were correct, ought not many other animals to have removed or supplemented their bodily weakness by mental attainments, and the hereditary facility produced by them? and yet we do not find that this is so. On the other hand, we find comparatively high mental attainments even in animals whose bodies are so favourably organized that the former are not necessary. For instance, the intelligence which is ascribed to the elephant cannot be traced to the desire to make up for bodily incapacity by mental perfection.

It may be true that faculties, which are originally imparted to animals by training, may to a certain degree become hereditary. But at any rate this only occurs in the case of certain peculiarly constituted animals, and then only to a moderate extent, and under human supervision and foresight. It is hardly conceivable that even this is possible in the natural state. A faculty does not become hereditary in a short time, and a prolonged continuous similar activity in similar animals under similar and different conditions presupposes the very thing which is to be obtained; the instinct and the power of always doing the same thing, and always exercising some particular faculty in the same way.

You see that wherever the details of Darwin's theory are compared with facts, unsurmountable difficulties arise. One of its opponents, Hoffmann, says, "The weak side in the Darwinian hypothesis is that it rests on premisses which are not based on experience; on the other hand, its strength, to the impartial observer of nature, consists in its grandeur and simplicity." The

1 Untersuchungen, etc. p. 28.

1

first statement is indisputable, and is partly admitted by the Darwinians themselves. But the simplicity of the hypothesis could only be a recommendation if it sufficed to explain the different facts which have to be considered, and this is not the case. Grandeur is no proof of truth; for even a mere fancy may be grand.

Darwin himself describes the theory of descent very well under the following image: "The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species, and those produced during former years may represent the long succession of extinct species. At each period of growth all the growing twigs have tried to branch out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups of species have at all times overmastered other species in the great battle for life. The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree was young, budding twigs; and this connection of the former and present buds by ramifying branches may well represent the classification of all extinct and living species in groups subordinate to groups. Of the many twigs which flourished when the tree was a mere bush, only two or three, now grown into great branches, yet survive and bear the other branches; so with the species which lived during long past geological periods, very few have left living and modified descendants. From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off; and these fallen branches

of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no living representatives, and which are known to us only in a fossil state. As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great tree of life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers its surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications."1

Hæckel has imitated the genealogical trees of families which have spread widely from their origin from a single ancestor, by making a regular genealogical tree of all organic beings, in which the moneron stands at the beginning as the original ancestor, and all the species of plants and animals which have existed, or still exist, have found their place.

Darwin may well say, "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved." The hypothesis is grand, no doubt, but is it admissible, that is, does it suffice to explain all the facts which have to be considered, and does it not come into conflict with assured facts?

I have enumerated a series of objections to the Darwinian theory of descent, and I have specially laid stress on the fact that the observations which have 2 Ibid. p. 429.

1 Origin of Species, pp. 104, 105.

been made up to the present time show that the effects produced by artificial selection cannot, without further ado, be also ascribed to what Darwin calls natural and sexual selection; further, that although we may admit that organic forms are variable, and that certain changes and variations may be transmitted and become hereditary, yet that up to the present time all observations show that this is confined within certain more or less narrow limits; also that in order to account for the changes of organic forms which Darwin assumes to have occurred, we must suppose that an endless series of fortunate chances took place throughout an endless number of generations, and that the theory cannot explain the origin of entirely new organs, such as the eyes, etc. In order to make our review easier, I have purposely up to this time confined myself to the application of the Darwinian theory to the more nearly allied species. But the more we follow it out the more problematical it becomes. We might, for instance, at any rate think it possible that the cat, the lion, the tiger, and the other animals. belonging to the genus Felis really were allied, that is, were descended from common ancestors, that a Felis had at one time existed whose descendants in the course of ages, after countless generations, had gradually differentiated into domestic cats, lions, tigers, etc., just as the descendants of the first men have differentiated into Europeans, Mongols, Americans, and negroes. There is greater difficulty in assuming the common ancestry, for instance, of the lion or elephant and the mouse, and it becomes still greater if we are to believe that the elephant and the humming-bird, the eagle

and the earth-worm, the butterfly and the whale had common ancestors; and according to Darwin this is what we must believe. Hæckel, in his genealogical tree, traces the descent of the elephant on the one hand, and the butterfly on the other, from the same moneron, or if not exactly from the same, yet from precisely similar individuals. But how many intermediate forms must there not have been between the elephant and the moneron, and again between the moneron and the butterfly? And as Hæckel could, of course, only set down the principal forms in his genealogical tables, we must multiply the intermediate forms which he has set down by thousands or millions. For every change which occurs and is perpetuated by natural selection is quite unimportant in itself, and hardly perceptible. The difference which exists between the elephant and the butterfly-and that of size is by no means the only one-is therefore the sum of millions of tiny differences, and each one of these originated quite gradually of itself, each one required, in order to perpetuate itself, not only a long time, but also the concourse of a great many fortunate circumstances. And how did all these small differences begin, and how were all these fortunate circumstances which perpetuated them brought about? Let us call the thing by its right name-by chance.

Darwin no doubt warns us against this expression, and says that chance is only the expression of our ignorance, or our want of discernment. This is in a certain sense true. "A chance," says Frohschammer,

"in the sense of an event which occurs without sufficient cause acting according to law, is no doubt impossible;