The Platonic Kosmos compared with the Darwinian theory of evolution.

It is my purpose in this chapter to draw a parallel between the theory of the origin of different animals propounded in the "TimÆus" of Plato and that of Mr. Darwin. The analogy between them has been briefly hinted by Mr. Grote, but he has not followed it out in detail, as it was no part of his object to make minute comparisons between any of the speculations of Plato and those of modern philosophers. The great English scholar and critic seems to regard it as somewhat uncertain how far Plato meant in the "TimÆus" to have his description of the Kosmos stand as an expression of his own belief, or as a mere work of his imagination and fancy. Plato, we are told, and this is quite obvious, dealt but little with facts, while he dealt largely with theories. But, even as a pure work of the imagination, or as a philosophical epic, the daring conception of the Kosmos is wonderfully complete; and it will repay any one, who follows Mr. Grote in his analysis of it, to observe how Plato employs a process of degeneration to account for the formation of different species of animals, from the higher to the lower, by agencies that bear a strong resemblance to those which are assumed by Darwin to have worked in the opposite process of variation and natural selection, resulting in the evolution of a higher from a lower animal. But, in order to render this comparison intelligible, it is necessary to make an abstract of Plato's system of the Kosmos before adverting to the analogies between that system and the Darwinian theory. I follow, although I have greatly condensed, Mr. Grote's description of the Platonic Kosmos.

According to the Platonic idea of the Kosmos, as given in the "TimÆus," there existed, anterior to all time, primordial matter in a state of chaos. This matter was not created for; according to Mr. Grote, whose authority upon such a point is the highest, the notion of absolute creation was unknown to the Greeks of antiquity, and it does not appear that Plato suggests it. But, without accounting for its existence, Plato assumes that there was matter in a condition of utter chaos before time could have had an existence; and, in order to make the chaotic condition the more impressive in its primitive destitution of all form or active principles tending to union or arrangement, he supposes that the four elements of fire, air, earth, and water had no existence save in the abstract, or as ideas and forms. But, as abstract ideas, these four elements of fire, air, earth, and water were distinct, self-existing, and indestructible, coeval with the chaotic matter which was waiting to receive their impress and to take on their distinctive elemental characters. They had already begun to act on the fundamentum, or primordial chaotic matter, as upon a recipient, but it was in a confused way and without regularity of plan, so that they had not become concrete existences or determinate agents.

In this state of things there appears upon the scene the Demiurgus, a being coeval with the chaos of matter, that is, self-existing and eternal. But, consistently with the philosophy which did not admit of the idea of absolute creation, the Demiurgus was not a creator, but an architect or designer, working on materials that lay within his reach. His moral attribute was goodness, which was, in his situation, synonymous with order, regularity, symmetry, and proportion, and, along with this tendency, he had supreme artistic skill. In other words, he was the personification of ????, or reason, working against necessity: the latter being, not what we mean by that term, something preordained and fixed, but confusion, uncertainty, irregularity, and unreason, which are to be overcome by their opposites.

Besides the chaotic matter and the ideas or forms of the four elements, as yet unrealized in the actual substances of fire, air, earth, and water, there were coeval ideas or forms of animals, or, as we should say, abstract animals, or conceptions of animals. The first and grandest of these was the eternal self-animal, or the ideal of animal existence. Next came the ideas or forms of four other animals: 1. The celestial gods; 2. Man; 3. Birds, or animals living in air; 4. Land or water animals. Bearing in mind that we are still in the region of abstract conceptions in regard to these types of animals, which as yet have no concrete existence, and that they are, so to speak, the intellectual models from which the Demiurgus is to work, in order to make the real animals conformably to the pre-existing and eternal plan, we come to the process of forming the Kosmos, which is to be the containing animal of all the other four. Out of the confused chaos of existing matter the Demiurgus proceeds to construct the Kosmos, which was to become the one self-animal, by impressing the idea or abstract form of animal upon a physical structure built out of the primordial chaotic matter and comprehending the whole of it. The first step was to bring the four elements of fire, air, earth, and water out of their chaotic and confused condition by separating them according to the forms of their eternal ideas. The total of each element, when made to take its normal form, was used in the construction of the Kosmos, which thus came to possess the whole existing body of material; "so that," to borrow the words of Mr. Grote, "there remained nothing of the four elements apart, to hurt the Kosmos from without, nor anything as raw material for a second Kosmos."

The Kosmos was made a perfect sphere, and with a perfectly smooth outer surface, without organs of sight or hearing, because there was nothing outside to be seen or heard; without organs of respiration, because there was no outside atmosphere to be breathed; and without nutritive or excrementory organs, because it was self-sufficing, being supplied with nourishment by its own decay. It was not furnished with limbs or means of locomotion or standing, because, being a sphere turning on an axis, and having only one of the seven possible varieties of movement, namely, rotation in a circle in one and the same plane, there was nothing for it to grasp or repel.[12] This body, the only-begotten, because in its formation all existing bodily material was employed, perfectly spherical and smooth, equidistant from its center to all points of its circumference, and suspended upon its own axis traversing its diameter, was now to be animated by a soul.

The Demiurgus, in the formation of the soul of the Kosmos, took three constituent ingredients and mixed them together. They were: 1. The Same, or the Identical, the indivisible and unchangeable essence of Ideas; 2. The Different, or the Plural, the divisible essence of bodies or of the elements; 3. A compound of both of these ingredients melted into one. Blended together in one grand compound, these three ingredients formed the soul of the Kosmos by first dividing the mixture into different portions, and then uniting the portions according to a complicated scale of harmonious numerical proportions. The outer or sidereal sphere of the Kosmos was made to receive the Same, or Identity, by being placed in an even and undivided rotation toward the right, turning on the great axis of the whole sphere. The interior, or planetary spheres, the five planets, and the sun and the moon, were made to be under the influence of the Different, or Diversity—that is to say, their rotations on their separate axes, all oblique, were toward the left, while the overpowering force of rotation of the outer sphere carried them along with it, although the time of their separate rotations was more or less modified by their own inherent and countermoving forces.

Thus the sentient capacity of the cosmical soul became the cognition of the Same and the Different, and the blended Same and Different, because it embodied these three ingredients in its own nature. It was invisible; rooted at its center and pervading and inclosing the whole visible body, circulating and communicating, without voice or sound, all impressions and information concerning the existing relations between the separate parts and specialties of the cosmical body.

Anterior to the Kosmos there was no time. With the rotation of the Kosmos time began. It was marked first by the eternal and unchanging rotation of the outer circle, in which were placed the fixed stars, which revolved with it in unaltered position with regard to each other; and one revolution of this outer or most rational circle made a day. The sun, moon, and planets were distributed in different portions of the Circle of the Different; one revolution of the moon marking a month, and one revolution of the sun marking a year. The earth, the first and oldest of the sidereal and planetary gods, was packed around the great axis which ran through the center of the Kosmos, and turned that axis; so that the earth regulated the movement of the great cosmical axis, and was the determining agent of night and day.

Thus far we have the formation of the Kosmos, animated with a pervading soul, the body being formed out of the whole of existing matter, molded into the specific elements of fire, air, earth, and water, and the soul being formed out of the constituent ingredients furnished by the eternal and invisible essence of ideas. The whole, body and soul of the Kosmos, was thus an animal, formed on the abstract but eternal idea or form of an animal which had existed before time began. We now approach the formation of the other animals. Of the Kosmos there could be but one. All existing material of matter had been used in his construction. He could not become a species, as there could be no second Kosmos. Something could be borrowed from him, for the formation of other animals, but nothing could be destroyed. He was not yet, however, a full copy of the model of the Generic Animal or Idea of Animal, because the eternal plan of that model required that he should be peopled or inhabited by four other animals, which might constitute species. Accordingly, the Demiurgus proceeds to form the first of these sub-animals, the gods, who are to inhabit different portions of the Kosmos. The first of these in formation was the earth, planted in the center, and made sentinel over night and day; next the fixed stars, formed chiefly out of fire, and placed in the outer circle of a fixed revolution, or the Circle of the Same, to give to it light and brilliancy. The sidereal orbs thus became animated beings, eternal and divine. They remained constantly turning round in the same relative position, but the sun, moon, and planets, belonging to the Circle of the Different, and trying to revolve by their own effort in a direction opposite to that of the outer sphere, became irregular in their revolutions and varied in their relative positions. Thus the primitive gods were the earth and the fixed stars, which revolved without variation with the Circle of the Same, and became immortal as well as visible; while the sun, moon, and planets were not among the primitive gods, but were simply spherical bodies placed in the inner Circle of the Different. The primitive gods preside over and regulate the Kosmos. From them are generated and descended the remaining gods.[13]

Having completed the Kosmos and the primitive gods, the Demiurgus paused in his work. There were still other animals to be constructed, the first and noblest of which was to be Man. But the Demiurgus, who, in the construction of these gods, had made them immortal, not in their own nature but through his determination, seems to have apprehended that, if he proceeded to construct the other animals himself, they would likewise be thereby rendered of immortal duration. He therefore assembled the newly generated gods and made to them a personal address. He informed them of their immortal existence, and of his purpose to confide to them the construction of the other animals, stating at the same time, in the case of man, that he would himself supply an immortal element which they were to incorporate with a mortal body, in imitation of the power which he had exercised in the generation of themselves. He then proceeded to compound together, but in inferior perfection and purity, the remnant of the same elements out of which he had formed the cosmical soul.[14] He then distributed the whole of this mass into souls equal in number to the fixed stars, placed each of them in a star of its own, where it would be carried round in the cosmical rotation, explained to it its immortal destiny, and that at an appointed hour of birth it would be transferred into a mortal body in conjunction with two inferior kinds of soul or mind. These irrational enemies, the two inferior souls, the rational and immortal soul would have to control and subdue, so as to live a good life. If it triumphed in the conflict, it would return after death to its own star, where in an everlasting abode it would dwell forever in unison with the celestial harmonies and perfections of the outer sphere. But, if it failed, it would be born again into an inferior body, and on the death of that body, if it continued evil, it would be again born into a still more degraded animal, through an indefinite transmigration from animal to animal, until the rational soul should have obtained the mastery over the irrational and turbulent, when it would be released and permitted to return to its own peculiar star.[15] Here, then, the Demiurgus retired, leaving to the gods the work of fabricating mortal bodies for man, and two mortal and inferior souls, with which the immortal soul was to be joined. But before he withdrew he inculcated upon the gods to construct the new mortal animal in the best manner, so that the immortal soul should have the fairest chance of guiding and governing rightly, in order that the animal might not be the cause of mischief and misery to himself; a possible and even probable result which the Demiurgus proclaimed beforehand, thus relieving himself of responsibility, and casting it, it would seem, upon the gods.[16] The latter stood, then, in the position of workmen, who have received certain directions from a superior architect, have been supplied with certain materials, and are obliged to conform to a prescribed model, the cosmical animal, as far as circumstances will allow. The Demiurgus retires, and leaves the gods to their work.

They borrow from the Kosmos, from which they are permitted to obtain materials, portions of the four elements, for the construction of the human body, with an engagement that these materials shall one day be returned. These they unite in one body by numerous minute and invisible fastenings; over this body they place a head or cranium, into which they introduce the immortal soul, making the head, with its spherical form like that of the Kosmos, and admitting of no motion but the rotary, the most divine portion of the human system and master of the body, which is to be subject and ministerial. To the body they give all the six varieties of motive power, forward, backward, upward, downward, to the right and to the left. The phenomena of nutrition and sensation begin as soon as the connection is formed between the immortal soul and the mortal body, but as the irregular movements and agitations arising from the diverse rotations of the Same and the Different convey false and foolish affirmations to the soul in the cranium. That soul is destitute of intelligence when first joined to the body, and remains so for some time. But gradually these disturbing currents abate, the rotations of the Same and the Different in the head become more regular, and the man becomes more intelligent.

It is now necessary to account for the introduction of the two mortal souls, and to show how the conflict appointed for the immortal soul became the test of a life which was to determine whether the latter should be permitted, on the death of the body, to return to its peculiar star, or whether it should be degraded into some lower form of animal. The immortal soul has its special abode in the head, which is both united to and separated from the trunk by the neck. The gods kept the two mortal souls separate, so that the rational or immortal soul might be defiled by the contact as little as possible. The better portion of the mortal soul they placed in the thoracic cavity. It was the energetic, courageous, contentious soul, placed above the diaphragm, so as to receive orders easily from the head, and to aid the rational soul in keeping the mutinous soul of appetite, which was placed below the diaphragm, in subjection.

It is unnecessary to follow here the minute anatomical descriptions which Plato gives of the different organs of the human body, or of the way in which they are supposed to act on the two divisions of the mortal soul, or to be acted on by them, or the mode in which the latter act upon the encephalic or immortal soul which is seated in the cranium. These descriptions evince much knowledge of the human anatomy, and probably all the knowledge that was possessed in Plato's time. It is immaterial how far this anatomical knowledge was correct, and of course there was in Plato's use of the various organs a great deal that was fanciful. It is sufficient, without following Mr. Grote's analysis through these details, to note that, in Plato's arrangement, the immortal soul was supposed to be fastened in the brain, the two mortal souls in the line of the spinal marrow continuous with the brain, and that this line formed the thread of connection between them all.

Passing on toward the point where the process of degradation might begin, which would result in the reduction of this new and divinely constructed animal to a lower form, we have to note, first, that it was made a non-sexual animal, being intended for an angelic type. In the original plan of the gods, it was not contemplated that this primitive type should reproduce itself by any process of generation. According to the original scheme, it would seem that every time a new immortal soul was to be brought down from its peculiar star, the process of constructing for it a mortal body would have to be repeated. Plato, Mr. Grote observes, does indeed tell us that the primitive non-sexual type had the option of maintaining itself. But this must mean that each individual of that type had the option of maintaining itself in its struggle with the debasing influences of appetite and disease. But not one representative of it has held his ground; and as it was foreseen that such an angelic type could not maintain itself, we are to look for a reconstruction of the whole organism. This came about from the degeneracy of the primitive non-sexual animal below the standard of good life which it had the option of continuing. Men whose lives had fallen below this standard became effeminate, cowardly, unjust. In their second birth, their immortal souls had to be translated into a body resembling that to which they had debased the first body into which they were born. The first transition, therefore, was from man into woman. In other words, the gods, seeing that the non-sexual primitive type did not maintain itself at the high point intended for it, reconstructed the whole organism upon the bi-sexual principle, introducing the comparatively lower type of woman. A partial transformation of the male structure makes the female. A suitable adjustment of the male organs, and the implanting of the sexual impulse in both sexes, by the agency of the gods, make provision for generative reproduction, and a species is formed, which takes the place of the primitive non-sexual type which did not reproduce itself in the original scheme. The primitive type disappears, and it disappears by a process of degradation, which it undergoes by reason of its failure to avail itself of the option which it originally had of living a good life that would entitle the immortal soul to return to its peculiar star without further conflict with the debasing tendencies to which it was exposed in the first body that it inhabited.

In this curious theory we see how a process of declension or degradation is induced by what may almost be called a choice, since the primitive human being, by not resisting the debasing tendencies of his lower nature, is made by those tendencies to assume a less divine form than that in which he originally existed. To the primitive man the gods assigned the encephalic or head-soul, which was connected with and suspended from the divine soul of the Kosmos. They assigned it to each man as his presiding genius. If he neglected it, and directed all his development toward the energetic or appetitive mortal soul, he would become debased. He did so. Hence it became necessary for the gods to reconstruct the whole organism, and in this reconstruction the primitive non-sexual type becomes the bi-sexual, and a species is formed.

It is not necessary to enter into the metaphysical argument which relates to the question of responsibility for this change from the original plan. Plato tells us that the gods foresaw it as a necessary consequence of the original scheme; and, moreover, that they foresaw that they must make preparation for the still more degenerate varieties of birds and quadrupeds, into which the corrupt and stupid part of mankind would sink, all of which were according to the great eternal scheme of the four kinds of ideal animals embraced in the idea of the Kosmos itself. But with the moral justice of the whole theory we have no concern here. We are here concerned, first, with the nature of the process by which, in the Platonic theory, the bi-sexual human race became formed out of the primitive non-sexual type; and, next, with the process by which individuals of this race became degraded into the lower animals.[17]

After the process of degradation had begun, after the primitive type had given place to the bi-sexual human race, and a species was thus formed, further degradation would be inevitable under the same causes which produced the first one. The female part of mankind would go on bringing forth new males and new females, and to each one at birth there would come from its peculiar star an immortal soul, for I do not understand that Plato's women were supposed not to be constructed, in this respect, upon the same plan as the men. But each of these newly arrived immortal souls would be placed in a mortal body in contact and conflict with the two mortal souls of appetite, disturbance, and mutiny against the divine laws of reason. Each new human being would then be exposed to further debasement, by which his or her human organs and human form would undergo transformation into a lower type of animal life. Accordingly, we find that Plato, in perfect consistency with his theory, supposes that birds are a degraded birth or formation derived from one peculiar mode of degeneracy in man, hair being transmuted into feathers and wings. If we inquire from what kind of men the birds were formed, and how they came to be assigned to the air, we shall best learn from the words employed by Mr. Grote to express Plato's idea: "Birds were formed from the harmless but light, airy, and superficial men, who, though carrying their minds aloft to the study of cosmical phenomena, studied them by visual observation and not by reason, foolishly imagining that they had discovered the way of reaching truth."[18]

Next to the birds came the land-animals, a more brutal formation. These, to borrow the words of Mr. Grote's analysis, "proceeded from men totally destitute of philosophy, who neither looked up to the heavens nor cared for celestial objects; from men making no use whatever of the rotations of their encephalic soul, but following exclusively the guidance of the lower soul in the trunk. Through such tastes and occupations, both their heads and their anterior limbs became dragged down to the earth by the force of affinity. Moreover, when the rotation of the encephalic soul from want of exercise became slackened and fell into desuetude, the round form of the cranium was lost and became converted into an oblong or some other form. These now degenerated into quadrupeds and multipeds, the gods furnishing a greater number of feet in proportion to the stupidity of each, in order that its approximation to earth might be multiplied. To some of the more stupid, however, the gods gave no feet or limbs at all, constraining them to drag the whole length of their bodies along the ground, and to become reptiles. Out of the most stupid and senseless of mankind, by still greater degeneracy, the gods formed fishes, or aquatic animals—the fourth and lowest genus after men, birds, land-animals. This race of beings, from their extreme want of mind, were not considered worthy to live on earth, or to respire thin and pure air. They were condemned to respire nothing but deep and turbid water, many of them, as oysters and other descriptions of shell-fish, being fixed down at the lowest depth or bottom. It is by such transitions (concludes the Platonic 'TimÆus') that the different races of animals passed originally, and still continue to pass, into each other. The interchange is determined by the acquisition or loss of reason or rationality."[19]

Here, then, we have a process of degradation by which the different races of animals were formed, by a kind of selection which, commencing in the human species from the neglect of the encephalic soul to maintain its high duties and aims, goes on in successive debasements which result in the formation of lower and still lower animals until we reach the shell-fish fixed upon the earth at the bottom of the water. The bi-sexual principle of construction having been introduced in the human species, was continued through all the other species formed by the still descending process of deterioration, so that to each successive species there remained the power of reproducing its own type, along with the tendency to evolve a lower type by further loss of reason or rationality. It is not material to the purpose of the parallel, which I am about to draw between the Platonic and the Darwinian system, to consider the precise nature of the Platonic idea of an intelligent power, by which these successive degradations were in one sense purposely ordained. Enough is apparent on the Platonic system to show that, while these degradations were according to an eternal plan, because they resulted from the conflict between reason and unreason, order and disorder, between purity and impurity, yet the different species of animals, after man, were not special creations by an infinite power interfering in each case by a separate exercise of creative will. They were a growth of an inferior organization out of a superior through the inevitable operation of tendencies which changed the forms of the animals. As fast as these tendencies operated—and they were continually operating—the ministers of the Demiurgus, the gods, stood ready to adapt the structure to the new conditions in which the tendencies resulted, so that the new animal might be fitted to and fixed in those conditions. Still, the gods are not represented as making separate creations of new species as an act of their will, without the pre-existing operation in the preceding type of tastes and occupations which modify the structure into one of a more degraded character. It may thus be said with entire truth that the Platonic idea of the origin of the different races of animals presents a parallel to the Darwinian theory, in which it will be found that the one is the reverse of the other, both of them proceeding upon and involving analogous principles of evolution, operating in the one system from below upward, and in the other from a higher point downward. If, in the Platonic system, the idea of an original immortal soul placed in a heavenly abode, but afterward brought down and fixed in a mortal body, is the starting-point—if a conflict of a spiritual and angelic existence with corporeal and earthly tendencies is at first the predominant fact—the parallel between the Platonic process of degradation and the Darwinian process of elevation remains the same; for, in the one system, reason degenerates into instinct, and instinct at last reaches its lowest possible action, or ceases entirely; and, in the other, instinct rises from its lowest action through successive improvements until it becomes mind or intellect: so that somewhere in the two processes there must be a point where they pass each other in opposite directions, the one losing or merging intellect in instinct, the other losing and merging instinct in mind, each of the two processes being a process of development or evolution, but in opposite directions.[20]

It is not easy to ascertain at once what was Mr. Darwin's idea of the mode in which a supreme intelligence has presided over the creation. In his work on "The Descent of Man", he adduces some evidence that man was not "originally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an Omnipotent God," this evidence being that numerous savage races have existed, and still exist, who have had and have no words in their language to express this idea. But this, if true, does not help us to understand what part in Mr. Darwin's theory an Omnipotent God is supposed to play. Scattered through the same work we find references to the hypothesis of such a being, and to the influences which this belief has exerted upon the advance of morality. But I assume that we are to understand that Mr. Darwin adopts as a fact, to be taken into account in judging of his theory of evolution, that there is such a being as an Omnipotent God, having equally the power to make separate creations, or to establish certain laws of matter, and to leave them to operate through secondary causes in the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world. In his work on the "Origin of Species" he refers to "what we know of the laws impressed upon matter by the Creator."[21] In his "Descent of Man" the following passage occurs toward the close of the work: "He who believes in the advancement of man from some low organized form will naturally ask, How does this bear on the belief in the immortality of the soul? The barbarous races of man, as Sir J. Lubbock has shown, possess no clear belief of this kind; but arguments, derived from the primeval beliefs of savages, are, as we have just seen, of little or no avail. Few persons feel any anxiety from the impossibility of determining at what precise period in the development of the individual, from the first trace of a minute germinal vesicle, man becomes an immortal being; and there is no greater cause for anxiety, because the period can not possibly be determined in the gradually ascending organic scale."

Surely it is a most pertinent inquiry, How does his theory of the advancement of man from some lower organized form bear on the immortality of the soul? and it is no answer to this inquiry to say that upon no hypothesis of man's origin can we determine at what precise period he becomes an immortal being. That the idea of an Omnipotent God, capable of creating a spiritual essence, or an immortal soul, is not denied by Mr. Darwin, is doubtless to be inferred from his strong affirmation that our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance the grand sequence of events which the birth both of the species and the individual presents to our view. That variations of structure, the union of pairs in marriage, the dissemination of seeds, and similar events, have all been ordained for some special purpose, is the hypothesis according to which he regards them as events brought about by the laws of natural selection, which laws were ordained by the Creator and left to operate. Now, while this hypothesis excludes, or tends to exclude, the idea of blind chance, it still remains to be considered whether the soul of man, or the essence which we call intellect, is in each case a direct creation of a special character, or whether it is a result from the operation of the laws which have been ordained for the action of organized matter. If it is the former, the soul may survive the destruction of the body. If it is the latter, the soul as well as all the other manifestations or exhibitions which the material body gives forth in its action, may and in all probability must cease with the organs whose action leads us falsely to believe that we are animated by an immortal spirit while we are in the flesh. If it is a necessary result of any theory that what is supposed to be the immortal soul of man is a product of the operation of certain laws imposed upon organized matter, without being a special creation of something distinct from matter, it is immaterial whether the organized form of matter with which the soul is connected, or appears to act for a time, was a special creation, or was an evolution out of some lower form, or came by blind chance. Nor is it material that we can not determine at what precise period in the genesis of the individual, by the ordinary process of reproduction, he becomes an immortal being. The question is, Does he ever become an immortal being, if in body and in mind he is a mere product of organized matter, formed from some lower type through the laws of variation and natural selection, resulting in an animal whose manifestations or exhibitions of what we call intellect or mind are manifestations of the same nature as the instincts of the lower animals, differing only in degree?

That I may not be misunderstood, and especially that I may not be charged with misrepresentation, I will state the case for the Darwinian theory as strongly as I can. The question here is obviously not a question of power. An Omnipotent Creator has just the same capacity to make special creations, by a direct and special exertion of his will, as he has to make one primordial type and place it under fixed laws that will in their operation cause a physical organization to act in such a way as to evolve out of it other and more or less perfect types. In either method of action, he would be the same Omnipotent God, by whose will all things would exist; and I assume that upon this point there is no difference between some of the evolution school and its opponents. But in considering the question of the origin of the human soul, or the intellect of man, we are dealing not with a question of power, but with the probable method in which the conceded Omnipotent capacity has acted. On the one hand, we have the hypothesis that the Eternal and Omnipotent capacity has created a spiritual and immortal being, capable of existing without any union with the body that is formed out of earthly material, but placed for a time in unison with such a body; and that for the effectual purpose of this temporary union this body has been specially constructed, and constructed in two related forms, male and female, so that this created species of animal may perpetuate itself by certain organic laws of reproduction. Now it is obviously immaterial that we can not detect the point of time, or the process, at or by which the union between the spiritual essence and the earthly body takes place in the generation of the individual. It is conceded to be alike impossible to detect the time or mode in which descendants of the lower animals, which had nothing resembling intellect, become endowed with and inhabited by intellect, through the supposed laws of variation and natural selection, operating to produce an animal of a more elaborate organization. The point of divergence between the two hypotheses is precisely this: that the one supposes the mind of man to be a special creation, of a spiritual nature, designed to be immortal, but placed in union with a mortal body for a temporary purpose. The other hypothesis supposes no special creation of either the mind or the body of man, but maintains that the latter is evolved out of some lower animal, and that the former is evolved out of the action of physical organization.[22] Either mode of projecting and executing the creation of both the body and the mind of man is of course competent to an Omnipotent God. The question is, Which mode has the highest amount of probability on which to challenge our belief? If the one, as it is described, leads to the conclusion that the mind can not survive the body, and the other leads to the conclusion that it can, we are left to choose between them: and our choice must be determined by what we can discover of satisfactory proof that the mind of man was destined to become immortal. What, then, is the Darwinian theory of the origin of man as an animal, and to what does it lead respecting the origin and nature of the human soul?

Whoever will carefully examine Mr. Darwin's hypothesis of the descent of man as an animal, will find that commencing at a point opposite to that at which Plato began his speculations, the modern naturalist assumes the existence of a very low form of animated and organized matter, destitute of anything in the nature of reason, even if acting under what may be called instinctive and unconscious impulses, imposed upon it by the preordained laws by which animated matter is to act. By some process of generation, either bi-sexual or uni-sexual or non-sexual, this very low type of animal is endowed with a power of reproducing other individuals of the same structure and habits. In process of time, for which we must allow periods very much longer than those of which we are accustomed to think in relation to recorded history, the individuals of this species become enormously multiplied. A struggle for existence takes place between these very numerous individuals; and in this struggle there comes into operation the law to which Mr. Darwin has given the name of "natural selection," which is but another name for a series of events. He does not mean by this term to imply a conscious choice on the part of the animals, nor an active power or interfering deity. He employs it to express a constantly occurring series of events or actions, by which, in certain circumstances, animals secure themselves against the tendency to destruction which is caused by the great disparity between their numbers and the amount of food that is accessible to them, or by the unfavorable influences of a change of climate upon so great a body of individuals. He calls this series of events or actions natural selection, in order, as I understand, to compare what takes place in nature with what takes place when a breeder of animals purposely selects the most favorable individuals for the purpose of improving or varying the breed. In nature, the selection is supposed to operate as follows: The strongest and most active individuals of a species of animals have the best chance of securing the requisite amount of food from the supply that is insufficient for all. They do this by their greater fleetness in overtaking the common prey, or by making war upon the more feeble or inactive of their fellows; and numerous individuals are either directly destroyed by this warfare, or are driven off from the feeding-ground and perish for want of nourishment. Thus the best specimens of the race survive; and to this occurrence is given the name of the "survival of the fittest," meaning the survival of those individuals best fitted to continue their own existence and to continue their species. A physical change in the country inhabited by a great multitude of individuals of a certain species, or by different species—for example, a change of climate—operates to make this struggle for existence still more severe, and the result would be that those individuals of the same species which could best adapt themselves to their new condition would tend to be preserved, as would the different species inhabiting the same country which could best maintain the struggle against other species. The improvement in the structure of the animals takes place, under this process of natural selection, in the following manner: The best individuals being preserved, the organs of which they make most use in the struggle for existence undergo development and slight modifications, favorable to the preservation of the individual, and these modifications are transmitted to their offspring. Here there comes in play a kind of collateral aid to which is given the name of "sexual selection," which is defined as a form of selection depending "not on a struggle for existence in relation to other organic beings or to external conditions, but on a struggle between individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the possession of the other sex."[23] "The result," continues Mr. Darwin, "is not death to the unsuccessful competitor, but few or no offspring. Sexual selection is, therefore, less rigorous than natural selection. Generally, the most vigorous males, those which are best fitted for their place in nature, will leave most progeny. But, in many cases, victory depends not so much on general vigor, as on having special weapons, confined to the male sex." As, by means of this warfare of sexual selection, the victor would always be allowed to breed, his courage and his special weapons of offense or defense, in their increased development, would descend to his offspring. Thus the improvement and modification induced by natural selection would be enhanced and transmitted by the sexual selection.[24]

In regard to the operation of the two kinds of selection in the evolution of man from a lower form of animal, we find the theory to be this: That organic beings with peculiar habits and structure have passed through transitions which have converted the primordial animal into one of totally different habits and structure; that, in these transitions, organs adapted to one condition and mode of life have become adapted to another; that such organs are homologous, and that in their widely varied uses they have been formed by transitional gradations, so that, for example, a floating apparatus, or swim-bladder, existing in a water-animal for one purpose—flotation—has become converted in the vertebrate animals into true lungs for the very different purpose of respiration. Thus, by ordinary generation, from an ancient and unknown prototype, not only have organs, by minute and successive transitions, become adapted to changed conditions of life, but the whole organism has become changed, and this has resulted in the production of an animal vastly superior to his ancient and unknown prototype; and yet to that prototype, of which we have no specimen and no record, are to be traced the germs of all the peculiarities of structure which we find in the perfect animals of different kinds that we thoroughly know, until we come to man, these successive results being brought about by the two kinds of selection—natural and sexual.

There can be no better illustration of the character of Mr. Darwin's theory than that to which he resorts when he means to carry it to its most startling length, while he candidly admits that he has felt the difficulty of this application of it far too keenly to be surprised at the hesitation of others. This illustration is the eye. Here he very justly says it is indispensable that reason should conquer imagination; but on which side of the question reason or imagination is most employed might, perhaps, be doubtful. Mr. Darwin's hypothesis concerning the eye begins with the fact that in the highest division of the animal kingdom, the vertebrata, we can start from an eye so simple that it consists, as in the lancelet,[25] of a little sack of transparent skin, furnished with a nerve, and lined with pigment, but destitute of any other apparatus. From this prototype of a visual organ, up to the marvelous construction of the eye of man or of the eagle, he supposes that extremely slight and gradual modifications have led, by the operation of natural and sexual selection; and by way of illustrating this development, he compares the formation of the eye to the formation of the telescope. "It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye with a telescope. We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued efforts of the highest human intellects, and we naturally infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man? If we must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we ought, in imagination, to take a thick layer of transparent tissue, with spaces filled with fluid, and with a nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be continually changing slowly in density, so as to separate into layers of different densities and thickness, placed at different distances from each other, and with the surface of each layer slowly changing in form. Further, we must suppose that there is a power, represented by natural selection or the survival of the fittest, always watching each slight alteration in the transparent layers, and carefully preserving each which, under varied circumstances, in any way or in any degree, tends to produce a distincter image. We must suppose each new state of the instrument to be multiplied by the million, each to be preserved until a better one is produced, and then the old ones to be all destroyed. In living bodies variations will cause the slight alterations, generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this process go on for millions of years, and during each year on millions of individuals of many kinds, and may we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass as the works of the Creator are to those of man?"[26]

It might have occurred to the very learned naturalist that the formation of a mechanical instrument by the hand of man, guided by his intellect, admits of varieties of that instrument for different purposes, as products of an intelligent will. Different kinds of telescopes for different uses have been produced, not by destroying the poorer ones and preserving the better ones, but by a special and intentional adaptation of the structure to special uses, until an instrument is made which will dissolve the nebulÆ of the milky way, and bring within the reach of our vision heavenly bodies of the existence of which we had no previous knowledge. Why may not the same intelligent and intentional formation of the human eye, as a special structure adapted to the special conditions of such an animal as man, have been the direct work of the Creator, just as the lowest visual organ—that of such a creature as the lancelet—was specially made for the conditions of its existence? Why resort to the theory that all the intermediate varieties of the eye have grown successively out of the lowest form of such an organ by transitional grades of which we can not trace the series, when the probabilities concerning the varieties of this organ of which we have any knowledge are so strongly on the side of a special and intentional adaptation of each one to the circumstances of the animal to which it has been given? As a question of power in the Creator, either method of action was of course just as competent as the other. As a question of which was his probable method, the case is very different; for we know comparatively very little of the modifications produced by such causes as natural or even sexual selection, while we may, without presumption, assume that we know much more about the purposes of special adaptation to special conditions, which an omnipotent Creator may have designed and effected. But this is a digression, and also an anticipation of the argument.

To state the pedigree of man according to the Darwinian theory, we must begin with an aquatic animal as the early progenitor of all the vertebrata. This animal existing, it is assumed, "in the dim obscurity of the past," was provided with branchiÆ or gills, or organs for respiration in water, with the two sexes united in the same individual, but with the most important organs of the body, such as the brain and heart, imperfectly or not at all developed. From this fish-like animal, or from some of its fish descendants, there was developed an amphibious creature, with the sexes distinct. Rising from the amphibians, through a long line of diversified forms, we come to an ancient marsupial animal, an order in which the young are born in a very incomplete state of development, and carried by the mother, while sucking, in a ventral pouch.[27] From the marsupials came the quadrumana[28] and all the higher mammals.[29] Among these mammals there was, it is supposed, a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits, from which man is descended. It was an inhabitant of the Old World. It branched into the lemuridÆ, a group of four-handed animals, distinct from the monkeys, and resembling the insectivorous quadrupeds in some of their characters and habits;[30] and from these came the simiadÆ, of which there were two great stems—the New World and Old World monkeys. "From the latter, at a remote period, man, the wonder and glory of the universe, proceeded."[31]

The reader must now, in order to do justice to this theory, imagine a lapse of time, from the period of the existence of the aquatic progenitor of all the vertebrata, to be counted by millions of years, or by any figures that will represent to the mind the most conceivable distance between a past and a present epoch. Through this enormous stretch of centuries, in order to give scope to the operation of the laws of natural and sexual selection, we must suppose the struggle for existence to be going on among the individuals of the same species, and among different species inhabiting the same country, and the sexual selection among the individuals of the same species to be perpetually transmitting to offspring the improved and more developed organs and powers induced by natural selection; so that in the countless sequence of generations there are evolved animals that are so widely different from their remote progenitors that in classifying them we find them to be new species, endowed with a power of reproducing their own type, and similarly capable, it would seem, of still further development into even higher types in the long-distant future.

I know not how it may appear to others, but to me the parallelism between the Platonic and the Darwinian theory is very striking. Both speculators assume the existence of a Supreme Intelligence and Power, presiding over the creation of animals which are to inhabit this earth. Behind the celestial or primitive gods the Greek philosopher places the Demiurgus, to whom the gods stand in the relation of ministers or servants to execute his will. The modern naturalist assumes the existence of the Omnipotent God; and although he does not directly personify the laws of natural and sexual selection which the Omnipotent power has made to operate in nature, they perform an office in the transitional gradations through which the animals are successively developed, that very closely resembles the office performed by the gods of Plato's system in providing the modifications of structure which the animals undergo. In the two processes the one is the reversed complement of the other. Plato begins with the formation of an animal of a very exalted type, and by successive degradations, induced by the failure of the animal to live up to the high standard of its rational existence, he supposes a descent into lower and still lower forms, the gods all the while providing a new structure for each successive lower form, until we reach the shell-fish fixed on the earth beneath the water. Darwin begins with the lowest form of animated organization, and by successive gradations induced by the struggle of the animal to maintain its existence, he supposes an ascent into higher and still higher forms, the laws of natural and sexual selection operating to develop a new structure for each successive higher form, until we reach man, "the wonder and glory of the universe," an animal whose immediate ancestor was the same as the monkey's, and whose remote progenitor was an aquatic creature breathing by gills and floating by a swim-bladder.

Nor had Plato less of probability to support his theory than Darwin had to support his. The Greek philosopher might have adduced the constant spectacle of men debasing their habits and even their physical appearance into a resemblance to the brutes. He might have suggested, and he does suggest, how the degrading tendencies of the lower appetites and the ravages of disease drag down the human frame from its erect carriage and its commanding power over matter to an approximation with the condition of the inferior animals. He might have adduced innumerable proofs of the loss of reason, or rationality, through successive generations of men, brought about by the transmission of both appetites and physical malformation from parents to children. He might have compared one of his Athenian fellow-citizens of the higher class with the lowest savage known throughout all the regions accessible to an observer of his day and country. He might have portrayed the one as a being preserving his physical organization in the highest state of perfection by gymnastic exercises, by a well-chosen diet, by observance of all the conditions of health, by the aid of the highest medical skill known to the age; cultivating his mind by philosophy, practicing every public and private virtue as they were understood among a people of rare refinement, and adorning his race by an exhibition of the highest qualities that were then attainable. All these qualities, physical, mental, and moral, Plato might have shown were transmissible in some degree, and in a good degree were actually transmitted from sire to son. Turning to the other picture, and comparing "Hyperion to the satyr," he might have shown that the lowest savage, in those physical points of structure which were best adapted to his animal preservation as an inhabitant of the wildest portion of the earth, had retained those which made him more nearly resemble the brute inhabitants of the same region, and that in his intellectual and moral qualities the resemblance between him and his Athenian contemporary was almost wholly lost. Intermediate between these extreme specimens of the human race, why could not Plato have found with great probability, and often with actual proof, successive degradations of structure and uses of organs, just as well supported by facts, or analogies, or hypotheses, as are Mr. Darwin's successive elevations from a lower to a higher animal? If Plato had known as much about the animal kingdom as is now known, he could have arrayed the same facts in support of his theory, by an argument as powerful as that which now supports the doctrine of evolution.

Nay, it is certain that Plato's attention was drawn to some of these facts, and that he makes use of them in a way that is as legitimately a probable occurrence as any use that is made of them at the present day. For example, he was struck with the existence of what in scientific parlance are called "rudiments," a term that is employed to describe an organ or part which appears to have no special use where it is found in one animal, but which, in a more developed or in a diversified condition, has an obvious use in another animal. Thus, he tells us that the gods, with a long-sighted providence, introduced a sketch or rudiment of nails into the earliest organization of man, foreseeing that the lower animals would be produced from the degeneration of man, and that to them claws and nails would be absolutely indispensable.[32] In the same way, he seems to regard hair as a rudiment, relatively speaking; for while its use on different parts of the body of man, or even on the head, is not very apparent, its use to the lower animals is very obvious. Why, then, is it not just as rational, and just as much in accordance with proper scientific reasoning, to suppose those parts of animal structure which are called "rudiments" to have been introduced as mere sketches in the organization of a very high animal, and then to have been developed into special uses in lower animals produced by the degeneration of the higher, as it is to suppose that they were developed in full activity and use in the lower animals, but sank into the condition of useless or comparatively useless appendages as the higher animal was evolved out of the lower by a process of elevation? The modern naturalist of the evolution school will doubtless say that "rudiments" in the human structure, for which there is no assignable use that can be observed, are not to be accounted for as sketches from which Nature was to work, in finding for them a use in some other animal in a developed and practically important condition; that, to the extent to which such things are found in man, they are proofs of his cognate relations to the lower animals, in which they have a palpable use; and that the gradations by which they have proceeded from practical and important uses in the lower animals, until they have become mere useless or comparatively useless sketches in the human structure, are among the proofs of the descent of man from the lower animals which had a use for such things. I shall endeavor hereafter to examine the argument that is derived from "rudiments" more closely. At present, the point which I suggest to the mind of the reader arises in the parallel between the Platonic and the Darwinian theory of the origin of the different species of animals. I ask, why is it not just as probably a true hypothesis to suppose that man was first created with these rudimentary sketches in his organization, and that they became useful appendages in the lower animals, into which man became degenerated, as it is to suppose that these parts existed in full development, activity, and practical use in the lower animals, out of whom man was generated, and that in man they lost their utility and became relatively mere rudiments? To my mind, neither theory has the requisite amount of probability in its favor compared with the probability of special creations; but I can see as much probability in the Platonic as in the Darwinian explanation, and a strong parallelism between them.

I will pursue this parallel somewhat further by again adverting to Plato's idea of the origin of the human soul. He supposes it to have been an immortal being, formed out of the eternal essence of Ideas by the Demiurgus. He manifestly makes it an existence distinct from matter, because he places its first abode in a heavenly mansion, where it is in unison with the celestial harmonies and perfections of the outer circle. This heavenly sphere is again to be its abode, after it shall have been released from its temporary abode on earth, which has been appointed to it for purposes of discipline and trial. At a fixed time of birth it is brought down from its celestial abode and united with a mortal body, that it may assert and prove its power to preside over and govern that body according to the eternal laws of reason and rectitude. If it fulfills this high duty, when the fastenings, which have bound it to the mortal frame, are dissolved with the dissolution of those which hold together the material structure, the soul flies away with delight to its own peculiar star. If it fails in this high duty, it is on the death of the first body transferred by a second birth into a more degraded body, resembling that to which it has allowed the first one to be debased. At length, somewhere in the series of transmigrations, the lower and bestial tendencies cease to have power over the immortal soul; the animal with which it was last united remains an animal bereft of reason, and the soul, released from further captivity, escapes to its original abode in the heavens, more or less contaminated by what it has undergone, but still immortal, indestructible, spiritual, and capable of purification.

Here, then, we have a conception of the origin and nature of the human soul as a spiritual existence, quite as distinctly presented as it can be by human reason. Stripped of the machinery by which Plato supposes the soul to have come into existence, his conception of its origin and nature is the most remarkable contribution which philosophy, apart from the aid of what is called inspiration, has made to our means of speculating upon this great theme. Of course, it affords, with all the machinery of which Plato makes use, no explanation of the point or the time of junction between the soul and the body. But, as a conception of what in the poverty of language must be called the substance of the soul, of its spiritual and immortal nature, of its distinctive existence separate from what we know as matter, whether Plato borrowed more or less from other philosophers who preceded him, it is a very distinct presentation of the nature of the human mind.

Turn now to what can be extracted from the Darwinian theory of the origin and nature of the human mind, and observe where it holds with and where it breaks from the parallelism between it and the Platonic theory. The doctrine of evolution, so called, presents to us no distinct suggestion that the mind of man is a separate and special creation. Rejecting, and very properly rejecting, the Platonic idea of an existence of the human soul anterior to the birth of the individual, the Darwinian theory supposes that in the long course of time, during which natural and sexual selection were operating to produce higher and still higher animals, there came about, in the earlier and primitive organizations, a habit of the animal to act in a certain way; that this habit descended to offspring; that it became developed into what is now called instinct; and that instinct became developed into what we now call mind. I know not how otherwise to interpret Mr. Darwin's repeated affirmations that, in comparing the mental powers of man and those of the lower animals, there can be detected no difference in kind, but that the difference is one of degree only; that there is no fundamental difference, or difference in nature, between the mental powers of an ape and a man, or between the mental power of one of the lowest fishes, as a lamprey or lancelet, and that of one of the higher apes; that both of these intervals, that between the ape and man, and that between the lancelet and the ape, which are much wider in the latter case than in the former, are filled up by numberless gradations.[33] If this be true, it must be because the lancelet, supposing that animal to be the progenitor, formed a habit of acting by an implanted impulse, which became, under the operation of natural and sexual selection, confirmed, developed, and increased in its descendants, until it not only amounted to what is called instinct, but took on more complex habits until something akin to reason was developed. As the higher animals continued to be evolved out of the lower, this approach to a reasoning power became in the ape a true mental faculty; and, at length, in the numberless gradations of structure intermediate between the ape and the man, we reach those intellectual faculties which distinguish the latter by an enormous interval from all the other animals. "If," says Mr. Darwin, "no organic being, excepting man, had possessed any mental power, or if his powers had been of a wholly different nature from those of the lower animals, then we never should have been able to convince ourselves that our high faculties had been gradually developed. But it can be shown that there is no fundamental difference of this kind."[34]

I will not here ask how far this is theoretical assumption. I shall endeavor to examine in another place the evidence which is supposed to show that the mental powers of man are in no respect fundamentally different, or different in kind, from the powers in the other animals to which the distinguished naturalist gives the name of "mental" powers. At present I am still concerned with the parallelism between the Platonic and the Darwinian theory; and I again ask whether the latter is not the former reversed, in respect to the process by which reason in the one case becomes lost, and that by which in the other case it becomes developed out of something to which it bears no resemblance? Plato supposes the creation of pure reason, or mental power, in the shape—to use the counterpart of a physical term—of a non-physical, spiritual intelligence, or mind. It remains always of this nature, but the successive animals which it is required to inhabit on earth undergo such degradations that the immortal reason loses in them the power to control their actions; nothing is left to govern in them but mere instinct, and this at last sinks into its lowest manifestations. Darwin, on the other hand, supposes the first creation to have been a very low animal of a fish-like structure, with the lowest capacity for voluntary action of any kind, but impelled to act in a certain way by superimposed laws of self-preservation; that in the infinitude of successive generations these laws have operated to produce numberless gradations of structure, in the growth of which fixed habits have become complex instincts; that further gradations have developed these instincts into something of mental power, as the successive higher animals have become evolved out of the lower ones, until at length the intellect of man has been "gradually developed" by a purely physical process of the action of organized matter.

This materialistic way of accounting for the origin of the human mind necessarily excludes the idea of its separate creation or its distinctive character. The theory is perfectly consistent with itself, in supposing that the mind of man does not differ in kind, or differ fundamentally, from those exhibitions which in the lower animals lead us to attribute to them some mental power. But whether the theory is consistent with what we know of our own minds, as compared with what we can observe in the other animals, is the real question. In the first place, it is to be remembered that we can read our own minds, by the power of consciousness and reflection. In the next place, it is conceded that we can know nothing of the minds of the other animals, excepting by their outward actions. They can not speak, to tell us of their emotions, their memories, their fears, their hopes, their desires, what they think, or whether they think at all. They do acts which wonderfully resemble the acts of man, in outward appearance, as if they were acts which proceeded from the same power of reason but in a less perfect degree; yet they can tell us nothing of their mental processes, if they have such processes, and the utmost that we can do is to argue from their acts that they have mental faculties akin to those of men. It is in the ordained nature of things that we know and can know, by introspection, what our own minds are. We can know the mind of no other animal excepting from his outward acts. How far these will justify us in assuming that his mind is of the same nature as ours, or that ours is an advanced development of his, is the fundamental question.

Plato was evidently led, by that study of the human mind which is open to all cultivated intellects through the process of consciousness and reflection, to conceive of the soul as a created intelligence of a spiritual nature. The fanciful materials out of which he supposes it to have been composed were the mere machinery employed to express his conception of its spiritual nature and its indestructible existence. He was led to employ such machinery by his highly speculative and constructive tendencies, and because it was the habit of Greek philosophy to account for everything. Some machinery he was irresistibly impelled to employ, in order to give due consistency to his theory. But his machinery in no way obscures his conception of the nature of the soul, and we may disregard it altogether and still have left the conception of a spiritual and immortal being, formed for separate existence from matter, but united to matter for a temporary purpose of discipline and trial.

The modern naturalist, on the other hand, although assuming the existence of the Omnipotent God, supposes the human mind to have become what it is by the action of organized matter beginning at the lowest point of animal life, and going on through successive gradations of animal structure, until habits are formed which become instincts, and instincts are gradually developed into mind. Take away the machinery that is employed, and you have left no conception of the immortal and indestructible nature of the human soul. The material out of which it is constructed is all of the earth earthy, and the twofold question arises: first, whether this was the probable method employed by the Omnipotent Creator; and, secondly, whether it will account for such an existence as we have reason to believe the mind of man to be.

There is another point in the parallel between the Platonic and the Darwinian systems which is worthy of note. We have seen that, according to Plato, when the Demiurgus had completed the construction of the Kosmos and that of the human soul, he retired and left to the gods the construction of a mortal body for man and of bodies of the inferior animals into which man would become degraded. According to Darwin, the Omnipotent God constructs some very low form of animal, and then, retiring from the work of direct creation, he leaves the laws of natural and sexual selection to operate in the production of higher animals through the process that is called evolution. Perhaps it may be unscientific to ask why the Omnipotent God should cease to exercise, or refrain from exercising, his power of special creation, after he has once exerted it. Perhaps there is some view of the nature and purposes of that infinite being which would render such an abstention from his powers a probable occurrence. But it is difficult to conceive what this view can be. If we take a comprehensive survey of all the facts concerning the animal kingdom that are within the reach of our observation; and if, then, in cases where we know of no intermediate or transitional states, we assume that they must have existed; if we array the whole in support of a certain theory which undertakes to account both for what we see and for what we do not see, we very easily reach the conclusion that the Omnipotent God performed but one act of special creation, or at most performed but a very few of such acts, and those of the rudest and simplest types, and then left all the subsequent and splendid exhibitions of animal structure to be worked out by natural selection. This is the scientific method adopted by the evolution school to account for the existence of all the higher animals of which we have knowledge, man included. It may be very startling, but we must acknowledge it as the method of action of the Omnipotent God, because it is said there is no logical impossibility in it.

There is a passage in Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species" which I must now quote, because it shows how strongly the supposed action and abstention of the infinite Creator, according to the Darwinian theory, resembles the action and abstention of Plato's Demiurgus: "Although the belief that an organ so perfect as the eye could have been formed by natural selection, is enough to stagger any one; yet in the case of any organ, if we know of a long series of gradations in complexity, each good for its possessor; then, under changing conditions of life, there is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection. In the cases in which we know of no intermediate or transitional states, we should be extremely cautious in concluding that none can have existed, for the metamorphoses of many organs show what wonderful changes in function are at least possible. For instance, a swim-bladder has apparently been converted into an air-breathing lung. The same organ having performed simultaneously very different functions, and then having been in part or in whole specialized for one function; and two distinct organs having performed at the same time the same function, the one having been perfected while aided by the other, must often have largely facilitated transitions."

Here, then, we have it propounded that after the creation of the rudest and simplest form of a visual organ, the infinite God abstains from direct and special creation of such a perfect and elaborate organ as the human eye, and leaves it to be worked out by natural selection; there being no logical impossibility, it is said, in this hypothesis. We are cautioned not to conclude, because we can not find the intermediate and transitional states of the visual organs, that they never existed; we are told that they are at least possible, and that analogies show they must have existed; and from the possibility of their existence and from the assumption that they happened, we are to believe that the Omnipotent God, refraining from the exercise of his power to create the human eye, with its wondrously perfect structure, left it to be evolved by natural selection out of the rudest and simplest visual organ which he directly fashioned.

All things are possible to an infinite Creator. He who made the visual organ of the lowest aquatic creature that ever floated could make the human eye as we know it, or could make one that would do more than the eye of man ever was capable of. He could by a direct exercise of his power of creation form the eye of man, or he could leave it to be evolved out of the only type of a visual organ on which he saw fit to exercise his creative power. He could create in the land-animals a true air-breathing lung as a special production of his will, or could permit it to be formed by transitional gradations out of the swim-bladder of an aquatic creature. But why should he abstain from the one method and employ the other? This question brings us at once to the probabilities of the case; and, in estimating those probabilities, we must take into the account all that reason permits us to believe of the attributes of the Almighty. We can not, it is true, penetrate into his counsels without the aid of revelation. But if we confine ourselves to the domain of science, or to the mere observation of nature, we shall find reason for believing that the Omnipotent God had purposes in his infinite wisdom that render the acts of special creation vastly more probable than the theory of evolution. A study of the animal kingdom and of all the phenomena of the universe leads us rationally and inevitably to one of two conclusions: either that there is no God, and that all things came by chance; or to the belief that there is a God, and that he is a being of infinite benevolence as well as infinite wisdom and power. Now, why should such a being, proposing to himself the existence on earth of such an animal as man, to be inhabited for a time by a soul destined to be immortal, abstain from the direct creation of both soul and body, and leave the latter to be evolved out of the lowest form of animal life, and the former to become a mere manifestation or exhibition of phenomena, resulting from the improved and more elaborate structures of successive types of animals? Is there no conceivable reason why an infinitely wise, benevolent, and omnipotent being should have chosen to exercise the direct power of creation in forming the soul of man for an immortal existence, and also to exercise his direct power of creation in so fashioning the body as to fit it with the utmost exactness to be serviceable and subservient to the mind which is to inhabit it for a season? Why depict the infinite God as a quiescent and retired spectator of the operation of certain laws which he has imposed upon organized matter, when there are discoverable so many manifest reasons for the special creation of such a being as man? It is hardly in accordance with any rational theory of God's providence, after we have attained a conception of such a being, to liken him intentionally or unintentionally to the Demiurgus of the acute and ingenious Greek philosopher. We must conclude that human society, with all that it has done or is capable of doing for man on earth, was in the contemplation of the Almighty; and if we adopt this conclusion, we must account for the moral sense, for moral obligation, and for the idea of law and duty. We can not account for these things upon any probable theory of their origin, if we reject the idea that they were specially implanted in the structure of the human soul, and suppose that both the intellectual faculties and the moral sense were evolved out of the struggle of lower animals for their existence, resulting in the formation of higher animals and in the development of their social instincts into more complex, refined, and consciously calculating instincts of the same nature.

I have not drawn this parallel between the Platonic and the Darwinian theories of the origin of different animals for any purpose of suggesting that the one was in any sense borrowed from the other. Plagiarism, in any form, is not, so far as I know, to be detected in the writings of the evolution school. But the speculations of Plato in regard to the origin and nature of the human soul, fanciful as they are, afford great assistance in grasping the conception of a spiritual existence; and the parallel between his process of degradation and Darwin's process of elevation shows to my mind as great probability in the one theory as there is in the other.