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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays: Scientific, Political, &
+Speculative, Vol. I, by Herbert Spencer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I
+
+Author: Herbert Spencer
+
+Release Date: August 31, 2009 [EBook #29869]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS: SCIENTIFIC, ETC. VOL I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Adrian Mastronardi, Carla Foust, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note
+
+
+Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Printer
+errors have been changed and are listed at the end. All other
+inconsistencies are as in the original.
+
+
+
+
+ESSAYS:
+
+SCIENTIFIC, POLITICAL, & SPECULATIVE.
+
+
+BY
+
+HERBERT SPENCER.
+
+
+LIBRARY EDITION,
+
+(OTHERWISE FIFTH THOUSAND)
+
+_Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and various other
+additions._
+
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+   WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,
+   14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON:
+   AND 20. SOUTH FREDERICK STREET. EDINBURGH.
+   1891.
+
+
+
+
+   LONDON:
+   G. NORMAN AND SON, PRINTERS, HART STREET,
+   COVENT GARDEN.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Excepting those which have appeared as articles in periodicals during
+the last eight years, the essays here gathered together were originally
+re-published in separate volumes at long intervals. The first volume
+appeared in December 1857; the second in November 1863; and the third in
+February 1874. By the time the original editions of the first two had
+been sold, American reprints, differently entitled and having the essays
+differently arranged, had been produced; and, for economy's sake, I have
+since contented myself with importing successive supplies printed from
+the American stereotype plates. Of the third volume, however, supplies
+have, as they were required, been printed over here, from plates partly
+American and partly English. The completion of this final edition of
+course puts an end to this make-shift arrangement.
+
+The essays above referred to as having been written since 1882, are now
+incorporated with those previously re-published. There are seven of
+them; namely--"Morals and Moral Sentiments," "The Factors of Organic
+Evolution," "Professor Green's Explanations," "The Ethics of Kant,"
+"Absolute Political Ethics," "From Freedom to Bondage," and "The
+Americans." As well as these large additions there are small additions,
+in the shape of postscripts to various essays--one to "The Constitution
+of the Sun," one to "The Philosophy of Style," one to "Railway Morals,"
+one to "Prison Ethics," and one to "The Origin and Function of Music:"
+which last is about equal in length to the original essay. Changes have
+been made in many of the essays: in some cases by omitting passages and
+in other cases by including new ones. Especially the essay on "The
+Nebular Hypothesis" may be named as one which, though unchanged in
+essentials, has been much altered by additions and subtractions, and by
+bringing its statements up to date; so that it has been in large measure
+re-cast. Beyond these respects in which this final edition differs from
+preceding editions, it differs in having undergone a verification of its
+references and quotations, as well as a second verbal revision.
+
+Naturally the fusion of three separate series of essays into one series,
+has made needful a general re-arrangement. Whether to follow the order
+of time or the order of subjects was a question which presented itself;
+and, as neither alternative promised satisfactory results, I eventually
+decided to compromise--to follow partly the one order and partly the
+other. The first volume is made up of essays in which the idea of
+evolution, general or special, is dominant. In the second volume essays
+dealing with philosophical questions, with abstract and concrete
+science, and with aesthetics, are brought together; but though all of
+them are tacitly evolutionary, their evolutionism is an incidental
+rather than a necessary trait. The ethical, political, and social essays
+composing the third volume, though mostly written from the evolution
+point of view, have for their more immediate purposes the enunciation of
+doctrines which are directly practical in their bearings. Meanwhile,
+within each volume the essays are arranged in order of time: not indeed
+strictly, but so far as consists with the requirements of sub-classing.
+
+Beyond the essays included in these three volumes, there remain several
+which I have not thought it well to include--in some cases because of
+their personal character, in other cases because of their relative
+unimportance, and in yet other cases because they would scarcely be
+understood in the absence of the arguments to which they are replies.
+But for the convenience of any who may wish to find them, I append their
+titles and places of publication. These are as follows:--"Retrogressive
+Religion," in _The Nineteenth Century_ for July 1884; "Last Words about
+Agnosticism and the Religion of Humanity," in _The Nineteenth Century_
+for November 1884; a note to Prof. Cairns' Critique on the _Study of
+Sociology_, in _The Fortnightly Review_, for February 1875; "A Short
+Rejoinder" [to Mr. J. F. McLennan], _Fortnightly Review_, June 1877;
+"Prof. Goldwin Smith as a Critic," _Contemporary Review_, March 1882; "A
+Rejoinder to M. de Laveleye," _Contemporary Review_, April 1885.
+
+LONDON, _December, 1890_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+   THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS                                          1
+
+   PROGRESS: ITS LAW AND CAUSE                                         8
+
+   TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSIOLOGY                                          63
+
+   THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS                                            108
+
+   ILLOGICAL GEOLOGY                                                 192
+
+   BAIN ON THE EMOTIONS AND THE WILL                                 241
+
+   THE SOCIAL ORGANISM                                               265
+
+   THE ORIGIN OF ANIMAL WORSHIP                                      308
+
+   MORALS AND MORAL SENTIMENTS                                       331
+
+   THE COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY OF MAN                                 351
+
+   MR. MARTINEAU ON EVOLUTION                                        371
+
+   THE FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION                                  389
+
+
+   (_For Index, see Volume III._)
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS.
+
+    [_Originally published in _The Leader, _for March 20,_ 1852. _Brief
+    though it is, I place this essay before the rest, partly because
+    with the exception of a similarly-brief essay on "Use and Beauty",
+    it came first in order of time, but chiefly because it came first in
+    order of thought, and struck the keynote of all that was to
+    follow._]
+
+
+In a debate upon the development hypothesis, lately narrated to me by a
+friend, one of the disputants was described as arguing that as, in all
+our experience, we know no such phenomenon as transmutation of species,
+it is unphilosophical to assume that transmutation of species ever takes
+place. Had I been present I think that, passing over his assertion,
+which is open to criticism, I should have replied that, as in all our
+experience we have never known a species _created_, it was, by his own
+showing, unphilosophical to assume that any species ever had been
+created.
+
+Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution as not being
+adequately supported by facts, seem to forget that their own theory is
+supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a
+given belief, they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief,
+but assume that their own needs none. Here we find, scattered over the
+globe, vegetable and animal organisms numbering, of the one kind
+(according to Humboldt), some 320,000 species, and of the other, some
+2,000,000 species (see Carpenter); and if to these we add the numbers of
+animal and vegetable species which have become extinct, we may safely
+estimate the number of species that have existed, and are existing, on
+the Earth, at not less than _ten millions_. Well, which is the most
+rational theory about these ten millions of species? Is it most likely
+that there have been ten millions of special creations? or is it most
+likely that, by continual modifications due to change of circumstances,
+ten millions of varieties have been produced, as varieties are being
+produced still?
+
+Doubtless many will reply that they can more easily conceive ten
+millions of special creations to have taken place, than they can
+conceive that ten millions of varieties have arisen by successive
+modifications. All such, however, will find, on inquiry, that they are
+under an illusion. This is one of the many cases in which men do not
+really believe, but rather _believe they believe_. It is not that they
+can truly conceive ten millions of special creations to have taken
+place, but that they _think they can do so_. Careful introspection will
+show them that they have never yet realized to themselves the creation
+of even _one_ species. If they have formed a definite conception of the
+process, let them tell us how a new species is constructed, and how it
+makes its appearance. Is it thrown down from the clouds? or must we hold
+to the notion that it struggles up out of the ground? Do its limbs and
+viscera rush together from all the points of the compass? or must we
+receive the old Hebrew idea, that God takes clay and moulds a new
+creature? If they say that a new creature is produced in none of these
+modes, which are too absurd to be believed, then they are required to
+describe the mode in which a new creature _may_ be produced--a mode
+which does _not_ seem absurd; and such a mode they will find that they
+neither have conceived nor can conceive.
+
+Should the believers in special creations consider it unfair thus to
+call upon them to describe how special creations take place, I reply
+that this is far less than they demand from the supporters of the
+Development Hypothesis. They are merely asked to point out a
+_conceivable_ mode. On the other hand, they ask, not simply for a
+_conceivable_ mode, but for the _actual_ mode. They do not say--Show us
+how this _may_ take place; but they say--Show us how this _does_ take
+place. So far from its being unreasonable to put the above question, it
+would be reasonable to ask not only for a _possible_ mode of special
+creation, but for an _ascertained_ mode; seeing that this is no greater
+a demand than they make upon their opponents.
+
+And here we may perceive how much more defensible the new doctrine is
+than the old one. Even could the supporters of the Development
+Hypothesis merely show that the origination of species by the process of
+modification is conceivable, they would be in a better position than
+their opponents. But they can do much more than this. They can show that
+the process of modification has effected, and is effecting, decided
+changes in all organisms subject to modifying influences. Though, from
+the impossibility of getting at a sufficiency of facts, they are unable
+to trace the many phases through which any existing species has passed
+in arriving at its present form, or to identify the influences which
+caused the successive modifications; yet, they can show that any
+existing species--animal or vegetable--when placed under conditions
+different from its previous ones, _immediately begins to undergo certain
+changes fitting it for the new conditions_. They can show that in
+successive generations these changes continue; until, ultimately, the
+new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated
+plants, in domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, such
+alterations have taken place. They can show that the degrees of
+difference so produced are often, as in dogs, greater than those on
+which distinctions of species are in other cases founded. They can show
+that it is a matter of dispute whether some of these modified forms are
+varieties or separate species. They can show, too, that the changes
+daily taking place in ourselves--the facility that attends long
+practice, and the loss of aptitude that begins when practice ceases--the
+strengthening of passions habitually gratified, and the weakening of
+those habitually curbed--the development of every faculty, bodily,
+moral, or intellectual, according to the use made of it--are all
+explicable on this same principle. And thus they can show that
+throughout all organic nature there _is_ at work a modifying influence
+of the kind they assign as the cause of these specific differences: an
+influence which, though slow in its action, does, in time, if the
+circumstances demand it, produce marked changes--an influence which, to
+all appearance, would produce in the millions of years, and under the
+great varieties of condition which geological records imply, any amount
+of change.
+
+Which, then, is the most rational hypothesis?--that of special creations
+which has neither a fact to support it nor is even definitely
+conceivable; or that of modification, which is not only definitely
+conceivable, but is countenanced by the habitudes of every existing
+organism?
+
+That by any series of changes a protozoon should ever become a mammal,
+seems to those who are not familiar with zoology, and who have not seen
+how clear becomes the relationship between the simplest and the most
+complex forms when intermediate forms are examined, a very grotesque
+notion. Habitually looking at things rather in their statical aspect
+than in their dynamical aspect, they never realize the fact that, by
+small increments of modification, any amount of modification may in time
+be generated. That surprise which they feel on finding one whom they
+last saw as a boy, grown into a man, becomes incredulity when the degree
+of change is greater. Nevertheless, abundant instances are at hand of
+the mode in which we may pass to the most diverse forms by insensible
+gradations. Arguing the matter some time since with a learned professor,
+I illustrated my position thus:--You admit that there is no apparent
+relationship between a circle and an hyperbola. The one is a finite
+curve; the other is an infinite one. All parts of the one are alike; of
+the other no parts are alike [save parts on its opposite sides]. The one
+incloses a space; the other will not inclose a space though produced for
+ever. Yet opposite as are these curves in all their properties, they may
+be connected together by a series of intermediate curves, no one of
+which differs from the adjacent ones in any appreciable degree. Thus, if
+a cone be cut by a plane at right angles to its axis we get a circle.
+If, instead of being perfectly at right angles, the plane subtends with
+the axis an angle of 89° 59´, we have an ellipse which no human eye,
+even when aided by an accurate pair of compasses, can distinguish from a
+circle. Decreasing the angle minute by minute, the ellipse becomes first
+perceptibly eccentric, then manifestly so, and by and by acquires so
+immensely elongated a form, as to bear no recognizable resemblance to a
+circle. By continuing this process, the ellipse passes insensibly into a
+parabola; and, ultimately, by still further diminishing the angle, into
+an hyperbola. Now here we have four different species of curve--circle,
+ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola--each having its peculiar properties
+and its separate equation, and the first and last of which are quite
+opposite in nature, connected together as members of one series, all
+producible by a single process of insensible modification.
+
+But the blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex
+organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple
+ones, becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms
+are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably
+in every respect--in bulk, in structure, in colour, in form, in chemical
+composition: differs so greatly that no visible resemblance of any kind
+can be pointed out between them. Yet is the one changed in the course of
+a few years into the other: changed so gradually, that at no moment can
+it be said--Now the seed ceases to be, and the tree exists. What can be
+more widely contrasted than a newly-born child and the small,
+semi-transparent spherule constituting the human ovum? The infant is so
+complex in structure that a cyclopædia is needed to describe its
+constituent parts. The germinal vesicle is so simple that it may be
+defined in a line. Nevertheless a few months suffice to develop the one
+out of the other; and that, too, by a series of modifications so small,
+that were the embryo examined at successive minutes, even a microscope
+would with difficulty disclose any sensible changes. That the uneducated
+and the ill-educated should think the hypothesis that all races of
+beings, man inclusive, may in process of time have been evolved from the
+simplest monad, a ludicrous one, is not to be wondered at. But for the
+physiologist, who knows that every individual being _is_ so evolved--who
+knows, further, that in their earliest condition the germs of all plants
+and animals whatever are so similar, "that there is no appreciable
+distinction amongst them, which would enable it to be determined whether
+a particular molecule is the germ of a Conferva or of an Oak, of a
+Zoophyte or of a Man;"[1]--for him to make a difficulty of the matter is
+inexcusable. Surely if a single cell may, when subjected to certain
+influences, become a man in the space of twenty years; there is nothing
+absurd in the hypothesis that under certain other influences, a cell
+may, in the course of millions of years, give origin to the human race.
+
+We have, indeed, in the part taken by many scientific men in this
+controversy of "Law _versus_ Miracle," a good illustration of the
+tenacious vitality of superstitions. Ask one of our leading geologists
+or physiologists whether he believes in the Mosaic account of the
+creation, and he will take the question as next to an insult. Either he
+rejects the narrative entirely, or understands it in some vague
+nonnatural sense. Yet one part of it he unconsciously adopts; and that,
+too, literally. For whence has he got this notion of "special
+creations," which he thinks so reasonable, and fights for so vigorously?
+Evidently he can trace it back to no other source than this myth which
+he repudiates. He has not a single fact in nature to cite in proof of
+it; nor is he prepared with any chain of reasoning by which it may be
+established. Catechize him, and he will be forced to confess that the
+notion was put into his mind in childhood as part of a story which he
+now thinks absurd. And why, after rejecting all the rest of the story,
+he should strenuously defend this last remnant of it, as though he had
+received it on valid authority, he would be puzzled to say.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 1: Carpenter, _Principles of Comparative Physiology_, p. 474.]
+
+
+
+
+PROGRESS: ITS LAW AND CAUSE.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Westminster Review _for April,_ 1857.
+    _Though the ideas and illustrations contained in this essay were
+    eventually incorporated in_ First Principles, _yet I think it well
+    here to reproduce it as exhibiting the form under which the General
+    Doctrine of Evolution made its first appearance._]
+
+
+The current conception of progress is shifting and indefinite. Sometimes
+it comprehends little more than simple growth--as of a nation in the
+number of its members and the extent of territory over which it spreads.
+Sometimes it has reference to quantity of material products--as when the
+advance of agriculture and manufactures is the topic. Sometimes the
+superior quality of these products is contemplated; and sometimes the
+new or improved appliances by which they are produced. When, again, we
+speak of moral or intellectual progress, we refer to states of the
+individual or people exhibiting it; while, when the progress of Science,
+or Art, is commented upon, we have in view certain abstract results of
+human thought and action. Not only, however, is the current conception
+of progress more or less vague, but it is in great measure erroneous. It
+takes in not so much the reality of progress as its accompaniments--not
+so much the substance as the shadow. That progress in intelligence seen
+during the growth of the child into the man, or the savage into the
+philosopher, is commonly regarded as consisting in the greater number
+of facts known and laws understood; whereas the actual progress consists
+in those internal modifications of which this larger knowledge is the
+expression. Social progress is supposed to consist in the making of a
+greater quantity and variety of the articles required for satisfying
+men's wants; in the increasing security of person and property; in
+widening freedom of action; whereas, rightly understood, social progress
+consists in those changes of structure in the social organism which have
+entailed these consequences. The current conception is a teleological
+one. The phenomena are contemplated solely as bearing on human
+happiness. Only those changes are held to constitute progress which
+directly or indirectly tend to heighten human happiness; and they are
+thought to constitute progress simply _because_ they tend to heighten
+human happiness. But rightly to understand progress, we must learn the
+nature of these changes, considered apart from our interests. Ceasing,
+for example, to regard the successive geological modifications that have
+taken place in the Earth, as modifications that have gradually fitted it
+for the habitation of Man, and as _therefore_ constituting geological
+progress, we must ascertain the character common to these
+modifications--the law to which they all conform. And similarly in every
+other case. Leaving out of sight concomitants and beneficial
+consequences, let us ask what progress is in itself.
+
+In respect to that progress which individual organisms display in the
+course of their evolution, this question has been answered by the
+Germans. The investigations of Wolff, Goethe, and von Baer, have
+established the truth that the series of changes gone through during the
+development of a seed into a tree, or an ovum into an animal, constitute
+an advance from homogeneity of structure to heterogeneity of structure.
+In its primary stage, every germ consists of a substance that is uniform
+throughout, both in texture and chemical composition. The first step is
+the appearance of a difference between two parts of this substance; or,
+as the phenomenon is called in physiological language, a
+differentiation. Each of these differentiated divisions presently begins
+itself to exhibit some contrast of parts: and by and by these secondary
+differentiations become as definite as the original one. This process is
+continuously repeated--is simultaneously going on in all parts of the
+growing embryo; and by endless such differentiations there is finally
+produced that complex combination of tissues and organs constituting the
+adult animal or plant. This is the history of all organisms whatever. It
+is settled beyond dispute that organic progress consists in a change
+from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.
+
+Now, we propose in the first place to show, that this law of organic
+progress is the law of all progress. Whether it be in the development of
+the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface, in the
+development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of
+Language, Literature, Science, Art, this same evolution of the simple
+into the complex, through successive differentiations, holds throughout.
+From the earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results
+of civilization, we shall find that the transformation of the
+homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which progress
+essentially consists.
+
+With the view of showing that _if_ the Nebular Hypothesis be true, the
+genesis of the solar system supplies one illustration of this law, let
+us assume that the matter of which the sun and planets consist was once
+in a diffused form; and that from the gravitation of its atoms there
+resulted a gradual concentration. By the hypothesis, the solar system in
+its nascent state existed as an indefinitely extended and nearly
+homogeneous medium--a medium almost homogeneous in density, in
+temperature, and in other physical attributes. The first change in the
+direction of increased aggregation, brought a contrast in density and a
+contrast in temperature, between the interior and the exterior of this
+mass. Simultaneously the drawing in of outer parts caused motions ending
+in rotation round a centre with various angular velocities. These
+differentiations increased in number and degree until there was evolved
+the organized group of sun, planets, and satellites, which we now
+know--a group which presents numerous contrasts of structure and action
+among its members. There are the immense contrasts between the sun and
+the planets, in bulk and in weight; as well as the subordinate contrasts
+between one planet and another, and between the planets and their
+satellites. There is the similarly-marked contrast between the sun as
+almost stationary (relatively to the other members of the Solar System),
+and the planets as moving round him with great velocity: while there are
+the secondary contrasts between the velocities and periods of the
+several planets, and between their simple revolutions and the double
+ones of their satellites, which have to move round their primaries while
+moving round the sun. There is the yet further strong contrast between
+the sun and the planets in respect of temperature; and there is good
+reason to suppose that the planets and satellites differ from each other
+in their proper heats, as well as in the amounts of heat they receive
+from the sun. When we bear in mind that, in addition to these various
+contrasts, the planets and satellites also differ in respect to their
+distances from each other and their primary; in respect to the
+inclinations of their orbits, the inclinations of their axes, their
+times of rotation on their axes, their specific gravities, and their
+physical constitutions; we see what a high degree of heterogeneity the
+solar system exhibits, when compared with the almost complete
+homogeneity of the nebulous mass out of which it is supposed to have
+originated.
+
+Passing from this hypothetical illustration, which must be taken for
+what it is worth, without prejudice to the general argument, let us
+descend to a more certain order of evidence. It is now generally agreed
+among geologists and physicists that the Earth was at one time a mass
+of molten matter. If so, it was at that time relatively homogeneous in
+consistence, and, in virtue of the circulation which takes place in
+heated fluids, must have been comparatively homogeneous in temperature;
+and it must have been surrounded by an atmosphere consisting partly of
+the elements of air and water, and partly of those various other
+elements which are among the more ready to assume gaseous forms at high
+temperatures. That slow cooling by radiation which is still going on at
+an inappreciable rate, and which, though originally far more rapid than
+now, necessarily required an immense time to produce any decided change,
+must ultimately have resulted in the solidification of the portion most
+able to part with its heat--namely, the surface. In the thin crust thus
+formed we have the first marked differentiation. A still further
+cooling, a consequent thickening of this crust, and an accompanying
+deposition of all solidifiable elements contained in the atmosphere,
+must finally have been followed by the condensation of the water
+previously existing as vapour. A second marked differentiation must thus
+have arisen; and as the condensation must have taken place on the
+coolest parts of the surface--namely, about the poles--there must thus
+have resulted the first geographical distinction of parts. To these
+illustrations of growing heterogeneity, which, though deduced from known
+physical laws, may be regarded as more or less hypothetical, Geology
+adds an extensive series that have been inductively established.
+Investigations show that the Earth has been continually becoming more
+heterogeneous in virtue of the multiplication of sedimentary strata
+which form its crust; also, that it has been becoming more heterogeneous
+in respect of the composition of these strata, the later of which, being
+made from the detritus of the earlier, are many of them rendered highly
+complex by the mixture of materials they contain; and further, that this
+heterogeneity has been vastly increased by the actions of the Earth's
+still molten nucleus upon its envelope, whence have resulted not only
+many kinds of igneous rocks, but the tilting up of sedimentary strata at
+all angles, the formation of faults and metallic veins, the production
+of endless dislocations and irregularities. Yet again, geologists teach
+us that the Earth's surface has been growing more varied in
+elevation--that the most ancient mountain systems are the smallest, and
+the Andes and Himalayas the most modern; while in all probability there
+have been corresponding changes in the bed of the ocean. As a
+consequence of these ceaseless differentiations, we now find that no
+considerable portion of the Earth's exposed surface is like any other
+portion, either in contour, in geologic structure, or in chemical
+composition; and that in most parts it changes from mile to mile in all
+these characters. Moreover, there has been simultaneously going on a
+differentiation of climates. As fast as the Earth cooled and its crust
+solidified, there arose appreciable differences in temperature between
+those parts of its surface more exposed to the sun and those less
+exposed. As the cooling progressed, these differences became more
+pronounced; until there finally resulted those marked contrasts between
+regions of perpetual ice and snow, regions where winter and summer
+alternately reign for periods varying according to the latitude, and
+regions where summer follows summer with scarcely an appreciable
+variation. At the same time the many and varied elevations and
+subsidences of portions of the Earth's crust, bringing about the present
+irregular distribution of land and sea, have entailed modifications of
+climate beyond those dependent on latitude; while a yet further series
+of such modifications have been produced by increasing differences of
+elevation in the land, which have in sundry places brought arctic,
+temperate, and tropical climates to within a few miles of one another.
+And the general outcome of these changes is, that not only has every
+extensive region its own meteorologic conditions, but that every
+locality in each region differs more or less from others in those
+conditions; as in its structure, its contour, its soil. Thus, between
+our existing Earth, the phenomena of whose crust neither geographers,
+geologists, mineralogists, nor meteorologists have yet enumerated, and
+the molten globe out of which it was evolved, the contrast in
+heterogeneity is extreme.
+
+When from the Earth itself we turn to the plants and animals which have
+lived, or still live, upon its surface, we find ourselves in some
+difficulty from lack of facts. That every existing organism has been
+developed out of the simple into the complex, is indeed the first
+established truth of all; and that every organism which existed in past
+times was similarly developed, is an inference no physiologist will
+hesitate to draw. But when we pass from individual forms of life to Life
+in general, and inquire whether the same law is seen in the _ensemble_
+of its manifestations,--whether modern plants and animals are of more
+heterogeneous structure than ancient ones, and whether the Earth's
+present Flora and Fauna are more heterogeneous than the Flora and Fauna
+of the past,--we find the evidence so fragmentary, that every conclusion
+is open to dispute. Three-fifths of the Earth's surface being covered by
+water; a great part of the exposed land being inaccessible to, or
+untravelled by, the geologist; the greater part of the remainder having
+been scarcely more than glanced at; and even the most familiar portions,
+as England, having been so imperfectly explored that a new series of
+strata has been added within these four years,--it is impossible for us
+to say with certainty what creatures have, and what have not, existed at
+any particular period. Considering the perishable nature of many of the
+lower organic forms, the metamorphosis of numerous sedimentary strata,
+and the great gaps occurring among the rest, we shall see further reason
+for distrusting our deductions. On the one hand, the repeated discovery
+of vertebrate remains in strata previously supposed to contain none,--of
+reptiles where only fish were thought to exist,--of mammals where it was
+believed there were no creatures higher than reptiles,--renders it daily
+more manifest how small is the value of negative evidence. On the other
+hand, the worthlessness of the assumption that we have discovered the
+earliest, or anything like the earliest, organic remains, is becoming
+equally clear. That the oldest known sedimentary rocks have been greatly
+changed by igneous action, and that still older ones have been totally
+transformed by it, is becoming undeniable. And the fact that sedimentary
+strata earlier than any we know, have been melted up, being admitted, it
+must also be admitted that we cannot say how far back in time this
+destruction of sedimentary strata has been going on. Thus the title
+_Palæozoic_, as applied to the earliest known fossiliferous strata,
+involves a _petitio principii_; and, for aught we know to the contrary,
+only the last few chapters of the Earth's biological history may have
+come down to us. On neither side, therefore, is the evidence conclusive.
+Nevertheless we cannot but think that, scanty as they are, the facts,
+taken altogether, tend to show both that the more heterogeneous
+organisms have been evolved in the later geologic periods, and that Life
+in general has been more heterogeneously manifested as time has
+advanced. Let us cite, in illustration, the one case of the
+_Vertebrata_. The earliest known vertebrate remains are those of Fishes;
+and Fishes are the most homogeneous of the vertebrata. Later and more
+heterogeneous are Reptiles. Later still, and more heterogeneous still,
+are Birds and Mammals. If it be said that the Palæozoic deposits, not
+being estuary deposits, are not likely to contain the remains of
+terrestrial vertebrata, which may nevertheless have existed at that era,
+we reply that we are merely pointing to the leading facts, _such as they
+are_. But to avoid any such criticism, let us take the mammalian
+subdivision only. The earliest known remains of mammals are those of
+small marsupials, which are the lowest of the mammalian type; while,
+conversely, the highest of the mammalian type--Man--is the most recent.
+The evidence that the vertebrate fauna, as a whole, has become more
+heterogeneous, is considerably stronger. To the argument that the
+vertebrate fauna of the Palæozoic period, consisting, so far as we know,
+entirely of Fishes, was less heterogeneous than the modern vertebrate
+fauna, which includes Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals, of multitudinous
+genera, it may be replied, as before, that estuary deposits of the
+Palæozoic period, could we find them, might contain other orders of
+vertebrata. But no such reply can be made to the argument that whereas
+the marine vertebrata of the Palæozoic period consisted entirely of
+cartilaginous fishes, the marine vertebrata of later periods include
+numerous genera of osseous fishes; and that, therefore, the later marine
+vertebrate faunas are more heterogeneous than the oldest known one. Nor,
+again, can any such reply be made to the fact that there are far more
+numerous orders and genera of mammalian remains in the tertiary
+formations than in the secondary formations. Did we wish merely to make
+out the best case, we might dwell upon the opinion of Dr. Carpenter, who
+says that "the general facts of Palæontology appear to sanction the
+belief, that _the same plan_ may be traced out in what may be called
+_the general life of the globe_, as in _the individual life_ of every
+one of the forms of organized being which now people it." Or we might
+quote, as decisive, the judgment of Professor Owen, who holds that the
+earlier examples of each group of creatures severally departed less
+widely from archetypal generality than the later examples--were
+severally less unlike the fundamental form common to the group as a
+whole; and thus constituted a less heterogeneous group of creatures. But
+in deference to an authority for whom we have the highest respect, who
+considers that the evidence at present obtained does not justify a
+verdict either way, we are content to leave the question open.[2]
+
+Whether an advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is or is
+not displayed in the biological history of the globe, it is clearly
+enough displayed in the progress of the latest and most heterogeneous
+creature--Man. It is true alike that, during the period in which the
+Earth has been peopled, the human organism has grown more heterogeneous
+among the civilized divisions of the species; and that the species, as a
+whole, has been growing more heterogeneous in virtue of the
+multiplication of races and the differentiation of these races from each
+other. In proof of the first of these positions, we may cite the fact
+that, in the relative development of the limbs, the civilized man
+departs more widely from the general type of the placental mammalia than
+do the lower human races. While often possessing well-developed body and
+arms, the Australian has very small legs: thus reminding us of the
+chimpanzee and the gorilla, which present no great contrasts in size
+between the hind and fore limbs. But in the European, the greater length
+and massiveness of the legs have become marked--the fore and hind limbs
+are more heterogeneous. Again, the greater ratio which the cranial bones
+bear to the facial bones illustrates the same truth. Among the
+vertebrata in general, progress is marked by an increasing heterogeneity
+in the vertebral column, and more especially in the segments
+constituting the skull: the higher forms being distinguished by the
+relatively larger size of the bones which cover the brain, and the
+relatively  smaller size of those which form the jaws, &c. Now this
+characteristic, which is stronger in Man than in any other creature, is
+stronger in the European than in the savage. Moreover, judging from the
+greater extent and variety of faculty he exhibits, we may infer that the
+civilized man has also a more complex or heterogeneous nervous system
+than the uncivilized man: and, indeed, the fact is in part visible in
+the increased ratio which his cerebrum bears to the subjacent ganglia,
+as well as in the wider departure from symmetry in its convolutions. If
+further elucidation be needed, we may find it in every nursery. The
+infant European has sundry marked points of resemblance to the lower
+human races; as in the flatness of the alæ of the nose, the depression
+of its bridge, the divergence and forward opening of the nostrils, the
+form of the lips, the absence of a frontal sinus, the width between the
+eyes, the smallness of the legs. Now, as the developmental process by
+which these traits are turned into those of the adult European, is a
+continuation of that change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous
+displayed during the previous evolution of the embryo, which every
+anatomist will admit; it follows that the parallel developmental process
+by which the like traits of the barbarous races have been turned into
+those of the civilized races, has also been a continuation of the change
+from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. The truth of the second
+position--that Mankind, as a whole, have become more heterogeneous--is
+so obvious as scarcely to need illustration. Every work on Ethnology, by
+its divisions and subdivisions of races, bears testimony to it. Even
+were we to admit the hypothesis that Mankind originated from several
+separate stocks, it would still remain true, that as, from each of these
+stocks, there have sprung many now widely-different tribes, which are
+proved by philological evidence to have had a common origin, the race as
+a whole is far less homogeneous than it once was. Add to which, that we
+have, in the Anglo-Americans, an example of a new variety arising
+within these few generations; and that, if we may trust to the
+descriptions of observers, we are likely soon to have another such
+example in Australia.
+
+On passing from Humanity under its individual form, to Humanity as
+socially embodied, we find the general law still more variously
+exemplified. The change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is
+displayed in the progress of civilization as a whole, as well as in the
+progress of every nation; and is still going on with increasing
+rapidity. As we see in existing barbarous tribes, society in its first
+and lowest form is a homogeneous aggregation of individuals having like
+powers and like functions: the only marked difference of function being
+that which accompanies difference of sex. Every man is warrior, hunter,
+fisherman, tool-maker, builder; every woman performs the same
+drudgeries. Very early, however, in the course of social evolution,
+there arises an incipient differentiation between the governing and the
+governed. Some kind of chieftainship seems coeval with the first advance
+from the state of separate wandering families to that of a nomadic
+tribe. The authority of the strongest or the most cunning makes itself
+felt among a body of savages as in a herd of animals, or a posse of
+schoolboys. At first, however, it is indefinite, uncertain; is shared by
+others of scarcely inferior power; and is unaccompanied by any
+difference in occupation or style of living: the first ruler kills his
+own game, makes his own weapons, builds his own hut, and, economically
+considered, does not differ from others of his tribe. Gradually, as the
+tribe progresses, the contrast between the governing and the governed
+grows more decided. Supreme power becomes hereditary in one family; the
+head of that family, ceasing to provide for his own wants, is served by
+others; and he begins to assume the sole office of ruling. At the same
+time there has been arising a co-ordinate species of government--that
+of Religion. As all ancient records and traditions prove, the earliest
+rulers are regarded as divine personages. The maxims and commands they
+uttered during their lives are held sacred after their deaths, and are
+enforced by their divinely-descended successors; who in their turns are
+promoted to the pantheon of the race, here to be worshipped and
+propitiated along with their predecessors: the most ancient of whom is
+the supreme god, and the rest subordinate gods. For a long time these
+connate forms of government--civil and religious--remain closely
+associated. For many generations the king continues to be the chief
+priest, and the priesthood to be members of the royal race. For many
+ages religious law continues to include more or less of civil
+regulation, and civil law to possess more or less of religious sanction;
+and even among the most advanced nations these two controlling agencies
+are by no means completely separated from each other. Having a common
+root with these, and gradually diverging from them, we find yet another
+controlling agency--that of Ceremonial usages. All titles of honour are
+originally the names of the god-king; afterwards of the god and the
+king; still later of persons of high rank; and finally come, some of
+them, to be used between man and man. All forms of complimentary address
+were at first the expressions of submission from prisoners to their
+conqueror, or from subjects to their ruler, either human or
+divine--expressions which were afterwards used to propitiate subordinate
+authorities, and slowly descended into ordinary intercourse. All modes
+of salutation were once obeisances made before the monarch and used in
+worship of him after his death. Presently others of the god-descended
+race were similarly saluted; and by degrees some of the salutations
+have become the due of all.[3] Thus, no sooner does the
+originally-homogeneous social mass differentiate  into the governed and
+the governing parts, than this last exhibits an incipient
+differentiation into religious and secular--Church and State; while at
+the same time there begins to be differentiated from both, that less
+definite species of government which rules our daily intercourse--a
+species of government which, as we may see in heralds' colleges, in
+books of the peerage, in masters of ceremonies, is not without a certain
+embodiment of its own. Each of these is itself subject to successive
+differentiations. In the course of ages, there arises, as among
+ourselves, a highly complex political organization of monarch,
+ministers, lords and commons, with their subordinate administrative
+departments, courts of justice, revenue offices, &c., supplemented in
+the provinces by municipal governments, county governments, parish or
+union governments--all of them more or less elaborated. By its side
+there grows up a highly complex religious organization, with its various
+grades of officials, from archbishops down to sextons, its colleges,
+convocations, ecclesiastical courts, &c.; to all which must be added the
+ever-multiplying independent sects, each with its general and local
+authorities. And at the same time there is developed a highly complex
+aggregation of customs, manners, and temporary fashions, enforced by
+society at large, and serving to control those minor transactions
+between man and man which are not regulated by civil and religious law.
+Moreover, it is to be observed that this increasing heterogeneity in the
+governmental appliances of each nation, has been accompanied by an
+increasing heterogeneity in the assemblage of governmental appliances of
+different nations: all nations being more or less unlike in their
+political systems and legislation, in their creeds and religious
+institutions, in their customs and ceremonial usages.
+
+Simultaneously there has been going on a second differentiation of a
+more familiar kind; that, namely, by which the mass of the community has
+been segregated into distinct classes and orders of workers. While the
+governing part has undergone the complex development above detailed, the
+governed part has undergone an equally complex development, which has
+resulted in that minute division of labour characterizing advanced
+nations. It is needless to trace out this progress from its first
+stages, up through the caste-divisions of the East and the incorporated
+guilds of Europe, to the elaborate producing and distributing
+organization existing among ourselves. It has been an evolution which,
+beginning with a tribe whose members severally perform the same actions
+each for himself, ends with a civilized community whose members
+severally perform different actions for each other; and an evolution
+which has transformed the solitary producer of any one commodity into a
+combination of producers who, united under a master, take separate parts
+in the manufacture of such commodity. But there are yet other and higher
+phases of this advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous in the
+industrial organization of society. Long after considerable progress has
+been made in the division of labour among different classes of workers,
+there is still little or no division of labour among the widely
+separated parts of the community: the nation continues comparatively
+homogeneous in the respect that in each district the same occupations
+are pursued. But when roads and other means of transit become numerous
+and good, the different districts begin to assume different functions,
+and to become mutually dependent. The calico manufacture locates itself
+in this county, the woollen-cloth manufacture in that; silks are
+produced here, lace there; stockings in one place, shoes in another;
+pottery, hardware, cutlery, come to have their special towns; and
+ultimately every locality becomes more or less distinguished from the
+rest by the leading occupation carried on in it. This subdivision of
+functions shows itself not only among the different parts of the same
+nation, but among different nations. That exchange of commodities which
+free-trade is increasing so largely, will ultimately have the effect of
+specializing, in a greater or less degree, the industry of each people.
+So that, beginning with a barbarous tribe, almost if not quite
+homogeneous in the functions of its members, the progress has been, and
+still is, towards an economic aggregation of the whole human race;
+growing ever more heterogeneous in respect of the separate functions
+assumed by separate nations, the separate functions assumed by the local
+sections of each nation, the separate functions assumed by the many
+kinds of makers and traders in each town, and the separate functions
+assumed by the workers united in producing each commodity.
+
+The law thus clearly exemplified in the evolution of the social
+organism, is exemplified with equal clearness in the evolution of all
+products of human thought and action; whether concrete or abstract, real
+or ideal. Let us take Language as our first illustration.
+
+The lowest form of language is the exclamation, by which an entire idea
+is vaguely conveyed through a single sound, as among the lower animals.
+That human language ever consisted solely of exclamations, and so was
+strictly homogeneous in respect of its parts of speech, we have no
+evidence. But that language can be traced down to a form in which nouns
+and verbs are its only elements, is an established fact. In the gradual
+multiplication of parts of speech out of these primary ones--in the
+differentiation of verbs into active and passive, of nouns into abstract
+and concrete--in the rise of distinctions of mood, tense, person, of
+number and case--in the formation of auxiliary verbs, of adjectives,
+adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, articles--in the divergence of those
+orders, genera, species, and varieties of parts of speech by which
+civilized races express minute modifications of meaning--we see a change
+from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. Another aspect under which we
+may trace the development of language is the divergence of words having
+common origins. Philology early disclosed the truth that in all
+languages words may be grouped into families, the members of each of
+which are allied by their derivation. Names springing from a primitive
+root, themselves become the parents of other names still further
+modified. And by the aid of those systematic modes which presently
+arise, of making derivatives and forming compound terms, there is
+finally developed a tribe of words so heterogeneous in sound and
+meaning, that to the uninitiated it seems incredible they should be
+nearly related. Meanwhile from other roots there are being evolved other
+such tribes, until there results a language of some sixty thousand or
+more unlike words, signifying as many unlike objects, qualities, acts.
+Yet another way in which language in general advances from the
+homogeneous to the heterogeneous, is in the multiplication of languages.
+Whether all languages have grown from one stock, or whether, as some
+philologists think, they have grown from two or more stocks, it is clear
+that since large groups of languages, as the Indo-European, are of one
+parentage, they have become distinct through a process of continuous
+divergence. The same diffusion over the Earth's surface which has led to
+differentiations of race, has simultaneously led to differentiations of
+speech: a truth which we see further illustrated in each nation by the
+distinct dialects found in separate districts. Thus the progress of
+Language conforms to the general law, alike in the evolution of
+languages, in the evolution of families of words, and in the evolution
+of parts of speech.
+
+On passing from spoken to written language, we come upon several classes
+of facts, having similar implications. Written language is connate with
+Painting and Sculpture; and at first all three are appendages of
+Architecture, and have a direct connection with the primary form of all
+Government--the theocratic. Merely noting by the way the fact that
+sundry wild races, as for example the Australians and the tribes of
+South Africa, are given to depicting personages and events upon the
+walls of caves, which are probably regarded as sacred places, let us
+pass to the case of the Egyptians. Among them, as also among the
+Assyrians, we find mural paintings used to decorate the temple of the
+god and the palace of the king (which were, indeed, originally
+identical); and as such they were governmental appliances in the same
+sense as state-pageants and religious feasts were. They were
+governmental appliances in another way: representing as they did the
+worship of the god, the triumphs of the god-king, the submission of his
+subjects, and the punishment of the rebellious. Further, they were
+governmental, as being the products of an art reverenced by the people
+as a sacred mystery. From the habitual use of this pictorial
+representation there grew up the but-slightly-modified practice of
+picture-writing--a practice which was found still extant among North
+American peoples at the time they were discovered. By abbreviations
+analogous to those still going on in our own written language, the most
+frequently-recurring of these pictured figures were successively
+simplified; and ultimately there grew up a system of symbols, most of
+which had but distant resemblances to the things for which they stood.
+The inference that the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians were thus
+produced, is confirmed by the fact that the picture-writing of the
+Mexicans was found to have given birth to a like family of ideographic
+forms; and among them, as among the Egyptians, these had been partially
+differentiated into the _kuriological_ or imitative, and the _tropical_
+or symbolic; which were, however, used together in the same record. In
+Egypt, written language underwent a further differentiation, whence
+resulted the _hieratic_ and the _epistolographic_ or _enchorial_; both
+of which are derived from the original hieroglyphic. At the same time we
+find that for the expression of proper names, which could not be
+otherwise conveyed, signs having phonetic values were employed; and
+though it is alleged that the Egyptians never achieved complete
+alphabetic writing, yet it can scarcely be doubted that these phonetic
+symbols, occasionally used in aid of their ideographic ones, were the
+germs of an alphabetic system. Once having become separate from
+hieroglyphics, alphabetic writing itself underwent numerous
+differentiations--multiplied alphabets were produced; between most of
+which, however, more or less connection can still be traced. And in each
+civilized nation there has now grown up, for the representation of one
+set of sounds, several sets of written signs used for distinct purposes.
+Finally, from writing diverged printing; which, uniform in kind as it
+was at first, has since become multiform.
+
+While written language was passing through its first stages of
+development, the mural decoration which contained its root was being
+differentiated into Painting and Sculpture. The gods, kings, men, and
+animals represented, were originally marked by indented outlines and
+coloured. In most cases these outlines were of such depth, and the
+object they circumscribed so far rounded and marked out in its leading
+parts, as to form a species of work intermediate between intaglio and
+bas-relief. In other cases we see an advance upon this: the raised
+spaces between the figures being chiselled off, and the figures
+themselves appropriately tinted, a painted bas-relief was produced. The
+restored Assyrian architecture at Sydenham exhibits this style of art
+carried to greater perfection--the persons and things represented,
+though still barbarously coloured, are carved out with more truth and in
+greater detail: and in the winged lions and bulls used for the angles of
+gateways, we may see a considerable advance towards a completely
+sculptured figure; which, nevertheless, is still coloured, and still
+forms part of the building. But while in Assyria the production of a
+statue proper seems to have been little, if at all, attempted, we may
+trace in Egyptian art the gradual separation of the sculptured figure
+from the wall. A walk through the collection in the British Museum
+shows this; while at the same time it affords an opportunity of
+observing the traces which the independent statues bear of their
+derivation from bas-relief: seeing that nearly all of them not only
+display that fusion of the legs with one another and of the arms with
+the body which is characteristic of bas-relief, but have the back united
+from head to foot with a block which stands in place of the original
+wall. Greece repeated the leading stages of this progress. On the
+friezes of Greek Temples, were coloured bas-reliefs representing
+sacrifices, battles, processions, games--all in some sort religious. The
+pediments contained painted sculptures more or less united with the
+tympanum, and having for subjects the triumphs of gods or heroes. Even
+statues definitely separated from buildings were coloured; and only in
+the later periods of Greek civilization does the differentiation of
+Sculpture from Painting appear to have become complete. In Christian art
+we may trace a parallel re-genesis. All early works of art throughout
+Europe were religious in subject--represented Christs, crucifixions,
+virgins, holy families, apostles, saints. They formed integral parts of
+church architecture, and were among the means of exciting worship; as in
+Roman Catholic countries they still are. Moreover, the sculptured
+figures of Christ on the cross, of virgins, of saints, were coloured;
+and it needs but to call to mind the painted madonnas still abundant in
+continental churches and highways, to perceive the significant fact that
+Painting and Sculpture continue in closest connection with each other
+where they continue in closest connection with their parent. Even when
+Christian sculpture became differentiated from painting, it was still
+religious and governmental in its subjects--was used for tombs in
+churches and statues of kings; while, at the same time, painting, where
+not purely ecclesiastical, was applied to the decoration of palaces, and
+besides representing royal personages, was mostly devoted to sacred
+legends. Only in recent times have painting and sculpture become quite
+separate and mainly secular. Only within these few centuries has
+Painting been divided into historical, landscape, marine, architectural,
+genre, animal, still-life, &c.; and Sculpture grown heterogeneous in
+respect of the variety of real and ideal subjects with which it occupies
+itself.
+
+Strange as it seems then, we find that all forms of written language, of
+Painting, and of Sculpture, have a common root in the politico-religious
+decorations of ancient temples and palaces. Little resemblance as they
+now have, the landscape that hangs against the wall, and the copy of the
+_Times_ lying on the table, are remotely akin. The brazen face of the
+knocker which the postman has just lifted, is related not only to the
+woodcuts of the _Illustrated London News_ which he is delivering, but to
+the characters of the _billet-doux_ which accompanies it. Between the
+painted window, the prayer-book on which its light falls, and the
+adjacent monument, there is consanguinity. The effigies on our coins,
+the signs over shops, the coat of arms outside the carriage panel, and
+the placards inside the omnibus, are, in common with dolls and
+paper-hangings, lineally descended from the rude sculpture-paintings in
+which ancient peoples represented the triumphs and worship of their
+god-kings. Perhaps no example can be given which more vividly
+illustrates the multiplicity and heterogeneity of the products that in
+course of time may arise by successive differentiations from a common
+stock.
+
+Before passing to other classes of facts, it should be observed that the
+evolution of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous is displayed not
+only in the separation of Painting and Sculpture from Architecture and
+from each other, and in the greater variety of subjects they embody, but
+it is further shown in the structure of each work. A modern picture or
+statue is of far more heterogeneous nature than an ancient one. An
+Egyptian sculpture-fresco usually represents all its figures as at the
+same distance from the eye; and so is less heterogeneous than a
+painting that represents them as at various distances from the eye. It
+exhibits all objects as exposed to the same degree of light; and so is
+less heterogeneous than a painting which exhibits its different objects
+and different parts of each object as in different degrees of light. It
+uses chiefly the primary colours, and these in their full intensities;
+and so is less heterogeneous than a painting which, introducing the
+primary colours but sparingly, employs numerous intermediate tints, each
+of heterogeneous composition, and differing from the rest not only in
+quality but in strength. Moreover, we see in these early works great
+uniformity of conception. The same arrangement of figures is perpetually
+reproduced--the same actions, attitudes, faces, dresses. In Egypt the
+modes of representation were so fixed that it was sacrilege to introduce
+a novelty. The Assyrian bas-reliefs display parallel characters.
+Deities, kings, attendants, winged-figures and animals, are time after
+time depicted in like positions, holding like implements, doing like
+things, and with like expression or non-expression of face. If a
+palm-grove is introduced, all the trees are of the same height, have the
+same number of leaves, and are equidistant. When water is imitated, each
+wave is a counterpart of the rest; and the fish, almost always of one
+kind, are evenly distributed over the surface. The beards of the kings,
+the gods, and the winged-figures, are everywhere similar; as are the
+manes of the lions, and equally so those of the horses. Hair is
+represented throughout by one form of curl. The king's beard is quite
+architecturally built up of compound tiers of uniform curls, alternating
+with twisted tiers placed in a transverse direction, and arranged with
+perfect regularity; and the terminal tufts of the bulls' tails are
+represented in exactly the same manner. Without tracing out analogous
+facts in early Christian art, in which, though less striking, they are
+still visible, the advance in heterogeneity will be sufficiently
+manifest on remembering that in the pictures of our own day the
+composition is endlessly varied; the attitudes, faces, expressions,
+unlike; the subordinate objects different in sizes, forms, textures; and
+more or less of contrast even in the smallest details. Or, if we compare
+an Egyptian statue, seated bolt upright on a block, with hands on knees,
+fingers parallel, eyes looking straight forward, and the two sides
+perfectly symmetrical in every particular, with a statue of the advanced
+Greek school or the modern school, which is asymmetrical in respect of
+the attitude of the head, the body, the limbs, the arrangement of the
+hair, dress, appendages, and in its relations to neighbouring objects,
+we shall see the change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous
+clearly manifested.
+
+In the co-ordinate origin and gradual differentiation of Poetry, Music,
+and Dancing, we have another series of illustrations. Rhythm in words,
+rhythm in sounds, and rhythm in motions, were in the beginning parts of
+the same thing, and have only in process of time become separate things.
+Among existing barbarous tribes we find them still united. The dances of
+savages are accompanied by some kind of monotonous chant, the clapping
+of hands, the striking of rude instruments: there are measured
+movements, measured words, and measured tones. The early records of
+historic races similarly show these three forms of metrical action
+united in religious festivals. In the Hebrew writings we read that the
+triumphal ode composed by Moses on the defeat of the Egyptians, was sung
+to an accompaniment of dancing and timbrels. The Israelites danced and
+sung "at the inauguration of the golden calf. And as it is generally
+agreed that this representation of the Deity was borrowed from the
+mysteries of Apis, it is probable that the dancing was copied from that
+of the Egyptians on those occasions." Again, in Greece the like relation
+is everywhere seen: the original type being there, as probably in other
+cases, a simultaneous chanting and mimetic representation of the life
+and adventures of the hero or the god. The Spartan dances were
+accompanied by hymns and songs; and in general the Greeks had "no
+festivals or religious assemblies but what were accompanied with songs
+and dances"--both of them being forms of worship used before altars.
+Among the Romans, too, there were sacred dances: the Salian and
+Lupercalian being named as of that kind. And even in Christian
+countries, as at Limoges, in comparatively recent times, the people have
+danced in the choir in honour of a saint. The incipient separation of
+these once-united arts from each other and from religion, was early
+visible in Greece. Probably diverging from dances partly religious,
+partly warlike, as the Corybantian, came the war-dances proper, of which
+there were various kinds. Meanwhile Music and Poetry, though still
+united, came to have an existence separate from Dancing. The primitive
+Greek poems, religious in subject, were not recited but chanted; and
+though at first the chant of the poet was accompanied by the dance of
+the chorus, it ultimately grew into independence. Later still, when the
+poem had been differentiated into epic and lyric--when it became the
+custom to sing the lyric and recite the epic--poetry proper was born. As
+during the same period musical instruments were being multiplied, we may
+presume that music came to have an existence apart from words. And both
+of them were beginning to assume other forms besides the religious.
+Facts having like implications might be cited from the histories of
+later times and peoples; as the practices of our own early minstrels,
+who sang to the harp heroic narratives versified by themselves to music
+of their own composition: thus uniting the now separate offices of poet,
+composer, vocalist, and instrumentalist. But, without further
+illustration, the common origin and gradual differentiation of Dancing,
+Poetry, and Music will be sufficiently manifest.
+
+The advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is displayed not
+only in the separation of these arts from each other and from religion,
+but also in the multiplied differentiations which each of them
+afterwards undergoes. Not to dwell upon the numberless kinds of dancing
+that have, in course of time, come into use: and not to occupy space in
+detailing the progress of poetry, as seen in the development of the
+various forms of metre, of rhyme, and of general organization; let us
+confine our attention to music as a type of the group. As implied by the
+customs of still extant barbarous races, the first musical instruments
+were, without doubt, percussive--sticks, calabashes, tom-toms--and were
+used simply to mark the time of the dance; and in this constant
+repetition of the same sound, we see music in its most homogeneous form.
+The Egyptians had a lyre with three strings. The early lyre of the
+Greeks had four, constituting their tetrachord. In course of some
+centuries lyres of seven and eight strings were employed; and, by the
+expiration of a thousand years, they had advanced to their "great
+system" of the double octave. Through all which changes there of course
+arose a greater heterogeneity of melody. Simultaneously there came into
+use the different modes--Dorian, Ionian, Phrygian, Æolian, and
+Lydian--answering to our keys; and of these there were ultimately
+fifteen. As yet, however, there was but little heterogeneity in the time
+of their music. Instrumental music being at first merely the
+accompaniment of vocal music, and vocal music being subordinated to
+words,--the singer being also the poet, chanting his own compositions
+and making the lengths of his notes agree with the feet of his
+verses,--there resulted a tiresome uniformity of measure, which, as Dr.
+Burney says, "no resources of melody could disguise." Lacking the
+complex rhythm obtained by our equal bars and unequal notes, the only
+rhythm was that produced by the quantity of the syllables, and was of
+necessity comparatively monotonous. And further, it maybe observed that
+the chant thus resulting, being like recitative, was much less clearly
+differentiated from ordinary speech than is our modern song.
+Nevertheless, in virtue of the extended range of notes in use, the
+variety of modes, the occasional variations of time consequent on
+changes of metre, and the multiplication of instruments, music had,
+towards the close of Greek civilization, attained to considerable
+heterogeneity--not indeed as compared with our music, but as compared
+with that which preceded it. Still, there existed nothing but melody:
+harmony was unknown. It was not until Christian church-music had reached
+some development, that music in parts was evolved; and then it came into
+existence through a very unobtrusive differentiation. Difficult as it
+may be to conceive _a priori_ how the advance from melody to harmony
+could take place without a sudden leap, it is none the less true that it
+did so. The circumstance which prepared the way for it was the
+employment of two choirs singing alternately the same air. Afterwards it
+became the practice--very possibly first suggested by a mistake--for the
+second choir to commence before the first had ceased; thus producing a
+fugue. With the simple airs then in use, a partially-harmonious fugue
+might not improbably thus result: and a very partially-harmonious fugue
+satisfied the ears of that age, as we know from still preserved
+examples. The idea having once been given, the composing of airs
+productive of fugal harmony would naturally grow up, as in some way it
+_did_ grow up, out of this alternate choir-singing. And from the fugue
+to concerted music of two, three, four, and more parts, the transition
+was easy. Without pointing out in detail the increasing complexity that
+resulted from introducing notes of various lengths, from the
+multiplication of keys, from the use of accidentals, from varieties of
+time, and so forth, it needs but to contrast music as it is, with music
+as it was, to see how immense is the increase of heterogeneity. We see
+this if, looking at music in its _ensemble_, we enumerate its many
+different genera and species--if we consider the divisions into vocal,
+instrumental, and mixed; and their subdivisions into music for
+different voices and different instruments--if we observe the many forms
+of sacred music, from the simple hymn, the chant, the canon, motet,
+anthem, &c., up to the oratorio; and the still more numerous forms of
+secular music, from the ballad up to the serenata, from the instrumental
+solo up to the symphony. Again, the same truth is seen on comparing any
+one sample of aboriginal music with a sample of modern music--even an
+ordinary song for the piano; which we find to be relatively very
+heterogeneous, not only in respect of the variety in the pitches and in
+the lengths of the notes, the number of different notes sounding at the
+same instant in company with the voice, and the variations of strength
+with which they are sounded and sung, but in respect of the changes of
+key, the changes of time, the changes of _timbre_ of the voice, and the
+many other modifications of expression. While between the old monotonous
+dance-chant and a grand opera of our own day, with its endless
+orchestral complexities and vocal combinations, the contrast in
+heterogeneity is so extreme that it seems scarcely credible that the one
+should have been the ancestor of the other.
+
+Were they needed, many further illustrations might be cited. Going back
+to the early time when the deeds of the god-king were recorded in
+picture-writings on the walls of temples and palaces, and so constituted
+a rude literature, we might trace the development of Literature through
+phases in which, as in the Hebrew Scriptures, it presents in one work
+theology, cosmogony, history, biography, law, ethics, poetry; down to
+its present heterogeneous development, in which its separated divisions
+and subdivisions are so numerous and varied as to defy complete
+classification. Or we might trace out the evolution of Science;
+beginning with the era in which it was not yet differentiated from Art,
+and was, in union with Art, the handmaid of Religion; passing through
+the era in which the sciences were so few and rudimentary, as to be
+simultaneously cultivated by the same men; and ending with the era in
+which the genera and species are so numerous that few can enumerate
+them, and no one can adequately grasp even one genus. Or we might do the
+like with Architecture, with the Drama, with Dress. But doubtless the
+reader is already weary of illustrations; and our promise has been amply
+fulfilled. Abundant proof has been given that the law of organic
+development formulated by von Baer, is the law of all development. The
+advance from the simple to the complex, through a process of successive
+differentiations, is seen alike in the earliest changes of the Universe
+to which we can reason our way back, and in the earliest changes which
+we can inductively establish; it is seen in the geologic and climatic
+evolution of the Earth; it is seen in the unfolding of every single
+organism on its surface, and in the multiplication of kinds of
+organisms; it is seen in the evolution of Humanity, whether contemplated
+in the civilized individual, or in the aggregate of races; it is seen in
+the evolution of Society in respect alike of its political, its
+religious, and its economical organization; and it is seen in the
+evolution of all those endless concrete and abstract products of human
+activity which constitute the environment of our daily life. From the
+remotest past which Science can fathom, up to the novelties of
+yesterday, that in which progress essentially consists, is the
+transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now, must not this uniformity of procedure be a consequence of some
+fundamental necessity? May we not rationally seek for some all-pervading
+principle which determines this all-pervading process of things? Does
+not the universality of the _law_ imply a universal _cause_?
+
+That we can comprehend such cause, noumenally considered, is not to be
+supposed. To do this would be to solve that ultimate mystery which must
+ever transcend human intelligence. But it still may be possible for us
+to reduce the law of all progress, above set forth, from the condition
+of an empirical generalization, to the condition of a rational
+generalization. Just as it was possible to interpret Kepler's laws as
+necessary consequences of the law of gravitation; so it may be possible
+to interpret this law of progress, in its multiform manifestations, as
+the necessary consequence of some similarly universal principle. As
+gravitation was assignable as the _cause_ of each of the groups of
+phenomena which Kepler generalized; so may some equally simple attribute
+of things be assignable as the cause of each of the groups of phenomena
+generalized in the foregoing pages. We may be able to affiliate all
+these varied evolutions of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous, upon
+certain facts of immediate experience, which, in virtue of endless
+repetition, we regard as necessary.
+
+The probability of a common cause, and the possibility of formulating
+it, being granted, it will be well, first, to ask what must be the
+general characteristics of such cause, and in what direction we ought to
+look for it. We can with certainty predict that it has a high degree of
+abstractness; seeing that it is common to such infinitely-varied
+phenomena. We need not expect to see in it an obvious solution of this
+or that form of progress; because it is equally concerned with forms of
+progress bearing little apparent resemblance to them: its association
+with multiform orders of facts, involves its dissociation from any
+particular order of facts. Being that which determines progress of every
+kind--astronomic, geologic, organic, ethnologic, social, economic,
+artistic, &c.--it must be involved with some fundamental trait displayed
+in common by these; and must be expressible in terms of this fundamental
+trait. The only obvious respect in which all kinds of progress are
+alike, is, that they are modes of _change_; and hence, in some
+characteristic of changes in general, the desired solution will probably
+be found. We may suspect _a priori_ that in some universal law of change
+lies the explanation of this universal transformation of the
+homogeneous into the heterogeneous.
+
+Thus much premised, we pass at once to the statement of the law, which
+is this:--_Every active force produces more than one change--every cause
+produces more than one effect._
+
+To make this proposition comprehensible, a few examples must be given.
+When one body strikes another, that which we usually regard as the
+effect, is a change of position or motion in one or both bodies. But a
+moment's thought shows us that this is a very incomplete view of the
+matter. Besides the visible mechanical result, sound is produced; or, to
+speak accurately, a vibration in one or both bodies, which is
+communicated to the surrounding air; and under some circumstances we
+call this the effect. Moreover, the air has not only been made to
+undulate, but has had currents caused in it by the transit of the
+bodies. Further, there is a disarrangement of the particles of the two
+bodies in the neighbourhood of their point of collision; amounting, in
+some cases, to a visible condensation. Yet more, this condensation is
+accompanied by the disengagement of heat. In some cases a spark--that
+is, light--results, from the incandescence of a portion struck off; and
+sometimes this incandescence is associated with chemical combination.
+Thus, by the mechanical force expended in the collision, at least five,
+and often more, different kinds of changes have been produced. Take,
+again, the lighting of a candle. Primarily this is a chemical change
+consequent on a rise of temperature. The process of combination having
+once been started by extraneous heat, there is a continued formation of
+carbonic acid, water, &c.--in itself a result more complex than the
+extraneous heat that first caused it. But accompanying this process of
+combination there is a production of heat; there is a production of
+light; there is an ascending column of hot gases generated; there are
+inflowing currents set going in the surrounding air. Moreover, the
+complicating of effects does not end here: each of the several changes
+produced becomes the parent of further changes. The carbonic acid given
+off will by and by combine with some base; or under the influence of
+sunshine give up its carbon to the leaf of a plant. The water will
+modify the hygrometric state of the air around; or, if the current of
+hot gases containing it comes against a cold body, will be condensed:
+altering the temperature of the surface it covers. The heat given out
+melts the subjacent tallow, and expands whatever it warms. The light,
+falling on various substances, calls forth from them reactions by which
+its composition is modified; and so divers colours are produced.
+Similarly even with these secondary actions, which may be traced out
+into ever-multiplying ramifications, until they become too minute to be
+appreciated. And thus it is with all changes whatever. No case can be
+named in which an active force does not evolve forces of several kinds,
+and each of these, other groups of forces. Universally the effect is
+more complex than the cause.
+
+Doubtless the reader already foresees the course of our argument. This
+multiplication of effects, which is displayed in every event of to-day,
+has been going on from the beginning; and is true of the grandest
+phenomena of the universe as of the most insignificant. From the law
+that every active force produces more than one change, it is an
+inevitable corollary that during the past there has been an ever-growing
+complication of things. Throughout creation there must have gone on, and
+must still go on, a never-ceasing transformation of the homogeneous into
+the heterogeneous. Let us trace this truth in detail.
+
+Without committing ourselves to it as more than a speculation, though a
+highly probable one, let us again commence with the evolution of the
+Solar System out of a nebulous medium. The hypothesis is that from the
+mutual attraction of the molecules of a diffused mass whose form is
+unsymmetrical, there results not only condensation but rotation. While
+the condensation and the rate of rotation go on increasing, the
+approach of the molecules is necessarily accompanied by an increasing
+temperature. As the temperature rises, light begins to be evolved; and
+ultimately there results a revolving sphere of fluid matter radiating
+intense heat and light--a sun. There are reasons for believing that, in
+consequence of the higher tangential velocity originally possessed by
+the outer parts of the condensing nebulous mass, there will be
+occasional detachments of rotating rings; and that, from the breaking up
+of these nebulous rings, there will arise masses which in the course of
+their condensation repeat the actions of the parent mass, and so produce
+planets and their satellites--an inference strongly supported by the
+still extant rings of Saturn. Should it hereafter be satisfactorily
+shown that planets and satellites were thus generated, a striking
+illustration will be afforded of the highly heterogeneous effects
+produced by the primary homogeneous cause; but it will serve our present
+purpose to point to the fact that from the mutual attraction of the
+particles of an irregular nebulous mass there result condensation,
+rotation, heat, and light.
+
+It follows as a corollary from the Nebular Hypothesis, that the Earth
+must once have been incandescent; and whether the Nebular Hypothesis be
+true or not, this original incandescence of the Earth is now inductively
+established--or, if not established, at least rendered so highly
+probable that it is an accepted geological doctrine. Let us look first
+at the astronomical attributes of this once molten globe. From its
+rotation there result the oblateness of its form, the alternations of
+day and night, and (under the influence of the moon and in a smaller
+degree the sun) the tides, aqueous and atmospheric. From the inclination
+of its axis, there result the many differences of the seasons, both
+simultaneous and successive, that pervade its surface, and from the same
+cause joined with the action of the moon on the equatorial protuberance
+there results the precession of the equinoxes. Thus the multiplication
+of effects is obvious. Several of the differentiations due to the
+gradual cooling of the Earth have been already noticed--as the formation
+of a crust, the solidification of sublimed elements, the precipitation
+of water, &c.,--and we here again refer to them merely to point out that
+they are simultaneous effects of the one cause, diminishing heat. Let us
+now, however, observe the multiplied changes afterwards arising from the
+continuance of this one cause. The cooling of the Earth involves its
+contraction. Hence the solid crust first formed is presently too large
+for the shrinking nucleus; and as it cannot support itself, inevitably
+follows the nucleus. But a spheroidal envelope cannot sink down into
+contact with a smaller internal spheroid, without disruption: it must
+run into wrinkles as the rind of an apple does when the bulk of its
+interior decreases from evaporation. As the cooling progresses and the
+envelope thickens, the ridges consequent on these contractions will
+become greater, rising ultimately into hills and mountains; and the
+later systems of mountains thus produced will not only be higher, as we
+find them to be, but will be longer, as we also find them to be. Thus,
+leaving out of view other modifying forces, we see what immense
+heterogeneity of surface has arisen from the one cause, loss of heat--a
+heterogeneity which the telescope shows us to be paralleled on the face
+of Mars, and which in the moon too, where aqueous and atmospheric
+agencies have been absent, it reveals under a somewhat different form.
+But we have yet to notice another kind of heterogeneity of surface
+similarly and simultaneously caused. While the Earth's crust was still
+thin, the ridges produced by its contraction must not only have been
+small, but the spaces between these ridges must have rested with great
+evenness upon the subjacent liquid spheroid; and the water in those
+arctic and antarctic regions in which it first condensed, must have been
+evenly distributed. But as fast as the crust thickened and gained
+corresponding strength, the lines of fracture from time to time caused
+in it, must have occurred at greater distances apart; the intermediate
+surfaces must have followed the contracting nucleus with less
+uniformity; and there must have resulted larger areas of land and water.
+If any one, after wrapping up an orange in tissue paper, and observing
+not only how small are the wrinkles, but how evenly the intervening
+spaces lie upon the surface of the orange, will then wrap it up in thick
+cartridge-paper, and note both the greater height of the ridges and the
+larger spaces throughout which the paper does not touch the orange, he
+will realize the fact that, as the Earth's solid envelope grew thicker,
+the areas of elevation and depression increased. In place of islands
+homogeneously dispersed amid an all-embracing sea, there must have
+gradually arisen heterogeneous arrangements of continent and ocean. Once
+more, this double change in the extent and in the elevation of the
+lands, involved yet another species of heterogeneity--that of
+coast-line. A tolerably even surface raised out of the ocean must have a
+simple, regular sea-margin; but a surface varied by table-lands and
+intersected by mountain-chains must, when raised out of the ocean, have
+an outline extremely irregular both in its leading features and in its
+details. Thus, multitudinous geological and geographical results are
+slowly brought about by this one cause--the contraction of the Earth.
+
+When we pass from the agency termed igneous, to aqueous and atmospheric
+agencies, we see the like ever-growing complications of effects. The
+denuding actions of air and water, joined with those of changing
+temperature, have, from the beginning, been modifying every exposed
+surface. Oxidation, heat, wind, frost, rain, glaciers, rivers, tides,
+waves, have been unceasingly producing disintegration; varying in kind
+and amount according to local circumstances. Acting upon a tract of
+granite, they here work scarcely an appreciable effect; there cause
+exfoliations of the surface, and a resulting heap of _débris_ and
+boulders; and elsewhere, after decomposing the feldspar into a white
+clay, carry away this and the accompanying quartz and mica, and deposit
+them in separate beds, fluviatile and marine. When the exposed land
+consists of several unlike kinds of sedimentary strata, or igneous
+rocks, or both, denudation produces changes proportionably more
+heterogeneous. The formations being disintegrable in different degrees,
+there follows an increased irregularity of surface. The areas drained by
+different rivers being differently constituted, these rivers carry down
+to the sea different combinations of ingredients; and so sundry new
+strata of unlike compositions are formed. And here we may see very
+simply illustrated, the truth, which we shall presently have to trace
+out in more involved cases, that in proportion to the heterogeneity of
+the object or objects on which any force expends itself, is the
+heterogeneity of the effects. A continent of complex structure, exposing
+many strata irregularly distributed, raised to various levels, tilted up
+at all angles, will, under the same denuding agencies, give origin to
+innumerable and involved results: each district must be differently
+modified; each river must carry down a different kind of detritus; each
+deposit must be differently distributed by the entangled currents, tidal
+and other, which wash the contorted shores; and this multiplication of
+results must manifestly be greatest where the complexity of surface is
+greatest.
+
+Here we might show how the general truth, that every active force
+produces more than one change, is again exemplified in the
+highly-involved flow of the tides, in the ocean currents, in the winds,
+in the distribution of rain, in the distribution of heat, and so forth.
+But not to dwell upon these, let us, for the fuller elucidation of this
+truth in relation to the inorganic world, consider what would be the
+consequences of some extensive cosmical catastrophe--say the subsidence
+of Central America. The immediate results of the disturbance would
+themselves be sufficiently complex. Besides the numberless dislocations
+of strata, the ejections of igneous matter, the propagation of
+earthquake vibrations thousands of miles around, the loud explosions,
+and the escape of gases; there would be the rush of the Atlantic and
+Pacific Oceans to fill the vacant space, the subsequent recoil of
+enormous waves, which would traverse both these oceans and produce
+myriads of changes along their shores, the corresponding atmospheric
+waves complicated by the currents surrounding each volcanic vent, and
+the electrical discharges with which such disturbances are accompanied.
+But these temporary effects would be insignificant compared with the
+permanent ones. The currents of the Atlantic and Pacific would be
+altered in their directions and amounts. The distribution of heat
+achieved by those ocean currents would be different from what it is. The
+arrangement of the isothermal lines, not only on neighbouring
+continents, but even throughout Europe, would be changed. The tides
+would flow differently from what they do now. There would be more or
+less modification of the winds in their periods, strengths, directions,
+qualities. Rain would fall scarcely anywhere at the same times and in
+the same quantities as at present. In short, the meteorological
+conditions thousands of miles off, on all sides, would be more or less
+revolutionized. Thus, without taking into account the infinitude of
+modifications which these changes would produce upon the flora and
+fauna, both of land and sea, the reader will perceive the immense
+heterogeneity of the results wrought out by one force, when that force
+expends itself upon a previously complicated area; and he will draw the
+corollary that from the beginning the complication has advanced at an
+increasing rate.
+
+Before going on to show how organic progress also depends on the law
+that every force produces more than one change, we have to notice the
+manifestation of this law in yet another species of inorganic
+progress--namely, chemical. The same general causes that have wrought
+out the heterogeneity of the Earth, physically considered, have
+simultaneously wrought out its chemical heterogeneity. There is every
+reason to believe that at an extreme heat the elements cannot combine.
+Even under such heat as can be artificially produced, some very strong
+affinities yield, as, for instance, that of oxygen for hydrogen; and the
+great majority of chemical compounds are decomposed at much lower
+temperatures. But without insisting on the highly probable inference,
+that when the Earth was in its first state of incandescence there were
+no chemical combinations at all, it will suffice for our purpose to
+point to the unquestionable fact that the compounds which can exist at
+the highest temperatures, and which must, therefore, have been the first
+that were formed as the Earth cooled, are those of the simplest
+constitutions. The protoxides--including under that head the alkalies,
+earths, &c.--are, as a class, the most stable compounds we know: most of
+them resisting decomposition by any heat we can generate. These are
+combinations of the simplest order--are but one degree less homogeneous
+than the elements themselves. More heterogeneous, less stable, and
+therefore later in the Earth's history, are the deutoxides, tritoxides,
+peroxides, &c.; in which two, three, four, or more atoms of oxygen are
+united with one atom of metal or other element. Higher than these in
+heterogeneity are the hydrates; in which an oxide of hydrogen, united
+with an oxide of some other element, forms a substance whose atoms
+severally contain at least four ultimate atoms of three different kinds.
+Yet more heterogeneous and less stable still are the salts; which
+present us with molecules each made up of five, six, seven, eight, ten,
+twelve, or more atoms, of three, if not more, kinds. Then there are the
+hydrated salts, of a yet greater heterogeneity, which undergo partial
+decomposition at much lower temperatures. After them come the further
+complicated supersalts and double salts, having a stability again
+decreased; and so throughout. Without entering into qualifications for
+which space fails, we believe no chemist will deny it to be a general
+law of these inorganic combinations that, _other things equal_, the
+stability decreases as the complexity increases. When we pass to the
+compounds of organic chemistry, we find this general law still further
+exemplified: we find much greater complexity and much less stability. A
+molecule of albumen, for instance, consists of 482 ultimate atoms of
+five different kinds. Fibrine, still more intricate in constitution,
+contains in each molecule, 298 atoms of carbon, 49 of nitrogen, 2 of
+sulphur, 228 of hydrogen, and 92 of oxygen--in all, 669 atoms; or, more
+strictly speaking, equivalents. And these two substances are so unstable
+as to decompose at quite ordinary temperatures; as that to which the
+outside of a joint of roast meat is exposed. Thus it is manifest that
+the present chemical heterogeneity of the Earth's surface has arisen by
+degrees, as the decrease of heat has permitted; and that it has shown
+itself in three forms--first, in the multiplication of chemical
+compounds; second, in the greater number of different elements contained
+in the more modern of these compounds; and third, in the higher and more
+varied multiples in which these more numerous elements combine.
+
+To say that this advance in chemical heterogeneity is due to the one
+cause, diminution of the Earth's temperature, would be to say too much;
+for it is clear that aqueous and atmospheric agencies have been
+concerned; and further, that the affinities of the elements themselves
+are implied. The cause has all along been a composite one: the cooling
+of the Earth having been simply the most general of the concurrent
+causes, or assemblage of conditions. And here, indeed, it may be
+remarked that in the several classes of facts already dealt with
+(excepting, perhaps, the first), and still more in those with which we
+shall presently deal, the causes are more or less compound; as indeed
+are nearly all causes with which we are acquainted. Scarcely any
+change can rightly be ascribed to one agency alone, to the neglect of
+the permanent or temporary conditions under which only this agency
+produces the change. But as it does not materially affect our argument,
+we prefer, for simplicity's sake, to use throughout the popular mode of
+expression. Perhaps it will be further objected, that to assign loss of
+heat as the cause of any changes, is to attribute these changes not to a
+force, but to the absence of a force. And this is true. Strictly
+speaking, the changes should be attributed to those forces which come
+into action when the antagonist force is withdrawn. But though there is
+inaccuracy in saying that the freezing of water is due to the loss of
+its heat, no practical error arises from it; nor will a parallel laxity
+of expression vitiate our statements respecting the multiplication of
+effects. Indeed, the objection serves but to draw attention to the fact,
+that not only does the exertion of a force produce more than one change,
+but the withdrawal of a force produces more than one change.
+
+Returning to the thread of our exposition, we have next to trace,
+throughout organic progress, this same all-pervading principle. And
+here, where the evolution of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous was
+first observed, the production of many effects by one cause is least
+easy to demonstrate. The development of a seed into a plant, or an ovum
+into an animal, is so gradual, while the forces which determine it are
+so involved, and at the same time so unobtrusive, that it is difficult
+to detect the multiplication of effects which is elsewhere so obvious.
+But, guided by indirect evidence, we may safely conclude that here too
+the law holds. Note, first, how numerous are the changes which any
+marked action works upon an adult organism--a human being, for instance.
+An alarming sound or sight, besides the impressions on the organs of
+sense and the nerves, may produce a start, a scream, a distortion of
+the face, a trembling consequent on general muscular relaxation, a burst
+of perspiration, a rush of blood to the brain, followed possibly by
+arrest of the heart's action and by syncope; and if the subject be
+feeble, an indisposition with its long train of complicated symptoms may
+set in. Similarly in cases of disease. A minute portion of the small-pox
+virus introduced into the system, will, in a severe case, cause, during
+the first stage, rigors, heat of skin, accelerated pulse, furred tongue,
+loss of appetite, thirst, epigastric uneasiness, vomiting, headache,
+pains in the back and limbs, muscular weakness, convulsions, delirium,
+&c.; in the second stage, cutaneous eruption, itching, tingling, sore
+throat, swelled fauces, salivation, cough, hoarseness, dyspnoea, &c.;
+and in the third stage, oedematous inflammations, pneumonia, pleurisy,
+diarrhoea, inflammation of the brain, ophthalmia, erysipelas, &c.:
+each of which enumerated symptoms is itself more or less complex.
+Medicines, special foods, better air, might in like manner be instanced
+as producing multipled results. Now it needs only to consider that the
+many changes thus wrought by one force upon an adult organism, will be
+in part paralleled in an embryo organism, to understand how here also,
+the evolution of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous may be due to
+the production of many effects by one cause. The external heat, which,
+falling on a matter having special proclivities, determines the first
+complications of the germ, may, by acting on these, superinduce further
+complications; upon these still higher and more numerous ones; and so on
+continually: each organ as it is developed serving, by its actions and
+reactions on the rest, to initiate new complexities. The first
+pulsations of the foetal heart must simultaneously aid the unfolding
+of every part. The growth of each tissue, by taking from the blood
+special proportions of elements, must modify the constitution of the
+blood; and so must modify the nutrition of all the other tissues. The
+heart's action, implying as it does a certain waste, necessitates an
+addition to the blood of effete matters, which must influence the rest
+of the system, and perhaps, as some think, cause the formation of
+excretory organs. The nervous connexions established among the viscera
+must further multiply their mutual influences; and so continually. Still
+stronger becomes the probability of this view when we call to mind the
+fact, that the same germ may be evolved into different forms according
+to circumstances. Thus, during its earlier stages, every embryo is
+sexless--becomes either male or female as the balance of forces acting
+on it determines. Again, it is a well-established fact that the larva of
+a working-bee will develop into a queen-bee, if before it is too late,
+its food be changed to that on which the larvæ of queen-bees are fed.
+All which instances suggest that the proximate cause of each advance in
+embryonic complication is the action of incident forces upon the
+complication previously existing. Indeed, we may find _a priori_ reason
+to think that the evolution proceeds after this manner. For since no
+germ, animal or vegetal, contains the slightest rudiment or indication
+of the future organism--since the microscope has shown us that the first
+process set up in every fertilized germ, is a process of repeated
+spontaneous fissions ending in the production of a mass of cells, not
+one of which exhibits any special character; there seems no alternative
+but to suppose that the partial organization at any moment existing in a
+growing embryo, is transformed by the agencies acting upon it into the
+succeeding phase of organization, and this into the next, until, through
+ever-increasing complexities, the ultimate form is reached. Not indeed
+that we can thus really explain the production of any plant or animal.
+We are still in the dark respecting those mysterious properties in
+virtue of which the germ, when subject to fit influences, undergoes the
+special changes that begin the series of transformations. All we aim to
+show, is, that given a germ possessing those particular proclivities
+distinguishing the species to which it belongs, and the evolution of an
+organism from it, probably depends on that multiplication of effects
+which we have seen to be the cause of progress in general, so far as we
+have yet traced it.
+
+When, leaving the development of single plants and animals, we pass to
+that of the Earth's flora and fauna, the course of our argument again
+becomes clear and simple. Though, as was admitted in the first part of
+this article, the fragmentary facts Paleontology has accumulated, do not
+clearly warrant us in saying that, in the lapse of geologic time, there
+have been evolved more heterogeneous organisms, and more heterogeneous
+assemblages of organisms, yet we shall now see that there _must_ ever
+have been a tendency towards these results. We shall find that the
+production of many effects by one cause, which as already shown, has
+been all along increasing the physical heterogeneity of the Earth, has
+further involved an increasing heterogeneity in its flora and fauna,
+individually and collectively. An illustration will make this clear.
+Suppose that by a series of upheavals, occurring, as they are now known
+to do, at long intervals, the East Indian Archipelago were to be, step
+by step, raised into a continent, and a chain of mountains formed along
+the axis of elevation. By the first of these upheavals, the plants and
+animals inhabiting Borneo, Sumatra, New Guinea, and the rest, would be
+subjected to slightly modified sets of conditions. The climate in
+general would be altered in temperature, in humidity, and in its
+periodical variations; while the local differences would be multiplied.
+These modifications would affect, perhaps inappreciably, the entire
+flora and fauna of the region. The change of level would produce
+additional modifications: varying in different species, and also in
+different members of the same species, according to their distance from
+the axis of elevation. Plants, growing only on the sea-shore in special
+localities, might become extinct. Others, living only in swamps of a
+certain humidity, would, if they survived at all, probably undergo
+visible changes of appearance. While still greater alterations would
+occur in the plants gradually spreading over the lands newly raised
+above the sea. The animals and insects living on these modified plants,
+would themselves be in some degree modified by change of food, as well
+as by change of climate; and the modification would be more marked
+where, from the dwindling or disappearance of one kind of plant, an
+allied kind was eaten. In the lapse of the many generations arising
+before the next upheaval, the sensible or insensible alterations thus
+produced in each species would become organized--there would be a more
+or less complete adaptation to the new conditions. The next upheaval
+would superinduce further organic changes, implying wider divergences
+from the primary forms; and so repeatedly. But now let it be observed
+that the revolution thus resulting would not be a substitution of a
+thousand more or less modified species for the thousand original
+species; but in place of the thousand original species there would arise
+several thousand species, or varieties, or changed forms. Each species
+being distributed over an area of some extent, and tending continually
+to colonize the new area exposed, its different members would be subject
+to different sets of changes. Plants and animals spreading towards the
+equator would not be affected in the same way as others spreading from
+it. Those spreading towards the new shores would undergo changes unlike
+the changes undergone by those spreading into the mountains. Thus, each
+original race of organisms, would become the root from which diverged
+several races differing more or less from it and from each other; and
+while some of these might subsequently disappear, probably more than one
+would survive in the next geologic period: the very dispersion itself
+increasing the chances of survival. Not only would there be certain
+modifications thus caused by change of physical conditions and food, but
+also in some cases other modifications caused by change of habit. The
+fauna of each island, peopling, step by step, the newly-raised tracts,
+would eventually come in contact with the faunas of other islands; and
+some members of these other faunas would be unlike any creatures before
+seen. Herbivores meeting with new beasts of prey, would, in some cases,
+be led into modes of defence or escape differing from those previously
+used; and simultaneously the beasts of prey would modify their modes of
+pursuit and attack. We know that when circumstances demand it, such
+changes of habit _do_ take place in animals; and we know that if the new
+habits become the dominant ones, they must eventually in some degree
+alter the organization. Observe now, however, a further consequence.
+There must arise not simply a tendency towards the differentiation of
+each race of organisms into several races; but also a tendency to the
+occasional production of a somewhat higher organism. Taken in the mass
+these divergent varieties which have been caused by fresh physical
+conditions and habits of life, will exhibit changes quite indefinite in
+kind and degree; and changes that do not necessarily constitute an
+advance. Probably in most cases the modified type will be neither more
+nor less heterogeneous than the original one. In some cases the habits
+of life adopted being simpler than before, a less heterogeneous
+structure will result: there will be a retrogradation. But it _must_ now
+and then occur, that some division of a species, falling into
+circumstances which give it rather more complex experiences, and demand
+actions somewhat more involved, will have certain of its organs further
+differentiated in proportionately small degrees,--will become slightly
+more heterogeneous. Thus, in the natural course of things, there will
+from time to time arise an increased heterogeneity both of the Earth's
+flora and fauna, and of individual races included in them. Omitting
+detailed explanations, and allowing for the qualifications which cannot
+here be specified, we think it is clear that geological mutations have
+all along tended to complicate the forms of life, whether regarded
+separately or collectively. The same causes which have led to the
+evolution of the Earth's crust from the simple into the complex, have
+simultaneously led to a parallel evolution of the Life upon its surface.
+In this case, as in previous ones, we see that the transformation of the
+homogeneous into the heterogeneous is consequent upon the universal
+principle, that every active force produces more than one change.
+
+The deduction here drawn from the established truths of geology and the
+general laws of life, gains immensely in weight on finding it to be in
+harmony with an induction drawn from direct experience. Just that
+divergence of many races from one race, which we inferred must have been
+continually occurring during geologic time, we know to have occurred
+during the pre-historic and historic periods, in man and domestic
+animals. And just that multiplication of effects which we concluded must
+have produced the first, we see has produced the last. Single causes, as
+famine, pressure of population, war, have periodically led to further
+dispersions of mankind and of dependent creatures: each such dispersion
+initiating new modifications, new varieties of type. Whether all the
+human races be or be not derived from one stock, philology makes it
+clear that whole groups of races now easily distinguishable from each
+other, were originally one race,--that the diffusion of one race into
+different climates and conditions of existence, has produced many
+modified forms of it. Similarly with domestic animals. Though in some
+cases--as that of dogs--community of origin will perhaps be disputed,
+yet in other cases--as that of the sheep or the cattle of our own
+country--it will not be questioned that local differences of climate,
+food, and treatment, have transformed one original breed into numerous
+breeds now become so far distinct as to produce unstable hybrids.
+Moreover, through the complication of effects flowing from single
+causes, we here find, what we before inferred, not only an increase of
+general heterogeneity, but also of special heterogeneity. While of the
+divergent divisions and subdivisions of the human race many have
+undergone changes not constituting an advance; while in some the type
+may have degraded; in others it has become decidedly more heterogeneous.
+The civilized European departs more widely from the vertebrate archetype
+than does the savage. Thus, both the law and the cause of progress,
+which, from lack of evidence, can be but hypothetically substantiated in
+respect of the earlier forms of life on our globe, can be actually
+substantiated in respect of the latest forms.[4]
+
+If the advance of Man towards greater heterogeneity is traceable to the
+production of many effects by one cause, still more clearly may the
+advance of Society towards greater heterogeneity be so explained.
+Consider the growth of an industrial organization. When, as must
+occasionally happen, some member of a tribe displays unusual aptitude
+for making an article of general use--a weapon, for instance--which was
+before made by each man for himself, there arises a tendency towards the
+differentiation of that member into a maker of such weapon. His
+companions--warriors and hunters all of them,--severally feel the
+importance of having the best weapons that can be made; and are
+therefore certain to offer strong inducements to this skilled individual
+to make weapons for them. He, on the other hand, having not only an
+unusual faculty, but an unusual liking, for making such weapons (the
+talent and the desire for any occupation being commonly associated), is
+predisposed to fulfil each commission on the offer of an adequate
+reward: especially as his love of distinction is also gratified and his
+living facilitated. This first specialization of function, once
+commenced, tends ever to become more decided. On the side of the
+weapon-maker practice gives increased skill--increased superiority to
+his products. On the side of his clients, cessation of practice entails
+decreased skill. Thus the influences which determine this division of
+labour grow stronger in both ways; and the incipient heterogeneity is,
+on the average of cases, likely to become permanent for that generation
+if no longer. This process not only differentiates the social mass into
+two parts, the one monopolizing, or almost monopolizing, the performance
+of a certain function, and the other losing the habit, and in some
+measure the power, of performing that function; but it tends to initiate
+other differentiations. The advance described implies the introduction
+of barter,--the maker of weapons has, on each occasion, to be paid in
+such other articles as he agrees to take in exchange. He will not
+habitually take in exchange one kind of article, but many kinds. He does
+not want mats only, or skins, or fishing-gear, but he wants all these,
+and on each occasion will bargain for the particular things he most
+needs. What follows? If among his fellows there exist any slight
+differences of skill in the manufacture of these various things, as
+there are almost sure to do, the weapon-maker will take from each one
+the thing which that one excels in making: he will exchange for mats
+with him whose mats are superior, and will bargain for the
+fishing-gear of him who has the best. But he who has bartered away his
+mats or his fishing-gear, must make other mats or fishing-gear for
+himself; and in so doing must, in some degree, further develop his
+aptitude. Thus it results that the small specialities of faculty
+possessed by various members of the tribe, will tend to grow more
+decided. And whether or not there ensue distinct differentiations of
+other individuals into makers of particular articles, it is clear that
+incipient differentiations take place throughout the tribe: the one
+original cause produces not only the first dual effect, but a number of
+secondary dual effects, like in kind, but minor in degree. This process,
+of which traces may be seen among schoolboys, cannot well produce
+lasting effects in an unsettled tribe; but where there grows up a fixed
+and multiplying community, such differentiations become permanent, and
+increase with each generation. The enhanced demand for every commodity,
+intensifies the functional activity of each specialized person or class;
+and this renders the specialization more definite where it already
+exists, and establishes it where it is but nascent. By increasing the
+pressure on the means of subsistence, a larger population again augments
+these results; seeing that each person is forced more and more to
+confine himself to that which he can do best, and by which he can gain
+most. Presently, under these same stimuli, new occupations arise.
+Competing workers, ever aiming to produce improved articles,
+occasionally discover better processes or raw materials. The
+substitution of bronze for stone entails on him who first makes it a
+great increase of demand; so that he or his successor eventually finds
+all his time occupied in making the bronze for the articles he sells,
+and is obliged to depute the fashioning of these articles to others;
+and, eventually, the making of bronze, thus differentiated from a
+pre-existing occupation, becomes an occupation by itself. But now mark
+the ramified changes which follow this change. Bronze presently
+replaces stone, not only in the articles it was first used for, but in
+many others--in arms, tools, and utensils of various kinds: and so
+affects the manufacture of them. Further, it affects the processes which
+these utensils subserve, and the resulting products,--modifies
+buildings, carvings, personal decorations. Yet again, it sets going
+manufactures which were before impossible, from lack of a material fit
+for the requisite implements. And all these changes react on the
+people--increase their manipulative skill, their intelligence, their
+comfort,--refine their habits and tastes. Thus the evolution of a
+homogeneous society into a heterogeneous one, is clearly consequent on
+the general principle, that many effects are produced by one cause.
+
+Space permitting, we might show how the localization o£ special
+industries in special parts of a kingdom, as well as the minute
+subdivision of labour in the making of each commodity, are similarly
+determined. Or, turning to a somewhat different order of illustrations,
+we might dwell on the multitudinous changes--material, intellectual,
+moral,--caused by printing; or the further extensive series of changes
+wrought by gunpowder. But leaving the intermediate phases of social
+development, let us take a few illustrations from its most recent and
+its passing phases. To trace the effects of steam-power, in its manifold
+applications to mining, navigation, and manufactures of all kinds, would
+carry us into unmanageable detail. Let us confine ourselves to the
+latest embodiment of steam power--the locomotive engine. This, as the
+proximate cause of our railway system, has changed the face of the
+country, the course of trade, and the habits of the people. Consider,
+first, the complicated sets of changes that precede the making of every
+railway--the provisional arrangements, the meetings, the registration,
+the trial section, the parliamentary survey, the lithographed plans, the
+books of reference, the local deposits and notices, the application to
+Parliament, the passing Standing Orders Committee, the first, second,
+and third readings: each of which brief heads indicates a multiplicity
+of transactions, and the extra development of sundry occupations--as
+those of engineers, surveyors, lithographers, parliamentary agents,
+share-brokers; and the creation of sundry others--as those of
+traffic-takers, reference-takers. Consider, next, the yet more marked
+changes implied in railway construction--the cuttings, embankings,
+tunnellings, diversions of roads; the building of bridges and stations,
+the laying down of ballast, sleepers, and rails; the making of engines,
+tenders, carriages, and waggons: which processes, acting on numerous
+trades, increase the importation of timber, the quarrying of stone, the
+manufacture of iron, the mining of coal, the burning of bricks;
+institute a variety of special manufactures weekly advertised in the
+_Railway Times_; and, finally, open the way to sundry new occupations,
+as those of drivers, stokers, cleaners, plate-layers, &c., &c. And then
+consider the changes, still more numerous and involved, which railways
+in action produce on the community at large. Business agencies are
+established where previously they would not have paid; goods are
+obtained from remote wholesale houses instead of near retail ones; and
+commodities are used which distance once rendered inaccessible. Again,
+the diminished cost of carriage tends to specialize more than ever the
+industries of different districts--to confine each manufacture to the
+parts in which, from local advantages, it can be best carried on.
+Further, the fall in freights, facilitating distribution, equalizes
+prices, and also, on the average, lowers prices: thus bringing divers
+articles within the means of those before unable to buy them, and so
+increasing their comforts and improving their habits. At the same time
+the practice of travelling is immensely extended. People who never
+before dreamed of it, take trips to the sea; visit their distant
+relations; make tours; and so we are benefited in body, feelings, and
+ideas. The more prompt transmission of letters and of news produces
+other marked changes--makes the pulse of the nation faster. Once more,
+there arises a wide dissemination of cheap literature through railway
+book-stalls, and of advertisements in railway carriages: both of them
+aiding ulterior progress. And the countless changes here briefly
+indicated are consequent on the invention of the locomotive engine. The
+social organism has been rendered more heterogeneous in virtue of the
+many new occupations introduced, and the many old ones further
+specialized; prices of nearly all things in every place have been
+altered; each trader has modified his way of doing business; and every
+person has been affected in his actions, thoughts, emotions.
+
+Illustrations to the same effect might be indefinitely accumulated, but
+they are needless. The only further fact demanding notice, is, that we
+here see still more clearly the truth before pointed out, that in
+proportion as the area on which any force expends itself becomes
+heterogeneous, the results are in a yet higher degree multiplied in
+number and kind. While among the simple tribes to whom it was first
+known, caoutchouc caused but few changes, among ourselves the changes
+have been so many and varied that the history of them occupies a
+volume.[5] Upon the small, homogeneous community inhabiting one of the
+Hebrides, the electric telegraph would produce, were it used, scarcely
+any results; but in England the results it produces are multitudinous.
+The comparatively simple organization under which our ancestors lived
+five centuries ago, could have undergone but few modifications from an
+event like the recent one at Canton; but now, the legislative decision
+respecting it sets up many hundreds of complex modifications, each of
+which will be the parent of numerous future ones.
+
+Space permitting, we could willingly have pursued the argument in
+relation to all the subtler results of civilization. As before we showed
+that the law of progress to which the organic and inorganic worlds
+conform, is also conformed to by Language, the plastic arts, Music, &c.;
+so might we here show that the cause which we have hitherto found to
+determine progress holds in these cases also. Instances might be given
+proving how, in Science, an advance of one division presently advances
+other divisions--how Astronomy has been immensely forwarded by
+discoveries in Optics, while other optical discoveries have initiated
+Microscopic Anatomy, and greatly aided the growth of Physiology--how
+Chemistry has indirectly increased our knowledge of Electricity,
+Magnetism, Biology, Geology--how Electricity has reacted on Chemistry
+and Magnetism, and has developed our views of Light and Heat. In
+Literature the same truth might be exhibited in the manifold effects of
+the primitive mystery-play, as originating the modern drama, which has
+variously branched; or in the still multiplying forms of periodical
+literature which have descended from the first newspaper, and which have
+severally acted and reacted on other forms of literature and on each
+other. The influence which a new school of Painting--as that of the
+pre-Raphaelites--exercises upon other schools; the hints which all kinds
+of pictorial art are deriving from Photography; the complex results of
+new critical doctrines, as those of Mr. Ruskin, might severally be dwelt
+upon as displaying the like multiplication of effects.
+
+But we venture to think our case is already made out. The imperfections
+of statement which brevity has necessitated, do not, we believe,
+invalidate the propositions laid down. The qualifications here and there
+demanded would not, if made, affect the inferences. Though, in tracing
+the genesis of progress, we have frequently spoken of complex causes as
+if they were simple ones; it still remains true that such causes are far
+less complex than their results. Detailed criticisms do not affect our
+main position. Endless facts go to show that every kind of progress is
+from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous; and that it is so because
+each change is followed by many changes. And it is significant that
+where the facts are most accessible and abundant, there these truths are
+most manifest.
+
+However, to avoid committing ourselves to more than is yet proved, we
+must be content with saying that such are the law and the cause of all
+progress that is known to us. Should the Nebular Hypothesis ever be
+established, then it will become manifest that the Universe at large,
+like every organism, was once homogeneous; that as a whole, and in every
+detail, it has unceasingly advanced towards greater heterogeneity. It
+will be seen that as in each event of to-day, so from the beginning, the
+decomposition of every expended force into several forces has been
+perpetually producing a higher complication; that the increase of
+heterogeneity so brought about is still going on and must continue to go
+on; and that thus progress is not an accident, not a thing within human
+control, but a beneficent necessity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few words must be added on the ontological bearings of our argument.
+Probably not a few will conclude that here is an attempted solution of
+the great questions with which Philosophy in all ages has perplexed
+itself. Let none thus deceive themselves. After all that has been said,
+the ultimate mystery remains just as it was. The explanation of that
+which is explicable, does but bring out into greater clearness the
+inexplicableness of that which remains behind. Little as it seems to do
+so, fearless inquiry tends continually to give a firmer basis to all
+true Religion. The timid sectarian, obliged to abandon one by one the
+superstitions bequeathed to him, and daily finding his cherished beliefs
+more and more shaken, secretly fears that all things may some day be
+explained; and has a corresponding dread of Science: thus evincing the
+profoundest of all infidelity--the fear lest the truth be bad. On the
+other hand, the sincere man of science, content to follow wherever the
+evidence leads him, becomes by each new inquiry more profoundly
+convinced that the Universe is an insoluble problem. Alike in the
+external and the internal worlds, he sees himself in the midst of
+ceaseless changes, of which he can discover neither beginning nor end.
+If, tracing back the evolution of things, he allows himself to entertain
+the hypothesis that all matter once existed in a diffused form, he finds
+it impossible to conceive how this came to be so; and equally, if he
+speculates on the future, he can assign no limit to the grand succession
+of phenomena ever unfolding themselves before him. Similarly, if he
+looks inward, he perceives that both terminations of the thread of
+consciousness are beyond his grasp: he cannot remember when or how
+consciousness commenced, and he cannot examine the consciousness at any
+moment existing; for only a state of consciousness which is already past
+can become the object of thought, and never one which is passing. When,
+again, he turns from the succession of phenomena, external or internal,
+to their essential nature, he is equally at fault. Though he may succeed
+in resolving all properties of objects into manifestations of force, he
+is not thereby enabled to conceive what force is; but finds, on the
+contrary, that the more he thinks about it, the more he is baffled.
+Similarly, though analysis of mental actions may finally bring him down
+to sensations as the original materials out of which all thought is
+woven, he is none the forwarder; for he cannot in the least comprehend
+sensation. Inward and outward things he thus discovers to be alike
+inscrutable in their ultimate genesis and nature. He sees that the
+Materialist and Spiritualist controversy is a mere war of words; the
+disputants being equally absurd--each believing he understands that
+which it is impossible for any man to understand. In all directions his
+investigations eventually bring him face to face with the unknowable;
+and he ever more clearly perceives it to be the unknowable. He learns at
+once the greatness and the littleness of human intellect--its power in
+dealing with all that comes within the range of experience; its
+impotence in dealing with all that transcends experience. He feels more
+vividly than any others can feel, the utter incomprehensibleness of the
+simplest fact, considered in itself. He alone truly _sees_ that absolute
+knowledge is impossible. He alone _knows_ that under all things there
+lies an impenetrable mystery.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 2: Since this was written (in 1857) the advance of
+paleontological discovery, especially in America, has shown
+conclusively, in respect of certain groups of vertebrates, that higher
+types have arisen by modifications of lower; so that, in common with
+others, Prof. Huxley, to whom the above allusion is made, now admits, or
+rather asserts, biological progression, and, by implication, that there
+have arisen more heterogeneous organic forms and a more heterogeneous
+assemblage of organic forms.]
+
+[Footnote 3: For detailed proof of these assertions see essay on
+"Manners and Fashion."]
+
+[Footnote 4: The argument concerning organic evolution contained in this
+paragraph and the one preceding it, stands verbatim as it did when first
+published in the _Westminster Review_ for April, 1857. I have thus left
+it without the alteration of a word that it may show the view I then
+held concerning the origin of species. The sole cause recognized is that
+of direct adaptation of constitution to conditions consequent on
+inheritance of the modifications of structure resulting from use and
+disuse. There is no recognition of that further cause disclosed in Mr.
+Darwin's work, published two and a half years later--the indirect
+adaptation resulting from the natural selection of favourable
+variations. The multiplication of effects is, however, equally
+illustrated in whatever way the adaptation to changing conditions is
+effected, or if it is effected in both ways, as I hold. I may add that
+there is indicated the view that the succession of organic forms is not
+serial but proceeds by perpetual divergence and re-divergence--that
+there has been a continual "divergence of many races from one race":
+each species being a "root" from which several other species branch out;
+and the growth of a tree being thus the implied symbol.]
+
+[Footnote 5: "Personal Narrative of the Origin of the Caoutchouc, or
+India-Rubber Manufacture in England." By Thomas Hancock.]
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSIOLOGY.
+
+    [_First published in_ The National Review _for October,_ 1857_,
+    under the title of "The Ultimate Laws of Physiology". The title
+    "Transcendental Physiology", which the editor did not approve, was
+    restored when the essay was re-published with others in_ 1857.]
+
+
+The title Transcendental Anatomy is used to distinguish that division of
+biological science which treats, not of the structures of individual
+organisms considered separately, but of the general principles of
+structure common to vast and varied groups of organisms,--the unity of
+plan discernible throughout multitudinous species, genera, and orders,
+which differ widely in appearance. And here, under the head of
+Transcendental Physiology, we purpose putting together sundry laws of
+development and function which hold not of particular kinds or classes
+of organisms, but of all organisms: laws, some of which have not, we
+believe, been hitherto enunciated.
+
+By way of unobtrusively introducing the general reader to biological
+truths of this class, let us begin by noticing one or two with which he
+is familiar. Take first, the relation between the activity of an organ
+and its growth. This is a universal relation. It holds, not only of a
+bone, a muscle, a nerve, an organ of sense, a mental faculty; but of
+every gland, every viscus, every element of the body. It is seen, not in
+man only, but in each animal which affords us adequate opportunity of
+tracing it. Always providing that the performance of function is not so
+excessive as to produce disorder, or to exceed the repairing powers
+either of the system at large or of the particular agencies by which
+nutriment is brought to the organ,--always providing this, it is a law
+of organized bodies that, other things equal, development varies as
+function. On this law are based all maxims and methods of right
+education, intellectual, moral, and physical; and when statesmen are
+wise enough to see it, this law will be found to underlie all right
+legislation.
+
+Another truth co-extensive with the organic world, is that of hereditary
+transmission. It is not, as commonly supposed, that hereditary
+transmission is exemplified merely in re-appearance of the family
+peculiarities displayed by immediate or remote progenitors. Nor does the
+law of hereditary transmission comprehend only such more general facts
+as that modified plants or animals become the parents of permanent
+varieties; and that new kinds of potatoes, new breeds of sheep, new
+races of men, have been thus originated. These are but minor
+exemplifications of the law. Understood in its entirety, the law is that
+each plant or animal produces others of like kind with itself: the
+likeness of kind consisting not so much in the repetition of individual
+traits as in the assumption of the same general structure. This truth
+has been made by daily illustration so familiar as nearly to have lost
+its significance. That wheat produces wheat,--that existing oxen are
+descended from ancestral oxen,--that every unfolding organism ultimately
+takes the form of the class, order, genus, and species from which it
+sprang; is a fact which, by force of repetition, has assumed in our
+minds the character of a necessity. It is in this, however, that the law
+of hereditary transmission is principally displayed; the phenomena
+commonly named as exemplifying it being quite subordinate
+manifestations. And the law, as thus understood, is universal. Not
+forgetting the apparent, but only apparent, exceptions presented by the
+strange class of phenomena known as "alternate generation," the truth
+that like produces like is common to all types of organisms.
+
+Let us take next a universal physiological law of a less conspicuous
+kind. To the ordinary observer, it seems that the multiplication of
+organisms proceeds in various ways. He sees that the young of the higher
+animals when born resemble their parents; that birds lay eggs, which
+they foster and hatch; that fish deposit spawn and leave it. Among
+plants, he finds that while in some cases new individuals grow from
+seeds only, in other cases they also grow from tubers; that by certain
+plants layers are sent out, take root, and develop new individuals; and
+that many plants can be reproduced from cuttings. Further, in the mould
+that quickly covers stale food, and the infusoria that soon swarm in
+water exposed to air and light, he sees a mode of generation which,
+seeming inexplicable, he is apt to consider "spontaneous." The reader of
+popular science thinks the modes of reproduction still more various. He
+learns that whole tribes of creatures multiply by gemmation--by a
+development from the body of the parent of buds which, after unfolding
+into the parental form, separate and lead independent lives. Concerning
+microscopic forms of both animal and vegetal life, he reads that the
+ordinary mode of multiplication is by spontaneous fission--a splitting
+up of the original individual into two or more individuals, which by and
+by severally repeat the process. Still more remarkable are the cases in
+which, as in the _Aphis_, an egg gives rise to an imperfect female, from
+which other imperfect females are born viviparously, grow, and in their
+turns bear other imperfect females; and so on for eight, ten, or more
+generations, until finally, perfect males and females are viviparously
+produced. But now under all these, and many more, modified modes of
+multiplication, the physiologist finds complete uniformity. The
+starting-point, not only of every higher animal or plant, but of every
+clan of organisms which by fission or gemmation have sprung from a
+single organism, is always a spore, seed, or ovum. The millions of
+infusoria or of aphides which, by sub-division or gemmation, have
+proceeded from one individual; the countless plants which have been
+successively propagated from one original plant by cuttings or tubers;
+are, in common with the highest creature, primarily descended from a
+fertilized germ. And in all cases--in the humblest alga as in the oak,
+in the protozoon as in the mammal--this fertilized germ results from the
+union of the contents of two cells. Whether, as among the lowest forms
+of life, these two cells are seemingly identical in nature; or whether,
+as among higher forms, they are distinguishable into sperm-cell and
+germ-cell; it remains throughout true that from their combination
+results the mass out of which is evolved a new organism or new series of
+organisms. That this law is without exception we are not prepared to
+say; for in the case of the _Aphis_ certain experiments are thought to
+imply that under special conditions the descendants of an original
+individual may continue multiplying for ever, without further
+fecundation. But we know of no case where it _actually is_ so; for
+although there are certain plants of which the seeds have never been
+seen, it is more probable that our observations are in fault than that
+these plants are exceptions. And until we find undoubted exceptions, the
+above-stated induction must stand. Here, then, we have another of the
+truths of Transcendental Physiology: a truth which, so far as we know,
+_transcends_ all distinctions of genus, order, class, kingdom, and
+applies to every living thing.
+
+Yet another generalization of like universality expresses the process of
+organic development. To the ordinary observer there seems no unity in
+this. No obvious parallelism exists between the unfolding of a plant and
+the unfolding of an animal. There is no manifest similarity between the
+development of a mammal, which proceeds without break from its first to
+its last stage, and that of an insect, which is divided into
+strongly-marked stages--egg, larva, pupa, imago. Nevertheless it is now
+an established fact, that all organisms are evolved after one general
+method. At the outset the germ of every plant or animal is relatively
+homogeneous; and advance towards maturity is advance towards greater
+heterogeneity. Each organized thing commences as an almost structureless
+mass, and reaches its ultimate complexity by the establishment of
+distinctions upon distinctions,--by the divergence of tissues from
+tissues and organs from organs. Here, then, we have yet another
+biological law of transcendent generality.
+
+Having thus recognized the scope of Transcendental Physiology as
+presented in its leading truths, we are prepared for the considerations
+that are to follow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And first, returning to the last of the great generalizations above
+given, let us inquire more nearly how this change from the homogeneous
+to the heterogeneous is carried on. Usually it is said to result from
+successive differentiations. This, however, cannot be considered a
+complete account of the process. During the evolution of an organism
+there occur, not only separations of parts, but coalescences of parts.
+There is not only segregation, but aggregation. The heart, at first a
+simple pulsating blood-vessel, by and by twists upon itself and becomes
+integrated. The bile-cells constituting the rudimentary liver, do not
+merely diverge from the surface of the intestine in which they at first
+form a simple layer; but they simultaneously consolidate into a definite
+organ. And the gradual concentration seen in these and other cases is a
+part of the developmental process--a part which, though more or less
+recognized by Milne-Edwards and others, does not seem to have been
+included as an essential element in it.
+
+This progressive integration, manifest alike when tracing up the several
+stages passed through by every embryo, and when ascending from the lower
+organic forms to the higher, may be most conveniently studied under
+several heads. Let us consider first what may be called _longitudinal
+integration_.
+
+The lower _Annulosa_--worms, myriapods, &c.--are characterized by the
+great numbers of segments of which they respectively consist, reaching
+in some cases to several hundreds; but as we advance to the higher
+_Annulosa_--centipedes, crustaceans, insects, spiders,--we find these
+numbers greatly reduced, down to twenty-two, thirteen, and even fewer;
+and accompanying this there is a shortening or integration of the whole
+body, reaching its extreme in crabs and spiders. Similarly with the
+development of an individual crustacean or insect. The thorax of a
+lobster, which, in the adult, forms, with the head, one compact box
+containing the viscera, is made up by the union of a number of segments
+which in the embryo were separable. The thirteen distinct divisions seen
+in the body of a caterpillar, become further integrated in the
+butterfly: several segments are consolidated to form the thorax, and the
+abdominal segments are more aggregated than they originally were. The
+like truth is seen when we pass to the internal organs. In the lower
+annulose forms, and in the larvæ of the higher ones, the alimentary
+canal consists either of a tube that is uniform from end to end, or else
+bulges into a succession of stomachs, one to each segment; but in the
+developed forms there is a single well-defined stomach. In the nervous,
+vascular, and respiratory systems a parallel concentration may be
+traced. Again, in the development of the _Vertebrata_ we have sundry
+examples of longitudinal integration. The coalescence of several
+segmental groups of bones to form the skull is one instance of it. It is
+further illustrated in the _os coccygis_, which results from the fusion
+of a number of caudal vertebræ. And in the consolidation of the sacral
+vertebræ of a bird it is also well exemplified.
+
+That which we may distinguish as _transverse integration_, is well
+illustrated among the _Annulosa_ in the development of the nervous
+system. Leaving out those simple forms which do not present distinct
+ganglia, it is to be observed that the lower annulose animals, in common
+with the larvæ of the higher, are severally characterized by a double
+chain of ganglia running from end to end of the body; while in the more
+advanced annulose animals this double chain becomes a single chain. Mr.
+Newport has described the course of this concentration in insects; and
+by Rathke it has been traced in crustaceans. In the early stages of the
+_Astacus fluviatilis_, or common cray-fish, there is a pair of separate
+ganglia to each ring. Of the fourteen pairs belonging to the head and
+thorax, the three pairs in advance of the mouth consolidate into one
+mass to form the brain, or cephalic ganglion. Meanwhile out of the
+remainder, the first six pairs severally unite in the median line, while
+the rest remain more or less separate. Of these six double ganglia thus
+formed, the anterior four coalesce into one mass; the remaining two
+coalesce into another mass; and then these two masses coalesce into one.
+Here we see longitudinal and transverse integration going on
+simultaneously; and in the highest crustaceans they are both carried
+still further. The _Vertebrata_ exhibit this transverse integration in
+the development of the generative system. The lowest of the
+mammalia--the _Monotremata_--in common with birds, have oviducts which
+towards their lower extremities are dilated into cavities severally
+performing in an imperfect way the function of a uterus. "In the
+_Marsupialia_, there is a closer approximation of the two lateral sets
+of organs on the median line; for the oviducts converge towards one
+another and meet (without coalescing) on the median line; so that their
+uterine dilatations are in contact with each other, forming a true
+'double uterus.' ... As we ascend the series of 'placental' mammals, we
+find the lateral coalescence becoming gradually more and more
+complete.... In many of the _Rodentia_, the uterus still remains
+completely divided into two lateral halves; whilst in others, these
+coalesce at their lower portion, forming a rudiment of the true 'body'
+of the uterus in the Human subject. This part increases at the expense
+of the lateral 'cornua' in the higher Herbivora and Carnivora; but even
+in the lower Quadrumana, the uterus is somewhat cleft at its
+summit."[6] And this process of transverse integration, which is still
+more striking when observed in its details, is accompanied by parallel
+though less important changes in the opposite sex. Once more; in the
+increasing commissural connexion of the cerebral hemispheres, which,
+though separate in the lower vertebrata, become gradually more united in
+the higher, we have another instance. And further ones of a different
+order, but of like general implication, are supplied by the vascular
+system.
+
+Now it seems to us that the various kinds of integration here
+exemplified, which are commonly set down as so many independent
+phenomena, ought to be generalized, and included in the formula
+describing the process of development. The fact that in an adult crab,
+many pairs of ganglia originally separate have become fused into a
+single mass, is a fact only second in significance to the
+differentiation of its alimentary canal into stomach and intestine. That
+in the higher _Annulosa_, a single heart replaces the string of
+rudimentary hearts constituting the dorsal blood-vessel in the lower
+_Annulosa_, (reaching in one species to the number of one hundred and
+sixty), is a truth as much needing to be comprised in the history of
+evolution, as is the formation of a respiratory surface by a branched
+expansion of the skin. A right conception of the genesis of a vertebral
+column, includes not only the differentiations from which result the
+_chorda dorsalis_ and the vertebral segments imbedded in it; but quite
+as much it includes the coalescence of numerous vertebral processes with
+their respective vertebral bodies. The changes in virtue of which
+several things become one, demand recognition equally with those in
+virtue of which one thing becomes several. Evidently, then, the current
+statement which ascribes the developmental progress to differentiations
+alone, is incomplete. Adequately to express the facts, we must say
+that the transition from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is carried
+on by differentiations and accompanying integrations.
+
+It may not be amiss here to ask--What is the meaning of these
+integrations? The evidence seems to show that they are in some way
+dependent on community of function. The eight segments which coalesce to
+make the head of a centipede, jointly protect the cephalic ganglion, and
+afford a solid fulcrum for the jaws, &c. The many bones which unite to
+form a vertebral skull have like uses. In the consolidation of the
+several pieces which constitute a mammalian pelvis, and in the
+anchylosis of from ten to nineteen vertebræ in the sacrum of a bird, we
+have kindred instances of the integration of parts which transfer the
+weight of the body to the legs. The more or less extensive fusion of the
+tibia with the fibula and the radius with the ulna in the ungulated
+mammals, whose habits require only partial rotations of the limbs, is a
+fact of like meaning. And all the instances lately given--the
+concentration of ganglia, the replacement of many pulsating blood-sacs
+by fewer and finally by one, the fusion of two uteri into a single
+uterus--have the same implication. Whether, as in some cases, the
+integration is merely a consequence of the growth which eventually
+brings into contact adjacent parts performing similar duties; or
+whether, as in other cases, there is an actual approximation of these
+parts before their union; or whether, as in yet other cases, the
+integration is of that indirect kind which arises when, out of a number
+of like organs, one, or a group, discharges an ever-increasing share of
+the common function, and so grows while the rest dwindle and
+disappear;--the general fact remains the same, that there is a tendency
+to the unification of parts having similar duties.
+
+The tendency, however, acts under limiting conditions; and recognition
+of them will explain some apparent exceptions. In the human foetus, as
+in the lower vertebrata, the eyes are placed one on each side of the
+head. During evolution they become relatively nearer, and at birth are
+in front; though they are still, in the European infant as in the adult
+Mongol, proportionately further apart than they afterwards become. But
+this approximation shows no signs of further increase. Two reasons
+suggest themselves. One is that the two eyes have not quite the same
+function, since they are directed to slightly-different aspects of each
+object looked at; and, since the resulting binocular vision has an
+advantage over monocular vision, there results a check upon further
+approach towards identity of function and unity of structure. The other
+reason is that the interposed structures do not admit of any nearer
+approach. For the orbits of the eyes to be brought closer together,
+would imply a decrease in the olfactory chambers; and as these are
+probably not larger than is demanded by their present functional
+activity, no decrease can take place. Again, if we trace up the external
+organs of smell through fishes,[7] reptiles, ungulate mammals and
+unguiculate mammals, to man, we perceive a general tendency to
+coalescence in the median line; and on comparing the savage with the
+civilized, or the infant with the adult, we see this approach of the
+nostrils carried furthest in the most perfect of the species. But since
+the septum which divides them has the function both of an evaporating
+surface for the lachrymal secretion, and of a ramifying surface for a
+nerve ancillary to that of smell, it does not disappear entirely: the
+integration remains incomplete. These and other like instances do not
+however militate against the hypothesis. They merely show that the
+tendency is sometimes antagonized by other tendencies. Bearing in mind
+which qualification, we may say, that as differentiation of parts is
+connected with difference of function, so there appears to be a
+connexion between integration of parts and sameness of function.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Closely related to the general truth that the evolution of all organisms
+is carried on by combined differentiations and integrations, is another
+general truth, which physiologists appear not to have recognized. When
+we look at the organic world as a whole, we may observe that, on passing
+from lower to higher forms, we pass to forms which are not only
+characterized by a greater differentiation of parts, but are at the same
+time more completely differentiated from the surrounding medium. This
+truth may be contemplated under various aspects.
+
+In the first place it is illustrated in _structure_. The advance from
+the homogeneous to the heterogeneous itself involves an increasing
+distinction from the inorganic world. In the lowest _Protozoa_, as some
+of the Rhizopods, we have a homogeneity approaching to that of air,
+water, or earth; and the ascent to organisms of greater and greater
+complexity of structure, is an ascent to organisms which are in that
+respect more strongly contrasted with the relatively structureless
+masses in the environment.
+
+In _form_ again we see the same truth. A general characteristic of
+inorganic matter is its indefiniteness of form, and this is also a
+characteristic of the lower organisms, as compared with the higher.
+Speaking generally, plants are less definite than animals, both in shape
+and size--admit of greater modifications from variations of position and
+nutrition. Among animals, the _Amoeba_ and its allies are not only
+almost structureless, but are amorphous; and the irregular form is
+constantly changing. Of the organisms resulting from the aggregation of
+amoeba-like creatures, we find that while some assume a certain
+definiteness of form, in their compound shells at least, others, as the
+Sponges, are irregular. In the Zoophytes and in the _Polyzoa_, we see
+compound organisms, most of which have modes of growth not more
+determinate than those of plants. But among the higher animals, we find
+not only that the mature shape of each species is quite definite, but
+that the individuals of each species differ very little in size.
+
+A parallel increase of contrast is seen in _chemical composition_. With
+but few exceptions, and those only partial ones, the lowest animal and
+vegetal forms are inhabitants of the water; and water is almost their
+sole constituent. Dessicated _Protophyta_ and _Protozoa_ shrink into
+mere dust; and among the acalephes we find but a few grains of solid
+matter to a pound of water. The higher aquatic plants, in common with
+the higher aquatic animals, possessing as they do much greater tenacity
+of substance, also contain a greater proportion of the organic elements;
+and so are chemically more unlike their medium. And when we pass to the
+superior classes of organisms--land plants and land animals--we find
+that, chemically considered, they have little in common either with the
+earth on which they stand or the air which surrounds them.
+
+In _specific gravity_, too, we may note the like. The very simplest
+forms, in common with the spores and gemmules of the higher ones, are as
+nearly as may be of the same specific gravity as the water in which they
+float; and though it cannot be said that among aquatic creatures
+superior specific gravity is a standard of general superiority, yet we
+may fairly say that the superior orders of them, when divested of the
+appliances by which their specific gravity is regulated, differ more
+from water in their relative weights than do the lower. In terrestrial
+organisms, the contrast becomes extremely marked. Trees and plants, in
+common with insects, reptiles, mammals, birds, are all of a specific
+gravity considerably less than the earth and immensely greater than the
+air.
+
+We see the law similarly fulfilled in respect of _temperature_. Plants
+generate but an extremely small quantity of heat, which is to be
+detected only by delicate experiments; and practically they may be
+considered as being in this respect like their environment. Aquatic
+animals rise very little above the surrounding water in temperature:
+that of the invertebrata being mostly less than a degree above it, and
+that of fishes not exceeding it by more than two or three degrees, save
+in the case of some large red-blooded fishes, as the tunny, which exceed
+it by nearly ten degrees. Among insects, the range is from two to ten
+degrees above that of the air: the excess varying according to their
+activity. The heat of reptiles is from four to fifteen degrees more than
+that of their medium. While mammals and birds maintain a heat which
+continues almost unaffected by external variations, and is often greater
+than that of the air by seventy, eighty, ninety, and even a hundred
+degrees.
+
+Once more, in greater _self-mobility_ a progressive differentiation is
+traceable. Dead matter is inert: some form of independent motion is our
+most general test of life. Passing over the indefinite border-land
+between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, we may roughly class plants
+as organisms which, while they exhibit the kind of motion implied in
+growth, are not only without locomotive power, but in nearly all cases
+are without the power of moving their parts in relation to one another;
+and thus are less differentiated from the inorganic world than animals.
+Though in those microscopic _Protophyta_ and _Protozoa_ inhabiting the
+water--the spores of algæ, the gemmules of sponges, and the infusoria
+generally--we see locomotion produced by ciliary action; yet this
+locomotion, while rapid relatively to their sizes, is absolutely slow.
+Of the _Coelenterata_, a great part are either permanently rooted or
+habitually stationary, and so have scarcely any self-mobility but that
+implied in the relative movements of parts; while the rest, of which the
+common jelly-fish serves as a sample, have mostly but little ability to
+move themselves through the water. Among the higher aquatic
+_Invertebrata_,--cuttle-fishes and lobsters, for instance,--there is a
+very considerable power of locomotion; and the aquatic _Vertebrata_ are,
+considered as a class, much more active in their movements than the
+other inhabitants of the water. But it is only when we come to
+air-breathing creatures that we find the vital characteristic of
+self-mobility manifested in the highest degree. Flying insects, mammals,
+birds, travel with velocities far exceeding those attained by any of the
+lower classes of animals; and so are more strongly contrasted with their
+inert environments.
+
+Thus, on contemplating the various grades of organisms in their
+ascending order, we find them more and more distinguished from their
+inanimate media in _structure_, in _form_, in _chemical composition_, in
+_specific gravity_, in _temperature_, in _self-mobility_. It is true
+that this generalization does not hold with regularity. Organisms which
+are in some respects the most strongly contrasted with the inorganic
+world, are in other respects less contrasted than inferior organisms. As
+a class, mammals are higher than birds; and yet they are of lower
+temperature, and have smaller powers of locomotion. The stationary
+oyster is of higher organization than the free-swimming medusa; and the
+cold-blooded and less heterogeneous fish is quicker in its movements
+than the warm-blooded and more heterogeneous sloth. But the admission
+that the several aspects under which this increasing contrast shows
+itself bear variable ratios to one another, does not negative the
+general truth enunciated. Looking at the facts in the mass, it cannot be
+denied that the successively higher groups of organisms are severally
+characterized, not only by greater differentiation of parts, but also by
+greater differentiation from the surrounding medium in sundry other
+physical attributes. It would seem that this peculiarity has some
+necessary connexion with superior vital manifestations. One of those
+lowly gelatinous forms which are some of them so transparent and
+colourless as to be with difficulty distinguished from the water they
+float in, is not more like its medium in chemical, mechanical, optical,
+thermal, and other properties, than it is in the passivity with which it
+submits to all the actions brought to bear on it; while the mammal does
+not more widely differ from inanimate things in these properties than it
+does in the activity with which it meets surrounding changes by
+compensating changes in itself. Between these two extremes, we see a
+tolerably constant ratio between these two kinds of contrast. In
+proportion as an organism is physically like its environment it remains
+a passive partaker of the changes going on in its environment; while in
+proportion as it is endowed with powers of counteracting such changes,
+it exhibits greater unlikeness to its environment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus far we have proceeded inductively, in conformity with established
+usage; but it seems to us that much may be done in this and other
+departments of biologic inquiry by pursuing the deductive method. The
+generalizations at present constituting the science of physiology, both
+general and special, have been reached _a posteriori_; but certain
+fundamental data have now been discovered, starting from which we may
+reason our way _a priori_, not only to some of the truths that have been
+ascertained by observation and experiment, but also to some others. The
+possibility of such _a priori_ conclusions will be at once recognized on
+considering some familiar cases.
+
+Chemists have shown that a necessary condition to vital activity in
+animals is oxidation of certain matters contained in the body either as
+components or as waste products. The oxygen requisite for this oxidation
+is contained in the surrounding medium--air or water, as the case may
+be. If the organism be minute, mere contact of its external surface with
+the oxygenated medium achieves the requisite oxidation; but if the
+organism is bulky, and so exposes a surface which is small in
+proportion to its mass, any considerable oxidation cannot be thus
+achieved. One of two things is therefore implied. Either this bulky
+organism, receiving no oxygen but that absorbed through its integument,
+must possess but little vital activity; or else, if it possesses much
+vital activity, there must be some extensive ramified surface, internal
+or external, through which adequate aeration may take place--a
+respiratory apparatus. That is to say, lungs, or gills, or branchiæ, or
+their equivalents, are predicable _a priori_ as possessed by all active
+creatures of any size.
+
+Similarly with respect to nutriment. There are _entozoa_ which, living
+in the insides of other animals, and being constantly bathed by
+nutritive fluids, absorb a sufficiency through their outer surfaces; and
+so have no need of stomachs, and do not possess them. But all other
+animals, inhabiting media that are not in themselves nutritive, but only
+contain masses of food here and there, must have appliances by which
+these masses of food may be utilized. Evidently mere external contact of
+a solid organism with a solid portion of nutriment, could not result in
+the absorption of it in any moderate time, if at all. To effect
+absorption, there must be both a solvent or macerating action, and an
+extended surface fit for containing and imbibing the dissolved products:
+there must be a digestive cavity. Thus, given the ordinary conditions of
+animal life, and the possession of stomachs by all creatures living
+under these conditions may be deductively known.
+
+Carrying out the train of reasoning still further, we may infer the
+existence of a vascular system or something equivalent to it, in all
+creatures of any size and activity. In a comparatively small inert
+animal, such as the hydra, which consists of little more than a sac
+having a double wall--an outer layer of cells forming the skin, and an
+inner layer forming the digestive and absorbent surface--there is no
+need for a special apparatus to diffuse through the body the aliment
+taken up; for the body is little more than a wrapper to the food it
+encloses. But where the bulk is considerable, or where the activity is
+such as to involve much waste and repair, or where both these
+characteristics exist, there is a necessity for a system of
+blood-vessels. It is not enough that there be adequately extensive
+surfaces for absorption and aeration; for in the absence of any means of
+conveyance, the absorbed elements can be of little or no use to the
+organism at large. Evidently there must be channels of communication.
+When, as in the _Medusæ_, we find these channels of communication
+consisting simply of branched canals opening out of the stomach and
+spreading through the disk, we may know, _a priori_, that such creatures
+are comparatively inactive; seeing that the nutritive liquid thus
+partially distributed throughout their bodies is crude and dilute, and
+that there is no efficient appliance for keeping it in motion.
+Conversely, when we meet with a creature of considerable size which
+displays much vivacity, we may know, _a priori_, that it must have an
+apparatus for the unceasing supply of concentrated nutriment, and of
+oxygen, to every organ--a pulsating vascular system.
+
+It is manifest, then, that setting out from certain known fundamental
+conditions to vital activity, we may deduce from them sundry of the
+chief characteristics of organized bodies. Doubtless these known
+fundamental conditions have been inductively established. But what we
+wish to show is that, given these inductively-established primary facts
+in physiology, we may with safety draw certain general deductions from
+them. And, indeed, the legitimacy of such deductions, though not
+formally acknowledged, is practically recognized in the convictions of
+every physiologist, as may be readily proved. Thus, were a physiologist
+to find a creature exhibiting complex and variously co-ordinated
+movements, and yet having no nervous system; he would be less astonished
+at the breach of his empirical generalization that all such creatures
+have nervous systems, than at the disproof of his unconscious deduction
+that all creatures exhibiting complex and variously co-ordinated
+movements must have an "internuncial" apparatus by which the
+co-ordination may be effected. Or were he to find a creature having
+blood rapidly circulated and rapidly aerated, but yet showing a low
+temperature, the proof so afforded that active change of matter is not,
+as he had inferred from chemical data, the cause of animal heat, would
+stagger him more than would the exception to a constantly-observed
+relation. Clearly, then, the _a priori_ method already plays a part in
+physiological reasoning. If not ostensibly employed as a means of
+reaching new truths, it is at least privately appealed to for
+confirmation of truths reached _a posteriori_.
+
+But the illustrations above given go far to show, that it may to a
+considerable extent be safely used as an independent instrument of
+research. The necessities for a nutritive system, a respiratory system,
+and a vascular system, in all animals of size and vivacity, seem to us
+legitimately inferable from the conditions to continued vital activity.
+Given the physical and chemical data, and these structural peculiarities
+may be deduced with as much certainty as may the hollowness of an iron
+ball from its power of floating in water.
+
+It is not, of course, asserted that the more _special_ physiological
+truths can be deductively reached. The argument by no means implies
+this. Legitimate deduction presupposes adequate data; and in respect to
+the _special_ phenomena of organic growth, structure, and function,
+adequate data are unattainable, and will probably ever remain so. It is
+only in the case of the more _general_ physiological truths, such as
+those above instanced, where we have something like adequate data, that
+deductive reasoning becomes possible.
+
+And here is reached the stage to which the foregoing considerations are
+introductory. We propose now to show that there are certain still more
+general attributes of organized bodies, which are deducible from certain
+still more general attributes of things.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In an essay on "Progress: its Law and Cause," elsewhere published,[8] we
+have endeavoured to show that the transformation of the homogeneous into
+the heterogeneous, in which all progress, organic or other, essentially
+consists, is consequent on the production of many effects by one
+cause--many changes by one force. Having pointed out that this is a law
+of all things, we proceeded to show deductively that the multiform
+evolutions of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous--astronomic,
+geologic, ethnologic, social, &c.,--were explicable as consequences. And
+though in the case of organic evolution, lack of data disabled us from
+specifically tracing out the progressive complication as due to the
+multiplication of effects; yet, we found sundry indirect evidences that
+it was so. Now in so far as this conclusion, that organic evolution
+results from the decomposition of each expended force into several
+forces, was inferred from the general law previously pointed out, it was
+an example of deductive physiology. The particular was concluded from
+the universal.
+
+We here propose in the first place to show, that there is another
+general truth closely connected with the above; and in common with it
+underlying explanations of all progress, and therefore the progress of
+organisms--a truth which may indeed be considered as taking precedence
+of it in respect of time, if not in respect of generality. This truth
+is, that _the condition of homogeneity is a condition of unstable
+equilibrium_.
+
+The phrase _unstable equilibrium_ is one used in mechanics to express
+a balance of forces of such kind, that the interference of any further
+force, however minute, will destroy the arrangement previously existing,
+and bring about a different arrangement. Thus, a stick poised on its
+lower end is in unstable equilibrium: however exactly it may be placed
+in a perpendicular position, as soon as it is left to itself it begins,
+at first imperceptibly and then visibly, to lean on one side, and with
+increasing rapidity falls into another position. Conversely, a stick
+suspended from its upper end is in stable equilibrium: however much
+disturbed, it will return to the same position. Our meaning is, then,
+that the state of homogeneity, like the state of the stick poised on its
+lower end, is one that cannot be maintained; and that hence results the
+first step in its gravitation towards the heterogeneous. Let us take a
+few illustrations.
+
+Of mechanical ones the most familiar is that of the scales. If
+accurately made and not clogged by dirt or rust, a pair of scales cannot
+be perfectly balanced: eventually one scale will descend and the other
+ascend--they will assume a heterogeneous relation. Again, if we sprinkle
+over the surface of a liquid a number of equal-sized particles, having
+an attraction for one another, they will, no matter how uniformly
+distributed, by and by concentrate irregularly into groups. Were it
+possible to bring a mass of water into a state of perfect homogeneity--a
+state of complete quiescence, and exactly equal density throughout--yet
+the radiation of heat from neighbouring bodies, by affecting differently
+its different parts, would soon produce inequalities of density and
+consequent currents; and would so render it to that extent
+heterogeneous. Take a piece of red-hot matter, and however evenly heated
+it may at first be, it will quickly cease to be so: the exterior,
+cooling faster than the interior, will become different in temperature
+from it. And the lapse into heterogeneity of temperature, so obvious in
+this extreme case, is ever taking place more or less in all cases. The
+actions of chemical forces supply other illustrations. Expose a
+fragment of metal to air or water, and in course of time it will be
+coated with a film of oxide, carbonate, or other compound: its outer
+parts will become unlike its inner parts. Thus, every homogeneous
+aggregate of matter tends to lose its balance in some way or
+other--either mechanically, chemically, thermally or electrically; and
+the rapidity with which it lapses into a non-homogeneous state is simply
+a question of time and circumstances. Social bodies illustrate the law
+with like constancy. Endow the members of a community with equal
+properties, positions, powers, and they will forthwith begin to slide
+into inequalities. Be it in a representative assembly, a railway board,
+or a private partnership, the homogeneity, though it may continue in
+name, inevitably disappears in reality.
+
+The instability thus variously illustrated becomes still more manifest
+if we consider its rationale. It is consequent on the fact that the
+several parts of any homogeneous mass are necessarily exposed to
+different forces--forces which differ either in their kinds or amounts;
+and being exposed to different forces they are of necessity differently
+modified. The relations of outside and inside, and of comparative
+nearness to neighbouring sources of influence, imply the reception of
+influences which are unlike in quantity or quality or both; and it
+follows that unlike changes will be wrought in the parts dissimilarly
+acted upon. The unstable equilibrium of any homogeneous aggregate can
+thus be shown both inductively and deductively.
+
+And now let us consider the bearing of this general truth on the
+evolution of organisms. The germ of a plant or animal is one of these
+homogeneous aggregates--relatively homogeneous if not absolutely
+so--whose equilibrium is unstable. But it has not simply the ordinary
+instability of homogeneous aggregates: it has something more. For it
+consists of units which are themselves specially characterized by
+instability. The constituent molecules of organic matter are
+distinguished by the feebleness of the affinities which hold their
+component elements together. They are extremely sensitive to heat,
+light, electricity, and the chemical actions of foreign elements; that
+is, they are peculiarly liable to be modified by disturbing forces.
+Hence then it follows, _a priori_, that a homogeneous aggregate of these
+unstable molecules will have an excessive tendency to lose its
+equilibrium. It will have a quite special liability to lapse into a
+non-homogeneous state. It will rapidly gravitate towards heretogeneity.
+
+Moreover, the process must repeat itself in each of the subordinate
+groups of organic units which are differentiated by the modifying
+forces. Each of these subordinate groups, like the original group, must
+gradually, in obedience to the influences acting on it, lose its balance
+of parts--must pass from a uniform into a multiform state. And so on
+continuously.
+
+Thus, starting from the general laws of things, and the known chemical
+attributes of organic matter, we may conclude deductively that the
+homogeneous germs of organisms have a peculiar proclivity towards a
+non-homogeneous state; which may be either the state we call
+decomposition, or the state we call organization.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At present we have reached a conclusion only of the most general nature.
+We merely learn that _some_ kind of heterogeneity is inevitable; but as
+yet there is nothing to tell us _what_ kind. Besides that _orderly_
+heterogeneity which distinguishes organisms, there is the _disorderly_
+or _chaotic_ heterogeneity, into which a loose mass of inorganic matter
+lapses; and at present no reason has been given why the homogeneous germ
+of a plant or animal should not lapse into the disorderly instead of the
+orderly heterogeneity. But by pursuing still further the line of
+argument hitherto followed we shall find a reason.
+
+We have seen that the instability of homogeneous aggregates in general,
+and of organic ones in particular, is consequent on the various ways and
+degrees in which their constituent parts are exposed to the disturbing
+forces brought to bear on them: their parts are differently acted upon,
+and therefore become different. Manifestly, then, a rationale of the
+special changes which a germ undergoes, must be sought in the particular
+relations which its several parts bear to each other and to their
+environment. However it may be masked, we may suspect the fundamental
+principle of organization to be, that the many like units forming a germ
+acquire those kinds and degrees of unlikeness which their respective
+positions entail.
+
+Take a mass of unorganized but organizable matter--either the body of
+one of the lowest living forms, or the germ of one of the higher.
+Consider its circumstances. It is immersed in water or air; or it is
+contained within a parent organism. Wherever placed, however, its outer
+and inner parts stand differently related to surrounding
+existences--nutriment, oxygen, and the various stimuli. But this is not
+all. Whether it lies quiescent at the bottom of the water, whether it
+moves through the water preserving some definite attitude, or whether it
+is in the inside of an adult; it equally results that certain parts of
+its surface are more directly exposed to surrounding agencies than other
+parts--in some cases more exposed to light, heat, or oxygen, and in
+others to the maternal tissues and their contents. The destruction of
+its original equilibrium is therefore certain. It may take place in one
+of two ways. Either the disturbing forces may be such as to overbalance
+the affinities of the organic elements, in which case there results that
+chaotic heterogeneity known as decomposition; or, as is ordinarily the
+case, such changes are induced as do not destroy the organic compounds,
+but only modify them: the parts most exposed to the modifying forces
+being most modified. Hence result those first differentiations which
+constitute incipient organization. From the point of view thus reached,
+suppose we look at a few cases: neglecting for the present all
+consideration of the tendency to assume the inherited type.
+
+Note first what appear to be exceptions, as the _Amoeba_. In this
+creature and its allies, the substance of the jelly-like body remains
+throughout life unorganized--undergoes no permanent differentiations.
+But this fact, which seems directly opposed to our inference, is really
+one of the most significant evidences of its truth. For what is the
+peculiarity of the Rhizopods, exemplified by the _Amoeba_? They
+undergo perpetual and irregular changes of shape--they show no
+persistent relations of parts. What lately formed a portion of the
+interior is now protruded, and, as a temporary limb, is attached to some
+object it happens to touch. What is now a part of the surface will
+presently be drawn, along with the atom of nutriment sticking to it,
+into the centre of the mass. Thus there is an unceasing interchange of
+places; and the relations of inner and outer have no settled existence.
+But by the hypothesis, it is only in virtue of their unlike positions
+with respect to modifying forces, that the originally-like units of a
+living mass become unlike. We must not therefore expect any established
+differentiation of parts in creatures which exhibit no established
+differences of position in their parts.
+
+This negative evidence is borne out by abundant positive evidence. When
+we turn from these ever-changing specks of living jelly to organisms
+having unchanging distributions of substance, we find differences of
+tissue corresponding to differences of relative position. In all the
+higher _Protozoa_, as also in the _Protophyta_, we meet with a
+fundamental differentiation into cell-membrane and cell-contents,
+answering to that fundamental contrast of conditions implied by the
+words outside and inside. And on passing from what are roughly classed
+as unicellular organisms to the lowest of those which consist of
+aggregated cells, we equally observe the connexion between structural
+differences and differences of circumstance. In the sponge, permeated
+throughout by currents of sea-water, the absence of definite
+organization corresponds with the absence of definite unlikeness of
+conditions. In the _Thalassicolla_ of Professor Huxley--a transparent,
+colourless body, found floating passively at the surface of the sea, and
+consisting essentially of "a mass of cells united by jelly"--there is
+displayed a rude structure obviously subordinated to the primary
+relations of centre and surface: in all of its many and important
+varieties, the parts exhibit a more or less concentric arrangement.
+
+After this primary modification, by which the outer tissues are
+differentiated from the inner, the next in order of constancy and
+importance is that by which some part of the outer tissues is
+differentiated from the rest; and this corresponds with the almost
+universal fact that some part of the outer tissues is more directly
+exposed to certain environing influences than the rest. Here, as before,
+the apparent exceptions are extremely significant. Some of the lowest
+vegetable organisms, as the _Hematococci_ and _Protococci_, evenly
+imbedded in a mass of mucus, or dispersed through the Arctic snow,
+display no differentiations of surface: the several parts of the surface
+being subjected to no definite contrasts of conditions. The
+_Thalassicolla_ above mentioned, unfixed, and rolled about by the waves,
+presents all its sides successively to the same agencies; and all its
+sides are alike. A ciliated sphere like the _Volvox_ has no parts of its
+periphery unlike other parts; and it is not to be expected that it
+should have; seeing that as it revolves in all directions, it does not,
+in traversing the water, permanently expose any part to special
+conditions. But when we come to creatures that are either fixed, or
+while moving, severally preserve a definite attitude, we no longer find
+uniformity of surface. The gemmule of a Zoophyte, which during its
+locomotive stage is distinguishable only into outer and inner tissues,
+no sooner takes root than its upper end begins to assume a different
+structure from its lower. The free-swimming embryo of an aquatic
+annelid, being ovate and not ciliated all over, moves with one end
+foremost; and its differentiations proceed in conformity with this
+contrast of circumstances.
+
+The principle thus displayed in the humbler forms of life, is traceable
+during the development of the higher; though being here soon masked by
+the assumption of the hereditary type, it cannot be traced far. Thus the
+"mulberry-mass" into which a fertilized ovum of a vertebrate animal
+first resolves itself, soon begins to exhibit a difference between the
+outer and inner parts answering to the difference of circumstances. The
+peripheral cells, after reaching a more complete development than the
+central ones, coalesce into a membrane enclosing the rest; and then the
+cells lying next to these outer ones become aggregated with them, and
+increase the thickness of the germinal membrane, while the central cells
+liquefy. Again, one part of the germinal membrane presently becomes
+distinguishable as the germinal spot; and without asserting that the
+cause of this is to be found in the unlike relations which the
+respective parts of the germinal membrane bear to environing influences,
+it is clear that we have in these unlike relations an element of
+disturbance tending to destroy the original homogeneity of the germinal
+membrane. Further, the germinal membrane by and by divides into two
+layers, internal and external; the one in contact with the liquefied
+interior part or yelk, the other exposed to the surrounding fluids: this
+contrast of circumstances being in obvious correspondence with the
+contrast of structures which follows it. Once more, the subsequent
+appearance of the vascular layer between these mucous and serous layers,
+as they have been named, admits of a like interpretation. And in this
+and the various complications which now begin to show themselves, we may
+see coming into play that general law of the multiplication of effects
+flowing from one cause, to which the increase of heterogeneity was
+elsewhere ascribed.[9]
+
+Confining our remarks, as we do, to the most general facts of
+development, we think that some light is thus thrown on them. That the
+unstable equilibrium of a homogeneous germ must be destroyed by the
+unlike exposure of its several units to surrounding influences, is an _a
+priori_ conclusion. And it seems also to be an _a priori_ conclusion,
+that the several units thus differently acted upon, must either be
+decomposed, or must undergo such modifications of nature as may enable
+them to live in the respective circumstances they are thrown into: in
+other words--_they must either die or become adapted to their
+conditions_. Indeed, we might infer as much without going through the
+foregoing train of reasoning. The superficial organic units (be they the
+outer cells of a "mulberry-mass," or be they the outer molecules of an
+individual cell) must assume the function which their position
+necessitates; and assuming this function, must acquire such character as
+performance of it involves. The layer of organic units lying in contact
+with the yelk must be those through which the yelk is absorbed; and so
+must be adapted to the absorbent office. On this condition only does the
+process of organization appear possible. We might almost say that just
+as some race of animals, which multiplies and spreads into divers
+regions of the earth, becomes differentiated into several races through
+the adaptation of each to its conditions of life; so, the originally
+homogeneous population of cells arising in a fertilized germ-cell,
+becomes divided into several populations of cells that grow unlike in
+virtue of the unlikeness of their circumstances.
+
+Moreover, it is to be remarked in further proof of our position, that it
+finds its clearest and most abundant illustrations where the conditions
+of the case are the simplest and most general--where the phenomena are
+the least involved: we mean in the production of individual cells. The
+structures which presently arise round nuclei in a blastema, and which
+have in some way been determined by those nuclei as centres of
+influence, evidently conform to the law; for the parts of the blastema
+in contact with the nuclei are differently conditioned from the parts
+not in contact with them. Again, the formation of a membrane round each
+of the masses of granules into which the endochrome of an alga-cell
+breaks up, is an instance of analogous kind. And should the
+recently-asserted fact that cells may arise round vacuoles in a mass of
+organizable substance, be confirmed, another good example will be
+furnished; for such portions of substance as bound these vacant spaces
+are subject to influences unlike those to which other portions of the
+substance are subject. If then we can most clearly trace this law of
+modification in these primordial processes, as well as in those more
+complex but analogous ones exhibited in the early changes of an ovum, we
+have strong reason for thinking that the law is fundamental.
+
+But, as already more than once hinted, this principle, understood in the
+simple form here presented, supplies no key to the detailed phenomena of
+organic development. It fails entirely to explain generic and specific
+peculiarities; and leaves us equally in the dark respecting those more
+important distinctions by which families and orders are marked out. Why
+two ova, similarly exposed in the same pool, should become the one a
+fish, and the other a reptile, it cannot tell us. That from two
+different eggs placed under the same hen, should respectively come forth
+a duckling and a chicken, is a fact not to be accounted for on the
+hypothesis above developed. Here we are obliged to fall back upon the
+unexplained principle of hereditary transmission. The capacity possessed
+by an unorganized germ of unfolding into a complex adult which repeats
+ancestral traits in minute details, and that even when it has been
+placed in conditions unlike those of its ancestors, is a capacity
+impossible for us to understand. That a microscopic portion of seemingly
+structureless matter should embody an influence of such kind, that the
+resulting man will in fifty years after become gouty or insane, is a
+truth which would be incredible were it not daily illustrated. But
+though the _manner_ in which hereditary likeness, in all its
+complications, is conveyed, is a mystery passing comprehension, it is
+quite conceivable that it is conveyed in subordination to the law of
+adaptation above explained; and we are not without reasons for thinking
+that it is so. Various facts show that acquired peculiarities resulting
+from the adaptation of constitution to conditions, are transmissible to
+offspring. Such acquired peculiarities consist of differences of
+structure or composition in one or more of the tissues. That is to say,
+of the aggregate of similar organic units composing a germ, the group
+going to the formation of a particular tissue, will take on the special
+character which the adaptation of that tissue to new circumstances had
+produced in the parents. We know this to be a general law of organic
+modifications. Further, it is the _only_ law of organic modifications of
+which we have any evidence.[10] It is not impossible then that it is the
+universal law; comprehending not simply those minor modifications which
+offspring inherit from recent ancestry, but comprehending also those
+larger modifications distinctive of species, genus, order, class, which
+they inherit from antecedent races of organisms. And thus it _may be_
+that the law of adaptation is the sole law; presiding not only over the
+differentiation of any race of organisms into several races, but also
+over the differentiation of the race of organic units composing a germ,
+into the many races of organic units composing an adult. So understood,
+the process gone through by every unfolding organism will consist,
+partly in the direct adaptation of its elements to their several
+circumstances, and partly in the assumption of characters resulting from
+analogous adaptations of the elements of all ancestral organisms.
+
+But our argument does not commit us to any such far-reaching speculation
+as this; which we introduce simply as suggested by it, not involved. All
+we are here concerned to show, is, that the deductive method aids us in
+interpreting some of the more general phenomena of development. That all
+homogeneous aggregates are in unstable equilibrium is a universal truth,
+from which is deducible the instability of every organic germ. From the
+known sensitiveness of organic compounds to chemical, thermal, and other
+disturbing forces, we further infer the _unusual_ instability of every
+organic germ--a proneness far beyond that of other homogeneous
+aggregates to lapse into a heterogeneous state. By the same line of
+reasoning we are led to the additional inference, that the first
+divisions into which a germ resolves itself, being severally in a state
+of unstable equilibrium, are similarly prone to undergo further changes;
+and so on continuously. Moreover, we have found it to be equally an _a
+priori_ conclusion, that as, in all other cases, the loss of homogeneity
+is due to the different degrees and kinds of force brought to bear on
+the different parts; so, in this case too, difference of circumstances
+is the primary cause of differentiation. Add to which, that as the
+several changes undergone by the respective parts thus diversely acted
+upon, are changes which do not destroy their vital activity, they must
+be changes which bring that vital activity into subordination to the
+incident forces--they must be adaptations; and the like must be in some
+sense true of all the subsequent changes. Thus by deductive reasoning we
+get some insight into the method of organization. However unable we are,
+and probably ever shall be, to comprehend the way in which a germ is
+made to take on the special form of its race, we may yet comprehend the
+general principles which regulate its first modifications; and,
+remembering the unity of plan so conspicuous throughout nature, we may
+_suspect_ that these principles are in some way concerned in succeeding
+modifications.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A controversy now going on among zoologists, opens yet another field for
+the application of the deductive method. We believe that the question
+whether there does or does not exist a _necessary correlation_ among the
+several parts of an organism is determinable _a priori_.
+
+Cuvier, who first asserted this necessary correlation, professed to base
+his restorations of extinct animals upon it. Geoffroy St. Hilaire and
+De Blainville, from different points of view, contested Cuvier's
+hypothesis; and the discussion, which has much interest as bearing on
+paleontology, has been recently revived under a somewhat modified form:
+Professors Huxley and Owen being respectively the assailant and defender
+of the hypothesis.
+
+Cuvier says--"Comparative anatomy possesses a principle whose just
+development is sufficient to dissipate all difficulties; it is that of
+the correlation of forms in organized beings, by means of which every
+kind of organized being might, strictly speaking, be recognized by a
+fragment of any of its parts. Every organized being constitutes a whole,
+a single and complete system, whose parts mutually correspond and concur
+by their reciprocal reaction to the same definite end. None of these
+parts can be changed without affecting the others; and consequently each
+taken separately, indicates and gives all the rest." He then gives
+illustrations: arguing that the carnivorous form of tooth necessitating
+a certain action of the jaw, implies a particular form in its condyles;
+implies also limbs fit for seizing and holding prey; therefore implies
+claws, a certain structure of the leg-bones, a certain form of
+shoulder-blade. Summing up he says, that "the claw, the scapula, the
+condyle, the femur, and all the other bones, taken separately, will give
+the tooth or one another; and by commencing with any one, he who had a
+rational conception of the laws of the organic economy, could
+reconstruct the whole animal."
+
+It will be seen that the method of restoration here contended for, is
+based on the alleged physiological necessity of the connexion between
+these several peculiarities. The argument used is, not that a scapula of
+a certain shape may be recognized as having belonged to a carnivorous
+mammal because we always find that carnivorous mammals _do_ possess such
+scapulas; but the argument is that they _must_ possess them, because
+carnivorous habits would be impossible without them. And in the above
+quotation Cuvier asserts that the necessary correlation which he
+considers so obvious in these cases, exists throughout the system:
+admitting, however, that in consequence of our limited knowledge of
+physiology we are unable in many cases to trace this necessary
+correlation, and are obliged to base our conclusions upon observed
+coexistences, of which we do not understand the reason, but which we
+find invariable.
+
+Now Professor Huxley has recently shown that, in the first place, this
+empirical method, which Cuvier introduces as quite subordinate, and to
+be used only in aid of the rational method, is really the method which
+Cuvier habitually employed--the so-called rational method remaining
+practically a dead letter; and, in the second place, he has shown that
+Cuvier himself has in several places so far admitted the inapplicability
+of the rational method, as virtually to surrender it as a method. But
+more than this, Professor Huxley contends that the alleged necessary
+correlation is not true. Quite admitting the physiological dependence of
+parts on each other, he denies that it is a dependence of a kind which
+could not be otherwise. "Thus the teeth of a lion and the stomach of
+the animal are in such relation that the one is fitted to digest the
+food which the other can tear, they are physiologically correlated; but
+we have no reason for affirming this to be a necessary physiological
+correlation, in the sense that no other could equally fit its possessor
+for living on recent flesh. The number and form of the teeth might have
+been quite different from that which we know them to be, and the
+construction of the stomach might have been greatly altered; and yet the
+functions of these organs might have been equally well performed."
+
+Thus much is needful to give an idea of the controversy. It is not here
+our purpose to go more at length into the evidence cited on either side.
+We simply wish to show that the question may be settled deductively.
+Before going on to do this, however, let us briefly notice two
+collateral points.
+
+In his defence of the Cuvierian doctrine, Professor Owen avails himself
+of the _odium theologicum_. He attributes to his opponents "the
+insinuation and masked advocacy of the doctrine subversive of a
+recognition of the Higher Mind." Now, saying nothing about the
+questionable propriety of thus prejudging an issue in science, we think
+this is an unfortunate accusation. What is there in the hypothesis of
+_necessary_, as distinguished from _actual_, correlation of parts, which
+is particularly in harmony with Theism? Maintenance of the _necessity_,
+whether of sequences or of coexistences, is commonly thought rather a
+derogation from divine power than otherwise. Cuvier says--"None of these
+parts can be changed without affecting the others; and consequently,
+each taken separately, indicates and gives all the rest." That is to
+say, in the nature of things the correlation _could not_ have been
+otherwise. On the other hand, Professor Huxley says we have no warrant
+for asserting that the correlation _could not_ have been otherwise; but
+have not a little reason for thinking that the same physiological ends
+might have been differently achieved. The one doctrine limits the
+possibilities of creation; the other denies the implied limit. Which,
+then, is most open to the charge of covert Atheism?
+
+On the other point we lean to the opinion of Professor Owen. We agree
+with him in thinking that where a rational correlation (in the highest
+sense of the term) can be made out, it affords a better basis for
+deduction than an empirical correlation ascertained only by accumulated
+observations. Premising that by rational correlation is not meant one in
+which we can trace, or think we can trace, a design, but one of which
+the negation is inconceivable (and this is the species of correlation
+which Cuvier's principle implies); then we hold that our knowledge of
+the correlation is of a more certain kind than where it is simply
+inductive. We think that Professor Huxley, in his anxiety to avoid the
+error of making Thought the measure of Things, does not sufficiently
+bear in mind the fact, that as our notion of necessity is determined by
+some absolute uniformity pervading all orders of our experiences, it
+follows that an organic correlation which cannot be conceived otherwise,
+is guaranteed by a much wider induction than one ascertained only by the
+observation of organisms. But the truth is, that there are relatively
+few organic correlations of which the negation is inconceivable. If we
+find the skull, vertebræ, ribs, and phalanges of some quadruped as large
+as an elephant; we may indeed be certain that the legs of this quadruped
+were of considerable size--much larger than those of a rat; and our
+reason for conceiving this correlation as necessary, is, that it is
+based, not only upon our experiences of moving organisms, but upon all
+our mechanical experiences relative to masses and their supports. But
+even were there many physiological correlations really of this order,
+which there are not, there would be danger in pursuing this line of
+reasoning, in consequence of the liability to include within the class
+of truly necessary correlations, those which are not such. For instance,
+there would seem to be a necessary correlation between the eye and the
+surface of the body: light being needful for vision, it might be
+supposed that every eye must be external. Nevertheless it is a fact that
+there are creatures, as the _Cirrhipedia_, having eyes (not very
+efficient ones, it may be) deeply imbedded within the body. Again, a
+necessary correlation might be assumed between the dimensions of the
+mammalian uterus and those of the pelvis. It would appear impossible
+that in any species there should exist a well-developed uterus
+containing a full-sized foetus, and yet that the arch of the pelvis
+should be too small to allow the foetus to pass. And were the only
+mammal having a very small pelvic arch, a fossil one, it would have been
+inferred, on the Cuvierian method, that the foetus must have been born
+in a rudimentary state; and that the uterus must have been
+proportionally small. But there happens to be an extant mammal having an
+undeveloped pelvis--the mole--which presents us with a fact that saves
+us from this erroneous inference. The young of the mole are not born
+through the pelvic arch at all; but in front of it! Thus, granting that
+some quite _direct_ physiological correlations may be necessary, we see
+that there is great risk of including among them some which are not.
+
+With regard to the great mass of the correlations, however, including
+all the _indirect_ ones, Professor Huxley seems to us warranted in
+denying that they are necessary; and we now propose to show deductively
+the truth of his thesis. Let us begin with an analogy.
+
+Whoever has been through an extensive iron-works, has seen a gigantic
+pair of shears worked by machinery, and used for cutting in two, bars of
+iron that are from time to time thrust between its blades. Supposing
+these blades to be the only visible parts of the apparatus, anyone
+observing their movements (or rather the movement of one, for the other
+is commonly fixed), will see from the manner in which the angle
+increases and decreases, and from the curve described by the moving
+extremity, that there must be some centre of motion--either a pivot or
+an external box equivalent to it. This may be regarded as a necessary
+correlation. Moreover, he might infer that beyond the centre of motion
+the moving blade was produced into a lever, to which the power was
+applied; but as another arrangement is just possible, this could not be
+called anything more than a highly probable correlation. If now he went
+a step further, and asked how the reciprocal movement was given to the
+lever, he would perhaps conclude that it was given by a crank. But if he
+knew anything of mechanics, he would know that it might possibly be
+given by an eccentric. Or again, he would know that the effect could be
+achieved by a cam. That is to say, he would see that there was no
+necessary correlation between the shears and the remoter parts of the
+apparatus. Take another case. The plate of a printing-press is required
+to move up and down to the extent of an inch or so; and it must exert
+its greatest pressure when it reaches the extreme of its downward
+movement. If now anyone will look over the stock of a printing-press
+maker, he will see half a dozen different mechanical arrangements by
+which these ends are achieved; and a machinist would tell him that as
+many more might readily be invented. If, then, there is no necessary
+correlation between the special parts of a machine, still less is there
+between those of an organism.
+
+From a converse point of view the same truth is manifest. Bearing in
+mind the above analogy, it will be foreseen that an alteration in one
+part of an organism will not necessarily entail _some one specific set
+of alterations in the other parts_. Cuvier says, "None of these parts
+can be changed without affecting the others; and consequently, each
+taken separately, indicates and gives all the rest." The first of these
+propositions may pass, but the second, which it is alleged follows from
+it, is not true; for it implies that "all the rest" can be severally
+affected in only one way and degree, whereas they can be affected in
+many ways and degrees. To show this, we must again have recourse to a
+mechanical analogy.
+
+If you set a brick on end and thrust it over, you can predict with
+certainty in what direction it will fall, and what attitude it will
+assume. If, again setting it up, you put another on the top of it, you
+can no longer foresee with accuracy the results of an overthrow; and on
+repeating the experiment, no matter how much care is taken to place the
+bricks in the same positions, and to apply the same degree of force in
+the same direction, the effects will on no two occasions be exactly
+alike. And in proportion as the aggregation is complicated by the
+addition of new and unlike parts, will the results of any disturbance
+become more varied and incalculable. The like truth is curiously
+illustrated by locomotive engines. It is a fact familiar to mechanical
+engineers and engine-drivers, that out of a number of engines built as
+accurately as possible to the same pattern, no two will act in just the
+same manner. Each will have its peculiarities. The play of actions and
+reactions will so far differ, that under like conditions each will
+behave in a somewhat different way; and every driver has to learn the
+idiosyncrasies of his own engine before he can work it to the greatest
+advantage. In organisms themselves this indefiniteness of mechanical
+reaction is clearly traceable. Two boys throwing stones will always
+differ more or less in their attitudes, as will two billiard-players.
+The familiar fact that each individual has a characteristic gait,
+illustrates the point still better. The rhythmical motion of the leg is
+simple, and on the Cuvierian hypothesis, should react on the body in
+some uniform way. But in consequence of those slight differences of
+structure which consist with identity of species, no two individuals
+make exactly similar movements either of the trunk or the arms. There
+is always a peculiarity recognizable by their friends.
+
+When we pass to disturbing forces of a non-mechanical kind, the same
+truth becomes still more conspicuous. Expose several persons to a
+drenching storm; and while one will subsequently feel no appreciable
+inconvenience, another will have a cough, another a catarrh, another an
+attack of diarrhoea, another a fit of rheumatism. Vaccinate several
+children of the same age with the same quantity of virus, applied to the
+same part, and the symptoms will not be quite alike in any of them,
+either in kind or intensity; and in some cases the differences will be
+extreme. The quantity of alcohol which will send one man to sleep, will
+render another unusually brilliant--will make this maudlin, and that
+irritable. Opium will produce either drowsiness or wakefulness: so will
+tobacco.
+
+Now in all these cases--mechanical and other--some force is brought to
+bear primarily on one part of an organism, and secondarily on the rest;
+and, according to the doctrine of Cuvier, the rest ought to be affected
+in a specific way. We find this to be by no means the case. The original
+change produced in one part does not stand in any necessary correlation
+with every one of the changes produced in the other parts; nor do these
+stand in any necessary correlation with one another. The functional
+alteration which the disturbing force causes in the organ directly acted
+upon, does not involve some _particular set_ of functional alterations
+in the other organs; but will be followed by some one out of various
+sets. And it is a manifest corollary, that any _structural alteration_
+which may eventually be produced in the one organ, will not be
+accompanied by _some particular set of structural alterations_ in the
+other organs. There will be no necessary correlation of forms.
+
+Thus Paleontology must depend upon the empirical method. A fossil
+species that was obliged to change its food or habits of life, did not
+of necessity undergo the particular set of modifications exhibited; but,
+under some slight change of predisposing causes--as of season or
+latitude--might have undergone some other set of modifications: the
+determining circumstance being one which, in the human sense, we call
+fortuitous.
+
+May we not say then, that the deductive method elucidates this vexed
+question in physiology; while at the same time our argument collaterally
+exhibits the limits within which the deductive method is applicable. For
+while we see that this extremely _general_ question may be
+satisfactorily dealt with deductively; the conclusion arrived at itself
+implies that the more _special_ phenomena of organization cannot be so
+dealt with.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is yet another method of investigating the general truths of
+physiology--a method to which physiology already owes one luminous idea,
+but which is not at present formally recognized as a method. We refer to
+the comparison of physiological phenomena with social phenomena.
+
+The analogy between individual organisms and the social organism, is one
+that has from early days occasionally forced itself on the attention of
+the observant. And though modern science does not countenance those
+crude ideas of this analogy which have been from time to time expressed
+since the Greeks flourished; yet it tends to show that there _is_ an
+analogy, and a remarkable one. While it is becoming clear that there are
+not those special parallelisms between the constituent parts of a man
+and those of a nation, which have been thought to exist; it is also
+becoming clear that the general principles of development and structure
+displayed in organized bodies are displayed in societies also. The
+fundamental characteristic both of societies and of living creatures,
+is, that they consist of mutually-dependent parts; and it would seem
+that this involves a community of various other characteristics. Those
+who are acquainted with the broad facts of both physiology and
+sociology, are beginning to recognize this correspondence not as a
+plausible fancy, but as a scientific truth. And we are strongly of
+opinion that it will by and by be seen to hold to an extent which few at
+present suspect.
+
+Meanwhile, if any such correspondence exists, it is clear that
+physiology and sociology will more or less interpret each other. Each
+affords its special facilities for inquiry. Relations of cause and
+effect clearly traceable in the social organism, may lead to the search
+for analogous ones in the individual organism; and may so elucidate what
+might else be inexplicable. Laws of growth and function disclosed by the
+pure physiologist, may occasionally give us the clue to certain social
+modifications otherwise difficult to understand. If they can do no more,
+the two sciences can at least exchange suggestions and confirmations;
+and this will be no small aid. The conception of "the physiological
+division of labour," which political economy has already supplied to
+physiology, is one of no small value. And probably it has others to
+give.
+
+In support of this opinion, we will now cite cases in which such aid is
+furnished. And in the first place, let us see whether the facts of
+social organization do not afford additional support to some of the
+doctrines set forth in the foregoing parts of this article.
+
+One of the propositions supported by evidence was that in animals the
+process of development is carried on, not by differentiations only, but
+by subordinate integrations. Now in the social organism we may see the
+same duality of process; and further, it is to be observed that the
+integrations are of the same three kinds. Thus we have integrations
+which arise from the simple growth of adjacent parts that perform like
+functions: as, for instance, the coalescence of Manchester with its
+calico-weaving suburbs. We have other integrations which arise when, out
+of several places producing a particular commodity, one monopolizes
+more and more of the business, and leaves the rest to dwindle: witness
+the growth of the Yorkshire cloth-districts at the expense of those in
+the west of England; or the absorption by Staffordshire of the
+pottery-manufacture, and the consequent decay of the establishments that
+once flourished at Worcester, Derby, and elsewhere. And we have those
+yet other integrations which result from the actual approximation of the
+similarly-occupied parts: whence result such facts as the concentration
+of publishers in Paternoster Row, of lawyers in the Temple and
+neighbourhood, of corn-merchants about Mark Lane, of civil engineers in
+Great George Street, of bankers in the centre of the city. Finding thus
+that in the evolution of the social organism, as in the evolution of
+individual organisms, there are integrations as well as
+differentiations, and moreover that these integrations are of the same
+three orders; we have additional reason for considering these
+integrations as essential parts of the developmental process, needed to
+be included in its formula. And further, the circumstance that in the
+social organism these integrations are determined by community of
+function, confirms the hypothesis that they are thus determined in the
+individual organism.
+
+Again, we endeavoured to show deductively, that the contrasts of parts
+first seen in all unfolding embryos, are consequent upon the contrasted
+circumstances to which such parts are exposed; that thus, adaptation of
+constitution to conditions is the principle which determines their
+primary changes; and that, possibly, if we include under the formula
+hereditarily-transmitted adaptations, all subsequent differentiations
+may be similarly determined. Well, we need not long contemplate the
+facts to see that some of the predominant social differentiations are
+brought about in an analogous way. As the members of an
+originally-homogeneous community multiply and spread, the gradual
+separation into sections which simultaneously takes place, manifestly
+depends on differences of local circumstances. Those who happen to
+live near some place chosen, perhaps for its centrality, as one of
+periodical assemblage, become traders, and a town springs up; those who
+live dispersed, continue to hunt or cultivate the earth; those who
+spread to the sea-shore fall into maritime occupations. And each of
+these classes undergoes modifications of character fitting to its
+function. Later in the process of social evolution these local
+adaptations are greatly multiplied. In virtue of differences of soil and
+climate, the rural inhabitants in different parts of the kingdom, have
+their occupations partially specialized; and are respectively
+distinguished as chiefly producing cattle, or sheep, or wheat, or oats,
+or hops, or cider. People living where coal-fields are discovered become
+colliers; Cornishmen take to mining because Cornwall is metalliferous;
+and the iron-manufacture is the dominant industry where ironstone is
+plentiful. Liverpool has assumed the office of importing cotton, in
+consequence of its proximity to the district where cotton goods are
+made; and for analogous reasons Hull has become the chief port at which
+foreign wools are brought in. Even in the establishment of breweries, of
+dye-works, of slate-quarries, of brick-yards, we may see the same truth.
+So that, both in general and in detail, these industrial specializations
+of the social organism which characterize separate districts, primarily
+depend on local circumstances. Of the originally-similar units making up
+the social mass, different groups assume the different functions which
+their respective positions entail; and become adapted to their
+conditions. Thus, that which we concluded, _a priori_, to be the leading
+cause of organic differentiations, we find, _a posteriori_, to be the
+leading cause of social differentiations. Nay further, as we inferred
+that possibly the embryonic changes which are not thus directly caused,
+are caused by hereditarily-transmitted adaptations; so, we may actually
+see that in embryonic societies, such changes as are not due to direct
+adaptations, are in the main traceable to adaptations originally
+undergone by the parent society. The colonies founded by distinct
+nations, while they are alike in exhibiting specializations caused in
+the way above described, grow unlike in so far as they take on, more or
+less, the organizations of the nations they sprung from. A French
+settlement does not develop exactly after the same manner as an English
+one; and both assume forms different from those which Roman settlements
+assumed. Now the fact that the differentiation of societies is
+determined partly by the direct adaptation of their units to local
+conditions, and partly by the transmitted influence of like adaptations
+undergone by ancestral societies, tends strongly to enforce the
+conclusion, otherwise reached, that the differentiation of individual
+organisms, similarly results from immediate adaptations compounded with
+ancestral adaptations.
+
+From confirmations thus furnished by sociology to physiology, let us now
+pass to a suggestion similarly furnished. A factory, or other producing
+establishment, or a town made up of such establishments, is an agency
+for elaborating some commodity consumed by society at large; and may be
+regarded as analogous to a gland or viscus in an individual organism. If
+we inquire what is the primitive mode in which one of these producing
+establishments grows up, we find it to be this. A single worker, who
+himself sells the produce of his labour, is the germ. His business
+increasing, he employs helpers--his sons or others; and having done
+this, he becomes a vendor not only of his own handiwork, but of that of
+others. A further increase of his business compels him to multiply his
+assistants, and his sale grows so rapid that he is obliged to confine
+himself to the process of selling: he ceases to be a producer, and
+becomes simply a channel through which the produce of others is conveyed
+to the public. Should his prosperity rise yet higher, he finds that he
+is unable to manage even the sale of his commodities, and has to employ
+others, probably of his own family, to aid him in selling; so that, to
+him as a main channel are now added subordinate channels. Moreover, when
+there grow up in one place, as a Manchester or a Birmingham, many
+establishments of like kind, this process is carried still further.
+There arise factors and buyers, who are the channels through which is
+transmitted the produce of many factories; and we believe that primarily
+these factors were manufacturers who undertook to dispose of the produce
+of smaller houses as well as their own, and ultimately became salesmen
+only. Under a converse aspect, all the stages of this development have
+been within these few years exemplified in our railway contractors.
+There are sundry men now living who illustrate the whole process in
+their own persons--men who were originally navvies, digging and
+wheeling; who then undertook some small sub-contract, and worked along
+with those they paid; who presently took larger contracts, and employed
+foremen; and who now contract for whole railways, and let portions to
+sub-contractors. That is to say, we have men who were originally
+workers, but have finally become the main channels out of which diverge
+secondary channels, which again bifurcate into the subordinate channels,
+through which flows the money (representing the nutriment) supplied by
+society to the actual makers of the railway. Now it seems worth
+inquiring whether this is not the original course followed in the
+evolution of secreting and excreting organs in an animal. We know that
+such is the process by which the liver is developed. Out of the group of
+bile-cells forming the germ of it, some centrally-placed ones, lying
+next to the intestine, are transformed into ducts through which the
+secretion of the peripheral bile-cells is poured into the intestine; and
+as the peripheral bile-cells multiply, there similarly arise secondary
+ducts emptying themselves into the main ones; tertiary ones into these;
+and so on. Recent inquiries show that the like is the case with the
+lungs,--that the bronchial tubes are thus formed. But while analogy
+suggests that this is the _original_ mode in which such organs are
+developed, it at the same time suggests that this does not necessarily
+continue to be the mode. For as we find that in the social organism,
+manufacturing establishments are no longer commonly developed through
+the series of modifications above described, but now mostly arise by the
+direct transformation of a number of persons into master, clerks,
+foremen, workers, &c.; so the approximate method of forming organs, may
+in some cases be replaced by a direct metamorphosis of the organic units
+into the destined structure, without any transitional structures being
+passed through. That there are organs thus formed is an ascertained
+fact; and the additional question which analogy suggests is, whether the
+direct method is substituted for the indirect method.
+
+Such parallelisms might be multiplied. And were it possible here to show
+in detail the close correspondence between the two kinds of
+organization, our case would be seen to have abundant support. But, as
+it is, these few illustrations will sufficiently justify the opinion
+that study of organized bodies may be indirectly furthered by study of
+the body politic. Hints may be expected, if nothing more. And thus we
+venture to think that the Inductive Method, usually alone employed by
+most physiologists, may not only derive important assistance from the
+Deductive Method, but may further be supplemented by the Sociological
+Method.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 6: Carpenter's _Principles of Comparative Physiology_, pp.
+616-17.]
+
+[Footnote 7: With the exception, perhaps, of the Myxinoid fishes, in
+which what is considered as the nasal orifice is single, and on the
+median line. But seeing how unusual is the position of this orifice, it
+seems questionable whether it is the true homologue of the nostrils.]
+
+[Footnote 8: In the _Westminster Review_ for April, 1857; and now
+reprinted in this volume.]
+
+[Footnote 9: See Essay on "Progress: its Law and Cause."]
+
+[Footnote 10: This was written before the publication of the _Origin of
+Species_. I leave it standing because it shows the stage of thought then
+arrived at.]
+
+
+
+
+THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Westminster Review _for July,_ 1858. _In
+    explanation of sundry passages, it seems needful to state that this
+    essay was written in defence of the Nebular Hypothesis at a time
+    when it had fallen into disrepute. Hence there are some opinions
+    spoken of as current which are no longer current._]
+
+
+Inquiring into the pedigree of an idea is not a bad means of roughly
+estimating its value. To have come of respectable ancestry, is _prima
+facie_ evidence of worth in a belief as in a person; while to be
+descended from a discreditable stock is, in the one case as in the
+other, an unfavourable index. The analogy is not a mere fancy. Beliefs,
+together with those who hold them, are modified little by little in
+successive generations; and as the modifications which successive
+generations of the holders undergo do not destroy the original type, but
+only disguise and refine it, so the accompanying alterations of belief,
+however much they purify, leave behind the essence of the original
+belief.
+
+Considered genealogically, the received theory respecting the creation
+of the Solar System is unmistakably of low origin. You may clearly trace
+it back to primitive mythologies. Its remotest ancestor is the doctrine
+that the celestial bodies are personages who originally lived on the
+Earth--a doctrine still held by some of the negroes Livingstone visited.
+Science having divested the sun and planets of their divine
+personalities, this old idea was succeeded by the idea which even Kepler
+entertained, that the planets are guided in their courses by presiding
+spirits: no longer themselves gods, they are still severally kept in
+their orbits by gods. And when gravitation came to dispense with these
+celestial steersmen, there was begotten a belief, less gross than its
+parent, but partaking of the same essential nature, that the planets
+were originally launched into their orbits by the Creator's hand.
+Evidently, though much refined, the anthropomorphism of the current
+hypothesis is inherited from the aboriginal anthropomorphism, which
+described gods as a stronger order of men.
+
+There is an antagonist hypothesis which does not propose to honour the
+Unknown Power manifested in the Universe, by such titles as "The
+Master-Builder," or "The Great Artificer;" but which regards this
+Unknown Power as probably working after a method quite different from
+that of human mechanics. And the genealogy of this hypothesis is as high
+as that of the other is low. It is begotten by that ever-enlarging and
+ever-strengthening belief in the presence of Law, which accumulated
+experiences have gradually produced in the human mind. From generation
+to generation Science has been proving uniformities of relation among
+phenomena which were before thought either fortuitous or supernatural in
+their origin--has been showing an established order and a constant
+causation where ignorance had assumed irregularity and arbitrariness.
+Each further discovery of Law has increased the presumption that Law is
+everywhere conformed to. And hence, among other beliefs, has arisen the
+belief that the Solar System originated, not by _manufacture_ but by
+_evolution_. Besides its abstract parentage in those grand general
+conceptions which Science has generated, this hypothesis has a concrete
+parentage of the highest character. Based as it is on the law of
+universal gravitation, it may claim for its remote progenitor the great
+thinker who established that law. It was first suggested by one who
+ranks high among philosophers. The man who collected evidence indicating
+that stars result from the aggregation of diffused matter, was the most
+diligent, careful, and original astronomical observer of modern times.
+And the world has not seen a more learned mathematician than the man
+who, setting out with this conception of diffused matter concentrating
+towards its centre of gravity, pointed out the way in which there would
+arise, in the course of its concentration, a balanced group of sun,
+planets, and satellites, like that of which the Earth is a member.
+
+Thus, even were there but little direct evidence assignable for the
+Nebular Hypothesis, the probability of its truth would be strong. Its
+own high derivation and the low derivation of the antagonist hypothesis,
+would together form a weighty reason for accepting it--at any rate,
+provisionally. But the direct evidence assignable for the Nebular
+Hypothesis is by no means little. It is far greater in quantity, and
+more varied in kind, than is commonly supposed. Much has been said here
+and there on this or that class of evidences; but nowhere, so far as we
+know, have all the evidences been fully stated. We propose here to do
+something towards supplying the deficiency: believing that, joined with
+the _a priori_ reasons given above, the array of _a posteriori_ reasons
+will leave little doubt in the mind of any candid inquirer.
+
+And first, let us address ourselves to those recent discoveries in
+stellar astronomy which have been supposed to conflict with this
+celebrated speculation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Sir William Herschel, directing his great reflector to various
+nebulous spots, found them resolvable into clusters of stars, he
+inferred, and for a time maintained, that all nebulous spots are
+clusters of stars exceedingly remote from us. But after years of
+conscientious investigation, he concluded that "there were nebulosities
+which are not of a starry nature;" and on this conclusion was based his
+hypothesis of a diffused luminous fluid which, by its eventual
+aggregation, produced stars. A telescopic power much exceeding that used
+by Herschel, has enabled Lord Rosse to resolve some of the nebulæ
+previously unresolved; and, returning to the conclusion which Herschel
+first formed on similar grounds but afterwards rejected, many
+astronomers have assumed that, under sufficiently high powers, every
+nebula would be decomposed into stars--that the irresolvability is due
+solely to distance. The hypothesis now commonly entertained is, that all
+nebulæ are galaxies more or less like in nature to that immediately
+surrounding us; but that they are so inconceivably remote as to look,
+through ordinary telescopes, like small faint spots. And not a few have
+drawn the corollary, that by the discoveries of Lord Rosse the Nebular
+Hypothesis has been disproved.
+
+Now, even supposing that these inferences respecting the distances and
+natures of the nebulæ are valid, they leave the Nebular Hypothesis
+substantially as it was. Admitting that each of these faint spots is a
+sidereal system, so far removed that its countless stars give less light
+than one small star of our own sidereal system; the admission is in no
+way inconsistent with the belief that stars, and their attendant
+planets, have been formed by the aggregation of nebulous matter. Though,
+doubtless, if the existence of nebulous matter now in course of
+concentration be disproved, one of the evidences of the Nebular
+Hypothesis is destroyed, yet the remaining evidences remain. It is a
+tenable position that though nebular condensation is now nowhere to be
+seen in progress, yet it was once going on universally. And, indeed, it
+might be argued that the still-continued existence of diffused nebulous
+matter is scarcely to be expected; seeing that the causes which have
+resulted in the aggregation of one mass, must have been acting on all
+masses, and that hence the existence of masses not aggregated would be a
+fact calling for explanation. Thus, granting the immediate conclusions
+suggested by these recent disclosures of the six-feet reflector, the
+corollary which many have drawn is inadmissible.
+
+But these conclusions may be successfully contested. Receiving them
+though we have been, for years past, as established truths, a critical
+examination of the facts has convinced us that they are quite
+unwarrantable. They involve so many manifest incongruities, that we have
+been astonished to find men of science entertaining them, even as
+probable. Let us consider these incongruities.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the first place, mark what is inferable from the distribution of
+nebulæ.
+
+     "The spaces which precede or which follow simple nebulæ," says
+     Arago, "and _a fortiori_, groups of nebulæ, contain generally few
+     stars. Herschel found this rule to be invariable. Thus every time
+     that during a short interval no star approached in virtue of the
+     diurnal motion, to place itself in the field of his motionless
+     telescope, he was accustomed to say to the secretary who assisted
+     him,--'Prepare to write; nebulæ are about to arrive.'"
+
+How does this fact consist with the hypothesis that nebulæ are remote
+galaxies? If there were but one nebula, it would be a curious
+coincidence were this one nebula so placed in the distant regions of
+space, as to agree in direction with a starless spot in our own sidereal
+system. If there were but two nebulæ, and both were so placed, the
+coincidence would be excessively strange. What, then, shall we say on
+finding that there are thousands of nebulæ so placed? Shall we believe
+that in thousands of cases these far-removed galaxies happen to agree in
+their visible positions with the thin places in our own galaxy? Such a
+belief is impossible.
+
+Still more manifest does the impossibility of it become when we consider
+the general distribution of nebulæ. Besides again showing itself in the
+fact that "the poorest regions in stars are near the richest in nebulæ,"
+the law above specified applies to the heavens as a whole. In that zone
+of celestial space where stars are excessively abundant, nebulæ are
+rare; while in the two opposite celestial spaces that are furthest
+removed from this zone, nebulæ are abundant. Scarcely any nebulæ lie
+near the galactic circle (or plane of the Milky Way); and the great
+mass of them lie round the galactic poles. Can this also be mere
+coincidence? When to the fact that the general mass of nebulæ are
+antithetical in position to the general mass of stars, we add the fact
+that local regions of nebulæ are regions where stars are scarce, and the
+further fact that single nebulæ are habitually found in comparatively
+starless spots; does not the proof of a physical connexion become
+overwhelming? Should it not require an infinity of evidence to show that
+nebulæ are not parts of our sidereal system? Let us see whether any such
+infinity of evidence is assignable. Let us see whether there is even a
+single alleged proof which will bear examination.
+
+     "As seen through colossal telescopes," says Humboldt, "the
+     contemplation of these nebulous masses leads us into regions from
+     whence a ray of light, according to an assumption not wholly
+     improbable, requires millions of years to reach our earth--to
+     distances for whose measurement the dimensions (the distance of
+     Sirius, or the calculated distances of the binary stars in Cygnus
+     and the Centaur) of our nearest stratum of fixed stars scarcely
+     suffice."
+
+In this confused sentence there is implied a belief, that the distances
+of the nebulæ from our galaxy of stars as much transcend the distances
+of our stars from one another, as these interstellar distances transcend
+the dimensions of our planetary system. Just as the diameter of the
+Earth's orbit, is a mere point when compared with the distance of our
+Sun from Sirius; so is the distance of our Sun from Sirius, a mere point
+when compared with the distance of our galaxy from those far-removed
+galaxies constituting nebulæ. Observe the consequences of this
+assumption.
+
+If one of these supposed galaxies is so remote that its distance dwarfs
+our interstellar spaces into points, and therefore makes the dimensions
+of our whole sidereal system relatively insignificant; does it not
+inevitably follow that the telescopic power required to resolve this
+remote galaxy into stars, must be incomparably greater than the
+telescopic power required to resolve the whole of our own galaxy into
+stars? Is it not certain that an instrument which can just exhibit with
+clearness the most distant stars of our own cluster, must be utterly
+unable to separate one of these remote clusters into stars? What, then,
+are we to think when we find that the same instrument which decomposes
+hosts of nebulæ into stars, _fails_ to resolve completely our own Milky
+Way? Take a homely comparison. Suppose a man who was surrounded by a
+swarm of bees, extending, as they sometimes do, so high in the air as to
+render some of the individual bees almost invisible, were to declare
+that a certain spot on the horizon was a swarm of bees; and that he knew
+it because he could see the bees as separate specks. Incredible as the
+assertion would be, it would not exceed in incredibility this which we
+are criticising. Reduce the dimensions to figures, and the absurdity
+becomes still more palpable. In round numbers, the distance of Sirius
+from the Earth is half a million times the distance of the Earth from
+the Sun; and, according to the hypothesis, the distance of a nebula is
+something like half a million times the distance of Sirius. Now, our own
+"starry island, or nebula," as Humboldt calls it, "forms a lens-shaped,
+flattened, and everywhere detached stratum, whose major axis is
+estimated at seven or eight hundred, and its minor axis at a hundred and
+fifty times the distance of Sirius from the Earth."[11] And since it is
+concluded that the Solar System is near the centre of this aggregation,
+it follows that our distance from the remotest parts of it is some four
+hundred distances of Sirius. But the stars forming these remotest parts
+are not individually visible, even through telescopes of the highest
+power. How, then, can such telescopes make individually visible the
+stars of a nebula which is half a million times the distance of Sirius?
+The implication is, that a star rendered invisible by distance becomes
+visible if taken twelve hundred times further off! Shall we accept this
+implication? or shall we not rather conclude that the nebulæ are _not_
+remote galaxies? Shall we not infer that, be their nature what it may,
+they must be at least as near to us as the extremities of our own
+sidereal system?
+
+Throughout the above argument, it is tacitly assumed that differences of
+apparent magnitude among the stars, result mainly from differences of
+distance. On this assumption the current doctrines respecting the nebulæ
+are founded; and this assumption is, for the nonce, admitted in each of
+the foregoing criticisms. From the time, however, when it was first made
+by Sir W. Herschel, this assumption has been purely gratuitous; and it
+now proves to be inadmissible. But, awkwardly enough, its truth and its
+untruth are alike fatal to the conclusions of those who argue after the
+manner of Humboldt. Note the alternatives.
+
+On the one hand, what follows from the untruth of the assumption? If
+apparent largeness of stars is not due to comparative nearness, and
+their successively smaller sizes to their greater and greater degrees of
+remoteness, what becomes of the inferences respecting the dimensions of
+our sidereal system and the distances of nebulæ? If, as has lately been
+shown, the almost invisible star 61 Cygni has a greater parallax than
+[Greek: a] Cygni, though, according to an estimate based on Sir W.
+Herschel's assumption, it should be about twelve times more distant--if,
+as it turns out, there exist telescopic stars which are nearer to us
+than Sirius; of what worth is the conclusion that the nebulæ are very
+remote, because their component luminous masses are made visible only by
+high telescopic powers? Clearly, if the most brilliant star in the
+heavens and a star that cannot be seen by the naked eye, prove to be
+equidistant, relative distances cannot be in the least inferred from
+relative visibilities. And if so, nebulæ may be comparatively near,
+though the starlets of which they are made up appear extremely minute.
+
+On the other hand, what follows if the truth of the assumption be
+granted? The arguments used to justify this assumption in the case of
+the stars, equally justify it in the case of the nebulæ. It cannot be
+contended that, on the average, the _apparent_ sizes of the stars
+indicate their distances, without its being admitted that, on the
+average, the _apparent_ sizes of the nebulæ indicate their
+distances--that, generally speaking, the larger are the nearer and the
+smaller are the more distant. Mark, now, the necessary inference
+respecting their resolvability. The largest or nearest nebulæ will be
+most easily resolved into stars; the successively smaller will be
+successively more difficult of resolution; and the irresolvable ones
+will be the smallest ones. This, however, is exactly the reverse of the
+fact. The largest nebulæ are either wholly irresolvable, or but
+partially resolvable under the highest telescopic powers; while large
+numbers of quite small nebulæ are easily resolved by far less powerful
+telescopes. An instrument through which the great nebula in Andromeda,
+two and a half degrees long and one degree broad, appears merely as a
+diffused light, decomposes a nebula of fifteen minutes diameter into
+twenty thousand starry points. At the same time that the individual
+stars of a nebula eight minutes in diameter are so clearly seen as to
+allow of their number being estimated, a nebula covering an area five
+hundred times as great shows no stars at all! What possible explanation
+of this can be given on the current hypothesis?
+
+Yet a further difficulty remains--one which is, perhaps, still more
+obviously fatal than the foregoing. This difficulty is presented by the
+phenomena of the Magellanic clouds. Describing the larger of these, Sir
+John Herschel says:--
+
+     "The Nubecula Major, like the Minor, consists partly of large
+     tracts and ill-defined patches of irresolvable nebula, and of
+     nebulosity in every stage of resolution, up to perfectly resolved
+     stars like the Milky Way, as also of regular and irregular nebulæ
+     properly so called, of globular clusters in every stage of
+     resolvability, and of clustering groups sufficiently insulated and
+     condensed to come under the designation of 'clusters of
+     stars.'"--_Cape Observations_, p. 146.
+
+In his _Outlines of Astronomy_, Sir John Herschel, after repeating this
+description in other words, goes on to remark that--
+
+     "This combination of characters, rightly considered, is in a high
+     degree instructive, affording an insight into the probable
+     comparative distance of _stars_ and _nebulæ_, and the real
+     brightness of individual stars as compared with one another. Taking
+     the apparent semidiameter of the nubecula major at three degrees,
+     and regarding its solid form as, roughly speaking, spherical, its
+     nearest and most remote parts differ in their distance from us by a
+     little more than a tenth part of our distance from its center. The
+     brightness of objects situated in its nearer portions, therefore,
+     cannot be _much_ exaggerated, nor that of its remoter _much_
+     enfeebled, by their difference of distance; yet within this
+     globular space, we have collected upwards of six hundred stars of
+     the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth magnitudes, nearly three
+     hundred nebulæ, and globular and other clusters, _of all degrees of
+     resolvability_, and smaller scattered stars innumerable of every
+     inferior magnitude, from the tenth to such as by their multitude
+     and minuteness constitute irresolvable nebulosity, extending over
+     tracts of many square degrees. Were there but one such object, it
+     might be maintained without utter improbability that its apparent
+     sphericity is only an effect of foreshortening, and that in reality
+     a much greater proportional difference of distance between its
+     nearer and more remote parts exists. But such an adjustment,
+     improbable enough in one case, must be rejected as too much so for
+     fair argument in two. It must, therefore, be taken as a
+     demonstrated fact, that stars of the seventh or eighth magnitude
+     and irresolvable nebula may co-exist within limits of distance not
+     differing in proportion more than as nine to ten."--_Outlines of
+     Astronomy_ (10th Ed.), pp. 656-57.
+
+This supplies yet another _reductio ad absurdum_ of the doctrine we are
+combating. It gives us the choice of two incredibilities. If we are to
+believe that one of these included nebulæ is so remote that its hundred
+thousand stars look like a milky spot, invisible to the naked eye; we
+must also believe that there are single stars so enormous that though
+removed to this same distance they remain visible. If we accept the
+other alternative, and say that many nebulæ are no further off than our
+own stars of the eighth magnitude; then it is requisite to say that at
+a distance not greater than that at which a single star is still
+faintly visible to the naked eye, there may exist a group of a hundred
+thousand stars which is invisible to the naked eye. Neither of these
+suppositions can be entertained. What, then, is the conclusion that
+remains? This only:--that the nebulæ are not further from us than parts
+of our own sidereal system, of which they must be considered members;
+and that when they are resolvable into discrete masses, these masses
+cannot be considered as stars in anything like the ordinary sense of
+that word.[12]
+
+And now, having seen the untenability of this idea, rashly espoused by
+sundry astronomers, that the nebulæ are extremely remote galaxies; let
+us consider whether the various appearances they present are not
+reconcilable with the Nebular Hypothesis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Given a rare and widely-diffused mass of nebulous matter, having a
+diameter, say, of one hundred times that of the Solar System,[13] what
+are the successive changes that may be expected to take place in it?
+Mutual gravitation will approximate its atoms or its molecules; but
+their approximation will be opposed by that atomic motion the resultant
+of which we recognize as repulsion, and the overcoming of which implies
+the evolution of heat. As fast as this heat partially escapes by
+radiation, further approximation will take place, attended by further
+evolution of heat, and so on continuously: the processes not occurring
+separately as here described, but simultaneously, uninterruptedly, and
+with increasing activity. When the nebulous mass has reached a
+particular stage of condensation--when its internally-situated atoms
+have approached to within certain distances, have generated a certain
+amount of heat, and are subject to a certain mutual pressure,
+combinations may be anticipated. Whether the molecules produced be of
+kinds such as we know, which is possible, or whether they be of kinds
+simpler than any we know, which is more probable, matters not to the
+argument. It suffices that molecular unions, either between atoms of the
+same kind or between atoms of different kinds, will finally take place.
+When they do take place, they will be accompanied by a sudden and great
+disengagement of heat; and until this excess of heat has escaped, the
+newly-formed molecules will remain uniformly diffused, or, as it were,
+dissolved in the pre-existing nebulous medium.
+
+But now what may be expected by and by to happen? When radiation has
+adequately lowered the temperature, these molecules will precipitate;
+and, having precipitated, they will not remain uniformly diffused, but
+will aggregate into flocculi; just as water, precipitated from air,
+collects into clouds. Concluding, thus, that a nebulous mass will, in
+course of time, resolve itself into flocculi of precipitated denser
+matter, floating in the rarer medium from which they were precipitated,
+let us inquire what are the mechanical results to be inferred. Of
+clustered bodies in empty space, each will move along a line which is
+the resultant of the tractive forces exercised by all the rest, modified
+from moment to moment by the acquired motion; and the aggregation of
+such clustered bodies, if it eventually results at all, can result only
+from collision, dissipation, and the formation of a resisting medium.
+But with clustered bodies already immersed in a resisting medium, and
+especially if such bodies are of small densities, such as those we are
+considering, the process of concentration will begin forthwith: two
+factors conspiring to produce it. The flocculi described, irregular in
+their shapes and presenting, as they must in nearly all cases,
+unsymmetrical faces to their lines of motion, will be deflected from
+those courses which mutual gravitation, if uninterfered with, would
+produce among them; and this will militate against that balancing of
+movements which permanence of the cluster pre-supposes. If it be said,
+as it may truly be said, that this is too trifling a cause of
+derangement to produce much effect, then there comes the more important
+cause with which it co-operates. The medium from which the flocculi have
+been precipitated, and through which they are moving, must, by
+gravitation, be rendered denser in its central parts than in its
+peripheral parts. Hence the flocculi, none of them moving in straight
+lines to the common centre of gravity, but having courses made to
+diverge to one or other side of it (in small degrees by the cause just
+assigned, and in much greater degrees by the tractive forces of other
+flocculi) will, in moving towards the central region, meet with greater
+resistances on their inner sides than on their outer sides; and will be
+thus made to diverge outwardly from their courses more than they would
+otherwise do. Hence a tendency which, apart from other tendencies, will
+cause them severally to go on one or other side of the centre of
+gravity, and, approaching it, to get motions more and more tangential.
+Observe, however, that their respective motions will be deflected, not
+towards one side of the common centre of gravity, but towards various
+sides. How then can there result a movement common to them all? Very
+simply. Each flocculus, in describing its course, must give motion to
+the medium through which it is moving. But the probabilities are
+infinity to one against all the respective motions thus impressed on
+this medium, exactly balancing one another. And if they do not balance
+one another the result must be rotation of the whole mass of the medium
+in one direction. But preponderating momentum in one direction, having
+caused rotation of the medium in that direction, the rotating medium
+must in its turn gradually arrest such flocculi as are moving in
+opposition, and impress its own motion upon them; and thus there will
+ultimately be formed a rotating medium with suspended flocculi partaking
+of its motion, while they move in converging spirals towards the common
+centre of gravity.[14]
+
+Before comparing these conclusions with facts, let us pursue the
+reasoning a little further, and observe certain subordinate actions. The
+respective flocculi must be drawn not towards their common centre of
+gravity only, but also towards neighbouring flocculi. Hence the whole
+assemblage of flocculi will break up into groups: each group
+concentrating towards its local centre of gravity, and in so doing
+acquiring a vortical movement like that subsequently acquired by the
+whole nebula. According to circumstances, and chiefly according to the
+size of the original nebulous mass, this process of local aggregation
+will produce various results. If the whole nebula is but small, the
+local groups of flocculi may be drawn into the common centre of gravity
+before their constituent masses have coalesced with one another. In a
+larger nebula, these local aggregations may have concentrated into
+rotating spheroids of vapour, while yet they have made but little
+approach towards the general focus of the system. In a still larger
+nebula, where the local aggregations are both greater and more remote
+from the common centre of gravity, they may have condensed into masses
+of molten matter before the general distribution of them has greatly
+altered. In short, as the conditions in each case determine, the
+discrete masses produced may vary indefinitely in number, in size, in
+density, in motion, in distribution.
+
+And now let us return to the visible characters of nebulæ, as observed
+through modern telescopes. Take first the description of those nebulæ
+which, by the hypothesis, must be in an early stage of evolution.
+
+     Among the "_irregular nebulæ_," says Sir John Herschel, "may be
+     comprehended all which, to _a want of complete and in most
+     instances even of partial resolvability_ by the power of the
+     20-feet reflector, unite such a deviation from the circular or
+     elliptic form, or such a want of symmetry (with that form) as
+     preclude their being placed in class 1, or that of Regular Nebulæ.
+     This second class comprises many of the most remarkable and
+     interesting objects in the heavens, _as well as the most extensive
+     in respect of the area they occupy_."
+
+And, referring to this same order of objects, M. Arago says:--"The forms
+of very large diffuse nebulæ do not appear to admit of definition; they
+have no regular outline."
+
+This coexistence of largeness, irregularity, and indefiniteness of
+outline, with irresolvability, is extremely significant. The fact that
+the largest nebulæ are either irresolvable or very difficult to resolve,
+might have been inferred _a priori_; seeing that irresolvability,
+implying that the aggregation of precipitated matter has gone on to but
+a small extent, will be found in nebulæ of wide diffusion. Again, the
+irregularity of these large, irresolvable nebulæ, might also have been
+expected; seeing that their outlines, compared by Arago with "the
+fantastic figures which characterize clouds carried away and tossed
+about by violent and often contrary winds," are similarly characteristic
+of a mass not yet gathered together by the mutual attraction of its
+parts. And once more, the fact that these large, irregular, irresolvable
+nebulæ have indefinite outlines--outlines that fade off insensibly into
+surrounding darkness--is one of like meaning.
+
+Speaking generally (and of course differences of distance negative
+anything beyond average statements), the spiral nebulæ are smaller than
+the irregular nebulæ, and more resolvable; at the same time that they
+are not so small as the regular nebulæ, and not so resolvable. This is
+as, according to the hypothesis, it should be. The degree of
+condensation causing spiral movement, is a degree of condensation also
+implying masses of flocculi that are larger, and therefore more visible,
+than those existing in an earlier stage. Moreover, the forms of these
+spiral nebulæ are quite in harmony with the explanation given. The
+curves of luminous matter which they exhibit, are _not_ such as would be
+described by discrete masses starting from a state of rest, and moving
+through a resisting medium to a common centre of gravity; but they _are_
+such as would be described by masses having their movements modified by
+the rotation of the medium.
+
+In the centre of a spiral nebula is seen a mass both more luminous and
+more resolvable than the rest. Assume that, in process of time, all the
+spiral streaks of luminous matter which converge to this centre are
+drawn into it, as they must be; assume further, that the flocculi, or
+other discrete portions constituting these luminous streaks, aggregate
+into larger masses at the same time that they approach the central
+group, and that the masses forming this central group also aggregate
+into larger masses; and there will finally result a cluster of such
+larger masses, which will be resolvable with comparative ease. And, as
+the coalescence and concentration go on, the constituent masses will
+gradually become fewer, larger, brighter, and more densely collected
+around the common centre of gravity. See now how completely this
+inference agrees with observation. "The circular form is that which most
+commonly characterises resolvable nebulæ," writes Arago. Resolvable
+nebulæ, says Sir John Herschel, "are almost universally round or oval."
+Moreover, the centre of each group habitually displays a closer
+clustering of the constituent masses than the outer parts; and it is
+shown that, under the law of gravitation, which we now know extends to
+the stars, this distribution is _not_ one of equilibrium, but implies
+progressing concentration. While, just as we inferred that, according to
+circumstances, the extent to which aggregation has been carried must
+vary; so we find that, in fact, there are regular nebulæ of all degrees
+of resolvability, from those consisting of innumerable minute masses, to
+those in which their numbers are smaller and the sizes greater, and to
+those in which there are a few large bodies worthy to be called stars.
+
+On the one hand, then, we see that the notion, of late years
+uncritically received, that the nebulæ are extremely remote galaxies of
+stars like those which make up our own Milky Way, is totally
+irreconcilable with the facts--involves us in sundry absurdities. On the
+other hand, we see that the hypothesis of nebular condensation
+harmonizes with the most recent results of stellar astronomy: nay
+more--that it supplies us with an explanation of various appearances
+which in its absence would be incomprehensible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Descending now to the Solar System, let us consider first a class of
+phenomena in some sort transitional--those offered by comets. In them,
+or at least in those most numerous of them which lie far out of the
+plane of the Solar System, and are not to be counted among its members,
+we have, still existing, a kind of matter like that out of which,
+according to the Nebular Hypothesis, the Solar System was evolved.
+Hence, for the explanation of them, we must go back to the time when the
+substances forming the sun and planets were yet unconcentrated.
+
+When diffused matter, precipitated from a rarer medium, is aggregating,
+there are certain to be here and there produced small flocculi, which
+long remain detached; as do, for instance, minute shreds of cloud in a
+summer sky. In a concentrating nebula these will, in the majority of
+cases, eventually coalesce with the larger flocculi near to them. But it
+is tolerably evident that some of those formed at the outermost parts of
+the nebula, will _not_ coalesce with the larger internal masses, but
+will slowly follow without overtaking them. The relatively greater
+resistance of the medium necessitates this. As a single feather falling
+to the ground will be rapidly left behind by a pillow-full of feathers;
+so, in their progress to the common centre of gravity, will the
+outermost shreds of vapour be left behind by the great masses of vapour
+internally situated. But we are not dependent merely on reasoning for
+this belief. Observation shows us that the less concentrated external
+parts of nebulæ, _are_ left behind by the more concentrated internal
+parts. Examined through high powers, all nebulæ, even when they have
+assumed regular forms, are seen to be surrounded by luminous streaks, of
+which the directions show that they are being drawn into the general
+mass. Still higher powers bring into view still smaller, fainter, and
+more widely-dispersed streaks. And it cannot be doubted that the minute
+fragments which no telescopic aid makes visible, are yet more numerous
+and widely dispersed. Thus far, then, inference and observation are at
+one.
+
+Granting that the great majority of these outlying portions of nebulous
+matter will be drawn into the central mass long before it reaches a
+definite form, the presumption is that some of the very small,
+far-removed portions will not be so; but that before they arrive near
+it, the central mass will have contracted into a comparatively moderate
+bulk. What now will be the characters of these late-arriving portions?
+
+In the first place, they will have either extremely eccentric orbits or
+non-elliptic paths. Left behind at a time when they were moving towards
+the centre of gravity in slightly-deflected lines, and therefore having
+but very small angular velocities, they will approach the central mass
+in greatly elongated curves; and rushing round it, will go off again
+into space. That is, they will behave just as we see the majority of
+comets do; the orbits of which are either so eccentric as to be
+indistinguishable from parabolas, or else are not orbits at all, but are
+paths which are distinctly either parabolic or hyperbolic.
+
+In the second place, they will come from all parts of the heavens. Our
+supposition implies that they were left behind at a time when the
+nebulous mass was of irregular shape, and had not acquired a definite
+rotation; and as the separation of them would not be from any one
+surface of the nebulous mass more than another, the conclusion must be
+that they will come to the central body from various directions in
+space. This, too, is exactly what happens. Unlike planets, whose orbits
+approximate to one plane, comets have orbits that show no relation to
+one another; but cut the plane of the ecliptic at all angles, and have
+axes inclined to it at all angles.
+
+In the third place, these remotest flocculi of nebulous matter will, at
+the outset, be deflected from their direct courses to the common centre
+of gravity, not all on one side, but each on such side as its form, or
+its original proper motion, determines. And being left behind before the
+rotation of the nebula is set up, they will severally retain their
+different individual motions. Hence, following the concentrated mass,
+they will eventually go round it on all sides; and as often from right
+to left as from left to right. Here again the inference perfectly
+corresponds with the facts. While all the planets go round the sun from
+west to east, comets as often go round the sun from east to west as from
+west to east. Of 262 comets recorded since 1680, 130 are direct, and 132
+are retrograde. This equality is what the law of probabilities would
+indicate.
+
+Then, in the fourth place, the physical constitution of comets accords
+with the hypothesis.[15] The ability of nebulous matter to concentrate
+into a concrete form, depends on its mass. To bring its ultimate atoms
+into that proximity requisite for chemical union--requisite, that is,
+for the production of denser matter--their repulsion must be overcome.
+The only force antagonistic to their repulsion, is their mutual
+gravitation. That their mutual gravitation may generate a pressure and
+temperature of sufficient intensity, there must be an enormous
+accumulation of them; and even then the approximation can slowly go on
+only as fast as the evolved heat escapes. But where the quantity of
+atoms is small, and therefore the force of mutual gravitation small,
+there will be nothing to coerce the atoms into union. Whence we infer
+that these detached fragments of nebulous matter will continue in
+their original state. Non-periodic comets seem to do so.
+
+We have already seen that this view of the origin of comets harmonizes
+with the characters of their orbits; but the evidence hence derived is
+much stronger than was indicated. The great majority of cometary orbits
+are classed as parabolic; and it is ordinarily inferred that they are
+visitors from remote space, and will never return. But are they rightly
+classed as parabolic? Observations on a comet moving in an extremely
+eccentric ellipse, which are possible only when it is comparatively near
+perihelion, must fail to distinguish its orbit from a parabola.
+Evidently, then, it is not safe to class it as a parabola because of
+inability to detect the elements of an ellipse. But if extreme
+eccentricity of an orbit necessitates such inability, it seems quite
+possible that comets have no other orbits than elliptic ones. Though
+five or six are said to be hyperbolic, yet, as I learn from one who has
+paid special attention to comets, "no such orbit has, I believe, been
+computed for a well-observed comet." Hence the probability that all the
+orbits are ellipses is overwhelming. Ellipses and hyperbolas have
+countless varieties of forms, but there is only one form of parabola;
+or, to speak literally, all parabolas are similar, while there are
+infinitely numerous dissimilar ellipses and dissimilar hyperbolas.
+Consequently, anything coming to the Sun from a great distance must have
+one exact amount of proper motion to produce a parabola: all other
+amounts would give hyperbolas or ellipses. And if there are no
+hyperbolic orbits, then it is infinity to one that all the orbits are
+elliptical. This is just what they would be if comets had the genesis
+above supposed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now, leaving these erratic bodies, let us turn to the more familiar
+and important members of the Solar System. It was the remarkable harmony
+among their movements which first made Laplace conceive that the Sun,
+planets, and satellites had resulted from a common genetic process. As
+Sir William Herschel, by his observations on the nebulæ, was led to the
+conclusion that stars resulted from the aggregation of diffused matter;
+so Laplace, by his observations on the structure of the Solar System,
+was led to the conclusion that only by the rotation of aggregating
+matter were its peculiarities to be explained. In his _Exposition du
+Système du Monde_, he enumerates as the leading evidences:--1. The
+movements of the planets in the same direction and in orbits approaching
+to the same plane; 2. The movements of the satellites in the same
+direction as those of the planets; 3. The movements of rotation of these
+various bodies and of the sun in the same direction as the orbital
+motions, and mostly in planes little different; 4. The small
+eccentricities of the orbits of the planets and satellites, as
+contrasted with the great eccentricities of the cometary orbits. And the
+probability that these harmonious movements had a common cause, he
+calculates as two hundred thousand billions to one.
+
+This immense preponderance of probability does not point to a common
+cause under the form ordinarily conceived--an Invisible Power working
+after the method of "a Great Artificer;" but to an Invisible Power
+working after the method of evolution. For though the supporters of the
+common hypothesis may argue that it was necessary for the sake of
+stability that the planets should go round the Sun in the same direction
+and nearly in one plane, they cannot thus account for the direction of
+the axial motions.[16] The mechanical equilibrium would not have been
+interfered with, had the Sun been without any rotatory movement; or had
+he revolved on his axis in a direction opposite to that in which the
+planets go round him; or in a direction at right angles to the average
+plane of their orbits. With equal safety the motion of the Moon round
+the Earth might have been the reverse of the Earth's motion round its
+axis; or the motions of Jupiter's satellites might similarly have been
+at variance with his axial motion; or those of Saturn's satellites with
+his. As, however, none of these alternatives have been followed, the
+uniformity must be considered, in this case as in all others, evidence
+of subordination to some general law--implies what we call natural
+causation, as distinguished from arbitrary arrangement.
+
+Hence the hypothesis of evolution would be the only probable one, even
+in the absence of any clue to the particular mode of evolution. But when
+we have, propounded by a mathematician of the highest authority, a
+theory of this evolution based on established mechanical principles,
+which accounts for these various peculiarities, as well as for many
+minor ones, the conclusion that the Solar System _was_ evolved becomes
+almost irresistible.
+
+The general nature of Laplace's theory scarcely needs stating. Books of
+popular astronomy have familiarized most readers with his
+conceptions;--namely, that the matter now condensed into the Solar
+System, once formed a vast rotating spheroid of extreme rarity extending
+beyond the orbit of the outermost planet; that as this spheroid
+contracted, its rate of rotation necessarily increased; that by
+augmenting centrifugal force its equatorial zone was from time to time
+prevented from following any further the concentrating mass, and so
+remained behind as a revolving ring; that each of the revolving rings
+thus periodically detached, eventually became ruptured at its weakest
+point, and, contracting on itself, gradually aggregated into a rotating
+mass; that this, like the parent mass, increased in rapidity of rotation
+as it decreased in size, and, where the centrifugal force was
+sufficient, similarly left behind rings, which finally collapsed into
+rotating spheroids; and that thus, out of these primary and secondary
+rings, there arose planets and their satellites, while from the central
+mass there resulted the Sun. Moreover, it is tolerably well known that
+this _a priori_ reasoning harmonizes with the results of experiment. Dr.
+Plateau has shown that when a mass of fluid is, as far may be, protected
+from the action of external forces, it will, if made to rotate with
+adequate velocity, form detached rings; and that these rings will break
+up into spheroids which turn on their axes in the same direction with
+the central mass. Thus, given the original nebula, which, acquiring a
+vortical motion in the way indicated, has at length concentrated into a
+vast spheroid of aeriform matter moving round its axis--given this, and
+mechanical principles explain the rest. The genesis of a Solar System
+displaying movements like those observed, may be predicted; and the
+reasoning on which the prediction is based is countenanced by
+experiment.[17]
+
+But now let us inquire whether, besides these most conspicuous
+structural and dynamic peculiarities of the Solar System, sundry minor
+ones are not similarly explicable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Take first the relation between the planes of the planetary orbits and
+the plane of the Sun's equator. If, when the nebulous spheroid extended
+beyond the orbit of Neptune, all parts of it had been revolving exactly
+in the same plane, or rather in parallel planes--if all its parts had
+had one axis; then the planes of the successive rings would have been
+coincident with each other and with that of the Sun's rotation. But it
+needs only to go back to the earlier stages of concentration, to see
+that there could exist no such complete uniformity of motion. The
+flocculi, already described as precipitated from an irregular and
+widely-diffused nebula, and as starting from all points to their common
+centre of gravity, must move not in one plane but in innumerable planes,
+cutting each other at all angles. The gradual establishment of a
+vortical motion such as we at present see indicated in the spiral
+nebulæ, is the gradual approach towards motion in one plane. But this
+plane can but slowly become decided. Flocculi not moving in this plane,
+but entering into the aggregation at various inclinations, will tend to
+perform their revolutions round its centre in their own planes; and only
+in course of time will their motions be partly destroyed by conflicting
+ones, and partly resolved into the general motion. Especially will the
+outermost portions of the rotating mass retain for a long time their
+more or less independent directions. Hence the probabilities are, that
+the planes of the rings first detached will differ considerably from the
+average plane of the mass; while the planes of those detached latest
+will differ from it less.
+
+Here, again, inference to a considerable extent agrees with observation.
+Though the progression is irregular, yet, on the average, the
+inclinations decrease on approaching the Sun; and this is all we can
+expect. For as the portions of the nebulous spheroid must have arrived
+with miscellaneous inclinations, its strata must have had planes of
+rotation diverging from the average plane in degrees not always
+proportionate to their distances from the centre.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Consider next the movements of the planets on their axes. Laplace
+alleged as one among other evidences of a common genetic cause, that the
+planets rotate in a direction the same as that in which they go round
+the Sun, and on axes approximately perpendicular to their orbits. Since
+he wrote, an exception to this general rule has been discovered in the
+case of Uranus, and another still more recently in the case of
+Neptune--judging, at least, from the motions of their respective
+satellites. This anomaly has been thought to throw considerable doubt on
+his speculation; and at first sight it does so. But a little reflection
+shows that the anomaly is not inexplicable, and that Laplace simply went
+too far in putting down as a certain result of nebular genesis, what is,
+in some instances, only a probable result. The cause he pointed out as
+determining the direction of rotation, is the greater absolute velocity
+of the outer part of the detached ring. But there are conditions under
+which this difference of velocity may be too insignificant, even if it
+exists. If a mass of nebulous matter approaching spirally to the central
+spheroid, and eventually joining it tangentially, is made up of parts
+having the same absolute velocities; then, after joining the equatorial
+periphery of the spheroid and being made to rotate with it, the angular
+velocity of its outer parts will be smaller than the angular velocity of
+its inner parts. Hence, if, when the angular velocities of the outer and
+inner parts of a detached ring are the same, there results a tendency to
+rotation in the same direction with the orbital motion, it may be
+inferred that when the outer parts of the ring have a smaller angular
+velocity than the inner parts, a tendency to retrograde rotation will be
+the consequence.
+
+Again, the sectional form of the ring is a circumstance of moment; and
+this form must have differed more or less in every case. To make this
+clear, some illustration will be necessary. Suppose we take an orange,
+and, assuming the marks of the stalk and the calyx to represent the
+poles, cut off round the line of the equator a strip of peel. This strip
+of peel, if placed on the table with its ends meeting, will make a ring
+shaped like the hoop of a barrel--a ring of which the thickness in the
+line of its diameter is very small, but of which the width in a
+direction perpendicular to its diameter is considerable. Suppose, now,
+that in place of an orange, which is a spheroid of very slight
+oblateness, we take a spheroid of very great oblateness, shaped somewhat
+like a lens of small convexity. If from the edge or equator of this
+lens-shaped spheroid, a ring of moderate size were cut off, it would be
+unlike the previous ring in this respect, that its greatest thickness
+would be in the line of its diameter, and not in a line at right angles
+to its diameter: it would be a ring shaped somewhat like a quoit, only
+far more slender. That is to say, according to the oblateness of a
+rotating spheroid, the detached ring may be either a hoop-shaped ring or
+a quoit-shaped ring.
+
+One further implication must be noted. In a much-flattened or
+lens-shaped spheroid, the form of the ring will vary with its bulk. A
+very slender ring, taking off just the equatorial surface, will be
+hoop-shaped; while a tolerably massive ring, trenching appreciably on
+the diameter of the spheroid, will be quoit-shaped. Thus, then,
+according to the oblateness of the spheroid and the bulkiness of the
+detached ring, will the greatest thickness of that ring be in the
+direction of its plane, or in a direction perpendicular to its plane.
+But this circumstance must greatly affect the rotation of the resulting
+planet. In a decidedly hoop-shaped nebulous ring, the differences of
+velocity between the inner and outer surfaces will be small; and such a
+ring, aggregating into a mass of which the greatest diameter is at right
+angles to the plane of the orbit, will almost certainly give to this
+mass a predominant tendency to rotate in a direction at right angles to
+the plane of the orbit. Where the ring is but little hoop-shaped, and
+the difference between the inner and outer velocities greater, as it
+must be, the opposing tendencies--one to produce rotation in the plane
+of the orbit, and the other, rotation perpendicular to it--will both be
+influential; and an intermediate plane of rotation will be taken up.
+While, if the nebulous ring is decidedly quoit-shaped, and therefore
+aggregates into a mass whose greatest dimension lies in the plane of
+the orbit, both tendencies will conspire to produce rotation in that
+plane.
+
+On referring to the facts, we find them, as far as can be judged, in
+harmony with this view. Considering the enormous circumference of
+Uranus's orbit, and his comparatively small mass, we may conclude that
+the ring from which he resulted was a comparatively slender, and
+therefore a hoop-shaped one: especially as the nebulous mass must have
+been at that time less oblate than afterwards. Hence, a plane of
+rotation nearly perpendicular to his orbit, and a direction of rotation
+having no reference to his orbital movement. Saturn has a mass seven
+times as great, and an orbit of less than half the diameter; whence it
+follows that his genetic ring, having less than half the circumference,
+and less than half the vertical thickness (the spheroid being then
+certainly _as_ oblate, and indeed _more_ oblate), must have had a much
+greater width--must have been less hoop-shaped, and more approaching to
+the quoit-shaped: notwithstanding difference of density, it must have
+been at least two or three times as broad in the line of its plane.
+Consequently, Saturn has a rotatory movement in the same direction as
+the movement of translation, and in a plane differing from it by thirty
+degrees only. In the case of Jupiter, again, whose mass is three and a
+half times that of Saturn, and whose orbit is little more than half the
+size, the genetic ring must, for the like reasons, have been still
+broader--decidedly quoit-shaped, we may say; and there hence resulted a
+planet whose plane of rotation differs from that of his orbit by
+scarcely more than three degrees. Once more, considering the comparative
+insignificance of Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury, it follows that, the
+diminishing circumferences of the rings not sufficing to account for the
+smallness of the resulting masses, the rings must have been slender
+ones--must have again approximated to the hoop-shaped; and thus it
+happens that the planes of rotation again diverge more or less widely
+from those of the orbits. Taking into account the increasing oblateness
+of the original spheroid in the successive stages of its concentration,
+and the different proportions of the detached rings, it may fairly be
+held that the respective rotatory motions are not at variance with the
+hypothesis but contrariwise tend to confirm it.
+
+Not only the directions, but also the velocities of rotation seem thus
+explicable. It might naturally be supposed that the large planets would
+revolve on their axes more slowly than the small ones: our terrestrial
+experiences of big and little bodies incline us to expect this. It is a
+corollary from the Nebular Hypothesis, however, more especially when
+interpreted as above, that while large planets will rotate rapidly,
+small ones will rotate slowly; and we find that in fact they do so.
+Other things equal, a concentrating nebulous mass which is diffused
+through a wide space, and whose outer parts have, therefore, to travel
+from great distances to the common centre of gravity, will acquire a
+high axial velocity in course of its aggregation; and conversely with a
+small mass. Still more marked will be the difference where the form of
+the genetic ring conspires to increase the rate of rotation. Other
+things equal, a genetic ring which is broadest in the direction of its
+plane will produce a mass rotating faster than one which is broadest at
+right angles to its plane; and if the ring is absolutely as well as
+relatively broad, the rotation will be very rapid. These conditions
+were, as we saw, fulfilled in the case of Jupiter; and Jupiter turns
+round his axis in less than ten hours. Saturn, in whose case, as above
+explained, the conditions were less favourable to rapid rotation, takes
+nearly ten hours and a half. While Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury,
+whose rings must have been slender, take more than double that time: the
+smallest taking the longest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the planets let us now pass to the satellites. Here, beyond the
+conspicuous facts commonly adverted to, that they go round their
+primaries in the directions in which these turn on their axes, in planes
+diverging but little from their equators, and in orbits nearly circular,
+there are several significant traits which must not be passed over.
+
+One of them is that each set of satellites repeats in miniature the
+relations of the planets to the Sun, both in certain respects above
+named and in the order of their sizes. On progressing from the outside
+of the Solar System to its centre, we see that there are four large
+external planets, and four internal ones which are comparatively small.
+A like contrast holds between the outer and inner satellites in every
+case. Among the four satellites of Jupiter, the parallel is maintained
+as well as the comparative smallness of the number allows: the two outer
+ones are the largest, and the two inner ones the smallest. According to
+the most recent observations made by Mr. Lassell, the like is true of
+the four satellites of Uranus. In the case of Saturn, who has eight
+secondary planets revolving round him, the likeness is still more close
+in arrangement as in number: the three outer satellites are large, the
+inner ones small; and the contrasts of size are here much greater
+between the largest, which is nearly as big as Mars, and the smallest,
+which is with difficulty discovered even by the best telescopes. But the
+analogy does not end here. Just as with the planets, there is at first a
+general increase of size on travelling inwards from Neptune and Uranus,
+which do not differ very widely, to Saturn, which is much larger, and to
+Jupiter, which is the largest; so of the eight satellites of Saturn, the
+largest is not the outermost, but the outermost save two; so of
+Jupiter's four secondaries, the largest is the most remote but one. Now
+these parallelisms are inexplicable by the theory of final causes. For
+purposes of lighting, if this be the presumed object of these attendant
+bodies, it would have been far better had the larger been the nearer: at
+present, their remoteness renders them of less service than the
+smallest. To the Nebular Hypothesis, however, these analogies give
+further support. They show the action of a common physical cause. They
+imply a _law_ of genesis, holding in the secondary systems as in the
+primary system.
+
+Still more instructive shall we find the distribution of the
+satellites--their absence in some instances, and their presence in other
+instances, in smaller or greater numbers. The argument from design fails
+to account for this distribution. Supposing it be granted that planets
+nearer the Sun than ourselves, have no need of moons (though,
+considering that their nights are as dark, and, relatively to their
+brilliant days, even darker than ours, the need seems quite as
+great)--supposing this to be granted; how are we to explain the fact
+that Uranus has but half as many moons as Saturn, though he is at double
+the distance? While, however, the current presumption is untenable, the
+Nebular Hypothesis furnishes us with an explanation. It enables us to
+predict where satellites will be abundant and where they will be absent.
+The reasoning is as follows.
+
+In a rotating nebulous spheroid which is concentrating into a planet,
+there are at work two antagonist mechanical tendencies--the centripetal
+and the centrifugal. While the force of gravitation draws all the atoms
+of the spheroid together, their tangential momentum is resolvable into
+two parts, of which one resists gravitation. The ratio which this
+centrifugal force bears to gravitation, varies, other things equal, as
+the square of the velocity. Hence, the aggregation of a rotating
+nebulous spheroid will be more or less hindered by this resisting force,
+according as the rate of rotation is high or low: the opposition, in
+equal spheroids, being four times as great when the rotation is twice as
+rapid; nine times as great when it is three times as rapid; and so on.
+Now the detachment of a ring from a planet-forming body of nebulous
+matter, implies that at its equatorial zone the increasing centrifugal
+force consequent on concentration has become so great as to balance
+gravity. Whence it is tolerably obvious that the detachment of rings
+will be most frequent from those masses in which the centrifugal
+tendency bears the greatest ratio to the gravitative tendency. Though it
+is not possible to calculate what ratio these two tendencies had to each
+other in the genetic spheroid which produced each planet, it is possible
+to calculate where each was the greatest and where the least. While it
+is true that the ratio which centrifugal force now bears to gravity at
+the equator of each planet, differs widely from that which it bore
+during the earlier stages of concentration; and while it is true that
+this change in the ratio, depending on the degree of contraction each
+planet has undergone, has in no two cases been the same; yet we may
+fairly conclude that where the ratio is still the greatest, it has been
+the greatest from the beginning. The satellite-forming tendency which
+each planet had, will be approximately indicated by the proportion now
+existing in it between the aggregating power, and the power that has
+opposed aggregation. On making the requisite calculations, a remarkable
+harmony with this inference comes out. The following table shows what
+fraction the centrifugal force is of the centripetal force in every
+case; and the relation which that fraction bears to the number of
+satellites.[18]
+
+   Mercury.  1/360
+   Venus.    1/253
+   Earth.    1/289    1 Satellite.
+   Mars.     1/127    2 Satellites.
+   Jupiter.  1/11·4   4 Satellites.
+   Saturn.   1/6·4    8 Satellites, and three rings.
+   Uranus.   1/10·9   4 Satellites.
+
+Thus taking as our standard of comparison the Earth with its one moon,
+we see that Mercury, in which the centrifugal force is relatively less,
+has no moon. Mars, in which it is relatively much greater, has two
+moons. Jupiter, in which it is far greater, has four moons. Uranus, in
+which it is greater still, has certainly four, and more if Herschel was
+right. Saturn, in which it is the greatest, being nearly one-sixth of
+gravity, has, including his rings, eleven attendants. The only instance
+in which there is nonconformity with observation, is that of Venus. Here
+it appears that the centrifugal force is relatively greater than in the
+Earth; and, according to the hypothesis, Venus ought to have a
+satellite. Respecting this anomaly several remarks are to be made.
+Without putting any faith in the alleged discovery of a satellite of
+Venus (repeated at intervals by five different observers), it may yet be
+contended that as the satellites of Mars eluded observation up to 1877,
+a satellite of Venus may have eluded observation up to the present time.
+Merely naming this as possible, but not probable, a consideration of
+more weight is that the period of rotation of Venus is but indefinitely
+fixed, and that a small diminution in the estimated angular velocity of
+her equator would bring the result into congruity with the hypothesis.
+Further, it may be remarked that not exact, but only general, congruity
+is to be expected; since the process of condensation of each planet from
+nebulous matter can scarcely be expected to have gone on with absolute
+uniformity: the angular velocities of the superposed strata of nebulous
+matter probably differed from one another in degrees unlike in each
+case; and such differences would affect the satellite-forming tendency.
+But without making much of these possible explanations of the
+discrepancy, the correspondence between inference and fact which we find
+in so many planets, may be held to afford strong support to the Nebular
+Hypothesis.
+
+Certain more special peculiarities of the satellites must be mentioned
+as suggestive. One of them is the relation between the period of
+revolution and that of rotation. No discoverable purpose is served by
+making the Moon go round its axis in the same time that it goes round
+the Earth: for our convenience, a more rapid axial motion would have
+been equally good; and for any possible inhabitants of the Moon, much
+better. Against the alternative supposition, that the equality occurred
+by accident, the probabilities are, as Laplace says, infinity to one.
+But to this arrangement, which is explicable neither as the result of
+design nor of chance, the Nebular Hypothesis furnishes a clue. In his
+_Exposition du Système du Monde_, Laplace shows, by reasoning too
+detailed to be here repeated, that under the circumstances such a
+relation of movements would be likely to establish itself.
+
+Among Jupiter's satellites, which severally display these same
+synchronous movements, there also exists a still more remarkable
+relation. "If the mean angular velocity of the first satellite be added
+to twice that of the third, the sum will be equal to three times that of
+the second;" and "from this it results that the situations of any two of
+them being given, that of the third can be found." Now here, as before,
+no conceivable advantage results. Neither in this case can the connexion
+have been accidental: the probabilities are infinity to one to the
+contrary. But again, according to Laplace, the Nebular Hypothesis
+supplies a solution. Are not these significant facts?
+
+Most significant fact of all, however, is that presented by the rings of
+Saturn. As Laplace remarks, they are, as it were, still extant witnesses
+of the genetic process he propounded. Here we have, continuing
+permanently, forms of aggregation like those through which each planet
+and satellite once passed; and their movements are just what, in
+conformity with the hypothesis, they should be. "La durée de la rotation
+d'une planète doit donc être, d'après cette hypothèse, plus petite que
+la durée de la révolution du corps le plus voisin qui circule autour
+d'elle," says Laplace. And he then points out that the time of Saturn's
+rotation is to that of his rings as 427 to 438--an amount of difference
+such as was to be expected.[19]
+
+Respecting Saturn's rings it may be further remarked that the place of
+their occurrence is not without significance.
+
+Rings detached early in the process of concentration, consisting of
+gaseous matter having extremely little power of cohesion, can have
+little ability to resist the disruptive forces due to imperfect balance;
+and, therefore, collapse into satellites. A ring of a denser kind,
+whether solid, liquid, or composed of small discrete masses (as Saturn's
+rings are now concluded to be), we can expect will be formed only near
+the body of a planet when it has reached so late a stage of
+concentration that its equatorial portions contain matters capable of
+easy precipitation into liquid and, finally, solid forms. Even then it
+can be produced only under special conditions. Gaining a
+rapidly-increasing preponderance as the gravitative force does during
+the closing stages of concentration, the centrifugal force cannot, in
+ordinary cases, cause the leaving behind of rings when the mass has
+become dense. Only where the centrifugal force has all along been very
+great, and remains powerful to the last, as in Saturn, can we expect
+dense rings to be formed.
+
+We find, then, that besides those most conspicuous peculiarities of the
+Solar System which first suggested the theory of its evolution, there
+are many minor ones pointing in the same direction. Were there no other
+evidence, these mechanical arrangements would, considered in their
+totality, go far to establish the Nebular Hypothesis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the mechanical arrangements of the Solar System, turn we now to its
+physical characters; and, first, let us consider the inferences
+deducible from relative specific gravities.
+
+The fact that, speaking generally, the denser planets are the nearer to
+the Sun, has been by some considered as adding another to the many
+indications of nebular origin. Legitimately assuming that the outermost
+parts of a rotating nebulous spheroid, in its earlier stages of
+concentration, must be comparatively rare; and that the increasing
+density which the whole mass acquires as it contracts, must hold of the
+outermost parts as well as the rest; it is argued that the rings
+successively detached will be more and more dense, and will form planets
+of higher and higher specific gravities. But passing over other
+objections, this explanation is quite inadequate to account for the
+facts. Using the Earth as a standard of comparison, the relative
+densities run thus:--
+
+   Neptune. Uranus. Saturn. Jupiter. Mars. Earth. Venus. Mercury. Sun.
+    0·17     0·25    0·11    0·23    0·45   1·00   0·92   1·26    0·25
+
+Two insurmountable objections are presented by this series. The first
+is, that the progression is but a broken one. Neptune is denser than
+Saturn, which, by the hypothesis, it ought not to be. Uranus is denser
+than Jupiter, which it ought not to be. Uranus is denser than Saturn,
+and the Earth is denser than Venus--facts which not only give no
+countenance to, but directly contradict, the alleged explanation. The
+second objection, still more manifestly fatal, is the low specific
+gravity of the Sun. If, when the matter of the Sun filled the orbit of
+Mercury, its state of aggregation was such that the detached ring formed
+a planet having a specific gravity equal to that of iron; then the Sun
+itself, now that it has concentrated, should have a specific gravity
+much greater than that of iron; whereas its specific gravity is only
+half as much again as that of water. Instead of being far denser than
+the nearest planet, it is but one-fifth as dense.
+
+While these anomalies render untenable the position that the relative
+specific gravities of the planets are direct indications of nebular
+condensation; it by no means follows that they negative it. Several
+causes may be assigned for these unlikenesses:--1. Differences among the
+planets in respect of the elementary substances composing them; or in
+the proportions of such elementary substances, if they contain the same
+kinds. 2. Differences among them in respect of the quantities of matter
+they contain; for, other things equal, the mutual gravitation of
+molecules will make a larger mass denser than a smaller. 3. Differences
+of temperatures; for, other things equal, those having higher
+temperatures will have lower specific gravities. 4. Differences of
+physical states, as being gaseous, liquid, or solid; or, otherwise,
+differences in the relative amounts of the solid, liquid, and gaseous
+matter they contain.
+
+It is quite possible, and we may indeed say probable, that all these
+causes come into play, and that they take various shares in the
+production of the several results. But difficulties stand in the way of
+definite conclusions. Nevertheless, if we revert to the hypothesis of
+nebular genesis, we are furnished with partial explanations if nothing
+more.
+
+In the cooling of celestial bodies several factors are concerned. The
+first and simplest is the one illustrated at every fire-side by the
+rapid blackening of little cinders which fall into the ashes, in
+contrast with the long-continued redness of big lumps. This factor is
+the relation between increase of surface and increase of content:
+surfaces, in similar bodies, increasing as the squares of the dimensions
+while contents increase as their cubes. Hence, on comparing the Earth
+with Jupiter, whose diameter is about eleven times that of the Earth, it
+results that while his surface is 125 times as great, his content is
+1390 times as great. Now even (supposing we assume like temperatures and
+like densities) if the only effect were that through a given area of
+surface eleven times more matter had to be cooled in the one case than
+in the other, there would be a vast difference between the times
+occupied in concentration. But, in virtue of a second factor, the
+difference would be much greater than that consequent on these
+geometrical relations. The escape of heat from a cooling mass is
+effected by conduction, or by convection, or by both. In a solid it is
+wholly by conduction; in a liquid or gas the chief part is played by
+convection--by circulating currents which continually transpose the
+hotter and cooler parts. Now in fluid spheroids--gaseous, or liquid, or
+mixed--increasing size entails an increasing obstacle to cooling,
+consequent on the increasing distances to be travelled by the
+circulating currents. Of course the relation is not a simple one: the
+velocities of the currents will be unlike. It is manifest, however, that
+in a sphere of eleven times the diameter, the transit of matter from
+centre to surface and back from surface to centre, will take a much
+longer time; even if its movement is unrestrained. But its movement is,
+in such cases as we are considering, greatly restrained. In a rotating
+spheroid there come into play retarding forces augmenting with the
+velocity of rotation. In such a spheroid the respective portions of
+matter (supposing them equal in their angular velocities round the axis,
+which they will tend more and more to become as the density increases),
+must vary in their absolute velocities according to their distances from
+the axis; and each portion cannot have its distance from the axis
+changed by circulating currents, which it must continually be, without
+loss or gain in its quantity of motion: through the medium of fluid
+friction, force must be expended, now in increasing its motion and now
+in retarding its motion. Hence, when the larger spheroid has also a
+higher velocity of rotation, the relative slowness of the circulating
+currents, and the consequent retardation of cooling, must be much
+greater than is implied by the extra distances to be travelled.
+
+And now observe the correspondence between inference and fact. In the
+first place, if we compare the group of the great planets, Jupiter,
+Saturn, and Uranus, with the group of the small planets, Mars, Earth,
+Venus, and Mercury, we see that low density goes along with great size
+and great velocity of rotation, and that high density goes along with
+small size and small velocity of rotation. In the second place, we are
+shown this relation still more clearly if we compare the extreme
+instances--Saturn and Mercury. The special contrast of these two, like
+the general contrast of the groups, points to the truth that low
+density, like the satellite-forming tendency, is associated with the
+ratio borne by centrifugal force to gravity; for in the case of Saturn
+with his many satellites and least density, centrifugal force at the
+equator is nearly 1/6th of gravity, whereas in Mercury with no satellite
+and greatest density centrifugal force is but 1/360th of gravity.
+
+There are, however, certain factors which, working in an opposite way,
+qualify and complicate these effects. Other things equal, mutual
+gravitation among the parts of a large mass will cause a greater
+evolution of heat than is similarly caused in a small mass; and the
+resulting difference of temperature will tend to produce more rapid
+dissipation of heat. To this must be added the greater velocity of the
+circulating currents which the intenser forces at work in larger
+spheroids will produce--a contrast made still greater by the relatively
+smaller retardation by friction to which the more voluminous currents
+are exposed. In these causes, joined with causes previously indicated,
+we may recognize a probable explanation of the otherwise anomalous fact
+that the Sun, though having a thousand times the mass of Jupiter, has
+yet reached as advanced a stage of concentration. For the force of
+gravity in the Sun, which at his surface is some ten times that at the
+surface of Jupiter, must expose his central parts to a pressure
+relatively very intense; producing, during contraction, a relatively
+rapid genesis of heat. And it is further to be remarked that, though the
+circulating currents in the Sun have far greater distances to travel,
+yet since his rotation is relatively so slow that the angular velocity
+of his substance is but about one-sixtieth of that of Jupiter's
+substance, the resulting obstacle to circulating currents is relatively
+small, and the escape of heat far less retarded. Here, too, we may note
+that in the co-operation of these factors, there seems a reason for the
+greater concentration reached by Jupiter than by Saturn, though Saturn
+is the elder as well as the smaller of the two; for at the same time
+that the gravitative force in Jupiter is more than twice as great as in
+Saturn, his velocity of rotation is very little greater, so that the
+opposition of the centrifugal force to the centripetal is not much more
+than half.
+
+But now, not judging more than roughly of the effects of these several
+factors, co-operating in various ways and degrees, some to aid
+concentration and others to resist it, it is sufficiently manifest that,
+other things equal, the larger nebulous spheroids, longer in losing
+their heat, will more slowly reach high specific gravities; and that
+where the contrasts in size are so immense as those between the greater
+and the smaller planets, the smaller may have reached relatively high
+specific gravities when the greater have reached but relatively low
+ones. Further, it appears that such qualification of the process as
+results from the more rapid genesis of heat in the larger masses, will
+be countervailed where high velocity of rotation greatly impedes the
+circulating currents. Thus interpreted then, the various specific
+gravities of the planets may be held to furnish further evidences
+supporting the Nebular Hypothesis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Increase of density and escape of heat are correlated phenomena, and
+hence in the foregoing section, treating of the respective densities of
+the celestial bodies in connexion with nebular condensation, much has
+been said and implied respecting the accompanying genesis and
+dissipation of heat. Quite apart, however, from the foregoing arguments
+and inferences, there is to be noted the fact that in the present
+temperatures of the celestial bodies at large we find additional
+supports to the hypothesis; and these, too, of the most substantial
+character. For if, as is implied above, heat must inevitably be
+generated by the aggregation of diffused matter, we ought to find in all
+the heavenly bodies, either present high temperatures or marks of past
+high temperatures. This we do, in the places and in the degrees which
+the hypothesis requires.
+
+Observations showing that as we descend below the Earth's surface there
+is a progressive increase of heat, joined with the conspicuous evidence
+furnished by volcanoes, necessitate the conclusion that the temperature
+is very high at great depths. Whether, as some believe, the interior of
+the Earth is still molten, or whether, as Sir William Thomson contends,
+it must be solid; there is agreement in the inference that its heat is
+intense. And it has been further shown that the rate at which the
+temperature increases on descending below the surface, is such as would
+be found in a mass which had been cooling for an indefinite period. The
+Moon, too, shows us, by its corrugations and its conspicuous extinct
+volcanoes, that in it there has been a process of refrigeration and
+contraction, like that which has gone on in the Earth. There is no
+teleological explanation of these facts. The frequent destructions of
+life by earthquakes and volcanoes, imply, rather, that it would have
+been better had the Earth been created with a low internal temperature.
+But if we contemplate the facts in connexion with the Nebular
+Hypothesis, we see that this still-continued high internal heat is one
+of its corollaries. The Earth must have passed through the gaseous and
+the molten conditions before it became solid, and must for an almost
+infinite period by its internal heat continue to bear evidence of this
+origin.
+
+The group of giant planets furnishes remarkable evidence. The _a priori_
+inference drawn above, that great size joined with relatively high ratio
+of centrifugal force to gravity must greatly retard aggregation, and
+must thus, by checking the genesis and dissipation of heat, make the
+process of cooling a slow one, has of late years received verifications
+from inferences drawn _a posteriori_; so that now the current conclusion
+among astronomers is that in physical condition the great planets are in
+stages midway between that of the Earth and that of the Sun. The fact
+that the centre of Jupiter's disc is twice or thrice as bright as his
+periphery, joined with the facts that he seems to radiate more light
+than is accounted for by reflection of the Sun's rays, and that his
+spectrum shows the "red-star line", are taken as evidences of
+luminosity; while the immense and rapid perturbations in his atmosphere,
+far greater than could be caused by heat received from the Sun, as well
+as the formation of spots analogous to those of the Sun, which also,
+like those of the Sun, show a higher rate of rotation near the equator
+than further from it, are held to imply high internal temperature. Thus
+in Jupiter, as also in Saturn, we find states which, not admitting of
+any teleological explanations (for they manifestly exclude the
+possibility of life), admit of explanations derived from the Nebular
+Hypothesis.
+
+But the argument from temperature does not end here. There remains to be
+noticed a more conspicuous and still more significant fact. If the Solar
+System was produced by the concentration of diffused matter, which
+evolved heat while gravitating into its present dense form; then there
+is an obvious implication. Other things equal, the latest-formed mass
+will be the latest in cooling--will, for an almost infinite time,
+possess a greater heat than the earlier-formed ones. Other things equal,
+the largest mass will, because of its superior aggregative force, become
+hotter than the others, and radiate more intensely. Other things equal,
+the largest mass, notwithstanding the higher temperature it reaches,
+will, in consequence of its relatively small surface, be the slowest in
+losing its evolved heat. And hence, if there is one mass which was not
+only formed after the rest, but exceeds them enormously in size, it
+follows that this one will reach an intensity of incandescence far
+beyond that reached by the rest; and will continue in a state of intense
+incandescence long after the rest have cooled. Such a mass we have in
+the Sun. It is a corollary from the Nebular Hypothesis, that the matter
+forming the Sun assumed its present integrated shape at a period much
+more recent than that at which the planets became definite bodies. The
+quantity of matter contained in the Sun is nearly five million times
+that contained in the smallest planet, and above a thousand times that
+contained in the largest. And while, from the enormous gravitative force
+of his parts to their common centre, the evolution of heat has been
+intense, the facilities of radiation have been relatively small. Hence
+the still-continued high temperature. Just that condition of the central
+body which is a necessary inference from the Nebular Hypothesis, we find
+actually existing in the Sun.
+
+[The paragraph which here follows, though it contains some questionable
+propositions, I reproduce just as it stood when first published in 1858,
+for reasons which will presently be apparent.]
+
+It may be well to consider more closely, what is the probable condition
+of the Sun's surface. Round the globe of incandescent molten substances,
+thus conceived to form the visible body of the Sun [which in conformity
+with the argument in a previous section, now transferred to the Addenda,
+was inferred to be hollow and filled with gaseous matter at high
+tension] there is known to exist a voluminous atmosphere: the inferior
+brilliancy of the Sun's border, and the appearances during a total
+eclipse, alike show this. What now must be the constitution of this
+atmosphere? At a temperature approaching a thousand times that of molten
+iron, which is the calculated temperature of the solar surface, very
+many, if not all, of the substances we know as solid, would become
+gaseous; and though the Sun's enormous attractive force must be a
+powerful check on this tendency to assume the form of vapour, yet it
+cannot be questioned that if the body of the Sun consists of molten
+substances, some of them must be constantly undergoing evaporation. That
+the dense gases thus continually being generated will form the entire
+mass of the solar atmosphere, is not probable. If anything is to be
+inferred, either from the Nebular Hypothesis, or from the analogies
+supplied by the planets, it must be concluded that the outermost part of
+the solar atmosphere consists of what are called permanent gases--gases
+that are not condensible into fluid even at low temperatures. If we
+consider what must have been the state of things here, when the surface
+of the Earth was molten, we shall see that round the still molten
+surface of the Sun, there probably exists a stratum of dense aeriform
+matter, made up of sublimed metals and metallic compounds, and above
+this a stratum of comparatively rare medium analogous to air. What now
+will happen with these two strata? Did they both consist of permanent
+gases, they could not remain separate: according to a well-known law,
+they would eventually form a homogeneous mixture. But this will by no
+means happen when the lower stratum consists of matters that are gaseous
+only at excessively high temperatures. Given off from a molten surface,
+ascending, expanding, and cooling, these will presently reach a limit of
+elevation above which they cannot exist as vapour, but must condense and
+precipitate. Meanwhile the upper stratum, habitually charged with its
+quantum of these denser matters, as our air with its quantum of water,
+and ready to deposit them on any depression of temperature, must be
+habitually unable to take up any more of the lower stratum; and
+therefore this lower stratum will remain quite distinct from it.[20]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Considered in their _ensemble_, the several groups of evidences assigned
+amount almost to proof. We have seen that, when critically examined,
+the speculations of late years current respecting the nature of the
+nebulæ, commit their promulgators to sundry absurdities; while, on the
+other hand, we see that the various appearances these nebulæ present,
+are explicable as different stages in the precipitation and aggregation
+of diffused matter. We find that the immense majority of comets (_i.e._
+omitting the periodic ones), by their physical constitution, their
+immensely-extended and variously-directed paths, the distribution of
+those paths, and their manifest structural relation to the Solar System,
+bear testimony to the past existence of that system in a nebulous form.
+Not only do those obvious peculiarities in the motions of the planets
+which first suggested the Nebular Hypothesis, supply proofs of it, but
+on closer examination we discover, in the slightly-diverging
+inclinations of their orbits, in their various rates of rotation, and
+their differently-directed axes of rotation, that the planets yield us
+yet further testimony; while the satellites, by sundry traits, and
+especially by their occurrence in greater or less abundance where the
+hypothesis implies greater or less abundance, confirm this testimony. By
+tracing out the process of planetary condensation, we are led to
+conclusions respecting the physical states of planets which explain
+their anomalous specific gravities. Once more, it turns out that what is
+inferable from the Nebular Hypothesis respecting the temperatures of
+celestial bodies, is just what observation establishes; and that both
+the absolute and the relative temperatures of the Sun and planets are
+thus accounted for. When we contemplate these various evidences in their
+totality--when we observe that, by the Nebular Hypothesis, the leading
+phenomena of the Solar System, and the heavens in general, are
+explicable; and when, on the other hand, we consider that the current
+cosmogony is not only without a single fact to stand on, but is at
+variance with all our positive knowledge of Nature, we see that the
+proof becomes overwhelming.
+
+It remains only to point out that while the genesis of the Solar System,
+and of countless other systems like it, is thus rendered comprehensible,
+the ultimate mystery continues as great as ever. The problem of
+existence is not solved: it is simply removed further back. The Nebular
+Hypothesis throws no light on the origin of diffused matter; and
+diffused matter as much needs accounting for as concrete matter. The
+genesis of an atom is not easier to conceive than the genesis of a
+planet. Nay, indeed, so far from making the Universe less a mystery than
+before, it makes it a greater mystery. Creation by manufacture is a much
+lower thing than creation by evolution. A man can put together a
+machine; but he cannot make a machine develop itself. That our
+harmonious universe once existed potentially as formless diffused
+matter, and has slowly grown into its present organized state, is a far
+more astonishing fact than would have been its formation after the
+artificial method vulgarly supposed. Those who hold it legitimate to
+argue from phenomena to noumena, may rightly contend that the Nebular
+Hypothesis implies a First Cause as much transcending "the mechanical
+God of Paley," as this does the fetish of the savage.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 11: _Cosmos._ (Seventh Edition.) Vol. i. pp. 79, 80.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Since the publication of this essay the late Mr. R. A.
+Proctor has given various further reasons for the conclusion that the
+nebulæ belong to our own sidereal system. The opposite conclusion,
+contested throughout the foregoing section, has now been tacitly
+abandoned.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Any objection made to the extreme tenuity this involves,
+is met by the calculation of Newton, who proved that were a spherical
+inch of air removed four thousand miles from the Earth, it would expand
+into a sphere more than filling the orbit of Saturn.]
+
+[Footnote 14: A reference may fitly be made here to a reason given by
+Mons. Babinet for rejection of the Nebular Hypothesis. He has calculated
+that taking the existing Sun, with its observed angular velocity, its
+substance, if expanded so as to fill the orbit of Neptune, would have
+nothing approaching the angular velocity which the time of revolution of
+that planet implies. The assumption he makes is inadmissible. He
+supposes that all parts of the nebulous spheroid when it filled
+Neptune's orbit, had the same angular velocities. But the process of
+nebular condensation as indicated above, implies that the remoter
+flocculi of nebulous matter, later in reaching the central mass, and
+forming its peripheral portions, will acquire, during their longer
+journeys towards it, greater velocities. An inspection of one of the
+spiral nebulæ, as 51st or 99th Messier, at once shows that the outlying
+portions when they reach the nucleus, will form an equatorial belt
+moving round the common centre more rapidly than the rest. Thus the
+central parts will have small angular velocities, while there will be
+increasing angular velocities of parts increasingly remote from the
+centre. And while the density of the spheroid continues small, fluid
+friction will scarcely at all change these differences.
+
+A like criticism may, I think, be passed on an opinion expressed by
+Prof. Newcomb. He says:--"When the contraction [of the nebulous
+spheroid] had gone so far that the centrifugal and attracting forces
+nearly balanced each other at the outer equatorial limit of the mass,
+the result would have been that contraction in the direction of the
+equator would cease entirely, and be confined to the polar regions, each
+particle dropping, not towards the sun, but towards the plane of the
+solar equator. Thus, we should have a constant flattening of the
+spheroidal atmosphere until it was reduced to a thin flat disk. This
+disk might then separate itself into rings, which would form planets in
+much the same way that Laplace supposed. But there would probably be no
+marked difference in the age of the planets." (_Popular Astronomy_,
+p. 512.) Now this conclusion assumes, like that of M. Babinet, that all
+parts of the nebulous spheroid had equal angular velocities. If, as
+above contended, it is inferable from the process by which a nebulous
+spheroid was formed, that its outer portions revolved with greater
+angular velocities than its inner; then the inference which Prof.
+Newcomb draws is not necessitated.]
+
+[Footnote 15: It is true that since this essay was written reasons have
+been given for concluding that comets consist of swarms of meteors
+enveloped in aeriform matter. Very possibly this is the constitution of
+the periodic comets which, approximating their orbits to the plane of
+the Solar System, form established parts of the System, and which, as
+will be hereafter indicated, have probably a quite different origin.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Though this rule fails at the periphery of the Solar
+System, yet it fails only where the axis of rotation, instead of being
+almost perpendicular to the orbit-plane, is very little inclined to it;
+and where, therefore, the forces tending to produce the congruity of
+motions were but little operative.]
+
+[Footnote 17: It is true that, as expressed by him, these propositions
+of Laplace are not all beyond dispute. An astronomer of the highest
+authority, who has favoured me with some criticisms on this essay,
+alleges that instead of a nebulous ring rupturing at one point, and
+collapsing into a single mass, "all probability would be in favour of
+its breaking up into many masses." This alternative result certainly
+seems the more likely. But granting that a nebulous ring would break up
+into many masses, it may still be contended that, since the chances are
+infinity to one against these being of equal sizes _and_ equidistant,
+they could not remain evenly distributed round their orbit. This annular
+chain of gaseous masses would break up into groups of masses; these
+groups would eventually aggregate into larger groups; and the final
+result would be the formation of a single mass. I have put the question
+to an astronomer scarcely second in authority to the one above referred
+to, and he agrees that this would probably be the process.]
+
+[Footnote 18: The comparative statement here given differs, slightly in
+most cases and in one case largely, from the statement included in this
+essay as originally published in 1858. As then given the table ran
+thus:--
+
+   Mercury.   1/362
+   Venus.     1/282
+   Earth.     1/289   1 Satellite.
+   Mars.      1/326
+   Jupiter.   1/14    4 Satellites.
+   Saturn.    1/6·2   8 Satellites, and three rings.
+   Uranus.    1/9     4 (or 6 according to Herschel).
+
+The calculations ending with these figures were made while the Sun's
+distance was still estimated at 95 millions of miles. Of course the
+reduction afterwards established in the estimated distance, entailing,
+as it did, changes in the factors which entered into the calculations,
+affected the results; and, though it was unlikely that the relations
+stated would be materially changed, it was needful to have the
+calculations made afresh. Mr. Lynn has been good enough to undertake
+this task, and the figures given in the text are his. In the case of
+Mars a large error in my calculation had arisen from accepting Arago's
+statement of his density (0·95), which proves to be something like
+double what it should be. Here a curious incident may be named. When, in
+1877, it was discovered that Mars has two satellites, though, according
+to my hypothesis, it seemed that he should have none, my faith in it
+received a shock; and since that time I have occasionally considered
+whether the fact is in any way reconcilable with the hypothesis. But now
+the proof afforded by Mr. Lynn that my calculation contained a wrong
+factor, disposes of the difficulty--nay, changes the objection to a
+verification. It turns out that, according to the hypothesis, Mars
+_ought_ to have satellites; and, further, that he ought to have a number
+intermediate between 1 and 4.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Since this paragraph was first published, the discovery
+that Mars has two satellites revolving round him in periods shorter than
+that of his rotation, has shown that the implication on which Laplace
+here insists is general only, and not absolute. Were it a necessary
+assumption that all parts of a concentrating nebulous spheroid revolve
+with the same angular velocities, the exception would appear an
+inexplicable one; but if, as suggested in a preceding section, it is
+inferable from the process of formation of a nebulous spheroid, that its
+outer strata will move round the general axis with higher angular
+velocities than the inner ones, there follows a possible interpretation.
+Though, during the earlier stages of concentration, while the nebulous
+matter, and especially its peripheral portions, are very rare, the
+effects of fluid-friction will be too small to change greatly such
+differences of angular velocities as exist; yet, when concentration has
+reached its last stages, and the matter is passing from the gaseous into
+the liquid and solid states, and when also the convection-currents have
+become common to the whole mass (which they probably at first are not),
+the angular velocity of the peripheral portion will gradually be
+assimilated to that of the interior; and it becomes comprehensible that
+in the case of Mars the peripheral portion, more and more dragged back
+by the internal mass, lost part of its velocity during the interval
+between the formation of the innermost satellite and the arrival at the
+final form.]
+
+[Footnote 20: I was about to suppress part of the above paragraph,
+written before the science of solar physics had taken shape, because of
+certain physical difficulties which stand in the way of its argument,
+when, on looking into recent astronomical works, I found that the
+hypothesis it sets forth respecting the Sun's structure has kinships to
+the several hypotheses since set forth by Zöllner, Faye, and Young. I
+have therefore decided to let it stand as it originally did.
+
+The contemplated partial suppression just named, was prompted by
+recognition of the truth that to effect mechanical stability the gaseous
+interior of the Sun must have a density at least equal to that of the
+molten shell (greater, indeed, at the centre); and this seems to imply a
+specific gravity higher than that which he possesses. It may, indeed, be
+that the unknown elements which spectrum analysis shows to exist in the
+Sun, are metals of very low specific gravities, and that, existing in
+large proportion with other of the lighter metals, they may form a
+molten shell not denser than is implied by the facts. But this can be
+regarded as nothing more than a possibility.
+
+No need, however, has arisen for either relinquishing or holding but
+loosely the associated conclusions respecting the constitution of the
+photosphere and its envelope. Widely speculative as seemed these
+suggested corollaries from the Nebular Hypothesis when set forth in
+1858, and quite at variance with the beliefs then current, they proved
+to be not ill-founded. At the close of 1859, there came the discoveries
+of Kirchhoff, proving the existence of various metallic vapours in the
+Sun's atmosphere.]
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDA.
+
+
+Speculative as is much of the foregoing essay, it appears undesirable to
+include in it anything still more speculative. For this reason I have
+decided to set forth separately some views concerning the genesis of the
+so-called elements during nebular condensation, and concerning the
+accompanying physical effects. At the same time it has seemed best to
+detach from the essay some of the more debatable conclusions originally
+contained in it; so that its general argument may not be needlessly
+implicated with them. These new portions, together with the old portions
+which re-appear more or less modified, I here append in a series of
+notes.
+
+
+NOTE I. For the belief that the so-called elements are compound there
+are both special reasons and general reasons. Among the special may be
+named the parallelism between allotropy and isomerism; the numerous
+lines in the spectrum of each element; and the cyclical law of Newlands
+and Mendeljeff. Of the more general reasons, which, as distinguished
+from these chemical or chemico-physical ones, may fitly be called
+cosmical, the following are the chief.
+
+The general law of evolution, if it does not actually involve the
+conclusion that the so-called elements are compounds, yet affords _a
+priori_ ground for suspecting that they are such. The implication is
+that, while the matter composing the Solar System has progressed
+physically from that relatively-homogeneous state which it had as a
+nebula to that relatively-heterogeneous state presented by Sun, planets,
+and satellites, it has also progressed chemically, from the
+relatively-homogeneous state in which it was composed of one or a few
+types of matter, to that relatively-heterogeneous state in which it is
+composed of many types of matter very diverse in their properties. This
+deduction from the law which holds throughout the cosmos as now known to
+us, would have much weight even were it unsupported by induction; but a
+survey of chemical phenomena at large discloses several groups of
+inductive evidences supporting it.
+
+The first is that since the cooling of the Earth reached an advanced
+stage, the components of its crust have been ever increasing in
+heterogeneity. When the so-called elements, originally existing in a
+dissociated state, united into oxides, acids, and other binary
+compounds, the total number of different substances was immensely
+augmented, the new substances were more complex than the old, and their
+properties were more varied. That is, the assemblage became more
+heterogeneous in its kinds, in the composition of each kind, and in the
+range of chemical characters. When, at a later period, there arose salts
+and other compounds of similar degrees of complexity, there was again an
+increase of heterogeneity, alike in the aggregate and in its members.
+And when, still later, matters classed as organic became possible, the
+multiformity was yet further augmented in kindred ways. If, then,
+chemical evolution, so far as we can trace it, has been from the
+homogeneous to the heterogeneous, may we not fairly suppose that it has
+been so from the beginning? If, from late stages in the Earth's history,
+we run back, and find the lines of chemical evolution continually
+converging, until they bring us to bodies which we cannot decompose, may
+we not suspect that, could we run back these lines still further, we
+should come to still decreasing heterogeneity in the number and nature
+of the substances, until we reached something like homogeneity?
+
+A parallel argument may be derived from consideration of the affinities
+and stabilities of chemical compounds. Beginning with the complex
+nitrogenous bodies out of which living things are formed, and which, in
+the history of the Earth, are the most modern, at the same time that
+they are the most heterogeneous, we see that the affinities and
+stabilities of these are extremely small. Their molecules do not enter
+bodily into union with those of other substances so as to form more
+complex compounds still, and their components often fail to hold
+together under ordinary conditions. A stage lower in degree of
+composition we come to the vast assemblage of oxy-hydro-carbons, numbers
+of which show many and decided affinities, and are stable at common
+temperatures. Passing to the inorganic group, we are shown by the salts
+&c. strong affinities between their components and unions which are, in
+many cases, not very easily broken. And then when we come to the oxides,
+acids, and other binary compounds, we see that in many cases the
+elements of which they are formed, when brought into the presence of one
+another under favourable conditions, unite with violence; and that many
+of their unions cannot be dissolved by heat alone. If, then, as we go
+back from the most modern and most complex substances to the most
+ancient and simplest substances, we see, on the average, a great
+increase in affinity and stability, it results that if the same law
+holds with the simplest substances known to us, the components of these,
+if they are compound, may be assumed to have united with affinities far
+more intense than any we have experience of, and to cling together with
+tenacities far exceeding the tenacities with which chemistry acquaints
+us. Hence the existence of a class of substances which are
+undecomposable and therefore seem simple, appears to be an implication;
+and the corollary is that these were formed during early stages of
+terrestrial concentration, under conditions of heat and pressure which
+we cannot now parallel.
+
+Yet another support for the belief that the so-called elements are
+compounds, is derived from a comparison of them, considered as an
+aggregate ascending in their molecular weights, with the aggregate of
+bodies known to be compound, similarly considered in their ascending
+molecular weights. Contrast the binary compounds as a class with the
+quaternary compounds as a class. The molecules constituting oxides
+(whether alkaline or acid or neutral) chlorides, sulphurets, &c. are
+relatively small; and, combining with great avidity, form stable
+compounds. On the other hand, the molecules constituting nitrogenous
+bodies are relatively vast and are chemically inert; and such
+combinations as their simpler types enter into, cannot withstand
+disturbing forces. Now a like difference is seen if we contrast with one
+another the so-called elements. Those of relatively-low molecular
+weights--oxygen, hydrogen, potassium, sodium, &c.,--show great readiness
+to unite among themselves; and, indeed, many of them cannot be prevented
+from uniting under ordinary conditions. Contrariwise, under ordinary
+conditions the substances of high molecular weights--the "noble
+metals"--are indifferent to other substances; and such compounds as they
+do form under conditions specially adjusted, are easily destroyed. Thus
+as, among the bodies we know to be compound, increasing molecular weight
+is associated with the appearance of certain characters, and as, among
+the bodies we class as simple, increasing molecular weight is
+associated with the appearance of similar characters, the composite
+nature of the elements is in another way pointed to.
+
+There has to be added one further class of phenomena, congruous with
+those above named, which here specially concerns us. Looking generally
+at chemical unions, we see that the heat evolved usually decreases as
+the degree of composition, and consequent massiveness, of the molecules,
+increases. In the first place, we have the fact that during the
+formation of simple compounds the heat evolved is much greater than that
+which is evolved during the formation of complex compounds: the
+elements, when uniting with one another, usually give out much heat;
+while, when the compounds they form are recompounded, but little heat is
+given out; and, as shown by the experiments of Prof. Andrews, the heat
+given out during the union of acids and bases is habitually smaller
+where the molecular weight of the base is greater. Then, in the second
+place, we see that among the elements themselves, the unions of those
+having low molecular weights result in far more heat than do the unions
+of those having high molecular weights. If we proceed on the supposition
+that the so-called elements are compounds, and if this law, if not
+universal, holds of undecomposable substances as of decomposable, then
+there are two implications. The one is that those compoundings and
+recompoundings by which the elements were formed, must have been
+accompanied by degrees of heat exceeding any degrees of heat known to
+us. The other is that among these compoundings and recompoundings
+themselves, those by which the small-moleculed elements were formed
+produced more intense heat than those by which the large-moleculed
+elements were formed: the elements formed by the final recompoundings
+being necessarily later in origin, and at the same time less stable,
+than the earlier-formed ones.
+
+
+NOTE II. May we from these propositions, and especially from the last,
+draw any conclusions respecting the evolution of heat during nebular
+condensation? And do such conclusions affect in any way the conclusions
+now current?
+
+In the first place, it seems inferable from physico-chemical facts at
+large, that only through the instrumentality of those combinations which
+formed the elements, did the concentration of diffused nebulous matter
+into concrete masses become possible. If we remember that hydrogen and
+oxygen in their uncombined states oppose, the one an insuperable and the
+other an almost insuperable, resistance to liquefaction, while when
+combined the compound assumes the liquid state with facility, we may
+suspect that in like manner the simpler types of matter out of which the
+elements were formed, could not have been reduced even to such degrees
+of density as the known gases show us, without what we may call
+proto-chemical unions: the implication being that after the heat
+resulting from each of such proto-chemical unions had escaped, mutual
+gravitation of the parts was able to produce further condensation of the
+nebulous mass.
+
+If we thus distinguish between the two sources of heat accompanying
+nebular condensation--the heat due to proto-chemical combinations and
+that due to the contraction caused by gravitation (both of them,
+however, being interpretable as consequent on loss of motion), it may be
+inferred that they take different shares during the earlier and during
+the later stages of aggregation. It seems probable that while the
+diffusion is great and the force of mutual gravitation small, the chief
+source of heat is combination of units of matter, simpler than any known
+to us, into such units of matter as those we know; while, conversely,
+when there has been reached close aggregation, the chief source of heat
+is gravitation, with consequent pressure and gradual contraction.
+Supposing this to be so, let us ask what may be inferred. If at the time
+when the nebulous spheroid from which the Solar System resulted, filled
+the orbit of Neptune, it had reached such a degree of density as
+enabled those units of matter which compose the sodium molecules to
+enter into combination; and if, in conformity with the analogies above
+indicated, the heat evolved by this proto-chemical combination was great
+compared with the heats evolved by the chemical combinations known to
+us; the implication is that the nebulous spheroid, in the course of its
+contraction, would have to get rid of a much larger quantity of heat
+than it would, did it commence at any ordinary temperature and had only
+to lose the heat consequent on contraction. That is to say, in
+estimating the past period during which solar emission of heat has been
+going on at a high rate, much must depend on the initial temperature
+assumed; and this may have been rendered intense by the proto-chemical
+changes which took place in early stages.[21]
+
+Respecting the future duration of the solar heat, there must also be
+differences between the estimates made according as we do or do not take
+into account the proto-chemical changes which possibly have still to
+take place. True as it may be that the quantity of heat to be emitted
+is measured by the quantity of motion to be lost, and that this must be
+the same whether the approximation of the molecules is effected by
+chemical unions, or by mutual gravitation, or by both; yet, evidently,
+everything must turn on the degree of condensation supposed to be
+eventually reached; and this must in large measure depend on the natures
+of the substances eventually formed. Though, by spectrum-analysis,
+platinum has recently been detected in the solar atmosphere, it seems
+clear that the metals of low molecular weights greatly predominate; and
+supposing the foregoing arguments to be valid, it may be inferred, as
+not improbable, that the compoundings and recompoundings by which the
+heavy-moleculed elements are produced, not hitherto possible in large
+measure, will hereafter take place; and that, as a result, the Sun's
+density will finally become very great in comparison with what it is
+now. I say "not hitherto possible in large measure", because it is a
+feasible supposition that they may be formed, and can continue to exist,
+only in certain outer parts of the Solar mass, where the pressure is
+sufficiently great while the heat is not too great. And if this be so,
+the implication is that the interior body of the Sun, higher in
+temperature than its peripheral layers, may consist wholly of the metals
+of low atomic weights, and that this may be a part cause of his low
+specific gravity; and a further implication is that when, in course of
+time, the internal temperature falls, the heavy-moleculed elements, as
+they severally become capable of existing in it, may arise: the
+formation of each having an evolution of heat as its concomitant.[22] If
+so, it would seem to follow that the amount of heat to be emitted by
+the Sun, and the length of the period during which the emission will go
+on, must be taken as much greater than if the Sun is supposed to be
+permanently constituted of the elements now predominating in him, and to
+be capable of only that degree of condensation which such composition
+permits.
+
+
+NOTE III. Are the internal structures of celestial bodies all the same,
+or do they differ? And if they differ, can we, from the process of
+nebular condensation, infer the conditions under which they assume one
+or other character? In the foregoing essay as originally published,
+these questions were discussed; and though the conclusions reached
+cannot be sustained in the form given to them, they foreshadow
+conclusions which may, perhaps, be sustained. Referring to the
+conceivable causes of unlike specific gravities in the members of the
+solar system, it was said that these might be--
+
+     "1. Differences between the kinds of matter or matters composing
+     them. 2. Differences between the quantities of matter; for, other
+     things equal, the mutual gravitation of atoms will make a large
+     mass denser than a small one. 3. Differences between the
+     structures: the masses being either solid or liquid throughout, or
+     having central cavities filled with elastic aëriform substance. Of
+     these three conceivable causes, that commonly assigned is the
+     first, more or less modified by the second."
+
+Written as this was before spectrum-analysis had made its disclosures,
+no notice could of course be taken of the way in which these conflict
+with the first of the foregoing suppositions; but after pointing out
+other objections to it the argument continued thus:--
+
+     "However, spite of these difficulties, the current hypothesis is,
+     that the Sun and planets, inclusive of the Earth, are either solid
+     or liquid, or have solid crusts with liquid nuclei."[23]
+
+After saying that the familiarity of this hypothesis must not delude us
+into uncritical acceptance of it, but that if any other hypothesis is
+physically possible it may reasonably be entertained, it was argued that
+by tracing out the process of condensation in a nebulous spheroid, we
+are led to infer the eventual formation of a molten shell with a nucleus
+consisting of gaseous matter at high tension. The paragraph which then
+follows runs thus:--
+
+     "But what," it may be asked, "will become of this gaseous nucleus
+     when exposed to the enormous gravitative pressure of a shell some
+     thousands of miles thick? How can aeriform matter withstand such a
+     pressure?" Very readily. It has been proved that, even when the
+     heat generated by compression is allowed to escape, some gases
+     remain uncondensible by any force we can produce. An unsuccessful
+     attempt lately made in Vienna to liquify oxygen, clearly shows this
+     enormous resistance. The steel piston employed was literally
+     shortened by the pressure used; and yet the gas remained
+     unliquified! If, then, the expansive force is thus immense when the
+     heat evolved is dissipated, what must it be when that heat is in
+     great measure detained, as in the case we are considering? Indeed
+     the experiences of M. Cagniard de Latour have shown that gases may,
+     under pressure, acquire the density of liquids while retaining the
+     aeriform state, provided the temperature continues extremely high.
+     In such a case, every addition to the heat is an addition to the
+     repulsive power of the atoms: the increased pressure itself
+     generates an increased ability to resist; and this remains true to
+     whatever extent the compression is carried. Indeed it is a
+     corollary from the persistence of force that if, under increasing
+     pressure, a gas retains all the heat evolved, its resisting force
+     is _absolutely unlimited_. Hence the internal planetary structure
+     we have described is as physically stable a one as that commonly
+     assumed."
+
+Had this paragraph, and the subsequent paragraphs, been written five
+years later, when Prof. Andrews had published an account of his
+researches, the propositions they contain, while rendered more specific
+and at the same time more defensible, would perhaps have been freed from
+the erroneous implication that the internal structure indicated is an
+universal one. Let us, while guided by Prof. Andrews' results, consider
+what would probably be the successive changes in a condensing nebulous
+spheroid.
+
+Prof. Andrews has shown that for each kind of gaseous matter there is a
+temperature above which no amount of pressure can cause liquefaction.
+The remark, made _a priori_ in the above extract, "that if, under
+increasing pressure, a gas retains all the heat evolved, its
+resisting force is _absolutely unlimited_", harmonizes with the
+inductively-reached result that if the temperature is not lowered to its
+"critical point" a gas does not liquify, however great the force
+applied. At the same time Prof. Andrews' experiments imply that,
+supposing the temperature to be lowered to the point at which
+liquefaction becomes possible, then liquefaction will take place where
+there is first reached the required pressure. What are the corollaries
+in relation to concentrating nebulous spheroids?
+
+Assume a spheroid of such size as will form one of the inferior planets,
+and consisting externally of a voluminous, cloudy atmosphere composed of
+the less condensible elements, and internally of metallic gases: such
+internal gases being kept by convection-currents at temperatures not
+very widely differing. And assume that continuous radiation has brought
+the internal mass of metallic gases down to the critical point of the
+most condensible. May we not say that there is a size of the spheroid
+such that the pressure will not be great enough to produce liquefaction
+at any other place than the centre? or, in other words, that in the
+process of decreasing temperature and increasing pressure, the centre
+will be the place at which the combined conditions of pressure and
+temperature will be first reached? If so, liquefaction, commencing at
+the centre, will spread thence to the periphery; and, in virtue of the
+law that solids have higher melting points under pressure than when
+free, it may be that solidification will similarly, at a later stage,
+begin at the centre and progress outwards: eventually producing, in that
+case, a state such as Sir William Thomson alleges exists in the Earth.
+But now suppose that instead of such a spheroid, we assume one of, say,
+twenty or thirty times the mass; what will then happen? Notwithstanding
+convection-currents, the temperature at the centre must always be
+higher than elsewhere; and in the process of cooling the "critical
+point" of temperature will sooner be reached in the outer parts. Though
+the requisite pressure will not exist near the surface, there is
+evidently, in a large spheroid, a depth below the surface at which the
+pressure will be great enough, if the temperature is sufficiently low.
+Hence it is inferable that somewhere between centre and surface in the
+supposed larger spheroid, there will arise that state described by Prof.
+Andrews, in which "flickering striæ" of liquid float in gaseous matter
+of equal density. And it may be inferred that gradually, as the process
+goes on, these striæ will become more abundant while the gaseous
+interspaces diminish; until, eventually, the liquid becomes continuous.
+Thus there will result a molten shell containing a gaseous nucleus
+equally dense with itself at their surface of contact and more dense at
+the centre--a molten shell which will slowly thicken by additions to
+both exterior and interior.
+
+That a solid crust will eventually form on this molten shell may be
+reasonably concluded. To the demurrer that solidification cannot
+commence at the surface, because the solids formed would sink, there are
+two replies. The first is that various metals expand while solidifying,
+and therefore would float. The second is that since the envelope of the
+supposed spheroid would consist of the gases and non-metallic elements,
+compounds of these with the metals and with one another would
+continually accumulate on the molten shell; and the crust, consisting of
+oxides, chlorides, sulphurets, and the rest, having much less specific
+gravity than the molten shell, would be readily supported by it.
+
+Clearly a planet thus constituted would be in an unstable state. Always
+it would remain liable to a catastrophe resulting from change in its
+gaseous nucleus. If, under some condition of pressure and temperature
+eventually reached, the components of this suddenly entered into one of
+those proto-chemical combinations forming a new element, there might
+result an explosion capable of shattering the entire planet, and
+propelling its fragments in all directions with high velocities. If the
+hypothetical planet between Jupiter and Mars was intermediate in size as
+in position, it would apparently fulfil the conditions under which such
+a catastrophe might occur.
+
+
+NOTE IV. The argument set forth in the foregoing note, is in part
+designed to introduce a question which seems to require
+re-consideration--the origin of the minor planets or planetoids. The
+hypothesis of Olbers, as propounded by him, implied that the disruption
+of the assumed planet between Mars and Jupiter had taken place at no
+very remote period in the past; and this implication was shown to be
+inadmissible by the discovery that there exists no such point of
+intersection of the orbits of the planetoids as the hypothesis requires.
+The inquiry whether, in the past, there was any nearer approach to a
+point of intersection than at present, having resulted in a negative, it
+is held that the hypothesis must be abandoned. It is, however, admitted
+that the mutual perturbations of the planetoids themselves would
+suffice, in the course of some millions of years, to destroy all traces
+of a place of intersection of their orbits, if it once existed. But if
+this be admitted why need the hypothesis be abandoned? Given such
+duration of the Solar System as is currently assumed, there seems no
+reason why lapse of a few millions of years should present any
+difficulty. The explosion may as well have taken place ten million years
+ago as at any more recent period. And whoever grants this must grant
+that the probability of the hypothesis has to be estimated from other
+data.
+
+As a preliminary to closer consideration, let us ask what may be
+inferred from the rate of discovery of the planetoids, and from the
+sizes of those most recently discovered. In 1878, Prof. Newcomb, arguing
+that "the preponderance of evidence is on the side of the number and
+magnitude being limited", says that "the newly discovered ones" "do not
+seem, on the average, to be materially smaller than those which were
+discovered ten years ago"; and further that "the new ones will probably
+be found to grow decidedly rare before another hundred are discovered".
+Now, inspection of the tables contained in the just-published fourth
+edition of Chambers' _Descriptive Astronomy_ (vol. I) shows that whereas
+the planetoids discovered in 1868 (the year Prof. Newcomb singles out
+for comparison) have an average magnitude of 11·56 those discovered last
+year (1888) have an average magnitude of 12·43. Further, it is
+observable that though more than ninety have been discovered since Prof.
+Newcomb wrote, they have by no means become rare: the year 1888 having
+added ten to the list, and having therefore maintained the average rate
+of the preceding ten years. If, then, the indications Prof. Newcomb
+names, had they arisen, would have implied a limitation of the number,
+these opposite indications imply that the number is unlimited. The
+reasonable conclusion appears to be that these minor planets are to be
+counted not by hundreds but by thousands; that more powerful telescopes
+will go on revealing still smaller ones; and that additions to the list
+will cease only when the smallness ends in invisibility.
+
+Commencing now to scrutinize the two hypotheses respecting the genesis
+of these multitudinous bodies, I may first remark concerning that of
+Laplace, that he might possibly not have propounded it had he known that
+instead of four such bodies there are hundreds, if not thousands. The
+supposition that they resulted from the breaking up of a nebulous ring
+into numerous small portions, instead of its collapse into one mass,
+might not, in such case, have seemed to him so probable. It would have
+appeared still less probable had he been aware of all that has since
+been discovered concerning the wide differences of the orbits in size,
+their various and often great eccentricities, and their various and
+often great inclinations. Let us look at these and other incongruous
+traits of them.
+
+(1.) Between the greatest and least mean distances of the planetoids
+there is a space of 200 millions of miles; so that the whole of the
+Earth's orbit might be placed between the limits of the zone occupied,
+and leave 7 millions of miles on either side: add to which that the
+widest excursions of the planetoids occupy a zone of 270 millions of
+miles. Had the rings from which Mercury, Venus, and the Earth were
+formed been one-sixth of the smaller width or one-ninth of the greater,
+they would have united: there would have been no nebulous rings at all,
+but a continuous disk. Nay more, since one of the planetoids trenches
+upon the orbit of Mars, it follows that the nebulous ring out of which
+the planetoids were formed must have overlapped that out of which Mars
+was formed. How do these implications consist with the nebular
+hypothesis? (2.) The tacit assumption usually made is that the different
+parts of a nebulous ring have the same angular velocities. Though this
+assumption may not be strictly true, yet it seems scarcely likely that
+it is so widely untrue as it would be had the inner part of the ring an
+angular velocity nearly thrice that of the outer. Yet this is implied.
+While the period of Thule is 8.8 years, the period of Medusa is 3·1
+years. (3.) The eccentricity of Jupiter's orbit is 0·04816, and the
+eccentricity of Mars' orbit is 0·09311. Estimated by groups of the first
+found and last found of the planetoids, the average eccentricity of the
+assemblage is about three times that of Jupiter and more than one and a
+half times that of Mars; and among the members of the assemblage
+themselves, some have an eccentricity thirty-five times that of others.
+How came this nebulous zone, out of which it is supposed the planetoids
+arose, to have originated eccentricities so divergent from one another
+as well as from those of the neighbouring planets? (4.) A like question
+may be asked respecting the inclinations of the orbits. The average
+inclination of the planetoid-orbits is four times the inclination of
+Mars' orbit and six times the inclination of Jupiter's orbit; and among
+the planetoid-orbits themselves the inclinations of some are fifty times
+those of others. How are all these differences to be accounted for on
+the hypothesis of genesis from a nebulous ring? (5.) Much greater
+becomes the difficulty on inquiring how these extremely unlike
+eccentricities and inclinations came to co-exist before the parts of the
+nebulous ring separated, and how they survived after the separation.
+Were all the great eccentricities displayed by the outermost members of
+the group, and the small by the innermost members, and were the
+inclinations so distributed that the orbits having much belonged to one
+part of the group, and those having little to another part of the group;
+the difficulty of explanation might not be insuperable. But the
+arrangement is by no means this. The orbits are, to use an expressive
+word, miscellaneously jumbled. Hence, if we go back to the nebulous
+ring, there presents itself the question,--How came each
+planetoid-forming portion of nebulous matter, when it gathered itself
+together and separated, to have a motion round the Sun differing so much
+from the motions of its neighbours in eccentricity and inclination? And
+there presents itself the further question,--How, during the time when
+it was concentrating into a planetoid, did it manage to jostle its way
+through all the differently-moving like masses of nebulous matter, and
+yet to preserve its individuality? Answers to these questions are, it
+seems to me, not even imaginable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Turn we now to the alternative hypothesis. During revision of the
+foregoing essay, in preparation for that edition of the volume
+containing it which was published in 1883, there occurred the thought
+that some light on the origin of the planetoids ought to be obtained by
+study of their distributions and movements. If, as Olbers supposed,
+they resulted from the bursting of a planet once revolving in the region
+they occupy, the implications are:--first, that the fragments must be
+most abundant in the space immediately about the original orbit, and
+less abundant far away from it; second, that the large fragments must be
+relatively few, while of smaller fragments the numbers will increase as
+the sizes decrease; third, that as some among the smaller fragments will
+be propelled further than any of the larger, the widest deviations in
+mean distance from the mean distance of the original planet, will be
+presented by the smallest members of the assemblage; and fourth, that
+the orbits differing most from the rest in eccentricity and in
+inclination, will be among those of these smallest members. In the
+fourth edition of Chambers's _Handbook of Descriptive and Practical
+Astronomy_ (the first volume of which has just been issued) there is a
+list of the elements (extracted and adapted from the _Berliner
+Astronomisches Jahrbuch_ for 1890) of all the small planets (281 in
+number) which had been discovered up to the end of 1888. The apparent
+brightness, as expressed in equivalent star-magnitudes, is the only
+index we have to the probable comparative sizes of by far the largest
+number of the planetoids: the exceptions being among those first
+discovered. Thus much premised, let us take the above points in order.
+(1) There is a region lying between 2·50 and 2·80 (in terms of the
+Earth's mean distance from the Sun) where the planetoids are found in
+maximum abundance. The mean between these extremes, 2·65, is nearly the
+same as the average of the distances of the four largest and
+earliest-known of these bodies, which amounts to 2·64. May we not say
+that the thick clustering about this distance (which is, however, rather
+less than that assigned for the original planet by Bode's empirical
+law), in contrast with the wide scattering of the comparatively few
+whose distances are little more than 2 or exceed 3, is a fact in
+accordance with the hypothesis in question?[24] (2) Any table which
+gives the apparent magnitudes of the planetoids, shows at once how much
+the number of the smaller members of the assemblage exceeds that of
+those which are comparatively large; and every succeeding year has
+emphasized this contrast more strongly. Only one of them (Vesta) exceeds
+in brightness the seventh star-magnitude, while one other (Ceres) is
+between the seventh and eighth, and a third (Pallas) is above the
+eighth; but between the eighth and ninth there are six; between the
+ninth and tenth, twenty; between the tenth and eleventh, fifty-five;
+below the eleventh a much larger number is known, and the number
+existing is probably far greater,--a conclusion we cannot doubt when the
+difficulty of finding the very faint members of the family, visible only
+in the largest telescopes, is considered. (3) Kindred evidence is
+furnished if we broadly contrast their mean distances. Out of the 13
+largest planetoids whose apparent brightnesses exceed that of a star of
+the 9·5 magnitude, there is not one having a mean distance that exceeds
+3. Of those having magnitudes at least 9·5 and smaller than 10, there
+are 15; and of these one only has a mean distance greater than 3. Of
+those between 10 and 10·5 there are 17; and of these also there is one
+exceeding 3 in mean distance. In the next group there are 37, and of
+these 5 have this great mean distance. The next group, 48, contains 12
+such; the next, 47, contains 13 such. Of those of the twelfth magnitude
+and fainter, 72 planetoids have been discovered, and of those of them
+of which the orbits have been computed, no fewer than 23 have a mean
+distance exceeding 3 in terms of the Earth's. It is evident from this
+how comparatively erratic are the fainter members of the extensive
+family with which we are dealing. (4) To illustrate the next point, it
+may be noted that among the planetoids whose sizes have been
+approximately measured, the orbits of the two largest, Vesta and Ceres,
+have eccentricities falling between .05 and .10, whilst the orbits of
+the two smallest, Menippe and Eva, have eccentricities falling between
+.20 and .25, and between .30 and .35. And then among those more recently
+discovered, having diameters so small that measurement of them has not
+been practicable, come the extremely erratic ones,--Hilda and Thule,
+which have mean distances of 3.97 and 4.25 respectively; Æthra, having
+an orbit so eccentric that it cuts the orbit of Mars; and Medusa, which
+has the smallest mean distance from the Sun of any. (5) If the average
+eccentricities of the orbits of the planetoids grouped according to
+their decreasing sizes are compared, no very definite results are
+disclosed, excepting this, that the eight Polyhymnia, Atalanta,
+Eurydice, Æthra, Eva, Andromache, Istria, and Eudora, which have the
+greatest eccentricities (falling between .30 and .38), are all among
+those of smallest star-magnitudes. Nor when we consider the inclinations
+of the orbits do we meet with obvious verifications; since the
+proportion of highly-inclined orbits among the smaller planetoids does
+not appear to be greater than among the others. But consideration shows
+that there are two ways in which these last comparisons are vitiated.
+One is that the inclinations are measured from the plane of the
+ecliptic, instead of being measured from the plane of the orbit of the
+hypothetical planet. The other, and more important one, is that the
+search for planetoids has naturally been carried on in that
+comparatively narrow zone within which most of their orbits fall; and
+that, consequently, those having the most highly-inclined orbits are the
+least likely to have been detected, especially if they are at the same
+time among the smallest. Moreover, considering the general relation
+between the inclination of planetoid orbits and their eccentricities, it
+is probable that among the orbits of these undetected planetoids are
+many of the most eccentric. But while recognizing the incompleteness of
+the evidence, it seems to me that it goes far to justify the hypothesis
+of Olbers, and is quite incongruous with that of Laplace. And as having
+the same meanings let me not omit the remarkable fact concerning the
+planetoids discovered by D'Arrest, that "if their orbits are figured
+under the form of material rings, these rings will be found so
+entangled, that it would be possible, by means of one among them taken
+at hazard, to lift up all the rest,"--a fact incongruous with Laplace's
+hypothesis, which implies an approximate concentricity, but quite
+congruous with the hypothesis of an exploded planet.
+
+Next to be considered come phenomena, the bearings of which on the
+question before us are scarcely considered--I mean those presented by
+meteors and shooting stars. The natures and distributions of these
+harmonize with the hypothesis of an exploded planet, and I think with no
+other hypothesis. The theory of volcanic origin, joined with the remark
+that the Sun emits jets which might propel them with adequate
+velocities, seems quite untenable. Such meteoric bodies as have
+descended to us, forbid absolutely the supposition of solar origin. Nor
+can they rationally be ascribed to planetary volcanoes. Even were their
+mineral characters appropriate, which many of them are not (for
+volcanoes do not eject iron), no planetary volcanoes could propel them
+with anything like the implied velocity--could no more withstand the
+tremendous force to be assumed, than could a card-board gun the force
+behind a rifle bullet. But that their mineral characters, various as
+they are, harmonize with the supposition that they were derived from
+the crust of a planet is manifest; and that the bursting of a planet
+might give to them, and to shooting stars, the needful velocities, is a
+reasonable conclusion. Along with those larger fragments of the crust
+constituting the known planetoids, varying from some 200 miles in
+diameter to little over a dozen, there would be sent out still more
+multitudinous portions of the crust, decreasing in size as they
+increased in number. And while there would thus result such masses as
+occasionally fall through the Earth's atmosphere to its surface, there
+would, in an accompanying process, be an adequate cause for the myriads
+of far smaller masses which, as shooting stars, are dissipated in
+passing through the Earth's atmosphere. Let us figure to ourselves, as
+well as we may, the process of explosion.
+
+Assume that the diameter of the missing planet was 20,000 miles; that
+its solid crust was a thousand miles thick; that under this came a shell
+of molten metallic matter which was another thousand miles thick; and
+that the space, 16,000 miles in diameter, within this, was occupied by
+the equally dense mass of gases above the "critical point", which,
+entering into a proto-chemical combination, caused the destroying
+explosion. The primary fissures in the crust must have been far
+apart--probably averaging distances between them as great as the
+thickness of the crust. Supposing them approximately equidistant, there
+would, in the equatorial periphery, be between 60 and 70 fissures. By
+the time the primary fragments thus separated had been heaved a mile
+outwards, the fissures formed would severally have, at the surface, a
+width of 170 odd yards. Of course these great masses, as soon as they
+moved, would themselves begin to fall in pieces; especially at their
+bounding surfaces. But passing over the resulting complications, we see
+that when the masses had been propelled 10 miles outwards, the fissures
+between them would be each a mile wide. Notwithstanding the enormous
+forces at work, an appreciable interval would elapse before these vast
+portions of the crust could be put in motion with any considerable
+velocities. Perhaps the estimate will be under the mark if we assume
+that it took 10 seconds to propel them through the first mile, and that,
+by implication, at the end of 20 seconds they had travelled 4 miles, and
+at the end of 30 seconds 9 miles. Supposing this granted, let us ask
+what would be taking place in each intervening fissure a thousand miles
+deep, which, in the space of half a minute, had opened out to nearly a
+mile wide, and in the subsequent half minute to a chasm approaching 3
+miles in width. There would first be propelled through it enormous jets
+of the molten metals composing the internal liquid shell; and these
+would part into relatively small masses as they were shot into space.
+Presently, as the chasm opened to some miles in width, the molten metals
+would begin to be followed by the equally dense gaseous matter behind,
+and the two would rush out together. Soon the gases, predominating,
+would carry with them the portions of the liquid shell continually
+collapsing; until the blast became one filled with millions of small
+masses, billions of smaller masses, and trillions of drops. These would
+be driven into space in a stream, the emission of which would continue
+for many seconds or even several minutes. Remembering the rate of motion
+of the jets emitted from the solar surface, and supposing that the
+blasts produced by this explosion reached only one-tenth of that rate,
+these myriads of small masses and drops would be propelled with
+planetary velocities, and in approximately the same direction. I say
+approximately, because they would be made to deviate somewhat by the
+friction and irregularities of the chasm passed through, and also by the
+rotation of the planet. Observe, however, that though they would all
+have immense velocities, their velocities would not be equal. During its
+earlier stages the blast would be considerably retarded by the
+resistance which the sides of its channel offered. When this became
+relatively small the velocity of the blast would reach its maximum; from
+which it would decline when the space for emission became very wide,
+and the pressure behind consequently less. Hence these almost infinitely
+numerous particles of planet-spray, as we might call it, as well as
+those formed by the condensation of the metallic vapours accompanying
+them, would forthwith begin to part company: some going rapidly in
+advance, and others falling behind; until the stream of them,
+perpetually elongating, formed an orbit round the Sun, or rather an
+assemblage of innumerable orbits, separating widely at aphelion and
+perihelion, but approximating midway, where they might fall within a
+space of, say, some two millions of miles, as do the orbits of the
+November meteors. At a later stage of the explosion, when the large
+masses, having moved far outwards, had also fallen to pieces of every
+size, from that of Vesta to that of an aerolite, and when the channels
+just described had ceased to exist, the contents of the planet would
+disperse themselves with lower velocities and without any unity of
+direction. Hence we see causes alike for the streams of shooting stars,
+for the solitary shooting stars visible to the naked eye, and for the
+telescopic shooting stars a score times more numerous.
+
+Further significant evidence is furnished by the comets of short
+periods. Of the thirteen constituting this group, twelve have orbits
+falling between those of Mars and Jupiter: one only having its aphelion
+beyond the orbit of Jupiter. That is to say, nearly all of them frequent
+the same region as the planetoids. By implication, they are similarly
+associated in respect of their periods. The periods of the planetoids
+range from 3.1 to 8.8 years; and all these twelve comets have periods
+falling between these extremes: the least being 3.29 and the greatest
+8.86. Once more this family of comets, like the planetoids in the zone
+they occupy and like them in their periods, are like them also in the
+respect that, as Mr. Lynn has pointed out, their motions are all direct.
+How happens this close kinship--how happens there to be this family of
+comets so much like the planetoids and so much like one another, but so
+unlike comets at large? The obvious suggestion is that they are among
+the products of the explosion which originated the planetoids, the
+aerolites, and the streams of meteors; and consideration of the probable
+circumstances shows us that such products might be expected. If the
+hypothetical planet was like its neighbour Jupiter in having an
+atmosphere, or like its neighbour Mars in having water on its surface,
+or like both in these respects; then these superficial masses of liquid,
+of vapour, and of gas, blown into space along with the solid matters,
+would yield the materials for comets. There would result, too, comets
+unlike one another in constitution. If a fissure opened beneath one of
+the seas, the molten metals and metallic gases rushing through it as
+above described, would decompose part of the water carried with them;
+and the oxygen and hydrogen liberated would be mingled with undecomposed
+vapour. In other cases, portions of the atmosphere might be propelled,
+probably with portions of vapour; and in yet other cases masses of water
+alone. Severally subject to great heat at perihelion, these would behave
+more or less differently. Once more, it would ordinarily happen that
+detached swarms of meteors projected as implied, would carry with them
+masses of vapours and gases; whence would result the cometic
+constitution now insisted on. And sometimes there would be like
+accompaniments to meteoric streams.
+
+See, then, the contrast between the two hypotheses. That of Laplace,
+looking probable while there were only four planetoids, but decreasing
+in apparent likelihood as the planetoids increase in number, until, as
+they pass through the hundreds on their way to the thousands, it becomes
+obviously improbable, is, at the same time, otherwise objectionable. It
+pre-supposes a nebulous ring of a width so enormous that it would have
+overlapped the ring of Mars. This ring would have had differences
+between the angular velocities of its parts quite inconsistent with the
+Nebular Hypothesis. The average eccentricities of the orbits of its
+parts must have differed greatly from those of adjacent orbits; and the
+average inclinations of the orbits of its parts must similarly have
+differed greatly from those of adjacent orbits. Once more, the orbits of
+its parts, confusedly interspersed, must have had varieties of
+eccentricity and inclination unaccountable in portions of the same
+nebulous ring; and, during concentration into planetoids, each must have
+had to maintain its course while struggling through the assemblage of
+other small nebulous masses, severally moving in ways unlike its own. On
+the other hand, the hypothesis of an exploded planet is supported by
+every increase in the number of planetoids discovered; by the greater
+numbers of the smaller sizes; by the thicker clustering near the
+inferred place of the missing planet; by the occurrence of the greatest
+mean distances among the smallest members of the assemblage; by the
+occurrence of the greatest eccentricities in the orbits of these
+smallest members; and by the entanglement of all the orbits. Further
+support for the hypothesis is yielded by aerolites, so various in their
+kinds, but all suggestive of a planet's crust; by the streams of
+shooting stars having their radiant points variously placed in the
+heavens; and also by the solitary shooting stars visible to the naked
+eye, and the more numerous ones visible through telescopes. Once more,
+it harmonizes with the discovery of a family of comets, twelve out of
+thirteen of which have mean distances falling within the zone of the
+planetoids, have similarly associated periods, have all the same direct
+motions, and are connected with swarms of meteors and with meteoric
+streams. May we not, indeed, say, that if there once existed a planet
+between Mars and Jupiter which burst, the explosion must have produced
+just such clusters of bodies and classes of phenomena as we actually
+find?
+
+And what is the objection? Merely that if such an explosion occurred it
+must have occurred many millions of years ago--an objection which is in
+fact no objection; for the supposition that the explosion occurred many
+millions of years ago is just as reasonable as the supposition that it
+occurred recently.
+
+It is, indeed, further objected that some of the resulting fragments
+ought to have retrograde motions. It turns out on calculation, however,
+that this is not the case. Assuming as true the velocity which Lagrange
+estimated would have sufficed to give the four chief planetoids the
+positions they occupy, it results that such a velocity, given to the
+fragments which were propelled backwards by the explosion, would not
+have given them retrograde motions, but would simply have reduced their
+direct motions from something over 11 miles per second to about 6 miles
+per second. It is, however, manifest that this reduction of velocity
+would have necessitated the formation of highly-elliptic orbits--more
+elliptic than any of those at present known. This seems to me the most
+serious difficulty which has presented itself. Still, considering that
+there remain probably an immense number of planetoids to be discovered,
+it is quite possible that among these there may be some having orbits
+answering to the requirement.
+
+
+NOTE V. Shortly before I commenced the revision of the foregoing essay,
+friends on two occasions named to me some remarkable photographs of
+nebulæ recently obtained by Mr. Isaac Roberts, and exhibited at the
+Royal Astronomical Society: saying that they presented appearances such
+as might have been sketched by Laplace in illustration of his
+hypothesis. Mr. Roberts has been kind enough to send me copies of the
+photographs in question and sundry others illustrative of stellar
+evolution. Those representing the Great Nebulæ in Andromeda and Canum
+Venaticorum as well as 81 Messier are at once impressive and
+instructive--illustrating as they do the genesis of nebulous rings round
+a central mass.
+
+I may remark, however, that they seem to suggest the need for some
+modification of the current conception; since they make it tolerably
+clear that the process is a much less uniform one than is supposed. The
+usual idea is that a vast rotating nebulous spheroid arises before there
+are produced any of the planet-forming rings. But both of these
+photographs apparently imply that, in some cases at any rate, the
+portions of nebulous matter composing the rings take shape before they
+reach the central mass. It looks as though these partially-formed annuli
+must be prevented by their acquired motions from approaching even very
+near to the still-irregular body they surround.
+
+Be this as it may, however, and be the dimensions of the incipient
+systems what they may (and it would seem to be a necessary implication
+that they are vastly larger than our Solar System), the process remains
+essentially the same. Practically demonstrated as this process now is,
+we may say that the doctrine of nebular genesis passes from the region
+of hypothesis into the region of established truth.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 21: Of course there remains the question whether, before the
+stage here recognized, there had already been produced a high
+temperature by those collisions of celestial masses which reduced the
+matter to a nebulous form. As suggested in _First Principles_ (§ 136 in
+the edition of 1862, and § 182 in subsequent editions), there must,
+after there have been effected all those minor dissolutions which follow
+evolutions, remain to be effected the dissolutions of the great bodies
+in and on which the minor evolutions and dissolutions have taken place;
+and it was argued that such dissolutions will be, at some time or other,
+effected by those immense transformations of molar motion into molecular
+motion, consequent on collisions: the argument being based on the
+statement of Sir John Herschel, that in clusters of stars collisions
+must inevitably occur. It may, however, be objected that though such a
+result may be reasonably looked for in closely aggregated assemblages of
+stars, it is difficult to conceive of its taking place throughout our
+Sidereal System at large, the members of which, and their intervals, may
+be roughly figured as pins-heads 50 miles apart. It would seem that
+something like an eternity must elapse before, by ethereal resistance or
+other cause, these can be brought into proximity great enough to make
+collisions probable.]
+
+[Footnote 22: The two sentences which, in the text, precede the
+asterisk, I have introduced while these pages are standing in type:
+being led to do so by the perusal of some notes kindly lent to me by
+Prof. Dewar, containing the outline of a lecture he gave at the Royal
+Institution during the session of 1880. Discussing the conditions under
+which, if "our so-called elements are compounded of elemental matter",
+they may have been formed, Prof. Dewar, arguing from the known habitudes
+of compound substances, concludes that the formation is in each case a
+function of pressure, temperature, and nature of the environing gases.]
+
+[Footnote 23: At the date of this passage the established teleology made
+it seem needful to assume that all the planets are habitable, and that
+even beneath the photosphere of the Sun there exists a dark body which
+may be the scene of life; but since then, the influence of teleology has
+so far diminished that this hypothesis can no longer be called the
+current one.]
+
+[Footnote 24: It may here be mentioned (though the principal
+significance of this comes under the next head) that the average mean
+distance of the later-discovered planetoids is somewhat greater than
+that of these earlier-discovered; amounting to 2·61 for Nos. 1 to 35 and
+2·80 for Nos. 211 to 245. For this observation I am indebted to Mr.
+Lynn; whose attention was drawn to it while revising for me the
+statements contained in this paragraph, so as to include discoveries
+made since the paragraph was written.]
+
+
+
+
+THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SUN.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Reader _for February_ 25, 1865. _I
+    reproduce this essay chiefly to give a place to the speculation
+    concerning the solar spots which forms the latter portion of it._]
+
+
+The hypothesis of M. Faye, described in your numbers for January 28 and
+February 4, respectively, is to a considerable extent coincident with
+one which I ventured to suggest in an article on "Recent Astronomy and
+the Nebular Hypothesis," published in the _Westminster Review_ for July,
+1858. In considering the possible causes of the immense differences of
+specific gravity among the planets, I was led to question the validity
+of the tacit assumption that each planet consists of solid or liquid
+matter from centre to surface. It seemed to me that any other internal
+structure which was mechanically stable, might be assumed with equal
+legitimacy. And the hypothesis of a solid or liquid shell, having its
+cavity filled with gaseous matter at high pressure and temperature [and
+of great density], was one which seemed worth considering.
+
+Hence arose the inquiry--What structure will result from the process of
+nebular condensation? [Here followed a long speculation respecting the
+processes going on in a concentrating nebulous spheroid; the general
+outcome of which is implied in Note III of the foregoing essay. I do not
+reproduce it because, not having the guidance of Prof. Andrew's
+researches, I had concluded that the formation of a molten shell would
+occur universally, instead of occasionally, as is now argued in the
+note named. The essay then proceeded thus:--]
+
+The process of condensation being in its essentials the same for all
+concentrating nebular spheroids, planetary or solar, it was argued that
+the Sun is still passing through that incandescent stage which all the
+planets have long ago passed through: his later aggregation, joined with
+the immensely greater ratio of his mass to his surface, involving
+comparative lateness of cooling. Supposing the sun to have reached the
+state of a molten shell, inclosing a gaseous nucleus, it was concluded
+that this molten shell, ever radiating its heat, but ever acquiring
+fresh heat by further integration of the Sun's mass, must be constantly
+kept up to that temperature at which its substance evaporates.
+
+[Here followed part of the paragraph quoted in the preceding essay on p.
+155; and there succeeded, in subsequent editions, a paragraph aiming to
+show that the inferred structure of the Sun's interior was congruous
+with the low specific gravity of the Sun--a conclusion which, as
+indicated on p. 156, implies some very problematical assumptions
+respecting the natures of the unknown elements of the Sun. There then
+came this passage:--]
+
+The conception of the Sun's constitution thus set forth, is like that of
+M. Faye in so far as the successive changes, the resulting structures,
+and the ultimate state, are concerned; but unlike it in so far as the
+Sun is supposed to have reached a later stage of concentration. As I
+gather from your abstract of M. Faye's paper [this referred to an
+article in _The Reader_], he considers the Sun to be at present a
+gaseous spheroid, having an envelope of metallic matters precipitated in
+the shape of luminous clouds, the local dispersions of which, caused by
+currents from within, appear to us as spots; and he looks forward to the
+future formation of a liquid film as an event that will soon be followed
+by extinction. Whereas the above hypothesis is that the liquid film
+already exists beneath the visible photosphere, and that extinction
+cannot result until, in the course of further aggregation, the gaseous
+nucleus has become so much reduced, and the shell so much thickened,
+that the escape of the heat generated is greatly retarded.... M. Faye's
+hypothesis appears to be espoused by him, partly because it affords an
+explanation of the spots, which are considered as openings in the
+photosphere, exposing the comparatively non-luminous gases filling the
+interior. But if these interior gases are non-luminous from the absence
+of precipitated matter, must they not for the same reason be
+transparent? And if transparent, will not the light from the remote side
+of the photosphere seen through them, be nearly as bright as that of the
+side next to us? By as much as the intensely-heated gases of the
+interior are disabled by the dissociation of their molecules from giving
+off luminiferous undulations, by so much must they be disabled from
+absorbing the light transmitted through them. And if their great
+light-transmitting power is exactly complementary to their small
+light-emitting power, there seems no reason why the interior of the Sun,
+disclosed to us by openings in the photosphere, should not appear as
+bright as its exterior.
+
+Take, on the other hand, the supposition that a more advanced state of
+concentration has been reached. A shell of molten metallic matter
+enclosing a gaseous nucleus still higher in temperature than itself,
+will be continually kept at the highest temperature consistent with its
+state of liquid aggregation. Unless we assume that simple radiation
+suffices to give off all the heat generated by progressing integration,
+we must conclude that the mass will be raised to that temperature at
+which part of its heat is absorbed in vaporizing its superficial parts.
+The atmosphere of metallic gases hence resulting, cannot continue to
+accumulate without reaching a height above the Sun's surface, at which
+the cooling due to radiation and rarefaction will cause condensation
+into cloud--cannot, indeed, cease accumulating until the precipitation
+from the upper limit of the atmosphere balances the evaporation from its
+lower limit. This upper limit of the atmosphere of metallic gases,
+whence precipitation is perpetually taking place, will form the visible
+photosphere--partly giving off light of its own, partly letting through
+the more brilliant light of the incandescent mass below. This conclusion
+harmonizes with the appearances. Sir John Herschel, advocating though he
+does an antagonist hypothesis, gives a description of the Sun's surface
+which agrees completely with the processes here supposed. He says:--
+
+     "There is nothing which represents so faithfully this appearance as
+     the slow subsidence of some flocculent chemical precipitates in a
+     transparent fluid, when viewed perpendicularly from above: so
+     faithfully, indeed, that it is hardly possible not to be impressed
+     with the idea of a luminous medium intermixed, but not confounded,
+     with a transparent and non-luminous atmosphere, either floating as
+     clouds in our air, or pervading it in vast sheets and columns like
+     flame, or the streamers of our northern lights".--_Treatise on
+     Astronomy_, p. 208.
+
+If the constitution of the Sun be that which is above inferred, it does
+not seem difficult to conceive still more specifically the production of
+these appearances. Everywhere throughout the atmosphere of metallic
+vapours which clothes the solar surface, there must be ascending and
+descending currents. The magnitude of these currents must obviously
+depend on the depth of this atmosphere. If it is shallow, the currents
+must be small; but if many thousands of miles deep, the currents may be
+wide enough to render visible to us the places at which they severally
+impinge on the limit of the atmosphere, and the places whence the
+descending currents commence. The top of an ascending current will be a
+space over which the thickness of condensed cloud is the least, and
+through which the greatest amount of light from beneath penetrates. The
+clouds perpetually formed at the top of such a current, will be
+perpetually thrust aside by the uncondensed gases from below them; and,
+growing while they are thrust aside, will collect in the spaces between
+the ascending currents, where there will result the greatest degree of
+opacity. Hence the mottled appearance--hence the "pores," or dark
+interspaces, separating the light-giving spots.[25]
+
+Of the more special appearances which the photosphere presents, let us
+take first the faculæ. These are ascribed to waves in the photosphere;
+and the way in which such waves might produce an excess of light has
+been variously explained in conformity with various hypotheses. What
+would result from them in a photosphere constituted and conditioned as
+above supposed? Traversing a canopy of cloud, here thicker and there
+thinner, a wave would cause a disturbance very unlikely to leave the
+thin and thick parts without any change in their average permeability to
+light. There would probably be, at some parts of the wave, extensions in
+the areas of the light-transmitting clouds, resulting in the passage of
+more rays from below. Another phenomenon, less common but more striking,
+appears also to be in harmony with the hypothesis. I refer to those
+bright spots, of a brilliancy greater than that of the photosphere,
+which are sometimes observed. In the course of a physical process so
+vast and so active as that here supposed to be going on in the Sun, we
+may expect that concurrent causes will occasionally produce ascending
+currents much hotter than usual, or more voluminous, or both. One of
+these, on reaching the stratum of luminous and illuminated cloud forming
+the photosphere, will burst through it, dispersing and dissolving it,
+and ascending to a greater height before it begins itself to condense:
+meanwhile allowing to be seen, through its transparent mass, the
+incandescent molten shell of the sun's body.
+
+[The foregoing passages, to most of which I do not commit myself as more
+than possibilities, I republish chiefly as introductory to the following
+speculation, which, since it was propounded in 1865, has met with some
+acceptance.]
+
+"But what of the spots commonly so called?" it will be asked. In the
+essay on the Nebular hypothesis, above quoted from, it was suggested
+that refraction of the light passing through the depressed centres of
+cyclones in this atmosphere of metallic gases, might possibly be the
+cause; but this, though defensible as a "true cause," appeared on
+further consideration to be an inadequate cause. Keeping the question in
+mind, however, and still taking as a postulate the conclusion of Sir
+John Herschel, that the spots are in some way produced by cyclones, I
+was led, in the course of the year following the publication of the
+essay, to an hypothesis which seemed more satisfactory. This, which I
+named at the time to Prof. Tyndall, had a point in common with the one
+afterward published by Prof. Kirchhoff, in so far as it supposed cloud
+to be the cause of darkness; but differed in so far as it assigned the
+cause of such cloud. More pressing matters prevented me from developing
+the idea for some time; and, afterwards, I was deterred from including
+it in the revised edition of the essay, by its inconsistency with the
+"willow-leaf" doctrine, at that time dominant. The reasoning was as
+follows:--The central region of a cyclone must be a region of
+rarefaction, and, consequently, a region of refrigeration. In an
+atmosphere of metallic gases rising from a molten surface, and presently
+reaching a limit at which condensation takes place, the molecular state,
+especially toward its upper part, must be such that a moderate
+diminution of density, and fall of temperature, will cause
+precipitation. That is to say, the rarefied interior of a solar cyclone
+will be filled with cloud: condensation, instead of taking place only
+at the level of the photosphere, will here extend to a great depth below
+it, and over a wide area. What will be the characters of a cloud thus
+occupying the interior of a cyclone? It will have a rotatory motion; and
+this it has been seen to have. Being funnel-shaped, as analogy warrants
+us in assuming, its central parts will be much deeper than its
+peripheral parts, and therefore more opaque. This, too, corresponds with
+observation. Mr. Dawes has discovered that in the middle of the spot
+there is a blacker spot: just where there would exist a funnel-shaped
+prolongation of the cyclonic cloud down toward the Sun's body, the
+darkness is greater than elsewhere. Moreover, there is furnished an
+adequate reason for the depression which one of these dark spaces
+exhibits. In a whirlwind, as in a whirlpool, the vortex will be below
+the general level, and all around, the surface of the medium will
+descend toward it. Hence a spot seen obliquely, as when carried toward
+the Sun's limb, will have its umbra more and more hidden, while its
+penumbra still remains visible. Nor are we without some interpretation
+of the penumbra. If, as is implied by what has been said, the so-called
+"willow-leaves," or "rice-grains," are the tops of the currents
+ascending from the Sun's body, what changes of appearance are they
+likely to undergo in the neighbourhood of a cyclone? For some distance
+round a cyclone there will be a drawing in of the superficial gases
+toward the vortex. All the luminous spaces of more transparent cloud
+forming the adjacent photosphere, will be changed in shape by these
+centripetal currents. They will be greatly elongated; and there will so
+be produced that "thatch"-like aspect which the penumbra presents.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[The explanation of the solar spots above suggested, which was
+originally propounded in opposition to that of M. Faye, was eventually
+adopted by him in place of his own. In the _Comptes Rendus_ for 1867,
+Vol. LXIV., p. 404, he refers to the article in the _Reader_, partly
+reproduced above, and speaks of me as having been replied to in a
+previous note. Again in the _Comptes Rendus_ for 1872, Vol. LXXV., p.
+1664, he recognizes the inadequacy of his hypothesis, saying:--"Il est
+certain que l'objection de M. Spencer, reproduit et développée par M.
+Kirchoff, est fondée jusqu'à un certain point; l'intérieur des taches,
+si ce sont des lacunes dans la photosphère, doit être froid
+relativement.... Il est donc impossible qu'elles proviennent d'éruptions
+ascendantes." He then proceeds to set forth the hypothesis that the
+spots are caused by the precipitation of vapour in the interiors of
+cyclones. But though, as above shown, he refers to the objection made in
+the foregoing essay to his original hypothesis, and recognizes its
+cogency, he does not say that the hypothesis which he thereupon
+substitutes is also to be found in the foregoing essay. Nor does he
+intimate this in the elaborate paper on the subject read before the
+French Association for the Advancement of Science, and published in the
+_Revue Scientifique_ for the 24th March 1883. The result is that the
+hypothesis is now currently ascribed to him.[26]
+
+About four months before I had to revise this essay on "The Constitution
+of the Sun," while staying near Pewsey, in Wiltshire, I was fortunate
+enough to witness a phenomenon which furnished, by analogy, a
+verification of the above hypothesis, and served more especially to
+elucidate one of the traits of solar spots, otherwise difficult to
+understand. It was at the close of August, when there had been a spell
+of very hot weather. A slight current of air from the West, moving along
+the line of the valley, had persisted through the day, which, up to 5
+o'clock, had been cloudless, and, with the exception now to be named,
+remained cloudless. The exception was furnished by a strange-looking
+cloud almost directly overhead. Its central part was comparatively dense
+and structureless. Its peripheral part, or to speak strictly, the
+two-thirds of it which were nearest and most clearly visible, consisted
+of _converging streaks_ of comparatively thin cloud. Possibly the third
+part on the remoter side was similarly constituted; but this I could not
+see. It did not occur to me at the time to think about its cause,
+though, had the question been raised, I should doubtless have concluded
+that as the sky still remained cloudless everywhere else, this
+precipitated mass of vapour must have resulted from a local eddy. In the
+space of perhaps half-an-hour, the gentle breeze had carried this cloud
+some miles to the East; and now its nature became obvious. That central
+part which, seen from underneath, seemed simply a dense, confused part,
+apparently no nearer than the rest, now, seen sideways, was obviously
+much lower than the rest and rudely funnel-shaped--nipple-shaped one
+might say; while the wide thin portion of cloud above it was
+disk-shaped: the converging streaks of cloud being now, in perspective,
+merged together. It thus became manifest that the cloud was produced by
+a feeble whirlwind, perhaps a quarter to half-a-mile in diameter.
+Further, the appearances made it clear that this feeble whirlwind was
+limited to the lower stratum of air: the stratum of air above it was not
+implicated in the cyclonic action. And then, lastly, there was the
+striking fact that the upper stratum, though not involved in the whirl,
+was, by its proximity to a region of diminished pressure, slightly
+rarified; and that its precipitated vapour was, by the draught set up
+towards the vortex below, drawn into converging streaks. Here, then, was
+an action analogous to that which, as above suggested, happens around a
+sun-spot, where the masses of illuminated vapour constituting the
+photosphere are drawn towards the vortex of the cyclone, and
+simultaneously elongated into striæ: so forming the penumbra. At the
+same time there was furnished an answer to the chief objection to the
+cyclonic theory of solar spots. For if, as here seen, a cyclone in a
+lower stratum may fail to communicate a vortical motion to the stratum
+above it, we may comprehend how, in a solar cyclone, the photosphere
+commonly fails to give any indication of the revolving currents below,
+and is only occasionally so entangled in these currents as itself to
+display a vortical motion.
+
+Let me add that apart from the elucidations furnished by the phenomenon
+above described, the probabilities are greatly in favour of the cyclonic
+origin of the solar spots. That some of them exhibit clear marks of
+vortical motion is undeniable; and if this is so, the question
+arises--What is the degree of likelihood that there are two causes for
+spots? Considering that they have so many characters in common, it is
+extremely improbable that their common characters are in some cases the
+concomitants of vortical motion and in other cases the concomitants of a
+different kind of action. Recognizing this great improbability, even in
+the absence of a reconciliation between the apparently conflicting
+traits, it is, I think, clear that when, in the way above shown, we are
+enabled to understand how it happens that the vortical motion, not
+ordinarily implicating the photosphere, may consequently be in most
+cases unapparent, the reasons for accepting the cyclonic theory become
+almost conclusive.]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 25: If the "rice-grain" appearance is thus produced by the
+tops of the ascending currents (and M. Faye accepts this
+interpretation), then I think it excludes M. Faye's hypothesis that the
+Sun is gaseous throughout. The comparative smallness of the light-giving
+spots and their comparative uniformity of size, show us that they have
+ascended through a stratum of but moderate depth (say 10,000 miles), and
+that this stratum has a _definite_ lower limit. This favours the
+hypothesis of a molten shell.]
+
+[Footnote 26: I should add that while M. Faye ascribes solar spots to
+clouds formed within cyclones, we differ concerning the nature of the
+cloud. I have argued that it is formed by rarefaction, and consequent
+refrigeration, of the metallic gases constituting the stratum in which
+the cyclone exists. He argues that it is formed within the mass of
+cooled hydrogen drawn from the chromosphere into the vortex of the
+cyclone. Speaking of the cyclones he says:--"Dans leur embouchure évasée
+ils entraîneront l'hydrogène froid de la chromosphère, produisant
+partout sur leur trajet vertical un abaissement notable de température
+et une obscurité relative, due à l'opacité de l'hydrogène froid
+englouti." (_Revue Scientifique_, 24 March 1883.) Considering the
+intense cold required to reduce hydrogen to the "critical point," it is
+a strong supposition that the motion given to it by fluid friction on
+entering the vortex of the cyclone, can produce a rotation, rarefaction,
+and cooling, great enough to produce precipitation in a region so
+intensely heated.]
+
+
+
+
+ILLOGICAL GEOLOGY.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Universal Review _for July,_ 1859.]
+
+
+That proclivity to generalization which is possessed in greater or less
+degree by all minds, and without which, indeed, intelligence cannot
+exist, has unavoidable inconveniences. Through it alone can truth be
+reached; and yet it almost inevitably betrays into error. But for the
+tendency to predicate of every other case, that which has been found in
+the observed cases, there could be no rational thinking; and yet by this
+indispensable tendency, men are perpetually led to found, on limited
+experience, propositions which they wrongly assume to be universal or
+absolute. In one sense, however, this can scarcely be regarded as an
+evil; for without premature generalizations the true generalization
+would never be arrived at. If we waited till all the facts were
+accumulated before trying to formulate them, the vast unorganized mass
+would be unmanageable. Only by provisional grouping can they be brought
+into such order as to be dealt with; and this provisional grouping is
+but another name for premature generalization. How uniformly men follow
+this course, and how needful the errors are as steps to truth, is well
+illustrated in the history of Astronomy. The heavenly bodies move round
+the Earth in circles, said the earliest observers: led partly by the
+appearances, and partly by their experiences of central motions in
+terrestrial objects, with which, as all circular, they classed the
+celestial motions from lack of any alternative conception. Without this
+provisional belief, wrong as it was, there could not have been that
+comparison of positions which showed that the motions are not
+representable by circles; and which led to the hypothesis of epicycles
+and eccentrics. Only by the aid of this hypothesis, equally untrue, but
+capable of accounting more nearly for the appearances, and so of
+inducing more accurate observations--only thus did it become possible
+for Copernicus to show that the heliocentric theory is more feasible
+than the geocentric theory; or for Kepler to show that the planets move
+round the sun in ellipses. Yet again, without the aid of Kepler's more
+advanced theory of the Solar system, Newton could not have established
+that general law from which it follows, that the motion of a heavenly
+body is not necessarily in an ellipse, but may be in any conic section.
+And lastly, it was only after the law of gravitation had been verified,
+that it became possible to determine the actual courses of planets,
+satellites, and comets; and to prove that, in consequence of
+perturbations, their orbits always deviate, more or less, from regular
+curves. In these successive theories we may trace both the tendency men
+have to leap from scanty data to wide generalizations, that are either
+untrue or but partially true; and the necessity there is for such
+transitional generalizations as steps to the final one.
+
+In the progress of geological speculation, the same laws of thought are
+displayed. We have dogmas that were more than half false, passing
+current for a time as universal truths. We have evidence collected in
+proof of these dogmas; by and by a colligation of facts in antagonism
+with them; and eventually a consequent modification. In conformity with
+this improved hypothesis, we have a better classification of facts; a
+greater power of arranging and interpreting the new facts now rapidly
+gathered together; and further resulting corrections of hypothesis.
+Being, as we are at present, in the midst of this process, it is not
+possible to give an adequate account of the development of geological
+science as thus regarded: the earlier stages are alone known to us. Not
+only, however, is it interesting to observe how the more advanced views
+now received respecting the Earth's history, have been evolved out of
+the crude views which preceded them; but we shall find it extremely
+instructive to observe this. We shall see how greatly the old ideas
+still sway both the general mind and the minds of geologists themselves.
+We shall see how the kind of evidence that has in part abolished these
+old ideas, is still daily accumulating, and threatens to make other like
+revolutions. In brief, we shall see whereabouts we are in the
+elaboration of a true theory of the Earth; and, seeing our whereabouts,
+shall be the better able to judge, among various conflicting opinions,
+which best conform to the ascertained direction of geological discovery.
+
+It is needless here to enumerate the many speculations which were in
+earlier ages propounded by acute men--speculations some of which
+contained portions of truth. Falling in unfit times, these speculations
+did not germinate; and hence do not concern us. We have nothing to do
+with ideas, however good, out of which no science grew; but only with
+those which gave origin to the existing system of Geology. We therefore
+begin with Werner.
+
+Taking for data the appearances of the Earth's crust in a narrow
+district of Germany; observing the constant order of superposition of
+strata, and their respective physical characters; Werner drew the
+inference that strata of like characters succeeded each other in like
+order over the entire surface of the Earth. And seeing, from the
+laminated structure of many formations and the organic remains contained
+in others, that they were sedimentary; he further inferred that these
+universal strata had been in succession precipitated from a chaotic
+menstruum which once covered our planet. Thus, on a very incomplete
+acquaintance with a thousandth part of the Earth's crust, he based a
+sweeping generalization applying to the whole of it. This Neptunist
+hypothesis, mark, borne out though it seemed to be by the most
+conspicuous surrounding facts, was quite untenable if analyzed. That a
+universal chaotic menstruum should deposit a series of numerous
+sharply-defined strata, differing from one another in composition, is
+incomprehensible. That the strata so deposited should contain the
+remains of plants and animals, which could not have lived under the
+supposed conditions, is still more incomprehensible. Physically absurd,
+however, as was this hypothesis, it recognized, though under a distorted
+form, one of the great agencies of geological change--the action of
+water. It served also to express the fact, that the formations of the
+Earth's crust stand in some kind of order. Further, it did a little
+towards supplying a nomenclature, without which much progress was
+impossible. Lastly, it furnished a standard with which successions of
+strata in various regions could be compared, the differences noted, and
+the actual sections tabulated. It was the first provisional
+generalization; and was useful, if not indispensable, as a step to truer
+ones.
+
+Following this rude conception, which ascribed geological phenomena to
+one agency, acting during one primeval epoch, there came a
+greatly-improved conception, which ascribed them to two agencies, acting
+alternately during successive epochs. Hutton, perceiving that
+sedimentary deposits were still being formed at the bottom of the sea
+from the detritus carried down by rivers; perceiving, further, that the
+strata of which the visible surface chiefly consists, bore marks of
+having been similarly formed out of pre-existing land; and inferring
+that these strata could have become land only by upheaval after their
+deposit; concluded that throughout an indefinite past, there had been
+periodic convulsions, by which continents were raised, with intervening
+eras of repose, during which such continents were worn down and
+transformed into new marine strata, fated to be in their turns elevated
+above the surface of the ocean. And finding that igneous action, to
+which sundry earlier geologists had ascribed basaltic rocks, was in
+countless places a cause of disturbance, he taught that from it resulted
+these periodic convulsions. In this theory we see:--first, that the
+previously-recognized agency of water was conceived to act, not as by
+Werner, after a manner of which we have no experience, but after a
+manner daily displayed to us; and secondly, that the igneous agency,
+before considered only as originating special formations, was recognized
+as a universal agency, but assumed to act in an unproved way. Werner's
+sole process Hutton developed from the catastrophic and inexplicable
+into the uniform and explicable; while that antagonistic second process,
+of which he first adequately estimated the importance, was regarded by
+him as a catastrophic one, and was not assimilated to known
+processes--not explained. We have here to note, however, that the facts
+collected and provisionally arranged in conformity with Werner's theory,
+served, after a time, to establish Hutton's more rational theory--in so
+far, at least, as aqueous formations are concerned; while the doctrine
+of periodic subterranean convulsions, crudely as it was conceived by
+Hutton, was a temporary generalization needful as a step towards the
+theory of igneous action.
+
+Since Hutton's time, the development of geological thought has gone
+still further in the same direction. These early sweeping doctrines have
+received additional qualifications. It has been discovered that more
+numerous and more heterogeneous agencies have been at work, than was at
+first believed. The conception of igneous action has been rationalized,
+as the conception of aqueous action had previously been. The gratuitous
+assumption that vast elevations suddenly occurred after long intervals
+of quiescence, has grown into the consistent theory, that islands and
+continents are the accumulated results of successive small upheavals,
+like those experienced in ordinary earthquakes. To speak more
+specifically, we find, in the first place, that instead of assuming the
+denudation produced by rain and rivers to be the sole means of wearing
+down lands and producing their irregularities of surface, geologists now
+see that denudation is only a part-cause of such irregularities; and
+further, that the new strata deposited at the bottom of the sea, are not
+the products of river-sediment solely, but are in part due to the
+actions of waves and tidal currents on the coasts. In the second place,
+we find that Hutton's conception of upheaval by subterranean forces, has
+not only been modified by assimilating these subterranean forces to
+ordinary earthquake-forces; but modern inquiries have shown that,
+besides elevations of surface, subsidences are thus produced; that local
+upheavals, as well as the general upheavals which raise continents, come
+within the same category; and that all these changes are probably
+consequent on the progressive collapse of the Earth's crust upon its
+cooling and contracting nucleus. In the third place, we find that beyond
+these two great antagonistic agencies, modern Geology recognizes sundry
+minor ones: those of glaciers and icebergs, those of coral-polypes;
+those of _Protozoa_ having siliceous or calcareous shells--each of which
+agencies, insignificant as it seems, is found capable of slowly working
+terrestrial changes of considerable magnitude. Thus, then, the recent
+progress of Geology has been a still further departure from primitive
+conceptions. Instead of one catastrophic cause, once in universal
+action, as supposed by Werner--instead of one general continuous cause,
+antagonized at long intervals by a catastrophic cause, as taught by
+Hutton; we now recognize several causes, all more or less general and
+continuous. We no longer resort to hypothetical agencies to explain the
+phenomena displayed by the Earth's crust; but we are day by day more
+clearly perceiving that these phenomena have arisen from forces like
+those now at work, which have acted in all varieties of combination,
+through immeasurable periods of time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Having thus briefly traced the evolution of geologic science, and noted
+its present form, let us go on to observe the way in which it is still
+swayed by the crude hypotheses it set out with; so that even now,
+doctrines long since abandoned as untenable in theory, continue in
+practice to mould the ideas of geologists, and to foster sundry beliefs
+that are logically indefensible. We shall see, both how those simple
+sweeping conceptions with which the science commenced, are those which
+every student is apt at first to seize hold of, and how several
+influences conspire to maintain the twist thus resulting--how the
+original nomenclature of periods and formations necessarily keeps alive
+the original implications; and how the need for arranging new data in
+some order, results in their being thrust into the old classification,
+unless their incongruity with it is very glaring. A few facts will best
+prepare the way for criticism.
+
+Up to 1839 it was inferred, from their crystalline character, that the
+metamorphic rocks of Anglesea were more ancient than any rocks of the
+adjacent main land; but it has since been shown that they are of the
+same age with the slates and grits of Carnarvon and Merioneth. Again,
+slaty cleavage having been first found only in the lowest rocks, was
+taken as an indication of the highest antiquity: whence resulted serious
+mistakes; for this mineral characteristic is now known to occur in the
+Carboniferous system. Once more, certain red conglomerates and grits on
+the north-west coast of Scotland, long supposed from their lithological
+aspect to belong to the Old Red Sandstone, are now identified with the
+Lower Silurians. These are a few instances of the small trust to be
+placed in mineral qualities, as evidence of the ages or relative
+positions of strata. From the recently-published third edition of
+_Siluria_, may be culled numerous facts of like implication. Sir R.
+Murchison considers it ascertained, that the siliceous Stiper stones of
+Shropshire are the equivalents of the Tremadock slates of North Wales.
+Judged by their fossils, Bala slate and limestone are of the same age as
+the Caradoc sandstone, lying forty miles off. In Radnorshire, the
+formation classed as upper Llandovery rock, is described at different
+spots, as "sandstone or conglomerate," "impure limestone," "hard coarse
+grits," "siliceous grit"--a considerable variation for so small an area
+as that of a county. Certain sandy beds on the left bank of the Towy,
+which Sir R. Murchison had, in his _Silurian System_, classed as Caradoc
+sandstone (evidently from their mineral characters), he now finds, from
+their fossils, belong to the Llandeilo formation. Nevertheless,
+inferences from mineral characters are still habitually drawn and
+received. Though _Siluria_, in common with other geological works,
+supplies numerous proofs that rocks of the same age are often of
+widely-different composition a few miles off, while rocks of
+widely-different ages are often of similar composition; and though Sir
+R. Murchison shows us, as in the case just cited, that he has himself in
+past times been misled by trusting to lithological evidence; yet his
+reasoning all through _Siluria_, shows that he still thinks it natural
+to expect formations of the same age to be chemically similar, even in
+remote regions. For example, in treating of the Silurian rocks of South
+Scotland, he says:--"When traversing the tract between Dumfries and
+Moffat, in 1850, it occurred to me, that the dull reddish or purple
+sandstone and schist to the north of the former town, which so resembled
+the bottom rocks of Longmynd, Llanberis, and St. David's, would prove to
+be of the same age;" and further on, he again insists upon the fact that
+these strata "are absolutely of the same composition as the bottom rocks
+of the Silurian region." On this unity of mineral character it is, that
+this Scottish formation is concluded to be contemporaneous with the
+lowest formations in Wales; for the scanty paleontological evidence
+suffices for neither proof nor disproof. Now, had there been a
+continuity of like strata in like order between Wales and Scotland,
+there might have been little to criticize in this conclusion. But since
+Sir R. Murchison himself admits, that in Westmoreland and Cumberland,
+some members of the system "assume a lithological aspect different from
+what they maintain in the Silurian and Welsh region," there seems no
+reason to expect mineralogical continuity in Scotland. Obviously,
+therefore, the assumption that these Scottish formations are of the same
+age with the Longmynd of Shropshire, implies the latent belief that
+certain mineral characters indicate certain eras. Far more striking
+instances, however, of the influence of this latent belief remain to be
+given. Not in such comparatively near districts as the Scottish lowlands
+only, does Sir R. Murchison expect a repetition of the Longmynd strata;
+but in the Rhenish provinces, certain "quartzose flagstones and grits,
+like those of the Longmynd," are seemingly concluded to be of
+contemporaneous origin, because of their likeness. "Quartzites in
+roofing-slates with a greenish tinge that reminded us of the lower
+slates of Cumberland and Westmoreland," are evidently suspected to be of
+the same age. In Russia, he remarks that the carboniferous limestones
+"are overlaid along the western edge of the Ural chain by sandstones and
+grits, which occupy much the same place in the general series as the
+millstone grit of England;" and in calling this group, as he does, the
+"representative of the millstone grit," Sir R. Murchison clearly shows
+that he thinks likeness of mineral composition some evidence of
+equivalence in time, even at that great distance. Nay, on the flanks of
+the Andes and in the United States, such similarities are looked for,
+and considered as significant of certain ages. Not that Sir R. Murchison
+contends theoretically for this relation between lithological character
+and date. For on the page from which we have just quoted (_Siluria_,
+p. 387), he says, that "whilst the soft Lower Silurian clays and sands
+of St. Petersburg have their equivalents in the hard schists and quartz
+rocks with gold veins in the heart of the Ural mountains, the equally
+soft red and green Devonian marls of the Valdai Hills are represented on
+the western flank of that chain by hard, contorted, and fractured
+limestones." But these, and other such admissions, seem to go for
+little. While himself asserting that the Potsdam-sandstone of North
+America, the Lingula-flags of England, and the alum-slates of
+Scandinavia are of the same period--while fully aware that among the
+Silurian formations of Wales, there are oolitic strata like those of
+secondary age; yet his reasoning is more or less coloured by the
+assumption, that formations of like qualities probably belong to the
+same era. Is it not manifest, then, that the exploded hypothesis of
+Werner continues to influence geological speculation?
+
+"But," it will perhaps be said, "though individual strata are not
+continuous over large areas, yet systems of strata are. Though within a
+few miles the same bed gradually passes from clay into sand, or thins
+out and disappears, yet the group of strata to which it belongs does not
+do so; but maintains in remote regions the same relations to other
+groups."
+
+This is the generally-current belief. On this assumption the received
+geological classifications appear to be framed. The Silurian system, the
+Devonian system, the Carboniferous system, etc., are set down in our
+books as groups of formations which everywhere succeed each other in a
+given order; and are severally everywhere of the same age. Though it may
+not be asserted that these successive systems are universal; yet it
+seems to be tacitly assumed that they are. In North and South America,
+in Asia, in Australia, sets of strata are assimilated to one or other of
+these groups; and their possession of certain mineral characters and a
+certain order of superposition are among the reasons assigned for so
+assimilating them. Though, probably, no competent geologist would
+contend that the European classification of strata is applicable to the
+globe as a whole; yet most, if not all geologists, write as though it
+were. Among readers of works on Geology, nine out of ten carry away the
+impression that the divisions, Primary, Secondary and Tertiary, are of
+absolute and uniform application; that these great divisions are
+separable into subdivisions, each of which is definitely distinguishable
+from the rest, and is everywhere recognizable by its characters as such
+or such; and that in all parts of the Earth, these minor systems
+severally began and ended at the same time. When they meet with the term
+"Carboniferous era," they take for granted that it was an era
+universally carboniferous--that it was, what Hugh Miller indeed actually
+describes it, an era when the Earth bore a vegetation far more luxuriant
+than it has since done; and were they in any of our colonies to meet
+with a coal-bed, they would conclude that, as a matter of course, it was
+of the same age as the English coal-beds.
+
+Now this belief that geologic "systems" are universal, is no more
+tenable than the other. It is just as absurd when considered _a priori_;
+and it is equally inconsistent with the facts. Though some series of
+strata classed together as Oolite, may range over a wider district than
+any one stratum of the series; yet we have but to ask what were the
+circumstances under which it was deposited, to see that the Oolitic
+series, like one of its individual strata, must be of local origin; and
+that there is not likely to be anywhere else, a series which
+corresponds, either in its characters or in its commencement and
+termination. For the formation of such a series implies an area of
+subsidence, in which its component beds were thrown down. Every area of
+subsidence is necessarily limited; and to suppose that there exist
+elsewhere groups of beds completely answering to those known as Oolite,
+is to suppose that, in contemporaneous areas of subsidence, like
+processes were going on. There is no reason to suppose this; but good
+reason to suppose the reverse. That in contemporaneous areas of
+subsidence throughout the globe, the conditions would cause the
+formation of Oolite, is an assumption which no modern geologist would
+openly make. He would say that the equivalent series of beds found
+elsewhere, would probably be of dissimilar mineral character. Moreover,
+in these contemporaneous areas of subsidence, the processes going on
+would not only be different in kind; but in no two cases would they be
+likely to agree in their commencements and terminations. The
+probabilities are greatly against separate portions of the Earth's
+surface beginning to subside at the same time, and ceasing to subside at
+the same time--a coincidence which alone could produce equivalent groups
+of strata. Subsidences in different places begin and end with utter
+irregularity; and hence the groups of strata thrown down in them can but
+rarely correspond. Measured against each other in time, their limits
+must disagree. On turning to the evidence, we find that it daily tends
+more and more to justify these _a priori_ positions. Take, as an
+example, the Old Red Sandstone system. In the north of England this is
+represented by a single stratum of conglomerate. In Herefordshire,
+Worcestershire, and Shropshire, it expands into a series of strata from
+eight to ten thousand feet thick, made up of conglomerates, red, green,
+and white sandstones, red, green, and spotted marls, and concretionary
+limestones. To the south-west, as between Caermarthen and Pembroke,
+these Old Red Sandstone strata exhibit considerable lithological
+changes; on the other side of the Bristol Channel, they display further
+changes in mineral characters; while in South Devon and Cornwall, the
+equivalent strata, consisting chiefly of slates, schists, and
+limestones, are so wholly different, that they were for a long time
+classed as Silurian. When we thus see that in certain directions the
+whole group of deposits thins out, and that its mineral characters
+change within moderate distances; does it not become clear that the
+whole group of deposits was a local one? And when we find, in other
+regions, formations analogous to these Old Red Sandstone or Devonian
+formations, is it certain--is it even probable--that they severally
+began and ended at the same time with them? Should it not require
+overwhelming evidence to make us believe as much?
+
+Yet so strongly is geological speculation swayed by the tendency to
+regard the phenomena as general instead of local, that even those most
+on their guard against it seem unable to escape its influence. At page
+158 of his _Principles of Geology_, Sir Charles Lyell says:--
+
+     "A group of red marl and red sandstone, containing salt and gypsum,
+     being interposed in England between the Lias and the Coal, all
+     other red marls and sandstones, associated some of them with salt,
+     and others with gypsum, and occurring not only in different parts
+     of Europe, but in North America, Peru, India, the salt deserts of
+     Asia, those of Africa--in a word, in every quarter of the globe,
+     were referred to one and the same period.... It was in vain to urge
+     as an objection the improbability of the hypothesis which implies
+     that all the moving waters on the globe were once simultaneously
+     charged with sediment of a red colour. But the rashness of
+     pretending to identify, in age, all the red sandstones and marls in
+     question, has at length been sufficiently exposed, by the discovery
+     that, even in Europe, they belong decidedly to many different
+     epochs."
+
+Nevertheless, while in this and many kindred passages Sir C. Lyell
+protests against the bias here illustrated, he seems himself not
+completely free from it. Though he utterly rejects the old hypothesis
+that all over the Earth the same continuous strata lie one upon another
+in regular order, like the coats of an onion, he still writes as though
+geologic "systems" do thus succeed each other. A reader of his _Manual_
+would certainly suppose him to believe, that the Primary epoch ended,
+and the secondary epoch began, all over the world at the same time--that
+these terms really correspond to distinct universal eras. When he
+assumes, as he does, that the division between Cambrian and Lower
+Silurian in America, answers chronologically to the division between
+Cambrian and Lower Silurian in Wales--when he takes for granted that
+the partings of Lower from Middle Silurian, and of Middle Silurian from
+Upper, in the one region, are of the same dates as the like partings in
+the other region; does it not seem that he believes geologic "systems"
+to be universal, in the sense that their separations were in all places
+contemporaneous? Though he would, doubtless, disown this as an article
+of faith, is not his thinking unconsciously influenced by it? Must we
+not say that, though the onion-coat hypothesis is dead, its spirit is
+traceable, under a transcendental form, even in the conclusions of its
+antagonists?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us now consider another leading geological doctrine,--the doctrine
+that strata of the same age contain like fossils; and that, therefore,
+the age and relative position of any stratum may be known by its
+fossils. While the theory that strata of like mineral characters were
+everywhere deposited simultaneously, has been ostensibly abandoned,
+there has been accepted the theory that in each geologic epoch similar
+plants and animals existed everywhere; and that, therefore, the epoch to
+which any formation belongs may be known by the organic remains
+contained in the formation. Though, perhaps, no leading geologist would
+openly commit himself to an unqualified assertion of this theory, yet it
+is tacitly assumed in current geological reasoning.
+
+This theory, however, is scarcely more tenable than the other. It cannot
+be concluded with any certainty, that formations in which similar
+organic remains are found, were of contemporaneous origin; nor can it be
+safely concluded that strata containing different organic remains are of
+different ages. To most readers these will be startling propositions;
+but they are fully admitted by the highest authorities. Sir Charles
+Lyell confesses that the test of organic remains must be used "under
+very much the same restrictions as the test of mineral composition." Sir
+Henry de la Beche, who variously illustrates this truth, remarks on the
+great incongruity there must be between the fossils of our carboniferous
+rocks and those of the marine strata deposited at the same period. But
+though, in the abstract, the danger of basing positive conclusions on
+evidence derived from fossils, is recognized; yet, in the concrete, this
+danger is generally disregarded. The established convictions respecting
+the ages of strata, have been formed in spite of it; and by some
+geologists it seems altogether ignored. Throughout his _Siluria_, Sir R.
+Murchison habitually assumes that the same, or kindred, species, lived
+in all parts of the Earth at the same time. In Russia, in Bohemia, in
+the United States, in South America, strata are classed as belonging to
+this or that part of the Silurian system, because of the similar fossils
+contained in them--are concluded to be everywhere contemporaneous if
+they enclose a proportion of identical or allied forms. In Russia the
+relative position of a stratum is inferred from the fact that, along
+with some Wenlock forms, it yields the _Pentamerus oblongus_. Certain
+crustaceans called _Eurypteri_, being characteristic of the Upper Ludlow
+rock, it is remarked that "large Eurypteri occur in a so-called black
+grey-wacke slate in Westmoreland, in Oneida County, New York, which will
+probably be found to be on the parallel of the Upper Ludlow rock:" in
+which word "probably," we see both how dominant is this belief of
+universal distribution of similar creatures at the same period, and how
+apt this belief is to make its own proof, by raising the expectation
+that the ages are identical when the forms are alike. Besides thus
+interpreting the formations of Russia, England, and America, Sir R.
+Murchison thus interprets those of the antipodes. Fossils from Victoria
+Colony, he agrees with the Government-surveyor in classing as of Lower
+Silurian or Llandovery age: that is, he takes for granted that when
+certain crustaceans and mollusks were living in Wales, certain similar
+crustaceans and mollusks were living in Australia. Yet the
+improbability of this assumption may be readily shown from Sir R.
+Murchison's own facts. If, as he points out, the fossil crustaceans of
+the uppermost Silurian rocks in Lanarkshire are, "with one doubtful
+exception," all "distinct from any of the forms known on the same
+horizon in England;" how can it be fairly presumed that the forms
+existing on the other side of the Earth during the Silurian period, were
+nearly allied to those existing here? Not only, indeed, do Sir R.
+Murchison's conclusions tacitly assume this doctrine of universal
+distribution, but he distinctly enunciates it. "The mere presence of a
+graptolite," he says, "will at once decide that the enclosing rock is
+Silurian;" and he says this, notwithstanding repeated warnings against
+such generalizations. During the progress of Geology, it has over and
+over again happened that a particular fossil, long considered
+characteristic of a particular formation, has been afterwards discovered
+in other formations. Until some twelve years ago, Goniatites had not
+been found lower than the Devonian rocks; but now, in Bohemia, they have
+been found in rocks classed as Silurian. Quite recently, the
+_Orthoceras_, previously supposed to be a type exclusively palæozoic,
+has been detected along with mesozoic Ammonites and Belemnites. Yet
+hosts of such experiences fail to extinguish the assumption, that the
+age of a stratum may be determined by the occurrence in it of a single
+fossil form. Nay, this assumption survives evidence of even a still more
+destructive kind. Referring to the Silurian system in Western Ireland,
+Sir R. Murchison says, "in the beds near Maam, Professor Nicol and
+myself collected remains, some of which would be considered Lower, and
+others Upper, Silurian;" and he then names sundry fossils which, in
+England, belong to the summit of the Ludlow rocks, or highest Silurian
+strata; "some, which elsewhere are known only in rocks of Llandovery
+age"--that is, of middle Silurian age; and some, only before known in
+Lower Silurian strata, not far above the most ancient fossiliferous
+beds. Now what do these facts prove? Clearly, they prove that species
+which in Wales are separated by strata more than twenty thousand feet
+deep, and therefore seem to belong to periods far more remote from each
+other, were really co-existent. They prove that the mollusks and
+crinoids held to be characteristic of early Silurian strata, and
+supposed to have become extinct long before the mollusks and crinoids of
+the later Silurian strata came into existence, were really flourishing
+at the same time with these last; and that these last possibly date back
+to as early a period as the first. They prove that not only the mineral
+characters of sedimentary formations, but also the collections of
+organic forms they contain, depend, to a great extent, on local
+circumstances. They prove that the fossils met with in any series of
+strata, cannot be taken as representing anything like the whole Flora
+and Fauna of the period they belong to. In brief, they throw great doubt
+upon numerous geological generalizations.
+
+Notwithstanding facts like these, and notwithstanding his avowed opinion
+that the test of organic remains must be used "under very much the same
+restrictions as the test of mineral composition," Sir Charles Lyell,
+too, considers sundry positive conclusions to be justified by this test:
+even where the community of fossils is slight and the distance great.
+Having decided that in various places in Europe, middle Eocene strata
+are distinguished by Nummulites; he infers, without any other assigned
+evidence, that wherever Nummulites are found--in Morocco, Algeria,
+Egypt, in Persia, Scinde, Cutch, Eastern Bengal, and the frontiers of
+China--the containing formation is Middle Eocene. And from this
+inference he draws the following important corollary:--
+
+     "When we have once arrived at the conviction that the nummulitic
+     formation occupies a middle place in the Eocene series, we are
+     struck with the comparatively modern date to which some of the
+     greatest revolutions in the physical geography of Europe, Asia, and
+     northern Africa must be referred. All the mountain chains, such as
+     the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians, and Himalayas, into the
+     composition of whose central and loftiest parts the nummulitic
+     strata enter bodily, could have had no existence till after the
+     Middle Eocene period."--_Manual_, p. 232.
+
+A still more marked case follows on the next page. Because a certain bed
+at Claiborne in Alabama, which contains "_four hundred_ species of
+marine shells," includes among them the _Cardita planicosta_, "and _some
+others_ identical with European species, or very nearly allied to them,"
+Sir C. Lyell says it is "highly probable the Claiborne beds agree in age
+with the central or Bracklesham group of England." When we find
+contemporaneity alleged on the strength of a community no greater than
+that which sometimes exists between strata of widely-different ages in
+the same country, it seems as though the above-quoted caution had been
+forgotten. It appears to be assumed for the occasion, that species which
+had a wide range in space had a narrow range in time; which is the
+reverse of the fact. The tendency to systematize overrides the evidence,
+and thrusts Nature into a formula too rigid to fit her endless variety.
+
+"But," it may be urged, "surely, when in different places the order of
+superposition, the mineral characters, and the fossils, agree, it may
+safely be concluded that the formations thus corresponding date back to
+the same time. If, for example, the United States display a succession
+of Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous systems, lithologically similar
+to those known here by those names, and characterized by like fossils,
+it is a fair inference that these groups of strata were severally being
+deposited in America while their equivalents were being deposited here."
+
+On this position, which seems a strong one, we have, in the first place,
+to remark, that the evidence of correspondence is always more or less
+suspicious. We have already adverted to the several "idols"--if we may
+use Bacon's metaphor--to which geologists unconsciously sacrifice, when
+interpreting the structures of unexplored regions. Carrying with them
+the classification of strata existing in Europe, and assuming that
+groups of strata in other parts of the world must answer to some of the
+groups of strata known here, they are necessarily prone to assert
+parallelism on insufficient evidence. They scarcely entertain the
+previous question, whether the formations they are examining have or
+have not any European equivalents; but the question is--with which of
+the European series shall they be classed?--with which do they most
+agree?--from which do they differ least? And this being the mode of
+inquiry, there is apt to result great laxity of interpretation. How lax
+the interpretation really is, may be readily shown. When strata are
+discontinuous, as between Europe and America, no evidence can be derived
+from the order of superposition, apart from mineral characters and
+organic remains; for, unless strata can be continuously traced, mineral
+characters and organic remains afford the only means of classing them as
+such or such. As to the test of mineral characters, we have seen that it
+is almost worthless; and no modern geologist would dare to say it should
+be relied on. If the Old Red Sandstone series in mid-England, differs
+wholly in lithological aspect from the equivalent series in South Devon,
+it is clear that similarities of texture and composition cannot justify
+us in classing a system of strata in another quarter of the globe with
+some European system. The test of fossils is the only one that remains;
+and with how little strictness this test is applied, one case will show.
+Of forty-six species of British Devonian corals, only six occur in
+America; and this, notwithstanding the wide range which the _Anthozoa_
+are known to have. Similarly of the _Mollusca_ and _Crinoidea_, it
+appears that, while there are sundry genera found in America which are
+found here, there are scarcely any of the same species. And Sir Charles
+Lyell admits that "the difficulty of deciding on the exact parallelism
+of the New York subdivisions, as above enumerated, with the members of
+the European Devonian, is very great, so few are the species in common."
+Yet it is on the strength of community of fossils, that the whole
+Devonian series of the United States is assumed to be contemporaneous
+with the whole Devonian series of England. And it is partly on the
+ground that the Devonian of the United States corresponds in time with
+our own Devonian, that Sir Charles Lyell concludes the superjacent
+coal-measures of the two countries to be of the same age. Is it not,
+then, as we said, that the evidence in these cases is very suspicious?
+Should it be replied, as it may fairly be, that this correspondence from
+which the synchronism of distant formations is inferred, is not a
+correspondence between particular species or particular genera, but
+between the general characters of the contained assemblages of
+fossils--between the _facies_ of the two Faunas; the rejoinder is, that
+though such correspondence is a stronger evidence of synchronism it is
+still an insufficient one. To infer synchronism from such
+correspondence, involves the postulate that throughout each geologic era
+there has habitually existed a recognizable similarity between the
+groups of organic forms inhabiting all the different parts of the Earth;
+and that the causes which have in one part of the Earth changed the
+organic forms into those which characterize the next era, have
+simultaneously acted in all other parts of the Earth, in such ways as to
+produce parallel changes of their organic forms. Now this is not only a
+large assumption to make; but it is an assumption contrary to
+probability. The probability is, that the causes which have changed
+Faunas have been local rather than universal; that hence while the
+Faunas of some regions have been rapidly changing, those of others have
+been almost quiescent; and that when those of others have been changed,
+it has been, not in such ways as to maintain parallelism, but in such
+ways as to produce divergence.
+
+Even supposing, however, that districts some hundreds of miles apart,
+furnished groups of strata which completely agreed in their order of
+superposition, their mineral characters, and their fossils, we should
+still have inadequate proof of contemporaneity. For there are
+conditions, very likely to occur, under which such groups might differ
+widely in age. If there be a continent of which the strata crop out on
+the surface obliquely to the line of coast--running, say,
+west-north-west, while the coast runs east and west--it is clear that
+each group of strata will crop out on the beach at a particular part of
+the coast; that further west the next group of strata will crop out on
+the beach; and so continuously. As the localization of marine plants and
+animals, is in a considerable degree determined by the natures of the
+rocks and their detritus, it follows that each part of this coast will
+have its more or less distinct Flora and Fauna. What now must result
+from the action of the waves in the course of a geologic epoch? As the
+sea makes slow inroads on the land, the place at which each group of
+strata crops out on the beach will gradually move towards the west: its
+distinctive fish, mollusks, crustaceans, and sea-weeds, migrating with
+it. Further, the detritus of each of these groups of strata will, as the
+point of outcrop moves westwards, be deposited over the detritus of the
+group in advance of it. And the consequence of these actions, carried on
+for one of those enormous periods which a geologic change takes, will be
+that, corresponding to each eastern stratum, there will arise a stratum
+far to the west, which, though occupying the same position relatively to
+other beds, formed of like materials, and containing like fossils, will
+yet be perhaps a million years later in date.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the illegitimacy, or at any rate the great doubtfulness, of many
+current geological inferences, is best seen when we contemplate
+terrestrial changes now going on; and ask how far such inferences are
+countenanced by them. If we carry out rigorously the modern method of
+interpreting geological phenomena, which Sir Charles Lyell has done so
+much to establish--that of referring them to causes like those at
+present in action--we cannot fail to see how improbable are sundry of
+the received conclusions.
+
+Along each shore which is being worn away by the waves, there are being
+formed mud, sand, and pebbles. This detritus has, in each locality, a
+more or less special character; determined by the nature of the strata
+destroyed. In the English Channel it is not the same as in the Irish
+Channel; on the east coast of Ireland it is not the same as on the west
+coast; and so throughout. At the mouth of each great river, there is
+being deposited sediment differing more or less from that deposited at
+the mouths of other rivers in colour and quality; forming strata which
+are here red, there yellow, and elsewhere brown, grey, or dirty white.
+Besides which various formations, going on in deltas and along shores,
+there are some much wider, and still more strongly contrasted,
+formations. At the bottom of the Ægean Sea, there is accumulating a bed
+of Pteropod shells, which will eventually, no doubt, become a calcareous
+rock. For some hundreds of thousands of square miles, the ocean-bed
+between Great Britain and North America, is being covered with a stratum
+of chalk; and over large areas in the Pacific, there are going on
+deposits of coralline limestone. Thus, there are at this moment being
+produced in different places multitudinous strata differing from one
+another in lithological characters. Name at random any part of the
+sea-bottom, and ask whether the deposit there taking place is like the
+deposit taking place at some distant part of the sea-bottom, and the
+almost-certainly correct answer will be--No. The chances are not in
+favour of similarity, but against it--many to one against it.
+
+In the order of superposition of strata there is being established a
+like variety. Each region of the Earth's surface has its special history
+of elevations, subsidences, periods of rest: and this history in no case
+fits chronologically with the history of any other portion. River
+deltas are now being thrown down on formations of different ages: some
+very ancient, some quite modern. While here there has been deposited a
+series of beds many hundreds of feet thick, there has elsewhere been
+deposited but a single bed of fine mud. While one region of the Earth's
+crust, continuing for a vast epoch above the surface of the ocean, bears
+record of no changes save those resulting from denudation; another
+region of the Earth's crust gives proof of sundry changes of level, with
+their several resulting masses of stratified detritus. If anything is to
+be judged from current processes, we must infer, not only that
+everywhere the succession of sedimentary formations differs more or less
+from the succession elsewhere; but also that in each place, there exist
+groups of strata to which many other places have no equivalents.
+
+With respect to the organic bodies imbedded in formations now in
+progress, a like truth is equally manifest, if not more manifest. Even
+along the same coast, within moderate distances, the forms of life
+differ very considerably; and they differ much more on coasts that are
+remote from one another. Again, dissimilar creatures which are living
+together near the same shore, do not leave their remains in the same
+beds of sediment. For instance, at the bottom of the Adriatic, where the
+prevailing currents cause the deposits to be here of mud, and there of
+calcareous matter, it is proved that different species of co-existing
+shells are being buried in these respective formations. On our own
+coasts, the marine remains found a few miles from shore, in banks where
+fish congregate, are different from those found close to the shore,
+where littoral species flourish. A large proportion of aquatic creatures
+have structures which do not admit of fossilization; while of the rest,
+the great majority are destroyed, when dead, by various kinds of
+scavengers. So that no one deposit near our shores can contain anything
+like a true representation of the Fauna of the surrounding sea; much
+less of the co-existing Faunas of other seas in the same latitude; and
+still less of the Faunas of seas in distant latitudes. Were it not that
+the assertion seems needful, it would be almost absurd to say, that the
+organic remains now being buried in the Dogger Bank, can tell us next to
+nothing about the fish, crustaceans, mollusks, and corals, which are
+being buried in the Bay of Bengal. Still stronger is the argument in the
+case of terrestrial life. With more numerous and greater contrasts
+between the types inhabiting one continent and those inhabiting another,
+there is a far more imperfect registry of them. Schouw marks out on the
+Earth more than twenty botanical regions, occupied by groups of forms so
+distinct, that, if fossilized, geologists would scarcely be disposed to
+refer them all to the same period. Of Faunas, the Arctic differs from
+the Temperate; the Temperate from the Tropical; and the South Temperate
+from the North Temperate. Nay, in the South Temperate Zone itself, the
+two regions of South Africa and South America are unlike in their
+mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, mollusks, insects. The shells and
+bones now lying at the bottoms of lakes and estuaries in these several
+regions, have certainly not that similarity which is usually looked for
+in those of contemporaneous strata; and the recent forms exhumed in any
+one of these regions would very untruly represent the present Flora and
+Fauna of the Earth. In conformity with the current style of geological
+reasoning, an exhaustive examination of deposits in the Arctic circle,
+might be held to prove that though at this period there were sundry
+mammals existing, there were no reptiles; while the absence of mammals
+in the deposits of the Galapagos Archipelago, where there are plenty of
+reptiles, might be held to prove the reverse. And at the same time, from
+the formations extending for two thousand miles along the great
+barrier-reef of Australia--formations in which are imbedded nothing but
+corals, echinoderms, mollusks, crustaceans, and fish, along with an
+occasional turtle, or bird, or cetacean--it might be inferred that there
+lived in our epoch neither terrestrial reptiles, nor terrestrial
+mammals. The mention of Australia, indeed, suggests an illustration
+which, even alone, would amply prove our case. The Fauna of this region
+differs widely from any that is found elsewhere. On land, all the
+indigenous mammals, except bats, belong to the lowest, or implacental
+division; and the insects are singularly different from those found
+elsewhere. The surrounding seas contain numerous forms which are more or
+less strange; and among the fish there exists a species of shark, which
+is the only living representative of a genus that flourished in early
+geologic epochs. If, now, the modern fossiliferous deposits of Australia
+were to be examined by one ignorant of the existing Australian Fauna;
+and if he were to reason in the usual manner; he would be very unlikely
+to class these deposits with those of the present time. How, then, can
+we place confidence in the tacit assumption that certain formations in
+remote parts of the Earth are referable to the same period, because the
+organic remains contained in them display a certain community of
+character? or that certain others are referable to different periods,
+because the _facies_ of their Faunas are different?
+
+"But," it will be replied, "in past eras the same, or similar, organic
+forms were more widely distributed than now." It may be so; but the
+evidence adduced by no means proves it. The argument by which this
+conclusion is reached, runs a risk of being quoted as an example of
+reasoning in a circle. As already pointed out, between formations in
+remote regions the accepted test of equivalence is community of fossils.
+If, then, the contemporaneity of remote formations is concluded from the
+likeness of their fossils; how can it be said that similar plants and
+animals were once more widely distributed, because they are found in
+contemporaneous strata in remote regions? Is not the fallacy manifest?
+Even supposing there were no such fatal objection as this, the evidence
+commonly assigned would still be insufficient. For we must bear in mind
+that the community of organic remains usually thought sufficient proof
+of correspondence in time, is a very imperfect community. When the
+compared sedimentary beds are far apart, it is scarcely expected that
+there will be many species common to the two: it is enough if there be
+discovered a considerable number of common genera. Now had it been
+proved that throughout geologic time, each genus lived but for a short
+period--a period measured by a single group of strata--something might
+be inferred. But what if we learn that many of the same genera continued
+to exist throughout enormous epochs, measured by several vast systems of
+strata? "Among molluscs, the genera _Avicula_, _Modiola_, _Terebratula_,
+_Lingula_, and _Orbicula_, are found from the Silurian rocks upwards to
+the present day." If, then, between the lowest fossiliferous formations
+and the most recent, there exists this degree of community; must we not
+infer that there will probably often exist a great degree of community
+between strata that are far from contemporaneous?
+
+Thus the reasoning from which it is concluded that similar organic forms
+were once more widely spread than now, is doubly fallacious; and,
+consequently, the classifications of foreign strata based on the
+conclusion are untrustworthy. Judging from the present distribution of
+life, we cannot expect to find similar remains in geographically remote
+strata of the same age; and where, between the fossils of geographically
+remote strata, we do find much similarity, it is probably due rather to
+likeness of conditions than to contemporaneity. If from causes and
+effects such as we now witness, we reason back to the causes and effects
+of past epochs, we discover inadequate warrant for sundry of the
+received doctrines. Seeing, as we do, that in large areas of the Pacific
+this is a period characterized by abundance of corals; that in the North
+Atlantic it is a period in which a great chalk-deposit is being formed;
+and that in the valley of the Mississippi it is a period of new
+coal-basins--seeing also, as we do, that in one extensive continent this
+is peculiarly an era of implacental mammals, and that in another
+extensive continent it is peculiarly an era of placental mammals; we
+have good reason to hesitate before accepting these sweeping
+generalizations which are based on a cursory examination of strata
+occupying but a tenth part of the Earth's surface.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the outset, this article was to have been a review of the works of
+Hugh Miller; but it has grown into something much more general.
+Nevertheless, the remaining two doctrines which we propose to criticize,
+may conveniently be treated in connexion with his name, as that of one
+who fully committed himself to them. And first, a few words respecting
+his position.
+
+That he was a man whose life was one of meritorious achievement, every
+one knows. That he was a diligent and successful working geologist,
+scarcely needs saying. That with indomitable perseverance he struggled
+up from obscurity to a place in the world of literature and science,
+shows him to have been highly endowed in character and intelligence. And
+that he had a remarkable power of presenting his facts and arguments in
+an attractive form, a glance at any of his books will quickly prove. By
+all means, let us respect him as a man of activity and sagacity, joined
+with a large amount of poetry. But while saying this we must add, that
+his reputation stands by no means so high in the scientific world as in
+the world at large. Partly from the fact that our Scotch neighbours are
+in the habit of blowing the trumpet rather loudly before their
+notabilities--partly because the charming style in which his books are
+written has gained him a large circle of readers--partly, perhaps,
+through a praiseworthy sympathy with him as a self-made man; Hugh Miller
+has met with an amount of applause which, little as we wish to diminish
+it, must not be allowed to blind the public to his defects as a man of
+science. The truth is, he was so far committed to a foregone conclusion,
+that he could not become a philosophical geologist. He might be aptly
+described as a theologian studying geology. The dominant idea with which
+he wrote, may be seen in the titles of two of his books--_Footprints of
+the Creator_,--_The Testimony of the Rocks_. Regarding geological facts
+as evidence for or against certain religious conclusions, it was
+scarcely possible for him to deal with geological facts impartially. His
+ruling aim was to disprove the Development Hypothesis, the assumed
+implications of which were repugnant to him; and in proportion to the
+strength of his feeling, was the one-sidedness of his reasoning. He
+admitted that "God might as certainly have _originated_ the species by a
+law of development, as he _maintains_ it by a law of development;--the
+existence of a First Great Cause is as perfectly compatible with the one
+scheme as with the other." Nevertheless, he considered the hypothesis at
+variance with Christianity; and therefore combated with it. He
+apparently overlooked the fact, that the doctrines of geology in
+general, as held by himself, had been rejected by many on similar
+grounds; and that he had himself been repeatedly attacked for his
+anti-Christian teachings. He seems not to have perceived that, just as
+his antagonists were wrong in condemning as irreligious, theories which
+he saw were not irreligious; so might he be wrong in condemning, on like
+grounds, the Theory of Evolution. In brief, he fell short of that
+highest faith which knows that all truths must harmonize; and which is,
+therefore, content trustfully to follow the evidence whithersoever it
+leads.
+
+Of course it is impossible to criticize his works without entering on
+this great question to which he chiefly devoted himself. The two
+remaining doctrines to be here discussed, bear directly on this
+question; and, as above said, we propose to treat them in connexion with
+Hugh Miller's name, because, throughout his reasonings, he assumes
+their truth. Let it not be supposed, however, that we shall aim to
+prove what he has aimed to disprove. While we purpose showing that his
+geological arguments against the Development Hypothesis are based on
+invalid assumptions; we do not purpose showing that the geological
+arguments urged in support of it are based on valid assumptions. We hope
+to make it apparent that the geological evidence at present obtained, is
+insufficient for either side; further, that there seems little
+probability that sufficient evidence will ever be obtained; and that if
+the question is eventually decided, it must be decided on other than
+geological grounds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first of the current doctrines to which we have just referred, is,
+that there occur in the serial records of former life on our planet, two
+great blanks; whence it is inferred that, on at least two occasions, the
+previously existing inhabitants of the Earth were almost wholly
+destroyed, and a different class of inhabitants created. Comparing the
+general life on the Earth to a thread, Hugh Miller says:--
+
+     "It is continuous from the present time up to the commencement of
+     the Tertiary period; and then so abrupt a break occurs, that, with
+     the exception of the microscopic diatomaceæ, to which I last
+     evening referred, and of one shell and one coral, not a single
+     species crossed the gap. On its farther or remoter side, however,
+     where the Secondary division closes, the intermingling of species
+     again begins, and runs on till the commencement of this great
+     Secondary division; and then, just where the Palæozoic division
+     closes, we find another abrupt break, crossed, if crossed at
+     all,--for there still exists some doubt on the subject,--by but two
+     species of plant."
+
+These breaks are supposed to imply actual new creations on the surface
+of our planet--supposed not by Hugh Miller only, but by the majority of
+geologists. And the terms Palæozoic, Mesozoic, and Cainozoic, are used
+to indicate these three successive systems of life. It is true that some
+accept this belief with caution; knowing how geologic research has been
+all along tending to fill up what were once thought wide gaps. Sir
+Charles Lyell points out that "the hiatus which exists in Great Britain
+between the fossils of the Lias and those of the Magnesian Limestone,
+is supplied in Germany by the rich fauna and flora of the Muschelkalk,
+Keuper, and Bunter Sandstein, which we know to be of a date precisely
+intermediate." Again he remarks that "until lately the fossils of the
+coal-measures were separated from those of the antecedent Silurian group
+by a very abrupt and decided line of demarcation; but recent discoveries
+have brought to light in Devonshire, Belgium, the Eifel, and Westphalia,
+the remains of a fauna of an intervening period." And once more, he
+says, "we have also in like manner had some success of late years in
+diminishing the hiatus which still separates the Cretaceous and Eocene
+periods in Europe." To which let us add that, since Hugh Miller penned
+the passage above quoted, the second of the great gaps he refers to has
+been very considerably narrowed by the discovery of strata containing
+Palæozoic genera and Mesozoic genera intermingled. Nevertheless, the
+occurrence of two great revolutions in the Earth's Flora and Fauna
+appears still to be held by many; and geologic nomenclature habitually
+assumes it.
+
+Before seeking a solution of the problem thus raised, let us glance at
+the several minor causes which produce breaks in the geological
+succession of organic forms; taking first, the more general ones which
+modify climate, and, therefore, the distribution of life. Among these
+may be noted one which has not, we believe, been named by writers on the
+subject. We mean that resulting from a certain slow astronomic rhythm,
+by which the northern and southern hemispheres are alternately subject
+to greater extremes of temperature. In consequence of the slight
+ellipticity of its orbit, the Earth's distance from the sun varies to
+the extent of some 3,000,000 of miles. At present, the aphelion occurs
+at the time of our northern summer; and the perihelion during the summer
+of the southern hemisphere. In consequence, however, of that slow
+movement of the Earth's axis which produces the precession of the
+equinoxes, this state of things will in time be reversed: the Earth
+will be nearest to the sun during the summer of the northern hemisphere,
+and furthest from it during the southern summer or northern winter. The
+period required to complete the slow movement producing these changes,
+is nearly 26,000 years; and were there no modifying process, the two
+hemispheres would alternately experience this coincidence of summer with
+relative nearness to the sun, during a period of 13,000 years. But there
+is also a still slower change in the direction of the axis major of the
+Earth's orbit; from which it results that the alternation we have
+described is completed in about 21,000 years. That is to say, if at a
+given time the Earth is nearest to the sun at our mid-summer, and
+furthest from the sun at our mid-winter; then, in 10,500 years
+afterwards, it will be furthest from the sun at our mid-summer, and
+nearest at our mid-winter. Now the difference between the distances from
+the sun at the two extremes of this alternation, amounts to
+one-thirtieth; and hence, the difference between the quantities of heat
+received from the sun on a summer's day under these opposite conditions
+amounts to one-fifteenth. Estimating this, not with reference to the
+zero of our thermometers, but with reference to the temperature of the
+celestial spaces, Sir John Herschel calculates "23° Fahrenheit, as the
+least variation of temperature under such circumstances which can
+reasonably be attributed to the actual variation of the sun's distance."
+Thus, then, each hemisphere has at a certain epoch, a short summer of
+extreme heat, followed by a long and very cold winter. Through the slow
+change in the direction of the Earth's axis, these extremes are
+gradually mitigated. And at the end of 10,500 years, there is reached
+the opposite state--a long and moderate summer, with a short and mild
+winter. At present, in consequence of the predominance of sea in the
+southern hemisphere, the extremes to which its astronomical conditions
+subject it, are much ameliorated; while the great proportion of land in
+the northern hemisphere, tends to exaggerate such contrast as now
+exists in it between winter and summer: whence it results that the
+climates of the two hemispheres are not widely unlike. But 10,000 years
+hence, the northern hemisphere will undergo annual variations of
+temperature far more marked than now.
+
+In the last edition of his _Outlines of Astronomy_, Sir John Herschel
+recognizes this as an element in geological processes; regarding it as
+possibly a part-cause of those climatic changes indicated by the records
+of the Earth's past. That it has had much to do with those larger
+changes of climate of which we have evidence, seems unlikely, since
+there is reason to think that these have been far slower and more
+lasting; but that it must have entailed a rhythmical exaggeration and
+mitigation of the climates otherwise produced, seems beyond question.
+And it seems also beyond question that there must have been a consequent
+rhythmical change in the distribution of organisms--a rhythmical change
+to which we here wish to draw attention, as one cause of minor breaks in
+the succession of fossil remains. Each species of plant and animal has
+certain limits of heat and cold within which only it can exist; and
+these limits in a great degree determine its geographical position. It
+will not spread north of a certain latitude, because it cannot bear a
+more northern winter, nor south of a certain latitude, because the
+summer heat is too great; or else it is indirectly restrained from
+spreading further by the effect of temperature on the humidity of the
+air, or on the distribution of the organisms it lives upon. But now,
+what will result from a slow alteration of climate, produced as above
+described? Supposing the period we set out from is that in which the
+contrast of seasons is least marked, it is manifest that during the
+progress towards the period of most violent contrast, each species of
+plant and animal will gradually change its limits of distribution--will
+be driven back, here by the winter's increasing cold, and there by the
+summer's increasing heat--will retire into those localities that are
+still fit for it. Thus during 10,000 years, each species will ebb away
+from certain regions it was inhabiting; and during the succeeding 10,000
+years will flow back into those regions. From the strata there forming,
+its remains will disappear; they will be absent from some of the
+superposed strata; and will be found in strata higher up. But in what
+shapes will they re-appear? Exposed during the 21,000 years of their
+slow recession and their slow return, to changing conditions of life,
+they are likely to have undergone modifications; and will probably
+re-appear with slight differences of constitution and perhaps of
+form--will be new varieties or perhaps new sub-species.
+
+To this cause of minor breaks in the succession of organic forms--a
+cause on which we have dwelt because it has not been taken into
+account--we must add sundry others. Besides these periodically-recurring
+changes of climate, there are the irregular ones produced by
+redistributions of land and sea; and these, sometimes less, sometimes
+greater, in degree, than the rhythmical changes, must, like them, cause
+in each region emigrations and immigrations of species; and consequent
+breaks, small or large as the case may be, in the paleontological
+series. Other and more special geological changes must produce other and
+more local blanks in the succession. By some inland elevation the
+natural drainage of a continent is modified; and instead of the sediment
+previously brought down to the sea by it, a great river brings down
+sediment unfavourable to various plants and animals living in its delta:
+whereupon these disappear from the locality, perhaps to re-appear in a
+changed form after a long epoch. Upheavals or subsidences of shores or
+sea-bottoms, involving deviations of marine currents, remove the
+habitats of many species to which such currents are salutary or
+injurious; and further, this redistribution of currents alters the
+places of sedimentary deposits, and thus stops the burying of organic
+remains in some localities, while commencing it in others. Had we space,
+many more such causes of blanks in our paleontological records might be
+added. But it is needless here to enumerate them. They are admirably
+explained and illustrated in Sir Charles Lyell's _Principles of
+Geology_.
+
+Now, if these minor changes of the Earth's surface produce minor breaks
+in the series of fossilized remains; must not great changes produce
+great breaks? If a local upheaval or subsidence causes throughout its
+small area the absence of some links in the chain of fossil forms; does
+it not follow that an upheaval or subsidence extending over a large part
+of the Earth's surface, must cause the absence of a great number of such
+links throughout a very wide area?
+
+When during a long epoch a continent, slowly sinking, gives place to a
+far-spreading ocean some miles in depth, at the bottom of which no
+deposits from rivers or abraded shores can be thrown down; and when,
+after some enormous period, this ocean-bottom is gradually elevated and
+becomes the site for new strata; it is clear that the fossils contained
+in these new strata are likely to have but little in common with the
+fossils of the strata below them. Take, in illustration, the case of the
+North Atlantic. We have already named the fact that between this country
+and the United States, the ocean-bottom is being covered with a deposit
+of chalk--a deposit which has been forming, probably, ever since there
+occurred that great depression of the Earth's crust from which the
+Atlantic resulted in remote geologic times. This chalk consists of the
+minute shells of _Foraminifera_, sprinkled with remains of small
+_Entomostraca_, and probably a few Pteropod-shells; though the sounding
+lines have not yet brought up any of these last. Thus, in so far as all
+high forms of life are concerned, this new chalk-formation must be a
+blank. At rare intervals, perhaps, a polar bear, drifted on an iceberg,
+may have its bones scattered over the bed; or a dead, decaying whale
+may similarly leave traces. But such remains must be so rare, that this
+new chalk-formation, if accessible, might be examined for a century
+before any of them were disclosed. If now, some millions of years hence,
+the Atlantic-bed should be raised, and estuary deposits or shore
+deposits laid upon it, these would contain remains of a Flora and a
+Fauna so distinct from everything below them, as to appear like a new
+creation.
+
+Thus, along with continuity of life on the Earth's surface, there not
+only _may_ be, but there _must_ be, great gaps in the series of fossils;
+and hence these gaps are no evidence against the doctrine of Evolution.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One other current assumption remains to be criticized; and it is the one
+on which, more than on any other, depends the view taken respecting the
+question of development.
+
+From the beginning of the controversy, the arguments for and against
+have turned upon the evidence of progression in organic forms, found in
+the ascending series of our sedimentary formations. On the one hand,
+those who contend that higher organisms have been evolved out of lower,
+joined with those who contend that successively higher organisms have
+been created at successively later periods, appeal for proof to the
+facts of Paleontology; which, they say, countenance their views. On the
+other hand, the Uniformitarians, who not only reject the hypothesis of
+development, but deny that the modern forms of life are higher than the
+ancient ones, reply that the paleontological evidence is at present very
+incomplete; that though we have not yet found remains of
+highly-organized creatures in strata of the greatest antiquity, we must
+not assume that no such creatures existed when those strata were
+deposited; and that, probably, search will eventually disclose them.
+
+It must be admitted that thus far, the evidence has gone in favour of
+the latter party. Geological discovery has year after year shown the
+small value of negative facts. The conviction that there are no traces
+of higher organisms in earlier strata, has resulted not from the absence
+of such traces, but from incomplete examination. At p. 460 of his
+_Manual of Elementary Geology_, Sir Charles Lyell gives a list in
+illustration of this. It appears that in 1709, fishes were not known
+lower than the Permian system. In 1793 they were found in the subjacent
+Carboniferous system; in 1828 in the Devonian; in 1840 in the Upper
+Silurian. Of reptiles, we read that in 1710 the lowest known were in the
+Permian; in 1844 they were detected in the Carboniferous; and in 1852 in
+the Upper Devonian. While of the Mammalia the list shows that in 1798
+none had been discovered below the Middle Eocene: but that in 1818 they
+were discovered in the Lower Oolite; and in 1847 in the Upper Trias.
+
+The fact is, however, that both parties set out with an inadmissible
+postulate. Of the Uniformitarians, not only such writers as Hugh Miller,
+but also such as Sir Charles Lyell,[27] reason as though we had found
+the earliest, or something like the earliest, strata. Their antagonists,
+whether defenders of the Development Hypothesis or simply
+Progressionists, almost uniformly do the like. Sir R. Murchison, who is
+a Progressionist, calls the lowest fossiliferous strata, "Protozoic."
+Prof. Ansted uses the same term. Whether avowedly or not, all the
+disputants stand on this assumption as their common ground.
+
+Yet is this assumption indefensible, as some who make it very well know.
+Facts may be cited against it which show that it is a more than
+questionable one--that it is a highly improbable one; while the evidence
+assigned in its favour will not bear criticism.
+
+Because in Bohemia, Great Britain, and portions of North America, the
+lowest unmetamorphosed strata yet discovered, contain but slight traces
+of life, Sir R. Murchison conceives that they were formed while yet few,
+if any, plants or animals had been created; and, therefore, classes them
+as "Azoic." His own pages, however, show the illegitimacy of the
+conclusion that there existed at that period no considerable amount of
+life. Such traces of life as have been found in the Longmynd rocks, for
+many years considered unfossiliferous, have been found in some of the
+lowest beds; and the twenty thousand feet of superposed beds, still
+yield no organic remains. If now these superposed strata throughout a
+depth of four miles, are without fossils, though the strata over which
+they lie prove that life had commenced; what becomes of Sir R.
+Murchison's inference? At page 189 of _Siluria_, a still more conclusive
+fact will be found. The "Glengariff grits," and other accompanying
+strata there described as 13,500 feet thick, contain no signs of
+contemporaneous life. Yet Sir R. Murchison refers them to the Devonian
+period--a period which had a large and varied marine Fauna. How then,
+from the absence of fossils in the Longmynd beds and their equivalents,
+can we conclude that the Earth was "azoic" when they were formed?
+
+"But," it may be asked, "if living creatures then existed, why do we not
+find fossiliferous strata of that age, or an earlier age?" One reply is,
+that the non-existence of such strata is but a negative fact--we have
+not found them. And considering how little we know even of the
+two-fifths of the Earth's surface now above the sea, and how absolutely
+ignorant we are of the three-fifths below the sea, it is rash to say
+that no such strata exist. But the chief reply is, that these records of
+the Earth's earlier history have been in great part destroyed, by
+agencies which are ever tending to destroy such records.
+
+It is an established geological doctrine, that sedimentary strata are
+liable to be changed, more or less profoundly, by igneous action. The
+rocks originally classed as "transition," because they were
+intermediate in character between the igneous rocks found below them,
+and the sedimentary strata found above them, are now known to be nothing
+else than sedimentary strata altered in texture and appearance by the
+intense heat of adjacent molten matter; and hence are renamed
+"metamorphic rocks." Modern researches have shown, too, that these
+metamorphic rocks are not, as was once supposed, all of the same age.
+Besides primary and secondary strata which have been transformed by
+igneous action, there are similarly-changed deposits of tertiary
+origin--deposits changed, even as far as a quarter of a mile from the
+point of contact with neighbouring granite. By this process fossils are
+of course destroyed. "In some cases," says Sir Charles Lyell, "dark
+limestones, replete with shells and corals, have been turned into white
+statuary marble, and hard clays, containing vegetable or other remains,
+into slates called mica-schist or hornblende-schist; every vestige of
+the organic bodies having been obliterated." Again, it is fast becoming
+an acknowledged truth that igneous rock, of whatever kind, is the
+product of sedimentary strata which have been completely melted. Granite
+and gneiss, which are of like chemical composition, have been shown, in
+various cases, to pass one into the other; as at Valorsine, near Mont
+Blanc, where the two, in contact, are observed to "both undergo a
+modification of mineral character. The granite still remaining
+unstratified, becomes charged with green particles; and the talcose
+gneiss assumes a granitiform structure without losing its
+stratification." In the Aberdeen-granite, lumps of unmelted gneiss are
+abundant; and we can ourselves bear witness that the granite on the
+banks of Loch Sunart yields proofs that, when molten, it contained
+incompletely-fused clots of sedimentary strata. Nor is this all. Fifty
+years ago, it was thought that all granitic rocks were primitive, or
+existed before any sedimentary strata; but it is now "no easy task to
+point out a single mass of granite demonstrably more ancient than all
+the known fossiliferous deposits." In brief, accumulated evidence shows,
+that by contact with, or proximity to, the molten matter of the Earth's
+nucleus, all beds of sediment are liable to be actually melted, or
+partially fused, or so heated as to agglutinate their particles; and
+that according to the temperature they have been raised to, and the
+circumstances under which they cool, they assume the forms of granite,
+porphyry, trap, gneiss, or rock otherwise altered. Further, it is
+manifest that though strata of various ages have been thus changed, yet
+the most ancient strata have been so changed to the greatest extent;
+both because they have been nearer to the centre of igneous agency; and
+because they have been for longer periods liable to be affected by it.
+Whence it follows, that sedimentary strata passing a certain antiquity,
+are unlikely to be found in an unmetamorphosed state; and that strata
+much earlier than these are certain to have been melted up. Thus if,
+throughout a past of indefinite duration, there had been at work those
+aqueous and igneous agencies which we see still at work, the state of
+the Earth's crust might be just what we find it. We have no evidence
+which puts a limit to the period throughout which this formation and
+destruction of strata has been going on. For aught the facts prove, it
+may have been going on for ten times the period measured by our whole
+series of sedimentary deposits.
+
+Besides having, in the present appearances of the Earth's crust, no data
+for fixing a commencement to these processes--besides finding that the
+evidence permits us to assume such commencement to have been
+inconceivably remote, as compared even with the vast eras of geology; we
+are not without positive grounds for inferring the inconceivable
+remoteness of such commencement. Modern geology has established truths
+which are irreconcilable with the belief that the formation and
+destruction of strata began when the Cambrian rocks were formed; or at
+anything like so recent a time. One fact from _Siluria_ will suffice.
+Sir R. Murchison estimates the vertical thickness of Silurian strata in
+Wales, at from 26,000 to 27,000 feet, or about five miles; and if to
+this we add the vertical depth of the Cambrian strata, on which the
+Silurians lie conformably, there results, on the lowest computation, a
+total depth of some seven miles. Now it is held by geologists, that this
+vast series of formations must have been deposited in an area of gradual
+subsidence. These beds could not have been thus laid one on another in
+regular order, unless the Earth's crust had been at that place sinking,
+either continuously or by small steps. Such an immense subsidence,
+however, must have been impossible without a crust of great thickness.
+The Earth's molten nucleus tends ever, with enormous force, to assume
+the form of a regular oblate spheroid. Any depression of its crust below
+the surface of equilibrium, and any elevation of its crust above that
+surface, have to withstand immense resistances. It follows inevitably
+that, with a thin crust, nothing but small elevations and subsidences
+would have been possible; and that, conversely, a subsidence of seven
+miles implies a crust of great strength, or, in other words, of great
+thickness. Indeed, if we compare this inferred subsidence in the
+Silurian period, with such elevations and depressions as our existing
+continents and oceans display, we see no evidence that the Earth's crust
+was appreciably thinner then than now. What are the implications? If, as
+geologists generally admit, the Earth's crust has resulted from that
+slow cooling which is even still going on--if we see no sign that at the
+time when the earliest Cambrian strata were formed, this crust was
+appreciably thinner than now; we are forced to conclude that the era
+during which it acquired that great thickness possessed in the Cambrian
+period, was enormous as compared with the interval between the Cambrian
+period and our own. But during the incalculable series of epochs thus
+implied, there existed an ocean, tides, winds, waves, rain, rivers. The
+agencies by which the denudation of continents and filling up of seas
+have all along been carried on, were as active then as now. Endless
+successions of strata must have been formed. And when we ask--Where are
+they? Nature's obvious reply is--They have been destroyed by that
+igneous action to which so great a part of our oldest-known strata owe
+their fusion or metamorphosis.
+
+Only the last chapter of the Earth's history has come down to us. The
+many previous chapters, stretching back to a time immeasurably remote,
+have been burnt; and with them all the records of life we may presume
+they contained. The greater part of the evidence which might have served
+to settle the Development-controversy, is for ever lost; and on neither
+side can the arguments derived from Geology be conclusive.
+
+"But how happen there to be such evidences of progression as exist?" it
+may be asked. "How happens it that, in ascending from the most ancient
+strata to the most recent strata, we _do_ find a succession of organic
+forms, which, however irregularly, carries us from lower to higher?"
+This question seems difficult to answer. Nevertheless, there is reason
+for thinking that nothing can be safely inferred from the apparent
+progression here cited. And the illustration which shows as much, will,
+we believe, also show how little trust is to be placed in certain
+geological generalizations that appear to be well established. With this
+somewhat elaborate illustration, to which we now pass, our criticisms
+may fitly conclude.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us suppose that in a region now covered by wide ocean, there begins
+one of those great and gradual upheavals by which new continents are
+formed. To be precise, let us say that in the South Pacific, midway
+between New Zealand and Patagonia, the sea-bottom has been little by
+little thrust up toward the surface, and is about to emerge. What will
+be the successive phenomena, geological and biological, which are
+likely to occur before this emerging sea-bottom has become another
+Europe or Asia? In the first place, such portions of the incipient land
+as are raised to the level of the waves, will be rapidly denuded by
+them: their soft substance will be torn up by the breakers, carried away
+by the local currents, and deposited in neighbouring deeper water.
+Successive small upheavals will bring new and larger areas within reach
+of the waves; fresh portions will each time be removed from the surfaces
+previously denuded; and further, some of the newly-formed strata, being
+elevated nearly to the level of the water, will be washed away and
+re-deposited. In course of time the harder formations of the upraised
+sea-bottom will be uncovered. These, being less easily destroyed, will
+remain permanently above the surface; and at their margins will arise
+the usual breaking down of rocks into beach-sand and pebbles. While in
+the slow course of this elevation, going on at the rate of perhaps two
+or three feet in a century, most of the sedimentary deposits produced
+will be again and again destroyed and reformed; there will, in those
+adjacent areas of subsidence which accompany areas of elevation, be more
+or less continuous successions of sedimentary deposits lying on the
+pre-existing ocean bed. And now, what will be the character of these
+strata, old and new? They will contain scarcely any traces of life. The
+deposits that had previously been slowly formed at the bottom of this
+wide ocean, would be sprinkled with fossils of but few species. The
+oceanic Fauna is not a rich one; its hydrozoa do not admit of
+preservation; and the hard parts of its few kinds of molluscs and
+crustaceans and insects are mostly fragile. Hence, when the ocean-bed
+was here and there raised to the surface--when its strata of sediment
+with their contained organic fragments were torn up and long washed
+about by the breakers before being re-deposited--when the re-deposits
+were again and again subject to this violent abrading action by
+subsequent small elevations, as they would mostly be; what few fragile
+organic remains they contained, would be in nearly all cases destroyed.
+Thus such of the first-formed strata as survived the repeated changes of
+level, would be practically "azoic;" like the Cambrian of our
+geologists. When by the washing away of the soft deposits, the hard
+sub-strata had been exposed in the shape of rocky islets, and a footing
+had thus been furnished, the pioneers of a new life might be expected to
+make their appearance. What would they be? Not any of the surrounding
+oceanic species, for these are not fitted for a littoral life; but
+species flourishing on some of the far-distant shores of the Pacific. Of
+such, the first to establish themselves would be sea-weeds and
+zoophytes; because the most readily conveyed on floating wood, &c., and
+because when conveyed they would find fit food. It is true that
+Cirrhipeds and Lamellibranchs, subsisting on the minute creatures which
+everywhere people the sea, would also find fit food. But the chances of
+early colonization are in favour of species which, multiplying by
+agamogenesis, can people a whole shore from a single germ; and against
+species which, multiplying only by gamogenesis, must be introduced in
+considerable numbers that some may propagate. Thus we infer that the
+earliest traces of life left in the sedimentary deposits near these new
+shores, will be traces of life as humble as that indicated in the most
+ancient rocks of Great Britain and Ireland. Imagine now that the
+processes above indicated, continue--that the emerging lands become
+wider in extent, and fringed by higher and more varied shores; and that
+there still go on those ocean-currents which, at long intervals, convey
+from far distant shores immigrant forms of life. What will result? Lapse
+of time will of course favour the introduction of such new forms:
+admitting, as it must, of those combinations of fit conditions, which
+can occur only after long intervals. Moreover, the increasing area of
+the islands, individually and as a group, implies increasing length of
+coast, and therefore a longer line of contact with the streams and waves
+which bring drifting masses bearing germs of fresh life. And once more,
+the comparatively-varied shores, presenting physical conditions which
+change from mile to mile, will furnish suitable habitats for more
+numerous species. So that as the elevation proceeds, three causes
+conspire to introduce additional marine plants and animals. To what
+classes will the increasing Fauna be for a long period confined? Of
+course, to classes of which individuals, or their germs, are most liable
+to be carried far away from their native shores by floating sea-weed or
+drift-wood; to classes which are also least likely to perish in transit,
+or from change of climate; and to those which can best subsist around
+coasts comparatively bare of life. Evidently then, corals, annelids,
+inferior molluscs, and crustaceans of low grade, will chiefly constitute
+the early Fauna. The large predatory members of these classes, will be
+later in establishing themselves; both because the new shores must first
+become well peopled by the creatures they prey on, and because, being
+more complex, they, or their ova, must be less likely to survive the
+journey, and the change of conditions. We may infer, then, that the
+strata deposited next after the almost "azoic" strata, would contain the
+remains of invertebrata, allied to those found near the shores of
+Australia and South America. Of such invertebrate remains, the lower
+beds would furnish comparatively few genera, and those of relatively low
+types; while in the upper beds the number of genera would be greater,
+and the types higher: just as among the fossils of our Silurian system.
+As this great geologic change slowly advanced through its long history
+of earthquakes, volcanic disturbances, minor upheavals and
+subsidences--as the extent of the archipelago became greater and its
+smaller islands coalesced into larger ones, while its coast-line grew
+still longer and more varied, and the neighbouring sea more thickly
+inhabited by inferior forms of life; the lowest division of the
+vertebrata would begin to be represented. In order of time, fish would
+naturally come later than the lower invertebrata; both as being less
+likely to have their ova transported across the waste of waters, and as
+requiring for their subsistence a pre-existing Fauna of some
+development. They might be expected to make their appearance along with
+the predaceous crustaceans; as they do in the uppermost Silurian rocks.
+And here, too, let us remark, that as, during this long epoch we have
+been describing, the sea would have made great inroads on some of the
+newly-raised lands which had remained stationary; and would probably in
+some places have reached masses of igneous or metamorphic rocks; there
+might, in course of time, arise by the decomposition and denudation of
+such rocks, local deposits coloured with oxide of iron, like our Old Red
+Sandstone. And in these deposits might be buried the remains of the fish
+then peopling the neighbouring sea.
+
+Meanwhile, how would the surfaces of the upheaved masses be occupied? At
+first their deserts of naked rocks would bear only the humblest forms of
+vegetal life, such as we find in grey and orange patches on our own
+rugged mountain sides; for these alone could flourish on such surfaces,
+and their spores would be the most readily transported. When, by the
+decay of such protophytes, and that decomposition of rock effected by
+them, there had resulted a fit habitat for mosses; these, of which the
+germs might be conveyed in drifted trees, would begin to spread. A soil
+having been eventually thus produced, it would become possible for
+plants of higher organization to find roothold; and as the archipelago
+and its constituent islands grew larger, and had more multiplied
+relations with winds and waters, such higher plants might be expected
+ultimately to have their seeds transferred from the nearest lands. After
+something like a Flora had thus colonized the surface, it would become
+possible for insects to exist; and of air-breathing creatures, insects
+would manifestly be among the first to find their way from elsewhere.
+As, however, terrestrial organisms, both vegetal and animal, are less
+likely than marine organisms to survive the accidents of transport from
+distant shores; it is inferable that long after the sea surrounding
+these new lands had acquired a varied Flora and Fauna, the lands
+themselves would still be comparatively bare; and thus that the early
+strata, like our Silurians, would afford no traces of terrestrial life.
+By the time that large areas had been raised above the ocean, we may
+fairly suppose a luxuriant vegetation to have been acquired. Under what
+circumstances are we likely to find this vegetation fossilized? Large
+surfaces of land imply large rivers with their accompanying deltas; and
+are liable to have lakes and swamps. These, as we know from extant
+cases, are favourable to rank vegetation; and afford the conditions
+needful for preserving it in coal-beds. Observe, then, that while in the
+early history of such a continent a carboniferous period could not
+occur, the occurrence of a carboniferous period would become probable
+after long-continued upheavals had uncovered large areas. As in our own
+sedimentary series, coal-beds would make their appearance only after
+there had been enormous accumulations of earlier strata charged with
+marine fossils.
+
+Let us ask next, in what order the higher forms of animal life would
+make their appearance. We have seen how, in the succession of marine
+forms, there would be something like a progress from the lower to the
+higher: bringing us in the end to predaceous molluscs, crustaceans, and
+fish. What are likely to succeed fish? After marine creatures, those
+which would have the greatest chance of surviving the voyage would be
+amphibious reptiles; both because they are more tenacious of life than
+higher animals, and because they would be less completely out of their
+element. Such reptiles as can live in both fresh and salt water, like
+alligators; and such as are drifted out of the mouths of great rivers on
+floating trees, as Humboldt says the Orinoco alligators are; might be
+early colonists. It is manifest, too, that reptiles of other kinds would
+be among the first vertebrata to people the new continent. If we
+consider what will occur on one of those natural rafts of trees, soil,
+and matted vegetable matter, sometimes swept out to sea by such currents
+as the Mississippi, with a miscellaneous living cargo; we shall see that
+while the active, hot-blooded, highly-organized creatures will soon die
+of starvation and exposure, the inert, cold-blooded ones, which can go
+long without food, will live perhaps for weeks; and so, out of the
+chances from time to time occurring during long periods, reptiles will
+be the first to get safely landed on foreign shores: as indeed they are
+even now known sometimes to be. The transport of mammalia being
+comparatively precarious, must, in the order of probability, be longer
+postponed; and would, indeed, be unlikely to occur until by the
+enlargement of the new continent, the distances of its shores from
+adjacent lands had been greatly diminished, or the formation of
+intervening islands had increased the chances of survival. Assuming,
+however, that the facilities for immigration had become adequate; which
+would be the first mammals to arrive and live? Not large herbivores; for
+they would be soon drowned if by any accident carried out to sea. Not
+the carnivora; for these would lack appropriate food, even if they
+outlived the voyage. Small quadrupeds frequenting trees, and feeding on
+insects, would be those most likely both to be drifted away from their
+native lands and to find fit food in a new one. Insectivorous mammals,
+like in size to those found in the Trias and the Stonesfield slate,
+might naturally be looked for as the pioneers of the higher vertebrata.
+And if we suppose the facilities of communication to be again increased,
+either by a further shallowing of the intervening sea and a consequent
+multiplication of islands, or by an actual junction of the new continent
+with an old one, through continued upheavals; we should finally have an
+influx of the larger and more perfect mammals.
+
+Now rude as is this sketch of a process that would be extremely
+elaborate and involved, and open as some of its propositions are to
+criticisms which there is no space here to meet; no one will deny that
+it represents something like the biologic history of the supposed new
+continent. Details apart, it is manifest that simple organisms, able to
+flourish under simple conditions of life, would be the first successful
+immigrants; and that more complex organisms, needing for their existence
+the fulfilment of more complex conditions, would afterwards establish
+themselves in something like an ascending succession. At the one extreme
+we see every facility. The new individuals can be conveyed in the shape
+of minute germs; immense numbers of these are perpetually being carried
+in all directions to great distances by ocean-currents--either detached
+or attached to floating bodies; they can find nutriment wherever they
+arrive; and the resulting organisms can multiply asexually with great
+rapidity. At the other extreme, we see every difficulty. The new
+individuals must be conveyed in their adult forms; their numbers are, in
+comparison, utterly insignificant; they live on land, and are very
+unlikely to be carried out to sea; when so carried, the chances are
+immense against their escape from drowning, starvation, or death by
+cold; if they survive the transit, they must have a pre-existing Flora
+or Fauna to supply their special food; they require, also, the
+fulfilment of various other physical conditions; and unless at least two
+individuals of different sexes are safely landed, the race cannot be
+established. Manifestly, then, the immigration of each successively
+higher order of organisms, having, from one or other additional
+condition to be fulfilled, an enormously-increased probability against
+it, would naturally be separated from the immigration of a lower order
+by some period like a geologic epoch. And thus the successive
+sedimentary deposits formed while this new continent was undergoing
+gradual elevation, would seem to furnish clear evidence of a general
+progress in the forms of life. That lands thus raised up in the midst of
+a wide ocean, would first give origin to unfossiliferous strata; next,
+to strata containing only the lowest marine forms; next to strata
+containing only the higher marine forms, ascending finally to fish; and
+that the strata above these would contain reptiles, then small mammals,
+then great mammals; seems to us demonstrable. And if the succession of
+fossils presented by the strata of this supposed new continent, would
+thus simulate the succession presented by our own sedimentary series;
+must we not conclude that our own sedimentary series very possibly
+records nothing more than the phenomena accompanying one of these great
+upheavals? The probability of this conclusion being admitted, it must be
+admitted that the facts of Paleontology can never suffice either to
+prove or disprove the Development Hypothesis; but that the most they can
+do is to show whether the last few pages of the Earth's biologic
+history, are or are not in harmony with this hypothesis--whether the
+existing Flora and Fauna can or can not be affiliated upon the Flora and
+Fauna of the most recent geologic times.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 27: Sir Charles Lyell is no longer to be classed among
+Uniformitarians. With rare and admirable candour he has, since this was
+written, yielded to the arguments of Mr. Darwin.]
+
+
+
+
+BAIN ON THE EMOTIONS AND THE WILL.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Medico-Chirurgical Review _for January,_
+    1860.]
+
+
+After the controversy between the Neptunists and the Vulcanists had been
+long carried on without definite results, there came a reaction against
+all speculative geology. Reasoning without adequate data having led to
+nothing, inquirers went into the opposite extreme, and confining
+themselves wholly to collecting data, relinquished reasoning. The
+Geological Society of London was formed with the express object of
+accumulating evidence; for many years hypotheses were forbidden at its
+meetings: and only of late have attempts to organize the mass of
+observations into consistent theory been tolerated.
+
+This reaction and subsequent re-reaction, well illustrate the recent
+history of English thought in general. The time was when our countrymen
+speculated, certainly to as great an extent as any other people, on all
+those high questions which present themselves to the human intellect;
+and, indeed, a glance at the systems of philosophy that are or have been
+current on the Continent, suffices to show how much other nations owe to
+the discoveries of our ancestors. For a generation or two, however,
+these more abstract subjects have fallen into neglect; and, among those
+who plume themselves on being "practical," even into contempt. Partly,
+perhaps, a natural accompaniment of our rapid material growth, this
+intellectual phase has been in great measure due to the exhaustion of
+argument, and the necessity for better data. Not so much with a
+conscious recognition of the end to be subserved, as from an unconscious
+subordination to that rhythm traceable in social changes as in other
+things, an era of theorizing without observing, has been followed by an
+era of observing without theorizing. During this long-continued devotion
+to concrete science, an immense quantity of raw material for abstract
+science has been accumulated; and now there is obviously commencing a
+period in which this accumulated raw material will be organized into
+consistent theory. On all sides--equally in the inorganic sciences, in
+the science of life, and in the science of society--we may note the
+tendency to pass from the superficial and empirical to the more profound
+and rational.
+
+In Psychology this change is conspicuous. The facts brought to light by
+anatomists and physiologists during the last fifty years, are at length
+being used towards the interpretation of this highest class of
+biological phenomena; and already there is promise of a great advance.
+The work of Mr. Alexander Bain, of which the second volume has been
+recently issued, may be regarded as especially characteristic of the
+transition. It gives us, in orderly arrangement, the great mass of
+evidence supplied by modern science towards the building-up of a
+coherent system of mental philosophy. It is not in itself a system of
+mental philosophy, properly so called; but a classified collection of
+materials for such a system, presented with that method and insight
+which scientific discipline generates, and accompanied with occasional
+passages of an analytical character. It is indeed that which it in the
+main professes to be--a natural history of the mind. Were we to say that
+the researches of the naturalist who collects and dissects and describes
+species, bear the same relation to the researches of the comparative
+anatomist tracing out the laws of organization, which Mr. Bain's
+labours bear to the labours of the abstract psychologist, we should be
+going somewhat too far; for Mr. Bain's work is not wholly descriptive.
+Still, however, such an analogy conveys the best general conception of
+what he has done; and serves most clearly to indicate its needfulness.
+For as, before there can be made anything like true generalizations
+respecting the classification of organisms and the laws of organization,
+there must be an extensive accumulation of the facts presented in
+numerous organic bodies; so, without a tolerably-complete delineation of
+mental phenomena of all orders, there can scarcely arise any adequate
+theory of mind. Until recently, mental science has been pursued much as
+physical science was pursued by the ancients; not by drawing conclusions
+from observations and experiments, but by drawing them from arbitrary _a
+priori_ assumptions. This course, long since abandoned in the one case
+with immense advantage, is gradually being abandoned in the other; and
+the treatment of Psychology as a division of natural history, shows that
+the abandonment will soon be complete.
+
+Estimated as a means to higher results, Mr. Bain's work is of great
+value. Of its kind it is the most scientific in conception, the most
+catholic in spirit, and the most complete in execution. Besides
+delineating the various classes of mental phenomena as seen under that
+stronger light thrown on them by modern science, it includes in the
+picture much which previous writers had omitted--partly from prejudice,
+partly from ignorance. We refer more especially to the participation of
+bodily organs in mental changes; and the addition to the primary mental
+changes, of those many secondary ones which the actions of the bodily
+organs generate. Mr. Bain has, we believe, been the first to appreciate
+the importance of this element in our states of consciousness; and it is
+one of his merits that he shows how constant and large an element it is.
+Further, the relations of voluntary and involuntary movements are
+elucidated in a way that was not possible to writers unacquainted with
+the modern doctrine of reflex action. And beyond this, some of the
+analytical passages that here and there occur, contain important ideas.
+
+Valuable, however, as is Mr. Bain's work, we regard it as essentially
+transitional. It presents in a digested form the results of a period of
+observation; adds to these results many well-delineated facts collected
+by himself; arranges new and old materials with that more scientific
+method which the discipline of our times has fostered; and so prepares
+the way for better generalizations. But almost of necessity its
+classifications and conclusions are provisional. In the growth of each
+science, not only is correct observation needful for the formation of
+true theory; but true theory is needful as a preliminary to correct
+observation. Of course we do not intend this assertion to be taken
+literally; but as a strong expression of the fact that the two must
+advance hand in hand. The first crude theory or rough classification,
+based on very slight knowledge of the phenomena, is requisite as a means
+of reducing the phenomena to some kind of order; and as supplying a
+conception with which fresh phenomena may be compared, and their
+agreement or disagreement noted. Incongruities being by and by made
+manifest by wider examination of cases, there comes such modification of
+the theory as brings it into a nearer correspondence with the evidence.
+This reacts to the further advance of observation. More extensive and
+complete observation brings additional corrections of theory; and so on
+till the truth is reached. In mental science, the systematic collection
+of facts having but recently commenced, it is not to be expected that
+the results can be at once rightly formulated. All that may be looked
+for are approximate generalizations which will presently serve for the
+better directing of inquiry. Hence, even were it not now possible to say
+in what way it does so, we might be tolerably certain that Mr. Bain's
+work bears the stamp of the inchoate state of Psychology.
+
+We think, however, that it will not be difficult to find in what
+respects its organization is provisional; and at the same time to show
+what must be the nature of a more complete organization. We propose here
+to attempt this: illustrating our positions from his recently-issued
+second volume.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Is it possible to make a true classification without the aid of
+analysis? or must there not be an analytical basis to every true
+classification? Can the real relations of things be determined by the
+obvious characteristics of the things? or does it not commonly happen
+that certain hidden characteristics, on which the obvious ones depend,
+are the truly significant ones? This is the preliminary question which a
+glance at Mr. Bain's scheme of the emotions suggests.
+
+Though not avowedly, yet by implication, Mr. Bain assumes that a right
+conception of the nature, the order, and the relations of the emotions,
+may be arrived at by contemplating their conspicuous objective and
+subjective characters, as displayed in the adult. After pointing out
+that we lack those means of classification which serve in the case of
+the sensations, he says--
+
+     "In these circumstances we must turn our attention to _the manner
+     of diffusion_ of the different passions and emotions, in order to
+     obtain a basis of classification analogous to the arrangement of
+     the sensations. If what we have already advanced on that subject be
+     at all well founded, this is the genuine turning point of the
+     method to be chosen, for the same mode of diffusion will always be
+     accompanied by the same mental experience, and each of the two
+     aspects would identify, and would be evidence of, the other. There
+     is, therefore, nothing so thoroughly characteristic of any state of
+     feeling as the nature of the diffusive wave that embodies it, or
+     the various organs specially roused into action by it, together
+     with the manner of the action. The only drawback is our comparative
+     ignorance, and our inability to discern the precise character of
+     the diffusive currents in every case; a radical imperfection in the
+     science of mind as constituted at present.
+
+     "Our own consciousness, formerly reckoned the only medium of
+     knowledge to the mental philosopher, must therefore be still
+     referred to as a principal means of discriminating the varieties of
+     human feeling. We have the power of noting agreement and difference
+     among our conscious states, and on this we can raise a structure of
+     classification. We recognise such generalities as pleasure, pain,
+     love, anger, through the property of mental or intellectual
+     discrimination that accompanies in our mind the fact of emotion. A
+     certain degree of precision is attainable by this mode of mental
+     comparison and analysis; the farther we can carry such precision
+     the better; but that is no reason why it should stand alone to the
+     neglect of the corporeal embodiments through which one mind reveals
+     itself to others. The companionship of inward feeling with bodily
+     manifestation is a fact of the human constitution, and deserves to
+     be studied as such; and it would be difficult to find a place more
+     appropriate than a treatise on the mind for setting forth the
+     conjunctions and sequences traceable in this department of nature.
+     I shall make no scruple in conjoining with the description of the
+     mental phenomena the physical appearances, in so far as I am able
+     to ascertain them.
+
+     "There is still one other quarter to be referred to in settling a
+     complete arrangement of the emotions, namely, the varieties of
+     human conduct, and the machinery created in subservience to our
+     common susceptibilities. For example, the vast superstructure of
+     fine art has its foundations in human feeling, and in rendering an
+     account of this we are led to recognise the interesting group of
+     artistic or æsthetic emotions. The same outward reference to
+     conduct and creations brings to light the so-called moral sense in
+     man, whose foundations in the mental system have accordingly to be
+     examined.
+
+     "Combining together these various indications, or sources of
+     discrimination,--outward objects, diffusive mode or expression,
+     inward consciousness, resulting conduct and institutions,--I adopt
+     the following arrangement of the families or natural orders of
+     emotion."
+
+Here, then, are confessedly adopted, as bases of classification, the
+most manifest characters of the emotions; as discerned subjectively, and
+objectively. The mode of diffusion of an emotion is one of its outside
+aspects; the institutions it generates form another of its outside
+aspects; and though the peculiarities of the emotion as a state of
+consciousness, seem to express its intrinsic and ultimate nature, yet
+such peculiarities as are perceptible by simple introspection, must also
+be classed as superficial peculiarities. It is a familiar fact that
+various intellectual states of consciousness turn out, when analyzed, to
+have natures widely unlike those which at first appear; and we believe
+the like will prove true of emotional states of consciousness. Just as
+our concept of space, which is apt to be thought a simple,
+undecomposable concept, is yet resolvable into experiences quite
+different from that state of consciousness which we call space; so,
+probably, the sentiment of affection or reverence is compounded of
+elements that are severally distinct from the whole which they make up.
+And much as a classification of our ideas which dealt with the idea of
+space as though it were ultimate, would be a classification of ideas by
+their externals; so, a classification of our emotions, which, regarding
+them as simple, describes their aspects in ordinary consciousness, is a
+classification of emotions by their externals.
+
+Thus, then, Mr. Bain's grouping is throughout determined by the most
+manifest attributes--those objectively displayed in the natural language
+of the emotions, and in the social phenomena that result from them, and
+those subjectively displayed in the aspects the emotions assume in an
+analytical consciousness. And the question is--Can they be correctly
+grouped after this method?
+
+We think not; and had Mr. Bain carried farther an idea with which he has
+set out, he would probably have seen that they cannot. As already said,
+he avowedly adopts "the natural-history-method:" not only referring to
+it in his preface, but in his first chapter giving examples of botanical
+and zoological classifications, as illustrating the mode in which he
+proposes to deal with the emotions. This we conceive to be a
+philosophical conception; and we have only to regret that Mr. Bain has
+overlooked some of its most important implications. For in what has
+essentially consisted the progress of natural-history-classification? In
+the abandonment of grouping by external, conspicuous characters; and in
+the making of certain internal, but all-essential characters, the bases
+of groups. Whales are not now ranged along with fish, because in their
+general forms and habits of life they resemble fish; but they are
+ranged with mammals, because the type of their organization, as
+ascertained by dissection, corresponds with that of mammals. No longer
+considered as sea-weeds in virtue of their forms and modes of growth,
+_Polyzoa_ are now shown, by examination of their economy, to belong to
+the animal kingdom. It is found, then, that the discovery of real
+relationships involves analysis. It has turned out that the earlier
+classifications, guided by general resemblances, though containing much
+truth, and though very useful provisionally, were yet in many cases
+radically wrong; and that the true affinities of organisms, and the true
+homologies of their parts, are to be made out only by examining their
+hidden structures. Another fact of great significance in the history of
+classification is also to be noted. Very frequently the kinship of an
+organism cannot be made out even by exhaustive analysis, if that
+analysis is confined to the adult structure. In many cases it is needful
+to examine the structure in its earlier stages; and even in its
+embryonic stage. So difficult was it, for instance, to determine the
+true position of the _Cirrhipedia_ among animals, by examining mature
+individuals only, that Cuvier erroneously classed them with _Mollusca_,
+even after dissecting them; and not until their early forms were
+discovered, were they clearly proved to belong to the _Crustacea_. So
+important, indeed, is the study of development as a means to
+classification, that the first zoologists now hold it to be the only
+absolute criterion.
+
+Here, then, in the advance of natural-history-classification, are two
+fundamental facts, which should be borne in mind when classifying the
+emotions. If, as Mr. Bain rightly assumes, the emotions are to be
+grouped after the natural-history-method; then it should be the
+natural-history-method in its complete form, and not in its rude form.
+Mr. Bain will doubtless agree in the belief, that a correct account of
+the emotions in their natures and relations, must correspond with a
+correct account of the nervous system--must form another side of the
+same ultimate facts. Structure and function must necessarily harmonize.
+Structures which have with each other certain ultimate connexions, must
+have functions which have answering connexions. Structures which have
+arisen in certain ways, must have functions which have arisen in
+parallel ways. And hence if analysis and development are needful for the
+right interpretation of structures, they must be needful for the right
+interpretation of functions. Just as a scientific description of the
+digestive organs must include not only their obvious forms and
+connexions, but their microscopic characters, and also the ways in which
+they severally result by differentiation from the primitive mucous
+membrane; so must a scientific account of the nervous system include its
+general arrangements, its minute structure, and its mode of evolution;
+and so must a scientific account of nervous actions include the
+answering three elements. Alike in classing separate organisms, and
+in classing the parts of the same organism, the complete
+natural-history-method involves ultimate analysis, aided by development;
+and Mr. Bain, in not basing his classification of the emotions on
+characters reached through these aids, has fallen short of the
+conception with which he set out.
+
+"But," it will perhaps be asked, "how are the emotions to be analyzed,
+and their modes of evolution to be ascertained? Different animals, and
+different organs of the same animal, may readily be compared in their
+internal structures and microscopic structures, as also in their
+developments; but functions, and especially such functions as the
+emotions, do not admit of like comparisons."
+
+It must be admitted that the application of these methods is here by no
+means so easy. Though we can note differences and similarities between
+the internal formations of two animals; it is difficult to contrast the
+mental states of two animals. Though the true morphological relations of
+organs may be made out by observation of embryos; yet, where such organs
+are inactive before birth, we cannot completely trace the history of
+their actions. Obviously, too, pursuance of inquiries of the kind
+indicated, raises questions which science is not yet prepared to answer;
+as, for instance--Whether all nervous functions, in common with all
+other functions, arise by gradual differentiations, as their organs do?
+Whether the emotions are, therefore, to be regarded as divergent modes
+of action that have become unlike by successive modifications? Whether,
+as two organs which originally budded out of the same membrane have not
+only become different as they developed, but have also severally become
+compound internally, though externally simple; so two emotions, simple
+and near akin in their roots, may not only have grown unlike, but may
+also have grown involved in their natures, though seeming homogeneous to
+consciousness? And here, indeed, in the inability of existing science to
+answer these questions which underlie a true psychological
+classification, we see how purely provisional any present classification
+is likely to be.
+
+Nevertheless, even now, classification may be aided by development and
+ultimate analysis to a considerable extent; and the defect in Mr. Bain's
+work is, that he has not systematically availed himself of them as far
+as possible. Thus we may, in the first place, study the evolution of the
+emotions up through the various grades of the animal kingdom: observing
+which of them are earliest and exist with the lowest organization and
+intelligence; in what order the others accompany higher endowments; and
+how they are severally related to the conditions of life. In the second
+place, we may note the emotional differences between the lower and the
+higher human races--may regard as earlier and simpler those feelings
+which are common to both, and as later and more compound those which are
+characteristic of the most civilized. In the third place, we may observe
+the order in which the emotions unfold during the progress from infancy
+to maturity. And lastly, comparing these three kinds of emotional
+development, displayed in the ascending grades of the animal kingdom,
+in the advance of the civilized races, and in individual history, we may
+see in what respects they harmonize, and what are the implied general
+truths.
+
+Having gathered together and generalized these several classes of facts,
+analysis of the emotions would be made easier. Setting out with the
+assumption that every new form of emotion making its appearance in the
+individual or the race, is a modification of some pre-existing emotion,
+or a compound of several pre-existing emotions, we should be greatly
+aided by knowing what always are the pre-existing emotions. When, for
+example, we find that very few of the lower animals show any love of
+accumulation, and that this feeling is absent in infancy--when we see
+that an infant in arms exhibits anger, fear, wonder, while yet it
+manifests no desire of permanent possession, and that a brute which has
+no acquisitiveness can nevertheless feel attachment, jealousy, love of
+approbation; we may suspect that the feeling which property satisfies is
+compounded out of simpler and deeper feelings. We may conclude that as,
+when a dog hides a bone, there must exist in him a prospective
+gratification of hunger; so there must similarly at first, in all cases
+where anything is secured or taken possession of, exist an ideal
+excitement of the feeling which that thing will gratify. We may further
+conclude that when the intelligence is such that a variety of objects
+come to be utilized for different purposes--when, as among savages,
+divers wants are satisfied through the articles appropriated for
+weapons, shelter, clothing, ornament; the act of appropriating comes to
+be one constantly involving agreeable associations, and one which is
+therefore pleasurable, irrespective of the end subserved. And when, as
+in civilized life, the property acquired is of a kind not conducing to
+one order of gratification in particular, but is capable of
+administering to all gratifications, the pleasure of acquiring property
+grows more distinct from each of the various pleasures subserved--is
+more completely differentiated into a separate emotion.
+
+This illustration, roughly as it is sketched, will show what we mean by
+the use of comparative psychology in aid of classification. Ascertaining
+by induction the actual order of evolution of the emotions, we are led
+to suspect this to be their order of successive dependence; and are so
+led to recognize their order of ascending complexity; and by consequence
+their true groupings.
+
+Thus, in the very process of arranging the emotions into grades,
+beginning with those involved in the lowest forms of conscious activity
+and ending with those peculiar to the adult civilized man, the way is
+opened for that ultimate analysis which alone can lead us to the true
+science of the matter. For when we find both that there exist in a man
+feelings which do not exist in a child, and that the European is
+characterized by some sentiments which are wholly or in great part
+absent from the savage--when we see that, besides the new emotions which
+arise spontaneously as the individual becomes completely organized,
+there are new emotions making their appearance in the more advanced
+divisions of our race; we are led to ask--How are new emotions
+generated? The lowest savages have not even the ideas of justice or
+mercy: they have neither words for them nor can they be made to conceive
+them; and the manifestation of them by Europeans they ascribe to fear or
+cunning. There are æsthetic emotions common among ourselves, which are
+scarcely in any degree experienced by some inferior races; as, for
+instance, those produced by music. To which instances may be added the
+less marked but more numerous contrasts that exist between civilized
+races in the degrees of their several emotions. And if it is manifest,
+both that all the emotions are capable of being permanently modified in
+the course of successive generations, and that what must be classed as
+new emotions may be brought into existence; then it follows that nothing
+like a true conception of the emotions is to be obtained, until we
+understand how they are evolved.
+
+Comparative Psychology, while it raises this inquiry, prepares the way
+for answering it. When observing the differences between races, we can
+scarcely fail to observe also how these differences correspond with
+differences between their conditions of existence, and consequent
+activities. Among the lowest races of men, love of property stimulates
+to the obtainment only of such things as satisfy immediate desires, or
+desires of the immediate future. Improvidence is the rule: there is
+little effort to meet remote contingencies. But the growth of
+established societies having gradually given security of possession,
+there has been an increasing tendency to provide for coming years: there
+has been a constant exercise of the feeling which is satisfied by a
+provision for the future; and there has been a growth of this feeling so
+great that it now prompts accumulation to an extent beyond what is
+needful. Note, again, that under the discipline of social life--under a
+comparative abstinence from aggressive actions, and a performance of
+those naturally-serviceable actions implied by the division of
+labour--there has been a development of those gentle emotions of which
+inferior races exhibit but the rudiments. Savages delight in giving pain
+rather than pleasure--are almost devoid of sympathy; while among
+ourselves, philanthropy organizes itself in laws, establishes numerous
+institutions, and dictates countless private benefactions.
+
+From which and other like facts, does it not seem an unavoidable
+inference, that new emotions are developed by new experiences--new
+habits of life? All are familiar with the truth that, in the individual,
+each feeling may be strengthened by performing those actions which it
+prompts; and to say that the feeling is _strengthened_, is to say that
+it is in part _made_ by these actions. We know, further, that not
+unfrequently, individuals, by persistence in special courses of conduct,
+acquire special likings for such courses, disagreeable as these may be
+to others; and these whims, or morbid tastes, imply incipient emotions
+corresponding to these special activities. We know that emotional
+characteristics, in common with all others, are hereditary; and the
+differences between civilized nations descended from the same stock,
+show us the cumulative results of small modifications hereditarily
+transmitted. And when we see that between savage and civilized races
+which diverged from one another in the remote past, and have for a
+hundred generations followed modes of life becoming ever more unlike,
+there exist still greater emotional contrasts; may we not infer that the
+more or less distinct emotions which characterize civilized races, are
+the organized results of certain daily-repeated combinations of mental
+states which social life involves? Must we not say that habits not only
+modify emotions in the individual, and not only beget tendencies to like
+habits and accompanying emotions in descendants, but that when the
+conditions of the race make the habits persistent, this progressive
+modification may go on to the extent of producing emotions so far
+distinct as to seem new? And if so, we may suspect that such new
+emotions, and by implication all emotions analytically considered,
+consist of aggregated and consolidated groups of those simpler feelings
+which habitually occur together in experience. When, in the
+circumstances of any race, some one kind of action or set of actions,
+sensation or set of sensations, is usually followed, or accompanied, by
+various other sets of actions or sensations, and so entails a large mass
+of pleasurable or painful states of consciousness; these, by frequent
+repetition, become so connected together that the initial action or
+sensation brings the ideas of all the rest crowding into consciousness:
+producing, in some degree, the pleasures or pains that have before been
+felt in reality. And when this relation, besides being frequently
+repeated in the individual, occurs in successive generations, all the
+many nervous actions involved tend to grow organically connected. They
+become incipiently reflex; and, on the occurrence of the appropriate
+stimulus, the whole nervous apparatus which in past generations was
+brought into activity by this stimulus, becomes nascently excited. Even
+while yet there have been no individual experiences, a vague feeling of
+pleasure or pain is produced; constituting what we may call the body of
+the emotion. And when the experiences of past generations come to be
+repeated in the individual, the emotion gains both strength and
+definiteness; and is accompanied by the appropriate specific ideas.
+
+This view of the matter, which we believe the established truths of
+Physiology and Psychology unite in indicating, and which is the view
+that generalizes the phenomena of habit, of national characteristics, of
+civilization in its moral aspects, at the same time that it gives us a
+conception of emotion in its origin and ultimate nature, may be
+illustrated from the mental modifications undergone by animals. On
+newly-discovered lands not inhabited by man, birds are so devoid of fear
+as to allow themselves to be knocked over with sticks; but in the course
+of generations, they acquire such a dread of man as to fly on his
+approach; and this dread is manifested by young as well as by old. Now
+unless this change be ascribed to the killing-off of the less fearful,
+and the preservation and multiplication of the more fearful, which,
+considering the comparatively small number killed by man, is an
+inadequate cause; it must be ascribed to accumulated experiences; and
+each experience must be held to have a share in producing it. We must
+conclude that in each bird which escapes with injuries inflicted by man,
+or is alarmed by the outcries of other members of the flock (gregarious
+creatures of any intelligence being necessarily more or less
+sympathetic), there is established an association of ideas between the
+human aspect and the pains, direct and indirect, suffered from human
+agency. And we must further conclude that the state of consciousness
+which impels the bird to take flight, is at first nothing more than an
+ideal reproduction of those painful impressions which before followed
+man's approach; that such ideal reproduction becomes more vivid and more
+massive as the painful experiences, direct or sympathetic, increase; and
+that thus the emotion in its incipient state, is nothing else than an
+aggregation of the revived pains before experienced. As, in the course
+of generations, the young birds of this race begin to display a fear of
+man before yet they have been injured by him, it is an unavoidable
+inference that the nervous system of the race has been organically
+modified by these experiences: we have no choice but to conclude that
+when a young bird is thus led to fly, it is because the impression
+produced on its senses by the approaching man, entails, through an
+incipiently-reflex action, a partial excitement of all those nerves
+which in its ancestors had been excited under the like conditions; that
+this partial excitement has its accompanying painful consciousness; and
+that the vague painful consciousness thus arising, constitutes emotion
+proper--_emotion undecomposable into specific experiences, and therefore
+seemingly homogeneous_.
+
+If such be the explanation of the fact in this case, then it is in all
+cases. If emotion is so generated here, then it is so generated
+throughout. We must perforce conclude that the emotional modifications
+displayed by different nations, and those higher emotions by which
+civilized are distinguished from savage, are to be accounted for on the
+same principle. And concluding this, we are led strongly to suspect that
+the emotions in general have severally thus originated.
+
+Perhaps we have now made sufficiently clear what we mean by the study of
+the emotions through analysis and development. We have aimed to justify
+the positions that, without analysis aided by development, there cannot
+be a true natural history of the emotions; and that a natural history of
+the emotions based on external characters can be but provisional. We
+think that Mr. Bain, in confining himself to an account of the emotions
+as they exist in the adult civilized man, has neglected those classes of
+facts out of which the science of the matter must chiefly be built. It
+is true that he has treated of habits as modifying emotions in the
+individual; but he has not recognized the fact that where conditions
+render habits persistent in successive generations, such modifications
+are cumulative: he has not hinted that the modifications produced by
+habit are emotions in the making. It is true, also, that he occasionally
+refers to the characteristics of children; but he does not
+systematically trace the changes through which childhood passes into
+manhood, as throwing light on the order and genesis of the emotions. It
+is further true that he here and there refers to national traits in
+illustration of his subject; but these stand as isolated facts, having
+no general significance: there is no hint of any relation between them
+and the national circumstances; while all those many moral contrasts
+between lower and higher races which throw great light on
+classification, are passed over. And once more, it is true that many
+passages of his work, and sometimes, indeed, whole sections of it, are
+analytical; but his analyses are incidental--they do not underlie his
+entire scheme, but are here and there added to it. In brief, he has
+written a Descriptive Psychology, which does not appeal to Comparative
+Psychology and Analytical Psychology for its leading ideas. And in doing
+this, he has omitted much that should be included in a natural history
+of the mind; while to that part of the subject with which he has dealt,
+he has given a necessarily-imperfect organization.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Even leaving out of view the absence of those methods and criteria on
+which we have been insisting, it appears to us that meritorious as is
+Mr. Bain's book in its details, it is defective in some of its leading
+ideas. The first paragraphs of his first chapter, quite startled us by
+the strangeness of their definitions--a strangeness which can scarcely
+be ascribed to laxity of expression. The paragraphs run thus:--
+
+     "Mind is comprised under three heads,--Emotion, Volition, and
+     Intellect.
+
+     "EMOTION is the name here used to comprehend all that is understood
+     by feelings, states of feeling, pleasures, pains, passions,
+     sentiments, affections. Consciousness, and conscious states also
+     for the most part denote modes of emotion, although there is such a
+     thing as the Intellectual consciousness.
+
+     "VOLITION, on the other hand, indicates the great fact that our
+     Pleasures and Pains, which are not the whole of our emotions,
+     prompt to action, or stimulate the active machinery of the living
+     framework to perform such operations as procure the first and abate
+     the last. To withdraw from a scalding heat, and cling to a gentle
+     warmth, are exercises of volition."
+
+The last of these definitions, which we may most conveniently take
+first, seems to us very faulty. We cannot but feel astonished that Mr.
+Bain, familiar as he is with the phenomena of reflex action, should have
+so expressed himself as to include a great part of them along with the
+phenomena of volition. He seems to be ignoring the discriminations of
+modern science, and returning to the vague conceptions of the past--nay
+more, he is comprehending under volition what even the popular speech
+would hardly bring under it. If you were to blame any one for snatching
+his foot from the scalding water into which he had inadvertently put it,
+he would tell you that he could not help it; and his reply would be
+indorsed by the general experience, that the withdrawal of a limb from
+contact with something extremely hot, is quite involuntary--that it
+takes place not only without volition, but in defiance of an effort of
+will to maintain the contact. How, then, can that be instanced as an
+example of volition, which occurs even when volition is antagonistic? We
+are quite aware that it is impossible to draw any absolute line of
+demarcation between automatic actions and actions which are not
+automatic. Doubtless we may pass gradually from the purely reflex,
+through the consensual, to the voluntary. Taking the case Mr. Bain
+cites, it is manifest that from a heat of such moderate degree that the
+withdrawal from it is wholly voluntary, we may advance by infinitesimal
+steps to a heat which compels involuntary withdrawal; and that there is
+a stage at which the voluntary and involuntary actions are mixed. But
+the difficulty of absolute discrimination is no reason for neglecting
+the broad general contrast; any more than it is for confounding light
+with darkness. If we are to include as examples of volition, all cases
+in which pleasures and pains "stimulate the active machinery of the
+living framework to perform such operations as procure the first and
+abate the last," then we must consider sneezing and coughing as examples
+of volition; and Mr. Bain surely cannot mean this. Indeed, we must
+confess ourselves at a loss. On the one hand if he does not mean it, his
+expression is lax to a degree that surprises us in so careful a writer.
+On the other hand, if he does mean it, we cannot understand his point of
+view.
+
+A parallel criticism applies to his definition of Emotion. Here, too, he
+has departed from the ordinary acceptation of the word; and, as we
+think, in the wrong direction. Whatever may be the interpretation that
+is justified by its derivation, the word emotion has come generally to
+mean that kind of feeling which is not a direct result of any action on
+the organism; but is either an indirect result of such action, or arises
+quite apart from such action. It is used to indicate those sentient
+states which are independently generated in consciousness; as
+distinguished from those generated in our corporeal framework, and known
+as sensations. Now this distinction, tacitly made in common speech, is
+one which Psychology cannot well reject; but one which it must adopt,
+and to which it must give scientific precision. Mr. Bain, however,
+appears to ignore any such distinction. Under the term emotion, he
+includes not only passions, sentiments, affections, but all "feelings,
+states of feeling, pleasures, pains,"--that is, all sensations. This
+does not appear to be a mere lapse of expression; for when, in the
+opening sentence, he asserts that "mind is comprised under the three
+heads--Emotion, Volition, and Intellect," he of necessity implies that
+sensation is included under one of these heads; and as it cannot be
+included under volition or intellect, it must be classed with emotion;
+as it clearly is in the next sentence.
+
+We cannot but think this a retrograde step. Though distinctions which
+have been established in popular thought and language, are not
+unfrequently merged in the higher generalizations of science (as, for
+instance, when crabs and worms are grouped together in the sub-kingdom
+_Annulosa_); yet science very generally recognizes the validity of these
+distinctions, as real though not fundamental. And so in the present
+case. Such community as analysis discloses between sensation and
+emotion, must not shut out the broad contrast that exists between them.
+If there needs a wider word, as there does, to signify any sentient
+state whatever; then we may fitly adopt for this purpose the word
+currently so used, namely, "Feeling." And considering as Feelings all
+that great division of mental states which we do not class as
+Cognitions, we may then separate this great division into the two
+orders, Sensations and Emotions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And here we may, before concluding, briefly indicate the leading
+outlines of a classification which reduces this distinction to a
+scientific form, and develops it somewhat further--a classification
+which, while suggested by certain fundamental traits reached without a
+very lengthened inquiry, is yet, we believe, in harmony with that
+disclosed by detailed analysis.
+
+Leaving out of view the Will, which is a simple homogeneous mental
+state, forming the link between feeling and action, and not admitting of
+subdivisions; our states of consciousness fall into two great
+classes--COGNITIONS and FEELINGS.
+
+COGNITIONS, or those modes of mind in which we are occupied with the
+_relations_ that subsist among our feelings, are divisible into four
+great sub-classes.
+
+_Presentative cognitions_; or those in which consciousness is occupied
+in localizing a sensation impressed on the organism--occupied, that is,
+with the relation between this presented mental state and those other
+presented mental states which make up our consciousness of the part
+affected: as when we cut ourselves.
+
+_Presentative-representative cognitions_; or those in which
+consciousness is occupied with the relation between a sensation or group
+of sensations and the representations of those various other sensations
+that accompany it in experience. This is what we commonly call
+perception--an act in which, along with certain impressions presented to
+consciousness, there arise in consciousness the ideas of certain other
+impressions ordinarily connected with the presented ones: as when its
+visible form and colour, lead us to mentally endow an orange with all
+its other attributes.
+
+_Representative cognitions_; or those in which consciousness is occupied
+with the relations among ideas or represented sensations; as in all acts
+of recollection.
+
+_Re-representative cognitions_; or those in which the occupation of
+consciousness is not by representation of special relations that have
+before been presented to consciousness; but those in which such
+represented special relations are thought of merely as comprehended in a
+general relation--those in which the concrete relations once
+experienced, in so far as they become objects of consciousness at all,
+are incidentally represented, along with the abstract relation which
+formulates them. The ideas resulting from this abstraction, do not
+themselves represent actual experiences; but are symbols which stand for
+groups of such actual experiences--represent aggregates of
+representations. And thus they may be called re-representative
+cognitions. It is clear that the process of re-representation is
+carried to higher stages, as the thought becomes more abstract.
+
+FEELINGS, or those modes of mind in which we are occupied, not with the
+relations subsisting between our sentient states, but with the sentient
+states themselves, are divisible into four parallel sub-classes.
+
+_Presentative feelings_, ordinarily called sensations, are those mental
+states in which, instead of regarding a corporeal impression as of this
+or that kind, or as located here or there, we contemplate it in itself
+as pleasure or pain: as when eating.
+
+_Presentative-representative feelings_, embracing a great part of what
+we commonly call emotions, are those in which a sensation, or group of
+sensations, or group of sensations and ideas, arouses a vast aggregation
+of represented sensations; partly of individual experience, but chiefly
+deeper than individual experience, and, consequently, indefinite. The
+emotion of terror may serve as an example. Along with certain
+impressions made on the eyes or ears, or both, are recalled in
+consciousness many of the pains to which such impressions have before
+been the antecedents; and when the relation between such impressions and
+such pains has been habitual in the race, the definite ideas of such
+pains which individual experience has given, are accompanied by
+the indefinite pains that result from inherited effects of
+experiences--vague feelings which we may call organic representations.
+In an infant, crying at a strange sight or sound while yet in the
+nurse's arms, we see these organic representations called into existence
+in the shape of dim discomfort, to which individual experience has yet
+given no specific outlines.
+
+_Representative feelings_, comprehending the ideas of the feelings above
+classed, when they are called up apart from the appropriate external
+excitements. As instances of these may be named the feelings with which
+the descriptive poet writes, and which are aroused in the minds of his
+readers.
+
+_Re-representative feelings_, under which head are included those more
+complex sentient states that are less the direct results of external
+excitements than the indirect or reflex results of them. The love of
+property is a feeling of this kind. It is awakened not by the presence
+of any special object, but by ownable objects at large; and it is not
+from the mere presence of such object, but from a certain ideal relation
+to them, that it arises. As before shown (p. 253) it consists, not of
+the represented advantages of possessing this or that, but of the
+represented advantages of possession in general--is not made up of
+certain concrete representations, but of the abstracts of many concrete
+representations; and so is re-representative. The higher sentiments, as
+that of justice, are still more completely of this nature. Here the
+sentient state is compounded out of sentient states that are themselves
+wholly, or almost wholly, re-representative: it involves representations
+of those lower emotions which are produced by the possession of
+property, by freedom of action, etc.; and thus is re-representative in a
+higher degree.
+
+This classification, here roughly indicated and capable of further
+expansion, will be found in harmony with the results of detailed
+analysis aided by development. Whether we trace mental progression
+through the grades of the animal kingdom, through the grades of mankind,
+or through the stages of individual growth; it is obvious that the
+advance, alike in cognitions and feelings, is, and must be, from the
+presentative to the more and more remotely representative. It is
+undeniable that intelligence ascends from those simple perceptions in
+which consciousness is occupied in localizing and classifying
+sensations, to perceptions more and more compound, to simple reasoning,
+to reasoning more and more complex and abstract--more and more remote
+from sensation. And in the evolution of feelings, there is a parallel
+series of steps. Simple sensations; sensations combined together;
+sensations combined with represented sensations; represented sensations
+organized into groups, in which their separate characters are very much
+merged; representations of these representative groups, in which the
+original components have become still more vague. In both cases, the
+progress has necessarily been from the simple and concrete to the
+complex and abstract; and as with the cognitions, so with the feelings,
+this must be the basis of classification.
+
+The space here occupied with criticisms on Mr. Bain's work, we might
+have filled with exposition and eulogy, had we thought this the more
+important. Though we have freely pointed out what we conceive to be its
+defects, let it not be inferred that we question its great merits. We
+repeat that, as a natural history of the mind, we believe it to be
+the best yet produced. It is a most valuable collection of
+carefully-elaborated materials. Perhaps we cannot better express our
+sense of its worth, than by saying that, to those who hereafter give to
+this branch of Psychology a thoroughly scientific organization, Mr.
+Bain's book will be indispensable.
+
+
+
+
+THE SOCIAL ORGANISM.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Westminster Review _for January,_ 1860.]
+
+
+Sir James Macintosh got great credit for the saying, that "constitutions
+are not made, but grow." In our day, the most significant thing about
+this saying is, that it was ever thought so significant. As from the
+surprise displayed by a man at some familiar fact, you may judge of his
+general culture; so from the admiration which an age accords to a new
+thought, its average degree of enlightenment may be inferred. That this
+apophthegm of Macintosh should have been quoted and requoted as it has,
+shows how profound has been the ignorance of social science. A small ray
+of truth has seemed brilliant, as a distant rushlight looks like a star
+in the surrounding darkness.
+
+Such a conception could not, indeed, fail to be startling when let fall
+in the midst of a system of thought to which it was utterly alien.
+Universally in Macintosh's day, things were explained on the hypothesis
+of manufacture, rather than that of growth; as indeed they are, by the
+majority, in our own day. It was held that the planets were severally
+projected round the Sun from the Creator's hand, with just the velocity
+required to balance the Sun's attraction. The formation of the Earth,
+the separation of sea from land, the production of animals, were
+mechanical works from which God rested as a labourer rests. Man was
+supposed to be moulded after a manner somewhat akin to that in which a
+modeller makes a clay-figure. And of course, in harmony with such
+ideas, societies were tacitly assumed to be arranged thus or thus by
+direct interposition of Providence; or by the regulations of law-makers;
+or by both.
+
+Yet that societies are not artificially put together, is a truth so
+manifest, that it seems wonderful men should ever have overlooked it.
+Perhaps nothing more clearly shows the small value of historical
+studies, as they have been commonly pursued. You need but to look at the
+changes going on around, or observe social organization in its leading
+traits, to see that these are neither supernatural, nor are determined
+by the wills of individual men, as by implication the older historians
+teach; but are consequent on general natural causes. The one case of the
+division of labour suffices to prove this. It has not been by command of
+any ruler that some men have become manufacturers, while others have
+remained cultivators of the soil. In Lancashire, millions have devoted
+themselves to the making of cotton-fabrics; in Yorkshire, another
+million lives by producing woollens; and the pottery of Staffordshire,
+the cutlery of Sheffield, the hardware of Birmingham, severally occupy
+their hundreds of thousands. These are large facts in the structure of
+English society; but we can ascribe them neither to miracle, nor to
+legislation. It is not by "the hero as king," any more than by
+"collective wisdom," that men have been segregated into producers,
+wholesale distributors, and retail distributors. Our industrial
+organization, from its main outlines down to its minutest details, has
+become what it is, not simply without legislative guidance, but, to a
+considerable extent, in spite of legislative hindrances. It has arisen
+under the pressure of human wants and resulting activities. While each
+citizen has been pursuing his individual welfare, and none taking
+thought about division of labour, or conscious of the need of it,
+division of labour has yet been ever becoming more complete. It has been
+doing this slowly and silently: few having observed it until quite
+modern times. By steps so small, that year after year the industrial
+arrangements have seemed just what they were before--by changes as
+insensible as those through which a seed passes into a tree; society has
+become the complex body of mutually-dependent workers which we now see.
+And this economic organization, mark, is the all-essential organization.
+Through the combination thus spontaneously evolved, every citizen is
+supplied with daily necessaries; while he yields some product or aid to
+others. That we are severally alive to-day, we owe to the regular
+working of this combination during the past week; and could it be
+suddenly abolished, multitudes would be dead before another week ended.
+If these most conspicuous and vital arrangements of our social structure
+have arisen not by the devising of any one, but through the individual
+efforts of citizens to satisfy their own wants; we may be tolerably
+certain that the less important arrangements have similarly arisen.
+
+"But surely," it will be said, "the social changes directly produced by
+law, cannot be classed as spontaneous growths. When parliaments or kings
+order this or that thing to be done, and appoint officials to do it, the
+process is clearly artificial; and society to this extent becomes a
+manufacture rather than a growth." No, not even these changes are
+exceptions, if they be real and permanent changes. The true sources of
+such changes lie deeper than the acts of legislators. To take first the
+simplest instance. We all know that the enactments of representative
+governments ultimately depend on the national will: they may for a time
+be out of harmony with it, but eventually they must conform to it. And
+to say that the national will finally determines them, is to say that
+they result from the average of individual desires; or, in other
+words--from the average of individual natures. A law so initiated,
+therefore, really grows out of the popular character. In the case of a
+Government representing a dominant class, the same thing holds, though
+not so manifestly. For the very existence of a class monopolizing all
+power, is due to certain sentiments in the commonalty. Without the
+feeling of loyalty on the part of retainers, a feudal system could not
+exist. We see in the protest of the Highlanders against the abolition of
+heritable jurisdictions, that they preferred that kind of local rule.
+And if to the popular nature must be ascribed the growth of an
+irresponsible ruling class; then to the popular nature must be ascribed
+the social arrangements which that class creates in the pursuit of its
+own ends. Even where the Government is despotic, the doctrine still
+holds. The character of the people is, as before, the original source of
+this political form; and, as we have abundant proof, other forms
+suddenly created will not act, but rapidly retrograde to the old form.
+Moreover, such regulations as a despot makes, if really operative, are
+so because of their fitness to the social state. His acts being very
+much swayed by general opinion--by precedent, by the feeling of his
+nobles, his priesthood, his army--are in part immediate results of the
+national character; and when they are out of harmony with the national
+character, they are soon practically abrogated. The failure of Cromwell
+permanently to establish a new social condition, and the rapid revival
+of suppressed institutions and practices after his death, show how
+powerless is a monarch to change the type of the society he governs. He
+may disturb, he may retard, or he may aid the natural process of
+organization; but the general course of this process is beyond his
+control. Nay, more than this is true. Those who regard the histories of
+societies as the histories of their great men, and think that these
+great men shape the fates of their societies, overlook the truth that
+such great men are the products of their societies. Without certain
+antecedents--without a certain average national character, they neither
+could have been generated nor could have had the culture which formed
+them. If their society is to some extent re-moulded by them, they
+were, both before and after birth, moulded by their society--were the
+results of all those influences which fostered the ancestral character
+they inherited, and gave their own early bias, their creed, morals,
+knowledge, aspirations. So that such social changes as are immediately
+traceable to individuals of unusual power, are still remotely traceable
+to the social causes which produced these individuals; and hence, from
+the highest point of view, such social changes also, are parts of the
+general developmental process.
+
+Thus that which is so obviously true of the industrial structure of
+society, is true of its whole structure. The fact that "constitutions
+are not made, but grow," is simply a fragment of the much larger fact,
+that under all its aspects and through all its ramifications, society is
+a growth and not a manufacture.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A perception that there exists some analogy between the body politic and
+a living individual body, was early reached; and has from time to time
+re-appeared in literature. But this perception was necessarily vague and
+more or less fanciful. In the absence of physiological science, and
+especially of those comprehensive generalizations which it has but
+lately reached, it was impossible to discern the real parallelisms.
+
+The central idea of Plato's model Republic, is the correspondence
+between the parts of a society and the faculties of the human mind.
+Classifying these faculties under the heads of Reason, Will, and
+Passion, he classifies the members of his ideal society under what he
+regards as three analogous heads:--councillors, who are to exercise
+government; military or executive, who are to fulfil their behests; and
+the commonalty, bent on gain and selfish gratification. In other words,
+the ruler, the warrior, and the craftsman, are, according to him, the
+analogues of our reflective, volitional, and emotional powers. Now
+even were there truth in the implied assumption of a parallelism
+between the structure of a society and that of a man, this
+classification would be indefensible. It might more truly be contended
+that, as the military power obeys the commands of the Government, it is
+the Government which answers to the Will; while the military power is
+simply an agency set in motion by it. Or, again, it might be contended
+that whereas the Will is a product of predominant desires, to which the
+Reason serves merely as an eye, it is the craftsmen, who, according to
+the alleged analogy, ought to be the moving power of the warriors.
+
+Hobbes sought to establish a still more definite parallelism: not,
+however, between a society and the human mind, but between a society and
+the human body. In the introduction to the work in which he develops
+this conception, he says--
+
+     "For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH,
+     or STATE, in Latin CIVITAS, which is but an artificial man; though
+     of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose
+     protection and defence it was intended, and in which the
+     _sovereignty_ is an artificial _soul_, as giving life and motion to
+     the whole body; the _magistrates_ and other _officers_ of
+     judicature and execution, artificial _joints_; _reward_ and
+     _punishment_, by which, fastened to the seat of the sovereignty,
+     every joint and member is moved to perform his duty, are the
+     _nerves_, that do the same in the body natural; the _wealth_ and
+     _riches_ of all the particular members are the _strength_; _salus
+     populi_, the _people's safety_, its _business_; _counsellors_, by
+     whom all things needful for it to know are suggested unto it, are
+     the _memory_; _equity_ and _laws_ an artificial _reason_ and
+     _will_; _concord_, _health_; _sedition_, _sickness_; and _civil
+     war_, _death_."
+
+And Hobbes carries this comparison so far as actually to give a drawing
+of the Leviathan--a vast human-shaped figure, whose body and limbs are
+made up of multitudes of men. Just noting that these different analogies
+asserted by Plato and Hobbes, serve to cancel each other (being, as they
+are, so completely at variance), we may say that on the whole those of
+Hobbes are the more plausible. But they are full of inconsistencies. If
+the sovereignty is the _soul_ of the body-politic, how can it be that
+magistrates, who are a kind of deputy-sovereigns, should be comparable
+to _joints_? Or, again, how can the three mental functions, memory,
+reason, and will, be severally analogous, the first to counsellors, who
+are a class of public officers, and the other two to equity and laws,
+which are not classes of officers, but abstractions? Or, once more, if
+magistrates are the artificial joints of society, how can reward and
+punishment be its nerves? Its nerves must surely be some class of
+persons. Reward and punishment must in societies, as in individuals, be
+_conditions_ of the nerves, and not the nerves themselves.
+
+But the chief errors of these comparisons made by Plato and Hobbes, lie
+much deeper. Both thinkers assume that the organization of a society is
+comparable, not simply to the organization of a living body in general,
+but to the organization of the human body in particular. There is no
+warrant whatever for assuming this. It is in no way implied by the
+evidence; and is simply one of those fancies which we commonly find
+mixed up with the truths of early speculation. Still more erroneous are
+the two conceptions in this, that they construe a society as an
+artificial structure. Plato's model republic--his ideal of a healthful
+body-politic--is to be consciously put together by men, just as a watch
+might be; and Plato manifestly thinks of societies in general as thus
+originated. Quite specifically does Hobbes express a like view. "For by
+_art_," he says, "is created that great LEVIATHAN called a
+COMMONWEALTH." And he even goes so far as to compare the supposed social
+contract, from which a society suddenly originates, to the creation of a
+man by the divine fiat. Thus they both fall into the extreme
+inconsistency of considering a community as similar in structure to a
+human being, and yet as produced in the same way as an artificial
+mechanism--in nature, an organism; in history, a machine.
+
+Notwithstanding errors, however, these speculations have considerable
+significance. That such likenesses, crudely as they are thought out,
+should have been alleged by Plato and Hobbes and others, is a reason
+for suspecting that _some_ analogy exists. The untenableness of the
+particular parallelisms above instanced, is no ground for denying an
+essential parallelism; since early ideas are usually but vague
+adumbrations of the truth. Lacking the great generalizations of biology,
+it was, as we have said, impossible to trace out the real relations of
+social organizations to organizations of another order. We propose here
+to show what are the analogies which modern science discloses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us set out by succinctly stating the points of similarity and the
+points of difference. Societies agree with individual organisms in four
+conspicuous peculiarities:--
+
+1. That commencing as small aggregations, they insensibly augment in
+mass: some of them eventually reaching ten thousand times what they
+originally were.
+
+2. That while at first so simple in structure as to be considered
+structureless, they assume, in the course of their growth, a
+continually-increasing complexity of structure.
+
+3. That though in their early, undeveloped states, there exists in them
+scarcely any mutual dependence of parts, their parts gradually acquire a
+mutual dependence; which becomes at last so great, that the activity and
+life of each part is made possible only by the activity and life of the
+rest.
+
+4. That the life of a society is independent of, and far more prolonged
+than, the lives of any of its component units; who are severally born,
+grow, work, reproduce, and die, while the body-politic composed of them
+survives generation after generation, increasing in mass, in
+completeness of structure, and in functional activity.
+
+These four parallelisms will appear the more significant the more we
+contemplate them. While the points specified, are points in which
+societies agree with individual organisms, they are also points in which
+individual organisms agree with one another, and disagree with all
+things else. In the course of its existence, every plant and animal
+increases in mass, in a way not paralleled by inorganic objects: even
+such inorganic objects as crystals, which arise by growth, show us no
+such definite relation between growth and existence as organisms do. The
+orderly progress from simplicity to complexity, displayed by
+bodies-politic in common with living bodies, is a characteristic which
+distinguishes living bodies from the inanimate bodies amid which they
+move. That functional dependence of parts, which is scarcely more
+manifest in animals than in nations, has no counterpart elsewhere. And
+in no aggregate except an organic or a social one, is there a perpetual
+removal and replacement of parts, joined with a continued integrity of
+the whole. Moreover, societies and organisms are not only alike in these
+peculiarities, in which they are unlike all other things; but the
+highest societies, like the highest organisms, exhibit them in the
+greatest degree. We see that the lowest animals do not increase to
+anything like the sizes of the higher ones; and, similarly, we see that
+aboriginal societies are comparatively limited in their growths. In
+complexity, our large civilized nations as much exceed primitive savage
+tribes, as a mammal does a zoophyte. Simple communities, like simple
+creatures, have so little mutual dependence of parts, that mutilation or
+subdivision causes but little inconvenience; but from complex
+communities, as from complex creatures, you cannot remove any
+considerable organ without producing great disturbance or death of the
+rest. And in societies of low type, as in inferior animals, the life of
+the aggregate, often cut short by division or dissolution, exceeds in
+length the lives of the component units, very far less than in civilized
+communities and superior animals; which outlive many generations of
+their component units.
+
+On the other hand, the leading differences between societies and
+individual organisms are these:--
+
+1. That societies have no specific external forms. This, however, is a
+point of contrast which loses much of its importance, when we remember
+that throughout the vegetal kingdom, as well as in some lower divisions
+of the animal kingdom, the forms are often very indefinite--definiteness
+being rather the exception than the rule; and that they are manifestly
+in part determined by surrounding physical circumstances, as the forms
+of societies are. If, too, it should eventually be shown, as we believe
+it will, that the form of every species of organism has resulted from
+the average play of the external forces to which it has been subject
+during its evolution as a species; then, that the external forms of
+societies should depend, as they do, on surrounding conditions, will be
+a further point of community.
+
+2. That though the living tissue whereof an individual organism
+consists, forms a continuous mass, the living elements of a society do
+not form a continuous mass; but are more or less widely dispersed over
+some portion of the Earth's surface. This, which at first sight appears
+to be an absolute distinction, is one which yet to a great extent fades
+when we contemplate all the facts. For, in the lower divisions of the
+animal and vegetal kingdoms, there are types of organization much more
+nearly allied, in this respect, to the organization of a society, than
+might be supposed--types in which the living units essentially composing
+the mass, are dispersed through an inert substance, that can scarcely be
+called living in the full sense of the word. It is thus with some of the
+_Protococci_ and with the _Nostoceæ_, which exist as cells imbedded in a
+viscid matter. It is so, too, with the _Thalassicollæ_--bodies made up
+of differentiated parts, dispersed through an undifferentiated jelly.
+And throughout considerable portions of their bodies, some of the
+_Acalephæ_ exhibit more or less this type of structure. Now this is very
+much the case with a society. For we must remember that though the men
+who make up a society are physically separate, and even scattered, yet
+the surface over which they are scattered is not one devoid of life, but
+is covered by life of a lower order which ministers to their life. The
+vegetation which clothes a country makes possible the animal life in
+that country; and only through its animal and vegetal products can such
+a country support a society. Hence the members of the body-politic are
+not to be regarded as separated by intervals of dead space, but as
+diffused through a space occupied by life of a lower order. In our
+conception of a social organism, we must include all that lower organic
+existence on which human existence, and therefore social existence,
+depend. And when we do this, we see that the citizens who make up a
+community may be considered as highly vitalized units surrounded by
+substances of lower vitality, from which they draw their nutriment: much
+as in the cases above instanced.
+
+3. The third difference is that while the ultimate living elements of an
+individual organism are mostly fixed in their relative positions, those
+of the social organism are capable of moving from place to place. But
+here, too, the disagreement is much less than would be supposed. For
+while citizens are locomotive in their private capacities, they are
+fixed in their public capacities. As farmers, manufacturers, or traders,
+men carry on their businesses at the same spots, often throughout their
+whole lives; and if they go away occasionally, they leave behind others
+to discharge their functions in their absence. Each great centre of
+production, each manufacturing town or district, continues always in the
+same place; and many of the firms in such town or district, are for
+generations carried on either by the descendants or successors of those
+who founded them. Just as in a living body, the cells that make up some
+important organ severally perform their functions for a time and then
+disappear, leaving others to supply their places; so, in each part of a
+society the organ remains, though the persons who compose it change.
+Thus, in social life, as in the life of an animal, the units as well as
+the larger agencies formed of them, are in the main stationary as
+respects the places where they discharge their duties and obtain their
+sustenance. And hence the power of individual locomotion does not
+practically affect the analogy.
+
+4. The last and perhaps the most important distinction is, that while in
+the body of an animal only a special tissue is endowed with feeling, in
+a society all the members are endowed with feeling. Even this
+distinction, however, is not a complete one. For in some of the lowest
+animals, characterized by the absence of a nervous system, such
+sensitiveness as exists is possessed by all parts. It is only in the
+more organized forms that feeling is monopolized by one class of the
+vital elements. And we must remember that societies, too, are not
+without a certain differentiation of this kind. Though the units of a
+community are all sensitive, they are so in unequal degrees. The classes
+engaged in laborious occupations are less susceptible, intellectually
+and emotionally, than the rest; and especially less so than the classes
+of highest mental culture. Still, we have here a tolerably decided
+contrast between bodies-politic and individual bodies; and it is one
+which we should keep constantly in view. For it reminds us that while,
+in individual bodies, the welfare of all other parts is rightly
+subservient to the welfare of the nervous system, whose pleasurable or
+painful activities make up the good or ill of life; in bodies-politic
+the same thing does not hold, or holds to but a very slight extent. It
+is well that the lives of all parts of an animal should be merged in the
+life of the whole, because the whole has a corporate consciousness
+capable of happiness or misery. But it is not so with a society; since
+its living units do not and cannot lose individual consciousness, and
+since the community as a whole has no corporate consciousness. This is
+an everlasting reason why the welfares of citizens cannot rightly be
+sacrificed to some supposed benefit of the State, and why, on the other
+hand, the State is to be maintained solely for the benefit of
+citizens. The corporate life must here be subservient to the lives of
+the parts, instead of the lives of the parts being subservient to the
+corporate life.
+
+Such, then, are the points of analogy and the points of difference. May
+we not say that the points of difference serve but to bring into clearer
+light the points of analogy? While comparison makes definite the obvious
+contrasts between organisms commonly so called, and the social organism,
+it shows that even these contrasts are not so decided as was to be
+expected. The indefiniteness of form, the discontinuity of the parts,
+and the universal sensitiveness, are not only peculiarities of the
+social organism which have to be stated with considerable
+qualifications; but they are peculiarities to which the inferior classes
+of animals present approximations. Thus we find but little to conflict
+with the all-important analogies. Societies slowly augment in mass; they
+progress in complexity of structure; at the same time their parts become
+more mutually dependent; their living units are removed and replaced
+without destroying their integrity; and the extents to which they
+display these peculiarities are proportionate to their vital activities.
+These are traits that societies have in common with organic bodies. And
+these traits in which they agree with organic bodies and disagree with
+all other things, entirely subordinate the minor distinctions: such
+distinctions being scarcely greater than those which separate one half
+of the organic kingdom from the other. The _principles_ of organization
+are the same, and the differences are simply differences of application.
+
+Here ending this general survey of the facts which justify the
+comparison of a society with a living body, let us look at them in
+detail. We shall find that the parallelism becomes the more marked the
+more closely it is examined.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lowest animal and vegetal forms--_Protozoa_ and _Protophyta_--are
+chiefly inhabitants of the water. They are minute bodies, most of which
+are made individually visible only by the microscope. All of them are
+extremely simple in structure, and some of them, as the _Rhizopods_,
+almost structureless. Multiplying, as they ordinarily do, by the
+spontaneous division of their bodies, they produce halves which may
+either become quite separate and move away in different directions, or
+may continue attached. By the repetition of this process of fission,
+aggregations of various sizes and kinds are formed. Among the
+_Protophyta_ we have some classes, as the _Diatomaceæ_ and the
+Yeast-plant, in which the individuals may be either separate or attached
+in groups of two, three, four, or more; other classes in which a
+considerable number of cells are united into a thread (_Conferva_,
+_Monilia_); others in which they form a network (_Hydrodictyon_); others
+in which they form plates (_Ulva_); and others in which they form masses
+(_Laminaria_, _Agaricus_): all which vegetal forms, having no
+distinction of root, stem, or leaf, are called _Thallogens_. Among the
+_Protozoa_ we find parallel facts. Immense numbers of _Amoeba_-like
+creatures, massed together in a framework of horny fibres, constitute
+Sponge. In the _Foraminifera_ we see smaller groups of such creatures
+arranged into more definite shapes. Not only do these almost
+structureless _Protozoa_ unite into regular or irregular aggregations of
+various sizes, but among some of the more organized ones, as the
+_Vorticellæ_, there are also produced clusters of individuals united to
+a common stem. But these little societies of monads, or cells, or
+whatever else we may call them, are societies only in the lowest sense:
+there is no subordination of parts among them--no organization. Each of
+the component units lives by and for itself; neither giving nor
+receiving aid. The only mutual dependence is that consequent on
+mechanical union.
+
+Do we not here discern analogies to the first stages of human societies?
+Among the lowest races, as the Bushmen, we find but incipient
+aggregation: sometimes single families, sometimes two or three families
+wandering about together. The number of associated units is small and
+variable, and their union inconstant. No division of labour exists
+except between the sexes, and the only kind of mutual aid is that of
+joint attack or defence. We see an undifferentiated group of
+individuals, forming the germ of a society; just as in the homogeneous
+groups of cells above described, we see the initial stage of animal and
+vegetal organization.
+
+The comparison may now be carried a step higher. In the vegetal kingdom
+we pass from the _Thallogens_, consisting of mere masses of similar
+cells, to the _Acrogens_, in which the cells are not similar throughout
+the whole mass; but are here aggregated into a structure serving as leaf
+and there into a structure serving as root; thus forming a whole in
+which there is a certain subdivision of functions among the units, and
+therefore a certain mutual dependence. In the animal kingdom we find
+analogous progress. From mere unorganized groups of cells, or cell-like
+bodies, we ascend to groups of such cells arranged into parts that have
+different duties. The common Polype, from the substance of which may be
+separated cells that exhibit, when detached, appearances and movements
+like those of a solitary _Amoeba_, illustrates this stage. The
+component units, though still showing great community of character,
+assume somewhat diverse functions in the skin, in the internal surface,
+and in the tentacles. There is a certain amount of "physiological
+division of labour."
+
+Turning to societies, we find these stages paralleled in most aboriginal
+tribes. When, instead of such small variable groups as are formed by
+Bushmen, we come to the larger and more permanent groups formed by
+savages not quite so low, we find traces of social structure. Though
+industrial organization scarcely shows itself, except in the different
+occupations of the sexes; yet there is more or less of governmental
+organization. While all the men are warriors and hunters, only a part
+of them are included in the council of chiefs; and in this council of
+chiefs some one has commonly supreme authority. There is thus a certain
+distinction of classes and powers; and through this slight
+specialization of functions is effected a rude co-operation among the
+increasing mass of individuals, whenever the society has to act in its
+corporate capacity. Beyond this analogy in the slight extent to which
+organization is carried, there is analogy in the indefiniteness of the
+organization. In the _Hydra_, the respective parts of the creature's
+substance have many functions in common. They are all contractile;
+omitting the tentacles, the whole of the external surface can give
+origin to young _hydræ_; and, when turned inside out, stomach performs
+the duties of skin and skin the duties of stomach. In aboriginal
+societies such differentiations as exist are similarly imperfect.
+Notwithstanding distinctions of rank, all persons maintain themselves by
+their own exertions. Not only do the head men of the tribe, in common
+with the rest, build their own huts, make their own weapons, kill their
+own food; but the chief does the like. Moreover, such governmental
+organization as exists is inconstant. It is frequently changed by
+violence or treachery, and the function of ruling assumed by some other
+warrior. Thus between the rudest societies and some of the lowest forms
+of animal life, there is analogy alike in the slight extent to which
+organization is carried, in the indefiniteness of this organization, and
+in its want of fixity.
+
+A further complication of the analogy is at hand. From the aggregation
+of units into organized groups, we pass to the multiplication of such
+groups, and their coalescence into compound groups. The _Hydra_, when it
+has reached a certain bulk, puts forth from its surface a bud which,
+growing and gradually assuming the form of the parent, finally becomes
+detached; and by this process of gemmation the creature peoples the
+adjacent water with others like itself. A parallel process is seen in
+the multiplication of those lowly-organized tribes above described. When
+one of them has increased to a size that is either too great for
+co-ordination under so rude a structure, or else that is greater than
+the surrounding country can supply with game and other wild food, there
+arises a tendency to divide; and as in such communities there often
+occur quarrels, jealousies, and other causes of division, there soon
+comes an occasion on which a part of the tribe separates under the
+leadership of some subordinate chief and migrates. This process being
+from time to time repeated, an extensive region is at length occupied by
+numerous tribes descended from a common ancestry. The analogy by no
+means ends here. Though in the common _Hydra_ the young ones that bud
+out from the parent soon become detached and independent; yet throughout
+the rest of the class _Hydrozoa_, to which this creature belongs, the
+like does not generally happen. The successive individuals thus
+developed continue attached; give origin to other such individuals which
+also continue attached; and so there results a compound animal. As in
+the _Hydra_ itself we find an aggregation of units which, considered
+separately, are akin to the lowest _Protozoa_; so here, in a _Zoophyte_,
+we find an aggregation of such aggregations. The like is also seen
+throughout the extensive family of _Polyzoa_ or _Molluscoida_. The
+Ascidian Mollusks, too, in their many forms, show us the same thing:
+exhibiting, at the same time, various degrees of union among the
+component individuals. For while in the _Salpæ_ the component
+individuals adhere so slightly that a blow on the vessel of water in
+which they are floating will separate them; in the _Botryllidæ_ there
+exist vascular connexions among them, and a common circulation. Now in
+these different stages of aggregation, may we not see paralleled the
+union of groups of connate tribes into nations? Though, in regions where
+circumstances permit, the tribes descended from some original tribe
+migrate in all directions, and become far removed and quite separate;
+yet, where the territory presents barriers to distant migration, this
+does not happen: the small kindred communities are held in closer
+contact, and eventually become more or less united into a nation. The
+contrast between the tribes of American Indians and the Scottish clans,
+illustrates this. And a glance at our own early history, or the early
+histories of continental nations, shows this fusion of small simple
+communities taking place in various ways and to various extents. As says
+M. Guizot, in his _History of the Origin of Representative
+Government_,--
+
+     "By degrees, in the midst of the chaos of the rising society, small
+     aggregations are formed which feel the want of alliance and union
+     with each other.... Soon inequality of strength is displayed among
+     neighbouring aggregations. The strong tend to subjugate the weak,
+     and usurp at first the rights of taxation and military service.
+     Thus political authority leaves the aggregations which first
+     instituted it, to take a wider range."
+
+That is to say, the small tribes, clans, or feudal groups, sprung mostly
+from a common stock, and long held in contact as occupants of adjacent
+lands, gradually get united in other ways than by kinship and proximity.
+
+A further series of changes begins now to take place, to which, as
+before, we find analogies in individual organisms. Returning to the
+_Hydrozoa_, we observe that in the simplest of the compound forms the
+connected individuals are alike in structure, and perform like
+functions; with the exception that here and there a bud, instead of
+developing into a stomach, mouth, and tentacles, becomes an egg-sac. But
+with the oceanic _Hydrozoa_ this is by no means the case. In the
+_Calycophoridæ_ some of the polypes growing from the common germ, become
+developed and modified into large, long, sack-like bodies, which, by
+their rhythmical contractions, move through the water, dragging the
+community of polypes after them. In the _Physophoridæ_ a variety of
+organs similarly arise by transformation of the budding polypes; so that
+in creatures like the _Physalia_, commonly known as the "Portuguese
+Man-of-war," instead of that tree-like group of similar individuals
+forming the original type, we have a complex mass of unlike parts
+fulfilling unlike duties. As an individual _Hydra_ may be regarded as a
+group of _Protozoa_ which have become partially metamorphosed into
+different organs; so a _Physalia_ is, morphologically considered, a
+group of _Hydræ_ of which the individuals have been variously
+transformed to fit them for various functions.
+
+This differentiation upon differentiation is just what takes place
+during the evolution of a civilized society. We observed how, in the
+small communities first formed, there arises a simple political
+organization: there is a partial separation of classes having different
+duties. And now we have to observe how, in a nation formed by the fusion
+of such small communities, the several sections, at first alike in
+structures and modes of activity, grow unlike in both--gradually become
+mutually-dependent parts, diverse in their natures and functions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The doctrine of the progressive division of labour, to which we are here
+introduced, is familiar to all readers. And further, the analogy between
+the economical division of labour and the "physiological division of
+labour," is so striking as long since to have drawn the attention of
+scientific naturalists: so striking, indeed, that the expression
+"physiological division of labour," has been suggested by it. It is not
+needful, therefore, to treat this part of the subject in great detail.
+We shall content ourselves with noting a few general and significant
+facts, not manifest on a first inspection.
+
+Throughout the whole animal kingdom, from the _Coelenterata_ upwards,
+the first stage of evolution is the same. Equally in the germ of a
+polype and in the human ovum, the aggregated mass of cells out of which
+the creature is to arise, gives origin to a peripheral layer of cells,
+slightly differing from the rest which they include; and this layer
+subsequently divides into two--the inner, lying in contact with the
+included yelk, being called the mucous layer, and the outer, exposed to
+surrounding agencies, being called the serous layer: or, in the terms
+used by Prof. Huxley, in describing the development of the
+_Hydrozoa_--the endoderm and ectoderm. This primary division marks out a
+fundamental contrast of parts in the future organism. From the mucous
+layer, or endoderm, is developed the apparatus of nutrition; while from
+the serous layer, or ectoderm, is developed the apparatus of external
+action. Out of the one arise the organs by which food is prepared and
+absorbed, oxygen imbibed, and blood purified; while out of the other
+arise the nervous, muscular, and osseous systems, by the combined
+actions of which the movements of the body as a whole are effected.
+Though this is not a rigorously-correct distinction, seeing that some
+organs involve both of these primitive membranes, yet high authorities
+agree in stating it as a broad general distinction. Well, in the
+evolution of a society, we see a primary differentiation of analogous
+kind, which similarly underlies the whole future structure. As already
+pointed out, the only manifest contrast of parts in primitive societies,
+is that between the governing and the governed. In the least organized
+tribes, the council of chiefs may be a body of men distinguished simply
+by greater courage or experience. In more organized tribes, the
+chief-class is definitely separated from the lower class, and often
+regarded as different in nature--sometimes as god-descended. And later,
+we find these two becoming respectively freemen and slaves, or nobles
+and serfs. A glance at their respective functions, makes it obvious that
+the great divisions thus early formed, stand to each other in a relation
+similar to that in which the primary divisions of the embryo stand to
+each other. For, from its first appearance, the warrior-class, headed by
+chiefs, is that by which the external acts of the society are carried
+on: alike in war, in negotiation, and in migration. Afterwards, while
+this upper class grows distinct from the lower, and at the same time
+becomes more and more exclusively regulative and defensive in its
+functions, alike in the persons of kings and subordinate rulers,
+priests, and soldiers; the inferior class becomes more and more
+exclusively occupied in providing the necessaries of life for the
+community at large. From the soil, with which it comes in most direct
+contact, the mass of the people takes up, and prepares for use, the food
+and such rude articles of manufacture as are known; while the overlying
+mass of superior men, maintained by the working population, deals with
+circumstances external to the community--circumstances with which, by
+position, it is more immediately concerned. Ceasing by-and-by to have
+any knowledge of, or power over, the concerns of the society as a whole,
+the serf-class becomes devoted to the processes of alimentation; while
+the noble class, ceasing to take any part in the processes of
+alimentation, becomes devoted to the co-ordinated movements of the
+entire body-politic.
+
+Equally remarkable is a further analogy of like kind. After the mucous
+and serous layers of the embryo have separated, there presently arises
+between the two a third, known to physiologists as the vascular layer--a
+layer out of which are developed the chief blood-vessels. The mucous
+layer absorbs nutriment from the mass of yelk it encloses; this
+nutriment has to be transferred to the overlying serous layer, out of
+which the nervo-muscular system is being developed; and between the two
+arises a vascular system by which the transfer is effected--a system of
+vessels which continues ever after to be the transferrer of nutriment
+from the places where it is absorbed and prepared, to the places where
+it is needed for growth and repair. Well, may we not trace a parallel
+step in social progress? Between the governing and the governed, there
+at first exists no intermediate class; and even in some societies that
+have reached considerable sizes, there are scarcely any but the nobles
+and their kindred on the one hand, and the serfs on the other: the
+social structure being such that transfer of commodities takes place
+directly from slaves to their masters. But in societies of a higher
+type, there grows up, between these two primitive classes, another--the
+trading or middle class. Equally at first as now, we may see that,
+speaking generally, this middle class is the analogue of the middle
+layer in the embryo. For all traders are essentially distributors.
+Whether they be wholesale dealers, who collect into large masses the
+commodities of various producers; or whether they be retailers, who
+divide out to those who want them, the masses of commodities thus
+collected together; all mercantile men are agents of transfer from the
+places where things are produced to the places where they are consumed.
+Thus the distributing apparatus in a society, answers to the
+distributing apparatus in a living body; not only in its functions, but
+in its intermediate origin and subsequent position, and in the time of
+its appearance.
+
+Without enumerating the minor differentiations which these three great
+classes afterwards undergo, we will merely note that throughout, they
+follow the same general law with the differentiations of an individual
+organism. In a society, as in a rudimentary animal, we have seen that
+the most general and broadly contrasted divisions are the first to make
+their appearance; and of the subdivisions it continues true in both
+cases, that they arise in the order of decreasing generality.
+
+Let us observe, next, that in the one case as in the other, the
+specializations are at first very incomplete, and approach completeness
+as organization progresses. We saw that in primitive tribes, as in the
+simplest animals, there remains much community of function between the
+parts which are nominally different--that, for instance, the class of
+chiefs long remains industrially the same as the inferior class; just
+as in a _Hydra_, the property of contractility is possessed by the units
+of the endoderm as well as by those of the ectoderm. We noted also how,
+as the society advanced, the two great primitive classes partook less
+and less of each other's functions. And we have here to remark that all
+subsequent specializations are at first vague and gradually become
+distinct. "In the infancy of society," says M. Guizot, "everything is
+confused and uncertain; there is as yet no fixed and precise line of
+demarcation between the different powers in a state." "Originally kings
+lived like other landowners, on the incomes derived from their own
+private estates." Nobles were petty kings; and kings only the most
+powerful nobles. Bishops were feudal lords and military leaders. The
+right of coining money was possessed by powerful subjects, and by the
+Church, as well as by the king. Every leading man exercised alike the
+functions of landowner, farmer, soldier, statesman, judge. Retainers
+were now soldiers, and now labourers, as the day required. But by
+degrees the Church has lost all civil jurisdiction; the State has
+exercised less and less control over religious teaching; the military
+class has grown a distinct one; handicrafts have concentrated in towns;
+and the spinning-wheels of scattered farmhouses, have disappeared before
+the machinery of manufacturing districts. Not only is all progress from
+the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, but, at the same time, it is from
+the indefinite to the definite.
+
+Another fact which should not be passed over, is that in the evolution
+of a large society out of a cluster of small ones, there is a gradual
+obliteration of the original lines of separation--a change to which,
+also, we may see analogies in living bodies. The sub-kingdom _Annulosa_,
+furnishes good illustrations. Among the lower types the body consists of
+numerous segments that are alike in nearly every particular. Each has
+its external ring; its pair of legs, if the creature has legs; its
+equal portion of intestine, or else its separate stomach; its equal
+portion of the great blood-vessel, or, in some cases, its separate
+heart; its equal portion of the nervous cord; and, perhaps, its separate
+pair of ganglia. But in the highest types, as in the large _Crustacea_,
+many of the segments are completely fused together; and the internal
+organs are no longer uniformly repeated in all the segments. Now the
+segments of which nations at first consist, lose their separate external
+and internal structures in a similar manner. In feudal times the minor
+communities, governed by feudal lords, were severally organized in the
+same rude way, and were held together only by the fealty of their
+respective rulers to a suzerain. But along with the growth of a central
+power, the demarcations of these local communities become relatively
+unimportant, and their separate organizations merge into the general
+organization. The like is seen on a larger scale in the fusion of
+England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; and, on the Continent, in the
+coalescence of provinces into kingdoms. Even in the disappearance of
+law-made divisions, the process is analogous. Among the Anglo-Saxons,
+England was divided into tithings, hundreds, and counties: there were
+county-courts, courts of hundred, and courts of tithing. The courts of
+tithing disappeared first; then the courts of hundred, which have,
+however, left traces; while the county-jurisdiction still exists.
+Chiefly, however, it is to be noted, that there eventually grows up an
+organization which has no reference to these original divisions, but
+traverses them in various directions, as is the case in creatures
+belonging to the sub-kingdom just named; and, further, that in both
+cases it is the sustaining organization which thus traverses old
+boundaries, while, in both cases, it is the governmental, or
+co-ordinating organization in which the original boundaries continue
+traceable. Thus, in the highest _Annulosa_ the exo-skeleton and the
+muscular system never lose all traces of their primitive segmentation;
+but throughout a great part of the body, the contained viscera do not in
+the least conform to the external divisions. Similarly with a nation we
+see that while, for governmental purposes, such divisions as counties
+and parishes still exist, the structure developed for carrying on the
+nutrition of society wholly ignores these boundaries: our great
+cotton-manufacture spreads out of Lancashire into North Derbyshire;
+Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire have long divided the stocking-trade
+between them; one great centre for the production of iron and
+iron-goods, includes parts of Warwickshire, Staffordshire, and
+Worcestershire; and those various specializations of agriculture which
+have made different parts of England noted for different products, show
+no more respect to county-boundaries than do our growing towns to the
+boundaries of parishes.
+
+If, after contemplating these analogies of structure, we inquire whether
+there are any such analogies between the processes of organic change,
+the answer is--yes. The causes which lead to increase of bulk in any
+part of the body-politic, are of like nature with those which lead to
+increase of bulk in any part of an individual body. In both cases the
+antecedent is greater functional activity consequent on greater demand.
+Each limb, viscus, gland, or other member of an animal, is developed by
+exercise--by actively discharging the duties which the body at large
+requires of it; and similarly, any class of labourers or artisans, any
+manufacturing centre, or any official agency, begins to enlarge when the
+community devolves on it more work. In each case, too, growth has its
+conditions and its limits. That any organ in a living being may grow by
+exercise, there needs a due supply of blood. All action implies waste;
+blood brings the materials for repair; and before there can be growth,
+the quantity of blood supplied must be more than is requisite for
+repair. In a society it is the same. If to some district which
+elaborates for the community particular commodities--say the woollens
+of Yorkshire--there comes an augmented demand; and if, in fulfilment of
+this demand, a certain expenditure and wear of the manufacturing
+organization are incurred; and if, in payment for the extra quantity of
+woollens sent away, there comes back only such quantity of commodities
+as replaces the expenditure, and makes good the waste of life and
+machinery; there can clearly be no growth. That there may be growth, the
+commodities obtained in return must be more than sufficient for these
+ends; and just in proportion as the surplus is great will the growth be
+rapid. Whence it is manifest that what in commercial affairs we call
+_profit_, answers to the excess of nutrition over waste in a living
+body. Moreover, in both cases when the functional activity is high and
+the nutrition defective, there results not growth but decay. If in an
+animal, any organ is worked so hard that the channels which bring blood
+cannot furnish enough for repair, the organ dwindles: atrophy is set up.
+And if in the body-politic, some part has been stimulated into great
+productivity, and cannot afterwards get paid for all its produce,
+certain of its members become bankrupt, and it decreases in size.
+
+One more parallelism to be here noted, is that the different parts of a
+social organism, like the different parts of an individual organism,
+compete for nutriment; and severally obtain more or less of it according
+as they are discharging more or less duty. If a man's brain be
+overexcited it abstracts blood from his viscera and stops digestion; or
+digestion, actively going on, so affects the circulation through the
+brain as to cause drowsiness; or great muscular exertion determines such
+a quantity of blood to the limbs as to arrest digestion or cerebral
+action, as the case may be. So, likewise, in a society, great activity
+in some one direction causes partial arrests of activity elsewhere by
+abstracting capital, that is commodities: as instance the way in which
+the sudden development of our railway-system hampered commercial
+operations; or the way in which the raising of a large military force
+temporarily stops the growth of leading industries.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The last few paragraphs introduce the next division of our subject.
+Almost unawares we have come upon the analogy which exists between the
+blood of a living body and the circulating mass of commodities in the
+body-politic. We have now to trace out this analogy from its simplest to
+its most complex manifestations.
+
+In the lowest animals there exists no blood properly so called. Through
+the small assemblage of cells which make up a _Hydra_, permeate the
+juices absorbed from the food. There is no apparatus for elaborating a
+concentrated and purified nutriment, and distributing it among the
+component units; but these component units directly imbibe the
+unprepared nutriment, either from the digestive cavity or from one
+another. May we not say that this is what takes place in an aboriginal
+tribe? All its members severally obtain for themselves the necessaries
+of life in their crude states; and severally prepare them for their own
+uses as well as they can. When there arises a decided differentiation
+between the governing and the governed, some amount of transfer begins
+between those inferior individuals who, as workers, come directly in
+contact with the products of the earth, and those superior ones who
+exercise the higher functions--a transfer parallel to that which
+accompanies the differentiation of the ectoderm from the endoderm. In
+the one case, as in the other, however, it is a transfer of products
+that are little if at all prepared; and takes place directly from the
+unit which obtains to the unit which consumes, without entering into any
+general current.
+
+Passing to larger organisms--individual and social--we meet the first
+advance on this arrangement. Where, as among the compound _Hydrozoa_,
+there is a union of many such primitive groups as form _Hydræ_; or
+where, as in a _Medusa_, one of these groups has become of great size;
+there exist rude channels running throughout the substance of the body:
+not, however, channels for the conveyance of prepared nutriment, but
+mere prolongations of the digestive cavity, through which the crude
+chyle-aqueous fluid reaches the remoter parts, and is moved backwards
+and forwards by the creature's contractions. Do we not find in some of
+the more advanced primitive communities an analogous condition? When the
+men, partially or fully united into one society, become numerous--when,
+as usually happens, they cover a surface of country not everywhere alike
+in its products--when, more especially, there arise considerable classes
+which are not industrial; some process of exchange and distribution
+inevitably arises. Traversing here and there the earth's surface,
+covered by that vegetation on which human life depends, and in which, as
+we say, the units of a society are imbedded, there are formed indefinite
+paths, along which some of the necessaries of life occasionally pass, to
+be bartered for others which presently come back along the same
+channels. Note, however, that at first little else but crude commodities
+are thus transferred--fruits, fish, pigs or cattle, skins, etc.: there
+are few, if any, manufactured products or articles prepared for
+consumption. And note also, that such distribution of these unprepared
+necessaries of life as takes place, is but occasional--goes on with a
+certain slow, irregular rhythm.
+
+Further progress in the elaboration and distribution of nutriment, or of
+commodities, is a necessary accompaniment of further differentiation of
+functions in the individual body or in the body-politic. As fast as each
+organ of a living animal becomes confined to a special action, it must
+become dependent on the rest for those materials which its position and
+duty do not permit it to obtain for itself; in the same way that, as
+fast as each particular class of a community becomes exclusively
+occupied in producing its own commodity, it must become dependent on
+the rest for the other commodities it needs. And, simultaneously, a more
+perfectly-elaborated blood will result from a highly specialized group
+of nutritive organs, severally adapted to prepare its different
+elements; in the same way that the stream of commodities circulating
+throughout a society, will be of superior quality in proportion to the
+greater division of labour among the workers. Observe, also, that in
+either case the circulating mass of nutritive materials, besides coming
+gradually to consist of better ingredients, also grows more complex. An
+increase in the number of the unlike organs which add to the blood their
+waste matters, and demand from it the different materials they severally
+need, implies a blood more heterogeneous in composition--an _a priori_
+conclusion which, according to Dr. Williams, is inductively confirmed by
+examination of the blood throughout the various grades of the animal
+kingdom. And similarly, it is manifest that as fast as the division of
+labour among the classes of a community becomes greater, there must be
+an increasing heterogeneity in the currents of merchandize flowing
+throughout that community.
+
+The circulating mass of nutritive materials in individual organisms and
+in social organisms, becoming at once better in the quality of its
+ingredients and more heterogeneous in composition, as the type of
+structure becomes higher, eventually has added to it in both cases
+another element, which is not itself nutritive but facilitates the
+processes of nutrition. We refer, in the case of the individual
+organism, to the blood-discs; and in the case of the social organism, to
+money. This analogy has been observed by Liebig, who in his _Familiar
+Letters on Chemistry_ says:--
+
+     "Silver and gold have to perform in the organism of the state, the
+     same function as the blood-corpuscles in the human organism. As
+     these round discs, without themselves taking an immediate share in
+     the nutritive process, are the medium, the essential condition of
+     the change of matter, of the production of the heat and of the
+     force by which the temperature of the body is kept up, and the
+     motions of the blood and all the juices are determined, so has gold
+     become the medium of all activity in the life of the state."
+
+And blood-corpuscles being like coin in their functions, and in the fact
+that they are not consumed in nutrition, he further points out that the
+number of them which in a considerable interval flows through the great
+centres, is enormous when compared with their absolute number; just as
+the quantity of money which annually passes through the great mercantile
+centres, is enormous when compared with the quantity of money in the
+kingdom. Nor is this all. Liebig has omitted the significant
+circumstance that only at a certain stage of organization does this
+element of the circulation make its appearance. Throughout extensive
+divisions of the lower animals, the blood contains no corpuscles; and in
+societies of low civilization, there is no money.
+
+Thus far we have considered the analogy between the blood in a living
+body and the consumable and circulating commodities in the body-politic.
+Let us now compare the appliances by which they are respectively
+distributed. We shall find in the developments of these appliances
+parallelisms not less remarkable than those above set forth. Already we
+have shown that, as classes, wholesale and retail distributors discharge
+in a society the office which the vascular system discharges in an
+individual creature; that they come into existence later than the other
+two great classes, as the vascular layer appears later than the mucous
+and serous layers; and that they occupy a like intermediate position.
+Here, however, it remains to be pointed out that a complete conception
+of the circulating system in a society, includes not only the active
+human agents who propel the currents of commodities, and regulate their
+distribution, but includes, also, the channels of communication. It is
+the formation and arrangement of these to which we now direct attention.
+
+Going back once more to those lower animals in which there is found
+nothing but a partial diffusion, not of blood, but only of crude
+nutritive fluids, it is to be remarked that the channels through which
+the diffusion takes place, are mere excavations through the
+half-organized substance of the body: they have no lining membranes, but
+are mere _lacunæ_ traversing a rude tissue. Now countries in which
+civilization is but commencing, display a like condition: there are no
+roads properly so called; but the wilderness of vegetal life covering
+the earth's surface is pierced by tracks, through which the distribution
+of crude commodities takes place. And while, in both cases, the acts of
+distribution occur only at long intervals (the currents, after a pause,
+now setting towards a general centre and now away from it), the transfer
+is in both cases slow and difficult. But among other accompaniments of
+progress, common to animals and societies, comes the formation of more
+definite and complete channels of communication. Blood-vessels acquire
+distinct walls; roads are fenced and gravelled. This advance is first
+seen in those roads or vessels that are nearest to the chief centres of
+distribution; while the peripheral roads and peripheral vessels long
+continue in their primitive states. At a yet later stage of development,
+where comparative finish of structure is found throughout the system as
+well as near the chief centres, there remains in both cases the
+difference that the main channels are comparatively broad and straight,
+while the subordinate ones are narrow and tortuous in proportion to
+their remoteness. Lastly, it is to be remarked that there ultimately
+arise in the higher social organisms, as in the higher individual
+organisms, main channels of distribution still more distinguished by
+their perfect structures, their comparative straightness, and the
+absence of those small branches which the minor channels perpetually
+give off. And in railways we also see, for the first time in the social
+organism, a system of double channels conveying currents in opposite
+directions, as do the arteries and veins of a well-developed animal.
+
+These parallelisms in the evolutions and structures of the circulating
+systems, introduce us to others in the kinds and rates of the movements
+going on through them. Through the lowest societies, as through the
+lowest creatures, the distribution of crude nutriment is by slow
+gurgitations and regurgitations. In creatures that have rude vascular
+systems, just as in societies that are beginning to have roads, there is
+no regular circulation along definite courses; but, instead, periodical
+changes of the currents--now towards this point and now towards that.
+Through each part of an inferior mollusk's body, the blood flows for a
+while in one direction, then stops and flows in the opposite direction;
+just as through a rudely-organized society, the distribution of
+merchandize is slowly carried on by great fairs, occurring in different
+localities, to and from which the currents periodically set. Only
+animals of tolerably complete organizations, like advanced communities,
+are permeated by constant currents that are definitely directed. In
+living bodies, the local and variable currents disappear when there grow
+up great centres of circulation, generating more powerful currents by a
+rhythm which ends in a quick, regular pulsation. And when in social
+bodies there arise great centres of commercial activity, producing and
+exchanging large quantities of commodities, the rapid and continuous
+streams drawn in and emitted by these centres subdue all minor and local
+circulations: the slow rhythm of fairs merges into the faster one of
+weekly markets, and in the chief centres of distribution, weekly markets
+merge into daily markets; while in place of the languid transfer from
+place to place, taking place at first weekly, then twice or thrice a
+week, we by-and-by get daily transfer, and finally transfer many times a
+day--the original sluggish, irregular rhythm, becomes a rapid, equable
+pulse. Mark, too, that in both cases the increased activity, like the
+greater perfection of structure, is much less conspicuous at the
+periphery of the vascular system. On main lines of railway, we have,
+perhaps, a score trains in each direction daily, going at from thirty to
+fifty miles an hour; as, through the great arteries, the blood moves
+rapidly in successive gushes. Along high roads, there go vehicles
+conveying men and commodities with much less, though still considerable,
+speed, and with a much less decided rhythm; as, in the smaller arteries,
+the speed of the blood is greatly diminished and the pulse less
+conspicuous. In parish-roads, narrower, less complete, and more
+tortuous, the rate of movement is further decreased and the rhythm
+scarcely traceable; as in the ultimate arteries. In those still more
+imperfect by-roads which lead from these parish-roads to scattered
+farmhouses and cottages, the motion is yet slower and very irregular;
+just as we find it in the capillaries. While along the field-roads,
+which, in their unformed, unfenced state, are typical of _lacunæ_, the
+movement is the slowest, the most irregular, and the most infrequent; as
+it is, not only in the primitive _lacunæ_ of animals and societies, but
+as it is also in those _lacunæ_ in which the vascular system ends among
+extensive families of inferior creatures.
+
+Thus, then, we find between the distributing systems of living bodies
+and the distributing systems of bodies-politic, wonderfully close
+parallelisms. In the lowest forms of individual and social organisms,
+there exist neither prepared nutritive matters nor distributing
+appliances; and in both, these, arising as necessary accompaniments of
+the differentiation of parts, approach perfection as this
+differentiation approaches completeness. In animals, as in societies,
+the distributing agencies begin to show themselves at the same relative
+periods, and in the same relative positions. In the one, as in the
+other, the nutritive materials circulated are at first crude and simple,
+gradually become better elaborated and more heterogeneous, and have
+eventually added to them a new element facilitating the nutritive
+processes. The channels of communication pass through similar phases of
+development, which bring them to analogous forms. And the directions,
+rhythms, and rates of circulation, progress by like steps to like final
+conditions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We come at length to the nervous system. Having noticed the primary
+differentiation of societies into the governing and governed classes,
+and observed its analogy to the differentiation of the two primary
+tissues which respectively develop into organs of external action and
+organs of alimentation; having noticed some of the leading analogies
+between the development of industrial arrangements and that of the
+alimentary apparatus; and having, above, more fully traced the analogies
+between the distributing systems, social and individual; we have now to
+compare the appliances by which a society, as a whole, is regulated,
+with those by which the movements of an individual creature are
+regulated. We shall find here parallelisms equally striking with those
+already detailed.
+
+The class out of which governmental organization originates, is, as we
+have said, analogous in its relations to the ectoderm of the lowest
+animals and of embryonic forms. And as this primitive membrane, out of
+which the nervo-muscular system is evolved, must, even in the first
+stage of its differentiation, be slightly distinguished from the rest by
+that greater impressibility and contractility characterizing the organs
+to which it gives rise; so, in that superior class which is eventually
+transformed into the directo-executive system of a society (its
+legislative and defensive appliances), does there exist in the
+beginning, a larger endowment of the capacities required for these
+higher social functions. Always, in rude assemblages of men, the
+strongest, most courageous, and most sagacious, become rulers and
+leaders; and, in a tribe of some standing, this results in the
+establishment of a dominant class, characterized on the average by those
+mental and bodily qualities which fit them for deliberation and
+vigorous combined action. Thus that greater impressibility and
+contractility, which in the rudest animal types characterize the units
+of the ectoderm, characterize also the units of the primitive social
+stratum which controls and fights; since impressibility and
+contractility are the respective roots of intelligence and strength.
+
+Again, in the unmodified ectoderm, as we see it in the _Hydra_, the
+units are all endowed both with impressibility and contractility; but as
+we ascend to higher types of organization, the ectoderm differentiates
+into classes of units which divide those two functions between them:
+some, becoming exclusively impressible, cease to be contractile; while
+some, becoming exclusively contractile, cease to be impressible.
+Similarly with societies. In an aboriginal tribe, the directive and
+executive functions are diffused in a mingled form throughout the whole
+governing class. Each minor chief commands those under him, and, if need
+be, himself coerces them into obedience. The council of chiefs itself
+carries out on the battle-field its own decisions. The head chief not
+only makes laws, but administers justice with his own hands. In larger
+and more settled communities, however, the directive and executive
+agencies begin to grow distinct from each other. As fast as his duties
+accumulate, the head chief or king confines himself more and more to
+directing public affairs, and leaves the execution of his will to
+others: he deputes others to enforce submission, to inflict punishments,
+or to carry out minor acts of offence and defence; and only on occasions
+when, perhaps, the safety of the society and his own supremacy are at
+stake, does he begin to act as well as direct. As this differentiation
+establishes itself, the characteristics of the ruler begin to change. No
+longer, as in an aboriginal tribe, the strongest and most daring man,
+the tendency is for him to become the man of greatest cunning,
+foresight, and skill in the management of others; for in societies that
+have advanced beyond the first stage, it is chiefly such qualities
+that insure success in gaining supreme power, and holding it against
+internal and external enemies. Thus that member of the governing class
+who comes to be the chief directing agent, and so plays the same part
+that a rudimentary nervous centre does in an unfolding organism, is
+usually one endowed with some superiorities of nervous organization.
+
+In those larger and more complex communities possessing, perhaps, a
+separate military class, a priesthood, and dispersed masses of
+population requiring local control, there grow up subordinate governing
+agents; who, as their duties accumulate, severally become more directive
+and less executive in their characters. And when, as commonly happens,
+the king begins to collect round himself advisers who aid him by
+communicating information, preparing subjects for his judgment, and
+issuing his orders; we may say that the form of organization is
+comparable to one very general among inferior types of animals, in which
+there exists a chief ganglion with a few dispersed minor ganglia under
+its control.
+
+The analogies between the evolution of governmental structures in
+societies, and the evolution of governmental structures in living
+bodies, are, however, more strikingly displayed during the formation of
+nations by coalescence of tribes--a process already shown to be, in
+several respects, parallel to the development of creatures that
+primarily consist of many like segments. Among other points of community
+between the successive rings which make up the body in the lower
+_Annulosa_, is the possession of similar pairs of ganglia. These pairs
+of ganglia, though connected by nerves, are very incompletely dependent
+on any general controlling power. Hence it results that when the body is
+cut in two, the hinder part continues to move forward under the
+propulsion of its numerous legs; and that when the chain of ganglia has
+been divided without severing the body, the hind limbs may be seen
+trying to propel the body in one direction while the fore limbs are
+trying to propel it in another. But in the higher _Annulosa_, called
+_Articulata_, sundry of the anterior pairs of ganglia, besides growing
+larger, unite in one mass; and this great cephalic ganglion having
+become the co-ordinator of all the creature's movements, there no longer
+exists much local independence. Now may we not in the growth of a
+consolidated kingdom out of petty sovereignties or baronies, observe
+analogous changes? Like the chiefs and primitive rulers above described,
+feudal lords, exercising supreme power over their respective groups of
+retainers, discharge functions analogous to those of rudimentary nervous
+centres. Among these local governing centres there is, in early feudal
+times, very little subordination. They are in frequent antagonism; they
+are individually restrained chiefly by the influence of parties in their
+own class; and they are but irregularly subject to that most powerful
+member of their order who has gained the position of head-suzerain or
+king. As the growth and organization of the society progresses, these
+local directive centres fall more and more under the control of a chief
+directive centre. Closer commercial union between the several segments
+is accompanied by closer governmental union; and these minor rulers end
+in being little more than agents who administer, in their several
+localities, the laws made by the supreme ruler: just as the local
+ganglia above described, eventually become agents which enforce, in
+their respective segments, the orders of the cephalic ganglion. The
+parallelism holds still further. We remarked above, when speaking of the
+rise of aboriginal kings, that in proportion as their territories
+increase, they are obliged not only to perform their executive functions
+by deputy, but also to gather round themselves advisers to aid in their
+directive functions; and that thus, in place of a solitary governing
+unit, there grows up a group of governing units, comparable to a
+ganglion consisting of many cells. Let us here add that the advisers and
+chief officers who thus form the rudiment of a ministry, tend from the
+beginning to exercise some control over the ruler. By the information
+they give and the opinions they express, they sway his judgment and
+affect his commands. To this extent he is made a channel through which
+are communicated the directions originating with them; and in course of
+time, when the advice of ministers becomes the acknowledged source of
+his actions, the king assumes the character of an automatic centre,
+reflecting the impressions made on him from without.
+
+Beyond this complication of governmental structure many societies do not
+progress; but in some, a further development takes place. Our own case
+best illustrates this further development and its further analogies. To
+kings and their ministries have been added, in England, other great
+directive centres, exercising a control which, at first small, has been
+gradually becoming predominant: as with the great governing ganglia
+which especially distinguish the highest classes of living beings.
+Strange as the assertion will be thought, our Houses of Parliament
+discharge, in the social economy, functions which are in sundry respects
+comparable to those discharged by the cerebral masses in a vertebrate
+animal. As it is in the nature of a single ganglion to be affected only
+by special stimuli from particular parts of the body; so it is in the
+nature of a single ruler to be swayed in his acts by exclusive personal
+or class interests. As it is in the nature of a cluster of ganglia,
+connected with the primary one, to convey to it a greater variety of
+influences from more numerous organs, and thus to make its acts conform
+to more numerous requirements; so it is in the nature of the subsidiary
+controlling powers surrounding a king to adapt his rule to a greater
+number of public exigencies. And as it is in the nature of those great
+and latest-developed ganglia which distinguish the higher animals, to
+interpret and combine the multiplied and varied impressions conveyed to
+them from all parts of the system, and to regulate the actions in such
+way as duly to regard them all; so it is in the nature of those great
+and latest-developed legislative bodies which distinguish the most
+advanced societies, to interpret and combine the wishes of all classes
+and localities, and to make laws in harmony with the general wants. We
+may describe the office of the brain as that of _averaging_ the
+interests of life, physical, intellectual, moral; and a good brain is
+one in which the desires answering to these respective interests are so
+balanced, that the conduct they jointly dictate, sacrifices none of
+them. Similarly, we may describe the office of a Parliament as that of
+_averaging_ the interests of the various classes in a community; and a
+good Parliament is one in which the parties answering to these
+respective interests are so balanced, that their united legislation
+allows to each class as much as consists with the claims of the rest.
+Besides being comparable in their duties, these great directive centres,
+social and individual, are comparable in the processes by which their
+duties are discharged. The cerebrum is not occupied with direct
+impressions from without but with the ideas of such impressions. Instead
+of the actual sensations produced in the body, and directly appreciated
+by the sensory ganglia, or primitive nervous centres, the cerebrum
+receives only the representations of these sensations; and its
+consciousness is called _representative_ consciousness, to distinguish
+it from the original or _presentative_ consciousness. Is it not
+significant that we have hit on the same word to distinguish the
+function of our House of Commons? We call it a _representative_ body,
+because the interests with which it deals are not directly presented to
+it, but represented to it by its various members; and a debate is a
+conflict of representations of the results likely to follow from a
+proposed course--a description which applies with equal truth to a
+debate in the individual consciousness. In both cases, too, these great
+governing masses take no part in the executive functions. As, after a
+conflict in the cerebrum, those desires which finally predominate act
+on the subjacent ganglia, and through their instrumentality determine
+the bodily actions; so the parties which, after a parliamentary
+struggle, gain the victory, do not themselves carry out their wishes,
+but get them carried out by the executive divisions of the Government.
+The fulfilment of all legislative decisions still devolves on the
+original directive centres: the impulse passing from the Parliament to
+the Ministers and from the Ministers to the King, in whose name
+everything is done; just as those smaller, first-developed ganglia,
+which in the lowest vertebrata are the chief controlling agents, are
+still, in the brains of the higher vertebrata, the agents through which
+the dictates of the cerebrum are worked out. Moreover, in both cases
+these original centres become increasingly automatic. In the developed
+vertebrate animal, they have little function beyond that of conveying
+impressions to, and executing the determinations of, the larger centres.
+In our highly organized government, the monarch has long been lapsing
+into a passive agent of Parliament; and now, ministries are rapidly
+falling into the same position. Nay, between the two cases there is a
+parallelism even in respect of the exceptions to this automatic action.
+For in the individual creature it happens that under circumstances of
+sudden alarm, as from a loud sound close at hand, an unexpected object
+starting up in front, or a slip from insecure footing, the danger is
+guarded against by some quick involuntary jump, or adjustment of the
+limbs, which occurs before there is time to consider the impending evil
+and take deliberate measures to avoid it: the rationale of which is that
+these violent impressions produced on the senses, are reflected from the
+sensory ganglia to the spinal cord and muscles, without, as in ordinary
+cases, first passing through the cerebrum. In like manner on national
+emergencies calling for prompt action, the King and Ministry, not having
+time to lay the matter before the great deliberative bodies, themselves
+issue commands for the requisite movements or precautions: the
+primitive, and now almost automatic, directive centres, resume for a
+moment their original uncontrolled power. And then, strangest of all,
+observe that in either case there is an after-process of approval or
+disapproval. The individual on recovering from his automatic start, at
+once contemplates the cause of his fright; and, according to the case,
+concludes that it was well he moved as he did, or condemns himself for
+his groundless alarm. In like manner, the deliberative powers of the
+State discuss, as soon as may be, the unauthorized acts of the executive
+powers; and, deciding that the reasons were or were not sufficient,
+grant or withhold a bill of indemnity.[28]
+
+Thus far in comparing the governmental organization of the body-politic
+with that of an individual body, we have considered only the respective
+co-ordinating centres. We have yet to consider the channels through
+which these co-ordinating centres receive information and convey
+commands. In the simplest societies, as in the simplest organisms, there
+is no "internuncial apparatus," as Hunter styled the nervous system.
+Consequently, impressions can be but slowly propagated from unit to unit
+throughout the whole mass. The same progress, however, which, in
+animal-organization, shows itself in the establishment of ganglia or
+directive centres, shows itself also in the establishment of
+nerve-threads, through which the ganglia receive and convey impressions
+and so control remote organs. And in societies the like eventually
+takes place. After a long period during which the directive centres
+communicate with various parts of the society through other means, there
+at last comes into existence an "internuncial apparatus," analogous to
+that found in individual bodies. The comparison of telegraph-wires to
+nerves is familiar to all. It applies, however, to an extent not
+commonly supposed. Thus, throughout the vertebrate sub-kingdom, the
+great nerve-bundles diverge from the vertebrate axis side by side with
+the great arteries; and similarly, our groups of telegraph-wires are
+carried along the sides of our railways. The most striking parallelism,
+however, remains. Into each great bundle of nerves, as it leaves the
+axis of the body along with an artery, there enters a branch of the
+sympathetic nerve; which branch, accompanying the artery throughout its
+ramifications, has the function of regulating its diameter and otherwise
+controlling the flow of blood through it according to local
+requirements. Analogously, in the group of telegraph-wires running
+alongside each railway, there is a wire for the purpose of regulating
+the traffic--for retarding or expediting the flow of passengers and
+commodities, as the local conditions demand. Probably, when our now
+rudimentary telegraph-system is fully developed, other analogies will be
+traceable.
+
+Such, then, is a general outline of the evidence which justifies the
+comparison of societies to living organisms. That they gradually
+increase in mass; that they become little by little more complex; that
+at the same time their parts grow more mutually dependent; and that they
+continue to live and grow as wholes, while successive generations of
+their units appear and disappear; are broad peculiarities which
+bodies-politic display in common with all living bodies; and in which
+they and living bodies differ from everything else. And on carrying out
+the comparison in detail, we find that these major analogies involve
+many minor analogies, far closer than might have been expected. Others
+might be added. We had hoped to say something respecting the different
+types of social organization, and something also on social
+metamorphoses; but we have reached our assigned limits.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 28: It may be well to warn the reader against an error fallen
+into by one who criticised this essay on its first publication--the
+error of supposing that the analogy here intended to be drawn, is a
+specific analogy between the organization of society in England, and the
+human organization. As said at the outset, no such specific analogy
+exists. The above parallel is one between the most-developed systems of
+governmental organization, individual and social; and the vertebrate
+type is instanced merely as exhibiting this most-developed system. If
+any specific comparison were made, which it cannot rationally be, it
+would be made with some much lower vertebrate form than the human.]
+
+
+
+
+THE ORIGIN OF ANIMAL WORSHIP.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Fortnightly Review _for May,_ 1870.]
+
+
+Mr. McLennan's recent essays on the Worship of Animals and Plants have
+done much to elucidate a very obscure subject. By pursuing in this case,
+as before in another case, the truly scientific method of comparing the
+phenomena presented by existing uncivilized races with those which the
+traditions of civilized races present, he has rendered both of them more
+comprehensible than they were before.
+
+It seems to me, however, that Mr. McLennan gives but an indefinite
+answer to the essential question--How did the worship of animals and
+plants arise? Indeed, in his concluding paper, he expressly leaves this
+problem unsolved; saying that his "is not an hypothesis explanatory of
+the origin of _Totemism_, be it remembered, but an hypothesis
+explanatory of the animal and plant worship of the ancient nations." So
+that we have still to ask--Why have savage tribes so generally taken
+animals and plants and other things as totems? What can have induced
+this tribe to ascribe special sacredness to one creature, and that tribe
+to another? And if to these questions the reply is, that each tribe
+considers itself to be descended from the object of its reverence, then
+there presses for answer the further question--How came so strange a
+notion into existence? If this notion occurred in one case only, we
+might set it down to some whim of thought or some illusive occurrence.
+But appealing, as it does, with multitudinous variations among so many
+uncivilized races in different parts of the world, and having left
+numerous marks in the superstitions of extinct civilized races, we
+cannot assume any special or exceptional cause. Moreover, the general
+cause, whatever it may be, must be such as does not negative an
+aboriginal intelligence like in nature to our own. After studying the
+grotesque beliefs of savages, we are apt to suppose that their reason is
+not as our reason. But this supposition is inadmissible. Given the
+amount of knowledge which primitive men possess, and given the imperfect
+verbal symbols used by them in speech and thought, and the conclusions
+they habitually reach will be those that are _relatively_ the most
+rational. This must be our postulate; and, setting out with this
+postulate, we have to ask how primitive men came so generally, if not
+universally, to believe themselves the progeny of animals or plants or
+inanimate bodies. There is, I believe, a satisfactory answer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The proposition with which Mr. McLennan sets out, that totem-worship
+preceded the worship of anthropomorphic gods, is one to which I can
+yield but a qualified assent. It is true in a sense, but not wholly
+true. If the words "gods" and "worship" carry with them their ordinary
+definite meanings, the statement is true; but if their meanings are
+widened so as to comprehend those earliest vague notions out of which
+the definite ideas of gods and worship are evolved, I think it is not
+true. The rudimentary form of all religion is the propitiation of dead
+ancestors, who are supposed to be still existing, and to be capable of
+working good or evil to their descendants. As a preparation for dealing
+hereafter with the principles of sociology, I have, for some years past,
+directed much attention to the modes of thought current in the simpler
+human societies; and evidence of many kinds, furnished by all
+varieties of uncivilized men, has forced on me a conclusion harmonizing
+with that lately expressed in this Review by Prof. Huxley--namely, that
+the savage, conceiving a corpse to be deserted by the active personality
+who dwelt in it, conceives this active personality to be still existing,
+and that his feelings and ideas concerning it form the basis of his
+superstitions. Everywhere we find expressed Or implied the belief that
+each person is double; and that when he dies, his other self, whether
+remaining near at hand or gone far away, may return, and continues
+capable of injuring his enemies and aiding his friends.[29]
+
+But how out of the desire to propitiate this second personality of a
+deceased man (the words "ghost" and "spirit" are somewhat misleading,
+since the savage believes that the second personality reappears in a
+form equally tangible with the first), does there grow up the worship of
+animals, plants, and inanimate objects? Very simply. Savages habitually
+distinguish individuals by names that are either directly suggestive of
+some personal trait or fact of personal history, or else express an
+observed community of character with some well-known object. Such a
+genesis of individual names, before surnames have arisen, is inevitable;
+and how easily it arises we shall see on remembering that it still goes
+on in its original form, even when no longer needful. I do not refer
+only to the significant fact that in some parts of England, as in the
+nail-making districts, nicknames are general, and surnames little
+recognized; but I refer to a common usage among both children and
+adults. The rude man is apt to be known as "a bear;" a sly fellow, as
+"an old fox;" a hypocrite, as "the crocodile." Names of plants, too, are
+used; as when the red-haired boy is called "carrots" by his
+school-fellows. Nor do we lack nicknames derived from inorganic objects
+and agents: instance that given by Mr. Carlyle to the elder
+Sterling--"Captain Whirlwind." Now, in the earliest savage state, this
+metaphorical naming will in most cases commence afresh in each
+generation--must do so, indeed, until surnames of some kind have been
+established. I say in most cases, because there will occur exceptions in
+the cases of men who have distinguished themselves. If "the Wolf,"
+proving famous in fight, becomes a terror to neighbouring tribes, and a
+dominant man in his own, his sons, proud of their parentage, will not
+let fall the fact that they descended from "the Wolf"; nor will this
+fact be forgotten by the rest of the tribe who hold "the Wolf" in awe,
+and see reason to dread his sons. In proportion to the power and
+celebrity of "the Wolf" will this pride and this fear conspire to
+maintain among his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as well as
+among those over whom they dominate, the remembrance of the fact that
+their ancestor was "the Wolf". And if, as will occasionally happen, this
+dominant family becomes the root of a new tribe, the members of this
+tribe will become known to themselves and others as "the Wolves".
+
+We need not rest satisfied with the inference that this inheritance of
+nicknames _will_ take place. There is proof that it _does_ take place.
+As nicknaming after animals, plants, and other objects, still goes on
+among ourselves, so among ourselves does there go on the descent of
+nicknames. An instance has come under my own notice on an estate in the
+West Highlands, belonging to some friends with whom I frequently have
+the pleasure of spending a few weeks in the autumn. "Take a young
+Croshek," has more than once been the reply of my host to the inquiry,
+who should go with me, when I was setting out salmon-fishing. The elder
+Croshek I knew well; and supposed that this name, borne by him and by
+all belonging to him, was the family surname. Years passed before I
+learned that the real surname was Cameron; that the father was called
+Croshek, after the name of his cottage, to distinguish him from other
+Camerons employed about the premises; and that his children had come to
+be similarly distinguished. Though here, as very generally in Scotland,
+the nickname was derived from the place of residence, yet had it been
+derived from an animal, the process would have been the same:
+inheritance of it would have occurred just as naturally. Not even for
+this small link in the argument, however, need we depend on inference.
+There is fact to bear us out. Mr. Bates, in his _Naturalist on the River
+Amazons_ (2d ed., p. 376), describing three half-castes who accompanied
+him on a hunting trip, says--"Two of them were brothers, namely, João
+(John) and Zephyrino Jabutí: Jabutí, or tortoise, being a nickname which
+their father had earned for his slow gait, and which, as is usual in
+this country, had descended as the surname of the family." Let me add
+the statement made by Mr. Wallace respecting this same region, that "one
+of the tribes on the river Isánna is called 'Jurupari' (Devils). Another
+is called 'Ducks;' a third, 'Stars;' a fourth, 'Mandiocca.'" Putting
+these two statements together, can there be any doubt about the genesis
+of these tribal names? Let "the Tortoise" become sufficiently
+distinguished (not necessarily by superiority--great inferiority may
+occasionally suffice) and the tradition of descent from him, preserved
+by his descendants themselves if he was superior, and by their
+contemptuous neighbours if he was inferior, may become a tribal
+name.[30]
+
+"But this," it will be said, "does not amount to an explanation of
+animal-worship." True: a third factor remains to be specified. Given a
+belief in the still-existing other self of the deceased ancestor, who
+must be propitiated; given this survival of his metaphorical name among
+his grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc.; and the further requisite
+is that the distinction between metaphor and reality shall be forgotten.
+Let tradition fail to keep clearly in view the fact that the ancestor
+was a man called "the Wolf"--let him be habitually spoken of as "the
+Wolf", just as when alive; and the natural mistake of taking the name
+literally will bring with it, firstly, a belief in descent from an
+actual wolf, and, secondly, a treatment of the wolf in a manner likely
+to propitiate him--a manner appropriate to one who may be the other self
+of the dead ancestor, or one of the kindred, and therefore a friend.
+
+That a misunderstanding of this kind is likely to grow up, becomes
+obvious when we bear in mind the great indefiniteness of
+primitive language. As Prof. Max Müller says, respecting certain
+misinterpretations of an opposite kind: "These metaphors ... would
+become mere names handed down in the conversation of a family,
+understood perhaps by the grandfather, familiar to the father, but
+strange to the son, and misunderstood by the grandson." We have ample
+reason, then, for supposing such misinterpretations. Nay, we may go
+further. We are justified in saying that they are certain to occur. For
+undeveloped languages contain no words capable of indicating the
+distinction to be kept in view. In the tongues of existing inferior
+races, only concrete objects and acts are expressible. The Australians
+have a name for each kind of tree, but no name for tree irrespective of
+kind. And though some witnesses allege that their vocabulary is not
+absolutely destitute of generic names, its extreme poverty in such is
+unquestionable. Similarly with the Tasmanians. Dr. Milligan says they
+"had acquired very limited powers of abstraction or generalization. They
+possessed no words representing abstract ideas; for each variety of
+gum-tree and wattle-tree, etc., etc., they had a name, but they had no
+equivalent for the expression, 'a tree;' neither could they express
+abstract qualities, such as hard, soft, warm, cold, long, short, round,
+etc.; for 'hard,' they would say 'like a stone;' for 'tall,' they would
+say 'long legs,' etc.; and for 'round,' they said 'like a ball,' 'like
+the moon,' and so on, usually suiting the action to the word, and
+confirming, by some sign, the meaning to be understood."[31] Now, even
+making allowance for over-statement here (which seems needful, since the
+word "long," said to be inexpressible in the abstract, subsequently
+occurs as qualifying a concrete in the expression, "long legs"), it is
+manifest that so imperfect a language must fail to convey the idea of a
+name, as something separate from a thing; and that still less can it be
+capable of indicating the act of naming. Familiar use of such
+partially-abstract words as are applicable to all objects of a class, is
+needful before there can be reached the conception of a name--a word
+symbolizing the symbolic character of other words; and the conception of
+a name, with its answering abstract term, must be long current before
+the verb to name can arise. Hence, men with speech so rude, cannot
+transmit the tradition of an ancestor named "the Wolf", as distinguished
+from the actual wolf. The children and grandchildren who saw him will
+not be led into error; but in later generations, descent from "the Wolf"
+will inevitably come to mean descent from the animal known by that name.
+And the ideas and sentiments which, as above shown, naturally grow up
+round the belief that the dead parents and grandparents are still alive,
+and ready, if propitiated, to befriend their descendants, will be
+extended to the wolf species.
+
+Before passing to other developments of this general view, let me point
+out how not simply animal-worship is thus accounted for, but also the
+conception, so variously illustrated in ancient legends, that animals
+are capable of displaying human powers of speech and thought and action.
+Mythologies are full of stories of beasts and birds and fishes that have
+played intelligent parts in human affairs--creatures that have
+befriended particular persons by giving them information, by guiding
+them, by yielding them help; or else that have deceived them, verbally
+or otherwise. Evidently all these traditions, as well as those about
+abductions of women by animals and fostering of children by them, fall
+naturally into their places as results of the habitual misinterpretation
+I have described.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The probability of the hypothesis will appear still greater when we
+observe how readily it applies to the worship of other orders of
+objects. Belief in actual descent from an animal, strange as we may
+think it, is one by no means incongruous with the unanalyzed experiences
+of the savage; for there come under his notice many metamorphoses,
+vegetal and animal, which are apparently of like character. But how
+could he possibly arrive at so grotesque a conception as that the
+progenitor of his tribe was the sun, or the moon, or a particular star?
+No observation of surrounding phenomena affords the slightest suggestion
+of any such possibility. But by the inheritance of nicknames that are
+eventually mistaken for the names of the objects from which they were
+derived, the belief readily arises--is sure to arise. That the names of
+heavenly bodies will furnish metaphorical names to the uncivilized, is
+manifest. Do we not ourselves call a distinguished singer or actor a
+star? And have we not in poems numerous comparisons of men and women to
+the sun and moon; as in _Love's Labour's Lost_, where the princess is
+called "a gracious moon," and as in _Henry VII._, where we read--"Those
+suns of glory, those two lights of men?" Clearly, primitive peoples will
+be not unlikely thus to speak of the chief hero of a successful battle.
+When we remember how the arrival of a triumphant warrior must affect the
+feelings of his tribe, dissipating clouds of anxiety and brightening all
+faces with joy, we shall see that the comparison of him to the sun is
+quite natural; and in early speech this comparison can be made only by
+calling him the sun. As before, then, it will happen that, through a
+confounding of the metaphorical name with the actual name, his progeny,
+after a few generations, will be regarded by themselves and others as
+descendants of the sun. And, as a consequence, partly of actual
+inheritance of the ancestral character, and partly of maintenance of the
+traditions respecting the ancestor's achievements, it will also
+naturally happen that the solar race will be considered a superior race,
+as we find it habitually is.
+
+The origin of other totems, equally strange, if not even stranger, is
+similarly accounted for, though otherwise unaccountable. One of the
+New-Zealand chiefs claimed as his progenitor the neighbouring great
+mountain, Tongariro. This seemingly-whimsical belief becomes
+intelligible when we observe how easily it may have arisen from a
+nickname. Do we not ourselves sometimes speak figuratively of a tall,
+fat man as a mountain of flesh? And, among a people prone to speak in
+still more concrete terms, would it not happen that a chief, remarkable
+for his great bulk, would be nicknamed after the highest mountain within
+sight, because he towered above other men as this did above surrounding
+hills? Such an occurrence is not simply possible, but probable. And, if
+so, the confusion of metaphor with fact would originate this surprising
+genealogy. A notion perhaps yet more grotesque, thus receives a
+satisfactory interpretation. What could have put it into the imagination
+of any one that he was descended from the dawn? Given the extremest
+credulity, joined with the wildest fancy, it would still seem requisite
+that the ancestor should be conceived as an entity; and the dawn is
+entirely without that definiteness and comparative constancy which enter
+into the conception of an entity. But when we remember that "the Dawn"
+is a natural complimentary name for a beautiful girl opening into
+womanhood, the genesis of the idea becomes, on the above hypothesis,
+quite obvious.[32]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another indirect verification is that we thus get a clear conception of
+Fetichism in general. Under the fetichistic mode of thought, surrounding
+objects and agents are regarded as having powers more or less definitely
+personal in their natures; and the current interpretation is, that human
+intelligence, in its early stages, is obliged to conceive of their
+powers under this form. I have myself hitherto accepted this
+interpretation; though always with a sense of dissatisfaction. This
+dissatisfaction was, I think, well grounded. The theory is scarcely a
+theory properly so-called; but rather, a restatement in other words.
+Uncivilized men _do_ habitually form anthropomorphic conceptions of
+surrounding things; and this observed general fact is transformed into
+the theory that at first they _must_ so conceive them--a theory for
+which the psychological justification attempted, seems to me inadequate.
+From our present stand-point, it becomes manifest that Fetichism is not
+primary but secondary. What has been said above almost of itself shows
+this. Let us, however, follow out the steps of its genesis. Respecting
+the Tasmanians, Dr. Milligan says:--"The names of men and women were
+taken from natural objects and occurrences around, as, for instance, a
+kangaroo, a gum tree, snow, hail, thunder, the wind," flowers in
+blossom, etc. Surrounding objects, then, giving origin to names of
+persons, and being, in the way shown, eventually mistaken for the actual
+progenitors of those who descend from persons nicknamed after them, it
+results that these surrounding objects come to be regarded as in some
+manner possessed of personalities like the human. He whose family
+tradition is that his ancestor was "the Crab," will conceive the crab as
+having a disguised inner power like his own; an alleged descent from
+"the Palm-tree" will entail belief in some kind of consciousness
+dwelling in the palm-tree. Hence, in proportion as the animals, plants,
+and inanimate objects or agents that originate names of persons, become
+numerous (which they will do in proportion as a tribe becomes large and
+the number of persons to be distinguished from one another increases),
+multitudinous things around will acquire imaginary personalities. And so
+it will happen that, as Mr. McLennan says of the Feejeeans, "Vegetables
+and stones, nay, even tools and weapons, pots and canoes, have souls
+that are immortal, and that, like the souls of men, pass on at last to
+Mbulu, the abode of departed spirits." Setting out, then, with a belief
+in the still-living other self of the dead ancestor, the alleged general
+cause of misapprehension affords us an intelligible origin of the
+fetichistic conception; and we are enabled to see how it tends to become
+a general, if not a universal, conception.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Other apparently inexplicable phenomena are at the same time divested of
+their strangeness. I refer to the beliefs in, and worship of, compound
+monsters--impossible hybrid animals, and forms that are half human, half
+brutal. The theory of a primordial Fetichism, supposing it otherwise
+adequate, yields no feasible solutions of these. Grant the alleged
+original tendency to think of all natural agencies as in some way
+personal. Grant, too, that hence may arise a worship of animals, plants,
+and even inanimate bodies. Still the obvious implication is that the
+worship so derived will be limited to things that are, or have been,
+perceived. Why should this mode of thought lead the savage to imagine a
+combination of bird and mammal; and not only to imagine it, but to
+worship it as a god? If even we admit that some illusion may have
+suggested the belief in a creature half man, half fish, we cannot thus
+explain the prevalence among Eastern races of idols representing
+bird-headed men, and men having their legs replaced by the legs of a
+cock, and men with the heads of elephants.
+
+Carrying with us the inferences above drawn, however, it is a corollary
+that ideas and practices of these kinds will arise. When tradition
+preserves both lines of ancestry--when a chief, nicknamed "the Wolf",
+carries away from an adjacent tribe a wife who is remembered either
+under the animal name of her tribe, or as a woman; it will happen that
+if a son distinguishes himself, the remembrance of him among his
+descendants will be that he was born of a wolf and some other animal, or
+of a wolf and a woman. Misinterpretation, arising in the way described
+from defects of language, will entail belief in a creature uniting the
+attributes of the two; and if the tribe grows into a society,
+representations of such a creature will become objects of worship. One
+of the cases cited by Mr. McLennan may here be repeated in illustration.
+"The story of the origin of the Dikokamenni Kirgheez," they say, "from a
+red greyhound and a certain queen and her forty handmaidens, is of
+ancient date." Now, if "the red greyhound" was the nickname of a man
+extremely swift of foot (celebrated runners have been nicknamed
+"greyhound" among ourselves), a story of this kind would naturally
+arise; and if the metaphorical name was mistaken for the actual name,
+there might result, as the idol of the race, a compound form appropriate
+to the story. We need not be surprised, then, at finding among the
+Egyptians the goddess Pasht represented as a woman with a lion's head,
+and the god Har-hat as a man with the head of a hawk. The Babylonian
+gods--one having the form of a man with an eagle's tail, and another
+uniting a human bust to a fish's body--no longer appear such
+unaccountable conceptions. We get feasible explanations, too, of
+sculptures representing sphinxes, winged human-headed bulls, etc.; as
+well as of the stories about centaurs, satyrs, and the rest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ancient myths in general thus acquire meanings considerably different
+from those ascribed to them by comparative mythologists. Though these
+last may be in part correct, yet if the foregoing argument is valid,
+they can scarcely be correct in their main outlines. Indeed, if we read
+the facts the other way upward, regarding as secondary or additional,
+the elements that are said to be primary, while we regard as primary,
+certain elements which are considered as accretions of later times, we
+shall, I think, be nearer the truth.
+
+The current theory of the myth is that it has grown out of the habit of
+symbolizing natural agents and processes, in terms of human
+personalities and actions. Now, it may in the first place be remarked
+that, though symbolization of this kind is common among civilized races,
+it is not common among races that are the most uncivilized. By existing
+savages, surrounding objects, motions, and changes, are habitually used
+to convey ideas respecting human transactions. It needs but to read the
+speech of an Indian chief to see that just as primitive men name one
+another metaphorically after surrounding objects, so do they
+metaphorically describe one another's doings as though they were the
+doings of natural objects. But assuming a contrary habit of thought to
+be the dominant one, ancient myths are explained as results of the
+primitive tendency to symbolize inanimate things and their changes, by
+human beings and their doings.
+
+A kindred difficulty must be added. The change of verbal meaning from
+which the myth is said to arise, is a change opposite in kind to that
+which prevails in the earlier stages of linguistic development. It
+implies a derivation of the concrete from the abstract; whereas at first
+abstracts are derived only from concretes: the concrete of abstracts
+being a subsequent process. In the words of Prof. Max Müller, there are
+"dialects spoken at the present day which have no abstract nouns, and
+the more we go back in the history of languages, the smaller we find the
+number of these useful expressions" (_Chips_, vol. ii., p. 54); or, as
+he says more recently--"Ancient words and ancient thoughts, for both go
+together, have not yet arrived at that stage of abstraction in which,
+for instance, active powers, whether natural or supernatural, can be
+represented in any but a personal and more or less human form."
+(_Fraser's Magazine_, April, 1870.) Here the concrete is represented as
+original, and the abstract as derivative. Immediately afterward,
+however, Prof. Max Müller, having given as examples of abstract nouns,
+"day and night, spring and winter, dawn and twilight, storm and
+thunder," goes on to argue that, "as long as people thought in language,
+it was simply impossible to speak of morning or evening, of spring and
+winter, without giving to these conceptions something of an individual,
+active, sexual, and at last, personal character." (_Chips_, vol. ii., p.
+55.) Here the concrete is derived from the abstract--the personal
+conception is represented as coming _after_ the impersonal conception;
+and through such transformation of the impersonal into the personal,
+Prof. Max Müller considers ancient myths to have arisen. How are these
+propositions reconcilable? One of two things must be said:--If
+originally there were none of these abstract nouns, then the earliest
+statements respecting the daily course of Nature were made in concrete
+terms--the personal elements of the myth were the primitive elements,
+and the impersonal expressions which are their equivalents came later.
+If this is not admitted, then it must be held that, until after there
+arose these abstract nouns, there were no current statements at all
+respecting these most conspicuous objects and changes which the heavens
+and the earth present; and that the abstract nouns having been somehow
+formed, and rightly formed, and used without personal meanings,
+afterward became personalized--a process the reverse of that which
+characterizes early linguistic progress.
+
+No such contradictions occur if we interpret myths after the manner that
+has been indicated. Nay, besides escaping contradictions, we meet with
+unexpected solutions. The moment we try it, the key unlocks for us with
+ease what seems a quite inexplicable fact, which the current hypothesis
+takes as one of its postulates. Speaking of such words as sky and earth,
+dew and rain, rivers and mountains, as well as of the abstract nouns
+above named, Prof. Max Müller says--"Now in ancient languages every one
+of these words had necessarily a termination expressive of gender, and
+this naturally produced in the mind the corresponding idea of sex, so
+that these names received not only an individual, but a sexual
+character. There was no substantive which was not either masculine or
+feminine; neuters being of later growth, and distinguishable chiefly in
+the nominative." (_Chips_, vol. ii., p. 55.) And this alleged necessity
+for a masculine or feminine implication is assigned as a part of the
+reason why these abstract nouns and collective nouns became
+personalized. But should not a true theory of these first steps in the
+evolution of thought and language show us how it happened that men
+acquired the seemingly-strange habit of so framing their words for sky,
+earth, dew, rain, etc., as to make them indicative of sex? Or, at any
+rate, must it not be admitted that an interpretation which, instead of
+assuming this habit to be "necessary," shows us how it results, thereby
+acquires an additional claim to acceptance? The interpretation I have
+indicated does this. If men and women are habitually nicknamed, and if
+defects of language lead their descendants to regard themselves as
+descendants of the things from which the names were taken, then
+masculine or feminine genders will be ascribed to these things according
+as the ancestors named after them were men or women. If a beautiful
+maiden known metaphorically as "the Dawn," afterwards becomes the
+mother of some distinguished chief called "the North Wind," it will
+result that when, in course of time, the two have been mistaken for the
+actual dawn and the actual north wind, these will, by implication, be
+respectively considered as male and female.
+
+Looking, now, at the ancient myths in general, their seemingly most
+inexplicable trait is the habitual combination of alleged human ancestry
+and adventures, with the possession of personalities otherwise figuring
+in the heavens and on the earth, with totally non-human attributes. This
+enormous incongruity, not the exception but the rule, the current theory
+fails to explain. Suppose it to be granted that the great terrestrial
+and celestial objects and agents naturally become personalized; it does
+not follow that each of them shall have a specific human biography. To
+say of some star that he was the son of this king or that hero, was born
+in a particular place, and when grown up carried off the wife of a
+neighbouring chief, is a gratuitous multiplication of incongruities
+already sufficiently great; and is not accounted for by the alleged
+necessary personalization of abstract and collective nouns. As looked at
+from our present stand-point, however, such traditions become quite
+natural--nay, it is clear that they will necessarily arise. When a
+nickname has become a tribal name, it thereby ceases to be individually
+distinctive; and, as already said, the process of nicknaming inevitably
+continues. It commences afresh with each child; and the nickname of each
+child is both an individual name and a potential tribal name, which may
+become an actual tribal name if the individual is sufficiently
+celebrated. Usually, then, there is a double set of distinctions; under
+one of which the individual is known by his ancestral name, and under
+the other of which he is known by a name suggestive of something
+peculiar to himself: just as we have seen happens among the Scotch
+clans. Consider, now, what will result when language has reached a
+stage of development such that it can convey the notion of naming, and
+is able, therefore, to preserve traditions of human ancestry. It will
+result that the individual will be known both as the son of such and
+such a man by a mother whose name was so and so, and also as "the Crab",
+or "the Bear", or "the Whirlwind"--supposing one of these to be his
+nickname. Such joint use of nicknames and proper names occurs in every
+school. Now, clearly, in advancing from the early state in which
+ancestors become identified with the objects they are nicknamed after,
+to the state in which there are proper names that have lost their
+metaphorical meanings, there must be passed through a state in which
+proper names, partially settled only, may or may not be preserved, and
+in which the new nicknames are still liable to be mistaken for actual
+names. Under such conditions there will arise (especially in the case of
+a distinguished man) this seemingly-impossible combination of human
+parentage with the possession of the non-human, or superhuman,
+attributes of the thing which gave the nickname. Another anomaly
+simultaneously disappears. The warrior may have, and often will have, a
+variety of complimentary nicknames--"the powerful one," "the destroyer,"
+etc. Supposing his leading nickname has been "the Sun"; then when he
+comes to be identified by tradition with the sun, it will happen that
+the sun will acquire his alternative descriptive titles--the swift one,
+the lion, the wolf--titles not obviously appropriate to the sun, but
+quite appropriate to the warrior. Then there comes, too, an explanation
+of the remaining trait of such myths. When this identification of
+conspicuous persons, male and female, with conspicuous natural agents,
+has become settled, there will in due course arise interpretations of
+the actions of these agents in anthropomorphic terms. Suppose, for
+instance, that Endymion and Selene, metaphorically named, the one after
+the setting sun, the other after the moon, have had their human
+individualities merged in those of the sun and moon, through
+misinterpretation of metaphors; what will happen? The legend of their
+loves having to be reconciled with their celestial appearances and
+motions, these will be spoken of as results of feeling and will; so that
+when the sun is going down in the west, while the moon in mid-heaven is
+following him, the fact will be expressed by saying: "Selene loves and
+watches Endymion." Thus we obtain a consistent explanation of the myth
+without distorting it; and without assuming that it contains gratuitous
+fictions. We are enabled to accept the biographical part of it, if not
+as literal fact, still as having had fact for its root. We are helped to
+see how, by an inevitable misinterpretation, there grew out of a more or
+less true tradition, this strange identification of its personages, with
+objects and powers totally non-human in their aspects. And then we are
+shown how, from the attempt to reconcile in thought these contradictory
+elements of the myth, there arose the habit of ascribing the actions of
+these non-human things to human motives.
+
+One further verification may be drawn from facts which are obstacles to
+the converse hypothesis. These objects and powers, celestial and
+terrestrial, which force themselves most on men's attention, have some
+of them several proper names, identified with those of different
+individuals, born at different places, and having different sets of
+adventures. Thus we have the sun variously known as Apollo, Endymion,
+Helios, Tithonos, etc.--personages having irreconcilable genealogies.
+Such anomalies Prof. Max Müller apparently ascribes to the
+untrustworthiness of traditions, which are "careless about
+contradictions, or ready to solve them sometimes by the most atrocious
+expedients." (_Chips_, vol. ii., p. 84.) But if the evolution of the
+myth has been that above indicated, there exists no anomalies to be got
+rid of: these diverse genealogies become parts of the evidence. For we
+have abundant proof that the same objects furnish metaphorical names of
+men in different tribes. There are Duck tribes in Australia, in South
+America, in North America. The eagle is still a totem among the North
+Americans, as Mr. McLennan shows reason to conclude that it was among
+the Egyptians, among the Jews, and among the Romans. Obviously, for
+reasons already assigned, it naturally happened in the early stages of
+the ancient races, that complimentary comparisons of their heroes to the
+Sun were frequently made. What resulted? The Sun having furnished names
+for sundry chiefs and early founders of tribes, and local traditions
+having severally identified them with the Sun, these tribes, when they
+grew, spread, conquered, or came otherwise into partial union,
+originated a combined mythology, which necessarily contained conflicting
+stories about the Sun-god, as about its other leading personages. If the
+North-American tribes, among several of which there are traditions of a
+Sun-god, had developed a combined civilization, there would similarly
+have arisen among them a mythology which ascribed to the Sun several
+different proper names and genealogies.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let me briefly set down the leading characters of this hypothesis which
+give it probability.
+
+True interpretations of all the natural processes, organic and
+inorganic, that have gone on in past times, habitually trace them to
+causes still in action. It is thus in Geology; it is thus in Biology; it
+is thus in Philology. Here we find this characteristic repeated.
+Nicknaming, the inheritance of nicknames, and to some extent, the
+misinterpretation of nicknames, go on among us still; and were surnames
+absent, language imperfect, and knowledge as rudimentary as of old, it
+is tolerably manifest that results would arise like those we have
+contemplated.
+
+A further characteristic of a true cause is that it accounts not only
+for the particular group of phenomena to be interpreted, but also for
+other groups. The cause here alleged does this. It equally well explains
+the worship of animals, of plants, of mountains, of winds, of celestial
+bodies, and even of appearances too vague to be considered entities. It
+gives us an intelligible genesis of fetichistic conceptions in general.
+It furnishes us with a reason for the practice, otherwise so
+unaccountable, of moulding the words applied to inanimate objects in
+such ways as to imply masculine and feminine genders. It shows us how
+there naturally arose the worship of compound animals, and of monsters
+half man, half brute. And it shows us why the worship of purely
+anthropomorphic deities came later, when language had so far developed
+that it could preserve in tradition the distinction between proper names
+and nicknames.
+
+A further verification of this view is, that it conforms to the general
+law of evolution: showing us how, out of one simple, vague, aboriginal
+form of belief, there have arisen, by continuous differentiations, the
+many heterogeneous forms of belief which have existed and do exist. The
+desire to propitiate the other self of the dead ancestor, displayed
+among savage tribes, dominantly manifested by the early historic races,
+by the Peruvians and Mexicans, by the Chinese at the present time, and
+to a considerable degree by ourselves (for what else is the wish to do
+that which a lately-deceased parent was known to have desired?) has been
+the universal first form of religious belief; and from it have grown up
+the many divergent beliefs which have been referred to.
+
+Let me add, as a further reason for adopting this view, that it
+immensely diminishes the apparently-great contrast between early modes
+of thought and our own mode of thought. Doubtless the aboriginal man
+differs considerably from us, both in intellect and feeling. But such an
+interpretation of the facts as helps us to bridge over the gap, derives
+additional likelihood from doing this. The hypothesis I have sketched
+out enables us to see that primitive ideas are not so gratuitously
+absurd as we suppose, and also enables us to rehabilitate the ancient
+myth with far less distortion than at first sight appears possible.
+
+These views I hope to develop in the first part of _The Principles of
+Sociology_. The large mass of evidence which I shall be able to give in
+support of the hypothesis, joined with the solutions it will be shown to
+yield of many minor problems which I have passed over, will, I think,
+then give to it a still greater probability than it seems now to have.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 29: A critical reader may raise an objection. If
+animal-worship is to be rationally interpreted, how can the
+interpretation set out by assuming a belief in the spirits of dead
+ancestors--a belief which just as much requires explanation? Doubtless
+there is here a wide gap in the argument. I hope eventually to fill it
+up. Here, out of many experiences which conspire to generate this
+belief, I can but briefly indicate the leading ones: 1. It is not
+impossible that his shadow, following him everywhere, and moving as he
+moves, may have some small share in giving to the savage a vague idea of
+his duality. It needs but to watch a child's interest in the movements
+of its shadow, and to remember that at first a shadow cannot be
+interpreted as a negation of light, but is looked upon as an entity, to
+perceive that the savage may very possibly consider it as a specific
+something which forms part of him. 2. A much more decided suggestion of
+the same kind is likely to result from the reflection of his face and
+figure in water: imitating him as it does in his form, colours, motions,
+grimaces. When we remember that not unfrequently a savage objects to
+have his portrait taken, because he thinks whoever carries away a
+representation of him carries away some part of his being, we see how
+probable it is that he thinks his double in the water is a reality in
+some way belonging to him. 3. Echoes must greatly tend to confirm the
+idea of duality otherwise arrived at. Incapable as he is of
+understanding their natural origin, the primitive man necessarily
+ascribes them to living beings--beings who mock him and elude his
+search. 4. The suggestions resulting from these and other physical
+phenomena are, however, secondary in importance. The root of this belief
+in another self lies in the experience of dreams. The distinction so
+easily made by us between our life in dreams and our real life, is one
+which the savage recognizes in but a vague way; and he cannot express
+even that distinction which he perceives. When he awakes, and to those
+who have seen him lying quietly asleep, describes where he has been, and
+what he has done, his rude language fails to state the difference
+between seeing and dreaming that he saw, doing and dreaming that he did.
+From this inadequacy of his language it not only results that he cannot
+truly represent this difference to others, but also that he cannot truly
+represent it to himself. Hence, in the absence of an alternative
+interpretation, his belief, and that of those to whom he tells his
+adventures, is that his other self has been away, and came back when he
+awoke. And this belief, which we find among various existing savage
+tribes, we equally find in the traditions of the early civilized races.
+5. The conception of another self capable of going away and returning,
+receives what to the savage must seem conclusive verifications from the
+abnormal suspensions of consciousness, and derangements of
+consciousness, that occasionally occur in members of his tribe. One who
+has fainted, and cannot be immediately brought back to himself (note the
+significance of our own phrases "returning to himself," etc.) as a
+sleeper can, shows him a state in which the other self has been away for
+a time beyond recall. Still more is this prolonged absence of the other
+self shown him in cases of apoplexy, catalepsy, and other forms of
+suspended animation. Here for hours the other self persists in remaining
+away, and on returning refuses to say where he has been. Further
+verification is afforded by every epileptic subject, into whose body,
+during the absence of the other self, some enemy has entered; for how
+else does it happen that the other self, on returning, denies all
+knowledge of what his body has been doing? And this supposition that the
+body has been "possessed" by some other being, is confirmed by the
+phenomena of somnambulism and insanity. 6. What, then, is the
+interpretation inevitably put upon death? The other self has habitually
+returned after sleep, which simulates death. It has returned, too, after
+fainting, which simulates death much more. It has even returned after
+the rigid state of catalepsy, which simulates death very greatly. Will
+it not return also after this still more prolonged quiescence and
+rigidity? Clearly it is quite possible--quite probable even. The dead
+man's other self is gone away for a long time, but it still exists
+somewhere, far or near, and may at any moment come back to do all he
+said he would do. Hence the various burial-rites--the placing of weapons
+and valuables along with the body, the daily bringing of food to it,
+etc. I hope hereafter to show that, with such knowledge of the facts as
+he has, this interpretation is the most reasonable the savage can arrive
+at. Let me here, however, by way of showing how clearly the facts bear
+out this view, give one illustration out of many. "The ceremonies with
+which they [the Veddahs] invoke them [the shades of the dead] are few as
+they are simple. The most common is the following. An arrow is fixed
+upright in the ground, and the Veddah dances slowly round it, chanting
+this invocation, which is almost musical in its rhythm:"
+
+     "Mâ miya, mâ miy, mâ deyâ,
+     Topang koyihetti mittigan yandâh?"
+
+   "My departed one, my departed one, my God!
+   Where art thou wandering?"
+
+"This invocation appears to be used on all occasions when the
+intervention of the guardian spirits is required, in sickness,
+preparatory to hunting, etc. Sometimes, in the latter case, a portion of
+the flesh of the game is promised as a votive offering, in the event of
+the chase being successful; and they believe that the spirits will
+appear to them in dreams and tell them where to hunt. Sometimes they
+cook food and place it in the dry bed of a river, or some other secluded
+spot, and then call on their deceased ancestors by name. 'Come and
+partake of this! Give us maintenance as you did when living! Come,
+wheresoever you may be; on a tree, on a rock, in the forest, come!' And
+they dance round the food, half chanting, half shouting, the
+invocation."--Bailey, in _Transactions of the Ethnological Society_,
+London, N. S., ii., p. 301-2.]
+
+[Footnote 30: Since the foregoing pages were written, my attention has
+been drawn by Sir John Lubbock to a passage in the appendix to the
+second edition of _Prehistoric Times_, in which he has indicated this
+derivation of tribal names. He says: "In endeavouring to account for the
+worship of animals, we must remember that names are very frequently
+taken from them. The children and followers of a man called the Bear or
+the Lion would make that a tribal name. Hence the animal itself would be
+first respected, at last worshipped." Of the genesis of this worship,
+however, Sir John Lubbock does not give any specific explanation.
+Apparently he inclines to the belief, tacitly adopted also by Mr.
+McLennan, that animal-worship is derived from an original Fetichism, of
+which it is a more developed form. As will shortly be seen, I take a
+different view of its origin.]
+
+[Footnote 31: _Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania_, iii., p.
+280-81.]
+
+[Footnote 32: I have since found, however, that the name Dawn, which
+occurs in various places, seems more frequently a birth-name, given
+because the birth took place at dawn.]
+
+
+
+
+MORALS AND MORAL SENTIMENTS.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Fortnightly Review _for April,_ 1871.]
+
+
+If a writer who discusses unsettled questions takes up every gauntlet
+thrown down to him, polemical writing will absorb much of his energy.
+Having a power of work which unfortunately does not suffice for
+executing with anything like due rapidity the task I have undertaken, I
+have made it a policy to avoid controversy as much as possible, even at
+the cost of being seriously misunderstood. Hence it resulted that when
+in _Macmillan's Magazine_, for July, 1869, Mr. Richard Hutton published,
+under the title "A Questionable Parentage for Morals," a criticism on a
+doctrine of mine, I decided to let his misrepresentations pass unnoticed
+until, in the course of my work, I arrived at the stage where, by a full
+exposition of this doctrine, they would be set aside. It did not occur
+to me that, in the meantime, these erroneous statements, accepted as
+true statements, would be repeated by other writers, and my views
+commented upon as untenable. This, however, has happened. In more
+periodicals than one, I have seen it asserted that Mr. Hutton has
+effectually disposed of my hypothesis. Supposing that this hypothesis
+has been rightly expressed by Mr. Hutton, Sir John Lubbock, in his
+_Origin of Civilisation_, &c., has been led to express a partial
+dissent; which I think he would not have expressed had my own
+exposition been before him. Mr. Mivart, too, in his recent _Genesis of
+Species_, has been similarly betrayed into misapprehensions. And now Sir
+Alexander Grant, following the same lead, has conveyed to the readers of
+the _Fortnightly Review_ another of these conceptions, which is but very
+partially true. Thus I find myself compelled to say as much as will
+serve to prevent further spread of the mischief.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If a general doctrine concerning a highly-involved class of phenomena
+could be adequately presented in a single paragraph of a letter, the
+writing of books would be superfluous. In the brief exposition of
+certain ethical doctrines held by me, which is given in Professor Bain's
+_Mental and Moral Science_, it is stated that they are--
+
+     "as yet, nowhere fully expressed. They form part of the more
+     general doctrine of Evolution which he is engaged in working out;
+     and they are at present to be gathered only from scattered
+     passages. It is true that, in his first work, _Social Statics_, he
+     presented what he then regarded as a tolerably complete view of one
+     division of Morals. But without abandoning this view, he now
+     regards it as inadequate--more especially in respect of its basis."
+
+Mr. Hutton, however, taking the bare enunciation of one part of this
+basis, deals with it critically; and, in the absence of any exposition
+by me, sets forth what he supposes to be my grounds for it, and proceeds
+to show that they are unsatisfactory.
+
+If, in his anxiety to suppress what he doubtless regards as a pernicious
+doctrine, Mr. Hutton could not wait until I had explained myself, it
+might have been expected that he would use whatever information was to
+be had concerning it. So far from seeking out such information, however,
+he has, in a way for which I cannot account, ignored the information
+immediately before him.
+
+The title which Mr. Hutton has chosen for his criticism is, "A
+Questionable Parentage for Morals." Now he has ample means of knowing
+that I allege a primary basis of Morals, quite independent of that
+which he describes and rejects. I do not refer merely to the fact that
+having, when he reviewed _Social Statics_,[33] expressed his very
+decided dissent from this primary basis, he must have been aware that I
+alleged it; for he may say that in the many years which have since
+elapsed he had forgotten all about it. But I refer to the distinct
+enunciation of this primary basis in that letter to Mr. Mill from which
+he quotes. In a preceding paragraph of the letter, I have explained
+that, while I accept utilitarianism in the abstract, I do not accept
+that current utilitarianism which recognizes for the guidance of conduct
+nothing beyond empirical generalizations; and I have contended that--
+
+     "Morality, properly so-called--the science of right conduct--has
+     for its object to determine _how_ and _why_ certain modes of
+     conduct are detrimental, and certain other modes beneficial. These
+     good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary
+     consequences of the constitution of things; and I conceive it to be
+     the business of Moral Science to deduce, from the laws of life and
+     the conditions of existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend
+     to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having
+     done this, its deductions are to be recognised as laws of conduct;
+     and are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of
+     happiness or misery."
+
+Nor is this the only enunciation of what I conceive to be the primary
+basis of morals, contained in this same letter. A subsequent paragraph
+separated by four lines only from that which Mr. Hutton extracts,
+commences thus:--
+
+    "Progressing civilization, which is of necessity a succession of
+    compromises between old and new, requires a perpetual re-adjustment
+    of the compromise between the ideal and the practicable in social
+    arrangements: to which end, both elements of the compromise must be
+    kept in view. If it is true that pure rectitude prescribes a system
+    of things far too good for men as they are, it is not less true that
+    mere expediency does not of itself tend to establish a system of
+    things any better than that which exists. While absolute morality
+    owes to expediency the checks which prevent it from rushing into
+    Utopian absurdities, expediency is indebted to absolute morality for
+    all stimulus to improvement. Granted that we are chiefly interested
+    in ascertaining what is _relatively right_, it still follows that we
+     must first consider what is _absolutely right_; since the one
+    conception presupposes the other."
+
+I do not see how there could well be a more emphatic assertion that
+there exists a primary basis of morals independent of, and in a sense
+antecedent to, that which is furnished by experiences of utility; and
+consequently, independent of, and, in a sense antecedent to, those moral
+sentiments which I conceive to be generated by such experiences. Yet no
+one could gather from Mr. Hutton's article that I assert this; or would
+even find reasons for a faint suspicion that I do so. From the reference
+made to my further views, he would infer my acceptance of that empirical
+utilitarianism which I have expressly repudiated. And the title which
+Mr. Hutton gives to his paper clearly asserts, by implication, that I
+recognize no "parentage for morals" beyond that of the accumulation and
+organization of the effects of experience. I cannot believe that Mr.
+Hutton intended to convey this erroneous impression. He was, I suppose,
+too much absorbed in contemplating the proposition he combats to
+observe, or, at least, to attach any weight to, the propositions which
+accompany it. But I am sorry he did not perceive the mischief he was
+likely to do me by spreading this one-sided statement.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I pass now to the particular question at issue--not the "parentage for
+morals," but the parentage of moral sentiments. In describing my view on
+this more special doctrine, Mr. Hutton has similarly, I regret to say,
+neglected the data which would have helped him to draw an approximately
+true outline of it. It cannot well be that the existence of such data
+was unknown to him. They are contained in the _Principles of
+Psychology_; and Mr. Hutton reviewed that work when it was first
+published.[34] In a chapter on the Feelings, which occurs near the end
+of it, there is sketched out a process of evolution by no means like
+that which Mr. Hutton indicates; and had he turned to that chapter he
+would have seen that his description of the genesis of moral sentiments
+out of organized experiences is not such a one as I should have given.
+Let me quote a passage from that chapter.
+
+     "Not only are those emotions which form the immediate stimuli to
+     actions, thus explicable; but the like explanation applies to the
+     emotions that leave the subject of them comparatively passive: as,
+     for instance, the emotion produced by beautiful scenery. The
+     gradually increasing complexity in the groups of sensations and
+     ideas co-ordinated, ends in the co-ordination of those vast
+     aggregations of them which a grand landscape excites and suggests.
+     The infant taken into the midst of mountains, is totally unaffected
+     by them; but is delighted with the small group of attributes and
+     relations presented in a toy. The child can appreciate, and be
+     pleased with, the more complicated relations of household objects
+     and localities, the garden, the field, and the street. But it is
+     only in youth and mature age, when individual things and small
+     assemblages of them have become familiar and automatically
+     cognizable, that those immense assemblages which landscapes present
+     can be adequately grasped, and the highly aggregated states of
+     consciousness produced by them, experienced. Then, however, the
+     various minor groups of states that have been in earlier days
+     severally produced by trees, by fields, by streams, by cascades, by
+     rocks, by precipices, by mountains, by clouds, are aroused
+     together. Along with the sensations immediately received, there are
+     partially excited the myriads of sensations that have been in times
+     past received from objects such as those presented; further, there
+     are partially excited the various incidental feelings that were
+     experienced on all these countless past occasions; and there are
+     probably also excited certain deeper, but now vague combinations of
+     states, that were organized in the race during barbarous times,
+     when its pleasurable activities were chiefly among the woods and
+     waters. And out of all these excitations, some of them actual but
+     most of them nascent, is composed the emotion which a fine
+     landscape produces in us."
+
+It is, I think, amply manifest that the processes here indicated are not
+to be taken as intellectual processes--not as processes in which
+recognized relations between pleasures and their antecedents, or
+intelligent adaptations of means to ends, form the dominant elements.
+The state of mind produced by an aggregate of picturesque objects is not
+one resolvable into propositions. The sentiment does not contain within
+itself any consciousness of causes and consequences of happiness. The
+vague recollections of other beautiful scenes and other delightful days
+which it dimly rouses, are not aroused because of any rational
+co-ordinations of ideas that have been formed in bygone years. Mr.
+Hutton, however, assumes that in speaking of the genesis of moral
+feelings as due to inherited experiences of the pleasures and pains
+caused by certain modes of conduct, I am speaking of reasoned-out
+experiences--experiences consciously accumulated and generalized. He
+overlooks the fact that the genesis of emotions is distinguished from
+the genesis of ideas in this; that whereas the ideas are composed of
+elements that are simple, definitely related, and (in the case of
+general ideas) constantly related, emotions are composed of enormously
+complex aggregates of elements that are never twice alike, and which
+stand in relations that are never twice alike. The difference in the
+resulting modes of consciousness is this:--In the genesis of an idea the
+successive experiences, be they of sounds, colours, touches, tastes, or
+be they of the special objects which combine many of these into groups,
+have so much in common that each, when it occurs, can be definitely
+thought of as like those which preceded it. But in the genesis of an
+emotion the successive experiences so far differ that each of them, when
+it occurs, suggests past experiences which are not specifically similar,
+but have only a general similarity; and, at the same time, it suggests
+benefits or evils in past experience which likewise are various in their
+special natures, though they have a certain community in general nature.
+Hence it results that the consciousness aroused is a multitudinous,
+confused consciousness, in which, along with a certain kind of
+combination among the impressions received from without, there is a
+vague cloud of ideal combinations akin to them, and a vague mass of
+ideal feelings of pleasure or pain which were associated with these. We
+have abundant proof that feelings grow up without reference to
+recognized causes and consequences, and without the possessor of them
+being able to say why they have grown up; though analysis,
+nevertheless, shows that they have been formed out of connected
+experiences. The familiar fact that a kind of jam which was, during
+childhood, repeatedly taken after medicine, may become, by simple
+association of sensations, so nauseous that it cannot be tolerated in
+after-life, illustrates clearly the way in which repugnances may be
+established by habitual association of feelings, without any belief in
+causal connexion; or rather, in spite of the knowledge that there is no
+causal connexion. Similarly with pleasurable emotions. The cawing of
+rooks is not in itself an agreeable sound: musically considered, it is
+very much the contrary. Yet the cawing of rooks usually produces in
+people feelings of a grateful kind--feelings which most of them suppose
+to result from the quality of the sound itself. Only the few who are
+given to self-analysis are aware that the cawing of rooks is agreeable
+to them because it has been connected with countless of their greatest
+gratifications--with the gathering of wild flowers in childhood; with
+Saturday-afternoon excursions in school-boy days; with midsummer
+holidays in the country, when books were thrown aside and lessons were
+replaced by games and adventures in the fields; with fresh, sunny
+mornings in after-years, when a walking excursion was an immense relief
+from toil. As it is, this sound, though not causally related to all
+these multitudinous and varied past delights, but only often associated
+with them, can no more be heard without rousing a dim consciousness of
+these delights, than the voice of an old friend unexpectedly coming into
+the house can be heard without suddenly raising a wave of that feeling
+that has resulted from the pleasures of past companionship. If we are to
+understand the genesis of emotions, either in the individual or in the
+race, we must take account of this all-important process. Mr. Hutton,
+however, apparently overlooking it, and not having reminded himself, by
+referring to the _Principles of Psychology_, that I insist upon it,
+represents my hypothesis to be that a certain sentiment results from the
+consolidation of intellectual conclusions! He speaks of me as believing
+that "what seems to us now the 'necessary' intuitions and _a priori_
+assumptions of human nature, are likely to prove, when scientifically
+analysed, nothing but a similar conglomeration of our ancestors' _best
+observations and most useful empirical rules_." He supposes me to think
+that men having, in past times, come to _see_ that truthfulness was
+useful, "the habit of approving truth-speaking and fidelity to
+engagements, which was first based on this ground of utility, became so
+rooted, that the utilitarian ground of it was forgotten, and _we_ find
+ourselves springing to the belief in truth-speaking and fidelity to
+engagements from an inherited tendency." Similarly throughout, Mr.
+Hutton has so used the word "utility," and so interpreted it on my
+behalf, as to make me appear to mean that moral sentiment is formed out
+of _conscious generalizations_ respecting what is beneficial and what
+detrimental. Were such my hypothesis, his criticisms would be very much
+to the point; but as such is not my hypothesis, they fall to the ground.
+The experiences of utility I refer to are those which become registered,
+not as distinctly recognized connexions between certain kinds of acts
+and certain kinds of remote results, but those which become registered
+in the shape of associations between groups of feelings that have often
+recurred together, though the relation between them has not been
+consciously generalized--associations the origin of which may be as
+little perceived as is the origin of the pleasure given by the sounds of
+a rookery; but which, nevertheless, have arisen in the course of daily
+converse with things, and serve as incentives or deterrents.
+
+In the paragraph which Mr. Hutton has extracted from my letter to Mr.
+Mill, I have indicated an analogy between those effects of emotional
+experiences out of which I believe moral sentiments have been developed,
+and those effects of intellectual experiences out of which I believe
+space-intuitions have been developed. Rightly considering that the first
+of these hypotheses cannot stand if the last is disproved, Mr. Hutton
+has directed part of his attack against this last. But would it not have
+been well if he had referred to the _Principles of Psychology_, where
+this last hypothesis is set forth at length, before criticising it?
+Would it not have been well to give an abstract of my own description of
+the process, instead of substituting what he _supposes_ my description
+must be? Any one who turns to the _Principles of Psychology_ (first
+edition, pp. 218-245), and reads the two chapters, "The Perception of
+Body as presenting Statical Attributes", and "The Perception of Space",
+will find that Mr. Hutton's account of my view on this matter has given
+him no notion of the view as it is expressed by me; and will, perhaps,
+be less inclined to smile than he was when he read Mr. Hutton's account.
+I cannot here do more than thus imply the invalidity of such part of Mr.
+Hutton's argument as proceeds upon this incorrect representation. The
+pages which would be required for properly explaining the doctrine that
+space-intuitions result from organized experiences may be better used
+for explaining this analogous doctrine at present before us. This I will
+now endeavour to do; not indirectly by correcting misapprehensions, but
+directly by an exposition which shall be as brief as the extremely
+involved nature of the process allows.
+
+An infant in arms, when old enough to gaze at objects around with some
+vague recognition, smiles in response to the laughing face and soft
+caressing voice of its mother. Let there come some one who, with an
+angry face, speaks to it in loud, harsh tones. The smile disappears, the
+features contract into an expression of pain, and, beginning to cry, it
+turns away its head, and makes such movements of escape as are possible.
+What is the meaning of these facts? Why does not the frown make it
+smile, and the mother's laugh make it weep? There is but one answer.
+Already in its developing brain there is coming into play the structure
+through which one cluster of visual and auditory impressions excites
+pleasurable feelings, and the structure through which another cluster of
+visual and auditory impressions excites painful feelings. The infant
+knows no more about the relation existing between a ferocious expression
+of face, and the evils which may follow perception of it, than the young
+bird just out of its nest knows of the possible pain and death which may
+be inflicted by a man coming towards it; and as certainly in the one
+case as in the other, the alarm felt is due to a partially-established
+nervous structure. Why does this partially-established nervous structure
+betray its presence thus early in the human being? Simply because, in
+the past experiences of the human race, smiles and gentle tones in those
+around have been the habitual accompaniments of pleasurable feelings;
+while pains of many kinds, immediate and more or less remote, have been
+continually associated with the impressions received from knit brows,
+and set teeth, and grating voice. Much deeper down than the history of
+the human race must we go to find the beginnings of these connexions.
+The appearances and sounds which excite in the infant a vague dread,
+indicate danger; and do so because they are the physiological
+accompaniments of destructive action--some of them common to man and
+inferior mammals, and consequently understood by inferior mammals, as
+every puppy shows us. What we call the natural language of anger, is due
+to a partial contraction of those muscles which actual combat would call
+into play; and all marks of irritation, down to that passing shade over
+the brow which accompanies slight annoyance, are incipient stages of
+these same contractions. Conversely with the natural language of
+pleasure, and of that state of mind which we call amicable feeling:
+this, too, has a physiological interpretation.[35]
+
+Let us pass now from the infant in arms to the children in the nursery.
+What have the experiences of each been doing in aid of the emotional
+development we are considering? While its limbs have been growing more
+agile by exercise, its manipulative skill increasing by practice, its
+perceptions of objects growing by use quicker, more accurate, more
+comprehensive; the associations between these two sets of impressions
+received from those around, and the pleasures and pains received along
+with them, or after them, have been by frequent repetition made
+stronger, and their adjustments better. The dim sense of pain and the
+vague glow of delight which the infant felt, have, in the urchin,
+severally taken shapes that are more definite. The angry voice of a
+nursemaid no longer arouses only a formless feeling of dread, but also a
+specific idea of the slap that may follow. The frown on the face of a
+bigger brother, along with the primitive, indefinable sense of ill,
+brings the ideas of ills that are definable as kicks, and cuffs, and
+pullings of hair, and losses of toys. The faces of parents, looking now
+sunny, now gloomy, have grown to be respectively associated with
+multitudinous forms of gratification and multitudinous forms of
+discomfort or privation. Hence these appearances and sounds, which imply
+amity or enmity in those around, become symbolic of happiness and
+misery; so that eventually, perception of the one set or the other can
+scarcely occur without raising a wave of pleasurable feeling or of
+painful feeling. The body of this wave is still substantially of the
+same nature as it was at first; for though in each of these
+multitudinous experiences a special set of facial and vocal signs has
+been connected with a special set of pleasures or pains; yet since these
+pleasures or pains have been immensely varied in their kinds and
+combinations, and since the signs that preceded them were in no two
+cases quite alike, it results that even to the end the consciousness
+produced remains as vague as it is voluminous. The thousands of
+partially-aroused ideas resulting from past experiences are massed
+together and superposed, so as to form an aggregate in which nothing is
+distinct, but which has the character of being pleasurable or painful
+according to the nature of its original components: the chief difference
+between this developed feeling and the feeling aroused in the infant
+being, that on bright or dark background forming the body of it, may now
+be sketched out in thought the particular pleasures or pains which the
+particular circumstances suggest as likely.
+
+What must be the working of this process under the conditions of
+aboriginal life? The emotions given to the young savage by the natural
+language of love and hate in the members of his tribe, gain first a
+partial definiteness in respect to his intercourse with his family and
+playmates; and he learns by experience the utility, in so far as his own
+ends are concerned, of avoiding courses which call from others
+manifestations of anger, and taking courses which call from them
+manifestations of pleasure. Not that he consciously generalizes. He does
+not at that age, probably not at any age, formulate his experiences in
+the general principle that it is well for him to do things which bring
+smiles, and to avoid doing things which bring frowns. What happens is
+that having, in the way shown, inherited this connexion between the
+perception of anger in others and the feeling of dread, and having
+discovered that certain acts of his bring on this anger, he cannot
+subsequently think of committing one of these acts without thinking of
+the resulting anger, and feeling more or less of the resulting dread. He
+has no thought of the utility or inutility of the act itself: the
+deterrent is the mainly vague, but partially definite, fear of evil that
+may follow. So understood, the deterring emotion is one which has grown
+out of experiences of utility, using that word in its ethical sense; and
+if we ask why this dreaded anger is called forth from others, we shall
+habitually find that it is because the forbidden act entails pain
+somewhere--is negatived by utility. On passing from domestic injunctions
+to injunctions current in the tribe, we see no less clearly how these
+emotions produced by approbation and reprobation come to be connected in
+experience with actions which are beneficial to the tribe, and actions
+which are detrimental to the tribe; and how there consequently grow up
+incentives to the one class of actions and prejudices against the other
+class. From early boyhood the young savage hears recounted the daring
+deeds of his chief--hears them in words of praise, and sees all faces
+glowing with admiration. From time to time also he listens while some
+one's cowardice is described in tones of scorn, and with contemptuous
+metaphors, and sees him meet with derision and insult whenever he
+appears. That is to say, one of the things that come to be associated in
+his mind with smiling faces, which are symbolical of pleasures in
+general, is courage; and one of the things that come to be associated in
+his mind with frowns and other marks of enmity, which form his symbol of
+unhappiness, is cowardice. These feelings are not formed in him because
+he has reasoned his way to the truth that courage is useful to the
+tribe, and, by implication, to himself, or to the truth that cowardice
+is a cause of evil. In adult life he may perhaps see this; but he
+certainly does not see it at the time when bravery is thus joined in his
+consciousness with all that is good, and cowardice with all that is bad.
+Similarly there are produced in him feelings of inclination or
+repugnance towards other lines of conduct that have become established
+or interdicted, because they are beneficial or injurious to the tribe;
+though neither the young nor the adults know why they have become
+established or interdicted. Instance the praiseworthiness of
+wife-stealing, and the viciousness of marrying within the tribe.
+
+We may now ascend a stage to an order of incentives and restraints
+derived from these. The primitive belief is that every dead man becomes
+a demon, who is often somewhere at hand, may at any moment return, may
+give aid or do mischief, and has to be continually propitiated. Hence
+among other agents whose approbation or reprobation are contemplated by
+the savage as consequences of his conduct, are the spirits of his
+ancestors. When a child he is told of their deeds, now in triumphant
+tones, now in whispers of horror; and the instilled belief that they may
+inflict some vaguely-imagined but fearful evil, or give some great help,
+becomes a powerful incentive or deterrent. Especially does this happen
+when the story is of a chief, distinguished for his strength, his
+ferocity, his persistence in that revenge on enemies which the
+experiences of the savage make him regard as beneficial and virtuous.
+The consciousness that such a chief, dreaded by neighbouring tribes, and
+dreaded, too, by members of his own tribe, may reappear and punish those
+who have disregarded his injunctions, becomes a powerful motive. But it
+is clear, in the first place, that the imagined anger and the imagined
+satisfaction of this deified chief, are simply transfigured forms of the
+anger and satisfaction displayed by those around; and that the feelings
+accompanying such imaginations have the same original root in the
+experiences which have associated an average of painful results with the
+manifestation of another's anger, and an average of pleasurable results
+with the manifestation of another's satisfaction. And it is clear, in
+the second place, that the actions thus forbidden and encouraged must be
+mostly actions that are respectively detrimental and beneficial to the
+tribe; since the successful chief is usually a better judge than the
+rest, and has the preservation of the tribe at heart. Hence experiences
+of utility, consciously or unconsciously organized, underlie his
+injunctions; and the sentiments which prompt obedience are, though very
+indirectly and without the knowledge of those who feel them, referable
+to experiences of utility.
+
+This transfigured form of restraint, differing at first but little from
+the original form, admits of immense development. Accumulating
+traditions, growing in grandeur as they are repeated from generation to
+generation, make more and more superhuman the early-recorded hero of the
+race. His powers of inflicting punishment and giving happiness become
+ever greater, more multitudinous, and more varied; so that the dread of
+divine displeasure, and the desire to obtain divine approbation, acquire
+a certain largeness and generality. Still the conceptions remain
+anthropomorphic. The revengeful deity continues to be thought of in
+terms of human emotions, and continues to be represented as displaying
+these emotions in human ways. Moreover, the sentiments of right and
+duty, so far as they have become developed, refer mainly to divine
+commands and interdicts; and have little reference to the natures of the
+acts commanded or interdicted. In the intended offering-up of Isaac, in
+the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter, and in the hewing to pieces of
+Agag, as much as in the countless atrocities committed from religious
+motives by various early historic races, as by some existing savage
+races, we see that the morality and immorality of actions, as we
+understand them, are at first little recognized; and that the feelings,
+chiefly of dread, which serve in place of them, are feelings felt
+towards the unseen beings supposed to issue the commands and interdicts.
+
+Here it will be said that, as just admitted, these are not the moral
+sentiments properly so called. They are simply sentiments that precede
+and make possible those highest sentiments which do not refer either to
+personal benefits or evils to be expected from men, or to more remote
+rewards and punishments. Several comments are, however, called forth by
+this criticism. One is, that if we glance back at past beliefs and their
+correlative feelings, as shown in Dante's poem, in the mystery-plays of
+the middle ages, in St. Bartholomew massacres, in burnings for heresy,
+we get proof that in comparatively modern times right and wrong meant
+little else than subordination or insubordination--to a divine ruler
+primarily, and under him to a human ruler. Another is, that down to our
+own day this conception largely prevails, and is even embodied in
+elaborate ethical works--instance the _Essays on the Principles of
+Morality_, by Jonathan Dymond, which recognizes no ground of moral
+obligation save the will of God as expressed in the current creed. And
+yet a further is, that while in sermons the torments of the damned and
+the joys of the blessed are set forth as the dominant deterrents and
+incentives, and while we have prepared for us printed instructions "how
+to make the best of both worlds," it cannot be denied that the feelings
+which impel and restrain men are still largely composed of elements like
+those operative on the savage: the dread, partly vague, partly specific,
+associated with the idea of reprobation, human and divine, and the sense
+of satisfaction, partly vague, partly specific, associated with the idea
+of approbation, human and divine.
+
+But during the growth of that civilization which has been made possible
+by these ego-altruistic sentiments, there have been slowly evolving the
+altruistic sentiments. Development of these has gone on only as fast as
+society has advanced to a state in which the activities are mainly
+peaceful. The root of all the altruistic sentiments is sympathy; and
+sympathy could become dominant only when the mode of life, instead of
+being one that habitually inflicted direct pain, became one which
+conferred direct and indirect benefits: the pains inflicted being mainly
+incidental and indirect. Adam Smith made a large step towards this truth
+when he recognized sympathy as giving rise to these superior controlling
+emotions. His _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, however, requires to be
+supplemented in two ways. The natural process by which sympathy becomes
+developed into a more and more important element of human nature has to
+be explained; and there has also to be explained the process by which
+sympathy produces the highest and most complex of the altruistic
+sentiments--that of justice. Respecting the first process, I can here do
+no more than say that sympathy may be proved, both inductively and
+deductively, to be the concomitant of gregariousness: the two having all
+along-increased by reciprocal aid. Multiplication has ever tended to
+force into an association, more or less close, all creatures having
+kinds of food and supplies of food that permit association; and
+established psychological laws warrant the inference that some sympathy
+will inevitably result from habitual manifestations of feelings in
+presence of one another, and that the gregariousness being augmented by
+the increase of sympathy, further facilitates the development of
+sympathy. But there are negative and positive checks upon this
+development--negative, because sympathy cannot advance faster than
+intelligence advances, since it presupposes the power of interpreting
+the natural language of the various feelings, and of mentally
+representing those feelings; positive, because the immediate needs of
+self-preservation are often at variance with its promptings, as, for
+example, during the predatory stages of human progress. For explanations
+of the second process, I must refer to the _Principles of Psychology_ (§
+202, first edition, and § 215, second edition) and to _Social Statics_,
+part ii. chapter v.[36] Asking that in default of space these
+explanations may be taken for granted, let me here point out in what
+sense even sympathy, and the sentiments that result from it, are due to
+experiences of utility. If we suppose all thought of rewards or
+punishments, immediate or remote, to be left out of consideration, it is
+clear that any one who hesitates to inflict a pain because of the vivid
+representation of that pain which rises in his consciousness, is
+restrained, not by any sense of obligation or by any formulated doctrine
+of utility, but by the painful association established in him. And it is
+clear that if, after repeated experiences of the moral discomfort he has
+felt from witnessing the unhappiness indirectly caused by some of his
+acts, he is led to check himself when again tempted to those acts, the
+restraint is of like nature. Conversely with the pleasure-giving acts:
+repetitions of kind deeds, and experiences of the sympathetic
+gratifications that follow, tend continually to make stronger the
+association between such deeds and feelings of happiness.
+
+Eventually these experiences may be consciously generalized, and there
+may result a deliberate pursuit of sympathetic gratifications. There may
+also come to be distinctly recognized the truths that the remoter
+results, kind and unkind conduct, are respectively beneficial and
+detrimental--that due regard for others is conducive to ultimate
+personal welfare, and disregard of others to ultimate personal disaster;
+and then there may become current such summations of experience as
+"honesty is the best policy." But so far from regarding these
+intellectual recognitions of utility as preceding and causing the moral
+sentiment, I regard the moral sentiment as preceding such recognitions
+of utility, and making them possible. The pleasures and pains directly
+resulting in experience from sympathetic and unsympathetic actions, had
+first to be slowly associated with such actions, and the resulting
+incentives and deterrents frequently obeyed, before there could arise
+the perceptions that sympathetic and unsympathetic actions are remotely
+beneficial or detrimental to the actor; and they had to be obeyed still
+longer and more generally before there could arise the perceptions that
+they are socially beneficial or detrimental. When, however, the remote
+effects, personal and social, have gained general recognition, are
+expressed in current maxims, and lead to injunctions having the
+religious sanction, the sentiments that prompt sympathetic actions and
+check unsympathetic ones are immensely strengthened by their alliances.
+Approbation and reprobation, divine and human, come to be associated in
+thought with the sympathetic and unsympathetic actions respectively. The
+commands of the creed, the legal penalties, and the code of social
+conduct, unitedly enforce them; and every child as it grows up, daily
+has impressed on it by the words and faces and voices of those around
+the authority of these highest principles of conduct. And now we may see
+why there arises a belief in the special sacredness of these highest
+principles, and a sense of the supreme authority of the altruistic
+sentiments answering to them. Many of the actions which, in early social
+states, received the religious sanction and gained public approbation,
+had the drawback that such sympathies as existed were outraged, and
+there was hence an imperfect satisfaction. Whereas these altruistic
+actions, while similarly having the religious sanction and gaining
+public approbation, bring a sympathetic consciousness of pleasure given
+or of pain prevented; and, beyond this, bring a sympathetic
+consciousness of human welfare at large, as being furthered by making
+altruistic actions habitual. Both this special and this general
+sympathetic consciousness become stronger and wider in proportion as the
+power of mental representation increases, and the imagination of
+consequences, immediate and remote, grows more vivid and comprehensive.
+Until at length these altruistic sentiments begin to call in question
+the authority of those ego-altruistic sentiments which once ruled
+unchallenged. They prompt resistance to laws that do not fulfil the
+conception of justice, encourage men to brave the frowns of their
+fellows by pursuing a course at variance with customs that are perceived
+to be socially injurious, and even cause dissent from the current
+religion; either to the extent of disbelief in those alleged divine
+attributes and acts not approved by this supreme moral arbiter, or to
+the extent of entire rejection of a creed which ascribes such attributes
+and acts.
+
+Much that is required to make this hypothesis complete must stand over
+until, at the close of the second volume of the _Principles of
+Psychology_, I have space for a full exposition. What I have said will
+make it sufficiently clear that two fundamental errors have been made in
+the interpretation put upon it. Both Utility and Experience have been
+construed in senses much too narrow. Utility, convenient a word as it is
+from its comprehensiveness, has very inconvenient and misleading
+implications. It vividly suggests uses, and means, and proximate ends,
+but very faintly suggests the pleasures, positive or negative, which are
+the ultimate ends, and which, in the ethical meaning of the word, are
+alone considered; and, further, it implies conscious recognition of
+means and ends--implies the deliberate taking of some course to gain a
+perceived benefit. Experience, too, in its ordinary acceptation,
+connotes definite perceptions of causes and consequences, as standing in
+observed relations, and is not taken to include the connexions formed in
+consciousness between states that recur together, when the relation
+between them, causal or other, is not perceived. It is in their widest
+senses, however, that I habitually use these words, as will be manifest
+to every one who reads the _Principles of Psychology;_ and it is in
+their widest senses that I have used them in the letter to Mr. Mill. I
+think I have shown above that, when they are so understood, the
+hypothesis briefly set forth in that letter is by no means so
+indefensible as is supposed. At any rate, I have shown--what seemed for
+the present needful to show--that Mr. Hutton's versions of my views must
+not be accepted as correct.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 33: See _Prospective Review_ for January, 1852.]
+
+[Footnote 34: His criticism will be found in the _National Review_ for
+January, 1856, under the title "Atheism."]
+
+[Footnote 35: Hereafter I hope to elucidate at length these phenomena of
+expression. For the present, I can refer only to such further
+indications as are contained in two essays on "The Physiology of
+Laughter" and "The Origin and Function of Music."]
+
+[Footnote 36: I may add that in _Social Statics_, chap. xxx., I have
+indicated, in a general way, the causes of the development of sympathy
+and the restraints upon its development--confining the discussion,
+however, to the case of the human race, my subject limiting me to that.
+The accompanying teleology I now disclaim.]
+
+
+
+
+THE COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY OF MAN.
+
+    [_Originally read before the Anthropological Institute, and
+    afterwards published in _Mind, _for January,_ 1876.]
+
+
+While discussing with two members of the Anthropological Institute the
+work to be undertaken by its psychological section, I made certain
+suggestions which they requested me to put in writing. When reminded,
+some months after, of the promise I had made to do this, I failed to
+recall the particular suggestions referred to; but in the endeavour to
+remember them, I was led to glance over the whole subject of comparative
+human psychology. Hence resulted the following paper.
+
+That making a general survey is useful as a preliminary to deliberate
+study, either of a whole or of any part, scarcely needs showing.
+Vagueness of thought accompanies the wandering about in a region without
+known bounds or landmarks. Attention devoted to some portion of a
+subject in ignorance of its connexion with the rest, leads to untrue
+conceptions. The whole cannot be rightly conceived without some
+knowledge of the parts; and no part can be rightly conceived out of
+relation to the whole.
+
+To map out the Comparative Psychology of Man must also conduce to the
+more methodic carrying on of inquiries. In this, as in other things,
+division of labour will facilitate progress; and that there may be
+division of labour, the work itself must be systematically divided.
+
+We may conveniently separate the entire subject into three main
+divisions, and may arrange them in the order of increasing speciality.
+
+The first division will treat of the degrees of mental evolution of
+different human types, generally considered: taking account of both the
+mass of mental manifestation and the complexity of mental manifestation.
+This division will include the relations of these characters to physical
+characters--the bodily mass and structure, and the cerebral mass and
+structure. It will also include inquiries concerning the time taken in
+completing mental evolution, and the time during which adult mental
+power lasts; as well as certain most general traits of mental action,
+such as the greater or less persistence of emotions and of intellectual
+processes. The connexion between the general mental type and the general
+social type should also be here dealt with.
+
+In the second division may be conveniently placed apart, inquiries
+concerning the relative mental natures of the sexes in each race. Under
+it will come such questions as these:--What differences of mental mass
+and mental complexity, if any, existing between males and females, are
+common to all races? Do such differences vary in degree, or in kind, or
+in both? Are there reasons for thinking that they are liable to change
+by increase or decrease? What relations do they bear in each case to the
+habits of life, the domestic arrangements, and the social arrangements?
+This division should also include in its scope the sentiments of the
+sexes towards one another, considered as varying quantitatively and
+qualitatively; as well as their respective sentiments towards offspring,
+similarly varying.
+
+For the third division of inquiries may be reserved the more special
+mental traits distinguishing different types of men. One class of such
+specialities results from differences of proportion among faculties
+possessed in common; and another class results from the presence in some
+races of faculties that are almost or quite absent from others. Each
+difference in each of these groups, when established by comparison, has
+to be studied in connexion with the stage of mental evolution reached,
+and has to be studied in connexion with the habits of life and the
+social development, regarding it as related to these both as cause and
+as consequence.
+
+Such being the outlines of these several divisions, let us now consider
+in detail the subdivisions contained within each.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I.--Under the head of general mental evolution we may begin with the
+trait of--
+
+1. _Mental mass._--Daily experiences show us that human beings differ in
+volume of mental manifestation. Some there are whose intelligence, high
+though it may be, produces little impression on those around; while
+there are some who, when uttering even commonplaces, do it so as to
+affect listeners in a disproportionate degree. Comparison of two such,
+makes it manifest that, generally, the difference is due to the natural
+language of the emotions. Behind the intellectual quickness of the one
+there is not felt any power of character; while the other betrays a
+momentum capable of bearing down opposition--a potentiality of emotion
+that has something formidable about it. Obviously the varieties of
+mankind differ much in respect of this trait. Apart from kind of
+feeling, they are unlike in amount of feeling. The dominant races
+overrun the inferior races mainly in virtue of the greater quantity of
+energy in which this greater mental mass shows itself. Hence a series of
+inquiries, of which these are some:--(_a_) What is the relation between
+mental mass and bodily mass? Manifestly, the small races are deficient
+in it. But it also appears that races much upon a par in size--as, for
+instance, an Englishman and a Damara, differ considerably in mental
+mass. (_b_) What is its relation to mass of brain? and, bearing in mind
+the general law that in the same species, size of brain increases with
+size of body (though not in the same proportion), how far can we connect
+the extra mental mass of the higher races, with an extra mass of brain
+beyond that which is proper to their greater bodily mass? (_c_) What
+relation, if any, is there between mental mass and the physiological
+state expressed in vigour of circulation and richness of blood, as
+severally determined by mode of life and general nutrition? (_d_) What
+are the relations of this trait to the social state, as nomadic or
+settled, predatory or industrial?
+
+2. _Mental complexity._--How races differ in respect of the more or less
+involved structures of their minds, will best be understood on recalling
+the unlikeness between the juvenile mind and the adult mind among
+ourselves. In the child we see absorption in special facts. Generalities
+even of a low order are scarcely recognized, and there is no recognition
+of high generalities. We see interest in individuals, in personal
+adventures, in domestic affairs, but no interest in political or social
+matters. We see vanity about clothes and small achievements, but little
+sense of justice: witness the forcible appropriation of one another's
+toys. While there have come into play many of the simpler mental powers,
+there has not yet been reached that complication of mind which results
+from the addition of powers evolved out of these simpler ones. Kindred
+differences of complexity exist between the minds of lower and higher
+races; and comparisons should be made to ascertain their kinds and
+amounts. Here, too, there may be a subdivision of the inquiries. (_a_)
+What is the relation between mental complexity and mental mass? Do not
+the two habitually vary together? (_b_) What is the relation to the
+social state, as more or less complex? that is to say--Do not mental
+complexity and social complexity act and react on each other?
+
+3. _Rate of mental development._--In conformity with the biological law
+that the higher the organisms the longer they take to evolve, members of
+the inferior human races may be expected to complete their mental
+evolution sooner than members of the superior races; and we have
+evidence that they do this. Travellers from many regions comment, now on
+the great precocity of children among savage and semi-civilized peoples,
+and now on the early arrest of their mental progress. Though we scarcely
+need more proofs that this general contrast exists, there remains to be
+asked the question, whether it is consistently maintained throughout all
+groups of races, from the lowest to the highest--whether, say, the
+Australian differs in this respect from the Hindu, as much as the Hindu
+does from the European. Of secondary inquiries coming under this
+sub-head may be named several. (_a_) Is this more rapid evolution and
+earlier arrest always unequally shown by the two sexes; or, in other
+words, are there in lower types proportional differences in rate and
+degree of development, such as higher types show us? (_b_) Is there in
+many cases, as there appears to be in some cases, a traceable relation
+between the period of arrest and the period of puberty? (_c_) Is mental
+decay early in proportion as mental evolution is rapid? (_d_) Can we in
+other respects assert that where the type is low, the entire cycle of
+mental changes between birth and death--ascending, uniform,
+descending--comes within a shorter interval?
+
+4. _Relative plasticity._--Is there any relation between the degree of
+mental modifiability which remains in adult life, and the character of
+the mental evolution in respect of mass, complexity, and rapidity? The
+animal kingdom at large yields reasons for associating an inferior and
+more rapidly-completed mental structure, with a relatively automatic
+nature. Lowly organized creatures, guided almost entirely by reflex
+actions, are in but small degrees changeable by individual experiences.
+As the nervous structure complicates, its actions become less rigorously
+confined within pre-established limits; and as we approach the highest
+creatures, individual experiences take larger and larger shares in
+moulding the conduct: there is an increasing ability to take in new
+impressions and to profit by the acquisitions. Inferior and superior
+human races are contrasted in this respect. Many travellers comment on
+the unchangeable habits of savages. The semi-civilized nations of the
+East, past and present, were, or are, characterized by a greater
+rigidity of custom than characterizes the more civilized nations of the
+West. The histories of the most civilized nations show us that in their
+earlier times, the modifiability of ideas and habits was less than it is
+at present. And if we contrast classes or individuals around us, we see
+that the most developed in mind are the most plastic. To inquiries
+respecting this trait of comparative plasticity, in its relations to
+precocity and early completion of mental development, may fitly be added
+inquiries respecting its relations to the social state, which it helps
+to determine, and which reacts upon it.
+
+5. _Variability._--To say of a mind that its actions are extremely
+inconstant, and at the same time to say that it is of relatively
+unchangeable nature, apparently implies a contradiction. When, however,
+the inconstancy is understood as referring to the manifestations which
+follow one another from minute to minute, and the unchangeableness to
+the average manifestations, extending over long periods, the apparent
+contradiction disappears; and it becomes comprehensible that the two
+traits may, and ordinarily do, co-exist. An infant, quickly wearied with
+each kind of perception, wanting ever a new object which it soon
+abandons for something else, and alternating a score times a day between
+smiles and tears, shows us a very small persistence in each kind of
+mental action: all its states, intellectual and emotional, are
+transient. Yet at the same time its mind cannot be easily changed in
+character. True, it changes spontaneously in due course; but it long
+remains incapable of receiving ideas or emotions beyond those of simple
+orders. The child exhibits less rapid variations, intellectual and
+emotional, while its educability is greater. Inferior human races show
+us this combination: great rigidity of general character with great
+irregularity in its passing manifestations. Speaking broadly, while they
+resist permanent modification, they lack intellectual persistence, and
+they lack emotional persistence. Of various low types we read that they
+cannot keep the attention fixed beyond a few minutes on anything
+requiring thought, even of a simple kind. Similarly with their feelings:
+these are less enduring than those of civilized men. There are, however,
+qualifications to be made in this statement; and comparisons are needed
+to ascertain how far these qualifications go. The savage shows great
+persistence in the action of the lower intellectual faculties. He is
+untiring in minute observation. He is untiring, also, in that kind of
+perceptive activity which accompanies the making of his weapons and
+ornaments: often persevering for immense periods in carving stones, &c.
+Emotionally, too, he shows persistence not only in the motives prompting
+these small industries, but also in certain of his passions--especially
+in that of revenge. Hence, in studying the degrees of mental variability
+shown us in the daily lives of the different races, we must ask how far
+variability characterizes the whole mind, and how far it holds only of
+parts of the mind.
+
+6. _Impulsiveness._--This trait is closely allied with the last:
+unenduring emotions are emotions which sway the conduct now this way and
+now that, without any consistency. The trait of impulsiveness may,
+however, be fitly dealt with separately, because it has other
+implications than mere lack of persistence. Comparisons of the lower
+human races with the higher, appear generally to show that, along with
+brevity of the passions, there goes violence. The sudden gusts of
+feeling which men of inferior types display, are excessive in degree as
+they are short in duration; and there is probably a connexion between
+these two traits: intensity sooner producing exhaustion. Observing that
+the passions of childhood illustrate this connexion, let us turn to
+certain interesting questions concerning the decrease of impulsiveness
+which accompanies advance in evolution. The nervous processes of an
+impulsive being, are less remote from reflex actions than are those of
+an unimpulsive being. In reflex actions we see a simple stimulus passing
+suddenly into movement: little or no control being exercised by other
+parts of the nervous system. As we ascend to higher actions, guided by
+more and more complicated combinations of stimuli, there is not the same
+instantaneous discharge in simple motions; but there is a comparatively
+deliberate and more variable adjustment of compound motions, duly
+restrained and proportioned. It is thus with the passions and sentiments
+in the less developed natures and in the more developed natures. Where
+there is but little emotional complexity, an emotion, when excited by
+some occurrence, explodes in action before the other emotions have been
+called into play; and each of these, from time to time, does the like.
+But the more complex emotional structure is one in which these simpler
+emotions are so co-ordinated that they do not act independently. Before
+excitement of any one has had time to cause action, some excitement has
+been communicated to others--often antagonistic ones; and the conduct
+becomes modified in adjustment to the combined dictates. Hence results a
+decreased impulsiveness, and also a greater persistence. The conduct
+pursued, being prompted by several emotions co-operating in degrees
+which do not exhaust them, acquires a greater continuity; and while
+spasmodic force becomes less conspicuous, there is an increase in the
+total energy. Examining the facts from this point of view, there are
+sundry questions of interest to be put respecting the different races of
+men. (_a_) To what other traits than degree of mental evolution is
+impulsiveness related? Apart from difference in elevation of type, the
+New-World races seem to be less impulsive than the Old-World races. Is
+this due to constitutional apathy? Can there be traced (other things
+equal) a relation between physical vivacity and mental impulsiveness?
+(_b_) What connexion is there between this trait and the social state?
+Clearly a very explosive nature--such as that of the Bushman--is unfit
+for social union; and, commonly, social union, when by any means
+established, checks impulsiveness. (_c_) What respective shares in
+checking impulsiveness are taken by the feelings which the social state
+fosters--such as the fear of surrounding individuals, the instinct of
+sociality, the desire to accumulate property, the sympathetic feelings,
+the sentiment of justice? These, which require a social environment for
+their development, all of them involve imaginations of consequences more
+or less distant; and thus imply checks upon the promptings of the
+simpler passions. Hence arise the questions--In what order, in what
+degrees, and in what combinations, do they come into play?
+
+7. One further general inquiry of a different kind may be added. What
+effect is produced on mental nature by mixture of races? There is reason
+for believing that throughout the animal kingdom, the union of varieties
+which have become widely divergent is physically injurious; while the
+union of slightly divergent varieties is physically beneficial. Does the
+like hold with the mental nature? Some facts seem to show that mixture
+of human races extremely unlike, produces a worthless type of mind--a
+mind fitted neither for the kind of life led by the higher of the two
+races, nor for that led by the lower--a mind out of adjustment to all
+conditions of life. Contrariwise, we find that peoples of the same
+stock, slightly differentiated by lives carried on in unlike
+circumstances for many generations, produce by mixture a mental type
+having certain superiorities. In his work on _The Huguenots_, Mr. Smiles
+points out how large a number of distinguished men among us have
+descended from Flemish and French refugees; and M. Alphonse de Candolle,
+in his _Histoire des Sciences et des Savants depuis deux Siècles_, shows
+that the descendants of French refugees in Switzerland have produced an
+unusually great proportion of scientific men. Though, in part, this
+result may be ascribed to the original natures of such refugees, who
+must have had that independence which is a chief factor in originality,
+yet it is probably in part due to mixtures of races. For thinking this,
+we have evidence which is not open to two interpretations. Prof. Morley
+draws attention to the fact that, during seven hundred years of our
+early history "the best genius of England sprang up on the line of
+country in which Celts and Anglo-Saxons came together." In like manner
+Mr. Galton, in his _English Men of Science_, shows that in recent days
+these have mostly come from an inland region, running generally from
+north to south, which we may reasonably presume contains more mixed
+blood than do the regions east and west of it. Such a result seems
+probable _a priori_. Two natures respectively adapted to slightly unlike
+sets of social conditions, may be expected by their union to produce a
+nature somewhat more plastic than either--a nature more impressible by
+the new circumstances of advancing social life, and therefore more
+likely to originate new ideas and display modified sentiments. The
+Comparative Psychology of Man may, then, fitly include the mental
+effects of mixture; and among derivative inquiries we may ask--How far
+the conquest of race by race has been instrumental in advancing
+civilization by aiding mixture, as well as in other ways.
+
+
+II.--The second of the three leading divisions named at the outset is
+less extensive. Still, concerning the relative mental natures of the
+sexes in each race, questions of much interest and importance may be
+raised.
+
+1. _Degree of difference between the sexes._--It is an established fact
+that, physically considered, the contrast between males and females is
+not equally great in all types of mankind. The bearded races, for
+instance, show us a greater unlikeness between the two than do the
+beardless races. Among South American tribes, men and women have a
+greater general resemblance in form, &c., than is usual elsewhere. The
+question, then, suggests itself--Do the mental natures of the sexes
+differ in a constant or in a variable degree? The difference is unlikely
+to be a constant one; and, looking for variation, we may ask what is its
+amount, and under what conditions does it occur?
+
+2. _Difference in mass and in complexity._--The comparisons between the
+sexes, of course, admit of subdivisions parallel to those made in the
+comparisons between races. Relative mental mass and relative mental
+complexity have chiefly to be observed. Assuming that the great
+inequality in the cost of reproduction to the two sexes, is the cause of
+unlikeness in mental mass, as in physical mass, this difference may be
+studied in connexion with reproductive differences presented by the
+various races, in respect of the ages at which reproduction commences,
+and the periods over which it lasts. An allied inquiry may be joined
+with this; namely, how far the mental developments of the two sexes are
+affected by their relative habits in respect to food and physical
+exertion? In many of the lower races, the women, treated with great
+brutality, are, physically, much inferior to the men: excess of labour
+and defect of nutrition being apparently the combined causes. Is any
+arrest of mental development simultaneously caused?
+
+3. _Variation of the differences._--If the unlikeness, physical and
+mental, of the sexes is not constant, then, supposing all races have
+diverged from one original stock, it follows that there must have been
+transmission of accumulated differences to those of the same sex in
+posterity. If, for instance, the prehistoric type of man was beardless,
+then the production of a bearded variety implies that within that
+variety the males continued to transmit an increasing amount of beard to
+descendants of the same sex. This limitation of heredity by sex, shown
+us in multitudinous ways throughout the animal kingdom, probably applies
+to the cerebral structures as much as to other structures. Hence the
+question--Do not the mental natures of the sexes in alien types of Man
+diverge in unlike ways and degrees?
+
+4. _Causes of the differences._--Are any relations to be traced between
+these variable differences and the variable parts the sexes play in the
+business of life? Assuming the cumulative effects of habit on function
+and structure, as well as the limitation of heredity by sex, it is to be
+expected that if, in any society, the activities of one sex, generation
+after generation, differ from those of the other, there will arise
+sexual adaptations of mind. Some instances in illustration may be named.
+Among the Africans of Loango and other districts, as also among some of
+the Indian Hill-tribes, the men and women are strongly contrasted as
+respectively inert and energetic: the industry of the women having
+apparently become so natural to them that no coercion is needed. Of
+course, such facts suggest an extensive series of questions. Limitation
+of heredity by sex may account both for those sexual differences of mind
+which distinguish men and women in all races, and for those which
+distinguish them in each race, or each society. An interesting
+subordinate inquiry may be, how far such mental differences are inverted
+in cases where there is inversion of social and domestic relations; as
+among those Khasi Hill-tribes, whose women have so far the upper hand
+that they turn off their husbands in a summary way if they displease
+them.
+
+5. _Mental modifiability in the two sexes._--Along with comparisons of
+races in respect of mental plasticity may go parallel comparisons of the
+sexes in each race. Is it true always, as it appears to be generally
+true, that women are less modifiable than men? The relative conservatism
+of women--their greater adhesion to established ideas and practices--is
+manifest in many civilized and semi-civilized societies. Is it so among
+the uncivilized? A curious instance of stronger attachment to custom in
+women than in men is given by Dalton, as occurring among the Juangs, one
+of the lowest wild tribes of Bengal. Until recently the only dress of
+both sexes was something less than that which the Hebrew legend gives to
+Adam and Eve. Years ago the men were led to adopt a cloth bandage round
+the loins, in place of the bunch of leaves; but the women adhered to the
+aboriginal habit: a conservatism shown where it might have been least
+expected.
+
+6. _The sexual sentiment._--Results of value may be looked for from
+comparisons of races made to determine the amounts and characters of the
+higher feelings to which the relation of the sexes gives rise. The
+lowest varieties of mankind have but small endowments of these feelings.
+Among varieties of higher types, such as the Malayo-Polynesians, these
+feelings seem considerably developed: the Dyaks, for instance, sometimes
+display them in great strength. Speaking generally, they appear to
+become stronger with the advance of civilization. Several subordinate
+inquiries may be named. (_a_) How far is development of the sexual
+sentiment dependent upon intellectual advance--upon growth of
+imaginative power? (_b_) How far is it related to emotional advance; and
+especially to evolution of those emotions which originate from sympathy?
+What are its relations to polyandry and polygyny? (_c_) Does it not
+tend towards, and is it not fostered by, monogamy? (_d_) What connexion
+has it with maintenance of the family bond, and the consequent better
+rearing of children?
+
+
+III.--Under the third head, to which we may now pass come the more
+special traits of the different races.
+
+1. _Imitativeness._--One of the characteristics in which the lower types
+of men show us a smaller departure from reflex action than do the higher
+types, is their strong tendency to mimic the motions and sounds made by
+others--an almost involuntary habit which travellers find it difficult
+to check. This meaningless repetition, which seems to imply that the
+idea of an observed action cannot be framed in the mind of the observer
+without tending forthwith to discharge itself in the action conceived
+(and every ideal action is a nascent form of the consciousness
+accompanying performance of such action), evidently diverges but little
+from the automatic; and decrease of it is to be expected along with
+increase of self-regulating power. This trait of automatic mimicry is
+evidently allied with that less automatic mimicry which shows itself in
+greater persistence of customs. For customs adopted by each generation
+from the last without thought or inquiry, imply a tendency to imitate
+which overmasters critical and sceptical tendencies: so maintaining
+habits for which no reasons can be given. The decrease of this
+irrational mimicry, strongest in the lowest savage and feeblest in the
+highest of the civilized, should be studied along with the successively
+higher stages of social life, as being at once an aid and a hindrance to
+civilization: an aid in so far as it gives that fixity to the social
+organization without which a society cannot survive; a hindrance in so
+far as it offers resistance to changes of social organization that have
+become desirable.
+
+2. _Incuriosity._--Projecting our own natures into the circumstances of
+the savage, we imagine ourselves as marvelling greatly on first seeing
+the products and appliances of civilized life. But we err in supposing
+that the savage has feelings such as we should have in his place. Want
+of rational curiosity respecting these incomprehensible novelties, is a
+trait remarked of the lowest races wherever found; and the
+partially-civilized races are distinguished from them as exhibiting
+rational curiosity. The relation of this trait to the intellectual
+nature, to the emotional nature, and to the social state, should be
+studied.
+
+3. _Quality of thought._--Under this vague head may be placed many sets
+of inquiries, each of them extensive--(_a_) The degree of generality of
+the ideas; (_b_) the degree of abstractness of the ideas; (_c_) the
+degree of definiteness of the ideas; (_d_) the degree of coherence of
+the ideas; (_e_) the extent to which there have been developed such
+notions as those of _class_, of _cause_, of _uniformity_, of _law_, of
+_truth_. Many conceptions which have become so familiar to us that we
+assume them to be the common property of all minds, are no more
+possessed by the lowest savages than they are by our own children; and
+comparisons of types should be so made as to elucidate the processes by
+which such conceptions are reached. The development under each head has
+to be observed--(_a_) independently in its successive stages; (_b_) in
+connexion with the co-operative intellectual conceptions; (_c_) in
+connexion with the progress of language, of the arts, and of social
+organization. Already linguistic phenomena have been used in aid of such
+inquiries; and more systematic use of them should be made. Not only the
+number of general words, and the number of abstract words, in a people's
+vocabulary should be taken as evidence, but also their _degrees_ of
+generality and abstractness; for there are generalities of the first,
+second, third, &c., orders, and abstractions similarly ascending. _Blue_
+is an abstraction referring to one class of impressions derived from
+visible objects; _colour_ is a higher abstraction referring to many such
+classes of visual impressions; _property_ is a still higher
+abstraction referring to classes of impressions received not through the
+eyes alone, but through other sense-organs. If generalities and
+abstractions were arranged in the order of their extensiveness and in
+the order of their grades, tests would be obtained which, applied to the
+vocabularies of the uncivilized, would yield definite evidence of the
+intellectual stages reached.
+
+4. _Peculiar aptitudes._--To such specialities of intelligence as mark
+different degrees of evolution, have to be added minor ones related to
+modes of life: the kinds and degrees of faculty which have become
+organized in adaptation to daily habits--skill in the use of weapons,
+powers of tracking, quick discrimination of individual objects. And
+under this head may fitly come inquiries concerning some
+race-peculiarities of the æsthetic class, not at present explicable.
+While the remains from the Dordogne caves show us that their
+inhabitants, low as we must suppose them to have been, could represent
+animals, both by drawing and carving, with some degree of fidelity;
+there are existing races, probably higher in other respects, who seem
+scarcely capable of recognizing pictorial representations. Similarly
+with the musical faculty. Almost or quite wanting in some inferior
+races, we find it in other races not of high grade, developed to an
+unexpected degree: instance the Negroes, some of whom are so innately
+musical, that, as I have been told by a missionary among them, the
+children in native schools when taught European psalm-tunes,
+spontaneously sing seconds to them. Whether any causes can be discovered
+for race peculiarities of this kind, is a question of interest.
+
+5. _Specialities of emotional nature._--These are worthy of careful
+study, as being intimately related to social phenomena--to the
+possibility of social progress, and to the nature of the social
+structure. Among others to be noted there are--(_a_) Gregariousness or
+sociality--a trait in the strength of which races differ widely: some,
+as the Mantras, being almost indifferent to social intercourse; some
+being unable to dispense with it. Obviously the degree of this desire
+for the presence of fellow-men, affects greatly the formation of social
+groups, and consequently influences social progress. (_b_) Intolerance
+of restraint. Men of some inferior types, as the Mapuché, are
+ungovernable; while those of other types, no higher in grade, not only
+submit to restraint, but admire the persons exercising it. These
+contrasted natures have to be observed in connexion with social
+evolution; to the early stages of which they are respectively
+antagonistic and favourable. (_c_) The desire for praise is a trait
+which, common to all races, high and low, varies considerably in degree.
+There are quite inferior races, as some of those in the Pacific States,
+whose members sacrifice without stint to gain the applause which lavish
+generosity brings; while, elsewhere, applause is sought with less
+eagerness. Notice should be taken of the connexion between this love of
+approbation and the social restraints; since it plays an important part
+in the maintenance of them. (_d_) The acquisitive propensity. This, too,
+is a character the degrees of which, and the relations of which to the
+social state, have to be especially noted. The desire for property grows
+along with the possibility of gratifying it; and this, extremely small
+among the lowest men, increases as social development goes on. With the
+advance from tribal property to family property and individual property,
+the notion of private right of possession gains definiteness, and the
+love of acquisition strengthens. Each step towards an orderly social
+state makes larger accumulations possible, and the pleasures achievable
+by them more sure; while the resulting encouragement to accumulate,
+leads to increase of capital and to further progress. This action and
+re-action of the sentiment and the social state, should be in every case
+observed.
+
+6. _The altruistic sentiments._--Coming last, these are also highest.
+The evolution of them in the course of civilization, shows us clearly
+the reciprocal influences of the social unit and the social organism. On
+the one hand, there can be no sympathy, nor any of the sentiments which
+sympathy generates, unless there are fellow-beings around. On the other
+hand, maintenance of union with fellow-beings depends in part on the
+presence of sympathy, and the resulting restraints on conduct.
+Gregariousness or sociality favours the growth of sympathy; increased
+sympathy conduces to closer sociality and a more stable social state;
+and so, continuously, each increment of the one makes possible a further
+increment of the other. Comparisons of the altruistic sentiments
+resulting from sympathy, as exhibited in different types of men and
+different social states, may be conveniently arranged under three
+heads--(_a_) Pity, which should be observed as displayed towards
+offspring, towards the sick and aged, and towards enemies. (_b_)
+Generosity (duly discriminated from the love of display) as shown in
+giving; as shown in the relinquishment of pleasures for the sake of
+others; as shown by active efforts on others' behalf. The manifestations
+of this sentiment, too, are to be noted in respect of their
+range--whether they are limited to relatives; whether they extend only
+to those of the same society; whether they extend to those of other
+societies; and they are also to be noted in connexion with the degree of
+providence--whether they result from sudden impulses obeyed without
+counting the cost, or go along with clear foresight of the future
+sacrifices entailed. (_c_) Justice. This most abstract of the altruistic
+sentiments is to be considered under aspects like those just named, as
+well as under many other aspects--how far it is shown in regard to the
+lives of others; how far in regard to their freedom; how far in regard
+to their property; how far in regard to their various minor claims. And
+comparisons concerning this highest sentiment should, beyond all others,
+be carried on along with comparisons of the accompanying social
+states, which it largely determines--the forms and actions of
+governments; the characters of laws; the relations of classes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such, stated as briefly as consists with clearness, are the leading
+divisions and subdivisions under which the Comparative Psychology of Man
+may be arranged. In going rapidly over so wide a field, I have doubtless
+overlooked much that should be included. Doubtless, too, various of the
+inquiries named will branch out into subordinate inquiries well worth
+pursuing. Even as it is, however, the programme is extensive enough to
+occupy numerous investigators, who may with advantage take separate
+divisions.
+
+Though, after occupying themselves with primitive arts and products,
+anthropologists have devoted their attention mainly to the physical
+characters of the human races; it must, I think, be admitted that the
+study of these yields in importance to the study of their psychical
+characters. The general conclusions to which the first set of inquiries
+may lead, cannot so much affect our views respecting the highest classes
+of phenomena as can the general conclusions to which the second set may
+lead. A true theory of the human mind vitally concerns us; and
+systematic comparisons of human minds, differing in their kinds and
+grades, will help us in forming a true theory. Knowledge of the
+reciprocal relations between the characters of men and the characters of
+the societies they form, must influence profoundly our ideas of
+political arrangements. When the inter-dependence of individual natures
+and social structures is understood, our conceptions of the changes now
+taking place, and hereafter to take place, will be rectified. A
+comprehension of mental development as a process of adaptation to social
+conditions, which are continually remoulding the mind and are again
+remoulded by it, will conduce to a salutary consciousness of the
+remoter effects produced by institutions upon character; and will
+check the grave mischiefs which ignorant legislation now causes. Lastly,
+a right theory of mental evolution as exhibited by humanity at large,
+giving a key, as it does, to the evolution of the individual mind, must
+help to rationalize our perverse methods of education; and so to raise
+intellectual power and moral nature.
+
+
+
+
+MR. MARTINEAU ON EVOLUTION.
+
+    [_First published in _The Contemporary Review_, for June,_ 1872.]
+
+
+The article by Mr. Martineau, in the April number of the _Contemporary
+Review_, on "The Place of Mind in Nature, and Intuition of Man,"
+recalled to me a partially-formed intention to deal with the chief
+criticisms which have from time to time been made on the general
+doctrine set forth in _First Principles_; since, though not avowedly
+directed against propositions asserted or implied in that work, Mr.
+Martineau's reasoning tells against them by implication. The fulfilment
+of this intention I should, however, have continued to postpone, had I
+not learned that the arguments of Mr. Martineau are supposed by many to
+be conclusive, and that, in the absence of replies, it will be assumed
+that no replies can be made. It seems desirable, therefore, to notice
+these arguments at once--especially as the essential ones may, I think,
+be effectually dealt with in a comparatively small space.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first definite objection which Mr. Martineau raises is, that the
+hypothesis of General Evolution is powerless to account even for the
+simpler orders of facts in the absence of numerous different substances.
+He argues that were matter all of one kind, no such phenomena as
+chemical changes would be possible; and that, "in order to start the
+world on its chemical career, you must enlarge its capital and present
+it with an outfit of _heterogeneous_ constituents. Try, therefore, the
+effect of such a gift; fling into the pre-existing cauldron the whole
+list of recognized elementary substances, and give leave to their
+affinities to work." The intended implication obviously is, that there
+must exist the separately-created elements before evolution can begin.
+
+Here, however, Mr. Martineau makes an assumption which few, if any,
+chemists will commit themselves to, and which many will distinctly deny.
+There are no "recognized elementary substances," if the expression means
+substances known to be elementary. What chemists, for convenience, call
+elementary substances, are merely substances which they have thus far
+failed to decompose; but, bearing in mind past experiences, they do not
+dare to say that they are absolutely undecomposable. Water was taken to
+be an element for more than two thousand years, and then was proved to
+be a compound; and, until Davy brought a galvanic current to bear upon
+them, the alkalies and the earths were supposed to be elements. So
+little true is it that "recognized elementary substances" are supposed
+to be absolutely elementary, that there has been much speculation among
+chemists respecting the process of compounding and recompounding by
+which they have been formed out of some ultimate substance--some
+chemists having supposed the atom of hydrogen to be the unit of
+composition, but others having contended that the atomic weights of the
+so-called elements are not thus interpretable. If I remember rightly,
+Sir John Herschel was one, among others, who, some five-and-twenty years
+ago, threw out suggestions respecting a system of compounding that might
+explain these relations of the atomic weights.
+
+What was at that time a suspicion has now become practically a
+certainty. Spectrum-analysis yields results wholly irreconcilable with
+the assumption that the conventionally-named simple substances are
+really simple. Each yields a spectrum having lines varying in number
+from two to eighty or more, every one of which implies the intercepting
+of ethereal undulations of a certain order by something oscillating in
+unison or in harmony with them. Were iron absolutely elementary, it is
+not conceivable that its atom could intercept ethereal undulations of
+eighty different orders. Though it does not follow that its molecule
+contains as many separate atoms as there are lines in its spectrum, it
+must clearly be a complex molecule. The evidence thus gained points to
+the conclusion that, out of some primordial units, the so-called
+elements arise by compounding and recompounding; just as by the
+compounding and recompounding of so-called elements there arise oxides,
+and acids, and salts.
+
+And this hypothesis is entirely in harmony with the phenomena of
+allotropy. Various substances, conventionally distinguished as simple,
+have several forms under which they present quite different properties.
+The semi-transparent, colourless, extremely active substance called
+phosphorus may be so changed as to become opaque, dark red, and inert.
+Like changes are known to occur in some gaseous, non-metallic elements,
+as oxygen; and also in metallic elements, as antimony. These total
+changes of properties, brought about without any changes to be called
+chemical, are interpretable only as due to molecular rearrangements;
+and, by showing that difference of property is producible by difference
+of arrangement, they support the inference otherwise to be drawn, that
+the properties of different elements result from differences of
+arrangement arising by the compounding and recompounding of ultimate
+homogeneous units.
+
+Thus Mr. Martineau's objection, which at best would imply a turning of
+our ignorance of the nature of elements into positive knowledge that
+they are simple, is, in fact, to be met by two sets of evidences, which
+imply that they are compound.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Martineau next alleges that a fatal difficulty is put in the way of
+the General Doctrine of Evolution by the existence of a chasm between
+the living and the not-living. He says:--"But with all your enlargement
+of data, turn them as you will, at the end of every passage which they
+explore, the _door of life_ is closed against them still." Here again
+our ignorance is employed to play the part of knowledge. The fact that
+we do not know distinctly how an alleged transition has taken place, is
+transformed into the assumption that no transition has taken place. We
+have, in a more general shape, the argument which until lately was
+thought conclusive--the argument that because the genesis of each
+species of creature had not been explained, therefore each species must
+have been separately created.
+
+Merely noting this, however, I go on to remark that scientific discovery
+is day by day narrowing the chasm, or, to vary Mr. Martineau's metaphor,
+"opening the door." Not many years since, it was held as certain that
+the chemical compounds distinguished as organic could not be formed
+artificially. Now, more than a thousand organic compounds have been
+formed artificially. Chemists have discovered the art of building them
+up from the simpler to the more complex, and do not doubt that they will
+eventually produce the most complex. Moreover, the phenomena attending
+isomeric change give a clue to those movements which are the only
+indications we have of life in its lowest forms. In various colloidal
+substances, including the albuminoid, isomeric change is accompanied by
+contraction or expansion, and consequent motion; and, in such primordial
+types as the _Protogenes_ of Haeckel, which do not differ in appearance
+from minute portions of albumen, the observed motions are comprehensible
+as accompanying isomeric changes caused by variations in surrounding
+physical actions. The probability of this interpretation will be seen on
+remembering the evidence we have that, in the higher organisms, many
+functions are essentially effected by isomeric changes from one to
+another of the multitudinous forms which protein assumes.
+
+Thus the reply to this objection is, first, that there is going on from
+both sides a narrowing of the chasm supposed to be impassable; and,
+secondly, that, even were the chasm not in course of being filled up, we
+should no more be justified in therefore assuming a supernatural
+commencement of life, than Kepler was justified in assuming that there
+were guiding-spirits to keep the planets in their orbits, because he
+could not see how else they were to be kept in their orbits.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The third definite objection made by Mr. Martineau is of kindred nature.
+The Hypothesis of Evolution is, he thinks, met by the insurmountable
+difficulty that plant life and animal life are absolutely distinct. "You
+cannot," he says, "take a single step toward the deduction of sensation
+and thought: neither at the upper limit do the highest plants (the
+exogens) transcend themselves and overbalance into animal existence; nor
+at the lower, grope as you may among the sea-weeds and sponges, can you
+persuade the sporules of the one to develop into the other."
+
+This is an extremely unfortunate objection to raise. For, though there
+are no transitions from vegetal to animal life at the places Mr.
+Martineau names, where, indeed, no biologist would look for them; yet
+the connexion between the two great kingdoms of living things is so
+complete that separation is now regarded as impossible. For a long time
+naturalists endeavored to frame definitions such as would, the one
+include all plants and exclude all animals, and the other include all
+animals and exclude all plants. But they have been so repeatedly foiled
+in the attempt that they have given it up. There is no chemical
+distinction which holds; there is no structural distinction which
+holds; there is no functional distinction which holds; there is no
+distinction as to mode of existence which holds. Large groups of the
+simpler animals contain chlorophyll, and decompose carbonic acid under
+the influence of light, as plants do. Large groups of the simpler
+plants, as you may observe in the diatoms from any stagnant pool, are no
+less actively locomotive than the minute creatures classed as animals
+seen along with them. Nay, among these lowest types of living things, it
+is common for the life to be now predominantly animal and presently to
+become predominantly vegetal. The very name _zoospores_, given to germs
+of _algæ_, which for a while swim about actively by means of cilia, and
+presently settling down grow into plant-forms, is given because of this
+conspicuous community of nature. So complete is this community of nature
+that for some time past many naturalists have wished to establish for
+these lowest types a sub-kingdom, intermediate between the animal and
+the vegetal: the reason against this course being, however, that the
+difficulty crops up afresh at any assumed places where this intermediate
+sub-kingdom may be supposed to join the other two.
+
+Thus the assumption on which Mr. Martineau proceeds is diametrically
+opposed to the conviction of naturalists in general.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Though I do not perceive that it is specifically stated, there appears
+to be tacitly implied a fourth difficulty of allied kind--the difficulty
+that there is no possibility of transition from life of the simplest
+kind to mind. Mr. Martineau says, indeed, that there can be "with only
+vital resources, as in the vegetable world, no beginning of mind:"
+apparently leaving it to be inferred that in the animal world the
+resources are such as to make the "beginning of mind" comprehensible.
+If, however, instead of leaving it a latent inference, he had
+distinctly asserted a chasm between mind and bodily life, for which
+there is certainly quite as much reason as for asserting a chasm between
+animal life and vegetal life, the difficulties in his way would have
+been no less insuperable.
+
+For those lowest forms of irritability in the animal kingdom which, I
+suppose, Mr. Martineau refers to as the "beginning of mind," are not
+distinguishable from the irritability which plants display: they in no
+greater degree imply consciousness. If the sudden folding of a
+sensitive-plant's leaf when touched, or the spreading out of the stamens
+in a wild-cistus when gently brushed, is to be considered a vital action
+of a purely physical kind; then so too must be considered the equally
+slow contraction of a polype's tentacles. And yet, from this simple
+motion of an animal of low type, we may pass by insensible stages
+through ever-complicating forms of actions, with their accompanying
+signs of feeling and intelligence, until we reach the highest.
+
+Even apart from the evidence derived from the ascending grades of
+animals up from _zoophytes_, as they are significantly named, it needs
+only to observe the evolution of a single animal to see that there does
+not exist any break or chasm between the life which shows no mind and
+the life which shows mind. The yelk of an egg which the cook has just
+broken, not only yields no sign of mind, but yields no sign of life. It
+does not respond to a stimulus as much even as many plants do. Had the
+egg, instead of being broken by the cook, been left under the hen for a
+certain time, the yelk would have passed by infinitesimal gradations
+through a series of forms ending in the chick; and by similarly
+infinitesimal gradations would have arisen those functions which end in
+the chick breaking its shell; and which, when it gets out, show
+themselves in running about, distinguishing and picking up food, and
+squeaking if hurt. When did the feeling begin? and how did there come
+into existence that power of perception which the chick's actions show?
+Should it be objected that the chick's actions are mainly automatic, I
+will not dwell on the fact that, though they are largely so, the chick
+manifestly has feeling and therefore consciousness; but I will accept
+the objection, and propose that instead we take the human being. The
+course of development before birth is just of the same general kind; and
+similarly, at a certain stage, begins to be accompanied by reflex
+movements. At birth there is displayed an amount of mind certainly not
+greater than that of the chick: there is no power of running from
+danger--no power of distinguishing and picking up food. If we say the
+chick is unintelligent, we must certainly say the infant is
+unintelligent. And yet from the unintelligence of the infant to the
+intelligence of the adult, there is an advance by steps so small that on
+no day is the amount of mind shown, appreciably different from that
+shown on preceding and succeeding days.
+
+Thus the tacit assumption that there exists a break, is not simply
+gratuitous, but is negatived by the most obvious facts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Certain of the words and phrases used in explaining that particular part
+of the Doctrine of Evolution which deals with the origin of species, are
+commented upon by Mr. Martineau as having implications justifying his
+view. Let us consider his comments.
+
+He says that _competition_ is not an "original power, which can of
+itself do anything;" further, that "it cannot act except in the presence
+of some _possibility of a better or worse_;" and that this "possibility
+of a better or worse" implies a "world pre-arranged for progress," "a
+directing Will intent upon the good." Had Mr. Martineau looked more
+closely into the matter, he would have found that, though the words and
+phrases he quotes are used for convenience, the conceptions they
+imply are not at all essential to the doctrine. Under its
+rigorously-scientific form, the doctrine is expressible in
+purely-physical terms, which neither imply competition nor imply better
+and worse.[37]
+
+Beyond this indirect mistake there is a direct mistake. Mr. Martineau
+speaks of the "survivorship of the better," as though that were the
+statement of the law; and then adds that the alleged result cannot be
+inferred "except on the assumption that whatever is _better_ is
+_stronger_ too." But the words he here uses are his own words, not the
+words of those he opposes. The law is the survival of the _fittest_.
+Probably, in substituting "better" for "fittest," Mr. Martineau did not
+suppose that he was changing the meaning; though I dare say he perceived
+that the meaning of the word "fittest" did not suit his argument so
+well. Had he examined the facts, he would have found that the law is not
+the survival of the "better" or the "stronger," if we give to those
+words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of
+those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions
+in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking,
+is inferiority, causes the survival. Superiority, whether in size,
+strength, activity, or sagacity, is, other things equal, at the cost of
+diminished fertility; and where the life led by a species does not
+demand these higher attributes, the species profits by decrease of them,
+and accompanying increase of fertility. This is the reason why there
+occur so many cases of retrograde metamorphosis--this is the reason why
+parasites, internal and external, are so commonly degraded forms of
+higher types. Survival of the "better" does not cover these cases,
+though survival of the "fittest" does; and as I am responsible for the
+phrase, I suppose I am competent to say that the word "fittest" was
+chosen for this reason. When it is remembered that these cases outnumber
+all others--that there are more species of parasites than there are
+species of all other animals put together--it will be seen that the
+expression "survivorship of the better" is wholly inappropriate, and the
+argument Mr. Martineau bases upon it quite untenable. Indeed, if, in
+place of those adjustments of the human sense-organs, which he so
+eloquently describes as implying pre-arrangement, Mr. Martineau had
+described the countless elaborate appliances which enable parasites to
+torture animals immeasurably superior to them, and which, from his point
+of view, no less imply pre-arrangement, I think the notes of admiration
+which end his descriptions would not have seemed to him so appropriate.
+
+One more word there is from the intrinsic meaning of which Mr. Martineau
+deduces what appears a powerful argument--the word _Evolution_ itself.
+He says:--
+
+     "It means, to unfold from within; and it is taken from the history
+     of the seed or embryo of living natures. And what is the seed but a
+     casket of pre-arranged futurities, with its whole contents
+     _prospective_, settled to be what they are by reference to ends
+     still in the distance?"
+
+Now, this criticism would have been very much to the point did the word
+Evolution truly express the process it names. If this process, as
+scientifically defined, really involved that conception which the word
+evolution was originally designed to convey, the implications would be
+those Mr. Martineau alleges. But, unfortunately for him, the word,
+having been in possession of the field before the process was
+understood, has been adopted merely because displacing it by another
+word seemed impracticable. And this adoption of it has been joined with
+a caution against misunderstandings arising from its unfitness. Here is
+a part of the caution:--"Evolution has other meanings, some of which are
+incongruous with, and some even directly opposed to, the meaning here
+given to it.... The antithetical word, Involution, would much more truly
+express the nature of the process; and would, indeed, describe better
+the secondary characters of the process which we shall have to deal
+with presently."[38] So that the meanings which the word involves, and
+which Mr. Martineau regards as fatal to the hypothesis, are already
+repudiated as not belonging to the hypothesis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now, having dealt with the essential objections raised by Mr.
+Martineau to the Hypothesis of Evolution as it is presented under that
+purely scientific form which generalizes the process of things, firstly
+as observed and secondly as inferred from certain ultimate principles,
+let me go on to examine that form of the Hypothesis which he
+propounds--Evolution as determined by Mind and Will--Evolution as
+pre-arranged by a Divine Actor. For Mr. Martineau apparently abandons
+the primitive theory of creation by "fiat of Almighty Will", and also
+the theory of creation by manufacture--by "a contriving and adapting
+power," and seems to believe in evolution: requiring only that "an
+originating Mind" shall be taken as its antecedent. Let us ask, first,
+in what relation Mr. Martineau conceives the "originating Mind" to stand
+to the evolving Universe. From some passages it is inferable that he
+considers the "presence of mind" to be everywhere needful. He says:--
+
+     "It is impossible to work the theory of Evolution upwards from the
+     bottom. If all force is to be conceived as One, its type must be
+     looked for in the highest and all-comprehending term; and Mind must
+     be conceived as there, and as divesting itself of some speciality
+     at each step of its descent to a lower stratum of law, till
+     represented at the base under the guise of simple Dynamics."
+
+This seems to be an unmistakable assertion that, wherever Evolution is
+going on, Mind is then and there behind it. At the close of the
+argument, however, a quite different conception is implied. Mr.
+Martineau says:--
+
+    "If the Divine Idea will not retire at the bidding of our
+    speculative science, but retains its place, it is natural to ask,
+    What is its relation to  the series of so-called Forces in the
+    world? But the question is too large and deep to be answered here.
+    Let it suffice to say, that there need not be any _overruling_ of
+    these forces by the Will of God, so that the supernatural should
+    disturb the natural; or any _supplementing_ of them, so that He
+    should fill up their deficiencies. Rather is His thought related to
+    them as, in man, the mental force is related to all below it."
+
+It would take too much space to deal fully with the various questions
+which this last passage raises. There is the question--Whence come these
+"Forces," spoken of as separate from the "Will of God"--did they
+pre-exist? Then what becomes of the Divine Power? Do they exist by the
+Divine Will? Then what kind of nature is that by which they act apart
+from the Divine Will? Again, there is the question--How do these
+deputy-forces co-operate in each particular phenomenon, if the presiding
+Will is not there present to control them? Either an organ which
+develops into fitness for its function, develops by the co-operation of
+these forces under the direction of Mind then present, or it so develops
+in the absence of Mind. If it develops in the absence of Mind, the
+hypothesis is given up; and if the "originating Mind" is required to be
+then and there present, we must suppose a particular providence to be
+present in each particular organ of each particular creature throughout
+the universe. Once more there is the question--If "His thought is
+related to them [these Forces] as, in Man, the mental force is related
+to all below it," how can "His thought" be regarded as the cause of
+Evolution? In man the mental force is related to the forces below it
+neither as a creator of them nor as a regulator of them, save in a very
+limited way: the greater part of the forces present in man, both
+structural and functional, defy the mental force absolutely. Nay, more,
+it needs but to injure a nerve to see that the power of the mental force
+over the physical forces is dependent on conditions which are themselves
+physical; and one who takes morphia in mistake for magnesia, discovers
+that the power of the physical forces over the mental is
+_un_conditioned by any thing mental.
+
+Not dwelling on these questions, however, I will merely draw attention
+to the entire incongruity of this conception with the previous
+conception which I have quoted. Assuming that, when the choice is
+pressed on him, Mr. Martineau will choose the first, which alone has any
+thing like defensibility, let us go on to ask how far Evolution is made
+more comprehensible by postulating Mind, universally immanent, as its
+cause.
+
+In metaphysical controversy, many of the propositions propounded and
+accepted as quite believable, are absolutely inconceivable. There is a
+perpetual confusing of actual ideas with what are nothing but
+pseud-ideas. No distinction is made between propositions that contain
+real thoughts, and propositions that are only the forms of thoughts. A
+thinkable proposition is one of which _the two terms can be brought
+together in consciousness under the relation said to exist between
+them_. But very often, when the subject of a proposition has been
+thought of as something known, and when the predicate has been thought
+of as something known, and when the relation alleged between them has
+been thought of as a known relation, it is supposed that the proposition
+itself has been thought. The thinking separately of the elements of a
+proposition is mistaken for the thinking of them in the combination
+which the proposition affirms. And hence it continually happens that
+propositions which cannot be rendered into thought at all, are supposed
+to be not only thought but believed. The proposition that Evolution is
+caused by Mind is one of this nature. The two terms are separately
+intelligible; but they can be regarded in the relation of effect and
+cause only so long as no attempt is made to put them together in this
+relation.
+
+The only thing which any one knows as Mind is the series of his own
+states of consciousness; and if he thinks of any mind other than his
+own, he can think of it only in terms derived from his own. If I am
+asked to frame a notion of Mind divested of all those structural traits
+under which alone I am conscious of mind in myself, I cannot do it. I
+know nothing of thought save as carried on in ideas originally traceable
+to the effects wrought by objects and forces on me. A mental act is an
+unintelligible phrase if I am not to regard it as an act in which states
+of consciousness are severally known as like other states in the series
+that has gone by, and in which the relations between them are severally
+known as like past relations in the series. If, then, I have to conceive
+Evolution as caused by an "originating Mind," I must conceive this Mind
+as having attributes akin to those of the only mind I know, and without
+which I cannot conceive Mind at all.
+
+I will not dwell on the many incongruities hence resulting, by asking
+how the "originating Mind" is to be thought of as having states produced
+by things objective to it; as discriminating among these states, and
+classing them as like and unlike; and as preferring one objective result
+to another. I will simply ask--What happens if we ascribe to the
+"originating Mind" the character absolutely essential to the conception
+of Mind, that it consists of a series of states of consciousness? Put a
+series of states of consciousness as cause, and the evolving Universe as
+effect, and then endeavor to see the last as flowing from the first. I
+find it possible to imagine in some dim way a series of states of
+consciousness serving as antecedent to any one of the movements I see
+going on; for my own states of consciousness are often indirectly the
+antecedents to such movements. But how if I attempt to think of such a
+series as antecedent to _all_ actions throughout the Universe--to the
+motions of the multitudinous stars through space, to the revolutions of
+all their planets round them, to the gyrations of all these planets on
+their axes, to the infinitely-multiplied physical processes going on in
+each of these suns and planets? I cannot think of a single series of
+states of consciousness as causing even the relatively small group of
+actions going on over the Earth's surface. I cannot think of it even as
+antecedent to all the various winds and the dissolving clouds they bear,
+to the currents of all the rivers, and the grinding actions of all the
+glaciers; still less can I think of it as antecedent to the infinity of
+processes simultaneously going on in all the plants that cover the
+globe, from scattered polar lichens to crowded tropical palms, and in
+all the millions of quadrupeds that roam among them, and the millions of
+millions of insects that buzz about them. Even to a single small set of
+these multitudinous terrestrial changes, I cannot conceive as antecedent
+a single series of states of consciousness--cannot, for instance, think
+of it as causing the hundred thousand breakers that are at this instant
+curling over on the shores of England. How, then, is it possible for me
+to conceive an "originating Mind," which I must represent to myself as a
+_single_ series of states of consciousness, working the
+infinitely-multiplied sets of changes _simultaneously_ going on in
+worlds too numerous to count, dispersed throughout a space that baffles
+imagination?
+
+If, to account for this infinitude of physical changes everywhere going
+on, "Mind must be conceived as there" "under the guise of simple
+Dynamics," then the reply is that, to be so conceived, Mind must be
+divested of all attributes by which it is distinguished; and that, when
+thus divested of its distinguishing attributes, the conception
+disappears--the word Mind stands for a blank. If Mr. Martineau takes
+refuge in the entirely different and, as it seems to me, incongruous
+hypothesis of something like a plurality of minds--if he accepts, as he
+seems to do, the doctrine that you cannot explain Evolution "unless
+among your primordial elements you scatter already the _germs_ of Mind
+as well as the inferior elements"--if the insuperable difficulties I
+have just pointed out are to be met by assuming a local series of states
+of consciousness for each phenomenon, then we are obviously carried
+back to something like the alleged fetichistic notion, with the
+difference only, that the assumed spiritual agencies are indefinitely
+multiplied.
+
+Clearly, therefore, the proposition that an "originating Mind" is the
+cause of Evolution, is a proposition that can be entertained so long
+only as no attempt is made to unite in thought its two terms in the
+alleged relation. That it should be accepted as a matter of _faith_, may
+be a defensible position, provided good cause is shown why it should be
+so accepted; but that it should be accepted as a matter of
+_understanding_--as a statement making the order of the universe
+comprehensible--is a quite indefensible position.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here let me guard myself against a misinterpretation very likely to be
+put upon the foregoing arguments; especially by those who have read the
+Essay to which they reply. The statements of that Essay carry the
+implication that all who adhere to the hypothesis it combats, imagine
+they have solved the mystery of things when they have shown the
+processes of Evolution to be naturally caused. Mr. Martineau tacitly
+represents them as believing that, when every thing has been interpreted
+in terms of Matter and Motion, nothing remains to be explained. This,
+however, is by no means the fact. The Doctrine of Evolution, under its
+purely scientific form, does not involve Materialism, though its
+opponents persistently represent it as doing so. Indeed, among adherents
+of it who are friends of mine, there are those who speak of the
+Materialism of Buechner and his school, with a contempt certainly not
+less than that felt by Mr. Martineau. To show how anti-materialistic my
+own view is, I may, perhaps, without impropriety, quote some out of many
+passages which I have written on the question elsewhere:
+
+     "Hence though of the two it seems easier to translate so-called
+     Matter into so-called Spirit, than to translate so-called Spirit
+     into so-called Matter (which latter is, indeed, wholly
+     impossible); yet no translation can carry us beyond our
+     symbols."[39]
+
+And again:
+
+     "See then our predicament. We can think of Matter only in terms of
+     Mind. We can think of Mind only in terms of Matter. When we have
+     pushed our explorations of the first to the uttermost limit, we are
+     referred to the second for a final answer; and, when we have got
+     the final answer of the second, we are referred back to the first
+     for an interpretation of it. We find the value of _x_ in terms of
+     _y_; then we find the value of _y_ in terms of _x_; and so on we
+     may continue forever without coming nearer to a solution. The
+     antithesis of subject and object, never to be transcended while
+     consciousness lasts, renders impossible all knowledge of that
+     Ultimate Reality in which subject and object are united."[40]
+
+It is thus, I think, manifest that the difference between Mr.
+Martineau's view and the view he opposes is by no means so wide as he
+makes it appear; and further, it seems to me that such difference as
+exists is rather the reverse of that indicated by his exposition.
+Briefly expressed, the difference is that, where he thinks there is no
+mystery, the doctrine he combats recognizes a mystery. Speaking for
+myself only, I may say that, agreeing entirely with Mr. Martineau in
+repudiating the materialistic interpretation as utterly futile, I differ
+from him simply in this, that while he says he has found another
+interpretation, I confess that I cannot find any interpretation; while
+he holds that he can understand the Power which is manifested in things,
+I feel obliged to admit, after many failures, that I cannot understand
+it. So that, in presence of the transcendent problem which the universe
+presents, Mr. Martineau regards the human intellect as capable, and I as
+incapable. This contrast does not appear to me of the kind which his
+Essay tacitly asserts. If there is such a thing as the "pride of
+Science," it is obviously exceeded by the pride of Theology. I fail to
+perceive humility in the belief that the human mind is able to
+comprehend that which is behind appearances; and I do not see how piety
+is especially exemplified in the assertion that the Universe contains
+no mode of existence higher in Nature than that which is present to us
+in consciousness. On the contrary, I think it quite a defensible
+proposition that humility is better shown by a confession of
+incompetence to grasp in thought the Cause of all things; and that the
+religious sentiment may find its highest sphere in the belief that the
+Ultimate Power is no more representable in terms of human consciousness
+than human consciousness is representable in terms of a plant's
+functions.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 37: _Principles of Biology_, §§ 159-168.]
+
+[Footnote 38: _First Principles_, second edition, § 97.]
+
+[Footnote 39: _Principles of Psychology_, second edition, vol. i., §
+63.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Ibid., § 272.]
+
+
+
+
+THE FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Nineteenth Century_, for April and May_,
+    1886.]
+
+
+I.
+
+Within the recollection of men now in middle life, opinion concerning
+the derivation of animals and plants was in a chaotic state. Among the
+unthinking there was tacit belief in creation by miracle, which formed
+an essential part of the creed of Christendom; and among the thinking
+there were two parties, each of which held an indefensible hypothesis.
+Immensely the larger of these parties, including nearly all whose
+scientific culture gave weight to their judgments, though not accepting
+literally the theologically-orthodox doctrine, made a compromise between
+that doctrine and the doctrines which geologists had established; while
+opposed to them were some, mostly having no authority in science, who
+held a doctrine which was heterodox both theologically and
+scientifically. Professor Huxley, in his lecture on "The Coming of Age
+of the Origin of Species," remarks concerning the first of these parties
+as follows:--
+
+     "One-and-twenty years ago, in spite of the work commenced by Hutton
+     and continued with rare skill and patience by Lyell, the dominant
+     view of the past history of the earth was catastrophic. Great and
+     sudden physical revolutions, wholesale creations and extinctions of
+     living beings, were the ordinary machinery of the geological epic
+     brought into fashion by the misapplied genius of Cuvier. It was
+     gravely maintained and taught that the end of every geological
+     epoch was signalised by a cataclysm, by which every living being on
+     the globe was swept away, to be replaced by a brand-new creation
+     when the world returned to quiescence. A scheme of nature which
+     appeared to be modelled on the likeness of a succession of rubbers
+     of whist, at the end of each of which the players upset the table
+     and called for a new pack, did not seem to shock anybody.
+
+     I may be wrong, but I doubt if, at the present time, there is a
+     single responsible representative of these opinions left. The
+     progress of scientific geology has elevated the fundament principle
+     of uniformitarianism, that the explanation of the past is to be
+     sought in the study of the present, into the position of an axiom;
+     and the wild speculations of the catastrophists, to which we all
+     listened with respect a quarter of a century ago, would hardly find
+     a single patient hearer at the present day."
+
+Of the party above referred to as not satisfied with this conception
+described by Professor Huxley, there were two classes. The great
+majority were admirers of the _Vestiges of the Natural History of
+Creation_--a work which, while it sought to show that organic evolution
+has taken place, contended that the cause of organic evolution, is "an
+impulse" supernaturally "imparted to the forms of life, advancing them,
+... through grades of organization." Being nearly all very inadequately
+acquainted with the facts, those who accepted the view set forth in the
+_Vestiges_ were ridiculed by the well-instructed for being satisfied
+with evidence, much of which was either invalid or easily cancelled by
+counter-evidence, and at the same time they exposed themselves to the
+ridicule of the more philosophical for being content with a supposed
+explanation which was in reality no explanation: the alleged "impulse"
+to advance giving us no more help in understanding the facts than does
+Nature's alleged "abhorrence of a vacuum" help us to understand the
+ascent of water in a pump. The remnant, forming the second of these
+classes, was very small. While rejecting this mere verbal solution,
+which both Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck had shadowed forth in other
+language, there were some few who, rejecting also the hypothesis
+indicated by both Dr. Darwin and Lamarck, that the promptings of desires
+or wants produced growths of the parts subserving them, accepted the
+single _vera causa_ assigned by these writers--the modification of
+structures resulting from modification of functions. They recognized
+as the sole process in organic development, the adaptation of parts and
+powers consequent on the effects of use and disuse--that continual
+moulding and re-moulding of organisms to suit their circumstances, which
+is brought about by direct converse with such circumstances.
+
+But while this cause accepted by these few is a true cause, since
+unquestionably during the life of the individual organism changes of
+function produce changes of structure; and while it is a tenable
+hypothesis that changes of structure so produced are inheritable; yet it
+was manifest to those not prepossessed, that this cause cannot with
+reason be assigned for the greater part of the facts. Though in plants
+there are some characters which may not irrationally be ascribed to the
+direct effects of modified functions consequent on modified
+circumstances, yet the majority of the traits presented by plants are
+not to be thus explained. It is impossible that the thorns by which a
+briar is in large measure defended against browsing animals, can have
+been developed and moulded by the continuous exercise of their
+protective actions; for in the first place, the great majority of the
+thorns are never touched at all, and, in the second place, we have no
+ground whatever for supposing that those which are touched are thereby
+made to grow, and to take those shapes which render them efficient.
+Plants which are rendered uneatable by the thick woolly coatings of
+their leaves, cannot have had these coatings produced by any process of
+reaction against the action of enemies; for there is no imaginable
+reason why, if one part of a plant is eaten, the rest should thereafter
+begin to develop the hairs on its surface. By what direct effect of
+function on structure, can the shell of a nut have been evolved? Or how
+can those seeds which contain essential oils, rendering them unpalatable
+to birds, have been made to secrete such essential oils by these actions
+of birds which they restrain? Or how can the delicate plumes borne by
+some seeds, and giving the wind power to waft them to new stations, be
+due to any immediate influences of surrounding conditions? Clearly in
+these and in countless other cases, change of structure cannot have been
+directly caused by change of function. So is it with animals to a large
+extent, if not to the same extent. Though we have proof that by rough
+usage the dermal layer may be so excited as to produce a greatly
+thickened epidermal layer, sometimes quite horny; and though it is a
+feasible hypothesis that an effect of this kind persistently produced
+may be inherited; yet no such cause can explain the carapace of the
+turtle, the armour of the armadillo, or the imbricated covering of the
+manis. The skins of these animals are no more exposed to habitual hard
+usage than are those of animals covered by hair. The strange
+excrescences which distinguish the heads of the hornbills, cannot
+possibly have arisen from any reaction against the action of surrounding
+forces; for even were they clearly protective, there is no reason to
+suppose that the heads of these birds need protection more than the
+heads of other birds. If, led by the evidence that in animals the amount
+of covering is in some cases affected by the degree of exposure, it were
+admitted as imaginable that the development of feathers from preceding
+dermal growths had resulted from that extra nutrition caused by extra
+superficial circulation, we should still be without explanation of the
+structure of a feather. Nor should we have any clue to the specialities
+of feathers--the crests of various birds, the tails sometimes so
+enormous, the curiously placed plumes of the bird of paradise, &c., &c.
+Still more obviously impossible is it to explain as due to use or disuse
+the colours of animals. No direct adaptation to function could have
+produced the blue protuberances on a mandril's face, or the striped hide
+of a tiger, or the gorgeous plumage of a kingfisher, or the eyes in a
+peacock's tail, or the multitudinous patterns of insects' wings. One
+single case, that of a deer's horns, might alone have sufficed to show
+how insufficient was the assigned cause. During their growth, a deer's
+horns are not used at all; and when, having been cleared of the dead
+skin and dried-up blood-vessels covering them, they are ready for use,
+they are nerveless and non-vascular, and hence are incapable of
+undergoing any changes of structure consequent on changes of function.
+
+Of these few then, who rejected the belief described by Professor
+Huxley, and who, espousing the belief in a continuous evolution, had to
+account for this evolution, it must be said that though the cause
+assigned was a true cause, yet, even admitting that it operated through
+successive generations, it left unexplained the greater part of the
+facts. Having been myself one of these few, I look back with surprise at
+the way in which the facts which were congruous with the espoused view
+monopolized consciousness and kept out the facts which were incongruous
+with it--conspicuous though many of them were. The misjudgment was not
+unnatural. Finding it impossible to accept any doctrine which implied a
+breach in the uniform course of natural causation, and, by implication,
+accepting as unquestionable the origin and development of all organic
+forms by accumulated modifications naturally caused, that which appeared
+to explain certain classes of these modifications, was supposed to be
+capable of explaining the rest: the tendency being to assume that these
+would eventually be similarly accounted for, though it was not clear
+how.
+
+Returning from this parenthetic remark, we are concerned here chiefly to
+remember that, as said at the outset, there existed thirty years ago, no
+tenable theory about the genesis of living things. Of the two
+alternative beliefs, neither would bear critical examination.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out of this dead lock we were released--in large measure, though not I
+believe entirely--by the _Origin of Species_. That work brought into
+view a further factor; or rather, such factor, recognized as in
+operation by here and there an observer (as pointed out by Mr. Darwin in
+his introduction to the second edition), was by him for the first time
+seen to have played so immense a part in the genesis of plants and
+animals.
+
+Though laying myself open to the charge of telling a thrice-told tale, I
+feel obliged here to indicate briefly the several great classes of facts
+which Mr. Darwin's hypothesis explains; because otherwise that which
+follows would scarcely be understood. And I feel the less hesitation in
+doing this because the hypothesis which it replaced, not very widely
+known at any time, has of late so completely dropped into the
+background, that the majority of readers are scarcely aware of its
+existence, and do not therefore understand the relation between Mr.
+Darwin's successful interpretation and the preceding unsuccessful
+attempt at interpretation. Of these classes of facts, four chief ones
+may be here distinguished.
+
+In the first place, such adjustments as those exemplified above are made
+comprehensible. Though it is inconceivable that a structure like that of
+the pitcher-plant could have been produced by accumulated effects of
+function on structure; yet it is conceivable that successive selections
+of favourable variations might have produced it; and the like holds of
+the no less remarkable appliance of the Venus's Fly-trap, or the still
+more astonishing one of that water-plant by which infant-fish are
+captured. Though it is impossible to imagine how, by direct influence of
+increased use, such dermal appendages as a porcupine's quills could have
+been developed; yet, profiting as the members of a species otherwise
+defenceless might do by the stiffness of their hairs, rendering them
+unpleasant morsels to eat, it is a feasible supposition that from
+successive survivals of individuals thus defended in the greatest
+degrees, and the consequent growth in successive generations of hairs
+into bristles, bristles into spines, spines into quills (for all these
+are homologous), this change could have arisen. In like manner, the odd
+inflatable bag of the bladder-nosed seal, the curious fishing-rod with
+its worm-like appendage carried on the head of the _lophius_ or angler,
+the spurs on the wings of certain birds, the weapons of the sword-fish
+and saw-fish, the wattles of fowls, and numberless such peculiar
+structures, though by no possibility explicable as due to effects of use
+or disuse, are explicable as resulting from natural selection operating
+in one or other way.
+
+In the second place, while showing us how there have arisen countless
+modifications in the forms, structures, and colours of each part, Mr.
+Darwin has shown us how, by the establishment of favourable variations,
+there may arise new parts. Though the first step in the production of
+horns on the heads of various herbivorous animals, may have been the
+growth of callosities consequent on the habit of butting--such
+callosities thus functionally initiated being afterwards developed in
+the most advantageous ways by selection; yet no explanation can be thus
+given of the sudden appearance of a duplicate set of horns, as
+occasionally happens in sheep: an addition which, where it proved
+beneficial, might readily be made a permanent trait by natural
+selection. Again, the modifications which follow use and disuse can by
+no possibility account for changes in the numbers of vertebræ; but after
+recognizing spontaneous, or rather fortuitous, variation as a factor, we
+can see that where an additional vertebra hence resulting (as in some
+pigeons) proves beneficial, survival of the fittest may make it a
+constant character; and there may, by further like additions, be
+produced extremely long strings of vertebræ, such as snakes show us.
+Similarly with the mammary glands. It is not an unreasonable supposition
+that by the effects of greater or less function, inherited through
+successive generations, these may be enlarged or diminished in size; but
+it is out of the question to allege such a cause for changes in their
+numbers. There is no imaginable explanation of these save the
+establishment by inheritance of spontaneous variations, such as are
+known to occur in the human race.
+
+So too, in the third place, with certain alterations in the connexions
+of parts. According to the greater or smaller demands made on this or
+that limb, the muscles moving it may be augmented or diminished in bulk;
+and, if there is inheritance of changes so wrought, the limb may, in
+course of generations, be rendered larger or smaller. But changes in the
+arrangements or attachments of muscles cannot be thus accounted for. It
+is found, especially at the extremities, that the relations of tendons
+to bones and to one another are not always the same. Variations in their
+modes of connexion may occasionally prove advantageous, and may thus
+become established. Here again, then, we have a class of structural
+changes to which Mr. Darwin's hypothesis gives us the key, and to which
+there is no other key.
+
+Once more there are the phenomena of mimicry. Perhaps in a more striking
+way than any others, these show how traits which seem inexplicable are
+explicable as due to the more frequent survival of individuals that have
+varied in favourable ways. We are enabled to understand such marvellous
+simulations as those of the leaf-insect, those of beetles which
+"resemble glittering dew-drops upon the leaves;" those of caterpillars
+which, when asleep, stretch themselves out so as to look like twigs. And
+we are shown how there have arisen still more astonishing
+imitations--those of one insect by another. As Mr. Bates has proved,
+there are cases in which a species of butterfly, rendered so unpalatable
+to insectivorous birds by its disagreeable taste that they will not
+catch it, is simulated in its colours and markings by a species which is
+structurally quite different--so simulated that even a practised
+entomologist is liable to be deceived: the explanation being that an
+original slight resemblance, leading to occasional mistakes on the part
+of birds, was increased generation after generation by the more frequent
+escape of the most-like individuals, until the likeness became thus
+great.
+
+But now, recognizing in full this process brought into clear view by Mr.
+Darwin, and traced out by him with so much care and skill, can we
+conclude that, taken alone, it accounts for organic evolution? Has the
+natural selection of favourable variations been the sole factor? On
+critically examining the evidence, we shall find reason to think that it
+by no means explains all that has to be explained. Omitting for the
+present any consideration of a factor which may be distinguished as
+primordial, it may be contended that the above-named factor alleged by
+Dr. Erasmus Darwin and by Lamarck, must be recognized as a co-operator.
+Utterly inadequate to explain the major part of the facts as is the
+hypothesis of the inheritance of functionally-produced modifications,
+yet there is a minor part of the facts, very extensive though less,
+which must be ascribed to this cause.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When discussing the question more than twenty years ago (_Principles of
+Biology_, § 166), I instanced the decreased size of the jaws in the
+civilized races of mankind, as a change not accounted for by the natural
+selection of favourable variations; since no one of the decrements by
+which, in thousands of years, this reduction has been effected, could
+have given to an individual in which it occurred, such advantage as
+would cause his survival, either through diminished cost of local
+nutrition or diminished weight to be carried. I did not then exclude, as
+I might have done, two other imaginable causes. It may be said that
+there is some organic correlation between increased size of brain and
+decreased size of jaw: Camper's doctrine of the facial angle being
+referred to in proof. But this argument may be met by pointing to the
+many examples of small-jawed people who are also small-brained, and by
+citing not infrequent cases of individuals remarkable for their mental
+powers, and at the same time distinguished by jaws not less than the
+average but greater. Again, if sexual selection be named as a possible
+cause, there is the reply that, even supposing such slight diminution of
+jaw as took place in a single generation to have been an attraction, yet
+the other incentives to choice on the part of men have been too many and
+great to allow this one to weigh in an adequate degree; while, during
+the greater portion of the period, choice on the part of women has
+scarcely operated: in earlier times they were stolen or bought, and in
+later times mostly coerced by parents. Thus, reconsideration of the
+facts does not show me the invalidity of the conclusion drawn, that this
+decrease in size of jaw can have had no other cause than continued
+inheritance of those diminutions consequent on diminutions of function,
+implied by the use of selected and well-prepared food. Here, however, my
+chief purpose is to add an instance showing, even more clearly, the
+connexion between change of function and change of structure. This
+instance, allied in nature to the other, is presented by those
+varieties, or rather sub-varieties, of dogs, which, having been
+household pets, and habitually fed on soft food, have not been called on
+to use their jaws in tearing and crunching, and have been but rarely
+allowed to use them in catching prey and in fighting. No inference can
+be drawn from the sizes of the jaws themselves, which, in these dogs,
+have probably been shortened mainly by selection. To get direct proof of
+the decrease of the muscles concerned in closing the jaws or biting,
+would require a series of observations very difficult to make. But it is
+not difficult to get indirect proof of this decrease by looking at the
+bony structures with which these muscles are connected. Examination of
+the skulls of sundry indoor dogs contained in the Museum of the College
+of Surgeons, proves the relative smallness of such parts. The only
+pug-dog's skull is that of an individual not perfectly adult; and though
+its traits are quite to the point they cannot with safety be taken as
+evidence. The skull of a toy-terrier has much restricted areas of
+insertion for the temporal muscles; has weak zygomatic arches; and has
+extremely small attachments for the masseter muscles. Still more
+significant is the evidence furnished by the skull of a King Charles's
+spaniel, which, if we allow three years to a generation, and bear in
+mind that the variety must have existed before Charles the Second's
+reign, we may assume belongs to something approaching to the hundredth
+generation of these household pets. The relative breadth between the
+outer surfaces of the zygomatic arches is conspicuously small; the
+narrowness of the temporal fossæ is also striking; the zygomata are very
+slender; the temporal muscles have left no marks whatever, either by
+limiting lines or by the character of the surfaces covered; and the
+places of attachment for the masseter muscles are very feebly developed.
+At the Museum of Natural History, among skulls of dogs there is one
+which, though unnamed, is shown by its small size and by its teeth, to
+have belonged to one variety or other of lap-dogs, and which has the
+same traits in an equal degree with the skull just described. Here,
+then, we have two if not three kinds of dogs which, similarly leading
+protected and pampered lives, show that in the course of generations the
+parts concerned in clenching the jaws have dwindled. To what cause must
+this decrease be ascribed? Certainly not to artificial selection; for
+most of the modifications named make no appreciable external signs: the
+width across the zygomata could alone be perceived. Neither can natural
+selection have had anything to do with it; for even were there any
+struggle for existence among such dogs, it cannot be contended that any
+advantage in the struggle could be gained by an individual in which a
+decrease took place. Economy of nutrition, too, is excluded. Abundantly
+fed as such dogs are, the constitutional tendency is to find places
+where excess of absorbed nutriment may be conveniently deposited, rather
+than to find places where some cutting down of the supplies is
+practicable. Nor again can there be alleged a possible correlation
+between these diminutions and that shortening of the jaws which has
+probably resulted from selection; for in the bull-dog, which has also
+relatively short jaws, these structures concerned in closing them are
+unusually large. Thus there remains as the only conceivable cause, the
+diminution of size which results from diminished use. The dwindling of a
+little-exercised part has, by inheritance, been made more and more
+marked in successive generations.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Difficulties of another class may next be exemplified--those which
+present themselves when we ask how there can be effected by the
+selection of favourable variations, such changes of structure as adapt
+an organism to some useful action in which many different parts
+co-operate. None can fail to see how a simple part may, in course of
+generations, be greatly enlarged, if each enlargement furthers, in some
+decided way, maintenance of the species. It is easy to understand, too,
+how a complex part, as an entire limb, may be increased as a whole by
+the simultaneous due increase of its co-operative parts; since if, while
+it is growing, the channels of supply bring to the limb an unusual
+quantity of blood, there will naturally result a proportionately greater
+size of all its components--bones, muscles, arteries, veins, &c. But
+though in cases like this, the co-operative parts forming some large
+complex part may be expected to vary together, nothing implies that they
+necessarily do so; and we have proof that in various cases, even when
+closely united, they do not do so. An example is furnished by those
+blind crabs named in the _Origin of Species_ which inhabit certain dark
+caves of Kentucky, and which, though they have lost their eyes, have
+not lost the foot-stalks which carried their eyes. In describing the
+varieties which have been produced by pigeon-fanciers, Mr. Darwin notes
+the fact that along with changes in length of beak produced by
+selection, there have not gone proportionate changes in length of
+tongue. Take again the case of teeth and jaws. In mankind these have not
+varied together. During civilization the jaws have decreased, but the
+teeth have not decreased in proportion; and hence that prevalent
+crowding of them, often remedied in childhood by extraction of some, and
+in other cases causing that imperfect development which is followed by
+early decay. But the absence of proportionate variation in co-operative
+parts that are close together, and are even bound up in the same mass,
+is best seen in those varieties of dogs named above as illustrating the
+inherited effects of disuse. We see in them, as we see in the human
+race, that diminution in the jaws has not been accompanied by
+corresponding diminution in the teeth. In the catalogue of the College
+of Surgeons Museum, there is appended to the entry which identifies a
+Blenheim Spaniel's skull, the words--"the teeth are closely crowded
+together," and to the entry concerning the skull of a King Charles's
+Spaniel the words--"the teeth are closely packed, p. 3, is placed quite
+transversely to the axis of the skull." It is further noteworthy that in
+a case where there is no diminished use of the jaws, but where they have
+been shortened by selection, a like want of concomitant variation is
+manifested: the case being that of the bull-dog, in the upper jaw of
+which also, "the premolars ... are excessively crowded, and placed
+obliquely or even transversely to the long axis of the skull."[41]
+
+If, then, in cases where we can test it, we find no concomitant
+variation in co-operative parts that are near together--if we do not
+find it in parts which, though belonging to different tissues, are so
+closely united as teeth and jaws--if we do not find it even when the
+co-operative parts are not only closely united, but are formed out of
+the same tissue, like the crab's eye and its peduncle; what shall we say
+of co-operative parts which, besides being composed of different
+tissues, are remote from one another? Not only are we forbidden to
+assume that they vary together, but we are warranted in asserting that
+they can have no tendency to vary together. And what are the
+implications in cases where increase of a structure can be of no service
+unless there is concomitant increase in many distant structures, which
+have to join it in performing the action for which it is useful?
+
+As far back as 1864 (_Principles of Biology_, § 166) I named in
+illustration an animal carrying heavy horns--the extinct Irish elk; and
+indicated the many changes in bones, muscles, blood-vessels, nerves,
+composing the fore-part of the body, which would be required to make an
+increment of size in such horns advantageous. Here let me take another
+instance--that of the giraffe: an instance which I take partly because,
+in the sixth edition of the _Origin of Species_, issued in 1872, Mr.
+Darwin has referred to this animal when effectually disposing of certain
+arguments urged against his hypothesis. He there says:--
+
+     "In order that an animal should acquire some structure specially
+     and largely developed, it is almost indispensable that several
+     other parts should be modified and co-adapted. Although every part
+     of the body varies slightly, it does not follow that the necessary
+     parts should always vary in the right direction and to the right
+     degree" (p. 179).
+
+And in the summary of the chapter, he remarks concerning the adjustments
+in the same quadruped, that "the prolonged use of all the parts together
+with inheritance will have aided in an important manner in their
+co-ordination" (p. 199): a remark probably having reference chiefly to
+the increased massiveness of the lower part of the neck; the increased
+size and strength of the thorax required to bear the additional burden;
+and the increased strength of the fore-legs required to carry the
+greater weight of both. But now I think that further consideration
+suggests the belief that the entailed modifications are much more
+numerous and remote than at first appears; and that the greater part of
+these are such as cannot be ascribed in any degree to the selection of
+favourable variations, but must be ascribed exclusively to the inherited
+effects of changed functions. Whoever has seen a giraffe gallop will
+long remember the sight as a ludicrous one. The reason for the
+strangeness of the motions is obvious. Though the fore limbs and the
+hind limbs differ so much in length, yet in galloping they have to keep
+pace--must take equal strides. The result is that at each stride, the
+angle which the hind limbs describe round their centre of motion is much
+larger than the angle described by the fore limbs. And beyond this, as
+an aid in equalizing the strides, the hind part of the back is at each
+stride bent very much downwards and forwards. Hence the hind-quarters
+appear to be doing nearly all the work. Now a moment's observation shows
+that the bones and muscles composing the hind-quarters of the giraffe,
+perform actions differing in one or other way and degree, from the
+actions performed by the homologous bones and muscles in a mammal of
+ordinary proportions, and from those in the ancestral mammal which gave
+origin to the giraffe. Each further stage of that growth which produced
+the large fore-quarters and neck, entailed some adapted change in sundry
+of the numerous parts composing the hind-quarters; since any failure in
+the adjustment of their respective strengths would entail some defect in
+speed and consequent loss of life when chased. It needs but to remember
+how, when continuing to walk with a blistered foot, the taking of steps
+in such a modified way as to diminish pressure on the sore point, soon
+produces aching of muscles which are called into unusual action, to see
+that over-straining of any one of the muscles of the giraffe's
+hind-quarters might quickly incapacitate the animal when putting out all
+its powers to escape; and to be a few yards behind others would cause
+death. Hence if we are debarred from assuming that co-operative parts
+vary together even when adjacent and closely united--if we are still
+more debarred from assuming that with increased length of fore-legs or
+of neck, there will go an appropriate change in any one muscle or bone
+in the hind-quarters; how entirely out of the question it is to assume
+that there will simultaneously take place the appropriate changes in
+_all_ those many components of the hind-quarters which severally require
+re-adjustment. It is useless to reply that an increment of length in the
+fore-legs or neck might be retained and transmitted to posterity,
+waiting an appropriate variation in a particular bone or muscle in the
+hind-quarters, which, being made, would allow of a further increment.
+For besides the fact that until this secondary variation occurred the
+primary variation would be a disadvantage often fatal; and besides the
+fact that before such an appropriate secondary variation might be
+expected in the course of generations to occur, the primary variation
+would have died out; there is the fact that the appropriate variation of
+one bone or muscle in the hind-quarters would be useless without
+appropriate variations of all the rest--some in this way and some in
+that--a number of appropriate variations which it is impossible to
+suppose.
+
+Nor is this all. Far more numerous appropriate variations would be
+indirectly necessitated. The immense change in the ratio of
+fore-quarters to hind-quarters would make requisite a corresponding
+change of ratio in the appliances carrying on the nutrition of the two.
+The entire vascular system, arterial and veinous, would have to undergo
+successive unbuildings and rebuildings to make its channels everywhere
+adequate to the local requirements; since any want of adjustment in the
+blood-supply in this or that set of muscles, would entail incapacity,
+failure of speed, and loss of life. Moreover the nerves supplying the
+various sets of muscles would have to be proportionately changed; as
+well as the central nervous tracts from which they issued. Can we
+suppose that all these appropriate changes, too, would be step by step
+simultaneously made by fortunate spontaneous variations, occurring along
+with all the other fortunate spontaneous variations? Considering how
+immense must be the number of these required changes, added to the
+changes above enumerated, the chances against any adequate
+re-adjustments fortuitously arising must be infinity to one.
+
+If the effects of use and disuse of parts are inheritable, then any
+change in the fore parts of the giraffe which affects the action of the
+hind limbs and back, will simultaneously cause, by the greater or less
+exercise of it, a re-moulding of each component in the hind limbs and
+back in a way adapted to the new demands; and generation after
+generation the entire structure of the hind-quarters will be
+progressively fitted to the changed structure of the fore-quarters: all
+the appliances for nutrition and innervation being at the same time
+progressively fitted to both. But in the absence of this inheritance of
+functionally-produced modifications, there is no seeing how the required
+re-adjustments can be made.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet a third class of difficulties stands in the way of the belief that
+the natural selection of useful variations is the sole factor of organic
+evolution. This class of difficulties, already pointed out in § 166 of
+the _Principles of Biology_, I cannot more clearly set forth than in the
+words there used. Hence I may perhaps be excused for here quoting them.
+
+     "Where the life is comparatively simple, or where surrounding
+     circumstances render some one function supremely important, the
+     survival of the fittest may readily bring about the appropriate
+     structural change, without any aid from the transmission of
+     functionally-acquired modifications. But in proportion as the life
+     grows complex--in proportion as a healthy existence cannot be
+     secured by a large endowment of some one power, but demands many
+     powers; in the same proportion do there arise obstacles to the
+     increase of any particular power, by 'the preservation of favoured
+     races in the struggle for life.' As fast as the faculties are
+     multiplied, so fast does it become possible for the several members
+     of a species to have various kinds of superiorities over one
+     another. While one saves its life by higher speed, another does the
+     like by clearer vision, another by keener scent, another by quicker
+     hearing, another by greater strength, another by unusual power of
+     enduring cold or hunger, another by special sagacity, another by
+     special timidity, another by special courage; and others by other
+     bodily and mental attributes. Now it is unquestionably true that,
+     other things equal, each of these attributes, giving its possessor
+     an extra chance of life, is likely to be transmitted to posterity.
+     But there seems no reason to suppose that it will be increased in
+     subsequent generations by natural selection. That it may be thus
+     increased, the individuals not possessing more than average
+     endowments of it, must be more frequently killed off than
+     individuals highly endowed with it; and this can happen only when
+     the attribute is one of greater importance, for the time being,
+     than most of the other attributes. If those members of the species
+     which have but ordinary shares of it, nevertheless survive by
+     virtue of other superiorities which they severally possess; then it
+     is not easy to see how this particular attribute can be developed
+     by natural selection in subsequent generations. The probability
+     seems rather to be, that by gamogenesis, this extra endowment will,
+     on the average, be diminished in posterity--just serving in the
+     long run to compensate the deficient endowments of other
+     individuals, whose special powers lie in other directions; and so
+     to keep up the normal structure of the species. The working out of
+     the process is here somewhat difficult to follow; but it appears to
+     me that as fast as the number of bodily and mental faculties
+     increases, and as fast as the maintenance of life comes to depend
+     less on the amount of any one, and more on the combined action of
+     all; so fast does the production of specialities of character by
+     natural selection alone, become difficult. Particularly does this
+     seem to be so with a species so multitudinous in its powers as
+     mankind; and above all does it seem to be so with such of the human
+     powers as have but minor shares in aiding the struggle for
+     life--the æsthetic faculties, for example."
+
+Dwelling for a moment on this last illustration of the class of
+difficulties described, let us ask how we are to interpret the
+development of the musical faculty. I will not enlarge on the family
+antecedents of the great composers. I will merely suggest the inquiry
+whether the greater powers possessed by Beethoven and Mozart, by Weber
+and Rossini, than by their fathers, were not due in larger measure to
+the inherited effects of daily exercise of the musical faculty by their
+fathers, than to inheritance, with increase, of spontaneous variations;
+and whether the diffused musical powers of the Bach clan, culminating in
+those of Johann Sebastian, did not result in part from constant
+practice; but I will raise the more general question--How came there
+that endowment of musical faculty which characterizes modern Europeans
+at large, as compared with their remote ancestors. The monotonous chants
+of low savages cannot be said to show any melodic inspiration; and it is
+not evident that an individual savage who had a little more musical
+perception than the rest, would derive any such advantage in the
+maintenance of life as would secure the spread of his superiority by
+inheritance of the variation. And then what are we to say of harmony? We
+cannot suppose that the appreciation of this, which is relatively
+modern, can have arisen by descent from the men in whom successive
+variations increased the appreciation of it--the composers and musical
+performers; for on the whole, these have been men whose worldly
+prosperity was not such as enabled them to rear many children inheriting
+their special traits. Even if we count the illegitimate ones, the
+survivors of these added to the survivors of the legitimate ones, can
+hardly be held to have yielded more than average numbers of descendants;
+and those who inherited their special traits have not often been thereby
+so aided in the struggle for existence as to further the spread of such
+traits. Rather the tendency seems to have been the reverse.
+
+Since the above passage was written, I have found in the second volume
+of _Animals and Plants under Domestication_, a remark made by Mr.
+Darwin, practically implying that among creatures which depend for their
+lives on the efficiency of numerous powers, the increase of any one by
+the natural selection of a variation is necessarily difficult. Here it
+is.
+
+     "Finally, as indefinite and almost illimitable variability is the
+     usual result of domestication and cultivation, with the same part
+     or organ varying in different individuals in different or even in
+     directly opposite ways; and as the same variation, if strongly
+     pronounced, usually recurs only after long intervals of time, any
+     particular variation would generally be lost by crossing,
+     reversion, and the accidental destruction of the varying
+     individuals, unless carefully preserved by man."--Vol. ii, 292.
+
+Remembering that mankind, subject as they are to this domestication and
+cultivation, are not, like domesticated animals, under an agency which
+picks out and preserves particular variations; it results that there
+must usually be among them, under the influence of natural selection
+alone, a continual disappearance of any useful variations of particular
+faculties which may arise. Only in cases of variations which are
+specially preservative, as for example, great cunning during a
+relatively barbarous state, can we expect increase from natural
+selection alone. We cannot suppose that minor traits, exemplified among
+others by the æsthetic perceptions, can have been evolved by natural
+selection. But if there is inheritance of functionally-produced
+modifications of structure, evolution of such minor traits is no longer
+inexplicable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two remarks made by Mr. Darwin have implications from which the same
+general conclusion must, I think, be drawn. Speaking of the variability
+of animals and plants under domestication, he says:--
+
+     "Changes of any kind in the conditions of life, even extremely
+     slight changes, often suffice to cause variability.... Animals and
+     plants continue to be variable for an immense period after their
+     first domestication; ... In the course of time they can be
+     habituated to certain changes, so as to become less variable; ...
+     There is good evidence that the power of changed conditions
+     accumulates; so that two, three, or more generations must be
+     exposed to new conditions before any effect is visible.... Some
+     variations are induced by the direct action of the surrounding
+     conditions on the whole organization, or on certain parts alone,
+     and other variations are induced indirectly through the
+     reproductive system being affected in the same manner as is so
+     common with organic beings when removed from their natural
+     conditions."--(_Animals and Plants under Domestication_, vol. ii,
+     270.)
+
+There are to be recognized two modes of this effect produced by changed
+conditions on the reproductive system, and consequently on offspring.
+Simple arrest of development is one. But beyond the variations of
+offspring arising from imperfectly developed reproductive systems in
+parents--variations which must be ordinarily in the nature of
+imperfections--there are others due to a changed balance of functions
+caused by changed conditions. The fact noted by Mr. Darwin in the above
+passage, "that the power of changed conditions accumulates; so that two,
+three, or more generations must be exposed to new conditions before any
+effect is visible," implies that during these generations there is going
+on some change of constitution consequent on the changed proportions and
+relations of the functions. I will not dwell on the implication, which
+seems tolerably clear, that this change must consist of such
+modifications of organs as adapt them to their changed functions; and
+that if the influence of changed conditions "accumulates," it must be
+through the inheritance of such modifications. Nor will I press the
+question--What is the nature of the effect registered in the
+reproductive elements, and which is subsequently manifested by
+variations?--Is it an effect entirely irrelevant to the new requirements
+of the variety?--Or is it an effect which makes the variety less fit for
+the new requirements?--Or is it an effect which makes it more fit for
+the new requirements? But not pressing these questions, it suffices to
+point out the necessary implication that changed functions of organs
+_do_, in some way or other, register themselves in changed proclivities
+of the reproductive elements. In face of these facts it cannot be denied
+that the modified action of a part produces an inheritable effect--be
+the nature of that effect what it may.
+
+The second of the remarks above adverted to as made by Mr. Darwin, is
+contained in his sections dealing with correlated variations. In the
+_Origin of Species_, p. 114, he says--
+
+     "The whole organization is so tied together during its growth and
+     development, that when slight variations in any one part occur, and
+     are accumulated through natural selection, other parts become
+     modified."
+
+And a parallel statement contained in _Animals and Plants under
+Domestication_, vol. ii, p. 320, runs thus--
+
+     "Correlated variation is an important subject for us; for when one
+     part is modified through continued selection, either by man or
+     under nature, other parts of the organization will be unavoidably
+     modified. From this correlation it apparently follows that, with
+     our domesticated animals and plants, varieties rarely or never
+     differ from each other by some single character alone."
+
+By what process does a changed part modify other parts? By modifying
+their functions in some way or degree, seems the necessary answer. It is
+indeed, imaginable, that where the part changed is some dermal appendage
+which, becoming larger, has abstracted more of the needful material from
+the general stock, the effect may consist simply in diminishing the
+amount of this material available for other dermal appendages, leading
+to diminution of some or all of them, and may fail to affect in
+appreciable ways the rest of the organism: save perhaps the
+blood-vessels near the enlarged appendage. But where the part is an
+active one--a limb, or viscus, or any organ which constantly demands
+blood, produces waste matter, secretes, or absorbs--then all the other
+active organs become implicated in the change. The functions performed
+by them have to constitute a moving equilibrium; and the function of one
+cannot, by alteration of the structure performing it, be modified in
+degree or kind, without modifying the functions of the rest--some
+appreciably and others inappreciably, according to the directness or
+indirectness of their relations. Of such inter-dependent changes, the
+normal ones are naturally inconspicuous; but those which are partially
+or completely abnormal, sufficiently carry home the general truth. Thus,
+unusual cerebral excitement affects the excretion through the kidneys in
+quantity or quality or both. Strong emotions of disagreeable kinds check
+or arrest the flow of bile. A considerable obstacle to the circulation
+offered by some important structure in a diseased or disordered state,
+throwing more strain upon the heart, causes hypertrophy of its muscular
+walls; and this change which is, so far as concerns the primary evil, a
+remedial one, often entails mischiefs in other organs. "Apoplexy and
+palsy, in a scarcely credible number of cases, are directly dependent on
+hypertrophic enlargement of the heart." And in other cases, asthma,
+dropsy, and epilepsy are caused. Now if a result of this
+inter-dependence as seen in the individual organism, is that a local
+modification of one part produces, by changing their functions,
+correlative modifications of other parts, then the question here to be
+put is--Are these correlative modifications, when of a kind falling
+within normal limits, inheritable or not. If they are inheritable, then
+the fact stated by Mr. Darwin that "when one part is modified through
+continued selection," "other parts of the organization will be
+unavoidably modified" is perfectly intelligible: these entailed
+secondary modifications are transmitted _pari passu_ with the successive
+modifications produced by selection. But what if they are not
+inheritable? Then these secondary modifications caused in the
+individual, not being transmitted to descendants, the descendants must
+commence life with organizations out of balance, and with each increment
+of change in the part affected by selection, their organizations must
+get more out of balance--must have a larger and larger amounts of
+re-organization to be made during their lives. Hence the constitution of
+the variety must become more and more unworkable.
+
+The only imaginable alternative is that the re-adjustments are effected
+in course of time by natural selection. But, in the first place, as we
+find no proof of concomitant variation among directly co-operative parts
+which are closely united, there cannot be assumed any concomitant
+variation among parts which are both indirectly co-operative and far
+from one another. And, in the second place, before all the many
+required re-adjustments could be made, the variety would die out from
+defective constitution. Even were there no such difficulty, we should
+still have to entertain a strange group of propositions, which would
+stand as follows:--1. Change in one part entails, by reaction on the
+organism, changes, in other parts, the functions of which are
+necessarily changed. 2. Such changes worked in the individual, affect,
+in some way, the reproductive elements: these being found to evolve
+unusual structures when the constitutional balance has been continuously
+disturbed. 3. But the changes in the reproductive elements thus caused,
+are not such as represent these functionally-produced changes: the
+modifications conveyed to offspring are irrelevant to these various
+modifications functionally produced in the organs of the parents. 4.
+Nevertheless, while the balance of functions cannot be re-established
+through inheritance of the effects of disturbed functions on structures,
+wrought throughout the individual organism; it can be re-established by
+the inheritance of fortuitous variations which occur in all the affected
+organs without reference to these changes of function.
+
+Now without saying that acceptance of this group of propositions is
+impossible, we may certainly say that it is not easy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"But where are the direct proofs that inheritance of
+functionally-produced modifications takes place?" is a question which
+will be put by those who have committed themselves to the current
+exclusive interpretation. "Grant that there are difficulties; still,
+before the transmitted effects of use and disuse can be legitimately
+assigned in explanation of them, we must have good evidence that the
+effects of use and disuse _are_ transmitted."
+
+Before dealing directly with this demurrer, let me deal with it
+indirectly, by pointing out that the lack of recognized evidence may be
+accounted for without assuming that there is not plenty of it.
+Inattention and reluctant attention lead to the ignoring of facts which
+really exist in abundance; as is well illustrated in the case of
+pre-historic implements. Biassed by the current belief that no traces of
+man were to be found on the Earth's surface, save in certain superficial
+formations of very recent date, geologists and anthropologists not only
+neglected to seek such traces, but for a long time continued to
+pooh-pooh those who said they had found them. When M. Boucher de Perthes
+at length succeeded in drawing the eyes of scientific men to the flint
+implements discovered by him in the quarternary deposits of the Somme
+valley; and when geologists and anthropologists had thus been convinced
+that evidences of human existence were to be found in formations of
+considerable age, and thereafter began to search for them; they found
+plenty of them all over the world. Or again, to take an instance closely
+germane to the matter, we may recall the fact that the contemptuous
+attitude towards the hypothesis of organic evolution which naturalists
+in general maintained before the publication of Mr. Darwin's work,
+prevented them from seeing the multitudinous facts by which it is
+supported. Similarly, it is very possible that their alienation from the
+belief that there is a transmission of those changes of structure which
+are produced by changes of action, makes naturalists slight the evidence
+which supports that belief and refuse to occupy themselves in seeking
+further evidence.
+
+If it be asked how it happens that there have been recorded
+multitudinous instances of variations fortuitously arising and
+re-appearing in offspring, while there have not been recorded instances
+of the transmission of changes functionally produced, there are three
+replies. The first is that changes of the one class are many of them
+conspicuous, while those of the other class are nearly all
+inconspicuous. If a child is born with six fingers, the anomaly is not
+simply obvious but so startling as to attract much notice; and if this
+child, growing up, has six-fingered descendents, everybody in the
+locality hears of it. A pigeon with specially-coloured feathers, or one
+distinguished by a broadened and upraised tail, or by a protuberance of
+the neck, draws attention by its oddness; and if in its young the trait
+is repeated, occasionally with increase, the fact is remarked, and there
+follows the thought of establishing the peculiarity by selection. A lamb
+disabled from leaping by the shortness of its legs, could not fail to be
+observed; and the fact that its offspring were similarly short-legged,
+and had a consequent inability to get over fences, would inevitably
+become widely known. Similarly with plants. That this flower had an
+extra number of petals, that that was unusually symmetrical, and that
+another differed considerably in colour from the average of its kind,
+would be easily seen by an observant gardener; and the suspicion that
+such anomalies are inheritable having arisen, experiments leading to
+further proofs that they are so, would frequently be made. But it is not
+thus with functionally-produced modifications. The seats of these are in
+nearly all cases the muscular, osseous, and nervous systems, and the
+viscera--parts which are either entirely hidden or greatly obscured.
+Modification in a nervous centre is inaccessible to vision; bones may be
+considerably altered in size or shape without attention being drawn to
+them; and, covered with thick coats as are most of the animals open to
+continuous observation, the increases or decreases in muscles must be
+great before they become externally perceptible.
+
+A further important difference between the two inquiries is that to
+ascertain whether a fortuitous variation is inheritable, needs merely a
+little attention to the selection of individuals and the observation of
+offspring; while to ascertain whether there is inheritance of a
+functionally-produced modification, it is requisite to make arrangements
+which demand the greater or smaller exercise of some part or parts;
+and it is difficult in many cases to find such arrangements, troublesome
+to maintain them even for one generation, and still more through
+successive generations.
+
+Nor is this all. There exist stimuli to inquiry in the one case which do
+not exist in the other. The money-interest and the interest of the
+fancier, acting now separately and now together, have prompted
+multitudinous individuals to make experiments which have brought out
+clear evidence that fortuitous variations are inherited. The
+cattle-breeders who profit by producing certain shapes and qualities;
+the keepers of pet animals who take pride in the perfections of those
+they have bred; the florists, professional and amateur, who obtain new
+varieties and take prizes; form a body of men who furnish naturalists
+with countless of the required proofs. But there is no such body of men,
+led either by pecuniary interest or the interest of a hobby, to
+ascertain by experiments whether the effects of use and disuse are
+inheritable.
+
+Thus, then, there are amply sufficient reasons why there is a great deal
+of direct evidence in the one case and but little in the other: such
+little being that which comes out incidentally. Let us look at what
+there is of it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Considerable weight attaches to a fact which Brown-Séquard discovered,
+quite by accident, in the course of his researches. He found that
+certain artificially-produced lesions of the nervous system, so small
+even as a section of the sciatic nerve, left, after healing, an
+increasing excitability which ended in liability to epilepsy; and there
+afterwards came out the unlooked-for result that the offspring of
+guinea-pigs which had thus acquired an epileptic habit such that a pinch
+on the neck would produce a fit, inherited an epileptic habit of like
+kind. It has, indeed, been since alleged that guinea pigs tend to
+epilepsy, and that phenomena of the kind described, occur where there
+have been no antecedents like those in Brown-Séquard's case. But
+considering the improbability that the phenomena observed by him
+happened to be nothing more than phenomena which occasionally arise
+naturally, we may, until there is good proof to the contrary, assign
+some value to his results.
+
+Evidence not of this directly experimental kind, but nevertheless of
+considerable weight, is furnished by other nervous disorders. There is
+proof enough that insanity admits of being induced by circumstances
+which, in one or other way, derange the nervous functions--excesses of
+this or that kind; and no one questions the accepted belief that
+insanity is inheritable. Is it alleged that the insanity which is
+inheritable is that which spontaneously arises, and that the insanity
+which follows some chronic perversion of functions is not inheritable?
+This does not seem a very reasonable allegation; and until some warrant
+for it is forthcoming, we may fairly assume that there is here a further
+support for belief in the transmission of functionally-produced changes.
+
+Moreover, I find among physicians the belief that nervous disorders of a
+less severe kind are inheritable. Men who have prostrated their nervous
+systems by prolonged overwork or in some other way, have children more
+or less prone to nervousness. It matters not what may be the form of
+inheritance--whether it be of a brain in some way imperfect, or of a
+deficient blood-supply; it is in any case the inheritance of
+functionally-modified structures.
+
+Verification of the reasons above given for the paucity of this direct
+evidence, is yielded by contemplation of it; for it is observable that
+the cases named are cases which, from one or other cause, have thrust
+themselves on observation. They justify the suspicion that it is not
+because such cases are rare that many of them cannot be cited; but
+simply because they are mostly unobtrusive, and to be found only by that
+deliberate search which nobody makes. I say nobody, but I am wrong.
+Successful search has been made by one whose competence as an observer
+is beyond question, and whose testimony is less liable than that of all
+others to any bias towards the conclusion that such inheritance takes
+place. I refer to the author of the _Origin of Species_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now-a-days most naturalists are more Darwinian than Mr. Darwin himself.
+I do not mean that their beliefs in organic evolution are more decided;
+though I shall be supposed to mean this by the mass of readers, who
+identify Mr. Darwin's great contribution to the theory of organic
+evolution, with the theory of organic evolution itself, and even with
+the theory of evolution at large. But I mean that the particular factor
+which he first recognized as having played so immense a part in organic
+evolution, has come to be regarded by his followers as the sole factor,
+though it was not so regarded by him. It is true that he apparently
+rejected altogether the causal agencies alleged by earlier inquirers. In
+the Historical Sketch prefixed to the later editions of his _Origin of
+Species_ (p. xiv, note), he writes:--"It is curious how largely my
+grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and erroneous
+grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his 'Zoonomia' (vol. i, pp. 500-510),
+published in 1794." And since, among the views thus referred to, was the
+view that changes of structure in organisms arise by the inheritance of
+functionally-produced changes, Mr. Darwin seems, by the above sentence,
+to have implied his disbelief in such inheritance. But he did not mean
+to imply this; for his belief in it as a cause of evolution, if not an
+important cause, is proved by many passages in his works. In the first
+chapter of the _Origin of Species_ (p. 8 of the sixth edition), he says
+respecting the inherited effects of habit, that "with animals the
+increased use or disuse of parts has had a more marked influence;" and
+he gives as instances the changed relative weights of the wing bones and
+leg bones of the wild duck and the domestic duck, "the great and
+inherited development of the udders in cows and goats," and the drooping
+ears of various domestic animals. Here are other passages taken from the
+latest edition of the work.
+
+     "I think there can be no doubt that use in our domestic animals has
+     strengthened and enlarged certain parts, and disuse diminished
+     them; and that such modifications are inherited" (p. 108). [And on
+     the following pages he gives five further examples of such
+     effects.] "Habit in producing constitutional peculiarities and use
+     in strengthening and disuse in weakening and diminishing organs,
+     appear in many cases to have been potent in their effects" (p.
+     131). "When discussing special cases, Mr. Mivart passes over the
+     effects of the increased use and disuse of parts, which I have
+     always maintained to be highly important, and have treated in my
+     'Variation under Domestication' at greater length than, as I
+     believe, any other writer" (p. 176). "Disuse, on the other hand,
+     will account for the less developed condition of the whole inferior
+     half of the body, including the lateral fins" (p. 188). "I may give
+     another instance of a structure which apparently owes its origin
+     exclusively to use or habit" (p. 188). "It appears probable that
+     disuse has been the main agent in rendering organs rudimentary"
+     (pp. 400-401). "On the whole, we may conclude that habit, or use
+     and disuse, have, in some cases, played a considerable part in the
+     modification of the constitution and structure; but that the
+     effects have often been largely combined with, and sometimes
+     overmastered by, the natural selection of innate variations" (p.
+     114).
+
+In his subsequent work, _The Variation of Animals and Plants under
+Domestication_, where he goes into full detail, Mr. Darwin gives more
+numerous illustrations of the inherited effects of use and disuse. The
+following are some of the cases, quoted from volume i of the first
+edition.
+
+     Treating of domesticated rabbits, he says:--"the want of exercise
+     has apparently modified the proportional length of the limbs in
+     comparison with the body" (p. 116). "We thus see that the most
+     important and complicated organ [the brain] in the whole
+     organization is subject to the law of decrease in size from disuse"
+     (p. 129). He remarks that in birds of the oceanic islands "not
+     persecuted by any enemies, the reduction of their wings has
+     probably been caused by gradual disuse." After comparing one of
+     these, the water-hen of Tristan d'Acunha, with the European
+     water-hen, and showing that all the bones concerned in flight are
+     smaller, he adds--"Hence in the skeleton of this natural species
+     nearly the same changes have occurred, only carried a little
+     further, as with our domestic ducks, and in this latter case I
+     presume no one will dispute that they have resulted from the
+     lessened use of the wings and the increased use of the legs" (pp.
+     286-7). "As with other long-domesticated animals, the instincts of
+     the silk-moth have suffered. The caterpillars, when placed on a
+     mulberry-tree, often commit the strange mistake of devouring the
+     base of the leaf on which they are feeding, and consequently fall
+     down; but they are capable, according to M. Robinet, of again
+     crawling up the trunk. Even this capacity sometimes fails, for M.
+     Martins placed some caterpillars on a tree, and those which fell
+     were not able to remount and perished of hunger; they were even
+     incapable of passing from leaf to leaf" (p. 304).
+
+Here are some instances of like meaning from volume ii.
+
+     "In many cases there is reason to believe that the lessened use of
+     various organs has affected the corresponding parts in the
+     offspring. But there is no good evidence that this ever follows in
+     the course of a single generation.... Our domestic fowls, ducks,
+     and geese have almost lost, not only in the individual but in the
+     race, their power of flight; for we do not see a chicken, when
+     frightened, take flight like a young pheasant.... With domestic
+     pigeons, the length of the sternum, the prominence of its crest,
+     the length of the scapulæ and furcula, the length of the wings as
+     measured from tip to tip of the radius, are all reduced relatively
+     to the same parts in the wild pigeon." [After detailing kindred
+     diminutions in fowls and ducks, Mr. Darwin adds] "The decreased
+     weight and size of the bones, in the foregoing cases, is probably
+     the indirect result of the reaction of the weakened muscles on the
+     bones" (pp. 297-8). "Nathusius has shown that, with the improved
+     races of the pig, the shortened legs and snout, the form of the
+     articular condyles of the occiput, and the position of the jaws
+     with the upper canine teeth projecting in a most anomalous manner
+     in front of the lower canines, may be attributed to these parts not
+     having been fully exercised.... These modifications of structure,
+     which are all strictly inherited, characterise several improved
+     breeds, so that they cannot have been derived from any single
+     domestic or wild stock. With respect to cattle, Professor Tanner
+     has remarked that the lungs and liver in the improved breeds 'are
+     found to be considerably reduced in size when compared with those
+     possessed by animals having perfect liberty;' ... The cause of the
+     reduced lungs in highly-bred animals which take little exercise is
+     obvious" (pp. 299-300). [And on pp. 301, 302 and 303, he gives
+     facts showing the effects of use and disuse in changing, among
+     domestic animals, the characters of the ears, the lengths of the
+     intestines, and, in various ways, the natures of the instincts.]
+
+But Mr. Darwin's admission, or rather his assertion, that the
+inheritance of functionally-produced modifications has been a factor in
+organic evolution, is made clear not by these passages alone and by
+kindred ones. It is made clearer still by a passage in the preface to
+the second edition of his _Descent of Man_. He there protests against
+that current version of his views in which this factor makes no
+appearance. The passage is as follows.
+
+     "I may take this opportunity of remarking that my critics
+     frequently assume that I attribute all changes of corporeal
+     structure and mental power exclusively to the natural selection of
+     such variations as are often called spontaneous; whereas, even in
+     the first edition of the 'Origin of Species,' I distinctly stated
+     that great weight must be attributed to the inherited effects of
+     use and disuse, with respect both to the body and mind."
+
+Nor is this all. There is evidence that Mr. Darwin's belief in the
+efficiency of this factor, became stronger as he grew older and
+accumulated more evidence. The first of the extracts above given, taken
+from the sixth edition of the _Origin of Species_, runs thus:--
+
+     "I think there can be no doubt that use in our domestic animals has
+     strengthened and enlarged certain parts, and disuse diminished
+     them; and that such modifications are inherited."
+
+Now on turning to the first edition, p. 134, it will be found that
+instead of the words--"I think there can be no doubt," the words
+originally used were--"I think there can be _little_ doubt." That this
+deliberate erasure of a qualifying word and substitution of a word
+implying unqualified belief, was due to a more decided recognition of a
+factor originally under-estimated, is clearly implied by the wording of
+the above-quoted passage from the preface to the _Descent of Man_; where
+he says that "_even_ in the first edition of the 'Origin of Species,'"
+&c.: the implication being that much more in subsequent editions, and
+subsequent works, had he insisted on this factor. The change thus
+indicated is especially significant as having occurred at a time of life
+when the natural tendency is towards fixity of opinion.
+
+During that earlier period when he was discovering the multitudinous
+cases in which his own hypothesis afforded solutions, and simultaneously
+observing how utterly futile in these multitudinous cases was the
+hypothesis propounded by his grandfather and Lamarck, Mr. Darwin was,
+not unnaturally, almost betrayed into the belief that the one is
+all-sufficient and the other inoperative. But in the mind of one so
+candid and ever open to more evidence, there naturally came a reaction.
+The inheritance of functionally-produced modifications, which, judging
+by the passage quoted above concerning the views of these earlier
+enquirers, would seem to have been at one time denied, but which as we
+have seen was always to some extent recognized, came to be recognized
+more and more, and deliberately included as a factor of importance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of this reaction displayed in the later writings of Mr. Darwin, let us
+now ask--Has it not to be carried further? Was the share in organic
+evolution which Mr. Darwin latterly assigned to the transmission of
+modifications caused by use and disuse, its due share? Consideration of
+the groups of evidences given above, will, I think, lead us to believe
+that its share has been much larger than he supposed even in his later
+days.
+
+There is first the implication yielded by extensive classes of phenomena
+which remain inexplicable in the absence of this factor. If, as we see,
+co-operative parts do not vary together, even when few and close
+together, and may not therefore be assumed to do so when many and
+remote, we cannot account for those innumerable changes in organization
+which are implied when, for advantageous use of some modified part, many
+other parts which join it in action have to be modified.
+
+Further, as increasing complexity of structure, accompanying increasing
+complexity of life, implies increasing number of faculties, of which
+each one conduces to preservation of self or descendants; and as the
+various individuals of a species, severally requiring something like the
+normal amounts of all these, may individually profit, here by an unusual
+amount of one, and there by an unusual amount of another; it follows
+that as the number of faculties becomes greater, it becomes more
+difficult for any one to be further developed by natural selection. Only
+where increase of some one is _predominantly_ advantageous does the
+means seem adequate to the end. Especially in the case of powers which
+do not subserve self-preservation in appreciable degrees, does
+development by natural selection appear impracticable.
+
+It is a fact recognized by Mr. Darwin, that where, by selection through
+successive generations, a part has been increased or decreased, its
+reaction upon other parts entails changes in them. This reaction is
+effected through the changes of function involved. If the changes of
+structure produced by such changes of function, are inheritable, then
+the re-adjustment of parts throughout the organism, taking place
+generation after generation, maintains an approximate balance; but if
+not, then generation after generation the organism must get more and
+more out of gear, and tend to become unworkable.
+
+Further, as it is proved that change in the balance of functions
+registers its effects on the reproductive elements, we have to choose
+between the alternatives that the registered effects are irrelevant to
+the particular modifications which the organism has undergone, or that
+they are such as tend to produce repetitions of these modifications. The
+last of these alternatives makes the facts comprehensible; but the first
+of them not only leaves us with several unsolved problems, but is
+incongruous with the general truth that by reproduction, ancestral
+traits, down to minute details, are transmitted.
+
+Though, in the absence of pecuniary interests and the interests in
+hobbies, no such special experiments as those which have established the
+inheritance of fortuitous variations have been made to ascertain whether
+functionally-produced modifications are inherited; yet certain apparent
+instances of such inheritance have forced themselves on observation
+without being sought for. In addition to other indications of a less
+conspicuous kind, is the one I have given above--the fact that the
+apparatus for tearing and mastication has decreased with decrease of its
+function, alike in civilized man and in some varieties of dogs which
+lead protected and pampered lives. Of the numerous cases named by Mr.
+Darwin, it is observable that they are yielded not by one class of parts
+only, but by most if not all classes--by the dermal system, the muscular
+system, the osseous system, the nervous system, the viscera; and that
+among parts liable to be functionally modified, the most numerous
+observed cases of inheritance are furnished by those which admit of
+preservation and easy comparison--the bones: these cases, moreover,
+being specially significant as showing how, in sundry unallied species,
+parallel changes of structure have occurred along with parallel changes
+of habit.
+
+What, then, shall we say of the general implication? Are we to stop
+short with the admission that inheritance of functionally-produced
+modifications takes place only in cases in which there is evidence of
+it? May we properly assume that these many instances of changes of
+structure caused by changes of function, occurring in various tissues
+and various organs, are merely special and exceptional instances having
+no general significance? Shall we suppose that though the evidence which
+already exists has come to light without aid from a body of inquirers,
+there would be no great increase were due attention devoted to the
+collection of evidence? This is, I think, not a reasonable supposition.
+To me the _ensemble_ of the facts suggests the belief, scarcely to be
+resisted, that the inheritance of functionally-produced modifications
+takes place universally. Looking at physiological phenomena as
+conforming to physical principles, it is difficult to conceive that a
+changed play of organic forces which in many cases of different kinds
+produces an inherited change of structure, does not do this in all
+cases. The implication, very strong I think, is that the action of every
+organ produces on it a reaction which, usually not altering its rate of
+nutrition, sometimes leaves it with diminished nutrition consequent on
+diminished action, and at other times increases its nutrition in
+proportion to its increased action; that while generating a modified
+_consensus_ of functions and of structures, the activities are at the
+same time impressing this modified _consensus_ on the sperm-cells and
+germ-cells whence future individuals are to be produced; and that in
+ways mostly too small to be identified, but occasionally in more
+conspicuous ways and in the course of generations, the resulting
+modifications of one or other kind show themselves. Further, it seems to
+me that as there are certain extensive classes of phenomena which are
+inexplicable if we assume the inheritance of fortuitous variations to be
+the sole factor, but which become at once explicable if we admit the
+inheritance of functionally-produced changes, we are justified in
+concluding that this inheritance of functionally-produced changes has
+been not simply a co-operating factor in organic evolution, but has been
+a co-operating factor without which organic evolution, in its higher
+forms at any rate, could never have taken place.
+
+Be this or be it not a warrantable conclusion, there is, I think, good
+reason for a provisional acceptance of the hypothesis that the effects
+of use and disuse are inheritable; and for a methodic pursuit of
+inquiries with the view of either establishing it or disproving it. It
+seems scarcely reasonable to accept without clear demonstration, the
+belief that while a trivial difference of structure arising
+spontaneously is transmissible, a massive difference of structure,
+maintained generation after generation by change of function, leaves no
+trace in posterity. Considering that unquestionably the modification of
+structure by function is a _vera causa_, in so far as concerns the
+individual; and considering the number of facts which so competent an
+observer as Mr. Darwin regarded as evidence that transmission of such
+modifications takes place in particular cases; the hypothesis that such
+transmission takes place in conformity with a general law, holding of
+all active structures, should, I think, be regarded as at least a good
+working hypothesis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But now supposing the broad conclusion above drawn to be
+granted--supposing all to agree that from the beginning, along with
+inheritance of useful variations fortuitously arising, there has been
+inheritance of effects produced by use and disuse; do there remain no
+classes of organic phenomena unaccounted for? To this question I think
+it must be replied that there do remain classes of organic phenomena
+unaccounted for. It may, I believe, be shown that certain cardinal
+traits of animals and plants at large are still unexplained; and that a
+further factor must be recognized. To show this, however, will require
+another paper.
+
+
+II.
+
+Ask a plumber who is repairing your pump, how the water is raised in it,
+and he replies--"By suction." Recalling the ability which he has to suck
+up water into his mouth through a tube, he is certain that he
+understands the pump's action. To inquire what he means by suction,
+seems to him absurd. He says you know as well as he does, what he means;
+and he cannot see that there is any need for asking how it happens that
+the water rises in the tube when he strains his mouth in a particular
+way. To the question why the pump, acting by suction, will not make the
+water rise above 32 feet, and practically not so much, he can give no
+answer; but this does not shake his confidence in his explanation.
+
+On the other hand an inquirer who insists on knowing what suction is,
+may obtain from the physicist answers which give him clear ideas, not
+only about it but about many other things. He learns that on ourselves
+and all things around, there is an atmospheric pressure amounting to
+about 15 pounds on the square inch: 15 pounds being the average weight
+of a column of air having a square inch for its base and extending
+upwards from the sea-level to the limit of the Earth's atmosphere. He is
+made to observe that when he puts one end of a tube into water and the
+other end into his mouth, and then draws back his tongue, so leaving a
+vacant space, two things happen. One is that the pressure of air outside
+his cheeks, no longer balanced by an equal pressure of air inside,
+thrusts his cheeks inwards; and the other is that the pressure of air on
+the surface of the water, no longer balanced by an equal pressure of air
+within the tube and his mouth (into which part of the air from the tube
+has gone) the water is forced up the tube in consequence of the unequal
+pressure. Once understanding thus the nature of the so-called suction,
+he sees how it happens that when the plunger of the pump is raised and
+relieves from atmospheric pressure the water below it, the atmospheric
+pressure on the water in the well, not being balanced by that on the
+water in the tube, forces the water higher up the tube, so that it
+follows the plunger. And now he sees why the water cannot be raised
+beyond the theoretic limit of 32 feet: a limit made much lower in
+practice by imperfections in the apparatus. For if, simplifying the
+conception, he supposes the tube of the pump to be a square inch in
+section, then the atmospheric pressure of 15 pounds per square inch on
+the water in the well, can raise the water in the tube to such height
+only that the entire column of it weighs 15 pounds. Having been thus
+enlightened about the pump's action, the action of a barometer becomes
+intelligible. He perceives how, under the conditions established, the
+weight of the column of mercury balances that of an atmospheric column
+of equal diameter; and how, as the weight of the atmospheric column
+varies, there is a corresponding variation in the weight of the
+mercurial column,--shown by change of height. Moreover, having
+previously supposed that he understood the ascent of a balloon when he
+ascribed it to relative lightness, he now sees that he did not truly
+understand it. For he did not recognize it as a result of that upward
+pressure caused by the difference between the weight of the mass formed
+by the gas in the balloon _plus_ the cylindrical column of air extending
+above it to the limit of the atmosphere, and the weight of a similar
+cylindrical column of air extending down to the under surface of the
+balloon: this difference of weight causing an equivalent upward pressure
+on the under surface.
+
+Why do I introduce these familiar truths so entirely irrelevant to my
+subject? I do it to show, in the first place, the contrast between a
+vague conception of a cause and a distinct conception of it; or rather,
+the contrast between that conception of a cause which results when it is
+simply classed with some other or others which familiarity makes us
+think we understand, and that conception of a cause which results when
+it is represented in terms of definite physical forces admitting of
+measurement. And I do it to show, in the second place, that when we
+insist on resolving a verbally-intelligible cause into its actual
+factors, we get not only a clear solution of the problem before us, but
+we find that the way is opened to solutions of sundry other problems.
+While we rest satisfied with unanalyzed causes, we may be sure both that
+we do not rightly comprehend the production of the particular effects
+ascribed to them, and that we overlook other effects which would be
+revealed to us by contemplation of the causes as analyzed. Especially
+must this be so where the causation is complex. Hence we may infer that
+the phenomena presented by the development of species, are not likely to
+be truly conceived unless we keep in view the concrete agencies at work.
+Let us look closely at the facts to be dealt with.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The growth of a thing is effected by the joint operation of certain
+forces on certain materials; and when it dwindles, there is either a
+lack of some materials, or the forces co-operate in a way different from
+that which produces growth. If a structure has varied, the implication
+is that the processes which built it up were made unlike the parallel
+processes in other cases, by the greater or less amount of some one or
+more of the matters or actions concerned. Where there is unusual
+fertility, the play of vital activities is thereby shown to have
+deviated from the ordinary play of vital activities; and conversely, if
+there is infertility. If the germs, or ova, or seed, or offspring
+partially developed, survive more or survive less, it is either because
+their molar or molecular structures are unlike the average ones, or
+because they are affected in unlike ways by surrounding agencies. When
+life is prolonged, the fact implies that the combination of actions,
+visible and invisible, constituting life, retains its equilibrium longer
+than usual in presence of environing forces which tend to destroy its
+equilibrium. That is to say, growth, variation, survival, death, if they
+are to be reduced to the forms in which physical science can recognize
+them, must be expressed as effects of agencies definitely
+conceived--mechanical forces, light, heat, chemical affinity, &c.
+
+This general conclusion brings with it the thought that the phrases
+employed in discussing organic evolution, though convenient and indeed
+needful, are liable to mislead us by veiling the actual agencies. That
+which really goes on in every organism is the working together of
+component parts in ways conducing to the continuance of their combined
+actions, in presence of things and actions outside; some of which tend
+to subserve, and others to destroy, the combination. The matters and
+forces in these two groups, are the sole causes properly so called. The
+words "natural selection," do not express a cause in the physical sense.
+They express a mode of co-operation among causes--or rather, to speak
+strictly, they express an effect of this mode of co-operation. The idea
+they convey seems perfectly intelligible. Natural selection having been
+compared with artificial selection, and the analogy pointed out, there
+apparently remains no indefiniteness: the inconvenience being, however,
+that the definiteness is of a wrong kind. The tacitly implied Nature
+which selects, is not an embodied agency analogous to the man who
+selects artificially; and the selection is not the picking out of an
+individual fixed on, but the overthrowing of many individuals by
+agencies which one successfully resists, and hence continues to live and
+multiply. Mr. Darwin was conscious of these misleading implications. In
+the introduction to his _Animals and Plants under Domestication_ (p. 6)
+he says:--
+
+     "For brevity sake I sometimes speak of natural selection as an
+     intelligent power; ... I have, also, often personified the word
+     Nature; for I have found it difficult to avoid this ambiguity; but
+     I mean by nature only the aggregate action and product of many
+     natural laws,--and by laws only the ascertained sequence of
+     events."
+
+But while he thus clearly saw, and distinctly asserted, that the factors
+of organic evolution are the concrete actions, inner and outer, to which
+every organism is subject, Mr. Darwin, by habitually using the
+convenient figure of speech, was, I think, prevented from recognizing so
+fully as he would otherwise have done, certain fundamental consequences
+of these actions.
+
+Though it does not personalize the cause, and does not assimilate its
+mode of working to a human mode of working, kindred objections may be
+urged against the expression to which I was led when seeking to present
+the phenomena in literal terms rather than metaphorical terms--the
+survival of the fittest;[42] for in a vague way the first word, and in a
+clear way the second word, calls up an anthropocentric idea. The
+thought of survival inevitably suggests the human view of certain sets
+of phenomena, rather than that character which they have simply as
+groups of changes. If, asking what we really know of a plant, we exclude
+all the ideas associated with the words life and death, we find that the
+sole facts known to us are that there go on in the plant certain
+inter-dependent processes, in presence of certain aiding and hindering
+influences outside of it; and that in some cases a difference of
+structure or a favourable set of circumstances, allows these
+inter-dependent processes to go on for longer periods than in other
+cases. Again, in the working together of those many actions, internal
+and external, which determine the lives or deaths of organisms, we see
+nothing to which the words fitness and unfitness are applicable in the
+physical sense. If a key fits a lock, or a glove a hand, the relation of
+the things to one another is presentable to the perceptions. No approach
+to fitness of this kind is made by an organism which continues to live
+under certain conditions. Neither the organic structures themselves, nor
+their individual movements, nor those combined movements of certain
+among them which constitute conduct, are related in any analogous way to
+the things and actions in the environment. Evidently the word fittest,
+as thus used, is a figure of speech; suggesting the fact that amid
+surrounding actions, an organism characterized by the word has either a
+greater ability than others of its kind to maintain the equilibrium of
+its vital activities, or else has so much greater a power of
+multiplication that though not longer lived than they, it continues to
+live in posterity more persistently. And indeed, as we here see, the
+word fittest has to cover cases in which there may be less ability than
+usual to survive individually, but in which the defect is more than made
+good by higher degrees of fertility.
+
+I have elaborated this criticism with the intention of emphasizing the
+need for studying the changes which have gone on, and are ever going
+on, in organic bodies, from an exclusively physical point of view. On
+contemplating the facts from this point of view, we become aware that,
+besides those special effects of the co-operating forces which eventuate
+in the longer survival of one individual than of others, and in the
+consequent increase through generations, of some trait which furthered
+its survival, many other effects are being wrought on each and all of
+the individuals. Bodies of every class and quality, inorganic as well as
+organic, are from instant to instant subject to the influences in their
+environments; are from instant to instant being changed by these in ways
+that are mostly inconspicuous; and are in course of time changed by them
+in conspicuous ways. Living things in common with dead things, are, I
+say, being thus perpetually acted upon and modified; and the changes
+hence resulting, constitute an all-important part of those undergone in
+the course of organic evolution. I do not mean to imply that changes of
+this class pass entirely unrecognized; for, as we shall see, Mr. Darwin
+takes cognizance of certain secondary and special ones. But the effects
+which are not taken into account, are those primary and universal
+effects which give certain fundamental characters to all organisms.
+Contemplation of an analogy will best prepare the way for appreciation
+of them, and of the relation they bear to those which at present
+monopolize attention.
+
+An observant rambler along shores, will, here and there, note places
+where the sea has deposited things more or less similar, and separated
+them from dissimilar things--will see shingle parted from sand; larger
+stones sorted from smaller stones; and will occasionally discover
+deposits of shells more or less worn by being rolled about. Sometimes
+the pebbles or boulders composing the shingle at one end of a bay, he
+will find much larger than those at the other: intermediate sizes,
+having small average differences, occupying the space between the
+extremes. An example occurs, if I remember rightly, some mile or two to
+the west of Tenby; but the most remarkable and well-known example is
+that afforded by the Chesil bank. Here, along a shore some sixteen miles
+long, there is a gradual increase in the sizes of the stones; which,
+being at one end but mere pebbles, are at the other end immense
+boulders. In this case, then, the breakers and the undertow have
+effected a selection--have at each place left behind those stones which
+were too large to be readily moved, while taking away others small
+enough to be moved easily. But now, if we contemplate exclusively this
+selective action of the sea, we overlook certain important effects which
+the sea simultaneously works. While the stones have been differently
+acted upon in so far that some have been left here and some carried
+there; they have been similarly acted upon in two allied, but
+distinguishable, ways. By perpetually rolling them about and knocking
+them one against another, the waves have so broken off their most
+prominent parts as to produce in all of them more or less rounded forms;
+and then, further, the mutual friction of the stones simultaneously
+caused, has smoothed their surfaces. That is to say in general terms,
+the actions of environing agencies, so far as they have operated
+indiscriminately, have produced in the stones a certain unity of
+character; at the same time that they have, by their differential
+effects, separated them: the larger ones having withstood certain
+violent actions which the smaller ones could not withstand.
+
+Similarly with other assemblages of objects which are alike in their
+primary traits but unlike in their secondary traits. When simultaneously
+exposed to the same set of actions, some of these actions, rising to a
+certain intensity, may be expected to work on particular members of the
+assemblage changes which they cannot work in those which are markedly
+unlike; while others of the actions will work in all of them similar
+changes, because of the uniform relations between these actions and
+certain attributes common to all members of the assemblage. Hence it is
+inferable that on living organisms, which form an assemblage of this
+kind, and are unceasingly exposed in common to the agencies composing
+their inorganic environments, there must be wrought two such sets of
+effects. There will result a universal likeness among them consequent on
+the likeness of their respective relations to the matters and forces
+around; and there will result, in some cases, the differences due to the
+differential effects of these matters and forces, and in other cases,
+the changes which, being life-sustaining or life-destroying, eventuate
+in certain natural selections.
+
+I have, above, made a passing reference to the fact that Mr. Darwin did
+not fail to take account of some among these effects directly produced
+on organisms by surrounding inorganic agencies. Here are extracts from
+the sixth edition of the _Origin of Species_ showing this.
+
+     "It is very difficult to decide how far changed conditions, such as
+     of climate, food, &c., have acted in a definite manner. There is
+     reason to believe that in the course of time the effects have been
+     greater than can be proved by clear evidence.... Mr. Gould believes
+     that birds of the same species are more brightly coloured under a
+     clear atmosphere, than when living near the coast or on islands;
+     and Wollaston is convinced that residence near the sea affects the
+     colours of insects. Moquin-Tandon gives a list of plants which,
+     when growing near the sea-shore, have their leaves in some degree
+     fleshy, though not elsewhere fleshy" (pp. 106-7). "Some observers
+     are convinced that a damp climate affects the growth of the hair,
+     and that with the hair the horns are correlated" (p. 159).
+
+In his subsequent work, _Animals and Plants under Domestication_, Mr.
+Darwin still more clearly recognizes these causes of change in
+organization. A chapter is devoted to the subject. After premising that
+"the direct action of the conditions of life, whether leading to
+definite or indefinite results, is a totally distinct consideration from
+the effects of natural selection;" he goes on to say that changed
+conditions of life "have acted so definitely and powerfully on the
+organisation of our domesticated productions, that they have sufficed
+to form new sub-varieties or races, without the aid of selection by man
+or of natural selection." Of his examples here are two.
+
+     "I have given in detail in the ninth chapter the most remarkable
+     case known to me, namely, that in Germany several varieties of
+     maize brought from the hotter parts of America were transformed in
+     the course of only two or three generations." (Vol. ii, p. 277.)
+     [And in this ninth chapter concerning these and other such
+     instances he says "some of the foregoing differences would
+     certainly be considered of specific value with plants in a state of
+     nature." (Vol. i, p. 321.)] "Mr. Meehan, in a remarkable paper,
+     compares twenty-nine kinds of American trees, belonging to various
+     orders, with their nearest European allies, all grown in close
+     proximity in the same garden and under as nearly as possible the
+     same conditions." And then enumerating six traits in which the
+     American forms all of them differ in like ways from their allied
+     European forms, Mr. Darwin thinks there is no choice but to
+     conclude that these "have been definitely caused by the
+     long-continued action of the different climate of the two
+     continents on the trees." (Vol. ii, pp. 281-2.)
+
+But the fact we have to note is that while Mr. Darwin thus took account
+of special effects due to special amounts and combinations of agencies
+in the environment, he did not take account of the far more important
+effects due to the general and constant operation of these agencies.[43]
+If a difference between the quantities of a force which acts on two
+organisms, otherwise alike and otherwise similarly conditioned, produces
+some difference between them; then, by implication, this force produces
+in both of them effects which they show in common. The inequality
+between two things cannot have a value unless the things themselves have
+values. Similarly if, in two cases, some unlikeness of proportion among
+the surrounding inorganic agencies to which two plants or two animals
+are exposed, is followed by some unlikeness in the changes wrought on
+them; then it follows that these several agencies taken separately, work
+changes in both of them. Hence we must infer that organisms have certain
+structural characters in common, which are consequent on the action of
+the medium in which they exist: using the word medium in a comprehensive
+sense, as including all physical forces falling upon them as well as
+matters bathing them. And we may conclude that from the primary
+characters thus produced there must result secondary characters.
+
+Before going on to observe those general traits of organisms due to the
+general action of the inorganic environment upon them, I feel tempted to
+enlarge on the effects produced by each of the several matters and
+forces constituting the environment. I should like to do this not only
+to give a clear preliminary conception of the ways in which all
+organisms are affected by these universally-present agents, but also to
+show that, in the first place, these agents modify inorganic bodies as
+well as organic bodies, and that, in the second place, the organic are
+far more modifiable by them than the inorganic. But to avoid undue
+suspension of the argument, I content myself with saying that when the
+respective effects of gravitation, heat, light, &c., are studied, as
+well as the respective effects, physical and chemical, of the matters
+forming the media, water and air, it will be found that while more or
+less operative on all bodies, each modifies organic bodies to an extent
+immensely greater than the extent to which it modifies inorganic bodies.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here, not discriminating among the special effects which these various
+forces and matters in the environment produce on both classes of bodies,
+let us consider their combined effects, and ask--What is the most
+general trait of such effects?
+
+Obviously the most general trait is the greater amount of change wrought
+on the outer surface than on the inner mass. In so far as the matters of
+which the medium is composed come into play, the unavoidable implication
+is that they act more on the parts directly exposed to them than on the
+parts sheltered from them. And in so far as the forces pervading the
+medium come into play, it is manifest that, excluding gravity, which
+affects outer and inner parts indiscriminately, the outer parts have to
+bear larger shares of their actions. If it is a question of heat, then
+the exterior must lose it or gain it faster than the interior; and in a
+medium which is now warmer and now colder, the two must habitually
+differ in temperature to some extent--at least where the size is
+considerable. If it is a question of light, then in all but absolutely
+transparent masses, the outer parts must undergo more of any change
+producible by it than the inner parts--supposing other things equal; by
+which I mean, supposing the case is not complicated by any such
+convexities of the outer surface as produce internal concentrations of
+rays. Hence then, speaking generally, the necessity is that the primary
+and almost universal effect of the converse between the body and its
+medium, is to differentiate its outside from its inside. I say almost
+universal, because where the body is both mechanically and chemically
+stable, like, for instance, a quartz crystal, the medium may fail to
+work either inner or outer change.
+
+Of illustrations among inorganic bodies, a convenient one is supplied by
+an old cannon-ball that has been long lying exposed. A coating of rust,
+formed of flakes within flakes, incloses it; and this thickens year by
+year, until, perhaps, it reaches a stage at which its exterior loses as
+much by rain and wind as its interior gains by further oxidation of the
+iron. Most mineral masses--pebbles, boulders, rocks--if they show any
+effect of the environment at all, show it only by that disintegration of
+surface which follows the freezing of absorbed water: an effect which,
+though mechanical rather than chemical, equally illustrates the general
+truth. Occasionally a "rocking-stone" is thus produced. There are formed
+successive layers relatively friable in texture, each of which, thickest
+at the most exposed parts, and being presently lost by weathering,
+leaves the contained mass in a shape more rounded than before; until,
+resting on its convex under-surface, it is easily moved. But of all
+instances perhaps the most remarkable is one to be seen on the west bank
+of the Nile at Philæ, where a ridge of granite 100 feet high, has had
+its outer parts reduced in course of time to a collection of
+boulder-shaped masses, varying from say a yard in diameter to six or
+eight feet, each one of which shows in progress an exfoliation of
+successively-formed shells of decomposed granite: most of the masses
+having portions of such shells partially detached.
+
+If, now, inorganic masses, relatively so stable in composition, thus
+have their outer parts differentiated from their inner parts, what must
+we say of organic masses, characterized by such extreme chemical
+instability?--instability so great that their essential material is
+named protein, to indicate the readiness with which it passes from one
+isomeric form to another. Clearly the necessary inference is that this
+effect of the medium must be wrought inevitably and promptly, wherever
+the relation of outer and inner has become settled: a qualification for
+which the need will be seen hereafter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Beginning with the earliest and most minute kinds of living things, we
+necessarily encounter difficulties in getting direct evidence; since, of
+the countless species now existing, all have been subject during
+millions upon millions of years to the evolutionary process, and have
+had their primary traits complicated and obscured by those endless
+secondary traits which the natural selection of favourable variations
+has produced. Among protophytes it needs but to think of the
+multitudinous varieties of diatoms and desmids, with their
+elaborately-constructed coverings; or of the definite methods of growth
+and multiplication among such simple _Algæ_ as the _Conjugatæ_; to see
+that most of their distinctive characters are due to inherited
+constitutions, which have been slowly moulded by survival of the fittest
+to this or that mode of life. To disentangle such parts of their
+developmental changes as are due to the action of the medium, is
+therefore hardly possible. We can hope only to get a general conception
+of it by contemplating the totality of the facts.
+
+The first cardinal fact is that all protophytes are cellular--all show
+us this contrast between outside and inside. Supposing the multitudinous
+specialities of the envelope in different orders and genera of
+protophytes to be set against one another, and mutually cancelled, there
+remains as a trait common to them--an envelope unlike that which it
+envelopes. The second cardinal fact is that this simple trait is the
+earliest trait displayed in germs, or spores, or other parts from which
+new individuals are to arise; and that, consequently, this trait must be
+regarded as having been primordial. For it is an established truth of
+organic evolution that embryos show us, in general ways, the forms of
+remote ancestors; and that the first changes undergone, indicate, more
+or less clearly, the first changes which took place in the series of
+forms through which the existing form has been reached. Describing, in
+successive groups of plants, the early transformations of these
+primitive units, Sachs[44] says of the lowest _Algæ_ that "the
+conjugated protoplasmic body clothes itself with a cell-wall" (p. 10);
+that in "the spores of Mosses and Vascular Cryptogams" and in "the
+pollen of Phanerogams" ... "the protoplasmic body of the mother-cell
+breaks up into four lumps, which quickly round themselves off and
+contract, and become enveloped by a cell-membrane only after complete
+separation" (p. 13); that in the _Equisetaceæ_ "the young spores, when
+first separated, are still naked, but they soon become surrounded by a
+cell-membrane" (p. 14); and that in higher plants, as in the pollen of
+many Dicotyledons, "the contracting daughter-cells secrete cellulose
+even during their separation" (p. 14). Here, then, in whatever way we
+interpret it, the fact is that there quickly arises an outer layer
+different from the contained matter. But the most significant evidence
+is furnished by "the masses of protoplasm that escape into water from
+the injured sacs of _Vaucheria_, which often instantly become rounded
+into globular bodies," and of which the "hyaline protoplasm envelopes
+the whole as a skin" (p. 41) which "is denser than the inner and more
+watery substance" (p. 42). As in this case the protoplasm is but a
+fragment, and as it is removed from the influence of the parent-cell,
+this differentiating process can scarcely be regarded as anything more
+than the effect of physico-chemical actions: a conclusion which is
+supported by the statement of Sachs that "not only every vacuole in a
+solid protoplasmic body, but also every thread of protoplasm which
+penetrates the sap-cavity, and finally the inner side of the
+protoplasm-sac which encloses the sap-cavity, is also bounded by a skin"
+(p. 42). If then "every portion of a protoplasmic body immediately
+surrounds itself, when it becomes isolated, with such a skin," which is
+shown in all cases to arise at the surface of contact with sap or water,
+this primary differentiation of outer from inner must be ascribed to the
+direct action of the medium. Whether the coating thus initiated is
+secreted by the protoplasm, or whether, as seems more likely, it
+results from transformation of it, matters not to the argument. Either
+way the action of the medium causes its formation; and either way the
+many varied and complex differentiations which developed cell-walls
+display, must be considered as originating from those variations of this
+physically-generated covering which natural selection has taken
+advantage of.
+
+The contained protoplasm of a vegetal cell, which has self-mobility and
+when liberated sometimes performs amoeba-like motions for a time, may
+be regarded as an imprisoned amoeba; and when we pass from it to a
+free amoeba, which is one of the simplest types of first animals, or
+_Protozoa_, we naturally meet with kindred phenomena. The general trait
+which here concerns us, is that while its plastic or semi-fluid sarcode
+goes on protruding, in irregular ways, now this and now that part of its
+periphery, and again withdrawing into its interior first one and then
+another of these temporary processes, perhaps with some small portion of
+food attached, there is but an indistinct differentiation of outer from
+inner (a fact shown by the frequent coalescence of the pseudopodia in
+Rhizopods); but that when it eventually becomes quiescent, the surface
+becomes differentiated from the contents: the passing into an encysted
+state, doubtless in large measure due to inherited proclivity, being
+furthered, and having probably been once initiated, by the action of the
+medium. The connexion between constancy of relative position among the
+parts of the sarcode, and the rise of a contrast between superficial and
+central parts, is perhaps best shown in the minutest and simplest
+_Infusoria_, the _Monadinæ_. The genus _Monas_ is described by Kent as
+"plastic and unstable in form, possessing no distinct cuticular
+investment; ... the food-substances incepted at all parts of the
+periphery";[45] and the genus _Scytomonas_ he says "differs from _Monas_
+only in its persistent shape and accompanying greater rigidity of the
+peripheral or ectoplasmic layer."[46] Describing generally such low
+forms, some of which are said to have neither nucleus nor vacuole, he
+remarks that in types somewhat higher "the outer or peripheral border of
+the protoplasmic mass, while not assuming the character of a distinct
+cell-wall or so-called cuticle, presents, as compared with the inner
+substance of that mass, a slightly more solid type of composition."[47]
+And it is added that these forms having so slightly differentiated an
+exterior, "while usually exhibiting a more or less characteristic normal
+outline, can revert at will to a pseud-amoeboid and repent state."[48]
+Here, then, we have several indications of the truth that the permanent
+externality of a certain part of the substance, is followed by
+transformation of it into a coating unlike the substance it contains.
+Indefinite and structureless in the simplest of these forms, as instance
+again the _Gregarina_,[49] the limiting membrane becomes, in higher
+_Infusoria_, definite and often complex: showing that the selection of
+favourable variations has had largely to do with its formation. In such
+types as the _Foraminifera_, which, almost structureless internally
+though they are, secrete calcareous shells, it is clear that the nature
+of this outer layer is determined by inherited constitution. But
+recognition of this consists with the belief that the action of the
+medium initiated the outer layer, specialized though it now is; and that
+even still, contact with the medium excites secretion of it.
+
+A remarkable analogy remains to be named. When we study the action of
+the medium in an inorganic mass, we are led to see that between the
+outer changed layer and the inner unchanged mass, comes a surface where
+active change is going on. Here we have to note that, alike in the
+plant-cell and in the animal-cell, there is a similar relation of parts.
+Immediately inside the envelope comes the primordial utricle in the
+one case, and in the other case the layer of active sarcode. In either
+case the living protoplasm, placed in the position of a lining to the
+cuticle of the cell, is shielded from the direct action of the medium,
+and yet is not beyond the reach of its influences.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Limited, as thus far drawn, to a certain common trait of those minute
+organisms which are mostly below the reach of unaided vision, the
+foregoing conclusion appears trivial enough. But it ceases to appear
+trivial on passing into a wider field, and observing the implications,
+direct and indirect, as they concern plants and animals of sensible
+sizes.
+
+Popular expositions of science have so far familiarized many readers
+with a certain fundamental trait of living things around, that they have
+ceased to perceive how marvellous a trait it is, and, until interpreted
+by the Theory of Evolution, how utterly mysterious. In past times, the
+conception of an ordinary plant or animal which prevailed, not
+throughout the world at large only but among the most instructed, was
+that it is a single continuous entity. One of these livings things was
+unhesitatingly regarded as being in all respects a unit. Parts it might
+have, various in their sizes, forms, and compositions; but these were
+components of a whole which had been from the beginning in its original
+nature a whole. Even to naturalists fifty years ago, the assertion that
+a cabbage or a cow, though in one sense a whole, is in another sense a
+vast society of minute individuals, severally living in greater or less
+degrees, and some of them maintaining their independent lives
+unrestrained, would have seemed an absurdity. But this truth which, like
+so many of the truths established by science, is contrary to that common
+sense in which most people have so much confidence, has been gradually
+growing clear since the days when Leeuwenhoeck and his contemporaries
+began to examine through lenses the minute structures of common plants
+and animals. Each improvement in the microscope, while it has widened
+our knowledge of those minute forms of life described above, has
+revealed further evidence of the fact that all the larger forms of life
+consist of units severally allied in their fundamental traits to these
+minute forms of life. Though, as formulated by Schwann and Schleiden,
+the cell-doctrine has undergone qualifications of statement; yet the
+qualifications have not been such as to militate against the general
+proposition that organisms visible to the naked eye, are severally
+compounded of invisible organisms--using that word in its most
+comprehensive sense. And then, when the development of any animal is
+traced, it is found that having been primarily a nucleated cell, and
+having afterwards become by spontaneous fission a cluster of nucleated
+cells, it goes on through successive stages to form out of such cells,
+ever multiplying and modifying in various ways, the several tissues and
+organs composing the adult.
+
+On the hypothesis of evolution this universal trait has to be accepted
+not as a fact that is strange but unmeaning. It has to be accepted as
+evidence that all the visible forms of life have arisen by union of the
+invisible forms; which, instead of flying apart when they divided,
+remained together. Various intermediate stages are known. Among plants,
+those of the _Volvox_ type show us the component protophytes so feebly
+combined that they severally carry on their lives with no appreciable
+subordination to the life of the group. And among animals, a parallel
+relation between the lives of the units and the life of the group is
+shown us in _Uroglena_ and _Syncrypta_. From these first stages upwards,
+may be traced through successively higher types, an increasing
+subordination of the units to the aggregate; though still a
+subordination leaving to them conspicuous amounts of individual
+activity. Joining which facts with the phenomena presented by the
+cell-multiplication and aggregation of every unfolding germ, naturalists
+are now accepting the conclusion that by this process of composition
+from _Protozoa_, were formed all classes of the _Metazoa_[50]--(as
+animals formed by this compounding are now called); and that in a
+similar way from _Protophyta_, were formed all classes of what I suppose
+will be called _Metaphyta_, though the word does not yet seem to have
+become current.
+
+And now what is the general meaning of these truths, taken in connexion
+with the conclusion reached in the last section. It is that this
+universal trait of the _Metazoa_ and _Metaphyta_, must be ascribed to
+the primitive action and re-action between the organism and its medium.
+The operation of those forces which produced the primary differentiation
+of outer from inner in early minute masses of protoplasm, pre-determined
+this universal cell-structure of all embryos, plant and animal, and the
+consequent cell-composition of adult forms arising from them. How
+unavoidable is this implication, will be seen on carrying further an
+illustration already used--that of the shingle-covered shore, the
+pebbles on which, while being in some cases selected, have been in all
+cases rounded and smoothed. Suppose a bed of such shingle to be, as we
+often see it, solidified, along with interfused material, into a
+conglomerate. What in such case must be considered as the chief trait of
+such conglomerate; or rather--what must we regard as the chief cause of
+its distinctive characters? Evidently the action of the sea. Without the
+breakers, no pebbles; without the pebbles, no conglomerate. Similarly
+then, in the absence of that action of the medium by which was effected
+the differentiation of outer from inner in those microscopic portions of
+protoplasm constituting the earliest and simplest animals and plants,
+there could not have existed this cardinal trait of composition which
+all the higher animals and plants show us.
+
+So that, active as has been the part played by natural selection, alike
+in modifying and moulding the original units--largely as survival of
+the fittest has been instrumental in furthering and controlling the
+combination of these units into visible organisms, and eventually into
+large ones; yet we must ascribe to the direct effect of the medium
+on the first forms of life, that character of which this
+everywhere-operative factor has taken advantage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us turn now to another and more obvious attribute of higher
+organisms, for which also there is this same general cause. Let us
+observe how, on a higher platform, there recurs this differentiation of
+outer from inner--how this primary trait in the living units with which
+life commences, re-appears as a primary trait in those aggregates of
+such units which constitute visible organisms.
+
+In its simplest and most unmistakable form, we see this in the early
+changes of an unfolding ovum of primitive type. The original fertilized
+single cell, having by spontaneous fission multiplied into a cluster of
+such cells, there begins to show itself a contrast between periphery and
+centre; and presently there is formed a sphere consisting of a
+superficial layer unlike its contents. The first change, then, is the
+rise of a difference between that outer part which holds direct converse
+with the surrounding medium, and that inclosed part which does not. This
+primary differentiation in these compound embryos of higher animals,
+parallels the primary differentiation undergone by the simplest living
+things.
+
+Leaving, for the present, succeeding changes of the compound embryo, the
+significance of which we shall have to consider by-and-by, let us pass
+now to the adult forms of visible plants and animals. In them we find
+cardinal traits which, after what we have seen above, will further
+impress us with the importance of the effects wrought on the organism by
+its medium.
+
+From the thallus of a sea-weed up to the leaf of a highly developed
+phænogam, we find, at all stages, a contrast between the inner and
+outer parts of these flattened masses of tissue. In the higher _Algæ_
+"the outermost layers consist of smaller and firmer cells, while the
+inner cells are often very large, and sometimes extremely long;"[51] and
+in the leaves of trees the epidermal layer, besides differing in the
+sizes and shapes of its component cells from the parenchyma forming the
+inner substance of the leaf, is itself differentiated by having a
+continuous cuticle, and by having the outer walls of its cells unlike
+the inner walls.[52] Especially significant is the structure of such
+intermediate types as the Liverworts. Beyond the differentiation of the
+covering cells from the contained cells, and the contrast between upper
+surface and under surface, the frond of _Marchantia polymorpha_ clearly
+shows us the direct effect of incident forces; and shows us, too, how it
+is involved with the effect of inherited proclivities. The frond grows
+from a flat disc-shaped gemma, the two sides of which are alike. Either
+side may fall uppermost; and then of the developing shoot, the side
+exposed to the light "is under all circumstances the upper side which
+forms stomata, the dark side becomes the under side which produces
+root-hairs and leafy processes."[53] So that while we have undeniable
+proof that the contrasted influences of the medium on the two sides,
+initiate the differentiation, we have also proof that the completion of
+it is determined by the transmitted structure of the type; since it is
+impossible to ascribe the development of stomata to the direct action of
+air and light. On turning from foliar expansions, to stems and roots,
+facts of like meaning meet us. Speaking generally of epidermal tissue
+and inner tissue, Sachs remarks that "the contrast of the two is the
+plainer the more the part of the plant concerned is exposed to air and
+light."[54] Elsewhere, in correspondence with this, it is said that in
+roots the cells of the epidermis, though distinguished by bearing hairs,
+"are otherwise similar to those of the fundamental tissue" which they
+clothe,[55] while the cuticular covering is relatively thin; whereas in
+stems the epidermis (often further differentiated) is composed of layers
+of cells which are smaller and thicker-walled: a stronger contrast of
+structure corresponding to a stronger contrast of conditions. By way of
+meeting the suggestion that these respective differences are wholly due
+to the natural selection of favourable variations, it will suffice if I
+draw attention to the unlikeness between imbedded roots and exposed
+roots. While in darkness, and surrounded by moist earth, the outermost
+protective coats, even of large roots, are comparatively thin; but when
+the accidents of growth entail permanent exposure to light and air,
+roots acquire coverings allied in character to the coverings of
+branches. That the action of the medium causes these and converse
+changes, cannot be doubted when we find, on the one hand, that "roots
+can become directly transformed into leaf-bearing shoots," and, on the
+other hand, that in some plants certain "apparent roots are only
+underground shoots," and that nevertheless "they are similar to true
+roots in function and in the formation of tissue, but have no root-cap,
+and, when they come to the light above ground, continue to grow in the
+manner of ordinary leaf-shoots."[56] If, then, in highly developed
+plants inheriting pronounced structures, this differentiating influence
+of the medium is so marked, it must have been all-important at the
+outset while types were undetermined.
+
+As with plants so with animals, we find good reason for inferring that
+while the specialities of the tegumentary parts must be ascribed to the
+natural selection of favourable variations, their most general traits
+are due to the direct action of surrounding agencies. Here we come upon
+the border of those changes which are ascribable to use and disuse. But
+from this class of changes we may fitly exclude those in which the parts
+concerned are wholly or mainly passive. A corn and a blister will
+conveniently serve to illustrate the way in which certain outer actions
+initiate in the superficial tissues, effects of very marked kinds, which
+are related neither to the needs of the organism nor to its normal
+structure. They are neither adaptive changes nor changes towards
+completion of the type. After noting them we may pass to allied, but
+still more instructive, changes. Continuous pressure on any portion of
+the surface causes absorption, while intermittent pressure causes
+growth: the one impeding circulation and the passage of plasma from the
+capillaries into the tissues, and the other aiding both. There are yet
+further mechanically-produced effects. That the general character of the
+ribbed skin on the under surfaces of the feet and insides of the hands
+is directly due to friction and intermittent pressure, we have the
+proofs:--first, that the tracts most exposed to rough usage are the most
+ribbed; second, that the insides of hands subject to unusual amounts of
+rough usage, as those of sailors, are strongly ribbed all over; and
+third, that in hands which are very little used, the parts commonly
+ribbed become quite smooth. These several kinds of evidence, however,
+full of meaning as they are, I give simply to prepare the way for
+evidence of a much more conclusive kind.
+
+Where a wide ulcer has eaten away the deep-seated layer out of which the
+epidermis grows, or where this layer has been destroyed by an extensive
+burn, the process of healing is very significant. From the subjacent
+tissues, which in the normal order have no concern with outward growth,
+there is produced a new skin, or rather a pro-skin; for this substituted
+outward-growing layer contains no hair-follicles or other specialities
+of the original one. Nevertheless, it is like the original one in so far
+that it is a continually renewed protective covering. Doubtless it may
+be contended that this make-shift skin results from the inherited
+proclivity of the type--the tendency to complete afresh the structure
+of the species when injured. We cannot, however, ignore the immediate
+influence of the medium, on recalling the facts above named, or on
+remembering the further fact that an inflamed surface of skin, when not
+sheltered from the air, will throw out a film of coagulable lymph. But
+that the direct action of the medium is a chief factor we are clearly
+shown by another case. Accident or disease occasionally causes permanent
+eversion, or protrusion, of mucous membrane. After a period of
+irritability, great at first but decreasing as the change advances, this
+membrane assumes the general character of ordinary skin. Nor is this
+all: its microscopic structure changes. Where it is a mucous membrane of
+the kind covered by cylinder-epithelium, the cylinders gradually
+shorten, becoming finally flat, and there results a squamous epithelium:
+there is a near approach in minute composition to epidermis. Here a
+tendency towards completion of the type cannot be alleged; for there is,
+contrariwise, divergence from the type. The effect of the medium is so
+great that, in a short time, it overcomes the inherited proclivity and
+produces a structure of opposite kind to the normal one.
+
+With but little break we come here upon a significant analogy, parallel
+to an analogy already described. As was pointed out, an inorganic body
+that is modifiable by its medium, acquires, after a time, an outer coat
+which has already undergone such change as surrounding agencies can
+effect; has a contained mass which is as yet unchanged, because
+unreached; and has a surface between the two where change is going on--a
+region of activity. And we saw that alike in the vegetal cell and the
+animal cell there exist analogous distributions: of course with the
+difference that the innermost part is not inert. Now we have to note
+that in those aggregates of cells constituting the _Metaphyta_ and
+_Metazoa_, analogous distributions also exist. In plants they are of
+course not to be looked for in leaves and other deciduous portions, but
+only in portions of long duration--stems and branches. Naturally, too,
+we need not expect them in plants having modes of growth which early
+produce an outer practically dead part, that effectually shields the
+inner actively living part of the stem from the influence of the
+medium--long-lived acrogens such as tree-ferns and long-lived endogens
+such as palms. But in the highest plants, exogens, which have the
+actively living part of their stems within reach of environing agencies,
+we find this part,--the cambium layer,--is one from which there is a
+growth inwards forming wood, and a growth outwards forming bark: there
+is an increasingly thick covering (where it does not scale off) of
+tissue changed by the medium, and inside this a film of highest
+vitality. In so far as concerns the present argument, it is the same
+with the _Metazoa_, or at least all of them which have developed
+organizations. The outer skin grows up from a limiting plane, or layer,
+a little distance below the surface--a place of predominant vital
+activity. Here perpetually arise new cells, which, as they develop, are
+thrust outwards and form the epidermis: flattening and drying up as they
+approach the surface, whence, having for a time served to shield the
+parts below, they finally scale off and leave younger ones to take their
+places. This still undifferentiated tissue forming the base of the
+epidermis, and existing also as a source of renewal in internal organs,
+is the essentially living substance; and facts above given imply that it
+was the action of the medium on this essentially living substance,
+which, during early stages in the organization of the _Metazoa_,
+initiated that protective envelope which presently became an inherited
+structure--a structure which, though now mainly inherited, still
+continues to be modifiable by its initiator.
+
+Fully to perceive the way in which these evidences compel us to
+recognize the influence of the medium as a primordial factor, we need
+but conceive them as interpreted without it. Suppose, for instance, we
+say that the structure of the epidermis is wholly determined by the
+natural selection of favourable variations; what must be the position
+taken in presence of the fact above named, that when mucous membrane is
+exposed to the air its cell-structure changes into the cell-structure of
+skin? The position taken must be this:--Though mucous membrane in a
+highly-evolved individual organism, thus shows the powerful effect of
+the medium on its surface; yet we must not suppose that the medium had
+the effect of producing such a cell-structure on the surfaces of
+primitive forms, undifferentiated though they were; or, if we suppose
+that such an effect was produced on them, we must not suppose that it
+was inheritable. Contrariwise, we must suppose that such effect of the
+medium either was not wrought at all, or that it was evanescent: though
+repeated through millions upon millions of generations it left no
+traces. And we must conclude that this skin-structure arose only in
+consequence of spontaneous variations not physically initiated (though
+like those physically initiated) which natural selection laid hold of
+and increased. Does any one think this a tenable position?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now we approach the last and chief series of morphological phenomena
+which must be ascribed to the direct action of environing matters and
+forces. These are presented to us when we study the early stages in the
+development of the embryos of the _Metazoa_ in general.
+
+We will set out with the fact already noted in passing, that after
+repeated spontaneous fissions have changed the original fertilized
+germ-cell into that cluster of cells which forms a gemmule or a
+primitive ovum, the first contrast which arises is between the
+peripheral parts and the central parts. Where, as with lower creatures
+which do not lay up large stores of nutriment with the germs of their
+offspring, the inner mass is inconsiderable, the outer layer of cells,
+which are presently made quite small by repeated subdivisions, forms a
+membrane extending over the whole surface--the blastoderm. The next
+stage of development, which ends in this covering layer becoming double,
+is reached in two ways--by invagination and by delamination; but which
+is the original way and which the abridged way, is not quite certain. Of
+invagination, multitudinously exemplified in the lowest types, Mr.
+Balfour says:--"On purely _à priori_ grounds there is in my opinion more
+to be said for invagination than for any other view";[57] and, for
+present purposes, it will suffice if we limit ourselves to this: making
+its nature clear to the general reader by a simple illustration.
+
+Take a small india-rubber ball--not of the inflated kind, nor of the
+solid kind, but of the kind about an inch or so in diameter with a small
+hole through which, under pressure, the air escapes. Suppose that
+instead of consisting of india-rubber its wall consists of small cells
+made polyhedral in form by mutual pressure, and united together. This
+will represent the blastoderm. Now with the finger, thrust in one side
+of the ball until it touches the other: so making a cup. This action
+will stand for the process of invagination. Imagine that by continuance
+of it, the hemispherical cup becomes very much deepened and the opening
+narrowed, until the cup becomes a sac, of which the introverted wall is
+everywhere in contact with the outer wall. This will represent the
+two-layered "gastrula"--the simplest ancestral form of the _Metazoa_: a
+form which is permanently represented in some of the lowest types; for
+it needs but tentacles round the mouth of the sac, to produce a common
+hydra. Here the fact which it chiefly concerns us to remark, is that of
+these two layers the outer, called in embryological language the
+epiblast, continues to carry on direct converse with the forces and
+matters in the environment; while the inner, called the hypoblast, comes
+in contact with such only of these matters as are put into the
+food-cavity which it lines. We have further to note that in the embryos
+of _Metazoa_ at all advanced in organization, there arises between these
+two layers a third--the mesoblast. The origin of this is seen in types
+where the developmental process is not obscured by the presence of a
+large food-yolk. While the above-described introversion is taking place,
+and before the inner surfaces of the resulting epiblast and hypoblast
+have come into contact, cells, or amoeboid units equivalent to them,
+are budded off from one or both of these inner surfaces, or some part of
+one or other; and these form a layer which eventually lies between the
+other two--a layer which, as this mode of formation implies, never has
+any converse with the surrounding medium and its contents, or with the
+nutritive bodies taken in from it. The striking facts to which this
+description is a necessary introduction, may now be stated. From the
+outer layer, or epiblast, are developed the permanent epidermis and its
+out-growths, the nervous system, and the organs of sense. From the
+introverted layer, or hypoblast, are developed the alimentary canal and
+those parts of its appended organs, liver, pancreas, &c., which are
+concerned in delivering their secretions into the alimentary canal, as
+well as the linings of those ramifying tubes in the lungs which convey
+air to the places where gaseous exchange is effected. And from the
+mesoblast originate the bones, the muscles, the heart and blood-vessels,
+and the lymphatics, together with such parts of various internal organs
+as are most remotely concerned with the outer world. Minor
+qualifications being admitted, there remain the broad general facts,
+that out of that part of the external layer which remains permanently
+external, are developed all the structures which carry on intercourse
+with the medium and its contents, active and passive; out of the
+introverted part of this external layer, are developed the structures
+which carry on intercourse with the quasi-external substances that are
+taken into the interior--solid food, water, and air; while out of the
+mesoblast are developed structures which have never had, from first to
+last, any intercourse with the environment. Let us contemplate these
+general facts.
+
+Who would have imagined that the nervous system is a modified portion of
+the primitive epidermis? In the absence of proofs furnished by the
+concurrent testimony of embryologists during the last thirty or forty
+years, who would have believed that the brain arises from an infolded
+tract of the outer skin, which, sinking down beneath the surface,
+becomes imbedded in other tissues and eventually surrounded by a bony
+case? Yet the human nervous system in common with the nervous systems of
+lower animals is thus originated. In the words of Mr. Balfour, early
+embryological changes imply that--
+
+     "the functions of the central nervous system, which were originally
+     taken by the whole skin, became gradually concentrated in a special
+     part of the skin which was step by step removed from the surface,
+     and has finally become in the higher types a well-defined organ
+     imbedded in the subdermal tissues.... The embryological evidence
+     shows that the ganglion-cells of the central part of the nervous
+     system are originally derived from the simple undifferentiated
+     epithelial cells of the surface of the body."[58]
+
+Less startling perhaps, though still startling enough, is the fact that
+the eye is evolved out of a portion of the skin; and that while the
+crystalline lens and its surroundings thus originate, the "percipient
+portions of the organs of special sense, especially of optic organs, are
+often formed from the same part of the primitive epidermis" which forms
+the central nervous system.[59] Similarly is it with the organs for
+smelling and hearing. These, too, begin as sacs formed by infoldings of
+the epidermis; and while their parts are developing they are joined from
+within by nervous structures which were themselves epidermic in origin.
+How are we to interpret these strange transformations? Observing, as we
+pass, how absurd from the point of view of the special-creationist,
+would appear such a filiation of structures, and such a round-about
+mode of embryonic development, we have here to remark that the process
+is not one to have been anticipated as a result of natural selection.
+After numbers of spontaneous variations had occurred, as the hypothesis
+implies, in useless ways, the variation which primarily initiated a
+nervous centre might reasonably have been expected to occur in some
+internal part where it would be fitly located. Its initiation in a
+dangerous place and subsequent migration to a safe place, would be
+incomprehensible. Not so if we bear in mind the cardinal truth above set
+forth, that the structures for holding converse with the medium and its
+contents, arise in that completely superficial part which is directly
+affected by the medium and its contents; and if we draw the inference
+that the external actions themselves initiate the structures. These once
+commenced, and furthered by natural selection where favourable to life,
+would form the first term of a series ending in developed sense organs
+and a developed nervous system.[60]
+
+Though it would enforce the argument, I must, for brevity's sake, pass
+over the analogous evolution of that introverted layer, or hypoblast,
+out of which the alimentary canal and attached organs arise. It will
+suffice to emphasize the fact that having been originally external, this
+layer continues in its developed form to have a quasi-externality, alike
+in its digesting part and in its respiratory part; since it continues to
+deal with matters alien to the organism. I must also refrain from
+dwelling at length on the fact already adverted to, that the
+intermediate derived layer, or mesoblast, which was at the outset
+completely internal, originates those structures which ever remain
+completely internal, and have no communication with the environment save
+through the structures developed from the other two: an antithesis which
+has great significance.
+
+Here, instead of dwelling on these details, it will be better to draw
+attention to the most general aspect of the facts. Whatever may be the
+course of subsequent changes, the first change is the formation of a
+superficial layer or blastoderm; and by whatever series of
+transformations the adult structure is reached, it is from the
+blastoderm that all the organs forming the adult originate. Why this
+marvellous fact?
+
+Meaning is given to it if we go back to the first stage in which
+_Protozoa_, having by repeated fissions formed a cluster, then arranged
+themselves into a hollow sphere, as do the protophytes forming a
+_Volvox_. Originally alike all over its surface, the hollow sphere of
+ciliated units thus formed, would, if not quite spherical, assume a
+constant attitude when moving through the water; and hence one part of
+the spheroid would more frequently than the rest come in contact with
+nutritive matters to be taken in. A division of labour resulting from
+such a variation being advantageous, and tending therefore to increase
+in descendants, would end in a differentiation like that shown in the
+gemmules of various low types of _Metazoa_, which, ovate in shape, are
+ciliated over one part of the surface only. There would arise a form in
+which the cilium-bearing units effected locomotion and aeration; while
+on the others, assuming an amoeba-like character, devolved the
+function of absorbing food: a primordial specialization variously
+indicated by evidence.[61] Just noting that an ancestral origin of this
+kind is implied by the fact that in low types of _Metazoa_ a hollow
+sphere of cells is the form first assumed by the unfolding embryo, I
+draw attention to the point here of chief interest; namely that the
+primary differentiation of this hollow sphere is in such case determined
+by a difference in the converse of its parts with the medium and its
+contents; and that the subsequent invagination arises by a continuance
+of this differential converse.
+
+Even neglecting this first stage and commencing with the next, in which
+a "gastrula" has been produced by the permanent introversion of one
+portion of the surface of the hollow sphere, it will suffice if we
+consider what must thereafter have happened. That which continued to be
+the outer surface was the part which from time to time touched quiescent
+masses and occasionally received the collisions consequent on its own
+motions or the motions of other things. It was the part to receive the
+sound-vibrations occasionally propagated through the water; the part to
+be affected more strongly than any other by those variations in the
+amounts of light caused by the passing of small bodies close to it; and
+the part which met those diffused molecules constituting odours. That is
+to say, from the beginning the surface was the part on which there fell
+the various influences pervading the environment, the part by which
+there was received those impressions from the environment serving for
+the guidance of actions, and the part which had to bear the mechanical
+re-actions consequent upon such actions. Necessarily, therefore, the
+surface was the part in which were initiated the various
+instrumentalities for carrying on intercourse with the environment. To
+suppose otherwise is to suppose that such instrumentalities arose
+internally where they could neither be operated on by surrounding
+agencies nor operate on them,--where the differentiating forces did not
+come into play, and the differentiated structures had nothing to do; and
+it is to suppose that meanwhile the parts directly exposed to the
+differentiating forces remained unchanged. Clearly, then, organization
+could not but begin on the surface; and having thus begun, its
+subsequent course could not but be determined by its superficial origin.
+And hence these remarkable facts showing us that individual evolution is
+accomplished by successive in-foldings and in-growings. Doubtless
+natural selection soon came into action, as, for example, in the removal
+of the rudimentary nervous centres from the surface; since an
+individual in which they were a little more deeply seated would be less
+likely to be incapacitated by injury of them. And so in multitudinous
+other ways. But nevertheless, as we here see, natural selection could
+operate only under subjection. It could do no more than take advantage
+of those structural changes which the medium and its contents initiated.
+
+See, then, how large has been the part played by this primordial factor.
+Had it done no more than give to _Protozoa_ and _Protophyta_ that
+cell-form which characterizes them--had it done no more than entail the
+cellular composition which is so remarkable a trait of _Metazoa_ and
+_Metaphyta_--had it done no more than cause the repetition in all
+visible animals and plants of that primary differentiation of outer from
+inner which it first wrought in animals and plants invisible to the
+naked eye; it would have done much towards giving to organisms of all
+kinds certain leading traits. But it has done more than this. By causing
+the first differentiations of those clusters of units out of which
+visible animals in general arose, it fixed the starting place for
+organization, and therefore determined the course of organization; and,
+doing this, gave indelible traits to embryonic transformations and to
+adult structures.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Though mainly carried on after the inductive method, the argument at the
+close of the foregoing section has passed into the deductive. Here let
+us follow for a space the deductive method pure and simple. Doubtless in
+biology _à priori_ reasoning is dangerous; but there can be no danger in
+considering whether its results coincide with those reached by reasoning
+_à posteriori_.
+
+Biologists in general agree that in the present state of the world, no
+such thing happens as the rise of a living creature out of non-living
+matter. They do not deny, however, that at a remote period in the past,
+when the temperature of the Earth's surface was much higher than at
+present, and other physical conditions were unlike those we know,
+inorganic matter, through successive complications, gave origin to
+organic matter. So many substances once supposed to belong exclusively
+to living bodies, have now been formed artificially, that men of science
+scarcely question the conclusion that there are conditions under which,
+by yet another step of composition, quaternary compounds of lower types
+pass into those of highest types. That there once took place gradual
+divergence of the organic from the inorganic, is, indeed, a necessary
+implication of the hypothesis of Evolution, taken as a whole; and if we
+accept it as a whole, we must put to ourselves the question--What were
+the early stages of progress which followed, after the most complex form
+of matter had arisen out of forms of matter a degree less complex?
+
+At first, protoplasm could have had no proclivities to one or other
+arrangement of parts; unless, indeed, a purely mechanical proclivity
+towards a spherical form when suspended in a liquid. At the outset it
+must have been passive. In respect of its passivity, primitive organic
+matter must have been like inorganic matter. No such thing as
+spontaneous variation could have occurred in it; for variation implies
+some habitual course of change from which it is a divergence, and is
+therefore excluded where there is no habitual course of change. In the
+absence of that cyclical series of metamorphoses which even the simplest
+living thing now shows us, as a result of its inherited constitution,
+there could be no _point d'appui_ for natural selection. How, then, did
+organic evolution begin?
+
+If a primitive mass of organic matter was like a mass of inorganic
+matter in respect of its passivity, and differed only in respect of its
+greater changeableness; then we must infer that its first changes
+conformed to the same general law as do the changes of an inorganic
+mass. The instability of the homogeneous is a universal principle. In
+all cases the homogeneous tends to pass into the heterogeneous, and the
+less heterogeneous into the more heterogeneous. In the primordial units
+of protoplasm, then, the step with which evolution commenced must have
+been the passage from a state of complete likeness throughout the mass
+to a state in which there existed some unlikeness. Further, the cause of
+this step in one of these portions of organic matter, as in any portion
+of inorganic matter, must have been the different exposure of its parts
+to incident forces. What incident forces? Those of its medium or
+environment. Which were the parts thus differently exposed? Necessarily
+the outside and the inside. Inevitably, then, alike in the organic
+aggregate and the inorganic aggregate (supposing it to have coherence
+enough to maintain constant relative positions among its parts), the
+first fall from homogeneity to heterogeneity must always have been the
+differentiation of the external surface from the internal contents. No
+matter whether the modification was physical or chemical, one of
+composition or of decomposition, it comes within the same
+generalization. The direct action of the medium was the primordial
+factor of organic evolution.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now, finally, let us look at the factors in their _ensemble_, and
+consider the respective parts they play: observing, especially, the ways
+in which, at successive stages, they severally give place one to another
+in degree of importance.
+
+Acting alone, the primordial factor must have initiated the primary
+differentiation in all units of protoplasm alike. I say alike, but I
+must forthwith qualify the word. For since surrounding influences,
+physical and chemical, could not be absolutely the same in all places,
+especially when the first rudiments of living things had spread over a
+considerable area, there necessarily arose small contrasts between the
+degrees and kinds of superficial differentiation effected. As soon as
+these became decided, natural selection came into play; for inevitably
+the unlikenesses produced among the units had effects on their lives:
+there was survival of some among the modified forms rather than others.
+Utterly in the dark though we are respecting the causes which set up
+that process of fission everywhere occurring among the minutest forms of
+life, we must infer that, when established, it furthered the spread of
+those which were most favourably differentiated by the medium. Though
+natural selection must have become increasingly active when once it had
+got a start; yet the differentiating action of the medium never ceased
+to be a co-operator in the development of these first animals and
+plants. Again taking the lead as there arose the composite forms of
+animals and plants, and again losing the lead with that advancing
+differentiation of these higher types which gave more scope to natural
+selection, it nevertheless continued, and must ever continue, to be a
+cause, both direct and indirect, of modifications in structure.
+
+Along with that remarkable process which, beginning in minute forms with
+what is called conjugation, developed into sexual generation, there came
+into play causes of frequent and marked fortuitous variations. The
+mixtures of constitutional proclivities made more or less unlike by
+unlikenesses of physical conditions, inevitably led to occasional
+concurrences of forces producing deviations of structure. These were of
+course mostly suppressed, but sometimes increased, by survival of the
+fittest. When, along with the growing multiplication in forms of life,
+conflict and competition became continually more active, fortuitous
+variations of structure of no account in the converse with the medium,
+became of much account in the struggle with enemies and competitors; and
+natural selection of such variations became the predominant factor.
+Especially throughout the plant-world its action appears to have been
+immensely the most important; and throughout that large part of the
+animal world characterized by relative inactivity, the survival of
+individuals that had varied in favourable ways, must all along have been
+the chief cause of the divergence of species and the occasional
+production of higher ones.
+
+But gradually with that increase of activity which we see on ascending
+to successively higher grades of animals, and especially with that
+increased complexity of life which we also see, there came more and more
+into play as a factor, the inheritance of those modifications of
+structure caused by modifications of function. Eventually, among
+creatures of high organization, this factor became an important one; and
+I think there is reason to conclude that, in the case of the highest of
+creatures, civilized men, among whom the kinds of variation which affect
+survival are too multitudinous to permit easy selection of any one, and
+among whom survival of the fittest is greatly interfered with, it has
+become the chief factor: such aid as survival of the fittest gives,
+being usually limited to the preservation of those in whom the totality
+of the faculties has been most favourably moulded by functional changes.
+
+Of course this sketch of the relations among the factors must be taken
+as in large measure a speculation. We are now too far removed from the
+beginnings of life to obtain data for anything more than tentative
+conclusions respecting its earliest stages; especially in the absence of
+any clue to the mode in which multiplication, first agamogenetic and
+then gamogenetic, was initiated. But it has seemed to me not amiss to
+present this general conception, by way of showing how the deductive
+interpretation harmonizes with the several inferences reached by
+induction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In his article on Evolution in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, Professor
+Huxley writes as follows:--
+
+     "How far 'natural selection' suffices for the production of
+     species remains to be seen. Few can doubt that, if not the whole
+     cause, it is a very important factor in that operation.... On the
+     evidence of palæontology, the evolution of many existing forms of
+     animal life from their predecessors is no longer an hypothesis, but
+     an historical fact; it is only the nature of the physiological
+     factors to which that evolution is due which is still open to
+     discussion."
+
+With these passages I may fitly join a remark made in the admirable
+address Prof. Huxley delivered before unveiling the statue of Mr. Darwin
+in the Museum at South Kensington. Deprecating the supposition that an
+authoritative sanction was given by the ceremony to the current ideas
+concerning organic evolution, he said that "science commits suicide when
+it adopts a creed."
+
+Along with larger motives, one motive which has joined in prompting the
+foregoing articles, has been the desire to point out that already among
+biologists, the beliefs concerning the origin of species have assumed
+too much the character of a creed; and that while becoming settled they
+have been narrowed. So far from further broadening that broader view
+which Mr. Darwin reached as he grew older, his followers appear to have
+retrograded towards a more restricted view than he ever expressed. Thus
+there seems occasion for recognizing the warning uttered by Prof.
+Huxley, as not uncalled for.
+
+Whatever may be thought of the arguments and conclusions set forth in
+this article and the preceding one, they will perhaps serve to show that
+it is as yet far too soon to close the inquiry concerning the causes of
+organic evolution.
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+    [_The following passages formed part of a preface to the small
+    volume in which the foregoing essay re-appeared. I append them here
+    as they cannot now be conveniently prefixed._]
+
+Though the direct bearings of the arguments contained in this Essay are
+biological, the argument contained in its first half has indirect
+bearings upon Psychology, Ethics, and Sociology. My belief in the
+profound importance of these indirect bearings, was originally a chief
+prompter to set forth the argument; and it now prompts me to re-issue it
+in permanent form.
+
+Though mental phenomena of many kinds, and especially of the simpler
+kinds, are explicable only as resulting from the natural selection of
+favourable variations; yet there are, I believe, still more numerous
+mental phenomena, including all those of any considerable complexity,
+which cannot be explained otherwise than as results of the inheritance
+of functionally-produced modifications. What theory of psychological
+evolution is espoused, thus depends on acceptance or rejection of the
+doctrine that not only in the individual, but in the successions of
+individuals, use and disuse of parts produce respectively increase and
+decrease of them.
+
+Of course there are involved the conceptions we form of the genesis and
+nature of our higher emotions; and, by implication, the conceptions we
+form of our moral intuitions. If functionally-produced modifications are
+inheritable, then the mental associations habitually produced in
+individuals by experiences of the relations between actions and their
+consequences, pleasurable or painful, may, in the successions of
+individuals, generate innate tendencies to like or dislike such actions.
+But if not, the genesis of such tendencies is, as we shall see, not
+satisfactorily explicable.
+
+That our sociological beliefs must also be profoundly affected by the
+conclusions we draw on this point, is obvious. If a nation is modified
+_en masse_ by transmission of the effects produced on the natures of its
+members by those modes of daily activity which its institutions and
+circumstances involve; then we must infer that such institutions and
+circumstances mould its members far more rapidly and comprehensively
+than they can do if the solo cause of adaptation to them is the more
+frequent survival of individuals who happen to have varied in
+favourable ways.
+
+I will add only that, considering the width and depth of the effects
+which acceptance of one or other of these hypotheses must have on our
+views of Life, Mind, Morals, and Politics, the question--Which of them
+is true? demands, beyond all other questions whatever, the attention of
+scientific men.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After the above articles were published, I received from Dr. Downes a
+copy of a paper "On the Influence of Light on Protoplasm," written by
+himself and Mr. T.P. Blunt, M.A., which was communicated to the Royal
+Society in 1878. It was a continuation of a preceding paper which,
+referring chiefly to _Bacteria_, contended that--
+
+     "Light is inimical to, and under favourable conditions may wholly
+     prevent, the development of these organisms."
+
+This supplementary paper goes on to show that the injurious effect of
+light upon protoplasm results only in presence of oxygen. Taking first a
+comparatively simple type of molecule which enters into the composition
+of organic matter, the authors say, after detailing experiments:--
+
+     "It was evident, therefore, that _oxygen_ was the agent of
+     destruction under the influence of sunlight."
+
+And accounts of experiments upon minute organisms are followed by the
+sentence--
+
+     "It seemed, therefore, that in absence of an atmosphere, light
+     failed entirely to produce any effect on such organisms as were
+     able to appear."
+
+They sum up the results of their experiments in the paragraph--
+
+     "We conclude, therefore, both from analogy and from direct
+     experiment, that the observed action on these organisms is not
+     dependent on light _per se_, but that the presence of free oxygen
+     is necessary; light and oxygen together accomplishing what neither
+     can do alone: and the inference seems irresistible that the effect
+     produced is a gradual oxidation of the constituent protoplasm of
+     these organisms, and that, in this respect, protoplasm, although
+     living, is not exempt from laws which appear to govern the
+     relations of light and oxygen to forms of matter less highly
+     endowed. A force which is indirectly absolutely essential to life
+     as we know it, and matter in the absence of which life has not yet
+     been proved to exist, here unite for its destruction."
+
+What is the obvious implication? If oxygen in presence of light destroys
+one of these minutest portions of protoplasm, what will be its effect on
+a larger portion of protoplasm? It will work an effect on the surface
+instead of on the whole mass. Not like the minutest mass made inert all
+through, the larger mass will be made inert only on its outside; and,
+indeed, the like will happen with the minutest mass if the light or the
+oxygen is very small in quantity. Hence there will result an envelope of
+changed matter, inclosing and protecting the unchanged protoplasm--there
+will result a rudimentary cell-wall.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 41: It is probable that this shortening has resulted not
+directly but indirectly, from the selection of individuals which were
+noted for tenacity of hold; for the bull-dog's peculiarity in this
+respect seems due to relative shortness of the upper jaw, giving the
+underhung structure which, involving retreat of the nostrils, enables
+the dog to continue breathing while holding.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Though Mr. Darwin approved of this expression and
+occasionally employed it, he did not adopt it for general use;
+contending, very truly, that the expression Natural Selection is in some
+cases more convenient. See _Animals and Plants under Domestication_
+(first edition) Vol. i, p. 6; and _Origin of Species_ (sixth edition) p.
+49.]
+
+[Footnote 43: It is true that while not deliberately admitted by Mr.
+Darwin, these effects are not denied by him. In his _Animals and Plants
+under Domestication_ (vol. ii, 281), he refers to certain chapters in
+the _Principles of Biology_, in which I have discussed this general
+inter-action of the medium and the organism, and ascribed certain most
+general traits to it. But though, by his expressions, he implies a
+sympathetic attention to the argument, he does not in such way adopt the
+conclusion as to assign to this factor any share in the genesis of
+organic structures--much less that large share which I believe it has
+had. I did not myself at that time, nor indeed until quite recently, see
+how extensive and profound have been the influences on organization
+which, as we shall presently see, are traceable to the early results of
+this fundamental relation between organism and medium. I may add that it
+is in an essay on "Transcendental Physiology," first published in 1857,
+that the line of thought here followed out in its wider bearings, was
+first entered upon.]
+
+[Footnote 44: _Text-Book of Botany, &c._ by Julius Sachs. Translated by
+A. W. Bennett and W. T. T. Dyer.]
+
+[Footnote 45: _A Manual of the Infusoria_, by W. Saville Kent. Vol. i,
+p. 232.]
+
+[Footnote 46: _Ib._ Vol. i, p. 241.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Kent, Vol. i, p. 56.]
+
+[Footnote 48: _Ib._ Vol. i, p. 57.]
+
+[Footnote 49: _The Elements of Comparative Anatomy_, by T. H. Huxley,
+pp. 7-9.]
+
+[Footnote 50: _A Treatise on Comparative Embryology_, by F. M. Balfour,
+Vol. ii, chap. xiii.]
+
+[Footnote 51: Sachs, p. 210.]
+
+[Footnote 52: _Ibid._ pp. 83-4.]
+
+[Footnote 53: _Ibid._ p. 185.]
+
+[Footnote 54: _Ibid._ 80.]
+
+[Footnote 55: Sachs, p. 83.]
+
+[Footnote 56: _Ibid._ p. 147.]
+
+[Footnote 57: _A Treatise on Comparative Embryology._ By Francis M.
+Balfour, LL.D., F.R.S. Vol. ii, p. 343 (second edition).]
+
+[Footnote 58: Balfour, l.c. Vol. ii, 400-1.]
+
+[Footnote 59: Balfour, l.c. Vol. ii, p. 401.]
+
+[Footnote 60: For a general delineation of the changes by which the
+development is effected, see Balfour, l.c. Vol. ii, pp. 401-4.]
+
+[Footnote 61: _See_ Balfour, Vol. i, 149 and Vol. ii, 343-4.]
+
+
+
+
+A COUNTER-CRITICISM.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Nineteenth Century_, for February,_ 1888.]
+
+
+While I do not concur in sundry of the statements and conclusions
+contained in the article entitled "A Great Confession," contributed by
+the Duke of Argyll to the last number of this Review, yet I am obliged
+to him for having raised afresh the question discussed in it. Though the
+injunction "Rest and be thankful," is one for which in many spheres much
+may be said--especially in the political, where undue restlessness is
+proving very mischievous; yet rest and be thankful is an injunction out
+of place in science. Unhappily, while politicians have not duly regarded
+it, it appears to have been taken to heart too much by naturalists; in
+so far, at least, as concerns the question of the origin of species.
+
+The new biological orthodoxy behaves just as the old biological
+orthodoxy did. In the days before Darwin, those who occupied themselves
+with the phenomena of life, passed by with unobservant eyes the
+multitudinous facts which point to an evolutionary origin for plants and
+animals; and they turned deaf ears to those who insisted on the
+significance of these facts. Now that they have come to believe in this
+evolutionary origin, and have at the same time accepted the hypothesis
+that natural selection has been the sole cause of the evolution, they
+are similarly unobservant of the multitudinous facts which cannot
+rationally be ascribed to that cause; and turn deaf ears to those who
+would draw their attention to them. The attitude is the same; it is only
+the creed which has changed.
+
+But, as above implied, though the protest of the Duke of Argyll against
+this attitude is quite justifiable, it seems to me that many of his
+statements cannot be sustained. Some of these concern me personally, and
+others are of impersonal concern. I propose to deal with them in the
+order in which they occur.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On page 144 the Duke of Argyll quotes me as omitting "for the present
+any consideration of a factor which may be distinguished as primordial;"
+and he represents me as implying by this "that Darwin's ultimate
+conception of some primordial 'breathing of the breath of life' is a
+conception which can be omitted only 'for the present.'" Even had there
+been no other obvious interpretation, it would have been a somewhat rash
+assumption that this was my meaning when referring to an omitted factor;
+and it is surprising that this assumption should have been made after
+reading the second of the two articles criticised, in which this factor
+omitted from the first is dealt with: this omitted third factor being
+the direct physico-chemical action of the medium on the organism. Such a
+thought as that which the Duke of Argyll ascribes to me, is so
+incongruous with the beliefs I have in many places expressed that the
+ascription of it never occurred to me as possible.
+
+Lower down on the same page are some other sentences having personal
+implications, which I must dispose of before going into the general
+question. The Duke says "it is more than doubtful whether any value
+attaches to the new factor with which he [I] desires to supplement it
+[natural selection]"; and he thinks it "unaccountable" that I "should
+make so great a fuss about so small a matter as the effect of use and
+disuse of particular organs as a separate and a newly-recognised
+factor in the development of varieties." I do not suppose that the Duke
+of Argyll intended to cast upon me the disagreeable imputation, that I
+claim as new that which all who are even slightly acquainted with the
+facts know to be anything rather than new. But his words certainly do
+this. How he should have thus written in spite of the extensive
+knowledge of the matter which he evidently has, and how he should have
+thus written in presence of the evidence contained in the articles he
+criticizes, I cannot understand. Naturalists, and multitudes besides
+naturalists, know that the hypothesis which I am represented as putting
+forward as new, is much older than the hypothesis of natural
+selection--goes back at least as far as Dr. Erasmus Darwin. My purpose
+was to bring into the foreground again a factor which has, I think, been
+of late years improperly ignored; to show that Mr. Darwin recognized
+this factor in an increasing degree as he grew older (by showing which I
+should have thought I sufficiently excluded the supposition that I
+brought it forward as new); to give further evidence that this factor is
+in operation; to show there are numerous phenomena which cannot be
+interpreted without it; and to argue that if proved operative in any
+case, it may be inferred that it is operative on all structures having
+active functions.
+
+Strangely enough, this passage, in which I am represented as implying
+novelty in a doctrine which I have merely sought to emphasize and
+extend, is immediately succeeded by a passage in which the Duke of
+Argyll himself represents the doctrine as being familiar and well
+established:--
+
+     "That organs thus enfeebled [i.e. by persistent disuse] are
+     transmitted by inheritance to offspring in a like condition of
+     functional and structural decline, is a correlated physiological
+     doctrine not generally disputed. The converse case--of increased
+     strength and development arising out of the habitual and healthy
+     use of special organs, and of the transmission of these to
+     offspring--is a case illustrated by many examples in the breeding
+     of domestic animals. I do not know to what else we can attribute
+     the long slender legs and bodies of greyhounds so manifestly
+     adapted to speed of foot, or the delicate powers of smell in
+     pointers and setters, or a dozen cases of modified structure
+     effected by artificial selection."
+
+In none of the assertions contained in this passage can I agree. Had the
+inheritance of "functional and structural decline" been "not generally
+disputed," half my argument would have been needless; and had the
+inheritance of "increased strength and development" caused by use been
+recognized, as "illustrated by many examples," the other half of my
+argument would have been needless. But both are disputed; and, if not
+positively denied, are held to be unproved. Greyhounds and pointers do
+not yield valid evidence, because their peculiarities are more due to
+artificial selection than to any other cause. It may, indeed, be doubted
+whether greyhounds use their legs more than other dogs. Dogs of all
+kinds are daily in the habit of running about and chasing one another at
+the top of their speed--other dogs more frequently than greyhounds,
+which are not much given to play. The occasions on which greyhounds
+exercise their legs in chasing hares, occupy but inconsiderable spaces
+in their lives, and can play but small parts in developing their legs.
+And then, how about their long heads and sharp noses? Are these
+developed by running? The structure of the greyhound is explicable as a
+result mainly of selection of variations occasionally arising from
+unknown causes; but it is inexplicable otherwise. Still more obviously
+invalid is the evidence said to be furnished by pointers and setters.
+How can these be said to exercise their organs of smell more than other
+dogs? Do not all dogs occupy themselves in sniffing about here and there
+all day long: tracing animals of their own kind and of other kinds?
+Instead of admitting that the olfactory sense is more exercised in
+pointers and setters than in other dogs, it might, contrariwise, be
+contended that it is exercised less; seeing that during the greater
+parts of their lives they are shut up in kennels where the varieties of
+odours, on which to practise their noses, is but small. Clearly if
+breeders of sporting dogs have from early days habitually bred from
+those puppies of each litter which had the keenest noses (and it is
+undeniable that the puppies of each litter are made different from one
+another, as are the children in each human family, by unknown
+combinations of causes), then the existence of such remarkable powers in
+pointers and setters may be accounted for; while it is otherwise
+unaccountable. These instances, and many others such, I should have
+gladly used in support of my argument, had they been available; but
+unfortunately they are not.
+
+On the next page of the Duke of Argyll's article (page 145), occurs a
+passage which I must quote at length before I can deal effectually with
+its various statements. It runs as follows:--
+
+     "But if natural selection is a mere phrase, vague enough and wide
+     enough to cover any number of the physical causes concerned in
+     ordinary generation, then the whole of Mr. Spencer's laborious
+     argument in favour of his 'other factor' becomes an argument worse
+     than superfluous. It is wholly fallacious in assuming that this
+     'factor' and 'natural selection' are at all exclusive of, or even
+     separate from, each other. The factor thus assumed to be new is
+     simply one of the subordinate cases of heredity. But heredity is
+     the central idea of natural selection. Therefore natural selection
+     includes and covers all the causes which can possibly operate
+     through inheritance. There is thus no difficulty whatever in
+     referring it to the same one factor whose solitary dominion Mr.
+     Spencer has plucked up courage to dispute. He will never succeed in
+     shaking its dictatorship by such a small rebellion. His little
+     contention is like some bit of Bumbledom setting up for Home
+     Rule--some parochial vestry claiming independence of a universal
+     empire. It pretends to set up for itself in some fragment of an
+     idea. But here is not even a fragment to boast of or to stand up
+     for. His new factor in organic evolution has neither independence
+     nor novelty. Mr. Spencer is able to quote himself as having
+     mentioned it in his _Principles of Biology_ published some twenty
+     years ago; and by a careful ransacking of Darwin he shows that the
+     idea was familiar to and admitted by him at least in his last
+     edition of the _Origin of Species_.... Darwin was a man so much
+     wiser than all his followers," &c.
+
+Had there not been the Duke of Argyll's signature to the article, I
+could scarcely have believed that this passage was written by him.
+Remembering that on reading his article in the preceding number of this
+Review, I was struck by the extent of knowledge, clearness of
+discrimination, and power of exposition, displayed in it, I can scarcely
+understand how there has come from the same pen a passage in which none
+of these traits are exhibited. Even one wholly unacquainted with the
+subject may see in the last two sentences of the above extract, how
+strangely its propositions are strung together. While in the first of
+them I am represented as bringing forward a "new factor," I am in the
+second represented as saying that I mentioned it twenty years ago! In
+the same breath I am described as claiming it as new and asserting it as
+old! So, again, the uninstructed reader, on comparing the first words of
+the extract with the last, will be surprised on seeing in a scientific
+article statements so manifestly wanting in precision. If "natural
+selection is a mere phrase," how can Mr. Darwin, who thought it
+explained the origin of species, be regarded as wise? Surely it must be
+more than a mere phrase if it is the key to so many otherwise
+inexplicable facts. These examples of incongruous thoughts I give to
+prepare the way; and will now go on to examine the chief propositions
+which the quoted passage contains.
+
+The Duke of Argyll says that "heredity is the central idea of natural
+selection." Now it would, I think, be concluded that those who possess
+the central idea of a thing have some consciousness of the thing. Yet
+men have possessed the idea of heredity for any number of generations
+and have been quite unconscious of natural selection. Clearly the
+statement is misleading. It might just as truly be said that the
+occurrence of structural variations in organisms is the central idea of
+natural selection. And it might just as truly be said that the action of
+external agencies in killing some individuals and fostering others is
+the central idea of natural selection. No such assertions are correct.
+The process has three factors--heredity, variation, and external
+action--any one of which being absent, the process ceases. The
+conception contains three corresponding ideas, and if any one be struck
+out, the conception cannot be framed. No one of them is the central
+idea, but they are co-essential ideas.
+
+From the erroneous belief that "heredity is the central idea of natural
+selection" the Duke of Argyll draws the conclusion, consequently
+erroneous, that "natural selection includes and covers all the causes
+which can possibly operate through inheritance." Had he considered the
+cases which, in the _Principles of Biology_, I have cited to illustrate
+the inheritance of functionally-produced modifications, he would have
+seen that his inference is far from correct. I have instanced the
+decrease of the jaw among civilized men as a change of structure which
+cannot have been produced by the inheritance of spontaneous, or
+fortuitous, variations. That changes of structure arising from such
+variations may be maintained and increased in successive generations, it
+is needful that the individuals in whom they occur shall derive from
+them advantages in the struggle for existence--advantages, too,
+sufficiently great to aid their survival and multiplication in
+considerable degrees. But a decrease of jaw reducing its weight by even
+an ounce (which would be a large variation), cannot, by either smaller
+weight carried or smaller nutrition required, have appreciably
+advantaged any person in the battle of life. Even supposing such
+diminution of jaw to be beneficial (and in the resulting decay of teeth
+it entails great evils), the benefit can hardly have been such as to
+increase the relative multiplication of families in which it occurred
+generation after generation. Unless it has done this, however, decreased
+size of the jaw cannot have been produced by the natural selection of
+favourable variations. How can it then have been produced? Only by
+decreased function--by the habitual use of soft food, joined, probably,
+with disuse of the teeth as tools. And now mark that this cause operates
+on all members of a society which falls into civilized habits.
+Generation after generation this decreased function changes its
+component families simultaneously. Natural selection does not cover the
+case at all--has nothing to do with it. And the like happens in
+multitudinous other cases. Every species spreading into a new habitat,
+coming in contact with new food, exposed to a different temperature, to
+a drier or moister air, to a more irregular surface, to a new soil, &c.,
+&c., has its members one and all subject to various changed actions,
+which influence its muscular, vascular, respiratory, digestive,
+and other systems of organs. If there is inheritance of
+functionally-produced modifications, then all its members will transmit
+the structural alterations wrought in them, and the species will change
+as a whole without the supplanting of some stocks by others. Doubtless
+in respect of certain changes natural selection will co-operate. If the
+species, being a predacious one, is brought, by migration, into the
+presence of prey of greater speed than before; then, while all its
+members will have their limbs strengthened by extra action, those in
+whom this muscular adaptation is greatest will have their multiplication
+furthered; and inheritance of the functionally-increased structures will
+be aided, in successive generations, by survival of the fittest. But it
+cannot be so with the multitudinous minor changes entailed by the
+modified life. The majority of these must be of such relative
+unimportance that one of them cannot give to the individual in which it
+becomes most marked, advantages which predominate over kindred
+advantages gained by other individuals from other changes more
+favourably wrought in them. In respect to these, the inherited effects
+of use and disuse must accumulate independently of natural selection.
+
+To make clear the relations of these two factors to one another and to
+heredity, let us take a case in which the operations of all three may be
+severally identified and distinguished.
+
+Here is one of those persons, occasionally met with, who has an
+additional finger on each hand, and who, we will suppose, is a
+blacksmith. He is neither aided nor much hindered by these additional
+fingers; but, by constant use, he has greatly developed the muscles of
+his right arm. To avoid a perturbing factor, we will assume that his
+wife, too, exercises her arms in an unusual degree: keeps a mangle, and
+has all the custom of the neighbourhood. Such being the circumstances,
+let us ask what are the established facts, and what are the beliefs and
+disbeliefs of biologists.
+
+The first fact is that this six-fingered blacksmith will be likely to
+transmit his peculiarity to some of his children; and some of these,
+again, to theirs. It is proved that, even in the absence of a like
+peculiarity in the other parent, this strange variation of structure
+(which we must ascribe to some fortuitous combination of causes) is
+often inherited for more than one generation. Now the causes which
+produce this persistent six-fingeredness are unquestionably causes which
+"operate through inheritance." The Duke of Argyll says that "natural
+selection includes and covers all the causes which can possibly operate
+through inheritance." How does it cover the causes which operate here?
+Natural selection never comes into play at all. There is no fostering of
+this peculiarity, since it does not help in the struggle for existence;
+and there is no reason to suppose it is such a hindrance in the struggle
+that those who have it disappear in consequence. It simply gets
+cancelled in the course of generations by the adverse influences of
+other stocks.
+
+While biologists admit, or rather assert, that the peculiarity in the
+blacksmith's arm which was born with him is transmissible, they deny, or
+rather do not admit, that the other peculiarities of his arm, induced by
+daily labour--its large muscles and strengthened bones--are
+transmissible. They say that there is no proof. The Duke of Argyll
+thinks that the inheritance of organs enfeebled by disuse is "not
+generally disputed;" and he thinks there is clear proof that the
+converse change--increase of size consequent on use--is also inherited.
+But biologists dispute both of these alleged kinds of inheritance. If
+proof is wanted, it will be found in the proceedings at the last meeting
+of the British Association, in a paper entitled "Are Acquired Characters
+Hereditary?" by Professor Ray Lankester, and in the discussion raised by
+that paper. Had this form of inheritance been, as the Duke of Argyll
+says, "not generally disputed," I should not have written the first of
+the two articles he criticizes.
+
+But supposing it proved, as it may hereafter be, that such a
+functionally-produced change of structure as the blacksmith's arm shows
+us, is transmissible, the persistent inheritance is again of a kind with
+which natural selection has nothing to do. If the greatly strengthened
+arm enabled the blacksmith and his descendants, having like strengthened
+arms, to carry on the battle of life in a much more successful way than
+it was carried on by other men, survival of the fittest would ensure the
+maintenance and increase of this trait in successive generations. But
+the skill of the carpenter enables him to earn quite as much as his
+stronger neighbour. By the various arts he has been taught, the plumber
+gets as large a weekly wage. The small shopkeeper by his foresight in
+buying and prudence in selling, the village-schoolmaster by his
+knowledge, the farm-bailiff by his diligence and care, succeed in the
+struggle for existence equally well. The advantage of a strong arm does
+not predominate over the advantages which other men gain by their innate
+or acquired powers of other kinds; and therefore natural selection
+cannot operate so as to increase the trait. Before it can be increased,
+it is neutralized by the unions of those who have it with those who have
+other traits. To whatever extent, therefore, inheritance of this
+functionally-produced modification operates, it operates independently
+of natural selection.
+
+One other point has to be noted--the relative importance of this factor.
+If additional developments of muscles and bones may be transmitted--if,
+as Mr. Darwin held, there are various other structural modifications
+caused by use and disuse which imply inheritance of this kind--if
+acquired characters are hereditary, as the Duke of Argyll believes; then
+the area over which this factor of organic evolution operates is
+enormous. Not every muscle only, but every nerve and nerve-centre, every
+blood-vessel, every viscus, and nearly every bone, may be increased or
+decreased by its influence. Excepting parts which have passive
+functions, such as dermal appendages and the bones which form the skull,
+the implication is that nearly every organ in the body may be modified
+in successive generations by the augmented or diminished activity
+required of it; and, save in the few cases where the change caused is
+one which conduces to survival in a pre-eminent degree, it will be thus
+modified independently of natural selection. Though this factor can
+operate but little in the vegetal world, and can play but a subordinate
+part in the lowest animal world; yet, seeing that all the active organs
+of all animals are subject to its influence, it has an immense sphere.
+The Duke of Argyll compares the claim made for this factor to "some bit
+of Bumbledom setting up for Home Rule--some parochial vestry claiming
+independence of a universal empire." But, far from this, the claim made
+for it is to an empire, less indeed than that of natural selection, and
+over a small part of which natural selection exercises concurrent power;
+but of which the independent part has an area that is immense.
+
+It seems to me, then, that the Duke of Argyll is mistaken in four of the
+propositions contained in the passages I have quoted. The inheritance of
+acquired characters _is_ disputed by biologists, though he thinks it is
+not. It is not true that "heredity is the central idea of natural
+selection." The statement that natural selection includes and covers all
+the causes which can possibly operate through inheritance, is quite
+erroneous. And if the inheritance of acquired characters is a factor at
+all, the dominion it rules over is not insignificant but vast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here I must break off, after dealing with a page and a half of the Duke
+of Argyll's article. A state of health which has prevented me from
+publishing anything since "The Factors of Organic Evolution," now nearly
+two years ago, prevents me from carrying the matter further. Could I
+have pursued the argument it would, I believe, have been practicable to
+show that various other positions taken up by the Duke of Argyll do not
+admit of effectual defence. But whether or not this is probable, the
+reader must be left to judge for himself. On one further point only will
+I say a word; and this chiefly because, if I pass it by, a mistaken
+impression of a serious kind may be diffused. The Duke of Argyll
+represents me as "giving up" the "famous phrase" "survival of the
+fittest," and wishing "to abandon it." He does this because I have
+pointed out that its words have connotations against which we must be on
+our guard, if we would avoid certain distortions of thought. With equal
+propriety he might say that an astronomer abandons the statement that
+the planets move in elliptic orbits, because he warns his readers that
+in the heavens there exist no such things as orbits, but that the
+planets sweep on through a pathless void, in directions perpetually
+changed by gravitation.
+
+I regret that I should have had thus to dissent so entirely from various
+of the statements made, and conclusions drawn, by the Duke of Argyll,
+because, as I have already implied, I think he has done good service by
+raising afresh the question he has dealt with. Though the advantages
+which he hopes may result from the discussion are widely unlike the
+advantages which I hope may result from it, yet we agree in the belief
+that advantages may be looked for.
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Transcriber's note
+
+
+The following changes have been made to the text:
+
+Page 21: "heterogeenity" changed to "heterogeneity".
+
+Page 47: "multipled results" changed to "multiplied results".
+
+Page 59: "pre-Raffaelites" changed to "pre-Raphaelites".
+
+Page 84: "heretogeneity" changed to "heterogeneity".
+
+Page 94: "observedcoexistences" changed to "observed coexistences".
+
+Page 97: "Cirrhipoedia" changed to "Cirrhipedia".
+
+Page 108: "primâ facie" changed to "prima facie".
+
+Page 112: "à fortiori" changed to "a fortiori".
+
+Page 124: "irreconcileable" changed to "irreconcilable".
+
+Page 140: "some thing like double" changed to "something like double".
+
+Page 216: "representive" changed to "representative".
+
+Page 291: "inbibe" changed to "imbibe".
+
+Page 306: "whic hthey and living" changed to "which they and living".
+
+Page 359: "of the two races, not" changed to "of the two races, nor".
+
+Page 393: "parenthethic" changed to "parenthetic".
+
+Page 411: "hypertropic" changed to "hypertrophic".
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays: Scientific, Political, &
+Speculative, Vol. I, by Herbert Spencer
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, Vol. 1, by Herbert Spencer.
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays: Scientific, Political, &
+Speculative, Vol. I, by Herbert Spencer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I
+
+Author: Herbert Spencer
+
+Release Date: August 31, 2009 [EBook #29869]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS: SCIENTIFIC, ETC. VOL I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Adrian Mastronardi, Carla Foust, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>ESSAYS:<br /><br />
+
+SCIENTIFIC, POLITICAL, &amp; SPECULATIVE.</h1>
+
+
+<p class="fm4">BY</p>
+
+<p class="fm2">HERBERT SPENCER.<br /><br /></p>
+
+
+<p class="fm3">LIBRARY EDITION,</p>
+
+<p class="fm4">(OTHERWISE FIFTH THOUSAND)<br />
+
+<i>Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and various other
+additions.</i></p>
+
+
+<p class="fm2">VOL. I.<br /><br /></p>
+
+
+<p class="fm2">WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,</p>
+<p class="fm3">14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON:<br />
+<span class="smcap">AND</span> 20. SOUTH FREDERICK STREET. EDINBURGH.<br />
+1891.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="fm4">LONDON:<br />
+G. NORMAN AND SON, PRINTERS, HART STREET,<br />
+COVENT GARDEN.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p>Excepting those which have appeared as articles in periodicals during
+the last eight years, the essays here gathered together were originally
+re-published in separate volumes at long intervals. The first volume
+appeared in December 1857; the second in November 1863; and the third in
+February 1874. By the time the original editions of the first two had
+been sold, American reprints, differently entitled and having the essays
+differently arranged, had been produced; and, for economy's sake, I have
+since contented myself with importing successive supplies printed from
+the American stereotype plates. Of the third volume, however, supplies
+have, as they were required, been printed over here, from plates partly
+American and partly English. The completion of this final edition of
+course puts an end to this make-shift arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>The essays above referred to as having been written since 1882, are now
+incorporated with those previously re-published. There are seven of
+them; namely&mdash;"Morals and Moral Sentiments," "The Factors of Organic
+Evolution," "Professor Green's Explanations," "The Ethics of Kant,"
+"Absolute Political Ethics," "From Freedom to Bondage," and "The
+Americans." As well as these large additions there are small additions,
+in the shape of post<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span>scripts to various essays&mdash;one to "The Constitution
+of the Sun," one to "The Philosophy of Style," one to "Railway Morals,"
+one to "Prison Ethics," and one to "The Origin and Function of Music:"
+which last is about equal in length to the original essay. Changes have
+been made in many of the essays: in some cases by omitting passages and
+in other cases by including new ones. Especially the essay on "The
+Nebular Hypothesis" may be named as one which, though unchanged in
+essentials, has been much altered by additions and subtractions, and by
+bringing its statements up to date; so that it has been in large measure
+re-cast. Beyond these respects in which this final edition differs from
+preceding editions, it differs in having undergone a verification of its
+references and quotations, as well as a second verbal revision.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally the fusion of three separate series of essays into one series,
+has made needful a general re-arrangement. Whether to follow the order
+of time or the order of subjects was a question which presented itself;
+and, as neither alternative promised satisfactory results, I eventually
+decided to compromise&mdash;to follow partly the one order and partly the
+other. The first volume is made up of essays in which the idea of
+evolution, general or special, is dominant. In the second volume essays
+dealing with philosophical questions, with abstract and concrete
+science, and with aesthetics, are brought together; but though all of
+them are tacitly evolutionary, their evolutionism is an incidental
+rather than a necessary trait. The ethical, political, and social essays
+composing the third volume, though mostly written from the evolution
+point of view, have for their more immediate purposes the enunciation of
+doctrines which are directly practical in their bearings. Meanwhile,
+within each volume the essays are arranged in order of time: not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span> indeed
+strictly, but so far as consists with the requirements of sub-classing.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the essays included in these three volumes, there remain several
+which I have not thought it well to include&mdash;in some cases because of
+their personal character, in other cases because of their relative
+unimportance, and in yet other cases because they would scarcely be
+understood in the absence of the arguments to which they are replies.
+But for the convenience of any who may wish to find them, I append their
+titles and places of publication. These are as follows:&mdash;"Retrogressive
+Religion," in <i>The Nineteenth Century</i> for July 1884; "Last Words about
+Agnosticism and the Religion of Humanity," in <i>The Nineteenth Century</i>
+for November 1884; a note to Prof. Cairns' Critique on the <i>Study of
+Sociology</i>, in <i>The Fortnightly Review</i>, for February 1875; "A Short
+Rejoinder" [to Mr. J. F. McLennan], <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, June 1877;
+"Prof. Goldwin Smith as a Critic," <i>Contemporary Review</i>, March 1882; "A
+Rejoinder to M. de Laveleye," <i>Contemporary Review</i>, April 1885.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">London</span>, <i>December, 1890</i>.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS_OF_VOL_I" id="CONTENTS_OF_VOL_I"></a>CONTENTS OF VOL. I.</h2>
+
+<table summary="CONTENTS">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdr">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">PROGRESS: ITS LAW AND CAUSE</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_8">8</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSIOLOGY</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">ILLOGICAL GEOLOGY</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_192">192</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">BAIN ON THE EMOTIONS AND THE WILL</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_241">241</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">THE SOCIAL ORGANISM</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_265">265</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">THE ORIGIN OF ANIMAL WORSHIP</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_308">308</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">MORALS AND MORAL SENTIMENTS</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_331">331</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">THE COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY OF MAN</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_351">351</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">MR. MARTINEAU ON EVOLUTION</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_371">371</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">THE FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_389">389</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="center">(<i>For Index, see Volume III.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_DEVELOPMENT_HYPOTHESIS" id="THE_DEVELOPMENT_HYPOTHESIS"></a>THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>Originally published in </i>The Leader, <i>for March 20,</i> 1852. <i>Brief
+though it is, I place this essay before the rest, partly because
+with the exception of a similarly-brief essay on "Use and Beauty",
+it came first in order of time, but chiefly because it came first
+in order of thought, and struck the keynote of all that was to
+follow.</i>]</p></div>
+
+
+<p>In a debate upon the development hypothesis, lately narrated to me by a
+friend, one of the disputants was described as arguing that as, in all
+our experience, we know no such phenomenon as transmutation of species,
+it is unphilosophical to assume that transmutation of species ever takes
+place. Had I been present I think that, passing over his assertion,
+which is open to criticism, I should have replied that, as in all our
+experience we have never known a species <i>created</i>, it was, by his own
+showing, unphilosophical to assume that any species ever had been
+created.</p>
+
+<p>Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution as not being
+adequately supported by facts, seem to forget that their own theory is
+supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a
+given belief, they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief,
+but assume that their own needs none. Here we find, scattered over the
+globe, vegetable and animal organisms numbering, of the one kind
+(according to Humboldt), some 320,000 species, and of the other, some
+2,000,000 species (see Carpenter); and if to these we add the numbers of
+animal and vegetable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> species which have become extinct, we may safely
+estimate the number of species that have existed, and are existing, on
+the Earth, at not less than <i>ten millions</i>. Well, which is the most
+rational theory about these ten millions of species? Is it most likely
+that there have been ten millions of special creations? or is it most
+likely that, by continual modifications due to change of circumstances,
+ten millions of varieties have been produced, as varieties are being
+produced still?</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless many will reply that they can more easily conceive ten
+millions of special creations to have taken place, than they can
+conceive that ten millions of varieties have arisen by successive
+modifications. All such, however, will find, on inquiry, that they are
+under an illusion. This is one of the many cases in which men do not
+really believe, but rather <i>believe they believe</i>. It is not that they
+can truly conceive ten millions of special creations to have taken
+place, but that they <i>think they can do so</i>. Careful introspection will
+show them that they have never yet realized to themselves the creation
+of even <i>one</i> species. If they have formed a definite conception of the
+process, let them tell us how a new species is constructed, and how it
+makes its appearance. Is it thrown down from the clouds? or must we hold
+to the notion that it struggles up out of the ground? Do its limbs and
+viscera rush together from all the points of the compass? or must we
+receive the old Hebrew idea, that God takes clay and moulds a new
+creature? If they say that a new creature is produced in none of these
+modes, which are too absurd to be believed, then they are required to
+describe the mode in which a new creature <i>may</i> be produced&mdash;a mode
+which does <i>not</i> seem absurd; and such a mode they will find that they
+neither have conceived nor can conceive.</p>
+
+<p>Should the believers in special creations consider it unfair thus to
+call upon them to describe how special creations take place, I reply
+that this is far less than they demand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> from the supporters of the
+Development Hypothesis. They are merely asked to point out a
+<i>conceivable</i> mode. On the other hand, they ask, not simply for a
+<i>conceivable</i> mode, but for the <i>actual</i> mode. They do not say&mdash;Show us
+how this <i>may</i> take place; but they say&mdash;Show us how this <i>does</i> take
+place. So far from its being unreasonable to put the above question, it
+would be reasonable to ask not only for a <i>possible</i> mode of special
+creation, but for an <i>ascertained</i> mode; seeing that this is no greater
+a demand than they make upon their opponents.</p>
+
+<p>And here we may perceive how much more defensible the new doctrine is
+than the old one. Even could the supporters of the Development
+Hypothesis merely show that the origination of species by the process of
+modification is conceivable, they would be in a better position than
+their opponents. But they can do much more than this. They can show that
+the process of modification has effected, and is effecting, decided
+changes in all organisms subject to modifying influences. Though, from
+the impossibility of getting at a sufficiency of facts, they are unable
+to trace the many phases through which any existing species has passed
+in arriving at its present form, or to identify the influences which
+caused the successive modifications; yet, they can show that any
+existing species&mdash;animal or vegetable&mdash;when placed under conditions
+different from its previous ones, <i>immediately begins to undergo certain
+changes fitting it for the new conditions</i>. They can show that in
+successive generations these changes continue; until, ultimately, the
+new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated
+plants, in domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, such
+alterations have taken place. They can show that the degrees of
+difference so produced are often, as in dogs, greater than those on
+which distinctions of species are in other cases founded. They can show
+that it is a matter of dispute whether some of these modified forms are
+varieties or separate species. They can show, too, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> the changes
+daily taking place in ourselves&mdash;the facility that attends long
+practice, and the loss of aptitude that begins when practice ceases&mdash;the
+strengthening of passions habitually gratified, and the weakening of
+those habitually curbed&mdash;the development of every faculty, bodily,
+moral, or intellectual, according to the use made of it&mdash;are all
+explicable on this same principle. And thus they can show that
+throughout all organic nature there <i>is</i> at work a modifying influence
+of the kind they assign as the cause of these specific differences: an
+influence which, though slow in its action, does, in time, if the
+circumstances demand it, produce marked changes&mdash;an influence which, to
+all appearance, would produce in the millions of years, and under the
+great varieties of condition which geological records imply, any amount
+of change.</p>
+
+<p>Which, then, is the most rational hypothesis?&mdash;that of special creations
+which has neither a fact to support it nor is even definitely
+conceivable; or that of modification, which is not only definitely
+conceivable, but is countenanced by the habitudes of every existing
+organism?</p>
+
+<p>That by any series of changes a protozoon should ever become a mammal,
+seems to those who are not familiar with zoology, and who have not seen
+how clear becomes the relationship between the simplest and the most
+complex forms when intermediate forms are examined, a very grotesque
+notion. Habitually looking at things rather in their statical aspect
+than in their dynamical aspect, they never realize the fact that, by
+small increments of modification, any amount of modification may in time
+be generated. That surprise which they feel on finding one whom they
+last saw as a boy, grown into a man, becomes incredulity when the degree
+of change is greater. Nevertheless, abundant instances are at hand of
+the mode in which we may pass to the most diverse forms by insensible
+gradations. Arguing the matter some time since with a learned professor,
+I illustrated my position thus:&mdash;You admit that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> there is no apparent
+relationship between a circle and an hyperbola. The one is a finite
+curve; the other is an infinite one. All parts of the one are alike; of
+the other no parts are alike [save parts on its opposite sides]. The one
+incloses a space; the other will not inclose a space though produced for
+ever. Yet opposite as are these curves in all their properties, they may
+be connected together by a series of intermediate curves, no one of
+which differs from the adjacent ones in any appreciable degree. Thus, if
+a cone be cut by a plane at right angles to its axis we get a circle.
+If, instead of being perfectly at right angles, the plane subtends with
+the axis an angle of 89&deg; 59&acute;, we have an ellipse which no human eye,
+even when aided by an accurate pair of compasses, can distinguish from a
+circle. Decreasing the angle minute by minute, the ellipse becomes first
+perceptibly eccentric, then manifestly so, and by and by acquires so
+immensely elongated a form, as to bear no recognizable resemblance to a
+circle. By continuing this process, the ellipse passes insensibly into a
+parabola; and, ultimately, by still further diminishing the angle, into
+an hyperbola. Now here we have four different species of curve&mdash;circle,
+ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola&mdash;each having its peculiar properties
+and its separate equation, and the first and last of which are quite
+opposite in nature, connected together as members of one series, all
+producible by a single process of insensible modification.</p>
+
+<p>But the blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex
+organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple
+ones, becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms
+are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably
+in every respect&mdash;in bulk, in structure, in colour, in form, in chemical
+composition: differs so greatly that no visible resemblance of any kind
+can be pointed out between them. Yet is the one changed in the course of
+a few years into the other: changed so gradually, that at no moment can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+it be said&mdash;Now the seed ceases to be, and the tree exists. What can be
+more widely contrasted than a newly-born child and the small,
+semi-transparent spherule constituting the human ovum? The infant is so
+complex in structure that a cyclop&aelig;dia is needed to describe its
+constituent parts. The germinal vesicle is so simple that it may be
+defined in a line. Nevertheless a few months suffice to develop the one
+out of the other; and that, too, by a series of modifications so small,
+that were the embryo examined at successive minutes, even a microscope
+would with difficulty disclose any sensible changes. That the uneducated
+and the ill-educated should think the hypothesis that all races of
+beings, man inclusive, may in process of time have been evolved from the
+simplest monad, a ludicrous one, is not to be wondered at. But for the
+physiologist, who knows that every individual being <i>is</i> so evolved&mdash;who
+knows, further, that in their earliest condition the germs of all plants
+and animals whatever are so similar, "that there is no appreciable
+distinction amongst them, which would enable it to be determined whether
+a particular molecule is the germ of a Conferva or of an Oak, of a
+Zoophyte or of a Man;"<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>&mdash;for him to make a difficulty of the matter is
+inexcusable. Surely if a single cell may, when subjected to certain
+influences, become a man in the space of twenty years; there is nothing
+absurd in the hypothesis that under certain other influences, a cell
+may, in the course of millions of years, give origin to the human race.</p>
+
+<p>We have, indeed, in the part taken by many scientific men in this
+controversy of "Law <i>versus</i> Miracle," a good illustration of the
+tenacious vitality of superstitions. Ask one of our leading geologists
+or physiologists whether he believes in the Mosaic account of the
+creation, and he will take the question as next to an insult. Either he
+rejects the narrative entirely, or understands it in some vague
+nonnatural <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>sense. Yet one part of it he unconsciously adopts; and that,
+too, literally. For whence has he got this notion of "special
+creations," which he thinks so reasonable, and fights for so vigorously?
+Evidently he can trace it back to no other source than this myth which
+he repudiates. He has not a single fact in nature to cite in proof of
+it; nor is he prepared with any chain of reasoning by which it may be
+established. Catechize him, and he will be forced to confess that the
+notion was put into his mind in childhood as part of a story which he
+now thinks absurd. And why, after rejecting all the rest of the story,
+he should strenuously defend this last remnant of it, as though he had
+received it on valid authority, he would be puzzled to say.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Carpenter, <i>Principles of Comparative Physiology</i>, p. 474.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PROGRESS_ITS_LAW_AND_CAUSE" id="PROGRESS_ITS_LAW_AND_CAUSE"></a>PROGRESS: ITS LAW AND CAUSE.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>First published in</i> The Westminster Review <i>for April,</i> 1857.
+<i>Though the ideas and illustrations contained in this essay were
+eventually incorporated in</i> First Principles, <i>yet I think it well
+here to reproduce it as exhibiting the form under which the General
+Doctrine of Evolution made its first appearance.</i>]</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The current conception of progress is shifting and indefinite. Sometimes
+it comprehends little more than simple growth&mdash;as of a nation in the
+number of its members and the extent of territory over which it spreads.
+Sometimes it has reference to quantity of material products&mdash;as when the
+advance of agriculture and manufactures is the topic. Sometimes the
+superior quality of these products is contemplated; and sometimes the
+new or improved appliances by which they are produced. When, again, we
+speak of moral or intellectual progress, we refer to states of the
+individual or people exhibiting it; while, when the progress of Science,
+or Art, is commented upon, we have in view certain abstract results of
+human thought and action. Not only, however, is the current conception
+of progress more or less vague, but it is in great measure erroneous. It
+takes in not so much the reality of progress as its accompaniments&mdash;not
+so much the substance as the shadow. That progress in intelligence seen
+during the growth of the child into the man, or the savage into the
+philosopher, is commonly regarded as consisting in the greater number<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+of facts known and laws understood; whereas the actual progress consists
+in those internal modifications of which this larger knowledge is the
+expression. Social progress is supposed to consist in the making of a
+greater quantity and variety of the articles required for satisfying
+men's wants; in the increasing security of person and property; in
+widening freedom of action; whereas, rightly understood, social progress
+consists in those changes of structure in the social organism which have
+entailed these consequences. The current conception is a teleological
+one. The phenomena are contemplated solely as bearing on human
+happiness. Only those changes are held to constitute progress which
+directly or indirectly tend to heighten human happiness; and they are
+thought to constitute progress simply <i>because</i> they tend to heighten
+human happiness. But rightly to understand progress, we must learn the
+nature of these changes, considered apart from our interests. Ceasing,
+for example, to regard the successive geological modifications that have
+taken place in the Earth, as modifications that have gradually fitted it
+for the habitation of Man, and as <i>therefore</i> constituting geological
+progress, we must ascertain the character common to these
+modifications&mdash;the law to which they all conform. And similarly in every
+other case. Leaving out of sight concomitants and beneficial
+consequences, let us ask what progress is in itself.</p>
+
+<p>In respect to that progress which individual organisms display in the
+course of their evolution, this question has been answered by the
+Germans. The investigations of Wolff, Goethe, and von Baer, have
+established the truth that the series of changes gone through during the
+development of a seed into a tree, or an ovum into an animal, constitute
+an advance from homogeneity of structure to heterogeneity of structure.
+In its primary stage, every germ consists of a substance that is uniform
+throughout, both in texture and chemical composition. The first step<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> is
+the appearance of a difference between two parts of this substance; or,
+as the phenomenon is called in physiological language, a
+differentiation. Each of these differentiated divisions presently begins
+itself to exhibit some contrast of parts: and by and by these secondary
+differentiations become as definite as the original one. This process is
+continuously repeated&mdash;is simultaneously going on in all parts of the
+growing embryo; and by endless such differentiations there is finally
+produced that complex combination of tissues and organs constituting the
+adult animal or plant. This is the history of all organisms whatever. It
+is settled beyond dispute that organic progress consists in a change
+from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.</p>
+
+<p>Now, we propose in the first place to show, that this law of organic
+progress is the law of all progress. Whether it be in the development of
+the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface, in the
+development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of
+Language, Literature, Science, Art, this same evolution of the simple
+into the complex, through successive differentiations, holds throughout.
+From the earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results
+of civilization, we shall find that the transformation of the
+homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which progress
+essentially consists.</p>
+
+<p>With the view of showing that <i>if</i> the Nebular Hypothesis be true, the
+genesis of the solar system supplies one illustration of this law, let
+us assume that the matter of which the sun and planets consist was once
+in a diffused form; and that from the gravitation of its atoms there
+resulted a gradual concentration. By the hypothesis, the solar system in
+its nascent state existed as an indefinitely extended and nearly
+homogeneous medium&mdash;a medium almost homogeneous in density, in
+temperature, and in other physical attributes. The first change in the
+direction of increased aggregation, brought a contrast in density and a
+contrast in temperature, between the interior and the exterior<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> of this
+mass. Simultaneously the drawing in of outer parts caused motions ending
+in rotation round a centre with various angular velocities. These
+differentiations increased in number and degree until there was evolved
+the organized group of sun, planets, and satellites, which we now
+know&mdash;a group which presents numerous contrasts of structure and action
+among its members. There are the immense contrasts between the sun and
+the planets, in bulk and in weight; as well as the subordinate contrasts
+between one planet and another, and between the planets and their
+satellites. There is the similarly-marked contrast between the sun as
+almost stationary (relatively to the other members of the Solar System),
+and the planets as moving round him with great velocity: while there are
+the secondary contrasts between the velocities and periods of the
+several planets, and between their simple revolutions and the double
+ones of their satellites, which have to move round their primaries while
+moving round the sun. There is the yet further strong contrast between
+the sun and the planets in respect of temperature; and there is good
+reason to suppose that the planets and satellites differ from each other
+in their proper heats, as well as in the amounts of heat they receive
+from the sun. When we bear in mind that, in addition to these various
+contrasts, the planets and satellites also differ in respect to their
+distances from each other and their primary; in respect to the
+inclinations of their orbits, the inclinations of their axes, their
+times of rotation on their axes, their specific gravities, and their
+physical constitutions; we see what a high degree of heterogeneity the
+solar system exhibits, when compared with the almost complete
+homogeneity of the nebulous mass out of which it is supposed to have
+originated.</p>
+
+<p>Passing from this hypothetical illustration, which must be taken for
+what it is worth, without prejudice to the general argument, let us
+descend to a more certain order of evidence. It is now generally agreed
+among geologists<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> and physicists that the Earth was at one time a mass
+of molten matter. If so, it was at that time relatively homogeneous in
+consistence, and, in virtue of the circulation which takes place in
+heated fluids, must have been comparatively homogeneous in temperature;
+and it must have been surrounded by an atmosphere consisting partly of
+the elements of air and water, and partly of those various other
+elements which are among the more ready to assume gaseous forms at high
+temperatures. That slow cooling by radiation which is still going on at
+an inappreciable rate, and which, though originally far more rapid than
+now, necessarily required an immense time to produce any decided change,
+must ultimately have resulted in the solidification of the portion most
+able to part with its heat&mdash;namely, the surface. In the thin crust thus
+formed we have the first marked differentiation. A still further
+cooling, a consequent thickening of this crust, and an accompanying
+deposition of all solidifiable elements contained in the atmosphere,
+must finally have been followed by the condensation of the water
+previously existing as vapour. A second marked differentiation must thus
+have arisen; and as the condensation must have taken place on the
+coolest parts of the surface&mdash;namely, about the poles&mdash;there must thus
+have resulted the first geographical distinction of parts. To these
+illustrations of growing heterogeneity, which, though deduced from known
+physical laws, may be regarded as more or less hypothetical, Geology
+adds an extensive series that have been inductively established.
+Investigations show that the Earth has been continually becoming more
+heterogeneous in virtue of the multiplication of sedimentary strata
+which form its crust; also, that it has been becoming more heterogeneous
+in respect of the composition of these strata, the later of which, being
+made from the detritus of the earlier, are many of them rendered highly
+complex by the mixture of materials they contain; and further, that this
+heterogeneity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> has been vastly increased by the actions of the Earth's
+still molten nucleus upon its envelope, whence have resulted not only
+many kinds of igneous rocks, but the tilting up of sedimentary strata at
+all angles, the formation of faults and metallic veins, the production
+of endless dislocations and irregularities. Yet again, geologists teach
+us that the Earth's surface has been growing more varied in
+elevation&mdash;that the most ancient mountain systems are the smallest, and
+the Andes and Himalayas the most modern; while in all probability there
+have been corresponding changes in the bed of the ocean. As a
+consequence of these ceaseless differentiations, we now find that no
+considerable portion of the Earth's exposed surface is like any other
+portion, either in contour, in geologic structure, or in chemical
+composition; and that in most parts it changes from mile to mile in all
+these characters. Moreover, there has been simultaneously going on a
+differentiation of climates. As fast as the Earth cooled and its crust
+solidified, there arose appreciable differences in temperature between
+those parts of its surface more exposed to the sun and those less
+exposed. As the cooling progressed, these differences became more
+pronounced; until there finally resulted those marked contrasts between
+regions of perpetual ice and snow, regions where winter and summer
+alternately reign for periods varying according to the latitude, and
+regions where summer follows summer with scarcely an appreciable
+variation. At the same time the many and varied elevations and
+subsidences of portions of the Earth's crust, bringing about the present
+irregular distribution of land and sea, have entailed modifications of
+climate beyond those dependent on latitude; while a yet further series
+of such modifications have been produced by increasing differences of
+elevation in the land, which have in sundry places brought arctic,
+temperate, and tropical climates to within a few miles of one another.
+And the general outcome of these changes is, that not only has every
+extensive region<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> its own meteorologic conditions, but that every
+locality in each region differs more or less from others in those
+conditions; as in its structure, its contour, its soil. Thus, between
+our existing Earth, the phenomena of whose crust neither geographers,
+geologists, mineralogists, nor meteorologists have yet enumerated, and
+the molten globe out of which it was evolved, the contrast in
+heterogeneity is extreme.</p>
+
+<p>When from the Earth itself we turn to the plants and animals which have
+lived, or still live, upon its surface, we find ourselves in some
+difficulty from lack of facts. That every existing organism has been
+developed out of the simple into the complex, is indeed the first
+established truth of all; and that every organism which existed in past
+times was similarly developed, is an inference no physiologist will
+hesitate to draw. But when we pass from individual forms of life to Life
+in general, and inquire whether the same law is seen in the <i>ensemble</i>
+of its manifestations,&mdash;whether modern plants and animals are of more
+heterogeneous structure than ancient ones, and whether the Earth's
+present Flora and Fauna are more heterogeneous than the Flora and Fauna
+of the past,&mdash;we find the evidence so fragmentary, that every conclusion
+is open to dispute. Three-fifths of the Earth's surface being covered by
+water; a great part of the exposed land being inaccessible to, or
+untravelled by, the geologist; the greater part of the remainder having
+been scarcely more than glanced at; and even the most familiar portions,
+as England, having been so imperfectly explored that a new series of
+strata has been added within these four years,&mdash;it is impossible for us
+to say with certainty what creatures have, and what have not, existed at
+any particular period. Considering the perishable nature of many of the
+lower organic forms, the metamorphosis of numerous sedimentary strata,
+and the great gaps occurring among the rest, we shall see further reason
+for distrusting our deductions. On the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> one hand, the repeated discovery
+of vertebrate remains in strata previously supposed to contain none,&mdash;of
+reptiles where only fish were thought to exist,&mdash;of mammals where it was
+believed there were no creatures higher than reptiles,&mdash;renders it daily
+more manifest how small is the value of negative evidence. On the other
+hand, the worthlessness of the assumption that we have discovered the
+earliest, or anything like the earliest, organic remains, is becoming
+equally clear. That the oldest known sedimentary rocks have been greatly
+changed by igneous action, and that still older ones have been totally
+transformed by it, is becoming undeniable. And the fact that sedimentary
+strata earlier than any we know, have been melted up, being admitted, it
+must also be admitted that we cannot say how far back in time this
+destruction of sedimentary strata has been going on. Thus the title
+<i>Pal&aelig;ozoic</i>, as applied to the earliest known fossiliferous strata,
+involves a <i>petitio principii</i>; and, for aught we know to the contrary,
+only the last few chapters of the Earth's biological history may have
+come down to us. On neither side, therefore, is the evidence conclusive.
+Nevertheless we cannot but think that, scanty as they are, the facts,
+taken altogether, tend to show both that the more heterogeneous
+organisms have been evolved in the later geologic periods, and that Life
+in general has been more heterogeneously manifested as time has
+advanced. Let us cite, in illustration, the one case of the
+<i>Vertebrata</i>. The earliest known vertebrate remains are those of Fishes;
+and Fishes are the most homogeneous of the vertebrata. Later and more
+heterogeneous are Reptiles. Later still, and more heterogeneous still,
+are Birds and Mammals. If it be said that the Pal&aelig;ozoic deposits, not
+being estuary deposits, are not likely to contain the remains of
+terrestrial vertebrata, which may nevertheless have existed at that era,
+we reply that we are merely pointing to the leading facts, <i>such as they
+are</i>. But to avoid any such criticism, let us take the mammalian
+sub<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>division only. The earliest known remains of mammals are those of
+small marsupials, which are the lowest of the mammalian type; while,
+conversely, the highest of the mammalian type&mdash;Man&mdash;is the most recent.
+The evidence that the vertebrate fauna, as a whole, has become more
+heterogeneous, is considerably stronger. To the argument that the
+vertebrate fauna of the Pal&aelig;ozoic period, consisting, so far as we know,
+entirely of Fishes, was less heterogeneous than the modern vertebrate
+fauna, which includes Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals, of multitudinous
+genera, it may be replied, as before, that estuary deposits of the
+Pal&aelig;ozoic period, could we find them, might contain other orders of
+vertebrata. But no such reply can be made to the argument that whereas
+the marine vertebrata of the Pal&aelig;ozoic period consisted entirely of
+cartilaginous fishes, the marine vertebrata of later periods include
+numerous genera of osseous fishes; and that, therefore, the later marine
+vertebrate faunas are more heterogeneous than the oldest known one. Nor,
+again, can any such reply be made to the fact that there are far more
+numerous orders and genera of mammalian remains in the tertiary
+formations than in the secondary formations. Did we wish merely to make
+out the best case, we might dwell upon the opinion of Dr. Carpenter, who
+says that "the general facts of Pal&aelig;ontology appear to sanction the
+belief, that <i>the same plan</i> may be traced out in what may be called
+<i>the general life of the globe</i>, as in <i>the individual life</i> of every
+one of the forms of organized being which now people it." Or we might
+quote, as decisive, the judgment of Professor Owen, who holds that the
+earlier examples of each group of creatures severally departed less
+widely from archetypal generality than the later examples&mdash;were
+severally less unlike the fundamental form common to the group as a
+whole; and thus constituted a less heterogeneous group of creatures. But
+in deference to an authority for whom we have the highest respect, who
+considers that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> evidence at present obtained does not justify a
+verdict either way, we are content to leave the question open.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>Whether an advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is or is
+not displayed in the biological history of the globe, it is clearly
+enough displayed in the progress of the latest and most heterogeneous
+creature&mdash;Man. It is true alike that, during the period in which the
+Earth has been peopled, the human organism has grown more heterogeneous
+among the civilized divisions of the species; and that the species, as a
+whole, has been growing more heterogeneous in virtue of the
+multiplication of races and the differentiation of these races from each
+other. In proof of the first of these positions, we may cite the fact
+that, in the relative development of the limbs, the civilized man
+departs more widely from the general type of the placental mammalia than
+do the lower human races. While often possessing well-developed body and
+arms, the Australian has very small legs: thus reminding us of the
+chimpanzee and the gorilla, which present no great contrasts in size
+between the hind and fore limbs. But in the European, the greater length
+and massiveness of the legs have become marked&mdash;the fore and hind limbs
+are more heterogeneous. Again, the greater ratio which the cranial bones
+bear to the facial bones illustrates the same truth. Among the
+vertebrata in general, progress is marked by an increasing heterogeneity
+in the vertebral column, and more especially in the segments
+constituting the skull: the higher forms being distinguished by the
+relatively larger size of the bones which cover the brain, and the
+relatively <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> smaller size of those which form the jaws, &amp;c. Now this
+characteristic, which is stronger in Man than in any other creature, is
+stronger in the European than in the savage. Moreover, judging from the
+greater extent and variety of faculty he exhibits, we may infer that the
+civilized man has also a more complex or heterogeneous nervous system
+than the uncivilized man: and, indeed, the fact is in part visible in
+the increased ratio which his cerebrum bears to the subjacent ganglia,
+as well as in the wider departure from symmetry in its convolutions. If
+further elucidation be needed, we may find it in every nursery. The
+infant European has sundry marked points of resemblance to the lower
+human races; as in the flatness of the al&aelig; of the nose, the depression
+of its bridge, the divergence and forward opening of the nostrils, the
+form of the lips, the absence of a frontal sinus, the width between the
+eyes, the smallness of the legs. Now, as the developmental process by
+which these traits are turned into those of the adult European, is a
+continuation of that change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous
+displayed during the previous evolution of the embryo, which every
+anatomist will admit; it follows that the parallel developmental process
+by which the like traits of the barbarous races have been turned into
+those of the civilized races, has also been a continuation of the change
+from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. The truth of the second
+position&mdash;that Mankind, as a whole, have become more heterogeneous&mdash;is
+so obvious as scarcely to need illustration. Every work on Ethnology, by
+its divisions and subdivisions of races, bears testimony to it. Even
+were we to admit the hypothesis that Mankind originated from several
+separate stocks, it would still remain true, that as, from each of these
+stocks, there have sprung many now widely-different tribes, which are
+proved by philological evidence to have had a common origin, the race as
+a whole is far less homogeneous than it once was. Add to which, that we
+have, in the Anglo-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>Americans, an example of a new variety arising
+within these few generations; and that, if we may trust to the
+descriptions of observers, we are likely soon to have another such
+example in Australia.</p>
+
+<p>On passing from Humanity under its individual form, to Humanity as
+socially embodied, we find the general law still more variously
+exemplified. The change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is
+displayed in the progress of civilization as a whole, as well as in the
+progress of every nation; and is still going on with increasing
+rapidity. As we see in existing barbarous tribes, society in its first
+and lowest form is a homogeneous aggregation of individuals having like
+powers and like functions: the only marked difference of function being
+that which accompanies difference of sex. Every man is warrior, hunter,
+fisherman, tool-maker, builder; every woman performs the same
+drudgeries. Very early, however, in the course of social evolution,
+there arises an incipient differentiation between the governing and the
+governed. Some kind of chieftainship seems coeval with the first advance
+from the state of separate wandering families to that of a nomadic
+tribe. The authority of the strongest or the most cunning makes itself
+felt among a body of savages as in a herd of animals, or a posse of
+schoolboys. At first, however, it is indefinite, uncertain; is shared by
+others of scarcely inferior power; and is unaccompanied by any
+difference in occupation or style of living: the first ruler kills his
+own game, makes his own weapons, builds his own hut, and, economically
+considered, does not differ from others of his tribe. Gradually, as the
+tribe progresses, the contrast between the governing and the governed
+grows more decided. Supreme power becomes hereditary in one family; the
+head of that family, ceasing to provide for his own wants, is served by
+others; and he begins to assume the sole office of ruling. At the same
+time there has been arising a co-ordinate species of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> government&mdash;that
+of Religion. As all ancient records and traditions prove, the earliest
+rulers are regarded as divine personages. The maxims and commands they
+uttered during their lives are held sacred after their deaths, and are
+enforced by their divinely-descended successors; who in their turns are
+promoted to the pantheon of the race, here to be worshipped and
+propitiated along with their predecessors: the most ancient of whom is
+the supreme god, and the rest subordinate gods. For a long time these
+connate forms of government&mdash;civil and religious&mdash;remain closely
+associated. For many generations the king continues to be the chief
+priest, and the priesthood to be members of the royal race. For many
+ages religious law continues to include more or less of civil
+regulation, and civil law to possess more or less of religious sanction;
+and even among the most advanced nations these two controlling agencies
+are by no means completely separated from each other. Having a common
+root with these, and gradually diverging from them, we find yet another
+controlling agency&mdash;that of Ceremonial usages. All titles of honour are
+originally the names of the god-king; afterwards of the god and the
+king; still later of persons of high rank; and finally come, some of
+them, to be used between man and man. All forms of complimentary address
+were at first the expressions of submission from prisoners to their
+conqueror, or from subjects to their ruler, either human or
+divine&mdash;expressions which were afterwards used to propitiate subordinate
+authorities, and slowly descended into ordinary intercourse. All modes
+of salutation were once obeisances made before the monarch and used in
+worship of him after his death. Presently others of the god-descended
+race were similarly saluted; and by degrees some of the salutations have
+become the due of all.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Thus, no sooner does the
+originally-homogeneous social mass differentiate <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> into the governed and
+the governing parts, than this last exhibits an incipient
+differentiation into religious and secular&mdash;Church and State; while at
+the same time there begins to be differentiated from both, that less
+definite species of government which rules our daily intercourse&mdash;a
+species of government which, as we may see in heralds' colleges, in
+books of the peerage, in masters of ceremonies, is not without a certain
+embodiment of its own. Each of these is itself subject to successive
+differentiations. In the course of ages, there arises, as among
+ourselves, a highly complex political organization of monarch,
+ministers, lords and commons, with their subordinate administrative
+departments, courts of justice, revenue offices, &amp;c., supplemented in
+the provinces by municipal governments, county governments, parish or
+union governments&mdash;all of them more or less elaborated. By its side
+there grows up a highly complex religious organization, with its various
+grades of officials, from archbishops down to sextons, its colleges,
+convocations, ecclesiastical courts, &amp;c.; to all which must be added the
+ever-multiplying independent sects, each with its general and local
+authorities. And at the same time there is developed a highly complex
+aggregation of customs, manners, and temporary fashions, enforced by
+society at large, and serving to control those minor transactions
+between man and man which are not regulated by civil and religious law.
+Moreover, it is to be observed that this increasing <a name='TC_1'></a><ins class="correction" title="Was 'heterogeenity'">heterogeneity</ins> in the
+governmental appliances of each nation, has been accompanied by an
+increasing heterogeneity in the assemblage of governmental appliances of
+different nations: all nations being more or less unlike in their
+political systems and legislation, in their creeds and religious
+institutions, in their customs and ceremonial usages.</p>
+
+<p>Simultaneously there has been going on a second differentiation of a
+more familiar kind; that, namely, by which the mass of the community has
+been segregated into distinct classes and orders of workers. While the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+governing part has undergone the complex development above detailed, the
+governed part has undergone an equally complex development, which has
+resulted in that minute division of labour characterizing advanced
+nations. It is needless to trace out this progress from its first
+stages, up through the caste-divisions of the East and the incorporated
+guilds of Europe, to the elaborate producing and distributing
+organization existing among ourselves. It has been an evolution which,
+beginning with a tribe whose members severally perform the same actions
+each for himself, ends with a civilized community whose members
+severally perform different actions for each other; and an evolution
+which has transformed the solitary producer of any one commodity into a
+combination of producers who, united under a master, take separate parts
+in the manufacture of such commodity. But there are yet other and higher
+phases of this advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous in the
+industrial organization of society. Long after considerable progress has
+been made in the division of labour among different classes of workers,
+there is still little or no division of labour among the widely
+separated parts of the community: the nation continues comparatively
+homogeneous in the respect that in each district the same occupations
+are pursued. But when roads and other means of transit become numerous
+and good, the different districts begin to assume different functions,
+and to become mutually dependent. The calico manufacture locates itself
+in this county, the woollen-cloth manufacture in that; silks are
+produced here, lace there; stockings in one place, shoes in another;
+pottery, hardware, cutlery, come to have their special towns; and
+ultimately every locality becomes more or less distinguished from the
+rest by the leading occupation carried on in it. This subdivision of
+functions shows itself not only among the different parts of the same
+nation, but among different nations. That exchange of commodities which
+free-trade is increasing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> so largely, will ultimately have the effect of
+specializing, in a greater or less degree, the industry of each people.
+So that, beginning with a barbarous tribe, almost if not quite
+homogeneous in the functions of its members, the progress has been, and
+still is, towards an economic aggregation of the whole human race;
+growing ever more heterogeneous in respect of the separate functions
+assumed by separate nations, the separate functions assumed by the local
+sections of each nation, the separate functions assumed by the many
+kinds of makers and traders in each town, and the separate functions
+assumed by the workers united in producing each commodity.</p>
+
+<p>The law thus clearly exemplified in the evolution of the social
+organism, is exemplified with equal clearness in the evolution of all
+products of human thought and action; whether concrete or abstract, real
+or ideal. Let us take Language as our first illustration.</p>
+
+<p>The lowest form of language is the exclamation, by which an entire idea
+is vaguely conveyed through a single sound, as among the lower animals.
+That human language ever consisted solely of exclamations, and so was
+strictly homogeneous in respect of its parts of speech, we have no
+evidence. But that language can be traced down to a form in which nouns
+and verbs are its only elements, is an established fact. In the gradual
+multiplication of parts of speech out of these primary ones&mdash;in the
+differentiation of verbs into active and passive, of nouns into abstract
+and concrete&mdash;in the rise of distinctions of mood, tense, person, of
+number and case&mdash;in the formation of auxiliary verbs, of adjectives,
+adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, articles&mdash;in the divergence of those
+orders, genera, species, and varieties of parts of speech by which
+civilized races express minute modifications of meaning&mdash;we see a change
+from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. Another aspect under which we
+may trace the development of language is the divergence of words having
+common origins. Philology<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> early disclosed the truth that in all
+languages words may be grouped into families, the members of each of
+which are allied by their derivation. Names springing from a primitive
+root, themselves become the parents of other names still further
+modified. And by the aid of those systematic modes which presently
+arise, of making derivatives and forming compound terms, there is
+finally developed a tribe of words so heterogeneous in sound and
+meaning, that to the uninitiated it seems incredible they should be
+nearly related. Meanwhile from other roots there are being evolved other
+such tribes, until there results a language of some sixty thousand or
+more unlike words, signifying as many unlike objects, qualities, acts.
+Yet another way in which language in general advances from the
+homogeneous to the heterogeneous, is in the multiplication of languages.
+Whether all languages have grown from one stock, or whether, as some
+philologists think, they have grown from two or more stocks, it is clear
+that since large groups of languages, as the Indo-European, are of one
+parentage, they have become distinct through a process of continuous
+divergence. The same diffusion over the Earth's surface which has led to
+differentiations of race, has simultaneously led to differentiations of
+speech: a truth which we see further illustrated in each nation by the
+distinct dialects found in separate districts. Thus the progress of
+Language conforms to the general law, alike in the evolution of
+languages, in the evolution of families of words, and in the evolution
+of parts of speech.</p>
+
+<p>On passing from spoken to written language, we come upon several classes
+of facts, having similar implications. Written language is connate with
+Painting and Sculpture; and at first all three are appendages of
+Architecture, and have a direct connection with the primary form of all
+Government&mdash;the theocratic. Merely noting by the way the fact that
+sundry wild races, as for example the Australians and the tribes of
+South Africa, are given to depicting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> personages and events upon the
+walls of caves, which are probably regarded as sacred places, let us
+pass to the case of the Egyptians. Among them, as also among the
+Assyrians, we find mural paintings used to decorate the temple of the
+god and the palace of the king (which were, indeed, originally
+identical); and as such they were governmental appliances in the same
+sense as state-pageants and religious feasts were. They were
+governmental appliances in another way: representing as they did the
+worship of the god, the triumphs of the god-king, the submission of his
+subjects, and the punishment of the rebellious. Further, they were
+governmental, as being the products of an art reverenced by the people
+as a sacred mystery. From the habitual use of this pictorial
+representation there grew up the but-slightly-modified practice of
+picture-writing&mdash;a practice which was found still extant among North
+American peoples at the time they were discovered. By abbreviations
+analogous to those still going on in our own written language, the most
+frequently-recurring of these pictured figures were successively
+simplified; and ultimately there grew up a system of symbols, most of
+which had but distant resemblances to the things for which they stood.
+The inference that the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians were thus
+produced, is confirmed by the fact that the picture-writing of the
+Mexicans was found to have given birth to a like family of ideographic
+forms; and among them, as among the Egyptians, these had been partially
+differentiated into the <i>kuriological</i> or imitative, and the <i>tropical</i>
+or symbolic; which were, however, used together in the same record. In
+Egypt, written language underwent a further differentiation, whence
+resulted the <i>hieratic</i> and the <i>epistolographic</i> or <i>enchorial</i>; both
+of which are derived from the original hieroglyphic. At the same time we
+find that for the expression of proper names, which could not be
+otherwise conveyed, signs having phonetic values were employed; and
+though it is alleged that the Egyptians<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> never achieved complete
+alphabetic writing, yet it can scarcely be doubted that these phonetic
+symbols, occasionally used in aid of their ideographic ones, were the
+germs of an alphabetic system. Once having become separate from
+hieroglyphics, alphabetic writing itself underwent numerous
+differentiations&mdash;multiplied alphabets were produced; between most of
+which, however, more or less connection can still be traced. And in each
+civilized nation there has now grown up, for the representation of one
+set of sounds, several sets of written signs used for distinct purposes.
+Finally, from writing diverged printing; which, uniform in kind as it
+was at first, has since become multiform.</p>
+
+<p>While written language was passing through its first stages of
+development, the mural decoration which contained its root was being
+differentiated into Painting and Sculpture. The gods, kings, men, and
+animals represented, were originally marked by indented outlines and
+coloured. In most cases these outlines were of such depth, and the
+object they circumscribed so far rounded and marked out in its leading
+parts, as to form a species of work intermediate between intaglio and
+bas-relief. In other cases we see an advance upon this: the raised
+spaces between the figures being chiselled off, and the figures
+themselves appropriately tinted, a painted bas-relief was produced. The
+restored Assyrian architecture at Sydenham exhibits this style of art
+carried to greater perfection&mdash;the persons and things represented,
+though still barbarously coloured, are carved out with more truth and in
+greater detail: and in the winged lions and bulls used for the angles of
+gateways, we may see a considerable advance towards a completely
+sculptured figure; which, nevertheless, is still coloured, and still
+forms part of the building. But while in Assyria the production of a
+statue proper seems to have been little, if at all, attempted, we may
+trace in Egyptian art the gradual separation of the sculptured figure
+from the wall. A walk through the collection in the British<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> Museum
+shows this; while at the same time it affords an opportunity of
+observing the traces which the independent statues bear of their
+derivation from bas-relief: seeing that nearly all of them not only
+display that fusion of the legs with one another and of the arms with
+the body which is characteristic of bas-relief, but have the back united
+from head to foot with a block which stands in place of the original
+wall. Greece repeated the leading stages of this progress. On the
+friezes of Greek Temples, were coloured bas-reliefs representing
+sacrifices, battles, processions, games&mdash;all in some sort religious. The
+pediments contained painted sculptures more or less united with the
+tympanum, and having for subjects the triumphs of gods or heroes. Even
+statues definitely separated from buildings were coloured; and only in
+the later periods of Greek civilization does the differentiation of
+Sculpture from Painting appear to have become complete. In Christian art
+we may trace a parallel re-genesis. All early works of art throughout
+Europe were religious in subject&mdash;represented Christs, crucifixions,
+virgins, holy families, apostles, saints. They formed integral parts of
+church architecture, and were among the means of exciting worship; as in
+Roman Catholic countries they still are. Moreover, the sculptured
+figures of Christ on the cross, of virgins, of saints, were coloured;
+and it needs but to call to mind the painted madonnas still abundant in
+continental churches and highways, to perceive the significant fact that
+Painting and Sculpture continue in closest connection with each other
+where they continue in closest connection with their parent. Even when
+Christian sculpture became differentiated from painting, it was still
+religious and governmental in its subjects&mdash;was used for tombs in
+churches and statues of kings; while, at the same time, painting, where
+not purely ecclesiastical, was applied to the decoration of palaces, and
+besides representing royal personages, was mostly devoted to sacred
+legends. Only in recent times<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> have painting and sculpture become quite
+separate and mainly secular. Only within these few centuries has
+Painting been divided into historical, landscape, marine, architectural,
+genre, animal, still-life, &amp;c.; and Sculpture grown heterogeneous in
+respect of the variety of real and ideal subjects with which it occupies
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>Strange as it seems then, we find that all forms of written language, of
+Painting, and of Sculpture, have a common root in the politico-religious
+decorations of ancient temples and palaces. Little resemblance as they
+now have, the landscape that hangs against the wall, and the copy of the
+<i>Times</i> lying on the table, are remotely akin. The brazen face of the
+knocker which the postman has just lifted, is related not only to the
+woodcuts of the <i>Illustrated London News</i> which he is delivering, but to
+the characters of the <i>billet-doux</i> which accompanies it. Between the
+painted window, the prayer-book on which its light falls, and the
+adjacent monument, there is consanguinity. The effigies on our coins,
+the signs over shops, the coat of arms outside the carriage panel, and
+the placards inside the omnibus, are, in common with dolls and
+paper-hangings, lineally descended from the rude sculpture-paintings in
+which ancient peoples represented the triumphs and worship of their
+god-kings. Perhaps no example can be given which more vividly
+illustrates the multiplicity and heterogeneity of the products that in
+course of time may arise by successive differentiations from a common
+stock.</p>
+
+<p>Before passing to other classes of facts, it should be observed that the
+evolution of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous is displayed not
+only in the separation of Painting and Sculpture from Architecture and
+from each other, and in the greater variety of subjects they embody, but
+it is further shown in the structure of each work. A modern picture or
+statue is of far more heterogeneous nature than an ancient one. An
+Egyptian sculpture-fresco usually represents all its figures as at the
+same distance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> from the eye; and so is less heterogeneous than a
+painting that represents them as at various distances from the eye. It
+exhibits all objects as exposed to the same degree of light; and so is
+less heterogeneous than a painting which exhibits its different objects
+and different parts of each object as in different degrees of light. It
+uses chiefly the primary colours, and these in their full intensities;
+and so is less heterogeneous than a painting which, introducing the
+primary colours but sparingly, employs numerous intermediate tints, each
+of heterogeneous composition, and differing from the rest not only in
+quality but in strength. Moreover, we see in these early works great
+uniformity of conception. The same arrangement of figures is perpetually
+reproduced&mdash;the same actions, attitudes, faces, dresses. In Egypt the
+modes of representation were so fixed that it was sacrilege to introduce
+a novelty. The Assyrian bas-reliefs display parallel characters.
+Deities, kings, attendants, winged-figures and animals, are time after
+time depicted in like positions, holding like implements, doing like
+things, and with like expression or non-expression of face. If a
+palm-grove is introduced, all the trees are of the same height, have the
+same number of leaves, and are equidistant. When water is imitated, each
+wave is a counterpart of the rest; and the fish, almost always of one
+kind, are evenly distributed over the surface. The beards of the kings,
+the gods, and the winged-figures, are everywhere similar; as are the
+manes of the lions, and equally so those of the horses. Hair is
+represented throughout by one form of curl. The king's beard is quite
+architecturally built up of compound tiers of uniform curls, alternating
+with twisted tiers placed in a transverse direction, and arranged with
+perfect regularity; and the terminal tufts of the bulls' tails are
+represented in exactly the same manner. Without tracing out analogous
+facts in early Christian art, in which, though less striking, they are
+still visible, the advance in heterogeneity will be sufficiently
+manifest on remembering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> that in the pictures of our own day the
+composition is endlessly varied; the attitudes, faces, expressions,
+unlike; the subordinate objects different in sizes, forms, textures; and
+more or less of contrast even in the smallest details. Or, if we compare
+an Egyptian statue, seated bolt upright on a block, with hands on knees,
+fingers parallel, eyes looking straight forward, and the two sides
+perfectly symmetrical in every particular, with a statue of the advanced
+Greek school or the modern school, which is asymmetrical in respect of
+the attitude of the head, the body, the limbs, the arrangement of the
+hair, dress, appendages, and in its relations to neighbouring objects,
+we shall see the change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous
+clearly manifested.</p>
+
+<p>In the co-ordinate origin and gradual differentiation of Poetry, Music,
+and Dancing, we have another series of illustrations. Rhythm in words,
+rhythm in sounds, and rhythm in motions, were in the beginning parts of
+the same thing, and have only in process of time become separate things.
+Among existing barbarous tribes we find them still united. The dances of
+savages are accompanied by some kind of monotonous chant, the clapping
+of hands, the striking of rude instruments: there are measured
+movements, measured words, and measured tones. The early records of
+historic races similarly show these three forms of metrical action
+united in religious festivals. In the Hebrew writings we read that the
+triumphal ode composed by Moses on the defeat of the Egyptians, was sung
+to an accompaniment of dancing and timbrels. The Israelites danced and
+sung "at the inauguration of the golden calf. And as it is generally
+agreed that this representation of the Deity was borrowed from the
+mysteries of Apis, it is probable that the dancing was copied from that
+of the Egyptians on those occasions." Again, in Greece the like relation
+is everywhere seen: the original type being there, as probably in other
+cases, a simultaneous chanting and mimetic representation of the life
+and adventures of the hero or the god.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> The Spartan dances were
+accompanied by hymns and songs; and in general the Greeks had "no
+festivals or religious assemblies but what were accompanied with songs
+and dances"&mdash;both of them being forms of worship used before altars.
+Among the Romans, too, there were sacred dances: the Salian and
+Lupercalian being named as of that kind. And even in Christian
+countries, as at Limoges, in comparatively recent times, the people have
+danced in the choir in honour of a saint. The incipient separation of
+these once-united arts from each other and from religion, was early
+visible in Greece. Probably diverging from dances partly religious,
+partly warlike, as the Corybantian, came the war-dances proper, of which
+there were various kinds. Meanwhile Music and Poetry, though still
+united, came to have an existence separate from Dancing. The primitive
+Greek poems, religious in subject, were not recited but chanted; and
+though at first the chant of the poet was accompanied by the dance of
+the chorus, it ultimately grew into independence. Later still, when the
+poem had been differentiated into epic and lyric&mdash;when it became the
+custom to sing the lyric and recite the epic&mdash;poetry proper was born. As
+during the same period musical instruments were being multiplied, we may
+presume that music came to have an existence apart from words. And both
+of them were beginning to assume other forms besides the religious.
+Facts having like implications might be cited from the histories of
+later times and peoples; as the practices of our own early minstrels,
+who sang to the harp heroic narratives versified by themselves to music
+of their own composition: thus uniting the now separate offices of poet,
+composer, vocalist, and instrumentalist. But, without further
+illustration, the common origin and gradual differentiation of Dancing,
+Poetry, and Music will be sufficiently manifest.</p>
+
+<p>The advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is displayed not
+only in the separation of these arts from each other and from religion,
+but also in the multiplied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> differentiations which each of them
+afterwards undergoes. Not to dwell upon the numberless kinds of dancing
+that have, in course of time, come into use: and not to occupy space in
+detailing the progress of poetry, as seen in the development of the
+various forms of metre, of rhyme, and of general organization; let us
+confine our attention to music as a type of the group. As implied by the
+customs of still extant barbarous races, the first musical instruments
+were, without doubt, percussive&mdash;sticks, calabashes, tom-toms&mdash;and were
+used simply to mark the time of the dance; and in this constant
+repetition of the same sound, we see music in its most homogeneous form.
+The Egyptians had a lyre with three strings. The early lyre of the
+Greeks had four, constituting their tetrachord. In course of some
+centuries lyres of seven and eight strings were employed; and, by the
+expiration of a thousand years, they had advanced to their "great
+system" of the double octave. Through all which changes there of course
+arose a greater heterogeneity of melody. Simultaneously there came into
+use the different modes&mdash;Dorian, Ionian, Phrygian, &AElig;olian, and
+Lydian&mdash;answering to our keys; and of these there were ultimately
+fifteen. As yet, however, there was but little heterogeneity in the time
+of their music. Instrumental music being at first merely the
+accompaniment of vocal music, and vocal music being subordinated to
+words,&mdash;the singer being also the poet, chanting his own compositions
+and making the lengths of his notes agree with the feet of his
+verses,&mdash;there resulted a tiresome uniformity of measure, which, as Dr.
+Burney says, "no resources of melody could disguise." Lacking the
+complex rhythm obtained by our equal bars and unequal notes, the only
+rhythm was that produced by the quantity of the syllables, and was of
+necessity comparatively monotonous. And further, it maybe observed that
+the chant thus resulting, being like recitative, was much less clearly
+differentiated from ordinary speech than is our modern song.
+Never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>theless, in virtue of the extended range of notes in use, the
+variety of modes, the occasional variations of time consequent on
+changes of metre, and the multiplication of instruments, music had,
+towards the close of Greek civilization, attained to considerable
+heterogeneity&mdash;not indeed as compared with our music, but as compared
+with that which preceded it. Still, there existed nothing but melody:
+harmony was unknown. It was not until Christian church-music had reached
+some development, that music in parts was evolved; and then it came into
+existence through a very unobtrusive differentiation. Difficult as it
+may be to conceive <i>a priori</i> how the advance from melody to harmony
+could take place without a sudden leap, it is none the less true that it
+did so. The circumstance which prepared the way for it was the
+employment of two choirs singing alternately the same air. Afterwards it
+became the practice&mdash;very possibly first suggested by a mistake&mdash;for the
+second choir to commence before the first had ceased; thus producing a
+fugue. With the simple airs then in use, a partially-harmonious fugue
+might not improbably thus result: and a very partially-harmonious fugue
+satisfied the ears of that age, as we know from still preserved
+examples. The idea having once been given, the composing of airs
+productive of fugal harmony would naturally grow up, as in some way it
+<i>did</i> grow up, out of this alternate choir-singing. And from the fugue
+to concerted music of two, three, four, and more parts, the transition
+was easy. Without pointing out in detail the increasing complexity that
+resulted from introducing notes of various lengths, from the
+multiplication of keys, from the use of accidentals, from varieties of
+time, and so forth, it needs but to contrast music as it is, with music
+as it was, to see how immense is the increase of heterogeneity. We see
+this if, looking at music in its <i>ensemble</i>, we enumerate its many
+different genera and species&mdash;if we consider the divisions into vocal,
+instrumental, and mixed; and their subdivisions into music<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> for
+different voices and different instruments&mdash;if we observe the many forms
+of sacred music, from the simple hymn, the chant, the canon, motet,
+anthem, &amp;c., up to the oratorio; and the still more numerous forms of
+secular music, from the ballad up to the serenata, from the instrumental
+solo up to the symphony. Again, the same truth is seen on comparing any
+one sample of aboriginal music with a sample of modern music&mdash;even an
+ordinary song for the piano; which we find to be relatively very
+heterogeneous, not only in respect of the variety in the pitches and in
+the lengths of the notes, the number of different notes sounding at the
+same instant in company with the voice, and the variations of strength
+with which they are sounded and sung, but in respect of the changes of
+key, the changes of time, the changes of <i>timbre</i> of the voice, and the
+many other modifications of expression. While between the old monotonous
+dance-chant and a grand opera of our own day, with its endless
+orchestral complexities and vocal combinations, the contrast in
+heterogeneity is so extreme that it seems scarcely credible that the one
+should have been the ancestor of the other.</p>
+
+<p>Were they needed, many further illustrations might be cited. Going back
+to the early time when the deeds of the god-king were recorded in
+picture-writings on the walls of temples and palaces, and so constituted
+a rude literature, we might trace the development of Literature through
+phases in which, as in the Hebrew Scriptures, it presents in one work
+theology, cosmogony, history, biography, law, ethics, poetry; down to
+its present heterogeneous development, in which its separated divisions
+and subdivisions are so numerous and varied as to defy complete
+classification. Or we might trace out the evolution of Science;
+beginning with the era in which it was not yet differentiated from Art,
+and was, in union with Art, the handmaid of Religion; passing through
+the era in which the sciences were so few and rudimentary, as to be
+simultaneously cultivated by the same men; and ending with the era<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> in
+which the genera and species are so numerous that few can enumerate
+them, and no one can adequately grasp even one genus. Or we might do the
+like with Architecture, with the Drama, with Dress. But doubtless the
+reader is already weary of illustrations; and our promise has been amply
+fulfilled. Abundant proof has been given that the law of organic
+development formulated by von Baer, is the law of all development. The
+advance from the simple to the complex, through a process of successive
+differentiations, is seen alike in the earliest changes of the Universe
+to which we can reason our way back, and in the earliest changes which
+we can inductively establish; it is seen in the geologic and climatic
+evolution of the Earth; it is seen in the unfolding of every single
+organism on its surface, and in the multiplication of kinds of
+organisms; it is seen in the evolution of Humanity, whether contemplated
+in the civilized individual, or in the aggregate of races; it is seen in
+the evolution of Society in respect alike of its political, its
+religious, and its economical organization; and it is seen in the
+evolution of all those endless concrete and abstract products of human
+activity which constitute the environment of our daily life. From the
+remotest past which Science can fathom, up to the novelties of
+yesterday, that in which progress essentially consists, is the
+transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>And now, must not this uniformity of procedure be a consequence of some
+fundamental necessity? May we not rationally seek for some all-pervading
+principle which determines this all-pervading process of things? Does
+not the universality of the <i>law</i> imply a universal <i>cause</i>?</p>
+
+<p>That we can comprehend such cause, noumenally considered, is not to be
+supposed. To do this would be to solve that ultimate mystery which must
+ever transcend human intelligence. But it still may be possible for us
+to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> reduce the law of all progress, above set forth, from the condition
+of an empirical generalization, to the condition of a rational
+generalization. Just as it was possible to interpret Kepler's laws as
+necessary consequences of the law of gravitation; so it may be possible
+to interpret this law of progress, in its multiform manifestations, as
+the necessary consequence of some similarly universal principle. As
+gravitation was assignable as the <i>cause</i> of each of the groups of
+phenomena which Kepler generalized; so may some equally simple attribute
+of things be assignable as the cause of each of the groups of phenomena
+generalized in the foregoing pages. We may be able to affiliate all
+these varied evolutions of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous, upon
+certain facts of immediate experience, which, in virtue of endless
+repetition, we regard as necessary.</p>
+
+<p>The probability of a common cause, and the possibility of formulating
+it, being granted, it will be well, first, to ask what must be the
+general characteristics of such cause, and in what direction we ought to
+look for it. We can with certainty predict that it has a high degree of
+abstractness; seeing that it is common to such infinitely-varied
+phenomena. We need not expect to see in it an obvious solution of this
+or that form of progress; because it is equally concerned with forms of
+progress bearing little apparent resemblance to them: its association
+with multiform orders of facts, involves its dissociation from any
+particular order of facts. Being that which determines progress of every
+kind&mdash;astronomic, geologic, organic, ethnologic, social, economic,
+artistic, &amp;c.&mdash;it must be involved with some fundamental trait displayed
+in common by these; and must be expressible in terms of this fundamental
+trait. The only obvious respect in which all kinds of progress are
+alike, is, that they are modes of <i>change</i>; and hence, in some
+characteristic of changes in general, the desired solution will probably
+be found. We may suspect <i>a priori</i> that in some universal law of change
+lies the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> explanation of this universal transformation of the
+homogeneous into the heterogeneous.</p>
+
+<p>Thus much premised, we pass at once to the statement of the law, which
+is this:&mdash;<i>Every active force produces more than one change&mdash;every cause
+produces more than one effect.</i></p>
+
+<p>To make this proposition comprehensible, a few examples must be given.
+When one body strikes another, that which we usually regard as the
+effect, is a change of position or motion in one or both bodies. But a
+moment's thought shows us that this is a very incomplete view of the
+matter. Besides the visible mechanical result, sound is produced; or, to
+speak accurately, a vibration in one or both bodies, which is
+communicated to the surrounding air; and under some circumstances we
+call this the effect. Moreover, the air has not only been made to
+undulate, but has had currents caused in it by the transit of the
+bodies. Further, there is a disarrangement of the particles of the two
+bodies in the neighbourhood of their point of collision; amounting, in
+some cases, to a visible condensation. Yet more, this condensation is
+accompanied by the disengagement of heat. In some cases a spark&mdash;that
+is, light&mdash;results, from the incandescence of a portion struck off; and
+sometimes this incandescence is associated with chemical combination.
+Thus, by the mechanical force expended in the collision, at least five,
+and often more, different kinds of changes have been produced. Take,
+again, the lighting of a candle. Primarily this is a chemical change
+consequent on a rise of temperature. The process of combination having
+once been started by extraneous heat, there is a continued formation of
+carbonic acid, water, &amp;c.&mdash;in itself a result more complex than the
+extraneous heat that first caused it. But accompanying this process of
+combination there is a production of heat; there is a production of
+light; there is an ascending column of hot gases generated; there are
+inflowing currents set going in the surrounding air. Moreover, the
+complicating of effects does not end<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> here: each of the several changes
+produced becomes the parent of further changes. The carbonic acid given
+off will by and by combine with some base; or under the influence of
+sunshine give up its carbon to the leaf of a plant. The water will
+modify the hygrometric state of the air around; or, if the current of
+hot gases containing it comes against a cold body, will be condensed:
+altering the temperature of the surface it covers. The heat given out
+melts the subjacent tallow, and expands whatever it warms. The light,
+falling on various substances, calls forth from them reactions by which
+its composition is modified; and so divers colours are produced.
+Similarly even with these secondary actions, which may be traced out
+into ever-multiplying ramifications, until they become too minute to be
+appreciated. And thus it is with all changes whatever. No case can be
+named in which an active force does not evolve forces of several kinds,
+and each of these, other groups of forces. Universally the effect is
+more complex than the cause.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless the reader already foresees the course of our argument. This
+multiplication of effects, which is displayed in every event of to-day,
+has been going on from the beginning; and is true of the grandest
+phenomena of the universe as of the most insignificant. From the law
+that every active force produces more than one change, it is an
+inevitable corollary that during the past there has been an ever-growing
+complication of things. Throughout creation there must have gone on, and
+must still go on, a never-ceasing transformation of the homogeneous into
+the heterogeneous. Let us trace this truth in detail.</p>
+
+<p>Without committing ourselves to it as more than a speculation, though a
+highly probable one, let us again commence with the evolution of the
+Solar System out of a nebulous medium. The hypothesis is that from the
+mutual attraction of the molecules of a diffused mass whose form is
+unsymmetrical, there results not only condensation but rotation. While
+the condensation and the rate of rotation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> go on increasing, the
+approach of the molecules is necessarily accompanied by an increasing
+temperature. As the temperature rises, light begins to be evolved; and
+ultimately there results a revolving sphere of fluid matter radiating
+intense heat and light&mdash;a sun. There are reasons for believing that, in
+consequence of the higher tangential velocity originally possessed by
+the outer parts of the condensing nebulous mass, there will be
+occasional detachments of rotating rings; and that, from the breaking up
+of these nebulous rings, there will arise masses which in the course of
+their condensation repeat the actions of the parent mass, and so produce
+planets and their satellites&mdash;an inference strongly supported by the
+still extant rings of Saturn. Should it hereafter be satisfactorily
+shown that planets and satellites were thus generated, a striking
+illustration will be afforded of the highly heterogeneous effects
+produced by the primary homogeneous cause; but it will serve our present
+purpose to point to the fact that from the mutual attraction of the
+particles of an irregular nebulous mass there result condensation,
+rotation, heat, and light.</p>
+
+<p>It follows as a corollary from the Nebular Hypothesis, that the Earth
+must once have been incandescent; and whether the Nebular Hypothesis be
+true or not, this original incandescence of the Earth is now inductively
+established&mdash;or, if not established, at least rendered so highly
+probable that it is an accepted geological doctrine. Let us look first
+at the astronomical attributes of this once molten globe. From its
+rotation there result the oblateness of its form, the alternations of
+day and night, and (under the influence of the moon and in a smaller
+degree the sun) the tides, aqueous and atmospheric. From the inclination
+of its axis, there result the many differences of the seasons, both
+simultaneous and successive, that pervade its surface, and from the same
+cause joined with the action of the moon on the equatorial protuberance
+there results the precession of the equinoxes. Thus the multiplication
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> effects is obvious. Several of the differentiations due to the
+gradual cooling of the Earth have been already noticed&mdash;as the formation
+of a crust, the solidification of sublimed elements, the precipitation
+of water, &amp;c.,&mdash;and we here again refer to them merely to point out that
+they are simultaneous effects of the one cause, diminishing heat. Let us
+now, however, observe the multiplied changes afterwards arising from the
+continuance of this one cause. The cooling of the Earth involves its
+contraction. Hence the solid crust first formed is presently too large
+for the shrinking nucleus; and as it cannot support itself, inevitably
+follows the nucleus. But a spheroidal envelope cannot sink down into
+contact with a smaller internal spheroid, without disruption: it must
+run into wrinkles as the rind of an apple does when the bulk of its
+interior decreases from evaporation. As the cooling progresses and the
+envelope thickens, the ridges consequent on these contractions will
+become greater, rising ultimately into hills and mountains; and the
+later systems of mountains thus produced will not only be higher, as we
+find them to be, but will be longer, as we also find them to be. Thus,
+leaving out of view other modifying forces, we see what immense
+heterogeneity of surface has arisen from the one cause, loss of heat&mdash;a
+heterogeneity which the telescope shows us to be paralleled on the face
+of Mars, and which in the moon too, where aqueous and atmospheric
+agencies have been absent, it reveals under a somewhat different form.
+But we have yet to notice another kind of heterogeneity of surface
+similarly and simultaneously caused. While the Earth's crust was still
+thin, the ridges produced by its contraction must not only have been
+small, but the spaces between these ridges must have rested with great
+evenness upon the subjacent liquid spheroid; and the water in those
+arctic and antarctic regions in which it first condensed, must have been
+evenly distributed. But as fast as the crust thickened and gained
+corresponding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> strength, the lines of fracture from time to time caused
+in it, must have occurred at greater distances apart; the intermediate
+surfaces must have followed the contracting nucleus with less
+uniformity; and there must have resulted larger areas of land and water.
+If any one, after wrapping up an orange in tissue paper, and observing
+not only how small are the wrinkles, but how evenly the intervening
+spaces lie upon the surface of the orange, will then wrap it up in thick
+cartridge-paper, and note both the greater height of the ridges and the
+larger spaces throughout which the paper does not touch the orange, he
+will realize the fact that, as the Earth's solid envelope grew thicker,
+the areas of elevation and depression increased. In place of islands
+homogeneously dispersed amid an all-embracing sea, there must have
+gradually arisen heterogeneous arrangements of continent and ocean. Once
+more, this double change in the extent and in the elevation of the
+lands, involved yet another species of heterogeneity&mdash;that of
+coast-line. A tolerably even surface raised out of the ocean must have a
+simple, regular sea-margin; but a surface varied by table-lands and
+intersected by mountain-chains must, when raised out of the ocean, have
+an outline extremely irregular both in its leading features and in its
+details. Thus, multitudinous geological and geographical results are
+slowly brought about by this one cause&mdash;the contraction of the Earth.</p>
+
+<p>When we pass from the agency termed igneous, to aqueous and atmospheric
+agencies, we see the like ever-growing complications of effects. The
+denuding actions of air and water, joined with those of changing
+temperature, have, from the beginning, been modifying every exposed
+surface. Oxidation, heat, wind, frost, rain, glaciers, rivers, tides,
+waves, have been unceasingly producing disintegration; varying in kind
+and amount according to local circumstances. Acting upon a tract of
+granite, they here work scarcely an appreciable effect; there cause
+exfoliations<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> of the surface, and a resulting heap of <i>d&eacute;bris</i> and
+boulders; and elsewhere, after decomposing the feldspar into a white
+clay, carry away this and the accompanying quartz and mica, and deposit
+them in separate beds, fluviatile and marine. When the exposed land
+consists of several unlike kinds of sedimentary strata, or igneous
+rocks, or both, denudation produces changes proportionably more
+heterogeneous. The formations being disintegrable in different degrees,
+there follows an increased irregularity of surface. The areas drained by
+different rivers being differently constituted, these rivers carry down
+to the sea different combinations of ingredients; and so sundry new
+strata of unlike compositions are formed. And here we may see very
+simply illustrated, the truth, which we shall presently have to trace
+out in more involved cases, that in proportion to the heterogeneity of
+the object or objects on which any force expends itself, is the
+heterogeneity of the effects. A continent of complex structure, exposing
+many strata irregularly distributed, raised to various levels, tilted up
+at all angles, will, under the same denuding agencies, give origin to
+innumerable and involved results: each district must be differently
+modified; each river must carry down a different kind of detritus; each
+deposit must be differently distributed by the entangled currents, tidal
+and other, which wash the contorted shores; and this multiplication of
+results must manifestly be greatest where the complexity of surface is
+greatest.</p>
+
+<p>Here we might show how the general truth, that every active force
+produces more than one change, is again exemplified in the
+highly-involved flow of the tides, in the ocean currents, in the winds,
+in the distribution of rain, in the distribution of heat, and so forth.
+But not to dwell upon these, let us, for the fuller elucidation of this
+truth in relation to the inorganic world, consider what would be the
+consequences of some extensive cosmical catastrophe&mdash;say the subsidence
+of Central America. The immediate results<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> of the disturbance would
+themselves be sufficiently complex. Besides the numberless dislocations
+of strata, the ejections of igneous matter, the propagation of
+earthquake vibrations thousands of miles around, the loud explosions,
+and the escape of gases; there would be the rush of the Atlantic and
+Pacific Oceans to fill the vacant space, the subsequent recoil of
+enormous waves, which would traverse both these oceans and produce
+myriads of changes along their shores, the corresponding atmospheric
+waves complicated by the currents surrounding each volcanic vent, and
+the electrical discharges with which such disturbances are accompanied.
+But these temporary effects would be insignificant compared with the
+permanent ones. The currents of the Atlantic and Pacific would be
+altered in their directions and amounts. The distribution of heat
+achieved by those ocean currents would be different from what it is. The
+arrangement of the isothermal lines, not only on neighbouring
+continents, but even throughout Europe, would be changed. The tides
+would flow differently from what they do now. There would be more or
+less modification of the winds in their periods, strengths, directions,
+qualities. Rain would fall scarcely anywhere at the same times and in
+the same quantities as at present. In short, the meteorological
+conditions thousands of miles off, on all sides, would be more or less
+revolutionized. Thus, without taking into account the infinitude of
+modifications which these changes would produce upon the flora and
+fauna, both of land and sea, the reader will perceive the immense
+heterogeneity of the results wrought out by one force, when that force
+expends itself upon a previously complicated area; and he will draw the
+corollary that from the beginning the complication has advanced at an
+increasing rate.</p>
+
+<p>Before going on to show how organic progress also depends on the law
+that every force produces more than one change, we have to notice the
+manifestation of this law in yet another species of inorganic
+progress&mdash;namely,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> chemical. The same general causes that have wrought
+out the heterogeneity of the Earth, physically considered, have
+simultaneously wrought out its chemical heterogeneity. There is every
+reason to believe that at an extreme heat the elements cannot combine.
+Even under such heat as can be artificially produced, some very strong
+affinities yield, as, for instance, that of oxygen for hydrogen; and the
+great majority of chemical compounds are decomposed at much lower
+temperatures. But without insisting on the highly probable inference,
+that when the Earth was in its first state of incandescence there were
+no chemical combinations at all, it will suffice for our purpose to
+point to the unquestionable fact that the compounds which can exist at
+the highest temperatures, and which must, therefore, have been the first
+that were formed as the Earth cooled, are those of the simplest
+constitutions. The protoxides&mdash;including under that head the alkalies,
+earths, &amp;c.&mdash;are, as a class, the most stable compounds we know: most of
+them resisting decomposition by any heat we can generate. These are
+combinations of the simplest order&mdash;are but one degree less homogeneous
+than the elements themselves. More heterogeneous, less stable, and
+therefore later in the Earth's history, are the deutoxides, tritoxides,
+peroxides, &amp;c.; in which two, three, four, or more atoms of oxygen are
+united with one atom of metal or other element. Higher than these in
+heterogeneity are the hydrates; in which an oxide of hydrogen, united
+with an oxide of some other element, forms a substance whose atoms
+severally contain at least four ultimate atoms of three different kinds.
+Yet more heterogeneous and less stable still are the salts; which
+present us with molecules each made up of five, six, seven, eight, ten,
+twelve, or more atoms, of three, if not more, kinds. Then there are the
+hydrated salts, of a yet greater heterogeneity, which undergo partial
+decomposition at much lower temperatures. After them come the further
+complicated supersalts and double<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> salts, having a stability again
+decreased; and so throughout. Without entering into qualifications for
+which space fails, we believe no chemist will deny it to be a general
+law of these inorganic combinations that, <i>other things equal</i>, the
+stability decreases as the complexity increases. When we pass to the
+compounds of organic chemistry, we find this general law still further
+exemplified: we find much greater complexity and much less stability. A
+molecule of albumen, for instance, consists of 482 ultimate atoms of
+five different kinds. Fibrine, still more intricate in constitution,
+contains in each molecule, 298 atoms of carbon, 49 of nitrogen, 2 of
+sulphur, 228 of hydrogen, and 92 of oxygen&mdash;in all, 669 atoms; or, more
+strictly speaking, equivalents. And these two substances are so unstable
+as to decompose at quite ordinary temperatures; as that to which the
+outside of a joint of roast meat is exposed. Thus it is manifest that
+the present chemical heterogeneity of the Earth's surface has arisen by
+degrees, as the decrease of heat has permitted; and that it has shown
+itself in three forms&mdash;first, in the multiplication of chemical
+compounds; second, in the greater number of different elements contained
+in the more modern of these compounds; and third, in the higher and more
+varied multiples in which these more numerous elements combine.</p>
+
+<p>To say that this advance in chemical heterogeneity is due to the one
+cause, diminution of the Earth's temperature, would be to say too much;
+for it is clear that aqueous and atmospheric agencies have been
+concerned; and further, that the affinities of the elements themselves
+are implied. The cause has all along been a composite one: the cooling
+of the Earth having been simply the most general of the concurrent
+causes, or assemblage of conditions. And here, indeed, it may be
+remarked that in the several classes of facts already dealt with
+(excepting, perhaps, the first), and still more in those with which we
+shall presently deal, the causes are more or less compound; as indeed
+are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> nearly all causes with which we are acquainted. Scarcely any
+change can rightly be ascribed to one agency alone, to the neglect of
+the permanent or temporary conditions under which only this agency
+produces the change. But as it does not materially affect our argument,
+we prefer, for simplicity's sake, to use throughout the popular mode of
+expression. Perhaps it will be further objected, that to assign loss of
+heat as the cause of any changes, is to attribute these changes not to a
+force, but to the absence of a force. And this is true. Strictly
+speaking, the changes should be attributed to those forces which come
+into action when the antagonist force is withdrawn. But though there is
+inaccuracy in saying that the freezing of water is due to the loss of
+its heat, no practical error arises from it; nor will a parallel laxity
+of expression vitiate our statements respecting the multiplication of
+effects. Indeed, the objection serves but to draw attention to the fact,
+that not only does the exertion of a force produce more than one change,
+but the withdrawal of a force produces more than one change.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to the thread of our exposition, we have next to trace,
+throughout organic progress, this same all-pervading principle. And
+here, where the evolution of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous was
+first observed, the production of many effects by one cause is least
+easy to demonstrate. The development of a seed into a plant, or an ovum
+into an animal, is so gradual, while the forces which determine it are
+so involved, and at the same time so unobtrusive, that it is difficult
+to detect the multiplication of effects which is elsewhere so obvious.
+But, guided by indirect evidence, we may safely conclude that here too
+the law holds. Note, first, how numerous are the changes which any
+marked action works upon an adult organism&mdash;a human being, for instance.
+An alarming sound or sight, besides the impressions on the organs of
+sense and the nerves, may produce a start, a scream, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> distortion of
+the face, a trembling consequent on general muscular relaxation, a burst
+of perspiration, a rush of blood to the brain, followed possibly by
+arrest of the heart's action and by syncope; and if the subject be
+feeble, an indisposition with its long train of complicated symptoms may
+set in. Similarly in cases of disease. A minute portion of the small-pox
+virus introduced into the system, will, in a severe case, cause, during
+the first stage, rigors, heat of skin, accelerated pulse, furred tongue,
+loss of appetite, thirst, epigastric uneasiness, vomiting, headache,
+pains in the back and limbs, muscular weakness, convulsions, delirium,
+&amp;c.; in the second stage, cutaneous eruption, itching, tingling, sore
+throat, swelled fauces, salivation, cough, hoarseness, dyspn&oelig;a, &amp;c.;
+and in the third stage, &oelig;dematous inflammations, pneumonia, pleurisy,
+diarrh&oelig;a, inflammation of the brain, ophthalmia, erysipelas, &amp;c.:
+each of which enumerated symptoms is itself more or less complex.
+Medicines, special foods, better air, might in like manner be instanced
+as producing <a name='TC_2'></a><ins class="correction" title="Was 'multipled'">multiplied</ins> results. Now it needs only to consider that the
+many changes thus wrought by one force upon an adult organism, will be
+in part paralleled in an embryo organism, to understand how here also,
+the evolution of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous may be due to
+the production of many effects by one cause. The external heat, which,
+falling on a matter having special proclivities, determines the first
+complications of the germ, may, by acting on these, superinduce further
+complications; upon these still higher and more numerous ones; and so on
+continually: each organ as it is developed serving, by its actions and
+reactions on the rest, to initiate new complexities. The first
+pulsations of the f&oelig;tal heart must simultaneously aid the unfolding
+of every part. The growth of each tissue, by taking from the blood
+special proportions of elements, must modify the constitution of the
+blood; and so must modify the nutrition of all the other tissues. The
+heart's action,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> implying as it does a certain waste, necessitates an
+addition to the blood of effete matters, which must influence the rest
+of the system, and perhaps, as some think, cause the formation of
+excretory organs. The nervous connexions established among the viscera
+must further multiply their mutual influences; and so continually. Still
+stronger becomes the probability of this view when we call to mind the
+fact, that the same germ may be evolved into different forms according
+to circumstances. Thus, during its earlier stages, every embryo is
+sexless&mdash;becomes either male or female as the balance of forces acting
+on it determines. Again, it is a well-established fact that the larva of
+a working-bee will develop into a queen-bee, if before it is too late,
+its food be changed to that on which the larv&aelig; of queen-bees are fed.
+All which instances suggest that the proximate cause of each advance in
+embryonic complication is the action of incident forces upon the
+complication previously existing. Indeed, we may find <i>a priori</i> reason
+to think that the evolution proceeds after this manner. For since no
+germ, animal or vegetal, contains the slightest rudiment or indication
+of the future organism&mdash;since the microscope has shown us that the first
+process set up in every fertilized germ, is a process of repeated
+spontaneous fissions ending in the production of a mass of cells, not
+one of which exhibits any special character; there seems no alternative
+but to suppose that the partial organization at any moment existing in a
+growing embryo, is transformed by the agencies acting upon it into the
+succeeding phase of organization, and this into the next, until, through
+ever-increasing complexities, the ultimate form is reached. Not indeed
+that we can thus really explain the production of any plant or animal.
+We are still in the dark respecting those mysterious properties in
+virtue of which the germ, when subject to fit influences, undergoes the
+special changes that begin the series of transformations. All we aim to
+show, is, that given a germ possessing those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> particular proclivities
+distinguishing the species to which it belongs, and the evolution of an
+organism from it, probably depends on that multiplication of effects
+which we have seen to be the cause of progress in general, so far as we
+have yet traced it.</p>
+
+<p>When, leaving the development of single plants and animals, we pass to
+that of the Earth's flora and fauna, the course of our argument again
+becomes clear and simple. Though, as was admitted in the first part of
+this article, the fragmentary facts Paleontology has accumulated, do not
+clearly warrant us in saying that, in the lapse of geologic time, there
+have been evolved more heterogeneous organisms, and more heterogeneous
+assemblages of organisms, yet we shall now see that there <i>must</i> ever
+have been a tendency towards these results. We shall find that the
+production of many effects by one cause, which as already shown, has
+been all along increasing the physical heterogeneity of the Earth, has
+further involved an increasing heterogeneity in its flora and fauna,
+individually and collectively. An illustration will make this clear.
+Suppose that by a series of upheavals, occurring, as they are now known
+to do, at long intervals, the East Indian Archipelago were to be, step
+by step, raised into a continent, and a chain of mountains formed along
+the axis of elevation. By the first of these upheavals, the plants and
+animals inhabiting Borneo, Sumatra, New Guinea, and the rest, would be
+subjected to slightly modified sets of conditions. The climate in
+general would be altered in temperature, in humidity, and in its
+periodical variations; while the local differences would be multiplied.
+These modifications would affect, perhaps inappreciably, the entire
+flora and fauna of the region. The change of level would produce
+additional modifications: varying in different species, and also in
+different members of the same species, according to their distance from
+the axis of elevation. Plants, growing only on the sea-shore in special
+localities, might become extinct.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> Others, living only in swamps of a
+certain humidity, would, if they survived at all, probably undergo
+visible changes of appearance. While still greater alterations would
+occur in the plants gradually spreading over the lands newly raised
+above the sea. The animals and insects living on these modified plants,
+would themselves be in some degree modified by change of food, as well
+as by change of climate; and the modification would be more marked
+where, from the dwindling or disappearance of one kind of plant, an
+allied kind was eaten. In the lapse of the many generations arising
+before the next upheaval, the sensible or insensible alterations thus
+produced in each species would become organized&mdash;there would be a more
+or less complete adaptation to the new conditions. The next upheaval
+would superinduce further organic changes, implying wider divergences
+from the primary forms; and so repeatedly. But now let it be observed
+that the revolution thus resulting would not be a substitution of a
+thousand more or less modified species for the thousand original
+species; but in place of the thousand original species there would arise
+several thousand species, or varieties, or changed forms. Each species
+being distributed over an area of some extent, and tending continually
+to colonize the new area exposed, its different members would be subject
+to different sets of changes. Plants and animals spreading towards the
+equator would not be affected in the same way as others spreading from
+it. Those spreading towards the new shores would undergo changes unlike
+the changes undergone by those spreading into the mountains. Thus, each
+original race of organisms, would become the root from which diverged
+several races differing more or less from it and from each other; and
+while some of these might subsequently disappear, probably more than one
+would survive in the next geologic period: the very dispersion itself
+increasing the chances of survival. Not only would there be certain
+modifications thus caused by change of physical conditions and food, but
+also in some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> cases other modifications caused by change of habit. The
+fauna of each island, peopling, step by step, the newly-raised tracts,
+would eventually come in contact with the faunas of other islands; and
+some members of these other faunas would be unlike any creatures before
+seen. Herbivores meeting with new beasts of prey, would, in some cases,
+be led into modes of defence or escape differing from those previously
+used; and simultaneously the beasts of prey would modify their modes of
+pursuit and attack. We know that when circumstances demand it, such
+changes of habit <i>do</i> take place in animals; and we know that if the new
+habits become the dominant ones, they must eventually in some degree
+alter the organization. Observe now, however, a further consequence.
+There must arise not simply a tendency towards the differentiation of
+each race of organisms into several races; but also a tendency to the
+occasional production of a somewhat higher organism. Taken in the mass
+these divergent varieties which have been caused by fresh physical
+conditions and habits of life, will exhibit changes quite indefinite in
+kind and degree; and changes that do not necessarily constitute an
+advance. Probably in most cases the modified type will be neither more
+nor less heterogeneous than the original one. In some cases the habits
+of life adopted being simpler than before, a less heterogeneous
+structure will result: there will be a retrogradation. But it <i>must</i> now
+and then occur, that some division of a species, falling into
+circumstances which give it rather more complex experiences, and demand
+actions somewhat more involved, will have certain of its organs further
+differentiated in proportionately small degrees,&mdash;will become slightly
+more heterogeneous. Thus, in the natural course of things, there will
+from time to time arise an increased heterogeneity both of the Earth's
+flora and fauna, and of individual races included in them. Omitting
+detailed explanations, and allowing for the qualifications which cannot
+here be specified, we think it is clear that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> geological mutations have
+all along tended to complicate the forms of life, whether regarded
+separately or collectively. The same causes which have led to the
+evolution of the Earth's crust from the simple into the complex, have
+simultaneously led to a parallel evolution of the Life upon its surface.
+In this case, as in previous ones, we see that the transformation of the
+homogeneous into the heterogeneous is consequent upon the universal
+principle, that every active force produces more than one change.</p>
+
+<p>The deduction here drawn from the established truths of geology and the
+general laws of life, gains immensely in weight on finding it to be in
+harmony with an induction drawn from direct experience. Just that
+divergence of many races from one race, which we inferred must have been
+continually occurring during geologic time, we know to have occurred
+during the pre-historic and historic periods, in man and domestic
+animals. And just that multiplication of effects which we concluded must
+have produced the first, we see has produced the last. Single causes, as
+famine, pressure of population, war, have periodically led to further
+dispersions of mankind and of dependent creatures: each such dispersion
+initiating new modifications, new varieties of type. Whether all the
+human races be or be not derived from one stock, philology makes it
+clear that whole groups of races now easily distinguishable from each
+other, were originally one race,&mdash;that the diffusion of one race into
+different climates and conditions of existence, has produced many
+modified forms of it. Similarly with domestic animals. Though in some
+cases&mdash;as that of dogs&mdash;community of origin will perhaps be disputed,
+yet in other cases&mdash;as that of the sheep or the cattle of our own
+country&mdash;it will not be questioned that local differences of climate,
+food, and treatment, have transformed one original breed into numerous
+breeds now become so far distinct as to produce unstable hybrids.
+Moreover, through the complication of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> effects flowing from single
+causes, we here find, what we before inferred, not only an increase of
+general heterogeneity, but also of special heterogeneity. While of the
+divergent divisions and subdivisions of the human race many have
+undergone changes not constituting an advance; while in some the type
+may have degraded; in others it has become decidedly more heterogeneous.
+The civilized European departs more widely from the vertebrate archetype
+than does the savage. Thus, both the law and the cause of progress,
+which, from lack of evidence, can be but hypothetically substantiated in
+respect of the earlier forms of life on our globe, can be actually
+substantiated in respect of the latest forms.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>If the advance of Man towards greater heterogeneity is traceable to the
+production of many effects by one cause, still more clearly may the
+advance of Society towards greater heterogeneity be so explained.
+Consider the growth of an industrial organization. When, as must
+occasionally happen, some member of a tribe displays unusual aptitude
+for making an article of general use&mdash;a weapon, for instance&mdash;which was
+before made by each man for himself, there arises a tendency towards the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>differentiation of that member into a maker of such weapon. His
+companions&mdash;warriors and hunters all of them,&mdash;severally feel the
+importance of having the best weapons that can be made; and are
+therefore certain to offer strong inducements to this skilled individual
+to make weapons for them. He, on the other hand, having not only an
+unusual faculty, but an unusual liking, for making such weapons (the
+talent and the desire for any occupation being commonly associated), is
+predisposed to fulfil each commission on the offer of an adequate
+reward: especially as his love of distinction is also gratified and his
+living facilitated. This first specialization of function, once
+commenced, tends ever to become more decided. On the side of the
+weapon-maker practice gives increased skill&mdash;increased superiority to
+his products. On the side of his clients, cessation of practice entails
+decreased skill. Thus the influences which determine this division of
+labour grow stronger in both ways; and the incipient heterogeneity is,
+on the average of cases, likely to become permanent for that generation
+if no longer. This process not only differentiates the social mass into
+two parts, the one monopolizing, or almost monopolizing, the performance
+of a certain function, and the other losing the habit, and in some
+measure the power, of performing that function; but it tends to initiate
+other differentiations. The advance described implies the introduction
+of barter,&mdash;the maker of weapons has, on each occasion, to be paid in
+such other articles as he agrees to take in exchange. He will not
+habitually take in exchange one kind of article, but many kinds. He does
+not want mats only, or skins, or fishing-gear, but he wants all these,
+and on each occasion will bargain for the particular things he most
+needs. What follows? If among his fellows there exist any slight
+differences of skill in the manufacture of these various things, as
+there are almost sure to do, the weapon-maker will take from each one
+the thing which that one excels in making: he will exchange for mats
+with him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> whose mats are superior, and will bargain for the
+fishing-gear of him who has the best. But he who has bartered away his
+mats or his fishing-gear, must make other mats or fishing-gear for
+himself; and in so doing must, in some degree, further develop his
+aptitude. Thus it results that the small specialities of faculty
+possessed by various members of the tribe, will tend to grow more
+decided. And whether or not there ensue distinct differentiations of
+other individuals into makers of particular articles, it is clear that
+incipient differentiations take place throughout the tribe: the one
+original cause produces not only the first dual effect, but a number of
+secondary dual effects, like in kind, but minor in degree. This process,
+of which traces may be seen among schoolboys, cannot well produce
+lasting effects in an unsettled tribe; but where there grows up a fixed
+and multiplying community, such differentiations become permanent, and
+increase with each generation. The enhanced demand for every commodity,
+intensifies the functional activity of each specialized person or class;
+and this renders the specialization more definite where it already
+exists, and establishes it where it is but nascent. By increasing the
+pressure on the means of subsistence, a larger population again augments
+these results; seeing that each person is forced more and more to
+confine himself to that which he can do best, and by which he can gain
+most. Presently, under these same stimuli, new occupations arise.
+Competing workers, ever aiming to produce improved articles,
+occasionally discover better processes or raw materials. The
+substitution of bronze for stone entails on him who first makes it a
+great increase of demand; so that he or his successor eventually finds
+all his time occupied in making the bronze for the articles he sells,
+and is obliged to depute the fashioning of these articles to others;
+and, eventually, the making of bronze, thus differentiated from a
+pre-existing occupation, becomes an occupation by itself. But now mark
+the ramified changes which follow this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> change. Bronze presently
+replaces stone, not only in the articles it was first used for, but in
+many others&mdash;in arms, tools, and utensils of various kinds: and so
+affects the manufacture of them. Further, it affects the processes which
+these utensils subserve, and the resulting products,&mdash;modifies
+buildings, carvings, personal decorations. Yet again, it sets going
+manufactures which were before impossible, from lack of a material fit
+for the requisite implements. And all these changes react on the
+people&mdash;increase their manipulative skill, their intelligence, their
+comfort,&mdash;refine their habits and tastes. Thus the evolution of a
+homogeneous society into a heterogeneous one, is clearly consequent on
+the general principle, that many effects are produced by one cause.</p>
+
+<p>Space permitting, we might show how the localization o&pound; special
+industries in special parts of a kingdom, as well as the minute
+subdivision of labour in the making of each commodity, are similarly
+determined. Or, turning to a somewhat different order of illustrations,
+we might dwell on the multitudinous changes&mdash;material, intellectual,
+moral,&mdash;caused by printing; or the further extensive series of changes
+wrought by gunpowder. But leaving the intermediate phases of social
+development, let us take a few illustrations from its most recent and
+its passing phases. To trace the effects of steam-power, in its manifold
+applications to mining, navigation, and manufactures of all kinds, would
+carry us into unmanageable detail. Let us confine ourselves to the
+latest embodiment of steam power&mdash;the locomotive engine. This, as the
+proximate cause of our railway system, has changed the face of the
+country, the course of trade, and the habits of the people. Consider,
+first, the complicated sets of changes that precede the making of every
+railway&mdash;the provisional arrangements, the meetings, the registration,
+the trial section, the parliamentary survey, the lithographed plans, the
+books of reference, the local deposits and notices, the application to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+Parliament, the passing Standing Orders Committee, the first, second,
+and third readings: each of which brief heads indicates a multiplicity
+of transactions, and the extra development of sundry occupations&mdash;as
+those of engineers, surveyors, lithographers, parliamentary agents,
+share-brokers; and the creation of sundry others&mdash;as those of
+traffic-takers, reference-takers. Consider, next, the yet more marked
+changes implied in railway construction&mdash;the cuttings, embankings,
+tunnellings, diversions of roads; the building of bridges and stations,
+the laying down of ballast, sleepers, and rails; the making of engines,
+tenders, carriages, and waggons: which processes, acting on numerous
+trades, increase the importation of timber, the quarrying of stone, the
+manufacture of iron, the mining of coal, the burning of bricks;
+institute a variety of special manufactures weekly advertised in the
+<i>Railway Times</i>; and, finally, open the way to sundry new occupations,
+as those of drivers, stokers, cleaners, plate-layers, &amp;c., &amp;c. And then
+consider the changes, still more numerous and involved, which railways
+in action produce on the community at large. Business agencies are
+established where previously they would not have paid; goods are
+obtained from remote wholesale houses instead of near retail ones; and
+commodities are used which distance once rendered inaccessible. Again,
+the diminished cost of carriage tends to specialize more than ever the
+industries of different districts&mdash;to confine each manufacture to the
+parts in which, from local advantages, it can be best carried on.
+Further, the fall in freights, facilitating distribution, equalizes
+prices, and also, on the average, lowers prices: thus bringing divers
+articles within the means of those before unable to buy them, and so
+increasing their comforts and improving their habits. At the same time
+the practice of travelling is immensely extended. People who never
+before dreamed of it, take trips to the sea; visit their distant
+relations; make tours; and so we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> are benefited in body, feelings, and
+ideas. The more prompt transmission of letters and of news produces
+other marked changes&mdash;makes the pulse of the nation faster. Once more,
+there arises a wide dissemination of cheap literature through railway
+book-stalls, and of advertisements in railway carriages: both of them
+aiding ulterior progress. And the countless changes here briefly
+indicated are consequent on the invention of the locomotive engine. The
+social organism has been rendered more heterogeneous in virtue of the
+many new occupations introduced, and the many old ones further
+specialized; prices of nearly all things in every place have been
+altered; each trader has modified his way of doing business; and every
+person has been affected in his actions, thoughts, emotions.</p>
+
+<p>Illustrations to the same effect might be indefinitely accumulated, but
+they are needless. The only further fact demanding notice, is, that we
+here see still more clearly the truth before pointed out, that in
+proportion as the area on which any force expends itself becomes
+heterogeneous, the results are in a yet higher degree multiplied in
+number and kind. While among the simple tribes to whom it was first
+known, caoutchouc caused but few changes, among ourselves the changes
+have been so many and varied that the history of them occupies a
+volume.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Upon the small, homogeneous community inhabiting one of the
+Hebrides, the electric telegraph would produce, were it used, scarcely
+any results; but in England the results it produces are multitudinous.
+The comparatively simple organization under which our ancestors lived
+five centuries ago, could have undergone but few modifications from an
+event like the recent one at Canton; but now, the legislative decision
+respecting it sets up many hundreds of complex modifications, each of
+which will be the parent of numerous future ones.</p>
+
+<p>Space permitting, we could willingly have pursued the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>argument in
+relation to all the subtler results of civilization. As before we showed
+that the law of progress to which the organic and inorganic worlds
+conform, is also conformed to by Language, the plastic arts, Music, &amp;c.;
+so might we here show that the cause which we have hitherto found to
+determine progress holds in these cases also. Instances might be given
+proving how, in Science, an advance of one division presently advances
+other divisions&mdash;how Astronomy has been immensely forwarded by
+discoveries in Optics, while other optical discoveries have initiated
+Microscopic Anatomy, and greatly aided the growth of Physiology&mdash;how
+Chemistry has indirectly increased our knowledge of Electricity,
+Magnetism, Biology, Geology&mdash;how Electricity has reacted on Chemistry
+and Magnetism, and has developed our views of Light and Heat. In
+Literature the same truth might be exhibited in the manifold effects of
+the primitive mystery-play, as originating the modern drama, which has
+variously branched; or in the still multiplying forms of periodical
+literature which have descended from the first newspaper, and which have
+severally acted and reacted on other forms of literature and on each
+other. The influence which a new school of Painting&mdash;as that of the
+pre-<a name='TC_3'></a><ins class="correction" title="Was 'Raffaelites'">Raphaelites</ins>&mdash;exercises upon other schools; the hints which all kinds
+of pictorial art are deriving from Photography; the complex results of
+new critical doctrines, as those of Mr. Ruskin, might severally be dwelt
+upon as displaying the like multiplication of effects.</p>
+
+<p>But we venture to think our case is already made out. The imperfections
+of statement which brevity has necessitated, do not, we believe,
+invalidate the propositions laid down. The qualifications here and there
+demanded would not, if made, affect the inferences. Though, in tracing
+the genesis of progress, we have frequently spoken of complex causes as
+if they were simple ones; it still remains true that such causes are far
+less complex than their results. Detailed criticisms do not affect our
+main position. Endless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> facts go to show that every kind of progress is
+from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous; and that it is so because
+each change is followed by many changes. And it is significant that
+where the facts are most accessible and abundant, there these truths are
+most manifest.</p>
+
+<p>However, to avoid committing ourselves to more than is yet proved, we
+must be content with saying that such are the law and the cause of all
+progress that is known to us. Should the Nebular Hypothesis ever be
+established, then it will become manifest that the Universe at large,
+like every organism, was once homogeneous; that as a whole, and in every
+detail, it has unceasingly advanced towards greater heterogeneity. It
+will be seen that as in each event of to-day, so from the beginning, the
+decomposition of every expended force into several forces has been
+perpetually producing a higher complication; that the increase of
+heterogeneity so brought about is still going on and must continue to go
+on; and that thus progress is not an accident, not a thing within human
+control, but a beneficent necessity.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>A few words must be added on the ontological bearings of our argument.
+Probably not a few will conclude that here is an attempted solution of
+the great questions with which Philosophy in all ages has perplexed
+itself. Let none thus deceive themselves. After all that has been said,
+the ultimate mystery remains just as it was. The explanation of that
+which is explicable, does but bring out into greater clearness the
+inexplicableness of that which remains behind. Little as it seems to do
+so, fearless inquiry tends continually to give a firmer basis to all
+true Religion. The timid sectarian, obliged to abandon one by one the
+superstitions bequeathed to him, and daily finding his cherished beliefs
+more and more shaken, secretly fears that all things may some day be
+explained; and has a corresponding dread of Science: thus evincing the
+pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>foundest of all infidelity&mdash;the fear lest the truth be bad. On the
+other hand, the sincere man of science, content to follow wherever the
+evidence leads him, becomes by each new inquiry more profoundly
+convinced that the Universe is an insoluble problem. Alike in the
+external and the internal worlds, he sees himself in the midst of
+ceaseless changes, of which he can discover neither beginning nor end.
+If, tracing back the evolution of things, he allows himself to entertain
+the hypothesis that all matter once existed in a diffused form, he finds
+it impossible to conceive how this came to be so; and equally, if he
+speculates on the future, he can assign no limit to the grand succession
+of phenomena ever unfolding themselves before him. Similarly, if he
+looks inward, he perceives that both terminations of the thread of
+consciousness are beyond his grasp: he cannot remember when or how
+consciousness commenced, and he cannot examine the consciousness at any
+moment existing; for only a state of consciousness which is already past
+can become the object of thought, and never one which is passing. When,
+again, he turns from the succession of phenomena, external or internal,
+to their essential nature, he is equally at fault. Though he may succeed
+in resolving all properties of objects into manifestations of force, he
+is not thereby enabled to conceive what force is; but finds, on the
+contrary, that the more he thinks about it, the more he is baffled.
+Similarly, though analysis of mental actions may finally bring him down
+to sensations as the original materials out of which all thought is
+woven, he is none the forwarder; for he cannot in the least comprehend
+sensation. Inward and outward things he thus discovers to be alike
+inscrutable in their ultimate genesis and nature. He sees that the
+Materialist and Spiritualist controversy is a mere war of words; the
+disputants being equally absurd&mdash;each believing he understands that
+which it is impossible for any man to understand. In all directions his
+investigations even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>tually bring him face to face with the unknowable;
+and he ever more clearly perceives it to be the unknowable. He learns at
+once the greatness and the littleness of human intellect&mdash;its power in
+dealing with all that comes within the range of experience; its
+impotence in dealing with all that transcends experience. He feels more
+vividly than any others can feel, the utter incomprehensibleness of the
+simplest fact, considered in itself. He alone truly <i>sees</i> that absolute
+knowledge is impossible. He alone <i>knows</i> that under all things there
+lies an impenetrable mystery.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Since this was written (in 1857) the advance of
+paleontological discovery, especially in America, has shown
+conclusively, in respect of certain groups of vertebrates, that higher
+types have arisen by modifications of lower; so that, in common with
+others, Prof. Huxley, to whom the above allusion is made, now admits, or
+rather asserts, biological progression, and, by implication, that there
+have arisen more heterogeneous organic forms and a more heterogeneous
+assemblage of organic forms.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> For detailed proof of these assertions see essay on
+"Manners and Fashion."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> The argument concerning organic evolution contained in this
+paragraph and the one preceding it, stands verbatim as it did when first
+published in the <i>Westminster Review</i> for April, 1857. I have thus left
+it without the alteration of a word that it may show the view I then
+held concerning the origin of species. The sole cause recognized is that
+of direct adaptation of constitution to conditions consequent on
+inheritance of the modifications of structure resulting from use and
+disuse. There is no recognition of that further cause disclosed in Mr.
+Darwin's work, published two and a half years later&mdash;the indirect
+adaptation resulting from the natural selection of favourable
+variations. The multiplication of effects is, however, equally
+illustrated in whatever way the adaptation to changing conditions is
+effected, or if it is effected in both ways, as I hold. I may add that
+there is indicated the view that the succession of organic forms is not
+serial but proceeds by perpetual divergence and re-divergence&mdash;that
+there has been a continual "divergence of many races from one race":
+each species being a "root" from which several other species branch out;
+and the growth of a tree being thus the implied symbol.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> "Personal Narrative of the Origin of the Caoutchouc, or
+India-Rubber Manufacture in England." By Thomas Hancock.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="TRANSCENDENTAL_PHYSIOLOGY" id="TRANSCENDENTAL_PHYSIOLOGY"></a>TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSIOLOGY.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>First published in</i> The National Review <i>for October,</i> 1857<i>, under
+the title of "The Ultimate Laws of Physiology". The title
+"Transcendental Physiology", which the editor did not approve, was
+restored when the essay was re-published with others in</i> 1857.]</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The title Transcendental Anatomy is used to distinguish that division of
+biological science which treats, not of the structures of individual
+organisms considered separately, but of the general principles of
+structure common to vast and varied groups of organisms,&mdash;the unity of
+plan discernible throughout multitudinous species, genera, and orders,
+which differ widely in appearance. And here, under the head of
+Transcendental Physiology, we purpose putting together sundry laws of
+development and function which hold not of particular kinds or classes
+of organisms, but of all organisms: laws, some of which have not, we
+believe, been hitherto enunciated.</p>
+
+<p>By way of unobtrusively introducing the general reader to biological
+truths of this class, let us begin by noticing one or two with which he
+is familiar. Take first, the relation between the activity of an organ
+and its growth. This is a universal relation. It holds, not only of a
+bone, a muscle, a nerve, an organ of sense, a mental faculty; but of
+every gland, every viscus, every element of the body. It is seen, not in
+man only, but in each animal which affords us adequate opportunity of
+tracing it. Always providing that the performance of function is not so
+excessive as to produce disorder, or to exceed the repairing powers
+either of the system at large or of the particular agencies by which
+nutriment is brought to the organ,&mdash;always providing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> this, it is a law
+of organized bodies that, other things equal, development varies as
+function. On this law are based all maxims and methods of right
+education, intellectual, moral, and physical; and when statesmen are
+wise enough to see it, this law will be found to underlie all right
+legislation.</p>
+
+<p>Another truth co-extensive with the organic world, is that of hereditary
+transmission. It is not, as commonly supposed, that hereditary
+transmission is exemplified merely in re-appearance of the family
+peculiarities displayed by immediate or remote progenitors. Nor does the
+law of hereditary transmission comprehend only such more general facts
+as that modified plants or animals become the parents of permanent
+varieties; and that new kinds of potatoes, new breeds of sheep, new
+races of men, have been thus originated. These are but minor
+exemplifications of the law. Understood in its entirety, the law is that
+each plant or animal produces others of like kind with itself: the
+likeness of kind consisting not so much in the repetition of individual
+traits as in the assumption of the same general structure. This truth
+has been made by daily illustration so familiar as nearly to have lost
+its significance. That wheat produces wheat,&mdash;that existing oxen are
+descended from ancestral oxen,&mdash;that every unfolding organism ultimately
+takes the form of the class, order, genus, and species from which it
+sprang; is a fact which, by force of repetition, has assumed in our
+minds the character of a necessity. It is in this, however, that the law
+of hereditary transmission is principally displayed; the phenomena
+commonly named as exemplifying it being quite subordinate
+manifestations. And the law, as thus understood, is universal. Not
+forgetting the apparent, but only apparent, exceptions presented by the
+strange class of phenomena known as "alternate generation," the truth
+that like produces like is common to all types of organisms.</p>
+
+<p>Let us take next a universal physiological law of a less conspicuous
+kind. To the ordinary observer, it seems that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> the multiplication of
+organisms proceeds in various ways. He sees that the young of the higher
+animals when born resemble their parents; that birds lay eggs, which
+they foster and hatch; that fish deposit spawn and leave it. Among
+plants, he finds that while in some cases new individuals grow from
+seeds only, in other cases they also grow from tubers; that by certain
+plants layers are sent out, take root, and develop new individuals; and
+that many plants can be reproduced from cuttings. Further, in the mould
+that quickly covers stale food, and the infusoria that soon swarm in
+water exposed to air and light, he sees a mode of generation which,
+seeming inexplicable, he is apt to consider "spontaneous." The reader of
+popular science thinks the modes of reproduction still more various. He
+learns that whole tribes of creatures multiply by gemmation&mdash;by a
+development from the body of the parent of buds which, after unfolding
+into the parental form, separate and lead independent lives. Concerning
+microscopic forms of both animal and vegetal life, he reads that the
+ordinary mode of multiplication is by spontaneous fission&mdash;a splitting
+up of the original individual into two or more individuals, which by and
+by severally repeat the process. Still more remarkable are the cases in
+which, as in the <i>Aphis</i>, an egg gives rise to an imperfect female, from
+which other imperfect females are born viviparously, grow, and in their
+turns bear other imperfect females; and so on for eight, ten, or more
+generations, until finally, perfect males and females are viviparously
+produced. But now under all these, and many more, modified modes of
+multiplication, the physiologist finds complete uniformity. The
+starting-point, not only of every higher animal or plant, but of every
+clan of organisms which by fission or gemmation have sprung from a
+single organism, is always a spore, seed, or ovum. The millions of
+infusoria or of aphides which, by sub-division or gemmation, have
+proceeded from one individual; the countless plants which have been
+successively propagated from one original plant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> by cuttings or tubers;
+are, in common with the highest creature, primarily descended from a
+fertilized germ. And in all cases&mdash;in the humblest alga as in the oak,
+in the protozoon as in the mammal&mdash;this fertilized germ results from the
+union of the contents of two cells. Whether, as among the lowest forms
+of life, these two cells are seemingly identical in nature; or whether,
+as among higher forms, they are distinguishable into sperm-cell and
+germ-cell; it remains throughout true that from their combination
+results the mass out of which is evolved a new organism or new series of
+organisms. That this law is without exception we are not prepared to
+say; for in the case of the <i>Aphis</i> certain experiments are thought to
+imply that under special conditions the descendants of an original
+individual may continue multiplying for ever, without further
+fecundation. But we know of no case where it <i>actually is</i> so; for
+although there are certain plants of which the seeds have never been
+seen, it is more probable that our observations are in fault than that
+these plants are exceptions. And until we find undoubted exceptions, the
+above-stated induction must stand. Here, then, we have another of the
+truths of Transcendental Physiology: a truth which, so far as we know,
+<i>transcends</i> all distinctions of genus, order, class, kingdom, and
+applies to every living thing.</p>
+
+<p>Yet another generalization of like universality expresses the process of
+organic development. To the ordinary observer there seems no unity in
+this. No obvious parallelism exists between the unfolding of a plant and
+the unfolding of an animal. There is no manifest similarity between the
+development of a mammal, which proceeds without break from its first to
+its last stage, and that of an insect, which is divided into
+strongly-marked stages&mdash;egg, larva, pupa, imago. Nevertheless it is now
+an established fact, that all organisms are evolved after one general
+method. At the outset the germ of every plant or animal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> is relatively
+homogeneous; and advance towards maturity is advance towards greater
+heterogeneity. Each organized thing commences as an almost structureless
+mass, and reaches its ultimate complexity by the establishment of
+distinctions upon distinctions,&mdash;by the divergence of tissues from
+tissues and organs from organs. Here, then, we have yet another
+biological law of transcendent generality.</p>
+
+<p>Having thus recognized the scope of Transcendental Physiology as
+presented in its leading truths, we are prepared for the considerations
+that are to follow.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>And first, returning to the last of the great generalizations above
+given, let us inquire more nearly how this change from the homogeneous
+to the heterogeneous is carried on. Usually it is said to result from
+successive differentiations. This, however, cannot be considered a
+complete account of the process. During the evolution of an organism
+there occur, not only separations of parts, but coalescences of parts.
+There is not only segregation, but aggregation. The heart, at first a
+simple pulsating blood-vessel, by and by twists upon itself and becomes
+integrated. The bile-cells constituting the rudimentary liver, do not
+merely diverge from the surface of the intestine in which they at first
+form a simple layer; but they simultaneously consolidate into a definite
+organ. And the gradual concentration seen in these and other cases is a
+part of the developmental process&mdash;a part which, though more or less
+recognized by Milne-Edwards and others, does not seem to have been
+included as an essential element in it.</p>
+
+<p>This progressive integration, manifest alike when tracing up the several
+stages passed through by every embryo, and when ascending from the lower
+organic forms to the higher, may be most conveniently studied under
+several heads. Let us consider first what may be called <i>longitudinal
+integration</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The lower <i>Annulosa</i>&mdash;worms, myriapods, &amp;c.&mdash;are cha<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>racterized by the
+great numbers of segments of which they respectively consist, reaching
+in some cases to several hundreds; but as we advance to the higher
+<i>Annulosa</i>&mdash;centipedes, crustaceans, insects, spiders,&mdash;we find these
+numbers greatly reduced, down to twenty-two, thirteen, and even fewer;
+and accompanying this there is a shortening or integration of the whole
+body, reaching its extreme in crabs and spiders. Similarly with the
+development of an individual crustacean or insect. The thorax of a
+lobster, which, in the adult, forms, with the head, one compact box
+containing the viscera, is made up by the union of a number of segments
+which in the embryo were separable. The thirteen distinct divisions seen
+in the body of a caterpillar, become further integrated in the
+butterfly: several segments are consolidated to form the thorax, and the
+abdominal segments are more aggregated than they originally were. The
+like truth is seen when we pass to the internal organs. In the lower
+annulose forms, and in the larv&aelig; of the higher ones, the alimentary
+canal consists either of a tube that is uniform from end to end, or else
+bulges into a succession of stomachs, one to each segment; but in the
+developed forms there is a single well-defined stomach. In the nervous,
+vascular, and respiratory systems a parallel concentration may be
+traced. Again, in the development of the <i>Vertebrata</i> we have sundry
+examples of longitudinal integration. The coalescence of several
+segmental groups of bones to form the skull is one instance of it. It is
+further illustrated in the <i>os coccygis</i>, which results from the fusion
+of a number of caudal vertebr&aelig;. And in the consolidation of the sacral
+vertebr&aelig; of a bird it is also well exemplified.</p>
+
+<p>That which we may distinguish as <i>transverse integration</i>, is well
+illustrated among the <i>Annulosa</i> in the development of the nervous
+system. Leaving out those simple forms which do not present distinct
+ganglia, it is to be observed that the lower annulose animals, in common
+with the larv&aelig; of the higher, are severally characterized by a double<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+chain of ganglia running from end to end of the body; while in the more
+advanced annulose animals this double chain becomes a single chain. Mr.
+Newport has described the course of this concentration in insects; and
+by Rathke it has been traced in crustaceans. In the early stages of the
+<i>Astacus fluviatilis</i>, or common cray-fish, there is a pair of separate
+ganglia to each ring. Of the fourteen pairs belonging to the head and
+thorax, the three pairs in advance of the mouth consolidate into one
+mass to form the brain, or cephalic ganglion. Meanwhile out of the
+remainder, the first six pairs severally unite in the median line, while
+the rest remain more or less separate. Of these six double ganglia thus
+formed, the anterior four coalesce into one mass; the remaining two
+coalesce into another mass; and then these two masses coalesce into one.
+Here we see longitudinal and transverse integration going on
+simultaneously; and in the highest crustaceans they are both carried
+still further. The <i>Vertebrata</i> exhibit this transverse integration in
+the development of the generative system. The lowest of the
+mammalia&mdash;the <i>Monotremata</i>&mdash;in common with birds, have oviducts which
+towards their lower extremities are dilated into cavities severally
+performing in an imperfect way the function of a uterus. "In the
+<i>Marsupialia</i>, there is a closer approximation of the two lateral sets
+of organs on the median line; for the oviducts converge towards one
+another and meet (without coalescing) on the median line; so that their
+uterine dilatations are in contact with each other, forming a true
+'double uterus.' ... As we ascend the series of 'placental' mammals, we
+find the lateral coalescence becoming gradually more and more
+complete.... In many of the <i>Rodentia</i>, the uterus still remains
+completely divided into two lateral halves; whilst in others, these
+coalesce at their lower portion, forming a rudiment of the true 'body'
+of the uterus in the Human subject. This part increases at the expense
+of the lateral 'cornua' in the higher Herbivora and Carnivora; but even
+in the lower Quadrumana, the uterus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> is somewhat cleft at its
+summit."<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> And this process of transverse integration, which is still
+more striking when observed in its details, is accompanied by parallel
+though less important changes in the opposite sex. Once more; in the
+increasing commissural connexion of the cerebral hemispheres, which,
+though separate in the lower vertebrata, become gradually more united in
+the higher, we have another instance. And further ones of a different
+order, but of like general implication, are supplied by the vascular
+system.</p>
+
+<p>Now it seems to us that the various kinds of integration here
+exemplified, which are commonly set down as so many independent
+phenomena, ought to be generalized, and included in the formula
+describing the process of development. The fact that in an adult crab,
+many pairs of ganglia originally separate have become fused into a
+single mass, is a fact only second in significance to the
+differentiation of its alimentary canal into stomach and intestine. That
+in the higher <i>Annulosa</i>, a single heart replaces the string of
+rudimentary hearts constituting the dorsal blood-vessel in the lower
+<i>Annulosa</i>, (reaching in one species to the number of one hundred and
+sixty), is a truth as much needing to be comprised in the history of
+evolution, as is the formation of a respiratory surface by a branched
+expansion of the skin. A right conception of the genesis of a vertebral
+column, includes not only the differentiations from which result the
+<i>chorda dorsalis</i> and the vertebral segments imbedded in it; but quite
+as much it includes the coalescence of numerous vertebral processes with
+their respective vertebral bodies. The changes in virtue of which
+several things become one, demand recognition equally with those in
+virtue of which one thing becomes several. Evidently, then, the current
+statement which ascribes the developmental progress to differentiations
+alone, is incomplete. Adequately to express the facts, we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> must say
+that the transition from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is carried
+on by differentiations and accompanying integrations.</p>
+
+<p>It may not be amiss here to ask&mdash;What is the meaning of these
+integrations? The evidence seems to show that they are in some way
+dependent on community of function. The eight segments which coalesce to
+make the head of a centipede, jointly protect the cephalic ganglion, and
+afford a solid fulcrum for the jaws, &amp;c. The many bones which unite to
+form a vertebral skull have like uses. In the consolidation of the
+several pieces which constitute a mammalian pelvis, and in the
+anchylosis of from ten to nineteen vertebr&aelig; in the sacrum of a bird, we
+have kindred instances of the integration of parts which transfer the
+weight of the body to the legs. The more or less extensive fusion of the
+tibia with the fibula and the radius with the ulna in the ungulated
+mammals, whose habits require only partial rotations of the limbs, is a
+fact of like meaning. And all the instances lately given&mdash;the
+concentration of ganglia, the replacement of many pulsating blood-sacs
+by fewer and finally by one, the fusion of two uteri into a single
+uterus&mdash;have the same implication. Whether, as in some cases, the
+integration is merely a consequence of the growth which eventually
+brings into contact adjacent parts performing similar duties; or
+whether, as in other cases, there is an actual approximation of these
+parts before their union; or whether, as in yet other cases, the
+integration is of that indirect kind which arises when, out of a number
+of like organs, one, or a group, discharges an ever-increasing share of
+the common function, and so grows while the rest dwindle and
+disappear;&mdash;the general fact remains the same, that there is a tendency
+to the unification of parts having similar duties.</p>
+
+<p>The tendency, however, acts under limiting conditions; and recognition
+of them will explain some apparent exceptions. In the human f&oelig;tus, as
+in the lower vertebrata, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> eyes are placed one on each side of the
+head. During evolution they become relatively nearer, and at birth are
+in front; though they are still, in the European infant as in the adult
+Mongol, proportionately further apart than they afterwards become. But
+this approximation shows no signs of further increase. Two reasons
+suggest themselves. One is that the two eyes have not quite the same
+function, since they are directed to slightly-different aspects of each
+object looked at; and, since the resulting binocular vision has an
+advantage over monocular vision, there results a check upon further
+approach towards identity of function and unity of structure. The other
+reason is that the interposed structures do not admit of any nearer
+approach. For the orbits of the eyes to be brought closer together,
+would imply a decrease in the olfactory chambers; and as these are
+probably not larger than is demanded by their present functional
+activity, no decrease can take place. Again, if we trace up the external
+organs of smell through fishes,<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> reptiles, ungulate mammals and
+unguiculate mammals, to man, we perceive a general tendency to
+coalescence in the median line; and on comparing the savage with the
+civilized, or the infant with the adult, we see this approach of the
+nostrils carried furthest in the most perfect of the species. But since
+the septum which divides them has the function both of an evaporating
+surface for the lachrymal secretion, and of a ramifying surface for a
+nerve ancillary to that of smell, it does not disappear entirely: the
+integration remains incomplete. These and other like instances do not
+however militate against the hypothesis. They merely show that the
+tendency is sometimes antagonized by other tendencies. Bearing in mind
+which qualification, we may say, that as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>differentiation of parts is
+connected with difference of function, so there appears to be a
+connexion between integration of parts and sameness of function.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Closely related to the general truth that the evolution of all organisms
+is carried on by combined differentiations and integrations, is another
+general truth, which physiologists appear not to have recognized. When
+we look at the organic world as a whole, we may observe that, on passing
+from lower to higher forms, we pass to forms which are not only
+characterized by a greater differentiation of parts, but are at the same
+time more completely differentiated from the surrounding medium. This
+truth may be contemplated under various aspects.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place it is illustrated in <i>structure</i>. The advance from
+the homogeneous to the heterogeneous itself involves an increasing
+distinction from the inorganic world. In the lowest <i>Protozoa</i>, as some
+of the Rhizopods, we have a homogeneity approaching to that of air,
+water, or earth; and the ascent to organisms of greater and greater
+complexity of structure, is an ascent to organisms which are in that
+respect more strongly contrasted with the relatively structureless
+masses in the environment.</p>
+
+<p>In <i>form</i> again we see the same truth. A general characteristic of
+inorganic matter is its indefiniteness of form, and this is also a
+characteristic of the lower organisms, as compared with the higher.
+Speaking generally, plants are less definite than animals, both in shape
+and size&mdash;admit of greater modifications from variations of position and
+nutrition. Among animals, the <i>Am&oelig;ba</i> and its allies are not only
+almost structureless, but are amorphous; and the irregular form is
+constantly changing. Of the organisms resulting from the aggregation of
+am&oelig;ba-like creatures, we find that while some assume a certain
+definiteness of form, in their compound shells at least, others, as the
+Sponges, are irregular. In the Zoophytes and in the <i>Polyzoa</i>, we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> see
+compound organisms, most of which have modes of growth not more
+determinate than those of plants. But among the higher animals, we find
+not only that the mature shape of each species is quite definite, but
+that the individuals of each species differ very little in size.</p>
+
+<p>A parallel increase of contrast is seen in <i>chemical composition</i>. With
+but few exceptions, and those only partial ones, the lowest animal and
+vegetal forms are inhabitants of the water; and water is almost their
+sole constituent. Dessicated <i>Protophyta</i> and <i>Protozoa</i> shrink into
+mere dust; and among the acalephes we find but a few grains of solid
+matter to a pound of water. The higher aquatic plants, in common with
+the higher aquatic animals, possessing as they do much greater tenacity
+of substance, also contain a greater proportion of the organic elements;
+and so are chemically more unlike their medium. And when we pass to the
+superior classes of organisms&mdash;land plants and land animals&mdash;we find
+that, chemically considered, they have little in common either with the
+earth on which they stand or the air which surrounds them.</p>
+
+<p>In <i>specific gravity</i>, too, we may note the like. The very simplest
+forms, in common with the spores and gemmules of the higher ones, are as
+nearly as may be of the same specific gravity as the water in which they
+float; and though it cannot be said that among aquatic creatures
+superior specific gravity is a standard of general superiority, yet we
+may fairly say that the superior orders of them, when divested of the
+appliances by which their specific gravity is regulated, differ more
+from water in their relative weights than do the lower. In terrestrial
+organisms, the contrast becomes extremely marked. Trees and plants, in
+common with insects, reptiles, mammals, birds, are all of a specific
+gravity considerably less than the earth and immensely greater than the
+air.</p>
+
+<p>We see the law similarly fulfilled in respect of <i>temperature</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> Plants
+generate but an extremely small quantity of heat, which is to be
+detected only by delicate experiments; and practically they may be
+considered as being in this respect like their environment. Aquatic
+animals rise very little above the surrounding water in temperature:
+that of the invertebrata being mostly less than a degree above it, and
+that of fishes not exceeding it by more than two or three degrees, save
+in the case of some large red-blooded fishes, as the tunny, which exceed
+it by nearly ten degrees. Among insects, the range is from two to ten
+degrees above that of the air: the excess varying according to their
+activity. The heat of reptiles is from four to fifteen degrees more than
+that of their medium. While mammals and birds maintain a heat which
+continues almost unaffected by external variations, and is often greater
+than that of the air by seventy, eighty, ninety, and even a hundred
+degrees.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, in greater <i>self-mobility</i> a progressive differentiation is
+traceable. Dead matter is inert: some form of independent motion is our
+most general test of life. Passing over the indefinite border-land
+between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, we may roughly class plants
+as organisms which, while they exhibit the kind of motion implied in
+growth, are not only without locomotive power, but in nearly all cases
+are without the power of moving their parts in relation to one another;
+and thus are less differentiated from the inorganic world than animals.
+Though in those microscopic <i>Protophyta</i> and <i>Protozoa</i> inhabiting the
+water&mdash;the spores of alg&aelig;, the gemmules of sponges, and the infusoria
+generally&mdash;we see locomotion produced by ciliary action; yet this
+locomotion, while rapid relatively to their sizes, is absolutely slow.
+Of the <i>C&oelig;lenterata</i>, a great part are either permanently rooted or
+habitually stationary, and so have scarcely any self-mobility but that
+implied in the relative movements of parts; while the rest, of which the
+common jelly-fish serves as a sample, have mostly but little ability to
+move themselves through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> the water. Among the higher aquatic
+<i>Invertebrata</i>,&mdash;cuttle-fishes and lobsters, for instance,&mdash;there is a
+very considerable power of locomotion; and the aquatic <i>Vertebrata</i> are,
+considered as a class, much more active in their movements than the
+other inhabitants of the water. But it is only when we come to
+air-breathing creatures that we find the vital characteristic of
+self-mobility manifested in the highest degree. Flying insects, mammals,
+birds, travel with velocities far exceeding those attained by any of the
+lower classes of animals; and so are more strongly contrasted with their
+inert environments.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, on contemplating the various grades of organisms in their
+ascending order, we find them more and more distinguished from their
+inanimate media in <i>structure</i>, in <i>form</i>, in <i>chemical composition</i>, in
+<i>specific gravity</i>, in <i>temperature</i>, in <i>self-mobility</i>. It is true
+that this generalization does not hold with regularity. Organisms which
+are in some respects the most strongly contrasted with the inorganic
+world, are in other respects less contrasted than inferior organisms. As
+a class, mammals are higher than birds; and yet they are of lower
+temperature, and have smaller powers of locomotion. The stationary
+oyster is of higher organization than the free-swimming medusa; and the
+cold-blooded and less heterogeneous fish is quicker in its movements
+than the warm-blooded and more heterogeneous sloth. But the admission
+that the several aspects under which this increasing contrast shows
+itself bear variable ratios to one another, does not negative the
+general truth enunciated. Looking at the facts in the mass, it cannot be
+denied that the successively higher groups of organisms are severally
+characterized, not only by greater differentiation of parts, but also by
+greater differentiation from the surrounding medium in sundry other
+physical attributes. It would seem that this peculiarity has some
+necessary connexion with superior vital manifestations. One of those
+lowly gelatinous forms which are some of them so tran<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>sparent and
+colourless as to be with difficulty distinguished from the water they
+float in, is not more like its medium in chemical, mechanical, optical,
+thermal, and other properties, than it is in the passivity with which it
+submits to all the actions brought to bear on it; while the mammal does
+not more widely differ from inanimate things in these properties than it
+does in the activity with which it meets surrounding changes by
+compensating changes in itself. Between these two extremes, we see a
+tolerably constant ratio between these two kinds of contrast. In
+proportion as an organism is physically like its environment it remains
+a passive partaker of the changes going on in its environment; while in
+proportion as it is endowed with powers of counteracting such changes,
+it exhibits greater unlikeness to its environment.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Thus far we have proceeded inductively, in conformity with established
+usage; but it seems to us that much may be done in this and other
+departments of biologic inquiry by pursuing the deductive method. The
+generalizations at present constituting the science of physiology, both
+general and special, have been reached <i>a posteriori</i>; but certain
+fundamental data have now been discovered, starting from which we may
+reason our way <i>a priori</i>, not only to some of the truths that have been
+ascertained by observation and experiment, but also to some others. The
+possibility of such <i>a priori</i> conclusions will be at once recognized on
+considering some familiar cases.</p>
+
+<p>Chemists have shown that a necessary condition to vital activity in
+animals is oxidation of certain matters contained in the body either as
+components or as waste products. The oxygen requisite for this oxidation
+is contained in the surrounding medium&mdash;air or water, as the case may
+be. If the organism be minute, mere contact of its external surface with
+the oxygenated medium achieves the requisite oxidation; but if the
+organism is bulky, and so exposes a surface<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> which is small in
+proportion to its mass, any considerable oxidation cannot be thus
+achieved. One of two things is therefore implied. Either this bulky
+organism, receiving no oxygen but that absorbed through its integument,
+must possess but little vital activity; or else, if it possesses much
+vital activity, there must be some extensive ramified surface, internal
+or external, through which adequate aeration may take place&mdash;a
+respiratory apparatus. That is to say, lungs, or gills, or branchi&aelig;, or
+their equivalents, are predicable <i>a priori</i> as possessed by all active
+creatures of any size.</p>
+
+<p>Similarly with respect to nutriment. There are <i>entozoa</i> which, living
+in the insides of other animals, and being constantly bathed by
+nutritive fluids, absorb a sufficiency through their outer surfaces; and
+so have no need of stomachs, and do not possess them. But all other
+animals, inhabiting media that are not in themselves nutritive, but only
+contain masses of food here and there, must have appliances by which
+these masses of food may be utilized. Evidently mere external contact of
+a solid organism with a solid portion of nutriment, could not result in
+the absorption of it in any moderate time, if at all. To effect
+absorption, there must be both a solvent or macerating action, and an
+extended surface fit for containing and imbibing the dissolved products:
+there must be a digestive cavity. Thus, given the ordinary conditions of
+animal life, and the possession of stomachs by all creatures living
+under these conditions may be deductively known.</p>
+
+<p>Carrying out the train of reasoning still further, we may infer the
+existence of a vascular system or something equivalent to it, in all
+creatures of any size and activity. In a comparatively small inert
+animal, such as the hydra, which consists of little more than a sac
+having a double wall&mdash;an outer layer of cells forming the skin, and an
+inner layer forming the digestive and absorbent surface&mdash;there is no
+need for a special apparatus to diffuse through the body<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> the aliment
+taken up; for the body is little more than a wrapper to the food it
+encloses. But where the bulk is considerable, or where the activity is
+such as to involve much waste and repair, or where both these
+characteristics exist, there is a necessity for a system of
+blood-vessels. It is not enough that there be adequately extensive
+surfaces for absorption and aeration; for in the absence of any means of
+conveyance, the absorbed elements can be of little or no use to the
+organism at large. Evidently there must be channels of communication.
+When, as in the <i>Medus&aelig;</i>, we find these channels of communication
+consisting simply of branched canals opening out of the stomach and
+spreading through the disk, we may know, <i>a priori</i>, that such creatures
+are comparatively inactive; seeing that the nutritive liquid thus
+partially distributed throughout their bodies is crude and dilute, and
+that there is no efficient appliance for keeping it in motion.
+Conversely, when we meet with a creature of considerable size which
+displays much vivacity, we may know, <i>a priori</i>, that it must have an
+apparatus for the unceasing supply of concentrated nutriment, and of
+oxygen, to every organ&mdash;a pulsating vascular system.</p>
+
+<p>It is manifest, then, that setting out from certain known fundamental
+conditions to vital activity, we may deduce from them sundry of the
+chief characteristics of organized bodies. Doubtless these known
+fundamental conditions have been inductively established. But what we
+wish to show is that, given these inductively-established primary facts
+in physiology, we may with safety draw certain general deductions from
+them. And, indeed, the legitimacy of such deductions, though not
+formally acknowledged, is practically recognized in the convictions of
+every physiologist, as may be readily proved. Thus, were a physiologist
+to find a creature exhibiting complex and variously co-ordinated
+movements, and yet having no nervous system; he would be less astonished
+at the breach of his empirical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> generalization that all such creatures
+have nervous systems, than at the disproof of his unconscious deduction
+that all creatures exhibiting complex and variously co-ordinated
+movements must have an "internuncial" apparatus by which the
+co-ordination may be effected. Or were he to find a creature having
+blood rapidly circulated and rapidly aerated, but yet showing a low
+temperature, the proof so afforded that active change of matter is not,
+as he had inferred from chemical data, the cause of animal heat, would
+stagger him more than would the exception to a constantly-observed
+relation. Clearly, then, the <i>a priori</i> method already plays a part in
+physiological reasoning. If not ostensibly employed as a means of
+reaching new truths, it is at least privately appealed to for
+confirmation of truths reached <i>a posteriori</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But the illustrations above given go far to show, that it may to a
+considerable extent be safely used as an independent instrument of
+research. The necessities for a nutritive system, a respiratory system,
+and a vascular system, in all animals of size and vivacity, seem to us
+legitimately inferable from the conditions to continued vital activity.
+Given the physical and chemical data, and these structural peculiarities
+may be deduced with as much certainty as may the hollowness of an iron
+ball from its power of floating in water.</p>
+
+<p>It is not, of course, asserted that the more <i>special</i> physiological
+truths can be deductively reached. The argument by no means implies
+this. Legitimate deduction presupposes adequate data; and in respect to
+the <i>special</i> phenomena of organic growth, structure, and function,
+adequate data are unattainable, and will probably ever remain so. It is
+only in the case of the more <i>general</i> physiological truths, such as
+those above instanced, where we have something like adequate data, that
+deductive reasoning becomes possible.</p>
+
+<p>And here is reached the stage to which the foregoing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> considerations are
+introductory. We propose now to show that there are certain still more
+general attributes of organized bodies, which are deducible from certain
+still more general attributes of things.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In an essay on "Progress: its Law and Cause," elsewhere published,<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> we
+have endeavoured to show that the transformation of the homogeneous into
+the heterogeneous, in which all progress, organic or other, essentially
+consists, is consequent on the production of many effects by one
+cause&mdash;many changes by one force. Having pointed out that this is a law
+of all things, we proceeded to show deductively that the multiform
+evolutions of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous&mdash;astronomic,
+geologic, ethnologic, social, &amp;c.,&mdash;were explicable as consequences. And
+though in the case of organic evolution, lack of data disabled us from
+specifically tracing out the progressive complication as due to the
+multiplication of effects; yet, we found sundry indirect evidences that
+it was so. Now in so far as this conclusion, that organic evolution
+results from the decomposition of each expended force into several
+forces, was inferred from the general law previously pointed out, it was
+an example of deductive physiology. The particular was concluded from
+the universal.</p>
+
+<p>We here propose in the first place to show, that there is another
+general truth closely connected with the above; and in common with it
+underlying explanations of all progress, and therefore the progress of
+organisms&mdash;a truth which may indeed be considered as taking precedence
+of it in respect of time, if not in respect of generality. This truth
+is, that <i>the condition of homogeneity is a condition of unstable
+equilibrium</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The phrase <i>unstable equilibrium</i> is one used in mechanics<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> to express
+a balance of forces of such kind, that the interference of any further
+force, however minute, will destroy the arrangement previously existing,
+and bring about a different arrangement. Thus, a stick poised on its
+lower end is in unstable equilibrium: however exactly it may be placed
+in a perpendicular position, as soon as it is left to itself it begins,
+at first imperceptibly and then visibly, to lean on one side, and with
+increasing rapidity falls into another position. Conversely, a stick
+suspended from its upper end is in stable equilibrium: however much
+disturbed, it will return to the same position. Our meaning is, then,
+that the state of homogeneity, like the state of the stick poised on its
+lower end, is one that cannot be maintained; and that hence results the
+first step in its gravitation towards the heterogeneous. Let us take a
+few illustrations.</p>
+
+<p>Of mechanical ones the most familiar is that of the scales. If
+accurately made and not clogged by dirt or rust, a pair of scales cannot
+be perfectly balanced: eventually one scale will descend and the other
+ascend&mdash;they will assume a heterogeneous relation. Again, if we sprinkle
+over the surface of a liquid a number of equal-sized particles, having
+an attraction for one another, they will, no matter how uniformly
+distributed, by and by concentrate irregularly into groups. Were it
+possible to bring a mass of water into a state of perfect homogeneity&mdash;a
+state of complete quiescence, and exactly equal density throughout&mdash;yet
+the radiation of heat from neighbouring bodies, by affecting differently
+its different parts, would soon produce inequalities of density and
+consequent currents; and would so render it to that extent
+heterogeneous. Take a piece of red-hot matter, and however evenly heated
+it may at first be, it will quickly cease to be so: the exterior,
+cooling faster than the interior, will become different in temperature
+from it. And the lapse into heterogeneity of temperature, so obvious in
+this extreme case, is ever taking place more or less in all cases. The
+actions of chemical forces supply other illus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>trations. Expose a
+fragment of metal to air or water, and in course of time it will be
+coated with a film of oxide, carbonate, or other compound: its outer
+parts will become unlike its inner parts. Thus, every homogeneous
+aggregate of matter tends to lose its balance in some way or
+other&mdash;either mechanically, chemically, thermally or electrically; and
+the rapidity with which it lapses into a non-homogeneous state is simply
+a question of time and circumstances. Social bodies illustrate the law
+with like constancy. Endow the members of a community with equal
+properties, positions, powers, and they will forthwith begin to slide
+into inequalities. Be it in a representative assembly, a railway board,
+or a private partnership, the homogeneity, though it may continue in
+name, inevitably disappears in reality.</p>
+
+<p>The instability thus variously illustrated becomes still more manifest
+if we consider its rationale. It is consequent on the fact that the
+several parts of any homogeneous mass are necessarily exposed to
+different forces&mdash;forces which differ either in their kinds or amounts;
+and being exposed to different forces they are of necessity differently
+modified. The relations of outside and inside, and of comparative
+nearness to neighbouring sources of influence, imply the reception of
+influences which are unlike in quantity or quality or both; and it
+follows that unlike changes will be wrought in the parts dissimilarly
+acted upon. The unstable equilibrium of any homogeneous aggregate can
+thus be shown both inductively and deductively.</p>
+
+<p>And now let us consider the bearing of this general truth on the
+evolution of organisms. The germ of a plant or animal is one of these
+homogeneous aggregates&mdash;relatively homogeneous if not absolutely
+so&mdash;whose equilibrium is unstable. But it has not simply the ordinary
+instability of homogeneous aggregates: it has something more. For it
+consists of units which are themselves specially characterized by
+instability. The constituent molecules of organic matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> are
+distinguished by the feebleness of the affinities which hold their
+component elements together. They are extremely sensitive to heat,
+light, electricity, and the chemical actions of foreign elements; that
+is, they are peculiarly liable to be modified by disturbing forces.
+Hence then it follows, <i>a priori</i>, that a homogeneous aggregate of these
+unstable molecules will have an excessive tendency to lose its
+equilibrium. It will have a quite special liability to lapse into a
+non-homogeneous state. It will rapidly gravitate towards <a name='TC_4'></a><ins class="correction" title="Was 'heretogeneity'">heterogeneity</ins>.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the process must repeat itself in each of the subordinate
+groups of organic units which are differentiated by the modifying
+forces. Each of these subordinate groups, like the original group, must
+gradually, in obedience to the influences acting on it, lose its balance
+of parts&mdash;must pass from a uniform into a multiform state. And so on
+continuously.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, starting from the general laws of things, and the known chemical
+attributes of organic matter, we may conclude deductively that the
+homogeneous germs of organisms have a peculiar proclivity towards a
+non-homogeneous state; which may be either the state we call
+decomposition, or the state we call organization.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>At present we have reached a conclusion only of the most general nature.
+We merely learn that <i>some</i> kind of heterogeneity is inevitable; but as
+yet there is nothing to tell us <i>what</i> kind. Besides that <i>orderly</i>
+heterogeneity which distinguishes organisms, there is the <i>disorderly</i>
+or <i>chaotic</i> heterogeneity, into which a loose mass of inorganic matter
+lapses; and at present no reason has been given why the homogeneous germ
+of a plant or animal should not lapse into the disorderly instead of the
+orderly heterogeneity. But by pursuing still further the line of
+argument hitherto followed we shall find a reason.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen that the instability of homogeneous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> aggregates in general,
+and of organic ones in particular, is consequent on the various ways and
+degrees in which their constituent parts are exposed to the disturbing
+forces brought to bear on them: their parts are differently acted upon,
+and therefore become different. Manifestly, then, a rationale of the
+special changes which a germ undergoes, must be sought in the particular
+relations which its several parts bear to each other and to their
+environment. However it may be masked, we may suspect the fundamental
+principle of organization to be, that the many like units forming a germ
+acquire those kinds and degrees of unlikeness which their respective
+positions entail.</p>
+
+<p>Take a mass of unorganized but organizable matter&mdash;either the body of
+one of the lowest living forms, or the germ of one of the higher.
+Consider its circumstances. It is immersed in water or air; or it is
+contained within a parent organism. Wherever placed, however, its outer
+and inner parts stand differently related to surrounding
+existences&mdash;nutriment, oxygen, and the various stimuli. But this is not
+all. Whether it lies quiescent at the bottom of the water, whether it
+moves through the water preserving some definite attitude, or whether it
+is in the inside of an adult; it equally results that certain parts of
+its surface are more directly exposed to surrounding agencies than other
+parts&mdash;in some cases more exposed to light, heat, or oxygen, and in
+others to the maternal tissues and their contents. The destruction of
+its original equilibrium is therefore certain. It may take place in one
+of two ways. Either the disturbing forces may be such as to overbalance
+the affinities of the organic elements, in which case there results that
+chaotic heterogeneity known as decomposition; or, as is ordinarily the
+case, such changes are induced as do not destroy the organic compounds,
+but only modify them: the parts most exposed to the modifying forces
+being most modified. Hence result those first differentiations which
+constitute incipient organization. From the point<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> of view thus reached,
+suppose we look at a few cases: neglecting for the present all
+consideration of the tendency to assume the inherited type.</p>
+
+<p>Note first what appear to be exceptions, as the <i>Am&oelig;ba</i>. In this
+creature and its allies, the substance of the jelly-like body remains
+throughout life unorganized&mdash;undergoes no permanent differentiations.
+But this fact, which seems directly opposed to our inference, is really
+one of the most significant evidences of its truth. For what is the
+peculiarity of the Rhizopods, exemplified by the <i>Am&oelig;ba</i>? They
+undergo perpetual and irregular changes of shape&mdash;they show no
+persistent relations of parts. What lately formed a portion of the
+interior is now protruded, and, as a temporary limb, is attached to some
+object it happens to touch. What is now a part of the surface will
+presently be drawn, along with the atom of nutriment sticking to it,
+into the centre of the mass. Thus there is an unceasing interchange of
+places; and the relations of inner and outer have no settled existence.
+But by the hypothesis, it is only in virtue of their unlike positions
+with respect to modifying forces, that the originally-like units of a
+living mass become unlike. We must not therefore expect any established
+differentiation of parts in creatures which exhibit no established
+differences of position in their parts.</p>
+
+<p>This negative evidence is borne out by abundant positive evidence. When
+we turn from these ever-changing specks of living jelly to organisms
+having unchanging distributions of substance, we find differences of
+tissue corresponding to differences of relative position. In all the
+higher <i>Protozoa</i>, as also in the <i>Protophyta</i>, we meet with a
+fundamental differentiation into cell-membrane and cell-contents,
+answering to that fundamental contrast of conditions implied by the
+words outside and inside. And on passing from what are roughly classed
+as unicellular organisms to the lowest of those which consist of
+aggregated cells, we equally observe the connexion between structural
+differences<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> and differences of circumstance. In the sponge, permeated
+throughout by currents of sea-water, the absence of definite
+organization corresponds with the absence of definite unlikeness of
+conditions. In the <i>Thalassicolla</i> of Professor Huxley&mdash;a transparent,
+colourless body, found floating passively at the surface of the sea, and
+consisting essentially of "a mass of cells united by jelly"&mdash;there is
+displayed a rude structure obviously subordinated to the primary
+relations of centre and surface: in all of its many and important
+varieties, the parts exhibit a more or less concentric arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>After this primary modification, by which the outer tissues are
+differentiated from the inner, the next in order of constancy and
+importance is that by which some part of the outer tissues is
+differentiated from the rest; and this corresponds with the almost
+universal fact that some part of the outer tissues is more directly
+exposed to certain environing influences than the rest. Here, as before,
+the apparent exceptions are extremely significant. Some of the lowest
+vegetable organisms, as the <i>Hematococci</i> and <i>Protococci</i>, evenly
+imbedded in a mass of mucus, or dispersed through the Arctic snow,
+display no differentiations of surface: the several parts of the surface
+being subjected to no definite contrasts of conditions. The
+<i>Thalassicolla</i> above mentioned, unfixed, and rolled about by the waves,
+presents all its sides successively to the same agencies; and all its
+sides are alike. A ciliated sphere like the <i>Volvox</i> has no parts of its
+periphery unlike other parts; and it is not to be expected that it
+should have; seeing that as it revolves in all directions, it does not,
+in traversing the water, permanently expose any part to special
+conditions. But when we come to creatures that are either fixed, or
+while moving, severally preserve a definite attitude, we no longer find
+uniformity of surface. The gemmule of a Zoophyte, which during its
+locomotive stage is distinguishable only into outer and inner tissues,
+no sooner takes root<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> than its upper end begins to assume a different
+structure from its lower. The free-swimming embryo of an aquatic
+annelid, being ovate and not ciliated all over, moves with one end
+foremost; and its differentiations proceed in conformity with this
+contrast of circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>The principle thus displayed in the humbler forms of life, is traceable
+during the development of the higher; though being here soon masked by
+the assumption of the hereditary type, it cannot be traced far. Thus the
+"mulberry-mass" into which a fertilized ovum of a vertebrate animal
+first resolves itself, soon begins to exhibit a difference between the
+outer and inner parts answering to the difference of circumstances. The
+peripheral cells, after reaching a more complete development than the
+central ones, coalesce into a membrane enclosing the rest; and then the
+cells lying next to these outer ones become aggregated with them, and
+increase the thickness of the germinal membrane, while the central cells
+liquefy. Again, one part of the germinal membrane presently becomes
+distinguishable as the germinal spot; and without asserting that the
+cause of this is to be found in the unlike relations which the
+respective parts of the germinal membrane bear to environing influences,
+it is clear that we have in these unlike relations an element of
+disturbance tending to destroy the original homogeneity of the germinal
+membrane. Further, the germinal membrane by and by divides into two
+layers, internal and external; the one in contact with the liquefied
+interior part or yelk, the other exposed to the surrounding fluids: this
+contrast of circumstances being in obvious correspondence with the
+contrast of structures which follows it. Once more, the subsequent
+appearance of the vascular layer between these mucous and serous layers,
+as they have been named, admits of a like interpretation. And in this
+and the various complications which now begin to show themselves, we may
+see coming into play that general law of the multiplication of effects
+flowing from one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> cause, to which the increase of heterogeneity was
+elsewhere ascribed.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<p>Confining our remarks, as we do, to the most general facts of
+development, we think that some light is thus thrown on them. That the
+unstable equilibrium of a homogeneous germ must be destroyed by the
+unlike exposure of its several units to surrounding influences, is an <i>a
+priori</i> conclusion. And it seems also to be an <i>a priori</i> conclusion,
+that the several units thus differently acted upon, must either be
+decomposed, or must undergo such modifications of nature as may enable
+them to live in the respective circumstances they are thrown into: in
+other words&mdash;<i>they must either die or become adapted to their
+conditions</i>. Indeed, we might infer as much without going through the
+foregoing train of reasoning. The superficial organic units (be they the
+outer cells of a "mulberry-mass," or be they the outer molecules of an
+individual cell) must assume the function which their position
+necessitates; and assuming this function, must acquire such character as
+performance of it involves. The layer of organic units lying in contact
+with the yelk must be those through which the yelk is absorbed; and so
+must be adapted to the absorbent office. On this condition only does the
+process of organization appear possible. We might almost say that just
+as some race of animals, which multiplies and spreads into divers
+regions of the earth, becomes differentiated into several races through
+the adaptation of each to its conditions of life; so, the originally
+homogeneous population of cells arising in a fertilized germ-cell,
+becomes divided into several populations of cells that grow unlike in
+virtue of the unlikeness of their circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, it is to be remarked in further proof of our position, that it
+finds its clearest and most abundant illustrations where the conditions
+of the case are the simplest <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>and most general&mdash;where the phenomena are
+the least involved: we mean in the production of individual cells. The
+structures which presently arise round nuclei in a blastema, and which
+have in some way been determined by those nuclei as centres of
+influence, evidently conform to the law; for the parts of the blastema
+in contact with the nuclei are differently conditioned from the parts
+not in contact with them. Again, the formation of a membrane round each
+of the masses of granules into which the endochrome of an alga-cell
+breaks up, is an instance of analogous kind. And should the
+recently-asserted fact that cells may arise round vacuoles in a mass of
+organizable substance, be confirmed, another good example will be
+furnished; for such portions of substance as bound these vacant spaces
+are subject to influences unlike those to which other portions of the
+substance are subject. If then we can most clearly trace this law of
+modification in these primordial processes, as well as in those more
+complex but analogous ones exhibited in the early changes of an ovum, we
+have strong reason for thinking that the law is fundamental.</p>
+
+<p>But, as already more than once hinted, this principle, understood in the
+simple form here presented, supplies no key to the detailed phenomena of
+organic development. It fails entirely to explain generic and specific
+peculiarities; and leaves us equally in the dark respecting those more
+important distinctions by which families and orders are marked out. Why
+two ova, similarly exposed in the same pool, should become the one a
+fish, and the other a reptile, it cannot tell us. That from two
+different eggs placed under the same hen, should respectively come forth
+a duckling and a chicken, is a fact not to be accounted for on the
+hypothesis above developed. Here we are obliged to fall back upon the
+unexplained principle of hereditary transmission. The capacity possessed
+by an unorganized germ of unfolding into a complex adult which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> repeats
+ancestral traits in minute details, and that even when it has been
+placed in conditions unlike those of its ancestors, is a capacity
+impossible for us to understand. That a microscopic portion of seemingly
+structureless matter should embody an influence of such kind, that the
+resulting man will in fifty years after become gouty or insane, is a
+truth which would be incredible were it not daily illustrated. But
+though the <i>manner</i> in which hereditary likeness, in all its
+complications, is conveyed, is a mystery passing comprehension, it is
+quite conceivable that it is conveyed in subordination to the law of
+adaptation above explained; and we are not without reasons for thinking
+that it is so. Various facts show that acquired peculiarities resulting
+from the adaptation of constitution to conditions, are transmissible to
+offspring. Such acquired peculiarities consist of differences of
+structure or composition in one or more of the tissues. That is to say,
+of the aggregate of similar organic units composing a germ, the group
+going to the formation of a particular tissue, will take on the special
+character which the adaptation of that tissue to new circumstances had
+produced in the parents. We know this to be a general law of organic
+modifications. Further, it is the <i>only</i> law of organic modifications of
+which we have any evidence.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> It is not impossible then that it is the
+universal law; comprehending not simply those minor modifications which
+offspring inherit from recent ancestry, but comprehending also those
+larger modifications distinctive of species, genus, order, class, which
+they inherit from antecedent races of organisms. And thus it <i>may be</i>
+that the law of adaptation is the sole law; presiding not only over the
+differentiation of any race of organisms into several races, but also
+over the differentiation of the race of organic units composing a germ,
+into the many races of organic units composing an adult. So understood,
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>process gone through by every unfolding organism will consist,
+partly in the direct adaptation of its elements to their several
+circumstances, and partly in the assumption of characters resulting from
+analogous adaptations of the elements of all ancestral organisms.</p>
+
+<p>But our argument does not commit us to any such far-reaching speculation
+as this; which we introduce simply as suggested by it, not involved. All
+we are here concerned to show, is, that the deductive method aids us in
+interpreting some of the more general phenomena of development. That all
+homogeneous aggregates are in unstable equilibrium is a universal truth,
+from which is deducible the instability of every organic germ. From the
+known sensitiveness of organic compounds to chemical, thermal, and other
+disturbing forces, we further infer the <i>unusual</i> instability of every
+organic germ&mdash;a proneness far beyond that of other homogeneous
+aggregates to lapse into a heterogeneous state. By the same line of
+reasoning we are led to the additional inference, that the first
+divisions into which a germ resolves itself, being severally in a state
+of unstable equilibrium, are similarly prone to undergo further changes;
+and so on continuously. Moreover, we have found it to be equally an <i>a
+priori</i> conclusion, that as, in all other cases, the loss of homogeneity
+is due to the different degrees and kinds of force brought to bear on
+the different parts; so, in this case too, difference of circumstances
+is the primary cause of differentiation. Add to which, that as the
+several changes undergone by the respective parts thus diversely acted
+upon, are changes which do not destroy their vital activity, they must
+be changes which bring that vital activity into subordination to the
+incident forces&mdash;they must be adaptations; and the like must be in some
+sense true of all the subsequent changes. Thus by deductive reasoning we
+get some insight into the method of organization. However unable we are,
+and probably ever shall be, to comprehend the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> way in which a germ is
+made to take on the special form of its race, we may yet comprehend the
+general principles which regulate its first modifications; and,
+remembering the unity of plan so conspicuous throughout nature, we may
+<i>suspect</i> that these principles are in some way concerned in succeeding
+modifications.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>A controversy now going on among zoologists, opens yet another field for
+the application of the deductive method. We believe that the question
+whether there does or does not exist a <i>necessary correlation</i> among the
+several parts of an organism is determinable <i>a priori</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Cuvier, who first asserted this necessary correlation, professed to base
+his restorations of extinct animals upon it. Geoffroy St. Hilaire and De&nbsp;Blainville,
+from different points of view, contested Cuvier's
+hypothesis; and the discussion, which has much interest as bearing on
+paleontology, has been recently revived under a somewhat modified form:
+Professors Huxley and Owen being respectively the assailant and defender
+of the hypothesis.</p>
+
+<p>Cuvier says&mdash;"Comparative anatomy possesses a principle whose just
+development is sufficient to dissipate all difficulties; it is that of
+the correlation of forms in organized beings, by means of which every
+kind of organized being might, strictly speaking, be recognized by a
+fragment of any of its parts. Every organized being constitutes a whole,
+a single and complete system, whose parts mutually correspond and concur
+by their reciprocal reaction to the same definite end. None of these
+parts can be changed without affecting the others; and consequently each
+taken separately, indicates and gives all the rest." He then gives
+illustrations: arguing that the carnivorous form of tooth necessitating
+a certain action of the jaw, implies a particular form in its condyles;
+implies also limbs fit for seizing and holding prey; therefore implies
+claws, a certain structure of the leg-bones, a certain form<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> of
+shoulder-blade. Summing up he says, that "the claw, the scapula, the
+condyle, the femur, and all the other bones, taken separately, will give
+the tooth or one another; and by commencing with any one, he who had a
+rational conception of the laws of the organic economy, could
+reconstruct the whole animal."</p>
+
+<p>It will be seen that the method of restoration here contended for, is
+based on the alleged physiological necessity of the connexion between
+these several peculiarities. The argument used is, not that a scapula of
+a certain shape may be recognized as having belonged to a carnivorous
+mammal because we always find that carnivorous mammals <i>do</i> possess such
+scapulas; but the argument is that they <i>must</i> possess them, because
+carnivorous habits would be impossible without them. And in the above
+quotation Cuvier asserts that the necessary correlation which he
+considers so obvious in these cases, exists throughout the system:
+admitting, however, that in consequence of our limited knowledge of
+physiology we are unable in many cases to trace this necessary
+correlation, and are obliged to base our conclusions upon <a name='TC_5'></a><ins class="correction" title="Was 'observedcoexistences'">observed
+coexistences</ins>, of which we do not understand the reason, but which we
+find invariable.</p>
+
+<p>Now Professor Huxley has recently shown that, in the first place, this
+empirical method, which Cuvier introduces as quite subordinate, and to
+be used only in aid of the rational method, is really the method which
+Cuvier habitually employed&mdash;the so-called rational method remaining
+practically a dead letter; and, in the second place, he has shown that
+Cuvier himself has in several places so far admitted the inapplicability
+of the rational method, as virtually to surrender it as a method. But
+more than this, Professor Huxley contends that the alleged necessary
+correlation is not true. Quite admitting the physiological dependence of
+parts on each other, he denies that it is a dependence of a kind which
+could not be otherwise. "Thus the teeth of a lion and the stomach of
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> animal are in such relation that the one is fitted to digest the
+food which the other can tear, they are physiologically correlated; but
+we have no reason for affirming this to be a necessary physiological
+correlation, in the sense that no other could equally fit its possessor
+for living on recent flesh. The number and form of the teeth might have
+been quite different from that which we know them to be, and the
+construction of the stomach might have been greatly altered; and yet the
+functions of these organs might have been equally well performed."</p>
+
+<p>Thus much is needful to give an idea of the controversy. It is not here
+our purpose to go more at length into the evidence cited on either side.
+We simply wish to show that the question may be settled deductively.
+Before going on to do this, however, let us briefly notice two
+collateral points.</p>
+
+<p>In his defence of the Cuvierian doctrine, Professor Owen avails himself
+of the <i>odium theologicum</i>. He attributes to his opponents "the
+insinuation and masked advocacy of the doctrine subversive of a
+recognition of the Higher Mind." Now, saying nothing about the
+questionable propriety of thus prejudging an issue in science, we think
+this is an unfortunate accusation. What is there in the hypothesis of
+<i>necessary</i>, as distinguished from <i>actual</i>, correlation of parts, which
+is particularly in harmony with Theism? Maintenance of the <i>necessity</i>,
+whether of sequences or of coexistences, is commonly thought rather a
+derogation from divine power than otherwise. Cuvier says&mdash;"None of these
+parts can be changed without affecting the others; and consequently,
+each taken separately, indicates and gives all the rest." That is to
+say, in the nature of things the correlation <i>could not</i> have been
+otherwise. On the other hand, Professor Huxley says we have no warrant
+for asserting that the correlation <i>could not</i> have been otherwise; but
+have not a little reason for thinking that the same physiological ends
+might have been differently achieved.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> The one doctrine limits the
+possibilities of creation; the other denies the implied limit. Which,
+then, is most open to the charge of covert Atheism?</p>
+
+<p>On the other point we lean to the opinion of Professor Owen. We agree
+with him in thinking that where a rational correlation (in the highest
+sense of the term) can be made out, it affords a better basis for
+deduction than an empirical correlation ascertained only by accumulated
+observations. Premising that by rational correlation is not meant one in
+which we can trace, or think we can trace, a design, but one of which
+the negation is inconceivable (and this is the species of correlation
+which Cuvier's principle implies); then we hold that our knowledge of
+the correlation is of a more certain kind than where it is simply
+inductive. We think that Professor Huxley, in his anxiety to avoid the
+error of making Thought the measure of Things, does not sufficiently
+bear in mind the fact, that as our notion of necessity is determined by
+some absolute uniformity pervading all orders of our experiences, it
+follows that an organic correlation which cannot be conceived otherwise,
+is guaranteed by a much wider induction than one ascertained only by the
+observation of organisms. But the truth is, that there are relatively
+few organic correlations of which the negation is inconceivable. If we
+find the skull, vertebr&aelig;, ribs, and phalanges of some quadruped as large
+as an elephant; we may indeed be certain that the legs of this quadruped
+were of considerable size&mdash;much larger than those of a rat; and our
+reason for conceiving this correlation as necessary, is, that it is
+based, not only upon our experiences of moving organisms, but upon all
+our mechanical experiences relative to masses and their supports. But
+even were there many physiological correlations really of this order,
+which there are not, there would be danger in pursuing this line of
+reasoning, in consequence of the liability to include within the class
+of truly necessary correlations, those which are not such. For instance,
+there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> would seem to be a necessary correlation between the eye and the
+surface of the body: light being needful for vision, it might be
+supposed that every eye must be external. Nevertheless it is a fact that
+there are creatures, as the <a name='TC_6'></a><ins class="correction" title="Was 'Cirrhip&oelig;dia'"><i>Cirrhipedia</i></ins>, having eyes (not very
+efficient ones, it may be) deeply imbedded within the body. Again, a
+necessary correlation might be assumed between the dimensions of the
+mammalian uterus and those of the pelvis. It would appear impossible
+that in any species there should exist a well-developed uterus
+containing a full-sized f&oelig;tus, and yet that the arch of the pelvis
+should be too small to allow the f&oelig;tus to pass. And were the only
+mammal having a very small pelvic arch, a fossil one, it would have been
+inferred, on the Cuvierian method, that the f&oelig;tus must have been born
+in a rudimentary state; and that the uterus must have been
+proportionally small. But there happens to be an extant mammal having an
+undeveloped pelvis&mdash;the mole&mdash;which presents us with a fact that saves
+us from this erroneous inference. The young of the mole are not born
+through the pelvic arch at all; but in front of it! Thus, granting that
+some quite <i>direct</i> physiological correlations may be necessary, we see
+that there is great risk of including among them some which are not.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the great mass of the correlations, however, including
+all the <i>indirect</i> ones, Professor Huxley seems to us warranted in
+denying that they are necessary; and we now propose to show deductively
+the truth of his thesis. Let us begin with an analogy.</p>
+
+<p>Whoever has been through an extensive iron-works, has seen a gigantic
+pair of shears worked by machinery, and used for cutting in two, bars of
+iron that are from time to time thrust between its blades. Supposing
+these blades to be the only visible parts of the apparatus, anyone
+observing their movements (or rather the movement of one, for the other
+is commonly fixed), will see from the manner in which the angle
+increases and decreases, and from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> curve described by the moving
+extremity, that there must be some centre of motion&mdash;either a pivot or
+an external box equivalent to it. This may be regarded as a necessary
+correlation. Moreover, he might infer that beyond the centre of motion
+the moving blade was produced into a lever, to which the power was
+applied; but as another arrangement is just possible, this could not be
+called anything more than a highly probable correlation. If now he went
+a step further, and asked how the reciprocal movement was given to the
+lever, he would perhaps conclude that it was given by a crank. But if he
+knew anything of mechanics, he would know that it might possibly be
+given by an eccentric. Or again, he would know that the effect could be
+achieved by a cam. That is to say, he would see that there was no
+necessary correlation between the shears and the remoter parts of the
+apparatus. Take another case. The plate of a printing-press is required
+to move up and down to the extent of an inch or so; and it must exert
+its greatest pressure when it reaches the extreme of its downward
+movement. If now anyone will look over the stock of a printing-press
+maker, he will see half a dozen different mechanical arrangements by
+which these ends are achieved; and a machinist would tell him that as
+many more might readily be invented. If, then, there is no necessary
+correlation between the special parts of a machine, still less is there
+between those of an organism.</p>
+
+<p>From a converse point of view the same truth is manifest. Bearing in
+mind the above analogy, it will be foreseen that an alteration in one
+part of an organism will not necessarily entail <i>some one specific set
+of alterations in the other parts</i>. Cuvier says, "None of these parts
+can be changed without affecting the others; and consequently, each
+taken separately, indicates and gives all the rest." The first of these
+propositions may pass, but the second, which it is alleged follows from
+it, is not true; for it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> implies that "all the rest" can be severally
+affected in only one way and degree, whereas they can be affected in
+many ways and degrees. To show this, we must again have recourse to a
+mechanical analogy.</p>
+
+<p>If you set a brick on end and thrust it over, you can predict with
+certainty in what direction it will fall, and what attitude it will
+assume. If, again setting it up, you put another on the top of it, you
+can no longer foresee with accuracy the results of an overthrow; and on
+repeating the experiment, no matter how much care is taken to place the
+bricks in the same positions, and to apply the same degree of force in
+the same direction, the effects will on no two occasions be exactly
+alike. And in proportion as the aggregation is complicated by the
+addition of new and unlike parts, will the results of any disturbance
+become more varied and incalculable. The like truth is curiously
+illustrated by locomotive engines. It is a fact familiar to mechanical
+engineers and engine-drivers, that out of a number of engines built as
+accurately as possible to the same pattern, no two will act in just the
+same manner. Each will have its peculiarities. The play of actions and
+reactions will so far differ, that under like conditions each will
+behave in a somewhat different way; and every driver has to learn the
+idiosyncrasies of his own engine before he can work it to the greatest
+advantage. In organisms themselves this indefiniteness of mechanical
+reaction is clearly traceable. Two boys throwing stones will always
+differ more or less in their attitudes, as will two billiard-players.
+The familiar fact that each individual has a characteristic gait,
+illustrates the point still better. The rhythmical motion of the leg is
+simple, and on the Cuvierian hypothesis, should react on the body in
+some uniform way. But in consequence of those slight differences of
+structure which consist with identity of species, no two individuals
+make exactly similar movements either of the trunk or the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> arms. There
+is always a peculiarity recognizable by their friends.</p>
+
+<p>When we pass to disturbing forces of a non-mechanical kind, the same
+truth becomes still more conspicuous. Expose several persons to a
+drenching storm; and while one will subsequently feel no appreciable
+inconvenience, another will have a cough, another a catarrh, another an
+attack of diarrh&oelig;a, another a fit of rheumatism. Vaccinate several
+children of the same age with the same quantity of virus, applied to the
+same part, and the symptoms will not be quite alike in any of them,
+either in kind or intensity; and in some cases the differences will be
+extreme. The quantity of alcohol which will send one man to sleep, will
+render another unusually brilliant&mdash;will make this maudlin, and that
+irritable. Opium will produce either drowsiness or wakefulness: so will
+tobacco.</p>
+
+<p>Now in all these cases&mdash;mechanical and other&mdash;some force is brought to
+bear primarily on one part of an organism, and secondarily on the rest;
+and, according to the doctrine of Cuvier, the rest ought to be affected
+in a specific way. We find this to be by no means the case. The original
+change produced in one part does not stand in any necessary correlation
+with every one of the changes produced in the other parts; nor do these
+stand in any necessary correlation with one another. The functional
+alteration which the disturbing force causes in the organ directly acted
+upon, does not involve some <i>particular set</i> of functional alterations
+in the other organs; but will be followed by some one out of various
+sets. And it is a manifest corollary, that any <i>structural alteration</i>
+which may eventually be produced in the one organ, will not be
+accompanied by <i>some particular set of structural alterations</i> in the
+other organs. There will be no necessary correlation of forms.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Paleontology must depend upon the empirical method. A fossil
+species that was obliged to change its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> food or habits of life, did not
+of necessity undergo the particular set of modifications exhibited; but,
+under some slight change of predisposing causes&mdash;as of season or
+latitude&mdash;might have undergone some other set of modifications: the
+determining circumstance being one which, in the human sense, we call
+fortuitous.</p>
+
+<p>May we not say then, that the deductive method elucidates this vexed
+question in physiology; while at the same time our argument collaterally
+exhibits the limits within which the deductive method is applicable. For
+while we see that this extremely <i>general</i> question may be
+satisfactorily dealt with deductively; the conclusion arrived at itself
+implies that the more <i>special</i> phenomena of organization cannot be so
+dealt with.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>There is yet another method of investigating the general truths of
+physiology&mdash;a method to which physiology already owes one luminous idea,
+but which is not at present formally recognized as a method. We refer to
+the comparison of physiological phenomena with social phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>The analogy between individual organisms and the social organism, is one
+that has from early days occasionally forced itself on the attention of
+the observant. And though modern science does not countenance those
+crude ideas of this analogy which have been from time to time expressed
+since the Greeks flourished; yet it tends to show that there <i>is</i> an
+analogy, and a remarkable one. While it is becoming clear that there are
+not those special parallelisms between the constituent parts of a man
+and those of a nation, which have been thought to exist; it is also
+becoming clear that the general principles of development and structure
+displayed in organized bodies are displayed in societies also. The
+fundamental characteristic both of societies and of living creatures,
+is, that they consist of mutually-dependent parts; and it would seem
+that this involves a community of various other characteristics. Those
+who are acquainted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> with the broad facts of both physiology and
+sociology, are beginning to recognize this correspondence not as a
+plausible fancy, but as a scientific truth. And we are strongly of
+opinion that it will by and by be seen to hold to an extent which few at
+present suspect.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, if any such correspondence exists, it is clear that
+physiology and sociology will more or less interpret each other. Each
+affords its special facilities for inquiry. Relations of cause and
+effect clearly traceable in the social organism, may lead to the search
+for analogous ones in the individual organism; and may so elucidate what
+might else be inexplicable. Laws of growth and function disclosed by the
+pure physiologist, may occasionally give us the clue to certain social
+modifications otherwise difficult to understand. If they can do no more,
+the two sciences can at least exchange suggestions and confirmations;
+and this will be no small aid. The conception of "the physiological
+division of labour," which political economy has already supplied to
+physiology, is one of no small value. And probably it has others to
+give.</p>
+
+<p>In support of this opinion, we will now cite cases in which such aid is
+furnished. And in the first place, let us see whether the facts of
+social organization do not afford additional support to some of the
+doctrines set forth in the foregoing parts of this article.</p>
+
+<p>One of the propositions supported by evidence was that in animals the
+process of development is carried on, not by differentiations only, but
+by subordinate integrations. Now in the social organism we may see the
+same duality of process; and further, it is to be observed that the
+integrations are of the same three kinds. Thus we have integrations
+which arise from the simple growth of adjacent parts that perform like
+functions: as, for instance, the coalescence of Manchester with its
+calico-weaving suburbs. We have other integrations which arise when, out
+of several places producing a particular commodity, one monopolizes
+more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> and more of the business, and leaves the rest to dwindle: witness
+the growth of the Yorkshire cloth-districts at the expense of those in
+the west of England; or the absorption by Staffordshire of the
+pottery-manufacture, and the consequent decay of the establishments that
+once flourished at Worcester, Derby, and elsewhere. And we have those
+yet other integrations which result from the actual approximation of the
+similarly-occupied parts: whence result such facts as the concentration
+of publishers in Paternoster Row, of lawyers in the Temple and
+neighbourhood, of corn-merchants about Mark Lane, of civil engineers in
+Great George Street, of bankers in the centre of the city. Finding thus
+that in the evolution of the social organism, as in the evolution of
+individual organisms, there are integrations as well as
+differentiations, and moreover that these integrations are of the same
+three orders; we have additional reason for considering these
+integrations as essential parts of the developmental process, needed to
+be included in its formula. And further, the circumstance that in the
+social organism these integrations are determined by community of
+function, confirms the hypothesis that they are thus determined in the
+individual organism.</p>
+
+<p>Again, we endeavoured to show deductively, that the contrasts of parts
+first seen in all unfolding embryos, are consequent upon the contrasted
+circumstances to which such parts are exposed; that thus, adaptation of
+constitution to conditions is the principle which determines their
+primary changes; and that, possibly, if we include under the formula
+hereditarily-transmitted adaptations, all subsequent differentiations
+may be similarly determined. Well, we need not long contemplate the
+facts to see that some of the predominant social differentiations are
+brought about in an analogous way. As the members of an
+originally-homogeneous community multiply and spread, the gradual
+separation into sections which simultaneously takes place, manifestly
+depends on differences of local<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> circumstances. Those who happen to
+live near some place chosen, perhaps for its centrality, as one of
+periodical assemblage, become traders, and a town springs up; those who
+live dispersed, continue to hunt or cultivate the earth; those who
+spread to the sea-shore fall into maritime occupations. And each of
+these classes undergoes modifications of character fitting to its
+function. Later in the process of social evolution these local
+adaptations are greatly multiplied. In virtue of differences of soil and
+climate, the rural inhabitants in different parts of the kingdom, have
+their occupations partially specialized; and are respectively
+distinguished as chiefly producing cattle, or sheep, or wheat, or oats,
+or hops, or cider. People living where coal-fields are discovered become
+colliers; Cornishmen take to mining because Cornwall is metalliferous;
+and the iron-manufacture is the dominant industry where ironstone is
+plentiful. Liverpool has assumed the office of importing cotton, in
+consequence of its proximity to the district where cotton goods are
+made; and for analogous reasons Hull has become the chief port at which
+foreign wools are brought in. Even in the establishment of breweries, of
+dye-works, of slate-quarries, of brick-yards, we may see the same truth.
+So that, both in general and in detail, these industrial specializations
+of the social organism which characterize separate districts, primarily
+depend on local circumstances. Of the originally-similar units making up
+the social mass, different groups assume the different functions which
+their respective positions entail; and become adapted to their
+conditions. Thus, that which we concluded, <i>a priori</i>, to be the leading
+cause of organic differentiations, we find, <i>a posteriori</i>, to be the
+leading cause of social differentiations. Nay further, as we inferred
+that possibly the embryonic changes which are not thus directly caused,
+are caused by hereditarily-transmitted adaptations; so, we may actually
+see that in embryonic societies, such changes as are not due to direct<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+adaptations, are in the main traceable to adaptations originally
+undergone by the parent society. The colonies founded by distinct
+nations, while they are alike in exhibiting specializations caused in
+the way above described, grow unlike in so far as they take on, more or
+less, the organizations of the nations they sprung from. A French
+settlement does not develop exactly after the same manner as an English
+one; and both assume forms different from those which Roman settlements
+assumed. Now the fact that the differentiation of societies is
+determined partly by the direct adaptation of their units to local
+conditions, and partly by the transmitted influence of like adaptations
+undergone by ancestral societies, tends strongly to enforce the
+conclusion, otherwise reached, that the differentiation of individual
+organisms, similarly results from immediate adaptations compounded with
+ancestral adaptations.</p>
+
+<p>From confirmations thus furnished by sociology to physiology, let us now
+pass to a suggestion similarly furnished. A factory, or other producing
+establishment, or a town made up of such establishments, is an agency
+for elaborating some commodity consumed by society at large; and may be
+regarded as analogous to a gland or viscus in an individual organism. If
+we inquire what is the primitive mode in which one of these producing
+establishments grows up, we find it to be this. A single worker, who
+himself sells the produce of his labour, is the germ. His business
+increasing, he employs helpers&mdash;his sons or others; and having done
+this, he becomes a vendor not only of his own handiwork, but of that of
+others. A further increase of his business compels him to multiply his
+assistants, and his sale grows so rapid that he is obliged to confine
+himself to the process of selling: he ceases to be a producer, and
+becomes simply a channel through which the produce of others is conveyed
+to the public. Should his prosperity rise yet higher, he finds that he
+is unable to manage even the sale of his commodities, and has to employ
+others, pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>bably of his own family, to aid him in selling; so that, to
+him as a main channel are now added subordinate channels. Moreover, when
+there grow up in one place, as a Manchester or a Birmingham, many
+establishments of like kind, this process is carried still further.
+There arise factors and buyers, who are the channels through which is
+transmitted the produce of many factories; and we believe that primarily
+these factors were manufacturers who undertook to dispose of the produce
+of smaller houses as well as their own, and ultimately became salesmen
+only. Under a converse aspect, all the stages of this development have
+been within these few years exemplified in our railway contractors.
+There are sundry men now living who illustrate the whole process in
+their own persons&mdash;men who were originally navvies, digging and
+wheeling; who then undertook some small sub-contract, and worked along
+with those they paid; who presently took larger contracts, and employed
+foremen; and who now contract for whole railways, and let portions to
+sub-contractors. That is to say, we have men who were originally
+workers, but have finally become the main channels out of which diverge
+secondary channels, which again bifurcate into the subordinate channels,
+through which flows the money (representing the nutriment) supplied by
+society to the actual makers of the railway. Now it seems worth
+inquiring whether this is not the original course followed in the
+evolution of secreting and excreting organs in an animal. We know that
+such is the process by which the liver is developed. Out of the group of
+bile-cells forming the germ of it, some centrally-placed ones, lying
+next to the intestine, are transformed into ducts through which the
+secretion of the peripheral bile-cells is poured into the intestine; and
+as the peripheral bile-cells multiply, there similarly arise secondary
+ducts emptying themselves into the main ones; tertiary ones into these;
+and so on. Recent inquiries show that the like is the case with the
+lungs,&mdash;that the bronchial tubes are thus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> formed. But while analogy
+suggests that this is the <i>original</i> mode in which such organs are
+developed, it at the same time suggests that this does not necessarily
+continue to be the mode. For as we find that in the social organism,
+manufacturing establishments are no longer commonly developed through
+the series of modifications above described, but now mostly arise by the
+direct transformation of a number of persons into master, clerks,
+foremen, workers, &amp;c.; so the approximate method of forming organs, may
+in some cases be replaced by a direct metamorphosis of the organic units
+into the destined structure, without any transitional structures being
+passed through. That there are organs thus formed is an ascertained
+fact; and the additional question which analogy suggests is, whether the
+direct method is substituted for the indirect method.</p>
+
+<p>Such parallelisms might be multiplied. And were it possible here to show
+in detail the close correspondence between the two kinds of
+organization, our case would be seen to have abundant support. But, as
+it is, these few illustrations will sufficiently justify the opinion
+that study of organized bodies may be indirectly furthered by study of
+the body politic. Hints may be expected, if nothing more. And thus we
+venture to think that the Inductive Method, usually alone employed by
+most physiologists, may not only derive important assistance from the
+Deductive Method, but may further be supplemented by the Sociological
+Method.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Carpenter's <i>Principles of Comparative Physiology</i>, pp.
+616-17.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> With the exception, perhaps, of the Myxinoid fishes, in
+which what is considered as the nasal orifice is single, and on the
+median line. But seeing how unusual is the position of this orifice, it
+seems questionable whether it is the true homologue of the nostrils.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> In the <i>Westminster Review</i> for April, 1857; and now
+reprinted in this volume.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> See Essay on "Progress: its Law and Cause."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> This was written before the publication of the <i>Origin of
+Species</i>. I leave it standing because it shows the stage of thought then
+arrived at.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_NEBULAR_HYPOTHESIS" id="THE_NEBULAR_HYPOTHESIS"></a>THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>First published in</i> The Westminster Review <i>for July,</i> 1858. <i>In
+explanation of sundry passages, it seems needful to state that this
+essay was written in defence of the Nebular Hypothesis at a time when it
+had fallen into disrepute. Hence there are some opinions spoken of as
+current which are no longer current.</i>]</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Inquiring into the pedigree of an idea is not a bad means of roughly
+estimating its value. To have come of respectable ancestry, is <a name='TC_7'></a><ins class="correction" title="Was 'primâ facie'"><i>prima
+facie</i></ins> evidence of worth in a belief as in a person; while to be
+descended from a discreditable stock is, in the one case as in the
+other, an unfavourable index. The analogy is not a mere fancy. Beliefs,
+together with those who hold them, are modified little by little in
+successive generations; and as the modifications which successive
+generations of the holders undergo do not destroy the original type, but
+only disguise and refine it, so the accompanying alterations of belief,
+however much they purify, leave behind the essence of the original
+belief.</p>
+
+<p>Considered genealogically, the received theory respecting the creation
+of the Solar System is unmistakably of low origin. You may clearly trace
+it back to primitive mythologies. Its remotest ancestor is the doctrine
+that the celestial bodies are personages who originally lived on the
+Earth&mdash;a doctrine still held by some of the negroes Livingstone visited.
+Science having divested the sun and planets of their divine
+personalities, this old idea was succeeded by the idea which even Kepler
+entertained, that the planets are guided in their courses by presiding
+spirits: no longer themselves gods, they are still severally kept in
+their orbits by gods. And when gravitation came to dispense with these
+celestial steersmen, there was begotten a belief, less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> gross than its
+parent, but partaking of the same essential nature, that the planets
+were originally launched into their orbits by the Creator's hand.
+Evidently, though much refined, the anthropomorphism of the current
+hypothesis is inherited from the aboriginal anthropomorphism, which
+described gods as a stronger order of men.</p>
+
+<p>There is an antagonist hypothesis which does not propose to honour the
+Unknown Power manifested in the Universe, by such titles as "The
+Master-Builder," or "The Great Artificer;" but which regards this
+Unknown Power as probably working after a method quite different from
+that of human mechanics. And the genealogy of this hypothesis is as high
+as that of the other is low. It is begotten by that ever-enlarging and
+ever-strengthening belief in the presence of Law, which accumulated
+experiences have gradually produced in the human mind. From generation
+to generation Science has been proving uniformities of relation among
+phenomena which were before thought either fortuitous or supernatural in
+their origin&mdash;has been showing an established order and a constant
+causation where ignorance had assumed irregularity and arbitrariness.
+Each further discovery of Law has increased the presumption that Law is
+everywhere conformed to. And hence, among other beliefs, has arisen the
+belief that the Solar System originated, not by <i>manufacture</i> but by
+<i>evolution</i>. Besides its abstract parentage in those grand general
+conceptions which Science has generated, this hypothesis has a concrete
+parentage of the highest character. Based as it is on the law of
+universal gravitation, it may claim for its remote progenitor the great
+thinker who established that law. It was first suggested by one who
+ranks high among philosophers. The man who collected evidence indicating
+that stars result from the aggregation of diffused matter, was the most
+diligent, careful, and original astronomical observer of modern times.
+And the world has not seen a more learned mathematician than the man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+who, setting out with this conception of diffused matter concentrating
+towards its centre of gravity, pointed out the way in which there would
+arise, in the course of its concentration, a balanced group of sun,
+planets, and satellites, like that of which the Earth is a member.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, even were there but little direct evidence assignable for the
+Nebular Hypothesis, the probability of its truth would be strong. Its
+own high derivation and the low derivation of the antagonist hypothesis,
+would together form a weighty reason for accepting it&mdash;at any rate,
+provisionally. But the direct evidence assignable for the Nebular
+Hypothesis is by no means little. It is far greater in quantity, and
+more varied in kind, than is commonly supposed. Much has been said here
+and there on this or that class of evidences; but nowhere, so far as we
+know, have all the evidences been fully stated. We propose here to do
+something towards supplying the deficiency: believing that, joined with
+the <i>a priori</i> reasons given above, the array of <i>a posteriori</i> reasons
+will leave little doubt in the mind of any candid inquirer.</p>
+
+<p>And first, let us address ourselves to those recent discoveries in
+stellar astronomy which have been supposed to conflict with this
+celebrated speculation.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>When Sir William Herschel, directing his great reflector to various
+nebulous spots, found them resolvable into clusters of stars, he
+inferred, and for a time maintained, that all nebulous spots are
+clusters of stars exceedingly remote from us. But after years of
+conscientious investigation, he concluded that "there were nebulosities
+which are not of a starry nature;" and on this conclusion was based his
+hypothesis of a diffused luminous fluid which, by its eventual
+aggregation, produced stars. A telescopic power much exceeding that used
+by Herschel, has enabled Lord Rosse to resolve some of the nebul&aelig;
+previously unresolved; and, returning to the conclusion which Herschel
+first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> formed on similar grounds but afterwards rejected, many
+astronomers have assumed that, under sufficiently high powers, every
+nebula would be decomposed into stars&mdash;that the irresolvability is due
+solely to distance. The hypothesis now commonly entertained is, that all
+nebul&aelig; are galaxies more or less like in nature to that immediately
+surrounding us; but that they are so inconceivably remote as to look,
+through ordinary telescopes, like small faint spots. And not a few have
+drawn the corollary, that by the discoveries of Lord Rosse the Nebular
+Hypothesis has been disproved.</p>
+
+<p>Now, even supposing that these inferences respecting the distances and
+natures of the nebul&aelig; are valid, they leave the Nebular Hypothesis
+substantially as it was. Admitting that each of these faint spots is a
+sidereal system, so far removed that its countless stars give less light
+than one small star of our own sidereal system; the admission is in no
+way inconsistent with the belief that stars, and their attendant
+planets, have been formed by the aggregation of nebulous matter. Though,
+doubtless, if the existence of nebulous matter now in course of
+concentration be disproved, one of the evidences of the Nebular
+Hypothesis is destroyed, yet the remaining evidences remain. It is a
+tenable position that though nebular condensation is now nowhere to be
+seen in progress, yet it was once going on universally. And, indeed, it
+might be argued that the still-continued existence of diffused nebulous
+matter is scarcely to be expected; seeing that the causes which have
+resulted in the aggregation of one mass, must have been acting on all
+masses, and that hence the existence of masses not aggregated would be a
+fact calling for explanation. Thus, granting the immediate conclusions
+suggested by these recent disclosures of the six-feet reflector, the
+corollary which many have drawn is inadmissible.</p>
+
+<p>But these conclusions may be successfully contested.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> Receiving them
+though we have been, for years past, as established truths, a critical
+examination of the facts has convinced us that they are quite
+unwarrantable. They involve so many manifest incongruities, that we have
+been astonished to find men of science entertaining them, even as
+probable. Let us consider these incongruities.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In the first place, mark what is inferable from the distribution of
+nebul&aelig;.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The spaces which precede or which follow simple nebul&aelig;," says
+Arago, "and <a name='TC_8'></a><ins class="correction" title="Was 'à fortioria'"><i>a fortiori</i></ins>, groups of nebul&aelig;, contain generally few
+stars. Herschel found this rule to be invariable. Thus every time
+that during a short interval no star approached in virtue of the
+diurnal motion, to place itself in the field of his motionless
+telescope, he was accustomed to say to the secretary who assisted
+him,&mdash;'Prepare to write; nebul&aelig; are about to arrive.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>How does this fact consist with the hypothesis that nebul&aelig; are remote
+galaxies? If there were but one nebula, it would be a curious
+coincidence were this one nebula so placed in the distant regions of
+space, as to agree in direction with a starless spot in our own sidereal
+system. If there were but two nebul&aelig;, and both were so placed, the
+coincidence would be excessively strange. What, then, shall we say on
+finding that there are thousands of nebul&aelig; so placed? Shall we believe
+that in thousands of cases these far-removed galaxies happen to agree in
+their visible positions with the thin places in our own galaxy? Such a
+belief is impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Still more manifest does the impossibility of it become when we consider
+the general distribution of nebul&aelig;. Besides again showing itself in the
+fact that "the poorest regions in stars are near the richest in nebul&aelig;,"
+the law above specified applies to the heavens as a whole. In that zone
+of celestial space where stars are excessively abundant, nebul&aelig; are
+rare; while in the two opposite celestial spaces that are furthest
+removed from this zone, nebul&aelig; are abundant. Scarcely any nebul&aelig; lie
+near the galactic circle (or plane of the Milky Way); and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> great
+mass of them lie round the galactic poles. Can this also be mere
+coincidence? When to the fact that the general mass of nebul&aelig; are
+antithetical in position to the general mass of stars, we add the fact
+that local regions of nebul&aelig; are regions where stars are scarce, and the
+further fact that single nebul&aelig; are habitually found in comparatively
+starless spots; does not the proof of a physical connexion become
+overwhelming? Should it not require an infinity of evidence to show that
+nebul&aelig; are not parts of our sidereal system? Let us see whether any such
+infinity of evidence is assignable. Let us see whether there is even a
+single alleged proof which will bear examination.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"As seen through colossal telescopes," says Humboldt, "the
+contemplation of these nebulous masses leads us into regions from
+whence a ray of light, according to an assumption not wholly
+improbable, requires millions of years to reach our earth&mdash;to
+distances for whose measurement the dimensions (the distance of
+Sirius, or the calculated distances of the binary stars in Cygnus
+and the Centaur) of our nearest stratum of fixed stars scarcely
+suffice."</p></div>
+
+<p>In this confused sentence there is implied a belief, that the distances
+of the nebul&aelig; from our galaxy of stars as much transcend the distances
+of our stars from one another, as these interstellar distances transcend
+the dimensions of our planetary system. Just as the diameter of the
+Earth's orbit, is a mere point when compared with the distance of our
+Sun from Sirius; so is the distance of our Sun from Sirius, a mere point
+when compared with the distance of our galaxy from those far-removed
+galaxies constituting nebul&aelig;. Observe the consequences of this
+assumption.</p>
+
+<p>If one of these supposed galaxies is so remote that its distance dwarfs
+our interstellar spaces into points, and therefore makes the dimensions
+of our whole sidereal system relatively insignificant; does it not
+inevitably follow that the telescopic power required to resolve this
+remote galaxy into stars, must be incomparably greater than the
+telescopic power required to resolve the whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> of our own galaxy into
+stars? Is it not certain that an instrument which can just exhibit with
+clearness the most distant stars of our own cluster, must be utterly
+unable to separate one of these remote clusters into stars? What, then,
+are we to think when we find that the same instrument which decomposes
+hosts of nebul&aelig; into stars, <i>fails</i> to resolve completely our own Milky
+Way? Take a homely comparison. Suppose a man who was surrounded by a
+swarm of bees, extending, as they sometimes do, so high in the air as to
+render some of the individual bees almost invisible, were to declare
+that a certain spot on the horizon was a swarm of bees; and that he knew
+it because he could see the bees as separate specks. Incredible as the
+assertion would be, it would not exceed in incredibility this which we
+are criticising. Reduce the dimensions to figures, and the absurdity
+becomes still more palpable. In round numbers, the distance of Sirius
+from the Earth is half a million times the distance of the Earth from
+the Sun; and, according to the hypothesis, the distance of a nebula is
+something like half a million times the distance of Sirius. Now, our own
+"starry island, or nebula," as Humboldt calls it, "forms a lens-shaped,
+flattened, and everywhere detached stratum, whose major axis is
+estimated at seven or eight hundred, and its minor axis at a hundred and
+fifty times the distance of Sirius from the Earth."<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> And since it is
+concluded that the Solar System is near the centre of this aggregation,
+it follows that our distance from the remotest parts of it is some four
+hundred distances of Sirius. But the stars forming these remotest parts
+are not individually visible, even through telescopes of the highest
+power. How, then, can such telescopes make individually visible the
+stars of a nebula which is half a million times the distance of Sirius?
+The implication is, that a star rendered invisible by distance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> becomes
+visible if taken twelve hundred times further off! Shall we accept this
+implication? or shall we not rather conclude that the nebul&aelig; are <i>not</i>
+remote galaxies? Shall we not infer that, be their nature what it may,
+they must be at least as near to us as the extremities of our own
+sidereal system?</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the above argument, it is tacitly assumed that differences of
+apparent magnitude among the stars, result mainly from differences of
+distance. On this assumption the current doctrines respecting the nebul&aelig;
+are founded; and this assumption is, for the nonce, admitted in each of
+the foregoing criticisms. From the time, however, when it was first made
+by Sir W. Herschel, this assumption has been purely gratuitous; and it
+now proves to be inadmissible. But, awkwardly enough, its truth and its
+untruth are alike fatal to the conclusions of those who argue after the
+manner of Humboldt. Note the alternatives.</p>
+
+<p>On the one hand, what follows from the untruth of the assumption? If
+apparent largeness of stars is not due to comparative nearness, and
+their successively smaller sizes to their greater and greater degrees of
+remoteness, what becomes of the inferences respecting the dimensions of
+our sidereal system and the distances of nebul&aelig;? If, as has lately been
+shown, the almost invisible star 61 Cygni has a greater parallax than
+[Greek: a] Cygni, though, according to an estimate based on Sir W.
+Herschel's assumption, it should be about twelve times more distant&mdash;if,
+as it turns out, there exist telescopic stars which are nearer to us
+than Sirius; of what worth is the conclusion that the nebul&aelig; are very
+remote, because their component luminous masses are made visible only by
+high telescopic powers? Clearly, if the most brilliant star in the
+heavens and a star that cannot be seen by the naked eye, prove to be
+equidistant, relative distances cannot be in the least inferred from
+relative visibilities. And if so, nebul&aelig; may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> be comparatively near,
+though the starlets of which they are made up appear extremely minute.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, what follows if the truth of the assumption be
+granted? The arguments used to justify this assumption in the case of
+the stars, equally justify it in the case of the nebul&aelig;. It cannot be
+contended that, on the average, the <i>apparent</i> sizes of the stars
+indicate their distances, without its being admitted that, on the
+average, the <i>apparent</i> sizes of the nebul&aelig; indicate their
+distances&mdash;that, generally speaking, the larger are the nearer and the
+smaller are the more distant. Mark, now, the necessary inference
+respecting their resolvability. The largest or nearest nebul&aelig; will be
+most easily resolved into stars; the successively smaller will be
+successively more difficult of resolution; and the irresolvable ones
+will be the smallest ones. This, however, is exactly the reverse of the
+fact. The largest nebul&aelig; are either wholly irresolvable, or but
+partially resolvable under the highest telescopic powers; while large
+numbers of quite small nebul&aelig; are easily resolved by far less powerful
+telescopes. An instrument through which the great nebula in Andromeda,
+two and a half degrees long and one degree broad, appears merely as a
+diffused light, decomposes a nebula of fifteen minutes diameter into
+twenty thousand starry points. At the same time that the individual
+stars of a nebula eight minutes in diameter are so clearly seen as to
+allow of their number being estimated, a nebula covering an area five
+hundred times as great shows no stars at all! What possible explanation
+of this can be given on the current hypothesis?</p>
+
+<p>Yet a further difficulty remains&mdash;one which is, perhaps, still more
+obviously fatal than the foregoing. This difficulty is presented by the
+phenomena of the Magellanic clouds. Describing the larger of these, Sir
+John Herschel says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The Nubecula Major, like the Minor, consists partly of large
+tracts and ill-defined patches of irresolvable nebula, and of
+nebulosity in every stage of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> resolution, up to perfectly resolved
+stars like the Milky Way, as also of regular and irregular nebul&aelig;
+properly so called, of globular clusters in every stage of
+resolvability, and of clustering groups sufficiently insulated and
+condensed to come under the designation of 'clusters of
+stars.'"&mdash;<i>Cape Observations</i>, p. 146.</p></div>
+
+<p>In his <i>Outlines of Astronomy</i>, Sir John Herschel, after repeating this
+description in other words, goes on to remark that&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"This combination of characters, rightly considered, is in a high
+degree instructive, affording an insight into the probable
+comparative distance of <i>stars</i> and <i>nebul&aelig;</i>, and the real
+brightness of individual stars as compared with one another. Taking
+the apparent semidiameter of the nubecula major at three degrees,
+and regarding its solid form as, roughly speaking, spherical, its
+nearest and most remote parts differ in their distance from us by a
+little more than a tenth part of our distance from its center. The
+brightness of objects situated in its nearer portions, therefore,
+cannot be <i>much</i> exaggerated, nor that of its remoter <i>much</i>
+enfeebled, by their difference of distance; yet within this
+globular space, we have collected upwards of six hundred stars of
+the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth magnitudes, nearly three
+hundred nebul&aelig;, and globular and other clusters, <i>of all degrees of
+resolvability</i>, and smaller scattered stars innumerable of every
+inferior magnitude, from the tenth to such as by their multitude
+and minuteness constitute irresolvable nebulosity, extending over
+tracts of many square degrees. Were there but one such object, it
+might be maintained without utter improbability that its apparent
+sphericity is only an effect of foreshortening, and that in reality
+a much greater proportional difference of distance between its
+nearer and more remote parts exists. But such an adjustment,
+improbable enough in one case, must be rejected as too much so for
+fair argument in two. It must, therefore, be taken as a
+demonstrated fact, that stars of the seventh or eighth magnitude
+and irresolvable nebula may co-exist within limits of distance not
+differing in proportion more than as nine to ten."&mdash;<i>Outlines of
+Astronomy</i> (10th Ed.), pp. 656-57.</p></div>
+
+<p>This supplies yet another <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of the doctrine we are
+combating. It gives us the choice of two incredibilities. If we are to
+believe that one of these included nebul&aelig; is so remote that its hundred
+thousand stars look like a milky spot, invisible to the naked eye; we
+must also believe that there are single stars so enormous that though
+removed to this same distance they remain visible. If we accept the
+other alternative, and say that many nebul&aelig; are no further off than our
+own stars of the eighth magnitude; then it is requisite to say that at
+a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> distance not greater than that at which a single star is still
+faintly visible to the naked eye, there may exist a group of a hundred
+thousand stars which is invisible to the naked eye. Neither of these
+suppositions can be entertained. What, then, is the conclusion that
+remains? This only:&mdash;that the nebul&aelig; are not further from us than parts
+of our own sidereal system, of which they must be considered members;
+and that when they are resolvable into discrete masses, these masses
+cannot be considered as stars in anything like the ordinary sense of
+that word.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<p>And now, having seen the untenability of this idea, rashly espoused by
+sundry astronomers, that the nebul&aelig; are extremely remote galaxies; let
+us consider whether the various appearances they present are not
+reconcilable with the Nebular Hypothesis.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Given a rare and widely-diffused mass of nebulous matter, having a
+diameter, say, of one hundred times that of the Solar System,<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> what
+are the successive changes that may be expected to take place in it?
+Mutual gravitation will approximate its atoms or its molecules; but
+their approximation will be opposed by that atomic motion the resultant
+of which we recognize as repulsion, and the overcoming of which implies
+the evolution of heat. As fast as this heat partially escapes by
+radiation, further approximation will take place, attended by further
+evolution of heat, and so on continuously: the processes not occurring
+separately as here described, but simultaneously, uninterruptedly, and
+with increasing activity. When the nebulous mass has <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>reached a
+particular stage of condensation&mdash;when its internally-situated atoms
+have approached to within certain distances, have generated a certain
+amount of heat, and are subject to a certain mutual pressure,
+combinations may be anticipated. Whether the molecules produced be of
+kinds such as we know, which is possible, or whether they be of kinds
+simpler than any we know, which is more probable, matters not to the
+argument. It suffices that molecular unions, either between atoms of the
+same kind or between atoms of different kinds, will finally take place.
+When they do take place, they will be accompanied by a sudden and great
+disengagement of heat; and until this excess of heat has escaped, the
+newly-formed molecules will remain uniformly diffused, or, as it were,
+dissolved in the pre-existing nebulous medium.</p>
+
+<p>But now what may be expected by and by to happen? When radiation has
+adequately lowered the temperature, these molecules will precipitate;
+and, having precipitated, they will not remain uniformly diffused, but
+will aggregate into flocculi; just as water, precipitated from air,
+collects into clouds. Concluding, thus, that a nebulous mass will, in
+course of time, resolve itself into flocculi of precipitated denser
+matter, floating in the rarer medium from which they were precipitated,
+let us inquire what are the mechanical results to be inferred. Of
+clustered bodies in empty space, each will move along a line which is
+the resultant of the tractive forces exercised by all the rest, modified
+from moment to moment by the acquired motion; and the aggregation of
+such clustered bodies, if it eventually results at all, can result only
+from collision, dissipation, and the formation of a resisting medium.
+But with clustered bodies already immersed in a resisting medium, and
+especially if such bodies are of small densities, such as those we are
+considering, the process of concentration will begin forthwith: two
+factors conspiring to produce it. The flocculi described, irregular in
+their shapes and pre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>senting, as they must in nearly all cases,
+unsymmetrical faces to their lines of motion, will be deflected from
+those courses which mutual gravitation, if uninterfered with, would
+produce among them; and this will militate against that balancing of
+movements which permanence of the cluster pre-supposes. If it be said,
+as it may truly be said, that this is too trifling a cause of
+derangement to produce much effect, then there comes the more important
+cause with which it co-operates. The medium from which the flocculi have
+been precipitated, and through which they are moving, must, by
+gravitation, be rendered denser in its central parts than in its
+peripheral parts. Hence the flocculi, none of them moving in straight
+lines to the common centre of gravity, but having courses made to
+diverge to one or other side of it (in small degrees by the cause just
+assigned, and in much greater degrees by the tractive forces of other
+flocculi) will, in moving towards the central region, meet with greater
+resistances on their inner sides than on their outer sides; and will be
+thus made to diverge outwardly from their courses more than they would
+otherwise do. Hence a tendency which, apart from other tendencies, will
+cause them severally to go on one or other side of the centre of
+gravity, and, approaching it, to get motions more and more tangential.
+Observe, however, that their respective motions will be deflected, not
+towards one side of the common centre of gravity, but towards various
+sides. How then can there result a movement common to them all? Very
+simply. Each flocculus, in describing its course, must give motion to
+the medium through which it is moving. But the probabilities are
+infinity to one against all the respective motions thus impressed on
+this medium, exactly balancing one another. And if they do not balance
+one another the result must be rotation of the whole mass of the medium
+in one direction. But preponderating momentum in one direction, having
+caused rotation of the medium in that direction, the rotating medium
+must in its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> turn gradually arrest such flocculi as are moving in
+opposition, and impress its own motion upon them; and thus there will
+ultimately be formed a rotating medium with suspended flocculi partaking
+of its motion, while they move in converging spirals towards the common
+centre of gravity.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p>
+
+<p>Before comparing these conclusions with facts, let us pursue the
+reasoning a little further, and observe certain subordinate actions. The
+respective flocculi must be drawn not towards their common centre of
+gravity only, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>but also towards neighbouring flocculi. Hence the whole
+assemblage of flocculi will break up into groups: each group
+concentrating towards its local centre of gravity, and in so doing
+acquiring a vortical movement like that subsequently acquired by the
+whole nebula. According to circumstances, and chiefly according to the
+size of the original nebulous mass, this process of local aggregation
+will produce various results. If the whole nebula is but small, the
+local groups of flocculi may be drawn into the common centre of gravity
+before their constituent masses have coalesced with one another. In a
+larger nebula, these local aggregations may have concentrated into
+rotating spheroids of vapour, while yet they have made but little
+approach towards the general focus of the system. In a still larger
+nebula, where the local aggregations are both greater and more remote
+from the common centre of gravity, they may have condensed into masses
+of molten matter before the general distribution of them has greatly
+altered. In short, as the conditions in each case determine, the
+discrete masses produced may vary indefinitely in number, in size, in
+density, in motion, in distribution.</p>
+
+<p>And now let us return to the visible characters of nebul&aelig;, as observed
+through modern telescopes. Take first the description of those nebul&aelig;
+which, by the hypothesis, must be in an early stage of evolution.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Among the "<i>irregular nebul&aelig;</i>," says Sir John Herschel, "may be
+comprehended all which, to <i>a want of complete and in most
+instances even of partial resolvability</i> by the power of the
+20-feet reflector, unite such a deviation from the circular or
+elliptic form, or such a want of symmetry (with that form) as
+preclude their being placed in class 1, or that of Regular Nebul&aelig;.
+This second class comprises many of the most remarkable and
+interesting objects in the heavens, <i>as well as the most extensive
+in respect of the area they occupy</i>."</p></div>
+
+<p>And, referring to this same order of objects, M. Arago says:&mdash;"The forms
+of very large diffuse nebul&aelig; do not appear to admit of definition; they
+have no regular outline."</p>
+
+<p>This coexistence of largeness, irregularity, and inde<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>finiteness of
+outline, with irresolvability, is extremely significant. The fact that
+the largest nebul&aelig; are either irresolvable or very difficult to resolve,
+might have been inferred <i>a priori</i>; seeing that irresolvability,
+implying that the aggregation of precipitated matter has gone on to but
+a small extent, will be found in nebul&aelig; of wide diffusion. Again, the
+irregularity of these large, irresolvable nebul&aelig;, might also have been
+expected; seeing that their outlines, compared by Arago with "the
+fantastic figures which characterize clouds carried away and tossed
+about by violent and often contrary winds," are similarly characteristic
+of a mass not yet gathered together by the mutual attraction of its
+parts. And once more, the fact that these large, irregular, irresolvable
+nebul&aelig; have indefinite outlines&mdash;outlines that fade off insensibly into
+surrounding darkness&mdash;is one of like meaning.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking generally (and of course differences of distance negative
+anything beyond average statements), the spiral nebul&aelig; are smaller than
+the irregular nebul&aelig;, and more resolvable; at the same time that they
+are not so small as the regular nebul&aelig;, and not so resolvable. This is
+as, according to the hypothesis, it should be. The degree of
+condensation causing spiral movement, is a degree of condensation also
+implying masses of flocculi that are larger, and therefore more visible,
+than those existing in an earlier stage. Moreover, the forms of these
+spiral nebul&aelig; are quite in harmony with the explanation given. The
+curves of luminous matter which they exhibit, are <i>not</i> such as would be
+described by discrete masses starting from a state of rest, and moving
+through a resisting medium to a common centre of gravity; but they <i>are</i>
+such as would be described by masses having their movements modified by
+the rotation of the medium.</p>
+
+<p>In the centre of a spiral nebula is seen a mass both more luminous and
+more resolvable than the rest. Assume that, in process of time, all the
+spiral streaks of luminous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> matter which converge to this centre are
+drawn into it, as they must be; assume further, that the flocculi, or
+other discrete portions constituting these luminous streaks, aggregate
+into larger masses at the same time that they approach the central
+group, and that the masses forming this central group also aggregate
+into larger masses; and there will finally result a cluster of such
+larger masses, which will be resolvable with comparative ease. And, as
+the coalescence and concentration go on, the constituent masses will
+gradually become fewer, larger, brighter, and more densely collected
+around the common centre of gravity. See now how completely this
+inference agrees with observation. "The circular form is that which most
+commonly characterises resolvable nebul&aelig;," writes Arago. Resolvable
+nebul&aelig;, says Sir John Herschel, "are almost universally round or oval."
+Moreover, the centre of each group habitually displays a closer
+clustering of the constituent masses than the outer parts; and it is
+shown that, under the law of gravitation, which we now know extends to
+the stars, this distribution is <i>not</i> one of equilibrium, but implies
+progressing concentration. While, just as we inferred that, according to
+circumstances, the extent to which aggregation has been carried must
+vary; so we find that, in fact, there are regular nebul&aelig; of all degrees
+of resolvability, from those consisting of innumerable minute masses, to
+those in which their numbers are smaller and the sizes greater, and to
+those in which there are a few large bodies worthy to be called stars.</p>
+
+<p>On the one hand, then, we see that the notion, of late years
+uncritically received, that the nebul&aelig; are extremely remote galaxies of
+stars like those which make up our own Milky Way, is totally
+<a name='TC_9'></a><ins class="correction" title="Was 'irreconcileable'">irreconcilable</ins> with the facts&mdash;involves us in sundry absurdities. On the
+other hand, we see that the hypothesis of nebular condensation
+harmonizes with the most recent results of stellar astronomy: nay
+more&mdash;that it supplies us with an explanation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> of various appearances
+which in its absence would be incomprehensible.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Descending now to the Solar System, let us consider first a class of
+phenomena in some sort transitional&mdash;those offered by comets. In them,
+or at least in those most numerous of them which lie far out of the
+plane of the Solar System, and are not to be counted among its members,
+we have, still existing, a kind of matter like that out of which,
+according to the Nebular Hypothesis, the Solar System was evolved.
+Hence, for the explanation of them, we must go back to the time when the
+substances forming the sun and planets were yet unconcentrated.</p>
+
+<p>When diffused matter, precipitated from a rarer medium, is aggregating,
+there are certain to be here and there produced small flocculi, which
+long remain detached; as do, for instance, minute shreds of cloud in a
+summer sky. In a concentrating nebula these will, in the majority of
+cases, eventually coalesce with the larger flocculi near to them. But it
+is tolerably evident that some of those formed at the outermost parts of
+the nebula, will <i>not</i> coalesce with the larger internal masses, but
+will slowly follow without overtaking them. The relatively greater
+resistance of the medium necessitates this. As a single feather falling
+to the ground will be rapidly left behind by a pillow-full of feathers;
+so, in their progress to the common centre of gravity, will the
+outermost shreds of vapour be left behind by the great masses of vapour
+internally situated. But we are not dependent merely on reasoning for
+this belief. Observation shows us that the less concentrated external
+parts of nebul&aelig;, <i>are</i> left behind by the more concentrated internal
+parts. Examined through high powers, all nebul&aelig;, even when they have
+assumed regular forms, are seen to be surrounded by luminous streaks, of
+which the directions show that they are being drawn into the general
+mass. Still higher powers bring into view still smaller, fainter,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> and
+more widely-dispersed streaks. And it cannot be doubted that the minute
+fragments which no telescopic aid makes visible, are yet more numerous
+and widely dispersed. Thus far, then, inference and observation are at
+one.</p>
+
+<p>Granting that the great majority of these outlying portions of nebulous
+matter will be drawn into the central mass long before it reaches a
+definite form, the presumption is that some of the very small,
+far-removed portions will not be so; but that before they arrive near
+it, the central mass will have contracted into a comparatively moderate
+bulk. What now will be the characters of these late-arriving portions?</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, they will have either extremely eccentric orbits or
+non-elliptic paths. Left behind at a time when they were moving towards
+the centre of gravity in slightly-deflected lines, and therefore having
+but very small angular velocities, they will approach the central mass
+in greatly elongated curves; and rushing round it, will go off again
+into space. That is, they will behave just as we see the majority of
+comets do; the orbits of which are either so eccentric as to be
+indistinguishable from parabolas, or else are not orbits at all, but are
+paths which are distinctly either parabolic or hyperbolic.</p>
+
+<p>In the second place, they will come from all parts of the heavens. Our
+supposition implies that they were left behind at a time when the
+nebulous mass was of irregular shape, and had not acquired a definite
+rotation; and as the separation of them would not be from any one
+surface of the nebulous mass more than another, the conclusion must be
+that they will come to the central body from various directions in
+space. This, too, is exactly what happens. Unlike planets, whose orbits
+approximate to one plane, comets have orbits that show no relation to
+one another; but cut the plane of the ecliptic at all angles, and have
+axes inclined to it at all angles.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>In the third place, these remotest flocculi of nebulous matter will, at
+the outset, be deflected from their direct courses to the common centre
+of gravity, not all on one side, but each on such side as its form, or
+its original proper motion, determines. And being left behind before the
+rotation of the nebula is set up, they will severally retain their
+different individual motions. Hence, following the concentrated mass,
+they will eventually go round it on all sides; and as often from right
+to left as from left to right. Here again the inference perfectly
+corresponds with the facts. While all the planets go round the sun from
+west to east, comets as often go round the sun from east to west as from
+west to east. Of 262 comets recorded since 1680, 130 are direct, and 132
+are retrograde. This equality is what the law of probabilities would
+indicate.</p>
+
+<p>Then, in the fourth place, the physical constitution of comets accords
+with the hypothesis.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> The ability of nebulous matter to concentrate
+into a concrete form, depends on its mass. To bring its ultimate atoms
+into that proximity requisite for chemical union&mdash;requisite, that is,
+for the production of denser matter&mdash;their repulsion must be overcome.
+The only force antagonistic to their repulsion, is their mutual
+gravitation. That their mutual gravitation may generate a pressure and
+temperature of sufficient intensity, there must be an enormous
+accumulation of them; and even then the approximation can slowly go on
+only as fast as the evolved heat escapes. But where the quantity of
+atoms is small, and therefore the force of mutual gravitation small,
+there will be nothing to coerce the atoms into union. Whence we infer
+that these <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>detached fragments of nebulous matter will continue in
+their original state. Non-periodic comets seem to do so.</p>
+
+<p>We have already seen that this view of the origin of comets harmonizes
+with the characters of their orbits; but the evidence hence derived is
+much stronger than was indicated. The great majority of cometary orbits
+are classed as parabolic; and it is ordinarily inferred that they are
+visitors from remote space, and will never return. But are they rightly
+classed as parabolic? Observations on a comet moving in an extremely
+eccentric ellipse, which are possible only when it is comparatively near
+perihelion, must fail to distinguish its orbit from a parabola.
+Evidently, then, it is not safe to class it as a parabola because of
+inability to detect the elements of an ellipse. But if extreme
+eccentricity of an orbit necessitates such inability, it seems quite
+possible that comets have no other orbits than elliptic ones. Though
+five or six are said to be hyperbolic, yet, as I learn from one who has
+paid special attention to comets, "no such orbit has, I believe, been
+computed for a well-observed comet." Hence the probability that all the
+orbits are ellipses is overwhelming. Ellipses and hyperbolas have
+countless varieties of forms, but there is only one form of parabola;
+or, to speak literally, all parabolas are similar, while there are
+infinitely numerous dissimilar ellipses and dissimilar hyperbolas.
+Consequently, anything coming to the Sun from a great distance must have
+one exact amount of proper motion to produce a parabola: all other
+amounts would give hyperbolas or ellipses. And if there are no
+hyperbolic orbits, then it is infinity to one that all the orbits are
+elliptical. This is just what they would be if comets had the genesis
+above supposed.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>And now, leaving these erratic bodies, let us turn to the more familiar
+and important members of the Solar System. It was the remarkable harmony
+among their movements which first made Laplace conceive that the Sun,
+planets, and satellites had resulted from a common genetic process.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> As
+Sir William Herschel, by his observations on the nebul&aelig;, was led to the
+conclusion that stars resulted from the aggregation of diffused matter;
+so Laplace, by his observations on the structure of the Solar System,
+was led to the conclusion that only by the rotation of aggregating
+matter were its peculiarities to be explained. In his <i>Exposition du
+Syst&egrave;me du Monde</i>, he enumerates as the leading evidences:&mdash;1. The
+movements of the planets in the same direction and in orbits approaching
+to the same plane; 2. The movements of the satellites in the same
+direction as those of the planets; 3. The movements of rotation of these
+various bodies and of the sun in the same direction as the orbital
+motions, and mostly in planes little different; 4. The small
+eccentricities of the orbits of the planets and satellites, as
+contrasted with the great eccentricities of the cometary orbits. And the
+probability that these harmonious movements had a common cause, he
+calculates as two hundred thousand billions to one.</p>
+
+<p>This immense preponderance of probability does not point to a common
+cause under the form ordinarily conceived&mdash;an Invisible Power working
+after the method of "a Great Artificer;" but to an Invisible Power
+working after the method of evolution. For though the supporters of the
+common hypothesis may argue that it was necessary for the sake of
+stability that the planets should go round the Sun in the same direction
+and nearly in one plane, they cannot thus account for the direction of
+the axial motions.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> The mechanical equilibrium would not have been
+interfered with, had the Sun been without any rotatory movement; or had
+he revolved on his axis in a direction opposite to that in which the
+planets go round him; or in a direction at right angles to the average
+plane of their orbits. With equal safety the motion of the Moon round
+the Earth might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> have been the reverse of the Earth's motion round its
+axis; or the motions of Jupiter's satellites might similarly have been
+at variance with his axial motion; or those of Saturn's satellites with
+his. As, however, none of these alternatives have been followed, the
+uniformity must be considered, in this case as in all others, evidence
+of subordination to some general law&mdash;implies what we call natural
+causation, as distinguished from arbitrary arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>Hence the hypothesis of evolution would be the only probable one, even
+in the absence of any clue to the particular mode of evolution. But when
+we have, propounded by a mathematician of the highest authority, a
+theory of this evolution based on established mechanical principles,
+which accounts for these various peculiarities, as well as for many
+minor ones, the conclusion that the Solar System <i>was</i> evolved becomes
+almost irresistible.</p>
+
+<p>The general nature of Laplace's theory scarcely needs stating. Books of
+popular astronomy have familiarized most readers with his
+conceptions;&mdash;namely, that the matter now condensed into the Solar
+System, once formed a vast rotating spheroid of extreme rarity extending
+beyond the orbit of the outermost planet; that as this spheroid
+contracted, its rate of rotation necessarily increased; that by
+augmenting centrifugal force its equatorial zone was from time to time
+prevented from following any further the concentrating mass, and so
+remained behind as a revolving ring; that each of the revolving rings
+thus periodically detached, eventually became ruptured at its weakest
+point, and, contracting on itself, gradually aggregated into a rotating
+mass; that this, like the parent mass, increased in rapidity of rotation
+as it decreased in size, and, where the centrifugal force was
+sufficient, similarly left behind rings, which finally collapsed into
+rotating spheroids; and that thus, out of these primary and secondary
+rings, there arose planets and their satellites, while from the central
+mass there resulted the Sun. Moreover, it is tolerably well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> known that
+this <i>a priori</i> reasoning harmonizes with the results of experiment. Dr.
+Plateau has shown that when a mass of fluid is, as far may be, protected
+from the action of external forces, it will, if made to rotate with
+adequate velocity, form detached rings; and that these rings will break
+up into spheroids which turn on their axes in the same direction with
+the central mass. Thus, given the original nebula, which, acquiring a
+vortical motion in the way indicated, has at length concentrated into a
+vast spheroid of aeriform matter moving round its axis&mdash;given this, and
+mechanical principles explain the rest. The genesis of a Solar System
+displaying movements like those observed, may be predicted; and the
+reasoning on which the prediction is based is countenanced by
+experiment.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p>But now let us inquire whether, besides these most conspicuous
+structural and dynamic peculiarities of the Solar System, sundry minor
+ones are not similarly explicable.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Take first the relation between the planes of the planetary orbits and
+the plane of the Sun's equator. If, when the nebulous spheroid extended
+beyond the orbit of Neptune, all parts of it had been revolving exactly
+in the same plane, or rather in parallel planes&mdash;if all its parts had
+had one axis; then the planes of the successive rings would have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>been
+coincident with each other and with that of the Sun's rotation. But it
+needs only to go back to the earlier stages of concentration, to see
+that there could exist no such complete uniformity of motion. The
+flocculi, already described as precipitated from an irregular and
+widely-diffused nebula, and as starting from all points to their common
+centre of gravity, must move not in one plane but in innumerable planes,
+cutting each other at all angles. The gradual establishment of a
+vortical motion such as we at present see indicated in the spiral
+nebul&aelig;, is the gradual approach towards motion in one plane. But this
+plane can but slowly become decided. Flocculi not moving in this plane,
+but entering into the aggregation at various inclinations, will tend to
+perform their revolutions round its centre in their own planes; and only
+in course of time will their motions be partly destroyed by conflicting
+ones, and partly resolved into the general motion. Especially will the
+outermost portions of the rotating mass retain for a long time their
+more or less independent directions. Hence the probabilities are, that
+the planes of the rings first detached will differ considerably from the
+average plane of the mass; while the planes of those detached latest
+will differ from it less.</p>
+
+<p>Here, again, inference to a considerable extent agrees with observation.
+Though the progression is irregular, yet, on the average, the
+inclinations decrease on approaching the Sun; and this is all we can
+expect. For as the portions of the nebulous spheroid must have arrived
+with miscellaneous inclinations, its strata must have had planes of
+rotation diverging from the average plane in degrees not always
+proportionate to their distances from the centre.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Consider next the movements of the planets on their axes. Laplace
+alleged as one among other evidences of a common genetic cause, that the
+planets rotate in a direction the same as that in which they go round
+the Sun, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> on axes approximately perpendicular to their orbits. Since
+he wrote, an exception to this general rule has been discovered in the
+case of Uranus, and another still more recently in the case of
+Neptune&mdash;judging, at least, from the motions of their respective
+satellites. This anomaly has been thought to throw considerable doubt on
+his speculation; and at first sight it does so. But a little reflection
+shows that the anomaly is not inexplicable, and that Laplace simply went
+too far in putting down as a certain result of nebular genesis, what is,
+in some instances, only a probable result. The cause he pointed out as
+determining the direction of rotation, is the greater absolute velocity
+of the outer part of the detached ring. But there are conditions under
+which this difference of velocity may be too insignificant, even if it
+exists. If a mass of nebulous matter approaching spirally to the central
+spheroid, and eventually joining it tangentially, is made up of parts
+having the same absolute velocities; then, after joining the equatorial
+periphery of the spheroid and being made to rotate with it, the angular
+velocity of its outer parts will be smaller than the angular velocity of
+its inner parts. Hence, if, when the angular velocities of the outer and
+inner parts of a detached ring are the same, there results a tendency to
+rotation in the same direction with the orbital motion, it may be
+inferred that when the outer parts of the ring have a smaller angular
+velocity than the inner parts, a tendency to retrograde rotation will be
+the consequence.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the sectional form of the ring is a circumstance of moment; and
+this form must have differed more or less in every case. To make this
+clear, some illustration will be necessary. Suppose we take an orange,
+and, assuming the marks of the stalk and the calyx to represent the
+poles, cut off round the line of the equator a strip of peel. This strip
+of peel, if placed on the table with its ends meeting, will make a ring
+shaped like the hoop of a barrel&mdash;a ring of which the thickness in the
+line of its diameter is very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> small, but of which the width in a
+direction perpendicular to its diameter is considerable. Suppose, now,
+that in place of an orange, which is a spheroid of very slight
+oblateness, we take a spheroid of very great oblateness, shaped somewhat
+like a lens of small convexity. If from the edge or equator of this
+lens-shaped spheroid, a ring of moderate size were cut off, it would be
+unlike the previous ring in this respect, that its greatest thickness
+would be in the line of its diameter, and not in a line at right angles
+to its diameter: it would be a ring shaped somewhat like a quoit, only
+far more slender. That is to say, according to the oblateness of a
+rotating spheroid, the detached ring may be either a hoop-shaped ring or
+a quoit-shaped ring.</p>
+
+<p>One further implication must be noted. In a much-flattened or
+lens-shaped spheroid, the form of the ring will vary with its bulk. A
+very slender ring, taking off just the equatorial surface, will be
+hoop-shaped; while a tolerably massive ring, trenching appreciably on
+the diameter of the spheroid, will be quoit-shaped. Thus, then,
+according to the oblateness of the spheroid and the bulkiness of the
+detached ring, will the greatest thickness of that ring be in the
+direction of its plane, or in a direction perpendicular to its plane.
+But this circumstance must greatly affect the rotation of the resulting
+planet. In a decidedly hoop-shaped nebulous ring, the differences of
+velocity between the inner and outer surfaces will be small; and such a
+ring, aggregating into a mass of which the greatest diameter is at right
+angles to the plane of the orbit, will almost certainly give to this
+mass a predominant tendency to rotate in a direction at right angles to
+the plane of the orbit. Where the ring is but little hoop-shaped, and
+the difference between the inner and outer velocities greater, as it
+must be, the opposing tendencies&mdash;one to produce rotation in the plane
+of the orbit, and the other, rotation perpendicular to it&mdash;will both be
+influential; and an intermediate plane of rotation will be taken up.
+While, if the nebulous ring is decidedly quoit-shaped, and therefore
+aggregates into a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> mass whose greatest dimension lies in the plane of
+the orbit, both tendencies will conspire to produce rotation in that
+plane.</p>
+
+<p>On referring to the facts, we find them, as far as can be judged, in
+harmony with this view. Considering the enormous circumference of
+Uranus's orbit, and his comparatively small mass, we may conclude that
+the ring from which he resulted was a comparatively slender, and
+therefore a hoop-shaped one: especially as the nebulous mass must have
+been at that time less oblate than afterwards. Hence, a plane of
+rotation nearly perpendicular to his orbit, and a direction of rotation
+having no reference to his orbital movement. Saturn has a mass seven
+times as great, and an orbit of less than half the diameter; whence it
+follows that his genetic ring, having less than half the circumference,
+and less than half the vertical thickness (the spheroid being then
+certainly <i>as</i> oblate, and indeed <i>more</i> oblate), must have had a much
+greater width&mdash;must have been less hoop-shaped, and more approaching to
+the quoit-shaped: notwithstanding difference of density, it must have
+been at least two or three times as broad in the line of its plane.
+Consequently, Saturn has a rotatory movement in the same direction as
+the movement of translation, and in a plane differing from it by thirty
+degrees only. In the case of Jupiter, again, whose mass is three and a
+half times that of Saturn, and whose orbit is little more than half the
+size, the genetic ring must, for the like reasons, have been still
+broader&mdash;decidedly quoit-shaped, we may say; and there hence resulted a
+planet whose plane of rotation differs from that of his orbit by
+scarcely more than three degrees. Once more, considering the comparative
+insignificance of Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury, it follows that, the
+diminishing circumferences of the rings not sufficing to account for the
+smallness of the resulting masses, the rings must have been slender
+ones&mdash;must have again approximated to the hoop-shaped; and thus it
+happens that the planes of rotation again diverge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> more or less widely
+from those of the orbits. Taking into account the increasing oblateness
+of the original spheroid in the successive stages of its concentration,
+and the different proportions of the detached rings, it may fairly be
+held that the respective rotatory motions are not at variance with the
+hypothesis but contrariwise tend to confirm it.</p>
+
+<p>Not only the directions, but also the velocities of rotation seem thus
+explicable. It might naturally be supposed that the large planets would
+revolve on their axes more slowly than the small ones: our terrestrial
+experiences of big and little bodies incline us to expect this. It is a
+corollary from the Nebular Hypothesis, however, more especially when
+interpreted as above, that while large planets will rotate rapidly,
+small ones will rotate slowly; and we find that in fact they do so.
+Other things equal, a concentrating nebulous mass which is diffused
+through a wide space, and whose outer parts have, therefore, to travel
+from great distances to the common centre of gravity, will acquire a
+high axial velocity in course of its aggregation; and conversely with a
+small mass. Still more marked will be the difference where the form of
+the genetic ring conspires to increase the rate of rotation. Other
+things equal, a genetic ring which is broadest in the direction of its
+plane will produce a mass rotating faster than one which is broadest at
+right angles to its plane; and if the ring is absolutely as well as
+relatively broad, the rotation will be very rapid. These conditions
+were, as we saw, fulfilled in the case of Jupiter; and Jupiter turns
+round his axis in less than ten hours. Saturn, in whose case, as above
+explained, the conditions were less favourable to rapid rotation, takes
+nearly ten hours and a half. While Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury,
+whose rings must have been slender, take more than double that time: the
+smallest taking the longest.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>From the planets let us now pass to the satellites. Here, beyond the
+conspicuous facts commonly adverted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> to, that they go round their
+primaries in the directions in which these turn on their axes, in planes
+diverging but little from their equators, and in orbits nearly circular,
+there are several significant traits which must not be passed over.</p>
+
+<p>One of them is that each set of satellites repeats in miniature the
+relations of the planets to the Sun, both in certain respects above
+named and in the order of their sizes. On progressing from the outside
+of the Solar System to its centre, we see that there are four large
+external planets, and four internal ones which are comparatively small.
+A like contrast holds between the outer and inner satellites in every
+case. Among the four satellites of Jupiter, the parallel is maintained
+as well as the comparative smallness of the number allows: the two outer
+ones are the largest, and the two inner ones the smallest. According to
+the most recent observations made by Mr. Lassell, the like is true of
+the four satellites of Uranus. In the case of Saturn, who has eight
+secondary planets revolving round him, the likeness is still more close
+in arrangement as in number: the three outer satellites are large, the
+inner ones small; and the contrasts of size are here much greater
+between the largest, which is nearly as big as Mars, and the smallest,
+which is with difficulty discovered even by the best telescopes. But the
+analogy does not end here. Just as with the planets, there is at first a
+general increase of size on travelling inwards from Neptune and Uranus,
+which do not differ very widely, to Saturn, which is much larger, and to
+Jupiter, which is the largest; so of the eight satellites of Saturn, the
+largest is not the outermost, but the outermost save two; so of
+Jupiter's four secondaries, the largest is the most remote but one. Now
+these parallelisms are inexplicable by the theory of final causes. For
+purposes of lighting, if this be the presumed object of these attendant
+bodies, it would have been far better had the larger been the nearer: at
+present, their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> remoteness renders them of less service than the
+smallest. To the Nebular Hypothesis, however, these analogies give
+further support. They show the action of a common physical cause. They
+imply a <i>law</i> of genesis, holding in the secondary systems as in the
+primary system.</p>
+
+<p>Still more instructive shall we find the distribution of the
+satellites&mdash;their absence in some instances, and their presence in other
+instances, in smaller or greater numbers. The argument from design fails
+to account for this distribution. Supposing it be granted that planets
+nearer the Sun than ourselves, have no need of moons (though,
+considering that their nights are as dark, and, relatively to their
+brilliant days, even darker than ours, the need seems quite as
+great)&mdash;supposing this to be granted; how are we to explain the fact
+that Uranus has but half as many moons as Saturn, though he is at double
+the distance? While, however, the current presumption is untenable, the
+Nebular Hypothesis furnishes us with an explanation. It enables us to
+predict where satellites will be abundant and where they will be absent.
+The reasoning is as follows.</p>
+
+<p>In a rotating nebulous spheroid which is concentrating into a planet,
+there are at work two antagonist mechanical tendencies&mdash;the centripetal
+and the centrifugal. While the force of gravitation draws all the atoms
+of the spheroid together, their tangential momentum is resolvable into
+two parts, of which one resists gravitation. The ratio which this
+centrifugal force bears to gravitation, varies, other things equal, as
+the square of the velocity. Hence, the aggregation of a rotating
+nebulous spheroid will be more or less hindered by this resisting force,
+according as the rate of rotation is high or low: the opposition, in
+equal spheroids, being four times as great when the rotation is twice as
+rapid; nine times as great when it is three times as rapid; and so on.
+Now the detachment of a ring from a planet-forming body of nebulous
+matter, implies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> that at its equatorial zone the increasing centrifugal
+force consequent on concentration has become so great as to balance
+gravity. Whence it is tolerably obvious that the detachment of rings
+will be most frequent from those masses in which the centrifugal
+tendency bears the greatest ratio to the gravitative tendency. Though it
+is not possible to calculate what ratio these two tendencies had to each
+other in the genetic spheroid which produced each planet, it is possible
+to calculate where each was the greatest and where the least. While it
+is true that the ratio which centrifugal force now bears to gravity at
+the equator of each planet, differs widely from that which it bore
+during the earlier stages of concentration; and while it is true that
+this change in the ratio, depending on the degree of contraction each
+planet has undergone, has in no two cases been the same; yet we may
+fairly conclude that where the ratio is still the greatest, it has been
+the greatest from the beginning. The satellite-forming tendency which
+each planet had, will be approximately indicated by the proportion now
+existing in it between the aggregating power, and the power that has
+opposed aggregation. On making the requisite calculations, a remarkable
+harmony with this inference comes out. The following table shows what
+fraction the centrifugal force is of the centripetal force in every
+case; and the relation which that fraction bears to the number of
+satellites.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<table summary="PLANETS">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Mercury.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Venus.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Earth.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Mars.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Jupiter.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Saturn.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Uranus.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>360</sub></td>
+<td class="tdl"><sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>253</sub></td>
+<td class="tdl"><sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>289</sub></td>
+<td class="tdl"><sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>127</sub></td>
+<td class="tdl"><sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>11&middot;4</sub></td>
+<td class="tdl"><sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>6&middot;4</sub></td>
+<td class="tdl"><sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>10&middot;9</sub></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdl">1 Satellite.</td>
+<td class="tdl">2 Satellites.</td>
+<td class="tdl">4 Satellites.</td>
+<td class="tdl">8 Satellites, and three rings</td>
+<td class="tdl">4 Satellites.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Thus taking as our standard of comparison the Earth with its one moon,
+we see that Mercury, in which the centrifugal force is relatively less,
+has no moon. Mars, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> which it is relatively much greater, has two
+moons. Jupiter, in which it is far greater, has four moons. Uranus, in
+which it is greater still, has certainly four, and more if Herschel was
+right. Saturn, in which it is the greatest, being nearly one-sixth of
+gravity, has, including his rings, eleven attendants. The only instance
+in which there is nonconformity with observation, is that of Venus. Here
+it appears that the centrifugal force is relatively greater than in the
+Earth; and, according to the hypothesis, Venus ought to have a
+satellite. Respecting this anomaly several remarks are to be made.
+Without putting any faith in the alleged discovery of a satellite of
+Venus (repeated at intervals by five different observers), it may yet be
+contended that as the satellites of Mars eluded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> observation up to 1877,
+a satellite of Venus may have eluded observation up to the present time.
+Merely naming this as possible, but not probable, a consideration of
+more weight is that the period of rotation of Venus is but indefinitely
+fixed, and that a small diminution in the estimated angular velocity of
+her equator would bring the result into congruity with the hypothesis.
+Further, it may be remarked that not exact, but only general, congruity
+is to be expected; since the process of condensation of each planet from
+nebulous matter can scarcely be expected to have gone on with absolute
+uniformity: the angular velocities of the superposed strata of nebulous
+matter probably differed from one another in degrees unlike in each
+case; and such differences would affect the satellite-forming tendency.
+But without making much of these possible explanations of the
+discrepancy, the correspondence between inference and fact which we find
+in so many planets, may be held to afford strong support to the Nebular
+Hypothesis.</p>
+
+<p>Certain more special peculiarities of the satellites must be mentioned
+as suggestive. One of them is the relation between the period of
+revolution and that of rotation. No discoverable purpose is served by
+making the Moon go round its axis in the same time that it goes round
+the Earth: for our convenience, a more rapid axial motion would have
+been equally good; and for any possible inhabitants of the Moon, much
+better. Against the alternative supposition, that the equality occurred
+by accident, the probabilities are, as Laplace says, infinity to one.
+But to this arrangement, which is explicable neither as the result of
+design nor of chance, the Nebular Hypothesis furnishes a clue. In his
+<i>Exposition du Syst&egrave;me du Monde</i>, Laplace shows, by reasoning too
+detailed to be here repeated, that under the circumstances such a
+relation of movements would be likely to establish itself.</p>
+
+<p>Among Jupiter's satellites, which severally display these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> same
+synchronous movements, there also exists a still more remarkable
+relation. "If the mean angular velocity of the first satellite be added
+to twice that of the third, the sum will be equal to three times that of
+the second;" and "from this it results that the situations of any two of
+them being given, that of the third can be found." Now here, as before,
+no conceivable advantage results. Neither in this case can the connexion
+have been accidental: the probabilities are infinity to one to the
+contrary. But again, according to Laplace, the Nebular Hypothesis
+supplies a solution. Are not these significant facts?</p>
+
+<p>Most significant fact of all, however, is that presented by the rings of
+Saturn. As Laplace remarks, they are, as it were, still extant witnesses
+of the genetic process he propounded. Here we have, continuing
+permanently, forms of aggregation like those through which each planet
+and satellite once passed; and their movements are just what, in
+conformity with the hypothesis, they should be. "La dur&eacute;e de la rotation
+d'une plan&egrave;te doit donc &ecirc;tre, d'apr&egrave;s cette hypoth&egrave;se, plus petite que
+la dur&eacute;e de la r&eacute;volution du corps le plus voisin qui circule autour
+d'elle," says Laplace. And he then points out that the time of Saturn's
+rotation is to that of his rings as 427 to 438&mdash;an amount of difference
+such as was to be expected.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+<p>Respecting Saturn's rings it may be further remarked that the place of
+their occurrence is not without significance.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>Rings detached early in the process of concentration, consisting of
+gaseous matter having extremely little power of cohesion, can have
+little ability to resist the disruptive forces due to imperfect balance;
+and, therefore, collapse into satellites. A ring of a denser kind,
+whether solid, liquid, or composed of small discrete masses (as Saturn's
+rings are now concluded to be), we can expect will be formed only near
+the body of a planet when it has reached so late a stage of
+concentration that its equatorial portions contain matters capable of
+easy precipitation into liquid and, finally, solid forms. Even then it
+can be produced only under special conditions. Gaining a
+rapidly-increasing preponderance as the gravitative force does during
+the closing stages of concentration, the centrifugal force cannot, in
+ordinary cases, cause the leaving behind of rings when the mass has
+become dense. Only where the centrifugal force has all along been very
+great, and remains powerful to the last, as in Saturn, can we expect
+dense rings to be formed.</p>
+
+<p>We find, then, that besides those most conspicuous peculiarities of the
+Solar System which first suggested the theory of its evolution, there
+are many minor ones pointing in the same direction. Were there no other
+evidence, these mechanical arrangements would, considered in their
+totality, go far to establish the Nebular Hypothesis.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>From the mechanical arrangements of the Solar System, turn we now to its
+physical characters; and, first, let us consider the inferences
+deducible from relative specific gravities.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>The fact that, speaking generally, the denser planets are the nearer to
+the Sun, has been by some considered as adding another to the many
+indications of nebular origin. Legitimately assuming that the outermost
+parts of a rotating nebulous spheroid, in its earlier stages of
+concentration, must be comparatively rare; and that the increasing
+density which the whole mass acquires as it contracts, must hold of the
+outermost parts as well as the rest; it is argued that the rings
+successively detached will be more and more dense, and will form planets
+of higher and higher specific gravities. But passing over other
+objections, this explanation is quite inadequate to account for the
+facts. Using the Earth as a standard of comparison, the relative
+densities run thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table summary="PLANETS">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Neptune</td>
+<td class="tdl">Uranus.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Saturn.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Jupiter.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Mars.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Earth.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Venus.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Mercury.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Sun.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">0&middot;17</td>
+<td class="tdl">0&middot;25</td>
+<td class="tdl">0&middot;11</td>
+<td class="tdl">0&middot;23</td>
+<td class="tdl">0&middot;45</td>
+<td class="tdl">1&middot;00</td>
+<td class="tdl">0&middot;92</td>
+<td class="tdl">1&middot;26</td>
+<td class="tdl">0&middot;25</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>Two insurmountable objections are presented by this series. The first
+is, that the progression is but a broken one. Neptune is denser than
+Saturn, which, by the hypothesis, it ought not to be. Uranus is denser
+than Jupiter, which it ought not to be. Uranus is denser than Saturn,
+and the Earth is denser than Venus&mdash;facts which not only give no
+countenance to, but directly contradict, the alleged explanation. The
+second objection, still more manifestly fatal, is the low specific
+gravity of the Sun. If, when the matter of the Sun filled the orbit of
+Mercury, its state of aggregation was such that the detached ring formed
+a planet having a specific gravity equal to that of iron; then the Sun
+itself, now that it has concentrated, should have a specific gravity
+much greater than that of iron; whereas its specific gravity is only
+half as much again as that of water. Instead of being far denser than
+the nearest planet, it is but one-fifth as dense.</p>
+
+<p>While these anomalies render untenable the position that the relative
+specific gravities of the planets are direct indications of nebular
+condensation; it by no means follows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> that they negative it. Several
+causes may be assigned for these unlikenesses:&mdash;1. Differences among the
+planets in respect of the elementary substances composing them; or in
+the proportions of such elementary substances, if they contain the same
+kinds. 2. Differences among them in respect of the quantities of matter
+they contain; for, other things equal, the mutual gravitation of
+molecules will make a larger mass denser than a smaller. 3. Differences
+of temperatures; for, other things equal, those having higher
+temperatures will have lower specific gravities. 4. Differences of
+physical states, as being gaseous, liquid, or solid; or, otherwise,
+differences in the relative amounts of the solid, liquid, and gaseous
+matter they contain.</p>
+
+<p>It is quite possible, and we may indeed say probable, that all these
+causes come into play, and that they take various shares in the
+production of the several results. But difficulties stand in the way of
+definite conclusions. Nevertheless, if we revert to the hypothesis of
+nebular genesis, we are furnished with partial explanations if nothing
+more.</p>
+
+<p>In the cooling of celestial bodies several factors are concerned. The
+first and simplest is the one illustrated at every fire-side by the
+rapid blackening of little cinders which fall into the ashes, in
+contrast with the long-continued redness of big lumps. This factor is
+the relation between increase of surface and increase of content:
+surfaces, in similar bodies, increasing as the squares of the dimensions
+while contents increase as their cubes. Hence, on comparing the Earth
+with Jupiter, whose diameter is about eleven times that of the Earth, it
+results that while his surface is 125 times as great, his content is
+1390 times as great. Now even (supposing we assume like temperatures and
+like densities) if the only effect were that through a given area of
+surface eleven times more matter had to be cooled in the one case than
+in the other, there would be a vast difference between the times
+occupied in concentration. But, in virtue of a second factor, the
+difference would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> much greater than that consequent on these
+geometrical relations. The escape of heat from a cooling mass is
+effected by conduction, or by convection, or by both. In a solid it is
+wholly by conduction; in a liquid or gas the chief part is played by
+convection&mdash;by circulating currents which continually transpose the
+hotter and cooler parts. Now in fluid spheroids&mdash;gaseous, or liquid, or
+mixed&mdash;increasing size entails an increasing obstacle to cooling,
+consequent on the increasing distances to be travelled by the
+circulating currents. Of course the relation is not a simple one: the
+velocities of the currents will be unlike. It is manifest, however, that
+in a sphere of eleven times the diameter, the transit of matter from
+centre to surface and back from surface to centre, will take a much
+longer time; even if its movement is unrestrained. But its movement is,
+in such cases as we are considering, greatly restrained. In a rotating
+spheroid there come into play retarding forces augmenting with the
+velocity of rotation. In such a spheroid the respective portions of
+matter (supposing them equal in their angular velocities round the axis,
+which they will tend more and more to become as the density increases),
+must vary in their absolute velocities according to their distances from
+the axis; and each portion cannot have its distance from the axis
+changed by circulating currents, which it must continually be, without
+loss or gain in its quantity of motion: through the medium of fluid
+friction, force must be expended, now in increasing its motion and now
+in retarding its motion. Hence, when the larger spheroid has also a
+higher velocity of rotation, the relative slowness of the circulating
+currents, and the consequent retardation of cooling, must be much
+greater than is implied by the extra distances to be travelled.</p>
+
+<p>And now observe the correspondence between inference and fact. In the
+first place, if we compare the group of the great planets, Jupiter,
+Saturn, and Uranus, with the group of the small planets, Mars, Earth,
+Venus, and Mercury,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> we see that low density goes along with great size
+and great velocity of rotation, and that high density goes along with
+small size and small velocity of rotation. In the second place, we are
+shown this relation still more clearly if we compare the extreme
+instances&mdash;Saturn and Mercury. The special contrast of these two, like
+the general contrast of the groups, points to the truth that low
+density, like the satellite-forming tendency, is associated with the
+ratio borne by centrifugal force to gravity; for in the case of Saturn
+with his many satellites and least density, centrifugal force at the
+equator is nearly <sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>6th</sub> of gravity, whereas in Mercury with no satellite
+and greatest density centrifugal force is but <sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>360th</sub> of gravity.</p>
+
+<p>There are, however, certain factors which, working in an opposite way,
+qualify and complicate these effects. Other things equal, mutual
+gravitation among the parts of a large mass will cause a greater
+evolution of heat than is similarly caused in a small mass; and the
+resulting difference of temperature will tend to produce more rapid
+dissipation of heat. To this must be added the greater velocity of the
+circulating currents which the intenser forces at work in larger
+spheroids will produce&mdash;a contrast made still greater by the relatively
+smaller retardation by friction to which the more voluminous currents
+are exposed. In these causes, joined with causes previously indicated,
+we may recognize a probable explanation of the otherwise anomalous fact
+that the Sun, though having a thousand times the mass of Jupiter, has
+yet reached as advanced a stage of concentration. For the force of
+gravity in the Sun, which at his surface is some ten times that at the
+surface of Jupiter, must expose his central parts to a pressure
+relatively very intense; producing, during contraction, a relatively
+rapid genesis of heat. And it is further to be remarked that, though the
+circulating currents in the Sun have far greater distances to travel,
+yet since his rotation is relatively so slow that the angular velocity
+of his substance is but about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> one-sixtieth of that of Jupiter's
+substance, the resulting obstacle to circulating currents is relatively
+small, and the escape of heat far less retarded. Here, too, we may note
+that in the co-operation of these factors, there seems a reason for the
+greater concentration reached by Jupiter than by Saturn, though Saturn
+is the elder as well as the smaller of the two; for at the same time
+that the gravitative force in Jupiter is more than twice as great as in
+Saturn, his velocity of rotation is very little greater, so that the
+opposition of the centrifugal force to the centripetal is not much more
+than half.</p>
+
+<p>But now, not judging more than roughly of the effects of these several
+factors, co-operating in various ways and degrees, some to aid
+concentration and others to resist it, it is sufficiently manifest that,
+other things equal, the larger nebulous spheroids, longer in losing
+their heat, will more slowly reach high specific gravities; and that
+where the contrasts in size are so immense as those between the greater
+and the smaller planets, the smaller may have reached relatively high
+specific gravities when the greater have reached but relatively low
+ones. Further, it appears that such qualification of the process as
+results from the more rapid genesis of heat in the larger masses, will
+be countervailed where high velocity of rotation greatly impedes the
+circulating currents. Thus interpreted then, the various specific
+gravities of the planets may be held to furnish further evidences
+supporting the Nebular Hypothesis.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Increase of density and escape of heat are correlated phenomena, and
+hence in the foregoing section, treating of the respective densities of
+the celestial bodies in connexion with nebular condensation, much has
+been said and implied respecting the accompanying genesis and
+dissipation of heat. Quite apart, however, from the foregoing arguments
+and inferences, there is to be noted the fact that in the present
+temperatures of the celestial bodies at large we find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> additional
+supports to the hypothesis; and these, too, of the most substantial
+character. For if, as is implied above, heat must inevitably be
+generated by the aggregation of diffused matter, we ought to find in all
+the heavenly bodies, either present high temperatures or marks of past
+high temperatures. This we do, in the places and in the degrees which
+the hypothesis requires.</p>
+
+<p>Observations showing that as we descend below the Earth's surface there
+is a progressive increase of heat, joined with the conspicuous evidence
+furnished by volcanoes, necessitate the conclusion that the temperature
+is very high at great depths. Whether, as some believe, the interior of
+the Earth is still molten, or whether, as Sir William Thomson contends,
+it must be solid; there is agreement in the inference that its heat is
+intense. And it has been further shown that the rate at which the
+temperature increases on descending below the surface, is such as would
+be found in a mass which had been cooling for an indefinite period. The
+Moon, too, shows us, by its corrugations and its conspicuous extinct
+volcanoes, that in it there has been a process of refrigeration and
+contraction, like that which has gone on in the Earth. There is no
+teleological explanation of these facts. The frequent destructions of
+life by earthquakes and volcanoes, imply, rather, that it would have
+been better had the Earth been created with a low internal temperature.
+But if we contemplate the facts in connexion with the Nebular
+Hypothesis, we see that this still-continued high internal heat is one
+of its corollaries. The Earth must have passed through the gaseous and
+the molten conditions before it became solid, and must for an almost
+infinite period by its internal heat continue to bear evidence of this
+origin.</p>
+
+<p>The group of giant planets furnishes remarkable evidence. The <i>a priori</i>
+inference drawn above, that great size joined with relatively high ratio
+of centrifugal force to gravity must greatly retard aggregation, and
+must thus, by check<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>ing the genesis and dissipation of heat, make the
+process of cooling a slow one, has of late years received verifications
+from inferences drawn <i>a posteriori</i>; so that now the current conclusion
+among astronomers is that in physical condition the great planets are in
+stages midway between that of the Earth and that of the Sun. The fact
+that the centre of Jupiter's disc is twice or thrice as bright as his
+periphery, joined with the facts that he seems to radiate more light
+than is accounted for by reflection of the Sun's rays, and that his
+spectrum shows the "red-star line", are taken as evidences of
+luminosity; while the immense and rapid perturbations in his atmosphere,
+far greater than could be caused by heat received from the Sun, as well
+as the formation of spots analogous to those of the Sun, which also,
+like those of the Sun, show a higher rate of rotation near the equator
+than further from it, are held to imply high internal temperature. Thus
+in Jupiter, as also in Saturn, we find states which, not admitting of
+any teleological explanations (for they manifestly exclude the
+possibility of life), admit of explanations derived from the Nebular
+Hypothesis.</p>
+
+<p>But the argument from temperature does not end here. There remains to be
+noticed a more conspicuous and still more significant fact. If the Solar
+System was produced by the concentration of diffused matter, which
+evolved heat while gravitating into its present dense form; then there
+is an obvious implication. Other things equal, the latest-formed mass
+will be the latest in cooling&mdash;will, for an almost infinite time,
+possess a greater heat than the earlier-formed ones. Other things equal,
+the largest mass will, because of its superior aggregative force, become
+hotter than the others, and radiate more intensely. Other things equal,
+the largest mass, notwithstanding the higher temperature it reaches,
+will, in consequence of its relatively small surface, be the slowest in
+losing its evolved heat. And hence, if there is one mass which was not
+only formed after the rest, but exceeds them enormously in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> size, it
+follows that this one will reach an intensity of incandescence far
+beyond that reached by the rest; and will continue in a state of intense
+incandescence long after the rest have cooled. Such a mass we have in
+the Sun. It is a corollary from the Nebular Hypothesis, that the matter
+forming the Sun assumed its present integrated shape at a period much
+more recent than that at which the planets became definite bodies. The
+quantity of matter contained in the Sun is nearly five million times
+that contained in the smallest planet, and above a thousand times that
+contained in the largest. And while, from the enormous gravitative force
+of his parts to their common centre, the evolution of heat has been
+intense, the facilities of radiation have been relatively small. Hence
+the still-continued high temperature. Just that condition of the central
+body which is a necessary inference from the Nebular Hypothesis, we find
+actually existing in the Sun.</p>
+
+<p>[The paragraph which here follows, though it contains some questionable
+propositions, I reproduce just as it stood when first published in 1858,
+for reasons which will presently be apparent.]</p>
+
+<p>It may be well to consider more closely, what is the probable condition
+of the Sun's surface. Round the globe of incandescent molten substances,
+thus conceived to form the visible body of the Sun [which in conformity
+with the argument in a previous section, now transferred to the Addenda,
+was inferred to be hollow and filled with gaseous matter at high
+tension] there is known to exist a voluminous atmosphere: the inferior
+brilliancy of the Sun's border, and the appearances during a total
+eclipse, alike show this. What now must be the constitution of this
+atmosphere? At a temperature approaching a thousand times that of molten
+iron, which is the calculated temperature of the solar surface, very
+many, if not all, of the substances we know as solid, would become
+gaseous; and though the Sun's enormous attractive force must be a
+powerful check<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> on this tendency to assume the form of vapour, yet it
+cannot be questioned that if the body of the Sun consists of molten
+substances, some of them must be constantly undergoing evaporation. That
+the dense gases thus continually being generated will form the entire
+mass of the solar atmosphere, is not probable. If anything is to be
+inferred, either from the Nebular Hypothesis, or from the analogies
+supplied by the planets, it must be concluded that the outermost part of
+the solar atmosphere consists of what are called permanent gases&mdash;gases
+that are not condensible into fluid even at low temperatures. If we
+consider what must have been the state of things here, when the surface
+of the Earth was molten, we shall see that round the still molten
+surface of the Sun, there probably exists a stratum of dense aeriform
+matter, made up of sublimed metals and metallic compounds, and above
+this a stratum of comparatively rare medium analogous to air. What now
+will happen with these two strata? Did they both consist of permanent
+gases, they could not remain separate: according to a well-known law,
+they would eventually form a homogeneous mixture. But this will by no
+means happen when the lower stratum consists of matters that are gaseous
+only at excessively high temperatures. Given off from a molten surface,
+ascending, expanding, and cooling, these will presently reach a limit of
+elevation above which they cannot exist as vapour, but must condense and
+precipitate. Meanwhile the upper stratum, habitually charged with its
+quantum of these denser matters, as our air with its quantum of water,
+and ready to deposit them on any depression of temperature, must be
+habitually unable to take up any more of the lower stratum; and
+therefore this lower stratum will remain quite distinct from it.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Considered in their <i>ensemble</i>, the several groups of evidences assigned
+amount almost to proof. We have seen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> that, when critically examined,
+the speculations of late years current respecting the nature of the
+nebul&aelig;, commit their promulgators to sundry absurdities; while, on the
+other hand, we see that the various appearances these nebul&aelig; present,
+are explicable as different stages in the precipitation and aggregation
+of diffused matter. We find that the immense majority of comets (<i>i.e.</i>
+omitting the periodic ones), by their physical constitution, their
+immensely-extended and variously-directed paths, the distribution of
+those paths, and their manifest structural relation to the Solar System,
+bear testimony to the past existence of that system in a nebulous form.
+Not only do those obvious peculiarities in the motions of the planets
+which first suggested the Nebular Hypothesis, supply proofs of it, but
+on closer examination we discover, in the slightly-diverging
+inclinations of their orbits, in their various rates of rotation, and
+their differently-directed axes of rotation, that the planets yield us
+yet further testimony; while the satellites,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> by sundry traits, and
+especially by their occurrence in greater or less abundance where the
+hypothesis implies greater or less abundance, confirm this testimony. By
+tracing out the process of planetary condensation, we are led to
+conclusions respecting the physical states of planets which explain
+their anomalous specific gravities. Once more, it turns out that what is
+inferable from the Nebular Hypothesis respecting the temperatures of
+celestial bodies, is just what observation establishes; and that both
+the absolute and the relative temperatures of the Sun and planets are
+thus accounted for. When we contemplate these various evidences in their
+totality&mdash;when we observe that, by the Nebular Hypothesis, the leading
+phenomena of the Solar System, and the heavens in general, are
+explicable; and when, on the other hand, we consider that the current
+cosmogony is not only without a single fact to stand on, but is at
+variance with all our positive knowledge of Nature, we see that the
+proof becomes overwhelming.</p>
+
+<p>It remains only to point out that while the genesis of the Solar System,
+and of countless other systems like it, is thus rendered comprehensible,
+the ultimate mystery continues as great as ever. The problem of
+existence is not solved: it is simply removed further back. The Nebular
+Hypothesis throws no light on the origin of diffused matter; and
+diffused matter as much needs accounting for as concrete matter. The
+genesis of an atom is not easier to conceive than the genesis of a
+planet. Nay, indeed, so far from making the Universe less a mystery than
+before, it makes it a greater mystery. Creation by manufacture is a much
+lower thing than creation by evolution. A man can put together a
+machine; but he cannot make a machine develop itself. That our
+harmonious universe once existed potentially as formless diffused
+matter, and has slowly grown into its present organized state, is a far
+more astonishing fact than would have been its formation after the
+artificial method vulgarly supposed. Those who hold it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> legitimate to
+argue from phenomena to noumena, may rightly contend that the Nebular
+Hypothesis implies a First Cause as much transcending "the mechanical
+God of Paley," as this does the fetish of the savage.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> <i>Cosmos.</i> (Seventh Edition.) Vol. i. pp. 79, 80.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Since the publication of this essay the late Mr. R. A.
+Proctor has given various further reasons for the conclusion that the
+nebul&aelig; belong to our own sidereal system. The opposite conclusion,
+contested throughout the foregoing section, has now been tacitly
+abandoned.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Any objection made to the extreme tenuity this involves,
+is met by the calculation of Newton, who proved that were a spherical
+inch of air removed four thousand miles from the Earth, it would expand
+into a sphere more than filling the orbit of Saturn.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> A reference may fitly be made here to a reason given by
+Mons. Babinet for rejection of the Nebular Hypothesis. He has calculated
+that taking the existing Sun, with its observed angular velocity, its
+substance, if expanded so as to fill the orbit of Neptune, would have
+nothing approaching the angular velocity which the time of revolution of
+that planet implies. The assumption he makes is inadmissible. He
+supposes that all parts of the nebulous spheroid when it filled
+Neptune's orbit, had the same angular velocities. But the process of
+nebular condensation as indicated above, implies that the remoter
+flocculi of nebulous matter, later in reaching the central mass, and
+forming its peripheral portions, will acquire, during their longer
+journeys towards it, greater velocities. An inspection of one of the
+spiral nebul&aelig;, as 51st or 99th Messier, at once shows that the outlying
+portions when they reach the nucleus, will form an equatorial belt
+moving round the common centre more rapidly than the rest. Thus the
+central parts will have small angular velocities, while there will be
+increasing angular velocities of parts increasingly remote from the
+centre. And while the density of the spheroid continues small, fluid
+friction will scarcely at all change these differences.
+</p><p>
+A like criticism may, I think, be passed on an opinion expressed by
+Prof. Newcomb. He says:&mdash;"When the contraction [of the nebulous
+spheroid] had gone so far that the centrifugal and attracting forces
+nearly balanced each other at the outer equatorial limit of the mass,
+the result would have been that contraction in the direction of the
+equator would cease entirely, and be confined to the polar regions, each
+particle dropping, not towards the sun, but towards the plane of the
+solar equator. Thus, we should have a constant flattening of the
+spheroidal atmosphere until it was reduced to a thin flat disk. This
+disk might then separate itself into rings, which would form planets in
+much the same way that Laplace supposed. But there would probably be no
+marked difference in the age of the planets." (<i>Popular Astronomy</i>, p.&nbsp;512.)
+Now this conclusion assumes, like that of M. Babinet, that all
+parts of the nebulous spheroid had equal angular velocities. If, as
+above contended, it is inferable from the process by which a nebulous
+spheroid was formed, that its outer portions revolved with greater
+angular velocities than its inner; then the inference which Prof.
+Newcomb draws is not necessitated.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> It is true that since this essay was written reasons have
+been given for concluding that comets consist of swarms of meteors
+enveloped in aeriform matter. Very possibly this is the constitution of
+the periodic comets which, approximating their orbits to the plane of
+the Solar System, form established parts of the System, and which, as
+will be hereafter indicated, have probably a quite different origin.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Though this rule fails at the periphery of the Solar
+System, yet it fails only where the axis of rotation, instead of being
+almost perpendicular to the orbit-plane, is very little inclined to it;
+and where, therefore, the forces tending to produce the congruity of
+motions were but little operative.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> It is true that, as expressed by him, these propositions
+of Laplace are not all beyond dispute. An astronomer of the highest
+authority, who has favoured me with some criticisms on this essay,
+alleges that instead of a nebulous ring rupturing at one point, and
+collapsing into a single mass, "all probability would be in favour of
+its breaking up into many masses." This alternative result certainly
+seems the more likely. But granting that a nebulous ring would break up
+into many masses, it may still be contended that, since the chances are
+infinity to one against these being of equal sizes <i>and</i> equidistant,
+they could not remain evenly distributed round their orbit. This annular
+chain of gaseous masses would break up into groups of masses; these
+groups would eventually aggregate into larger groups; and the final
+result would be the formation of a single mass. I have put the question
+to an astronomer scarcely second in authority to the one above referred
+to, and he agrees that this would probably be the process.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> The comparative statement here given differs, slightly in
+most cases and in one case largely, from the statement included in this
+essay as originally published in 1858. As then given the table ran
+thus:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<table summary="PLANETS">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Mercury.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Venus.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Earth.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Mars.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Jupiter.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Saturn.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Uranus.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>362</sub></td>
+<td class="tdl"><sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>282</sub></td>
+<td class="tdl"><sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>289</sub></td>
+<td class="tdl"><sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>326</sub></td>
+<td class="tdl"><sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>14</sub></td>
+<td class="tdl"><sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>6&middot;2</sub></td>
+<td class="tdl"><sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>9</sub></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdl">1 Satellite.</td>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdl">4 Satellites.</td>
+<td class="tdl">8 Satellites, and three rings</td>
+<td class="tdl">4 (or 6 according to Herschel).</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>
+The calculations ending with these figures were made while the Sun's
+distance was still estimated at 95 millions of miles. Of course the
+reduction afterwards established in the estimated distance, entailing,
+as it did, changes in the factors which entered into the calculations,
+affected the results; and, though it was unlikely that the relations
+stated would be materially changed, it was needful to have the
+calculations made afresh. Mr. Lynn has been good enough to undertake
+this task, and the figures given in the text are his. In the case of
+Mars a large error in my calculation had arisen from accepting Arago's
+statement of his density (0&middot;95), which proves to be <a name='TC_10'></a><ins class="correction" title="Was 'some thing'">something</ins> like
+double what it should be. Here a curious incident may be named. When, in
+1877, it was discovered that Mars has two satellites, though, according
+to my hypothesis, it seemed that he should have none, my faith in it
+received a shock; and since that time I have occasionally considered
+whether the fact is in any way reconcilable with the hypothesis. But now
+the proof afforded by Mr. Lynn that my calculation contained a wrong
+factor, disposes of the difficulty&mdash;nay, changes the objection to a
+verification. It turns out that, according to the hypothesis, Mars
+<i>ought</i> to have satellites; and, further, that he ought to have a number
+intermediate between 1 and 4.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Since this paragraph was first published, the discovery
+that Mars has two satellites revolving round him in periods shorter than
+that of his rotation, has shown that the implication on which Laplace
+here insists is general only, and not absolute. Were it a necessary
+assumption that all parts of a concentrating nebulous spheroid revolve
+with the same angular velocities, the exception would appear an
+inexplicable one; but if, as suggested in a preceding section, it is
+inferable from the process of formation of a nebulous spheroid, that its
+outer strata will move round the general axis with higher angular
+velocities than the inner ones, there follows a possible interpretation.
+Though, during the earlier stages of concentration, while the nebulous
+matter, and especially its peripheral portions, are very rare, the
+effects of fluid-friction will be too small to change greatly such
+differences of angular velocities as exist; yet, when concentration has
+reached its last stages, and the matter is passing from the gaseous into
+the liquid and solid states, and when also the convection-currents have
+become common to the whole mass (which they probably at first are not),
+the angular velocity of the peripheral portion will gradually be
+assimilated to that of the interior; and it becomes comprehensible that
+in the case of Mars the peripheral portion, more and more dragged back
+by the internal mass, lost part of its velocity during the interval
+between the formation of the innermost satellite and the arrival at the
+final form.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> I was about to suppress part of the above paragraph,
+written before the science of solar physics had taken shape, because of
+certain physical difficulties which stand in the way of its argument,
+when, on looking into recent astronomical works, I found that the
+hypothesis it sets forth respecting the Sun's structure has kinships to
+the several hypotheses since set forth by Z&ouml;llner, Faye, and Young. I
+have therefore decided to let it stand as it originally did.
+</p><p>
+The contemplated partial suppression just named, was prompted by
+recognition of the truth that to effect mechanical stability the gaseous
+interior of the Sun must have a density at least equal to that of the
+molten shell (greater, indeed, at the centre); and this seems to imply a
+specific gravity higher than that which he possesses. It may, indeed, be
+that the unknown elements which spectrum analysis shows to exist in the
+Sun, are metals of very low specific gravities, and that, existing in
+large proportion with other of the lighter metals, they may form a
+molten shell not denser than is implied by the facts. But this can be
+regarded as nothing more than a possibility.
+</p><p>
+No need, however, has arisen for either relinquishing or holding but
+loosely the associated conclusions respecting the constitution of the
+photosphere and its envelope. Widely speculative as seemed these
+suggested corollaries from the Nebular Hypothesis when set forth in
+1858, and quite at variance with the beliefs then current, they proved
+to be not ill-founded. At the close of 1859, there came the discoveries
+of Kirchhoff, proving the existence of various metallic vapours in the
+Sun's atmosphere.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ADDENDA" id="ADDENDA"></a>ADDENDA.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Speculative as is much of the foregoing essay, it appears undesirable to
+include in it anything still more speculative. For this reason I have
+decided to set forth separately some views concerning the genesis of the
+so-called elements during nebular condensation, and concerning the
+accompanying physical effects. At the same time it has seemed best to
+detach from the essay some of the more debatable conclusions originally
+contained in it; so that its general argument may not be needlessly
+implicated with them. These new portions, together with the old portions
+which re-appear more or less modified, I here append in a series of
+notes.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Note I.</span> For the belief that the so-called elements are compound there
+are both special reasons and general reasons. Among the special may be
+named the parallelism between allotropy and isomerism; the numerous
+lines in the spectrum of each element; and the cyclical law of Newlands
+and Mendeljeff. Of the more general reasons, which, as distinguished
+from these chemical or chemico-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>physical ones, may fitly be called
+cosmical, the following are the chief.</p>
+
+<p>The general law of evolution, if it does not actually involve the
+conclusion that the so-called elements are compounds, yet affords <i>a
+priori</i> ground for suspecting that they are such. The implication is
+that, while the matter composing the Solar System has progressed
+physically from that relatively-homogeneous state which it had as a
+nebula to that relatively-heterogeneous state presented by Sun, planets,
+and satellites, it has also progressed chemically, from the
+relatively-homogeneous state in which it was composed of one or a few
+types of matter, to that relatively-heterogeneous state in which it is
+composed of many types of matter very diverse in their properties. This
+deduction from the law which holds throughout the cosmos as now known to
+us, would have much weight even were it unsupported by induction; but a
+survey of chemical phenomena at large discloses several groups of
+inductive evidences supporting it.</p>
+
+<p>The first is that since the cooling of the Earth reached an advanced
+stage, the components of its crust have been ever increasing in
+heterogeneity. When the so-called elements, originally existing in a
+dissociated state, united into oxides, acids, and other binary
+compounds, the total number of different substances was immensely
+augmented, the new substances were more complex than the old, and their
+properties were more varied. That is, the assemblage became more
+heterogeneous in its kinds, in the composition of each kind, and in the
+range of chemical characters. When, at a later period, there arose salts
+and other compounds of similar degrees of complexity, there was again an
+increase of heterogeneity, alike in the aggregate and in its members.
+And when, still later, matters classed as organic became possible, the
+multiformity was yet further augmented in kindred ways. If, then,
+chemical evolution, so far as we can trace it, has been from the
+homogeneous to the hetero<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>geneous, may we not fairly suppose that it has
+been so from the beginning? If, from late stages in the Earth's history,
+we run back, and find the lines of chemical evolution continually
+converging, until they bring us to bodies which we cannot decompose, may
+we not suspect that, could we run back these lines still further, we
+should come to still decreasing heterogeneity in the number and nature
+of the substances, until we reached something like homogeneity?</p>
+
+<p>A parallel argument may be derived from consideration of the affinities
+and stabilities of chemical compounds. Beginning with the complex
+nitrogenous bodies out of which living things are formed, and which, in
+the history of the Earth, are the most modern, at the same time that
+they are the most heterogeneous, we see that the affinities and
+stabilities of these are extremely small. Their molecules do not enter
+bodily into union with those of other substances so as to form more
+complex compounds still, and their components often fail to hold
+together under ordinary conditions. A stage lower in degree of
+composition we come to the vast assemblage of oxy-hydro-carbons, numbers
+of which show many and decided affinities, and are stable at common
+temperatures. Passing to the inorganic group, we are shown by the salts
+&amp;c. strong affinities between their components and unions which are, in
+many cases, not very easily broken. And then when we come to the oxides,
+acids, and other binary compounds, we see that in many cases the
+elements of which they are formed, when brought into the presence of one
+another under favourable conditions, unite with violence; and that many
+of their unions cannot be dissolved by heat alone. If, then, as we go
+back from the most modern and most complex substances to the most
+ancient and simplest substances, we see, on the average, a great
+increase in affinity and stability, it results that if the same law
+holds with the simplest substances known to us, the components of these,
+if they are compound,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> may be assumed to have united with affinities far
+more intense than any we have experience of, and to cling together with
+tenacities far exceeding the tenacities with which chemistry acquaints
+us. Hence the existence of a class of substances which are
+undecomposable and therefore seem simple, appears to be an implication;
+and the corollary is that these were formed during early stages of
+terrestrial concentration, under conditions of heat and pressure which
+we cannot now parallel.</p>
+
+<p>Yet another support for the belief that the so-called elements are
+compounds, is derived from a comparison of them, considered as an
+aggregate ascending in their molecular weights, with the aggregate of
+bodies known to be compound, similarly considered in their ascending
+molecular weights. Contrast the binary compounds as a class with the
+quaternary compounds as a class. The molecules constituting oxides
+(whether alkaline or acid or neutral) chlorides, sulphurets, &amp;c. are
+relatively small; and, combining with great avidity, form stable
+compounds. On the other hand, the molecules constituting nitrogenous
+bodies are relatively vast and are chemically inert; and such
+combinations as their simpler types enter into, cannot withstand
+disturbing forces. Now a like difference is seen if we contrast with one
+another the so-called elements. Those of relatively-low molecular
+weights&mdash;oxygen, hydrogen, potassium, sodium, &amp;c.,&mdash;show great readiness
+to unite among themselves; and, indeed, many of them cannot be prevented
+from uniting under ordinary conditions. Contrariwise, under ordinary
+conditions the substances of high molecular weights&mdash;the "noble
+metals"&mdash;are indifferent to other substances; and such compounds as they
+do form under conditions specially adjusted, are easily destroyed. Thus
+as, among the bodies we know to be compound, increasing molecular weight
+is associated with the appearance of certain characters, and as, among
+the bodies we class as simple, increasing molecular weight is
+associated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> with the appearance of similar characters, the composite
+nature of the elements is in another way pointed to.</p>
+
+<p>There has to be added one further class of phenomena, congruous with
+those above named, which here specially concerns us. Looking generally
+at chemical unions, we see that the heat evolved usually decreases as
+the degree of composition, and consequent massiveness, of the molecules,
+increases. In the first place, we have the fact that during the
+formation of simple compounds the heat evolved is much greater than that
+which is evolved during the formation of complex compounds: the
+elements, when uniting with one another, usually give out much heat;
+while, when the compounds they form are recompounded, but little heat is
+given out; and, as shown by the experiments of Prof. Andrews, the heat
+given out during the union of acids and bases is habitually smaller
+where the molecular weight of the base is greater. Then, in the second
+place, we see that among the elements themselves, the unions of those
+having low molecular weights result in far more heat than do the unions
+of those having high molecular weights. If we proceed on the supposition
+that the so-called elements are compounds, and if this law, if not
+universal, holds of undecomposable substances as of decomposable, then
+there are two implications. The one is that those compoundings and
+recompoundings by which the elements were formed, must have been
+accompanied by degrees of heat exceeding any degrees of heat known to
+us. The other is that among these compoundings and recompoundings
+themselves, those by which the small-moleculed elements were formed
+produced more intense heat than those by which the large-moleculed
+elements were formed: the elements formed by the final recompoundings
+being necessarily later in origin, and at the same time less stable,
+than the earlier-formed ones.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Note II.</span> May we from these propositions, and especially<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> from the last,
+draw any conclusions respecting the evolution of heat during nebular
+condensation? And do such conclusions affect in any way the conclusions
+now current?</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, it seems inferable from physico-chemical facts at
+large, that only through the instrumentality of those combinations which
+formed the elements, did the concentration of diffused nebulous matter
+into concrete masses become possible. If we remember that hydrogen and
+oxygen in their uncombined states oppose, the one an insuperable and the
+other an almost insuperable, resistance to liquefaction, while when
+combined the compound assumes the liquid state with facility, we may
+suspect that in like manner the simpler types of matter out of which the
+elements were formed, could not have been reduced even to such degrees
+of density as the known gases show us, without what we may call
+proto-chemical unions: the implication being that after the heat
+resulting from each of such proto-chemical unions had escaped, mutual
+gravitation of the parts was able to produce further condensation of the
+nebulous mass.</p>
+
+<p>If we thus distinguish between the two sources of heat accompanying
+nebular condensation&mdash;the heat due to proto-chemical combinations and
+that due to the contraction caused by gravitation (both of them,
+however, being interpretable as consequent on loss of motion), it may be
+inferred that they take different shares during the earlier and during
+the later stages of aggregation. It seems probable that while the
+diffusion is great and the force of mutual gravitation small, the chief
+source of heat is combination of units of matter, simpler than any known
+to us, into such units of matter as those we know; while, conversely,
+when there has been reached close aggregation, the chief source of heat
+is gravitation, with consequent pressure and gradual contraction.
+Supposing this to be so, let us ask what may be inferred. If at the time
+when the nebulous spheroid from which the Solar System resulted, filled
+the orbit of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> Neptune, it had reached such a degree of density as
+enabled those units of matter which compose the sodium molecules to
+enter into combination; and if, in conformity with the analogies above
+indicated, the heat evolved by this proto-chemical combination was great
+compared with the heats evolved by the chemical combinations known to
+us; the implication is that the nebulous spheroid, in the course of its
+contraction, would have to get rid of a much larger quantity of heat
+than it would, did it commence at any ordinary temperature and had only
+to lose the heat consequent on contraction. That is to say, in
+estimating the past period during which solar emission of heat has been
+going on at a high rate, much must depend on the initial temperature
+assumed; and this may have been rendered intense by the proto-chemical
+changes which took place in early stages.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>
+
+<p>Respecting the future duration of the solar heat, there must also be
+differences between the estimates made according as we do or do not take
+into account the proto-chemical changes which possibly have still to
+take place. True as it may be that the quantity of heat to be emitted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+is measured by the quantity of motion to be lost, and that this must be
+the same whether the approximation of the molecules is effected by
+chemical unions, or by mutual gravitation, or by both; yet, evidently,
+everything must turn on the degree of condensation supposed to be
+eventually reached; and this must in large measure depend on the natures
+of the substances eventually formed. Though, by spectrum-analysis,
+platinum has recently been detected in the solar atmosphere, it seems
+clear that the metals of low molecular weights greatly predominate; and
+supposing the foregoing arguments to be valid, it may be inferred, as
+not improbable, that the compoundings and recompoundings by which the
+heavy-moleculed elements are produced, not hitherto possible in large
+measure, will hereafter take place; and that, as a result, the Sun's
+density will finally become very great in comparison with what it is
+now. I say "not hitherto possible in large measure", because it is a
+feasible supposition that they may be formed, and can continue to exist,
+only in certain outer parts of the Solar mass, where the pressure is
+sufficiently great while the heat is not too great. And if this be so,
+the implication is that the interior body of the Sun, higher in
+temperature than its peripheral layers, may consist wholly of the metals
+of low atomic weights, and that this may be a part cause of his low
+specific gravity; and a further implication is that when, in course of
+time, the internal temperature falls, the heavy-moleculed elements, as
+they severally become capable of existing in it, may arise: the
+formation of each having an evolution of heat as its concomitant.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> If
+so, it would seem to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> follow that the amount of heat to be emitted by
+the Sun, and the length of the period during which the emission will go
+on, must be taken as much greater than if the Sun is supposed to be
+permanently constituted of the elements now predominating in him, and to
+be capable of only that degree of condensation which such composition
+permits.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Note III.</span> Are the internal structures of celestial bodies all the same,
+or do they differ? And if they differ, can we, from the process of
+nebular condensation, infer the conditions under which they assume one
+or other character? In the foregoing essay as originally published,
+these questions were discussed; and though the conclusions reached
+cannot be sustained in the form given to them, they foreshadow
+conclusions which may, perhaps, be sustained. Referring to the
+conceivable causes of unlike specific gravities in the members of the
+solar system, it was said that these might be&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"1. Differences between the kinds of matter or matters composing
+them. 2. Differences between the quantities of matter; for, other
+things equal, the mutual gravitation of atoms will make a large
+mass denser than a small one. 3. Differences between the
+structures: the masses being either solid or liquid throughout, or
+having central cavities filled with elastic a&euml;riform substance. Of
+these three conceivable causes, that commonly assigned is the
+first, more or less modified by the second."</p></div>
+
+<p>Written as this was before spectrum-analysis had made its disclosures,
+no notice could of course be taken of the way in which these conflict
+with the first of the foregoing suppositions; but after pointing out
+other objections to it the argument continued thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"However, spite of these difficulties, the current hypothesis is,
+that the Sun and planets, inclusive of the Earth, are either solid
+or liquid, or have solid crusts with liquid nuclei."<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p></div>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>After saying that the familiarity of this hypothesis must not delude us
+into uncritical acceptance of it, but that if any other hypothesis is
+physically possible it may reasonably be entertained, it was argued that
+by tracing out the process of condensation in a nebulous spheroid, we
+are led to infer the eventual formation of a molten shell with a nucleus
+consisting of gaseous matter at high tension. The paragraph which then
+follows runs thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"But what," it may be asked, "will become of this gaseous nucleus
+when exposed to the enormous gravitative pressure of a shell some
+thousands of miles thick? How can aeriform matter withstand such a
+pressure?" Very readily. It has been proved that, even when the
+heat generated by compression is allowed to escape, some gases
+remain uncondensible by any force we can produce. An unsuccessful
+attempt lately made in Vienna to liquify oxygen, clearly shows this
+enormous resistance. The steel piston employed was literally
+shortened by the pressure used; and yet the gas remained
+unliquified! If, then, the expansive force is thus immense when the
+heat evolved is dissipated, what must it be when that heat is in
+great measure detained, as in the case we are considering? Indeed
+the experiences of M. Cagniard de Latour have shown that gases may,
+under pressure, acquire the density of liquids while retaining the
+aeriform state, provided the temperature continues extremely high.
+In such a case, every addition to the heat is an addition to the
+repulsive power of the atoms: the increased pressure itself
+generates an increased ability to resist; and this remains true to
+whatever extent the compression is carried. Indeed it is a
+corollary from the persistence of force that if, under increasing
+pressure, a gas retains all the heat evolved, its resisting force
+is <i>absolutely unlimited</i>. Hence the internal planetary structure
+we have described is as physically stable a one as that commonly
+assumed."</p></div>
+
+<p>Had this paragraph, and the subsequent paragraphs, been written five
+years later, when Prof. Andrews had published an account of his
+researches, the propositions they contain, while rendered more specific
+and at the same time more defensible, would perhaps have been freed from
+the erroneous implication that the internal structure indicated is an
+universal one. Let us, while guided by Prof. Andrews' results, consider
+what would probably be the successive changes in a condensing nebulous
+spheroid.</p>
+
+<p>Prof. Andrews has shown that for each kind of gaseous matter there is a
+temperature above which no amount of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> pressure can cause liquefaction.
+The remark, made <i>a priori</i> in the above extract, "that if, under
+increasing pressure, a gas retains all the heat evolved, its resisting
+force is <i>absolutely unlimited</i>", harmonizes with the
+inductively-reached result that if the temperature is not lowered to its
+"critical point" a gas does not liquify, however great the force
+applied. At the same time Prof. Andrews' experiments imply that,
+supposing the temperature to be lowered to the point at which
+liquefaction becomes possible, then liquefaction will take place where
+there is first reached the required pressure. What are the corollaries
+in relation to concentrating nebulous spheroids?</p>
+
+<p>Assume a spheroid of such size as will form one of the inferior planets,
+and consisting externally of a voluminous, cloudy atmosphere composed of
+the less condensible elements, and internally of metallic gases: such
+internal gases being kept by convection-currents at temperatures not
+very widely differing. And assume that continuous radiation has brought
+the internal mass of metallic gases down to the critical point of the
+most condensible. May we not say that there is a size of the spheroid
+such that the pressure will not be great enough to produce liquefaction
+at any other place than the centre? or, in other words, that in the
+process of decreasing temperature and increasing pressure, the centre
+will be the place at which the combined conditions of pressure and
+temperature will be first reached? If so, liquefaction, commencing at
+the centre, will spread thence to the periphery; and, in virtue of the
+law that solids have higher melting points under pressure than when
+free, it may be that solidification will similarly, at a later stage,
+begin at the centre and progress outwards: eventually producing, in that
+case, a state such as Sir William Thomson alleges exists in the Earth.
+But now suppose that instead of such a spheroid, we assume one of, say,
+twenty or thirty times the mass; what will then happen? Notwithstanding
+convection-currents, the tem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>perature at the centre must always be
+higher than elsewhere; and in the process of cooling the "critical
+point" of temperature will sooner be reached in the outer parts. Though
+the requisite pressure will not exist near the surface, there is
+evidently, in a large spheroid, a depth below the surface at which the
+pressure will be great enough, if the temperature is sufficiently low.
+Hence it is inferable that somewhere between centre and surface in the
+supposed larger spheroid, there will arise that state described by Prof.
+Andrews, in which "flickering stri&aelig;" of liquid float in gaseous matter
+of equal density. And it may be inferred that gradually, as the process
+goes on, these stri&aelig; will become more abundant while the gaseous
+interspaces diminish; until, eventually, the liquid becomes continuous.
+Thus there will result a molten shell containing a gaseous nucleus
+equally dense with itself at their surface of contact and more dense at
+the centre&mdash;a molten shell which will slowly thicken by additions to
+both exterior and interior.</p>
+
+<p>That a solid crust will eventually form on this molten shell may be
+reasonably concluded. To the demurrer that solidification cannot
+commence at the surface, because the solids formed would sink, there are
+two replies. The first is that various metals expand while solidifying,
+and therefore would float. The second is that since the envelope of the
+supposed spheroid would consist of the gases and non-metallic elements,
+compounds of these with the metals and with one another would
+continually accumulate on the molten shell; and the crust, consisting of
+oxides, chlorides, sulphurets, and the rest, having much less specific
+gravity than the molten shell, would be readily supported by it.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly a planet thus constituted would be in an unstable state. Always
+it would remain liable to a catastrophe resulting from change in its
+gaseous nucleus. If, under some condition of pressure and temperature
+eventually reached, the components of this suddenly entered into one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> of
+those proto-chemical combinations forming a new element, there might
+result an explosion capable of shattering the entire planet, and
+propelling its fragments in all directions with high velocities. If the
+hypothetical planet between Jupiter and Mars was intermediate in size as
+in position, it would apparently fulfil the conditions under which such
+a catastrophe might occur.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Note IV.</span> The argument set forth in the foregoing note, is in part
+designed to introduce a question which seems to require
+re-consideration&mdash;the origin of the minor planets or planetoids. The
+hypothesis of Olbers, as propounded by him, implied that the disruption
+of the assumed planet between Mars and Jupiter had taken place at no
+very remote period in the past; and this implication was shown to be
+inadmissible by the discovery that there exists no such point of
+intersection of the orbits of the planetoids as the hypothesis requires.
+The inquiry whether, in the past, there was any nearer approach to a
+point of intersection than at present, having resulted in a negative, it
+is held that the hypothesis must be abandoned. It is, however, admitted
+that the mutual perturbations of the planetoids themselves would
+suffice, in the course of some millions of years, to destroy all traces
+of a place of intersection of their orbits, if it once existed. But if
+this be admitted why need the hypothesis be abandoned? Given such
+duration of the Solar System as is currently assumed, there seems no
+reason why lapse of a few millions of years should present any
+difficulty. The explosion may as well have taken place ten million years
+ago as at any more recent period. And whoever grants this must grant
+that the probability of the hypothesis has to be estimated from other
+data.</p>
+
+<p>As a preliminary to closer consideration, let us ask what may be
+inferred from the rate of discovery of the planetoids, and from the
+sizes of those most recently discovered. In 1878, Prof. Newcomb, arguing
+that "the preponderance of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> evidence is on the side of the number and
+magnitude being limited", says that "the newly discovered ones" "do not
+seem, on the average, to be materially smaller than those which were
+discovered ten years ago"; and further that "the new ones will probably
+be found to grow decidedly rare before another hundred are discovered".
+Now, inspection of the tables contained in the just-published fourth
+edition of Chambers' <i>Descriptive Astronomy</i> (vol. I) shows that whereas
+the planetoids discovered in 1868 (the year Prof. Newcomb singles out
+for comparison) have an average magnitude of 11&#8729;56 those discovered last
+year (1888) have an average magnitude of 12&#8729;43. Further, it is
+observable that though more than ninety have been discovered since Prof.
+Newcomb wrote, they have by no means become rare: the year 1888 having
+added ten to the list, and having therefore maintained the average rate
+of the preceding ten years. If, then, the indications Prof. Newcomb
+names, had they arisen, would have implied a limitation of the number,
+these opposite indications imply that the number is unlimited. The
+reasonable conclusion appears to be that these minor planets are to be
+counted not by hundreds but by thousands; that more powerful telescopes
+will go on revealing still smaller ones; and that additions to the list
+will cease only when the smallness ends in invisibility.</p>
+
+<p>Commencing now to scrutinize the two hypotheses respecting the genesis
+of these multitudinous bodies, I may first remark concerning that of
+Laplace, that he might possibly not have propounded it had he known that
+instead of four such bodies there are hundreds, if not thousands. The
+supposition that they resulted from the breaking up of a nebulous ring
+into numerous small portions, instead of its collapse into one mass,
+might not, in such case, have seemed to him so probable. It would have
+appeared still less probable had he been aware of all that has since
+been discovered concerning the wide differences of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> orbits in size,
+their various and often great eccentricities, and their various and
+often great inclinations. Let us look at these and other incongruous
+traits of them.</p>
+
+<p>(1.) Between the greatest and least mean distances of the planetoids
+there is a space of 200 millions of miles; so that the whole of the
+Earth's orbit might be placed between the limits of the zone occupied,
+and leave 7 millions of miles on either side: add to which that the
+widest excursions of the planetoids occupy a zone of 270 millions of
+miles. Had the rings from which Mercury, Venus, and the Earth were
+formed been one-sixth of the smaller width or one-ninth of the greater,
+they would have united: there would have been no nebulous rings at all,
+but a continuous disk. Nay more, since one of the planetoids trenches
+upon the orbit of Mars, it follows that the nebulous ring out of which
+the planetoids were formed must have overlapped that out of which Mars
+was formed. How do these implications consist with the nebular
+hypothesis? (2.) The tacit assumption usually made is that the different
+parts of a nebulous ring have the same angular velocities. Though this
+assumption may not be strictly true, yet it seems scarcely likely that
+it is so widely untrue as it would be had the inner part of the ring an
+angular velocity nearly thrice that of the outer. Yet this is implied.
+While the period of Thule is 8.8 years, the period of Medusa is 3&middot;1
+years. (3.) The eccentricity of Jupiter's orbit is 0&middot;04816, and the
+eccentricity of Mars' orbit is 0&middot;09311. Estimated by groups of the first
+found and last found of the planetoids, the average eccentricity of the
+assemblage is about three times that of Jupiter and more than one and a
+half times that of Mars; and among the members of the assemblage
+themselves, some have an eccentricity thirty-five times that of others.
+How came this nebulous zone, out of which it is supposed the planetoids
+arose, to have originated eccentricities so divergent from one another
+as well as from those of the neighbouring planets? (4.) A like question
+may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> be asked respecting the inclinations of the orbits. The average
+inclination of the planetoid-orbits is four times the inclination of
+Mars' orbit and six times the inclination of Jupiter's orbit; and among
+the planetoid-orbits themselves the inclinations of some are fifty times
+those of others. How are all these differences to be accounted for on
+the hypothesis of genesis from a nebulous ring? (5.) Much greater
+becomes the difficulty on inquiring how these extremely unlike
+eccentricities and inclinations came to co-exist before the parts of the
+nebulous ring separated, and how they survived after the separation.
+Were all the great eccentricities displayed by the outermost members of
+the group, and the small by the innermost members, and were the
+inclinations so distributed that the orbits having much belonged to one
+part of the group, and those having little to another part of the group;
+the difficulty of explanation might not be insuperable. But the
+arrangement is by no means this. The orbits are, to use an expressive
+word, miscellaneously jumbled. Hence, if we go back to the nebulous
+ring, there presents itself the question,&mdash;How came each
+planetoid-forming portion of nebulous matter, when it gathered itself
+together and separated, to have a motion round the Sun differing so much
+from the motions of its neighbours in eccentricity and inclination? And
+there presents itself the further question,&mdash;How, during the time when
+it was concentrating into a planetoid, did it manage to jostle its way
+through all the differently-moving like masses of nebulous matter, and
+yet to preserve its individuality? Answers to these questions are, it
+seems to me, not even imaginable.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Turn we now to the alternative hypothesis. During revision of the
+foregoing essay, in preparation for that edition of the volume
+containing it which was published in 1883, there occurred the thought
+that some light on the origin of the planetoids ought to be obtained by
+study of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> distributions and movements. If, as Olbers supposed,
+they resulted from the bursting of a planet once revolving in the region
+they occupy, the implications are:&mdash;first, that the fragments must be
+most abundant in the space immediately about the original orbit, and
+less abundant far away from it; second, that the large fragments must be
+relatively few, while of smaller fragments the numbers will increase as
+the sizes decrease; third, that as some among the smaller fragments will
+be propelled further than any of the larger, the widest deviations in
+mean distance from the mean distance of the original planet, will be
+presented by the smallest members of the assemblage; and fourth, that
+the orbits differing most from the rest in eccentricity and in
+inclination, will be among those of these smallest members. In the
+fourth edition of Chambers's <i>Handbook of Descriptive and Practical
+Astronomy</i> (the first volume of which has just been issued) there is a
+list of the elements (extracted and adapted from the <i>Berliner
+Astronomisches Jahrbuch</i> for 1890) of all the small planets (281 in
+number) which had been discovered up to the end of 1888. The apparent
+brightness, as expressed in equivalent star-magnitudes, is the only
+index we have to the probable comparative sizes of by far the largest
+number of the planetoids: the exceptions being among those first
+discovered. Thus much premised, let us take the above points in order.
+(1) There is a region lying between 2&middot;50 and 2&middot;80 (in terms of the
+Earth's mean distance from the Sun) where the planetoids are found in
+maximum abundance. The mean between these extremes, 2&middot;65, is nearly the
+same as the average of the distances of the four largest and
+earliest-known of these bodies, which amounts to 2&middot;64. May we not say
+that the thick clustering about this distance (which is, however, rather
+less than that assigned for the original planet by Bode's empirical
+law), in contrast with the wide scattering of the comparatively few
+whose distances are little more than 2 or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> exceed 3, is a fact in
+accordance with the hypothesis in question?<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> (2) Any table which
+gives the apparent magnitudes of the planetoids, shows at once how much
+the number of the smaller members of the assemblage exceeds that of
+those which are comparatively large; and every succeeding year has
+emphasized this contrast more strongly. Only one of them (Vesta) exceeds
+in brightness the seventh star-magnitude, while one other (Ceres) is
+between the seventh and eighth, and a third (Pallas) is above the
+eighth; but between the eighth and ninth there are six; between the
+ninth and tenth, twenty; between the tenth and eleventh, fifty-five;
+below the eleventh a much larger number is known, and the number
+existing is probably far greater,&mdash;a conclusion we cannot doubt when the
+difficulty of finding the very faint members of the family, visible only
+in the largest telescopes, is considered. (3) Kindred evidence is
+furnished if we broadly contrast their mean distances. Out of the 13
+largest planetoids whose apparent brightnesses exceed that of a star of
+the 9&middot;5 magnitude, there is not one having a mean distance that exceeds
+3. Of those having magnitudes at least 9&middot;5 and smaller than 10, there
+are 15; and of these one only has a mean distance greater than 3. Of
+those between 10 and 10&middot;5 there are 17; and of these also there is one
+exceeding 3 in mean distance. In the next group there are 37, and of
+these 5 have this great mean distance. The next group, 48, contains 12
+such; the next, 47, contains 13 such. Of those of the twelfth magnitude
+and fainter, 72 planetoids have been discovered,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> and of those of them
+of which the orbits have been computed, no fewer than 23 have a mean
+distance exceeding 3 in terms of the Earth's. It is evident from this
+how comparatively erratic are the fainter members of the extensive
+family with which we are dealing. (4) To illustrate the next point, it
+may be noted that among the planetoids whose sizes have been
+approximately measured, the orbits of the two largest, Vesta and Ceres,
+have eccentricities falling between .05 and .10, whilst the orbits of
+the two smallest, Menippe and Eva, have eccentricities falling between
+.20 and .25, and between .30 and .35. And then among those more recently
+discovered, having diameters so small that measurement of them has not
+been practicable, come the extremely erratic ones,&mdash;Hilda and Thule,
+which have mean distances of 3.97 and 4.25 respectively; &AElig;thra, having
+an orbit so eccentric that it cuts the orbit of Mars; and Medusa, which
+has the smallest mean distance from the Sun of any. (5) If the average
+eccentricities of the orbits of the planetoids grouped according to
+their decreasing sizes are compared, no very definite results are
+disclosed, excepting this, that the eight Polyhymnia, Atalanta,
+Eurydice, &AElig;thra, Eva, Andromache, Istria, and Eudora, which have the
+greatest eccentricities (falling between .30 and .38), are all among
+those of smallest star-magnitudes. Nor when we consider the inclinations
+of the orbits do we meet with obvious verifications; since the
+proportion of highly-inclined orbits among the smaller planetoids does
+not appear to be greater than among the others. But consideration shows
+that there are two ways in which these last comparisons are vitiated.
+One is that the inclinations are measured from the plane of the
+ecliptic, instead of being measured from the plane of the orbit of the
+hypothetical planet. The other, and more important one, is that the
+search for planetoids has naturally been carried on in that
+comparatively narrow zone within which most of their orbits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> fall; and
+that, consequently, those having the most highly-inclined orbits are the
+least likely to have been detected, especially if they are at the same
+time among the smallest. Moreover, considering the general relation
+between the inclination of planetoid orbits and their eccentricities, it
+is probable that among the orbits of these undetected planetoids are
+many of the most eccentric. But while recognizing the incompleteness of
+the evidence, it seems to me that it goes far to justify the hypothesis
+of Olbers, and is quite incongruous with that of Laplace. And as having
+the same meanings let me not omit the remarkable fact concerning the
+planetoids discovered by D'Arrest, that "if their orbits are figured
+under the form of material rings, these rings will be found so
+entangled, that it would be possible, by means of one among them taken
+at hazard, to lift up all the rest,"&mdash;a fact incongruous with Laplace's
+hypothesis, which implies an approximate concentricity, but quite
+congruous with the hypothesis of an exploded planet.</p>
+
+<p>Next to be considered come phenomena, the bearings of which on the
+question before us are scarcely considered&mdash;I mean those presented by
+meteors and shooting stars. The natures and distributions of these
+harmonize with the hypothesis of an exploded planet, and I think with no
+other hypothesis. The theory of volcanic origin, joined with the remark
+that the Sun emits jets which might propel them with adequate
+velocities, seems quite untenable. Such meteoric bodies as have
+descended to us, forbid absolutely the supposition of solar origin. Nor
+can they rationally be ascribed to planetary volcanoes. Even were their
+mineral characters appropriate, which many of them are not (for
+volcanoes do not eject iron), no planetary volcanoes could propel them
+with anything like the implied velocity&mdash;could no more withstand the
+tremendous force to be assumed, than could a card-board gun the force
+behind a rifle bullet. But that their mineral characters, various as
+they are, harmonize with the supposition that they were derived<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> from
+the crust of a planet is manifest; and that the bursting of a planet
+might give to them, and to shooting stars, the needful velocities, is a
+reasonable conclusion. Along with those larger fragments of the crust
+constituting the known planetoids, varying from some 200 miles in
+diameter to little over a dozen, there would be sent out still more
+multitudinous portions of the crust, decreasing in size as they
+increased in number. And while there would thus result such masses as
+occasionally fall through the Earth's atmosphere to its surface, there
+would, in an accompanying process, be an adequate cause for the myriads
+of far smaller masses which, as shooting stars, are dissipated in
+passing through the Earth's atmosphere. Let us figure to ourselves, as
+well as we may, the process of explosion.</p>
+
+<p>Assume that the diameter of the missing planet was 20,000 miles; that
+its solid crust was a thousand miles thick; that under this came a shell
+of molten metallic matter which was another thousand miles thick; and
+that the space, 16,000 miles in diameter, within this, was occupied by
+the equally dense mass of gases above the "critical point", which,
+entering into a proto-chemical combination, caused the destroying
+explosion. The primary fissures in the crust must have been far
+apart&mdash;probably averaging distances between them as great as the
+thickness of the crust. Supposing them approximately equidistant, there
+would, in the equatorial periphery, be between 60 and 70 fissures. By
+the time the primary fragments thus separated had been heaved a mile
+outwards, the fissures formed would severally have, at the surface, a
+width of 170 odd yards. Of course these great masses, as soon as they
+moved, would themselves begin to fall in pieces; especially at their
+bounding surfaces. But passing over the resulting complications, we see
+that when the masses had been propelled 10 miles outwards, the fissures
+between them would be each a mile wide. Notwithstanding the enormous
+forces at work, an appreciable interval would elapse before these vast
+portions of the crust<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> could be put in motion with any considerable
+velocities. Perhaps the estimate will be under the mark if we assume
+that it took 10 seconds to propel them through the first mile, and that,
+by implication, at the end of 20 seconds they had travelled 4 miles, and
+at the end of 30 seconds 9 miles. Supposing this granted, let us ask
+what would be taking place in each intervening fissure a thousand miles
+deep, which, in the space of half a minute, had opened out to nearly a
+mile wide, and in the subsequent half minute to a chasm approaching 3
+miles in width. There would first be propelled through it enormous jets
+of the molten metals composing the internal liquid shell; and these
+would part into relatively small masses as they were shot into space.
+Presently, as the chasm opened to some miles in width, the molten metals
+would begin to be followed by the equally dense gaseous matter behind,
+and the two would rush out together. Soon the gases, predominating,
+would carry with them the portions of the liquid shell continually
+collapsing; until the blast became one filled with millions of small
+masses, billions of smaller masses, and trillions of drops. These would
+be driven into space in a stream, the emission of which would continue
+for many seconds or even several minutes. Remembering the rate of motion
+of the jets emitted from the solar surface, and supposing that the
+blasts produced by this explosion reached only one-tenth of that rate,
+these myriads of small masses and drops would be propelled with
+planetary velocities, and in approximately the same direction. I say
+approximately, because they would be made to deviate somewhat by the
+friction and irregularities of the chasm passed through, and also by the
+rotation of the planet. Observe, however, that though they would all
+have immense velocities, their velocities would not be equal. During its
+earlier stages the blast would be considerably retarded by the
+resistance which the sides of its channel offered. When this became
+relatively small the velocity of the blast would reach its maximum; from
+which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> it would decline when the space for emission became very wide,
+and the pressure behind consequently less. Hence these almost infinitely
+numerous particles of planet-spray, as we might call it, as well as
+those formed by the condensation of the metallic vapours accompanying
+them, would forthwith begin to part company: some going rapidly in
+advance, and others falling behind; until the stream of them,
+perpetually elongating, formed an orbit round the Sun, or rather an
+assemblage of innumerable orbits, separating widely at aphelion and
+perihelion, but approximating midway, where they might fall within a
+space of, say, some two millions of miles, as do the orbits of the
+November meteors. At a later stage of the explosion, when the large
+masses, having moved far outwards, had also fallen to pieces of every
+size, from that of Vesta to that of an aerolite, and when the channels
+just described had ceased to exist, the contents of the planet would
+disperse themselves with lower velocities and without any unity of
+direction. Hence we see causes alike for the streams of shooting stars,
+for the solitary shooting stars visible to the naked eye, and for the
+telescopic shooting stars a score times more numerous.</p>
+
+<p>Further significant evidence is furnished by the comets of short
+periods. Of the thirteen constituting this group, twelve have orbits
+falling between those of Mars and Jupiter: one only having its aphelion
+beyond the orbit of Jupiter. That is to say, nearly all of them frequent
+the same region as the planetoids. By implication, they are similarly
+associated in respect of their periods. The periods of the planetoids
+range from 3.1 to 8.8 years; and all these twelve comets have periods
+falling between these extremes: the least being 3.29 and the greatest
+8.86. Once more this family of comets, like the planetoids in the zone
+they occupy and like them in their periods, are like them also in the
+respect that, as Mr. Lynn has pointed out, their motions are all direct.
+How happens this close kinship&mdash;how happens there to be this family of
+comets so much like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> the planetoids and so much like one another, but so
+unlike comets at large? The obvious suggestion is that they are among
+the products of the explosion which originated the planetoids, the
+aerolites, and the streams of meteors; and consideration of the probable
+circumstances shows us that such products might be expected. If the
+hypothetical planet was like its neighbour Jupiter in having an
+atmosphere, or like its neighbour Mars in having water on its surface,
+or like both in these respects; then these superficial masses of liquid,
+of vapour, and of gas, blown into space along with the solid matters,
+would yield the materials for comets. There would result, too, comets
+unlike one another in constitution. If a fissure opened beneath one of
+the seas, the molten metals and metallic gases rushing through it as
+above described, would decompose part of the water carried with them;
+and the oxygen and hydrogen liberated would be mingled with undecomposed
+vapour. In other cases, portions of the atmosphere might be propelled,
+probably with portions of vapour; and in yet other cases masses of water
+alone. Severally subject to great heat at perihelion, these would behave
+more or less differently. Once more, it would ordinarily happen that
+detached swarms of meteors projected as implied, would carry with them
+masses of vapours and gases; whence would result the cometic
+constitution now insisted on. And sometimes there would be like
+accompaniments to meteoric streams.</p>
+
+<p>See, then, the contrast between the two hypotheses. That of Laplace,
+looking probable while there were only four planetoids, but decreasing
+in apparent likelihood as the planetoids increase in number, until, as
+they pass through the hundreds on their way to the thousands, it becomes
+obviously improbable, is, at the same time, otherwise objectionable. It
+pre-supposes a nebulous ring of a width so enormous that it would have
+overlapped the ring of Mars. This ring would have had differences
+between the angular velocities of its parts quite inconsistent with the
+Nebular<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> Hypothesis. The average eccentricities of the orbits of its
+parts must have differed greatly from those of adjacent orbits; and the
+average inclinations of the orbits of its parts must similarly have
+differed greatly from those of adjacent orbits. Once more, the orbits of
+its parts, confusedly interspersed, must have had varieties of
+eccentricity and inclination unaccountable in portions of the same
+nebulous ring; and, during concentration into planetoids, each must have
+had to maintain its course while struggling through the assemblage of
+other small nebulous masses, severally moving in ways unlike its own. On
+the other hand, the hypothesis of an exploded planet is supported by
+every increase in the number of planetoids discovered; by the greater
+numbers of the smaller sizes; by the thicker clustering near the
+inferred place of the missing planet; by the occurrence of the greatest
+mean distances among the smallest members of the assemblage; by the
+occurrence of the greatest eccentricities in the orbits of these
+smallest members; and by the entanglement of all the orbits. Further
+support for the hypothesis is yielded by aerolites, so various in their
+kinds, but all suggestive of a planet's crust; by the streams of
+shooting stars having their radiant points variously placed in the
+heavens; and also by the solitary shooting stars visible to the naked
+eye, and the more numerous ones visible through telescopes. Once more,
+it harmonizes with the discovery of a family of comets, twelve out of
+thirteen of which have mean distances falling within the zone of the
+planetoids, have similarly associated periods, have all the same direct
+motions, and are connected with swarms of meteors and with meteoric
+streams. May we not, indeed, say, that if there once existed a planet
+between Mars and Jupiter which burst, the explosion must have produced
+just such clusters of bodies and classes of phenomena as we actually
+find?</p>
+
+<p>And what is the objection? Merely that if such an explosion occurred it
+must have occurred many millions of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> years ago&mdash;an objection which is in
+fact no objection; for the supposition that the explosion occurred many
+millions of years ago is just as reasonable as the supposition that it
+occurred recently.</p>
+
+<p>It is, indeed, further objected that some of the resulting fragments
+ought to have retrograde motions. It turns out on calculation, however,
+that this is not the case. Assuming as true the velocity which Lagrange
+estimated would have sufficed to give the four chief planetoids the
+positions they occupy, it results that such a velocity, given to the
+fragments which were propelled backwards by the explosion, would not
+have given them retrograde motions, but would simply have reduced their
+direct motions from something over 11 miles per second to about 6 miles
+per second. It is, however, manifest that this reduction of velocity
+would have necessitated the formation of highly-elliptic orbits&mdash;more
+elliptic than any of those at present known. This seems to me the most
+serious difficulty which has presented itself. Still, considering that
+there remain probably an immense number of planetoids to be discovered,
+it is quite possible that among these there may be some having orbits
+answering to the requirement.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Note V.</span> Shortly before I commenced the revision of the foregoing essay,
+friends on two occasions named to me some remarkable photographs of
+nebul&aelig; recently obtained by Mr. Isaac Roberts, and exhibited at the
+Royal Astronomical Society: saying that they presented appearances such
+as might have been sketched by Laplace in illustration of his
+hypothesis. Mr. Roberts has been kind enough to send me copies of the
+photographs in question and sundry others illustrative of stellar
+evolution. Those representing the Great Nebul&aelig; in Andromeda and Canum
+Venaticorum as well as 81 Messier are at once impressive and
+instructive&mdash;illustrating as they do the genesis of nebulous rings round
+a central mass.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>I may remark, however, that they seem to suggest the need for some
+modification of the current conception; since they make it tolerably
+clear that the process is a much less uniform one than is supposed. The
+usual idea is that a vast rotating nebulous spheroid arises before there
+are produced any of the planet-forming rings. But both of these
+photographs apparently imply that, in some cases at any rate, the
+portions of nebulous matter composing the rings take shape before they
+reach the central mass. It looks as though these partially-formed annuli
+must be prevented by their acquired motions from approaching even very
+near to the still-irregular body they surround.</p>
+
+<p>Be this as it may, however, and be the dimensions of the incipient
+systems what they may (and it would seem to be a necessary implication
+that they are vastly larger than our Solar System), the process remains
+essentially the same. Practically demonstrated as this process now is,
+we may say that the doctrine of nebular genesis passes from the region
+of hypothesis into the region of established truth.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Of course there remains the question whether, before the
+stage here recognized, there had already been produced a high
+temperature by those collisions of celestial masses which reduced the
+matter to a nebulous form. As suggested in <i>First Principles</i> (&sect; 136 in
+the edition of 1862, and &sect; 182 in subsequent editions), there must,
+after there have been effected all those minor dissolutions which follow
+evolutions, remain to be effected the dissolutions of the great bodies
+in and on which the minor evolutions and dissolutions have taken place;
+and it was argued that such dissolutions will be, at some time or other,
+effected by those immense transformations of molar motion into molecular
+motion, consequent on collisions: the argument being based on the
+statement of Sir John Herschel, that in clusters of stars collisions
+must inevitably occur. It may, however, be objected that though such a
+result may be reasonably looked for in closely aggregated assemblages of
+stars, it is difficult to conceive of its taking place throughout our
+Sidereal System at large, the members of which, and their intervals, may
+be roughly figured as pins-heads 50 miles apart. It would seem that
+something like an eternity must elapse before, by ethereal resistance or
+other cause, these can be brought into proximity great enough to make
+collisions probable.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> The two sentences which, in the text, precede the
+asterisk, I have introduced while these pages are standing in type:
+being led to do so by the perusal of some notes kindly lent to me by
+Prof. Dewar, containing the outline of a lecture he gave at the Royal
+Institution during the session of 1880. Discussing the conditions under
+which, if "our so-called elements are compounded of elemental matter",
+they may have been formed, Prof. Dewar, arguing from the known habitudes
+of compound substances, concludes that the formation is in each case a
+function of pressure, temperature, and nature of the environing gases.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> At the date of this passage the established teleology made
+it seem needful to assume that all the planets are habitable, and that
+even beneath the photosphere of the Sun there exists a dark body which
+may be the scene of life; but since then, the influence of teleology has
+so far diminished that this hypothesis can no longer be called the
+current one.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> It may here be mentioned (though the principal
+significance of this comes under the next head) that the average mean
+distance of the later-discovered planetoids is somewhat greater than
+that of these earlier-discovered; amounting to 2&middot;61 for Nos. 1 to 35 and
+2&middot;80 for Nos. 211 to 245. For this observation I am indebted to Mr.
+Lynn; whose attention was drawn to it while revising for me the
+statements contained in this paragraph, so as to include discoveries
+made since the paragraph was written.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_CONSTITUTION_OF_THE_SUN" id="THE_CONSTITUTION_OF_THE_SUN"></a>THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SUN.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>First published in</i> The Reader <i>for February 25, 1865. I reproduce
+this essay chiefly to give a place to the speculation concerning the
+solar spots which forms the latter portion of it.</i>]</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The hypothesis of M. Faye, described in your numbers for January 28 and
+February 4, respectively, is to a considerable extent coincident with
+one which I ventured to suggest in an article on "Recent Astronomy and
+the Nebular Hypothesis," published in the <i>Westminster Review</i> for July,
+1858. In considering the possible causes of the immense differences of
+specific gravity among the planets, I was led to question the validity
+of the tacit assumption that each planet consists of solid or liquid
+matter from centre to surface. It seemed to me that any other internal
+structure which was mechanically stable, might be assumed with equal
+legitimacy. And the hypothesis of a solid or liquid shell, having its
+cavity filled with gaseous matter at high pressure and temperature [and
+of great density], was one which seemed worth considering.</p>
+
+<p>Hence arose the inquiry&mdash;What structure will result from the process of
+nebular condensation? [Here followed a long speculation respecting the
+processes going on in a concentrating nebulous spheroid; the general
+outcome of which is implied in Note III of the foregoing essay. I do not
+reproduce it because, not having the guidance of Prof. Andrew's
+researches, I had concluded that the formation of a molten shell would
+occur universally, instead of occasion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>ally, as is now argued in the
+note named. The essay then proceeded thus:&mdash;]</p>
+
+<p>The process of condensation being in its essentials the same for all
+concentrating nebular spheroids, planetary or solar, it was argued that
+the Sun is still passing through that incandescent stage which all the
+planets have long ago passed through: his later aggregation, joined with
+the immensely greater ratio of his mass to his surface, involving
+comparative lateness of cooling. Supposing the sun to have reached the
+state of a molten shell, inclosing a gaseous nucleus, it was concluded
+that this molten shell, ever radiating its heat, but ever acquiring
+fresh heat by further integration of the Sun's mass, must be constantly
+kept up to that temperature at which its substance evaporates.</p>
+
+<p>[Here followed part of the paragraph quoted in the preceding essay on p.
+155; and there succeeded, in subsequent editions, a paragraph aiming to
+show that the inferred structure of the Sun's interior was congruous
+with the low specific gravity of the Sun&mdash;a conclusion which, as
+indicated on p. 156, implies some very problematical assumptions
+respecting the natures of the unknown elements of the Sun. There then
+came this passage:&mdash;]</p>
+
+<p>The conception of the Sun's constitution thus set forth, is like that of
+M. Faye in so far as the successive changes, the resulting structures,
+and the ultimate state, are concerned; but unlike it in so far as the
+Sun is supposed to have reached a later stage of concentration. As I
+gather from your abstract of M. Faye's paper [this referred to an
+article in <i>The Reader</i>], he considers the Sun to be at present a
+gaseous spheroid, having an envelope of metallic matters precipitated in
+the shape of luminous clouds, the local dispersions of which, caused by
+currents from within, appear to us as spots; and he looks forward to the
+future formation of a liquid film as an event that will soon be followed
+by extinction. Whereas the above hypothesis is that the liquid film
+already exists beneath the visible photosphere,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> and that extinction
+cannot result until, in the course of further aggregation, the gaseous
+nucleus has become so much reduced, and the shell so much thickened,
+that the escape of the heat generated is greatly retarded.... M. Faye's
+hypothesis appears to be espoused by him, partly because it affords an
+explanation of the spots, which are considered as openings in the
+photosphere, exposing the comparatively non-luminous gases filling the
+interior. But if these interior gases are non-luminous from the absence
+of precipitated matter, must they not for the same reason be
+transparent? And if transparent, will not the light from the remote side
+of the photosphere seen through them, be nearly as bright as that of the
+side next to us? By as much as the intensely-heated gases of the
+interior are disabled by the dissociation of their molecules from giving
+off luminiferous undulations, by so much must they be disabled from
+absorbing the light transmitted through them. And if their great
+light-transmitting power is exactly complementary to their small
+light-emitting power, there seems no reason why the interior of the Sun,
+disclosed to us by openings in the photosphere, should not appear as
+bright as its exterior.</p>
+
+<p>Take, on the other hand, the supposition that a more advanced state of
+concentration has been reached. A shell of molten metallic matter
+enclosing a gaseous nucleus still higher in temperature than itself,
+will be continually kept at the highest temperature consistent with its
+state of liquid aggregation. Unless we assume that simple radiation
+suffices to give off all the heat generated by progressing integration,
+we must conclude that the mass will be raised to that temperature at
+which part of its heat is absorbed in vaporizing its superficial parts.
+The atmosphere of metallic gases hence resulting, cannot continue to
+accumulate without reaching a height above the Sun's surface, at which
+the cooling due to radiation and rarefaction will cause condensation
+into cloud&mdash;cannot, indeed, cease accumulating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> until the precipitation
+from the upper limit of the atmosphere balances the evaporation from its
+lower limit. This upper limit of the atmosphere of metallic gases,
+whence precipitation is perpetually taking place, will form the visible
+photosphere&mdash;partly giving off light of its own, partly letting through
+the more brilliant light of the incandescent mass below. This conclusion
+harmonizes with the appearances. Sir John Herschel, advocating though he
+does an antagonist hypothesis, gives a description of the Sun's surface
+which agrees completely with the processes here supposed. He says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"There is nothing which represents so faithfully this appearance as
+the slow subsidence of some flocculent chemical precipitates in a
+transparent fluid, when viewed perpendicularly from above: so
+faithfully, indeed, that it is hardly possible not to be impressed
+with the idea of a luminous medium intermixed, but not confounded,
+with a transparent and non-luminous atmosphere, either floating as
+clouds in our air, or pervading it in vast sheets and columns like
+flame, or the streamers of our northern lights".&mdash;<i>Treatise on
+Astronomy</i>, p. 208.</p></div>
+
+<p>If the constitution of the Sun be that which is above inferred, it does
+not seem difficult to conceive still more specifically the production of
+these appearances. Everywhere throughout the atmosphere of metallic
+vapours which clothes the solar surface, there must be ascending and
+descending currents. The magnitude of these currents must obviously
+depend on the depth of this atmosphere. If it is shallow, the currents
+must be small; but if many thousands of miles deep, the currents may be
+wide enough to render visible to us the places at which they severally
+impinge on the limit of the atmosphere, and the places whence the
+descending currents commence. The top of an ascending current will be a
+space over which the thickness of condensed cloud is the least, and
+through which the greatest amount of light from beneath penetrates. The
+clouds perpetually formed at the top of such a current, will be
+perpetually thrust aside by the uncondensed gases from below them; and,
+growing while they are thrust aside, will collect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> in the spaces between
+the ascending currents, where there will result the greatest degree of
+opacity. Hence the mottled appearance&mdash;hence the "pores," or dark
+interspaces, separating the light-giving spots.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>
+
+<p>Of the more special appearances which the photosphere presents, let us
+take first the facul&aelig;. These are ascribed to waves in the photosphere;
+and the way in which such waves might produce an excess of light has
+been variously explained in conformity with various hypotheses. What
+would result from them in a photosphere constituted and conditioned as
+above supposed? Traversing a canopy of cloud, here thicker and there
+thinner, a wave would cause a disturbance very unlikely to leave the
+thin and thick parts without any change in their average permeability to
+light. There would probably be, at some parts of the wave, extensions in
+the areas of the light-transmitting clouds, resulting in the passage of
+more rays from below. Another phenomenon, less common but more striking,
+appears also to be in harmony with the hypothesis. I refer to those
+bright spots, of a brilliancy greater than that of the photosphere,
+which are sometimes observed. In the course of a physical process so
+vast and so active as that here supposed to be going on in the Sun, we
+may expect that concurrent causes will occasionally produce ascending
+currents much hotter than usual, or more voluminous, or both. One of
+these, on reaching the stratum of luminous and illuminated cloud forming
+the photosphere, will burst through it, dispersing and dissolving it,
+and ascending to a greater height before it begins itself to condense:
+meanwhile<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> allowing to be seen, through its transparent mass, the
+incandescent molten shell of the sun's body.</p>
+
+<p>[The foregoing passages, to most of which I do not commit myself as more
+than possibilities, I republish chiefly as introductory to the following
+speculation, which, since it was propounded in 1865, has met with some
+acceptance.]</p>
+
+<p>"But what of the spots commonly so called?" it will be asked. In the
+essay on the Nebular hypothesis, above quoted from, it was suggested
+that refraction of the light passing through the depressed centres of
+cyclones in this atmosphere of metallic gases, might possibly be the
+cause; but this, though defensible as a "true cause," appeared on
+further consideration to be an inadequate cause. Keeping the question in
+mind, however, and still taking as a postulate the conclusion of Sir
+John Herschel, that the spots are in some way produced by cyclones, I
+was led, in the course of the year following the publication of the
+essay, to an hypothesis which seemed more satisfactory. This, which I
+named at the time to Prof. Tyndall, had a point in common with the one
+afterward published by Prof. Kirchhoff, in so far as it supposed cloud
+to be the cause of darkness; but differed in so far as it assigned the
+cause of such cloud. More pressing matters prevented me from developing
+the idea for some time; and, afterwards, I was deterred from including
+it in the revised edition of the essay, by its inconsistency with the
+"willow-leaf" doctrine, at that time dominant. The reasoning was as
+follows:&mdash;The central region of a cyclone must be a region of
+rarefaction, and, consequently, a region of refrigeration. In an
+atmosphere of metallic gases rising from a molten surface, and presently
+reaching a limit at which condensation takes place, the molecular state,
+especially toward its upper part, must be such that a moderate
+diminution of density, and fall of temperature, will cause
+precipitation. That is to say, the rarefied interior of a solar cyclone
+will be filled with cloud: condensation, instead of taking place<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> only
+at the level of the photosphere, will here extend to a great depth below
+it, and over a wide area. What will be the characters of a cloud thus
+occupying the interior of a cyclone? It will have a rotatory motion; and
+this it has been seen to have. Being funnel-shaped, as analogy warrants
+us in assuming, its central parts will be much deeper than its
+peripheral parts, and therefore more opaque. This, too, corresponds with
+observation. Mr. Dawes has discovered that in the middle of the spot
+there is a blacker spot: just where there would exist a funnel-shaped
+prolongation of the cyclonic cloud down toward the Sun's body, the
+darkness is greater than elsewhere. Moreover, there is furnished an
+adequate reason for the depression which one of these dark spaces
+exhibits. In a whirlwind, as in a whirlpool, the vortex will be below
+the general level, and all around, the surface of the medium will
+descend toward it. Hence a spot seen obliquely, as when carried toward
+the Sun's limb, will have its umbra more and more hidden, while its
+penumbra still remains visible. Nor are we without some interpretation
+of the penumbra. If, as is implied by what has been said, the so-called
+"willow-leaves," or "rice-grains," are the tops of the currents
+ascending from the Sun's body, what changes of appearance are they
+likely to undergo in the neighbourhood of a cyclone? For some distance
+round a cyclone there will be a drawing in of the superficial gases
+toward the vortex. All the luminous spaces of more transparent cloud
+forming the adjacent photosphere, will be changed in shape by these
+centripetal currents. They will be greatly elongated; and there will so
+be produced that "thatch"-like aspect which the penumbra presents.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>[The explanation of the solar spots above suggested, which was
+originally propounded in opposition to that of M. Faye, was eventually
+adopted by him in place of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> own. In the <i>Comptes Rendus</i> for 1867,
+Vol. LXIV., p. 404, he refers to the article in the <i>Reader</i>, partly
+reproduced above, and speaks of me as having been replied to in a
+previous note. Again in the <i>Comptes Rendus</i> for 1872, Vol. LXXV., p.
+1664, he recognizes the inadequacy of his hypothesis, saying:&mdash;"Il est
+certain que l'objection de M. Spencer, reproduit et d&eacute;velopp&eacute;e par M.
+Kirchoff, est fond&eacute;e jusqu'&agrave; un certain point; l'int&eacute;rieur des taches,
+si ce sont des lacunes dans la photosph&egrave;re, doit &ecirc;tre froid
+relativement.... Il est donc impossible qu'elles proviennent d'&eacute;ruptions
+ascendantes." He then proceeds to set forth the hypothesis that the
+spots are caused by the precipitation of vapour in the interiors of
+cyclones. But though, as above shown, he refers to the objection made in
+the foregoing essay to his original hypothesis, and recognizes its
+cogency, he does not say that the hypothesis which he thereupon
+substitutes is also to be found in the foregoing essay. Nor does he
+intimate this in the elaborate paper on the subject read before the
+French Association for the Advancement of Science, and published in the
+<i>Revue Scientifique</i> for the 24th March 1883. The result is that the
+hypothesis is now currently ascribed to him.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>
+
+<p>About four months before I had to revise this essay on "The Constitution
+of the Sun," while staying near Pewsey, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>in Wiltshire, I was fortunate
+enough to witness a phenomenon which furnished, by analogy, a
+verification of the above hypothesis, and served more especially to
+elucidate one of the traits of solar spots, otherwise difficult to
+understand. It was at the close of August, when there had been a spell
+of very hot weather. A slight current of air from the West, moving along
+the line of the valley, had persisted through the day, which, up to 5
+o'clock, had been cloudless, and, with the exception now to be named,
+remained cloudless. The exception was furnished by a strange-looking
+cloud almost directly overhead. Its central part was comparatively dense
+and structureless. Its peripheral part, or to speak strictly, the
+two-thirds of it which were nearest and most clearly visible, consisted
+of <i>converging streaks</i> of comparatively thin cloud. Possibly the third
+part on the remoter side was similarly constituted; but this I could not
+see. It did not occur to me at the time to think about its cause,
+though, had the question been raised, I should doubtless have concluded
+that as the sky still remained cloudless everywhere else, this
+precipitated mass of vapour must have resulted from a local eddy. In the
+space of perhaps half-an-hour, the gentle breeze had carried this cloud
+some miles to the East; and now its nature became obvious. That central
+part which, seen from underneath, seemed simply a dense, confused part,
+apparently no nearer than the rest, now, seen sideways, was obviously
+much lower than the rest and rudely funnel-shaped&mdash;nipple-shaped one
+might say; while the wide thin portion of cloud above it was
+disk-shaped: the converging streaks of cloud being now, in perspective,
+merged together. It thus became manifest that the cloud was produced by
+a feeble whirlwind, perhaps a quarter to half-a-mile in diameter.
+Further, the appearances made it clear that this feeble whirlwind was
+limited to the lower stratum of air: the stratum of air above it was not
+implicated in the cyclonic action. And then, lastly, there was the
+striking fact that the upper stratum, though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> not involved in the whirl,
+was, by its proximity to a region of diminished pressure, slightly
+rarified; and that its precipitated vapour was, by the draught set up
+towards the vortex below, drawn into converging streaks. Here, then, was
+an action analogous to that which, as above suggested, happens around a
+sun-spot, where the masses of illuminated vapour constituting the
+photosphere are drawn towards the vortex of the cyclone, and
+simultaneously elongated into stri&aelig;: so forming the penumbra. At the
+same time there was furnished an answer to the chief objection to the
+cyclonic theory of solar spots. For if, as here seen, a cyclone in a
+lower stratum may fail to communicate a vortical motion to the stratum
+above it, we may comprehend how, in a solar cyclone, the photosphere
+commonly fails to give any indication of the revolving currents below,
+and is only occasionally so entangled in these currents as itself to
+display a vortical motion.</p>
+
+<p>Let me add that apart from the elucidations furnished by the phenomenon
+above described, the probabilities are greatly in favour of the cyclonic
+origin of the solar spots. That some of them exhibit clear marks of
+vortical motion is undeniable; and if this is so, the question
+arises&mdash;What is the degree of likelihood that there are two causes for
+spots? Considering that they have so many characters in common, it is
+extremely improbable that their common characters are in some cases the
+concomitants of vortical motion and in other cases the concomitants of a
+different kind of action. Recognizing this great improbability, even in
+the absence of a reconciliation between the apparently conflicting
+traits, it is, I think, clear that when, in the way above shown, we are
+enabled to understand how it happens that the vortical motion, not
+ordinarily implicating the photosphere, may consequently be in most
+cases unapparent, the reasons for accepting the cyclonic theory become
+almost conclusive.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> If the "rice-grain" appearance is thus produced by the
+tops of the ascending currents (and M. Faye accepts this
+interpretation), then I think it excludes M. Faye's hypothesis that the
+Sun is gaseous throughout. The comparative smallness of the light-giving
+spots and their comparative uniformity of size, show us that they have
+ascended through a stratum of but moderate depth (say 10,000 miles), and
+that this stratum has a <i>definite</i> lower limit. This favours the
+hypothesis of a molten shell.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> I should add that while M. Faye ascribes solar spots to
+clouds formed within cyclones, we differ concerning the nature of the
+cloud. I have argued that it is formed by rarefaction, and consequent
+refrigeration, of the metallic gases constituting the stratum in which
+the cyclone exists. He argues that it is formed within the mass of
+cooled hydrogen drawn from the chromosphere into the vortex of the
+cyclone. Speaking of the cyclones he says:&mdash;"Dans leur embouchure &eacute;vas&eacute;e
+ils entra&icirc;neront l'hydrog&egrave;ne froid de la chromosph&egrave;re, produisant
+partout sur leur trajet vertical un abaissement notable de temp&eacute;rature
+et une obscurit&eacute; relative, due &agrave; l'opacit&eacute; de l'hydrog&egrave;ne froid
+englouti." (<i>Revue Scientifique</i>, 24 March 1883.) Considering the
+intense cold required to reduce hydrogen to the "critical point," it is
+a strong supposition that the motion given to it by fluid friction on
+entering the vortex of the cyclone, can produce a rotation, rarefaction,
+and cooling, great enough to produce precipitation in a region so
+intensely heated.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="ILLOGICAL_GEOLOGY" id="ILLOGICAL_GEOLOGY"></a>ILLOGICAL GEOLOGY.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>First published in</i> The Universal Review <i>for July,</i> 1859.]</p></div>
+
+
+<p>That proclivity to generalization which is possessed in greater or less
+degree by all minds, and without which, indeed, intelligence cannot
+exist, has unavoidable inconveniences. Through it alone can truth be
+reached; and yet it almost inevitably betrays into error. But for the
+tendency to predicate of every other case, that which has been found in
+the observed cases, there could be no rational thinking; and yet by this
+indispensable tendency, men are perpetually led to found, on limited
+experience, propositions which they wrongly assume to be universal or
+absolute. In one sense, however, this can scarcely be regarded as an
+evil; for without premature generalizations the true generalization
+would never be arrived at. If we waited till all the facts were
+accumulated before trying to formulate them, the vast unorganized mass
+would be unmanageable. Only by provisional grouping can they be brought
+into such order as to be dealt with; and this provisional grouping is
+but another name for premature generalization. How uniformly men follow
+this course, and how needful the errors are as steps to truth, is well
+illustrated in the history of Astronomy. The heavenly bodies move round
+the Earth in circles, said the earliest observers: led partly by the
+appearances, and partly by their experiences of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> central motions in
+terrestrial objects, with which, as all circular, they classed the
+celestial motions from lack of any alternative conception. Without this
+provisional belief, wrong as it was, there could not have been that
+comparison of positions which showed that the motions are not
+representable by circles; and which led to the hypothesis of epicycles
+and eccentrics. Only by the aid of this hypothesis, equally untrue, but
+capable of accounting more nearly for the appearances, and so of
+inducing more accurate observations&mdash;only thus did it become possible
+for Copernicus to show that the heliocentric theory is more feasible
+than the geocentric theory; or for Kepler to show that the planets move
+round the sun in ellipses. Yet again, without the aid of Kepler's more
+advanced theory of the Solar system, Newton could not have established
+that general law from which it follows, that the motion of a heavenly
+body is not necessarily in an ellipse, but may be in any conic section.
+And lastly, it was only after the law of gravitation had been verified,
+that it became possible to determine the actual courses of planets,
+satellites, and comets; and to prove that, in consequence of
+perturbations, their orbits always deviate, more or less, from regular
+curves. In these successive theories we may trace both the tendency men
+have to leap from scanty data to wide generalizations, that are either
+untrue or but partially true; and the necessity there is for such
+transitional generalizations as steps to the final one.</p>
+
+<p>In the progress of geological speculation, the same laws of thought are
+displayed. We have dogmas that were more than half false, passing
+current for a time as universal truths. We have evidence collected in
+proof of these dogmas; by and by a colligation of facts in antagonism
+with them; and eventually a consequent modification. In conformity with
+this improved hypothesis, we have a better classification of facts; a
+greater power of arranging and interpreting the new facts now rapidly
+gathered together;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> and further resulting corrections of hypothesis.
+Being, as we are at present, in the midst of this process, it is not
+possible to give an adequate account of the development of geological
+science as thus regarded: the earlier stages are alone known to us. Not
+only, however, is it interesting to observe how the more advanced views
+now received respecting the Earth's history, have been evolved out of
+the crude views which preceded them; but we shall find it extremely
+instructive to observe this. We shall see how greatly the old ideas
+still sway both the general mind and the minds of geologists themselves.
+We shall see how the kind of evidence that has in part abolished these
+old ideas, is still daily accumulating, and threatens to make other like
+revolutions. In brief, we shall see whereabouts we are in the
+elaboration of a true theory of the Earth; and, seeing our whereabouts,
+shall be the better able to judge, among various conflicting opinions,
+which best conform to the ascertained direction of geological discovery.</p>
+
+<p>It is needless here to enumerate the many speculations which were in
+earlier ages propounded by acute men&mdash;speculations some of which
+contained portions of truth. Falling in unfit times, these speculations
+did not germinate; and hence do not concern us. We have nothing to do
+with ideas, however good, out of which no science grew; but only with
+those which gave origin to the existing system of Geology. We therefore
+begin with Werner.</p>
+
+<p>Taking for data the appearances of the Earth's crust in a narrow
+district of Germany; observing the constant order of superposition of
+strata, and their respective physical characters; Werner drew the
+inference that strata of like characters succeeded each other in like
+order over the entire surface of the Earth. And seeing, from the
+laminated structure of many formations and the organic remains contained
+in others, that they were sedimentary; he further inferred that these
+universal strata had been in succession precipitated from a chaotic
+menstruum which once covered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> our planet. Thus, on a very incomplete
+acquaintance with a thousandth part of the Earth's crust, he based a
+sweeping generalization applying to the whole of it. This Neptunist
+hypothesis, mark, borne out though it seemed to be by the most
+conspicuous surrounding facts, was quite untenable if analyzed. That a
+universal chaotic menstruum should deposit a series of numerous
+sharply-defined strata, differing from one another in composition, is
+incomprehensible. That the strata so deposited should contain the
+remains of plants and animals, which could not have lived under the
+supposed conditions, is still more incomprehensible. Physically absurd,
+however, as was this hypothesis, it recognized, though under a distorted
+form, one of the great agencies of geological change&mdash;the action of
+water. It served also to express the fact, that the formations of the
+Earth's crust stand in some kind of order. Further, it did a little
+towards supplying a nomenclature, without which much progress was
+impossible. Lastly, it furnished a standard with which successions of
+strata in various regions could be compared, the differences noted, and
+the actual sections tabulated. It was the first provisional
+generalization; and was useful, if not indispensable, as a step to truer
+ones.</p>
+
+<p>Following this rude conception, which ascribed geological phenomena to
+one agency, acting during one primeval epoch, there came a
+greatly-improved conception, which ascribed them to two agencies, acting
+alternately during successive epochs. Hutton, perceiving that
+sedimentary deposits were still being formed at the bottom of the sea
+from the detritus carried down by rivers; perceiving, further, that the
+strata of which the visible surface chiefly consists, bore marks of
+having been similarly formed out of pre-existing land; and inferring
+that these strata could have become land only by upheaval after their
+deposit; concluded that throughout an indefinite past, there had been
+periodic convulsions, by which continents were raised,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> with intervening
+eras of repose, during which such continents were worn down and
+transformed into new marine strata, fated to be in their turns elevated
+above the surface of the ocean. And finding that igneous action, to
+which sundry earlier geologists had ascribed basaltic rocks, was in
+countless places a cause of disturbance, he taught that from it resulted
+these periodic convulsions. In this theory we see:&mdash;first, that the
+previously-recognized agency of water was conceived to act, not as by
+Werner, after a manner of which we have no experience, but after a
+manner daily displayed to us; and secondly, that the igneous agency,
+before considered only as originating special formations, was recognized
+as a universal agency, but assumed to act in an unproved way. Werner's
+sole process Hutton developed from the catastrophic and inexplicable
+into the uniform and explicable; while that antagonistic second process,
+of which he first adequately estimated the importance, was regarded by
+him as a catastrophic one, and was not assimilated to known
+processes&mdash;not explained. We have here to note, however, that the facts
+collected and provisionally arranged in conformity with Werner's theory,
+served, after a time, to establish Hutton's more rational theory&mdash;in so
+far, at least, as aqueous formations are concerned; while the doctrine
+of periodic subterranean convulsions, crudely as it was conceived by
+Hutton, was a temporary generalization needful as a step towards the
+theory of igneous action.</p>
+
+<p>Since Hutton's time, the development of geological thought has gone
+still further in the same direction. These early sweeping doctrines have
+received additional qualifications. It has been discovered that more
+numerous and more heterogeneous agencies have been at work, than was at
+first believed. The conception of igneous action has been rationalized,
+as the conception of aqueous action had previously been. The gratuitous
+assumption that vast elevations suddenly occurred after long intervals
+of quiescence, has grown into the consistent theory, that islands and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+continents are the accumulated results of successive small upheavals,
+like those experienced in ordinary earthquakes. To speak more
+specifically, we find, in the first place, that instead of assuming the
+denudation produced by rain and rivers to be the sole means of wearing
+down lands and producing their irregularities of surface, geologists now
+see that denudation is only a part-cause of such irregularities; and
+further, that the new strata deposited at the bottom of the sea, are not
+the products of river-sediment solely, but are in part due to the
+actions of waves and tidal currents on the coasts. In the second place,
+we find that Hutton's conception of upheaval by subterranean forces, has
+not only been modified by assimilating these subterranean forces to
+ordinary earthquake-forces; but modern inquiries have shown that,
+besides elevations of surface, subsidences are thus produced; that local
+upheavals, as well as the general upheavals which raise continents, come
+within the same category; and that all these changes are probably
+consequent on the progressive collapse of the Earth's crust upon its
+cooling and contracting nucleus. In the third place, we find that beyond
+these two great antagonistic agencies, modern Geology recognizes sundry
+minor ones: those of glaciers and icebergs, those of coral-polypes;
+those of <i>Protozoa</i> having siliceous or calcareous shells&mdash;each of which
+agencies, insignificant as it seems, is found capable of slowly working
+terrestrial changes of considerable magnitude. Thus, then, the recent
+progress of Geology has been a still further departure from primitive
+conceptions. Instead of one catastrophic cause, once in universal
+action, as supposed by Werner&mdash;instead of one general continuous cause,
+antagonized at long intervals by a catastrophic cause, as taught by
+Hutton; we now recognize several causes, all more or less general and
+continuous. We no longer resort to hypothetical agencies to explain the
+phenomena displayed by the Earth's crust; but we are day by day more
+clearly perceiving that these phenomena have arisen from forces like
+those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> now at work, which have acted in all varieties of combination,
+through immeasurable periods of time.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Having thus briefly traced the evolution of geologic science, and noted
+its present form, let us go on to observe the way in which it is still
+swayed by the crude hypotheses it set out with; so that even now,
+doctrines long since abandoned as untenable in theory, continue in
+practice to mould the ideas of geologists, and to foster sundry beliefs
+that are logically indefensible. We shall see, both how those simple
+sweeping conceptions with which the science commenced, are those which
+every student is apt at first to seize hold of, and how several
+influences conspire to maintain the twist thus resulting&mdash;how the
+original nomenclature of periods and formations necessarily keeps alive
+the original implications; and how the need for arranging new data in
+some order, results in their being thrust into the old classification,
+unless their incongruity with it is very glaring. A few facts will best
+prepare the way for criticism.</p>
+
+<p>Up to 1839 it was inferred, from their crystalline character, that the
+metamorphic rocks of Anglesea were more ancient than any rocks of the
+adjacent main land; but it has since been shown that they are of the
+same age with the slates and grits of Carnarvon and Merioneth. Again,
+slaty cleavage having been first found only in the lowest rocks, was
+taken as an indication of the highest antiquity: whence resulted serious
+mistakes; for this mineral characteristic is now known to occur in the
+Carboniferous system. Once more, certain red conglomerates and grits on
+the north-west coast of Scotland, long supposed from their lithological
+aspect to belong to the Old Red Sandstone, are now identified with the
+Lower Silurians. These are a few instances of the small trust to be
+placed in mineral qualities, as evidence of the ages or relative
+positions of strata. From the recently-published<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> third edition of
+<i>Siluria</i>, may be culled numerous facts of like implication. Sir R.
+Murchison considers it ascertained, that the siliceous Stiper stones of
+Shropshire are the equivalents of the Tremadock slates of North Wales.
+Judged by their fossils, Bala slate and limestone are of the same age as
+the Caradoc sandstone, lying forty miles off. In Radnorshire, the
+formation classed as upper Llandovery rock, is described at different
+spots, as "sandstone or conglomerate," "impure limestone," "hard coarse
+grits," "siliceous grit"&mdash;a considerable variation for so small an area
+as that of a county. Certain sandy beds on the left bank of the Towy,
+which Sir R. Murchison had, in his <i>Silurian System</i>, classed as Caradoc
+sandstone (evidently from their mineral characters), he now finds, from
+their fossils, belong to the Llandeilo formation. Nevertheless,
+inferences from mineral characters are still habitually drawn and
+received. Though <i>Siluria</i>, in common with other geological works,
+supplies numerous proofs that rocks of the same age are often of
+widely-different composition a few miles off, while rocks of
+widely-different ages are often of similar composition; and though Sir
+R. Murchison shows us, as in the case just cited, that he has himself in
+past times been misled by trusting to lithological evidence; yet his
+reasoning all through <i>Siluria</i>, shows that he still thinks it natural
+to expect formations of the same age to be chemically similar, even in
+remote regions. For example, in treating of the Silurian rocks of South
+Scotland, he says:&mdash;"When traversing the tract between Dumfries and
+Moffat, in 1850, it occurred to me, that the dull reddish or purple
+sandstone and schist to the north of the former town, which so resembled
+the bottom rocks of Longmynd, Llanberis, and St. David's, would prove to
+be of the same age;" and further on, he again insists upon the fact that
+these strata "are absolutely of the same composition as the bottom rocks
+of the Silurian region." On this unity of mineral character it is, that
+this Scottish formation is concluded to be contemporaneous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> with the
+lowest formations in Wales; for the scanty paleontological evidence
+suffices for neither proof nor disproof. Now, had there been a
+continuity of like strata in like order between Wales and Scotland,
+there might have been little to criticize in this conclusion. But since
+Sir R. Murchison himself admits, that in Westmoreland and Cumberland,
+some members of the system "assume a lithological aspect different from
+what they maintain in the Silurian and Welsh region," there seems no
+reason to expect mineralogical continuity in Scotland. Obviously,
+therefore, the assumption that these Scottish formations are of the same
+age with the Longmynd of Shropshire, implies the latent belief that
+certain mineral characters indicate certain eras. Far more striking
+instances, however, of the influence of this latent belief remain to be
+given. Not in such comparatively near districts as the Scottish lowlands
+only, does Sir R. Murchison expect a repetition of the Longmynd strata;
+but in the Rhenish provinces, certain "quartzose flagstones and grits,
+like those of the Longmynd," are seemingly concluded to be of
+contemporaneous origin, because of their likeness. "Quartzites in
+roofing-slates with a greenish tinge that reminded us of the lower
+slates of Cumberland and Westmoreland," are evidently suspected to be of
+the same age. In Russia, he remarks that the carboniferous limestones
+"are overlaid along the western edge of the Ural chain by sandstones and
+grits, which occupy much the same place in the general series as the
+millstone grit of England;" and in calling this group, as he does, the
+"representative of the millstone grit," Sir R. Murchison clearly shows
+that he thinks likeness of mineral composition some evidence of
+equivalence in time, even at that great distance. Nay, on the flanks of
+the Andes and in the United States, such similarities are looked for,
+and considered as significant of certain ages. Not that Sir R. Murchison
+contends theoretically for this relation between lithological character
+and date. For on the page<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> from which we have just quoted (<i>Siluria</i>,
+p. 387), he says, that "whilst the soft Lower Silurian clays and sands
+of St. Petersburg have their equivalents in the hard schists and quartz
+rocks with gold veins in the heart of the Ural mountains, the equally
+soft red and green Devonian marls of the Valdai Hills are represented on
+the western flank of that chain by hard, contorted, and fractured
+limestones." But these, and other such admissions, seem to go for
+little. While himself asserting that the Potsdam-sandstone of North
+America, the Lingula-flags of England, and the alum-slates of
+Scandinavia are of the same period&mdash;while fully aware that among the
+Silurian formations of Wales, there are oolitic strata like those of
+secondary age; yet his reasoning is more or less coloured by the
+assumption, that formations of like qualities probably belong to the
+same era. Is it not manifest, then, that the exploded hypothesis of
+Werner continues to influence geological speculation?</p>
+
+<p>"But," it will perhaps be said, "though individual strata are not
+continuous over large areas, yet systems of strata are. Though within a
+few miles the same bed gradually passes from clay into sand, or thins
+out and disappears, yet the group of strata to which it belongs does not
+do so; but maintains in remote regions the same relations to other
+groups."</p>
+
+<p>This is the generally-current belief. On this assumption the received
+geological classifications appear to be framed. The Silurian system, the
+Devonian system, the Carboniferous system, etc., are set down in our
+books as groups of formations which everywhere succeed each other in a
+given order; and are severally everywhere of the same age. Though it may
+not be asserted that these successive systems are universal; yet it
+seems to be tacitly assumed that they are. In North and South America,
+in Asia, in Australia, sets of strata are assimilated to one or other of
+these groups; and their possession of certain mineral characters and a
+certain order of superposition are among the reasons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> assigned for so
+assimilating them. Though, probably, no competent geologist would
+contend that the European classification of strata is applicable to the
+globe as a whole; yet most, if not all geologists, write as though it
+were. Among readers of works on Geology, nine out of ten carry away the
+impression that the divisions, Primary, Secondary and Tertiary, are of
+absolute and uniform application; that these great divisions are
+separable into subdivisions, each of which is definitely distinguishable
+from the rest, and is everywhere recognizable by its characters as such
+or such; and that in all parts of the Earth, these minor systems
+severally began and ended at the same time. When they meet with the term
+"Carboniferous era," they take for granted that it was an era
+universally carboniferous&mdash;that it was, what Hugh Miller indeed actually
+describes it, an era when the Earth bore a vegetation far more luxuriant
+than it has since done; and were they in any of our colonies to meet
+with a coal-bed, they would conclude that, as a matter of course, it was
+of the same age as the English coal-beds.</p>
+
+<p>Now this belief that geologic "systems" are universal, is no more
+tenable than the other. It is just as absurd when considered <i>a priori</i>;
+and it is equally inconsistent with the facts. Though some series of
+strata classed together as Oolite, may range over a wider district than
+any one stratum of the series; yet we have but to ask what were the
+circumstances under which it was deposited, to see that the Oolitic
+series, like one of its individual strata, must be of local origin; and
+that there is not likely to be anywhere else, a series which
+corresponds, either in its characters or in its commencement and
+termination. For the formation of such a series implies an area of
+subsidence, in which its component beds were thrown down. Every area of
+subsidence is necessarily limited; and to suppose that there exist
+elsewhere groups of beds completely answering to those known as Oolite,
+is to suppose that, in contemporaneous areas of subsidence, like
+processes were going on.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> There is no reason to suppose this; but good
+reason to suppose the reverse. That in contemporaneous areas of
+subsidence throughout the globe, the conditions would cause the
+formation of Oolite, is an assumption which no modern geologist would
+openly make. He would say that the equivalent series of beds found
+elsewhere, would probably be of dissimilar mineral character. Moreover,
+in these contemporaneous areas of subsidence, the processes going on
+would not only be different in kind; but in no two cases would they be
+likely to agree in their commencements and terminations. The
+probabilities are greatly against separate portions of the Earth's
+surface beginning to subside at the same time, and ceasing to subside at
+the same time&mdash;a coincidence which alone could produce equivalent groups
+of strata. Subsidences in different places begin and end with utter
+irregularity; and hence the groups of strata thrown down in them can but
+rarely correspond. Measured against each other in time, their limits
+must disagree. On turning to the evidence, we find that it daily tends
+more and more to justify these <i>a priori</i> positions. Take, as an
+example, the Old Red Sandstone system. In the north of England this is
+represented by a single stratum of conglomerate. In Herefordshire,
+Worcestershire, and Shropshire, it expands into a series of strata from
+eight to ten thousand feet thick, made up of conglomerates, red, green,
+and white sandstones, red, green, and spotted marls, and concretionary
+limestones. To the south-west, as between Caermarthen and Pembroke,
+these Old Red Sandstone strata exhibit considerable lithological
+changes; on the other side of the Bristol Channel, they display further
+changes in mineral characters; while in South Devon and Cornwall, the
+equivalent strata, consisting chiefly of slates, schists, and
+limestones, are so wholly different, that they were for a long time
+classed as Silurian. When we thus see that in certain directions the
+whole group of deposits thins out, and that its mineral characters
+change within<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> moderate distances; does it not become clear that the
+whole group of deposits was a local one? And when we find, in other
+regions, formations analogous to these Old Red Sandstone or Devonian
+formations, is it certain&mdash;is it even probable&mdash;that they severally
+began and ended at the same time with them? Should it not require
+overwhelming evidence to make us believe as much?</p>
+
+<p>Yet so strongly is geological speculation swayed by the tendency to
+regard the phenomena as general instead of local, that even those most
+on their guard against it seem unable to escape its influence. At page
+158 of his <i>Principles of Geology</i>, Sir Charles Lyell says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"A group of red marl and red sandstone, containing salt and gypsum,
+being interposed in England between the Lias and the Coal, all
+other red marls and sandstones, associated some of them with salt,
+and others with gypsum, and occurring not only in different parts
+of Europe, but in North America, Peru, India, the salt deserts of
+Asia, those of Africa&mdash;in a word, in every quarter of the globe,
+were referred to one and the same period.... It was in vain to urge
+as an objection the improbability of the hypothesis which implies
+that all the moving waters on the globe were once simultaneously
+charged with sediment of a red colour. But the rashness of
+pretending to identify, in age, all the red sandstones and marls in
+question, has at length been sufficiently exposed, by the discovery
+that, even in Europe, they belong decidedly to many different
+epochs."</p></div>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, while in this and many kindred passages Sir C. Lyell
+protests against the bias here illustrated, he seems himself not
+completely free from it. Though he utterly rejects the old hypothesis
+that all over the Earth the same continuous strata lie one upon another
+in regular order, like the coats of an onion, he still writes as though
+geologic "systems" do thus succeed each other. A reader of his <i>Manual</i>
+would certainly suppose him to believe, that the Primary epoch ended,
+and the secondary epoch began, all over the world at the same time&mdash;that
+these terms really correspond to distinct universal eras. When he
+assumes, as he does, that the division between Cambrian and Lower
+Silurian in America, answers chronologically to the division between
+Cambrian and Lower Silurian in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> Wales&mdash;when he takes for granted that
+the partings of Lower from Middle Silurian, and of Middle Silurian from
+Upper, in the one region, are of the same dates as the like partings in
+the other region; does it not seem that he believes geologic "systems"
+to be universal, in the sense that their separations were in all places
+contemporaneous? Though he would, doubtless, disown this as an article
+of faith, is not his thinking unconsciously influenced by it? Must we
+not say that, though the onion-coat hypothesis is dead, its spirit is
+traceable, under a transcendental form, even in the conclusions of its
+antagonists?</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Let us now consider another leading geological doctrine,&mdash;the doctrine
+that strata of the same age contain like fossils; and that, therefore,
+the age and relative position of any stratum may be known by its
+fossils. While the theory that strata of like mineral characters were
+everywhere deposited simultaneously, has been ostensibly abandoned,
+there has been accepted the theory that in each geologic epoch similar
+plants and animals existed everywhere; and that, therefore, the epoch to
+which any formation belongs may be known by the organic remains
+contained in the formation. Though, perhaps, no leading geologist would
+openly commit himself to an unqualified assertion of this theory, yet it
+is tacitly assumed in current geological reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>This theory, however, is scarcely more tenable than the other. It cannot
+be concluded with any certainty, that formations in which similar
+organic remains are found, were of contemporaneous origin; nor can it be
+safely concluded that strata containing different organic remains are of
+different ages. To most readers these will be startling propositions;
+but they are fully admitted by the highest authorities. Sir Charles
+Lyell confesses that the test of organic remains must be used "under
+very much the same restrictions as the test of mineral composition." Sir
+Henry de la Beche,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> who variously illustrates this truth, remarks on the
+great incongruity there must be between the fossils of our carboniferous
+rocks and those of the marine strata deposited at the same period. But
+though, in the abstract, the danger of basing positive conclusions on
+evidence derived from fossils, is recognized; yet, in the concrete, this
+danger is generally disregarded. The established convictions respecting
+the ages of strata, have been formed in spite of it; and by some
+geologists it seems altogether ignored. Throughout his <i>Siluria</i>, Sir R.
+Murchison habitually assumes that the same, or kindred, species, lived
+in all parts of the Earth at the same time. In Russia, in Bohemia, in
+the United States, in South America, strata are classed as belonging to
+this or that part of the Silurian system, because of the similar fossils
+contained in them&mdash;are concluded to be everywhere contemporaneous if
+they enclose a proportion of identical or allied forms. In Russia the
+relative position of a stratum is inferred from the fact that, along
+with some Wenlock forms, it yields the <i>Pentamerus oblongus</i>. Certain
+crustaceans called <i>Eurypteri</i>, being characteristic of the Upper Ludlow
+rock, it is remarked that "large Eurypteri occur in a so-called black
+grey-wacke slate in Westmoreland, in Oneida County, New York, which will
+probably be found to be on the parallel of the Upper Ludlow rock:" in
+which word "probably," we see both how dominant is this belief of
+universal distribution of similar creatures at the same period, and how
+apt this belief is to make its own proof, by raising the expectation
+that the ages are identical when the forms are alike. Besides thus
+interpreting the formations of Russia, England, and America, Sir R.
+Murchison thus interprets those of the antipodes. Fossils from Victoria
+Colony, he agrees with the Government-surveyor in classing as of Lower
+Silurian or Llandovery age: that is, he takes for granted that when
+certain crustaceans and mollusks were living in Wales, certain similar
+crustaceans and mollusks were living in Australia.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> Yet the
+improbability of this assumption may be readily shown from Sir R.
+Murchison's own facts. If, as he points out, the fossil crustaceans of
+the uppermost Silurian rocks in Lanarkshire are, "with one doubtful
+exception," all "distinct from any of the forms known on the same
+horizon in England;" how can it be fairly presumed that the forms
+existing on the other side of the Earth during the Silurian period, were
+nearly allied to those existing here? Not only, indeed, do Sir R.
+Murchison's conclusions tacitly assume this doctrine of universal
+distribution, but he distinctly enunciates it. "The mere presence of a
+graptolite," he says, "will at once decide that the enclosing rock is
+Silurian;" and he says this, notwithstanding repeated warnings against
+such generalizations. During the progress of Geology, it has over and
+over again happened that a particular fossil, long considered
+characteristic of a particular formation, has been afterwards discovered
+in other formations. Until some twelve years ago, Goniatites had not
+been found lower than the Devonian rocks; but now, in Bohemia, they have
+been found in rocks classed as Silurian. Quite recently, the
+<i>Orthoceras</i>, previously supposed to be a type exclusively pal&aelig;ozoic,
+has been detected along with mesozoic Ammonites and Belemnites. Yet
+hosts of such experiences fail to extinguish the assumption, that the
+age of a stratum may be determined by the occurrence in it of a single
+fossil form. Nay, this assumption survives evidence of even a still more
+destructive kind. Referring to the Silurian system in Western Ireland,
+Sir R. Murchison says, "in the beds near Maam, Professor Nicol and
+myself collected remains, some of which would be considered Lower, and
+others Upper, Silurian;" and he then names sundry fossils which, in
+England, belong to the summit of the Ludlow rocks, or highest Silurian
+strata; "some, which elsewhere are known only in rocks of Llandovery
+age"&mdash;that is, of middle Silurian age; and some, only before known in
+Lower Silurian strata, not far above the most ancient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> fossiliferous
+beds. Now what do these facts prove? Clearly, they prove that species
+which in Wales are separated by strata more than twenty thousand feet
+deep, and therefore seem to belong to periods far more remote from each
+other, were really co-existent. They prove that the mollusks and
+crinoids held to be characteristic of early Silurian strata, and
+supposed to have become extinct long before the mollusks and crinoids of
+the later Silurian strata came into existence, were really flourishing
+at the same time with these last; and that these last possibly date back
+to as early a period as the first. They prove that not only the mineral
+characters of sedimentary formations, but also the collections of
+organic forms they contain, depend, to a great extent, on local
+circumstances. They prove that the fossils met with in any series of
+strata, cannot be taken as representing anything like the whole Flora
+and Fauna of the period they belong to. In brief, they throw great doubt
+upon numerous geological generalizations.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding facts like these, and notwithstanding his avowed opinion
+that the test of organic remains must be used "under very much the same
+restrictions as the test of mineral composition," Sir Charles Lyell,
+too, considers sundry positive conclusions to be justified by this test:
+even where the community of fossils is slight and the distance great.
+Having decided that in various places in Europe, middle Eocene strata
+are distinguished by Nummulites; he infers, without any other assigned
+evidence, that wherever Nummulites are found&mdash;in Morocco, Algeria,
+Egypt, in Persia, Scinde, Cutch, Eastern Bengal, and the frontiers of
+China&mdash;the containing formation is Middle Eocene. And from this
+inference he draws the following important corollary:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"When we have once arrived at the conviction that the nummulitic
+formation occupies a middle place in the Eocene series, we are
+struck with the comparatively modern date to which some of the
+greatest revolutions in the physical geography of Europe, Asia, and
+northern Africa must be referred. All the mountain chains, such as
+the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians, and Himalayas, into the
+composition of whose central and loftiest parts the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> nummulitic
+strata enter bodily, could have had no existence till after the
+Middle Eocene period."&mdash;<i>Manual</i>, p. 232.</p></div>
+
+<p>A still more marked case follows on the next page. Because a certain bed
+at Claiborne in Alabama, which contains "<i>four hundred</i> species of
+marine shells," includes among them the <i>Cardita planicosta</i>, "and <i>some
+others</i> identical with European species, or very nearly allied to them,"
+Sir C. Lyell says it is "highly probable the Claiborne beds agree in age
+with the central or Bracklesham group of England." When we find
+contemporaneity alleged on the strength of a community no greater than
+that which sometimes exists between strata of widely-different ages in
+the same country, it seems as though the above-quoted caution had been
+forgotten. It appears to be assumed for the occasion, that species which
+had a wide range in space had a narrow range in time; which is the
+reverse of the fact. The tendency to systematize overrides the evidence,
+and thrusts Nature into a formula too rigid to fit her endless variety.</p>
+
+<p>"But," it may be urged, "surely, when in different places the order of
+superposition, the mineral characters, and the fossils, agree, it may
+safely be concluded that the formations thus corresponding date back to
+the same time. If, for example, the United States display a succession
+of Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous systems, lithologically similar
+to those known here by those names, and characterized by like fossils,
+it is a fair inference that these groups of strata were severally being
+deposited in America while their equivalents were being deposited here."</p>
+
+<p>On this position, which seems a strong one, we have, in the first place,
+to remark, that the evidence of correspondence is always more or less
+suspicious. We have already adverted to the several "idols"&mdash;if we may
+use Bacon's metaphor&mdash;to which geologists unconsciously sacrifice, when
+interpreting the structures of unexplored regions. Carrying with them
+the classification of strata existing in Europe,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> and assuming that
+groups of strata in other parts of the world must answer to some of the
+groups of strata known here, they are necessarily prone to assert
+parallelism on insufficient evidence. They scarcely entertain the
+previous question, whether the formations they are examining have or
+have not any European equivalents; but the question is&mdash;with which of
+the European series shall they be classed?&mdash;with which do they most
+agree?&mdash;from which do they differ least? And this being the mode of
+inquiry, there is apt to result great laxity of interpretation. How lax
+the interpretation really is, may be readily shown. When strata are
+discontinuous, as between Europe and America, no evidence can be derived
+from the order of superposition, apart from mineral characters and
+organic remains; for, unless strata can be continuously traced, mineral
+characters and organic remains afford the only means of classing them as
+such or such. As to the test of mineral characters, we have seen that it
+is almost worthless; and no modern geologist would dare to say it should
+be relied on. If the Old Red Sandstone series in mid-England, differs
+wholly in lithological aspect from the equivalent series in South Devon,
+it is clear that similarities of texture and composition cannot justify
+us in classing a system of strata in another quarter of the globe with
+some European system. The test of fossils is the only one that remains;
+and with how little strictness this test is applied, one case will show.
+Of forty-six species of British Devonian corals, only six occur in
+America; and this, notwithstanding the wide range which the <i>Anthozoa</i>
+are known to have. Similarly of the <i>Mollusca</i> and <i>Crinoidea</i>, it
+appears that, while there are sundry genera found in America which are
+found here, there are scarcely any of the same species. And Sir Charles
+Lyell admits that "the difficulty of deciding on the exact parallelism
+of the New York subdivisions, as above enumerated, with the members of
+the European Devonian, is very great, so few are the species in common."
+Yet it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> is on the strength of community of fossils, that the whole
+Devonian series of the United States is assumed to be contemporaneous
+with the whole Devonian series of England. And it is partly on the
+ground that the Devonian of the United States corresponds in time with
+our own Devonian, that Sir Charles Lyell concludes the superjacent
+coal-measures of the two countries to be of the same age. Is it not,
+then, as we said, that the evidence in these cases is very suspicious?
+Should it be replied, as it may fairly be, that this correspondence from
+which the synchronism of distant formations is inferred, is not a
+correspondence between particular species or particular genera, but
+between the general characters of the contained assemblages of
+fossils&mdash;between the <i>facies</i> of the two Faunas; the rejoinder is, that
+though such correspondence is a stronger evidence of synchronism it is
+still an insufficient one. To infer synchronism from such
+correspondence, involves the postulate that throughout each geologic era
+there has habitually existed a recognizable similarity between the
+groups of organic forms inhabiting all the different parts of the Earth;
+and that the causes which have in one part of the Earth changed the
+organic forms into those which characterize the next era, have
+simultaneously acted in all other parts of the Earth, in such ways as to
+produce parallel changes of their organic forms. Now this is not only a
+large assumption to make; but it is an assumption contrary to
+probability. The probability is, that the causes which have changed
+Faunas have been local rather than universal; that hence while the
+Faunas of some regions have been rapidly changing, those of others have
+been almost quiescent; and that when those of others have been changed,
+it has been, not in such ways as to maintain parallelism, but in such
+ways as to produce divergence.</p>
+
+<p>Even supposing, however, that districts some hundreds of miles apart,
+furnished groups of strata which completely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> agreed in their order of
+superposition, their mineral characters, and their fossils, we should
+still have inadequate proof of contemporaneity. For there are
+conditions, very likely to occur, under which such groups might differ
+widely in age. If there be a continent of which the strata crop out on
+the surface obliquely to the line of coast&mdash;running, say,
+west-north-west, while the coast runs east and west&mdash;it is clear that
+each group of strata will crop out on the beach at a particular part of
+the coast; that further west the next group of strata will crop out on
+the beach; and so continuously. As the localization of marine plants and
+animals, is in a considerable degree determined by the natures of the
+rocks and their detritus, it follows that each part of this coast will
+have its more or less distinct Flora and Fauna. What now must result
+from the action of the waves in the course of a geologic epoch? As the
+sea makes slow inroads on the land, the place at which each group of
+strata crops out on the beach will gradually move towards the west: its
+distinctive fish, mollusks, crustaceans, and sea-weeds, migrating with
+it. Further, the detritus of each of these groups of strata will, as the
+point of outcrop moves westwards, be deposited over the detritus of the
+group in advance of it. And the consequence of these actions, carried on
+for one of those enormous periods which a geologic change takes, will be
+that, corresponding to each eastern stratum, there will arise a stratum
+far to the west, which, though occupying the same position relatively to
+other beds, formed of like materials, and containing like fossils, will
+yet be perhaps a million years later in date.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>But the illegitimacy, or at any rate the great doubtfulness, of many
+current geological inferences, is best seen when we contemplate
+terrestrial changes now going on; and ask how far such inferences are
+countenanced by them. If we carry out rigorously the modern method of
+interpreting geological phenomena, which Sir Charles Lyell has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> done so
+much to establish&mdash;that of referring them to causes like those at
+present in action&mdash;we cannot fail to see how improbable are sundry of
+the received conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>Along each shore which is being worn away by the waves, there are being
+formed mud, sand, and pebbles. This detritus has, in each locality, a
+more or less special character; determined by the nature of the strata
+destroyed. In the English Channel it is not the same as in the Irish
+Channel; on the east coast of Ireland it is not the same as on the west
+coast; and so throughout. At the mouth of each great river, there is
+being deposited sediment differing more or less from that deposited at
+the mouths of other rivers in colour and quality; forming strata which
+are here red, there yellow, and elsewhere brown, grey, or dirty white.
+Besides which various formations, going on in deltas and along shores,
+there are some much wider, and still more strongly contrasted,
+formations. At the bottom of the &AElig;gean Sea, there is accumulating a bed
+of Pteropod shells, which will eventually, no doubt, become a calcareous
+rock. For some hundreds of thousands of square miles, the ocean-bed
+between Great Britain and North America, is being covered with a stratum
+of chalk; and over large areas in the Pacific, there are going on
+deposits of coralline limestone. Thus, there are at this moment being
+produced in different places multitudinous strata differing from one
+another in lithological characters. Name at random any part of the
+sea-bottom, and ask whether the deposit there taking place is like the
+deposit taking place at some distant part of the sea-bottom, and the
+almost-certainly correct answer will be&mdash;No. The chances are not in
+favour of similarity, but against it&mdash;many to one against it.</p>
+
+<p>In the order of superposition of strata there is being established a
+like variety. Each region of the Earth's surface has its special history
+of elevations, subsidences, periods of rest: and this history in no case
+fits chronologi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>cally with the history of any other portion. River
+deltas are now being thrown down on formations of different ages: some
+very ancient, some quite modern. While here there has been deposited a
+series of beds many hundreds of feet thick, there has elsewhere been
+deposited but a single bed of fine mud. While one region of the Earth's
+crust, continuing for a vast epoch above the surface of the ocean, bears
+record of no changes save those resulting from denudation; another
+region of the Earth's crust gives proof of sundry changes of level, with
+their several resulting masses of stratified detritus. If anything is to
+be judged from current processes, we must infer, not only that
+everywhere the succession of sedimentary formations differs more or less
+from the succession elsewhere; but also that in each place, there exist
+groups of strata to which many other places have no equivalents.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to the organic bodies imbedded in formations now in
+progress, a like truth is equally manifest, if not more manifest. Even
+along the same coast, within moderate distances, the forms of life
+differ very considerably; and they differ much more on coasts that are
+remote from one another. Again, dissimilar creatures which are living
+together near the same shore, do not leave their remains in the same
+beds of sediment. For instance, at the bottom of the Adriatic, where the
+prevailing currents cause the deposits to be here of mud, and there of
+calcareous matter, it is proved that different species of co-existing
+shells are being buried in these respective formations. On our own
+coasts, the marine remains found a few miles from shore, in banks where
+fish congregate, are different from those found close to the shore,
+where littoral species flourish. A large proportion of aquatic creatures
+have structures which do not admit of fossilization; while of the rest,
+the great majority are destroyed, when dead, by various kinds of
+scavengers. So that no one deposit near our shores can contain anything
+like a true representation of the Fauna of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> the surrounding sea; much
+less of the co-existing Faunas of other seas in the same latitude; and
+still less of the Faunas of seas in distant latitudes. Were it not that
+the assertion seems needful, it would be almost absurd to say, that the
+organic remains now being buried in the Dogger Bank, can tell us next to
+nothing about the fish, crustaceans, mollusks, and corals, which are
+being buried in the Bay of Bengal. Still stronger is the argument in the
+case of terrestrial life. With more numerous and greater contrasts
+between the types inhabiting one continent and those inhabiting another,
+there is a far more imperfect registry of them. Schouw marks out on the
+Earth more than twenty botanical regions, occupied by groups of forms so
+distinct, that, if fossilized, geologists would scarcely be disposed to
+refer them all to the same period. Of Faunas, the Arctic differs from
+the Temperate; the Temperate from the Tropical; and the South Temperate
+from the North Temperate. Nay, in the South Temperate Zone itself, the
+two regions of South Africa and South America are unlike in their
+mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, mollusks, insects. The shells and
+bones now lying at the bottoms of lakes and estuaries in these several
+regions, have certainly not that similarity which is usually looked for
+in those of contemporaneous strata; and the recent forms exhumed in any
+one of these regions would very untruly represent the present Flora and
+Fauna of the Earth. In conformity with the current style of geological
+reasoning, an exhaustive examination of deposits in the Arctic circle,
+might be held to prove that though at this period there were sundry
+mammals existing, there were no reptiles; while the absence of mammals
+in the deposits of the Galapagos Archipelago, where there are plenty of
+reptiles, might be held to prove the reverse. And at the same time, from
+the formations extending for two thousand miles along the great
+barrier-reef of Australia&mdash;formations in which are imbedded nothing but
+corals, echinoderms, mollusks, crustaceans, and fish, along with an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+occasional turtle, or bird, or cetacean&mdash;it might be inferred that there
+lived in our epoch neither terrestrial reptiles, nor terrestrial
+mammals. The mention of Australia, indeed, suggests an illustration
+which, even alone, would amply prove our case. The Fauna of this region
+differs widely from any that is found elsewhere. On land, all the
+indigenous mammals, except bats, belong to the lowest, or implacental
+division; and the insects are singularly different from those found
+elsewhere. The surrounding seas contain numerous forms which are more or
+less strange; and among the fish there exists a species of shark, which
+is the only living <a name='TC_11'></a><ins class="correction" title="Was 'representive'">representative</ins> of a genus that flourished in early
+geologic epochs. If, now, the modern fossiliferous deposits of Australia
+were to be examined by one ignorant of the existing Australian Fauna;
+and if he were to reason in the usual manner; he would be very unlikely
+to class these deposits with those of the present time. How, then, can
+we place confidence in the tacit assumption that certain formations in
+remote parts of the Earth are referable to the same period, because the
+organic remains contained in them display a certain community of
+character? or that certain others are referable to different periods,
+because the <i>facies</i> of their Faunas are different?</p>
+
+<p>"But," it will be replied, "in past eras the same, or similar, organic
+forms were more widely distributed than now." It may be so; but the
+evidence adduced by no means proves it. The argument by which this
+conclusion is reached, runs a risk of being quoted as an example of
+reasoning in a circle. As already pointed out, between formations in
+remote regions the accepted test of equivalence is community of fossils.
+If, then, the contemporaneity of remote formations is concluded from the
+likeness of their fossils; how can it be said that similar plants and
+animals were once more widely distributed, because they are found in
+contemporaneous strata in remote regions? Is not the fallacy manifest?
+Even supposing there were no such fatal objection as this, the evidence
+commonly assigned would still be insufficient. For we must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> bear in mind
+that the community of organic remains usually thought sufficient proof
+of correspondence in time, is a very imperfect community. When the
+compared sedimentary beds are far apart, it is scarcely expected that
+there will be many species common to the two: it is enough if there be
+discovered a considerable number of common genera. Now had it been
+proved that throughout geologic time, each genus lived but for a short
+period&mdash;a period measured by a single group of strata&mdash;something might
+be inferred. But what if we learn that many of the same genera continued
+to exist throughout enormous epochs, measured by several vast systems of
+strata? "Among molluscs, the genera <i>Avicula</i>, <i>Modiola</i>, <i>Terebratula</i>,
+<i>Lingula</i>, and <i>Orbicula</i>, are found from the Silurian rocks upwards to
+the present day." If, then, between the lowest fossiliferous formations
+and the most recent, there exists this degree of community; must we not
+infer that there will probably often exist a great degree of community
+between strata that are far from contemporaneous?</p>
+
+<p>Thus the reasoning from which it is concluded that similar organic forms
+were once more widely spread than now, is doubly fallacious; and,
+consequently, the classifications of foreign strata based on the
+conclusion are untrustworthy. Judging from the present distribution of
+life, we cannot expect to find similar remains in geographically remote
+strata of the same age; and where, between the fossils of geographically
+remote strata, we do find much similarity, it is probably due rather to
+likeness of conditions than to contemporaneity. If from causes and
+effects such as we now witness, we reason back to the causes and effects
+of past epochs, we discover inadequate warrant for sundry of the
+received doctrines. Seeing, as we do, that in large areas of the Pacific
+this is a period characterized by abundance of corals; that in the North
+Atlantic it is a period in which a great chalk-deposit is being formed;
+and that in the valley of the Mississippi it is a period of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> new
+coal-basins&mdash;seeing also, as we do, that in one extensive continent this
+is peculiarly an era of implacental mammals, and that in another
+extensive continent it is peculiarly an era of placental mammals; we
+have good reason to hesitate before accepting these sweeping
+generalizations which are based on a cursory examination of strata
+occupying but a tenth part of the Earth's surface.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>At the outset, this article was to have been a review of the works of
+Hugh Miller; but it has grown into something much more general.
+Nevertheless, the remaining two doctrines which we propose to criticize,
+may conveniently be treated in connexion with his name, as that of one
+who fully committed himself to them. And first, a few words respecting
+his position.</p>
+
+<p>That he was a man whose life was one of meritorious achievement, every
+one knows. That he was a diligent and successful working geologist,
+scarcely needs saying. That with indomitable perseverance he struggled
+up from obscurity to a place in the world of literature and science,
+shows him to have been highly endowed in character and intelligence. And
+that he had a remarkable power of presenting his facts and arguments in
+an attractive form, a glance at any of his books will quickly prove. By
+all means, let us respect him as a man of activity and sagacity, joined
+with a large amount of poetry. But while saying this we must add, that
+his reputation stands by no means so high in the scientific world as in
+the world at large. Partly from the fact that our Scotch neighbours are
+in the habit of blowing the trumpet rather loudly before their
+notabilities&mdash;partly because the charming style in which his books are
+written has gained him a large circle of readers&mdash;partly, perhaps,
+through a praiseworthy sympathy with him as a self-made man; Hugh Miller
+has met with an amount of applause which, little as we wish to diminish
+it, must not be allowed to blind the public to his defects as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> a man of
+science. The truth is, he was so far committed to a foregone conclusion,
+that he could not become a philosophical geologist. He might be aptly
+described as a theologian studying geology. The dominant idea with which
+he wrote, may be seen in the titles of two of his books&mdash;<i>Footprints of
+the Creator</i>,&mdash;<i>The Testimony of the Rocks</i>. Regarding geological facts
+as evidence for or against certain religious conclusions, it was
+scarcely possible for him to deal with geological facts impartially. His
+ruling aim was to disprove the Development Hypothesis, the assumed
+implications of which were repugnant to him; and in proportion to the
+strength of his feeling, was the one-sidedness of his reasoning. He
+admitted that "God might as certainly have <i>originated</i> the species by a
+law of development, as he <i>maintains</i> it by a law of development;&mdash;the
+existence of a First Great Cause is as perfectly compatible with the one
+scheme as with the other." Nevertheless, he considered the hypothesis at
+variance with Christianity; and therefore combated with it. He
+apparently overlooked the fact, that the doctrines of geology in
+general, as held by himself, had been rejected by many on similar
+grounds; and that he had himself been repeatedly attacked for his
+anti-Christian teachings. He seems not to have perceived that, just as
+his antagonists were wrong in condemning as irreligious, theories which
+he saw were not irreligious; so might he be wrong in condemning, on like
+grounds, the Theory of Evolution. In brief, he fell short of that
+highest faith which knows that all truths must harmonize; and which is,
+therefore, content trustfully to follow the evidence whithersoever it
+leads.</p>
+
+<p>Of course it is impossible to criticize his works without entering on
+this great question to which he chiefly devoted himself. The two
+remaining doctrines to be here discussed, bear directly on this
+question; and, as above said, we propose to treat them in connexion with
+Hugh Miller's name, because, throughout his reasonings, he assumes
+their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> truth. Let it not be supposed, however, that we shall aim to
+prove what he has aimed to disprove. While we purpose showing that his
+geological arguments against the Development Hypothesis are based on
+invalid assumptions; we do not purpose showing that the geological
+arguments urged in support of it are based on valid assumptions. We hope
+to make it apparent that the geological evidence at present obtained, is
+insufficient for either side; further, that there seems little
+probability that sufficient evidence will ever be obtained; and that if
+the question is eventually decided, it must be decided on other than
+geological grounds.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The first of the current doctrines to which we have just referred, is,
+that there occur in the serial records of former life on our planet, two
+great blanks; whence it is inferred that, on at least two occasions, the
+previously existing inhabitants of the Earth were almost wholly
+destroyed, and a different class of inhabitants created. Comparing the
+general life on the Earth to a thread, Hugh Miller says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is continuous from the present time up to the commencement of
+the Tertiary period; and then so abrupt a break occurs, that, with
+the exception of the microscopic diatomace&aelig;, to which I last
+evening referred, and of one shell and one coral, not a single
+species crossed the gap. On its farther or remoter side, however,
+where the Secondary division closes, the intermingling of species
+again begins, and runs on till the commencement of this great
+Secondary division; and then, just where the Pal&aelig;ozoic division
+closes, we find another abrupt break, crossed, if crossed at
+all,&mdash;for there still exists some doubt on the subject,&mdash;by but two
+species of plant."</p></div>
+
+<p>These breaks are supposed to imply actual new creations on the surface
+of our planet&mdash;supposed not by Hugh Miller only, but by the majority of
+geologists. And the terms Pal&aelig;ozoic, Mesozoic, and Cainozoic, are used
+to indicate these three successive systems of life. It is true that some
+accept this belief with caution; knowing how geologic research has been
+all along tending to fill up what were once thought wide gaps. Sir
+Charles Lyell points out that "the hiatus which exists in Great Britain
+between the fossils of the Lias and those of the Magnesian Lime<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>stone,
+is supplied in Germany by the rich fauna and flora of the Muschelkalk,
+Keuper, and Bunter Sandstein, which we know to be of a date precisely
+intermediate." Again he remarks that "until lately the fossils of the
+coal-measures were separated from those of the antecedent Silurian group
+by a very abrupt and decided line of demarcation; but recent discoveries
+have brought to light in Devonshire, Belgium, the Eifel, and Westphalia,
+the remains of a fauna of an intervening period." And once more, he
+says, "we have also in like manner had some success of late years in
+diminishing the hiatus which still separates the Cretaceous and Eocene
+periods in Europe." To which let us add that, since Hugh Miller penned
+the passage above quoted, the second of the great gaps he refers to has
+been very considerably narrowed by the discovery of strata containing
+Pal&aelig;ozoic genera and Mesozoic genera intermingled. Nevertheless, the
+occurrence of two great revolutions in the Earth's Flora and Fauna
+appears still to be held by many; and geologic nomenclature habitually
+assumes it.</p>
+
+<p>Before seeking a solution of the problem thus raised, let us glance at
+the several minor causes which produce breaks in the geological
+succession of organic forms; taking first, the more general ones which
+modify climate, and, therefore, the distribution of life. Among these
+may be noted one which has not, we believe, been named by writers on the
+subject. We mean that resulting from a certain slow astronomic rhythm,
+by which the northern and southern hemispheres are alternately subject
+to greater extremes of temperature. In consequence of the slight
+ellipticity of its orbit, the Earth's distance from the sun varies to
+the extent of some 3,000,000 of miles. At present, the aphelion occurs
+at the time of our northern summer; and the perihelion during the summer
+of the southern hemisphere. In consequence, however, of that slow
+movement of the Earth's axis which produces the precession of the
+equinoxes, this state of things will in time be reversed:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> the Earth
+will be nearest to the sun during the summer of the northern hemisphere,
+and furthest from it during the southern summer or northern winter. The
+period required to complete the slow movement producing these changes,
+is nearly 26,000 years; and were there no modifying process, the two
+hemispheres would alternately experience this coincidence of summer with
+relative nearness to the sun, during a period of 13,000 years. But there
+is also a still slower change in the direction of the axis major of the
+Earth's orbit; from which it results that the alternation we have
+described is completed in about 21,000 years. That is to say, if at a
+given time the Earth is nearest to the sun at our mid-summer, and
+furthest from the sun at our mid-winter; then, in 10,500 years
+afterwards, it will be furthest from the sun at our mid-summer, and
+nearest at our mid-winter. Now the difference between the distances from
+the sun at the two extremes of this alternation, amounts to
+one-thirtieth; and hence, the difference between the quantities of heat
+received from the sun on a summer's day under these opposite conditions
+amounts to one-fifteenth. Estimating this, not with reference to the
+zero of our thermometers, but with reference to the temperature of the
+celestial spaces, Sir John Herschel calculates "23&deg; Fahrenheit, as the
+least variation of temperature under such circumstances which can
+reasonably be attributed to the actual variation of the sun's distance."
+Thus, then, each hemisphere has at a certain epoch, a short summer of
+extreme heat, followed by a long and very cold winter. Through the slow
+change in the direction of the Earth's axis, these extremes are
+gradually mitigated. And at the end of 10,500 years, there is reached
+the opposite state&mdash;a long and moderate summer, with a short and mild
+winter. At present, in consequence of the predominance of sea in the
+southern hemisphere, the extremes to which its astronomical conditions
+subject it, are much ameliorated; while the great proportion of land in
+the northern hemisphere,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> tends to exaggerate such contrast as now
+exists in it between winter and summer: whence it results that the
+climates of the two hemispheres are not widely unlike. But 10,000 years
+hence, the northern hemisphere will undergo annual variations of
+temperature far more marked than now.</p>
+
+<p>In the last edition of his <i>Outlines of Astronomy</i>, Sir John Herschel
+recognizes this as an element in geological processes; regarding it as
+possibly a part-cause of those climatic changes indicated by the records
+of the Earth's past. That it has had much to do with those larger
+changes of climate of which we have evidence, seems unlikely, since
+there is reason to think that these have been far slower and more
+lasting; but that it must have entailed a rhythmical exaggeration and
+mitigation of the climates otherwise produced, seems beyond question.
+And it seems also beyond question that there must have been a consequent
+rhythmical change in the distribution of organisms&mdash;a rhythmical change
+to which we here wish to draw attention, as one cause of minor breaks in
+the succession of fossil remains. Each species of plant and animal has
+certain limits of heat and cold within which only it can exist; and
+these limits in a great degree determine its geographical position. It
+will not spread north of a certain latitude, because it cannot bear a
+more northern winter, nor south of a certain latitude, because the
+summer heat is too great; or else it is indirectly restrained from
+spreading further by the effect of temperature on the humidity of the
+air, or on the distribution of the organisms it lives upon. But now,
+what will result from a slow alteration of climate, produced as above
+described? Supposing the period we set out from is that in which the
+contrast of seasons is least marked, it is manifest that during the
+progress towards the period of most violent contrast, each species of
+plant and animal will gradually change its limits of distribution&mdash;will
+be driven back, here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> by the winter's increasing cold, and there by the
+summer's increasing heat&mdash;will retire into those localities that are
+still fit for it. Thus during 10,000 years, each species will ebb away
+from certain regions it was inhabiting; and during the succeeding 10,000
+years will flow back into those regions. From the strata there forming,
+its remains will disappear; they will be absent from some of the
+superposed strata; and will be found in strata higher up. But in what
+shapes will they re-appear? Exposed during the 21,000 years of their
+slow recession and their slow return, to changing conditions of life,
+they are likely to have undergone modifications; and will probably
+re-appear with slight differences of constitution and perhaps of
+form&mdash;will be new varieties or perhaps new sub-species.</p>
+
+<p>To this cause of minor breaks in the succession of organic forms&mdash;a
+cause on which we have dwelt because it has not been taken into
+account&mdash;we must add sundry others. Besides these periodically-recurring
+changes of climate, there are the irregular ones produced by
+redistributions of land and sea; and these, sometimes less, sometimes
+greater, in degree, than the rhythmical changes, must, like them, cause
+in each region emigrations and immigrations of species; and consequent
+breaks, small or large as the case may be, in the paleontological
+series. Other and more special geological changes must produce other and
+more local blanks in the succession. By some inland elevation the
+natural drainage of a continent is modified; and instead of the sediment
+previously brought down to the sea by it, a great river brings down
+sediment unfavourable to various plants and animals living in its delta:
+whereupon these disappear from the locality, perhaps to re-appear in a
+changed form after a long epoch. Upheavals or subsidences of shores or
+sea-bottoms, involving deviations of marine currents, remove the
+habitats of many species to which such currents are salutary or
+injurious; and further, this redistribution of currents alters the
+places of sedi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>mentary deposits, and thus stops the burying of organic
+remains in some localities, while commencing it in others. Had we space,
+many more such causes of blanks in our paleontological records might be
+added. But it is needless here to enumerate them. They are admirably
+explained and illustrated in Sir Charles Lyell's <i>Principles of
+Geology</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if these minor changes of the Earth's surface produce minor breaks
+in the series of fossilized remains; must not great changes produce
+great breaks? If a local upheaval or subsidence causes throughout its
+small area the absence of some links in the chain of fossil forms; does
+it not follow that an upheaval or subsidence extending over a large part
+of the Earth's surface, must cause the absence of a great number of such
+links throughout a very wide area?</p>
+
+<p>When during a long epoch a continent, slowly sinking, gives place to a
+far-spreading ocean some miles in depth, at the bottom of which no
+deposits from rivers or abraded shores can be thrown down; and when,
+after some enormous period, this ocean-bottom is gradually elevated and
+becomes the site for new strata; it is clear that the fossils contained
+in these new strata are likely to have but little in common with the
+fossils of the strata below them. Take, in illustration, the case of the
+North Atlantic. We have already named the fact that between this country
+and the United States, the ocean-bottom is being covered with a deposit
+of chalk&mdash;a deposit which has been forming, probably, ever since there
+occurred that great depression of the Earth's crust from which the
+Atlantic resulted in remote geologic times. This chalk consists of the
+minute shells of <i>Foraminifera</i>, sprinkled with remains of small
+<i>Entomostraca</i>, and probably a few Pteropod-shells; though the sounding
+lines have not yet brought up any of these last. Thus, in so far as all
+high forms of life are concerned, this new chalk-formation must be a
+blank. At rare intervals, perhaps, a polar bear, drifted on an iceberg,
+may have its bones scattered over the bed; or a dead, decaying whale<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+may similarly leave traces. But such remains must be so rare, that this
+new chalk-formation, if accessible, might be examined for a century
+before any of them were disclosed. If now, some millions of years hence,
+the Atlantic-bed should be raised, and estuary deposits or shore
+deposits laid upon it, these would contain remains of a Flora and a
+Fauna so distinct from everything below them, as to appear like a new
+creation.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, along with continuity of life on the Earth's surface, there not
+only <i>may</i> be, but there <i>must</i> be, great gaps in the series of fossils;
+and hence these gaps are no evidence against the doctrine of Evolution.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>One other current assumption remains to be criticized; and it is the one
+on which, more than on any other, depends the view taken respecting the
+question of development.</p>
+
+<p>From the beginning of the controversy, the arguments for and against
+have turned upon the evidence of progression in organic forms, found in
+the ascending series of our sedimentary formations. On the one hand,
+those who contend that higher organisms have been evolved out of lower,
+joined with those who contend that successively higher organisms have
+been created at successively later periods, appeal for proof to the
+facts of Paleontology; which, they say, countenance their views. On the
+other hand, the Uniformitarians, who not only reject the hypothesis of
+development, but deny that the modern forms of life are higher than the
+ancient ones, reply that the paleontological evidence is at present very
+incomplete; that though we have not yet found remains of
+highly-organized creatures in strata of the greatest antiquity, we must
+not assume that no such creatures existed when those strata were
+deposited; and that, probably, search will eventually disclose them.</p>
+
+<p>It must be admitted that thus far, the evidence has gone in favour of
+the latter party. Geological discovery has year after year shown the
+small value of negative facts. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> conviction that there are no traces
+of higher organisms in earlier strata, has resulted not from the absence
+of such traces, but from incomplete examination. At p. 460 of his
+<i>Manual of Elementary Geology</i>, Sir Charles Lyell gives a list in
+illustration of this. It appears that in 1709, fishes were not known
+lower than the Permian system. In 1793 they were found in the subjacent
+Carboniferous system; in 1828 in the Devonian; in 1840 in the Upper
+Silurian. Of reptiles, we read that in 1710 the lowest known were in the
+Permian; in 1844 they were detected in the Carboniferous; and in 1852 in
+the Upper Devonian. While of the Mammalia the list shows that in 1798
+none had been discovered below the Middle Eocene: but that in 1818 they
+were discovered in the Lower Oolite; and in 1847 in the Upper Trias.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is, however, that both parties set out with an inadmissible
+postulate. Of the Uniformitarians, not only such writers as Hugh Miller,
+but also such as Sir Charles Lyell,<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> reason as though we had found
+the earliest, or something like the earliest, strata. Their antagonists,
+whether defenders of the Development Hypothesis or simply
+Progressionists, almost uniformly do the like. Sir R. Murchison, who is
+a Progressionist, calls the lowest fossiliferous strata, "Protozoic."
+Prof. Ansted uses the same term. Whether avowedly or not, all the
+disputants stand on this assumption as their common ground.</p>
+
+<p>Yet is this assumption indefensible, as some who make it very well know.
+Facts may be cited against it which show that it is a more than
+questionable one&mdash;that it is a highly improbable one; while the evidence
+assigned in its favour will not bear criticism.</p>
+
+<p>Because in Bohemia, Great Britain, and portions of North America, the
+lowest unmetamorphosed strata yet discovered,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> contain but slight traces
+of life, Sir R. Murchison conceives that they were formed while yet few,
+if any, plants or animals had been created; and, therefore, classes them
+as "Azoic." His own pages, however, show the illegitimacy of the
+conclusion that there existed at that period no considerable amount of
+life. Such traces of life as have been found in the Longmynd rocks, for
+many years considered unfossiliferous, have been found in some of the
+lowest beds; and the twenty thousand feet of superposed beds, still
+yield no organic remains. If now these superposed strata throughout a
+depth of four miles, are without fossils, though the strata over which
+they lie prove that life had commenced; what becomes of Sir R.
+Murchison's inference? At page 189 of <i>Siluria</i>, a still more conclusive
+fact will be found. The "Glengariff grits," and other accompanying
+strata there described as 13,500 feet thick, contain no signs of
+contemporaneous life. Yet Sir R. Murchison refers them to the Devonian
+period&mdash;a period which had a large and varied marine Fauna. How then,
+from the absence of fossils in the Longmynd beds and their equivalents,
+can we conclude that the Earth was "azoic" when they were formed?</p>
+
+<p>"But," it may be asked, "if living creatures then existed, why do we not
+find fossiliferous strata of that age, or an earlier age?" One reply is,
+that the non-existence of such strata is but a negative fact&mdash;we have
+not found them. And considering how little we know even of the
+two-fifths of the Earth's surface now above the sea, and how absolutely
+ignorant we are of the three-fifths below the sea, it is rash to say
+that no such strata exist. But the chief reply is, that these records of
+the Earth's earlier history have been in great part destroyed, by
+agencies which are ever tending to destroy such records.</p>
+
+<p>It is an established geological doctrine, that sedimentary strata are
+liable to be changed, more or less profoundly, by igneous action. The
+rocks originally classed as "transition,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span> because they were
+intermediate in character between the igneous rocks found below them,
+and the sedimentary strata found above them, are now known to be nothing
+else than sedimentary strata altered in texture and appearance by the
+intense heat of adjacent molten matter; and hence are renamed
+"metamorphic rocks." Modern researches have shown, too, that these
+metamorphic rocks are not, as was once supposed, all of the same age.
+Besides primary and secondary strata which have been transformed by
+igneous action, there are similarly-changed deposits of tertiary
+origin&mdash;deposits changed, even as far as a quarter of a mile from the
+point of contact with neighbouring granite. By this process fossils are
+of course destroyed. "In some cases," says Sir Charles Lyell, "dark
+limestones, replete with shells and corals, have been turned into white
+statuary marble, and hard clays, containing vegetable or other remains,
+into slates called mica-schist or hornblende-schist; every vestige of
+the organic bodies having been obliterated." Again, it is fast becoming
+an acknowledged truth that igneous rock, of whatever kind, is the
+product of sedimentary strata which have been completely melted. Granite
+and gneiss, which are of like chemical composition, have been shown, in
+various cases, to pass one into the other; as at Valorsine, near Mont
+Blanc, where the two, in contact, are observed to "both undergo a
+modification of mineral character. The granite still remaining
+unstratified, becomes charged with green particles; and the talcose
+gneiss assumes a granitiform structure without losing its
+stratification." In the Aberdeen-granite, lumps of unmelted gneiss are
+abundant; and we can ourselves bear witness that the granite on the
+banks of Loch Sunart yields proofs that, when molten, it contained
+incompletely-fused clots of sedimentary strata. Nor is this all. Fifty
+years ago, it was thought that all granitic rocks were primitive, or
+existed before any sedimentary strata; but it is now "no easy task to
+point out a single mass of granite demonstrably more ancient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> than all
+the known fossiliferous deposits." In brief, accumulated evidence shows,
+that by contact with, or proximity to, the molten matter of the Earth's
+nucleus, all beds of sediment are liable to be actually melted, or
+partially fused, or so heated as to agglutinate their particles; and
+that according to the temperature they have been raised to, and the
+circumstances under which they cool, they assume the forms of granite,
+porphyry, trap, gneiss, or rock otherwise altered. Further, it is
+manifest that though strata of various ages have been thus changed, yet
+the most ancient strata have been so changed to the greatest extent;
+both because they have been nearer to the centre of igneous agency; and
+because they have been for longer periods liable to be affected by it.
+Whence it follows, that sedimentary strata passing a certain antiquity,
+are unlikely to be found in an unmetamorphosed state; and that strata
+much earlier than these are certain to have been melted up. Thus if,
+throughout a past of indefinite duration, there had been at work those
+aqueous and igneous agencies which we see still at work, the state of
+the Earth's crust might be just what we find it. We have no evidence
+which puts a limit to the period throughout which this formation and
+destruction of strata has been going on. For aught the facts prove, it
+may have been going on for ten times the period measured by our whole
+series of sedimentary deposits.</p>
+
+<p>Besides having, in the present appearances of the Earth's crust, no data
+for fixing a commencement to these processes&mdash;besides finding that the
+evidence permits us to assume such commencement to have been
+inconceivably remote, as compared even with the vast eras of geology; we
+are not without positive grounds for inferring the inconceivable
+remoteness of such commencement. Modern geology has established truths
+which are irreconcilable with the belief that the formation and
+destruction of strata began when the Cambrian rocks were formed; or at
+anything like so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> recent a time. One fact from <i>Siluria</i> will suffice.
+Sir R. Murchison estimates the vertical thickness of Silurian strata in
+Wales, at from 26,000 to 27,000 feet, or about five miles; and if to
+this we add the vertical depth of the Cambrian strata, on which the
+Silurians lie conformably, there results, on the lowest computation, a
+total depth of some seven miles. Now it is held by geologists, that this
+vast series of formations must have been deposited in an area of gradual
+subsidence. These beds could not have been thus laid one on another in
+regular order, unless the Earth's crust had been at that place sinking,
+either continuously or by small steps. Such an immense subsidence,
+however, must have been impossible without a crust of great thickness.
+The Earth's molten nucleus tends ever, with enormous force, to assume
+the form of a regular oblate spheroid. Any depression of its crust below
+the surface of equilibrium, and any elevation of its crust above that
+surface, have to withstand immense resistances. It follows inevitably
+that, with a thin crust, nothing but small elevations and subsidences
+would have been possible; and that, conversely, a subsidence of seven
+miles implies a crust of great strength, or, in other words, of great
+thickness. Indeed, if we compare this inferred subsidence in the
+Silurian period, with such elevations and depressions as our existing
+continents and oceans display, we see no evidence that the Earth's crust
+was appreciably thinner then than now. What are the implications? If, as
+geologists generally admit, the Earth's crust has resulted from that
+slow cooling which is even still going on&mdash;if we see no sign that at the
+time when the earliest Cambrian strata were formed, this crust was
+appreciably thinner than now; we are forced to conclude that the era
+during which it acquired that great thickness possessed in the Cambrian
+period, was enormous as compared with the interval between the Cambrian
+period and our own. But during the incalculable series of epochs thus
+implied, there existed an ocean, tides, winds, waves,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> rain, rivers. The
+agencies by which the denudation of continents and filling up of seas
+have all along been carried on, were as active then as now. Endless
+successions of strata must have been formed. And when we ask&mdash;Where are
+they? Nature's obvious reply is&mdash;They have been destroyed by that
+igneous action to which so great a part of our oldest-known strata owe
+their fusion or metamorphosis.</p>
+
+<p>Only the last chapter of the Earth's history has come down to us. The
+many previous chapters, stretching back to a time immeasurably remote,
+have been burnt; and with them all the records of life we may presume
+they contained. The greater part of the evidence which might have served
+to settle the Development-controversy, is for ever lost; and on neither
+side can the arguments derived from Geology be conclusive.</p>
+
+<p>"But how happen there to be such evidences of progression as exist?" it
+may be asked. "How happens it that, in ascending from the most ancient
+strata to the most recent strata, we <i>do</i> find a succession of organic
+forms, which, however irregularly, carries us from lower to higher?"
+This question seems difficult to answer. Nevertheless, there is reason
+for thinking that nothing can be safely inferred from the apparent
+progression here cited. And the illustration which shows as much, will,
+we believe, also show how little trust is to be placed in certain
+geological generalizations that appear to be well established. With this
+somewhat elaborate illustration, to which we now pass, our criticisms
+may fitly conclude.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Let us suppose that in a region now covered by wide ocean, there begins
+one of those great and gradual upheavals by which new continents are
+formed. To be precise, let us say that in the South Pacific, midway
+between New Zealand and Patagonia, the sea-bottom has been little by
+little thrust up toward the surface, and is about to emerge. What will
+be the successive phenomena, geological and biological, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> are
+likely to occur before this emerging sea-bottom has become another
+Europe or Asia? In the first place, such portions of the incipient land
+as are raised to the level of the waves, will be rapidly denuded by
+them: their soft substance will be torn up by the breakers, carried away
+by the local currents, and deposited in neighbouring deeper water.
+Successive small upheavals will bring new and larger areas within reach
+of the waves; fresh portions will each time be removed from the surfaces
+previously denuded; and further, some of the newly-formed strata, being
+elevated nearly to the level of the water, will be washed away and
+re-deposited. In course of time the harder formations of the upraised
+sea-bottom will be uncovered. These, being less easily destroyed, will
+remain permanently above the surface; and at their margins will arise
+the usual breaking down of rocks into beach-sand and pebbles. While in
+the slow course of this elevation, going on at the rate of perhaps two
+or three feet in a century, most of the sedimentary deposits produced
+will be again and again destroyed and reformed; there will, in those
+adjacent areas of subsidence which accompany areas of elevation, be more
+or less continuous successions of sedimentary deposits lying on the
+pre-existing ocean bed. And now, what will be the character of these
+strata, old and new? They will contain scarcely any traces of life. The
+deposits that had previously been slowly formed at the bottom of this
+wide ocean, would be sprinkled with fossils of but few species. The
+oceanic Fauna is not a rich one; its hydrozoa do not admit of
+preservation; and the hard parts of its few kinds of molluscs and
+crustaceans and insects are mostly fragile. Hence, when the ocean-bed
+was here and there raised to the surface&mdash;when its strata of sediment
+with their contained organic fragments were torn up and long washed
+about by the breakers before being re-deposited&mdash;when the re-deposits
+were again and again subject to this violent abrading action by
+subsequent small elevations, as they would mostly be; what few fragile<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+organic remains they contained, would be in nearly all cases destroyed.
+Thus such of the first-formed strata as survived the repeated changes of
+level, would be practically "azoic;" like the Cambrian of our
+geologists. When by the washing away of the soft deposits, the hard
+sub-strata had been exposed in the shape of rocky islets, and a footing
+had thus been furnished, the pioneers of a new life might be expected to
+make their appearance. What would they be? Not any of the surrounding
+oceanic species, for these are not fitted for a littoral life; but
+species flourishing on some of the far-distant shores of the Pacific. Of
+such, the first to establish themselves would be sea-weeds and
+zoophytes; because the most readily conveyed on floating wood, &amp;c., and
+because when conveyed they would find fit food. It is true that
+Cirrhipeds and Lamellibranchs, subsisting on the minute creatures which
+everywhere people the sea, would also find fit food. But the chances of
+early colonization are in favour of species which, multiplying by
+agamogenesis, can people a whole shore from a single germ; and against
+species which, multiplying only by gamogenesis, must be introduced in
+considerable numbers that some may propagate. Thus we infer that the
+earliest traces of life left in the sedimentary deposits near these new
+shores, will be traces of life as humble as that indicated in the most
+ancient rocks of Great Britain and Ireland. Imagine now that the
+processes above indicated, continue&mdash;that the emerging lands become
+wider in extent, and fringed by higher and more varied shores; and that
+there still go on those ocean-currents which, at long intervals, convey
+from far distant shores immigrant forms of life. What will result? Lapse
+of time will of course favour the introduction of such new forms:
+admitting, as it must, of those combinations of fit conditions, which
+can occur only after long intervals. Moreover, the increasing area of
+the islands, individually and as a group, implies increasing length of
+coast, and therefore a longer line of contact with the streams and waves
+which bring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> drifting masses bearing germs of fresh life. And once more,
+the comparatively-varied shores, presenting physical conditions which
+change from mile to mile, will furnish suitable habitats for more
+numerous species. So that as the elevation proceeds, three causes
+conspire to introduce additional marine plants and animals. To what
+classes will the increasing Fauna be for a long period confined? Of
+course, to classes of which individuals, or their germs, are most liable
+to be carried far away from their native shores by floating sea-weed or
+drift-wood; to classes which are also least likely to perish in transit,
+or from change of climate; and to those which can best subsist around
+coasts comparatively bare of life. Evidently then, corals, annelids,
+inferior molluscs, and crustaceans of low grade, will chiefly constitute
+the early Fauna. The large predatory members of these classes, will be
+later in establishing themselves; both because the new shores must first
+become well peopled by the creatures they prey on, and because, being
+more complex, they, or their ova, must be less likely to survive the
+journey, and the change of conditions. We may infer, then, that the
+strata deposited next after the almost "azoic" strata, would contain the
+remains of invertebrata, allied to those found near the shores of
+Australia and South America. Of such invertebrate remains, the lower
+beds would furnish comparatively few genera, and those of relatively low
+types; while in the upper beds the number of genera would be greater,
+and the types higher: just as among the fossils of our Silurian system.
+As this great geologic change slowly advanced through its long history
+of earthquakes, volcanic disturbances, minor upheavals and
+subsidences&mdash;as the extent of the archipelago became greater and its
+smaller islands coalesced into larger ones, while its coast-line grew
+still longer and more varied, and the neighbouring sea more thickly
+inhabited by inferior forms of life; the lowest division of the
+vertebrata would begin to be represented. In order of time, fish would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+naturally come later than the lower invertebrata; both as being less
+likely to have their ova transported across the waste of waters, and as
+requiring for their subsistence a pre-existing Fauna of some
+development. They might be expected to make their appearance along with
+the predaceous crustaceans; as they do in the uppermost Silurian rocks.
+And here, too, let us remark, that as, during this long epoch we have
+been describing, the sea would have made great inroads on some of the
+newly-raised lands which had remained stationary; and would probably in
+some places have reached masses of igneous or metamorphic rocks; there
+might, in course of time, arise by the decomposition and denudation of
+such rocks, local deposits coloured with oxide of iron, like our Old Red
+Sandstone. And in these deposits might be buried the remains of the fish
+then peopling the neighbouring sea.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, how would the surfaces of the upheaved masses be occupied? At
+first their deserts of naked rocks would bear only the humblest forms of
+vegetal life, such as we find in grey and orange patches on our own
+rugged mountain sides; for these alone could flourish on such surfaces,
+and their spores would be the most readily transported. When, by the
+decay of such protophytes, and that decomposition of rock effected by
+them, there had resulted a fit habitat for mosses; these, of which the
+germs might be conveyed in drifted trees, would begin to spread. A soil
+having been eventually thus produced, it would become possible for
+plants of higher organization to find roothold; and as the archipelago
+and its constituent islands grew larger, and had more multiplied
+relations with winds and waters, such higher plants might be expected
+ultimately to have their seeds transferred from the nearest lands. After
+something like a Flora had thus colonized the surface, it would become
+possible for insects to exist; and of air-breathing creatures, insects
+would manifestly be among the first to find their way from elsewhere.
+As, however, terres<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>trial organisms, both vegetal and animal, are less
+likely than marine organisms to survive the accidents of transport from
+distant shores; it is inferable that long after the sea surrounding
+these new lands had acquired a varied Flora and Fauna, the lands
+themselves would still be comparatively bare; and thus that the early
+strata, like our Silurians, would afford no traces of terrestrial life.
+By the time that large areas had been raised above the ocean, we may
+fairly suppose a luxuriant vegetation to have been acquired. Under what
+circumstances are we likely to find this vegetation fossilized? Large
+surfaces of land imply large rivers with their accompanying deltas; and
+are liable to have lakes and swamps. These, as we know from extant
+cases, are favourable to rank vegetation; and afford the conditions
+needful for preserving it in coal-beds. Observe, then, that while in the
+early history of such a continent a carboniferous period could not
+occur, the occurrence of a carboniferous period would become probable
+after long-continued upheavals had uncovered large areas. As in our own
+sedimentary series, coal-beds would make their appearance only after
+there had been enormous accumulations of earlier strata charged with
+marine fossils.</p>
+
+<p>Let us ask next, in what order the higher forms of animal life would
+make their appearance. We have seen how, in the succession of marine
+forms, there would be something like a progress from the lower to the
+higher: bringing us in the end to predaceous molluscs, crustaceans, and
+fish. What are likely to succeed fish? After marine creatures, those
+which would have the greatest chance of surviving the voyage would be
+amphibious reptiles; both because they are more tenacious of life than
+higher animals, and because they would be less completely out of their
+element. Such reptiles as can live in both fresh and salt water, like
+alligators; and such as are drifted out of the mouths of great rivers on
+floating trees, as Humboldt says the Orinoco<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> alligators are; might be
+early colonists. It is manifest, too, that reptiles of other kinds would
+be among the first vertebrata to people the new continent. If we
+consider what will occur on one of those natural rafts of trees, soil,
+and matted vegetable matter, sometimes swept out to sea by such currents
+as the Mississippi, with a miscellaneous living cargo; we shall see that
+while the active, hot-blooded, highly-organized creatures will soon die
+of starvation and exposure, the inert, cold-blooded ones, which can go
+long without food, will live perhaps for weeks; and so, out of the
+chances from time to time occurring during long periods, reptiles will
+be the first to get safely landed on foreign shores: as indeed they are
+even now known sometimes to be. The transport of mammalia being
+comparatively precarious, must, in the order of probability, be longer
+postponed; and would, indeed, be unlikely to occur until by the
+enlargement of the new continent, the distances of its shores from
+adjacent lands had been greatly diminished, or the formation of
+intervening islands had increased the chances of survival. Assuming,
+however, that the facilities for immigration had become adequate; which
+would be the first mammals to arrive and live? Not large herbivores; for
+they would be soon drowned if by any accident carried out to sea. Not
+the carnivora; for these would lack appropriate food, even if they
+outlived the voyage. Small quadrupeds frequenting trees, and feeding on
+insects, would be those most likely both to be drifted away from their
+native lands and to find fit food in a new one. Insectivorous mammals,
+like in size to those found in the Trias and the Stonesfield slate,
+might naturally be looked for as the pioneers of the higher vertebrata.
+And if we suppose the facilities of communication to be again increased,
+either by a further shallowing of the intervening sea and a consequent
+multiplication of islands, or by an actual junction of the new continent
+with an old one, through continued upheavals;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span> we should finally have an
+influx of the larger and more perfect mammals.</p>
+
+<p>Now rude as is this sketch of a process that would be extremely
+elaborate and involved, and open as some of its propositions are to
+criticisms which there is no space here to meet; no one will deny that
+it represents something like the biologic history of the supposed new
+continent. Details apart, it is manifest that simple organisms, able to
+flourish under simple conditions of life, would be the first successful
+immigrants; and that more complex organisms, needing for their existence
+the fulfilment of more complex conditions, would afterwards establish
+themselves in something like an ascending succession. At the one extreme
+we see every facility. The new individuals can be conveyed in the shape
+of minute germs; immense numbers of these are perpetually being carried
+in all directions to great distances by ocean-currents&mdash;either detached
+or attached to floating bodies; they can find nutriment wherever they
+arrive; and the resulting organisms can multiply asexually with great
+rapidity. At the other extreme, we see every difficulty. The new
+individuals must be conveyed in their adult forms; their numbers are, in
+comparison, utterly insignificant; they live on land, and are very
+unlikely to be carried out to sea; when so carried, the chances are
+immense against their escape from drowning, starvation, or death by
+cold; if they survive the transit, they must have a pre-existing Flora
+or Fauna to supply their special food; they require, also, the
+fulfilment of various other physical conditions; and unless at least two
+individuals of different sexes are safely landed, the race cannot be
+established. Manifestly, then, the immigration of each successively
+higher order of organisms, having, from one or other additional
+condition to be fulfilled, an enormously-increased probability against
+it, would naturally be separated from the immigration of a lower order
+by some period like a geologic epoch. And thus the successive
+sedimentary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> deposits formed while this new continent was undergoing
+gradual elevation, would seem to furnish clear evidence of a general
+progress in the forms of life. That lands thus raised up in the midst of
+a wide ocean, would first give origin to unfossiliferous strata; next,
+to strata containing only the lowest marine forms; next to strata
+containing only the higher marine forms, ascending finally to fish; and
+that the strata above these would contain reptiles, then small mammals,
+then great mammals; seems to us demonstrable. And if the succession of
+fossils presented by the strata of this supposed new continent, would
+thus simulate the succession presented by our own sedimentary series;
+must we not conclude that our own sedimentary series very possibly
+records nothing more than the phenomena accompanying one of these great
+upheavals? The probability of this conclusion being admitted, it must be
+admitted that the facts of Paleontology can never suffice either to
+prove or disprove the Development Hypothesis; but that the most they can
+do is to show whether the last few pages of the Earth's biologic
+history, are or are not in harmony with this hypothesis&mdash;whether the
+existing Flora and Fauna can or can not be affiliated upon the Flora and
+Fauna of the most recent geologic times.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Sir Charles Lyell is no longer to be classed among
+Uniformitarians. With rare and admirable candour he has, since this was
+written, yielded to the arguments of Mr. Darwin.</p></div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BAIN_ON_THE_EMOTIONS_AND_THE_WILL" id="BAIN_ON_THE_EMOTIONS_AND_THE_WILL"></a>BAIN ON THE EMOTIONS AND THE WILL.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>First published in</i> The Medico-Chirurgical Review <i>for January,</i>
+1860.]</p></div>
+
+
+<p>After the controversy between the Neptunists and the Vulcanists had been
+long carried on without definite results, there came a reaction against
+all speculative geology. Reasoning without adequate data having led to
+nothing, inquirers went into the opposite extreme, and confining
+themselves wholly to collecting data, relinquished reasoning. The
+Geological Society of London was formed with the express object of
+accumulating evidence; for many years hypotheses were forbidden at its
+meetings: and only of late have attempts to organize the mass of
+observations into consistent theory been tolerated.</p>
+
+<p>This reaction and subsequent re-reaction, well illustrate the recent
+history of English thought in general. The time was when our countrymen
+speculated, certainly to as great an extent as any other people, on all
+those high questions which present themselves to the human intellect;
+and, indeed, a glance at the systems of philosophy that are or have been
+current on the Continent, suffices to show how much other nations owe to
+the discoveries of our ancestors. For a generation or two, however,
+these more abstract subjects have fallen into neglect; and, among those
+who plume themselves on being "practical," even into contempt. Partly,
+perhaps, a natural accompaniment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> of our rapid material growth, this
+intellectual phase has been in great measure due to the exhaustion of
+argument, and the necessity for better data. Not so much with a
+conscious recognition of the end to be subserved, as from an unconscious
+subordination to that rhythm traceable in social changes as in other
+things, an era of theorizing without observing, has been followed by an
+era of observing without theorizing. During this long-continued devotion
+to concrete science, an immense quantity of raw material for abstract
+science has been accumulated; and now there is obviously commencing a
+period in which this accumulated raw material will be organized into
+consistent theory. On all sides&mdash;equally in the inorganic sciences, in
+the science of life, and in the science of society&mdash;we may note the
+tendency to pass from the superficial and empirical to the more profound
+and rational.</p>
+
+<p>In Psychology this change is conspicuous. The facts brought to light by
+anatomists and physiologists during the last fifty years, are at length
+being used towards the interpretation of this highest class of
+biological phenomena; and already there is promise of a great advance.
+The work of Mr. Alexander Bain, of which the second volume has been
+recently issued, may be regarded as especially characteristic of the
+transition. It gives us, in orderly arrangement, the great mass of
+evidence supplied by modern science towards the building-up of a
+coherent system of mental philosophy. It is not in itself a system of
+mental philosophy, properly so called; but a classified collection of
+materials for such a system, presented with that method and insight
+which scientific discipline generates, and accompanied with occasional
+passages of an analytical character. It is indeed that which it in the
+main professes to be&mdash;a natural history of the mind. Were we to say that
+the researches of the naturalist who collects and dissects and describes
+species, bear the same relation to the researches of the comparative
+anatomist tracing out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> the laws of organization, which Mr. Bain's
+labours bear to the labours of the abstract psychologist, we should be
+going somewhat too far; for Mr. Bain's work is not wholly descriptive.
+Still, however, such an analogy conveys the best general conception of
+what he has done; and serves most clearly to indicate its needfulness.
+For as, before there can be made anything like true generalizations
+respecting the classification of organisms and the laws of organization,
+there must be an extensive accumulation of the facts presented in
+numerous organic bodies; so, without a tolerably-complete delineation of
+mental phenomena of all orders, there can scarcely arise any adequate
+theory of mind. Until recently, mental science has been pursued much as
+physical science was pursued by the ancients; not by drawing conclusions
+from observations and experiments, but by drawing them from arbitrary <i>a
+priori</i> assumptions. This course, long since abandoned in the one case
+with immense advantage, is gradually being abandoned in the other; and
+the treatment of Psychology as a division of natural history, shows that
+the abandonment will soon be complete.</p>
+
+<p>Estimated as a means to higher results, Mr. Bain's work is of great
+value. Of its kind it is the most scientific in conception, the most
+catholic in spirit, and the most complete in execution. Besides
+delineating the various classes of mental phenomena as seen under that
+stronger light thrown on them by modern science, it includes in the
+picture much which previous writers had omitted&mdash;partly from prejudice,
+partly from ignorance. We refer more especially to the participation of
+bodily organs in mental changes; and the addition to the primary mental
+changes, of those many secondary ones which the actions of the bodily
+organs generate. Mr. Bain has, we believe, been the first to appreciate
+the importance of this element in our states of consciousness; and it is
+one of his merits that he shows how constant and large an element it is.
+Further,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> the relations of voluntary and involuntary movements are
+elucidated in a way that was not possible to writers unacquainted with
+the modern doctrine of reflex action. And beyond this, some of the
+analytical passages that here and there occur, contain important ideas.</p>
+
+<p>Valuable, however, as is Mr. Bain's work, we regard it as essentially
+transitional. It presents in a digested form the results of a period of
+observation; adds to these results many well-delineated facts collected
+by himself; arranges new and old materials with that more scientific
+method which the discipline of our times has fostered; and so prepares
+the way for better generalizations. But almost of necessity its
+classifications and conclusions are provisional. In the growth of each
+science, not only is correct observation needful for the formation of
+true theory; but true theory is needful as a preliminary to correct
+observation. Of course we do not intend this assertion to be taken
+literally; but as a strong expression of the fact that the two must
+advance hand in hand. The first crude theory or rough classification,
+based on very slight knowledge of the phenomena, is requisite as a means
+of reducing the phenomena to some kind of order; and as supplying a
+conception with which fresh phenomena may be compared, and their
+agreement or disagreement noted. Incongruities being by and by made
+manifest by wider examination of cases, there comes such modification of
+the theory as brings it into a nearer correspondence with the evidence.
+This reacts to the further advance of observation. More extensive and
+complete observation brings additional corrections of theory; and so on
+till the truth is reached. In mental science, the systematic collection
+of facts having but recently commenced, it is not to be expected that
+the results can be at once rightly formulated. All that may be looked
+for are approximate generalizations which will presently serve for the
+better directing of inquiry. Hence, even were it not now possible to say
+in what way it does so, we might be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span> tolerably certain that Mr. Bain's
+work bears the stamp of the inchoate state of Psychology.</p>
+
+<p>We think, however, that it will not be difficult to find in what
+respects its organization is provisional; and at the same time to show
+what must be the nature of a more complete organization. We propose here
+to attempt this: illustrating our positions from his recently-issued
+second volume.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Is it possible to make a true classification without the aid of
+analysis? or must there not be an analytical basis to every true
+classification? Can the real relations of things be determined by the
+obvious characteristics of the things? or does it not commonly happen
+that certain hidden characteristics, on which the obvious ones depend,
+are the truly significant ones? This is the preliminary question which a
+glance at Mr. Bain's scheme of the emotions suggests.</p>
+
+<p>Though not avowedly, yet by implication, Mr. Bain assumes that a right
+conception of the nature, the order, and the relations of the emotions,
+may be arrived at by contemplating their conspicuous objective and
+subjective characters, as displayed in the adult. After pointing out
+that we lack those means of classification which serve in the case of
+the sensations, he says&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"In these circumstances we must turn our attention to <i>the manner
+of diffusion</i> of the different passions and emotions, in order to
+obtain a basis of classification analogous to the arrangement of
+the sensations. If what we have already advanced on that subject be
+at all well founded, this is the genuine turning point of the
+method to be chosen, for the same mode of diffusion will always be
+accompanied by the same mental experience, and each of the two
+aspects would identify, and would be evidence of, the other. There
+is, therefore, nothing so thoroughly characteristic of any state of
+feeling as the nature of the diffusive wave that embodies it, or
+the various organs specially roused into action by it, together
+with the manner of the action. The only drawback is our comparative
+ignorance, and our inability to discern the precise character of
+the diffusive currents in every case; a radical imperfection in the
+science of mind as constituted at present.</p>
+
+<p>"Our own consciousness, formerly reckoned the only medium of
+know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>ledge to the mental philosopher, must therefore be still
+referred to as a principal means of discriminating the varieties of
+human feeling. We have the power of noting agreement and difference
+among our conscious states, and on this we can raise a structure of
+classification. We recognise such generalities as pleasure, pain,
+love, anger, through the property of mental or intellectual
+discrimination that accompanies in our mind the fact of emotion. A
+certain degree of precision is attainable by this mode of mental
+comparison and analysis; the farther we can carry such precision
+the better; but that is no reason why it should stand alone to the
+neglect of the corporeal embodiments through which one mind reveals
+itself to others. The companionship of inward feeling with bodily
+manifestation is a fact of the human constitution, and deserves to
+be studied as such; and it would be difficult to find a place more
+appropriate than a treatise on the mind for setting forth the
+conjunctions and sequences traceable in this department of nature.
+I shall make no scruple in conjoining with the description of the
+mental phenomena the physical appearances, in so far as I am able
+to ascertain them.</p>
+
+<p>"There is still one other quarter to be referred to in settling a
+complete arrangement of the emotions, namely, the varieties of
+human conduct, and the machinery created in subservience to our
+common susceptibilities. For example, the vast superstructure of
+fine art has its foundations in human feeling, and in rendering an
+account of this we are led to recognise the interesting group of
+artistic or &aelig;sthetic emotions. The same outward reference to
+conduct and creations brings to light the so-called moral sense in
+man, whose foundations in the mental system have accordingly to be
+examined.</p>
+
+<p>"Combining together these various indications, or sources of
+discrimination,&mdash;outward objects, diffusive mode or expression,
+inward consciousness, resulting conduct and institutions,&mdash;I adopt
+the following arrangement of the families or natural orders of
+emotion."</p></div>
+
+<p>Here, then, are confessedly adopted, as bases of classification, the
+most manifest characters of the emotions; as discerned subjectively, and
+objectively. The mode of diffusion of an emotion is one of its outside
+aspects; the institutions it generates form another of its outside
+aspects; and though the peculiarities of the emotion as a state of
+consciousness, seem to express its intrinsic and ultimate nature, yet
+such peculiarities as are perceptible by simple introspection, must also
+be classed as superficial peculiarities. It is a familiar fact that
+various intellectual states of consciousness turn out, when analyzed, to
+have natures widely unlike those which at first appear; and we believe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>
+the like will prove true of emotional states of consciousness. Just as
+our concept of space, which is apt to be thought a simple,
+undecomposable concept, is yet resolvable into experiences quite
+different from that state of consciousness which we call space; so,
+probably, the sentiment of affection or reverence is compounded of
+elements that are severally distinct from the whole which they make up.
+And much as a classification of our ideas which dealt with the idea of
+space as though it were ultimate, would be a classification of ideas by
+their externals; so, a classification of our emotions, which, regarding
+them as simple, describes their aspects in ordinary consciousness, is a
+classification of emotions by their externals.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, then, Mr. Bain's grouping is throughout determined by the most
+manifest attributes&mdash;those objectively displayed in the natural language
+of the emotions, and in the social phenomena that result from them, and
+those subjectively displayed in the aspects the emotions assume in an
+analytical consciousness. And the question is&mdash;Can they be correctly
+grouped after this method?</p>
+
+<p>We think not; and had Mr. Bain carried farther an idea with which he has
+set out, he would probably have seen that they cannot. As already said,
+he avowedly adopts "the natural-history-method:" not only referring to
+it in his preface, but in his first chapter giving examples of botanical
+and zoological classifications, as illustrating the mode in which he
+proposes to deal with the emotions. This we conceive to be a
+philosophical conception; and we have only to regret that Mr. Bain has
+overlooked some of its most important implications. For in what has
+essentially consisted the progress of natural-history-classification? In
+the abandonment of grouping by external, conspicuous characters; and in
+the making of certain internal, but all-essential characters, the bases
+of groups. Whales are not now ranged along with fish, because in their
+general forms and habits of life they resemble fish; but they are
+ranged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> with mammals, because the type of their organization, as
+ascertained by dissection, corresponds with that of mammals. No longer
+considered as sea-weeds in virtue of their forms and modes of growth,
+<i>Polyzoa</i> are now shown, by examination of their economy, to belong to
+the animal kingdom. It is found, then, that the discovery of real
+relationships involves analysis. It has turned out that the earlier
+classifications, guided by general resemblances, though containing much
+truth, and though very useful provisionally, were yet in many cases
+radically wrong; and that the true affinities of organisms, and the true
+homologies of their parts, are to be made out only by examining their
+hidden structures. Another fact of great significance in the history of
+classification is also to be noted. Very frequently the kinship of an
+organism cannot be made out even by exhaustive analysis, if that
+analysis is confined to the adult structure. In many cases it is needful
+to examine the structure in its earlier stages; and even in its
+embryonic stage. So difficult was it, for instance, to determine the
+true position of the <i>Cirrhipedia</i> among animals, by examining mature
+individuals only, that Cuvier erroneously classed them with <i>Mollusca</i>,
+even after dissecting them; and not until their early forms were
+discovered, were they clearly proved to belong to the <i>Crustacea</i>. So
+important, indeed, is the study of development as a means to
+classification, that the first zoologists now hold it to be the only
+absolute criterion.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, in the advance of natural-history-classification, are two
+fundamental facts, which should be borne in mind when classifying the
+emotions. If, as Mr. Bain rightly assumes, the emotions are to be
+grouped after the natural-history-method; then it should be the
+natural-history-method in its complete form, and not in its rude form.
+Mr. Bain will doubtless agree in the belief, that a correct account of
+the emotions in their natures and relations, must correspond with a
+correct account of the nervous system&mdash;must form another side of the
+same ultimate facts. Struc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>ture and function must necessarily harmonize.
+Structures which have with each other certain ultimate connexions, must
+have functions which have answering connexions. Structures which have
+arisen in certain ways, must have functions which have arisen in
+parallel ways. And hence if analysis and development are needful for the
+right interpretation of structures, they must be needful for the right
+interpretation of functions. Just as a scientific description of the
+digestive organs must include not only their obvious forms and
+connexions, but their microscopic characters, and also the ways in which
+they severally result by differentiation from the primitive mucous
+membrane; so must a scientific account of the nervous system include its
+general arrangements, its minute structure, and its mode of evolution;
+and so must a scientific account of nervous actions include the
+answering three elements. Alike in classing separate organisms, and in
+classing the parts of the same organism, the complete
+natural-history-method involves ultimate analysis, aided by development;
+and Mr. Bain, in not basing his classification of the emotions on
+characters reached through these aids, has fallen short of the
+conception with which he set out.</p>
+
+<p>"But," it will perhaps be asked, "how are the emotions to be analyzed,
+and their modes of evolution to be ascertained? Different animals, and
+different organs of the same animal, may readily be compared in their
+internal structures and microscopic structures, as also in their
+developments; but functions, and especially such functions as the
+emotions, do not admit of like comparisons."</p>
+
+<p>It must be admitted that the application of these methods is here by no
+means so easy. Though we can note differences and similarities between
+the internal formations of two animals; it is difficult to contrast the
+mental states of two animals. Though the true morphological relations of
+organs may be made out by observation of embryos; yet, where such organs
+are inactive before birth, we cannot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> completely trace the history of
+their actions. Obviously, too, pursuance of inquiries of the kind
+indicated, raises questions which science is not yet prepared to answer;
+as, for instance&mdash;Whether all nervous functions, in common with all
+other functions, arise by gradual differentiations, as their organs do?
+Whether the emotions are, therefore, to be regarded as divergent modes
+of action that have become unlike by successive modifications? Whether,
+as two organs which originally budded out of the same membrane have not
+only become different as they developed, but have also severally become
+compound internally, though externally simple; so two emotions, simple
+and near akin in their roots, may not only have grown unlike, but may
+also have grown involved in their natures, though seeming homogeneous to
+consciousness? And here, indeed, in the inability of existing science to
+answer these questions which underlie a true psychological
+classification, we see how purely provisional any present classification
+is likely to be.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, even now, classification may be aided by development and
+ultimate analysis to a considerable extent; and the defect in Mr. Bain's
+work is, that he has not systematically availed himself of them as far
+as possible. Thus we may, in the first place, study the evolution of the
+emotions up through the various grades of the animal kingdom: observing
+which of them are earliest and exist with the lowest organization and
+intelligence; in what order the others accompany higher endowments; and
+how they are severally related to the conditions of life. In the second
+place, we may note the emotional differences between the lower and the
+higher human races&mdash;may regard as earlier and simpler those feelings
+which are common to both, and as later and more compound those which are
+characteristic of the most civilized. In the third place, we may observe
+the order in which the emotions unfold during the progress from infancy
+to maturity. And lastly, comparing these three kinds of emotional
+development,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> displayed in the ascending grades of the animal kingdom,
+in the advance of the civilized races, and in individual history, we may
+see in what respects they harmonize, and what are the implied general
+truths.</p>
+
+<p>Having gathered together and generalized these several classes of facts,
+analysis of the emotions would be made easier. Setting out with the
+assumption that every new form of emotion making its appearance in the
+individual or the race, is a modification of some pre-existing emotion,
+or a compound of several pre-existing emotions, we should be greatly
+aided by knowing what always are the pre-existing emotions. When, for
+example, we find that very few of the lower animals show any love of
+accumulation, and that this feeling is absent in infancy&mdash;when we see
+that an infant in arms exhibits anger, fear, wonder, while yet it
+manifests no desire of permanent possession, and that a brute which has
+no acquisitiveness can nevertheless feel attachment, jealousy, love of
+approbation; we may suspect that the feeling which property satisfies is
+compounded out of simpler and deeper feelings. We may conclude that as,
+when a dog hides a bone, there must exist in him a prospective
+gratification of hunger; so there must similarly at first, in all cases
+where anything is secured or taken possession of, exist an ideal
+excitement of the feeling which that thing will gratify. We may further
+conclude that when the intelligence is such that a variety of objects
+come to be utilized for different purposes&mdash;when, as among savages,
+divers wants are satisfied through the articles appropriated for
+weapons, shelter, clothing, ornament; the act of appropriating comes to
+be one constantly involving agreeable associations, and one which is
+therefore pleasurable, irrespective of the end subserved. And when, as
+in civilized life, the property acquired is of a kind not conducing to
+one order of gratification in particular, but is capable of
+administering to all gratifications, the pleasure of acquiring property
+grows more distinct from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> each of the various pleasures subserved&mdash;is
+more completely differentiated into a separate emotion.</p>
+
+<p>This illustration, roughly as it is sketched, will show what we mean by
+the use of comparative psychology in aid of classification. Ascertaining
+by induction the actual order of evolution of the emotions, we are led
+to suspect this to be their order of successive dependence; and are so
+led to recognize their order of ascending complexity; and by consequence
+their true groupings.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, in the very process of arranging the emotions into grades,
+beginning with those involved in the lowest forms of conscious activity
+and ending with those peculiar to the adult civilized man, the way is
+opened for that ultimate analysis which alone can lead us to the true
+science of the matter. For when we find both that there exist in a man
+feelings which do not exist in a child, and that the European is
+characterized by some sentiments which are wholly or in great part
+absent from the savage&mdash;when we see that, besides the new emotions which
+arise spontaneously as the individual becomes completely organized,
+there are new emotions making their appearance in the more advanced
+divisions of our race; we are led to ask&mdash;How are new emotions
+generated? The lowest savages have not even the ideas of justice or
+mercy: they have neither words for them nor can they be made to conceive
+them; and the manifestation of them by Europeans they ascribe to fear or
+cunning. There are &aelig;sthetic emotions common among ourselves, which are
+scarcely in any degree experienced by some inferior races; as, for
+instance, those produced by music. To which instances may be added the
+less marked but more numerous contrasts that exist between civilized
+races in the degrees of their several emotions. And if it is manifest,
+both that all the emotions are capable of being permanently modified in
+the course of successive generations, and that what must be classed as
+new emotions may be brought into existence; then it follows that nothing
+like a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> true conception of the emotions is to be obtained, until we
+understand how they are evolved.</p>
+
+<p>Comparative Psychology, while it raises this inquiry, prepares the way
+for answering it. When observing the differences between races, we can
+scarcely fail to observe also how these differences correspond with
+differences between their conditions of existence, and consequent
+activities. Among the lowest races of men, love of property stimulates
+to the obtainment only of such things as satisfy immediate desires, or
+desires of the immediate future. Improvidence is the rule: there is
+little effort to meet remote contingencies. But the growth of
+established societies having gradually given security of possession,
+there has been an increasing tendency to provide for coming years: there
+has been a constant exercise of the feeling which is satisfied by a
+provision for the future; and there has been a growth of this feeling so
+great that it now prompts accumulation to an extent beyond what is
+needful. Note, again, that under the discipline of social life&mdash;under a
+comparative abstinence from aggressive actions, and a performance of
+those naturally-serviceable actions implied by the division of
+labour&mdash;there has been a development of those gentle emotions of which
+inferior races exhibit but the rudiments. Savages delight in giving pain
+rather than pleasure&mdash;are almost devoid of sympathy; while among
+ourselves, philanthropy organizes itself in laws, establishes numerous
+institutions, and dictates countless private benefactions.</p>
+
+<p>From which and other like facts, does it not seem an unavoidable
+inference, that new emotions are developed by new experiences&mdash;new
+habits of life? All are familiar with the truth that, in the individual,
+each feeling may be strengthened by performing those actions which it
+prompts; and to say that the feeling is <i>strengthened</i>, is to say that
+it is in part <i>made</i> by these actions. We know, further, that not
+unfrequently, individuals, by persistence in special courses of conduct,
+acquire special likings for such courses,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> disagreeable as these may be
+to others; and these whims, or morbid tastes, imply incipient emotions
+corresponding to these special activities. We know that emotional
+characteristics, in common with all others, are hereditary; and the
+differences between civilized nations descended from the same stock,
+show us the cumulative results of small modifications hereditarily
+transmitted. And when we see that between savage and civilized races
+which diverged from one another in the remote past, and have for a
+hundred generations followed modes of life becoming ever more unlike,
+there exist still greater emotional contrasts; may we not infer that the
+more or less distinct emotions which characterize civilized races, are
+the organized results of certain daily-repeated combinations of mental
+states which social life involves? Must we not say that habits not only
+modify emotions in the individual, and not only beget tendencies to like
+habits and accompanying emotions in descendants, but that when the
+conditions of the race make the habits persistent, this progressive
+modification may go on to the extent of producing emotions so far
+distinct as to seem new? And if so, we may suspect that such new
+emotions, and by implication all emotions analytically considered,
+consist of aggregated and consolidated groups of those simpler feelings
+which habitually occur together in experience. When, in the
+circumstances of any race, some one kind of action or set of actions,
+sensation or set of sensations, is usually followed, or accompanied, by
+various other sets of actions or sensations, and so entails a large mass
+of pleasurable or painful states of consciousness; these, by frequent
+repetition, become so connected together that the initial action or
+sensation brings the ideas of all the rest crowding into consciousness:
+producing, in some degree, the pleasures or pains that have before been
+felt in reality. And when this relation, besides being frequently
+repeated in the individual, occurs in successive generations, all the
+many nervous actions involved tend to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> grow organically connected. They
+become incipiently reflex; and, on the occurrence of the appropriate
+stimulus, the whole nervous apparatus which in past generations was
+brought into activity by this stimulus, becomes nascently excited. Even
+while yet there have been no individual experiences, a vague feeling of
+pleasure or pain is produced; constituting what we may call the body of
+the emotion. And when the experiences of past generations come to be
+repeated in the individual, the emotion gains both strength and
+definiteness; and is accompanied by the appropriate specific ideas.</p>
+
+<p>This view of the matter, which we believe the established truths of
+Physiology and Psychology unite in indicating, and which is the view
+that generalizes the phenomena of habit, of national characteristics, of
+civilization in its moral aspects, at the same time that it gives us a
+conception of emotion in its origin and ultimate nature, may be
+illustrated from the mental modifications undergone by animals. On
+newly-discovered lands not inhabited by man, birds are so devoid of fear
+as to allow themselves to be knocked over with sticks; but in the course
+of generations, they acquire such a dread of man as to fly on his
+approach; and this dread is manifested by young as well as by old. Now
+unless this change be ascribed to the killing-off of the less fearful,
+and the preservation and multiplication of the more fearful, which,
+considering the comparatively small number killed by man, is an
+inadequate cause; it must be ascribed to accumulated experiences; and
+each experience must be held to have a share in producing it. We must
+conclude that in each bird which escapes with injuries inflicted by man,
+or is alarmed by the outcries of other members of the flock (gregarious
+creatures of any intelligence being necessarily more or less
+sympathetic), there is established an association of ideas between the
+human aspect and the pains, direct and indirect, suffered from human
+agency. And we must further conclude that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> the state of consciousness
+which impels the bird to take flight, is at first nothing more than an
+ideal reproduction of those painful impressions which before followed
+man's approach; that such ideal reproduction becomes more vivid and more
+massive as the painful experiences, direct or sympathetic, increase; and
+that thus the emotion in its incipient state, is nothing else than an
+aggregation of the revived pains before experienced. As, in the course
+of generations, the young birds of this race begin to display a fear of
+man before yet they have been injured by him, it is an unavoidable
+inference that the nervous system of the race has been organically
+modified by these experiences: we have no choice but to conclude that
+when a young bird is thus led to fly, it is because the impression
+produced on its senses by the approaching man, entails, through an
+incipiently-reflex action, a partial excitement of all those nerves
+which in its ancestors had been excited under the like conditions; that
+this partial excitement has its accompanying painful consciousness; and
+that the vague painful consciousness thus arising, constitutes emotion
+proper&mdash;<i>emotion undecomposable into specific experiences, and therefore
+seemingly homogeneous</i>.</p>
+
+<p>If such be the explanation of the fact in this case, then it is in all
+cases. If emotion is so generated here, then it is so generated
+throughout. We must perforce conclude that the emotional modifications
+displayed by different nations, and those higher emotions by which
+civilized are distinguished from savage, are to be accounted for on the
+same principle. And concluding this, we are led strongly to suspect that
+the emotions in general have severally thus originated.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps we have now made sufficiently clear what we mean by the study of
+the emotions through analysis and development. We have aimed to justify
+the positions that, without analysis aided by development, there cannot
+be a true natural history of the emotions; and that a natural history of
+the emotions based on external characters can be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span> but provisional. We
+think that Mr. Bain, in confining himself to an account of the emotions
+as they exist in the adult civilized man, has neglected those classes of
+facts out of which the science of the matter must chiefly be built. It
+is true that he has treated of habits as modifying emotions in the
+individual; but he has not recognized the fact that where conditions
+render habits persistent in successive generations, such modifications
+are cumulative: he has not hinted that the modifications produced by
+habit are emotions in the making. It is true, also, that he occasionally
+refers to the characteristics of children; but he does not
+systematically trace the changes through which childhood passes into
+manhood, as throwing light on the order and genesis of the emotions. It
+is further true that he here and there refers to national traits in
+illustration of his subject; but these stand as isolated facts, having
+no general significance: there is no hint of any relation between them
+and the national circumstances; while all those many moral contrasts
+between lower and higher races which throw great light on
+classification, are passed over. And once more, it is true that many
+passages of his work, and sometimes, indeed, whole sections of it, are
+analytical; but his analyses are incidental&mdash;they do not underlie his
+entire scheme, but are here and there added to it. In brief, he has
+written a Descriptive Psychology, which does not appeal to Comparative
+Psychology and Analytical Psychology for its leading ideas. And in doing
+this, he has omitted much that should be included in a natural history
+of the mind; while to that part of the subject with which he has dealt,
+he has given a necessarily-imperfect organization.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Even leaving out of view the absence of those methods and criteria on
+which we have been insisting, it appears to us that meritorious as is
+Mr. Bain's book in its details, it is defective in some of its leading
+ideas. The first paragraphs of his first chapter, quite startled us by
+the strangeness of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> their definitions&mdash;a strangeness which can scarcely
+be ascribed to laxity of expression. The paragraphs run thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mind is comprised under three heads,&mdash;Emotion, Volition, and
+Intellect.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Emotion</span> is the name here used to comprehend all that is understood
+by feelings, states of feeling, pleasures, pains, passions,
+sentiments, affections. Consciousness, and conscious states also
+for the most part denote modes of emotion, although there is such a
+thing as the Intellectual consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Volition</span>, on the other hand, indicates the great fact that our
+Pleasures and Pains, which are not the whole of our emotions,
+prompt to action, or stimulate the active machinery of the living
+framework to perform such operations as procure the first and abate
+the last. To withdraw from a scalding heat, and cling to a gentle
+warmth, are exercises of volition."</p></div>
+
+<p>The last of these definitions, which we may most conveniently take
+first, seems to us very faulty. We cannot but feel astonished that Mr.
+Bain, familiar as he is with the phenomena of reflex action, should have
+so expressed himself as to include a great part of them along with the
+phenomena of volition. He seems to be ignoring the discriminations of
+modern science, and returning to the vague conceptions of the past&mdash;nay
+more, he is comprehending under volition what even the popular speech
+would hardly bring under it. If you were to blame any one for snatching
+his foot from the scalding water into which he had inadvertently put it,
+he would tell you that he could not help it; and his reply would be
+indorsed by the general experience, that the withdrawal of a limb from
+contact with something extremely hot, is quite involuntary&mdash;that it
+takes place not only without volition, but in defiance of an effort of
+will to maintain the contact. How, then, can that be instanced as an
+example of volition, which occurs even when volition is antagonistic? We
+are quite aware that it is impossible to draw any absolute line of
+demarcation between automatic actions and actions which are not
+automatic. Doubtless we may pass gradually from the purely reflex,
+through the consensual, to the voluntary. Taking the case Mr. Bain
+cites, it is manifest that from a heat of such moderate degree that the
+withdrawal from it is wholly voluntary, we may advance by infinitesimal
+steps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> to a heat which compels involuntary withdrawal; and that there is
+a stage at which the voluntary and involuntary actions are mixed. But
+the difficulty of absolute discrimination is no reason for neglecting
+the broad general contrast; any more than it is for confounding light
+with darkness. If we are to include as examples of volition, all cases
+in which pleasures and pains "stimulate the active machinery of the
+living framework to perform such operations as procure the first and
+abate the last," then we must consider sneezing and coughing as examples
+of volition; and Mr. Bain surely cannot mean this. Indeed, we must
+confess ourselves at a loss. On the one hand if he does not mean it, his
+expression is lax to a degree that surprises us in so careful a writer.
+On the other hand, if he does mean it, we cannot understand his point of
+view.</p>
+
+<p>A parallel criticism applies to his definition of Emotion. Here, too, he
+has departed from the ordinary acceptation of the word; and, as we
+think, in the wrong direction. Whatever may be the interpretation that
+is justified by its derivation, the word emotion has come generally to
+mean that kind of feeling which is not a direct result of any action on
+the organism; but is either an indirect result of such action, or arises
+quite apart from such action. It is used to indicate those sentient
+states which are independently generated in consciousness; as
+distinguished from those generated in our corporeal framework, and known
+as sensations. Now this distinction, tacitly made in common speech, is
+one which Psychology cannot well reject; but one which it must adopt,
+and to which it must give scientific precision. Mr. Bain, however,
+appears to ignore any such distinction. Under the term emotion, he
+includes not only passions, sentiments, affections, but all "feelings,
+states of feeling, pleasures, pains,"&mdash;that is, all sensations. This
+does not appear to be a mere lapse of expression; for when, in the
+opening sentence, he asserts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span> that "mind is comprised under the three
+heads&mdash;Emotion, Volition, and Intellect," he of necessity implies that
+sensation is included under one of these heads; and as it cannot be
+included under volition or intellect, it must be classed with emotion;
+as it clearly is in the next sentence.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot but think this a retrograde step. Though distinctions which
+have been established in popular thought and language, are not
+unfrequently merged in the higher generalizations of science (as, for
+instance, when crabs and worms are grouped together in the sub-kingdom
+<i>Annulosa</i>); yet science very generally recognizes the validity of these
+distinctions, as real though not fundamental. And so in the present
+case. Such community as analysis discloses between sensation and
+emotion, must not shut out the broad contrast that exists between them.
+If there needs a wider word, as there does, to signify any sentient
+state whatever; then we may fitly adopt for this purpose the word
+currently so used, namely, "Feeling." And considering as Feelings all
+that great division of mental states which we do not class as
+Cognitions, we may then separate this great division into the two
+orders, Sensations and Emotions.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>And here we may, before concluding, briefly indicate the leading
+outlines of a classification which reduces this distinction to a
+scientific form, and develops it somewhat further&mdash;a classification
+which, while suggested by certain fundamental traits reached without a
+very lengthened inquiry, is yet, we believe, in harmony with that
+disclosed by detailed analysis.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving out of view the Will, which is a simple homogeneous mental
+state, forming the link between feeling and action, and not admitting of
+subdivisions; our states of consciousness fall into two great
+classes&mdash;<span class="smcap">Cognitions</span> and <span class="smcap">Feelings</span>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Cognitions</span>, or those modes of mind in which we are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> occupied with the
+<i>relations</i> that subsist among our feelings, are divisible into four
+great sub-classes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Presentative cognitions</i>; or those in which consciousness is occupied
+in localizing a sensation impressed on the organism&mdash;occupied, that is,
+with the relation between this presented mental state and those other
+presented mental states which make up our consciousness of the part
+affected: as when we cut ourselves.</p>
+
+<p><i>Presentative-representative cognitions</i>; or those in which
+consciousness is occupied with the relation between a sensation or group
+of sensations and the representations of those various other sensations
+that accompany it in experience. This is what we commonly call
+perception&mdash;an act in which, along with certain impressions presented to
+consciousness, there arise in consciousness the ideas of certain other
+impressions ordinarily connected with the presented ones: as when its
+visible form and colour, lead us to mentally endow an orange with all
+its other attributes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Representative cognitions</i>; or those in which consciousness is occupied
+with the relations among ideas or represented sensations; as in all acts
+of recollection.</p>
+
+<p><i>Re-representative cognitions</i>; or those in which the occupation of
+consciousness is not by representation of special relations that have
+before been presented to consciousness; but those in which such
+represented special relations are thought of merely as comprehended in a
+general relation&mdash;those in which the concrete relations once
+experienced, in so far as they become objects of consciousness at all,
+are incidentally represented, along with the abstract relation which
+formulates them. The ideas resulting from this abstraction, do not
+themselves represent actual experiences; but are symbols which stand for
+groups of such actual experiences&mdash;represent aggregates of
+representations. And thus they may be called re-representative
+cognitions. It is clear that the process of re-representa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>tion is
+carried to higher stages, as the thought becomes more abstract.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Feelings</span>, or those modes of mind in which we are occupied, not with the
+relations subsisting between our sentient states, but with the sentient
+states themselves, are divisible into four parallel sub-classes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Presentative feelings</i>, ordinarily called sensations, are those mental
+states in which, instead of regarding a corporeal impression as of this
+or that kind, or as located here or there, we contemplate it in itself
+as pleasure or pain: as when eating.</p>
+
+<p><i>Presentative-representative feelings</i>, embracing a great part of what
+we commonly call emotions, are those in which a sensation, or group of
+sensations, or group of sensations and ideas, arouses a vast aggregation
+of represented sensations; partly of individual experience, but chiefly
+deeper than individual experience, and, consequently, indefinite. The
+emotion of terror may serve as an example. Along with certain
+impressions made on the eyes or ears, or both, are recalled in
+consciousness many of the pains to which such impressions have before
+been the antecedents; and when the relation between such impressions and
+such pains has been habitual in the race, the definite ideas of such
+pains which individual experience has given, are accompanied by the
+indefinite pains that result from inherited effects of
+experiences&mdash;vague feelings which we may call organic representations.
+In an infant, crying at a strange sight or sound while yet in the
+nurse's arms, we see these organic representations called into existence
+in the shape of dim discomfort, to which individual experience has yet
+given no specific outlines.</p>
+
+<p><i>Representative feelings</i>, comprehending the ideas of the feelings above
+classed, when they are called up apart from the appropriate external
+excitements. As instances of these may be named the feelings with which
+the de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>scriptive poet writes, and which are aroused in the minds of his
+readers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Re-representative feelings</i>, under which head are included those more
+complex sentient states that are less the direct results of external
+excitements than the indirect or reflex results of them. The love of
+property is a feeling of this kind. It is awakened not by the presence
+of any special object, but by ownable objects at large; and it is not
+from the mere presence of such object, but from a certain ideal relation
+to them, that it arises. As before shown (p. 253) it consists, not of
+the represented advantages of possessing this or that, but of the
+represented advantages of possession in general&mdash;is not made up of
+certain concrete representations, but of the abstracts of many concrete
+representations; and so is re-representative. The higher sentiments, as
+that of justice, are still more completely of this nature. Here the
+sentient state is compounded out of sentient states that are themselves
+wholly, or almost wholly, re-representative: it involves representations
+of those lower emotions which are produced by the possession of
+property, by freedom of action, etc.; and thus is re-representative in a
+higher degree.</p>
+
+<p>This classification, here roughly indicated and capable of further
+expansion, will be found in harmony with the results of detailed
+analysis aided by development. Whether we trace mental progression
+through the grades of the animal kingdom, through the grades of mankind,
+or through the stages of individual growth; it is obvious that the
+advance, alike in cognitions and feelings, is, and must be, from the
+presentative to the more and more remotely representative. It is
+undeniable that intelligence ascends from those simple perceptions in
+which consciousness is occupied in localizing and classifying
+sensations, to perceptions more and more compound, to simple reasoning,
+to reasoning more and more complex and abstract&mdash;more and more remote
+from sensation. And in the evolution of feelings,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> there is a parallel
+series of steps. Simple sensations; sensations combined together;
+sensations combined with represented sensations; represented sensations
+organized into groups, in which their separate characters are very much
+merged; representations of these representative groups, in which the
+original components have become still more vague. In both cases, the
+progress has necessarily been from the simple and concrete to the
+complex and abstract; and as with the cognitions, so with the feelings,
+this must be the basis of classification.</p>
+
+<p>The space here occupied with criticisms on Mr. Bain's work, we might
+have filled with exposition and eulogy, had we thought this the more
+important. Though we have freely pointed out what we conceive to be its
+defects, let it not be inferred that we question its great merits. We
+repeat that, as a natural history of the mind, we believe it to be the
+best yet produced. It is a most valuable collection of
+carefully-elaborated materials. Perhaps we cannot better express our
+sense of its worth, than by saying that, to those who hereafter give to
+this branch of Psychology a thoroughly scientific organization, Mr.
+Bain's book will be indispensable.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_SOCIAL_ORGANISM" id="THE_SOCIAL_ORGANISM"></a>THE SOCIAL ORGANISM.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>First published in</i> The Westminster Review <i>for January,</i> 1860.]</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Sir James Macintosh got great credit for the saying, that "constitutions
+are not made, but grow." In our day, the most significant thing about
+this saying is, that it was ever thought so significant. As from the
+surprise displayed by a man at some familiar fact, you may judge of his
+general culture; so from the admiration which an age accords to a new
+thought, its average degree of enlightenment may be inferred. That this
+apophthegm of Macintosh should have been quoted and requoted as it has,
+shows how profound has been the ignorance of social science. A small ray
+of truth has seemed brilliant, as a distant rushlight looks like a star
+in the surrounding darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Such a conception could not, indeed, fail to be startling when let fall
+in the midst of a system of thought to which it was utterly alien.
+Universally in Macintosh's day, things were explained on the hypothesis
+of manufacture, rather than that of growth; as indeed they are, by the
+majority, in our own day. It was held that the planets were severally
+projected round the Sun from the Creator's hand, with just the velocity
+required to balance the Sun's attraction. The formation of the Earth,
+the separation of sea from land, the production of animals, were
+mechanical works from which God rested as a labourer rests. Man was
+supposed to be moulded after a manner somewhat akin to that in which a
+modeller makes a clay-figure. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> of course, in harmony with such
+ideas, societies were tacitly assumed to be arranged thus or thus by
+direct interposition of Providence; or by the regulations of law-makers;
+or by both.</p>
+
+<p>Yet that societies are not artificially put together, is a truth so
+manifest, that it seems wonderful men should ever have overlooked it.
+Perhaps nothing more clearly shows the small value of historical
+studies, as they have been commonly pursued. You need but to look at the
+changes going on around, or observe social organization in its leading
+traits, to see that these are neither supernatural, nor are determined
+by the wills of individual men, as by implication the older historians
+teach; but are consequent on general natural causes. The one case of the
+division of labour suffices to prove this. It has not been by command of
+any ruler that some men have become manufacturers, while others have
+remained cultivators of the soil. In Lancashire, millions have devoted
+themselves to the making of cotton-fabrics; in Yorkshire, another
+million lives by producing woollens; and the pottery of Staffordshire,
+the cutlery of Sheffield, the hardware of Birmingham, severally occupy
+their hundreds of thousands. These are large facts in the structure of
+English society; but we can ascribe them neither to miracle, nor to
+legislation. It is not by "the hero as king," any more than by
+"collective wisdom," that men have been segregated into producers,
+wholesale distributors, and retail distributors. Our industrial
+organization, from its main outlines down to its minutest details, has
+become what it is, not simply without legislative guidance, but, to a
+considerable extent, in spite of legislative hindrances. It has arisen
+under the pressure of human wants and resulting activities. While each
+citizen has been pursuing his individual welfare, and none taking
+thought about division of labour, or conscious of the need of it,
+division of labour has yet been ever becoming more complete. It has been
+doing this slowly and silently: few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> having observed it until quite
+modern times. By steps so small, that year after year the industrial
+arrangements have seemed just what they were before&mdash;by changes as
+insensible as those through which a seed passes into a tree; society has
+become the complex body of mutually-dependent workers which we now see.
+And this economic organization, mark, is the all-essential organization.
+Through the combination thus spontaneously evolved, every citizen is
+supplied with daily necessaries; while he yields some product or aid to
+others. That we are severally alive to-day, we owe to the regular
+working of this combination during the past week; and could it be
+suddenly abolished, multitudes would be dead before another week ended.
+If these most conspicuous and vital arrangements of our social structure
+have arisen not by the devising of any one, but through the individual
+efforts of citizens to satisfy their own wants; we may be tolerably
+certain that the less important arrangements have similarly arisen.</p>
+
+<p>"But surely," it will be said, "the social changes directly produced by
+law, cannot be classed as spontaneous growths. When parliaments or kings
+order this or that thing to be done, and appoint officials to do it, the
+process is clearly artificial; and society to this extent becomes a
+manufacture rather than a growth." No, not even these changes are
+exceptions, if they be real and permanent changes. The true sources of
+such changes lie deeper than the acts of legislators. To take first the
+simplest instance. We all know that the enactments of representative
+governments ultimately depend on the national will: they may for a time
+be out of harmony with it, but eventually they must conform to it. And
+to say that the national will finally determines them, is to say that
+they result from the average of individual desires; or, in other
+words&mdash;from the average of individual natures. A law so initiated,
+therefore, really grows out of the popular character. In the case of a
+Government representing a dominant class,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> the same thing holds, though
+not so manifestly. For the very existence of a class monopolizing all
+power, is due to certain sentiments in the commonalty. Without the
+feeling of loyalty on the part of retainers, a feudal system could not
+exist. We see in the protest of the Highlanders against the abolition of
+heritable jurisdictions, that they preferred that kind of local rule.
+And if to the popular nature must be ascribed the growth of an
+irresponsible ruling class; then to the popular nature must be ascribed
+the social arrangements which that class creates in the pursuit of its
+own ends. Even where the Government is despotic, the doctrine still
+holds. The character of the people is, as before, the original source of
+this political form; and, as we have abundant proof, other forms
+suddenly created will not act, but rapidly retrograde to the old form.
+Moreover, such regulations as a despot makes, if really operative, are
+so because of their fitness to the social state. His acts being very
+much swayed by general opinion&mdash;by precedent, by the feeling of his
+nobles, his priesthood, his army&mdash;are in part immediate results of the
+national character; and when they are out of harmony with the national
+character, they are soon practically abrogated. The failure of Cromwell
+permanently to establish a new social condition, and the rapid revival
+of suppressed institutions and practices after his death, show how
+powerless is a monarch to change the type of the society he governs. He
+may disturb, he may retard, or he may aid the natural process of
+organization; but the general course of this process is beyond his
+control. Nay, more than this is true. Those who regard the histories of
+societies as the histories of their great men, and think that these
+great men shape the fates of their societies, overlook the truth that
+such great men are the products of their societies. Without certain
+antecedents&mdash;without a certain average national character, they neither
+could have been generated nor could have had the culture which formed
+them. If their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> society is to some extent re-moulded by them, they
+were, both before and after birth, moulded by their society&mdash;were the
+results of all those influences which fostered the ancestral character
+they inherited, and gave their own early bias, their creed, morals,
+knowledge, aspirations. So that such social changes as are immediately
+traceable to individuals of unusual power, are still remotely traceable
+to the social causes which produced these individuals; and hence, from
+the highest point of view, such social changes also, are parts of the
+general developmental process.</p>
+
+<p>Thus that which is so obviously true of the industrial structure of
+society, is true of its whole structure. The fact that "constitutions
+are not made, but grow," is simply a fragment of the much larger fact,
+that under all its aspects and through all its ramifications, society is
+a growth and not a manufacture.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>A perception that there exists some analogy between the body politic and
+a living individual body, was early reached; and has from time to time
+re-appeared in literature. But this perception was necessarily vague and
+more or less fanciful. In the absence of physiological science, and
+especially of those comprehensive generalizations which it has but
+lately reached, it was impossible to discern the real parallelisms.</p>
+
+<p>The central idea of Plato's model Republic, is the correspondence
+between the parts of a society and the faculties of the human mind.
+Classifying these faculties under the heads of Reason, Will, and
+Passion, he classifies the members of his ideal society under what he
+regards as three analogous heads:&mdash;councillors, who are to exercise
+government; military or executive, who are to fulfil their behests; and
+the commonalty, bent on gain and selfish gratification. In other words,
+the ruler, the warrior, and the craftsman, are, according to him, the
+analogues of our reflective, volitional, and emotional powers. Now
+even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> were there truth in the implied assumption of a parallelism
+between the structure of a society and that of a man, this
+classification would be indefensible. It might more truly be contended
+that, as the military power obeys the commands of the Government, it is
+the Government which answers to the Will; while the military power is
+simply an agency set in motion by it. Or, again, it might be contended
+that whereas the Will is a product of predominant desires, to which the
+Reason serves merely as an eye, it is the craftsmen, who, according to
+the alleged analogy, ought to be the moving power of the warriors.</p>
+
+<p>Hobbes sought to establish a still more definite parallelism: not,
+however, between a society and the human mind, but between a society and
+the human body. In the introduction to the work in which he develops
+this conception, he says&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"For by art is created that great <span class="smcap">Leviathan</span> called a <span class="smcap">Commonwealth</span>,
+or <span class="smcap">State</span>, in Latin <span class="smcap">Civitas</span>, which is but an artificial man; though
+of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose
+protection and defence it was intended, and in which the
+<i>sovereignty</i> is an artificial <i>soul</i>, as giving life and motion to
+the whole body; the <i>magistrates</i> and other <i>officers</i> of
+judicature and execution, artificial <i>joints</i>; <i>reward</i> and
+<i>punishment</i>, by which, fastened to the seat of the sovereignty,
+every joint and member is moved to perform his duty, are the
+<i>nerves</i>, that do the same in the body natural; the <i>wealth</i> and
+<i>riches</i> of all the particular members are the <i>strength</i>; <i>salus
+populi</i>, the <i>people's safety</i>, its <i>business</i>; <i>counsellors</i>, by
+whom all things needful for it to know are suggested unto it, are
+the <i>memory</i>; <i>equity</i> and <i>laws</i> an artificial <i>reason</i> and
+<i>will</i>; <i>concord</i>, <i>health</i>; <i>sedition</i>, <i>sickness</i>; and <i>civil
+war</i>, <i>death</i>."</p></div>
+
+<p>And Hobbes carries this comparison so far as actually to give a drawing
+of the Leviathan&mdash;a vast human-shaped figure, whose body and limbs are
+made up of multitudes of men. Just noting that these different analogies
+asserted by Plato and Hobbes, serve to cancel each other (being, as they
+are, so completely at variance), we may say that on the whole those of
+Hobbes are the more plausible. But they are full of inconsistencies. If
+the sovereignty is the <i>soul</i> of the body-politic, how can it be that
+magistrates, who are a kind of deputy-sovereigns, should be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span> comparable
+to <i>joints</i>? Or, again, how can the three mental functions, memory,
+reason, and will, be severally analogous, the first to counsellors, who
+are a class of public officers, and the other two to equity and laws,
+which are not classes of officers, but abstractions? Or, once more, if
+magistrates are the artificial joints of society, how can reward and
+punishment be its nerves? Its nerves must surely be some class of
+persons. Reward and punishment must in societies, as in individuals, be
+<i>conditions</i> of the nerves, and not the nerves themselves.</p>
+
+<p>But the chief errors of these comparisons made by Plato and Hobbes, lie
+much deeper. Both thinkers assume that the organization of a society is
+comparable, not simply to the organization of a living body in general,
+but to the organization of the human body in particular. There is no
+warrant whatever for assuming this. It is in no way implied by the
+evidence; and is simply one of those fancies which we commonly find
+mixed up with the truths of early speculation. Still more erroneous are
+the two conceptions in this, that they construe a society as an
+artificial structure. Plato's model republic&mdash;his ideal of a healthful
+body-politic&mdash;is to be consciously put together by men, just as a watch
+might be; and Plato manifestly thinks of societies in general as thus
+originated. Quite specifically does Hobbes express a like view. "For by
+<i>art</i>," he says, "is created that great <span class="smcap">Leviathan</span> called a
+<span class="smcap">Commonwealth</span>." And he even goes so far as to compare the supposed social
+contract, from which a society suddenly originates, to the creation of a
+man by the divine fiat. Thus they both fall into the extreme
+inconsistency of considering a community as similar in structure to a
+human being, and yet as produced in the same way as an artificial
+mechanism&mdash;in nature, an organism; in history, a machine.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding errors, however, these speculations have considerable
+significance. That such likenesses, crudely as they are thought out,
+should have been alleged by Plato<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span> and Hobbes and others, is a reason
+for suspecting that <i>some</i> analogy exists. The untenableness of the
+particular parallelisms above instanced, is no ground for denying an
+essential parallelism; since early ideas are usually but vague
+adumbrations of the truth. Lacking the great generalizations of biology,
+it was, as we have said, impossible to trace out the real relations of
+social organizations to organizations of another order. We propose here
+to show what are the analogies which modern science discloses.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Let us set out by succinctly stating the points of similarity and the
+points of difference. Societies agree with individual organisms in four
+conspicuous peculiarities:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1. That commencing as small aggregations, they insensibly augment in
+mass: some of them eventually reaching ten thousand times what they
+originally were.</p>
+
+<p>2. That while at first so simple in structure as to be considered
+structureless, they assume, in the course of their growth, a
+continually-increasing complexity of structure.</p>
+
+<p>3. That though in their early, undeveloped states, there exists in them
+scarcely any mutual dependence of parts, their parts gradually acquire a
+mutual dependence; which becomes at last so great, that the activity and
+life of each part is made possible only by the activity and life of the
+rest.</p>
+
+<p>4. That the life of a society is independent of, and far more prolonged
+than, the lives of any of its component units; who are severally born,
+grow, work, reproduce, and die, while the body-politic composed of them
+survives generation after generation, increasing in mass, in
+completeness of structure, and in functional activity.</p>
+
+<p>These four parallelisms will appear the more significant the more we
+contemplate them. While the points specified, are points in which
+societies agree with individual organisms, they are also points in which
+individual organisms agree with one another, and disagree with all
+things else. In the course of its existence, every plant and animal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>
+increases in mass, in a way not paralleled by inorganic objects: even
+such inorganic objects as crystals, which arise by growth, show us no
+such definite relation between growth and existence as organisms do. The
+orderly progress from simplicity to complexity, displayed by
+bodies-politic in common with living bodies, is a characteristic which
+distinguishes living bodies from the inanimate bodies amid which they
+move. That functional dependence of parts, which is scarcely more
+manifest in animals than in nations, has no counterpart elsewhere. And
+in no aggregate except an organic or a social one, is there a perpetual
+removal and replacement of parts, joined with a continued integrity of
+the whole. Moreover, societies and organisms are not only alike in these
+peculiarities, in which they are unlike all other things; but the
+highest societies, like the highest organisms, exhibit them in the
+greatest degree. We see that the lowest animals do not increase to
+anything like the sizes of the higher ones; and, similarly, we see that
+aboriginal societies are comparatively limited in their growths. In
+complexity, our large civilized nations as much exceed primitive savage
+tribes, as a mammal does a zoophyte. Simple communities, like simple
+creatures, have so little mutual dependence of parts, that mutilation or
+subdivision causes but little inconvenience; but from complex
+communities, as from complex creatures, you cannot remove any
+considerable organ without producing great disturbance or death of the
+rest. And in societies of low type, as in inferior animals, the life of
+the aggregate, often cut short by division or dissolution, exceeds in
+length the lives of the component units, very far less than in civilized
+communities and superior animals; which outlive many generations of
+their component units.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the leading differences between societies and
+individual organisms are these:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1. That societies have no specific external forms. This, however, is a
+point of contrast which loses much of its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> importance, when we remember
+that throughout the vegetal kingdom, as well as in some lower divisions
+of the animal kingdom, the forms are often very indefinite&mdash;definiteness
+being rather the exception than the rule; and that they are manifestly
+in part determined by surrounding physical circumstances, as the forms
+of societies are. If, too, it should eventually be shown, as we believe
+it will, that the form of every species of organism has resulted from
+the average play of the external forces to which it has been subject
+during its evolution as a species; then, that the external forms of
+societies should depend, as they do, on surrounding conditions, will be
+a further point of community.</p>
+
+<p>2. That though the living tissue whereof an individual organism
+consists, forms a continuous mass, the living elements of a society do
+not form a continuous mass; but are more or less widely dispersed over
+some portion of the Earth's surface. This, which at first sight appears
+to be an absolute distinction, is one which yet to a great extent fades
+when we contemplate all the facts. For, in the lower divisions of the
+animal and vegetal kingdoms, there are types of organization much more
+nearly allied, in this respect, to the organization of a society, than
+might be supposed&mdash;types in which the living units essentially composing
+the mass, are dispersed through an inert substance, that can scarcely be
+called living in the full sense of the word. It is thus with some of the
+<i>Protococci</i> and with the <i>Nostoce&aelig;</i>, which exist as cells imbedded in a
+viscid matter. It is so, too, with the <i>Thalassicoll&aelig;</i>&mdash;bodies made up
+of differentiated parts, dispersed through an undifferentiated jelly.
+And throughout considerable portions of their bodies, some of the
+<i>Acaleph&aelig;</i> exhibit more or less this type of structure. Now this is very
+much the case with a society. For we must remember that though the men
+who make up a society are physically separate, and even scattered, yet
+the surface over which they are scattered is not one devoid of life, but
+is covered by life of a lower order which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> ministers to their life. The
+vegetation which clothes a country makes possible the animal life in
+that country; and only through its animal and vegetal products can such
+a country support a society. Hence the members of the body-politic are
+not to be regarded as separated by intervals of dead space, but as
+diffused through a space occupied by life of a lower order. In our
+conception of a social organism, we must include all that lower organic
+existence on which human existence, and therefore social existence,
+depend. And when we do this, we see that the citizens who make up a
+community may be considered as highly vitalized units surrounded by
+substances of lower vitality, from which they draw their nutriment: much
+as in the cases above instanced.</p>
+
+<p>3. The third difference is that while the ultimate living elements of an
+individual organism are mostly fixed in their relative positions, those
+of the social organism are capable of moving from place to place. But
+here, too, the disagreement is much less than would be supposed. For
+while citizens are locomotive in their private capacities, they are
+fixed in their public capacities. As farmers, manufacturers, or traders,
+men carry on their businesses at the same spots, often throughout their
+whole lives; and if they go away occasionally, they leave behind others
+to discharge their functions in their absence. Each great centre of
+production, each manufacturing town or district, continues always in the
+same place; and many of the firms in such town or district, are for
+generations carried on either by the descendants or successors of those
+who founded them. Just as in a living body, the cells that make up some
+important organ severally perform their functions for a time and then
+disappear, leaving others to supply their places; so, in each part of a
+society the organ remains, though the persons who compose it change.
+Thus, in social life, as in the life of an animal, the units as well as
+the larger agencies formed of them, are in the main<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> stationary as
+respects the places where they discharge their duties and obtain their
+sustenance. And hence the power of individual locomotion does not
+practically affect the analogy.</p>
+
+<p>4. The last and perhaps the most important distinction is, that while in
+the body of an animal only a special tissue is endowed with feeling, in
+a society all the members are endowed with feeling. Even this
+distinction, however, is not a complete one. For in some of the lowest
+animals, characterized by the absence of a nervous system, such
+sensitiveness as exists is possessed by all parts. It is only in the
+more organized forms that feeling is monopolized by one class of the
+vital elements. And we must remember that societies, too, are not
+without a certain differentiation of this kind. Though the units of a
+community are all sensitive, they are so in unequal degrees. The classes
+engaged in laborious occupations are less susceptible, intellectually
+and emotionally, than the rest; and especially less so than the classes
+of highest mental culture. Still, we have here a tolerably decided
+contrast between bodies-politic and individual bodies; and it is one
+which we should keep constantly in view. For it reminds us that while,
+in individual bodies, the welfare of all other parts is rightly
+subservient to the welfare of the nervous system, whose pleasurable or
+painful activities make up the good or ill of life; in bodies-politic
+the same thing does not hold, or holds to but a very slight extent. It
+is well that the lives of all parts of an animal should be merged in the
+life of the whole, because the whole has a corporate consciousness
+capable of happiness or misery. But it is not so with a society; since
+its living units do not and cannot lose individual consciousness, and
+since the community as a whole has no corporate consciousness. This is
+an everlasting reason why the welfares of citizens cannot rightly be
+sacrificed to some supposed benefit of the State, and why, on the other
+hand, the State is to be maintained solely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> for the benefit of
+citizens. The corporate life must here be subservient to the lives of
+the parts, instead of the lives of the parts being subservient to the
+corporate life.</p>
+
+<p>Such, then, are the points of analogy and the points of difference. May
+we not say that the points of difference serve but to bring into clearer
+light the points of analogy? While comparison makes definite the obvious
+contrasts between organisms commonly so called, and the social organism,
+it shows that even these contrasts are not so decided as was to be
+expected. The indefiniteness of form, the discontinuity of the parts,
+and the universal sensitiveness, are not only peculiarities of the
+social organism which have to be stated with considerable
+qualifications; but they are peculiarities to which the inferior classes
+of animals present approximations. Thus we find but little to conflict
+with the all-important analogies. Societies slowly augment in mass; they
+progress in complexity of structure; at the same time their parts become
+more mutually dependent; their living units are removed and replaced
+without destroying their integrity; and the extents to which they
+display these peculiarities are proportionate to their vital activities.
+These are traits that societies have in common with organic bodies. And
+these traits in which they agree with organic bodies and disagree with
+all other things, entirely subordinate the minor distinctions: such
+distinctions being scarcely greater than those which separate one half
+of the organic kingdom from the other. The <i>principles</i> of organization
+are the same, and the differences are simply differences of application.</p>
+
+<p>Here ending this general survey of the facts which justify the
+comparison of a society with a living body, let us look at them in
+detail. We shall find that the parallelism becomes the more marked the
+more closely it is examined.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The lowest animal and vegetal forms&mdash;<i>Protozoa</i> and <i>Protophyta</i>&mdash;are
+chiefly inhabitants of the water. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> are minute bodies, most of which
+are made individually visible only by the microscope. All of them are
+extremely simple in structure, and some of them, as the <i>Rhizopods</i>,
+almost structureless. Multiplying, as they ordinarily do, by the
+spontaneous division of their bodies, they produce halves which may
+either become quite separate and move away in different directions, or
+may continue attached. By the repetition of this process of fission,
+aggregations of various sizes and kinds are formed. Among the
+<i>Protophyta</i> we have some classes, as the <i>Diatomace&aelig;</i> and the
+Yeast-plant, in which the individuals may be either separate or attached
+in groups of two, three, four, or more; other classes in which a
+considerable number of cells are united into a thread (<i>Conferva</i>,
+<i>Monilia</i>); others in which they form a network (<i>Hydrodictyon</i>); others
+in which they form plates (<i>Ulva</i>); and others in which they form masses
+(<i>Laminaria</i>, <i>Agaricus</i>): all which vegetal forms, having no
+distinction of root, stem, or leaf, are called <i>Thallogens</i>. Among the
+<i>Protozoa</i> we find parallel facts. Immense numbers of <i>Am&oelig;ba</i>-like
+creatures, massed together in a framework of horny fibres, constitute
+Sponge. In the <i>Foraminifera</i> we see smaller groups of such creatures
+arranged into more definite shapes. Not only do these almost
+structureless <i>Protozoa</i> unite into regular or irregular aggregations of
+various sizes, but among some of the more organized ones, as the
+<i>Vorticell&aelig;</i>, there are also produced clusters of individuals united to
+a common stem. But these little societies of monads, or cells, or
+whatever else we may call them, are societies only in the lowest sense:
+there is no subordination of parts among them&mdash;no organization. Each of
+the component units lives by and for itself; neither giving nor
+receiving aid. The only mutual dependence is that consequent on
+mechanical union.</p>
+
+<p>Do we not here discern analogies to the first stages of human societies?
+Among the lowest races, as the Bushmen, we find but incipient
+aggregation: sometimes single<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span> families, sometimes two or three families
+wandering about together. The number of associated units is small and
+variable, and their union inconstant. No division of labour exists
+except between the sexes, and the only kind of mutual aid is that of
+joint attack or defence. We see an undifferentiated group of
+individuals, forming the germ of a society; just as in the homogeneous
+groups of cells above described, we see the initial stage of animal and
+vegetal organization.</p>
+
+<p>The comparison may now be carried a step higher. In the vegetal kingdom
+we pass from the <i>Thallogens</i>, consisting of mere masses of similar
+cells, to the <i>Acrogens</i>, in which the cells are not similar throughout
+the whole mass; but are here aggregated into a structure serving as leaf
+and there into a structure serving as root; thus forming a whole in
+which there is a certain subdivision of functions among the units, and
+therefore a certain mutual dependence. In the animal kingdom we find
+analogous progress. From mere unorganized groups of cells, or cell-like
+bodies, we ascend to groups of such cells arranged into parts that have
+different duties. The common Polype, from the substance of which may be
+separated cells that exhibit, when detached, appearances and movements
+like those of a solitary <i>Am&oelig;ba</i>, illustrates this stage. The
+component units, though still showing great community of character,
+assume somewhat diverse functions in the skin, in the internal surface,
+and in the tentacles. There is a certain amount of "physiological
+division of labour."</p>
+
+<p>Turning to societies, we find these stages paralleled in most aboriginal
+tribes. When, instead of such small variable groups as are formed by
+Bushmen, we come to the larger and more permanent groups formed by
+savages not quite so low, we find traces of social structure. Though
+industrial organization scarcely shows itself, except in the different
+occupations of the sexes; yet there is more or less of governmental
+organization. While all the men are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span> warriors and hunters, only a part
+of them are included in the council of chiefs; and in this council of
+chiefs some one has commonly supreme authority. There is thus a certain
+distinction of classes and powers; and through this slight
+specialization of functions is effected a rude co-operation among the
+increasing mass of individuals, whenever the society has to act in its
+corporate capacity. Beyond this analogy in the slight extent to which
+organization is carried, there is analogy in the indefiniteness of the
+organization. In the <i>Hydra</i>, the respective parts of the creature's
+substance have many functions in common. They are all contractile;
+omitting the tentacles, the whole of the external surface can give
+origin to young <i>hydr&aelig;</i>; and, when turned inside out, stomach performs
+the duties of skin and skin the duties of stomach. In aboriginal
+societies such differentiations as exist are similarly imperfect.
+Notwithstanding distinctions of rank, all persons maintain themselves by
+their own exertions. Not only do the head men of the tribe, in common
+with the rest, build their own huts, make their own weapons, kill their
+own food; but the chief does the like. Moreover, such governmental
+organization as exists is inconstant. It is frequently changed by
+violence or treachery, and the function of ruling assumed by some other
+warrior. Thus between the rudest societies and some of the lowest forms
+of animal life, there is analogy alike in the slight extent to which
+organization is carried, in the indefiniteness of this organization, and
+in its want of fixity.</p>
+
+<p>A further complication of the analogy is at hand. From the aggregation
+of units into organized groups, we pass to the multiplication of such
+groups, and their coalescence into compound groups. The <i>Hydra</i>, when it
+has reached a certain bulk, puts forth from its surface a bud which,
+growing and gradually assuming the form of the parent, finally becomes
+detached; and by this process of gemmation the creature peoples the
+adjacent water with others<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span> like itself. A parallel process is seen in
+the multiplication of those lowly-organized tribes above described. When
+one of them has increased to a size that is either too great for
+co-ordination under so rude a structure, or else that is greater than
+the surrounding country can supply with game and other wild food, there
+arises a tendency to divide; and as in such communities there often
+occur quarrels, jealousies, and other causes of division, there soon
+comes an occasion on which a part of the tribe separates under the
+leadership of some subordinate chief and migrates. This process being
+from time to time repeated, an extensive region is at length occupied by
+numerous tribes descended from a common ancestry. The analogy by no
+means ends here. Though in the common <i>Hydra</i> the young ones that bud
+out from the parent soon become detached and independent; yet throughout
+the rest of the class <i>Hydrozoa</i>, to which this creature belongs, the
+like does not generally happen. The successive individuals thus
+developed continue attached; give origin to other such individuals which
+also continue attached; and so there results a compound animal. As in
+the <i>Hydra</i> itself we find an aggregation of units which, considered
+separately, are akin to the lowest <i>Protozoa</i>; so here, in a <i>Zoophyte</i>,
+we find an aggregation of such aggregations. The like is also seen
+throughout the extensive family of <i>Polyzoa</i> or <i>Molluscoida</i>. The
+Ascidian Mollusks, too, in their many forms, show us the same thing:
+exhibiting, at the same time, various degrees of union among the
+component individuals. For while in the <i>Salp&aelig;</i> the component
+individuals adhere so slightly that a blow on the vessel of water in
+which they are floating will separate them; in the <i>Botryllid&aelig;</i> there
+exist vascular connexions among them, and a common circulation. Now in
+these different stages of aggregation, may we not see paralleled the
+union of groups of connate tribes into nations? Though, in regions where
+circumstances permit, the tribes descended from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span> some original tribe
+migrate in all directions, and become far removed and quite separate;
+yet, where the territory presents barriers to distant migration, this
+does not happen: the small kindred communities are held in closer
+contact, and eventually become more or less united into a nation. The
+contrast between the tribes of American Indians and the Scottish clans,
+illustrates this. And a glance at our own early history, or the early
+histories of continental nations, shows this fusion of small simple
+communities taking place in various ways and to various extents. As says
+M. Guizot, in his <i>History of the Origin of Representative
+Government</i>,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"By degrees, in the midst of the chaos of the rising society, small
+aggregations are formed which feel the want of alliance and union
+with each other.... Soon inequality of strength is displayed among
+neighbouring aggregations. The strong tend to subjugate the weak,
+and usurp at first the rights of taxation and military service.
+Thus political authority leaves the aggregations which first
+instituted it, to take a wider range."</p></div>
+
+<p>That is to say, the small tribes, clans, or feudal groups, sprung mostly
+from a common stock, and long held in contact as occupants of adjacent
+lands, gradually get united in other ways than by kinship and proximity.</p>
+
+<p>A further series of changes begins now to take place, to which, as
+before, we find analogies in individual organisms. Returning to the
+<i>Hydrozoa</i>, we observe that in the simplest of the compound forms the
+connected individuals are alike in structure, and perform like
+functions; with the exception that here and there a bud, instead of
+developing into a stomach, mouth, and tentacles, becomes an egg-sac. But
+with the oceanic <i>Hydrozoa</i> this is by no means the case. In the
+<i>Calycophorid&aelig;</i> some of the polypes growing from the common germ, become
+developed and modified into large, long, sack-like bodies, which, by
+their rhythmical contractions, move through the water, dragging the
+community of polypes after them. In the <i>Physophorid&aelig;</i> a variety of
+organs similarly arise by transformation of the budding polypes; so that
+in creatures like the <i>Physalia</i>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span> commonly known as the "Portuguese
+Man-of-war," instead of that tree-like group of similar individuals
+forming the original type, we have a complex mass of unlike parts
+fulfilling unlike duties. As an individual <i>Hydra</i> may be regarded as a
+group of <i>Protozoa</i> which have become partially metamorphosed into
+different organs; so a <i>Physalia</i> is, morphologically considered, a
+group of <i>Hydr&aelig;</i> of which the individuals have been variously
+transformed to fit them for various functions.</p>
+
+<p>This differentiation upon differentiation is just what takes place
+during the evolution of a civilized society. We observed how, in the
+small communities first formed, there arises a simple political
+organization: there is a partial separation of classes having different
+duties. And now we have to observe how, in a nation formed by the fusion
+of such small communities, the several sections, at first alike in
+structures and modes of activity, grow unlike in both&mdash;gradually become
+mutually-dependent parts, diverse in their natures and functions.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The doctrine of the progressive division of labour, to which we are here
+introduced, is familiar to all readers. And further, the analogy between
+the economical division of labour and the "physiological division of
+labour," is so striking as long since to have drawn the attention of
+scientific naturalists: so striking, indeed, that the expression
+"physiological division of labour," has been suggested by it. It is not
+needful, therefore, to treat this part of the subject in great detail.
+We shall content ourselves with noting a few general and significant
+facts, not manifest on a first inspection.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the whole animal kingdom, from the <i>C&oelig;lenterata</i> upwards,
+the first stage of evolution is the same. Equally in the germ of a
+polype and in the human ovum, the aggregated mass of cells out of which
+the creature is to arise, gives origin to a peripheral layer of cells,
+slightly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span> differing from the rest which they include; and this layer
+subsequently divides into two&mdash;the inner, lying in contact with the
+included yelk, being called the mucous layer, and the outer, exposed to
+surrounding agencies, being called the serous layer: or, in the terms
+used by Prof. Huxley, in describing the development of the
+<i>Hydrozoa</i>&mdash;the endoderm and ectoderm. This primary division marks out a
+fundamental contrast of parts in the future organism. From the mucous
+layer, or endoderm, is developed the apparatus of nutrition; while from
+the serous layer, or ectoderm, is developed the apparatus of external
+action. Out of the one arise the organs by which food is prepared and
+absorbed, oxygen imbibed, and blood purified; while out of the other
+arise the nervous, muscular, and osseous systems, by the combined
+actions of which the movements of the body as a whole are effected.
+Though this is not a rigorously-correct distinction, seeing that some
+organs involve both of these primitive membranes, yet high authorities
+agree in stating it as a broad general distinction. Well, in the
+evolution of a society, we see a primary differentiation of analogous
+kind, which similarly underlies the whole future structure. As already
+pointed out, the only manifest contrast of parts in primitive societies,
+is that between the governing and the governed. In the least organized
+tribes, the council of chiefs may be a body of men distinguished simply
+by greater courage or experience. In more organized tribes, the
+chief-class is definitely separated from the lower class, and often
+regarded as different in nature&mdash;sometimes as god-descended. And later,
+we find these two becoming respectively freemen and slaves, or nobles
+and serfs. A glance at their respective functions, makes it obvious that
+the great divisions thus early formed, stand to each other in a relation
+similar to that in which the primary divisions of the embryo stand to
+each other. For, from its first appearance, the warrior-class, headed by
+chiefs, is that by which the external acts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> of the society are carried
+on: alike in war, in negotiation, and in migration. Afterwards, while
+this upper class grows distinct from the lower, and at the same time
+becomes more and more exclusively regulative and defensive in its
+functions, alike in the persons of kings and subordinate rulers,
+priests, and soldiers; the inferior class becomes more and more
+exclusively occupied in providing the necessaries of life for the
+community at large. From the soil, with which it comes in most direct
+contact, the mass of the people takes up, and prepares for use, the food
+and such rude articles of manufacture as are known; while the overlying
+mass of superior men, maintained by the working population, deals with
+circumstances external to the community&mdash;circumstances with which, by
+position, it is more immediately concerned. Ceasing by-and-by to have
+any knowledge of, or power over, the concerns of the society as a whole,
+the serf-class becomes devoted to the processes of alimentation; while
+the noble class, ceasing to take any part in the processes of
+alimentation, becomes devoted to the co-ordinated movements of the
+entire body-politic.</p>
+
+<p>Equally remarkable is a further analogy of like kind. After the mucous
+and serous layers of the embryo have separated, there presently arises
+between the two a third, known to physiologists as the vascular layer&mdash;a
+layer out of which are developed the chief blood-vessels. The mucous
+layer absorbs nutriment from the mass of yelk it encloses; this
+nutriment has to be transferred to the overlying serous layer, out of
+which the nervo-muscular system is being developed; and between the two
+arises a vascular system by which the transfer is effected&mdash;a system of
+vessels which continues ever after to be the transferrer of nutriment
+from the places where it is absorbed and prepared, to the places where
+it is needed for growth and repair. Well, may we not trace a parallel
+step in social progress? Between the governing and the governed, there
+at first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span> exists no intermediate class; and even in some societies that
+have reached considerable sizes, there are scarcely any but the nobles
+and their kindred on the one hand, and the serfs on the other: the
+social structure being such that transfer of commodities takes place
+directly from slaves to their masters. But in societies of a higher
+type, there grows up, between these two primitive classes, another&mdash;the
+trading or middle class. Equally at first as now, we may see that,
+speaking generally, this middle class is the analogue of the middle
+layer in the embryo. For all traders are essentially distributors.
+Whether they be wholesale dealers, who collect into large masses the
+commodities of various producers; or whether they be retailers, who
+divide out to those who want them, the masses of commodities thus
+collected together; all mercantile men are agents of transfer from the
+places where things are produced to the places where they are consumed.
+Thus the distributing apparatus in a society, answers to the
+distributing apparatus in a living body; not only in its functions, but
+in its intermediate origin and subsequent position, and in the time of
+its appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Without enumerating the minor differentiations which these three great
+classes afterwards undergo, we will merely note that throughout, they
+follow the same general law with the differentiations of an individual
+organism. In a society, as in a rudimentary animal, we have seen that
+the most general and broadly contrasted divisions are the first to make
+their appearance; and of the subdivisions it continues true in both
+cases, that they arise in the order of decreasing generality.</p>
+
+<p>Let us observe, next, that in the one case as in the other, the
+specializations are at first very incomplete, and approach completeness
+as organization progresses. We saw that in primitive tribes, as in the
+simplest animals, there remains much community of function between the
+parts which are nominally different&mdash;that, for instance, the class of
+chiefs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span> long remains industrially the same as the inferior class; just
+as in a <i>Hydra</i>, the property of contractility is possessed by the units
+of the endoderm as well as by those of the ectoderm. We noted also how,
+as the society advanced, the two great primitive classes partook less
+and less of each other's functions. And we have here to remark that all
+subsequent specializations are at first vague and gradually become
+distinct. "In the infancy of society," says M. Guizot, "everything is
+confused and uncertain; there is as yet no fixed and precise line of
+demarcation between the different powers in a state." "Originally kings
+lived like other landowners, on the incomes derived from their own
+private estates." Nobles were petty kings; and kings only the most
+powerful nobles. Bishops were feudal lords and military leaders. The
+right of coining money was possessed by powerful subjects, and by the
+Church, as well as by the king. Every leading man exercised alike the
+functions of landowner, farmer, soldier, statesman, judge. Retainers
+were now soldiers, and now labourers, as the day required. But by
+degrees the Church has lost all civil jurisdiction; the State has
+exercised less and less control over religious teaching; the military
+class has grown a distinct one; handicrafts have concentrated in towns;
+and the spinning-wheels of scattered farmhouses, have disappeared before
+the machinery of manufacturing districts. Not only is all progress from
+the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, but, at the same time, it is from
+the indefinite to the definite.</p>
+
+<p>Another fact which should not be passed over, is that in the evolution
+of a large society out of a cluster of small ones, there is a gradual
+obliteration of the original lines of separation&mdash;a change to which,
+also, we may see analogies in living bodies. The sub-kingdom <i>Annulosa</i>,
+furnishes good illustrations. Among the lower types the body consists of
+numerous segments that are alike in nearly every particular. Each has
+its external ring; its pair of legs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span> if the creature has legs; its
+equal portion of intestine, or else its separate stomach; its equal
+portion of the great blood-vessel, or, in some cases, its separate
+heart; its equal portion of the nervous cord; and, perhaps, its separate
+pair of ganglia. But in the highest types, as in the large <i>Crustacea</i>,
+many of the segments are completely fused together; and the internal
+organs are no longer uniformly repeated in all the segments. Now the
+segments of which nations at first consist, lose their separate external
+and internal structures in a similar manner. In feudal times the minor
+communities, governed by feudal lords, were severally organized in the
+same rude way, and were held together only by the fealty of their
+respective rulers to a suzerain. But along with the growth of a central
+power, the demarcations of these local communities become relatively
+unimportant, and their separate organizations merge into the general
+organization. The like is seen on a larger scale in the fusion of
+England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; and, on the Continent, in the
+coalescence of provinces into kingdoms. Even in the disappearance of
+law-made divisions, the process is analogous. Among the Anglo-Saxons,
+England was divided into tithings, hundreds, and counties: there were
+county-courts, courts of hundred, and courts of tithing. The courts of
+tithing disappeared first; then the courts of hundred, which have,
+however, left traces; while the county-jurisdiction still exists.
+Chiefly, however, it is to be noted, that there eventually grows up an
+organization which has no reference to these original divisions, but
+traverses them in various directions, as is the case in creatures
+belonging to the sub-kingdom just named; and, further, that in both
+cases it is the sustaining organization which thus traverses old
+boundaries, while, in both cases, it is the governmental, or
+co-ordinating organization in which the original boundaries continue
+traceable. Thus, in the highest <i>Annulosa</i> the exo-skeleton and the
+muscular system never lose all traces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span> of their primitive segmentation;
+but throughout a great part of the body, the contained viscera do not in
+the least conform to the external divisions. Similarly with a nation we
+see that while, for governmental purposes, such divisions as counties
+and parishes still exist, the structure developed for carrying on the
+nutrition of society wholly ignores these boundaries: our great
+cotton-manufacture spreads out of Lancashire into North Derbyshire;
+Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire have long divided the stocking-trade
+between them; one great centre for the production of iron and
+iron-goods, includes parts of Warwickshire, Staffordshire, and
+Worcestershire; and those various specializations of agriculture which
+have made different parts of England noted for different products, show
+no more respect to county-boundaries than do our growing towns to the
+boundaries of parishes.</p>
+
+<p>If, after contemplating these analogies of structure, we inquire whether
+there are any such analogies between the processes of organic change,
+the answer is&mdash;yes. The causes which lead to increase of bulk in any
+part of the body-politic, are of like nature with those which lead to
+increase of bulk in any part of an individual body. In both cases the
+antecedent is greater functional activity consequent on greater demand.
+Each limb, viscus, gland, or other member of an animal, is developed by
+exercise&mdash;by actively discharging the duties which the body at large
+requires of it; and similarly, any class of labourers or artisans, any
+manufacturing centre, or any official agency, begins to enlarge when the
+community devolves on it more work. In each case, too, growth has its
+conditions and its limits. That any organ in a living being may grow by
+exercise, there needs a due supply of blood. All action implies waste;
+blood brings the materials for repair; and before there can be growth,
+the quantity of blood supplied must be more than is requisite for
+repair. In a society it is the same. If to some district which
+elaborates for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span> the community particular commodities&mdash;say the woollens
+of Yorkshire&mdash;there comes an augmented demand; and if, in fulfilment of
+this demand, a certain expenditure and wear of the manufacturing
+organization are incurred; and if, in payment for the extra quantity of
+woollens sent away, there comes back only such quantity of commodities
+as replaces the expenditure, and makes good the waste of life and
+machinery; there can clearly be no growth. That there may be growth, the
+commodities obtained in return must be more than sufficient for these
+ends; and just in proportion as the surplus is great will the growth be
+rapid. Whence it is manifest that what in commercial affairs we call
+<i>profit</i>, answers to the excess of nutrition over waste in a living
+body. Moreover, in both cases when the functional activity is high and
+the nutrition defective, there results not growth but decay. If in an
+animal, any organ is worked so hard that the channels which bring blood
+cannot furnish enough for repair, the organ dwindles: atrophy is set up.
+And if in the body-politic, some part has been stimulated into great
+productivity, and cannot afterwards get paid for all its produce,
+certain of its members become bankrupt, and it decreases in size.</p>
+
+<p>One more parallelism to be here noted, is that the different parts of a
+social organism, like the different parts of an individual organism,
+compete for nutriment; and severally obtain more or less of it according
+as they are discharging more or less duty. If a man's brain be
+overexcited it abstracts blood from his viscera and stops digestion; or
+digestion, actively going on, so affects the circulation through the
+brain as to cause drowsiness; or great muscular exertion determines such
+a quantity of blood to the limbs as to arrest digestion or cerebral
+action, as the case may be. So, likewise, in a society, great activity
+in some one direction causes partial arrests of activity elsewhere by
+abstracting capital, that is commodities: as instance the way in which
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span> sudden development of our railway-system hampered commercial
+operations; or the way in which the raising of a large military force
+temporarily stops the growth of leading industries.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The last few paragraphs introduce the next division of our subject.
+Almost unawares we have come upon the analogy which exists between the
+blood of a living body and the circulating mass of commodities in the
+body-politic. We have now to trace out this analogy from its simplest to
+its most complex manifestations.</p>
+
+<p>In the lowest animals there exists no blood properly so called. Through
+the small assemblage of cells which make up a <i>Hydra</i>, permeate the
+juices absorbed from the food. There is no apparatus for elaborating a
+concentrated and purified nutriment, and distributing it among the
+component units; but these component units directly <a name='TC_12'></a><ins class="correction" title="Was 'inbibe'">imbibe</ins> the
+unprepared nutriment, either from the digestive cavity or from one
+another. May we not say that this is what takes place in an aboriginal
+tribe? All its members severally obtain for themselves the necessaries
+of life in their crude states; and severally prepare them for their own
+uses as well as they can. When there arises a decided differentiation
+between the governing and the governed, some amount of transfer begins
+between those inferior individuals who, as workers, come directly in
+contact with the products of the earth, and those superior ones who
+exercise the higher functions&mdash;a transfer parallel to that which
+accompanies the differentiation of the ectoderm from the endoderm. In
+the one case, as in the other, however, it is a transfer of products
+that are little if at all prepared; and takes place directly from the
+unit which obtains to the unit which consumes, without entering into any
+general current.</p>
+
+<p>Passing to larger organisms&mdash;individual and social&mdash;we meet the first
+advance on this arrangement. Where, as among the compound <i>Hydrozoa</i>,
+there is a union of many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span> such primitive groups as form <i>Hydr&aelig;</i>; or
+where, as in a <i>Medusa</i>, one of these groups has become of great size;
+there exist rude channels running throughout the substance of the body:
+not, however, channels for the conveyance of prepared nutriment, but
+mere prolongations of the digestive cavity, through which the crude
+chyle-aqueous fluid reaches the remoter parts, and is moved backwards
+and forwards by the creature's contractions. Do we not find in some of
+the more advanced primitive communities an analogous condition? When the
+men, partially or fully united into one society, become numerous&mdash;when,
+as usually happens, they cover a surface of country not everywhere alike
+in its products&mdash;when, more especially, there arise considerable classes
+which are not industrial; some process of exchange and distribution
+inevitably arises. Traversing here and there the earth's surface,
+covered by that vegetation on which human life depends, and in which, as
+we say, the units of a society are imbedded, there are formed indefinite
+paths, along which some of the necessaries of life occasionally pass, to
+be bartered for others which presently come back along the same
+channels. Note, however, that at first little else but crude commodities
+are thus transferred&mdash;fruits, fish, pigs or cattle, skins, etc.: there
+are few, if any, manufactured products or articles prepared for
+consumption. And note also, that such distribution of these unprepared
+necessaries of life as takes place, is but occasional&mdash;goes on with a
+certain slow, irregular rhythm.</p>
+
+<p>Further progress in the elaboration and distribution of nutriment, or of
+commodities, is a necessary accompaniment of further differentiation of
+functions in the individual body or in the body-politic. As fast as each
+organ of a living animal becomes confined to a special action, it must
+become dependent on the rest for those materials which its position and
+duty do not permit it to obtain for itself; in the same way that, as
+fast as each particular class of a community becomes exclusively
+occupied in producing its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span> own commodity, it must become dependent on
+the rest for the other commodities it needs. And, simultaneously, a more
+perfectly-elaborated blood will result from a highly specialized group
+of nutritive organs, severally adapted to prepare its different
+elements; in the same way that the stream of commodities circulating
+throughout a society, will be of superior quality in proportion to the
+greater division of labour among the workers. Observe, also, that in
+either case the circulating mass of nutritive materials, besides coming
+gradually to consist of better ingredients, also grows more complex. An
+increase in the number of the unlike organs which add to the blood their
+waste matters, and demand from it the different materials they severally
+need, implies a blood more heterogeneous in composition&mdash;an <i>a priori</i>
+conclusion which, according to Dr. Williams, is inductively confirmed by
+examination of the blood throughout the various grades of the animal
+kingdom. And similarly, it is manifest that as fast as the division of
+labour among the classes of a community becomes greater, there must be
+an increasing heterogeneity in the currents of merchandize flowing
+throughout that community.</p>
+
+<p>The circulating mass of nutritive materials in individual organisms and
+in social organisms, becoming at once better in the quality of its
+ingredients and more heterogeneous in composition, as the type of
+structure becomes higher, eventually has added to it in both cases
+another element, which is not itself nutritive but facilitates the
+processes of nutrition. We refer, in the case of the individual
+organism, to the blood-discs; and in the case of the social organism, to
+money. This analogy has been observed by Liebig, who in his <i>Familiar
+Letters on Chemistry</i> says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Silver and gold have to perform in the organism of the state, the
+same function as the blood-corpuscles in the human organism. As
+these round discs, without themselves taking an immediate share in
+the nutritive process, are the medium, the essential condition of
+the change of matter, of the production of the heat and of the
+force by which the temperature of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span> body is kept up, and the
+motions of the blood and all the juices are determined, so has gold
+become the medium of all activity in the life of the state."</p></div>
+
+<p>And blood-corpuscles being like coin in their functions, and in the fact
+that they are not consumed in nutrition, he further points out that the
+number of them which in a considerable interval flows through the great
+centres, is enormous when compared with their absolute number; just as
+the quantity of money which annually passes through the great mercantile
+centres, is enormous when compared with the quantity of money in the
+kingdom. Nor is this all. Liebig has omitted the significant
+circumstance that only at a certain stage of organization does this
+element of the circulation make its appearance. Throughout extensive
+divisions of the lower animals, the blood contains no corpuscles; and in
+societies of low civilization, there is no money.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far we have considered the analogy between the blood in a living
+body and the consumable and circulating commodities in the body-politic.
+Let us now compare the appliances by which they are respectively
+distributed. We shall find in the developments of these appliances
+parallelisms not less remarkable than those above set forth. Already we
+have shown that, as classes, wholesale and retail distributors discharge
+in a society the office which the vascular system discharges in an
+individual creature; that they come into existence later than the other
+two great classes, as the vascular layer appears later than the mucous
+and serous layers; and that they occupy a like intermediate position.
+Here, however, it remains to be pointed out that a complete conception
+of the circulating system in a society, includes not only the active
+human agents who propel the currents of commodities, and regulate their
+distribution, but includes, also, the channels of communication. It is
+the formation and arrangement of these to which we now direct attention.</p>
+
+<p>Going back once more to those lower animals in which there is found
+nothing but a partial diffusion, not of blood,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span> but only of crude
+nutritive fluids, it is to be remarked that the channels through which
+the diffusion takes place, are mere excavations through the
+half-organized substance of the body: they have no lining membranes, but
+are mere <i>lacun&aelig;</i> traversing a rude tissue. Now countries in which
+civilization is but commencing, display a like condition: there are no
+roads properly so called; but the wilderness of vegetal life covering
+the earth's surface is pierced by tracks, through which the distribution
+of crude commodities takes place. And while, in both cases, the acts of
+distribution occur only at long intervals (the currents, after a pause,
+now setting towards a general centre and now away from it), the transfer
+is in both cases slow and difficult. But among other accompaniments of
+progress, common to animals and societies, comes the formation of more
+definite and complete channels of communication. Blood-vessels acquire
+distinct walls; roads are fenced and gravelled. This advance is first
+seen in those roads or vessels that are nearest to the chief centres of
+distribution; while the peripheral roads and peripheral vessels long
+continue in their primitive states. At a yet later stage of development,
+where comparative finish of structure is found throughout the system as
+well as near the chief centres, there remains in both cases the
+difference that the main channels are comparatively broad and straight,
+while the subordinate ones are narrow and tortuous in proportion to
+their remoteness. Lastly, it is to be remarked that there ultimately
+arise in the higher social organisms, as in the higher individual
+organisms, main channels of distribution still more distinguished by
+their perfect structures, their comparative straightness, and the
+absence of those small branches which the minor channels perpetually
+give off. And in railways we also see, for the first time in the social
+organism, a system of double channels conveying currents in opposite
+directions, as do the arteries and veins of a well-developed animal.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>These parallelisms in the evolutions and structures of the circulating
+systems, introduce us to others in the kinds and rates of the movements
+going on through them. Through the lowest societies, as through the
+lowest creatures, the distribution of crude nutriment is by slow
+gurgitations and regurgitations. In creatures that have rude vascular
+systems, just as in societies that are beginning to have roads, there is
+no regular circulation along definite courses; but, instead, periodical
+changes of the currents&mdash;now towards this point and now towards that.
+Through each part of an inferior mollusk's body, the blood flows for a
+while in one direction, then stops and flows in the opposite direction;
+just as through a rudely-organized society, the distribution of
+merchandize is slowly carried on by great fairs, occurring in different
+localities, to and from which the currents periodically set. Only
+animals of tolerably complete organizations, like advanced communities,
+are permeated by constant currents that are definitely directed. In
+living bodies, the local and variable currents disappear when there grow
+up great centres of circulation, generating more powerful currents by a
+rhythm which ends in a quick, regular pulsation. And when in social
+bodies there arise great centres of commercial activity, producing and
+exchanging large quantities of commodities, the rapid and continuous
+streams drawn in and emitted by these centres subdue all minor and local
+circulations: the slow rhythm of fairs merges into the faster one of
+weekly markets, and in the chief centres of distribution, weekly markets
+merge into daily markets; while in place of the languid transfer from
+place to place, taking place at first weekly, then twice or thrice a
+week, we by-and-by get daily transfer, and finally transfer many times a
+day&mdash;the original sluggish, irregular rhythm, becomes a rapid, equable
+pulse. Mark, too, that in both cases the increased activity, like the
+greater perfection of structure, is much less conspicuous at the
+periphery of the vascular system. On<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span> main lines of railway, we have,
+perhaps, a score trains in each direction daily, going at from thirty to
+fifty miles an hour; as, through the great arteries, the blood moves
+rapidly in successive gushes. Along high roads, there go vehicles
+conveying men and commodities with much less, though still considerable,
+speed, and with a much less decided rhythm; as, in the smaller arteries,
+the speed of the blood is greatly diminished and the pulse less
+conspicuous. In parish-roads, narrower, less complete, and more
+tortuous, the rate of movement is further decreased and the rhythm
+scarcely traceable; as in the ultimate arteries. In those still more
+imperfect by-roads which lead from these parish-roads to scattered
+farmhouses and cottages, the motion is yet slower and very irregular;
+just as we find it in the capillaries. While along the field-roads,
+which, in their unformed, unfenced state, are typical of <i>lacun&aelig;</i>, the
+movement is the slowest, the most irregular, and the most infrequent; as
+it is, not only in the primitive <i>lacun&aelig;</i> of animals and societies, but
+as it is also in those <i>lacun&aelig;</i> in which the vascular system ends among
+extensive families of inferior creatures.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, then, we find between the distributing systems of living bodies
+and the distributing systems of bodies-politic, wonderfully close
+parallelisms. In the lowest forms of individual and social organisms,
+there exist neither prepared nutritive matters nor distributing
+appliances; and in both, these, arising as necessary accompaniments of
+the differentiation of parts, approach perfection as this
+differentiation approaches completeness. In animals, as in societies,
+the distributing agencies begin to show themselves at the same relative
+periods, and in the same relative positions. In the one, as in the
+other, the nutritive materials circulated are at first crude and simple,
+gradually become better elaborated and more heterogeneous, and have
+eventually added to them a new element facilitating the nutritive
+processes. The channels of communication pass through similar phases of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>
+development, which bring them to analogous forms. And the directions,
+rhythms, and rates of circulation, progress by like steps to like final
+conditions.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We come at length to the nervous system. Having noticed the primary
+differentiation of societies into the governing and governed classes,
+and observed its analogy to the differentiation of the two primary
+tissues which respectively develop into organs of external action and
+organs of alimentation; having noticed some of the leading analogies
+between the development of industrial arrangements and that of the
+alimentary apparatus; and having, above, more fully traced the analogies
+between the distributing systems, social and individual; we have now to
+compare the appliances by which a society, as a whole, is regulated,
+with those by which the movements of an individual creature are
+regulated. We shall find here parallelisms equally striking with those
+already detailed.</p>
+
+<p>The class out of which governmental organization originates, is, as we
+have said, analogous in its relations to the ectoderm of the lowest
+animals and of embryonic forms. And as this primitive membrane, out of
+which the nervo-muscular system is evolved, must, even in the first
+stage of its differentiation, be slightly distinguished from the rest by
+that greater impressibility and contractility characterizing the organs
+to which it gives rise; so, in that superior class which is eventually
+transformed into the directo-executive system of a society (its
+legislative and defensive appliances), does there exist in the
+beginning, a larger endowment of the capacities required for these
+higher social functions. Always, in rude assemblages of men, the
+strongest, most courageous, and most sagacious, become rulers and
+leaders; and, in a tribe of some standing, this results in the
+establishment of a dominant class, characterized on the average by those
+mental and bodily qualities which fit them for deliberation and
+vigorous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> combined action. Thus that greater impressibility and
+contractility, which in the rudest animal types characterize the units
+of the ectoderm, characterize also the units of the primitive social
+stratum which controls and fights; since impressibility and
+contractility are the respective roots of intelligence and strength.</p>
+
+<p>Again, in the unmodified ectoderm, as we see it in the <i>Hydra</i>, the
+units are all endowed both with impressibility and contractility; but as
+we ascend to higher types of organization, the ectoderm differentiates
+into classes of units which divide those two functions between them:
+some, becoming exclusively impressible, cease to be contractile; while
+some, becoming exclusively contractile, cease to be impressible.
+Similarly with societies. In an aboriginal tribe, the directive and
+executive functions are diffused in a mingled form throughout the whole
+governing class. Each minor chief commands those under him, and, if need
+be, himself coerces them into obedience. The council of chiefs itself
+carries out on the battle-field its own decisions. The head chief not
+only makes laws, but administers justice with his own hands. In larger
+and more settled communities, however, the directive and executive
+agencies begin to grow distinct from each other. As fast as his duties
+accumulate, the head chief or king confines himself more and more to
+directing public affairs, and leaves the execution of his will to
+others: he deputes others to enforce submission, to inflict punishments,
+or to carry out minor acts of offence and defence; and only on occasions
+when, perhaps, the safety of the society and his own supremacy are at
+stake, does he begin to act as well as direct. As this differentiation
+establishes itself, the characteristics of the ruler begin to change. No
+longer, as in an aboriginal tribe, the strongest and most daring man,
+the tendency is for him to become the man of greatest cunning,
+foresight, and skill in the management of others; for in societies that
+have advanced beyond the first stage, it is chiefly such qualities<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>
+that insure success in gaining supreme power, and holding it against
+internal and external enemies. Thus that member of the governing class
+who comes to be the chief directing agent, and so plays the same part
+that a rudimentary nervous centre does in an unfolding organism, is
+usually one endowed with some superiorities of nervous organization.</p>
+
+<p>In those larger and more complex communities possessing, perhaps, a
+separate military class, a priesthood, and dispersed masses of
+population requiring local control, there grow up subordinate governing
+agents; who, as their duties accumulate, severally become more directive
+and less executive in their characters. And when, as commonly happens,
+the king begins to collect round himself advisers who aid him by
+communicating information, preparing subjects for his judgment, and
+issuing his orders; we may say that the form of organization is
+comparable to one very general among inferior types of animals, in which
+there exists a chief ganglion with a few dispersed minor ganglia under
+its control.</p>
+
+<p>The analogies between the evolution of governmental structures in
+societies, and the evolution of governmental structures in living
+bodies, are, however, more strikingly displayed during the formation of
+nations by coalescence of tribes&mdash;a process already shown to be, in
+several respects, parallel to the development of creatures that
+primarily consist of many like segments. Among other points of community
+between the successive rings which make up the body in the lower
+<i>Annulosa</i>, is the possession of similar pairs of ganglia. These pairs
+of ganglia, though connected by nerves, are very incompletely dependent
+on any general controlling power. Hence it results that when the body is
+cut in two, the hinder part continues to move forward under the
+propulsion of its numerous legs; and that when the chain of ganglia has
+been divided without severing the body, the hind limbs may be seen
+trying to propel the body in one direction while the fore limbs are
+trying to propel it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span> in another. But in the higher <i>Annulosa</i>, called
+<i>Articulata</i>, sundry of the anterior pairs of ganglia, besides growing
+larger, unite in one mass; and this great cephalic ganglion having
+become the co-ordinator of all the creature's movements, there no longer
+exists much local independence. Now may we not in the growth of a
+consolidated kingdom out of petty sovereignties or baronies, observe
+analogous changes? Like the chiefs and primitive rulers above described,
+feudal lords, exercising supreme power over their respective groups of
+retainers, discharge functions analogous to those of rudimentary nervous
+centres. Among these local governing centres there is, in early feudal
+times, very little subordination. They are in frequent antagonism; they
+are individually restrained chiefly by the influence of parties in their
+own class; and they are but irregularly subject to that most powerful
+member of their order who has gained the position of head-suzerain or
+king. As the growth and organization of the society progresses, these
+local directive centres fall more and more under the control of a chief
+directive centre. Closer commercial union between the several segments
+is accompanied by closer governmental union; and these minor rulers end
+in being little more than agents who administer, in their several
+localities, the laws made by the supreme ruler: just as the local
+ganglia above described, eventually become agents which enforce, in
+their respective segments, the orders of the cephalic ganglion. The
+parallelism holds still further. We remarked above, when speaking of the
+rise of aboriginal kings, that in proportion as their territories
+increase, they are obliged not only to perform their executive functions
+by deputy, but also to gather round themselves advisers to aid in their
+directive functions; and that thus, in place of a solitary governing
+unit, there grows up a group of governing units, comparable to a
+ganglion consisting of many cells. Let us here add that the advisers and
+chief officers who thus form the rudiment of a ministry, tend from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>
+beginning to exercise some control over the ruler. By the information
+they give and the opinions they express, they sway his judgment and
+affect his commands. To this extent he is made a channel through which
+are communicated the directions originating with them; and in course of
+time, when the advice of ministers becomes the acknowledged source of
+his actions, the king assumes the character of an automatic centre,
+reflecting the impressions made on him from without.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond this complication of governmental structure many societies do not
+progress; but in some, a further development takes place. Our own case
+best illustrates this further development and its further analogies. To
+kings and their ministries have been added, in England, other great
+directive centres, exercising a control which, at first small, has been
+gradually becoming predominant: as with the great governing ganglia
+which especially distinguish the highest classes of living beings.
+Strange as the assertion will be thought, our Houses of Parliament
+discharge, in the social economy, functions which are in sundry respects
+comparable to those discharged by the cerebral masses in a vertebrate
+animal. As it is in the nature of a single ganglion to be affected only
+by special stimuli from particular parts of the body; so it is in the
+nature of a single ruler to be swayed in his acts by exclusive personal
+or class interests. As it is in the nature of a cluster of ganglia,
+connected with the primary one, to convey to it a greater variety of
+influences from more numerous organs, and thus to make its acts conform
+to more numerous requirements; so it is in the nature of the subsidiary
+controlling powers surrounding a king to adapt his rule to a greater
+number of public exigencies. And as it is in the nature of those great
+and latest-developed ganglia which distinguish the higher animals, to
+interpret and combine the multiplied and varied impressions conveyed to
+them from all parts of the system, and to regulate the actions in such
+way as duly to regard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span> them all; so it is in the nature of those great
+and latest-developed legislative bodies which distinguish the most
+advanced societies, to interpret and combine the wishes of all classes
+and localities, and to make laws in harmony with the general wants. We
+may describe the office of the brain as that of <i>averaging</i> the
+interests of life, physical, intellectual, moral; and a good brain is
+one in which the desires answering to these respective interests are so
+balanced, that the conduct they jointly dictate, sacrifices none of
+them. Similarly, we may describe the office of a Parliament as that of
+<i>averaging</i> the interests of the various classes in a community; and a
+good Parliament is one in which the parties answering to these
+respective interests are so balanced, that their united legislation
+allows to each class as much as consists with the claims of the rest.
+Besides being comparable in their duties, these great directive centres,
+social and individual, are comparable in the processes by which their
+duties are discharged. The cerebrum is not occupied with direct
+impressions from without but with the ideas of such impressions. Instead
+of the actual sensations produced in the body, and directly appreciated
+by the sensory ganglia, or primitive nervous centres, the cerebrum
+receives only the representations of these sensations; and its
+consciousness is called <i>representative</i> consciousness, to distinguish
+it from the original or <i>presentative</i> consciousness. Is it not
+significant that we have hit on the same word to distinguish the
+function of our House of Commons? We call it a <i>representative</i> body,
+because the interests with which it deals are not directly presented to
+it, but represented to it by its various members; and a debate is a
+conflict of representations of the results likely to follow from a
+proposed course&mdash;a description which applies with equal truth to a
+debate in the individual consciousness. In both cases, too, these great
+governing masses take no part in the executive functions. As, after a
+conflict in the cerebrum, those desires which finally pre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span>dominate act
+on the subjacent ganglia, and through their instrumentality determine
+the bodily actions; so the parties which, after a parliamentary
+struggle, gain the victory, do not themselves carry out their wishes,
+but get them carried out by the executive divisions of the Government.
+The fulfilment of all legislative decisions still devolves on the
+original directive centres: the impulse passing from the Parliament to
+the Ministers and from the Ministers to the King, in whose name
+everything is done; just as those smaller, first-developed ganglia,
+which in the lowest vertebrata are the chief controlling agents, are
+still, in the brains of the higher vertebrata, the agents through which
+the dictates of the cerebrum are worked out. Moreover, in both cases
+these original centres become increasingly automatic. In the developed
+vertebrate animal, they have little function beyond that of conveying
+impressions to, and executing the determinations of, the larger centres.
+In our highly organized government, the monarch has long been lapsing
+into a passive agent of Parliament; and now, ministries are rapidly
+falling into the same position. Nay, between the two cases there is a
+parallelism even in respect of the exceptions to this automatic action.
+For in the individual creature it happens that under circumstances of
+sudden alarm, as from a loud sound close at hand, an unexpected object
+starting up in front, or a slip from insecure footing, the danger is
+guarded against by some quick involuntary jump, or adjustment of the
+limbs, which occurs before there is time to consider the impending evil
+and take deliberate measures to avoid it: the rationale of which is that
+these violent impressions produced on the senses, are reflected from the
+sensory ganglia to the spinal cord and muscles, without, as in ordinary
+cases, first passing through the cerebrum. In like manner on national
+emergencies calling for prompt action, the King and Ministry, not having
+time to lay the matter before the great deliberative bodies, themselves
+issue commands for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span> requisite movements or precautions: the
+primitive, and now almost automatic, directive centres, resume for a
+moment their original uncontrolled power. And then, strangest of all,
+observe that in either case there is an after-process of approval or
+disapproval. The individual on recovering from his automatic start, at
+once contemplates the cause of his fright; and, according to the case,
+concludes that it was well he moved as he did, or condemns himself for
+his groundless alarm. In like manner, the deliberative powers of the
+State discuss, as soon as may be, the unauthorized acts of the executive
+powers; and, deciding that the reasons were or were not sufficient,
+grant or withhold a bill of indemnity.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+<p>Thus far in comparing the governmental organization of the body-politic
+with that of an individual body, we have considered only the respective
+co-ordinating centres. We have yet to consider the channels through
+which these co-ordinating centres receive information and convey
+commands. In the simplest societies, as in the simplest organisms, there
+is no "internuncial apparatus," as Hunter styled the nervous system.
+Consequently, impressions can be but slowly propagated from unit to unit
+throughout the whole mass. The same progress, however, which, in
+animal-organization, shows itself in the establishment of ganglia or
+directive centres, shows itself also in the establishment of
+nerve-threads, through which the ganglia receive and convey impressions
+and so control remote<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span> organs. And in societies the like eventually
+takes place. After a long period during which the directive centres
+communicate with various parts of the society through other means, there
+at last comes into existence an "internuncial apparatus," analogous to
+that found in individual bodies. The comparison of telegraph-wires to
+nerves is familiar to all. It applies, however, to an extent not
+commonly supposed. Thus, throughout the vertebrate sub-kingdom, the
+great nerve-bundles diverge from the vertebrate axis side by side with
+the great arteries; and similarly, our groups of telegraph-wires are
+carried along the sides of our railways. The most striking parallelism,
+however, remains. Into each great bundle of nerves, as it leaves the
+axis of the body along with an artery, there enters a branch of the
+sympathetic nerve; which branch, accompanying the artery throughout its
+ramifications, has the function of regulating its diameter and otherwise
+controlling the flow of blood through it according to local
+requirements. Analogously, in the group of telegraph-wires running
+alongside each railway, there is a wire for the purpose of regulating
+the traffic&mdash;for retarding or expediting the flow of passengers and
+commodities, as the local conditions demand. Probably, when our now
+rudimentary telegraph-system is fully developed, other analogies will be
+traceable.</p>
+
+<p>Such, then, is a general outline of the evidence which justifies the
+comparison of societies to living organisms. That they gradually
+increase in mass; that they become little by little more complex; that
+at the same time their parts grow more mutually dependent; and that they
+continue to live and grow as wholes, while successive generations of
+their units appear and disappear; are broad peculiarities which
+bodies-politic display in common with all living bodies; and in <a name='TC_13'></a><ins class="correction" title="Was 'whic hthey'">which
+they</ins> and living bodies differ from everything else. And on carrying out
+the comparison in detail, we find that these major analogies involve
+many minor analogies, far closer than might have been expected.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span> Others
+might be added. We had hoped to say something respecting the different
+types of social organization, and something also on social
+metamorphoses; but we have reached our assigned limits.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> It may be well to warn the reader against an error fallen
+into by one who criticised this essay on its first publication&mdash;the
+error of supposing that the analogy here intended to be drawn, is a
+specific analogy between the organization of society in England, and the
+human organization. As said at the outset, no such specific analogy
+exists. The above parallel is one between the most-developed systems of
+governmental organization, individual and social; and the vertebrate
+type is instanced merely as exhibiting this most-developed system. If
+any specific comparison were made, which it cannot rationally be, it
+would be made with some much lower vertebrate form than the human.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_ORIGIN_OF_ANIMAL_WORSHIP" id="THE_ORIGIN_OF_ANIMAL_WORSHIP"></a>THE ORIGIN OF ANIMAL WORSHIP.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>First published in</i> The Fortnightly Review <i>for May,</i> 1870.]</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Mr. McLennan's recent essays on the Worship of Animals and Plants have
+done much to elucidate a very obscure subject. By pursuing in this case,
+as before in another case, the truly scientific method of comparing the
+phenomena presented by existing uncivilized races with those which the
+traditions of civilized races present, he has rendered both of them more
+comprehensible than they were before.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me, however, that Mr. McLennan gives but an indefinite
+answer to the essential question&mdash;How did the worship of animals and
+plants arise? Indeed, in his concluding paper, he expressly leaves this
+problem unsolved; saying that his "is not an hypothesis explanatory of
+the origin of <i>Totemism</i>, be it remembered, but an hypothesis
+explanatory of the animal and plant worship of the ancient nations." So
+that we have still to ask&mdash;Why have savage tribes so generally taken
+animals and plants and other things as totems? What can have induced
+this tribe to ascribe special sacredness to one creature, and that tribe
+to another? And if to these questions the reply is, that each tribe
+considers itself to be descended from the object of its reverence, then
+there presses for answer the further question&mdash;How came so strange a
+notion into existence? If this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span> notion occurred in one case only, we
+might set it down to some whim of thought or some illusive occurrence.
+But appealing, as it does, with multitudinous variations among so many
+uncivilized races in different parts of the world, and having left
+numerous marks in the superstitions of extinct civilized races, we
+cannot assume any special or exceptional cause. Moreover, the general
+cause, whatever it may be, must be such as does not negative an
+aboriginal intelligence like in nature to our own. After studying the
+grotesque beliefs of savages, we are apt to suppose that their reason is
+not as our reason. But this supposition is inadmissible. Given the
+amount of knowledge which primitive men possess, and given the imperfect
+verbal symbols used by them in speech and thought, and the conclusions
+they habitually reach will be those that are <i>relatively</i> the most
+rational. This must be our postulate; and, setting out with this
+postulate, we have to ask how primitive men came so generally, if not
+universally, to believe themselves the progeny of animals or plants or
+inanimate bodies. There is, I believe, a satisfactory answer.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The proposition with which Mr. McLennan sets out, that totem-worship
+preceded the worship of anthropomorphic gods, is one to which I can
+yield but a qualified assent. It is true in a sense, but not wholly
+true. If the words "gods" and "worship" carry with them their ordinary
+definite meanings, the statement is true; but if their meanings are
+widened so as to comprehend those earliest vague notions out of which
+the definite ideas of gods and worship are evolved, I think it is not
+true. The rudimentary form of all religion is the propitiation of dead
+ancestors, who are supposed to be still existing, and to be capable of
+working good or evil to their descendants. As a preparation for dealing
+hereafter with the principles of sociology, I have, for some years past,
+directed much attention to the modes of thought current in the simpler
+human societies; and evidence of many kinds,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span> furnished by all
+varieties of uncivilized men, has forced on me a conclusion harmonizing
+with that lately expressed in this Review by Prof. Huxley&mdash;namely, that
+the savage, conceiving a corpse to be deserted by the active personality
+who dwelt in it, conceives this active personality to be still existing,
+and that his feelings and ideas concerning it form the basis of his
+superstitions. Everywhere we find expressed Or implied the belief that
+each person is double; and that when he dies, his other self, whether
+remaining near at hand or gone far away, may return, and continues
+capable of injuring his enemies and aiding his friends.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p>
+
+<p>But how out of the desire to propitiate this second personality<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span> of a
+deceased man (the words "ghost" and "spirit" are somewhat misleading,
+since the savage believes that the second personality reappears in a
+form equally tangible with the first), does there grow up the worship of
+animals, plants, and inanimate objects? Very simply. Savages habitually
+distinguish individuals by names that are either directly suggestive of
+some personal trait or fact of personal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span> history, or else express an
+observed community of character with some well-known object. Such a
+genesis of individual names, before surnames have arisen, is inevitable;
+and how easily it arises we shall see on remembering that it still goes
+on in its original form, even when no longer needful. I do not refer
+only to the significant fact that in some parts of England, as in the
+nail-making districts, nicknames are general, and surnames little
+recognized; but I refer to a common usage among both children and
+adults. The rude man is apt to be known as "a bear;" a sly fellow, as
+"an old fox;" a hypocrite, as "the crocodile." Names of plants, too, are
+used; as when the red-haired boy is called "carrots" by his
+school-fellows. Nor do we lack nicknames derived from inorganic objects
+and agents: instance that given by Mr. Carlyle to the elder
+Sterling&mdash;"Captain Whirlwind." Now, in the earliest savage state, this
+metaphorical naming will in most cases commence afresh in each
+generation&mdash;must do so, indeed, until surnames of some kind have been
+established. I say in most cases, because there will occur exceptions in
+the cases of men who have distinguished themselves. If "the Wolf,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span>
+proving famous in fight, becomes a terror to neighbouring tribes, and a
+dominant man in his own, his sons, proud of their parentage, will not
+let fall the fact that they descended from "the Wolf"; nor will this
+fact be forgotten by the rest of the tribe who hold "the Wolf" in awe,
+and see reason to dread his sons. In proportion to the power and
+celebrity of "the Wolf" will this pride and this fear conspire to
+maintain among his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as well as
+among those over whom they dominate, the remembrance of the fact that
+their ancestor was "the Wolf". And if, as will occasionally happen, this
+dominant family becomes the root of a new tribe, the members of this
+tribe will become known to themselves and others as "the Wolves".</p>
+
+<p>We need not rest satisfied with the inference that this inheritance of
+nicknames <i>will</i> take place. There is proof that it <i>does</i> take place.
+As nicknaming after animals, plants, and other objects, still goes on
+among ourselves, so among ourselves does there go on the descent of
+nicknames. An instance has come under my own notice on an estate in the
+West Highlands, belonging to some friends with whom I frequently have
+the pleasure of spending a few weeks in the autumn. "Take a young
+Croshek," has more than once been the reply of my host to the inquiry,
+who should go with me, when I was setting out salmon-fishing. The elder
+Croshek I knew well; and supposed that this name, borne by him and by
+all belonging to him, was the family surname. Years passed before I
+learned that the real surname was Cameron; that the father was called
+Croshek, after the name of his cottage, to distinguish him from other
+Camerons employed about the premises; and that his children had come to
+be similarly distinguished. Though here, as very generally in Scotland,
+the nickname was derived from the place of residence, yet had it been
+derived from an animal, the process would have been the same:
+inheritance of it would have occurred just as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span> naturally. Not even for
+this small link in the argument, however, need we depend on inference.
+There is fact to bear us out. Mr. Bates, in his <i>Naturalist on the River
+Amazons</i> (2d ed., p. 376), describing three half-castes who accompanied
+him on a hunting trip, says&mdash;"Two of them were brothers, namely, Jo&atilde;o
+(John) and Zephyrino Jabut&iacute;: Jabut&iacute;, or tortoise, being a nickname which
+their father had earned for his slow gait, and which, as is usual in
+this country, had descended as the surname of the family." Let me add
+the statement made by Mr. Wallace respecting this same region, that "one
+of the tribes on the river Is&aacute;nna is called 'Jurupari' (Devils). Another
+is called 'Ducks;' a third, 'Stars;' a fourth, 'Mandiocca.'" Putting
+these two statements together, can there be any doubt about the genesis
+of these tribal names? Let "the Tortoise" become sufficiently
+distinguished (not necessarily by superiority&mdash;great inferiority may
+occasionally suffice) and the tradition of descent from him, preserved
+by his descendants themselves if he was superior, and by their
+contemptuous neighbours if he was inferior, may become a tribal
+name.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
+
+<p>"But this," it will be said, "does not amount to an explanation of
+animal-worship." True: a third factor remains to be specified. Given a
+belief in the still-existing other self of the deceased ancestor, who
+must be propitiated; given this survival of his metaphorical name among
+his grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc.; and the further<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span> requisite
+is that the distinction between metaphor and reality shall be forgotten.
+Let tradition fail to keep clearly in view the fact that the ancestor
+was a man called "the Wolf"&mdash;let him be habitually spoken of as "the
+Wolf", just as when alive; and the natural mistake of taking the name
+literally will bring with it, firstly, a belief in descent from an
+actual wolf, and, secondly, a treatment of the wolf in a manner likely
+to propitiate him&mdash;a manner appropriate to one who may be the other self
+of the dead ancestor, or one of the kindred, and therefore a friend.</p>
+
+<p>That a misunderstanding of this kind is likely to grow up, becomes
+obvious when we bear in mind the great indefiniteness of primitive
+language. As Prof. Max M&uuml;ller says, respecting certain
+misinterpretations of an opposite kind: "These metaphors ... would
+become mere names handed down in the conversation of a family,
+understood perhaps by the grandfather, familiar to the father, but
+strange to the son, and misunderstood by the grandson." We have ample
+reason, then, for supposing such misinterpretations. Nay, we may go
+further. We are justified in saying that they are certain to occur. For
+undeveloped languages contain no words capable of indicating the
+distinction to be kept in view. In the tongues of existing inferior
+races, only concrete objects and acts are expressible. The Australians
+have a name for each kind of tree, but no name for tree irrespective of
+kind. And though some witnesses allege that their vocabulary is not
+absolutely destitute of generic names, its extreme poverty in such is
+unquestionable. Similarly with the Tasmanians. Dr. Milligan says they
+"had acquired very limited powers of abstraction or generalization. They
+possessed no words representing abstract ideas; for each variety of
+gum-tree and wattle-tree, etc., etc., they had a name, but they had no
+equivalent for the expression, 'a tree;' neither could they express
+abstract qualities, such as hard, soft, warm, cold, long, short, round,
+etc.; for 'hard,' they would say 'like a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span> stone;' for 'tall,' they would
+say 'long legs,' etc.; and for 'round,' they said 'like a ball,' 'like
+the moon,' and so on, usually suiting the action to the word, and
+confirming, by some sign, the meaning to be understood."<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> Now, even
+making allowance for over-statement here (which seems needful, since the
+word "long," said to be inexpressible in the abstract, subsequently
+occurs as qualifying a concrete in the expression, "long legs"), it is
+manifest that so imperfect a language must fail to convey the idea of a
+name, as something separate from a thing; and that still less can it be
+capable of indicating the act of naming. Familiar use of such
+partially-abstract words as are applicable to all objects of a class, is
+needful before there can be reached the conception of a name&mdash;a word
+symbolizing the symbolic character of other words; and the conception of
+a name, with its answering abstract term, must be long current before
+the verb to name can arise. Hence, men with speech so rude, cannot
+transmit the tradition of an ancestor named "the Wolf", as distinguished
+from the actual wolf. The children and grandchildren who saw him will
+not be led into error; but in later generations, descent from "the Wolf"
+will inevitably come to mean descent from the animal known by that name.
+And the ideas and sentiments which, as above shown, naturally grow up
+round the belief that the dead parents and grandparents are still alive,
+and ready, if propitiated, to befriend their descendants, will be
+extended to the wolf species.</p>
+
+<p>Before passing to other developments of this general view, let me point
+out how not simply animal-worship is thus accounted for, but also the
+conception, so variously illustrated in ancient legends, that animals
+are capable of displaying human powers of speech and thought and action.
+Mythologies are full of stories of beasts and birds and fishes that have
+played intelligent parts in human affairs&mdash;creatures<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span> that have
+befriended particular persons by giving them information, by guiding
+them, by yielding them help; or else that have deceived them, verbally
+or otherwise. Evidently all these traditions, as well as those about
+abductions of women by animals and fostering of children by them, fall
+naturally into their places as results of the habitual misinterpretation
+I have described.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The probability of the hypothesis will appear still greater when we
+observe how readily it applies to the worship of other orders of
+objects. Belief in actual descent from an animal, strange as we may
+think it, is one by no means incongruous with the unanalyzed experiences
+of the savage; for there come under his notice many metamorphoses,
+vegetal and animal, which are apparently of like character. But how
+could he possibly arrive at so grotesque a conception as that the
+progenitor of his tribe was the sun, or the moon, or a particular star?
+No observation of surrounding phenomena affords the slightest suggestion
+of any such possibility. But by the inheritance of nicknames that are
+eventually mistaken for the names of the objects from which they were
+derived, the belief readily arises&mdash;is sure to arise. That the names of
+heavenly bodies will furnish metaphorical names to the uncivilized, is
+manifest. Do we not ourselves call a distinguished singer or actor a
+star? And have we not in poems numerous comparisons of men and women to
+the sun and moon; as in <i>Love's Labour's Lost</i>, where the princess is
+called "a gracious moon," and as in <i>Henry VII.</i>, where we read&mdash;"Those
+suns of glory, those two lights of men?" Clearly, primitive peoples will
+be not unlikely thus to speak of the chief hero of a successful battle.
+When we remember how the arrival of a triumphant warrior must affect the
+feelings of his tribe, dissipating clouds of anxiety and brightening all
+faces with joy, we shall see that the comparison of him to the sun is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span>
+quite natural; and in early speech this comparison can be made only by
+calling him the sun. As before, then, it will happen that, through a
+confounding of the metaphorical name with the actual name, his progeny,
+after a few generations, will be regarded by themselves and others as
+descendants of the sun. And, as a consequence, partly of actual
+inheritance of the ancestral character, and partly of maintenance of the
+traditions respecting the ancestor's achievements, it will also
+naturally happen that the solar race will be considered a superior race,
+as we find it habitually is.</p>
+
+<p>The origin of other totems, equally strange, if not even stranger, is
+similarly accounted for, though otherwise unaccountable. One of the
+New-Zealand chiefs claimed as his progenitor the neighbouring great
+mountain, Tongariro. This seemingly-whimsical belief becomes
+intelligible when we observe how easily it may have arisen from a
+nickname. Do we not ourselves sometimes speak figuratively of a tall,
+fat man as a mountain of flesh? And, among a people prone to speak in
+still more concrete terms, would it not happen that a chief, remarkable
+for his great bulk, would be nicknamed after the highest mountain within
+sight, because he towered above other men as this did above surrounding
+hills? Such an occurrence is not simply possible, but probable. And, if
+so, the confusion of metaphor with fact would originate this surprising
+genealogy. A notion perhaps yet more grotesque, thus receives a
+satisfactory interpretation. What could have put it into the imagination
+of any one that he was descended from the dawn? Given the extremest
+credulity, joined with the wildest fancy, it would still seem requisite
+that the ancestor should be conceived as an entity; and the dawn is
+entirely without that definiteness and comparative constancy which enter
+into the conception of an entity. But when we remember that "the Dawn"
+is a natural complimentary name for a beautiful girl opening into
+womanhood, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span> genesis of the idea becomes, on the above hypothesis,
+quite obvious.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Another indirect verification is that we thus get a clear conception of
+Fetichism in general. Under the fetichistic mode of thought, surrounding
+objects and agents are regarded as having powers more or less definitely
+personal in their natures; and the current interpretation is, that human
+intelligence, in its early stages, is obliged to conceive of their
+powers under this form. I have myself hitherto accepted this
+interpretation; though always with a sense of dissatisfaction. This
+dissatisfaction was, I think, well grounded. The theory is scarcely a
+theory properly so-called; but rather, a restatement in other words.
+Uncivilized men <i>do</i> habitually form anthropomorphic conceptions of
+surrounding things; and this observed general fact is transformed into
+the theory that at first they <i>must</i> so conceive them&mdash;a theory for
+which the psychological justification attempted, seems to me inadequate.
+From our present stand-point, it becomes manifest that Fetichism is not
+primary but secondary. What has been said above almost of itself shows
+this. Let us, however, follow out the steps of its genesis. Respecting
+the Tasmanians, Dr. Milligan says:&mdash;"The names of men and women were
+taken from natural objects and occurrences around, as, for instance, a
+kangaroo, a gum tree, snow, hail, thunder, the wind," flowers in
+blossom, etc. Surrounding objects, then, giving origin to names of
+persons, and being, in the way shown, eventually mistaken for the actual
+progenitors of those who descend from persons nicknamed after them, it
+results that these surrounding objects come to be regarded as in some
+manner possessed of personalities like the human. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span> whose family
+tradition is that his ancestor was "the Crab," will conceive the crab as
+having a disguised inner power like his own; an alleged descent from
+"the Palm-tree" will entail belief in some kind of consciousness
+dwelling in the palm-tree. Hence, in proportion as the animals, plants,
+and inanimate objects or agents that originate names of persons, become
+numerous (which they will do in proportion as a tribe becomes large and
+the number of persons to be distinguished from one another increases),
+multitudinous things around will acquire imaginary personalities. And so
+it will happen that, as Mr. McLennan says of the Feejeeans, "Vegetables
+and stones, nay, even tools and weapons, pots and canoes, have souls
+that are immortal, and that, like the souls of men, pass on at last to
+Mbulu, the abode of departed spirits." Setting out, then, with a belief
+in the still-living other self of the dead ancestor, the alleged general
+cause of misapprehension affords us an intelligible origin of the
+fetichistic conception; and we are enabled to see how it tends to become
+a general, if not a universal, conception.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Other apparently inexplicable phenomena are at the same time divested of
+their strangeness. I refer to the beliefs in, and worship of, compound
+monsters&mdash;impossible hybrid animals, and forms that are half human, half
+brutal. The theory of a primordial Fetichism, supposing it otherwise
+adequate, yields no feasible solutions of these. Grant the alleged
+original tendency to think of all natural agencies as in some way
+personal. Grant, too, that hence may arise a worship of animals, plants,
+and even inanimate bodies. Still the obvious implication is that the
+worship so derived will be limited to things that are, or have been,
+perceived. Why should this mode of thought lead the savage to imagine a
+combination of bird and mammal; and not only to imagine it, but to
+worship it as a god? If even we admit that some illusion may have
+suggested the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span> belief in a creature half man, half fish, we cannot thus
+explain the prevalence among Eastern races of idols representing
+bird-headed men, and men having their legs replaced by the legs of a
+cock, and men with the heads of elephants.</p>
+
+<p>Carrying with us the inferences above drawn, however, it is a corollary
+that ideas and practices of these kinds will arise. When tradition
+preserves both lines of ancestry&mdash;when a chief, nicknamed "the Wolf",
+carries away from an adjacent tribe a wife who is remembered either
+under the animal name of her tribe, or as a woman; it will happen that
+if a son distinguishes himself, the remembrance of him among his
+descendants will be that he was born of a wolf and some other animal, or
+of a wolf and a woman. Misinterpretation, arising in the way described
+from defects of language, will entail belief in a creature uniting the
+attributes of the two; and if the tribe grows into a society,
+representations of such a creature will become objects of worship. One
+of the cases cited by Mr. McLennan may here be repeated in illustration.
+"The story of the origin of the Dikokamenni Kirgheez," they say, "from a
+red greyhound and a certain queen and her forty handmaidens, is of
+ancient date." Now, if "the red greyhound" was the nickname of a man
+extremely swift of foot (celebrated runners have been nicknamed
+"greyhound" among ourselves), a story of this kind would naturally
+arise; and if the metaphorical name was mistaken for the actual name,
+there might result, as the idol of the race, a compound form appropriate
+to the story. We need not be surprised, then, at finding among the
+Egyptians the goddess Pasht represented as a woman with a lion's head,
+and the god Har-hat as a man with the head of a hawk. The Babylonian
+gods&mdash;one having the form of a man with an eagle's tail, and another
+uniting a human bust to a fish's body&mdash;no longer appear such
+unaccountable conceptions. We get feasible explanations, too, of
+sculp<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span>tures representing sphinxes, winged human-headed bulls, etc.; as
+well as of the stories about centaurs, satyrs, and the rest.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Ancient myths in general thus acquire meanings considerably different
+from those ascribed to them by comparative mythologists. Though these
+last may be in part correct, yet if the foregoing argument is valid,
+they can scarcely be correct in their main outlines. Indeed, if we read
+the facts the other way upward, regarding as secondary or additional,
+the elements that are said to be primary, while we regard as primary,
+certain elements which are considered as accretions of later times, we
+shall, I think, be nearer the truth.</p>
+
+<p>The current theory of the myth is that it has grown out of the habit of
+symbolizing natural agents and processes, in terms of human
+personalities and actions. Now, it may in the first place be remarked
+that, though symbolization of this kind is common among civilized races,
+it is not common among races that are the most uncivilized. By existing
+savages, surrounding objects, motions, and changes, are habitually used
+to convey ideas respecting human transactions. It needs but to read the
+speech of an Indian chief to see that just as primitive men name one
+another metaphorically after surrounding objects, so do they
+metaphorically describe one another's doings as though they were the
+doings of natural objects. But assuming a contrary habit of thought to
+be the dominant one, ancient myths are explained as results of the
+primitive tendency to symbolize inanimate things and their changes, by
+human beings and their doings.</p>
+
+<p>A kindred difficulty must be added. The change of verbal meaning from
+which the myth is said to arise, is a change opposite in kind to that
+which prevails in the earlier stages of linguistic development. It
+implies a derivation of the concrete from the abstract; whereas at first
+abstracts are derived only from concretes: the concrete of abstracts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>
+being a subsequent process. In the words of Prof. Max M&uuml;ller, there are
+"dialects spoken at the present day which have no abstract nouns, and
+the more we go back in the history of languages, the smaller we find the
+number of these useful expressions" (<i>Chips</i>, vol. ii., p. 54); or, as
+he says more recently&mdash;"Ancient words and ancient thoughts, for both go
+together, have not yet arrived at that stage of abstraction in which,
+for instance, active powers, whether natural or supernatural, can be
+represented in any but a personal and more or less human form."
+(<i>Fraser's Magazine</i>, April, 1870.) Here the concrete is represented as
+original, and the abstract as derivative. Immediately afterward,
+however, Prof. Max M&uuml;ller, having given as examples of abstract nouns,
+"day and night, spring and winter, dawn and twilight, storm and
+thunder," goes on to argue that, "as long as people thought in language,
+it was simply impossible to speak of morning or evening, of spring and
+winter, without giving to these conceptions something of an individual,
+active, sexual, and at last, personal character." (<i>Chips</i>, vol. ii., p.
+55.) Here the concrete is derived from the abstract&mdash;the personal
+conception is represented as coming <i>after</i> the impersonal conception;
+and through such transformation of the impersonal into the personal,
+Prof. Max M&uuml;ller considers ancient myths to have arisen. How are these
+propositions reconcilable? One of two things must be said:&mdash;If
+originally there were none of these abstract nouns, then the earliest
+statements respecting the daily course of Nature were made in concrete
+terms&mdash;the personal elements of the myth were the primitive elements,
+and the impersonal expressions which are their equivalents came later.
+If this is not admitted, then it must be held that, until after there
+arose these abstract nouns, there were no current statements at all
+respecting these most conspicuous objects and changes which the heavens
+and the earth present; and that the abstract nouns having been somehow
+formed, and rightly formed, and used<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span> without personal meanings,
+afterward became personalized&mdash;a process the reverse of that which
+characterizes early linguistic progress.</p>
+
+<p>No such contradictions occur if we interpret myths after the manner that
+has been indicated. Nay, besides escaping contradictions, we meet with
+unexpected solutions. The moment we try it, the key unlocks for us with
+ease what seems a quite inexplicable fact, which the current hypothesis
+takes as one of its postulates. Speaking of such words as sky and earth,
+dew and rain, rivers and mountains, as well as of the abstract nouns
+above named, Prof. Max M&uuml;ller says&mdash;"Now in ancient languages every one
+of these words had necessarily a termination expressive of gender, and
+this naturally produced in the mind the corresponding idea of sex, so
+that these names received not only an individual, but a sexual
+character. There was no substantive which was not either masculine or
+feminine; neuters being of later growth, and distinguishable chiefly in
+the nominative." (<i>Chips</i>, vol. ii., p. 55.) And this alleged necessity
+for a masculine or feminine implication is assigned as a part of the
+reason why these abstract nouns and collective nouns became
+personalized. But should not a true theory of these first steps in the
+evolution of thought and language show us how it happened that men
+acquired the seemingly-strange habit of so framing their words for sky,
+earth, dew, rain, etc., as to make them indicative of sex? Or, at any
+rate, must it not be admitted that an interpretation which, instead of
+assuming this habit to be "necessary," shows us how it results, thereby
+acquires an additional claim to acceptance? The interpretation I have
+indicated does this. If men and women are habitually nicknamed, and if
+defects of language lead their descendants to regard themselves as
+descendants of the things from which the names were taken, then
+masculine or feminine genders will be ascribed to these things according
+as the ancestors named after them were men or women. If a beautiful
+maiden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span> known metaphorically as "the Dawn," afterwards becomes the
+mother of some distinguished chief called "the North Wind," it will
+result that when, in course of time, the two have been mistaken for the
+actual dawn and the actual north wind, these will, by implication, be
+respectively considered as male and female.</p>
+
+<p>Looking, now, at the ancient myths in general, their seemingly most
+inexplicable trait is the habitual combination of alleged human ancestry
+and adventures, with the possession of personalities otherwise figuring
+in the heavens and on the earth, with totally non-human attributes. This
+enormous incongruity, not the exception but the rule, the current theory
+fails to explain. Suppose it to be granted that the great terrestrial
+and celestial objects and agents naturally become personalized; it does
+not follow that each of them shall have a specific human biography. To
+say of some star that he was the son of this king or that hero, was born
+in a particular place, and when grown up carried off the wife of a
+neighbouring chief, is a gratuitous multiplication of incongruities
+already sufficiently great; and is not accounted for by the alleged
+necessary personalization of abstract and collective nouns. As looked at
+from our present stand-point, however, such traditions become quite
+natural&mdash;nay, it is clear that they will necessarily arise. When a
+nickname has become a tribal name, it thereby ceases to be individually
+distinctive; and, as already said, the process of nicknaming inevitably
+continues. It commences afresh with each child; and the nickname of each
+child is both an individual name and a potential tribal name, which may
+become an actual tribal name if the individual is sufficiently
+celebrated. Usually, then, there is a double set of distinctions; under
+one of which the individual is known by his ancestral name, and under
+the other of which he is known by a name suggestive of something
+peculiar to himself: just as we have seen happens among the Scotch
+clans. Consider, now, what will result when language has reached<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span> a
+stage of development such that it can convey the notion of naming, and
+is able, therefore, to preserve traditions of human ancestry. It will
+result that the individual will be known both as the son of such and
+such a man by a mother whose name was so and so, and also as "the Crab",
+or "the Bear", or "the Whirlwind"&mdash;supposing one of these to be his
+nickname. Such joint use of nicknames and proper names occurs in every
+school. Now, clearly, in advancing from the early state in which
+ancestors become identified with the objects they are nicknamed after,
+to the state in which there are proper names that have lost their
+metaphorical meanings, there must be passed through a state in which
+proper names, partially settled only, may or may not be preserved, and
+in which the new nicknames are still liable to be mistaken for actual
+names. Under such conditions there will arise (especially in the case of
+a distinguished man) this seemingly-impossible combination of human
+parentage with the possession of the non-human, or superhuman,
+attributes of the thing which gave the nickname. Another anomaly
+simultaneously disappears. The warrior may have, and often will have, a
+variety of complimentary nicknames&mdash;"the powerful one," "the destroyer,"
+etc. Supposing his leading nickname has been "the Sun"; then when he
+comes to be identified by tradition with the sun, it will happen that
+the sun will acquire his alternative descriptive titles&mdash;the swift one,
+the lion, the wolf&mdash;titles not obviously appropriate to the sun, but
+quite appropriate to the warrior. Then there comes, too, an explanation
+of the remaining trait of such myths. When this identification of
+conspicuous persons, male and female, with conspicuous natural agents,
+has become settled, there will in due course arise interpretations of
+the actions of these agents in anthropomorphic terms. Suppose, for
+instance, that Endymion and Selene, metaphorically named, the one after
+the setting sun, the other after the moon, have had their human
+individualities merged in those of the sun and moon, through
+mis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>interpretation of metaphors; what will happen? The legend of their
+loves having to be reconciled with their celestial appearances and
+motions, these will be spoken of as results of feeling and will; so that
+when the sun is going down in the west, while the moon in mid-heaven is
+following him, the fact will be expressed by saying: "Selene loves and
+watches Endymion." Thus we obtain a consistent explanation of the myth
+without distorting it; and without assuming that it contains gratuitous
+fictions. We are enabled to accept the biographical part of it, if not
+as literal fact, still as having had fact for its root. We are helped to
+see how, by an inevitable misinterpretation, there grew out of a more or
+less true tradition, this strange identification of its personages, with
+objects and powers totally non-human in their aspects. And then we are
+shown how, from the attempt to reconcile in thought these contradictory
+elements of the myth, there arose the habit of ascribing the actions of
+these non-human things to human motives.</p>
+
+<p>One further verification may be drawn from facts which are obstacles to
+the converse hypothesis. These objects and powers, celestial and
+terrestrial, which force themselves most on men's attention, have some
+of them several proper names, identified with those of different
+individuals, born at different places, and having different sets of
+adventures. Thus we have the sun variously known as Apollo, Endymion,
+Helios, Tithonos, etc.&mdash;personages having irreconcilable genealogies.
+Such anomalies Prof. Max M&uuml;ller apparently ascribes to the
+untrustworthiness of traditions, which are "careless about
+contradictions, or ready to solve them sometimes by the most atrocious
+expedients." (<i>Chips</i>, vol. ii., p. 84.) But if the evolution of the
+myth has been that above indicated, there exists no anomalies to be got
+rid of: these diverse genealogies become parts of the evidence. For we
+have abundant proof that the same objects furnish metaphorical names of
+men in different tribes. There are Duck tribes in Australia, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span> South
+America, in North America. The eagle is still a totem among the North
+Americans, as Mr. McLennan shows reason to conclude that it was among
+the Egyptians, among the Jews, and among the Romans. Obviously, for
+reasons already assigned, it naturally happened in the early stages of
+the ancient races, that complimentary comparisons of their heroes to the
+Sun were frequently made. What resulted? The Sun having furnished names
+for sundry chiefs and early founders of tribes, and local traditions
+having severally identified them with the Sun, these tribes, when they
+grew, spread, conquered, or came otherwise into partial union,
+originated a combined mythology, which necessarily contained conflicting
+stories about the Sun-god, as about its other leading personages. If the
+North-American tribes, among several of which there are traditions of a
+Sun-god, had developed a combined civilization, there would similarly
+have arisen among them a mythology which ascribed to the Sun several
+different proper names and genealogies.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Let me briefly set down the leading characters of this hypothesis which
+give it probability.</p>
+
+<p>True interpretations of all the natural processes, organic and
+inorganic, that have gone on in past times, habitually trace them to
+causes still in action. It is thus in Geology; it is thus in Biology; it
+is thus in Philology. Here we find this characteristic repeated.
+Nicknaming, the inheritance of nicknames, and to some extent, the
+misinterpretation of nicknames, go on among us still; and were surnames
+absent, language imperfect, and knowledge as rudimentary as of old, it
+is tolerably manifest that results would arise like those we have
+contemplated.</p>
+
+<p>A further characteristic of a true cause is that it accounts not only
+for the particular group of phenomena to be interpreted, but also for
+other groups. The cause here alleged does this. It equally well explains
+the worship of animals,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span> of plants, of mountains, of winds, of celestial
+bodies, and even of appearances too vague to be considered entities. It
+gives us an intelligible genesis of fetichistic conceptions in general.
+It furnishes us with a reason for the practice, otherwise so
+unaccountable, of moulding the words applied to inanimate objects in
+such ways as to imply masculine and feminine genders. It shows us how
+there naturally arose the worship of compound animals, and of monsters
+half man, half brute. And it shows us why the worship of purely
+anthropomorphic deities came later, when language had so far developed
+that it could preserve in tradition the distinction between proper names
+and nicknames.</p>
+
+<p>A further verification of this view is, that it conforms to the general
+law of evolution: showing us how, out of one simple, vague, aboriginal
+form of belief, there have arisen, by continuous differentiations, the
+many heterogeneous forms of belief which have existed and do exist. The
+desire to propitiate the other self of the dead ancestor, displayed
+among savage tribes, dominantly manifested by the early historic races,
+by the Peruvians and Mexicans, by the Chinese at the present time, and
+to a considerable degree by ourselves (for what else is the wish to do
+that which a lately-deceased parent was known to have desired?) has been
+the universal first form of religious belief; and from it have grown up
+the many divergent beliefs which have been referred to.</p>
+
+<p>Let me add, as a further reason for adopting this view, that it
+immensely diminishes the apparently-great contrast between early modes
+of thought and our own mode of thought. Doubtless the aboriginal man
+differs considerably from us, both in intellect and feeling. But such an
+interpretation of the facts as helps us to bridge over the gap, derives
+additional likelihood from doing this. The hypothesis I have sketched
+out enables us to see that primitive ideas are not so gratuitously
+absurd as we suppose, and also<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span> enables us to rehabilitate the ancient
+myth with far less distortion than at first sight appears possible.</p>
+
+<p>These views I hope to develop in the first part of <i>The Principles of
+Sociology</i>. The large mass of evidence which I shall be able to give in
+support of the hypothesis, joined with the solutions it will be shown to
+yield of many minor problems which I have passed over, will, I think,
+then give to it a still greater probability than it seems now to have.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> A critical reader may raise an objection. If
+animal-worship is to be rationally interpreted, how can the
+interpretation set out by assuming a belief in the spirits of dead
+ancestors&mdash;a belief which just as much requires explanation? Doubtless
+there is here a wide gap in the argument. I hope eventually to fill it
+up. Here, out of many experiences which conspire to generate this
+belief, I can but briefly indicate the leading ones: 1. It is not
+impossible that his shadow, following him everywhere, and moving as he
+moves, may have some small share in giving to the savage a vague idea of
+his duality. It needs but to watch a child's interest in the movements
+of its shadow, and to remember that at first a shadow cannot be
+interpreted as a negation of light, but is looked upon as an entity, to
+perceive that the savage may very possibly consider it as a specific
+something which forms part of him. 2. A much more decided suggestion of
+the same kind is likely to result from the reflection of his face and
+figure in water: imitating him as it does in his form, colours, motions,
+grimaces. When we remember that not unfrequently a savage objects to
+have his portrait taken, because he thinks whoever carries away a
+representation of him carries away some part of his being, we see how
+probable it is that he thinks his double in the water is a reality in
+some way belonging to him. 3. Echoes must greatly tend to confirm the
+idea of duality otherwise arrived at. Incapable as he is of
+understanding their natural origin, the primitive man necessarily
+ascribes them to living beings&mdash;beings who mock him and elude his
+search. 4. The suggestions resulting from these and other physical
+phenomena are, however, secondary in importance. The root of this belief
+in another self lies in the experience of dreams. The distinction so
+easily made by us between our life in dreams and our real life, is one
+which the savage recognizes in but a vague way; and he cannot express
+even that distinction which he perceives. When he awakes, and to those
+who have seen him lying quietly asleep, describes where he has been, and
+what he has done, his rude language fails to state the difference
+between seeing and dreaming that he saw, doing and dreaming that he did.
+From this inadequacy of his language it not only results that he cannot
+truly represent this difference to others, but also that he cannot truly
+represent it to himself. Hence, in the absence of an alternative
+interpretation, his belief, and that of those to whom he tells his
+adventures, is that his other self has been away, and came back when he
+awoke. And this belief, which we find among various existing savage
+tribes, we equally find in the traditions of the early civilized races.
+5. The conception of another self capable of going away and returning,
+receives what to the savage must seem conclusive verifications from the
+abnormal suspensions of consciousness, and derangements of
+consciousness, that occasionally occur in members of his tribe. One who
+has fainted, and cannot be immediately brought back to himself (note the
+significance of our own phrases "returning to himself," etc.) as a
+sleeper can, shows him a state in which the other self has been away for
+a time beyond recall. Still more is this prolonged absence of the other
+self shown him in cases of apoplexy, catalepsy, and other forms of
+suspended animation. Here for hours the other self persists in remaining
+away, and on returning refuses to say where he has been. Further
+verification is afforded by every epileptic subject, into whose body,
+during the absence of the other self, some enemy has entered; for how
+else does it happen that the other self, on returning, denies all
+knowledge of what his body has been doing? And this supposition that the
+body has been "possessed" by some other being, is confirmed by the
+phenomena of somnambulism and insanity. 6. What, then, is the
+interpretation inevitably put upon death? The other self has habitually
+returned after sleep, which simulates death. It has returned, too, after
+fainting, which simulates death much more. It has even returned after
+the rigid state of catalepsy, which simulates death very greatly. Will
+it not return also after this still more prolonged quiescence and
+rigidity? Clearly it is quite possible&mdash;quite probable even. The dead
+man's other self is gone away for a long time, but it still exists
+somewhere, far or near, and may at any moment come back to do all he
+said he would do. Hence the various burial-rites&mdash;the placing of weapons
+and valuables along with the body, the daily bringing of food to it,
+etc. I hope hereafter to show that, with such knowledge of the facts as
+he has, this interpretation is the most reasonable the savage can arrive
+at. Let me here, however, by way of showing how clearly the facts bear
+out this view, give one illustration out of many. "The ceremonies with
+which they [the Veddahs] invoke them [the shades of the dead] are few as
+they are simple. The most common is the following. An arrow is fixed
+upright in the ground, and the Veddah dances slowly round it, chanting
+this invocation, which is almost musical in its rhythm:"
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">"M&acirc; miya, m&acirc; miy, m&acirc; dey&acirc;,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Topang koyihetti mittigan yand&acirc;h?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"My departed one, my departed one, my God!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where art thou wandering?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"This invocation appears to be used on all occasions when the
+intervention of the guardian spirits is required, in sickness,
+preparatory to hunting, etc. Sometimes, in the latter case, a portion of
+the flesh of the game is promised as a votive offering, in the event of
+the chase being successful; and they believe that the spirits will
+appear to them in dreams and tell them where to hunt. Sometimes they
+cook food and place it in the dry bed of a river, or some other secluded
+spot, and then call on their deceased ancestors by name. 'Come and
+partake of this! Give us maintenance as you did when living! Come,
+wheresoever you may be; on a tree, on a rock, in the forest, come!' And
+they dance round the food, half chanting, half shouting, the
+invocation."&mdash;Bailey, in <i>Transactions of the Ethnological Society</i>,
+London, N. S., ii., p. 301-2.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Since the foregoing pages were written, my attention has
+been drawn by Sir John Lubbock to a passage in the appendix to the
+second edition of <i>Prehistoric Times</i>, in which he has indicated this
+derivation of tribal names. He says: "In endeavouring to account for the
+worship of animals, we must remember that names are very frequently
+taken from them. The children and followers of a man called the Bear or
+the Lion would make that a tribal name. Hence the animal itself would be
+first respected, at last worshipped." Of the genesis of this worship,
+however, Sir John Lubbock does not give any specific explanation.
+Apparently he inclines to the belief, tacitly adopted also by Mr.
+McLennan, that animal-worship is derived from an original Fetichism, of
+which it is a more developed form. As will shortly be seen, I take a
+different view of its origin.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> <i>Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania</i>, iii., p.
+280-81.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> I have since found, however, that the name Dawn, which
+occurs in various places, seems more frequently a birth-name, given
+because the birth took place at dawn.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="MORALS_AND_MORAL_SENTIMENTS" id="MORALS_AND_MORAL_SENTIMENTS"></a>MORALS AND MORAL SENTIMENTS.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>First published in</i> The Fortnightly Review <i>for April,</i> 1871.]</p></div>
+
+
+<p>If a writer who discusses unsettled questions takes up every gauntlet
+thrown down to him, polemical writing will absorb much of his energy.
+Having a power of work which unfortunately does not suffice for
+executing with anything like due rapidity the task I have undertaken, I
+have made it a policy to avoid controversy as much as possible, even at
+the cost of being seriously misunderstood. Hence it resulted that when
+in <i>Macmillan's Magazine</i>, for July, 1869, Mr. Richard Hutton published,
+under the title "A Questionable Parentage for Morals," a criticism on a
+doctrine of mine, I decided to let his misrepresentations pass unnoticed
+until, in the course of my work, I arrived at the stage where, by a full
+exposition of this doctrine, they would be set aside. It did not occur
+to me that, in the meantime, these erroneous statements, accepted as
+true statements, would be repeated by other writers, and my views
+commented upon as untenable. This, however, has happened. In more
+periodicals than one, I have seen it asserted that Mr. Hutton has
+effectually disposed of my hypothesis. Supposing that this hypothesis
+has been rightly expressed by Mr. Hutton, Sir John Lubbock, in his
+<i>Origin of Civilisation</i>, &amp;c., has been led to express a partial
+dissent; which I think he would not have ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span>pressed had my own
+exposition been before him. Mr. Mivart, too, in his recent <i>Genesis of
+Species</i>, has been similarly betrayed into misapprehensions. And now Sir
+Alexander Grant, following the same lead, has conveyed to the readers of
+the <i>Fortnightly Review</i> another of these conceptions, which is but very
+partially true. Thus I find myself compelled to say as much as will
+serve to prevent further spread of the mischief.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>If a general doctrine concerning a highly-involved class of phenomena
+could be adequately presented in a single paragraph of a letter, the
+writing of books would be superfluous. In the brief exposition of
+certain ethical doctrines held by me, which is given in Professor Bain's
+<i>Mental and Moral Science</i>, it is stated that they are&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"as yet, nowhere fully expressed. They form part of the more
+general doctrine of Evolution which he is engaged in working out;
+and they are at present to be gathered only from scattered
+passages. It is true that, in his first work, <i>Social Statics</i>, he
+presented what he then regarded as a tolerably complete view of one
+division of Morals. But without abandoning this view, he now
+regards it as inadequate&mdash;more especially in respect of its basis."</p></div>
+
+<p>Mr. Hutton, however, taking the bare enunciation of one part of this
+basis, deals with it critically; and, in the absence of any exposition
+by me, sets forth what he supposes to be my grounds for it, and proceeds
+to show that they are unsatisfactory.</p>
+
+<p>If, in his anxiety to suppress what he doubtless regards as a pernicious
+doctrine, Mr. Hutton could not wait until I had explained myself, it
+might have been expected that he would use whatever information was to
+be had concerning it. So far from seeking out such information, however,
+he has, in a way for which I cannot account, ignored the information
+immediately before him.</p>
+
+<p>The title which Mr. Hutton has chosen for his criticism is, "A
+Questionable Parentage for Morals." Now he has ample means of knowing
+that I allege a primary basis of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span> Morals, quite independent of that
+which he describes and rejects. I do not refer merely to the fact that
+having, when he reviewed <i>Social Statics</i>,<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> expressed his very
+decided dissent from this primary basis, he must have been aware that I
+alleged it; for he may say that in the many years which have since
+elapsed he had forgotten all about it. But I refer to the distinct
+enunciation of this primary basis in that letter to Mr. Mill from which
+he quotes. In a preceding paragraph of the letter, I have explained
+that, while I accept utilitarianism in the abstract, I do not accept
+that current utilitarianism which recognizes for the guidance of conduct
+nothing beyond empirical generalizations; and I have contended that&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Morality, properly so-called&mdash;the science of right conduct&mdash;has
+for its object to determine <i>how</i> and <i>why</i> certain modes of
+conduct are detrimental, and certain other modes beneficial. These
+good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary
+consequences of the constitution of things; and I conceive it to be
+the business of Moral Science to deduce, from the laws of life and
+the conditions of existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend
+to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having
+done this, its deductions are to be recognised as laws of conduct;
+and are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of
+happiness or misery."</p></div>
+
+<p>Nor is this the only enunciation of what I conceive to be the primary
+basis of morals, contained in this same letter. A subsequent paragraph
+separated by four lines only from that which Mr. Hutton extracts,
+commences thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Progressing civilization, which is of necessity a succession of
+compromises between old and new, requires a perpetual re-adjustment
+of the compromise between the ideal and the practicable in social
+arrangements: to which end, both elements of the compromise must be
+kept in view. If it is true that pure rectitude prescribes a system
+of things far too good for men as they are, it is not less true that
+mere expediency does not of itself tend to establish a system of
+things any better than that which exists. While absolute morality
+owes to expediency the checks which prevent it from rushing into
+Utopian absurdities, expediency is indebted to absolute morality for
+all stimulus to improvement. Granted that we are chiefly interested
+in ascertaining what is <i>relatively right</i>, it still follows that we
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span>must first consider what is <i>absolutely right</i>; since the one
+conception presupposes the other."</p></div>
+
+<p>I do not see how there could well be a more emphatic assertion that
+there exists a primary basis of morals independent of, and in a sense
+antecedent to, that which is furnished by experiences of utility; and
+consequently, independent of, and, in a sense antecedent to, those moral
+sentiments which I conceive to be generated by such experiences. Yet no
+one could gather from Mr. Hutton's article that I assert this; or would
+even find reasons for a faint suspicion that I do so. From the reference
+made to my further views, he would infer my acceptance of that empirical
+utilitarianism which I have expressly repudiated. And the title which
+Mr. Hutton gives to his paper clearly asserts, by implication, that I
+recognize no "parentage for morals" beyond that of the accumulation and
+organization of the effects of experience. I cannot believe that Mr.
+Hutton intended to convey this erroneous impression. He was, I suppose,
+too much absorbed in contemplating the proposition he combats to
+observe, or, at least, to attach any weight to, the propositions which
+accompany it. But I am sorry he did not perceive the mischief he was
+likely to do me by spreading this one-sided statement.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>I pass now to the particular question at issue&mdash;not the "parentage for
+morals," but the parentage of moral sentiments. In describing my view on
+this more special doctrine, Mr. Hutton has similarly, I regret to say,
+neglected the data which would have helped him to draw an approximately
+true outline of it. It cannot well be that the existence of such data
+was unknown to him. They are contained in the <i>Principles of
+Psychology</i>; and Mr. Hutton reviewed that work when it was first
+published.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> In a chapter on the Feelings, which occurs near the end
+of it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span> there is sketched out a process of evolution by no means like
+that which Mr. Hutton indicates; and had he turned to that chapter he
+would have seen that his description of the genesis of moral sentiments
+out of organized experiences is not such a one as I should have given.
+Let me quote a passage from that chapter.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Not only are those emotions which form the immediate stimuli to
+actions, thus explicable; but the like explanation applies to the
+emotions that leave the subject of them comparatively passive: as,
+for instance, the emotion produced by beautiful scenery. The
+gradually increasing complexity in the groups of sensations and
+ideas co-ordinated, ends in the co-ordination of those vast
+aggregations of them which a grand landscape excites and suggests.
+The infant taken into the midst of mountains, is totally unaffected
+by them; but is delighted with the small group of attributes and
+relations presented in a toy. The child can appreciate, and be
+pleased with, the more complicated relations of household objects
+and localities, the garden, the field, and the street. But it is
+only in youth and mature age, when individual things and small
+assemblages of them have become familiar and automatically
+cognizable, that those immense assemblages which landscapes present
+can be adequately grasped, and the highly aggregated states of
+consciousness produced by them, experienced. Then, however, the
+various minor groups of states that have been in earlier days
+severally produced by trees, by fields, by streams, by cascades, by
+rocks, by precipices, by mountains, by clouds, are aroused
+together. Along with the sensations immediately received, there are
+partially excited the myriads of sensations that have been in times
+past received from objects such as those presented; further, there
+are partially excited the various incidental feelings that were
+experienced on all these countless past occasions; and there are
+probably also excited certain deeper, but now vague combinations of
+states, that were organized in the race during barbarous times,
+when its pleasurable activities were chiefly among the woods and
+waters. And out of all these excitations, some of them actual but
+most of them nascent, is composed the emotion which a fine
+landscape produces in us."</p></div>
+
+<p>It is, I think, amply manifest that the processes here indicated are not
+to be taken as intellectual processes&mdash;not as processes in which
+recognized relations between pleasures and their antecedents, or
+intelligent adaptations of means to ends, form the dominant elements.
+The state of mind produced by an aggregate of picturesque objects is not
+one resolvable into propositions. The sentiment does not contain within
+itself any consciousness of causes and consequences of happiness. The
+vague recollections of other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span> beautiful scenes and other delightful days
+which it dimly rouses, are not aroused because of any rational
+co-ordinations of ideas that have been formed in bygone years. Mr.
+Hutton, however, assumes that in speaking of the genesis of moral
+feelings as due to inherited experiences of the pleasures and pains
+caused by certain modes of conduct, I am speaking of reasoned-out
+experiences&mdash;experiences consciously accumulated and generalized. He
+overlooks the fact that the genesis of emotions is distinguished from
+the genesis of ideas in this; that whereas the ideas are composed of
+elements that are simple, definitely related, and (in the case of
+general ideas) constantly related, emotions are composed of enormously
+complex aggregates of elements that are never twice alike, and which
+stand in relations that are never twice alike. The difference in the
+resulting modes of consciousness is this:&mdash;In the genesis of an idea the
+successive experiences, be they of sounds, colours, touches, tastes, or
+be they of the special objects which combine many of these into groups,
+have so much in common that each, when it occurs, can be definitely
+thought of as like those which preceded it. But in the genesis of an
+emotion the successive experiences so far differ that each of them, when
+it occurs, suggests past experiences which are not specifically similar,
+but have only a general similarity; and, at the same time, it suggests
+benefits or evils in past experience which likewise are various in their
+special natures, though they have a certain community in general nature.
+Hence it results that the consciousness aroused is a multitudinous,
+confused consciousness, in which, along with a certain kind of
+combination among the impressions received from without, there is a
+vague cloud of ideal combinations akin to them, and a vague mass of
+ideal feelings of pleasure or pain which were associated with these. We
+have abundant proof that feelings grow up without reference to
+recognized causes and consequences, and without the possessor of them
+being able<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span> to say why they have grown up; though analysis,
+nevertheless, shows that they have been formed out of connected
+experiences. The familiar fact that a kind of jam which was, during
+childhood, repeatedly taken after medicine, may become, by simple
+association of sensations, so nauseous that it cannot be tolerated in
+after-life, illustrates clearly the way in which repugnances may be
+established by habitual association of feelings, without any belief in
+causal connexion; or rather, in spite of the knowledge that there is no
+causal connexion. Similarly with pleasurable emotions. The cawing of
+rooks is not in itself an agreeable sound: musically considered, it is
+very much the contrary. Yet the cawing of rooks usually produces in
+people feelings of a grateful kind&mdash;feelings which most of them suppose
+to result from the quality of the sound itself. Only the few who are
+given to self-analysis are aware that the cawing of rooks is agreeable
+to them because it has been connected with countless of their greatest
+gratifications&mdash;with the gathering of wild flowers in childhood; with
+Saturday-afternoon excursions in school-boy days; with midsummer
+holidays in the country, when books were thrown aside and lessons were
+replaced by games and adventures in the fields; with fresh, sunny
+mornings in after-years, when a walking excursion was an immense relief
+from toil. As it is, this sound, though not causally related to all
+these multitudinous and varied past delights, but only often associated
+with them, can no more be heard without rousing a dim consciousness of
+these delights, than the voice of an old friend unexpectedly coming into
+the house can be heard without suddenly raising a wave of that feeling
+that has resulted from the pleasures of past companionship. If we are to
+understand the genesis of emotions, either in the individual or in the
+race, we must take account of this all-important process. Mr. Hutton,
+however, apparently overlooking it, and not having reminded himself, by
+referring to the <i>Principles of Psychology</i>, that I insist upon it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span>
+represents my hypothesis to be that a certain sentiment results from the
+consolidation of intellectual conclusions! He speaks of me as believing
+that "what seems to us now the 'necessary' intuitions and <i>a priori</i>
+assumptions of human nature, are likely to prove, when scientifically
+analysed, nothing but a similar conglomeration of our ancestors' <i>best
+observations and most useful empirical rules</i>." He supposes me to think
+that men having, in past times, come to <i>see</i> that truthfulness was
+useful, "the habit of approving truth-speaking and fidelity to
+engagements, which was first based on this ground of utility, became so
+rooted, that the utilitarian ground of it was forgotten, and <i>we</i> find
+ourselves springing to the belief in truth-speaking and fidelity to
+engagements from an inherited tendency." Similarly throughout, Mr.
+Hutton has so used the word "utility," and so interpreted it on my
+behalf, as to make me appear to mean that moral sentiment is formed out
+of <i>conscious generalizations</i> respecting what is beneficial and what
+detrimental. Were such my hypothesis, his criticisms would be very much
+to the point; but as such is not my hypothesis, they fall to the ground.
+The experiences of utility I refer to are those which become registered,
+not as distinctly recognized connexions between certain kinds of acts
+and certain kinds of remote results, but those which become registered
+in the shape of associations between groups of feelings that have often
+recurred together, though the relation between them has not been
+consciously generalized&mdash;associations the origin of which may be as
+little perceived as is the origin of the pleasure given by the sounds of
+a rookery; but which, nevertheless, have arisen in the course of daily
+converse with things, and serve as incentives or deterrents.</p>
+
+<p>In the paragraph which Mr. Hutton has extracted from my letter to Mr.
+Mill, I have indicated an analogy between those effects of emotional
+experiences out of which I believe moral sentiments have been developed,
+and those effects of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span> intellectual experiences out of which I believe
+space-intuitions have been developed. Rightly considering that the first
+of these hypotheses cannot stand if the last is disproved, Mr. Hutton
+has directed part of his attack against this last. But would it not have
+been well if he had referred to the <i>Principles of Psychology</i>, where
+this last hypothesis is set forth at length, before criticising it?
+Would it not have been well to give an abstract of my own description of
+the process, instead of substituting what he <i>supposes</i> my description
+must be? Any one who turns to the <i>Principles of Psychology</i> (first
+edition, pp. 218-245), and reads the two chapters, "The Perception of
+Body as presenting Statical Attributes", and "The Perception of Space",
+will find that Mr. Hutton's account of my view on this matter has given
+him no notion of the view as it is expressed by me; and will, perhaps,
+be less inclined to smile than he was when he read Mr. Hutton's account.
+I cannot here do more than thus imply the invalidity of such part of Mr.
+Hutton's argument as proceeds upon this incorrect representation. The
+pages which would be required for properly explaining the doctrine that
+space-intuitions result from organized experiences may be better used
+for explaining this analogous doctrine at present before us. This I will
+now endeavour to do; not indirectly by correcting misapprehensions, but
+directly by an exposition which shall be as brief as the extremely
+involved nature of the process allows.</p>
+
+<p>An infant in arms, when old enough to gaze at objects around with some
+vague recognition, smiles in response to the laughing face and soft
+caressing voice of its mother. Let there come some one who, with an
+angry face, speaks to it in loud, harsh tones. The smile disappears, the
+features contract into an expression of pain, and, beginning to cry, it
+turns away its head, and makes such movements of escape as are possible.
+What is the meaning of these facts? Why does not the frown make it
+smile, and the mother's laugh make it weep? There is but one answer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span>
+Already in its developing brain there is coming into play the structure
+through which one cluster of visual and auditory impressions excites
+pleasurable feelings, and the structure through which another cluster of
+visual and auditory impressions excites painful feelings. The infant
+knows no more about the relation existing between a ferocious expression
+of face, and the evils which may follow perception of it, than the young
+bird just out of its nest knows of the possible pain and death which may
+be inflicted by a man coming towards it; and as certainly in the one
+case as in the other, the alarm felt is due to a partially-established
+nervous structure. Why does this partially-established nervous structure
+betray its presence thus early in the human being? Simply because, in
+the past experiences of the human race, smiles and gentle tones in those
+around have been the habitual accompaniments of pleasurable feelings;
+while pains of many kinds, immediate and more or less remote, have been
+continually associated with the impressions received from knit brows,
+and set teeth, and grating voice. Much deeper down than the history of
+the human race must we go to find the beginnings of these connexions.
+The appearances and sounds which excite in the infant a vague dread,
+indicate danger; and do so because they are the physiological
+accompaniments of destructive action&mdash;some of them common to man and
+inferior mammals, and consequently understood by inferior mammals, as
+every puppy shows us. What we call the natural language of anger, is due
+to a partial contraction of those muscles which actual combat would call
+into play; and all marks of irritation, down to that passing shade over
+the brow which accompanies slight annoyance, are incipient stages of
+these same contractions. Conversely with the natural language of
+pleasure, and of that state of mind which we call amicable feeling:
+this, too, has a physiological interpretation.<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span>Let us pass now from the infant in arms to the children in the nursery.
+What have the experiences of each been doing in aid of the emotional
+development we are considering? While its limbs have been growing more
+agile by exercise, its manipulative skill increasing by practice, its
+perceptions of objects growing by use quicker, more accurate, more
+comprehensive; the associations between these two sets of impressions
+received from those around, and the pleasures and pains received along
+with them, or after them, have been by frequent repetition made
+stronger, and their adjustments better. The dim sense of pain and the
+vague glow of delight which the infant felt, have, in the urchin,
+severally taken shapes that are more definite. The angry voice of a
+nursemaid no longer arouses only a formless feeling of dread, but also a
+specific idea of the slap that may follow. The frown on the face of a
+bigger brother, along with the primitive, indefinable sense of ill,
+brings the ideas of ills that are definable as kicks, and cuffs, and
+pullings of hair, and losses of toys. The faces of parents, looking now
+sunny, now gloomy, have grown to be respectively associated with
+multitudinous forms of gratification and multitudinous forms of
+discomfort or privation. Hence these appearances and sounds, which imply
+amity or enmity in those around, become symbolic of happiness and
+misery; so that eventually, perception of the one set or the other can
+scarcely occur without raising a wave of pleasurable feeling or of
+painful feeling. The body of this wave is still substantially of the
+same nature as it was at first; for though in each of these
+multitudinous experiences a special set of facial and vocal signs has
+been connected with a special set of pleasures or pains; yet since these
+pleasures or pains have been immensely varied in their kinds and
+combinations, and since the signs that preceded them were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span> in no two
+cases quite alike, it results that even to the end the consciousness
+produced remains as vague as it is voluminous. The thousands of
+partially-aroused ideas resulting from past experiences are massed
+together and superposed, so as to form an aggregate in which nothing is
+distinct, but which has the character of being pleasurable or painful
+according to the nature of its original components: the chief difference
+between this developed feeling and the feeling aroused in the infant
+being, that on bright or dark background forming the body of it, may now
+be sketched out in thought the particular pleasures or pains which the
+particular circumstances suggest as likely.</p>
+
+<p>What must be the working of this process under the conditions of
+aboriginal life? The emotions given to the young savage by the natural
+language of love and hate in the members of his tribe, gain first a
+partial definiteness in respect to his intercourse with his family and
+playmates; and he learns by experience the utility, in so far as his own
+ends are concerned, of avoiding courses which call from others
+manifestations of anger, and taking courses which call from them
+manifestations of pleasure. Not that he consciously generalizes. He does
+not at that age, probably not at any age, formulate his experiences in
+the general principle that it is well for him to do things which bring
+smiles, and to avoid doing things which bring frowns. What happens is
+that having, in the way shown, inherited this connexion between the
+perception of anger in others and the feeling of dread, and having
+discovered that certain acts of his bring on this anger, he cannot
+subsequently think of committing one of these acts without thinking of
+the resulting anger, and feeling more or less of the resulting dread. He
+has no thought of the utility or inutility of the act itself: the
+deterrent is the mainly vague, but partially definite, fear of evil that
+may follow. So understood, the deterring emotion is one which has grown
+out of experiences of utility, using that word in its ethical sense; and
+if we ask why this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span> dreaded anger is called forth from others, we shall
+habitually find that it is because the forbidden act entails pain
+somewhere&mdash;is negatived by utility. On passing from domestic injunctions
+to injunctions current in the tribe, we see no less clearly how these
+emotions produced by approbation and reprobation come to be connected in
+experience with actions which are beneficial to the tribe, and actions
+which are detrimental to the tribe; and how there consequently grow up
+incentives to the one class of actions and prejudices against the other
+class. From early boyhood the young savage hears recounted the daring
+deeds of his chief&mdash;hears them in words of praise, and sees all faces
+glowing with admiration. From time to time also he listens while some
+one's cowardice is described in tones of scorn, and with contemptuous
+metaphors, and sees him meet with derision and insult whenever he
+appears. That is to say, one of the things that come to be associated in
+his mind with smiling faces, which are symbolical of pleasures in
+general, is courage; and one of the things that come to be associated in
+his mind with frowns and other marks of enmity, which form his symbol of
+unhappiness, is cowardice. These feelings are not formed in him because
+he has reasoned his way to the truth that courage is useful to the
+tribe, and, by implication, to himself, or to the truth that cowardice
+is a cause of evil. In adult life he may perhaps see this; but he
+certainly does not see it at the time when bravery is thus joined in his
+consciousness with all that is good, and cowardice with all that is bad.
+Similarly there are produced in him feelings of inclination or
+repugnance towards other lines of conduct that have become established
+or interdicted, because they are beneficial or injurious to the tribe;
+though neither the young nor the adults know why they have become
+established or interdicted. Instance the praiseworthiness of
+wife-stealing, and the viciousness of marrying within the tribe.</p>
+
+<p>We may now ascend a stage to an order of incentives<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span> and restraints
+derived from these. The primitive belief is that every dead man becomes
+a demon, who is often somewhere at hand, may at any moment return, may
+give aid or do mischief, and has to be continually propitiated. Hence
+among other agents whose approbation or reprobation are contemplated by
+the savage as consequences of his conduct, are the spirits of his
+ancestors. When a child he is told of their deeds, now in triumphant
+tones, now in whispers of horror; and the instilled belief that they may
+inflict some vaguely-imagined but fearful evil, or give some great help,
+becomes a powerful incentive or deterrent. Especially does this happen
+when the story is of a chief, distinguished for his strength, his
+ferocity, his persistence in that revenge on enemies which the
+experiences of the savage make him regard as beneficial and virtuous.
+The consciousness that such a chief, dreaded by neighbouring tribes, and
+dreaded, too, by members of his own tribe, may reappear and punish those
+who have disregarded his injunctions, becomes a powerful motive. But it
+is clear, in the first place, that the imagined anger and the imagined
+satisfaction of this deified chief, are simply transfigured forms of the
+anger and satisfaction displayed by those around; and that the feelings
+accompanying such imaginations have the same original root in the
+experiences which have associated an average of painful results with the
+manifestation of another's anger, and an average of pleasurable results
+with the manifestation of another's satisfaction. And it is clear, in
+the second place, that the actions thus forbidden and encouraged must be
+mostly actions that are respectively detrimental and beneficial to the
+tribe; since the successful chief is usually a better judge than the
+rest, and has the preservation of the tribe at heart. Hence experiences
+of utility, consciously or unconsciously organized, underlie his
+injunctions; and the sentiments which prompt obedience are, though very
+indirectly and without the knowledge of those who feel them, referable
+to experiences of utility.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span>This transfigured form of restraint, differing at first but little from
+the original form, admits of immense development. Accumulating
+traditions, growing in grandeur as they are repeated from generation to
+generation, make more and more superhuman the early-recorded hero of the
+race. His powers of inflicting punishment and giving happiness become
+ever greater, more multitudinous, and more varied; so that the dread of
+divine displeasure, and the desire to obtain divine approbation, acquire
+a certain largeness and generality. Still the conceptions remain
+anthropomorphic. The revengeful deity continues to be thought of in
+terms of human emotions, and continues to be represented as displaying
+these emotions in human ways. Moreover, the sentiments of right and
+duty, so far as they have become developed, refer mainly to divine
+commands and interdicts; and have little reference to the natures of the
+acts commanded or interdicted. In the intended offering-up of Isaac, in
+the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter, and in the hewing to pieces of
+Agag, as much as in the countless atrocities committed from religious
+motives by various early historic races, as by some existing savage
+races, we see that the morality and immorality of actions, as we
+understand them, are at first little recognized; and that the feelings,
+chiefly of dread, which serve in place of them, are feelings felt
+towards the unseen beings supposed to issue the commands and interdicts.</p>
+
+<p>Here it will be said that, as just admitted, these are not the moral
+sentiments properly so called. They are simply sentiments that precede
+and make possible those highest sentiments which do not refer either to
+personal benefits or evils to be expected from men, or to more remote
+rewards and punishments. Several comments are, however, called forth by
+this criticism. One is, that if we glance back at past beliefs and their
+correlative feelings, as shown in Dante's poem, in the mystery-plays of
+the middle ages, in St. Bartholomew massacres, in burnings for heresy,
+we get<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span> proof that in comparatively modern times right and wrong meant
+little else than subordination or insubordination&mdash;to a divine ruler
+primarily, and under him to a human ruler. Another is, that down to our
+own day this conception largely prevails, and is even embodied in
+elaborate ethical works&mdash;instance the <i>Essays on the Principles of
+Morality</i>, by Jonathan Dymond, which recognizes no ground of moral
+obligation save the will of God as expressed in the current creed. And
+yet a further is, that while in sermons the torments of the damned and
+the joys of the blessed are set forth as the dominant deterrents and
+incentives, and while we have prepared for us printed instructions "how
+to make the best of both worlds," it cannot be denied that the feelings
+which impel and restrain men are still largely composed of elements like
+those operative on the savage: the dread, partly vague, partly specific,
+associated with the idea of reprobation, human and divine, and the sense
+of satisfaction, partly vague, partly specific, associated with the idea
+of approbation, human and divine.</p>
+
+<p>But during the growth of that civilization which has been made possible
+by these ego-altruistic sentiments, there have been slowly evolving the
+altruistic sentiments. Development of these has gone on only as fast as
+society has advanced to a state in which the activities are mainly
+peaceful. The root of all the altruistic sentiments is sympathy; and
+sympathy could become dominant only when the mode of life, instead of
+being one that habitually inflicted direct pain, became one which
+conferred direct and indirect benefits: the pains inflicted being mainly
+incidental and indirect. Adam Smith made a large step towards this truth
+when he recognized sympathy as giving rise to these superior controlling
+emotions. His <i>Theory of Moral Sentiments</i>, however, requires to be
+supplemented in two ways. The natural process by which sympathy becomes
+developed into a more and more important element of human nature has to
+be explained; and there has also<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span> to be explained the process by which
+sympathy produces the highest and most complex of the altruistic
+sentiments&mdash;that of justice. Respecting the first process, I can here do
+no more than say that sympathy may be proved, both inductively and
+deductively, to be the concomitant of gregariousness: the two having all
+along-increased by reciprocal aid. Multiplication has ever tended to
+force into an association, more or less close, all creatures having
+kinds of food and supplies of food that permit association; and
+established psychological laws warrant the inference that some sympathy
+will inevitably result from habitual manifestations of feelings in
+presence of one another, and that the gregariousness being augmented by
+the increase of sympathy, further facilitates the development of
+sympathy. But there are negative and positive checks upon this
+development&mdash;negative, because sympathy cannot advance faster than
+intelligence advances, since it presupposes the power of interpreting
+the natural language of the various feelings, and of mentally
+representing those feelings; positive, because the immediate needs of
+self-preservation are often at variance with its promptings, as, for
+example, during the predatory stages of human progress. For explanations
+of the second process, I must refer to the <i>Principles of Psychology</i> (&sect;
+202, first edition, and &sect; 215, second edition) and to <i>Social Statics</i>,
+part ii. chapter v.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> Asking that in default of space these
+explanations may be taken for granted, let me here point out in what
+sense even sympathy, and the sentiments that result from it, are due to
+experiences of utility. If we suppose all thought of rewards or
+punishments, immediate or remote, to be left out of consideration, it is
+clear that any one who hesitates to inflict a pain because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span> of the vivid
+representation of that pain which rises in his consciousness, is
+restrained, not by any sense of obligation or by any formulated doctrine
+of utility, but by the painful association established in him. And it is
+clear that if, after repeated experiences of the moral discomfort he has
+felt from witnessing the unhappiness indirectly caused by some of his
+acts, he is led to check himself when again tempted to those acts, the
+restraint is of like nature. Conversely with the pleasure-giving acts:
+repetitions of kind deeds, and experiences of the sympathetic
+gratifications that follow, tend continually to make stronger the
+association between such deeds and feelings of happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Eventually these experiences may be consciously generalized, and there
+may result a deliberate pursuit of sympathetic gratifications. There may
+also come to be distinctly recognized the truths that the remoter
+results, kind and unkind conduct, are respectively beneficial and
+detrimental&mdash;that due regard for others is conducive to ultimate
+personal welfare, and disregard of others to ultimate personal disaster;
+and then there may become current such summations of experience as
+"honesty is the best policy." But so far from regarding these
+intellectual recognitions of utility as preceding and causing the moral
+sentiment, I regard the moral sentiment as preceding such recognitions
+of utility, and making them possible. The pleasures and pains directly
+resulting in experience from sympathetic and unsympathetic actions, had
+first to be slowly associated with such actions, and the resulting
+incentives and deterrents frequently obeyed, before there could arise
+the perceptions that sympathetic and unsympathetic actions are remotely
+beneficial or detrimental to the actor; and they had to be obeyed still
+longer and more generally before there could arise the perceptions that
+they are socially beneficial or detrimental. When, however, the remote
+effects, personal and social, have gained general recognition, are
+expressed in current maxims, and lead to in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span>junctions having the
+religious sanction, the sentiments that prompt sympathetic actions and
+check unsympathetic ones are immensely strengthened by their alliances.
+Approbation and reprobation, divine and human, come to be associated in
+thought with the sympathetic and unsympathetic actions respectively. The
+commands of the creed, the legal penalties, and the code of social
+conduct, unitedly enforce them; and every child as it grows up, daily
+has impressed on it by the words and faces and voices of those around
+the authority of these highest principles of conduct. And now we may see
+why there arises a belief in the special sacredness of these highest
+principles, and a sense of the supreme authority of the altruistic
+sentiments answering to them. Many of the actions which, in early social
+states, received the religious sanction and gained public approbation,
+had the drawback that such sympathies as existed were outraged, and
+there was hence an imperfect satisfaction. Whereas these altruistic
+actions, while similarly having the religious sanction and gaining
+public approbation, bring a sympathetic consciousness of pleasure given
+or of pain prevented; and, beyond this, bring a sympathetic
+consciousness of human welfare at large, as being furthered by making
+altruistic actions habitual. Both this special and this general
+sympathetic consciousness become stronger and wider in proportion as the
+power of mental representation increases, and the imagination of
+consequences, immediate and remote, grows more vivid and comprehensive.
+Until at length these altruistic sentiments begin to call in question
+the authority of those ego-altruistic sentiments which once ruled
+unchallenged. They prompt resistance to laws that do not fulfil the
+conception of justice, encourage men to brave the frowns of their
+fellows by pursuing a course at variance with customs that are perceived
+to be socially injurious, and even cause dissent from the current
+religion; either to the extent of disbelief in those alleged divine
+attributes and acts not approved by this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span> supreme moral arbiter, or to
+the extent of entire rejection of a creed which ascribes such attributes
+and acts.</p>
+
+<p>Much that is required to make this hypothesis complete must stand over
+until, at the close of the second volume of the <i>Principles of
+Psychology</i>, I have space for a full exposition. What I have said will
+make it sufficiently clear that two fundamental errors have been made in
+the interpretation put upon it. Both Utility and Experience have been
+construed in senses much too narrow. Utility, convenient a word as it is
+from its comprehensiveness, has very inconvenient and misleading
+implications. It vividly suggests uses, and means, and proximate ends,
+but very faintly suggests the pleasures, positive or negative, which are
+the ultimate ends, and which, in the ethical meaning of the word, are
+alone considered; and, further, it implies conscious recognition of
+means and ends&mdash;implies the deliberate taking of some course to gain a
+perceived benefit. Experience, too, in its ordinary acceptation,
+connotes definite perceptions of causes and consequences, as standing in
+observed relations, and is not taken to include the connexions formed in
+consciousness between states that recur together, when the relation
+between them, causal or other, is not perceived. It is in their widest
+senses, however, that I habitually use these words, as will be manifest
+to every one who reads the <i>Principles of Psychology;</i> and it is in
+their widest senses that I have used them in the letter to Mr. Mill. I
+think I have shown above that, when they are so understood, the
+hypothesis briefly set forth in that letter is by no means so
+indefensible as is supposed. At any rate, I have shown&mdash;what seemed for
+the present needful to show&mdash;that Mr. Hutton's versions of my views must
+not be accepted as correct.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> See <i>Prospective Review</i> for January, 1852.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> His criticism will be found in the <i>National Review</i> for
+January, 1856, under the title "Atheism."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> Hereafter I hope to elucidate at length these phenomena of
+expression. For the present, I can refer only to such further
+indications as are contained in two essays on "The Physiology of
+Laughter" and "The Origin and Function of Music."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> I may add that in <i>Social Statics</i>, chap. xxx., I have
+indicated, in a general way, the causes of the development of sympathy
+and the restraints upon its development&mdash;confining the discussion,
+however, to the case of the human race, my subject limiting me to that.
+The accompanying teleology I now disclaim.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_COMPARATIVE_PSYCHOLOGY_OF_MAN" id="THE_COMPARATIVE_PSYCHOLOGY_OF_MAN"></a>THE COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY OF MAN.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>Originally read before the Anthropological Institute, and afterwards
+published in </i>Mind, <i>for January,</i> 1876.]</p></div>
+
+<p>While discussing with two members of the Anthropological Institute the
+work to be undertaken by its psychological section, I made certain
+suggestions which they requested me to put in writing. When reminded,
+some months after, of the promise I had made to do this, I failed to
+recall the particular suggestions referred to; but in the endeavour to
+remember them, I was led to glance over the whole subject of comparative
+human psychology. Hence resulted the following paper.</p>
+
+<p>That making a general survey is useful as a preliminary to deliberate
+study, either of a whole or of any part, scarcely needs showing.
+Vagueness of thought accompanies the wandering about in a region without
+known bounds or landmarks. Attention devoted to some portion of a
+subject in ignorance of its connexion with the rest, leads to untrue
+conceptions. The whole cannot be rightly conceived without some
+knowledge of the parts; and no part can be rightly conceived out of
+relation to the whole.</p>
+
+<p>To map out the Comparative Psychology of Man must also conduce to the
+more methodic carrying on of inquiries. In this, as in other things,
+division of labour will facilitate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span> progress; and that there may be
+division of labour, the work itself must be systematically divided.</p>
+
+<p>We may conveniently separate the entire subject into three main
+divisions, and may arrange them in the order of increasing speciality.</p>
+
+<p>The first division will treat of the degrees of mental evolution of
+different human types, generally considered: taking account of both the
+mass of mental manifestation and the complexity of mental manifestation.
+This division will include the relations of these characters to physical
+characters&mdash;the bodily mass and structure, and the cerebral mass and
+structure. It will also include inquiries concerning the time taken in
+completing mental evolution, and the time during which adult mental
+power lasts; as well as certain most general traits of mental action,
+such as the greater or less persistence of emotions and of intellectual
+processes. The connexion between the general mental type and the general
+social type should also be here dealt with.</p>
+
+<p>In the second division may be conveniently placed apart, inquiries
+concerning the relative mental natures of the sexes in each race. Under
+it will come such questions as these:&mdash;What differences of mental mass
+and mental complexity, if any, existing between males and females, are
+common to all races? Do such differences vary in degree, or in kind, or
+in both? Are there reasons for thinking that they are liable to change
+by increase or decrease? What relations do they bear in each case to the
+habits of life, the domestic arrangements, and the social arrangements?
+This division should also include in its scope the sentiments of the
+sexes towards one another, considered as varying quantitatively and
+qualitatively; as well as their respective sentiments towards offspring,
+similarly varying.</p>
+
+<p>For the third division of inquiries may be reserved the more special
+mental traits distinguishing different types of men. One class of such
+specialities results from differences<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span> of proportion among faculties
+possessed in common; and another class results from the presence in some
+races of faculties that are almost or quite absent from others. Each
+difference in each of these groups, when established by comparison, has
+to be studied in connexion with the stage of mental evolution reached,
+and has to be studied in connexion with the habits of life and the
+social development, regarding it as related to these both as cause and
+as consequence.</p>
+
+<p>Such being the outlines of these several divisions, let us now consider
+in detail the subdivisions contained within each.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>I.&mdash;Under the head of general mental evolution we may begin with the
+trait of&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1. <i>Mental mass.</i>&mdash;Daily experiences show us that human beings differ in
+volume of mental manifestation. Some there are whose intelligence, high
+though it may be, produces little impression on those around; while
+there are some who, when uttering even commonplaces, do it so as to
+affect listeners in a disproportionate degree. Comparison of two such,
+makes it manifest that, generally, the difference is due to the natural
+language of the emotions. Behind the intellectual quickness of the one
+there is not felt any power of character; while the other betrays a
+momentum capable of bearing down opposition&mdash;a potentiality of emotion
+that has something formidable about it. Obviously the varieties of
+mankind differ much in respect of this trait. Apart from kind of
+feeling, they are unlike in amount of feeling. The dominant races
+overrun the inferior races mainly in virtue of the greater quantity of
+energy in which this greater mental mass shows itself. Hence a series of
+inquiries, of which these are some:&mdash;(<i>a</i>) What is the relation between
+mental mass and bodily mass? Manifestly, the small races are deficient
+in it. But it also<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span> appears that races much upon a par in size&mdash;as, for
+instance, an Englishman and a Damara, differ considerably in mental
+mass. (<i>b</i>) What is its relation to mass of brain? and, bearing in mind
+the general law that in the same species, size of brain increases with
+size of body (though not in the same proportion), how far can we connect
+the extra mental mass of the higher races, with an extra mass of brain
+beyond that which is proper to their greater bodily mass? (<i>c</i>) What
+relation, if any, is there between mental mass and the physiological
+state expressed in vigour of circulation and richness of blood, as
+severally determined by mode of life and general nutrition? (<i>d</i>) What
+are the relations of this trait to the social state, as nomadic or
+settled, predatory or industrial?</p>
+
+<p>2. <i>Mental complexity.</i>&mdash;How races differ in respect of the more or less
+involved structures of their minds, will best be understood on recalling
+the unlikeness between the juvenile mind and the adult mind among
+ourselves. In the child we see absorption in special facts. Generalities
+even of a low order are scarcely recognized, and there is no recognition
+of high generalities. We see interest in individuals, in personal
+adventures, in domestic affairs, but no interest in political or social
+matters. We see vanity about clothes and small achievements, but little
+sense of justice: witness the forcible appropriation of one another's
+toys. While there have come into play many of the simpler mental powers,
+there has not yet been reached that complication of mind which results
+from the addition of powers evolved out of these simpler ones. Kindred
+differences of complexity exist between the minds of lower and higher
+races; and comparisons should be made to ascertain their kinds and
+amounts. Here, too, there may be a subdivision of the inquiries. (<i>a</i>)
+What is the relation between mental complexity and mental mass? Do not
+the two habitually vary together? (<i>b</i>) What is the relation to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span>
+social state, as more or less complex? that is to say&mdash;Do not mental
+complexity and social complexity act and react on each other?</p>
+
+<p>3. <i>Rate of mental development.</i>&mdash;In conformity with the biological law
+that the higher the organisms the longer they take to evolve, members of
+the inferior human races may be expected to complete their mental
+evolution sooner than members of the superior races; and we have
+evidence that they do this. Travellers from many regions comment, now on
+the great precocity of children among savage and semi-civilized peoples,
+and now on the early arrest of their mental progress. Though we scarcely
+need more proofs that this general contrast exists, there remains to be
+asked the question, whether it is consistently maintained throughout all
+groups of races, from the lowest to the highest&mdash;whether, say, the
+Australian differs in this respect from the Hindu, as much as the Hindu
+does from the European. Of secondary inquiries coming under this
+sub-head may be named several. (<i>a</i>) Is this more rapid evolution and
+earlier arrest always unequally shown by the two sexes; or, in other
+words, are there in lower types proportional differences in rate and
+degree of development, such as higher types show us? (<i>b</i>) Is there in
+many cases, as there appears to be in some cases, a traceable relation
+between the period of arrest and the period of puberty? (<i>c</i>) Is mental
+decay early in proportion as mental evolution is rapid? (<i>d</i>) Can we in
+other respects assert that where the type is low, the entire cycle of
+mental changes between birth and death&mdash;ascending, uniform,
+descending&mdash;comes within a shorter interval?</p>
+
+<p>4. <i>Relative plasticity.</i>&mdash;Is there any relation between the degree of
+mental modifiability which remains in adult life, and the character of
+the mental evolution in respect of mass, complexity, and rapidity? The
+animal kingdom at large yields reasons for associating an inferior and
+more rapidly-completed mental structure, with a relatively automatic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span>
+nature. Lowly organized creatures, guided almost entirely by reflex
+actions, are in but small degrees changeable by individual experiences.
+As the nervous structure complicates, its actions become less rigorously
+confined within pre-established limits; and as we approach the highest
+creatures, individual experiences take larger and larger shares in
+moulding the conduct: there is an increasing ability to take in new
+impressions and to profit by the acquisitions. Inferior and superior
+human races are contrasted in this respect. Many travellers comment on
+the unchangeable habits of savages. The semi-civilized nations of the
+East, past and present, were, or are, characterized by a greater
+rigidity of custom than characterizes the more civilized nations of the
+West. The histories of the most civilized nations show us that in their
+earlier times, the modifiability of ideas and habits was less than it is
+at present. And if we contrast classes or individuals around us, we see
+that the most developed in mind are the most plastic. To inquiries
+respecting this trait of comparative plasticity, in its relations to
+precocity and early completion of mental development, may fitly be added
+inquiries respecting its relations to the social state, which it helps
+to determine, and which reacts upon it.</p>
+
+<p>5. <i>Variability.</i>&mdash;To say of a mind that its actions are extremely
+inconstant, and at the same time to say that it is of relatively
+unchangeable nature, apparently implies a contradiction. When, however,
+the inconstancy is understood as referring to the manifestations which
+follow one another from minute to minute, and the unchangeableness to
+the average manifestations, extending over long periods, the apparent
+contradiction disappears; and it becomes comprehensible that the two
+traits may, and ordinarily do, co-exist. An infant, quickly wearied with
+each kind of perception, wanting ever a new object which it soon
+abandons for something else, and alternating a score times a day between
+smiles and tears, shows us a very small persistence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span> in each kind of
+mental action: all its states, intellectual and emotional, are
+transient. Yet at the same time its mind cannot be easily changed in
+character. True, it changes spontaneously in due course; but it long
+remains incapable of receiving ideas or emotions beyond those of simple
+orders. The child exhibits less rapid variations, intellectual and
+emotional, while its educability is greater. Inferior human races show
+us this combination: great rigidity of general character with great
+irregularity in its passing manifestations. Speaking broadly, while they
+resist permanent modification, they lack intellectual persistence, and
+they lack emotional persistence. Of various low types we read that they
+cannot keep the attention fixed beyond a few minutes on anything
+requiring thought, even of a simple kind. Similarly with their feelings:
+these are less enduring than those of civilized men. There are, however,
+qualifications to be made in this statement; and comparisons are needed
+to ascertain how far these qualifications go. The savage shows great
+persistence in the action of the lower intellectual faculties. He is
+untiring in minute observation. He is untiring, also, in that kind of
+perceptive activity which accompanies the making of his weapons and
+ornaments: often persevering for immense periods in carving stones, &amp;c.
+Emotionally, too, he shows persistence not only in the motives prompting
+these small industries, but also in certain of his passions&mdash;especially
+in that of revenge. Hence, in studying the degrees of mental variability
+shown us in the daily lives of the different races, we must ask how far
+variability characterizes the whole mind, and how far it holds only of
+parts of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>6. <i>Impulsiveness.</i>&mdash;This trait is closely allied with the last:
+unenduring emotions are emotions which sway the conduct now this way and
+now that, without any consistency. The trait of impulsiveness may,
+however, be fitly dealt with separately, because it has other
+implications than mere lack of persistence. Comparisons of the lower
+human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span> races with the higher, appear generally to show that, along with
+brevity of the passions, there goes violence. The sudden gusts of
+feeling which men of inferior types display, are excessive in degree as
+they are short in duration; and there is probably a connexion between
+these two traits: intensity sooner producing exhaustion. Observing that
+the passions of childhood illustrate this connexion, let us turn to
+certain interesting questions concerning the decrease of impulsiveness
+which accompanies advance in evolution. The nervous processes of an
+impulsive being, are less remote from reflex actions than are those of
+an unimpulsive being. In reflex actions we see a simple stimulus passing
+suddenly into movement: little or no control being exercised by other
+parts of the nervous system. As we ascend to higher actions, guided by
+more and more complicated combinations of stimuli, there is not the same
+instantaneous discharge in simple motions; but there is a comparatively
+deliberate and more variable adjustment of compound motions, duly
+restrained and proportioned. It is thus with the passions and sentiments
+in the less developed natures and in the more developed natures. Where
+there is but little emotional complexity, an emotion, when excited by
+some occurrence, explodes in action before the other emotions have been
+called into play; and each of these, from time to time, does the like.
+But the more complex emotional structure is one in which these simpler
+emotions are so co-ordinated that they do not act independently. Before
+excitement of any one has had time to cause action, some excitement has
+been communicated to others&mdash;often antagonistic ones; and the conduct
+becomes modified in adjustment to the combined dictates. Hence results a
+decreased impulsiveness, and also a greater persistence. The conduct
+pursued, being prompted by several emotions co-operating in degrees
+which do not exhaust them, acquires a greater continuity; and while
+spasmodic force becomes less conspicuous, there is an increase in the
+total<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span> energy. Examining the facts from this point of view, there are
+sundry questions of interest to be put respecting the different races of
+men. (<i>a</i>) To what other traits than degree of mental evolution is
+impulsiveness related? Apart from difference in elevation of type, the
+New-World races seem to be less impulsive than the Old-World races. Is
+this due to constitutional apathy? Can there be traced (other things
+equal) a relation between physical vivacity and mental impulsiveness?
+(<i>b</i>) What connexion is there between this trait and the social state?
+Clearly a very explosive nature&mdash;such as that of the Bushman&mdash;is unfit
+for social union; and, commonly, social union, when by any means
+established, checks impulsiveness. (<i>c</i>) What respective shares in
+checking impulsiveness are taken by the feelings which the social state
+fosters&mdash;such as the fear of surrounding individuals, the instinct of
+sociality, the desire to accumulate property, the sympathetic feelings,
+the sentiment of justice? These, which require a social environment for
+their development, all of them involve imaginations of consequences more
+or less distant; and thus imply checks upon the promptings of the
+simpler passions. Hence arise the questions&mdash;In what order, in what
+degrees, and in what combinations, do they come into play?</p>
+
+<p>7. One further general inquiry of a different kind may be added. What
+effect is produced on mental nature by mixture of races? There is reason
+for believing that throughout the animal kingdom, the union of varieties
+which have become widely divergent is physically injurious; while the
+union of slightly divergent varieties is physically beneficial. Does the
+like hold with the mental nature? Some facts seem to show that mixture
+of human races extremely unlike, produces a worthless type of mind&mdash;a
+mind fitted neither for the kind of life led by the higher of the two
+races, <a name='TC_14'></a><ins class="correction" title="Was 'not'">nor</ins> for that led by the lower&mdash;a mind out of adjustment to all
+conditions of life. Contrariwise, we find that peoples of the same
+stock, slightly differenti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span>ated by lives carried on in unlike
+circumstances for many generations, produce by mixture a mental type
+having certain superiorities. In his work on <i>The Huguenots</i>, Mr. Smiles
+points out how large a number of distinguished men among us have
+descended from Flemish and French refugees; and M. Alphonse de Candolle,
+in his <i>Histoire des Sciences et des Savants depuis deux Si&egrave;cles</i>, shows
+that the descendants of French refugees in Switzerland have produced an
+unusually great proportion of scientific men. Though, in part, this
+result may be ascribed to the original natures of such refugees, who
+must have had that independence which is a chief factor in originality,
+yet it is probably in part due to mixtures of races. For thinking this,
+we have evidence which is not open to two interpretations. Prof. Morley
+draws attention to the fact that, during seven hundred years of our
+early history "the best genius of England sprang up on the line of
+country in which Celts and Anglo-Saxons came together." In like manner
+Mr. Galton, in his <i>English Men of Science</i>, shows that in recent days
+these have mostly come from an inland region, running generally from
+north to south, which we may reasonably presume contains more mixed
+blood than do the regions east and west of it. Such a result seems
+probable <i>a priori</i>. Two natures respectively adapted to slightly unlike
+sets of social conditions, may be expected by their union to produce a
+nature somewhat more plastic than either&mdash;a nature more impressible by
+the new circumstances of advancing social life, and therefore more
+likely to originate new ideas and display modified sentiments. The
+Comparative Psychology of Man may, then, fitly include the mental
+effects of mixture; and among derivative inquiries we may ask&mdash;How far
+the conquest of race by race has been instrumental in advancing
+civilization by aiding mixture, as well as in other ways.</p>
+
+
+<p>II.&mdash;The second of the three leading divisions named<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span> at the outset is
+less extensive. Still, concerning the relative mental natures of the
+sexes in each race, questions of much interest and importance may be
+raised.</p>
+
+<p>1. <i>Degree of difference between the sexes.</i>&mdash;It is an established fact
+that, physically considered, the contrast between males and females is
+not equally great in all types of mankind. The bearded races, for
+instance, show us a greater unlikeness between the two than do the
+beardless races. Among South American tribes, men and women have a
+greater general resemblance in form, &amp;c., than is usual elsewhere. The
+question, then, suggests itself&mdash;Do the mental natures of the sexes
+differ in a constant or in a variable degree? The difference is unlikely
+to be a constant one; and, looking for variation, we may ask what is its
+amount, and under what conditions does it occur?</p>
+
+<p>2. <i>Difference in mass and in complexity.</i>&mdash;The comparisons between the
+sexes, of course, admit of subdivisions parallel to those made in the
+comparisons between races. Relative mental mass and relative mental
+complexity have chiefly to be observed. Assuming that the great
+inequality in the cost of reproduction to the two sexes, is the cause of
+unlikeness in mental mass, as in physical mass, this difference may be
+studied in connexion with reproductive differences presented by the
+various races, in respect of the ages at which reproduction commences,
+and the periods over which it lasts. An allied inquiry may be joined
+with this; namely, how far the mental developments of the two sexes are
+affected by their relative habits in respect to food and physical
+exertion? In many of the lower races, the women, treated with great
+brutality, are, physically, much inferior to the men: excess of labour
+and defect of nutrition being apparently the combined causes. Is any
+arrest of mental development simultaneously caused?</p>
+
+<p>3. <i>Variation of the differences.</i>&mdash;If the unlikeness,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span> physical and
+mental, of the sexes is not constant, then, supposing all races have
+diverged from one original stock, it follows that there must have been
+transmission of accumulated differences to those of the same sex in
+posterity. If, for instance, the prehistoric type of man was beardless,
+then the production of a bearded variety implies that within that
+variety the males continued to transmit an increasing amount of beard to
+descendants of the same sex. This limitation of heredity by sex, shown
+us in multitudinous ways throughout the animal kingdom, probably applies
+to the cerebral structures as much as to other structures. Hence the
+question&mdash;Do not the mental natures of the sexes in alien types of Man
+diverge in unlike ways and degrees?</p>
+
+<p>4. <i>Causes of the differences.</i>&mdash;Are any relations to be traced between
+these variable differences and the variable parts the sexes play in the
+business of life? Assuming the cumulative effects of habit on function
+and structure, as well as the limitation of heredity by sex, it is to be
+expected that if, in any society, the activities of one sex, generation
+after generation, differ from those of the other, there will arise
+sexual adaptations of mind. Some instances in illustration may be named.
+Among the Africans of Loango and other districts, as also among some of
+the Indian Hill-tribes, the men and women are strongly contrasted as
+respectively inert and energetic: the industry of the women having
+apparently become so natural to them that no coercion is needed. Of
+course, such facts suggest an extensive series of questions. Limitation
+of heredity by sex may account both for those sexual differences of mind
+which distinguish men and women in all races, and for those which
+distinguish them in each race, or each society. An interesting
+subordinate inquiry may be, how far such mental differences are inverted
+in cases where there is inversion of social and domestic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span> relations; as
+among those Khasi Hill-tribes, whose women have so far the upper hand
+that they turn off their husbands in a summary way if they displease
+them.</p>
+
+<p>5. <i>Mental modifiability in the two sexes.</i>&mdash;Along with comparisons of
+races in respect of mental plasticity may go parallel comparisons of the
+sexes in each race. Is it true always, as it appears to be generally
+true, that women are less modifiable than men? The relative conservatism
+of women&mdash;their greater adhesion to established ideas and practices&mdash;is
+manifest in many civilized and semi-civilized societies. Is it so among
+the uncivilized? A curious instance of stronger attachment to custom in
+women than in men is given by Dalton, as occurring among the Juangs, one
+of the lowest wild tribes of Bengal. Until recently the only dress of
+both sexes was something less than that which the Hebrew legend gives to
+Adam and Eve. Years ago the men were led to adopt a cloth bandage round
+the loins, in place of the bunch of leaves; but the women adhered to the
+aboriginal habit: a conservatism shown where it might have been least
+expected.</p>
+
+<p>6. <i>The sexual sentiment.</i>&mdash;Results of value may be looked for from
+comparisons of races made to determine the amounts and characters of the
+higher feelings to which the relation of the sexes gives rise. The
+lowest varieties of mankind have but small endowments of these feelings.
+Among varieties of higher types, such as the Malayo-Polynesians, these
+feelings seem considerably developed: the Dyaks, for instance, sometimes
+display them in great strength. Speaking generally, they appear to
+become stronger with the advance of civilization. Several subordinate
+inquiries may be named. (<i>a</i>) How far is development of the sexual
+sentiment dependent upon intellectual advance&mdash;upon growth of
+imaginative power? (<i>b</i>) How far is it related to emotional advance; and
+especially to evolution of those emotions which originate from sympathy?
+What are its relations to polyandry and polygyny? (<i>c</i>)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span> Does it not
+tend towards, and is it not fostered by, monogamy? (<i>d</i>) What connexion
+has it with maintenance of the family bond, and the consequent better
+rearing of children?</p>
+
+
+<p>III.&mdash;Under the third head, to which we may now pass come the more
+special traits of the different races.</p>
+
+<p>1. <i>Imitativeness.</i>&mdash;One of the characteristics in which the lower types
+of men show us a smaller departure from reflex action than do the higher
+types, is their strong tendency to mimic the motions and sounds made by
+others&mdash;an almost involuntary habit which travellers find it difficult
+to check. This meaningless repetition, which seems to imply that the
+idea of an observed action cannot be framed in the mind of the observer
+without tending forthwith to discharge itself in the action conceived
+(and every ideal action is a nascent form of the consciousness
+accompanying performance of such action), evidently diverges but little
+from the automatic; and decrease of it is to be expected along with
+increase of self-regulating power. This trait of automatic mimicry is
+evidently allied with that less automatic mimicry which shows itself in
+greater persistence of customs. For customs adopted by each generation
+from the last without thought or inquiry, imply a tendency to imitate
+which overmasters critical and sceptical tendencies: so maintaining
+habits for which no reasons can be given. The decrease of this
+irrational mimicry, strongest in the lowest savage and feeblest in the
+highest of the civilized, should be studied along with the successively
+higher stages of social life, as being at once an aid and a hindrance to
+civilization: an aid in so far as it gives that fixity to the social
+organization without which a society cannot survive; a hindrance in so
+far as it offers resistance to changes of social organization that have
+become desirable.</p>
+
+<p>2. <i>Incuriosity.</i>&mdash;Projecting our own natures into the circumstances of
+the savage, we imagine ourselves as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span> marvelling greatly on first seeing
+the products and appliances of civilized life. But we err in supposing
+that the savage has feelings such as we should have in his place. Want
+of rational curiosity respecting these incomprehensible novelties, is a
+trait remarked of the lowest races wherever found; and the
+partially-civilized races are distinguished from them as exhibiting
+rational curiosity. The relation of this trait to the intellectual
+nature, to the emotional nature, and to the social state, should be
+studied.</p>
+
+<p>3. <i>Quality of thought.</i>&mdash;Under this vague head may be placed many sets
+of inquiries, each of them extensive&mdash;(<i>a</i>) The degree of generality of
+the ideas; (<i>b</i>) the degree of abstractness of the ideas; (<i>c</i>) the
+degree of definiteness of the ideas; (<i>d</i>) the degree of coherence of
+the ideas; (<i>e</i>) the extent to which there have been developed such
+notions as those of <i>class</i>, of <i>cause</i>, of <i>uniformity</i>, of <i>law</i>, of
+<i>truth</i>. Many conceptions which have become so familiar to us that we
+assume them to be the common property of all minds, are no more
+possessed by the lowest savages than they are by our own children; and
+comparisons of types should be so made as to elucidate the processes by
+which such conceptions are reached. The development under each head has
+to be observed&mdash;(<i>a</i>) independently in its successive stages; (<i>b</i>) in
+connexion with the co-operative intellectual conceptions; (<i>c</i>) in
+connexion with the progress of language, of the arts, and of social
+organization. Already linguistic phenomena have been used in aid of such
+inquiries; and more systematic use of them should be made. Not only the
+number of general words, and the number of abstract words, in a people's
+vocabulary should be taken as evidence, but also their <i>degrees</i> of
+generality and abstractness; for there are generalities of the first,
+second, third, &amp;c., orders, and abstractions similarly ascending. <i>Blue</i>
+is an abstraction referring to one class of impressions derived from
+visible objects; <i>colour</i> is a higher abstraction referring to many such
+classes of visual impressions; <i>property</i> is a still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span> higher
+abstraction referring to classes of impressions received not through the
+eyes alone, but through other sense-organs. If generalities and
+abstractions were arranged in the order of their extensiveness and in
+the order of their grades, tests would be obtained which, applied to the
+vocabularies of the uncivilized, would yield definite evidence of the
+intellectual stages reached.</p>
+
+<p>4. <i>Peculiar aptitudes.</i>&mdash;To such specialities of intelligence as mark
+different degrees of evolution, have to be added minor ones related to
+modes of life: the kinds and degrees of faculty which have become
+organized in adaptation to daily habits&mdash;skill in the use of weapons,
+powers of tracking, quick discrimination of individual objects. And
+under this head may fitly come inquiries concerning some
+race-peculiarities of the &aelig;sthetic class, not at present explicable.
+While the remains from the Dordogne caves show us that their
+inhabitants, low as we must suppose them to have been, could represent
+animals, both by drawing and carving, with some degree of fidelity;
+there are existing races, probably higher in other respects, who seem
+scarcely capable of recognizing pictorial representations. Similarly
+with the musical faculty. Almost or quite wanting in some inferior
+races, we find it in other races not of high grade, developed to an
+unexpected degree: instance the Negroes, some of whom are so innately
+musical, that, as I have been told by a missionary among them, the
+children in native schools when taught European psalm-tunes,
+spontaneously sing seconds to them. Whether any causes can be discovered
+for race peculiarities of this kind, is a question of interest.</p>
+
+<p>5. <i>Specialities of emotional nature.</i>&mdash;These are worthy of careful
+study, as being intimately related to social phenomena&mdash;to the
+possibility of social progress, and to the nature of the social
+structure. Among others to be noted there are&mdash;(<i>a</i>) Gregariousness or
+sociality&mdash;a trait in the strength of which races differ widely: some,
+as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span> Mantras, being almost indifferent to social intercourse; some
+being unable to dispense with it. Obviously the degree of this desire
+for the presence of fellow-men, affects greatly the formation of social
+groups, and consequently influences social progress. (<i>b</i>) Intolerance
+of restraint. Men of some inferior types, as the Mapuch&eacute;, are
+ungovernable; while those of other types, no higher in grade, not only
+submit to restraint, but admire the persons exercising it. These
+contrasted natures have to be observed in connexion with social
+evolution; to the early stages of which they are respectively
+antagonistic and favourable. (<i>c</i>) The desire for praise is a trait
+which, common to all races, high and low, varies considerably in degree.
+There are quite inferior races, as some of those in the Pacific States,
+whose members sacrifice without stint to gain the applause which lavish
+generosity brings; while, elsewhere, applause is sought with less
+eagerness. Notice should be taken of the connexion between this love of
+approbation and the social restraints; since it plays an important part
+in the maintenance of them. (<i>d</i>) The acquisitive propensity. This, too,
+is a character the degrees of which, and the relations of which to the
+social state, have to be especially noted. The desire for property grows
+along with the possibility of gratifying it; and this, extremely small
+among the lowest men, increases as social development goes on. With the
+advance from tribal property to family property and individual property,
+the notion of private right of possession gains definiteness, and the
+love of acquisition strengthens. Each step towards an orderly social
+state makes larger accumulations possible, and the pleasures achievable
+by them more sure; while the resulting encouragement to accumulate,
+leads to increase of capital and to further progress. This action and
+re-action of the sentiment and the social state, should be in every case
+observed.</p>
+
+<p>6. <i>The altruistic sentiments.</i>&mdash;Coming last, these are also<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span> highest.
+The evolution of them in the course of civilization, shows us clearly
+the reciprocal influences of the social unit and the social organism. On
+the one hand, there can be no sympathy, nor any of the sentiments which
+sympathy generates, unless there are fellow-beings around. On the other
+hand, maintenance of union with fellow-beings depends in part on the
+presence of sympathy, and the resulting restraints on conduct.
+Gregariousness or sociality favours the growth of sympathy; increased
+sympathy conduces to closer sociality and a more stable social state;
+and so, continuously, each increment of the one makes possible a further
+increment of the other. Comparisons of the altruistic sentiments
+resulting from sympathy, as exhibited in different types of men and
+different social states, may be conveniently arranged under three
+heads&mdash;(<i>a</i>) Pity, which should be observed as displayed towards
+offspring, towards the sick and aged, and towards enemies. (<i>b</i>)
+Generosity (duly discriminated from the love of display) as shown in
+giving; as shown in the relinquishment of pleasures for the sake of
+others; as shown by active efforts on others' behalf. The manifestations
+of this sentiment, too, are to be noted in respect of their
+range&mdash;whether they are limited to relatives; whether they extend only
+to those of the same society; whether they extend to those of other
+societies; and they are also to be noted in connexion with the degree of
+providence&mdash;whether they result from sudden impulses obeyed without
+counting the cost, or go along with clear foresight of the future
+sacrifices entailed. (<i>c</i>) Justice. This most abstract of the altruistic
+sentiments is to be considered under aspects like those just named, as
+well as under many other aspects&mdash;how far it is shown in regard to the
+lives of others; how far in regard to their freedom; how far in regard
+to their property; how far in regard to their various minor claims. And
+comparisons concerning this highest sentiment should, beyond all others,
+be carried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span> on along with comparisons of the accompanying social
+states, which it largely determines&mdash;the forms and actions of
+governments; the characters of laws; the relations of classes.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Such, stated as briefly as consists with clearness, are the leading
+divisions and subdivisions under which the Comparative Psychology of Man
+may be arranged. In going rapidly over so wide a field, I have doubtless
+overlooked much that should be included. Doubtless, too, various of the
+inquiries named will branch out into subordinate inquiries well worth
+pursuing. Even as it is, however, the programme is extensive enough to
+occupy numerous investigators, who may with advantage take separate
+divisions.</p>
+
+<p>Though, after occupying themselves with primitive arts and products,
+anthropologists have devoted their attention mainly to the physical
+characters of the human races; it must, I think, be admitted that the
+study of these yields in importance to the study of their psychical
+characters. The general conclusions to which the first set of inquiries
+may lead, cannot so much affect our views respecting the highest classes
+of phenomena as can the general conclusions to which the second set may
+lead. A true theory of the human mind vitally concerns us; and
+systematic comparisons of human minds, differing in their kinds and
+grades, will help us in forming a true theory. Knowledge of the
+reciprocal relations between the characters of men and the characters of
+the societies they form, must influence profoundly our ideas of
+political arrangements. When the inter-dependence of individual natures
+and social structures is understood, our conceptions of the changes now
+taking place, and hereafter to take place, will be rectified. A
+comprehension of mental development as a process of adaptation to social
+conditions, which are continually remoulding the mind and are again
+remoulded by it, will conduce to a salutary consciousness of the
+remoter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span> effects produced by institutions upon character; and will
+check the grave mischiefs which ignorant legislation now causes. Lastly,
+a right theory of mental evolution as exhibited by humanity at large,
+giving a key, as it does, to the evolution of the individual mind, must
+help to rationalize our perverse methods of education; and so to raise
+intellectual power and moral nature.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="MR_MARTINEAU_ON_EVOLUTION" id="MR_MARTINEAU_ON_EVOLUTION"></a>MR. MARTINEAU ON EVOLUTION.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>First published in </i>The Contemporary Review<i>, for June,</i> 1872.]</p></div>
+
+<p>The article by Mr. Martineau, in the April number of the <i>Contemporary
+Review</i>, on "The Place of Mind in Nature, and Intuition of Man,"
+recalled to me a partially-formed intention to deal with the chief
+criticisms which have from time to time been made on the general
+doctrine set forth in <i>First Principles</i>; since, though not avowedly
+directed against propositions asserted or implied in that work, Mr.
+Martineau's reasoning tells against them by implication. The fulfilment
+of this intention I should, however, have continued to postpone, had I
+not learned that the arguments of Mr. Martineau are supposed by many to
+be conclusive, and that, in the absence of replies, it will be assumed
+that no replies can be made. It seems desirable, therefore, to notice
+these arguments at once&mdash;especially as the essential ones may, I think,
+be effectually dealt with in a comparatively small space.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The first definite objection which Mr. Martineau raises is, that the
+hypothesis of General Evolution is powerless to account even for the
+simpler orders of facts in the absence of numerous different substances.
+He argues that were matter all of one kind, no such phenomena as
+chemical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span> changes would be possible; and that, "in order to start the
+world on its chemical career, you must enlarge its capital and present
+it with an outfit of <i>heterogeneous</i> constituents. Try, therefore, the
+effect of such a gift; fling into the pre-existing cauldron the whole
+list of recognized elementary substances, and give leave to their
+affinities to work." The intended implication obviously is, that there
+must exist the separately-created elements before evolution can begin.</p>
+
+<p>Here, however, Mr. Martineau makes an assumption which few, if any,
+chemists will commit themselves to, and which many will distinctly deny.
+There are no "recognized elementary substances," if the expression means
+substances known to be elementary. What chemists, for convenience, call
+elementary substances, are merely substances which they have thus far
+failed to decompose; but, bearing in mind past experiences, they do not
+dare to say that they are absolutely undecomposable. Water was taken to
+be an element for more than two thousand years, and then was proved to
+be a compound; and, until Davy brought a galvanic current to bear upon
+them, the alkalies and the earths were supposed to be elements. So
+little true is it that "recognized elementary substances" are supposed
+to be absolutely elementary, that there has been much speculation among
+chemists respecting the process of compounding and recompounding by
+which they have been formed out of some ultimate substance&mdash;some
+chemists having supposed the atom of hydrogen to be the unit of
+composition, but others having contended that the atomic weights of the
+so-called elements are not thus interpretable. If I remember rightly,
+Sir John Herschel was one, among others, who, some five-and-twenty years
+ago, threw out suggestions respecting a system of compounding that might
+explain these relations of the atomic weights.</p>
+
+<p>What was at that time a suspicion has now become practically a
+certainty. Spectrum-analysis yields results<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span> wholly irreconcilable with
+the assumption that the conventionally-named simple substances are
+really simple. Each yields a spectrum having lines varying in number
+from two to eighty or more, every one of which implies the intercepting
+of ethereal undulations of a certain order by something oscillating in
+unison or in harmony with them. Were iron absolutely elementary, it is
+not conceivable that its atom could intercept ethereal undulations of
+eighty different orders. Though it does not follow that its molecule
+contains as many separate atoms as there are lines in its spectrum, it
+must clearly be a complex molecule. The evidence thus gained points to
+the conclusion that, out of some primordial units, the so-called
+elements arise by compounding and recompounding; just as by the
+compounding and recompounding of so-called elements there arise oxides,
+and acids, and salts.</p>
+
+<p>And this hypothesis is entirely in harmony with the phenomena of
+allotropy. Various substances, conventionally distinguished as simple,
+have several forms under which they present quite different properties.
+The semi-transparent, colourless, extremely active substance called
+phosphorus may be so changed as to become opaque, dark red, and inert.
+Like changes are known to occur in some gaseous, non-metallic elements,
+as oxygen; and also in metallic elements, as antimony. These total
+changes of properties, brought about without any changes to be called
+chemical, are interpretable only as due to molecular rearrangements;
+and, by showing that difference of property is producible by difference
+of arrangement, they support the inference otherwise to be drawn, that
+the properties of different elements result from differences of
+arrangement arising by the compounding and recompounding of ultimate
+homogeneous units.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Mr. Martineau's objection, which at best would imply a turning of
+our ignorance of the nature of elements into positive knowledge that
+they are simple, is, in fact, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span> be met by two sets of evidences, which
+imply that they are compound.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Mr. Martineau next alleges that a fatal difficulty is put in the way of
+the General Doctrine of Evolution by the existence of a chasm between
+the living and the not-living. He says:&mdash;"But with all your enlargement
+of data, turn them as you will, at the end of every passage which they
+explore, the <i>door of life</i> is closed against them still." Here again
+our ignorance is employed to play the part of knowledge. The fact that
+we do not know distinctly how an alleged transition has taken place, is
+transformed into the assumption that no transition has taken place. We
+have, in a more general shape, the argument which until lately was
+thought conclusive&mdash;the argument that because the genesis of each
+species of creature had not been explained, therefore each species must
+have been separately created.</p>
+
+<p>Merely noting this, however, I go on to remark that scientific discovery
+is day by day narrowing the chasm, or, to vary Mr. Martineau's metaphor,
+"opening the door." Not many years since, it was held as certain that
+the chemical compounds distinguished as organic could not be formed
+artificially. Now, more than a thousand organic compounds have been
+formed artificially. Chemists have discovered the art of building them
+up from the simpler to the more complex, and do not doubt that they will
+eventually produce the most complex. Moreover, the phenomena attending
+isomeric change give a clue to those movements which are the only
+indications we have of life in its lowest forms. In various colloidal
+substances, including the albuminoid, isomeric change is accompanied by
+contraction or expansion, and consequent motion; and, in such primordial
+types as the <i>Protogenes</i> of Haeckel, which do not differ in appearance
+from minute portions of albumen, the observed motions are comprehensible
+as accompanying isomeric changes caused by variations in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span> surrounding
+physical actions. The probability of this interpretation will be seen on
+remembering the evidence we have that, in the higher organisms, many
+functions are essentially effected by isomeric changes from one to
+another of the multitudinous forms which protein assumes.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the reply to this objection is, first, that there is going on from
+both sides a narrowing of the chasm supposed to be impassable; and,
+secondly, that, even were the chasm not in course of being filled up, we
+should no more be justified in therefore assuming a supernatural
+commencement of life, than Kepler was justified in assuming that there
+were guiding-spirits to keep the planets in their orbits, because he
+could not see how else they were to be kept in their orbits.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The third definite objection made by Mr. Martineau is of kindred nature.
+The Hypothesis of Evolution is, he thinks, met by the insurmountable
+difficulty that plant life and animal life are absolutely distinct. "You
+cannot," he says, "take a single step toward the deduction of sensation
+and thought: neither at the upper limit do the highest plants (the
+exogens) transcend themselves and overbalance into animal existence; nor
+at the lower, grope as you may among the sea-weeds and sponges, can you
+persuade the sporules of the one to develop into the other."</p>
+
+<p>This is an extremely unfortunate objection to raise. For, though there
+are no transitions from vegetal to animal life at the places Mr.
+Martineau names, where, indeed, no biologist would look for them; yet
+the connexion between the two great kingdoms of living things is so
+complete that separation is now regarded as impossible. For a long time
+naturalists endeavored to frame definitions such as would, the one
+include all plants and exclude all animals, and the other include all
+animals and exclude all plants. But they have been so repeatedly foiled
+in the attempt that they have given it up. There is no chemical
+distinction<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span> which holds; there is no structural distinction which
+holds; there is no functional distinction which holds; there is no
+distinction as to mode of existence which holds. Large groups of the
+simpler animals contain chlorophyll, and decompose carbonic acid under
+the influence of light, as plants do. Large groups of the simpler
+plants, as you may observe in the diatoms from any stagnant pool, are no
+less actively locomotive than the minute creatures classed as animals
+seen along with them. Nay, among these lowest types of living things, it
+is common for the life to be now predominantly animal and presently to
+become predominantly vegetal. The very name <i>zoospores</i>, given to germs
+of <i>alg&aelig;</i>, which for a while swim about actively by means of cilia, and
+presently settling down grow into plant-forms, is given because of this
+conspicuous community of nature. So complete is this community of nature
+that for some time past many naturalists have wished to establish for
+these lowest types a sub-kingdom, intermediate between the animal and
+the vegetal: the reason against this course being, however, that the
+difficulty crops up afresh at any assumed places where this intermediate
+sub-kingdom may be supposed to join the other two.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the assumption on which Mr. Martineau proceeds is diametrically
+opposed to the conviction of naturalists in general.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Though I do not perceive that it is specifically stated, there appears
+to be tacitly implied a fourth difficulty of allied kind&mdash;the difficulty
+that there is no possibility of transition from life of the simplest
+kind to mind. Mr. Martineau says, indeed, that there can be "with only
+vital resources, as in the vegetable world, no beginning of mind:"
+apparently leaving it to be inferred that in the animal world the
+resources are such as to make the "beginning of mind" comprehensible.
+If, however, instead<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span> of leaving it a latent inference, he had
+distinctly asserted a chasm between mind and bodily life, for which
+there is certainly quite as much reason as for asserting a chasm between
+animal life and vegetal life, the difficulties in his way would have
+been no less insuperable.</p>
+
+<p>For those lowest forms of irritability in the animal kingdom which, I
+suppose, Mr. Martineau refers to as the "beginning of mind," are not
+distinguishable from the irritability which plants display: they in no
+greater degree imply consciousness. If the sudden folding of a
+sensitive-plant's leaf when touched, or the spreading out of the stamens
+in a wild-cistus when gently brushed, is to be considered a vital action
+of a purely physical kind; then so too must be considered the equally
+slow contraction of a polype's tentacles. And yet, from this simple
+motion of an animal of low type, we may pass by insensible stages
+through ever-complicating forms of actions, with their accompanying
+signs of feeling and intelligence, until we reach the highest.</p>
+
+<p>Even apart from the evidence derived from the ascending grades of
+animals up from <i>zoophytes</i>, as they are significantly named, it needs
+only to observe the evolution of a single animal to see that there does
+not exist any break or chasm between the life which shows no mind and
+the life which shows mind. The yelk of an egg which the cook has just
+broken, not only yields no sign of mind, but yields no sign of life. It
+does not respond to a stimulus as much even as many plants do. Had the
+egg, instead of being broken by the cook, been left under the hen for a
+certain time, the yelk would have passed by infinitesimal gradations
+through a series of forms ending in the chick; and by similarly
+infinitesimal gradations would have arisen those functions which end in
+the chick breaking its shell; and which, when it gets out, show
+themselves in running about, distinguishing and picking up food, and
+squeaking if hurt. When did the feeling begin? and how did there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span> come
+into existence that power of perception which the chick's actions show?
+Should it be objected that the chick's actions are mainly automatic, I
+will not dwell on the fact that, though they are largely so, the chick
+manifestly has feeling and therefore consciousness; but I will accept
+the objection, and propose that instead we take the human being. The
+course of development before birth is just of the same general kind; and
+similarly, at a certain stage, begins to be accompanied by reflex
+movements. At birth there is displayed an amount of mind certainly not
+greater than that of the chick: there is no power of running from
+danger&mdash;no power of distinguishing and picking up food. If we say the
+chick is unintelligent, we must certainly say the infant is
+unintelligent. And yet from the unintelligence of the infant to the
+intelligence of the adult, there is an advance by steps so small that on
+no day is the amount of mind shown, appreciably different from that
+shown on preceding and succeeding days.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the tacit assumption that there exists a break, is not simply
+gratuitous, but is negatived by the most obvious facts.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Certain of the words and phrases used in explaining that particular part
+of the Doctrine of Evolution which deals with the origin of species, are
+commented upon by Mr. Martineau as having implications justifying his
+view. Let us consider his comments.</p>
+
+<p>He says that <i>competition</i> is not an "original power, which can of
+itself do anything;" further, that "it cannot act except in the presence
+of some <i>possibility of a better or worse</i>;" and that this "possibility
+of a better or worse" implies a "world pre-arranged for progress," "a
+directing Will intent upon the good." Had Mr. Martineau looked more
+closely into the matter, he would have found that, though the words and
+phrases he quotes are used for convenience, the conceptions they imply
+are not at all essential<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span> to the doctrine. Under its
+rigorously-scientific form, the doctrine is expressible in
+purely-physical terms, which neither imply competition nor imply better
+and worse.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p>
+
+<p>Beyond this indirect mistake there is a direct mistake. Mr. Martineau
+speaks of the "survivorship of the better," as though that were the
+statement of the law; and then adds that the alleged result cannot be
+inferred "except on the assumption that whatever is <i>better</i> is
+<i>stronger</i> too." But the words he here uses are his own words, not the
+words of those he opposes. The law is the survival of the <i>fittest</i>.
+Probably, in substituting "better" for "fittest," Mr. Martineau did not
+suppose that he was changing the meaning; though I dare say he perceived
+that the meaning of the word "fittest" did not suit his argument so
+well. Had he examined the facts, he would have found that the law is not
+the survival of the "better" or the "stronger," if we give to those
+words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of
+those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions
+in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking,
+is inferiority, causes the survival. Superiority, whether in size,
+strength, activity, or sagacity, is, other things equal, at the cost of
+diminished fertility; and where the life led by a species does not
+demand these higher attributes, the species profits by decrease of them,
+and accompanying increase of fertility. This is the reason why there
+occur so many cases of retrograde metamorphosis&mdash;this is the reason why
+parasites, internal and external, are so commonly degraded forms of
+higher types. Survival of the "better" does not cover these cases,
+though survival of the "fittest" does; and as I am responsible for the
+phrase, I suppose I am competent to say that the word "fittest" was
+chosen for this reason. When it is remembered that these cases outnumber
+all others&mdash;that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[380]</a></span> there are more species of parasites than there are
+species of all other animals put together&mdash;it will be seen that the
+expression "survivorship of the better" is wholly inappropriate, and the
+argument Mr. Martineau bases upon it quite untenable. Indeed, if, in
+place of those adjustments of the human sense-organs, which he so
+eloquently describes as implying pre-arrangement, Mr. Martineau had
+described the countless elaborate appliances which enable parasites to
+torture animals immeasurably superior to them, and which, from his point
+of view, no less imply pre-arrangement, I think the notes of admiration
+which end his descriptions would not have seemed to him so appropriate.</p>
+
+<p>One more word there is from the intrinsic meaning of which Mr. Martineau
+deduces what appears a powerful argument&mdash;the word <i>Evolution</i> itself.
+He says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It means, to unfold from within; and it is taken from the history
+of the seed or embryo of living natures. And what is the seed but a
+casket of pre-arranged futurities, with its whole contents
+<i>prospective</i>, settled to be what they are by reference to ends
+still in the distance?"</p></div>
+
+<p>Now, this criticism would have been very much to the point did the word
+Evolution truly express the process it names. If this process, as
+scientifically defined, really involved that conception which the word
+evolution was originally designed to convey, the implications would be
+those Mr. Martineau alleges. But, unfortunately for him, the word,
+having been in possession of the field before the process was
+understood, has been adopted merely because displacing it by another
+word seemed impracticable. And this adoption of it has been joined with
+a caution against misunderstandings arising from its unfitness. Here is
+a part of the caution:&mdash;"Evolution has other meanings, some of which are
+incongruous with, and some even directly opposed to, the meaning here
+given to it.... The antithetical word, Involution, would much more truly
+express the nature of the process; and would, indeed, describe better
+the secondary characters of the process which we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[381]</a></span> shall have to deal
+with presently."<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> So that the meanings which the word involves, and
+which Mr. Martineau regards as fatal to the hypothesis, are already
+repudiated as not belonging to the hypothesis.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>And now, having dealt with the essential objections raised by Mr.
+Martineau to the Hypothesis of Evolution as it is presented under that
+purely scientific form which generalizes the process of things, firstly
+as observed and secondly as inferred from certain ultimate principles,
+let me go on to examine that form of the Hypothesis which he
+propounds&mdash;Evolution as determined by Mind and Will&mdash;Evolution as
+pre-arranged by a Divine Actor. For Mr. Martineau apparently abandons
+the primitive theory of creation by "fiat of Almighty Will", and also
+the theory of creation by manufacture&mdash;by "a contriving and adapting
+power," and seems to believe in evolution: requiring only that "an
+originating Mind" shall be taken as its antecedent. Let us ask, first,
+in what relation Mr. Martineau conceives the "originating Mind" to stand
+to the evolving Universe. From some passages it is inferable that he
+considers the "presence of mind" to be everywhere needful. He says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is impossible to work the theory of Evolution upwards from the
+bottom. If all force is to be conceived as One, its type must be
+looked for in the highest and all-comprehending term; and Mind must
+be conceived as there, and as divesting itself of some speciality
+at each step of its descent to a lower stratum of law, till
+represented at the base under the guise of simple Dynamics."</p></div>
+
+<p>This seems to be an unmistakable assertion that, wherever Evolution is
+going on, Mind is then and there behind it. At the close of the
+argument, however, a quite different conception is implied. Mr.
+Martineau says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"If the Divine Idea will not retire at the bidding of our
+speculative science, but retains its place, it is natural to ask,
+What is its relation to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[382]</a></span> the series of so-called Forces in the
+world? But the question is too large and deep to be answered here.
+Let it suffice to say, that there need not be any <i>overruling</i> of
+these forces by the Will of God, so that the supernatural should
+disturb the natural; or any <i>supplementing</i> of them, so that He
+should fill up their deficiencies. Rather is His thought related to
+them as, in man, the mental force is related to all below it."
+</p></div>
+
+<p>It would take too much space to deal fully with the various questions
+which this last passage raises. There is the question&mdash;Whence come these
+"Forces," spoken of as separate from the "Will of God"&mdash;did they
+pre-exist? Then what becomes of the Divine Power? Do they exist by the
+Divine Will? Then what kind of nature is that by which they act apart
+from the Divine Will? Again, there is the question&mdash;How do these
+deputy-forces co-operate in each particular phenomenon, if the presiding
+Will is not there present to control them? Either an organ which
+develops into fitness for its function, develops by the co-operation of
+these forces under the direction of Mind then present, or it so develops
+in the absence of Mind. If it develops in the absence of Mind, the
+hypothesis is given up; and if the "originating Mind" is required to be
+then and there present, we must suppose a particular providence to be
+present in each particular organ of each particular creature throughout
+the universe. Once more there is the question&mdash;If "His thought is
+related to them [these Forces] as, in Man, the mental force is related
+to all below it," how can "His thought" be regarded as the cause of
+Evolution? In man the mental force is related to the forces below it
+neither as a creator of them nor as a regulator of them, save in a very
+limited way: the greater part of the forces present in man, both
+structural and functional, defy the mental force absolutely. Nay, more,
+it needs but to injure a nerve to see that the power of the mental force
+over the physical forces is dependent on conditions which are themselves
+physical; and one who takes morphia in mistake for magnesia, discovers
+that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[383]</a></span> power of the physical forces over the mental is
+<i>un</i>conditioned by any thing mental.</p>
+
+<p>Not dwelling on these questions, however, I will merely draw attention
+to the entire incongruity of this conception with the previous
+conception which I have quoted. Assuming that, when the choice is
+pressed on him, Mr. Martineau will choose the first, which alone has any
+thing like defensibility, let us go on to ask how far Evolution is made
+more comprehensible by postulating Mind, universally immanent, as its
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>In metaphysical controversy, many of the propositions propounded and
+accepted as quite believable, are absolutely inconceivable. There is a
+perpetual confusing of actual ideas with what are nothing but
+pseud-ideas. No distinction is made between propositions that contain
+real thoughts, and propositions that are only the forms of thoughts. A
+thinkable proposition is one of which <i>the two terms can be brought
+together in consciousness under the relation said to exist between
+them</i>. But very often, when the subject of a proposition has been
+thought of as something known, and when the predicate has been thought
+of as something known, and when the relation alleged between them has
+been thought of as a known relation, it is supposed that the proposition
+itself has been thought. The thinking separately of the elements of a
+proposition is mistaken for the thinking of them in the combination
+which the proposition affirms. And hence it continually happens that
+propositions which cannot be rendered into thought at all, are supposed
+to be not only thought but believed. The proposition that Evolution is
+caused by Mind is one of this nature. The two terms are separately
+intelligible; but they can be regarded in the relation of effect and
+cause only so long as no attempt is made to put them together in this
+relation.</p>
+
+<p>The only thing which any one knows as Mind is the series of his own
+states of consciousness; and if he thinks of any mind other than his
+own, he can think of it only in terms<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[384]</a></span> derived from his own. If I am
+asked to frame a notion of Mind divested of all those structural traits
+under which alone I am conscious of mind in myself, I cannot do it. I
+know nothing of thought save as carried on in ideas originally traceable
+to the effects wrought by objects and forces on me. A mental act is an
+unintelligible phrase if I am not to regard it as an act in which states
+of consciousness are severally known as like other states in the series
+that has gone by, and in which the relations between them are severally
+known as like past relations in the series. If, then, I have to conceive
+Evolution as caused by an "originating Mind," I must conceive this Mind
+as having attributes akin to those of the only mind I know, and without
+which I cannot conceive Mind at all.</p>
+
+<p>I will not dwell on the many incongruities hence resulting, by asking
+how the "originating Mind" is to be thought of as having states produced
+by things objective to it; as discriminating among these states, and
+classing them as like and unlike; and as preferring one objective result
+to another. I will simply ask&mdash;What happens if we ascribe to the
+"originating Mind" the character absolutely essential to the conception
+of Mind, that it consists of a series of states of consciousness? Put a
+series of states of consciousness as cause, and the evolving Universe as
+effect, and then endeavor to see the last as flowing from the first. I
+find it possible to imagine in some dim way a series of states of
+consciousness serving as antecedent to any one of the movements I see
+going on; for my own states of consciousness are often indirectly the
+antecedents to such movements. But how if I attempt to think of such a
+series as antecedent to <i>all</i> actions throughout the Universe&mdash;to the
+motions of the multitudinous stars through space, to the revolutions of
+all their planets round them, to the gyrations of all these planets on
+their axes, to the infinitely-multiplied physical processes going on in
+each of these suns and planets? I cannot think of a single series of
+states of consciousness as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[385]</a></span> causing even the relatively small group of
+actions going on over the Earth's surface. I cannot think of it even as
+antecedent to all the various winds and the dissolving clouds they bear,
+to the currents of all the rivers, and the grinding actions of all the
+glaciers; still less can I think of it as antecedent to the infinity of
+processes simultaneously going on in all the plants that cover the
+globe, from scattered polar lichens to crowded tropical palms, and in
+all the millions of quadrupeds that roam among them, and the millions of
+millions of insects that buzz about them. Even to a single small set of
+these multitudinous terrestrial changes, I cannot conceive as antecedent
+a single series of states of consciousness&mdash;cannot, for instance, think
+of it as causing the hundred thousand breakers that are at this instant
+curling over on the shores of England. How, then, is it possible for me
+to conceive an "originating Mind," which I must represent to myself as a
+<i>single</i> series of states of consciousness, working the
+infinitely-multiplied sets of changes <i>simultaneously</i> going on in
+worlds too numerous to count, dispersed throughout a space that baffles
+imagination?</p>
+
+<p>If, to account for this infinitude of physical changes everywhere going
+on, "Mind must be conceived as there" "under the guise of simple
+Dynamics," then the reply is that, to be so conceived, Mind must be
+divested of all attributes by which it is distinguished; and that, when
+thus divested of its distinguishing attributes, the conception
+disappears&mdash;the word Mind stands for a blank. If Mr. Martineau takes
+refuge in the entirely different and, as it seems to me, incongruous
+hypothesis of something like a plurality of minds&mdash;if he accepts, as he
+seems to do, the doctrine that you cannot explain Evolution "unless
+among your primordial elements you scatter already the <i>germs</i> of Mind
+as well as the inferior elements"&mdash;if the insuperable difficulties I
+have just pointed out are to be met by assuming a local series of states
+of consciousness for each phenomenon,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[386]</a></span> then we are obviously carried
+back to something like the alleged fetichistic notion, with the
+difference only, that the assumed spiritual agencies are indefinitely
+multiplied.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly, therefore, the proposition that an "originating Mind" is the
+cause of Evolution, is a proposition that can be entertained so long
+only as no attempt is made to unite in thought its two terms in the
+alleged relation. That it should be accepted as a matter of <i>faith</i>, may
+be a defensible position, provided good cause is shown why it should be
+so accepted; but that it should be accepted as a matter of
+<i>understanding</i>&mdash;as a statement making the order of the universe
+comprehensible&mdash;is a quite indefensible position.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Here let me guard myself against a misinterpretation very likely to be
+put upon the foregoing arguments; especially by those who have read the
+Essay to which they reply. The statements of that Essay carry the
+implication that all who adhere to the hypothesis it combats, imagine
+they have solved the mystery of things when they have shown the
+processes of Evolution to be naturally caused. Mr. Martineau tacitly
+represents them as believing that, when every thing has been interpreted
+in terms of Matter and Motion, nothing remains to be explained. This,
+however, is by no means the fact. The Doctrine of Evolution, under its
+purely scientific form, does not involve Materialism, though its
+opponents persistently represent it as doing so. Indeed, among adherents
+of it who are friends of mine, there are those who speak of the
+Materialism of Buechner and his school, with a contempt certainly not
+less than that felt by Mr. Martineau. To show how anti-materialistic my
+own view is, I may, perhaps, without impropriety, quote some out of many
+passages which I have written on the question elsewhere:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Hence though of the two it seems easier to translate so-called
+Matter into so-called Spirit, than to translate so-called Spirit
+into so-called Matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[387]</a></span> (which latter is, indeed, wholly
+impossible); yet no translation can carry us beyond our
+symbols."<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>And again:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"See then our predicament. We can think of Matter only in terms of
+Mind. We can think of Mind only in terms of Matter. When we have
+pushed our explorations of the first to the uttermost limit, we are
+referred to the second for a final answer; and, when we have got
+the final answer of the second, we are referred back to the first
+for an interpretation of it. We find the value of <i>x</i> in terms of
+<i>y</i>; then we find the value of <i>y</i> in terms of <i>x</i>; and so on we
+may continue forever without coming nearer to a solution. The
+antithesis of subject and object, never to be transcended while
+consciousness lasts, renders impossible all knowledge of that
+Ultimate Reality in which subject and object are united."<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>It is thus, I think, manifest that the difference between Mr.
+Martineau's view and the view he opposes is by no means so wide as he
+makes it appear; and further, it seems to me that such difference as
+exists is rather the reverse of that indicated by his exposition.
+Briefly expressed, the difference is that, where he thinks there is no
+mystery, the doctrine he combats recognizes a mystery. Speaking for
+myself only, I may say that, agreeing entirely with Mr. Martineau in
+repudiating the materialistic interpretation as utterly futile, I differ
+from him simply in this, that while he says he has found another
+interpretation, I confess that I cannot find any interpretation; while
+he holds that he can understand the Power which is manifested in things,
+I feel obliged to admit, after many failures, that I cannot understand
+it. So that, in presence of the transcendent problem which the universe
+presents, Mr. Martineau regards the human intellect as capable, and I as
+incapable. This contrast does not appear to me of the kind which his
+Essay tacitly asserts. If there is such a thing as the "pride of
+Science," it is obviously exceeded by the pride of Theology. I fail to
+perceive humility in the belief that the human mind is able to
+comprehend that which is behind appearances; and I do not see how piety
+is especially <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[388]</a></span>exemplified in the assertion that the Universe contains
+no mode of existence higher in Nature than that which is present to us
+in consciousness. On the contrary, I think it quite a defensible
+proposition that humility is better shown by a confession of
+incompetence to grasp in thought the Cause of all things; and that the
+religious sentiment may find its highest sphere in the belief that the
+Ultimate Power is no more representable in terms of human consciousness
+than human consciousness is representable in terms of a plant's
+functions.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <i>Principles of Biology</i>, &sect;&sect; 159-168.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> <i>First Principles</i>, second edition, &sect; 97.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> <i>Principles of Psychology</i>, second edition, vol. i., &sect;
+63.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Ibid., &sect; 272.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[389]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_FACTORS_OF_ORGANIC_EVOLUTION" id="THE_FACTORS_OF_ORGANIC_EVOLUTION"></a>THE FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>First published in</i> The Nineteenth Century, for <i>April and May</i>,
+1886.]</p></div>
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<p>Within the recollection of men now in middle life, opinion concerning
+the derivation of animals and plants was in a chaotic state. Among the
+unthinking there was tacit belief in creation by miracle, which formed
+an essential part of the creed of Christendom; and among the thinking
+there were two parties, each of which held an indefensible hypothesis.
+Immensely the larger of these parties, including nearly all whose
+scientific culture gave weight to their judgments, though not accepting
+literally the theologically-orthodox doctrine, made a compromise between
+that doctrine and the doctrines which geologists had established; while
+opposed to them were some, mostly having no authority in science, who
+held a doctrine which was heterodox both theologically and
+scientifically. Professor Huxley, in his lecture on "The Coming of Age
+of the Origin of Species," remarks concerning the first of these parties
+as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"One-and-twenty years ago, in spite of the work commenced by Hutton
+and continued with rare skill and patience by Lyell, the dominant
+view of the past history of the earth was catastrophic. Great and
+sudden physical revolutions, wholesale creations and extinctions of
+living beings, were the ordinary machinery of the geological epic
+brought into fashion by the misapplied genius of Cuvier. It was
+gravely maintained and taught that the end of every geological
+epoch was signalised by a cataclysm, by which every living being on
+the globe was swept away, to be replaced by a brand-new creation
+when the world returned to quiescence. A scheme of nature which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[390]</a></span>
+appeared to be modelled on the likeness of a succession of rubbers
+of whist, at the end of each of which the players upset the table
+and called for a new pack, did not seem to shock anybody.</p>
+
+<p>I may be wrong, but I doubt if, at the present time, there is a
+single responsible representative of these opinions left. The
+progress of scientific geology has elevated the fundament principle
+of uniformitarianism, that the explanation of the past is to be
+sought in the study of the present, into the position of an axiom;
+and the wild speculations of the catastrophists, to which we all
+listened with respect a quarter of a century ago, would hardly find
+a single patient hearer at the present day."</p></div>
+
+<p>Of the party above referred to as not satisfied with this conception
+described by Professor Huxley, there were two classes. The great
+majority were admirers of the <i>Vestiges of the Natural History of
+Creation</i>&mdash;a work which, while it sought to show that organic evolution
+has taken place, contended that the cause of organic evolution, is "an
+impulse" supernaturally "imparted to the forms of life, advancing them,
+... through grades of organization." Being nearly all very inadequately
+acquainted with the facts, those who accepted the view set forth in the
+<i>Vestiges</i> were ridiculed by the well-instructed for being satisfied
+with evidence, much of which was either invalid or easily cancelled by
+counter-evidence, and at the same time they exposed themselves to the
+ridicule of the more philosophical for being content with a supposed
+explanation which was in reality no explanation: the alleged "impulse"
+to advance giving us no more help in understanding the facts than does
+Nature's alleged "abhorrence of a vacuum" help us to understand the
+ascent of water in a pump. The remnant, forming the second of these
+classes, was very small. While rejecting this mere verbal solution,
+which both Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck had shadowed forth in other
+language, there were some few who, rejecting also the hypothesis
+indicated by both Dr. Darwin and Lamarck, that the promptings of desires
+or wants produced growths of the parts subserving them, accepted the
+single <i>vera causa</i> assigned by these writers&mdash;the modification of
+structures resulting from modification of functions. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[391]</a></span> recognized
+as the sole process in organic development, the adaptation of parts and
+powers consequent on the effects of use and disuse&mdash;that continual
+moulding and re-moulding of organisms to suit their circumstances, which
+is brought about by direct converse with such circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>But while this cause accepted by these few is a true cause, since
+unquestionably during the life of the individual organism changes of
+function produce changes of structure; and while it is a tenable
+hypothesis that changes of structure so produced are inheritable; yet it
+was manifest to those not prepossessed, that this cause cannot with
+reason be assigned for the greater part of the facts. Though in plants
+there are some characters which may not irrationally be ascribed to the
+direct effects of modified functions consequent on modified
+circumstances, yet the majority of the traits presented by plants are
+not to be thus explained. It is impossible that the thorns by which a
+briar is in large measure defended against browsing animals, can have
+been developed and moulded by the continuous exercise of their
+protective actions; for in the first place, the great majority of the
+thorns are never touched at all, and, in the second place, we have no
+ground whatever for supposing that those which are touched are thereby
+made to grow, and to take those shapes which render them efficient.
+Plants which are rendered uneatable by the thick woolly coatings of
+their leaves, cannot have had these coatings produced by any process of
+reaction against the action of enemies; for there is no imaginable
+reason why, if one part of a plant is eaten, the rest should thereafter
+begin to develop the hairs on its surface. By what direct effect of
+function on structure, can the shell of a nut have been evolved? Or how
+can those seeds which contain essential oils, rendering them unpalatable
+to birds, have been made to secrete such essential oils by these actions
+of birds which they restrain? Or how can the delicate plumes borne by
+some seeds, and giving the wind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[392]</a></span> power to waft them to new stations, be
+due to any immediate influences of surrounding conditions? Clearly in
+these and in countless other cases, change of structure cannot have been
+directly caused by change of function. So is it with animals to a large
+extent, if not to the same extent. Though we have proof that by rough
+usage the dermal layer may be so excited as to produce a greatly
+thickened epidermal layer, sometimes quite horny; and though it is a
+feasible hypothesis that an effect of this kind persistently produced
+may be inherited; yet no such cause can explain the carapace of the
+turtle, the armour of the armadillo, or the imbricated covering of the
+manis. The skins of these animals are no more exposed to habitual hard
+usage than are those of animals covered by hair. The strange
+excrescences which distinguish the heads of the hornbills, cannot
+possibly have arisen from any reaction against the action of surrounding
+forces; for even were they clearly protective, there is no reason to
+suppose that the heads of these birds need protection more than the
+heads of other birds. If, led by the evidence that in animals the amount
+of covering is in some cases affected by the degree of exposure, it were
+admitted as imaginable that the development of feathers from preceding
+dermal growths had resulted from that extra nutrition caused by extra
+superficial circulation, we should still be without explanation of the
+structure of a feather. Nor should we have any clue to the specialities
+of feathers&mdash;the crests of various birds, the tails sometimes so
+enormous, the curiously placed plumes of the bird of paradise, &amp;c., &amp;c.
+Still more obviously impossible is it to explain as due to use or disuse
+the colours of animals. No direct adaptation to function could have
+produced the blue protuberances on a mandril's face, or the striped hide
+of a tiger, or the gorgeous plumage of a kingfisher, or the eyes in a
+peacock's tail, or the multitudinous patterns of insects' wings. One
+single case, that of a deer's horns, might alone have sufficed to show<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[393]</a></span>
+how insufficient was the assigned cause. During their growth, a deer's
+horns are not used at all; and when, having been cleared of the dead
+skin and dried-up blood-vessels covering them, they are ready for use,
+they are nerveless and non-vascular, and hence are incapable of
+undergoing any changes of structure consequent on changes of function.</p>
+
+<p>Of these few then, who rejected the belief described by Professor
+Huxley, and who, espousing the belief in a continuous evolution, had to
+account for this evolution, it must be said that though the cause
+assigned was a true cause, yet, even admitting that it operated through
+successive generations, it left unexplained the greater part of the
+facts. Having been myself one of these few, I look back with surprise at
+the way in which the facts which were congruous with the espoused view
+monopolized consciousness and kept out the facts which were incongruous
+with it&mdash;conspicuous though many of them were. The misjudgment was not
+unnatural. Finding it impossible to accept any doctrine which implied a
+breach in the uniform course of natural causation, and, by implication,
+accepting as unquestionable the origin and development of all organic
+forms by accumulated modifications naturally caused, that which appeared
+to explain certain classes of these modifications, was supposed to be
+capable of explaining the rest: the tendency being to assume that these
+would eventually be similarly accounted for, though it was not clear
+how.</p>
+
+<p>Returning from this <a name='TC_15'></a><ins class="correction" title="Was 'parenthethic'">parenthetic</ins> remark, we are concerned here chiefly to
+remember that, as said at the outset, there existed thirty years ago, no
+tenable theory about the genesis of living things. Of the two
+alternative beliefs, neither would bear critical examination.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Out of this dead lock we were released&mdash;in large measure, though not I
+believe entirely&mdash;by the <i>Origin of Species</i>. That work brought into
+view a further factor; or rather,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[394]</a></span> such factor, recognized as in
+operation by here and there an observer (as pointed out by Mr. Darwin in
+his introduction to the second edition), was by him for the first time
+seen to have played so immense a part in the genesis of plants and
+animals.</p>
+
+<p>Though laying myself open to the charge of telling a thrice-told tale, I
+feel obliged here to indicate briefly the several great classes of facts
+which Mr. Darwin's hypothesis explains; because otherwise that which
+follows would scarcely be understood. And I feel the less hesitation in
+doing this because the hypothesis which it replaced, not very widely
+known at any time, has of late so completely dropped into the
+background, that the majority of readers are scarcely aware of its
+existence, and do not therefore understand the relation between Mr.
+Darwin's successful interpretation and the preceding unsuccessful
+attempt at interpretation. Of these classes of facts, four chief ones
+may be here distinguished.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, such adjustments as those exemplified above are made
+comprehensible. Though it is inconceivable that a structure like that of
+the pitcher-plant could have been produced by accumulated effects of
+function on structure; yet it is conceivable that successive selections
+of favourable variations might have produced it; and the like holds of
+the no less remarkable appliance of the Venus's Fly-trap, or the still
+more astonishing one of that water-plant by which infant-fish are
+captured. Though it is impossible to imagine how, by direct influence of
+increased use, such dermal appendages as a porcupine's quills could have
+been developed; yet, profiting as the members of a species otherwise
+defenceless might do by the stiffness of their hairs, rendering them
+unpleasant morsels to eat, it is a feasible supposition that from
+successive survivals of individuals thus defended in the greatest
+degrees, and the consequent growth in successive generations of hairs
+into bristles, bristles into spines, spines into quills (for all these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[395]</a></span>
+are homologous), this change could have arisen. In like manner, the odd
+inflatable bag of the bladder-nosed seal, the curious fishing-rod with
+its worm-like appendage carried on the head of the <i>lophius</i> or angler,
+the spurs on the wings of certain birds, the weapons of the sword-fish
+and saw-fish, the wattles of fowls, and numberless such peculiar
+structures, though by no possibility explicable as due to effects of use
+or disuse, are explicable as resulting from natural selection operating
+in one or other way.</p>
+
+<p>In the second place, while showing us how there have arisen countless
+modifications in the forms, structures, and colours of each part, Mr.
+Darwin has shown us how, by the establishment of favourable variations,
+there may arise new parts. Though the first step in the production of
+horns on the heads of various herbivorous animals, may have been the
+growth of callosities consequent on the habit of butting&mdash;such
+callosities thus functionally initiated being afterwards developed in
+the most advantageous ways by selection; yet no explanation can be thus
+given of the sudden appearance of a duplicate set of horns, as
+occasionally happens in sheep: an addition which, where it proved
+beneficial, might readily be made a permanent trait by natural
+selection. Again, the modifications which follow use and disuse can by
+no possibility account for changes in the numbers of vertebr&aelig;; but after
+recognizing spontaneous, or rather fortuitous, variation as a factor, we
+can see that where an additional vertebra hence resulting (as in some
+pigeons) proves beneficial, survival of the fittest may make it a
+constant character; and there may, by further like additions, be
+produced extremely long strings of vertebr&aelig;, such as snakes show us.
+Similarly with the mammary glands. It is not an unreasonable supposition
+that by the effects of greater or less function, inherited through
+successive generations, these may be enlarged or diminished in size; but
+it is out of the question to allege such a cause for changes in their
+numbers. There is no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[396]</a></span> imaginable explanation of these save the
+establishment by inheritance of spontaneous variations, such as are
+known to occur in the human race.</p>
+
+<p>So too, in the third place, with certain alterations in the connexions
+of parts. According to the greater or smaller demands made on this or
+that limb, the muscles moving it may be augmented or diminished in bulk;
+and, if there is inheritance of changes so wrought, the limb may, in
+course of generations, be rendered larger or smaller. But changes in the
+arrangements or attachments of muscles cannot be thus accounted for. It
+is found, especially at the extremities, that the relations of tendons
+to bones and to one another are not always the same. Variations in their
+modes of connexion may occasionally prove advantageous, and may thus
+become established. Here again, then, we have a class of structural
+changes to which Mr. Darwin's hypothesis gives us the key, and to which
+there is no other key.</p>
+
+<p>Once more there are the phenomena of mimicry. Perhaps in a more striking
+way than any others, these show how traits which seem inexplicable are
+explicable as due to the more frequent survival of individuals that have
+varied in favourable ways. We are enabled to understand such marvellous
+simulations as those of the leaf-insect, those of beetles which
+"resemble glittering dew-drops upon the leaves;" those of caterpillars
+which, when asleep, stretch themselves out so as to look like twigs. And
+we are shown how there have arisen still more astonishing
+imitations&mdash;those of one insect by another. As Mr. Bates has proved,
+there are cases in which a species of butterfly, rendered so unpalatable
+to insectivorous birds by its disagreeable taste that they will not
+catch it, is simulated in its colours and markings by a species which is
+structurally quite different&mdash;so simulated that even a practised
+entomologist is liable to be deceived: the explanation being that an
+original slight resemblance, leading to occasional<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[397]</a></span> mistakes on the part
+of birds, was increased generation after generation by the more frequent
+escape of the most-like individuals, until the likeness became thus
+great.</p>
+
+<p>But now, recognizing in full this process brought into clear view by Mr.
+Darwin, and traced out by him with so much care and skill, can we
+conclude that, taken alone, it accounts for organic evolution? Has the
+natural selection of favourable variations been the sole factor? On
+critically examining the evidence, we shall find reason to think that it
+by no means explains all that has to be explained. Omitting for the
+present any consideration of a factor which may be distinguished as
+primordial, it may be contended that the above-named factor alleged by
+Dr. Erasmus Darwin and by Lamarck, must be recognized as a co-operator.
+Utterly inadequate to explain the major part of the facts as is the
+hypothesis of the inheritance of functionally-produced modifications,
+yet there is a minor part of the facts, very extensive though less,
+which must be ascribed to this cause.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>When discussing the question more than twenty years ago (<i>Principles of
+Biology</i>, &sect; 166), I instanced the decreased size of the jaws in the
+civilized races of mankind, as a change not accounted for by the natural
+selection of favourable variations; since no one of the decrements by
+which, in thousands of years, this reduction has been effected, could
+have given to an individual in which it occurred, such advantage as
+would cause his survival, either through diminished cost of local
+nutrition or diminished weight to be carried. I did not then exclude, as
+I might have done, two other imaginable causes. It may be said that
+there is some organic correlation between increased size of brain and
+decreased size of jaw: Camper's doctrine of the facial angle being
+referred to in proof. But this argument may be met by pointing to the
+many examples of small-jawed people who are also small-brained,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[398]</a></span> and by
+citing not infrequent cases of individuals remarkable for their mental
+powers, and at the same time distinguished by jaws not less than the
+average but greater. Again, if sexual selection be named as a possible
+cause, there is the reply that, even supposing such slight diminution of
+jaw as took place in a single generation to have been an attraction, yet
+the other incentives to choice on the part of men have been too many and
+great to allow this one to weigh in an adequate degree; while, during
+the greater portion of the period, choice on the part of women has
+scarcely operated: in earlier times they were stolen or bought, and in
+later times mostly coerced by parents. Thus, reconsideration of the
+facts does not show me the invalidity of the conclusion drawn, that this
+decrease in size of jaw can have had no other cause than continued
+inheritance of those diminutions consequent on diminutions of function,
+implied by the use of selected and well-prepared food. Here, however, my
+chief purpose is to add an instance showing, even more clearly, the
+connexion between change of function and change of structure. This
+instance, allied in nature to the other, is presented by those
+varieties, or rather sub-varieties, of dogs, which, having been
+household pets, and habitually fed on soft food, have not been called on
+to use their jaws in tearing and crunching, and have been but rarely
+allowed to use them in catching prey and in fighting. No inference can
+be drawn from the sizes of the jaws themselves, which, in these dogs,
+have probably been shortened mainly by selection. To get direct proof of
+the decrease of the muscles concerned in closing the jaws or biting,
+would require a series of observations very difficult to make. But it is
+not difficult to get indirect proof of this decrease by looking at the
+bony structures with which these muscles are connected. Examination of
+the skulls of sundry indoor dogs contained in the Museum of the College
+of Surgeons, proves the relative smallness of such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[399]</a></span> parts. The only
+pug-dog's skull is that of an individual not perfectly adult; and though
+its traits are quite to the point they cannot with safety be taken as
+evidence. The skull of a toy-terrier has much restricted areas of
+insertion for the temporal muscles; has weak zygomatic arches; and has
+extremely small attachments for the masseter muscles. Still more
+significant is the evidence furnished by the skull of a King Charles's
+spaniel, which, if we allow three years to a generation, and bear in
+mind that the variety must have existed before Charles the Second's
+reign, we may assume belongs to something approaching to the hundredth
+generation of these household pets. The relative breadth between the
+outer surfaces of the zygomatic arches is conspicuously small; the
+narrowness of the temporal foss&aelig; is also striking; the zygomata are very
+slender; the temporal muscles have left no marks whatever, either by
+limiting lines or by the character of the surfaces covered; and the
+places of attachment for the masseter muscles are very feebly developed.
+At the Museum of Natural History, among skulls of dogs there is one
+which, though unnamed, is shown by its small size and by its teeth, to
+have belonged to one variety or other of lap-dogs, and which has the
+same traits in an equal degree with the skull just described. Here,
+then, we have two if not three kinds of dogs which, similarly leading
+protected and pampered lives, show that in the course of generations the
+parts concerned in clenching the jaws have dwindled. To what cause must
+this decrease be ascribed? Certainly not to artificial selection; for
+most of the modifications named make no appreciable external signs: the
+width across the zygomata could alone be perceived. Neither can natural
+selection have had anything to do with it; for even were there any
+struggle for existence among such dogs, it cannot be contended that any
+advantage in the struggle could be gained by an individual in which a
+decrease took place. Economy of nutrition, too, is excluded. Abundantly
+fed as such dogs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[400]</a></span> are, the constitutional tendency is to find places
+where excess of absorbed nutriment may be conveniently deposited, rather
+than to find places where some cutting down of the supplies is
+practicable. Nor again can there be alleged a possible correlation
+between these diminutions and that shortening of the jaws which has
+probably resulted from selection; for in the bull-dog, which has also
+relatively short jaws, these structures concerned in closing them are
+unusually large. Thus there remains as the only conceivable cause, the
+diminution of size which results from diminished use. The dwindling of a
+little-exercised part has, by inheritance, been made more and more
+marked in successive generations.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Difficulties of another class may next be exemplified&mdash;those which
+present themselves when we ask how there can be effected by the
+selection of favourable variations, such changes of structure as adapt
+an organism to some useful action in which many different parts
+co-operate. None can fail to see how a simple part may, in course of
+generations, be greatly enlarged, if each enlargement furthers, in some
+decided way, maintenance of the species. It is easy to understand, too,
+how a complex part, as an entire limb, may be increased as a whole by
+the simultaneous due increase of its co-operative parts; since if, while
+it is growing, the channels of supply bring to the limb an unusual
+quantity of blood, there will naturally result a proportionately greater
+size of all its components&mdash;bones, muscles, arteries, veins, &amp;c. But
+though in cases like this, the co-operative parts forming some large
+complex part may be expected to vary together, nothing implies that they
+necessarily do so; and we have proof that in various cases, even when
+closely united, they do not do so. An example is furnished by those
+blind crabs named in the <i>Origin of Species</i> which inhabit certain dark
+caves of Kentucky, and which, though they have lost their eyes, have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[401]</a></span>
+not lost the foot-stalks which carried their eyes. In describing the
+varieties which have been produced by pigeon-fanciers, Mr. Darwin notes
+the fact that along with changes in length of beak produced by
+selection, there have not gone proportionate changes in length of
+tongue. Take again the case of teeth and jaws. In mankind these have not
+varied together. During civilization the jaws have decreased, but the
+teeth have not decreased in proportion; and hence that prevalent
+crowding of them, often remedied in childhood by extraction of some, and
+in other cases causing that imperfect development which is followed by
+early decay. But the absence of proportionate variation in co-operative
+parts that are close together, and are even bound up in the same mass,
+is best seen in those varieties of dogs named above as illustrating the
+inherited effects of disuse. We see in them, as we see in the human
+race, that diminution in the jaws has not been accompanied by
+corresponding diminution in the teeth. In the catalogue of the College
+of Surgeons Museum, there is appended to the entry which identifies a
+Blenheim Spaniel's skull, the words&mdash;"the teeth are closely crowded
+together," and to the entry concerning the skull of a King Charles's
+Spaniel the words&mdash;"the teeth are closely packed, p. 3, is placed quite
+transversely to the axis of the skull." It is further noteworthy that in
+a case where there is no diminished use of the jaws, but where they have
+been shortened by selection, a like want of concomitant variation is
+manifested: the case being that of the bull-dog, in the upper jaw of
+which also, "the premolars ... are excessively crowded, and placed
+obliquely or even transversely to the long axis of the skull."<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<p>If, then, in cases where we can test it, we find no concomitant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[402]</a></span>
+variation in co-operative parts that are near together&mdash;if we do not
+find it in parts which, though belonging to different tissues, are so
+closely united as teeth and jaws&mdash;if we do not find it even when the
+co-operative parts are not only closely united, but are formed out of
+the same tissue, like the crab's eye and its peduncle; what shall we say
+of co-operative parts which, besides being composed of different
+tissues, are remote from one another? Not only are we forbidden to
+assume that they vary together, but we are warranted in asserting that
+they can have no tendency to vary together. And what are the
+implications in cases where increase of a structure can be of no service
+unless there is concomitant increase in many distant structures, which
+have to join it in performing the action for which it is useful?</p>
+
+<p>As far back as 1864 (<i>Principles of Biology</i>, &sect; 166) I named in
+illustration an animal carrying heavy horns&mdash;the extinct Irish elk; and
+indicated the many changes in bones, muscles, blood-vessels, nerves,
+composing the fore-part of the body, which would be required to make an
+increment of size in such horns advantageous. Here let me take another
+instance&mdash;that of the giraffe: an instance which I take partly because,
+in the sixth edition of the <i>Origin of Species</i>, issued in 1872, Mr.
+Darwin has referred to this animal when effectually disposing of certain
+arguments urged against his hypothesis. He there says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"In order that an animal should acquire some structure specially
+and largely developed, it is almost indispensable that several
+other parts should be modified and co-adapted. Although every part
+of the body varies slightly, it does not follow that the necessary
+parts should always vary in the right direction and to the right
+degree" (p. 179).</p></div>
+
+<p>And in the summary of the chapter, he remarks concerning the adjustments
+in the same quadruped, that "the prolonged use of all the parts together
+with inheritance will have aided in an important manner in their
+co-ordination" (p. 199): a remark probably having reference chiefly to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[403]</a></span>
+the increased massiveness of the lower part of the neck; the increased
+size and strength of the thorax required to bear the additional burden;
+and the increased strength of the fore-legs required to carry the
+greater weight of both. But now I think that further consideration
+suggests the belief that the entailed modifications are much more
+numerous and remote than at first appears; and that the greater part of
+these are such as cannot be ascribed in any degree to the selection of
+favourable variations, but must be ascribed exclusively to the inherited
+effects of changed functions. Whoever has seen a giraffe gallop will
+long remember the sight as a ludicrous one. The reason for the
+strangeness of the motions is obvious. Though the fore limbs and the
+hind limbs differ so much in length, yet in galloping they have to keep
+pace&mdash;must take equal strides. The result is that at each stride, the
+angle which the hind limbs describe round their centre of motion is much
+larger than the angle described by the fore limbs. And beyond this, as
+an aid in equalizing the strides, the hind part of the back is at each
+stride bent very much downwards and forwards. Hence the hind-quarters
+appear to be doing nearly all the work. Now a moment's observation shows
+that the bones and muscles composing the hind-quarters of the giraffe,
+perform actions differing in one or other way and degree, from the
+actions performed by the homologous bones and muscles in a mammal of
+ordinary proportions, and from those in the ancestral mammal which gave
+origin to the giraffe. Each further stage of that growth which produced
+the large fore-quarters and neck, entailed some adapted change in sundry
+of the numerous parts composing the hind-quarters; since any failure in
+the adjustment of their respective strengths would entail some defect in
+speed and consequent loss of life when chased. It needs but to remember
+how, when continuing to walk with a blistered foot, the taking of steps
+in such a modified way as to diminish pressure on the sore point, soon
+produces aching<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[404]</a></span> of muscles which are called into unusual action, to see
+that over-straining of any one of the muscles of the giraffe's
+hind-quarters might quickly incapacitate the animal when putting out all
+its powers to escape; and to be a few yards behind others would cause
+death. Hence if we are debarred from assuming that co-operative parts
+vary together even when adjacent and closely united&mdash;if we are still
+more debarred from assuming that with increased length of fore-legs or
+of neck, there will go an appropriate change in any one muscle or bone
+in the hind-quarters; how entirely out of the question it is to assume
+that there will simultaneously take place the appropriate changes in
+<i>all</i> those many components of the hind-quarters which severally require
+re-adjustment. It is useless to reply that an increment of length in the
+fore-legs or neck might be retained and transmitted to posterity,
+waiting an appropriate variation in a particular bone or muscle in the
+hind-quarters, which, being made, would allow of a further increment.
+For besides the fact that until this secondary variation occurred the
+primary variation would be a disadvantage often fatal; and besides the
+fact that before such an appropriate secondary variation might be
+expected in the course of generations to occur, the primary variation
+would have died out; there is the fact that the appropriate variation of
+one bone or muscle in the hind-quarters would be useless without
+appropriate variations of all the rest&mdash;some in this way and some in
+that&mdash;a number of appropriate variations which it is impossible to
+suppose.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is this all. Far more numerous appropriate variations would be
+indirectly necessitated. The immense change in the ratio of
+fore-quarters to hind-quarters would make requisite a corresponding
+change of ratio in the appliances carrying on the nutrition of the two.
+The entire vascular system, arterial and veinous, would have to undergo
+successive unbuildings and rebuildings to make its channels everywhere
+adequate to the local requirements;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[405]</a></span> since any want of adjustment in the
+blood-supply in this or that set of muscles, would entail incapacity,
+failure of speed, and loss of life. Moreover the nerves supplying the
+various sets of muscles would have to be proportionately changed; as
+well as the central nervous tracts from which they issued. Can we
+suppose that all these appropriate changes, too, would be step by step
+simultaneously made by fortunate spontaneous variations, occurring along
+with all the other fortunate spontaneous variations? Considering how
+immense must be the number of these required changes, added to the
+changes above enumerated, the chances against any adequate
+re-adjustments fortuitously arising must be infinity to one.</p>
+
+<p>If the effects of use and disuse of parts are inheritable, then any
+change in the fore parts of the giraffe which affects the action of the
+hind limbs and back, will simultaneously cause, by the greater or less
+exercise of it, a re-moulding of each component in the hind limbs and
+back in a way adapted to the new demands; and generation after
+generation the entire structure of the hind-quarters will be
+progressively fitted to the changed structure of the fore-quarters: all
+the appliances for nutrition and innervation being at the same time
+progressively fitted to both. But in the absence of this inheritance of
+functionally-produced modifications, there is no seeing how the required
+re-adjustments can be made.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Yet a third class of difficulties stands in the way of the belief that
+the natural selection of useful variations is the sole factor of organic
+evolution. This class of difficulties, already pointed out in &sect; 166 of
+the <i>Principles of Biology</i>, I cannot more clearly set forth than in the
+words there used. Hence I may perhaps be excused for here quoting them.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Where the life is comparatively simple, or where surrounding
+circumstances render some one function supremely important, the
+survival of the fittest may readily bring about the appropriate
+structural change, without any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[406]</a></span> aid from the transmission of
+functionally-acquired modifications. But in proportion as the life
+grows complex&mdash;in proportion as a healthy existence cannot be
+secured by a large endowment of some one power, but demands many
+powers; in the same proportion do there arise obstacles to the
+increase of any particular power, by 'the preservation of favoured
+races in the struggle for life.' As fast as the faculties are
+multiplied, so fast does it become possible for the several members
+of a species to have various kinds of superiorities over one
+another. While one saves its life by higher speed, another does the
+like by clearer vision, another by keener scent, another by quicker
+hearing, another by greater strength, another by unusual power of
+enduring cold or hunger, another by special sagacity, another by
+special timidity, another by special courage; and others by other
+bodily and mental attributes. Now it is unquestionably true that,
+other things equal, each of these attributes, giving its possessor
+an extra chance of life, is likely to be transmitted to posterity.
+But there seems no reason to suppose that it will be increased in
+subsequent generations by natural selection. That it may be thus
+increased, the individuals not possessing more than average
+endowments of it, must be more frequently killed off than
+individuals highly endowed with it; and this can happen only when
+the attribute is one of greater importance, for the time being,
+than most of the other attributes. If those members of the species
+which have but ordinary shares of it, nevertheless survive by
+virtue of other superiorities which they severally possess; then it
+is not easy to see how this particular attribute can be developed
+by natural selection in subsequent generations. The probability
+seems rather to be, that by gamogenesis, this extra endowment will,
+on the average, be diminished in posterity&mdash;just serving in the
+long run to compensate the deficient endowments of other
+individuals, whose special powers lie in other directions; and so
+to keep up the normal structure of the species. The working out of
+the process is here somewhat difficult to follow; but it appears to
+me that as fast as the number of bodily and mental faculties
+increases, and as fast as the maintenance of life comes to depend
+less on the amount of any one, and more on the combined action of
+all; so fast does the production of specialities of character by
+natural selection alone, become difficult. Particularly does this
+seem to be so with a species so multitudinous in its powers as
+mankind; and above all does it seem to be so with such of the human
+powers as have but minor shares in aiding the struggle for
+life&mdash;the &aelig;sthetic faculties, for example."</p></div>
+
+<p>Dwelling for a moment on this last illustration of the class of
+difficulties described, let us ask how we are to interpret the
+development of the musical faculty. I will not enlarge on the family
+antecedents of the great composers. I will merely suggest the inquiry
+whether the greater powers possessed by Beethoven and Mozart, by Weber
+and Rossini, than by their fathers, were not due<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[407]</a></span> in larger measure to
+the inherited effects of daily exercise of the musical faculty by their
+fathers, than to inheritance, with increase, of spontaneous variations;
+and whether the diffused musical powers of the Bach clan, culminating in
+those of Johann Sebastian, did not result in part from constant
+practice; but I will raise the more general question&mdash;How came there
+that endowment of musical faculty which characterizes modern Europeans
+at large, as compared with their remote ancestors. The monotonous chants
+of low savages cannot be said to show any melodic inspiration; and it is
+not evident that an individual savage who had a little more musical
+perception than the rest, would derive any such advantage in the
+maintenance of life as would secure the spread of his superiority by
+inheritance of the variation. And then what are we to say of harmony? We
+cannot suppose that the appreciation of this, which is relatively
+modern, can have arisen by descent from the men in whom successive
+variations increased the appreciation of it&mdash;the composers and musical
+performers; for on the whole, these have been men whose worldly
+prosperity was not such as enabled them to rear many children inheriting
+their special traits. Even if we count the illegitimate ones, the
+survivors of these added to the survivors of the legitimate ones, can
+hardly be held to have yielded more than average numbers of descendants;
+and those who inherited their special traits have not often been thereby
+so aided in the struggle for existence as to further the spread of such
+traits. Rather the tendency seems to have been the reverse.</p>
+
+<p>Since the above passage was written, I have found in the second volume
+of <i>Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, a remark made by Mr.
+Darwin, practically implying that among creatures which depend for their
+lives on the efficiency of numerous powers, the increase of any one by
+the natural selection of a variation is necessarily difficult. Here it
+is.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[408]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Finally, as indefinite and almost illimitable variability is the
+usual result of domestication and cultivation, with the same part
+or organ varying in different individuals in different or even in
+directly opposite ways; and as the same variation, if strongly
+pronounced, usually recurs only after long intervals of time, any
+particular variation would generally be lost by crossing,
+reversion, and the accidental destruction of the varying
+individuals, unless carefully preserved by man."&mdash;Vol. ii, 292.</p></div>
+
+<p>Remembering that mankind, subject as they are to this domestication and
+cultivation, are not, like domesticated animals, under an agency which
+picks out and preserves particular variations; it results that there
+must usually be among them, under the influence of natural selection
+alone, a continual disappearance of any useful variations of particular
+faculties which may arise. Only in cases of variations which are
+specially preservative, as for example, great cunning during a
+relatively barbarous state, can we expect increase from natural
+selection alone. We cannot suppose that minor traits, exemplified among
+others by the &aelig;sthetic perceptions, can have been evolved by natural
+selection. But if there is inheritance of functionally-produced
+modifications of structure, evolution of such minor traits is no longer
+inexplicable.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Two remarks made by Mr. Darwin have implications from which the same
+general conclusion must, I think, be drawn. Speaking of the variability
+of animals and plants under domestication, he says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Changes of any kind in the conditions of life, even extremely
+slight changes, often suffice to cause variability.... Animals and
+plants continue to be variable for an immense period after their
+first domestication; ... In the course of time they can be
+habituated to certain changes, so as to become less variable; ...
+There is good evidence that the power of changed conditions
+accumulates; so that two, three, or more generations must be
+exposed to new conditions before any effect is visible.... Some
+variations are induced by the direct action of the surrounding
+conditions on the whole organization, or on certain parts alone,
+and other variations are induced indirectly through the
+reproductive system being affected in the same manner as is so
+common with organic beings when removed from their natural
+conditions."&mdash;(<i>Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, vol. ii,
+270.)</p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[409]</a></span>There are to be recognized two modes of this effect produced by changed
+conditions on the reproductive system, and consequently on offspring.
+Simple arrest of development is one. But beyond the variations of
+offspring arising from imperfectly developed reproductive systems in
+parents&mdash;variations which must be ordinarily in the nature of
+imperfections&mdash;there are others due to a changed balance of functions
+caused by changed conditions. The fact noted by Mr. Darwin in the above
+passage, "that the power of changed conditions accumulates; so that two,
+three, or more generations must be exposed to new conditions before any
+effect is visible," implies that during these generations there is going
+on some change of constitution consequent on the changed proportions and
+relations of the functions. I will not dwell on the implication, which
+seems tolerably clear, that this change must consist of such
+modifications of organs as adapt them to their changed functions; and
+that if the influence of changed conditions "accumulates," it must be
+through the inheritance of such modifications. Nor will I press the
+question&mdash;What is the nature of the effect registered in the
+reproductive elements, and which is subsequently manifested by
+variations?&mdash;Is it an effect entirely irrelevant to the new requirements
+of the variety?&mdash;Or is it an effect which makes the variety less fit for
+the new requirements?&mdash;Or is it an effect which makes it more fit for
+the new requirements? But not pressing these questions, it suffices to
+point out the necessary implication that changed functions of organs
+<i>do</i>, in some way or other, register themselves in changed proclivities
+of the reproductive elements. In face of these facts it cannot be denied
+that the modified action of a part produces an inheritable effect&mdash;be
+the nature of that effect what it may.</p>
+
+<p>The second of the remarks above adverted to as made by Mr. Darwin, is
+contained in his sections dealing with correlated variations. In the
+<i>Origin of Species</i>, p. 114, he says<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[410]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The whole organization is so tied together during its growth and
+development, that when slight variations in any one part occur, and
+are accumulated through natural selection, other parts become
+modified."</p></div>
+
+<p>And a parallel statement contained in <i>Animals and Plants under
+Domestication</i>, vol. ii, p. 320, runs thus&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Correlated variation is an important subject for us; for when one
+part is modified through continued selection, either by man or
+under nature, other parts of the organization will be unavoidably
+modified. From this correlation it apparently follows that, with
+our domesticated animals and plants, varieties rarely or never
+differ from each other by some single character alone."</p></div>
+
+<p>By what process does a changed part modify other parts? By modifying
+their functions in some way or degree, seems the necessary answer. It is
+indeed, imaginable, that where the part changed is some dermal appendage
+which, becoming larger, has abstracted more of the needful material from
+the general stock, the effect may consist simply in diminishing the
+amount of this material available for other dermal appendages, leading
+to diminution of some or all of them, and may fail to affect in
+appreciable ways the rest of the organism: save perhaps the
+blood-vessels near the enlarged appendage. But where the part is an
+active one&mdash;a limb, or viscus, or any organ which constantly demands
+blood, produces waste matter, secretes, or absorbs&mdash;then all the other
+active organs become implicated in the change. The functions performed
+by them have to constitute a moving equilibrium; and the function of one
+cannot, by alteration of the structure performing it, be modified in
+degree or kind, without modifying the functions of the rest&mdash;some
+appreciably and others inappreciably, according to the directness or
+indirectness of their relations. Of such inter-dependent changes, the
+normal ones are naturally inconspicuous; but those which are partially
+or completely abnormal, sufficiently carry home the general truth. Thus,
+unusual cerebral excitement affects the excretion through the kidneys in
+quantity or quality or both. Strong emotions of disagreeable kinds check
+or arrest the flow of bile. A considerable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[411]</a></span> obstacle to the circulation
+offered by some important structure in a diseased or disordered state,
+throwing more strain upon the heart, causes hypertrophy of its muscular
+walls; and this change which is, so far as concerns the primary evil, a
+remedial one, often entails mischiefs in other organs. "Apoplexy and
+palsy, in a scarcely credible number of cases, are directly dependent on
+<a name='TC_16'></a><ins class="correction" title="Was 'hypertropic'">hypertrophic</ins> enlargement of the heart." And in other cases, asthma,
+dropsy, and epilepsy are caused. Now if a result of this
+inter-dependence as seen in the individual organism, is that a local
+modification of one part produces, by changing their functions,
+correlative modifications of other parts, then the question here to be
+put is&mdash;Are these correlative modifications, when of a kind falling
+within normal limits, inheritable or not. If they are inheritable, then
+the fact stated by Mr. Darwin that "when one part is modified through
+continued selection," "other parts of the organization will be
+unavoidably modified" is perfectly intelligible: these entailed
+secondary modifications are transmitted <i>pari passu</i> with the successive
+modifications produced by selection. But what if they are not
+inheritable? Then these secondary modifications caused in the
+individual, not being transmitted to descendants, the descendants must
+commence life with organizations out of balance, and with each increment
+of change in the part affected by selection, their organizations must
+get more out of balance&mdash;must have a larger and larger amounts of
+re-organization to be made during their lives. Hence the constitution of
+the variety must become more and more unworkable.</p>
+
+<p>The only imaginable alternative is that the re-adjustments are effected
+in course of time by natural selection. But, in the first place, as we
+find no proof of concomitant variation among directly co-operative parts
+which are closely united, there cannot be assumed any concomitant
+variation among parts which are both indirectly co-operative and far
+from one another. And, in the second place,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[412]</a></span> before all the many
+required re-adjustments could be made, the variety would die out from
+defective constitution. Even were there no such difficulty, we should
+still have to entertain a strange group of propositions, which would
+stand as follows:&mdash;1. Change in one part entails, by reaction on the
+organism, changes, in other parts, the functions of which are
+necessarily changed. 2. Such changes worked in the individual, affect,
+in some way, the reproductive elements: these being found to evolve
+unusual structures when the constitutional balance has been continuously
+disturbed. 3. But the changes in the reproductive elements thus caused,
+are not such as represent these functionally-produced changes: the
+modifications conveyed to offspring are irrelevant to these various
+modifications functionally produced in the organs of the parents. 4.
+Nevertheless, while the balance of functions cannot be re-established
+through inheritance of the effects of disturbed functions on structures,
+wrought throughout the individual organism; it can be re-established by
+the inheritance of fortuitous variations which occur in all the affected
+organs without reference to these changes of function.</p>
+
+<p>Now without saying that acceptance of this group of propositions is
+impossible, we may certainly say that it is not easy.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"But where are the direct proofs that inheritance of
+functionally-produced modifications takes place?" is a question which
+will be put by those who have committed themselves to the current
+exclusive interpretation. "Grant that there are difficulties; still,
+before the transmitted effects of use and disuse can be legitimately
+assigned in explanation of them, we must have good evidence that the
+effects of use and disuse <i>are</i> transmitted."</p>
+
+<p>Before dealing directly with this demurrer, let me deal with it
+indirectly, by pointing out that the lack of recognized evidence may be
+accounted for without assuming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[413]</a></span> that there is not plenty of it.
+Inattention and reluctant attention lead to the ignoring of facts which
+really exist in abundance; as is well illustrated in the case of
+pre-historic implements. Biassed by the current belief that no traces of
+man were to be found on the Earth's surface, save in certain superficial
+formations of very recent date, geologists and anthropologists not only
+neglected to seek such traces, but for a long time continued to
+pooh-pooh those who said they had found them. When M. Boucher de Perthes
+at length succeeded in drawing the eyes of scientific men to the flint
+implements discovered by him in the quarternary deposits of the Somme
+valley; and when geologists and anthropologists had thus been convinced
+that evidences of human existence were to be found in formations of
+considerable age, and thereafter began to search for them; they found
+plenty of them all over the world. Or again, to take an instance closely
+germane to the matter, we may recall the fact that the contemptuous
+attitude towards the hypothesis of organic evolution which naturalists
+in general maintained before the publication of Mr. Darwin's work,
+prevented them from seeing the multitudinous facts by which it is
+supported. Similarly, it is very possible that their alienation from the
+belief that there is a transmission of those changes of structure which
+are produced by changes of action, makes naturalists slight the evidence
+which supports that belief and refuse to occupy themselves in seeking
+further evidence.</p>
+
+<p>If it be asked how it happens that there have been recorded
+multitudinous instances of variations fortuitously arising and
+re-appearing in offspring, while there have not been recorded instances
+of the transmission of changes functionally produced, there are three
+replies. The first is that changes of the one class are many of them
+conspicuous, while those of the other class are nearly all
+inconspicuous. If a child is born with six fingers, the anomaly is not
+simply obvious but so startling as to attract<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[414]</a></span> much notice; and if this
+child, growing up, has six-fingered descendents, everybody in the
+locality hears of it. A pigeon with specially-coloured feathers, or one
+distinguished by a broadened and upraised tail, or by a protuberance of
+the neck, draws attention by its oddness; and if in its young the trait
+is repeated, occasionally with increase, the fact is remarked, and there
+follows the thought of establishing the peculiarity by selection. A lamb
+disabled from leaping by the shortness of its legs, could not fail to be
+observed; and the fact that its offspring were similarly short-legged,
+and had a consequent inability to get over fences, would inevitably
+become widely known. Similarly with plants. That this flower had an
+extra number of petals, that that was unusually symmetrical, and that
+another differed considerably in colour from the average of its kind,
+would be easily seen by an observant gardener; and the suspicion that
+such anomalies are inheritable having arisen, experiments leading to
+further proofs that they are so, would frequently be made. But it is not
+thus with functionally-produced modifications. The seats of these are in
+nearly all cases the muscular, osseous, and nervous systems, and the
+viscera&mdash;parts which are either entirely hidden or greatly obscured.
+Modification in a nervous centre is inaccessible to vision; bones may be
+considerably altered in size or shape without attention being drawn to
+them; and, covered with thick coats as are most of the animals open to
+continuous observation, the increases or decreases in muscles must be
+great before they become externally perceptible.</p>
+
+<p>A further important difference between the two inquiries is that to
+ascertain whether a fortuitous variation is inheritable, needs merely a
+little attention to the selection of individuals and the observation of
+offspring; while to ascertain whether there is inheritance of a
+functionally-produced modification, it is requisite to make arrangements
+which demand the greater or smaller exercise of some part<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[415]</a></span> or parts;
+and it is difficult in many cases to find such arrangements, troublesome
+to maintain them even for one generation, and still more through
+successive generations.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is this all. There exist stimuli to inquiry in the one case which do
+not exist in the other. The money-interest and the interest of the
+fancier, acting now separately and now together, have prompted
+multitudinous individuals to make experiments which have brought out
+clear evidence that fortuitous variations are inherited. The
+cattle-breeders who profit by producing certain shapes and qualities;
+the keepers of pet animals who take pride in the perfections of those
+they have bred; the florists, professional and amateur, who obtain new
+varieties and take prizes; form a body of men who furnish naturalists
+with countless of the required proofs. But there is no such body of men,
+led either by pecuniary interest or the interest of a hobby, to
+ascertain by experiments whether the effects of use and disuse are
+inheritable.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, then, there are amply sufficient reasons why there is a great deal
+of direct evidence in the one case and but little in the other: such
+little being that which comes out incidentally. Let us look at what
+there is of it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Considerable weight attaches to a fact which Brown-S&eacute;quard discovered,
+quite by accident, in the course of his researches. He found that
+certain artificially-produced lesions of the nervous system, so small
+even as a section of the sciatic nerve, left, after healing, an
+increasing excitability which ended in liability to epilepsy; and there
+afterwards came out the unlooked-for result that the offspring of
+guinea-pigs which had thus acquired an epileptic habit such that a pinch
+on the neck would produce a fit, inherited an epileptic habit of like
+kind. It has, indeed, been since alleged that guinea pigs tend to
+epilepsy, and that phenomena of the kind described, occur where there
+have been no antecedents like those in Brown-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[416]</a></span>S&eacute;quard's case. But
+considering the improbability that the phenomena observed by him
+happened to be nothing more than phenomena which occasionally arise
+naturally, we may, until there is good proof to the contrary, assign
+some value to his results.</p>
+
+<p>Evidence not of this directly experimental kind, but nevertheless of
+considerable weight, is furnished by other nervous disorders. There is
+proof enough that insanity admits of being induced by circumstances
+which, in one or other way, derange the nervous functions&mdash;excesses of
+this or that kind; and no one questions the accepted belief that
+insanity is inheritable. Is it alleged that the insanity which is
+inheritable is that which spontaneously arises, and that the insanity
+which follows some chronic perversion of functions is not inheritable?
+This does not seem a very reasonable allegation; and until some warrant
+for it is forthcoming, we may fairly assume that there is here a further
+support for belief in the transmission of functionally-produced changes.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, I find among physicians the belief that nervous disorders of a
+less severe kind are inheritable. Men who have prostrated their nervous
+systems by prolonged overwork or in some other way, have children more
+or less prone to nervousness. It matters not what may be the form of
+inheritance&mdash;whether it be of a brain in some way imperfect, or of a
+deficient blood-supply; it is in any case the inheritance of
+functionally-modified structures.</p>
+
+<p>Verification of the reasons above given for the paucity of this direct
+evidence, is yielded by contemplation of it; for it is observable that
+the cases named are cases which, from one or other cause, have thrust
+themselves on observation. They justify the suspicion that it is not
+because such cases are rare that many of them cannot be cited; but
+simply because they are mostly unobtrusive, and to be found only by that
+deliberate search which nobody makes. I say nobody, but I am wrong.
+Successful search<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[417]</a></span> has been made by one whose competence as an observer
+is beyond question, and whose testimony is less liable than that of all
+others to any bias towards the conclusion that such inheritance takes
+place. I refer to the author of the <i>Origin of Species</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Now-a-days most naturalists are more Darwinian than Mr. Darwin himself.
+I do not mean that their beliefs in organic evolution are more decided;
+though I shall be supposed to mean this by the mass of readers, who
+identify Mr. Darwin's great contribution to the theory of organic
+evolution, with the theory of organic evolution itself, and even with
+the theory of evolution at large. But I mean that the particular factor
+which he first recognized as having played so immense a part in organic
+evolution, has come to be regarded by his followers as the sole factor,
+though it was not so regarded by him. It is true that he apparently
+rejected altogether the causal agencies alleged by earlier inquirers. In
+the Historical Sketch prefixed to the later editions of his <i>Origin of
+Species</i> (p. xiv, note), he writes:&mdash;"It is curious how largely my
+grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and erroneous
+grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his 'Zoonomia' (vol. i, pp. 500-510),
+published in 1794." And since, among the views thus referred to, was the
+view that changes of structure in organisms arise by the inheritance of
+functionally-produced changes, Mr. Darwin seems, by the above sentence,
+to have implied his disbelief in such inheritance. But he did not mean
+to imply this; for his belief in it as a cause of evolution, if not an
+important cause, is proved by many passages in his works. In the first
+chapter of the <i>Origin of Species</i> (p. 8 of the sixth edition), he says
+respecting the inherited effects of habit, that "with animals the
+increased use or disuse of parts has had a more marked influence;" and
+he gives as instances the changed relative weights of the wing bones and
+leg bones of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[418]</a></span> wild duck and the domestic duck, "the great and
+inherited development of the udders in cows and goats," and the drooping
+ears of various domestic animals. Here are other passages taken from the
+latest edition of the work.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I think there can be no doubt that use in our domestic animals has
+strengthened and enlarged certain parts, and disuse diminished
+them; and that such modifications are inherited" (p. 108). [And on
+the following pages he gives five further examples of such
+effects.] "Habit in producing constitutional peculiarities and use
+in strengthening and disuse in weakening and diminishing organs,
+appear in many cases to have been potent in their effects" (p.
+131). "When discussing special cases, Mr. Mivart passes over the
+effects of the increased use and disuse of parts, which I have
+always maintained to be highly important, and have treated in my
+'Variation under Domestication' at greater length than, as I
+believe, any other writer" (p. 176). "Disuse, on the other hand,
+will account for the less developed condition of the whole inferior
+half of the body, including the lateral fins" (p. 188). "I may give
+another instance of a structure which apparently owes its origin
+exclusively to use or habit" (p. 188). "It appears probable that
+disuse has been the main agent in rendering organs rudimentary"
+(pp. 400-401). "On the whole, we may conclude that habit, or use
+and disuse, have, in some cases, played a considerable part in the
+modification of the constitution and structure; but that the
+effects have often been largely combined with, and sometimes
+overmastered by, the natural selection of innate variations" (p.
+114).</p></div>
+
+<p>In his subsequent work, <i>The Variation of Animals and Plants under
+Domestication</i>, where he goes into full detail, Mr. Darwin gives more
+numerous illustrations of the inherited effects of use and disuse. The
+following are some of the cases, quoted from volume i of the first
+edition.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Treating of domesticated rabbits, he says:&mdash;"the want of exercise
+has apparently modified the proportional length of the limbs in
+comparison with the body" (p. 116). "We thus see that the most
+important and complicated organ [the brain] in the whole
+organization is subject to the law of decrease in size from disuse"
+(p. 129). He remarks that in birds of the oceanic islands "not
+persecuted by any enemies, the reduction of their wings has
+probably been caused by gradual disuse." After comparing one of
+these, the water-hen of Tristan d'Acunha, with the European
+water-hen, and showing that all the bones concerned in flight are
+smaller, he adds&mdash;"Hence in the skeleton of this natural species
+nearly the same changes have occurred, only carried a little
+further, as with our domestic ducks, and in this latter case I
+presume no one will dispute that they have resulted from the
+lessened use of the wings and the increased use of the legs" (pp.
+286-7). "As with other long-domesticated animals, the instincts of
+the silk-moth have suffered. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[419]</a></span> caterpillars, when placed on a
+mulberry-tree, often commit the strange mistake of devouring the
+base of the leaf on which they are feeding, and consequently fall
+down; but they are capable, according to M. Robinet, of again
+crawling up the trunk. Even this capacity sometimes fails, for M.
+Martins placed some caterpillars on a tree, and those which fell
+were not able to remount and perished of hunger; they were even
+incapable of passing from leaf to leaf" (p. 304).</p></div>
+
+<p>Here are some instances of like meaning from volume ii.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"In many cases there is reason to believe that the lessened use of
+various organs has affected the corresponding parts in the
+offspring. But there is no good evidence that this ever follows in
+the course of a single generation.... Our domestic fowls, ducks,
+and geese have almost lost, not only in the individual but in the
+race, their power of flight; for we do not see a chicken, when
+frightened, take flight like a young pheasant.... With domestic
+pigeons, the length of the sternum, the prominence of its crest,
+the length of the scapul&aelig; and furcula, the length of the wings as
+measured from tip to tip of the radius, are all reduced relatively
+to the same parts in the wild pigeon." [After detailing kindred
+diminutions in fowls and ducks, Mr. Darwin adds] "The decreased
+weight and size of the bones, in the foregoing cases, is probably
+the indirect result of the reaction of the weakened muscles on the
+bones" (pp. 297-8). "Nathusius has shown that, with the improved
+races of the pig, the shortened legs and snout, the form of the
+articular condyles of the occiput, and the position of the jaws
+with the upper canine teeth projecting in a most anomalous manner
+in front of the lower canines, may be attributed to these parts not
+having been fully exercised.... These modifications of structure,
+which are all strictly inherited, characterise several improved
+breeds, so that they cannot have been derived from any single
+domestic or wild stock. With respect to cattle, Professor Tanner
+has remarked that the lungs and liver in the improved breeds 'are
+found to be considerably reduced in size when compared with those
+possessed by animals having perfect liberty;' ... The cause of the
+reduced lungs in highly-bred animals which take little exercise is
+obvious" (pp. 299-300). [And on pp. 301, 302 and 303, he gives
+facts showing the effects of use and disuse in changing, among
+domestic animals, the characters of the ears, the lengths of the
+intestines, and, in various ways, the natures of the instincts.]</p></div>
+
+<p>But Mr. Darwin's admission, or rather his assertion, that the
+inheritance of functionally-produced modifications has been a factor in
+organic evolution, is made clear not by these passages alone and by
+kindred ones. It is made clearer still by a passage in the preface to
+the second edition of his <i>Descent of Man</i>. He there protests against
+that current version of his views in which this factor makes no
+appearance. The passage is as follows.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[420]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I may take this opportunity of remarking that my critics
+frequently assume that I attribute all changes of corporeal
+structure and mental power exclusively to the natural selection of
+such variations as are often called spontaneous; whereas, even in
+the first edition of the 'Origin of Species,' I distinctly stated
+that great weight must be attributed to the inherited effects of
+use and disuse, with respect both to the body and mind."</p></div>
+
+<p>Nor is this all. There is evidence that Mr. Darwin's belief in the
+efficiency of this factor, became stronger as he grew older and
+accumulated more evidence. The first of the extracts above given, taken
+from the sixth edition of the <i>Origin of Species</i>, runs thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I think there can be no doubt that use in our domestic animals has
+strengthened and enlarged certain parts, and disuse diminished
+them; and that such modifications are inherited."</p></div>
+
+<p>Now on turning to the first edition, p. 134, it will be found that
+instead of the words&mdash;"I think there can be no doubt," the words
+originally used were&mdash;"I think there can be <i>little</i> doubt." That this
+deliberate erasure of a qualifying word and substitution of a word
+implying unqualified belief, was due to a more decided recognition of a
+factor originally under-estimated, is clearly implied by the wording of
+the above-quoted passage from the preface to the <i>Descent of Man</i>; where
+he says that "<i>even</i> in the first edition of the 'Origin of Species,'"
+&amp;c.: the implication being that much more in subsequent editions, and
+subsequent works, had he insisted on this factor. The change thus
+indicated is especially significant as having occurred at a time of life
+when the natural tendency is towards fixity of opinion.</p>
+
+<p>During that earlier period when he was discovering the multitudinous
+cases in which his own hypothesis afforded solutions, and simultaneously
+observing how utterly futile in these multitudinous cases was the
+hypothesis propounded by his grandfather and Lamarck, Mr. Darwin was,
+not unnaturally, almost betrayed into the belief that the one is
+all-sufficient and the other inoperative. But in the mind of one so
+candid and ever open to more evidence, there naturally came a reaction.
+The inheritance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[421]</a></span> of functionally-produced modifications, which, judging
+by the passage quoted above concerning the views of these earlier
+enquirers, would seem to have been at one time denied, but which as we
+have seen was always to some extent recognized, came to be recognized
+more and more, and deliberately included as a factor of importance.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Of this reaction displayed in the later writings of Mr. Darwin, let us
+now ask&mdash;Has it not to be carried further? Was the share in organic
+evolution which Mr. Darwin latterly assigned to the transmission of
+modifications caused by use and disuse, its due share? Consideration of
+the groups of evidences given above, will, I think, lead us to believe
+that its share has been much larger than he supposed even in his later
+days.</p>
+
+<p>There is first the implication yielded by extensive classes of phenomena
+which remain inexplicable in the absence of this factor. If, as we see,
+co-operative parts do not vary together, even when few and close
+together, and may not therefore be assumed to do so when many and
+remote, we cannot account for those innumerable changes in organization
+which are implied when, for advantageous use of some modified part, many
+other parts which join it in action have to be modified.</p>
+
+<p>Further, as increasing complexity of structure, accompanying increasing
+complexity of life, implies increasing number of faculties, of which
+each one conduces to preservation of self or descendants; and as the
+various individuals of a species, severally requiring something like the
+normal amounts of all these, may individually profit, here by an unusual
+amount of one, and there by an unusual amount of another; it follows
+that as the number of faculties becomes greater, it becomes more
+difficult for any one to be further developed by natural selection. Only
+where increase of some one is <i>predominantly</i> advantageous does the
+means seem adequate to the end. Especially in the case of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[422]</a></span> powers which
+do not subserve self-preservation in appreciable degrees, does
+development by natural selection appear impracticable.</p>
+
+<p>It is a fact recognized by Mr. Darwin, that where, by selection through
+successive generations, a part has been increased or decreased, its
+reaction upon other parts entails changes in them. This reaction is
+effected through the changes of function involved. If the changes of
+structure produced by such changes of function, are inheritable, then
+the re-adjustment of parts throughout the organism, taking place
+generation after generation, maintains an approximate balance; but if
+not, then generation after generation the organism must get more and
+more out of gear, and tend to become unworkable.</p>
+
+<p>Further, as it is proved that change in the balance of functions
+registers its effects on the reproductive elements, we have to choose
+between the alternatives that the registered effects are irrelevant to
+the particular modifications which the organism has undergone, or that
+they are such as tend to produce repetitions of these modifications. The
+last of these alternatives makes the facts comprehensible; but the first
+of them not only leaves us with several unsolved problems, but is
+incongruous with the general truth that by reproduction, ancestral
+traits, down to minute details, are transmitted.</p>
+
+<p>Though, in the absence of pecuniary interests and the interests in
+hobbies, no such special experiments as those which have established the
+inheritance of fortuitous variations have been made to ascertain whether
+functionally-produced modifications are inherited; yet certain apparent
+instances of such inheritance have forced themselves on observation
+without being sought for. In addition to other indications of a less
+conspicuous kind, is the one I have given above&mdash;the fact that the
+apparatus for tearing and mastication has decreased with decrease of its
+function, alike in civilized man and in some varieties of dogs which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[423]</a></span>
+lead protected and pampered lives. Of the numerous cases named by Mr.
+Darwin, it is observable that they are yielded not by one class of parts
+only, but by most if not all classes&mdash;by the dermal system, the muscular
+system, the osseous system, the nervous system, the viscera; and that
+among parts liable to be functionally modified, the most numerous
+observed cases of inheritance are furnished by those which admit of
+preservation and easy comparison&mdash;the bones: these cases, moreover,
+being specially significant as showing how, in sundry unallied species,
+parallel changes of structure have occurred along with parallel changes
+of habit.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, shall we say of the general implication? Are we to stop
+short with the admission that inheritance of functionally-produced
+modifications takes place only in cases in which there is evidence of
+it? May we properly assume that these many instances of changes of
+structure caused by changes of function, occurring in various tissues
+and various organs, are merely special and exceptional instances having
+no general significance? Shall we suppose that though the evidence which
+already exists has come to light without aid from a body of inquirers,
+there would be no great increase were due attention devoted to the
+collection of evidence? This is, I think, not a reasonable supposition.
+To me the <i>ensemble</i> of the facts suggests the belief, scarcely to be
+resisted, that the inheritance of functionally-produced modifications
+takes place universally. Looking at physiological phenomena as
+conforming to physical principles, it is difficult to conceive that a
+changed play of organic forces which in many cases of different kinds
+produces an inherited change of structure, does not do this in all
+cases. The implication, very strong I think, is that the action of every
+organ produces on it a reaction which, usually not altering its rate of
+nutrition, sometimes leaves it with diminished nutrition consequent on
+diminished action, and at other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[424]</a></span> times increases its nutrition in
+proportion to its increased action; that while generating a modified
+<i>consensus</i> of functions and of structures, the activities are at the
+same time impressing this modified <i>consensus</i> on the sperm-cells and
+germ-cells whence future individuals are to be produced; and that in
+ways mostly too small to be identified, but occasionally in more
+conspicuous ways and in the course of generations, the resulting
+modifications of one or other kind show themselves. Further, it seems to
+me that as there are certain extensive classes of phenomena which are
+inexplicable if we assume the inheritance of fortuitous variations to be
+the sole factor, but which become at once explicable if we admit the
+inheritance of functionally-produced changes, we are justified in
+concluding that this inheritance of functionally-produced changes has
+been not simply a co-operating factor in organic evolution, but has been
+a co-operating factor without which organic evolution, in its higher
+forms at any rate, could never have taken place.</p>
+
+<p>Be this or be it not a warrantable conclusion, there is, I think, good
+reason for a provisional acceptance of the hypothesis that the effects
+of use and disuse are inheritable; and for a methodic pursuit of
+inquiries with the view of either establishing it or disproving it. It
+seems scarcely reasonable to accept without clear demonstration, the
+belief that while a trivial difference of structure arising
+spontaneously is transmissible, a massive difference of structure,
+maintained generation after generation by change of function, leaves no
+trace in posterity. Considering that unquestionably the modification of
+structure by function is a <i>vera causa</i>, in so far as concerns the
+individual; and considering the number of facts which so competent an
+observer as Mr. Darwin regarded as evidence that transmission of such
+modifications takes place in particular cases; the hypothesis that such
+transmission takes place in conformity with a general law, holding of
+all active structures,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[425]</a></span> should, I think, be regarded as at least a good
+working hypothesis.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>But now supposing the broad conclusion above drawn to be
+granted&mdash;supposing all to agree that from the beginning, along with
+inheritance of useful variations fortuitously arising, there has been
+inheritance of effects produced by use and disuse; do there remain no
+classes of organic phenomena unaccounted for? To this question I think
+it must be replied that there do remain classes of organic phenomena
+unaccounted for. It may, I believe, be shown that certain cardinal
+traits of animals and plants at large are still unexplained; and that a
+further factor must be recognized. To show this, however, will require
+another paper.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p>Ask a plumber who is repairing your pump, how the water is raised in it,
+and he replies&mdash;"By suction." Recalling the ability which he has to suck
+up water into his mouth through a tube, he is certain that he
+understands the pump's action. To inquire what he means by suction,
+seems to him absurd. He says you know as well as he does, what he means;
+and he cannot see that there is any need for asking how it happens that
+the water rises in the tube when he strains his mouth in a particular
+way. To the question why the pump, acting by suction, will not make the
+water rise above 32 feet, and practically not so much, he can give no
+answer; but this does not shake his confidence in his explanation.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand an inquirer who insists on knowing what suction is,
+may obtain from the physicist answers which give him clear ideas, not
+only about it but about many other things. He learns that on ourselves
+and all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[426]</a></span> things around, there is an atmospheric pressure amounting to
+about 15 pounds on the square inch: 15 pounds being the average weight
+of a column of air having a square inch for its base and extending
+upwards from the sea-level to the limit of the Earth's atmosphere. He is
+made to observe that when he puts one end of a tube into water and the
+other end into his mouth, and then draws back his tongue, so leaving a
+vacant space, two things happen. One is that the pressure of air outside
+his cheeks, no longer balanced by an equal pressure of air inside,
+thrusts his cheeks inwards; and the other is that the pressure of air on
+the surface of the water, no longer balanced by an equal pressure of air
+within the tube and his mouth (into which part of the air from the tube
+has gone) the water is forced up the tube in consequence of the unequal
+pressure. Once understanding thus the nature of the so-called suction,
+he sees how it happens that when the plunger of the pump is raised and
+relieves from atmospheric pressure the water below it, the atmospheric
+pressure on the water in the well, not being balanced by that on the
+water in the tube, forces the water higher up the tube, so that it
+follows the plunger. And now he sees why the water cannot be raised
+beyond the theoretic limit of 32 feet: a limit made much lower in
+practice by imperfections in the apparatus. For if, simplifying the
+conception, he supposes the tube of the pump to be a square inch in
+section, then the atmospheric pressure of 15 pounds per square inch on
+the water in the well, can raise the water in the tube to such height
+only that the entire column of it weighs 15 pounds. Having been thus
+enlightened about the pump's action, the action of a barometer becomes
+intelligible. He perceives how, under the conditions established, the
+weight of the column of mercury balances that of an atmospheric column
+of equal diameter; and how, as the weight of the atmospheric column
+varies, there is a corresponding variation in the weight of the
+mercurial column,&mdash;shown by change of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[427]</a></span> height. Moreover, having
+previously supposed that he understood the ascent of a balloon when he
+ascribed it to relative lightness, he now sees that he did not truly
+understand it. For he did not recognize it as a result of that upward
+pressure caused by the difference between the weight of the mass formed
+by the gas in the balloon <i>plus</i> the cylindrical column of air extending
+above it to the limit of the atmosphere, and the weight of a similar
+cylindrical column of air extending down to the under surface of the
+balloon: this difference of weight causing an equivalent upward pressure
+on the under surface.</p>
+
+<p>Why do I introduce these familiar truths so entirely irrelevant to my
+subject? I do it to show, in the first place, the contrast between a
+vague conception of a cause and a distinct conception of it; or rather,
+the contrast between that conception of a cause which results when it is
+simply classed with some other or others which familiarity makes us
+think we understand, and that conception of a cause which results when
+it is represented in terms of definite physical forces admitting of
+measurement. And I do it to show, in the second place, that when we
+insist on resolving a verbally-intelligible cause into its actual
+factors, we get not only a clear solution of the problem before us, but
+we find that the way is opened to solutions of sundry other problems.
+While we rest satisfied with unanalyzed causes, we may be sure both that
+we do not rightly comprehend the production of the particular effects
+ascribed to them, and that we overlook other effects which would be
+revealed to us by contemplation of the causes as analyzed. Especially
+must this be so where the causation is complex. Hence we may infer that
+the phenomena presented by the development of species, are not likely to
+be truly conceived unless we keep in view the concrete agencies at work.
+Let us look closely at the facts to be dealt with.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The growth of a thing is effected by the joint operation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[428]</a></span> of certain
+forces on certain materials; and when it dwindles, there is either a
+lack of some materials, or the forces co-operate in a way different from
+that which produces growth. If a structure has varied, the implication
+is that the processes which built it up were made unlike the parallel
+processes in other cases, by the greater or less amount of some one or
+more of the matters or actions concerned. Where there is unusual
+fertility, the play of vital activities is thereby shown to have
+deviated from the ordinary play of vital activities; and conversely, if
+there is infertility. If the germs, or ova, or seed, or offspring
+partially developed, survive more or survive less, it is either because
+their molar or molecular structures are unlike the average ones, or
+because they are affected in unlike ways by surrounding agencies. When
+life is prolonged, the fact implies that the combination of actions,
+visible and invisible, constituting life, retains its equilibrium longer
+than usual in presence of environing forces which tend to destroy its
+equilibrium. That is to say, growth, variation, survival, death, if they
+are to be reduced to the forms in which physical science can recognize
+them, must be expressed as effects of agencies definitely
+conceived&mdash;mechanical forces, light, heat, chemical affinity, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>This general conclusion brings with it the thought that the phrases
+employed in discussing organic evolution, though convenient and indeed
+needful, are liable to mislead us by veiling the actual agencies. That
+which really goes on in every organism is the working together of
+component parts in ways conducing to the continuance of their combined
+actions, in presence of things and actions outside; some of which tend
+to subserve, and others to destroy, the combination. The matters and
+forces in these two groups, are the sole causes properly so called. The
+words "natural selection," do not express a cause in the physical sense.
+They express a mode of co-operation among causes&mdash;or rather, to speak
+strictly, they express an effect of this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[429]</a></span> mode of co-operation. The idea
+they convey seems perfectly intelligible. Natural selection having been
+compared with artificial selection, and the analogy pointed out, there
+apparently remains no indefiniteness: the inconvenience being, however,
+that the definiteness is of a wrong kind. The tacitly implied Nature
+which selects, is not an embodied agency analogous to the man who
+selects artificially; and the selection is not the picking out of an
+individual fixed on, but the overthrowing of many individuals by
+agencies which one successfully resists, and hence continues to live and
+multiply. Mr. Darwin was conscious of these misleading implications. In
+the introduction to his <i>Animals and Plants under Domestication</i> (p. 6)
+he says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"For brevity sake I sometimes speak of natural selection as an
+intelligent power; ... I have, also, often personified the word
+Nature; for I have found it difficult to avoid this ambiguity; but
+I mean by nature only the aggregate action and product of many
+natural laws,&mdash;and by laws only the ascertained sequence of
+events."</p></div>
+
+<p>But while he thus clearly saw, and distinctly asserted, that the factors
+of organic evolution are the concrete actions, inner and outer, to which
+every organism is subject, Mr. Darwin, by habitually using the
+convenient figure of speech, was, I think, prevented from recognizing so
+fully as he would otherwise have done, certain fundamental consequences
+of these actions.</p>
+
+<p>Though it does not personalize the cause, and does not assimilate its
+mode of working to a human mode of working, kindred objections may be
+urged against the expression to which I was led when seeking to present
+the phenomena in literal terms rather than metaphorical terms&mdash;the
+survival of the fittest;<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> for in a vague way the first word, and in a
+clear way the second word, calls up an anthropocentric<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[430]</a></span> idea. The
+thought of survival inevitably suggests the human view of certain sets
+of phenomena, rather than that character which they have simply as
+groups of changes. If, asking what we really know of a plant, we exclude
+all the ideas associated with the words life and death, we find that the
+sole facts known to us are that there go on in the plant certain
+inter-dependent processes, in presence of certain aiding and hindering
+influences outside of it; and that in some cases a difference of
+structure or a favourable set of circumstances, allows these
+inter-dependent processes to go on for longer periods than in other
+cases. Again, in the working together of those many actions, internal
+and external, which determine the lives or deaths of organisms, we see
+nothing to which the words fitness and unfitness are applicable in the
+physical sense. If a key fits a lock, or a glove a hand, the relation of
+the things to one another is presentable to the perceptions. No approach
+to fitness of this kind is made by an organism which continues to live
+under certain conditions. Neither the organic structures themselves, nor
+their individual movements, nor those combined movements of certain
+among them which constitute conduct, are related in any analogous way to
+the things and actions in the environment. Evidently the word fittest,
+as thus used, is a figure of speech; suggesting the fact that amid
+surrounding actions, an organism characterized by the word has either a
+greater ability than others of its kind to maintain the equilibrium of
+its vital activities, or else has so much greater a power of
+multiplication that though not longer lived than they, it continues to
+live in posterity more persistently. And indeed, as we here see, the
+word fittest has to cover cases in which there may be less ability than
+usual to survive individually, but in which the defect is more than made
+good by higher degrees of fertility.</p>
+
+<p>I have elaborated this criticism with the intention of emphasizing the
+need for studying the changes which have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[431]</a></span> gone on, and are ever going
+on, in organic bodies, from an exclusively physical point of view. On
+contemplating the facts from this point of view, we become aware that,
+besides those special effects of the co-operating forces which eventuate
+in the longer survival of one individual than of others, and in the
+consequent increase through generations, of some trait which furthered
+its survival, many other effects are being wrought on each and all of
+the individuals. Bodies of every class and quality, inorganic as well as
+organic, are from instant to instant subject to the influences in their
+environments; are from instant to instant being changed by these in ways
+that are mostly inconspicuous; and are in course of time changed by them
+in conspicuous ways. Living things in common with dead things, are, I
+say, being thus perpetually acted upon and modified; and the changes
+hence resulting, constitute an all-important part of those undergone in
+the course of organic evolution. I do not mean to imply that changes of
+this class pass entirely unrecognized; for, as we shall see, Mr. Darwin
+takes cognizance of certain secondary and special ones. But the effects
+which are not taken into account, are those primary and universal
+effects which give certain fundamental characters to all organisms.
+Contemplation of an analogy will best prepare the way for appreciation
+of them, and of the relation they bear to those which at present
+monopolize attention.</p>
+
+<p>An observant rambler along shores, will, here and there, note places
+where the sea has deposited things more or less similar, and separated
+them from dissimilar things&mdash;will see shingle parted from sand; larger
+stones sorted from smaller stones; and will occasionally discover
+deposits of shells more or less worn by being rolled about. Sometimes
+the pebbles or boulders composing the shingle at one end of a bay, he
+will find much larger than those at the other: intermediate sizes,
+having small average differences, occupying the space between the
+extremes. An example<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[432]</a></span> occurs, if I remember rightly, some mile or two to
+the west of Tenby; but the most remarkable and well-known example is
+that afforded by the Chesil bank. Here, along a shore some sixteen miles
+long, there is a gradual increase in the sizes of the stones; which,
+being at one end but mere pebbles, are at the other end immense
+boulders. In this case, then, the breakers and the undertow have
+effected a selection&mdash;have at each place left behind those stones which
+were too large to be readily moved, while taking away others small
+enough to be moved easily. But now, if we contemplate exclusively this
+selective action of the sea, we overlook certain important effects which
+the sea simultaneously works. While the stones have been differently
+acted upon in so far that some have been left here and some carried
+there; they have been similarly acted upon in two allied, but
+distinguishable, ways. By perpetually rolling them about and knocking
+them one against another, the waves have so broken off their most
+prominent parts as to produce in all of them more or less rounded forms;
+and then, further, the mutual friction of the stones simultaneously
+caused, has smoothed their surfaces. That is to say in general terms,
+the actions of environing agencies, so far as they have operated
+indiscriminately, have produced in the stones a certain unity of
+character; at the same time that they have, by their differential
+effects, separated them: the larger ones having withstood certain
+violent actions which the smaller ones could not withstand.</p>
+
+<p>Similarly with other assemblages of objects which are alike in their
+primary traits but unlike in their secondary traits. When simultaneously
+exposed to the same set of actions, some of these actions, rising to a
+certain intensity, may be expected to work on particular members of the
+assemblage changes which they cannot work in those which are markedly
+unlike; while others of the actions will work in all of them similar
+changes, because of the uniform<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[433]</a></span> relations between these actions and
+certain attributes common to all members of the assemblage. Hence it is
+inferable that on living organisms, which form an assemblage of this
+kind, and are unceasingly exposed in common to the agencies composing
+their inorganic environments, there must be wrought two such sets of
+effects. There will result a universal likeness among them consequent on
+the likeness of their respective relations to the matters and forces
+around; and there will result, in some cases, the differences due to the
+differential effects of these matters and forces, and in other cases,
+the changes which, being life-sustaining or life-destroying, eventuate
+in certain natural selections.</p>
+
+<p>I have, above, made a passing reference to the fact that Mr. Darwin did
+not fail to take account of some among these effects directly produced
+on organisms by surrounding inorganic agencies. Here are extracts from
+the sixth edition of the <i>Origin of Species</i> showing this.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is very difficult to decide how far changed conditions, such as
+of climate, food, &amp;c., have acted in a definite manner. There is
+reason to believe that in the course of time the effects have been
+greater than can be proved by clear evidence.... Mr. Gould believes
+that birds of the same species are more brightly coloured under a
+clear atmosphere, than when living near the coast or on islands;
+and Wollaston is convinced that residence near the sea affects the
+colours of insects. Moquin-Tandon gives a list of plants which,
+when growing near the sea-shore, have their leaves in some degree
+fleshy, though not elsewhere fleshy" (pp. 106-7). "Some observers
+are convinced that a damp climate affects the growth of the hair,
+and that with the hair the horns are correlated" (p. 159).</p></div>
+
+<p>In his subsequent work, <i>Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, Mr.
+Darwin still more clearly recognizes these causes of change in
+organization. A chapter is devoted to the subject. After premising that
+"the direct action of the conditions of life, whether leading to
+definite or indefinite results, is a totally distinct consideration from
+the effects of natural selection;" he goes on to say that changed
+conditions of life "have acted so definitely and powerfully on the
+organisation of our domesticated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[434]</a></span> productions, that they have sufficed
+to form new sub-varieties or races, without the aid of selection by man
+or of natural selection." Of his examples here are two.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have given in detail in the ninth chapter the most remarkable
+case known to me, namely, that in Germany several varieties of
+maize brought from the hotter parts of America were transformed in
+the course of only two or three generations." (Vol. ii, p. 277.)
+[And in this ninth chapter concerning these and other such
+instances he says "some of the foregoing differences would
+certainly be considered of specific value with plants in a state of
+nature." (Vol. i, p. 321.)] "Mr. Meehan, in a remarkable paper,
+compares twenty-nine kinds of American trees, belonging to various
+orders, with their nearest European allies, all grown in close
+proximity in the same garden and under as nearly as possible the
+same conditions." And then enumerating six traits in which the
+American forms all of them differ in like ways from their allied
+European forms, Mr. Darwin thinks there is no choice but to
+conclude that these "have been definitely caused by the
+long-continued action of the different climate of the two
+continents on the trees." (Vol. ii, pp. 281-2.)</p></div>
+
+<p>But the fact we have to note is that while Mr. Darwin thus took account
+of special effects due to special amounts and combinations of agencies
+in the environment, he did not take account of the far more important
+effects due to the general and constant operation of these agencies.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a>
+If a difference between the quantities of a force which acts on two
+organisms, otherwise alike and otherwise similarly conditioned, produces
+some difference between them; then, by implication, this force produces
+in both of them effects<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[435]</a></span> which they show in common. The inequality
+between two things cannot have a value unless the things themselves have
+values. Similarly if, in two cases, some unlikeness of proportion among
+the surrounding inorganic agencies to which two plants or two animals
+are exposed, is followed by some unlikeness in the changes wrought on
+them; then it follows that these several agencies taken separately, work
+changes in both of them. Hence we must infer that organisms have certain
+structural characters in common, which are consequent on the action of
+the medium in which they exist: using the word medium in a comprehensive
+sense, as including all physical forces falling upon them as well as
+matters bathing them. And we may conclude that from the primary
+characters thus produced there must result secondary characters.</p>
+
+<p>Before going on to observe those general traits of organisms due to the
+general action of the inorganic environment upon them, I feel tempted to
+enlarge on the effects produced by each of the several matters and
+forces constituting the environment. I should like to do this not only
+to give a clear preliminary conception of the ways in which all
+organisms are affected by these universally-present agents, but also to
+show that, in the first place, these agents modify inorganic bodies as
+well as organic bodies, and that, in the second place, the organic are
+far more modifiable by them than the inorganic. But to avoid undue
+suspension of the argument, I content myself with saying that when the
+respective effects of gravitation, heat, light, &amp;c., are studied, as
+well as the respective effects, physical and chemical, of the matters
+forming the media, water and air, it will be found that while more or
+less operative on all bodies, each modifies organic bodies to an extent
+immensely greater than the extent to which it modifies inorganic bodies.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Here, not discriminating among the special effects which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[436]</a></span> these various
+forces and matters in the environment produce on both classes of bodies,
+let us consider their combined effects, and ask&mdash;What is the most
+general trait of such effects?</p>
+
+<p>Obviously the most general trait is the greater amount of change wrought
+on the outer surface than on the inner mass. In so far as the matters of
+which the medium is composed come into play, the unavoidable implication
+is that they act more on the parts directly exposed to them than on the
+parts sheltered from them. And in so far as the forces pervading the
+medium come into play, it is manifest that, excluding gravity, which
+affects outer and inner parts indiscriminately, the outer parts have to
+bear larger shares of their actions. If it is a question of heat, then
+the exterior must lose it or gain it faster than the interior; and in a
+medium which is now warmer and now colder, the two must habitually
+differ in temperature to some extent&mdash;at least where the size is
+considerable. If it is a question of light, then in all but absolutely
+transparent masses, the outer parts must undergo more of any change
+producible by it than the inner parts&mdash;supposing other things equal; by
+which I mean, supposing the case is not complicated by any such
+convexities of the outer surface as produce internal concentrations of
+rays. Hence then, speaking generally, the necessity is that the primary
+and almost universal effect of the converse between the body and its
+medium, is to differentiate its outside from its inside. I say almost
+universal, because where the body is both mechanically and chemically
+stable, like, for instance, a quartz crystal, the medium may fail to
+work either inner or outer change.</p>
+
+<p>Of illustrations among inorganic bodies, a convenient one is supplied by
+an old cannon-ball that has been long lying exposed. A coating of rust,
+formed of flakes within flakes, incloses it; and this thickens year by
+year, until, perhaps, it reaches a stage at which its exterior loses as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[437]</a></span>
+much by rain and wind as its interior gains by further oxidation of the
+iron. Most mineral masses&mdash;pebbles, boulders, rocks&mdash;if they show any
+effect of the environment at all, show it only by that disintegration of
+surface which follows the freezing of absorbed water: an effect which,
+though mechanical rather than chemical, equally illustrates the general
+truth. Occasionally a "rocking-stone" is thus produced. There are formed
+successive layers relatively friable in texture, each of which, thickest
+at the most exposed parts, and being presently lost by weathering,
+leaves the contained mass in a shape more rounded than before; until,
+resting on its convex under-surface, it is easily moved. But of all
+instances perhaps the most remarkable is one to be seen on the west bank
+of the Nile at Phil&aelig;, where a ridge of granite 100 feet high, has had
+its outer parts reduced in course of time to a collection of
+boulder-shaped masses, varying from say a yard in diameter to six or
+eight feet, each one of which shows in progress an exfoliation of
+successively-formed shells of decomposed granite: most of the masses
+having portions of such shells partially detached.</p>
+
+<p>If, now, inorganic masses, relatively so stable in composition, thus
+have their outer parts differentiated from their inner parts, what must
+we say of organic masses, characterized by such extreme chemical
+instability?&mdash;instability so great that their essential material is
+named protein, to indicate the readiness with which it passes from one
+isomeric form to another. Clearly the necessary inference is that this
+effect of the medium must be wrought inevitably and promptly, wherever
+the relation of outer and inner has become settled: a qualification for
+which the need will be seen hereafter.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Beginning with the earliest and most minute kinds of living things, we
+necessarily encounter difficulties in getting direct evidence; since, of
+the countless species<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[438]</a></span> now existing, all have been subject during
+millions upon millions of years to the evolutionary process, and have
+had their primary traits complicated and obscured by those endless
+secondary traits which the natural selection of favourable variations
+has produced. Among protophytes it needs but to think of the
+multitudinous varieties of diatoms and desmids, with their
+elaborately-constructed coverings; or of the definite methods of growth
+and multiplication among such simple <i>Alg&aelig;</i> as the <i>Conjugat&aelig;</i>; to see
+that most of their distinctive characters are due to inherited
+constitutions, which have been slowly moulded by survival of the fittest
+to this or that mode of life. To disentangle such parts of their
+developmental changes as are due to the action of the medium, is
+therefore hardly possible. We can hope only to get a general conception
+of it by contemplating the totality of the facts.</p>
+
+<p>The first cardinal fact is that all protophytes are cellular&mdash;all show
+us this contrast between outside and inside. Supposing the multitudinous
+specialities of the envelope in different orders and genera of
+protophytes to be set against one another, and mutually cancelled, there
+remains as a trait common to them&mdash;an envelope unlike that which it
+envelopes. The second cardinal fact is that this simple trait is the
+earliest trait displayed in germs, or spores, or other parts from which
+new individuals are to arise; and that, consequently, this trait must be
+regarded as having been primordial. For it is an established truth of
+organic evolution that embryos show us, in general ways, the forms of
+remote ancestors; and that the first changes undergone, indicate, more
+or less clearly, the first changes which took place in the series of
+forms through which the existing form has been reached. Describing, in
+successive groups of plants, the early transformations of these
+primitive units, Sachs<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> says of the lowest <i>Alg&aelig;</i> that "the
+conjugated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[439]</a></span> protoplasmic body clothes itself with a cell-wall" (p. 10);
+that in "the spores of Mosses and Vascular Cryptogams" and in "the
+pollen of Phanerogams" ... "the protoplasmic body of the mother-cell
+breaks up into four lumps, which quickly round themselves off and
+contract, and become enveloped by a cell-membrane only after complete
+separation" (p. 13); that in the <i>Equisetace&aelig;</i> "the young spores, when
+first separated, are still naked, but they soon become surrounded by a
+cell-membrane" (p. 14); and that in higher plants, as in the pollen of
+many Dicotyledons, "the contracting daughter-cells secrete cellulose
+even during their separation" (p. 14). Here, then, in whatever way we
+interpret it, the fact is that there quickly arises an outer layer
+different from the contained matter. But the most significant evidence
+is furnished by "the masses of protoplasm that escape into water from
+the injured sacs of <i>Vaucheria</i>, which often instantly become rounded
+into globular bodies," and of which the "hyaline protoplasm envelopes
+the whole as a skin" (p. 41) which "is denser than the inner and more
+watery substance" (p. 42). As in this case the protoplasm is but a
+fragment, and as it is removed from the influence of the parent-cell,
+this differentiating process can scarcely be regarded as anything more
+than the effect of physico-chemical actions: a conclusion which is
+supported by the statement of Sachs that "not only every vacuole in a
+solid protoplasmic body, but also every thread of protoplasm which
+penetrates the sap-cavity, and finally the inner side of the
+protoplasm-sac which encloses the sap-cavity, is also bounded by a skin"
+(p. 42). If then "every portion of a protoplasmic body immediately
+surrounds itself, when it becomes isolated, with such a skin," which is
+shown in all cases to arise at the surface of contact with sap or water,
+this primary differentiation of outer from inner must be ascribed to the
+direct action of the medium. Whether the coating thus initiated is
+secreted by the protoplasm, or whether, as seems more likely, it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[440]</a></span>
+results from transformation of it, matters not to the argument. Either
+way the action of the medium causes its formation; and either way the
+many varied and complex differentiations which developed cell-walls
+display, must be considered as originating from those variations of this
+physically-generated covering which natural selection has taken
+advantage of.</p>
+
+<p>The contained protoplasm of a vegetal cell, which has self-mobility and
+when liberated sometimes performs am&oelig;ba-like motions for a time, may
+be regarded as an imprisoned am&oelig;ba; and when we pass from it to a
+free am&oelig;ba, which is one of the simplest types of first animals, or
+<i>Protozoa</i>, we naturally meet with kindred phenomena. The general trait
+which here concerns us, is that while its plastic or semi-fluid sarcode
+goes on protruding, in irregular ways, now this and now that part of its
+periphery, and again withdrawing into its interior first one and then
+another of these temporary processes, perhaps with some small portion of
+food attached, there is but an indistinct differentiation of outer from
+inner (a fact shown by the frequent coalescence of the pseudopodia in
+Rhizopods); but that when it eventually becomes quiescent, the surface
+becomes differentiated from the contents: the passing into an encysted
+state, doubtless in large measure due to inherited proclivity, being
+furthered, and having probably been once initiated, by the action of the
+medium. The connexion between constancy of relative position among the
+parts of the sarcode, and the rise of a contrast between superficial and
+central parts, is perhaps best shown in the minutest and simplest
+<i>Infusoria</i>, the <i>Monadin&aelig;</i>. The genus <i>Monas</i> is described by Kent as
+"plastic and unstable in form, possessing no distinct cuticular
+investment; ... the food-substances incepted at all parts of the
+periphery";<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> and the genus <i>Scytomonas</i> he says "differs from <i>Monas</i>
+only in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[441]</a></span> its persistent shape and accompanying greater rigidity of the
+peripheral or ectoplasmic layer."<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> Describing generally such low
+forms, some of which are said to have neither nucleus nor vacuole, he
+remarks that in types somewhat higher "the outer or peripheral border of
+the protoplasmic mass, while not assuming the character of a distinct
+cell-wall or so-called cuticle, presents, as compared with the inner
+substance of that mass, a slightly more solid type of composition."<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a>
+And it is added that these forms having so slightly differentiated an
+exterior, "while usually exhibiting a more or less characteristic normal
+outline, can revert at will to a pseud-am&oelig;boid and repent state."<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a>
+Here, then, we have several indications of the truth that the permanent
+externality of a certain part of the substance, is followed by
+transformation of it into a coating unlike the substance it contains.
+Indefinite and structureless in the simplest of these forms, as instance
+again the <i>Gregarina</i>,<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> the limiting membrane becomes, in higher
+<i>Infusoria</i>, definite and often complex: showing that the selection of
+favourable variations has had largely to do with its formation. In such
+types as the <i>Foraminifera</i>, which, almost structureless internally
+though they are, secrete calcareous shells, it is clear that the nature
+of this outer layer is determined by inherited constitution. But
+recognition of this consists with the belief that the action of the
+medium initiated the outer layer, specialized though it now is; and that
+even still, contact with the medium excites secretion of it.</p>
+
+<p>A remarkable analogy remains to be named. When we study the action of
+the medium in an inorganic mass, we are led to see that between the
+outer changed layer and the inner unchanged mass, comes a surface where
+active change is going on. Here we have to note that, alike in the
+plant-cell and in the animal-cell, there is a similar relation of parts.
+Immediately inside the envelope comes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[442]</a></span>the primordial utricle in the
+one case, and in the other case the layer of active sarcode. In either
+case the living protoplasm, placed in the position of a lining to the
+cuticle of the cell, is shielded from the direct action of the medium,
+and yet is not beyond the reach of its influences.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Limited, as thus far drawn, to a certain common trait of those minute
+organisms which are mostly below the reach of unaided vision, the
+foregoing conclusion appears trivial enough. But it ceases to appear
+trivial on passing into a wider field, and observing the implications,
+direct and indirect, as they concern plants and animals of sensible
+sizes.</p>
+
+<p>Popular expositions of science have so far familiarized many readers
+with a certain fundamental trait of living things around, that they have
+ceased to perceive how marvellous a trait it is, and, until interpreted
+by the Theory of Evolution, how utterly mysterious. In past times, the
+conception of an ordinary plant or animal which prevailed, not
+throughout the world at large only but among the most instructed, was
+that it is a single continuous entity. One of these livings things was
+unhesitatingly regarded as being in all respects a unit. Parts it might
+have, various in their sizes, forms, and compositions; but these were
+components of a whole which had been from the beginning in its original
+nature a whole. Even to naturalists fifty years ago, the assertion that
+a cabbage or a cow, though in one sense a whole, is in another sense a
+vast society of minute individuals, severally living in greater or less
+degrees, and some of them maintaining their independent lives
+unrestrained, would have seemed an absurdity. But this truth which, like
+so many of the truths established by science, is contrary to that common
+sense in which most people have so much confidence, has been gradually
+growing clear since the days when Leeuwenhoeck and his contemporaries
+began to examine through lenses the minute structures of common plants
+and animals. Each<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[443]</a></span> improvement in the microscope, while it has widened
+our knowledge of those minute forms of life described above, has
+revealed further evidence of the fact that all the larger forms of life
+consist of units severally allied in their fundamental traits to these
+minute forms of life. Though, as formulated by Schwann and Schleiden,
+the cell-doctrine has undergone qualifications of statement; yet the
+qualifications have not been such as to militate against the general
+proposition that organisms visible to the naked eye, are severally
+compounded of invisible organisms&mdash;using that word in its most
+comprehensive sense. And then, when the development of any animal is
+traced, it is found that having been primarily a nucleated cell, and
+having afterwards become by spontaneous fission a cluster of nucleated
+cells, it goes on through successive stages to form out of such cells,
+ever multiplying and modifying in various ways, the several tissues and
+organs composing the adult.</p>
+
+<p>On the hypothesis of evolution this universal trait has to be accepted
+not as a fact that is strange but unmeaning. It has to be accepted as
+evidence that all the visible forms of life have arisen by union of the
+invisible forms; which, instead of flying apart when they divided,
+remained together. Various intermediate stages are known. Among plants,
+those of the <i>Volvox</i> type show us the component protophytes so feebly
+combined that they severally carry on their lives with no appreciable
+subordination to the life of the group. And among animals, a parallel
+relation between the lives of the units and the life of the group is
+shown us in <i>Uroglena</i> and <i>Syncrypta</i>. From these first stages upwards,
+may be traced through successively higher types, an increasing
+subordination of the units to the aggregate; though still a
+subordination leaving to them conspicuous amounts of individual
+activity. Joining which facts with the phenomena presented by the
+cell-multiplication and aggregation of every unfolding germ, naturalists
+are now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[444]</a></span> accepting the conclusion that by this process of composition
+from <i>Protozoa</i>, were formed all classes of the <i>Metazoa</i><a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a>&mdash;(as
+animals formed by this compounding are now called); and that in a
+similar way from <i>Protophyta</i>, were formed all classes of what I suppose
+will be called <i>Metaphyta</i>, though the word does not yet seem to have
+become current.</p>
+
+<p>And now what is the general meaning of these truths, taken in connexion
+with the conclusion reached in the last section. It is that this
+universal trait of the <i>Metazoa</i> and <i>Metaphyta</i>, must be ascribed to
+the primitive action and re-action between the organism and its medium.
+The operation of those forces which produced the primary differentiation
+of outer from inner in early minute masses of protoplasm, pre-determined
+this universal cell-structure of all embryos, plant and animal, and the
+consequent cell-composition of adult forms arising from them. How
+unavoidable is this implication, will be seen on carrying further an
+illustration already used&mdash;that of the shingle-covered shore, the
+pebbles on which, while being in some cases selected, have been in all
+cases rounded and smoothed. Suppose a bed of such shingle to be, as we
+often see it, solidified, along with interfused material, into a
+conglomerate. What in such case must be considered as the chief trait of
+such conglomerate; or rather&mdash;what must we regard as the chief cause of
+its distinctive characters? Evidently the action of the sea. Without the
+breakers, no pebbles; without the pebbles, no conglomerate. Similarly
+then, in the absence of that action of the medium by which was effected
+the differentiation of outer from inner in those microscopic portions of
+protoplasm constituting the earliest and simplest animals and plants,
+there could not have existed this cardinal trait of composition which
+all the higher animals and plants show us.</p>
+
+<p>So that, active as has been the part played by natural selection, alike
+in modifying and moulding the original<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[445]</a></span> units&mdash;largely as survival of
+the fittest has been instrumental in furthering and controlling the
+combination of these units into visible organisms, and eventually into
+large ones; yet we must ascribe to the direct effect of the medium on
+the first forms of life, that character of which this
+everywhere-operative factor has taken advantage.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Let us turn now to another and more obvious attribute of higher
+organisms, for which also there is this same general cause. Let us
+observe how, on a higher platform, there recurs this differentiation of
+outer from inner&mdash;how this primary trait in the living units with which
+life commences, re-appears as a primary trait in those aggregates of
+such units which constitute visible organisms.</p>
+
+<p>In its simplest and most unmistakable form, we see this in the early
+changes of an unfolding ovum of primitive type. The original fertilized
+single cell, having by spontaneous fission multiplied into a cluster of
+such cells, there begins to show itself a contrast between periphery and
+centre; and presently there is formed a sphere consisting of a
+superficial layer unlike its contents. The first change, then, is the
+rise of a difference between that outer part which holds direct converse
+with the surrounding medium, and that inclosed part which does not. This
+primary differentiation in these compound embryos of higher animals,
+parallels the primary differentiation undergone by the simplest living
+things.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving, for the present, succeeding changes of the compound embryo, the
+significance of which we shall have to consider by-and-by, let us pass
+now to the adult forms of visible plants and animals. In them we find
+cardinal traits which, after what we have seen above, will further
+impress us with the importance of the effects wrought on the organism by
+its medium.</p>
+
+<p>From the thallus of a sea-weed up to the leaf of a highly developed
+ph&aelig;nogam, we find, at all stages, a contrast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[446]</a></span> between the inner and
+outer parts of these flattened masses of tissue. In the higher <i>Alg&aelig;</i>
+"the outermost layers consist of smaller and firmer cells, while the
+inner cells are often very large, and sometimes extremely long;"<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> and
+in the leaves of trees the epidermal layer, besides differing in the
+sizes and shapes of its component cells from the parenchyma forming the
+inner substance of the leaf, is itself differentiated by having a
+continuous cuticle, and by having the outer walls of its cells unlike
+the inner walls.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> Especially significant is the structure of such
+intermediate types as the Liverworts. Beyond the differentiation of the
+covering cells from the contained cells, and the contrast between upper
+surface and under surface, the frond of <i>Marchantia polymorpha</i> clearly
+shows us the direct effect of incident forces; and shows us, too, how it
+is involved with the effect of inherited proclivities. The frond grows
+from a flat disc-shaped gemma, the two sides of which are alike. Either
+side may fall uppermost; and then of the developing shoot, the side
+exposed to the light "is under all circumstances the upper side which
+forms stomata, the dark side becomes the under side which produces
+root-hairs and leafy processes."<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> So that while we have undeniable
+proof that the contrasted influences of the medium on the two sides,
+initiate the differentiation, we have also proof that the completion of
+it is determined by the transmitted structure of the type; since it is
+impossible to ascribe the development of stomata to the direct action of
+air and light. On turning from foliar expansions, to stems and roots,
+facts of like meaning meet us. Speaking generally of epidermal tissue
+and inner tissue, Sachs remarks that "the contrast of the two is the
+plainer the more the part of the plant concerned is exposed to air and
+light."<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> Elsewhere, in correspondence with this, it is said that in
+roots the cells of the epidermis, though distinguished by bearing hairs,
+"are otherwise similar <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[447]</a></span>to those of the fundamental tissue" which they
+clothe,<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> while the cuticular covering is relatively thin; whereas in
+stems the epidermis (often further differentiated) is composed of layers
+of cells which are smaller and thicker-walled: a stronger contrast of
+structure corresponding to a stronger contrast of conditions. By way of
+meeting the suggestion that these respective differences are wholly due
+to the natural selection of favourable variations, it will suffice if I
+draw attention to the unlikeness between imbedded roots and exposed
+roots. While in darkness, and surrounded by moist earth, the outermost
+protective coats, even of large roots, are comparatively thin; but when
+the accidents of growth entail permanent exposure to light and air,
+roots acquire coverings allied in character to the coverings of
+branches. That the action of the medium causes these and converse
+changes, cannot be doubted when we find, on the one hand, that "roots
+can become directly transformed into leaf-bearing shoots," and, on the
+other hand, that in some plants certain "apparent roots are only
+underground shoots," and that nevertheless "they are similar to true
+roots in function and in the formation of tissue, but have no root-cap,
+and, when they come to the light above ground, continue to grow in the
+manner of ordinary leaf-shoots."<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> If, then, in highly developed
+plants inheriting pronounced structures, this differentiating influence
+of the medium is so marked, it must have been all-important at the
+outset while types were undetermined.</p>
+
+<p>As with plants so with animals, we find good reason for inferring that
+while the specialities of the tegumentary parts must be ascribed to the
+natural selection of favourable variations, their most general traits
+are due to the direct action of surrounding agencies. Here we come upon
+the border of those changes which are ascribable to use and disuse. But
+from this class of changes we may fitly exclude those in which the parts
+concerned are wholly or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[448]</a></span>mainly passive. A corn and a blister will
+conveniently serve to illustrate the way in which certain outer actions
+initiate in the superficial tissues, effects of very marked kinds, which
+are related neither to the needs of the organism nor to its normal
+structure. They are neither adaptive changes nor changes towards
+completion of the type. After noting them we may pass to allied, but
+still more instructive, changes. Continuous pressure on any portion of
+the surface causes absorption, while intermittent pressure causes
+growth: the one impeding circulation and the passage of plasma from the
+capillaries into the tissues, and the other aiding both. There are yet
+further mechanically-produced effects. That the general character of the
+ribbed skin on the under surfaces of the feet and insides of the hands
+is directly due to friction and intermittent pressure, we have the
+proofs:&mdash;first, that the tracts most exposed to rough usage are the most
+ribbed; second, that the insides of hands subject to unusual amounts of
+rough usage, as those of sailors, are strongly ribbed all over; and
+third, that in hands which are very little used, the parts commonly
+ribbed become quite smooth. These several kinds of evidence, however,
+full of meaning as they are, I give simply to prepare the way for
+evidence of a much more conclusive kind.</p>
+
+<p>Where a wide ulcer has eaten away the deep-seated layer out of which the
+epidermis grows, or where this layer has been destroyed by an extensive
+burn, the process of healing is very significant. From the subjacent
+tissues, which in the normal order have no concern with outward growth,
+there is produced a new skin, or rather a pro-skin; for this substituted
+outward-growing layer contains no hair-follicles or other specialities
+of the original one. Nevertheless, it is like the original one in so far
+that it is a continually renewed protective covering. Doubtless it may
+be contended that this make-shift skin results from the inherited
+proclivity of the type&mdash;the tendency to complete afresh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[449]</a></span> the structure
+of the species when injured. We cannot, however, ignore the immediate
+influence of the medium, on recalling the facts above named, or on
+remembering the further fact that an inflamed surface of skin, when not
+sheltered from the air, will throw out a film of coagulable lymph. But
+that the direct action of the medium is a chief factor we are clearly
+shown by another case. Accident or disease occasionally causes permanent
+eversion, or protrusion, of mucous membrane. After a period of
+irritability, great at first but decreasing as the change advances, this
+membrane assumes the general character of ordinary skin. Nor is this
+all: its microscopic structure changes. Where it is a mucous membrane of
+the kind covered by cylinder-epithelium, the cylinders gradually
+shorten, becoming finally flat, and there results a squamous epithelium:
+there is a near approach in minute composition to epidermis. Here a
+tendency towards completion of the type cannot be alleged; for there is,
+contrariwise, divergence from the type. The effect of the medium is so
+great that, in a short time, it overcomes the inherited proclivity and
+produces a structure of opposite kind to the normal one.</p>
+
+<p>With but little break we come here upon a significant analogy, parallel
+to an analogy already described. As was pointed out, an inorganic body
+that is modifiable by its medium, acquires, after a time, an outer coat
+which has already undergone such change as surrounding agencies can
+effect; has a contained mass which is as yet unchanged, because
+unreached; and has a surface between the two where change is going on&mdash;a
+region of activity. And we saw that alike in the vegetal cell and the
+animal cell there exist analogous distributions: of course with the
+difference that the innermost part is not inert. Now we have to note
+that in those aggregates of cells constituting the <i>Metaphyta</i> and
+<i>Metazoa</i>, analogous distributions also exist. In plants they are of
+course not to be looked for in leaves and other deciduous portions, but
+only in portions of long duration&mdash;stem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[450]</a></span>s and branches. Naturally, too,
+we need not expect them in plants having modes of growth which early
+produce an outer practically dead part, that effectually shields the
+inner actively living part of the stem from the influence of the
+medium&mdash;long-lived acrogens such as tree-ferns and long-lived endogens
+such as palms. But in the highest plants, exogens, which have the
+actively living part of their stems within reach of environing agencies,
+we find this part,&mdash;the cambium layer,&mdash;is one from which there is a
+growth inwards forming wood, and a growth outwards forming bark: there
+is an increasingly thick covering (where it does not scale off) of
+tissue changed by the medium, and inside this a film of highest
+vitality. In so far as concerns the present argument, it is the same
+with the <i>Metazoa</i>, or at least all of them which have developed
+organizations. The outer skin grows up from a limiting plane, or layer,
+a little distance below the surface&mdash;a place of predominant vital
+activity. Here perpetually arise new cells, which, as they develop, are
+thrust outwards and form the epidermis: flattening and drying up as they
+approach the surface, whence, having for a time served to shield the
+parts below, they finally scale off and leave younger ones to take their
+places. This still undifferentiated tissue forming the base of the
+epidermis, and existing also as a source of renewal in internal organs,
+is the essentially living substance; and facts above given imply that it
+was the action of the medium on this essentially living substance,
+which, during early stages in the organization of the <i>Metazoa</i>,
+initiated that protective envelope which presently became an inherited
+structure&mdash;a structure which, though now mainly inherited, still
+continues to be modifiable by its initiator.</p>
+
+<p>Fully to perceive the way in which these evidences compel us to
+recognize the influence of the medium as a primordial factor, we need
+but conceive them as interpreted without it. Suppose, for instance, we
+say that the structure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[451]</a></span> of the epidermis is wholly determined by the
+natural selection of favourable variations; what must be the position
+taken in presence of the fact above named, that when mucous membrane is
+exposed to the air its cell-structure changes into the cell-structure of
+skin? The position taken must be this:&mdash;Though mucous membrane in a
+highly-evolved individual organism, thus shows the powerful effect of
+the medium on its surface; yet we must not suppose that the medium had
+the effect of producing such a cell-structure on the surfaces of
+primitive forms, undifferentiated though they were; or, if we suppose
+that such an effect was produced on them, we must not suppose that it
+was inheritable. Contrariwise, we must suppose that such effect of the
+medium either was not wrought at all, or that it was evanescent: though
+repeated through millions upon millions of generations it left no
+traces. And we must conclude that this skin-structure arose only in
+consequence of spontaneous variations not physically initiated (though
+like those physically initiated) which natural selection laid hold of
+and increased. Does any one think this a tenable position?</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>And now we approach the last and chief series of morphological phenomena
+which must be ascribed to the direct action of environing matters and
+forces. These are presented to us when we study the early stages in the
+development of the embryos of the <i>Metazoa</i> in general.</p>
+
+<p>We will set out with the fact already noted in passing, that after
+repeated spontaneous fissions have changed the original fertilized
+germ-cell into that cluster of cells which forms a gemmule or a
+primitive ovum, the first contrast which arises is between the
+peripheral parts and the central parts. Where, as with lower creatures
+which do not lay up large stores of nutriment with the germs of their
+offspring, the inner mass is inconsiderable, the outer layer of cells,
+which are presently made quite small by repeated subdivisions,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[452]</a></span> forms a
+membrane extending over the whole surface&mdash;the blastoderm. The next
+stage of development, which ends in this covering layer becoming double,
+is reached in two ways&mdash;by invagination and by delamination; but which
+is the original way and which the abridged way, is not quite certain. Of
+invagination, multitudinously exemplified in the lowest types, Mr.
+Balfour says:&mdash;"On purely <i>&agrave; priori</i> grounds there is in my opinion more
+to be said for invagination than for any other view";<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> and, for
+present purposes, it will suffice if we limit ourselves to this: making
+its nature clear to the general reader by a simple illustration.</p>
+
+<p>Take a small india-rubber ball&mdash;not of the inflated kind, nor of the
+solid kind, but of the kind about an inch or so in diameter with a small
+hole through which, under pressure, the air escapes. Suppose that
+instead of consisting of india-rubber its wall consists of small cells
+made polyhedral in form by mutual pressure, and united together. This
+will represent the blastoderm. Now with the finger, thrust in one side
+of the ball until it touches the other: so making a cup. This action
+will stand for the process of invagination. Imagine that by continuance
+of it, the hemispherical cup becomes very much deepened and the opening
+narrowed, until the cup becomes a sac, of which the introverted wall is
+everywhere in contact with the outer wall. This will represent the
+two-layered "gastrula"&mdash;the simplest ancestral form of the <i>Metazoa</i>: a
+form which is permanently represented in some of the lowest types; for
+it needs but tentacles round the mouth of the sac, to produce a common
+hydra. Here the fact which it chiefly concerns us to remark, is that of
+these two layers the outer, called in embryological language the
+epiblast, continues to carry on direct converse with the forces and
+matters in the environment; while the inner, called the hypoblast, comes
+in contact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[453]</a></span> with such only of these matters as are put into the
+food-cavity which it lines. We have further to note that in the embryos
+of <i>Metazoa</i> at all advanced in organization, there arises between these
+two layers a third&mdash;the mesoblast. The origin of this is seen in types
+where the developmental process is not obscured by the presence of a
+large food-yolk. While the above-described introversion is taking place,
+and before the inner surfaces of the resulting epiblast and hypoblast
+have come into contact, cells, or am&oelig;boid units equivalent to them,
+are budded off from one or both of these inner surfaces, or some part of
+one or other; and these form a layer which eventually lies between the
+other two&mdash;a layer which, as this mode of formation implies, never has
+any converse with the surrounding medium and its contents, or with the
+nutritive bodies taken in from it. The striking facts to which this
+description is a necessary introduction, may now be stated. From the
+outer layer, or epiblast, are developed the permanent epidermis and its
+out-growths, the nervous system, and the organs of sense. From the
+introverted layer, or hypoblast, are developed the alimentary canal and
+those parts of its appended organs, liver, pancreas, &amp;c., which are
+concerned in delivering their secretions into the alimentary canal, as
+well as the linings of those ramifying tubes in the lungs which convey
+air to the places where gaseous exchange is effected. And from the
+mesoblast originate the bones, the muscles, the heart and blood-vessels,
+and the lymphatics, together with such parts of various internal organs
+as are most remotely concerned with the outer world. Minor
+qualifications being admitted, there remain the broad general facts,
+that out of that part of the external layer which remains permanently
+external, are developed all the structures which carry on intercourse
+with the medium and its contents, active and passive; out of the
+introverted part of this external layer, are developed the structures
+which carry on intercourse with the quasi-external substances that are
+taken into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[454]</a></span> interior&mdash;solid food, water, and air; while out of the
+mesoblast are developed structures which have never had, from first to
+last, any intercourse with the environment. Let us contemplate these
+general facts.</p>
+
+<p>Who would have imagined that the nervous system is a modified portion of
+the primitive epidermis? In the absence of proofs furnished by the
+concurrent testimony of embryologists during the last thirty or forty
+years, who would have believed that the brain arises from an infolded
+tract of the outer skin, which, sinking down beneath the surface,
+becomes imbedded in other tissues and eventually surrounded by a bony
+case? Yet the human nervous system in common with the nervous systems of
+lower animals is thus originated. In the words of Mr. Balfour, early
+embryological changes imply that&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"the functions of the central nervous system, which were originally
+taken by the whole skin, became gradually concentrated in a special
+part of the skin which was step by step removed from the surface,
+and has finally become in the higher types a well-defined organ
+imbedded in the subdermal tissues.... The embryological evidence
+shows that the ganglion-cells of the central part of the nervous
+system are originally derived from the simple undifferentiated
+epithelial cells of the surface of the body."<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>Less startling perhaps, though still startling enough, is the fact that
+the eye is evolved out of a portion of the skin; and that while the
+crystalline lens and its surroundings thus originate, the "percipient
+portions of the organs of special sense, especially of optic organs, are
+often formed from the same part of the primitive epidermis" which forms
+the central nervous system.<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> Similarly is it with the organs for
+smelling and hearing. These, too, begin as sacs formed by infoldings of
+the epidermis; and while their parts are developing they are joined from
+within by nervous structures which were themselves epidermic in origin.
+How are we to interpret these strange transformations? Observing, as we
+pass, how absurd from the point of view of the special-creationist,
+would appear <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[455]</a></span>such a filiation of structures, and such a round-about
+mode of embryonic development, we have here to remark that the process
+is not one to have been anticipated as a result of natural selection.
+After numbers of spontaneous variations had occurred, as the hypothesis
+implies, in useless ways, the variation which primarily initiated a
+nervous centre might reasonably have been expected to occur in some
+internal part where it would be fitly located. Its initiation in a
+dangerous place and subsequent migration to a safe place, would be
+incomprehensible. Not so if we bear in mind the cardinal truth above set
+forth, that the structures for holding converse with the medium and its
+contents, arise in that completely superficial part which is directly
+affected by the medium and its contents; and if we draw the inference
+that the external actions themselves initiate the structures. These once
+commenced, and furthered by natural selection where favourable to life,
+would form the first term of a series ending in developed sense organs
+and a developed nervous system.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
+
+<p>Though it would enforce the argument, I must, for brevity's sake, pass
+over the analogous evolution of that introverted layer, or hypoblast,
+out of which the alimentary canal and attached organs arise. It will
+suffice to emphasize the fact that having been originally external, this
+layer continues in its developed form to have a quasi-externality, alike
+in its digesting part and in its respiratory part; since it continues to
+deal with matters alien to the organism. I must also refrain from
+dwelling at length on the fact already adverted to, that the
+intermediate derived layer, or mesoblast, which was at the outset
+completely internal, originates those structures which ever remain
+completely internal, and have no communication with the environment save
+through the structures developed from the other two: an antithesis which
+has great significance.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[456]</a></span>Here, instead of dwelling on these details, it will be better to draw
+attention to the most general aspect of the facts. Whatever may be the
+course of subsequent changes, the first change is the formation of a
+superficial layer or blastoderm; and by whatever series of
+transformations the adult structure is reached, it is from the
+blastoderm that all the organs forming the adult originate. Why this
+marvellous fact?</p>
+
+<p>Meaning is given to it if we go back to the first stage in which
+<i>Protozoa</i>, having by repeated fissions formed a cluster, then arranged
+themselves into a hollow sphere, as do the protophytes forming a
+<i>Volvox</i>. Originally alike all over its surface, the hollow sphere of
+ciliated units thus formed, would, if not quite spherical, assume a
+constant attitude when moving through the water; and hence one part of
+the spheroid would more frequently than the rest come in contact with
+nutritive matters to be taken in. A division of labour resulting from
+such a variation being advantageous, and tending therefore to increase
+in descendants, would end in a differentiation like that shown in the
+gemmules of various low types of <i>Metazoa</i>, which, ovate in shape, are
+ciliated over one part of the surface only. There would arise a form in
+which the cilium-bearing units effected locomotion and aeration; while
+on the others, assuming an am&oelig;ba-like character, devolved the
+function of absorbing food: a primordial specialization variously
+indicated by evidence.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> Just noting that an ancestral origin of this
+kind is implied by the fact that in low types of <i>Metazoa</i> a hollow
+sphere of cells is the form first assumed by the unfolding embryo, I
+draw attention to the point here of chief interest; namely that the
+primary differentiation of this hollow sphere is in such case determined
+by a difference in the converse of its parts with the medium and its
+contents; and that the subsequent invagination arises by a continuance
+of this differential converse.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[457]</a></span>Even neglecting this first stage and commencing with the next, in which
+a "gastrula" has been produced by the permanent introversion of one
+portion of the surface of the hollow sphere, it will suffice if we
+consider what must thereafter have happened. That which continued to be
+the outer surface was the part which from time to time touched quiescent
+masses and occasionally received the collisions consequent on its own
+motions or the motions of other things. It was the part to receive the
+sound-vibrations occasionally propagated through the water; the part to
+be affected more strongly than any other by those variations in the
+amounts of light caused by the passing of small bodies close to it; and
+the part which met those diffused molecules constituting odours. That is
+to say, from the beginning the surface was the part on which there fell
+the various influences pervading the environment, the part by which
+there was received those impressions from the environment serving for
+the guidance of actions, and the part which had to bear the mechanical
+re-actions consequent upon such actions. Necessarily, therefore, the
+surface was the part in which were initiated the various
+instrumentalities for carrying on intercourse with the environment. To
+suppose otherwise is to suppose that such instrumentalities arose
+internally where they could neither be operated on by surrounding
+agencies nor operate on them,&mdash;where the differentiating forces did not
+come into play, and the differentiated structures had nothing to do; and
+it is to suppose that meanwhile the parts directly exposed to the
+differentiating forces remained unchanged. Clearly, then, organization
+could not but begin on the surface; and having thus begun, its
+subsequent course could not but be determined by its superficial origin.
+And hence these remarkable facts showing us that individual evolution is
+accomplished by successive in-foldings and in-growings. Doubtless
+natural selection soon came into action, as, for example, in the removal
+of the rudimentary nervous centres from the surface; since an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[458]</a></span>
+individual in which they were a little more deeply seated would be less
+likely to be incapacitated by injury of them. And so in multitudinous
+other ways. But nevertheless, as we here see, natural selection could
+operate only under subjection. It could do no more than take advantage
+of those structural changes which the medium and its contents initiated.</p>
+
+<p>See, then, how large has been the part played by this primordial factor.
+Had it done no more than give to <i>Protozoa</i> and <i>Protophyta</i> that
+cell-form which characterizes them&mdash;had it done no more than entail the
+cellular composition which is so remarkable a trait of <i>Metazoa</i> and
+<i>Metaphyta</i>&mdash;had it done no more than cause the repetition in all
+visible animals and plants of that primary differentiation of outer from
+inner which it first wrought in animals and plants invisible to the
+naked eye; it would have done much towards giving to organisms of all
+kinds certain leading traits. But it has done more than this. By causing
+the first differentiations of those clusters of units out of which
+visible animals in general arose, it fixed the starting place for
+organization, and therefore determined the course of organization; and,
+doing this, gave indelible traits to embryonic transformations and to
+adult structures.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Though mainly carried on after the inductive method, the argument at the
+close of the foregoing section has passed into the deductive. Here let
+us follow for a space the deductive method pure and simple. Doubtless in
+biology <i>&agrave; priori</i> reasoning is dangerous; but there can be no danger in
+considering whether its results coincide with those reached by reasoning
+<i>&agrave; posteriori</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Biologists in general agree that in the present state of the world, no
+such thing happens as the rise of a living creature out of non-living
+matter. They do not deny, however, that at a remote period in the past,
+when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[459]</a></span> temperature of the Earth's surface was much higher than at
+present, and other physical conditions were unlike those we know,
+inorganic matter, through successive complications, gave origin to
+organic matter. So many substances once supposed to belong exclusively
+to living bodies, have now been formed artificially, that men of science
+scarcely question the conclusion that there are conditions under which,
+by yet another step of composition, quaternary compounds of lower types
+pass into those of highest types. That there once took place gradual
+divergence of the organic from the inorganic, is, indeed, a necessary
+implication of the hypothesis of Evolution, taken as a whole; and if we
+accept it as a whole, we must put to ourselves the question&mdash;What were
+the early stages of progress which followed, after the most complex form
+of matter had arisen out of forms of matter a degree less complex?</p>
+
+<p>At first, protoplasm could have had no proclivities to one or other
+arrangement of parts; unless, indeed, a purely mechanical proclivity
+towards a spherical form when suspended in a liquid. At the outset it
+must have been passive. In respect of its passivity, primitive organic
+matter must have been like inorganic matter. No such thing as
+spontaneous variation could have occurred in it; for variation implies
+some habitual course of change from which it is a divergence, and is
+therefore excluded where there is no habitual course of change. In the
+absence of that cyclical series of metamorphoses which even the simplest
+living thing now shows us, as a result of its inherited constitution,
+there could be no <i>point d'appui</i> for natural selection. How, then, did
+organic evolution begin?</p>
+
+<p>If a primitive mass of organic matter was like a mass of inorganic
+matter in respect of its passivity, and differed only in respect of its
+greater changeableness; then we must infer that its first changes
+conformed to the same general law as do the changes of an inorganic
+mass. The instability of the homogeneous is a universal principle.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[460]</a></span> In
+all cases the homogeneous tends to pass into the heterogeneous, and the
+less heterogeneous into the more heterogeneous. In the primordial units
+of protoplasm, then, the step with which evolution commenced must have
+been the passage from a state of complete likeness throughout the mass
+to a state in which there existed some unlikeness. Further, the cause of
+this step in one of these portions of organic matter, as in any portion
+of inorganic matter, must have been the different exposure of its parts
+to incident forces. What incident forces? Those of its medium or
+environment. Which were the parts thus differently exposed? Necessarily
+the outside and the inside. Inevitably, then, alike in the organic
+aggregate and the inorganic aggregate (supposing it to have coherence
+enough to maintain constant relative positions among its parts), the
+first fall from homogeneity to heterogeneity must always have been the
+differentiation of the external surface from the internal contents. No
+matter whether the modification was physical or chemical, one of
+composition or of decomposition, it comes within the same
+generalization. The direct action of the medium was the primordial
+factor of organic evolution.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>And now, finally, let us look at the factors in their <i>ensemble</i>, and
+consider the respective parts they play: observing, especially, the ways
+in which, at successive stages, they severally give place one to another
+in degree of importance.</p>
+
+<p>Acting alone, the primordial factor must have initiated the primary
+differentiation in all units of protoplasm alike. I say alike, but I
+must forthwith qualify the word. For since surrounding influences,
+physical and chemical, could not be absolutely the same in all places,
+especially when the first rudiments of living things had spread over a
+considerable area, there necessarily arose small contrasts between the
+degrees and kinds of superficial differentiation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[461]</a></span> effected. As soon as
+these became decided, natural selection came into play; for inevitably
+the unlikenesses produced among the units had effects on their lives:
+there was survival of some among the modified forms rather than others.
+Utterly in the dark though we are respecting the causes which set up
+that process of fission everywhere occurring among the minutest forms of
+life, we must infer that, when established, it furthered the spread of
+those which were most favourably differentiated by the medium. Though
+natural selection must have become increasingly active when once it had
+got a start; yet the differentiating action of the medium never ceased
+to be a co-operator in the development of these first animals and
+plants. Again taking the lead as there arose the composite forms of
+animals and plants, and again losing the lead with that advancing
+differentiation of these higher types which gave more scope to natural
+selection, it nevertheless continued, and must ever continue, to be a
+cause, both direct and indirect, of modifications in structure.</p>
+
+<p>Along with that remarkable process which, beginning in minute forms with
+what is called conjugation, developed into sexual generation, there came
+into play causes of frequent and marked fortuitous variations. The
+mixtures of constitutional proclivities made more or less unlike by
+unlikenesses of physical conditions, inevitably led to occasional
+concurrences of forces producing deviations of structure. These were of
+course mostly suppressed, but sometimes increased, by survival of the
+fittest. When, along with the growing multiplication in forms of life,
+conflict and competition became continually more active, fortuitous
+variations of structure of no account in the converse with the medium,
+became of much account in the struggle with enemies and competitors; and
+natural selection of such variations became the predominant factor.
+Especially throughout the plant-world its action appears to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[462]</a></span> been
+immensely the most important; and throughout that large part of the
+animal world characterized by relative inactivity, the survival of
+individuals that had varied in favourable ways, must all along have been
+the chief cause of the divergence of species and the occasional
+production of higher ones.</p>
+
+<p>But gradually with that increase of activity which we see on ascending
+to successively higher grades of animals, and especially with that
+increased complexity of life which we also see, there came more and more
+into play as a factor, the inheritance of those modifications of
+structure caused by modifications of function. Eventually, among
+creatures of high organization, this factor became an important one; and
+I think there is reason to conclude that, in the case of the highest of
+creatures, civilized men, among whom the kinds of variation which affect
+survival are too multitudinous to permit easy selection of any one, and
+among whom survival of the fittest is greatly interfered with, it has
+become the chief factor: such aid as survival of the fittest gives,
+being usually limited to the preservation of those in whom the totality
+of the faculties has been most favourably moulded by functional changes.</p>
+
+<p>Of course this sketch of the relations among the factors must be taken
+as in large measure a speculation. We are now too far removed from the
+beginnings of life to obtain data for anything more than tentative
+conclusions respecting its earliest stages; especially in the absence of
+any clue to the mode in which multiplication, first agamogenetic and
+then gamogenetic, was initiated. But it has seemed to me not amiss to
+present this general conception, by way of showing how the deductive
+interpretation harmonizes with the several inferences reached by
+induction.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In his article on Evolution in the <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica</i>, Professor
+Huxley writes as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"How far 'natural selection' suffices for the production of
+species<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[463]</a></span> remains to be seen. Few can doubt that, if not the whole
+cause, it is a very important factor in that operation.... On the
+evidence of pal&aelig;ontology, the evolution of many existing forms of
+animal life from their predecessors is no longer an hypothesis, but
+an historical fact; it is only the nature of the physiological
+factors to which that evolution is due which is still open to
+discussion."</p></div>
+
+<p>With these passages I may fitly join a remark made in the admirable
+address Prof. Huxley delivered before unveiling the statue of Mr. Darwin
+in the Museum at South Kensington. Deprecating the supposition that an
+authoritative sanction was given by the ceremony to the current ideas
+concerning organic evolution, he said that "science commits suicide when
+it adopts a creed."</p>
+
+<p>Along with larger motives, one motive which has joined in prompting the
+foregoing articles, has been the desire to point out that already among
+biologists, the beliefs concerning the origin of species have assumed
+too much the character of a creed; and that while becoming settled they
+have been narrowed. So far from further broadening that broader view
+which Mr. Darwin reached as he grew older, his followers appear to have
+retrograded towards a more restricted view than he ever expressed. Thus
+there seems occasion for recognizing the warning uttered by Prof.
+Huxley, as not uncalled for.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever may be thought of the arguments and conclusions set forth in
+this article and the preceding one, they will perhaps serve to show that
+it is as yet far too soon to close the inquiry concerning the causes of
+organic evolution.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Note.</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>The following passages formed part of a preface to the small volume in
+which the foregoing essay re-appeared. I append them here as they cannot
+now be conveniently prefixed.</i>]</p></div>
+
+<p>Though the direct bearings of the arguments contained in this Essay are
+biological, the argument contained in its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[464]</a></span> first half has indirect
+bearings upon Psychology, Ethics, and Sociology. My belief in the
+profound importance of these indirect bearings, was originally a chief
+prompter to set forth the argument; and it now prompts me to re-issue it
+in permanent form.</p>
+
+<p>Though mental phenomena of many kinds, and especially of the simpler
+kinds, are explicable only as resulting from the natural selection of
+favourable variations; yet there are, I believe, still more numerous
+mental phenomena, including all those of any considerable complexity,
+which cannot be explained otherwise than as results of the inheritance
+of functionally-produced modifications. What theory of psychological
+evolution is espoused, thus depends on acceptance or rejection of the
+doctrine that not only in the individual, but in the successions of
+individuals, use and disuse of parts produce respectively increase and
+decrease of them.</p>
+
+<p>Of course there are involved the conceptions we form of the genesis and
+nature of our higher emotions; and, by implication, the conceptions we
+form of our moral intuitions. If functionally-produced modifications are
+inheritable, then the mental associations habitually produced in
+individuals by experiences of the relations between actions and their
+consequences, pleasurable or painful, may, in the successions of
+individuals, generate innate tendencies to like or dislike such actions.
+But if not, the genesis of such tendencies is, as we shall see, not
+satisfactorily explicable.</p>
+
+<p>That our sociological beliefs must also be profoundly affected by the
+conclusions we draw on this point, is obvious. If a nation is modified
+<i>en masse</i> by transmission of the effects produced on the natures of its
+members by those modes of daily activity which its institutions and
+circumstances involve; then we must infer that such institutions and
+circumstances mould its members far more rapidly and comprehensively
+than they can do if the solo cause of adaptation to them is the more
+frequent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[465]</a></span> survival of individuals who happen to have varied in
+favourable ways.</p>
+
+<p>I will add only that, considering the width and depth of the effects
+which acceptance of one or other of these hypotheses must have on our
+views of Life, Mind, Morals, and Politics, the question&mdash;Which of them
+is true? demands, beyond all other questions whatever, the attention of
+scientific men.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>After the above articles were published, I received from Dr. Downes a
+copy of a paper "On the Influence of Light on Protoplasm," written by
+himself and Mr. T.P. Blunt, <span class="smcap">M.A.</span>, which was communicated to the Royal
+Society in 1878. It was a continuation of a preceding paper which,
+referring chiefly to <i>Bacteria</i>, contended that&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Light is inimical to, and under favourable conditions may wholly
+prevent, the development of these organisms."</p></div>
+
+<p>This supplementary paper goes on to show that the injurious effect of
+light upon protoplasm results only in presence of oxygen. Taking first a
+comparatively simple type of molecule which enters into the composition
+of organic matter, the authors say, after detailing experiments:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It was evident, therefore, that <i>oxygen</i> was the agent of
+destruction under the influence of sunlight."</p></div>
+
+<p>And accounts of experiments upon minute organisms are followed by the
+sentence&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It seemed, therefore, that in absence of an atmosphere, light
+failed entirely to produce any effect on such organisms as were
+able to appear."</p></div>
+
+<p>They sum up the results of their experiments in the paragraph&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"We conclude, therefore, both from analogy and from direct
+experiment, that the observed action on these organisms is not
+dependent on light <i>per se</i>, but that the presence of free oxygen
+is necessary; light and oxygen together accomplishing what neither
+can do alone: and the inference seems irresistible that the effect
+produced is a gradual oxidation of the constituent protoplasm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[466]</a></span> of
+these organisms, and that, in this respect, protoplasm, although
+living, is not exempt from laws which appear to govern the
+relations of light and oxygen to forms of matter less highly
+endowed. A force which is indirectly absolutely essential to life
+as we know it, and matter in the absence of which life has not yet
+been proved to exist, here unite for its destruction."</p></div>
+
+<p>What is the obvious implication? If oxygen in presence of light destroys
+one of these minutest portions of protoplasm, what will be its effect on
+a larger portion of protoplasm? It will work an effect on the surface
+instead of on the whole mass. Not like the minutest mass made inert all
+through, the larger mass will be made inert only on its outside; and,
+indeed, the like will happen with the minutest mass if the light or the
+oxygen is very small in quantity. Hence there will result an envelope of
+changed matter, inclosing and protecting the unchanged protoplasm&mdash;there
+will result a rudimentary cell-wall.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> It is probable that this shortening has resulted not
+directly but indirectly, from the selection of individuals which were
+noted for tenacity of hold; for the bull-dog's peculiarity in this
+respect seems due to relative shortness of the upper jaw, giving the
+underhung structure which, involving retreat of the nostrils, enables
+the dog to continue breathing while holding.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Though Mr. Darwin approved of this expression and
+occasionally employed it, he did not adopt it for general use;
+contending, very truly, that the expression Natural Selection is in some
+cases more convenient. See <i>Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>
+(first edition) Vol. i, p. 6; and <i>Origin of Species</i> (sixth edition) p.
+49.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> It is true that while not deliberately admitted by Mr.
+Darwin, these effects are not denied by him. In his <i>Animals and Plants
+under Domestication</i> (vol. ii, 281), he refers to certain chapters in
+the <i>Principles of Biology</i>, in which I have discussed this general
+inter-action of the medium and the organism, and ascribed certain most
+general traits to it. But though, by his expressions, he implies a
+sympathetic attention to the argument, he does not in such way adopt the
+conclusion as to assign to this factor any share in the genesis of
+organic structures&mdash;much less that large share which I believe it has
+had. I did not myself at that time, nor indeed until quite recently, see
+how extensive and profound have been the influences on organization
+which, as we shall presently see, are traceable to the early results of
+this fundamental relation between organism and medium. I may add that it
+is in an essay on "Transcendental Physiology," first published in 1857,
+that the line of thought here followed out in its wider bearings, was
+first entered upon.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> <i>Text-Book of Botany, &amp;c.</i> by Julius Sachs. Translated by
+A. W. Bennett and W. T. T. Dyer.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> <i>A Manual of the Infusoria</i>, by W. Saville Kent. Vol. i,
+p. 232.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> Vol. i, p. 241.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Kent, Vol. i, p. 56.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> Vol. i, p. 57.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <i>The Elements of Comparative Anatomy</i>, by T. H. Huxley,
+pp. 7-9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <i>A Treatise on Comparative Embryology</i>, by F. M. Balfour,
+Vol. ii, chap. xiii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> Sachs, p. 210.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> pp. 83-4.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 185.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> 80.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> Sachs, p. 83.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 147.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> <i>A Treatise on Comparative Embryology.</i> By Francis M.
+Balfour, <span class="smcap">LL.D.</span>, <span class="smcap">F.R.S.</span> Vol. ii, p. 343 (second edition).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> Balfour, l.c. Vol. ii, 400-1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Balfour, l.c. Vol. ii, p. 401.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> For a general delineation of the changes by which the
+development is effected, see Balfour, l.c. Vol. ii, pp. 401-4.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> <i>See</i> Balfour, Vol. i, 149 and Vol. ii, 343-4.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[467]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="A_COUNTER-CRITICISM" id="A_COUNTER-CRITICISM"></a>A COUNTER-CRITICISM.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>First published in</i> The Nineteenth Century, <i>for February</i>, 1888.]</p></div>
+
+
+<p>While I do not concur in sundry of the statements and conclusions
+contained in the article entitled "A Great Confession," contributed by
+the Duke of Argyll to the last number of this Review, yet I am obliged
+to him for having raised afresh the question discussed in it. Though the
+injunction "Rest and be thankful," is one for which in many spheres much
+may be said&mdash;especially in the political, where undue restlessness is
+proving very mischievous; yet rest and be thankful is an injunction out
+of place in science. Unhappily, while politicians have not duly regarded
+it, it appears to have been taken to heart too much by naturalists; in
+so far, at least, as concerns the question of the origin of species.</p>
+
+<p>The new biological orthodoxy behaves just as the old biological
+orthodoxy did. In the days before Darwin, those who occupied themselves
+with the phenomena of life, passed by with unobservant eyes the
+multitudinous facts which point to an evolutionary origin for plants and
+animals; and they turned deaf ears to those who insisted on the
+significance of these facts. Now that they have come to believe in this
+evolutionary origin, and have at the same time accepted the hypothesis
+that natural selection has been the sole cause of the evolution, they
+are similarly unobservant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[468]</a></span> of the multitudinous facts which cannot
+rationally be ascribed to that cause; and turn deaf ears to those who
+would draw their attention to them. The attitude is the same; it is only
+the creed which has changed.</p>
+
+<p>But, as above implied, though the protest of the Duke of Argyll against
+this attitude is quite justifiable, it seems to me that many of his
+statements cannot be sustained. Some of these concern me personally, and
+others are of impersonal concern. I propose to deal with them in the
+order in which they occur.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>On page 144 the Duke of Argyll quotes me as omitting "for the present
+any consideration of a factor which may be distinguished as primordial;"
+and he represents me as implying by this "that Darwin's ultimate
+conception of some primordial 'breathing of the breath of life' is a
+conception which can be omitted only 'for the present.'" Even had there
+been no other obvious interpretation, it would have been a somewhat rash
+assumption that this was my meaning when referring to an omitted factor;
+and it is surprising that this assumption should have been made after
+reading the second of the two articles criticised, in which this factor
+omitted from the first is dealt with: this omitted third factor being
+the direct physico-chemical action of the medium on the organism. Such a
+thought as that which the Duke of Argyll ascribes to me, is so
+incongruous with the beliefs I have in many places expressed that the
+ascription of it never occurred to me as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Lower down on the same page are some other sentences having personal
+implications, which I must dispose of before going into the general
+question. The Duke says "it is more than doubtful whether any value
+attaches to the new factor with which he [I] desires to supplement it
+[natural selection]"; and he thinks it "unaccountable" that I "should
+make so great a fuss about so small a matter as the effect of use and
+disuse of particular organs as a separate and a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[469]</a></span> newly-recognised
+factor in the development of varieties." I do not suppose that the Duke
+of Argyll intended to cast upon me the disagreeable imputation, that I
+claim as new that which all who are even slightly acquainted with the
+facts know to be anything rather than new. But his words certainly do
+this. How he should have thus written in spite of the extensive
+knowledge of the matter which he evidently has, and how he should have
+thus written in presence of the evidence contained in the articles he
+criticizes, I cannot understand. Naturalists, and multitudes besides
+naturalists, know that the hypothesis which I am represented as putting
+forward as new, is much older than the hypothesis of natural
+selection&mdash;goes back at least as far as Dr. Erasmus Darwin. My purpose
+was to bring into the foreground again a factor which has, I think, been
+of late years improperly ignored; to show that Mr. Darwin recognized
+this factor in an increasing degree as he grew older (by showing which I
+should have thought I sufficiently excluded the supposition that I
+brought it forward as new); to give further evidence that this factor is
+in operation; to show there are numerous phenomena which cannot be
+interpreted without it; and to argue that if proved operative in any
+case, it may be inferred that it is operative on all structures having
+active functions.</p>
+
+<p>Strangely enough, this passage, in which I am represented as implying
+novelty in a doctrine which I have merely sought to emphasize and
+extend, is immediately succeeded by a passage in which the Duke of
+Argyll himself represents the doctrine as being familiar and well
+established:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"That organs thus enfeebled [i.e. by persistent disuse] are
+transmitted by inheritance to offspring in a like condition of
+functional and structural decline, is a correlated physiological
+doctrine not generally disputed. The converse case&mdash;of increased
+strength and development arising out of the habitual and healthy
+use of special organs, and of the transmission of these to
+offspring&mdash;is a case illustrated by many examples in the breeding
+of domestic animals. I do not know to what else we can attribute
+the long slender legs and bodies of greyhounds so manifestly
+adapted to speed of foot, or the delicate powers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[470]</a></span> of smell in
+pointers and setters, or a dozen cases of modified structure
+effected by artificial selection."</p></div>
+
+<p>In none of the assertions contained in this passage can I agree. Had the
+inheritance of "functional and structural decline" been "not generally
+disputed," half my argument would have been needless; and had the
+inheritance of "increased strength and development" caused by use been
+recognized, as "illustrated by many examples," the other half of my
+argument would have been needless. But both are disputed; and, if not
+positively denied, are held to be unproved. Greyhounds and pointers do
+not yield valid evidence, because their peculiarities are more due to
+artificial selection than to any other cause. It may, indeed, be doubted
+whether greyhounds use their legs more than other dogs. Dogs of all
+kinds are daily in the habit of running about and chasing one another at
+the top of their speed&mdash;other dogs more frequently than greyhounds,
+which are not much given to play. The occasions on which greyhounds
+exercise their legs in chasing hares, occupy but inconsiderable spaces
+in their lives, and can play but small parts in developing their legs.
+And then, how about their long heads and sharp noses? Are these
+developed by running? The structure of the greyhound is explicable as a
+result mainly of selection of variations occasionally arising from
+unknown causes; but it is inexplicable otherwise. Still more obviously
+invalid is the evidence said to be furnished by pointers and setters.
+How can these be said to exercise their organs of smell more than other
+dogs? Do not all dogs occupy themselves in sniffing about here and there
+all day long: tracing animals of their own kind and of other kinds?
+Instead of admitting that the olfactory sense is more exercised in
+pointers and setters than in other dogs, it might, contrariwise, be
+contended that it is exercised less; seeing that during the greater
+parts of their lives they are shut up in kennels where the varieties of
+odours, on which to practise their noses, is but small. Clearly if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[471]</a></span>
+breeders of sporting dogs have from early days habitually bred from
+those puppies of each litter which had the keenest noses (and it is
+undeniable that the puppies of each litter are made different from one
+another, as are the children in each human family, by unknown
+combinations of causes), then the existence of such remarkable powers in
+pointers and setters may be accounted for; while it is otherwise
+unaccountable. These instances, and many others such, I should have
+gladly used in support of my argument, had they been available; but
+unfortunately they are not.</p>
+
+<p>On the next page of the Duke of Argyll's article (page 145), occurs a
+passage which I must quote at length before I can deal effectually with
+its various statements. It runs as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"But if natural selection is a mere phrase, vague enough and wide
+enough to cover any number of the physical causes concerned in
+ordinary generation, then the whole of Mr. Spencer's laborious
+argument in favour of his 'other factor' becomes an argument worse
+than superfluous. It is wholly fallacious in assuming that this
+'factor' and 'natural selection' are at all exclusive of, or even
+separate from, each other. The factor thus assumed to be new is
+simply one of the subordinate cases of heredity. But heredity is
+the central idea of natural selection. Therefore natural selection
+includes and covers all the causes which can possibly operate
+through inheritance. There is thus no difficulty whatever in
+referring it to the same one factor whose solitary dominion Mr.
+Spencer has plucked up courage to dispute. He will never succeed in
+shaking its dictatorship by such a small rebellion. His little
+contention is like some bit of Bumbledom setting up for Home
+Rule&mdash;some parochial vestry claiming independence of a universal
+empire. It pretends to set up for itself in some fragment of an
+idea. But here is not even a fragment to boast of or to stand up
+for. His new factor in organic evolution has neither independence
+nor novelty. Mr. Spencer is able to quote himself as having
+mentioned it in his <i>Principles of Biology</i> published some twenty
+years ago; and by a careful ransacking of Darwin he shows that the
+idea was familiar to and admitted by him at least in his last
+edition of the <i>Origin of Species</i>.... Darwin was a man so much
+wiser than all his followers," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<p>Had there not been the Duke of Argyll's signature to the article, I
+could scarcely have believed that this passage was written by him.
+Remembering that on reading his article in the preceding number of this
+Review, I was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[472]</a></span> struck by the extent of knowledge, clearness of
+discrimination, and power of exposition, displayed in it, I can scarcely
+understand how there has come from the same pen a passage in which none
+of these traits are exhibited. Even one wholly unacquainted with the
+subject may see in the last two sentences of the above extract, how
+strangely its propositions are strung together. While in the first of
+them I am represented as bringing forward a "new factor," I am in the
+second represented as saying that I mentioned it twenty years ago! In
+the same breath I am described as claiming it as new and asserting it as
+old! So, again, the uninstructed reader, on comparing the first words of
+the extract with the last, will be surprised on seeing in a scientific
+article statements so manifestly wanting in precision. If "natural
+selection is a mere phrase," how can Mr. Darwin, who thought it
+explained the origin of species, be regarded as wise? Surely it must be
+more than a mere phrase if it is the key to so many otherwise
+inexplicable facts. These examples of incongruous thoughts I give to
+prepare the way; and will now go on to examine the chief propositions
+which the quoted passage contains.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke of Argyll says that "heredity is the central idea of natural
+selection." Now it would, I think, be concluded that those who possess
+the central idea of a thing have some consciousness of the thing. Yet
+men have possessed the idea of heredity for any number of generations
+and have been quite unconscious of natural selection. Clearly the
+statement is misleading. It might just as truly be said that the
+occurrence of structural variations in organisms is the central idea of
+natural selection. And it might just as truly be said that the action of
+external agencies in killing some individuals and fostering others is
+the central idea of natural selection. No such assertions are correct.
+The process has three factors&mdash;heredity, variation, and external
+action&mdash;any one of which being absent, the process ceases. The
+conception contains three<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[473]</a></span> corresponding ideas, and if any one be struck
+out, the conception cannot be framed. No one of them is the central
+idea, but they are co-essential ideas.</p>
+
+<p>From the erroneous belief that "heredity is the central idea of natural
+selection" the Duke of Argyll draws the conclusion, consequently
+erroneous, that "natural selection includes and covers all the causes
+which can possibly operate through inheritance." Had he considered the
+cases which, in the <i>Principles of Biology</i>, I have cited to illustrate
+the inheritance of functionally-produced modifications, he would have
+seen that his inference is far from correct. I have instanced the
+decrease of the jaw among civilized men as a change of structure which
+cannot have been produced by the inheritance of spontaneous, or
+fortuitous, variations. That changes of structure arising from such
+variations may be maintained and increased in successive generations, it
+is needful that the individuals in whom they occur shall derive from
+them advantages in the struggle for existence&mdash;advantages, too,
+sufficiently great to aid their survival and multiplication in
+considerable degrees. But a decrease of jaw reducing its weight by even
+an ounce (which would be a large variation), cannot, by either smaller
+weight carried or smaller nutrition required, have appreciably
+advantaged any person in the battle of life. Even supposing such
+diminution of jaw to be beneficial (and in the resulting decay of teeth
+it entails great evils), the benefit can hardly have been such as to
+increase the relative multiplication of families in which it occurred
+generation after generation. Unless it has done this, however, decreased
+size of the jaw cannot have been produced by the natural selection of
+favourable variations. How can it then have been produced? Only by
+decreased function&mdash;by the habitual use of soft food, joined, probably,
+with disuse of the teeth as tools. And now mark that this cause operates
+on all members of a society which falls into civilized habits.
+Generation after generation this decreased<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[474]</a></span> function changes its
+component families simultaneously. Natural selection does not cover the
+case at all&mdash;has nothing to do with it. And the like happens in
+multitudinous other cases. Every species spreading into a new habitat,
+coming in contact with new food, exposed to a different temperature, to
+a drier or moister air, to a more irregular surface, to a new soil, &amp;c.,
+&amp;c., has its members one and all subject to various changed actions,
+which influence its muscular, vascular, respiratory, digestive, and
+other systems of organs. If there is inheritance of
+functionally-produced modifications, then all its members will transmit
+the structural alterations wrought in them, and the species will change
+as a whole without the supplanting of some stocks by others. Doubtless
+in respect of certain changes natural selection will co-operate. If the
+species, being a predacious one, is brought, by migration, into the
+presence of prey of greater speed than before; then, while all its
+members will have their limbs strengthened by extra action, those in
+whom this muscular adaptation is greatest will have their multiplication
+furthered; and inheritance of the functionally-increased structures will
+be aided, in successive generations, by survival of the fittest. But it
+cannot be so with the multitudinous minor changes entailed by the
+modified life. The majority of these must be of such relative
+unimportance that one of them cannot give to the individual in which it
+becomes most marked, advantages which predominate over kindred
+advantages gained by other individuals from other changes more
+favourably wrought in them. In respect to these, the inherited effects
+of use and disuse must accumulate independently of natural selection.</p>
+
+<p>To make clear the relations of these two factors to one another and to
+heredity, let us take a case in which the operations of all three may be
+severally identified and distinguished.</p>
+
+<p>Here is one of those persons, occasionally met with, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[475]</a></span> has an
+additional finger on each hand, and who, we will suppose, is a
+blacksmith. He is neither aided nor much hindered by these additional
+fingers; but, by constant use, he has greatly developed the muscles of
+his right arm. To avoid a perturbing factor, we will assume that his
+wife, too, exercises her arms in an unusual degree: keeps a mangle, and
+has all the custom of the neighbourhood. Such being the circumstances,
+let us ask what are the established facts, and what are the beliefs and
+disbeliefs of biologists.</p>
+
+<p>The first fact is that this six-fingered blacksmith will be likely to
+transmit his peculiarity to some of his children; and some of these,
+again, to theirs. It is proved that, even in the absence of a like
+peculiarity in the other parent, this strange variation of structure
+(which we must ascribe to some fortuitous combination of causes) is
+often inherited for more than one generation. Now the causes which
+produce this persistent six-fingeredness are unquestionably causes which
+"operate through inheritance." The Duke of Argyll says that "natural
+selection includes and covers all the causes which can possibly operate
+through inheritance." How does it cover the causes which operate here?
+Natural selection never comes into play at all. There is no fostering of
+this peculiarity, since it does not help in the struggle for existence;
+and there is no reason to suppose it is such a hindrance in the struggle
+that those who have it disappear in consequence. It simply gets
+cancelled in the course of generations by the adverse influences of
+other stocks.</p>
+
+<p>While biologists admit, or rather assert, that the peculiarity in the
+blacksmith's arm which was born with him is transmissible, they deny, or
+rather do not admit, that the other peculiarities of his arm, induced by
+daily labour&mdash;its large muscles and strengthened bones&mdash;are
+transmissible. They say that there is no proof. The Duke of Argyll
+thinks that the inheritance of organs enfeebled by disuse is "not
+generally disputed;" and he thinks there is clear proof that the
+converse change&mdash;increase of size conse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[476]</a></span>quent on use&mdash;is also inherited.
+But biologists dispute both of these alleged kinds of inheritance. If
+proof is wanted, it will be found in the proceedings at the last meeting
+of the British Association, in a paper entitled "Are Acquired Characters
+Hereditary?" by Professor Ray Lankester, and in the discussion raised by
+that paper. Had this form of inheritance been, as the Duke of Argyll
+says, "not generally disputed," I should not have written the first of
+the two articles he criticizes.</p>
+
+<p>But supposing it proved, as it may hereafter be, that such a
+functionally-produced change of structure as the blacksmith's arm shows
+us, is transmissible, the persistent inheritance is again of a kind with
+which natural selection has nothing to do. If the greatly strengthened
+arm enabled the blacksmith and his descendants, having like strengthened
+arms, to carry on the battle of life in a much more successful way than
+it was carried on by other men, survival of the fittest would ensure the
+maintenance and increase of this trait in successive generations. But
+the skill of the carpenter enables him to earn quite as much as his
+stronger neighbour. By the various arts he has been taught, the plumber
+gets as large a weekly wage. The small shopkeeper by his foresight in
+buying and prudence in selling, the village-schoolmaster by his
+knowledge, the farm-bailiff by his diligence and care, succeed in the
+struggle for existence equally well. The advantage of a strong arm does
+not predominate over the advantages which other men gain by their innate
+or acquired powers of other kinds; and therefore natural selection
+cannot operate so as to increase the trait. Before it can be increased,
+it is neutralized by the unions of those who have it with those who have
+other traits. To whatever extent, therefore, inheritance of this
+functionally-produced modification operates, it operates independently
+of natural selection.</p>
+
+<p>One other point has to be noted&mdash;the relative importance of this factor.
+If additional developments of muscles and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[477]</a></span> bones may be transmitted&mdash;if,
+as Mr. Darwin held, there are various other structural modifications
+caused by use and disuse which imply inheritance of this kind&mdash;if
+acquired characters are hereditary, as the Duke of Argyll believes; then
+the area over which this factor of organic evolution operates is
+enormous. Not every muscle only, but every nerve and nerve-centre, every
+blood-vessel, every viscus, and nearly every bone, may be increased or
+decreased by its influence. Excepting parts which have passive
+functions, such as dermal appendages and the bones which form the skull,
+the implication is that nearly every organ in the body may be modified
+in successive generations by the augmented or diminished activity
+required of it; and, save in the few cases where the change caused is
+one which conduces to survival in a pre-eminent degree, it will be thus
+modified independently of natural selection. Though this factor can
+operate but little in the vegetal world, and can play but a subordinate
+part in the lowest animal world; yet, seeing that all the active organs
+of all animals are subject to its influence, it has an immense sphere.
+The Duke of Argyll compares the claim made for this factor to "some bit
+of Bumbledom setting up for Home Rule&mdash;some parochial vestry claiming
+independence of a universal empire." But, far from this, the claim made
+for it is to an empire, less indeed than that of natural selection, and
+over a small part of which natural selection exercises concurrent power;
+but of which the independent part has an area that is immense.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me, then, that the Duke of Argyll is mistaken in four of the
+propositions contained in the passages I have quoted. The inheritance of
+acquired characters <i>is</i> disputed by biologists, though he thinks it is
+not. It is not true that "heredity is the central idea of natural
+selection." The statement that natural selection includes and covers all
+the causes which can possibly operate through inheritance, is quite
+erroneous. And if the inheritance of acquired<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[478]</a></span> characters is a factor at
+all, the dominion it rules over is not insignificant but vast.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Here I must break off, after dealing with a page and a half of the Duke
+of Argyll's article. A state of health which has prevented me from
+publishing anything since "The Factors of Organic Evolution," now nearly
+two years ago, prevents me from carrying the matter further. Could I
+have pursued the argument it would, I believe, have been practicable to
+show that various other positions taken up by the Duke of Argyll do not
+admit of effectual defence. But whether or not this is probable, the
+reader must be left to judge for himself. On one further point only will
+I say a word; and this chiefly because, if I pass it by, a mistaken
+impression of a serious kind may be diffused. The Duke of Argyll
+represents me as "giving up" the "famous phrase" "survival of the
+fittest," and wishing "to abandon it." He does this because I have
+pointed out that its words have connotations against which we must be on
+our guard, if we would avoid certain distortions of thought. With equal
+propriety he might say that an astronomer abandons the statement that
+the planets move in elliptic orbits, because he warns his readers that
+in the heavens there exist no such things as orbits, but that the
+planets sweep on through a pathless void, in directions perpetually
+changed by gravitation.</p>
+
+<p>I regret that I should have had thus to dissent so entirely from various
+of the statements made, and conclusions drawn, by the Duke of Argyll,
+because, as I have already implied, I think he has done good service by
+raising afresh the question he has dealt with. Though the advantages
+which he hopes may result from the discussion are widely unlike the
+advantages which I hope may result from it, yet we agree in the belief
+that advantages may be looked for.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">END OF VOL. I.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="transnote">
+<h3>Transcriber's note<a name="tnotes" id="tnotes"></a></h3>
+
+<p>Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Printer
+errors have been changed and are listed below. All other
+inconsistencies are as in the original.</p>
+
+<p>
+The following changes have been made to the text:</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_1'>Page 21</a>: Was 'heterogeenity' (between man and man which are not regulated by civil and religious law. Moreover, it is to be observed that this increasing <b>heterogeneity</b> in the governmental appliances of each nation, has been accompanied by an)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_2'>Page 47</a>: Was multipled (Medicines, special foods, better air, might in like manner be instanced as producing <b>multiplied</b> results. Now it needs only to consider that the many changes thus wrought by one force upon an adult organism, will be)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_3'>Page 59</a>: Was Raffaelites (other. The influence which a new school of Painting&mdash;as that of the pre-<b>Raphaelites</b>&mdash;exercises upon other schools; the hints which all kinds of pictorial art are deriving from Photography; the complex results of)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_4'>Page 84</a>: Was 'heretogeneity' (equilibrium. It will have a quite special liability to lapse into a non-homogeneous state. It will rapidly gravitate towards <b>heterogeneity</b>.)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_5'>Page 94</a>: Was 'observedcoexistences' (physiology we are unable in many cases to trace this necessary correlation, and are obliged to base our conclusions upon <b>observed coexistences</b>, of which we do not understand the reason, but which we)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_6'>Page 97</a>: Was 'Cirrhip&oelig;dia' (supposed that every eye must be external. Nevertheless it is a fact that there are creatures, as the <b><i>Cirrhipedia</i></b>, having eyes (not very efficient ones, it may be) deeply imbedded within the body. Again, a)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_7'>Page 108</a>: Was 'primâ facie' (Inquiring into the pedigree of an idea is not a bad means of roughly estimating its value. To have come of respectable ancestry, is <b><i>prima facie</i></b> evidence of worth in a belief as in a person; while to be)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_8'>Page 112</a>: Was 'à fortioria' ("The spaces which precede or which follow simple nebul&aelig;," says Arago, "and <b><i>a fortiori</i></b>, groups of nebul&aelig;, contain generally few stars. Herschel found this rule to be invariable. Thus every time)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_9'>Page 124</a>: Was 'irreconcileable' (stars like those which make up our own Milky Way, is totally <b>irreconcilable</b> with the facts&mdash;involves us in sundry absurdities. On the other hand, we see that the hypothesis of nebular condensation)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_10'>Page 140</a>: Was 'some thing' (Mars a large error in my calculation had arisen from accepting Arago's statement of his density (0&middot;95), which proves to be <b>something</b> like double what it should be. Here a curious incident may be named. When, in)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_11'>Page 216</a>: Was 'representive' (less strange; and among the fish there exists a species of shark, which is the only living <b>representative</b> of a genus that flourished in early geologic epochs. If, now, the modern fossiliferous deposits of Australia)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_12'>Page 291</a>: Was 'inbibe' (concentrated and purified nutriment, and distributing it among the component units; but these component units directly <b>imbibe</b> the unprepared nutriment, either from the digestive cavity or from one)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_13'>Page 306</a>: Was 'whic hthey' (their units appear and disappear; are broad peculiarities which bodies-politic display in common with all living bodies; and in <b>which they</b> and living bodies differ from everything else. And on carrying out)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_14'>Page 359</a>: Was 'not' (mind fitted neither for the kind of life led by the higher of the two races, <b>nor</b> for that led by the lower&mdash;a mind out of adjustment to all conditions of life. Contrariwise, we find that peoples of the same)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_15'>Page 393</a>: Was 'parenthethic' (Returning from this <b>parenthetic</b> remark, we are concerned here chiefly to remember that, as said at the outset, there existed thirty years ago, no)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_16'>Page 411</a>: Was 'hypertropic' (palsy, in a scarcely credible number of cases, are directly dependent on <b>hypertrophic</b> enlargement of the heart." And in other cases, asthma, dropsy, and epilepsy are caused. Now if a result of this)</p>
+
+<p>Footnotes have been moved to end of the chapters.  The page number for the correction on Page 140 is the original one,
+but the link points to the new location.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays: Scientific, Political, &
+Speculative, Vol. I, by Herbert Spencer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I
+
+Author: Herbert Spencer
+
+Release Date: August 31, 2009 [EBook #29869]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS: SCIENTIFIC, ETC. VOL I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Adrian Mastronardi, Carla Foust, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note
+
+
+Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Printer
+errors have been changed and are listed at the end. All other
+inconsistencies are as in the original.
+
+
+
+
+ESSAYS:
+
+SCIENTIFIC, POLITICAL, & SPECULATIVE.
+
+
+BY
+
+HERBERT SPENCER.
+
+
+LIBRARY EDITION,
+
+(OTHERWISE FIFTH THOUSAND)
+
+_Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and various other
+additions._
+
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+   WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,
+   14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON:
+   AND 20. SOUTH FREDERICK STREET. EDINBURGH.
+   1891.
+
+
+
+
+   LONDON:
+   G. NORMAN AND SON, PRINTERS, HART STREET,
+   COVENT GARDEN.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Excepting those which have appeared as articles in periodicals during
+the last eight years, the essays here gathered together were originally
+re-published in separate volumes at long intervals. The first volume
+appeared in December 1857; the second in November 1863; and the third in
+February 1874. By the time the original editions of the first two had
+been sold, American reprints, differently entitled and having the essays
+differently arranged, had been produced; and, for economy's sake, I have
+since contented myself with importing successive supplies printed from
+the American stereotype plates. Of the third volume, however, supplies
+have, as they were required, been printed over here, from plates partly
+American and partly English. The completion of this final edition of
+course puts an end to this make-shift arrangement.
+
+The essays above referred to as having been written since 1882, are now
+incorporated with those previously re-published. There are seven of
+them; namely--"Morals and Moral Sentiments," "The Factors of Organic
+Evolution," "Professor Green's Explanations," "The Ethics of Kant,"
+"Absolute Political Ethics," "From Freedom to Bondage," and "The
+Americans." As well as these large additions there are small additions,
+in the shape of postscripts to various essays--one to "The Constitution
+of the Sun," one to "The Philosophy of Style," one to "Railway Morals,"
+one to "Prison Ethics," and one to "The Origin and Function of Music:"
+which last is about equal in length to the original essay. Changes have
+been made in many of the essays: in some cases by omitting passages and
+in other cases by including new ones. Especially the essay on "The
+Nebular Hypothesis" may be named as one which, though unchanged in
+essentials, has been much altered by additions and subtractions, and by
+bringing its statements up to date; so that it has been in large measure
+re-cast. Beyond these respects in which this final edition differs from
+preceding editions, it differs in having undergone a verification of its
+references and quotations, as well as a second verbal revision.
+
+Naturally the fusion of three separate series of essays into one series,
+has made needful a general re-arrangement. Whether to follow the order
+of time or the order of subjects was a question which presented itself;
+and, as neither alternative promised satisfactory results, I eventually
+decided to compromise--to follow partly the one order and partly the
+other. The first volume is made up of essays in which the idea of
+evolution, general or special, is dominant. In the second volume essays
+dealing with philosophical questions, with abstract and concrete
+science, and with aesthetics, are brought together; but though all of
+them are tacitly evolutionary, their evolutionism is an incidental
+rather than a necessary trait. The ethical, political, and social essays
+composing the third volume, though mostly written from the evolution
+point of view, have for their more immediate purposes the enunciation of
+doctrines which are directly practical in their bearings. Meanwhile,
+within each volume the essays are arranged in order of time: not indeed
+strictly, but so far as consists with the requirements of sub-classing.
+
+Beyond the essays included in these three volumes, there remain several
+which I have not thought it well to include--in some cases because of
+their personal character, in other cases because of their relative
+unimportance, and in yet other cases because they would scarcely be
+understood in the absence of the arguments to which they are replies.
+But for the convenience of any who may wish to find them, I append their
+titles and places of publication. These are as follows:--"Retrogressive
+Religion," in _The Nineteenth Century_ for July 1884; "Last Words about
+Agnosticism and the Religion of Humanity," in _The Nineteenth Century_
+for November 1884; a note to Prof. Cairns' Critique on the _Study of
+Sociology_, in _The Fortnightly Review_, for February 1875; "A Short
+Rejoinder" [to Mr. J. F. McLennan], _Fortnightly Review_, June 1877;
+"Prof. Goldwin Smith as a Critic," _Contemporary Review_, March 1882; "A
+Rejoinder to M. de Laveleye," _Contemporary Review_, April 1885.
+
+LONDON, _December, 1890_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+   THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS                                          1
+
+   PROGRESS: ITS LAW AND CAUSE                                         8
+
+   TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSIOLOGY                                          63
+
+   THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS                                            108
+
+   ILLOGICAL GEOLOGY                                                 192
+
+   BAIN ON THE EMOTIONS AND THE WILL                                 241
+
+   THE SOCIAL ORGANISM                                               265
+
+   THE ORIGIN OF ANIMAL WORSHIP                                      308
+
+   MORALS AND MORAL SENTIMENTS                                       331
+
+   THE COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY OF MAN                                 351
+
+   MR. MARTINEAU ON EVOLUTION                                        371
+
+   THE FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION                                  389
+
+
+   (_For Index, see Volume III._)
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS.
+
+    [_Originally published in _The Leader, _for March 20,_ 1852. _Brief
+    though it is, I place this essay before the rest, partly because
+    with the exception of a similarly-brief essay on "Use and Beauty",
+    it came first in order of time, but chiefly because it came first in
+    order of thought, and struck the keynote of all that was to
+    follow._]
+
+
+In a debate upon the development hypothesis, lately narrated to me by a
+friend, one of the disputants was described as arguing that as, in all
+our experience, we know no such phenomenon as transmutation of species,
+it is unphilosophical to assume that transmutation of species ever takes
+place. Had I been present I think that, passing over his assertion,
+which is open to criticism, I should have replied that, as in all our
+experience we have never known a species _created_, it was, by his own
+showing, unphilosophical to assume that any species ever had been
+created.
+
+Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution as not being
+adequately supported by facts, seem to forget that their own theory is
+supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a
+given belief, they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief,
+but assume that their own needs none. Here we find, scattered over the
+globe, vegetable and animal organisms numbering, of the one kind
+(according to Humboldt), some 320,000 species, and of the other, some
+2,000,000 species (see Carpenter); and if to these we add the numbers of
+animal and vegetable species which have become extinct, we may safely
+estimate the number of species that have existed, and are existing, on
+the Earth, at not less than _ten millions_. Well, which is the most
+rational theory about these ten millions of species? Is it most likely
+that there have been ten millions of special creations? or is it most
+likely that, by continual modifications due to change of circumstances,
+ten millions of varieties have been produced, as varieties are being
+produced still?
+
+Doubtless many will reply that they can more easily conceive ten
+millions of special creations to have taken place, than they can
+conceive that ten millions of varieties have arisen by successive
+modifications. All such, however, will find, on inquiry, that they are
+under an illusion. This is one of the many cases in which men do not
+really believe, but rather _believe they believe_. It is not that they
+can truly conceive ten millions of special creations to have taken
+place, but that they _think they can do so_. Careful introspection will
+show them that they have never yet realized to themselves the creation
+of even _one_ species. If they have formed a definite conception of the
+process, let them tell us how a new species is constructed, and how it
+makes its appearance. Is it thrown down from the clouds? or must we hold
+to the notion that it struggles up out of the ground? Do its limbs and
+viscera rush together from all the points of the compass? or must we
+receive the old Hebrew idea, that God takes clay and moulds a new
+creature? If they say that a new creature is produced in none of these
+modes, which are too absurd to be believed, then they are required to
+describe the mode in which a new creature _may_ be produced--a mode
+which does _not_ seem absurd; and such a mode they will find that they
+neither have conceived nor can conceive.
+
+Should the believers in special creations consider it unfair thus to
+call upon them to describe how special creations take place, I reply
+that this is far less than they demand from the supporters of the
+Development Hypothesis. They are merely asked to point out a
+_conceivable_ mode. On the other hand, they ask, not simply for a
+_conceivable_ mode, but for the _actual_ mode. They do not say--Show us
+how this _may_ take place; but they say--Show us how this _does_ take
+place. So far from its being unreasonable to put the above question, it
+would be reasonable to ask not only for a _possible_ mode of special
+creation, but for an _ascertained_ mode; seeing that this is no greater
+a demand than they make upon their opponents.
+
+And here we may perceive how much more defensible the new doctrine is
+than the old one. Even could the supporters of the Development
+Hypothesis merely show that the origination of species by the process of
+modification is conceivable, they would be in a better position than
+their opponents. But they can do much more than this. They can show that
+the process of modification has effected, and is effecting, decided
+changes in all organisms subject to modifying influences. Though, from
+the impossibility of getting at a sufficiency of facts, they are unable
+to trace the many phases through which any existing species has passed
+in arriving at its present form, or to identify the influences which
+caused the successive modifications; yet, they can show that any
+existing species--animal or vegetable--when placed under conditions
+different from its previous ones, _immediately begins to undergo certain
+changes fitting it for the new conditions_. They can show that in
+successive generations these changes continue; until, ultimately, the
+new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated
+plants, in domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, such
+alterations have taken place. They can show that the degrees of
+difference so produced are often, as in dogs, greater than those on
+which distinctions of species are in other cases founded. They can show
+that it is a matter of dispute whether some of these modified forms are
+varieties or separate species. They can show, too, that the changes
+daily taking place in ourselves--the facility that attends long
+practice, and the loss of aptitude that begins when practice ceases--the
+strengthening of passions habitually gratified, and the weakening of
+those habitually curbed--the development of every faculty, bodily,
+moral, or intellectual, according to the use made of it--are all
+explicable on this same principle. And thus they can show that
+throughout all organic nature there _is_ at work a modifying influence
+of the kind they assign as the cause of these specific differences: an
+influence which, though slow in its action, does, in time, if the
+circumstances demand it, produce marked changes--an influence which, to
+all appearance, would produce in the millions of years, and under the
+great varieties of condition which geological records imply, any amount
+of change.
+
+Which, then, is the most rational hypothesis?--that of special creations
+which has neither a fact to support it nor is even definitely
+conceivable; or that of modification, which is not only definitely
+conceivable, but is countenanced by the habitudes of every existing
+organism?
+
+That by any series of changes a protozoon should ever become a mammal,
+seems to those who are not familiar with zoology, and who have not seen
+how clear becomes the relationship between the simplest and the most
+complex forms when intermediate forms are examined, a very grotesque
+notion. Habitually looking at things rather in their statical aspect
+than in their dynamical aspect, they never realize the fact that, by
+small increments of modification, any amount of modification may in time
+be generated. That surprise which they feel on finding one whom they
+last saw as a boy, grown into a man, becomes incredulity when the degree
+of change is greater. Nevertheless, abundant instances are at hand of
+the mode in which we may pass to the most diverse forms by insensible
+gradations. Arguing the matter some time since with a learned professor,
+I illustrated my position thus:--You admit that there is no apparent
+relationship between a circle and an hyperbola. The one is a finite
+curve; the other is an infinite one. All parts of the one are alike; of
+the other no parts are alike [save parts on its opposite sides]. The one
+incloses a space; the other will not inclose a space though produced for
+ever. Yet opposite as are these curves in all their properties, they may
+be connected together by a series of intermediate curves, no one of
+which differs from the adjacent ones in any appreciable degree. Thus, if
+a cone be cut by a plane at right angles to its axis we get a circle.
+If, instead of being perfectly at right angles, the plane subtends with
+the axis an angle of 89 deg. 59', we have an ellipse which no human eye,
+even when aided by an accurate pair of compasses, can distinguish from a
+circle. Decreasing the angle minute by minute, the ellipse becomes first
+perceptibly eccentric, then manifestly so, and by and by acquires so
+immensely elongated a form, as to bear no recognizable resemblance to a
+circle. By continuing this process, the ellipse passes insensibly into a
+parabola; and, ultimately, by still further diminishing the angle, into
+an hyperbola. Now here we have four different species of curve--circle,
+ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola--each having its peculiar properties
+and its separate equation, and the first and last of which are quite
+opposite in nature, connected together as members of one series, all
+producible by a single process of insensible modification.
+
+But the blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex
+organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple
+ones, becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms
+are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably
+in every respect--in bulk, in structure, in colour, in form, in chemical
+composition: differs so greatly that no visible resemblance of any kind
+can be pointed out between them. Yet is the one changed in the course of
+a few years into the other: changed so gradually, that at no moment can
+it be said--Now the seed ceases to be, and the tree exists. What can be
+more widely contrasted than a newly-born child and the small,
+semi-transparent spherule constituting the human ovum? The infant is so
+complex in structure that a cyclopaedia is needed to describe its
+constituent parts. The germinal vesicle is so simple that it may be
+defined in a line. Nevertheless a few months suffice to develop the one
+out of the other; and that, too, by a series of modifications so small,
+that were the embryo examined at successive minutes, even a microscope
+would with difficulty disclose any sensible changes. That the uneducated
+and the ill-educated should think the hypothesis that all races of
+beings, man inclusive, may in process of time have been evolved from the
+simplest monad, a ludicrous one, is not to be wondered at. But for the
+physiologist, who knows that every individual being _is_ so evolved--who
+knows, further, that in their earliest condition the germs of all plants
+and animals whatever are so similar, "that there is no appreciable
+distinction amongst them, which would enable it to be determined whether
+a particular molecule is the germ of a Conferva or of an Oak, of a
+Zoophyte or of a Man;"[1]--for him to make a difficulty of the matter is
+inexcusable. Surely if a single cell may, when subjected to certain
+influences, become a man in the space of twenty years; there is nothing
+absurd in the hypothesis that under certain other influences, a cell
+may, in the course of millions of years, give origin to the human race.
+
+We have, indeed, in the part taken by many scientific men in this
+controversy of "Law _versus_ Miracle," a good illustration of the
+tenacious vitality of superstitions. Ask one of our leading geologists
+or physiologists whether he believes in the Mosaic account of the
+creation, and he will take the question as next to an insult. Either he
+rejects the narrative entirely, or understands it in some vague
+nonnatural sense. Yet one part of it he unconsciously adopts; and that,
+too, literally. For whence has he got this notion of "special
+creations," which he thinks so reasonable, and fights for so vigorously?
+Evidently he can trace it back to no other source than this myth which
+he repudiates. He has not a single fact in nature to cite in proof of
+it; nor is he prepared with any chain of reasoning by which it may be
+established. Catechize him, and he will be forced to confess that the
+notion was put into his mind in childhood as part of a story which he
+now thinks absurd. And why, after rejecting all the rest of the story,
+he should strenuously defend this last remnant of it, as though he had
+received it on valid authority, he would be puzzled to say.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 1: Carpenter, _Principles of Comparative Physiology_, p. 474.]
+
+
+
+
+PROGRESS: ITS LAW AND CAUSE.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Westminster Review _for April,_ 1857.
+    _Though the ideas and illustrations contained in this essay were
+    eventually incorporated in_ First Principles, _yet I think it well
+    here to reproduce it as exhibiting the form under which the General
+    Doctrine of Evolution made its first appearance._]
+
+
+The current conception of progress is shifting and indefinite. Sometimes
+it comprehends little more than simple growth--as of a nation in the
+number of its members and the extent of territory over which it spreads.
+Sometimes it has reference to quantity of material products--as when the
+advance of agriculture and manufactures is the topic. Sometimes the
+superior quality of these products is contemplated; and sometimes the
+new or improved appliances by which they are produced. When, again, we
+speak of moral or intellectual progress, we refer to states of the
+individual or people exhibiting it; while, when the progress of Science,
+or Art, is commented upon, we have in view certain abstract results of
+human thought and action. Not only, however, is the current conception
+of progress more or less vague, but it is in great measure erroneous. It
+takes in not so much the reality of progress as its accompaniments--not
+so much the substance as the shadow. That progress in intelligence seen
+during the growth of the child into the man, or the savage into the
+philosopher, is commonly regarded as consisting in the greater number
+of facts known and laws understood; whereas the actual progress consists
+in those internal modifications of which this larger knowledge is the
+expression. Social progress is supposed to consist in the making of a
+greater quantity and variety of the articles required for satisfying
+men's wants; in the increasing security of person and property; in
+widening freedom of action; whereas, rightly understood, social progress
+consists in those changes of structure in the social organism which have
+entailed these consequences. The current conception is a teleological
+one. The phenomena are contemplated solely as bearing on human
+happiness. Only those changes are held to constitute progress which
+directly or indirectly tend to heighten human happiness; and they are
+thought to constitute progress simply _because_ they tend to heighten
+human happiness. But rightly to understand progress, we must learn the
+nature of these changes, considered apart from our interests. Ceasing,
+for example, to regard the successive geological modifications that have
+taken place in the Earth, as modifications that have gradually fitted it
+for the habitation of Man, and as _therefore_ constituting geological
+progress, we must ascertain the character common to these
+modifications--the law to which they all conform. And similarly in every
+other case. Leaving out of sight concomitants and beneficial
+consequences, let us ask what progress is in itself.
+
+In respect to that progress which individual organisms display in the
+course of their evolution, this question has been answered by the
+Germans. The investigations of Wolff, Goethe, and von Baer, have
+established the truth that the series of changes gone through during the
+development of a seed into a tree, or an ovum into an animal, constitute
+an advance from homogeneity of structure to heterogeneity of structure.
+In its primary stage, every germ consists of a substance that is uniform
+throughout, both in texture and chemical composition. The first step is
+the appearance of a difference between two parts of this substance; or,
+as the phenomenon is called in physiological language, a
+differentiation. Each of these differentiated divisions presently begins
+itself to exhibit some contrast of parts: and by and by these secondary
+differentiations become as definite as the original one. This process is
+continuously repeated--is simultaneously going on in all parts of the
+growing embryo; and by endless such differentiations there is finally
+produced that complex combination of tissues and organs constituting the
+adult animal or plant. This is the history of all organisms whatever. It
+is settled beyond dispute that organic progress consists in a change
+from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.
+
+Now, we propose in the first place to show, that this law of organic
+progress is the law of all progress. Whether it be in the development of
+the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface, in the
+development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of
+Language, Literature, Science, Art, this same evolution of the simple
+into the complex, through successive differentiations, holds throughout.
+From the earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results
+of civilization, we shall find that the transformation of the
+homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which progress
+essentially consists.
+
+With the view of showing that _if_ the Nebular Hypothesis be true, the
+genesis of the solar system supplies one illustration of this law, let
+us assume that the matter of which the sun and planets consist was once
+in a diffused form; and that from the gravitation of its atoms there
+resulted a gradual concentration. By the hypothesis, the solar system in
+its nascent state existed as an indefinitely extended and nearly
+homogeneous medium--a medium almost homogeneous in density, in
+temperature, and in other physical attributes. The first change in the
+direction of increased aggregation, brought a contrast in density and a
+contrast in temperature, between the interior and the exterior of this
+mass. Simultaneously the drawing in of outer parts caused motions ending
+in rotation round a centre with various angular velocities. These
+differentiations increased in number and degree until there was evolved
+the organized group of sun, planets, and satellites, which we now
+know--a group which presents numerous contrasts of structure and action
+among its members. There are the immense contrasts between the sun and
+the planets, in bulk and in weight; as well as the subordinate contrasts
+between one planet and another, and between the planets and their
+satellites. There is the similarly-marked contrast between the sun as
+almost stationary (relatively to the other members of the Solar System),
+and the planets as moving round him with great velocity: while there are
+the secondary contrasts between the velocities and periods of the
+several planets, and between their simple revolutions and the double
+ones of their satellites, which have to move round their primaries while
+moving round the sun. There is the yet further strong contrast between
+the sun and the planets in respect of temperature; and there is good
+reason to suppose that the planets and satellites differ from each other
+in their proper heats, as well as in the amounts of heat they receive
+from the sun. When we bear in mind that, in addition to these various
+contrasts, the planets and satellites also differ in respect to their
+distances from each other and their primary; in respect to the
+inclinations of their orbits, the inclinations of their axes, their
+times of rotation on their axes, their specific gravities, and their
+physical constitutions; we see what a high degree of heterogeneity the
+solar system exhibits, when compared with the almost complete
+homogeneity of the nebulous mass out of which it is supposed to have
+originated.
+
+Passing from this hypothetical illustration, which must be taken for
+what it is worth, without prejudice to the general argument, let us
+descend to a more certain order of evidence. It is now generally agreed
+among geologists and physicists that the Earth was at one time a mass
+of molten matter. If so, it was at that time relatively homogeneous in
+consistence, and, in virtue of the circulation which takes place in
+heated fluids, must have been comparatively homogeneous in temperature;
+and it must have been surrounded by an atmosphere consisting partly of
+the elements of air and water, and partly of those various other
+elements which are among the more ready to assume gaseous forms at high
+temperatures. That slow cooling by radiation which is still going on at
+an inappreciable rate, and which, though originally far more rapid than
+now, necessarily required an immense time to produce any decided change,
+must ultimately have resulted in the solidification of the portion most
+able to part with its heat--namely, the surface. In the thin crust thus
+formed we have the first marked differentiation. A still further
+cooling, a consequent thickening of this crust, and an accompanying
+deposition of all solidifiable elements contained in the atmosphere,
+must finally have been followed by the condensation of the water
+previously existing as vapour. A second marked differentiation must thus
+have arisen; and as the condensation must have taken place on the
+coolest parts of the surface--namely, about the poles--there must thus
+have resulted the first geographical distinction of parts. To these
+illustrations of growing heterogeneity, which, though deduced from known
+physical laws, may be regarded as more or less hypothetical, Geology
+adds an extensive series that have been inductively established.
+Investigations show that the Earth has been continually becoming more
+heterogeneous in virtue of the multiplication of sedimentary strata
+which form its crust; also, that it has been becoming more heterogeneous
+in respect of the composition of these strata, the later of which, being
+made from the detritus of the earlier, are many of them rendered highly
+complex by the mixture of materials they contain; and further, that this
+heterogeneity has been vastly increased by the actions of the Earth's
+still molten nucleus upon its envelope, whence have resulted not only
+many kinds of igneous rocks, but the tilting up of sedimentary strata at
+all angles, the formation of faults and metallic veins, the production
+of endless dislocations and irregularities. Yet again, geologists teach
+us that the Earth's surface has been growing more varied in
+elevation--that the most ancient mountain systems are the smallest, and
+the Andes and Himalayas the most modern; while in all probability there
+have been corresponding changes in the bed of the ocean. As a
+consequence of these ceaseless differentiations, we now find that no
+considerable portion of the Earth's exposed surface is like any other
+portion, either in contour, in geologic structure, or in chemical
+composition; and that in most parts it changes from mile to mile in all
+these characters. Moreover, there has been simultaneously going on a
+differentiation of climates. As fast as the Earth cooled and its crust
+solidified, there arose appreciable differences in temperature between
+those parts of its surface more exposed to the sun and those less
+exposed. As the cooling progressed, these differences became more
+pronounced; until there finally resulted those marked contrasts between
+regions of perpetual ice and snow, regions where winter and summer
+alternately reign for periods varying according to the latitude, and
+regions where summer follows summer with scarcely an appreciable
+variation. At the same time the many and varied elevations and
+subsidences of portions of the Earth's crust, bringing about the present
+irregular distribution of land and sea, have entailed modifications of
+climate beyond those dependent on latitude; while a yet further series
+of such modifications have been produced by increasing differences of
+elevation in the land, which have in sundry places brought arctic,
+temperate, and tropical climates to within a few miles of one another.
+And the general outcome of these changes is, that not only has every
+extensive region its own meteorologic conditions, but that every
+locality in each region differs more or less from others in those
+conditions; as in its structure, its contour, its soil. Thus, between
+our existing Earth, the phenomena of whose crust neither geographers,
+geologists, mineralogists, nor meteorologists have yet enumerated, and
+the molten globe out of which it was evolved, the contrast in
+heterogeneity is extreme.
+
+When from the Earth itself we turn to the plants and animals which have
+lived, or still live, upon its surface, we find ourselves in some
+difficulty from lack of facts. That every existing organism has been
+developed out of the simple into the complex, is indeed the first
+established truth of all; and that every organism which existed in past
+times was similarly developed, is an inference no physiologist will
+hesitate to draw. But when we pass from individual forms of life to Life
+in general, and inquire whether the same law is seen in the _ensemble_
+of its manifestations,--whether modern plants and animals are of more
+heterogeneous structure than ancient ones, and whether the Earth's
+present Flora and Fauna are more heterogeneous than the Flora and Fauna
+of the past,--we find the evidence so fragmentary, that every conclusion
+is open to dispute. Three-fifths of the Earth's surface being covered by
+water; a great part of the exposed land being inaccessible to, or
+untravelled by, the geologist; the greater part of the remainder having
+been scarcely more than glanced at; and even the most familiar portions,
+as England, having been so imperfectly explored that a new series of
+strata has been added within these four years,--it is impossible for us
+to say with certainty what creatures have, and what have not, existed at
+any particular period. Considering the perishable nature of many of the
+lower organic forms, the metamorphosis of numerous sedimentary strata,
+and the great gaps occurring among the rest, we shall see further reason
+for distrusting our deductions. On the one hand, the repeated discovery
+of vertebrate remains in strata previously supposed to contain none,--of
+reptiles where only fish were thought to exist,--of mammals where it was
+believed there were no creatures higher than reptiles,--renders it daily
+more manifest how small is the value of negative evidence. On the other
+hand, the worthlessness of the assumption that we have discovered the
+earliest, or anything like the earliest, organic remains, is becoming
+equally clear. That the oldest known sedimentary rocks have been greatly
+changed by igneous action, and that still older ones have been totally
+transformed by it, is becoming undeniable. And the fact that sedimentary
+strata earlier than any we know, have been melted up, being admitted, it
+must also be admitted that we cannot say how far back in time this
+destruction of sedimentary strata has been going on. Thus the title
+_Palaeozoic_, as applied to the earliest known fossiliferous strata,
+involves a _petitio principii_; and, for aught we know to the contrary,
+only the last few chapters of the Earth's biological history may have
+come down to us. On neither side, therefore, is the evidence conclusive.
+Nevertheless we cannot but think that, scanty as they are, the facts,
+taken altogether, tend to show both that the more heterogeneous
+organisms have been evolved in the later geologic periods, and that Life
+in general has been more heterogeneously manifested as time has
+advanced. Let us cite, in illustration, the one case of the
+_Vertebrata_. The earliest known vertebrate remains are those of Fishes;
+and Fishes are the most homogeneous of the vertebrata. Later and more
+heterogeneous are Reptiles. Later still, and more heterogeneous still,
+are Birds and Mammals. If it be said that the Palaeozoic deposits, not
+being estuary deposits, are not likely to contain the remains of
+terrestrial vertebrata, which may nevertheless have existed at that era,
+we reply that we are merely pointing to the leading facts, _such as they
+are_. But to avoid any such criticism, let us take the mammalian
+subdivision only. The earliest known remains of mammals are those of
+small marsupials, which are the lowest of the mammalian type; while,
+conversely, the highest of the mammalian type--Man--is the most recent.
+The evidence that the vertebrate fauna, as a whole, has become more
+heterogeneous, is considerably stronger. To the argument that the
+vertebrate fauna of the Palaeozoic period, consisting, so far as we know,
+entirely of Fishes, was less heterogeneous than the modern vertebrate
+fauna, which includes Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals, of multitudinous
+genera, it may be replied, as before, that estuary deposits of the
+Palaeozoic period, could we find them, might contain other orders of
+vertebrata. But no such reply can be made to the argument that whereas
+the marine vertebrata of the Palaeozoic period consisted entirely of
+cartilaginous fishes, the marine vertebrata of later periods include
+numerous genera of osseous fishes; and that, therefore, the later marine
+vertebrate faunas are more heterogeneous than the oldest known one. Nor,
+again, can any such reply be made to the fact that there are far more
+numerous orders and genera of mammalian remains in the tertiary
+formations than in the secondary formations. Did we wish merely to make
+out the best case, we might dwell upon the opinion of Dr. Carpenter, who
+says that "the general facts of Palaeontology appear to sanction the
+belief, that _the same plan_ may be traced out in what may be called
+_the general life of the globe_, as in _the individual life_ of every
+one of the forms of organized being which now people it." Or we might
+quote, as decisive, the judgment of Professor Owen, who holds that the
+earlier examples of each group of creatures severally departed less
+widely from archetypal generality than the later examples--were
+severally less unlike the fundamental form common to the group as a
+whole; and thus constituted a less heterogeneous group of creatures. But
+in deference to an authority for whom we have the highest respect, who
+considers that the evidence at present obtained does not justify a
+verdict either way, we are content to leave the question open.[2]
+
+Whether an advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is or is
+not displayed in the biological history of the globe, it is clearly
+enough displayed in the progress of the latest and most heterogeneous
+creature--Man. It is true alike that, during the period in which the
+Earth has been peopled, the human organism has grown more heterogeneous
+among the civilized divisions of the species; and that the species, as a
+whole, has been growing more heterogeneous in virtue of the
+multiplication of races and the differentiation of these races from each
+other. In proof of the first of these positions, we may cite the fact
+that, in the relative development of the limbs, the civilized man
+departs more widely from the general type of the placental mammalia than
+do the lower human races. While often possessing well-developed body and
+arms, the Australian has very small legs: thus reminding us of the
+chimpanzee and the gorilla, which present no great contrasts in size
+between the hind and fore limbs. But in the European, the greater length
+and massiveness of the legs have become marked--the fore and hind limbs
+are more heterogeneous. Again, the greater ratio which the cranial bones
+bear to the facial bones illustrates the same truth. Among the
+vertebrata in general, progress is marked by an increasing heterogeneity
+in the vertebral column, and more especially in the segments
+constituting the skull: the higher forms being distinguished by the
+relatively larger size of the bones which cover the brain, and the
+relatively  smaller size of those which form the jaws, &c. Now this
+characteristic, which is stronger in Man than in any other creature, is
+stronger in the European than in the savage. Moreover, judging from the
+greater extent and variety of faculty he exhibits, we may infer that the
+civilized man has also a more complex or heterogeneous nervous system
+than the uncivilized man: and, indeed, the fact is in part visible in
+the increased ratio which his cerebrum bears to the subjacent ganglia,
+as well as in the wider departure from symmetry in its convolutions. If
+further elucidation be needed, we may find it in every nursery. The
+infant European has sundry marked points of resemblance to the lower
+human races; as in the flatness of the alae of the nose, the depression
+of its bridge, the divergence and forward opening of the nostrils, the
+form of the lips, the absence of a frontal sinus, the width between the
+eyes, the smallness of the legs. Now, as the developmental process by
+which these traits are turned into those of the adult European, is a
+continuation of that change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous
+displayed during the previous evolution of the embryo, which every
+anatomist will admit; it follows that the parallel developmental process
+by which the like traits of the barbarous races have been turned into
+those of the civilized races, has also been a continuation of the change
+from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. The truth of the second
+position--that Mankind, as a whole, have become more heterogeneous--is
+so obvious as scarcely to need illustration. Every work on Ethnology, by
+its divisions and subdivisions of races, bears testimony to it. Even
+were we to admit the hypothesis that Mankind originated from several
+separate stocks, it would still remain true, that as, from each of these
+stocks, there have sprung many now widely-different tribes, which are
+proved by philological evidence to have had a common origin, the race as
+a whole is far less homogeneous than it once was. Add to which, that we
+have, in the Anglo-Americans, an example of a new variety arising
+within these few generations; and that, if we may trust to the
+descriptions of observers, we are likely soon to have another such
+example in Australia.
+
+On passing from Humanity under its individual form, to Humanity as
+socially embodied, we find the general law still more variously
+exemplified. The change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is
+displayed in the progress of civilization as a whole, as well as in the
+progress of every nation; and is still going on with increasing
+rapidity. As we see in existing barbarous tribes, society in its first
+and lowest form is a homogeneous aggregation of individuals having like
+powers and like functions: the only marked difference of function being
+that which accompanies difference of sex. Every man is warrior, hunter,
+fisherman, tool-maker, builder; every woman performs the same
+drudgeries. Very early, however, in the course of social evolution,
+there arises an incipient differentiation between the governing and the
+governed. Some kind of chieftainship seems coeval with the first advance
+from the state of separate wandering families to that of a nomadic
+tribe. The authority of the strongest or the most cunning makes itself
+felt among a body of savages as in a herd of animals, or a posse of
+schoolboys. At first, however, it is indefinite, uncertain; is shared by
+others of scarcely inferior power; and is unaccompanied by any
+difference in occupation or style of living: the first ruler kills his
+own game, makes his own weapons, builds his own hut, and, economically
+considered, does not differ from others of his tribe. Gradually, as the
+tribe progresses, the contrast between the governing and the governed
+grows more decided. Supreme power becomes hereditary in one family; the
+head of that family, ceasing to provide for his own wants, is served by
+others; and he begins to assume the sole office of ruling. At the same
+time there has been arising a co-ordinate species of government--that
+of Religion. As all ancient records and traditions prove, the earliest
+rulers are regarded as divine personages. The maxims and commands they
+uttered during their lives are held sacred after their deaths, and are
+enforced by their divinely-descended successors; who in their turns are
+promoted to the pantheon of the race, here to be worshipped and
+propitiated along with their predecessors: the most ancient of whom is
+the supreme god, and the rest subordinate gods. For a long time these
+connate forms of government--civil and religious--remain closely
+associated. For many generations the king continues to be the chief
+priest, and the priesthood to be members of the royal race. For many
+ages religious law continues to include more or less of civil
+regulation, and civil law to possess more or less of religious sanction;
+and even among the most advanced nations these two controlling agencies
+are by no means completely separated from each other. Having a common
+root with these, and gradually diverging from them, we find yet another
+controlling agency--that of Ceremonial usages. All titles of honour are
+originally the names of the god-king; afterwards of the god and the
+king; still later of persons of high rank; and finally come, some of
+them, to be used between man and man. All forms of complimentary address
+were at first the expressions of submission from prisoners to their
+conqueror, or from subjects to their ruler, either human or
+divine--expressions which were afterwards used to propitiate subordinate
+authorities, and slowly descended into ordinary intercourse. All modes
+of salutation were once obeisances made before the monarch and used in
+worship of him after his death. Presently others of the god-descended
+race were similarly saluted; and by degrees some of the salutations
+have become the due of all.[3] Thus, no sooner does the
+originally-homogeneous social mass differentiate  into the governed and
+the governing parts, than this last exhibits an incipient
+differentiation into religious and secular--Church and State; while at
+the same time there begins to be differentiated from both, that less
+definite species of government which rules our daily intercourse--a
+species of government which, as we may see in heralds' colleges, in
+books of the peerage, in masters of ceremonies, is not without a certain
+embodiment of its own. Each of these is itself subject to successive
+differentiations. In the course of ages, there arises, as among
+ourselves, a highly complex political organization of monarch,
+ministers, lords and commons, with their subordinate administrative
+departments, courts of justice, revenue offices, &c., supplemented in
+the provinces by municipal governments, county governments, parish or
+union governments--all of them more or less elaborated. By its side
+there grows up a highly complex religious organization, with its various
+grades of officials, from archbishops down to sextons, its colleges,
+convocations, ecclesiastical courts, &c.; to all which must be added the
+ever-multiplying independent sects, each with its general and local
+authorities. And at the same time there is developed a highly complex
+aggregation of customs, manners, and temporary fashions, enforced by
+society at large, and serving to control those minor transactions
+between man and man which are not regulated by civil and religious law.
+Moreover, it is to be observed that this increasing heterogeneity in the
+governmental appliances of each nation, has been accompanied by an
+increasing heterogeneity in the assemblage of governmental appliances of
+different nations: all nations being more or less unlike in their
+political systems and legislation, in their creeds and religious
+institutions, in their customs and ceremonial usages.
+
+Simultaneously there has been going on a second differentiation of a
+more familiar kind; that, namely, by which the mass of the community has
+been segregated into distinct classes and orders of workers. While the
+governing part has undergone the complex development above detailed, the
+governed part has undergone an equally complex development, which has
+resulted in that minute division of labour characterizing advanced
+nations. It is needless to trace out this progress from its first
+stages, up through the caste-divisions of the East and the incorporated
+guilds of Europe, to the elaborate producing and distributing
+organization existing among ourselves. It has been an evolution which,
+beginning with a tribe whose members severally perform the same actions
+each for himself, ends with a civilized community whose members
+severally perform different actions for each other; and an evolution
+which has transformed the solitary producer of any one commodity into a
+combination of producers who, united under a master, take separate parts
+in the manufacture of such commodity. But there are yet other and higher
+phases of this advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous in the
+industrial organization of society. Long after considerable progress has
+been made in the division of labour among different classes of workers,
+there is still little or no division of labour among the widely
+separated parts of the community: the nation continues comparatively
+homogeneous in the respect that in each district the same occupations
+are pursued. But when roads and other means of transit become numerous
+and good, the different districts begin to assume different functions,
+and to become mutually dependent. The calico manufacture locates itself
+in this county, the woollen-cloth manufacture in that; silks are
+produced here, lace there; stockings in one place, shoes in another;
+pottery, hardware, cutlery, come to have their special towns; and
+ultimately every locality becomes more or less distinguished from the
+rest by the leading occupation carried on in it. This subdivision of
+functions shows itself not only among the different parts of the same
+nation, but among different nations. That exchange of commodities which
+free-trade is increasing so largely, will ultimately have the effect of
+specializing, in a greater or less degree, the industry of each people.
+So that, beginning with a barbarous tribe, almost if not quite
+homogeneous in the functions of its members, the progress has been, and
+still is, towards an economic aggregation of the whole human race;
+growing ever more heterogeneous in respect of the separate functions
+assumed by separate nations, the separate functions assumed by the local
+sections of each nation, the separate functions assumed by the many
+kinds of makers and traders in each town, and the separate functions
+assumed by the workers united in producing each commodity.
+
+The law thus clearly exemplified in the evolution of the social
+organism, is exemplified with equal clearness in the evolution of all
+products of human thought and action; whether concrete or abstract, real
+or ideal. Let us take Language as our first illustration.
+
+The lowest form of language is the exclamation, by which an entire idea
+is vaguely conveyed through a single sound, as among the lower animals.
+That human language ever consisted solely of exclamations, and so was
+strictly homogeneous in respect of its parts of speech, we have no
+evidence. But that language can be traced down to a form in which nouns
+and verbs are its only elements, is an established fact. In the gradual
+multiplication of parts of speech out of these primary ones--in the
+differentiation of verbs into active and passive, of nouns into abstract
+and concrete--in the rise of distinctions of mood, tense, person, of
+number and case--in the formation of auxiliary verbs, of adjectives,
+adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, articles--in the divergence of those
+orders, genera, species, and varieties of parts of speech by which
+civilized races express minute modifications of meaning--we see a change
+from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. Another aspect under which we
+may trace the development of language is the divergence of words having
+common origins. Philology early disclosed the truth that in all
+languages words may be grouped into families, the members of each of
+which are allied by their derivation. Names springing from a primitive
+root, themselves become the parents of other names still further
+modified. And by the aid of those systematic modes which presently
+arise, of making derivatives and forming compound terms, there is
+finally developed a tribe of words so heterogeneous in sound and
+meaning, that to the uninitiated it seems incredible they should be
+nearly related. Meanwhile from other roots there are being evolved other
+such tribes, until there results a language of some sixty thousand or
+more unlike words, signifying as many unlike objects, qualities, acts.
+Yet another way in which language in general advances from the
+homogeneous to the heterogeneous, is in the multiplication of languages.
+Whether all languages have grown from one stock, or whether, as some
+philologists think, they have grown from two or more stocks, it is clear
+that since large groups of languages, as the Indo-European, are of one
+parentage, they have become distinct through a process of continuous
+divergence. The same diffusion over the Earth's surface which has led to
+differentiations of race, has simultaneously led to differentiations of
+speech: a truth which we see further illustrated in each nation by the
+distinct dialects found in separate districts. Thus the progress of
+Language conforms to the general law, alike in the evolution of
+languages, in the evolution of families of words, and in the evolution
+of parts of speech.
+
+On passing from spoken to written language, we come upon several classes
+of facts, having similar implications. Written language is connate with
+Painting and Sculpture; and at first all three are appendages of
+Architecture, and have a direct connection with the primary form of all
+Government--the theocratic. Merely noting by the way the fact that
+sundry wild races, as for example the Australians and the tribes of
+South Africa, are given to depicting personages and events upon the
+walls of caves, which are probably regarded as sacred places, let us
+pass to the case of the Egyptians. Among them, as also among the
+Assyrians, we find mural paintings used to decorate the temple of the
+god and the palace of the king (which were, indeed, originally
+identical); and as such they were governmental appliances in the same
+sense as state-pageants and religious feasts were. They were
+governmental appliances in another way: representing as they did the
+worship of the god, the triumphs of the god-king, the submission of his
+subjects, and the punishment of the rebellious. Further, they were
+governmental, as being the products of an art reverenced by the people
+as a sacred mystery. From the habitual use of this pictorial
+representation there grew up the but-slightly-modified practice of
+picture-writing--a practice which was found still extant among North
+American peoples at the time they were discovered. By abbreviations
+analogous to those still going on in our own written language, the most
+frequently-recurring of these pictured figures were successively
+simplified; and ultimately there grew up a system of symbols, most of
+which had but distant resemblances to the things for which they stood.
+The inference that the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians were thus
+produced, is confirmed by the fact that the picture-writing of the
+Mexicans was found to have given birth to a like family of ideographic
+forms; and among them, as among the Egyptians, these had been partially
+differentiated into the _kuriological_ or imitative, and the _tropical_
+or symbolic; which were, however, used together in the same record. In
+Egypt, written language underwent a further differentiation, whence
+resulted the _hieratic_ and the _epistolographic_ or _enchorial_; both
+of which are derived from the original hieroglyphic. At the same time we
+find that for the expression of proper names, which could not be
+otherwise conveyed, signs having phonetic values were employed; and
+though it is alleged that the Egyptians never achieved complete
+alphabetic writing, yet it can scarcely be doubted that these phonetic
+symbols, occasionally used in aid of their ideographic ones, were the
+germs of an alphabetic system. Once having become separate from
+hieroglyphics, alphabetic writing itself underwent numerous
+differentiations--multiplied alphabets were produced; between most of
+which, however, more or less connection can still be traced. And in each
+civilized nation there has now grown up, for the representation of one
+set of sounds, several sets of written signs used for distinct purposes.
+Finally, from writing diverged printing; which, uniform in kind as it
+was at first, has since become multiform.
+
+While written language was passing through its first stages of
+development, the mural decoration which contained its root was being
+differentiated into Painting and Sculpture. The gods, kings, men, and
+animals represented, were originally marked by indented outlines and
+coloured. In most cases these outlines were of such depth, and the
+object they circumscribed so far rounded and marked out in its leading
+parts, as to form a species of work intermediate between intaglio and
+bas-relief. In other cases we see an advance upon this: the raised
+spaces between the figures being chiselled off, and the figures
+themselves appropriately tinted, a painted bas-relief was produced. The
+restored Assyrian architecture at Sydenham exhibits this style of art
+carried to greater perfection--the persons and things represented,
+though still barbarously coloured, are carved out with more truth and in
+greater detail: and in the winged lions and bulls used for the angles of
+gateways, we may see a considerable advance towards a completely
+sculptured figure; which, nevertheless, is still coloured, and still
+forms part of the building. But while in Assyria the production of a
+statue proper seems to have been little, if at all, attempted, we may
+trace in Egyptian art the gradual separation of the sculptured figure
+from the wall. A walk through the collection in the British Museum
+shows this; while at the same time it affords an opportunity of
+observing the traces which the independent statues bear of their
+derivation from bas-relief: seeing that nearly all of them not only
+display that fusion of the legs with one another and of the arms with
+the body which is characteristic of bas-relief, but have the back united
+from head to foot with a block which stands in place of the original
+wall. Greece repeated the leading stages of this progress. On the
+friezes of Greek Temples, were coloured bas-reliefs representing
+sacrifices, battles, processions, games--all in some sort religious. The
+pediments contained painted sculptures more or less united with the
+tympanum, and having for subjects the triumphs of gods or heroes. Even
+statues definitely separated from buildings were coloured; and only in
+the later periods of Greek civilization does the differentiation of
+Sculpture from Painting appear to have become complete. In Christian art
+we may trace a parallel re-genesis. All early works of art throughout
+Europe were religious in subject--represented Christs, crucifixions,
+virgins, holy families, apostles, saints. They formed integral parts of
+church architecture, and were among the means of exciting worship; as in
+Roman Catholic countries they still are. Moreover, the sculptured
+figures of Christ on the cross, of virgins, of saints, were coloured;
+and it needs but to call to mind the painted madonnas still abundant in
+continental churches and highways, to perceive the significant fact that
+Painting and Sculpture continue in closest connection with each other
+where they continue in closest connection with their parent. Even when
+Christian sculpture became differentiated from painting, it was still
+religious and governmental in its subjects--was used for tombs in
+churches and statues of kings; while, at the same time, painting, where
+not purely ecclesiastical, was applied to the decoration of palaces, and
+besides representing royal personages, was mostly devoted to sacred
+legends. Only in recent times have painting and sculpture become quite
+separate and mainly secular. Only within these few centuries has
+Painting been divided into historical, landscape, marine, architectural,
+genre, animal, still-life, &c.; and Sculpture grown heterogeneous in
+respect of the variety of real and ideal subjects with which it occupies
+itself.
+
+Strange as it seems then, we find that all forms of written language, of
+Painting, and of Sculpture, have a common root in the politico-religious
+decorations of ancient temples and palaces. Little resemblance as they
+now have, the landscape that hangs against the wall, and the copy of the
+_Times_ lying on the table, are remotely akin. The brazen face of the
+knocker which the postman has just lifted, is related not only to the
+woodcuts of the _Illustrated London News_ which he is delivering, but to
+the characters of the _billet-doux_ which accompanies it. Between the
+painted window, the prayer-book on which its light falls, and the
+adjacent monument, there is consanguinity. The effigies on our coins,
+the signs over shops, the coat of arms outside the carriage panel, and
+the placards inside the omnibus, are, in common with dolls and
+paper-hangings, lineally descended from the rude sculpture-paintings in
+which ancient peoples represented the triumphs and worship of their
+god-kings. Perhaps no example can be given which more vividly
+illustrates the multiplicity and heterogeneity of the products that in
+course of time may arise by successive differentiations from a common
+stock.
+
+Before passing to other classes of facts, it should be observed that the
+evolution of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous is displayed not
+only in the separation of Painting and Sculpture from Architecture and
+from each other, and in the greater variety of subjects they embody, but
+it is further shown in the structure of each work. A modern picture or
+statue is of far more heterogeneous nature than an ancient one. An
+Egyptian sculpture-fresco usually represents all its figures as at the
+same distance from the eye; and so is less heterogeneous than a
+painting that represents them as at various distances from the eye. It
+exhibits all objects as exposed to the same degree of light; and so is
+less heterogeneous than a painting which exhibits its different objects
+and different parts of each object as in different degrees of light. It
+uses chiefly the primary colours, and these in their full intensities;
+and so is less heterogeneous than a painting which, introducing the
+primary colours but sparingly, employs numerous intermediate tints, each
+of heterogeneous composition, and differing from the rest not only in
+quality but in strength. Moreover, we see in these early works great
+uniformity of conception. The same arrangement of figures is perpetually
+reproduced--the same actions, attitudes, faces, dresses. In Egypt the
+modes of representation were so fixed that it was sacrilege to introduce
+a novelty. The Assyrian bas-reliefs display parallel characters.
+Deities, kings, attendants, winged-figures and animals, are time after
+time depicted in like positions, holding like implements, doing like
+things, and with like expression or non-expression of face. If a
+palm-grove is introduced, all the trees are of the same height, have the
+same number of leaves, and are equidistant. When water is imitated, each
+wave is a counterpart of the rest; and the fish, almost always of one
+kind, are evenly distributed over the surface. The beards of the kings,
+the gods, and the winged-figures, are everywhere similar; as are the
+manes of the lions, and equally so those of the horses. Hair is
+represented throughout by one form of curl. The king's beard is quite
+architecturally built up of compound tiers of uniform curls, alternating
+with twisted tiers placed in a transverse direction, and arranged with
+perfect regularity; and the terminal tufts of the bulls' tails are
+represented in exactly the same manner. Without tracing out analogous
+facts in early Christian art, in which, though less striking, they are
+still visible, the advance in heterogeneity will be sufficiently
+manifest on remembering that in the pictures of our own day the
+composition is endlessly varied; the attitudes, faces, expressions,
+unlike; the subordinate objects different in sizes, forms, textures; and
+more or less of contrast even in the smallest details. Or, if we compare
+an Egyptian statue, seated bolt upright on a block, with hands on knees,
+fingers parallel, eyes looking straight forward, and the two sides
+perfectly symmetrical in every particular, with a statue of the advanced
+Greek school or the modern school, which is asymmetrical in respect of
+the attitude of the head, the body, the limbs, the arrangement of the
+hair, dress, appendages, and in its relations to neighbouring objects,
+we shall see the change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous
+clearly manifested.
+
+In the co-ordinate origin and gradual differentiation of Poetry, Music,
+and Dancing, we have another series of illustrations. Rhythm in words,
+rhythm in sounds, and rhythm in motions, were in the beginning parts of
+the same thing, and have only in process of time become separate things.
+Among existing barbarous tribes we find them still united. The dances of
+savages are accompanied by some kind of monotonous chant, the clapping
+of hands, the striking of rude instruments: there are measured
+movements, measured words, and measured tones. The early records of
+historic races similarly show these three forms of metrical action
+united in religious festivals. In the Hebrew writings we read that the
+triumphal ode composed by Moses on the defeat of the Egyptians, was sung
+to an accompaniment of dancing and timbrels. The Israelites danced and
+sung "at the inauguration of the golden calf. And as it is generally
+agreed that this representation of the Deity was borrowed from the
+mysteries of Apis, it is probable that the dancing was copied from that
+of the Egyptians on those occasions." Again, in Greece the like relation
+is everywhere seen: the original type being there, as probably in other
+cases, a simultaneous chanting and mimetic representation of the life
+and adventures of the hero or the god. The Spartan dances were
+accompanied by hymns and songs; and in general the Greeks had "no
+festivals or religious assemblies but what were accompanied with songs
+and dances"--both of them being forms of worship used before altars.
+Among the Romans, too, there were sacred dances: the Salian and
+Lupercalian being named as of that kind. And even in Christian
+countries, as at Limoges, in comparatively recent times, the people have
+danced in the choir in honour of a saint. The incipient separation of
+these once-united arts from each other and from religion, was early
+visible in Greece. Probably diverging from dances partly religious,
+partly warlike, as the Corybantian, came the war-dances proper, of which
+there were various kinds. Meanwhile Music and Poetry, though still
+united, came to have an existence separate from Dancing. The primitive
+Greek poems, religious in subject, were not recited but chanted; and
+though at first the chant of the poet was accompanied by the dance of
+the chorus, it ultimately grew into independence. Later still, when the
+poem had been differentiated into epic and lyric--when it became the
+custom to sing the lyric and recite the epic--poetry proper was born. As
+during the same period musical instruments were being multiplied, we may
+presume that music came to have an existence apart from words. And both
+of them were beginning to assume other forms besides the religious.
+Facts having like implications might be cited from the histories of
+later times and peoples; as the practices of our own early minstrels,
+who sang to the harp heroic narratives versified by themselves to music
+of their own composition: thus uniting the now separate offices of poet,
+composer, vocalist, and instrumentalist. But, without further
+illustration, the common origin and gradual differentiation of Dancing,
+Poetry, and Music will be sufficiently manifest.
+
+The advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is displayed not
+only in the separation of these arts from each other and from religion,
+but also in the multiplied differentiations which each of them
+afterwards undergoes. Not to dwell upon the numberless kinds of dancing
+that have, in course of time, come into use: and not to occupy space in
+detailing the progress of poetry, as seen in the development of the
+various forms of metre, of rhyme, and of general organization; let us
+confine our attention to music as a type of the group. As implied by the
+customs of still extant barbarous races, the first musical instruments
+were, without doubt, percussive--sticks, calabashes, tom-toms--and were
+used simply to mark the time of the dance; and in this constant
+repetition of the same sound, we see music in its most homogeneous form.
+The Egyptians had a lyre with three strings. The early lyre of the
+Greeks had four, constituting their tetrachord. In course of some
+centuries lyres of seven and eight strings were employed; and, by the
+expiration of a thousand years, they had advanced to their "great
+system" of the double octave. Through all which changes there of course
+arose a greater heterogeneity of melody. Simultaneously there came into
+use the different modes--Dorian, Ionian, Phrygian, AEolian, and
+Lydian--answering to our keys; and of these there were ultimately
+fifteen. As yet, however, there was but little heterogeneity in the time
+of their music. Instrumental music being at first merely the
+accompaniment of vocal music, and vocal music being subordinated to
+words,--the singer being also the poet, chanting his own compositions
+and making the lengths of his notes agree with the feet of his
+verses,--there resulted a tiresome uniformity of measure, which, as Dr.
+Burney says, "no resources of melody could disguise." Lacking the
+complex rhythm obtained by our equal bars and unequal notes, the only
+rhythm was that produced by the quantity of the syllables, and was of
+necessity comparatively monotonous. And further, it maybe observed that
+the chant thus resulting, being like recitative, was much less clearly
+differentiated from ordinary speech than is our modern song.
+Nevertheless, in virtue of the extended range of notes in use, the
+variety of modes, the occasional variations of time consequent on
+changes of metre, and the multiplication of instruments, music had,
+towards the close of Greek civilization, attained to considerable
+heterogeneity--not indeed as compared with our music, but as compared
+with that which preceded it. Still, there existed nothing but melody:
+harmony was unknown. It was not until Christian church-music had reached
+some development, that music in parts was evolved; and then it came into
+existence through a very unobtrusive differentiation. Difficult as it
+may be to conceive _a priori_ how the advance from melody to harmony
+could take place without a sudden leap, it is none the less true that it
+did so. The circumstance which prepared the way for it was the
+employment of two choirs singing alternately the same air. Afterwards it
+became the practice--very possibly first suggested by a mistake--for the
+second choir to commence before the first had ceased; thus producing a
+fugue. With the simple airs then in use, a partially-harmonious fugue
+might not improbably thus result: and a very partially-harmonious fugue
+satisfied the ears of that age, as we know from still preserved
+examples. The idea having once been given, the composing of airs
+productive of fugal harmony would naturally grow up, as in some way it
+_did_ grow up, out of this alternate choir-singing. And from the fugue
+to concerted music of two, three, four, and more parts, the transition
+was easy. Without pointing out in detail the increasing complexity that
+resulted from introducing notes of various lengths, from the
+multiplication of keys, from the use of accidentals, from varieties of
+time, and so forth, it needs but to contrast music as it is, with music
+as it was, to see how immense is the increase of heterogeneity. We see
+this if, looking at music in its _ensemble_, we enumerate its many
+different genera and species--if we consider the divisions into vocal,
+instrumental, and mixed; and their subdivisions into music for
+different voices and different instruments--if we observe the many forms
+of sacred music, from the simple hymn, the chant, the canon, motet,
+anthem, &c., up to the oratorio; and the still more numerous forms of
+secular music, from the ballad up to the serenata, from the instrumental
+solo up to the symphony. Again, the same truth is seen on comparing any
+one sample of aboriginal music with a sample of modern music--even an
+ordinary song for the piano; which we find to be relatively very
+heterogeneous, not only in respect of the variety in the pitches and in
+the lengths of the notes, the number of different notes sounding at the
+same instant in company with the voice, and the variations of strength
+with which they are sounded and sung, but in respect of the changes of
+key, the changes of time, the changes of _timbre_ of the voice, and the
+many other modifications of expression. While between the old monotonous
+dance-chant and a grand opera of our own day, with its endless
+orchestral complexities and vocal combinations, the contrast in
+heterogeneity is so extreme that it seems scarcely credible that the one
+should have been the ancestor of the other.
+
+Were they needed, many further illustrations might be cited. Going back
+to the early time when the deeds of the god-king were recorded in
+picture-writings on the walls of temples and palaces, and so constituted
+a rude literature, we might trace the development of Literature through
+phases in which, as in the Hebrew Scriptures, it presents in one work
+theology, cosmogony, history, biography, law, ethics, poetry; down to
+its present heterogeneous development, in which its separated divisions
+and subdivisions are so numerous and varied as to defy complete
+classification. Or we might trace out the evolution of Science;
+beginning with the era in which it was not yet differentiated from Art,
+and was, in union with Art, the handmaid of Religion; passing through
+the era in which the sciences were so few and rudimentary, as to be
+simultaneously cultivated by the same men; and ending with the era in
+which the genera and species are so numerous that few can enumerate
+them, and no one can adequately grasp even one genus. Or we might do the
+like with Architecture, with the Drama, with Dress. But doubtless the
+reader is already weary of illustrations; and our promise has been amply
+fulfilled. Abundant proof has been given that the law of organic
+development formulated by von Baer, is the law of all development. The
+advance from the simple to the complex, through a process of successive
+differentiations, is seen alike in the earliest changes of the Universe
+to which we can reason our way back, and in the earliest changes which
+we can inductively establish; it is seen in the geologic and climatic
+evolution of the Earth; it is seen in the unfolding of every single
+organism on its surface, and in the multiplication of kinds of
+organisms; it is seen in the evolution of Humanity, whether contemplated
+in the civilized individual, or in the aggregate of races; it is seen in
+the evolution of Society in respect alike of its political, its
+religious, and its economical organization; and it is seen in the
+evolution of all those endless concrete and abstract products of human
+activity which constitute the environment of our daily life. From the
+remotest past which Science can fathom, up to the novelties of
+yesterday, that in which progress essentially consists, is the
+transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now, must not this uniformity of procedure be a consequence of some
+fundamental necessity? May we not rationally seek for some all-pervading
+principle which determines this all-pervading process of things? Does
+not the universality of the _law_ imply a universal _cause_?
+
+That we can comprehend such cause, noumenally considered, is not to be
+supposed. To do this would be to solve that ultimate mystery which must
+ever transcend human intelligence. But it still may be possible for us
+to reduce the law of all progress, above set forth, from the condition
+of an empirical generalization, to the condition of a rational
+generalization. Just as it was possible to interpret Kepler's laws as
+necessary consequences of the law of gravitation; so it may be possible
+to interpret this law of progress, in its multiform manifestations, as
+the necessary consequence of some similarly universal principle. As
+gravitation was assignable as the _cause_ of each of the groups of
+phenomena which Kepler generalized; so may some equally simple attribute
+of things be assignable as the cause of each of the groups of phenomena
+generalized in the foregoing pages. We may be able to affiliate all
+these varied evolutions of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous, upon
+certain facts of immediate experience, which, in virtue of endless
+repetition, we regard as necessary.
+
+The probability of a common cause, and the possibility of formulating
+it, being granted, it will be well, first, to ask what must be the
+general characteristics of such cause, and in what direction we ought to
+look for it. We can with certainty predict that it has a high degree of
+abstractness; seeing that it is common to such infinitely-varied
+phenomena. We need not expect to see in it an obvious solution of this
+or that form of progress; because it is equally concerned with forms of
+progress bearing little apparent resemblance to them: its association
+with multiform orders of facts, involves its dissociation from any
+particular order of facts. Being that which determines progress of every
+kind--astronomic, geologic, organic, ethnologic, social, economic,
+artistic, &c.--it must be involved with some fundamental trait displayed
+in common by these; and must be expressible in terms of this fundamental
+trait. The only obvious respect in which all kinds of progress are
+alike, is, that they are modes of _change_; and hence, in some
+characteristic of changes in general, the desired solution will probably
+be found. We may suspect _a priori_ that in some universal law of change
+lies the explanation of this universal transformation of the
+homogeneous into the heterogeneous.
+
+Thus much premised, we pass at once to the statement of the law, which
+is this:--_Every active force produces more than one change--every cause
+produces more than one effect._
+
+To make this proposition comprehensible, a few examples must be given.
+When one body strikes another, that which we usually regard as the
+effect, is a change of position or motion in one or both bodies. But a
+moment's thought shows us that this is a very incomplete view of the
+matter. Besides the visible mechanical result, sound is produced; or, to
+speak accurately, a vibration in one or both bodies, which is
+communicated to the surrounding air; and under some circumstances we
+call this the effect. Moreover, the air has not only been made to
+undulate, but has had currents caused in it by the transit of the
+bodies. Further, there is a disarrangement of the particles of the two
+bodies in the neighbourhood of their point of collision; amounting, in
+some cases, to a visible condensation. Yet more, this condensation is
+accompanied by the disengagement of heat. In some cases a spark--that
+is, light--results, from the incandescence of a portion struck off; and
+sometimes this incandescence is associated with chemical combination.
+Thus, by the mechanical force expended in the collision, at least five,
+and often more, different kinds of changes have been produced. Take,
+again, the lighting of a candle. Primarily this is a chemical change
+consequent on a rise of temperature. The process of combination having
+once been started by extraneous heat, there is a continued formation of
+carbonic acid, water, &c.--in itself a result more complex than the
+extraneous heat that first caused it. But accompanying this process of
+combination there is a production of heat; there is a production of
+light; there is an ascending column of hot gases generated; there are
+inflowing currents set going in the surrounding air. Moreover, the
+complicating of effects does not end here: each of the several changes
+produced becomes the parent of further changes. The carbonic acid given
+off will by and by combine with some base; or under the influence of
+sunshine give up its carbon to the leaf of a plant. The water will
+modify the hygrometric state of the air around; or, if the current of
+hot gases containing it comes against a cold body, will be condensed:
+altering the temperature of the surface it covers. The heat given out
+melts the subjacent tallow, and expands whatever it warms. The light,
+falling on various substances, calls forth from them reactions by which
+its composition is modified; and so divers colours are produced.
+Similarly even with these secondary actions, which may be traced out
+into ever-multiplying ramifications, until they become too minute to be
+appreciated. And thus it is with all changes whatever. No case can be
+named in which an active force does not evolve forces of several kinds,
+and each of these, other groups of forces. Universally the effect is
+more complex than the cause.
+
+Doubtless the reader already foresees the course of our argument. This
+multiplication of effects, which is displayed in every event of to-day,
+has been going on from the beginning; and is true of the grandest
+phenomena of the universe as of the most insignificant. From the law
+that every active force produces more than one change, it is an
+inevitable corollary that during the past there has been an ever-growing
+complication of things. Throughout creation there must have gone on, and
+must still go on, a never-ceasing transformation of the homogeneous into
+the heterogeneous. Let us trace this truth in detail.
+
+Without committing ourselves to it as more than a speculation, though a
+highly probable one, let us again commence with the evolution of the
+Solar System out of a nebulous medium. The hypothesis is that from the
+mutual attraction of the molecules of a diffused mass whose form is
+unsymmetrical, there results not only condensation but rotation. While
+the condensation and the rate of rotation go on increasing, the
+approach of the molecules is necessarily accompanied by an increasing
+temperature. As the temperature rises, light begins to be evolved; and
+ultimately there results a revolving sphere of fluid matter radiating
+intense heat and light--a sun. There are reasons for believing that, in
+consequence of the higher tangential velocity originally possessed by
+the outer parts of the condensing nebulous mass, there will be
+occasional detachments of rotating rings; and that, from the breaking up
+of these nebulous rings, there will arise masses which in the course of
+their condensation repeat the actions of the parent mass, and so produce
+planets and their satellites--an inference strongly supported by the
+still extant rings of Saturn. Should it hereafter be satisfactorily
+shown that planets and satellites were thus generated, a striking
+illustration will be afforded of the highly heterogeneous effects
+produced by the primary homogeneous cause; but it will serve our present
+purpose to point to the fact that from the mutual attraction of the
+particles of an irregular nebulous mass there result condensation,
+rotation, heat, and light.
+
+It follows as a corollary from the Nebular Hypothesis, that the Earth
+must once have been incandescent; and whether the Nebular Hypothesis be
+true or not, this original incandescence of the Earth is now inductively
+established--or, if not established, at least rendered so highly
+probable that it is an accepted geological doctrine. Let us look first
+at the astronomical attributes of this once molten globe. From its
+rotation there result the oblateness of its form, the alternations of
+day and night, and (under the influence of the moon and in a smaller
+degree the sun) the tides, aqueous and atmospheric. From the inclination
+of its axis, there result the many differences of the seasons, both
+simultaneous and successive, that pervade its surface, and from the same
+cause joined with the action of the moon on the equatorial protuberance
+there results the precession of the equinoxes. Thus the multiplication
+of effects is obvious. Several of the differentiations due to the
+gradual cooling of the Earth have been already noticed--as the formation
+of a crust, the solidification of sublimed elements, the precipitation
+of water, &c.,--and we here again refer to them merely to point out that
+they are simultaneous effects of the one cause, diminishing heat. Let us
+now, however, observe the multiplied changes afterwards arising from the
+continuance of this one cause. The cooling of the Earth involves its
+contraction. Hence the solid crust first formed is presently too large
+for the shrinking nucleus; and as it cannot support itself, inevitably
+follows the nucleus. But a spheroidal envelope cannot sink down into
+contact with a smaller internal spheroid, without disruption: it must
+run into wrinkles as the rind of an apple does when the bulk of its
+interior decreases from evaporation. As the cooling progresses and the
+envelope thickens, the ridges consequent on these contractions will
+become greater, rising ultimately into hills and mountains; and the
+later systems of mountains thus produced will not only be higher, as we
+find them to be, but will be longer, as we also find them to be. Thus,
+leaving out of view other modifying forces, we see what immense
+heterogeneity of surface has arisen from the one cause, loss of heat--a
+heterogeneity which the telescope shows us to be paralleled on the face
+of Mars, and which in the moon too, where aqueous and atmospheric
+agencies have been absent, it reveals under a somewhat different form.
+But we have yet to notice another kind of heterogeneity of surface
+similarly and simultaneously caused. While the Earth's crust was still
+thin, the ridges produced by its contraction must not only have been
+small, but the spaces between these ridges must have rested with great
+evenness upon the subjacent liquid spheroid; and the water in those
+arctic and antarctic regions in which it first condensed, must have been
+evenly distributed. But as fast as the crust thickened and gained
+corresponding strength, the lines of fracture from time to time caused
+in it, must have occurred at greater distances apart; the intermediate
+surfaces must have followed the contracting nucleus with less
+uniformity; and there must have resulted larger areas of land and water.
+If any one, after wrapping up an orange in tissue paper, and observing
+not only how small are the wrinkles, but how evenly the intervening
+spaces lie upon the surface of the orange, will then wrap it up in thick
+cartridge-paper, and note both the greater height of the ridges and the
+larger spaces throughout which the paper does not touch the orange, he
+will realize the fact that, as the Earth's solid envelope grew thicker,
+the areas of elevation and depression increased. In place of islands
+homogeneously dispersed amid an all-embracing sea, there must have
+gradually arisen heterogeneous arrangements of continent and ocean. Once
+more, this double change in the extent and in the elevation of the
+lands, involved yet another species of heterogeneity--that of
+coast-line. A tolerably even surface raised out of the ocean must have a
+simple, regular sea-margin; but a surface varied by table-lands and
+intersected by mountain-chains must, when raised out of the ocean, have
+an outline extremely irregular both in its leading features and in its
+details. Thus, multitudinous geological and geographical results are
+slowly brought about by this one cause--the contraction of the Earth.
+
+When we pass from the agency termed igneous, to aqueous and atmospheric
+agencies, we see the like ever-growing complications of effects. The
+denuding actions of air and water, joined with those of changing
+temperature, have, from the beginning, been modifying every exposed
+surface. Oxidation, heat, wind, frost, rain, glaciers, rivers, tides,
+waves, have been unceasingly producing disintegration; varying in kind
+and amount according to local circumstances. Acting upon a tract of
+granite, they here work scarcely an appreciable effect; there cause
+exfoliations of the surface, and a resulting heap of _debris_ and
+boulders; and elsewhere, after decomposing the feldspar into a white
+clay, carry away this and the accompanying quartz and mica, and deposit
+them in separate beds, fluviatile and marine. When the exposed land
+consists of several unlike kinds of sedimentary strata, or igneous
+rocks, or both, denudation produces changes proportionably more
+heterogeneous. The formations being disintegrable in different degrees,
+there follows an increased irregularity of surface. The areas drained by
+different rivers being differently constituted, these rivers carry down
+to the sea different combinations of ingredients; and so sundry new
+strata of unlike compositions are formed. And here we may see very
+simply illustrated, the truth, which we shall presently have to trace
+out in more involved cases, that in proportion to the heterogeneity of
+the object or objects on which any force expends itself, is the
+heterogeneity of the effects. A continent of complex structure, exposing
+many strata irregularly distributed, raised to various levels, tilted up
+at all angles, will, under the same denuding agencies, give origin to
+innumerable and involved results: each district must be differently
+modified; each river must carry down a different kind of detritus; each
+deposit must be differently distributed by the entangled currents, tidal
+and other, which wash the contorted shores; and this multiplication of
+results must manifestly be greatest where the complexity of surface is
+greatest.
+
+Here we might show how the general truth, that every active force
+produces more than one change, is again exemplified in the
+highly-involved flow of the tides, in the ocean currents, in the winds,
+in the distribution of rain, in the distribution of heat, and so forth.
+But not to dwell upon these, let us, for the fuller elucidation of this
+truth in relation to the inorganic world, consider what would be the
+consequences of some extensive cosmical catastrophe--say the subsidence
+of Central America. The immediate results of the disturbance would
+themselves be sufficiently complex. Besides the numberless dislocations
+of strata, the ejections of igneous matter, the propagation of
+earthquake vibrations thousands of miles around, the loud explosions,
+and the escape of gases; there would be the rush of the Atlantic and
+Pacific Oceans to fill the vacant space, the subsequent recoil of
+enormous waves, which would traverse both these oceans and produce
+myriads of changes along their shores, the corresponding atmospheric
+waves complicated by the currents surrounding each volcanic vent, and
+the electrical discharges with which such disturbances are accompanied.
+But these temporary effects would be insignificant compared with the
+permanent ones. The currents of the Atlantic and Pacific would be
+altered in their directions and amounts. The distribution of heat
+achieved by those ocean currents would be different from what it is. The
+arrangement of the isothermal lines, not only on neighbouring
+continents, but even throughout Europe, would be changed. The tides
+would flow differently from what they do now. There would be more or
+less modification of the winds in their periods, strengths, directions,
+qualities. Rain would fall scarcely anywhere at the same times and in
+the same quantities as at present. In short, the meteorological
+conditions thousands of miles off, on all sides, would be more or less
+revolutionized. Thus, without taking into account the infinitude of
+modifications which these changes would produce upon the flora and
+fauna, both of land and sea, the reader will perceive the immense
+heterogeneity of the results wrought out by one force, when that force
+expends itself upon a previously complicated area; and he will draw the
+corollary that from the beginning the complication has advanced at an
+increasing rate.
+
+Before going on to show how organic progress also depends on the law
+that every force produces more than one change, we have to notice the
+manifestation of this law in yet another species of inorganic
+progress--namely, chemical. The same general causes that have wrought
+out the heterogeneity of the Earth, physically considered, have
+simultaneously wrought out its chemical heterogeneity. There is every
+reason to believe that at an extreme heat the elements cannot combine.
+Even under such heat as can be artificially produced, some very strong
+affinities yield, as, for instance, that of oxygen for hydrogen; and the
+great majority of chemical compounds are decomposed at much lower
+temperatures. But without insisting on the highly probable inference,
+that when the Earth was in its first state of incandescence there were
+no chemical combinations at all, it will suffice for our purpose to
+point to the unquestionable fact that the compounds which can exist at
+the highest temperatures, and which must, therefore, have been the first
+that were formed as the Earth cooled, are those of the simplest
+constitutions. The protoxides--including under that head the alkalies,
+earths, &c.--are, as a class, the most stable compounds we know: most of
+them resisting decomposition by any heat we can generate. These are
+combinations of the simplest order--are but one degree less homogeneous
+than the elements themselves. More heterogeneous, less stable, and
+therefore later in the Earth's history, are the deutoxides, tritoxides,
+peroxides, &c.; in which two, three, four, or more atoms of oxygen are
+united with one atom of metal or other element. Higher than these in
+heterogeneity are the hydrates; in which an oxide of hydrogen, united
+with an oxide of some other element, forms a substance whose atoms
+severally contain at least four ultimate atoms of three different kinds.
+Yet more heterogeneous and less stable still are the salts; which
+present us with molecules each made up of five, six, seven, eight, ten,
+twelve, or more atoms, of three, if not more, kinds. Then there are the
+hydrated salts, of a yet greater heterogeneity, which undergo partial
+decomposition at much lower temperatures. After them come the further
+complicated supersalts and double salts, having a stability again
+decreased; and so throughout. Without entering into qualifications for
+which space fails, we believe no chemist will deny it to be a general
+law of these inorganic combinations that, _other things equal_, the
+stability decreases as the complexity increases. When we pass to the
+compounds of organic chemistry, we find this general law still further
+exemplified: we find much greater complexity and much less stability. A
+molecule of albumen, for instance, consists of 482 ultimate atoms of
+five different kinds. Fibrine, still more intricate in constitution,
+contains in each molecule, 298 atoms of carbon, 49 of nitrogen, 2 of
+sulphur, 228 of hydrogen, and 92 of oxygen--in all, 669 atoms; or, more
+strictly speaking, equivalents. And these two substances are so unstable
+as to decompose at quite ordinary temperatures; as that to which the
+outside of a joint of roast meat is exposed. Thus it is manifest that
+the present chemical heterogeneity of the Earth's surface has arisen by
+degrees, as the decrease of heat has permitted; and that it has shown
+itself in three forms--first, in the multiplication of chemical
+compounds; second, in the greater number of different elements contained
+in the more modern of these compounds; and third, in the higher and more
+varied multiples in which these more numerous elements combine.
+
+To say that this advance in chemical heterogeneity is due to the one
+cause, diminution of the Earth's temperature, would be to say too much;
+for it is clear that aqueous and atmospheric agencies have been
+concerned; and further, that the affinities of the elements themselves
+are implied. The cause has all along been a composite one: the cooling
+of the Earth having been simply the most general of the concurrent
+causes, or assemblage of conditions. And here, indeed, it may be
+remarked that in the several classes of facts already dealt with
+(excepting, perhaps, the first), and still more in those with which we
+shall presently deal, the causes are more or less compound; as indeed
+are nearly all causes with which we are acquainted. Scarcely any
+change can rightly be ascribed to one agency alone, to the neglect of
+the permanent or temporary conditions under which only this agency
+produces the change. But as it does not materially affect our argument,
+we prefer, for simplicity's sake, to use throughout the popular mode of
+expression. Perhaps it will be further objected, that to assign loss of
+heat as the cause of any changes, is to attribute these changes not to a
+force, but to the absence of a force. And this is true. Strictly
+speaking, the changes should be attributed to those forces which come
+into action when the antagonist force is withdrawn. But though there is
+inaccuracy in saying that the freezing of water is due to the loss of
+its heat, no practical error arises from it; nor will a parallel laxity
+of expression vitiate our statements respecting the multiplication of
+effects. Indeed, the objection serves but to draw attention to the fact,
+that not only does the exertion of a force produce more than one change,
+but the withdrawal of a force produces more than one change.
+
+Returning to the thread of our exposition, we have next to trace,
+throughout organic progress, this same all-pervading principle. And
+here, where the evolution of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous was
+first observed, the production of many effects by one cause is least
+easy to demonstrate. The development of a seed into a plant, or an ovum
+into an animal, is so gradual, while the forces which determine it are
+so involved, and at the same time so unobtrusive, that it is difficult
+to detect the multiplication of effects which is elsewhere so obvious.
+But, guided by indirect evidence, we may safely conclude that here too
+the law holds. Note, first, how numerous are the changes which any
+marked action works upon an adult organism--a human being, for instance.
+An alarming sound or sight, besides the impressions on the organs of
+sense and the nerves, may produce a start, a scream, a distortion of
+the face, a trembling consequent on general muscular relaxation, a burst
+of perspiration, a rush of blood to the brain, followed possibly by
+arrest of the heart's action and by syncope; and if the subject be
+feeble, an indisposition with its long train of complicated symptoms may
+set in. Similarly in cases of disease. A minute portion of the small-pox
+virus introduced into the system, will, in a severe case, cause, during
+the first stage, rigors, heat of skin, accelerated pulse, furred tongue,
+loss of appetite, thirst, epigastric uneasiness, vomiting, headache,
+pains in the back and limbs, muscular weakness, convulsions, delirium,
+&c.; in the second stage, cutaneous eruption, itching, tingling, sore
+throat, swelled fauces, salivation, cough, hoarseness, dyspnoea, &c.;
+and in the third stage, oedematous inflammations, pneumonia, pleurisy,
+diarrhoea, inflammation of the brain, ophthalmia, erysipelas, &c.:
+each of which enumerated symptoms is itself more or less complex.
+Medicines, special foods, better air, might in like manner be instanced
+as producing multipled results. Now it needs only to consider that the
+many changes thus wrought by one force upon an adult organism, will be
+in part paralleled in an embryo organism, to understand how here also,
+the evolution of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous may be due to
+the production of many effects by one cause. The external heat, which,
+falling on a matter having special proclivities, determines the first
+complications of the germ, may, by acting on these, superinduce further
+complications; upon these still higher and more numerous ones; and so on
+continually: each organ as it is developed serving, by its actions and
+reactions on the rest, to initiate new complexities. The first
+pulsations of the foetal heart must simultaneously aid the unfolding
+of every part. The growth of each tissue, by taking from the blood
+special proportions of elements, must modify the constitution of the
+blood; and so must modify the nutrition of all the other tissues. The
+heart's action, implying as it does a certain waste, necessitates an
+addition to the blood of effete matters, which must influence the rest
+of the system, and perhaps, as some think, cause the formation of
+excretory organs. The nervous connexions established among the viscera
+must further multiply their mutual influences; and so continually. Still
+stronger becomes the probability of this view when we call to mind the
+fact, that the same germ may be evolved into different forms according
+to circumstances. Thus, during its earlier stages, every embryo is
+sexless--becomes either male or female as the balance of forces acting
+on it determines. Again, it is a well-established fact that the larva of
+a working-bee will develop into a queen-bee, if before it is too late,
+its food be changed to that on which the larvae of queen-bees are fed.
+All which instances suggest that the proximate cause of each advance in
+embryonic complication is the action of incident forces upon the
+complication previously existing. Indeed, we may find _a priori_ reason
+to think that the evolution proceeds after this manner. For since no
+germ, animal or vegetal, contains the slightest rudiment or indication
+of the future organism--since the microscope has shown us that the first
+process set up in every fertilized germ, is a process of repeated
+spontaneous fissions ending in the production of a mass of cells, not
+one of which exhibits any special character; there seems no alternative
+but to suppose that the partial organization at any moment existing in a
+growing embryo, is transformed by the agencies acting upon it into the
+succeeding phase of organization, and this into the next, until, through
+ever-increasing complexities, the ultimate form is reached. Not indeed
+that we can thus really explain the production of any plant or animal.
+We are still in the dark respecting those mysterious properties in
+virtue of which the germ, when subject to fit influences, undergoes the
+special changes that begin the series of transformations. All we aim to
+show, is, that given a germ possessing those particular proclivities
+distinguishing the species to which it belongs, and the evolution of an
+organism from it, probably depends on that multiplication of effects
+which we have seen to be the cause of progress in general, so far as we
+have yet traced it.
+
+When, leaving the development of single plants and animals, we pass to
+that of the Earth's flora and fauna, the course of our argument again
+becomes clear and simple. Though, as was admitted in the first part of
+this article, the fragmentary facts Paleontology has accumulated, do not
+clearly warrant us in saying that, in the lapse of geologic time, there
+have been evolved more heterogeneous organisms, and more heterogeneous
+assemblages of organisms, yet we shall now see that there _must_ ever
+have been a tendency towards these results. We shall find that the
+production of many effects by one cause, which as already shown, has
+been all along increasing the physical heterogeneity of the Earth, has
+further involved an increasing heterogeneity in its flora and fauna,
+individually and collectively. An illustration will make this clear.
+Suppose that by a series of upheavals, occurring, as they are now known
+to do, at long intervals, the East Indian Archipelago were to be, step
+by step, raised into a continent, and a chain of mountains formed along
+the axis of elevation. By the first of these upheavals, the plants and
+animals inhabiting Borneo, Sumatra, New Guinea, and the rest, would be
+subjected to slightly modified sets of conditions. The climate in
+general would be altered in temperature, in humidity, and in its
+periodical variations; while the local differences would be multiplied.
+These modifications would affect, perhaps inappreciably, the entire
+flora and fauna of the region. The change of level would produce
+additional modifications: varying in different species, and also in
+different members of the same species, according to their distance from
+the axis of elevation. Plants, growing only on the sea-shore in special
+localities, might become extinct. Others, living only in swamps of a
+certain humidity, would, if they survived at all, probably undergo
+visible changes of appearance. While still greater alterations would
+occur in the plants gradually spreading over the lands newly raised
+above the sea. The animals and insects living on these modified plants,
+would themselves be in some degree modified by change of food, as well
+as by change of climate; and the modification would be more marked
+where, from the dwindling or disappearance of one kind of plant, an
+allied kind was eaten. In the lapse of the many generations arising
+before the next upheaval, the sensible or insensible alterations thus
+produced in each species would become organized--there would be a more
+or less complete adaptation to the new conditions. The next upheaval
+would superinduce further organic changes, implying wider divergences
+from the primary forms; and so repeatedly. But now let it be observed
+that the revolution thus resulting would not be a substitution of a
+thousand more or less modified species for the thousand original
+species; but in place of the thousand original species there would arise
+several thousand species, or varieties, or changed forms. Each species
+being distributed over an area of some extent, and tending continually
+to colonize the new area exposed, its different members would be subject
+to different sets of changes. Plants and animals spreading towards the
+equator would not be affected in the same way as others spreading from
+it. Those spreading towards the new shores would undergo changes unlike
+the changes undergone by those spreading into the mountains. Thus, each
+original race of organisms, would become the root from which diverged
+several races differing more or less from it and from each other; and
+while some of these might subsequently disappear, probably more than one
+would survive in the next geologic period: the very dispersion itself
+increasing the chances of survival. Not only would there be certain
+modifications thus caused by change of physical conditions and food, but
+also in some cases other modifications caused by change of habit. The
+fauna of each island, peopling, step by step, the newly-raised tracts,
+would eventually come in contact with the faunas of other islands; and
+some members of these other faunas would be unlike any creatures before
+seen. Herbivores meeting with new beasts of prey, would, in some cases,
+be led into modes of defence or escape differing from those previously
+used; and simultaneously the beasts of prey would modify their modes of
+pursuit and attack. We know that when circumstances demand it, such
+changes of habit _do_ take place in animals; and we know that if the new
+habits become the dominant ones, they must eventually in some degree
+alter the organization. Observe now, however, a further consequence.
+There must arise not simply a tendency towards the differentiation of
+each race of organisms into several races; but also a tendency to the
+occasional production of a somewhat higher organism. Taken in the mass
+these divergent varieties which have been caused by fresh physical
+conditions and habits of life, will exhibit changes quite indefinite in
+kind and degree; and changes that do not necessarily constitute an
+advance. Probably in most cases the modified type will be neither more
+nor less heterogeneous than the original one. In some cases the habits
+of life adopted being simpler than before, a less heterogeneous
+structure will result: there will be a retrogradation. But it _must_ now
+and then occur, that some division of a species, falling into
+circumstances which give it rather more complex experiences, and demand
+actions somewhat more involved, will have certain of its organs further
+differentiated in proportionately small degrees,--will become slightly
+more heterogeneous. Thus, in the natural course of things, there will
+from time to time arise an increased heterogeneity both of the Earth's
+flora and fauna, and of individual races included in them. Omitting
+detailed explanations, and allowing for the qualifications which cannot
+here be specified, we think it is clear that geological mutations have
+all along tended to complicate the forms of life, whether regarded
+separately or collectively. The same causes which have led to the
+evolution of the Earth's crust from the simple into the complex, have
+simultaneously led to a parallel evolution of the Life upon its surface.
+In this case, as in previous ones, we see that the transformation of the
+homogeneous into the heterogeneous is consequent upon the universal
+principle, that every active force produces more than one change.
+
+The deduction here drawn from the established truths of geology and the
+general laws of life, gains immensely in weight on finding it to be in
+harmony with an induction drawn from direct experience. Just that
+divergence of many races from one race, which we inferred must have been
+continually occurring during geologic time, we know to have occurred
+during the pre-historic and historic periods, in man and domestic
+animals. And just that multiplication of effects which we concluded must
+have produced the first, we see has produced the last. Single causes, as
+famine, pressure of population, war, have periodically led to further
+dispersions of mankind and of dependent creatures: each such dispersion
+initiating new modifications, new varieties of type. Whether all the
+human races be or be not derived from one stock, philology makes it
+clear that whole groups of races now easily distinguishable from each
+other, were originally one race,--that the diffusion of one race into
+different climates and conditions of existence, has produced many
+modified forms of it. Similarly with domestic animals. Though in some
+cases--as that of dogs--community of origin will perhaps be disputed,
+yet in other cases--as that of the sheep or the cattle of our own
+country--it will not be questioned that local differences of climate,
+food, and treatment, have transformed one original breed into numerous
+breeds now become so far distinct as to produce unstable hybrids.
+Moreover, through the complication of effects flowing from single
+causes, we here find, what we before inferred, not only an increase of
+general heterogeneity, but also of special heterogeneity. While of the
+divergent divisions and subdivisions of the human race many have
+undergone changes not constituting an advance; while in some the type
+may have degraded; in others it has become decidedly more heterogeneous.
+The civilized European departs more widely from the vertebrate archetype
+than does the savage. Thus, both the law and the cause of progress,
+which, from lack of evidence, can be but hypothetically substantiated in
+respect of the earlier forms of life on our globe, can be actually
+substantiated in respect of the latest forms.[4]
+
+If the advance of Man towards greater heterogeneity is traceable to the
+production of many effects by one cause, still more clearly may the
+advance of Society towards greater heterogeneity be so explained.
+Consider the growth of an industrial organization. When, as must
+occasionally happen, some member of a tribe displays unusual aptitude
+for making an article of general use--a weapon, for instance--which was
+before made by each man for himself, there arises a tendency towards the
+differentiation of that member into a maker of such weapon. His
+companions--warriors and hunters all of them,--severally feel the
+importance of having the best weapons that can be made; and are
+therefore certain to offer strong inducements to this skilled individual
+to make weapons for them. He, on the other hand, having not only an
+unusual faculty, but an unusual liking, for making such weapons (the
+talent and the desire for any occupation being commonly associated), is
+predisposed to fulfil each commission on the offer of an adequate
+reward: especially as his love of distinction is also gratified and his
+living facilitated. This first specialization of function, once
+commenced, tends ever to become more decided. On the side of the
+weapon-maker practice gives increased skill--increased superiority to
+his products. On the side of his clients, cessation of practice entails
+decreased skill. Thus the influences which determine this division of
+labour grow stronger in both ways; and the incipient heterogeneity is,
+on the average of cases, likely to become permanent for that generation
+if no longer. This process not only differentiates the social mass into
+two parts, the one monopolizing, or almost monopolizing, the performance
+of a certain function, and the other losing the habit, and in some
+measure the power, of performing that function; but it tends to initiate
+other differentiations. The advance described implies the introduction
+of barter,--the maker of weapons has, on each occasion, to be paid in
+such other articles as he agrees to take in exchange. He will not
+habitually take in exchange one kind of article, but many kinds. He does
+not want mats only, or skins, or fishing-gear, but he wants all these,
+and on each occasion will bargain for the particular things he most
+needs. What follows? If among his fellows there exist any slight
+differences of skill in the manufacture of these various things, as
+there are almost sure to do, the weapon-maker will take from each one
+the thing which that one excels in making: he will exchange for mats
+with him whose mats are superior, and will bargain for the
+fishing-gear of him who has the best. But he who has bartered away his
+mats or his fishing-gear, must make other mats or fishing-gear for
+himself; and in so doing must, in some degree, further develop his
+aptitude. Thus it results that the small specialities of faculty
+possessed by various members of the tribe, will tend to grow more
+decided. And whether or not there ensue distinct differentiations of
+other individuals into makers of particular articles, it is clear that
+incipient differentiations take place throughout the tribe: the one
+original cause produces not only the first dual effect, but a number of
+secondary dual effects, like in kind, but minor in degree. This process,
+of which traces may be seen among schoolboys, cannot well produce
+lasting effects in an unsettled tribe; but where there grows up a fixed
+and multiplying community, such differentiations become permanent, and
+increase with each generation. The enhanced demand for every commodity,
+intensifies the functional activity of each specialized person or class;
+and this renders the specialization more definite where it already
+exists, and establishes it where it is but nascent. By increasing the
+pressure on the means of subsistence, a larger population again augments
+these results; seeing that each person is forced more and more to
+confine himself to that which he can do best, and by which he can gain
+most. Presently, under these same stimuli, new occupations arise.
+Competing workers, ever aiming to produce improved articles,
+occasionally discover better processes or raw materials. The
+substitution of bronze for stone entails on him who first makes it a
+great increase of demand; so that he or his successor eventually finds
+all his time occupied in making the bronze for the articles he sells,
+and is obliged to depute the fashioning of these articles to others;
+and, eventually, the making of bronze, thus differentiated from a
+pre-existing occupation, becomes an occupation by itself. But now mark
+the ramified changes which follow this change. Bronze presently
+replaces stone, not only in the articles it was first used for, but in
+many others--in arms, tools, and utensils of various kinds: and so
+affects the manufacture of them. Further, it affects the processes which
+these utensils subserve, and the resulting products,--modifies
+buildings, carvings, personal decorations. Yet again, it sets going
+manufactures which were before impossible, from lack of a material fit
+for the requisite implements. And all these changes react on the
+people--increase their manipulative skill, their intelligence, their
+comfort,--refine their habits and tastes. Thus the evolution of a
+homogeneous society into a heterogeneous one, is clearly consequent on
+the general principle, that many effects are produced by one cause.
+
+Space permitting, we might show how the localization oL special
+industries in special parts of a kingdom, as well as the minute
+subdivision of labour in the making of each commodity, are similarly
+determined. Or, turning to a somewhat different order of illustrations,
+we might dwell on the multitudinous changes--material, intellectual,
+moral,--caused by printing; or the further extensive series of changes
+wrought by gunpowder. But leaving the intermediate phases of social
+development, let us take a few illustrations from its most recent and
+its passing phases. To trace the effects of steam-power, in its manifold
+applications to mining, navigation, and manufactures of all kinds, would
+carry us into unmanageable detail. Let us confine ourselves to the
+latest embodiment of steam power--the locomotive engine. This, as the
+proximate cause of our railway system, has changed the face of the
+country, the course of trade, and the habits of the people. Consider,
+first, the complicated sets of changes that precede the making of every
+railway--the provisional arrangements, the meetings, the registration,
+the trial section, the parliamentary survey, the lithographed plans, the
+books of reference, the local deposits and notices, the application to
+Parliament, the passing Standing Orders Committee, the first, second,
+and third readings: each of which brief heads indicates a multiplicity
+of transactions, and the extra development of sundry occupations--as
+those of engineers, surveyors, lithographers, parliamentary agents,
+share-brokers; and the creation of sundry others--as those of
+traffic-takers, reference-takers. Consider, next, the yet more marked
+changes implied in railway construction--the cuttings, embankings,
+tunnellings, diversions of roads; the building of bridges and stations,
+the laying down of ballast, sleepers, and rails; the making of engines,
+tenders, carriages, and waggons: which processes, acting on numerous
+trades, increase the importation of timber, the quarrying of stone, the
+manufacture of iron, the mining of coal, the burning of bricks;
+institute a variety of special manufactures weekly advertised in the
+_Railway Times_; and, finally, open the way to sundry new occupations,
+as those of drivers, stokers, cleaners, plate-layers, &c., &c. And then
+consider the changes, still more numerous and involved, which railways
+in action produce on the community at large. Business agencies are
+established where previously they would not have paid; goods are
+obtained from remote wholesale houses instead of near retail ones; and
+commodities are used which distance once rendered inaccessible. Again,
+the diminished cost of carriage tends to specialize more than ever the
+industries of different districts--to confine each manufacture to the
+parts in which, from local advantages, it can be best carried on.
+Further, the fall in freights, facilitating distribution, equalizes
+prices, and also, on the average, lowers prices: thus bringing divers
+articles within the means of those before unable to buy them, and so
+increasing their comforts and improving their habits. At the same time
+the practice of travelling is immensely extended. People who never
+before dreamed of it, take trips to the sea; visit their distant
+relations; make tours; and so we are benefited in body, feelings, and
+ideas. The more prompt transmission of letters and of news produces
+other marked changes--makes the pulse of the nation faster. Once more,
+there arises a wide dissemination of cheap literature through railway
+book-stalls, and of advertisements in railway carriages: both of them
+aiding ulterior progress. And the countless changes here briefly
+indicated are consequent on the invention of the locomotive engine. The
+social organism has been rendered more heterogeneous in virtue of the
+many new occupations introduced, and the many old ones further
+specialized; prices of nearly all things in every place have been
+altered; each trader has modified his way of doing business; and every
+person has been affected in his actions, thoughts, emotions.
+
+Illustrations to the same effect might be indefinitely accumulated, but
+they are needless. The only further fact demanding notice, is, that we
+here see still more clearly the truth before pointed out, that in
+proportion as the area on which any force expends itself becomes
+heterogeneous, the results are in a yet higher degree multiplied in
+number and kind. While among the simple tribes to whom it was first
+known, caoutchouc caused but few changes, among ourselves the changes
+have been so many and varied that the history of them occupies a
+volume.[5] Upon the small, homogeneous community inhabiting one of the
+Hebrides, the electric telegraph would produce, were it used, scarcely
+any results; but in England the results it produces are multitudinous.
+The comparatively simple organization under which our ancestors lived
+five centuries ago, could have undergone but few modifications from an
+event like the recent one at Canton; but now, the legislative decision
+respecting it sets up many hundreds of complex modifications, each of
+which will be the parent of numerous future ones.
+
+Space permitting, we could willingly have pursued the argument in
+relation to all the subtler results of civilization. As before we showed
+that the law of progress to which the organic and inorganic worlds
+conform, is also conformed to by Language, the plastic arts, Music, &c.;
+so might we here show that the cause which we have hitherto found to
+determine progress holds in these cases also. Instances might be given
+proving how, in Science, an advance of one division presently advances
+other divisions--how Astronomy has been immensely forwarded by
+discoveries in Optics, while other optical discoveries have initiated
+Microscopic Anatomy, and greatly aided the growth of Physiology--how
+Chemistry has indirectly increased our knowledge of Electricity,
+Magnetism, Biology, Geology--how Electricity has reacted on Chemistry
+and Magnetism, and has developed our views of Light and Heat. In
+Literature the same truth might be exhibited in the manifold effects of
+the primitive mystery-play, as originating the modern drama, which has
+variously branched; or in the still multiplying forms of periodical
+literature which have descended from the first newspaper, and which have
+severally acted and reacted on other forms of literature and on each
+other. The influence which a new school of Painting--as that of the
+pre-Raphaelites--exercises upon other schools; the hints which all kinds
+of pictorial art are deriving from Photography; the complex results of
+new critical doctrines, as those of Mr. Ruskin, might severally be dwelt
+upon as displaying the like multiplication of effects.
+
+But we venture to think our case is already made out. The imperfections
+of statement which brevity has necessitated, do not, we believe,
+invalidate the propositions laid down. The qualifications here and there
+demanded would not, if made, affect the inferences. Though, in tracing
+the genesis of progress, we have frequently spoken of complex causes as
+if they were simple ones; it still remains true that such causes are far
+less complex than their results. Detailed criticisms do not affect our
+main position. Endless facts go to show that every kind of progress is
+from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous; and that it is so because
+each change is followed by many changes. And it is significant that
+where the facts are most accessible and abundant, there these truths are
+most manifest.
+
+However, to avoid committing ourselves to more than is yet proved, we
+must be content with saying that such are the law and the cause of all
+progress that is known to us. Should the Nebular Hypothesis ever be
+established, then it will become manifest that the Universe at large,
+like every organism, was once homogeneous; that as a whole, and in every
+detail, it has unceasingly advanced towards greater heterogeneity. It
+will be seen that as in each event of to-day, so from the beginning, the
+decomposition of every expended force into several forces has been
+perpetually producing a higher complication; that the increase of
+heterogeneity so brought about is still going on and must continue to go
+on; and that thus progress is not an accident, not a thing within human
+control, but a beneficent necessity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few words must be added on the ontological bearings of our argument.
+Probably not a few will conclude that here is an attempted solution of
+the great questions with which Philosophy in all ages has perplexed
+itself. Let none thus deceive themselves. After all that has been said,
+the ultimate mystery remains just as it was. The explanation of that
+which is explicable, does but bring out into greater clearness the
+inexplicableness of that which remains behind. Little as it seems to do
+so, fearless inquiry tends continually to give a firmer basis to all
+true Religion. The timid sectarian, obliged to abandon one by one the
+superstitions bequeathed to him, and daily finding his cherished beliefs
+more and more shaken, secretly fears that all things may some day be
+explained; and has a corresponding dread of Science: thus evincing the
+profoundest of all infidelity--the fear lest the truth be bad. On the
+other hand, the sincere man of science, content to follow wherever the
+evidence leads him, becomes by each new inquiry more profoundly
+convinced that the Universe is an insoluble problem. Alike in the
+external and the internal worlds, he sees himself in the midst of
+ceaseless changes, of which he can discover neither beginning nor end.
+If, tracing back the evolution of things, he allows himself to entertain
+the hypothesis that all matter once existed in a diffused form, he finds
+it impossible to conceive how this came to be so; and equally, if he
+speculates on the future, he can assign no limit to the grand succession
+of phenomena ever unfolding themselves before him. Similarly, if he
+looks inward, he perceives that both terminations of the thread of
+consciousness are beyond his grasp: he cannot remember when or how
+consciousness commenced, and he cannot examine the consciousness at any
+moment existing; for only a state of consciousness which is already past
+can become the object of thought, and never one which is passing. When,
+again, he turns from the succession of phenomena, external or internal,
+to their essential nature, he is equally at fault. Though he may succeed
+in resolving all properties of objects into manifestations of force, he
+is not thereby enabled to conceive what force is; but finds, on the
+contrary, that the more he thinks about it, the more he is baffled.
+Similarly, though analysis of mental actions may finally bring him down
+to sensations as the original materials out of which all thought is
+woven, he is none the forwarder; for he cannot in the least comprehend
+sensation. Inward and outward things he thus discovers to be alike
+inscrutable in their ultimate genesis and nature. He sees that the
+Materialist and Spiritualist controversy is a mere war of words; the
+disputants being equally absurd--each believing he understands that
+which it is impossible for any man to understand. In all directions his
+investigations eventually bring him face to face with the unknowable;
+and he ever more clearly perceives it to be the unknowable. He learns at
+once the greatness and the littleness of human intellect--its power in
+dealing with all that comes within the range of experience; its
+impotence in dealing with all that transcends experience. He feels more
+vividly than any others can feel, the utter incomprehensibleness of the
+simplest fact, considered in itself. He alone truly _sees_ that absolute
+knowledge is impossible. He alone _knows_ that under all things there
+lies an impenetrable mystery.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 2: Since this was written (in 1857) the advance of
+paleontological discovery, especially in America, has shown
+conclusively, in respect of certain groups of vertebrates, that higher
+types have arisen by modifications of lower; so that, in common with
+others, Prof. Huxley, to whom the above allusion is made, now admits, or
+rather asserts, biological progression, and, by implication, that there
+have arisen more heterogeneous organic forms and a more heterogeneous
+assemblage of organic forms.]
+
+[Footnote 3: For detailed proof of these assertions see essay on
+"Manners and Fashion."]
+
+[Footnote 4: The argument concerning organic evolution contained in this
+paragraph and the one preceding it, stands verbatim as it did when first
+published in the _Westminster Review_ for April, 1857. I have thus left
+it without the alteration of a word that it may show the view I then
+held concerning the origin of species. The sole cause recognized is that
+of direct adaptation of constitution to conditions consequent on
+inheritance of the modifications of structure resulting from use and
+disuse. There is no recognition of that further cause disclosed in Mr.
+Darwin's work, published two and a half years later--the indirect
+adaptation resulting from the natural selection of favourable
+variations. The multiplication of effects is, however, equally
+illustrated in whatever way the adaptation to changing conditions is
+effected, or if it is effected in both ways, as I hold. I may add that
+there is indicated the view that the succession of organic forms is not
+serial but proceeds by perpetual divergence and re-divergence--that
+there has been a continual "divergence of many races from one race":
+each species being a "root" from which several other species branch out;
+and the growth of a tree being thus the implied symbol.]
+
+[Footnote 5: "Personal Narrative of the Origin of the Caoutchouc, or
+India-Rubber Manufacture in England." By Thomas Hancock.]
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSIOLOGY.
+
+    [_First published in_ The National Review _for October,_ 1857_,
+    under the title of "The Ultimate Laws of Physiology". The title
+    "Transcendental Physiology", which the editor did not approve, was
+    restored when the essay was re-published with others in_ 1857.]
+
+
+The title Transcendental Anatomy is used to distinguish that division of
+biological science which treats, not of the structures of individual
+organisms considered separately, but of the general principles of
+structure common to vast and varied groups of organisms,--the unity of
+plan discernible throughout multitudinous species, genera, and orders,
+which differ widely in appearance. And here, under the head of
+Transcendental Physiology, we purpose putting together sundry laws of
+development and function which hold not of particular kinds or classes
+of organisms, but of all organisms: laws, some of which have not, we
+believe, been hitherto enunciated.
+
+By way of unobtrusively introducing the general reader to biological
+truths of this class, let us begin by noticing one or two with which he
+is familiar. Take first, the relation between the activity of an organ
+and its growth. This is a universal relation. It holds, not only of a
+bone, a muscle, a nerve, an organ of sense, a mental faculty; but of
+every gland, every viscus, every element of the body. It is seen, not in
+man only, but in each animal which affords us adequate opportunity of
+tracing it. Always providing that the performance of function is not so
+excessive as to produce disorder, or to exceed the repairing powers
+either of the system at large or of the particular agencies by which
+nutriment is brought to the organ,--always providing this, it is a law
+of organized bodies that, other things equal, development varies as
+function. On this law are based all maxims and methods of right
+education, intellectual, moral, and physical; and when statesmen are
+wise enough to see it, this law will be found to underlie all right
+legislation.
+
+Another truth co-extensive with the organic world, is that of hereditary
+transmission. It is not, as commonly supposed, that hereditary
+transmission is exemplified merely in re-appearance of the family
+peculiarities displayed by immediate or remote progenitors. Nor does the
+law of hereditary transmission comprehend only such more general facts
+as that modified plants or animals become the parents of permanent
+varieties; and that new kinds of potatoes, new breeds of sheep, new
+races of men, have been thus originated. These are but minor
+exemplifications of the law. Understood in its entirety, the law is that
+each plant or animal produces others of like kind with itself: the
+likeness of kind consisting not so much in the repetition of individual
+traits as in the assumption of the same general structure. This truth
+has been made by daily illustration so familiar as nearly to have lost
+its significance. That wheat produces wheat,--that existing oxen are
+descended from ancestral oxen,--that every unfolding organism ultimately
+takes the form of the class, order, genus, and species from which it
+sprang; is a fact which, by force of repetition, has assumed in our
+minds the character of a necessity. It is in this, however, that the law
+of hereditary transmission is principally displayed; the phenomena
+commonly named as exemplifying it being quite subordinate
+manifestations. And the law, as thus understood, is universal. Not
+forgetting the apparent, but only apparent, exceptions presented by the
+strange class of phenomena known as "alternate generation," the truth
+that like produces like is common to all types of organisms.
+
+Let us take next a universal physiological law of a less conspicuous
+kind. To the ordinary observer, it seems that the multiplication of
+organisms proceeds in various ways. He sees that the young of the higher
+animals when born resemble their parents; that birds lay eggs, which
+they foster and hatch; that fish deposit spawn and leave it. Among
+plants, he finds that while in some cases new individuals grow from
+seeds only, in other cases they also grow from tubers; that by certain
+plants layers are sent out, take root, and develop new individuals; and
+that many plants can be reproduced from cuttings. Further, in the mould
+that quickly covers stale food, and the infusoria that soon swarm in
+water exposed to air and light, he sees a mode of generation which,
+seeming inexplicable, he is apt to consider "spontaneous." The reader of
+popular science thinks the modes of reproduction still more various. He
+learns that whole tribes of creatures multiply by gemmation--by a
+development from the body of the parent of buds which, after unfolding
+into the parental form, separate and lead independent lives. Concerning
+microscopic forms of both animal and vegetal life, he reads that the
+ordinary mode of multiplication is by spontaneous fission--a splitting
+up of the original individual into two or more individuals, which by and
+by severally repeat the process. Still more remarkable are the cases in
+which, as in the _Aphis_, an egg gives rise to an imperfect female, from
+which other imperfect females are born viviparously, grow, and in their
+turns bear other imperfect females; and so on for eight, ten, or more
+generations, until finally, perfect males and females are viviparously
+produced. But now under all these, and many more, modified modes of
+multiplication, the physiologist finds complete uniformity. The
+starting-point, not only of every higher animal or plant, but of every
+clan of organisms which by fission or gemmation have sprung from a
+single organism, is always a spore, seed, or ovum. The millions of
+infusoria or of aphides which, by sub-division or gemmation, have
+proceeded from one individual; the countless plants which have been
+successively propagated from one original plant by cuttings or tubers;
+are, in common with the highest creature, primarily descended from a
+fertilized germ. And in all cases--in the humblest alga as in the oak,
+in the protozoon as in the mammal--this fertilized germ results from the
+union of the contents of two cells. Whether, as among the lowest forms
+of life, these two cells are seemingly identical in nature; or whether,
+as among higher forms, they are distinguishable into sperm-cell and
+germ-cell; it remains throughout true that from their combination
+results the mass out of which is evolved a new organism or new series of
+organisms. That this law is without exception we are not prepared to
+say; for in the case of the _Aphis_ certain experiments are thought to
+imply that under special conditions the descendants of an original
+individual may continue multiplying for ever, without further
+fecundation. But we know of no case where it _actually is_ so; for
+although there are certain plants of which the seeds have never been
+seen, it is more probable that our observations are in fault than that
+these plants are exceptions. And until we find undoubted exceptions, the
+above-stated induction must stand. Here, then, we have another of the
+truths of Transcendental Physiology: a truth which, so far as we know,
+_transcends_ all distinctions of genus, order, class, kingdom, and
+applies to every living thing.
+
+Yet another generalization of like universality expresses the process of
+organic development. To the ordinary observer there seems no unity in
+this. No obvious parallelism exists between the unfolding of a plant and
+the unfolding of an animal. There is no manifest similarity between the
+development of a mammal, which proceeds without break from its first to
+its last stage, and that of an insect, which is divided into
+strongly-marked stages--egg, larva, pupa, imago. Nevertheless it is now
+an established fact, that all organisms are evolved after one general
+method. At the outset the germ of every plant or animal is relatively
+homogeneous; and advance towards maturity is advance towards greater
+heterogeneity. Each organized thing commences as an almost structureless
+mass, and reaches its ultimate complexity by the establishment of
+distinctions upon distinctions,--by the divergence of tissues from
+tissues and organs from organs. Here, then, we have yet another
+biological law of transcendent generality.
+
+Having thus recognized the scope of Transcendental Physiology as
+presented in its leading truths, we are prepared for the considerations
+that are to follow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And first, returning to the last of the great generalizations above
+given, let us inquire more nearly how this change from the homogeneous
+to the heterogeneous is carried on. Usually it is said to result from
+successive differentiations. This, however, cannot be considered a
+complete account of the process. During the evolution of an organism
+there occur, not only separations of parts, but coalescences of parts.
+There is not only segregation, but aggregation. The heart, at first a
+simple pulsating blood-vessel, by and by twists upon itself and becomes
+integrated. The bile-cells constituting the rudimentary liver, do not
+merely diverge from the surface of the intestine in which they at first
+form a simple layer; but they simultaneously consolidate into a definite
+organ. And the gradual concentration seen in these and other cases is a
+part of the developmental process--a part which, though more or less
+recognized by Milne-Edwards and others, does not seem to have been
+included as an essential element in it.
+
+This progressive integration, manifest alike when tracing up the several
+stages passed through by every embryo, and when ascending from the lower
+organic forms to the higher, may be most conveniently studied under
+several heads. Let us consider first what may be called _longitudinal
+integration_.
+
+The lower _Annulosa_--worms, myriapods, &c.--are characterized by the
+great numbers of segments of which they respectively consist, reaching
+in some cases to several hundreds; but as we advance to the higher
+_Annulosa_--centipedes, crustaceans, insects, spiders,--we find these
+numbers greatly reduced, down to twenty-two, thirteen, and even fewer;
+and accompanying this there is a shortening or integration of the whole
+body, reaching its extreme in crabs and spiders. Similarly with the
+development of an individual crustacean or insect. The thorax of a
+lobster, which, in the adult, forms, with the head, one compact box
+containing the viscera, is made up by the union of a number of segments
+which in the embryo were separable. The thirteen distinct divisions seen
+in the body of a caterpillar, become further integrated in the
+butterfly: several segments are consolidated to form the thorax, and the
+abdominal segments are more aggregated than they originally were. The
+like truth is seen when we pass to the internal organs. In the lower
+annulose forms, and in the larvae of the higher ones, the alimentary
+canal consists either of a tube that is uniform from end to end, or else
+bulges into a succession of stomachs, one to each segment; but in the
+developed forms there is a single well-defined stomach. In the nervous,
+vascular, and respiratory systems a parallel concentration may be
+traced. Again, in the development of the _Vertebrata_ we have sundry
+examples of longitudinal integration. The coalescence of several
+segmental groups of bones to form the skull is one instance of it. It is
+further illustrated in the _os coccygis_, which results from the fusion
+of a number of caudal vertebrae. And in the consolidation of the sacral
+vertebrae of a bird it is also well exemplified.
+
+That which we may distinguish as _transverse integration_, is well
+illustrated among the _Annulosa_ in the development of the nervous
+system. Leaving out those simple forms which do not present distinct
+ganglia, it is to be observed that the lower annulose animals, in common
+with the larvae of the higher, are severally characterized by a double
+chain of ganglia running from end to end of the body; while in the more
+advanced annulose animals this double chain becomes a single chain. Mr.
+Newport has described the course of this concentration in insects; and
+by Rathke it has been traced in crustaceans. In the early stages of the
+_Astacus fluviatilis_, or common cray-fish, there is a pair of separate
+ganglia to each ring. Of the fourteen pairs belonging to the head and
+thorax, the three pairs in advance of the mouth consolidate into one
+mass to form the brain, or cephalic ganglion. Meanwhile out of the
+remainder, the first six pairs severally unite in the median line, while
+the rest remain more or less separate. Of these six double ganglia thus
+formed, the anterior four coalesce into one mass; the remaining two
+coalesce into another mass; and then these two masses coalesce into one.
+Here we see longitudinal and transverse integration going on
+simultaneously; and in the highest crustaceans they are both carried
+still further. The _Vertebrata_ exhibit this transverse integration in
+the development of the generative system. The lowest of the
+mammalia--the _Monotremata_--in common with birds, have oviducts which
+towards their lower extremities are dilated into cavities severally
+performing in an imperfect way the function of a uterus. "In the
+_Marsupialia_, there is a closer approximation of the two lateral sets
+of organs on the median line; for the oviducts converge towards one
+another and meet (without coalescing) on the median line; so that their
+uterine dilatations are in contact with each other, forming a true
+'double uterus.' ... As we ascend the series of 'placental' mammals, we
+find the lateral coalescence becoming gradually more and more
+complete.... In many of the _Rodentia_, the uterus still remains
+completely divided into two lateral halves; whilst in others, these
+coalesce at their lower portion, forming a rudiment of the true 'body'
+of the uterus in the Human subject. This part increases at the expense
+of the lateral 'cornua' in the higher Herbivora and Carnivora; but even
+in the lower Quadrumana, the uterus is somewhat cleft at its
+summit."[6] And this process of transverse integration, which is still
+more striking when observed in its details, is accompanied by parallel
+though less important changes in the opposite sex. Once more; in the
+increasing commissural connexion of the cerebral hemispheres, which,
+though separate in the lower vertebrata, become gradually more united in
+the higher, we have another instance. And further ones of a different
+order, but of like general implication, are supplied by the vascular
+system.
+
+Now it seems to us that the various kinds of integration here
+exemplified, which are commonly set down as so many independent
+phenomena, ought to be generalized, and included in the formula
+describing the process of development. The fact that in an adult crab,
+many pairs of ganglia originally separate have become fused into a
+single mass, is a fact only second in significance to the
+differentiation of its alimentary canal into stomach and intestine. That
+in the higher _Annulosa_, a single heart replaces the string of
+rudimentary hearts constituting the dorsal blood-vessel in the lower
+_Annulosa_, (reaching in one species to the number of one hundred and
+sixty), is a truth as much needing to be comprised in the history of
+evolution, as is the formation of a respiratory surface by a branched
+expansion of the skin. A right conception of the genesis of a vertebral
+column, includes not only the differentiations from which result the
+_chorda dorsalis_ and the vertebral segments imbedded in it; but quite
+as much it includes the coalescence of numerous vertebral processes with
+their respective vertebral bodies. The changes in virtue of which
+several things become one, demand recognition equally with those in
+virtue of which one thing becomes several. Evidently, then, the current
+statement which ascribes the developmental progress to differentiations
+alone, is incomplete. Adequately to express the facts, we must say
+that the transition from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is carried
+on by differentiations and accompanying integrations.
+
+It may not be amiss here to ask--What is the meaning of these
+integrations? The evidence seems to show that they are in some way
+dependent on community of function. The eight segments which coalesce to
+make the head of a centipede, jointly protect the cephalic ganglion, and
+afford a solid fulcrum for the jaws, &c. The many bones which unite to
+form a vertebral skull have like uses. In the consolidation of the
+several pieces which constitute a mammalian pelvis, and in the
+anchylosis of from ten to nineteen vertebrae in the sacrum of a bird, we
+have kindred instances of the integration of parts which transfer the
+weight of the body to the legs. The more or less extensive fusion of the
+tibia with the fibula and the radius with the ulna in the ungulated
+mammals, whose habits require only partial rotations of the limbs, is a
+fact of like meaning. And all the instances lately given--the
+concentration of ganglia, the replacement of many pulsating blood-sacs
+by fewer and finally by one, the fusion of two uteri into a single
+uterus--have the same implication. Whether, as in some cases, the
+integration is merely a consequence of the growth which eventually
+brings into contact adjacent parts performing similar duties; or
+whether, as in other cases, there is an actual approximation of these
+parts before their union; or whether, as in yet other cases, the
+integration is of that indirect kind which arises when, out of a number
+of like organs, one, or a group, discharges an ever-increasing share of
+the common function, and so grows while the rest dwindle and
+disappear;--the general fact remains the same, that there is a tendency
+to the unification of parts having similar duties.
+
+The tendency, however, acts under limiting conditions; and recognition
+of them will explain some apparent exceptions. In the human foetus, as
+in the lower vertebrata, the eyes are placed one on each side of the
+head. During evolution they become relatively nearer, and at birth are
+in front; though they are still, in the European infant as in the adult
+Mongol, proportionately further apart than they afterwards become. But
+this approximation shows no signs of further increase. Two reasons
+suggest themselves. One is that the two eyes have not quite the same
+function, since they are directed to slightly-different aspects of each
+object looked at; and, since the resulting binocular vision has an
+advantage over monocular vision, there results a check upon further
+approach towards identity of function and unity of structure. The other
+reason is that the interposed structures do not admit of any nearer
+approach. For the orbits of the eyes to be brought closer together,
+would imply a decrease in the olfactory chambers; and as these are
+probably not larger than is demanded by their present functional
+activity, no decrease can take place. Again, if we trace up the external
+organs of smell through fishes,[7] reptiles, ungulate mammals and
+unguiculate mammals, to man, we perceive a general tendency to
+coalescence in the median line; and on comparing the savage with the
+civilized, or the infant with the adult, we see this approach of the
+nostrils carried furthest in the most perfect of the species. But since
+the septum which divides them has the function both of an evaporating
+surface for the lachrymal secretion, and of a ramifying surface for a
+nerve ancillary to that of smell, it does not disappear entirely: the
+integration remains incomplete. These and other like instances do not
+however militate against the hypothesis. They merely show that the
+tendency is sometimes antagonized by other tendencies. Bearing in mind
+which qualification, we may say, that as differentiation of parts is
+connected with difference of function, so there appears to be a
+connexion between integration of parts and sameness of function.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Closely related to the general truth that the evolution of all organisms
+is carried on by combined differentiations and integrations, is another
+general truth, which physiologists appear not to have recognized. When
+we look at the organic world as a whole, we may observe that, on passing
+from lower to higher forms, we pass to forms which are not only
+characterized by a greater differentiation of parts, but are at the same
+time more completely differentiated from the surrounding medium. This
+truth may be contemplated under various aspects.
+
+In the first place it is illustrated in _structure_. The advance from
+the homogeneous to the heterogeneous itself involves an increasing
+distinction from the inorganic world. In the lowest _Protozoa_, as some
+of the Rhizopods, we have a homogeneity approaching to that of air,
+water, or earth; and the ascent to organisms of greater and greater
+complexity of structure, is an ascent to organisms which are in that
+respect more strongly contrasted with the relatively structureless
+masses in the environment.
+
+In _form_ again we see the same truth. A general characteristic of
+inorganic matter is its indefiniteness of form, and this is also a
+characteristic of the lower organisms, as compared with the higher.
+Speaking generally, plants are less definite than animals, both in shape
+and size--admit of greater modifications from variations of position and
+nutrition. Among animals, the _Amoeba_ and its allies are not only
+almost structureless, but are amorphous; and the irregular form is
+constantly changing. Of the organisms resulting from the aggregation of
+amoeba-like creatures, we find that while some assume a certain
+definiteness of form, in their compound shells at least, others, as the
+Sponges, are irregular. In the Zoophytes and in the _Polyzoa_, we see
+compound organisms, most of which have modes of growth not more
+determinate than those of plants. But among the higher animals, we find
+not only that the mature shape of each species is quite definite, but
+that the individuals of each species differ very little in size.
+
+A parallel increase of contrast is seen in _chemical composition_. With
+but few exceptions, and those only partial ones, the lowest animal and
+vegetal forms are inhabitants of the water; and water is almost their
+sole constituent. Dessicated _Protophyta_ and _Protozoa_ shrink into
+mere dust; and among the acalephes we find but a few grains of solid
+matter to a pound of water. The higher aquatic plants, in common with
+the higher aquatic animals, possessing as they do much greater tenacity
+of substance, also contain a greater proportion of the organic elements;
+and so are chemically more unlike their medium. And when we pass to the
+superior classes of organisms--land plants and land animals--we find
+that, chemically considered, they have little in common either with the
+earth on which they stand or the air which surrounds them.
+
+In _specific gravity_, too, we may note the like. The very simplest
+forms, in common with the spores and gemmules of the higher ones, are as
+nearly as may be of the same specific gravity as the water in which they
+float; and though it cannot be said that among aquatic creatures
+superior specific gravity is a standard of general superiority, yet we
+may fairly say that the superior orders of them, when divested of the
+appliances by which their specific gravity is regulated, differ more
+from water in their relative weights than do the lower. In terrestrial
+organisms, the contrast becomes extremely marked. Trees and plants, in
+common with insects, reptiles, mammals, birds, are all of a specific
+gravity considerably less than the earth and immensely greater than the
+air.
+
+We see the law similarly fulfilled in respect of _temperature_. Plants
+generate but an extremely small quantity of heat, which is to be
+detected only by delicate experiments; and practically they may be
+considered as being in this respect like their environment. Aquatic
+animals rise very little above the surrounding water in temperature:
+that of the invertebrata being mostly less than a degree above it, and
+that of fishes not exceeding it by more than two or three degrees, save
+in the case of some large red-blooded fishes, as the tunny, which exceed
+it by nearly ten degrees. Among insects, the range is from two to ten
+degrees above that of the air: the excess varying according to their
+activity. The heat of reptiles is from four to fifteen degrees more than
+that of their medium. While mammals and birds maintain a heat which
+continues almost unaffected by external variations, and is often greater
+than that of the air by seventy, eighty, ninety, and even a hundred
+degrees.
+
+Once more, in greater _self-mobility_ a progressive differentiation is
+traceable. Dead matter is inert: some form of independent motion is our
+most general test of life. Passing over the indefinite border-land
+between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, we may roughly class plants
+as organisms which, while they exhibit the kind of motion implied in
+growth, are not only without locomotive power, but in nearly all cases
+are without the power of moving their parts in relation to one another;
+and thus are less differentiated from the inorganic world than animals.
+Though in those microscopic _Protophyta_ and _Protozoa_ inhabiting the
+water--the spores of algae, the gemmules of sponges, and the infusoria
+generally--we see locomotion produced by ciliary action; yet this
+locomotion, while rapid relatively to their sizes, is absolutely slow.
+Of the _Coelenterata_, a great part are either permanently rooted or
+habitually stationary, and so have scarcely any self-mobility but that
+implied in the relative movements of parts; while the rest, of which the
+common jelly-fish serves as a sample, have mostly but little ability to
+move themselves through the water. Among the higher aquatic
+_Invertebrata_,--cuttle-fishes and lobsters, for instance,--there is a
+very considerable power of locomotion; and the aquatic _Vertebrata_ are,
+considered as a class, much more active in their movements than the
+other inhabitants of the water. But it is only when we come to
+air-breathing creatures that we find the vital characteristic of
+self-mobility manifested in the highest degree. Flying insects, mammals,
+birds, travel with velocities far exceeding those attained by any of the
+lower classes of animals; and so are more strongly contrasted with their
+inert environments.
+
+Thus, on contemplating the various grades of organisms in their
+ascending order, we find them more and more distinguished from their
+inanimate media in _structure_, in _form_, in _chemical composition_, in
+_specific gravity_, in _temperature_, in _self-mobility_. It is true
+that this generalization does not hold with regularity. Organisms which
+are in some respects the most strongly contrasted with the inorganic
+world, are in other respects less contrasted than inferior organisms. As
+a class, mammals are higher than birds; and yet they are of lower
+temperature, and have smaller powers of locomotion. The stationary
+oyster is of higher organization than the free-swimming medusa; and the
+cold-blooded and less heterogeneous fish is quicker in its movements
+than the warm-blooded and more heterogeneous sloth. But the admission
+that the several aspects under which this increasing contrast shows
+itself bear variable ratios to one another, does not negative the
+general truth enunciated. Looking at the facts in the mass, it cannot be
+denied that the successively higher groups of organisms are severally
+characterized, not only by greater differentiation of parts, but also by
+greater differentiation from the surrounding medium in sundry other
+physical attributes. It would seem that this peculiarity has some
+necessary connexion with superior vital manifestations. One of those
+lowly gelatinous forms which are some of them so transparent and
+colourless as to be with difficulty distinguished from the water they
+float in, is not more like its medium in chemical, mechanical, optical,
+thermal, and other properties, than it is in the passivity with which it
+submits to all the actions brought to bear on it; while the mammal does
+not more widely differ from inanimate things in these properties than it
+does in the activity with which it meets surrounding changes by
+compensating changes in itself. Between these two extremes, we see a
+tolerably constant ratio between these two kinds of contrast. In
+proportion as an organism is physically like its environment it remains
+a passive partaker of the changes going on in its environment; while in
+proportion as it is endowed with powers of counteracting such changes,
+it exhibits greater unlikeness to its environment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus far we have proceeded inductively, in conformity with established
+usage; but it seems to us that much may be done in this and other
+departments of biologic inquiry by pursuing the deductive method. The
+generalizations at present constituting the science of physiology, both
+general and special, have been reached _a posteriori_; but certain
+fundamental data have now been discovered, starting from which we may
+reason our way _a priori_, not only to some of the truths that have been
+ascertained by observation and experiment, but also to some others. The
+possibility of such _a priori_ conclusions will be at once recognized on
+considering some familiar cases.
+
+Chemists have shown that a necessary condition to vital activity in
+animals is oxidation of certain matters contained in the body either as
+components or as waste products. The oxygen requisite for this oxidation
+is contained in the surrounding medium--air or water, as the case may
+be. If the organism be minute, mere contact of its external surface with
+the oxygenated medium achieves the requisite oxidation; but if the
+organism is bulky, and so exposes a surface which is small in
+proportion to its mass, any considerable oxidation cannot be thus
+achieved. One of two things is therefore implied. Either this bulky
+organism, receiving no oxygen but that absorbed through its integument,
+must possess but little vital activity; or else, if it possesses much
+vital activity, there must be some extensive ramified surface, internal
+or external, through which adequate aeration may take place--a
+respiratory apparatus. That is to say, lungs, or gills, or branchiae, or
+their equivalents, are predicable _a priori_ as possessed by all active
+creatures of any size.
+
+Similarly with respect to nutriment. There are _entozoa_ which, living
+in the insides of other animals, and being constantly bathed by
+nutritive fluids, absorb a sufficiency through their outer surfaces; and
+so have no need of stomachs, and do not possess them. But all other
+animals, inhabiting media that are not in themselves nutritive, but only
+contain masses of food here and there, must have appliances by which
+these masses of food may be utilized. Evidently mere external contact of
+a solid organism with a solid portion of nutriment, could not result in
+the absorption of it in any moderate time, if at all. To effect
+absorption, there must be both a solvent or macerating action, and an
+extended surface fit for containing and imbibing the dissolved products:
+there must be a digestive cavity. Thus, given the ordinary conditions of
+animal life, and the possession of stomachs by all creatures living
+under these conditions may be deductively known.
+
+Carrying out the train of reasoning still further, we may infer the
+existence of a vascular system or something equivalent to it, in all
+creatures of any size and activity. In a comparatively small inert
+animal, such as the hydra, which consists of little more than a sac
+having a double wall--an outer layer of cells forming the skin, and an
+inner layer forming the digestive and absorbent surface--there is no
+need for a special apparatus to diffuse through the body the aliment
+taken up; for the body is little more than a wrapper to the food it
+encloses. But where the bulk is considerable, or where the activity is
+such as to involve much waste and repair, or where both these
+characteristics exist, there is a necessity for a system of
+blood-vessels. It is not enough that there be adequately extensive
+surfaces for absorption and aeration; for in the absence of any means of
+conveyance, the absorbed elements can be of little or no use to the
+organism at large. Evidently there must be channels of communication.
+When, as in the _Medusae_, we find these channels of communication
+consisting simply of branched canals opening out of the stomach and
+spreading through the disk, we may know, _a priori_, that such creatures
+are comparatively inactive; seeing that the nutritive liquid thus
+partially distributed throughout their bodies is crude and dilute, and
+that there is no efficient appliance for keeping it in motion.
+Conversely, when we meet with a creature of considerable size which
+displays much vivacity, we may know, _a priori_, that it must have an
+apparatus for the unceasing supply of concentrated nutriment, and of
+oxygen, to every organ--a pulsating vascular system.
+
+It is manifest, then, that setting out from certain known fundamental
+conditions to vital activity, we may deduce from them sundry of the
+chief characteristics of organized bodies. Doubtless these known
+fundamental conditions have been inductively established. But what we
+wish to show is that, given these inductively-established primary facts
+in physiology, we may with safety draw certain general deductions from
+them. And, indeed, the legitimacy of such deductions, though not
+formally acknowledged, is practically recognized in the convictions of
+every physiologist, as may be readily proved. Thus, were a physiologist
+to find a creature exhibiting complex and variously co-ordinated
+movements, and yet having no nervous system; he would be less astonished
+at the breach of his empirical generalization that all such creatures
+have nervous systems, than at the disproof of his unconscious deduction
+that all creatures exhibiting complex and variously co-ordinated
+movements must have an "internuncial" apparatus by which the
+co-ordination may be effected. Or were he to find a creature having
+blood rapidly circulated and rapidly aerated, but yet showing a low
+temperature, the proof so afforded that active change of matter is not,
+as he had inferred from chemical data, the cause of animal heat, would
+stagger him more than would the exception to a constantly-observed
+relation. Clearly, then, the _a priori_ method already plays a part in
+physiological reasoning. If not ostensibly employed as a means of
+reaching new truths, it is at least privately appealed to for
+confirmation of truths reached _a posteriori_.
+
+But the illustrations above given go far to show, that it may to a
+considerable extent be safely used as an independent instrument of
+research. The necessities for a nutritive system, a respiratory system,
+and a vascular system, in all animals of size and vivacity, seem to us
+legitimately inferable from the conditions to continued vital activity.
+Given the physical and chemical data, and these structural peculiarities
+may be deduced with as much certainty as may the hollowness of an iron
+ball from its power of floating in water.
+
+It is not, of course, asserted that the more _special_ physiological
+truths can be deductively reached. The argument by no means implies
+this. Legitimate deduction presupposes adequate data; and in respect to
+the _special_ phenomena of organic growth, structure, and function,
+adequate data are unattainable, and will probably ever remain so. It is
+only in the case of the more _general_ physiological truths, such as
+those above instanced, where we have something like adequate data, that
+deductive reasoning becomes possible.
+
+And here is reached the stage to which the foregoing considerations are
+introductory. We propose now to show that there are certain still more
+general attributes of organized bodies, which are deducible from certain
+still more general attributes of things.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In an essay on "Progress: its Law and Cause," elsewhere published,[8] we
+have endeavoured to show that the transformation of the homogeneous into
+the heterogeneous, in which all progress, organic or other, essentially
+consists, is consequent on the production of many effects by one
+cause--many changes by one force. Having pointed out that this is a law
+of all things, we proceeded to show deductively that the multiform
+evolutions of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous--astronomic,
+geologic, ethnologic, social, &c.,--were explicable as consequences. And
+though in the case of organic evolution, lack of data disabled us from
+specifically tracing out the progressive complication as due to the
+multiplication of effects; yet, we found sundry indirect evidences that
+it was so. Now in so far as this conclusion, that organic evolution
+results from the decomposition of each expended force into several
+forces, was inferred from the general law previously pointed out, it was
+an example of deductive physiology. The particular was concluded from
+the universal.
+
+We here propose in the first place to show, that there is another
+general truth closely connected with the above; and in common with it
+underlying explanations of all progress, and therefore the progress of
+organisms--a truth which may indeed be considered as taking precedence
+of it in respect of time, if not in respect of generality. This truth
+is, that _the condition of homogeneity is a condition of unstable
+equilibrium_.
+
+The phrase _unstable equilibrium_ is one used in mechanics to express
+a balance of forces of such kind, that the interference of any further
+force, however minute, will destroy the arrangement previously existing,
+and bring about a different arrangement. Thus, a stick poised on its
+lower end is in unstable equilibrium: however exactly it may be placed
+in a perpendicular position, as soon as it is left to itself it begins,
+at first imperceptibly and then visibly, to lean on one side, and with
+increasing rapidity falls into another position. Conversely, a stick
+suspended from its upper end is in stable equilibrium: however much
+disturbed, it will return to the same position. Our meaning is, then,
+that the state of homogeneity, like the state of the stick poised on its
+lower end, is one that cannot be maintained; and that hence results the
+first step in its gravitation towards the heterogeneous. Let us take a
+few illustrations.
+
+Of mechanical ones the most familiar is that of the scales. If
+accurately made and not clogged by dirt or rust, a pair of scales cannot
+be perfectly balanced: eventually one scale will descend and the other
+ascend--they will assume a heterogeneous relation. Again, if we sprinkle
+over the surface of a liquid a number of equal-sized particles, having
+an attraction for one another, they will, no matter how uniformly
+distributed, by and by concentrate irregularly into groups. Were it
+possible to bring a mass of water into a state of perfect homogeneity--a
+state of complete quiescence, and exactly equal density throughout--yet
+the radiation of heat from neighbouring bodies, by affecting differently
+its different parts, would soon produce inequalities of density and
+consequent currents; and would so render it to that extent
+heterogeneous. Take a piece of red-hot matter, and however evenly heated
+it may at first be, it will quickly cease to be so: the exterior,
+cooling faster than the interior, will become different in temperature
+from it. And the lapse into heterogeneity of temperature, so obvious in
+this extreme case, is ever taking place more or less in all cases. The
+actions of chemical forces supply other illustrations. Expose a
+fragment of metal to air or water, and in course of time it will be
+coated with a film of oxide, carbonate, or other compound: its outer
+parts will become unlike its inner parts. Thus, every homogeneous
+aggregate of matter tends to lose its balance in some way or
+other--either mechanically, chemically, thermally or electrically; and
+the rapidity with which it lapses into a non-homogeneous state is simply
+a question of time and circumstances. Social bodies illustrate the law
+with like constancy. Endow the members of a community with equal
+properties, positions, powers, and they will forthwith begin to slide
+into inequalities. Be it in a representative assembly, a railway board,
+or a private partnership, the homogeneity, though it may continue in
+name, inevitably disappears in reality.
+
+The instability thus variously illustrated becomes still more manifest
+if we consider its rationale. It is consequent on the fact that the
+several parts of any homogeneous mass are necessarily exposed to
+different forces--forces which differ either in their kinds or amounts;
+and being exposed to different forces they are of necessity differently
+modified. The relations of outside and inside, and of comparative
+nearness to neighbouring sources of influence, imply the reception of
+influences which are unlike in quantity or quality or both; and it
+follows that unlike changes will be wrought in the parts dissimilarly
+acted upon. The unstable equilibrium of any homogeneous aggregate can
+thus be shown both inductively and deductively.
+
+And now let us consider the bearing of this general truth on the
+evolution of organisms. The germ of a plant or animal is one of these
+homogeneous aggregates--relatively homogeneous if not absolutely
+so--whose equilibrium is unstable. But it has not simply the ordinary
+instability of homogeneous aggregates: it has something more. For it
+consists of units which are themselves specially characterized by
+instability. The constituent molecules of organic matter are
+distinguished by the feebleness of the affinities which hold their
+component elements together. They are extremely sensitive to heat,
+light, electricity, and the chemical actions of foreign elements; that
+is, they are peculiarly liable to be modified by disturbing forces.
+Hence then it follows, _a priori_, that a homogeneous aggregate of these
+unstable molecules will have an excessive tendency to lose its
+equilibrium. It will have a quite special liability to lapse into a
+non-homogeneous state. It will rapidly gravitate towards heretogeneity.
+
+Moreover, the process must repeat itself in each of the subordinate
+groups of organic units which are differentiated by the modifying
+forces. Each of these subordinate groups, like the original group, must
+gradually, in obedience to the influences acting on it, lose its balance
+of parts--must pass from a uniform into a multiform state. And so on
+continuously.
+
+Thus, starting from the general laws of things, and the known chemical
+attributes of organic matter, we may conclude deductively that the
+homogeneous germs of organisms have a peculiar proclivity towards a
+non-homogeneous state; which may be either the state we call
+decomposition, or the state we call organization.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At present we have reached a conclusion only of the most general nature.
+We merely learn that _some_ kind of heterogeneity is inevitable; but as
+yet there is nothing to tell us _what_ kind. Besides that _orderly_
+heterogeneity which distinguishes organisms, there is the _disorderly_
+or _chaotic_ heterogeneity, into which a loose mass of inorganic matter
+lapses; and at present no reason has been given why the homogeneous germ
+of a plant or animal should not lapse into the disorderly instead of the
+orderly heterogeneity. But by pursuing still further the line of
+argument hitherto followed we shall find a reason.
+
+We have seen that the instability of homogeneous aggregates in general,
+and of organic ones in particular, is consequent on the various ways and
+degrees in which their constituent parts are exposed to the disturbing
+forces brought to bear on them: their parts are differently acted upon,
+and therefore become different. Manifestly, then, a rationale of the
+special changes which a germ undergoes, must be sought in the particular
+relations which its several parts bear to each other and to their
+environment. However it may be masked, we may suspect the fundamental
+principle of organization to be, that the many like units forming a germ
+acquire those kinds and degrees of unlikeness which their respective
+positions entail.
+
+Take a mass of unorganized but organizable matter--either the body of
+one of the lowest living forms, or the germ of one of the higher.
+Consider its circumstances. It is immersed in water or air; or it is
+contained within a parent organism. Wherever placed, however, its outer
+and inner parts stand differently related to surrounding
+existences--nutriment, oxygen, and the various stimuli. But this is not
+all. Whether it lies quiescent at the bottom of the water, whether it
+moves through the water preserving some definite attitude, or whether it
+is in the inside of an adult; it equally results that certain parts of
+its surface are more directly exposed to surrounding agencies than other
+parts--in some cases more exposed to light, heat, or oxygen, and in
+others to the maternal tissues and their contents. The destruction of
+its original equilibrium is therefore certain. It may take place in one
+of two ways. Either the disturbing forces may be such as to overbalance
+the affinities of the organic elements, in which case there results that
+chaotic heterogeneity known as decomposition; or, as is ordinarily the
+case, such changes are induced as do not destroy the organic compounds,
+but only modify them: the parts most exposed to the modifying forces
+being most modified. Hence result those first differentiations which
+constitute incipient organization. From the point of view thus reached,
+suppose we look at a few cases: neglecting for the present all
+consideration of the tendency to assume the inherited type.
+
+Note first what appear to be exceptions, as the _Amoeba_. In this
+creature and its allies, the substance of the jelly-like body remains
+throughout life unorganized--undergoes no permanent differentiations.
+But this fact, which seems directly opposed to our inference, is really
+one of the most significant evidences of its truth. For what is the
+peculiarity of the Rhizopods, exemplified by the _Amoeba_? They
+undergo perpetual and irregular changes of shape--they show no
+persistent relations of parts. What lately formed a portion of the
+interior is now protruded, and, as a temporary limb, is attached to some
+object it happens to touch. What is now a part of the surface will
+presently be drawn, along with the atom of nutriment sticking to it,
+into the centre of the mass. Thus there is an unceasing interchange of
+places; and the relations of inner and outer have no settled existence.
+But by the hypothesis, it is only in virtue of their unlike positions
+with respect to modifying forces, that the originally-like units of a
+living mass become unlike. We must not therefore expect any established
+differentiation of parts in creatures which exhibit no established
+differences of position in their parts.
+
+This negative evidence is borne out by abundant positive evidence. When
+we turn from these ever-changing specks of living jelly to organisms
+having unchanging distributions of substance, we find differences of
+tissue corresponding to differences of relative position. In all the
+higher _Protozoa_, as also in the _Protophyta_, we meet with a
+fundamental differentiation into cell-membrane and cell-contents,
+answering to that fundamental contrast of conditions implied by the
+words outside and inside. And on passing from what are roughly classed
+as unicellular organisms to the lowest of those which consist of
+aggregated cells, we equally observe the connexion between structural
+differences and differences of circumstance. In the sponge, permeated
+throughout by currents of sea-water, the absence of definite
+organization corresponds with the absence of definite unlikeness of
+conditions. In the _Thalassicolla_ of Professor Huxley--a transparent,
+colourless body, found floating passively at the surface of the sea, and
+consisting essentially of "a mass of cells united by jelly"--there is
+displayed a rude structure obviously subordinated to the primary
+relations of centre and surface: in all of its many and important
+varieties, the parts exhibit a more or less concentric arrangement.
+
+After this primary modification, by which the outer tissues are
+differentiated from the inner, the next in order of constancy and
+importance is that by which some part of the outer tissues is
+differentiated from the rest; and this corresponds with the almost
+universal fact that some part of the outer tissues is more directly
+exposed to certain environing influences than the rest. Here, as before,
+the apparent exceptions are extremely significant. Some of the lowest
+vegetable organisms, as the _Hematococci_ and _Protococci_, evenly
+imbedded in a mass of mucus, or dispersed through the Arctic snow,
+display no differentiations of surface: the several parts of the surface
+being subjected to no definite contrasts of conditions. The
+_Thalassicolla_ above mentioned, unfixed, and rolled about by the waves,
+presents all its sides successively to the same agencies; and all its
+sides are alike. A ciliated sphere like the _Volvox_ has no parts of its
+periphery unlike other parts; and it is not to be expected that it
+should have; seeing that as it revolves in all directions, it does not,
+in traversing the water, permanently expose any part to special
+conditions. But when we come to creatures that are either fixed, or
+while moving, severally preserve a definite attitude, we no longer find
+uniformity of surface. The gemmule of a Zoophyte, which during its
+locomotive stage is distinguishable only into outer and inner tissues,
+no sooner takes root than its upper end begins to assume a different
+structure from its lower. The free-swimming embryo of an aquatic
+annelid, being ovate and not ciliated all over, moves with one end
+foremost; and its differentiations proceed in conformity with this
+contrast of circumstances.
+
+The principle thus displayed in the humbler forms of life, is traceable
+during the development of the higher; though being here soon masked by
+the assumption of the hereditary type, it cannot be traced far. Thus the
+"mulberry-mass" into which a fertilized ovum of a vertebrate animal
+first resolves itself, soon begins to exhibit a difference between the
+outer and inner parts answering to the difference of circumstances. The
+peripheral cells, after reaching a more complete development than the
+central ones, coalesce into a membrane enclosing the rest; and then the
+cells lying next to these outer ones become aggregated with them, and
+increase the thickness of the germinal membrane, while the central cells
+liquefy. Again, one part of the germinal membrane presently becomes
+distinguishable as the germinal spot; and without asserting that the
+cause of this is to be found in the unlike relations which the
+respective parts of the germinal membrane bear to environing influences,
+it is clear that we have in these unlike relations an element of
+disturbance tending to destroy the original homogeneity of the germinal
+membrane. Further, the germinal membrane by and by divides into two
+layers, internal and external; the one in contact with the liquefied
+interior part or yelk, the other exposed to the surrounding fluids: this
+contrast of circumstances being in obvious correspondence with the
+contrast of structures which follows it. Once more, the subsequent
+appearance of the vascular layer between these mucous and serous layers,
+as they have been named, admits of a like interpretation. And in this
+and the various complications which now begin to show themselves, we may
+see coming into play that general law of the multiplication of effects
+flowing from one cause, to which the increase of heterogeneity was
+elsewhere ascribed.[9]
+
+Confining our remarks, as we do, to the most general facts of
+development, we think that some light is thus thrown on them. That the
+unstable equilibrium of a homogeneous germ must be destroyed by the
+unlike exposure of its several units to surrounding influences, is an _a
+priori_ conclusion. And it seems also to be an _a priori_ conclusion,
+that the several units thus differently acted upon, must either be
+decomposed, or must undergo such modifications of nature as may enable
+them to live in the respective circumstances they are thrown into: in
+other words--_they must either die or become adapted to their
+conditions_. Indeed, we might infer as much without going through the
+foregoing train of reasoning. The superficial organic units (be they the
+outer cells of a "mulberry-mass," or be they the outer molecules of an
+individual cell) must assume the function which their position
+necessitates; and assuming this function, must acquire such character as
+performance of it involves. The layer of organic units lying in contact
+with the yelk must be those through which the yelk is absorbed; and so
+must be adapted to the absorbent office. On this condition only does the
+process of organization appear possible. We might almost say that just
+as some race of animals, which multiplies and spreads into divers
+regions of the earth, becomes differentiated into several races through
+the adaptation of each to its conditions of life; so, the originally
+homogeneous population of cells arising in a fertilized germ-cell,
+becomes divided into several populations of cells that grow unlike in
+virtue of the unlikeness of their circumstances.
+
+Moreover, it is to be remarked in further proof of our position, that it
+finds its clearest and most abundant illustrations where the conditions
+of the case are the simplest and most general--where the phenomena are
+the least involved: we mean in the production of individual cells. The
+structures which presently arise round nuclei in a blastema, and which
+have in some way been determined by those nuclei as centres of
+influence, evidently conform to the law; for the parts of the blastema
+in contact with the nuclei are differently conditioned from the parts
+not in contact with them. Again, the formation of a membrane round each
+of the masses of granules into which the endochrome of an alga-cell
+breaks up, is an instance of analogous kind. And should the
+recently-asserted fact that cells may arise round vacuoles in a mass of
+organizable substance, be confirmed, another good example will be
+furnished; for such portions of substance as bound these vacant spaces
+are subject to influences unlike those to which other portions of the
+substance are subject. If then we can most clearly trace this law of
+modification in these primordial processes, as well as in those more
+complex but analogous ones exhibited in the early changes of an ovum, we
+have strong reason for thinking that the law is fundamental.
+
+But, as already more than once hinted, this principle, understood in the
+simple form here presented, supplies no key to the detailed phenomena of
+organic development. It fails entirely to explain generic and specific
+peculiarities; and leaves us equally in the dark respecting those more
+important distinctions by which families and orders are marked out. Why
+two ova, similarly exposed in the same pool, should become the one a
+fish, and the other a reptile, it cannot tell us. That from two
+different eggs placed under the same hen, should respectively come forth
+a duckling and a chicken, is a fact not to be accounted for on the
+hypothesis above developed. Here we are obliged to fall back upon the
+unexplained principle of hereditary transmission. The capacity possessed
+by an unorganized germ of unfolding into a complex adult which repeats
+ancestral traits in minute details, and that even when it has been
+placed in conditions unlike those of its ancestors, is a capacity
+impossible for us to understand. That a microscopic portion of seemingly
+structureless matter should embody an influence of such kind, that the
+resulting man will in fifty years after become gouty or insane, is a
+truth which would be incredible were it not daily illustrated. But
+though the _manner_ in which hereditary likeness, in all its
+complications, is conveyed, is a mystery passing comprehension, it is
+quite conceivable that it is conveyed in subordination to the law of
+adaptation above explained; and we are not without reasons for thinking
+that it is so. Various facts show that acquired peculiarities resulting
+from the adaptation of constitution to conditions, are transmissible to
+offspring. Such acquired peculiarities consist of differences of
+structure or composition in one or more of the tissues. That is to say,
+of the aggregate of similar organic units composing a germ, the group
+going to the formation of a particular tissue, will take on the special
+character which the adaptation of that tissue to new circumstances had
+produced in the parents. We know this to be a general law of organic
+modifications. Further, it is the _only_ law of organic modifications of
+which we have any evidence.[10] It is not impossible then that it is the
+universal law; comprehending not simply those minor modifications which
+offspring inherit from recent ancestry, but comprehending also those
+larger modifications distinctive of species, genus, order, class, which
+they inherit from antecedent races of organisms. And thus it _may be_
+that the law of adaptation is the sole law; presiding not only over the
+differentiation of any race of organisms into several races, but also
+over the differentiation of the race of organic units composing a germ,
+into the many races of organic units composing an adult. So understood,
+the process gone through by every unfolding organism will consist,
+partly in the direct adaptation of its elements to their several
+circumstances, and partly in the assumption of characters resulting from
+analogous adaptations of the elements of all ancestral organisms.
+
+But our argument does not commit us to any such far-reaching speculation
+as this; which we introduce simply as suggested by it, not involved. All
+we are here concerned to show, is, that the deductive method aids us in
+interpreting some of the more general phenomena of development. That all
+homogeneous aggregates are in unstable equilibrium is a universal truth,
+from which is deducible the instability of every organic germ. From the
+known sensitiveness of organic compounds to chemical, thermal, and other
+disturbing forces, we further infer the _unusual_ instability of every
+organic germ--a proneness far beyond that of other homogeneous
+aggregates to lapse into a heterogeneous state. By the same line of
+reasoning we are led to the additional inference, that the first
+divisions into which a germ resolves itself, being severally in a state
+of unstable equilibrium, are similarly prone to undergo further changes;
+and so on continuously. Moreover, we have found it to be equally an _a
+priori_ conclusion, that as, in all other cases, the loss of homogeneity
+is due to the different degrees and kinds of force brought to bear on
+the different parts; so, in this case too, difference of circumstances
+is the primary cause of differentiation. Add to which, that as the
+several changes undergone by the respective parts thus diversely acted
+upon, are changes which do not destroy their vital activity, they must
+be changes which bring that vital activity into subordination to the
+incident forces--they must be adaptations; and the like must be in some
+sense true of all the subsequent changes. Thus by deductive reasoning we
+get some insight into the method of organization. However unable we are,
+and probably ever shall be, to comprehend the way in which a germ is
+made to take on the special form of its race, we may yet comprehend the
+general principles which regulate its first modifications; and,
+remembering the unity of plan so conspicuous throughout nature, we may
+_suspect_ that these principles are in some way concerned in succeeding
+modifications.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A controversy now going on among zoologists, opens yet another field for
+the application of the deductive method. We believe that the question
+whether there does or does not exist a _necessary correlation_ among the
+several parts of an organism is determinable _a priori_.
+
+Cuvier, who first asserted this necessary correlation, professed to base
+his restorations of extinct animals upon it. Geoffroy St. Hilaire and
+De Blainville, from different points of view, contested Cuvier's
+hypothesis; and the discussion, which has much interest as bearing on
+paleontology, has been recently revived under a somewhat modified form:
+Professors Huxley and Owen being respectively the assailant and defender
+of the hypothesis.
+
+Cuvier says--"Comparative anatomy possesses a principle whose just
+development is sufficient to dissipate all difficulties; it is that of
+the correlation of forms in organized beings, by means of which every
+kind of organized being might, strictly speaking, be recognized by a
+fragment of any of its parts. Every organized being constitutes a whole,
+a single and complete system, whose parts mutually correspond and concur
+by their reciprocal reaction to the same definite end. None of these
+parts can be changed without affecting the others; and consequently each
+taken separately, indicates and gives all the rest." He then gives
+illustrations: arguing that the carnivorous form of tooth necessitating
+a certain action of the jaw, implies a particular form in its condyles;
+implies also limbs fit for seizing and holding prey; therefore implies
+claws, a certain structure of the leg-bones, a certain form of
+shoulder-blade. Summing up he says, that "the claw, the scapula, the
+condyle, the femur, and all the other bones, taken separately, will give
+the tooth or one another; and by commencing with any one, he who had a
+rational conception of the laws of the organic economy, could
+reconstruct the whole animal."
+
+It will be seen that the method of restoration here contended for, is
+based on the alleged physiological necessity of the connexion between
+these several peculiarities. The argument used is, not that a scapula of
+a certain shape may be recognized as having belonged to a carnivorous
+mammal because we always find that carnivorous mammals _do_ possess such
+scapulas; but the argument is that they _must_ possess them, because
+carnivorous habits would be impossible without them. And in the above
+quotation Cuvier asserts that the necessary correlation which he
+considers so obvious in these cases, exists throughout the system:
+admitting, however, that in consequence of our limited knowledge of
+physiology we are unable in many cases to trace this necessary
+correlation, and are obliged to base our conclusions upon observed
+coexistences, of which we do not understand the reason, but which we
+find invariable.
+
+Now Professor Huxley has recently shown that, in the first place, this
+empirical method, which Cuvier introduces as quite subordinate, and to
+be used only in aid of the rational method, is really the method which
+Cuvier habitually employed--the so-called rational method remaining
+practically a dead letter; and, in the second place, he has shown that
+Cuvier himself has in several places so far admitted the inapplicability
+of the rational method, as virtually to surrender it as a method. But
+more than this, Professor Huxley contends that the alleged necessary
+correlation is not true. Quite admitting the physiological dependence of
+parts on each other, he denies that it is a dependence of a kind which
+could not be otherwise. "Thus the teeth of a lion and the stomach of
+the animal are in such relation that the one is fitted to digest the
+food which the other can tear, they are physiologically correlated; but
+we have no reason for affirming this to be a necessary physiological
+correlation, in the sense that no other could equally fit its possessor
+for living on recent flesh. The number and form of the teeth might have
+been quite different from that which we know them to be, and the
+construction of the stomach might have been greatly altered; and yet the
+functions of these organs might have been equally well performed."
+
+Thus much is needful to give an idea of the controversy. It is not here
+our purpose to go more at length into the evidence cited on either side.
+We simply wish to show that the question may be settled deductively.
+Before going on to do this, however, let us briefly notice two
+collateral points.
+
+In his defence of the Cuvierian doctrine, Professor Owen avails himself
+of the _odium theologicum_. He attributes to his opponents "the
+insinuation and masked advocacy of the doctrine subversive of a
+recognition of the Higher Mind." Now, saying nothing about the
+questionable propriety of thus prejudging an issue in science, we think
+this is an unfortunate accusation. What is there in the hypothesis of
+_necessary_, as distinguished from _actual_, correlation of parts, which
+is particularly in harmony with Theism? Maintenance of the _necessity_,
+whether of sequences or of coexistences, is commonly thought rather a
+derogation from divine power than otherwise. Cuvier says--"None of these
+parts can be changed without affecting the others; and consequently,
+each taken separately, indicates and gives all the rest." That is to
+say, in the nature of things the correlation _could not_ have been
+otherwise. On the other hand, Professor Huxley says we have no warrant
+for asserting that the correlation _could not_ have been otherwise; but
+have not a little reason for thinking that the same physiological ends
+might have been differently achieved. The one doctrine limits the
+possibilities of creation; the other denies the implied limit. Which,
+then, is most open to the charge of covert Atheism?
+
+On the other point we lean to the opinion of Professor Owen. We agree
+with him in thinking that where a rational correlation (in the highest
+sense of the term) can be made out, it affords a better basis for
+deduction than an empirical correlation ascertained only by accumulated
+observations. Premising that by rational correlation is not meant one in
+which we can trace, or think we can trace, a design, but one of which
+the negation is inconceivable (and this is the species of correlation
+which Cuvier's principle implies); then we hold that our knowledge of
+the correlation is of a more certain kind than where it is simply
+inductive. We think that Professor Huxley, in his anxiety to avoid the
+error of making Thought the measure of Things, does not sufficiently
+bear in mind the fact, that as our notion of necessity is determined by
+some absolute uniformity pervading all orders of our experiences, it
+follows that an organic correlation which cannot be conceived otherwise,
+is guaranteed by a much wider induction than one ascertained only by the
+observation of organisms. But the truth is, that there are relatively
+few organic correlations of which the negation is inconceivable. If we
+find the skull, vertebrae, ribs, and phalanges of some quadruped as large
+as an elephant; we may indeed be certain that the legs of this quadruped
+were of considerable size--much larger than those of a rat; and our
+reason for conceiving this correlation as necessary, is, that it is
+based, not only upon our experiences of moving organisms, but upon all
+our mechanical experiences relative to masses and their supports. But
+even were there many physiological correlations really of this order,
+which there are not, there would be danger in pursuing this line of
+reasoning, in consequence of the liability to include within the class
+of truly necessary correlations, those which are not such. For instance,
+there would seem to be a necessary correlation between the eye and the
+surface of the body: light being needful for vision, it might be
+supposed that every eye must be external. Nevertheless it is a fact that
+there are creatures, as the _Cirrhipedia_, having eyes (not very
+efficient ones, it may be) deeply imbedded within the body. Again, a
+necessary correlation might be assumed between the dimensions of the
+mammalian uterus and those of the pelvis. It would appear impossible
+that in any species there should exist a well-developed uterus
+containing a full-sized foetus, and yet that the arch of the pelvis
+should be too small to allow the foetus to pass. And were the only
+mammal having a very small pelvic arch, a fossil one, it would have been
+inferred, on the Cuvierian method, that the foetus must have been born
+in a rudimentary state; and that the uterus must have been
+proportionally small. But there happens to be an extant mammal having an
+undeveloped pelvis--the mole--which presents us with a fact that saves
+us from this erroneous inference. The young of the mole are not born
+through the pelvic arch at all; but in front of it! Thus, granting that
+some quite _direct_ physiological correlations may be necessary, we see
+that there is great risk of including among them some which are not.
+
+With regard to the great mass of the correlations, however, including
+all the _indirect_ ones, Professor Huxley seems to us warranted in
+denying that they are necessary; and we now propose to show deductively
+the truth of his thesis. Let us begin with an analogy.
+
+Whoever has been through an extensive iron-works, has seen a gigantic
+pair of shears worked by machinery, and used for cutting in two, bars of
+iron that are from time to time thrust between its blades. Supposing
+these blades to be the only visible parts of the apparatus, anyone
+observing their movements (or rather the movement of one, for the other
+is commonly fixed), will see from the manner in which the angle
+increases and decreases, and from the curve described by the moving
+extremity, that there must be some centre of motion--either a pivot or
+an external box equivalent to it. This may be regarded as a necessary
+correlation. Moreover, he might infer that beyond the centre of motion
+the moving blade was produced into a lever, to which the power was
+applied; but as another arrangement is just possible, this could not be
+called anything more than a highly probable correlation. If now he went
+a step further, and asked how the reciprocal movement was given to the
+lever, he would perhaps conclude that it was given by a crank. But if he
+knew anything of mechanics, he would know that it might possibly be
+given by an eccentric. Or again, he would know that the effect could be
+achieved by a cam. That is to say, he would see that there was no
+necessary correlation between the shears and the remoter parts of the
+apparatus. Take another case. The plate of a printing-press is required
+to move up and down to the extent of an inch or so; and it must exert
+its greatest pressure when it reaches the extreme of its downward
+movement. If now anyone will look over the stock of a printing-press
+maker, he will see half a dozen different mechanical arrangements by
+which these ends are achieved; and a machinist would tell him that as
+many more might readily be invented. If, then, there is no necessary
+correlation between the special parts of a machine, still less is there
+between those of an organism.
+
+From a converse point of view the same truth is manifest. Bearing in
+mind the above analogy, it will be foreseen that an alteration in one
+part of an organism will not necessarily entail _some one specific set
+of alterations in the other parts_. Cuvier says, "None of these parts
+can be changed without affecting the others; and consequently, each
+taken separately, indicates and gives all the rest." The first of these
+propositions may pass, but the second, which it is alleged follows from
+it, is not true; for it implies that "all the rest" can be severally
+affected in only one way and degree, whereas they can be affected in
+many ways and degrees. To show this, we must again have recourse to a
+mechanical analogy.
+
+If you set a brick on end and thrust it over, you can predict with
+certainty in what direction it will fall, and what attitude it will
+assume. If, again setting it up, you put another on the top of it, you
+can no longer foresee with accuracy the results of an overthrow; and on
+repeating the experiment, no matter how much care is taken to place the
+bricks in the same positions, and to apply the same degree of force in
+the same direction, the effects will on no two occasions be exactly
+alike. And in proportion as the aggregation is complicated by the
+addition of new and unlike parts, will the results of any disturbance
+become more varied and incalculable. The like truth is curiously
+illustrated by locomotive engines. It is a fact familiar to mechanical
+engineers and engine-drivers, that out of a number of engines built as
+accurately as possible to the same pattern, no two will act in just the
+same manner. Each will have its peculiarities. The play of actions and
+reactions will so far differ, that under like conditions each will
+behave in a somewhat different way; and every driver has to learn the
+idiosyncrasies of his own engine before he can work it to the greatest
+advantage. In organisms themselves this indefiniteness of mechanical
+reaction is clearly traceable. Two boys throwing stones will always
+differ more or less in their attitudes, as will two billiard-players.
+The familiar fact that each individual has a characteristic gait,
+illustrates the point still better. The rhythmical motion of the leg is
+simple, and on the Cuvierian hypothesis, should react on the body in
+some uniform way. But in consequence of those slight differences of
+structure which consist with identity of species, no two individuals
+make exactly similar movements either of the trunk or the arms. There
+is always a peculiarity recognizable by their friends.
+
+When we pass to disturbing forces of a non-mechanical kind, the same
+truth becomes still more conspicuous. Expose several persons to a
+drenching storm; and while one will subsequently feel no appreciable
+inconvenience, another will have a cough, another a catarrh, another an
+attack of diarrhoea, another a fit of rheumatism. Vaccinate several
+children of the same age with the same quantity of virus, applied to the
+same part, and the symptoms will not be quite alike in any of them,
+either in kind or intensity; and in some cases the differences will be
+extreme. The quantity of alcohol which will send one man to sleep, will
+render another unusually brilliant--will make this maudlin, and that
+irritable. Opium will produce either drowsiness or wakefulness: so will
+tobacco.
+
+Now in all these cases--mechanical and other--some force is brought to
+bear primarily on one part of an organism, and secondarily on the rest;
+and, according to the doctrine of Cuvier, the rest ought to be affected
+in a specific way. We find this to be by no means the case. The original
+change produced in one part does not stand in any necessary correlation
+with every one of the changes produced in the other parts; nor do these
+stand in any necessary correlation with one another. The functional
+alteration which the disturbing force causes in the organ directly acted
+upon, does not involve some _particular set_ of functional alterations
+in the other organs; but will be followed by some one out of various
+sets. And it is a manifest corollary, that any _structural alteration_
+which may eventually be produced in the one organ, will not be
+accompanied by _some particular set of structural alterations_ in the
+other organs. There will be no necessary correlation of forms.
+
+Thus Paleontology must depend upon the empirical method. A fossil
+species that was obliged to change its food or habits of life, did not
+of necessity undergo the particular set of modifications exhibited; but,
+under some slight change of predisposing causes--as of season or
+latitude--might have undergone some other set of modifications: the
+determining circumstance being one which, in the human sense, we call
+fortuitous.
+
+May we not say then, that the deductive method elucidates this vexed
+question in physiology; while at the same time our argument collaterally
+exhibits the limits within which the deductive method is applicable. For
+while we see that this extremely _general_ question may be
+satisfactorily dealt with deductively; the conclusion arrived at itself
+implies that the more _special_ phenomena of organization cannot be so
+dealt with.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is yet another method of investigating the general truths of
+physiology--a method to which physiology already owes one luminous idea,
+but which is not at present formally recognized as a method. We refer to
+the comparison of physiological phenomena with social phenomena.
+
+The analogy between individual organisms and the social organism, is one
+that has from early days occasionally forced itself on the attention of
+the observant. And though modern science does not countenance those
+crude ideas of this analogy which have been from time to time expressed
+since the Greeks flourished; yet it tends to show that there _is_ an
+analogy, and a remarkable one. While it is becoming clear that there are
+not those special parallelisms between the constituent parts of a man
+and those of a nation, which have been thought to exist; it is also
+becoming clear that the general principles of development and structure
+displayed in organized bodies are displayed in societies also. The
+fundamental characteristic both of societies and of living creatures,
+is, that they consist of mutually-dependent parts; and it would seem
+that this involves a community of various other characteristics. Those
+who are acquainted with the broad facts of both physiology and
+sociology, are beginning to recognize this correspondence not as a
+plausible fancy, but as a scientific truth. And we are strongly of
+opinion that it will by and by be seen to hold to an extent which few at
+present suspect.
+
+Meanwhile, if any such correspondence exists, it is clear that
+physiology and sociology will more or less interpret each other. Each
+affords its special facilities for inquiry. Relations of cause and
+effect clearly traceable in the social organism, may lead to the search
+for analogous ones in the individual organism; and may so elucidate what
+might else be inexplicable. Laws of growth and function disclosed by the
+pure physiologist, may occasionally give us the clue to certain social
+modifications otherwise difficult to understand. If they can do no more,
+the two sciences can at least exchange suggestions and confirmations;
+and this will be no small aid. The conception of "the physiological
+division of labour," which political economy has already supplied to
+physiology, is one of no small value. And probably it has others to
+give.
+
+In support of this opinion, we will now cite cases in which such aid is
+furnished. And in the first place, let us see whether the facts of
+social organization do not afford additional support to some of the
+doctrines set forth in the foregoing parts of this article.
+
+One of the propositions supported by evidence was that in animals the
+process of development is carried on, not by differentiations only, but
+by subordinate integrations. Now in the social organism we may see the
+same duality of process; and further, it is to be observed that the
+integrations are of the same three kinds. Thus we have integrations
+which arise from the simple growth of adjacent parts that perform like
+functions: as, for instance, the coalescence of Manchester with its
+calico-weaving suburbs. We have other integrations which arise when, out
+of several places producing a particular commodity, one monopolizes
+more and more of the business, and leaves the rest to dwindle: witness
+the growth of the Yorkshire cloth-districts at the expense of those in
+the west of England; or the absorption by Staffordshire of the
+pottery-manufacture, and the consequent decay of the establishments that
+once flourished at Worcester, Derby, and elsewhere. And we have those
+yet other integrations which result from the actual approximation of the
+similarly-occupied parts: whence result such facts as the concentration
+of publishers in Paternoster Row, of lawyers in the Temple and
+neighbourhood, of corn-merchants about Mark Lane, of civil engineers in
+Great George Street, of bankers in the centre of the city. Finding thus
+that in the evolution of the social organism, as in the evolution of
+individual organisms, there are integrations as well as
+differentiations, and moreover that these integrations are of the same
+three orders; we have additional reason for considering these
+integrations as essential parts of the developmental process, needed to
+be included in its formula. And further, the circumstance that in the
+social organism these integrations are determined by community of
+function, confirms the hypothesis that they are thus determined in the
+individual organism.
+
+Again, we endeavoured to show deductively, that the contrasts of parts
+first seen in all unfolding embryos, are consequent upon the contrasted
+circumstances to which such parts are exposed; that thus, adaptation of
+constitution to conditions is the principle which determines their
+primary changes; and that, possibly, if we include under the formula
+hereditarily-transmitted adaptations, all subsequent differentiations
+may be similarly determined. Well, we need not long contemplate the
+facts to see that some of the predominant social differentiations are
+brought about in an analogous way. As the members of an
+originally-homogeneous community multiply and spread, the gradual
+separation into sections which simultaneously takes place, manifestly
+depends on differences of local circumstances. Those who happen to
+live near some place chosen, perhaps for its centrality, as one of
+periodical assemblage, become traders, and a town springs up; those who
+live dispersed, continue to hunt or cultivate the earth; those who
+spread to the sea-shore fall into maritime occupations. And each of
+these classes undergoes modifications of character fitting to its
+function. Later in the process of social evolution these local
+adaptations are greatly multiplied. In virtue of differences of soil and
+climate, the rural inhabitants in different parts of the kingdom, have
+their occupations partially specialized; and are respectively
+distinguished as chiefly producing cattle, or sheep, or wheat, or oats,
+or hops, or cider. People living where coal-fields are discovered become
+colliers; Cornishmen take to mining because Cornwall is metalliferous;
+and the iron-manufacture is the dominant industry where ironstone is
+plentiful. Liverpool has assumed the office of importing cotton, in
+consequence of its proximity to the district where cotton goods are
+made; and for analogous reasons Hull has become the chief port at which
+foreign wools are brought in. Even in the establishment of breweries, of
+dye-works, of slate-quarries, of brick-yards, we may see the same truth.
+So that, both in general and in detail, these industrial specializations
+of the social organism which characterize separate districts, primarily
+depend on local circumstances. Of the originally-similar units making up
+the social mass, different groups assume the different functions which
+their respective positions entail; and become adapted to their
+conditions. Thus, that which we concluded, _a priori_, to be the leading
+cause of organic differentiations, we find, _a posteriori_, to be the
+leading cause of social differentiations. Nay further, as we inferred
+that possibly the embryonic changes which are not thus directly caused,
+are caused by hereditarily-transmitted adaptations; so, we may actually
+see that in embryonic societies, such changes as are not due to direct
+adaptations, are in the main traceable to adaptations originally
+undergone by the parent society. The colonies founded by distinct
+nations, while they are alike in exhibiting specializations caused in
+the way above described, grow unlike in so far as they take on, more or
+less, the organizations of the nations they sprung from. A French
+settlement does not develop exactly after the same manner as an English
+one; and both assume forms different from those which Roman settlements
+assumed. Now the fact that the differentiation of societies is
+determined partly by the direct adaptation of their units to local
+conditions, and partly by the transmitted influence of like adaptations
+undergone by ancestral societies, tends strongly to enforce the
+conclusion, otherwise reached, that the differentiation of individual
+organisms, similarly results from immediate adaptations compounded with
+ancestral adaptations.
+
+From confirmations thus furnished by sociology to physiology, let us now
+pass to a suggestion similarly furnished. A factory, or other producing
+establishment, or a town made up of such establishments, is an agency
+for elaborating some commodity consumed by society at large; and may be
+regarded as analogous to a gland or viscus in an individual organism. If
+we inquire what is the primitive mode in which one of these producing
+establishments grows up, we find it to be this. A single worker, who
+himself sells the produce of his labour, is the germ. His business
+increasing, he employs helpers--his sons or others; and having done
+this, he becomes a vendor not only of his own handiwork, but of that of
+others. A further increase of his business compels him to multiply his
+assistants, and his sale grows so rapid that he is obliged to confine
+himself to the process of selling: he ceases to be a producer, and
+becomes simply a channel through which the produce of others is conveyed
+to the public. Should his prosperity rise yet higher, he finds that he
+is unable to manage even the sale of his commodities, and has to employ
+others, probably of his own family, to aid him in selling; so that, to
+him as a main channel are now added subordinate channels. Moreover, when
+there grow up in one place, as a Manchester or a Birmingham, many
+establishments of like kind, this process is carried still further.
+There arise factors and buyers, who are the channels through which is
+transmitted the produce of many factories; and we believe that primarily
+these factors were manufacturers who undertook to dispose of the produce
+of smaller houses as well as their own, and ultimately became salesmen
+only. Under a converse aspect, all the stages of this development have
+been within these few years exemplified in our railway contractors.
+There are sundry men now living who illustrate the whole process in
+their own persons--men who were originally navvies, digging and
+wheeling; who then undertook some small sub-contract, and worked along
+with those they paid; who presently took larger contracts, and employed
+foremen; and who now contract for whole railways, and let portions to
+sub-contractors. That is to say, we have men who were originally
+workers, but have finally become the main channels out of which diverge
+secondary channels, which again bifurcate into the subordinate channels,
+through which flows the money (representing the nutriment) supplied by
+society to the actual makers of the railway. Now it seems worth
+inquiring whether this is not the original course followed in the
+evolution of secreting and excreting organs in an animal. We know that
+such is the process by which the liver is developed. Out of the group of
+bile-cells forming the germ of it, some centrally-placed ones, lying
+next to the intestine, are transformed into ducts through which the
+secretion of the peripheral bile-cells is poured into the intestine; and
+as the peripheral bile-cells multiply, there similarly arise secondary
+ducts emptying themselves into the main ones; tertiary ones into these;
+and so on. Recent inquiries show that the like is the case with the
+lungs,--that the bronchial tubes are thus formed. But while analogy
+suggests that this is the _original_ mode in which such organs are
+developed, it at the same time suggests that this does not necessarily
+continue to be the mode. For as we find that in the social organism,
+manufacturing establishments are no longer commonly developed through
+the series of modifications above described, but now mostly arise by the
+direct transformation of a number of persons into master, clerks,
+foremen, workers, &c.; so the approximate method of forming organs, may
+in some cases be replaced by a direct metamorphosis of the organic units
+into the destined structure, without any transitional structures being
+passed through. That there are organs thus formed is an ascertained
+fact; and the additional question which analogy suggests is, whether the
+direct method is substituted for the indirect method.
+
+Such parallelisms might be multiplied. And were it possible here to show
+in detail the close correspondence between the two kinds of
+organization, our case would be seen to have abundant support. But, as
+it is, these few illustrations will sufficiently justify the opinion
+that study of organized bodies may be indirectly furthered by study of
+the body politic. Hints may be expected, if nothing more. And thus we
+venture to think that the Inductive Method, usually alone employed by
+most physiologists, may not only derive important assistance from the
+Deductive Method, but may further be supplemented by the Sociological
+Method.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 6: Carpenter's _Principles of Comparative Physiology_, pp.
+616-17.]
+
+[Footnote 7: With the exception, perhaps, of the Myxinoid fishes, in
+which what is considered as the nasal orifice is single, and on the
+median line. But seeing how unusual is the position of this orifice, it
+seems questionable whether it is the true homologue of the nostrils.]
+
+[Footnote 8: In the _Westminster Review_ for April, 1857; and now
+reprinted in this volume.]
+
+[Footnote 9: See Essay on "Progress: its Law and Cause."]
+
+[Footnote 10: This was written before the publication of the _Origin of
+Species_. I leave it standing because it shows the stage of thought then
+arrived at.]
+
+
+
+
+THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Westminster Review _for July,_ 1858. _In
+    explanation of sundry passages, it seems needful to state that this
+    essay was written in defence of the Nebular Hypothesis at a time
+    when it had fallen into disrepute. Hence there are some opinions
+    spoken of as current which are no longer current._]
+
+
+Inquiring into the pedigree of an idea is not a bad means of roughly
+estimating its value. To have come of respectable ancestry, is _prima
+facie_ evidence of worth in a belief as in a person; while to be
+descended from a discreditable stock is, in the one case as in the
+other, an unfavourable index. The analogy is not a mere fancy. Beliefs,
+together with those who hold them, are modified little by little in
+successive generations; and as the modifications which successive
+generations of the holders undergo do not destroy the original type, but
+only disguise and refine it, so the accompanying alterations of belief,
+however much they purify, leave behind the essence of the original
+belief.
+
+Considered genealogically, the received theory respecting the creation
+of the Solar System is unmistakably of low origin. You may clearly trace
+it back to primitive mythologies. Its remotest ancestor is the doctrine
+that the celestial bodies are personages who originally lived on the
+Earth--a doctrine still held by some of the negroes Livingstone visited.
+Science having divested the sun and planets of their divine
+personalities, this old idea was succeeded by the idea which even Kepler
+entertained, that the planets are guided in their courses by presiding
+spirits: no longer themselves gods, they are still severally kept in
+their orbits by gods. And when gravitation came to dispense with these
+celestial steersmen, there was begotten a belief, less gross than its
+parent, but partaking of the same essential nature, that the planets
+were originally launched into their orbits by the Creator's hand.
+Evidently, though much refined, the anthropomorphism of the current
+hypothesis is inherited from the aboriginal anthropomorphism, which
+described gods as a stronger order of men.
+
+There is an antagonist hypothesis which does not propose to honour the
+Unknown Power manifested in the Universe, by such titles as "The
+Master-Builder," or "The Great Artificer;" but which regards this
+Unknown Power as probably working after a method quite different from
+that of human mechanics. And the genealogy of this hypothesis is as high
+as that of the other is low. It is begotten by that ever-enlarging and
+ever-strengthening belief in the presence of Law, which accumulated
+experiences have gradually produced in the human mind. From generation
+to generation Science has been proving uniformities of relation among
+phenomena which were before thought either fortuitous or supernatural in
+their origin--has been showing an established order and a constant
+causation where ignorance had assumed irregularity and arbitrariness.
+Each further discovery of Law has increased the presumption that Law is
+everywhere conformed to. And hence, among other beliefs, has arisen the
+belief that the Solar System originated, not by _manufacture_ but by
+_evolution_. Besides its abstract parentage in those grand general
+conceptions which Science has generated, this hypothesis has a concrete
+parentage of the highest character. Based as it is on the law of
+universal gravitation, it may claim for its remote progenitor the great
+thinker who established that law. It was first suggested by one who
+ranks high among philosophers. The man who collected evidence indicating
+that stars result from the aggregation of diffused matter, was the most
+diligent, careful, and original astronomical observer of modern times.
+And the world has not seen a more learned mathematician than the man
+who, setting out with this conception of diffused matter concentrating
+towards its centre of gravity, pointed out the way in which there would
+arise, in the course of its concentration, a balanced group of sun,
+planets, and satellites, like that of which the Earth is a member.
+
+Thus, even were there but little direct evidence assignable for the
+Nebular Hypothesis, the probability of its truth would be strong. Its
+own high derivation and the low derivation of the antagonist hypothesis,
+would together form a weighty reason for accepting it--at any rate,
+provisionally. But the direct evidence assignable for the Nebular
+Hypothesis is by no means little. It is far greater in quantity, and
+more varied in kind, than is commonly supposed. Much has been said here
+and there on this or that class of evidences; but nowhere, so far as we
+know, have all the evidences been fully stated. We propose here to do
+something towards supplying the deficiency: believing that, joined with
+the _a priori_ reasons given above, the array of _a posteriori_ reasons
+will leave little doubt in the mind of any candid inquirer.
+
+And first, let us address ourselves to those recent discoveries in
+stellar astronomy which have been supposed to conflict with this
+celebrated speculation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Sir William Herschel, directing his great reflector to various
+nebulous spots, found them resolvable into clusters of stars, he
+inferred, and for a time maintained, that all nebulous spots are
+clusters of stars exceedingly remote from us. But after years of
+conscientious investigation, he concluded that "there were nebulosities
+which are not of a starry nature;" and on this conclusion was based his
+hypothesis of a diffused luminous fluid which, by its eventual
+aggregation, produced stars. A telescopic power much exceeding that used
+by Herschel, has enabled Lord Rosse to resolve some of the nebulae
+previously unresolved; and, returning to the conclusion which Herschel
+first formed on similar grounds but afterwards rejected, many
+astronomers have assumed that, under sufficiently high powers, every
+nebula would be decomposed into stars--that the irresolvability is due
+solely to distance. The hypothesis now commonly entertained is, that all
+nebulae are galaxies more or less like in nature to that immediately
+surrounding us; but that they are so inconceivably remote as to look,
+through ordinary telescopes, like small faint spots. And not a few have
+drawn the corollary, that by the discoveries of Lord Rosse the Nebular
+Hypothesis has been disproved.
+
+Now, even supposing that these inferences respecting the distances and
+natures of the nebulae are valid, they leave the Nebular Hypothesis
+substantially as it was. Admitting that each of these faint spots is a
+sidereal system, so far removed that its countless stars give less light
+than one small star of our own sidereal system; the admission is in no
+way inconsistent with the belief that stars, and their attendant
+planets, have been formed by the aggregation of nebulous matter. Though,
+doubtless, if the existence of nebulous matter now in course of
+concentration be disproved, one of the evidences of the Nebular
+Hypothesis is destroyed, yet the remaining evidences remain. It is a
+tenable position that though nebular condensation is now nowhere to be
+seen in progress, yet it was once going on universally. And, indeed, it
+might be argued that the still-continued existence of diffused nebulous
+matter is scarcely to be expected; seeing that the causes which have
+resulted in the aggregation of one mass, must have been acting on all
+masses, and that hence the existence of masses not aggregated would be a
+fact calling for explanation. Thus, granting the immediate conclusions
+suggested by these recent disclosures of the six-feet reflector, the
+corollary which many have drawn is inadmissible.
+
+But these conclusions may be successfully contested. Receiving them
+though we have been, for years past, as established truths, a critical
+examination of the facts has convinced us that they are quite
+unwarrantable. They involve so many manifest incongruities, that we have
+been astonished to find men of science entertaining them, even as
+probable. Let us consider these incongruities.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the first place, mark what is inferable from the distribution of
+nebulae.
+
+     "The spaces which precede or which follow simple nebulae," says
+     Arago, "and _a fortiori_, groups of nebulae, contain generally few
+     stars. Herschel found this rule to be invariable. Thus every time
+     that during a short interval no star approached in virtue of the
+     diurnal motion, to place itself in the field of his motionless
+     telescope, he was accustomed to say to the secretary who assisted
+     him,--'Prepare to write; nebulae are about to arrive.'"
+
+How does this fact consist with the hypothesis that nebulae are remote
+galaxies? If there were but one nebula, it would be a curious
+coincidence were this one nebula so placed in the distant regions of
+space, as to agree in direction with a starless spot in our own sidereal
+system. If there were but two nebulae, and both were so placed, the
+coincidence would be excessively strange. What, then, shall we say on
+finding that there are thousands of nebulae so placed? Shall we believe
+that in thousands of cases these far-removed galaxies happen to agree in
+their visible positions with the thin places in our own galaxy? Such a
+belief is impossible.
+
+Still more manifest does the impossibility of it become when we consider
+the general distribution of nebulae. Besides again showing itself in the
+fact that "the poorest regions in stars are near the richest in nebulae,"
+the law above specified applies to the heavens as a whole. In that zone
+of celestial space where stars are excessively abundant, nebulae are
+rare; while in the two opposite celestial spaces that are furthest
+removed from this zone, nebulae are abundant. Scarcely any nebulae lie
+near the galactic circle (or plane of the Milky Way); and the great
+mass of them lie round the galactic poles. Can this also be mere
+coincidence? When to the fact that the general mass of nebulae are
+antithetical in position to the general mass of stars, we add the fact
+that local regions of nebulae are regions where stars are scarce, and the
+further fact that single nebulae are habitually found in comparatively
+starless spots; does not the proof of a physical connexion become
+overwhelming? Should it not require an infinity of evidence to show that
+nebulae are not parts of our sidereal system? Let us see whether any such
+infinity of evidence is assignable. Let us see whether there is even a
+single alleged proof which will bear examination.
+
+     "As seen through colossal telescopes," says Humboldt, "the
+     contemplation of these nebulous masses leads us into regions from
+     whence a ray of light, according to an assumption not wholly
+     improbable, requires millions of years to reach our earth--to
+     distances for whose measurement the dimensions (the distance of
+     Sirius, or the calculated distances of the binary stars in Cygnus
+     and the Centaur) of our nearest stratum of fixed stars scarcely
+     suffice."
+
+In this confused sentence there is implied a belief, that the distances
+of the nebulae from our galaxy of stars as much transcend the distances
+of our stars from one another, as these interstellar distances transcend
+the dimensions of our planetary system. Just as the diameter of the
+Earth's orbit, is a mere point when compared with the distance of our
+Sun from Sirius; so is the distance of our Sun from Sirius, a mere point
+when compared with the distance of our galaxy from those far-removed
+galaxies constituting nebulae. Observe the consequences of this
+assumption.
+
+If one of these supposed galaxies is so remote that its distance dwarfs
+our interstellar spaces into points, and therefore makes the dimensions
+of our whole sidereal system relatively insignificant; does it not
+inevitably follow that the telescopic power required to resolve this
+remote galaxy into stars, must be incomparably greater than the
+telescopic power required to resolve the whole of our own galaxy into
+stars? Is it not certain that an instrument which can just exhibit with
+clearness the most distant stars of our own cluster, must be utterly
+unable to separate one of these remote clusters into stars? What, then,
+are we to think when we find that the same instrument which decomposes
+hosts of nebulae into stars, _fails_ to resolve completely our own Milky
+Way? Take a homely comparison. Suppose a man who was surrounded by a
+swarm of bees, extending, as they sometimes do, so high in the air as to
+render some of the individual bees almost invisible, were to declare
+that a certain spot on the horizon was a swarm of bees; and that he knew
+it because he could see the bees as separate specks. Incredible as the
+assertion would be, it would not exceed in incredibility this which we
+are criticising. Reduce the dimensions to figures, and the absurdity
+becomes still more palpable. In round numbers, the distance of Sirius
+from the Earth is half a million times the distance of the Earth from
+the Sun; and, according to the hypothesis, the distance of a nebula is
+something like half a million times the distance of Sirius. Now, our own
+"starry island, or nebula," as Humboldt calls it, "forms a lens-shaped,
+flattened, and everywhere detached stratum, whose major axis is
+estimated at seven or eight hundred, and its minor axis at a hundred and
+fifty times the distance of Sirius from the Earth."[11] And since it is
+concluded that the Solar System is near the centre of this aggregation,
+it follows that our distance from the remotest parts of it is some four
+hundred distances of Sirius. But the stars forming these remotest parts
+are not individually visible, even through telescopes of the highest
+power. How, then, can such telescopes make individually visible the
+stars of a nebula which is half a million times the distance of Sirius?
+The implication is, that a star rendered invisible by distance becomes
+visible if taken twelve hundred times further off! Shall we accept this
+implication? or shall we not rather conclude that the nebulae are _not_
+remote galaxies? Shall we not infer that, be their nature what it may,
+they must be at least as near to us as the extremities of our own
+sidereal system?
+
+Throughout the above argument, it is tacitly assumed that differences of
+apparent magnitude among the stars, result mainly from differences of
+distance. On this assumption the current doctrines respecting the nebulae
+are founded; and this assumption is, for the nonce, admitted in each of
+the foregoing criticisms. From the time, however, when it was first made
+by Sir W. Herschel, this assumption has been purely gratuitous; and it
+now proves to be inadmissible. But, awkwardly enough, its truth and its
+untruth are alike fatal to the conclusions of those who argue after the
+manner of Humboldt. Note the alternatives.
+
+On the one hand, what follows from the untruth of the assumption? If
+apparent largeness of stars is not due to comparative nearness, and
+their successively smaller sizes to their greater and greater degrees of
+remoteness, what becomes of the inferences respecting the dimensions of
+our sidereal system and the distances of nebulae? If, as has lately been
+shown, the almost invisible star 61 Cygni has a greater parallax than
+[Greek: a] Cygni, though, according to an estimate based on Sir W.
+Herschel's assumption, it should be about twelve times more distant--if,
+as it turns out, there exist telescopic stars which are nearer to us
+than Sirius; of what worth is the conclusion that the nebulae are very
+remote, because their component luminous masses are made visible only by
+high telescopic powers? Clearly, if the most brilliant star in the
+heavens and a star that cannot be seen by the naked eye, prove to be
+equidistant, relative distances cannot be in the least inferred from
+relative visibilities. And if so, nebulae may be comparatively near,
+though the starlets of which they are made up appear extremely minute.
+
+On the other hand, what follows if the truth of the assumption be
+granted? The arguments used to justify this assumption in the case of
+the stars, equally justify it in the case of the nebulae. It cannot be
+contended that, on the average, the _apparent_ sizes of the stars
+indicate their distances, without its being admitted that, on the
+average, the _apparent_ sizes of the nebulae indicate their
+distances--that, generally speaking, the larger are the nearer and the
+smaller are the more distant. Mark, now, the necessary inference
+respecting their resolvability. The largest or nearest nebulae will be
+most easily resolved into stars; the successively smaller will be
+successively more difficult of resolution; and the irresolvable ones
+will be the smallest ones. This, however, is exactly the reverse of the
+fact. The largest nebulae are either wholly irresolvable, or but
+partially resolvable under the highest telescopic powers; while large
+numbers of quite small nebulae are easily resolved by far less powerful
+telescopes. An instrument through which the great nebula in Andromeda,
+two and a half degrees long and one degree broad, appears merely as a
+diffused light, decomposes a nebula of fifteen minutes diameter into
+twenty thousand starry points. At the same time that the individual
+stars of a nebula eight minutes in diameter are so clearly seen as to
+allow of their number being estimated, a nebula covering an area five
+hundred times as great shows no stars at all! What possible explanation
+of this can be given on the current hypothesis?
+
+Yet a further difficulty remains--one which is, perhaps, still more
+obviously fatal than the foregoing. This difficulty is presented by the
+phenomena of the Magellanic clouds. Describing the larger of these, Sir
+John Herschel says:--
+
+     "The Nubecula Major, like the Minor, consists partly of large
+     tracts and ill-defined patches of irresolvable nebula, and of
+     nebulosity in every stage of resolution, up to perfectly resolved
+     stars like the Milky Way, as also of regular and irregular nebulae
+     properly so called, of globular clusters in every stage of
+     resolvability, and of clustering groups sufficiently insulated and
+     condensed to come under the designation of 'clusters of
+     stars.'"--_Cape Observations_, p. 146.
+
+In his _Outlines of Astronomy_, Sir John Herschel, after repeating this
+description in other words, goes on to remark that--
+
+     "This combination of characters, rightly considered, is in a high
+     degree instructive, affording an insight into the probable
+     comparative distance of _stars_ and _nebulae_, and the real
+     brightness of individual stars as compared with one another. Taking
+     the apparent semidiameter of the nubecula major at three degrees,
+     and regarding its solid form as, roughly speaking, spherical, its
+     nearest and most remote parts differ in their distance from us by a
+     little more than a tenth part of our distance from its center. The
+     brightness of objects situated in its nearer portions, therefore,
+     cannot be _much_ exaggerated, nor that of its remoter _much_
+     enfeebled, by their difference of distance; yet within this
+     globular space, we have collected upwards of six hundred stars of
+     the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth magnitudes, nearly three
+     hundred nebulae, and globular and other clusters, _of all degrees of
+     resolvability_, and smaller scattered stars innumerable of every
+     inferior magnitude, from the tenth to such as by their multitude
+     and minuteness constitute irresolvable nebulosity, extending over
+     tracts of many square degrees. Were there but one such object, it
+     might be maintained without utter improbability that its apparent
+     sphericity is only an effect of foreshortening, and that in reality
+     a much greater proportional difference of distance between its
+     nearer and more remote parts exists. But such an adjustment,
+     improbable enough in one case, must be rejected as too much so for
+     fair argument in two. It must, therefore, be taken as a
+     demonstrated fact, that stars of the seventh or eighth magnitude
+     and irresolvable nebula may co-exist within limits of distance not
+     differing in proportion more than as nine to ten."--_Outlines of
+     Astronomy_ (10th Ed.), pp. 656-57.
+
+This supplies yet another _reductio ad absurdum_ of the doctrine we are
+combating. It gives us the choice of two incredibilities. If we are to
+believe that one of these included nebulae is so remote that its hundred
+thousand stars look like a milky spot, invisible to the naked eye; we
+must also believe that there are single stars so enormous that though
+removed to this same distance they remain visible. If we accept the
+other alternative, and say that many nebulae are no further off than our
+own stars of the eighth magnitude; then it is requisite to say that at
+a distance not greater than that at which a single star is still
+faintly visible to the naked eye, there may exist a group of a hundred
+thousand stars which is invisible to the naked eye. Neither of these
+suppositions can be entertained. What, then, is the conclusion that
+remains? This only:--that the nebulae are not further from us than parts
+of our own sidereal system, of which they must be considered members;
+and that when they are resolvable into discrete masses, these masses
+cannot be considered as stars in anything like the ordinary sense of
+that word.[12]
+
+And now, having seen the untenability of this idea, rashly espoused by
+sundry astronomers, that the nebulae are extremely remote galaxies; let
+us consider whether the various appearances they present are not
+reconcilable with the Nebular Hypothesis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Given a rare and widely-diffused mass of nebulous matter, having a
+diameter, say, of one hundred times that of the Solar System,[13] what
+are the successive changes that may be expected to take place in it?
+Mutual gravitation will approximate its atoms or its molecules; but
+their approximation will be opposed by that atomic motion the resultant
+of which we recognize as repulsion, and the overcoming of which implies
+the evolution of heat. As fast as this heat partially escapes by
+radiation, further approximation will take place, attended by further
+evolution of heat, and so on continuously: the processes not occurring
+separately as here described, but simultaneously, uninterruptedly, and
+with increasing activity. When the nebulous mass has reached a
+particular stage of condensation--when its internally-situated atoms
+have approached to within certain distances, have generated a certain
+amount of heat, and are subject to a certain mutual pressure,
+combinations may be anticipated. Whether the molecules produced be of
+kinds such as we know, which is possible, or whether they be of kinds
+simpler than any we know, which is more probable, matters not to the
+argument. It suffices that molecular unions, either between atoms of the
+same kind or between atoms of different kinds, will finally take place.
+When they do take place, they will be accompanied by a sudden and great
+disengagement of heat; and until this excess of heat has escaped, the
+newly-formed molecules will remain uniformly diffused, or, as it were,
+dissolved in the pre-existing nebulous medium.
+
+But now what may be expected by and by to happen? When radiation has
+adequately lowered the temperature, these molecules will precipitate;
+and, having precipitated, they will not remain uniformly diffused, but
+will aggregate into flocculi; just as water, precipitated from air,
+collects into clouds. Concluding, thus, that a nebulous mass will, in
+course of time, resolve itself into flocculi of precipitated denser
+matter, floating in the rarer medium from which they were precipitated,
+let us inquire what are the mechanical results to be inferred. Of
+clustered bodies in empty space, each will move along a line which is
+the resultant of the tractive forces exercised by all the rest, modified
+from moment to moment by the acquired motion; and the aggregation of
+such clustered bodies, if it eventually results at all, can result only
+from collision, dissipation, and the formation of a resisting medium.
+But with clustered bodies already immersed in a resisting medium, and
+especially if such bodies are of small densities, such as those we are
+considering, the process of concentration will begin forthwith: two
+factors conspiring to produce it. The flocculi described, irregular in
+their shapes and presenting, as they must in nearly all cases,
+unsymmetrical faces to their lines of motion, will be deflected from
+those courses which mutual gravitation, if uninterfered with, would
+produce among them; and this will militate against that balancing of
+movements which permanence of the cluster pre-supposes. If it be said,
+as it may truly be said, that this is too trifling a cause of
+derangement to produce much effect, then there comes the more important
+cause with which it co-operates. The medium from which the flocculi have
+been precipitated, and through which they are moving, must, by
+gravitation, be rendered denser in its central parts than in its
+peripheral parts. Hence the flocculi, none of them moving in straight
+lines to the common centre of gravity, but having courses made to
+diverge to one or other side of it (in small degrees by the cause just
+assigned, and in much greater degrees by the tractive forces of other
+flocculi) will, in moving towards the central region, meet with greater
+resistances on their inner sides than on their outer sides; and will be
+thus made to diverge outwardly from their courses more than they would
+otherwise do. Hence a tendency which, apart from other tendencies, will
+cause them severally to go on one or other side of the centre of
+gravity, and, approaching it, to get motions more and more tangential.
+Observe, however, that their respective motions will be deflected, not
+towards one side of the common centre of gravity, but towards various
+sides. How then can there result a movement common to them all? Very
+simply. Each flocculus, in describing its course, must give motion to
+the medium through which it is moving. But the probabilities are
+infinity to one against all the respective motions thus impressed on
+this medium, exactly balancing one another. And if they do not balance
+one another the result must be rotation of the whole mass of the medium
+in one direction. But preponderating momentum in one direction, having
+caused rotation of the medium in that direction, the rotating medium
+must in its turn gradually arrest such flocculi as are moving in
+opposition, and impress its own motion upon them; and thus there will
+ultimately be formed a rotating medium with suspended flocculi partaking
+of its motion, while they move in converging spirals towards the common
+centre of gravity.[14]
+
+Before comparing these conclusions with facts, let us pursue the
+reasoning a little further, and observe certain subordinate actions. The
+respective flocculi must be drawn not towards their common centre of
+gravity only, but also towards neighbouring flocculi. Hence the whole
+assemblage of flocculi will break up into groups: each group
+concentrating towards its local centre of gravity, and in so doing
+acquiring a vortical movement like that subsequently acquired by the
+whole nebula. According to circumstances, and chiefly according to the
+size of the original nebulous mass, this process of local aggregation
+will produce various results. If the whole nebula is but small, the
+local groups of flocculi may be drawn into the common centre of gravity
+before their constituent masses have coalesced with one another. In a
+larger nebula, these local aggregations may have concentrated into
+rotating spheroids of vapour, while yet they have made but little
+approach towards the general focus of the system. In a still larger
+nebula, where the local aggregations are both greater and more remote
+from the common centre of gravity, they may have condensed into masses
+of molten matter before the general distribution of them has greatly
+altered. In short, as the conditions in each case determine, the
+discrete masses produced may vary indefinitely in number, in size, in
+density, in motion, in distribution.
+
+And now let us return to the visible characters of nebulae, as observed
+through modern telescopes. Take first the description of those nebulae
+which, by the hypothesis, must be in an early stage of evolution.
+
+     Among the "_irregular nebulae_," says Sir John Herschel, "may be
+     comprehended all which, to _a want of complete and in most
+     instances even of partial resolvability_ by the power of the
+     20-feet reflector, unite such a deviation from the circular or
+     elliptic form, or such a want of symmetry (with that form) as
+     preclude their being placed in class 1, or that of Regular Nebulae.
+     This second class comprises many of the most remarkable and
+     interesting objects in the heavens, _as well as the most extensive
+     in respect of the area they occupy_."
+
+And, referring to this same order of objects, M. Arago says:--"The forms
+of very large diffuse nebulae do not appear to admit of definition; they
+have no regular outline."
+
+This coexistence of largeness, irregularity, and indefiniteness of
+outline, with irresolvability, is extremely significant. The fact that
+the largest nebulae are either irresolvable or very difficult to resolve,
+might have been inferred _a priori_; seeing that irresolvability,
+implying that the aggregation of precipitated matter has gone on to but
+a small extent, will be found in nebulae of wide diffusion. Again, the
+irregularity of these large, irresolvable nebulae, might also have been
+expected; seeing that their outlines, compared by Arago with "the
+fantastic figures which characterize clouds carried away and tossed
+about by violent and often contrary winds," are similarly characteristic
+of a mass not yet gathered together by the mutual attraction of its
+parts. And once more, the fact that these large, irregular, irresolvable
+nebulae have indefinite outlines--outlines that fade off insensibly into
+surrounding darkness--is one of like meaning.
+
+Speaking generally (and of course differences of distance negative
+anything beyond average statements), the spiral nebulae are smaller than
+the irregular nebulae, and more resolvable; at the same time that they
+are not so small as the regular nebulae, and not so resolvable. This is
+as, according to the hypothesis, it should be. The degree of
+condensation causing spiral movement, is a degree of condensation also
+implying masses of flocculi that are larger, and therefore more visible,
+than those existing in an earlier stage. Moreover, the forms of these
+spiral nebulae are quite in harmony with the explanation given. The
+curves of luminous matter which they exhibit, are _not_ such as would be
+described by discrete masses starting from a state of rest, and moving
+through a resisting medium to a common centre of gravity; but they _are_
+such as would be described by masses having their movements modified by
+the rotation of the medium.
+
+In the centre of a spiral nebula is seen a mass both more luminous and
+more resolvable than the rest. Assume that, in process of time, all the
+spiral streaks of luminous matter which converge to this centre are
+drawn into it, as they must be; assume further, that the flocculi, or
+other discrete portions constituting these luminous streaks, aggregate
+into larger masses at the same time that they approach the central
+group, and that the masses forming this central group also aggregate
+into larger masses; and there will finally result a cluster of such
+larger masses, which will be resolvable with comparative ease. And, as
+the coalescence and concentration go on, the constituent masses will
+gradually become fewer, larger, brighter, and more densely collected
+around the common centre of gravity. See now how completely this
+inference agrees with observation. "The circular form is that which most
+commonly characterises resolvable nebulae," writes Arago. Resolvable
+nebulae, says Sir John Herschel, "are almost universally round or oval."
+Moreover, the centre of each group habitually displays a closer
+clustering of the constituent masses than the outer parts; and it is
+shown that, under the law of gravitation, which we now know extends to
+the stars, this distribution is _not_ one of equilibrium, but implies
+progressing concentration. While, just as we inferred that, according to
+circumstances, the extent to which aggregation has been carried must
+vary; so we find that, in fact, there are regular nebulae of all degrees
+of resolvability, from those consisting of innumerable minute masses, to
+those in which their numbers are smaller and the sizes greater, and to
+those in which there are a few large bodies worthy to be called stars.
+
+On the one hand, then, we see that the notion, of late years
+uncritically received, that the nebulae are extremely remote galaxies of
+stars like those which make up our own Milky Way, is totally
+irreconcilable with the facts--involves us in sundry absurdities. On the
+other hand, we see that the hypothesis of nebular condensation
+harmonizes with the most recent results of stellar astronomy: nay
+more--that it supplies us with an explanation of various appearances
+which in its absence would be incomprehensible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Descending now to the Solar System, let us consider first a class of
+phenomena in some sort transitional--those offered by comets. In them,
+or at least in those most numerous of them which lie far out of the
+plane of the Solar System, and are not to be counted among its members,
+we have, still existing, a kind of matter like that out of which,
+according to the Nebular Hypothesis, the Solar System was evolved.
+Hence, for the explanation of them, we must go back to the time when the
+substances forming the sun and planets were yet unconcentrated.
+
+When diffused matter, precipitated from a rarer medium, is aggregating,
+there are certain to be here and there produced small flocculi, which
+long remain detached; as do, for instance, minute shreds of cloud in a
+summer sky. In a concentrating nebula these will, in the majority of
+cases, eventually coalesce with the larger flocculi near to them. But it
+is tolerably evident that some of those formed at the outermost parts of
+the nebula, will _not_ coalesce with the larger internal masses, but
+will slowly follow without overtaking them. The relatively greater
+resistance of the medium necessitates this. As a single feather falling
+to the ground will be rapidly left behind by a pillow-full of feathers;
+so, in their progress to the common centre of gravity, will the
+outermost shreds of vapour be left behind by the great masses of vapour
+internally situated. But we are not dependent merely on reasoning for
+this belief. Observation shows us that the less concentrated external
+parts of nebulae, _are_ left behind by the more concentrated internal
+parts. Examined through high powers, all nebulae, even when they have
+assumed regular forms, are seen to be surrounded by luminous streaks, of
+which the directions show that they are being drawn into the general
+mass. Still higher powers bring into view still smaller, fainter, and
+more widely-dispersed streaks. And it cannot be doubted that the minute
+fragments which no telescopic aid makes visible, are yet more numerous
+and widely dispersed. Thus far, then, inference and observation are at
+one.
+
+Granting that the great majority of these outlying portions of nebulous
+matter will be drawn into the central mass long before it reaches a
+definite form, the presumption is that some of the very small,
+far-removed portions will not be so; but that before they arrive near
+it, the central mass will have contracted into a comparatively moderate
+bulk. What now will be the characters of these late-arriving portions?
+
+In the first place, they will have either extremely eccentric orbits or
+non-elliptic paths. Left behind at a time when they were moving towards
+the centre of gravity in slightly-deflected lines, and therefore having
+but very small angular velocities, they will approach the central mass
+in greatly elongated curves; and rushing round it, will go off again
+into space. That is, they will behave just as we see the majority of
+comets do; the orbits of which are either so eccentric as to be
+indistinguishable from parabolas, or else are not orbits at all, but are
+paths which are distinctly either parabolic or hyperbolic.
+
+In the second place, they will come from all parts of the heavens. Our
+supposition implies that they were left behind at a time when the
+nebulous mass was of irregular shape, and had not acquired a definite
+rotation; and as the separation of them would not be from any one
+surface of the nebulous mass more than another, the conclusion must be
+that they will come to the central body from various directions in
+space. This, too, is exactly what happens. Unlike planets, whose orbits
+approximate to one plane, comets have orbits that show no relation to
+one another; but cut the plane of the ecliptic at all angles, and have
+axes inclined to it at all angles.
+
+In the third place, these remotest flocculi of nebulous matter will, at
+the outset, be deflected from their direct courses to the common centre
+of gravity, not all on one side, but each on such side as its form, or
+its original proper motion, determines. And being left behind before the
+rotation of the nebula is set up, they will severally retain their
+different individual motions. Hence, following the concentrated mass,
+they will eventually go round it on all sides; and as often from right
+to left as from left to right. Here again the inference perfectly
+corresponds with the facts. While all the planets go round the sun from
+west to east, comets as often go round the sun from east to west as from
+west to east. Of 262 comets recorded since 1680, 130 are direct, and 132
+are retrograde. This equality is what the law of probabilities would
+indicate.
+
+Then, in the fourth place, the physical constitution of comets accords
+with the hypothesis.[15] The ability of nebulous matter to concentrate
+into a concrete form, depends on its mass. To bring its ultimate atoms
+into that proximity requisite for chemical union--requisite, that is,
+for the production of denser matter--their repulsion must be overcome.
+The only force antagonistic to their repulsion, is their mutual
+gravitation. That their mutual gravitation may generate a pressure and
+temperature of sufficient intensity, there must be an enormous
+accumulation of them; and even then the approximation can slowly go on
+only as fast as the evolved heat escapes. But where the quantity of
+atoms is small, and therefore the force of mutual gravitation small,
+there will be nothing to coerce the atoms into union. Whence we infer
+that these detached fragments of nebulous matter will continue in
+their original state. Non-periodic comets seem to do so.
+
+We have already seen that this view of the origin of comets harmonizes
+with the characters of their orbits; but the evidence hence derived is
+much stronger than was indicated. The great majority of cometary orbits
+are classed as parabolic; and it is ordinarily inferred that they are
+visitors from remote space, and will never return. But are they rightly
+classed as parabolic? Observations on a comet moving in an extremely
+eccentric ellipse, which are possible only when it is comparatively near
+perihelion, must fail to distinguish its orbit from a parabola.
+Evidently, then, it is not safe to class it as a parabola because of
+inability to detect the elements of an ellipse. But if extreme
+eccentricity of an orbit necessitates such inability, it seems quite
+possible that comets have no other orbits than elliptic ones. Though
+five or six are said to be hyperbolic, yet, as I learn from one who has
+paid special attention to comets, "no such orbit has, I believe, been
+computed for a well-observed comet." Hence the probability that all the
+orbits are ellipses is overwhelming. Ellipses and hyperbolas have
+countless varieties of forms, but there is only one form of parabola;
+or, to speak literally, all parabolas are similar, while there are
+infinitely numerous dissimilar ellipses and dissimilar hyperbolas.
+Consequently, anything coming to the Sun from a great distance must have
+one exact amount of proper motion to produce a parabola: all other
+amounts would give hyperbolas or ellipses. And if there are no
+hyperbolic orbits, then it is infinity to one that all the orbits are
+elliptical. This is just what they would be if comets had the genesis
+above supposed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now, leaving these erratic bodies, let us turn to the more familiar
+and important members of the Solar System. It was the remarkable harmony
+among their movements which first made Laplace conceive that the Sun,
+planets, and satellites had resulted from a common genetic process. As
+Sir William Herschel, by his observations on the nebulae, was led to the
+conclusion that stars resulted from the aggregation of diffused matter;
+so Laplace, by his observations on the structure of the Solar System,
+was led to the conclusion that only by the rotation of aggregating
+matter were its peculiarities to be explained. In his _Exposition du
+Systeme du Monde_, he enumerates as the leading evidences:--1. The
+movements of the planets in the same direction and in orbits approaching
+to the same plane; 2. The movements of the satellites in the same
+direction as those of the planets; 3. The movements of rotation of these
+various bodies and of the sun in the same direction as the orbital
+motions, and mostly in planes little different; 4. The small
+eccentricities of the orbits of the planets and satellites, as
+contrasted with the great eccentricities of the cometary orbits. And the
+probability that these harmonious movements had a common cause, he
+calculates as two hundred thousand billions to one.
+
+This immense preponderance of probability does not point to a common
+cause under the form ordinarily conceived--an Invisible Power working
+after the method of "a Great Artificer;" but to an Invisible Power
+working after the method of evolution. For though the supporters of the
+common hypothesis may argue that it was necessary for the sake of
+stability that the planets should go round the Sun in the same direction
+and nearly in one plane, they cannot thus account for the direction of
+the axial motions.[16] The mechanical equilibrium would not have been
+interfered with, had the Sun been without any rotatory movement; or had
+he revolved on his axis in a direction opposite to that in which the
+planets go round him; or in a direction at right angles to the average
+plane of their orbits. With equal safety the motion of the Moon round
+the Earth might have been the reverse of the Earth's motion round its
+axis; or the motions of Jupiter's satellites might similarly have been
+at variance with his axial motion; or those of Saturn's satellites with
+his. As, however, none of these alternatives have been followed, the
+uniformity must be considered, in this case as in all others, evidence
+of subordination to some general law--implies what we call natural
+causation, as distinguished from arbitrary arrangement.
+
+Hence the hypothesis of evolution would be the only probable one, even
+in the absence of any clue to the particular mode of evolution. But when
+we have, propounded by a mathematician of the highest authority, a
+theory of this evolution based on established mechanical principles,
+which accounts for these various peculiarities, as well as for many
+minor ones, the conclusion that the Solar System _was_ evolved becomes
+almost irresistible.
+
+The general nature of Laplace's theory scarcely needs stating. Books of
+popular astronomy have familiarized most readers with his
+conceptions;--namely, that the matter now condensed into the Solar
+System, once formed a vast rotating spheroid of extreme rarity extending
+beyond the orbit of the outermost planet; that as this spheroid
+contracted, its rate of rotation necessarily increased; that by
+augmenting centrifugal force its equatorial zone was from time to time
+prevented from following any further the concentrating mass, and so
+remained behind as a revolving ring; that each of the revolving rings
+thus periodically detached, eventually became ruptured at its weakest
+point, and, contracting on itself, gradually aggregated into a rotating
+mass; that this, like the parent mass, increased in rapidity of rotation
+as it decreased in size, and, where the centrifugal force was
+sufficient, similarly left behind rings, which finally collapsed into
+rotating spheroids; and that thus, out of these primary and secondary
+rings, there arose planets and their satellites, while from the central
+mass there resulted the Sun. Moreover, it is tolerably well known that
+this _a priori_ reasoning harmonizes with the results of experiment. Dr.
+Plateau has shown that when a mass of fluid is, as far may be, protected
+from the action of external forces, it will, if made to rotate with
+adequate velocity, form detached rings; and that these rings will break
+up into spheroids which turn on their axes in the same direction with
+the central mass. Thus, given the original nebula, which, acquiring a
+vortical motion in the way indicated, has at length concentrated into a
+vast spheroid of aeriform matter moving round its axis--given this, and
+mechanical principles explain the rest. The genesis of a Solar System
+displaying movements like those observed, may be predicted; and the
+reasoning on which the prediction is based is countenanced by
+experiment.[17]
+
+But now let us inquire whether, besides these most conspicuous
+structural and dynamic peculiarities of the Solar System, sundry minor
+ones are not similarly explicable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Take first the relation between the planes of the planetary orbits and
+the plane of the Sun's equator. If, when the nebulous spheroid extended
+beyond the orbit of Neptune, all parts of it had been revolving exactly
+in the same plane, or rather in parallel planes--if all its parts had
+had one axis; then the planes of the successive rings would have been
+coincident with each other and with that of the Sun's rotation. But it
+needs only to go back to the earlier stages of concentration, to see
+that there could exist no such complete uniformity of motion. The
+flocculi, already described as precipitated from an irregular and
+widely-diffused nebula, and as starting from all points to their common
+centre of gravity, must move not in one plane but in innumerable planes,
+cutting each other at all angles. The gradual establishment of a
+vortical motion such as we at present see indicated in the spiral
+nebulae, is the gradual approach towards motion in one plane. But this
+plane can but slowly become decided. Flocculi not moving in this plane,
+but entering into the aggregation at various inclinations, will tend to
+perform their revolutions round its centre in their own planes; and only
+in course of time will their motions be partly destroyed by conflicting
+ones, and partly resolved into the general motion. Especially will the
+outermost portions of the rotating mass retain for a long time their
+more or less independent directions. Hence the probabilities are, that
+the planes of the rings first detached will differ considerably from the
+average plane of the mass; while the planes of those detached latest
+will differ from it less.
+
+Here, again, inference to a considerable extent agrees with observation.
+Though the progression is irregular, yet, on the average, the
+inclinations decrease on approaching the Sun; and this is all we can
+expect. For as the portions of the nebulous spheroid must have arrived
+with miscellaneous inclinations, its strata must have had planes of
+rotation diverging from the average plane in degrees not always
+proportionate to their distances from the centre.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Consider next the movements of the planets on their axes. Laplace
+alleged as one among other evidences of a common genetic cause, that the
+planets rotate in a direction the same as that in which they go round
+the Sun, and on axes approximately perpendicular to their orbits. Since
+he wrote, an exception to this general rule has been discovered in the
+case of Uranus, and another still more recently in the case of
+Neptune--judging, at least, from the motions of their respective
+satellites. This anomaly has been thought to throw considerable doubt on
+his speculation; and at first sight it does so. But a little reflection
+shows that the anomaly is not inexplicable, and that Laplace simply went
+too far in putting down as a certain result of nebular genesis, what is,
+in some instances, only a probable result. The cause he pointed out as
+determining the direction of rotation, is the greater absolute velocity
+of the outer part of the detached ring. But there are conditions under
+which this difference of velocity may be too insignificant, even if it
+exists. If a mass of nebulous matter approaching spirally to the central
+spheroid, and eventually joining it tangentially, is made up of parts
+having the same absolute velocities; then, after joining the equatorial
+periphery of the spheroid and being made to rotate with it, the angular
+velocity of its outer parts will be smaller than the angular velocity of
+its inner parts. Hence, if, when the angular velocities of the outer and
+inner parts of a detached ring are the same, there results a tendency to
+rotation in the same direction with the orbital motion, it may be
+inferred that when the outer parts of the ring have a smaller angular
+velocity than the inner parts, a tendency to retrograde rotation will be
+the consequence.
+
+Again, the sectional form of the ring is a circumstance of moment; and
+this form must have differed more or less in every case. To make this
+clear, some illustration will be necessary. Suppose we take an orange,
+and, assuming the marks of the stalk and the calyx to represent the
+poles, cut off round the line of the equator a strip of peel. This strip
+of peel, if placed on the table with its ends meeting, will make a ring
+shaped like the hoop of a barrel--a ring of which the thickness in the
+line of its diameter is very small, but of which the width in a
+direction perpendicular to its diameter is considerable. Suppose, now,
+that in place of an orange, which is a spheroid of very slight
+oblateness, we take a spheroid of very great oblateness, shaped somewhat
+like a lens of small convexity. If from the edge or equator of this
+lens-shaped spheroid, a ring of moderate size were cut off, it would be
+unlike the previous ring in this respect, that its greatest thickness
+would be in the line of its diameter, and not in a line at right angles
+to its diameter: it would be a ring shaped somewhat like a quoit, only
+far more slender. That is to say, according to the oblateness of a
+rotating spheroid, the detached ring may be either a hoop-shaped ring or
+a quoit-shaped ring.
+
+One further implication must be noted. In a much-flattened or
+lens-shaped spheroid, the form of the ring will vary with its bulk. A
+very slender ring, taking off just the equatorial surface, will be
+hoop-shaped; while a tolerably massive ring, trenching appreciably on
+the diameter of the spheroid, will be quoit-shaped. Thus, then,
+according to the oblateness of the spheroid and the bulkiness of the
+detached ring, will the greatest thickness of that ring be in the
+direction of its plane, or in a direction perpendicular to its plane.
+But this circumstance must greatly affect the rotation of the resulting
+planet. In a decidedly hoop-shaped nebulous ring, the differences of
+velocity between the inner and outer surfaces will be small; and such a
+ring, aggregating into a mass of which the greatest diameter is at right
+angles to the plane of the orbit, will almost certainly give to this
+mass a predominant tendency to rotate in a direction at right angles to
+the plane of the orbit. Where the ring is but little hoop-shaped, and
+the difference between the inner and outer velocities greater, as it
+must be, the opposing tendencies--one to produce rotation in the plane
+of the orbit, and the other, rotation perpendicular to it--will both be
+influential; and an intermediate plane of rotation will be taken up.
+While, if the nebulous ring is decidedly quoit-shaped, and therefore
+aggregates into a mass whose greatest dimension lies in the plane of
+the orbit, both tendencies will conspire to produce rotation in that
+plane.
+
+On referring to the facts, we find them, as far as can be judged, in
+harmony with this view. Considering the enormous circumference of
+Uranus's orbit, and his comparatively small mass, we may conclude that
+the ring from which he resulted was a comparatively slender, and
+therefore a hoop-shaped one: especially as the nebulous mass must have
+been at that time less oblate than afterwards. Hence, a plane of
+rotation nearly perpendicular to his orbit, and a direction of rotation
+having no reference to his orbital movement. Saturn has a mass seven
+times as great, and an orbit of less than half the diameter; whence it
+follows that his genetic ring, having less than half the circumference,
+and less than half the vertical thickness (the spheroid being then
+certainly _as_ oblate, and indeed _more_ oblate), must have had a much
+greater width--must have been less hoop-shaped, and more approaching to
+the quoit-shaped: notwithstanding difference of density, it must have
+been at least two or three times as broad in the line of its plane.
+Consequently, Saturn has a rotatory movement in the same direction as
+the movement of translation, and in a plane differing from it by thirty
+degrees only. In the case of Jupiter, again, whose mass is three and a
+half times that of Saturn, and whose orbit is little more than half the
+size, the genetic ring must, for the like reasons, have been still
+broader--decidedly quoit-shaped, we may say; and there hence resulted a
+planet whose plane of rotation differs from that of his orbit by
+scarcely more than three degrees. Once more, considering the comparative
+insignificance of Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury, it follows that, the
+diminishing circumferences of the rings not sufficing to account for the
+smallness of the resulting masses, the rings must have been slender
+ones--must have again approximated to the hoop-shaped; and thus it
+happens that the planes of rotation again diverge more or less widely
+from those of the orbits. Taking into account the increasing oblateness
+of the original spheroid in the successive stages of its concentration,
+and the different proportions of the detached rings, it may fairly be
+held that the respective rotatory motions are not at variance with the
+hypothesis but contrariwise tend to confirm it.
+
+Not only the directions, but also the velocities of rotation seem thus
+explicable. It might naturally be supposed that the large planets would
+revolve on their axes more slowly than the small ones: our terrestrial
+experiences of big and little bodies incline us to expect this. It is a
+corollary from the Nebular Hypothesis, however, more especially when
+interpreted as above, that while large planets will rotate rapidly,
+small ones will rotate slowly; and we find that in fact they do so.
+Other things equal, a concentrating nebulous mass which is diffused
+through a wide space, and whose outer parts have, therefore, to travel
+from great distances to the common centre of gravity, will acquire a
+high axial velocity in course of its aggregation; and conversely with a
+small mass. Still more marked will be the difference where the form of
+the genetic ring conspires to increase the rate of rotation. Other
+things equal, a genetic ring which is broadest in the direction of its
+plane will produce a mass rotating faster than one which is broadest at
+right angles to its plane; and if the ring is absolutely as well as
+relatively broad, the rotation will be very rapid. These conditions
+were, as we saw, fulfilled in the case of Jupiter; and Jupiter turns
+round his axis in less than ten hours. Saturn, in whose case, as above
+explained, the conditions were less favourable to rapid rotation, takes
+nearly ten hours and a half. While Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury,
+whose rings must have been slender, take more than double that time: the
+smallest taking the longest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the planets let us now pass to the satellites. Here, beyond the
+conspicuous facts commonly adverted to, that they go round their
+primaries in the directions in which these turn on their axes, in planes
+diverging but little from their equators, and in orbits nearly circular,
+there are several significant traits which must not be passed over.
+
+One of them is that each set of satellites repeats in miniature the
+relations of the planets to the Sun, both in certain respects above
+named and in the order of their sizes. On progressing from the outside
+of the Solar System to its centre, we see that there are four large
+external planets, and four internal ones which are comparatively small.
+A like contrast holds between the outer and inner satellites in every
+case. Among the four satellites of Jupiter, the parallel is maintained
+as well as the comparative smallness of the number allows: the two outer
+ones are the largest, and the two inner ones the smallest. According to
+the most recent observations made by Mr. Lassell, the like is true of
+the four satellites of Uranus. In the case of Saturn, who has eight
+secondary planets revolving round him, the likeness is still more close
+in arrangement as in number: the three outer satellites are large, the
+inner ones small; and the contrasts of size are here much greater
+between the largest, which is nearly as big as Mars, and the smallest,
+which is with difficulty discovered even by the best telescopes. But the
+analogy does not end here. Just as with the planets, there is at first a
+general increase of size on travelling inwards from Neptune and Uranus,
+which do not differ very widely, to Saturn, which is much larger, and to
+Jupiter, which is the largest; so of the eight satellites of Saturn, the
+largest is not the outermost, but the outermost save two; so of
+Jupiter's four secondaries, the largest is the most remote but one. Now
+these parallelisms are inexplicable by the theory of final causes. For
+purposes of lighting, if this be the presumed object of these attendant
+bodies, it would have been far better had the larger been the nearer: at
+present, their remoteness renders them of less service than the
+smallest. To the Nebular Hypothesis, however, these analogies give
+further support. They show the action of a common physical cause. They
+imply a _law_ of genesis, holding in the secondary systems as in the
+primary system.
+
+Still more instructive shall we find the distribution of the
+satellites--their absence in some instances, and their presence in other
+instances, in smaller or greater numbers. The argument from design fails
+to account for this distribution. Supposing it be granted that planets
+nearer the Sun than ourselves, have no need of moons (though,
+considering that their nights are as dark, and, relatively to their
+brilliant days, even darker than ours, the need seems quite as
+great)--supposing this to be granted; how are we to explain the fact
+that Uranus has but half as many moons as Saturn, though he is at double
+the distance? While, however, the current presumption is untenable, the
+Nebular Hypothesis furnishes us with an explanation. It enables us to
+predict where satellites will be abundant and where they will be absent.
+The reasoning is as follows.
+
+In a rotating nebulous spheroid which is concentrating into a planet,
+there are at work two antagonist mechanical tendencies--the centripetal
+and the centrifugal. While the force of gravitation draws all the atoms
+of the spheroid together, their tangential momentum is resolvable into
+two parts, of which one resists gravitation. The ratio which this
+centrifugal force bears to gravitation, varies, other things equal, as
+the square of the velocity. Hence, the aggregation of a rotating
+nebulous spheroid will be more or less hindered by this resisting force,
+according as the rate of rotation is high or low: the opposition, in
+equal spheroids, being four times as great when the rotation is twice as
+rapid; nine times as great when it is three times as rapid; and so on.
+Now the detachment of a ring from a planet-forming body of nebulous
+matter, implies that at its equatorial zone the increasing centrifugal
+force consequent on concentration has become so great as to balance
+gravity. Whence it is tolerably obvious that the detachment of rings
+will be most frequent from those masses in which the centrifugal
+tendency bears the greatest ratio to the gravitative tendency. Though it
+is not possible to calculate what ratio these two tendencies had to each
+other in the genetic spheroid which produced each planet, it is possible
+to calculate where each was the greatest and where the least. While it
+is true that the ratio which centrifugal force now bears to gravity at
+the equator of each planet, differs widely from that which it bore
+during the earlier stages of concentration; and while it is true that
+this change in the ratio, depending on the degree of contraction each
+planet has undergone, has in no two cases been the same; yet we may
+fairly conclude that where the ratio is still the greatest, it has been
+the greatest from the beginning. The satellite-forming tendency which
+each planet had, will be approximately indicated by the proportion now
+existing in it between the aggregating power, and the power that has
+opposed aggregation. On making the requisite calculations, a remarkable
+harmony with this inference comes out. The following table shows what
+fraction the centrifugal force is of the centripetal force in every
+case; and the relation which that fraction bears to the number of
+satellites.[18]
+
+   Mercury.  1/360
+   Venus.    1/253
+   Earth.    1/289    1 Satellite.
+   Mars.     1/127    2 Satellites.
+   Jupiter.  1/11.4   4 Satellites.
+   Saturn.   1/6.4    8 Satellites, and three rings.
+   Uranus.   1/10.9   4 Satellites.
+
+Thus taking as our standard of comparison the Earth with its one moon,
+we see that Mercury, in which the centrifugal force is relatively less,
+has no moon. Mars, in which it is relatively much greater, has two
+moons. Jupiter, in which it is far greater, has four moons. Uranus, in
+which it is greater still, has certainly four, and more if Herschel was
+right. Saturn, in which it is the greatest, being nearly one-sixth of
+gravity, has, including his rings, eleven attendants. The only instance
+in which there is nonconformity with observation, is that of Venus. Here
+it appears that the centrifugal force is relatively greater than in the
+Earth; and, according to the hypothesis, Venus ought to have a
+satellite. Respecting this anomaly several remarks are to be made.
+Without putting any faith in the alleged discovery of a satellite of
+Venus (repeated at intervals by five different observers), it may yet be
+contended that as the satellites of Mars eluded observation up to 1877,
+a satellite of Venus may have eluded observation up to the present time.
+Merely naming this as possible, but not probable, a consideration of
+more weight is that the period of rotation of Venus is but indefinitely
+fixed, and that a small diminution in the estimated angular velocity of
+her equator would bring the result into congruity with the hypothesis.
+Further, it may be remarked that not exact, but only general, congruity
+is to be expected; since the process of condensation of each planet from
+nebulous matter can scarcely be expected to have gone on with absolute
+uniformity: the angular velocities of the superposed strata of nebulous
+matter probably differed from one another in degrees unlike in each
+case; and such differences would affect the satellite-forming tendency.
+But without making much of these possible explanations of the
+discrepancy, the correspondence between inference and fact which we find
+in so many planets, may be held to afford strong support to the Nebular
+Hypothesis.
+
+Certain more special peculiarities of the satellites must be mentioned
+as suggestive. One of them is the relation between the period of
+revolution and that of rotation. No discoverable purpose is served by
+making the Moon go round its axis in the same time that it goes round
+the Earth: for our convenience, a more rapid axial motion would have
+been equally good; and for any possible inhabitants of the Moon, much
+better. Against the alternative supposition, that the equality occurred
+by accident, the probabilities are, as Laplace says, infinity to one.
+But to this arrangement, which is explicable neither as the result of
+design nor of chance, the Nebular Hypothesis furnishes a clue. In his
+_Exposition du Systeme du Monde_, Laplace shows, by reasoning too
+detailed to be here repeated, that under the circumstances such a
+relation of movements would be likely to establish itself.
+
+Among Jupiter's satellites, which severally display these same
+synchronous movements, there also exists a still more remarkable
+relation. "If the mean angular velocity of the first satellite be added
+to twice that of the third, the sum will be equal to three times that of
+the second;" and "from this it results that the situations of any two of
+them being given, that of the third can be found." Now here, as before,
+no conceivable advantage results. Neither in this case can the connexion
+have been accidental: the probabilities are infinity to one to the
+contrary. But again, according to Laplace, the Nebular Hypothesis
+supplies a solution. Are not these significant facts?
+
+Most significant fact of all, however, is that presented by the rings of
+Saturn. As Laplace remarks, they are, as it were, still extant witnesses
+of the genetic process he propounded. Here we have, continuing
+permanently, forms of aggregation like those through which each planet
+and satellite once passed; and their movements are just what, in
+conformity with the hypothesis, they should be. "La duree de la rotation
+d'une planete doit donc etre, d'apres cette hypothese, plus petite que
+la duree de la revolution du corps le plus voisin qui circule autour
+d'elle," says Laplace. And he then points out that the time of Saturn's
+rotation is to that of his rings as 427 to 438--an amount of difference
+such as was to be expected.[19]
+
+Respecting Saturn's rings it may be further remarked that the place of
+their occurrence is not without significance.
+
+Rings detached early in the process of concentration, consisting of
+gaseous matter having extremely little power of cohesion, can have
+little ability to resist the disruptive forces due to imperfect balance;
+and, therefore, collapse into satellites. A ring of a denser kind,
+whether solid, liquid, or composed of small discrete masses (as Saturn's
+rings are now concluded to be), we can expect will be formed only near
+the body of a planet when it has reached so late a stage of
+concentration that its equatorial portions contain matters capable of
+easy precipitation into liquid and, finally, solid forms. Even then it
+can be produced only under special conditions. Gaining a
+rapidly-increasing preponderance as the gravitative force does during
+the closing stages of concentration, the centrifugal force cannot, in
+ordinary cases, cause the leaving behind of rings when the mass has
+become dense. Only where the centrifugal force has all along been very
+great, and remains powerful to the last, as in Saturn, can we expect
+dense rings to be formed.
+
+We find, then, that besides those most conspicuous peculiarities of the
+Solar System which first suggested the theory of its evolution, there
+are many minor ones pointing in the same direction. Were there no other
+evidence, these mechanical arrangements would, considered in their
+totality, go far to establish the Nebular Hypothesis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the mechanical arrangements of the Solar System, turn we now to its
+physical characters; and, first, let us consider the inferences
+deducible from relative specific gravities.
+
+The fact that, speaking generally, the denser planets are the nearer to
+the Sun, has been by some considered as adding another to the many
+indications of nebular origin. Legitimately assuming that the outermost
+parts of a rotating nebulous spheroid, in its earlier stages of
+concentration, must be comparatively rare; and that the increasing
+density which the whole mass acquires as it contracts, must hold of the
+outermost parts as well as the rest; it is argued that the rings
+successively detached will be more and more dense, and will form planets
+of higher and higher specific gravities. But passing over other
+objections, this explanation is quite inadequate to account for the
+facts. Using the Earth as a standard of comparison, the relative
+densities run thus:--
+
+   Neptune. Uranus. Saturn. Jupiter. Mars. Earth. Venus. Mercury. Sun.
+    0.17     0.25    0.11    0.23    0.45   1.00   0.92   1.26    0.25
+
+Two insurmountable objections are presented by this series. The first
+is, that the progression is but a broken one. Neptune is denser than
+Saturn, which, by the hypothesis, it ought not to be. Uranus is denser
+than Jupiter, which it ought not to be. Uranus is denser than Saturn,
+and the Earth is denser than Venus--facts which not only give no
+countenance to, but directly contradict, the alleged explanation. The
+second objection, still more manifestly fatal, is the low specific
+gravity of the Sun. If, when the matter of the Sun filled the orbit of
+Mercury, its state of aggregation was such that the detached ring formed
+a planet having a specific gravity equal to that of iron; then the Sun
+itself, now that it has concentrated, should have a specific gravity
+much greater than that of iron; whereas its specific gravity is only
+half as much again as that of water. Instead of being far denser than
+the nearest planet, it is but one-fifth as dense.
+
+While these anomalies render untenable the position that the relative
+specific gravities of the planets are direct indications of nebular
+condensation; it by no means follows that they negative it. Several
+causes may be assigned for these unlikenesses:--1. Differences among the
+planets in respect of the elementary substances composing them; or in
+the proportions of such elementary substances, if they contain the same
+kinds. 2. Differences among them in respect of the quantities of matter
+they contain; for, other things equal, the mutual gravitation of
+molecules will make a larger mass denser than a smaller. 3. Differences
+of temperatures; for, other things equal, those having higher
+temperatures will have lower specific gravities. 4. Differences of
+physical states, as being gaseous, liquid, or solid; or, otherwise,
+differences in the relative amounts of the solid, liquid, and gaseous
+matter they contain.
+
+It is quite possible, and we may indeed say probable, that all these
+causes come into play, and that they take various shares in the
+production of the several results. But difficulties stand in the way of
+definite conclusions. Nevertheless, if we revert to the hypothesis of
+nebular genesis, we are furnished with partial explanations if nothing
+more.
+
+In the cooling of celestial bodies several factors are concerned. The
+first and simplest is the one illustrated at every fire-side by the
+rapid blackening of little cinders which fall into the ashes, in
+contrast with the long-continued redness of big lumps. This factor is
+the relation between increase of surface and increase of content:
+surfaces, in similar bodies, increasing as the squares of the dimensions
+while contents increase as their cubes. Hence, on comparing the Earth
+with Jupiter, whose diameter is about eleven times that of the Earth, it
+results that while his surface is 125 times as great, his content is
+1390 times as great. Now even (supposing we assume like temperatures and
+like densities) if the only effect were that through a given area of
+surface eleven times more matter had to be cooled in the one case than
+in the other, there would be a vast difference between the times
+occupied in concentration. But, in virtue of a second factor, the
+difference would be much greater than that consequent on these
+geometrical relations. The escape of heat from a cooling mass is
+effected by conduction, or by convection, or by both. In a solid it is
+wholly by conduction; in a liquid or gas the chief part is played by
+convection--by circulating currents which continually transpose the
+hotter and cooler parts. Now in fluid spheroids--gaseous, or liquid, or
+mixed--increasing size entails an increasing obstacle to cooling,
+consequent on the increasing distances to be travelled by the
+circulating currents. Of course the relation is not a simple one: the
+velocities of the currents will be unlike. It is manifest, however, that
+in a sphere of eleven times the diameter, the transit of matter from
+centre to surface and back from surface to centre, will take a much
+longer time; even if its movement is unrestrained. But its movement is,
+in such cases as we are considering, greatly restrained. In a rotating
+spheroid there come into play retarding forces augmenting with the
+velocity of rotation. In such a spheroid the respective portions of
+matter (supposing them equal in their angular velocities round the axis,
+which they will tend more and more to become as the density increases),
+must vary in their absolute velocities according to their distances from
+the axis; and each portion cannot have its distance from the axis
+changed by circulating currents, which it must continually be, without
+loss or gain in its quantity of motion: through the medium of fluid
+friction, force must be expended, now in increasing its motion and now
+in retarding its motion. Hence, when the larger spheroid has also a
+higher velocity of rotation, the relative slowness of the circulating
+currents, and the consequent retardation of cooling, must be much
+greater than is implied by the extra distances to be travelled.
+
+And now observe the correspondence between inference and fact. In the
+first place, if we compare the group of the great planets, Jupiter,
+Saturn, and Uranus, with the group of the small planets, Mars, Earth,
+Venus, and Mercury, we see that low density goes along with great size
+and great velocity of rotation, and that high density goes along with
+small size and small velocity of rotation. In the second place, we are
+shown this relation still more clearly if we compare the extreme
+instances--Saturn and Mercury. The special contrast of these two, like
+the general contrast of the groups, points to the truth that low
+density, like the satellite-forming tendency, is associated with the
+ratio borne by centrifugal force to gravity; for in the case of Saturn
+with his many satellites and least density, centrifugal force at the
+equator is nearly 1/6th of gravity, whereas in Mercury with no satellite
+and greatest density centrifugal force is but 1/360th of gravity.
+
+There are, however, certain factors which, working in an opposite way,
+qualify and complicate these effects. Other things equal, mutual
+gravitation among the parts of a large mass will cause a greater
+evolution of heat than is similarly caused in a small mass; and the
+resulting difference of temperature will tend to produce more rapid
+dissipation of heat. To this must be added the greater velocity of the
+circulating currents which the intenser forces at work in larger
+spheroids will produce--a contrast made still greater by the relatively
+smaller retardation by friction to which the more voluminous currents
+are exposed. In these causes, joined with causes previously indicated,
+we may recognize a probable explanation of the otherwise anomalous fact
+that the Sun, though having a thousand times the mass of Jupiter, has
+yet reached as advanced a stage of concentration. For the force of
+gravity in the Sun, which at his surface is some ten times that at the
+surface of Jupiter, must expose his central parts to a pressure
+relatively very intense; producing, during contraction, a relatively
+rapid genesis of heat. And it is further to be remarked that, though the
+circulating currents in the Sun have far greater distances to travel,
+yet since his rotation is relatively so slow that the angular velocity
+of his substance is but about one-sixtieth of that of Jupiter's
+substance, the resulting obstacle to circulating currents is relatively
+small, and the escape of heat far less retarded. Here, too, we may note
+that in the co-operation of these factors, there seems a reason for the
+greater concentration reached by Jupiter than by Saturn, though Saturn
+is the elder as well as the smaller of the two; for at the same time
+that the gravitative force in Jupiter is more than twice as great as in
+Saturn, his velocity of rotation is very little greater, so that the
+opposition of the centrifugal force to the centripetal is not much more
+than half.
+
+But now, not judging more than roughly of the effects of these several
+factors, co-operating in various ways and degrees, some to aid
+concentration and others to resist it, it is sufficiently manifest that,
+other things equal, the larger nebulous spheroids, longer in losing
+their heat, will more slowly reach high specific gravities; and that
+where the contrasts in size are so immense as those between the greater
+and the smaller planets, the smaller may have reached relatively high
+specific gravities when the greater have reached but relatively low
+ones. Further, it appears that such qualification of the process as
+results from the more rapid genesis of heat in the larger masses, will
+be countervailed where high velocity of rotation greatly impedes the
+circulating currents. Thus interpreted then, the various specific
+gravities of the planets may be held to furnish further evidences
+supporting the Nebular Hypothesis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Increase of density and escape of heat are correlated phenomena, and
+hence in the foregoing section, treating of the respective densities of
+the celestial bodies in connexion with nebular condensation, much has
+been said and implied respecting the accompanying genesis and
+dissipation of heat. Quite apart, however, from the foregoing arguments
+and inferences, there is to be noted the fact that in the present
+temperatures of the celestial bodies at large we find additional
+supports to the hypothesis; and these, too, of the most substantial
+character. For if, as is implied above, heat must inevitably be
+generated by the aggregation of diffused matter, we ought to find in all
+the heavenly bodies, either present high temperatures or marks of past
+high temperatures. This we do, in the places and in the degrees which
+the hypothesis requires.
+
+Observations showing that as we descend below the Earth's surface there
+is a progressive increase of heat, joined with the conspicuous evidence
+furnished by volcanoes, necessitate the conclusion that the temperature
+is very high at great depths. Whether, as some believe, the interior of
+the Earth is still molten, or whether, as Sir William Thomson contends,
+it must be solid; there is agreement in the inference that its heat is
+intense. And it has been further shown that the rate at which the
+temperature increases on descending below the surface, is such as would
+be found in a mass which had been cooling for an indefinite period. The
+Moon, too, shows us, by its corrugations and its conspicuous extinct
+volcanoes, that in it there has been a process of refrigeration and
+contraction, like that which has gone on in the Earth. There is no
+teleological explanation of these facts. The frequent destructions of
+life by earthquakes and volcanoes, imply, rather, that it would have
+been better had the Earth been created with a low internal temperature.
+But if we contemplate the facts in connexion with the Nebular
+Hypothesis, we see that this still-continued high internal heat is one
+of its corollaries. The Earth must have passed through the gaseous and
+the molten conditions before it became solid, and must for an almost
+infinite period by its internal heat continue to bear evidence of this
+origin.
+
+The group of giant planets furnishes remarkable evidence. The _a priori_
+inference drawn above, that great size joined with relatively high ratio
+of centrifugal force to gravity must greatly retard aggregation, and
+must thus, by checking the genesis and dissipation of heat, make the
+process of cooling a slow one, has of late years received verifications
+from inferences drawn _a posteriori_; so that now the current conclusion
+among astronomers is that in physical condition the great planets are in
+stages midway between that of the Earth and that of the Sun. The fact
+that the centre of Jupiter's disc is twice or thrice as bright as his
+periphery, joined with the facts that he seems to radiate more light
+than is accounted for by reflection of the Sun's rays, and that his
+spectrum shows the "red-star line", are taken as evidences of
+luminosity; while the immense and rapid perturbations in his atmosphere,
+far greater than could be caused by heat received from the Sun, as well
+as the formation of spots analogous to those of the Sun, which also,
+like those of the Sun, show a higher rate of rotation near the equator
+than further from it, are held to imply high internal temperature. Thus
+in Jupiter, as also in Saturn, we find states which, not admitting of
+any teleological explanations (for they manifestly exclude the
+possibility of life), admit of explanations derived from the Nebular
+Hypothesis.
+
+But the argument from temperature does not end here. There remains to be
+noticed a more conspicuous and still more significant fact. If the Solar
+System was produced by the concentration of diffused matter, which
+evolved heat while gravitating into its present dense form; then there
+is an obvious implication. Other things equal, the latest-formed mass
+will be the latest in cooling--will, for an almost infinite time,
+possess a greater heat than the earlier-formed ones. Other things equal,
+the largest mass will, because of its superior aggregative force, become
+hotter than the others, and radiate more intensely. Other things equal,
+the largest mass, notwithstanding the higher temperature it reaches,
+will, in consequence of its relatively small surface, be the slowest in
+losing its evolved heat. And hence, if there is one mass which was not
+only formed after the rest, but exceeds them enormously in size, it
+follows that this one will reach an intensity of incandescence far
+beyond that reached by the rest; and will continue in a state of intense
+incandescence long after the rest have cooled. Such a mass we have in
+the Sun. It is a corollary from the Nebular Hypothesis, that the matter
+forming the Sun assumed its present integrated shape at a period much
+more recent than that at which the planets became definite bodies. The
+quantity of matter contained in the Sun is nearly five million times
+that contained in the smallest planet, and above a thousand times that
+contained in the largest. And while, from the enormous gravitative force
+of his parts to their common centre, the evolution of heat has been
+intense, the facilities of radiation have been relatively small. Hence
+the still-continued high temperature. Just that condition of the central
+body which is a necessary inference from the Nebular Hypothesis, we find
+actually existing in the Sun.
+
+[The paragraph which here follows, though it contains some questionable
+propositions, I reproduce just as it stood when first published in 1858,
+for reasons which will presently be apparent.]
+
+It may be well to consider more closely, what is the probable condition
+of the Sun's surface. Round the globe of incandescent molten substances,
+thus conceived to form the visible body of the Sun [which in conformity
+with the argument in a previous section, now transferred to the Addenda,
+was inferred to be hollow and filled with gaseous matter at high
+tension] there is known to exist a voluminous atmosphere: the inferior
+brilliancy of the Sun's border, and the appearances during a total
+eclipse, alike show this. What now must be the constitution of this
+atmosphere? At a temperature approaching a thousand times that of molten
+iron, which is the calculated temperature of the solar surface, very
+many, if not all, of the substances we know as solid, would become
+gaseous; and though the Sun's enormous attractive force must be a
+powerful check on this tendency to assume the form of vapour, yet it
+cannot be questioned that if the body of the Sun consists of molten
+substances, some of them must be constantly undergoing evaporation. That
+the dense gases thus continually being generated will form the entire
+mass of the solar atmosphere, is not probable. If anything is to be
+inferred, either from the Nebular Hypothesis, or from the analogies
+supplied by the planets, it must be concluded that the outermost part of
+the solar atmosphere consists of what are called permanent gases--gases
+that are not condensible into fluid even at low temperatures. If we
+consider what must have been the state of things here, when the surface
+of the Earth was molten, we shall see that round the still molten
+surface of the Sun, there probably exists a stratum of dense aeriform
+matter, made up of sublimed metals and metallic compounds, and above
+this a stratum of comparatively rare medium analogous to air. What now
+will happen with these two strata? Did they both consist of permanent
+gases, they could not remain separate: according to a well-known law,
+they would eventually form a homogeneous mixture. But this will by no
+means happen when the lower stratum consists of matters that are gaseous
+only at excessively high temperatures. Given off from a molten surface,
+ascending, expanding, and cooling, these will presently reach a limit of
+elevation above which they cannot exist as vapour, but must condense and
+precipitate. Meanwhile the upper stratum, habitually charged with its
+quantum of these denser matters, as our air with its quantum of water,
+and ready to deposit them on any depression of temperature, must be
+habitually unable to take up any more of the lower stratum; and
+therefore this lower stratum will remain quite distinct from it.[20]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Considered in their _ensemble_, the several groups of evidences assigned
+amount almost to proof. We have seen that, when critically examined,
+the speculations of late years current respecting the nature of the
+nebulae, commit their promulgators to sundry absurdities; while, on the
+other hand, we see that the various appearances these nebulae present,
+are explicable as different stages in the precipitation and aggregation
+of diffused matter. We find that the immense majority of comets (_i.e._
+omitting the periodic ones), by their physical constitution, their
+immensely-extended and variously-directed paths, the distribution of
+those paths, and their manifest structural relation to the Solar System,
+bear testimony to the past existence of that system in a nebulous form.
+Not only do those obvious peculiarities in the motions of the planets
+which first suggested the Nebular Hypothesis, supply proofs of it, but
+on closer examination we discover, in the slightly-diverging
+inclinations of their orbits, in their various rates of rotation, and
+their differently-directed axes of rotation, that the planets yield us
+yet further testimony; while the satellites, by sundry traits, and
+especially by their occurrence in greater or less abundance where the
+hypothesis implies greater or less abundance, confirm this testimony. By
+tracing out the process of planetary condensation, we are led to
+conclusions respecting the physical states of planets which explain
+their anomalous specific gravities. Once more, it turns out that what is
+inferable from the Nebular Hypothesis respecting the temperatures of
+celestial bodies, is just what observation establishes; and that both
+the absolute and the relative temperatures of the Sun and planets are
+thus accounted for. When we contemplate these various evidences in their
+totality--when we observe that, by the Nebular Hypothesis, the leading
+phenomena of the Solar System, and the heavens in general, are
+explicable; and when, on the other hand, we consider that the current
+cosmogony is not only without a single fact to stand on, but is at
+variance with all our positive knowledge of Nature, we see that the
+proof becomes overwhelming.
+
+It remains only to point out that while the genesis of the Solar System,
+and of countless other systems like it, is thus rendered comprehensible,
+the ultimate mystery continues as great as ever. The problem of
+existence is not solved: it is simply removed further back. The Nebular
+Hypothesis throws no light on the origin of diffused matter; and
+diffused matter as much needs accounting for as concrete matter. The
+genesis of an atom is not easier to conceive than the genesis of a
+planet. Nay, indeed, so far from making the Universe less a mystery than
+before, it makes it a greater mystery. Creation by manufacture is a much
+lower thing than creation by evolution. A man can put together a
+machine; but he cannot make a machine develop itself. That our
+harmonious universe once existed potentially as formless diffused
+matter, and has slowly grown into its present organized state, is a far
+more astonishing fact than would have been its formation after the
+artificial method vulgarly supposed. Those who hold it legitimate to
+argue from phenomena to noumena, may rightly contend that the Nebular
+Hypothesis implies a First Cause as much transcending "the mechanical
+God of Paley," as this does the fetish of the savage.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 11: _Cosmos._ (Seventh Edition.) Vol. i. pp. 79, 80.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Since the publication of this essay the late Mr. R. A.
+Proctor has given various further reasons for the conclusion that the
+nebulae belong to our own sidereal system. The opposite conclusion,
+contested throughout the foregoing section, has now been tacitly
+abandoned.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Any objection made to the extreme tenuity this involves,
+is met by the calculation of Newton, who proved that were a spherical
+inch of air removed four thousand miles from the Earth, it would expand
+into a sphere more than filling the orbit of Saturn.]
+
+[Footnote 14: A reference may fitly be made here to a reason given by
+Mons. Babinet for rejection of the Nebular Hypothesis. He has calculated
+that taking the existing Sun, with its observed angular velocity, its
+substance, if expanded so as to fill the orbit of Neptune, would have
+nothing approaching the angular velocity which the time of revolution of
+that planet implies. The assumption he makes is inadmissible. He
+supposes that all parts of the nebulous spheroid when it filled
+Neptune's orbit, had the same angular velocities. But the process of
+nebular condensation as indicated above, implies that the remoter
+flocculi of nebulous matter, later in reaching the central mass, and
+forming its peripheral portions, will acquire, during their longer
+journeys towards it, greater velocities. An inspection of one of the
+spiral nebulae, as 51st or 99th Messier, at once shows that the outlying
+portions when they reach the nucleus, will form an equatorial belt
+moving round the common centre more rapidly than the rest. Thus the
+central parts will have small angular velocities, while there will be
+increasing angular velocities of parts increasingly remote from the
+centre. And while the density of the spheroid continues small, fluid
+friction will scarcely at all change these differences.
+
+A like criticism may, I think, be passed on an opinion expressed by
+Prof. Newcomb. He says:--"When the contraction [of the nebulous
+spheroid] had gone so far that the centrifugal and attracting forces
+nearly balanced each other at the outer equatorial limit of the mass,
+the result would have been that contraction in the direction of the
+equator would cease entirely, and be confined to the polar regions, each
+particle dropping, not towards the sun, but towards the plane of the
+solar equator. Thus, we should have a constant flattening of the
+spheroidal atmosphere until it was reduced to a thin flat disk. This
+disk might then separate itself into rings, which would form planets in
+much the same way that Laplace supposed. But there would probably be no
+marked difference in the age of the planets." (_Popular Astronomy_,
+p. 512.) Now this conclusion assumes, like that of M. Babinet, that all
+parts of the nebulous spheroid had equal angular velocities. If, as
+above contended, it is inferable from the process by which a nebulous
+spheroid was formed, that its outer portions revolved with greater
+angular velocities than its inner; then the inference which Prof.
+Newcomb draws is not necessitated.]
+
+[Footnote 15: It is true that since this essay was written reasons have
+been given for concluding that comets consist of swarms of meteors
+enveloped in aeriform matter. Very possibly this is the constitution of
+the periodic comets which, approximating their orbits to the plane of
+the Solar System, form established parts of the System, and which, as
+will be hereafter indicated, have probably a quite different origin.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Though this rule fails at the periphery of the Solar
+System, yet it fails only where the axis of rotation, instead of being
+almost perpendicular to the orbit-plane, is very little inclined to it;
+and where, therefore, the forces tending to produce the congruity of
+motions were but little operative.]
+
+[Footnote 17: It is true that, as expressed by him, these propositions
+of Laplace are not all beyond dispute. An astronomer of the highest
+authority, who has favoured me with some criticisms on this essay,
+alleges that instead of a nebulous ring rupturing at one point, and
+collapsing into a single mass, "all probability would be in favour of
+its breaking up into many masses." This alternative result certainly
+seems the more likely. But granting that a nebulous ring would break up
+into many masses, it may still be contended that, since the chances are
+infinity to one against these being of equal sizes _and_ equidistant,
+they could not remain evenly distributed round their orbit. This annular
+chain of gaseous masses would break up into groups of masses; these
+groups would eventually aggregate into larger groups; and the final
+result would be the formation of a single mass. I have put the question
+to an astronomer scarcely second in authority to the one above referred
+to, and he agrees that this would probably be the process.]
+
+[Footnote 18: The comparative statement here given differs, slightly in
+most cases and in one case largely, from the statement included in this
+essay as originally published in 1858. As then given the table ran
+thus:--
+
+   Mercury.   1/362
+   Venus.     1/282
+   Earth.     1/289   1 Satellite.
+   Mars.      1/326
+   Jupiter.   1/14    4 Satellites.
+   Saturn.    1/6.2   8 Satellites, and three rings.
+   Uranus.    1/9     4 (or 6 according to Herschel).
+
+The calculations ending with these figures were made while the Sun's
+distance was still estimated at 95 millions of miles. Of course the
+reduction afterwards established in the estimated distance, entailing,
+as it did, changes in the factors which entered into the calculations,
+affected the results; and, though it was unlikely that the relations
+stated would be materially changed, it was needful to have the
+calculations made afresh. Mr. Lynn has been good enough to undertake
+this task, and the figures given in the text are his. In the case of
+Mars a large error in my calculation had arisen from accepting Arago's
+statement of his density (0.95), which proves to be something like
+double what it should be. Here a curious incident may be named. When, in
+1877, it was discovered that Mars has two satellites, though, according
+to my hypothesis, it seemed that he should have none, my faith in it
+received a shock; and since that time I have occasionally considered
+whether the fact is in any way reconcilable with the hypothesis. But now
+the proof afforded by Mr. Lynn that my calculation contained a wrong
+factor, disposes of the difficulty--nay, changes the objection to a
+verification. It turns out that, according to the hypothesis, Mars
+_ought_ to have satellites; and, further, that he ought to have a number
+intermediate between 1 and 4.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Since this paragraph was first published, the discovery
+that Mars has two satellites revolving round him in periods shorter than
+that of his rotation, has shown that the implication on which Laplace
+here insists is general only, and not absolute. Were it a necessary
+assumption that all parts of a concentrating nebulous spheroid revolve
+with the same angular velocities, the exception would appear an
+inexplicable one; but if, as suggested in a preceding section, it is
+inferable from the process of formation of a nebulous spheroid, that its
+outer strata will move round the general axis with higher angular
+velocities than the inner ones, there follows a possible interpretation.
+Though, during the earlier stages of concentration, while the nebulous
+matter, and especially its peripheral portions, are very rare, the
+effects of fluid-friction will be too small to change greatly such
+differences of angular velocities as exist; yet, when concentration has
+reached its last stages, and the matter is passing from the gaseous into
+the liquid and solid states, and when also the convection-currents have
+become common to the whole mass (which they probably at first are not),
+the angular velocity of the peripheral portion will gradually be
+assimilated to that of the interior; and it becomes comprehensible that
+in the case of Mars the peripheral portion, more and more dragged back
+by the internal mass, lost part of its velocity during the interval
+between the formation of the innermost satellite and the arrival at the
+final form.]
+
+[Footnote 20: I was about to suppress part of the above paragraph,
+written before the science of solar physics had taken shape, because of
+certain physical difficulties which stand in the way of its argument,
+when, on looking into recent astronomical works, I found that the
+hypothesis it sets forth respecting the Sun's structure has kinships to
+the several hypotheses since set forth by Zoellner, Faye, and Young. I
+have therefore decided to let it stand as it originally did.
+
+The contemplated partial suppression just named, was prompted by
+recognition of the truth that to effect mechanical stability the gaseous
+interior of the Sun must have a density at least equal to that of the
+molten shell (greater, indeed, at the centre); and this seems to imply a
+specific gravity higher than that which he possesses. It may, indeed, be
+that the unknown elements which spectrum analysis shows to exist in the
+Sun, are metals of very low specific gravities, and that, existing in
+large proportion with other of the lighter metals, they may form a
+molten shell not denser than is implied by the facts. But this can be
+regarded as nothing more than a possibility.
+
+No need, however, has arisen for either relinquishing or holding but
+loosely the associated conclusions respecting the constitution of the
+photosphere and its envelope. Widely speculative as seemed these
+suggested corollaries from the Nebular Hypothesis when set forth in
+1858, and quite at variance with the beliefs then current, they proved
+to be not ill-founded. At the close of 1859, there came the discoveries
+of Kirchhoff, proving the existence of various metallic vapours in the
+Sun's atmosphere.]
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDA.
+
+
+Speculative as is much of the foregoing essay, it appears undesirable to
+include in it anything still more speculative. For this reason I have
+decided to set forth separately some views concerning the genesis of the
+so-called elements during nebular condensation, and concerning the
+accompanying physical effects. At the same time it has seemed best to
+detach from the essay some of the more debatable conclusions originally
+contained in it; so that its general argument may not be needlessly
+implicated with them. These new portions, together with the old portions
+which re-appear more or less modified, I here append in a series of
+notes.
+
+
+NOTE I. For the belief that the so-called elements are compound there
+are both special reasons and general reasons. Among the special may be
+named the parallelism between allotropy and isomerism; the numerous
+lines in the spectrum of each element; and the cyclical law of Newlands
+and Mendeljeff. Of the more general reasons, which, as distinguished
+from these chemical or chemico-physical ones, may fitly be called
+cosmical, the following are the chief.
+
+The general law of evolution, if it does not actually involve the
+conclusion that the so-called elements are compounds, yet affords _a
+priori_ ground for suspecting that they are such. The implication is
+that, while the matter composing the Solar System has progressed
+physically from that relatively-homogeneous state which it had as a
+nebula to that relatively-heterogeneous state presented by Sun, planets,
+and satellites, it has also progressed chemically, from the
+relatively-homogeneous state in which it was composed of one or a few
+types of matter, to that relatively-heterogeneous state in which it is
+composed of many types of matter very diverse in their properties. This
+deduction from the law which holds throughout the cosmos as now known to
+us, would have much weight even were it unsupported by induction; but a
+survey of chemical phenomena at large discloses several groups of
+inductive evidences supporting it.
+
+The first is that since the cooling of the Earth reached an advanced
+stage, the components of its crust have been ever increasing in
+heterogeneity. When the so-called elements, originally existing in a
+dissociated state, united into oxides, acids, and other binary
+compounds, the total number of different substances was immensely
+augmented, the new substances were more complex than the old, and their
+properties were more varied. That is, the assemblage became more
+heterogeneous in its kinds, in the composition of each kind, and in the
+range of chemical characters. When, at a later period, there arose salts
+and other compounds of similar degrees of complexity, there was again an
+increase of heterogeneity, alike in the aggregate and in its members.
+And when, still later, matters classed as organic became possible, the
+multiformity was yet further augmented in kindred ways. If, then,
+chemical evolution, so far as we can trace it, has been from the
+homogeneous to the heterogeneous, may we not fairly suppose that it has
+been so from the beginning? If, from late stages in the Earth's history,
+we run back, and find the lines of chemical evolution continually
+converging, until they bring us to bodies which we cannot decompose, may
+we not suspect that, could we run back these lines still further, we
+should come to still decreasing heterogeneity in the number and nature
+of the substances, until we reached something like homogeneity?
+
+A parallel argument may be derived from consideration of the affinities
+and stabilities of chemical compounds. Beginning with the complex
+nitrogenous bodies out of which living things are formed, and which, in
+the history of the Earth, are the most modern, at the same time that
+they are the most heterogeneous, we see that the affinities and
+stabilities of these are extremely small. Their molecules do not enter
+bodily into union with those of other substances so as to form more
+complex compounds still, and their components often fail to hold
+together under ordinary conditions. A stage lower in degree of
+composition we come to the vast assemblage of oxy-hydro-carbons, numbers
+of which show many and decided affinities, and are stable at common
+temperatures. Passing to the inorganic group, we are shown by the salts
+&c. strong affinities between their components and unions which are, in
+many cases, not very easily broken. And then when we come to the oxides,
+acids, and other binary compounds, we see that in many cases the
+elements of which they are formed, when brought into the presence of one
+another under favourable conditions, unite with violence; and that many
+of their unions cannot be dissolved by heat alone. If, then, as we go
+back from the most modern and most complex substances to the most
+ancient and simplest substances, we see, on the average, a great
+increase in affinity and stability, it results that if the same law
+holds with the simplest substances known to us, the components of these,
+if they are compound, may be assumed to have united with affinities far
+more intense than any we have experience of, and to cling together with
+tenacities far exceeding the tenacities with which chemistry acquaints
+us. Hence the existence of a class of substances which are
+undecomposable and therefore seem simple, appears to be an implication;
+and the corollary is that these were formed during early stages of
+terrestrial concentration, under conditions of heat and pressure which
+we cannot now parallel.
+
+Yet another support for the belief that the so-called elements are
+compounds, is derived from a comparison of them, considered as an
+aggregate ascending in their molecular weights, with the aggregate of
+bodies known to be compound, similarly considered in their ascending
+molecular weights. Contrast the binary compounds as a class with the
+quaternary compounds as a class. The molecules constituting oxides
+(whether alkaline or acid or neutral) chlorides, sulphurets, &c. are
+relatively small; and, combining with great avidity, form stable
+compounds. On the other hand, the molecules constituting nitrogenous
+bodies are relatively vast and are chemically inert; and such
+combinations as their simpler types enter into, cannot withstand
+disturbing forces. Now a like difference is seen if we contrast with one
+another the so-called elements. Those of relatively-low molecular
+weights--oxygen, hydrogen, potassium, sodium, &c.,--show great readiness
+to unite among themselves; and, indeed, many of them cannot be prevented
+from uniting under ordinary conditions. Contrariwise, under ordinary
+conditions the substances of high molecular weights--the "noble
+metals"--are indifferent to other substances; and such compounds as they
+do form under conditions specially adjusted, are easily destroyed. Thus
+as, among the bodies we know to be compound, increasing molecular weight
+is associated with the appearance of certain characters, and as, among
+the bodies we class as simple, increasing molecular weight is
+associated with the appearance of similar characters, the composite
+nature of the elements is in another way pointed to.
+
+There has to be added one further class of phenomena, congruous with
+those above named, which here specially concerns us. Looking generally
+at chemical unions, we see that the heat evolved usually decreases as
+the degree of composition, and consequent massiveness, of the molecules,
+increases. In the first place, we have the fact that during the
+formation of simple compounds the heat evolved is much greater than that
+which is evolved during the formation of complex compounds: the
+elements, when uniting with one another, usually give out much heat;
+while, when the compounds they form are recompounded, but little heat is
+given out; and, as shown by the experiments of Prof. Andrews, the heat
+given out during the union of acids and bases is habitually smaller
+where the molecular weight of the base is greater. Then, in the second
+place, we see that among the elements themselves, the unions of those
+having low molecular weights result in far more heat than do the unions
+of those having high molecular weights. If we proceed on the supposition
+that the so-called elements are compounds, and if this law, if not
+universal, holds of undecomposable substances as of decomposable, then
+there are two implications. The one is that those compoundings and
+recompoundings by which the elements were formed, must have been
+accompanied by degrees of heat exceeding any degrees of heat known to
+us. The other is that among these compoundings and recompoundings
+themselves, those by which the small-moleculed elements were formed
+produced more intense heat than those by which the large-moleculed
+elements were formed: the elements formed by the final recompoundings
+being necessarily later in origin, and at the same time less stable,
+than the earlier-formed ones.
+
+
+NOTE II. May we from these propositions, and especially from the last,
+draw any conclusions respecting the evolution of heat during nebular
+condensation? And do such conclusions affect in any way the conclusions
+now current?
+
+In the first place, it seems inferable from physico-chemical facts at
+large, that only through the instrumentality of those combinations which
+formed the elements, did the concentration of diffused nebulous matter
+into concrete masses become possible. If we remember that hydrogen and
+oxygen in their uncombined states oppose, the one an insuperable and the
+other an almost insuperable, resistance to liquefaction, while when
+combined the compound assumes the liquid state with facility, we may
+suspect that in like manner the simpler types of matter out of which the
+elements were formed, could not have been reduced even to such degrees
+of density as the known gases show us, without what we may call
+proto-chemical unions: the implication being that after the heat
+resulting from each of such proto-chemical unions had escaped, mutual
+gravitation of the parts was able to produce further condensation of the
+nebulous mass.
+
+If we thus distinguish between the two sources of heat accompanying
+nebular condensation--the heat due to proto-chemical combinations and
+that due to the contraction caused by gravitation (both of them,
+however, being interpretable as consequent on loss of motion), it may be
+inferred that they take different shares during the earlier and during
+the later stages of aggregation. It seems probable that while the
+diffusion is great and the force of mutual gravitation small, the chief
+source of heat is combination of units of matter, simpler than any known
+to us, into such units of matter as those we know; while, conversely,
+when there has been reached close aggregation, the chief source of heat
+is gravitation, with consequent pressure and gradual contraction.
+Supposing this to be so, let us ask what may be inferred. If at the time
+when the nebulous spheroid from which the Solar System resulted, filled
+the orbit of Neptune, it had reached such a degree of density as
+enabled those units of matter which compose the sodium molecules to
+enter into combination; and if, in conformity with the analogies above
+indicated, the heat evolved by this proto-chemical combination was great
+compared with the heats evolved by the chemical combinations known to
+us; the implication is that the nebulous spheroid, in the course of its
+contraction, would have to get rid of a much larger quantity of heat
+than it would, did it commence at any ordinary temperature and had only
+to lose the heat consequent on contraction. That is to say, in
+estimating the past period during which solar emission of heat has been
+going on at a high rate, much must depend on the initial temperature
+assumed; and this may have been rendered intense by the proto-chemical
+changes which took place in early stages.[21]
+
+Respecting the future duration of the solar heat, there must also be
+differences between the estimates made according as we do or do not take
+into account the proto-chemical changes which possibly have still to
+take place. True as it may be that the quantity of heat to be emitted
+is measured by the quantity of motion to be lost, and that this must be
+the same whether the approximation of the molecules is effected by
+chemical unions, or by mutual gravitation, or by both; yet, evidently,
+everything must turn on the degree of condensation supposed to be
+eventually reached; and this must in large measure depend on the natures
+of the substances eventually formed. Though, by spectrum-analysis,
+platinum has recently been detected in the solar atmosphere, it seems
+clear that the metals of low molecular weights greatly predominate; and
+supposing the foregoing arguments to be valid, it may be inferred, as
+not improbable, that the compoundings and recompoundings by which the
+heavy-moleculed elements are produced, not hitherto possible in large
+measure, will hereafter take place; and that, as a result, the Sun's
+density will finally become very great in comparison with what it is
+now. I say "not hitherto possible in large measure", because it is a
+feasible supposition that they may be formed, and can continue to exist,
+only in certain outer parts of the Solar mass, where the pressure is
+sufficiently great while the heat is not too great. And if this be so,
+the implication is that the interior body of the Sun, higher in
+temperature than its peripheral layers, may consist wholly of the metals
+of low atomic weights, and that this may be a part cause of his low
+specific gravity; and a further implication is that when, in course of
+time, the internal temperature falls, the heavy-moleculed elements, as
+they severally become capable of existing in it, may arise: the
+formation of each having an evolution of heat as its concomitant.[22] If
+so, it would seem to follow that the amount of heat to be emitted by
+the Sun, and the length of the period during which the emission will go
+on, must be taken as much greater than if the Sun is supposed to be
+permanently constituted of the elements now predominating in him, and to
+be capable of only that degree of condensation which such composition
+permits.
+
+
+NOTE III. Are the internal structures of celestial bodies all the same,
+or do they differ? And if they differ, can we, from the process of
+nebular condensation, infer the conditions under which they assume one
+or other character? In the foregoing essay as originally published,
+these questions were discussed; and though the conclusions reached
+cannot be sustained in the form given to them, they foreshadow
+conclusions which may, perhaps, be sustained. Referring to the
+conceivable causes of unlike specific gravities in the members of the
+solar system, it was said that these might be--
+
+     "1. Differences between the kinds of matter or matters composing
+     them. 2. Differences between the quantities of matter; for, other
+     things equal, the mutual gravitation of atoms will make a large
+     mass denser than a small one. 3. Differences between the
+     structures: the masses being either solid or liquid throughout, or
+     having central cavities filled with elastic aeriform substance. Of
+     these three conceivable causes, that commonly assigned is the
+     first, more or less modified by the second."
+
+Written as this was before spectrum-analysis had made its disclosures,
+no notice could of course be taken of the way in which these conflict
+with the first of the foregoing suppositions; but after pointing out
+other objections to it the argument continued thus:--
+
+     "However, spite of these difficulties, the current hypothesis is,
+     that the Sun and planets, inclusive of the Earth, are either solid
+     or liquid, or have solid crusts with liquid nuclei."[23]
+
+After saying that the familiarity of this hypothesis must not delude us
+into uncritical acceptance of it, but that if any other hypothesis is
+physically possible it may reasonably be entertained, it was argued that
+by tracing out the process of condensation in a nebulous spheroid, we
+are led to infer the eventual formation of a molten shell with a nucleus
+consisting of gaseous matter at high tension. The paragraph which then
+follows runs thus:--
+
+     "But what," it may be asked, "will become of this gaseous nucleus
+     when exposed to the enormous gravitative pressure of a shell some
+     thousands of miles thick? How can aeriform matter withstand such a
+     pressure?" Very readily. It has been proved that, even when the
+     heat generated by compression is allowed to escape, some gases
+     remain uncondensible by any force we can produce. An unsuccessful
+     attempt lately made in Vienna to liquify oxygen, clearly shows this
+     enormous resistance. The steel piston employed was literally
+     shortened by the pressure used; and yet the gas remained
+     unliquified! If, then, the expansive force is thus immense when the
+     heat evolved is dissipated, what must it be when that heat is in
+     great measure detained, as in the case we are considering? Indeed
+     the experiences of M. Cagniard de Latour have shown that gases may,
+     under pressure, acquire the density of liquids while retaining the
+     aeriform state, provided the temperature continues extremely high.
+     In such a case, every addition to the heat is an addition to the
+     repulsive power of the atoms: the increased pressure itself
+     generates an increased ability to resist; and this remains true to
+     whatever extent the compression is carried. Indeed it is a
+     corollary from the persistence of force that if, under increasing
+     pressure, a gas retains all the heat evolved, its resisting force
+     is _absolutely unlimited_. Hence the internal planetary structure
+     we have described is as physically stable a one as that commonly
+     assumed."
+
+Had this paragraph, and the subsequent paragraphs, been written five
+years later, when Prof. Andrews had published an account of his
+researches, the propositions they contain, while rendered more specific
+and at the same time more defensible, would perhaps have been freed from
+the erroneous implication that the internal structure indicated is an
+universal one. Let us, while guided by Prof. Andrews' results, consider
+what would probably be the successive changes in a condensing nebulous
+spheroid.
+
+Prof. Andrews has shown that for each kind of gaseous matter there is a
+temperature above which no amount of pressure can cause liquefaction.
+The remark, made _a priori_ in the above extract, "that if, under
+increasing pressure, a gas retains all the heat evolved, its
+resisting force is _absolutely unlimited_", harmonizes with the
+inductively-reached result that if the temperature is not lowered to its
+"critical point" a gas does not liquify, however great the force
+applied. At the same time Prof. Andrews' experiments imply that,
+supposing the temperature to be lowered to the point at which
+liquefaction becomes possible, then liquefaction will take place where
+there is first reached the required pressure. What are the corollaries
+in relation to concentrating nebulous spheroids?
+
+Assume a spheroid of such size as will form one of the inferior planets,
+and consisting externally of a voluminous, cloudy atmosphere composed of
+the less condensible elements, and internally of metallic gases: such
+internal gases being kept by convection-currents at temperatures not
+very widely differing. And assume that continuous radiation has brought
+the internal mass of metallic gases down to the critical point of the
+most condensible. May we not say that there is a size of the spheroid
+such that the pressure will not be great enough to produce liquefaction
+at any other place than the centre? or, in other words, that in the
+process of decreasing temperature and increasing pressure, the centre
+will be the place at which the combined conditions of pressure and
+temperature will be first reached? If so, liquefaction, commencing at
+the centre, will spread thence to the periphery; and, in virtue of the
+law that solids have higher melting points under pressure than when
+free, it may be that solidification will similarly, at a later stage,
+begin at the centre and progress outwards: eventually producing, in that
+case, a state such as Sir William Thomson alleges exists in the Earth.
+But now suppose that instead of such a spheroid, we assume one of, say,
+twenty or thirty times the mass; what will then happen? Notwithstanding
+convection-currents, the temperature at the centre must always be
+higher than elsewhere; and in the process of cooling the "critical
+point" of temperature will sooner be reached in the outer parts. Though
+the requisite pressure will not exist near the surface, there is
+evidently, in a large spheroid, a depth below the surface at which the
+pressure will be great enough, if the temperature is sufficiently low.
+Hence it is inferable that somewhere between centre and surface in the
+supposed larger spheroid, there will arise that state described by Prof.
+Andrews, in which "flickering striae" of liquid float in gaseous matter
+of equal density. And it may be inferred that gradually, as the process
+goes on, these striae will become more abundant while the gaseous
+interspaces diminish; until, eventually, the liquid becomes continuous.
+Thus there will result a molten shell containing a gaseous nucleus
+equally dense with itself at their surface of contact and more dense at
+the centre--a molten shell which will slowly thicken by additions to
+both exterior and interior.
+
+That a solid crust will eventually form on this molten shell may be
+reasonably concluded. To the demurrer that solidification cannot
+commence at the surface, because the solids formed would sink, there are
+two replies. The first is that various metals expand while solidifying,
+and therefore would float. The second is that since the envelope of the
+supposed spheroid would consist of the gases and non-metallic elements,
+compounds of these with the metals and with one another would
+continually accumulate on the molten shell; and the crust, consisting of
+oxides, chlorides, sulphurets, and the rest, having much less specific
+gravity than the molten shell, would be readily supported by it.
+
+Clearly a planet thus constituted would be in an unstable state. Always
+it would remain liable to a catastrophe resulting from change in its
+gaseous nucleus. If, under some condition of pressure and temperature
+eventually reached, the components of this suddenly entered into one of
+those proto-chemical combinations forming a new element, there might
+result an explosion capable of shattering the entire planet, and
+propelling its fragments in all directions with high velocities. If the
+hypothetical planet between Jupiter and Mars was intermediate in size as
+in position, it would apparently fulfil the conditions under which such
+a catastrophe might occur.
+
+
+NOTE IV. The argument set forth in the foregoing note, is in part
+designed to introduce a question which seems to require
+re-consideration--the origin of the minor planets or planetoids. The
+hypothesis of Olbers, as propounded by him, implied that the disruption
+of the assumed planet between Mars and Jupiter had taken place at no
+very remote period in the past; and this implication was shown to be
+inadmissible by the discovery that there exists no such point of
+intersection of the orbits of the planetoids as the hypothesis requires.
+The inquiry whether, in the past, there was any nearer approach to a
+point of intersection than at present, having resulted in a negative, it
+is held that the hypothesis must be abandoned. It is, however, admitted
+that the mutual perturbations of the planetoids themselves would
+suffice, in the course of some millions of years, to destroy all traces
+of a place of intersection of their orbits, if it once existed. But if
+this be admitted why need the hypothesis be abandoned? Given such
+duration of the Solar System as is currently assumed, there seems no
+reason why lapse of a few millions of years should present any
+difficulty. The explosion may as well have taken place ten million years
+ago as at any more recent period. And whoever grants this must grant
+that the probability of the hypothesis has to be estimated from other
+data.
+
+As a preliminary to closer consideration, let us ask what may be
+inferred from the rate of discovery of the planetoids, and from the
+sizes of those most recently discovered. In 1878, Prof. Newcomb, arguing
+that "the preponderance of evidence is on the side of the number and
+magnitude being limited", says that "the newly discovered ones" "do not
+seem, on the average, to be materially smaller than those which were
+discovered ten years ago"; and further that "the new ones will probably
+be found to grow decidedly rare before another hundred are discovered".
+Now, inspection of the tables contained in the just-published fourth
+edition of Chambers' _Descriptive Astronomy_ (vol. I) shows that whereas
+the planetoids discovered in 1868 (the year Prof. Newcomb singles out
+for comparison) have an average magnitude of 11.56 those discovered last
+year (1888) have an average magnitude of 12.43. Further, it is
+observable that though more than ninety have been discovered since Prof.
+Newcomb wrote, they have by no means become rare: the year 1888 having
+added ten to the list, and having therefore maintained the average rate
+of the preceding ten years. If, then, the indications Prof. Newcomb
+names, had they arisen, would have implied a limitation of the number,
+these opposite indications imply that the number is unlimited. The
+reasonable conclusion appears to be that these minor planets are to be
+counted not by hundreds but by thousands; that more powerful telescopes
+will go on revealing still smaller ones; and that additions to the list
+will cease only when the smallness ends in invisibility.
+
+Commencing now to scrutinize the two hypotheses respecting the genesis
+of these multitudinous bodies, I may first remark concerning that of
+Laplace, that he might possibly not have propounded it had he known that
+instead of four such bodies there are hundreds, if not thousands. The
+supposition that they resulted from the breaking up of a nebulous ring
+into numerous small portions, instead of its collapse into one mass,
+might not, in such case, have seemed to him so probable. It would have
+appeared still less probable had he been aware of all that has since
+been discovered concerning the wide differences of the orbits in size,
+their various and often great eccentricities, and their various and
+often great inclinations. Let us look at these and other incongruous
+traits of them.
+
+(1.) Between the greatest and least mean distances of the planetoids
+there is a space of 200 millions of miles; so that the whole of the
+Earth's orbit might be placed between the limits of the zone occupied,
+and leave 7 millions of miles on either side: add to which that the
+widest excursions of the planetoids occupy a zone of 270 millions of
+miles. Had the rings from which Mercury, Venus, and the Earth were
+formed been one-sixth of the smaller width or one-ninth of the greater,
+they would have united: there would have been no nebulous rings at all,
+but a continuous disk. Nay more, since one of the planetoids trenches
+upon the orbit of Mars, it follows that the nebulous ring out of which
+the planetoids were formed must have overlapped that out of which Mars
+was formed. How do these implications consist with the nebular
+hypothesis? (2.) The tacit assumption usually made is that the different
+parts of a nebulous ring have the same angular velocities. Though this
+assumption may not be strictly true, yet it seems scarcely likely that
+it is so widely untrue as it would be had the inner part of the ring an
+angular velocity nearly thrice that of the outer. Yet this is implied.
+While the period of Thule is 8.8 years, the period of Medusa is 3.1
+years. (3.) The eccentricity of Jupiter's orbit is 0.04816, and the
+eccentricity of Mars' orbit is 0.09311. Estimated by groups of the first
+found and last found of the planetoids, the average eccentricity of the
+assemblage is about three times that of Jupiter and more than one and a
+half times that of Mars; and among the members of the assemblage
+themselves, some have an eccentricity thirty-five times that of others.
+How came this nebulous zone, out of which it is supposed the planetoids
+arose, to have originated eccentricities so divergent from one another
+as well as from those of the neighbouring planets? (4.) A like question
+may be asked respecting the inclinations of the orbits. The average
+inclination of the planetoid-orbits is four times the inclination of
+Mars' orbit and six times the inclination of Jupiter's orbit; and among
+the planetoid-orbits themselves the inclinations of some are fifty times
+those of others. How are all these differences to be accounted for on
+the hypothesis of genesis from a nebulous ring? (5.) Much greater
+becomes the difficulty on inquiring how these extremely unlike
+eccentricities and inclinations came to co-exist before the parts of the
+nebulous ring separated, and how they survived after the separation.
+Were all the great eccentricities displayed by the outermost members of
+the group, and the small by the innermost members, and were the
+inclinations so distributed that the orbits having much belonged to one
+part of the group, and those having little to another part of the group;
+the difficulty of explanation might not be insuperable. But the
+arrangement is by no means this. The orbits are, to use an expressive
+word, miscellaneously jumbled. Hence, if we go back to the nebulous
+ring, there presents itself the question,--How came each
+planetoid-forming portion of nebulous matter, when it gathered itself
+together and separated, to have a motion round the Sun differing so much
+from the motions of its neighbours in eccentricity and inclination? And
+there presents itself the further question,--How, during the time when
+it was concentrating into a planetoid, did it manage to jostle its way
+through all the differently-moving like masses of nebulous matter, and
+yet to preserve its individuality? Answers to these questions are, it
+seems to me, not even imaginable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Turn we now to the alternative hypothesis. During revision of the
+foregoing essay, in preparation for that edition of the volume
+containing it which was published in 1883, there occurred the thought
+that some light on the origin of the planetoids ought to be obtained by
+study of their distributions and movements. If, as Olbers supposed,
+they resulted from the bursting of a planet once revolving in the region
+they occupy, the implications are:--first, that the fragments must be
+most abundant in the space immediately about the original orbit, and
+less abundant far away from it; second, that the large fragments must be
+relatively few, while of smaller fragments the numbers will increase as
+the sizes decrease; third, that as some among the smaller fragments will
+be propelled further than any of the larger, the widest deviations in
+mean distance from the mean distance of the original planet, will be
+presented by the smallest members of the assemblage; and fourth, that
+the orbits differing most from the rest in eccentricity and in
+inclination, will be among those of these smallest members. In the
+fourth edition of Chambers's _Handbook of Descriptive and Practical
+Astronomy_ (the first volume of which has just been issued) there is a
+list of the elements (extracted and adapted from the _Berliner
+Astronomisches Jahrbuch_ for 1890) of all the small planets (281 in
+number) which had been discovered up to the end of 1888. The apparent
+brightness, as expressed in equivalent star-magnitudes, is the only
+index we have to the probable comparative sizes of by far the largest
+number of the planetoids: the exceptions being among those first
+discovered. Thus much premised, let us take the above points in order.
+(1) There is a region lying between 2.50 and 2.80 (in terms of the
+Earth's mean distance from the Sun) where the planetoids are found in
+maximum abundance. The mean between these extremes, 2.65, is nearly the
+same as the average of the distances of the four largest and
+earliest-known of these bodies, which amounts to 2.64. May we not say
+that the thick clustering about this distance (which is, however, rather
+less than that assigned for the original planet by Bode's empirical
+law), in contrast with the wide scattering of the comparatively few
+whose distances are little more than 2 or exceed 3, is a fact in
+accordance with the hypothesis in question?[24] (2) Any table which
+gives the apparent magnitudes of the planetoids, shows at once how much
+the number of the smaller members of the assemblage exceeds that of
+those which are comparatively large; and every succeeding year has
+emphasized this contrast more strongly. Only one of them (Vesta) exceeds
+in brightness the seventh star-magnitude, while one other (Ceres) is
+between the seventh and eighth, and a third (Pallas) is above the
+eighth; but between the eighth and ninth there are six; between the
+ninth and tenth, twenty; between the tenth and eleventh, fifty-five;
+below the eleventh a much larger number is known, and the number
+existing is probably far greater,--a conclusion we cannot doubt when the
+difficulty of finding the very faint members of the family, visible only
+in the largest telescopes, is considered. (3) Kindred evidence is
+furnished if we broadly contrast their mean distances. Out of the 13
+largest planetoids whose apparent brightnesses exceed that of a star of
+the 9.5 magnitude, there is not one having a mean distance that exceeds
+3. Of those having magnitudes at least 9.5 and smaller than 10, there
+are 15; and of these one only has a mean distance greater than 3. Of
+those between 10 and 10.5 there are 17; and of these also there is one
+exceeding 3 in mean distance. In the next group there are 37, and of
+these 5 have this great mean distance. The next group, 48, contains 12
+such; the next, 47, contains 13 such. Of those of the twelfth magnitude
+and fainter, 72 planetoids have been discovered, and of those of them
+of which the orbits have been computed, no fewer than 23 have a mean
+distance exceeding 3 in terms of the Earth's. It is evident from this
+how comparatively erratic are the fainter members of the extensive
+family with which we are dealing. (4) To illustrate the next point, it
+may be noted that among the planetoids whose sizes have been
+approximately measured, the orbits of the two largest, Vesta and Ceres,
+have eccentricities falling between .05 and .10, whilst the orbits of
+the two smallest, Menippe and Eva, have eccentricities falling between
+.20 and .25, and between .30 and .35. And then among those more recently
+discovered, having diameters so small that measurement of them has not
+been practicable, come the extremely erratic ones,--Hilda and Thule,
+which have mean distances of 3.97 and 4.25 respectively; AEthra, having
+an orbit so eccentric that it cuts the orbit of Mars; and Medusa, which
+has the smallest mean distance from the Sun of any. (5) If the average
+eccentricities of the orbits of the planetoids grouped according to
+their decreasing sizes are compared, no very definite results are
+disclosed, excepting this, that the eight Polyhymnia, Atalanta,
+Eurydice, AEthra, Eva, Andromache, Istria, and Eudora, which have the
+greatest eccentricities (falling between .30 and .38), are all among
+those of smallest star-magnitudes. Nor when we consider the inclinations
+of the orbits do we meet with obvious verifications; since the
+proportion of highly-inclined orbits among the smaller planetoids does
+not appear to be greater than among the others. But consideration shows
+that there are two ways in which these last comparisons are vitiated.
+One is that the inclinations are measured from the plane of the
+ecliptic, instead of being measured from the plane of the orbit of the
+hypothetical planet. The other, and more important one, is that the
+search for planetoids has naturally been carried on in that
+comparatively narrow zone within which most of their orbits fall; and
+that, consequently, those having the most highly-inclined orbits are the
+least likely to have been detected, especially if they are at the same
+time among the smallest. Moreover, considering the general relation
+between the inclination of planetoid orbits and their eccentricities, it
+is probable that among the orbits of these undetected planetoids are
+many of the most eccentric. But while recognizing the incompleteness of
+the evidence, it seems to me that it goes far to justify the hypothesis
+of Olbers, and is quite incongruous with that of Laplace. And as having
+the same meanings let me not omit the remarkable fact concerning the
+planetoids discovered by D'Arrest, that "if their orbits are figured
+under the form of material rings, these rings will be found so
+entangled, that it would be possible, by means of one among them taken
+at hazard, to lift up all the rest,"--a fact incongruous with Laplace's
+hypothesis, which implies an approximate concentricity, but quite
+congruous with the hypothesis of an exploded planet.
+
+Next to be considered come phenomena, the bearings of which on the
+question before us are scarcely considered--I mean those presented by
+meteors and shooting stars. The natures and distributions of these
+harmonize with the hypothesis of an exploded planet, and I think with no
+other hypothesis. The theory of volcanic origin, joined with the remark
+that the Sun emits jets which might propel them with adequate
+velocities, seems quite untenable. Such meteoric bodies as have
+descended to us, forbid absolutely the supposition of solar origin. Nor
+can they rationally be ascribed to planetary volcanoes. Even were their
+mineral characters appropriate, which many of them are not (for
+volcanoes do not eject iron), no planetary volcanoes could propel them
+with anything like the implied velocity--could no more withstand the
+tremendous force to be assumed, than could a card-board gun the force
+behind a rifle bullet. But that their mineral characters, various as
+they are, harmonize with the supposition that they were derived from
+the crust of a planet is manifest; and that the bursting of a planet
+might give to them, and to shooting stars, the needful velocities, is a
+reasonable conclusion. Along with those larger fragments of the crust
+constituting the known planetoids, varying from some 200 miles in
+diameter to little over a dozen, there would be sent out still more
+multitudinous portions of the crust, decreasing in size as they
+increased in number. And while there would thus result such masses as
+occasionally fall through the Earth's atmosphere to its surface, there
+would, in an accompanying process, be an adequate cause for the myriads
+of far smaller masses which, as shooting stars, are dissipated in
+passing through the Earth's atmosphere. Let us figure to ourselves, as
+well as we may, the process of explosion.
+
+Assume that the diameter of the missing planet was 20,000 miles; that
+its solid crust was a thousand miles thick; that under this came a shell
+of molten metallic matter which was another thousand miles thick; and
+that the space, 16,000 miles in diameter, within this, was occupied by
+the equally dense mass of gases above the "critical point", which,
+entering into a proto-chemical combination, caused the destroying
+explosion. The primary fissures in the crust must have been far
+apart--probably averaging distances between them as great as the
+thickness of the crust. Supposing them approximately equidistant, there
+would, in the equatorial periphery, be between 60 and 70 fissures. By
+the time the primary fragments thus separated had been heaved a mile
+outwards, the fissures formed would severally have, at the surface, a
+width of 170 odd yards. Of course these great masses, as soon as they
+moved, would themselves begin to fall in pieces; especially at their
+bounding surfaces. But passing over the resulting complications, we see
+that when the masses had been propelled 10 miles outwards, the fissures
+between them would be each a mile wide. Notwithstanding the enormous
+forces at work, an appreciable interval would elapse before these vast
+portions of the crust could be put in motion with any considerable
+velocities. Perhaps the estimate will be under the mark if we assume
+that it took 10 seconds to propel them through the first mile, and that,
+by implication, at the end of 20 seconds they had travelled 4 miles, and
+at the end of 30 seconds 9 miles. Supposing this granted, let us ask
+what would be taking place in each intervening fissure a thousand miles
+deep, which, in the space of half a minute, had opened out to nearly a
+mile wide, and in the subsequent half minute to a chasm approaching 3
+miles in width. There would first be propelled through it enormous jets
+of the molten metals composing the internal liquid shell; and these
+would part into relatively small masses as they were shot into space.
+Presently, as the chasm opened to some miles in width, the molten metals
+would begin to be followed by the equally dense gaseous matter behind,
+and the two would rush out together. Soon the gases, predominating,
+would carry with them the portions of the liquid shell continually
+collapsing; until the blast became one filled with millions of small
+masses, billions of smaller masses, and trillions of drops. These would
+be driven into space in a stream, the emission of which would continue
+for many seconds or even several minutes. Remembering the rate of motion
+of the jets emitted from the solar surface, and supposing that the
+blasts produced by this explosion reached only one-tenth of that rate,
+these myriads of small masses and drops would be propelled with
+planetary velocities, and in approximately the same direction. I say
+approximately, because they would be made to deviate somewhat by the
+friction and irregularities of the chasm passed through, and also by the
+rotation of the planet. Observe, however, that though they would all
+have immense velocities, their velocities would not be equal. During its
+earlier stages the blast would be considerably retarded by the
+resistance which the sides of its channel offered. When this became
+relatively small the velocity of the blast would reach its maximum; from
+which it would decline when the space for emission became very wide,
+and the pressure behind consequently less. Hence these almost infinitely
+numerous particles of planet-spray, as we might call it, as well as
+those formed by the condensation of the metallic vapours accompanying
+them, would forthwith begin to part company: some going rapidly in
+advance, and others falling behind; until the stream of them,
+perpetually elongating, formed an orbit round the Sun, or rather an
+assemblage of innumerable orbits, separating widely at aphelion and
+perihelion, but approximating midway, where they might fall within a
+space of, say, some two millions of miles, as do the orbits of the
+November meteors. At a later stage of the explosion, when the large
+masses, having moved far outwards, had also fallen to pieces of every
+size, from that of Vesta to that of an aerolite, and when the channels
+just described had ceased to exist, the contents of the planet would
+disperse themselves with lower velocities and without any unity of
+direction. Hence we see causes alike for the streams of shooting stars,
+for the solitary shooting stars visible to the naked eye, and for the
+telescopic shooting stars a score times more numerous.
+
+Further significant evidence is furnished by the comets of short
+periods. Of the thirteen constituting this group, twelve have orbits
+falling between those of Mars and Jupiter: one only having its aphelion
+beyond the orbit of Jupiter. That is to say, nearly all of them frequent
+the same region as the planetoids. By implication, they are similarly
+associated in respect of their periods. The periods of the planetoids
+range from 3.1 to 8.8 years; and all these twelve comets have periods
+falling between these extremes: the least being 3.29 and the greatest
+8.86. Once more this family of comets, like the planetoids in the zone
+they occupy and like them in their periods, are like them also in the
+respect that, as Mr. Lynn has pointed out, their motions are all direct.
+How happens this close kinship--how happens there to be this family of
+comets so much like the planetoids and so much like one another, but so
+unlike comets at large? The obvious suggestion is that they are among
+the products of the explosion which originated the planetoids, the
+aerolites, and the streams of meteors; and consideration of the probable
+circumstances shows us that such products might be expected. If the
+hypothetical planet was like its neighbour Jupiter in having an
+atmosphere, or like its neighbour Mars in having water on its surface,
+or like both in these respects; then these superficial masses of liquid,
+of vapour, and of gas, blown into space along with the solid matters,
+would yield the materials for comets. There would result, too, comets
+unlike one another in constitution. If a fissure opened beneath one of
+the seas, the molten metals and metallic gases rushing through it as
+above described, would decompose part of the water carried with them;
+and the oxygen and hydrogen liberated would be mingled with undecomposed
+vapour. In other cases, portions of the atmosphere might be propelled,
+probably with portions of vapour; and in yet other cases masses of water
+alone. Severally subject to great heat at perihelion, these would behave
+more or less differently. Once more, it would ordinarily happen that
+detached swarms of meteors projected as implied, would carry with them
+masses of vapours and gases; whence would result the cometic
+constitution now insisted on. And sometimes there would be like
+accompaniments to meteoric streams.
+
+See, then, the contrast between the two hypotheses. That of Laplace,
+looking probable while there were only four planetoids, but decreasing
+in apparent likelihood as the planetoids increase in number, until, as
+they pass through the hundreds on their way to the thousands, it becomes
+obviously improbable, is, at the same time, otherwise objectionable. It
+pre-supposes a nebulous ring of a width so enormous that it would have
+overlapped the ring of Mars. This ring would have had differences
+between the angular velocities of its parts quite inconsistent with the
+Nebular Hypothesis. The average eccentricities of the orbits of its
+parts must have differed greatly from those of adjacent orbits; and the
+average inclinations of the orbits of its parts must similarly have
+differed greatly from those of adjacent orbits. Once more, the orbits of
+its parts, confusedly interspersed, must have had varieties of
+eccentricity and inclination unaccountable in portions of the same
+nebulous ring; and, during concentration into planetoids, each must have
+had to maintain its course while struggling through the assemblage of
+other small nebulous masses, severally moving in ways unlike its own. On
+the other hand, the hypothesis of an exploded planet is supported by
+every increase in the number of planetoids discovered; by the greater
+numbers of the smaller sizes; by the thicker clustering near the
+inferred place of the missing planet; by the occurrence of the greatest
+mean distances among the smallest members of the assemblage; by the
+occurrence of the greatest eccentricities in the orbits of these
+smallest members; and by the entanglement of all the orbits. Further
+support for the hypothesis is yielded by aerolites, so various in their
+kinds, but all suggestive of a planet's crust; by the streams of
+shooting stars having their radiant points variously placed in the
+heavens; and also by the solitary shooting stars visible to the naked
+eye, and the more numerous ones visible through telescopes. Once more,
+it harmonizes with the discovery of a family of comets, twelve out of
+thirteen of which have mean distances falling within the zone of the
+planetoids, have similarly associated periods, have all the same direct
+motions, and are connected with swarms of meteors and with meteoric
+streams. May we not, indeed, say, that if there once existed a planet
+between Mars and Jupiter which burst, the explosion must have produced
+just such clusters of bodies and classes of phenomena as we actually
+find?
+
+And what is the objection? Merely that if such an explosion occurred it
+must have occurred many millions of years ago--an objection which is in
+fact no objection; for the supposition that the explosion occurred many
+millions of years ago is just as reasonable as the supposition that it
+occurred recently.
+
+It is, indeed, further objected that some of the resulting fragments
+ought to have retrograde motions. It turns out on calculation, however,
+that this is not the case. Assuming as true the velocity which Lagrange
+estimated would have sufficed to give the four chief planetoids the
+positions they occupy, it results that such a velocity, given to the
+fragments which were propelled backwards by the explosion, would not
+have given them retrograde motions, but would simply have reduced their
+direct motions from something over 11 miles per second to about 6 miles
+per second. It is, however, manifest that this reduction of velocity
+would have necessitated the formation of highly-elliptic orbits--more
+elliptic than any of those at present known. This seems to me the most
+serious difficulty which has presented itself. Still, considering that
+there remain probably an immense number of planetoids to be discovered,
+it is quite possible that among these there may be some having orbits
+answering to the requirement.
+
+
+NOTE V. Shortly before I commenced the revision of the foregoing essay,
+friends on two occasions named to me some remarkable photographs of
+nebulae recently obtained by Mr. Isaac Roberts, and exhibited at the
+Royal Astronomical Society: saying that they presented appearances such
+as might have been sketched by Laplace in illustration of his
+hypothesis. Mr. Roberts has been kind enough to send me copies of the
+photographs in question and sundry others illustrative of stellar
+evolution. Those representing the Great Nebulae in Andromeda and Canum
+Venaticorum as well as 81 Messier are at once impressive and
+instructive--illustrating as they do the genesis of nebulous rings round
+a central mass.
+
+I may remark, however, that they seem to suggest the need for some
+modification of the current conception; since they make it tolerably
+clear that the process is a much less uniform one than is supposed. The
+usual idea is that a vast rotating nebulous spheroid arises before there
+are produced any of the planet-forming rings. But both of these
+photographs apparently imply that, in some cases at any rate, the
+portions of nebulous matter composing the rings take shape before they
+reach the central mass. It looks as though these partially-formed annuli
+must be prevented by their acquired motions from approaching even very
+near to the still-irregular body they surround.
+
+Be this as it may, however, and be the dimensions of the incipient
+systems what they may (and it would seem to be a necessary implication
+that they are vastly larger than our Solar System), the process remains
+essentially the same. Practically demonstrated as this process now is,
+we may say that the doctrine of nebular genesis passes from the region
+of hypothesis into the region of established truth.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 21: Of course there remains the question whether, before the
+stage here recognized, there had already been produced a high
+temperature by those collisions of celestial masses which reduced the
+matter to a nebulous form. As suggested in _First Principles_ (Sec. 136 in
+the edition of 1862, and Sec. 182 in subsequent editions), there must,
+after there have been effected all those minor dissolutions which follow
+evolutions, remain to be effected the dissolutions of the great bodies
+in and on which the minor evolutions and dissolutions have taken place;
+and it was argued that such dissolutions will be, at some time or other,
+effected by those immense transformations of molar motion into molecular
+motion, consequent on collisions: the argument being based on the
+statement of Sir John Herschel, that in clusters of stars collisions
+must inevitably occur. It may, however, be objected that though such a
+result may be reasonably looked for in closely aggregated assemblages of
+stars, it is difficult to conceive of its taking place throughout our
+Sidereal System at large, the members of which, and their intervals, may
+be roughly figured as pins-heads 50 miles apart. It would seem that
+something like an eternity must elapse before, by ethereal resistance or
+other cause, these can be brought into proximity great enough to make
+collisions probable.]
+
+[Footnote 22: The two sentences which, in the text, precede the
+asterisk, I have introduced while these pages are standing in type:
+being led to do so by the perusal of some notes kindly lent to me by
+Prof. Dewar, containing the outline of a lecture he gave at the Royal
+Institution during the session of 1880. Discussing the conditions under
+which, if "our so-called elements are compounded of elemental matter",
+they may have been formed, Prof. Dewar, arguing from the known habitudes
+of compound substances, concludes that the formation is in each case a
+function of pressure, temperature, and nature of the environing gases.]
+
+[Footnote 23: At the date of this passage the established teleology made
+it seem needful to assume that all the planets are habitable, and that
+even beneath the photosphere of the Sun there exists a dark body which
+may be the scene of life; but since then, the influence of teleology has
+so far diminished that this hypothesis can no longer be called the
+current one.]
+
+[Footnote 24: It may here be mentioned (though the principal
+significance of this comes under the next head) that the average mean
+distance of the later-discovered planetoids is somewhat greater than
+that of these earlier-discovered; amounting to 2.61 for Nos. 1 to 35 and
+2.80 for Nos. 211 to 245. For this observation I am indebted to Mr.
+Lynn; whose attention was drawn to it while revising for me the
+statements contained in this paragraph, so as to include discoveries
+made since the paragraph was written.]
+
+
+
+
+THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SUN.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Reader _for February_ 25, 1865. _I
+    reproduce this essay chiefly to give a place to the speculation
+    concerning the solar spots which forms the latter portion of it._]
+
+
+The hypothesis of M. Faye, described in your numbers for January 28 and
+February 4, respectively, is to a considerable extent coincident with
+one which I ventured to suggest in an article on "Recent Astronomy and
+the Nebular Hypothesis," published in the _Westminster Review_ for July,
+1858. In considering the possible causes of the immense differences of
+specific gravity among the planets, I was led to question the validity
+of the tacit assumption that each planet consists of solid or liquid
+matter from centre to surface. It seemed to me that any other internal
+structure which was mechanically stable, might be assumed with equal
+legitimacy. And the hypothesis of a solid or liquid shell, having its
+cavity filled with gaseous matter at high pressure and temperature [and
+of great density], was one which seemed worth considering.
+
+Hence arose the inquiry--What structure will result from the process of
+nebular condensation? [Here followed a long speculation respecting the
+processes going on in a concentrating nebulous spheroid; the general
+outcome of which is implied in Note III of the foregoing essay. I do not
+reproduce it because, not having the guidance of Prof. Andrew's
+researches, I had concluded that the formation of a molten shell would
+occur universally, instead of occasionally, as is now argued in the
+note named. The essay then proceeded thus:--]
+
+The process of condensation being in its essentials the same for all
+concentrating nebular spheroids, planetary or solar, it was argued that
+the Sun is still passing through that incandescent stage which all the
+planets have long ago passed through: his later aggregation, joined with
+the immensely greater ratio of his mass to his surface, involving
+comparative lateness of cooling. Supposing the sun to have reached the
+state of a molten shell, inclosing a gaseous nucleus, it was concluded
+that this molten shell, ever radiating its heat, but ever acquiring
+fresh heat by further integration of the Sun's mass, must be constantly
+kept up to that temperature at which its substance evaporates.
+
+[Here followed part of the paragraph quoted in the preceding essay on p.
+155; and there succeeded, in subsequent editions, a paragraph aiming to
+show that the inferred structure of the Sun's interior was congruous
+with the low specific gravity of the Sun--a conclusion which, as
+indicated on p. 156, implies some very problematical assumptions
+respecting the natures of the unknown elements of the Sun. There then
+came this passage:--]
+
+The conception of the Sun's constitution thus set forth, is like that of
+M. Faye in so far as the successive changes, the resulting structures,
+and the ultimate state, are concerned; but unlike it in so far as the
+Sun is supposed to have reached a later stage of concentration. As I
+gather from your abstract of M. Faye's paper [this referred to an
+article in _The Reader_], he considers the Sun to be at present a
+gaseous spheroid, having an envelope of metallic matters precipitated in
+the shape of luminous clouds, the local dispersions of which, caused by
+currents from within, appear to us as spots; and he looks forward to the
+future formation of a liquid film as an event that will soon be followed
+by extinction. Whereas the above hypothesis is that the liquid film
+already exists beneath the visible photosphere, and that extinction
+cannot result until, in the course of further aggregation, the gaseous
+nucleus has become so much reduced, and the shell so much thickened,
+that the escape of the heat generated is greatly retarded.... M. Faye's
+hypothesis appears to be espoused by him, partly because it affords an
+explanation of the spots, which are considered as openings in the
+photosphere, exposing the comparatively non-luminous gases filling the
+interior. But if these interior gases are non-luminous from the absence
+of precipitated matter, must they not for the same reason be
+transparent? And if transparent, will not the light from the remote side
+of the photosphere seen through them, be nearly as bright as that of the
+side next to us? By as much as the intensely-heated gases of the
+interior are disabled by the dissociation of their molecules from giving
+off luminiferous undulations, by so much must they be disabled from
+absorbing the light transmitted through them. And if their great
+light-transmitting power is exactly complementary to their small
+light-emitting power, there seems no reason why the interior of the Sun,
+disclosed to us by openings in the photosphere, should not appear as
+bright as its exterior.
+
+Take, on the other hand, the supposition that a more advanced state of
+concentration has been reached. A shell of molten metallic matter
+enclosing a gaseous nucleus still higher in temperature than itself,
+will be continually kept at the highest temperature consistent with its
+state of liquid aggregation. Unless we assume that simple radiation
+suffices to give off all the heat generated by progressing integration,
+we must conclude that the mass will be raised to that temperature at
+which part of its heat is absorbed in vaporizing its superficial parts.
+The atmosphere of metallic gases hence resulting, cannot continue to
+accumulate without reaching a height above the Sun's surface, at which
+the cooling due to radiation and rarefaction will cause condensation
+into cloud--cannot, indeed, cease accumulating until the precipitation
+from the upper limit of the atmosphere balances the evaporation from its
+lower limit. This upper limit of the atmosphere of metallic gases,
+whence precipitation is perpetually taking place, will form the visible
+photosphere--partly giving off light of its own, partly letting through
+the more brilliant light of the incandescent mass below. This conclusion
+harmonizes with the appearances. Sir John Herschel, advocating though he
+does an antagonist hypothesis, gives a description of the Sun's surface
+which agrees completely with the processes here supposed. He says:--
+
+     "There is nothing which represents so faithfully this appearance as
+     the slow subsidence of some flocculent chemical precipitates in a
+     transparent fluid, when viewed perpendicularly from above: so
+     faithfully, indeed, that it is hardly possible not to be impressed
+     with the idea of a luminous medium intermixed, but not confounded,
+     with a transparent and non-luminous atmosphere, either floating as
+     clouds in our air, or pervading it in vast sheets and columns like
+     flame, or the streamers of our northern lights".--_Treatise on
+     Astronomy_, p. 208.
+
+If the constitution of the Sun be that which is above inferred, it does
+not seem difficult to conceive still more specifically the production of
+these appearances. Everywhere throughout the atmosphere of metallic
+vapours which clothes the solar surface, there must be ascending and
+descending currents. The magnitude of these currents must obviously
+depend on the depth of this atmosphere. If it is shallow, the currents
+must be small; but if many thousands of miles deep, the currents may be
+wide enough to render visible to us the places at which they severally
+impinge on the limit of the atmosphere, and the places whence the
+descending currents commence. The top of an ascending current will be a
+space over which the thickness of condensed cloud is the least, and
+through which the greatest amount of light from beneath penetrates. The
+clouds perpetually formed at the top of such a current, will be
+perpetually thrust aside by the uncondensed gases from below them; and,
+growing while they are thrust aside, will collect in the spaces between
+the ascending currents, where there will result the greatest degree of
+opacity. Hence the mottled appearance--hence the "pores," or dark
+interspaces, separating the light-giving spots.[25]
+
+Of the more special appearances which the photosphere presents, let us
+take first the faculae. These are ascribed to waves in the photosphere;
+and the way in which such waves might produce an excess of light has
+been variously explained in conformity with various hypotheses. What
+would result from them in a photosphere constituted and conditioned as
+above supposed? Traversing a canopy of cloud, here thicker and there
+thinner, a wave would cause a disturbance very unlikely to leave the
+thin and thick parts without any change in their average permeability to
+light. There would probably be, at some parts of the wave, extensions in
+the areas of the light-transmitting clouds, resulting in the passage of
+more rays from below. Another phenomenon, less common but more striking,
+appears also to be in harmony with the hypothesis. I refer to those
+bright spots, of a brilliancy greater than that of the photosphere,
+which are sometimes observed. In the course of a physical process so
+vast and so active as that here supposed to be going on in the Sun, we
+may expect that concurrent causes will occasionally produce ascending
+currents much hotter than usual, or more voluminous, or both. One of
+these, on reaching the stratum of luminous and illuminated cloud forming
+the photosphere, will burst through it, dispersing and dissolving it,
+and ascending to a greater height before it begins itself to condense:
+meanwhile allowing to be seen, through its transparent mass, the
+incandescent molten shell of the sun's body.
+
+[The foregoing passages, to most of which I do not commit myself as more
+than possibilities, I republish chiefly as introductory to the following
+speculation, which, since it was propounded in 1865, has met with some
+acceptance.]
+
+"But what of the spots commonly so called?" it will be asked. In the
+essay on the Nebular hypothesis, above quoted from, it was suggested
+that refraction of the light passing through the depressed centres of
+cyclones in this atmosphere of metallic gases, might possibly be the
+cause; but this, though defensible as a "true cause," appeared on
+further consideration to be an inadequate cause. Keeping the question in
+mind, however, and still taking as a postulate the conclusion of Sir
+John Herschel, that the spots are in some way produced by cyclones, I
+was led, in the course of the year following the publication of the
+essay, to an hypothesis which seemed more satisfactory. This, which I
+named at the time to Prof. Tyndall, had a point in common with the one
+afterward published by Prof. Kirchhoff, in so far as it supposed cloud
+to be the cause of darkness; but differed in so far as it assigned the
+cause of such cloud. More pressing matters prevented me from developing
+the idea for some time; and, afterwards, I was deterred from including
+it in the revised edition of the essay, by its inconsistency with the
+"willow-leaf" doctrine, at that time dominant. The reasoning was as
+follows:--The central region of a cyclone must be a region of
+rarefaction, and, consequently, a region of refrigeration. In an
+atmosphere of metallic gases rising from a molten surface, and presently
+reaching a limit at which condensation takes place, the molecular state,
+especially toward its upper part, must be such that a moderate
+diminution of density, and fall of temperature, will cause
+precipitation. That is to say, the rarefied interior of a solar cyclone
+will be filled with cloud: condensation, instead of taking place only
+at the level of the photosphere, will here extend to a great depth below
+it, and over a wide area. What will be the characters of a cloud thus
+occupying the interior of a cyclone? It will have a rotatory motion; and
+this it has been seen to have. Being funnel-shaped, as analogy warrants
+us in assuming, its central parts will be much deeper than its
+peripheral parts, and therefore more opaque. This, too, corresponds with
+observation. Mr. Dawes has discovered that in the middle of the spot
+there is a blacker spot: just where there would exist a funnel-shaped
+prolongation of the cyclonic cloud down toward the Sun's body, the
+darkness is greater than elsewhere. Moreover, there is furnished an
+adequate reason for the depression which one of these dark spaces
+exhibits. In a whirlwind, as in a whirlpool, the vortex will be below
+the general level, and all around, the surface of the medium will
+descend toward it. Hence a spot seen obliquely, as when carried toward
+the Sun's limb, will have its umbra more and more hidden, while its
+penumbra still remains visible. Nor are we without some interpretation
+of the penumbra. If, as is implied by what has been said, the so-called
+"willow-leaves," or "rice-grains," are the tops of the currents
+ascending from the Sun's body, what changes of appearance are they
+likely to undergo in the neighbourhood of a cyclone? For some distance
+round a cyclone there will be a drawing in of the superficial gases
+toward the vortex. All the luminous spaces of more transparent cloud
+forming the adjacent photosphere, will be changed in shape by these
+centripetal currents. They will be greatly elongated; and there will so
+be produced that "thatch"-like aspect which the penumbra presents.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[The explanation of the solar spots above suggested, which was
+originally propounded in opposition to that of M. Faye, was eventually
+adopted by him in place of his own. In the _Comptes Rendus_ for 1867,
+Vol. LXIV., p. 404, he refers to the article in the _Reader_, partly
+reproduced above, and speaks of me as having been replied to in a
+previous note. Again in the _Comptes Rendus_ for 1872, Vol. LXXV., p.
+1664, he recognizes the inadequacy of his hypothesis, saying:--"Il est
+certain que l'objection de M. Spencer, reproduit et developpee par M.
+Kirchoff, est fondee jusqu'a un certain point; l'interieur des taches,
+si ce sont des lacunes dans la photosphere, doit etre froid
+relativement.... Il est donc impossible qu'elles proviennent d'eruptions
+ascendantes." He then proceeds to set forth the hypothesis that the
+spots are caused by the precipitation of vapour in the interiors of
+cyclones. But though, as above shown, he refers to the objection made in
+the foregoing essay to his original hypothesis, and recognizes its
+cogency, he does not say that the hypothesis which he thereupon
+substitutes is also to be found in the foregoing essay. Nor does he
+intimate this in the elaborate paper on the subject read before the
+French Association for the Advancement of Science, and published in the
+_Revue Scientifique_ for the 24th March 1883. The result is that the
+hypothesis is now currently ascribed to him.[26]
+
+About four months before I had to revise this essay on "The Constitution
+of the Sun," while staying near Pewsey, in Wiltshire, I was fortunate
+enough to witness a phenomenon which furnished, by analogy, a
+verification of the above hypothesis, and served more especially to
+elucidate one of the traits of solar spots, otherwise difficult to
+understand. It was at the close of August, when there had been a spell
+of very hot weather. A slight current of air from the West, moving along
+the line of the valley, had persisted through the day, which, up to 5
+o'clock, had been cloudless, and, with the exception now to be named,
+remained cloudless. The exception was furnished by a strange-looking
+cloud almost directly overhead. Its central part was comparatively dense
+and structureless. Its peripheral part, or to speak strictly, the
+two-thirds of it which were nearest and most clearly visible, consisted
+of _converging streaks_ of comparatively thin cloud. Possibly the third
+part on the remoter side was similarly constituted; but this I could not
+see. It did not occur to me at the time to think about its cause,
+though, had the question been raised, I should doubtless have concluded
+that as the sky still remained cloudless everywhere else, this
+precipitated mass of vapour must have resulted from a local eddy. In the
+space of perhaps half-an-hour, the gentle breeze had carried this cloud
+some miles to the East; and now its nature became obvious. That central
+part which, seen from underneath, seemed simply a dense, confused part,
+apparently no nearer than the rest, now, seen sideways, was obviously
+much lower than the rest and rudely funnel-shaped--nipple-shaped one
+might say; while the wide thin portion of cloud above it was
+disk-shaped: the converging streaks of cloud being now, in perspective,
+merged together. It thus became manifest that the cloud was produced by
+a feeble whirlwind, perhaps a quarter to half-a-mile in diameter.
+Further, the appearances made it clear that this feeble whirlwind was
+limited to the lower stratum of air: the stratum of air above it was not
+implicated in the cyclonic action. And then, lastly, there was the
+striking fact that the upper stratum, though not involved in the whirl,
+was, by its proximity to a region of diminished pressure, slightly
+rarified; and that its precipitated vapour was, by the draught set up
+towards the vortex below, drawn into converging streaks. Here, then, was
+an action analogous to that which, as above suggested, happens around a
+sun-spot, where the masses of illuminated vapour constituting the
+photosphere are drawn towards the vortex of the cyclone, and
+simultaneously elongated into striae: so forming the penumbra. At the
+same time there was furnished an answer to the chief objection to the
+cyclonic theory of solar spots. For if, as here seen, a cyclone in a
+lower stratum may fail to communicate a vortical motion to the stratum
+above it, we may comprehend how, in a solar cyclone, the photosphere
+commonly fails to give any indication of the revolving currents below,
+and is only occasionally so entangled in these currents as itself to
+display a vortical motion.
+
+Let me add that apart from the elucidations furnished by the phenomenon
+above described, the probabilities are greatly in favour of the cyclonic
+origin of the solar spots. That some of them exhibit clear marks of
+vortical motion is undeniable; and if this is so, the question
+arises--What is the degree of likelihood that there are two causes for
+spots? Considering that they have so many characters in common, it is
+extremely improbable that their common characters are in some cases the
+concomitants of vortical motion and in other cases the concomitants of a
+different kind of action. Recognizing this great improbability, even in
+the absence of a reconciliation between the apparently conflicting
+traits, it is, I think, clear that when, in the way above shown, we are
+enabled to understand how it happens that the vortical motion, not
+ordinarily implicating the photosphere, may consequently be in most
+cases unapparent, the reasons for accepting the cyclonic theory become
+almost conclusive.]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 25: If the "rice-grain" appearance is thus produced by the
+tops of the ascending currents (and M. Faye accepts this
+interpretation), then I think it excludes M. Faye's hypothesis that the
+Sun is gaseous throughout. The comparative smallness of the light-giving
+spots and their comparative uniformity of size, show us that they have
+ascended through a stratum of but moderate depth (say 10,000 miles), and
+that this stratum has a _definite_ lower limit. This favours the
+hypothesis of a molten shell.]
+
+[Footnote 26: I should add that while M. Faye ascribes solar spots to
+clouds formed within cyclones, we differ concerning the nature of the
+cloud. I have argued that it is formed by rarefaction, and consequent
+refrigeration, of the metallic gases constituting the stratum in which
+the cyclone exists. He argues that it is formed within the mass of
+cooled hydrogen drawn from the chromosphere into the vortex of the
+cyclone. Speaking of the cyclones he says:--"Dans leur embouchure evasee
+ils entraineront l'hydrogene froid de la chromosphere, produisant
+partout sur leur trajet vertical un abaissement notable de temperature
+et une obscurite relative, due a l'opacite de l'hydrogene froid
+englouti." (_Revue Scientifique_, 24 March 1883.) Considering the
+intense cold required to reduce hydrogen to the "critical point," it is
+a strong supposition that the motion given to it by fluid friction on
+entering the vortex of the cyclone, can produce a rotation, rarefaction,
+and cooling, great enough to produce precipitation in a region so
+intensely heated.]
+
+
+
+
+ILLOGICAL GEOLOGY.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Universal Review _for July,_ 1859.]
+
+
+That proclivity to generalization which is possessed in greater or less
+degree by all minds, and without which, indeed, intelligence cannot
+exist, has unavoidable inconveniences. Through it alone can truth be
+reached; and yet it almost inevitably betrays into error. But for the
+tendency to predicate of every other case, that which has been found in
+the observed cases, there could be no rational thinking; and yet by this
+indispensable tendency, men are perpetually led to found, on limited
+experience, propositions which they wrongly assume to be universal or
+absolute. In one sense, however, this can scarcely be regarded as an
+evil; for without premature generalizations the true generalization
+would never be arrived at. If we waited till all the facts were
+accumulated before trying to formulate them, the vast unorganized mass
+would be unmanageable. Only by provisional grouping can they be brought
+into such order as to be dealt with; and this provisional grouping is
+but another name for premature generalization. How uniformly men follow
+this course, and how needful the errors are as steps to truth, is well
+illustrated in the history of Astronomy. The heavenly bodies move round
+the Earth in circles, said the earliest observers: led partly by the
+appearances, and partly by their experiences of central motions in
+terrestrial objects, with which, as all circular, they classed the
+celestial motions from lack of any alternative conception. Without this
+provisional belief, wrong as it was, there could not have been that
+comparison of positions which showed that the motions are not
+representable by circles; and which led to the hypothesis of epicycles
+and eccentrics. Only by the aid of this hypothesis, equally untrue, but
+capable of accounting more nearly for the appearances, and so of
+inducing more accurate observations--only thus did it become possible
+for Copernicus to show that the heliocentric theory is more feasible
+than the geocentric theory; or for Kepler to show that the planets move
+round the sun in ellipses. Yet again, without the aid of Kepler's more
+advanced theory of the Solar system, Newton could not have established
+that general law from which it follows, that the motion of a heavenly
+body is not necessarily in an ellipse, but may be in any conic section.
+And lastly, it was only after the law of gravitation had been verified,
+that it became possible to determine the actual courses of planets,
+satellites, and comets; and to prove that, in consequence of
+perturbations, their orbits always deviate, more or less, from regular
+curves. In these successive theories we may trace both the tendency men
+have to leap from scanty data to wide generalizations, that are either
+untrue or but partially true; and the necessity there is for such
+transitional generalizations as steps to the final one.
+
+In the progress of geological speculation, the same laws of thought are
+displayed. We have dogmas that were more than half false, passing
+current for a time as universal truths. We have evidence collected in
+proof of these dogmas; by and by a colligation of facts in antagonism
+with them; and eventually a consequent modification. In conformity with
+this improved hypothesis, we have a better classification of facts; a
+greater power of arranging and interpreting the new facts now rapidly
+gathered together; and further resulting corrections of hypothesis.
+Being, as we are at present, in the midst of this process, it is not
+possible to give an adequate account of the development of geological
+science as thus regarded: the earlier stages are alone known to us. Not
+only, however, is it interesting to observe how the more advanced views
+now received respecting the Earth's history, have been evolved out of
+the crude views which preceded them; but we shall find it extremely
+instructive to observe this. We shall see how greatly the old ideas
+still sway both the general mind and the minds of geologists themselves.
+We shall see how the kind of evidence that has in part abolished these
+old ideas, is still daily accumulating, and threatens to make other like
+revolutions. In brief, we shall see whereabouts we are in the
+elaboration of a true theory of the Earth; and, seeing our whereabouts,
+shall be the better able to judge, among various conflicting opinions,
+which best conform to the ascertained direction of geological discovery.
+
+It is needless here to enumerate the many speculations which were in
+earlier ages propounded by acute men--speculations some of which
+contained portions of truth. Falling in unfit times, these speculations
+did not germinate; and hence do not concern us. We have nothing to do
+with ideas, however good, out of which no science grew; but only with
+those which gave origin to the existing system of Geology. We therefore
+begin with Werner.
+
+Taking for data the appearances of the Earth's crust in a narrow
+district of Germany; observing the constant order of superposition of
+strata, and their respective physical characters; Werner drew the
+inference that strata of like characters succeeded each other in like
+order over the entire surface of the Earth. And seeing, from the
+laminated structure of many formations and the organic remains contained
+in others, that they were sedimentary; he further inferred that these
+universal strata had been in succession precipitated from a chaotic
+menstruum which once covered our planet. Thus, on a very incomplete
+acquaintance with a thousandth part of the Earth's crust, he based a
+sweeping generalization applying to the whole of it. This Neptunist
+hypothesis, mark, borne out though it seemed to be by the most
+conspicuous surrounding facts, was quite untenable if analyzed. That a
+universal chaotic menstruum should deposit a series of numerous
+sharply-defined strata, differing from one another in composition, is
+incomprehensible. That the strata so deposited should contain the
+remains of plants and animals, which could not have lived under the
+supposed conditions, is still more incomprehensible. Physically absurd,
+however, as was this hypothesis, it recognized, though under a distorted
+form, one of the great agencies of geological change--the action of
+water. It served also to express the fact, that the formations of the
+Earth's crust stand in some kind of order. Further, it did a little
+towards supplying a nomenclature, without which much progress was
+impossible. Lastly, it furnished a standard with which successions of
+strata in various regions could be compared, the differences noted, and
+the actual sections tabulated. It was the first provisional
+generalization; and was useful, if not indispensable, as a step to truer
+ones.
+
+Following this rude conception, which ascribed geological phenomena to
+one agency, acting during one primeval epoch, there came a
+greatly-improved conception, which ascribed them to two agencies, acting
+alternately during successive epochs. Hutton, perceiving that
+sedimentary deposits were still being formed at the bottom of the sea
+from the detritus carried down by rivers; perceiving, further, that the
+strata of which the visible surface chiefly consists, bore marks of
+having been similarly formed out of pre-existing land; and inferring
+that these strata could have become land only by upheaval after their
+deposit; concluded that throughout an indefinite past, there had been
+periodic convulsions, by which continents were raised, with intervening
+eras of repose, during which such continents were worn down and
+transformed into new marine strata, fated to be in their turns elevated
+above the surface of the ocean. And finding that igneous action, to
+which sundry earlier geologists had ascribed basaltic rocks, was in
+countless places a cause of disturbance, he taught that from it resulted
+these periodic convulsions. In this theory we see:--first, that the
+previously-recognized agency of water was conceived to act, not as by
+Werner, after a manner of which we have no experience, but after a
+manner daily displayed to us; and secondly, that the igneous agency,
+before considered only as originating special formations, was recognized
+as a universal agency, but assumed to act in an unproved way. Werner's
+sole process Hutton developed from the catastrophic and inexplicable
+into the uniform and explicable; while that antagonistic second process,
+of which he first adequately estimated the importance, was regarded by
+him as a catastrophic one, and was not assimilated to known
+processes--not explained. We have here to note, however, that the facts
+collected and provisionally arranged in conformity with Werner's theory,
+served, after a time, to establish Hutton's more rational theory--in so
+far, at least, as aqueous formations are concerned; while the doctrine
+of periodic subterranean convulsions, crudely as it was conceived by
+Hutton, was a temporary generalization needful as a step towards the
+theory of igneous action.
+
+Since Hutton's time, the development of geological thought has gone
+still further in the same direction. These early sweeping doctrines have
+received additional qualifications. It has been discovered that more
+numerous and more heterogeneous agencies have been at work, than was at
+first believed. The conception of igneous action has been rationalized,
+as the conception of aqueous action had previously been. The gratuitous
+assumption that vast elevations suddenly occurred after long intervals
+of quiescence, has grown into the consistent theory, that islands and
+continents are the accumulated results of successive small upheavals,
+like those experienced in ordinary earthquakes. To speak more
+specifically, we find, in the first place, that instead of assuming the
+denudation produced by rain and rivers to be the sole means of wearing
+down lands and producing their irregularities of surface, geologists now
+see that denudation is only a part-cause of such irregularities; and
+further, that the new strata deposited at the bottom of the sea, are not
+the products of river-sediment solely, but are in part due to the
+actions of waves and tidal currents on the coasts. In the second place,
+we find that Hutton's conception of upheaval by subterranean forces, has
+not only been modified by assimilating these subterranean forces to
+ordinary earthquake-forces; but modern inquiries have shown that,
+besides elevations of surface, subsidences are thus produced; that local
+upheavals, as well as the general upheavals which raise continents, come
+within the same category; and that all these changes are probably
+consequent on the progressive collapse of the Earth's crust upon its
+cooling and contracting nucleus. In the third place, we find that beyond
+these two great antagonistic agencies, modern Geology recognizes sundry
+minor ones: those of glaciers and icebergs, those of coral-polypes;
+those of _Protozoa_ having siliceous or calcareous shells--each of which
+agencies, insignificant as it seems, is found capable of slowly working
+terrestrial changes of considerable magnitude. Thus, then, the recent
+progress of Geology has been a still further departure from primitive
+conceptions. Instead of one catastrophic cause, once in universal
+action, as supposed by Werner--instead of one general continuous cause,
+antagonized at long intervals by a catastrophic cause, as taught by
+Hutton; we now recognize several causes, all more or less general and
+continuous. We no longer resort to hypothetical agencies to explain the
+phenomena displayed by the Earth's crust; but we are day by day more
+clearly perceiving that these phenomena have arisen from forces like
+those now at work, which have acted in all varieties of combination,
+through immeasurable periods of time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Having thus briefly traced the evolution of geologic science, and noted
+its present form, let us go on to observe the way in which it is still
+swayed by the crude hypotheses it set out with; so that even now,
+doctrines long since abandoned as untenable in theory, continue in
+practice to mould the ideas of geologists, and to foster sundry beliefs
+that are logically indefensible. We shall see, both how those simple
+sweeping conceptions with which the science commenced, are those which
+every student is apt at first to seize hold of, and how several
+influences conspire to maintain the twist thus resulting--how the
+original nomenclature of periods and formations necessarily keeps alive
+the original implications; and how the need for arranging new data in
+some order, results in their being thrust into the old classification,
+unless their incongruity with it is very glaring. A few facts will best
+prepare the way for criticism.
+
+Up to 1839 it was inferred, from their crystalline character, that the
+metamorphic rocks of Anglesea were more ancient than any rocks of the
+adjacent main land; but it has since been shown that they are of the
+same age with the slates and grits of Carnarvon and Merioneth. Again,
+slaty cleavage having been first found only in the lowest rocks, was
+taken as an indication of the highest antiquity: whence resulted serious
+mistakes; for this mineral characteristic is now known to occur in the
+Carboniferous system. Once more, certain red conglomerates and grits on
+the north-west coast of Scotland, long supposed from their lithological
+aspect to belong to the Old Red Sandstone, are now identified with the
+Lower Silurians. These are a few instances of the small trust to be
+placed in mineral qualities, as evidence of the ages or relative
+positions of strata. From the recently-published third edition of
+_Siluria_, may be culled numerous facts of like implication. Sir R.
+Murchison considers it ascertained, that the siliceous Stiper stones of
+Shropshire are the equivalents of the Tremadock slates of North Wales.
+Judged by their fossils, Bala slate and limestone are of the same age as
+the Caradoc sandstone, lying forty miles off. In Radnorshire, the
+formation classed as upper Llandovery rock, is described at different
+spots, as "sandstone or conglomerate," "impure limestone," "hard coarse
+grits," "siliceous grit"--a considerable variation for so small an area
+as that of a county. Certain sandy beds on the left bank of the Towy,
+which Sir R. Murchison had, in his _Silurian System_, classed as Caradoc
+sandstone (evidently from their mineral characters), he now finds, from
+their fossils, belong to the Llandeilo formation. Nevertheless,
+inferences from mineral characters are still habitually drawn and
+received. Though _Siluria_, in common with other geological works,
+supplies numerous proofs that rocks of the same age are often of
+widely-different composition a few miles off, while rocks of
+widely-different ages are often of similar composition; and though Sir
+R. Murchison shows us, as in the case just cited, that he has himself in
+past times been misled by trusting to lithological evidence; yet his
+reasoning all through _Siluria_, shows that he still thinks it natural
+to expect formations of the same age to be chemically similar, even in
+remote regions. For example, in treating of the Silurian rocks of South
+Scotland, he says:--"When traversing the tract between Dumfries and
+Moffat, in 1850, it occurred to me, that the dull reddish or purple
+sandstone and schist to the north of the former town, which so resembled
+the bottom rocks of Longmynd, Llanberis, and St. David's, would prove to
+be of the same age;" and further on, he again insists upon the fact that
+these strata "are absolutely of the same composition as the bottom rocks
+of the Silurian region." On this unity of mineral character it is, that
+this Scottish formation is concluded to be contemporaneous with the
+lowest formations in Wales; for the scanty paleontological evidence
+suffices for neither proof nor disproof. Now, had there been a
+continuity of like strata in like order between Wales and Scotland,
+there might have been little to criticize in this conclusion. But since
+Sir R. Murchison himself admits, that in Westmoreland and Cumberland,
+some members of the system "assume a lithological aspect different from
+what they maintain in the Silurian and Welsh region," there seems no
+reason to expect mineralogical continuity in Scotland. Obviously,
+therefore, the assumption that these Scottish formations are of the same
+age with the Longmynd of Shropshire, implies the latent belief that
+certain mineral characters indicate certain eras. Far more striking
+instances, however, of the influence of this latent belief remain to be
+given. Not in such comparatively near districts as the Scottish lowlands
+only, does Sir R. Murchison expect a repetition of the Longmynd strata;
+but in the Rhenish provinces, certain "quartzose flagstones and grits,
+like those of the Longmynd," are seemingly concluded to be of
+contemporaneous origin, because of their likeness. "Quartzites in
+roofing-slates with a greenish tinge that reminded us of the lower
+slates of Cumberland and Westmoreland," are evidently suspected to be of
+the same age. In Russia, he remarks that the carboniferous limestones
+"are overlaid along the western edge of the Ural chain by sandstones and
+grits, which occupy much the same place in the general series as the
+millstone grit of England;" and in calling this group, as he does, the
+"representative of the millstone grit," Sir R. Murchison clearly shows
+that he thinks likeness of mineral composition some evidence of
+equivalence in time, even at that great distance. Nay, on the flanks of
+the Andes and in the United States, such similarities are looked for,
+and considered as significant of certain ages. Not that Sir R. Murchison
+contends theoretically for this relation between lithological character
+and date. For on the page from which we have just quoted (_Siluria_,
+p. 387), he says, that "whilst the soft Lower Silurian clays and sands
+of St. Petersburg have their equivalents in the hard schists and quartz
+rocks with gold veins in the heart of the Ural mountains, the equally
+soft red and green Devonian marls of the Valdai Hills are represented on
+the western flank of that chain by hard, contorted, and fractured
+limestones." But these, and other such admissions, seem to go for
+little. While himself asserting that the Potsdam-sandstone of North
+America, the Lingula-flags of England, and the alum-slates of
+Scandinavia are of the same period--while fully aware that among the
+Silurian formations of Wales, there are oolitic strata like those of
+secondary age; yet his reasoning is more or less coloured by the
+assumption, that formations of like qualities probably belong to the
+same era. Is it not manifest, then, that the exploded hypothesis of
+Werner continues to influence geological speculation?
+
+"But," it will perhaps be said, "though individual strata are not
+continuous over large areas, yet systems of strata are. Though within a
+few miles the same bed gradually passes from clay into sand, or thins
+out and disappears, yet the group of strata to which it belongs does not
+do so; but maintains in remote regions the same relations to other
+groups."
+
+This is the generally-current belief. On this assumption the received
+geological classifications appear to be framed. The Silurian system, the
+Devonian system, the Carboniferous system, etc., are set down in our
+books as groups of formations which everywhere succeed each other in a
+given order; and are severally everywhere of the same age. Though it may
+not be asserted that these successive systems are universal; yet it
+seems to be tacitly assumed that they are. In North and South America,
+in Asia, in Australia, sets of strata are assimilated to one or other of
+these groups; and their possession of certain mineral characters and a
+certain order of superposition are among the reasons assigned for so
+assimilating them. Though, probably, no competent geologist would
+contend that the European classification of strata is applicable to the
+globe as a whole; yet most, if not all geologists, write as though it
+were. Among readers of works on Geology, nine out of ten carry away the
+impression that the divisions, Primary, Secondary and Tertiary, are of
+absolute and uniform application; that these great divisions are
+separable into subdivisions, each of which is definitely distinguishable
+from the rest, and is everywhere recognizable by its characters as such
+or such; and that in all parts of the Earth, these minor systems
+severally began and ended at the same time. When they meet with the term
+"Carboniferous era," they take for granted that it was an era
+universally carboniferous--that it was, what Hugh Miller indeed actually
+describes it, an era when the Earth bore a vegetation far more luxuriant
+than it has since done; and were they in any of our colonies to meet
+with a coal-bed, they would conclude that, as a matter of course, it was
+of the same age as the English coal-beds.
+
+Now this belief that geologic "systems" are universal, is no more
+tenable than the other. It is just as absurd when considered _a priori_;
+and it is equally inconsistent with the facts. Though some series of
+strata classed together as Oolite, may range over a wider district than
+any one stratum of the series; yet we have but to ask what were the
+circumstances under which it was deposited, to see that the Oolitic
+series, like one of its individual strata, must be of local origin; and
+that there is not likely to be anywhere else, a series which
+corresponds, either in its characters or in its commencement and
+termination. For the formation of such a series implies an area of
+subsidence, in which its component beds were thrown down. Every area of
+subsidence is necessarily limited; and to suppose that there exist
+elsewhere groups of beds completely answering to those known as Oolite,
+is to suppose that, in contemporaneous areas of subsidence, like
+processes were going on. There is no reason to suppose this; but good
+reason to suppose the reverse. That in contemporaneous areas of
+subsidence throughout the globe, the conditions would cause the
+formation of Oolite, is an assumption which no modern geologist would
+openly make. He would say that the equivalent series of beds found
+elsewhere, would probably be of dissimilar mineral character. Moreover,
+in these contemporaneous areas of subsidence, the processes going on
+would not only be different in kind; but in no two cases would they be
+likely to agree in their commencements and terminations. The
+probabilities are greatly against separate portions of the Earth's
+surface beginning to subside at the same time, and ceasing to subside at
+the same time--a coincidence which alone could produce equivalent groups
+of strata. Subsidences in different places begin and end with utter
+irregularity; and hence the groups of strata thrown down in them can but
+rarely correspond. Measured against each other in time, their limits
+must disagree. On turning to the evidence, we find that it daily tends
+more and more to justify these _a priori_ positions. Take, as an
+example, the Old Red Sandstone system. In the north of England this is
+represented by a single stratum of conglomerate. In Herefordshire,
+Worcestershire, and Shropshire, it expands into a series of strata from
+eight to ten thousand feet thick, made up of conglomerates, red, green,
+and white sandstones, red, green, and spotted marls, and concretionary
+limestones. To the south-west, as between Caermarthen and Pembroke,
+these Old Red Sandstone strata exhibit considerable lithological
+changes; on the other side of the Bristol Channel, they display further
+changes in mineral characters; while in South Devon and Cornwall, the
+equivalent strata, consisting chiefly of slates, schists, and
+limestones, are so wholly different, that they were for a long time
+classed as Silurian. When we thus see that in certain directions the
+whole group of deposits thins out, and that its mineral characters
+change within moderate distances; does it not become clear that the
+whole group of deposits was a local one? And when we find, in other
+regions, formations analogous to these Old Red Sandstone or Devonian
+formations, is it certain--is it even probable--that they severally
+began and ended at the same time with them? Should it not require
+overwhelming evidence to make us believe as much?
+
+Yet so strongly is geological speculation swayed by the tendency to
+regard the phenomena as general instead of local, that even those most
+on their guard against it seem unable to escape its influence. At page
+158 of his _Principles of Geology_, Sir Charles Lyell says:--
+
+     "A group of red marl and red sandstone, containing salt and gypsum,
+     being interposed in England between the Lias and the Coal, all
+     other red marls and sandstones, associated some of them with salt,
+     and others with gypsum, and occurring not only in different parts
+     of Europe, but in North America, Peru, India, the salt deserts of
+     Asia, those of Africa--in a word, in every quarter of the globe,
+     were referred to one and the same period.... It was in vain to urge
+     as an objection the improbability of the hypothesis which implies
+     that all the moving waters on the globe were once simultaneously
+     charged with sediment of a red colour. But the rashness of
+     pretending to identify, in age, all the red sandstones and marls in
+     question, has at length been sufficiently exposed, by the discovery
+     that, even in Europe, they belong decidedly to many different
+     epochs."
+
+Nevertheless, while in this and many kindred passages Sir C. Lyell
+protests against the bias here illustrated, he seems himself not
+completely free from it. Though he utterly rejects the old hypothesis
+that all over the Earth the same continuous strata lie one upon another
+in regular order, like the coats of an onion, he still writes as though
+geologic "systems" do thus succeed each other. A reader of his _Manual_
+would certainly suppose him to believe, that the Primary epoch ended,
+and the secondary epoch began, all over the world at the same time--that
+these terms really correspond to distinct universal eras. When he
+assumes, as he does, that the division between Cambrian and Lower
+Silurian in America, answers chronologically to the division between
+Cambrian and Lower Silurian in Wales--when he takes for granted that
+the partings of Lower from Middle Silurian, and of Middle Silurian from
+Upper, in the one region, are of the same dates as the like partings in
+the other region; does it not seem that he believes geologic "systems"
+to be universal, in the sense that their separations were in all places
+contemporaneous? Though he would, doubtless, disown this as an article
+of faith, is not his thinking unconsciously influenced by it? Must we
+not say that, though the onion-coat hypothesis is dead, its spirit is
+traceable, under a transcendental form, even in the conclusions of its
+antagonists?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us now consider another leading geological doctrine,--the doctrine
+that strata of the same age contain like fossils; and that, therefore,
+the age and relative position of any stratum may be known by its
+fossils. While the theory that strata of like mineral characters were
+everywhere deposited simultaneously, has been ostensibly abandoned,
+there has been accepted the theory that in each geologic epoch similar
+plants and animals existed everywhere; and that, therefore, the epoch to
+which any formation belongs may be known by the organic remains
+contained in the formation. Though, perhaps, no leading geologist would
+openly commit himself to an unqualified assertion of this theory, yet it
+is tacitly assumed in current geological reasoning.
+
+This theory, however, is scarcely more tenable than the other. It cannot
+be concluded with any certainty, that formations in which similar
+organic remains are found, were of contemporaneous origin; nor can it be
+safely concluded that strata containing different organic remains are of
+different ages. To most readers these will be startling propositions;
+but they are fully admitted by the highest authorities. Sir Charles
+Lyell confesses that the test of organic remains must be used "under
+very much the same restrictions as the test of mineral composition." Sir
+Henry de la Beche, who variously illustrates this truth, remarks on the
+great incongruity there must be between the fossils of our carboniferous
+rocks and those of the marine strata deposited at the same period. But
+though, in the abstract, the danger of basing positive conclusions on
+evidence derived from fossils, is recognized; yet, in the concrete, this
+danger is generally disregarded. The established convictions respecting
+the ages of strata, have been formed in spite of it; and by some
+geologists it seems altogether ignored. Throughout his _Siluria_, Sir R.
+Murchison habitually assumes that the same, or kindred, species, lived
+in all parts of the Earth at the same time. In Russia, in Bohemia, in
+the United States, in South America, strata are classed as belonging to
+this or that part of the Silurian system, because of the similar fossils
+contained in them--are concluded to be everywhere contemporaneous if
+they enclose a proportion of identical or allied forms. In Russia the
+relative position of a stratum is inferred from the fact that, along
+with some Wenlock forms, it yields the _Pentamerus oblongus_. Certain
+crustaceans called _Eurypteri_, being characteristic of the Upper Ludlow
+rock, it is remarked that "large Eurypteri occur in a so-called black
+grey-wacke slate in Westmoreland, in Oneida County, New York, which will
+probably be found to be on the parallel of the Upper Ludlow rock:" in
+which word "probably," we see both how dominant is this belief of
+universal distribution of similar creatures at the same period, and how
+apt this belief is to make its own proof, by raising the expectation
+that the ages are identical when the forms are alike. Besides thus
+interpreting the formations of Russia, England, and America, Sir R.
+Murchison thus interprets those of the antipodes. Fossils from Victoria
+Colony, he agrees with the Government-surveyor in classing as of Lower
+Silurian or Llandovery age: that is, he takes for granted that when
+certain crustaceans and mollusks were living in Wales, certain similar
+crustaceans and mollusks were living in Australia. Yet the
+improbability of this assumption may be readily shown from Sir R.
+Murchison's own facts. If, as he points out, the fossil crustaceans of
+the uppermost Silurian rocks in Lanarkshire are, "with one doubtful
+exception," all "distinct from any of the forms known on the same
+horizon in England;" how can it be fairly presumed that the forms
+existing on the other side of the Earth during the Silurian period, were
+nearly allied to those existing here? Not only, indeed, do Sir R.
+Murchison's conclusions tacitly assume this doctrine of universal
+distribution, but he distinctly enunciates it. "The mere presence of a
+graptolite," he says, "will at once decide that the enclosing rock is
+Silurian;" and he says this, notwithstanding repeated warnings against
+such generalizations. During the progress of Geology, it has over and
+over again happened that a particular fossil, long considered
+characteristic of a particular formation, has been afterwards discovered
+in other formations. Until some twelve years ago, Goniatites had not
+been found lower than the Devonian rocks; but now, in Bohemia, they have
+been found in rocks classed as Silurian. Quite recently, the
+_Orthoceras_, previously supposed to be a type exclusively palaeozoic,
+has been detected along with mesozoic Ammonites and Belemnites. Yet
+hosts of such experiences fail to extinguish the assumption, that the
+age of a stratum may be determined by the occurrence in it of a single
+fossil form. Nay, this assumption survives evidence of even a still more
+destructive kind. Referring to the Silurian system in Western Ireland,
+Sir R. Murchison says, "in the beds near Maam, Professor Nicol and
+myself collected remains, some of which would be considered Lower, and
+others Upper, Silurian;" and he then names sundry fossils which, in
+England, belong to the summit of the Ludlow rocks, or highest Silurian
+strata; "some, which elsewhere are known only in rocks of Llandovery
+age"--that is, of middle Silurian age; and some, only before known in
+Lower Silurian strata, not far above the most ancient fossiliferous
+beds. Now what do these facts prove? Clearly, they prove that species
+which in Wales are separated by strata more than twenty thousand feet
+deep, and therefore seem to belong to periods far more remote from each
+other, were really co-existent. They prove that the mollusks and
+crinoids held to be characteristic of early Silurian strata, and
+supposed to have become extinct long before the mollusks and crinoids of
+the later Silurian strata came into existence, were really flourishing
+at the same time with these last; and that these last possibly date back
+to as early a period as the first. They prove that not only the mineral
+characters of sedimentary formations, but also the collections of
+organic forms they contain, depend, to a great extent, on local
+circumstances. They prove that the fossils met with in any series of
+strata, cannot be taken as representing anything like the whole Flora
+and Fauna of the period they belong to. In brief, they throw great doubt
+upon numerous geological generalizations.
+
+Notwithstanding facts like these, and notwithstanding his avowed opinion
+that the test of organic remains must be used "under very much the same
+restrictions as the test of mineral composition," Sir Charles Lyell,
+too, considers sundry positive conclusions to be justified by this test:
+even where the community of fossils is slight and the distance great.
+Having decided that in various places in Europe, middle Eocene strata
+are distinguished by Nummulites; he infers, without any other assigned
+evidence, that wherever Nummulites are found--in Morocco, Algeria,
+Egypt, in Persia, Scinde, Cutch, Eastern Bengal, and the frontiers of
+China--the containing formation is Middle Eocene. And from this
+inference he draws the following important corollary:--
+
+     "When we have once arrived at the conviction that the nummulitic
+     formation occupies a middle place in the Eocene series, we are
+     struck with the comparatively modern date to which some of the
+     greatest revolutions in the physical geography of Europe, Asia, and
+     northern Africa must be referred. All the mountain chains, such as
+     the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians, and Himalayas, into the
+     composition of whose central and loftiest parts the nummulitic
+     strata enter bodily, could have had no existence till after the
+     Middle Eocene period."--_Manual_, p. 232.
+
+A still more marked case follows on the next page. Because a certain bed
+at Claiborne in Alabama, which contains "_four hundred_ species of
+marine shells," includes among them the _Cardita planicosta_, "and _some
+others_ identical with European species, or very nearly allied to them,"
+Sir C. Lyell says it is "highly probable the Claiborne beds agree in age
+with the central or Bracklesham group of England." When we find
+contemporaneity alleged on the strength of a community no greater than
+that which sometimes exists between strata of widely-different ages in
+the same country, it seems as though the above-quoted caution had been
+forgotten. It appears to be assumed for the occasion, that species which
+had a wide range in space had a narrow range in time; which is the
+reverse of the fact. The tendency to systematize overrides the evidence,
+and thrusts Nature into a formula too rigid to fit her endless variety.
+
+"But," it may be urged, "surely, when in different places the order of
+superposition, the mineral characters, and the fossils, agree, it may
+safely be concluded that the formations thus corresponding date back to
+the same time. If, for example, the United States display a succession
+of Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous systems, lithologically similar
+to those known here by those names, and characterized by like fossils,
+it is a fair inference that these groups of strata were severally being
+deposited in America while their equivalents were being deposited here."
+
+On this position, which seems a strong one, we have, in the first place,
+to remark, that the evidence of correspondence is always more or less
+suspicious. We have already adverted to the several "idols"--if we may
+use Bacon's metaphor--to which geologists unconsciously sacrifice, when
+interpreting the structures of unexplored regions. Carrying with them
+the classification of strata existing in Europe, and assuming that
+groups of strata in other parts of the world must answer to some of the
+groups of strata known here, they are necessarily prone to assert
+parallelism on insufficient evidence. They scarcely entertain the
+previous question, whether the formations they are examining have or
+have not any European equivalents; but the question is--with which of
+the European series shall they be classed?--with which do they most
+agree?--from which do they differ least? And this being the mode of
+inquiry, there is apt to result great laxity of interpretation. How lax
+the interpretation really is, may be readily shown. When strata are
+discontinuous, as between Europe and America, no evidence can be derived
+from the order of superposition, apart from mineral characters and
+organic remains; for, unless strata can be continuously traced, mineral
+characters and organic remains afford the only means of classing them as
+such or such. As to the test of mineral characters, we have seen that it
+is almost worthless; and no modern geologist would dare to say it should
+be relied on. If the Old Red Sandstone series in mid-England, differs
+wholly in lithological aspect from the equivalent series in South Devon,
+it is clear that similarities of texture and composition cannot justify
+us in classing a system of strata in another quarter of the globe with
+some European system. The test of fossils is the only one that remains;
+and with how little strictness this test is applied, one case will show.
+Of forty-six species of British Devonian corals, only six occur in
+America; and this, notwithstanding the wide range which the _Anthozoa_
+are known to have. Similarly of the _Mollusca_ and _Crinoidea_, it
+appears that, while there are sundry genera found in America which are
+found here, there are scarcely any of the same species. And Sir Charles
+Lyell admits that "the difficulty of deciding on the exact parallelism
+of the New York subdivisions, as above enumerated, with the members of
+the European Devonian, is very great, so few are the species in common."
+Yet it is on the strength of community of fossils, that the whole
+Devonian series of the United States is assumed to be contemporaneous
+with the whole Devonian series of England. And it is partly on the
+ground that the Devonian of the United States corresponds in time with
+our own Devonian, that Sir Charles Lyell concludes the superjacent
+coal-measures of the two countries to be of the same age. Is it not,
+then, as we said, that the evidence in these cases is very suspicious?
+Should it be replied, as it may fairly be, that this correspondence from
+which the synchronism of distant formations is inferred, is not a
+correspondence between particular species or particular genera, but
+between the general characters of the contained assemblages of
+fossils--between the _facies_ of the two Faunas; the rejoinder is, that
+though such correspondence is a stronger evidence of synchronism it is
+still an insufficient one. To infer synchronism from such
+correspondence, involves the postulate that throughout each geologic era
+there has habitually existed a recognizable similarity between the
+groups of organic forms inhabiting all the different parts of the Earth;
+and that the causes which have in one part of the Earth changed the
+organic forms into those which characterize the next era, have
+simultaneously acted in all other parts of the Earth, in such ways as to
+produce parallel changes of their organic forms. Now this is not only a
+large assumption to make; but it is an assumption contrary to
+probability. The probability is, that the causes which have changed
+Faunas have been local rather than universal; that hence while the
+Faunas of some regions have been rapidly changing, those of others have
+been almost quiescent; and that when those of others have been changed,
+it has been, not in such ways as to maintain parallelism, but in such
+ways as to produce divergence.
+
+Even supposing, however, that districts some hundreds of miles apart,
+furnished groups of strata which completely agreed in their order of
+superposition, their mineral characters, and their fossils, we should
+still have inadequate proof of contemporaneity. For there are
+conditions, very likely to occur, under which such groups might differ
+widely in age. If there be a continent of which the strata crop out on
+the surface obliquely to the line of coast--running, say,
+west-north-west, while the coast runs east and west--it is clear that
+each group of strata will crop out on the beach at a particular part of
+the coast; that further west the next group of strata will crop out on
+the beach; and so continuously. As the localization of marine plants and
+animals, is in a considerable degree determined by the natures of the
+rocks and their detritus, it follows that each part of this coast will
+have its more or less distinct Flora and Fauna. What now must result
+from the action of the waves in the course of a geologic epoch? As the
+sea makes slow inroads on the land, the place at which each group of
+strata crops out on the beach will gradually move towards the west: its
+distinctive fish, mollusks, crustaceans, and sea-weeds, migrating with
+it. Further, the detritus of each of these groups of strata will, as the
+point of outcrop moves westwards, be deposited over the detritus of the
+group in advance of it. And the consequence of these actions, carried on
+for one of those enormous periods which a geologic change takes, will be
+that, corresponding to each eastern stratum, there will arise a stratum
+far to the west, which, though occupying the same position relatively to
+other beds, formed of like materials, and containing like fossils, will
+yet be perhaps a million years later in date.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the illegitimacy, or at any rate the great doubtfulness, of many
+current geological inferences, is best seen when we contemplate
+terrestrial changes now going on; and ask how far such inferences are
+countenanced by them. If we carry out rigorously the modern method of
+interpreting geological phenomena, which Sir Charles Lyell has done so
+much to establish--that of referring them to causes like those at
+present in action--we cannot fail to see how improbable are sundry of
+the received conclusions.
+
+Along each shore which is being worn away by the waves, there are being
+formed mud, sand, and pebbles. This detritus has, in each locality, a
+more or less special character; determined by the nature of the strata
+destroyed. In the English Channel it is not the same as in the Irish
+Channel; on the east coast of Ireland it is not the same as on the west
+coast; and so throughout. At the mouth of each great river, there is
+being deposited sediment differing more or less from that deposited at
+the mouths of other rivers in colour and quality; forming strata which
+are here red, there yellow, and elsewhere brown, grey, or dirty white.
+Besides which various formations, going on in deltas and along shores,
+there are some much wider, and still more strongly contrasted,
+formations. At the bottom of the AEgean Sea, there is accumulating a bed
+of Pteropod shells, which will eventually, no doubt, become a calcareous
+rock. For some hundreds of thousands of square miles, the ocean-bed
+between Great Britain and North America, is being covered with a stratum
+of chalk; and over large areas in the Pacific, there are going on
+deposits of coralline limestone. Thus, there are at this moment being
+produced in different places multitudinous strata differing from one
+another in lithological characters. Name at random any part of the
+sea-bottom, and ask whether the deposit there taking place is like the
+deposit taking place at some distant part of the sea-bottom, and the
+almost-certainly correct answer will be--No. The chances are not in
+favour of similarity, but against it--many to one against it.
+
+In the order of superposition of strata there is being established a
+like variety. Each region of the Earth's surface has its special history
+of elevations, subsidences, periods of rest: and this history in no case
+fits chronologically with the history of any other portion. River
+deltas are now being thrown down on formations of different ages: some
+very ancient, some quite modern. While here there has been deposited a
+series of beds many hundreds of feet thick, there has elsewhere been
+deposited but a single bed of fine mud. While one region of the Earth's
+crust, continuing for a vast epoch above the surface of the ocean, bears
+record of no changes save those resulting from denudation; another
+region of the Earth's crust gives proof of sundry changes of level, with
+their several resulting masses of stratified detritus. If anything is to
+be judged from current processes, we must infer, not only that
+everywhere the succession of sedimentary formations differs more or less
+from the succession elsewhere; but also that in each place, there exist
+groups of strata to which many other places have no equivalents.
+
+With respect to the organic bodies imbedded in formations now in
+progress, a like truth is equally manifest, if not more manifest. Even
+along the same coast, within moderate distances, the forms of life
+differ very considerably; and they differ much more on coasts that are
+remote from one another. Again, dissimilar creatures which are living
+together near the same shore, do not leave their remains in the same
+beds of sediment. For instance, at the bottom of the Adriatic, where the
+prevailing currents cause the deposits to be here of mud, and there of
+calcareous matter, it is proved that different species of co-existing
+shells are being buried in these respective formations. On our own
+coasts, the marine remains found a few miles from shore, in banks where
+fish congregate, are different from those found close to the shore,
+where littoral species flourish. A large proportion of aquatic creatures
+have structures which do not admit of fossilization; while of the rest,
+the great majority are destroyed, when dead, by various kinds of
+scavengers. So that no one deposit near our shores can contain anything
+like a true representation of the Fauna of the surrounding sea; much
+less of the co-existing Faunas of other seas in the same latitude; and
+still less of the Faunas of seas in distant latitudes. Were it not that
+the assertion seems needful, it would be almost absurd to say, that the
+organic remains now being buried in the Dogger Bank, can tell us next to
+nothing about the fish, crustaceans, mollusks, and corals, which are
+being buried in the Bay of Bengal. Still stronger is the argument in the
+case of terrestrial life. With more numerous and greater contrasts
+between the types inhabiting one continent and those inhabiting another,
+there is a far more imperfect registry of them. Schouw marks out on the
+Earth more than twenty botanical regions, occupied by groups of forms so
+distinct, that, if fossilized, geologists would scarcely be disposed to
+refer them all to the same period. Of Faunas, the Arctic differs from
+the Temperate; the Temperate from the Tropical; and the South Temperate
+from the North Temperate. Nay, in the South Temperate Zone itself, the
+two regions of South Africa and South America are unlike in their
+mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, mollusks, insects. The shells and
+bones now lying at the bottoms of lakes and estuaries in these several
+regions, have certainly not that similarity which is usually looked for
+in those of contemporaneous strata; and the recent forms exhumed in any
+one of these regions would very untruly represent the present Flora and
+Fauna of the Earth. In conformity with the current style of geological
+reasoning, an exhaustive examination of deposits in the Arctic circle,
+might be held to prove that though at this period there were sundry
+mammals existing, there were no reptiles; while the absence of mammals
+in the deposits of the Galapagos Archipelago, where there are plenty of
+reptiles, might be held to prove the reverse. And at the same time, from
+the formations extending for two thousand miles along the great
+barrier-reef of Australia--formations in which are imbedded nothing but
+corals, echinoderms, mollusks, crustaceans, and fish, along with an
+occasional turtle, or bird, or cetacean--it might be inferred that there
+lived in our epoch neither terrestrial reptiles, nor terrestrial
+mammals. The mention of Australia, indeed, suggests an illustration
+which, even alone, would amply prove our case. The Fauna of this region
+differs widely from any that is found elsewhere. On land, all the
+indigenous mammals, except bats, belong to the lowest, or implacental
+division; and the insects are singularly different from those found
+elsewhere. The surrounding seas contain numerous forms which are more or
+less strange; and among the fish there exists a species of shark, which
+is the only living representative of a genus that flourished in early
+geologic epochs. If, now, the modern fossiliferous deposits of Australia
+were to be examined by one ignorant of the existing Australian Fauna;
+and if he were to reason in the usual manner; he would be very unlikely
+to class these deposits with those of the present time. How, then, can
+we place confidence in the tacit assumption that certain formations in
+remote parts of the Earth are referable to the same period, because the
+organic remains contained in them display a certain community of
+character? or that certain others are referable to different periods,
+because the _facies_ of their Faunas are different?
+
+"But," it will be replied, "in past eras the same, or similar, organic
+forms were more widely distributed than now." It may be so; but the
+evidence adduced by no means proves it. The argument by which this
+conclusion is reached, runs a risk of being quoted as an example of
+reasoning in a circle. As already pointed out, between formations in
+remote regions the accepted test of equivalence is community of fossils.
+If, then, the contemporaneity of remote formations is concluded from the
+likeness of their fossils; how can it be said that similar plants and
+animals were once more widely distributed, because they are found in
+contemporaneous strata in remote regions? Is not the fallacy manifest?
+Even supposing there were no such fatal objection as this, the evidence
+commonly assigned would still be insufficient. For we must bear in mind
+that the community of organic remains usually thought sufficient proof
+of correspondence in time, is a very imperfect community. When the
+compared sedimentary beds are far apart, it is scarcely expected that
+there will be many species common to the two: it is enough if there be
+discovered a considerable number of common genera. Now had it been
+proved that throughout geologic time, each genus lived but for a short
+period--a period measured by a single group of strata--something might
+be inferred. But what if we learn that many of the same genera continued
+to exist throughout enormous epochs, measured by several vast systems of
+strata? "Among molluscs, the genera _Avicula_, _Modiola_, _Terebratula_,
+_Lingula_, and _Orbicula_, are found from the Silurian rocks upwards to
+the present day." If, then, between the lowest fossiliferous formations
+and the most recent, there exists this degree of community; must we not
+infer that there will probably often exist a great degree of community
+between strata that are far from contemporaneous?
+
+Thus the reasoning from which it is concluded that similar organic forms
+were once more widely spread than now, is doubly fallacious; and,
+consequently, the classifications of foreign strata based on the
+conclusion are untrustworthy. Judging from the present distribution of
+life, we cannot expect to find similar remains in geographically remote
+strata of the same age; and where, between the fossils of geographically
+remote strata, we do find much similarity, it is probably due rather to
+likeness of conditions than to contemporaneity. If from causes and
+effects such as we now witness, we reason back to the causes and effects
+of past epochs, we discover inadequate warrant for sundry of the
+received doctrines. Seeing, as we do, that in large areas of the Pacific
+this is a period characterized by abundance of corals; that in the North
+Atlantic it is a period in which a great chalk-deposit is being formed;
+and that in the valley of the Mississippi it is a period of new
+coal-basins--seeing also, as we do, that in one extensive continent this
+is peculiarly an era of implacental mammals, and that in another
+extensive continent it is peculiarly an era of placental mammals; we
+have good reason to hesitate before accepting these sweeping
+generalizations which are based on a cursory examination of strata
+occupying but a tenth part of the Earth's surface.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the outset, this article was to have been a review of the works of
+Hugh Miller; but it has grown into something much more general.
+Nevertheless, the remaining two doctrines which we propose to criticize,
+may conveniently be treated in connexion with his name, as that of one
+who fully committed himself to them. And first, a few words respecting
+his position.
+
+That he was a man whose life was one of meritorious achievement, every
+one knows. That he was a diligent and successful working geologist,
+scarcely needs saying. That with indomitable perseverance he struggled
+up from obscurity to a place in the world of literature and science,
+shows him to have been highly endowed in character and intelligence. And
+that he had a remarkable power of presenting his facts and arguments in
+an attractive form, a glance at any of his books will quickly prove. By
+all means, let us respect him as a man of activity and sagacity, joined
+with a large amount of poetry. But while saying this we must add, that
+his reputation stands by no means so high in the scientific world as in
+the world at large. Partly from the fact that our Scotch neighbours are
+in the habit of blowing the trumpet rather loudly before their
+notabilities--partly because the charming style in which his books are
+written has gained him a large circle of readers--partly, perhaps,
+through a praiseworthy sympathy with him as a self-made man; Hugh Miller
+has met with an amount of applause which, little as we wish to diminish
+it, must not be allowed to blind the public to his defects as a man of
+science. The truth is, he was so far committed to a foregone conclusion,
+that he could not become a philosophical geologist. He might be aptly
+described as a theologian studying geology. The dominant idea with which
+he wrote, may be seen in the titles of two of his books--_Footprints of
+the Creator_,--_The Testimony of the Rocks_. Regarding geological facts
+as evidence for or against certain religious conclusions, it was
+scarcely possible for him to deal with geological facts impartially. His
+ruling aim was to disprove the Development Hypothesis, the assumed
+implications of which were repugnant to him; and in proportion to the
+strength of his feeling, was the one-sidedness of his reasoning. He
+admitted that "God might as certainly have _originated_ the species by a
+law of development, as he _maintains_ it by a law of development;--the
+existence of a First Great Cause is as perfectly compatible with the one
+scheme as with the other." Nevertheless, he considered the hypothesis at
+variance with Christianity; and therefore combated with it. He
+apparently overlooked the fact, that the doctrines of geology in
+general, as held by himself, had been rejected by many on similar
+grounds; and that he had himself been repeatedly attacked for his
+anti-Christian teachings. He seems not to have perceived that, just as
+his antagonists were wrong in condemning as irreligious, theories which
+he saw were not irreligious; so might he be wrong in condemning, on like
+grounds, the Theory of Evolution. In brief, he fell short of that
+highest faith which knows that all truths must harmonize; and which is,
+therefore, content trustfully to follow the evidence whithersoever it
+leads.
+
+Of course it is impossible to criticize his works without entering on
+this great question to which he chiefly devoted himself. The two
+remaining doctrines to be here discussed, bear directly on this
+question; and, as above said, we propose to treat them in connexion with
+Hugh Miller's name, because, throughout his reasonings, he assumes
+their truth. Let it not be supposed, however, that we shall aim to
+prove what he has aimed to disprove. While we purpose showing that his
+geological arguments against the Development Hypothesis are based on
+invalid assumptions; we do not purpose showing that the geological
+arguments urged in support of it are based on valid assumptions. We hope
+to make it apparent that the geological evidence at present obtained, is
+insufficient for either side; further, that there seems little
+probability that sufficient evidence will ever be obtained; and that if
+the question is eventually decided, it must be decided on other than
+geological grounds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first of the current doctrines to which we have just referred, is,
+that there occur in the serial records of former life on our planet, two
+great blanks; whence it is inferred that, on at least two occasions, the
+previously existing inhabitants of the Earth were almost wholly
+destroyed, and a different class of inhabitants created. Comparing the
+general life on the Earth to a thread, Hugh Miller says:--
+
+     "It is continuous from the present time up to the commencement of
+     the Tertiary period; and then so abrupt a break occurs, that, with
+     the exception of the microscopic diatomaceae, to which I last
+     evening referred, and of one shell and one coral, not a single
+     species crossed the gap. On its farther or remoter side, however,
+     where the Secondary division closes, the intermingling of species
+     again begins, and runs on till the commencement of this great
+     Secondary division; and then, just where the Palaeozoic division
+     closes, we find another abrupt break, crossed, if crossed at
+     all,--for there still exists some doubt on the subject,--by but two
+     species of plant."
+
+These breaks are supposed to imply actual new creations on the surface
+of our planet--supposed not by Hugh Miller only, but by the majority of
+geologists. And the terms Palaeozoic, Mesozoic, and Cainozoic, are used
+to indicate these three successive systems of life. It is true that some
+accept this belief with caution; knowing how geologic research has been
+all along tending to fill up what were once thought wide gaps. Sir
+Charles Lyell points out that "the hiatus which exists in Great Britain
+between the fossils of the Lias and those of the Magnesian Limestone,
+is supplied in Germany by the rich fauna and flora of the Muschelkalk,
+Keuper, and Bunter Sandstein, which we know to be of a date precisely
+intermediate." Again he remarks that "until lately the fossils of the
+coal-measures were separated from those of the antecedent Silurian group
+by a very abrupt and decided line of demarcation; but recent discoveries
+have brought to light in Devonshire, Belgium, the Eifel, and Westphalia,
+the remains of a fauna of an intervening period." And once more, he
+says, "we have also in like manner had some success of late years in
+diminishing the hiatus which still separates the Cretaceous and Eocene
+periods in Europe." To which let us add that, since Hugh Miller penned
+the passage above quoted, the second of the great gaps he refers to has
+been very considerably narrowed by the discovery of strata containing
+Palaeozoic genera and Mesozoic genera intermingled. Nevertheless, the
+occurrence of two great revolutions in the Earth's Flora and Fauna
+appears still to be held by many; and geologic nomenclature habitually
+assumes it.
+
+Before seeking a solution of the problem thus raised, let us glance at
+the several minor causes which produce breaks in the geological
+succession of organic forms; taking first, the more general ones which
+modify climate, and, therefore, the distribution of life. Among these
+may be noted one which has not, we believe, been named by writers on the
+subject. We mean that resulting from a certain slow astronomic rhythm,
+by which the northern and southern hemispheres are alternately subject
+to greater extremes of temperature. In consequence of the slight
+ellipticity of its orbit, the Earth's distance from the sun varies to
+the extent of some 3,000,000 of miles. At present, the aphelion occurs
+at the time of our northern summer; and the perihelion during the summer
+of the southern hemisphere. In consequence, however, of that slow
+movement of the Earth's axis which produces the precession of the
+equinoxes, this state of things will in time be reversed: the Earth
+will be nearest to the sun during the summer of the northern hemisphere,
+and furthest from it during the southern summer or northern winter. The
+period required to complete the slow movement producing these changes,
+is nearly 26,000 years; and were there no modifying process, the two
+hemispheres would alternately experience this coincidence of summer with
+relative nearness to the sun, during a period of 13,000 years. But there
+is also a still slower change in the direction of the axis major of the
+Earth's orbit; from which it results that the alternation we have
+described is completed in about 21,000 years. That is to say, if at a
+given time the Earth is nearest to the sun at our mid-summer, and
+furthest from the sun at our mid-winter; then, in 10,500 years
+afterwards, it will be furthest from the sun at our mid-summer, and
+nearest at our mid-winter. Now the difference between the distances from
+the sun at the two extremes of this alternation, amounts to
+one-thirtieth; and hence, the difference between the quantities of heat
+received from the sun on a summer's day under these opposite conditions
+amounts to one-fifteenth. Estimating this, not with reference to the
+zero of our thermometers, but with reference to the temperature of the
+celestial spaces, Sir John Herschel calculates "23 deg. Fahrenheit, as the
+least variation of temperature under such circumstances which can
+reasonably be attributed to the actual variation of the sun's distance."
+Thus, then, each hemisphere has at a certain epoch, a short summer of
+extreme heat, followed by a long and very cold winter. Through the slow
+change in the direction of the Earth's axis, these extremes are
+gradually mitigated. And at the end of 10,500 years, there is reached
+the opposite state--a long and moderate summer, with a short and mild
+winter. At present, in consequence of the predominance of sea in the
+southern hemisphere, the extremes to which its astronomical conditions
+subject it, are much ameliorated; while the great proportion of land in
+the northern hemisphere, tends to exaggerate such contrast as now
+exists in it between winter and summer: whence it results that the
+climates of the two hemispheres are not widely unlike. But 10,000 years
+hence, the northern hemisphere will undergo annual variations of
+temperature far more marked than now.
+
+In the last edition of his _Outlines of Astronomy_, Sir John Herschel
+recognizes this as an element in geological processes; regarding it as
+possibly a part-cause of those climatic changes indicated by the records
+of the Earth's past. That it has had much to do with those larger
+changes of climate of which we have evidence, seems unlikely, since
+there is reason to think that these have been far slower and more
+lasting; but that it must have entailed a rhythmical exaggeration and
+mitigation of the climates otherwise produced, seems beyond question.
+And it seems also beyond question that there must have been a consequent
+rhythmical change in the distribution of organisms--a rhythmical change
+to which we here wish to draw attention, as one cause of minor breaks in
+the succession of fossil remains. Each species of plant and animal has
+certain limits of heat and cold within which only it can exist; and
+these limits in a great degree determine its geographical position. It
+will not spread north of a certain latitude, because it cannot bear a
+more northern winter, nor south of a certain latitude, because the
+summer heat is too great; or else it is indirectly restrained from
+spreading further by the effect of temperature on the humidity of the
+air, or on the distribution of the organisms it lives upon. But now,
+what will result from a slow alteration of climate, produced as above
+described? Supposing the period we set out from is that in which the
+contrast of seasons is least marked, it is manifest that during the
+progress towards the period of most violent contrast, each species of
+plant and animal will gradually change its limits of distribution--will
+be driven back, here by the winter's increasing cold, and there by the
+summer's increasing heat--will retire into those localities that are
+still fit for it. Thus during 10,000 years, each species will ebb away
+from certain regions it was inhabiting; and during the succeeding 10,000
+years will flow back into those regions. From the strata there forming,
+its remains will disappear; they will be absent from some of the
+superposed strata; and will be found in strata higher up. But in what
+shapes will they re-appear? Exposed during the 21,000 years of their
+slow recession and their slow return, to changing conditions of life,
+they are likely to have undergone modifications; and will probably
+re-appear with slight differences of constitution and perhaps of
+form--will be new varieties or perhaps new sub-species.
+
+To this cause of minor breaks in the succession of organic forms--a
+cause on which we have dwelt because it has not been taken into
+account--we must add sundry others. Besides these periodically-recurring
+changes of climate, there are the irregular ones produced by
+redistributions of land and sea; and these, sometimes less, sometimes
+greater, in degree, than the rhythmical changes, must, like them, cause
+in each region emigrations and immigrations of species; and consequent
+breaks, small or large as the case may be, in the paleontological
+series. Other and more special geological changes must produce other and
+more local blanks in the succession. By some inland elevation the
+natural drainage of a continent is modified; and instead of the sediment
+previously brought down to the sea by it, a great river brings down
+sediment unfavourable to various plants and animals living in its delta:
+whereupon these disappear from the locality, perhaps to re-appear in a
+changed form after a long epoch. Upheavals or subsidences of shores or
+sea-bottoms, involving deviations of marine currents, remove the
+habitats of many species to which such currents are salutary or
+injurious; and further, this redistribution of currents alters the
+places of sedimentary deposits, and thus stops the burying of organic
+remains in some localities, while commencing it in others. Had we space,
+many more such causes of blanks in our paleontological records might be
+added. But it is needless here to enumerate them. They are admirably
+explained and illustrated in Sir Charles Lyell's _Principles of
+Geology_.
+
+Now, if these minor changes of the Earth's surface produce minor breaks
+in the series of fossilized remains; must not great changes produce
+great breaks? If a local upheaval or subsidence causes throughout its
+small area the absence of some links in the chain of fossil forms; does
+it not follow that an upheaval or subsidence extending over a large part
+of the Earth's surface, must cause the absence of a great number of such
+links throughout a very wide area?
+
+When during a long epoch a continent, slowly sinking, gives place to a
+far-spreading ocean some miles in depth, at the bottom of which no
+deposits from rivers or abraded shores can be thrown down; and when,
+after some enormous period, this ocean-bottom is gradually elevated and
+becomes the site for new strata; it is clear that the fossils contained
+in these new strata are likely to have but little in common with the
+fossils of the strata below them. Take, in illustration, the case of the
+North Atlantic. We have already named the fact that between this country
+and the United States, the ocean-bottom is being covered with a deposit
+of chalk--a deposit which has been forming, probably, ever since there
+occurred that great depression of the Earth's crust from which the
+Atlantic resulted in remote geologic times. This chalk consists of the
+minute shells of _Foraminifera_, sprinkled with remains of small
+_Entomostraca_, and probably a few Pteropod-shells; though the sounding
+lines have not yet brought up any of these last. Thus, in so far as all
+high forms of life are concerned, this new chalk-formation must be a
+blank. At rare intervals, perhaps, a polar bear, drifted on an iceberg,
+may have its bones scattered over the bed; or a dead, decaying whale
+may similarly leave traces. But such remains must be so rare, that this
+new chalk-formation, if accessible, might be examined for a century
+before any of them were disclosed. If now, some millions of years hence,
+the Atlantic-bed should be raised, and estuary deposits or shore
+deposits laid upon it, these would contain remains of a Flora and a
+Fauna so distinct from everything below them, as to appear like a new
+creation.
+
+Thus, along with continuity of life on the Earth's surface, there not
+only _may_ be, but there _must_ be, great gaps in the series of fossils;
+and hence these gaps are no evidence against the doctrine of Evolution.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One other current assumption remains to be criticized; and it is the one
+on which, more than on any other, depends the view taken respecting the
+question of development.
+
+From the beginning of the controversy, the arguments for and against
+have turned upon the evidence of progression in organic forms, found in
+the ascending series of our sedimentary formations. On the one hand,
+those who contend that higher organisms have been evolved out of lower,
+joined with those who contend that successively higher organisms have
+been created at successively later periods, appeal for proof to the
+facts of Paleontology; which, they say, countenance their views. On the
+other hand, the Uniformitarians, who not only reject the hypothesis of
+development, but deny that the modern forms of life are higher than the
+ancient ones, reply that the paleontological evidence is at present very
+incomplete; that though we have not yet found remains of
+highly-organized creatures in strata of the greatest antiquity, we must
+not assume that no such creatures existed when those strata were
+deposited; and that, probably, search will eventually disclose them.
+
+It must be admitted that thus far, the evidence has gone in favour of
+the latter party. Geological discovery has year after year shown the
+small value of negative facts. The conviction that there are no traces
+of higher organisms in earlier strata, has resulted not from the absence
+of such traces, but from incomplete examination. At p. 460 of his
+_Manual of Elementary Geology_, Sir Charles Lyell gives a list in
+illustration of this. It appears that in 1709, fishes were not known
+lower than the Permian system. In 1793 they were found in the subjacent
+Carboniferous system; in 1828 in the Devonian; in 1840 in the Upper
+Silurian. Of reptiles, we read that in 1710 the lowest known were in the
+Permian; in 1844 they were detected in the Carboniferous; and in 1852 in
+the Upper Devonian. While of the Mammalia the list shows that in 1798
+none had been discovered below the Middle Eocene: but that in 1818 they
+were discovered in the Lower Oolite; and in 1847 in the Upper Trias.
+
+The fact is, however, that both parties set out with an inadmissible
+postulate. Of the Uniformitarians, not only such writers as Hugh Miller,
+but also such as Sir Charles Lyell,[27] reason as though we had found
+the earliest, or something like the earliest, strata. Their antagonists,
+whether defenders of the Development Hypothesis or simply
+Progressionists, almost uniformly do the like. Sir R. Murchison, who is
+a Progressionist, calls the lowest fossiliferous strata, "Protozoic."
+Prof. Ansted uses the same term. Whether avowedly or not, all the
+disputants stand on this assumption as their common ground.
+
+Yet is this assumption indefensible, as some who make it very well know.
+Facts may be cited against it which show that it is a more than
+questionable one--that it is a highly improbable one; while the evidence
+assigned in its favour will not bear criticism.
+
+Because in Bohemia, Great Britain, and portions of North America, the
+lowest unmetamorphosed strata yet discovered, contain but slight traces
+of life, Sir R. Murchison conceives that they were formed while yet few,
+if any, plants or animals had been created; and, therefore, classes them
+as "Azoic." His own pages, however, show the illegitimacy of the
+conclusion that there existed at that period no considerable amount of
+life. Such traces of life as have been found in the Longmynd rocks, for
+many years considered unfossiliferous, have been found in some of the
+lowest beds; and the twenty thousand feet of superposed beds, still
+yield no organic remains. If now these superposed strata throughout a
+depth of four miles, are without fossils, though the strata over which
+they lie prove that life had commenced; what becomes of Sir R.
+Murchison's inference? At page 189 of _Siluria_, a still more conclusive
+fact will be found. The "Glengariff grits," and other accompanying
+strata there described as 13,500 feet thick, contain no signs of
+contemporaneous life. Yet Sir R. Murchison refers them to the Devonian
+period--a period which had a large and varied marine Fauna. How then,
+from the absence of fossils in the Longmynd beds and their equivalents,
+can we conclude that the Earth was "azoic" when they were formed?
+
+"But," it may be asked, "if living creatures then existed, why do we not
+find fossiliferous strata of that age, or an earlier age?" One reply is,
+that the non-existence of such strata is but a negative fact--we have
+not found them. And considering how little we know even of the
+two-fifths of the Earth's surface now above the sea, and how absolutely
+ignorant we are of the three-fifths below the sea, it is rash to say
+that no such strata exist. But the chief reply is, that these records of
+the Earth's earlier history have been in great part destroyed, by
+agencies which are ever tending to destroy such records.
+
+It is an established geological doctrine, that sedimentary strata are
+liable to be changed, more or less profoundly, by igneous action. The
+rocks originally classed as "transition," because they were
+intermediate in character between the igneous rocks found below them,
+and the sedimentary strata found above them, are now known to be nothing
+else than sedimentary strata altered in texture and appearance by the
+intense heat of adjacent molten matter; and hence are renamed
+"metamorphic rocks." Modern researches have shown, too, that these
+metamorphic rocks are not, as was once supposed, all of the same age.
+Besides primary and secondary strata which have been transformed by
+igneous action, there are similarly-changed deposits of tertiary
+origin--deposits changed, even as far as a quarter of a mile from the
+point of contact with neighbouring granite. By this process fossils are
+of course destroyed. "In some cases," says Sir Charles Lyell, "dark
+limestones, replete with shells and corals, have been turned into white
+statuary marble, and hard clays, containing vegetable or other remains,
+into slates called mica-schist or hornblende-schist; every vestige of
+the organic bodies having been obliterated." Again, it is fast becoming
+an acknowledged truth that igneous rock, of whatever kind, is the
+product of sedimentary strata which have been completely melted. Granite
+and gneiss, which are of like chemical composition, have been shown, in
+various cases, to pass one into the other; as at Valorsine, near Mont
+Blanc, where the two, in contact, are observed to "both undergo a
+modification of mineral character. The granite still remaining
+unstratified, becomes charged with green particles; and the talcose
+gneiss assumes a granitiform structure without losing its
+stratification." In the Aberdeen-granite, lumps of unmelted gneiss are
+abundant; and we can ourselves bear witness that the granite on the
+banks of Loch Sunart yields proofs that, when molten, it contained
+incompletely-fused clots of sedimentary strata. Nor is this all. Fifty
+years ago, it was thought that all granitic rocks were primitive, or
+existed before any sedimentary strata; but it is now "no easy task to
+point out a single mass of granite demonstrably more ancient than all
+the known fossiliferous deposits." In brief, accumulated evidence shows,
+that by contact with, or proximity to, the molten matter of the Earth's
+nucleus, all beds of sediment are liable to be actually melted, or
+partially fused, or so heated as to agglutinate their particles; and
+that according to the temperature they have been raised to, and the
+circumstances under which they cool, they assume the forms of granite,
+porphyry, trap, gneiss, or rock otherwise altered. Further, it is
+manifest that though strata of various ages have been thus changed, yet
+the most ancient strata have been so changed to the greatest extent;
+both because they have been nearer to the centre of igneous agency; and
+because they have been for longer periods liable to be affected by it.
+Whence it follows, that sedimentary strata passing a certain antiquity,
+are unlikely to be found in an unmetamorphosed state; and that strata
+much earlier than these are certain to have been melted up. Thus if,
+throughout a past of indefinite duration, there had been at work those
+aqueous and igneous agencies which we see still at work, the state of
+the Earth's crust might be just what we find it. We have no evidence
+which puts a limit to the period throughout which this formation and
+destruction of strata has been going on. For aught the facts prove, it
+may have been going on for ten times the period measured by our whole
+series of sedimentary deposits.
+
+Besides having, in the present appearances of the Earth's crust, no data
+for fixing a commencement to these processes--besides finding that the
+evidence permits us to assume such commencement to have been
+inconceivably remote, as compared even with the vast eras of geology; we
+are not without positive grounds for inferring the inconceivable
+remoteness of such commencement. Modern geology has established truths
+which are irreconcilable with the belief that the formation and
+destruction of strata began when the Cambrian rocks were formed; or at
+anything like so recent a time. One fact from _Siluria_ will suffice.
+Sir R. Murchison estimates the vertical thickness of Silurian strata in
+Wales, at from 26,000 to 27,000 feet, or about five miles; and if to
+this we add the vertical depth of the Cambrian strata, on which the
+Silurians lie conformably, there results, on the lowest computation, a
+total depth of some seven miles. Now it is held by geologists, that this
+vast series of formations must have been deposited in an area of gradual
+subsidence. These beds could not have been thus laid one on another in
+regular order, unless the Earth's crust had been at that place sinking,
+either continuously or by small steps. Such an immense subsidence,
+however, must have been impossible without a crust of great thickness.
+The Earth's molten nucleus tends ever, with enormous force, to assume
+the form of a regular oblate spheroid. Any depression of its crust below
+the surface of equilibrium, and any elevation of its crust above that
+surface, have to withstand immense resistances. It follows inevitably
+that, with a thin crust, nothing but small elevations and subsidences
+would have been possible; and that, conversely, a subsidence of seven
+miles implies a crust of great strength, or, in other words, of great
+thickness. Indeed, if we compare this inferred subsidence in the
+Silurian period, with such elevations and depressions as our existing
+continents and oceans display, we see no evidence that the Earth's crust
+was appreciably thinner then than now. What are the implications? If, as
+geologists generally admit, the Earth's crust has resulted from that
+slow cooling which is even still going on--if we see no sign that at the
+time when the earliest Cambrian strata were formed, this crust was
+appreciably thinner than now; we are forced to conclude that the era
+during which it acquired that great thickness possessed in the Cambrian
+period, was enormous as compared with the interval between the Cambrian
+period and our own. But during the incalculable series of epochs thus
+implied, there existed an ocean, tides, winds, waves, rain, rivers. The
+agencies by which the denudation of continents and filling up of seas
+have all along been carried on, were as active then as now. Endless
+successions of strata must have been formed. And when we ask--Where are
+they? Nature's obvious reply is--They have been destroyed by that
+igneous action to which so great a part of our oldest-known strata owe
+their fusion or metamorphosis.
+
+Only the last chapter of the Earth's history has come down to us. The
+many previous chapters, stretching back to a time immeasurably remote,
+have been burnt; and with them all the records of life we may presume
+they contained. The greater part of the evidence which might have served
+to settle the Development-controversy, is for ever lost; and on neither
+side can the arguments derived from Geology be conclusive.
+
+"But how happen there to be such evidences of progression as exist?" it
+may be asked. "How happens it that, in ascending from the most ancient
+strata to the most recent strata, we _do_ find a succession of organic
+forms, which, however irregularly, carries us from lower to higher?"
+This question seems difficult to answer. Nevertheless, there is reason
+for thinking that nothing can be safely inferred from the apparent
+progression here cited. And the illustration which shows as much, will,
+we believe, also show how little trust is to be placed in certain
+geological generalizations that appear to be well established. With this
+somewhat elaborate illustration, to which we now pass, our criticisms
+may fitly conclude.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us suppose that in a region now covered by wide ocean, there begins
+one of those great and gradual upheavals by which new continents are
+formed. To be precise, let us say that in the South Pacific, midway
+between New Zealand and Patagonia, the sea-bottom has been little by
+little thrust up toward the surface, and is about to emerge. What will
+be the successive phenomena, geological and biological, which are
+likely to occur before this emerging sea-bottom has become another
+Europe or Asia? In the first place, such portions of the incipient land
+as are raised to the level of the waves, will be rapidly denuded by
+them: their soft substance will be torn up by the breakers, carried away
+by the local currents, and deposited in neighbouring deeper water.
+Successive small upheavals will bring new and larger areas within reach
+of the waves; fresh portions will each time be removed from the surfaces
+previously denuded; and further, some of the newly-formed strata, being
+elevated nearly to the level of the water, will be washed away and
+re-deposited. In course of time the harder formations of the upraised
+sea-bottom will be uncovered. These, being less easily destroyed, will
+remain permanently above the surface; and at their margins will arise
+the usual breaking down of rocks into beach-sand and pebbles. While in
+the slow course of this elevation, going on at the rate of perhaps two
+or three feet in a century, most of the sedimentary deposits produced
+will be again and again destroyed and reformed; there will, in those
+adjacent areas of subsidence which accompany areas of elevation, be more
+or less continuous successions of sedimentary deposits lying on the
+pre-existing ocean bed. And now, what will be the character of these
+strata, old and new? They will contain scarcely any traces of life. The
+deposits that had previously been slowly formed at the bottom of this
+wide ocean, would be sprinkled with fossils of but few species. The
+oceanic Fauna is not a rich one; its hydrozoa do not admit of
+preservation; and the hard parts of its few kinds of molluscs and
+crustaceans and insects are mostly fragile. Hence, when the ocean-bed
+was here and there raised to the surface--when its strata of sediment
+with their contained organic fragments were torn up and long washed
+about by the breakers before being re-deposited--when the re-deposits
+were again and again subject to this violent abrading action by
+subsequent small elevations, as they would mostly be; what few fragile
+organic remains they contained, would be in nearly all cases destroyed.
+Thus such of the first-formed strata as survived the repeated changes of
+level, would be practically "azoic;" like the Cambrian of our
+geologists. When by the washing away of the soft deposits, the hard
+sub-strata had been exposed in the shape of rocky islets, and a footing
+had thus been furnished, the pioneers of a new life might be expected to
+make their appearance. What would they be? Not any of the surrounding
+oceanic species, for these are not fitted for a littoral life; but
+species flourishing on some of the far-distant shores of the Pacific. Of
+such, the first to establish themselves would be sea-weeds and
+zoophytes; because the most readily conveyed on floating wood, &c., and
+because when conveyed they would find fit food. It is true that
+Cirrhipeds and Lamellibranchs, subsisting on the minute creatures which
+everywhere people the sea, would also find fit food. But the chances of
+early colonization are in favour of species which, multiplying by
+agamogenesis, can people a whole shore from a single germ; and against
+species which, multiplying only by gamogenesis, must be introduced in
+considerable numbers that some may propagate. Thus we infer that the
+earliest traces of life left in the sedimentary deposits near these new
+shores, will be traces of life as humble as that indicated in the most
+ancient rocks of Great Britain and Ireland. Imagine now that the
+processes above indicated, continue--that the emerging lands become
+wider in extent, and fringed by higher and more varied shores; and that
+there still go on those ocean-currents which, at long intervals, convey
+from far distant shores immigrant forms of life. What will result? Lapse
+of time will of course favour the introduction of such new forms:
+admitting, as it must, of those combinations of fit conditions, which
+can occur only after long intervals. Moreover, the increasing area of
+the islands, individually and as a group, implies increasing length of
+coast, and therefore a longer line of contact with the streams and waves
+which bring drifting masses bearing germs of fresh life. And once more,
+the comparatively-varied shores, presenting physical conditions which
+change from mile to mile, will furnish suitable habitats for more
+numerous species. So that as the elevation proceeds, three causes
+conspire to introduce additional marine plants and animals. To what
+classes will the increasing Fauna be for a long period confined? Of
+course, to classes of which individuals, or their germs, are most liable
+to be carried far away from their native shores by floating sea-weed or
+drift-wood; to classes which are also least likely to perish in transit,
+or from change of climate; and to those which can best subsist around
+coasts comparatively bare of life. Evidently then, corals, annelids,
+inferior molluscs, and crustaceans of low grade, will chiefly constitute
+the early Fauna. The large predatory members of these classes, will be
+later in establishing themselves; both because the new shores must first
+become well peopled by the creatures they prey on, and because, being
+more complex, they, or their ova, must be less likely to survive the
+journey, and the change of conditions. We may infer, then, that the
+strata deposited next after the almost "azoic" strata, would contain the
+remains of invertebrata, allied to those found near the shores of
+Australia and South America. Of such invertebrate remains, the lower
+beds would furnish comparatively few genera, and those of relatively low
+types; while in the upper beds the number of genera would be greater,
+and the types higher: just as among the fossils of our Silurian system.
+As this great geologic change slowly advanced through its long history
+of earthquakes, volcanic disturbances, minor upheavals and
+subsidences--as the extent of the archipelago became greater and its
+smaller islands coalesced into larger ones, while its coast-line grew
+still longer and more varied, and the neighbouring sea more thickly
+inhabited by inferior forms of life; the lowest division of the
+vertebrata would begin to be represented. In order of time, fish would
+naturally come later than the lower invertebrata; both as being less
+likely to have their ova transported across the waste of waters, and as
+requiring for their subsistence a pre-existing Fauna of some
+development. They might be expected to make their appearance along with
+the predaceous crustaceans; as they do in the uppermost Silurian rocks.
+And here, too, let us remark, that as, during this long epoch we have
+been describing, the sea would have made great inroads on some of the
+newly-raised lands which had remained stationary; and would probably in
+some places have reached masses of igneous or metamorphic rocks; there
+might, in course of time, arise by the decomposition and denudation of
+such rocks, local deposits coloured with oxide of iron, like our Old Red
+Sandstone. And in these deposits might be buried the remains of the fish
+then peopling the neighbouring sea.
+
+Meanwhile, how would the surfaces of the upheaved masses be occupied? At
+first their deserts of naked rocks would bear only the humblest forms of
+vegetal life, such as we find in grey and orange patches on our own
+rugged mountain sides; for these alone could flourish on such surfaces,
+and their spores would be the most readily transported. When, by the
+decay of such protophytes, and that decomposition of rock effected by
+them, there had resulted a fit habitat for mosses; these, of which the
+germs might be conveyed in drifted trees, would begin to spread. A soil
+having been eventually thus produced, it would become possible for
+plants of higher organization to find roothold; and as the archipelago
+and its constituent islands grew larger, and had more multiplied
+relations with winds and waters, such higher plants might be expected
+ultimately to have their seeds transferred from the nearest lands. After
+something like a Flora had thus colonized the surface, it would become
+possible for insects to exist; and of air-breathing creatures, insects
+would manifestly be among the first to find their way from elsewhere.
+As, however, terrestrial organisms, both vegetal and animal, are less
+likely than marine organisms to survive the accidents of transport from
+distant shores; it is inferable that long after the sea surrounding
+these new lands had acquired a varied Flora and Fauna, the lands
+themselves would still be comparatively bare; and thus that the early
+strata, like our Silurians, would afford no traces of terrestrial life.
+By the time that large areas had been raised above the ocean, we may
+fairly suppose a luxuriant vegetation to have been acquired. Under what
+circumstances are we likely to find this vegetation fossilized? Large
+surfaces of land imply large rivers with their accompanying deltas; and
+are liable to have lakes and swamps. These, as we know from extant
+cases, are favourable to rank vegetation; and afford the conditions
+needful for preserving it in coal-beds. Observe, then, that while in the
+early history of such a continent a carboniferous period could not
+occur, the occurrence of a carboniferous period would become probable
+after long-continued upheavals had uncovered large areas. As in our own
+sedimentary series, coal-beds would make their appearance only after
+there had been enormous accumulations of earlier strata charged with
+marine fossils.
+
+Let us ask next, in what order the higher forms of animal life would
+make their appearance. We have seen how, in the succession of marine
+forms, there would be something like a progress from the lower to the
+higher: bringing us in the end to predaceous molluscs, crustaceans, and
+fish. What are likely to succeed fish? After marine creatures, those
+which would have the greatest chance of surviving the voyage would be
+amphibious reptiles; both because they are more tenacious of life than
+higher animals, and because they would be less completely out of their
+element. Such reptiles as can live in both fresh and salt water, like
+alligators; and such as are drifted out of the mouths of great rivers on
+floating trees, as Humboldt says the Orinoco alligators are; might be
+early colonists. It is manifest, too, that reptiles of other kinds would
+be among the first vertebrata to people the new continent. If we
+consider what will occur on one of those natural rafts of trees, soil,
+and matted vegetable matter, sometimes swept out to sea by such currents
+as the Mississippi, with a miscellaneous living cargo; we shall see that
+while the active, hot-blooded, highly-organized creatures will soon die
+of starvation and exposure, the inert, cold-blooded ones, which can go
+long without food, will live perhaps for weeks; and so, out of the
+chances from time to time occurring during long periods, reptiles will
+be the first to get safely landed on foreign shores: as indeed they are
+even now known sometimes to be. The transport of mammalia being
+comparatively precarious, must, in the order of probability, be longer
+postponed; and would, indeed, be unlikely to occur until by the
+enlargement of the new continent, the distances of its shores from
+adjacent lands had been greatly diminished, or the formation of
+intervening islands had increased the chances of survival. Assuming,
+however, that the facilities for immigration had become adequate; which
+would be the first mammals to arrive and live? Not large herbivores; for
+they would be soon drowned if by any accident carried out to sea. Not
+the carnivora; for these would lack appropriate food, even if they
+outlived the voyage. Small quadrupeds frequenting trees, and feeding on
+insects, would be those most likely both to be drifted away from their
+native lands and to find fit food in a new one. Insectivorous mammals,
+like in size to those found in the Trias and the Stonesfield slate,
+might naturally be looked for as the pioneers of the higher vertebrata.
+And if we suppose the facilities of communication to be again increased,
+either by a further shallowing of the intervening sea and a consequent
+multiplication of islands, or by an actual junction of the new continent
+with an old one, through continued upheavals; we should finally have an
+influx of the larger and more perfect mammals.
+
+Now rude as is this sketch of a process that would be extremely
+elaborate and involved, and open as some of its propositions are to
+criticisms which there is no space here to meet; no one will deny that
+it represents something like the biologic history of the supposed new
+continent. Details apart, it is manifest that simple organisms, able to
+flourish under simple conditions of life, would be the first successful
+immigrants; and that more complex organisms, needing for their existence
+the fulfilment of more complex conditions, would afterwards establish
+themselves in something like an ascending succession. At the one extreme
+we see every facility. The new individuals can be conveyed in the shape
+of minute germs; immense numbers of these are perpetually being carried
+in all directions to great distances by ocean-currents--either detached
+or attached to floating bodies; they can find nutriment wherever they
+arrive; and the resulting organisms can multiply asexually with great
+rapidity. At the other extreme, we see every difficulty. The new
+individuals must be conveyed in their adult forms; their numbers are, in
+comparison, utterly insignificant; they live on land, and are very
+unlikely to be carried out to sea; when so carried, the chances are
+immense against their escape from drowning, starvation, or death by
+cold; if they survive the transit, they must have a pre-existing Flora
+or Fauna to supply their special food; they require, also, the
+fulfilment of various other physical conditions; and unless at least two
+individuals of different sexes are safely landed, the race cannot be
+established. Manifestly, then, the immigration of each successively
+higher order of organisms, having, from one or other additional
+condition to be fulfilled, an enormously-increased probability against
+it, would naturally be separated from the immigration of a lower order
+by some period like a geologic epoch. And thus the successive
+sedimentary deposits formed while this new continent was undergoing
+gradual elevation, would seem to furnish clear evidence of a general
+progress in the forms of life. That lands thus raised up in the midst of
+a wide ocean, would first give origin to unfossiliferous strata; next,
+to strata containing only the lowest marine forms; next to strata
+containing only the higher marine forms, ascending finally to fish; and
+that the strata above these would contain reptiles, then small mammals,
+then great mammals; seems to us demonstrable. And if the succession of
+fossils presented by the strata of this supposed new continent, would
+thus simulate the succession presented by our own sedimentary series;
+must we not conclude that our own sedimentary series very possibly
+records nothing more than the phenomena accompanying one of these great
+upheavals? The probability of this conclusion being admitted, it must be
+admitted that the facts of Paleontology can never suffice either to
+prove or disprove the Development Hypothesis; but that the most they can
+do is to show whether the last few pages of the Earth's biologic
+history, are or are not in harmony with this hypothesis--whether the
+existing Flora and Fauna can or can not be affiliated upon the Flora and
+Fauna of the most recent geologic times.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 27: Sir Charles Lyell is no longer to be classed among
+Uniformitarians. With rare and admirable candour he has, since this was
+written, yielded to the arguments of Mr. Darwin.]
+
+
+
+
+BAIN ON THE EMOTIONS AND THE WILL.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Medico-Chirurgical Review _for January,_
+    1860.]
+
+
+After the controversy between the Neptunists and the Vulcanists had been
+long carried on without definite results, there came a reaction against
+all speculative geology. Reasoning without adequate data having led to
+nothing, inquirers went into the opposite extreme, and confining
+themselves wholly to collecting data, relinquished reasoning. The
+Geological Society of London was formed with the express object of
+accumulating evidence; for many years hypotheses were forbidden at its
+meetings: and only of late have attempts to organize the mass of
+observations into consistent theory been tolerated.
+
+This reaction and subsequent re-reaction, well illustrate the recent
+history of English thought in general. The time was when our countrymen
+speculated, certainly to as great an extent as any other people, on all
+those high questions which present themselves to the human intellect;
+and, indeed, a glance at the systems of philosophy that are or have been
+current on the Continent, suffices to show how much other nations owe to
+the discoveries of our ancestors. For a generation or two, however,
+these more abstract subjects have fallen into neglect; and, among those
+who plume themselves on being "practical," even into contempt. Partly,
+perhaps, a natural accompaniment of our rapid material growth, this
+intellectual phase has been in great measure due to the exhaustion of
+argument, and the necessity for better data. Not so much with a
+conscious recognition of the end to be subserved, as from an unconscious
+subordination to that rhythm traceable in social changes as in other
+things, an era of theorizing without observing, has been followed by an
+era of observing without theorizing. During this long-continued devotion
+to concrete science, an immense quantity of raw material for abstract
+science has been accumulated; and now there is obviously commencing a
+period in which this accumulated raw material will be organized into
+consistent theory. On all sides--equally in the inorganic sciences, in
+the science of life, and in the science of society--we may note the
+tendency to pass from the superficial and empirical to the more profound
+and rational.
+
+In Psychology this change is conspicuous. The facts brought to light by
+anatomists and physiologists during the last fifty years, are at length
+being used towards the interpretation of this highest class of
+biological phenomena; and already there is promise of a great advance.
+The work of Mr. Alexander Bain, of which the second volume has been
+recently issued, may be regarded as especially characteristic of the
+transition. It gives us, in orderly arrangement, the great mass of
+evidence supplied by modern science towards the building-up of a
+coherent system of mental philosophy. It is not in itself a system of
+mental philosophy, properly so called; but a classified collection of
+materials for such a system, presented with that method and insight
+which scientific discipline generates, and accompanied with occasional
+passages of an analytical character. It is indeed that which it in the
+main professes to be--a natural history of the mind. Were we to say that
+the researches of the naturalist who collects and dissects and describes
+species, bear the same relation to the researches of the comparative
+anatomist tracing out the laws of organization, which Mr. Bain's
+labours bear to the labours of the abstract psychologist, we should be
+going somewhat too far; for Mr. Bain's work is not wholly descriptive.
+Still, however, such an analogy conveys the best general conception of
+what he has done; and serves most clearly to indicate its needfulness.
+For as, before there can be made anything like true generalizations
+respecting the classification of organisms and the laws of organization,
+there must be an extensive accumulation of the facts presented in
+numerous organic bodies; so, without a tolerably-complete delineation of
+mental phenomena of all orders, there can scarcely arise any adequate
+theory of mind. Until recently, mental science has been pursued much as
+physical science was pursued by the ancients; not by drawing conclusions
+from observations and experiments, but by drawing them from arbitrary _a
+priori_ assumptions. This course, long since abandoned in the one case
+with immense advantage, is gradually being abandoned in the other; and
+the treatment of Psychology as a division of natural history, shows that
+the abandonment will soon be complete.
+
+Estimated as a means to higher results, Mr. Bain's work is of great
+value. Of its kind it is the most scientific in conception, the most
+catholic in spirit, and the most complete in execution. Besides
+delineating the various classes of mental phenomena as seen under that
+stronger light thrown on them by modern science, it includes in the
+picture much which previous writers had omitted--partly from prejudice,
+partly from ignorance. We refer more especially to the participation of
+bodily organs in mental changes; and the addition to the primary mental
+changes, of those many secondary ones which the actions of the bodily
+organs generate. Mr. Bain has, we believe, been the first to appreciate
+the importance of this element in our states of consciousness; and it is
+one of his merits that he shows how constant and large an element it is.
+Further, the relations of voluntary and involuntary movements are
+elucidated in a way that was not possible to writers unacquainted with
+the modern doctrine of reflex action. And beyond this, some of the
+analytical passages that here and there occur, contain important ideas.
+
+Valuable, however, as is Mr. Bain's work, we regard it as essentially
+transitional. It presents in a digested form the results of a period of
+observation; adds to these results many well-delineated facts collected
+by himself; arranges new and old materials with that more scientific
+method which the discipline of our times has fostered; and so prepares
+the way for better generalizations. But almost of necessity its
+classifications and conclusions are provisional. In the growth of each
+science, not only is correct observation needful for the formation of
+true theory; but true theory is needful as a preliminary to correct
+observation. Of course we do not intend this assertion to be taken
+literally; but as a strong expression of the fact that the two must
+advance hand in hand. The first crude theory or rough classification,
+based on very slight knowledge of the phenomena, is requisite as a means
+of reducing the phenomena to some kind of order; and as supplying a
+conception with which fresh phenomena may be compared, and their
+agreement or disagreement noted. Incongruities being by and by made
+manifest by wider examination of cases, there comes such modification of
+the theory as brings it into a nearer correspondence with the evidence.
+This reacts to the further advance of observation. More extensive and
+complete observation brings additional corrections of theory; and so on
+till the truth is reached. In mental science, the systematic collection
+of facts having but recently commenced, it is not to be expected that
+the results can be at once rightly formulated. All that may be looked
+for are approximate generalizations which will presently serve for the
+better directing of inquiry. Hence, even were it not now possible to say
+in what way it does so, we might be tolerably certain that Mr. Bain's
+work bears the stamp of the inchoate state of Psychology.
+
+We think, however, that it will not be difficult to find in what
+respects its organization is provisional; and at the same time to show
+what must be the nature of a more complete organization. We propose here
+to attempt this: illustrating our positions from his recently-issued
+second volume.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Is it possible to make a true classification without the aid of
+analysis? or must there not be an analytical basis to every true
+classification? Can the real relations of things be determined by the
+obvious characteristics of the things? or does it not commonly happen
+that certain hidden characteristics, on which the obvious ones depend,
+are the truly significant ones? This is the preliminary question which a
+glance at Mr. Bain's scheme of the emotions suggests.
+
+Though not avowedly, yet by implication, Mr. Bain assumes that a right
+conception of the nature, the order, and the relations of the emotions,
+may be arrived at by contemplating their conspicuous objective and
+subjective characters, as displayed in the adult. After pointing out
+that we lack those means of classification which serve in the case of
+the sensations, he says--
+
+     "In these circumstances we must turn our attention to _the manner
+     of diffusion_ of the different passions and emotions, in order to
+     obtain a basis of classification analogous to the arrangement of
+     the sensations. If what we have already advanced on that subject be
+     at all well founded, this is the genuine turning point of the
+     method to be chosen, for the same mode of diffusion will always be
+     accompanied by the same mental experience, and each of the two
+     aspects would identify, and would be evidence of, the other. There
+     is, therefore, nothing so thoroughly characteristic of any state of
+     feeling as the nature of the diffusive wave that embodies it, or
+     the various organs specially roused into action by it, together
+     with the manner of the action. The only drawback is our comparative
+     ignorance, and our inability to discern the precise character of
+     the diffusive currents in every case; a radical imperfection in the
+     science of mind as constituted at present.
+
+     "Our own consciousness, formerly reckoned the only medium of
+     knowledge to the mental philosopher, must therefore be still
+     referred to as a principal means of discriminating the varieties of
+     human feeling. We have the power of noting agreement and difference
+     among our conscious states, and on this we can raise a structure of
+     classification. We recognise such generalities as pleasure, pain,
+     love, anger, through the property of mental or intellectual
+     discrimination that accompanies in our mind the fact of emotion. A
+     certain degree of precision is attainable by this mode of mental
+     comparison and analysis; the farther we can carry such precision
+     the better; but that is no reason why it should stand alone to the
+     neglect of the corporeal embodiments through which one mind reveals
+     itself to others. The companionship of inward feeling with bodily
+     manifestation is a fact of the human constitution, and deserves to
+     be studied as such; and it would be difficult to find a place more
+     appropriate than a treatise on the mind for setting forth the
+     conjunctions and sequences traceable in this department of nature.
+     I shall make no scruple in conjoining with the description of the
+     mental phenomena the physical appearances, in so far as I am able
+     to ascertain them.
+
+     "There is still one other quarter to be referred to in settling a
+     complete arrangement of the emotions, namely, the varieties of
+     human conduct, and the machinery created in subservience to our
+     common susceptibilities. For example, the vast superstructure of
+     fine art has its foundations in human feeling, and in rendering an
+     account of this we are led to recognise the interesting group of
+     artistic or aesthetic emotions. The same outward reference to
+     conduct and creations brings to light the so-called moral sense in
+     man, whose foundations in the mental system have accordingly to be
+     examined.
+
+     "Combining together these various indications, or sources of
+     discrimination,--outward objects, diffusive mode or expression,
+     inward consciousness, resulting conduct and institutions,--I adopt
+     the following arrangement of the families or natural orders of
+     emotion."
+
+Here, then, are confessedly adopted, as bases of classification, the
+most manifest characters of the emotions; as discerned subjectively, and
+objectively. The mode of diffusion of an emotion is one of its outside
+aspects; the institutions it generates form another of its outside
+aspects; and though the peculiarities of the emotion as a state of
+consciousness, seem to express its intrinsic and ultimate nature, yet
+such peculiarities as are perceptible by simple introspection, must also
+be classed as superficial peculiarities. It is a familiar fact that
+various intellectual states of consciousness turn out, when analyzed, to
+have natures widely unlike those which at first appear; and we believe
+the like will prove true of emotional states of consciousness. Just as
+our concept of space, which is apt to be thought a simple,
+undecomposable concept, is yet resolvable into experiences quite
+different from that state of consciousness which we call space; so,
+probably, the sentiment of affection or reverence is compounded of
+elements that are severally distinct from the whole which they make up.
+And much as a classification of our ideas which dealt with the idea of
+space as though it were ultimate, would be a classification of ideas by
+their externals; so, a classification of our emotions, which, regarding
+them as simple, describes their aspects in ordinary consciousness, is a
+classification of emotions by their externals.
+
+Thus, then, Mr. Bain's grouping is throughout determined by the most
+manifest attributes--those objectively displayed in the natural language
+of the emotions, and in the social phenomena that result from them, and
+those subjectively displayed in the aspects the emotions assume in an
+analytical consciousness. And the question is--Can they be correctly
+grouped after this method?
+
+We think not; and had Mr. Bain carried farther an idea with which he has
+set out, he would probably have seen that they cannot. As already said,
+he avowedly adopts "the natural-history-method:" not only referring to
+it in his preface, but in his first chapter giving examples of botanical
+and zoological classifications, as illustrating the mode in which he
+proposes to deal with the emotions. This we conceive to be a
+philosophical conception; and we have only to regret that Mr. Bain has
+overlooked some of its most important implications. For in what has
+essentially consisted the progress of natural-history-classification? In
+the abandonment of grouping by external, conspicuous characters; and in
+the making of certain internal, but all-essential characters, the bases
+of groups. Whales are not now ranged along with fish, because in their
+general forms and habits of life they resemble fish; but they are
+ranged with mammals, because the type of their organization, as
+ascertained by dissection, corresponds with that of mammals. No longer
+considered as sea-weeds in virtue of their forms and modes of growth,
+_Polyzoa_ are now shown, by examination of their economy, to belong to
+the animal kingdom. It is found, then, that the discovery of real
+relationships involves analysis. It has turned out that the earlier
+classifications, guided by general resemblances, though containing much
+truth, and though very useful provisionally, were yet in many cases
+radically wrong; and that the true affinities of organisms, and the true
+homologies of their parts, are to be made out only by examining their
+hidden structures. Another fact of great significance in the history of
+classification is also to be noted. Very frequently the kinship of an
+organism cannot be made out even by exhaustive analysis, if that
+analysis is confined to the adult structure. In many cases it is needful
+to examine the structure in its earlier stages; and even in its
+embryonic stage. So difficult was it, for instance, to determine the
+true position of the _Cirrhipedia_ among animals, by examining mature
+individuals only, that Cuvier erroneously classed them with _Mollusca_,
+even after dissecting them; and not until their early forms were
+discovered, were they clearly proved to belong to the _Crustacea_. So
+important, indeed, is the study of development as a means to
+classification, that the first zoologists now hold it to be the only
+absolute criterion.
+
+Here, then, in the advance of natural-history-classification, are two
+fundamental facts, which should be borne in mind when classifying the
+emotions. If, as Mr. Bain rightly assumes, the emotions are to be
+grouped after the natural-history-method; then it should be the
+natural-history-method in its complete form, and not in its rude form.
+Mr. Bain will doubtless agree in the belief, that a correct account of
+the emotions in their natures and relations, must correspond with a
+correct account of the nervous system--must form another side of the
+same ultimate facts. Structure and function must necessarily harmonize.
+Structures which have with each other certain ultimate connexions, must
+have functions which have answering connexions. Structures which have
+arisen in certain ways, must have functions which have arisen in
+parallel ways. And hence if analysis and development are needful for the
+right interpretation of structures, they must be needful for the right
+interpretation of functions. Just as a scientific description of the
+digestive organs must include not only their obvious forms and
+connexions, but their microscopic characters, and also the ways in which
+they severally result by differentiation from the primitive mucous
+membrane; so must a scientific account of the nervous system include its
+general arrangements, its minute structure, and its mode of evolution;
+and so must a scientific account of nervous actions include the
+answering three elements. Alike in classing separate organisms, and
+in classing the parts of the same organism, the complete
+natural-history-method involves ultimate analysis, aided by development;
+and Mr. Bain, in not basing his classification of the emotions on
+characters reached through these aids, has fallen short of the
+conception with which he set out.
+
+"But," it will perhaps be asked, "how are the emotions to be analyzed,
+and their modes of evolution to be ascertained? Different animals, and
+different organs of the same animal, may readily be compared in their
+internal structures and microscopic structures, as also in their
+developments; but functions, and especially such functions as the
+emotions, do not admit of like comparisons."
+
+It must be admitted that the application of these methods is here by no
+means so easy. Though we can note differences and similarities between
+the internal formations of two animals; it is difficult to contrast the
+mental states of two animals. Though the true morphological relations of
+organs may be made out by observation of embryos; yet, where such organs
+are inactive before birth, we cannot completely trace the history of
+their actions. Obviously, too, pursuance of inquiries of the kind
+indicated, raises questions which science is not yet prepared to answer;
+as, for instance--Whether all nervous functions, in common with all
+other functions, arise by gradual differentiations, as their organs do?
+Whether the emotions are, therefore, to be regarded as divergent modes
+of action that have become unlike by successive modifications? Whether,
+as two organs which originally budded out of the same membrane have not
+only become different as they developed, but have also severally become
+compound internally, though externally simple; so two emotions, simple
+and near akin in their roots, may not only have grown unlike, but may
+also have grown involved in their natures, though seeming homogeneous to
+consciousness? And here, indeed, in the inability of existing science to
+answer these questions which underlie a true psychological
+classification, we see how purely provisional any present classification
+is likely to be.
+
+Nevertheless, even now, classification may be aided by development and
+ultimate analysis to a considerable extent; and the defect in Mr. Bain's
+work is, that he has not systematically availed himself of them as far
+as possible. Thus we may, in the first place, study the evolution of the
+emotions up through the various grades of the animal kingdom: observing
+which of them are earliest and exist with the lowest organization and
+intelligence; in what order the others accompany higher endowments; and
+how they are severally related to the conditions of life. In the second
+place, we may note the emotional differences between the lower and the
+higher human races--may regard as earlier and simpler those feelings
+which are common to both, and as later and more compound those which are
+characteristic of the most civilized. In the third place, we may observe
+the order in which the emotions unfold during the progress from infancy
+to maturity. And lastly, comparing these three kinds of emotional
+development, displayed in the ascending grades of the animal kingdom,
+in the advance of the civilized races, and in individual history, we may
+see in what respects they harmonize, and what are the implied general
+truths.
+
+Having gathered together and generalized these several classes of facts,
+analysis of the emotions would be made easier. Setting out with the
+assumption that every new form of emotion making its appearance in the
+individual or the race, is a modification of some pre-existing emotion,
+or a compound of several pre-existing emotions, we should be greatly
+aided by knowing what always are the pre-existing emotions. When, for
+example, we find that very few of the lower animals show any love of
+accumulation, and that this feeling is absent in infancy--when we see
+that an infant in arms exhibits anger, fear, wonder, while yet it
+manifests no desire of permanent possession, and that a brute which has
+no acquisitiveness can nevertheless feel attachment, jealousy, love of
+approbation; we may suspect that the feeling which property satisfies is
+compounded out of simpler and deeper feelings. We may conclude that as,
+when a dog hides a bone, there must exist in him a prospective
+gratification of hunger; so there must similarly at first, in all cases
+where anything is secured or taken possession of, exist an ideal
+excitement of the feeling which that thing will gratify. We may further
+conclude that when the intelligence is such that a variety of objects
+come to be utilized for different purposes--when, as among savages,
+divers wants are satisfied through the articles appropriated for
+weapons, shelter, clothing, ornament; the act of appropriating comes to
+be one constantly involving agreeable associations, and one which is
+therefore pleasurable, irrespective of the end subserved. And when, as
+in civilized life, the property acquired is of a kind not conducing to
+one order of gratification in particular, but is capable of
+administering to all gratifications, the pleasure of acquiring property
+grows more distinct from each of the various pleasures subserved--is
+more completely differentiated into a separate emotion.
+
+This illustration, roughly as it is sketched, will show what we mean by
+the use of comparative psychology in aid of classification. Ascertaining
+by induction the actual order of evolution of the emotions, we are led
+to suspect this to be their order of successive dependence; and are so
+led to recognize their order of ascending complexity; and by consequence
+their true groupings.
+
+Thus, in the very process of arranging the emotions into grades,
+beginning with those involved in the lowest forms of conscious activity
+and ending with those peculiar to the adult civilized man, the way is
+opened for that ultimate analysis which alone can lead us to the true
+science of the matter. For when we find both that there exist in a man
+feelings which do not exist in a child, and that the European is
+characterized by some sentiments which are wholly or in great part
+absent from the savage--when we see that, besides the new emotions which
+arise spontaneously as the individual becomes completely organized,
+there are new emotions making their appearance in the more advanced
+divisions of our race; we are led to ask--How are new emotions
+generated? The lowest savages have not even the ideas of justice or
+mercy: they have neither words for them nor can they be made to conceive
+them; and the manifestation of them by Europeans they ascribe to fear or
+cunning. There are aesthetic emotions common among ourselves, which are
+scarcely in any degree experienced by some inferior races; as, for
+instance, those produced by music. To which instances may be added the
+less marked but more numerous contrasts that exist between civilized
+races in the degrees of their several emotions. And if it is manifest,
+both that all the emotions are capable of being permanently modified in
+the course of successive generations, and that what must be classed as
+new emotions may be brought into existence; then it follows that nothing
+like a true conception of the emotions is to be obtained, until we
+understand how they are evolved.
+
+Comparative Psychology, while it raises this inquiry, prepares the way
+for answering it. When observing the differences between races, we can
+scarcely fail to observe also how these differences correspond with
+differences between their conditions of existence, and consequent
+activities. Among the lowest races of men, love of property stimulates
+to the obtainment only of such things as satisfy immediate desires, or
+desires of the immediate future. Improvidence is the rule: there is
+little effort to meet remote contingencies. But the growth of
+established societies having gradually given security of possession,
+there has been an increasing tendency to provide for coming years: there
+has been a constant exercise of the feeling which is satisfied by a
+provision for the future; and there has been a growth of this feeling so
+great that it now prompts accumulation to an extent beyond what is
+needful. Note, again, that under the discipline of social life--under a
+comparative abstinence from aggressive actions, and a performance of
+those naturally-serviceable actions implied by the division of
+labour--there has been a development of those gentle emotions of which
+inferior races exhibit but the rudiments. Savages delight in giving pain
+rather than pleasure--are almost devoid of sympathy; while among
+ourselves, philanthropy organizes itself in laws, establishes numerous
+institutions, and dictates countless private benefactions.
+
+From which and other like facts, does it not seem an unavoidable
+inference, that new emotions are developed by new experiences--new
+habits of life? All are familiar with the truth that, in the individual,
+each feeling may be strengthened by performing those actions which it
+prompts; and to say that the feeling is _strengthened_, is to say that
+it is in part _made_ by these actions. We know, further, that not
+unfrequently, individuals, by persistence in special courses of conduct,
+acquire special likings for such courses, disagreeable as these may be
+to others; and these whims, or morbid tastes, imply incipient emotions
+corresponding to these special activities. We know that emotional
+characteristics, in common with all others, are hereditary; and the
+differences between civilized nations descended from the same stock,
+show us the cumulative results of small modifications hereditarily
+transmitted. And when we see that between savage and civilized races
+which diverged from one another in the remote past, and have for a
+hundred generations followed modes of life becoming ever more unlike,
+there exist still greater emotional contrasts; may we not infer that the
+more or less distinct emotions which characterize civilized races, are
+the organized results of certain daily-repeated combinations of mental
+states which social life involves? Must we not say that habits not only
+modify emotions in the individual, and not only beget tendencies to like
+habits and accompanying emotions in descendants, but that when the
+conditions of the race make the habits persistent, this progressive
+modification may go on to the extent of producing emotions so far
+distinct as to seem new? And if so, we may suspect that such new
+emotions, and by implication all emotions analytically considered,
+consist of aggregated and consolidated groups of those simpler feelings
+which habitually occur together in experience. When, in the
+circumstances of any race, some one kind of action or set of actions,
+sensation or set of sensations, is usually followed, or accompanied, by
+various other sets of actions or sensations, and so entails a large mass
+of pleasurable or painful states of consciousness; these, by frequent
+repetition, become so connected together that the initial action or
+sensation brings the ideas of all the rest crowding into consciousness:
+producing, in some degree, the pleasures or pains that have before been
+felt in reality. And when this relation, besides being frequently
+repeated in the individual, occurs in successive generations, all the
+many nervous actions involved tend to grow organically connected. They
+become incipiently reflex; and, on the occurrence of the appropriate
+stimulus, the whole nervous apparatus which in past generations was
+brought into activity by this stimulus, becomes nascently excited. Even
+while yet there have been no individual experiences, a vague feeling of
+pleasure or pain is produced; constituting what we may call the body of
+the emotion. And when the experiences of past generations come to be
+repeated in the individual, the emotion gains both strength and
+definiteness; and is accompanied by the appropriate specific ideas.
+
+This view of the matter, which we believe the established truths of
+Physiology and Psychology unite in indicating, and which is the view
+that generalizes the phenomena of habit, of national characteristics, of
+civilization in its moral aspects, at the same time that it gives us a
+conception of emotion in its origin and ultimate nature, may be
+illustrated from the mental modifications undergone by animals. On
+newly-discovered lands not inhabited by man, birds are so devoid of fear
+as to allow themselves to be knocked over with sticks; but in the course
+of generations, they acquire such a dread of man as to fly on his
+approach; and this dread is manifested by young as well as by old. Now
+unless this change be ascribed to the killing-off of the less fearful,
+and the preservation and multiplication of the more fearful, which,
+considering the comparatively small number killed by man, is an
+inadequate cause; it must be ascribed to accumulated experiences; and
+each experience must be held to have a share in producing it. We must
+conclude that in each bird which escapes with injuries inflicted by man,
+or is alarmed by the outcries of other members of the flock (gregarious
+creatures of any intelligence being necessarily more or less
+sympathetic), there is established an association of ideas between the
+human aspect and the pains, direct and indirect, suffered from human
+agency. And we must further conclude that the state of consciousness
+which impels the bird to take flight, is at first nothing more than an
+ideal reproduction of those painful impressions which before followed
+man's approach; that such ideal reproduction becomes more vivid and more
+massive as the painful experiences, direct or sympathetic, increase; and
+that thus the emotion in its incipient state, is nothing else than an
+aggregation of the revived pains before experienced. As, in the course
+of generations, the young birds of this race begin to display a fear of
+man before yet they have been injured by him, it is an unavoidable
+inference that the nervous system of the race has been organically
+modified by these experiences: we have no choice but to conclude that
+when a young bird is thus led to fly, it is because the impression
+produced on its senses by the approaching man, entails, through an
+incipiently-reflex action, a partial excitement of all those nerves
+which in its ancestors had been excited under the like conditions; that
+this partial excitement has its accompanying painful consciousness; and
+that the vague painful consciousness thus arising, constitutes emotion
+proper--_emotion undecomposable into specific experiences, and therefore
+seemingly homogeneous_.
+
+If such be the explanation of the fact in this case, then it is in all
+cases. If emotion is so generated here, then it is so generated
+throughout. We must perforce conclude that the emotional modifications
+displayed by different nations, and those higher emotions by which
+civilized are distinguished from savage, are to be accounted for on the
+same principle. And concluding this, we are led strongly to suspect that
+the emotions in general have severally thus originated.
+
+Perhaps we have now made sufficiently clear what we mean by the study of
+the emotions through analysis and development. We have aimed to justify
+the positions that, without analysis aided by development, there cannot
+be a true natural history of the emotions; and that a natural history of
+the emotions based on external characters can be but provisional. We
+think that Mr. Bain, in confining himself to an account of the emotions
+as they exist in the adult civilized man, has neglected those classes of
+facts out of which the science of the matter must chiefly be built. It
+is true that he has treated of habits as modifying emotions in the
+individual; but he has not recognized the fact that where conditions
+render habits persistent in successive generations, such modifications
+are cumulative: he has not hinted that the modifications produced by
+habit are emotions in the making. It is true, also, that he occasionally
+refers to the characteristics of children; but he does not
+systematically trace the changes through which childhood passes into
+manhood, as throwing light on the order and genesis of the emotions. It
+is further true that he here and there refers to national traits in
+illustration of his subject; but these stand as isolated facts, having
+no general significance: there is no hint of any relation between them
+and the national circumstances; while all those many moral contrasts
+between lower and higher races which throw great light on
+classification, are passed over. And once more, it is true that many
+passages of his work, and sometimes, indeed, whole sections of it, are
+analytical; but his analyses are incidental--they do not underlie his
+entire scheme, but are here and there added to it. In brief, he has
+written a Descriptive Psychology, which does not appeal to Comparative
+Psychology and Analytical Psychology for its leading ideas. And in doing
+this, he has omitted much that should be included in a natural history
+of the mind; while to that part of the subject with which he has dealt,
+he has given a necessarily-imperfect organization.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Even leaving out of view the absence of those methods and criteria on
+which we have been insisting, it appears to us that meritorious as is
+Mr. Bain's book in its details, it is defective in some of its leading
+ideas. The first paragraphs of his first chapter, quite startled us by
+the strangeness of their definitions--a strangeness which can scarcely
+be ascribed to laxity of expression. The paragraphs run thus:--
+
+     "Mind is comprised under three heads,--Emotion, Volition, and
+     Intellect.
+
+     "EMOTION is the name here used to comprehend all that is understood
+     by feelings, states of feeling, pleasures, pains, passions,
+     sentiments, affections. Consciousness, and conscious states also
+     for the most part denote modes of emotion, although there is such a
+     thing as the Intellectual consciousness.
+
+     "VOLITION, on the other hand, indicates the great fact that our
+     Pleasures and Pains, which are not the whole of our emotions,
+     prompt to action, or stimulate the active machinery of the living
+     framework to perform such operations as procure the first and abate
+     the last. To withdraw from a scalding heat, and cling to a gentle
+     warmth, are exercises of volition."
+
+The last of these definitions, which we may most conveniently take
+first, seems to us very faulty. We cannot but feel astonished that Mr.
+Bain, familiar as he is with the phenomena of reflex action, should have
+so expressed himself as to include a great part of them along with the
+phenomena of volition. He seems to be ignoring the discriminations of
+modern science, and returning to the vague conceptions of the past--nay
+more, he is comprehending under volition what even the popular speech
+would hardly bring under it. If you were to blame any one for snatching
+his foot from the scalding water into which he had inadvertently put it,
+he would tell you that he could not help it; and his reply would be
+indorsed by the general experience, that the withdrawal of a limb from
+contact with something extremely hot, is quite involuntary--that it
+takes place not only without volition, but in defiance of an effort of
+will to maintain the contact. How, then, can that be instanced as an
+example of volition, which occurs even when volition is antagonistic? We
+are quite aware that it is impossible to draw any absolute line of
+demarcation between automatic actions and actions which are not
+automatic. Doubtless we may pass gradually from the purely reflex,
+through the consensual, to the voluntary. Taking the case Mr. Bain
+cites, it is manifest that from a heat of such moderate degree that the
+withdrawal from it is wholly voluntary, we may advance by infinitesimal
+steps to a heat which compels involuntary withdrawal; and that there is
+a stage at which the voluntary and involuntary actions are mixed. But
+the difficulty of absolute discrimination is no reason for neglecting
+the broad general contrast; any more than it is for confounding light
+with darkness. If we are to include as examples of volition, all cases
+in which pleasures and pains "stimulate the active machinery of the
+living framework to perform such operations as procure the first and
+abate the last," then we must consider sneezing and coughing as examples
+of volition; and Mr. Bain surely cannot mean this. Indeed, we must
+confess ourselves at a loss. On the one hand if he does not mean it, his
+expression is lax to a degree that surprises us in so careful a writer.
+On the other hand, if he does mean it, we cannot understand his point of
+view.
+
+A parallel criticism applies to his definition of Emotion. Here, too, he
+has departed from the ordinary acceptation of the word; and, as we
+think, in the wrong direction. Whatever may be the interpretation that
+is justified by its derivation, the word emotion has come generally to
+mean that kind of feeling which is not a direct result of any action on
+the organism; but is either an indirect result of such action, or arises
+quite apart from such action. It is used to indicate those sentient
+states which are independently generated in consciousness; as
+distinguished from those generated in our corporeal framework, and known
+as sensations. Now this distinction, tacitly made in common speech, is
+one which Psychology cannot well reject; but one which it must adopt,
+and to which it must give scientific precision. Mr. Bain, however,
+appears to ignore any such distinction. Under the term emotion, he
+includes not only passions, sentiments, affections, but all "feelings,
+states of feeling, pleasures, pains,"--that is, all sensations. This
+does not appear to be a mere lapse of expression; for when, in the
+opening sentence, he asserts that "mind is comprised under the three
+heads--Emotion, Volition, and Intellect," he of necessity implies that
+sensation is included under one of these heads; and as it cannot be
+included under volition or intellect, it must be classed with emotion;
+as it clearly is in the next sentence.
+
+We cannot but think this a retrograde step. Though distinctions which
+have been established in popular thought and language, are not
+unfrequently merged in the higher generalizations of science (as, for
+instance, when crabs and worms are grouped together in the sub-kingdom
+_Annulosa_); yet science very generally recognizes the validity of these
+distinctions, as real though not fundamental. And so in the present
+case. Such community as analysis discloses between sensation and
+emotion, must not shut out the broad contrast that exists between them.
+If there needs a wider word, as there does, to signify any sentient
+state whatever; then we may fitly adopt for this purpose the word
+currently so used, namely, "Feeling." And considering as Feelings all
+that great division of mental states which we do not class as
+Cognitions, we may then separate this great division into the two
+orders, Sensations and Emotions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And here we may, before concluding, briefly indicate the leading
+outlines of a classification which reduces this distinction to a
+scientific form, and develops it somewhat further--a classification
+which, while suggested by certain fundamental traits reached without a
+very lengthened inquiry, is yet, we believe, in harmony with that
+disclosed by detailed analysis.
+
+Leaving out of view the Will, which is a simple homogeneous mental
+state, forming the link between feeling and action, and not admitting of
+subdivisions; our states of consciousness fall into two great
+classes--COGNITIONS and FEELINGS.
+
+COGNITIONS, or those modes of mind in which we are occupied with the
+_relations_ that subsist among our feelings, are divisible into four
+great sub-classes.
+
+_Presentative cognitions_; or those in which consciousness is occupied
+in localizing a sensation impressed on the organism--occupied, that is,
+with the relation between this presented mental state and those other
+presented mental states which make up our consciousness of the part
+affected: as when we cut ourselves.
+
+_Presentative-representative cognitions_; or those in which
+consciousness is occupied with the relation between a sensation or group
+of sensations and the representations of those various other sensations
+that accompany it in experience. This is what we commonly call
+perception--an act in which, along with certain impressions presented to
+consciousness, there arise in consciousness the ideas of certain other
+impressions ordinarily connected with the presented ones: as when its
+visible form and colour, lead us to mentally endow an orange with all
+its other attributes.
+
+_Representative cognitions_; or those in which consciousness is occupied
+with the relations among ideas or represented sensations; as in all acts
+of recollection.
+
+_Re-representative cognitions_; or those in which the occupation of
+consciousness is not by representation of special relations that have
+before been presented to consciousness; but those in which such
+represented special relations are thought of merely as comprehended in a
+general relation--those in which the concrete relations once
+experienced, in so far as they become objects of consciousness at all,
+are incidentally represented, along with the abstract relation which
+formulates them. The ideas resulting from this abstraction, do not
+themselves represent actual experiences; but are symbols which stand for
+groups of such actual experiences--represent aggregates of
+representations. And thus they may be called re-representative
+cognitions. It is clear that the process of re-representation is
+carried to higher stages, as the thought becomes more abstract.
+
+FEELINGS, or those modes of mind in which we are occupied, not with the
+relations subsisting between our sentient states, but with the sentient
+states themselves, are divisible into four parallel sub-classes.
+
+_Presentative feelings_, ordinarily called sensations, are those mental
+states in which, instead of regarding a corporeal impression as of this
+or that kind, or as located here or there, we contemplate it in itself
+as pleasure or pain: as when eating.
+
+_Presentative-representative feelings_, embracing a great part of what
+we commonly call emotions, are those in which a sensation, or group of
+sensations, or group of sensations and ideas, arouses a vast aggregation
+of represented sensations; partly of individual experience, but chiefly
+deeper than individual experience, and, consequently, indefinite. The
+emotion of terror may serve as an example. Along with certain
+impressions made on the eyes or ears, or both, are recalled in
+consciousness many of the pains to which such impressions have before
+been the antecedents; and when the relation between such impressions and
+such pains has been habitual in the race, the definite ideas of such
+pains which individual experience has given, are accompanied by
+the indefinite pains that result from inherited effects of
+experiences--vague feelings which we may call organic representations.
+In an infant, crying at a strange sight or sound while yet in the
+nurse's arms, we see these organic representations called into existence
+in the shape of dim discomfort, to which individual experience has yet
+given no specific outlines.
+
+_Representative feelings_, comprehending the ideas of the feelings above
+classed, when they are called up apart from the appropriate external
+excitements. As instances of these may be named the feelings with which
+the descriptive poet writes, and which are aroused in the minds of his
+readers.
+
+_Re-representative feelings_, under which head are included those more
+complex sentient states that are less the direct results of external
+excitements than the indirect or reflex results of them. The love of
+property is a feeling of this kind. It is awakened not by the presence
+of any special object, but by ownable objects at large; and it is not
+from the mere presence of such object, but from a certain ideal relation
+to them, that it arises. As before shown (p. 253) it consists, not of
+the represented advantages of possessing this or that, but of the
+represented advantages of possession in general--is not made up of
+certain concrete representations, but of the abstracts of many concrete
+representations; and so is re-representative. The higher sentiments, as
+that of justice, are still more completely of this nature. Here the
+sentient state is compounded out of sentient states that are themselves
+wholly, or almost wholly, re-representative: it involves representations
+of those lower emotions which are produced by the possession of
+property, by freedom of action, etc.; and thus is re-representative in a
+higher degree.
+
+This classification, here roughly indicated and capable of further
+expansion, will be found in harmony with the results of detailed
+analysis aided by development. Whether we trace mental progression
+through the grades of the animal kingdom, through the grades of mankind,
+or through the stages of individual growth; it is obvious that the
+advance, alike in cognitions and feelings, is, and must be, from the
+presentative to the more and more remotely representative. It is
+undeniable that intelligence ascends from those simple perceptions in
+which consciousness is occupied in localizing and classifying
+sensations, to perceptions more and more compound, to simple reasoning,
+to reasoning more and more complex and abstract--more and more remote
+from sensation. And in the evolution of feelings, there is a parallel
+series of steps. Simple sensations; sensations combined together;
+sensations combined with represented sensations; represented sensations
+organized into groups, in which their separate characters are very much
+merged; representations of these representative groups, in which the
+original components have become still more vague. In both cases, the
+progress has necessarily been from the simple and concrete to the
+complex and abstract; and as with the cognitions, so with the feelings,
+this must be the basis of classification.
+
+The space here occupied with criticisms on Mr. Bain's work, we might
+have filled with exposition and eulogy, had we thought this the more
+important. Though we have freely pointed out what we conceive to be its
+defects, let it not be inferred that we question its great merits. We
+repeat that, as a natural history of the mind, we believe it to be
+the best yet produced. It is a most valuable collection of
+carefully-elaborated materials. Perhaps we cannot better express our
+sense of its worth, than by saying that, to those who hereafter give to
+this branch of Psychology a thoroughly scientific organization, Mr.
+Bain's book will be indispensable.
+
+
+
+
+THE SOCIAL ORGANISM.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Westminster Review _for January,_ 1860.]
+
+
+Sir James Macintosh got great credit for the saying, that "constitutions
+are not made, but grow." In our day, the most significant thing about
+this saying is, that it was ever thought so significant. As from the
+surprise displayed by a man at some familiar fact, you may judge of his
+general culture; so from the admiration which an age accords to a new
+thought, its average degree of enlightenment may be inferred. That this
+apophthegm of Macintosh should have been quoted and requoted as it has,
+shows how profound has been the ignorance of social science. A small ray
+of truth has seemed brilliant, as a distant rushlight looks like a star
+in the surrounding darkness.
+
+Such a conception could not, indeed, fail to be startling when let fall
+in the midst of a system of thought to which it was utterly alien.
+Universally in Macintosh's day, things were explained on the hypothesis
+of manufacture, rather than that of growth; as indeed they are, by the
+majority, in our own day. It was held that the planets were severally
+projected round the Sun from the Creator's hand, with just the velocity
+required to balance the Sun's attraction. The formation of the Earth,
+the separation of sea from land, the production of animals, were
+mechanical works from which God rested as a labourer rests. Man was
+supposed to be moulded after a manner somewhat akin to that in which a
+modeller makes a clay-figure. And of course, in harmony with such
+ideas, societies were tacitly assumed to be arranged thus or thus by
+direct interposition of Providence; or by the regulations of law-makers;
+or by both.
+
+Yet that societies are not artificially put together, is a truth so
+manifest, that it seems wonderful men should ever have overlooked it.
+Perhaps nothing more clearly shows the small value of historical
+studies, as they have been commonly pursued. You need but to look at the
+changes going on around, or observe social organization in its leading
+traits, to see that these are neither supernatural, nor are determined
+by the wills of individual men, as by implication the older historians
+teach; but are consequent on general natural causes. The one case of the
+division of labour suffices to prove this. It has not been by command of
+any ruler that some men have become manufacturers, while others have
+remained cultivators of the soil. In Lancashire, millions have devoted
+themselves to the making of cotton-fabrics; in Yorkshire, another
+million lives by producing woollens; and the pottery of Staffordshire,
+the cutlery of Sheffield, the hardware of Birmingham, severally occupy
+their hundreds of thousands. These are large facts in the structure of
+English society; but we can ascribe them neither to miracle, nor to
+legislation. It is not by "the hero as king," any more than by
+"collective wisdom," that men have been segregated into producers,
+wholesale distributors, and retail distributors. Our industrial
+organization, from its main outlines down to its minutest details, has
+become what it is, not simply without legislative guidance, but, to a
+considerable extent, in spite of legislative hindrances. It has arisen
+under the pressure of human wants and resulting activities. While each
+citizen has been pursuing his individual welfare, and none taking
+thought about division of labour, or conscious of the need of it,
+division of labour has yet been ever becoming more complete. It has been
+doing this slowly and silently: few having observed it until quite
+modern times. By steps so small, that year after year the industrial
+arrangements have seemed just what they were before--by changes as
+insensible as those through which a seed passes into a tree; society has
+become the complex body of mutually-dependent workers which we now see.
+And this economic organization, mark, is the all-essential organization.
+Through the combination thus spontaneously evolved, every citizen is
+supplied with daily necessaries; while he yields some product or aid to
+others. That we are severally alive to-day, we owe to the regular
+working of this combination during the past week; and could it be
+suddenly abolished, multitudes would be dead before another week ended.
+If these most conspicuous and vital arrangements of our social structure
+have arisen not by the devising of any one, but through the individual
+efforts of citizens to satisfy their own wants; we may be tolerably
+certain that the less important arrangements have similarly arisen.
+
+"But surely," it will be said, "the social changes directly produced by
+law, cannot be classed as spontaneous growths. When parliaments or kings
+order this or that thing to be done, and appoint officials to do it, the
+process is clearly artificial; and society to this extent becomes a
+manufacture rather than a growth." No, not even these changes are
+exceptions, if they be real and permanent changes. The true sources of
+such changes lie deeper than the acts of legislators. To take first the
+simplest instance. We all know that the enactments of representative
+governments ultimately depend on the national will: they may for a time
+be out of harmony with it, but eventually they must conform to it. And
+to say that the national will finally determines them, is to say that
+they result from the average of individual desires; or, in other
+words--from the average of individual natures. A law so initiated,
+therefore, really grows out of the popular character. In the case of a
+Government representing a dominant class, the same thing holds, though
+not so manifestly. For the very existence of a class monopolizing all
+power, is due to certain sentiments in the commonalty. Without the
+feeling of loyalty on the part of retainers, a feudal system could not
+exist. We see in the protest of the Highlanders against the abolition of
+heritable jurisdictions, that they preferred that kind of local rule.
+And if to the popular nature must be ascribed the growth of an
+irresponsible ruling class; then to the popular nature must be ascribed
+the social arrangements which that class creates in the pursuit of its
+own ends. Even where the Government is despotic, the doctrine still
+holds. The character of the people is, as before, the original source of
+this political form; and, as we have abundant proof, other forms
+suddenly created will not act, but rapidly retrograde to the old form.
+Moreover, such regulations as a despot makes, if really operative, are
+so because of their fitness to the social state. His acts being very
+much swayed by general opinion--by precedent, by the feeling of his
+nobles, his priesthood, his army--are in part immediate results of the
+national character; and when they are out of harmony with the national
+character, they are soon practically abrogated. The failure of Cromwell
+permanently to establish a new social condition, and the rapid revival
+of suppressed institutions and practices after his death, show how
+powerless is a monarch to change the type of the society he governs. He
+may disturb, he may retard, or he may aid the natural process of
+organization; but the general course of this process is beyond his
+control. Nay, more than this is true. Those who regard the histories of
+societies as the histories of their great men, and think that these
+great men shape the fates of their societies, overlook the truth that
+such great men are the products of their societies. Without certain
+antecedents--without a certain average national character, they neither
+could have been generated nor could have had the culture which formed
+them. If their society is to some extent re-moulded by them, they
+were, both before and after birth, moulded by their society--were the
+results of all those influences which fostered the ancestral character
+they inherited, and gave their own early bias, their creed, morals,
+knowledge, aspirations. So that such social changes as are immediately
+traceable to individuals of unusual power, are still remotely traceable
+to the social causes which produced these individuals; and hence, from
+the highest point of view, such social changes also, are parts of the
+general developmental process.
+
+Thus that which is so obviously true of the industrial structure of
+society, is true of its whole structure. The fact that "constitutions
+are not made, but grow," is simply a fragment of the much larger fact,
+that under all its aspects and through all its ramifications, society is
+a growth and not a manufacture.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A perception that there exists some analogy between the body politic and
+a living individual body, was early reached; and has from time to time
+re-appeared in literature. But this perception was necessarily vague and
+more or less fanciful. In the absence of physiological science, and
+especially of those comprehensive generalizations which it has but
+lately reached, it was impossible to discern the real parallelisms.
+
+The central idea of Plato's model Republic, is the correspondence
+between the parts of a society and the faculties of the human mind.
+Classifying these faculties under the heads of Reason, Will, and
+Passion, he classifies the members of his ideal society under what he
+regards as three analogous heads:--councillors, who are to exercise
+government; military or executive, who are to fulfil their behests; and
+the commonalty, bent on gain and selfish gratification. In other words,
+the ruler, the warrior, and the craftsman, are, according to him, the
+analogues of our reflective, volitional, and emotional powers. Now
+even were there truth in the implied assumption of a parallelism
+between the structure of a society and that of a man, this
+classification would be indefensible. It might more truly be contended
+that, as the military power obeys the commands of the Government, it is
+the Government which answers to the Will; while the military power is
+simply an agency set in motion by it. Or, again, it might be contended
+that whereas the Will is a product of predominant desires, to which the
+Reason serves merely as an eye, it is the craftsmen, who, according to
+the alleged analogy, ought to be the moving power of the warriors.
+
+Hobbes sought to establish a still more definite parallelism: not,
+however, between a society and the human mind, but between a society and
+the human body. In the introduction to the work in which he develops
+this conception, he says--
+
+     "For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH,
+     or STATE, in Latin CIVITAS, which is but an artificial man; though
+     of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose
+     protection and defence it was intended, and in which the
+     _sovereignty_ is an artificial _soul_, as giving life and motion to
+     the whole body; the _magistrates_ and other _officers_ of
+     judicature and execution, artificial _joints_; _reward_ and
+     _punishment_, by which, fastened to the seat of the sovereignty,
+     every joint and member is moved to perform his duty, are the
+     _nerves_, that do the same in the body natural; the _wealth_ and
+     _riches_ of all the particular members are the _strength_; _salus
+     populi_, the _people's safety_, its _business_; _counsellors_, by
+     whom all things needful for it to know are suggested unto it, are
+     the _memory_; _equity_ and _laws_ an artificial _reason_ and
+     _will_; _concord_, _health_; _sedition_, _sickness_; and _civil
+     war_, _death_."
+
+And Hobbes carries this comparison so far as actually to give a drawing
+of the Leviathan--a vast human-shaped figure, whose body and limbs are
+made up of multitudes of men. Just noting that these different analogies
+asserted by Plato and Hobbes, serve to cancel each other (being, as they
+are, so completely at variance), we may say that on the whole those of
+Hobbes are the more plausible. But they are full of inconsistencies. If
+the sovereignty is the _soul_ of the body-politic, how can it be that
+magistrates, who are a kind of deputy-sovereigns, should be comparable
+to _joints_? Or, again, how can the three mental functions, memory,
+reason, and will, be severally analogous, the first to counsellors, who
+are a class of public officers, and the other two to equity and laws,
+which are not classes of officers, but abstractions? Or, once more, if
+magistrates are the artificial joints of society, how can reward and
+punishment be its nerves? Its nerves must surely be some class of
+persons. Reward and punishment must in societies, as in individuals, be
+_conditions_ of the nerves, and not the nerves themselves.
+
+But the chief errors of these comparisons made by Plato and Hobbes, lie
+much deeper. Both thinkers assume that the organization of a society is
+comparable, not simply to the organization of a living body in general,
+but to the organization of the human body in particular. There is no
+warrant whatever for assuming this. It is in no way implied by the
+evidence; and is simply one of those fancies which we commonly find
+mixed up with the truths of early speculation. Still more erroneous are
+the two conceptions in this, that they construe a society as an
+artificial structure. Plato's model republic--his ideal of a healthful
+body-politic--is to be consciously put together by men, just as a watch
+might be; and Plato manifestly thinks of societies in general as thus
+originated. Quite specifically does Hobbes express a like view. "For by
+_art_," he says, "is created that great LEVIATHAN called a
+COMMONWEALTH." And he even goes so far as to compare the supposed social
+contract, from which a society suddenly originates, to the creation of a
+man by the divine fiat. Thus they both fall into the extreme
+inconsistency of considering a community as similar in structure to a
+human being, and yet as produced in the same way as an artificial
+mechanism--in nature, an organism; in history, a machine.
+
+Notwithstanding errors, however, these speculations have considerable
+significance. That such likenesses, crudely as they are thought out,
+should have been alleged by Plato and Hobbes and others, is a reason
+for suspecting that _some_ analogy exists. The untenableness of the
+particular parallelisms above instanced, is no ground for denying an
+essential parallelism; since early ideas are usually but vague
+adumbrations of the truth. Lacking the great generalizations of biology,
+it was, as we have said, impossible to trace out the real relations of
+social organizations to organizations of another order. We propose here
+to show what are the analogies which modern science discloses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us set out by succinctly stating the points of similarity and the
+points of difference. Societies agree with individual organisms in four
+conspicuous peculiarities:--
+
+1. That commencing as small aggregations, they insensibly augment in
+mass: some of them eventually reaching ten thousand times what they
+originally were.
+
+2. That while at first so simple in structure as to be considered
+structureless, they assume, in the course of their growth, a
+continually-increasing complexity of structure.
+
+3. That though in their early, undeveloped states, there exists in them
+scarcely any mutual dependence of parts, their parts gradually acquire a
+mutual dependence; which becomes at last so great, that the activity and
+life of each part is made possible only by the activity and life of the
+rest.
+
+4. That the life of a society is independent of, and far more prolonged
+than, the lives of any of its component units; who are severally born,
+grow, work, reproduce, and die, while the body-politic composed of them
+survives generation after generation, increasing in mass, in
+completeness of structure, and in functional activity.
+
+These four parallelisms will appear the more significant the more we
+contemplate them. While the points specified, are points in which
+societies agree with individual organisms, they are also points in which
+individual organisms agree with one another, and disagree with all
+things else. In the course of its existence, every plant and animal
+increases in mass, in a way not paralleled by inorganic objects: even
+such inorganic objects as crystals, which arise by growth, show us no
+such definite relation between growth and existence as organisms do. The
+orderly progress from simplicity to complexity, displayed by
+bodies-politic in common with living bodies, is a characteristic which
+distinguishes living bodies from the inanimate bodies amid which they
+move. That functional dependence of parts, which is scarcely more
+manifest in animals than in nations, has no counterpart elsewhere. And
+in no aggregate except an organic or a social one, is there a perpetual
+removal and replacement of parts, joined with a continued integrity of
+the whole. Moreover, societies and organisms are not only alike in these
+peculiarities, in which they are unlike all other things; but the
+highest societies, like the highest organisms, exhibit them in the
+greatest degree. We see that the lowest animals do not increase to
+anything like the sizes of the higher ones; and, similarly, we see that
+aboriginal societies are comparatively limited in their growths. In
+complexity, our large civilized nations as much exceed primitive savage
+tribes, as a mammal does a zoophyte. Simple communities, like simple
+creatures, have so little mutual dependence of parts, that mutilation or
+subdivision causes but little inconvenience; but from complex
+communities, as from complex creatures, you cannot remove any
+considerable organ without producing great disturbance or death of the
+rest. And in societies of low type, as in inferior animals, the life of
+the aggregate, often cut short by division or dissolution, exceeds in
+length the lives of the component units, very far less than in civilized
+communities and superior animals; which outlive many generations of
+their component units.
+
+On the other hand, the leading differences between societies and
+individual organisms are these:--
+
+1. That societies have no specific external forms. This, however, is a
+point of contrast which loses much of its importance, when we remember
+that throughout the vegetal kingdom, as well as in some lower divisions
+of the animal kingdom, the forms are often very indefinite--definiteness
+being rather the exception than the rule; and that they are manifestly
+in part determined by surrounding physical circumstances, as the forms
+of societies are. If, too, it should eventually be shown, as we believe
+it will, that the form of every species of organism has resulted from
+the average play of the external forces to which it has been subject
+during its evolution as a species; then, that the external forms of
+societies should depend, as they do, on surrounding conditions, will be
+a further point of community.
+
+2. That though the living tissue whereof an individual organism
+consists, forms a continuous mass, the living elements of a society do
+not form a continuous mass; but are more or less widely dispersed over
+some portion of the Earth's surface. This, which at first sight appears
+to be an absolute distinction, is one which yet to a great extent fades
+when we contemplate all the facts. For, in the lower divisions of the
+animal and vegetal kingdoms, there are types of organization much more
+nearly allied, in this respect, to the organization of a society, than
+might be supposed--types in which the living units essentially composing
+the mass, are dispersed through an inert substance, that can scarcely be
+called living in the full sense of the word. It is thus with some of the
+_Protococci_ and with the _Nostoceae_, which exist as cells imbedded in a
+viscid matter. It is so, too, with the _Thalassicollae_--bodies made up
+of differentiated parts, dispersed through an undifferentiated jelly.
+And throughout considerable portions of their bodies, some of the
+_Acalephae_ exhibit more or less this type of structure. Now this is very
+much the case with a society. For we must remember that though the men
+who make up a society are physically separate, and even scattered, yet
+the surface over which they are scattered is not one devoid of life, but
+is covered by life of a lower order which ministers to their life. The
+vegetation which clothes a country makes possible the animal life in
+that country; and only through its animal and vegetal products can such
+a country support a society. Hence the members of the body-politic are
+not to be regarded as separated by intervals of dead space, but as
+diffused through a space occupied by life of a lower order. In our
+conception of a social organism, we must include all that lower organic
+existence on which human existence, and therefore social existence,
+depend. And when we do this, we see that the citizens who make up a
+community may be considered as highly vitalized units surrounded by
+substances of lower vitality, from which they draw their nutriment: much
+as in the cases above instanced.
+
+3. The third difference is that while the ultimate living elements of an
+individual organism are mostly fixed in their relative positions, those
+of the social organism are capable of moving from place to place. But
+here, too, the disagreement is much less than would be supposed. For
+while citizens are locomotive in their private capacities, they are
+fixed in their public capacities. As farmers, manufacturers, or traders,
+men carry on their businesses at the same spots, often throughout their
+whole lives; and if they go away occasionally, they leave behind others
+to discharge their functions in their absence. Each great centre of
+production, each manufacturing town or district, continues always in the
+same place; and many of the firms in such town or district, are for
+generations carried on either by the descendants or successors of those
+who founded them. Just as in a living body, the cells that make up some
+important organ severally perform their functions for a time and then
+disappear, leaving others to supply their places; so, in each part of a
+society the organ remains, though the persons who compose it change.
+Thus, in social life, as in the life of an animal, the units as well as
+the larger agencies formed of them, are in the main stationary as
+respects the places where they discharge their duties and obtain their
+sustenance. And hence the power of individual locomotion does not
+practically affect the analogy.
+
+4. The last and perhaps the most important distinction is, that while in
+the body of an animal only a special tissue is endowed with feeling, in
+a society all the members are endowed with feeling. Even this
+distinction, however, is not a complete one. For in some of the lowest
+animals, characterized by the absence of a nervous system, such
+sensitiveness as exists is possessed by all parts. It is only in the
+more organized forms that feeling is monopolized by one class of the
+vital elements. And we must remember that societies, too, are not
+without a certain differentiation of this kind. Though the units of a
+community are all sensitive, they are so in unequal degrees. The classes
+engaged in laborious occupations are less susceptible, intellectually
+and emotionally, than the rest; and especially less so than the classes
+of highest mental culture. Still, we have here a tolerably decided
+contrast between bodies-politic and individual bodies; and it is one
+which we should keep constantly in view. For it reminds us that while,
+in individual bodies, the welfare of all other parts is rightly
+subservient to the welfare of the nervous system, whose pleasurable or
+painful activities make up the good or ill of life; in bodies-politic
+the same thing does not hold, or holds to but a very slight extent. It
+is well that the lives of all parts of an animal should be merged in the
+life of the whole, because the whole has a corporate consciousness
+capable of happiness or misery. But it is not so with a society; since
+its living units do not and cannot lose individual consciousness, and
+since the community as a whole has no corporate consciousness. This is
+an everlasting reason why the welfares of citizens cannot rightly be
+sacrificed to some supposed benefit of the State, and why, on the other
+hand, the State is to be maintained solely for the benefit of
+citizens. The corporate life must here be subservient to the lives of
+the parts, instead of the lives of the parts being subservient to the
+corporate life.
+
+Such, then, are the points of analogy and the points of difference. May
+we not say that the points of difference serve but to bring into clearer
+light the points of analogy? While comparison makes definite the obvious
+contrasts between organisms commonly so called, and the social organism,
+it shows that even these contrasts are not so decided as was to be
+expected. The indefiniteness of form, the discontinuity of the parts,
+and the universal sensitiveness, are not only peculiarities of the
+social organism which have to be stated with considerable
+qualifications; but they are peculiarities to which the inferior classes
+of animals present approximations. Thus we find but little to conflict
+with the all-important analogies. Societies slowly augment in mass; they
+progress in complexity of structure; at the same time their parts become
+more mutually dependent; their living units are removed and replaced
+without destroying their integrity; and the extents to which they
+display these peculiarities are proportionate to their vital activities.
+These are traits that societies have in common with organic bodies. And
+these traits in which they agree with organic bodies and disagree with
+all other things, entirely subordinate the minor distinctions: such
+distinctions being scarcely greater than those which separate one half
+of the organic kingdom from the other. The _principles_ of organization
+are the same, and the differences are simply differences of application.
+
+Here ending this general survey of the facts which justify the
+comparison of a society with a living body, let us look at them in
+detail. We shall find that the parallelism becomes the more marked the
+more closely it is examined.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lowest animal and vegetal forms--_Protozoa_ and _Protophyta_--are
+chiefly inhabitants of the water. They are minute bodies, most of which
+are made individually visible only by the microscope. All of them are
+extremely simple in structure, and some of them, as the _Rhizopods_,
+almost structureless. Multiplying, as they ordinarily do, by the
+spontaneous division of their bodies, they produce halves which may
+either become quite separate and move away in different directions, or
+may continue attached. By the repetition of this process of fission,
+aggregations of various sizes and kinds are formed. Among the
+_Protophyta_ we have some classes, as the _Diatomaceae_ and the
+Yeast-plant, in which the individuals may be either separate or attached
+in groups of two, three, four, or more; other classes in which a
+considerable number of cells are united into a thread (_Conferva_,
+_Monilia_); others in which they form a network (_Hydrodictyon_); others
+in which they form plates (_Ulva_); and others in which they form masses
+(_Laminaria_, _Agaricus_): all which vegetal forms, having no
+distinction of root, stem, or leaf, are called _Thallogens_. Among the
+_Protozoa_ we find parallel facts. Immense numbers of _Amoeba_-like
+creatures, massed together in a framework of horny fibres, constitute
+Sponge. In the _Foraminifera_ we see smaller groups of such creatures
+arranged into more definite shapes. Not only do these almost
+structureless _Protozoa_ unite into regular or irregular aggregations of
+various sizes, but among some of the more organized ones, as the
+_Vorticellae_, there are also produced clusters of individuals united to
+a common stem. But these little societies of monads, or cells, or
+whatever else we may call them, are societies only in the lowest sense:
+there is no subordination of parts among them--no organization. Each of
+the component units lives by and for itself; neither giving nor
+receiving aid. The only mutual dependence is that consequent on
+mechanical union.
+
+Do we not here discern analogies to the first stages of human societies?
+Among the lowest races, as the Bushmen, we find but incipient
+aggregation: sometimes single families, sometimes two or three families
+wandering about together. The number of associated units is small and
+variable, and their union inconstant. No division of labour exists
+except between the sexes, and the only kind of mutual aid is that of
+joint attack or defence. We see an undifferentiated group of
+individuals, forming the germ of a society; just as in the homogeneous
+groups of cells above described, we see the initial stage of animal and
+vegetal organization.
+
+The comparison may now be carried a step higher. In the vegetal kingdom
+we pass from the _Thallogens_, consisting of mere masses of similar
+cells, to the _Acrogens_, in which the cells are not similar throughout
+the whole mass; but are here aggregated into a structure serving as leaf
+and there into a structure serving as root; thus forming a whole in
+which there is a certain subdivision of functions among the units, and
+therefore a certain mutual dependence. In the animal kingdom we find
+analogous progress. From mere unorganized groups of cells, or cell-like
+bodies, we ascend to groups of such cells arranged into parts that have
+different duties. The common Polype, from the substance of which may be
+separated cells that exhibit, when detached, appearances and movements
+like those of a solitary _Amoeba_, illustrates this stage. The
+component units, though still showing great community of character,
+assume somewhat diverse functions in the skin, in the internal surface,
+and in the tentacles. There is a certain amount of "physiological
+division of labour."
+
+Turning to societies, we find these stages paralleled in most aboriginal
+tribes. When, instead of such small variable groups as are formed by
+Bushmen, we come to the larger and more permanent groups formed by
+savages not quite so low, we find traces of social structure. Though
+industrial organization scarcely shows itself, except in the different
+occupations of the sexes; yet there is more or less of governmental
+organization. While all the men are warriors and hunters, only a part
+of them are included in the council of chiefs; and in this council of
+chiefs some one has commonly supreme authority. There is thus a certain
+distinction of classes and powers; and through this slight
+specialization of functions is effected a rude co-operation among the
+increasing mass of individuals, whenever the society has to act in its
+corporate capacity. Beyond this analogy in the slight extent to which
+organization is carried, there is analogy in the indefiniteness of the
+organization. In the _Hydra_, the respective parts of the creature's
+substance have many functions in common. They are all contractile;
+omitting the tentacles, the whole of the external surface can give
+origin to young _hydrae_; and, when turned inside out, stomach performs
+the duties of skin and skin the duties of stomach. In aboriginal
+societies such differentiations as exist are similarly imperfect.
+Notwithstanding distinctions of rank, all persons maintain themselves by
+their own exertions. Not only do the head men of the tribe, in common
+with the rest, build their own huts, make their own weapons, kill their
+own food; but the chief does the like. Moreover, such governmental
+organization as exists is inconstant. It is frequently changed by
+violence or treachery, and the function of ruling assumed by some other
+warrior. Thus between the rudest societies and some of the lowest forms
+of animal life, there is analogy alike in the slight extent to which
+organization is carried, in the indefiniteness of this organization, and
+in its want of fixity.
+
+A further complication of the analogy is at hand. From the aggregation
+of units into organized groups, we pass to the multiplication of such
+groups, and their coalescence into compound groups. The _Hydra_, when it
+has reached a certain bulk, puts forth from its surface a bud which,
+growing and gradually assuming the form of the parent, finally becomes
+detached; and by this process of gemmation the creature peoples the
+adjacent water with others like itself. A parallel process is seen in
+the multiplication of those lowly-organized tribes above described. When
+one of them has increased to a size that is either too great for
+co-ordination under so rude a structure, or else that is greater than
+the surrounding country can supply with game and other wild food, there
+arises a tendency to divide; and as in such communities there often
+occur quarrels, jealousies, and other causes of division, there soon
+comes an occasion on which a part of the tribe separates under the
+leadership of some subordinate chief and migrates. This process being
+from time to time repeated, an extensive region is at length occupied by
+numerous tribes descended from a common ancestry. The analogy by no
+means ends here. Though in the common _Hydra_ the young ones that bud
+out from the parent soon become detached and independent; yet throughout
+the rest of the class _Hydrozoa_, to which this creature belongs, the
+like does not generally happen. The successive individuals thus
+developed continue attached; give origin to other such individuals which
+also continue attached; and so there results a compound animal. As in
+the _Hydra_ itself we find an aggregation of units which, considered
+separately, are akin to the lowest _Protozoa_; so here, in a _Zoophyte_,
+we find an aggregation of such aggregations. The like is also seen
+throughout the extensive family of _Polyzoa_ or _Molluscoida_. The
+Ascidian Mollusks, too, in their many forms, show us the same thing:
+exhibiting, at the same time, various degrees of union among the
+component individuals. For while in the _Salpae_ the component
+individuals adhere so slightly that a blow on the vessel of water in
+which they are floating will separate them; in the _Botryllidae_ there
+exist vascular connexions among them, and a common circulation. Now in
+these different stages of aggregation, may we not see paralleled the
+union of groups of connate tribes into nations? Though, in regions where
+circumstances permit, the tribes descended from some original tribe
+migrate in all directions, and become far removed and quite separate;
+yet, where the territory presents barriers to distant migration, this
+does not happen: the small kindred communities are held in closer
+contact, and eventually become more or less united into a nation. The
+contrast between the tribes of American Indians and the Scottish clans,
+illustrates this. And a glance at our own early history, or the early
+histories of continental nations, shows this fusion of small simple
+communities taking place in various ways and to various extents. As says
+M. Guizot, in his _History of the Origin of Representative
+Government_,--
+
+     "By degrees, in the midst of the chaos of the rising society, small
+     aggregations are formed which feel the want of alliance and union
+     with each other.... Soon inequality of strength is displayed among
+     neighbouring aggregations. The strong tend to subjugate the weak,
+     and usurp at first the rights of taxation and military service.
+     Thus political authority leaves the aggregations which first
+     instituted it, to take a wider range."
+
+That is to say, the small tribes, clans, or feudal groups, sprung mostly
+from a common stock, and long held in contact as occupants of adjacent
+lands, gradually get united in other ways than by kinship and proximity.
+
+A further series of changes begins now to take place, to which, as
+before, we find analogies in individual organisms. Returning to the
+_Hydrozoa_, we observe that in the simplest of the compound forms the
+connected individuals are alike in structure, and perform like
+functions; with the exception that here and there a bud, instead of
+developing into a stomach, mouth, and tentacles, becomes an egg-sac. But
+with the oceanic _Hydrozoa_ this is by no means the case. In the
+_Calycophoridae_ some of the polypes growing from the common germ, become
+developed and modified into large, long, sack-like bodies, which, by
+their rhythmical contractions, move through the water, dragging the
+community of polypes after them. In the _Physophoridae_ a variety of
+organs similarly arise by transformation of the budding polypes; so that
+in creatures like the _Physalia_, commonly known as the "Portuguese
+Man-of-war," instead of that tree-like group of similar individuals
+forming the original type, we have a complex mass of unlike parts
+fulfilling unlike duties. As an individual _Hydra_ may be regarded as a
+group of _Protozoa_ which have become partially metamorphosed into
+different organs; so a _Physalia_ is, morphologically considered, a
+group of _Hydrae_ of which the individuals have been variously
+transformed to fit them for various functions.
+
+This differentiation upon differentiation is just what takes place
+during the evolution of a civilized society. We observed how, in the
+small communities first formed, there arises a simple political
+organization: there is a partial separation of classes having different
+duties. And now we have to observe how, in a nation formed by the fusion
+of such small communities, the several sections, at first alike in
+structures and modes of activity, grow unlike in both--gradually become
+mutually-dependent parts, diverse in their natures and functions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The doctrine of the progressive division of labour, to which we are here
+introduced, is familiar to all readers. And further, the analogy between
+the economical division of labour and the "physiological division of
+labour," is so striking as long since to have drawn the attention of
+scientific naturalists: so striking, indeed, that the expression
+"physiological division of labour," has been suggested by it. It is not
+needful, therefore, to treat this part of the subject in great detail.
+We shall content ourselves with noting a few general and significant
+facts, not manifest on a first inspection.
+
+Throughout the whole animal kingdom, from the _Coelenterata_ upwards,
+the first stage of evolution is the same. Equally in the germ of a
+polype and in the human ovum, the aggregated mass of cells out of which
+the creature is to arise, gives origin to a peripheral layer of cells,
+slightly differing from the rest which they include; and this layer
+subsequently divides into two--the inner, lying in contact with the
+included yelk, being called the mucous layer, and the outer, exposed to
+surrounding agencies, being called the serous layer: or, in the terms
+used by Prof. Huxley, in describing the development of the
+_Hydrozoa_--the endoderm and ectoderm. This primary division marks out a
+fundamental contrast of parts in the future organism. From the mucous
+layer, or endoderm, is developed the apparatus of nutrition; while from
+the serous layer, or ectoderm, is developed the apparatus of external
+action. Out of the one arise the organs by which food is prepared and
+absorbed, oxygen imbibed, and blood purified; while out of the other
+arise the nervous, muscular, and osseous systems, by the combined
+actions of which the movements of the body as a whole are effected.
+Though this is not a rigorously-correct distinction, seeing that some
+organs involve both of these primitive membranes, yet high authorities
+agree in stating it as a broad general distinction. Well, in the
+evolution of a society, we see a primary differentiation of analogous
+kind, which similarly underlies the whole future structure. As already
+pointed out, the only manifest contrast of parts in primitive societies,
+is that between the governing and the governed. In the least organized
+tribes, the council of chiefs may be a body of men distinguished simply
+by greater courage or experience. In more organized tribes, the
+chief-class is definitely separated from the lower class, and often
+regarded as different in nature--sometimes as god-descended. And later,
+we find these two becoming respectively freemen and slaves, or nobles
+and serfs. A glance at their respective functions, makes it obvious that
+the great divisions thus early formed, stand to each other in a relation
+similar to that in which the primary divisions of the embryo stand to
+each other. For, from its first appearance, the warrior-class, headed by
+chiefs, is that by which the external acts of the society are carried
+on: alike in war, in negotiation, and in migration. Afterwards, while
+this upper class grows distinct from the lower, and at the same time
+becomes more and more exclusively regulative and defensive in its
+functions, alike in the persons of kings and subordinate rulers,
+priests, and soldiers; the inferior class becomes more and more
+exclusively occupied in providing the necessaries of life for the
+community at large. From the soil, with which it comes in most direct
+contact, the mass of the people takes up, and prepares for use, the food
+and such rude articles of manufacture as are known; while the overlying
+mass of superior men, maintained by the working population, deals with
+circumstances external to the community--circumstances with which, by
+position, it is more immediately concerned. Ceasing by-and-by to have
+any knowledge of, or power over, the concerns of the society as a whole,
+the serf-class becomes devoted to the processes of alimentation; while
+the noble class, ceasing to take any part in the processes of
+alimentation, becomes devoted to the co-ordinated movements of the
+entire body-politic.
+
+Equally remarkable is a further analogy of like kind. After the mucous
+and serous layers of the embryo have separated, there presently arises
+between the two a third, known to physiologists as the vascular layer--a
+layer out of which are developed the chief blood-vessels. The mucous
+layer absorbs nutriment from the mass of yelk it encloses; this
+nutriment has to be transferred to the overlying serous layer, out of
+which the nervo-muscular system is being developed; and between the two
+arises a vascular system by which the transfer is effected--a system of
+vessels which continues ever after to be the transferrer of nutriment
+from the places where it is absorbed and prepared, to the places where
+it is needed for growth and repair. Well, may we not trace a parallel
+step in social progress? Between the governing and the governed, there
+at first exists no intermediate class; and even in some societies that
+have reached considerable sizes, there are scarcely any but the nobles
+and their kindred on the one hand, and the serfs on the other: the
+social structure being such that transfer of commodities takes place
+directly from slaves to their masters. But in societies of a higher
+type, there grows up, between these two primitive classes, another--the
+trading or middle class. Equally at first as now, we may see that,
+speaking generally, this middle class is the analogue of the middle
+layer in the embryo. For all traders are essentially distributors.
+Whether they be wholesale dealers, who collect into large masses the
+commodities of various producers; or whether they be retailers, who
+divide out to those who want them, the masses of commodities thus
+collected together; all mercantile men are agents of transfer from the
+places where things are produced to the places where they are consumed.
+Thus the distributing apparatus in a society, answers to the
+distributing apparatus in a living body; not only in its functions, but
+in its intermediate origin and subsequent position, and in the time of
+its appearance.
+
+Without enumerating the minor differentiations which these three great
+classes afterwards undergo, we will merely note that throughout, they
+follow the same general law with the differentiations of an individual
+organism. In a society, as in a rudimentary animal, we have seen that
+the most general and broadly contrasted divisions are the first to make
+their appearance; and of the subdivisions it continues true in both
+cases, that they arise in the order of decreasing generality.
+
+Let us observe, next, that in the one case as in the other, the
+specializations are at first very incomplete, and approach completeness
+as organization progresses. We saw that in primitive tribes, as in the
+simplest animals, there remains much community of function between the
+parts which are nominally different--that, for instance, the class of
+chiefs long remains industrially the same as the inferior class; just
+as in a _Hydra_, the property of contractility is possessed by the units
+of the endoderm as well as by those of the ectoderm. We noted also how,
+as the society advanced, the two great primitive classes partook less
+and less of each other's functions. And we have here to remark that all
+subsequent specializations are at first vague and gradually become
+distinct. "In the infancy of society," says M. Guizot, "everything is
+confused and uncertain; there is as yet no fixed and precise line of
+demarcation between the different powers in a state." "Originally kings
+lived like other landowners, on the incomes derived from their own
+private estates." Nobles were petty kings; and kings only the most
+powerful nobles. Bishops were feudal lords and military leaders. The
+right of coining money was possessed by powerful subjects, and by the
+Church, as well as by the king. Every leading man exercised alike the
+functions of landowner, farmer, soldier, statesman, judge. Retainers
+were now soldiers, and now labourers, as the day required. But by
+degrees the Church has lost all civil jurisdiction; the State has
+exercised less and less control over religious teaching; the military
+class has grown a distinct one; handicrafts have concentrated in towns;
+and the spinning-wheels of scattered farmhouses, have disappeared before
+the machinery of manufacturing districts. Not only is all progress from
+the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, but, at the same time, it is from
+the indefinite to the definite.
+
+Another fact which should not be passed over, is that in the evolution
+of a large society out of a cluster of small ones, there is a gradual
+obliteration of the original lines of separation--a change to which,
+also, we may see analogies in living bodies. The sub-kingdom _Annulosa_,
+furnishes good illustrations. Among the lower types the body consists of
+numerous segments that are alike in nearly every particular. Each has
+its external ring; its pair of legs, if the creature has legs; its
+equal portion of intestine, or else its separate stomach; its equal
+portion of the great blood-vessel, or, in some cases, its separate
+heart; its equal portion of the nervous cord; and, perhaps, its separate
+pair of ganglia. But in the highest types, as in the large _Crustacea_,
+many of the segments are completely fused together; and the internal
+organs are no longer uniformly repeated in all the segments. Now the
+segments of which nations at first consist, lose their separate external
+and internal structures in a similar manner. In feudal times the minor
+communities, governed by feudal lords, were severally organized in the
+same rude way, and were held together only by the fealty of their
+respective rulers to a suzerain. But along with the growth of a central
+power, the demarcations of these local communities become relatively
+unimportant, and their separate organizations merge into the general
+organization. The like is seen on a larger scale in the fusion of
+England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; and, on the Continent, in the
+coalescence of provinces into kingdoms. Even in the disappearance of
+law-made divisions, the process is analogous. Among the Anglo-Saxons,
+England was divided into tithings, hundreds, and counties: there were
+county-courts, courts of hundred, and courts of tithing. The courts of
+tithing disappeared first; then the courts of hundred, which have,
+however, left traces; while the county-jurisdiction still exists.
+Chiefly, however, it is to be noted, that there eventually grows up an
+organization which has no reference to these original divisions, but
+traverses them in various directions, as is the case in creatures
+belonging to the sub-kingdom just named; and, further, that in both
+cases it is the sustaining organization which thus traverses old
+boundaries, while, in both cases, it is the governmental, or
+co-ordinating organization in which the original boundaries continue
+traceable. Thus, in the highest _Annulosa_ the exo-skeleton and the
+muscular system never lose all traces of their primitive segmentation;
+but throughout a great part of the body, the contained viscera do not in
+the least conform to the external divisions. Similarly with a nation we
+see that while, for governmental purposes, such divisions as counties
+and parishes still exist, the structure developed for carrying on the
+nutrition of society wholly ignores these boundaries: our great
+cotton-manufacture spreads out of Lancashire into North Derbyshire;
+Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire have long divided the stocking-trade
+between them; one great centre for the production of iron and
+iron-goods, includes parts of Warwickshire, Staffordshire, and
+Worcestershire; and those various specializations of agriculture which
+have made different parts of England noted for different products, show
+no more respect to county-boundaries than do our growing towns to the
+boundaries of parishes.
+
+If, after contemplating these analogies of structure, we inquire whether
+there are any such analogies between the processes of organic change,
+the answer is--yes. The causes which lead to increase of bulk in any
+part of the body-politic, are of like nature with those which lead to
+increase of bulk in any part of an individual body. In both cases the
+antecedent is greater functional activity consequent on greater demand.
+Each limb, viscus, gland, or other member of an animal, is developed by
+exercise--by actively discharging the duties which the body at large
+requires of it; and similarly, any class of labourers or artisans, any
+manufacturing centre, or any official agency, begins to enlarge when the
+community devolves on it more work. In each case, too, growth has its
+conditions and its limits. That any organ in a living being may grow by
+exercise, there needs a due supply of blood. All action implies waste;
+blood brings the materials for repair; and before there can be growth,
+the quantity of blood supplied must be more than is requisite for
+repair. In a society it is the same. If to some district which
+elaborates for the community particular commodities--say the woollens
+of Yorkshire--there comes an augmented demand; and if, in fulfilment of
+this demand, a certain expenditure and wear of the manufacturing
+organization are incurred; and if, in payment for the extra quantity of
+woollens sent away, there comes back only such quantity of commodities
+as replaces the expenditure, and makes good the waste of life and
+machinery; there can clearly be no growth. That there may be growth, the
+commodities obtained in return must be more than sufficient for these
+ends; and just in proportion as the surplus is great will the growth be
+rapid. Whence it is manifest that what in commercial affairs we call
+_profit_, answers to the excess of nutrition over waste in a living
+body. Moreover, in both cases when the functional activity is high and
+the nutrition defective, there results not growth but decay. If in an
+animal, any organ is worked so hard that the channels which bring blood
+cannot furnish enough for repair, the organ dwindles: atrophy is set up.
+And if in the body-politic, some part has been stimulated into great
+productivity, and cannot afterwards get paid for all its produce,
+certain of its members become bankrupt, and it decreases in size.
+
+One more parallelism to be here noted, is that the different parts of a
+social organism, like the different parts of an individual organism,
+compete for nutriment; and severally obtain more or less of it according
+as they are discharging more or less duty. If a man's brain be
+overexcited it abstracts blood from his viscera and stops digestion; or
+digestion, actively going on, so affects the circulation through the
+brain as to cause drowsiness; or great muscular exertion determines such
+a quantity of blood to the limbs as to arrest digestion or cerebral
+action, as the case may be. So, likewise, in a society, great activity
+in some one direction causes partial arrests of activity elsewhere by
+abstracting capital, that is commodities: as instance the way in which
+the sudden development of our railway-system hampered commercial
+operations; or the way in which the raising of a large military force
+temporarily stops the growth of leading industries.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The last few paragraphs introduce the next division of our subject.
+Almost unawares we have come upon the analogy which exists between the
+blood of a living body and the circulating mass of commodities in the
+body-politic. We have now to trace out this analogy from its simplest to
+its most complex manifestations.
+
+In the lowest animals there exists no blood properly so called. Through
+the small assemblage of cells which make up a _Hydra_, permeate the
+juices absorbed from the food. There is no apparatus for elaborating a
+concentrated and purified nutriment, and distributing it among the
+component units; but these component units directly imbibe the
+unprepared nutriment, either from the digestive cavity or from one
+another. May we not say that this is what takes place in an aboriginal
+tribe? All its members severally obtain for themselves the necessaries
+of life in their crude states; and severally prepare them for their own
+uses as well as they can. When there arises a decided differentiation
+between the governing and the governed, some amount of transfer begins
+between those inferior individuals who, as workers, come directly in
+contact with the products of the earth, and those superior ones who
+exercise the higher functions--a transfer parallel to that which
+accompanies the differentiation of the ectoderm from the endoderm. In
+the one case, as in the other, however, it is a transfer of products
+that are little if at all prepared; and takes place directly from the
+unit which obtains to the unit which consumes, without entering into any
+general current.
+
+Passing to larger organisms--individual and social--we meet the first
+advance on this arrangement. Where, as among the compound _Hydrozoa_,
+there is a union of many such primitive groups as form _Hydrae_; or
+where, as in a _Medusa_, one of these groups has become of great size;
+there exist rude channels running throughout the substance of the body:
+not, however, channels for the conveyance of prepared nutriment, but
+mere prolongations of the digestive cavity, through which the crude
+chyle-aqueous fluid reaches the remoter parts, and is moved backwards
+and forwards by the creature's contractions. Do we not find in some of
+the more advanced primitive communities an analogous condition? When the
+men, partially or fully united into one society, become numerous--when,
+as usually happens, they cover a surface of country not everywhere alike
+in its products--when, more especially, there arise considerable classes
+which are not industrial; some process of exchange and distribution
+inevitably arises. Traversing here and there the earth's surface,
+covered by that vegetation on which human life depends, and in which, as
+we say, the units of a society are imbedded, there are formed indefinite
+paths, along which some of the necessaries of life occasionally pass, to
+be bartered for others which presently come back along the same
+channels. Note, however, that at first little else but crude commodities
+are thus transferred--fruits, fish, pigs or cattle, skins, etc.: there
+are few, if any, manufactured products or articles prepared for
+consumption. And note also, that such distribution of these unprepared
+necessaries of life as takes place, is but occasional--goes on with a
+certain slow, irregular rhythm.
+
+Further progress in the elaboration and distribution of nutriment, or of
+commodities, is a necessary accompaniment of further differentiation of
+functions in the individual body or in the body-politic. As fast as each
+organ of a living animal becomes confined to a special action, it must
+become dependent on the rest for those materials which its position and
+duty do not permit it to obtain for itself; in the same way that, as
+fast as each particular class of a community becomes exclusively
+occupied in producing its own commodity, it must become dependent on
+the rest for the other commodities it needs. And, simultaneously, a more
+perfectly-elaborated blood will result from a highly specialized group
+of nutritive organs, severally adapted to prepare its different
+elements; in the same way that the stream of commodities circulating
+throughout a society, will be of superior quality in proportion to the
+greater division of labour among the workers. Observe, also, that in
+either case the circulating mass of nutritive materials, besides coming
+gradually to consist of better ingredients, also grows more complex. An
+increase in the number of the unlike organs which add to the blood their
+waste matters, and demand from it the different materials they severally
+need, implies a blood more heterogeneous in composition--an _a priori_
+conclusion which, according to Dr. Williams, is inductively confirmed by
+examination of the blood throughout the various grades of the animal
+kingdom. And similarly, it is manifest that as fast as the division of
+labour among the classes of a community becomes greater, there must be
+an increasing heterogeneity in the currents of merchandize flowing
+throughout that community.
+
+The circulating mass of nutritive materials in individual organisms and
+in social organisms, becoming at once better in the quality of its
+ingredients and more heterogeneous in composition, as the type of
+structure becomes higher, eventually has added to it in both cases
+another element, which is not itself nutritive but facilitates the
+processes of nutrition. We refer, in the case of the individual
+organism, to the blood-discs; and in the case of the social organism, to
+money. This analogy has been observed by Liebig, who in his _Familiar
+Letters on Chemistry_ says:--
+
+     "Silver and gold have to perform in the organism of the state, the
+     same function as the blood-corpuscles in the human organism. As
+     these round discs, without themselves taking an immediate share in
+     the nutritive process, are the medium, the essential condition of
+     the change of matter, of the production of the heat and of the
+     force by which the temperature of the body is kept up, and the
+     motions of the blood and all the juices are determined, so has gold
+     become the medium of all activity in the life of the state."
+
+And blood-corpuscles being like coin in their functions, and in the fact
+that they are not consumed in nutrition, he further points out that the
+number of them which in a considerable interval flows through the great
+centres, is enormous when compared with their absolute number; just as
+the quantity of money which annually passes through the great mercantile
+centres, is enormous when compared with the quantity of money in the
+kingdom. Nor is this all. Liebig has omitted the significant
+circumstance that only at a certain stage of organization does this
+element of the circulation make its appearance. Throughout extensive
+divisions of the lower animals, the blood contains no corpuscles; and in
+societies of low civilization, there is no money.
+
+Thus far we have considered the analogy between the blood in a living
+body and the consumable and circulating commodities in the body-politic.
+Let us now compare the appliances by which they are respectively
+distributed. We shall find in the developments of these appliances
+parallelisms not less remarkable than those above set forth. Already we
+have shown that, as classes, wholesale and retail distributors discharge
+in a society the office which the vascular system discharges in an
+individual creature; that they come into existence later than the other
+two great classes, as the vascular layer appears later than the mucous
+and serous layers; and that they occupy a like intermediate position.
+Here, however, it remains to be pointed out that a complete conception
+of the circulating system in a society, includes not only the active
+human agents who propel the currents of commodities, and regulate their
+distribution, but includes, also, the channels of communication. It is
+the formation and arrangement of these to which we now direct attention.
+
+Going back once more to those lower animals in which there is found
+nothing but a partial diffusion, not of blood, but only of crude
+nutritive fluids, it is to be remarked that the channels through which
+the diffusion takes place, are mere excavations through the
+half-organized substance of the body: they have no lining membranes, but
+are mere _lacunae_ traversing a rude tissue. Now countries in which
+civilization is but commencing, display a like condition: there are no
+roads properly so called; but the wilderness of vegetal life covering
+the earth's surface is pierced by tracks, through which the distribution
+of crude commodities takes place. And while, in both cases, the acts of
+distribution occur only at long intervals (the currents, after a pause,
+now setting towards a general centre and now away from it), the transfer
+is in both cases slow and difficult. But among other accompaniments of
+progress, common to animals and societies, comes the formation of more
+definite and complete channels of communication. Blood-vessels acquire
+distinct walls; roads are fenced and gravelled. This advance is first
+seen in those roads or vessels that are nearest to the chief centres of
+distribution; while the peripheral roads and peripheral vessels long
+continue in their primitive states. At a yet later stage of development,
+where comparative finish of structure is found throughout the system as
+well as near the chief centres, there remains in both cases the
+difference that the main channels are comparatively broad and straight,
+while the subordinate ones are narrow and tortuous in proportion to
+their remoteness. Lastly, it is to be remarked that there ultimately
+arise in the higher social organisms, as in the higher individual
+organisms, main channels of distribution still more distinguished by
+their perfect structures, their comparative straightness, and the
+absence of those small branches which the minor channels perpetually
+give off. And in railways we also see, for the first time in the social
+organism, a system of double channels conveying currents in opposite
+directions, as do the arteries and veins of a well-developed animal.
+
+These parallelisms in the evolutions and structures of the circulating
+systems, introduce us to others in the kinds and rates of the movements
+going on through them. Through the lowest societies, as through the
+lowest creatures, the distribution of crude nutriment is by slow
+gurgitations and regurgitations. In creatures that have rude vascular
+systems, just as in societies that are beginning to have roads, there is
+no regular circulation along definite courses; but, instead, periodical
+changes of the currents--now towards this point and now towards that.
+Through each part of an inferior mollusk's body, the blood flows for a
+while in one direction, then stops and flows in the opposite direction;
+just as through a rudely-organized society, the distribution of
+merchandize is slowly carried on by great fairs, occurring in different
+localities, to and from which the currents periodically set. Only
+animals of tolerably complete organizations, like advanced communities,
+are permeated by constant currents that are definitely directed. In
+living bodies, the local and variable currents disappear when there grow
+up great centres of circulation, generating more powerful currents by a
+rhythm which ends in a quick, regular pulsation. And when in social
+bodies there arise great centres of commercial activity, producing and
+exchanging large quantities of commodities, the rapid and continuous
+streams drawn in and emitted by these centres subdue all minor and local
+circulations: the slow rhythm of fairs merges into the faster one of
+weekly markets, and in the chief centres of distribution, weekly markets
+merge into daily markets; while in place of the languid transfer from
+place to place, taking place at first weekly, then twice or thrice a
+week, we by-and-by get daily transfer, and finally transfer many times a
+day--the original sluggish, irregular rhythm, becomes a rapid, equable
+pulse. Mark, too, that in both cases the increased activity, like the
+greater perfection of structure, is much less conspicuous at the
+periphery of the vascular system. On main lines of railway, we have,
+perhaps, a score trains in each direction daily, going at from thirty to
+fifty miles an hour; as, through the great arteries, the blood moves
+rapidly in successive gushes. Along high roads, there go vehicles
+conveying men and commodities with much less, though still considerable,
+speed, and with a much less decided rhythm; as, in the smaller arteries,
+the speed of the blood is greatly diminished and the pulse less
+conspicuous. In parish-roads, narrower, less complete, and more
+tortuous, the rate of movement is further decreased and the rhythm
+scarcely traceable; as in the ultimate arteries. In those still more
+imperfect by-roads which lead from these parish-roads to scattered
+farmhouses and cottages, the motion is yet slower and very irregular;
+just as we find it in the capillaries. While along the field-roads,
+which, in their unformed, unfenced state, are typical of _lacunae_, the
+movement is the slowest, the most irregular, and the most infrequent; as
+it is, not only in the primitive _lacunae_ of animals and societies, but
+as it is also in those _lacunae_ in which the vascular system ends among
+extensive families of inferior creatures.
+
+Thus, then, we find between the distributing systems of living bodies
+and the distributing systems of bodies-politic, wonderfully close
+parallelisms. In the lowest forms of individual and social organisms,
+there exist neither prepared nutritive matters nor distributing
+appliances; and in both, these, arising as necessary accompaniments of
+the differentiation of parts, approach perfection as this
+differentiation approaches completeness. In animals, as in societies,
+the distributing agencies begin to show themselves at the same relative
+periods, and in the same relative positions. In the one, as in the
+other, the nutritive materials circulated are at first crude and simple,
+gradually become better elaborated and more heterogeneous, and have
+eventually added to them a new element facilitating the nutritive
+processes. The channels of communication pass through similar phases of
+development, which bring them to analogous forms. And the directions,
+rhythms, and rates of circulation, progress by like steps to like final
+conditions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We come at length to the nervous system. Having noticed the primary
+differentiation of societies into the governing and governed classes,
+and observed its analogy to the differentiation of the two primary
+tissues which respectively develop into organs of external action and
+organs of alimentation; having noticed some of the leading analogies
+between the development of industrial arrangements and that of the
+alimentary apparatus; and having, above, more fully traced the analogies
+between the distributing systems, social and individual; we have now to
+compare the appliances by which a society, as a whole, is regulated,
+with those by which the movements of an individual creature are
+regulated. We shall find here parallelisms equally striking with those
+already detailed.
+
+The class out of which governmental organization originates, is, as we
+have said, analogous in its relations to the ectoderm of the lowest
+animals and of embryonic forms. And as this primitive membrane, out of
+which the nervo-muscular system is evolved, must, even in the first
+stage of its differentiation, be slightly distinguished from the rest by
+that greater impressibility and contractility characterizing the organs
+to which it gives rise; so, in that superior class which is eventually
+transformed into the directo-executive system of a society (its
+legislative and defensive appliances), does there exist in the
+beginning, a larger endowment of the capacities required for these
+higher social functions. Always, in rude assemblages of men, the
+strongest, most courageous, and most sagacious, become rulers and
+leaders; and, in a tribe of some standing, this results in the
+establishment of a dominant class, characterized on the average by those
+mental and bodily qualities which fit them for deliberation and
+vigorous combined action. Thus that greater impressibility and
+contractility, which in the rudest animal types characterize the units
+of the ectoderm, characterize also the units of the primitive social
+stratum which controls and fights; since impressibility and
+contractility are the respective roots of intelligence and strength.
+
+Again, in the unmodified ectoderm, as we see it in the _Hydra_, the
+units are all endowed both with impressibility and contractility; but as
+we ascend to higher types of organization, the ectoderm differentiates
+into classes of units which divide those two functions between them:
+some, becoming exclusively impressible, cease to be contractile; while
+some, becoming exclusively contractile, cease to be impressible.
+Similarly with societies. In an aboriginal tribe, the directive and
+executive functions are diffused in a mingled form throughout the whole
+governing class. Each minor chief commands those under him, and, if need
+be, himself coerces them into obedience. The council of chiefs itself
+carries out on the battle-field its own decisions. The head chief not
+only makes laws, but administers justice with his own hands. In larger
+and more settled communities, however, the directive and executive
+agencies begin to grow distinct from each other. As fast as his duties
+accumulate, the head chief or king confines himself more and more to
+directing public affairs, and leaves the execution of his will to
+others: he deputes others to enforce submission, to inflict punishments,
+or to carry out minor acts of offence and defence; and only on occasions
+when, perhaps, the safety of the society and his own supremacy are at
+stake, does he begin to act as well as direct. As this differentiation
+establishes itself, the characteristics of the ruler begin to change. No
+longer, as in an aboriginal tribe, the strongest and most daring man,
+the tendency is for him to become the man of greatest cunning,
+foresight, and skill in the management of others; for in societies that
+have advanced beyond the first stage, it is chiefly such qualities
+that insure success in gaining supreme power, and holding it against
+internal and external enemies. Thus that member of the governing class
+who comes to be the chief directing agent, and so plays the same part
+that a rudimentary nervous centre does in an unfolding organism, is
+usually one endowed with some superiorities of nervous organization.
+
+In those larger and more complex communities possessing, perhaps, a
+separate military class, a priesthood, and dispersed masses of
+population requiring local control, there grow up subordinate governing
+agents; who, as their duties accumulate, severally become more directive
+and less executive in their characters. And when, as commonly happens,
+the king begins to collect round himself advisers who aid him by
+communicating information, preparing subjects for his judgment, and
+issuing his orders; we may say that the form of organization is
+comparable to one very general among inferior types of animals, in which
+there exists a chief ganglion with a few dispersed minor ganglia under
+its control.
+
+The analogies between the evolution of governmental structures in
+societies, and the evolution of governmental structures in living
+bodies, are, however, more strikingly displayed during the formation of
+nations by coalescence of tribes--a process already shown to be, in
+several respects, parallel to the development of creatures that
+primarily consist of many like segments. Among other points of community
+between the successive rings which make up the body in the lower
+_Annulosa_, is the possession of similar pairs of ganglia. These pairs
+of ganglia, though connected by nerves, are very incompletely dependent
+on any general controlling power. Hence it results that when the body is
+cut in two, the hinder part continues to move forward under the
+propulsion of its numerous legs; and that when the chain of ganglia has
+been divided without severing the body, the hind limbs may be seen
+trying to propel the body in one direction while the fore limbs are
+trying to propel it in another. But in the higher _Annulosa_, called
+_Articulata_, sundry of the anterior pairs of ganglia, besides growing
+larger, unite in one mass; and this great cephalic ganglion having
+become the co-ordinator of all the creature's movements, there no longer
+exists much local independence. Now may we not in the growth of a
+consolidated kingdom out of petty sovereignties or baronies, observe
+analogous changes? Like the chiefs and primitive rulers above described,
+feudal lords, exercising supreme power over their respective groups of
+retainers, discharge functions analogous to those of rudimentary nervous
+centres. Among these local governing centres there is, in early feudal
+times, very little subordination. They are in frequent antagonism; they
+are individually restrained chiefly by the influence of parties in their
+own class; and they are but irregularly subject to that most powerful
+member of their order who has gained the position of head-suzerain or
+king. As the growth and organization of the society progresses, these
+local directive centres fall more and more under the control of a chief
+directive centre. Closer commercial union between the several segments
+is accompanied by closer governmental union; and these minor rulers end
+in being little more than agents who administer, in their several
+localities, the laws made by the supreme ruler: just as the local
+ganglia above described, eventually become agents which enforce, in
+their respective segments, the orders of the cephalic ganglion. The
+parallelism holds still further. We remarked above, when speaking of the
+rise of aboriginal kings, that in proportion as their territories
+increase, they are obliged not only to perform their executive functions
+by deputy, but also to gather round themselves advisers to aid in their
+directive functions; and that thus, in place of a solitary governing
+unit, there grows up a group of governing units, comparable to a
+ganglion consisting of many cells. Let us here add that the advisers and
+chief officers who thus form the rudiment of a ministry, tend from the
+beginning to exercise some control over the ruler. By the information
+they give and the opinions they express, they sway his judgment and
+affect his commands. To this extent he is made a channel through which
+are communicated the directions originating with them; and in course of
+time, when the advice of ministers becomes the acknowledged source of
+his actions, the king assumes the character of an automatic centre,
+reflecting the impressions made on him from without.
+
+Beyond this complication of governmental structure many societies do not
+progress; but in some, a further development takes place. Our own case
+best illustrates this further development and its further analogies. To
+kings and their ministries have been added, in England, other great
+directive centres, exercising a control which, at first small, has been
+gradually becoming predominant: as with the great governing ganglia
+which especially distinguish the highest classes of living beings.
+Strange as the assertion will be thought, our Houses of Parliament
+discharge, in the social economy, functions which are in sundry respects
+comparable to those discharged by the cerebral masses in a vertebrate
+animal. As it is in the nature of a single ganglion to be affected only
+by special stimuli from particular parts of the body; so it is in the
+nature of a single ruler to be swayed in his acts by exclusive personal
+or class interests. As it is in the nature of a cluster of ganglia,
+connected with the primary one, to convey to it a greater variety of
+influences from more numerous organs, and thus to make its acts conform
+to more numerous requirements; so it is in the nature of the subsidiary
+controlling powers surrounding a king to adapt his rule to a greater
+number of public exigencies. And as it is in the nature of those great
+and latest-developed ganglia which distinguish the higher animals, to
+interpret and combine the multiplied and varied impressions conveyed to
+them from all parts of the system, and to regulate the actions in such
+way as duly to regard them all; so it is in the nature of those great
+and latest-developed legislative bodies which distinguish the most
+advanced societies, to interpret and combine the wishes of all classes
+and localities, and to make laws in harmony with the general wants. We
+may describe the office of the brain as that of _averaging_ the
+interests of life, physical, intellectual, moral; and a good brain is
+one in which the desires answering to these respective interests are so
+balanced, that the conduct they jointly dictate, sacrifices none of
+them. Similarly, we may describe the office of a Parliament as that of
+_averaging_ the interests of the various classes in a community; and a
+good Parliament is one in which the parties answering to these
+respective interests are so balanced, that their united legislation
+allows to each class as much as consists with the claims of the rest.
+Besides being comparable in their duties, these great directive centres,
+social and individual, are comparable in the processes by which their
+duties are discharged. The cerebrum is not occupied with direct
+impressions from without but with the ideas of such impressions. Instead
+of the actual sensations produced in the body, and directly appreciated
+by the sensory ganglia, or primitive nervous centres, the cerebrum
+receives only the representations of these sensations; and its
+consciousness is called _representative_ consciousness, to distinguish
+it from the original or _presentative_ consciousness. Is it not
+significant that we have hit on the same word to distinguish the
+function of our House of Commons? We call it a _representative_ body,
+because the interests with which it deals are not directly presented to
+it, but represented to it by its various members; and a debate is a
+conflict of representations of the results likely to follow from a
+proposed course--a description which applies with equal truth to a
+debate in the individual consciousness. In both cases, too, these great
+governing masses take no part in the executive functions. As, after a
+conflict in the cerebrum, those desires which finally predominate act
+on the subjacent ganglia, and through their instrumentality determine
+the bodily actions; so the parties which, after a parliamentary
+struggle, gain the victory, do not themselves carry out their wishes,
+but get them carried out by the executive divisions of the Government.
+The fulfilment of all legislative decisions still devolves on the
+original directive centres: the impulse passing from the Parliament to
+the Ministers and from the Ministers to the King, in whose name
+everything is done; just as those smaller, first-developed ganglia,
+which in the lowest vertebrata are the chief controlling agents, are
+still, in the brains of the higher vertebrata, the agents through which
+the dictates of the cerebrum are worked out. Moreover, in both cases
+these original centres become increasingly automatic. In the developed
+vertebrate animal, they have little function beyond that of conveying
+impressions to, and executing the determinations of, the larger centres.
+In our highly organized government, the monarch has long been lapsing
+into a passive agent of Parliament; and now, ministries are rapidly
+falling into the same position. Nay, between the two cases there is a
+parallelism even in respect of the exceptions to this automatic action.
+For in the individual creature it happens that under circumstances of
+sudden alarm, as from a loud sound close at hand, an unexpected object
+starting up in front, or a slip from insecure footing, the danger is
+guarded against by some quick involuntary jump, or adjustment of the
+limbs, which occurs before there is time to consider the impending evil
+and take deliberate measures to avoid it: the rationale of which is that
+these violent impressions produced on the senses, are reflected from the
+sensory ganglia to the spinal cord and muscles, without, as in ordinary
+cases, first passing through the cerebrum. In like manner on national
+emergencies calling for prompt action, the King and Ministry, not having
+time to lay the matter before the great deliberative bodies, themselves
+issue commands for the requisite movements or precautions: the
+primitive, and now almost automatic, directive centres, resume for a
+moment their original uncontrolled power. And then, strangest of all,
+observe that in either case there is an after-process of approval or
+disapproval. The individual on recovering from his automatic start, at
+once contemplates the cause of his fright; and, according to the case,
+concludes that it was well he moved as he did, or condemns himself for
+his groundless alarm. In like manner, the deliberative powers of the
+State discuss, as soon as may be, the unauthorized acts of the executive
+powers; and, deciding that the reasons were or were not sufficient,
+grant or withhold a bill of indemnity.[28]
+
+Thus far in comparing the governmental organization of the body-politic
+with that of an individual body, we have considered only the respective
+co-ordinating centres. We have yet to consider the channels through
+which these co-ordinating centres receive information and convey
+commands. In the simplest societies, as in the simplest organisms, there
+is no "internuncial apparatus," as Hunter styled the nervous system.
+Consequently, impressions can be but slowly propagated from unit to unit
+throughout the whole mass. The same progress, however, which, in
+animal-organization, shows itself in the establishment of ganglia or
+directive centres, shows itself also in the establishment of
+nerve-threads, through which the ganglia receive and convey impressions
+and so control remote organs. And in societies the like eventually
+takes place. After a long period during which the directive centres
+communicate with various parts of the society through other means, there
+at last comes into existence an "internuncial apparatus," analogous to
+that found in individual bodies. The comparison of telegraph-wires to
+nerves is familiar to all. It applies, however, to an extent not
+commonly supposed. Thus, throughout the vertebrate sub-kingdom, the
+great nerve-bundles diverge from the vertebrate axis side by side with
+the great arteries; and similarly, our groups of telegraph-wires are
+carried along the sides of our railways. The most striking parallelism,
+however, remains. Into each great bundle of nerves, as it leaves the
+axis of the body along with an artery, there enters a branch of the
+sympathetic nerve; which branch, accompanying the artery throughout its
+ramifications, has the function of regulating its diameter and otherwise
+controlling the flow of blood through it according to local
+requirements. Analogously, in the group of telegraph-wires running
+alongside each railway, there is a wire for the purpose of regulating
+the traffic--for retarding or expediting the flow of passengers and
+commodities, as the local conditions demand. Probably, when our now
+rudimentary telegraph-system is fully developed, other analogies will be
+traceable.
+
+Such, then, is a general outline of the evidence which justifies the
+comparison of societies to living organisms. That they gradually
+increase in mass; that they become little by little more complex; that
+at the same time their parts grow more mutually dependent; and that they
+continue to live and grow as wholes, while successive generations of
+their units appear and disappear; are broad peculiarities which
+bodies-politic display in common with all living bodies; and in which
+they and living bodies differ from everything else. And on carrying out
+the comparison in detail, we find that these major analogies involve
+many minor analogies, far closer than might have been expected. Others
+might be added. We had hoped to say something respecting the different
+types of social organization, and something also on social
+metamorphoses; but we have reached our assigned limits.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 28: It may be well to warn the reader against an error fallen
+into by one who criticised this essay on its first publication--the
+error of supposing that the analogy here intended to be drawn, is a
+specific analogy between the organization of society in England, and the
+human organization. As said at the outset, no such specific analogy
+exists. The above parallel is one between the most-developed systems of
+governmental organization, individual and social; and the vertebrate
+type is instanced merely as exhibiting this most-developed system. If
+any specific comparison were made, which it cannot rationally be, it
+would be made with some much lower vertebrate form than the human.]
+
+
+
+
+THE ORIGIN OF ANIMAL WORSHIP.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Fortnightly Review _for May,_ 1870.]
+
+
+Mr. McLennan's recent essays on the Worship of Animals and Plants have
+done much to elucidate a very obscure subject. By pursuing in this case,
+as before in another case, the truly scientific method of comparing the
+phenomena presented by existing uncivilized races with those which the
+traditions of civilized races present, he has rendered both of them more
+comprehensible than they were before.
+
+It seems to me, however, that Mr. McLennan gives but an indefinite
+answer to the essential question--How did the worship of animals and
+plants arise? Indeed, in his concluding paper, he expressly leaves this
+problem unsolved; saying that his "is not an hypothesis explanatory of
+the origin of _Totemism_, be it remembered, but an hypothesis
+explanatory of the animal and plant worship of the ancient nations." So
+that we have still to ask--Why have savage tribes so generally taken
+animals and plants and other things as totems? What can have induced
+this tribe to ascribe special sacredness to one creature, and that tribe
+to another? And if to these questions the reply is, that each tribe
+considers itself to be descended from the object of its reverence, then
+there presses for answer the further question--How came so strange a
+notion into existence? If this notion occurred in one case only, we
+might set it down to some whim of thought or some illusive occurrence.
+But appealing, as it does, with multitudinous variations among so many
+uncivilized races in different parts of the world, and having left
+numerous marks in the superstitions of extinct civilized races, we
+cannot assume any special or exceptional cause. Moreover, the general
+cause, whatever it may be, must be such as does not negative an
+aboriginal intelligence like in nature to our own. After studying the
+grotesque beliefs of savages, we are apt to suppose that their reason is
+not as our reason. But this supposition is inadmissible. Given the
+amount of knowledge which primitive men possess, and given the imperfect
+verbal symbols used by them in speech and thought, and the conclusions
+they habitually reach will be those that are _relatively_ the most
+rational. This must be our postulate; and, setting out with this
+postulate, we have to ask how primitive men came so generally, if not
+universally, to believe themselves the progeny of animals or plants or
+inanimate bodies. There is, I believe, a satisfactory answer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The proposition with which Mr. McLennan sets out, that totem-worship
+preceded the worship of anthropomorphic gods, is one to which I can
+yield but a qualified assent. It is true in a sense, but not wholly
+true. If the words "gods" and "worship" carry with them their ordinary
+definite meanings, the statement is true; but if their meanings are
+widened so as to comprehend those earliest vague notions out of which
+the definite ideas of gods and worship are evolved, I think it is not
+true. The rudimentary form of all religion is the propitiation of dead
+ancestors, who are supposed to be still existing, and to be capable of
+working good or evil to their descendants. As a preparation for dealing
+hereafter with the principles of sociology, I have, for some years past,
+directed much attention to the modes of thought current in the simpler
+human societies; and evidence of many kinds, furnished by all
+varieties of uncivilized men, has forced on me a conclusion harmonizing
+with that lately expressed in this Review by Prof. Huxley--namely, that
+the savage, conceiving a corpse to be deserted by the active personality
+who dwelt in it, conceives this active personality to be still existing,
+and that his feelings and ideas concerning it form the basis of his
+superstitions. Everywhere we find expressed Or implied the belief that
+each person is double; and that when he dies, his other self, whether
+remaining near at hand or gone far away, may return, and continues
+capable of injuring his enemies and aiding his friends.[29]
+
+But how out of the desire to propitiate this second personality of a
+deceased man (the words "ghost" and "spirit" are somewhat misleading,
+since the savage believes that the second personality reappears in a
+form equally tangible with the first), does there grow up the worship of
+animals, plants, and inanimate objects? Very simply. Savages habitually
+distinguish individuals by names that are either directly suggestive of
+some personal trait or fact of personal history, or else express an
+observed community of character with some well-known object. Such a
+genesis of individual names, before surnames have arisen, is inevitable;
+and how easily it arises we shall see on remembering that it still goes
+on in its original form, even when no longer needful. I do not refer
+only to the significant fact that in some parts of England, as in the
+nail-making districts, nicknames are general, and surnames little
+recognized; but I refer to a common usage among both children and
+adults. The rude man is apt to be known as "a bear;" a sly fellow, as
+"an old fox;" a hypocrite, as "the crocodile." Names of plants, too, are
+used; as when the red-haired boy is called "carrots" by his
+school-fellows. Nor do we lack nicknames derived from inorganic objects
+and agents: instance that given by Mr. Carlyle to the elder
+Sterling--"Captain Whirlwind." Now, in the earliest savage state, this
+metaphorical naming will in most cases commence afresh in each
+generation--must do so, indeed, until surnames of some kind have been
+established. I say in most cases, because there will occur exceptions in
+the cases of men who have distinguished themselves. If "the Wolf,"
+proving famous in fight, becomes a terror to neighbouring tribes, and a
+dominant man in his own, his sons, proud of their parentage, will not
+let fall the fact that they descended from "the Wolf"; nor will this
+fact be forgotten by the rest of the tribe who hold "the Wolf" in awe,
+and see reason to dread his sons. In proportion to the power and
+celebrity of "the Wolf" will this pride and this fear conspire to
+maintain among his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as well as
+among those over whom they dominate, the remembrance of the fact that
+their ancestor was "the Wolf". And if, as will occasionally happen, this
+dominant family becomes the root of a new tribe, the members of this
+tribe will become known to themselves and others as "the Wolves".
+
+We need not rest satisfied with the inference that this inheritance of
+nicknames _will_ take place. There is proof that it _does_ take place.
+As nicknaming after animals, plants, and other objects, still goes on
+among ourselves, so among ourselves does there go on the descent of
+nicknames. An instance has come under my own notice on an estate in the
+West Highlands, belonging to some friends with whom I frequently have
+the pleasure of spending a few weeks in the autumn. "Take a young
+Croshek," has more than once been the reply of my host to the inquiry,
+who should go with me, when I was setting out salmon-fishing. The elder
+Croshek I knew well; and supposed that this name, borne by him and by
+all belonging to him, was the family surname. Years passed before I
+learned that the real surname was Cameron; that the father was called
+Croshek, after the name of his cottage, to distinguish him from other
+Camerons employed about the premises; and that his children had come to
+be similarly distinguished. Though here, as very generally in Scotland,
+the nickname was derived from the place of residence, yet had it been
+derived from an animal, the process would have been the same:
+inheritance of it would have occurred just as naturally. Not even for
+this small link in the argument, however, need we depend on inference.
+There is fact to bear us out. Mr. Bates, in his _Naturalist on the River
+Amazons_ (2d ed., p. 376), describing three half-castes who accompanied
+him on a hunting trip, says--"Two of them were brothers, namely, Joao
+(John) and Zephyrino Jabuti: Jabuti, or tortoise, being a nickname which
+their father had earned for his slow gait, and which, as is usual in
+this country, had descended as the surname of the family." Let me add
+the statement made by Mr. Wallace respecting this same region, that "one
+of the tribes on the river Isanna is called 'Jurupari' (Devils). Another
+is called 'Ducks;' a third, 'Stars;' a fourth, 'Mandiocca.'" Putting
+these two statements together, can there be any doubt about the genesis
+of these tribal names? Let "the Tortoise" become sufficiently
+distinguished (not necessarily by superiority--great inferiority may
+occasionally suffice) and the tradition of descent from him, preserved
+by his descendants themselves if he was superior, and by their
+contemptuous neighbours if he was inferior, may become a tribal
+name.[30]
+
+"But this," it will be said, "does not amount to an explanation of
+animal-worship." True: a third factor remains to be specified. Given a
+belief in the still-existing other self of the deceased ancestor, who
+must be propitiated; given this survival of his metaphorical name among
+his grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc.; and the further requisite
+is that the distinction between metaphor and reality shall be forgotten.
+Let tradition fail to keep clearly in view the fact that the ancestor
+was a man called "the Wolf"--let him be habitually spoken of as "the
+Wolf", just as when alive; and the natural mistake of taking the name
+literally will bring with it, firstly, a belief in descent from an
+actual wolf, and, secondly, a treatment of the wolf in a manner likely
+to propitiate him--a manner appropriate to one who may be the other self
+of the dead ancestor, or one of the kindred, and therefore a friend.
+
+That a misunderstanding of this kind is likely to grow up, becomes
+obvious when we bear in mind the great indefiniteness of
+primitive language. As Prof. Max Mueller says, respecting certain
+misinterpretations of an opposite kind: "These metaphors ... would
+become mere names handed down in the conversation of a family,
+understood perhaps by the grandfather, familiar to the father, but
+strange to the son, and misunderstood by the grandson." We have ample
+reason, then, for supposing such misinterpretations. Nay, we may go
+further. We are justified in saying that they are certain to occur. For
+undeveloped languages contain no words capable of indicating the
+distinction to be kept in view. In the tongues of existing inferior
+races, only concrete objects and acts are expressible. The Australians
+have a name for each kind of tree, but no name for tree irrespective of
+kind. And though some witnesses allege that their vocabulary is not
+absolutely destitute of generic names, its extreme poverty in such is
+unquestionable. Similarly with the Tasmanians. Dr. Milligan says they
+"had acquired very limited powers of abstraction or generalization. They
+possessed no words representing abstract ideas; for each variety of
+gum-tree and wattle-tree, etc., etc., they had a name, but they had no
+equivalent for the expression, 'a tree;' neither could they express
+abstract qualities, such as hard, soft, warm, cold, long, short, round,
+etc.; for 'hard,' they would say 'like a stone;' for 'tall,' they would
+say 'long legs,' etc.; and for 'round,' they said 'like a ball,' 'like
+the moon,' and so on, usually suiting the action to the word, and
+confirming, by some sign, the meaning to be understood."[31] Now, even
+making allowance for over-statement here (which seems needful, since the
+word "long," said to be inexpressible in the abstract, subsequently
+occurs as qualifying a concrete in the expression, "long legs"), it is
+manifest that so imperfect a language must fail to convey the idea of a
+name, as something separate from a thing; and that still less can it be
+capable of indicating the act of naming. Familiar use of such
+partially-abstract words as are applicable to all objects of a class, is
+needful before there can be reached the conception of a name--a word
+symbolizing the symbolic character of other words; and the conception of
+a name, with its answering abstract term, must be long current before
+the verb to name can arise. Hence, men with speech so rude, cannot
+transmit the tradition of an ancestor named "the Wolf", as distinguished
+from the actual wolf. The children and grandchildren who saw him will
+not be led into error; but in later generations, descent from "the Wolf"
+will inevitably come to mean descent from the animal known by that name.
+And the ideas and sentiments which, as above shown, naturally grow up
+round the belief that the dead parents and grandparents are still alive,
+and ready, if propitiated, to befriend their descendants, will be
+extended to the wolf species.
+
+Before passing to other developments of this general view, let me point
+out how not simply animal-worship is thus accounted for, but also the
+conception, so variously illustrated in ancient legends, that animals
+are capable of displaying human powers of speech and thought and action.
+Mythologies are full of stories of beasts and birds and fishes that have
+played intelligent parts in human affairs--creatures that have
+befriended particular persons by giving them information, by guiding
+them, by yielding them help; or else that have deceived them, verbally
+or otherwise. Evidently all these traditions, as well as those about
+abductions of women by animals and fostering of children by them, fall
+naturally into their places as results of the habitual misinterpretation
+I have described.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The probability of the hypothesis will appear still greater when we
+observe how readily it applies to the worship of other orders of
+objects. Belief in actual descent from an animal, strange as we may
+think it, is one by no means incongruous with the unanalyzed experiences
+of the savage; for there come under his notice many metamorphoses,
+vegetal and animal, which are apparently of like character. But how
+could he possibly arrive at so grotesque a conception as that the
+progenitor of his tribe was the sun, or the moon, or a particular star?
+No observation of surrounding phenomena affords the slightest suggestion
+of any such possibility. But by the inheritance of nicknames that are
+eventually mistaken for the names of the objects from which they were
+derived, the belief readily arises--is sure to arise. That the names of
+heavenly bodies will furnish metaphorical names to the uncivilized, is
+manifest. Do we not ourselves call a distinguished singer or actor a
+star? And have we not in poems numerous comparisons of men and women to
+the sun and moon; as in _Love's Labour's Lost_, where the princess is
+called "a gracious moon," and as in _Henry VII._, where we read--"Those
+suns of glory, those two lights of men?" Clearly, primitive peoples will
+be not unlikely thus to speak of the chief hero of a successful battle.
+When we remember how the arrival of a triumphant warrior must affect the
+feelings of his tribe, dissipating clouds of anxiety and brightening all
+faces with joy, we shall see that the comparison of him to the sun is
+quite natural; and in early speech this comparison can be made only by
+calling him the sun. As before, then, it will happen that, through a
+confounding of the metaphorical name with the actual name, his progeny,
+after a few generations, will be regarded by themselves and others as
+descendants of the sun. And, as a consequence, partly of actual
+inheritance of the ancestral character, and partly of maintenance of the
+traditions respecting the ancestor's achievements, it will also
+naturally happen that the solar race will be considered a superior race,
+as we find it habitually is.
+
+The origin of other totems, equally strange, if not even stranger, is
+similarly accounted for, though otherwise unaccountable. One of the
+New-Zealand chiefs claimed as his progenitor the neighbouring great
+mountain, Tongariro. This seemingly-whimsical belief becomes
+intelligible when we observe how easily it may have arisen from a
+nickname. Do we not ourselves sometimes speak figuratively of a tall,
+fat man as a mountain of flesh? And, among a people prone to speak in
+still more concrete terms, would it not happen that a chief, remarkable
+for his great bulk, would be nicknamed after the highest mountain within
+sight, because he towered above other men as this did above surrounding
+hills? Such an occurrence is not simply possible, but probable. And, if
+so, the confusion of metaphor with fact would originate this surprising
+genealogy. A notion perhaps yet more grotesque, thus receives a
+satisfactory interpretation. What could have put it into the imagination
+of any one that he was descended from the dawn? Given the extremest
+credulity, joined with the wildest fancy, it would still seem requisite
+that the ancestor should be conceived as an entity; and the dawn is
+entirely without that definiteness and comparative constancy which enter
+into the conception of an entity. But when we remember that "the Dawn"
+is a natural complimentary name for a beautiful girl opening into
+womanhood, the genesis of the idea becomes, on the above hypothesis,
+quite obvious.[32]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another indirect verification is that we thus get a clear conception of
+Fetichism in general. Under the fetichistic mode of thought, surrounding
+objects and agents are regarded as having powers more or less definitely
+personal in their natures; and the current interpretation is, that human
+intelligence, in its early stages, is obliged to conceive of their
+powers under this form. I have myself hitherto accepted this
+interpretation; though always with a sense of dissatisfaction. This
+dissatisfaction was, I think, well grounded. The theory is scarcely a
+theory properly so-called; but rather, a restatement in other words.
+Uncivilized men _do_ habitually form anthropomorphic conceptions of
+surrounding things; and this observed general fact is transformed into
+the theory that at first they _must_ so conceive them--a theory for
+which the psychological justification attempted, seems to me inadequate.
+From our present stand-point, it becomes manifest that Fetichism is not
+primary but secondary. What has been said above almost of itself shows
+this. Let us, however, follow out the steps of its genesis. Respecting
+the Tasmanians, Dr. Milligan says:--"The names of men and women were
+taken from natural objects and occurrences around, as, for instance, a
+kangaroo, a gum tree, snow, hail, thunder, the wind," flowers in
+blossom, etc. Surrounding objects, then, giving origin to names of
+persons, and being, in the way shown, eventually mistaken for the actual
+progenitors of those who descend from persons nicknamed after them, it
+results that these surrounding objects come to be regarded as in some
+manner possessed of personalities like the human. He whose family
+tradition is that his ancestor was "the Crab," will conceive the crab as
+having a disguised inner power like his own; an alleged descent from
+"the Palm-tree" will entail belief in some kind of consciousness
+dwelling in the palm-tree. Hence, in proportion as the animals, plants,
+and inanimate objects or agents that originate names of persons, become
+numerous (which they will do in proportion as a tribe becomes large and
+the number of persons to be distinguished from one another increases),
+multitudinous things around will acquire imaginary personalities. And so
+it will happen that, as Mr. McLennan says of the Feejeeans, "Vegetables
+and stones, nay, even tools and weapons, pots and canoes, have souls
+that are immortal, and that, like the souls of men, pass on at last to
+Mbulu, the abode of departed spirits." Setting out, then, with a belief
+in the still-living other self of the dead ancestor, the alleged general
+cause of misapprehension affords us an intelligible origin of the
+fetichistic conception; and we are enabled to see how it tends to become
+a general, if not a universal, conception.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Other apparently inexplicable phenomena are at the same time divested of
+their strangeness. I refer to the beliefs in, and worship of, compound
+monsters--impossible hybrid animals, and forms that are half human, half
+brutal. The theory of a primordial Fetichism, supposing it otherwise
+adequate, yields no feasible solutions of these. Grant the alleged
+original tendency to think of all natural agencies as in some way
+personal. Grant, too, that hence may arise a worship of animals, plants,
+and even inanimate bodies. Still the obvious implication is that the
+worship so derived will be limited to things that are, or have been,
+perceived. Why should this mode of thought lead the savage to imagine a
+combination of bird and mammal; and not only to imagine it, but to
+worship it as a god? If even we admit that some illusion may have
+suggested the belief in a creature half man, half fish, we cannot thus
+explain the prevalence among Eastern races of idols representing
+bird-headed men, and men having their legs replaced by the legs of a
+cock, and men with the heads of elephants.
+
+Carrying with us the inferences above drawn, however, it is a corollary
+that ideas and practices of these kinds will arise. When tradition
+preserves both lines of ancestry--when a chief, nicknamed "the Wolf",
+carries away from an adjacent tribe a wife who is remembered either
+under the animal name of her tribe, or as a woman; it will happen that
+if a son distinguishes himself, the remembrance of him among his
+descendants will be that he was born of a wolf and some other animal, or
+of a wolf and a woman. Misinterpretation, arising in the way described
+from defects of language, will entail belief in a creature uniting the
+attributes of the two; and if the tribe grows into a society,
+representations of such a creature will become objects of worship. One
+of the cases cited by Mr. McLennan may here be repeated in illustration.
+"The story of the origin of the Dikokamenni Kirgheez," they say, "from a
+red greyhound and a certain queen and her forty handmaidens, is of
+ancient date." Now, if "the red greyhound" was the nickname of a man
+extremely swift of foot (celebrated runners have been nicknamed
+"greyhound" among ourselves), a story of this kind would naturally
+arise; and if the metaphorical name was mistaken for the actual name,
+there might result, as the idol of the race, a compound form appropriate
+to the story. We need not be surprised, then, at finding among the
+Egyptians the goddess Pasht represented as a woman with a lion's head,
+and the god Har-hat as a man with the head of a hawk. The Babylonian
+gods--one having the form of a man with an eagle's tail, and another
+uniting a human bust to a fish's body--no longer appear such
+unaccountable conceptions. We get feasible explanations, too, of
+sculptures representing sphinxes, winged human-headed bulls, etc.; as
+well as of the stories about centaurs, satyrs, and the rest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ancient myths in general thus acquire meanings considerably different
+from those ascribed to them by comparative mythologists. Though these
+last may be in part correct, yet if the foregoing argument is valid,
+they can scarcely be correct in their main outlines. Indeed, if we read
+the facts the other way upward, regarding as secondary or additional,
+the elements that are said to be primary, while we regard as primary,
+certain elements which are considered as accretions of later times, we
+shall, I think, be nearer the truth.
+
+The current theory of the myth is that it has grown out of the habit of
+symbolizing natural agents and processes, in terms of human
+personalities and actions. Now, it may in the first place be remarked
+that, though symbolization of this kind is common among civilized races,
+it is not common among races that are the most uncivilized. By existing
+savages, surrounding objects, motions, and changes, are habitually used
+to convey ideas respecting human transactions. It needs but to read the
+speech of an Indian chief to see that just as primitive men name one
+another metaphorically after surrounding objects, so do they
+metaphorically describe one another's doings as though they were the
+doings of natural objects. But assuming a contrary habit of thought to
+be the dominant one, ancient myths are explained as results of the
+primitive tendency to symbolize inanimate things and their changes, by
+human beings and their doings.
+
+A kindred difficulty must be added. The change of verbal meaning from
+which the myth is said to arise, is a change opposite in kind to that
+which prevails in the earlier stages of linguistic development. It
+implies a derivation of the concrete from the abstract; whereas at first
+abstracts are derived only from concretes: the concrete of abstracts
+being a subsequent process. In the words of Prof. Max Mueller, there are
+"dialects spoken at the present day which have no abstract nouns, and
+the more we go back in the history of languages, the smaller we find the
+number of these useful expressions" (_Chips_, vol. ii., p. 54); or, as
+he says more recently--"Ancient words and ancient thoughts, for both go
+together, have not yet arrived at that stage of abstraction in which,
+for instance, active powers, whether natural or supernatural, can be
+represented in any but a personal and more or less human form."
+(_Fraser's Magazine_, April, 1870.) Here the concrete is represented as
+original, and the abstract as derivative. Immediately afterward,
+however, Prof. Max Mueller, having given as examples of abstract nouns,
+"day and night, spring and winter, dawn and twilight, storm and
+thunder," goes on to argue that, "as long as people thought in language,
+it was simply impossible to speak of morning or evening, of spring and
+winter, without giving to these conceptions something of an individual,
+active, sexual, and at last, personal character." (_Chips_, vol. ii., p.
+55.) Here the concrete is derived from the abstract--the personal
+conception is represented as coming _after_ the impersonal conception;
+and through such transformation of the impersonal into the personal,
+Prof. Max Mueller considers ancient myths to have arisen. How are these
+propositions reconcilable? One of two things must be said:--If
+originally there were none of these abstract nouns, then the earliest
+statements respecting the daily course of Nature were made in concrete
+terms--the personal elements of the myth were the primitive elements,
+and the impersonal expressions which are their equivalents came later.
+If this is not admitted, then it must be held that, until after there
+arose these abstract nouns, there were no current statements at all
+respecting these most conspicuous objects and changes which the heavens
+and the earth present; and that the abstract nouns having been somehow
+formed, and rightly formed, and used without personal meanings,
+afterward became personalized--a process the reverse of that which
+characterizes early linguistic progress.
+
+No such contradictions occur if we interpret myths after the manner that
+has been indicated. Nay, besides escaping contradictions, we meet with
+unexpected solutions. The moment we try it, the key unlocks for us with
+ease what seems a quite inexplicable fact, which the current hypothesis
+takes as one of its postulates. Speaking of such words as sky and earth,
+dew and rain, rivers and mountains, as well as of the abstract nouns
+above named, Prof. Max Mueller says--"Now in ancient languages every one
+of these words had necessarily a termination expressive of gender, and
+this naturally produced in the mind the corresponding idea of sex, so
+that these names received not only an individual, but a sexual
+character. There was no substantive which was not either masculine or
+feminine; neuters being of later growth, and distinguishable chiefly in
+the nominative." (_Chips_, vol. ii., p. 55.) And this alleged necessity
+for a masculine or feminine implication is assigned as a part of the
+reason why these abstract nouns and collective nouns became
+personalized. But should not a true theory of these first steps in the
+evolution of thought and language show us how it happened that men
+acquired the seemingly-strange habit of so framing their words for sky,
+earth, dew, rain, etc., as to make them indicative of sex? Or, at any
+rate, must it not be admitted that an interpretation which, instead of
+assuming this habit to be "necessary," shows us how it results, thereby
+acquires an additional claim to acceptance? The interpretation I have
+indicated does this. If men and women are habitually nicknamed, and if
+defects of language lead their descendants to regard themselves as
+descendants of the things from which the names were taken, then
+masculine or feminine genders will be ascribed to these things according
+as the ancestors named after them were men or women. If a beautiful
+maiden known metaphorically as "the Dawn," afterwards becomes the
+mother of some distinguished chief called "the North Wind," it will
+result that when, in course of time, the two have been mistaken for the
+actual dawn and the actual north wind, these will, by implication, be
+respectively considered as male and female.
+
+Looking, now, at the ancient myths in general, their seemingly most
+inexplicable trait is the habitual combination of alleged human ancestry
+and adventures, with the possession of personalities otherwise figuring
+in the heavens and on the earth, with totally non-human attributes. This
+enormous incongruity, not the exception but the rule, the current theory
+fails to explain. Suppose it to be granted that the great terrestrial
+and celestial objects and agents naturally become personalized; it does
+not follow that each of them shall have a specific human biography. To
+say of some star that he was the son of this king or that hero, was born
+in a particular place, and when grown up carried off the wife of a
+neighbouring chief, is a gratuitous multiplication of incongruities
+already sufficiently great; and is not accounted for by the alleged
+necessary personalization of abstract and collective nouns. As looked at
+from our present stand-point, however, such traditions become quite
+natural--nay, it is clear that they will necessarily arise. When a
+nickname has become a tribal name, it thereby ceases to be individually
+distinctive; and, as already said, the process of nicknaming inevitably
+continues. It commences afresh with each child; and the nickname of each
+child is both an individual name and a potential tribal name, which may
+become an actual tribal name if the individual is sufficiently
+celebrated. Usually, then, there is a double set of distinctions; under
+one of which the individual is known by his ancestral name, and under
+the other of which he is known by a name suggestive of something
+peculiar to himself: just as we have seen happens among the Scotch
+clans. Consider, now, what will result when language has reached a
+stage of development such that it can convey the notion of naming, and
+is able, therefore, to preserve traditions of human ancestry. It will
+result that the individual will be known both as the son of such and
+such a man by a mother whose name was so and so, and also as "the Crab",
+or "the Bear", or "the Whirlwind"--supposing one of these to be his
+nickname. Such joint use of nicknames and proper names occurs in every
+school. Now, clearly, in advancing from the early state in which
+ancestors become identified with the objects they are nicknamed after,
+to the state in which there are proper names that have lost their
+metaphorical meanings, there must be passed through a state in which
+proper names, partially settled only, may or may not be preserved, and
+in which the new nicknames are still liable to be mistaken for actual
+names. Under such conditions there will arise (especially in the case of
+a distinguished man) this seemingly-impossible combination of human
+parentage with the possession of the non-human, or superhuman,
+attributes of the thing which gave the nickname. Another anomaly
+simultaneously disappears. The warrior may have, and often will have, a
+variety of complimentary nicknames--"the powerful one," "the destroyer,"
+etc. Supposing his leading nickname has been "the Sun"; then when he
+comes to be identified by tradition with the sun, it will happen that
+the sun will acquire his alternative descriptive titles--the swift one,
+the lion, the wolf--titles not obviously appropriate to the sun, but
+quite appropriate to the warrior. Then there comes, too, an explanation
+of the remaining trait of such myths. When this identification of
+conspicuous persons, male and female, with conspicuous natural agents,
+has become settled, there will in due course arise interpretations of
+the actions of these agents in anthropomorphic terms. Suppose, for
+instance, that Endymion and Selene, metaphorically named, the one after
+the setting sun, the other after the moon, have had their human
+individualities merged in those of the sun and moon, through
+misinterpretation of metaphors; what will happen? The legend of their
+loves having to be reconciled with their celestial appearances and
+motions, these will be spoken of as results of feeling and will; so that
+when the sun is going down in the west, while the moon in mid-heaven is
+following him, the fact will be expressed by saying: "Selene loves and
+watches Endymion." Thus we obtain a consistent explanation of the myth
+without distorting it; and without assuming that it contains gratuitous
+fictions. We are enabled to accept the biographical part of it, if not
+as literal fact, still as having had fact for its root. We are helped to
+see how, by an inevitable misinterpretation, there grew out of a more or
+less true tradition, this strange identification of its personages, with
+objects and powers totally non-human in their aspects. And then we are
+shown how, from the attempt to reconcile in thought these contradictory
+elements of the myth, there arose the habit of ascribing the actions of
+these non-human things to human motives.
+
+One further verification may be drawn from facts which are obstacles to
+the converse hypothesis. These objects and powers, celestial and
+terrestrial, which force themselves most on men's attention, have some
+of them several proper names, identified with those of different
+individuals, born at different places, and having different sets of
+adventures. Thus we have the sun variously known as Apollo, Endymion,
+Helios, Tithonos, etc.--personages having irreconcilable genealogies.
+Such anomalies Prof. Max Mueller apparently ascribes to the
+untrustworthiness of traditions, which are "careless about
+contradictions, or ready to solve them sometimes by the most atrocious
+expedients." (_Chips_, vol. ii., p. 84.) But if the evolution of the
+myth has been that above indicated, there exists no anomalies to be got
+rid of: these diverse genealogies become parts of the evidence. For we
+have abundant proof that the same objects furnish metaphorical names of
+men in different tribes. There are Duck tribes in Australia, in South
+America, in North America. The eagle is still a totem among the North
+Americans, as Mr. McLennan shows reason to conclude that it was among
+the Egyptians, among the Jews, and among the Romans. Obviously, for
+reasons already assigned, it naturally happened in the early stages of
+the ancient races, that complimentary comparisons of their heroes to the
+Sun were frequently made. What resulted? The Sun having furnished names
+for sundry chiefs and early founders of tribes, and local traditions
+having severally identified them with the Sun, these tribes, when they
+grew, spread, conquered, or came otherwise into partial union,
+originated a combined mythology, which necessarily contained conflicting
+stories about the Sun-god, as about its other leading personages. If the
+North-American tribes, among several of which there are traditions of a
+Sun-god, had developed a combined civilization, there would similarly
+have arisen among them a mythology which ascribed to the Sun several
+different proper names and genealogies.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let me briefly set down the leading characters of this hypothesis which
+give it probability.
+
+True interpretations of all the natural processes, organic and
+inorganic, that have gone on in past times, habitually trace them to
+causes still in action. It is thus in Geology; it is thus in Biology; it
+is thus in Philology. Here we find this characteristic repeated.
+Nicknaming, the inheritance of nicknames, and to some extent, the
+misinterpretation of nicknames, go on among us still; and were surnames
+absent, language imperfect, and knowledge as rudimentary as of old, it
+is tolerably manifest that results would arise like those we have
+contemplated.
+
+A further characteristic of a true cause is that it accounts not only
+for the particular group of phenomena to be interpreted, but also for
+other groups. The cause here alleged does this. It equally well explains
+the worship of animals, of plants, of mountains, of winds, of celestial
+bodies, and even of appearances too vague to be considered entities. It
+gives us an intelligible genesis of fetichistic conceptions in general.
+It furnishes us with a reason for the practice, otherwise so
+unaccountable, of moulding the words applied to inanimate objects in
+such ways as to imply masculine and feminine genders. It shows us how
+there naturally arose the worship of compound animals, and of monsters
+half man, half brute. And it shows us why the worship of purely
+anthropomorphic deities came later, when language had so far developed
+that it could preserve in tradition the distinction between proper names
+and nicknames.
+
+A further verification of this view is, that it conforms to the general
+law of evolution: showing us how, out of one simple, vague, aboriginal
+form of belief, there have arisen, by continuous differentiations, the
+many heterogeneous forms of belief which have existed and do exist. The
+desire to propitiate the other self of the dead ancestor, displayed
+among savage tribes, dominantly manifested by the early historic races,
+by the Peruvians and Mexicans, by the Chinese at the present time, and
+to a considerable degree by ourselves (for what else is the wish to do
+that which a lately-deceased parent was known to have desired?) has been
+the universal first form of religious belief; and from it have grown up
+the many divergent beliefs which have been referred to.
+
+Let me add, as a further reason for adopting this view, that it
+immensely diminishes the apparently-great contrast between early modes
+of thought and our own mode of thought. Doubtless the aboriginal man
+differs considerably from us, both in intellect and feeling. But such an
+interpretation of the facts as helps us to bridge over the gap, derives
+additional likelihood from doing this. The hypothesis I have sketched
+out enables us to see that primitive ideas are not so gratuitously
+absurd as we suppose, and also enables us to rehabilitate the ancient
+myth with far less distortion than at first sight appears possible.
+
+These views I hope to develop in the first part of _The Principles of
+Sociology_. The large mass of evidence which I shall be able to give in
+support of the hypothesis, joined with the solutions it will be shown to
+yield of many minor problems which I have passed over, will, I think,
+then give to it a still greater probability than it seems now to have.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 29: A critical reader may raise an objection. If
+animal-worship is to be rationally interpreted, how can the
+interpretation set out by assuming a belief in the spirits of dead
+ancestors--a belief which just as much requires explanation? Doubtless
+there is here a wide gap in the argument. I hope eventually to fill it
+up. Here, out of many experiences which conspire to generate this
+belief, I can but briefly indicate the leading ones: 1. It is not
+impossible that his shadow, following him everywhere, and moving as he
+moves, may have some small share in giving to the savage a vague idea of
+his duality. It needs but to watch a child's interest in the movements
+of its shadow, and to remember that at first a shadow cannot be
+interpreted as a negation of light, but is looked upon as an entity, to
+perceive that the savage may very possibly consider it as a specific
+something which forms part of him. 2. A much more decided suggestion of
+the same kind is likely to result from the reflection of his face and
+figure in water: imitating him as it does in his form, colours, motions,
+grimaces. When we remember that not unfrequently a savage objects to
+have his portrait taken, because he thinks whoever carries away a
+representation of him carries away some part of his being, we see how
+probable it is that he thinks his double in the water is a reality in
+some way belonging to him. 3. Echoes must greatly tend to confirm the
+idea of duality otherwise arrived at. Incapable as he is of
+understanding their natural origin, the primitive man necessarily
+ascribes them to living beings--beings who mock him and elude his
+search. 4. The suggestions resulting from these and other physical
+phenomena are, however, secondary in importance. The root of this belief
+in another self lies in the experience of dreams. The distinction so
+easily made by us between our life in dreams and our real life, is one
+which the savage recognizes in but a vague way; and he cannot express
+even that distinction which he perceives. When he awakes, and to those
+who have seen him lying quietly asleep, describes where he has been, and
+what he has done, his rude language fails to state the difference
+between seeing and dreaming that he saw, doing and dreaming that he did.
+From this inadequacy of his language it not only results that he cannot
+truly represent this difference to others, but also that he cannot truly
+represent it to himself. Hence, in the absence of an alternative
+interpretation, his belief, and that of those to whom he tells his
+adventures, is that his other self has been away, and came back when he
+awoke. And this belief, which we find among various existing savage
+tribes, we equally find in the traditions of the early civilized races.
+5. The conception of another self capable of going away and returning,
+receives what to the savage must seem conclusive verifications from the
+abnormal suspensions of consciousness, and derangements of
+consciousness, that occasionally occur in members of his tribe. One who
+has fainted, and cannot be immediately brought back to himself (note the
+significance of our own phrases "returning to himself," etc.) as a
+sleeper can, shows him a state in which the other self has been away for
+a time beyond recall. Still more is this prolonged absence of the other
+self shown him in cases of apoplexy, catalepsy, and other forms of
+suspended animation. Here for hours the other self persists in remaining
+away, and on returning refuses to say where he has been. Further
+verification is afforded by every epileptic subject, into whose body,
+during the absence of the other self, some enemy has entered; for how
+else does it happen that the other self, on returning, denies all
+knowledge of what his body has been doing? And this supposition that the
+body has been "possessed" by some other being, is confirmed by the
+phenomena of somnambulism and insanity. 6. What, then, is the
+interpretation inevitably put upon death? The other self has habitually
+returned after sleep, which simulates death. It has returned, too, after
+fainting, which simulates death much more. It has even returned after
+the rigid state of catalepsy, which simulates death very greatly. Will
+it not return also after this still more prolonged quiescence and
+rigidity? Clearly it is quite possible--quite probable even. The dead
+man's other self is gone away for a long time, but it still exists
+somewhere, far or near, and may at any moment come back to do all he
+said he would do. Hence the various burial-rites--the placing of weapons
+and valuables along with the body, the daily bringing of food to it,
+etc. I hope hereafter to show that, with such knowledge of the facts as
+he has, this interpretation is the most reasonable the savage can arrive
+at. Let me here, however, by way of showing how clearly the facts bear
+out this view, give one illustration out of many. "The ceremonies with
+which they [the Veddahs] invoke them [the shades of the dead] are few as
+they are simple. The most common is the following. An arrow is fixed
+upright in the ground, and the Veddah dances slowly round it, chanting
+this invocation, which is almost musical in its rhythm:"
+
+     "Ma miya, ma miy, ma deya,
+     Topang koyihetti mittigan yandah?"
+
+   "My departed one, my departed one, my God!
+   Where art thou wandering?"
+
+"This invocation appears to be used on all occasions when the
+intervention of the guardian spirits is required, in sickness,
+preparatory to hunting, etc. Sometimes, in the latter case, a portion of
+the flesh of the game is promised as a votive offering, in the event of
+the chase being successful; and they believe that the spirits will
+appear to them in dreams and tell them where to hunt. Sometimes they
+cook food and place it in the dry bed of a river, or some other secluded
+spot, and then call on their deceased ancestors by name. 'Come and
+partake of this! Give us maintenance as you did when living! Come,
+wheresoever you may be; on a tree, on a rock, in the forest, come!' And
+they dance round the food, half chanting, half shouting, the
+invocation."--Bailey, in _Transactions of the Ethnological Society_,
+London, N. S., ii., p. 301-2.]
+
+[Footnote 30: Since the foregoing pages were written, my attention has
+been drawn by Sir John Lubbock to a passage in the appendix to the
+second edition of _Prehistoric Times_, in which he has indicated this
+derivation of tribal names. He says: "In endeavouring to account for the
+worship of animals, we must remember that names are very frequently
+taken from them. The children and followers of a man called the Bear or
+the Lion would make that a tribal name. Hence the animal itself would be
+first respected, at last worshipped." Of the genesis of this worship,
+however, Sir John Lubbock does not give any specific explanation.
+Apparently he inclines to the belief, tacitly adopted also by Mr.
+McLennan, that animal-worship is derived from an original Fetichism, of
+which it is a more developed form. As will shortly be seen, I take a
+different view of its origin.]
+
+[Footnote 31: _Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania_, iii., p.
+280-81.]
+
+[Footnote 32: I have since found, however, that the name Dawn, which
+occurs in various places, seems more frequently a birth-name, given
+because the birth took place at dawn.]
+
+
+
+
+MORALS AND MORAL SENTIMENTS.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Fortnightly Review _for April,_ 1871.]
+
+
+If a writer who discusses unsettled questions takes up every gauntlet
+thrown down to him, polemical writing will absorb much of his energy.
+Having a power of work which unfortunately does not suffice for
+executing with anything like due rapidity the task I have undertaken, I
+have made it a policy to avoid controversy as much as possible, even at
+the cost of being seriously misunderstood. Hence it resulted that when
+in _Macmillan's Magazine_, for July, 1869, Mr. Richard Hutton published,
+under the title "A Questionable Parentage for Morals," a criticism on a
+doctrine of mine, I decided to let his misrepresentations pass unnoticed
+until, in the course of my work, I arrived at the stage where, by a full
+exposition of this doctrine, they would be set aside. It did not occur
+to me that, in the meantime, these erroneous statements, accepted as
+true statements, would be repeated by other writers, and my views
+commented upon as untenable. This, however, has happened. In more
+periodicals than one, I have seen it asserted that Mr. Hutton has
+effectually disposed of my hypothesis. Supposing that this hypothesis
+has been rightly expressed by Mr. Hutton, Sir John Lubbock, in his
+_Origin of Civilisation_, &c., has been led to express a partial
+dissent; which I think he would not have expressed had my own
+exposition been before him. Mr. Mivart, too, in his recent _Genesis of
+Species_, has been similarly betrayed into misapprehensions. And now Sir
+Alexander Grant, following the same lead, has conveyed to the readers of
+the _Fortnightly Review_ another of these conceptions, which is but very
+partially true. Thus I find myself compelled to say as much as will
+serve to prevent further spread of the mischief.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If a general doctrine concerning a highly-involved class of phenomena
+could be adequately presented in a single paragraph of a letter, the
+writing of books would be superfluous. In the brief exposition of
+certain ethical doctrines held by me, which is given in Professor Bain's
+_Mental and Moral Science_, it is stated that they are--
+
+     "as yet, nowhere fully expressed. They form part of the more
+     general doctrine of Evolution which he is engaged in working out;
+     and they are at present to be gathered only from scattered
+     passages. It is true that, in his first work, _Social Statics_, he
+     presented what he then regarded as a tolerably complete view of one
+     division of Morals. But without abandoning this view, he now
+     regards it as inadequate--more especially in respect of its basis."
+
+Mr. Hutton, however, taking the bare enunciation of one part of this
+basis, deals with it critically; and, in the absence of any exposition
+by me, sets forth what he supposes to be my grounds for it, and proceeds
+to show that they are unsatisfactory.
+
+If, in his anxiety to suppress what he doubtless regards as a pernicious
+doctrine, Mr. Hutton could not wait until I had explained myself, it
+might have been expected that he would use whatever information was to
+be had concerning it. So far from seeking out such information, however,
+he has, in a way for which I cannot account, ignored the information
+immediately before him.
+
+The title which Mr. Hutton has chosen for his criticism is, "A
+Questionable Parentage for Morals." Now he has ample means of knowing
+that I allege a primary basis of Morals, quite independent of that
+which he describes and rejects. I do not refer merely to the fact that
+having, when he reviewed _Social Statics_,[33] expressed his very
+decided dissent from this primary basis, he must have been aware that I
+alleged it; for he may say that in the many years which have since
+elapsed he had forgotten all about it. But I refer to the distinct
+enunciation of this primary basis in that letter to Mr. Mill from which
+he quotes. In a preceding paragraph of the letter, I have explained
+that, while I accept utilitarianism in the abstract, I do not accept
+that current utilitarianism which recognizes for the guidance of conduct
+nothing beyond empirical generalizations; and I have contended that--
+
+     "Morality, properly so-called--the science of right conduct--has
+     for its object to determine _how_ and _why_ certain modes of
+     conduct are detrimental, and certain other modes beneficial. These
+     good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary
+     consequences of the constitution of things; and I conceive it to be
+     the business of Moral Science to deduce, from the laws of life and
+     the conditions of existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend
+     to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having
+     done this, its deductions are to be recognised as laws of conduct;
+     and are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of
+     happiness or misery."
+
+Nor is this the only enunciation of what I conceive to be the primary
+basis of morals, contained in this same letter. A subsequent paragraph
+separated by four lines only from that which Mr. Hutton extracts,
+commences thus:--
+
+    "Progressing civilization, which is of necessity a succession of
+    compromises between old and new, requires a perpetual re-adjustment
+    of the compromise between the ideal and the practicable in social
+    arrangements: to which end, both elements of the compromise must be
+    kept in view. If it is true that pure rectitude prescribes a system
+    of things far too good for men as they are, it is not less true that
+    mere expediency does not of itself tend to establish a system of
+    things any better than that which exists. While absolute morality
+    owes to expediency the checks which prevent it from rushing into
+    Utopian absurdities, expediency is indebted to absolute morality for
+    all stimulus to improvement. Granted that we are chiefly interested
+    in ascertaining what is _relatively right_, it still follows that we
+     must first consider what is _absolutely right_; since the one
+    conception presupposes the other."
+
+I do not see how there could well be a more emphatic assertion that
+there exists a primary basis of morals independent of, and in a sense
+antecedent to, that which is furnished by experiences of utility; and
+consequently, independent of, and, in a sense antecedent to, those moral
+sentiments which I conceive to be generated by such experiences. Yet no
+one could gather from Mr. Hutton's article that I assert this; or would
+even find reasons for a faint suspicion that I do so. From the reference
+made to my further views, he would infer my acceptance of that empirical
+utilitarianism which I have expressly repudiated. And the title which
+Mr. Hutton gives to his paper clearly asserts, by implication, that I
+recognize no "parentage for morals" beyond that of the accumulation and
+organization of the effects of experience. I cannot believe that Mr.
+Hutton intended to convey this erroneous impression. He was, I suppose,
+too much absorbed in contemplating the proposition he combats to
+observe, or, at least, to attach any weight to, the propositions which
+accompany it. But I am sorry he did not perceive the mischief he was
+likely to do me by spreading this one-sided statement.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I pass now to the particular question at issue--not the "parentage for
+morals," but the parentage of moral sentiments. In describing my view on
+this more special doctrine, Mr. Hutton has similarly, I regret to say,
+neglected the data which would have helped him to draw an approximately
+true outline of it. It cannot well be that the existence of such data
+was unknown to him. They are contained in the _Principles of
+Psychology_; and Mr. Hutton reviewed that work when it was first
+published.[34] In a chapter on the Feelings, which occurs near the end
+of it, there is sketched out a process of evolution by no means like
+that which Mr. Hutton indicates; and had he turned to that chapter he
+would have seen that his description of the genesis of moral sentiments
+out of organized experiences is not such a one as I should have given.
+Let me quote a passage from that chapter.
+
+     "Not only are those emotions which form the immediate stimuli to
+     actions, thus explicable; but the like explanation applies to the
+     emotions that leave the subject of them comparatively passive: as,
+     for instance, the emotion produced by beautiful scenery. The
+     gradually increasing complexity in the groups of sensations and
+     ideas co-ordinated, ends in the co-ordination of those vast
+     aggregations of them which a grand landscape excites and suggests.
+     The infant taken into the midst of mountains, is totally unaffected
+     by them; but is delighted with the small group of attributes and
+     relations presented in a toy. The child can appreciate, and be
+     pleased with, the more complicated relations of household objects
+     and localities, the garden, the field, and the street. But it is
+     only in youth and mature age, when individual things and small
+     assemblages of them have become familiar and automatically
+     cognizable, that those immense assemblages which landscapes present
+     can be adequately grasped, and the highly aggregated states of
+     consciousness produced by them, experienced. Then, however, the
+     various minor groups of states that have been in earlier days
+     severally produced by trees, by fields, by streams, by cascades, by
+     rocks, by precipices, by mountains, by clouds, are aroused
+     together. Along with the sensations immediately received, there are
+     partially excited the myriads of sensations that have been in times
+     past received from objects such as those presented; further, there
+     are partially excited the various incidental feelings that were
+     experienced on all these countless past occasions; and there are
+     probably also excited certain deeper, but now vague combinations of
+     states, that were organized in the race during barbarous times,
+     when its pleasurable activities were chiefly among the woods and
+     waters. And out of all these excitations, some of them actual but
+     most of them nascent, is composed the emotion which a fine
+     landscape produces in us."
+
+It is, I think, amply manifest that the processes here indicated are not
+to be taken as intellectual processes--not as processes in which
+recognized relations between pleasures and their antecedents, or
+intelligent adaptations of means to ends, form the dominant elements.
+The state of mind produced by an aggregate of picturesque objects is not
+one resolvable into propositions. The sentiment does not contain within
+itself any consciousness of causes and consequences of happiness. The
+vague recollections of other beautiful scenes and other delightful days
+which it dimly rouses, are not aroused because of any rational
+co-ordinations of ideas that have been formed in bygone years. Mr.
+Hutton, however, assumes that in speaking of the genesis of moral
+feelings as due to inherited experiences of the pleasures and pains
+caused by certain modes of conduct, I am speaking of reasoned-out
+experiences--experiences consciously accumulated and generalized. He
+overlooks the fact that the genesis of emotions is distinguished from
+the genesis of ideas in this; that whereas the ideas are composed of
+elements that are simple, definitely related, and (in the case of
+general ideas) constantly related, emotions are composed of enormously
+complex aggregates of elements that are never twice alike, and which
+stand in relations that are never twice alike. The difference in the
+resulting modes of consciousness is this:--In the genesis of an idea the
+successive experiences, be they of sounds, colours, touches, tastes, or
+be they of the special objects which combine many of these into groups,
+have so much in common that each, when it occurs, can be definitely
+thought of as like those which preceded it. But in the genesis of an
+emotion the successive experiences so far differ that each of them, when
+it occurs, suggests past experiences which are not specifically similar,
+but have only a general similarity; and, at the same time, it suggests
+benefits or evils in past experience which likewise are various in their
+special natures, though they have a certain community in general nature.
+Hence it results that the consciousness aroused is a multitudinous,
+confused consciousness, in which, along with a certain kind of
+combination among the impressions received from without, there is a
+vague cloud of ideal combinations akin to them, and a vague mass of
+ideal feelings of pleasure or pain which were associated with these. We
+have abundant proof that feelings grow up without reference to
+recognized causes and consequences, and without the possessor of them
+being able to say why they have grown up; though analysis,
+nevertheless, shows that they have been formed out of connected
+experiences. The familiar fact that a kind of jam which was, during
+childhood, repeatedly taken after medicine, may become, by simple
+association of sensations, so nauseous that it cannot be tolerated in
+after-life, illustrates clearly the way in which repugnances may be
+established by habitual association of feelings, without any belief in
+causal connexion; or rather, in spite of the knowledge that there is no
+causal connexion. Similarly with pleasurable emotions. The cawing of
+rooks is not in itself an agreeable sound: musically considered, it is
+very much the contrary. Yet the cawing of rooks usually produces in
+people feelings of a grateful kind--feelings which most of them suppose
+to result from the quality of the sound itself. Only the few who are
+given to self-analysis are aware that the cawing of rooks is agreeable
+to them because it has been connected with countless of their greatest
+gratifications--with the gathering of wild flowers in childhood; with
+Saturday-afternoon excursions in school-boy days; with midsummer
+holidays in the country, when books were thrown aside and lessons were
+replaced by games and adventures in the fields; with fresh, sunny
+mornings in after-years, when a walking excursion was an immense relief
+from toil. As it is, this sound, though not causally related to all
+these multitudinous and varied past delights, but only often associated
+with them, can no more be heard without rousing a dim consciousness of
+these delights, than the voice of an old friend unexpectedly coming into
+the house can be heard without suddenly raising a wave of that feeling
+that has resulted from the pleasures of past companionship. If we are to
+understand the genesis of emotions, either in the individual or in the
+race, we must take account of this all-important process. Mr. Hutton,
+however, apparently overlooking it, and not having reminded himself, by
+referring to the _Principles of Psychology_, that I insist upon it,
+represents my hypothesis to be that a certain sentiment results from the
+consolidation of intellectual conclusions! He speaks of me as believing
+that "what seems to us now the 'necessary' intuitions and _a priori_
+assumptions of human nature, are likely to prove, when scientifically
+analysed, nothing but a similar conglomeration of our ancestors' _best
+observations and most useful empirical rules_." He supposes me to think
+that men having, in past times, come to _see_ that truthfulness was
+useful, "the habit of approving truth-speaking and fidelity to
+engagements, which was first based on this ground of utility, became so
+rooted, that the utilitarian ground of it was forgotten, and _we_ find
+ourselves springing to the belief in truth-speaking and fidelity to
+engagements from an inherited tendency." Similarly throughout, Mr.
+Hutton has so used the word "utility," and so interpreted it on my
+behalf, as to make me appear to mean that moral sentiment is formed out
+of _conscious generalizations_ respecting what is beneficial and what
+detrimental. Were such my hypothesis, his criticisms would be very much
+to the point; but as such is not my hypothesis, they fall to the ground.
+The experiences of utility I refer to are those which become registered,
+not as distinctly recognized connexions between certain kinds of acts
+and certain kinds of remote results, but those which become registered
+in the shape of associations between groups of feelings that have often
+recurred together, though the relation between them has not been
+consciously generalized--associations the origin of which may be as
+little perceived as is the origin of the pleasure given by the sounds of
+a rookery; but which, nevertheless, have arisen in the course of daily
+converse with things, and serve as incentives or deterrents.
+
+In the paragraph which Mr. Hutton has extracted from my letter to Mr.
+Mill, I have indicated an analogy between those effects of emotional
+experiences out of which I believe moral sentiments have been developed,
+and those effects of intellectual experiences out of which I believe
+space-intuitions have been developed. Rightly considering that the first
+of these hypotheses cannot stand if the last is disproved, Mr. Hutton
+has directed part of his attack against this last. But would it not have
+been well if he had referred to the _Principles of Psychology_, where
+this last hypothesis is set forth at length, before criticising it?
+Would it not have been well to give an abstract of my own description of
+the process, instead of substituting what he _supposes_ my description
+must be? Any one who turns to the _Principles of Psychology_ (first
+edition, pp. 218-245), and reads the two chapters, "The Perception of
+Body as presenting Statical Attributes", and "The Perception of Space",
+will find that Mr. Hutton's account of my view on this matter has given
+him no notion of the view as it is expressed by me; and will, perhaps,
+be less inclined to smile than he was when he read Mr. Hutton's account.
+I cannot here do more than thus imply the invalidity of such part of Mr.
+Hutton's argument as proceeds upon this incorrect representation. The
+pages which would be required for properly explaining the doctrine that
+space-intuitions result from organized experiences may be better used
+for explaining this analogous doctrine at present before us. This I will
+now endeavour to do; not indirectly by correcting misapprehensions, but
+directly by an exposition which shall be as brief as the extremely
+involved nature of the process allows.
+
+An infant in arms, when old enough to gaze at objects around with some
+vague recognition, smiles in response to the laughing face and soft
+caressing voice of its mother. Let there come some one who, with an
+angry face, speaks to it in loud, harsh tones. The smile disappears, the
+features contract into an expression of pain, and, beginning to cry, it
+turns away its head, and makes such movements of escape as are possible.
+What is the meaning of these facts? Why does not the frown make it
+smile, and the mother's laugh make it weep? There is but one answer.
+Already in its developing brain there is coming into play the structure
+through which one cluster of visual and auditory impressions excites
+pleasurable feelings, and the structure through which another cluster of
+visual and auditory impressions excites painful feelings. The infant
+knows no more about the relation existing between a ferocious expression
+of face, and the evils which may follow perception of it, than the young
+bird just out of its nest knows of the possible pain and death which may
+be inflicted by a man coming towards it; and as certainly in the one
+case as in the other, the alarm felt is due to a partially-established
+nervous structure. Why does this partially-established nervous structure
+betray its presence thus early in the human being? Simply because, in
+the past experiences of the human race, smiles and gentle tones in those
+around have been the habitual accompaniments of pleasurable feelings;
+while pains of many kinds, immediate and more or less remote, have been
+continually associated with the impressions received from knit brows,
+and set teeth, and grating voice. Much deeper down than the history of
+the human race must we go to find the beginnings of these connexions.
+The appearances and sounds which excite in the infant a vague dread,
+indicate danger; and do so because they are the physiological
+accompaniments of destructive action--some of them common to man and
+inferior mammals, and consequently understood by inferior mammals, as
+every puppy shows us. What we call the natural language of anger, is due
+to a partial contraction of those muscles which actual combat would call
+into play; and all marks of irritation, down to that passing shade over
+the brow which accompanies slight annoyance, are incipient stages of
+these same contractions. Conversely with the natural language of
+pleasure, and of that state of mind which we call amicable feeling:
+this, too, has a physiological interpretation.[35]
+
+Let us pass now from the infant in arms to the children in the nursery.
+What have the experiences of each been doing in aid of the emotional
+development we are considering? While its limbs have been growing more
+agile by exercise, its manipulative skill increasing by practice, its
+perceptions of objects growing by use quicker, more accurate, more
+comprehensive; the associations between these two sets of impressions
+received from those around, and the pleasures and pains received along
+with them, or after them, have been by frequent repetition made
+stronger, and their adjustments better. The dim sense of pain and the
+vague glow of delight which the infant felt, have, in the urchin,
+severally taken shapes that are more definite. The angry voice of a
+nursemaid no longer arouses only a formless feeling of dread, but also a
+specific idea of the slap that may follow. The frown on the face of a
+bigger brother, along with the primitive, indefinable sense of ill,
+brings the ideas of ills that are definable as kicks, and cuffs, and
+pullings of hair, and losses of toys. The faces of parents, looking now
+sunny, now gloomy, have grown to be respectively associated with
+multitudinous forms of gratification and multitudinous forms of
+discomfort or privation. Hence these appearances and sounds, which imply
+amity or enmity in those around, become symbolic of happiness and
+misery; so that eventually, perception of the one set or the other can
+scarcely occur without raising a wave of pleasurable feeling or of
+painful feeling. The body of this wave is still substantially of the
+same nature as it was at first; for though in each of these
+multitudinous experiences a special set of facial and vocal signs has
+been connected with a special set of pleasures or pains; yet since these
+pleasures or pains have been immensely varied in their kinds and
+combinations, and since the signs that preceded them were in no two
+cases quite alike, it results that even to the end the consciousness
+produced remains as vague as it is voluminous. The thousands of
+partially-aroused ideas resulting from past experiences are massed
+together and superposed, so as to form an aggregate in which nothing is
+distinct, but which has the character of being pleasurable or painful
+according to the nature of its original components: the chief difference
+between this developed feeling and the feeling aroused in the infant
+being, that on bright or dark background forming the body of it, may now
+be sketched out in thought the particular pleasures or pains which the
+particular circumstances suggest as likely.
+
+What must be the working of this process under the conditions of
+aboriginal life? The emotions given to the young savage by the natural
+language of love and hate in the members of his tribe, gain first a
+partial definiteness in respect to his intercourse with his family and
+playmates; and he learns by experience the utility, in so far as his own
+ends are concerned, of avoiding courses which call from others
+manifestations of anger, and taking courses which call from them
+manifestations of pleasure. Not that he consciously generalizes. He does
+not at that age, probably not at any age, formulate his experiences in
+the general principle that it is well for him to do things which bring
+smiles, and to avoid doing things which bring frowns. What happens is
+that having, in the way shown, inherited this connexion between the
+perception of anger in others and the feeling of dread, and having
+discovered that certain acts of his bring on this anger, he cannot
+subsequently think of committing one of these acts without thinking of
+the resulting anger, and feeling more or less of the resulting dread. He
+has no thought of the utility or inutility of the act itself: the
+deterrent is the mainly vague, but partially definite, fear of evil that
+may follow. So understood, the deterring emotion is one which has grown
+out of experiences of utility, using that word in its ethical sense; and
+if we ask why this dreaded anger is called forth from others, we shall
+habitually find that it is because the forbidden act entails pain
+somewhere--is negatived by utility. On passing from domestic injunctions
+to injunctions current in the tribe, we see no less clearly how these
+emotions produced by approbation and reprobation come to be connected in
+experience with actions which are beneficial to the tribe, and actions
+which are detrimental to the tribe; and how there consequently grow up
+incentives to the one class of actions and prejudices against the other
+class. From early boyhood the young savage hears recounted the daring
+deeds of his chief--hears them in words of praise, and sees all faces
+glowing with admiration. From time to time also he listens while some
+one's cowardice is described in tones of scorn, and with contemptuous
+metaphors, and sees him meet with derision and insult whenever he
+appears. That is to say, one of the things that come to be associated in
+his mind with smiling faces, which are symbolical of pleasures in
+general, is courage; and one of the things that come to be associated in
+his mind with frowns and other marks of enmity, which form his symbol of
+unhappiness, is cowardice. These feelings are not formed in him because
+he has reasoned his way to the truth that courage is useful to the
+tribe, and, by implication, to himself, or to the truth that cowardice
+is a cause of evil. In adult life he may perhaps see this; but he
+certainly does not see it at the time when bravery is thus joined in his
+consciousness with all that is good, and cowardice with all that is bad.
+Similarly there are produced in him feelings of inclination or
+repugnance towards other lines of conduct that have become established
+or interdicted, because they are beneficial or injurious to the tribe;
+though neither the young nor the adults know why they have become
+established or interdicted. Instance the praiseworthiness of
+wife-stealing, and the viciousness of marrying within the tribe.
+
+We may now ascend a stage to an order of incentives and restraints
+derived from these. The primitive belief is that every dead man becomes
+a demon, who is often somewhere at hand, may at any moment return, may
+give aid or do mischief, and has to be continually propitiated. Hence
+among other agents whose approbation or reprobation are contemplated by
+the savage as consequences of his conduct, are the spirits of his
+ancestors. When a child he is told of their deeds, now in triumphant
+tones, now in whispers of horror; and the instilled belief that they may
+inflict some vaguely-imagined but fearful evil, or give some great help,
+becomes a powerful incentive or deterrent. Especially does this happen
+when the story is of a chief, distinguished for his strength, his
+ferocity, his persistence in that revenge on enemies which the
+experiences of the savage make him regard as beneficial and virtuous.
+The consciousness that such a chief, dreaded by neighbouring tribes, and
+dreaded, too, by members of his own tribe, may reappear and punish those
+who have disregarded his injunctions, becomes a powerful motive. But it
+is clear, in the first place, that the imagined anger and the imagined
+satisfaction of this deified chief, are simply transfigured forms of the
+anger and satisfaction displayed by those around; and that the feelings
+accompanying such imaginations have the same original root in the
+experiences which have associated an average of painful results with the
+manifestation of another's anger, and an average of pleasurable results
+with the manifestation of another's satisfaction. And it is clear, in
+the second place, that the actions thus forbidden and encouraged must be
+mostly actions that are respectively detrimental and beneficial to the
+tribe; since the successful chief is usually a better judge than the
+rest, and has the preservation of the tribe at heart. Hence experiences
+of utility, consciously or unconsciously organized, underlie his
+injunctions; and the sentiments which prompt obedience are, though very
+indirectly and without the knowledge of those who feel them, referable
+to experiences of utility.
+
+This transfigured form of restraint, differing at first but little from
+the original form, admits of immense development. Accumulating
+traditions, growing in grandeur as they are repeated from generation to
+generation, make more and more superhuman the early-recorded hero of the
+race. His powers of inflicting punishment and giving happiness become
+ever greater, more multitudinous, and more varied; so that the dread of
+divine displeasure, and the desire to obtain divine approbation, acquire
+a certain largeness and generality. Still the conceptions remain
+anthropomorphic. The revengeful deity continues to be thought of in
+terms of human emotions, and continues to be represented as displaying
+these emotions in human ways. Moreover, the sentiments of right and
+duty, so far as they have become developed, refer mainly to divine
+commands and interdicts; and have little reference to the natures of the
+acts commanded or interdicted. In the intended offering-up of Isaac, in
+the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter, and in the hewing to pieces of
+Agag, as much as in the countless atrocities committed from religious
+motives by various early historic races, as by some existing savage
+races, we see that the morality and immorality of actions, as we
+understand them, are at first little recognized; and that the feelings,
+chiefly of dread, which serve in place of them, are feelings felt
+towards the unseen beings supposed to issue the commands and interdicts.
+
+Here it will be said that, as just admitted, these are not the moral
+sentiments properly so called. They are simply sentiments that precede
+and make possible those highest sentiments which do not refer either to
+personal benefits or evils to be expected from men, or to more remote
+rewards and punishments. Several comments are, however, called forth by
+this criticism. One is, that if we glance back at past beliefs and their
+correlative feelings, as shown in Dante's poem, in the mystery-plays of
+the middle ages, in St. Bartholomew massacres, in burnings for heresy,
+we get proof that in comparatively modern times right and wrong meant
+little else than subordination or insubordination--to a divine ruler
+primarily, and under him to a human ruler. Another is, that down to our
+own day this conception largely prevails, and is even embodied in
+elaborate ethical works--instance the _Essays on the Principles of
+Morality_, by Jonathan Dymond, which recognizes no ground of moral
+obligation save the will of God as expressed in the current creed. And
+yet a further is, that while in sermons the torments of the damned and
+the joys of the blessed are set forth as the dominant deterrents and
+incentives, and while we have prepared for us printed instructions "how
+to make the best of both worlds," it cannot be denied that the feelings
+which impel and restrain men are still largely composed of elements like
+those operative on the savage: the dread, partly vague, partly specific,
+associated with the idea of reprobation, human and divine, and the sense
+of satisfaction, partly vague, partly specific, associated with the idea
+of approbation, human and divine.
+
+But during the growth of that civilization which has been made possible
+by these ego-altruistic sentiments, there have been slowly evolving the
+altruistic sentiments. Development of these has gone on only as fast as
+society has advanced to a state in which the activities are mainly
+peaceful. The root of all the altruistic sentiments is sympathy; and
+sympathy could become dominant only when the mode of life, instead of
+being one that habitually inflicted direct pain, became one which
+conferred direct and indirect benefits: the pains inflicted being mainly
+incidental and indirect. Adam Smith made a large step towards this truth
+when he recognized sympathy as giving rise to these superior controlling
+emotions. His _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, however, requires to be
+supplemented in two ways. The natural process by which sympathy becomes
+developed into a more and more important element of human nature has to
+be explained; and there has also to be explained the process by which
+sympathy produces the highest and most complex of the altruistic
+sentiments--that of justice. Respecting the first process, I can here do
+no more than say that sympathy may be proved, both inductively and
+deductively, to be the concomitant of gregariousness: the two having all
+along-increased by reciprocal aid. Multiplication has ever tended to
+force into an association, more or less close, all creatures having
+kinds of food and supplies of food that permit association; and
+established psychological laws warrant the inference that some sympathy
+will inevitably result from habitual manifestations of feelings in
+presence of one another, and that the gregariousness being augmented by
+the increase of sympathy, further facilitates the development of
+sympathy. But there are negative and positive checks upon this
+development--negative, because sympathy cannot advance faster than
+intelligence advances, since it presupposes the power of interpreting
+the natural language of the various feelings, and of mentally
+representing those feelings; positive, because the immediate needs of
+self-preservation are often at variance with its promptings, as, for
+example, during the predatory stages of human progress. For explanations
+of the second process, I must refer to the _Principles of Psychology_ (Sec.
+202, first edition, and Sec. 215, second edition) and to _Social Statics_,
+part ii. chapter v.[36] Asking that in default of space these
+explanations may be taken for granted, let me here point out in what
+sense even sympathy, and the sentiments that result from it, are due to
+experiences of utility. If we suppose all thought of rewards or
+punishments, immediate or remote, to be left out of consideration, it is
+clear that any one who hesitates to inflict a pain because of the vivid
+representation of that pain which rises in his consciousness, is
+restrained, not by any sense of obligation or by any formulated doctrine
+of utility, but by the painful association established in him. And it is
+clear that if, after repeated experiences of the moral discomfort he has
+felt from witnessing the unhappiness indirectly caused by some of his
+acts, he is led to check himself when again tempted to those acts, the
+restraint is of like nature. Conversely with the pleasure-giving acts:
+repetitions of kind deeds, and experiences of the sympathetic
+gratifications that follow, tend continually to make stronger the
+association between such deeds and feelings of happiness.
+
+Eventually these experiences may be consciously generalized, and there
+may result a deliberate pursuit of sympathetic gratifications. There may
+also come to be distinctly recognized the truths that the remoter
+results, kind and unkind conduct, are respectively beneficial and
+detrimental--that due regard for others is conducive to ultimate
+personal welfare, and disregard of others to ultimate personal disaster;
+and then there may become current such summations of experience as
+"honesty is the best policy." But so far from regarding these
+intellectual recognitions of utility as preceding and causing the moral
+sentiment, I regard the moral sentiment as preceding such recognitions
+of utility, and making them possible. The pleasures and pains directly
+resulting in experience from sympathetic and unsympathetic actions, had
+first to be slowly associated with such actions, and the resulting
+incentives and deterrents frequently obeyed, before there could arise
+the perceptions that sympathetic and unsympathetic actions are remotely
+beneficial or detrimental to the actor; and they had to be obeyed still
+longer and more generally before there could arise the perceptions that
+they are socially beneficial or detrimental. When, however, the remote
+effects, personal and social, have gained general recognition, are
+expressed in current maxims, and lead to injunctions having the
+religious sanction, the sentiments that prompt sympathetic actions and
+check unsympathetic ones are immensely strengthened by their alliances.
+Approbation and reprobation, divine and human, come to be associated in
+thought with the sympathetic and unsympathetic actions respectively. The
+commands of the creed, the legal penalties, and the code of social
+conduct, unitedly enforce them; and every child as it grows up, daily
+has impressed on it by the words and faces and voices of those around
+the authority of these highest principles of conduct. And now we may see
+why there arises a belief in the special sacredness of these highest
+principles, and a sense of the supreme authority of the altruistic
+sentiments answering to them. Many of the actions which, in early social
+states, received the religious sanction and gained public approbation,
+had the drawback that such sympathies as existed were outraged, and
+there was hence an imperfect satisfaction. Whereas these altruistic
+actions, while similarly having the religious sanction and gaining
+public approbation, bring a sympathetic consciousness of pleasure given
+or of pain prevented; and, beyond this, bring a sympathetic
+consciousness of human welfare at large, as being furthered by making
+altruistic actions habitual. Both this special and this general
+sympathetic consciousness become stronger and wider in proportion as the
+power of mental representation increases, and the imagination of
+consequences, immediate and remote, grows more vivid and comprehensive.
+Until at length these altruistic sentiments begin to call in question
+the authority of those ego-altruistic sentiments which once ruled
+unchallenged. They prompt resistance to laws that do not fulfil the
+conception of justice, encourage men to brave the frowns of their
+fellows by pursuing a course at variance with customs that are perceived
+to be socially injurious, and even cause dissent from the current
+religion; either to the extent of disbelief in those alleged divine
+attributes and acts not approved by this supreme moral arbiter, or to
+the extent of entire rejection of a creed which ascribes such attributes
+and acts.
+
+Much that is required to make this hypothesis complete must stand over
+until, at the close of the second volume of the _Principles of
+Psychology_, I have space for a full exposition. What I have said will
+make it sufficiently clear that two fundamental errors have been made in
+the interpretation put upon it. Both Utility and Experience have been
+construed in senses much too narrow. Utility, convenient a word as it is
+from its comprehensiveness, has very inconvenient and misleading
+implications. It vividly suggests uses, and means, and proximate ends,
+but very faintly suggests the pleasures, positive or negative, which are
+the ultimate ends, and which, in the ethical meaning of the word, are
+alone considered; and, further, it implies conscious recognition of
+means and ends--implies the deliberate taking of some course to gain a
+perceived benefit. Experience, too, in its ordinary acceptation,
+connotes definite perceptions of causes and consequences, as standing in
+observed relations, and is not taken to include the connexions formed in
+consciousness between states that recur together, when the relation
+between them, causal or other, is not perceived. It is in their widest
+senses, however, that I habitually use these words, as will be manifest
+to every one who reads the _Principles of Psychology;_ and it is in
+their widest senses that I have used them in the letter to Mr. Mill. I
+think I have shown above that, when they are so understood, the
+hypothesis briefly set forth in that letter is by no means so
+indefensible as is supposed. At any rate, I have shown--what seemed for
+the present needful to show--that Mr. Hutton's versions of my views must
+not be accepted as correct.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 33: See _Prospective Review_ for January, 1852.]
+
+[Footnote 34: His criticism will be found in the _National Review_ for
+January, 1856, under the title "Atheism."]
+
+[Footnote 35: Hereafter I hope to elucidate at length these phenomena of
+expression. For the present, I can refer only to such further
+indications as are contained in two essays on "The Physiology of
+Laughter" and "The Origin and Function of Music."]
+
+[Footnote 36: I may add that in _Social Statics_, chap. xxx., I have
+indicated, in a general way, the causes of the development of sympathy
+and the restraints upon its development--confining the discussion,
+however, to the case of the human race, my subject limiting me to that.
+The accompanying teleology I now disclaim.]
+
+
+
+
+THE COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY OF MAN.
+
+    [_Originally read before the Anthropological Institute, and
+    afterwards published in _Mind, _for January,_ 1876.]
+
+
+While discussing with two members of the Anthropological Institute the
+work to be undertaken by its psychological section, I made certain
+suggestions which they requested me to put in writing. When reminded,
+some months after, of the promise I had made to do this, I failed to
+recall the particular suggestions referred to; but in the endeavour to
+remember them, I was led to glance over the whole subject of comparative
+human psychology. Hence resulted the following paper.
+
+That making a general survey is useful as a preliminary to deliberate
+study, either of a whole or of any part, scarcely needs showing.
+Vagueness of thought accompanies the wandering about in a region without
+known bounds or landmarks. Attention devoted to some portion of a
+subject in ignorance of its connexion with the rest, leads to untrue
+conceptions. The whole cannot be rightly conceived without some
+knowledge of the parts; and no part can be rightly conceived out of
+relation to the whole.
+
+To map out the Comparative Psychology of Man must also conduce to the
+more methodic carrying on of inquiries. In this, as in other things,
+division of labour will facilitate progress; and that there may be
+division of labour, the work itself must be systematically divided.
+
+We may conveniently separate the entire subject into three main
+divisions, and may arrange them in the order of increasing speciality.
+
+The first division will treat of the degrees of mental evolution of
+different human types, generally considered: taking account of both the
+mass of mental manifestation and the complexity of mental manifestation.
+This division will include the relations of these characters to physical
+characters--the bodily mass and structure, and the cerebral mass and
+structure. It will also include inquiries concerning the time taken in
+completing mental evolution, and the time during which adult mental
+power lasts; as well as certain most general traits of mental action,
+such as the greater or less persistence of emotions and of intellectual
+processes. The connexion between the general mental type and the general
+social type should also be here dealt with.
+
+In the second division may be conveniently placed apart, inquiries
+concerning the relative mental natures of the sexes in each race. Under
+it will come such questions as these:--What differences of mental mass
+and mental complexity, if any, existing between males and females, are
+common to all races? Do such differences vary in degree, or in kind, or
+in both? Are there reasons for thinking that they are liable to change
+by increase or decrease? What relations do they bear in each case to the
+habits of life, the domestic arrangements, and the social arrangements?
+This division should also include in its scope the sentiments of the
+sexes towards one another, considered as varying quantitatively and
+qualitatively; as well as their respective sentiments towards offspring,
+similarly varying.
+
+For the third division of inquiries may be reserved the more special
+mental traits distinguishing different types of men. One class of such
+specialities results from differences of proportion among faculties
+possessed in common; and another class results from the presence in some
+races of faculties that are almost or quite absent from others. Each
+difference in each of these groups, when established by comparison, has
+to be studied in connexion with the stage of mental evolution reached,
+and has to be studied in connexion with the habits of life and the
+social development, regarding it as related to these both as cause and
+as consequence.
+
+Such being the outlines of these several divisions, let us now consider
+in detail the subdivisions contained within each.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I.--Under the head of general mental evolution we may begin with the
+trait of--
+
+1. _Mental mass._--Daily experiences show us that human beings differ in
+volume of mental manifestation. Some there are whose intelligence, high
+though it may be, produces little impression on those around; while
+there are some who, when uttering even commonplaces, do it so as to
+affect listeners in a disproportionate degree. Comparison of two such,
+makes it manifest that, generally, the difference is due to the natural
+language of the emotions. Behind the intellectual quickness of the one
+there is not felt any power of character; while the other betrays a
+momentum capable of bearing down opposition--a potentiality of emotion
+that has something formidable about it. Obviously the varieties of
+mankind differ much in respect of this trait. Apart from kind of
+feeling, they are unlike in amount of feeling. The dominant races
+overrun the inferior races mainly in virtue of the greater quantity of
+energy in which this greater mental mass shows itself. Hence a series of
+inquiries, of which these are some:--(_a_) What is the relation between
+mental mass and bodily mass? Manifestly, the small races are deficient
+in it. But it also appears that races much upon a par in size--as, for
+instance, an Englishman and a Damara, differ considerably in mental
+mass. (_b_) What is its relation to mass of brain? and, bearing in mind
+the general law that in the same species, size of brain increases with
+size of body (though not in the same proportion), how far can we connect
+the extra mental mass of the higher races, with an extra mass of brain
+beyond that which is proper to their greater bodily mass? (_c_) What
+relation, if any, is there between mental mass and the physiological
+state expressed in vigour of circulation and richness of blood, as
+severally determined by mode of life and general nutrition? (_d_) What
+are the relations of this trait to the social state, as nomadic or
+settled, predatory or industrial?
+
+2. _Mental complexity._--How races differ in respect of the more or less
+involved structures of their minds, will best be understood on recalling
+the unlikeness between the juvenile mind and the adult mind among
+ourselves. In the child we see absorption in special facts. Generalities
+even of a low order are scarcely recognized, and there is no recognition
+of high generalities. We see interest in individuals, in personal
+adventures, in domestic affairs, but no interest in political or social
+matters. We see vanity about clothes and small achievements, but little
+sense of justice: witness the forcible appropriation of one another's
+toys. While there have come into play many of the simpler mental powers,
+there has not yet been reached that complication of mind which results
+from the addition of powers evolved out of these simpler ones. Kindred
+differences of complexity exist between the minds of lower and higher
+races; and comparisons should be made to ascertain their kinds and
+amounts. Here, too, there may be a subdivision of the inquiries. (_a_)
+What is the relation between mental complexity and mental mass? Do not
+the two habitually vary together? (_b_) What is the relation to the
+social state, as more or less complex? that is to say--Do not mental
+complexity and social complexity act and react on each other?
+
+3. _Rate of mental development._--In conformity with the biological law
+that the higher the organisms the longer they take to evolve, members of
+the inferior human races may be expected to complete their mental
+evolution sooner than members of the superior races; and we have
+evidence that they do this. Travellers from many regions comment, now on
+the great precocity of children among savage and semi-civilized peoples,
+and now on the early arrest of their mental progress. Though we scarcely
+need more proofs that this general contrast exists, there remains to be
+asked the question, whether it is consistently maintained throughout all
+groups of races, from the lowest to the highest--whether, say, the
+Australian differs in this respect from the Hindu, as much as the Hindu
+does from the European. Of secondary inquiries coming under this
+sub-head may be named several. (_a_) Is this more rapid evolution and
+earlier arrest always unequally shown by the two sexes; or, in other
+words, are there in lower types proportional differences in rate and
+degree of development, such as higher types show us? (_b_) Is there in
+many cases, as there appears to be in some cases, a traceable relation
+between the period of arrest and the period of puberty? (_c_) Is mental
+decay early in proportion as mental evolution is rapid? (_d_) Can we in
+other respects assert that where the type is low, the entire cycle of
+mental changes between birth and death--ascending, uniform,
+descending--comes within a shorter interval?
+
+4. _Relative plasticity._--Is there any relation between the degree of
+mental modifiability which remains in adult life, and the character of
+the mental evolution in respect of mass, complexity, and rapidity? The
+animal kingdom at large yields reasons for associating an inferior and
+more rapidly-completed mental structure, with a relatively automatic
+nature. Lowly organized creatures, guided almost entirely by reflex
+actions, are in but small degrees changeable by individual experiences.
+As the nervous structure complicates, its actions become less rigorously
+confined within pre-established limits; and as we approach the highest
+creatures, individual experiences take larger and larger shares in
+moulding the conduct: there is an increasing ability to take in new
+impressions and to profit by the acquisitions. Inferior and superior
+human races are contrasted in this respect. Many travellers comment on
+the unchangeable habits of savages. The semi-civilized nations of the
+East, past and present, were, or are, characterized by a greater
+rigidity of custom than characterizes the more civilized nations of the
+West. The histories of the most civilized nations show us that in their
+earlier times, the modifiability of ideas and habits was less than it is
+at present. And if we contrast classes or individuals around us, we see
+that the most developed in mind are the most plastic. To inquiries
+respecting this trait of comparative plasticity, in its relations to
+precocity and early completion of mental development, may fitly be added
+inquiries respecting its relations to the social state, which it helps
+to determine, and which reacts upon it.
+
+5. _Variability._--To say of a mind that its actions are extremely
+inconstant, and at the same time to say that it is of relatively
+unchangeable nature, apparently implies a contradiction. When, however,
+the inconstancy is understood as referring to the manifestations which
+follow one another from minute to minute, and the unchangeableness to
+the average manifestations, extending over long periods, the apparent
+contradiction disappears; and it becomes comprehensible that the two
+traits may, and ordinarily do, co-exist. An infant, quickly wearied with
+each kind of perception, wanting ever a new object which it soon
+abandons for something else, and alternating a score times a day between
+smiles and tears, shows us a very small persistence in each kind of
+mental action: all its states, intellectual and emotional, are
+transient. Yet at the same time its mind cannot be easily changed in
+character. True, it changes spontaneously in due course; but it long
+remains incapable of receiving ideas or emotions beyond those of simple
+orders. The child exhibits less rapid variations, intellectual and
+emotional, while its educability is greater. Inferior human races show
+us this combination: great rigidity of general character with great
+irregularity in its passing manifestations. Speaking broadly, while they
+resist permanent modification, they lack intellectual persistence, and
+they lack emotional persistence. Of various low types we read that they
+cannot keep the attention fixed beyond a few minutes on anything
+requiring thought, even of a simple kind. Similarly with their feelings:
+these are less enduring than those of civilized men. There are, however,
+qualifications to be made in this statement; and comparisons are needed
+to ascertain how far these qualifications go. The savage shows great
+persistence in the action of the lower intellectual faculties. He is
+untiring in minute observation. He is untiring, also, in that kind of
+perceptive activity which accompanies the making of his weapons and
+ornaments: often persevering for immense periods in carving stones, &c.
+Emotionally, too, he shows persistence not only in the motives prompting
+these small industries, but also in certain of his passions--especially
+in that of revenge. Hence, in studying the degrees of mental variability
+shown us in the daily lives of the different races, we must ask how far
+variability characterizes the whole mind, and how far it holds only of
+parts of the mind.
+
+6. _Impulsiveness._--This trait is closely allied with the last:
+unenduring emotions are emotions which sway the conduct now this way and
+now that, without any consistency. The trait of impulsiveness may,
+however, be fitly dealt with separately, because it has other
+implications than mere lack of persistence. Comparisons of the lower
+human races with the higher, appear generally to show that, along with
+brevity of the passions, there goes violence. The sudden gusts of
+feeling which men of inferior types display, are excessive in degree as
+they are short in duration; and there is probably a connexion between
+these two traits: intensity sooner producing exhaustion. Observing that
+the passions of childhood illustrate this connexion, let us turn to
+certain interesting questions concerning the decrease of impulsiveness
+which accompanies advance in evolution. The nervous processes of an
+impulsive being, are less remote from reflex actions than are those of
+an unimpulsive being. In reflex actions we see a simple stimulus passing
+suddenly into movement: little or no control being exercised by other
+parts of the nervous system. As we ascend to higher actions, guided by
+more and more complicated combinations of stimuli, there is not the same
+instantaneous discharge in simple motions; but there is a comparatively
+deliberate and more variable adjustment of compound motions, duly
+restrained and proportioned. It is thus with the passions and sentiments
+in the less developed natures and in the more developed natures. Where
+there is but little emotional complexity, an emotion, when excited by
+some occurrence, explodes in action before the other emotions have been
+called into play; and each of these, from time to time, does the like.
+But the more complex emotional structure is one in which these simpler
+emotions are so co-ordinated that they do not act independently. Before
+excitement of any one has had time to cause action, some excitement has
+been communicated to others--often antagonistic ones; and the conduct
+becomes modified in adjustment to the combined dictates. Hence results a
+decreased impulsiveness, and also a greater persistence. The conduct
+pursued, being prompted by several emotions co-operating in degrees
+which do not exhaust them, acquires a greater continuity; and while
+spasmodic force becomes less conspicuous, there is an increase in the
+total energy. Examining the facts from this point of view, there are
+sundry questions of interest to be put respecting the different races of
+men. (_a_) To what other traits than degree of mental evolution is
+impulsiveness related? Apart from difference in elevation of type, the
+New-World races seem to be less impulsive than the Old-World races. Is
+this due to constitutional apathy? Can there be traced (other things
+equal) a relation between physical vivacity and mental impulsiveness?
+(_b_) What connexion is there between this trait and the social state?
+Clearly a very explosive nature--such as that of the Bushman--is unfit
+for social union; and, commonly, social union, when by any means
+established, checks impulsiveness. (_c_) What respective shares in
+checking impulsiveness are taken by the feelings which the social state
+fosters--such as the fear of surrounding individuals, the instinct of
+sociality, the desire to accumulate property, the sympathetic feelings,
+the sentiment of justice? These, which require a social environment for
+their development, all of them involve imaginations of consequences more
+or less distant; and thus imply checks upon the promptings of the
+simpler passions. Hence arise the questions--In what order, in what
+degrees, and in what combinations, do they come into play?
+
+7. One further general inquiry of a different kind may be added. What
+effect is produced on mental nature by mixture of races? There is reason
+for believing that throughout the animal kingdom, the union of varieties
+which have become widely divergent is physically injurious; while the
+union of slightly divergent varieties is physically beneficial. Does the
+like hold with the mental nature? Some facts seem to show that mixture
+of human races extremely unlike, produces a worthless type of mind--a
+mind fitted neither for the kind of life led by the higher of the two
+races, nor for that led by the lower--a mind out of adjustment to all
+conditions of life. Contrariwise, we find that peoples of the same
+stock, slightly differentiated by lives carried on in unlike
+circumstances for many generations, produce by mixture a mental type
+having certain superiorities. In his work on _The Huguenots_, Mr. Smiles
+points out how large a number of distinguished men among us have
+descended from Flemish and French refugees; and M. Alphonse de Candolle,
+in his _Histoire des Sciences et des Savants depuis deux Siecles_, shows
+that the descendants of French refugees in Switzerland have produced an
+unusually great proportion of scientific men. Though, in part, this
+result may be ascribed to the original natures of such refugees, who
+must have had that independence which is a chief factor in originality,
+yet it is probably in part due to mixtures of races. For thinking this,
+we have evidence which is not open to two interpretations. Prof. Morley
+draws attention to the fact that, during seven hundred years of our
+early history "the best genius of England sprang up on the line of
+country in which Celts and Anglo-Saxons came together." In like manner
+Mr. Galton, in his _English Men of Science_, shows that in recent days
+these have mostly come from an inland region, running generally from
+north to south, which we may reasonably presume contains more mixed
+blood than do the regions east and west of it. Such a result seems
+probable _a priori_. Two natures respectively adapted to slightly unlike
+sets of social conditions, may be expected by their union to produce a
+nature somewhat more plastic than either--a nature more impressible by
+the new circumstances of advancing social life, and therefore more
+likely to originate new ideas and display modified sentiments. The
+Comparative Psychology of Man may, then, fitly include the mental
+effects of mixture; and among derivative inquiries we may ask--How far
+the conquest of race by race has been instrumental in advancing
+civilization by aiding mixture, as well as in other ways.
+
+
+II.--The second of the three leading divisions named at the outset is
+less extensive. Still, concerning the relative mental natures of the
+sexes in each race, questions of much interest and importance may be
+raised.
+
+1. _Degree of difference between the sexes._--It is an established fact
+that, physically considered, the contrast between males and females is
+not equally great in all types of mankind. The bearded races, for
+instance, show us a greater unlikeness between the two than do the
+beardless races. Among South American tribes, men and women have a
+greater general resemblance in form, &c., than is usual elsewhere. The
+question, then, suggests itself--Do the mental natures of the sexes
+differ in a constant or in a variable degree? The difference is unlikely
+to be a constant one; and, looking for variation, we may ask what is its
+amount, and under what conditions does it occur?
+
+2. _Difference in mass and in complexity._--The comparisons between the
+sexes, of course, admit of subdivisions parallel to those made in the
+comparisons between races. Relative mental mass and relative mental
+complexity have chiefly to be observed. Assuming that the great
+inequality in the cost of reproduction to the two sexes, is the cause of
+unlikeness in mental mass, as in physical mass, this difference may be
+studied in connexion with reproductive differences presented by the
+various races, in respect of the ages at which reproduction commences,
+and the periods over which it lasts. An allied inquiry may be joined
+with this; namely, how far the mental developments of the two sexes are
+affected by their relative habits in respect to food and physical
+exertion? In many of the lower races, the women, treated with great
+brutality, are, physically, much inferior to the men: excess of labour
+and defect of nutrition being apparently the combined causes. Is any
+arrest of mental development simultaneously caused?
+
+3. _Variation of the differences._--If the unlikeness, physical and
+mental, of the sexes is not constant, then, supposing all races have
+diverged from one original stock, it follows that there must have been
+transmission of accumulated differences to those of the same sex in
+posterity. If, for instance, the prehistoric type of man was beardless,
+then the production of a bearded variety implies that within that
+variety the males continued to transmit an increasing amount of beard to
+descendants of the same sex. This limitation of heredity by sex, shown
+us in multitudinous ways throughout the animal kingdom, probably applies
+to the cerebral structures as much as to other structures. Hence the
+question--Do not the mental natures of the sexes in alien types of Man
+diverge in unlike ways and degrees?
+
+4. _Causes of the differences._--Are any relations to be traced between
+these variable differences and the variable parts the sexes play in the
+business of life? Assuming the cumulative effects of habit on function
+and structure, as well as the limitation of heredity by sex, it is to be
+expected that if, in any society, the activities of one sex, generation
+after generation, differ from those of the other, there will arise
+sexual adaptations of mind. Some instances in illustration may be named.
+Among the Africans of Loango and other districts, as also among some of
+the Indian Hill-tribes, the men and women are strongly contrasted as
+respectively inert and energetic: the industry of the women having
+apparently become so natural to them that no coercion is needed. Of
+course, such facts suggest an extensive series of questions. Limitation
+of heredity by sex may account both for those sexual differences of mind
+which distinguish men and women in all races, and for those which
+distinguish them in each race, or each society. An interesting
+subordinate inquiry may be, how far such mental differences are inverted
+in cases where there is inversion of social and domestic relations; as
+among those Khasi Hill-tribes, whose women have so far the upper hand
+that they turn off their husbands in a summary way if they displease
+them.
+
+5. _Mental modifiability in the two sexes._--Along with comparisons of
+races in respect of mental plasticity may go parallel comparisons of the
+sexes in each race. Is it true always, as it appears to be generally
+true, that women are less modifiable than men? The relative conservatism
+of women--their greater adhesion to established ideas and practices--is
+manifest in many civilized and semi-civilized societies. Is it so among
+the uncivilized? A curious instance of stronger attachment to custom in
+women than in men is given by Dalton, as occurring among the Juangs, one
+of the lowest wild tribes of Bengal. Until recently the only dress of
+both sexes was something less than that which the Hebrew legend gives to
+Adam and Eve. Years ago the men were led to adopt a cloth bandage round
+the loins, in place of the bunch of leaves; but the women adhered to the
+aboriginal habit: a conservatism shown where it might have been least
+expected.
+
+6. _The sexual sentiment._--Results of value may be looked for from
+comparisons of races made to determine the amounts and characters of the
+higher feelings to which the relation of the sexes gives rise. The
+lowest varieties of mankind have but small endowments of these feelings.
+Among varieties of higher types, such as the Malayo-Polynesians, these
+feelings seem considerably developed: the Dyaks, for instance, sometimes
+display them in great strength. Speaking generally, they appear to
+become stronger with the advance of civilization. Several subordinate
+inquiries may be named. (_a_) How far is development of the sexual
+sentiment dependent upon intellectual advance--upon growth of
+imaginative power? (_b_) How far is it related to emotional advance; and
+especially to evolution of those emotions which originate from sympathy?
+What are its relations to polyandry and polygyny? (_c_) Does it not
+tend towards, and is it not fostered by, monogamy? (_d_) What connexion
+has it with maintenance of the family bond, and the consequent better
+rearing of children?
+
+
+III.--Under the third head, to which we may now pass come the more
+special traits of the different races.
+
+1. _Imitativeness._--One of the characteristics in which the lower types
+of men show us a smaller departure from reflex action than do the higher
+types, is their strong tendency to mimic the motions and sounds made by
+others--an almost involuntary habit which travellers find it difficult
+to check. This meaningless repetition, which seems to imply that the
+idea of an observed action cannot be framed in the mind of the observer
+without tending forthwith to discharge itself in the action conceived
+(and every ideal action is a nascent form of the consciousness
+accompanying performance of such action), evidently diverges but little
+from the automatic; and decrease of it is to be expected along with
+increase of self-regulating power. This trait of automatic mimicry is
+evidently allied with that less automatic mimicry which shows itself in
+greater persistence of customs. For customs adopted by each generation
+from the last without thought or inquiry, imply a tendency to imitate
+which overmasters critical and sceptical tendencies: so maintaining
+habits for which no reasons can be given. The decrease of this
+irrational mimicry, strongest in the lowest savage and feeblest in the
+highest of the civilized, should be studied along with the successively
+higher stages of social life, as being at once an aid and a hindrance to
+civilization: an aid in so far as it gives that fixity to the social
+organization without which a society cannot survive; a hindrance in so
+far as it offers resistance to changes of social organization that have
+become desirable.
+
+2. _Incuriosity._--Projecting our own natures into the circumstances of
+the savage, we imagine ourselves as marvelling greatly on first seeing
+the products and appliances of civilized life. But we err in supposing
+that the savage has feelings such as we should have in his place. Want
+of rational curiosity respecting these incomprehensible novelties, is a
+trait remarked of the lowest races wherever found; and the
+partially-civilized races are distinguished from them as exhibiting
+rational curiosity. The relation of this trait to the intellectual
+nature, to the emotional nature, and to the social state, should be
+studied.
+
+3. _Quality of thought._--Under this vague head may be placed many sets
+of inquiries, each of them extensive--(_a_) The degree of generality of
+the ideas; (_b_) the degree of abstractness of the ideas; (_c_) the
+degree of definiteness of the ideas; (_d_) the degree of coherence of
+the ideas; (_e_) the extent to which there have been developed such
+notions as those of _class_, of _cause_, of _uniformity_, of _law_, of
+_truth_. Many conceptions which have become so familiar to us that we
+assume them to be the common property of all minds, are no more
+possessed by the lowest savages than they are by our own children; and
+comparisons of types should be so made as to elucidate the processes by
+which such conceptions are reached. The development under each head has
+to be observed--(_a_) independently in its successive stages; (_b_) in
+connexion with the co-operative intellectual conceptions; (_c_) in
+connexion with the progress of language, of the arts, and of social
+organization. Already linguistic phenomena have been used in aid of such
+inquiries; and more systematic use of them should be made. Not only the
+number of general words, and the number of abstract words, in a people's
+vocabulary should be taken as evidence, but also their _degrees_ of
+generality and abstractness; for there are generalities of the first,
+second, third, &c., orders, and abstractions similarly ascending. _Blue_
+is an abstraction referring to one class of impressions derived from
+visible objects; _colour_ is a higher abstraction referring to many such
+classes of visual impressions; _property_ is a still higher
+abstraction referring to classes of impressions received not through the
+eyes alone, but through other sense-organs. If generalities and
+abstractions were arranged in the order of their extensiveness and in
+the order of their grades, tests would be obtained which, applied to the
+vocabularies of the uncivilized, would yield definite evidence of the
+intellectual stages reached.
+
+4. _Peculiar aptitudes._--To such specialities of intelligence as mark
+different degrees of evolution, have to be added minor ones related to
+modes of life: the kinds and degrees of faculty which have become
+organized in adaptation to daily habits--skill in the use of weapons,
+powers of tracking, quick discrimination of individual objects. And
+under this head may fitly come inquiries concerning some
+race-peculiarities of the aesthetic class, not at present explicable.
+While the remains from the Dordogne caves show us that their
+inhabitants, low as we must suppose them to have been, could represent
+animals, both by drawing and carving, with some degree of fidelity;
+there are existing races, probably higher in other respects, who seem
+scarcely capable of recognizing pictorial representations. Similarly
+with the musical faculty. Almost or quite wanting in some inferior
+races, we find it in other races not of high grade, developed to an
+unexpected degree: instance the Negroes, some of whom are so innately
+musical, that, as I have been told by a missionary among them, the
+children in native schools when taught European psalm-tunes,
+spontaneously sing seconds to them. Whether any causes can be discovered
+for race peculiarities of this kind, is a question of interest.
+
+5. _Specialities of emotional nature._--These are worthy of careful
+study, as being intimately related to social phenomena--to the
+possibility of social progress, and to the nature of the social
+structure. Among others to be noted there are--(_a_) Gregariousness or
+sociality--a trait in the strength of which races differ widely: some,
+as the Mantras, being almost indifferent to social intercourse; some
+being unable to dispense with it. Obviously the degree of this desire
+for the presence of fellow-men, affects greatly the formation of social
+groups, and consequently influences social progress. (_b_) Intolerance
+of restraint. Men of some inferior types, as the Mapuche, are
+ungovernable; while those of other types, no higher in grade, not only
+submit to restraint, but admire the persons exercising it. These
+contrasted natures have to be observed in connexion with social
+evolution; to the early stages of which they are respectively
+antagonistic and favourable. (_c_) The desire for praise is a trait
+which, common to all races, high and low, varies considerably in degree.
+There are quite inferior races, as some of those in the Pacific States,
+whose members sacrifice without stint to gain the applause which lavish
+generosity brings; while, elsewhere, applause is sought with less
+eagerness. Notice should be taken of the connexion between this love of
+approbation and the social restraints; since it plays an important part
+in the maintenance of them. (_d_) The acquisitive propensity. This, too,
+is a character the degrees of which, and the relations of which to the
+social state, have to be especially noted. The desire for property grows
+along with the possibility of gratifying it; and this, extremely small
+among the lowest men, increases as social development goes on. With the
+advance from tribal property to family property and individual property,
+the notion of private right of possession gains definiteness, and the
+love of acquisition strengthens. Each step towards an orderly social
+state makes larger accumulations possible, and the pleasures achievable
+by them more sure; while the resulting encouragement to accumulate,
+leads to increase of capital and to further progress. This action and
+re-action of the sentiment and the social state, should be in every case
+observed.
+
+6. _The altruistic sentiments._--Coming last, these are also highest.
+The evolution of them in the course of civilization, shows us clearly
+the reciprocal influences of the social unit and the social organism. On
+the one hand, there can be no sympathy, nor any of the sentiments which
+sympathy generates, unless there are fellow-beings around. On the other
+hand, maintenance of union with fellow-beings depends in part on the
+presence of sympathy, and the resulting restraints on conduct.
+Gregariousness or sociality favours the growth of sympathy; increased
+sympathy conduces to closer sociality and a more stable social state;
+and so, continuously, each increment of the one makes possible a further
+increment of the other. Comparisons of the altruistic sentiments
+resulting from sympathy, as exhibited in different types of men and
+different social states, may be conveniently arranged under three
+heads--(_a_) Pity, which should be observed as displayed towards
+offspring, towards the sick and aged, and towards enemies. (_b_)
+Generosity (duly discriminated from the love of display) as shown in
+giving; as shown in the relinquishment of pleasures for the sake of
+others; as shown by active efforts on others' behalf. The manifestations
+of this sentiment, too, are to be noted in respect of their
+range--whether they are limited to relatives; whether they extend only
+to those of the same society; whether they extend to those of other
+societies; and they are also to be noted in connexion with the degree of
+providence--whether they result from sudden impulses obeyed without
+counting the cost, or go along with clear foresight of the future
+sacrifices entailed. (_c_) Justice. This most abstract of the altruistic
+sentiments is to be considered under aspects like those just named, as
+well as under many other aspects--how far it is shown in regard to the
+lives of others; how far in regard to their freedom; how far in regard
+to their property; how far in regard to their various minor claims. And
+comparisons concerning this highest sentiment should, beyond all others,
+be carried on along with comparisons of the accompanying social
+states, which it largely determines--the forms and actions of
+governments; the characters of laws; the relations of classes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such, stated as briefly as consists with clearness, are the leading
+divisions and subdivisions under which the Comparative Psychology of Man
+may be arranged. In going rapidly over so wide a field, I have doubtless
+overlooked much that should be included. Doubtless, too, various of the
+inquiries named will branch out into subordinate inquiries well worth
+pursuing. Even as it is, however, the programme is extensive enough to
+occupy numerous investigators, who may with advantage take separate
+divisions.
+
+Though, after occupying themselves with primitive arts and products,
+anthropologists have devoted their attention mainly to the physical
+characters of the human races; it must, I think, be admitted that the
+study of these yields in importance to the study of their psychical
+characters. The general conclusions to which the first set of inquiries
+may lead, cannot so much affect our views respecting the highest classes
+of phenomena as can the general conclusions to which the second set may
+lead. A true theory of the human mind vitally concerns us; and
+systematic comparisons of human minds, differing in their kinds and
+grades, will help us in forming a true theory. Knowledge of the
+reciprocal relations between the characters of men and the characters of
+the societies they form, must influence profoundly our ideas of
+political arrangements. When the inter-dependence of individual natures
+and social structures is understood, our conceptions of the changes now
+taking place, and hereafter to take place, will be rectified. A
+comprehension of mental development as a process of adaptation to social
+conditions, which are continually remoulding the mind and are again
+remoulded by it, will conduce to a salutary consciousness of the
+remoter effects produced by institutions upon character; and will
+check the grave mischiefs which ignorant legislation now causes. Lastly,
+a right theory of mental evolution as exhibited by humanity at large,
+giving a key, as it does, to the evolution of the individual mind, must
+help to rationalize our perverse methods of education; and so to raise
+intellectual power and moral nature.
+
+
+
+
+MR. MARTINEAU ON EVOLUTION.
+
+    [_First published in _The Contemporary Review_, for June,_ 1872.]
+
+
+The article by Mr. Martineau, in the April number of the _Contemporary
+Review_, on "The Place of Mind in Nature, and Intuition of Man,"
+recalled to me a partially-formed intention to deal with the chief
+criticisms which have from time to time been made on the general
+doctrine set forth in _First Principles_; since, though not avowedly
+directed against propositions asserted or implied in that work, Mr.
+Martineau's reasoning tells against them by implication. The fulfilment
+of this intention I should, however, have continued to postpone, had I
+not learned that the arguments of Mr. Martineau are supposed by many to
+be conclusive, and that, in the absence of replies, it will be assumed
+that no replies can be made. It seems desirable, therefore, to notice
+these arguments at once--especially as the essential ones may, I think,
+be effectually dealt with in a comparatively small space.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first definite objection which Mr. Martineau raises is, that the
+hypothesis of General Evolution is powerless to account even for the
+simpler orders of facts in the absence of numerous different substances.
+He argues that were matter all of one kind, no such phenomena as
+chemical changes would be possible; and that, "in order to start the
+world on its chemical career, you must enlarge its capital and present
+it with an outfit of _heterogeneous_ constituents. Try, therefore, the
+effect of such a gift; fling into the pre-existing cauldron the whole
+list of recognized elementary substances, and give leave to their
+affinities to work." The intended implication obviously is, that there
+must exist the separately-created elements before evolution can begin.
+
+Here, however, Mr. Martineau makes an assumption which few, if any,
+chemists will commit themselves to, and which many will distinctly deny.
+There are no "recognized elementary substances," if the expression means
+substances known to be elementary. What chemists, for convenience, call
+elementary substances, are merely substances which they have thus far
+failed to decompose; but, bearing in mind past experiences, they do not
+dare to say that they are absolutely undecomposable. Water was taken to
+be an element for more than two thousand years, and then was proved to
+be a compound; and, until Davy brought a galvanic current to bear upon
+them, the alkalies and the earths were supposed to be elements. So
+little true is it that "recognized elementary substances" are supposed
+to be absolutely elementary, that there has been much speculation among
+chemists respecting the process of compounding and recompounding by
+which they have been formed out of some ultimate substance--some
+chemists having supposed the atom of hydrogen to be the unit of
+composition, but others having contended that the atomic weights of the
+so-called elements are not thus interpretable. If I remember rightly,
+Sir John Herschel was one, among others, who, some five-and-twenty years
+ago, threw out suggestions respecting a system of compounding that might
+explain these relations of the atomic weights.
+
+What was at that time a suspicion has now become practically a
+certainty. Spectrum-analysis yields results wholly irreconcilable with
+the assumption that the conventionally-named simple substances are
+really simple. Each yields a spectrum having lines varying in number
+from two to eighty or more, every one of which implies the intercepting
+of ethereal undulations of a certain order by something oscillating in
+unison or in harmony with them. Were iron absolutely elementary, it is
+not conceivable that its atom could intercept ethereal undulations of
+eighty different orders. Though it does not follow that its molecule
+contains as many separate atoms as there are lines in its spectrum, it
+must clearly be a complex molecule. The evidence thus gained points to
+the conclusion that, out of some primordial units, the so-called
+elements arise by compounding and recompounding; just as by the
+compounding and recompounding of so-called elements there arise oxides,
+and acids, and salts.
+
+And this hypothesis is entirely in harmony with the phenomena of
+allotropy. Various substances, conventionally distinguished as simple,
+have several forms under which they present quite different properties.
+The semi-transparent, colourless, extremely active substance called
+phosphorus may be so changed as to become opaque, dark red, and inert.
+Like changes are known to occur in some gaseous, non-metallic elements,
+as oxygen; and also in metallic elements, as antimony. These total
+changes of properties, brought about without any changes to be called
+chemical, are interpretable only as due to molecular rearrangements;
+and, by showing that difference of property is producible by difference
+of arrangement, they support the inference otherwise to be drawn, that
+the properties of different elements result from differences of
+arrangement arising by the compounding and recompounding of ultimate
+homogeneous units.
+
+Thus Mr. Martineau's objection, which at best would imply a turning of
+our ignorance of the nature of elements into positive knowledge that
+they are simple, is, in fact, to be met by two sets of evidences, which
+imply that they are compound.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Martineau next alleges that a fatal difficulty is put in the way of
+the General Doctrine of Evolution by the existence of a chasm between
+the living and the not-living. He says:--"But with all your enlargement
+of data, turn them as you will, at the end of every passage which they
+explore, the _door of life_ is closed against them still." Here again
+our ignorance is employed to play the part of knowledge. The fact that
+we do not know distinctly how an alleged transition has taken place, is
+transformed into the assumption that no transition has taken place. We
+have, in a more general shape, the argument which until lately was
+thought conclusive--the argument that because the genesis of each
+species of creature had not been explained, therefore each species must
+have been separately created.
+
+Merely noting this, however, I go on to remark that scientific discovery
+is day by day narrowing the chasm, or, to vary Mr. Martineau's metaphor,
+"opening the door." Not many years since, it was held as certain that
+the chemical compounds distinguished as organic could not be formed
+artificially. Now, more than a thousand organic compounds have been
+formed artificially. Chemists have discovered the art of building them
+up from the simpler to the more complex, and do not doubt that they will
+eventually produce the most complex. Moreover, the phenomena attending
+isomeric change give a clue to those movements which are the only
+indications we have of life in its lowest forms. In various colloidal
+substances, including the albuminoid, isomeric change is accompanied by
+contraction or expansion, and consequent motion; and, in such primordial
+types as the _Protogenes_ of Haeckel, which do not differ in appearance
+from minute portions of albumen, the observed motions are comprehensible
+as accompanying isomeric changes caused by variations in surrounding
+physical actions. The probability of this interpretation will be seen on
+remembering the evidence we have that, in the higher organisms, many
+functions are essentially effected by isomeric changes from one to
+another of the multitudinous forms which protein assumes.
+
+Thus the reply to this objection is, first, that there is going on from
+both sides a narrowing of the chasm supposed to be impassable; and,
+secondly, that, even were the chasm not in course of being filled up, we
+should no more be justified in therefore assuming a supernatural
+commencement of life, than Kepler was justified in assuming that there
+were guiding-spirits to keep the planets in their orbits, because he
+could not see how else they were to be kept in their orbits.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The third definite objection made by Mr. Martineau is of kindred nature.
+The Hypothesis of Evolution is, he thinks, met by the insurmountable
+difficulty that plant life and animal life are absolutely distinct. "You
+cannot," he says, "take a single step toward the deduction of sensation
+and thought: neither at the upper limit do the highest plants (the
+exogens) transcend themselves and overbalance into animal existence; nor
+at the lower, grope as you may among the sea-weeds and sponges, can you
+persuade the sporules of the one to develop into the other."
+
+This is an extremely unfortunate objection to raise. For, though there
+are no transitions from vegetal to animal life at the places Mr.
+Martineau names, where, indeed, no biologist would look for them; yet
+the connexion between the two great kingdoms of living things is so
+complete that separation is now regarded as impossible. For a long time
+naturalists endeavored to frame definitions such as would, the one
+include all plants and exclude all animals, and the other include all
+animals and exclude all plants. But they have been so repeatedly foiled
+in the attempt that they have given it up. There is no chemical
+distinction which holds; there is no structural distinction which
+holds; there is no functional distinction which holds; there is no
+distinction as to mode of existence which holds. Large groups of the
+simpler animals contain chlorophyll, and decompose carbonic acid under
+the influence of light, as plants do. Large groups of the simpler
+plants, as you may observe in the diatoms from any stagnant pool, are no
+less actively locomotive than the minute creatures classed as animals
+seen along with them. Nay, among these lowest types of living things, it
+is common for the life to be now predominantly animal and presently to
+become predominantly vegetal. The very name _zoospores_, given to germs
+of _algae_, which for a while swim about actively by means of cilia, and
+presently settling down grow into plant-forms, is given because of this
+conspicuous community of nature. So complete is this community of nature
+that for some time past many naturalists have wished to establish for
+these lowest types a sub-kingdom, intermediate between the animal and
+the vegetal: the reason against this course being, however, that the
+difficulty crops up afresh at any assumed places where this intermediate
+sub-kingdom may be supposed to join the other two.
+
+Thus the assumption on which Mr. Martineau proceeds is diametrically
+opposed to the conviction of naturalists in general.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Though I do not perceive that it is specifically stated, there appears
+to be tacitly implied a fourth difficulty of allied kind--the difficulty
+that there is no possibility of transition from life of the simplest
+kind to mind. Mr. Martineau says, indeed, that there can be "with only
+vital resources, as in the vegetable world, no beginning of mind:"
+apparently leaving it to be inferred that in the animal world the
+resources are such as to make the "beginning of mind" comprehensible.
+If, however, instead of leaving it a latent inference, he had
+distinctly asserted a chasm between mind and bodily life, for which
+there is certainly quite as much reason as for asserting a chasm between
+animal life and vegetal life, the difficulties in his way would have
+been no less insuperable.
+
+For those lowest forms of irritability in the animal kingdom which, I
+suppose, Mr. Martineau refers to as the "beginning of mind," are not
+distinguishable from the irritability which plants display: they in no
+greater degree imply consciousness. If the sudden folding of a
+sensitive-plant's leaf when touched, or the spreading out of the stamens
+in a wild-cistus when gently brushed, is to be considered a vital action
+of a purely physical kind; then so too must be considered the equally
+slow contraction of a polype's tentacles. And yet, from this simple
+motion of an animal of low type, we may pass by insensible stages
+through ever-complicating forms of actions, with their accompanying
+signs of feeling and intelligence, until we reach the highest.
+
+Even apart from the evidence derived from the ascending grades of
+animals up from _zoophytes_, as they are significantly named, it needs
+only to observe the evolution of a single animal to see that there does
+not exist any break or chasm between the life which shows no mind and
+the life which shows mind. The yelk of an egg which the cook has just
+broken, not only yields no sign of mind, but yields no sign of life. It
+does not respond to a stimulus as much even as many plants do. Had the
+egg, instead of being broken by the cook, been left under the hen for a
+certain time, the yelk would have passed by infinitesimal gradations
+through a series of forms ending in the chick; and by similarly
+infinitesimal gradations would have arisen those functions which end in
+the chick breaking its shell; and which, when it gets out, show
+themselves in running about, distinguishing and picking up food, and
+squeaking if hurt. When did the feeling begin? and how did there come
+into existence that power of perception which the chick's actions show?
+Should it be objected that the chick's actions are mainly automatic, I
+will not dwell on the fact that, though they are largely so, the chick
+manifestly has feeling and therefore consciousness; but I will accept
+the objection, and propose that instead we take the human being. The
+course of development before birth is just of the same general kind; and
+similarly, at a certain stage, begins to be accompanied by reflex
+movements. At birth there is displayed an amount of mind certainly not
+greater than that of the chick: there is no power of running from
+danger--no power of distinguishing and picking up food. If we say the
+chick is unintelligent, we must certainly say the infant is
+unintelligent. And yet from the unintelligence of the infant to the
+intelligence of the adult, there is an advance by steps so small that on
+no day is the amount of mind shown, appreciably different from that
+shown on preceding and succeeding days.
+
+Thus the tacit assumption that there exists a break, is not simply
+gratuitous, but is negatived by the most obvious facts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Certain of the words and phrases used in explaining that particular part
+of the Doctrine of Evolution which deals with the origin of species, are
+commented upon by Mr. Martineau as having implications justifying his
+view. Let us consider his comments.
+
+He says that _competition_ is not an "original power, which can of
+itself do anything;" further, that "it cannot act except in the presence
+of some _possibility of a better or worse_;" and that this "possibility
+of a better or worse" implies a "world pre-arranged for progress," "a
+directing Will intent upon the good." Had Mr. Martineau looked more
+closely into the matter, he would have found that, though the words and
+phrases he quotes are used for convenience, the conceptions they
+imply are not at all essential to the doctrine. Under its
+rigorously-scientific form, the doctrine is expressible in
+purely-physical terms, which neither imply competition nor imply better
+and worse.[37]
+
+Beyond this indirect mistake there is a direct mistake. Mr. Martineau
+speaks of the "survivorship of the better," as though that were the
+statement of the law; and then adds that the alleged result cannot be
+inferred "except on the assumption that whatever is _better_ is
+_stronger_ too." But the words he here uses are his own words, not the
+words of those he opposes. The law is the survival of the _fittest_.
+Probably, in substituting "better" for "fittest," Mr. Martineau did not
+suppose that he was changing the meaning; though I dare say he perceived
+that the meaning of the word "fittest" did not suit his argument so
+well. Had he examined the facts, he would have found that the law is not
+the survival of the "better" or the "stronger," if we give to those
+words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of
+those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions
+in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking,
+is inferiority, causes the survival. Superiority, whether in size,
+strength, activity, or sagacity, is, other things equal, at the cost of
+diminished fertility; and where the life led by a species does not
+demand these higher attributes, the species profits by decrease of them,
+and accompanying increase of fertility. This is the reason why there
+occur so many cases of retrograde metamorphosis--this is the reason why
+parasites, internal and external, are so commonly degraded forms of
+higher types. Survival of the "better" does not cover these cases,
+though survival of the "fittest" does; and as I am responsible for the
+phrase, I suppose I am competent to say that the word "fittest" was
+chosen for this reason. When it is remembered that these cases outnumber
+all others--that there are more species of parasites than there are
+species of all other animals put together--it will be seen that the
+expression "survivorship of the better" is wholly inappropriate, and the
+argument Mr. Martineau bases upon it quite untenable. Indeed, if, in
+place of those adjustments of the human sense-organs, which he so
+eloquently describes as implying pre-arrangement, Mr. Martineau had
+described the countless elaborate appliances which enable parasites to
+torture animals immeasurably superior to them, and which, from his point
+of view, no less imply pre-arrangement, I think the notes of admiration
+which end his descriptions would not have seemed to him so appropriate.
+
+One more word there is from the intrinsic meaning of which Mr. Martineau
+deduces what appears a powerful argument--the word _Evolution_ itself.
+He says:--
+
+     "It means, to unfold from within; and it is taken from the history
+     of the seed or embryo of living natures. And what is the seed but a
+     casket of pre-arranged futurities, with its whole contents
+     _prospective_, settled to be what they are by reference to ends
+     still in the distance?"
+
+Now, this criticism would have been very much to the point did the word
+Evolution truly express the process it names. If this process, as
+scientifically defined, really involved that conception which the word
+evolution was originally designed to convey, the implications would be
+those Mr. Martineau alleges. But, unfortunately for him, the word,
+having been in possession of the field before the process was
+understood, has been adopted merely because displacing it by another
+word seemed impracticable. And this adoption of it has been joined with
+a caution against misunderstandings arising from its unfitness. Here is
+a part of the caution:--"Evolution has other meanings, some of which are
+incongruous with, and some even directly opposed to, the meaning here
+given to it.... The antithetical word, Involution, would much more truly
+express the nature of the process; and would, indeed, describe better
+the secondary characters of the process which we shall have to deal
+with presently."[38] So that the meanings which the word involves, and
+which Mr. Martineau regards as fatal to the hypothesis, are already
+repudiated as not belonging to the hypothesis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now, having dealt with the essential objections raised by Mr.
+Martineau to the Hypothesis of Evolution as it is presented under that
+purely scientific form which generalizes the process of things, firstly
+as observed and secondly as inferred from certain ultimate principles,
+let me go on to examine that form of the Hypothesis which he
+propounds--Evolution as determined by Mind and Will--Evolution as
+pre-arranged by a Divine Actor. For Mr. Martineau apparently abandons
+the primitive theory of creation by "fiat of Almighty Will", and also
+the theory of creation by manufacture--by "a contriving and adapting
+power," and seems to believe in evolution: requiring only that "an
+originating Mind" shall be taken as its antecedent. Let us ask, first,
+in what relation Mr. Martineau conceives the "originating Mind" to stand
+to the evolving Universe. From some passages it is inferable that he
+considers the "presence of mind" to be everywhere needful. He says:--
+
+     "It is impossible to work the theory of Evolution upwards from the
+     bottom. If all force is to be conceived as One, its type must be
+     looked for in the highest and all-comprehending term; and Mind must
+     be conceived as there, and as divesting itself of some speciality
+     at each step of its descent to a lower stratum of law, till
+     represented at the base under the guise of simple Dynamics."
+
+This seems to be an unmistakable assertion that, wherever Evolution is
+going on, Mind is then and there behind it. At the close of the
+argument, however, a quite different conception is implied. Mr.
+Martineau says:--
+
+    "If the Divine Idea will not retire at the bidding of our
+    speculative science, but retains its place, it is natural to ask,
+    What is its relation to  the series of so-called Forces in the
+    world? But the question is too large and deep to be answered here.
+    Let it suffice to say, that there need not be any _overruling_ of
+    these forces by the Will of God, so that the supernatural should
+    disturb the natural; or any _supplementing_ of them, so that He
+    should fill up their deficiencies. Rather is His thought related to
+    them as, in man, the mental force is related to all below it."
+
+It would take too much space to deal fully with the various questions
+which this last passage raises. There is the question--Whence come these
+"Forces," spoken of as separate from the "Will of God"--did they
+pre-exist? Then what becomes of the Divine Power? Do they exist by the
+Divine Will? Then what kind of nature is that by which they act apart
+from the Divine Will? Again, there is the question--How do these
+deputy-forces co-operate in each particular phenomenon, if the presiding
+Will is not there present to control them? Either an organ which
+develops into fitness for its function, develops by the co-operation of
+these forces under the direction of Mind then present, or it so develops
+in the absence of Mind. If it develops in the absence of Mind, the
+hypothesis is given up; and if the "originating Mind" is required to be
+then and there present, we must suppose a particular providence to be
+present in each particular organ of each particular creature throughout
+the universe. Once more there is the question--If "His thought is
+related to them [these Forces] as, in Man, the mental force is related
+to all below it," how can "His thought" be regarded as the cause of
+Evolution? In man the mental force is related to the forces below it
+neither as a creator of them nor as a regulator of them, save in a very
+limited way: the greater part of the forces present in man, both
+structural and functional, defy the mental force absolutely. Nay, more,
+it needs but to injure a nerve to see that the power of the mental force
+over the physical forces is dependent on conditions which are themselves
+physical; and one who takes morphia in mistake for magnesia, discovers
+that the power of the physical forces over the mental is
+_un_conditioned by any thing mental.
+
+Not dwelling on these questions, however, I will merely draw attention
+to the entire incongruity of this conception with the previous
+conception which I have quoted. Assuming that, when the choice is
+pressed on him, Mr. Martineau will choose the first, which alone has any
+thing like defensibility, let us go on to ask how far Evolution is made
+more comprehensible by postulating Mind, universally immanent, as its
+cause.
+
+In metaphysical controversy, many of the propositions propounded and
+accepted as quite believable, are absolutely inconceivable. There is a
+perpetual confusing of actual ideas with what are nothing but
+pseud-ideas. No distinction is made between propositions that contain
+real thoughts, and propositions that are only the forms of thoughts. A
+thinkable proposition is one of which _the two terms can be brought
+together in consciousness under the relation said to exist between
+them_. But very often, when the subject of a proposition has been
+thought of as something known, and when the predicate has been thought
+of as something known, and when the relation alleged between them has
+been thought of as a known relation, it is supposed that the proposition
+itself has been thought. The thinking separately of the elements of a
+proposition is mistaken for the thinking of them in the combination
+which the proposition affirms. And hence it continually happens that
+propositions which cannot be rendered into thought at all, are supposed
+to be not only thought but believed. The proposition that Evolution is
+caused by Mind is one of this nature. The two terms are separately
+intelligible; but they can be regarded in the relation of effect and
+cause only so long as no attempt is made to put them together in this
+relation.
+
+The only thing which any one knows as Mind is the series of his own
+states of consciousness; and if he thinks of any mind other than his
+own, he can think of it only in terms derived from his own. If I am
+asked to frame a notion of Mind divested of all those structural traits
+under which alone I am conscious of mind in myself, I cannot do it. I
+know nothing of thought save as carried on in ideas originally traceable
+to the effects wrought by objects and forces on me. A mental act is an
+unintelligible phrase if I am not to regard it as an act in which states
+of consciousness are severally known as like other states in the series
+that has gone by, and in which the relations between them are severally
+known as like past relations in the series. If, then, I have to conceive
+Evolution as caused by an "originating Mind," I must conceive this Mind
+as having attributes akin to those of the only mind I know, and without
+which I cannot conceive Mind at all.
+
+I will not dwell on the many incongruities hence resulting, by asking
+how the "originating Mind" is to be thought of as having states produced
+by things objective to it; as discriminating among these states, and
+classing them as like and unlike; and as preferring one objective result
+to another. I will simply ask--What happens if we ascribe to the
+"originating Mind" the character absolutely essential to the conception
+of Mind, that it consists of a series of states of consciousness? Put a
+series of states of consciousness as cause, and the evolving Universe as
+effect, and then endeavor to see the last as flowing from the first. I
+find it possible to imagine in some dim way a series of states of
+consciousness serving as antecedent to any one of the movements I see
+going on; for my own states of consciousness are often indirectly the
+antecedents to such movements. But how if I attempt to think of such a
+series as antecedent to _all_ actions throughout the Universe--to the
+motions of the multitudinous stars through space, to the revolutions of
+all their planets round them, to the gyrations of all these planets on
+their axes, to the infinitely-multiplied physical processes going on in
+each of these suns and planets? I cannot think of a single series of
+states of consciousness as causing even the relatively small group of
+actions going on over the Earth's surface. I cannot think of it even as
+antecedent to all the various winds and the dissolving clouds they bear,
+to the currents of all the rivers, and the grinding actions of all the
+glaciers; still less can I think of it as antecedent to the infinity of
+processes simultaneously going on in all the plants that cover the
+globe, from scattered polar lichens to crowded tropical palms, and in
+all the millions of quadrupeds that roam among them, and the millions of
+millions of insects that buzz about them. Even to a single small set of
+these multitudinous terrestrial changes, I cannot conceive as antecedent
+a single series of states of consciousness--cannot, for instance, think
+of it as causing the hundred thousand breakers that are at this instant
+curling over on the shores of England. How, then, is it possible for me
+to conceive an "originating Mind," which I must represent to myself as a
+_single_ series of states of consciousness, working the
+infinitely-multiplied sets of changes _simultaneously_ going on in
+worlds too numerous to count, dispersed throughout a space that baffles
+imagination?
+
+If, to account for this infinitude of physical changes everywhere going
+on, "Mind must be conceived as there" "under the guise of simple
+Dynamics," then the reply is that, to be so conceived, Mind must be
+divested of all attributes by which it is distinguished; and that, when
+thus divested of its distinguishing attributes, the conception
+disappears--the word Mind stands for a blank. If Mr. Martineau takes
+refuge in the entirely different and, as it seems to me, incongruous
+hypothesis of something like a plurality of minds--if he accepts, as he
+seems to do, the doctrine that you cannot explain Evolution "unless
+among your primordial elements you scatter already the _germs_ of Mind
+as well as the inferior elements"--if the insuperable difficulties I
+have just pointed out are to be met by assuming a local series of states
+of consciousness for each phenomenon, then we are obviously carried
+back to something like the alleged fetichistic notion, with the
+difference only, that the assumed spiritual agencies are indefinitely
+multiplied.
+
+Clearly, therefore, the proposition that an "originating Mind" is the
+cause of Evolution, is a proposition that can be entertained so long
+only as no attempt is made to unite in thought its two terms in the
+alleged relation. That it should be accepted as a matter of _faith_, may
+be a defensible position, provided good cause is shown why it should be
+so accepted; but that it should be accepted as a matter of
+_understanding_--as a statement making the order of the universe
+comprehensible--is a quite indefensible position.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here let me guard myself against a misinterpretation very likely to be
+put upon the foregoing arguments; especially by those who have read the
+Essay to which they reply. The statements of that Essay carry the
+implication that all who adhere to the hypothesis it combats, imagine
+they have solved the mystery of things when they have shown the
+processes of Evolution to be naturally caused. Mr. Martineau tacitly
+represents them as believing that, when every thing has been interpreted
+in terms of Matter and Motion, nothing remains to be explained. This,
+however, is by no means the fact. The Doctrine of Evolution, under its
+purely scientific form, does not involve Materialism, though its
+opponents persistently represent it as doing so. Indeed, among adherents
+of it who are friends of mine, there are those who speak of the
+Materialism of Buechner and his school, with a contempt certainly not
+less than that felt by Mr. Martineau. To show how anti-materialistic my
+own view is, I may, perhaps, without impropriety, quote some out of many
+passages which I have written on the question elsewhere:
+
+     "Hence though of the two it seems easier to translate so-called
+     Matter into so-called Spirit, than to translate so-called Spirit
+     into so-called Matter (which latter is, indeed, wholly
+     impossible); yet no translation can carry us beyond our
+     symbols."[39]
+
+And again:
+
+     "See then our predicament. We can think of Matter only in terms of
+     Mind. We can think of Mind only in terms of Matter. When we have
+     pushed our explorations of the first to the uttermost limit, we are
+     referred to the second for a final answer; and, when we have got
+     the final answer of the second, we are referred back to the first
+     for an interpretation of it. We find the value of _x_ in terms of
+     _y_; then we find the value of _y_ in terms of _x_; and so on we
+     may continue forever without coming nearer to a solution. The
+     antithesis of subject and object, never to be transcended while
+     consciousness lasts, renders impossible all knowledge of that
+     Ultimate Reality in which subject and object are united."[40]
+
+It is thus, I think, manifest that the difference between Mr.
+Martineau's view and the view he opposes is by no means so wide as he
+makes it appear; and further, it seems to me that such difference as
+exists is rather the reverse of that indicated by his exposition.
+Briefly expressed, the difference is that, where he thinks there is no
+mystery, the doctrine he combats recognizes a mystery. Speaking for
+myself only, I may say that, agreeing entirely with Mr. Martineau in
+repudiating the materialistic interpretation as utterly futile, I differ
+from him simply in this, that while he says he has found another
+interpretation, I confess that I cannot find any interpretation; while
+he holds that he can understand the Power which is manifested in things,
+I feel obliged to admit, after many failures, that I cannot understand
+it. So that, in presence of the transcendent problem which the universe
+presents, Mr. Martineau regards the human intellect as capable, and I as
+incapable. This contrast does not appear to me of the kind which his
+Essay tacitly asserts. If there is such a thing as the "pride of
+Science," it is obviously exceeded by the pride of Theology. I fail to
+perceive humility in the belief that the human mind is able to
+comprehend that which is behind appearances; and I do not see how piety
+is especially exemplified in the assertion that the Universe contains
+no mode of existence higher in Nature than that which is present to us
+in consciousness. On the contrary, I think it quite a defensible
+proposition that humility is better shown by a confession of
+incompetence to grasp in thought the Cause of all things; and that the
+religious sentiment may find its highest sphere in the belief that the
+Ultimate Power is no more representable in terms of human consciousness
+than human consciousness is representable in terms of a plant's
+functions.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 37: _Principles of Biology_, Sec.Sec. 159-168.]
+
+[Footnote 38: _First Principles_, second edition, Sec. 97.]
+
+[Footnote 39: _Principles of Psychology_, second edition, vol. i., Sec.
+63.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Ibid., Sec. 272.]
+
+
+
+
+THE FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Nineteenth Century_, for April and May_,
+    1886.]
+
+
+I.
+
+Within the recollection of men now in middle life, opinion concerning
+the derivation of animals and plants was in a chaotic state. Among the
+unthinking there was tacit belief in creation by miracle, which formed
+an essential part of the creed of Christendom; and among the thinking
+there were two parties, each of which held an indefensible hypothesis.
+Immensely the larger of these parties, including nearly all whose
+scientific culture gave weight to their judgments, though not accepting
+literally the theologically-orthodox doctrine, made a compromise between
+that doctrine and the doctrines which geologists had established; while
+opposed to them were some, mostly having no authority in science, who
+held a doctrine which was heterodox both theologically and
+scientifically. Professor Huxley, in his lecture on "The Coming of Age
+of the Origin of Species," remarks concerning the first of these parties
+as follows:--
+
+     "One-and-twenty years ago, in spite of the work commenced by Hutton
+     and continued with rare skill and patience by Lyell, the dominant
+     view of the past history of the earth was catastrophic. Great and
+     sudden physical revolutions, wholesale creations and extinctions of
+     living beings, were the ordinary machinery of the geological epic
+     brought into fashion by the misapplied genius of Cuvier. It was
+     gravely maintained and taught that the end of every geological
+     epoch was signalised by a cataclysm, by which every living being on
+     the globe was swept away, to be replaced by a brand-new creation
+     when the world returned to quiescence. A scheme of nature which
+     appeared to be modelled on the likeness of a succession of rubbers
+     of whist, at the end of each of which the players upset the table
+     and called for a new pack, did not seem to shock anybody.
+
+     I may be wrong, but I doubt if, at the present time, there is a
+     single responsible representative of these opinions left. The
+     progress of scientific geology has elevated the fundament principle
+     of uniformitarianism, that the explanation of the past is to be
+     sought in the study of the present, into the position of an axiom;
+     and the wild speculations of the catastrophists, to which we all
+     listened with respect a quarter of a century ago, would hardly find
+     a single patient hearer at the present day."
+
+Of the party above referred to as not satisfied with this conception
+described by Professor Huxley, there were two classes. The great
+majority were admirers of the _Vestiges of the Natural History of
+Creation_--a work which, while it sought to show that organic evolution
+has taken place, contended that the cause of organic evolution, is "an
+impulse" supernaturally "imparted to the forms of life, advancing them,
+... through grades of organization." Being nearly all very inadequately
+acquainted with the facts, those who accepted the view set forth in the
+_Vestiges_ were ridiculed by the well-instructed for being satisfied
+with evidence, much of which was either invalid or easily cancelled by
+counter-evidence, and at the same time they exposed themselves to the
+ridicule of the more philosophical for being content with a supposed
+explanation which was in reality no explanation: the alleged "impulse"
+to advance giving us no more help in understanding the facts than does
+Nature's alleged "abhorrence of a vacuum" help us to understand the
+ascent of water in a pump. The remnant, forming the second of these
+classes, was very small. While rejecting this mere verbal solution,
+which both Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck had shadowed forth in other
+language, there were some few who, rejecting also the hypothesis
+indicated by both Dr. Darwin and Lamarck, that the promptings of desires
+or wants produced growths of the parts subserving them, accepted the
+single _vera causa_ assigned by these writers--the modification of
+structures resulting from modification of functions. They recognized
+as the sole process in organic development, the adaptation of parts and
+powers consequent on the effects of use and disuse--that continual
+moulding and re-moulding of organisms to suit their circumstances, which
+is brought about by direct converse with such circumstances.
+
+But while this cause accepted by these few is a true cause, since
+unquestionably during the life of the individual organism changes of
+function produce changes of structure; and while it is a tenable
+hypothesis that changes of structure so produced are inheritable; yet it
+was manifest to those not prepossessed, that this cause cannot with
+reason be assigned for the greater part of the facts. Though in plants
+there are some characters which may not irrationally be ascribed to the
+direct effects of modified functions consequent on modified
+circumstances, yet the majority of the traits presented by plants are
+not to be thus explained. It is impossible that the thorns by which a
+briar is in large measure defended against browsing animals, can have
+been developed and moulded by the continuous exercise of their
+protective actions; for in the first place, the great majority of the
+thorns are never touched at all, and, in the second place, we have no
+ground whatever for supposing that those which are touched are thereby
+made to grow, and to take those shapes which render them efficient.
+Plants which are rendered uneatable by the thick woolly coatings of
+their leaves, cannot have had these coatings produced by any process of
+reaction against the action of enemies; for there is no imaginable
+reason why, if one part of a plant is eaten, the rest should thereafter
+begin to develop the hairs on its surface. By what direct effect of
+function on structure, can the shell of a nut have been evolved? Or how
+can those seeds which contain essential oils, rendering them unpalatable
+to birds, have been made to secrete such essential oils by these actions
+of birds which they restrain? Or how can the delicate plumes borne by
+some seeds, and giving the wind power to waft them to new stations, be
+due to any immediate influences of surrounding conditions? Clearly in
+these and in countless other cases, change of structure cannot have been
+directly caused by change of function. So is it with animals to a large
+extent, if not to the same extent. Though we have proof that by rough
+usage the dermal layer may be so excited as to produce a greatly
+thickened epidermal layer, sometimes quite horny; and though it is a
+feasible hypothesis that an effect of this kind persistently produced
+may be inherited; yet no such cause can explain the carapace of the
+turtle, the armour of the armadillo, or the imbricated covering of the
+manis. The skins of these animals are no more exposed to habitual hard
+usage than are those of animals covered by hair. The strange
+excrescences which distinguish the heads of the hornbills, cannot
+possibly have arisen from any reaction against the action of surrounding
+forces; for even were they clearly protective, there is no reason to
+suppose that the heads of these birds need protection more than the
+heads of other birds. If, led by the evidence that in animals the amount
+of covering is in some cases affected by the degree of exposure, it were
+admitted as imaginable that the development of feathers from preceding
+dermal growths had resulted from that extra nutrition caused by extra
+superficial circulation, we should still be without explanation of the
+structure of a feather. Nor should we have any clue to the specialities
+of feathers--the crests of various birds, the tails sometimes so
+enormous, the curiously placed plumes of the bird of paradise, &c., &c.
+Still more obviously impossible is it to explain as due to use or disuse
+the colours of animals. No direct adaptation to function could have
+produced the blue protuberances on a mandril's face, or the striped hide
+of a tiger, or the gorgeous plumage of a kingfisher, or the eyes in a
+peacock's tail, or the multitudinous patterns of insects' wings. One
+single case, that of a deer's horns, might alone have sufficed to show
+how insufficient was the assigned cause. During their growth, a deer's
+horns are not used at all; and when, having been cleared of the dead
+skin and dried-up blood-vessels covering them, they are ready for use,
+they are nerveless and non-vascular, and hence are incapable of
+undergoing any changes of structure consequent on changes of function.
+
+Of these few then, who rejected the belief described by Professor
+Huxley, and who, espousing the belief in a continuous evolution, had to
+account for this evolution, it must be said that though the cause
+assigned was a true cause, yet, even admitting that it operated through
+successive generations, it left unexplained the greater part of the
+facts. Having been myself one of these few, I look back with surprise at
+the way in which the facts which were congruous with the espoused view
+monopolized consciousness and kept out the facts which were incongruous
+with it--conspicuous though many of them were. The misjudgment was not
+unnatural. Finding it impossible to accept any doctrine which implied a
+breach in the uniform course of natural causation, and, by implication,
+accepting as unquestionable the origin and development of all organic
+forms by accumulated modifications naturally caused, that which appeared
+to explain certain classes of these modifications, was supposed to be
+capable of explaining the rest: the tendency being to assume that these
+would eventually be similarly accounted for, though it was not clear
+how.
+
+Returning from this parenthetic remark, we are concerned here chiefly to
+remember that, as said at the outset, there existed thirty years ago, no
+tenable theory about the genesis of living things. Of the two
+alternative beliefs, neither would bear critical examination.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out of this dead lock we were released--in large measure, though not I
+believe entirely--by the _Origin of Species_. That work brought into
+view a further factor; or rather, such factor, recognized as in
+operation by here and there an observer (as pointed out by Mr. Darwin in
+his introduction to the second edition), was by him for the first time
+seen to have played so immense a part in the genesis of plants and
+animals.
+
+Though laying myself open to the charge of telling a thrice-told tale, I
+feel obliged here to indicate briefly the several great classes of facts
+which Mr. Darwin's hypothesis explains; because otherwise that which
+follows would scarcely be understood. And I feel the less hesitation in
+doing this because the hypothesis which it replaced, not very widely
+known at any time, has of late so completely dropped into the
+background, that the majority of readers are scarcely aware of its
+existence, and do not therefore understand the relation between Mr.
+Darwin's successful interpretation and the preceding unsuccessful
+attempt at interpretation. Of these classes of facts, four chief ones
+may be here distinguished.
+
+In the first place, such adjustments as those exemplified above are made
+comprehensible. Though it is inconceivable that a structure like that of
+the pitcher-plant could have been produced by accumulated effects of
+function on structure; yet it is conceivable that successive selections
+of favourable variations might have produced it; and the like holds of
+the no less remarkable appliance of the Venus's Fly-trap, or the still
+more astonishing one of that water-plant by which infant-fish are
+captured. Though it is impossible to imagine how, by direct influence of
+increased use, such dermal appendages as a porcupine's quills could have
+been developed; yet, profiting as the members of a species otherwise
+defenceless might do by the stiffness of their hairs, rendering them
+unpleasant morsels to eat, it is a feasible supposition that from
+successive survivals of individuals thus defended in the greatest
+degrees, and the consequent growth in successive generations of hairs
+into bristles, bristles into spines, spines into quills (for all these
+are homologous), this change could have arisen. In like manner, the odd
+inflatable bag of the bladder-nosed seal, the curious fishing-rod with
+its worm-like appendage carried on the head of the _lophius_ or angler,
+the spurs on the wings of certain birds, the weapons of the sword-fish
+and saw-fish, the wattles of fowls, and numberless such peculiar
+structures, though by no possibility explicable as due to effects of use
+or disuse, are explicable as resulting from natural selection operating
+in one or other way.
+
+In the second place, while showing us how there have arisen countless
+modifications in the forms, structures, and colours of each part, Mr.
+Darwin has shown us how, by the establishment of favourable variations,
+there may arise new parts. Though the first step in the production of
+horns on the heads of various herbivorous animals, may have been the
+growth of callosities consequent on the habit of butting--such
+callosities thus functionally initiated being afterwards developed in
+the most advantageous ways by selection; yet no explanation can be thus
+given of the sudden appearance of a duplicate set of horns, as
+occasionally happens in sheep: an addition which, where it proved
+beneficial, might readily be made a permanent trait by natural
+selection. Again, the modifications which follow use and disuse can by
+no possibility account for changes in the numbers of vertebrae; but after
+recognizing spontaneous, or rather fortuitous, variation as a factor, we
+can see that where an additional vertebra hence resulting (as in some
+pigeons) proves beneficial, survival of the fittest may make it a
+constant character; and there may, by further like additions, be
+produced extremely long strings of vertebrae, such as snakes show us.
+Similarly with the mammary glands. It is not an unreasonable supposition
+that by the effects of greater or less function, inherited through
+successive generations, these may be enlarged or diminished in size; but
+it is out of the question to allege such a cause for changes in their
+numbers. There is no imaginable explanation of these save the
+establishment by inheritance of spontaneous variations, such as are
+known to occur in the human race.
+
+So too, in the third place, with certain alterations in the connexions
+of parts. According to the greater or smaller demands made on this or
+that limb, the muscles moving it may be augmented or diminished in bulk;
+and, if there is inheritance of changes so wrought, the limb may, in
+course of generations, be rendered larger or smaller. But changes in the
+arrangements or attachments of muscles cannot be thus accounted for. It
+is found, especially at the extremities, that the relations of tendons
+to bones and to one another are not always the same. Variations in their
+modes of connexion may occasionally prove advantageous, and may thus
+become established. Here again, then, we have a class of structural
+changes to which Mr. Darwin's hypothesis gives us the key, and to which
+there is no other key.
+
+Once more there are the phenomena of mimicry. Perhaps in a more striking
+way than any others, these show how traits which seem inexplicable are
+explicable as due to the more frequent survival of individuals that have
+varied in favourable ways. We are enabled to understand such marvellous
+simulations as those of the leaf-insect, those of beetles which
+"resemble glittering dew-drops upon the leaves;" those of caterpillars
+which, when asleep, stretch themselves out so as to look like twigs. And
+we are shown how there have arisen still more astonishing
+imitations--those of one insect by another. As Mr. Bates has proved,
+there are cases in which a species of butterfly, rendered so unpalatable
+to insectivorous birds by its disagreeable taste that they will not
+catch it, is simulated in its colours and markings by a species which is
+structurally quite different--so simulated that even a practised
+entomologist is liable to be deceived: the explanation being that an
+original slight resemblance, leading to occasional mistakes on the part
+of birds, was increased generation after generation by the more frequent
+escape of the most-like individuals, until the likeness became thus
+great.
+
+But now, recognizing in full this process brought into clear view by Mr.
+Darwin, and traced out by him with so much care and skill, can we
+conclude that, taken alone, it accounts for organic evolution? Has the
+natural selection of favourable variations been the sole factor? On
+critically examining the evidence, we shall find reason to think that it
+by no means explains all that has to be explained. Omitting for the
+present any consideration of a factor which may be distinguished as
+primordial, it may be contended that the above-named factor alleged by
+Dr. Erasmus Darwin and by Lamarck, must be recognized as a co-operator.
+Utterly inadequate to explain the major part of the facts as is the
+hypothesis of the inheritance of functionally-produced modifications,
+yet there is a minor part of the facts, very extensive though less,
+which must be ascribed to this cause.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When discussing the question more than twenty years ago (_Principles of
+Biology_, Sec. 166), I instanced the decreased size of the jaws in the
+civilized races of mankind, as a change not accounted for by the natural
+selection of favourable variations; since no one of the decrements by
+which, in thousands of years, this reduction has been effected, could
+have given to an individual in which it occurred, such advantage as
+would cause his survival, either through diminished cost of local
+nutrition or diminished weight to be carried. I did not then exclude, as
+I might have done, two other imaginable causes. It may be said that
+there is some organic correlation between increased size of brain and
+decreased size of jaw: Camper's doctrine of the facial angle being
+referred to in proof. But this argument may be met by pointing to the
+many examples of small-jawed people who are also small-brained, and by
+citing not infrequent cases of individuals remarkable for their mental
+powers, and at the same time distinguished by jaws not less than the
+average but greater. Again, if sexual selection be named as a possible
+cause, there is the reply that, even supposing such slight diminution of
+jaw as took place in a single generation to have been an attraction, yet
+the other incentives to choice on the part of men have been too many and
+great to allow this one to weigh in an adequate degree; while, during
+the greater portion of the period, choice on the part of women has
+scarcely operated: in earlier times they were stolen or bought, and in
+later times mostly coerced by parents. Thus, reconsideration of the
+facts does not show me the invalidity of the conclusion drawn, that this
+decrease in size of jaw can have had no other cause than continued
+inheritance of those diminutions consequent on diminutions of function,
+implied by the use of selected and well-prepared food. Here, however, my
+chief purpose is to add an instance showing, even more clearly, the
+connexion between change of function and change of structure. This
+instance, allied in nature to the other, is presented by those
+varieties, or rather sub-varieties, of dogs, which, having been
+household pets, and habitually fed on soft food, have not been called on
+to use their jaws in tearing and crunching, and have been but rarely
+allowed to use them in catching prey and in fighting. No inference can
+be drawn from the sizes of the jaws themselves, which, in these dogs,
+have probably been shortened mainly by selection. To get direct proof of
+the decrease of the muscles concerned in closing the jaws or biting,
+would require a series of observations very difficult to make. But it is
+not difficult to get indirect proof of this decrease by looking at the
+bony structures with which these muscles are connected. Examination of
+the skulls of sundry indoor dogs contained in the Museum of the College
+of Surgeons, proves the relative smallness of such parts. The only
+pug-dog's skull is that of an individual not perfectly adult; and though
+its traits are quite to the point they cannot with safety be taken as
+evidence. The skull of a toy-terrier has much restricted areas of
+insertion for the temporal muscles; has weak zygomatic arches; and has
+extremely small attachments for the masseter muscles. Still more
+significant is the evidence furnished by the skull of a King Charles's
+spaniel, which, if we allow three years to a generation, and bear in
+mind that the variety must have existed before Charles the Second's
+reign, we may assume belongs to something approaching to the hundredth
+generation of these household pets. The relative breadth between the
+outer surfaces of the zygomatic arches is conspicuously small; the
+narrowness of the temporal fossae is also striking; the zygomata are very
+slender; the temporal muscles have left no marks whatever, either by
+limiting lines or by the character of the surfaces covered; and the
+places of attachment for the masseter muscles are very feebly developed.
+At the Museum of Natural History, among skulls of dogs there is one
+which, though unnamed, is shown by its small size and by its teeth, to
+have belonged to one variety or other of lap-dogs, and which has the
+same traits in an equal degree with the skull just described. Here,
+then, we have two if not three kinds of dogs which, similarly leading
+protected and pampered lives, show that in the course of generations the
+parts concerned in clenching the jaws have dwindled. To what cause must
+this decrease be ascribed? Certainly not to artificial selection; for
+most of the modifications named make no appreciable external signs: the
+width across the zygomata could alone be perceived. Neither can natural
+selection have had anything to do with it; for even were there any
+struggle for existence among such dogs, it cannot be contended that any
+advantage in the struggle could be gained by an individual in which a
+decrease took place. Economy of nutrition, too, is excluded. Abundantly
+fed as such dogs are, the constitutional tendency is to find places
+where excess of absorbed nutriment may be conveniently deposited, rather
+than to find places where some cutting down of the supplies is
+practicable. Nor again can there be alleged a possible correlation
+between these diminutions and that shortening of the jaws which has
+probably resulted from selection; for in the bull-dog, which has also
+relatively short jaws, these structures concerned in closing them are
+unusually large. Thus there remains as the only conceivable cause, the
+diminution of size which results from diminished use. The dwindling of a
+little-exercised part has, by inheritance, been made more and more
+marked in successive generations.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Difficulties of another class may next be exemplified--those which
+present themselves when we ask how there can be effected by the
+selection of favourable variations, such changes of structure as adapt
+an organism to some useful action in which many different parts
+co-operate. None can fail to see how a simple part may, in course of
+generations, be greatly enlarged, if each enlargement furthers, in some
+decided way, maintenance of the species. It is easy to understand, too,
+how a complex part, as an entire limb, may be increased as a whole by
+the simultaneous due increase of its co-operative parts; since if, while
+it is growing, the channels of supply bring to the limb an unusual
+quantity of blood, there will naturally result a proportionately greater
+size of all its components--bones, muscles, arteries, veins, &c. But
+though in cases like this, the co-operative parts forming some large
+complex part may be expected to vary together, nothing implies that they
+necessarily do so; and we have proof that in various cases, even when
+closely united, they do not do so. An example is furnished by those
+blind crabs named in the _Origin of Species_ which inhabit certain dark
+caves of Kentucky, and which, though they have lost their eyes, have
+not lost the foot-stalks which carried their eyes. In describing the
+varieties which have been produced by pigeon-fanciers, Mr. Darwin notes
+the fact that along with changes in length of beak produced by
+selection, there have not gone proportionate changes in length of
+tongue. Take again the case of teeth and jaws. In mankind these have not
+varied together. During civilization the jaws have decreased, but the
+teeth have not decreased in proportion; and hence that prevalent
+crowding of them, often remedied in childhood by extraction of some, and
+in other cases causing that imperfect development which is followed by
+early decay. But the absence of proportionate variation in co-operative
+parts that are close together, and are even bound up in the same mass,
+is best seen in those varieties of dogs named above as illustrating the
+inherited effects of disuse. We see in them, as we see in the human
+race, that diminution in the jaws has not been accompanied by
+corresponding diminution in the teeth. In the catalogue of the College
+of Surgeons Museum, there is appended to the entry which identifies a
+Blenheim Spaniel's skull, the words--"the teeth are closely crowded
+together," and to the entry concerning the skull of a King Charles's
+Spaniel the words--"the teeth are closely packed, p. 3, is placed quite
+transversely to the axis of the skull." It is further noteworthy that in
+a case where there is no diminished use of the jaws, but where they have
+been shortened by selection, a like want of concomitant variation is
+manifested: the case being that of the bull-dog, in the upper jaw of
+which also, "the premolars ... are excessively crowded, and placed
+obliquely or even transversely to the long axis of the skull."[41]
+
+If, then, in cases where we can test it, we find no concomitant
+variation in co-operative parts that are near together--if we do not
+find it in parts which, though belonging to different tissues, are so
+closely united as teeth and jaws--if we do not find it even when the
+co-operative parts are not only closely united, but are formed out of
+the same tissue, like the crab's eye and its peduncle; what shall we say
+of co-operative parts which, besides being composed of different
+tissues, are remote from one another? Not only are we forbidden to
+assume that they vary together, but we are warranted in asserting that
+they can have no tendency to vary together. And what are the
+implications in cases where increase of a structure can be of no service
+unless there is concomitant increase in many distant structures, which
+have to join it in performing the action for which it is useful?
+
+As far back as 1864 (_Principles of Biology_, Sec. 166) I named in
+illustration an animal carrying heavy horns--the extinct Irish elk; and
+indicated the many changes in bones, muscles, blood-vessels, nerves,
+composing the fore-part of the body, which would be required to make an
+increment of size in such horns advantageous. Here let me take another
+instance--that of the giraffe: an instance which I take partly because,
+in the sixth edition of the _Origin of Species_, issued in 1872, Mr.
+Darwin has referred to this animal when effectually disposing of certain
+arguments urged against his hypothesis. He there says:--
+
+     "In order that an animal should acquire some structure specially
+     and largely developed, it is almost indispensable that several
+     other parts should be modified and co-adapted. Although every part
+     of the body varies slightly, it does not follow that the necessary
+     parts should always vary in the right direction and to the right
+     degree" (p. 179).
+
+And in the summary of the chapter, he remarks concerning the adjustments
+in the same quadruped, that "the prolonged use of all the parts together
+with inheritance will have aided in an important manner in their
+co-ordination" (p. 199): a remark probably having reference chiefly to
+the increased massiveness of the lower part of the neck; the increased
+size and strength of the thorax required to bear the additional burden;
+and the increased strength of the fore-legs required to carry the
+greater weight of both. But now I think that further consideration
+suggests the belief that the entailed modifications are much more
+numerous and remote than at first appears; and that the greater part of
+these are such as cannot be ascribed in any degree to the selection of
+favourable variations, but must be ascribed exclusively to the inherited
+effects of changed functions. Whoever has seen a giraffe gallop will
+long remember the sight as a ludicrous one. The reason for the
+strangeness of the motions is obvious. Though the fore limbs and the
+hind limbs differ so much in length, yet in galloping they have to keep
+pace--must take equal strides. The result is that at each stride, the
+angle which the hind limbs describe round their centre of motion is much
+larger than the angle described by the fore limbs. And beyond this, as
+an aid in equalizing the strides, the hind part of the back is at each
+stride bent very much downwards and forwards. Hence the hind-quarters
+appear to be doing nearly all the work. Now a moment's observation shows
+that the bones and muscles composing the hind-quarters of the giraffe,
+perform actions differing in one or other way and degree, from the
+actions performed by the homologous bones and muscles in a mammal of
+ordinary proportions, and from those in the ancestral mammal which gave
+origin to the giraffe. Each further stage of that growth which produced
+the large fore-quarters and neck, entailed some adapted change in sundry
+of the numerous parts composing the hind-quarters; since any failure in
+the adjustment of their respective strengths would entail some defect in
+speed and consequent loss of life when chased. It needs but to remember
+how, when continuing to walk with a blistered foot, the taking of steps
+in such a modified way as to diminish pressure on the sore point, soon
+produces aching of muscles which are called into unusual action, to see
+that over-straining of any one of the muscles of the giraffe's
+hind-quarters might quickly incapacitate the animal when putting out all
+its powers to escape; and to be a few yards behind others would cause
+death. Hence if we are debarred from assuming that co-operative parts
+vary together even when adjacent and closely united--if we are still
+more debarred from assuming that with increased length of fore-legs or
+of neck, there will go an appropriate change in any one muscle or bone
+in the hind-quarters; how entirely out of the question it is to assume
+that there will simultaneously take place the appropriate changes in
+_all_ those many components of the hind-quarters which severally require
+re-adjustment. It is useless to reply that an increment of length in the
+fore-legs or neck might be retained and transmitted to posterity,
+waiting an appropriate variation in a particular bone or muscle in the
+hind-quarters, which, being made, would allow of a further increment.
+For besides the fact that until this secondary variation occurred the
+primary variation would be a disadvantage often fatal; and besides the
+fact that before such an appropriate secondary variation might be
+expected in the course of generations to occur, the primary variation
+would have died out; there is the fact that the appropriate variation of
+one bone or muscle in the hind-quarters would be useless without
+appropriate variations of all the rest--some in this way and some in
+that--a number of appropriate variations which it is impossible to
+suppose.
+
+Nor is this all. Far more numerous appropriate variations would be
+indirectly necessitated. The immense change in the ratio of
+fore-quarters to hind-quarters would make requisite a corresponding
+change of ratio in the appliances carrying on the nutrition of the two.
+The entire vascular system, arterial and veinous, would have to undergo
+successive unbuildings and rebuildings to make its channels everywhere
+adequate to the local requirements; since any want of adjustment in the
+blood-supply in this or that set of muscles, would entail incapacity,
+failure of speed, and loss of life. Moreover the nerves supplying the
+various sets of muscles would have to be proportionately changed; as
+well as the central nervous tracts from which they issued. Can we
+suppose that all these appropriate changes, too, would be step by step
+simultaneously made by fortunate spontaneous variations, occurring along
+with all the other fortunate spontaneous variations? Considering how
+immense must be the number of these required changes, added to the
+changes above enumerated, the chances against any adequate
+re-adjustments fortuitously arising must be infinity to one.
+
+If the effects of use and disuse of parts are inheritable, then any
+change in the fore parts of the giraffe which affects the action of the
+hind limbs and back, will simultaneously cause, by the greater or less
+exercise of it, a re-moulding of each component in the hind limbs and
+back in a way adapted to the new demands; and generation after
+generation the entire structure of the hind-quarters will be
+progressively fitted to the changed structure of the fore-quarters: all
+the appliances for nutrition and innervation being at the same time
+progressively fitted to both. But in the absence of this inheritance of
+functionally-produced modifications, there is no seeing how the required
+re-adjustments can be made.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet a third class of difficulties stands in the way of the belief that
+the natural selection of useful variations is the sole factor of organic
+evolution. This class of difficulties, already pointed out in Sec. 166 of
+the _Principles of Biology_, I cannot more clearly set forth than in the
+words there used. Hence I may perhaps be excused for here quoting them.
+
+     "Where the life is comparatively simple, or where surrounding
+     circumstances render some one function supremely important, the
+     survival of the fittest may readily bring about the appropriate
+     structural change, without any aid from the transmission of
+     functionally-acquired modifications. But in proportion as the life
+     grows complex--in proportion as a healthy existence cannot be
+     secured by a large endowment of some one power, but demands many
+     powers; in the same proportion do there arise obstacles to the
+     increase of any particular power, by 'the preservation of favoured
+     races in the struggle for life.' As fast as the faculties are
+     multiplied, so fast does it become possible for the several members
+     of a species to have various kinds of superiorities over one
+     another. While one saves its life by higher speed, another does the
+     like by clearer vision, another by keener scent, another by quicker
+     hearing, another by greater strength, another by unusual power of
+     enduring cold or hunger, another by special sagacity, another by
+     special timidity, another by special courage; and others by other
+     bodily and mental attributes. Now it is unquestionably true that,
+     other things equal, each of these attributes, giving its possessor
+     an extra chance of life, is likely to be transmitted to posterity.
+     But there seems no reason to suppose that it will be increased in
+     subsequent generations by natural selection. That it may be thus
+     increased, the individuals not possessing more than average
+     endowments of it, must be more frequently killed off than
+     individuals highly endowed with it; and this can happen only when
+     the attribute is one of greater importance, for the time being,
+     than most of the other attributes. If those members of the species
+     which have but ordinary shares of it, nevertheless survive by
+     virtue of other superiorities which they severally possess; then it
+     is not easy to see how this particular attribute can be developed
+     by natural selection in subsequent generations. The probability
+     seems rather to be, that by gamogenesis, this extra endowment will,
+     on the average, be diminished in posterity--just serving in the
+     long run to compensate the deficient endowments of other
+     individuals, whose special powers lie in other directions; and so
+     to keep up the normal structure of the species. The working out of
+     the process is here somewhat difficult to follow; but it appears to
+     me that as fast as the number of bodily and mental faculties
+     increases, and as fast as the maintenance of life comes to depend
+     less on the amount of any one, and more on the combined action of
+     all; so fast does the production of specialities of character by
+     natural selection alone, become difficult. Particularly does this
+     seem to be so with a species so multitudinous in its powers as
+     mankind; and above all does it seem to be so with such of the human
+     powers as have but minor shares in aiding the struggle for
+     life--the aesthetic faculties, for example."
+
+Dwelling for a moment on this last illustration of the class of
+difficulties described, let us ask how we are to interpret the
+development of the musical faculty. I will not enlarge on the family
+antecedents of the great composers. I will merely suggest the inquiry
+whether the greater powers possessed by Beethoven and Mozart, by Weber
+and Rossini, than by their fathers, were not due in larger measure to
+the inherited effects of daily exercise of the musical faculty by their
+fathers, than to inheritance, with increase, of spontaneous variations;
+and whether the diffused musical powers of the Bach clan, culminating in
+those of Johann Sebastian, did not result in part from constant
+practice; but I will raise the more general question--How came there
+that endowment of musical faculty which characterizes modern Europeans
+at large, as compared with their remote ancestors. The monotonous chants
+of low savages cannot be said to show any melodic inspiration; and it is
+not evident that an individual savage who had a little more musical
+perception than the rest, would derive any such advantage in the
+maintenance of life as would secure the spread of his superiority by
+inheritance of the variation. And then what are we to say of harmony? We
+cannot suppose that the appreciation of this, which is relatively
+modern, can have arisen by descent from the men in whom successive
+variations increased the appreciation of it--the composers and musical
+performers; for on the whole, these have been men whose worldly
+prosperity was not such as enabled them to rear many children inheriting
+their special traits. Even if we count the illegitimate ones, the
+survivors of these added to the survivors of the legitimate ones, can
+hardly be held to have yielded more than average numbers of descendants;
+and those who inherited their special traits have not often been thereby
+so aided in the struggle for existence as to further the spread of such
+traits. Rather the tendency seems to have been the reverse.
+
+Since the above passage was written, I have found in the second volume
+of _Animals and Plants under Domestication_, a remark made by Mr.
+Darwin, practically implying that among creatures which depend for their
+lives on the efficiency of numerous powers, the increase of any one by
+the natural selection of a variation is necessarily difficult. Here it
+is.
+
+     "Finally, as indefinite and almost illimitable variability is the
+     usual result of domestication and cultivation, with the same part
+     or organ varying in different individuals in different or even in
+     directly opposite ways; and as the same variation, if strongly
+     pronounced, usually recurs only after long intervals of time, any
+     particular variation would generally be lost by crossing,
+     reversion, and the accidental destruction of the varying
+     individuals, unless carefully preserved by man."--Vol. ii, 292.
+
+Remembering that mankind, subject as they are to this domestication and
+cultivation, are not, like domesticated animals, under an agency which
+picks out and preserves particular variations; it results that there
+must usually be among them, under the influence of natural selection
+alone, a continual disappearance of any useful variations of particular
+faculties which may arise. Only in cases of variations which are
+specially preservative, as for example, great cunning during a
+relatively barbarous state, can we expect increase from natural
+selection alone. We cannot suppose that minor traits, exemplified among
+others by the aesthetic perceptions, can have been evolved by natural
+selection. But if there is inheritance of functionally-produced
+modifications of structure, evolution of such minor traits is no longer
+inexplicable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two remarks made by Mr. Darwin have implications from which the same
+general conclusion must, I think, be drawn. Speaking of the variability
+of animals and plants under domestication, he says:--
+
+     "Changes of any kind in the conditions of life, even extremely
+     slight changes, often suffice to cause variability.... Animals and
+     plants continue to be variable for an immense period after their
+     first domestication; ... In the course of time they can be
+     habituated to certain changes, so as to become less variable; ...
+     There is good evidence that the power of changed conditions
+     accumulates; so that two, three, or more generations must be
+     exposed to new conditions before any effect is visible.... Some
+     variations are induced by the direct action of the surrounding
+     conditions on the whole organization, or on certain parts alone,
+     and other variations are induced indirectly through the
+     reproductive system being affected in the same manner as is so
+     common with organic beings when removed from their natural
+     conditions."--(_Animals and Plants under Domestication_, vol. ii,
+     270.)
+
+There are to be recognized two modes of this effect produced by changed
+conditions on the reproductive system, and consequently on offspring.
+Simple arrest of development is one. But beyond the variations of
+offspring arising from imperfectly developed reproductive systems in
+parents--variations which must be ordinarily in the nature of
+imperfections--there are others due to a changed balance of functions
+caused by changed conditions. The fact noted by Mr. Darwin in the above
+passage, "that the power of changed conditions accumulates; so that two,
+three, or more generations must be exposed to new conditions before any
+effect is visible," implies that during these generations there is going
+on some change of constitution consequent on the changed proportions and
+relations of the functions. I will not dwell on the implication, which
+seems tolerably clear, that this change must consist of such
+modifications of organs as adapt them to their changed functions; and
+that if the influence of changed conditions "accumulates," it must be
+through the inheritance of such modifications. Nor will I press the
+question--What is the nature of the effect registered in the
+reproductive elements, and which is subsequently manifested by
+variations?--Is it an effect entirely irrelevant to the new requirements
+of the variety?--Or is it an effect which makes the variety less fit for
+the new requirements?--Or is it an effect which makes it more fit for
+the new requirements? But not pressing these questions, it suffices to
+point out the necessary implication that changed functions of organs
+_do_, in some way or other, register themselves in changed proclivities
+of the reproductive elements. In face of these facts it cannot be denied
+that the modified action of a part produces an inheritable effect--be
+the nature of that effect what it may.
+
+The second of the remarks above adverted to as made by Mr. Darwin, is
+contained in his sections dealing with correlated variations. In the
+_Origin of Species_, p. 114, he says--
+
+     "The whole organization is so tied together during its growth and
+     development, that when slight variations in any one part occur, and
+     are accumulated through natural selection, other parts become
+     modified."
+
+And a parallel statement contained in _Animals and Plants under
+Domestication_, vol. ii, p. 320, runs thus--
+
+     "Correlated variation is an important subject for us; for when one
+     part is modified through continued selection, either by man or
+     under nature, other parts of the organization will be unavoidably
+     modified. From this correlation it apparently follows that, with
+     our domesticated animals and plants, varieties rarely or never
+     differ from each other by some single character alone."
+
+By what process does a changed part modify other parts? By modifying
+their functions in some way or degree, seems the necessary answer. It is
+indeed, imaginable, that where the part changed is some dermal appendage
+which, becoming larger, has abstracted more of the needful material from
+the general stock, the effect may consist simply in diminishing the
+amount of this material available for other dermal appendages, leading
+to diminution of some or all of them, and may fail to affect in
+appreciable ways the rest of the organism: save perhaps the
+blood-vessels near the enlarged appendage. But where the part is an
+active one--a limb, or viscus, or any organ which constantly demands
+blood, produces waste matter, secretes, or absorbs--then all the other
+active organs become implicated in the change. The functions performed
+by them have to constitute a moving equilibrium; and the function of one
+cannot, by alteration of the structure performing it, be modified in
+degree or kind, without modifying the functions of the rest--some
+appreciably and others inappreciably, according to the directness or
+indirectness of their relations. Of such inter-dependent changes, the
+normal ones are naturally inconspicuous; but those which are partially
+or completely abnormal, sufficiently carry home the general truth. Thus,
+unusual cerebral excitement affects the excretion through the kidneys in
+quantity or quality or both. Strong emotions of disagreeable kinds check
+or arrest the flow of bile. A considerable obstacle to the circulation
+offered by some important structure in a diseased or disordered state,
+throwing more strain upon the heart, causes hypertrophy of its muscular
+walls; and this change which is, so far as concerns the primary evil, a
+remedial one, often entails mischiefs in other organs. "Apoplexy and
+palsy, in a scarcely credible number of cases, are directly dependent on
+hypertrophic enlargement of the heart." And in other cases, asthma,
+dropsy, and epilepsy are caused. Now if a result of this
+inter-dependence as seen in the individual organism, is that a local
+modification of one part produces, by changing their functions,
+correlative modifications of other parts, then the question here to be
+put is--Are these correlative modifications, when of a kind falling
+within normal limits, inheritable or not. If they are inheritable, then
+the fact stated by Mr. Darwin that "when one part is modified through
+continued selection," "other parts of the organization will be
+unavoidably modified" is perfectly intelligible: these entailed
+secondary modifications are transmitted _pari passu_ with the successive
+modifications produced by selection. But what if they are not
+inheritable? Then these secondary modifications caused in the
+individual, not being transmitted to descendants, the descendants must
+commence life with organizations out of balance, and with each increment
+of change in the part affected by selection, their organizations must
+get more out of balance--must have a larger and larger amounts of
+re-organization to be made during their lives. Hence the constitution of
+the variety must become more and more unworkable.
+
+The only imaginable alternative is that the re-adjustments are effected
+in course of time by natural selection. But, in the first place, as we
+find no proof of concomitant variation among directly co-operative parts
+which are closely united, there cannot be assumed any concomitant
+variation among parts which are both indirectly co-operative and far
+from one another. And, in the second place, before all the many
+required re-adjustments could be made, the variety would die out from
+defective constitution. Even were there no such difficulty, we should
+still have to entertain a strange group of propositions, which would
+stand as follows:--1. Change in one part entails, by reaction on the
+organism, changes, in other parts, the functions of which are
+necessarily changed. 2. Such changes worked in the individual, affect,
+in some way, the reproductive elements: these being found to evolve
+unusual structures when the constitutional balance has been continuously
+disturbed. 3. But the changes in the reproductive elements thus caused,
+are not such as represent these functionally-produced changes: the
+modifications conveyed to offspring are irrelevant to these various
+modifications functionally produced in the organs of the parents. 4.
+Nevertheless, while the balance of functions cannot be re-established
+through inheritance of the effects of disturbed functions on structures,
+wrought throughout the individual organism; it can be re-established by
+the inheritance of fortuitous variations which occur in all the affected
+organs without reference to these changes of function.
+
+Now without saying that acceptance of this group of propositions is
+impossible, we may certainly say that it is not easy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"But where are the direct proofs that inheritance of
+functionally-produced modifications takes place?" is a question which
+will be put by those who have committed themselves to the current
+exclusive interpretation. "Grant that there are difficulties; still,
+before the transmitted effects of use and disuse can be legitimately
+assigned in explanation of them, we must have good evidence that the
+effects of use and disuse _are_ transmitted."
+
+Before dealing directly with this demurrer, let me deal with it
+indirectly, by pointing out that the lack of recognized evidence may be
+accounted for without assuming that there is not plenty of it.
+Inattention and reluctant attention lead to the ignoring of facts which
+really exist in abundance; as is well illustrated in the case of
+pre-historic implements. Biassed by the current belief that no traces of
+man were to be found on the Earth's surface, save in certain superficial
+formations of very recent date, geologists and anthropologists not only
+neglected to seek such traces, but for a long time continued to
+pooh-pooh those who said they had found them. When M. Boucher de Perthes
+at length succeeded in drawing the eyes of scientific men to the flint
+implements discovered by him in the quarternary deposits of the Somme
+valley; and when geologists and anthropologists had thus been convinced
+that evidences of human existence were to be found in formations of
+considerable age, and thereafter began to search for them; they found
+plenty of them all over the world. Or again, to take an instance closely
+germane to the matter, we may recall the fact that the contemptuous
+attitude towards the hypothesis of organic evolution which naturalists
+in general maintained before the publication of Mr. Darwin's work,
+prevented them from seeing the multitudinous facts by which it is
+supported. Similarly, it is very possible that their alienation from the
+belief that there is a transmission of those changes of structure which
+are produced by changes of action, makes naturalists slight the evidence
+which supports that belief and refuse to occupy themselves in seeking
+further evidence.
+
+If it be asked how it happens that there have been recorded
+multitudinous instances of variations fortuitously arising and
+re-appearing in offspring, while there have not been recorded instances
+of the transmission of changes functionally produced, there are three
+replies. The first is that changes of the one class are many of them
+conspicuous, while those of the other class are nearly all
+inconspicuous. If a child is born with six fingers, the anomaly is not
+simply obvious but so startling as to attract much notice; and if this
+child, growing up, has six-fingered descendents, everybody in the
+locality hears of it. A pigeon with specially-coloured feathers, or one
+distinguished by a broadened and upraised tail, or by a protuberance of
+the neck, draws attention by its oddness; and if in its young the trait
+is repeated, occasionally with increase, the fact is remarked, and there
+follows the thought of establishing the peculiarity by selection. A lamb
+disabled from leaping by the shortness of its legs, could not fail to be
+observed; and the fact that its offspring were similarly short-legged,
+and had a consequent inability to get over fences, would inevitably
+become widely known. Similarly with plants. That this flower had an
+extra number of petals, that that was unusually symmetrical, and that
+another differed considerably in colour from the average of its kind,
+would be easily seen by an observant gardener; and the suspicion that
+such anomalies are inheritable having arisen, experiments leading to
+further proofs that they are so, would frequently be made. But it is not
+thus with functionally-produced modifications. The seats of these are in
+nearly all cases the muscular, osseous, and nervous systems, and the
+viscera--parts which are either entirely hidden or greatly obscured.
+Modification in a nervous centre is inaccessible to vision; bones may be
+considerably altered in size or shape without attention being drawn to
+them; and, covered with thick coats as are most of the animals open to
+continuous observation, the increases or decreases in muscles must be
+great before they become externally perceptible.
+
+A further important difference between the two inquiries is that to
+ascertain whether a fortuitous variation is inheritable, needs merely a
+little attention to the selection of individuals and the observation of
+offspring; while to ascertain whether there is inheritance of a
+functionally-produced modification, it is requisite to make arrangements
+which demand the greater or smaller exercise of some part or parts;
+and it is difficult in many cases to find such arrangements, troublesome
+to maintain them even for one generation, and still more through
+successive generations.
+
+Nor is this all. There exist stimuli to inquiry in the one case which do
+not exist in the other. The money-interest and the interest of the
+fancier, acting now separately and now together, have prompted
+multitudinous individuals to make experiments which have brought out
+clear evidence that fortuitous variations are inherited. The
+cattle-breeders who profit by producing certain shapes and qualities;
+the keepers of pet animals who take pride in the perfections of those
+they have bred; the florists, professional and amateur, who obtain new
+varieties and take prizes; form a body of men who furnish naturalists
+with countless of the required proofs. But there is no such body of men,
+led either by pecuniary interest or the interest of a hobby, to
+ascertain by experiments whether the effects of use and disuse are
+inheritable.
+
+Thus, then, there are amply sufficient reasons why there is a great deal
+of direct evidence in the one case and but little in the other: such
+little being that which comes out incidentally. Let us look at what
+there is of it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Considerable weight attaches to a fact which Brown-Sequard discovered,
+quite by accident, in the course of his researches. He found that
+certain artificially-produced lesions of the nervous system, so small
+even as a section of the sciatic nerve, left, after healing, an
+increasing excitability which ended in liability to epilepsy; and there
+afterwards came out the unlooked-for result that the offspring of
+guinea-pigs which had thus acquired an epileptic habit such that a pinch
+on the neck would produce a fit, inherited an epileptic habit of like
+kind. It has, indeed, been since alleged that guinea pigs tend to
+epilepsy, and that phenomena of the kind described, occur where there
+have been no antecedents like those in Brown-Sequard's case. But
+considering the improbability that the phenomena observed by him
+happened to be nothing more than phenomena which occasionally arise
+naturally, we may, until there is good proof to the contrary, assign
+some value to his results.
+
+Evidence not of this directly experimental kind, but nevertheless of
+considerable weight, is furnished by other nervous disorders. There is
+proof enough that insanity admits of being induced by circumstances
+which, in one or other way, derange the nervous functions--excesses of
+this or that kind; and no one questions the accepted belief that
+insanity is inheritable. Is it alleged that the insanity which is
+inheritable is that which spontaneously arises, and that the insanity
+which follows some chronic perversion of functions is not inheritable?
+This does not seem a very reasonable allegation; and until some warrant
+for it is forthcoming, we may fairly assume that there is here a further
+support for belief in the transmission of functionally-produced changes.
+
+Moreover, I find among physicians the belief that nervous disorders of a
+less severe kind are inheritable. Men who have prostrated their nervous
+systems by prolonged overwork or in some other way, have children more
+or less prone to nervousness. It matters not what may be the form of
+inheritance--whether it be of a brain in some way imperfect, or of a
+deficient blood-supply; it is in any case the inheritance of
+functionally-modified structures.
+
+Verification of the reasons above given for the paucity of this direct
+evidence, is yielded by contemplation of it; for it is observable that
+the cases named are cases which, from one or other cause, have thrust
+themselves on observation. They justify the suspicion that it is not
+because such cases are rare that many of them cannot be cited; but
+simply because they are mostly unobtrusive, and to be found only by that
+deliberate search which nobody makes. I say nobody, but I am wrong.
+Successful search has been made by one whose competence as an observer
+is beyond question, and whose testimony is less liable than that of all
+others to any bias towards the conclusion that such inheritance takes
+place. I refer to the author of the _Origin of Species_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now-a-days most naturalists are more Darwinian than Mr. Darwin himself.
+I do not mean that their beliefs in organic evolution are more decided;
+though I shall be supposed to mean this by the mass of readers, who
+identify Mr. Darwin's great contribution to the theory of organic
+evolution, with the theory of organic evolution itself, and even with
+the theory of evolution at large. But I mean that the particular factor
+which he first recognized as having played so immense a part in organic
+evolution, has come to be regarded by his followers as the sole factor,
+though it was not so regarded by him. It is true that he apparently
+rejected altogether the causal agencies alleged by earlier inquirers. In
+the Historical Sketch prefixed to the later editions of his _Origin of
+Species_ (p. xiv, note), he writes:--"It is curious how largely my
+grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and erroneous
+grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his 'Zoonomia' (vol. i, pp. 500-510),
+published in 1794." And since, among the views thus referred to, was the
+view that changes of structure in organisms arise by the inheritance of
+functionally-produced changes, Mr. Darwin seems, by the above sentence,
+to have implied his disbelief in such inheritance. But he did not mean
+to imply this; for his belief in it as a cause of evolution, if not an
+important cause, is proved by many passages in his works. In the first
+chapter of the _Origin of Species_ (p. 8 of the sixth edition), he says
+respecting the inherited effects of habit, that "with animals the
+increased use or disuse of parts has had a more marked influence;" and
+he gives as instances the changed relative weights of the wing bones and
+leg bones of the wild duck and the domestic duck, "the great and
+inherited development of the udders in cows and goats," and the drooping
+ears of various domestic animals. Here are other passages taken from the
+latest edition of the work.
+
+     "I think there can be no doubt that use in our domestic animals has
+     strengthened and enlarged certain parts, and disuse diminished
+     them; and that such modifications are inherited" (p. 108). [And on
+     the following pages he gives five further examples of such
+     effects.] "Habit in producing constitutional peculiarities and use
+     in strengthening and disuse in weakening and diminishing organs,
+     appear in many cases to have been potent in their effects" (p.
+     131). "When discussing special cases, Mr. Mivart passes over the
+     effects of the increased use and disuse of parts, which I have
+     always maintained to be highly important, and have treated in my
+     'Variation under Domestication' at greater length than, as I
+     believe, any other writer" (p. 176). "Disuse, on the other hand,
+     will account for the less developed condition of the whole inferior
+     half of the body, including the lateral fins" (p. 188). "I may give
+     another instance of a structure which apparently owes its origin
+     exclusively to use or habit" (p. 188). "It appears probable that
+     disuse has been the main agent in rendering organs rudimentary"
+     (pp. 400-401). "On the whole, we may conclude that habit, or use
+     and disuse, have, in some cases, played a considerable part in the
+     modification of the constitution and structure; but that the
+     effects have often been largely combined with, and sometimes
+     overmastered by, the natural selection of innate variations" (p.
+     114).
+
+In his subsequent work, _The Variation of Animals and Plants under
+Domestication_, where he goes into full detail, Mr. Darwin gives more
+numerous illustrations of the inherited effects of use and disuse. The
+following are some of the cases, quoted from volume i of the first
+edition.
+
+     Treating of domesticated rabbits, he says:--"the want of exercise
+     has apparently modified the proportional length of the limbs in
+     comparison with the body" (p. 116). "We thus see that the most
+     important and complicated organ [the brain] in the whole
+     organization is subject to the law of decrease in size from disuse"
+     (p. 129). He remarks that in birds of the oceanic islands "not
+     persecuted by any enemies, the reduction of their wings has
+     probably been caused by gradual disuse." After comparing one of
+     these, the water-hen of Tristan d'Acunha, with the European
+     water-hen, and showing that all the bones concerned in flight are
+     smaller, he adds--"Hence in the skeleton of this natural species
+     nearly the same changes have occurred, only carried a little
+     further, as with our domestic ducks, and in this latter case I
+     presume no one will dispute that they have resulted from the
+     lessened use of the wings and the increased use of the legs" (pp.
+     286-7). "As with other long-domesticated animals, the instincts of
+     the silk-moth have suffered. The caterpillars, when placed on a
+     mulberry-tree, often commit the strange mistake of devouring the
+     base of the leaf on which they are feeding, and consequently fall
+     down; but they are capable, according to M. Robinet, of again
+     crawling up the trunk. Even this capacity sometimes fails, for M.
+     Martins placed some caterpillars on a tree, and those which fell
+     were not able to remount and perished of hunger; they were even
+     incapable of passing from leaf to leaf" (p. 304).
+
+Here are some instances of like meaning from volume ii.
+
+     "In many cases there is reason to believe that the lessened use of
+     various organs has affected the corresponding parts in the
+     offspring. But there is no good evidence that this ever follows in
+     the course of a single generation.... Our domestic fowls, ducks,
+     and geese have almost lost, not only in the individual but in the
+     race, their power of flight; for we do not see a chicken, when
+     frightened, take flight like a young pheasant.... With domestic
+     pigeons, the length of the sternum, the prominence of its crest,
+     the length of the scapulae and furcula, the length of the wings as
+     measured from tip to tip of the radius, are all reduced relatively
+     to the same parts in the wild pigeon." [After detailing kindred
+     diminutions in fowls and ducks, Mr. Darwin adds] "The decreased
+     weight and size of the bones, in the foregoing cases, is probably
+     the indirect result of the reaction of the weakened muscles on the
+     bones" (pp. 297-8). "Nathusius has shown that, with the improved
+     races of the pig, the shortened legs and snout, the form of the
+     articular condyles of the occiput, and the position of the jaws
+     with the upper canine teeth projecting in a most anomalous manner
+     in front of the lower canines, may be attributed to these parts not
+     having been fully exercised.... These modifications of structure,
+     which are all strictly inherited, characterise several improved
+     breeds, so that they cannot have been derived from any single
+     domestic or wild stock. With respect to cattle, Professor Tanner
+     has remarked that the lungs and liver in the improved breeds 'are
+     found to be considerably reduced in size when compared with those
+     possessed by animals having perfect liberty;' ... The cause of the
+     reduced lungs in highly-bred animals which take little exercise is
+     obvious" (pp. 299-300). [And on pp. 301, 302 and 303, he gives
+     facts showing the effects of use and disuse in changing, among
+     domestic animals, the characters of the ears, the lengths of the
+     intestines, and, in various ways, the natures of the instincts.]
+
+But Mr. Darwin's admission, or rather his assertion, that the
+inheritance of functionally-produced modifications has been a factor in
+organic evolution, is made clear not by these passages alone and by
+kindred ones. It is made clearer still by a passage in the preface to
+the second edition of his _Descent of Man_. He there protests against
+that current version of his views in which this factor makes no
+appearance. The passage is as follows.
+
+     "I may take this opportunity of remarking that my critics
+     frequently assume that I attribute all changes of corporeal
+     structure and mental power exclusively to the natural selection of
+     such variations as are often called spontaneous; whereas, even in
+     the first edition of the 'Origin of Species,' I distinctly stated
+     that great weight must be attributed to the inherited effects of
+     use and disuse, with respect both to the body and mind."
+
+Nor is this all. There is evidence that Mr. Darwin's belief in the
+efficiency of this factor, became stronger as he grew older and
+accumulated more evidence. The first of the extracts above given, taken
+from the sixth edition of the _Origin of Species_, runs thus:--
+
+     "I think there can be no doubt that use in our domestic animals has
+     strengthened and enlarged certain parts, and disuse diminished
+     them; and that such modifications are inherited."
+
+Now on turning to the first edition, p. 134, it will be found that
+instead of the words--"I think there can be no doubt," the words
+originally used were--"I think there can be _little_ doubt." That this
+deliberate erasure of a qualifying word and substitution of a word
+implying unqualified belief, was due to a more decided recognition of a
+factor originally under-estimated, is clearly implied by the wording of
+the above-quoted passage from the preface to the _Descent of Man_; where
+he says that "_even_ in the first edition of the 'Origin of Species,'"
+&c.: the implication being that much more in subsequent editions, and
+subsequent works, had he insisted on this factor. The change thus
+indicated is especially significant as having occurred at a time of life
+when the natural tendency is towards fixity of opinion.
+
+During that earlier period when he was discovering the multitudinous
+cases in which his own hypothesis afforded solutions, and simultaneously
+observing how utterly futile in these multitudinous cases was the
+hypothesis propounded by his grandfather and Lamarck, Mr. Darwin was,
+not unnaturally, almost betrayed into the belief that the one is
+all-sufficient and the other inoperative. But in the mind of one so
+candid and ever open to more evidence, there naturally came a reaction.
+The inheritance of functionally-produced modifications, which, judging
+by the passage quoted above concerning the views of these earlier
+enquirers, would seem to have been at one time denied, but which as we
+have seen was always to some extent recognized, came to be recognized
+more and more, and deliberately included as a factor of importance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of this reaction displayed in the later writings of Mr. Darwin, let us
+now ask--Has it not to be carried further? Was the share in organic
+evolution which Mr. Darwin latterly assigned to the transmission of
+modifications caused by use and disuse, its due share? Consideration of
+the groups of evidences given above, will, I think, lead us to believe
+that its share has been much larger than he supposed even in his later
+days.
+
+There is first the implication yielded by extensive classes of phenomena
+which remain inexplicable in the absence of this factor. If, as we see,
+co-operative parts do not vary together, even when few and close
+together, and may not therefore be assumed to do so when many and
+remote, we cannot account for those innumerable changes in organization
+which are implied when, for advantageous use of some modified part, many
+other parts which join it in action have to be modified.
+
+Further, as increasing complexity of structure, accompanying increasing
+complexity of life, implies increasing number of faculties, of which
+each one conduces to preservation of self or descendants; and as the
+various individuals of a species, severally requiring something like the
+normal amounts of all these, may individually profit, here by an unusual
+amount of one, and there by an unusual amount of another; it follows
+that as the number of faculties becomes greater, it becomes more
+difficult for any one to be further developed by natural selection. Only
+where increase of some one is _predominantly_ advantageous does the
+means seem adequate to the end. Especially in the case of powers which
+do not subserve self-preservation in appreciable degrees, does
+development by natural selection appear impracticable.
+
+It is a fact recognized by Mr. Darwin, that where, by selection through
+successive generations, a part has been increased or decreased, its
+reaction upon other parts entails changes in them. This reaction is
+effected through the changes of function involved. If the changes of
+structure produced by such changes of function, are inheritable, then
+the re-adjustment of parts throughout the organism, taking place
+generation after generation, maintains an approximate balance; but if
+not, then generation after generation the organism must get more and
+more out of gear, and tend to become unworkable.
+
+Further, as it is proved that change in the balance of functions
+registers its effects on the reproductive elements, we have to choose
+between the alternatives that the registered effects are irrelevant to
+the particular modifications which the organism has undergone, or that
+they are such as tend to produce repetitions of these modifications. The
+last of these alternatives makes the facts comprehensible; but the first
+of them not only leaves us with several unsolved problems, but is
+incongruous with the general truth that by reproduction, ancestral
+traits, down to minute details, are transmitted.
+
+Though, in the absence of pecuniary interests and the interests in
+hobbies, no such special experiments as those which have established the
+inheritance of fortuitous variations have been made to ascertain whether
+functionally-produced modifications are inherited; yet certain apparent
+instances of such inheritance have forced themselves on observation
+without being sought for. In addition to other indications of a less
+conspicuous kind, is the one I have given above--the fact that the
+apparatus for tearing and mastication has decreased with decrease of its
+function, alike in civilized man and in some varieties of dogs which
+lead protected and pampered lives. Of the numerous cases named by Mr.
+Darwin, it is observable that they are yielded not by one class of parts
+only, but by most if not all classes--by the dermal system, the muscular
+system, the osseous system, the nervous system, the viscera; and that
+among parts liable to be functionally modified, the most numerous
+observed cases of inheritance are furnished by those which admit of
+preservation and easy comparison--the bones: these cases, moreover,
+being specially significant as showing how, in sundry unallied species,
+parallel changes of structure have occurred along with parallel changes
+of habit.
+
+What, then, shall we say of the general implication? Are we to stop
+short with the admission that inheritance of functionally-produced
+modifications takes place only in cases in which there is evidence of
+it? May we properly assume that these many instances of changes of
+structure caused by changes of function, occurring in various tissues
+and various organs, are merely special and exceptional instances having
+no general significance? Shall we suppose that though the evidence which
+already exists has come to light without aid from a body of inquirers,
+there would be no great increase were due attention devoted to the
+collection of evidence? This is, I think, not a reasonable supposition.
+To me the _ensemble_ of the facts suggests the belief, scarcely to be
+resisted, that the inheritance of functionally-produced modifications
+takes place universally. Looking at physiological phenomena as
+conforming to physical principles, it is difficult to conceive that a
+changed play of organic forces which in many cases of different kinds
+produces an inherited change of structure, does not do this in all
+cases. The implication, very strong I think, is that the action of every
+organ produces on it a reaction which, usually not altering its rate of
+nutrition, sometimes leaves it with diminished nutrition consequent on
+diminished action, and at other times increases its nutrition in
+proportion to its increased action; that while generating a modified
+_consensus_ of functions and of structures, the activities are at the
+same time impressing this modified _consensus_ on the sperm-cells and
+germ-cells whence future individuals are to be produced; and that in
+ways mostly too small to be identified, but occasionally in more
+conspicuous ways and in the course of generations, the resulting
+modifications of one or other kind show themselves. Further, it seems to
+me that as there are certain extensive classes of phenomena which are
+inexplicable if we assume the inheritance of fortuitous variations to be
+the sole factor, but which become at once explicable if we admit the
+inheritance of functionally-produced changes, we are justified in
+concluding that this inheritance of functionally-produced changes has
+been not simply a co-operating factor in organic evolution, but has been
+a co-operating factor without which organic evolution, in its higher
+forms at any rate, could never have taken place.
+
+Be this or be it not a warrantable conclusion, there is, I think, good
+reason for a provisional acceptance of the hypothesis that the effects
+of use and disuse are inheritable; and for a methodic pursuit of
+inquiries with the view of either establishing it or disproving it. It
+seems scarcely reasonable to accept without clear demonstration, the
+belief that while a trivial difference of structure arising
+spontaneously is transmissible, a massive difference of structure,
+maintained generation after generation by change of function, leaves no
+trace in posterity. Considering that unquestionably the modification of
+structure by function is a _vera causa_, in so far as concerns the
+individual; and considering the number of facts which so competent an
+observer as Mr. Darwin regarded as evidence that transmission of such
+modifications takes place in particular cases; the hypothesis that such
+transmission takes place in conformity with a general law, holding of
+all active structures, should, I think, be regarded as at least a good
+working hypothesis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But now supposing the broad conclusion above drawn to be
+granted--supposing all to agree that from the beginning, along with
+inheritance of useful variations fortuitously arising, there has been
+inheritance of effects produced by use and disuse; do there remain no
+classes of organic phenomena unaccounted for? To this question I think
+it must be replied that there do remain classes of organic phenomena
+unaccounted for. It may, I believe, be shown that certain cardinal
+traits of animals and plants at large are still unexplained; and that a
+further factor must be recognized. To show this, however, will require
+another paper.
+
+
+II.
+
+Ask a plumber who is repairing your pump, how the water is raised in it,
+and he replies--"By suction." Recalling the ability which he has to suck
+up water into his mouth through a tube, he is certain that he
+understands the pump's action. To inquire what he means by suction,
+seems to him absurd. He says you know as well as he does, what he means;
+and he cannot see that there is any need for asking how it happens that
+the water rises in the tube when he strains his mouth in a particular
+way. To the question why the pump, acting by suction, will not make the
+water rise above 32 feet, and practically not so much, he can give no
+answer; but this does not shake his confidence in his explanation.
+
+On the other hand an inquirer who insists on knowing what suction is,
+may obtain from the physicist answers which give him clear ideas, not
+only about it but about many other things. He learns that on ourselves
+and all things around, there is an atmospheric pressure amounting to
+about 15 pounds on the square inch: 15 pounds being the average weight
+of a column of air having a square inch for its base and extending
+upwards from the sea-level to the limit of the Earth's atmosphere. He is
+made to observe that when he puts one end of a tube into water and the
+other end into his mouth, and then draws back his tongue, so leaving a
+vacant space, two things happen. One is that the pressure of air outside
+his cheeks, no longer balanced by an equal pressure of air inside,
+thrusts his cheeks inwards; and the other is that the pressure of air on
+the surface of the water, no longer balanced by an equal pressure of air
+within the tube and his mouth (into which part of the air from the tube
+has gone) the water is forced up the tube in consequence of the unequal
+pressure. Once understanding thus the nature of the so-called suction,
+he sees how it happens that when the plunger of the pump is raised and
+relieves from atmospheric pressure the water below it, the atmospheric
+pressure on the water in the well, not being balanced by that on the
+water in the tube, forces the water higher up the tube, so that it
+follows the plunger. And now he sees why the water cannot be raised
+beyond the theoretic limit of 32 feet: a limit made much lower in
+practice by imperfections in the apparatus. For if, simplifying the
+conception, he supposes the tube of the pump to be a square inch in
+section, then the atmospheric pressure of 15 pounds per square inch on
+the water in the well, can raise the water in the tube to such height
+only that the entire column of it weighs 15 pounds. Having been thus
+enlightened about the pump's action, the action of a barometer becomes
+intelligible. He perceives how, under the conditions established, the
+weight of the column of mercury balances that of an atmospheric column
+of equal diameter; and how, as the weight of the atmospheric column
+varies, there is a corresponding variation in the weight of the
+mercurial column,--shown by change of height. Moreover, having
+previously supposed that he understood the ascent of a balloon when he
+ascribed it to relative lightness, he now sees that he did not truly
+understand it. For he did not recognize it as a result of that upward
+pressure caused by the difference between the weight of the mass formed
+by the gas in the balloon _plus_ the cylindrical column of air extending
+above it to the limit of the atmosphere, and the weight of a similar
+cylindrical column of air extending down to the under surface of the
+balloon: this difference of weight causing an equivalent upward pressure
+on the under surface.
+
+Why do I introduce these familiar truths so entirely irrelevant to my
+subject? I do it to show, in the first place, the contrast between a
+vague conception of a cause and a distinct conception of it; or rather,
+the contrast between that conception of a cause which results when it is
+simply classed with some other or others which familiarity makes us
+think we understand, and that conception of a cause which results when
+it is represented in terms of definite physical forces admitting of
+measurement. And I do it to show, in the second place, that when we
+insist on resolving a verbally-intelligible cause into its actual
+factors, we get not only a clear solution of the problem before us, but
+we find that the way is opened to solutions of sundry other problems.
+While we rest satisfied with unanalyzed causes, we may be sure both that
+we do not rightly comprehend the production of the particular effects
+ascribed to them, and that we overlook other effects which would be
+revealed to us by contemplation of the causes as analyzed. Especially
+must this be so where the causation is complex. Hence we may infer that
+the phenomena presented by the development of species, are not likely to
+be truly conceived unless we keep in view the concrete agencies at work.
+Let us look closely at the facts to be dealt with.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The growth of a thing is effected by the joint operation of certain
+forces on certain materials; and when it dwindles, there is either a
+lack of some materials, or the forces co-operate in a way different from
+that which produces growth. If a structure has varied, the implication
+is that the processes which built it up were made unlike the parallel
+processes in other cases, by the greater or less amount of some one or
+more of the matters or actions concerned. Where there is unusual
+fertility, the play of vital activities is thereby shown to have
+deviated from the ordinary play of vital activities; and conversely, if
+there is infertility. If the germs, or ova, or seed, or offspring
+partially developed, survive more or survive less, it is either because
+their molar or molecular structures are unlike the average ones, or
+because they are affected in unlike ways by surrounding agencies. When
+life is prolonged, the fact implies that the combination of actions,
+visible and invisible, constituting life, retains its equilibrium longer
+than usual in presence of environing forces which tend to destroy its
+equilibrium. That is to say, growth, variation, survival, death, if they
+are to be reduced to the forms in which physical science can recognize
+them, must be expressed as effects of agencies definitely
+conceived--mechanical forces, light, heat, chemical affinity, &c.
+
+This general conclusion brings with it the thought that the phrases
+employed in discussing organic evolution, though convenient and indeed
+needful, are liable to mislead us by veiling the actual agencies. That
+which really goes on in every organism is the working together of
+component parts in ways conducing to the continuance of their combined
+actions, in presence of things and actions outside; some of which tend
+to subserve, and others to destroy, the combination. The matters and
+forces in these two groups, are the sole causes properly so called. The
+words "natural selection," do not express a cause in the physical sense.
+They express a mode of co-operation among causes--or rather, to speak
+strictly, they express an effect of this mode of co-operation. The idea
+they convey seems perfectly intelligible. Natural selection having been
+compared with artificial selection, and the analogy pointed out, there
+apparently remains no indefiniteness: the inconvenience being, however,
+that the definiteness is of a wrong kind. The tacitly implied Nature
+which selects, is not an embodied agency analogous to the man who
+selects artificially; and the selection is not the picking out of an
+individual fixed on, but the overthrowing of many individuals by
+agencies which one successfully resists, and hence continues to live and
+multiply. Mr. Darwin was conscious of these misleading implications. In
+the introduction to his _Animals and Plants under Domestication_ (p. 6)
+he says:--
+
+     "For brevity sake I sometimes speak of natural selection as an
+     intelligent power; ... I have, also, often personified the word
+     Nature; for I have found it difficult to avoid this ambiguity; but
+     I mean by nature only the aggregate action and product of many
+     natural laws,--and by laws only the ascertained sequence of
+     events."
+
+But while he thus clearly saw, and distinctly asserted, that the factors
+of organic evolution are the concrete actions, inner and outer, to which
+every organism is subject, Mr. Darwin, by habitually using the
+convenient figure of speech, was, I think, prevented from recognizing so
+fully as he would otherwise have done, certain fundamental consequences
+of these actions.
+
+Though it does not personalize the cause, and does not assimilate its
+mode of working to a human mode of working, kindred objections may be
+urged against the expression to which I was led when seeking to present
+the phenomena in literal terms rather than metaphorical terms--the
+survival of the fittest;[42] for in a vague way the first word, and in a
+clear way the second word, calls up an anthropocentric idea. The
+thought of survival inevitably suggests the human view of certain sets
+of phenomena, rather than that character which they have simply as
+groups of changes. If, asking what we really know of a plant, we exclude
+all the ideas associated with the words life and death, we find that the
+sole facts known to us are that there go on in the plant certain
+inter-dependent processes, in presence of certain aiding and hindering
+influences outside of it; and that in some cases a difference of
+structure or a favourable set of circumstances, allows these
+inter-dependent processes to go on for longer periods than in other
+cases. Again, in the working together of those many actions, internal
+and external, which determine the lives or deaths of organisms, we see
+nothing to which the words fitness and unfitness are applicable in the
+physical sense. If a key fits a lock, or a glove a hand, the relation of
+the things to one another is presentable to the perceptions. No approach
+to fitness of this kind is made by an organism which continues to live
+under certain conditions. Neither the organic structures themselves, nor
+their individual movements, nor those combined movements of certain
+among them which constitute conduct, are related in any analogous way to
+the things and actions in the environment. Evidently the word fittest,
+as thus used, is a figure of speech; suggesting the fact that amid
+surrounding actions, an organism characterized by the word has either a
+greater ability than others of its kind to maintain the equilibrium of
+its vital activities, or else has so much greater a power of
+multiplication that though not longer lived than they, it continues to
+live in posterity more persistently. And indeed, as we here see, the
+word fittest has to cover cases in which there may be less ability than
+usual to survive individually, but in which the defect is more than made
+good by higher degrees of fertility.
+
+I have elaborated this criticism with the intention of emphasizing the
+need for studying the changes which have gone on, and are ever going
+on, in organic bodies, from an exclusively physical point of view. On
+contemplating the facts from this point of view, we become aware that,
+besides those special effects of the co-operating forces which eventuate
+in the longer survival of one individual than of others, and in the
+consequent increase through generations, of some trait which furthered
+its survival, many other effects are being wrought on each and all of
+the individuals. Bodies of every class and quality, inorganic as well as
+organic, are from instant to instant subject to the influences in their
+environments; are from instant to instant being changed by these in ways
+that are mostly inconspicuous; and are in course of time changed by them
+in conspicuous ways. Living things in common with dead things, are, I
+say, being thus perpetually acted upon and modified; and the changes
+hence resulting, constitute an all-important part of those undergone in
+the course of organic evolution. I do not mean to imply that changes of
+this class pass entirely unrecognized; for, as we shall see, Mr. Darwin
+takes cognizance of certain secondary and special ones. But the effects
+which are not taken into account, are those primary and universal
+effects which give certain fundamental characters to all organisms.
+Contemplation of an analogy will best prepare the way for appreciation
+of them, and of the relation they bear to those which at present
+monopolize attention.
+
+An observant rambler along shores, will, here and there, note places
+where the sea has deposited things more or less similar, and separated
+them from dissimilar things--will see shingle parted from sand; larger
+stones sorted from smaller stones; and will occasionally discover
+deposits of shells more or less worn by being rolled about. Sometimes
+the pebbles or boulders composing the shingle at one end of a bay, he
+will find much larger than those at the other: intermediate sizes,
+having small average differences, occupying the space between the
+extremes. An example occurs, if I remember rightly, some mile or two to
+the west of Tenby; but the most remarkable and well-known example is
+that afforded by the Chesil bank. Here, along a shore some sixteen miles
+long, there is a gradual increase in the sizes of the stones; which,
+being at one end but mere pebbles, are at the other end immense
+boulders. In this case, then, the breakers and the undertow have
+effected a selection--have at each place left behind those stones which
+were too large to be readily moved, while taking away others small
+enough to be moved easily. But now, if we contemplate exclusively this
+selective action of the sea, we overlook certain important effects which
+the sea simultaneously works. While the stones have been differently
+acted upon in so far that some have been left here and some carried
+there; they have been similarly acted upon in two allied, but
+distinguishable, ways. By perpetually rolling them about and knocking
+them one against another, the waves have so broken off their most
+prominent parts as to produce in all of them more or less rounded forms;
+and then, further, the mutual friction of the stones simultaneously
+caused, has smoothed their surfaces. That is to say in general terms,
+the actions of environing agencies, so far as they have operated
+indiscriminately, have produced in the stones a certain unity of
+character; at the same time that they have, by their differential
+effects, separated them: the larger ones having withstood certain
+violent actions which the smaller ones could not withstand.
+
+Similarly with other assemblages of objects which are alike in their
+primary traits but unlike in their secondary traits. When simultaneously
+exposed to the same set of actions, some of these actions, rising to a
+certain intensity, may be expected to work on particular members of the
+assemblage changes which they cannot work in those which are markedly
+unlike; while others of the actions will work in all of them similar
+changes, because of the uniform relations between these actions and
+certain attributes common to all members of the assemblage. Hence it is
+inferable that on living organisms, which form an assemblage of this
+kind, and are unceasingly exposed in common to the agencies composing
+their inorganic environments, there must be wrought two such sets of
+effects. There will result a universal likeness among them consequent on
+the likeness of their respective relations to the matters and forces
+around; and there will result, in some cases, the differences due to the
+differential effects of these matters and forces, and in other cases,
+the changes which, being life-sustaining or life-destroying, eventuate
+in certain natural selections.
+
+I have, above, made a passing reference to the fact that Mr. Darwin did
+not fail to take account of some among these effects directly produced
+on organisms by surrounding inorganic agencies. Here are extracts from
+the sixth edition of the _Origin of Species_ showing this.
+
+     "It is very difficult to decide how far changed conditions, such as
+     of climate, food, &c., have acted in a definite manner. There is
+     reason to believe that in the course of time the effects have been
+     greater than can be proved by clear evidence.... Mr. Gould believes
+     that birds of the same species are more brightly coloured under a
+     clear atmosphere, than when living near the coast or on islands;
+     and Wollaston is convinced that residence near the sea affects the
+     colours of insects. Moquin-Tandon gives a list of plants which,
+     when growing near the sea-shore, have their leaves in some degree
+     fleshy, though not elsewhere fleshy" (pp. 106-7). "Some observers
+     are convinced that a damp climate affects the growth of the hair,
+     and that with the hair the horns are correlated" (p. 159).
+
+In his subsequent work, _Animals and Plants under Domestication_, Mr.
+Darwin still more clearly recognizes these causes of change in
+organization. A chapter is devoted to the subject. After premising that
+"the direct action of the conditions of life, whether leading to
+definite or indefinite results, is a totally distinct consideration from
+the effects of natural selection;" he goes on to say that changed
+conditions of life "have acted so definitely and powerfully on the
+organisation of our domesticated productions, that they have sufficed
+to form new sub-varieties or races, without the aid of selection by man
+or of natural selection." Of his examples here are two.
+
+     "I have given in detail in the ninth chapter the most remarkable
+     case known to me, namely, that in Germany several varieties of
+     maize brought from the hotter parts of America were transformed in
+     the course of only two or three generations." (Vol. ii, p. 277.)
+     [And in this ninth chapter concerning these and other such
+     instances he says "some of the foregoing differences would
+     certainly be considered of specific value with plants in a state of
+     nature." (Vol. i, p. 321.)] "Mr. Meehan, in a remarkable paper,
+     compares twenty-nine kinds of American trees, belonging to various
+     orders, with their nearest European allies, all grown in close
+     proximity in the same garden and under as nearly as possible the
+     same conditions." And then enumerating six traits in which the
+     American forms all of them differ in like ways from their allied
+     European forms, Mr. Darwin thinks there is no choice but to
+     conclude that these "have been definitely caused by the
+     long-continued action of the different climate of the two
+     continents on the trees." (Vol. ii, pp. 281-2.)
+
+But the fact we have to note is that while Mr. Darwin thus took account
+of special effects due to special amounts and combinations of agencies
+in the environment, he did not take account of the far more important
+effects due to the general and constant operation of these agencies.[43]
+If a difference between the quantities of a force which acts on two
+organisms, otherwise alike and otherwise similarly conditioned, produces
+some difference between them; then, by implication, this force produces
+in both of them effects which they show in common. The inequality
+between two things cannot have a value unless the things themselves have
+values. Similarly if, in two cases, some unlikeness of proportion among
+the surrounding inorganic agencies to which two plants or two animals
+are exposed, is followed by some unlikeness in the changes wrought on
+them; then it follows that these several agencies taken separately, work
+changes in both of them. Hence we must infer that organisms have certain
+structural characters in common, which are consequent on the action of
+the medium in which they exist: using the word medium in a comprehensive
+sense, as including all physical forces falling upon them as well as
+matters bathing them. And we may conclude that from the primary
+characters thus produced there must result secondary characters.
+
+Before going on to observe those general traits of organisms due to the
+general action of the inorganic environment upon them, I feel tempted to
+enlarge on the effects produced by each of the several matters and
+forces constituting the environment. I should like to do this not only
+to give a clear preliminary conception of the ways in which all
+organisms are affected by these universally-present agents, but also to
+show that, in the first place, these agents modify inorganic bodies as
+well as organic bodies, and that, in the second place, the organic are
+far more modifiable by them than the inorganic. But to avoid undue
+suspension of the argument, I content myself with saying that when the
+respective effects of gravitation, heat, light, &c., are studied, as
+well as the respective effects, physical and chemical, of the matters
+forming the media, water and air, it will be found that while more or
+less operative on all bodies, each modifies organic bodies to an extent
+immensely greater than the extent to which it modifies inorganic bodies.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here, not discriminating among the special effects which these various
+forces and matters in the environment produce on both classes of bodies,
+let us consider their combined effects, and ask--What is the most
+general trait of such effects?
+
+Obviously the most general trait is the greater amount of change wrought
+on the outer surface than on the inner mass. In so far as the matters of
+which the medium is composed come into play, the unavoidable implication
+is that they act more on the parts directly exposed to them than on the
+parts sheltered from them. And in so far as the forces pervading the
+medium come into play, it is manifest that, excluding gravity, which
+affects outer and inner parts indiscriminately, the outer parts have to
+bear larger shares of their actions. If it is a question of heat, then
+the exterior must lose it or gain it faster than the interior; and in a
+medium which is now warmer and now colder, the two must habitually
+differ in temperature to some extent--at least where the size is
+considerable. If it is a question of light, then in all but absolutely
+transparent masses, the outer parts must undergo more of any change
+producible by it than the inner parts--supposing other things equal; by
+which I mean, supposing the case is not complicated by any such
+convexities of the outer surface as produce internal concentrations of
+rays. Hence then, speaking generally, the necessity is that the primary
+and almost universal effect of the converse between the body and its
+medium, is to differentiate its outside from its inside. I say almost
+universal, because where the body is both mechanically and chemically
+stable, like, for instance, a quartz crystal, the medium may fail to
+work either inner or outer change.
+
+Of illustrations among inorganic bodies, a convenient one is supplied by
+an old cannon-ball that has been long lying exposed. A coating of rust,
+formed of flakes within flakes, incloses it; and this thickens year by
+year, until, perhaps, it reaches a stage at which its exterior loses as
+much by rain and wind as its interior gains by further oxidation of the
+iron. Most mineral masses--pebbles, boulders, rocks--if they show any
+effect of the environment at all, show it only by that disintegration of
+surface which follows the freezing of absorbed water: an effect which,
+though mechanical rather than chemical, equally illustrates the general
+truth. Occasionally a "rocking-stone" is thus produced. There are formed
+successive layers relatively friable in texture, each of which, thickest
+at the most exposed parts, and being presently lost by weathering,
+leaves the contained mass in a shape more rounded than before; until,
+resting on its convex under-surface, it is easily moved. But of all
+instances perhaps the most remarkable is one to be seen on the west bank
+of the Nile at Philae, where a ridge of granite 100 feet high, has had
+its outer parts reduced in course of time to a collection of
+boulder-shaped masses, varying from say a yard in diameter to six or
+eight feet, each one of which shows in progress an exfoliation of
+successively-formed shells of decomposed granite: most of the masses
+having portions of such shells partially detached.
+
+If, now, inorganic masses, relatively so stable in composition, thus
+have their outer parts differentiated from their inner parts, what must
+we say of organic masses, characterized by such extreme chemical
+instability?--instability so great that their essential material is
+named protein, to indicate the readiness with which it passes from one
+isomeric form to another. Clearly the necessary inference is that this
+effect of the medium must be wrought inevitably and promptly, wherever
+the relation of outer and inner has become settled: a qualification for
+which the need will be seen hereafter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Beginning with the earliest and most minute kinds of living things, we
+necessarily encounter difficulties in getting direct evidence; since, of
+the countless species now existing, all have been subject during
+millions upon millions of years to the evolutionary process, and have
+had their primary traits complicated and obscured by those endless
+secondary traits which the natural selection of favourable variations
+has produced. Among protophytes it needs but to think of the
+multitudinous varieties of diatoms and desmids, with their
+elaborately-constructed coverings; or of the definite methods of growth
+and multiplication among such simple _Algae_ as the _Conjugatae_; to see
+that most of their distinctive characters are due to inherited
+constitutions, which have been slowly moulded by survival of the fittest
+to this or that mode of life. To disentangle such parts of their
+developmental changes as are due to the action of the medium, is
+therefore hardly possible. We can hope only to get a general conception
+of it by contemplating the totality of the facts.
+
+The first cardinal fact is that all protophytes are cellular--all show
+us this contrast between outside and inside. Supposing the multitudinous
+specialities of the envelope in different orders and genera of
+protophytes to be set against one another, and mutually cancelled, there
+remains as a trait common to them--an envelope unlike that which it
+envelopes. The second cardinal fact is that this simple trait is the
+earliest trait displayed in germs, or spores, or other parts from which
+new individuals are to arise; and that, consequently, this trait must be
+regarded as having been primordial. For it is an established truth of
+organic evolution that embryos show us, in general ways, the forms of
+remote ancestors; and that the first changes undergone, indicate, more
+or less clearly, the first changes which took place in the series of
+forms through which the existing form has been reached. Describing, in
+successive groups of plants, the early transformations of these
+primitive units, Sachs[44] says of the lowest _Algae_ that "the
+conjugated protoplasmic body clothes itself with a cell-wall" (p. 10);
+that in "the spores of Mosses and Vascular Cryptogams" and in "the
+pollen of Phanerogams" ... "the protoplasmic body of the mother-cell
+breaks up into four lumps, which quickly round themselves off and
+contract, and become enveloped by a cell-membrane only after complete
+separation" (p. 13); that in the _Equisetaceae_ "the young spores, when
+first separated, are still naked, but they soon become surrounded by a
+cell-membrane" (p. 14); and that in higher plants, as in the pollen of
+many Dicotyledons, "the contracting daughter-cells secrete cellulose
+even during their separation" (p. 14). Here, then, in whatever way we
+interpret it, the fact is that there quickly arises an outer layer
+different from the contained matter. But the most significant evidence
+is furnished by "the masses of protoplasm that escape into water from
+the injured sacs of _Vaucheria_, which often instantly become rounded
+into globular bodies," and of which the "hyaline protoplasm envelopes
+the whole as a skin" (p. 41) which "is denser than the inner and more
+watery substance" (p. 42). As in this case the protoplasm is but a
+fragment, and as it is removed from the influence of the parent-cell,
+this differentiating process can scarcely be regarded as anything more
+than the effect of physico-chemical actions: a conclusion which is
+supported by the statement of Sachs that "not only every vacuole in a
+solid protoplasmic body, but also every thread of protoplasm which
+penetrates the sap-cavity, and finally the inner side of the
+protoplasm-sac which encloses the sap-cavity, is also bounded by a skin"
+(p. 42). If then "every portion of a protoplasmic body immediately
+surrounds itself, when it becomes isolated, with such a skin," which is
+shown in all cases to arise at the surface of contact with sap or water,
+this primary differentiation of outer from inner must be ascribed to the
+direct action of the medium. Whether the coating thus initiated is
+secreted by the protoplasm, or whether, as seems more likely, it
+results from transformation of it, matters not to the argument. Either
+way the action of the medium causes its formation; and either way the
+many varied and complex differentiations which developed cell-walls
+display, must be considered as originating from those variations of this
+physically-generated covering which natural selection has taken
+advantage of.
+
+The contained protoplasm of a vegetal cell, which has self-mobility and
+when liberated sometimes performs amoeba-like motions for a time, may
+be regarded as an imprisoned amoeba; and when we pass from it to a
+free amoeba, which is one of the simplest types of first animals, or
+_Protozoa_, we naturally meet with kindred phenomena. The general trait
+which here concerns us, is that while its plastic or semi-fluid sarcode
+goes on protruding, in irregular ways, now this and now that part of its
+periphery, and again withdrawing into its interior first one and then
+another of these temporary processes, perhaps with some small portion of
+food attached, there is but an indistinct differentiation of outer from
+inner (a fact shown by the frequent coalescence of the pseudopodia in
+Rhizopods); but that when it eventually becomes quiescent, the surface
+becomes differentiated from the contents: the passing into an encysted
+state, doubtless in large measure due to inherited proclivity, being
+furthered, and having probably been once initiated, by the action of the
+medium. The connexion between constancy of relative position among the
+parts of the sarcode, and the rise of a contrast between superficial and
+central parts, is perhaps best shown in the minutest and simplest
+_Infusoria_, the _Monadinae_. The genus _Monas_ is described by Kent as
+"plastic and unstable in form, possessing no distinct cuticular
+investment; ... the food-substances incepted at all parts of the
+periphery";[45] and the genus _Scytomonas_ he says "differs from _Monas_
+only in its persistent shape and accompanying greater rigidity of the
+peripheral or ectoplasmic layer."[46] Describing generally such low
+forms, some of which are said to have neither nucleus nor vacuole, he
+remarks that in types somewhat higher "the outer or peripheral border of
+the protoplasmic mass, while not assuming the character of a distinct
+cell-wall or so-called cuticle, presents, as compared with the inner
+substance of that mass, a slightly more solid type of composition."[47]
+And it is added that these forms having so slightly differentiated an
+exterior, "while usually exhibiting a more or less characteristic normal
+outline, can revert at will to a pseud-amoeboid and repent state."[48]
+Here, then, we have several indications of the truth that the permanent
+externality of a certain part of the substance, is followed by
+transformation of it into a coating unlike the substance it contains.
+Indefinite and structureless in the simplest of these forms, as instance
+again the _Gregarina_,[49] the limiting membrane becomes, in higher
+_Infusoria_, definite and often complex: showing that the selection of
+favourable variations has had largely to do with its formation. In such
+types as the _Foraminifera_, which, almost structureless internally
+though they are, secrete calcareous shells, it is clear that the nature
+of this outer layer is determined by inherited constitution. But
+recognition of this consists with the belief that the action of the
+medium initiated the outer layer, specialized though it now is; and that
+even still, contact with the medium excites secretion of it.
+
+A remarkable analogy remains to be named. When we study the action of
+the medium in an inorganic mass, we are led to see that between the
+outer changed layer and the inner unchanged mass, comes a surface where
+active change is going on. Here we have to note that, alike in the
+plant-cell and in the animal-cell, there is a similar relation of parts.
+Immediately inside the envelope comes the primordial utricle in the
+one case, and in the other case the layer of active sarcode. In either
+case the living protoplasm, placed in the position of a lining to the
+cuticle of the cell, is shielded from the direct action of the medium,
+and yet is not beyond the reach of its influences.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Limited, as thus far drawn, to a certain common trait of those minute
+organisms which are mostly below the reach of unaided vision, the
+foregoing conclusion appears trivial enough. But it ceases to appear
+trivial on passing into a wider field, and observing the implications,
+direct and indirect, as they concern plants and animals of sensible
+sizes.
+
+Popular expositions of science have so far familiarized many readers
+with a certain fundamental trait of living things around, that they have
+ceased to perceive how marvellous a trait it is, and, until interpreted
+by the Theory of Evolution, how utterly mysterious. In past times, the
+conception of an ordinary plant or animal which prevailed, not
+throughout the world at large only but among the most instructed, was
+that it is a single continuous entity. One of these livings things was
+unhesitatingly regarded as being in all respects a unit. Parts it might
+have, various in their sizes, forms, and compositions; but these were
+components of a whole which had been from the beginning in its original
+nature a whole. Even to naturalists fifty years ago, the assertion that
+a cabbage or a cow, though in one sense a whole, is in another sense a
+vast society of minute individuals, severally living in greater or less
+degrees, and some of them maintaining their independent lives
+unrestrained, would have seemed an absurdity. But this truth which, like
+so many of the truths established by science, is contrary to that common
+sense in which most people have so much confidence, has been gradually
+growing clear since the days when Leeuwenhoeck and his contemporaries
+began to examine through lenses the minute structures of common plants
+and animals. Each improvement in the microscope, while it has widened
+our knowledge of those minute forms of life described above, has
+revealed further evidence of the fact that all the larger forms of life
+consist of units severally allied in their fundamental traits to these
+minute forms of life. Though, as formulated by Schwann and Schleiden,
+the cell-doctrine has undergone qualifications of statement; yet the
+qualifications have not been such as to militate against the general
+proposition that organisms visible to the naked eye, are severally
+compounded of invisible organisms--using that word in its most
+comprehensive sense. And then, when the development of any animal is
+traced, it is found that having been primarily a nucleated cell, and
+having afterwards become by spontaneous fission a cluster of nucleated
+cells, it goes on through successive stages to form out of such cells,
+ever multiplying and modifying in various ways, the several tissues and
+organs composing the adult.
+
+On the hypothesis of evolution this universal trait has to be accepted
+not as a fact that is strange but unmeaning. It has to be accepted as
+evidence that all the visible forms of life have arisen by union of the
+invisible forms; which, instead of flying apart when they divided,
+remained together. Various intermediate stages are known. Among plants,
+those of the _Volvox_ type show us the component protophytes so feebly
+combined that they severally carry on their lives with no appreciable
+subordination to the life of the group. And among animals, a parallel
+relation between the lives of the units and the life of the group is
+shown us in _Uroglena_ and _Syncrypta_. From these first stages upwards,
+may be traced through successively higher types, an increasing
+subordination of the units to the aggregate; though still a
+subordination leaving to them conspicuous amounts of individual
+activity. Joining which facts with the phenomena presented by the
+cell-multiplication and aggregation of every unfolding germ, naturalists
+are now accepting the conclusion that by this process of composition
+from _Protozoa_, were formed all classes of the _Metazoa_[50]--(as
+animals formed by this compounding are now called); and that in a
+similar way from _Protophyta_, were formed all classes of what I suppose
+will be called _Metaphyta_, though the word does not yet seem to have
+become current.
+
+And now what is the general meaning of these truths, taken in connexion
+with the conclusion reached in the last section. It is that this
+universal trait of the _Metazoa_ and _Metaphyta_, must be ascribed to
+the primitive action and re-action between the organism and its medium.
+The operation of those forces which produced the primary differentiation
+of outer from inner in early minute masses of protoplasm, pre-determined
+this universal cell-structure of all embryos, plant and animal, and the
+consequent cell-composition of adult forms arising from them. How
+unavoidable is this implication, will be seen on carrying further an
+illustration already used--that of the shingle-covered shore, the
+pebbles on which, while being in some cases selected, have been in all
+cases rounded and smoothed. Suppose a bed of such shingle to be, as we
+often see it, solidified, along with interfused material, into a
+conglomerate. What in such case must be considered as the chief trait of
+such conglomerate; or rather--what must we regard as the chief cause of
+its distinctive characters? Evidently the action of the sea. Without the
+breakers, no pebbles; without the pebbles, no conglomerate. Similarly
+then, in the absence of that action of the medium by which was effected
+the differentiation of outer from inner in those microscopic portions of
+protoplasm constituting the earliest and simplest animals and plants,
+there could not have existed this cardinal trait of composition which
+all the higher animals and plants show us.
+
+So that, active as has been the part played by natural selection, alike
+in modifying and moulding the original units--largely as survival of
+the fittest has been instrumental in furthering and controlling the
+combination of these units into visible organisms, and eventually into
+large ones; yet we must ascribe to the direct effect of the medium
+on the first forms of life, that character of which this
+everywhere-operative factor has taken advantage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us turn now to another and more obvious attribute of higher
+organisms, for which also there is this same general cause. Let us
+observe how, on a higher platform, there recurs this differentiation of
+outer from inner--how this primary trait in the living units with which
+life commences, re-appears as a primary trait in those aggregates of
+such units which constitute visible organisms.
+
+In its simplest and most unmistakable form, we see this in the early
+changes of an unfolding ovum of primitive type. The original fertilized
+single cell, having by spontaneous fission multiplied into a cluster of
+such cells, there begins to show itself a contrast between periphery and
+centre; and presently there is formed a sphere consisting of a
+superficial layer unlike its contents. The first change, then, is the
+rise of a difference between that outer part which holds direct converse
+with the surrounding medium, and that inclosed part which does not. This
+primary differentiation in these compound embryos of higher animals,
+parallels the primary differentiation undergone by the simplest living
+things.
+
+Leaving, for the present, succeeding changes of the compound embryo, the
+significance of which we shall have to consider by-and-by, let us pass
+now to the adult forms of visible plants and animals. In them we find
+cardinal traits which, after what we have seen above, will further
+impress us with the importance of the effects wrought on the organism by
+its medium.
+
+From the thallus of a sea-weed up to the leaf of a highly developed
+phaenogam, we find, at all stages, a contrast between the inner and
+outer parts of these flattened masses of tissue. In the higher _Algae_
+"the outermost layers consist of smaller and firmer cells, while the
+inner cells are often very large, and sometimes extremely long;"[51] and
+in the leaves of trees the epidermal layer, besides differing in the
+sizes and shapes of its component cells from the parenchyma forming the
+inner substance of the leaf, is itself differentiated by having a
+continuous cuticle, and by having the outer walls of its cells unlike
+the inner walls.[52] Especially significant is the structure of such
+intermediate types as the Liverworts. Beyond the differentiation of the
+covering cells from the contained cells, and the contrast between upper
+surface and under surface, the frond of _Marchantia polymorpha_ clearly
+shows us the direct effect of incident forces; and shows us, too, how it
+is involved with the effect of inherited proclivities. The frond grows
+from a flat disc-shaped gemma, the two sides of which are alike. Either
+side may fall uppermost; and then of the developing shoot, the side
+exposed to the light "is under all circumstances the upper side which
+forms stomata, the dark side becomes the under side which produces
+root-hairs and leafy processes."[53] So that while we have undeniable
+proof that the contrasted influences of the medium on the two sides,
+initiate the differentiation, we have also proof that the completion of
+it is determined by the transmitted structure of the type; since it is
+impossible to ascribe the development of stomata to the direct action of
+air and light. On turning from foliar expansions, to stems and roots,
+facts of like meaning meet us. Speaking generally of epidermal tissue
+and inner tissue, Sachs remarks that "the contrast of the two is the
+plainer the more the part of the plant concerned is exposed to air and
+light."[54] Elsewhere, in correspondence with this, it is said that in
+roots the cells of the epidermis, though distinguished by bearing hairs,
+"are otherwise similar to those of the fundamental tissue" which they
+clothe,[55] while the cuticular covering is relatively thin; whereas in
+stems the epidermis (often further differentiated) is composed of layers
+of cells which are smaller and thicker-walled: a stronger contrast of
+structure corresponding to a stronger contrast of conditions. By way of
+meeting the suggestion that these respective differences are wholly due
+to the natural selection of favourable variations, it will suffice if I
+draw attention to the unlikeness between imbedded roots and exposed
+roots. While in darkness, and surrounded by moist earth, the outermost
+protective coats, even of large roots, are comparatively thin; but when
+the accidents of growth entail permanent exposure to light and air,
+roots acquire coverings allied in character to the coverings of
+branches. That the action of the medium causes these and converse
+changes, cannot be doubted when we find, on the one hand, that "roots
+can become directly transformed into leaf-bearing shoots," and, on the
+other hand, that in some plants certain "apparent roots are only
+underground shoots," and that nevertheless "they are similar to true
+roots in function and in the formation of tissue, but have no root-cap,
+and, when they come to the light above ground, continue to grow in the
+manner of ordinary leaf-shoots."[56] If, then, in highly developed
+plants inheriting pronounced structures, this differentiating influence
+of the medium is so marked, it must have been all-important at the
+outset while types were undetermined.
+
+As with plants so with animals, we find good reason for inferring that
+while the specialities of the tegumentary parts must be ascribed to the
+natural selection of favourable variations, their most general traits
+are due to the direct action of surrounding agencies. Here we come upon
+the border of those changes which are ascribable to use and disuse. But
+from this class of changes we may fitly exclude those in which the parts
+concerned are wholly or mainly passive. A corn and a blister will
+conveniently serve to illustrate the way in which certain outer actions
+initiate in the superficial tissues, effects of very marked kinds, which
+are related neither to the needs of the organism nor to its normal
+structure. They are neither adaptive changes nor changes towards
+completion of the type. After noting them we may pass to allied, but
+still more instructive, changes. Continuous pressure on any portion of
+the surface causes absorption, while intermittent pressure causes
+growth: the one impeding circulation and the passage of plasma from the
+capillaries into the tissues, and the other aiding both. There are yet
+further mechanically-produced effects. That the general character of the
+ribbed skin on the under surfaces of the feet and insides of the hands
+is directly due to friction and intermittent pressure, we have the
+proofs:--first, that the tracts most exposed to rough usage are the most
+ribbed; second, that the insides of hands subject to unusual amounts of
+rough usage, as those of sailors, are strongly ribbed all over; and
+third, that in hands which are very little used, the parts commonly
+ribbed become quite smooth. These several kinds of evidence, however,
+full of meaning as they are, I give simply to prepare the way for
+evidence of a much more conclusive kind.
+
+Where a wide ulcer has eaten away the deep-seated layer out of which the
+epidermis grows, or where this layer has been destroyed by an extensive
+burn, the process of healing is very significant. From the subjacent
+tissues, which in the normal order have no concern with outward growth,
+there is produced a new skin, or rather a pro-skin; for this substituted
+outward-growing layer contains no hair-follicles or other specialities
+of the original one. Nevertheless, it is like the original one in so far
+that it is a continually renewed protective covering. Doubtless it may
+be contended that this make-shift skin results from the inherited
+proclivity of the type--the tendency to complete afresh the structure
+of the species when injured. We cannot, however, ignore the immediate
+influence of the medium, on recalling the facts above named, or on
+remembering the further fact that an inflamed surface of skin, when not
+sheltered from the air, will throw out a film of coagulable lymph. But
+that the direct action of the medium is a chief factor we are clearly
+shown by another case. Accident or disease occasionally causes permanent
+eversion, or protrusion, of mucous membrane. After a period of
+irritability, great at first but decreasing as the change advances, this
+membrane assumes the general character of ordinary skin. Nor is this
+all: its microscopic structure changes. Where it is a mucous membrane of
+the kind covered by cylinder-epithelium, the cylinders gradually
+shorten, becoming finally flat, and there results a squamous epithelium:
+there is a near approach in minute composition to epidermis. Here a
+tendency towards completion of the type cannot be alleged; for there is,
+contrariwise, divergence from the type. The effect of the medium is so
+great that, in a short time, it overcomes the inherited proclivity and
+produces a structure of opposite kind to the normal one.
+
+With but little break we come here upon a significant analogy, parallel
+to an analogy already described. As was pointed out, an inorganic body
+that is modifiable by its medium, acquires, after a time, an outer coat
+which has already undergone such change as surrounding agencies can
+effect; has a contained mass which is as yet unchanged, because
+unreached; and has a surface between the two where change is going on--a
+region of activity. And we saw that alike in the vegetal cell and the
+animal cell there exist analogous distributions: of course with the
+difference that the innermost part is not inert. Now we have to note
+that in those aggregates of cells constituting the _Metaphyta_ and
+_Metazoa_, analogous distributions also exist. In plants they are of
+course not to be looked for in leaves and other deciduous portions, but
+only in portions of long duration--stems and branches. Naturally, too,
+we need not expect them in plants having modes of growth which early
+produce an outer practically dead part, that effectually shields the
+inner actively living part of the stem from the influence of the
+medium--long-lived acrogens such as tree-ferns and long-lived endogens
+such as palms. But in the highest plants, exogens, which have the
+actively living part of their stems within reach of environing agencies,
+we find this part,--the cambium layer,--is one from which there is a
+growth inwards forming wood, and a growth outwards forming bark: there
+is an increasingly thick covering (where it does not scale off) of
+tissue changed by the medium, and inside this a film of highest
+vitality. In so far as concerns the present argument, it is the same
+with the _Metazoa_, or at least all of them which have developed
+organizations. The outer skin grows up from a limiting plane, or layer,
+a little distance below the surface--a place of predominant vital
+activity. Here perpetually arise new cells, which, as they develop, are
+thrust outwards and form the epidermis: flattening and drying up as they
+approach the surface, whence, having for a time served to shield the
+parts below, they finally scale off and leave younger ones to take their
+places. This still undifferentiated tissue forming the base of the
+epidermis, and existing also as a source of renewal in internal organs,
+is the essentially living substance; and facts above given imply that it
+was the action of the medium on this essentially living substance,
+which, during early stages in the organization of the _Metazoa_,
+initiated that protective envelope which presently became an inherited
+structure--a structure which, though now mainly inherited, still
+continues to be modifiable by its initiator.
+
+Fully to perceive the way in which these evidences compel us to
+recognize the influence of the medium as a primordial factor, we need
+but conceive them as interpreted without it. Suppose, for instance, we
+say that the structure of the epidermis is wholly determined by the
+natural selection of favourable variations; what must be the position
+taken in presence of the fact above named, that when mucous membrane is
+exposed to the air its cell-structure changes into the cell-structure of
+skin? The position taken must be this:--Though mucous membrane in a
+highly-evolved individual organism, thus shows the powerful effect of
+the medium on its surface; yet we must not suppose that the medium had
+the effect of producing such a cell-structure on the surfaces of
+primitive forms, undifferentiated though they were; or, if we suppose
+that such an effect was produced on them, we must not suppose that it
+was inheritable. Contrariwise, we must suppose that such effect of the
+medium either was not wrought at all, or that it was evanescent: though
+repeated through millions upon millions of generations it left no
+traces. And we must conclude that this skin-structure arose only in
+consequence of spontaneous variations not physically initiated (though
+like those physically initiated) which natural selection laid hold of
+and increased. Does any one think this a tenable position?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now we approach the last and chief series of morphological phenomena
+which must be ascribed to the direct action of environing matters and
+forces. These are presented to us when we study the early stages in the
+development of the embryos of the _Metazoa_ in general.
+
+We will set out with the fact already noted in passing, that after
+repeated spontaneous fissions have changed the original fertilized
+germ-cell into that cluster of cells which forms a gemmule or a
+primitive ovum, the first contrast which arises is between the
+peripheral parts and the central parts. Where, as with lower creatures
+which do not lay up large stores of nutriment with the germs of their
+offspring, the inner mass is inconsiderable, the outer layer of cells,
+which are presently made quite small by repeated subdivisions, forms a
+membrane extending over the whole surface--the blastoderm. The next
+stage of development, which ends in this covering layer becoming double,
+is reached in two ways--by invagination and by delamination; but which
+is the original way and which the abridged way, is not quite certain. Of
+invagination, multitudinously exemplified in the lowest types, Mr.
+Balfour says:--"On purely _a priori_ grounds there is in my opinion more
+to be said for invagination than for any other view";[57] and, for
+present purposes, it will suffice if we limit ourselves to this: making
+its nature clear to the general reader by a simple illustration.
+
+Take a small india-rubber ball--not of the inflated kind, nor of the
+solid kind, but of the kind about an inch or so in diameter with a small
+hole through which, under pressure, the air escapes. Suppose that
+instead of consisting of india-rubber its wall consists of small cells
+made polyhedral in form by mutual pressure, and united together. This
+will represent the blastoderm. Now with the finger, thrust in one side
+of the ball until it touches the other: so making a cup. This action
+will stand for the process of invagination. Imagine that by continuance
+of it, the hemispherical cup becomes very much deepened and the opening
+narrowed, until the cup becomes a sac, of which the introverted wall is
+everywhere in contact with the outer wall. This will represent the
+two-layered "gastrula"--the simplest ancestral form of the _Metazoa_: a
+form which is permanently represented in some of the lowest types; for
+it needs but tentacles round the mouth of the sac, to produce a common
+hydra. Here the fact which it chiefly concerns us to remark, is that of
+these two layers the outer, called in embryological language the
+epiblast, continues to carry on direct converse with the forces and
+matters in the environment; while the inner, called the hypoblast, comes
+in contact with such only of these matters as are put into the
+food-cavity which it lines. We have further to note that in the embryos
+of _Metazoa_ at all advanced in organization, there arises between these
+two layers a third--the mesoblast. The origin of this is seen in types
+where the developmental process is not obscured by the presence of a
+large food-yolk. While the above-described introversion is taking place,
+and before the inner surfaces of the resulting epiblast and hypoblast
+have come into contact, cells, or amoeboid units equivalent to them,
+are budded off from one or both of these inner surfaces, or some part of
+one or other; and these form a layer which eventually lies between the
+other two--a layer which, as this mode of formation implies, never has
+any converse with the surrounding medium and its contents, or with the
+nutritive bodies taken in from it. The striking facts to which this
+description is a necessary introduction, may now be stated. From the
+outer layer, or epiblast, are developed the permanent epidermis and its
+out-growths, the nervous system, and the organs of sense. From the
+introverted layer, or hypoblast, are developed the alimentary canal and
+those parts of its appended organs, liver, pancreas, &c., which are
+concerned in delivering their secretions into the alimentary canal, as
+well as the linings of those ramifying tubes in the lungs which convey
+air to the places where gaseous exchange is effected. And from the
+mesoblast originate the bones, the muscles, the heart and blood-vessels,
+and the lymphatics, together with such parts of various internal organs
+as are most remotely concerned with the outer world. Minor
+qualifications being admitted, there remain the broad general facts,
+that out of that part of the external layer which remains permanently
+external, are developed all the structures which carry on intercourse
+with the medium and its contents, active and passive; out of the
+introverted part of this external layer, are developed the structures
+which carry on intercourse with the quasi-external substances that are
+taken into the interior--solid food, water, and air; while out of the
+mesoblast are developed structures which have never had, from first to
+last, any intercourse with the environment. Let us contemplate these
+general facts.
+
+Who would have imagined that the nervous system is a modified portion of
+the primitive epidermis? In the absence of proofs furnished by the
+concurrent testimony of embryologists during the last thirty or forty
+years, who would have believed that the brain arises from an infolded
+tract of the outer skin, which, sinking down beneath the surface,
+becomes imbedded in other tissues and eventually surrounded by a bony
+case? Yet the human nervous system in common with the nervous systems of
+lower animals is thus originated. In the words of Mr. Balfour, early
+embryological changes imply that--
+
+     "the functions of the central nervous system, which were originally
+     taken by the whole skin, became gradually concentrated in a special
+     part of the skin which was step by step removed from the surface,
+     and has finally become in the higher types a well-defined organ
+     imbedded in the subdermal tissues.... The embryological evidence
+     shows that the ganglion-cells of the central part of the nervous
+     system are originally derived from the simple undifferentiated
+     epithelial cells of the surface of the body."[58]
+
+Less startling perhaps, though still startling enough, is the fact that
+the eye is evolved out of a portion of the skin; and that while the
+crystalline lens and its surroundings thus originate, the "percipient
+portions of the organs of special sense, especially of optic organs, are
+often formed from the same part of the primitive epidermis" which forms
+the central nervous system.[59] Similarly is it with the organs for
+smelling and hearing. These, too, begin as sacs formed by infoldings of
+the epidermis; and while their parts are developing they are joined from
+within by nervous structures which were themselves epidermic in origin.
+How are we to interpret these strange transformations? Observing, as we
+pass, how absurd from the point of view of the special-creationist,
+would appear such a filiation of structures, and such a round-about
+mode of embryonic development, we have here to remark that the process
+is not one to have been anticipated as a result of natural selection.
+After numbers of spontaneous variations had occurred, as the hypothesis
+implies, in useless ways, the variation which primarily initiated a
+nervous centre might reasonably have been expected to occur in some
+internal part where it would be fitly located. Its initiation in a
+dangerous place and subsequent migration to a safe place, would be
+incomprehensible. Not so if we bear in mind the cardinal truth above set
+forth, that the structures for holding converse with the medium and its
+contents, arise in that completely superficial part which is directly
+affected by the medium and its contents; and if we draw the inference
+that the external actions themselves initiate the structures. These once
+commenced, and furthered by natural selection where favourable to life,
+would form the first term of a series ending in developed sense organs
+and a developed nervous system.[60]
+
+Though it would enforce the argument, I must, for brevity's sake, pass
+over the analogous evolution of that introverted layer, or hypoblast,
+out of which the alimentary canal and attached organs arise. It will
+suffice to emphasize the fact that having been originally external, this
+layer continues in its developed form to have a quasi-externality, alike
+in its digesting part and in its respiratory part; since it continues to
+deal with matters alien to the organism. I must also refrain from
+dwelling at length on the fact already adverted to, that the
+intermediate derived layer, or mesoblast, which was at the outset
+completely internal, originates those structures which ever remain
+completely internal, and have no communication with the environment save
+through the structures developed from the other two: an antithesis which
+has great significance.
+
+Here, instead of dwelling on these details, it will be better to draw
+attention to the most general aspect of the facts. Whatever may be the
+course of subsequent changes, the first change is the formation of a
+superficial layer or blastoderm; and by whatever series of
+transformations the adult structure is reached, it is from the
+blastoderm that all the organs forming the adult originate. Why this
+marvellous fact?
+
+Meaning is given to it if we go back to the first stage in which
+_Protozoa_, having by repeated fissions formed a cluster, then arranged
+themselves into a hollow sphere, as do the protophytes forming a
+_Volvox_. Originally alike all over its surface, the hollow sphere of
+ciliated units thus formed, would, if not quite spherical, assume a
+constant attitude when moving through the water; and hence one part of
+the spheroid would more frequently than the rest come in contact with
+nutritive matters to be taken in. A division of labour resulting from
+such a variation being advantageous, and tending therefore to increase
+in descendants, would end in a differentiation like that shown in the
+gemmules of various low types of _Metazoa_, which, ovate in shape, are
+ciliated over one part of the surface only. There would arise a form in
+which the cilium-bearing units effected locomotion and aeration; while
+on the others, assuming an amoeba-like character, devolved the
+function of absorbing food: a primordial specialization variously
+indicated by evidence.[61] Just noting that an ancestral origin of this
+kind is implied by the fact that in low types of _Metazoa_ a hollow
+sphere of cells is the form first assumed by the unfolding embryo, I
+draw attention to the point here of chief interest; namely that the
+primary differentiation of this hollow sphere is in such case determined
+by a difference in the converse of its parts with the medium and its
+contents; and that the subsequent invagination arises by a continuance
+of this differential converse.
+
+Even neglecting this first stage and commencing with the next, in which
+a "gastrula" has been produced by the permanent introversion of one
+portion of the surface of the hollow sphere, it will suffice if we
+consider what must thereafter have happened. That which continued to be
+the outer surface was the part which from time to time touched quiescent
+masses and occasionally received the collisions consequent on its own
+motions or the motions of other things. It was the part to receive the
+sound-vibrations occasionally propagated through the water; the part to
+be affected more strongly than any other by those variations in the
+amounts of light caused by the passing of small bodies close to it; and
+the part which met those diffused molecules constituting odours. That is
+to say, from the beginning the surface was the part on which there fell
+the various influences pervading the environment, the part by which
+there was received those impressions from the environment serving for
+the guidance of actions, and the part which had to bear the mechanical
+re-actions consequent upon such actions. Necessarily, therefore, the
+surface was the part in which were initiated the various
+instrumentalities for carrying on intercourse with the environment. To
+suppose otherwise is to suppose that such instrumentalities arose
+internally where they could neither be operated on by surrounding
+agencies nor operate on them,--where the differentiating forces did not
+come into play, and the differentiated structures had nothing to do; and
+it is to suppose that meanwhile the parts directly exposed to the
+differentiating forces remained unchanged. Clearly, then, organization
+could not but begin on the surface; and having thus begun, its
+subsequent course could not but be determined by its superficial origin.
+And hence these remarkable facts showing us that individual evolution is
+accomplished by successive in-foldings and in-growings. Doubtless
+natural selection soon came into action, as, for example, in the removal
+of the rudimentary nervous centres from the surface; since an
+individual in which they were a little more deeply seated would be less
+likely to be incapacitated by injury of them. And so in multitudinous
+other ways. But nevertheless, as we here see, natural selection could
+operate only under subjection. It could do no more than take advantage
+of those structural changes which the medium and its contents initiated.
+
+See, then, how large has been the part played by this primordial factor.
+Had it done no more than give to _Protozoa_ and _Protophyta_ that
+cell-form which characterizes them--had it done no more than entail the
+cellular composition which is so remarkable a trait of _Metazoa_ and
+_Metaphyta_--had it done no more than cause the repetition in all
+visible animals and plants of that primary differentiation of outer from
+inner which it first wrought in animals and plants invisible to the
+naked eye; it would have done much towards giving to organisms of all
+kinds certain leading traits. But it has done more than this. By causing
+the first differentiations of those clusters of units out of which
+visible animals in general arose, it fixed the starting place for
+organization, and therefore determined the course of organization; and,
+doing this, gave indelible traits to embryonic transformations and to
+adult structures.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Though mainly carried on after the inductive method, the argument at the
+close of the foregoing section has passed into the deductive. Here let
+us follow for a space the deductive method pure and simple. Doubtless in
+biology _a priori_ reasoning is dangerous; but there can be no danger in
+considering whether its results coincide with those reached by reasoning
+_a posteriori_.
+
+Biologists in general agree that in the present state of the world, no
+such thing happens as the rise of a living creature out of non-living
+matter. They do not deny, however, that at a remote period in the past,
+when the temperature of the Earth's surface was much higher than at
+present, and other physical conditions were unlike those we know,
+inorganic matter, through successive complications, gave origin to
+organic matter. So many substances once supposed to belong exclusively
+to living bodies, have now been formed artificially, that men of science
+scarcely question the conclusion that there are conditions under which,
+by yet another step of composition, quaternary compounds of lower types
+pass into those of highest types. That there once took place gradual
+divergence of the organic from the inorganic, is, indeed, a necessary
+implication of the hypothesis of Evolution, taken as a whole; and if we
+accept it as a whole, we must put to ourselves the question--What were
+the early stages of progress which followed, after the most complex form
+of matter had arisen out of forms of matter a degree less complex?
+
+At first, protoplasm could have had no proclivities to one or other
+arrangement of parts; unless, indeed, a purely mechanical proclivity
+towards a spherical form when suspended in a liquid. At the outset it
+must have been passive. In respect of its passivity, primitive organic
+matter must have been like inorganic matter. No such thing as
+spontaneous variation could have occurred in it; for variation implies
+some habitual course of change from which it is a divergence, and is
+therefore excluded where there is no habitual course of change. In the
+absence of that cyclical series of metamorphoses which even the simplest
+living thing now shows us, as a result of its inherited constitution,
+there could be no _point d'appui_ for natural selection. How, then, did
+organic evolution begin?
+
+If a primitive mass of organic matter was like a mass of inorganic
+matter in respect of its passivity, and differed only in respect of its
+greater changeableness; then we must infer that its first changes
+conformed to the same general law as do the changes of an inorganic
+mass. The instability of the homogeneous is a universal principle. In
+all cases the homogeneous tends to pass into the heterogeneous, and the
+less heterogeneous into the more heterogeneous. In the primordial units
+of protoplasm, then, the step with which evolution commenced must have
+been the passage from a state of complete likeness throughout the mass
+to a state in which there existed some unlikeness. Further, the cause of
+this step in one of these portions of organic matter, as in any portion
+of inorganic matter, must have been the different exposure of its parts
+to incident forces. What incident forces? Those of its medium or
+environment. Which were the parts thus differently exposed? Necessarily
+the outside and the inside. Inevitably, then, alike in the organic
+aggregate and the inorganic aggregate (supposing it to have coherence
+enough to maintain constant relative positions among its parts), the
+first fall from homogeneity to heterogeneity must always have been the
+differentiation of the external surface from the internal contents. No
+matter whether the modification was physical or chemical, one of
+composition or of decomposition, it comes within the same
+generalization. The direct action of the medium was the primordial
+factor of organic evolution.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now, finally, let us look at the factors in their _ensemble_, and
+consider the respective parts they play: observing, especially, the ways
+in which, at successive stages, they severally give place one to another
+in degree of importance.
+
+Acting alone, the primordial factor must have initiated the primary
+differentiation in all units of protoplasm alike. I say alike, but I
+must forthwith qualify the word. For since surrounding influences,
+physical and chemical, could not be absolutely the same in all places,
+especially when the first rudiments of living things had spread over a
+considerable area, there necessarily arose small contrasts between the
+degrees and kinds of superficial differentiation effected. As soon as
+these became decided, natural selection came into play; for inevitably
+the unlikenesses produced among the units had effects on their lives:
+there was survival of some among the modified forms rather than others.
+Utterly in the dark though we are respecting the causes which set up
+that process of fission everywhere occurring among the minutest forms of
+life, we must infer that, when established, it furthered the spread of
+those which were most favourably differentiated by the medium. Though
+natural selection must have become increasingly active when once it had
+got a start; yet the differentiating action of the medium never ceased
+to be a co-operator in the development of these first animals and
+plants. Again taking the lead as there arose the composite forms of
+animals and plants, and again losing the lead with that advancing
+differentiation of these higher types which gave more scope to natural
+selection, it nevertheless continued, and must ever continue, to be a
+cause, both direct and indirect, of modifications in structure.
+
+Along with that remarkable process which, beginning in minute forms with
+what is called conjugation, developed into sexual generation, there came
+into play causes of frequent and marked fortuitous variations. The
+mixtures of constitutional proclivities made more or less unlike by
+unlikenesses of physical conditions, inevitably led to occasional
+concurrences of forces producing deviations of structure. These were of
+course mostly suppressed, but sometimes increased, by survival of the
+fittest. When, along with the growing multiplication in forms of life,
+conflict and competition became continually more active, fortuitous
+variations of structure of no account in the converse with the medium,
+became of much account in the struggle with enemies and competitors; and
+natural selection of such variations became the predominant factor.
+Especially throughout the plant-world its action appears to have been
+immensely the most important; and throughout that large part of the
+animal world characterized by relative inactivity, the survival of
+individuals that had varied in favourable ways, must all along have been
+the chief cause of the divergence of species and the occasional
+production of higher ones.
+
+But gradually with that increase of activity which we see on ascending
+to successively higher grades of animals, and especially with that
+increased complexity of life which we also see, there came more and more
+into play as a factor, the inheritance of those modifications of
+structure caused by modifications of function. Eventually, among
+creatures of high organization, this factor became an important one; and
+I think there is reason to conclude that, in the case of the highest of
+creatures, civilized men, among whom the kinds of variation which affect
+survival are too multitudinous to permit easy selection of any one, and
+among whom survival of the fittest is greatly interfered with, it has
+become the chief factor: such aid as survival of the fittest gives,
+being usually limited to the preservation of those in whom the totality
+of the faculties has been most favourably moulded by functional changes.
+
+Of course this sketch of the relations among the factors must be taken
+as in large measure a speculation. We are now too far removed from the
+beginnings of life to obtain data for anything more than tentative
+conclusions respecting its earliest stages; especially in the absence of
+any clue to the mode in which multiplication, first agamogenetic and
+then gamogenetic, was initiated. But it has seemed to me not amiss to
+present this general conception, by way of showing how the deductive
+interpretation harmonizes with the several inferences reached by
+induction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In his article on Evolution in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, Professor
+Huxley writes as follows:--
+
+     "How far 'natural selection' suffices for the production of
+     species remains to be seen. Few can doubt that, if not the whole
+     cause, it is a very important factor in that operation.... On the
+     evidence of palaeontology, the evolution of many existing forms of
+     animal life from their predecessors is no longer an hypothesis, but
+     an historical fact; it is only the nature of the physiological
+     factors to which that evolution is due which is still open to
+     discussion."
+
+With these passages I may fitly join a remark made in the admirable
+address Prof. Huxley delivered before unveiling the statue of Mr. Darwin
+in the Museum at South Kensington. Deprecating the supposition that an
+authoritative sanction was given by the ceremony to the current ideas
+concerning organic evolution, he said that "science commits suicide when
+it adopts a creed."
+
+Along with larger motives, one motive which has joined in prompting the
+foregoing articles, has been the desire to point out that already among
+biologists, the beliefs concerning the origin of species have assumed
+too much the character of a creed; and that while becoming settled they
+have been narrowed. So far from further broadening that broader view
+which Mr. Darwin reached as he grew older, his followers appear to have
+retrograded towards a more restricted view than he ever expressed. Thus
+there seems occasion for recognizing the warning uttered by Prof.
+Huxley, as not uncalled for.
+
+Whatever may be thought of the arguments and conclusions set forth in
+this article and the preceding one, they will perhaps serve to show that
+it is as yet far too soon to close the inquiry concerning the causes of
+organic evolution.
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+    [_The following passages formed part of a preface to the small
+    volume in which the foregoing essay re-appeared. I append them here
+    as they cannot now be conveniently prefixed._]
+
+Though the direct bearings of the arguments contained in this Essay are
+biological, the argument contained in its first half has indirect
+bearings upon Psychology, Ethics, and Sociology. My belief in the
+profound importance of these indirect bearings, was originally a chief
+prompter to set forth the argument; and it now prompts me to re-issue it
+in permanent form.
+
+Though mental phenomena of many kinds, and especially of the simpler
+kinds, are explicable only as resulting from the natural selection of
+favourable variations; yet there are, I believe, still more numerous
+mental phenomena, including all those of any considerable complexity,
+which cannot be explained otherwise than as results of the inheritance
+of functionally-produced modifications. What theory of psychological
+evolution is espoused, thus depends on acceptance or rejection of the
+doctrine that not only in the individual, but in the successions of
+individuals, use and disuse of parts produce respectively increase and
+decrease of them.
+
+Of course there are involved the conceptions we form of the genesis and
+nature of our higher emotions; and, by implication, the conceptions we
+form of our moral intuitions. If functionally-produced modifications are
+inheritable, then the mental associations habitually produced in
+individuals by experiences of the relations between actions and their
+consequences, pleasurable or painful, may, in the successions of
+individuals, generate innate tendencies to like or dislike such actions.
+But if not, the genesis of such tendencies is, as we shall see, not
+satisfactorily explicable.
+
+That our sociological beliefs must also be profoundly affected by the
+conclusions we draw on this point, is obvious. If a nation is modified
+_en masse_ by transmission of the effects produced on the natures of its
+members by those modes of daily activity which its institutions and
+circumstances involve; then we must infer that such institutions and
+circumstances mould its members far more rapidly and comprehensively
+than they can do if the solo cause of adaptation to them is the more
+frequent survival of individuals who happen to have varied in
+favourable ways.
+
+I will add only that, considering the width and depth of the effects
+which acceptance of one or other of these hypotheses must have on our
+views of Life, Mind, Morals, and Politics, the question--Which of them
+is true? demands, beyond all other questions whatever, the attention of
+scientific men.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After the above articles were published, I received from Dr. Downes a
+copy of a paper "On the Influence of Light on Protoplasm," written by
+himself and Mr. T.P. Blunt, M.A., which was communicated to the Royal
+Society in 1878. It was a continuation of a preceding paper which,
+referring chiefly to _Bacteria_, contended that--
+
+     "Light is inimical to, and under favourable conditions may wholly
+     prevent, the development of these organisms."
+
+This supplementary paper goes on to show that the injurious effect of
+light upon protoplasm results only in presence of oxygen. Taking first a
+comparatively simple type of molecule which enters into the composition
+of organic matter, the authors say, after detailing experiments:--
+
+     "It was evident, therefore, that _oxygen_ was the agent of
+     destruction under the influence of sunlight."
+
+And accounts of experiments upon minute organisms are followed by the
+sentence--
+
+     "It seemed, therefore, that in absence of an atmosphere, light
+     failed entirely to produce any effect on such organisms as were
+     able to appear."
+
+They sum up the results of their experiments in the paragraph--
+
+     "We conclude, therefore, both from analogy and from direct
+     experiment, that the observed action on these organisms is not
+     dependent on light _per se_, but that the presence of free oxygen
+     is necessary; light and oxygen together accomplishing what neither
+     can do alone: and the inference seems irresistible that the effect
+     produced is a gradual oxidation of the constituent protoplasm of
+     these organisms, and that, in this respect, protoplasm, although
+     living, is not exempt from laws which appear to govern the
+     relations of light and oxygen to forms of matter less highly
+     endowed. A force which is indirectly absolutely essential to life
+     as we know it, and matter in the absence of which life has not yet
+     been proved to exist, here unite for its destruction."
+
+What is the obvious implication? If oxygen in presence of light destroys
+one of these minutest portions of protoplasm, what will be its effect on
+a larger portion of protoplasm? It will work an effect on the surface
+instead of on the whole mass. Not like the minutest mass made inert all
+through, the larger mass will be made inert only on its outside; and,
+indeed, the like will happen with the minutest mass if the light or the
+oxygen is very small in quantity. Hence there will result an envelope of
+changed matter, inclosing and protecting the unchanged protoplasm--there
+will result a rudimentary cell-wall.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 41: It is probable that this shortening has resulted not
+directly but indirectly, from the selection of individuals which were
+noted for tenacity of hold; for the bull-dog's peculiarity in this
+respect seems due to relative shortness of the upper jaw, giving the
+underhung structure which, involving retreat of the nostrils, enables
+the dog to continue breathing while holding.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Though Mr. Darwin approved of this expression and
+occasionally employed it, he did not adopt it for general use;
+contending, very truly, that the expression Natural Selection is in some
+cases more convenient. See _Animals and Plants under Domestication_
+(first edition) Vol. i, p. 6; and _Origin of Species_ (sixth edition) p.
+49.]
+
+[Footnote 43: It is true that while not deliberately admitted by Mr.
+Darwin, these effects are not denied by him. In his _Animals and Plants
+under Domestication_ (vol. ii, 281), he refers to certain chapters in
+the _Principles of Biology_, in which I have discussed this general
+inter-action of the medium and the organism, and ascribed certain most
+general traits to it. But though, by his expressions, he implies a
+sympathetic attention to the argument, he does not in such way adopt the
+conclusion as to assign to this factor any share in the genesis of
+organic structures--much less that large share which I believe it has
+had. I did not myself at that time, nor indeed until quite recently, see
+how extensive and profound have been the influences on organization
+which, as we shall presently see, are traceable to the early results of
+this fundamental relation between organism and medium. I may add that it
+is in an essay on "Transcendental Physiology," first published in 1857,
+that the line of thought here followed out in its wider bearings, was
+first entered upon.]
+
+[Footnote 44: _Text-Book of Botany, &c._ by Julius Sachs. Translated by
+A. W. Bennett and W. T. T. Dyer.]
+
+[Footnote 45: _A Manual of the Infusoria_, by W. Saville Kent. Vol. i,
+p. 232.]
+
+[Footnote 46: _Ib._ Vol. i, p. 241.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Kent, Vol. i, p. 56.]
+
+[Footnote 48: _Ib._ Vol. i, p. 57.]
+
+[Footnote 49: _The Elements of Comparative Anatomy_, by T. H. Huxley,
+pp. 7-9.]
+
+[Footnote 50: _A Treatise on Comparative Embryology_, by F. M. Balfour,
+Vol. ii, chap. xiii.]
+
+[Footnote 51: Sachs, p. 210.]
+
+[Footnote 52: _Ibid._ pp. 83-4.]
+
+[Footnote 53: _Ibid._ p. 185.]
+
+[Footnote 54: _Ibid._ 80.]
+
+[Footnote 55: Sachs, p. 83.]
+
+[Footnote 56: _Ibid._ p. 147.]
+
+[Footnote 57: _A Treatise on Comparative Embryology._ By Francis M.
+Balfour, LL.D., F.R.S. Vol. ii, p. 343 (second edition).]
+
+[Footnote 58: Balfour, l.c. Vol. ii, 400-1.]
+
+[Footnote 59: Balfour, l.c. Vol. ii, p. 401.]
+
+[Footnote 60: For a general delineation of the changes by which the
+development is effected, see Balfour, l.c. Vol. ii, pp. 401-4.]
+
+[Footnote 61: _See_ Balfour, Vol. i, 149 and Vol. ii, 343-4.]
+
+
+
+
+A COUNTER-CRITICISM.
+
+    [_First published in_ The Nineteenth Century_, for February,_ 1888.]
+
+
+While I do not concur in sundry of the statements and conclusions
+contained in the article entitled "A Great Confession," contributed by
+the Duke of Argyll to the last number of this Review, yet I am obliged
+to him for having raised afresh the question discussed in it. Though the
+injunction "Rest and be thankful," is one for which in many spheres much
+may be said--especially in the political, where undue restlessness is
+proving very mischievous; yet rest and be thankful is an injunction out
+of place in science. Unhappily, while politicians have not duly regarded
+it, it appears to have been taken to heart too much by naturalists; in
+so far, at least, as concerns the question of the origin of species.
+
+The new biological orthodoxy behaves just as the old biological
+orthodoxy did. In the days before Darwin, those who occupied themselves
+with the phenomena of life, passed by with unobservant eyes the
+multitudinous facts which point to an evolutionary origin for plants and
+animals; and they turned deaf ears to those who insisted on the
+significance of these facts. Now that they have come to believe in this
+evolutionary origin, and have at the same time accepted the hypothesis
+that natural selection has been the sole cause of the evolution, they
+are similarly unobservant of the multitudinous facts which cannot
+rationally be ascribed to that cause; and turn deaf ears to those who
+would draw their attention to them. The attitude is the same; it is only
+the creed which has changed.
+
+But, as above implied, though the protest of the Duke of Argyll against
+this attitude is quite justifiable, it seems to me that many of his
+statements cannot be sustained. Some of these concern me personally, and
+others are of impersonal concern. I propose to deal with them in the
+order in which they occur.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On page 144 the Duke of Argyll quotes me as omitting "for the present
+any consideration of a factor which may be distinguished as primordial;"
+and he represents me as implying by this "that Darwin's ultimate
+conception of some primordial 'breathing of the breath of life' is a
+conception which can be omitted only 'for the present.'" Even had there
+been no other obvious interpretation, it would have been a somewhat rash
+assumption that this was my meaning when referring to an omitted factor;
+and it is surprising that this assumption should have been made after
+reading the second of the two articles criticised, in which this factor
+omitted from the first is dealt with: this omitted third factor being
+the direct physico-chemical action of the medium on the organism. Such a
+thought as that which the Duke of Argyll ascribes to me, is so
+incongruous with the beliefs I have in many places expressed that the
+ascription of it never occurred to me as possible.
+
+Lower down on the same page are some other sentences having personal
+implications, which I must dispose of before going into the general
+question. The Duke says "it is more than doubtful whether any value
+attaches to the new factor with which he [I] desires to supplement it
+[natural selection]"; and he thinks it "unaccountable" that I "should
+make so great a fuss about so small a matter as the effect of use and
+disuse of particular organs as a separate and a newly-recognised
+factor in the development of varieties." I do not suppose that the Duke
+of Argyll intended to cast upon me the disagreeable imputation, that I
+claim as new that which all who are even slightly acquainted with the
+facts know to be anything rather than new. But his words certainly do
+this. How he should have thus written in spite of the extensive
+knowledge of the matter which he evidently has, and how he should have
+thus written in presence of the evidence contained in the articles he
+criticizes, I cannot understand. Naturalists, and multitudes besides
+naturalists, know that the hypothesis which I am represented as putting
+forward as new, is much older than the hypothesis of natural
+selection--goes back at least as far as Dr. Erasmus Darwin. My purpose
+was to bring into the foreground again a factor which has, I think, been
+of late years improperly ignored; to show that Mr. Darwin recognized
+this factor in an increasing degree as he grew older (by showing which I
+should have thought I sufficiently excluded the supposition that I
+brought it forward as new); to give further evidence that this factor is
+in operation; to show there are numerous phenomena which cannot be
+interpreted without it; and to argue that if proved operative in any
+case, it may be inferred that it is operative on all structures having
+active functions.
+
+Strangely enough, this passage, in which I am represented as implying
+novelty in a doctrine which I have merely sought to emphasize and
+extend, is immediately succeeded by a passage in which the Duke of
+Argyll himself represents the doctrine as being familiar and well
+established:--
+
+     "That organs thus enfeebled [i.e. by persistent disuse] are
+     transmitted by inheritance to offspring in a like condition of
+     functional and structural decline, is a correlated physiological
+     doctrine not generally disputed. The converse case--of increased
+     strength and development arising out of the habitual and healthy
+     use of special organs, and of the transmission of these to
+     offspring--is a case illustrated by many examples in the breeding
+     of domestic animals. I do not know to what else we can attribute
+     the long slender legs and bodies of greyhounds so manifestly
+     adapted to speed of foot, or the delicate powers of smell in
+     pointers and setters, or a dozen cases of modified structure
+     effected by artificial selection."
+
+In none of the assertions contained in this passage can I agree. Had the
+inheritance of "functional and structural decline" been "not generally
+disputed," half my argument would have been needless; and had the
+inheritance of "increased strength and development" caused by use been
+recognized, as "illustrated by many examples," the other half of my
+argument would have been needless. But both are disputed; and, if not
+positively denied, are held to be unproved. Greyhounds and pointers do
+not yield valid evidence, because their peculiarities are more due to
+artificial selection than to any other cause. It may, indeed, be doubted
+whether greyhounds use their legs more than other dogs. Dogs of all
+kinds are daily in the habit of running about and chasing one another at
+the top of their speed--other dogs more frequently than greyhounds,
+which are not much given to play. The occasions on which greyhounds
+exercise their legs in chasing hares, occupy but inconsiderable spaces
+in their lives, and can play but small parts in developing their legs.
+And then, how about their long heads and sharp noses? Are these
+developed by running? The structure of the greyhound is explicable as a
+result mainly of selection of variations occasionally arising from
+unknown causes; but it is inexplicable otherwise. Still more obviously
+invalid is the evidence said to be furnished by pointers and setters.
+How can these be said to exercise their organs of smell more than other
+dogs? Do not all dogs occupy themselves in sniffing about here and there
+all day long: tracing animals of their own kind and of other kinds?
+Instead of admitting that the olfactory sense is more exercised in
+pointers and setters than in other dogs, it might, contrariwise, be
+contended that it is exercised less; seeing that during the greater
+parts of their lives they are shut up in kennels where the varieties of
+odours, on which to practise their noses, is but small. Clearly if
+breeders of sporting dogs have from early days habitually bred from
+those puppies of each litter which had the keenest noses (and it is
+undeniable that the puppies of each litter are made different from one
+another, as are the children in each human family, by unknown
+combinations of causes), then the existence of such remarkable powers in
+pointers and setters may be accounted for; while it is otherwise
+unaccountable. These instances, and many others such, I should have
+gladly used in support of my argument, had they been available; but
+unfortunately they are not.
+
+On the next page of the Duke of Argyll's article (page 145), occurs a
+passage which I must quote at length before I can deal effectually with
+its various statements. It runs as follows:--
+
+     "But if natural selection is a mere phrase, vague enough and wide
+     enough to cover any number of the physical causes concerned in
+     ordinary generation, then the whole of Mr. Spencer's laborious
+     argument in favour of his 'other factor' becomes an argument worse
+     than superfluous. It is wholly fallacious in assuming that this
+     'factor' and 'natural selection' are at all exclusive of, or even
+     separate from, each other. The factor thus assumed to be new is
+     simply one of the subordinate cases of heredity. But heredity is
+     the central idea of natural selection. Therefore natural selection
+     includes and covers all the causes which can possibly operate
+     through inheritance. There is thus no difficulty whatever in
+     referring it to the same one factor whose solitary dominion Mr.
+     Spencer has plucked up courage to dispute. He will never succeed in
+     shaking its dictatorship by such a small rebellion. His little
+     contention is like some bit of Bumbledom setting up for Home
+     Rule--some parochial vestry claiming independence of a universal
+     empire. It pretends to set up for itself in some fragment of an
+     idea. But here is not even a fragment to boast of or to stand up
+     for. His new factor in organic evolution has neither independence
+     nor novelty. Mr. Spencer is able to quote himself as having
+     mentioned it in his _Principles of Biology_ published some twenty
+     years ago; and by a careful ransacking of Darwin he shows that the
+     idea was familiar to and admitted by him at least in his last
+     edition of the _Origin of Species_.... Darwin was a man so much
+     wiser than all his followers," &c.
+
+Had there not been the Duke of Argyll's signature to the article, I
+could scarcely have believed that this passage was written by him.
+Remembering that on reading his article in the preceding number of this
+Review, I was struck by the extent of knowledge, clearness of
+discrimination, and power of exposition, displayed in it, I can scarcely
+understand how there has come from the same pen a passage in which none
+of these traits are exhibited. Even one wholly unacquainted with the
+subject may see in the last two sentences of the above extract, how
+strangely its propositions are strung together. While in the first of
+them I am represented as bringing forward a "new factor," I am in the
+second represented as saying that I mentioned it twenty years ago! In
+the same breath I am described as claiming it as new and asserting it as
+old! So, again, the uninstructed reader, on comparing the first words of
+the extract with the last, will be surprised on seeing in a scientific
+article statements so manifestly wanting in precision. If "natural
+selection is a mere phrase," how can Mr. Darwin, who thought it
+explained the origin of species, be regarded as wise? Surely it must be
+more than a mere phrase if it is the key to so many otherwise
+inexplicable facts. These examples of incongruous thoughts I give to
+prepare the way; and will now go on to examine the chief propositions
+which the quoted passage contains.
+
+The Duke of Argyll says that "heredity is the central idea of natural
+selection." Now it would, I think, be concluded that those who possess
+the central idea of a thing have some consciousness of the thing. Yet
+men have possessed the idea of heredity for any number of generations
+and have been quite unconscious of natural selection. Clearly the
+statement is misleading. It might just as truly be said that the
+occurrence of structural variations in organisms is the central idea of
+natural selection. And it might just as truly be said that the action of
+external agencies in killing some individuals and fostering others is
+the central idea of natural selection. No such assertions are correct.
+The process has three factors--heredity, variation, and external
+action--any one of which being absent, the process ceases. The
+conception contains three corresponding ideas, and if any one be struck
+out, the conception cannot be framed. No one of them is the central
+idea, but they are co-essential ideas.
+
+From the erroneous belief that "heredity is the central idea of natural
+selection" the Duke of Argyll draws the conclusion, consequently
+erroneous, that "natural selection includes and covers all the causes
+which can possibly operate through inheritance." Had he considered the
+cases which, in the _Principles of Biology_, I have cited to illustrate
+the inheritance of functionally-produced modifications, he would have
+seen that his inference is far from correct. I have instanced the
+decrease of the jaw among civilized men as a change of structure which
+cannot have been produced by the inheritance of spontaneous, or
+fortuitous, variations. That changes of structure arising from such
+variations may be maintained and increased in successive generations, it
+is needful that the individuals in whom they occur shall derive from
+them advantages in the struggle for existence--advantages, too,
+sufficiently great to aid their survival and multiplication in
+considerable degrees. But a decrease of jaw reducing its weight by even
+an ounce (which would be a large variation), cannot, by either smaller
+weight carried or smaller nutrition required, have appreciably
+advantaged any person in the battle of life. Even supposing such
+diminution of jaw to be beneficial (and in the resulting decay of teeth
+it entails great evils), the benefit can hardly have been such as to
+increase the relative multiplication of families in which it occurred
+generation after generation. Unless it has done this, however, decreased
+size of the jaw cannot have been produced by the natural selection of
+favourable variations. How can it then have been produced? Only by
+decreased function--by the habitual use of soft food, joined, probably,
+with disuse of the teeth as tools. And now mark that this cause operates
+on all members of a society which falls into civilized habits.
+Generation after generation this decreased function changes its
+component families simultaneously. Natural selection does not cover the
+case at all--has nothing to do with it. And the like happens in
+multitudinous other cases. Every species spreading into a new habitat,
+coming in contact with new food, exposed to a different temperature, to
+a drier or moister air, to a more irregular surface, to a new soil, &c.,
+&c., has its members one and all subject to various changed actions,
+which influence its muscular, vascular, respiratory, digestive,
+and other systems of organs. If there is inheritance of
+functionally-produced modifications, then all its members will transmit
+the structural alterations wrought in them, and the species will change
+as a whole without the supplanting of some stocks by others. Doubtless
+in respect of certain changes natural selection will co-operate. If the
+species, being a predacious one, is brought, by migration, into the
+presence of prey of greater speed than before; then, while all its
+members will have their limbs strengthened by extra action, those in
+whom this muscular adaptation is greatest will have their multiplication
+furthered; and inheritance of the functionally-increased structures will
+be aided, in successive generations, by survival of the fittest. But it
+cannot be so with the multitudinous minor changes entailed by the
+modified life. The majority of these must be of such relative
+unimportance that one of them cannot give to the individual in which it
+becomes most marked, advantages which predominate over kindred
+advantages gained by other individuals from other changes more
+favourably wrought in them. In respect to these, the inherited effects
+of use and disuse must accumulate independently of natural selection.
+
+To make clear the relations of these two factors to one another and to
+heredity, let us take a case in which the operations of all three may be
+severally identified and distinguished.
+
+Here is one of those persons, occasionally met with, who has an
+additional finger on each hand, and who, we will suppose, is a
+blacksmith. He is neither aided nor much hindered by these additional
+fingers; but, by constant use, he has greatly developed the muscles of
+his right arm. To avoid a perturbing factor, we will assume that his
+wife, too, exercises her arms in an unusual degree: keeps a mangle, and
+has all the custom of the neighbourhood. Such being the circumstances,
+let us ask what are the established facts, and what are the beliefs and
+disbeliefs of biologists.
+
+The first fact is that this six-fingered blacksmith will be likely to
+transmit his peculiarity to some of his children; and some of these,
+again, to theirs. It is proved that, even in the absence of a like
+peculiarity in the other parent, this strange variation of structure
+(which we must ascribe to some fortuitous combination of causes) is
+often inherited for more than one generation. Now the causes which
+produce this persistent six-fingeredness are unquestionably causes which
+"operate through inheritance." The Duke of Argyll says that "natural
+selection includes and covers all the causes which can possibly operate
+through inheritance." How does it cover the causes which operate here?
+Natural selection never comes into play at all. There is no fostering of
+this peculiarity, since it does not help in the struggle for existence;
+and there is no reason to suppose it is such a hindrance in the struggle
+that those who have it disappear in consequence. It simply gets
+cancelled in the course of generations by the adverse influences of
+other stocks.
+
+While biologists admit, or rather assert, that the peculiarity in the
+blacksmith's arm which was born with him is transmissible, they deny, or
+rather do not admit, that the other peculiarities of his arm, induced by
+daily labour--its large muscles and strengthened bones--are
+transmissible. They say that there is no proof. The Duke of Argyll
+thinks that the inheritance of organs enfeebled by disuse is "not
+generally disputed;" and he thinks there is clear proof that the
+converse change--increase of size consequent on use--is also inherited.
+But biologists dispute both of these alleged kinds of inheritance. If
+proof is wanted, it will be found in the proceedings at the last meeting
+of the British Association, in a paper entitled "Are Acquired Characters
+Hereditary?" by Professor Ray Lankester, and in the discussion raised by
+that paper. Had this form of inheritance been, as the Duke of Argyll
+says, "not generally disputed," I should not have written the first of
+the two articles he criticizes.
+
+But supposing it proved, as it may hereafter be, that such a
+functionally-produced change of structure as the blacksmith's arm shows
+us, is transmissible, the persistent inheritance is again of a kind with
+which natural selection has nothing to do. If the greatly strengthened
+arm enabled the blacksmith and his descendants, having like strengthened
+arms, to carry on the battle of life in a much more successful way than
+it was carried on by other men, survival of the fittest would ensure the
+maintenance and increase of this trait in successive generations. But
+the skill of the carpenter enables him to earn quite as much as his
+stronger neighbour. By the various arts he has been taught, the plumber
+gets as large a weekly wage. The small shopkeeper by his foresight in
+buying and prudence in selling, the village-schoolmaster by his
+knowledge, the farm-bailiff by his diligence and care, succeed in the
+struggle for existence equally well. The advantage of a strong arm does
+not predominate over the advantages which other men gain by their innate
+or acquired powers of other kinds; and therefore natural selection
+cannot operate so as to increase the trait. Before it can be increased,
+it is neutralized by the unions of those who have it with those who have
+other traits. To whatever extent, therefore, inheritance of this
+functionally-produced modification operates, it operates independently
+of natural selection.
+
+One other point has to be noted--the relative importance of this factor.
+If additional developments of muscles and bones may be transmitted--if,
+as Mr. Darwin held, there are various other structural modifications
+caused by use and disuse which imply inheritance of this kind--if
+acquired characters are hereditary, as the Duke of Argyll believes; then
+the area over which this factor of organic evolution operates is
+enormous. Not every muscle only, but every nerve and nerve-centre, every
+blood-vessel, every viscus, and nearly every bone, may be increased or
+decreased by its influence. Excepting parts which have passive
+functions, such as dermal appendages and the bones which form the skull,
+the implication is that nearly every organ in the body may be modified
+in successive generations by the augmented or diminished activity
+required of it; and, save in the few cases where the change caused is
+one which conduces to survival in a pre-eminent degree, it will be thus
+modified independently of natural selection. Though this factor can
+operate but little in the vegetal world, and can play but a subordinate
+part in the lowest animal world; yet, seeing that all the active organs
+of all animals are subject to its influence, it has an immense sphere.
+The Duke of Argyll compares the claim made for this factor to "some bit
+of Bumbledom setting up for Home Rule--some parochial vestry claiming
+independence of a universal empire." But, far from this, the claim made
+for it is to an empire, less indeed than that of natural selection, and
+over a small part of which natural selection exercises concurrent power;
+but of which the independent part has an area that is immense.
+
+It seems to me, then, that the Duke of Argyll is mistaken in four of the
+propositions contained in the passages I have quoted. The inheritance of
+acquired characters _is_ disputed by biologists, though he thinks it is
+not. It is not true that "heredity is the central idea of natural
+selection." The statement that natural selection includes and covers all
+the causes which can possibly operate through inheritance, is quite
+erroneous. And if the inheritance of acquired characters is a factor at
+all, the dominion it rules over is not insignificant but vast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here I must break off, after dealing with a page and a half of the Duke
+of Argyll's article. A state of health which has prevented me from
+publishing anything since "The Factors of Organic Evolution," now nearly
+two years ago, prevents me from carrying the matter further. Could I
+have pursued the argument it would, I believe, have been practicable to
+show that various other positions taken up by the Duke of Argyll do not
+admit of effectual defence. But whether or not this is probable, the
+reader must be left to judge for himself. On one further point only will
+I say a word; and this chiefly because, if I pass it by, a mistaken
+impression of a serious kind may be diffused. The Duke of Argyll
+represents me as "giving up" the "famous phrase" "survival of the
+fittest," and wishing "to abandon it." He does this because I have
+pointed out that its words have connotations against which we must be on
+our guard, if we would avoid certain distortions of thought. With equal
+propriety he might say that an astronomer abandons the statement that
+the planets move in elliptic orbits, because he warns his readers that
+in the heavens there exist no such things as orbits, but that the
+planets sweep on through a pathless void, in directions perpetually
+changed by gravitation.
+
+I regret that I should have had thus to dissent so entirely from various
+of the statements made, and conclusions drawn, by the Duke of Argyll,
+because, as I have already implied, I think he has done good service by
+raising afresh the question he has dealt with. Though the advantages
+which he hopes may result from the discussion are widely unlike the
+advantages which I hope may result from it, yet we agree in the belief
+that advantages may be looked for.
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Transcriber's note
+
+
+The following changes have been made to the text:
+
+Page 21: "heterogeenity" changed to "heterogeneity".
+
+Page 47: "multipled results" changed to "multiplied results".
+
+Page 59: "pre-Raffaelites" changed to "pre-Raphaelites".
+
+Page 84: "heretogeneity" changed to "heterogeneity".
+
+Page 94: "observedcoexistences" changed to "observed coexistences".
+
+Page 97: "Cirrhipoedia" changed to "Cirrhipedia".
+
+Page 108: "prima facie" changed to "prima facie".
+
+Page 112: "a fortiori" changed to "a fortiori".
+
+Page 124: "irreconcileable" changed to "irreconcilable".
+
+Page 140: "some thing like double" changed to "something like double".
+
+Page 216: "representive" changed to "representative".
+
+Page 291: "inbibe" changed to "imbibe".
+
+Page 306: "whic hthey and living" changed to "which they and living".
+
+Page 359: "of the two races, not" changed to "of the two races, nor".
+
+Page 393: "parenthethic" changed to "parenthetic".
+
+Page 411: "hypertropic" changed to "hypertrophic".
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays: Scientific, Political, &
+Speculative, Vol. I, by Herbert Spencer
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