The Darwinian pedigree of man—The evolution of organisms out of other organisms, according to the theory of Darwin.

It is doubtless an interesting speculation to go back in imagination to a period to be counted by any number of millions of years, or covered by an immeasurable lapse of time, and to conceive of slowly-moving causes by which the present or the past inhabitants of this globe became developed out of some primordial type, through successive generations, resulting in different species, which became final products and distinct organisms. But what the imagination can do in the formation of a theory when acting upon a certain range of facts is, as a matter of belief, to be tested by the inquiry whether the weight of evidence shows that theory to be, in a supreme degree, a probable truth, when compared with any other hypothesis. It is in this way that I propose to examine and test the Darwinian pedigree of man. The whole of Mr. Darwin's theory of the descent of man as an animal consists in assigning to him a certain pedigree, which traces his organism through a long series of other animals back to the lowest and crudest form of animal life; and it must be remembered that this mode of accounting for the origin of man of necessity supposes an unbroken connection of lives with lives, back through the whole series of organisms which constitute the pedigree, and that, according to the Darwinian theory, there was no aboriginal creation of any of these organisms, save the very first and lowest form with which the series commences. Not only must this connection of lives with lives be shown, but the theory must be able to show how it has come about that there are now distinct species of animals which never reproduce any type but their own.

Two great agencies, according to the Darwinian theory, have operated to develop the different species of animals from some low primordial type, through a long series which has culminated in man, who can not lay claim to be a special creation, but must trace his pedigree to some ape-like creature, and so on to the remote progenitor of all the Vertebrata. It is now needful to grasp, with as much precision as such a theory admits of, the nature and operation of these agencies, and to note the strength or weakness of the proof which they afford of the main hypothesis. First, we have what is called "the struggle for existence," which may be conceded as a fact, and to which more or less may be attributed. The term is used by Mr. Darwin in a metaphorical sense, to include all that any being has to encounter in maintaining its individual existence, and in leaving progeny, or perpetuating its kind. In the animal kingdom, the struggle for individual existence is chiefly a struggle for food among the different individuals which depend on the same food, or against a dearth of one kind of food which compels a resort to some other kind. The struggle for a continuation of its species is dependent on the success with which the individual animal maintains the contest for its own existence. Now, it is argued that in this great and complex battle for life it would occur that infinitely varied diversities of structure would be useful to the animals in helping them to carry on the battle under changing conditions. These useful diversities, consisting of the development of new organs and powers, would be preserved and perpetuated in the offspring, through many successive generations, while the variations that were injurious would be rigidly destroyed. The animals in whom these favorable individual differences and variations of structure were preserved would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind. So that, by this "survival of the fittest," Nature is continually selecting those variations of structure which are useful, and continually rejecting or eliminating those which are injurious; the result being the gradual evolution of successive higher types of animals out of the lower ones, until we reach man, the highest animal organism that exists on this earth. In the next place, we have, as an auxiliary agency, in aid of natural selection, what is called "the sexual selection," by which the best endowed and most powerful males of a given species appropriate the females, and thus the progeny become possessed of those variations of structure and the superior qualities which have given to the male parent the victory over his competitors.

The proofs that are relied upon to establish the operation and effect of these agencies in producing the results that are claimed for them, ought to show that, in one or more instances, an animal of a superior organization which, when left to the natural course of its reproduction by the union of its two sexes, always produces its own distinct type and no other, has, in fact, been itself evolved out of some lower and different organism by the agencies of natural and sexual selection operating among the individuals of that lower type. One of the proofs, on which great stress is laid by Mr. Darwin, may be disposed of without difficulty. It is that which is said to take place in the breeding of domestic animals, or of animals the breeding of which man undertakes to improve for his own practical benefit, or to please his fancy, or to try experiments. In all that has been done in this kind of selection, in breeding from the best specimens of any class of animals, there is not one instance of the production of an animal varying from its near or its remote known progenitors in anything but adventitious peculiarities which will not warrant us in regarding it as a new or different animal. No breeder of horses has ever produced an animal that was not a horse. He may have brought about great and important improvements in the qualities of fleetness, or strength, or weight, or endurance, by careful selection of the sire and the dam; but the race-horse or the hunter, or the draught-horse or the war-horse, is but a horse of different qualities and powers, with the same skeleton, viscera, organs, muscles, which mark this species of animal, and with no other variations of structure than such as follow from the limited development of different parts for different uses. No breeder of cows ever produced a female animal that was not a cow, although he may have greatly improved the quality and quantity of the milk peculiar to this animal by careful selection of the individuals which he permits or encourages to breed. No breeder of sheep ever produced an animal that was not a sheep, although the quality of the fleece or of the mutton may have been greatly improved or varied. Among the domestic fowls, no animal that was not a bird was ever bred by any crossing of breeds, although great varieties of plumage, structure of beak, formation of foot, development of wing, habits of life, adaptation to changes of situation, and many minor peculiarities, have been the consequences of careful and intelligent breeding from different varieties of the same fowl. In the case of the pigeon, of which Mr. Darwin has given a great many curious facts from his own experience as a breeder, the most remarkable variations are perhaps to be observed as the results of intentional breeding from different races of that bird; but with all these variations nothing that was not a bird was ever produced. In the case of the dog, whatever was his origin, or supposing him to have been derived from the wolf, or to belong to the same family as the wolf, it is, of course, impossible to produce, by any crossing of different breeds of dogs, an animal that would not belong to the class of the CanidÆ. Indeed, it is conceded by Darwin, with all the array of facts which he adduces in regard to the domesticated animals, that by crossing we can only get forms in some degree intermediate between the parents; and that although a race may be modified by occasional crosses, if aided by careful selection of the individuals which present the desired character, yet to obtain a race intermediate between two distinct races would be very difficult, if not impossible. If this is so, how much more remote must be the possibility, by any selection, or by any crossing to which Nature will allow the different animals to submit, to produce an animal of so distinct a type that it would amount to a different species from its known progenitors!

From all that has been brought about in the efforts of man to improve or to vary the breeds of domestic animals—a kind of selection that is supposed to be analogous to what takes place in Nature, although under different conditions—it is apparent that there are limitations to the power of selection in regard to the effects that are to be attributed to it. A line must be drawn somewhere. It will not do in scientific reasoning, or in any other reasoning, to ignore the limitations to which all experience and observation point with unerring certainty, so far as experience and observation furnish us with facts. It is true that the lapse of time during which there has been, with more or less success, an intentional improvement in the breeds of domestic animals carried on with recorded results has been very short when compared with the enormous period that has elapsed since the first creation of an animal organization, whenever or whatever that creation was. But history furnishes us with a pretty long stretch of time through which civilized, half-civilized, and savage nations have had to do with various animals in first taming them from a wild state and then in domesticating so as to make them subservient to human wants, and finally in improving their breeds. But there is no recorded or known instance in which there has been produced under domestication an animal which can be said to be of a different species from its immediate known progenitors, or one that differed from its remote known progenitors in any but minor and adventitious peculiarities of structure. If in passing from what has been done by human selection in the breeding of animals to what has taken place in Nature in a much longer space of time and on a far greater scale, we find that in Nature, too, there are limitations to the power of that agency which is called natural selection—that there is an impassable barrier which Nature never crosses, an invincible division between the different species of animals—we must conclude that there is a line between what selection can and what it can not do. We must conclude, with all the scope and power that can be given to natural selection, that Nature has not developed a higher and differently organized animal out of a lower and inferior type—has not made new species by the process called evolution, because the infinite God has not commissioned Nature to do that thing, but has reserved it unto himself to make special creations. Do not all that we know of the animal kingdom—all that naturalists have accumulated of facts and all that they concede to be the absence of facts—show that there is a clear and well-defined limitation to the power of natural selection, as well as to the power of that other agency which is called sexual selection? Grant that this agency of natural selection began to operate at a period, the commencement of which is as remote as figures can describe; that the struggle for life began as soon as there was an organized being existing in numbers sufficiently large to be out of proportion to the supply of food; that the sexual selection began at the same time, and that both together have been operating ever since among the different species of animals that have successively arisen and successively displaced each other throughout the earth. The longer we imagine this period to have been, the stronger is the argument against the theory of evolution, because the more numerous will be the absences of the gradations and transitions necessary to prove an unbroken descent from the remote prototype which is assumed to have been the first progenitor of the whole animal kingdom. Upon the hypothesis that evolution is a true account of the origin of the different animals, we ought practically to find no missing links in the chain. The fact is that the missing links are both extremely numerous and important; and the longer the period assumed—the further we get from the probability that these two agencies of natural and sexual selection were capable of producing the results that are claimed for them—the stronger is the proof that a barrier has been set to their operation, and the more necessary is it to recognize the line which separates what they can from what they can not do.

Let us now see what is the state of the proof. It may assist the reader to understand the Darwinian pedigree of man if I present it in a tabulated form, such as we are accustomed to use in exhibiting to the eye the pedigree of a single animal. Stated in this manner, the Darwinian pedigree of man may be traced as follows:

These ten classes or groups of animals are supposed to be connected together by intermediate diversified forms, which constitute the transitions from one of the classes or groups to the other; and in reading the table downward it must be remembered that we are reading in fact through an ascending scale of beings, from the very lowest organized creature to the highest. The whole, taken together, forms a chain of evidence; and, according to the rational rules of evidence, each distinct fact ought to be proved to have existed at some time before our belief in the main hypothesis can be challenged. I know of no reason why the probable truth of a scientific hypothesis should be judged by any other rules of determination than those which are applied to any other subject of inquiry; and, while I am ready to concede that in matters of physical science it is allowable to employ analogy in constructing a theory, it nevertheless remains, and must remain, true that where there are numerous links in a supposed chain of proofs that are established by nothing but an inference drawn from an analogous fact, the collection of supposed proofs does not exclude the probable truth of every other hypothesis but that which is sought to be established, as it also does not establish the theory in favor of which the supposed facts are adduced. Upon these principles of evidence I propose now to examine the Darwinian pedigree of man.

I. The group of marine animals described as resembling the larvÆ of existing Ascidians; that is to say, an aquatic animal in the form of a grub, caterpillar, or worm, which is the first condition of an insect at its issuing from the egg. These assumed progenitors of the Vertebrata are reached, according to Mr. Darwin, by "an obscure glance into a remote antiquity," and they are described as "apparently" existing, and as "resembling" the larvÆ of existing Ascidians. We are told that these animals were provided with branchiÆ, or gills, for respiration in water, but with the most important organs of the body, such as the brain and heart, imperfectly or not at all developed. This simple and crude animal "we can see," it is said, "in the dim obscurity of the past," and that it "must have been the early progenitor of all the Vertebrata."[35] It is manifest that this creature is a mere hypothesis, constructed, no doubt, by the aid of analogy, but existing only in the eye of scientific imagination. Why is it placed in the water? For no reason, apparently, but that its supposed construction is made to resemble that of some creatures which have been found in the water, and because it was necessary to make it the progenitor of the next group, the lowly-organized fishes, in order to carry out the theory of the subsequent derivations. It might have existed on the land, unless at the period of its assumed existence the whole globe was covered with water. If it had existed on the land, the four subsequent forms, up to and including the Marsupials, might have been varied to suit the exigencies of the pedigree without tracing the descent of the Marsupials through fishes and the Amphibians.

II. The group of lowly-organized fishes. These are said to have been "probably" derived from the aquatic worm (I), and they are described to have been as lowly organized as the lancelet, which is a known fish of negative characters, without brain, vertebral column, or heart, presenting some affinities with the Ascidians, which are invertebrate, hermaphrodite marine creatures, permanently attached to a support, and consisting of a simple, tough, leathery sack, with two small projecting orifices. The larvÆ of these creatures somewhat resemble tadpoles, and have the power of swimming freely about. These larvÆ of the Ascidians are said to be, in their manner of development, related to the Vertebrata in the relative position of the nervous system, and in possessing a structure closely like the chorda dorsalis of vertebrate animals.[36] Here, again, it is apparent that a group of lowly-organized fish-like animals, of which there are no remains, have been constructed by a process of scientific reasoning from a certain class of marine creatures that are known. As a matter of pure theory, there can be no serious objection to this kind of construction, especially if it is supported by strong probabilities furnished by known facts. But when a theory requires this kind of reasoning in order to establish an important link in a chain of proofs, it is perfectly legitimate and necessary criticism that we are called upon to assume the former existence of such a link; and, indeed, the theorists themselves, with true candor and accuracy, tell us that they are arguing upon probabilities from the known to the unknown, or that a thing "must have existed" because analogies warrant the assumption that it did exist. In a matter so interesting, and in many senses important, as the evolution theory of man's descent, it is certainly none too rigid to insist on the application of the ordinary rules of belief.

III. The Ganoids and other fishes like the Lepidosiren. These, we are told, "must have been developed" from the preceding (II). The Ganoids, it is said, were fishes covered with peculiar enameled bony scales. Most of them are said to be extinct, but enough is known about them to lay the foundation for their "probable" development from the first fishes that are supposed to have been derived from the aquatic worm (I). There is a reason for arguing the existence of these first fishes as a true fish with the power of locomotion, because the next ascending group of animals is to be the Amphibians. In a fish, the swim-bladder is an important organ; and it is an organ that plays an important part in the Darwinian theory, furnishing, it is claimed, a very remarkable illustration that an organ constructed originally for one purpose, flotation, may be converted into one for a widely different purpose, namely, respiration. As the Amphibians, which as a distinct group were to come next after the fishes in the order of development, must be furnished with a true air-breathing lung, their progenitors, which inhabited the water only, must be provided with an organ that would undergo, by transitional gradations, conversion into a lung. But what is to be chiefly noted here is that it is admitted that the prototype, which was furnished with a swim-bladder, was "an ancient and unknown prototype"; and it is a mere inference that the true lungs of vertebrate animals are the swim-bladder of a fish so converted, by ordinary generation, from the unknown prototype because the swim-bladder is "homologous or 'ideally similar' in position and structure with the lungs of the higher vertebrate animals."[37] One might ask here without presumption, why the Omnipotent God should not have created in the vertebrate animals a lung for respiration, as well as have created or permitted the formation of a swim-bladder in a fish; and looking to the probabilities of the case, it is altogether too strong for the learned naturalist to assert that "there is no reason to doubt that the swim-bladder has actually been converted into lungs or an organ used exclusively for respiration"; especially as we are furnished with nothing but speculation to show the intermediate and transitionary modifications between the swim-bladder and the lung. While we may not assume "that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man," in all respects, it is surely not presumptuous to suppose that an Omnipotent and All-wise Being works by powers that are competent to produce anything that in his infinite purposes he may see fit specially to create.

IV. The Amphibians. Here we come to what is now a very numerous group, of which it is said that the first specimens received, among other modifications, the transformation of the swim-bladder of their fish progenitors into an air-breathing lung. We are told that from the fishes of the last preceding group (III) "a very small advance would carry us on to the Amphibians."[38] But whether the advance from an animal living in the water and incapable of existing out of that element, to an animal capable of living on the land as well as in the water, was small or large, we look in vain, at present, for the facts that constitute that advance.

V. The Ancient Marsupials. These were an order of mammals such as the existing kangaroos, opossums, etc., of which the young, born in a very incomplete state of development, are carried by the mother, while sucking, in a ventral pouch. They are supposed to have been the predecessors, at an earlier geological period, of the placental mammals, namely, the highest class of mammals, in which the embryo, after it has attained a certain stage, is united to the mother by a vascular connection called the placenta, which secures nourishment that enables the young to be born in a more complete state. There is a third and still lower division of the great mammalian series, called the Montremata, and said to be allied to the Marsupials. But the early progenitors of the existing Marsupials, classed as the Ancient Marsupials, are supposed to constitute the connection between the Amphibians and the placental mammals; that is to say, an animal which produced its young by bringing forth an egg, from which the young is hatched, became converted into an animal which produced its young from a womb and nourished it after birth from the milk supplied by its teats, the young being born in a very incomplete state of development and carried by the mother in a ventral pouch while it is sucking. The steps of variation and development by which this extraordinary change of structure, of modes of reproduction and formation of organs, as well as habits of life, took place, are certainly not yet discovered; and it is admitted, in respect to forms "now so utterly unlike," that the production of the higher forms by the process of evolution "implies the former existence of links binding closely together all these forms."[39] In other words, we are called upon to supply by general reasoning links of which we have as yet no proof.

VI. The Quadrumana and all the higher (or Placental) Mammals. These are supposed to stand between the implacental mammals (V) and the LemuridÆ (VII). The latter were a group of four-handed animals, distinct from the monkeys, and "resembling the insectivorous quadrupeds." But the gradations which would show the transformation from the implacental Marsupials to the placental Quadrumana are wanting.

VII. The LemuridÆ. This branch of the placental mammals is now actually represented by only a few varieties. The early progenitors of those which still exist are placed by Darwin in the series intermediate between the Quadrumana and the SimiadÆ; and according to Huxley they were derived from the lowest, smallest, and least intelligent of the placental mammalia.

VIII. The SimiadÆ. This is the general term given by naturalists to the whole group of monkeys. From the LemuridÆ to the SimiadÆ we are told by Darwin that "the interval is not very wide." Be it wider or narrower, it would be satisfactory to know whether the gradations by which the former became the latter are established by anything more than general speculation.

IX. The Catarrhine, or Old-World Monkeys. These are the great stem or branch of the SimiadÆ which became the progenitors of man. His immediate progenitors were "probably" a group of monkeys called by naturalists the Anthropomorphous Apes, being a group without tails or callosities, and in other respects resembling man. While this origin of man is gravely put forward and maintained with much ingenuity, we are told that "we must not fall into the error of supposing that the early progenitor of the whole Simian stock, including man, was identical with, or even closely resembled, any existing ape or monkey."[40] So that somewhere between the early progenitor of the whole Simian stock and all that we know of the monkey tribe, there were transitions and gradations and modifications produced by natural and sexual selection which we must supply as well as we can.

X. Man. We have now arrived at "the wonder and glory of the universe," and have traced his pedigree from a low form of animal, in the shape of an aquatic worm, through successive higher forms, each developed out of its predecessor by the operation of fixed laws, and without the intervention of any special act of creation anywhere in the series, whatever may have been the power and purpose by and for which existence was given to the first organized and living creature, the aquatic worm. Speaking of man as belonging, from a genealogical point of view, to the Catarrhine, or Old-World stock of monkeys, Mr. Darwin observes that "we must conclude, however much the conclusion may revolt our pride, that our early progenitors would have been properly thus designated."[41]

I have already said that our pride may be wholly laid out of consideration. The question of the probable truth of this hypothesis of man's descent should not be affected by anything but correct reasoning and the application of proper principles of belief. Treating it with absolute indifference in regard to the dignity of our race, I shall request my readers to examine the argument by which it is supported, without the smallest influence of prejudice. I am aware that it is asking a good deal to desire the reader to divest himself of all that nature and education and history and poetry and religion have contributed to produce in our feelings respecting our rank in the scale of being. When I come to treat of that which, for want of a more suitable term, must be called the substance of the human mind, and to suggest how it bears upon this question of the origin of man, I shall, as I trust, give the true, and no more than the true, scope to those considerations which lead to the comparative dignity of the race. But this dignity, as I have before observed, should follow and should not precede or accompany the discussion of the scientific problem.

What has chiefly struck me in studying the theory of evolution as an account of the origin of man is the extent to which the theory itself has influenced the array of proofs, the inconsequential character of the reasoning, and the amount of assumption which marks the whole argument. This is not said with any purpose of giving offense. What is meant by it will be fully explained and justified, and one of the chief means for its justification will be found in what I have here more than once adverted to—Mr. Darwin's own candor and accuracy in pointing out the particulars in which important proofs are wanting. Another thing by which I have been much impressed has been the repetition of what is "probable," without a sufficient weighing of the opposite probability; and sometimes this reliance on the "probable" has been carried to the verge, and even beyond the verge, of all probability. Doubtless the whole question of special creations on the one hand and of gradual evolution on the other is a question of probability. But I now refer to a habit among naturalists of asserting the probability of a fact or an occurrence, and then, without proof, placing that fact or occurrence in a chain of evidence from which the truth of their main hypothesis is to be inferred. It is creditable to them as witnesses, that they tell us that the particular fact or occurrence is only probably true, and that we are to look for proof of it hereafter. But the whole theory thus becomes an expectant one. We are to give up our belief that God made man in his own image—that he fashioned our minds and bodies after an image which he had conceived in his infinite wisdom—because we are to expect at some future time to discover the proof that he did something very different; that he formed some very lowly-organized creature, and then sat as a retired spectator of the struggle for existence, through which another and then another higher form of being would be evolved, until the mind and the body of man would both have grown out of the successive developments of organic structure. We can not see this now; we can not prove it; but we may expect to be able to see it and to prove it hereafter.

The present state of the argument does not furnish very strong grounds for the expectation of what the future is to show. As far as I can discover, the main ground on which the principle of evolution is accepted by those who believe in it, is general reasoning. It is admitted that there are breaks in the organic chain between man and his nearest supposed allies which can not be bridged over by any extinct or living species. The answer that is made to this objection seems to me a very singular specimen of reasoning. It is said that the objection will not appear of much weight to those who believe in the principle of evolution from general reasons. But how is it with those who are inquiring, and who, failing to feel the force of the "general reasons," seek to know what the facts are? When we are told that the breaks in the organic chain "depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct," is it asking too much to inquire how it is known that there were such forms and that they have become extinct? Geology, it is fully conceded on its highest authorities, affords us very little aid in arriving at these extinct forms which would connect man with his ape-like progenitors; for, according to Lyell, the discovery of fossil remains of all the vertebrate classes has been a very slow and fortuitous process, and this process has as yet reached no remains connecting man with some extinct ape-like creature.[42] The regions where such remains would be most likely to be found have not yet been searched by geologists. This shows the expectant character of the theory, and how much remains for the future in supplying the facts which are to take the place of "general reasons."

But perhaps the most remarkable part of the argument remains to be stated. The breaks in the organic chain of man's supposed descent are admitted to be of frequent occurrence in all parts of the series, "some being wide, sharp, and defined, others less so in various degrees."[43] But these breaks depend merely, it is said, upon the number of related forms that have become extinct, there being as yet no proof, even by fossil remains, that they once existed. Now, the prediction is that at some future time such breaks will be found still more numerous and wider, by a process of extinction that will be observed and recorded; and hence we are not to be disturbed, in looking back into the past, by finding breaks that can not be filled by anything but general reasoning. The passage in which this singular kind of reasoning is expressed by Mr. Darwin deserves to be quoted:

"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Prof. Schaafhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."[44]

I do not quite comprehend how the "more civilized state of man" in the more or less remote future is to lead to this wider break. One can understand how the whole of mankind may become more civilized, and how the savage races will disappear by extermination or otherwise. It may be, and probably will be, that the anthropomorphous apes will be exterminated at the same time. But the question here is not in regard to a more perfect and widely diffused civilization—a higher and universal elevation of the intellectual and moral condition of mankind, a more improved physical and moral well-being—but it is in regard to a change in the physical and organic structure of the human animal, so marked and pronounced as to produce a wider break between man and his nearest supposed allies than that which now exists between the negro or the Australian and the gorilla. The anthropomorphous ape existing now will have disappeared; but it will be a well-known and recorded animal of the past. But what reason is there to expect that natural and sexual selection, or the advance of civilization, or the extermination of the savage races of mankind, or all such causes combined, are going to change essentially the structure of the human body to something superior to or fundamentally different from the Caucasian individual? We have had a tolerably long recorded history of the human body as it has existed in all states of civilization or barbarism. And although in the progress from barbarism to civilization—if utter barbarism preceded civilization—the development of its parts has been varied, and the brain especially has undergone a large increase in volume and in the activity of its functions, we do not find that the plan on which the human animal was constructed, however we may suppose him to have originated, has undergone any material change.

The most splendid specimen of the Caucasian race that the civilized world can show to-day has no more organs, bones, muscles, arteries, veins, or nerves than those which are found in the lowest savage. He makes a different use of them, and that use has changed their development, and to some extent has modified stature, physical, intellectual, and moral, and many other attributes; as climate and habits of life have modified complexion, the diseases to which the human frame is liable, and many other peculiarities. But if we take historic man, we find that in all the physical features of his animal construction that constitute him a species, he has been essentially the same animal in all states of civilization or barbarism; and unless we boldly assume that the prehistoric man was an animal born with a coat of hair all over his body, and that clothing was resorted to as the hair in successive generations disappeared, we can have no very strong reason for believing that the human body has been at any time an essentially different structure from what it is now. Even in regard to longevity or power of continued life, if we set aside the exceptional cases of what is related of the patriarchs in the biblical records, we do not find that the average duration of human life has been much greater or much less than the threescore and ten or the fourscore years that are said to have been the divinely appointed term. As to what may have been the average duration of life among prehistoric men, we are altogether in the dark.

I must now revert to one of the most prominent of the admitted breaks in the Darwinian pedigree, namely, that which occurs at the supposed transition from the amphibians to the mammalia. There is a term which is used in mechanics to mark the characteristic and fundamental distinction between one complex machine and another. We speak of the "principle" on which a mechanical structure operates, meaning the essential construction and mode of operation which distinguish it from other machines of the same general class. Although we are not to forget that an animal organization, to which is given that mysterious essence that is called life, may come into being by very different processes from those which are employed by man in dealing with dead matter and the forces which reside in it, yet there is no danger of being misled into false analogies, if we borrow from mechanics a convenient term, and speak of the "principle" on which an animal is constructed and on which its animal organization operates. We find, then, that in the animal kingdom there is a perfectly clear and pronounced division between the modes in which the reproductive system is constructed and by which it operates in the continuation of the species. The principle of construction and operation of the reproductive system, by which an individual animal is produced from an egg brought forth by the female parent, and is thereafter nourished without anything derived from the parental body, is as widely different from that by which the young animal is born from a womb and nourished for a time from the milk of the mother, as any two constructions, animate or inanimate, that can be conceived of. Whatever may be the analogy or resemblance between the embryo that is in the egg of one animal and the embryo that remains in the womb of another animal, at the point at which the egg is expelled from the parental system the analogy or resemblance ceases. In certain animals a body that is called an egg is formed in the female parent, containing an embryo, or foetus, of the same species, or the substance from which a like animal is produced. This substance is inclosed in an air-tight vessel or shell; when this has been expelled from the parent the growth of the embryo goes on to the stage of development at which the young animal is to emerge from the inclosure, and, whatever may have been the process or means of nourishment surrounding the embryo within the shell and brought in that inclosure from the body of the parent, the young animal never derives, at any subsequent stage of its existence, either before or after it has left the shell, anything more from the parental system. It may be "hatched" by parental incubation or by heat from another source, but for nourishment, after it leaves the shell, the young animal is dependent on substances that are not supplied from the parental body, although they may be gathered or put within its reach by the parental care.

The transition from this system of reproduction to that by which the foetus is formed into a greater or less degree of development within the body of the parent, and then brought forth to be nourished into further development by the parental milk, is enormous. The principle of the organic construction and mode of perpetuating the species, in the two cases, is absolutely unlike after we pass the point at which the ovule is formed by the union of the male and the female vesicles that are supposed to constitute its substance. When we pass from the implacental to the placental mammals we arrive at the crowning distinction between the two great systems of reproduction which separates them by a line that seems to forbid the idea that the one has grown out of the other by such causes as natural selection, and without a special and intentional creation of a new and different mode of operation. On the one hand, we have a system of reproduction by which the ovule is brought forth from the body of the parent in an inclosed vessel, and thereafter derives nothing from the parental body. In the other, we have the ovule developed into the foetus within the body of the parent, and the young animal is then brought forth in a more or less complete state of development, to be nourished by the parental secretion called milk. The intervention of the placental connection between the foetus and the mother, whereby nourishment is kept up so that the young animal may be born in a more complete state of development, is a contrivance of marvelous skill, which natural selection, or anything that can be supposed to take place in the struggle for existence, or the result of the sexual battle, seems to be entirely inadequate to account for. If two such very diverse systems could be supposed to have been the product of human contrivance, we should not hesitate to say that the principle of the one was entirely different from that of the other, and that the change evinced the highest constructive skill and a special design.

The Darwinian hypothesis is that this great transition from the one system of reproduction to the other took place between the amphibians and the ancient marsupials, by the operation of the influences of natural and sexual selection. That is to say, the system of reproduction through an egg, which is the characteristic of the amphibians, became changed by gradations and modifications into the system of the lowest mammals, the distinction between the former and the latter being an obvious and palpable one. Then we are to suppose a further change from the marsupials, or the implacental mammals, to that wonderful contrivance, the placenta, by which the mother nourishes the foetus into a more complete state of development before the young animal is born. This enormous change of system is supposed to have been brought about by a struggle among the individuals of one species for food, aided by a struggle between the males of that species for the possession of the females, by the growth and development of organs useful to the animal in the two battles, and by the transmission of these enhanced powers and improved weapons to offspring, and possibly by the crossing of different varieties of the new animals thus produced. But what potency there could be in such causes to bring about this great change it is extremely difficult to imagine, and we must draw largely on our imaginations to reach it. It would seem that if there is any one part of animal economy that is beyond the influence of such causes as the "survival of the fittest," it is the reproductive system, by which the great divisions of the animal kingdom continue their respective forms. Give all the play that you can to the operation of the successful battle for individual life, and to the victory of the best-appointed males over their competitors for the possession of the females, and to the transmission of acquired peculiarities to offspring—when you come to such a change as that between the two systems of reproduction and perpetuation, you have to account for something which needs far more proof of the transitional gradations of structure and habits of life than can now be found between the highest of the amphibians and the lowest of the mammalia. I know not how there could be higher or stronger evidence of design, of a specially planned and intentionally elaborated construction, than is afforded by this great interval between the one reproductive system and the other. But it is time now to pass to those points of resemblance between man and the other mammals which are asserted as the decisive proofs of his and their descent from some pre-existing form, their common progenitor. These points of resemblance may be considered in the following order:

1. The Bodily Structure of Man.—He is notoriously constructed on the same general type or model as other mammals. "All the bones in his skeleton can be compared with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or seal. So it is with his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, and internal viscera. The brain, the most important of all the organs, follows the same law."[45]

2. The Liability of Man to certain Diseases to which the Lower Animals are liable.—These diseases, such as hydrophobia, variola, the glanders, syphilis, cholera, etc., man both communicates to and receives from some of the lower animals. "This fact proves the close similarity of their tissues and blood, both in minute structure and composition, far more plainly than does their comparison under the best microscope or by the aid of the best chemical analysis." Monkeys are liable to many of the same non-contagious diseases as we are, such as catarrh and consumption. They suffer from apoplexy, inflammation of the bowels, and cataract in the eye. Their young die from fever when shedding their milk-teeth. Medicines produce the same effect on them as on us, and they have a strong taste for tea, coffee, spirituous liquors, and even tobacco. Man is infested with both internal and external parasites of the same genera or families as those infesting other mammals; in the case of scabies, he is infested with the same species of parasites. He is subject to the same law of lunar periods, in the process of gestation, and in the maturation and duration of certain diseases. His wounds are repaired by the same process of healing, and, after the amputation of his limbs, the stumps occasionally possess some power of regeneration, as in the lowest animals.[46]

3. The Reproductive Process.—This is strikingly the same, it is said, in all mammals, from the first act of courtship by the male to the birth and nurturing of the young.[47] The closeness of the parallel here, however, is obviously between man and the other placental mammalia, if we regard the whole process of reproduction of the different species.

4. Embryonic Development.—From the human ovule, which is said to differ in no respect from the ovule of other animals, into and through the early embryonic period, we are told that the embryo of man can hardly be distinguished from that of other members of the vertebrate kingdom. It is not necessary to repeat the details of the resemblance, which are undoubtedly striking, because they show a remarkable similarity between the embryo of man and that of the dog and the ape, in the earlier stage of the development, and that it is not until quite in the later stages of development that the three depart from each other, the difference between the young human being and the ape being not so great as that between the ape and the dog. We may, of course, accept Prof. Huxley's testimony that "the mode of origin [conception?] and the early stages of the development of man are identical with those of the animals immediately below him in the scale; without a doubt, in these respects, he is far nearer to the apes than the apes are to the dog."[48]

5. Rudiments.—This is a somewhat obscure branch of the proofs, which requires a more detailed examination in order to appreciate its bearing on the general theory of evolution. A distinction is made between rudimentary and nascent organs. The former are absolutely useless to their possessor—such as the mammÆ of male quadrupeds, or the incisor teeth of ruminants, which never cut through the gums—or else they are of such slight service to their present possessors that they can not be supposed to have been developed under the conditions which now exist. These useless, or very slightly useful, organs in the human frame, are supposed to have been organs which had an important utility in the lower animals from which man is descended, but, by disuse at that period of life when the organ is chiefly used, and by inheritance at a corresponding period of life, they became of less and less utility in the successive animals that were evolved out of the preceding forms, until they sank into the condition of useless appendages, although perpetuated by force of the derivation of one species of animal from another, caused by the operation of the laws of natural and sexual selection. Nascent organs, on the other hand, are those which, though not fully developed to their entire capability, are of high service to their possessor, and may be carried to a higher degree of utility. One of the characteristics, as it is said, of rudimentary organs, is that they often become wholly suppressed in individuals, and then reappear occasionally in other individuals, through what is called reversion, or a return to ancestral peculiarities.[49] We are told that "not one of the higher animals can be named which does not bear some part in a rudimentary condition; and man forms no exception to the rule."[50]

Among the rudiments that are peculiar to man, and which are supposed to be proofs of his cognate relations to the lower animals, we are referred to certain muscles in a reduced condition, which in the other animals are used to move, twitch, or contract the skin, and remnants of which, in an efficient state, are found in various parts of our bodies; for instance, the muscles which raise the eyebrows, those which contract the scalp, those which, in some individuals, move the external ear, and similar muscular powers in different parts of the body. These are adduced as illustrations of the persistent transmission of an absolutely useless, or almost useless, faculty, "probably" derived from our remote semi-human progenitors. There is also another rudiment in man, found in the covering of the eye, and called by anatomists the "semi-lunar fold," which in birds is of great functional importance, as it can be rapidly drawn across the whole eyeball. In those animals in which, with its accessory muscles and other structures, it is well developed, as in some reptiles and amphibians, and in sharks, it is a third eyelid. In the two lower divisions of the mammalian series, the monotremata and the marsupials, and in some few of the higher mammals, as in the walrus, it is said to be fairly well developed. But in man, in the quadrumana, and most other mammals, it has become a mere rudiment.

The sense of smell in man is also classed by Darwin and other naturalists among the rudiments. It is argued that it was not originally acquired by man as he now exists, but that he has inherited this power, in an enfeebled and so far rudimentary condition, from some early progenitor, to whom it was highly serviceable, and by whom it was continually used.

Then we have the rudiment of hair, which, so far as it now exists on different parts of our body, is regarded as a mere remnant of the uniform hairy coat of the lower animals. Man, as he is now born, "differs conspicuously from all the other primates in being almost naked." But this nearly nude condition was not, it is said, the condition of his progenitors, and it is not the condition of his co-descendants from the same progenitors. At some time the progenitors of man and his co-descendants became covered all over with a coat of hair. What remains upon our bodies of this peculiar growth, that is called hair, is what was left after the agency of natural selection had worked off what was useless to the successive animals, and sexual selection had operated to transmit to offspring the absence of hair that had accrued in the nearer progenitors and the immediate parents. The illustrations which render this view "probable" do not need to be repeated, nor is it necessary to follow out the speculations concerning the mode in which our progenitors, near or remote, became varied in respect to the quantity, position, or direction of the hairs on various parts of their bodies.

There are several other alleged homologues or rudiments which are supposed to connect man with the lower animals, but which, whatever may be the resemblances, it is not necessary to discuss in detail, because there is one consideration at least which applies to the whole of this class of proofs, and to that I now pass. The three great classes of facts on which the whole argument rests, viewing man as an animal and omitting all reference to his intellect, are the resemblances of his bodily structure to that of the other mammals, the similarity between his embryonic development and theirs, and the rudiments. I reserve for separate discussion the counter-proof which may be derived from the nature of the human mind, and the special adaptation of the human structure to become the temporary residence and instrument of a spiritual and immortal being.

"It is," says Mr. Darwin, "no scientific explanation to assert that they have all [man and the other animals of the mammalian class] been formed on the same ideal plan."[51] The similarity of pattern is pronounced "utterly inexplicable" upon any other hypothesis than that all these animals are descended from a common progenitor, and that they have become what they are by subsequent adaptation to diversified conditions. I may incur some risk in undertaking to suggest what is a "scientific" explanation. Certainly I do not propose to "assert" anything. But I will endeavor to keep within the bounds of what I suppose to be science. I take that to be a scientific explanation which, embracing the important facts of natural history as the groundwork of the reasoning, undertakes to show the rationality of one hypothesis that differs from another, when the question is, Which has the greater amount of probability in its favor?

All correct reasoning on this subject of man's descent as an animal begins, I presume, with the postulate of an Infinite Creator, having under his power all the elements and forms of matter, organized and unorganized, animate and inanimate. There is no fundamental difference of opinion on this point, as I understand, between some of the evolutionists and their opponents.[52] Omnipotence, boundless choice of means and ends, illimitable wisdom, a benevolence that can not fail and can not err, are the conceded attributes of the being who is supposed to preside over the universe; and, however difficult it may be for us to express a conception of infinite power and infinite wisdom, as it is to describe infinite space and duration, we know what we mean to assume when we speak or think of faculties that are without limit, and of moral qualities that are subject to no imperfection. It is true that we have no means of forming an idea of superhuman and infinite power but by a comparison of our own limited faculties with those which we assume to belong to an eternal and infinite God. But the nature of our own limited powers teaches us that there may be powers that are as far above ours as the heavens are above the earth, as the endless realms of space stretch beyond and forever beyond any measurable distance, as eternity stretches beyond and forever beyond all measurable time. At all events, the postulate of an infinite God is the one common starting-point for the scientists of the evolution school and those who accept their doctrine, and for those who dissent from it. If I did not assume this, I could not go one step further, for without it there could not be a basis for any reasoning on the subject that would lead anywhere but to the conclusion that all that exists came by blind chance. This conclusion is rejected alike by the scientists, whose views I am now examining, and by those who differ from them.

In the economy of Nature, which is but another term for the economy of the Omnipotent Creator, there is no waste of power, as there is no abstention from the exercise of power, where its exertions are needed to accomplish an end. By this I mean that when a general plan of construction is found carried out through a variety of organizations, the rational inference is that so much power has been exerted as was needful to accomplish in each organization the objects that are common to all of them, and that no more power has been used in that direction. But where a special adaptation in some one variety of the same class of constructions is needful to accomplish an object peculiar to a new variety, the necessary amount of power never fails to be exerted. A study of the animal kingdom reveals this great truth, as palpably as a study of the products of human skill reveals the fact that man, from the imperfection of his faculties, is constantly exerting more or less power than was needful in his efforts to produce a new variety in his mechanical constructions. Experience and accumulated knowledge enable us to carry a general plan of construction through a considerable group of mechanical forms; but it is when we endeavor to vary the principle of construction so as to produce a new and special mode of operation, that we either waste power in repeating the general plan or fail to exercise the amount of power necessary to adapt the general plan to the introduction of the special object at which we are aiming. Our success in making such adaptations is often wonderful, but our failures evince that our imperfect faculties do not always enable us to accomplish the necessary adaptations of the general plan of construction to the special objects which we wish to attain. To the Infinite Creator, all such difficulties are unknown. He neither wastes power by new plans that are unnecessary, nor makes "vain repetitions," nor fails to exert the requisite amount of power and wisdom in the introduction of new and special contrivances which he ingrafts upon or superadds to the general plan, and which he has devised for the accomplishment of a new object. With a boundless choice of means and ends, with a skill that can not err, with a prescience that sees the end from the first conception of the design, he can repeat the general plan throughout any variety of constructions without any waste of power, and can introduce the new adaptations or contrivances which are to constitute a new construction, by the exercise of all the power that is required to accomplish a special object. Whether we are to suppose that he does this by the establishment of certain laws which he leaves to operate within prescribed limits, or does it by special creations proceeding from direct and specific exertions of his will, the question of his power to employ the one method or the other remains always the same. The question of which was his probable method depends upon the force of evidence; and upon this question we must allow great weight to the fact which all Nature discloses, namely, that the Creator does not waste power by making new plans of construction where an existing plan may be usefully repeated, and that he does not fail to exercise the necessary power when he wishes to add to the general plan of construction a new and special organism for a particular purpose.

Is there anything presumptuous in thus speaking of the determination and purposes of the Omnipotent Creator? We have his existence and infinite attributes conceded as the basis of all sound reasoning on his works. Why then should we not infer his purposes and his acts from his works? Why should we not attribute to him a special design, when we can not examine his works without inferring such special design, unless we conclude that the most amazing and peculiar constructions grew up under the operation of causes of which we have no sufficient proof, and in the supposed result of which there are admitted chasms that can not be bridged over?

To return now to the resemblance between the bodily structure of man and that of his supposed progenitors. The assertion is that a repetition of the same general plan of construction throughout a class of animals can only be explained upon the hypothesis of their descent from a common progenitor. They are, it is claimed, co-descendants from some one ancient animal; and however they may differ from each other, in all these co-descendants from that animal we find the same general plan of construction, the same ideal model repeated. Among the whole class of the higher mammals, we have skeletons, muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, internal viscera, organs, that closely correspond. What does this prove but that there was no waste of power, because there was no necessity in making man, for the formation of a general plan of construction different in these particulars from that which was employed in making the monkey, the bat, or the seal? The similarity of pattern between the hand of a man or a monkey, the foot of a horse, the flipper of a seal, or the wing of a bat, is pronounced "utterly inexplicable" upon any hypothesis but that of descent from a common progenitor. But why is not this sameness of ideal plan just as consistent with the hypothesis that the same ideal plan would answer for the human hand or the hand of an ape, the foot of the horse, the flipper of the seal, or the wing of the bat?[53] It is when you pass from such resemblances and come to the special contrivances which separate one animal from another by a broad line of demarkation, that you are to look for the adaptation of special contrivances to repetitions of the same ideal model through the varying species. Take, for example, the introduction among the mammals of the placental system of reproduction, parturition, and subsequent nourishment of the young, combined with the nourishment of the foetus while it continues in the body of the mother. This system would require no material variation from the general plan of construction that is common to the different mammals of this class in respect to the parts where the resemblances are kept up throughout the series, such as those of the skeleton, muscles, nerves, viscera, and other organs that are found in all of them. But for the introduction of this peculiar system of reproduction and continuation of the species, there was needful a special and most extraordinary contrivance. If such a contrivance or anything like it had been produced by human skill, and been introduced into a mechanical structure, we should not hesitate to say that there had been an invention of a most special character. When you follow this system through the different animals in which it is found operating, and find that the period of gestation and of suckling is varied for each of them, that for each there is the necessary modification of trunk, situation of the organs, assimilation of food and formation of milk, and many other peculiarities, what are you to conclude but that there has been an adaptation of a new system to a general plan of construction, and that while the latter remains substantially the same, it has had ingrafted upon or incorporated with it a most singular contrivance, so original, comprehensive, and flexible, that its characteristic principle admits of the most exact working in animals that are as far asunder as man and the horse, or as the horse and the seal, or as the seal and the bat?

The resemblances between the embryonic development of man and the other mammals present another instance of the constantly occurring fact that there has been no waste of power on the one hand, and on the other no failure to exert the amount of power requisite to produce a new variation of the general principle. There is no more logical force in the hypothesis of a common progenitor, in order to account for these resemblances, than there is in the hypothesis that the general system of embryonic development was first devised, and that it was then varied in each distinct animal according to the requirements of its special construction. Upon the latter supposition, there would be resemblances to a certain stage, and then there would follow the departures which we have no difficulty in tracing. Upon the former supposition we should expect to find, what we actually do find, that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to assign any reason for the departures, or to suggest how it has happened that one animal is so absolutely distinct from another. Thus, to begin with the embryo itself, and to trace it through its stages of development, we find that in man it can hardly be distinguished from that of other members of the vertebrate kingdom. This we should expect to be the case after we have learned the great fact that Nature operates upon a uniform principle up to the point where variations and departures are to supervene. The system of embryonic development being devised to operate in parallel lines through all the placental mammals until the lines should begin to depart from each other so as to result in animals of different species, would necessarily show strong resemblances of structure until the departures supervened. There would be, in other words, a strong illustration of the truth that in the Divine economy there is no waste of power. But when the stage is reached at which the departures may be noted, and the lines diverge into the production of organized beings differing widely from each other, we reach an equally striking illustration of the corresponding truth that the amount of power necessary to produce very different results never fails to be put forth. There is no good reason why this latter exertion of power should not be attributed to special design just as logically and rationally as we must attribute to intentional purpose and infinite skill the general system of embryonic development which has been made for the whole class of the placental mammals. While, therefore, we may accept as a fact Prof. Huxley's statement on this branch of comparative anatomy, we are under no necessity to accept his conclusion. To the question whether man originates in a different way from a dog, bird, frog, or fish, this anatomist answers, as already quoted: "The reply is not doubtful for a moment; without question, the mode of origin and the early stages of the development of man are identical with those of the animals immediately below him in the scale; without a doubt, in these respects he is far nearer to apes than apes are to the dog." This refers, of course, to the parallelism that obtains in the early stages of the embryonic development. It necessarily implies, at later stages, diverging lines, which depart more or less from each other, and thus we have between the ape and the man a nearer approach than we have between the ape and the dog. But how does this displace, or tend to displace, the hypothesis of a general system of embryonic development for all animals of a certain class, and an intentional and special variation of that system so as to produce different species of animals? The identity between the mode of origin and the early stages of the development of man and those of the animals immediately below him in the scale, is strong proof of the applicability of the same general principle of development throughout all the animals of a certain class. The cessation of the parallelism at the diverging lines is equally strong proof of a design to create an animal differing as man does from the ape, or as the ape does from the dog. The argument that these three species are co-descendants from a common progenitor, viewing man simply as an animal, is at least no stronger than the argument which leads to the conclusion of special creations.

The same thing may be said of the liability of man to certain contagious or non-contagious diseases in common with some of the lower animals. That there is a similarity in the chemical composition of the blood of an entire class of animals, in the structure of their tissues and blood-vessels, so that they are subject to the same causes of inflammation or to the same parasites, is proof of a uniform plan of the fluids and the vascular system, or, in other words, it evinces that here, too, there has been in these respects no waste of power in forming the different animals of the same class. But trace back the supposed pedigree of the animals sharing this chemical composition of the blood, character of tissues, and vascular system, until you have passed through the amphibians and reached their supposed fish progenitors. Somewhere between the fishes and the higher mammals, you have not only a great change in the chemical composition of the blood-vessels and tissues, but an equally great change in the apparatus by which the blood is oxygenated.[54] How can these changes have been brought about without a new and intentional structure of the vessels and the apparatus for supplying the oxygen demanded for the continuation of life? How can we explain these changes by such agencies as the natural selection which is supposed to lead to the "survival of the fittest," and the sexual selection which is supposed to give to the best-appointed males of a given species the power to transmit to their offspring the new peculiarities which they have acquired through successive generations? Do not these changes show that there is a line of division which such agencies alone can not cross? Do they not clearly point to the exercise of the creative power in a special manner, and for special purposes? That power being once exercised, the new chemical composition and mechanical appliances being devised, the same "ideal plan" could be carried through a new class of animals by a repetition which is in accordance with the economy of Nature, and which an infinite power could adapt to the formation of animals, each of which was designed to perpetuate its own species and no other. Hence we should expect to find in the animals sharing in the same formation of the blood and the vascular system a corresponding process of healing the parts severed by a wound, and a continuous secretion from such vessels as have not been cut away; but we should not expect to find the stumps growing into a new and perfect part, to take the place of what has been removed by amputation.[55] We should expect to find the same drugs affecting different animals of the same class alike; and when the nervous system of a class of animals is upon the same general plan, we should expect to find them similarly affected by stimulants. But these resemblances do not militate very strongly against the hypothesis of special creations, when we consider that it is according to the universal economy of the Omnipotent Creator to employ the necessary, and no more than the necessary, power in originating a plan that may be applied to the formation of a distinct class of beings, and that his adaptations of this plan to further and specific constructions of beings belonging to a general class, but differing widely from each other, are among the strongest and plainest proofs of his infinite power and the nature of his methods.

In regard to the "rudiments" that are found in man, the theory of Mr. Darwin can be best stated in his own words: "In order to understand the existence of rudimentary organs, we have only to suppose that a former progenitor possessed the parts in question in a perfect state, and that under changed habits of life they became greatly reduced, either from simple disuse or through the natural selection of those individuals which were least encumbered with a superfluous part, aided by the other means previously indicated."[56] But, in order to do justice to this theory, it is necessary to repeat the description and operation of the supposed agencies of natural and sexual selection. Natural selection is an occurrence which takes place among the individuals of a certain species in the struggle for existence, whereby those who are best appointed secure the necessary supply of food, and the weaker or less active are either directly destroyed in the contest or perish for want of nourishment. The "fittest" having survived, they have the best chance of procreating their kind, and are likely to have the most progeny. To these individuals there comes in aid the sexual selection, which means chiefly the victory of the fittest males over their less fit competitors for the possession of the females. Whatever peculiarities of structure or development, or diminution of structure or development, these fittest males possess, they would transmit to their offspring. This tendency would be enhanced by the varying conditions of life through which the successive generations might have to pass; so that if the former progenitor possessed naturally an organ in a perfect state, but ceased to make use of it, and for thousands of generations its use went on diminishing, it would sink into the condition of a mere rudiment. Supposing this to be a partially true explanation of the modes in which organs become rudimentary, how does it militate against the idea of separate creations? We have "only to suppose" that the first men possessed, for example, the power of moving the skin all over their bodies by the contraction of certain muscles, and that their remote descendants lost it everywhere excepting in a few parts, where it remains in an efficient state, and that it has become varied in different individuals. The process by which organs become rudimentary is an hypothesis just as consistent with the separate creation of man as it is with his being a co-descendant from some lower animal whose descendants branched into men, apes, horses, seals, bats, etc.; for, on the supposition of the separate creation of all these different animals, each species might have been originally endowed with this power of muscular contraction of the skin, and in their descendants it might have been retained or varied or have become more or less rudimentary, according to its utility to the particular species. The truth is, that our own faculties of creation or construction, when we undertake to deal with matter and its properties, are so imperfect, and that which constitutes living organisms is so utterly beyond our reach, that we do not sufficiently remember how entirely it is within the compass of the infinite Power, which has given to matter all the properties that it possesses and has living organisms under its absolute control, to form a system of construction and operation for beings of entirely distinct characters, carrying it through each of them in parallel lines, or causing it to diverge into varying results with an economy that neither wastes the constructive power nor fails to exert it where it is needed. To argue that the presence of rudiments in different animals, in different comparative states of development or efficiency, or in a purely useless condition, can only be explained by a descent from some remote common progenitor, is what the logicians call a non sequitur. It overlooks the illimitable faculty of the creating Power, and disregards the great fact that such a power acts by an economy that is saving where uniformity will accomplish what is intended, that is profuse where variation is needful, and that can guide its own exertions of power, or its abstention from such exertions, by unerring wisdom, to the most varied and exact results.

I trust that by the use of the term "economy" in speaking of what is observable in the works of the Creator, I shall be understood as comprehending both the avoidance of unnecessary and the exertion of all necessary power. Of the degree of necessity in any exercise of a power which we suppose to be infinite, we can only judge by what we can see. If omnipotence and omniscience are to be predicated of the being who is supposed to preside over the universe, it is rational to conclude, from all that we can discover, that, in applying a uniform system of construction to different animals of a certain general class, he acted upon a principle that his unerring faculties enabled him to see was a comprehensive one; and that in producing variations of that system of construction that would result in adapting its uniformity to the varying conditions of the different species, he acted by the same boundless wisdom and power. If these postulates of the Divine attributes are conceded, rudiments do not by any means necessarily lead to the conclusion that all the animals of a certain class are co-descendants from some remote common progenitor, for they do not exclude the hypothesis that each distinct animal was formed upon a general plan of construction that could be applied throughout the class, but that it was varied according to the special conditions of its intended being. Organs or parts may thus have become more or less rudimentary without resorting to the supposition of a common progenitor for the whole class. That supposition, indeed, makes it necessary to assume that the infinite Creator fashioned some one animal, and then, abstaining from all work of further direct creation, left all the other animals to be evolved out of that one by the operation of secondary causes that fail even as a theory to account for what we see, and that can not be traced through any results that have yet been discovered. Wherever we pause in the ascending scale of the Darwinian descent of man, wherever we place the first special act of creative power, whether we put it at the fish-like animal of the most remote antiquity, and call that creature the original progenitor of all the vertebrata, or whether we suppose a special creation to have occurred at the introduction of the mammalian series, or anywhere else, we have to account for changes of system, new constructions, elaborately diversified forms, by the operation of agencies that were incapable of producing the results, if we are to judge of their capacity by anything that we have seen or known of their effects.

I will conclude this chapter by expressing as accurately as I can what has struck me as the excessive tendency of modern science to resolve everything into the operation of general laws, or into what we call secondary causes. I may be able to suggest nothing new upon this part of the subject, but I shall at least be able, I hope, to put my own mind in contact with that of the reader by explaining what has impressed me in the speculations of those who lay so much stress upon the potency of general laws to produce the results which we see in Nature. Of course, I do not question the great fact that the infinite Power acts by and through the uniform methods from which we are accustomed to infer what we call laws; which in physics is nothing but a deduction of regularity and system from that which we see to be perpetually and invariably happening. Now, I do not enter here into the question of the tendency of modern science to displace our religious ideas of a special Providence, by attributing everything in Nature to the operation of fixed laws of matter; or its tendency, in other words, to remove the infinite Being at a greater distance from us than that in which our religious feelings like to contemplate him. I am perfectly sensible that in truth the infinite God is just as near to us, when we regard him as acting by general laws and secondary causes, as when we believe him to be exercising a direct and special power. I am equally sensible that it is in the very nature of infinite power, wisdom, and benevolence to be able and willing to ordain uniform and fixed principles of action. That Power which gives to matter all its properties may well be supposed to have established uniformity and regularity of movements, forces, combinations, and qualities. How supremely consistent this uniformity and regularity are, with what stupendous accuracy they are kept forever in operation, we are more or less able to discern; and that benevolence which is believed to accompany the power may well be supposed to have intended that its intelligent and rational creatures should be able in some degree to discover and to avail themselves of these unvarying laws of the physical world. But are these laws to be supposed to be the only methods by which the infinite Will has ever acted? Is it to be assumed that, having settled and established these perpetual principles, on which matter, organized or unorganized, is to act, he leaves everything to their operation and abstains from all further exertion of his creative power for any special purpose? Has he given to these general laws a potency to produce, in and of themselves, all the results? In other words, has he affixed to their operation no limitations, or has he set bounds to them, and reserved to himself, by direct, specific, and occasional exercise of his will and power, for new purposes, to produce results for which the general laws were not ordained?

It is not necessary here to enter into the consideration of what are called "miracles." These, in their true meaning, are special interpositions, which the Divine Power is supposed to make, by a suspension or interruption of the established laws of Nature; and, whatever may be the grounds of our belief or our unbelief in such occurrences, they are not exercises of power such as those which are supposed to take place in special creations of new beings. That the hypothesis of special creations of new beings involves no interruption or displacement of the fixed laws of Nature, is quite manifest.

Note A.

Note on Amputation, or Severance of Parts.—As Mr. Darwin attached some importance to a fact which he asserted respecting the efforts of Nature to restore a part of an organism which has been severed by amputation, I think it well to quote his statement, and to point out what I believe to be an inaccuracy. His statement is this: "His [man's] wounds are repaired by the same process of healing, and the stumps left after the amputation of his limbs, especially during an early embryonic period, occasionally possess some power of regeneration, as in the lowest animals." It is not quite apparent what he means by amputation during an early embryonic period. If he is to be understood as referring to a case of complete severance of any part of an embryo before birth, it has not been demonstrated that such a severance has been followed by a successful effort of Nature to replace the severed part; and it is difficult to understand how there could be such an amputation during embryonic life without destroying the life of the embryo; or, if the severed part were one of the extremities, how there could be a new extremity formed. In such a case, if life continued and birth were to take place, the animal must be born in an imperfect state. In regard to amputations taking place at any time after birth, if the expression "some power of regeneration" means to imply a new formation to take the place of the severed part, the assertion is not correct. What occurs in such cases may be illustrated by the very common accident of the severance of the end of a human finger at the root of the nail. If the incision is far enough back to remove the whole of the vessels which secrete the horny substance that forms the nail, there will be no after growth of anything resembling a nail. If some of those vessels are left in the stump, there will be continuous secretion and deposit of the horny substance, which may go so far as to form a crude resemblance to a nail. But if all the vessels which constitute the means of perpetuating a perfect nail are not left in their normal number and action, there can be no such thing as the formation of a new nail. Whether it is correct to speak of the imperfect continuation of a few of the vessels to secrete the substance which it is their normal function to secrete, as a "power of regeneration," is more than doubtful, if by such a power is meant a power to make a new and complete structure to take the place of the structure that has been cut away. It is nothing more than the continued action of a few vessels, less in number than the normal system required for the continued growth and renewal of the part in question. The abortive product in such cases looks like an unsuccessful effort of Nature to make a new structure in place of the old one; but it is not in reality such an effort. The fact that the same thing occurs, in just the same way and to a corresponding extent, in different animals, has no tendency to prove anything excepting that these different animals share the same general system of secreting vessels for the formation and perpetuation of the several parts of their structures. It has no tendency to prove that they are co-descendants from a common ancestral stock, for on the hypothesis of their special and independent creation a common system of secreting vessels would be entirely consistent with their peculiar and special constructions.