fleshy tubercles or tentacles, hard spines, beautifully colored hairs arranged in tufts, brushes, starry clusters, or long pencils, and horns on the head and tail, either single or double, pointed or clubbed." Mr. Wallace adds, "Now if all these beautiful and varied ornaments can be produced and rendered constant in each species by some unknown cause quite independent of sexual selection, why cannot the same cause produce the colors and many of the ornaments of perfect insects; "-we may also add, the colors and ornaments of all other animals, including birds?

There is, however, another reason which induces Mr. Darwin to accept sexual selection; and it is probably this which, in his mind, mainly gives importance to the facts mentioned as to the plumage and motions of birds. He says of "display," "It is incredible that all this display should be purposeless" (vol. ii. p. 399); and again (vol. ii. p. 93), he declares that any one who denies that the female Argus pheasant can appreciate the refined beauty of the plumage of her mate, "will be compelled to admit that the extraordinary attitudes assumed by the male during the act of courtship, by which the wonderful beauty of his plumage is fully displayed, are purposeless; and this is a conclusion which I for one will never admit." It seems then that it is this imaginary necessity of attributing purposelessness to acts, which determines Mr. Darwin to attribute that peculiar and special purpose to birds' actions which he does attribute to them. But surely this difficulty is a mere chimera. Let it be granted that the female does not select; yet the display of the male may be useful in supplying the necessary degree of stimulation to her nervous system, and to that of the male. Pleasurable sensation, perhaps very keen in intensity, may thence result to both. There would be no difficulty in suggesting yet other purposes if we were to ascend into higher speculative regions. Mr. Darwin has given us in one place a very remarkable passage; he says:—

"With respect to female birds feeling a preference for particular males, we must bear in mind that we can judge of choice being exerted only by placing ourselves in imagination in the same position. If an inhabitant of another planet were to behold a number of young rustics at a fair, courting

and quarrelling over a pretty girl, like birds at one of their places of assemblage, he would be able to infer that she had the

power of choice only by observing the eagerness of the wooers to please her, and to display their finery.”—vol. ii. p. 122.

Now here it must be observed that, as is often the case, Mr. Darwin assumes the very point in dispute, unless he means by "power of choice" mere freedom of physical power.

If he means an internal, mental faculty of choice, then the observer could attribute such power to the girl only if he had reason to attribute to the rustics an intellectual and moral nature similar in kind to that which he possessed himself. Such a similarity of nature Mr. Darwin, of course, does attribute to rational beings and to brutes; but those who do not agree with him in this would require other tests than the presence of ornaments, and the performance of antics and gestures unaccompanied by any evidence of the faculty of articulate speech.

Such, then, is the nature of the evidence on which sexual selection is supposed to rest. To us the action of sexual selection scarcely seems more than a possi bility, the evidence rarely raising it to probability. It cannot be a "sufficient cause" to account for the phenomena which it is intended to explain, nor can it even claim to be taken as a vera causa at all. Yet Mr. Darwin again and again speaks as if its reality and cogency were indisputable.

As to the alleged action of natural selection on our own species we may mention two points.

First, as to the absence of hair. This is a character which Mr. Darwin admits cannot be accounted for by "natural selection," because manifestly not beneficial it is therefore attributed to "sexual selection," incipient man being supposed to have chosen mates with less and less hairy bodies; and the possibility of such action is thought by Mr. Darwin to be supported by the fact that certain monkeys have parts of the body naked. Yet it is a fact that the higher apes have not this nakedness, or have it in a much smaller degree.

Secondly, as to the races of mankind, alternation of constancy and caprice to Mr. Darwin's theory, indeed, requires the account for the selection and the conservation of marked varieties. In order that each race may possess and preserve its own

ideal standard of beauty we require the truth of the hypothesis that "certain tastes may in the course of time become inherited;" and yet Mr. Darwin candidly admits (vol. ii. p. 353): “ I know of no evidence in favor of this belief." On the the other hand, he says (p. 370), as soon as tribes exposed to different conditions came to vary, "each isolated tribe would form for itself a slightly different standard of beauty," which "would gradually and inevitably be increased to a greater and greater degree." But why have not the numerous tribes of North American Indians diverged from each more conspicuously, inhabiting, as they do, such different climates, and surrounded by such diverse conditions?

Again, far from each race being bound in the trammels of its own features, all cultivated Europeans, whether Celts, Teutons, or Slaves, agree in admiring the Hellenic ideal as the highest type of human beauty.

We may now pass on to the peculiarities of man's bodily frame, and the value and signification of the resemblances presented by it to the various structures which are found to exist in lower members of the animal kingdom.

Mr. Darwin treats us to a very interesting account, not only of man's anatomy, but also of the habits, diseases, and parasites (internal and external) of man, together with the process of his development. He points out (vol. i. p. 11) not only the close similarity even of cerebral structure between man and apes, but also how the same animals are "liable to many of the same non contagious diseases as we are; thus Rengger, who carefully observed for a long time the Cebus Azaræ in its native land, found it liable to catarrh, with the usual symptoms, and which when often recurrent led to consumption. These monkeys suffered also from apoplexy, inflammation of the bowels, and cataract in the eye. The younger ones, when shedding their milk-teeth, often died from fever. Medicines produced the same effect on them as on us. Many kinds of monkeys have a strong taste for tea, coffee, and spirituous liquors; they will also, as I have myself seen, smoke tobacco with pleasure." He also tells us of baboons which, after taking too much beer, "on the following morning were very cross and dismal, held their aching heads with both

hands, and wore a most pitiable expression: when beer or wine was offered them, they turned away with disgust, but relished the juice of lemons." He notices, besides, the process of development in man with the transitory resemblances it exhibits to the immature conditions of other animals, and he mentions certain muscular abnormalities.

Mr. Darwin also brings forward an observation of Mr. Woolner, the sculptor, as to a small projection of the helix or outermost fold of the human ear, which projection "we may safely conclude" to be "a vestige of formerly pointed ears— which occasionally reappears in man." (vol. i. p. 23.) Very many other interesting facts are noted which it would be superfluous here to recapitulate. It is, however, in connection with man's bodily structure and its resemblances that we have observed slight errors on the part of Mr. Darwin, which it may be as well to point out; though it should be borne in mind that he does not profess to be in any sense an anatomist. Thus, at vol. i. p. 28, he mistakes the supra-condyloid foramen of the humerus for the inter-condyloid perforation. Did the former condition frequently occur in man-as, through this mistake, he asserts-it would be remarkable indeed, as it is only found in the lower monkeys and not in the higher. A more singular mistake is that of the malar bone for the premaxilla.— vol. i. p. 124.

To return to the bodily and other characters enumerated at such length by Mr. Darwin. They may, and doubtless they will, produce a considerable effect on readers who are not anatomists, but in fact the whole and sole result is to show that man is an animal. That he is such is denied by no one, but has been taught and accepted since the time of Aristotle. We remember on one occasion meeting at a dinner-table a clever medical man of materialistic views. He strongly impressed the minds of some laymen present by an elaborate statement of the mental phenomena following upon different injuries, or diseased conditions of different parts of the brain, until one of the number remarked as a climax, "Yes; and when the brain is entirely removed the mental phenomena cease altogether"--the previous observations having only brought out vividly what no one denied, viz., that dur

ing this life a certain integrity of bodily structure is requisite for the due exercise of the mental powers. Thus Mr. Darwin's remarks are merely an elaborate statement of what all admit, namely, that man is an animal. They further imply, however, that he is no more than an animal, and that the mode of origin of his visible being must be the mode of his origin as a whole-a conclusion of which we should not question the legitimacy if we could accept Mr. Darwin's views of man's mental powers.

All that can be said to be established by our author is, that if the various kinds of lower animals have been evolved one from the other by a process of natural generation or evolution, then it becomes highly probable à priori that man's body has been similarly evolved; but this, in such a case, becomes equally probable from the admitted fact that he is an animal at all.

The evidence for such a process of evolution of man's body amounts, however, only to an à priori probability, and might be reconciled with another mode of origin if there were sufficient reason (of another kind) to justify a belief in such other mode of origin. Mr. Darwin says: "It is only our natural prejudice, and that arrogance which made our forefathers declare that they were descended from demi-gods, which leads us to demur to this conclusion." (vol. i. p. 32.) But this is not the case; for many demur to his conclusion because they believe that to accept his view would be to contradict other truths which to them are far more evident.

He also makes the startling assertion that to take any other view than his as to man's origin, "is to admit that our own structure and that of all the animals around us, is a mere snare laid to entrap our judgment." (vol. i. p. 32.) Mr. Darwin is, we are quite sure, far enough from pretending that he has exhausted the possibilities of the case, and yet could any thing but a conviction that the whole field had been explored exhaustively justify such an assertion? If, without such a conviction, it were permissible so to dogmatize, every theorizer who had attained to a plausible explanation of a set of phenomena might equally make use of the assertion, and say, until a better explanation was found, that to doubt him would be to attribute duplicity to the Almighty.

"On the contrary, I see no reason to doubt that a more perfectly constructed hand would have been an advantage to them, provided, and it is important to note this, that their hands had not thus been rendered less well adapted for climbing trees. We may suspect that a perfect hand would have been arboreal monkeys in the world, namely disadvantageous for climbing; as the most Ateles in America and Hylobates in Asia, either have their thumbs much reduced in size and even rudimentary, or their fingers partially coherent, so that their hands are converted into grasping-hooks."-vol i. p.

140.

In a note, Mr. Darwin refers to the Syndactyle Gibbon as having two of the digits coherent. But these digits are not, as he supposes, digits of the hand but toes. Moreover, though doubtless the Gibbons and spider-monkeys are admirably organized for their needs, yet it is plain that a well-developed thumb is no impediment to climbing, for the strictly arboreal Lemurs are exceedingly well furnished in this respect. Again he says (vol. i. p. 143) of the Gibbons, that they, "without having been taught, can walk or run upright with tolerable quickness, though they move awkwardly, and much less securely than man." This is a little misleading, inasmuch as it is not stated that this upright progression is effected by placing the enormously long arms behind the head or holding them out backwards as a balance in progression.

We have already seen that Mr. Darwin tries to account for man's hairlessness by the help of "sexual selection." He also, however, speculates as to the possibility of his having lost it through heat of climate, saying: "Elephants and rhinoceroses are almost hairless; and as certain extinct species which formerly lived under an arctic climate were covered with long wool or hair, it would almost appear as if the existing species of both genera had lost their hairy covering from exposure to heat."-vol. i. p. 148.

This affords us a good example of hasty and inconclusive speculation. Surely it would be as rational to suppose that the

arctic species had gained their coats as that the tropical species had lost theirs. But over-hasty conclusions are, we regret to say, the rule in Mr. Darwin's speculalations as to man's genealogy. He car ries that genealogy back to some ancient form of animal life somewhat like an existing larval Ascidian; and he does this on the strength of the observations of Kowalevsky and Kuppfer. He assumes at once that the similarities of structure which those observers detected are due to descent instead of to independent similarity of evolution, though the latter mode of origin is at least possible, and can hardly be considered improbable when we reflect on the close similarity independently induced in the eyes of fishes and cephalopods.

Quite recently, however, observations have been published by Dr. Donizt,* which render in necessary, at least, to pause and reconsider the question before admitting the Ascidian ancestry of the Vertebrate sub-kingdom.

We now come to the consideration of a subject of great importance-namely, that of man's mental powers. Are they, as Mr. Darwin again and again affirms that they are, † different only in degree and not in kind from the mental powers of brutes? As is so often the case in discussions, the error to be combated is an implied negation. Mr. Darwin implies and seems to assume that when two things have certain characters in common there can be no fundamental difference between them.

To avoid ambiguity and obscurity, it may be well here to state plainly certain very elementary matters. The ordinary antecedents and concomitants of distinctly felt sensations may exist, with all their physical consequences, in the total absence of intellectual cognizance, as is shown by the well-known fact, that when through fracture of the spine the lower limbs of a man are utterly deprived of the power of feeling, the foot may nevertheless withdraw itself from tickling just as if a sensation was consciously felt. Amongst lower animals, a decapitated frog will join its hind feet together to push away an irritating object just as an uninjured animal

* See "Journal für Anatomie und Physiologie," edited by Reichert and Dubois. Berlin. "There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties.-Descent of Man, vol. i. p. 35.

will do. Here we have coadjusted actions resulting from stimuli which normally produce sensation, but occurring under conditions in which cerebral action does not take place. Did it take place we should have sensations, but by no means necessarily intellectual action.

"Sensation" is not "thought," and no amount of the former would constitute the most rudimentary condition of the latter, though sensations supply the condition for the existence of "thought" or "knowledge."

Altogether, we may clearly distinguish at least six kinds of action to which the nervous system ministers :

I. That in which impressions received result in appropriate movements without the intervention of sensation or thought, as in the cases of injury above given.This is the reflex action of the nervous system.

II. That in which stimuli fr n without result in sensations through the agency of which their due effects are wrought out.Sensation.

III. That in which impressions received result in sensations which give rise to the observation of sensible objects.—Sensible perception.

IV. That in which sensations and perceptions continue to coalesce, agglutinate, and combine in more or less complex aggregations, according to the laws of the association of sensible perceptions.-Association.

The above four groups contain only indeliberate operations, consisting, as they do at the best, but of mere presentative sensible ideas in no way implying any reflective or representative faculty. Such actions minister to and from Instinct. Besides these, we may distinguish two other kinds of mental action, namely:

V. That in which sensations and sensible perceptions are reflected on by thought and recognized as our own and we ourselves recognized by ourselves as affected and perceiving.-Self-consciousness.

VI. That in which we reflect upon our sensations or perceptions, and ask what they are and why they are.-Reason.

These two latter kinds of action are deliberate operations, performed, as they are, by means of representative ideas implying the use of a reflective representative faculty. Such actions distinguish the intellect or rational faculty. Now, we assert

that possession in perfection of all the first four (presentative) kinds of action by no means implies the possession of the last two (representative) kinds. All persons, we think, must admit the truth of the following proposition :

Two faculties are distinct, not in degree but in kind, if we may possess the one in perfection without that fact implying that we possess the other also. Still more will this be the case if the two faculties tend to increase in an inverse ratio. Yet this is the distinction between the instinctive and the intellectual parts of man's nature. As to animals, we fully admit that they may possess all the first four groups of actions-that they may have, so to speak, mental images of sensible objects combined in all degrees of complexity, as governed by the laws of association. We deny to them, on the other hand, the possession of the last two kinds of mental actions. We deny them, that is, the power of reflecting on their own existence or of enquiring into the nature of objects and their causes. We deny that they know that they know or know themselves in knowing. In other words, we deny them reason. The possession of the presentative faculty, as above explained, in no way implies that of the reflective faculty; nor does any amount of direct operation imply the power of asking the reflective question before mentioned, as to "what" and "why."

According to our definition, then, given above, the faculties of men and those of other animals differ in kind; and brutes low in the scale supply us with a good example in support of this distinctness; for it is in animals generally admitted to be wanting in reason-such as insects (e. g., the ant and the bee)-that we have the very summit and perfection of instinct made known to us.

We will shortly examine Mr. Darwin's arguments, and see if he can bring forward a single instance of brute action implying the existence in it of the representative reflective power. Before doing so, however, one or two points as to the conditions of the controversy must be noticed.

In the first place, the position which we maintain is the one in possession-that which is commended to us by our intuitions, by ethical considerations, and by religious teaching universally. The onus probandi should surely therefore rest with

him who, attacking the accepted position, maintains the essential similarity and fundamental identity of powers the effects of which are so glaringly diverse. Yet Mr. Darwin quietly assumes the whole point in dispute, by asserting identity of intuition where there is identity of sensation (vol. i. p. 36), which, of course, implies that there is no mental power whatever except sensation. For if the existence of another faculty were allowed by him, it is plain that the action of that other faculty might modify the effects of mere sensation in any being possessed of such additional faculty.

Secondly, it must be remembered that it is a law in all reasoning that where known causes are sufficient to account for any phenomena we shall not gratuitously call in additional causes. If, as we believe to be the case, there is no need whatever to call in the representative faculty as an explanation of brute mental action ;if the phenomena brutes exhibit can be accounted for by the presentative faculty —that is, by the presence of sensible perceptions and emotions together with the reflex and co-ordinating powers of the nervous system ;--then to ascribe to them the possession of reason is thoroughly gratuitous.

Thirdly, in addition to the argument that brutes have not intellect because their actions can be accounted for without the exercise of that faculty, we have other and positive arguments in opposition to Mr. Darwin's view of their mental powers. These arguments are based upon the absence in brutes of articulate and rational speech, of true concerted action and of educability, in the human sense of the word. We have, besides, what may be called an experimental proof in the same direction. For if the germs of a rational nature existed in brutes, such germs would certainly ere this have so developed as to have produced unmistakably rational phenomena, considering the prodigious lapse of time passed since the entombment of the earliest known fossils. To this question we will return later.

We shall perhaps be met by the assertion that many men may also be taken to be irrational animals, so little do the phenomena they exhibit exceed in dignity and importance the phenomena presented by certain brutes. But, in reply, it is to be remarked that we can only consider men who are truly men-not idiots, and that all