between the Eocene Orohippus and the true horse of our own epoch. Suffice it to say that these remains present a most interesting and instructive series of modifications in certain parts of their structure, and notably of the feet. These modifications are supposed to indicate specific differences; and I would not for one moment attempt to throw discredit on Mr. Huxley's unequalled knowledge of the subject by suggesting any doubt that for purposes of classification they may be so considered. But it

is not, therefore and necessarily, to be taken for granted that physiologically they each represent a different species, in the sense in which species is generally defined in these discussions-viz., as a group which produces offspring continuously fertile inter se, and not continuously fertile with allied groups.

I assert nothing, for I have no means of knowing; but I ask, Will any naturalist affirm that such can be proved to be the case in any of these instances; or that the differences between them are greater than those which occasionally are observed in species which we know, by the above test, to be physiologically the same? The formation of the feet differs considerably; but is this a difference of species or only of race? With reference to the lateral toes of the hipparion, Mr. Huxley tells us that "they could have had but very little functional importance, and they must have been rather of the nature of dew-claws, such as are to be found in many ruminant animals. Such being the case, it is only what might be expected, that these toes, in accordance with a well-known law, should dwindle, and be represented, after many succeeding generations, by mere rudiments. There seems also nothing,impossible in the supposition that, in accordance with gradual changes in the physical conditions, and the medium generally in which they lived, similar lapses of functional importance, and a similar gradual dwindling and partial disappearance of certain elements of the extremities, may have occurred in all these successive races without any absolute change of species, physiologically.

Of the extent and nature of the modi

'American Addresses," p. 81.

fications that may be caused by physical surroundings, our knowledge is almost in its infancy. We know some facts— of their true cause we know nothing. Pallas relates that in certain sheep of Central Asia the tail disappears, and is reduced to a simple coccyx, on each side of which is a hemispherical mass of fat weighing twenty or thirty pounds each. This peculiarity entirely disappears in a few generations, when the animals are removed to another climate. American oxen are descended from European stocks. In Buenos Ayres their descendants have preserved the horns; in Mexico they have lost them.* A race of Corsican deer was at one time supposed to be a new species, until one of them was taken to Paris for some years, where it gradually assumed the usual typical form.

Joints also and appendages seem to be very variable, from undefined causes, without necessitating any physiological change of species. An instance, though one of not much importance, is met with in the common dog. Some of the smaller dogs have only four toes on the hind foot, while in some of the largest the fifth is fully developed. Yet physiologically they are equally dogs. In some pigs there is observed a very remarkable and important modification of the foot, in which a third median toe is developed, and the whole is enveloped in a single hoof, so representing the solidungulate type. This is at least as remarkable a modification as that of the foot of the hipparion as compared with that of the horse, yet these remain physiologically pigs. Oxen have been found with thirteen ribs and an additional vertebra, yet they are still oxen.

These few illustrations, which might be multiplied indefinitely, must be taken. for just as much as they are worth. It is not professed that they prove anything whatever-except this, that we ought to be very cautious in proclaiming loudly and dogmatically the absolute demonstration of an untenable hypothesis on the strength of facts which will bear many different interpretations, each one of which is more in accordance with observed analogies than the one so promulgated. So far as these considera

* Quatrefages.j

But apart from what geology does not tell us, there is a history which it does relate, or suggest-a history which is by no means in accordance with the theory now under discussion, which, on the contrary, seems absolutely to controvert it. The succession of forms of life on our globe is demonstrably not such as ought to be the case on the theory of Evolution. It was not the small and feeble species or most generalized forms that first appeared, either among mollusks, fish, reptiles, or mammalia. We look in vain now for the representatives of the gigantic fishes of the Old Red Sandstone. And where are the mighty reptile tyrants of air, earth, and water of the Oölite? Have they been "improved" and "preserved" into the puny races of modern reptiles? Where are the ponderous monsters that shook the Eocene and Miocene earth with their massive tread? Where is the megatherium, unless improved into the modern sloth ? These races appeared in the plenitude of their development and power; and as their dynasty grew old, it was not that the race was improved or preserved in consequence, but they dwindled, and were, so to speak, degraded, as if to make room in the economy of Nature for their successors.†

*Were it permitted to us to adopt the same rules of argument as those used by the Evolutionists, there would be no difficulty in replying trenchantly to this question the Horse series. I should at once say that the Horse, as we know it now, existed contemporaneously with the Orohippus in the Miocene period, and that there had been no change

from that to modern times. When the

very

obvious objection was made to this, that it was a mere assertion, unsupported by any evidence whatever, I should appeal to the " im perfection of the geological record," and as

sume that were it perfect it could do no other

than testify in my favor. If it were suggested that this mode of argument was not science of any sort, and would prove any absurd proposition whatever, I should then reply, that the "certain proof" of the then existence of the horse was to be found in the fact that it was

necessary for my theory. (See Haeckel's "Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte," chap. xxii. passime, and especially at pp. 583 and 587.)

A vast mass of interesting matter bearing

.

upon this question may be found in Mr. Huxley's Essay on Paleontology and Evolution," included in the volume entitled "Critiques

and Addresses," 1874.

From all this it would appear to result that we can obtain no indication of any support for the doctrine of Evolution either from history, observation, experiment, or Palæontology. Any conclusion from experiment is, perhaps, not to be expected as yet; nevertheless, were the characters of species so plastic as it is sought to prove, it can scarcely be conceived that some slight evidence of this modifiability would not have been met with, either in Nature or as the result of artificial selection. We do not expect to witness the entire process of the conversion of one species into another, either naturally or artificially; but it is surely a reasonable surmise that among the countless millions of variations that must be constantly in progress, on this hypothesis, we should occasionally meet with one which would fulfil in some small degree the necessary conditions—* that is, one that would exhibit some incipient failure of fertility with the parent stock, and increased fertility with others varied in like manner. But it is not suggested that one such instance of this, the very first condition of formation of a new species, has ever presented itself.

Among animals we observe at least five distinct types, between any two of which there is no known or suspected transitional form-the Protozoa, the Cœlenterata, the Mollusca, the Annulata, and the Vertebrata. We have seen above to what straits Professor Haeckel is reduced when he attempts to derive these from one common stock, and to draw out a plan of the succession of forms of life. At many points in his series he has to interpolate entire orders, which are so purely imaginary that he does not even profess to have any evidence to adduce for their existence, except that they are necessary" for the completion of his theory. For the most part these may be passed over in silence; but one of them is at once so audacious, so cumbrous, and so impossible that it requires a passing notice.

The connection of the Vertebrata with the lower members of the animal world, and the difficulty of their derivation, by natural process, from any known or imaginable forms, has always presented a serious stumbling-block to the Evolutionist. In his work on the "Descent of Man" Mr. Darwin traces the human

pedigree quite smoothly and easily downward as far as the fishes; but there a difficulty arises: How came the fish to have a vertebral column, and from what was it evolved? There appeared no readier way of answering this inquiry than by the discovery that the larvæ of the Ascidians (invertebrate hermaphrodite marine mollusks) presented some analogy to the Vertebrata in certain points of their structure and development. Hence Mr. Darwin considered himself "justified in believing that at an extremely remote period a group of animals existed resembling in many respects the larvæ of our present Ascidians, which diverged into two great branches-the one retrograding (!) in development and producing the present class of Ascidia; the other rising to the crown and summit of the animal kingdom by giving birth to the Vertebrata."'*

Haeckel indulges in no such halfhearted conjectures as this. When the period arrives when the Vertebrata must be introduced, there is no craning before he leaps, no pusillanimous hesitation. He takes a worm, and with a stroke of his pen endows it with a spinal marrow and a chorda dorsalis, on "mechanical principles;" and having further improved it he calls it Chordonia-the parent of all the Vertebrata-and a sort of distant relative, perhaps second cousin, of the Ascidian. It is placed in its natural order as though it had a legitimate claim to be there; and it never seems to have occurred to the author that, even were it true, this process in no one respect resembled Evolution. I feel some reluctance to speak of this as it deserves; but I consider it as little short of a monstrous literary fraud, as it would be a commercial fraud to pass a forged note in a packet of real ones. I may add that, if there be any truth or reality whatever in the principles of the science of Embryology, it is as impossible for the Ascidian to stand in this relationship to the Vertebrata as it would be for any member of a genealogical tree to be represented at one and the same time as his own grandfather and his own grand-nephew. I have given the demonstration of this position

* "Descent of Man," vol. i. p. 206.

elsewhere,* and space does not admit of even a condensed repetition of it.

I can only briefly allude to the extension of the theory of Evolution to Man. To the doctrine which teaches that Man is lineally descended from a catarrhine ape, Morphology gives some qualified support; Embryology, fairly considered, renders it very improbable; the science of Man demonstrates it to be impossible. It may be conceded at once that the resemblance, in essential type, between man and some apes is very strong indeed; that "the structural differences which separate man from the gorilla and the chimpanzee are not so great as those which separate the gorilla from the lower apes, and that "the human body contains no single organ which might not have been inherited from the apes. N vertheless there are differences, and of such a kind as renders it highly unlikely that man is merely a higher ape. It is very improbable that smoothskinned man should have descended (at least by any process of selection) from hairy ancestry, but this is not much to be relied upon. It is improbable in the extreme that a walking animal should descend from a climbing animal, so improbable that it has appeared to many, even of those who hold the doctrine of Evolution, as a fatal bar to the ape theory; and they have attempted to trace out some other brute origin for man.§ It is supremely improbable that man, the most helpless and the longest helpless of all animals, should be descended, in accordance with any rational theory of progressive development, from any of the brute creation.

*Winds of Doctrine."

"Man's Place in Nature," by Prof. Huxley, p. 103. 1 Haeckel's Anthropogenie," p. 694; only that instead of "might not have been Haeckel says "is not" inherited, etc.

"

M. Quatrefages ("The Human Species," p. 107) says on this subject that "from the point of view of the logical application of the law of permanent characterization . . . man

cannot be descended from an ancestor who is already characterized as an ape, any more than a catarrhine tailless ape can be descended trom a tailed catarrhine. A walking animal cannot be descended from a climbing one.

C. von Baër gives it as his verdict that it is impossible that a man can by progressive development (fortachreitende entwickelung) have

But perhaps the most significant point of difference in the mere mechanism of apes and men is the opposibality of the great toe, or the thumb of the posterior hand, in the former, as contrasted with the same structure in the latter. The importance of this is well understood by the advocates of Evolution, and Haeckel thereupon affirms most positively that this faculty or formation is not peculiar to apes, but that there are "races of wild men in whom the great toe is as opposable as the thumb," adducing other illustrations also. Against 'this we have the positive testimony of an accurate and cautious observer, Mr. Wallace, to the following effect :

"The common statement of travellers as to

savages having great prehensile power in the toes has been adopted by some naturalists as indicating an approach to the apes. But this notion is founded on a complete misconception. Savages pick up objects with their feet, it is true, but always by a lateral motion of the toes, which we should equally possess if we never wore shoes or stockings. In no savage have I ever seen the slightest approach to opposability of the great toe, which is the essential distinguishing features of apes; nor have I ever seen it stated that any variation in this direc

tion has been detected in the anatomical structure of the foot of the lower races." t

The evidence from Embryology is of too technical a nature to be introduced here. It may be briefly indicated as turning upon the fact that the order of embryonic development in the ape, in some most important parts, is in inverse order to that of man, from which the Embryologist will conclude, necessarily and absolutely, that man is not descended from an ape.

Before leaving the subject of bodily relationship, it may be suggested that on either theory of Ontology, whether of special creation or of Evolution, there is exactly the same reason for the very close resemblance in structure that obtains between man and the higher animals. It is acknowledged on all hands, without the necessity for the prolix demonstrations that have been given of the position, that man is an animal, however much more he may be, and whatever his origin; and that he has to perform a great

originated from an ape. Virchow is of the same opinion.

* 64

Nat. Schöpf.," p. 568. "Tropical Nature and other Essays," by Alfred R. Wallace, pp. 289-90.

er variety of selected activities than any other animal. If, then, animals generally are constructed or evolved according to the type best adapted to their special activities, it follows, as a matter of logical necessity, that man should be constructed in accordance with the best and highest of these types. With reserve, I believe that man is the most perfect of machines—that is, that, cæteris paribus, he can do more foot-pounds of work in proportion to fuel than any other animal or machine.

When we come to the science of Man specially, we find that the evidence for his distinct nature, consequently for his independent origin, is overwhelming ; the demonstration is easy, precise, and incontrovertible. By the possession of articulate speech, of a conscious reasoning

*

and reflective faculty, of a moral sense and a religious sentiment; by his conception of abstract ideas; by his faculties of judgment and conscious volition; it is evident that man is neither from nor of the brute; that he “differs fundamentally from every other creature which presents itself to our senses; that he differs absolutely, and therefore differs in origin also." In one comprehensive particular he also asserts that he stands alone-in his capability for continuous progress and his power of utilizing the registered experience" of successive generations.

66

Finally, whatever may be his structure, it is recognized on all hands that there is an altogether "immeasurable and prac tically infinite divergence of the human from the Simian stirps." This is a judgment of the utmost importance, and involves a perfect demonstration of our position. For, whether the structural difference between man and the apes be great or small, it is certainly finite, while the divergence in essential nature is practically infinite. We are, then, driven to this conclusion-that the nature of man is not a "function" § of his organization, and that there is something superadded which is not provided for by any

Man is "the only consciously intelligent denizen of this world." Mr. Huxley's "Man's

Place in Nature," p. 110.

190.

Mr. Mivart's "Lessons from Nature," p.

Mr. Huxley, op. cit., p. 103.

I here use the term "function" in its mathematical sense.

theory of Evolution, of selection, or of direct inheritance. On this supposition, all that has been urged as to organic resemblance comes to have no significance, and the verdict must be that man's descent from the apes is, if not impossible, at least not proven. Q. E. D.*

The differences in the moral and spiritual nature of man and those of the brute have, of course, not been overlooked by the Evolutionists, and they have denied, neutralized, or evaded them according to their respective lights and tendencies. Thus, with regard to articulate speech, one school, represented by Dr. Büchner (the happy propounder of the fact that Holothuride engender snails!), openly proclaims that animals have articulate speech. Mr. Darwin, with his usual candor, confesses that this endowment is "peculiar to man." Mr. Huxley agrees, but attributes the want of it to some inconspicuous structural difference.'

66

The same diversity appears with regard to the moral sense, and this is the last point which can be noticed at this time. It has been seen how the doctrine of Evolution, as elaborated by Professor Haeckel and indorsed by Mr. Huxley, leads us, logically and inevitably to the conclusion-which moreover it is not sought to disguise-that there is no such thing as Free Will. From this also it follows, as an indentical proposition, that there can be no such thing as a moral sense; or rather, that any term or phrase implying morals, as such, in any way, has no possible meaning. We may have conduct-and that conduct may possibly be of any degree of excellence, in its adaptation and obedience to gradually evolved social requirements; but of morals proper, as generally understood, there can be no question. Haeckel cuts the knot arising out of these considerations with characteristic directness. After discussing the subject at some length he says, "The final result of this comparison is this-that between the highest brute-souls (Thier

* Mr. Wallace's arguments in favor of the special origin of man are cogent, clear, and philosophical, but it would be doing them an injustice to condense them into the small space at my disposal.

Articulate speech is mentioned here because so inextricably attached to the development of the moral nature.

NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXII., No. 1

Seelen) and the lowest human souls there exists only a small quantitative and no qualitative difference; and that this difference is much less than that between the highest and lowest human souls, or between the highest and lowest brutesouls."* On the other hand, the school represented by Mr. Huxley and Mr. Herbert Spencer denies to man the possession of any special inherent moral sense --that is, any other than such as can be, and has been, derived by way of Evolution from more simple ideas, such as the desire for pleasure, the avoidance of pain, or the fear of punishment. Commenting on Mr. Mivart's expression that there is no trace in brutes of any actions simulating morality which are not explicable by the fear of punishment, by the hope of pleasure, or by personal affection," Mr. Huxley says that it may be affirmed with equal truth that there is no trace in men of any actions which are not traceable to the same motives. If a man does anything, he does it either because he fears to be punished if he does not do it, or because he hopes to obtain pleasure by doing it. . . . "†

To the majority of thinking men, who still hold that we have some innate perception of right as right, and of wrong as wrong, irrespective of consequences, however diverse or distorted such ideas may be, these doctrines may be left to speak for themselves. It is impossible now to enter upon so broad a subject as the nature and origin of the moral sense. Happily for a benighted world, a ray of light shines through the worse than Cimmerian darkness into which we seem to be plunging. It may prove to be but a very rushlight, yet it proclaims itself loudly to be the true light, and we welcome it as a promise of illumination, trembling and shuddering meanwhile at the dangers through which we have unconsciously been passing, like the lost traveller who faints when the morning reveals to him the horrors through which he has passed in the darkness of the night.

Mr. Herbert Spencer sees clearly that moral injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred origin ;" and lest, unhappily, the world

"Nat. Schöpf.," p. 652.

Critiques and Addresses," p. 289. "Data of Ethics," Pref. p. iv.

2