"C'est dire qu'il y a eu, pour l'ensemble du monde organique, une periode de formation ou tout etait changeant et mobile, une phase analogue a la vie embryonnaire et a la jeunesse de chaque etre particulier; et qu'a cet age de mobilite et de croissance a succede une periode de stabilite, au moins relative, une sorte d'age adulte, ou la force evolutive, ayant acheve son oeuvre, n'est plus occupee qu'a la maintenir, sans pouvoir produire d'organismes nouveaux. Limitee en quantite, comme toutes les forces en jeu dans une planete ou dans un systeme sideral tout entier, cette force n'a pu accomplir qu'un travail limite; et du meme qu'un organisme, animal ou vegetal, ne croit pas indefiniment et qu'il s'arrete a des proportions que rien ne peut faire depasser, de meme aussi l'organisme total de la nature s'est arrete a un etat d'equilibre, dont la duree, selon toutes vraisemblances, doit etre beaucoup plus longue que celle de la phase de developpement et de croissance.

A fixed amount of "evolutive force" is given, to begin with. At first enormous, because none has been used up in work, it is necessarily enfeebled in the currents into which the stream divides, and the narrower and narrower channels in which it flows with slowly-diminishing power. Hence the limited although very unequal duration of all individuals, of all species, and of all types of organization. A multitude of forms have disappeared already, and the number of species, far from increasing, as some have believed, must, on the contrary, be diminishing. Some species, no doubt, have suffered death by violence or accident, by geological changes, local alteration of the conditions, or the direct or indirect attacks of other species; but these have only anticipated their fate, for M. Naudin contends that most of the extinct species have died a natural death from exhaustion of force, and that all the survivors are on the way to it. The great timepiece of Nature was wound up at the beginning, and is running down. In the earlier stages of great plasticity and exuberant power, diversification took place freely, but only in definite lines, and species and types multiplied. As the power of survival is inherently limited, still more the power of change: this diminishes in time, if we rightly apprehend the idea, partly through the waning of vital force, partly through the fixity acquired by heredity—like producing like, the more certainly in proportion to the length and continuity of the ancestral chain And so the small variations of species which we behold are the feeble remnants of the pristine plasticity and an exhausted force.[XII-2] This force of variation or origination of forms has acted rhythmically or intermittently, because each movement was the result of the rupture of an equilibrium, the liberation of a force which till then was retained in a potential state by some opposing force or obstacle, overcoming which it passes to a new equilibrium and so on Hence alternations of dynamic activity and static repose, of origination of species and types, alternated with periods of stability or fixity. The timepiece does not run down regularly, but "la force procede par saccades; et . . . par pulsations d'autant plus energiques que la nature etait plus pres de son commencement."

Such is the hypothesis. For a theory of evolution, this is singularly unlike Darwin's in most respects, and particularly in the kind of causes invoked and speculations indulged in. But we are not here to comment upon it beyond the particular point under consideration, namely, its doctrine of the inherently limited duration of species. This comes, it will be noticed, as a deduction from the modern physical doctrine of the equivalence of force. The reasoning is ingenious, but, if we mistake not, fallacious.

To call that "evolutive force" which produces the change of one kind of plant or animal into another, is simple and easy, but of little help by way of explanation. To homologize it with physical force, as M. Naudin's argument requires, is indeed a step, and a hardy one; but it quite invalidates the argument. For, if the "evolutive force" is a part of the physical force of the universe, of which, as he reminds us, the sum is fixed and the tendency is toward a stable equilibrium in which all change is to end, then this evolutive was derived from the physical force; and why not still derivable from it? What is to prevent its replenishment in vegetation, pari passu with that great operation in which physical force is stored up in vegetable organisms, and by the expenditure or transformation of which their work, and that of all animals, is carried on? Whatever be the cause (if any there be) which determines the decadence and death of species, one cannot well believe that it is a consequence of a diminution of their proper force by plant-development and division; for instance, that the sum of what is called vital force in a full-grown tree is not greater, instead of less, than that in the seeding, and in the grove greater than in the single parental tree. This power, if it be properly a force, is doubtless as truly derived from the sunbeam as is the power which the plant and animal expend in work. Here, then, is a source of replenishment as lasting as the sun itself, and a ground—so far as a supply of force is concerned—for indefinite duration. For all that any one can mean by the indefinite existence of species is, that they may (for all that yet appears) continue while the external conditions of their being or well-being continue.

Perhaps, however, M. Naudin does not mean that "evolutive force," or the force of vitality, is really homologous with common physical force, but only something which may be likened to it. In that case the parallel has only a metaphorical value, and the reason why variation must cease and species die out is still to seek. In short, if that which continues the series of individuals in propagation, whether like or unlike the parents, be a force in the physical sense of the term, then there is abundant provision in Nature for its indefinite replenishment. If, rather, it be a part or phase of that something which directs and determines the expenditure of force, then it is not subject to the laws of the latter, and there is no ground for inferring its exhaustibility. The limited vitality is an unproved and unprovable conjecture. The evolutive force, dying out in the using, is either the same conjecture repeated, or a misapplied analogy.

After all—apart from speculative analogies—the only evidences we possess which indicate a tendency in species to die out, are those to which Mr. Darwin has called attention. These are, first, the observed deterioration which results, at least in animals, from continued breeding in and in, which may possibly be resolvable into cumulative heritable disease; and, secondly, as already stated (p. 285), what may be termed the sedulous and elaborate pains everywhere taken in Nature to prevent close breeding—arrangements which are particularly prominent in plants, the greater number of which bear hermaphrodite blossoms. The importance of this may be inferred from the universality, variety, and practical perfection of the arrangements which secure the end; and the inference may fairly be drawn that this is the physiological import of sexes. It follows from this that there is a tendency, seemingly inherent, in species as in individuals, to die out; but that this tendency is counteracted or checked by sexual wider breeding, which is, on the whole, amply secured in Nature, and which in some way or other reenforces vitality to such an extent as to warrant Darwin's inference that "some unknown great good is derived from the union of individuals which have been kept distinct for many generations." Whether this reenforcement is a complete preventive of decrepitude in species, or only a palliative, is more than we can determine. If the latter, then existing species and their derivatives must perish in time, and the earth may be growing poorer in species, as M. Naudin supposes, through mere senility. If the former, then the earth, if not even growing richer, may be expected to hold its own, and extant species or their derivatives should last as long as the physical world lasts and affords favorable conditions. General analogies seem to favor the former view. Such facts as we possess, and the Darwinian hypothesis, favor the latter.

XIII

EVOLUTIONARY TELEOLOGY

When Cuvier spoke of the "combination of organs in such order that they may be in consistence with the part which the animal has to play in Nature," his opponent, Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, rejoined, "I know nothing of animals which have to play a part in Nature." The discussion was a notable one in its day. From that time to this, the reaction of morphology against "final causes" has not rarely gone to the extent of denying the need and the propriety of assuming ends in the study of animal and vegetable organizations. Especially in our day, when it became apparent that the actual use of an organ might not be the fundamental reason of its existence— that one and the same organ, morphologically considered, was modified in different cases to the most diverse uses, while intrinsically different organs subserved identical functions, and consequently that use was a fallacious and homology the surer guide to correct classification—it was not surprising that teleological ideas nearly disappeared from natural history. Probably it is still generally thought that the school of Cuvier and that of St.-Hilaire have neither common ground nor capability of reconcilement.

In a review of Darwin's volume on the "Fertilization of Orchids" * (too technical and too detailed for reproduction here), and later in a brief sketch of the character of his scientific work (art. IX, p. 234), we expressed our sense of the great gain to science from his having brought back teleology to natural history. In Darwinism, usefulness and purpose come to the front again as working principles of the first order; upon them, indeed, the whole system rests.

To most, this restoration of teleology has come from an unexpected quarter, and in an unwonted guise; so that the first look of it is by no means reassuring to the minds of those who cherish theistic views of Nature. Adaptations irresistibly suggesting purpose had their supreme application in natural theology. Being manifold, particular, and exquisite, and evidently inwrought into the whole system of the organic world, they were held to furnish irrefragable as well as independent proof of a personal designer, a divine originator of Nature. By a confusion of thought, now obvious, but at the time not unnatural, they were also regarded as proof of a direct execution of the contriver's purpose in the creation of each organ and organism, as it were, in the manner man contrives and puts together a machine—an idea which has been set up as the orthodox doctrine, but which to St. Augustine and other learned Christian fathers would have savored of heterodoxy.

In the doctrine of the origination of species through natural selection, these adaptations appear as the outcome rather than as the motive, as final results rather than final causes. Adaptation to use, although the very essence of Darwinism, is not a fixed and inflexible adaptation, realized once for all at the outset; it includes a long progression and succession of modifications, adjusting themselves to changing circumstances, under which they may be more and more diversified, specialized, and in a just sense perfected. Now, the question is, Does this involve the destruction or only the reconstruction of our consecrated ideas of teleology? Is it compatible with our seemingly inbore conception of Nature as an ordered system? Furthermore, and above all, can the Darwinian theory itself dispense with the idea of purpose, in the ordinary sense of the word, as tantamount to design?

From two opposing sides we hear the first two questions answered in the negative. And an affirmative response to the third is directly implied in the following citation:

"The word purpose has been used in a sense to which it is, perhaps, worth while to call attention. Adaptation of means to an end may be provided in two ways that we at present know of: by processes of natural selection, and by the agency of an intelligence in which an image or idea of the end preceded the use of the means. In both cases the existence of the adaptation is accounted for by the necessity or utility of the end. It seems to me convenient to use the word purpose as meaning generally the end to which certain means are adapted, both in these two cases and in any other that may hereafter become known, provided only that the adaptation is accounted for by the necessity or utility of the end. And there seems no objection to the use of the phrase 'final cause' in this wider sense, if it is to be kept at all. The word 'design' might then be kept for the special case of adaptation by an intelligence. And we may then say that, since the process of natural selection has been understood, purpose has ceased to suggest design to instructed people, except in cases where the agency of man is independently probable."—P.C.W., in the Contemporary Review for September, 1875, p. 657.

The distinction made by this anonymous writer is convenient and useful, and his statement clear. We propose to adopt this use of the terms purpose and design, and to examine the allegation. The latter comes to this: "Processes of natural selection" exclude "the agency of an intelligence in which the image or idea of the end precedes the use of the means;" and since the former have been understood "purpose has ceased to suggest design to instructed people, except in cases where the agency of man is independently probable." The maxim "L'homme propose, Dieu dispose," under this reading means that the former has the monopoly of design, while the latter accomplishes without designing. Man's works alone suggest design.

But it is clear to us that this monopoly is shared with certain beings of inferior grade. Granting that quite possibly the capture of flies for food by Dionaea and the sundews may be attributed to purpose apart from design (if it be practicable in the last resort to maintain this now convenient distinction), still their capture by a spider's-web, and by a swallow on the wing, can hardly "cease to suggest design to instructed people." And surely, in coming at his master's call, the dog fulfills his own design as well as that of his master; and so of other actions and constructions of brute animals.

Without doubt so acute a writer has a clear and sensible meaning; so we conclude that he regards brutes as automata, and was thinking of design as coextensive merely with general conceptions. Not concerning ourselves with the difficulty he may have in drawing a line between the simpler judgments and affections of man and those of the highest-endowed brutes, we subserve our immediate ends by remarking that the automatic theory would seem to be one which can least of all dispense with design, since, either in the literal or current sense of the word, undesigned automatism is, as near as may be, a contradiction in terms. As the automaton man constructs manifests the designs of its maker and mover, so the more efficient automata which man did not construct would not legitimately suggest less than human intelligence. And so all adaptations in the animal and vegetable world which irresistibly suggest purpose (in the sense now accepted) would also suggest design, and, under the law of parsimony, claim to be thus interpreted, unless some other hypothesis will better account for the facts. We will consider, presently, if any other does so.

We here claim only that some beings other than men design, and that the adaptations of means to ends in the structure of animals and plants, in so far as they carry the marks of purpose, carry also the implication of having been designed. Also, that the idea or hypothesis of a designing mind, as the author of Nature—however we came by it—having possession of the field, and being one which man, himself a designer, seemingly must needs form, cannot be rivaled except by some other equally adequate for explanation, or displaced except by showing the illegitimacy of the inference. As to the latter, is the common apprehension and sense of mankind in this regard well grounded? Can we rightly reason from our own intelligence and powers to a higher or a supreme intelligence ordering and shaping the system of Nature?

A very able and ingenious writer upon "The Evidences of Design in Nature," in the Westminster Review for July, 1875, maintains the negative. His article may be taken as the argument in support of the position assumed by "P.C.W.," in the Contemporary Review above cited. It opens with the admission that the orthodox view is the most simple and apparently convincing, has had for centuries the unhesitating assent of an immense majority of thinkers, and that the latest master-writer upon the subject disposed to reject it, namely, Mill, comes to the conclusion that, "in the present state of our knowledge, the adaptations in Nature afford a large balance of probability in favor of creation by intelligence." It proceeds to attack not so much the evidence in favor of design as the foundation upon which the whole doctrine rests, and closes with the prediction that sooner or later the superstructure must fall. And, truly, if his reasonings are legitimate, and his conclusions just, "Science has laid the axe to the tree."

"Given a set of marks which we look upon in human productions as unfailing indications of design," he asks, "is not the inference equally legitimate when we recognize these marks in Nature? To gaze on such a universe as this, to feel our hearts exult within us in the fullness of existence, and to offer in explanation of such beneficent provision no other word but Chance, seems as unthankful and iniquitous as it seems absurd. Chance produces nothing in the human sphere; nothing, at least, that can be relied upon for good. Design alone engenders harmony, consistency; and Chance not only never is the parent, but is constantly the enemy of these. How, then, can we suppose Chance to be the author of a system in which everything is as regular as clockwork? . . . The hypothesis of Chance is inadmissible."

There is, then, in Nature, an order; and, in "P.C.W.'s" sense of the word, a manifest purpose. Some sort of conception as to the cause of it is inevitable, that of design first and foremost. "Why"—the Westminster Reviewer repeats the question—"why, if the marks of utility and adaptation are conclusive in the works of man, should they not be considered equally conclusive in the works of Nature?" His answer appears to us more ingenious than sound. Because, referring to Paley's watch,—

"The watch-finder is not guided solely in his inference by marks of adaptation and utility; he would recognize design in half a watch, in a mere fragment of a watch, just as surely as in a whole time-keeper . . . Two cog-wheels, grasping each other, will be thought conclusive evidence of design, quite independently of any use attaching to them. And the inference, indeed, is perfectly correct; only it is an inference, not from a mark of design, properly so called, but from a mark of human workmanship . . . No more is needed for the watch-finder, since all the works of man are, at the same time, products of design; but a great deal more is requisite for us, who are called upon by Paley to recognize design in works in which this stamp, this label of human workmanship, is wanting. The mental operation required in the one case is radically different from that performed in the other; there is no parallel, and Paley's demonstration is totally irrelevant."[XIII-2] But, surely, all human doings are not "products of design;" many are contingent or accidental. And why not suppose that the finder of the watch, or of the watch-wheel, infers both design and human workmanship? The two are mutually exclusive only on the supposition that man alone is a designer, which is simply begging the question in discussion. If the watch-finder's attention had been arrested by a different object, such as a spider's web, he would have inferred both design and non-human workmanship. Of some objects he might be uncertain whether they were of human origin or not, with-out ever doubting they were designed, while of others this might remain doubtful. Nor is man's recognition of human workmanship, or of any other, dependent upon his comprehending how it was done, or what particular ends it subserves. Such considerations make it clear that "the label of human workmanship" is not the generic stamp from which man infers design. It seems equally clear that "the mental operation required in the one case" is not so radically or materially "different from that performed in the other" as this writer would have us suppose. The judgment respecting a spider's web, or a trap-door spider's dwelling, would be the very same in this regard if it preceded, as it occasionally might, all knowledge of whether the object met with were of human or animal origin. A dam across a stream, and the appearance of the stumps of trees which entered into its formation, would suggest design quite irrespective of and antecedent to the considerable knowledge or experience which would enable the beholder to decide whether this was the work of men or of beavers. Why, then, should the judgment that any particular structure is a designed work be thought illegitimate when attributed to a higher instead of a lower intelligence than that of man? It might, indeed, be so if the supposed observer had no conception of a power and intelligence superior to his own. But it would then be more than "irrelevant;" it would be impossible, except on the supposition that the phenomena would of themselves give rise to such an inference. That it is now possible to make the inference, and, indeed, hardly possible not to make it, is sufficient warrant of its relevancy.

It may, of course, be rejoined that, if this important factor is given, the inference yields no independent argument of a divine creator; and it may also be reasonably urged that the difference between things that are made under our observation and comprehension, and things that grow, but have originated beyond our comprehension, is too wide for a sure inference from the one to the other. But the present question involves neither of these. It is simply whether the argument for design from adaptations in Nature is relevant, not whether it is independent or sure. It is conceded that the argument is analogical, and the parallel incomplete. But the gist is in the points that are parallel or similar. Pulleys, valves, and suchlike elaborate mechanical adaptations, cannot differ greatly in meaning, wherever met with.

The opposing argument is repeated and passed in another form:

"The evidence of design afforded by the marks of adaptation in works of human competence is null and void in the case of creation itself . . . Nature is full of adaptations; but these are valueless to us as traces of design, unless we know something of the rival adaptations among which an intelligent being might have chosen. To assert that in Nature no such rival adaptations existed, and that in every case the useful function in question could be established by no other instrument but one, is simply to reason in a circle, since it is solely from what we find existing that our notions of possibility and impossibility are drawn. . . . We cannot imagine ourselves in the position of the Creator before his work began, nor examine the materials among which he had to choose, nor count the laws which limited his operations. Here all is dark, and the inference we draw from the seeming perfections of the existing instruments or means is a measure of nothing but our ignorance."

But the question is not about the perfection of these adaptations, or whether others might have been instituted in their place. It is simply whether observed adaptations of intricate sorts, admirably subserving uses, do or do not legitimately suggest to one designing mind that they are the product of some other. If so, no amount of ignorance, or even inconceivability, of the conditions and mode of production could affect the validity of the inference, nor could it be affected by any misunderstanding on our part as to what the particular use or function was; a statement which would have been deemed superfluous, except for the following:

"There is not an organ in our bodies but what has passed, and is still passing, through a series of different and often contradictory interpretations. Our lungs, for instance, were anciently conceived to be a kind of cooling apparatus, a refrigerator; at the close of the last century they were supposed to be a centre of combustion; and nowadays both these theories have been abandoned for a third . . . Have these changes modified in the slightest degree the supposed evidence of design?"

We have not the least idea why they should. So, also, of complicated processes, such as human digestion, being replaced by other and simpler ones in lower animals, or even in certain plants. If "we argue the necessity of every adaptation solely from the fact that it exists," and that "we cannot mutilate it grossly without injury to the function," we do not "announce triumphantly that digestion is impossible in any way but this," etc., but see equal wisdom and no impugnment of design in any number of simpler adaptations accomplishing equivalent purposes in lower animals.

Finally, adaptation and utility being the only marks of design in Nature which we possess, and adaptation only as subservient to usefulness, the Westminster Reviewer shows us how:

"The argument from utility may be equally refuted another way. We found in our discussion of the mark of adaptation that the positive evidence of design afforded by the mechanisms of the human frame was never accompanied by the possibility of negative evidence. We regarded this as a suspicious circumstance, just as the fox, invited to attend the lion in his den, was deterred from his visit by observing that all the foottracks lay in one direction. The same suspicious circumstance warns us now. If positive evidence of design be afforded by the presence of a faculty, negative evidence of design ought to be afforded by the absence of a faculty. This, however, is not the case." [Then follows the account of a butterfly, which, from the wonderful power of the males to find the females at a great distance, is conceived to possess a sixth sense.] "Do we consider the deficiency of this sixth sense in man as the slightest evidence against design? Should we be less apt to infer creative wisdom if we had only four senses instead of five, or three instead of four? No, the case would stand precisely as it does now. We value our senses simply because we have them, and because our conception of life as we desire it is drawn from them. But to reason from such value to the origin of our endowment, to argue that our senses must have been given to us by a deity because we prize them, is evidently to move round and round in a vicious circle.

"The same rejoinder is easily applicable to the argument from beauty, which indeed is only a particular aspect of the argument from utility. It is certainly improbable that a random daubing of colors on a canvas will produce a tolerable painting, even should the experiment be continued for thousands of years. Our conception of beauty being given, it is utterly improbable that chance should select, out of the infinity of combinations which form and color may afford, the precise combination which that conception will approve. But the universe is not posterior to our sense of beauty, but antecedent to it: our sense of beauty grows out of what we see; and hence the conformance of our world to our aesthetical conceptions is evidence, not of the world's origin, but of our own."

We are accustomed to hear design doubted on account of certain failures of provision, waste of resources, or functionless condition of organs; but it is refreshingly new to have the very harmony itself of man with his surroundings, and the completeness of provision for his wants and desires, brought up as a refutation of the validity of the argument for design. It is hard, indeed, if man must be out of harmony with Nature in order to judge anything respecting it, or his relations with it; if he must have experience of chaos before he can predicate anything of order.

But is it true that man has all that he conceives of, or thinks would be useful, and has no "negative evidence of design afforded by the absence of a faculty" to set against the positive evidence afforded by its presence? He notes that he lacks the faculty of flight, sometimes wants it, and in dreams imagines that he has it, yet as thoroughly believes that he was designed not to have it as that he was designed to have the faculties and organs which he possesses. He notes that some animals lack sight, and so, with this negative side of the testimony to the value of vision, he is "apt to infer creative wisdom" both in what he enjoys and in what the lower animal neither needs nor wants. That man does not miss that which he has no conception of, and is by this limitation disqualified from judging rightly of what he can conceive and know, is what the Westminster Reviewer comes to, as follows:

"We value the constitution of our world because we live by it, and because we cannot conceive ourselves as living otherwise. Our conceptions of possibility, of law, of regularity, of logic, are all derived from the same source; and as we are constantly compelled to work with these conceptions, as in our increasing endeavors to better our condition and increase our provision we are constantly compelled to guide ourselves by Nature's regulations, we accustom ourselves to look upon these regularities and conceptions as antecedent to all work, even to a Creator's, and to judge of the origin of Nature as we judge of the origin of inventions and utilities ascribable to man. This explains why the argument of design has enjoyed such universal popularity. But that such popularity is no criterion of the argument's worth, and that, indeed, it is no evidence of anything save of an unhappy weakness in man's mental constitution, is abundantly proved by the explanation itself." Well, the constitution and condition of man being such that he always does infer design in Nature, what stronger presumption could there possibly be of the relevancy of the inference? We do not say of its correctness: that is another thing, and is not the present point. At the last, as has well been said, the whole question resolves itself into one respecting the ultimate veracity of Nature, or of the author of Nature, if there be any.

Passing from these attempts to undermine the foundation of the doctrine—which we judge to be unsuccessful—we turn to the consideration of those aimed at the superstructure. Evidences of design may be relevant, but not cogent. They may, as Mill thought, preponderate, or the wavering balance may incline the other way. There are two lines of argument: one against the sufficiency, the other against the necessity, of the principle of design. Design has been denied on the ground that it squares with only one part of the facts, and fails to explain others; it may be superseded by showing that all the facts are in the way of being explained without it.

The things which the principle of design does not explain are many and serious. Some are in their nature inexplicable, at least are beyond the power and province of science. Others are of matters which scientific students have to consider, and upon which they may form opinions, more or less well grounded. As to biological science—with which alone we are concerned—it is getting to be generally thought that this principle, as commonly understood, is weighted with much more than it can carry.

This statement will not be thought exaggerated by those most familiar with the facts and the ideas of the age, and accustomed to look them in the face. Design is held to, no doubt, by most, and by a sure instinct; not, however, as always offering an explanation of the facts, but in spite of the failure to do so. The stumbling-blocks are various, and they lie in every path: we can allude only to one or two as specimens.

Adaptation and utility are the marks of design. What, then, are organs not adapted to use marks of? Functionless organs of some sort are the heritage of almost every species. We have ways of seeming to account for them—and of late one which may really account for them—but they are unaccountable on the principle of design. Some, shutting their eyes to the difficulty, deny that we know them to be functionless, and prefer to believe they must have a use because they exist, and are more or less connected with organs which are correlated to obvious use; but only blindfolded persons care to tread the round of so narrow a circle. Of late some such abortive organs in flowers and fruits are found to have a use, though not the use of their kind. But unwavering believers in design should not trust too much to instances of this sort. There is an old adage that, if anything be kept long enough, a use will be found for it. If the following up of this line, when it comes in our way, should bring us round again to a teleological principle, it will not be one which conforms to the prevalent ideas now attacked.

It is commonly said that abortive and useless organs exist for the sake of symmetry, or as parts of a plan. To say this, and stop there, is a fine instance of mere seeming to say something. For, under the principle of design, what is the sense of introducing useless parts into a useful organism, and what shadow of explanation does "symmetry" give? To go further and explain the cause of the symmetry and how abortive organs came to be, is more to the purpose, but it introduces quite another principle than that of design. The difficulty recurs in a somewhat different form when an organ is useful and of exquisite perfection in some species, but functionless in another. An organ, such as an eye, strikes us by its exquisite and, as we may, perfect adaptation and utility in some animal; it is found repeated, still useful but destitute of many of its adaptations, in some animal of lower grade; in some one lower still it is rudimentary and useless. It is asked, If the first was so created for its obvious and actual use, and the second for such use as it has, what was the design of the third? One more case, in which use after all is well subserved, we cite from the article already much quoted from:

"It is well known that certain fishes (Pleuronecta) display the singularity of having both eyes on the same side of their head, one eye being placed a little higher than the other. This arrangement has its utility; for the Pleuronecta, swimming on their side quite near the bottom of the sea, have little occasion for their eyesight except to observe what is going on above them. But the detail to which we would call notice is, that the original position of the eyes is symmetrical in these fishes, and that it is only at a certain point of their development that the anomaly is manifested, one of the eyes passing to the other side of the head. It is almost inconceivable that an intelligent being should have selected such an arrangement; and that, intending the eyes to be used only on one side of the head, he should have placed them originally on different sides."

Then the waste of being is enormous, far beyond the common apprehension. Seeds, eggs, and other germs, are designed to be plants and animals, but not one of a thousand or of a million achieves its destiny. Those that fall into fitting places and in fitting numbers find beneficent provision, and, if they were to wake to consciousness, might argue design from the adaptation of their surroundings to their well-being. But what of the vast majority that perish? As of the light of the sun, sent forth in all directions, only a minute portion is intercepted by the earth or other planets where some of it may be utilized for present or future life, so of potential organisms, or organisms begun, no larger proportion attain the presumed end of their creation.

"Destruction, therefore, is the rule; life is the exception. We notice chiefly the exception—namely, the lucky prize-winner in the lottery— and take but little thought about the losers, who vanish from our field of observation, and whose number it is often impossible to estimate. But, in this question of design, the losers are important witnesses. If the maxim 'audi alteram partem' is applicable anywhere, it is applicable here. We must hear both sides, and the testimony of the seed fallen on good ground must be corrected by the testimony of that which falls by the wayside, or on the rocks. When we find, as we have seen above, that the sowing is a scattering at random, and that, for one being provided for and living, ten thousand perish unprovided for, we must allow that the existing order would be accounted as the worst disorder in any human sphere of action."

It is urged, moreover, that all this and much more applies equally to the past stages of our earth and its immensely long and varied succession of former inhabitants, different from, yet intimately connected with, the present. It is not one specific creation that the question has to deal with—as was thought not very many years ago—but a series of creations through countless ages, and of which the beginning is unknown.

These references touch a few out of many points, and merely allude to some of the difficulties which the unheeding pass by, but which, when brought before the mind, are seen to be stupendous.

Somewhat may be justly, or at least plausibly, said in reply to all this from the ordinary standpoint, but probably not to much effect. There were always insuperable difficulties, which, when they seemed to be few, might be regarded as exceptional; but, as they increase in number and variety, they seem to fall into a system. No doubt we may still insist that, "in the present state of our knowledge, the adaptations in Nature afford a large balance of probability in favor of creation by intelligence," as Mill concluded; and probability must needs be the guide of reason through these dark places. Still, the balancing of irreconcilable facts is not a satisfying occupation, nor a wholly hopeful one, while fresh weights are from time to time dropping into the lighter side of the balance. Strong as our convictions are, they may be overborne by evidence. We cannot rival the fabled woman of Ephesus, who, beginning by carrying her calf from the day of its birth, was still able to do so when it became an ox. The burden which our fathers carried comfortably, with some adventitious help, has become too heavy for our shoulders.

Seriously, there must be something wrong in the position, some baleful error mixed with the truth, to which this contradiction of our inmost convictions may be attributed. The error, as we suppose, lies in the combination of the principle of design with the hypothesis of the immutability and isolated creation of species. The latter hypothesis, in its nature un-provable, has, on scientific grounds, become so far improbable that few, even of the anti-Darwinian naturalists, now hold to it; and, whatever may once have been its religious claims, it is at present a hinderance rather than a help to any just and consistent teleology.

By the adoption of the Darwinian hypothesis, or something like it, which we incline to favor, many of the difficulties are obviated, and others diminished. In the comprehensive and far-reaching teleology which may take the place of the former narrow conceptions, organs and even faculties, useless to the individual, find their explanation and reason of being. Either they have done service in the past, or they may do service in the future. They may have been essentially useful in one way in a past species, and, though now functionless, they may be turned to useful account in some very different way hereafter. In botany several cases come to our mind which suggest such interpretation.

Under this view, moreover, waste of life and material in organic Nature ceases to be utterly inexplicable, because it ceases to be objectless. It is seen to be a part of the general "economy of Nature," a phrase which has a real meaning. One good illustration of it is furnished by the pollen of flowers. The seeming waste of this in a pine-forest is enormous. It gives rise to the so-called "showers of sulphur," which every one has heard of. Myriads upon myriads of pollen-grains (each an elaborate organic structure) are wastefully dispersed by the winds to one which reaches a female flower and fertilizes a seed. Contrast this with one of the close-fertilized flowers of a violet, in which there are not many times more grains of pollen produced than there are of seeds to be fertilized; or with an orchis-flower, in which the proportion is not widely different. These latter are certainly the more economical; but there is reason to believe that the former arrangement is not wasteful. The plan in the violet-flower assures the result with the greatest possible saving of material and action; but this result, being close-fertilization or breeding in and in, would, without much doubt, in the course of time, defeat the very object of having seeds at all.[XIII-3] So the same plant produces other flowers also, provided with a large surplus of pollen, and endowed (as the others are not) with color, fragrance, and nectar, attractive to certain insects, which are thereby induced to convey this pollen from blossom to blossom, that it may fulfill its office. In such blossoms, and in the great majority of flowers, the fertilization and consequent perpetuity of which are committed to insects, the likelihood that much pollen may be left behind or lost in the transit is sufficient reason for the apparent superfluity. So, too, the greater economy in orchis-flowers is accounted for by the fact that the pollen is packed in coherent masses, all attached to a common stalk, the end of which is expanded into a sort of button, with a glutinous adhesive face (like a bit of sticking-plaster), and this is placed exactly where the head of a moth or butterfly will be pressed against it when it sucks nectar from the flower, and so the pollen will be bodily conveyed from blossom to blossom, with small chance of waste or loss. The floral world is full of such contrivances; and while they exist the doctrine of purpose or final cause is not likely to die out. Now, in the contrasted case, that of pine-trees, the vast superabundance of pollen would be sheer waste if the intention was to fertilize the seeds of the same tree, or if there were any provision for insect-carriage; but with wide-breeding as the end, and the wind which "bloweth where it listeth" as the means, no one is entitled to declare that pine-pollen is in wasteful excess. The cheapness of wind-carriage may be set against the overproduction of pollen.

Similar considerations may apply to the mould-fungi and other very low organisms, with spores dispersed through the air in countless myriads, but of which only an infinitesimal portion find opportunity for development. The myriads perish. The exceptional one, falling into a fit medium, is imagined by the Westminster Reviewer to argue design from the beneficial provision it finds itself enjoying, in happy ignorance of the perishing or latent multitude. But, in view of the large and important part they play (as the producers of all fermentation and as the omnipresent scavenger-police of Nature), no good ground appears for arguing either wasteful excess or absence of design from the vast disparity between their potential and their actual numbers. The reserve and the active members of the force should both be counted in, ready as they always and everywhere are for service. Considering their ubiquity, persistent vitality, and promptitude of action upon fitting occasion, the suggestion would rather be that, while

". . . thousands at His bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest, They also serve [which] only stand and wait."

Finally, Darwinian teleology has the special advantage of accounting for the imperfections and failures as well as for successes. It not only accounts for them, but turns them to practical account. It explains the seeming waste as being part and parcel of a great economical process. Without the competing multitude, no struggle for life; and without this, no natural selection and survival of the fittest, no continuous adaptation to changing surroundings, no diversification and improvement, leading from lower up to higher and nobler forms. So the most puzzling things of all to the old-school teleologists are the principia of the Darwinian. In this system the forms and species, in all their variety, are not mere ends in themselves, but the whole a series of means and ends, in the contemplation of which we may obtain higher and more comprehensive, and perhaps worthier, as well as more consistent, views of design in Nature than heretofore. At least, it would appear that in Darwinian evolution we may have a theory that accords with if it does not explain the principal facts, and a teleology that is free from the common objections.

But is it a teleology, or rather—to use the new-fangled term—a dysteleology? That depends upon how it is held. Darwinian evolution (whatever may be said of other kinds) is neither theistical nor nontheistical. Its relations to the question of design belong to the natural theologian, or, in the larger sense, to the philosopher. So long as the world lasts it will probably be open to any one to hold consistently, in the last resort, either of the two hypotheses, that of a divine mind, or that of no divine mind. There is no way that we know of C by which the alternative may be excluded. Viewed philosophically, the question only is, Which is the better supported hypothesis of the two?

We have only to say that the Darwinian system, as we understand it, coincides well with the theistic view of Nature. It not only acknowledges purpose (in the Contemporary Reviewer's sense), but builds upon it; and if purpose in this sense does not of itself imply design, it is certainly compatible with it, and suggestive of it. Difficult as it may be to conceive and impossible to demonstrate design in a whole of which the series of parts appear to be contingent, the alternative may be yet more difficult and less satisfactory. If all Nature is of a piece—as modern physical philosophy insists— then it seems clear that design must in some way, and in some sense, pervade the system, or be wholly absent from it. Of the alternatives, the predication of design—special, general, or universal, as the case may be—is most natural to the mind; while the exclusion of it throughout, because some utilities may happen, many adaptations may be contingent results, and no organic maladaptations could continue, runs counter to such analogies as we have to guide us, and leads to a conclusion which few men ever rested in. It need not much trouble us that we are incapable of drawing clear lines of demarkation between mere utilities, contingent adaptations, and designed contrivances in Nature; for we are in much the same condition as respects human affairs and those of lower animals. What results are comprehended in a plan, and what are incidental, is often more than we can readily determine in matters open to observation. And in plans executed mediately or indirectly, and for ends comprehensive and far-reaching, many purposed steps must appear to us incidental or meaningless. But the higher the intelligence, the more fully will the incidents enter into the plan, and the more universal and interconnected may the ends be. Trite as the remark is, it would seem still needful to insist that the failure of a finite being to compass the designs of an infinite mind should not invalidate its conclusions respecting proximate ends which he can understand. It is just as in physical science, where, as our knowledge and grasp increase, and happy discoveries are made, wider generalizations are formed, which commonly comprehend, rather than destroy, the earlier and partial ones. So, too, the "sterility" of the old doctrine of final causes in science, and the presumptuous uses made of them, when it was supposed that every adapted arrangement or structure existed for this or that direct and special end, and for no other, can hardly be pressed to the conclusion that there are no final causes, i.e., ultimate reasons of things.[XIII-4] Design in Nature is distinguished from that in human affairs—as it fittingly should be—by all comprehensiveness and system. Its theological synonym is Providence. Its application in particular is surrounded by similar insoluble difficulties; nevertheless, both are bound up with theism.

Probably few at the present day will maintain that Darwinian evolution is incompatible with the principle of design; but some insist that the theory can dispense with, and in fact supersedes, this principle.

The Westminster Reviewer cleverly expounds how it does so. The exposition is too long to quote, and an abstract is unnecessary, for the argument adverse to design is, as usual, a mere summation or illustration of the facts and assumptions of the hypothesis itself, by us freely admitted. Simplest forms began; variations occurred among them; under the competition consequent upon the arithmetical or geometrical progression in numbers, only the fittest for the conditions survive and propagate, vary further, and are similarly selected; and so on.

"Progress having once begun by the establishment of species, the laws of atavism and variability will suffice to tell the remainder of the story. The colonies gifted with the faculty of forming others in their likeness will soon by their increase become sole masters of the field; but the common enemy being thus destroyed, the struggle for life will be renewed among the conquerors. The saying that 'a house divided against itself cannot stand,' receives in Nature its flattest contradiction. Civil war is here the very instrument of progress; it brings about the survival of the fittest. Original differences in the cell-colonies, however slight, will bring about differences of life and action; the latter, continued through successive generations, will widen the original differences of structure; innumerable species will thus spring up, branching forth in every direction from the original stock; and the competition of these species among each other for the ground they occupy, or the food they seek, will bring out and develop the powers of the rivals. One chief cause of superiority will lie in the division of labor instituted by each colony; or, in other words, in the localization of the colony's functions. In the primitive associations (as in the lowest organisms existing now), each cell performed much the same work as its neighbor, and the functions necessary to the existence of the whole (alimentation, digestion, respiration, etc.) were exercised by every colonist in his own behalf. Social life, however, acting upon the cells as it acts upon the members of a human family, soon created differences among them—differences ever deepened by continuance, and which, by narrowing the limits of each colonist's activity, and increasing his dependence on the rest, rendered him fitter for his special task. Each function was thus gradually monopolized; but it came to be the appanage of a single group of cells, or organ; and so excellent did this arrangement prove, so greatly were the powers of each commonwealth enhanced by the division of its labor, that the more organs a colony possessed, the more likely it was to succeed in its struggle for life. . . We shall go no further, for the reader will easily fill out the remainder of the picture for himself. Man is but an immense colony of cells, in which the division of labor, together with the centralization of the nervous system, has reached its highest limit. It is chiefly to this that his superiority is due; a superiority so great, as regards certain functions of the brain, that he may be excused for having denied his humbler relatives, and dreamed that, standing alone in the centre of the universe, sun, moon, and stars, were made for him."

Let us learn from the same writer how both eyes of the flounder get, quite unintentionally, on the same side of the head. The writer makes much of this case (see p. 306), and we are not disposed to pass it by:

"A similar application may be made to the Pleuronecta. Presumably, these fishes had adopted their peculiar mode of swimming long before the position of their eyes became adapted to it. A spontaneous variation occurred, consisting in the passage of one eye to the opposite side of the head; and this variation afforded its possessors such increased facilities of sight that in the course of time the exception became the rule. But the remarkable point is, that the law of heredity not only preserved the variation itself, but the date of its occurrence; and that, although for thousands of years the adult Pleuronecta have had both eyes on the same side, the young still continue during their earlier development to exhibit the contrary arrangement, just as if the variation still occurred spontaneously."

Here a wonderful and one would say unaccountable transference takes place in a short time. As Steenstrup showed, one eye actually passes through the head while the young fish is growing. We ask how this comes about; and we are told, truly enough, that it takes place in each generation because it did so in the parents and in the whole line of ancestors. Why offspring should be like parent is more than any one can explain; but so it is, in a manner so nearly fixed and settled that we can count on it; yet not from any absolute necessity that we know of, and, indeed, with sufficiently striking difference now and then to demonstrate that it might have been otherwise, or is so in a notable degree. This transference of one eye through the head, from the side where it would be nearly useless to that in which it may help the other, bears all the marks of purpose, and so carries the implication of design. The case is adduced as part of the evidence that Darwinian evolution supersedes design. But how? Not certainly in the way this goes on from generation to generation; therefore, doubtless in the way it began. So we look for the explanation of how it came about at the first unintentionally or accidentally; how, under known or supposed conditions, it must have happened, or at least was likely to happen. And we read, "A spontaneous variation occurred, consisting in the passage of one eye to the opposite side of the head." That is all; and we suppose there is nothing more to be said. In short, this surprising thing was undesigned because it took place, and has taken place ever since! The writer presumes, moreover (but this is an obiter dictum), that the peculiarity originated long after flounders had fixed the habit of swimming on one side (and in this particular case it is rather difficult to see how the two may have gone on pari passu), and so he cuts away all obvious occasion for the alteration through the summation of slight variations in one direction, each bringing some advantage.

This is a strongly-marked case; but its features, although unusually prominent, are like those of the general run of the considerations by which evolution is supposed to exclude design. Those of the penultimate citation and its context are all of the same stamp. The differences which begin as variations are said to be spontaneous—a metaphorical word of wide meanings—are inferred to be casual (whereas we only know them to be occult), or to be originated by surrounding agencies (which is not in a just sense true); they are legitimately inferred to be led on by natural selection, wholly new structures or organs appear, no one can say how, certainly no one can show that they are necessary outcomes of what preceded; and these two are through natural selection kept in harmony with the surroundings, adapted to different ones, diversified, and perfected; purposes are all along subserved through exquisite adaptations; and yet the whole is thought to be undesigned, not because of any assigned reason why this or that must have been thus or so, but simply because they all occurred in Nature! The Darwinian theory implies that the birth and development of a species are as natural as those of an individual, are facts of the same kind in a higher order. The alleged proof of the absence of design from it amounts to a simple reiteration of the statement, with particulars. Now, the marks of contrivance in the structure of animals used not to be questioned because of their coming in the way of birth and development. It is curious that a further extension of this birth and development should be held to disprove them. It appears to us that all this is begging the question against design in Nature, instead of proving that it may be dispensed with.

Two things have helped on this confusion. One is the notion of the direct and independent creation of species, with only an ideal connection between them, to question which was thought to question the principle of design. The other is a wrong idea of the nature and province of natural selection. In former papers we have over and over explained the Darwinian doctrine in this respect. It may be briefly illustrated thus: Natural selection is not the wind which propels the vessel, but the rudder which, by friction, now on this side and now on that, shapes the course. The rudder acts while the vessel is in motion, effects nothing when it is at rest. Variation answers to the wind: "Thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell when it cometh and whither it goeth." Its course is controlled by natural selection, the action of which, at any given moment, is seemingly small or insensible; but the ultimate results are great. This proceeds mainly through outward influences. But we are more and more convinced that variation, and therefore the ground of adaptation, is not a product of, but a response to, the action of the environment. Variations, in other words, the differences between individual plants and animals, however originated, are evidently not from without but from within—not physical but physiological.

We cannot here assign particularly the reasons for this opinion. But we notice that the way in which varieties make their appearance strongly suggests it. The variations of plants which spring up in a seed-bed, for instance, seem to be in no assignable relation to the external conditions. They arise, as we say, spontaneously, and either with decided characters from the first, or with obvious tendencies in one or few directions. The occult power, whatever it be, does not seem in any given case to act vaguely, producing all sorts of variations from a common centre, to be reduced by the struggle for life to fewness and the appearance of order; there are, rather, orderly indications from the first. The variations of which we speak, as originating in no obvious casual relation to the external conditions, do not include dwarfed or starved, and gigantesque or luxuriant forms, and those drawn up or expanded on the one hand, or contracted and hardened on the other, by the direct difference in the supply of food and moisture, light and heat. Here the action of the environment is both obvious and direct. But such cases do not account for much in evolution.

Moreover, while we see how the mere struggle and interplay among occurring forms may improve them and lead them on, we cannot well imagine how the adaptations which arrest our attention are thereby secured. Our difficulty, let it be understood, is not about the natural origination of organs. To the triumphant outcry, "How can an organ, such as an eye, be formed under Nature?" we would respond with a parallel question, How can a complex and elaborate organ, such as a nettle-sting, be formed under Nature? But it is so formed. In the same species some individuals have these exquisitely-constructed organs and some have not. And so of other glands, the structure and adaptation of which, when looked into, appear to be as wonderful as anything in Nature. The impossibility lies in conceiving how the obvious purpose was effectuated under natural selection alone. This, under our view, any amount of gradation in a series of forms goes a small way in explaining. The transit of a young flounder's eye across the head is a capital instance of a wonderful thing done under Nature, and done unaccountably.

But simpler correlations are involved in similar difficulty. The superabundance of the pollen of pine-trees above referred to, and in oak-trees, is correlated with chance fertilization under the winds. In the analogous instance of willows a diminished amount of pollen is correlated with direct transportation by insects. Even in so simple a case as this it is not easy to see how this difference in the conveyance would reduce the quantity of pollen produced. It is, we know, in the very alphabet of Darwinism that if a male willow-tree should produce a smaller amount of pollen, and if this pollen communicated to the offspring of the female flowers it fertilized a similar tendency (as it might), this male progeny would secure whatever advantage might come from the saving of a certain amount of work and material; but why should it begin to produce less pollen? But this is as nothing compared with the arrangements in orchid-flowers, where new and peculiar structures are introduced—structures which, once originated and then set into variation, may thereupon be selected, and thereby led on to improvement and diversification. But the origination, and even the variation, still remains unexplained either by the action of insects or by any of the processes which collectively are personified by the term natural selection. We really believe that these exquisite adaptations have come to pass in the course of Nature, and under natural selection, but not that natural selection alone explains or in a just sense originates them. Or rather, if this term is to stand for sufficient cause and rational explanation, it must denote or include that inscrutable something which produces—as well as that which results in the survival of—"the fittest."

We have been considering this class of questions only as a naturalist might who sought for the proper or reasonable interpretation of the problem before him, unmingled with considerations from any other source. Weightier arguments in the last resort, drawn from the intellectual and moral constitution of man, lie on a higher plane, to which it was unnecessary for our particular purpose to rise, however indispensable this be to a full presentation of the evidence of mind in Nature. To us the evidence, judged as impartially as we are capable of judging, appears convincing. But, whatever view one unconvinced may take, it cannot remain doubtful what position a theist ought to occupy. If he cannot recognize design in Nature because of evolution, he may be ranked with those of whom it was said, "Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe." How strange that a convinced theist should be so prone to associate design only with miracle!

All turns, however, upon what is meant by this Nature, to which it appears more and more probable that the being and becoming—no less than the well-being and succession—of species and genera, as well as of individuals, are committed. To us it means "the world of force and movement in time and space," as Aristotle defined it—the system and totality of things in the visible universe. What is generally called Nature Prof. Tyndall names matter—a peculiar nomenclature, requiring new definitions (as he avers), inviting misunderstanding, and leaving the questions we are concerned with just where they were. For it is still to ask: whence this rich endowment of matter? Whence comes that of which all we see and know is the outcome? That to which potency may in the last resort be ascribed, Prof. Tyndall, suspending further judgment, calls mystery—using the word in one of its senses, namely, something hidden from us which we are not to seek to know. But there are also mysteries proper to be inquired into and to be reasoned about; and, although it may not be given unto us to know the mystery of causation, there can hardly be a more legitimate subject of philosophical inquiry. Most scientific men have thought themselves intellectually authorized to have an opinion about it. "For, by the primitive and very ancient men, it has been handed down in the form of myths, and thus left to later generations, that the Divine it is which holds together all Nature;" and this tradition, of which Aristotle, both naturalist and philosopher, thus nobly speaks[XIII-5]—continued through succeeding ages, and illuminated by the Light which has come into the world—may still express the worthiest thoughts of the modern scientific investigator and reasoner.



FOOTNOTES:

I-1. "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life," by Charles Darwin, M.A., Fellow of the Royal, Geological, Linnaean, etc., Societies, Author of "Journal of Researches during H. M. S. Beagle's Voyage round the World." London: John Murray. 1859. 502 pp., post 8vo.

I-2. Article in this Journal, vol. xxiv., p. 305.

I-3. "Species tot sunt, quot diversas formas ab initio produxit Infinitum Ens; quae formae secundum generationis inditas leges, produxere plures, at sibi semper similes."—Linn. Phil. Bot., 99, 157.

I-4. Agassiz, "Essay on Classification; Contributions to Natural History," p. 132, et seq.

I-5. As to this, Darwin remarks that he can only hope to see the law hereafter proved true (p. 449); and p. 338: "Agassiz insists that ancient animals resemble to a certain extent the embryos of recent animals of the same classes; or that the geological succession of extinct forms is in some degree parallel to the embryological development of recent forms. I must follow Pictet and Huxley in thinking that the truth of this doctrine is very far from proved. Yet I fully expect to see it hereafter confirmed, at least in regard to subordinate groups, which have branched off from each other within comparatively recent times. For this doctrine of Agassiz accords well with the theory of natural selection."

I-6. Op. cit., p. 131.—One or two Bridgewater Treatises, and most modern works upon natural theology, should have rendered the evidences of thought in inorganic Nature not "unexpected."

I-7. Volume xvii. (2), 1854, p. 13.

I-8. We suspect that this is not an ultimate fact, but a natural consequence of inheritance—the inheritance of disease or of tendency to disease, which close interbreeding perpetuates and accumulates, but wide breeding may neutralize or eliminate.

I-9. The rules and processes of breeders of animals, and their results, are so familiar that they need not be particularized. Less is popularly known about the production of vegetable races. We refer our readers back to this Journal, vol. xxvii., pp. 440—442 (May, 1859), for an abstract of the papers of M. Vilmorin upon this subject.

I-10. Quadrupeds of America," vol. ii., p. 239.

I-11. "Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences," vol. iv., p. 178.

I-12. Owen adds a third, viz., vegetative repetition; but this, in the vegetable kingdom, is simply unity of type.

I-13. "Contributions to Natural History of America," vol. i., pp. 127—131.

I-14. Op. cit., p. 130.

II-1. To parry an adversary's thrust at a vulnerable part, or to show that it need not be fatal, is an incomplete defense. If the discussion had gone on, it might, perhaps, have been made to appear that the Darwinian hypothesis, so far from involving the idea of necessity (except in the sense that everything is of necessity), was based upon the opposite idea, that of contingency.

III-1. Vide "Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science," 1859, and London Athenoeum, passim. It appears to be conceded that these "celts" or stone knives are artificial productions, and apparently of the age of the mammoth, the fossil rhinoceros, etc.

III-2. See "Correspondence of M. Nickles," in American Journal of Science and Arts, for March, 1860.

III-3. See Morlot, "Some General Views on Archaeology," in American Journal of Science and Arts, for January, 186o, translated from "Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise," 1859.

III-4. Page 484, English edition. In the new American edition (vide Supplement, pp. 431, 432) the principal analogies which suggest the extreme view are referred to, and the remark is appended: "But this inference is chiefly grounded on analogy, and it is immaterial whether or not it be accepted. The case is different with the members of each great class, as the Vertebrata or Articulata; for here we have in the laws of homology, embryology, etc., some distinct evidence that all have descended from a single primordial parent."

III-5. In Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve, March, 1860.

III-6. This we learn from his very interesting article, "De la Question de l'Homme Fossile," in the same (March) number of the Biblioteque Universelle. (See, also, the same author's "Note sur la Periode Quaternaire ou Diluvienne, consideree dans ses Rapports avec l'Epoque Actuelle," in the number for August, 1860, of the same periodical.)

III-7. In Comptes Rendus, Academie des Sciences, February 2, 1857.

III-8. Whatever it may be, it is not "the homoeopathic form of the transmutative hypothesis," as Darwin's is said to be (p. 252, American reprint), so happily that the prescription is repeated in the second (p. 259) and third (p. 271) dilutions, no doubt, on Hahnemann's famous principle, of an increase of potency at each dilution. Probably the supposed transmutation is per saltus. "Homoeopathic doses of transmutation," indeed! Well, if we really must swallow transmutation in some form or other, as this reviewer intimates, we might prefer the mild homoeopathic doses of Darwin's formula to the allopathic bolus which the Edinburgh general practitioner appears to be compounding.

III-9. Vide North American Review, for April, 1860, p. 475, and Christian Examiner, for May, p. 457.

III-10. Page 188, English edition.

III-11. In American Journal of Science, July, 1860, pp. 147—149.

III-12. In "Contributions to the Natural History of the United States," vol. i., p.128, 129.

III-13. Contributions to the Natural History of the United States," vol. 1, p. 130; and American Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 143.

III-14. North American Review for April 1860, p. 506.

III-15. Vide motto from Butler, prefixed to the second edition of Darwin's work.

III-16. North American Review, loc. cit., p. 504.

III-17. North American Review, loc. cit., p. 487, et passim.

III-18. In American Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 143.

III-19. Vide article by Mr. C. Wright, in the Mathematical Monthly for May last.

III-20. Vide Edinburgh Review for January, 1860, article on "Acclimatization," etc.

III-21. American Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 146.

IV-1. A name which, at the close of his article, De Candolle proposes for the study of the succession of organized beings, to comprehend, therefore, palaeontology and all included under what is called geographical botany and zoology—the whole forming a science parallel to geology—the latter devoted to the history of unorganized bodies, the former, to that of organized beings, as respects origin, distribution, and succession. We are not satisfied with the word, notwithstanding the precedent of palaeontology; since ontology, the Science of being, has an established meaning as referring to mental existence—i.e., is a synonym for a department of metaphysics.

IV-2. Natural History Review, January, 1862

IV-3. What the Rev. Principal Tulloch remarks in respect to the philosophy of miracles has a pertinent application here. We quote at second hand:

"The stoutest advocates of interference can mean nothing more than that the Supreme Will has so moved the hidden springs of Nature that a new issue arises on given circumstances. The ordinary issue is supplanted by a higher issue. The essential facts before us are a certain set of phenomena, and a Higher Will moving them. How moving them? is a question for human definition; the answer to which does not and cannot affect the divine meaning of the change. Yet when we reflect that this Higher Will is every. where reason and wisdom, it seems a juster as well as a more comprehensive view to regard it as operating by subordination and evolution, rather than by interference or violation."

IV-4. Particularly citing Flourens: "La ressemblance n'est qu'une condition secondaire; la condition essentielle est la descendance: ce n'est pas la ressemblance, c'est la succession des individus, qui fait l'espece."

V-1. The phrase "Atlantic United States" is here used throughout in contradistinction to Pacific United States: to the former of course belong, botanically and geographically, the valley of the Mississippi and its tributaries up to the eastern border of the great woodless plains, which constitute an intermediate region.

V-2. The tabulated list referred to was printed as an appendix to the official edition of this discourse, but is here omitted.

V-3. American Journal of Science, 1867, p. 402; "Proceedings of American Academy," vol. viii., p. 244.

V-4. "Memoirs of American Academy," vol. vi., pp. 377—458 (1859)

V-5. Die vegetation der erde nach ihrer kilmatischen Anordnung," 1871.

V-6. Reference should also be made to the extensive researches of Newberry upon the tertiary and cretaceous floras of the Western United States. See especially Prof. Newberry's paper in the Boston Journal of Natural History, vol. vii., No. 4, describing fossil plants of Vancouver's Island, etc.; his "Notes on the Later Extinct Floras of North America," etc., in "Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History," vol. ix., April, 1868; "Report on the Cretaceous and Tertiary Plants collected in Raynolds and Hayden's Yellowstone and Missouri Exploring Expedition, 1859—1860," published in 1869; and an interesting article entitled "The Ancient Lakes of Western America, their Deposits and Drainage," published in The American Naturalist, January, 1871.

The only document I was able to consult was Lesquereux's "Report on the Fossil Plants," in Hayden's report of 1872.

V-7. There is, at least, one instance so opportune to the present argument that it should not pass unnoticed, although I had overlooked the record until now. Onoclea sensibilis is a fern peculiar to the Atlantic United States (where it is common and wide-spread) and to Japan. Prof. Newberry identified it several years ago in a collection, obtained by Dr. Hayden, of miocene fossil plants of Dakota Territory, which is far beyond its present habitat. He moreover regards it as probably identical with a fossil specimen "described by the late Prof. E. Forbes, under the name of Filicites Hebridicus, and obtained by the Duke of Argyll from the island of Mull."

V-8. "Darwinism in Morals," in Theological Review, April, 1871.

VI-1. "Histoire des Sciences et des Sevants depuis deux Siecles, suivie d'autres etudes sur des sujets scientifiques, en particulier sur la Selection dans 1'Espce Humaine, par Alphonse De Candolle." Geneve: H. Georg. 1873.

"Addresses of George Bentham, President, read at the anniversary meetings of the Linnaean Society, 1862—1873."

"Notes on the Classification, History, and Geographical Distribution of Compositae. By George Bentham." Separate issue from the Journal of the Linnean Society. Vol. XIII. London. 1873.

"On Palaeontological Evidence of Gradual Modification of Animal Forms, read at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, April 25, 1873. By Prof. W.H. Flower." (Journal of the Royal Institution, pp. 11.)

"The Distribution and Migration of Birds. Memoir presented to the National Academy of Sciences, January, 1865, abstracted in the American Journal of Science and the Arts. 1866, etc. By Spencer F. Baird."

"The Story of the Earth and Man. By J.W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S., Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University, Montreal. London: Hodder & Stoughton; New York: Harper & Brothers. 1873. Pp. 403, 12mo.

VI-2. Since this article was in type, noteworthy examples of appreciative scientific judgment of the derivative hypothesis have come to hand: 1. In the opening address to the Geological Section of the British Association, at its recent meeting, by its president, the veteran Phillips, perhaps the oldest surviving geologist after Lyell; and, 2. That of Prof. Allman, President of the Biological Section. The first touches the subject briefly, but in the way of favorable suggestion; the second is a full and discriminating exposition of the reasons which seem to assure at least the provisional acceptance of the hypothesis, as a guide in all biological studies, "a key to the order and hidden forces of the world of life."

VII-1. "The Theory of Evolution of Living Things, and the Application of the Principles of Evolution to Religion, considered as illustrative of the 'Wisdom and Beneficence of the Almighty.' By the Rev. George Henslow, M.A., F.L.S., F.G.S., etc." New York: Macmillan & Co. 1873. 12mo, pp. 220.

"Systematic Theology. By Charles Hodge, D.D., Professor in the Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey. Vol. ii. (Part II, Anthropology.") New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1872.

"Religion and Science: A Series of Sunday Lectures on the Relation of Natural and Revealed Religion, or the Truths Revealed in Nature and Scripture. By Joseph Le Conte, Professor of Geology and Natural History in the University of California." New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1874. 12mo, pp. 324.

VII-2. "But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this— we can perceive that events are brought about, not by insulated interpositions of divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws.—Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise.

"The only distinct meaning of the world 'natural' is stated, fixed, or settled; since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so—i.e., to effect it continually or at stated times—as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for once."—Butler's Analogy.

VIII-1. "What Is Darwinism? By Charles Hodge, Princeton, N.J." New York:

Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874. "The Doctrine of Evolution. By Alexander Winchell, LL.D., etc. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1874.

"Darwinism and Design; or, Creation by Evolution. By George St. Clair." London: Hodder & Stoughton. 1873.

"Westminster Sermons. By the Rev. Charles Kingsley, F.L.S., F.G.S., Canon of Westminster, etc." London and New York: Macmillan & Co. 1874.

VIII-2. These two postulate-mottoes are quoted in full in a previous article, in No. 446 of The Nation.

XI-1. "Insectivorous Plants. By Charles Darwin, M.A., F.R.S." With Illustrations. London: John Murray. 1875. Pp. 462. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

"The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants. By Charles Darwin, M.A., F.R.S., etc." Second Edition, revised, with Illustrations. London: John Murray. 1875. Pp. 208. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

XI-2. The Nation, Nos. 457, 458, 1874. It was in these somewhat light and desultory, but substantially serious, articles that some account of Mr. Darwin's observations upon the digestive powers of Drosera and Dionaea first appeared; in fact, their leading motive was to make sufficient reference to his then unpublished discoveries to guard against expected or possible claims to priority. Dr. Burdon-Sanderson's lecture, and the report in Nature, which first made them known in England, appeared later.

A mistake on our part in the reading of a somewhat ambiguous sentence in a letter led to the remark, at the close of the first of those articles, that the leaf-trap of Dionaea had been paralyzed on one side in consequence of a dexterous puncture. What was communicated really related to Drosera.

XI-3. A. Gray, in "Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences," vol. iv., p. 98; and American Journal of Science and the Arts, March, 1859, p. 278.

XII-1. "Les Especes affines et la Theorie de l'Evolution," par Charles Naudin, Membre de l'Institut, in Bulletin de la Societe Botanique de France, tome xxi., pp. 240-272, 1874. See also Comptes Rendus, September 27 and October 4, 1875, reproduced in "Annales des Sciences Naturelles," 1876, pp. 73-81.

XII-2. In noticing M. Naudin's paper in the Comptes Rendus, now reprinted in the "Annales des Sciences Naturelles," entitled "Variation desordonnee des Plantes Hybrides et Deductions qu'on peut en tirer," we were at a loss to conceive why he attributed all present variation of species to atavism, i.e., to the reappearance of ancestral characters (American Journal of Science, February, 1876). His anterior paper was not then known to us; from which it now appears that this view comes in as a part of the hypothesis of extreme plasticity and variability at the first, subsiding at length into entire fixity and persistence of character. According to which, it is assumed that the species of our time have lost all power of original variation, but can still reproduce some old ones—some reminiscences, as it were, of youthful vagaries—in the way of atavism.

XIII-1. London, 1862.

XIII-2. Hume, in his "Essays," anticipated this argument. But he did not rest on it. His matured convictions appear to be expressed in statements such as the following, here cited at second hand from Jackson's "Philosophy of Natural Theology," a volume to which a friend has just called our attention:

"Though the stupidity of men," writes Hume, "barbarous and uninstructed, be so great that they may not see a sovereign author in the more obvious works of Nature, to which they are so much familiarized, yet it scarce seems possible that any one of good understanding should reject that idea, when once it is suggested to him. A purpose, an intention, a design, is evident in everything; and when our comprehension is so far enlarged as to contemplate the first rise of this visible system, we must adopt, with the strongest conviction, the idea of some intelligent cause or author. The uniform maxims, too, which prevail throughout the whole frame of the universe, naturally, if not necessarily, lead us to conceive this intelligence as single and undivided, where the prejudices of education oppose not so reasonable a theory. Even the contrarieties of Nature, by discovering themselves everywhere, become proofs of some consistent plan, and establish one single purpose or intention, however inexplicable and incomprehensible."—-("Natural History of Religion," xv.)

"In many views of the universe, and of its parts, particularly the latter, the beauty and fitness of final causes strike us with such irresistible force that all objections appear (what I believe they really are) mere cavils and sophisms."— ("Dialogues concerning Natural Religion," Part X.)

"The order and arrangement of Nature, the curious adjustment of final causes, the plain use and intention of every part and organ, all these bespeak in the clearest language an intelligent cause or author."—(Ibid., Part IV.)



XIII-3. See Section I, Chapter 12.

XIII-4. "No single and limited good can be assigned by us as the final cause of any contrivance in Nature. The real final cause . . . is the sum of all the uses to which it is ever to be put. Any use to which a contrivance of Nature is put, we may be sure, is a part of its final cause."—(G. F. Wright, in The New-Englander, October, 1871.)

XIII-5. "No single and limited good can be assigned by us as the final cause of any contrivance in Nature. The real final cause . . . is the sum of all the uses to which it is ever to be put. Any use to which a contrivance of Nature is put, we may be sure, is a part of its final cause."—(G. F. Wright, in The New-Englander, October, 1871.)

THE END