at the bar: "Come, Swill, let's take a drink!" "Well, I don't know. Ain't dry myself. Hows'ever, guess I will take a drink, for fear 1 might get dry!" With better philosophy on their side, these educated oysters, twice in every twenty-four hours took their precautionary drink. The French method of oyster-training is much more laborious. The adult bivalves are carefully spread out in the water, and periodical lessons are given to each one individually. Each oyster on this occasion receives a tap, not with a ferule, but with a small iron instrument. This causes the bivalve to close tightly. Finally the last day comes with its last premonitory tap. Its education thus finished, it takes passage with its fellow-graduates for Paris. As a result of its education, it knows how to keep its mouth shut when it enters society!

Said one of the English commissioners at the great World's Fair, in respect of the American inventions on exhibition, "They show so much knowingness!" So we think of this oyster-training; the American practice shows a common-sense tact, not found in the French method. And, though in a vastly more ancient sense, the secret of keeping oysters alive in the winter is an American art. Connected with the inland deposits of oyster-shells, made by the former Indian tribes in New Jersey, the writer has discovered what he believes to be oyster-preserves, the evidence of pits in which the Indians stored the living bivalves for winter consumption, when the bays and rivers of New Jersey were frozen over. While unearthing this Indian cache, the thought occurred, "How knowing these ancient people must have been!"

The next article will give, in detail, the friends and companions of the oyster; its enemies, with their modes of attack, and the geographical area of this bivalve.

HERBERT SPENCER AND THE DOCTRINE OF
EVOLUTION.'

THE

HE change that has taken place in the world of thought within our own time, regarding the doctrine of Evolution, is something quite unprecedented in the history of progressive ideas. Twenty years ago that doctrine was almost universally scouted as a groundless and absurd speculation; now, it is admitted as an established principle by many of the ablest men of science, and is almost universally conceded to have a basis of truth, whatever form it may ultimately take. It is, moreover, beginning to exert a powerful influence in the investigation

1 A Lecture delivered before the New York Liberal Club, June 5th, 1874, by E. L. Youmans.

of and mode of considering many subjects; while those who avow their belief in it are no longer pointed at as graceless reprobates or incorrigible fools.

With this general reversal of judgment regarding the doctrine, and from the prominence it has assumed as a matter of public criticism and discussion, there is naturally an increasing interest in the question of its origin and authorship; and also, as we might expect, a good deal of misapprehension about it. The name of Herbert Spencer has been long associated, in the public mind, with the idea of Evolution. And, while that idea was passing through what may be called its stage of execration, there was no hesitancy in according to him all the infamy of its paternity; but, when the infamy is to be changed to honor, by a kind of perverse consistency of injustice, there turns out to be a good deal less alacrity in making the revised award. That the system of doctrine put forth by Mr. Spencer would meet with strong opposition was inevitable. Representing the most advanced opinions, and disturbing widely-cherished beliefs at many points, it was natural that it should be strenuously resisted and unsparingly criticised. Nor is this to be regretted, as it is by conflict that truth is elicited; and those, who, after candid examination, hold his teachings to be erroneous and injurious, are certainly justified in condemning them. With such, at the present time, I have no controversy, but propose to deal with quite another class of critics. There are men of eminence, leaders of opinion, who neither know nor care much for what Mr. Spencer thinks or has done, but are quite ready with their verdicts about him; and, so long as it is not generally known to what an extent we are indebted to him for having originated and elaborated the greatest doctrine of the age, these superficial and careless deliverances from conspicuous men become very misleading and injurious. By many he is regarded as only a clever and versatile essayist, ambitious of writing upon every thing, and who has done something to popularize the views of Mr. Darwin and other scientists. For example, M. Taine, in a late Paris journal, says: "Mr. Spencer possesses the rare merit of having extended to the sum of phenomena-to the whole history of Nature and of mind-the two master-thoughts which, for the past thirty years, have been giving new form to the positive sciences; the one being Mayer and Joule's Conservation of Energy, the other Darwin's Natural Selection." Colonel Higginson says: "Mr. Spencer has what Talleyrand calls the weakness of omniscience, and must write not alone on astronomy, metaphysics, and banking, but also on music, on dancing, on style." And again: "It seems rather absurd. to attribute to him, as a scientific achievement, any vast enlargement or further generalization of the modern scientific doctrine of Evolution." To the same effect, Mr. Emerson, when recently called upon by a newspaper interviewer to furnish his opinions of great men, de1 Estimating Spencer, in the Friend of Progress, 1864.

1

clared Mr. Spencer to be nothing better than a "stock-writer, who writes equally well upon all subjects."

These are not the circumspect and instructive utterances which we should look for from men of authority whose opinions are sought and are valued by the public; they are gross and inexcusable misrepresentations, and exemplify a style of criticism that is now so freely indulged in that it requires to be met, in the common interest of justice and truth. By their estimates of Mr. Spencer, the gentlemen quoted have raised the question of his position as a thinker, and the character and claims of his intellectual work. I follow their lead, and propose, on the present occasion, to bring forward some considerations which may help to a more trustworthy judgment upon the subject. Assuming the foregoing statements to be representative, it will be worth while to see what becomes of them under examination. My object will be, less to expound or to defend Mr. Spencer's views, than to trace his mental history, and the quality and extent of his labors, as disclosed by an analysis and review of his published writings.

And, first, let us glance at the general condition of thought in relation to the origination of things when he began its investigation. Character is tested by emergencies, as well in the world of ideas as in the world of action; and it is by his bearing in one of the great crises of our progressive knowledge of Nature that Mr. Spencer is to be measured.

Down to the early part of the present century it had generally been believed that this world, with all that it contains, was suddenly called into existence but a few thousand years ago in much the same condition as we now see it. Throughout Christendom it was held, with the earnestness of religious conviction, that the universe was a Divine manufacture, made out of nothing in a week, and set at once to running in all its present perfection. This doctrine was something more than a mere item of faith; it was a complete theory of the method of origin of natural things, and it gave shape to a whole body of science, philosophy, and common opinion, which was interpreted in accordance with this theory. The problem of origins was thus authoritatively solved, and life, mind, man, and all Nature, were studied under the hypothesis of their late and sudden production.

But it was difficult to inquire into the existing order of Nature without tracing it backward. Modern science was long restrained from this procedure by the power of traditional beliefs, but the force of facts and reasoning at length proved too strong for these beliefs, and it was demonstrated that the prevailing notion concerning the recent origin of the world was not true. Overwhelming evidence was found that the universe did not come into existence in the condition in which we now see it, nor in any thing like that condition, but that the present order of things is the outcome of a vast series of changes running back to an indefinite and incalculable antiquity. It was

proved that the present forms and distributions of mountains, valleys, continents, and oceans, are but the final terms of a stupendous course of transformations to which the crust of the earth has been subjected. It was also established that life has stretched back for untold millions of years; that multitudes of its forms arose and perished in a determinate succession, while the last appearing are highest in grade, as if by some principle of order and progression.

It is obvious that one of the great epochs of thought had now been reached; for the point of view from which natural things are to be regarded was fundamentally and forever altered. But, as it is impossible to escape at once and completely from the dominion of old ideas, the full import of the position was far from being recognized, and different classes of the thinking world were naturally very differently affected by the new discoveries. To the mass of people who inherit their opinions and rarely inquire into the grounds upon which they rest, the changed view was of no moment; nor had the geological revelations much interest to the literary classes beyond that of bare curiosity about strange and remote speculations. To the theologians, however, the step that had been taken was of grave concern. They were the proprietors of the old view; they claimed for it supernatural authority, and strenuously maintained that its subversion would be the subversion of religion itself. They maintained, moreover, that the controversy involved the very existence of God. The most familiar conception of the Deity was that of a Creator, and creation was held to mean the grand six-day drama of calling the universe into existence; while this transcendent display of power had always been devoutly held as alike the exemplification and the proof of the Divine attributes. How deep and tenacious was the old error is shown by the fact that, although it has been completely exploded, although the immeasurable antiquity of the earth and the progressive order of its life have been demonstrated and admitted by all intelligent people, yet the pulpit still clings to the old conceptions, and the traditional view is that which generally prevails among the multitude.

To men of science the new position was, of course, in the highest degree, important. It was stated by Prof. Sedgwick, in an anniversary address to the Geological Society of London, in 1831, as follows: "We have a series of proofs the most emphatic and convincing that the approach to the present system of things has been gradual, and that there has been a progressive development of organic structure subservient to the purposes of life." The traditional explanation of the origin of the world, and all that belongs to it, being thus discredited, it only remained to seek another explanation: if it has not been done one way, how has it been done? was the inevitable question. One might suppose that the effect of the utter break-down of the old hypothesis would have been to relegate the whole question to the sphere of science, but this was far from being done. The preternatu

ral solution had failed, but its only logical alternative, a natural solution, or the thorough investigation of the subject on principles of causation, was not adopted or urged. The geologists occupied themselves in extending observations and accumulating facts rather than in working out any comprehensive scientific or philosophical principles from the new point of view. The result was a kind of tacit compromise between the contending parties-the theologians conceding the vast antiquity of the earth, and the geologists conceding preternatural intervention in the regular on-working of the scheme; so that, in place of one mighty miracle of creation occurring a few thousand years ago, there was substituted the idea of hundreds of thousands of separate miracles of special creation scattered all along the geological ages, to account for the phenomena of terrestrial life. Two systems of agencies-natural and supernatural-were thus invoked to explain the production of effects. What it now concerns us to note is, that the subject had not yet been brought into the domain of science. One portion of it was still held to be above Nature, and therefore inaccessible to rational inquiry; while that part of the problem which was withheld from science was really the key to the whole situation. Under the new view, the question of the origin of living forms, or of the action of natural agencies in their production, was as completely barred to science as it had formerly been under the literal Mosaic interpretation; and, as questions of origin were thus virtually interdicted, the old traditional opinions regarding the genesis of the present constitution of things remained in full force.

It is in relation to this great crisis in the course of advancing thought that Herbert Spencer is to be regarded. Like many others, he assumed, at the outset, that the study of the whole phenomenal sphere of Nature belongs to science; but he may claim the honor of being the first to discern the full significance of the new intellectual position. It had been proved that a vast course of orderly changes in the past has led up to the present, and is leading on to the future: Mr. Spencer saw that it was of transcendent moment that the laws of these changes be determined. If natural agencies have been at work in vast periods of time to bring about the present condition of things, he perceived that a new set of problems of immense range and importance is open to inquiry, the effect of which must be to work an extensive revolution of ideas. It was apparent to him that the hitherto forbidden question as to how things have originated had at length come to be the supreme question. When the conception that the present order had been called into being at once and in all its completeness was found to be no longer defensible, it was claimed that it makes no difference how it originated that the existing system is the same whatever may have been its source. Mr. Spencer saw, on the contrary, that the question how things have been caused is fundamental; and that we can have no real understanding of what they are, without first knowing how they