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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVOLUTION AND ETHICS, AND
+OTHER ESSAYS ***
+
+
+
+
+EVOLUTION AND ETHICS
+AND OTHER ESSAYS
+
+BY THOMAS H. HUXLEY
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+THE discourse on "Evolution and Ethics," reprinted in the first half of
+the present volume, was delivered before the University of Oxford, as
+the second of the annual lectures founded by Mr. Romanes: whose name I
+may not write without deploring the untimely death, in the flower of
+his age, of a friend endeared to me, as to so many others, by his
+kindly nature; and justly valued by all his colleagues for his powers
+of investigation and his zeal for the advancement of knowledge. I well
+remember, when Mr. Romanes' early work came into my hands, as one of
+the secretaries of the Royal Society, how much I rejoiced in the
+accession to the ranks of the little army of workers in science of a
+recruit so well qualified to take a high place among us.
+
+It was at my friend's urgent request that I agreed to undertake the
+lecture, should I be honoured with an official proposal to give it,
+though I confess not without misgivings, if only on account of the
+serious fatigue and hoarseness which public speaking has for some
+years caused me; while I knew that it would be my fate to follow the
+most accomplished and facile orator of our time, whose indomitable
+youth is in no matter more manifest than in his penetrating and
+musical voice. A certain saying about comparisons intruded itself
+somewhat importunately.
+
+And even if I disregarded the weakness of my body in the matter of
+voice, and that of my mind in the matter of vanity, there remained a
+third difficulty. For several reasons, my attention, during a number
+of years, has been much directed to the bearing of modern scientific
+thought on the problems of morals and of politics, and I did not care
+to be diverted from that topic. Moreover, I thought it the most
+important and the worthiest which, at the present time, could engage
+the attention even of an ancient and renowned University.
+
+But it is a condition of the Romanes foundation that the lecturer
+shall abstain from treating of either Religion or Politics; and it
+appeared to me that, more than most, perhaps, I was bound to act, not
+merely up to the letter, but in the spirit, of that prohibition. Yet
+Ethical Science is, on all sides, so entangled with Religion and
+Politics that the lecturer who essays to touch the former without
+coming into contact with either of the latter, needs all the dexterity
+of an egg-dancer; and may even discover that his sense of clearness
+and his sense of propriety come into conflict, by no means to the
+advantage of the former.
+
+I had little notion of the real magnitude of these difficulties when I
+set about my task; but I am consoled for my pains and anxiety by
+observing that none of the multitudinous criticisms with which I have
+been favoured and, often, instructed, find fault with me on the score
+of having strayed out of bounds.
+
+Among my critics there are not a few to whom I feel deeply indebted for
+the careful attention which they have given to the exposition thus
+hampered; and further weakened, I am afraid, by my forgetfulness of a
+maxim touching lectures of a popular character, which has descended to
+me from that prince of lecturers, Mr. Faraday. He was once asked by a
+beginner, called upon to address a highly select and cultivated
+audience, what he might suppose his hearers to know already. Whereupon
+the past master of the art of exposition emphatically replied
+"Nothing!"
+
+To my shame as a retired veteran, who has all his life profited by
+this great precept of lecturing strategy, I forgot all about it just
+when it would have been most useful. I was fatuous enough to imagine
+that a number of propositions, which I thought established, and which,
+in fact, I had advanced without challenge on former occasions, needed
+no repetition.
+
+I have endeavoured to repair my error by prefacing the lecture with
+some matter--chiefly elementary or recapitulatory--to which I have
+given the title of "Prolegomena" I wish I could have hit upon a
+heading of less pedantic aspect which would have served my purpose;
+and if it be urged that the new building looks over large for the
+edifice to which it is added, I can only plead the precedent of the
+ancient architects, who always made the adytum the smallest part of
+the temple.
+
+If I had attempted to reply in full to the criticisms to which I have
+referred, I know not what extent of ground would have been covered by
+my pronaos. All I have endeavoured to do, at present, is to remove
+that which seems to have proved a stumbling-block to many--namely, the
+apparent paradox that ethical nature, while born of cosmic nature, is
+necessarily at enmity with its parent. Unless the arguments set forth
+in the Prolegomena, in the simplest language at my command, have some
+flaw which I am unable to discern, this seeming paradox is a truth, as
+great as it is plain, the recognition of which is fundamental for the
+ethical philosopher.
+
+We cannot do without our inheritance from the forefathers who were the
+puppets of the cosmic process; the society which renounces it must be
+destroyed from without. Still less can we de with too much of it; the
+society in which it dominates must be destroyed from within.
+
+The motive of the drama of human life is the necessity, laid upon every
+man who comes into the world, of discovering the mean between
+self-assertion and self-restraint suited to his character and his
+circumstances. And the eternally tragic aspect of the drama lies in
+this: that the problem set before us is one the elements of which can
+be but imperfectly known, and of which even an approximately right
+solution rarely presents itself, until that stern critic, aged
+experience, has been furnished with ample justification for venting
+his sarcastic humour upon the irreparable blunders we have already
+made.
+
+I have reprinted the letters on the "Darkest England" scheme, published
+in the "Times" of December, 1890, and January, 1891; and subsequently
+issued, with additions, as a pamphlet, under the title of "Social
+Diseases and Worse Remedies," because, although the clever attempt to
+rush the country on behalf of that scheme has been balked, Booth's
+standing army remains afoot, retaining all the capacities for mischief
+which are inherent in its constitution. I am desirous that this fact
+should be kept steadily in view; and that the moderation of the
+clamour of the drums and trumpets should not lead us to forget the
+existence of a force, which, in bad hands, may, at any time, be used
+for bad purposes.
+
+In 1892, a Committee was "formed for the purpose of investigating the
+manner in which the moneys, subscribed in response to the appeal made
+in the book entitled 'In Darkest England and the Way out,' have been
+expended." The members of this body were gentlemen in whose competency
+and equity every one must have complete confidence; and in December,
+1892, they published a report in which they declare that, "with the
+exception of the sums expended on the 'barracks' at Hadleigh," the
+moneys in question have been "devoted only to the objects and expended
+in the methods set out in that appeal, and to and in no others."
+
+Nevertheless, their final conclusion runs as follows: "(4) That whilst
+the invested property, real and personal, resulting from such Appeal
+is so vested and controlled by the Trust of the Deed of January 30th,
+1891, that any application of it to purposes other than those declared
+in the deed by any 'General' of the Salvation Army would amount to a
+breach of trust, and would subject him to the proceedings of a civil
+and criminal character, before mentioned in the Report, ADEQUATE LEGAL
+SAFEGUARDS DO NOT AT PRESENT EXIST TO PREVENT THE MISAPPLICATION OF
+SUCH PROPERTY."
+
+The passage I have italicised forms part of a document dated December
+19th, 1892. It follows, that, even after the Deed of January 30th,
+1891, was executed, "adequate legal safeguards" "to prevent the
+misapplication of the property" did not exist. What then was the state
+of things, up to a week earlier, that is on January 22nd, 1891, when
+my twelfth and last letter appeared in the "Times"? A better
+justification for what I have said about the want of adequate security
+for the proper administration of the funds intrusted to Mr. Booth
+could not be desired, unless it be that which is to be found in the
+following passages of the Report (pp. 36 and 37):--
+
+"It is possible that a 'General' may be forgetful of his duty, and
+sell property and appropriate the proceeds to his own use, or to
+meeting the general liabilities of the Salvation Army. As matters now
+stand, he, and he alone, would have control over such a sale. Against
+such possibilities it appears to the Committee to be reasonable that
+some check should be imposed."
+
+Once more let it be remembered that this opinion given under the hand
+of Sir Henry James, was expressed by the Committee, with the Trust
+Deed of 1891, which has been so sedulously flaunted before the public,
+in full view.
+
+The Committee made a suggestion for the improvement of this very
+unsatisfactory state of things; but the exact value set upon it by the
+suggestors should be carefully considered (p.37).
+
+"The Committee are fully aware that if the views thus expressed are
+carried out, the safeguards and checks created will not be sufficient
+for all purposes absolutely to prevent possible dealing with the
+property and moneys inconsistent with the purposes to which they are
+intended to be devoted."
+
+In fact, they are content to express the very modest hope that "if the
+suggestion made be acted upon, some hindrance will thereby be placed in
+the way of any one acting dishonestly in respect of the disposal of
+the property and moneys referred to."
+
+I do not know, and, under the circumstances, I cannot say I much care,
+whether the suggestions of the Committee have, or have not, been acted
+upon.  Whether or not, the fact remains that an unscrupulous "General"
+will have a pretty free hand, notwithstanding "some" hindrance.
+
+Thus, the judgment of the highly authoritative, and certainly not
+hostile, Committee of 1892, upon the issues with which they concerned
+themselves is hardly such as to inspire enthusiastic confidence. And
+it is further to be borne in mind that they carefully excluded from
+their duties "any examination of the principles, government, teaching,
+or methods of the Salvation Army as a religious organization, or of
+its affairs" except so far as they related to the administration of
+the moneys collected by the "Darkest England" appeal.
+
+Consequently, the most important questions discussed in my letters were
+not in any way touched by the Committee. Even if their report had been
+far more favourable to the "Darkest England" scheme than it is; if it
+had really assured the contributors that the funds raised were fully
+secured against malversation; the objections, on social and political
+grounds, to Mr.  Booth's despotic organization, with its thousands of
+docile satellites pledged to blind obedience, set forth in the
+letters, would be in no degree weakened. The "sixpennyworth of good"
+would still be out-weighed by the "shillingsworth of harm"; if indeed
+the relative worth, or unworth, of the latter should not be rated in
+pounds rather than in shillings.
+
+What would one not give for the opinion of the financial members of
+the Committee about the famous Bank; and that of the legal experts
+about the proposed "tribunes of the people"?
+
+HODESLEA, EASTBOURNE,
+        July, 1894.
+
+
+
+
+                   CONTENTS
+
+                       I
+
+                                                  PAGE
+EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. PROLEGOMENA [1894] . . . . . . 1
+
+                       II
+
+EVOLUTION AND ETHICS [1893]. . . . . . . . . . . . .46
+
+                       III
+
+SCIENCE AND MORALS [1886]. . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
+
+                       IV
+
+CAPITAL--THE MOTHER OF LABOUR [1890] . . . . . . . 147
+
+                       V
+
+SOCIAL DISEASES AND WORSE REMEDIES [1891]. . . . . 188
+
+Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
+The Struggle for Existence in Human Society. 195
+Letters to the Times . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
+Legal Opinions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
+The Articles of War of the Salvation Army. . 321
+
+
+
+
+[1]
+
+
+                       I.
+
+              EVOLUTION AND ETHICS.
+
+                  PROLEGOMENA.
+
+                    [1894.]
+
+
+                       I.
+
+IT may be safely assumed that, two thousand years ago, before Caesar
+set foot in southern Britain, the whole country-side visible from the
+windows of the room in which I write, was in what is called "the state
+of nature." Except, it may be, by raising a few sepulchral mounds,
+such as those which still, here and there, break the flowing contours
+of the downs, man's hands had made no mark upon it; and the thin veil
+of vegetation which overspread the broad-backed heights and the
+shelving sides of the coombs was unaffected by his industry. The
+native grasses and weeds, the scattered patches of gorse, contended
+with one another for the possession of the scanty surface soil; they
+fought against the droughts of summer, the frosts of winter, and the
+furious gales which swept, with unbroken force, now from the [2]
+Atlantic, and now from the North Sea, at all times of the year; they
+filled up, as they best might, the gaps made in their ranks by all
+sorts of underground and overground animal ravagers. One year with
+another, an average population, the floating balance of the unceasing
+struggle for existence among the indigenous plants, maintained itself.
+It is as little to be doubted, that an essentially similar state of
+nature prevailed, in this region, for many thousand years before the
+coming of Caesar; and there is no assignable reason for denying that
+it might continue to exist through an equally prolonged futurity,
+except for the intervention of man.
+
+Reckoned by our customary standards of duration, the native vegetation,
+like the "everlasting hills" which it clothes, seems a type of
+permanence. The little Amarella Gentians, which abound in some places
+to-day, are the descendants of those that were trodden underfoot, by
+the prehistoric savages who have left their flint tools, about, here
+and there; and they followed ancestors which, in the climate of the
+glacial epoch, probably flourished better than they do now. Compared
+with the long past of this humble plant, all the history of civilized
+men is but an episode.
+
+Yet nothing is more certain than that, measured by the liberal scale
+of time-keeping of the universe, this present state of nature, however
+it may seem to have gone and to go on for ever, is [3] but a fleeting
+phase of her infinite variety; merely the last of the series of
+changes which the earth's surface has undergone in the course of the
+millions of years of its existence. Turn back a square foot of the
+thin turf, and the solid foundation of the land, exposed in cliffs of
+chalk five hundred feet high on the adjacent shore, yields full
+assurance of a time when the sea covered the site of the "everlasting
+hills"; and when the vegetation of what land lay nearest, was as
+different from the present Flora of the Sussex downs, as that of
+Central Africa now is.* No less certain is it that, between the time
+during which the chalk was formed and that at which the original turf
+came into existence, thousands of centuries elapsed, in the course of
+which, the state of nature of the ages during which the chalk was
+deposited, passed into that which now is, by changes so slow that, in
+the coming and going of the generations of men, had such witnessed
+them, the contemporary conditions would have seemed to be unchanging
+and unchangeable.
+
+    * See "On a piece of Chalk" in the preceding volume of these
+    Essays (vol.  viii. p. 1).
+
+But it is also certain that, before the deposition of the chalk, a
+vastly longer period had elapsed; throughout which it is easy to
+follow the traces of the same process of ceaseless modification and of
+the internecine struggle for existence of living things; and that even
+when we can get no further [4] back, it is not because there is any
+reason to think we have reached the beginning, but because the trail
+of the most ancient life remains hidden, or has become obliterated.
+
+Thus that state of nature of the world of plants which we began by
+considering, is far from possessing the attribute of permanence. Rather
+its very essence is impermanence. It may have lasted twenty or thirty
+thousand years, it may last for twenty or thirty thousand years more,
+without obvious change; but, as surely as it has followed upon a very
+different state, so it will be followed by an equally different
+condition. That which endures is not one or another association of
+living forms, but the process of which the cosmos is the product, and
+of which these are among the transitory expressions. And in the living
+world, one of the most characteristic features of this cosmic process
+is the struggle for existence, the competition of each with all, the
+result of which is the selection, that is to say, the survival of
+those forms which, on the whole, are best adapted, to the conditions
+which at any period obtain; and which are, therefore, in that respect,
+and only in that respect, the fittest.* The acme reached by the cosmic
+[5] process in the vegetation of the downs is seen in the turf, with
+its weeds and gorse. Under the conditions, they have come out of the
+struggle victorious; and, by surviving, have proved that they are the
+fittest to survive.
+
+    * That every theory of evolution must be consistent not merely
+    with progressive development, but with indefinite persistence
+    in the same condition and with retrogressive modification, is a
+    point which I have insisted upon repeatedly from the year 1862
+    till now. See Collected Essays, vol. ii. pp. 461-89; vol. iii.
+    p. 33; vol. viii. p. 304. In the address on "Geological
+    Contemporaneity and Persistent Types" (1862), the
+    paleontological proofs of this proposition were, I believe,
+    first set forth.
+
+That the state of nature, at any time, is a temporary phase of a
+process of incessant change, which has been going on for innumerable
+ages, appears to me to be a proposition as well established as any in
+modern history.
+
+Paleontology assures us, in addition, that the ancient philosophers
+who, with less reason, held the same doctrine, erred in supposing that
+the phases formed a cycle, exactly repeating the past, exactly
+foreshadowing the future, in their rotations. On the contrary, it
+furnishes us with conclusive reasons for thinking that, if every link
+in the ancestry of these humble indigenous plants had been preserved
+and were accessible to us, the whole would present a converging series
+of forms of gradually diminishing complexity, until, at some period in
+the history of the earth, far more remote than any of which organic
+remains have yet been discovered, they would merge in those low groups
+among which the Boundaries between animal and vegetable life become
+effaced.*
+
+    * "On the Border Territory between the Animal and the Vegetable
+    Kingdoms," Essays, vol. viii. p. 162
+
+[6] The word "evolution," now generally applied to the cosmic process,
+has had a singular history, and is used in various senses.* Taken in
+its popular signification it means progressive development, that is,
+gradual change from a condition of relative uniformity to one of
+relative complexity; but its connotation has been widened to include
+the phenomena of retrogressive metamorphosis, that is, of progress
+from a condition of relative complexity to one of relative uniformity.
+
+As a natural process, of the same character as the development of a
+tree from its seed, or of a fowl from its egg, evolution excludes
+creation and all other kinds of supernatural intervention. As the
+expression of a fixed order, every stage of which is the effect of
+causes operating according to definite rules, the conception of
+evolution no less excludes that of chance.  It is very desirable to
+remember that evolution is not an explanation of the cosmic process,
+but merely a generalized statement of the method and results of that
+process. And, further, that, if there is proof that the cosmic process
+was set going by any agent, then that agent will be, the creator of it
+and of all its products, although supernatural intervention may remain
+strictly excluded from its further course.
+
+So far as that limited revelation of the nature of things, which we
+call scientific knowledge, has [7] yet gone, it tends, with constantly
+increasing emphasis, to the belief that, not merely the world of
+plants, but that of animals; not merely living things, but the whole
+fabric of the earth; not merely our planet, but the whole solar
+system; not merely our star and its satellites, but the millions of
+similar bodies which bear witness to the order which pervades
+boundless space, and has endured through boundless time; are all
+working out their predestined courses of evolution.
+
+    * See "Evolution in Biology," Essays, vol. ii. p. 187
+
+With none of these have I anything to do, at present, except with that
+exhibited by the forms of life which tenant the earth. All plants and
+animals exhibit the tendency to vary, the causes of which have yet to
+be ascertained; it is the tendency of the conditions of life, at any
+given time, while favouring the existence of the variations best
+adapted to them, to oppose that of the rest and thus to exercise
+selection; and all living things tend to multiply without limit, while
+the means of support are limited; the obvious cause of which is the
+production of offspring more numerous than their progenitors, but with
+equal expectation of life in the actuarial sense. Without the first
+tendency there could be no evolution.  Without the second, there would
+be no good reason why one variation should disappear and another take
+its place; that is to say there would be no selection. Without the [8]
+third, the struggle for existence, the agent of the selective process
+in the state of nature, would vanish.*
+
+    * Collected Essays, vol. ii. passim.
+
+Granting the existence of these tendencies, all the known facts of the
+history of plants and of animals may be brought into rational
+correlation.  And this is more than can be said for any other
+hypothesis that I know of.  Such hypotheses, for example, as that of
+the existence of a primitive, orderless chaos; of a passive and
+sluggish eternal matter moulded, with but partial success, by
+archetypal ideas; of a brand-new world-stuff suddenly created and
+swiftly shaped by a supernatural power; receive no encouragement, but
+the contrary, from our present knowledge. That our earth may once have
+formed part of a nebulous cosmic magma is certainly possible, indeed
+seems highly probable; but there is no reason to doubt that order
+reigned there, as completely as amidst what we regard as the most
+finished works of nature or of man.** The faith which is born of
+knowledge, finds its object in an eternal order, bringing forth
+ceaseless change, through endless time, in endless space; the
+manifestations of the cosmic energy alternating between phases of
+potentiality and phases of explication. It may be that, as Kant
+suggests,*** every cosmic [9] magma predestined to evolve into a new
+world, has been the no less predestined end of a vanished predecessor.
+
+    **Ibid., vol. iv. p. 138; vol. v. pp. 71-73.
+    ***Ibid., vol. viii. p. 321.
+
+
+                    II.
+
+Three or four years have elapsed since the state of nature, to which I
+have referred, was brought to an end, so far as a small patch of the
+soil is concerned, by the intervention of man. The patch was cut off
+from the rest by a wall; within the area thus protected, the native
+vegetation was, as far as possible, extirpated; while a colony of
+strange plants was imported and set down in its place. In short, it
+was made into a garden. At the present time, this artificially treated
+area presents an aspect extraordinarily different from that of so much
+of the land as remains in the state of nature, outside the wall.
+Trees, shrubs, and herbs, many of them appertaining to the state of
+nature of remote parts of the globe, abound and flourish. Moreover,
+considerable quantities of vegetables, fruits, and flowers are
+produced, of kinds which neither now exist, nor have ever existed,
+except under conditions such as obtain in the garden; and which,
+therefore, are as much works of the art of man as the frames and
+glasshouses in which some of them are raised. That the "state of Art,"
+thus created in the state of nature by man, is sustained by and
+dependent on him, would at once become [10] apparent, if the watchful
+supervision of the gardener were withdrawn, and the antagonistic
+influences of the general cosmic process were no longer sedulously
+warded off, or counteracted. The walls and gates would decay;
+quadrupedal and bipedal intruders would devour and tread down the
+useful and beautiful plants; birds, insects, blight, and mildew would
+work their will; the seeds of the native plants, carried by winds or
+other agencies, would immigrate, and in virtue of their long-earned
+special adaptation to the local conditions, these despised native
+weeds would soon choke their choice exotic rivals. A century or two
+hence, little beyond the foundations of the wall and of the houses and
+frames would be left, in evidence of the victory of the cosmic powers
+at work in the state of nature, over the temporary obstacles to their
+supremacy, set up by the art of the horticulturist.
+
+It will be admitted that the garden is as much a work of art,* or
+artifice, as anything that can be mentioned. The energy localised in
+certain human bodies, directed by similarly localised intellects, has
+produced a collocation of other material bodies which could not be
+brought about in the state of nature. The same proposition is true of
+all the
+
+    * The sense of the term "Art" is becoming narrowed; "work of
+    Art" to most people means a picture, a statue, or a piece of
+    bijouterie; by way of compensation "artist" has included in its
+    wide embrace cooks and ballet girls, no less than painters and
+    sculptors.
+
+[11] works of man's hands, from a flint implement to a cathedral or a
+chronometer; and it is because it is true, that we call these things
+artificial, term them works of art, or artifice, by way of
+distinguishing them from the products of the cosmic process, working
+outside man, which we call natural, or works of nature. The
+distinction thus drawn between the works of nature and those of man,
+is universally recognized; and it is, as I conceive, both useful and
+justifiable.
+
+
+                   III.
+
+No doubt, it may be properly urged that the operation of human energy
+and intelligence, which has brought into existence and maintains the
+garden, by what I have called "the horticultural process," is,
+strictly speaking, part and parcel of the cosmic process. And no one
+could more readily agree to that proposition than I. In fact, I do not
+know that any one has taken more pains than I have, during the last
+thirty years, to insist upon the doctrine, so much reviled in the
+early part of that period, that man, physical, intellectual, and
+moral, is as much a part of nature, as purely a product of the cosmic
+process, as the humblest weed.*
+
+    * See "Man's Place in Nature," Collected Essays, vol. vii., and
+    "On the Struggle for Existence in Human Society" (1888), below.
+
+But if, following up this admission, it is urged [12] that, such being
+the case, the cosmic process cannot be in antagonism with that
+horticultural process which is part of itself--I can only reply, that
+if the conclusion that the two are antagonistic is logically absurd,
+I am sorry for logic, because, as we have seen, the fact is so. The
+garden is in the same position as every other work of man's art; it is
+a result of the cosmic process working through and by human energy and
+intelligence; and, as is the case with every other artificial thing
+set up in the state of nature, the influences of the latter, are
+constantly tending to break it down and destroy it. No doubt, the
+Forth bridge and an ironclad in the offing, are, in ultimate resort,
+products of the cosmic process; as much so as the river which flows
+under the one, or the seawater on which the other floats.
+Nevertheless, every breeze strains the bridge a little, every tide
+does something to weaken its foundations; every change of temperature
+alters the adjustment of its parts, produces friction and consequent
+wear and tear.  From time to time, the bridge must be repaired, just
+as the ironclad must go into dock; simply because nature is always
+tending to reclaim that which her child, man, has borrowed from her
+and has arranged in combinations which are not those favoured by the
+general cosmic process.
+
+Thus, it is not only true that the cosmic energy, working through man
+upon a portion of [13] the plant world, opposes the same energy as it
+works through the state of nature, but a similar antagonism is
+everywhere manifest between the artificial and the natural. Even in
+the state of nature itself, what is the struggle for existence but the
+antagonism of the results of the cosmic process in the region of life,
+one to another?*
+
+    * Or to put the case still more simply. When a man lays hold of
+    the two ends of a piece of string and pulls them, with intent
+    to break it, the right arm is certainly exerted in antagonism
+    to the left arm; yet both arms derive their energy from the
+    same original source.
+
+
+                  IV.
+
+Not only is the state of nature hostile to the state of art of the
+garden; but the principle of the horticultural process, by which the
+latter is created and maintained, is antithetic to that of the cosmic
+process. The characteristic feature of the latter is the intense and
+unceasing competition of the struggle for existence. The
+characteristic of the former is the elimination of that struggle, by
+the removal of the conditions which give rise to it. The tendency of
+the cosmic process is to bring about the adjustment of the forms of
+plant life to the current conditions; the tendency of the
+horticultural process is the adjustment of the conditions to the needs
+of the forms of plant life which the gardener desires to raise.
+
+The cosmic process uses unrestricted multiplication [14] as the means
+whereby hundreds compete for the place and nourishment adequate for
+one; it employs frost and drought to cut off the weak and unfortunate;
+to survive, there is need not only of strength, but of flexibility and
+of good fortune.
+
+The gardener, on the other hand, restricts multiplication; provides
+that each plant shall have sufficient space and nourishment; protects
+from frost and drought; and, in every other way, attempts to modify
+the conditions, in such a manner as to bring about the survival of
+those forms which most nearly approach the standard of the useful or
+the beautiful, which he has in his mind.
+
+If the fruits and the tubers, the foliage and the flowers thus
+obtained, reach, or sufficiently approach, that ideal, there is no
+reason why the status quo attained should not be indefinitely
+prolonged. So long as the state of nature remains approximately the
+same, so long will the energy and intelligence which created the
+garden suffice to maintain it. However, the limits within which this
+mastery of man over nature can be maintained are narrow. If the
+conditions of the cretaceous epoch returned, I fear the most skilful
+of gardeners would have to give up the cultivation of apples and
+gooseberries; while, if those of the glacial period once again
+obtained, open asparagus beds would be superfluous, and the training
+of fruit [15] trees against the most favourable of South walls, a
+waste of time and trouble.
+
+But it is extremely important to note that, the state of nature
+remaining the same, if the produce does not satisfy the gardener, it
+may be made to approach his ideal more closely. Although the struggle
+for existence may be at end, the possibility of progress remains. In
+discussions on these topics, it is often strangely forgotten that the
+essential conditions of the modification, or evolution, of living
+things are variation and hereditary transmission. Selection is the
+means by which certain variations are favoured and their progeny
+preserved. But the struggle for existence is only one of the means by
+which selection may be effected. The endless varieties of cultivated
+flowers, fruits, roots, tubers, and bulbs are not products of
+selection by means of the struggle for existence, but of direct
+selection, in view of an ideal of utility or beauty. Amidst a multitude
+of plants, occupying the same station and subjected to the same
+conditions, in the garden, varieties arise. The varieties tending in a
+given direction are preserved, and the rest are destroyed. And the
+same process takes place among the varieties until, for example, the
+wild kale becomes a cabbage, or the wild Viola tricolor, a prize
+pansy.
+
+[16]
+
+
+                  V.
+
+The process of colonisation presents analogies to the formation of a
+garden which are highly instructive. Suppose a shipload of English
+colonists sent to form a settlement, in such a country as Tasmania was
+in the middle of the last century. On landing, they find themselves in
+the midst of a state of nature, widely different from that left behind
+them in everything but the most general physical conditions. The
+common plants, the common birds and quadrupeds, are as totally
+distinct as the men from anything to be seen on the side of the globe
+from which they come. The colonists proceed to put an end to this
+state of things over as large an area as they desire to occupy.  They
+clear away the native vegetation, extirpate or drive out the animal
+population, so far as may be necessary, and take measures to defend
+themselves from the re-immigration of either. In their place, they
+introduce English grain and fruit trees; English dogs, sheep, cattle,
+horses; and English men; in fact, they set up a new Flora and Fauna and
+a new variety of mankind, within the old state of nature. Their farms
+and pastures represent a garden on a great scale, and themselves the
+gardeners who have to keep it up, in watchful antagonism to the old
+regime. Considered as a whole, the colony is a composite unit
+introduced into the old state of nature; and, [17] thenceforward, a
+competitor in the struggle for existence, to conquer or be vanquished.
+
+Under the conditions supposed, there is no doubt of the result, if the
+work of the colonists be carried out energetically and with
+intelligent combination of all their forces. On the other hand, if
+they are slothful, stupid, and careless; or if they waste their
+energies in contests with one another, the chances are that the old
+state of nature will have the best of it. The native savage will
+destroy the immigrant civilized man; of the English animals and plants
+some will be extirpated by their indigenous rivals, others will pass
+into the feral state and themselves become components of the state of
+nature. In a few decades, all other traces of the settlement will have
+vanished.
+
+
+                   VI.
+
+Let us now imagine that some administrative authority, as far superior
+in power and intelligence to men, as men are to their cattle, is set
+over the colony, charged to deal with its human elements in such a
+manner as to assure the victory of the settlement over the
+antagonistic influences of the state of nature in which it is set
+down. He would proceed in the same fashion as that in which the
+gardener dealt with his garden. In the first place, he would, as far
+as possible, put a [18] stop to the influence of external competition
+by thoroughly extirpating and excluding the native rivals, whether
+men, beasts, or plants. And our administrator would select his human
+agents, with a view to his ideal of a successful colony, just as the
+gardener selects his plants with a view to his ideal of useful or
+beautiful products.
+
+In the second place, in order that no struggle for the means of
+existence between these human agents should weaken the efficiency of
+the corporate whole in the battle with the state of nature, he would
+make arrangements by which each would be provided with those means;
+and would be relieved from the fear of being deprived of them by his
+stronger or more cunning fellows.  Laws, sanctioned by the combined
+force of the colony, would restrain the self-assertion of each man
+within the limits required for the maintenance of peace. In other
+words, the cosmic struggle for existence, as between man and man,
+would be rigorously suppressed; and selection, by its means, would be
+as completely excluded as it is from the garden.
+
+At the same time, the obstacles to the full development of the
+capacities of the colonists by other conditions of the state of nature
+than those already mentioned, would be removed by the creation of
+artificial conditions of existence of a more favourable character:
+Protection against extremes of heat and cold would [19] be afforded by
+houses and clothing; drainage and irrigation works would antagonise
+the effects of excessive rain and excessive drought; roads, bridges,
+canals, carriages, and ships would overcome the natural obstacles to
+locomotion and transport; mechanical engines would supplement the
+natural strength of men and of their draught animals; hygienic
+precautions would check, or remove, the natural causes of disease.
+With every step of this progress in civilization, the colonists would
+become more and more independent of the state of nature; more and
+more, their lives would be conditioned by a state of art. In order to
+attain his ends, the administrator would have to avail himself of the
+courage, industry, and co-operative intelligence of the settlers; and
+it is plain that the interest of the community would be best served by
+increasing the proportion of persons who possess such qualities, and
+diminishing that of persons devoid of them. In other words, by
+selection directed towards an ideal.
+
+Thus the administrator might look to the establishment of an earthly
+paradise, a true garden of Eden, in which all things should work
+together towards the well-being of the gardeners: within which the
+cosmic process, the coarse struggle for existence of the state of
+nature, should be abolished; in which that state should be replaced by
+a state of art; [20] where every plant and every lower animal should
+be adapted to human wants, and would perish if human supervision and
+protection were withdrawn; where men themselves should have been
+selected, with a view to their efficiency as organs for the
+performance of the functions of a perfected society. And this ideal
+polity would have been brought about, not by gradually adjusting the
+men to the conditions around them, but by creating artificial
+conditions for them; not by allowing the free play of the struggle for
+existence, but by excluding that struggle; and by substituting
+selection directed towards the administrator's ideal for the selection
+it exercises.
+
+
+                VII.
+
+But the Eden would have its serpent, and a very subtle beast too. Man
+shares with the rest of the living world the mighty instinct of
+reproduction and its consequence, the tendency to multiply with great
+rapidity. The better the measures of the administrator achieved their
+object, the more completely the destructive agencies of the state of
+nature were defeated, the less would that multiplication be checked.
+
+On the other hand, within the colony, the enforcement of peace, which
+deprives every man of the power to take away the means of existence
+from another, simply because he is the stronger, [21] would have put
+an end to the struggle for existence between the colonists, and the
+competition for the commodities of existence, which would alone
+remain, is no check upon population.
+
+Thus, as soon as the colonists began to multiply, the administrator
+would have to face the tendency to the reintroduction of the cosmic
+struggle into his artificial fabric, in consequence of the
+competition, not merely for the commodities, but for the means of
+existence. When the colony reached the limit of possible expansion,
+the surplus population must be disposed of somehow; or the fierce
+struggle for existence must recommence and destroy that peace, which
+is the fundamental condition of the maintenance of the state of art
+against the state of nature.
+
+Supposing the administrator to be guided by purely scientific
+considerations, he would, like the gardener, meet this most serious
+difficulty by systematic extirpation, or exclusion, of the superfluous.
+The hopelessly diseased, the infirm aged, the weak or deformed in body
+or in mind, the excess of infants born, would be put away, as the
+gardener pulls up defective and superfluous plants, or the breeder
+destroys undesirable cattle. Only the strong and the healthy,
+carefully matched, with a view to the progeny best adapted to the
+purposes of the administrator, would be permitted to perpetuate their
+kind.
+
+[22]
+
+
+                VIII.
+
+Of the more thoroughgoing of the multitudinous attempts to apply the
+principles of cosmic evolution, or what are supposed to be such, to
+social and political problems, which have appeared of late years, a
+considerable proportion appear to me to be based upon the notion that
+human society is competent to furnish, from its own resources, an
+administrator of the kind I have imagined. The pigeons, in short, are
+to be their own Sir John Sebright.* A despotic government, whether
+individual or collective, is to be endowed with the preternatural
+intelligence, and with what, I am afraid, many will consider the
+preternatural ruthlessness, required for the purpose of carrying out
+the principle of improvement by selection, with the somewhat drastic
+thoroughness upon which the success of the method depends.  Experience
+certainly does not justify us in limiting the ruthlessness of
+individual "saviours of society"; and, on the well-known grounds of
+the aphorism which denies both body and soul to corporations, it seems
+probable (indeed the belief is not without support in history) that a
+collective despotism, a mob got to believe in its own divine right by
+demagogic missionaries, would be capable of more thorough [23] work in
+this direction than any single tyrant, puffed up with the same
+illusion, has ever achieved.  But intelligence is another affair. The
+fact that "saviours of society" take to that trade is evidence enough
+that they have none to spare. And such as they possess is generally
+sold to the capitalists of physical force on whose resources they
+depend. However, I doubt whether even the keenest judge of character,
+if he had before him a hundred boys and girls under fourteen, could
+pick out, with the least chance of success, those who should be kept,
+as certain to be serviceable members of the polity, and those who
+should be chloroformed, as equally sure to be stupid, idle, or
+vicious. The "points" of a good or of a bad citizen are really far
+harder to discern than those of a puppy or a short-horn calf; many do
+not show themselves before the practical difficulties of life
+stimulate manhood to full exertion. And by that time the mischief is
+done. The evil stock, if it be one, has had time to multiply, and
+selection is nullified.
+
+    * Not that the conception of such a society is necessarily based
+    upon the idea of evolution. The Platonic state testifies to the
+    contrary.
+
+
+                           IX.
+
+I have other reasons for fearing that this logical ideal of
+evolutionary regimentation--this pigeon-fanciers' polity--is
+unattainable. In the absence of any such a severely scientific
+administrator as we have been dreaming of, human society [24] is kept
+together by bonds of such a singular character, that the attempt to
+perfect society after his fashion would run serious risk of loosening
+them. Social organization is not peculiar to men. Other societies,
+such as those constituted by bees and ants, have also arisen out of
+the advantage of co-operation in the struggle for existence; and their
+resemblances to, and their differences from, human society are alike
+instructive. The society formed by the hive bee fulfils the ideal of
+the communistic aphorism "to each according to his needs, from each
+according to his capacity." Within it, the struggle for existence is
+strictly limited.  Queen, drones, and workers have each their allotted
+sufficiency of food; each performs the function assigned to it in the
+economy of the hive, and all contribute to the success of the whole
+cooperative society in its competition with rival collectors of nectar
+and pollen and with other enemies, in the state of nature without. In
+the same sense as the garden, or the colony, is a work of human art,
+the bee polity is a work of apiarian art, brought about by the cosmic
+process, working through the organization of the hymenopterous type.
+
+Now this society is the direct product of an organic necessity,
+impelling every member of it to a course of action which tends to the
+good of the whole. Each bee has its duty and none [25] has any rights.
+Whether bees are susceptible of feeling and capable of thought is a
+question which cannot be dogmatically answered. As a pious opinion, I
+am disposed to deny them more than the merest rudiments of
+consciousness.* But it is curious to reflect that a thoughtful drone
+(workers and queens would have no leisure for speculation) with a turn
+for ethical philosophy, must needs profess himself an intuitive
+moralist of the purest water. He would point out, with perfect
+justice, that the devotion of the workers to a life of ceaseless toil
+for a mere subsistence wage, cannot be accounted for either by
+enlightened selfishness, or by any other sort of utilitarian motives;
+since these bees begin to work, without experience or reflection, as
+they emerge from the cell in which they are hatched. Plainly, an
+eternal and immutable principle, innate in each bee, can alone account
+for the phenomena. On the other hand, the biologist, who traces out
+all the extant stages of gradation between solitary and hive bees, as
+clearly sees in the latter, simply the perfection of an automatic
+mechanism, hammered out by the blows of the struggle for existence
+upon the progeny of the former, during long ages of constant
+variation.
+
+    * Collected Essays, vol. i., "Animal Automatism"; vol. v.,
+    "Prologue," pp. 45 et seq.
+
+[26]
+
+
+                 X.
+
+I see no reason to doubt that, at its origin, human society was as much
+a product of organic necessity as that of the bees.* The human family,
+to begin with, rested upon exactly the same conditions as those which
+gave rise to similar associations among animals lower in the scale.
+Further, it is easy to see that every increase in the duration of the
+family ties, with the resulting co-operation of a larger and larger
+number of descendants for protection and defence, would give the
+families in which such modification took place a distinct advantage
+over the others. And, as in the hive, the progressive limitation of
+the struggle for existence between the members of the family would
+involve increasing efficiency as regards outside competition.
+
+But there is this vast and fundamental difference between bee society
+and human society. In the former, the members of the society are each
+organically predestined to the performance of one particular class of
+functions only. If they were endowed with desires, each could desire
+to perform none but those offices for which its organization specially
+fits it; and which, in view of the good of the whole, it is proper it
+should do. So long as a new queen does not make her appearance,
+rivalries, and competition are absent from the bee polity.
+
+    * Collected Essays, vol v., Prologue, pp. 50-54,
+
+[27] Among mankind, on the contrary, there is no such predestination to
+a sharply defined place in the social organism. However much men may
+differ in the quality of their intellects, the intensity of their
+passions, and the delicacy of their sensations, it cannot be said that
+one is fitted by his organization to be an agricultural labourer and
+nothing else, and another to be a landowner and nothing else.
+Moreover, with all their enormous differences in natural endowment,
+men agree in one thing, and that is their innate desire to enjoy the
+pleasures and to escape the pains of life; and, in short, to do
+nothing but that which it pleases them to do, without the least
+reference to the welfare of the society into which they are born. That
+is their inheritance (the reality at the bottom of the doctrine of
+original sin) from the long series of ancestors, human and semi-human
+and brutal, in whom the strength of this innate tendency to
+self-assertion was the condition of victory in the struggle for
+existence. That is the reason of the aviditas vitae*--the insatiable
+hunger for enjoyment--of all mankind, which is one of the essential
+conditions of success in the war with the state of nature outside; and
+yet the sure agent of the destruction of society if allowed free play
+within.
+
+    * See below. Romanes' Lecture, note 7.
+
+The check upon this free play of self-assertion, or natural liberty,
+which is the necessary condition for the origin of human society, is
+the product [28] of organic necessities of a different kind from those
+upon which the constitution of the hive depends. One of these is the
+mutual affection of parent and offspring, intensified by the long
+infancy of the human species.  But the most important is the tendency,
+so strongly developed in man, to reproduce in himself actions and
+feelings similar to, or correlated with, those of other men. Man is
+the most consummate of all mimics in the animal world; none but
+himself can draw or model; none comes near him in the scope, variety,
+and exactness of vocal imitation; none is such a master of gesture;
+while he seems to be impelled thus to imitate for the pure pleasure of
+it.  And there is no such another emotional chameleon. By a purely
+reflex operation of the mind, we take the hue of passion of those who
+are about us, or, it may be, the complementary colour. It is not by
+any conscious "putting one's self in the place" of a joyful or a
+suffering person that the state of mind we call sympathy usually
+arises; * indeed, it is often contrary to one's sense of [29] right,
+and in spite of one's will, that "fellow-feeling makes us wondrous
+kind," or the reverse. However complete may be the indifference to
+public opinion, in a cool, intellectual view, of the traditional sage,
+it has not yet been my fortune to meet with any actual sage who took
+its hostile manifestations with entire equanimity. Indeed, I doubt if
+the philosopher lives, or ever has lived who could know himself to be
+heartily despised by a street boy without some irritation. And,
+though one cannot justify Haman for wishing to hang Mordecai on such a
+very high gibbet, yet, really, the consciousness of the Vizier of
+Ahasuerus, as he went in and out of the gate, that this obscure Jew
+had no respect for him, must have been very annoying.**
+
+    * Adam Smith makes the pithy observation that the man who
+    sympathises with a woman in childbed, cannot be said to put
+    himself in her place. ("The Theory of the Moral Sentiments,"
+    Part vii. sec. iii. chap. i.) Perhaps there is more humour than
+    force in the example; and, in spite of this and other
+    observations of the same tenor, I think that the one defect of
+    the remarkable work in which it occurs is that it lays too much
+    stress on conscious substitution, too little on purely reflex
+    sympathy.
+
+    ** Esther v. 9-13. ". . . but when Haman saw Mordecai in the
+    king's gate, that he stood not up, nor moved for him, he was
+    full of indignation against Mordecai. . . . And Haman told them
+    of the glory of his riches . . . and all the things wherein the
+    king had promoted him . . . Yet all this availeth me nothing,
+    so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate."
+    What a shrewd exposure of human weakness it is!
+
+It is needful only to look around us, to see that the greatest
+restrainer of the anti-social tendencies of men is fear, not of the
+law, but of the opinion of their fellows. The conventions of honour
+bind men who break legal, moral, and religious bonds; and, while
+people endure the extremity of physical pain rather than part with
+life, shame drives the weakest to suicide.
+
+Every forward step of social progress brings [30] men into closer
+relations with their fellows, and increases the importance of the
+pleasures and pains derived from sympathy. We judge the acts of others
+by our own sympathies, and we judge our own acts by the sympathies of
+others, every day and all day long, from childhood upwards, until
+associations, as indissoluble as those of language, are formed between
+certain acts and the feelings of approbation or disapprobation. It
+becomes impossible to imagine some acts without disapprobation, or
+others without approbation of the actor, whether he be one's self, or
+any one else. We come to think in the acquired dialect of morals. An
+artificial personality, the "man within," as Adam Smith* calls
+conscience, is built up beside the natural personality. He is the
+watchman of society, charged to restrain the anti-social tendencies of
+the natural man within the limits required by social welfare.
+
+    * "Theory of the Moral Sentiments," Part iii. chap. 3. On the
+    Influence and Authority of Conscience.
+
+
+                   XI.
+
+I have termed this evolution of the feelings out of which the
+primitive bonds of human society are so largely forged, into the
+organized and personified sympathy we call conscience, the ethical
+process.* So far as it tends to
+
+    * Worked out, in its essential features, chiefly by Hartley and
+    Adam Smith, long before the modern doctrine of evolution was
+    thought of. See Note below, p. 45.
+
+[31] make any human society more efficient in the struggle for
+existence with the state of nature, or with other societies, it works
+in harmonious contrast with the cosmic process. But it is none the
+less true that, since law and morals are restraints upon the struggle
+for existence between men in society, the ethical process is in
+opposition to the principle of the cosmic process, and tends to the
+suppression of the qualities best fitted for success in that
+struggle.*
+
+    * See the essay "On the Struggle for Existence in Human Society"
+    below; and Collected Essays, vol. i. p. 276, for Kant's
+    recognition of these facts.
+
+It is further to be observed that, just as the self-assertion,
+necessary to the maintenance of society against the state of nature,
+will destroy that society if it is allowed free operation within; so
+the self-restraint, the essence of the ethical process, which is no
+less an essential condition of the existence of every polity, may, by
+excess, become ruinous to it.
+
+Moralists of all ages and of all faiths, attending only to the
+relations of men towards one another in an ideal society, have agreed
+upon the "golden rule," "Do as you would be done by." In other words,
+let sympathy be your guide; put yourself in the place of the man
+towards whom your action is directed; and do to him what you would
+like to have done to yourself under the circumstances. However much
+one may admire the generosity of such a rule of [32] conduct; however
+confident one may be that average men may be thoroughly depended upon
+not to carry it out to its full logical consequences; it is
+nevertheless desirable to recognise the fact that these consequences
+are incompatible with the existence of a civil state, under any
+circumstances of this world which have obtained, or, so far as one can
+see, are, likely to come to pass.
+
+For I imagine there can be no doubt that the great desire of every
+wrongdoer is to escape from the painful consequences of his actions.
+If I put myself in the place of the man who has robbed me, I find that
+I am possessed by an exceeding desire not to be fined or imprisoned;
+if in that of the man who has smitten me on one cheek, I contemplate
+with satisfaction the absence of any worse result than the turning of
+the other cheek for like treatment.  Strictly observed, the "golden
+rule" involves the negation of law by the refusal to put it in motion
+against law-breakers; and, as regards the external relations of a
+polity, it is the refusal to continue the struggle for existence. It
+can be obeyed, even partially, only under the protection of a society
+which repudiates it. Without such shelter, the followers of the
+"golden rule" may indulge in hopes of heaven, but they must reckon with
+the certainty that other people will be masters of the earth.
+
+What would become of the garden if the [33] gardener treated all the
+weeds and slugs, and birds and trespassers as he would like to be
+treated, if he were in their place?
+
+
+                 XII.
+
+Under the preceding heads, I have endeavoured to represent in broad,
+but I hope faithful, outlines the essential features of the state of
+nature and of that cosmic process of which it is the outcome, so far
+as was needful for my argument; I have contrasted with the state of
+nature the state of art, produced by human intelligence and energy, as
+it is exemplified by a garden; and I have shown that the state of art,
+here and elsewhere, can be maintained only by the constant
+counteraction of the hostile influences of the state of nature.
+Further, I have pointed out that the "horticultural process," which
+thus sets itself against the "cosmic process" is opposed to the latter
+in principle, in so far as it tends to arrest the struggle for
+existence, by restraining the multiplication which is one of the chief
+causes of that struggle, and by creating artificial conditions of
+life, better adapted to the cultivated plants than are the conditions
+of the state of nature. And I have dwelt upon the fact that, though
+the progressive modification, which is the consequence of the struggle
+for existence in the state of nature, is at an end, such modification
+may still be effected [34] by that selection, in view of an ideal of
+usefulness, or of pleasantness, to man, of which the state of nature
+knows nothing.
+
+I have proceeded to show that a colony, set down in a country in the
+state of nature, presents close analogies with a garden; and I have
+indicated the course of action which an administrator, able and
+willing to carry out horticultural principles, would adopt, in order
+to secure the success of such a newly formed polity, supposing it to
+be capable of indefinite expansion. In the contrary case, I have shown
+that difficulties must arise; that the unlimited increase of the
+population over a limited area must, sooner or later, reintroduce into
+the colony that struggle for the means of existence between the
+colonists, which it was the primary object of the administrator to
+exclude, insomuch as it is fatal to the mutual peace which is the
+prime condition of the union of men in society.
+
+I have briefly described the nature of the only radical cure, known to
+me, for the disease which would thus threaten the existence of the
+colony; and, however regretfully, I have been obliged to admit that
+this rigorously scientific method of applying the principles of
+evolution to human society hardly comes within the region of practical
+politics; not for want of will on the part of a great many people; but
+because, for one reason, there is no hope that mere human beings will
+ever possess enough intelligence to select the fittest. And I [35]
+have adduced other grounds for arriving at the same conclusion.
+
+I have pointed out that human society took its rise in the organic
+necessities expressed by imitation and by the sympathetic emotions;
+and that, in the struggle for existence with the state of nature and
+with other societies, as part of it, those in which men were thus led
+to close co-operation had a great advantage.* But, since each man
+retained more or less of the faculties common to all the rest, and
+especially a full share of the desire for unlimited
+self-gratification, the struggle for existence within society could
+only be gradually eliminated. So long as any of it remained, society
+continued to be an imperfect instrument of the struggle for existence
+and, consequently, was improvable by the selective influence of that
+struggle. Other things being alike, the tribe of savages in which
+order was best maintained; in which there was most security within the
+tribe and the most loyal mutual support outside it, would be the
+survivors.
+
+    * Collected Essays, vol. v., Prologue, p. 52.
+
+I have termed this gradual strengthening of the social bond, which,
+though it arrest the struggle for existence inside society, up to a
+certain point improves the chances of society, as a corporate whole,
+in the cosmic struggle--the ethical process. I have endeavoured to
+show that, when the ethical process has advanced so far as to secure
+[36] every member of the society in the possession of the means of
+existence, the struggle for existence, as between man and man, within
+that society is, ipso facto, at an end. And, as it is undeniable that
+the most highly civilized societies have substantially reached this
+position, it follows that, so far as they are concerned, the struggle
+for existence can play no important part within them.* In other words,
+the kind of evolution which is brought about in the state of nature
+cannot take place.
+
+    * Whether the struggle for existence with the state of nature
+    and with other societies, so far as they stand in the relation
+    of the state of nature with it, exerts a selective influence
+    upon modern society, and in what direction, are questions not
+    easy to answer. The problem of the effect of military and
+    industrial warfare upon those who wage it is very complicated.
+
+I have further shown cause for the belief that direct selection, after
+the fashion of the horticulturist and the breeder, neither has played,
+nor can play, any important part in the evolution of society; apart
+from other reasons, because I do not see how such selection could be
+practised without a serious weakening, it may be the destruction, of
+the bonds which hold society together. It strikes me that men who are
+accustomed to contemplate the active or passive extirpation of the
+weak, the unfortunate, and the superfluous; who justify that conduct
+on the ground that it has the sanction of the cosmic process, and is
+the only way of ensuring the progress of the race; who, if [37] they
+are consistent, must rank medicine among the black arts and count the
+physician a mischievous preserver of the unfit; on whose matrimonial
+undertakings the principles of the stud have the chief influence;
+whose whole lives, therefore, are an education in the noble art of
+suppressing natural affection and sympathy, are not likely to have any
+large stock of these commodities left. But, without them, there is no
+conscience, nor any restraint on the conduct of men, except the
+calculation of self-interest, the balancing of certain present
+gratifications against doubtful future pains; and experience tells us
+how much that is worth. Every day, we see firm believers in the hell
+of the theologians commit acts by which, as they believe when cool,
+they risk eternal punishment; while they hold back from those which are
+opposed to the sympathies of their associates.
+
+
+                XIII.
+
+That progressive modification of civilization which passes by the name
+of the "evolution of society," is, in fact, a process of an
+essentially different character, both from that which brings about the
+evolution of species, in the state of nature, and from that which
+gives rise to the evolution of varieties, in the state of art.
+
+There can be no doubt that vast changes have taken place in English
+civilization since the reign [38] of the Tudors. But I am not aware of
+a particle of evidence in favour of the conclusion that this
+evolutionary process, has been accompanied by any modification of the
+physical, or the mental, characters of the men who have been the
+subjects of it. I have not met with any grounds for suspecting that
+the average Englishmen of to-day are sensibly different from those
+that Shakspere knew and drew. We look into his magic mirror of the
+Elizabethan age, and behold, nowise darkly, the presentment of
+ourselves.
+
+During these three centuries, from the reign of Elizabeth to that of
+Victoria, the struggle for existence between man and man has been so
+largely restrained among the great mass of the population (except for
+one or two short intervals of civil war), that it can have had little,
+or no, selective operation. As to anything comparable to direct
+selection, it has been practised on so small a scale that it may also
+be neglected. The criminal law, in so far as by putting to death or by
+subjecting to long periods of imprisonment, those who infringe its
+provisions, prevents the propagation of hereditary criminal
+tendencies; and the poor-law, in so far as it separates married
+couples, whose destitution arises from hereditary defects of
+character, are doubtless selective agents operating in favour of the
+non-criminal and the more effective members of society. But the
+proportion of the population which they influence [39] is very small;
+and, generally, the hereditary criminal and the hereditary pauper have
+propagated their kind before the law affects them. In a large
+proportion of cases, crime and pauperism have nothing to do with
+heredity; but are the consequence, partly, of circumstances and,
+partly, of the possession of qualities, which, under different
+conditions of life, might have excited esteem and even admiration.  It
+was a shrewd man of the world who, in discussing sewage problems,
+remarked that dirt is riches in the wrong place; and that sound
+aphorism has moral applications. The benevolence and open-handed
+generosity which adorn a rich man, may make a pauper of a poor one;
+the energy and courage to which the successful soldier owes his rise,
+the cool and daring subtlety to which the great financier owes his
+fortune, may very easily, under unfavourable conditions, lead their
+possessors to the gallows, or to the hulks. Moreover, it is fairly
+probable that the children of a "failure" will receive from their
+other parent just that little modification of character which makes
+all the difference. I sometimes wonder whether people, who talk so
+freely about extirpating the unfit, ever dispassionately consider
+their own history. Surely, one must be very "fit," indeed, not to know
+of an occasion, or perhaps two, in one's life, when it would have been
+only too easy to qualify for a place among the "unfit."
+
+[40] In my belief the innate qualities, physical, intellectual, and
+moral, of our nation have remained substantially the same for the last
+four or five centuries. If the struggle for existence has affected us
+to any serious extent (and I doubt it) it has been, indirectly,
+through our military and industrial wars with other nations.
+
+
+                  XIV.
+
+What is often called the struggle for existence in society (I plead
+guilty to having used the term too loosely myself), is a contest, not
+for the means of existence, but for the means of enjoyment. Those who
+occupy the first places in this practical competitive examination are
+the rich and the influential; those who fail, more or less, occupy the
+lower places, down to the squalid obscurity of the pauper and the
+criminal. Upon the most liberal estimate, I suppose the former group
+will not amount to two per cent. of the population. I doubt if the
+latter exceeds another two per cent.; but let it be supposed, for the
+sake of argument, that it is as great as five per cent.*
+
+    * Those who read the last Essay in this volume will not accuse
+    me of wishing to attenuate the evil of the existence of this
+    group, whether great or small.
+
+As it is only in the latter group that any thing comparable to the
+struggle for existence in the state of nature can take place; as it is
+[41] only among this twentieth of the whole people that numerous men,
+women, and children die of rapid or slow starvation, or of the
+diseases incidental to permanently bad conditions of life; and as
+there is nothing to prevent their multiplication before they are
+killed off, while, in spite of greater infant mortality, they increase
+faster than the rich; it seems clear that the struggle for existence
+in this class can have no appreciable selective influence upon the
+other 95 per cent. of the population.
+
+What sort of a sheep breeder would he be who should content himself
+with picking out the worst fifty out of a thousand, leaving them on a
+barren common till the weakest starved, and then letting the survivors
+go back to mix with the rest? And the parallel is too favourable;
+since in a large number of cases, the actual poor and the convicted
+criminals are neither the weakest nor the worst.
+
+In the struggle for the means of enjoyment, the qualities which ensure
+success are energy, industry, intellectual capacity, tenacity of
+purpose, and, at least, as much sympathy as is necessary to make a man
+understand the feelings of his fellows. Were there none of those
+artificial arrangements by which fools and knaves are kept at the top
+of society instead of sinking to their natural place at the bottom,*
+the struggle for the means [42] of enjoyment would ensure a constant
+circulation of the human units of the social compound, from the bottom
+to the top and from the top to the bottom.  The survivors of the
+contest, those who continued to form the great bulk of the polity,
+would not be those "fittest" who got to the very top, but the great
+body of the moderately "fit," whose numbers and superior propagative
+power, enable them always to swamp the exceptionally endowed minority.
+
+    * I have elsewhere lamented the absence from society of a
+    machinery for facilitating the descent of incapacity.
+    "Administrative Nihilism." Collected Essays, vol. i. p. 54.
+
+I think it must be obvious to every one, that, whether we consider the
+internal or the external interests of society, it is desirable they
+should be in the hands of those who are endowed with the largest share
+of energy, of industry, of intellectual capacity, of tenacity of
+purpose, while they are not devoid of sympathetic humanity; and, in so
+far as the struggle for the means of enjoyment tends to place such men
+in possession of wealth and influence, it is a process which tends to
+the good of society. But the process, as we have seen, has no real
+resemblance to that which adapts living beings to current conditions
+in the state of nature; nor any to the artificial selection of the
+horticulturist.
+
+[43] To return, once more, to the parallel of horticulture. In the
+modern world, the gardening of men by themselves is practically
+restricted to the performance, not of selection, but of that other
+function of the gardener, the creation of conditions more favourable
+than those of the state of nature; to the end of facilitating the free
+expansion of the innate faculties of the citizen, so far as it is
+consistent with the general good.  And the business of the moral and
+political philosopher appears to me to be the ascertainment, by the
+same method of observation, experiment, and ratiocination, as is
+practised in other kinds of scientific work, of the course of conduct
+which will best conduce to that end.
+
+But, supposing this course of conduct to be scientifically determined
+and carefully followed out, it cannot put an end to the struggle for
+existence in the state of nature; and it will not so much as tend, in
+any way, to the adaptation of man to that state. Even should the whole
+human race be absorbed in one vast polity, within which "absolute
+political justice" reigns, the struggle for existence with the state
+of nature outside it, and the tendency to the return to the struggle
+within, in consequence of over-multiplication, will remain; and,
+unless men's inheritance from the ancestors who fought a good fight in
+the state of [44] nature, their dose of original sin, is rooted out by
+some method at present unrevealed, at any rate to disbelievers in
+supernaturalism, every child born into the world will still bring with
+him the instinct of unlimited self-assertion. He will have to learn
+the lesson of self-restraint and renunciation. But the practice of
+self-restraint and renunciation is not happiness, though it may be
+something much better.
+
+That man, as a "political animal," is susceptible of a vast amount of
+improvement, by education, by instruction, and by the application of
+his intelligence to the adaptation of the conditions of life to his
+higher needs, I entertain not the slightest doubt. But so long as he
+remains liable to error, intellectual or moral; so long as he is
+compelled to be perpetually on guard against the cosmic forces, whose
+ends are not his ends, without and within himself; so long as he is
+haunted by inexpugnable memories and hopeless aspirations; so long as
+the recognition of his intellectual limitations forces him to
+acknowledge his incapacity to penetrate the mystery of existence; the
+prospect of attaining untroubled happiness, or of a state which can,
+even remotely, deserve the title of perfection, appears to me to be as
+misleading an illusion as ever was dangled before the eyes of poor
+humanity. And there have been many of them.
+
+That which lies before the human race is a [45] constant struggle to
+maintain and improve, in opposition to the State of Nature, the State
+of Art of an organized polity; in which, and by which, man may develop
+a worthy civilization, capable of maintaining and constantly improving
+itself, until the evolution of our globe shall have entered so far
+upon its downward course that the cosmic process resumes its sway;
+and, once more, the State of Nature prevails over the surface of our
+planet.
+
+     Note: (See p. 30).--It seems the fashion nowadays to ignore
+Hartley; though, a century and a half ago, he not only laid the
+foundations but built up much of the superstructure of a true theory
+of the Evolution of the intellectual and moral faculties. He speaks of
+what I have termed the ethical process as "our Progress from
+Self-interest to Self-annihilation." Observations on Man (1749), vol.
+ii p. 281.
+
+[46]
+
+                         II.
+
+                  EVOLUTION AND ETHICS.
+
+             [The Romanes Lecture, 1893.]
+
+Soleo enim et in aliena castra transire, non tanquam transfuga sed
+tanquam explorator. (L. ANNAEI SENECAE EPIST. II. 4.)
+
+THERE is a delightful child's story, known by the title of "Jack and
+the Bean-stalk," with which my contemporaries who are present will be
+familiar.  But so many of our grave and reverend Juniors have been
+brought up on severer intellectual diet, and, perhaps, have become
+acquainted with fairyland only through primers of comparative
+mythology, that it may be needful to give an outline of the tale. It
+is a legend of a bean-plant, which grows and grows until it reaches
+the high heavens and there spreads out into a vast canopy of foliage.
+The hero, being moved to climb the stalk, discovers that the leafy
+expanse supports a world composed of the same elements as that below
+but yet strangely new; and his adventures there, on which I may not
+dwell, must [47] have completely changed his views of the nature of
+things; though the story, not having been composed by, or for,
+philosophers, has nothing to say about views.
+
+My present enterprise has a certain analogy to that of the daring
+adventurer. I beg you to accompany me in an attempt to reach a world
+which, to many, is probably strange, by the help of a bean. It is, as
+you know, a simple, inert-looking thing. Yet, if planted under proper
+conditions, of which sufficient warmth is one of the most important,
+it manifests active powers of a very remarkable kind. A small green
+seedling emerges, rises to the surface of the soil, rapidly increases
+in size and, at the same time, undergoes a series of metamorphoses
+which do not excite our wonder as much as those which meet us in
+legendary history, merely because they are to be seen every day and
+all day long.
+
+By insensible steps, the plant builds itself up into a large and
+various fabric of root, stem, leaves, flowers, and fruit, every one
+moulded within and without in accordance with an extremely complex
+but, at the same time, minutely defined pattern. In each of these
+complicated structures, as in their smallest constituents, there is an
+immanent energy which, in harmony with that resident in all the
+others, incessantly works towards the maintenance ,of the whole and
+the efficient performance of the part which it has to play in the
+economy of nature.
+
+[48] But no sooner has the edifice, reared with such exact
+elaboration, attained completeness, than it begins to crumble. By
+degrees, the plant withers and disappears from view, leaving behind
+more or fewer apparently inert and simple bodies, just like the bean
+from which it sprang; and, like it, endowed with the potentiality of
+giving rise to a similar cycle of manifestations. Neither the poetic
+nor the scientific imagination is put to much strain in the search
+after analogies with this process of going forth and, as it were,
+returning to the starting-point. It may be likened to the ascent and
+descent of a slung stone, or the course of an arrow along its
+trajectory. Or we may say that the living energy takes first an upward
+and then a downward road. Or it may seem preferable to compare the
+expansion of the germ into the full-grown plant, to the unfolding of a
+fan, or to the rolling forth and widening of a stream; and thus to
+arrive at the conception of "development," or "evolution." Here, as
+elsewhere, names are "noise and smoke"; the important point is to have
+a clear and adequate conception of the fact signified by a name. And,
+in this case, the fact is the Sisyphaean process, in the course of
+which, the living and growing plant passes from the relative
+simplicity and latent potentiality of the seed to the full epiphany of
+a highly differentiated type, thence to fall back to simplicity and
+potentiality.
+
+[49] The value of a strong intellectual grasp of the nature of this
+process lies in the circumstance that what is true of the bean is true
+of living things in general. From very low forms up to the highest--in
+the animal no less than in the vegetable kingdom--the process of life
+presents the same appearance [Note 1] of cyclical evolution. Nay, we
+have but to cast our eyes over the rest of the world and cyclical
+change presents itself on all sides.  It meets us in the water that
+flows to the sea and returns to the springs; in the heavenly bodies
+that wax and wane, go and return to their places; in the inexorable
+sequence of the ages of man's life; in that successive rise, apogee,
+and fall of dynasties and of states which is the most prominent topic
+of civil history.
+
+As no man fording a swift stream can dip his foot twice into the same
+water, so no man can, with exactness, affirm of anything in the
+sensible world that it is.[Note 2] As he utters the words, nay, as he
+thinks them, the predicate ceases to be applicable; the present has
+become the past; the "is" should be "was." And the more we learn of
+the nature of things, the more evident is it that what we call rest is
+only unperceived activity; that seeming peace is silent but strenuous
+battle. In every part, at every moment, the state of the cosmos is the
+expression of a transitory adjustment of contending forces; a scene,
+of strife, in which all the combatants fall in turn. What is [50] true
+of each part, is true of the whole. Natural knowledge tends more and
+more to the conclusion that "all the choir of heaven and furniture of
+the earth" are the transitory forms of parcels of cosmic substance
+wending along the road of evolution, from nebulous potentiality,
+through endless growths of sun and planet and satellite; through all
+varieties of matter; through infinite diversities of life and thought;
+possibly, through modes of being of which we neither have a
+conception, nor are competent to form any, back to the indefinable
+latency from which they arose. Thus the most obvious attribute of the
+cosmos is its impermanence. It assumes the aspect not so much of a
+permanent entity as of a changeful process in which naught endures
+save the flow of energy and the rational order which pervades it.
+
+We have climbed our bean-stalk and have reached a wonderland in which
+the common and the familiar become things new and strange. In the
+exploration of the cosmic process thus typified, the highest
+intelligence of man finds inexhaustible employment; giants are subdued
+to our service; and the spiritual affections of the contemplative
+philosopher are engaged by beauties worthy of eternal constancy.
+
+But there is another aspect of the cosmic process, so perfect as a
+mechanism, so beautiful as a work of art. Where the cosmopoietic energy
+[51] works through sentient beings, there arises, among its other
+manifestations, that which we call pain or suffering. This baleful
+product of evolution increases in quantity and in intensity, with
+advancing grades of animal organization, until it attains its highest
+level in man. Further, the consummation is not reached in man, the
+mere animal; nor in man, the whole or half savage; but only in man,
+the member of an organized polity. And it is a necessary consequence
+of his attempt to live in this way; that is, under those conditions
+which are essential to the full development of his noblest powers.
+
+Man, the animal, in fact, has worked his way to the headship of the
+sentient world, and has become the superb animal which he is, in
+virtue of his success in the struggle for existence. The conditions
+having been of a certain order, man's organization has adjusted itself
+to them better than that of his competitors in the cosmic strife. In
+the case of mankind, the self-assertion, the unscrupulous seizing upon
+all that can be grasped, the tenacious holding of all that can be
+kept, which constitute the essence of the struggle for existence, have
+answered. For his successful progress, throughout the savage state,
+man has been largely indebted to those qualities which he shares with
+the ape and the tiger; his exceptional physical organization; his
+cunning, his sociability, his curiosity, and his imitativeness; his
+ruthless and [52] ferocious destructiveness when his anger is roused
+by opposition.
+
+But, in proportion as men have passed from anarchy to social
+organization, and in proportion as civilization has grown in worth,
+these deeply ingrained serviceable qualities have become defects.
+After the manner of successful persons, civilized man would gladly
+kick down the ladder by which he has climbed. He would be only too
+pleased to see "the ape and tiger die." But they decline to suit his
+convenience; and the unwelcome intrusion of these boon companions of
+his hot youth into the ranged existence of civil life adds pains and
+griefs, innumerable and immeasurably great, to those which the cosmic
+process necessarily brings on the mere animal. In fact, civilized man
+brands all these ape and tiger promptings with the name of sins; he
+punishes many of the acts which flow from them as crimes; and, in
+extreme cases, he does his best to put an end to the survival of the
+fittest of former days by axe and rope.
+
+I have said that civilized man has reached this point; the assertion
+is perhaps too broad and general; I had better put it that ethical man
+has attained thereto. The science of ethics professes to furnish us
+with a reasoned rule of life; to tell us what is right action and why
+it is so.  Whatever differences of opinion may exist among experts
+there is a general consensus that the ape and [53] tiger methods of
+the struggle for existence are not reconcilable with sound ethical
+principles.
+
+The hero of our story descended the bean-stalk, and came back to the
+common world, where fare and work were alike hard; where ugly
+competitors were much commoner than beautiful princesses; and where
+the everlasting battle with self was much less sure to be crowned with
+victory than a turn-to with a giant. We have done the like. Thousands
+upon thousands of our fellows, thousands of years ago, have preceded
+us in finding themselves face to face with the same dread problem of
+evil. They also have seen that the cosmic process is evolution; that
+it is full of wonder, full of beauty, and, at the same time, full of
+pain. They have sought to discover the bearing of these great facts on
+ethics; to find out whether there is, or is not, a sanction for
+morality in the ways of the cosmos.
+
+Theories of the universe, in which the conception of evolution plays a
+leading part, were extant at least six centuries before our era.
+Certain knowledge of them, in the fifth century, reaches us from
+localities as distant as the valley of the Ganges and the Asiatic
+coasts of the Aegean. To the early philosophers of Hindostan, no less
+than to those of Ionia, the salient and characteristic feature of the
+phenomenal world was its [54] changefulness; the unresting flow of all
+things, through birth to visible being and thence to not being, in
+which they could discern no sign of a beginning and for which they saw
+no prospect of an ending. It was no less plain to some of these
+antique forerunners of modern philosophy that suffering is the badge
+of all the tribe of sentient things; that it is no accidental
+accompaniment, but an essential constituent of the cosmic process. The
+energetic Greek might find fierce joys in a world in which "strife is
+father and king;" but the old Aryan spirit was subdued to quietism in
+the Indian sage; the mist of suffering which spread over humanity hid
+everything else from his view; to him life was one with suffering and
+suffering with life.
+
+In Hindostan, as in Ionia, a period of relatively high and tolerably
+stable civilization had succeeded long ages of semi-barbarism and
+struggle. Out of wealth and security had come leisure and refinement,
+and, close at their heels, had followed the malady of thought. To the
+struggle for bare existence, which never ends, though it may be
+alleviated and partially disguised for a fortunate few, succeeded the
+struggle to make existence intelligible and to bring the order of
+things into harmony with the moral sense of man, which also never
+ends, but, for the thinking few, becomes keen er with every increase
+of knowledge and with every step towards the realization of a worthy
+ideal of life.
+
+[55] Two thousand five hundred years ago, the value of civilization was
+as apparent as it is now; then, as now, it was obvious that only in
+the garden of an orderly polity can the finest fruits humanity is
+capable of bearing be produced. But it had also become evident that
+the blessings of culture were not unmixed. The garden was apt to turn
+into a hothouse. The stimulation of the senses, the pampering of the
+emotions, endlessly multiplied the sources of pleasure. The constant
+widening of the intellectual field indefinitely extended the range of
+that especially human faculty of looking before and after, which adds
+to the fleeting present those old and new worlds of the past and the
+future, wherein men dwell the more the higher their culture.  But that
+very sharpening of the sense and that subtle refinement of emotion,
+which brought such a wealth of pleasures, were fatally attended by a
+proportional enlargement of the capacity for suffering; and the divine
+faculty of imagination, while it created new heavens and new earths,
+provided them with the corresponding hells of futile regret for the
+past and morbid anxiety for the future. [Note 3] Finally, the
+inevitable penalty of over-stimulation, exhaustion, opened the gates
+of civilization to its great enemy, ennui; the stale and flat
+weariness when man delights-not, nor woman neither; when all things
+are vanity and vexation; and life seems not worth living except to
+escape the bore of dying.
+
+[56] Even purely intellectual progress brings about its revenges.
+Problems settled in a rough and ready way by rude men, absorbed in
+action, demand renewed attention and show themselves to be still
+unread riddles when men have time to think. The beneficent demon,
+doubt, whose name is Legion and who dwells amongst the tombs of old
+faiths, enters into mankind and thenceforth refuses to be cast out.
+Sacred customs, venerable dooms of ancestral wisdom, hallowed by
+tradition and professing to hold good for all time, are put to the
+question. Cultured reflection asks for their credentials; judges them
+by its own standards; finally, gathers those of which it approves into
+ethical systems, in which the reasoning is rarely much more than a
+decent pretext for the adoption of foregone conclusions.
+
+One of the oldest and most important elements in such systems is the
+conception of justice. Society is impossible unless those who are
+associated agree to observe certain rules of conduct towards one
+another; its stability depends on the steadiness with which they abide
+by that agreement; and, so far as they waver, that mutual trust which
+is the bond of society is weakened or destroyed. Wolves could not hunt
+in packs except for the real, though unexpressed, understanding that
+they should not attack one another during the chase. The most
+rudimentary polity is a pack of men living under the like tacit, or
+expressed, [57] understanding; and having made the very important
+advance upon wolf society, that they agree to use the force of the
+whole body against individuals who violate it and in favour of those
+who observe it. This observance of a common understanding, with the
+consequent distribution of punishments and rewards according to
+accepted rules, received the name of justice, while the contrary was
+called injustice. Early ethics did not take much note of the animus of
+the violator of the rules.  But civilization could not advance far,
+without the establishment of a capital distinction between the case of
+involuntary and that of wilful misdeed; between a merely wrong action
+and a guilty one. And, with increasing refinement of moral
+appreciation, the problem of desert, which arises out of this
+distinction, acquired more and more theoretical and practical
+importance. If life must be given for life, yet it was recognized that
+the unintentional slayer did not altogether deserve death; and, by a
+sort of compromise between the public and the private conception of
+justice, a sanctuary was provided in which he might take refuge from
+the avenger of blood.
+
+The idea of justice thus underwent a gradual sublimation from
+punishment and reward according to acts, to punishment and reward
+according to desert; or, in other words, according to motive.
+Righteousness, that is, action from right motive, [58] not only became
+synonymous with justice, but the positive constituent of innocence and
+the very heart of goodness.
+
+Now when the ancient sage, whether Indian or Greek, who had attained to
+this conception of goodness, looked the world, and especially human
+life, in the face, he found it as hard as we do to bring the course of
+evolution into harmony with even the elementary requirement of the
+ethical ideal of the just and the good.
+
+If there is one thing plainer than another, it is that neither the
+pleasures nor the pains of life, in the merely animal world, are
+distributed according to desert; for it is admittedly impossible for
+the lower orders of sentient beings, to deserve either the one or the
+other. If there is a generalization from the facts of human life which
+has the assent of thoughtful men in every age and country, it is that
+the violator of ethical rules constantly escapes the punishment which
+he deserves; that the wicked flourishes like a green bay tree, while,
+the righteous begs his bread; that the sins of the fathers are visited
+upon the children; that, in the realm of nature, ignorance is punished
+just as severely as wilful wrong; and that thousands upon thousands of
+innocent beings suffer for the crime, or the unintentional trespass of
+one.
+
+Greek and Semite and Indian are agreed upon [59] this subject. The book
+of Job is at one with the "Works and Days" and the Buddhist Sutras;
+the Psalmist and the Preacher of Israel, with the Tragic Poets of
+Greece. What is a more common motive of the ancient tragedy in fact,
+than the unfathomable injustice of the nature of things; what is more
+deeply felt to be true than its presentation of the destruction of the
+blameless by the work of his own hands, or by the fatal operation of
+the sins of others?  Surely Oedipus was pure of heart; it was the
+natural sequence of events--the cosmic process--which drove him, in
+all innocence, to slay his father and become the husband of his
+mother, to the desolation of his people and his own headlong ruin. Or
+to step, for a moment, beyond the chronological limits I have set
+myself, what constitutes the sempiternal attraction of Hamlet but the
+appeal to deepest experience of that history of a no less blameless
+dreamer, dragged, in spite of himself, into a world out of joint
+involved in a tangle of crime and misery, created by one of the prime
+agents of the cosmic process as it works in and through man?
+
+Thus, brought before the tribunal of ethics, the cosmos might well seem
+to stand condemned. The conscience of man revolted against the moral
+indifference of nature, and the microcosmic atom should have found the
+illimitable macrocosm guilty. But few, or none, ventured to record
+that verdict.
+
+[60] In the great Semitic trial of this issue, Job takes refuge in
+silence and submission; the Indian and the Greek, less wise perhaps,
+attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable and plead for the defendant.
+To this end, the Greeks invented Theodicies; while the Indians devised
+what, in its ultimate form, must rather be termed a Cosmodicy. For,
+although Buddhism recognizes gods many and lords many, they are
+products of the cosmic process; and transitory, however long enduring,
+manifestations of its eternal activity.  In the doctrine of
+transmigration, whatever its origin, Brahminical and Buddhist
+speculation found, ready to hand[Note 4] the means of constructing a
+plausible vindication of the ways of the cosmos to man. If this world
+is full of pain and sorrow; if grief and evil fall, like the rain,
+upon both the just and the unjust; it is because, like the rain, they
+are links in the endless chain of natural causation by which past,
+present, and future are indissolubly connected; and there is no more
+injustice in the one case than in the other. Every sentient being is
+reaping as it has sown; if not in this life, then in one or other of
+the infinite series of antecedent existences of which it is the latest
+term. The present distribution of good and evil is, therefore, the
+algebraical sum of accumulated positive and negative deserts; or,
+rather, it depends on the floating balance of the account. For it was
+not thought necessary that a complete settlement [61] should ever take
+place. Arrears might stand over as a sort of "hanging gale;" a period
+of celestial happiness just earned might be succeeded by ages of
+torment in a hideous nether world, the balance still overdue for some
+remote ancestral error. [Note 5]
+
+Whether the cosmic process looks any more moral than at first, after
+such a vindication, may perhaps be questioned. Yet this plea of
+justification is not less plausible than others; and none but very
+hasty thinkers will reject it on the ground of inherent absurdity.
+Like the doctrine of evolution itself, that of transmigration has its
+roots in the world of reality; and it may claim such support as the
+great argument from analogy is capable of supplying.
+
+Everyday experience familiarizes us with the facts which are grouped
+under the name of heredity. Every one of us bears upon him obvious
+marks of his parentage, perhaps of remoter relationships. More
+particularly, the sum of tendencies to act in a certain way, which we
+call "character," is often to be traced through a long series of
+progenitors and collaterals. So we may justly say that this
+"character"--this moral and intellectual essence of a man--does
+veritably pass over from one fleshly tabernacle to another, and does
+really transmigrate from generation to generation. In the new-born
+infant, the character of the stock lies latent, and the Ego is little
+more [62] than a bundle of potentialities. But, very early, these
+become acutalities; from childhood to age they manifest themselves in
+dulness or brightness, weakness or strength, viciousness or
+uprightness; and with each feature modified by confluence with another
+character, if by nothing else, the character passed on to its
+incarnation in new bodies.
+
+The Indian philosophers called character, as thus defined,
+"karma."[Note 6] It is this karma which passed from life to life and
+linked them in the chain of transmigrations; and they held that it is
+modified in each life, not merely by confluence of parentage, but by
+its own acts. They were, in fact, strong believers in the theory, so
+much disputed just at present, of the hereditary transmission of
+acquired characters. That the manifestation of the tendencies of a
+character may be greatly facilitated, or impeded, by conditions, of
+which self-discipline, or the absence of it, are among the most
+important, is indubitable; but that the character itself is modified
+in this way is by no means so certain; it is not so sure that the
+transmitted character of an evil liver is worse, or that of a
+righteous man better, than that which he received. Indian philosophy,
+however, did not admit of any doubt on this subject; the belief in the
+influence of conditions, notably of self-discipline, on the karma was
+not merely a necessary postulate of its theory of retribution, but it
+presented [63] the only way of escape from the endless round of
+transmigrations.
+
+The earlier forms of Indian philosophy agreed with those prevalent in
+our own times, in supposing the existence of a permanent reality, or
+"substance," beneath the shifting series of phenomena, whether of
+matter or of mind. The substance of the cosmos was "Brahma," that of
+the individual man "Atman;" and the latter was separated from the
+former only, if I may so speak, by its phenomenal envelope, by the
+casing of sensations, thoughts and desires, pleasures and pains, which
+make up the illusive phantasmagoria of life. This the ignorant take
+for reality; their "Atman" therefore remains eternally imprisoned in
+delusions, bound by the fetters of desire and scourged by the whip of
+misery. But the man who has attained enlightenment sees that the
+apparent reality is mere illusion, or, as was said a couple of
+thousand years later, that there is nothing good nor bad but thinking
+makes it so. If the cosmos is just "and of our pleasant vices makes
+instruments to scourge us," it would seem that the only way to escape
+from our heritage of evil is to destroy that fountain of desire whence
+our vices flow; to refuse any longer to be the instruments of the
+evolutionary process, and withdraw from the struggle for existence. If
+the karma is modifiable by self-discipline, if its coarser desires,
+one after another, can be extinguished, the ultimate [64] fundamental
+desire of self-assertion, or the desire to be, may also be destroyed.
+[Note 7] Then the bubble of illusion will burst, and the freed
+individual "Atman" will lose itself in the universal "Brahma."
+
+Such seems to have been the pre-Buddhistic conception of salvation, and
+of the way to be followed by those who would attain thereto. No more
+thorough mortification of the flesh has ever been attempted than-that
+achieved by the Indian ascetic anchorite; no later monachism has so
+nearly succeeded in reducing the human mind to that condition of
+impassive quasi-somnambulism, which, but for its acknowledged
+holiness, might run the risk of being confounded with idiocy.
+
+And this salvation, it will be observed, was to be attained through
+knowledge, and by action based on that knowledge; just as the
+experimenter, who would obtain a certain physical or chemical result,
+must have a knowledge of the natural laws involved and the persistent
+disciplined will adequate to carry out all the various operations
+required. The supernatural, in our sense of the term, was entirely
+excluded. There was no external power which could affect the sequence
+of cause and effect which gives rise to karma; none but the will of
+the subject of the karma which could put an end to it.
+
+Only one rule of conduct could be based upon the remarkable theory of
+which I have endeavoured to give a reasoned outline. It was folly to
+continue [65] to exist when an overplus of pain was certain; and the
+probabilities in favour of the increase of misery with the
+prolongation of existence, were so overwhelming. Slaying the body only
+made matters worse; there was nothing for it but to slay the soul by
+the voluntary arrest of all its activities.  Property, social ties,
+family affections, common companionship, must be abandoned; the most
+natural appetites, even that for food, must be suppressed, or at least
+minimized; until all that remained of a man was the impassive,
+extenuated, mendicant monk, self-hypnotised into cataleptic trances,
+which the deluded mystic took for foretastes of the final union with
+Brahma.
+
+The founder of Buddhism accepted the chief postulates demanded by his
+predecessors. But he was not satisfied with the practical annihilation
+involved in merging the individual existence in the unconditioned--the
+Atman in Brahma. It would seem that the admission of the existence of
+any substance whatever--even of the tenuity of that which has neither
+quality nor energy and of which no predicate whatever can be
+asserted--appeared to him to be a danger and a snare. Though reduced
+to a hypostatized negation, Brahma was not to be trusted; so long as
+entity was there, it might conceivably resume the weary round of
+evolution, with all its train of immeasurable miseries. Gautama got
+rid of even that [66] shade of a shadow of permanent existence by a
+metaphysical tour de force of great interest to the student of
+philosophy, seeing that it supplies the wanting half of Bishop
+Berkeley's well-known idealistic argument.
+
+Granting the premises, I am not aware of any escape from Berkeley's
+conclusion, that the "substance" of matter is a metaphysical unknown
+quantity, of the existence of which there is no proof. What Berkeley
+does not seem to have so clearly perceived is that the non-existence
+of a substance of mind is equally arguable; and that the result of the
+impartial applications of his reasonings is the reduction of the All
+to coexistences and sequences of phenomena, beneath and beyond which
+there is nothing cognoscible. It is a remarkable indication of the
+subtlety of Indian speculation that Gautama should have seen deeper
+than the greatest of modern idealists; though it must be admitted
+that, if some of Berkeley's reasonings respecting the nature of spirit
+are pushed home, they reach pretty much the same conclusion. [Note 8]
+
+Accepting the prevalent Brahminical doctrine that the whole cosmos,
+celestial, terrestrial, and infernal, with its population of gods and
+other celestial beings, of sentient animals, of Mara and his devils,
+is incessantly shifting through recurring cycles of production and
+destruction, in each of which every human being has his transmigratory
+[67] representative, Gautama proceeded to eliminate substance
+altogether; and to reduce the cosmos to a mere flow of sensations,
+emotions, volitions, and thoughts, devoid of any substratum. As, on
+the surface of a stream of water, we see ripples and whirlpools, which
+last for a while and then vanish with the causes that gave rise to
+them, so what seem individual existences are mere temporary
+associations of phenomena circling round a centre, "like a dog tied to
+a post." In the whole universe there is nothing permanent, no eternal
+substance either of mind or of matter. Personality is a metaphysical
+fancy; and in very truth, not only we, but all things, in the worlds
+without end of the cosmic phantasmagoria, are such stuff as dreams are
+made of.
+
+What then becomes of karma? Karma remains untouched. As the peculiar
+form of energy we call magnetism may be transmitted from a loadstone
+to a piece of steel, from the steel to a piece of nickel, as it may be
+strengthened or weakened by the conditions to which it is subjected
+while resident in each piece, so it seems to have been conceived that
+karma might be transmitted from one phenomenal association to another
+by a sort of induction. However this may be, Gautama doubtless had a
+better guarantee for the abolition of transmigration, when no wrack of
+substance, either of Atman or of Brahma, was left behind; when, in
+short, a man had but to [68] dream that he willed not to dream, to put
+an end to all dreaming.
+
+This end of life's dream is Nirvana. What Nirvana is the learned do
+not agree. But, since the best original authorities tell us there is
+neither desire nor activity, nor any possibility of phenomenal
+reappearance for the sage who has entered Nirvana, it may be safely
+said of this acme of Buddhistic philosophy--"the rest is silence."
+
+[Note 9] Thus there is no very great practical disagreement between
+Gautama and his predecessors with respect to the end of action; but it
+is otherwise as regards the means to that end. With just insight into
+human nature, Gautama declared extreme ascetic practices to be useless
+and indeed harmful.  The appetites and the passions are not to be
+abolished by mere mortification of the body; they must, in addition,
+be attacked on their own ground and conquered by steady cultivation of
+the mental habits which oppose them; by universal benevolence; by the
+return of good for evil; by humility; by abstinence from evil thought;
+in short, by total renunciation of that self-assertion which is the
+essence of the cosmic process.
+
+Doubtless, it is to these ethical qualities that Buddhism owes its
+marvellous success.[Note 10] A system which knows no God in the
+western sense; which denies a soul to man; which counts the belief in
+immortality a blunder and the hope of it a sin; [69] which refuses any
+efficacy to prayer and sacrifice; which bids men look to nothing but
+their own efforts for salvation; which, in its original purity, knew
+nothing of vows of obedience, abhorred intolerance, and never sought
+the aid of the secular arm; yet spread over a considerable moiety of
+the Old World with marvellous rapidity, and is still, with whatever
+base admixture of foreign superstitions, the dominant creed of a large
+fraction of mankind.
+
+Let us now set our faces westwards, towards Asia Minor and Greece and
+Italy, to view the rise and progress of another philosophy, apparently
+independent, but no less pervaded by the conception of evolution.[Note
+11]
+
+The sages of Miletus were pronounced evolutionists; and, however dark
+may be some of the sayings of Heracleitus of Ephesus, who was probably
+a contemporary of Gautama, no better expressions of the essence of the
+modern doctrine of evolution can be found than are presented by some
+of his pithy aphorisms and striking metaphors. [Note 12] Indeed, many
+of my present auditors must have observed that, more than once, I have
+borrowed from him in the brief exposition of the theory of evolution
+with which this discourse commenced.
+
+But when the focus of Greek intellectual activity shifted to Athens,
+the leading minds [70] concentrated their attention upon ethical
+problems.  Forsaking the study of the macrocosm for that of the
+microcosm, they lost the key to the thought of the great Ephesian,
+which, I imagine, is more intelligible to us than it was to Socrates,
+or to Plato. Socrates, more especially, set the fashion of a kind of
+inverse agnosticism, by teaching that the problems of physics lie
+beyond the reach of the human intellect; that the attempt to solve
+them is essentially vain; that the one worthy object of investigation
+is the problem of ethical life; and his example was followed by the
+Cynics and the later Stoics. Even the comprehensive knowledge and the
+penetrating intellect of Aristotle failed to suggest to him that in
+holding the eternity of the world, within its present range of
+mutation, he was making a retrogressive step. The scientific heritage
+of Heracleitus passed into the hands neither of Plato nor of
+Aristotle, but into those of Democritus. But the world was not yet
+ready to receive the great conceptions of the philosopher of Abdera.
+It was reserved for the Stoics to return to the track marked out by
+the earlier philosophers; and, professing themselves disciples of
+Heracleitus, to develop the idea of evolution systematically. In doing
+this, they not only omitted some characteristic features of their
+master's teaching, but they made additions altogether foreign to it.
+One of the most influential of these importations was the
+transcendental [71] theism which had come into vogue. The restless,
+fiery energy, operating according to law, out of which all things
+emerge and into which they return, in the endless successive cycles of
+the great year; which creates and destroys worlds as a wanton child
+builds up, and anon levels, sand castles on the seashore; was
+metamorphosed into a material world-soul and decked out with all the
+attributes of ideal Divinity; not merely with infinite power and
+transcendent wisdom, but with absolute goodness.
+
+The consequences of this step were momentous. For if the cosmos is the
+effect of an immanent, omnipotent, and infinitely beneficent cause,
+the existence in it of real evil, still less of necessarily inherent
+evil, is plainly inadmissible. [Note 13] Yet the universal experience
+of mankind testified then, as now, that, whether we look within us or
+without us, evil stares us in the face on all sides; that if anything
+is real, pain and sorrow and wrong are realities.
+
+It would be a new thing in history if a priori philosophers were
+daunted by the factious opposition of experience; and the Stoics were
+the last men to allow themselves to be beaten by mere facts. "Give me
+a doctrine and I will find the reasons for it," said Chrysippus. So
+they perfected, if they did not invent, that ingenious and plausible
+form of pleading, the Theodicy; for the purpose of showing firstly,
+that there is no such [72] thing as evil; secondly, that if there is,
+it is the necessary correlate of good; and, moreover, that it is
+either due to our own fault, or inflicted for our benefit. Theodicies
+have been very popular in their time, and I believe that a numerous,
+though somewhat dwarfed, progeny of them still survives. So far as I
+know, they are all variations of the theme set forth in those famous
+six lines of the "Essay on Man," in which Pope sums up Bolingbroke's
+reminiscences of stoical and other speculations of this kind--
+
+    "All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
+     All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
+     All discord, harmony not understood;
+     All partial evil, universal good;
+     And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
+     One truth is clear: whatever is is right."
+
+Yet, surely, if there are few more important truths than those
+enunciated in the first triad, the second is open to very grave
+objections. That there is a "soul of good in things evil" is
+unquestionable; nor will any wise man deny the disciplinary value of
+pain and sorrow. But these considerations do not help us to see why
+the immense multitude of irresponsible sentient beings, which cannot
+profit by such discipline, should suffer; nor why, among the endless
+possibilities open to omnipotence--that of sinless, happy existence
+among the rest--the actuality in which sin and misery abound should be
+that selected.
+
+[73] Surely it is mere cheap rhetoric to call arguments which have
+never yet been answered by even the meekest and the least rational of
+Optimists, suggestions of the pride of reason. As to the concluding
+aphorism, its fittest place would be as an inscription in letters of
+mud over the portal of some "stye of Epicurus"[Note 14]; for that is
+where the logical application of it to practice would land men, with
+every aspiration stifled and every effort paralyzed. Why try to set
+right what is right already? Why strive to improve the best of all
+possible worlds? Let us eat and drink, for as today all is right, so
+to-morrow all will be.
+
+But the attempt of the Stoics to blind themselves to the reality of
+evil, as a necessary concomitant of the cosmic process, had less
+success than that of the Indian philosophers to exclude the reality of
+good from their purview.  Unfortunately, it is much easier to shut
+one's eyes to good than to evil.  Pain and sorrow knock at our doors
+more loudly than pleasure and happiness; and the prints of their heavy
+footsteps are less easily effaced. Before the grim realities of
+practical life the pleasant fictions of optimism vanished.  If this
+were the best of all possible worlds, it nevertheless proved itself a
+very inconvenient habitation for the ideal sage.
+
+The stoical summary of the whole duty of man, "Live according to
+nature," would seem to imply that the cosmic process is an exemplar
+for human [74] conduct. Ethics would thus become applied Natural
+History. In fact, a confused employment of the maxim, in this sense,
+has done immeasurable mischief in later times. It has furnished an
+axiomatic foundation for the philosophy of philosophasters and for the
+moralizing of sentimentalists. But the Stoics were, at bottom, not
+merely noble, but sane, men; and if we look closely into what they
+really meant by this ill-used phrase, it will be found to present no
+justification for the mischievous conclusions that have been deduced
+from it.
+
+In the language of the Stoa, "Nature" was a word of many meanings.
+There was the "Nature" of the cosmos and the "Nature" of man. In the
+latter, the animal "nature," which man shares with a moiety of the
+living part of the cosmos, was distinguished from a higher "nature."
+Even in this higher nature there were grades of rank. The logical
+faculty is an instrument which may be turned to account for any
+purpose. The passions and the emotions are so closely tied to the
+lower nature that they may be considered to be pathological, rather
+than normal, phenomena. The one supreme, hegemonic, faculty, which
+constitutes the essential "nature" of man, is most nearly represented
+by that which, in the language of a later philosophy, has been called
+the pure reason. It is this "nature" which holds up the ideal of the
+supreme good and demands absolute submission of the will to its
+behests. It is [75] which commands all men to love one another, to
+return good for evil, to regard one another as fellow-citizens of one
+great state. Indeed, seeing that the progress towards perfection of a
+civilized state, or polity, depends on the obedience of its members to
+these commands, the Stoics sometimes termed the pure reason the
+"political" nature. Unfortunately, the sense of the adjective has
+undergone so much modification, that the application of it to that
+which commands the sacrifice of self to the common good would now
+sound almost grotesque. [Note 15]
+
+But what part is played by the theory of evolution in this view of
+ethics?  So far as I can discern, the ethical system of the Stoics,
+which is essentially intuitive, and reverences the categorical
+imperative as strongly as that of any later moralists, might have been
+just what it was if they had held any other theory; whether that of
+special creation, on the one side, or that of the eternal existence of
+the present order, on the other.[Note 16] To the Stoic, the cosmos had
+no importance for the conscience, except in so far as he chose to
+think it a pedagogue to virtue. The pertinacious optimism of our
+philosophers hid from them the actual state of the case. It prevented
+them from seeing that cosmic nature is no school of virtue, but the
+headquarters of the enemy of ethical nature. The logic of facts was
+necessary to convince them [76] that the cosmos works through the
+lower nature of man, not for righteousness, but against it. And it
+finally drove them to confess that the existence of their ideal "wise
+man" was incompatible with the nature of things; that even a passable
+approximation to that ideal was to be attained only at the cost of
+renunciation of the world and mortification, not merely of the flesh,
+but of all human affections. The state of perfection was that
+"apatheia"[Note 17] in which desire, though it may still be felt, is
+powerless to move the will, reduced to the sole function of executing
+the commands of pure reason. Even this residuum of activity was to be
+regarded as a temporary loan, as an efflux of the divine
+world-pervading spirit, chafing at its imprisonment in the
+flesh, until such time as death enabled it to return to its source in
+the all-pervading logos.
+
+I find it difficult to discover any very great difference between
+Apatheia and Nirvana, except that stoical speculation agrees with
+pre-Buddhistic philosophy, rather than with the teachings of Gautama,
+in so far as it postulates a permanent substance equivalent to
+"Brahma" and "Atman;" and that, in stoical practice, the adoption of
+the life of the mendicant cynic was held to be more a counsel of
+perfection than an indispensable condition of the higher life.
+
+Thus the extremes touch. Greek thought and [77] Indian thought set out
+from ground common to both, diverge widely, develop under very
+different physical and moral conditions, and finally converge to
+practically the same end.
+
+The Vedas and the Homeric epos set before us a world of rich and
+vigorous life, full of joyous fighting men
+
+     That ever with a frolic welcome took
+     The thunder and the sunshine ....
+
+and who were ready to brave the very Gods themselves when their blood
+was up. A few centuries pass away, and under the influence of
+civilization the descendants of these men are "sicklied o'er with the
+pale cast of thought"--frank pessimists, or, at best, make-believe
+optimists. The courage of the warlike stock may be as hardly tried as
+before, perhaps more hardly, but the enemy is self. The hero has
+become a monk. The man of action is replaced by the quietist, whose
+highest aspiration is to be the passive instrument of the divine
+Reason. By the Tiber, as by the Ganges, ethical man admits that the
+cosmos is too strong for him; and, destroying every bond which ties
+him to it by ascetic discipline, he seeks salvation in absolute
+renunciation.[Note 18]
+
+Modern thought is making a fresh start from the base whence Indian and
+Greek philosophy set out; and, the human mind being very much what
+[78] it was six-and-twenty centuries ago, there is no ground for
+wonder if it presents indications of a tendency to move along the old
+lines to the same results.
+
+We are more than sufficiently familiar with modern pessimism, at least
+as a speculation; for I cannot call to mind that any of its present
+votaries have sealed their faith by assuming the rags and the bowl of
+the mendicant Bhikku, or the cloak and the wallet of the Cynic. The
+obstacles placed in the way of sturdy vagrancy by an unphilosophical
+police have, perhaps, proved too formidable for philosophical
+consistency. We also know modern speculative optimism, with its
+perfectibility of the species, reign of peace, and lion and lamb
+transformation scenes; but one does not hear so much of it as one did
+forty years ago; indeed, I imagine it is to be met with more commonly
+at the tables of the healthy and wealthy, than in the congregations of
+the wise. The majority of us, I apprehend, profess neither pessimism
+nor optimism. We hold that the world is neither so good, nor so bad,
+as it conceivably might be; and, as most of us have reason, now and
+again, to discover that it can be. Those who have failed to experience
+the joys that make life worth living are, probably, in as small a
+minority as those who have never known the griefs that rob existence
+of its savour and turn its richest fruits into mere dust and ashes.
+
+[79] Further, I think I do not err in assuming that, however diverse
+their views on philosophical and religious matters, most men are
+agreed that the proportion of good and evil in life may be very
+sensibly affected by human action. I never heard anybody doubt that
+the evil may be thus increased, or diminished; and it would seem to
+follow that good must be similarly susceptible of addition or
+subtraction. Finally, to my knowledge, nobody professes to doubt that,
+so far forth as we possess a power of bettering things, it is our
+paramount duty to use it and to train all our intellect and energy to
+this supreme service of our kind.
+
+Hence the pressing interest of the question, to what extent modern
+progress in natural knowledge, and, more especially, the general
+outcome of that progress in the doctrine of evolution, is competent to
+help us in the great work of helping one another?
+
+The propounders of what are called the "ethics of evolution," when the
+"evolution of ethics" would usually better express the object of their
+speculations, adduce a number of more or less interesting facts and
+more or less sound arguments in favour of the origin of the moral
+sentiments, in the same way as other natural phenomena, by a process
+of evolution. I have little doubt, for my own part, that they are on
+the right track; but as the immoral sentiments have no less been
+evolved, there is, so far, as much natural sanction for the [80] one
+as the other. The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as
+the philanthropist. Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the
+evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is
+incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is
+preferable to what we call evil than we had before. Some day, I doubt
+not, we shall arrive at an understanding of the evolution of the
+æsthetic faculty; but all the understanding in the world will neither
+increase nor diminish the force of the intuition that this is
+beautiful and that is ugly.
+
+There is another fallacy which appears to me to pervade the so-called
+"ethics of evolution." It is the notion that because, on the whole,
+animals and plants have advanced in perfection of organization by
+means of the struggle for existence and the consequent "survival of
+the fittest;" therefore men in society, men as ethical beings, must
+look to the same process to help them towards perfection. I suspect
+that this fallacy has arisen out of the unfortunate ambiguity of the
+phrase "survival of the fittest." "Fittest" has a connotation of
+"best;" and about "best" there hangs a moral flavour. In cosmic
+nature, however, what is "fittest" depends upon the conditions. Long
+since [Note 19], I ventured to point out that if our hemisphere were
+to cool again, the survival of the fittest might bring about, in the
+vegetable kingdom, a population of more and more stunted and humbler
+[81] and humbler organisms, until the "fittest" that survived might be
+nothing but lichens, diatoms, and such microscopic organisms as those
+which give red snow its colour; while, if it became hotter, the
+pleasant valleys of the Thames and Isis might be uninhabitable by any
+animated beings save those that flourish in a tropical jungle. They,
+as the fittest, the best adapted to the changed conditions, would
+survive.
+
+Men in society are undoubtedly subject to the cosmic process. As among
+other animals, multiplication goes on without cessation, and involves
+severe competition for the means of support. The struggle for
+existence tends to eliminate those less fitted to adapt themselves to
+the circumstances of their existence. The strongest, the most
+self-assertive, tend to tread down the weaker. But the influence of
+the cosmic process on the evolution of society is the greater the more
+rudimentary its civilization.  Social progress means a checking of the
+cosmic, process at every step and the substitution for it of another,
+which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the
+survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the
+whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically
+the best.[Note 20]
+
+As I have already urged, the practice of that which is ethically
+best--what we call goodness or virtue--involves a course of conduct
+which, in all [82] respects, is opposed to that which leads to success
+in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless
+self-assertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside,
+or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual
+shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows; its influence is
+directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest, as to the
+fitting of as many as possible to survive. It repudiates the
+gladiatorial theory of existence. It demands that each man who enters
+into the enjoyment of the advantages of a polity shall be mindful of
+his debt to those who have laboriously constructed it; and shall take
+heed that no act of his weakens the fabric in which he has been
+permitted to live. Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of
+curbing the cosmic process and reminding the individual of his duty to
+the community, to the protection and influence of which he owes, if
+not existence itself, at least the life of something better than a
+brutal savage.
+
+It is from neglect of these plain considerations that the fanatical
+individualism [Note 21] of our time attempts to apply the analogy of
+cosmic nature to society. Once more we have a misapplication of the
+stoical injunction to follow nature; the duties of the individual to
+the state are forgotten, and his tendencies to self-assertion are
+dignified by the name of rights. It is seriously debated whether the
+members of a community are justified in using [83] their combined
+strength to constrain one of their number to contribute his share to
+the maintenance of it; or even to prevent him from doing his best to
+destroy it. The struggle for existence which has done such admirable
+work in cosmic nature, must, it appears, be equally beneficent in the
+ethical sphere. Yet if that which I have insisted upon is true; if the
+cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends; if the imitation
+of it by man is inconsistent with the first principles of ethics; what
+becomes of this surprising theory?
+
+Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society
+depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running
+away from it, but in combating it. It may seem an audacious proposal
+thus to pit the microcosm against the macrocosm and to set man to
+subdue nature to his higher ends; but I venture to think that the
+great intellectual difference between the ancient times with which we
+have been occupied and our day, lies in the solid foundation we have
+acquired for the hope that such an enterprise may meet with a certain
+measure of success.
+
+The history of civilization details the steps by which men have
+succeeded in building up an artificial world within the cosmos.
+Fragile reed as he may be, man, as Pascal says, is a thinking reed:
+[Note 22] there lies within him a fund of energy operating
+intelligently and so far akin to that which pervades the universe,
+that it is competent [84] to influence and modify the cosmic process.
+In virtue of his intelligence, the dwarf bends the Titan to his will.
+In every family, in every polity that has been established, the cosmic
+process in man has been restrained and otherwise modified by law and
+custom; in surrounding nature, it has been similarly influenced by the
+art of the shepherd, the agriculturist, the artisan. As civilization
+has advanced, so has the extent of this interference increased; until
+the organized and highly developed sciences and arts of the present
+day have endowed man with a command over the course of non-human
+nature greater than that once attributed to the magicians. The most
+impressive, I might say startling, of these changes have been brought
+about in the course of the last two centuries; while a right
+comprehension of the process of life and of the means of influencing
+its manifestations is only just dawning upon us.  We do not yet see
+our way beyond generalities; and we are befogged by the obtrusion of
+false analogies and crude anticipations. But Astronomy, Physics,
+Chemistry, have all had to pass through similar phases, before they
+reached the stage at which their influence became an important factor
+in human affairs. Physiology, Psychology, Ethics, Political Science,
+must submit to the same ordeal. Yet it seems to me irrational to doubt
+that, at no distant period, they will work as great a revolution in
+the sphere of practice.
+
+[85] The theory of evolution encourages no millennial anticipations.
+If, for millions of years, our globe has taken the upward road, yet,
+some time, the summit will be reached and the downward route will be
+commenced. The most daring imagination will hardly venture upon the
+suggestion that the power and the intelligence of man can ever arrest
+the procession of the great year.
+
+Moreover, the cosmic nature born with us and, to a large extent,
+necessary for our maintenance, is the outcome of millions of years of
+severe training, and it would be folly to imagine that a few centuries
+will suffice to subdue its masterfulness to purely ethical ends.
+Ethical nature may count upon having to reckon with a tenacious and
+powerful enemy as long as the world lasts. But, on the other hand, I
+see no limit to the extent to which intelligence and will, guided by
+sound principles of investigation, and organized in common effort, may
+modify the conditions of existence, for a period longer than that now
+covered by history. And much may be done to change the nature of man
+himself. [Note 23] The intelligence which has converted the brother of
+the wolf into the faithful guardian of the flock ought to be able to
+do something towards curbing the instincts of savagery in civilized
+men.
+
+But if we may permit ourselves at larger hope of abatement of the
+essential evil of the world than was possible to those who, in the
+infancy of [86] exact knowledge, faced the problem of existence more
+than a score of centuries ago, I deem it an essential condition of the
+realization of that hope that we should cast aside the notion that the
+escape from pain and sorrow is the proper object of life.
+
+We have long since emerged from the heroic childhood of our race, when
+good and evil could be met with the same "frolic welcome;" the
+attempts to escape from evil, whether Indian or Greek, have ended in
+flight from the battle-field; it remains to us to throw aside the
+youthful overconfidence and the no less youthful discouragement of
+nonage. We are grown men, and must play the man
+
+     "...strong in will
+     To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,"
+
+cherishing the good that falls in our way, and bearing the evil, in
+and around us, with stout hearts set on diminishing it. So far, we all
+may strive in one faith towards one hope:
+
+     "... It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,
+     It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
+
+     ... but something ere the end,
+     Some work of noble note may yet be done." [Note 24]
+
+[187]
+
+                               NOTES.
+
+Note 1 (p. 49).
+
+I have been careful to speak of the "appearance" of cyclical evolution
+presented by living things; for, on critical examination, it will be
+found that the course of vegetable and of animal life is not exactly
+represented by, the figure of a cycle which returns into itself. What
+actually happens, in all but the lowest organisms, is that one part of
+the growing germ (A) gives rise to tissues and organs; while another
+part (B) remains in its primitive condition, or is but slightly
+modified. The moiety A becomes the body of the adult and, sooner or
+later, perishes, while portions of the moiety B are detached and, as
+offspring, continue the life of the species.  Thus, if we trace back
+an organism along the direct line of descent from its remotest
+ancestor, B, as a whole, has never suffered death; portions of it,
+only, have been cast off and died in each individual offspring.
+
+Everybody is familiar with the way in which the "suckers" of a
+strawberry plant behave. A thin cylinder of living tissue keeps on
+growing at its free end, until it attains a considerable length. At
+[88] successive intervals, it develops buds which grow into strawberry
+plants; and these become independent by the death of the parts of the
+sucker which connect them. The rest of the sucker, however, may go on
+living and growing indefinitely, and, circumstances remaining
+favourable, there is no obvious reason why it should ever die. The
+living substance B, in a manner, answers to the sucker. If we could
+restore the continuity which was once possessed by the portions of B,
+contained in all the individuals of a direct line of descent, they
+would form a sucker, or stolon, on which these individuals would be
+strung, and which would never have wholly died.
+
+A species remains unchanged so long as the potentiality of development
+resident in B remains unaltered; so long, e.g., as the buds of the
+strawberry sucker tend to become typical strawberry plants. In the case
+of the progressive evolution of a species, the developmental
+potentiality of B becomes of a higher and higher order. In
+retrogressive evolution, the contrary would be the case. The phenomena
+of atavism seem to show that retrogressive evolution that is, the
+return of a species to one or other of its earlier forms, is a
+possibility to be reckoned with. The simplification of structure,
+which is so common in the parasitic members of a group, however, does
+not properly come under this head. The worm-like, limbless Lernoea has
+no resemblance to any of the stages of development of the many-limbed
+active animals of the group to which it belongs. [89] Note 2 (p. 49).
+
+Heracleitus says,[Greek phrase Potamo gar ouk esti dis embenai to suto]
+but, to be strictly accurate, the river remains, though the water of
+which it is composed changes--just as a man retains his identity
+though the whole substance of his body is constantly shifting.
+
+This is put very well by Seneca (Ep. lvii. i. 20, Ed. Ruhkopf):
+"Corpora nostra rapiuntur fluminum more, quidquid vides currit cum
+tempore; nihil ex his quae videmus manet. Ego ipse dum loquor mutari
+ista, mutatus sum. Hoc est quod ait Heraclitus 'In idem flumen bis non
+descendimus.' Manet idem fluminis nomen, aqua transmissa est. Hoc in
+amne manifestius est quam in homine, sed nos quoque non minus velox
+cursus praetervehit."
+
+Note 3 (p. 55).
+
+"Multa bona nostra nobis nocent, timoris enim tormentum memorin
+reducit, providentia anticipat. Nemo tantum praesentibus miser est."
+(Seneca, Ed. v.  7.)
+
+Among the many wise and weighty aphorisms of the Roman Bacon, few sound
+the realities of life more deeply than "Multa bona nostra nobis
+nocent." If there is a soul of good in things evil, it is at least
+equally true that there is a soul of evil in things good: for things,
+like men, have "les defauts de leurs qualites." It is one of the last
+lessons one learns from experience, but not the least important, that
+a [90] heavy tax is levied upon all forms of success, and that failure
+is one of the commonest disguises assumed by blessings.
+
+Note 4 (p. 60).
+
+"There is within the body of every man a soul which, at the death of
+the body, flies away from it like a bird out of a cage, and enters
+upon a new life ... either in one of the heavens or one of the hells
+or on this earth.  The only exception is the rare case of a man having
+in this life acquired a true knowledge of God. According to the
+pre-Buddhistic theory, the soul of such a man goes along the path of
+the Gods to God, and, being united with Him, enters upon an immortal
+life in which his individuality is not extinguished. In the latter
+theory his soul is directly absorbed into the Great Soul, is lost in
+it, and has no longer any independent existence. The souls of all
+other men enter, after the death of the body, upon a new existence in
+one or other of the many different modes of being. If in heaven or
+hell, the soul itself becomes a god or demon without entering a body;
+all superhuman beings, save the great gods, being looked upon as not
+eternal, but merely temporary creatures. If the soul returns to earth
+it may or may not enter a new body; and this either of a human being,
+an animal, a plant, or even a material object. For all these are
+possessed of souls, and there is no essential difference between these
+souls and the souls of men--all being alike mere sparks of the Great
+Spirit, who is [91] the only real existence." (Rhys Davids, Hibbert
+Lectures, 1881, p. 83.)
+
+For what I have said about Indian Philosophy, I am particularly
+indebted to the luminous exposition of primitive Buddhism and its
+relations to earlier Hindu thought, which is given by Prof. Rhys
+Davids in his remarkable Hibbert Lectures for 1881, and Buddhism
+(1890). The only apology I can offer for the freedom with which I have
+borrowed from him in these notes, is my desire to leave no doubt as to
+my indebtedness. I have also found Dr. Oldenberg's Buddha (Ed. 2,
+1890) very helpful. The origin of the theory of transmigration stated
+in the above extract is an unsolved problem. That it differs widely
+from the Egyptian metempsychosis is clear. In fact, since men usually
+people the other world with phantoms of this, the Egyptian doctrine
+would seem to presuppose the Indian as a more archaic belief.
+
+Prof. Rhys Davids has fully insisted upon the ethical importance of
+the transmigration theory. "One of the latest speculations now being
+put forward among ourselves would seek to explain each man's
+character, and even his outward condition in life, by the character he
+inherited from his ancestors, a character gradually formed during a
+practically endless series of past existences, modified only by the
+conditions into which he was born, those very conditions being also,
+in like manner, the last result of a practically endless series of
+past causes. Gotama's; speculation might be stated in the same words.
+But it attempted also to explain, in a way different from [92] that
+which would be adopted by the exponents of the modern theory, that
+strange problem which it is also the motive of the wonderful drama of
+the book of Job to explain--the fact that the actual distribution here
+of good fortune, or misery, is entirely independent of the moral
+qualities which men call good or bad. We cannot wonder that a teacher,
+whose whole system was so essentially an ethical reformation, should
+have felt it incumbent upon him to seek an explanation of this
+apparent injustice. And all the more so, since the belief he had
+inherited, the theory of the transmigration of souls, had provided a
+solution perfectly sufficient to any one who could accept that
+belief." (Hibbert Lectures, p. 93.) I should venture to suggest the
+substitution of "largely" for "entirely" in the foregoing passage.
+Whether a ship makes a good or a bad voyage is largely independent of
+the conduct of the captain, but it is largely affected by that
+conduct. Though powerless before a hurricane he may weather a bad
+gale.
+
+Note 5 (P. 61).
+
+The outward condition of the soul is, in each new birth, determined by
+its actions in a previous birth; but by each action in succession, and
+not by the balance struck after the evil has been reckoned off against
+the good. A good man who has once uttered a slander may spend a
+hundred thousand years as a god, in consequence of his goodness, and
+when the power of his good actions is exhausted, may be born [93] as a
+dumb man on account of his transgression; and a robber who has once
+done an act of mercy, may come to life in a king's body as the result
+of his virtue, and then suffer torments for ages in hell or as a ghost
+without a body, or be re-born many times as a slave or an outcast, in
+consequence of his evil life.
+
+"There is no escape, according to this theory, from the result of any
+act; though it is only the consequences of its own acts that each soul
+has to endure. The force has been set in motion by itself and can
+never stop; and its effect can never be foretold. If evil, it can
+never be modified or prevented, for it depends on a cause already
+completed, that is now for ever beyond the soul's control. There is
+even no continuing consciousness, no memory of the past that could
+guide the soul to any knowledge of its fate.  The only advantage open
+to it is to add in this life to the sum of its good actions, that it
+may bear fruit with the rest. And even this can only happen in some
+future life under essentially them same conditions as the present one:
+subject, like the present one, to old age, decay, and death; and
+affording opportunity, like the present one, for the commission of
+errors, ignorances, or sins, which in their turn must inevitably
+produce their due effect of sickness, disability, or woe. Thus is the
+soul tossed about from life to life, from billow to billow in the
+great ocean of transmigration.  And there is no escape save for the
+very few, who, during their birth as men, attain to a right knowledge
+of the Great Spirit: and thus enter into immortality, or, as the later
+[94] philosophers taught, are absorbed into the Divine Essence." (Rhys
+Davids, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 85, 86.)
+
+The state after death thus imagined by the Hindu philosophers has a
+certain analogy to the purgatory of the Roman Church; except that
+escape from it is dependent, not on a divine decree modified, it may
+be, by sacerdotal or saintly intercession, but by the acts of the
+individual himself; and that while ultimate emergence into heavenly
+bliss of the good, or well-prayed for, Catholic is professedly
+assured, the chances in favour of the attainment of absorption, or of
+Nirvana, by any individual Hindu are extremely small.
+
+Note 6 (P. 62).
+
+"That part of the then prevalent transmigration theory which could not
+be proved false seemed to meet a deeply felt necessity, seemed to
+supply a moral cause which would explain the unequal distribution here
+of happiness or woe, so utterly inconsistent with the present
+characters of men." Gautama "still therefore talked of men's previous
+existence, but by no means in the way that he is generally represented
+to have done." What he taught was "the transmigration of character."
+He held that after the death of any being, whether human or not, there
+survived nothing at all but that being's "Karma," the result, that is,
+of its mental and bodily actions. Every individual, whether human or
+divine, was the last inheritor and the last result of the Karma of a
+long series of past individuals--"a series [95] so long that its
+beginning is beyond the reach of calculation, and its end will be
+coincident with the destruction of the world." (Rhys Davids, Hibbert
+Lectures, p. 92.)
+
+In the theory of evolution, the tendency of a germ to develop according
+to a certain specific type, e.g. of the kidney bean seed to grow into
+a plant having all the characters of Phaseolus vulgaris, is its
+"Karma." It is the "last inheritor and the last result" of all the
+conditions that have affected a line of ancestry which goes back for
+many millions of years to the time when life first appeared on the
+earth. The moiety B of the substance of the bean plant (see Note 1) is
+the last link in a once continuous chain extending from the primitive
+living substance: and the characters of the successive species to
+which it has given rise are the manifestations of its gradually
+modified Karma. As Prof. Rhys Davids aptly says, the snowdrop "is a
+snowdrop and not an oak, and just that kind of snowdrop, because it is
+the outcome of the Karma of an endless series of past existences."
+(Hibbert Lectures, p. 114.)
+
+Note 7 (p. 64).
+
+"It is interesting to notice that the very point which is the weakness
+of the theory--the supposed concentration of the effect of the Karma
+in one new being--presented itself to the early Buddhists themselves
+as a difficulty.  They avoided it, partly by explaining that it was a
+particular thirst in the creature dying (a craving, Tanha, which plays
+other [96] wise a great part in the Buddhist theory) which actually
+caused the birth of the new individual who was to inherit the Karma of
+the former one. But, how this too place, how the craving desire
+produced this effect, was acknowledged to be a mystery patent only to
+a Buddha." (Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, P. 95.)
+
+Among the many parallelisms of Stoicism and Buddhism, it is curious to
+find one for this Tanha, "thirst," or "craving desire" for life.
+Seneca writes (Epist. lxxvi. 18): "Si enim ullum aliud est bonum quam
+honestum, sequetur nos aviditas vitae aviditas rerum vitam
+instruentium: quod est intolerabile infinitum, vagum."
+
+Note 8 (P. 66).
+
+"The distinguishing characteristic of Buddhism was that it started a
+new line, that it looked upon the deepest questions men have to solve
+from an entirely different standpoint. It swept away from the field of
+its vision the whole of the great soul theory which had hitherto so
+completely filled and dominated the minds of the superstitious and the
+thoughtful alike. For the first time in the history of the world, it
+proclaimed a salvation which each man could gain for himself and by
+himself, in this world, during this life, without any the least
+reference to God, or to Gods, either great or small. Like the
+Upanishads, it placed the first importance on knowledge; but it was no
+longer a knowledge of God, it was a clear perception of the real
+nature, as [97] they supposed it to be, of men and things. And it added
+to the necessity of knowledge, the necessity of purity, of courtesy,
+of uprightness, of peace and of a universal love far reaching, grown
+great and beyond measure." (Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, p. 29.)
+
+The contemporary Greek philosophy takes an analogous direction.
+According to Heracleitus, the universe was made neither by Gods nor
+men; but, from all eternity, has been, and to all eternity, will be,
+immortal fire, glowing and fading in due measure. (Mullach, Heracliti
+Fragmenta, 27.) And the part assigned by his successors, the Stoics,
+to the knowledge and the volition of the "wise man" made their
+Divinity (for logical thinkers) a subject for compliments, rather than
+a power to be reckoned with. In Hindu speculation the "Arahat," still
+more the "Buddha," becomes the superior of Brahma; the stoical "wise
+man" is, at least, the equal of Zeus.
+
+Berkeley affirms over and over again that no idea can be formed of a
+soul or spirit--"If any man shall doubt of the truth of what is here
+delivered, let him but reflect and try if he can form any idea of
+power or active being; and whether he hath ideas of two principal
+powers marked by the names of will and understanding distinct from
+each other, as well as from a third idea of substance or being in
+general, with a relative notion of its supporting or being the subject
+of the aforesaid power, which is signified by the name soul or spirit.
+This is what some hold but, so far as I can see, the words will, soul,
+spirit, do not stand for different ideas or, in truth, for any idea at
+all, but for something which is very different from ideas, and which,
+being an agent, cannot be like unto or represented by Any idea
+whatever [though it must be owned at the same time, that we have some
+notion of soul, spirit, and the operations of the mind, such as
+willing, loving, hating, inasmuch as we know or understand the meaning
+of these words". (The Principles of Human Knowledge, lxxvi. See also
+sections lxxxix., cxxxv., cxlv.)
+
+It is open to discussion, I think, whether it is possible to have
+"some notion" of that of which we can form no "idea."
+
+Berkeley attaches several predicates to the "perceiving active being
+mind, spirit, soul or myself" (Parts I. II.) It is said, for example,
+to be "indivisible, incorporeal, unextended, and incorruptible." The
+predicate indivisible, though negative in form, has highly positive
+consequences. For, if "perceiving active being" is strictly
+indivisible, man's soul must be one with the Divine spirit: which is
+good Hindu or Stoical doctrine, but hardly orthodox Christian
+philosophy. If, on the other hand, the "substance" of active
+perceiving "being" is actually divided into the one Divine and
+innumerable human entities, how can the predicate "indivisible" be
+rigorously applicable to it?
+
+Taking the words cited, as they stand, the amount to the denial of the
+possibility of any knowledge of substance. "Matter" having been
+resolved into mere affections of "spirit", "spirit" melts away into an
+admittedly inconceivable and unknowable [99] hypostasis of thought and
+power--consequently the existence of anything in the universe beyond a
+flow of phenomena is a purely hypothetical assumption. Indeed a
+pyrrhonist might raise the objection that if "esse" is "percipi"
+spirit itself can have no existence except as a perception,
+hypostatized into a "self," or as a perception of some other spirit.
+In the former case, objective reality vanishes; in the latter, there
+would seem to be the need of an infinite series of spirits each
+perceiving the others.
+
+It is curious to observe how very closely the phraseology of Berkeley
+sometimes approaches that of the Stoics: thus (cxlviii.) "It seems to
+be a general pretence of the unthinking herd that they cannot see God.
+. . But, alas, we need only open our eyes to see the Sovereign Lord of
+all things with a more full and clear view, than we do any of our
+fellow-creatures . .  . we do at all times and in all places perceive
+manifest tokens of the Divinity: everything we see, hear, feel, or any
+wise perceive by sense, being a sign or effect of the power of God" .
+. . cxlix. "It is therefore plain, that nothing can be more evident to
+any one that is capable of the least reflection, than the existence of
+God, or a spirit who is intimately present to our minds, producing in
+them all that variety of ideas or sensations which continually affect
+us, on whom we have an absolute and entire dependence, in short, in
+whom we live and move and have our being." cl. "[But you will say hath
+Nature no share in the production of natural things, and must they all
+be ascribed to the immediate and sole operation of God? ... if by
+Nature is [100] meant some being distinct from God, as well as from
+the laws of nature and things perceived by sense, I must confess that
+word is to me an empty sound, without any intelligible meaning annexed
+to it.] Nature in this acceptation is a vain Chimaera introduced by
+those heathens, who had not just notions of the omnipresence and
+infinite perfection of God."
+
+Compare Seneca (De Beneficiis, iv. 7):
+
+"Natura, inquit, haec mihi praestat. Non intelligis te, quum hoc
+dicis, mutare Nomen Deo? Quid enim est aliud Natura quam Deus, et
+divina ratio, toti mundo et partibus ejus inserta? Quoties voles tibi
+licet aliter hunc auctorem rerum nostrarum compellare, et Jovem illum
+optimum et maximum rite dices, et tonantem, et statorem: qui non, ut
+historici tradiderunt, ex eo quod post votum susceptum acies Romanorum
+fugientum stetit, sed quod stant beneficio ejus omnina, stator,
+stabilitorque est: hunc eundem et fatum si dixeris, non mentieris, nam
+quum fatum nihil aliud est, quam series implexa causarum, ille est
+prima omnium causa, ea qua caeterae pendent." It would appear,
+therefore, that the good Bishop is somewhat hard upon the "heathen,"
+of whose words his own might be a paraphrase.
+
+There is yet another direction in which Berkeley's philosophy, I will
+not say agrees with Gautama's, but at any rate helps to make a
+fundamental dogma of Buddhism intelligible.
+
+"I find I can excite ideas in my mind at pleasure, and vary and shift
+the scene as often as I think fit. It is no more than willing, and
+straightway this or that idea arises in my fancy: and by the same
+power [101] it is obliterated, and makes way for another. This making
+and unmaking of ideas doth very properly denominate the mind active.
+This much is certain and grounded on experience. . ." (Principles,
+xxviii.)
+
+A good many of us, I fancy, have reason to think that experience tells
+them very much the contrary; and are painfully familiar with the
+obsession of the mind by ideas which cannot be obliterated by any
+effort of the will and steadily refuse to make way for others. But
+what I desire to point out is that if Gautama was equally confident
+that he could "make and unmake" ideas--then, since he had resolved
+self into a group of ideal phantoms--the possibility of abolishing
+self by volition naturally followed.
+
+Note 9 (P. 68).
+
+According to Buddhism, the relation of one life to the next is merely
+that borne by the flame of one lamp to the flame of another lamp which
+is set alight by it. To the "Arahat" or adept "no outward form, no
+compound thing, no creature, no creator, no existence of any kind,
+must appear to be other than a temporary collocation of its component
+parts, fated inevitably to be dissolved."--(Rhys Davids, Hibbert
+Lectures, p. 211.)
+
+The self is nothing but a group of phenomena held together by the
+desire of life; when that desire shall have ceased, "the Karma of that
+particular chain of lives will cease to influence any longer any
+distinct individual, and there will be no more birth; [102] for birth,
+decay, and death, grief, lamentation, and despair will have come, so
+far as regards that chain of lives, for ever to an end."
+
+The state of mind of the Arahat in which the desire of life has ceased
+is Nirvana. Dr. Oldenberg has very acutely and patiently considered
+the various interpretations which have been attached to "Nirvana" in
+the work to which I have referred (pp. 285 et seq.). The result of his
+and other discussions of the question may I think be briefly stated
+thus:
+
+1. Logical deduction from the predicates attached to the term
+"Nirvana" strips it of all reality, conceivability, or perceivability,
+whether by Gods or men. For all practical purposes, therefore, it
+comes to exactly the same thing as annihilation.
+
+2. But it is not annihilation in the ordinary sense, inasmuch as it
+could take place in the living Arahat or Buddha.
+
+3. And, since, for the faithful Buddhist, that which was abolished in
+the Arahat was the possibility of further pain, sorrow, or sin; and
+that which was attained was perfect peace; his mind directed itself
+exclusively to this joyful consummation, and personified the negation
+of all conceivable existence and of all pain into a positive bliss.
+This was all the more easy, as Gautama refused to give any dogmatic
+definition of Nirvana. There is something analogous in the way in
+which people commonly talk of the "happy release" of a man who has
+been long suffering from mortal disease. According to their own views,
+it must always be extremely doubtful whether the man will be any
+happier after the "release" [103] than before. But they do not choose
+to look at the matter in this light.
+
+The popular notion that, with practical, if not metaphysical,
+annihilation in view, Buddhism must needs be a sad and gloomy faith
+seems to be inconsistent with fact; on the contrary, the prospect of
+Nirvana fills the true believer, not merely with cheerfulness, but
+with an ecstatic desire to reach it.
+
+Note 10 (P. 68.)
+
+The influence of the picture of the personal qualities of Gautama,
+afforded by the legendary anecdotes which rapidly grew into a
+biography of the Buddha; and by the birth stories, which coalesced
+with the current folk-lore, and were intelligible to all the world,
+doubtless played a great part. Further, although Gautama appears not
+to have meddled with the caste system, he refused to recognize any
+distinction, save that of perfection in the way of salvation, among
+his followers; and by such teaching, no less than by the inculcation
+of love and benevolence to all sentient beings, he practically
+levelled every social, political, and racial barrier. A third
+important condition was the organization of the Buddhists into
+monastic communities for the stricter professors, while the laity were
+permitted a wide indulgence in practice and were allowed to hope for
+accommodation in some of the temporary abodes of bliss. With a few
+hundred thousand years of immediate paradise in sight, the average man
+could be content to shut his eyes to what might follow.
+
+[104]
+
+Note 11 (P. 69).
+
+In ancient times it was the fashion, even among the Greeks themselves,
+to derive all Greek wisdom from Eastern sources; not long ago it was
+as generally denied that Greek philosophy had any connection, with
+Oriental speculation; it seems probable, however, that the truth lies
+between these extremes.
+
+The Ionian intellectual movement does not stand alone. It is only one
+of several sporadic indications of the working of some powerful mental
+ferment over the whole of the area comprised between the Aegean and
+Northern Hindostan during the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries
+before our era. In these three hundred years, prophetism attained its
+apogee among the Semites of Palestine; Zoroasterism grew and became
+the creed of a conquering race, the Iranic Aryans; Buddhism rose and
+spread with marvellous rapidity among the Aryans of Hindostan; while
+scientific naturalism took its rise among the Aryans of Ionia. It
+would be difficult to find another three centuries which have given
+birth to four events of equal importance. All the principal existing
+religions of mankind have grown out of the first three: while the
+fourth is the little spring, now swollen into the great stream of
+positive science. So far as physical possibilities go, the prophet
+Jeremiah and the oldest Ionian philosopher might have met and
+conversed. If they had done so, they would probably have disagreed a
+good deal; and it is interesting to reflect that their discussions
+might have [105] embraced Questions which, at the present day, are
+still hotly controverted.
+
+The old Ionian philosophy, then, seems to be only one of many results
+of a stirring of the moral and intellectual life of the Aryan and the
+Semitic populations of Western Asia. The conditions of this general
+awakening were doubtless manifold; but there is one which modern
+research has brought into great prominence. This is the existence of
+extremely ancient and highly advanced societies in the valleys of the
+Euphrates and of the Nile.
+
+It is now known that, more than a thousand--perhaps more than two
+thousand--years before the sixth century B.C., civilization had
+attained a relatively high pitch among the Babylonians and the
+Egyptians. Not only had painting, sculpture, architecture, and the
+industrial arts reached a remarkable development; but in Chaldaea, at
+any rate, a vast amount of knowledge had been accumulated and
+methodized, in the departments of grammar, mathematics, astronomy, and
+natural history. Where such traces of the scientific spirit are
+visible, naturalistic speculation is rarely far off, though, so far as
+I know, no remains of an Accacian, or Egyptian, philosophy, properly
+so called, have yet been recovered.
+
+Geographically, Chaldaea occupied a central position among the oldest
+seats of civilization. Commerce, largely aided by the intervention of
+those colossal pedlars, the Phoenicians, had brought Chaldaea into
+connection with all of them, for a thousand years before the epoch at
+present under consideration. And in the ninth, eighth and seventh
+[106] centuries, the Assyrian, the depositary of Chaldaean
+civilization, as the Macedonian and the Roman, at a later date, were
+the depositories of Greek culture, had added irresistible force to the
+other agencies for the wide distribution of Chaldaean literature, art,
+and science.
+
+I confess that I find it difficult to imagine that the Greek
+immigrant--who stood in somewhat the same relation to the Babylonians
+and the Egyptians as the later Germanic barbarians to the Romans of
+the Empire--should not have been immensely influenced by the new life
+with which they became acquainted.  But there is abundant direct
+evidence of the magnitude of this influence in certain spheres. I
+suppose it is not doubted that the Greek went to school with the
+Oriental for his primary instruction in reading, writing, and
+arithmetic; and that Semitic theology supplied him with some of his
+mythological lore. Nor does there now seem to be any question about
+the large indebtedness of Greek art to that of Chaldaea and that of
+Egypt.
+
+But the manner of that indebtedness is very instructive. The obligation
+is clear, but its limits are no less definite. Nothing better
+exemplifies the indomitable originality of the Greeks than the
+relations of their art to that of the Orientals. Far from being
+subdued into mere imitators by the technical excellence of their
+teachers, they lost no time in bettering the instruction they
+received, using their models as mere stepping stones on the way to
+those unsurpassed and unsurpassable achievements which are all their
+own. The shibboleth of Art is [107] the human figure. The ancient
+Chaldaeans and Egyptians, like the modern Japanese, did wonders in the
+representation of birds and quadrupeds; they even attained to
+something more than respectability in human portraiture. But their
+utmost efforts never brought them within range of the best Greek
+embodiments of the grace of womanhood, or of the severer beauty of
+manhood.
+
+It is worth while to consider the probable effect upon the acute and
+critical Greek mind of the conflict of ideas, social, political, and
+theological, which arose out of the conditions of life in the Asiatic
+colonies. The Ionian polities had passed through the whole gamut of
+social and political changes, from patriarchal and occasionally
+oppressive kingship to rowdy and still more burdensome mobship--no
+doubt with infinitely eloquent and copious argumentation, on both
+sides, at every stage of their progress towards that arbitrament of
+force which settles most political questions. The marvellous
+speculative faculty, latent in the Ionian, had come in contact with
+Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Phoenician theologies and cosmogonies; with
+the illuminati of Orphism and the fanatics and dreamers of the
+Mysteries; possibly with Buddhism and Zoroasterism; possibly even with
+Judaism. And it has been observed that the mutual contradictions of
+antagonistic supernaturalisms are apt to play a large part among the
+generative agencies of naturalism.
+
+Thus, various external influences may have contributed to the rise of
+philosophy among the Ionian Greeks of the sixth century. But the
+assimilative [108] capacity of the Greek mind--its power of
+Hellenizing whatever it touched--has here worked so effectually, that,
+so far as I can learn, no indubitable traces of such extraneous
+contributions are now allowed to exist by the most authoritative
+historians of Philosophy.  Nevertheless, I think it must be admitted
+that the coincidences between the Heracleito-stoical doctrines and
+those of the older Hindu philosophy are extremely remarkable. In both,
+the cosmos pursues an eternal succession of cyclical changes. The
+great year, answering to the Kalpa, covers an entire cycle from the
+origin of the universe as a fluid to its dissolution in fire--"Humor
+initium, ignis exitus mundi," as Seneca has it. In both systems, there
+is immanent in the cosmos a source of energy, Brahma, or the Logos,
+which works according to fixed laws. The individual soul is an efflux
+of this world-spirit, and returns to it. Perfection is attainable only
+by individual effort, through ascetic discipline, and is rather a
+state of painlessness than of happiness; if indeed it can be said to
+be a state of anything, save the negation of perturbing emotion. The
+hatchment motto "In Coelo Quies" would serve both Hindu and Stoic; and
+absolute quiet is not easily distinguishable from annihilation.
+
+Zoroasterism, which, geographically, occupies a position intermediate
+between Hellenism and Hinduism, agrees with the latter in recognizing
+the essential evil of the cosmos; but differs from both in its
+intensely anthropomorphic personification of the two antagonistic
+principles, to the one of which it ascribes all the good; and, to the
+other, all the evil.
+
+[109] In fact, it assumes the existence of two worlds, one good and one
+bad; the latter created by the evil power for the purpose of damaging
+the former.  The existing cosmos is a mere mixture of the two, and the
+"last judgment" is a root-and-branch extirpation of the work of
+Ahriman.
+
+Note 12 (p. 69).
+
+There is no snare in which the feet of a modern student of ancient lore
+are more easily entangled, than that which is spread by the similarity
+of the language of antiquity to modern modes of expression. I do not
+presume to interpret the obscurest of Greek philosophers; all I wish
+is to point out, that his words, in the sense accepted by competent
+interpreters, fit modern ideas singularly well.
+
+So far as the general theory of evolution goes there is no difficulty.
+The aphorism about the river; the figure of the child playing on the
+shore; the kingship and fatherhood of strife, seem decisive. The
+[Greek phrase osod ano kato mie] expresses, with singular aptness, the
+cyclical aspect of the one process of organic evolution in individual
+plants and animals: yet it may be a question whether the Heracleitean
+strife included any distinct conception of the struggle for existence.
+Again, it is tempting to compare the part played by the Heracleitean
+"fire" with that ascribed by the moderns to heat, or rather to that
+cause of motion of which heat is one expression; and a little
+ingenuity might find a foreshadowing of the doctrine of the
+conservation of energy, in the saying [110] that all the things are
+changed into fire and fire into all things, as gold into goods and
+goods into gold.
+
+Note 13 (p. 71).
+
+Pope's lines in the Essay on Man(Ep. i. 267-8),
+
+     All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
+     Whose body Nature is, and God the soul,"
+
+simply paraphrase Seneca's "quem in hoc mundo locum deus obtinet, hunc
+in homine animus: quod est illic materia, id nobis corpus est."--(Ep.
+lxv. 24); which again is a Latin version of the old Stoical doctrine,
+[Greek phrase eis apan tou kosou meros diekei o nous, kataper aph emon
+e psuche].
+
+So far as the testimony for the universality of what ordinary people
+call "evil" goes, there is nothing better than the writings of the
+Stoics themselves. They might serve, as a storehouse for the epigrams
+of the ultra-pessimists. Heracleitus (circa 500 B.C.) says just as
+hard things about ordinary humanity as his disciples centuries later;
+and there really seems no need to seek for the causes of this dark
+view of life in the circumstances of the time of Alexander's
+successors or of the early Emperors of Rome. To the man with an
+ethical ideal, the world, including himself, will always seem full of
+evil.
+
+Note 14 (P. 73).
+
+I use the well-known phrase, but decline responsibility for the libel
+upon Epicurus, whose doctrines [111] were far less compatible with
+existence in a stye than those of the Cynics. If it were steadily
+borne in mind that the conception of the "flesh" as the source of
+evil, and the great saying "Initium est salutis notitia peccati," are
+the property of Epicurus, fewer illusions about Epicureanism would
+pass muster for accepted truth.
+
+Note 15 (P. 75).
+
+The Stoics said that man was a [Greek phrase zoon logikon politikon
+philallelon], or a rational, a political, and an altruistic or
+philanthropic animal. In their view, his higher nature tended to
+develop in these three directions, as a plant tends to grow up into
+its typical form. Since, without the introduction of any consideration
+of pleasure or pain, whatever thwarted the realization of its type by
+the plant might be said to be bad, and whatever helped it good; so
+virtue, in the Stoical sense, as the conduct which tended to the
+attainment of the rational, political, and philanthropic ideal, was
+good in itself, and irrespectively of its emotional concomitants.
+
+Man is an "animal sociale communi bono genitum." The safety of society
+depends upon practical recognition of the fact. "Salva autem esse
+societas nisi custodia et amore partium non possit," says Seneca. (De.
+Ira, ii. 31.)
+
+Note 16 (P. 75).
+
+The importance of the physical doctrine of the Stoics lies in its
+clear recognition of the universality [112] of the law of causation,
+with its corollary, the order of nature: the exact form of that order
+is an altogether secondary consideration.
+
+Many ingenious persons now appear to consider that the incompatibility
+of pantheism, of materialism, and of any doubt about the immortality
+of the soul, with religion and morality, is to be held as an
+axiomatic truth. I confess that I have a certain difficulty in
+accepting this dogma. For the Stoics were notoriously materialists and
+pantheists of the most extreme character; and while no strict Stoic
+believed in the eternal duration of the individual soul, some even
+denied its persistence after death. Yet it is equally certain that of
+all gentile philosophies, Stoicism exhibits the highest ethical
+development, is animated by the most religious spirit, and has exerted
+the profoundest influence upon the moral and religious development not
+merely of the best men among the Romans, but among the moderns down to
+our own day.
+
+Seneca was claimed as a Christian and placed among the saints by the
+fathers of the early Christian Church; and the genuineness of a
+correspondence between him and the apostle Paul has been hotly
+maintained in our own time, by orthodox writers. That the letters, as
+we possess them, are worthless forgeries is obvious; and writers as
+wide apart as Baur and Lightfoot agree that the whole story is devoid
+of foundation.
+
+The dissertation of the late Bishop of Durham (Epistle to the
+Philippians) is particularly worthy of study, apart from this
+question, on account of [113] evidence which it supplies of the
+numerous similarities of thought between Seneca and the writer of the
+Pauline epistles. When it is remembered that the writer of the Acts
+puts a quotation from Aratus, or Cleanthes, into the mouth of the
+apostle; and that Tarsus was a great seat of philosophical and
+especially stoical learning (Chrysippus himself was a native of the
+adjacent town of Soli), there is no difficulty in understanding the
+origin of these resemblances. See, on this subject, Sir Alexander
+Grant's dissertation in his edition of The Ethics of Aristotle (where
+there is an interesting reference to the stoical character of Bishop
+Butler's ethics), the concluding pages of Dr. Weygoldt's instructive
+little work Die Philosophie der Stoa, and Aubertin's Seneque et Saint
+Paul.
+
+It is surprising that a writer of Dr. Lightfoot's stamp should speak
+of Stoicism as a philosophy of "despair." Surely, rather, it was a
+philosophy of men who, having cast off all illusions, and the
+childishness of despair among them, were minded to endure in patience
+whatever conditions the cosmic process might create, so long as those
+conditions were compatible with the progress towards virtue, which
+alone, for them, conferred a worthy object on existence. There is no
+note of despair in the stoical declaration that the perfected "wise
+man" is the equal of Zeus in everything but the duration of his
+existence. And, in my judgment, there is as little pride about it,
+often as it serves for the text of discourses on stoical arrogance.
+Grant the stoical postulate that there is no good except virtue; grant
+that [114] the perfected wise man is altogether virtuous, in
+consequence of being guided in all things by the reason, which is an
+effluence of Zeus, and there seems no escape from the stoical
+conclusion.
+
+Note 17 (p. 76).
+
+Our "Apathy" carries such a different set of connotations from its
+Greek original that I have ventured on using the latter as a technical
+term.
+
+Note 18 (P. 77).
+
+Many of the stoical philosophers recommended their disciples to take
+an active share in public affairs; and in the Roman world, for several
+centuries, the best public men were strongly inclined to Stoicism.
+Nevertheless, the logical tendency of Stoicism seems to me to be
+fulfilled only in such men as Diogenes and Epictetus.
+
+Note 19 (P. 80).
+
+"Criticisms on the Origin of Species," 1864. Collected Essays, vol. ii.
+p.  91.[1894.]
+
+Note 20 (P. 81).
+
+Of course, strictly speaking, social life, and the ethical process in
+virtue of which it advances towards perfection, Are part and parcel of
+the general process of evolution, just as the gregarious habit of in
+[115] numerable plants and animals, which has been of immense
+advantage to them, is so. A hive of bees is an organic polity, a
+society in which the part played by each member is determined by
+organic necessities. Queens, workers, and drones are, so to speak,
+castes, divided from one another by marked physical barriers. Among
+birds and mammals, societies are formed, of which the bond in many
+cases seems to be purely psychological; that is to say, it appears to
+depend upon the liking of the individuals for one another's company.
+The tendency of individuals to over self-assertion is kept down by
+fighting.  Even in these rudimentary forms of society, love and fear
+come into play, and enforce a greater or less renunciation of
+self-will. To this extent the general cosmic process begins to be
+checked by a rudimentary ethical process, which is, strictly speaking,
+part of the former, just as the "governor" in a steam-engine is part
+of the mechanism of the engine.
+
+Note 21 (p. 82).
+
+See "Government: Anarchy or Regimentation," Collected Essays, vol. i.
+pp.  413-418. It is this form of political philosophy to which I
+conceive the epithet of "reasoned savagery" to be strictly
+applicable.[1894.]
+
+Note 22 (p. 83).
+
+"L'homme n'est qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c'est
+un roseau pensant. Il ne faut [116] pas que l'univers entier s'arme
+pour l'ecraser. Une vapour, une goutte d'eau, suffit pour le tuer.
+Mais quand l'univers l'ecraserait, l'homme serait encore plus noble
+que ce qui le tue, parce qu'il sait qu'il muert; et l'avantage que
+l'univers a sur lui, l'univers n'en sait rien."--Pensees de Pascal.
+
+Note 23 (p. 85).
+
+The use of the word "Nature" here may be criticised. Yet the
+manifestation of the natural tendencies of men is so profoundly
+modified by training that it is hardly too strong. Consider the
+suppression of the sexual instinct between near relations.
+
+Note 24 (p. 86).
+
+A great proportion of poetry is addressed by the young to the young;
+only the great masters of the art are capable of divining, or think it
+worth while to enter into, the feelings of retrospective age. The two
+great poets whom we have so lately lost, Tennyson and Browning, have
+done this, each in his own inimitable way; the one in the Ulysses,
+from which I have borrowed; the other in that wonderful fragment
+"Childe Roland to the dark Tower came."
+
+[147]
+
+(Note: Section III came from a different source than the
+other sections and thus does not have page numbers.
+
+Section III of the volume, "Science and Theology", is not Huxley's text
+and is not by Huxley. It reprints instead an entirely different essay,
+one by Asa Gray on Darwin, published in the Atlantic in 1860 as
+specified in a note before the text here; what looks like a subheading,
+"NATURAL SELECTION NOT INCONSISTENT WITH NATURAL THEOLOGY", is the title
+given to Gray's essay in some reprints.)
+
+				 III.
+
+			  SCIENCE AND MORALS
+
+				[1886]
+
+
+NATURAL SELECTION
+
+NOT INCONSISTENT WITH
+
+NATURAL THEOLOGY
+
+(Atlantic Monthly for July, August, and October, 1860, reprinted in
+1861)
+
+
+I
+
+
+Novelties are enticing to most people; to us they are simply annoying.
+We cling to a long-accepted theory, just as we cling to an old suit of
+clothes.  A new theory, like a new pair of breeches (the Atlantic still
+affects the older type of nether garment), is sure to have hard-fitting
+places; or, even when no particular fault can be found with the
+article, it oppresses with a sense of general discomfort. New notions
+and new styles worry us, till we get well used to them, which is only
+by slow degrees.
+
+Wherefore, in Galileos time, we might have helped to proscribe, or to
+burn--had he been stubborn enough to warrant cremation--even the great
+pioneer of inductive research; although, when we had fairly recovered
+our composure, and bad leisurely excogitated the matter, we might have
+come to conclude that the new doctrine was better than the old one,
+after all, at least for those who had nothing to unlearn.
+
+Such being our habitual state of mind, it may well be believed that the
+perusal of the new book "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
+Selection" left an uncomfortable impression, in spite of its plausible
+and winning ways. We were not wholly unprepared for it, as many of our
+contemporaries seem to have been. The scientific reading in which we
+indulge as a relaxation from severer studies had raised dim
+forebodings.  Investigations about the succession of species in time,
+and their actual geographical distribution over the earths surface,
+were leading up from all sides and in various ways to the question of
+their origin. Now and then we encountered a sentence, like Prof. Owens
+"axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living
+things," which haunted us like an apparition. For, dim as our
+conception must needs be as to what such oracular and grandiloquent
+phrases might really mean, we felt confident that they presaged no good
+to old beliefs. Foreseeing, yet deprecating, the coming time of
+trouble, we still hoped that, with some repairs and makeshifts, the old
+views might last out our days. Apres nous le deluge.  Still, not to lag
+behind the rest of the world, we read the book in which the new theory
+is promulgated. We took it up, like our neighbors, and, as was natural,
+in a somewhat captious frame of mind.
+
+Well, we found no cause of quarrel with the first chapter. Here the
+author takes us directly to the barn-yard and the kitchen-garden. Like
+an honorable rural member of our General Court, who sat silent until,
+near the close of a long session, a bill requiring all swine at large
+to wear pokes was introduced, when he claimed the privilege of
+addressing the house, on the proper ground that he had been "brought up
+among the pigs, and knew all about them"--so we were brought up among
+cows and cabbages; and the lowing of cattle, the cackle of hens, and
+the cooing of pigeons, were sounds native and pleasant to our ears. So
+"Variation under Domestication" dealt with familiar subjects in a
+natural way, and gently introduced "Variation under Nature," which
+seemed likely enough. Then follows "Struggle for Existence"--a
+principle which we experimentally know to be true and cogent--bringing
+the comfortable assurance, that man, even upon Leviathan Hobbess theory
+of society, is no worse than the rest of creation, since all Nature is
+at war, one species with another, and the nearer kindred the more
+internecine--bringing in thousandfold confirmation and extension of the
+Malthusian doctrine that population tends far to outrun means of
+subsistence throughout the animal and vegetable world, and has to be
+kept down by sharp preventive checks; so that not more than one of a
+hundred or a thousand of the individuals whose existence is so
+wonderfully and so sedulously provided for ever comes to anything,
+under ordinary circumstances; so the lucky and the strong must prevail,
+and the weaker and ill-favored must perish; and then follows, as
+naturally as one sheep follows another, the chapter on "Natural
+Selection," Darwins cheval de bataille, which is very much the
+Napoleonic doctrine that Providence favors the strongest
+battalions--that, since many more individuals are born than can
+possibly survive, those individuals and those variations which possess
+any advantage, however slight, over the rest, are in the long-run sure
+to survive, to propagate, and to occupy the limited field, to the
+exclusion or destruction of the weaker brethren. All this we pondered,
+and could not much object to. In fact, we began to contract a liking
+for a system which at the outset illustrates the advantages of good
+breeding, and which makes the most "of every creatures best."
+
+Could we "let by-gones be by-gones," and, beginning now, go on
+improving and diversifying for the future by natural selection, could
+we even take up the theory at the introduction  of the actually
+existing species, we should be well content; and so, perhaps, would
+most naturalists be. It is by no means difficult to believe that
+varieties are incipient or possible species, when we see what trouble
+naturalists, especially botanists, have to distinguish between
+them--one regarding as a true species what another regards as a
+variety; when the progress of knowledge continually increases, rather
+than diminishes, the number of doubtful instances; and when there is
+less agreement than ever among naturalists as to what is the basis in
+Nature upon which our idea of species reposes, or how the word is to be
+defined.  Indeed, when we consider the endless disputes of naturalists
+and ethnologists over the human races, as to whether they belong to one
+species or to more, and, if to more, whether to three, or five, or
+fifty, we can hardly help fancying that both may be right--or rather,
+that the uni-humanitarians would have been right many thousand years
+ago, and the multi-humanitarians will be several thousand years later;
+while at present the safe thing to say is, that probably there is some
+truth on both sides.
+
+"Natural selection," Darwin remarks, "leads to divergence of character;
+for the more living beings can be supported on the same area, the more
+they diverge in structure, habits, and constitution" (a principle
+which, by-the-way, is paralleled and illustrated by the diversification
+of human labor); and also leads to much extinction of intermediate or
+unimproved forms. Now, though this divergence may "steadily tend to
+increase," yet this is evidently a slow process in Nature, and liable
+to much counteraction wherever man does not interpose, and so not
+likely to work much harm for the future. And if natural selection, with
+artificial to help it, will produce better animals and better men than
+the present, and fit them better to the conditions of existence, why,
+let it work, say we, to the top of its bent There is still room enough
+for improvement. Only let us hope that it always works for good: if
+not, the divergent lines on Darwin's lithographic diagram of
+"Transmutation made Easy," ominously show what small deviations from
+the straight path may come to in the end.
+
+The prospect of the future, accordingly, is on the whole pleasant and
+encouraging. It is only the backward glance, the gaze up the long vista
+of the past, that reveals anything alarming. Here the lines converge as
+they recede into the geological ages, and point to conclusions which,
+upon the theory, are inevitable, but hardly welcome. The very first
+step backward makes the negro and the Hottentot our
+blood-relations--not that reason or Scripture objects to that, though
+pride may. The next suggests a closer association of our ancestors of
+the olden time with "our poor relations" of the quadrumanous family
+than we like to acknowledge. Fortunately, however--even if we must
+account for him scientifically --man with his two feet stands upon a
+foundation of his own. Intermediate links between the Bimana and the
+Quadrumana are lacking altogether; so that, put the genealogy of the
+brutes upon what footing you will, the four-handed races will not serve
+for our forerunners--at least, not until some monkey, live or fossil,
+is producible with great-toes, instead of thumbs, upon his nether
+extremities; or until some lucky geologist turns up the bones of his
+ancestor and prototype in France or England, who was so busy "napping
+the chuckie-stanes" and chipping out flint knives and arrow-heads in
+the time of the drift, very many ages ago--before the British Channel
+existed, says Lyell [III-1]--and until these men of the olden time are
+shown to have worn their great-toes in the divergent and thumblike
+fashion. That would be evidence indeed: but, until some testimony of
+the sort is produced, we must needs believe in the separate and special
+creation of man, however it may have been with the lower animals and
+with plants.
+
+No doubt, the full development and symmetry of Darwin's hypothesis
+strongly suggest the evolution of the human no less than the lower
+animal races out of some simple primordial animal--that all are equally
+"lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the
+first bed of the Silurian system was deposited." But, as the author
+speaks disrespectfully of spontaneous generation, and accepts a
+supernatural beginning of life on earth, in some form or forms of being
+which included potentially all that have since existed and are yet to
+be, he is thereby not warranted to extend his inferences beyond the
+evidence or the fair probability. There seems as great likelihood that
+one special origination should be followed by another upon fitting
+occasion (such as the introduction of man), as that one form should be
+transmuted into another upon fitting occasion, as, for instance, in the
+succession of species which differ from each other only in some
+details. To compare small things with great in a homely illustration:
+man alters from time to time his instruments or machines, as new
+circumstances or conditions may require and his wit suggest. Minor
+alterations and improvements he adds to the machine he possesses; he
+adapts a new rig or a new rudder to an old boat: this answers to
+Variation. "Like begets like," being the great rule in Nature, if boats
+could engender, the variations would doubtless be propagated, like
+those of domestic cattle. In course of time the old ones would be worn
+out or wrecked; the best sorts would be chosen for each particular use,
+and further improved upon; and so the primordial boat be developed into
+the scow, the skiff, the sloop, and other species of water-craft--the
+very diversification, as well as the successive improvements, entailing
+the disappearance of intermediate forms, less adapted to any one
+particular purpose; wherefore these go slowly out of use, and become
+extinct species: this is Natural Selection. Now, let a great and
+important advance be made, like that of steam navigation: here, though
+the engine might be added to the old vessel, yet the wiser and
+therefore the actual way is to make a new vessel on a modified plan:
+this may answer to Specific Creation. Anyhow, the one does not
+necessarily exclude the other.  Variation and natural selection may
+play their part, and so may specific creation also. Why not?
+
+This leads us to ask for the reasons which call for this new theory of
+transmutation. The beginning of things must needs lie in obscurity,
+beyond the bounds of proof, though within those of conjecture or of
+analogical inference. Why not hold fast to the customary view, that all
+species were directly, instead of indirectly, created after their
+respective kinds, as we now behold them--and that in a manner which,
+passing our comprehension, we intuitively refer to the supernatural?
+Why this continual striving after "the unattained and dim?" why these
+anxious endeavors, especially of late years, by naturalists and
+philosophers of various schools and different tendencies, to penetrate
+what one of them calls "that mystery of mysteries," the origin of
+species?
+
+To this, in general, sufficient answer may be found in the activity of
+the human intellect, "the delirious yet divine desire to know,"
+stimulated as it has been by its own success in unveiling the laws and
+processes of inorganic Nature; in the fact that the principal triumphs
+of our age in physical science have consisted in tracing connections
+where none were known before, in reducing heterogeneous phenomena to a
+common cause or origin, in a manner quite analogous to that of the
+reduction of supposed independently originated species to a common
+ultimate origin--thus, and in various other ways, largely and
+legitimately extending the domain of secondary causes.  Surely the
+scientific mind of an age which contemplates the solar system as
+evolved from a common revolving fluid mass--which, through experimental
+research, has come to regard light, heat, electricity, magnetism,
+chemical affinity, and mechanical power as varieties or derivative and
+convertible forms of one force, instead of independent species--which
+has brought the so-called elementary kinds of matter, such as the
+metals, into kindred groups, and pertinently raised the question,
+whether the members of each group may not be mere varieties of one
+species--and which speculates steadily in the direction of the ultimate
+unity of matter, of a sort of prototype or simple element which may be
+to the ordinary species of matter what the Protozoa or what the
+component cells of an organism are to the higher sorts of animals and
+plants--the mind of such an age cannot be expected to let the old
+belief about species pass unquestioned. It will raise the question, how
+the diverse sorts of plants and animals came to be as they are and
+where they are and will allow that the whole inquiry transcends its
+powers only when all endeavors have failed Granting the origin to be
+super natural or miraculous even, will not arrest the inquiry All real
+origination the philosophers will say, is supernatural, their very
+question is, whether we have yet gone back to the origin and can affirm
+that the present forms of plants and animals are the primordial, the
+miraculously created ones.  And, even if they admit that, they will
+still inquire into the order of the phenomena, into the form of the
+miracle You might as well expect the child to grow up content with what
+it is told about the advent of its infant brother Indeed, to learn that
+the new comer is the gift of God, far from lulling inquiry, only
+stimulates speculation as to how the precious gift was bestowed That
+questioning child is father to the man--is philosopher in
+short-clothes.
+
+Since, then questions about the origin of species will be raised, and
+have been raised--and since the theorizings, however different in
+particulars, all proceed upon the notion that one species of plant or
+animal is somehow derived from another, that the different sorts which
+now flourish are lineal (or unlineal) descendants of other and earlier
+sorts--it now concerns us to ask, What are the grounds in Nature, the
+admitted facts, which suggest hypotheses of derivation in some :shape
+or other? Reasons there must be, and plausible ones, for the persistent
+recurrence of theories upon this genetic basis. A study of Darwins
+book, and a general glance at the present state of the natural
+sciences, enable us to gather the following as among the most
+suggestive and influential. We can only enumerate them here, without
+much indication of their particular bearing. There is--
+
+1. The general fact of variability, and the general tendency of the
+variety to propagate its like--the patent facts that all species vary
+more or less; that domesticated plants and animals, being in conditions
+favorable to the production and preservation of varieties, are apt to
+vary widely; and that, by interbreeding, any variety may be fixed into
+a race, that is, into a variety which comes true from seed. Many such
+races, it is allowed, differ from each other in structure and
+appearance as widely as do many admitted species; and it is practically
+very difficult, even impossible, to draw a clear line between races and
+species. Witness the human races, for instance.  Wild species also
+vary, perhaps about as widely as those of domestication, though in
+different ways. Some of them apparently vary little, others moderately,
+others immoderately, to the great bewilderment of systematic botanists
+and zoologists, and increasing disagreement as to whether various forms
+shall be held to be original species or strong varieties. Moreover, the
+degree to which the descendants of the same stock, varying in different
+directions, may at length diverge, is unknown. All we know is, that
+varieties are themselves variable, and that very diverse forms have
+been educed from one stock.
+
+2. Species of the same genus are not distinguished from each other by
+equal amounts of difference. There is diversity in this respect
+analogous to that of the varieties of a polymorphous species, some of
+them slight, others extreme. And in large genera the unequal
+resemblance shows itself in the clustering of the species around
+several types or central species, like satellites around their
+respective planets. Obviously suggestive this of the hypothesis that
+they were satellites, not thrown off by revolution, like the moons of
+Jupiter, Saturn, and our own solitary moon, but gradually and
+peacefully detached by divergent variation. That such closely-related
+species may be only varieties of higher grade, earlier origin, or more
+favored evolution, is not a very violent supposition. Anyhow, it was a
+supposition sure to be made.
+
+3. The actual geographical distribution of species upon the earths
+surface tends to suggest the same notion. For, as a general thing, all
+or most of the species of a peculiar genus or other type are grouped in
+the same country, or occupy continuous, proximate, or accessible areas.
+So well does this rule hold, so general is the implication that kindred
+species are or were associated geographically, that most trustworthy
+naturalists, quite free from hypotheses of transmutation, are
+constantly inferring former geographical continuity between parts of
+the world now widely disjoined, in order to account thereby for certain
+generic similarities among their inhabitants; just as philologists
+infer former connection of races, and a parent language, to account for
+generic similarities among existing languages. Yet no scientific
+explanation has been offered to account for the geographical
+association of kindred species, except the hypothesis of a common
+origin.
+
+4. Here the fact of the antiquity of creation, and in particular of the
+present kinds of the earths inhabitants, or of a large part of them,
+comes in to rebut the objection that there has not been time enough for
+any marked diversification of living things through divergent
+variation--not time enough for varieties to have diverged into what we
+call species.
+
+So long as the existing species of plants and animals were thought to
+have originated a few thousand years ago, and without predecessors,
+there was no room for a theory of derivation of one sort from another,
+nor time enough even to account for the establishment of the races
+which are generally believed to have diverged from a common stock. Not
+so much that five or six thousand years was a short allowance for this;
+but because some of our familiar domesticated varieties of grain, of
+fowls, and of other animals, were pictured and mummified by the old
+Egyptians more than half that number of years ago, if not earlier.
+Indeed, perhaps the strongest argument for the original plurality of
+human species was drawn from the identification of some of the present
+races of men upon these early historical monuments and records.
+
+But this very extension of the current chronology, if we may rely upon
+the archaeologists, removes the difficulty by opening up a longer
+vista. So does the discovery in Europe of remains and implements of
+prehistoric races of men, to whom the use of metals was unknown--men of
+the stone age, as the Scandinavian archaeologists designate them. And
+now, "axes and knives of flint, evidently wrought by human skill, are
+found in beds of the drift at Amiens (also in other places, both in
+France and England), associated with the bones of extinct species of
+animals." These implements, indeed, were noticed twenty years ago; at a
+place in Suffolk they have been exhumed from time to time for more than
+a century; but the full confirmation, the recognition of the age of the
+deposit in which the implements occur, their abundance, and the
+appreciation of their bearings upon most interesting questions, belong
+to the present time. To complete the connection of these primitive
+people with the fossil ages, the French geologists, we are told, have
+now "found these axes in Picardy associated with remains of Elephas
+primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Equus fossilis, and an extinct
+species of Bos."[III-2] In plain language, these workers in flint lived
+in the time of the mammoth, of a rhinoceros now extinct, and along with
+horses and cattle unlike any now existing--specifically different, as
+naturalists say, from those with which man is now associated.  Their
+connection with existing human races may perhaps be traced through the
+intervening people of the stone age, who were succeeded by the people
+of the bronze age, and these by workers in iron.[III-3] Now, various
+evidence carries back the existence of many of the present lower
+species of animals, and probably of a larger number of plants, to the
+same drift period. All agree that this was very many thousand years
+ago. Agassiz tells us that the same species of polyps which are now
+building coral walls around the present peninsula of Florida actually
+made that peninsula, and have been building there for many thousand
+centuries.
+
+5.  The overlapping of existing and extinct species, and the seemingly
+gradual transition of the life of the drift period into that of the
+present, may be turned to the same account. Mammoths, mastodons, and
+Irish elks, now extinct, must have lived down to human, if not almost
+to historic times.  Perhaps the last dodo did not long outlive his huge
+New Zealand kindred. The aurochs, once the companion of mammoths, still
+survives, but owes his present and precarious existence to mans care.
+Now, nothing that we know of forbids the hypothesis that some new
+species have been independently and supernaturally created within the
+period which other species have survived.  Some may even believe that
+man was created in the days of the mammoth, became extinct, and was
+recreated at a later date. But why not say the same of the aurochs,
+contemporary both of the old man and of the new? Still it is more
+natural, if not inevitable, to infer that, if the aurochs of that olden
+time were the ancestors of the aurochs of the Lithuanian forests, so
+likewise were the men of that age the ancestors of the present human
+races.  Then, whoever concludes that these primitive makers of rude
+flint axes and knives were the ancestors of the better workmen of the
+succeeding  stone age, and these again of the succeeding artificers in
+brass and iron, will also be likely to suppose that the Equus and Bos
+of that time, different though they be, were the remote progenitors of
+our own horses and cattle. In all candor we must at least concede that
+such considerations suggest a genetic descent from the drift period
+down to the present, and allow time enough--if time is of any account--
+for variation and natural selection to work out some appreciable
+results in the way of divergence into races, or even into so-called
+species. Whatever might have been thought, when geological time was
+supposed to be separated from the present era by a clear line, it is
+now certain that a gradual replacement of old forms by new ones is
+strongly suggestive of some mode of origination which may still be
+operative. When species, like individuals, were found to die out one by
+one, and apparently to come in one by one, a theory for what Owen
+sonorously calls "the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of
+living things" could not be far off.
+
+That all such theories should take the form of a derivation of the new
+from the old seems to be inevitable, perhaps from our inability to
+conceive of any other line of secondary causes in this connection. Owen
+himself is apparently in travail with some transmutation theory of his
+own conceiving, which may yet see the light, although Darwins came
+first to the birth.  Different as the two theories will probably be,
+they cannot fail to exhibit that fundamental resemblance in this
+respect which betokens a community of origin, a common foundation on
+the general facts and the obvious suggestions of modern science.
+Indeed--to turn the point of a pungent simile directed against
+Darwin--the difference between the Darwinian and the Owenian hypotheses
+may, after all, be only that between homoeopathic and heroic doses of
+the same drug.
+
+If theories of derivation could only stop here, content with explaining
+the diversification and succession of species between the teritiary
+period and the present time, through natural agencies or secondary
+causes still in operation, we fancy they would not be generally or
+violently objected to by the savants of the present day. But it is
+hard, if not impossible, to find a stopping-place. Some of the facts or
+accepted conclusions already referred to, and several others, of a more
+general character, which must be taken into the account, impel the
+theory onward with accumulated force. Vires (not to say virus) acquirit
+eundo. The theory hitches on wonderfully well to Lyells uniformitarian
+theory in geology--that the thing that has been is the thing that is
+and shall be--that the natural operations now going on will account for
+all geological changes in a quiet and easy way, only give them time
+enough, so connecting the present and the proximate with the farthest
+past by almost imperceptible gradations--a view which finds large and
+increasing, if not general, acceptance in physical geology, and of
+which Darwins theory is the natural complement.
+
+So the Darwinian theory, once getting a foothold, marches; boldly on,
+follows the supposed near ancestors of our present species farther and
+yet farther back into the dim past, and ends with an analogical
+inference which "makes the whole world kin." As we said at the
+beginning, this upshot discomposes us. Several features of the theory
+have an uncanny look. They may prove to be innocent: but their first
+aspect is suspicious, and high authorities pronounce the whole thing to
+be positively mischievous. In this dilemma we are going to take advice.
+Following the bent of our prejudices, and hoping to fortify these by
+new and strong arguments, we are going now to read the principal
+reviews which undertake to demolish the theory--with what result our
+readers shall be duly informed.
+
+
+II
+
+
+"I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and
+dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most
+naturalists entertain, and which I formerly entertained, namely, that
+each species has been independently created, is erroneous. I am fully
+convinced that species are not immutable; but that those belonging to
+what are called the same genera are lineal descendants of some other
+and generally extinct species, in the same manner as the acknowledged
+varieties of any one species are the descendants of that species.
+Furthermore, I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main,
+but not exclusive, means of modification."
+
+
+This is the kernel of the new theory, the Darwinian creed, as recited
+at the close of the introduction to the remarkable book under
+consideration.  The questions, "What will he do with it?" and "How far
+will he carry it?" the author answers at the close of the volume:
+
+
+"I cannot doubt that the theory of descent with modification embraces
+all the members of the same class." Furthermore, "I believe that all
+animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and
+plants from an equal or lesser number."
+
+
+Seeing that analogy as strongly suggests a further step in the same
+direction, while he protests that "analogy may be a deceitful guide,"
+yet he follows its inexorable leading to the inference that--
+
+"Probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this ear have
+descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first
+breathed."[III-4]
+
+
+In the first extract we have the thin end of the wedge driven a little
+way; in the last, the wedge driven home.
+
+We have already sketched some of the reasons suggestive of such a
+theory of derivation of species, reasons which gave it plausibility,
+and even no small probability, as applied to our actual world and to
+changes occurring since the latest tertiary period. We are well pleased
+at this moment to find that the conclusions we were arriving at in this
+respect are sustained by the very high authority and impartial judgment
+of Pictet, the Swiss paleontologist. In his review of Darwins
+book[III-5] -- the fairest and most admirable opposing one that has
+appeared--he freely accepts that ensemble of natural operations which
+Darwin impersonates under the now familiar name of Natural Selection,
+allows that the exposition throughout the first chapters seems "a la
+fois prudent et fort," and is disposed to accept the whole argument in
+its foundations, that is, so far as it relates to what is now going on,
+or has taken place in the present geological period--which period he
+carries back through the diluvial epoch to the borders of the
+tertiary.[III-6]  Pictet accordingly admits that the theory will very
+well account for the origination by divergence of nearly-related
+species, whether within the present period or in remoter geological
+times; a very natural view for him to take, since he appears to have
+reached and published, several years ago, the pregnant conclusion that
+there most probably was some material connection between the
+closely-related species of two successive faunas, and that the numerous
+close species, whose limits are so difficult to determine, were not all
+created distinct and independent.  But while thus accepting, or ready
+to accept, the basis of Darwins theory, and all its legitimate direct
+inferences, he rejects the ultimate conclusions, brings some weighty
+arguments to bear against them, and is evidently convinced that he can
+draw a clear line between the sound inferences, which he favors, and
+the unsound or unwarranted theoretical deductions, which he rejects. We
+hope he can.
+
+This raises the question, Why does Darwin press his theory to these
+extreme conclusions? Why do all hypotheses of derivation converge so
+inevitably to one ultimate point? Having already considered some of the
+reasons which suggest or support the theory at its outset--which may
+carry it as far as such sound and experienced naturalists as Pictet
+allow that it may be true--perhaps as far as Darwin himself unfolds it
+in the introductory proposition cited at the beginning of this
+article--we may now inquire after the motives which impel the theorist
+so much farther. Here proofs, in the proper sense of the word, are not
+to be had. We are beyond the region of demonstration, and have only
+probabilities to consider. What are these probabilities? What work will
+this hypothesis do to establish a claim to be adopted in its
+completeness? Why should a theory which may plausibly enough account
+for the diversification of the species of each special type or genus be
+expanded into a general system for the origination or successive
+diversification of all species, and all special types or forms, from
+four or five remote primordial forms, or perhaps from one? We accept
+the theory of gravitation because it explains all the facts we know,
+and bears all the tests that we can put it to. We incline to accept the
+nebular hypothesis, for similar reasons; not because it is proved--thus
+far it is incapable of proof--but because it is a natural theoretical
+deduction from accepted physical laws, is thoroughly congruous with the
+facts, and because its assumption serves to connect and harmonize these
+into one probable and consistent whole. Can the derivative hypothesis
+be maintained and carried out into a system on similar grounds? If so,
+however unproved, it would appear to be a tenable hypothesis, which is
+all that its author ought now to claim. Such hypotheses as, from the
+conditions of the case, can neither be proved nor disproved by direct
+evidence or experiment, are to be tested only indirectly, and therefore
+imperfectly, by trying their power to harmonize the known facts, and to
+account for what is otherwise unaccountable. So the question comes to
+this: What will an hypothesis of the derivation of species explain
+which the opposing view leaves unexplained?
+
+Questions these which ought to be entertained before we take up the
+arguments which have been advanced against this theory. We can barely
+glance at some of the considerations which Darwin adduces, or will be
+sure to adduce in the future and fuller exposition which is promised.
+To display them in such wise as to indoctrinate the unscientific reader
+would require a volume. Merely to refer to them in the most general
+terms would suffice for those familiar with scientific matters, but
+would scarcely enlighten those who are not. Wherefore let these trust
+the impartial Pictet, who freely admits that, "in the absence of
+sufficient direct proofs to justify the possibility of his hypothesis,
+Mr. Darwin relies upon indirect proofs, the bearing of which is real
+and incontestable;" who concedes that "his theory accords very well
+with the great facts of comparative anatomy and zoology--comes in
+admirably to explain unity of composition of organisms, also to explain
+rudimentary and representative organs, and the natural series of genera
+and species--equally corresponds with many paleontological data--agrees
+well with the specific resemblances which exist between two successive
+faunas, with the parallelism which is sometimes observed between the
+series of paleontological succession and of embryonal development,"
+etc.; and finally, although he does not accept the theory in these
+results, he allows that "it appears to offer the best means of
+explaining the manner in which organized beings were produced in epochs
+anterior to our own."
+
+What more than this could be said for such an hypothesis? Here,
+probably, is its charm, and its strong hold upon the speculative mind.
+Unproven though it be, and cumbered prima facie with cumulative
+improbabilities as it proceeds, yet it singularly accords with great
+classes of facts otherwise insulated and enigmatic, and explains many
+things which are thus far utterly inexplicable upon any other
+scientific assumption.
+
+We have said that Darwins hypothesis is the natural complement to
+Lyells uniformitarian theory in physical geology. It is for the organic
+world what that is for the inorganic; and the accepters of the latter
+stand in a position from which to regard the former in the most
+favorable light.  Wherefore the rumor that the cautious Lyell himself
+has adopted the Darwinian hypothesis need not surprise us. The two
+views are made for each other, and, like the two counterpart pictures
+for the stereoscope, when brought together, combine into one apparently
+solid whole.
+
+If we allow, with Pictet, that Darwins theory will very well serve for
+all that concerns the present epoch of the worlds history--an epoch in
+which this renowned paleontologist includes the diluvial or quaternary
+period--then Darwins first and foremost need in his onward course is a
+practicable road from this into and through the tertiary period, the
+intervening region between the comparatively near and the far remote
+past.  Here Lyells doctrine paves the way, by showing that in the
+physical geology there is no general or absolute break between the two,
+probably no greater between the latest tertiary and the quaternary
+period than between the latter and the present time. So far, the
+Lyellian view is, we suppose, generally concurred in. It is largely
+admitted that numerous tertiary species have continued down into the
+quaternary, and many of them to the present time. A goodly percentage
+of the earlier and nearly half of the later tertiary mollusca,
+according to Des Hayes, Lye!!, and, if we mistake not, Bronn, still
+live. This identification, however, is now questioned by a naturalist
+of the very highest authority. But, in its bearings on the new theory,
+the point here turns not upon absolute identity so much as upon close
+resemblance. For those who, with Agassiz, doubt the specific identity
+in any of these cases, and those who say, with Pictet, that "the later
+tertiary deposits contain in general the debris of species very nearly
+related to those which still exist, belonging to the same genera, but
+specifically different," may also agree with Pictet, that the
+nearly-related species of successive faunas must or may have had "a
+material connection." But the only material connection that we have an
+idea of in such a case is a genealogical one. And the supposition of a
+genealogical connection is surely not unnatural in such cases--is
+demonstrably the natural one as respects all those tertiary species
+which experienced naturalists have pronounced to be identical with
+existing ones, but which others now deem distinct For to identify the
+two is the same thing as to conclude the one to be the ancestor of the
+other No doubt there are differences between the tertiary and the
+present individuals, differences equally noticed by both classes of
+naturalists, but differently estimated By the one these are deemed
+quite compatible, by the other incompatible, with community of origin
+But who can tell us what amount of difference is compatible with
+community of origin?  This is the very question at issue, and one to be
+settled by observation alone Who would have thought that the peach and
+the nectarine came from one stock? But,  this being proved is it now
+very improbable that both were derived from the almond, or from some
+common amygdaline progenitor? Who would have thought that the cabbage,
+cauliflower, broccoli kale, and kohlrabi are derivatives of one
+species, and rape or colza, turnip, and probably ruta-baga, of  another
+species? And who that is convinced of this can long undoubtingly hold
+the original distinctness of turnips from cabbages as an article of
+faith? On scientific grounds may not a primordial cabbage or rape be
+assumed as the ancestor of all the cabbage races, on much the same
+ground that we assume a common ancestry for the diversified human
+races? If all Our breeds of cattle came from one stock why not this
+stock from the auroch, which has had all the time between the diluvial
+and the historic periods in which to set off a variation perhaps no
+greater than the difference between some sorts of domestic cattle?
+
+That considerable differences are often discernible between tertiary
+individuals and their supposed descendants of the present day affords
+no argument against Darwins theory, as has been rashly thought, but is
+decidedly in its favor. If the identification were so perfect that no
+more differences were observable between the tertiary and the recent
+shells than between various individuals of either, then Darwins
+opponents, who argue the immutability of species from the ibises and
+cats preserved by the ancient Egyptians being just like those of the
+present day, could triumphantly add a few hundred thousand years more
+to the length of the experiment and to the force of their argument.
+
+As the facts stand, it appears that, while some tertiary forms are
+essentially undistinguishable from existing ones, others are the same
+with a difference, which is judged not to be specific or aboriginal;
+and yet others show somewhat greater differences, such as are
+scientifically expressed by calling them marked varieties, or else
+doubtful species; while others, differing a little more, are
+confidently termed distinct, but nearly-related species. Now, is not
+all this a question of degree, of mere gradation of difference? And is
+it at all likely that these several gradations came to be established
+in two totally different ways--some of them (though naturalists cant
+agree which) through natural variation, or other secondary cause, and
+some by original creation, without secondary cause? We have seen that
+the judicious Pictet answers such questions as Darwin would have him
+do, in affirming that, in all probability, the nearly-related species
+of two successive faunas were materially connected, and that
+contemporaneous species, similarly resembling each other, were not all
+created so, but have become so. This is equivalent to saying that
+species (using the term as all naturalists do, and must continue to
+employ the word) have only a relative, not an absolute fixity; that
+differences fully equivalent to what are held to be specific may arise
+in the course of time, so that one species may at length be naturally
+replaced by another species a good deal like it, or may be diversified
+into two, three, or more species, or forms as different as species.
+This concedes all that Darwin has a right to ask, all that he can
+directly infer from evidence. We must add that it affords a locus
+standi, more or less tenable, for inferring more.
+
+Here another geological consideration comes in to help on this
+inference.  The species of the later tertiary period for the most part
+not only resembled those of our days--many of them so closely as to
+suggest an absolute continuity--but also occupied in general the same
+regions that their relatives occupy now. The same may be said, though
+less specially, of the earlier tertiary and of the later secondary; but
+there is less and less localization of forms as we recede, yet some
+localization even in palaeozoic times. While in the secondary period
+one is struck with the similarity of forms and the identity of many of
+the species which flourished apparently at the same time in all or in
+the most widely-separated parts of the world, in the tertiary epoch, on
+the contrary, along with the increasing specialization of climates and
+their approximation to the present state, we find abundant evidence of
+increasing localization of orders, genera and species, and this
+localization strikingly accords with the present geographical
+distribution of the same groups of species Where the imputed
+forefathers lived their relatives and supposed descendants now flourish
+All the actual classes of the animal and vegetable kingdoms were
+represented in the tertiary faunas and floras and in nearly the same
+proportions and the same diversities as at present The faunas of what
+is now Europe, Asia America and Australia, differed from each other
+much as they now differ: in fact--according to Adolphe Brongniart,
+whose statements we here condense[III-7]--the inhabitants of these
+different regions appear for the most part to have acquired, before the
+close of the tertiary period, the characters which essentially
+distinguish their existing faunas. The Eastern Continent had then, as
+now, its great pachyderms, elephants, rhinoceros, hippopotamus; South
+America, its armadillos, sloths, and anteaters; Australia, a crowd of
+marsupials; and the very strange birds of New Zealand had predecessors
+of similar strangeness.
+
+Everywhere the same geographical distribution as now, with a difference
+in the particular area, as respects the northern portion of the
+continents, answering to a warmer climate then than ours, such as
+allowed species of hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and elephant, to range
+even to the regions now inhabited by the reindeer and the musk-ox, and
+with the serious disturbing intervention of the glacial period within a
+comparatively recent time. Let it be noted also that those tertiary
+species which have continued with little change down to our days are
+the marine animals of the lower grades, especially mollusca. Their low
+organization, moderate sensibility, and the simple conditions of an
+existence in a medium like the ocean, not subject to great variation
+and incapable of sudden change, may well account for their continuance;
+while, on the other hand, the more intense, however gradual, climatic
+vicissitudes on land, which have driven all tropical and subtropical
+forms out of the higher latitudes and assigned to them their actual
+limits, would be almost sure to extinguish such huge and unwieldy
+animals as mastodons, mammoths, and the like, whose power of enduring
+altered circumstances must have been small.
+
+This general replacement of the tertiary species of a country by others
+so much like them is a noteworthy fact. The hypothesis of the
+independent creation of all species, irrespective of their antecedents,
+leaves this fact just as mysterious as is creation itself; that of
+derivation undertakes to account for it. Whether it satisfactorily does
+so or not, it must be allowed that the facts well accord with that
+hypothesis. The same may be said of another conclusion, namely, that
+the geological succession of animals and plants appears to correspond
+in a general way with their relative standing or rank in a natural
+system of classification. It seems clear that, though no one of the
+grand types of the animal kingdom can be traced back farther than the
+rest, yet the lower classes long preceded the higher; that there has
+been on the whole a steady progression within each class and order; and
+that the highest plants and animals have appeared only in relatively
+modern times. It is only, however, in a broad sense that this
+generalization is now thought to hold good. It encounters many apparent
+exceptions, and sundry real ones. So far as the rule holds, all is as
+it should be upon an hypothesis of derivation.
+
+The rule has its exceptions. But, curiously enough, the most striking
+class of exceptions, if such they be, seems to us even more favorable
+to the doctrine of derivation than is the general rule of a pure and
+simple ascending gradation. We refer to what Agassiz calls prophetic
+and synthetic types; for which the former name may suffice, as the
+difference between the two is evanescent.
+
+
+"It has been noticed," writes our great zoologist, "that certain types,
+which are frequently prominent among the representatives of past ages,
+combine in their structure peculiarities which at later periods are
+only observed separately in different, distinct types. Sauroid fishes
+before reptiles, Pterodactyles before birds, Ichthyosauri before
+dolphins, etc.  There are entire families, of nearly every class of
+animals, which in the state of their perfect development exemplify such
+prophetic relations.
+
+The sauroid fishes of the past geological ages are an example of this
+kind These fishes which preceded the appearance of reptiles present a
+combination of ichthyic and reptilian characters not to be found in the
+true members of this class, which form its bulk at present. The
+Pterodactyles, which preceded the class of birds, and the Ichthyosauri,
+which preceded the Cetacea, are other examples of such prophetic
+types."--(Agassiz, "Contributions, Essay on Classification," p. 117.)
+
+
+Now, these reptile-like fishes, of which gar-pikes are the living
+representatives, though of earlier appearance, are admittedly of higher
+rank than common fishes. They dominated until reptiles appeared, when
+they mostly gave place to (or, as the derivationists will insist, were
+resolved by divergent variation and natural selection into) common
+fishes, destitute of reptilian characters, and saurian reptiles--the
+intermediate grades, which, according to a familiar piscine saying, are
+"neither fish, flesh, nor good red-herring," being eliminated and
+extinguished by natural consequence of the struggle for existence which
+Darwin so aptly portrays. And so, perhaps, of the other prophetic
+types. Here type and antitype correspond. If these are true prophecies,
+we need not wonder that some who read them in Agassizs book will read
+their fulfillment in Darwins.
+
+Note also, in this connection, that along with a wonderful persistence
+of type, with change of species, genera, orders, etc., from formation
+to formation, no species and no higher group which has once
+unequivocally died out ever afterward reappears. Why is this, but that
+the link of generation has been sundered? Why, on the hypothesis of
+independent originations, were not failing species recreated, either
+identically or with a difference, in regions eminently adapted to their
+well-being? To take a striking case. That no part of the world now
+offers more suitable conditions for wild horses and cattle than the
+pampas and other plains of South America, is shown by the facility with
+which they have there run wild and enormously multiplied, since
+introduced from the Old World not long ago. There was no wild American
+stock. Yet in the times of the mastodon and megatherium, at the dawn of
+the present period, wild-horses--certainly very much like the existing
+horse--roamed over those plains in abundance. On the principle of
+original and direct created adaptation of species to climate and other
+conditions, why were they not reproduced, when, after the colder
+intervening era, those regions became again eminently adapted to such
+animals? Why, but because, by their complete extinction in South
+America, the line of descent was there utterly broken? Upon the
+ordinary hypothesis, there is no scientific explanation possible of
+this series of facts, and of many others like them.  Upon the new
+hypothesis, "the succession of the same types of structure within the
+same areas during the later geological periods ceases to be mysterious,
+and is simply explained by inheritance." Their cessation is failure of
+issue.
+
+Along with these considerations the fact (alluded to on page 98) should
+be remembered that, as a general thing, related species of the present
+age are geographically associated. The larger part of the plants, and
+still more of the animals, of each separate country are peculiar to it;
+and, as most species now flourish over the graves of their by-gone
+relatives of former ages, so they now dwell among or accessibly near
+their kindred species.
+
+Here also comes in that general "parallelism between the order of
+succession of animals and plants in geological times, and the gradation
+among their living representatives" from low to highly organized, from
+simple and general to complex and specialized forms; also "the
+parallelism between the order of succession of animals in geological
+times and the changes their living representatives undergo during their
+embryological growth," as if the world were one prolonged gestation.
+Modern science has much insisted on this parallelism, and to a certain
+extent is allowed to have made it out. All these things, which conspire
+to prove that the ancient and the recent forms of life "are somehow
+intimately connected together in one grand system," equally conspire to
+suggest that the connection is one similar or analogous to generation.
+Surely no naturalist can be blamed for entering somewhat confidently
+upon a field of speculative inquiry which here opens so invitingly; nor
+need former premature endeavors and failures utterly dishearten him.
+
+All these things, it may naturally be said, go to explain the order,
+not the mode, of the incoming of species. But they all do tend to bring
+out the generalization expressed by Mr. Wallace in the formula that
+"every species has come into existence coincident both in time and
+space with preexisting closely-allied species." Not, however, that this
+is proved even of existing species as a matter of general fact. It is
+obviously impossible to prove anything of the kind. But we must concede
+that the known facts strongly suggest such an inference. And--since
+species are only congeries of individuals, since every individual came
+into existence in consequence of preexisting individuals of the same
+sort, so leading up to the individuals with which the species began,
+and since the only material sequence we know of among plants and
+animals is that from parent to progeny--the presumption becomes
+exceedingly strong that the connection of the incoming with the
+preexisting species is a genealogical one.
+
+Here, however, all depends upon the probability that Mr. Wallaces
+inference is really true. Certainly it is not yet generally accepted;
+but a strong current is setting toward its acceptance.
+
+So long as universal cataclysms were in vogue, and all life upon the
+earth was thought to have been suddenly destroyed and renewed many
+times in succession, such a view could not be thought of. So the
+equivalent view maintained by Agassiz, and formerly, we believe, by
+DOrbigny, that irrespectively of general and sudden catastrophes, or
+any known adequate physical cause, there has been a total depopulation
+at the close of each geological period or formation, say forty or fifty
+times or more, followed by as many independent great acts of creation,
+at which alone have species been originated, and at each of which a
+vegetable and an animal kingdom were produced entire and complete,
+full-fledged, as flourishing, as wide-spread, and populous, as varied
+and mutually adapted from the beginning as ever afterward--such a view,
+of course, supersedes all material connection between successive
+species, and removes even the association and geographical range of
+species entirely out of the domain of physical causes and of natural
+science. This is the extreme opposite of Wallaces and Darwin s view,
+and is quite as hypothetical. The nearly universal opinion, if we
+rightly gather it, manifestly is, that the replacement of the species
+of successive formations was not complete and simultaneous, but partial
+and successive; and that along the course of each epoch some species
+probably were introduced, and some, doubtless, became extinct. If all
+since the tertiary belongs to our present epoch, this is certainly true
+of it: if to two or more epochs, then the hypothesis of a total change
+is not true of them.
+
+Geology makes huge demands upon time; and we regret to find that it has
+exhausted ours--that what we meant for the briefest and most general
+sketch of some geological considerations in favor of Darwins hypothesis
+has so extended as to leave no room for considering "the great facts of
+comparative anatomy and zoology" with which Darwins theory "very well
+accords," nor for indicating how "it admirably serves for explaining
+the unity of composition of all organisms, the existence of
+representative and rudimentary organs, and the natural series which
+genera and species compose." Suffice it to say that these are the real
+strongholds of the new system on its theoretical side; that it goes far
+toward explaining both the physiological and the structural gradations
+and relations between the two kingdoms, and the arrangement of all
+their forms in groups subordinate to groups, all within a few great
+types; that it reads the riddle of abortive organs and of morphological
+conformity, of which no other theory has ever offered a scientific
+explanation, and supplies a ground for harmonizing the two fundamental
+ideas which naturalists and philosophers conceive to have ruled the
+organic world, though they could not reconcile them; namely, Adaptation
+to Purpose and Conditions of Existence, and Unity of Type. To reconcile
+these two undeniable principles is the capital problem in the
+philosophy of natural history; and the hypothesis which consistently
+does so thereby secures a great advantage.
+
+We all know that the arm and hand of a monkey, the foreleg and foot of
+a dog and of a horse, the wing of a bat, and the fin of a porpoise, are
+fundamentally identical; that the long neck of the giraffe has the same
+and no more bones than the short one of the elephant; that the eggs of
+Surinam frogs hatch into tadpoles with as good tails for swimming as
+any of their kindred, although as tadpoles they never enter the water;
+that the Guinea-pig is furnished with incisor teeth which it never
+uses, as it sheds them before birth; that embryos of mammals and birds
+have branchial slits and arteries running in loops, in imitation or
+reminiscence of the arrangement which is permanent in fishes; and that
+thousands of animals and plants have rudimentary organs which, at least
+in numerous cases, are wholly useless to their possessors, etc., etc.
+Upon a derivative theory this morphological conformity is explained by
+community of descent; and it has not been explained in any other way.
+
+Naturalists are constantly speaking of "related species," of the
+"affinity" of a genus or other group, and of "family
+resemblance"--vaguely conscious that these terms of kinship are
+something more than mere metaphors, but unaware of the grounds of their
+aptness. Mr. Darwin assures them that they have been talking derivative
+doctrine all their lives--as M. Jourdain talked prose--without knowing
+it.
+
+If it is difficult and in many cases practically impossible to fix the
+limits of species, it is still more so to fix those of genera; and
+those of tribes and families are still less susceptible of exact
+natural circumscription. Intermediate forms occur, connecting one group
+with another in a manner sadly perplexing to systematists, except to
+those who have ceased to expect absolute limitations in Nature. All
+this blending could hardly fail to suggest a former material connection
+among allied forms, such as that which the hypothesis of derivation
+demands.
+
+Here it would not be amiss to consider the general principle of
+gradation throughout organic Nature--a principle which answers in a
+general way to the Law of Continuity in the inorganic world, or rather
+is so analogous to it that both may fairly be expressed by the
+Leibnitzian axiom, Natura non agit saltatim. As an axiom or
+philosophical principle, used to test modal laws or hypotheses, this in
+strictness belongs only to physics. In the investigation of Nature at
+large, at least in the organic world, nobody would undertake to apply
+this principle as a test of the validity of any theory or supposed law.
+But naturalists of enlarged views will not fail to infer the principle
+from the phenomena they investigate--to perceive that the rule holds,
+under due qualifications and altered forms, throughout the realm of
+Nature; although we do not suppose that Nature in the organic world
+makes no distinct steps, but only short and serial steps--not
+infinitely fine gradations, but no long leaps, or few of them.
+
+To glance at a few illustrations out of many that present themselves.
+It would be thought that the distinction between the two organic
+kingdoms was broad and absolute.  Plants and animals belong to two very
+different categories, fulfill opposite offices and, as to the mass of
+them are so unlike that the difficulty of the ordinary observer would
+be to find points of comparison Without entering into details which
+would fill an article, we may safely say that the difficulty with the
+naturalist is all the other way--that all these broad differences
+vanish one by one as we approach the lower confines of the two
+kingdoms, and that no absolute distinction whatever is now known
+between them. It is quite possible that the same organism may be both
+vegetable and animal, or may be first the one and then the other. If
+some organisms may be said to be at first vegetables and then animals,
+others, like the spores and other reproductive bodies of many of the
+lower Algae, may equally claim to have first a characteristically
+animal, and then an unequivocally vegetable existence. Nor is the
+gradation restricted to these simple organisms. It appears in general
+functions, as in that of reproduction, which is reducible to the same
+formula in both kingdoms, while it exhibits close approximations in the
+lower forms; also in a common or similar ground of sensibility in the
+lowest forms of both, a common faculty of effecting movements tending
+to a determinate end, traces of which pervade the vegetable
+kingdom--while, on the other hand, this indefinable principle, this
+vegetable
+
+"Animula vagula, blandula, Hospes comesque corporis,"
+
+graduates into the higher sensitiveness of the lower class of animals.
+Nor need we hesitate to recognize the fine gradations from simple
+sensitiveness and volition to the higher instinctive and to the other
+psychical manifestations of the higher brute animals. The gradation is
+undoubted, however we may explain it.
+
+Again, propagation is of one mode in the higher animals, of two in all
+plants; but vegetative propagation, by budding or offshoots, extends
+through the lower grades of animals. In both kingdoms there may be
+separation of the offshoots, or indifference in this respect, or
+continued and organic union with the parent stock; and this either with
+essential independence of the offshoots, or with a subordination of
+these to a common whole; or finally with such subordination and
+amalgamation, along with specialization of function, that the same
+parts, which in other cases can be regarded only as progeny, in these
+become only members of an individual.
+
+This leads to the question of individuality, a subject quite too large
+and too recondite for present discussion. The conclusion of the whole
+matter, however, is, that individuality--that very ground of being as
+distinguished from thing--is not attained in Nature at one leap. If
+anywhere truly exemplified in plants, it is only in the lowest and
+simplest, where the being is a structural unit, a single cell,
+member-less and organless, though organic--the same thing as those
+cells of which all the more complex plants are built up, and with which
+every plant and (structurally) every animal began its development. In
+the ascending gradation of the vegetable kingdom individuality is, so
+to say, striven after, but never attained; in the lower animals it is
+striven after with greater though incomplete success; it is realized
+only in animals of so high a rank that vegetative multiplication or
+offshoots are out of the question, where all parts are strictly members
+and nothing else, and all subordinated to a common nervous centre--is
+fully realized only in a conscious person.
+
+So, also, the broad distinction between reproduction by seeds or ova
+and propagation by buds, though perfect in some of the lowest forms of
+life, becomes evanescent in others; and even the most absolute law we
+know in the physiology of genuine reproduction--that of sexual
+cooperation--has its exceptions in both kingdoms in parthenogenesis, to
+which in the vegetable kingdom a most curious and intimate series of
+gradations leads. In plants, likewise, a long and finely graduated
+series of transitions leads from bisexual to unisexual blossoms; and so
+in various other respects. Everywhere we may perceive that Nature
+secures her ends, and makes her distinctions on the whole manifest and
+real but everywhere without abrupt breaks We need not wonder therefore
+that gradations between species and varieties should occur; the more
+so, since genera, tribes, and other groups into which the naturalist
+collocates species, are far from being always absolutely limited in
+Nature, though they are necessarily represented to be so in systems.
+From the necessity of the case, the classifications of the naturalist
+abruptly define where Nature more or less blends. Our systems are
+nothing, if not definite. They express differences, and some of the
+coarser gradations. But this evinces not their perfection, but their
+imperfection. Even the best of them are to the system of Nature what
+consecutive patches of the seven colors are to the rainbow.
+
+Now the principle of gradation throughout organic Nature may, of
+course, be interpreted upon other assumptions than those of Darwins
+hypothesis--certainly upon quite other than those of a materialistic
+philosophy, with which we ourselves have no sympathy. Still we conceive
+it not only possible, but probable, that this gradation, as it has its
+natural ground, may yet have its scientific explanation. In any case,
+there is no need to deny that the general facts correspond well with an
+hypothesis like Darwins, which is built upon fine gradations.
+
+We have contemplated quite long enough the general presumptions in
+favor of an hypothesis of the derivation of species. We cannot forget,
+however, while for the moment we overlook, the formidable difficulties
+which all hypotheses of this class have to encounter, and the serious
+implications which they seem to involve. We feel, moreover, that
+Darwins particular hypothesis is exposed to some special objections. It
+requires no small strength of nerve steadily to conceive, not only of
+the diversification, but of the formation of the organs of an animal
+through cumulative variation and natural selection. Think of such an
+organ as the eye, that most perfect of optical instruments, as so
+produced in the lower animals and perfected in the higher! A friend of
+ours, who accepts the new doctrine, confesses that for a long while a
+cold chill came over him whenever he thought of the eye. He has at
+length got over that stage of the complaint, and is now in the fever of
+belief, perchance to be succeeded by the sweating stage, during which
+sundry peccant humors may be eliminated from the system. For ourselves,
+we dread the chill, and have some misgivings about the consequences of
+the reaction.  We find ourselves in the "singular position"
+acknowledged by Pictet--that is, confronted with a theory which,
+although it can really explain much, seems inadequate to the heavy task
+it so boldly assumes, but which, nevertheless, appears better fitted
+than any other that has been broached to explain, if it be possible to
+explain, somewhat of the manner in which organized beings may have
+arisen and succeeded each other. In this dilemma we might take
+advantage of Mr. Darwins candid admission, that he by no means expects
+to convince old and experienced people, whose minds are stocked with a
+multitude of facts all regarded during a long course of years from the
+old point of view. This is nearly our case. So, owning no call to a
+larger faith than is expected of us, but not prepared to pronounce the
+whole hypothesis untenable, under such construction as we should put
+upon it, we naturally sought to attain a settled conviction through a
+perusal of several proffered refutations of the theory. At least, this
+course seemed to offer the readiest way of bringing to a head the
+various objections to which the theory is exposed. On several accounts
+some of these opposed reviews especially invite examination. We
+propose, accordingly, to conclude our task with an article upon "Darwin
+and his Reviewers."
+
+
+III
+
+
+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.
+
+In our survey of the lively discussion which has been raised, it
+matters little how our own particular opinions may incline. But we may
+confess to an impression, thus far, that the doctrine of the permanent
+and complete immutability of species has not been established, and may
+fairly be doubted.  We believe that species vary, and that "Natural
+Selection"
+ works; but we suspect that its operation, like every analogous natural
+operation, may be limited by something else. Just as every species by
+its natural rate of reproduction would soon completely fill any country
+it could live in, but does not, being checked by some other species or
+some other condition--so it may be surmised that variation and natural
+selection have their struggle and consequent check, or are limited by
+something inherent in the constitution of organic beings.
+
+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.
+
+The assertion that acquired habitudes or instincts, and acquired
+structures, are not heritable, any breeder or good observer can
+refute.
+     That "the human mind has become what it is out of a developed
+instinct," is a statement which Mr. Darwin nowhere makes, and, we
+presume, would not accept. That he would have us believe that
+individual animals acquire their  instincts gradually,[III-21] is a
+statement which must have been penned in inadvertence both of the very
+definition of instinct, and of everything we know of in Mr. Darwins
+book.
+
+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.
+
+[148] 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 [149] 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 [150] 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 [151] 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.
+
+[152] 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 [153] 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; [154] 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 [155] 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 [156]
+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.
+
+    * It remains to be seen whether the plants which have no
+    chlorophyll, and flourish in darkness, such as the Fungi, can
+    live upon purely mineral food.
+
+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 [157] 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" [158] 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 [159] 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.
+
+    * In some remarkable passages of the Botany of Sir James Ross's
+    Antarctic voyage, which took place half a century ago, Sir
+    Joseph Hooker demonstrated the dependence of the animal life of
+    the sea upon the minute, indeed microscopic, plants which float
+    in it: a marvellous example of what may be done by
+    water-culture. One might indulge in dreams of cultivating and
+    improving diatoms, until the domesticated bore the same
+    relation to the wild forms, as cauliflowers to the primitive
+    Brassica oleracea, without passing beyond the limits of fair
+    scientific speculation.
+
+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 [160] 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.
+
+    * It is a pity that we have no word that signifies plant-culture
+    exclusively. But for the present purpose I may restrict
+    agriculture to that sense.
+
+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-- [161] 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.
+
+    * I do not forget electric lighting, greenhouses and hothouses,
+    and the various modes of affording shelter against violent
+    winds: but in regard to production of food-stuffs on the large
+    scale they may be neglected. Even if synthetic chemistry should
+    effect the construction of proteids, the Laboratory will
+    hardly enter into competition with the Farm within any time
+    which the present generation need trouble itself about.
+
+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 [162] 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 [163] 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 [164] 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 [165]
+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 [166]
+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.
+[167] 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 [168] 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.*
+
+    * See the discussion of this subject further on.
+
+That it should be necessary, at this time of day, to set forth such
+elementary truths as these may [169] 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
+
+     ..."that labour is maintained and paid out of existing capital,
+        before the product which constitutes the ultimate object is
+        secured" (p. 16).
+
+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 [170] 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.
+
+    * Collected Essays, vol. i. pp. 359-382.
+
+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:--
+
+     . . . "Buildings, cattle, tools, machinery, agricultural and
+           mineral products, manufactured goods, ships, waggons,
+           furniture, and the like" (p. 27).
+
+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 [171] 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 [172] is devoted to the aid of
+production" (p. 28); and yet again it is said to be
+
+     . . . "wealth in course of exchange,* understanding exchange to
+           include, not merely the passing from hand to hand, but
+           also such transmutations as occur when the reproductive
+           or transforming forces of nature are utilised for the
+           increase of wealth" (p. 32).
+
+    * The italics are the author's.
+
+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:--
+
+     . . . "Nor is the definition of capital I have suggested of
+           any importance" (p. 33).
+
+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 [173] 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 [174] 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 [175] 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 [176] 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 [177] 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."
+
+    * Not merely on the grounds stated below, but on the strength
+    of Mr. George's own definition. Does the gatherer of eggs, or
+    berries, produce them by his labour? If so, what do the hens
+    and the bushes do?
+
+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, [178] they will probably fail, as completely as I do, to
+discover the relevancy of the statement.
+
+Again:--
+
+     . . . Or, if I take a piece of leather and work it up into a
+           pair of shoes, the shoes are my wages--the reward of my
+           exertion. Surely they are not drawn from capital--either
+           my capital or anybody else's capital--but are brought
+           into existence by the labour of which they became the
+           wages; and, in obtaining this pair of shoes as the wages
+           of my labour, capital is not even momentarily lessened
+           one iota. For if we call in the idea of capital, my
+           capital at the beginning consists of the piece of
+           leather, the thread, &c. (p. 34).
+
+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 [179] 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:--
+
+     . . . As my labour goes on, value is steadily added until,
+           when my labour results in the finished shoes, I have my
+           capital plus the difference in value between the
+           material and the shoes. In obtaining this additional
+           value--my wages--how is capital, at any time, drawn
+           upon? (p, 34).
+
+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 [180] 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)--
+
+     . . . "The produce of labour constitutes the natural recompense
+           or wages of labour. In that original state of things which
+           precedes both the appropriation of land and the
+           accumulation of stock, the whole produce of labour belongs
+           to the labourer. He has neither landlord nor master to
+           share with him" ("Wealth of Nations," ch. viii).
+
+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 [181] "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).
+
+[182] 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 [183] "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:--
+
+     . . . "For where wages are paid before the object of the labour
+           is obtained, or is finished--as in agriculture, where
+           ploughing and sowing must precede by several months the
+           harvesting of the crop; as in the erection of buildings,
+           the construction of ships, railroads, canals, &c.--it is
+           clear that the owners of the capital paid in wages cannot
+           expect an immediate return, but, as the phrase is, must
+           "outlay it" or "lie out of it" for a time which sometimes
+           amounts to many years. And hence, if first principles are
+           not kept in mind, it is easy to jump to the conclusion
+           that wages are advanced by capital" (p. 44).
+
+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).
+
+[184] 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?
+
+[185] 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 [186] 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 [187] 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.
+
+[188]
+
+
+                             V.
+
+              SOCIAL DISEASES AND WORSE REMEDIES
+
+        LETTERS TO THE "TIMES" ON MR. BOOTH'S SCHEME.
+           WITH A PREFACE AND INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
+
+                          [1891]
+
+                          PREFACE
+
+The letters which are here collected together were published in the
+"Times" in the course of the months of December, 1890, and January,
+1891.
+
+The circumstances which led me to write the first letter are
+sufficiently set forth in its opening sentences; and the materials on
+which I based my criticisms of Mr. Booth's scheme, in this and in the
+second letter, were wholly derived from Mr. Booth's book. I had some
+reason to know, however, that when anybody allows his sense of duty so
+far to prevail over his sense of the blessedness of peace as to write
+a letter to the "Times," on any subject of public interest, his
+reflections, before he has done with the business, will be very like
+[189] those of Johnny Gilpin, "who little thought, when he set out, of
+running such a rig." Such undoubtedly are mine when I contemplate
+these twelve documents, and call to mind the distinct addition to the
+revenue of the Post Office which must have accrued from the mass of
+letters and pamphlets which have been delivered at my door; to say
+nothing of the unexpected light upon my character, motives, and
+doctrines, which has been thrown by some of the "Times'"
+correspondents, and by no end of comments elsewhere.
+
+If self-knowledge is the highest aim of man, I ought by this time to
+have little to learn. And yet, if I am awake, some of my
+teachers--unable, perhaps, to control the divine fire of the poetic
+imagination which is so closely akin to, if not a part of, the
+mythopoeic faculty--have surely dreamed dreams. So far as my humbler
+and essentially prosaic faculties of observation and comparison go,
+plain facts are against them. But, as I may be mistaken, I have
+thought it well to prefix to the letters (by way of "Prolegomena") an
+essay which appeared in the "Nineteenth Century" for January, 1888, in
+which the principles that, to my mind, lie at the bottom of the
+"social question" are stated. So far as Individualism and Regimental
+Socialism are concerned, this paper simply emphasizes and expands the
+opinions expressed in an address to the members of the Midland
+Institute, delivered seventeen years earlier, [190] and still more
+fully developed in several essays published in the "Nineteenth
+Century" in 1889, which I hope, before long, to republish.*
+
+    * See Collected Essays, vol. i. p. 290 to end; and this volume,
+    p. 147.
+
+The fundamental proposition which runs through the writings, which
+thus extend over twenty years, is, that the common a priori
+doctrines and methods of reasoning about political and social
+questions are essentially vicious; and that argumentation on this
+basis leads, with equal logical force, to two contradictory and
+extremely mischievous systems, the one that of Anarchaic
+Individualism, the other that of despotic or Regimental Socialism.
+Whether I am right or wrong, I am at least consistent in opposing both
+to the best of my ability. Mr. Booth's system appears to me, and, as I
+have shown, is regarded by Socialists themselves, to be mere
+autocratic Socialism, masked by its theological exterior. That the
+"fantastic" religious skin will wear away, and the Socialistic reality
+it covers will show its real nature, is the expressed hope of one
+candid Socialist, and may be fairly conceived to be the unexpressed
+belief of the despotic leader of the new Trades Union, who has shown
+his zeal, if not his discretion, in championing Mr. Booth's projects.
+[See Letter VIII.]
+
+Yet another word to commentators upon my letters. There are some who
+rather chuckle, and [191] some who sneer, at what they seem to
+consider the dexterity of an "old controversial hand," exhibited by
+the contrast which I have drawn between the methods of conversion
+depicted in the New Testament and those pursued by fanatics of the
+Salvationist type, whether they be such as are now exploited by Mr.
+Booth, or such as those who, from the time of the Anabaptists, to go
+no further back, have worked upon similar lines.
+
+Whether such observations were intended to be flattering or sarcastic,
+I must respectfully decline to accept the compliment, or to apply the
+sarcasm to myself. I object to obliquity of procedure and ambiguity of
+speech in all shapes. And I confess that I find it difficult to
+understand the state of mind which leads any one to suppose, that deep
+respect for single-minded devotion to high aims is incompatible with
+the unhesitating conviction that those aims include the propagation of
+doctrines which are devoid of foundation--perhaps even mischievous.
+
+The most degrading feature of the narrower forms of Christianity (of
+which that professed by Mr. Booth is a notable example) is their
+insistence that the noblest virtues, if displayed by those who reject
+their pitiable formulae, are, as their pet phrase goes, "splendid
+sins." But there is, perhaps, one step lower; and that is that men,
+who profess freedom of thought, should fail to see and [192]
+appreciate that large soul of goodness which often animates even the
+fanatical adherents of such tenets. I am sorry for any man who can
+read the epistles to the Galatians and the Corinthians without
+yielding a large meed of admiration to the fervent humanity of Paul of
+Tarsus; who can study the lives of Francis of Assisi, or of Catherine
+of Siena, without wishing that, for the furtherance of his own ideals,
+he might be even as they; or who can contemplate unmoved the steadfast
+veracity and true heroism which loom through the fogs of mystical
+utterance in George Fox. In all these great men and women there lay
+the root of the matter; a burning desire to amend the condition of
+their fellow-men, and to put aside all other things for that end. If,
+in spite of all the dogmatic helps or hindrances in which they were
+entangled, these people are not to be held in high honour, who are?
+
+I have never expressed a doubt--for I have none--that, when Mr. Booth
+left the Methodist connection, and started that organisation of the
+Salvation Army upon which, comparatively recently, such ambitious
+schemes of social reform have been grafted, he may have deserved some
+share of such honour. I do not say that, so far as his personal
+desires and intentions go, he may not still deserve it. But the
+correlate of despotic authority is unlimited responsibility. If Mr.
+Booth is to take [193] credit for any good that the Army system has
+effected, he must be prepared to bear blame for its inherent evils. As
+it seems to me, that has happened to him which sooner or later happens
+to all despots: he has become the slave of his own creation--the
+prosperity and glory of the soul-saving machine have become the end,
+instead of a means, of soul-saving; and to maintain these at the
+proper pitch, the "General" is led to do things which the Mr. Booth of
+twenty years ago would probably have scorned.
+
+And those who desire, as I most emphatically desire, to be just to Mr.
+Booth, however badly they may think of the working of the organization
+he has founded, will bear in mind that some astute backers of his
+probably care little enough for Salvationist religion; and, perhaps,
+are not very keen about many of Mr. Booth's projects. I have referred
+to the rubbing of the hands of the Socialists over Mr. Booth's
+success;* but, unless I err greatly, there are politicians of a
+certain school to whom it affords still greater satisfaction. Consider
+what electioneering agents the captains of the Salvation Army,
+scattered through all our towns, and directed from a political
+"bureau" in London, would make! Think how political adversaries could
+be harassed by our local attorney--"tribune of the people," I mean;
+and how a troublesome man, on the other side, could be "hunted [194]
+down" upon any convenient charge, whether true or false, brought by
+our Vigilance-familiar!**
+
+    * See Letter VIII.
+    ** See Letter II.
+
+I entirely acquit Mr. Booth of any complicity in far-reaching schemes
+of this kind; but I did not write idly when, in my first letter, I
+gave no vague warning of what might grow out of the organised force,
+drilled in the habit of unhesitating obedience, which he has created.
+
+[195]
+
+
+                         INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
+
+             THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE IN HUMAN SOCIETY.
+
+                              [1888].
+
+The vast and varied procession of events, which we call Nature, affords
+a sublime spectacle and an inexhaustible wealth of attractive problems
+to the speculative observer. If we confine our attention to that
+aspect which engages the attention of the intellect, nature appears a
+beautiful and harmonious whole, the incarnation of a faultless logical
+process, from certain premises in the past to an inevitable conclusion
+in the future. But if it be regarded from a less elevated, though more
+human, point of view; if our moral sympathies are allowed to influence
+our judgment, and we permit ourselves to criticise our great mother as
+we criticise one another; then our verdict, at least so far as
+sentient nature is concerned, can hardly be so favourable.
+
+In sober truth, to those who have made a study of the phenomena of life
+as they exhibited by the higher forms of the animal world, [196] the
+optimistic dogma, that this is the best of all possible worlds, will
+seem little better than a libel upon possibility. It is really only
+another instance to be added to the many extant, of the audacity of a
+priori speculators who, having created God in their own image, find no
+difficulty in assuming that the Almighty must have been actuated by
+the same motives as themselves. They are quite sure that, had any
+other course been practicable, He would no more have made infinite
+suffering a necessary ingredient of His handiwork than a respectable
+philosopher would have done the like.
+
+But even the modified optimism of the time-honoured thesis of
+physico-theology, that the sentient world is, on the whole, regulated
+by principles of benevolence, does but ill stand the test of impartial
+confrontation with the facts of the case. No doubt it is quite true
+that sentient nature affords hosts of examples of subtle contrivances
+directed towards the production of pleasure or the avoidance of pain;
+and it may be proper to say that these are evidences of benevolence.
+But if so, why is it not equally proper to say of the equally numerous
+arrangements, the no less necessary result of which is the production
+of pain, that they are evidences of malevolence?
+
+If a vast amount of that which, in a piece of human workmanship, we
+should call skill, is [197] visible in those parts of the organization
+of a deer to which it owes its ability to escape from beasts of prey,
+there is at least equal skill displayed in that bodily mechanism of
+the wolf which enables him to track, and sooner or later to bring
+down, the deer. Viewed under the dry light of science, deer and wolf
+are alike admirable; and, if both were non-sentient automata, there
+would be nothing to qualify our admiration of the action of the one on
+the other. But the fact that the deer suffers, while the wolf inflicts
+suffering, engages our moral sympathies. We should call men like the
+deer innocent and good, men such as the wolf malignant and bad; we
+should call those who defended the deer and aided him to escape brave
+and compassionate, and those who helped the wolf in his bloody work
+base and cruel. Surely, if we transfer these judgments to nature
+outside the world of man at all, we must do so impartially. In that
+case, the goodness of the right hand which helps the deer, and the
+wickedness of the left hand which eggs on the wolf, will neutralize
+one another: and the course of nature will appear to be neither moral
+nor immoral, but non-moral.
+
+This conclusion is thrust upon us by analogous facts in every part of
+the sentient world; yet, inasmuch as it not only jars upon prevalent
+prejudices, but arouses the natural dislike to that which is painful,
+much ingenuity has been exercised in devising an escape from it.
+
+From the theological side, we are told that [198] this is a state of
+probation, and that the seeming injustices and immoralities of nature
+will be compensated by and by. But how this compensation is to be
+effected, in the case of the great majority of sentient things, is not
+clear. I apprehend that no one is seriously prepared to maintain that
+the ghosts of all the myriads of generations of herbivorous animals
+which lived during the millions of years of the earth's duration,
+before the appearance of man, and which have all that time been
+tormented and devoured by carnivores, are to be compensated by a
+perennial existence in clover; while the ghosts of carnivores are to
+go to some kennel where there is neither a pan of water nor a bone
+with any meat on it. Besides, from the point of view of morality, the
+last stage of things would be worse than the first. For the
+carnivores, however brutal and sanguinary, have only done that which,
+if there is any evidence of contrivance in the world, they were
+expressly constructed to do.  Moreover, carnivores and herbivores
+alike have been subject to all the miseries incidental to old age,
+disease, and over-multiplication, and both might well put in a claim
+for "compensation" on this score.
+
+On the evolutionist side, on the other hand, we are told to take
+comfort from the reflection that the terrible struggle for existence
+tends to final good, and that the suffering of the ancestor is paid
+for by the increased perfection of the progeny. There would be
+something in this argument if, in [199] Chinese fashion, the present
+generation could pay its debts to its ancestors; otherwise it is not
+clear what compensation the Eohippus gets for his sorrows in the fact
+that, some millions of years afterwards, one of his descendants wins
+the Derby. And, again, it is an error to imagine that evolution
+signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process
+undoubtedly involves a constant remodelling of the organism in
+adaptation to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those
+conditions whether the direction of the modifications effected shall
+be upward or downward. Retrogressive is as practicable as progressive
+metamorphosis. If what the physical philosophers tell us, that our
+globe has been in a state of fusion, and, like the sun, is gradually
+cooling down, is true; then the time must come when evolution will
+mean adaptation to an universal winter, and all forms of life will die
+out, except such low and simple organisms as the Diatom of the arctic
+and antarctic ice and the Protococcus of the red snow. If our globe is
+proceeding from a condition in which it was too hot to support any but
+the lowest living thing to a condition in which it will be too cold to
+permit of the existence of any others, the course of life upon its
+surface must describe a trajectory like that of a ball fired from a
+mortar; and the sinking half of that course is as much a part of the
+general process of evolution as the rising.
+
+From the point of view of the moralist the [200] animal world is on
+about the same level as a gladiator's show. The creatures are fairly
+well treated, and set to fight--whereby the strongest, the swiftest,
+and the cunningest live to fight another day. The spectator has no
+need to turn his thumbs down, as no quarter is given. He must admit
+that the skill and training displayed are wonderful. But he must shut
+his eyes if he would not see that more or less enduring suffering is
+the meed of both vanquished and victor. And since the great game is
+going on in every corner of the world, thousands of times a minute;
+since, were our ears sharp enough, we need not descend to the gates of
+hell to hear--
+
+    . . . sospiri, pianti, ed alti guai.
+    Voci alte e floche, e suon di man con elle
+
+--it seems to follow that, if the world is governed by benevolence, it
+must be a different sort of benevolence from that of John Howard.
+
+But the old Babylonians wisely symbolized Nature by their great
+goddess Istar, who combined the attributes of Aphrodite with those of
+Ares. Her terrible aspect is not to be ignored or covered up with
+shams; but it is not the only one. If the optimism of Leibnitz is a
+foolish though pleasant dream, the pessimism of Schopenhauer is a
+nightmare, the more foolish because of its hideousness. Error which is
+not pleasant is surely the worst form of wrong.
+
+[201] This may not be the best of all possible worlds, but to say that
+it is the worst is mere petulant nonsense. A worn-out voluptuary may
+find nothing good under the sun, or a vain and inexperienced youth,
+who cannot get the moon he cries for, may vent his irritation in
+pessimistic moanings; but there can be no doubt in the mind of any
+reasonable person that mankind could, would, and in fact do, get on
+fairly well with vastly less happiness and far more misery than find
+their way into the lives of nine people out of ten. If each and all of
+us had been visited by an attack of neuralgia, or of extreme mental
+depression, for one hour in every twenty-four--a supposition which
+many tolerably vigorous people know, to their cost, is not
+extravagant--the burden of life would have been immensely increased
+without much practical hindrance to its general course. Men with any
+manhood in them find life quite worth living under worse conditions
+than these.
+
+There is another sufficiently obvious fact, which renders the
+hypothesis that the course of sentient nature is dictated by
+malevolence quite untenable. A vast multitude of pleasures, and these
+among the purest and the best, are superfluities, bits of good which
+are to all appearances unnecessary as inducements to live, and are, so
+to speak, thrown into the bargain of life. To those who experience
+them, few delights can be more entrancing than such as are afforded by
+natural [202] beauty, or by the arts, and especially by music; but
+they are products of, rather than factors in, evolution, and it is
+probable that they are known, in any considerable degree, to but a
+very small proportion of mankind.
+
+The conclusion of the whole matter seems to be that, if Ormuzd has not
+had his way in this world, neither has Ahriman. Pessimism is as little
+consonant with the facts of sentient existence as optimism. If we
+desire to represent the course of nature in terms of human thought,
+and assume that it was intended to be that which it is, we must say
+that its governing principle is intellectual and not moral; that it is
+a materialized logical process, accompanied by pleasures and pains,
+the incidence of which, in the majority of cases, has not the
+slightest reference to moral desert. That the rain falls alike upon
+the just and the unjust, and that those upon whom the Tower of Siloam
+fell were no worse than their neighbours, seem to be Oriental modes of
+expressing the same conclusion.
+
+In the strict sense of the word "nature," it denotes the sum of the
+phenomenal world, of that which has been, and is, and will be; and
+society, like art, is therefore a part of nature.  But it is
+convenient to distinguish those parts of nature in which man plays the
+part of immediate cause, as some thing apart; and, therefore, society,
+like art, [203] is usefully to be considered as distinct from nature.
+It is the more desirable, and even necessary, to make this
+distinction, since society differs from nature in having a definite
+moral object; whence it comes about that the course shaped by the
+ethical man--the member of society or citizen--necessarily runs
+counter to that which the non-ethical man--the primitive savage, or
+man as a mere member of the animal kingdom--tends to adopt. The latter
+fights out the struggle for existence to the bitter end, like any
+other animal; the former devotes his best energies to the object of
+setting limits to the struggle.*
+
+In the cycle of phenomena presented by the life of man, the animal, no
+more moral end is discernible than in that presented by the lives of
+the wolf and of the deer. However imperfect the relics of prehistoric
+men may be, the evidence which they afford clearly tends to the
+conclusion that, for thousands and thousands of years, before the
+origin of the oldest known civilizations, men were savages of a very
+low type. They strove with their enemies and their competitors; they
+preyed upon things weaker or less cunning than themselves; they were
+born, multiplied without stint, and died, for thousands of generations
+alongside the mammoth, the urus, the lion, and the hyaena, whose lives
+were spent in the same way; [204] and they were no more to be praised
+or blamed on moral grounds, than their less erect and more hairy
+compatriots.
+
+    * [The reader will observe that this is the argument of the
+    Romanes Lecture, in brief.--1894.]
+
+As among these, so among primitive men, the weakest and stupidest went
+to the wall, while the toughest and shrewdest, those who were best
+fitted to cope with their circumstances, but not the best in any other
+sense, survived. Life was a continual free fight, and beyond the
+limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of
+each against all was the normal state of existence. The human species,
+like others, plashed and floundered amid the general stream of
+evolution, keeping its head above water as it best might, and thinking
+neither of whence nor whither.
+
+The history of civilization--that is, of society--on the other hand, is
+the record of the attempts which the human race has made to escape
+from this position. The first men who substituted the state of mutual
+peace for that of mutual war, whatever the motive which impelled them
+to take that step, created society. But, in establishing peace, they
+obviously put a limit upon the struggle for existence. Between the
+members of that society, at any rate, it was not to be pursued a
+outrance. And of all the successive shapes which society has taken,
+that most nearly approaches perfection in which the war of individual
+against individual is most strictly limited.
+
+[205] The primitive savage, tutored by Istar, appropriated whatever
+took his fancy, and killed whomsoever opposed him, if he could. On the
+contrary, the ideal of the ethical man is to limit his freedom of
+action to a sphere in which he does not interfere with the freedom of
+others; he seeks the common weal as much as his own; and, indeed, as
+an essential part of his own welfare. Peace is both end and means with
+him; and he founds his life on a more or less complete self-restraint,
+which is the negation of the unlimited struggle for existence. He
+tries to escape from his place in the animal kingdom, founded on the
+free development of the principle of non-moral evolution, and to
+establish a kingdom of Man, governed upon the principle of moral
+evolution. For society not only has a moral end, but in its
+perfection, social life, is embodied morality.
+
+But the effort of ethical man to work towards a moral end by no means
+abolished, perhaps has hardly modified, the deep-seated organic
+impulses which impel the natural man to follow his non-moral course.
+One of the most essential conditions, if not the chief cause, of the
+struggle for existence, is the tendency to multiply without limit,
+which man shares with all living things. It is notable that "increase
+and multiply" is a commandment traditionally much older than the ten;
+and that it is, perhaps, the only one which has been spontaneously and
+ex animo obeyed by [206] the great majority of the human race. But, in
+civilized society, the inevitable result of such obedience is the
+re-establishment, in all its intensity, of that struggle for
+existence--the war of each against all--the mitigation or abolition of
+which was the chief end of social organization.
+
+It is conceivable that, at some period in the history of the fabled Atlantis,
+the production of food should have been exactly sufficient to meet the
+wants of the population, that the makers of the commodities of the
+artificer should have amounted to just the number supportable by the
+surplus food of the agriculturists. And, as there is no harm in adding
+another monstrous supposition to the foregoing, let it be imagined
+that every man, woman, and child was perfectly virtuous, and aimed at
+the good of all as the highest personal good. In that happy land, the
+natural man would have been finally put down by the ethical man. There
+would have been no competition, but the industry of each would have
+been serviceable to all; nobody being vain and nobody avaricious,
+there would have been no rivalries; the struggle for existence would
+have been abolished, and the millennium would have finally set in. But
+it is obvious that this state of things could have been permanent only
+with a stationary population. Add ten fresh mouths; and as, by the
+supposition, there was only exactly enough before, somebody must go on
+short rations. The [207] Atlantis society might have been a heaven
+upon earth, the whole nation might have consisted of just men, needing
+no repentance, and yet somebody must starve. Reckless Istar, non-moral
+Nature, would have riven the ethical fabric. I was once talking with a
+very eminent physician* about the vis medicatrix naturae. "Stuff!"
+said he; "nine times out of ten nature does not want to cure the man:
+she wants to put him in his coffin." And Istar-Nature appears to have
+equally little sympathy with the ends of society. "Stuff! she wants
+nothing but a fair field and free play for her darling the strongest."
+
+    * The late Sir W. Gull
+
+Our Atlantis may be an impossible figment, but the antagonistic
+tendencies which the fable adumbrates have existed in every society
+which was ever established, and, to all appearance, must strive for
+the victory in all that will be. Historians point to the greed and
+ambition of rulers, to the reckless turbulence of the ruled, to the
+debasing effects of wealth and luxury, and to the devastating wars
+which have formed a great part of the occupation of mankind, as the
+causes of the decay of states and the foundering of old civilizations,
+and thereby point their story with a moral.  No doubt immoral motives
+of all sorts have figured largely among the minor causes of these
+events. But beneath all this [208] superficial turmoil lay the
+deep-seated impulse given by unlimited multiplication. In the swarms
+of colonies thrown out by Phoenicia and by old Greece; in the ver
+sacrum of the Latin races; in the floods of Gauls and of Teutons which
+burst over the frontiers of the old civilization of Europe; in the
+swaying to and fro of the vast Mongolian hordes in late times, the
+population problem comes to the front in a very visible shape. Nor is
+it less plainly manifest in the everlasting agrarian questions of
+ancient Rome than in the Arreoi societies of the Polynesian Islands.
+
+In the ancient world, and in a large part of that in which we live,
+the practice of infanticide was, or is, a regular and legal custom;
+famine, pestilence, and war were and are normal factors in the
+struggle for existence, and they have served, in a gross and brutal
+fashion, to mitigate the intensity of the effects of its chief cause.
+
+But, in the more advanced civilizations, the progress of private and
+public morality has steadily tended to remove all these checks. We
+declare infanticide murder, and punish it as such; we decree, not
+quite so successfully, that no one shall die of hunger; we regard
+death from preventible causes of other kinds as a sort of constructive
+murder, and eliminate pestilence to the best of our ability; we
+declaim against the curse [209] of war, and the wickedness of the
+military spirit, and we are never weary of dilating on the blessedness
+of peace and the innocent beneficence of Industry. In their moments of
+expansion, even statesmen and men of business go thus far. The finer
+spirits look to an ideal civitas Dei; a state when, every man having
+reached the point of absolute self-negation, and having nothing but
+moral perfection to strive after, peace will truly reign, not merely
+among nations, but among men, and the struggle for existence will be
+at an end.
+
+Whether human nature is competent, under any circumstances, to reach,
+or even seriously advance towards, this ideal condition, is a question
+which need not be discussed. It will be admitted that mankind has not
+yet reached this stage by a very long way, and my business is with the
+present. And that which I wish to point out is that, so long as the
+natural man increases and multiplies without restraint, so long will
+peace and industry not only permit, but they will necessitate, a
+struggle for existence as sharp as any that ever went on under the
+regime of war. If Istar is to reign on the one hand, she will demand
+her human sacrifices on the other.
+
+Let us look at home. For seventy years peace and industry have had
+their way among us with less interruption and under more favourable
+conditions than in any other country on the face of the earth. The
+wealth of Croesus was nothing to [210] that which we have accumulated,
+and our prosperity has filled the world with envy. But Nemesis did not
+forget Croesus: has she forgotten us?
+
+I think not. There are now 36,000,000 of people in our islands, and
+every year considerably more than 300,000 are added to our numbers.*
+That is to say, about every hundred seconds, or so, a new claimant to
+a share in the common stock or maintenance presents him or herself
+among us. At the present time, the produce of the soil does not
+suffice to feed half its population.  The other moiety has to be
+supplied with food which must be bought from the people of
+food-producing countries. That is to say, we have to offer them the
+things which they want in exchange for the things we want. And the
+things they want and which we can produce better than they can are
+mainly manufactures--industrial products.
+
+    * These numbers are only approximately accurate. In 1881, our
+    population amounted to 35,241,482, exceeding the number in 1871
+    by 3,396,103. The average annual increase in the decennial.
+    1871--1881 is therefore 339,610. The number of minutes in a
+    calendar year is 525,600.
+
+The insolent reproach of the first Napoleon had a very solid
+foundation. We not only are, but, under penalty of starvation, we are
+bound to be, a nation of shopkeepers. But other nations also lie under
+the same necessity of keeping shop, and some of them deal in the same
+goods as ourselves. Our customers naturally seek to get the most and
+[211] the best in exchange for their produce. If our goods are
+inferior to those of our competitors, there is no ground, compatible
+with the sanity of the buyers, which can be alleged, why they should
+not prefer the latter. And, if that result should ever take place on a
+large and general scale, five or six millions of us would soon have
+nothing to eat. We know what the cotton famine was; and we can
+therefore form some notion of what a dearth of customers would be.
+
+Judged by an ethical standard, nothing can be less satisfactory than
+the position in which we find ourselves. In a real, though incomplete,
+degree we have attained the condition of peace which is the main
+object of social organization; and, for argument's sake, it may be
+assumed that we desire nothing but that which is in itself innocent
+and praiseworthy--namely, the enjoyment of the fruits of honest
+industry. And lo! in spite of ourselves, we are in reality engaged in
+an internecine struggle for existence with our presumably no less
+peaceful and well-meaning neighbours. We seek peace and we do not
+ensue it. The moral nature in us asks for no more than is compatible
+with the general good; the non-moral nature proclaims and acts upon
+that fine old Scottish family motto, "Thou shalt starve ere I want."
+Let us be under no illusions, then. So long as unlimited multiplication
+goes on, no social organization which has ever been devised, or is
+likely to [212] be devised, no fiddle-faddling with the distribution
+of wealth, will deliver society from the tendency to be destroyed by
+the reproduction within itself, in its intensest form, of that
+struggle for existence the limitation of which is the object of
+society. And however shocking to the moral sense this eternal
+competition of man against man and of nation against nation may be;
+however revolting may be the accumulation of misery at the negative
+pole of society, in contrast with that of monstrous wealth at the
+positive pole;* this state of things must abide, and grow continually
+worse, so long as Istar holds her way unchecked. It is the true riddle
+of the Sphinx; and every nation which does not solve it will sooner or
+later be devoured by the monster itself has generated.
+
+The practical and pressing question for us, just now, seems to me to be
+how to gain time. "Time brings counsel," as the Teutonic proverb has
+it; and wiser folk among our posterity may see their way out of that
+which at present looks like an impasse.
+
+It would be folly to entertain any ill-feeling towards those neighbours
+and rivals who, like ourselves, are slaves of Istar; but, if somebody
+is to be starved, the modern world has no Oracle of Delphi to which
+the nations can appeal for an [213] indication of the victim. It is
+open to us to try our fortune; and, if we avoid impending fate, there
+will be a certain ground for believing that we are the right people to
+escape. Securus judicat orbis.
+
+    * [It is hard to say whether the increase of the unemployed
+    poor, or that of the unemployed rich, is the greater social
+    evil. -- 1894]
+
+To this end, it is well to look into the necessary condition of our
+salvation by works. They are two, one plain to all the world and
+hardly needing insistence; the other seemingly not so plain, since too
+often it has been theoretically and practically left out of sight. The
+obvious condition is that our produce shall be better than that of
+others. There is only one reason why our goods should be preferred to
+those of our rivals--our customers must find them better at the price.
+That means that we must use more knowledge, skill, and industry in
+producing them, without a proportionate increase in the cost of
+production; and, as the price of labour constitutes a large element in
+that cost, the rate of wages must be restricted within certain limits.
+It is perfectly true that cheap production and cheap labour are by no
+means synonymous; but it is also true that wages cannot increase
+beyond a certain proportion without destroying cheapness.  Cheapness,
+then, with, as part and parcel of cheapness, a moderate price of
+labour, is essential to our success as competitors in the markets of
+the world.
+
+The second condition is really quite as plainly indispensable as the
+first, if one thinks seriously [214] about the matter. It is social
+stability.  Society is stable, when the wants of its members obtain as
+much satisfaction as, life being what it is, common sense and
+experience show may be reasonably expected. Mankind, in general, care
+very little for forms of government or ideal considerations of any
+sort; and nothing really stirs the great multitude to break with
+custom and incur the manifest perils of revolt except the belief that
+misery in this world, or damnation in the next, or both, are
+threatened by the continuance of the state of things in which they
+have been brought up. But when they do attain that conviction, society
+becomes as unstable as a package of dynamite, and a very small matter
+will produce the explosion which sends it back to the chaos of
+savagery.
+
+It needs no argument to prove that when the price of labour sinks below
+a certain point, the worker infallibly falls into that condition which
+the French emphatically call la misere--a word for which I do not
+think there is any exact English equivalent. It is a condition in
+which the food, warmth, and clothing which are necessary for the mere
+maintenance of the functions of the body in their normal state cannot
+be obtained; in which men, women, and children are forced to crowd
+into dens wherein decency is abolished and the most ordinary
+conditions of healthful existence are impossible of attainment; in
+which the [215] pleasures within reach are reduced to bestiality and
+drunkenness; in which the pains accumulate at compound interest, in
+the shape of starvation, disease, stunted development, and moral
+degradation; in which the prospect of even steady and honest industry
+is a life of unsuccessful battling with hunger, rounded by a pauper's
+grave.
+
+That a certain proportion of the members of every great aggregation of
+mankind should constantly tend to establish and populate such a Slough
+of Despond as this is inevitable, so long as some people are by nature
+idle and vicious, while others are disabled by sickness or accident,
+or thrown upon the world by the death of their bread-winners. So long
+as that proportion is restricted within tolerable limits, it can be
+dealt with; and, so far as it arises only from such causes, its
+existence may and must be patiently borne.  But, when the organization
+of society, instead of mitigating this tendency, tends to continue and
+intensify it; when a given social order plainly makes for evil and not
+for good, men naturally enough begin to think it high time to try a
+fresh experiment. The animal man, finding that the ethical man has
+landed him in such a slough, resumes his ancient sovereignty, and
+preaches anarchy; which is, substantially, a proposal to reduce the
+social cosmos to chaos, and begin the brute struggle for existence
+once again.
+
+Any one who is acquainted with the state of [216] the population of
+all great industrial centres, whether in this or other countries, is
+aware that, amidst a large and increasing body of that population, la
+misere reigns supreme. I have no pretensions to the character of a
+philanthropist, and I have a special horror of all sorts of
+sentimental rhetoric; I am merely trying to deal with facts, to some
+extent within my own knowledge, and further evidenced by abundant
+testimony, as a naturalist; and I take it to be a mere plain truth
+that, throughout industrial Europe, there is not a single large
+manufacturing city which is free from a vast mass of people whose
+condition is exactly that described; and from a still greater mass
+who, living just on the edge of the social swamp, are liable to be
+precipitated into it by any lack of demand for their produce. And,
+with every addition to the population, the multitude already sunk in
+the pit and the number of the host sliding towards it continually
+increase.
+
+Argumentation can hardly be needful to make it clear that no society
+in which the elements of decomposition are thus swiftly and surely
+accumulating can hope to win in the race of industries.
+
+Intelligence, knowledge, and skill are undoubtedly conditions of
+success; but of what avail are they likely to be unless they are
+backed up by honesty, energy, goodwill, and all the physical and moral
+faculties that go to the making of manhood, and unless they are
+stimulated by hope of such [217] reward as men may fairly look to? And
+what dweller in the slough of want, dwarfed in body and soul,
+demoralized, hopeless, can reasonably be expected to possess these
+qualities?
+
+Any full and permanent development of the productive powers of an
+industrial population, then, must be compatible with and, indeed,
+based upon a social organization which will secure a fair amount of
+physical and moral welfare to that population; which will make for
+good and not for evil. Natural science and religious enthusiasm rarely
+go hand in hand, but on this matter their concord is complete; and the
+least sympathetic of naturalists can but admire the insight and the
+devotion of such social reformers as the late Lord Shaftesbury, whose
+recently published "Life and Letters" gives a vivid picture of the
+condition of the working classes fifty years ago, and of the pit which
+our industry, ignoring these plain truths, was then digging under its
+own feet.
+
+There is, perhaps, no more hopeful sign of progress among us, in the
+last half-century, than the steadily increasing devotion which has
+been and is directed to measures for promoting physical and moral
+welfare among the poorer classes. Sanitary reformers, like most other
+reformers whom I have had the advantage of knowing, seem to need a
+good dose of fanaticism, as a sort of moral coca, to keep them up to
+the mark, and, doubtless, they have made many mistakes; but that the
+[218] endeavour to improve the condition under our industrial
+population live, to amend the drainage of densely peopled streets, to
+provide baths, washhouses, and gymnasia, to facilitate habits of
+thrift, to furnish some provision for instruction and amusement in
+public libraries and the like, is not only desirable from a
+philanthropic point of view, but an essential condition of safe
+industrial development, appears to me to be indisputable. It is by
+such means alone, so far as I can see, that we can hope to check the
+constant gravitation of industrial society towards la misere, until
+the general progress of intelligence and morality leads men to grapple
+with the sources of that tendency. If it is said that the carrying out
+of such arrangements as those indicated must enhance the cost of
+production, and thus handicap the producer in the race of competition,
+I venture, in the first place, to doubt the fact; but if it be so, it
+results that industrial society has to face a dilemma, either
+alternative of which threatens destruction.
+
+On the one hand, a population the labour of which is sufficiently
+remunerated may be physically and morally healthy and socially stable,
+but may fail in industrial competition by reason of the dearness of
+its produce.  On the other hand, a population the labour of which is
+insufficiently remunerated must become physically and morally
+unhealthy, and socially unstable; and though it [219] may succeed for
+a while in industrial competition, by reason of the cheapness of its
+produce, it must in the end fall, through hideous misery and
+degradation, to utter ruin.
+
+Well, if these are the only possible alternatives, let us for ourselves
+and our children choose the former, and, if need be, starve like men.
+But I do not believe that the stable society made up of healthy,
+vigorous, instructed, and self-ruling people would ever incur serious
+risk of that fate. They are not likely to be troubled with many
+competitors of the same character, just yet; and they may be safely
+trusted to find ways of holding their own.
+
+Assuming that the physical and moral well-being and the stable social
+order, which are the indispensable conditions of permanent industrial
+development, are secured, there remains for consideration the means of
+attaining that knowledge and skill without which, even then, the
+battle of competition cannot be successfully fought. Let us consider
+how we stand. A vast system of elementary education has now been in
+operation among us for sixteen years, and has reached all but a very
+small fraction of the population. I do not think that there is any
+room for doubt that, on the whole, it has worked well, and that its
+indirect no less than its direct benefits have been immense. But, as
+might be expected, it exhibits the defects of all our educational
+systems--fashioned [220] as they were to meet the wants of a bygone
+condition of society. There is a widespread and, I think,
+well-justified complaint that it has too much to do with books and too
+little to do with things. I am as little disposed as any one can well
+be to narrow early education and to make the primary school a mere
+annexe of the shop. And it is not so much in the interests of
+industry, as in that of breadth of culture, that I echo the common
+complaint against the bookish and theoretical character of our primary
+instruction.
+
+If there were no such things as industrial pursuits, a system of
+education which does nothing for the faculties of observation, which
+trains neither the eye nor the hand, and is compatible with utter
+ignorance of the commonest natural truths, might still be reasonably
+regarded as strangely imperfect. And when we consider that the
+instruction and training which are lacking are exactly; those which
+are of most importance for the great mass of our population, the fault
+becomes almost a crime, the more that there is no practical difficulty
+in making good these defects. There really is no reason why drawing
+should not be universally taught, and it is an admirable training for
+both eye and hand. Artists are born, not made; but everybody may be
+taught to draw elevations, plans, and sections; and pots and pans are
+as good, indeed better, models for [221] this purpose than the Apollo
+Belvedere. The plant is not expensive; and there is this excellent
+quality about drawing of the kind indicated, that it can be tested
+almost as easily and severely as arithmetic. Such drawings are either
+right or wrong, and if they are wrong the pupil can be made to see
+that they are wrong. From the industrial point of view, drawing has
+the further merit that there is hardly any trade in which the power of
+drawing is not of daily and hourly utility.  In the next place, no
+good reason, except the want of capable teachers, can be assigned why
+elementary notions of science should not be an element in general
+instruction. In this case, again, no expensive or elaborate apparatus
+is necessary. The commonest thing--a candle, a boy's squirt, a piece
+of chalk--in the hands of a teacher who knows his business, may be
+made the starting-point whence children may be led into the regions of
+science as far as their capacity permits, with efficient exercise of
+their observational and reasoning faculties on the road. If object
+lessons often prove trivial failures, it is not the fault of object
+lessons, but that of the teacher, who has not found out how much the
+power of teaching a little depends on knowing a great deal, and that
+thoroughly; and that he has not made that discovery is not the fault
+of the teachers, but of the detestable system of training them which
+is widely prevalent.*
+
+    * Training in the use of simple tools is no doubt desirable,
+    on all grounds. From the point of view of "culture," the
+    man whose "fingers are all thumbs" is but a stunted
+    creature. But the practical difficulties in the way of
+    introducing handiwork of this kind into elementary schools
+    appear to me to be considerable.
+
+[222] As I have said, I do not regard the proposal to add these to the
+present subjects of universal instruction as made merely in the
+interests of industry. Elementary science and drawing are just as
+needful at Eton (where I am happy to say both are now parts of the
+regular course) as in the lowest primary school. But their importance
+in the education of the artisan is enhanced, not merely by the fact
+that the knowledge and skill thus gained--little as they may amount
+to--will still be of practical utility to him; but, further, because
+they constitute an introduction to that special training which is
+commonly called "technical education."
+
+I conceive that our wants in this last direction may be grouped under
+three heads: (1) Instruction in the principles of those branches of
+science and of art which are peculiarly applicable to industrial
+pursuits, which may be called preliminary scientific education. (2)
+Instruction in the special branches of such applied science and art,
+as technical education proper. (3) Instruction of teachers in both
+these branches. (4) Capacity-catching machinery.
+
+A great deal has already been done in each of these directions, but
+much remains to be done. If elementary education is amended in the way
+[223] that has been suggested, I think that the school boards will
+have quite as much on their hands as they are capable of doing well.
+The influences under which the members of these bodies are elected do
+not tend to secure fitness for dealing with scientific or technical
+education; and it is the less necessary to burden them with an
+uncongenial task as there are other organizations, not only much
+better fitted to do the work, but already actually doing it.
+
+In the matter of preliminary scientific education, the chief of these
+is the Science and Art Department, which has done more during the last
+quarter of a century for the teaching of elementary science among the
+masses of the people than any organization which exists either in this
+or in any other country. It has become veritably a people's
+university, so far as physical science is concerned. At the foundation
+of our old universities they were freely open to the poorest, but the
+poorest must come to them. In the last quarter of a century, the
+Science and Art Department, by means of its classes spread all over
+the country and open to all, has conveyed instruction to the poorest.
+The University Extension movement shows that our older learned
+corporations have discovered the propriety of following suit.
+
+Technical education, in the strict sense, has become a necessity for
+two reasons. The old apprenticeship system has broken down, partly by
+[224] reason of the changed conditions of industrial life, and partly
+because trades have ceased to be "crafts," the traditional secrets
+whereof the master handed down to his apprentices. Invention is
+constantly changing the face of our industries, so that "use and
+wont," "rule of thumb," and the like, are gradually losing their
+importance, while that knowledge of principles which alone can deal
+successfully with changed conditions is becoming more and more
+valuable. Socially, the "master" of four or five apprentices is
+disappearing in favour of the "employer" of forty, or four hundred, or
+four thousand, "hands," and the odds and ends of technical knowledge,
+formerly picked up in a shop, are not, and cannot be, supplied in the
+factory. The instruction formerly given by the master must therefore
+be more than replaced by the systematic teaching of the technical
+school.
+
+Institutions of this kind on varying scales of magnitude and
+completeness, from the splendid edifice set up by the City and Guilds
+Institute to the smallest local technical school, to say nothing of
+classes, such as those in technology instituted by the Society of Arts
+(subsequently taken over by the City Guilds), have been established in
+various parts of the country, and the movement in favour of their
+increase and multiplication is rapidly growing in breadth and
+intensity. But there is much difference of opinion as to the best
+[225] way in which the technical instruction, so generally desired,
+should be given. Two courses appear to be practicable: the one is the
+establishment of special technical schools with a systematic and
+lengthened course of instruction demanding the employment of the whole
+time of the pupils. The other is the setting afoot of technical
+classes, especially evening classes, comprising a short series of
+lessons on some special topic, which may be attended by persons
+already earning wages in some branch of trade or commerce.
+
+There is no doubt that technical schools, on the plan indicated under
+the first head, are extremely costly; and, so far as the teaching of
+artisans is concerned, it is very commonly objected to them that, as
+the learners do not work under trade conditions, they are apt to fall
+into amateurish habits, which prove of more hindrance than service in
+the actual business of life.  When such schools are attached to
+factories under the direction of an employer who desires to train up a
+supply of intelligent workmen, of course this objection does not
+apply; nor can the usefulness of such schools for the training of
+future employers and for the higher grade of the employed be doubtful;
+but they are clearly out of the reach of the great mass of the people,
+who have to earn their bread as soon as possible. We must therefore
+look to the classes, and especially to evening classes, as the great
+instrument for the technical [226] education of the artisan. The
+utility of such classes has now been placed beyond all doubt; the only
+question which remains is to find the ways and means of extending
+them.
+
+We are here, as in all other questions of social organization, met by
+two diametrically opposed views. On the one hand, the methods pursued
+in foreign countries are held up as our example. The State is exhorted
+to take the matter in hand and establish a great system of technical
+education. On the other hand, many economists of the individualist
+school exhaust the resources of language in condemning and
+repudiating, not merely the interference of the general government in
+such matters, but the application of a farthing of the funds raised by
+local taxation to these purposes. I entertain a strong conviction
+that, in this country, at any rate, the State had much better leave
+purely technical and trade instruction alone. But, although my
+personal leanings are decidedly towards the individualists, I have
+arrived at that conclusion on merely practical grounds. In fact, my
+individualism is rather of a sentimental sort, and I sometimes think I
+should be stronger in the faith if it were less vehemently advocated.*
+I am unable to see that civil society is anything but a corporation
+established [227] for a moral object only--namely, the good of its
+members--and therefore that it may take such measures as seem fitting
+for the attainment of that which the general voice decides to be the
+general good. That the suffrage of the majority is by no means a
+scientific test of social good and evil is unfortunately too true;
+but, in practice, it is the only test we can apply, and the refusal to
+abide by it means anarchy. The purest despotism that ever existed is
+as much based upon that will of the majority (which is usually
+submission to the will of a small minority) as the freest republic.
+Law is the expression of the opinion of the majority; and it is law,
+and not mere opinion, because the many are strong enough to enforce
+it.
+
+    * In what follows I am only repeating and emphasizing
+    opinions which I expressed seventeen years ago, in an
+    Address to the members of the Midland Institute
+    (republished in Critiques and Addresses in 1873, and in Vol.
+    I. of these Essays ). I have seen no reason to modify them,
+    notwithstanding high authority on the other side.
+
+I am as strongly convinced as the most pronounced individualist can be,
+that it is desirable that every man should be free to act in every way
+which does not limit the corresponding freedom of his fellow-man. But
+I fail to connect that great induction of political science with the
+practical corollary which is frequently drawn from it: that the
+State--that is, the people in their corporate capacity--has no
+business to meddle with anything but the administration of justice and
+external defence. It appears to me that the [228] amount of freedom
+which incorporate society may fitly leave to its members is not a
+fixed quantity, to be determined a priori by deduction from the
+fiction called "natural rights"; but that it must be determined by,
+and vary with, circumstances. I conceive it to be demonstrable that
+the higher and the more complex the organization of the social body,
+the more closely is the life of each member bound up with that of the
+whole; and the larger becomes the category of acts which cease to be
+merely self-regarding, and which interfere with the freedom of others
+more or less seriously.
+
+If a squatter, living ten miles away from any neighbour, chooses to
+burn his house down to get rid of vermin, there may be no necessity
+(in the absence of insurance offices) that the law should interfere
+with his freedom of action; his act can hurt nobody but himself. But,
+if the dweller in a street chooses to do the same thing, the State
+very properly makes such a proceeding a crime, and punishes it as
+such. He does meddle with his neighbour's freedom, and that seriously.
+So it might, perhaps, be a tenable doctrine, that it would be
+needless, and even tyrannous, to make education compulsory in a sparse
+agricultural population, living in abundance on the produce of its own
+soil; but, in a densely populated manufacturing country, struggling
+for existence with competitors, every ignorant person tends to [229]
+become a burden upon, and, so far, an infringer of the liberty of, his
+fellows, and an obstacle to their success. Under such circumstances an
+education rate is, in fact, a war tax, levied for purposes of defence.
+
+That State action always has been more or less misdirected, and always
+will be so, is, I believe, perfectly true. But I am not aware that it
+is more true of the action of men in their corporate capacity than it
+is of the doings of individuals. The wisest and most dispassionate man
+in existence, merely wishing to go from one stile in a field to the
+opposite, will not walk quite straight--he is always going a little
+wrong, and always correcting himself; and I can only congratulate the
+individualist who is able to say that his general course of life has
+been of a less undulatory character. To abolish State action, because
+its direction is never more than approximately correct, appears to me
+to be much the same thing as abolishing the man at the wheel
+altogether, because, do what he will, the ship yaws more or less. "Why
+should I be robbed of my property to pay for teaching another man's
+children?" is an individualist question, which is not unfrequently put
+as if it settled the whole business. Perhaps it does, but I find
+difficulties in seeing why it should. The parish in which I live makes
+me pay my share for the paving and lighting of a great many streets
+that I never pass through; [230] and I might plead that I am robbed to
+smooth the way and lighten the darkness of other people. But I am
+afraid the parochial authorities would not let me off on this plea;
+and I must confess I do not see why they should.
+
+I cannot speak of my own knowledge, but I have every reason to believe
+that I came into this world a small reddish person, certainly without
+a gold spoon in my mouth, and in fact with no discernible abstract or
+concrete "rights" or property of any description. If a foot was not
+set upon me, at once, as a squalling nuisance, it was either the
+natural affection of those about me, which I certainly had done
+nothing to deserve, or the fear of the law which, ages before my
+birth, was painfully built up by the society into which I intruded,
+that prevented that catastrophe. If I was nourished, cared for,
+taught, saved from the vagabondage of a wastrel, I certainly am not
+aware that I did anything to deserve those advantages. And, if I
+possess anything now, it strikes me that, though I may have fairly
+earned my day's wages for my day's work, and may justly call them my
+property--yet, without that organization of society, created out of
+the toil and blood of long generations before my time, I should
+probably have had nothing but a flint axe and an indifferent hut to
+call my own; and even those would be mine only so long as no stronger
+savage came my way.
+
+So that if society, having, quite gratuitously, [231] done all these
+things for me, asks me in turn to do something towards its
+preservation--even if that something is to contribute to the teaching
+of other men's children--I really in spite of all my individualist
+leanings, feel rather ashamed to say no. And if I were not ashamed, I
+cannot say that I think that society would be dealing unjustly with me
+in converting the moral obligation into a legal one. There is a
+manifest unfairness in letting all the burden be borne by the willing
+horse.
+
+It does not appear to me, then, that there is any valid objection to
+taxation for purposes of education; but, in the case of technical
+schools and classes, I think it is practically expedient that such a
+taxation should be local. Our industrial population accumulates in
+particular towns and districts; these districts are those which
+immediately profit by technical education; and it is only in them that
+we can find the men practically engaged in industries, among whom some
+may reasonably be expected to be competent judges of that which is
+wanted, and of the best means of meeting the want.
+
+In my belief, all methods of technical training are at present
+tentative, and, to be successful, each must be adapted to the special
+peculiarities of its locality. This is a case in which we want twenty
+years, not of "strong government," but of cheerful and hopeful
+blundering; and we may be [232] thankful if we get things straight in
+that time.
+
+The principle of the Bill introduced, but dropped, by the Government
+last session, appears to me to be wise, and some of the objections to
+it I think are due to a misunderstanding. The bill proposed in
+substance to allow localities to tax themselves for purposes of
+technical education--on the condition that any scheme for such purpose
+should be submitted to the Science and Art Department, and declared by
+that department to be in accordance with the intention of the
+Legislature.
+
+A cry was raised that the Bill proposed to throw technical education
+into the hands of the Science and Art Department. But, in reality, no
+power of initiation, nor even of meddling with details, was given to
+that Department--the sole function of which was to decide whether any
+plan proposed did or did not come within the limits of "technical
+education." The necessity for such control, somewhere, is obvious. No
+legislature, certainly not ours, is likely to grant the power of
+self-taxation without setting limits to that power in some way; and it
+would neither have been practicable to devise a legal definition of
+technical education, nor commendable to leave the question to the
+Auditor-General, to be fought out in the law-courts. The only
+alternative was to leave the decision to an appropriate State
+authority. If it is [233] asked what is the need of such control if
+the people of the localities are the best judges, the obvious reply is
+that there are localities and localities, and that while Manchester,
+or Liverpool, or Birmingham, or Glasgow might, perhaps, be safely left
+to do as they thought fit, smaller towns, in which there is less
+certainty of full discussion by competent people of different ways of
+thinking, might easily fall a prey to crocheteers.
+
+Supposing our intermediate science teaching and our technical schools
+and classes are established, there is yet a third need to be supplied,
+and that is the want of good teachers. And it is necessary not only to
+get them, but to keep them when you have got them.
+
+It is impossible to insist too strongly upon the fact that the
+efficient teachers of science and of technology are not to be made by
+the processes in vogue at ordinary training colleges. The memory
+loaded with mere bookwork is not the thing wanted--is, in fact, rather
+worse than useless--in the teacher of scientific subjects. It is
+absolutely essential that his mind should be full of knowledge and not
+of mere learning, and that what he knows should have been learned in
+the laboratory rather than in the library. There are happily already,
+both in London and in the provinces, various places in which such
+training is to be had, and the main thing at present is to make it in
+the first place accessible, and in the next [234] indispensable, to
+those who undertake the business of teaching. But when the well-trained
+men are supplied, it must be recollected that the profession of
+teacher is not a very lucrative or otherwise tempting one, and that it
+may be advisable to offer special inducements to good men to remain in
+it. These, however, are questions of detail into which it is
+unnecessary to enter further.
+
+Last, but not least, comes the question of providing the machinery for
+enabling those who are by nature specially qualified to undertake the
+higher branches of industrial work, to reach the position in which
+they may render that service to the community. If all our educational
+expenditure did nothing but pick one man of scientific or inventive
+genius, each year, from amidst the hewers of wood and drawers of
+water, and give him the chance of making the best of his inborn
+faculties, it would be a very good investment.  If there is one such
+child among the hundreds of thousands of our annual increase, it would
+be worth any money to drag him either from the slough of misery, or
+from the hotbed of wealth, and teach him to devote himself to the
+service of his people. Here, again, we have made a beginning with our
+scholarships and the like, and need only follow in the tracks already
+worn.
+
+The programme of industrial development briefly set forth in the
+preceding pages is not what Kant calls a "Hirngespinnst," a cobweb
+[235] spun in the brain of a Utopian philosopher. More or less of it
+has taken bodily shape in many parts of the country, and there are
+towns of no great size or wealth in the manufacturing districts
+(Keighley, for example) in which almost the whole of it has, for some
+time, been carried out, so far as the means at the disposal of the
+energetic and public-spirited men who have taken the matter in hand
+permitted. The thing can be done; I have endeavoured to show good
+grounds for the belief that it must be done, and that speedily, if we
+wish to hold our own in the war of industry. I doubt not that it will
+be done, whenever its absolute necessity becomes as apparent to all
+those who are absorbed in the actual business of industrial life as it
+is to some of the lookers on.
+
+Perhaps it is necessary for me to add that technical education is not
+here proposed as a panacea for social diseases, but simply as a
+medicament which will help the patient to pass through an imminent
+crisis.
+
+An ophthalmic surgeon may recommend an operation for cataract in a man
+who is going blind, without being supposed to undertake that it will
+cure him of gout. And I may pursue the metaphor so far as to remark,
+that the surgeon is justified in pointing out that a diet of
+pork-chops and burgundy will probably kill his patient, though he may
+be quite able to suggest a mode of living [236] which will free him
+from his constitutional disorder.
+
+Mr. Booth asks me, Why do you not propose some plan of your own?
+Really, that is no answer to my argument that his treatment will make
+the patient very much worse. [Note added in Social Diseases and Worse
+Remedies, January, 1891.]
+
+[237]
+
+
+          LETTERS TO THE "Times"
+
+                ON THE
+
+         "DARKEST ENGLAND SCHEME."
+
+                   I.
+
+The "Times," December 1st, 1890
+
+SIR: A short time ago a generous and philanthropic friend wrote to me,
+placing at my disposal a large sum of money for the furtherance of the
+vast scheme which the "General" of the Salvation Army has propounded,
+if I thought it worthy of support. The responsibility of advising my
+benevolent correspondent has weighed heavily upon me, but I felt that
+it would be cowardly, as well as ungracious, to refuse to accept it. I
+have therefore studied Mr. Booth's book with some care, for the
+purpose of separating the essential from the accessory features of his
+project, and I have based my judgment--I am sorry to say an
+unfavourable one--upon the data thus obtained. Before communicating my
+conclusions to my friend, however, I am desirous to know what there
+may be to be said in arrest of that judgment; [238] and the matter is
+of such vast public importance that I trust you will aid me by
+publishing this letter, notwithstanding its length.
+
+There are one or two points upon which I imagine all thinking men have
+arrived at the same convictions as those from which Mr. Booth starts.
+It is certain that there is an immense amount of remediable misery
+among us, that, in addition to the poverty, disease, and degradation
+which are the consequences of causes beyond human control, there is a
+vast, probably a very much larger, quantity of misery which is the
+result of individual ignorance, or misconduct, and of faulty social
+arrangements. Further, I think it is not to be doubted that, unless
+this remediable misery is effectually dealt with, the hordes of vice
+and pauperism will destroy modern civilization as effectually as
+uncivilized tribes of another kind destroyed the great social
+organization which preceded ours. Moreover, I think all will agree
+that no reforms and improvements will go to the root of the evil
+unless they attack it in its ultimate source--namely, the motives of
+the individual man. Honest, industrious, and self-restraining men will
+make a very bad social organization prosper; while vicious, idle, and
+reckless citizens will bring to ruin the best that ever was, or ever
+will be, invented.
+
+The leading propositions which are peculiar to Mr. Booth I take to be
+these:--
+
+[239] (1) That the only adequate means to such reformation of the
+individual man is the adoption of that form of somewhat corybantic
+Christianity of which the soldiers of the Salvation Army are the
+militant missionaries. This implies the belief that the excitement of
+the religious emotions (largely by processes described by their
+employers as "rousing" and "convivial") is a desirable and trustworthy
+method of permanently amending the conduct of mankind.
+
+I demur to these propositions. I am of opinion that the testimony of
+history, no less than the cool observation of that which lies within
+the personal experience of many of us, is wholly adverse to it.
+
+   (2) That the appropriate instrument for the propagation and
+maintenance of this peculiar sacramental enthusiasm is the Salvation
+Army--a body of devotees, drilled and disciplined as a military
+organization, and provided with a numerous hierarchy of officers,
+every one of whom is pledged to blind and unhesitating obedience to
+the "General," who frankly tells us that the first condition of the
+service is "implicit, unquestioning obedience." "A telegram from me
+will send any of them to the uttermost parts of the earth"; every one
+"has taken service on the express condition that he or she will obey,
+without questioning, or gainsaying, the orders from headquarters"
+("Darkest England," p. 243).
+
+[240] This proposition seems to me to be indisputable. History confirms
+it.  Francis of Assisi and Ignatius Loyola made their great
+experiments on the same principle. Nothing is more certain than that a
+body of religious enthusiasts (perhaps we may even say fanatics)
+pledged to blind obedience to their chief, is one of the most
+efficient instruments for effecting any purpose that the wit of man
+has yet succeeded in devising. And I can but admire the insight into
+human nature which has led Mr. Booth to leave his unquestioning and
+unhesitating instruments unbound by vows. A volunteer slave is worth
+ten sworn bondsmen.
+
+   (3) That the success of the Salvation Army, with its present force
+of 9416 officers "wholly engaged in the work," its capital of three
+quarters of a million, its income of the same amount, its 1375 corps
+at home, and 1499 in the colonies and foreign countries (Appendix, pp.
+3 and 4), is a proof that Divine assistance has been vouchsafed to its
+efforts.
+
+Here I am not able to agree with the sanguine Commander-in-chief of
+the new model, whose labours in creating it have probably interfered
+with his acquisition of information respecting the fate of previous
+enterprises of like kind.
+
+It does not appear to me that his success is in any degree more
+remarkable than that of Francis of Assisi or that of Ignatius Loyola,
+than that [241] of George Fox, or even than that of the Mormons, in
+our own time. When I observe the discrepancies of the doctrinal
+foundations from which each of these great movements set out, I find
+it difficult to suppose that supernatural aid has been given to all of
+them; still more, that Mr. Booth's smaller measure of success is
+evidence that it has been granted to him.
+
+But what became of the Franciscan experiment?* If there was one rule
+rather than another on which the founder laid stress, it was that his
+army of friars should be absolute mendicants, keeping themselves
+sternly apart from all worldly entanglements. Yet, even before the
+death of Francis, in 1226, a strong party, headed by Elias of Cortona,
+the deputy of his own appointment, began to hanker after these very
+things; and, within thirty years of that time, the Franciscans had
+become one of the most powerful, wealthy, and worldly corporations in
+Christendom, with their fingers in every sink of political and social
+corruption, if so be profit for the order could be fished out of it;
+their principal interest being to fight their rivals, the Dominicans,
+and to persecute such of their own brethren as were honest enough to
+try to carry out their founder's plainest injunctions. We also know
+what has become of Loyola's experiment. For two centuries the Jesuits
+have been the hope of the enemies of the Papacy; whenever it becomes
+too prosperous, they are sure to bring about a catastrophe by their
+corrupt use of the political and social influence which their
+organization and their wealth secure.
+
+    * See note pp. 245-247]
+
+[242] With these examples of that which may happen to institutions
+founded by noble men, with high aims, in the hands of successors of a
+different stamp, armed with despotic authority, before me, common
+prudence surely requires that, before advising the handing over of a
+large sum of money to the general of a new order of mendicants, I
+should ask what guarantee there is that, thirty years hence, the
+"General" who then autocratically controls the action, say, of 100,000
+officers pledged to blind obedience, distributed through the whole
+length and breadth of the poorer classes, and each with his finger on
+the trigger of a mine charged with discontent and religious
+fanaticism; with the absolute control, say, of eight or ten millions
+sterling of capital and as many of income; with barracks in every town,
+with estates scattered over the country, and with settlements in the
+colonies--will exercise his enormous powers, not merely honestly, but
+wisely? What shadow of security is there that the person who wields
+this uncontrolled authority over many thousands of men shall use it
+solely for those philanthropic and religious objects which, I do not
+doubt, are alone in the mind of Mr. Booth? Who is to say that the
+Salvation Army, in the year [243] 1920, shall not be a replica of what
+the Franciscan order had become in the year 1260?
+
+The personal character and the intentions of the founders of such
+organizations as we are considering count for very little in the
+formation of a forecast of their future; and if they did, it is no
+disrespect to Mr.  Booth to say that he is not the peer of Francis of
+Assisi. But if Francis's judgment of men was so imperfect as to permit
+him to appoint an ambitious intriguer of the stamp of Brother Elias
+his deputy, we have no right to be sanguine about the perspicacity of
+Mr. Booth in a like matter.
+
+Adding to all these considerations the fact that Mr. Llewelyn Davies,
+the warmth of whose philanthropy is beyond question, and in whose
+competency and fairness I, for one, place implicit reliance, flatly
+denies the boasted success of the Salvation Army in its professed
+mission, I have arrived at the conclusion that, as at present advised,
+I cannot be the instrument of carrying out my friend's proposal.
+
+Mr. Booth has pithily characterized certain benevolent schemes as
+doing sixpennyworth of good and a shilling's worth of harm. I grieve
+to say that, in my opinion, the definition exactly fits his own
+project. Few social evils are of greater magnitude than uninstructed
+and unchastened religious fanaticism; no personal habit more surely
+degrades the conscience and the intellect than [244] blind and
+unhesitating obedience to unlimited authority. Undoubtedly, harlotry
+and intemperance are sore evils, and starvation is hard to bear, or
+even to know of; but the prostitution of the mind, the soddening of
+the conscience, the dwarfing of manhood are worse calamities. It is a
+greater evil to have the intellect of a nation put down by organized
+fanaticism; to see its political and industrial affairs at the mercy
+of a despot whose chief thought is to make that fanaticism prevail; to
+watch the degradation of men, who should feel themselves individually
+responsible for their own and their country's fates, to mere brute
+instruments, ready to the hand of a master for any use to which he may
+put them.
+
+But that is the end to which, in my opinion, all such organizations as
+that to which kindly people, who do not look to the consequences of
+their acts, are now giving their thousands, inevitably tend. Unless
+clear proof that I am wrong is furnished, another thousand shall not
+be added by my instrumentality.
+
+              I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
+                                  T. H. Huxley.
+
+[245]
+
+                     NOTE.
+
+An authoritative contemporary historian, Matthew Paris, writes thus of
+the Minorite, or Franciscan, Friars in England in 1235, just nine
+years after the death of Francis of Assisi:--
+
+"At this time some of the Minorite brethren, as well as some of the
+Order of Preachers, unmindful of their profession and the restrictions
+of their order, impudently entered the territories of some noble
+monasteries, under pretense of fulfilling their duties of preaching,
+as if intending to depart after preaching the next day. Under pretence
+of sickness, or on some other pretext, however, they remained, and,
+constructing an altar of wood, they placed on it a consecrated stone
+altar, which they had brought with them, and clandestinely and in a
+low voice performed mass, and even received the confessions of many of
+the parishioners, to the prejudice of the priests.  And if by chance
+they were not satisfied with this, they broke forth in insults and
+threats, reviling every other order except their own, and asserting
+that all the rest were doomed to damnation, and that they would not
+spare the soles of their feet till they had exhausted the wealth of
+their opposers, however great it might be. The religious men,
+therefore, gave way to them in many points, yielding to avoid scandal,
+and offending those in power. For they were the councillors and
+messengers of the nobles, and even secretaries of the Pope, and
+therefore obtained much [246] secular favour. Some, however, finding
+themselves opposed by the Court of Rome, were restrained by obvious
+reasons, and went away in confusion; for the Supreme Pontiff, with a
+scowling look, said to them, 'What means this, my brethren?  To what
+lengths are you going? Have you not professed voluntary poverty, and
+that you would traverse towns and castles and distant places, as the
+case required, barefooted and unostentatiously, in order to preach the
+word of God in all humility? And do you now presume to usurp these
+estates to yourselves against the will of the lords of these fees?
+Your religion appears to be in a great measure dying away, and your
+doctrines to be confuted."
+
+Under date of 1243, Matthew writes:--
+
+"For three or four hundred years or more the monastic order did not
+hasten to destruction so quickly as their order [Minorites and
+Preachers] of whom now the brothers, twenty-four years having scarcely
+elapsed, had first built in England dwellings which rivalled regal
+palaces in height. These are they who daily expose to view their
+inestimable treasures, in enlarging their sumptuous edifices, and
+erecting lofty walls, thereby impudently transgressing the limits of
+their original poverty and violating the basis of their religion,
+according to the prophecy of German Hildegarde. When noblemen and rich
+men are at the point of death, whom they know to be possessed of great
+riches, they, in their love of gain, diligently urge them, to the
+injury and loss of the ordinary pastors, and extort confessions and
+hidden wills, lauding themselves and their own order only, [247] and
+placing themselves before all others. So no faithful man now believes
+he can be saved, except he is directed by the counsels of the
+Preachers and Minorites."--Matthew Paris's English History. Translated
+by the Rev. J. A.  Giles, 1889, Vol. I.
+
+
+                     II
+
+The "Times," December 9th, 1890
+
+Sir,--The purpose of my previous letter about Mr. Booth's scheme was
+to arouse the contributors to the military chest of the Salvation Army
+to a clear sense of what they are doing. I thought it desirable that
+they should be distinctly aware that they are setting up and endowing
+a sect, in many ways analogous to the "Ranters" and "Revivalists" of
+undesirable notoriety in former times; but with this immensely
+important difference, that it possesses a strong, far-reaching,
+centralized organization, the disposal of the physical, moral, and
+financial strength of which rests with an irresponsible chief, who,
+according to his own account, is assured of the blind obedience of
+nearly 10,000 subordinates. I wish them to ask themselves, Ought
+prudent men and good citizens to aid in the establishment of an
+organization which, under sundry, by no means improbable,
+contingencies, may easily become a worse and more [248] dangerous
+nuisance than the mendicant friars of the middle ages? If this is an
+academic question, I really do not know what questions deserve to be
+called practical. As you divined, I purposely omitted any
+consideration of the details of the Salvationist scheme, and of the
+principles which animate those who work it, because I desired that the
+public appreciation of the evils, necessarily inherent in all such
+plans of despotic social and religious regimentation should not be
+obscured by the raising of points of less comparative, however great
+absolute, importance.
+
+But it is now time to undertake a more particular criticism of
+"Darkest England." At the outset of my examination of that work, I was
+startled to find that Mr. Booth had put forward his scheme with an
+almost incredibly imperfect knowledge of what had been done and is
+doing in the same direction. A simple reader might well imagine that
+the author of "Darkest England" posed as the Columbus, or at any rate
+the Cortez, of that region.  "Go to Mudie's," he tells us, and you
+will be surprised to see how few books there are upon the social
+problem. That may or may not be correct; but if Mr. Booth had gone to
+a certain reading-room not far from Mudie's, I undertake to say that
+the well-informed and obliging staff of the national library in
+Bloomsbury would have provided him with more books on this topic, in
+almost all European languages, than he would [249] read in three
+months.  Has socialism no literature? And what is socialism but an
+incarnation of the social question? Moreover, I am persuaded that even
+"Mudie's" resources could have furnished Mr. Booth with the "Life of
+Lord Shaftesbury" and Carlyle's works. Mr. Booth seems to have
+undertaken to instruct the world without having heard of "Past and
+Present" or of "Latter-Day Pamphlets"; though, somewhat late in the
+day, a judicious friend calls his attention to them. To those of my
+contemporaries on whom, as on myself, Carlyle's writings on this topic
+made an ineffaceable impression forty years ago, who know that, for
+all that time, hundreds of able and devoted men, both clerical and
+lay, have worked heart and soul for the permanent amendment of the
+condition of the poor, Mr. Booth's "Go to Mudie's" affords an apt
+measure of the depth of his preliminary studies. However, I am bound
+to admit that these earlier labourers in the field laboured in such a
+different fashion, that the originality of the plan started by Mr.
+Booth remains largely unaffected. For them no drums have beat, no
+trombones brayed; no sanctified buffoonery, after the model of the
+oration of the Friar in Wallenstein's camp dear to the readers of
+Schiller, has tickled the ears of the groundlings on their behalf.
+Sadly behind the great age of rowdy self-advertisement in which their
+lot has fallen, they seem not to have advanced one whit [250] beyond
+John the Baptist and the Apostles, 1800 years ago, in their notions of
+the way in which the metanoia, the change of mind of the ill-doer, is
+to be brought about. Yet the new model was there, ready for the
+imitation of those ancient savers of souls. The ranting and roaring
+mystagogues of some of the most venerable of Greek and Syrian cults
+also had their processions and banners, their fifes and cymbals and
+holy chants, their hierarchy of officers to whom the art of making
+collections was not wholly unknown; and who, as freely as their modern
+imitators, promised an Elysian future to contributory converts. The
+success of these antique Salvation armies was enormous. Simon Magus
+was quite as notorious a personage, and probably had as strong a
+following as Mr. Booth. Yet the Apostles, with their old-fashioned
+ways, would not accept such a success as a satisfactory sign of the
+Divine sanction, nor depart from their own methods of leading the way
+to the higher life.
+
+I deem it unessential to verify Mr. Booth's statistics. The exact
+strength of the population of the realm of misery, be it one, two, or
+three millions, has nothing to do with the efficacy of any means
+proposed for the highly desirable end of reducing it to a minimum. The
+sole question for consideration at present is whether the scheme,
+keeping specially in view the spirit in which it is to be worked, is
+likely to do more good than harm.
+
+[251] Mr. Booth tells us, with commendable frankness, that "it is
+primarily and mainly for the sake of saving the soul that I seek the
+salvation of the body" (p. 45), which language, being interpreted,
+means that the propagation of the special Salvationist creed comes
+first, and the promotion of the physical, intellectual, and purely
+moral welfare of mankind second in his estimation. Men are to be made
+sober and industrious, mainly, that, as washed, shorn, and docile
+sheep, they may be driven into the narrow theological fold which Mr.
+Booth patronizes. If they refuse to enter, for all their moral
+cleanliness, they will have to take their place among the goats as
+sinners, only less dirty than the rest.
+
+I have been in the habit of thinking (and I believe the opinion is
+largely shared by reasonable men) that self-respect and thrift are the
+rungs of the ladder by which men may most surely climb out of the
+slough of despond of want; and I have regarded them as perhaps the
+most eminent of the practical virtues. That is not Mr. Booth's
+opinion. For him they are mere varnished sins--nothing better than
+"Pride re-baptised" (p. 46). Shutting his eyes to the necessary
+consequences of the struggle for life, the existence of which he
+accepts as fully as any Darwinian,* Mr. Booth tells men, whose evil
+case is one of those consequences, that envy is a corner-stone of our
+[252] competitive system. With thrift and self-respect denounced as
+sin, with the suffering of starving men referred to the sins of the
+capitalist, the gospel according to Mr. Booth may save souls, but it
+will hardly save society.
+
+    * See p. 100
+
+In estimating the social and political influence which the Salvation
+Army is likely to exert, it is important to reflect that the officers
+(pledged to blind obedience to their "General") are not to confine
+themselves to the functions of mere deacons and catechists (though,
+under a "General" like Cyril, Alexandria knew to her cost what even
+they could effect); they are to be "tribunes of the people," who are
+to act as their gratuitous legal advisers; and, when law is not
+sufficiently effective, the whole force of the army is to obtain what
+the said tribunes may conceive to be justice, by the practice of
+ruthless intimidation. Society, says Mr. Booth, needs "mothering"; and
+he sets forth, with much complacency, a variety of "cases," by which
+we may estimate the sort of "mothering" to be expected at his parental
+hands. Those who study the materials thus set before them will, I
+think, be driven to the conclusion that the "mother" has already
+proved herself a most unscrupulous meddler, even if she has not fallen
+within reach of the arm of the law.
+
+Consider this "case." A, asserting herself to have been seduced twice,
+"applied to our people. We hunted up the man, followed him to the
+country, [253] threatened him with public exposure, and forced from
+him the payment to his victim of [Pounds] 60 down, an allowance of
+[Pounds] 1 a week, and an insurance policy on his life for [Pounds]
+450 in her favour" (p. 222) .
+
+Jedburgh justice this. We "constitute ourselves prosecutor, judge,
+jury, sheriff's officer, all in one;" we "practice intimidation as
+deftly as if we were a branch of another League; and, under threat of
+exposure," we "extort a tolerably heavy hush-money in payment of our
+silence. "
+
+Well, really, my poor moral sense is unable to distinguish these
+remarkable proceedings of the new popular tribunate from what, in
+French, is called chantage and, in plain English, blackmailing. And
+when we consider that anybody, for any reason of jealousy, or personal
+spite, or party hatred, might be thus "hunted," "followed,"
+"threatened," and financially squeezed or ruined, without a particle
+of legal investigation, at the will of a man whom the familiar charged
+with the inquisitorial business dare not hesitate to obey, surely it
+is not unreasonable to ask how far does the Salvation Army, in its
+"tribune of the people" aspect, differ from a Sicilian Mafia? I am no
+apologist of men guilty of the acts charged against the person who
+yet, I think, might be as fairly called a "victim," in this case, as
+his partner in wrong-doing. It is possible that, in so peculiar a
+case, Solomon himself might have been puzzled [254] to apportion the
+relative moral delinquency of the parties. However that may be, the
+man was morally and legally bound to support his child, and any one
+would have been justified in helping the woman to her legal rights,
+and the man to the legal consequences (in which exposure is included)
+of his fault.
+
+The action of the "General" of the Salvation Army in extorting the
+heavy fine he chose to impose as the price of his silence, however
+excellent his motives, appears to me to be as immoral as, I hope, it
+is illegal.
+
+So much for the Salvation Army as a teacher of questionable ethics and
+of eccentric economics, as the legal adviser who recommends and
+practices the extraction of money by intimidation, as the fairy
+godmother who proposes to "mother" society, in a fashion which is not
+to my taste, however much it may commend itself to some of Mr. Booth's
+supporters.
+
+                  I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
+                                      T. H. Huxley.
+
+[255]
+
+
+                    III
+
+       The "Times," December 11th, 1890
+
+Sir,--When I first addressed you on the subject of the projected
+operations of the Salvation Army, all that I knew about that body was
+derived from the study of Mr. Booth's book, from common repute, and
+from occasional attention to the sayings and doings of his noisy
+squadrons, with which my walks about London, in past years, have made
+me familiar. I was quite unaware of the existence of evidence
+respecting the present administration of the Salvation forces, which
+would have enabled me to act upon the sagacious maxim of the American
+humourist, "Don't prophesy unless you know." The letter you were good
+enough to publish has brought upon me a swarm of letters and
+pamphlets.  Some favour me with abuse; some thoughtful correspondents
+warmly agree with me, and then proceed to point out how much worthier
+certain schemes of their own are of my friend's support; some send
+valuable encouragement, for which I offer my hearty thanks, and ask
+them to excuse any more special acknowledgment. But that which I find
+most to the purpose, just now, is the revelation made by some of the
+documents which have reached me, of a fact of which I was wholly
+ignorant--namely, that [256] persons who have faithfully and zealously
+served in the Salvation Army, who express unchanged attachment to its
+original principles and practice, and who have been in close official
+relations with the "General" have publicly declared that the process
+of degradation of the organization into a mere engine of fanatical
+intolerance and personal ambition, which I declared was inevitable,
+has already set in and is making rapid progress.
+
+It is out of the question, Sir, that I should occupy the columns of
+the "Times" with a detailed exposition and criticism of these pieces
+justificatives of my forecast. I say criticism, because the assertions
+of persons who have quitted any society must, in fairness, be taken
+with the caution that is required in the case of all ex parte
+statements of hostile witnesses. But it is, at any rate, a notable
+fact that there are parts of my first letter, indicating the inherent
+and necessary evil consequences of any such organization, which might
+serve for abstracts of portions of this evidence, long since printed
+and published under the public responsibility of the witnesses.
+
+Let us ask the attention of your readers, in the first place, to "An
+ex-Captain's Experience of the Salvation Army," by J. J. R. Redstone,
+the genuineness of which is guaranteed by the preface (dated April
+5th, 1888) which the Rev. Dr. Cunningham Geikie has supplied. Mr.
+Redstone's story is well worth reading on its own account.
+
+[257] Told in simple, direct language such as John Bunyan might have
+used, it permits no doubt of the single-minded sincerity of the man,
+who gave up everything to become an officer of the Salvation Army,
+but, exhibiting a sad want of that capacity for unhesitating and blind
+obedience on which Mr.  Booth lays so much stress, was thrown aside,
+penniless--no, I am wrong, with 2s. 4d. for his last week's salary--to
+shift, with his equally devoted wife, as he best might. I wish I could
+induce intending contributors to Mr.  Booth's army chest to read Mr.
+Redstone's story. I would particularly ask them to contrast the pure
+simplicity of his plain tale with the artificial pietism and
+slobbering unction of the letters which Mr. Ballington Booth addresses
+to his "dear boy" (a married man apparently older than himself), so
+long as the said "dear boy" is facing brickbats and starvation, as per
+order.
+
+I confess that my opinion of the chiefs of the Salvation Army has been
+so distinctly modified by the perusal of this pamphlet that I am glad
+to be relieved from the necessity of expressing it. It will be much
+better that I should cite a few sentences from the preface written by
+Dr. Cunningham Geikie, who expresses warm admiration for the early and
+uncorrupted work of the Salvation Army, and cannot possibly be accused
+of prejudice against it on religious grounds:--
+
+   (1) "The Salvation Army is emphatically a [258] family concern. Mr.
+Booth, senior, is General; one son is chief of the staff, and the
+remaining sons and daughters engross the other chief positions. It is
+Booth all over; indeed, like the sun in your eyes, you can see nothing
+else wherever you turn. And, as Dr. Geikie shrewdly remarks, 'to be
+the head of a widely spread sect carries with it many advantages--not
+all exclusively spiritual.'"
+
+   (2) "Whoever becomes a Salvation officer is henceforth a slave,
+helplessly exposed to the caprice of his superiors."
+
+"Mr. Redstone bore an excellent character both before he entered the
+army and when he left it. To join it, though a married man, he gave up
+a situation which he had held for five years, and he served Mr. Booth
+two years, working hard in most difficult posts. His one fault, Major
+Lawley tells us, was, that he was 'too straight'--that is, too honest,
+truthful, and manly--or, in other words, too real a Christian. Yet
+without trial, without formulated charges, on the strength of secret
+complaints which were never, apparently, tested, he was dismissed with
+less courtesy than most people would show a beggar--with 2s. 4d. for
+his last week's salary. If there be any mistake in this matter, I
+shall be glad to learn it."
+
+   (3) Dr. Geikie confirms, on the ground of information given
+confidentially by other officers, [259] Mr. Redstone's assertion that
+they are watched and reported by spies from headquarters.
+
+   (4) Mr. Booth refuses to guarantee his officers any fixed amount of
+salary. While he and his family of high officials live in comfort, if
+not in luxury, the pledged slaves whose devotion is the foundation of
+any true success the Army has met with often have "hardly food enough
+to sustain life. One good fellow frankly told me that when he had
+nothing he just went and begged."
+
+At this point, it is proper that I should interpose an apology for
+having hastily spoken of such men as Francis of Assisi, even for
+purposes of warning, in connection with Mr. Booth. Whatever may be
+thought of the wisdom of the plans of the founders of the great
+monastic orders of the middle ages, they took their full share of
+suffering and privation, and never shirked in their own persons the
+sacrifices they imposed on their followers.
+
+I have already expressed the opinion, that whatever the ostensible
+purpose of the scheme under discussion, one of its consequences will
+be the setting up and endowment of a new Ranter-Socialist sect. I may
+now add that another effect will be--indeed, has been--to set up and
+endow the Booth dynasty with unlimited control of the physical, moral,
+and financial resources of the sect. Mr. Booth is already a printer
+and publisher, who, it is plainly declared, utilizes the officers of
+the [260] Army as agents for advertising and selling his publications;
+and some of them are so strongly impressed with the belief that active
+pushing of Mr. Booth's business is the best road to their master's
+favour, that when the public obstinately refuse to purchase his papers
+they buy them themselves and send the proceeds to headquarters. Mr.
+Booth is also a retail trader on a large scale, and the Dean of Wells
+has, most seasonably, drawn attention to the very notable banking
+project which he is trying to float. Any one who follows Dean
+Plumptre's clear exposition of the principles of this financial
+operation can have little doubt that, whether they are, or are not,
+adequate to the attainment of the first and second of Mr. Booth's
+ostensible objects, they may be trusted to effect a wide extension of
+any kingdom in which worldly possessions are of no value. We are, in
+fact, in sight of a financial catastrophe like that of Law a century
+ago. Only it is the poor who will suffer.
+
+I have already occupied too much of your space, and yet I have drawn
+upon only one of the sources of information about the inner working of
+the Salvation Army at my disposition. Far graver charges than any here
+dealt with are publicly brought in the others.
+
+                   I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
+                                       T. H. Huxley.
+
+[261] P.S.-- I have just read Mr. Buchanan's letter in the Times of
+to-day.  Mr. Buchanan is, I believe, an imaginative writer. I am not
+acquainted with his works, but nothing in the way of fiction he has
+yet achieved can well surpass his account of my opinions and of the
+purport of my writings.
+
+
+
+                     IV
+
+The "Times" December 20th, 1890
+
+Sir,--In discussing Mr. Booth's projects I have hitherto left in the
+background a distinction which must be kept well in sight by those who
+wish to form a fair judgment of the influence, for good or evil, of
+the Salvation Army. Salvationism, the work of "saving souls" by
+revivalist methods, is one thing; Boothism, the utilization of the
+workers for the furtherance of Mr.  Booth's peculiar projects, is
+another. Mr. Booth has captured, and harnessed with sharp bits and
+effectual blinkers, a multitude of ultra-Evangelical missionaries of
+the revivalist school who were wandering at large. It is this
+skilfully, if somewhat mercilessly, driven team which has dragged the
+"General's" coach-load of projects into their present position.
+
+[262] Looking, then, at the host of Salvationists proper, from the
+"captains" downwards (to whom, in my judgment, the family hierarchy
+stands in the relation of the Old Man of the Sea to Sinbad), as an
+independent entity, I desire to say that the evidence before me,
+whether hostile or friendly to the General and his schemes, is
+distinctly favourable to them.  It exhibits them as, in the main,
+poor, uninstructed, not unfrequently fanatical, enthusiasts, the
+purity of whose lives, the sincerity of whose belief, and the
+cheerfulness of whose endurance of privation and rough usage, in what
+they consider a just cause, command sincere respect. For my part,
+though I conceive the corybantic method of soul-saving to be full of
+dangers, and though the theological speculations of these good people
+are to me wholly unacceptable, yet I believe that the evils which must
+follow in the track of such errors, as of all other errors, will be
+largely outweighed by the moral and social improvement of the people
+whom they convert. I would no more raise my voice against them (so
+long as they abstain from annoying their neighbours) than I would
+quarrel with a man, vigorously sweeping out a stye, on account of the
+shape of his broom, or because he made a great noise over his work. I
+have always had a strong faith in the principle of the injunction,
+"Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn." If a
+kingdom is worth a Mass, as a great [263] ruler said, surely the reign
+of clean living, industry, and thrift is worth any quantity of
+tambourines and eccentric doctrinal hypotheses. All that I have
+hitherto said, and propose further to say, is directed against Mr.
+Booth's extremely clever, audacious, and hitherto successful attempt
+to utilize the credit won by all this honest devotion and
+self-sacrifice for the purposes of his socialistic autocracy.
+
+I now propose to bring forward a little more evidence as to how things
+really stand where Mr. Booth's system has had a fair trial. I obtain
+it, mainly, from a curious pamphlet, the title of which runs: "The New
+Papacy.  Behind the Scenes in the Salvation Army," by an ex-Staff
+Officer. "Make not my Father's house a house of merchandise" (John ii.
+16). 1889. Published at Toronto, by A. Britnell. On the cover it is
+stated that "This is the book which was burned by the authorities of
+the Salvation Army." I remind the reader, once more, that the
+statements which I shall cite must be regarded as ex parte; all I can
+vouch for is that, on grounds of internal evidence and from other
+concurrent testimony respecting the ways of the Booth hierarchy, I
+feel justified in using them.
+
+This is the picture the writer draws of the army in the early days of
+its invasion of the Dominion of Canada:--
+
+[264] "Then, it will be remembered, it professed to be the humble
+handmaid of the existing churches; its professed object was the
+evangelization of the masses. It repudiated the idea of building up a
+separate religious body, and it denounced the practice of gathering
+together wealth and the accumulation of property. Men and women other
+than its own converts gathered around it and threw themselves heart
+and soul into the work, for the simple reason that it offered, as they
+supposed, a more extended and widely open field for evangelical
+effort. Ministers everywhere were invited and welcomed to its
+platforms, majors and colonels were few and far between, and the
+supremacy and power of the General were things unknown . . .  Care was
+taken to avoid anything like proselytism; its converts were never
+coerced into joining its ranks...  In a word, the organization
+occupied the position of an auxiliary mission and recruiting agency
+for the various religious bodies.... The meetings were crowded, people
+professed conversion by the score, the public liberally supplied the
+means to carry on the work in their respective communities; therefore
+every corps was wholly self-supporting, its officers were properly, if
+not luxuriously, cared for, the local expenditure was amply provided,
+and, under the supervision of the secretary, a local member, and the
+officer in charge, the funds were disbursed in the towns where they
+were collected, and the [265] spirit of satisfaction and confidence
+was mutual all around" (pp. 4, 5).
+
+Such was the army as the green tree. Now for the dry:--
+
+"Those who have been daily conversant with the army's machinery are
+well aware how entirely and radically the whole system has changed,
+and how, from a band of devoted and disinterested workers, united in
+the bonds of zeal and charity for the good of their fellows, it has
+developed into a colossal and aggressive agency for the building up of
+a system and a sect, bound by rules and regulations altogether
+subversive of religious liberty and antagonistic to every (other?)
+branch of Christian endeavour, and bound hand and foot to the will of
+one supreme head and ruler.... As the work has spread through the
+country, and as the area of its endeavours has enlarged, each leading
+position has been filled, one after the other, by individuals strangers
+to the country, totally ignorant of the sentiments and idiosyncrasies
+of the Canadian people, trained in one school under the teachings and
+dominance of a member of the Booth family, and out of whom every idea
+has been crushed, except that of unquestioning obedience to the
+General, and the absolute necessity of going forward to his bidding
+without hesitation or question" (p. 6).
+
+[266] "What is the result of all this? In the first place, whilst
+material prosperity has undoubtedly been attained, spirituality has
+been quenched, and, as an evangelical agency, the army has become
+almost a dead letter...  In seventy-five per cent of its stations its
+officers suffer need and privation, chiefly on account of the heavy
+taxation that is placed upon them to maintain an imposing headquarters
+and a large ornamental staff. The whole financial arrangements are
+carried on by a system of inflation and a hand-to-mouth extravagance
+and blindness as to future contingencies. Nearly all of its original
+workers and members have disappeared" (p. 7). "In reference to the
+religious bodies at large the army has become entirely antagonistic.
+Soldiers are forbidden by its rules to attend other places of worship
+without the permission of their officers...  Officers or soldiers who
+may conscientiously leave the service or the ranks are looked upon and
+often denounced publicly as backsliders...  Means of the most
+despicable description have been resorted to in order to starve them
+back to the service" (p. 8). "In its inner workings the army system is
+identical with Jesuitism...  That 'the end justifies the means,' if
+not openly taught, is as tacitly agreed as in that celebrated order"
+(p. 9).
+
+Surely a bitter, overcharged, anonymous libel, is the reflection which
+will occur to many who read [267] these passages, especially the last.
+Well, I turn to other evidence which, at any rate, is not anonymous.
+It is contained in a pamphlet entitled "General Booth, the Family, and
+the Salvation Army, showing its Rise, Progress, and Moral and
+Spiritual Decline," by S. H.  Hodges, LL.B., late Major in the Army,
+and formerly private secretary to General Booth (Manchester, 1890). I
+recommend potential contributors to Mr.  Booth's wealth to study this
+little work also. I have learned a great deal from it. Among other
+interesting novelties, it tells me that Mr. Booth has discovered "the
+necessity of a third step or blessing, in the work of Salvation. He
+said to me one day, 'Hodges, you have only two barrels to your gun; I
+have three'" (p. 31). And if Mr. Hodges's description of this third
+barrel is correct--"giving up your conscience" and, "for God and the
+army, stooping to do things which even honourable worldly men would
+not consent to do" (p. 32)--it is surely calculated to bring down a
+good many things, the first principles of morality among them.
+
+Mr. Hodges gives some remarkable examples of the army practice with
+the "General's" new rifle. But I must refer the curious to his
+instructive pamphlet. The position I am about to take up is a serious
+one; and I prefer to fortify it by the help of evidence which, though
+some of it may be anonymous, cannot be sneered away. And I shall [268]
+be believed, when I say that nothing but a sense of the great social
+danger of the spread of Boothism could induce me to revive a scandal,
+even though it is barely entitled to the benefit of the Statute of
+Limitations.
+
+On the 7th of July, 1883, you, Sir, did the public a great service by
+writing a leading article on the notorious "Eagle" case, from which I
+take the following extract:--
+
+"Mr. Justice Kay refused the application, but he was induced to refuse
+it by means which, as Mr. Justice Stephen justly remarked, were highly
+discreditable to Mr. Booth. Mr. Booth filed an affidavit which appears
+totally to have misled Mr. Justice Kay, as it would have misled any one
+who regarded it as a frank and honest statement by a professed teacher
+of religion."
+
+When I addressed my first letter to you I had never so much as heard of
+the "Eagle" scandal. But I am thankful that my perception of the
+inevitable tendency of all religious autocracies towards evil was
+clear enough to bring about a provisional condemnation of Mr. Booth's
+schemes in my mind.  Supposing that I had decided the other way, with
+what sort of feeling should I have faced my friend, when I had to
+confess that the money had passed into the absolute control of a
+person about the character of whose administration this [269]
+concurrence of damnatory evidence was already extant?
+
+I have nothing to say about Mr. Booth personally, for I know nothing.
+On that subject, as on several others, I profess myself an agnostic.
+But, if he is, as he may be, a saint actuated by the purest of
+motives, he is not the first saint who, as you have said, has shown
+himself "in the ardour of prosecuting a well-meant object" to be
+capable of overlooking "the plain maxims of every-day morality." If I
+were a Salvationist soldier, I should cry with Othello, "Cassio, I
+love thee; but never more be officer of mine."
+
+               I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
+                                   T. H. Huxley.
+
+
+
+                       V
+
+The "Times," December 24th, 1890--
+
+Sir,--If I have any strong points, finance is certainly not one of
+them. But the financial, or rather fiscal, operations of the General
+of the Salvation Army, as they are set forth and exemplified in "The
+New Papacy," possess that grand simplicity which is the mark of
+genius; [270] and even I can comprehend them--or, to be more modest, I
+can portray them in such a manner that every lineament, however harsh,
+and every shade, however dark, can be verified by published evidence.
+
+Suppose there is a thriving, expanding colonial town, and that,
+scattered among its artisans and labourers, there is a sprinkling of
+Methodists, or other such ultra-evangelical good people, doing their
+best, in a quiet way, to "save souls." Clearly, this is an outpost
+which it is desirable to capture. "We," therefore, take measures to
+get up a Salvation "boom" of the ordinary pattern. Enthusiasm is
+roused. A score or two of soldiers are enlisted into the ranks of the
+Salvation Army. "We" select the man who promises to serve our purposes
+best, make a "captain" of him, and put him in command of the "corps."
+He is very pleased and grateful; and indeed he ought to be. All he has
+done is that he has given up his trade; that he has promised to work
+at least nine hours a day in our service (none of your eight-hour
+nonsense for us) as collector, bookseller, general agent, and anything
+else we may order him to be. "We," on the other hand, guarantee him
+nothing whatever; to do so might weaken his faith and substitute
+worldly for spiritual ties between us. Knowing that, if he exerts
+himself in a right spirit, his labours will surely be blessed, we
+content ourselves with telling him that if, after all [271] expenses
+are paid and our demands are satisfied each week, 25s. remains, he may
+take it. And, if nothing remains, he may take that, and stay his
+stomach with what the faithful may give him.  With a certain grim
+playfulness, we add that the value of these contributions will be
+reckoned as so much salary. So long as our "captain" is successful,
+therefore, a beneficent spring of cash trickles unseen into our
+treasury; when it begins to dry up we say, "God bless you, dear boy,"
+turn him adrift (with or without 2s. 4d. in his pocket), and put some
+other willing horse in the shafts.
+
+The "General," I believe, proposes, among other things, to do away
+with "sweating." May he not as well set a good example by beginning at
+home? My little sketch, however, looks so like a monstrous caricature
+that, after all, I must produce the original from the pages of my
+Canadian authority. He says that a "captain" "has to pay 10 per cent.
+of all collections and donations to the divisional fund for the
+support of his divisional officer, who has also the privilege of
+arranging for such special meetings as he shall think fit, the
+proceeds of which he takes away for the general needs of the division.
+Headquarters, too, has the right to hold such special meetings at the
+corps and send around such special attractions as its wisdom sees fit,
+and to take away the proceeds for the purposes it decides upon.
+
+[272] He has to pay the rent of his building, either to headquarters or
+a private individual; he has to send the whole collection of the
+afternoon meeting of the first Sunday in the month to the 'Extension
+Fund' at headquarters; he has to pay for the heating, lighting, and
+cleaning of his hall, together with such necessary repairs as may be
+needed; he has to provide the food, lodging, and clothing of his
+cadet, if he has one; headquarters taxes him with so many copies of
+the army papers each week, for which he has to pay, sold or unsold;
+and when he has done this, he may take $6 (or $5, being a woman), or
+such proportion of it as may be left, with which to clothe and feed
+himself and to pay the rent and provide for the heating and lighting
+of his quarters. If he has a lieutenant he has to pay him $6 per week,
+or such proportion of it as he himself gets, and share the house
+expenses with him. Now, it will be easily understood that at least 60
+per cent. of the stations in Canada the officer gets no money at all,
+and he has to beg specially amongst his people for his house-rent and
+food. There are few places in the Dominion in which the soldiers do
+not find their officers in all the food they need; but it must be
+remembered that the value of the food so received has to be accounted
+for at headquarters and entered upon the books of the corps as cash
+received, the amount being deducted from any moneys that the officer
+is able to take from the [273] week's collections. So that, no matter
+how much may be specially given, the officer cannot receive more than
+the value of $6 per week. The officer cannot collect any arrears of
+salary, as each week has to pay its own expenses; and if there is any
+surplus cash after all demands are met it must be sent to the 'war
+chest' at headquarters."--"The New Papacy" (pp. 35, 36).
+
+Evidently, Sir, "headquarters" has taken to heart the injunction about
+casting your bread upon the waters. It casts the crumb of a day or
+two's work of an emissary, and gets back any quantity of loaves of
+cash, so long as "captains" present themselves to be used up and
+replaced by new victims.  What can be said of these devoted poor
+fellows except, O sancta simplicitas!
+
+But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the money-gathering
+efficacy of Mr. Booth's fiscal agencies is exhausted by the foregoing
+enumeration of their regular operations. Consider the following
+edifying history of the "Rescue Home" in Toronto:--
+
+"It is a fine building in the heart of the city; the lot cost $7,000,
+and a building was put up at a cost of $7,000 more, and there is a
+mortgage on it amounting to half the cost of the whole. The land
+to-day would probably fetch double its original price, and every year
+enhances its value....In the first five months of its [274] existence
+this institution received from the public an income of $1,812 70c.;
+out of this $600 was paid to headquarters for rent, $590 52c. was
+spent upon the building in various ways, and the balance of $622 18c.
+paid the salaries of the staff and supported the inmates" (pp. 24,
+25).
+
+Said I not truly that Mr. Booth's fisc bears the stamp of genius? Who
+else could have got the public to buy him a "corner lot," put a
+building upon it, pay all its working expenses: and then, not content
+with paying him a heavy rent for the use of the handsome present they
+had made him, they say not a word against his mortgaging it to half
+its value? And, so far as any one knows, there is nothing to stop
+headquarters from selling the whole estate tomorrow, and using the
+money as the "General" may direct.
+
+Once more listen to the author of "The New Papacy," who affirms that
+"out of the funds given by the Dominion for the evangelization of the
+people by means of the Salvation Army, one sixth had been spent in the
+extension of the Kingdom of God, and the other five sixths had been
+invested in valuable property, all handed over to Mr. Booth and his
+heirs and assigns, as we have already stated" (p. 26).
+
+And this brings me to the last point upon which I wish to touch. The
+answer to all inquiries as to what has become of the enormous [275]
+personal and real estate which has been given over to Mr. Booth is
+that it is held "in trust." The supporters of Mr. Booth may feel
+justified in taking that statement "on trust." I do not. Anyhow, the
+more completely satisfactory this "trust" is, the less can any man who
+asks the public to put blind faith in his integrity and his wisdom
+object to acquaint them exactly with its provisions. Is the trust
+drawn up in favour of the Salvation Army? But what is the legal status
+of the Salvation Army? Have the soldiers any claim?  Certainly not.
+Have the officers any legal interest in the "trust"? Surely not. The
+"General" has taken good care to insist on their renouncing all claims
+as a condition of their appointment. Thus, to all appearance, the
+army, as a legal person, is identical with Mr. Booth. And, in that
+case, any "trust" ostensibly for the benefit of the army is--what
+shall we say that is at once accurate and polite?
+
+I conclude with these plain questions--Will Mr. Booth take counsel's
+opinion as to whether there is anything in such legal arrangements as
+he has at present made which prevents him from disposing of the wealth
+he has accumulated at his own will and pleasure? Will anybody be in a
+position to set either the civil or the criminal law in motion against
+him or his successors if he or they choose to spend every farthing in
+ways very different from those contemplated by the donors?
+
+[276] I may add that a careful study of the terms of a "Declaration of
+Trust by William Booth in favour of the Christian Mission," made in
+1878, has not enabled persons of much greater competence than myself
+to answer these questions satisfactorily.*
+
+                 I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
+                                     T. H. Huxley.
+
+    * See Preface to this volume, pp. ix-xiii.
+
+On December 24th a letter appeared in the "Times" signed "J. S.
+Trotter," in which the following passages appear:--
+
+"It seems a pity to put a damper on the spirits of those who agree
+with Professor Huxley in his denunciation of General Booth and all his
+works. May I give a few particulars as to the 'book' which was
+published in Canada? I had the pleasure of an interview with the
+author of a book written in Canada. The book was printed at Toronto,
+and two copies only struck off by the printers; one of these copies
+was stolen from the printer, and the quotation sent to you by
+Professor Huxley was inserted in the book, and is consequently a
+forgery. The book was published without the consent and against the
+will of the author.
+
+[277] "So the quotation is not only 'a bitter, overcharged anonymous
+libel,' as Professor Huxley intimates, but a forgery as well. As to
+Mr. Hodges, it seems to me to be simply trifling with your readers to
+bring him in as an authority. He was turned out of the army, out of
+kindness taken on again, and again dismissed. If this had happened to
+one of your staff, would his opinion of the 'Times' as a newspaper be
+taken for gospel?"
+
+But in the "Times" of December 29th Mr. J. S. Trotter writes:--
+
+"I find I was mistaken in saying, in my letter of Wednesday, to the
+'Times' that Mr. Hodges was dismissed from the service of General
+Booth, and regret any inconvenience the statement may have caused to
+Mr. Hodges."
+
+And on December 30th the "Times" published a letter from Mr. Hodges in
+which he says that Mr. Trotter's statements as they regard himself
+"are the very reverse of truth.--I was never turned out of the
+Salvation Army. Nor, so far as I was made acquainted with General
+Booth's motives, was I taken on again out of kindness. In order to
+rejoin the Salvation Army, I resigned the position of manager in a
+mill where I was in [278] receipt of a salary of [Pounds] 250 per
+annum, with house-rent and one third of the profits. Instead of this
+Mr. Booth allowed me [Pounds] 2 per week and house-rent."
+
+
+
+                 VI
+
+The "Times," December 26th, 1890
+
+Sir,--I am much obliged to Mr. J. S. Trotter for the letter which you
+published this morning. It furnishes evidence, which I much desired to
+possess on the following points:--
+
+   1. The author of "The New Papacy" is a responsible, trustworthy
+person; otherwise Mr. Trotter would not speak of having had "the
+pleasure of an interview" with him.
+
+   2. After this responsible person had taken the trouble to write a
+pamphlet of sixty-four closely printed pages, some influence was
+brought to bear upon him, the effect of which was that he refused his
+consent to its publication. Mr. Trotter's excellent information will
+surely enable him to tell us what influence that was.
+
+   3. How does Mr. Trotter know that any passage I have quoted is an
+interpolation? Does he possess that other copy of the "two" which
+alone, as he affirms, were printed?
+
+[279] 4. If so, he will be able to say which of the passages I have
+cited is genuine and which is not; and whether the tenor of the whole
+uninterpolated copy differs in any important respect from that of the
+copy I have quoted.
+
+It will be interesting to hear what Mr. J. S. Trotter has to say upon
+these points. But the really important thing which he has done is that
+he has testified, of his own knowledge, that the anonymous author of
+"The New Papacy" is no mere irresponsible libeller, but a person of
+whom even an ardent Salvationist has to speak with respect.
+
+            I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
+                                T. H. Huxley.
+
+[I may add that the unfortunate Mr. Trotter did me the further service
+of eliciting the letter from Mr. Hodges referred to on p. 277--which
+sufficiently establishes that gentleman's credit, and leads me to
+attach full weight to his evidence about the third barrel.]
+
+     January, 1891.
+
+[280]
+
+
+                  VII
+
+The "Times," December 27th, 1890
+
+SIR,--In making use of the only evidence of the actual working of Mr.
+Booth's autocratic government accessible to me, I was fully aware of
+the slippery nature of the ground upon which I was treading. For, as I
+pointed out in my first letter, "no personal habit more surely
+degrades the conscience and the intellect than blind and unhesitating
+obedience to unlimited authority." Now we have it, on Mr. Booth's own
+showing that every officer of his has undertaken to "obey without
+questioning or gainsaying the orders from headquarters." And the
+possible relations of such orders to honour and veracity are
+demonstrated not only by the judicial deliverance on Mr. Booth's
+affidavit in the "Eagle" case, which I have already cited; not only by
+Mr. Bramwell Booth's admission before Mr. Justice Lopes that he had
+stated what was "not quite correct" because he had "promised Mr. Stead
+not to divulge" the facts of the case (the "Times," November 4th,
+1885); but by the following passage in Mr. Hodges's account of the
+reasons of his withdrawal from the Salvation Army:--
+
+"The general and Chief did not and could [281] not deny doing these
+things; the only question was this, Was it right to practise this
+deception? These points of difference were fully discussed between
+myself and the Chief of the Staff on my withdrawal, especially the
+Leamington incident, which was the one that finally drove me to
+decision. I had come to the conclusion, from the first, that they had
+acted as they supposed with a single eye to the good of God's cause,
+and had persuaded myself that the things were, as against the devil,
+right to be done, that as in battle one party captured and turned the
+enemy's own guns upon them, so, as they were fighting against the
+devil, it would be fair to use against him his weapons. And I wrote to
+this effect to the "General" (p. 63)."
+
+Now, I do not wish to say anything needlessly harsh, but I ask any
+prudent man these questions. Could I, under these circumstances, trust
+any uncorroborated statement emanating from headquarters, or made by
+the General's order? Had I any reason to doubt the truth of Mr.
+Hodges's naive confession of the corrupting influence of Mr. Booth's
+system? And did it not behove me to pick my way carefully through the
+mass of statements before me, many of them due to people whose moral
+sense might, by possibility, have been as much blunted by the army
+discipline in the [282] use of the weapons of the devil as Mr. Hodges
+affirms that his was?
+
+Therefore, in my third letter, I commenced my illustrations of the
+practical working of Boothism with the evidence of Mr. Redstone,
+fortified and supplemented by that of a non-Salvationist, Dr.
+Cunningham Geikie. That testimony has not been challenged, and, until
+it is, I shall assume that it cannot be. In my fourth letter, I cited
+a definite statement by Mr. Hodges in evidence of the Jesuitical
+principles of headquarters. What sort of answer is it to tell us that
+Mr. Hodges was dismissed the army? A child might expect that some such
+red herring would be drawn across the trail; and, in anticipation of
+the stale trick, I added the strong prima facie evidence of the
+trustworthiness of my witness, in this particular, which is afforded
+by the "Eagle" case. It was not until I wrote my fourth letter to you,
+Sir--until the exploitation of the "captains" and the Jesuitry of
+headquarters could be proved up to the hilt--that I ventured to have
+recourse to "The New Papacy." So far as the pamphlet itself goes, this
+is an anonymous work; and, for sufficient reasons, I did not choose to
+go beyond what was to be found between its covers. To any one
+accustomed to deal with the facts of evolution, the Boothism of "The
+New Papacy" was merely the natural and necessary development of the
+Boothism of Mr. Redstone's case and of the [283] "Eagle" case.
+Therefore, I felt fully justified in using it, at the same time
+carefully warning my readers that it must be taken with due caution.
+
+Mr. Trotter's useful letter admits that such a book was written by a
+person with whom he had the "pleasure of an interview," and that a
+version of it (interpolated, according to his assertion) was published
+against the will of the author. Hence I am justified in believing that
+there is a foundation of truth in certain statements, some of which
+have long been in my possession, but which for lack of Mr. Trotter's
+valuable corroboration I have refrained from using. The time is come
+when I can set forth some of the heads of this information, with the
+request that Mr. Trotter, who knows all about the business, will be so
+good as to point out any error that there may be in them. I am bound
+to suppose that his sole object, like mine, is the elucidation of the
+truth, and to assume his willingness to help me therein to the best of
+his ability.
+
+   1. "The author of 'The New Papacy' is a Mr. Sumner, a person of
+perfect respectability, and greatly esteemed in Toronto, who held a
+high position in the Army. When he left, a large public meeting,
+presided over by a popular Methodist minister, passed a vote of
+sympathy with him."
+
+[284] Is this true or false?
+
+   2. "On Saturday last, about noon, Mr. Sumner, the author of the
+book, and Mr. Fred Perry, the Salvation Army printer, accompanied by a
+lawyer, went down to Messrs. Imrie and Graham's establishment, and
+asked for all the manuscript, stereotype plates, &c., of the book. Mr.
+Sumner explained that the book had been sold to the Army, and, on a
+cheque for the amount due being given, the printing material was
+delivered up."
+
+Did these paragraphs appear in the "Toronto Telegram" of April 24th,
+1889, or did they not? Are the statements they contain true or false?
+
+3. "Public interest in the fate or probable outcome of that mysterious
+book called 'The New Papacy; or, Behind the Scenes in the Salvation
+Army,' continues unabated, though the line of proceedings by the
+publisher and his solicitor, Mr. Smoke, of Watson, Thorne, Smoke, and
+Masten, has not been altered since yesterday. The book, no doubt, will
+be issued in some form. So far as known, only one complete copy
+remains, and the whereabouts of this is a secret which will be
+profoundly kept. It is safe to say that if the Commissioner kept on
+guessing until the next anniversary, he would not strike the secluded
+[285] location of the one volume among five thousand which escaped,
+when he and his assistant, Mr. Fred Perry, believed they had cast
+every vestige of the forbidden work into the fiery furnace. On Tuesday
+last, when the discovery was made that a copy of 'The New Papacy' was
+in existence, Publisher Britnell, of Yonge Street, was at once the
+suspected holder, and in a short time his book-store was the resort of
+army agents sent to reconnoitre" ("Toronto News," April 28th, 1889).
+
+Is this a forgery, or is it not? Is it in substance true or false?
+
+When Mr. Trotter has answered these inquiries categorically, we may
+proceed to discuss the question of interpolations in Mr. Sumner's
+book.
+
+          I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
+                              T. H. Huxley.
+
+[On the 26th of December a letter, signed J. T. Cunningham, late Fellow of
+University College, Oxford, called forth the following commentary.]
+
+[286]
+
+
+
+                VIII
+
+The "Times," December 29th, 1890--
+
+Sir,--If Mr. Cunningham doubts the efficacy of the struggle for
+existence, as a factor in social conditions, he should find fault with
+Mr. Booth and not with me.
+
+"I am labouring under no delusion as to the possibility of inaugurating
+the millennium by my social specific. In the struggle of life the
+weakest will go to the wall, and there are so many weak. The fittest
+in tooth and claw will survive. All that we can do is to soften the
+lot of the unfit, and make their suffering less horrible than it is at
+present" ("In Darkest England," p. 44).
+
+That is what Mr. Cunningham would have found if he had read Mr. Booth's
+book with attention. And, if he will bestow equal pains on my second
+letter, he will discover that he has interpolated the word "wilfully"
+in his statement of my "argument," which runs thus: "Shutting his eyes
+to the necessary consequences of the struggle for life, the existence
+of which he admits as fully as any Darwinian, Mr. Booth tells men
+whose evil case is one of those consequences that envy is a
+corner-stone of our competitive system." Mr.  [287] Cunningham's
+physiological studies will have informed him that the process of
+"shutting the eyes," in the literal sense of the words, is not always
+wilful; and I propose to illustrate, by the crucial instance his own
+letter furnishes, that the "shutting of the eyes" of the mind to the
+obvious consequences of accepted propositions may also be involuntary.
+At least, I hope so.
+
+   1. "Sooner or later," says Mr. Cunningham, "the population problem
+will block the way once more." What does this mean, except that
+multiplication, excessive in relation to the contemporaneous means of
+support, will create a severe competition for those means? And this
+seems to me to be a pretty accurate "reflection of the conceptions of
+Malthus" and the other poor benighted folks of a past generation at
+whom Mr. Cunningham sneers.
+
+   2. By way of leaving no doubt upon this subject, Mr. Cunningham
+further tells us, "The struggle for existence is always going on, of
+course; let us thank Darwin for making us realize it." It is pleasant
+to meet with a little gratitude to Darwin among the epigoni who are
+squabbling over the heritage he conquered for them, but Mr.
+Cunningham's personal expression of that feeling is hasty. For it is
+obvious that he has not "realized" the significance of Darwin's
+teaching--indeed, I fail to discover in Mr.  Cunningham's letter any
+sign that he has even "realized" what [288] he would be at. If the
+"struggle for existence is always going on"; and if, as I suppose will
+be granted, industrial competition is one phase of that struggle, I
+fail to see how my conclusion that it is sheer wickedness to tell
+ignorant men that "envy" is a corner-stone of competition can be
+disputed.
+
+Mr. Cunningham has followed the lead of that polished and instructed
+person, Mr. Ben Tillett, in rebuking me for (as the associates say)
+attacking Mr.  Booth's personal character. Of course, when I was
+writing, I did not doubt that this very handy, though not too clean,
+weapon would be used by one or other of Mr. Booth's supporters. And my
+action was finally decided by the following considerations: I happen
+to be a member of one of the largest life insurance societies. There
+is a vacancy in the directory at present, for which half a dozen
+gentlemen are candidates. Now, I said to myself, supposing that one of
+these gentlemen (whose pardon I humbly beg for starting the
+hypothesis), say Mr. A., in his administrative capacity and as a man
+of business, has been the subject of such observations as a Judge on
+the Bench bestowed upon Mr. Booth, is he a person for whom I can
+properly vote? And, if I find, when I go to the meeting of the
+policy-holders, that most of them know nothing of this and other
+evidences of what, by the mildest judgment, must be termed Mr. A.'s
+unfitness for administrative [289] responsibilities, am I to let them
+remain in their ignorance? I leave the answer and its application to
+men of sense and integrity.
+
+The mention of Mr. Cunningham's ally reminds me that I have omitted to
+thank Mr. Tillett for his very useful and instructive letter; and I
+hasten to repair a neglect which I assure Mr. Tillett was more
+apparent than real. Mr.  Tillett's letter is dated December 20th. On
+the 21st the following pregnant (however unconscious) commentary upon
+it appeared in "Reynolds's Newspaper":-
+
+"I have always maintained that the Salvation Army is one of the
+mightiest Socialistic agencies in the country; and now Professor
+Huxley comes in to confirm that view. How could it be otherwise? The
+fantastic religious side of Salvationism will disappear in the course
+of time, and what will be left?  A large number of men and women who
+have been organized, disciplined, and taught to look for something
+better than their present condition, and who have become public
+speakers and not afraid of ridicule. There you have the raw materials
+for a Socialist army."
+
+Mr. Ben Tillett evidently knows Latin enough to construe proximus
+ardet.
+
+I trust that the public will not allow themselves to be led away by
+the false issues which are [290] dangled before them. A man really may
+love his fellow-men; cherish any form of Christianity he pleases; and
+hold not only that Darwinism is "tottering to its fall," but, if he
+pleases, the equally sane belief that it never existed; and yet may
+feel it his duty to oppose, to the best of his capacity, despotic
+Socialism in all its forms, and, more particularly, in its Boothian
+disguise.
+
+             I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
+                                 T.H. Huxley.
+
+[Persons who have not had the advantage of a classical education might
+fairly complain of my use of the word epigoni. To say truth, I had
+been reading Droysen's "Geschichte des Hellenismus," and the familiar
+historical title slipped out unawares. In replying to me, however, the
+late "Fellow of University College," Oxford, declares he had to look
+the word out in a Lexicon. I commend the fact to the notice of the
+combatants over the desirability of retaining the present compulsory
+modicum of Greek in our Universities.]
+
+[291]
+
+
+                  IX.
+
+The "Times," December 30th, 1890
+
+Sir,--I am much obliged to Messrs. Ranger, Burton, and Matthews for
+their prompt answer to my questions. I presume it applies to all money
+collected by the agency of the Salvation Army, though not specifically
+given for the purposes of the "Christian Mission" named in the deed of
+1878; to all sums raised by mortgage upon houses and land so given;
+and, further, to funds subscribed for Mr. Booth's various projects,
+which have no apparent reference to the objects of the "Christian
+Mission" as defined in the deed.  Otherwise, to use a phrase which has
+become classical, "it does not assist us much." But I must leave these
+points to persons learned in the law.
+
+And, indeed, with many thanks to you, Sir, for the amount of valuable
+space which you have allowed me to occupy, I now propose to leave the
+whole subject. My sole purpose in embarking upon an enterprise which
+was extremely distasteful to me was to prevent the skilful "General,"
+or rather "Generals," who devised the plan of campaign from sweeping
+all before them with a rush. I found the pass already held by such
+stout defenders as Mr.  Loch and the Dean [292] of Wells, and, with
+your powerful help, we have given time for the reinforcements, sure to
+be sent by the abundant, though somewhat slowly acting, common sense
+of our countrymen, to come up.
+
+I can no longer be useful, and I return to more congenial occupations.
+
+        I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
+                            T. H. Huxley.
+
+The following letter appeared in the "Times" of January 2nd, 1891:--
+
+"Dear Mr. Tillett,--I have not had patience to read Professor Huxley's
+letters. The existence of hunger, nakedness, misery, 'death from
+insufficient food,' even of starvation, is certain, and no agency as
+yet reaches it. How can any man hinder or discourage the giving of
+food or help?  Why is the house called a workhouse? Because it is for
+those who cannot work? No, because it was the house to give work or
+bread. The very name is an argument. I am very sure what Our Lord and
+His Apostles would do if they were in London. Let us be thankful even
+to have a will to do the same.
+
+"Yours faithfully,
+Henry E. Card. Manning."
+
+[293]
+
+
+                    X.
+
+The "Times," January 3rd, 1891
+
+SIR,--In my old favourite, "The Arabian Nights," the motive of the
+whole series of delightful narratives is that the sultan, who refuses
+to attend to reason, can be got to listen to a story. May I try
+whether Cardinal Manning is to be reached in the same way? When I was
+attending the meeting of the British Association in Belfast nearly
+forty years ago, I had promised to breakfast with the eminent scholar
+Dr. Hincks. Having been up very late the previous night, I was behind
+time; so, hailing an outside car, I said to the driver as I jumped on,
+"Now drive fast, I am in a hurry." Whereupon he whipped up his horse
+and set off at a hand-gallop. Nearly jerked off my seat, I shouted,
+"My good friend, do you know where I want to go?" "No, yer honner,"
+said the driver, "but, any way, I am driving fast." I have never
+forgotten this object-lesson in the dangers of ill-regulated
+enthusiasm. We are all invited to jump on to the Salvation Army car,
+which Mr. Booth is undoubtedly driving very fast. Some of us have a
+firm conviction, not only that he is taking a very different direction
+from that in which we wish to go, but that, before long, car and
+driver will come to grief. Are we to accept [294] the invitation, even
+at the bidding of the eminent person who appears to think himself
+entitled to pledge the credit of "Our Lord and His Apostles" in favour
+of Boothism?
+
+   I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
+                       T. H. Huxley.
+
+
+
+                XI.
+
+The "Times," January 13th, 1891
+
+SIR,--A letter from Mr. Booth-Clibborn, dated January 3rd, appeared in
+the "Times" of yesterday. This elaborate document occupies three
+columns of small print--space enough, assuredly, for an effectual
+reply to the seven letters of mine to which the writer refers, if any
+such were forthcoming.  Mr. Booth-Clibborn signs himself "Commissioner
+of the Salvation Army for France and Switzerland," but he says that he
+accepts my "challenge" without the knowledge of his chiefs.
+Considering the self-damaging character of his letter, it was,
+perhaps, hardly necessary to make that statement.
+
+Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn speaks of my "challenge." I presume
+that he refers to my request for information about the authorship and
+fate of "The New Papacy," in the letter [295] published in the "Times"
+on December 27th, 1890. The "Commissioner" deals with this matter in
+paragraph No. 4 of his letter; and I observe, with no little
+satisfaction, that he does not venture to controvert any one of the
+statements of my witnesses. He tacitly admits that the author of "The
+New Papacy" was a person "greatly esteemed in Toronto," and that he
+held "a high position in the army"; further, that the Canadian
+"Commissioner" thought it worth while to pay the printer's bill, in
+order that the copies already printed off might be destroyed and the
+pamphlet effectually suppressed. Thus the essential facts of the case
+are admitted and established beyond question.
+
+How does Mr. Booth-Clibborn try to explain them away?
+
+"Mr. Sumner, who wrote the little book in a hot fit, soon regretted it
+(as any man would do whose conscience showed him in a calmer moment
+when his 'respectability' returned with his repentance, that he had
+grossly misrepresented), and just before it appeared offered to order
+its suppression if the army would pay the costs already incurred, and
+which he was unable to bear."
+
+"The New Papacy" fills sixty closely printed duodecimo pages. It is
+carefully written, and for the most part in studiously moderate
+language; moreover, it contains many precise details and [296]
+figures, the ascertainment of which must have taken much time and
+trouble. Yet, forsooth, it was written in "a hot fit."
+
+I sincerely hope, for the sake of his own credit, that Mr.
+"Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn does not know as much about this
+melancholy business as I do.  My hands are unfortunately tied, and I
+am not at liberty to use all the information in my possession. I must
+content myself with quoting the following passage from the preface to
+"The New Papacy":--
+
+"It has not been without considerable thought and a good deal of urging
+that the following pages have been given to the public. But though we
+would have shrunk from a labour so distasteful, and have gladly
+avoided a notoriety anything but pleasant to the feelings, or
+conducive to our material welfare, we have felt that in the interests
+of the benevolent public, in the interests of religion, in the
+interests of a band of devoted men and women whose personal ends are
+being defeated, and the fruit of whose labour is being destroyed, and,
+above all, in the interests of that future which lies before the
+Salvation Army itself, if purged and purified in its executive and
+returned to its original position in the ranks of Canadian Christian
+effort, it is no more than our duty to throw such light as we are able
+upon its true inwardness, and with that object and for the [297]
+furtherance of those ends we offer our pages to the public view."
+
+The preface is dated April 1889. According to the statement in the
+"Toronto Telegram" which Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn does not
+dare to dispute, his Canadian fellow-"Commissioner" bought and
+destroyed the whole edition of "The New Papacy" about the end of the
+third week in April. It is clear that the writer of the paragraph
+quoted from the preface was well out of a "hot fit," if he had ever
+been in one, while he had not entered on the stage of repentance
+within three weeks of that time. Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn's
+scandalous insinuations that Mr. Sumner was bribed by "a few
+sovereigns," and that he was "bought off," in the face of his own
+admission that Mr. Sumner "offered to order its suppression if the
+army would pay the costs already incurred, and which he was unable to
+bear" is a crucial example of that Jesuitry with which the officials
+of the army have been so frequently charged.
+
+Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn says that when "London headquarters
+heard of the affair, it disapproved of the action of the
+Commissioner." That circumstance indicates that headquarters is not
+wholly devoid of intelligence; but it has nothing to do with the value
+of Mr. Sumner's evidence, which is all I am concerned about. Very
+likely London headquarters will disapprove of its French [298]
+"Commissioner's" present action. But what then? The upshot of all this
+is that Mr. Booth-Clibborn has made as great a blunder as simple Mr.
+Trotter did. The pair of Balaams greatly desired to curse, but have
+been compelled to bless. They have, between them, completely justified
+my reliance on Mr. Sumner as a perfectly trustworthy witness; and
+neither of them has dared to challenge the accuracy of one solitary
+statement made by that worthy gentleman, whose full story I hope some
+day or other to see set before the public. Then the true causes of his
+action will be made known.
+
+Paragraph 2 of the "Commissioner's" letter says many things, but not
+much about Mr. Hodges. The columns of the "Times" recently showed that
+Mr. Hodges was able to compel an apology from Mr. Trotter. I leave it
+to him to deal with the "Commissioner."
+
+As to the "Eagle" case, treated of in paragraph No. 3, a gentleman
+well versed in the law, who was in court during the hearing of the
+appeal, has assured me that the argument was purely technical; that
+the facts were very slightly gone into; and that, so far as he knows,
+no dissenting comment was made on the strictures of the Judge before
+whom the case first came.  Moreover, in the judgment of the Master of
+the Rolls, fully recorded in the "Times" of February 14th, 1884, the
+following passages occur:--
+
+[299] "The case had been heard by a learned Judge, who had exercised
+his discretion upon it, and the Court would not interfere with his
+discretion unless they could see that he was wrong. The learned Judge
+had taken a strong view of the conduct of the defendant, but
+nevertheless had said that he would have given relief if he could have
+seen how far protection and compensation could be given. And if this
+Court differed from him in that view, and could give relief without
+forfeiture, they would be acting on his own principle in doing so.
+Certain suggestions had been made with that view, and the Court had to
+consider the case under all the circumstances.... He himself (the
+Master of the Rolls) considered that it was probable the defendant,
+with his principles, had intended to destroy the property as a
+public-house, and that it was not right thus to take property under a
+covenant to keep it up as a public-house, intending to destroy it as
+such.  He did not, however, think this was enough to deprive him of
+all relief. The defendant could only expect severe terms."
+
+Yet, Sir, Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn, this high official of the
+Salvation Army, has the audacity to tell the public that if I had made
+inquiries I should have found that "in the Court of Appeal the Judge
+reversed the decision of his predecessor as regards seven eighths of
+the property, and the General was declared to have acted [300] all
+along with straight forwardness and good faith."
+
+But the nature of Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn's conceptions of
+straightforwardness and good faith is so marvellously illustrated by
+the portions of his letter with which I have dealt that I doubt not
+his statements are quite up to the level of the "Army" Regulations and
+Instructions in regard to those cardinal virtues. As I pointed out must
+be the case, the slave is subdued to that he works in.
+
+For myself, I must confess that the process of wading through Mr.
+"Commissioner's" verbose and clumsy pleadings has given me a "hot
+fit," which, I undertake to say, will be followed by not so much as a
+passing shiver of repentance. And it is under the influence of the
+genial warmth diffused through the frame, on one of those rare
+occasions when one may be "angry and sin not," that I infringe my
+resolution to trouble you with no more letters. On reflection, I am
+convinced that it is undesirable that the public should be misled, for
+even a few days, by misrepresentations so serious.
+
+I am copiously abused for speaking of the Jesuitical methods of the
+superior officials of the Salvation Army. But the following facts have
+not been, and, I believe, cannot be, denied:--
+
+   1. Mr. Booth's conduct in the "Eagle" case has been censured by two
+of the Judges.
+
+[301] 2. Mr. Bramwell Booth admitted before Mr. Justice Lopes that he
+had made an untrue statement because of a promise he had made to Mr.
+Stead.*
+
+    * This statement has been disputed, but not yet publicly. (See p. 305.)
+
+And I have just proved that Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn asserts
+the exact contrary of that which your report of the judgment of the
+Master of the Rolls tells us that distinguished judge said.
+
+Under these circumstances, I think that my politeness in applying no
+harder adjective than "Jesuitical" to these proceedings is not
+properly appreciated.
+
+      I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
+                          T. H. Huxley.
+
+
+
+                XII.
+
+The "Times," January 22nd, 1891
+
+SIR,--I think that your readers will be interested in the accompanying
+opinion, written in consultation with an eminent Chancery Queen's
+Counsel, with which I have been favoured. It will be observed that
+this important legal deliverance [302] justifies much stronger
+language than any which I have applied to the only security (?) for
+the proper administration of the funds in Mr. Booth's hands which
+appears to be in existence.
+
+I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
+                           T. H. Huxley.
+
+       1, Dr. Johnson's Buildings, Temple, E.C.,
+                  January 14, 1891.
+
+MR. BOOTH'S DECLARATION OF TRUST DEED, 1878.
+
+"I am of opinion, subject to the question whether there may be any
+provision in the Charitable Trusts Acts which can be made available
+for enforcing some scheme for the appropriation of the property, and
+with regard to the real and leasehold properties whether the
+conveyances and leases are not altogether void, as frauds on the
+Mortmain Acts, that nothing can be done to control or to interfere
+with Booth in the disposition or application of the properties or
+moneys purported to be affected by the deed.
+
+"As to the properties vested in Booth himself, it appears to me that
+such are placed absolutely under his power and control both as to the
+disposal and application thereof, and that there are no trusts for any
+specific purposes declared which [303] could be enforced, and that
+there are no defined persons nor classes of persons who can claim to
+be entitled to the benefits of them, or at whose instance they could
+be enforced by any legal process.
+
+"As to the properties (if any) vested in trustees appointed by Booth,
+it appears to me that the only person who has a locus standi to
+enforce these trusts is Booth himself, and that he would have absolute
+power over the trusts and the property, and might deal with the
+property as he pleased, and that, as in the former case, nothing could
+be done in the way of enforcing any trusts against him.
+
+"As to the moneys contributed or raised by mortgage for the general
+purposes of the mission, it appears to me that Booth may expend them
+as he pleases, without being subject to any legal control, and that he
+cannot even be compelled to publish any balance-sheets.
+
+"Whether there are any provisions in the Charitable Trusts Acts which
+could be made available for enforcing some scheme for the application
+of the property or funds is a question to which I should require to
+give a closer consideration should it become necessary to go into it;
+but at present, after perusing these Acts, and especially 16 and 17
+Vict. c. 137 and 18 and 19 Vict. c. 124, I cannot see how they could
+be made applicable to the trusts as declared in this deed.
+
+[304] "As to the Mortmain Acts, the matter is clearly charitable, and
+unless in the conveyances and leases to Booth, or to the trustees (if
+any) named by him, all the provisions of the Acts have been complied
+with, and the deeds have been enrolled under the Acts, they would be
+void. It is probable, however, that every conveyance and lease has
+been taken without disclosing any charitable trust, for the purpose of
+preventing it from being void on the face of it. It is to be noted
+that the deed is a mere deed poll by Booth himself, without any other
+party to it, who, as a contracting party, would have a right to
+enforce it.
+
+"Whether there are any objects of the trust I cannot say. If there is,
+as the recital indicates, a society of enrolled members called 'The
+Christian Mission,' those members would be objects of the trust, but
+then, it appears to me, Booth has entire control and determination of
+the application. And, as to the trusts enuring for the benefit of the
+'Salvation Army,' I am not aware what is the constitution of the
+'Salvation Army,' but there is no reference whatever to any such body
+in the deed. I have understood the army as being merely the
+missionaries, and not the society of worshippers.
+
+"If there is no Christian Mission Society of enrolled members, then
+there are no objects of the trust. The trusts are purely religious,
+and trading is entirely beyond its purposes. Booth can [305] 'give
+away' the property, simply because there is no one who has any right
+to prevent his doing so.
+
+"Ernest Hatton."
+
+It is probably my want of legal knowledge which prevents me from
+appreciating the value of the professed corrections of Mr. Hatton's
+opinion contained in the letters of Messrs. Ranger, Burton, and
+Matthews, "Times," January 28th and 29th, 1891.
+
+The note on page 301 refers to a correspondence, incomplete at the
+time fixed for the publication of my pamphlet, the nature of which is
+sufficiently indicated by the subjoined extracts from Mr. Stead's
+letter in the "Times" of January 20th, and from my reply in the
+"Times" of January 24th. Referring to the paragraphs numbered 1, 2, at
+the end of my letter XI., Mr. Stead says:--
+
+"On reading this, I at once wrote to Professor Huxley, stating that, as
+he had mentioned my name, I was justified in intervening to explain
+that, so far as the second count in his indictment went--for the Eagle
+dispute is no concern of mine--he had been misled by an error in the
+reports of the case which appeared in the daily papers [306] of
+November 4, 1885. I have his reply to-day, saying that I had better
+write to you direct. May I ask you, then, seeing that my name has been
+brought into the affair, to state that, as I was in the dock when Mr.
+Bramwell Booth was in the witness-box, I am in a position to give the
+most unqualified denial to the statement as to the alleged admission
+on his part of falsehood? Nothing was heard in Court of any such
+admission. Neither the prosecuting counsel nor the Judge who tried the
+case ever referred to it, although it would obviously have had a
+direct bearing on the credit of the witness; and the jury, by
+acquitting Mr.  Bramwell Booth, showed that they believed him to be a
+witness of truth. But fortunately the facts can be verified beyond all
+gainsaying by a reference to the official shorthand-writer's report of
+the evidence. During the hearing of the case for the prosecution,
+Inspector Borner was interrupted by the Judge, who said:--
+
+"'I want to ask you a question. During the whole of that conversation,
+did Booth in any way suggest that that child had been sold?' Borner
+replied:--
+
+"'Not at that interview, my Lord.'
+
+"It was to this that Mr. Bramwell Booth referred when, after
+examination, cross-examination, [307] and re-examination, during which
+no suggestion had been made that he had ever made the untrue statement
+now alleged against him, he asked and received leave from the Judge to
+make the following explanation, which I quote from the official
+report:--
+
+"'Will you allow me to explain a matter mentioned yesterday in
+reference to a question asked by your Lordship some days ago with
+respect to one matter connected with my conduct? Your Lordship asked,
+I think it was Inspector Borner, whether I had said to him at either
+of our interviews that the child was sold by her parents, and he
+replied "No." That is quite correct; I did not say so to him, and what
+I wish to say now is that I had been specially requested by Mr. Stead,
+and had given him a promise, that I would not under any circumstances
+divulge the fact of that sale to any person which would ma ke it at
+all probable that any trouble would be brought upon the persons who
+had taken part in this investigation.' (Central Criminal Court Reports,
+Vol.  CII., part 612, pp. 1,035-6.)
+
+"In the daily papers of the following day this statement was
+misreported as follows:--
+
+"'I wish to explain, in regard to your Lordship's condemnation of my
+having said "No" to [308] Inspector Borner when he asked me whether
+the child had been sold by her parents--the reason why I stated what
+was not correct was that I had promised Mr. Stead not to divulge the
+fact of the sale to any person which would make it probable that any
+trouble should be brought on persons taking part in this proceeding.'
+
+"Hence the mistake into which Professor Huxley has unwittingly fallen.
+
+"I may add that, so far from the statement never having been challenged
+for five years, it was denounced as 'a remarkably striking lie' in the
+'War Cry' of November 14th, and again the same official organ of the
+Salvation Army of November 18th specifically adduced this misreport as
+an instance of 'the most disgraceful way' in which the reports of the
+trial were garbled by some of the papers. What, then, becomes of one
+of the two main pillars of Professor Huxley's argument?"
+
+In my reply, I point out that, on the 10th of January, Mr. Stead
+addressed to me a letter, which commences thus: "I see in the 'Times'
+of this morning that you are about to republish your letters on
+Booth's book."
+
+I replied to this letter on the 12th of January:--
+
+[309] "Dear Mr. Stead,--I charge Mr. Bramwell Booth with nothing. I
+simply quote the 'Times' report, the accuracy of which, so far as I
+know, has never been challenged by Mr. Booth. I say I quote the
+'Times' and not Mr. Hodges,* because I took some pains about the
+verification of Mr. Hodges's citation.
+
+    * This is a slip of the pen. Mr. Hodges had nothing to do
+    with the citation of which I made use.
+
+"I should have thought it rather appertained to Mr. Bramwell Booth to
+contradict a statement which refers, not to what you heard, but to what
+he said. However, I am the last person to wish to give circulation to
+a story which may not be quite correct; and I will take care, if you
+have no objection (your letter is marked 'private'), to make public as
+much of your letter as relates to the point to which you have called
+my attention.
+
+           "I am, yours very faithfully,
+                          T. H. Huxley."
+
+To this Mr. Stead answered, under date of January 13th, 1891:--
+
+"Dear Professor Huxley,--I thank you for your letter of the 12th inst.
+I am quite sure you would not wish to do any injustice in this matter.
+But, instead of publishing any extract from my letter, might I ask you
+to read the passage as it [310] appears in the verbatim report of the
+trial which was printed day by day, and used by counsel on both sides,
+and by the Judge during the case? I had hoped to have got you a copy
+to-day, but find that I was too late. I shall have it first thing
+to-morrow morning. You will find that it is quite clear, and
+conclusively disposes of the alleged admission of untruthfulness.
+Again thanking you for your courtesy,
+
+           "I am, yours faithfully,
+                      W. T. Stead."
+
+Thus it appears that the letter which Mr. Stead wrote to me on the 13th
+of January does not contain one word of that which he ways it
+contains, in the statement which appears in the "Times" to-day.
+Moreover, the letter of mine to which Mr. Stead refers in his first
+communication to me is not the letter which appeared on the 13th, as
+he states, but that which you published on December 27th, 1890.
+Therefore, it is not true that Mr. Stead wrote "at once." On the
+contrary, he allowed nearly a fortnight to elapse before he addressed
+me on the 10th of January 1891. Furthermore, Mr. Stead suppresses the
+fact that, since the 13th of January, he has had in his possession my
+offer to publish his version of the story; and he leads the reader to
+suppose that my only answer was that he "had better write to [311] you
+direct. All the while, Mr. Stead knows perfectly well that I was
+withheld from making public use of his letter of the 10th by nothing
+but my scruples about using a document which was marked "private"; and
+that he did not give me leave to quote his letter of the 10th of
+January until after he had written that which appeared yesterday.
+
+And I add:--
+
+As to the subject-matter of Mr. Stead's letter, the point which he
+wishes to prove appears to be this--that Mr. Bramwell Booth did not
+make a false statement, but that he withheld from the officers of
+justice, pursuing a most serious criminal inquiry, a fact of grave
+importance, which lay within his own knowledge. And this because he
+had promised Mr. Stead to keep the fact secret. In short, Mr. Bramwell
+Booth did not say what was wrong; but he did what was wrong.
+
+I will take care to give every weight to the correction. Most people,
+I think, will consider that one of the "main pillars of my argument,"
+as Mr.  Stead is pleased to call them, has become very much
+strengthened.
+
+[312]
+
+        LEGAL OPINIONS RESPECTING
+         "GENERAL" BOOTH'S ACTS.
+
+In referring to the course of action adopted by "General" Booth and
+Mr.  Bramwell Booth in respect of their legal obligations to other
+persons, or to the criminal and civil law, I have been as careful as I
+was bound to be, to put any difficulties suggested by mere lay
+commonsense in an interrogative or merely doubtful form; and to
+confine myself, for any positive expressions, to citations from
+published declarations of the judges before whom the acts of "General"
+Booth came; from reports of the Law Courts; and from the deliberate
+opinions of legal experts. I have now some further remarks to make on
+these topics.
+
+   I. The observations at p. 305 express, with due reserve, the
+impression which the counsel's opinions, quoted by "General" Booth's
+solicitors, made on my mind. They were written and sent to the printer
+before I saw the letter from a "Barrister NOT Practising on the Common
+Law Side," and those from Messrs. Clarke and Calkin and Mr. George
+Kebbell, which appeared in the "Times" of February 3rd and 4th.
+
+These letters fully bear out the conclusion which I had formed, but
+which it would have [313] been presumptuous on my part to express,
+that the opinions cited by "General" Booth's solicitors were like the
+famous broken tea-cups "wisely ranged for show"; and that, as Messrs.
+Clarke and Calkin say, they "do not at all meet the main points on
+which Mr. Hatton advised." I do not think that any one who reads
+attentively the able letter of "A Barrister NOT Practicing on the
+Common Law Side" will arrive at any other conclusion; or who will not
+share the very natural desire of Mr. Kebbell to be provided with clear
+and intelligible answers to the following inquiries:--
+
+   (1) Does the trust deed by its operation empower any one legally to
+call upon Mr. Booth to account for the application of the funds?
+
+   (2) In the event of the funds not being properly accounted for, is
+any one, and, if so, who, in a position to institute civil or criminal
+proceedings against any one, and whom, in respect of such refusal or
+neglect to account?
+
+   (3) In the event of the proceedings, civil or criminal, failing to
+obtain restitution of misapplied funds, is or are any other person or
+persons liable to make good the loss?
+
+On December 24th, 1890, a letter of mine appeared in the "Times" (No.
+V.  above) in which I put questions of the same import, and asked Mr.
+Booth if he would not be so good as to take counsel's opinion on the
+"trusts" of which so [314] much has been heard and so little seen, not
+as they stood in 1878, or in 1888, but as they stand now? Six weeks
+have elapsed, and I wait for a reply.
+
+It is true that Dr. Greenwood has been authorized by Mr. Booth to
+publish what he calls a "Rough outline of the intended Trust Deed"
+("General Booth and His Critics," p. 120), but unfortunately we are
+especially told that it "does not profess to be an absolutely accurate
+analysis." Under these circumstances I am afraid that neither lawyers
+nor laymen of moderate intelligence will pay much attention to the
+assertion, that "it gives a fair idea of the general effect of the
+draft," even although "the words in quotation marks are taken from it
+verbatim."
+
+These words, which I give in italics, (1) define the purposes of the
+scheme to be "for the social and moral regeneration and improvement of
+persons needy, destitute, degraded, or criminal, in some manner
+indicated, implied, or suggested in the book called 'In Darkest
+England.'" Whence I apprehend that, if the whole funds collected are
+applied to "mothering society" by the help of speculative attorney
+"tribunes of the people," the purposes of the trust will be
+unassailably fulfilled. (2) The name is to be "Darkest England
+Scheme," (3) the General of the Salvation Army is to be "Director of
+the Scheme." Truly valuable information all this! But taking it for
+what it is worth, the [315] public must not be misled into supposing
+that it has the least bearing upon the questions to which neither I,
+nor anybody else, has yet been able to obtain an intelligible answer,
+and that is, where are the vast funds which have been obtained, in one
+way or another, during the last dozen years in the name of the
+Salvation Army? Where is the presumably amended Trust Deed of 1888? I
+ask once more: Will Mr. Booth submit to competent and impartial legal
+scrutiny the arrangements by which he and his successors are prevented
+from dealing with the funds of the so-called "army chest" exactly as
+he or they may please?
+
+II. With respect to the "Eagle" case, I am advised that Dr. Greenwood,
+whose good faith I do not question, has been misled into
+misrepresenting it in the appendix to his pamphlet. And certainly, the
+evidence of authoritative records which I have had the opportunity of
+perusing, appears to my non-legal mind to be utterly at variance with
+the statement to which Dr.  Greenwood stands committed. I may observe,
+further, that the excuse alleged on behalf of Mr. Booth, that he
+signed the affidavit set before him by his solicitors without duly
+considering its contents, is one which I should not like to have put
+forward were the case my own. It may be, and often is, necessary for a
+person to sign an affidavit without [316] being able fully to
+appreciate the technical language in which it is couched. But his
+solicitor will always instruct him as to the effect of these terms.
+And, in this particular case where the whole matter turns on Mr.
+Booth's personal intentions, it was his plainest duty to inquire, very
+seriously, whether the legal phraseology employed would convey neither
+more nor less than such intentions to those who would act on the
+affidavit, before he put his name to it.
+
+III. With respect to Mr. Bramwell Booth's case, I refer the reader to
+p. 311.
+
+IV. As to Mr. Booth-Clibborn's misrepresentations, see above, pp. 298,
+299.
+
+This much for the legal questions which have been raised by various
+persons since the first edition of the pamphlet was published.
+
+DR. GREENWOOD'S "GENERAL BOOTH AND HIS CRITICS"
+
+So far as I am concerned, there is little or nothing in this brochure
+beyond a reproduction of the vituperative stuff which has been going
+the round of those newspapers which favour "General" Booth for some
+weeks. Those who do not want to see the real worth of it all will not
+read [317] the preceding pages; and those who do will need no help
+from me.
+
+I fear, however, that in justice to other people I must put one of Dr.
+Greenwood's paragraphs in the pillory. He says that I have "built up,
+on the flimsy foundation of stories told by three or four deserters
+from the Army" (p. 114), a sweeping indictment against General Booth.
+This is the sort of thing to which I am well accustomed at the hands
+of anonymous newspaper writers. But in view of the following easily
+verifiable statements, I do not think that an educated and, I have no
+doubt, highly respectable gentleman like Dr. Greenwood can, in cold
+blood, contemplate that assertion with satisfaction.
+
+The persons here alluded to as "three or four deserters from the army"
+are:--
+
+   (1) Mr. Redstone, for whose character Dr. Cunningham Geikie is
+guarantee, and whom it has been left to Dr. Greenwood to attempt to
+besmirch.
+
+   (2) Mr. Sumner, who is a gentleman quite as worthy of respect as
+Dr. Greenwood, and whose published evidence not one of the champions
+of the Salvation Army has yet ventured to impugn.
+
+   (3) Mr. Hodges, similarly libelled by that unhappy meddler Mr.
+Trotter, who was compelled to the prompt confession of his error (see
+p. 277).
+
+   (4) Notwithstanding this evidence of Mr. Trotter's claims to
+attention, Dr. Greenwood quotes a [318] statement of his as evidence
+that a statement quoted by me from Mr. Sumner's work is a "forgery."
+But Dr. Greenwood unfortunately forgets to mention that on the 27th of
+December 1890 (Letter No. VII. above) Mr. Trotter was publicly
+required to produce proof of his assertion; and that he has not
+thought fit to produce that proof.
+
+If I were disposed to use to Dr. Greenwood language of the sort he so
+freely employs to me, I think that he could not complain of a handsome
+scolding.  For what is the real state of the case? Simply this--that
+having come to the conclusion, from the perusal of "In Darkest
+England," that "General" Booth's colossal scheme (as apart from the
+local action of Salvationists) was bad in principle and must produce
+certain evil consequences, and having warned the public to that
+effect, I quite unexpectedly found my hands full of evidence that the
+exact evils predicted had, in fact, already shown themselves on a
+great scale; and, carefully warning the public to criticize this
+evidence, I produced a small part of it. When Dr. Greenwood talks
+about my want of "regard to the opinion of the nine thousand odd who
+still remain among the faithful" (p. 114), he commits an imprudence.
+He would obviously be surprised to learn the extent of the support,
+encouragement, and information which I have received from active and
+sincere members of the Salvation Army [319] --but of which I can make
+no use, because of the terroristic discipline and systematic espionage
+which my correspondents tell me is enforced by its chief. Some of
+these days, when nobody can be damaged by their use, a curious light
+may be thrown upon the inner workings of the organization which we are
+bidden to regard as a happy family, by these documents.
+
+[320] (blank page)
+[321]
+
+
+
+          THE SALVATION ARMY
+          ARTICLES OF WAR,
+
+To be signed by all who wish to be entered on the roll as soldiers.
+
+Having received with all my heart the Salvation offered to me by the
+tender mercy of Jehovah, I do here and now publicly acknowledge God to
+be my Father and King, Jesus Christ to be my Saviour, and the Holy
+Spirit to be my Guide, Comforter, and Strength; and that I will, by
+His help, love, serve, worship, and obey this glorious God through all
+time and through all eternity.
+
+Believing solemnly that The Salvation Army has been raised up by God,
+and is sustained and directed by Him, I do here declare my full
+determination, by God's help, to be a true soldier of the Army till I
+die.
+
+   I am thoroughly convinced of the truth of the Army's teaching.
+
+   I believe that repentance towards God, faith in our Lord Jesus
+Christ, and conversion by the Holy Spirit, are necessary to Salvation,
+and that all men may be saved.
+
+   I believe that we are saved by grace, through faith in our Lord
+Jesus Christ, and he that believeth hath the witness of it in himself.
+I have got it. Thank God!
+
+   I believe that the Scriptures were given by inspiration of God, and
+that they teach that not only does continuance in the favour of God
+depend upon continued faith in, and obedience to, Christ, [322] but
+that it is possible for those who have been truly converted to fall
+away and be eternally lost.
+
+   I believe that it is the privilege of all God's people to be
+"wholly sanctified," and that "their whole spirit and soul and body"
+may "be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
+That is to say, I believe that after conversion there remain in the
+heart of the believer inclinations to evil, or roots of bitterness,
+which, unless overpowered by Divine grace, produce actual sin; but
+these evil tendencies can be entirely taken away by the Spirit of God,
+and the whole heart thus cleansed from anything contrary to the will
+of God, or entirely sanctified, will then produce the fruit of the
+Spirit only. And I believe that persons thus entirely sanctified may,
+by the power of God, be kept unblamable and unreprovable before Him.
+
+   I believe in the immortality of the soul; in the resurrection of
+the body; in the general judgment at the end of the world; in the
+eternal happiness of the righteous; and in the everlasting punishment
+of the wicked.
+
+THEREFORE, I do here, and now, and for ever, renounce the world with
+all its sinful pleasures, companionship treasures, and objects, and
+declare my full determination boldly to show myself a Soldier of Jesus
+Christ in all places and companies, no matter what I may have to
+suffer, do, or lose, by so doing.
+
+   I do here and now declare that I will abstain from the use of all
+intoxicating liquors, and also from the habitual use of opium,
+laudanum, morphia, and all other baneful drugs, except when in illness
+such drugs shall be ordered for me by a doctor.
+
+   I do here and now declare that I will abstain from [323] the use of
+all low or profane language; from the taking of the name of God in
+vain; and from all impurity, or from taking part in any unclean
+conversation or the reading of any obscene book or paper at any time,
+in any company, or in any place.
+
+   I do here declare that I will not allow myself in any falsehood,
+deceit, misrepresentation, or dishonesty; neither will I practise any
+fraudulent conduct, either in my business, my home, or in any other
+relation in which I may stand to my fellow men, but that I will deal
+truthfully, fairly, honourably, and kindly with all those who may
+employ me or whom I may myself employ.
+
+   I do here declare that I will never treat any woman, child, or
+other person, whose life, comfort, or happiness may be placed within
+my power, in an oppressive, cruel, or cowardly manner, but that I will
+protect such from evil and danger so far as I can, and promote, to the
+utmost of my ability, their present welfare and eternal salvation.
+
+   I do here declare that I will spend all the time, strength, money,
+and influence I can in supporting and carrying on this War, and that I
+will endeavour to lead my family, friends, neighbours, and all others
+whom I can influence, to do the same, believing that the sure and only
+way to remedy all the evils in the world is by bringing men to submit
+themselves to the government of the Lord Jesus Christ.
+
+   I do here declare that I will always obey the lawful orders of my
+Officers, and that I will carry out to the utmost of my power all the
+Orders and Regulations of The Army; and further, that I will be an
+example of faithfulness to its principles, advance to the utmost of my
+ability its operations, and never allow, where I can prevent it, any
+injury to its interests or hindrance to its success.
+
+[324] And I do here and now call upon all present to witness that I
+enter into this undertaking and sign these Articles of War of my own
+free will, feeling that the love of Christ who died to save me
+requires from me this devotion of my life to His service for the
+Salvation of the whole world, and therefore wish now to be enrolled as
+a Soldier of the Salvation Army.
+
+________________________________________
+
+_____________CORPS______________ 18___
+
+                                      ____________________________________
+                                      ______________________________ Corps
+                                      ___________________________ Division
+                                      _____________________ 18____
+
+                              (SINGLE)
+
+                       FORM OF APPLICATION
+                    FOR AN APPOINTMENT AS AN
+                  OFFICER IN THE SALVATION ARMY
+
+Name _____________________________________________________________________
+
+Address __________________________________________________________________
+
+1. What was your AGE last birthday? ___________________
+   What is the date of your birthday? _________________
+
+2. What is your height? __________________
+
+3. Are you free from bodily defect or disease? ____
+
+4. What serious illnesses have you had, and when? ________________________
+__________________________________________________________________________
+
+5. Have you ever had fits of any kind? __________________
+If so how long, and what kind? ___________________________________________
+
+6. Do you consider your health good, and that you are strong enough for
+the work of an officer? __________________________________________________
+If not, or if you are doubtful, write a letter and explain the matter.
+
+7. Is your doctor's certificate a full and correct statement so far as you
+know? ___________________________________________________________
+
+8. Are you, or have you ever been, married? ___________
+
+9. When and where CONVERTED? ____________________________
+
+10. What other Religious Societies have you belonged to? _________________
+__________________________________________________________________________
+
+11. Were you ever a Junior Soldier? _____________________
+If so, how long? ________________________________________
+
+12. How long have you been enrolled as a SOLDIER? _______
+and signed Articles of War? ____________________
+
+13. If you hold any office in your Corps, say what and how long held? ____
+__________________________________________________________________________
+
+14. Do you intend to live and die in the ranks of the Salvation Army? ____
+
+                   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
+
+15. Have you ever been an open BACKSLIDER? ______________
+If so, how long? ________________________________________
+
+16. Why? _________________________________________________________________
+Date of your Restoration? ___________________
+
+17. Are you in DEBT? __________________
+If so, how much? ______________________
+
+18. How long owing? ______________________________________________________
+__________________________________________________________________________
+
+19. Did you ever use Intoxicating Drink? _____________
+If so, how long is it since you entirely gave up its use? ________________
+
+20. Did you ever use Tobacco or Snuff? _________
+If so, how long is it since you gave up using either? ____________________
+
+                       ------------------------
+
+21. What UNIFORM do you wear? ____________________________________________
+
+22. How long have you worn it? ___________________________________________
+
+23. Do you agree to dress in accordance with the direction of Headquarters?
+_________________
+
+24. Can you provide your own uniform and "List of Necessaries" before
+entering the Service? ____________________________________________________
+
+                    --------------------------------
+
+25. Are you in a Situation? _____________
+If so, how long? ________________________
+
+26. Nature of duties, and salary _________________________________________
+
+27. Name and address of employer? ________________________________________
+
+28. If out, date of leaving last situation? _________________________
+How long there? _____________________________________________________
+
+29. Why did you leave? ___________________________________________________
+__________________________________________________________________________
+
+30. Name and address of last employer? ___________________________________
+__________________________________________________________________________
+
+31. Can you start the SINGING? __________
+
+32. Can you play any musical instrument? _________________
+If so, what? _____________________________________________________________
+
+33. Is this form filled up by you? ________________________
+Can you read well at first sight? _________________________
+
+34. Can you write SHORTHAND? _________________________
+If so, what speed and system? ____________________________________________
+
+35. Can you speak any language other than English? _______________________
+If so, what? _____________________________________________________________
+
+36. Have you had any experience and success in the JUNIOR SOLDIERS' WAR? _
+
+37. If so, what? _________________________________________________________
+__________________________________________________________________________
+_
+
+38. Are you willing to sell the "WAR CRY" on Sundays? ____________
+
+39. Do you engage not to publish any books, songs, or music except for the
+benefit of the Salvation Army, and then only with the consent of
+Headquarters? ________________
+
+40. Do you promise not to engage in any trade, profession, or other money-
+making occupation, except for the benefit of the Salvation Army, and then
+only with the consent of Headquarters? _________________________
+
+41. Would you be willing to go ABROAD if required? _______________________
+
+42. Do you promise to do your utmost to help forward the Junior Soldiers'
+work if accepted? _____________
+
+43. Do you pledge yourself to spend not less than nine hours every day in
+the active service of the Army, of which not less than three hours of each
+week day shall be spent in VISITATION? ______________________
+
+44. Do you pledge yourself to fill up and send to Headquarters forms as to
+how your day is spent? ______________________
+
+                      ----------------------------
+
+45. Have you read, and do you believe, the DOCTRINES printed on the other
+side? ____________________
+
+46. Have you read the "Orders and Regulations for Field Officers" of the
+Army? ________________________________
+
+If you have not got a copy of "Orders and Regulations," get one from
+Candidates' Department at once. The price to Candidates is 2s. 6d.
+
+47. Do you pledge yourself to study and carry out and to endeavour to
+train others to carry out all Orders and Regulations of the Army? ________
+
+48. Have you read the Order on page 3 of this Form as to PRESENTS and
+TESTIMONIALS, and do you engage to carry it out? _________________________
+
+49. Do you pledge yourself never to receive any sum in the form of pay
+beyond the amount of allowances granted under the scale which  follows?
+___________
+
+   ALLOWANCES-- From the day of arrival at his station, each officer is
+entitled to draw the following allowances, provided the amount remains in
+hand after meeting all local expenses, namely:
+
+-- For Single Men: Lieutenants, 16s. weekly, and Captains, 18s.
+
+-- for Single Women: Lieutenants, 12s. weekly, and Captains, 15s. weekly.
+
+-- Married Men, 27s. per week, and ls. per week for each child under 14
+years of age; in all cases without house-rent.
+
+50. Do you perfectly understand that no salary or allowance is guaranteed
+to you, and that you will have no claim against the Salvation Army, or
+against any one connected therewith, on account of salary or allowances
+not received by you? _____________________________________________________
+
+                      -----------------------------
+
+51. Have you ever APPLIED BEFORE? ___  If so, when? ______________________
+
+52. With what result? ____________________________________________________
+
+53. If you have ever been in the service of the Salvation Army in any
+position, say what? ______________________________________________________
+
+54. Why did you leave? ___________________________________________________
+
+55. Are you willing to come into TRAINING that we may see whether you
+have the necessary goodness and ability for an Officer in the Salvation
+Army, and should we conclude that you have not the necessary qualifications,
+do you pledge yourself to return home and work in your Corps without
+creating any dissatisfaction? ____________________________________________
+
+56. Will you pay your own travelling expenses if we decide to receive you
+in Training? _____________________________________________________________
+
+57. How much can you pay for your maintenance while in Training? _________
+__________________________________________________________________________
+
+58. Can you deposit [Pound] 1 so that we can provide you with a suit of
+Uniform when you are Commissioned?
+______________________________________________________
+
+59. What is the shortest NOTICE you require should we want you? __________
+
+60. Are your PARENTS willing that you should become an Officer? __________
+
+61. Does any one depend upon you for support? _________ If so, who? ______
+__________________________________________________________________________
+
+62. To what extent? ______________________________________________________
+
+63. Give your parents', or nearest living relatives', full address _______
+__________________________________________________________________________
+
+                 ---------------------------------
+
+64. Are you COURTING? ________ If so, give name and address of the person:
+__________________________________________________________________________
+
+65. How long have you been engaged? _____________ What is the person's age?
+__________________________________________
+
+66. What is the date of Birthday? _______________________
+How long enrolled as a SOLDIER? _________________________
+
+67. What Uniform does the person wear? ___________________________________
+How long worn? ______________________
+
+68. What does the person do in the Corps? ________________________________
+
+69. Has the person applied for the work? _________________________________
+
+70. If not, when does the person intend doing so? ________________________
+
+71. Do the parents agree to the person coming into Training? _____________
+
+                 ---------------------------------
+
+72. Do you understand that you may not be allowed to marry until three
+years after your appointment as an Officer, and do you engage to abide
+by this? __________________
+
+73. If you are not courting, do you pledge yourself to abstain from
+anything of the kind during Training and for at least twelve months
+after your appointment as a Commissioned Field Officer? __________________
+
+74. Do you pledge yourself not to carry on courtship with any one at the
+station to which you are at the time appointed? __________________________
+
+75. Do you pledge yourself never to commence, or allow to commence, or
+break off anything of the sort, without first informing your Divisional
+Officer, or Headquarters, of your intention to do so? ____________________
+
+76. Do you pledge yourself never to marry any one marriage with whom would
+take you out of the Army altogether? _____________________________________
+
+77. Have you read, and do you agree to carry out, the following
+Regulations as to Courtship and Marriage? ___________________
+
+(a) "Officers must inform their Divisional Officer or Headquarters of
+their desire to enter into or break off any engagement, and no Officer is
+permitted to enter into or break off an engagement without the consent of
+his or her D.O.
+
+(b) "Officers will not be allowed to carry on any courtship in the Town in
+which they are appointed; nor until twelve months after the date of their
+Commission.
+
+(c) "Headquarters cannot consent to the engagement of Male Lieutenants,
+until their Divisional Officer is prepared to recommend them for command
+of a Station as Captain.
+
+(d) "Before Headquarters can consent to the marriage of any Officer, the
+Divisional Officer must be prepared to give him three stations as a married
+man.
+
+(e) "No Officer accepted will be allowed to marry until he or she has been
+at least three years in the field, except in cases of long-standing
+engagements before application for the work.
+
+(f) "No Male Officer will, under any circumstances, be allowed to marry
+before he is twenty-two years of age, unless required by Headquarters for
+special service.
+
+(g) "Headquarters will not agree to the Marriage of any Male Officer
+(except under extraordinary circumstances) until twelve months after
+consenting to his engagement.
+
+(h) "Consent will not be given to the engagement of any male Officer
+unless the young woman is likely to make a suitable wife for an Officer,
+and (if not already an Officer) is prepared to come into Training at once.
+
+(i) "Consent will be given to engagements between Female Officers and
+Soldiers, on condition that the latter are suitable for Officers, and are
+willing to come into Training if called upon.
+
+(j) "Consent will never be given to any engagement or marriage which would
+take an Officer out of the Army.
+
+(k) "Every Officer must sign before marriage the Articles of Marriage,
+contained in the Orders and Regulations for Field Officers."
+
+                          ----------------------------
+
+              PRESENTS AND TESTIMONIALS.
+
+1. Officers are expected to refuse utterly, and to prevent, if possible,
+even the proposal of any present or testimonial to them.
+
+2. Of course, an Officer who is receiving no salary, or only part salary,
+may accept food or other gifts, such as are needed to meet his wants; but
+it is dishonourable for any one who is receiving their salary to accept
+gifts of food also.
+
+         THE DOCTRINES OF THE SALVATION ARMY.
+
+The principal Doctrines taught in the Army are as follows: --
+
+1. We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament were given
+by inspiration of God, and that they only constitute the Divine rule of
+Christian faith and practice.
+
+2. We believe there is only one God, who is infinitely perfect, the
+Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things.
+
+3. We believe that there are three persons in the Godhead--the Father, the
+Son, and the Holy Ghost, undivided in essence, coequal in power and glory,
+and the only proper object of religious worship.
+
+4. We believe that, in the person of Jesus Christ, the Divine and human
+natures are united, so that He is truly and properly God, and truly and
+properly man.
+
+5. We believe that our first parents were created in a state of innocency,
+but by their disobedience they lost their purity and happiness; and that,
+in consequence of their fall, all men have become sinners, totally
+depraved, and as such are justly exposed to the wrath of God.
+
+6. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ has, by His suffering and death,
+made an atonement for the whole world, so that whosoever will may be
+saved.
+
+7. We believe that repentance towards God, faith in our Lord Jesus Christ,
+and regeneration by the Holy Spirit, are necessary to Salvation.
+
+8. We believe that we are justified by grace, through faith in our Lord
+Jesus Christ, and that he that believeth hath the witness in himself.
+
+9. We believe the Scriptures teach that not only does continuance in the
+favour of God depend upon continued faith in, and obedience to, Christ,
+but that it is possible for those who have been truly converted to fall
+away and be eternally lost.
+
+10. We believe that it is the privilege of all believers to be "wholly
+sanctified," and that "the whole spirit and soul and body" may "be
+preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." That is to
+say, we believe that after conversion there remain in the heart of the
+believer inclinations to evil, or roots of bitterness, which, unless
+overpowered by Divine grace, produce actual sin; but that these evil
+tendencies can be entirely taken away by the Spirit of God, and the whole
+heart, thus cleansed from everything contrary to the will of God, or
+entirely sanctified, will then produce the fruit of the Spirit only. And
+we believe that persons thus entirely sanctified may, by the power of God,
+be kept unblamable and unreprovable before Him.
+
+11. We believe in the immortality of the soul; in the resurrection of the
+body; in the general judgment at the end of the world; in the eternal
+happiness of the righteous; and in the everlasting punishment of the
+wicked.
+
+                   -----------------------------
+
+                    DECLARATION.
+
+I HEREBY DECLARE that I will never, on any consideration, do anything
+calculated to injure The Salvation Army, and especially, that I will
+never, without first having obtained the consent of The General, take any
+part in any religious services or in carrying on services held in
+opposition to the Army.
+
+I PLEDGE MYSELF to make true records, daily, on the forms supplied to me,
+of what I do, and to confess, as far as I am concerned, and to report, as
+far as I may see in others, any neglect or variation from the orders or
+directions of The General.
+
+I FULLY UNDERSTAND that he does not undertake to employ or to retain in
+the service of The Army any one who does not appear to him to be fitted
+for the work, or faithful and successful in it, and I solemnly pledge
+myself quietly to leave any Army Station to which I may be sent, without
+making any attempt to disturb or annoy The Army in any way, should The
+General desire me to do so. And I hereby discharge The Army and The
+General from all liability, and pledge myself to make no claim on account
+of any situation, property, or interest I may give up in order to secure
+an engagement in The Army.
+
+I understand that The General will not be responsible in any way for any
+loss I may suffer in consequence of being dismissed from Training; as I am
+aware that the Cadets are received into Training for the very purpose of
+testing their suitability for the work of Salvation Army Officers.
+
+I hereby declare that the foregoing answers appear to me to fully express
+the truth as to the questions put to me, and that I know of no other facts
+which would prevent my engagement by The General, if they were known to
+him.
+
+Candidate to sign here.........................................
+
+                    --------------------------
+
+               NOTICE TO CANDIDATES.
+
+1. All Candidates are expected to fill up and sign this form themselves,
+if they can write at all.
+
+2. You are expected to have obtained and read "Orders and Regulations for
+Field Officers" before you make this application.
+
+3. Making this application does NOT imply that we can receive you as an
+officer, and you are, therefore, NOT to leave your home, or give notice to
+leave your situation, until you hear again from us.
+
+4. If you are appointed as an Officer, or received into Training and it is
+afterwards discovered that any of the questions in this form have not been
+truthfully answered, you will be instantly dismissed.
+
+5. If you do not understand any question in this form, or if you do not
+agree to any of the requirements stated upon it, return it to
+Headquarters, and say so in a straightforward manner.
+
+6. Make the question for this appointment a matter of earnest prayer, as
+it is the most important step you have taken since your conversion.
+
+We must have your Photo. Please enclose it with your forms, and address
+them to "Candidate Department," 101, Queen Victoria Street, London, E.C.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVOLUTION AND ETHICS, AND OTHER
+ESSAYS ***
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