring it. The 
Will behind Evolution is not dead; the heart of 
Nature is not stilled. Love not only was; it is; it  moves; it spreads. To ignore the later and most  striking phases is to fail to see what the earlier pro-  cess really was, and to leave the ancient task of 
Evolution historically incomplete. That Christian

1 Duke of Argyll, Edinburgh Review, April, 1894.

346 INVOLUTION.

development, social, moral, spiritual, which is going  on around us, is as real an evolutionary movement  as any that preceded it, and at least as capable of  scientific expression. A system founded on Self- 
Sacrifice, whose fittest symbol is the Leaven, whose  organic development has its natural analogy in the  growth of a Mustard Tree, is not a foreign thing to the 
Eyolutionist ; and that prophet of the Kingdom of God  was no less the spokesman of Nature when he proclaimed  that the end of Man is ‘‘ that which we had from the  beginning, that we love.”

In the profoundest sense, this is scientific doctrine. 
The Ascent of Man and of Society is bound up hence-  forth with the conflict, the intensification, and the  diffusion of the Struggle for the Life of Others. This  is the Further Evolution, the page of history that lies  before us, the closing act of the drama of Man. The 
Struggle may be short or long; but by all scientific  analogy the result is sure. All the other Kingdoms  of Nature culminated; Evolution always attains;  always rounds off its work. It spent an eternity over  the earth, but finished it. It struggled for millen-  niums to bring the Vegetable Kingdom up to the 
Flowering Plants, and succeeded. In the Animal 
Kingdom it never paused until the possibilities of  organization were exhausted in the Mammalia. Kindled  by this past, Man may surely say, ‘I shall arrive.” 
The Further Evolution must go on, the Higher King-  dom come—first the blade, where we are to-day ; then  the ear, where we shall be to-morrow; then the full  corn in the ear, which awaits our children’s children,  and which we live to hasten.

FINIS.

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Library Bureau Cat. No. 1137

215. 
D795

Drummond

The Ascent of Man

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