The origin of species, like all origination, like the institution of any other natural state or order, is beyond our immediate ken. We see or may learn how things go on; we can only frame hypotheses as to how they began.

Two hypotheses divide the scientific world, very unequally, upon the origin of the existing diversity of the plants and animals which surround us. One assumes that the actual kinds are primordial; the other, that they are derivative. One, that all kinds originated supernaturally and directly as such, and have continued unchanged in the order of Nature; the other, that the present kinds appeared in some sort of genealogical connection with other and earlier kinds, that they became what they now are in the course of time and in the order of Nature.

Or, bringing in the word species, which is well defined as "the perennial succession of individuals," commonly of very like individuals—as a close corporation of individuals perpetuated by generation, instead of election—and reducing the question to mathematical simplicity of statement: species are lines of individuals coming down from the past and running on to the future; lines receding, therefore, from our view in either direction. Within our limited observation they appear to be parallel lines, as a general thing neither approaching to nor diverging from each other.

The first hypothesis assumes that they were parallel from the unknown beginning and will be to the unknown end. The second hypothesis assumes that the apparent parallelism is not real and complete, at least aboriginally, but approximate or temporary; that we should find the lines convergent in the past, if we could trace them far enough; that some of them, if produced back, would fall into certain fragments of lines, which have left traces in the past, lying not exactly in the same direction, and these farther back into others to which they are equally unparallel. It will also claim that the present lines, whether on the whole really or only approximately parallel, sometimes fork or send off branches on one side or the other, producing new lines (varieties), which run for a while, and for aught we know indefinitely when not interfered with, near and approximately parallel to the parent line. This claim it can establish; and it may also show that these close subsidiary lines may branch or vary again, and that those branches or varieties which are best adapted to the existing conditions may be continued, while others stop or die out. And so we may have the basis of a real theory of the diversification of species and here indeed, there is a real, though a narrow, established ground to build upon But as systems of organic Nature, both doctrines are equally hypotheses, are suppositions of what there is no proof of from experience, assumed in order to account for the observed phenomena, and supported by such indirect evidence as can be had.

Even when the upholders of the former and more popular system mix up revelation with scientific discussion—which we decline to do—they by no means thereby render their view other than hypothetical. Agreeing that plants and animals were produced by Omnipotent fiat does not exclude the idea of natural order and what we call secondary causes. The record of the fiat—"Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed," etc., "and it was so;" "let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind, and it was so"—seems even to imply them. Agreeing that they were formed of "the dust of the ground," and of thin air, only leads to the conclusion that the pristine individuals were corporeally constituted like existing individuals, produced through natural agencies. To agree that they were created "after their kinds" determines nothing as to what were the original kinds, nor in what mode, during what time, and in what connections it pleased the Almighty to introduce the first individuals of each sort upon the earth. Scientifically considered, the two opposing doctrines are equally hypothetical.

The two views very unequally divide the scientific world; so that believers in "the divine right of majorities" need not hesitate which side to take, at least for the present. Up to a time quite within the memory of a generation still on the stage, two hypotheses about the nature of light very unequally divided the scientific world. But the small minority has already prevailed: the emission theory has gone out; the undulatory or wave theory, after some fluctuation, has reached high tide, and is now the pervading, the fully-established system. There was an intervening time during which most physicists held their opinions in suspense.

The adoption of the undulatory theory of light called for the extension of the same theory to heat, and this promptly suggested the hypothesis of a correlation, material connection, and transmutability of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, etc.; which hypothesis the physicists held in absolute suspense until very lately, but are now generally adopting. If not already established as a system, it promises soon to become so. At least, it is generally received as a tenable and probably true hypothesis.

Parallel to this, however less cogent the reasons, Darwin and others, having shown it likely that some varieties of plants or animals have diverged in time into cognate species, or into forms as different as species, are led to infer that all species of a genus may have thus diverged from a common stock, and thence to suppose a higher community of origin in ages still farther back, and so on. Following the safe example of the physicists, and acknowledging the fact of the diversification of a once homogeneous species into varieties, we may receive the theory of the evolution of these into species, even while for the present we hold the hypothesis of a further evolution in cool suspense or in grave suspicion. In respect to very many questions a wise mans mind rests long in a state neither of belief nor unbelief. But your intellectually short-sighted people are apt to be preternaturally clear-sighted, and to find their way very plain to positive conclusions upon one side or the other of every mooted question.

In fact, most people, and some philosophers, refuse to hold questions in abeyance, however incompetent they may be to decide them. And, curiously enough, the more difficult, recondite, and perplexing, the questions or hypotheses are—such, for instance, as those about organic Nature—the more impatient they are of suspense. Sometimes, and evidently in the present case, this impatience grows out of a fear that a new hypothesis may endanger cherished and most important beliefs. Impatience under such circumstances is not unnatural, though perhaps needless, and, if so, unwise.

To us the present revival of the derivative hypothesis, in a more winning shape than it ever before had, was not unexpected. We wonder that any thoughtful observer of the course of investigation and of speculation in science should not have foreseen it, and have learned at length to take its inevitable coming patiently; the more so, as in Darwins treatise it comes in a purely scientific form, addressed only to scientific men. The notoriety and wide popular perusal of this treatise appear to have astonished the author even more than the book itself has astonished the reading world Coming as the new presentation does from a naturalist of acknowledged character and ability and marked by a conscientiousness and candor which have not always been reciprocated we have thought it simply right to set forth the doctrine as fairly and as favorably as we could There are plenty to decry it and the whole theory is widely exposed to attack For the arguments on the other side we may look to the numerous adverse publications which Darwin s volume has already called out and especially to those reviews which propose directly to refute it. Taking various lines and reflecting very diverse modes of thought, these hostile critics may be expected to concentrate and enforce the principal objections which can be brought to bear against the derivative hypothesis in general, and Darwins new exposition of it in particular.

Upon the opposing side of the question we have read with attention—1. An article in the North American Review for April last; 2. One in the Christian Examiner, Boston, for May; 3. M. Pictets article in the Bibliotheque Universelle, which we have already made considerable use of, which seems throughout most able and correct, and which in tone and fairness is admirably in contrast with—4. The article in the Edinburgh Review for May, attributed—although against a large amount of internal presumptive evidence—to the most distinguished British comparative anatomist; 5. An article in the North British Review for May; 6. Prof. Agassiz has afforded an early opportunity to peruse the criticisms he makes in the forthcoming third volume of his great work, by a publication of them in advance in the American Journal of Science for July.

We are disposed to rank the derivative hypothesis in its fullness with the nebular hypothesis, and to regard both as allowable, as not unlikely to prove tenable in spite of some strong objections, but as not therefore demonstrably true. Those, if any there be, who regard the derivative hypothesis as satisfactorily proved, must have loose notions as to what proof is. Those who imagine it can be easily refuted and cast aside, must, we think, have imperfect or very prejudiced conceptions of the facts concerned and of the questions at issue.

We are not disposed nor prepared to take sides for or against the new hypothesis, and so, perhaps, occupy a good position from which to watch the discussion and criticise those objections which are seemingly inconclusive. On surveying the arguments urged by those who have undertaken to demolish the theory, we have been most impressed with a sense of their great inequality. Some strike us as excellent and perhaps unanswerable; some, as incongruous with other views of the same writers; others, when carried out, as incompatible with general experience or general beliefs, and therefore as proving too much; still others, as proving nothing at all; so that, on the whole, the effect is rather confusing and disappointing. We certainly expected a stronger adverse case than any which the thoroughgoing opposers of Darwin appear to have made out. Wherefore, if it be found that the new hypothesis has grown upon our favor as we proceeded, this must be attributed not so much to the force of the arguments of the book itself as to the want of force of several of those by which it has been assailed. Darwins arguments we might resist or adjourn; but some of the refutations of it give us more concern than the book itself did.

These remarks apply mainly to the philosophical and theological objections which have been elaborately urged, almost exclusively by the American reviewers. The North British reviewer, indeed, roundly denounces the book as atheistical, but evidently deems the case too clear for argument. The Edinburgh reviewer, on the contrary, scouts all such objections—as well he may, since he records his belief in "a continuous creative operation," a constantly operating secondary creational law," through which species are successively produced; and he emits faint, but not indistinct, glimmerings of a transmutation theory of his own;[III-8} so that he is equally exposed to all the philosophical objections advanced by Agassiz, and to most of those urged by the other American critics, against Darwin himself.

Proposing now to criticise the critics, so far as to see what their most general and comprehensive objections amount to, we must needs begin with the American reviewers, and with their arguments adduced to prove that a derivative hypothesis ought not to be true, or is not possible, philosophical, or theistic.

It must not be forgotten that on former occasions very confident judgments have been pronounced by very competent persons, which have not been finally ratified. Of the two great minds of the seventeenth century, Newton and Leibnitz, both profoundly religious as well as philosophical, one produced the theory of gravitation, the other objected to that theory that it was subversive of natural religion. The nebular hypothesis—a natural consequence of the theory of gravitation and of the subsequent progress of physical and astronomical discovery—has been denounced as atheistical even down to our own day. But it is now largely adopted by the most theistical natural philosophers as a tenable and perhaps sufficient hypothesis, and where not accepted is no longer objected to, so far as we know, on philosophical or religious grounds.

The gist of the philosophical objections urged by the two Boston reviewers against an hypothesis of the derivation of species—or at least against Darwins particular hypothesis— is, that it is incompatible with the idea of any manifestation of design in the universe, that it denies final causes. A serious objection this, and one that demands very serious attention.

The proposition, that things and events in Nature were not designed to be so, if logically carried out, is doubtless tantamount to atheism. Yet most people believe that some were designed and others were not, although they fall into a hopeless maze whenever they undertake to define their position. So we should not like to stigmatize as atheistically disposed a person who regards certain things and events as being what they are through designed laws (whatever that expression means), but as not themselves specially ordained, or who, in another connection, believes in general, but not in particular Providence. We could sadly puzzle him with questions; but in return he might equally puzzle us. Then, to deny that anything was specially designed to be what it is, is one proposition; while to deny that the Designer supernaturally or immediately made it so, is another: though the reviewers appear not to recognize the distinction.

Also, "scornfully to repudiate" or to "sneer at the idea of any manifestation of design in the material universe,"[III-9} is one thing; while to consider, and perhaps to exaggerate, the difficulties which attend the practical application of the doctrine of final causes to certain instances, is quite another thing: yet the Boston reviewers, we regret to say, have not been duly regardful of the difference. Whatever be thought of Darwins doctrine, we are surprised that he should be charged with scorning or sneering at the opinions of others, upon such a subject. Perhaps Darwins view is incompatible with final causes—we will consider that question presently— but as to the Examiners charge, that he "sneers at the idea of any manifestation of design in the material universe," though we are confident that no misrepresentation was intended, we are equally confident that it is not at all warranted by the two passages cited in support of it. Here are the passages:

"If green woodpeckers alone had existed, or we did not know that there were many black and pied kinds, I dare say that we should have thought that the green color was a beautiful adaptation to hide this tree-frequenting bird from its enemies."

"If our reason leads us to admire with enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable contrivances in Nature, this same reason tells us, though we may easily err on both sides, that some contrivances are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect, which, when used against many attacking animals, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes the death of the insect by tearing out its viscera?"

If the sneer here escapes ordinary vision in the detached extracts (one of them wanting the end of the sentence), it is, if possible, more imperceptible when read with the context. Moreover, this perusal inclines us to think that the Examiner has misapprehended the particular argument or object, as well as the spirit, of the author in these passages. The whole reads more naturally as a caution against the inconsiderate use of final causes in science, and an illustration of some of the manifold errors and absurdities which their hasty assumption is apt to involve—considerations probably equivalent to those which induced Lord Bacon to liken final causes to "vestal virgins." So, if any one, it is here Bacon that "sitteth in the seat of the scornful." As to Darwin, in the section from which the extracts were made, he is considering a subsidiary question, and trying to obviate a particular difficulty, but, we suppose, is wholly unconscious of denying "any manifestation of design in the material universe." He concludes the first sentence:

—"and consequently that it was a character of importance, and might have been acquired through natural selection; as it is, I have no doubt that the color is due to some quite distinct cause, probably to sexual selection."

After an illustration from the vegetable creation, Darwin adds:

"The naked skin on the head of a vulture is generally looked at as a direct adaptation for wallowing in putridity; and so it may be, or it may possibly be due to the direct action of putrid matter; but we should be very cautious in drawing any such inference, when we see that the skin on the head of the clean-feeding male turkey is likewise naked. The sutures in the skulls of young mammals have been advanced as a beautiful adaptation for aiding parturition, and no doubt they facilitate or may be indispensable for this act; but as sutures occur in the skulls of young birds and reptiles, which have only to escape from a broken egg, we may infer that this structure has arisen from the laws of growth, and has been taken advantage of in the parturition of the higher animals."

All this, simply taken, is beyond cavil, unless the attempt to explain scientifically how any designed result is accomplished savors of impropriety.

In the other place, Darwin is contemplating the patent fact that "perfection here below" is relative, not absolute—and illustrating this by the circumstance that European animals, and especially plants, are now proving to be better adapted for New Zealand than many of the indigenous ones—that "the correction for the aberration of light is said, on high authority, not to be quite perfect even in that most perfect organ, the eye." And then follows the second extract of the reviewer. But what is the position of the reviewer upon his own interpretation of these passages? If he insists that green woodpeckers were specifically created so in order that they might be less liable to capture, must he not equally hold that the black and pied ones were specifically made of these colors in order that they might be more liable to be caught? And would an explanation of the mode in which those woodpeckers came to be green, however complete, convince him that the color was undesigned?

As to the other illustration, is the reviewer so complete an optimist as to insist that the arrangement and the weapon are wholly perfect (quoad the insect) the normal use of which often causes the animal fatally to injure or to disembowel itself? Either way it seems to us that the argument here, as well as the insect, performs hari-kari. The Examiner adds:

"We should in like manner object to the word favorable, as implying that some species are placed by the Creator under unfavorable circumstances, at least under such as might be advantageously modified."

But are not many individuals and some races of men placed by the Creator "under unfavorable circumstances, at least under such as might be advantageously modified?" Surely these reviewers must be living in an ideal world, surrounded by "the faultless monsters which our world neer saw," in some elysium where imperfection and distress were never heard of! Such arguments resemble some which we often hear against the Bible, holding that book responsible as if it originated certain facts on the shady side of human nature or the apparently darker lines of Providential dealing, though the facts are facts of common observation and have to be confronted upon any theory.

The North American reviewer also has a world of his own—just such a one as an idealizing philosopher would be apt to devise—that is, full of sharp and absolute distinctions: such, for instance, as the "absolute invariableness of instinct;" an absolute want of intelligence in any brute animal; and a complete monopoly of instinct by the brute animals, so that this "instinct is a great matter" for them only, since it sharply and perfectly distinguishes this portion of organic Nature from the vegetable kingdom on the one hand and from man on the other: most convenient views for argumentative purposes, but we suppose not borne out in fact.

In their scientific objections the two reviewers take somewhat different lines; but their philosophical and theological arguments strikingly coincide. They agree in emphatically asserting that Darwins hypothesis of the origination of species through variation and natural selection "repudiates the whole doctrine of final causes," and "all indication of design or purpose in the organic world . . . is neither more nor less than a formal denial of any agency beyond that of a blind chance in the developing or perfecting of the organs or instincts of created beings. . . . It is in vain that the apologists of this hypothesis might say that it merely attributes a different mode and time to the Divine agency—that all the qualities subsequently appearing in their descendants must have been implanted, and have remained latent in the original pair." Such a view, the Examiner declares, "is nowhere stated in this book, and would be, we are sure, disclaimed by the author."

We should like to be informed of the grounds of this sureness. The marked rejection of spontaneous generation—the statement of a belief that all animals have descended from four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number, or, perhaps, if constrained to it by analogy, "from some one primordial form into which life was first breathed"—coupled with the expression, "To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes," than "that each species has been independently created"—these and similar expressions lead us to suppose that the author probably does accept the kind of view which the Examiner is sure he would disclaim. At least, we charitably see nothing in his scientific theory to hinder his adoption of Lord Bacons "Confession of Faith" in this regard— "That, notwithstanding God hath rested and ceased from creating, yet, nevertheless, he doth accomplish and fulfill his divine will in all things, great and small, singular and general, as fully and exactly by providence as he could by miracle and new creation, though his working be not immediate and direct, but by compass; not violating Nature, which is his own law upon the creature."

However that may be, it is undeniable that Mr. Darwin has purposely been silent upon the philosophical and theological applications of his theory. This reticence, under the circumstances, argues design, and raises inquiry as to the final cause or reason why. Here, as in higher instances, confident as we are that there is a final cause, we must not be overconfident that we can infer the particular or true one. Perhaps the author is more familiar with natural-historical than with philosophical inquiries, and, not having decided which particular theory about efficient cause is best founded, he meanwhile argues the scientific questions concerned—all that relates to secondary causes—upon purely scientific grounds, as he must do in any case. Perhaps, confident, as he evidently is, that his view will finally be adopted, he may enjoy a sort of satisfaction in hearing it denounced as sheer atheism by the inconsiderate, and afterward, when it takes its place with the nebular hypothesis and the like, see this judgment reversed, as we suppose it would be in such event.

Whatever Mr. Darwins philosophy may be, or whether he has any, is a matter of no consequence at all, compared with the important questions, whether a theory to account for the origination and diversification of animal and vegetable forms through the operation of secondary causes does or does not exclude design; and whether the establishment by adequate evidence of Darwin s particular theory of diversification through variation and natural selection would essentially alter the present scientific and philosophical grounds for theistic views of Nature. The unqualified affirmative judgment rendered by the two Boston reviewers, evidently able and practised reasoners, "must give us pause." We hesitate to advance our conclusions in opposition to theirs. But, after full and serious consideration, we are constrained to say that, in our opinion, the adoption of a derivative hypothesis, and of Darwins particular hypothesis, if we understand it, would leave the doctrines of final causes, utility, and special design, just where they were before. We do not pretend that the subject is not environed with difficulties. Every view is so environed; and every shifting of the view is likely, if it removes some difficulties, to bring others into prominence. But we cannot perceive that Darwins theory brings in any new kind of scientific difficulty, that is, any with which philosophical naturalists were not already familiar.

Since natural science deals only with secondary or natural causes, the scientific terms of a theory of derivation of species—no less than of a theory of dynamics—must needs be the same to the theist as to the atheist. The difference appears only when the inquiry is carried up to the question of primary cause—a question which belongs to philosophy. Wherefore, Darwin s reticence about efficient cause does not disturb us. He considers only the scientific questions. As already stated, we think that a theistic view of Nature is implied in his book, and we must charitably refrain from suggesting the contrary until the contrary is logically deduced from his premises. If, however, he anywhere maintains that the natural causes through which species are diversified operate without an ordaining and directing intelligence, and that the orderly arrangements and admirable adaptations we see all around us are fortuitous or blind, undesigned results—that the eye, though it came to see, was not designed for seeing, nor the hand for handling—then, we suppose, he is justly chargeable with denying, and very needlessly denying, all design in organic Nature; otherwise, we suppose not. Why, if Darwins well-known passage about the eye[III-10} equivocal though some of the language be—does not imply ordaining and directing intelligence, then he refutes his own theory as effectually as any of his opponents are likely to do. He asks:

"May we not believe that [under variation proceeding long enough, generation multiplying the better variations times enough, and natural selection securing the improvements] a living optical instrument might be thus formed as superior to one of glass as the works of the Creator are to those of man?"

This must mean one of two things: either that the living instrument was made and perfected under (which is the same thing as by) an intelligent First Cause, or that it was not. If it was, then theism is asserted; and as to the mode of operation, how do we know, and why must we believe, that, fitting precedent forms being in existence, a living instrument (so different from a lifeless manufacture) would be originated and perfected in any other way, or that this is not the fitting way? If it means that it was not, if he so misuses words that by the Creator he intends an unintelligent power, undirected force, or necessity, then he has put his case so as to invite disbelief in it. For then blind forces have produced not only manifest adaptions of means to specific ends—which is absurd enough—but better adjusted and more perfect instruments or machines than intellect (that is, human intellect) can contrive and human skill execute—which no sane person will believe.

On the other hand, if Darwin even admits—we will not say adopts—the theistic view, he may save himself much needless trouble in the endeavor to account for the absence of every sort of intermediate form. Those in the line between one species and another supposed to be derived from it he may be bound to provide; but as to "an infinite number of other varieties not intermediate, gross, rude, and purposeless, the unmeaning creations of an unconscious cause," born only to perish, which a relentless reviewer has imposed upon his theory—rightly enough upon the atheistic alternative—the theistic view rids him at once of this "scum of creation." For, as species do not now vary at all times and places and in all directions, nor produce crude, vague, imperfect, and useless forms, there is no reason for supposing that they ever did. Good-for-nothing monstrosities, failures of purpose rather than purposeless, indeed, sometimes occur; but these are just as anomalous and unlikely upon Darwins theory as upon any other. For his particular theory is based, and even over-strictly insists, upon the most universal of physiological laws, namely, that successive generations shall differ only slightly, if at all, from their parents; and this effectively excludes crude and impotent forms. Wherefore, if we believe that the species were designed, and that natural propagation was designed, how can we say that the actual varieties of the species were not equally designed? Have we not similar grounds for inferring design in the supposed varieties of species, that we have in the case of the supposed species of a genus? When a

naturalist comes to regard as three closely related species what he before took to be so many varieties of one species how has he thereby strengthened our conviction that the three forms are designed to have the differences which they actually exhibit? Wherefore so long as gradatory, orderly, and adapted forms in Nature argue design, and at least while the physical cause of variation is utterly unknown and mysterious, we should advise Mr. Darwin to assume in the philosophy of his hypothesis that variation has been led along certain beneficial lines. Streams flowing over a sloping plain by gravitation (here the counterpart of natural selection) may have worn their actual channels as they flowed; yet their particular courses may have been assigned; and where we see them forming definite and useful lines of irrigation, after a manner unaccountable on the laws of gravitation and dynamics, we should believe that the distribution was designed.

To insist, therefore, that the new hypothesis of the derivative origin of the actual species is incompatible with final causes and design, is to take a position which we must consider philosophically untenable. We must also regard it as highly unwise and dangerous, in the present state and present prospects of physical and physiological science. We should expect the philosophical atheist or skeptic to take this ground; also, until better informed, the unlearned and unphilosophical believer; but we should think that the thoughtful theistic philosopher would take the other side. Not to do so seems to concede that only supernatural events can be shown to be designed, which no theist can admit—seems also to misconceive the scope and meaning of all ordinary arguments for design in Nature. This misconception is shared both by the reviewers and the reviewed. At least, Mr. Darwin uses expressions which imply that the natural forms which surround us, because they have a history or natural sequence, could have been only generally, but not particularly designed—a view at once superficial and contradictory; whereas his true line should be, that his hypothesis concerns the order and not the cause, the how and not the why of the phenomena, and so leaves the question of design just where it was before.

To illustrate this from the theists point of view: Transfer the question for a moment from the origination of species to the origination of individuals, which occurs, as we say, naturally. Because natural, that is, "stated, fixed, or settled," is it any the less designed on that account? We acknowledge that God is our maker—not merely the originator of the race, but our maker as individuals—and none the less so because it pleased him to make us in the way of ordinary generation. If any of us were born unlike our parents and grandparents, in a slight degree, or in whatever degree, would the case be altered in this regard?

The whole argument in natural theology proceeds upon the ground that the inference for a final cause of the structure of the hand and of the valves in the veins is just as valid now, in individuals produced through natural generation, as it would have been in the case of the first man, supernaturally created. Why not, then, just as good even on the supposition of the descent of men from chimpanzees and gorillas, since those animals possess these same contrivances? Or, to take a more supposable case: If the argument from structure to design is convincing when drawn from a particular animal, say a Newfoundland dog, and is not weakened by the knowledge that this dog came from similar parents, would it be at all weakened if, in tracing his genealogy, it were ascertained that he was a remote descendant of the mastiff or some other breed, or that both these and other breeds came (as is suspected) from some wolf? If not, how is the argument for design in the structure of our particular dog affected by the supposition that his wolfish progenitor came from a post-tertiary wolf, perhaps less unlike an existing one than the dog in question is to some other of the numerous existing races of dogs, and that this post-tertiary came from an equally or more different tertiary wolf? And if the argument from structure to design is not invalidated by our present knowledge that our

individual dog was developed from a single organic cell, how is it invalidated by the supposition of an analogous natural descent, through a long line of connected forms, from such a cell, or from some simple animal, existing ages before there were any dogs?

Again, suppose we have two well-known and apparently most decidedly different animals or plants, A and D, both presenting, in their structure and in their adaptations to the conditions of existence, as valid and clear evidence of design as any animal or plant ever presented: suppose we have now discovered two intermediate species, B and C, which make up a series with equable differences from A to D. Is the proof of design or final cause in A and D, whatever it amounted to, at all weakened by the discovery of the intermediate forms? Rather does not the proof extend to the intermediate species, and go to show that all four were equally designed? Suppose, now, the number of intermediate forms to be much increased, and therefore the gradations to be closer yet—as close as those between the various sorts of dogs, or races of men, or of horned cattle: would the evidence of design, as shown in the structure of any of the members of the series, be any weaker than it was in the case of A and D? Whoever contends that it would be, should likewise maintain that the origination of individuals by generation is incompatible with design, or an impossibility in Nature. We might all have confidently thought the latter, antecedently to experience of the fact of reproduction. Let our experience teach us wisdom.

These illustrations make it clear that the evidence of design from structure and adaptation is furnished complete by the individual animal or plant itself, and that our knowledge or our ignorance of the history of its formation or mode of production adds nothing to it and takes nothing away. We infer design from certain arrangements and results; and we have no other way of ascertaining it. Testimony, unless infallible, cannot prove it, and is out of the question here. Testimony is not the appropriate proof of design: adaptation to purpose is. Some arrangements in Nature appear to be contrivances, but may leave us in doubt. Many others, of which the eye and the hand are notable examples, compel belief with a force not appreciably short of demonstration. Clearly to settle that such as these must have been designed goes far toward proving that other organs and other seemingly less explicit adaptations in Nature must also have been designed, and clinches our belief, from manifold considerations, that all Nature is a preconcerted arrangement, a manifested design. A strange contradiction would it be to insist that the shape and markings of certain rude pieces of flint, lately found in drift-deposits, prove design, but that nicer and thousand-fold more complex adaptations to use in animals and vegetables do not a fortiori argue design.

We could not affirm that the arguments for design in Nature are conclusive to all minds. But we may insist, upon grounds already intimated, that, whatever they were good for before Darwins book appeared, they are good for now. To our minds the argument from design always appeared conclusive of the being and continued operation of an intelligent First Cause, the Ordainer of Nature; and we do not see that the grounds of such belief would be disturbed or shifted by the adoption of Darwins hypothesis. We are not blind to the philosophical difficulties which the thoroughgoing implication of design in Nature has to encounter, nor is it our vocation to obviate them It suffices us to know that they are not new nor peculiar difficulties—that, as Darwin s theory and our reasonings upon it did not raise these perturbing spirits, they are not bound to lay them. Meanwhile, that the doctrine of design encounters the very same difficulties in the material that it does in the moral world is Just what ought to be expected.

So the issue between the skeptic and the theist is only the old one, long ago argued out—namely, whether organic Nature is a result of design or of chance. Variation and natural selection open no third alternative; they concern only the question how the results, whether fortuitous or designed, may have been brought about. Organic Nature abounds with unmistakable and irresistible indications of design, and, being a connected and consistent system, this evidence carries the implication of design throughout the whole. On the other hand, chance carries no probabilities with it, can never be developed into a consistent system, but, when applied to the explanation of orderly or beneficial results, heaps up improbabilities at every step beyond all computation. To us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply inconceivable. The alternative is a designed Cosmos.

It is very easy to assume that, because events in Nature are in one sense accidental, and the operative forces which bring them to pass are themselves blind and unintelligent (physically considered, all forces are), therefore they are undirected, or that he who describes these events as the results of such forces thereby assumes that they are undirected. This is the assumption of the Boston reviewers, and of Mr. Agassiz, who insists that the only alternative to the doctrine, that all organized beings were supernaturally created just as they are, is, that they have arisen spontaneously through the omnipotence of matter.[III-11}

As to all this, nothing is easier than to bring out in the conclusion what you introduce in the premises. If you import atheism into your conception of variation and natural selection, you can readily exhibit it in the result. If you do not put it in, perhaps there need be none to come out. While the mechanician is considering a steamboat or locomotive-engine as a material organism, and contemplating the fuel, water, and steam, the source of the mechanical forces, and how they operate, he may not have occasion to mention the engineer. But, the orderly and special results accomplished, the why the movements are in this or that particular direction, etc., is inexplicable without him. If Mr. Darwin believes that the events which he supposes to have occurred and the results we behold were undirected and undesigned, or if the physicist believes that the natural forces to which he refers phenomena are uncaused and undirected, no argument is needed to show that such belief is atheism. But the admission of the phenomena and of these natural processes and forces does not necessitate any such belief, nor even render it one whit less improbable than before.

Surely, too, the accidental element may play its part in Nature without negativing design in the theists view. He believes that the earths surface has been very gradually prepared for man and the existing animal races, that vegetable matter has through a long series of generations imparted fertility to the soil in order that it may support its present occupants, that even beds of coal have been stored up for mans benefit Yet what is more accidental, and more simply the consequence of physical agencies than the accumulation of vegetable matter in a peat bog and its transformation into coal? No scientific person at this day doubts that our solar system is a progressive development, whether in his conception he begins with molten masses, or aeriform or nebulous masses, or with a fluid revolving mass of vast extent, from which the specific existing worlds have been developed one by one What theist doubts that the actual results of the development in the inorganic worlds are not merely compatible with design but are in the truest sense designed re suits? Not Mr. Agassiz, certainly, who adopts a remarkable illustration of design directly founded on the nebular hypothesis drawing from the position and times of the revolution of the world, so originated direct evidence that the physical world has been ordained in conformity with laws which obtain also among living beings But the reader of the interesting exposition[III-12} will notice that the designed result has been brought to pass through what, speaking after the manner of men, might be called a chapter of accidents.

A natural corollary of this demonstration would seem to be, that a material connection between a series of created things—such as the development of one of them from another, or of all from a common stock—is highly compatible with their intellectual connection, namely, with their being designed and directed by one mind. Yet upon some ground which is not explained, and which we are unable to conjecture, Mr. Agassiz concludes to the contrary in the organic kingdoms, and insists that, because the members of such a series have an intellectual connection, "they cannot be the result of a material differentiation of the objects themselves,"[III-13} that is, they cannot have had a genealogical connection. But is there not as much intellectual connection between the successive generations of any species as there is between the several species of a genus, or the several genera of an order? As the intellectual connection here is realized through the material connection, why may it not be so in the case of species and genera? On all sides, therefore, the implication seems to be quite the other way.

Returning to the accidental element, it is evident that the strongest point against the compatibility of Darwins hypothesis with design in Nature is made when natural selection is referred to as picking out those variations which are improvements from a vast number which are not improvements, but perhaps the contrary, and therefore useless or purposeless, and born to perish. But even here the difficulty is not peculiar; for Nature abounds with analogous instances. Some of our race are useless, or worse, as regards the improvement of mankind; yet the race may be designed to improve, and may be actually improving. Or, to avoid the complication with free agency—the whole animate life of a country depends absolutely upon the vegetation, the vegetation upon the rain. The moisture is furnished by the ocean, is raised by the suns heat from the oceans surface, and is wafted inland by the winds. But what multitudes of raindrops fall back into the ocean—are as much without a final cause as the incipient varieties which come to nothing! Does it therefore follow that the rains which are bestowed upon the soil with such rule and average regularity were not designed to support vegetable and animal life? Consider, likewise, the vast proportion of seeds and pollen, of ova and young—a thousand or more to one—which come to nothing, and are therefore purposeless in the same sense, and only in the same sense, as are Darwins unimproved and unused slight variations. The world is full of such cases; and these must answer the argument—for we cannot, except by thus showing that it proves too much.

Finally, it is worth noticing that, though natural selection is scientifically explicable, variation is not. Thus far the cause of variation, or the reason why the offspring is sometimes unlike the parents, is just as mysterious as the reason why it is generally like the parents. It is now as inexplicable as any other origination; and, if ever explained, the explanation will only carry up the sequence of secondary causes one step farther, and bring us in face of a somewhat different problem, but which will have the same element of mystery that the problem of variation has now. Circumstances may preserve or may destroy the variations man may use or direct them but selection whether artificial or natural no more originates them than man originates the power which turns a wheel when he dams a stream and lets the water fall upon it The origination of this power is a question about efficient cause. The tendency of science in respect to this obviously is not toward the omnipotence of matter, as some suppose, but to ward the omnipotence of spirit.

So the real question we come to is as to the way in which we are to conceive intelligent and efficient cause to be exerted, and upon what exerted. Are we bound to suppose efficient cause in all cases exerted upon nothing to evoke something into existence—and this thousands of times repeated, when a slight change in the details would make all the difference between successive species? Why may not the new species, or some of them, be designed diversifications of the old?

There are, perhaps, only three views of efficient cause which may claim to be both philosophical and theistic:

1. The view of its exertion at the beginning of time, endowing matter and created things with forces which do the work and produce the phenomena.

2. This same view, with the theory of insulated interpositions, or occasional direct action, engrafted upon it—the view that events and operations in general go on in virtue simply of forces communicated at the first, but that now and then, and only now and then, the Deity puts his hand directly to the work.

3. The theory of the immediate, orderly, and constant, however infinitely diversified, action of the intelligent efficient Cause.

It must be allowed that, while the third is preeminently the Christian view, all three are philosophically compatible with design in Nature. The second is probably the popular conception. Perhaps most thoughtful people oscillate from the middle view toward the first or the third—adopting the first on some occasions, the third on others. Those philosophers who like and expect to settle all mooted questions will take one or the other extreme. The Examiner inclines toward, the North American reviewer fully adopts, the third view, to the logical extent of maintaining that "the origin of an individual, as well as the origin of a species or a genus, can be explained only by the direct action of an intelligent creative cause." To silence his critics, this is the line for Mr. Darwin to take; for it at once and completely relieves his scientific theory from every theological objection which his reviewers have urged against it.

At present we suspect that our author prefers the first conception, though he might contend that his hypothesis is compatible with either of the three. That it is also compatible with an atheistic or pantheistic conception of the universe, is an objection which, being shared by all physical, and some ethical or moral science, cannot specially be urged against Darwins system. As he rejects spontaneous generation, and admits of intervention at the beginning of organic life, and probably in more than one instance, he is not wholly excluded from adopting the middle view, although the interventions he would allow are few and far back. Yet one interposition admits the principle as well as more. Interposition presupposes particular necessity or reason for it, and raises the question, when and how often it may have been necessary. It might be the natural supposition, if we had only one set of species to account for, or if the successive inhabitants of the earth had no other connections or resemblances than those which adaptation to similar conditions, which final causes in the narrower sense, might explain. But if this explanation of organic Nature requires one to "believe that, at innumerable periods in the earths history, certain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues," and this when the results are seen to be strictly connected and systematic, we cannot wonder that such interventions should at length be considered, not as interpositions or interferences, but rather—to use the reviewers own language—as "exertions so frequent and beneficent that we come to regard them as the ordinary action of Him who laid the foundation of the earth, and without whom not a sparrow falleth to the ground."[III-14} What does the difference between Mr. Darwin and his reviewer now amount to? If we say that according to one view the origination of species is natural, according to the other miraculous, Mr. Darwin agrees that "what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent mind to render it so— that is, to effect it continually or at stated times—as what is supernatural does to effect it for once."[III-15} He merely inquires into the form of the miracle, may remind us that all recorded miracles (except the primal creation of matter) were transformations or actions in and upon natural things, and will ask how many times and how frequently may the origination of successive species be repeated before the supernatural merges in the natural.

In short, Darwin maintains that the origination of a species, no less than that of an individual, is natural; the reviewer, that the natural origination of an individual, no less than the origination of a species, requires and presupposes Divine power. A fortiori, then, the origination of a variety requires and presupposes Divine power. And so between the scientific hypothesis of the one and the philosophical conception of the other no contrariety remains. And so, concludes the North American reviewer, "a proper view of the nature of causation places the vital doctrine of the being and the providence of a God on ground that can never be shaken."[III-16} A worthy conclusion, and a sufficient answer to the denunciations and arguments of the rest of the article, so far as philosophy and natural theology are concerned. If a writer must needs use his own favorite dogma as a weapon with which to give coup de grace to a pernicious theory, he should be careful to seize his edge-tool by the handle, and not by the blade.

We can barely glance at a subsidiary philosophical objection of the North American reviewer, which the Examiner also raises, though less explicitly. Like all geologists, Mr. Darwin draws upon time in the most unlimited manner. He is not peculiar in this regard. Mr. Agassiz tells us that the conviction is "now universal, among well-informed naturalists, that this globe has been in existence for innumerable ages, and that the length of time elapsed since it first became inhabited cannot be counted in years;" Pictet, that the imagination refuses to calculate the immense number of years and of ages during which the faunas of thirty or more epochs have succeeded one another, and developed their long succession of generations. Now, the reviewer declares that such indefinite succession of ages is "virtually infinite," "lacks no characteristic of eternity except its name," at least, that "the difference between such a conception and that of the strictly infinite, if any, is not appreciable." But infinity belongs to metaphysics. Therefore, he concludes, Darwin supports his theory, not by scientific but by metaphysical evidence; his theory is "essentially and completely metaphysical in character, resting altogether upon that idea of the infinite which the human mind can neither put aside nor comprehend."[III-17} And so a theory which will be generally regarded as much too physical is transferred by a single syllogism to metaphysics.

Well, physical geology must go with it: for, even on the soberest view, it demands an indefinitely long time antecedent to the introduction of organic life upon our earth. A fortiori is physical astronomy a branch of metaphysics, demanding, as it does, still larger "instalments of infinity," as the reviewer calls them, both as to time and number. Moreover, far the greater part of physical inquiries now relate to molecular actions, which, a distinguished natural philosopher informs us, "we have to regard as the results of an infinite number of in finitely small material particles, acting on each other at infinitely small distances"—a triad of infinities—and so physics becomes the most metaphysical of sciences. Verily, if this style of reasoning is to prevail—

"Thinking is but an idle waste of thought, And naught is everything, and everything is naught."

The leading objection of Mr. Agassiz is likewise of a philosophical character. It is, that species exist only "as categories of thought"—that, having no material existence, they can have had no material variation, and no material community of origin. Here the predication is of species in the subjective sense, the inference in the objective sense. Reduced to plain terms, the argument seems to be: Species are ideas; therefore the objects from which the idea is derived cannot vary or blend, and cannot have had a genealogical connection.

The common view of species is, that, although they are generalizations, yet they have a direct objective ground in Nature, which genera, orders, etc., have not. According to the succinct definition of Jussieu—and that of Linnaeus is identical in meaning—a species is the perennial succession of similar individuals in continued generations. The species is the chain of which the individuals are the links. The sum of the genealogically-connected similar individuals constitutes the species, which thus has an actuality and ground of distinction not shared by genera and other groups which were not supposed to be genealogically connected. How a derivative hypothesis would modify this view, in assigning to species only a temporary fixity, is obvious. Yet, if naturalists adopt that hypothesis, they will still retain Jussieus definition, which leaves untouched the question as to how and when the "perennial successions" were established. The practical question will only be, How much difference between two sets of individuals entitles them to rank under distinct species? and that is the practical question now, on whatever theory. The theoretical question is—as stated at the beginning of this article—whether these specific lines were always as distinct as now.

Mr. Agassiz has "lost no opportunity of urging the idea that, while species have no material existence, they yet exist as categories of thought in the same way [and only in the same way] as genera, families, orders, classes," etc. He

"has taken the ground that all the natural divisions in the animal kingdom are primarily distinct, founded upon different categories of characters, and that all exist in the same way, that is, as categories of thought, embodied in individual living forms. I have attempted to show that branches in the animal kingdom are founded upon different plans of structure, and for that very reason have embraced from the beginning representatives between which there could be no community of origin; that classes are founded upon different modes of execution of these plans, and therefore they also embrace representatives which could have no community of origin; that orders represent the different degrees of complication in the mode of execution of each class, and therefore embrace representatives which could not have a community of origin any more than the members of different classes or branches; that families are founded upon different patterns of form, and embrace, representatives equally independent in their origin; that genera are founded upon ultimate peculiarities of structure, embracing representatives which, from the very nature of their peculiarities, could have no community of origin; and that, finally, species are based upon relations—and proportions that exclude, as much as all the preceding distinctions, the idea of a common descent.

"As the community of characters among the beings belonging to these different categories arises from the intellectual connection which shows them to be categories of thought, they cannot be the result of a gradual

material differentiation of the objects themselves. The argument on which these views are founded may be summed up in the following few words: Species, genera, families, etc., exist as thoughts, individuals as facts."[III-18}

An ingenious dilemma caps the argument:

"It seems to me that there is much confusion of ideas in the general statement of the variability of species so often repeated lately. If species do not exist at all, as the supporters of the transmutation theory maintain, how can they vary? And if individuals alone exist, how can the differences which may be observed among them prove the variability of species?"

Now, we imagine that Mr. Darwin need not be dangerously gored by either horn of this curious dilemma. Although we ourselves cherish old-fashioned prejudices in favor of the probable permanence, and therefore of a more stable objective ground of species, yet we agree—and Mr. Darwin will agree fully with Mr. Agassiz—that species, and he will add varieties, "exist as categories of thought," that is, as cognizable distinctions—which is all that we can make of the phrase here, whatever it may mean in the Aristotelian metaphysics. Admitting that species are only categories of thought, and not facts or things, how does this prevent the individuals, which are material things, from having varied in the course of time, so as to exemplify the present almost innumerable categories of thought, or embodiments of Divine thought in material forms, or—viewed on the human side—in forms marked with such orderly and graduated resemblances and differences as to suggest to our minds the idea of species, genera, orders, etc., and to our reason the inference of a Divine Original? We have no clear idea how Mr. Agassiz intends to answer this question, in saying that branches are founded upon different plans of structure, classes upon different mode of execution of these plans, orders on different degrees of complication in the mode of execution, families upon different patterns of form, genera upon ultimate peculiarities of structure, and species upon relations and proportions. That is, we do not perceive how these several "categories of thought" exclude the possibility or the probability that the individuals which manifest or suggest the thoughts had an ultimate community of origin.

Moreover, Mr. Darwin might insinuate that the particular philosophy of classification upon which this whole argument reposes is as purely hypothetical and as little accepted as is his own doctrine. If both are pure hypotheses, it is hardly fair or satisfactory to extinguish the one by the other. If there is no real contradiction between them, nothing is gained by the attempt.

As to the dilemma propounded, suppose we try it upon that category of thought which we call chair. This is a genus, comprising a common chair (Sella vulgaris), arm or easy chair (S. cathedra), the rocking-chair (S. oscillans)—widely distributed in the United States—and some others, each of which has sported, as the gardeners say, into many varieties. But now, as the genus and the species have no material existence, how can they vary? If only individual chairs exist, how can the differences which may be observed among them prove the variability of the species? To which we reply by asking, Which does the question refer to, the category of thought, or the individual embodiment? If the former, then we would remark that our categories of thought vary from time to time in the readiest manner. And, although the Divine thoughts are eternal, yet they are manifested to us in time and succession, and by their manifestation only can we know them, how imperfectly! Allowing that what has no material existence can have had no material connection or variation, we should yet infer that what has intellectual existence and connection might have intellectual variation; and, turning to the individuals, which represent the species, we do not see how all this shows that they may not vary. Observation shows us that they do. Wherefore, taught by fact that successive individuals do vary, we safely infer that the idea must have varied, and that this variation of the individual representatives proves the variability of the species, whether objectively or subjectively regarded.

Each species or sort of chair, as we have said, has its varieties, and one species shades off by gradations into another. And—note it well—these numerous and successively slight variations and gradations, far from suggesting an accidental origin to chairs and to their forms, are very proofs of design.

Again, edifice is a generic category of thought. Egyptian, Grecian, Byzantine, and Gothic buildings are well-marked species, of which each individual building of the sort is a material embodiment. Now, the question is, whether these categories or ideas may not have been evolved, one from another in succession, or from some primal, less specialized, edificial category. What better evidence for such hypothesis could we have than the variations and grades which connect these species with each other? We might extend the parallel, and get some good illustrations of natural selection from the history of architecture, and the origin of the different styles under different climates and conditions. Two considerations may qualify or limit the comparison. One, that houses do not propagate, so as to produce continuing lines of each sort and variety; but this is of small moment on Agassizs view, he holding that genealogical connection is not of the essence of a species at all. The other, that the formation and development of the ideas upon which human works proceed are gradual; or, as the same great naturalist well states it, "while human thought is consecutive, Divine thought is simultaneous." But we have no right to affirm this of Divine action.

We must close here. We meant to review some of the more general scientific objections which we thought not altogether tenable. But, after all, we are not so anxious just now to know whether the new theory is well founded on facts, as whether it would be harmless if it were. Besides, we feel quite unable to answer some of these objections, and it is pleasanter to take up those which one thinks he can.

Among the unanswerable, perhaps the weightiest of the objections, is that of the absence, in geological deposits, of vestiges of the intermediate forms which the theory requires to have existed. Here all that Mr. Darwin can do is to insist upon the extreme imperfection of the geological record and the uncertainty of negative evidence. But, withal, he allows the force of the objection almost as much as his opponents urge it—so much so, indeed, that two of his English critics turn the concession unfairly upon him, and charge him with actually basing his hypothesis upon these and similar difficulties—as if he held it because of the difficulties, and not in spite of them; a handsome return for his candor!

As to this imperfection of the geological record, perhaps we should get a fair and intelligible illustration of it by imagining the existing animals and plants of New England, with all their remains and products since the arrival of the Mayflower, to be annihilated; and that, in the coming time, the geologists of a new colony, dropped by the New Zealand fleet on its way to explore the ruins of London, undertake, after fifty years of examination, to reconstruct in a catalogue the flora and fauna of our day, that is, from the close of the glacial period to the present time. With all the advantages of a surface exploration, what a beggarly account it would be! How many of the land animals and plants which are enumerated in the Massachusetts official reports would it be likely to contain?

Another unanswerable question asked by the Boston reviewers is, Why, when structure and instinct or habit vary— as they must have varied, on Darwins hypothesis—they vary together and harmoniously, instead of vaguely? We cannot tell, because we cannot tell why either varies at all. Yet, as they both do vary in successive generations—as is seen under domestication—and are correlated, we can only adduce the fact. Darwin may be precluded from our answer, but we may say that they vary together because designed to do so. A reviewer says that the chance of their varying together is inconceivably small; yet, if they do not, the variant individuals must all perish. Then it is well that it is not left to chance. To refer to a parallel case: before we were born, nourishment and the equivalent to respiration took place in a certain way. But the moment we were ushered into this breathing world, our actions promptly conformed, both as to respiration and nourishment, to the before unused structure and to the new surroundings.

"Now," says the Examiner, "suppose, for instance, the gills of an aquatic animal converted into lungs, while instinct still compelled a continuance under water, would not drowning ensue?" No doubt. But—simply contemplating the facts, instead of theorizing—we notice that young frogs do not keep their heads under water after ceasing to be tadpoles. The instinct promptly changes with the structure, without supernatural interposition—just as Darwin would have it, if the development of a variety or incipient species, though rare, were as natural as a metamorphosis.

"Or if a quadruped, not yet furnished with wings, were suddenly inspired with the instinct of a bird, and precipitated itself from a cliff, would not the descent be hazardously rapid?" Doubtless the animal would be no better supported than the objection. But Darwin makes very little indeed of voluntary efforts as a cause of change, and even poor Lamarck need not be caricatured. He never supposed that an elephant would take such a notion into his wise head, or that a squirrel would begin with other than short and easy leaps; yet might not the length of the leap be increased by practice?

The North American reviewers position, that the higher brute animals have comparatively little instinct and no intelligence, is a heavy blow and great discouragement to dogs, horses, elephants, and monkeys. Thus stripped of their all, and left to shift for themselves as they may in this hard world, their pursuit and seeming attainment of knowledge under such peculiar difficulties are interesting to contemplate. However, we are not so sure as is the critic that instinct regularly increases downward and decreases upward in the scale of being. Now that the case of the bee is reduced to moderate proportions,[III-19} we know of nothing in instinct surpassing that of an animal so high as a bird, the talegal, the male of which plumes himself upon making a hot-bed in which to batch his partners eggs—which he tends and regulates the beat of about as carefully and skillfully as the unplumed biped does an eccaleobion.[III-20}

As to the real intelligence of the higher brutes, it has been ably defended by a far more competent observer, Mr. Agassiz, to whose conclusions we yield a general assent, although we cannot quite place the best of dogs "in that respect upon a level with a considerable proportion of poor humanity," nor indulge the hope, or indeed the desire, of a renewed acquaintance with the whole animal kingdom in a future life.

It has been attempted to destroy the very foundation of Darwins hypothesis by denying that there are any wild varieties, to speak of, for natural selection to operate upon. We cannot gravely sit down to prove that wild varieties abound. We should think it just as necessary to prove that snow falls in winter. That variation among plants cannot be largely due to hybridism, and that their variation in Nature is not essentially different from much that occurs in domestication, and, in the long-run, probably hardly less in amount, we could show if our space permitted.

As to the sterility of hybrids, that can no longer be insisted upon as absolutely true, nor be practically used as a test between species and varieties, unless we allow that hares and rabbits are of one species. That such sterility, whether total or partial, subserves a purpose in keeping species apart, and was so designed, we do not doubt. But the critics fail to perceive that this sterility proves nothing whatever against the derivative origin of the actual species; for it may as well have been intended to keep separate those forms which have reached a certain amount of divergence, as those which were always thus distinct.

The argument for the permanence of species, drawn from the identity with those now living of cats, birds, and other animals preserved in Egyptian catacombs, was good enough as used by Cuvier against St.-Hilaire, that is, against the supposition that time brings about a gradual alteration of whole species; but it goes for little against Darwin, unless it be proved that species never vary, or that the perpetuation of a variety necessitates the extinction of the parent breed. For Darwin clearly maintains—what the facts warrant—that the mass of a species remains fixed so long as it exists at all, though it may set off a variety now and then. The variety may finally supersede the parent form, or it may coexist with it; yet it does not in the least hinder the unvaried stock from continuing true to the breed, unless it crosses with it. The common law of inheritance may be expected to keep both the original and the variety mainly true as long as they last, and none the less so because they have given rise to occasional varieties. The tailless Manx cats, like the curtailed fox in the fable, have not induced the normal breeds to dispense with their tails, nor have the Dorkings (apparently known to Pliny) affected the permanence of the common sort of fowl.

As to the objection that the lower forms of life ought, on Darwins theory, to have been long ago improved out of existence, and replaced by higher forms, the objectors forget what a vacuum that would leave below, and what a vast field there is to which a simple organization is best adapted, and where an advance would be no improvement, but the contrary. To accumulate the greatest amount of being upon a given space, and to provide as much enjoyment of life as can be under the conditions, is what Nature seems to aim at; and this is effected by diversification.

Finally, we advise nobody to accept Darwins or any other derivative theory as true. The time has not come for that, and perhaps never will. We also advise against a similar credulity on the other side, in a blind faith that species—that the manifold sorts and forms of existing animals and vegetables—"have no secondary cause." The contrary is already not unlikely, and we suppose will hereafter become more and more probable. But we are confident that, if a derivative hypothesis ever is established, it will be so on a solid theistic ground.

Meanwhile an inevitable and legitimate hypothesis is on trial—an hypothesis thus far not untenable—a trial just now very useful to science, and, we conclude, not harmful to religion, unless injudicious assailants temporarily make it so.

One good effect is already manifest; its enabling the advocates of the hypothesis of a multiplicity of human species to perceive the double insecurity of their ground. When the races of men are admitted to be of one species, the corollary, that they are of one origin, may be expected to follow. Those who allow them to be of one species must admit an actual diversification into strongly-marked and persistent varieties, and so admit the basis of fact upon which the Darwinian hypothesis is built; while those, on the other hand, who recognize several or numerous human species, will hardly be able to maintain that such species were primordial and supernatural in the ordinary sense of the word.

The English mind is prone to positivism and kindred forms of materialistic philosophy, and we must expect the derivative theory to be taken up in that interest. We have no predilection for that school, but the contrary. If we had, we might have looked complacently upon a line of criticism which would indirectly, but effectively, play into the hands of positivists and materialistic atheists generally. The wiser and stronger ground to take is, that the derivative hypothesis leaves the argument for design, and therefore for a designer, as valid as it ever was; that to do any work by an instrument must require, and therefore presuppose, the exertion rather of more than of less power than to do it directly; that whoever would be a consistent theist should believe that Design in the natural world is coextensive with Providence, and hold as firmly to the one as he does to the other, in spite of the wholly similar and apparently insuperable difficulties which the mind encounters whenever it endeavors to develop the idea into a system, either in the material and organic, or in the moral world. It is enough, in the way of obviating objections, to show that the philosophical difficulties of the one are the same, and only the same, as of the other.

IV. CAPITAL—THE MOTHER OF LABOUR

AN ECONOMICAL PROBLEM DISCUSSED FROM A PHYSIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW {1890.]

THE first act of a new-born child is to draw a deep breath. In fact, it will never draw a deeper, inasmuch as the passages and chambers of the lungs, once distended with air, do not empty themselves again; it is only a fraction of their contents which passes in and out with the flow and the ebb of the respiratory tide. Mechanically, this act of drawing breath, or inspiration, is of the same nature as that by which the handles of a bellows are separated, in order to fill the bellows with air; and, in like manner, it involves that expenditure of energy which we call exertion, or work, or labour. It is, therefore, no mere metaphor to say that man is destined to a life of toil: the work of respiration which began with his first breath ends only with his last; nor does one born in the purple get off with a lighter task than the child who first sees light under a hedge.

How is it that the new-born infant is enabled to perform this first instalment of the sentence of life-long labour which no man may escape? Whatever else a child may be, in respect of this particular question, it is a complicated piece of mechanism, built up out of materials supplied by its mother; and in the course of such building-up, provided with a set of motors—the muscles. Each of these muscles contains a stock of substance capable of yielding energy under certain conditions, one of which is a change of state in the nerve fibres connected with it. The powder in a loaded gun is such another stock of substance capable of yielding energy in consequence of a change of state in the mechanism of the lock, which intervenes between the finger of the man who pulls the trigger and the cartridge. If that change is brought about, the potential energy of the powder passes suddenly into actual energy, and does the work of propelling the bullet. The powder, therefore, may be appropriately called work-stuff, not only because it is stuff which is easily made to yield work in the physical sense, but because a good deal of work in the economical sense has contributed to its production. Labour was necessary to collect, transport, and purify the raw sulphur and saltpetre; to cut wood and convert it into powdered charcoal; to mix these ingredients in the right proportions; to give the mixture the proper grain, and so on. The powder

once formed part of the stock, or capital, of a powder-maker: and it is not only certain natural bodies which are collected and stored in the gunpowder, but the labour bestowed on the operations mentioned may be figuratively said to be incorporated in it.

In principle, the work-stuff stored in the muscles of the new-born child is comparable to that stored in the gun-barrel. The infant is launched into altogether new surroundings; and these operate through the mechanism of the nervous machinery, with the result that the potential energy of some of the work-stuff in the muscles which bring about inspiration is suddenly converted into actual energy; and this, operating through the mechanism of the respiratory apparatus, gives rise to an act of inspiration. As the bullet is propelled by the "going off" of the powder, as it might be said that the ribs are raised and the midriff depressed by the "going off" of certain portions of muscular work-stuff. This work-stuff is part of a stock or capital of that commodity stored up in the child's organism before birth, at the expense of the mother; and the mother has made good her expenditure by drawing upon the capital of food-stuffs which furnished her daily maintenance.

Under these circumstances, it does not appear to me to be open to doubt that the primary act of outward labour in the series which necessarily accompany

the life of man is dependent upon the pre-existence of a stock of material which is not only of use to him, but which is disposed in such a manner as to be utilisable with facility. And I further imagine that the propriety of the application of the term 'capital' to this stock of useful substance cannot be justly called in question; inasmuch as it is easy to prove that the essential constituents of the work-stuff accumulated in the child's muscles have merely been transferred from the store of food-stuffs, which everybody admits to be capital, by means of the maternal organism to that of the child, in which they are again deposited to await use. Every subsequent act of labour, in like manner, involves an equivalent consumption of the child's store of work-stuff—its vital capital; and one of the main objects of the process of breathing is to get rid of some of the effects of that consumption. It follows, then, that, even if no other than the respiratory work were going on in the organism, the capital of work-stuff, which the child brought with it into the world, must sooner or later be used up, and the movements of breathing must come to an end; just as the see-saw of the piston of a steam-engine stops when the coal in the fireplace has burnt away.

Milk, however, is a stock of materials which essentially consists of savings from the food-stuffs supplied to the mother. And these savings are

in such a physical and chemical condition that the organism of the child can easily convert them into work-stuff. That is to say, by borrowing directly from the vital capital of the mother, indirectly from the store in the natural bodies accessible to her, it can make good the loss of its own. The operation of borrowing, however, involves further work; that is, the labour of sucking, which is a mechanical operation of much the same nature as breathing. The child thus pays for the capital it borrows in labour; but as the value in work-stuff of the milk obtained is very far greater than the value of that labour, estimated by the consumption of work-stuff it involves, the operation yields a large profit to the infant. The overplus of food-stuff suffices to increase the child's capital of work-stuff; and to supply not only the materials for the enlargement of the "buildings and machinery" which is expressed by the child's growth, but also the energy required to put all these materials together, and to carry them to their proper places. Thus, throughout the years of infancy, and so long thereafter as the youth or man is not thrown upon his own resources, he lives by consuming the vital capital provided by others. To use a terminology which is more common than appropriate, whatever work he performs (and he does a good deal, if only in mere locomotion) is unproductive.

Let us now suppose the child come to man's estate in the condition of a wandering savage, dependent for his food upon what he can pick up or catch, after the fashion of the Australian aborigines. It is plain that the place of mother, as the supplier of vital capital, is now taken by the fruits, seeds, and roots of plants and by various kinds of animals. It is they alone which contain stocks of those substances which can be converted within the man's organism into work-stuff; and of the other matters, except air and water, required to supply the constant consumption of his capital and to keep his organic machinery going. In no way does the savage contribute to the production of these substances. Whatever labour he bestows upon such vegetable and animal bodies, on the contrary, is devoted to their destruction; and it is a mere matter of accident whether a little labour yields him a great deal—as in the case, for example, of a stranded whale; or whether much labour yields next to nothing—as in times of long-continued drought. The savage, like the child, borrows the capital he needs, and, at any rate, intentionally, does nothing towards repayment; it would plainly be an improper use of the word "produce" to say that his labour in hunting for the roots, or the fruits, or the eggs, or the grubs and snakes, which he finds and eats, "produces" or contributes to "produce" them. The same thing is true of more advanced tribes, who

are still merely hunters, such as the Esquimaux. They may expend more labour and skill; but it is spent in destruction.

When we pass from these to men who lead a purely pastoral life, like the South American Gauchos, or some Asiatic nomads, there is an important change. Let us suppose the owner of a flock of sheep to live on the milk, cheese, and flesh which they yield. It is obvious that the flock stands to him in the economic relation of the mother to the child, inasmuch as it supplies him with food-stuffs competent to make good the daily and hourly losses of his capital of workstuff. If we imagine our sheep-owner to have access to extensive pastures and to be troubled neither by predacious animals nor by rival shepherds, the performance of his pastoral functions will hardly involve the expenditure of any more labour than is needful to provide him with the exercise required to maintain health. And this is true, even if we take into account the trouble originally devoted to the domestication of the sheep. It surely would be a most singular pretension for the shepherd to talk of the flock as the "produce" of his labour in any but a very limited sense. In truth, his labour would have been a mere accessory of production of very little consequence. Under the circumstances supposed, a ram and some ewes, left to themselves for a few years, would probably generate as large a flock;

and the superadded labour of the shepherd would have little more effect upon their production than upon that of the blackberries on the bushes about the pastures. For the most part the increment would be thoroughly unearned; and, if it is a rule of absolute political ethics that owners have no claim upon "betterment" brought about independently of their own labour, then the shepherd would have no claim to at least nine-tenths of the increase of the flock.

But if the shepherd has no real claim to the title of "producer," who has? Are the rams and ewes the true "producers"? Certainly their title is better if, borrowing from the old terminology of chemistry, they only claim to be regarded as the "proximate principles" of production. And yet, if strict justice is to be dispensed, even they are to be regarded rather as collectors and distributors than as "producers." For all that they really do is to collect, slightly modify, and render easily accessible, the vital capital which already exists in the green herbs on which they feed, but in such a form as to be practically out of the reach of man.

Thus, from an economic point of view, the sheep are more comparable to confectioners than to producers. The usefulness of biscuit lies in the raw flour of which it is made; but raw flour does not answer as an article of human diet, and biscuit does. So the usefulness of mutton lies mainly in certain chemical compounds which it

contains: the sheep gets them out of grass; we cannot live on grass, but we can on mutton.

Now, herbaceous and all other green plants stand alone among terrestrial natural bodies, in so far as, under the influence of light, they possess the power to build up, out of the carbonic acid gas in the atmosphere, water and certain nitrogenous and mineral salts, those substances which in the animal organism are utilised as work-stuff. They are the chief and, for practical purposes, the sole producers of that vital capital which we have seen to be the necessary antecedent of every act of labour. Every green plant is a laboratory in which, so long as the sun shines upon it, materials furnished by the mineral world, gases, water, saline compounds, are worked up into those foodstuffs without which animal life cannot be carried on. And since, up to the present time, synthetic chemistry has not advanced so far as to achieve this feat, the green plant may be said to be the only living worker whose labour directly results in the production of that vital capital which is the necessary antecedent of human labour.* Nor is this statement a paradox involving perpetual motion, because the energy by which the plant does its work is supplied by the sun—the primordial capitalist so far as we are concerned. But

it cannot be too strongly impressed upon the mind that sunshine, air, water, the best soil that is to be found on the surface of the earth, might co-exist; yet without plants, there is no known agency competent to generate the so-called "protein compounds," by which alone animal life can be permanently supported. And not only are plants thus essential; but, in respect of particular kinds of animals, they must be plants of a particular nature. If there were no terrestrial green plants but, say, cypresses and mosses, pastoral and agricultural life would be alike impossible; indeed, it is difficult to imagine the possibility of the existence of any large animal, as the labour required to get at a sufficiency of the store of food-stuffs, contained in such plants as these, could hardly extract from them an equivalent for the waste involved in that expenditure of work.

We are compact of dust and air; from that we set out, and to that complexion must we come at last. The plant either directly, or by some animal intermediary, lends us the capital which enables us to carry on the business of life, as we flit through the upper world, from the one term of our journey to the other. Popularly, no doubt, it is permissible to speak of the soil as a "producer," just as we may talk of the daily movement of the sun. But, as I have elsewhere remarked, propositions which are to bear any deductive strain that may be put upon them must run the risk of

seeming pedantic, rather than that of being inaccurate. And the statement that land, in the sense of cultivable soil, is a producer, or even one of the essentials of economic production, is anything but accurate. The process of water-culture, in which a plant is not "planted" in any soil, but is merely supported in water containing in solution the mineral ingredients essential to that plant, is now thoroughly understood; and, if it were worth while, a crop yielding abundant food-stuffs could be raised on an acre of fresh water, no less than on an acre of dry land. In the Arctic regions, again, land has nothing to do with "production" in the social economy of the Esquimaux, who live on seals and other marine animals; and might, like Proteus, shepherd the flocks of Poseidon if they had a mind for pastoral life. But the seals and the bears are dependent on other inhabitants of the sea, until, somewhere in the series, we come to the minute green plants which float in the ocean, and are the real "producers" by which the whole of its vast animal population is supported.* Thus, when we find set forth as an "absolute"

truth the statement that the essential factors in economic production are land, capital and labour—when this is offered as an axiom whence all sorts of other important truths may be deduced—it is needful to remember that the assertion is true only with a qualification. Undoubtedly "vital capital" is essential; for, as we have seen, no human work can be done unless it exists, not even that internal work of the body which is necessary to passive life. But, with respect to labour (that is, human labour) I hope to have left no doubt on the reader's mind that, in regard to production, the importance of human labour may be so small as to be almost a vanishing quantity. Moreover, it is certain that there is no approximation to a fixed ratio between the expenditure of labour and the production of that vital capital which is the foundation of all wealth. For, suppose that we introduce into our suppositious pastoral paradise beasts of prey and rival shepherds, the amount of labour thrown upon the sheep-owner may increase almost indefinitely, and its importance as a condition of production may be enormously augmented, while the quantity of produce remains stationary. Compare for a moment the unimportance of the shepherd's labour, under the circumstances first defined, with its indispensability in countries in which the water for the sheep has to be drawn from deep

wells, or in which the flock has to be defended from wolves or from human depredators. As to land, it has been shown that, except as affording mere room and standing ground, the importance of land, great as it may be, is secondary. The one thing needful for economic production is the green plant, as the sole producer of vital capital from natural inorganic bodies. Men might exist without labour (in the ordinary sense) and without land; without plants they must inevitably perish.

That which is true of the purely pastoral condition is a fortiori true of the purely agricultural* condition, in which the existence of the cultivator is directly dependent on the production of vital capital by the plants which he cultivates. Here, again, the condition precedent of the work of each year is vital capital. Suppose that a man lives exclusively upon the plants which he cultivates. It is obvious that he must have food-stuffs to live upon, while he prepares the soil for sowing and throughout the period which elapses between this and harvest. These food-stuffs must be yielded by the stock remaining over from former crops. The result is the same as before—the pre-existence of vital capital is the necessary antecedent of labour. Moreover, the amount of labour which contributes, as an accessory condition, to the production

of the crop varies as widely in the case of plant-raising as in that of cattle-raising. With favourable soil, climate and other conditions, it may be very small, with unfavourable, very great, for the same revenue or yield of food-stuffs.

Thus, I do not think it is possible to dispute the following proposition: the existence of any man, or of any number of men, whether organised into a polity or not, depends on the production of foodstuffs (that is, vital capital) readily accessible to man, either directly or indirectly, by plants. But it follows that the number of men who can exist, say for one year, on any given area of land, taken by itself, depends upon the quantity of food-stuffs produced by such plants growing on the area in one year. If a is that quantity, and b the minimum of food-stuffs required for each man, A/B=N, the maximum number of men who can exist on the area. Now the amount of production (a) is limited by the extent of area occupied; by the quantity of sunshine which falls upon the area; by the range and distribution of temperature; by the force of the winds; by the supply of water; by the composition and the physical characters of the soil; by animal and vegetable competitors and destroyers. The labour of man neither does, nor can, produce vital capital; all that it can do is to modify, favourably or unfavourably, the conditions of its production. The most important of these—

namely, sunshine, range of daily and nightly temperature, wind—are practically out of men's reach.* On the other hand, the supply of water, the physical and chemical qualities of the soil, and the influences of competitors and destroyers, can often, though by no means always, be largely affected by labour and skill. And there is no harm in calling the effect of such labour "production," if it is clearly understood that "production" in this sense is a very different thing from the "production" of food-stuffs by a plant.

We have been dealing hitherto with suppositions the materials of which are furnished by everyday experience, not with mere a priori assumptions. Our hypothetical solitary shepherd with his flock, or the solitary farmer with his grain field, are mere bits of such experience, cut out, as it were, for easy study. Still borrowing from daily experience, let us suppose that either sheep-owner or farmer, for any reason that may be imagined, desires the help of one or more other men; and that, in exchange for their labour, he offers so many sheep, or quarts of milk, or pounds of

cheese, or so many measures of grain, for a year's service. I fail to discover any a priori "rights of labour" in virtue of which these men may insist on being employed, if they are not wanted. But, on the other hand, I think it is clear that there is only one condition upon which the persons to whom the offer of these "wages" is made can accept it; and that is that the things offered in exchange for a year's work shall contain at least as much vital capital as a man uses up in doing the year's work. For no rational man could knowingly and willingly accept conditions which necessarily involve starvation. Therefore there is an irreducible minimum of wages; it is such an amount of vital capital as suffices to replace the inevitable consumption of the person hired. Now, surely, it is beyond a doubt that these wages, whether at or above the irreducible minimum, are paid out of the capital disposable after the wants of the owner of the flock or of the crop of grain are satisfied; and, from what has been said already, it follows that there is a limit to the number of men, whether hired, or brought in any other way, who can be maintained by the sheep owner or landowner out of his own resources. Since no amount of labour can produce an ounce of foodstuff beyond the maximum producible by a limited number of plants, under the most favourable circumstances in regard to those conditions which are not affected by labour, it follows

that, if the number of men to be fed increases indefinitely, a time must come when some will have to starve. That is the essence of the so-called Malthusian doctrine; and it is a truth which, to my mind, is as plain as the general proposition that a quantity which constantly increases will, some time or other, exceed any greater quantity the amount of which is fixed.

The foregoing considerations leave no doubt about the fundamental condition of the existence of any polity, or organised society of men, either in a purely pastoral or purely agricultural state, or in any mixture of both states. It must possess a store of vital capital to start with, and the means of repairing the consumption of that capital which takes place as a consequence of the work of the members of the society. And, if the polity occupies a completely isolated area of the earth's surface, the numerical strength of that polity can never exceed the quotient of the maximum quantity of food-stuffs producible by the green plants on that area, in each year, divided by the quantity necessary for the maintenance of each person during the year. But, there is a third mode of existence possible to a polity; it may, conceivably, be neither purely pastoral nor purely agricultural, but purely manufacturing. Let us suppose three islands, like Gran Canaria, Teneriffe and Lanzerote, in the Canaries, to be quite cut off from the rest of the world. Let Gran Canaria be

inhabited by grain-raisers, Teneriffe by cattle-breeders; while the population of Lanzerote (which we may suppose to be utterly barren) consists of carpenters, woollen manufacturers, and shoemakers. Then the facts of daily experience teach us that the people of Lanzerote could never have existed unless they came to the island provided with a stock of food-stuffs; and that they could not continue to exist, unless that stock, as it was consumed, was made up by contributions from the vital capital of either Gran Canaria, or Teneriffe, or both. Moreover, the carpenters of Lanzerote could do nothing, unless they were provided with wood from the other islands; nor could the wool spinners and weavers or the shoemakers work without wool and skins from the same sources. The wood and the wool and the skins are, in fact, the capital without which their work as manufacturers in their respective trades is impossible—so that the vital and other capital supplied by Gran Canaria and Teneriffe is most indubitably the necessary antecedent of the industrial labour of Lanzerote. It is perfectly true that by the time the wood, the wool, and the skins reached Lanzerote a good deal of labour in cutting, shearing, skinning, transport, and so on, would have been spent upon them. But this does not alter the fact that the only "production" which is essential to the existence of the population of Teneriffe and Gran Canaria is that effected by the

green plants in both islands; and that all the labour spent upon the raw produce useful in manufacture, directly or indirectly yielded by them—by the inhabitants of these islands and by those of Lanzerote into the bargain—will not provide one solitary Lanzerotian with a dinner, unless the Teneriffians and Canariotes happen to want his goods and to be willing to give some of their vital capital in exchange for them.

Under the circumstances defined, if Teneriffe and Gran Canaria disappeared, or if their inhabitants ceased to care for carpentry, clothing, or shoes, the people of Lanzerote must starve. But if they wish to buy, then the Lanzerotians, by "cultivating" the buyers, indirectly favour the cultivation of the produce of those buyers.

Thus, if the question is asked whether the labour employed in manufacture in Lanzerote is "productive" or "unproductive" there can be only one reply. If anybody will exchange vital capital, or that which can be exchanged for vital capital, for Lanzerote goods, it is productive; if not, it is unproductive.

In the case of the manufacturer, the dependence of labour upon capital is still more intimate than in that of the herdsman or agriculturist. When the latter are once started they can go on, without troubling themselves about the existence of any other people. But the manufacturer depends on pre-existing capital, not only at the

beginning, but at the end of his operations. However great the expenditure of his labour and of his skill, the result, for the purpose of maintaining his existence, is just the same as if he had done nothing, unless there is a customer able and willing to exchange food-stuffs for that which his labour and skill have achieved.

There is another point concerning which it is very necessary to have clear ideas. Suppose a carpenter in Lanzerote to be engaged in making chests of drawers. Let us suppose that a, the timber, and b, the grain and meat needful for the man's sustenance until he can finish a chest of drawers, have to be paid for by that chest. Then the capital with which he starts is represented by a + b. He could not start at all unless he had it; day by day, he must destroy more or less of the substance and of the general adaptability of a in order to work it up into the special forms needed to constitute the chest of drawers; and, day by day, he must use up at least so much of b as will replace his loss of vital capital by the work of that day. Suppose it takes the carpenter and his workmen ten days to saw up the timber, to plane the boards, and to give them the shape and size proper for the various parts of the chest of drawers. And suppose that he then offers his heap of boards to the advancer of a + b as an equivalent for the wood + ten days' supply of vital capital? The latter will surely say: "No.

I did not ask for a heap of boards. I asked for a chest of drawers. Up to this time, so far as I am concerned, you have done nothing and are as much in my debt as ever." And if the carpenter maintained that he had "virtually" created two-thirds of a chest of drawers, inasmuch as it would take only five days more to put together the pieces of wood, and that the heap of boards ought to be accepted as the equivalent of two-thirds of his debt, I am afraid the creditor would regard him as little better than an impudent swindler. It obviously makes no sort of difference whether the Canariote or Teneriffian buyer advanced the wood and the food-stuffs, on which the carpenter had to maintain himself; or whether the carpenter had a stock of both, the consumption of which must be recouped by the exchange of a chest of drawers for a fresh supply. In the latter case, it is even less doubtful that, if the carpenter offered his boards to the man who wanted a chest of drawers, the latter would laugh in his face. And if he took the chest of drawers for himself, then so much of his vital capital would be sunk in it past recovery. Again, the payment of goods in a lump, for the chest of drawers, comes to the same thing as the payment of daily wages for the fifteen days that the carpenter was occupied in making it. If, at the end of each day, the carpenter chose to say to himself "I have 'virtually' created, by my day's labour, a fifteenth of what I shall get for the chest

of drawers—therefore my wages are the produce of my day's labour"—there is no great harm in such metaphorical speech, so long as the poor man does not delude himself into the supposition that it represents the exact truth. "Virtually" is apt to cover more intellectual sins than "charity" does moral delicts. After what has been said, it surely must be plain enough that each day's work has involved the consumption of the carpenter's vital capital, and the fashioning of his timber, at the expense of more or less consumption of those forms of capital. Whether the a + b to be exchanged for the chest has been advanced as a loan, or is paid daily or weekly as wages, or, at some later time, as the price of a finished commodity—the essential element of the transaction, and the only essential element, is, that it must, at least, effect the replacement of the vital capital consumed. Neither boards nor chest of drawers are eatable; and, so far from the carpenter having produced the essential part of his wages by each day's labour, he has merely wasted that labour, unless somebody who happens to want a chest of drawers offers to exchange vital capital, or something that can procure it, equivalent to the amount consumed during the process of manufacture.*

That it should be necessary, at this time of day, to set forth such elementary truths as these may

well seem strange; but no one who consults that interesting museum of political delusions, "Progress and Poverty," some of the treasures of which I have already brought to light, will doubt the fact, if he bestows proper attention upon the first book of that widely-read work. At page 15 it is thus written:

"The proposition I shall endeavour to prove is: that wages, instead of being drawn from capital, are, in reality, drawn from the product of the labour for which they are paid."

Again at page 18:—

"In every case in which labour is exchanged for commodities, production really precedes enjoyment . . . wages are the earnings—that is to say, the makings—of labour—not the advances of capital."

And the proposition which the author endeavours to disprove is the hitherto generally accepted doctrine

The doctrine respecting the relation of capital and wages, which is thus opposed in "Progress and Poverty," is that illustrated in the foregoing pages; the truth of which, I conceive, must be plain to any one who has apprehended the very simple arguments by which I have endeavoured to

demonstrate it. One conclusion or the other must be hopelessly wrong; and, even at the cost of going once more over some of the ground traversed in this essay and that on "Natural and Political Rights,"* I propose to show that the error lies with "Progress and Poverty"; in which work, so far as political science is concerned, the poverty is, to my eye, much more apparent than the progress.

To begin at the beginning. The author propounds a definition of wealth: "Nothing which nature supplies to man without his labour is wealth" (p. 28). Wealth consists of "natural substances or products which have been adapted by human labour to human use or gratification, their value depending upon the amount of labour which, upon the average, would be required to produce things of like kind" (p. 27). The following examples of wealth are given:—

I take it that native metals, coal and brick clay, are "mineral products"; and I quite believe that they are properly termed "wealth." But when a seam of coal crops out at the surface, and lumps of coal are to be had for the picking up; or when native copper lies about in nuggets, or

when brick clay forms a superficial stratum, it appears to me that these things are supplied to, nay almost thrust upon, man without his labour. According to the definition, therefore, they are not "wealth." According to the enumeration, however, they are "wealth": a tolerably fair specimen of a contradiction in terms. Or does "Progress and Poverty" really suggest that a coal seam which crops out at the surface is not wealth; but that if somebody breaks off a piece and carries it away, the bestowal of this amount of labour upon that particular lump makes it wealth; while the rest remains "not wealth"? The notion that the value of a thing bears any necessary relation to the amount of labour (average or otherwise) bestowed upon it, is a fallacy which needs no further refutation than it has already received. The average amount of labour bestowed upon warming-pans confers no value upon them in the eyes of a Gold-Coast negro; nor would an Esquimaux give a slice of blubber for the most elaborate of ice-machines.

So much for the doctrine of "Progress and Poverty" touching the nature of wealth. Let us now consider its teachings respecting capital as wealth or a part of wealth. Adam Smith's definition "that part of a man's stock which he expects to yield him a revenue is called his capital" is quoted with approval (p. 32); elsewhere capital is said to be that part of wealth "which

is devoted to the aid of production" (p. 28); and yet again it is said to be

But if too much pondering over the possible senses and scope of these definitions should weary the reader, he will be relieved by the following acknowledgment:—

The author informs us, in fact, that he is "not writing a text-book," thereby intimating his opinion that it is less important to be clear and accurate when you are trying to bring about a political revolution than when a merely academic interest attaches to the subject treated. But he is not busy about anything so serious as a textbook: no, he "is only attempting to discover the laws which control a great social problem"—a mode of expression which indicates perhaps the high-water mark of intellectual muddlement. I have heard, in my time, of "laws" which control other "laws"; but this is the first occasion on which "laws" which "control a problem" have come under my notice. Even the disquisitions "of

those flabby writers who have burdened the press and darkened counsel by numerous volumes which are dubbed political economy" (p. 28) could hardly furnish their critics with a finer specimen of that which a hero of the "Dunciad," by the one flash of genius recorded of him, called "clotted nonsense."

Doubtless it is a sign of grace that the author of these definitions should attach no importance to any of them; but since, unfortunately, his whole argument turns upon the tacit assumption that they are important, I may not pass them over so lightly. The third I give up. Why anything should be capital when it is "in course of exchange," and not be capital under other circumstances, passes my understanding. We are told that "that part of a farmer's crop held for sale or for seed, or to feed his help, in part payment of wages, would be accounted capital; that held for the care of his family would not be" (p. 31). But I fail to discover any ground of reason or authority for the doctrine that it is only when a crop is about to be sold or sown, or given as wages, that it may be called capital. On the contrary, whether we consider custom or reason, so much of it as is stored away in ricks and barns during harvest, and remains there to be used in any of these ways months or years afterwards, is customarily and rightly termed capital. Surely, the meaning of the clumsy phrase that capital is "wealth in the

course of exchange" must be that it is "wealth capable of being exchanged" against labour or anything else. That, in fact, is the equivalent of the second definition, that capital is "that part of wealth which is devoted to the aid of production." Obviously, if you possess that for which men will give labour, you can aid production by means of that labour. And, again, it agrees with the first definition (borrowed from Adam Smith) that capital is "that part of a man's stock which he expects to yield him a revenue." For a revenue is both etymologically and in sense a "return." A man gives his labour in sowing grain, or in tending cattle, because he expects a "return"—a "revenue"—in the shape of the increase of the grain or of the herd; and also, in the latter case, in the shape of their labour and manure which "aid the production" of such increase. The grain and cattle of which he is possessed immediately after harvest is his capital; and his revenue for the twelvemonth, until the next harvest, is the surplus of grain and cattle over and above the amount with which he started. This is disposable for any purpose for which he may desire to use it, leaving him just as well off as he was at the beginning of the year. Whether the man keeps the surplus grain for sowing more land, and the surplus cattle for occupying more pasture; whether he exchanges them for other commodities, such as the use of the land (as rent); or labour (as

wages); or whether he feeds himself and his family, in no way alters their nature as revenue, or affects the fact that this revenue is merely disposable capital.

That (even apart from etymology) cattle are typical examples of capital cannot be denied ("Progress and Poverty," p. 25); and if we seek for that particular quality of cattle which makes them "capital," neither has the author of "Progress and Poverty" supplied, nor is any one else very likely to supply, a better account of the matter than Adam Smith has done. Cattle are "capital" because they are "stock which yields revenue." That is to say, they afford to their owner a supply of that which he desires to possess. And, in this particular case, the "revenue" is not only desirable, but of supreme importance, inasmuch as it is capable of maintaining human life. The herd yields a revenue of food-stuffs as milk and meat; a revenue of skins; a revenue of manure; a revenue of labour; a revenue of exchangeable commodities in the shape of these things, as well as in that of live cattle. In each and all of these capacities cattle are capital; and, conversely, things which possess any or all of these capacities are capital.

Therefore what we find at page 25 of "Progress and Poverty" must be regarded as a welcome lapse into clearness of apprehension:—

"A fertile field, a rich vein of ore, a falling stream which supplies power, may give the possessor advantages

equivalent to the possession of capital; but to class such things as capital would be to put an end to the distinction between land and capital."

Just so. But the fatal truth is that these things are capital; and that there really is no fundamental distinction between land and capital. Is it denied that a fertile field, a rich vein of ore, or a falling stream, may form part of a man's stock, and that, if they do, they are capable of yielding revenue? Will not somebody pay a share of the produce in kind, or in money, for the privilege of cultivating the first royalties for that of working the second; and a like equivalent for that of erecting a mill on the third? In what sense, then, are these things less "capital" than the buildings and tools which on page 27 of "Progress and Poverty" are admitted to be capital? Is it not plain that if these things confer "advantages equivalent to the possession of capital," and if the "advantage" of capital is nothing but the yielding of revenue, then the denial that they are capital is merely a roundabout way of self-contradiction?

All this confused talk about capital, however, is lucidity itself compared with the exposition of the remarkable thesis, "Wages not drawn from capital, but produced by labour," which occupies the third chapter of "Progress and Poverty."

"If, for instance, I devote my labour to gathering birds' eggs or picking wild berries, the eggs or berries I thus

get are my wages. Surely no one will contend that, in such a case, wages are drawn from capital. There is no capital in the case" (p. 34).

Nevertheless, those who have followed what has been said in the first part of this essay surely neither will, nor can, have any hesitation about substantially adopting the challenged contention, though they may possibly have qualms as to the propriety of the use of the term "wages."* They will have no difficulty in apprehending the fact that birds' eggs and berries are stores of foodstuffs, or vital capital; that the man who devotes his labour to getting them does so at the expense of his personal vital capital; and that, if the eggs and the berries are "wages" for his work, they are so because they enable him to restore to his organism the vital capital which he has consumed in doing the work of collection. So that there is really a great deal of "capital in the case."

Our author proceeds:—

"An absolutely naked man, thrown on an island where no human being has before trod, may gather birds' eggs or pick berries" (p. 34).

No doubt. But those who have followed my argument thus far will be aware that a man's vital capital does not reside in his clothes; and, therefore,

they will probably fail, as completely as I do, to discover the relevancy of the statement.

Again:—

It takes away one's breath to have such a concatenation of fallacies administered in the space of half a paragraph. It does not seem to have occurred to our economical reformer to imagine whence his "capital at the beginning," the "leather, thread, &c." came. I venture to suppose that leather to have been originally cattle-skin; and since calves and oxen are not flayed alive, the existence of the leather implies the lessening of that form of capital by a very considerable iota. It is, therefore, as sure as anything can be that, in the long run, the shoes are drawn from that which is capital par excellence; to wit, cattle. It is further beyond doubt that the operation of tanning must involve loss of capital in the shape of bark, to say nothing of other losses; and that the use of the awls and knives of the shoemaker involves loss of capital in the shape of the store of

iron; further, the shoemaker has been enabled to do his work not only by the vital capital expended during the time occupied in making the pair of shoes, but by that expended from the time of his birth, up to the time that he earned wages that would keep him alive.

"Progress and Poverty" continues:—

In return we may inquire, how can any one propound such a question? Capital is drawn upon all the time. Not only when the shoes are commenced, but while they are being made, and until they are either used by the shoemaker himself or are purchased by somebody else; that is, exchanged for a portion of another man's capital. In fact (supposing that the shoemaker does not want shoes himself), it is the existence of vital capital in the possession of another person and the willingness of that person to part with more or less of it in exchange for the shoes—it is these two conditions, alone, which prevent the shoemaker from having consumed his capital unproductively, just as much as if he had spent his time in chopping up the leather into minute fragments.

Thus, the examination of the very case selected

by the advocate of the doctrine that labour bestowed upon manufacture, without any intervention of capital, can produce wages, proves to be a delusion of the first magnitude; even though it be supported by the dictum of Adam Smith which is quoted in its favour (p. 34)—

But the whole of this passage exhibits the influence of the French Physiocrats by whom Adam Smith was inspired, at their worst; that is to say, when they most completely forsook the ground of experience for a priori speculation. The confident reference to "that original state of things" is quite in the manner of the Essai sur l'Inegalie. Now, the state of men before the "appropriation of land" and the "accumulation of stock" must surely have been that of purely savage hunters. As, by the supposition, nobody would have possessed land, certainly no man could have had a landlord; and, if there was no accumulation of stock in a transferable form, as surely there could be no master, in the sense of hirer. But hirer and hire (that is, wages) are correlative terms, like mother and child. As "child" implies "mother," so does "hire" or "wages" imply a

"hirer" or "wage-giver." Therefore, when a man in "the original state of things" gathered fruit or killed game for his own sustenance, the fruit or the game could be called his "wages" only in a figurative sense; as one sees if the term "hire," which has a more limited connotation, is substituted for "wage." If not, it must be assumed that the savage hired himself to get his own dinner; whereby we are led to the tolerably absurd conclusion that, as in the "state of nature" he was his own employer, the "master" and the labourer, in that model age, appropriated the produce in equal shares! And if this should be not enough, it has already been seen that, in the hunting state, man is not even an accessory of production of vital capital; he merely consumes what nature produces.

According to the author of "Progress and Poverty" political economists have been deluded by a "fallacy which has entangled some of the most acute minds in a web of their own spinning."

"It is in the use of the term capital in two senses. In the primary proposition that capital is necessary to the exertion of productive labour, the term "capital" is understood as including all food, clothing, shelter, &c.; whereas in the deductions finally drawn from it, the term is used in its common and legitimate meaning of wealth devoted, not to the immediate gratification of desire, but to the procurement of more wealth—of wealth in the hands of employers as distinguished from labourers" (p. 40).

I am by no means concerned to defend the political economists who are thus charged with blundering; but I shall be surprised to learn that any have carried the art of self-entanglement to the degree of perfection exhibited by this passage. Who has ever imagined that wealth which, in the hands of an employer, is capital, ceases to be capital if it is in the hands of a labourer? Suppose a workman to be paid thirty shillings on Saturday evening for six days' labour, that thirty shillings comes out of the employer's capital, and receives the name of "wages" simply because it is exchanged for labour. In the workman's pocket, as he goes home, it is a part of his capital, in exactly the same sense as, half an hour before, it was part of the employer's capital; he is a capitalist just as much as if he were a Rothschild. Suppose him to be a single man, whose cooking and household matters are attended to by the people of the house in which he has a room; then the rent which he pays them out of this capital is, in part, wages for their labour, and he is, so far, an employer. If he saves one shilling out of his thirty, he has, to that extent, added to his capital when the next Saturday comes round. And if he puts his saved shillings week by week into the Savings Bank, the difference between him and the most bloated of bankers is simply one of degree.

At page 42, we are confidently told that

"labourers by receiving wages" cannot lessen "even temporarily" the "capital of the employer," while at page 44 it is admitted that in certain cases the capitalist "pays out capital in wages." One would think that the "paying out" of capital is hardly possible without at least a "temporary" diminution of the capital from which payment is made. But "Progress and Poverty" changes all that by a little verbal legerdemain:—

Those who have paid attention to the argument of former parts of this paper may not be able to understand how, if sound "first principles are kept in mind," any other conclusion can be reached, whether by jumping, or by any other mode of logical progression. But the first principle which our author "keeps in mind" possesses just that amount of ambiguity which enables him to play hocus-pocus with it. It is this; that "the creation of value does not depend upon the finishing of the product" (p. 44).

There is no doubt that, under certain limitations, this proposition is correct. It is not true that "labour always adds to capital by its exertion before it takes from capital its wages" (p. 44), but it is true that it may, and often does, produce that effect.

To take one of the examples given, the construction of a ship. The shaping of the timbers undoubtedly gives them a value (for a shipbuilder) which they did not possess before. When they are put together to constitute the framework of the ship, there is a still further addition of value (for a shipbuilder); and when the outside planking is added, there is another addition (for a shipbuilder). Suppose everything else about the hull is finished, except the one little item of caulking the seams, there is no doubt that it has still more value for a shipbuilder. But for whom else has it any value, except perhaps for a fire-wood merchant? What price will any one who wants a ship—that is to say, something that will carry a cargo from one port to another—give for the unfinished vessel which would take water in at every seam and go down in half an hour, if she were launched? Suppose the shipbuilder's capital to fail before the vessel is caulked, and that he cannot find another shipbuilder who cares to buy and finish it, what sort of proportion does the value created by the labour, for which he has paid out of his capital, stand to that of his advances?

Surely no one will give him one-tenth of the capital disbursed in wages, perhaps not so much even as the prime cost of the raw materials. Therefore, though the assertion that "the creation of value does not depend on the finishing of the product" may be strictly true under certain circumstances, it need not be and is not always true. And, if it is meant to imply or suggest that the creation of value in a manufactured article does not depend upon the finishing of that article, a more serious error could hardly be propounded.

Is there not a prodigious difference in the value of an uncaulked and in that of a finished ship; between the value of a house in which only the tiles of the roof are wanting and a finished house; between that of a clock which only lacks the escapement and a finished clock?

As ships, house, and clock, the unfinished articles have no value whatever—that is to say, no person who wanted to purchase one of these things, for immediate use, would give a farthing for either. The only value they can have, apart from that of the materials they contain, is that which they possess for some one who can finish them, or for some one who can make use of parts of them for the construction of other things. A man might buy an unfinished house for the sake of the bricks; or he might buy an incomplete clock to use the works for some other piece of machinery.

Thus, though every stage of the labour

bestowed on raw material, for the purpose of giving rise to a certain product, confers some additional value on that material in the estimation of those who are engaged in manufacturing that product, the ratio of that accumulated value, at any stage of the process, to the value of the finished product is extremely inconstant, and often small; while, to other persons, the value of the unfinished product may be nothing, or even a minus quantity. A house-timber merchant, for example, might consider that wood which had been worked into the ribs of a ship was spoiled—that is, had less value than it had as a log.

According to "Progress and Poverty," there was, really, no advance of capital while the great St. Gothard tunnel was cut. Suppose that, as the Swiss and the Italian halves of the tunnel approached to within half a kilometre, that half-kilometre had turned out to be composed of practically impenetrable rock—would anybody have given a centime for the unfinished tunnel? And if not, how comes it that "the creation of value does not depend on the finishing of the product"?

I think it may be not too much to say that, of all the political delusions which are current in this queer world, the very stupidest are those which assume that labour and capital are necessarily antagonistic; that all capital is produced by labour and therefore, by natural right, is the property of

the labourer; that the possessor of capital is a robber who preys on the workman and appropriates to himself that which he has had no share in producing.

On the contrary, capital and labour are, necessarily, close allies; capital is never a product of human labour alone; it exists apart from human labour; it is the necessary antecedent of labour; and it furnishes the materials on which labour is employed. The only indispensable form of capital—vital capital—cannot be produced by human labour. All that man can do is to favour its formation by the real producers. There is no intrinsic relation between the amount of labour bestowed on an article and its value in exchange. The claim of labour to the total result of operations which are rendered possible only by capital is simply an a priori iniquity.