production is to be without any constraint upon the parent species, or when they are in their natural or "wild state." This had not been done when Professor Huxley published, and has not since been done. The necessary "physical condition" has not been attained, and Professor Huxley actually leaves the scientific world on this point, where it has ever been.

Now, just inquire, what is this natural selection, or selective modification? Is it a power, like gravitation, or a property, like cohesion, or a force, like magnetism, or an attraction, like chemical affinity? None of these. It acts in consistency with the nature of a plant or animal. How then can it change or modify that nature? We can only promote the natural action of the plant or animal. It must mean only this; that a plant, more favorably placed as to soil, water, light and heat, nutriment, air and all things, will more advance in its growth and in unfolding itself and maturing its fruit, than another in a less favorable condition; or, a plant in a less favorable soil may, for some unseen cause get the start of another, and continue to take its nutriment and make a finer growth than the other. In either case the plant can act only according to the plant-nature and laws, and can not alter that nature. In either case the former plant must appropriate more plant elements to its use than the latter, but each acts on its own laws of vegetable life. This is "natural selection." It must be continually operating, as the vital power of vegetable expansion. It is only a new name for an old principle. It can never modify wheat into rice, or rice into maize, or buckwheat into sugar cane. In the brute creation the proofs and result of natural selection must be the same, operating according to its peculiar animal nature.

The nature of the animal constitutes it what it is. It acts according to what it is, to perpetuate its existence, that is to continue the same nature. The development of an animal into another animal becomes a physical impossibility, a physiological absurdity.

In the

With this accords the common decision of mankind. ways before pointed out, they know that man has powers and characters entirely different from those of a brute, which raise the former immeasurably above the latter. It is from this knowledge, and not from any overweening vanity or foolish

pride of position or rank, that the general opinion of mankind is so opposed to the Professor's conclusion concerning "Man's Place in Nature," amounting to a violent "repugnance," which, he says, will be heard "on all sides," in the language, "we are men and women, and not a mere better sort of apes," possessing "the power of knowledge, the conscience of good and evil, the pitiful tenderness of human affections." p. 129. "We are men and women"; this involves the grand conclusion, and the Professor heard and repeated the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: "Man is a man."

ARTICLE V.

TEACHINGS OF THE REBELLION.

EVERY political era and revolution has its own peculiar lesson, differing from every other in so far as the causes which produce and govern it, and the circumstances which attend it differ from those which attend every other era or revolution. Certain general laws there are which apply to every revolution ; but those special ones which each develops and which are applicable only to the same state of facts in other instances, are what a wise statesmanship will seek to know, and what we all should endeavor to recognize.

In seeking to understand the lessons which the present rebellion of the Southern States is designed to teach, we must first know the condition of society in those States, and in what it differs from those which yet remain heartily loyal.

It can not have escaped the observation of the watchful student of our rapidly enacting history that even the upper classes in the seceded States, to whom we might naturally look for that intelligence and information which is one of the great safeguards of a republican government, and which the poorer classes, having less leisure for self culture, are unable to obtain, have joined

in the rebellion with a surprising degree of unanimity. Why is this when the loyal and seceded States are under a government which extends its privileges and blessings to North and South alike?

Every observant traveller in the Southern States has noticed that, except in the large towns and cities, school-houses are met with almost as rarely as gold mines. One may travel, as the writer has, twenty miles along the principal roads of Virginia and North Carolina, and if he takes the trouble to seek for the public schools, he will be told that there are none. The poorer classes are scattered too sparsely over the country to maintain schools for their children; and the wealthier ones educate theirs at home, employing private teachers upon each plantation. The rich do not desire to maintain a system of public schools which they do not use, and the poor being unable to support them the opportunities of education are denied to the

many.

If the organization of society were such as to distribute the wealth more equally there would be less ignorance in the masses. But the "peculiar institution" of the Southern States tends to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. The South is mainly an agricultural country; but so is the West, and it can not be said that the agricultural character of the country is the cause of its ignorance. Precisely the same condition would be found if commerce were its principal employment. The error is that capital owns labor; and where this is the case the poor are dependent upon the rich; and as the rich have no interest in supporting schools they almost cease to exist.

One of the fundamental laws of God and of human nature is violated when the healthful inter-dependence of capital and labor is broken down; and one of the results is the ignorance of the masses of the people. In the Northern States, where slavery does not exist, it is for the interest of the capitalist that his workmen and laborers should be as intelligent as possible. They do more work and do it better than those who are less informed. Hence free schools are for the interest of all; and, if they were not, the number of the laboring classes is so great that they are able to control the ballot box and thus secure the system.

But in the South knowledge is by far too dangerous a power to be intrusted to bondmen; it spoils them for servitude, and unfits them for the performance of the tasks required by their masters. And as slavery not only enables the wealthy planter to control the ballot box directly, but also gives him such power over his white dependents as to enable him to control that class of voters, schools are, in one respect at least, like angels' visits, few and far between. Thus the South is left to the ignorance of nature and to all the vices which are sure to follow close upon its heels. And this result is directly attributable to slavery inasmuch as the wealthy only can be successful in any branch of industry where slave labor is employed. The large slave population and the system of large plantations and rich planters scatters the population thinly over the country.

In addition to this the direct moral tendency of slavery is to idleness, by leading the white population to look down upon employments which are considered the proper sphere of the slave. And this is a legitimate result of the system; the employments of the bondman have ever been regarded with disdain by the freeman in all history. The servile system creates, by instinct, a subtle but decided line of separation between the master and the slave. For what result can we look when a people are thus left to idleness and ignorance? It is a law of mind that it will have some occupation; it cannot remain utterly inactive; and if a healthful, beneficial employment is not found it will break out into violence and sin.

This condition of ignorance, which is almost universal at the South, leaves the popular mind open to the deceptions and temptations of the designing to a degree which we at the North, in a land of busy industry and open schools, can hardly imagine. At the South it is the rule that all classes are unable to read or write, and the rare exception that a person can do either. This may stagger belief; but it is too sadly true as tested by actual observation in several of the seceded States; and the masses (we speak of the white population,) are thus reduced in a great degree to the condition of savages; for, as they can neither read the newspapers and books which might teach them better things, nor communicate by letter, they are almost wholly

dependent upon the educated few who as public men are relied on, and who can deceive without the risk of detection.

This condition would be less deplorable if there were any hope of its amelioration; but such is not the case. The demagogue knows too well that his power is gone when his hearer becomes sufficiently intelligent to judge for himself, and he therefore seeks to rivet the chains still closer. The planter, too, feels that the sceptre may be snatched from his hands by those who are in subjection to him rather through moral than legal power, if they become wise enough to understand their power; and he throws the whole vast weight of his slave vote into the scale, and the cause of human progress flies up. Thus the poor white gropes his way through life with no glimmering of the blessed star of hope to illumine the night of ignorance and moral darkness which surrounds him.

In thus destroying the counterpoise which should steady the social and political structure the path is left clear to the knowing few, and a result has been silently produced which has utterly astonished the people of the North. We could not believe that the Southern mind could be so grossly in error, so utterly deluded; but we have at last opened our eyes to the fact, and we may well be startled; for, much as has been said upon this subject, the half has not been told. But we must not suppose that the case is hopeless; for the reaction will be as sudden and complete when the light is once let in as was the original madness. Day by day and year by year, at the grocery and in the market, by the fireside and in the street, at the horse race and upon the political platform, the one theme has been dwelt upon that the North was seeking to overpower and crush the South, until hatred of the North has become the gospel and confession of faith of the Southern mind. But once let in the light, show them that we are their friends and well wishers, and come with the sword in our hands only to protect the right and not to enforce the wrong, and they will love the freedom of the North as heartily as they now hate it.

We of the North started in life with the system fastened upon us. Did we, as some of our statesmen would have us believe, throw it aside because our climate was unsuited to slavery, or because the intelligence of the North saw that it