acquired, like all the other social instincts, through natural selection" (vol. i. p. 164); and "the fundamental social instincts were originally thus gained" (vol. i. p. 173).

He tells us (vol. i. p. 155): "The pollen-collecting apparatus, or the sting of the worker-bee, or the great jaws of soldier-ants have been thus acquired," i.e., by natural selection.

It is rarely that Mr. Darwin fails in courtesy to his opponents; and one may well therefore be surprised at the tone of the following passage (vol. ii. p. 386): "He who is not content to look like a savage, at the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation. He will be forced to admit " the contrary. What justifies Mr. Darwin in taking this tone of superiority, and in his assumption that to suppose the soul of man to have been specially created, is to regard the phenomena of nature as disconnected?

question he

argues.

Secondly, as an instance of Mr. Darwin's too frequent He begs the practice of begging the question at issue, the following assertion may be quoted: "Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man" (vol. i. p. 71). This is either a monstrous assumption or a mere truism; it is a truism, for of course, any creature with the intellect of a man would perceive the qualities men's intellect is capable of perceiving, and, amongst them-moral worth.

Mr. Darwin, in a passage before quoted (vol. i. p. 86) slips in the whole of absolute morality, by employing the phrase "appreciation of justice." Again (vol. i. p. 168), when he speaks of aiding the needy, he remarks: "Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature." How noblest? According to Mr. Darwin, a virtuous instinct is a strong and permanent one. There can be, according to his views, no other elements of quality than intensity and duration. Mr.

Darwin, in fact, thus silently introduces the moral element into his "social instinct," and then, of course, has no difficulty in finding in this latter what he had previously put there.

Mr. Darwin's hypothesis has been examined at length by me in the Genesis of Species,' and the causes have been there assigned which have determined me to reject it in favour of the conception of an internal force-a conclusion which has also been arrived at by various other naturalists; Professor Owen, as has been said, amongst them.

Dr. Carpenter has observed (in a periodical called 'Il Barth'), of the origin of new species by the appearance of modified individuals: "Natural selection is asssuredly not that cause." "Consequently we must look to forces acting either within or without the organism as the real agents." "This much seems to me clear: that just as there is at the present time a determinate capacity for a certain fixed kind of development in each germ, in virtue of which one evolves itself into a zoophyte, and another (though not originally distinguishable from it) into a man, so must the primordial germs have been endowed each with its determinate capacity for a particular course of development; in virtue of which it has evolved the whole succession of forms that has ultimately proceeded from it. That the 'accidents' of Natural Selection should have produced that orderly succession, is to my own mind inconceivable."

It cannot then be contested that the far-famed " Origin of

Selection."

Species," that, namely, by "Natural Selection," has Conclusion as been repudiated, in fact, though not expressly, to "Natural even by its own author. This circumstance, which is simply undeniable, might dispense us from any further consideration of the hypothesis itself. But the "conspiracy of silence" which has accompanied the repudiation tends to lead the unthinking many to suppose that the same importance still attaches to it as at first. On this account it may be worth while to ask the question, what, after all, is “Natural Selection"?

The answer may seem surprising to some, but it is none the less true, that "Natural Selection" is simply nothing. It is an apparently positive name for a really negative effect, and is therefore an eminently misleading term. By "Natural Selection" is meant the result of all the destructive agencies of nature, destructive to individuals and to races by destroying their lives or their powers of propagation. Evidently the cause of the distinction of species (supposing such distinction to be brought about in natural generation) must be that which causes variation, and variation in one determinate direction in at least several individuals simultaneously. At the same time it is freely conceded that the destructive agencies of nature do succeed in preventing the perpetuation of monstrous, abortive, and feeble attempts at the performance of the evolutionary process, that they remove rapidly antecedent forms when new ones are evolved more in harmony with surrounding conditions, and that their action results in the promotion of new characters when these have once attained sufficient completeness to be of real utility to their possessor.

Continued reflection, and five years' further pondering over the problem of specific origin, have more and more convinced me the conception that the origin of all species, "man included," is due simply to conditions which are (to use Mr. Darwin's own words) "strictly accidental," is a conception utterly irrational. This conception is not that of Mr. Wallace, who makes of man a special exception. With regard to the conception as now put forward by Mr. Darwin, however, I cannot truly characterize it but by an epithet which I employ only with much reluctance. I weigh my words, and have present to my mind the many distinguished naturalists who have accepted the notion, and yet I cannot hesitate to call it a "puerile hypothesis." I call it puerile and not infantine, because in the infancy of nations as of individuals the tendency is to explain each visible action by a direct supernatural intervention. Reaction from this infantine condition tends to the exclusion from our

conception of the First Cause, of knowledge, purpose and will altogether, as in the Ionian Philosophy which reappears amongst us to-day-the puerile view. This puerile view results from a want of appreciation of human reason. Maturity reconciles the apparently diverging truths contained in each assertion and represents the material universe as always and everywhere sustained and directed by an infinite Cause, for which to us the word MIND is the least inadequate and misleading of symbols.

CHAPTER X.

SEXUAL SELECTION.

"Sexual selection is an hypothesis which neither has been nor can be proved true, but the falsehood of which is demonstrated by a mass of zoological data."

tion, an ac

cessory hypo

THE hypothesis of "natural selection" having been found Sexual selec- by its author unequal for the task he had assigned it, that of serving as the explanation of thesis. specific origin, he subsequently brought forward to its aid a subordinate hypothesis, which he termed "sexual selection." The present chapter will be devoted to the consideration of what lessons we can derive from nature as to the existence and action of this process.

In considering the Origin of Man, Mr. Darwin brings in his addition of" sexual selection" to the aid of "natural selection." We need not here further consider the action of "natural selection;" but since Mr. Darwin is convinced that the action of "sexual selection" is necessary to account for man's origin and present condition, it will be necessary to consider "sexual selection" at some length. It plays the most important part in the "descent of man," according to Mr. Darwin's views. He maintains that we owe to it our power of song and our hairlessness of body, and that also to it is due the formation and conservation of the various races and varieties of the human species. Indeed "sexual selection" is now the corner-stone of Mr. Darwin's theory. It occupies three-fourths of his work on Man; and unless he has clearly established this point, the whole fabric falls to the ground. It is impossible, therefore, to estimate his views adequately without entering fully into the subject.