CHAPTER II.

The Platonic Kosmos compared with the Darwinian theory of evolution.

It is my purpose in this chapter to draw a parallel between the theory

of the origin of different animals propounded in the "Timæus" of Plato

and that of Mr. Darwin. The analogy between them has been briefly

hinted by Mr. Grote, but he has not followed it out in detail, as it

was no part of his object to make minute comparisons between any of

the speculations of Plato and those of modern philosophers. The great

English scholar and critic seems to regard it as somewhat uncertain how

far Plato meant in the "Timæus" to have his description of the Kosmos

stand as an expression of his own belief, or as a mere work of his

imagination and fancy. Plato, we are told, and this is quite obvious,

dealt but little with facts, while he dealt largely with theories.

But, even as a pure work of the imagination, or as a philosophical

epic, the daring conception of the Kosmos is wonderfully complete; and

it will repay any one, who follows Mr. Grote in his analysis of it,

to observe how Plato employs a process of degeneration to account for

the formation of different species of animals, from the higher to the

lower, by agencies that bear a strong resemblance to those which are

assumed by Darwin to have worked in the opposite process of variation

and natural selection, resulting in the evolution of a higher from a

lower animal. But, in order to render this comparison intelligible, it

is necessary to make an abstract of Plato's system of the Kosmos before

adverting to the analogies between that system and the Darwinian

theory. I follow, although I have greatly condensed, Mr. Grote's

description of the Platonic Kosmos.

According to the Platonic idea of the Kosmos, as given in the "Timæus,"

there existed, anterior to all time, primordial matter in a state of

chaos. This matter was not created for; according to Mr. Grote, whose

authority upon such a point is the highest, the notion of absolute

creation was unknown to the Greeks of antiquity, and it does not appear

that Plato suggests it. But, without accounting for its existence,

Plato assumes that there was matter in a condition of utter chaos

before time could have had an existence; and, in order to make the

chaotic condition the more impressive in its primitive destitution

of all form or active principles tending to union or arrangement, he

supposes that the four elements of fire, air, earth, and water had

no existence save in the abstract, or as ideas and forms. But, as

abstract ideas, these four elements of fire, air, earth, and water were

distinct, self-existing, and indestructible, coeval with the chaotic

matter which was waiting to receive their impress and to take on their

distinctive elemental characters. They had already begun to act on the

_fundamentum_, or primordial chaotic matter, as upon a recipient, but

it was in a confused way and without regularity of plan, so that they

had not become concrete existences or determinate agents.

In this state of things there appears upon the scene the Demiurgus,

a being coeval with the chaos of matter, that is, self-existing and

eternal. But, consistently with the philosophy which did not admit of

the idea of absolute creation, the Demiurgus was not a creator, but

an architect or designer, working on materials that lay within his

reach. His moral attribute was goodness, which was, in his situation,

synonymous with order, regularity, symmetry, and proportion, and, along

with this tendency, he had supreme artistic skill. In other words, he

was the personification of νους, or reason, working against necessity:

the latter being, not what we mean by that term, something preordained

and fixed, but confusion, uncertainty, irregularity, and unreason,

which are to be overcome by their opposites.

Besides the chaotic matter and the ideas or forms of the four elements,

as yet unrealized in the actual substances of fire, air, earth, and

water, there were coeval ideas or forms of animals, or, as we should

say, abstract animals, or conceptions of animals. The first and

grandest of these was the eternal self-animal, or the ideal of animal

existence. Next came the ideas or forms of four other animals: 1. The

celestial gods; 2. Man; 3. Birds, or animals living in air; 4. Land

or water animals. Bearing in mind that we are still in the region of

abstract conceptions in regard to these types of animals, which as

yet have no concrete existence, and that they are, so to speak, the

intellectual models from which the Demiurgus is to work, in order to

make the real animals conformably to the pre-existing and eternal

plan, we come to the process of forming the Kosmos, which is to be the

containing animal of all the other four. Out of the confused chaos of

existing matter the Demiurgus proceeds to construct the Kosmos, which

was to become the one self-animal, by impressing the idea or abstract

form of animal upon a physical structure built out of the primordial

chaotic matter and comprehending the whole of it. The first step was

to bring the four elements of fire, air, earth, and water out of their

chaotic and confused condition by separating them according to the

forms of their eternal ideas. The total of each element, when made to

take its normal form, was used in the construction of the Kosmos, which

thus came to possess the whole existing body of material; "so that,"

to borrow the words of Mr. Grote, "there remained nothing of the four

elements apart, to hurt the Kosmos from without, nor anything as raw

material for a second Kosmos."

The Kosmos was made a perfect sphere, and with a perfectly smooth outer

surface, without organs of sight or hearing, because there was nothing

outside to be seen or heard; without organs of respiration, because

there was no outside atmosphere to be breathed; and without nutritive

or excrementory organs, because it was self-sufficing, being supplied

with nourishment by its own decay. It was not furnished with limbs or

means of locomotion or standing, because, being a sphere turning on an

axis, and having only one of the seven possible varieties of movement,

namely, rotation in a circle in one and the same plane, there was

nothing for it to grasp or repel.[12] This body, the only-begotten,

because in its formation all existing bodily material was employed,

perfectly spherical and smooth, equidistant from its center to all

points of its circumference, and suspended upon its own axis traversing

its diameter, was now to be animated by a soul.

The Demiurgus, in the formation of the soul of the Kosmos, took three

constituent ingredients and mixed them together. They were: 1. The

Same, or the Identical, the indivisible and unchangeable essence of

Ideas; 2. The Different, or the Plural, the divisible essence of

bodies or of the elements; 3. A compound of both of these ingredients

melted into one. Blended together in one grand compound, these three

ingredients formed the soul of the Kosmos by first dividing the mixture

into different portions, and then uniting the portions according to

a complicated scale of harmonious numerical proportions. The outer

or sidereal sphere of the Kosmos was made to receive the Same, or

Identity, by being placed in an even and undivided rotation toward the

right, turning on the great axis of the whole sphere. The interior, or

planetary spheres, the five planets, and the sun and the moon, were

made to be under the influence of the Different, or Diversity--that

is to say, their rotations on their separate axes, all oblique, were

toward the left, while the overpowering force of rotation of the

outer sphere carried them along with it, although the time of their

separate rotations was more or less modified by their own inherent and

countermoving forces.

Thus the sentient capacity of the cosmical soul became the cognition

of the Same and the Different, and the blended Same and Different,

because it embodied these three ingredients in its own nature. It was

invisible; rooted at its center and pervading and inclosing the whole

visible body, circulating and communicating, without voice or sound,

all impressions and information concerning the existing relations

between the separate parts and specialties of the cosmical body.

Anterior to the Kosmos there was no time. With the rotation of the

Kosmos time began. It was marked first by the eternal and unchanging

rotation of the outer circle, in which were placed the fixed stars,

which revolved with it in unaltered position with regard to each other;

and one revolution of this outer or most rational circle made a day.

The sun, moon, and planets were distributed in different portions of

the Circle of the Different; one revolution of the moon marking a

month, and one revolution of the sun marking a year. The earth, the

first and oldest of the sidereal and planetary gods, was packed around

the great axis which ran through the center of the Kosmos, and turned

that axis; so that the earth regulated the movement of the great

cosmical axis, and was the determining agent of night and day.

Thus far we have the formation of the Kosmos, animated with a pervading

soul, the body being formed out of the whole of existing matter, molded

into the specific elements of fire, air, earth, and water, and the

soul being formed out of the constituent ingredients furnished by the

eternal and invisible essence of ideas. The whole, body and soul of

the Kosmos, was thus an animal, formed on the abstract but eternal

idea or form of an animal which had existed before time began. We

now approach the formation of the other animals. Of the Kosmos there

could be but one. All existing material of matter had been used in

his construction. He could not become a species, as there could be no

second Kosmos. Something could be borrowed from him, for the formation

of other animals, but nothing could be destroyed. He was not yet,

however, a full copy of the model of the Generic Animal or Idea of

Animal, because the eternal plan of that model required that he should

be peopled or inhabited by four other animals, which might constitute

species. Accordingly, the Demiurgus proceeds to form the first of

these sub-animals, the gods, who are to inhabit different portions of

the Kosmos. The first of these in formation was the earth, planted

in the center, and made sentinel over night and day; next the fixed

stars, formed chiefly out of fire, and placed in the outer circle of a

fixed revolution, or the Circle of the Same, to give to it light and

brilliancy. The sidereal orbs thus became animated beings, eternal and

divine. They remained constantly turning round in the same relative

position, but the sun, moon, and planets, belonging to the Circle of

the Different, and trying to revolve by their own effort in a direction

opposite to that of the outer sphere, became irregular in their

revolutions and varied in their relative positions. Thus the primitive

gods were the earth and the fixed stars, which revolved without

variation with the Circle of the Same, and became immortal as well as

visible; while the sun, moon, and planets were not among the primitive

gods, but were simply spherical bodies placed in the inner Circle

of the Different. The primitive gods preside over and regulate the

Kosmos. From them are generated and descended the remaining gods.[13]

Having completed the Kosmos and the primitive gods, the Demiurgus

paused in his work. There were still other animals to be constructed,

the first and noblest of which was to be Man. But the Demiurgus,

who, in the construction of these gods, had made them immortal, not

in their own nature but through his determination, seems to have

apprehended that, if he proceeded to construct the other animals

himself, they would likewise be thereby rendered of immortal duration.

He therefore assembled the newly generated gods and made to them a

personal address. He informed them of their immortal existence, and of

his purpose to confide to them the construction of the other animals,

stating at the same time, in the case of man, that he would himself

supply an immortal element which they were to incorporate with a

mortal body, in imitation of the power which he had exercised in the

generation of themselves. He then proceeded to compound together, but

in inferior perfection and purity, the remnant of the same elements

out of which he had formed the cosmical soul.[14] He then distributed

the whole of this mass into souls equal in number to the fixed stars,

placed each of them in a star of its own, where it would be carried

round in the cosmical rotation, explained to it its immortal destiny,

and that at an appointed hour of birth it would be transferred into a

mortal body in conjunction with two inferior kinds of soul or mind.

These irrational enemies, the two inferior souls, the rational and

immortal soul would have to control and subdue, so as to live a good

life. If it triumphed in the conflict, it would return after death to

its own star, where in an everlasting abode it would dwell forever

in unison with the celestial harmonies and perfections of the outer

sphere. But, if it failed, it would be born again into an inferior

body, and on the death of that body, if it continued evil, it would be

again born into a still more degraded animal, through an indefinite

transmigration from animal to animal, until the rational soul should

have obtained the mastery over the irrational and turbulent, when it

would be released and permitted to return to its own peculiar star.[15]

Here, then, the Demiurgus retired, leaving to the gods the work of

fabricating mortal bodies for man, and two mortal and inferior souls,

with which the immortal soul was to be joined. But before he withdrew

he inculcated upon the gods to construct the new mortal animal in the

best manner, so that the immortal soul should have the fairest chance

of guiding and governing rightly, in order that the animal might

not be the cause of mischief and misery to himself; a possible and

even probable result which the Demiurgus proclaimed beforehand, thus

relieving himself of responsibility, and casting it, it would seem,

upon the gods.[16] The latter stood, then, in the position of workmen,

who have received certain directions from a superior architect, have

been supplied with certain materials, and are obliged to conform to a

prescribed model, the cosmical animal, as far as circumstances will

allow. The Demiurgus retires, and leaves the gods to their work.

They borrow from the Kosmos, from which they are permitted to obtain

materials, portions of the four elements, for the construction of the

human body, with an engagement that these materials shall one day be

returned. These they unite in one body by numerous minute and invisible

fastenings; over this body they place a head or cranium, into which

they introduce the immortal soul, making the head, with its spherical

form like that of the Kosmos, and admitting of no motion but the

rotary, the most divine portion of the human system and master of the

body, which is to be subject and ministerial. To the body they give all

the six varieties of motive power, forward, backward, upward, downward,

to the right and to the left. The phenomena of nutrition and sensation

begin as soon as the connection is formed between the immortal soul and

the mortal body, but as the irregular movements and agitations arising

from the diverse rotations of the Same and the Different convey false

and foolish affirmations to the soul in the cranium. That soul is

destitute of intelligence when first joined to the body, and remains

so for some time. But gradually these disturbing currents abate,

the rotations of the Same and the Different in the head become more

regular, and the man becomes more intelligent.

It is now necessary to account for the introduction of the two mortal

souls, and to show how the conflict appointed for the immortal soul

became the test of a life which was to determine whether the latter

should be permitted, on the death of the body, to return to its

peculiar star, or whether it should be degraded into some lower form

of animal. The immortal soul has its special abode in the head, which

is both united to and separated from the trunk by the neck. The gods

kept the two mortal souls separate, so that the rational or immortal

soul might be defiled by the contact as little as possible. The better

portion of the mortal soul they placed in the thoracic cavity. It

was the energetic, courageous, contentious soul, placed above the

diaphragm, so as to receive orders easily from the head, and to aid

the rational soul in keeping the mutinous soul of appetite, which was

placed below the diaphragm, in subjection.

It is unnecessary to follow here the minute anatomical descriptions

which Plato gives of the different organs of the human body, or of

the way in which they are supposed to act on the two divisions of

the mortal soul, or to be acted on by them, or the mode in which the

latter act upon the encephalic or immortal soul which is seated in the

cranium. These descriptions evince much knowledge of the human anatomy,

and probably all the knowledge that was possessed in Plato's time. It

is immaterial how far this anatomical knowledge was correct, and of

course there was in Plato's use of the various organs a great deal that

was fanciful. It is sufficient, without following Mr. Grote's analysis

through these details, to note that, in Plato's arrangement, the

immortal soul was supposed to be fastened in the brain, the two mortal

souls in the line of the spinal marrow continuous with the brain, and

that this line formed the thread of connection between them all.

Passing on toward the point where the process of degradation might

begin, which would result in the reduction of this new and divinely

constructed animal to a lower form, we have to note, first, that it was

made a non-sexual animal, being intended for an angelic type. In the

original plan of the gods, it was not contemplated that this primitive

type should reproduce itself by any process of generation. According

to the original scheme, it would seem that every time a new immortal

soul was to be brought down from its peculiar star, the process of

constructing for it a mortal body would have to be repeated. Plato,

Mr. Grote observes, does indeed tell us that the primitive non-sexual

type had the option of maintaining itself. But this must mean that

each individual of that type had the option of maintaining itself in

its struggle with the debasing influences of appetite and disease.

But not one representative of it has held his ground; and as it was

foreseen that such an angelic type could not maintain itself, we

are to look for a reconstruction of the whole organism. This came

about from the degeneracy of the primitive non-sexual animal below

the standard of good life which it had the option of continuing.

Men whose lives had fallen below this standard became effeminate,

cowardly, unjust. In their second birth, their immortal souls had to be

translated into a body resembling that to which they had debased the

first body into which they were born. The first transition, therefore,

was from man into woman. In other words, the gods, seeing that the

non-sexual primitive type did not maintain itself at the high point

intended for it, reconstructed the whole organism upon the bi-sexual

principle, introducing the comparatively lower type of woman. A partial

transformation of the male structure makes the female. A suitable

adjustment of the male organs, and the implanting of the sexual

impulse in both sexes, by the agency of the gods, make provision for

generative reproduction, and a species is formed, which takes the place

of the primitive non-sexual type which did not reproduce itself in the

original scheme. The primitive type disappears, and it disappears by

a process of degradation, which it undergoes by reason of its failure

to avail itself of the option which it originally had of living a good

life that would entitle the immortal soul to return to its peculiar

star without further conflict with the debasing tendencies to which it

was exposed in the first body that it inhabited.

In this curious theory we see how a process of declension or

degradation is induced by what may almost be called a choice, since

the primitive human being, by not resisting the debasing tendencies of

his lower nature, is made by those tendencies to assume a less divine

form than that in which he originally existed. To the primitive man the

gods assigned the encephalic or head-soul, which was connected with

and suspended from the divine soul of the Kosmos. They assigned it to

each man as his presiding genius. If he neglected it, and directed

all his development toward the energetic or appetitive mortal soul,

he would become debased. He did so. Hence it became necessary for the

gods to reconstruct the whole organism, and in this reconstruction

the primitive non-sexual type becomes the bi-sexual, and a species is

formed.

It is not necessary to enter into the metaphysical argument which

relates to the question of responsibility for this change from the

original plan. Plato tells us that the gods foresaw it as a necessary

consequence of the original scheme; and, moreover, that they foresaw

that they must make preparation for the still more degenerate varieties

of birds and quadrupeds, into which the corrupt and stupid part of

mankind would sink, all of which were according to the great eternal

scheme of the four kinds of ideal animals embraced in the idea of the

Kosmos itself. But with the moral justice of the whole theory we have

no concern here. We are here concerned, first, with the nature of the

process by which, in the Platonic theory, the bi-sexual human race

became formed out of the primitive non-sexual type; and, next, with

the process by which individuals of this race became degraded into the

lower animals.[17]

After the process of degradation had begun, after the primitive type

had given place to the bi-sexual human race, and a species was thus

formed, further degradation would be inevitable under the same causes

which produced the first one. The female part of mankind would go on

bringing forth new males and new females, and to each one at birth

there would come from its peculiar star an immortal soul, for I do not

understand that Plato's women were supposed not to be constructed, in

this respect, upon the same plan as the men. But each of these newly

arrived immortal souls would be placed in a mortal body in contact and

conflict with the two mortal souls of appetite, disturbance, and mutiny

against the divine laws of reason. Each new human being would then be

exposed to further debasement, by which his or her human organs and

human form would undergo transformation into a lower type of animal

life. Accordingly, we find that Plato, in perfect consistency with his

theory, supposes that birds are a degraded birth or formation derived

from one peculiar mode of degeneracy in man, hair being transmuted into

feathers and wings. If we inquire from what kind of men the birds were

formed, and how they came to be assigned to the air, we shall best

learn from the words employed by Mr. Grote to express Plato's idea:

"Birds were formed from the harmless but light, airy, and superficial

men, who, though carrying their minds aloft to the study of cosmical

phenomena, studied them by visual observation and not by reason,

foolishly imagining that they had discovered the way of reaching

truth."[18]

Next to the birds came the land-animals, a more brutal formation.

These, to borrow the words of Mr. Grote's analysis, "proceeded from men

totally destitute of philosophy, who neither looked up to the heavens

nor cared for celestial objects; from men making no use whatever of

the rotations of their encephalic soul, but following exclusively

the guidance of the lower soul in the trunk. Through such tastes and

occupations, both their heads and their anterior limbs became dragged

down to the earth by the force of affinity. Moreover, when the rotation

of the encephalic soul from want of exercise became slackened and fell

into desuetude, the round form of the cranium was lost and became

converted into an oblong or some other form. These now degenerated into

quadrupeds and multipeds, the gods furnishing a greater number of feet

in proportion to the stupidity of each, in order that its approximation

to earth might be multiplied. To some of the more stupid, however, the

gods gave no feet or limbs at all, constraining them to drag the whole

length of their bodies along the ground, and to become reptiles. Out of

the most stupid and senseless of mankind, by still greater degeneracy,

the gods formed fishes, or aquatic animals--the fourth and lowest genus

after men, birds, land-animals. This race of beings, from their extreme

want of mind, were not considered worthy to live on earth, or to

respire thin and pure air. They were condemned to respire nothing but

deep and turbid water, many of them, as oysters and other descriptions

of shell-fish, being fixed down at the lowest depth or bottom. It is by

such transitions (concludes the Platonic 'Timæus') that the different

races of animals passed originally, and still continue to pass, into

each other. The interchange is determined by the acquisition or loss of

reason or rationality."[19]

Here, then, we have a process of degradation by which the different

races of animals were formed, by a kind of selection which, commencing

in the human species from the neglect of the encephalic soul to

maintain its high duties and aims, goes on in successive debasements

which result in the formation of lower and still lower animals until

we reach the shell-fish fixed upon the earth at the bottom of the

water. The bi-sexual principle of construction having been introduced

in the human species, was continued through all the other species

formed by the still descending process of deterioration, so that to

each successive species there remained the power of reproducing its

own type, along with the tendency to evolve a lower type by further

loss of reason or rationality. It is not material to the purpose of

the parallel, which I am about to draw between the Platonic and the

Darwinian system, to consider the precise nature of the Platonic idea

of an intelligent power, by which these successive degradations were

in one sense purposely ordained. Enough is apparent on the Platonic

system to show that, while these degradations were according to an

eternal plan, because they resulted from the conflict between reason

and unreason, order and disorder, between purity and impurity, yet the

different species of animals, after man, were not special creations by

an infinite power interfering in each case by a separate exercise of

creative will. They were a growth of an inferior organization out of a

superior through the inevitable operation of tendencies which changed

the forms of the animals. As fast as these tendencies operated--and

they were continually operating--the ministers of the Demiurgus, the

gods, stood ready to adapt the structure to the new conditions in

which the tendencies resulted, so that the new animal might be fitted

to and fixed in those conditions. Still, the gods are not represented

as making separate creations of new species as an act of their will,

without the pre-existing operation in the preceding type of tastes and

occupations which modify the structure into one of a more degraded

character. It may thus be said with entire truth that the Platonic idea

of the origin of the different races of animals presents a parallel

to the Darwinian theory, in which it will be found that the one is

the reverse of the other, both of them proceeding upon and involving

analogous principles of evolution, operating in the one system from

below upward, and in the other from a higher point downward. If, in

the Platonic system, the idea of an original immortal soul placed

in a heavenly abode, but afterward brought down and fixed in a

mortal body, is the starting-point--if a conflict of a spiritual and

angelic existence with corporeal and earthly tendencies is at first

the predominant fact--the parallel between the Platonic process of

degradation and the Darwinian process of elevation remains the same;

for, in the one system, reason degenerates into instinct, and instinct

at last reaches its lowest possible action, or ceases entirely; and,

in the other, instinct rises from its lowest action through successive

improvements until it becomes mind or intellect: so that somewhere in

the two processes there must be a point where they pass each other in

opposite directions, the one losing or merging intellect in instinct,

the other losing and merging instinct in mind, each of the two

processes being a process of development or evolution, but in opposite

directions.[20]

It is not easy to ascertain at once what was Mr. Darwin's idea of the

mode in which a supreme intelligence has presided over the creation.

In his work on "The Descent of Man", he adduces some evidence that man

was not "originally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence

of an Omnipotent God," this evidence being that numerous savage races

have existed, and still exist, who have had and have no words in their

language to express this idea. But this, if true, does not help us

to understand what part in Mr. Darwin's theory an Omnipotent God is

supposed to play. Scattered through the same work we find references

to the hypothesis of such a being, and to the influences which this

belief has exerted upon the advance of morality. But I assume that we

are to understand that Mr. Darwin adopts as a fact, to be taken into

account in judging of his theory of evolution, that there is such a

being as an Omnipotent God, having equally the power to make separate

creations, or to establish certain laws of matter, and to leave them

to operate through secondary causes in the production and extinction

of the past and present inhabitants of the world. In his work on the

"Origin of Species" he refers to "what we know of the laws impressed

upon matter by the Creator."[21] In his "Descent of Man" the following

passage occurs toward the close of the work: "He who believes in the

advancement of man from some low organized form will naturally ask,

How does this bear on the belief in the immortality of the soul? The

barbarous races of man, as Sir J. Lubbock has shown, possess no clear

belief of this kind; but arguments, derived from the primeval beliefs

of savages, are, as we have just seen, of little or no avail. Few

persons feel any anxiety from the impossibility of determining at what

precise period in the development of the individual, from the first

trace of a minute germinal vesicle, man becomes an immortal being;

and there is no greater cause for anxiety, because the period can not

possibly be determined in the gradually ascending organic scale."

Surely it is a most pertinent inquiry, How does his theory of the

advancement of man from some lower organized form bear on the

immortality of the soul? and it is no answer to this inquiry to say

that upon no hypothesis of man's origin can we determine at what

precise period he becomes an immortal being. That the idea of an

Omnipotent God, capable of creating a spiritual essence, or an immortal

soul, is not denied by Mr. Darwin, is doubtless to be inferred from

his strong affirmation that our minds refuse to accept as the result

of blind chance the grand sequence of events which the birth both of

the species and the individual presents to our view. That variations of

structure, the union of pairs in marriage, the dissemination of seeds,

and similar events, have all been ordained for some special purpose,

is the hypothesis according to which he regards them as events brought

about by the laws of natural selection, which laws were ordained by

the Creator and left to operate. Now, while this hypothesis excludes,

or tends to exclude, the idea of blind chance, it still remains to

be considered whether the soul of man, or the essence which we call

intellect, is in each case a direct creation of a special character, or

whether it is a result from the operation of the laws which have been

ordained for the action of organized matter. If it is the former, the

soul may survive the destruction of the body. If it is the latter, the

soul as well as all the other manifestations or exhibitions which the

material body gives forth in its action, may and in all probability

must cease with the organs whose action leads us falsely to believe

that we are animated by an immortal spirit while we are in the flesh.

If it is a necessary result of any theory that what is supposed to be

the immortal soul of man is a product of the operation of certain laws

imposed upon organized matter, without being a special creation of

something distinct from matter, it is immaterial whether the organized

form of matter with which the soul is connected, or appears to act for

a time, was a special creation, or was an evolution out of some lower

form, or came by blind chance. Nor is it material that we can not

determine at what precise period in the genesis of the individual, by

the ordinary process of reproduction, he becomes an immortal being. The

question is, Does he ever become an immortal being, if in body and in

mind he is a mere product of organized matter, formed from some lower

type through the laws of variation and natural selection, resulting in

an animal whose manifestations or exhibitions of what we call intellect

or mind are manifestations of the same nature as the instincts of the

lower animals, differing only in degree?

That I may not be misunderstood, and especially that I may not be

charged with misrepresentation, I will state the case for the Darwinian

theory as strongly as I can. The question here is obviously not a

question of power. An Omnipotent Creator has just the same capacity to

make special creations, by a direct and special exertion of his will,

as he has to make one primordial type and place it under fixed laws

that will in their operation cause a physical organization to act in

such a way as to evolve out of it other and more or less perfect types.

In either method of action, he would be the same Omnipotent God, by

whose will all things would exist; and I assume that upon this point

there is no difference between some of the evolution school and its

opponents. But in considering the question of the origin of the human

soul, or the intellect of man, we are dealing not with a question of

power, but with the probable method in which the conceded Omnipotent

capacity has acted. On the one hand, we have the hypothesis that the

Eternal and Omnipotent capacity has created a spiritual and immortal

being, capable of existing without any union with the body that is

formed out of earthly material, but placed for a time in unison with

such a body; and that for the effectual purpose of this temporary

union this body has been specially constructed, and constructed in two

related forms, male and female, so that this created species of animal

may perpetuate itself by certain organic laws of reproduction. Now it

is obviously immaterial that we can not detect the point of time, or

the process, at or by which the union between the spiritual essence

and the earthly body takes place in the generation of the individual.

It is conceded to be alike impossible to detect the time or mode in

which descendants of the lower animals, which had nothing resembling

intellect, become endowed with and inhabited by intellect, through the

supposed laws of variation and natural selection, operating to produce

an animal of a more elaborate organization. The point of divergence

between the two hypotheses is precisely this: that the one supposes the

mind of man to be a special creation, of a spiritual nature, designed

to be immortal, but placed in union with a mortal body for a temporary

purpose. The other hypothesis supposes no special creation of either

the mind or the body of man, but maintains that the latter is evolved

out of some lower animal, and that the former is evolved out of the

action of physical organization.[22] Either mode of projecting and

executing the creation of both the body and the mind of man is of

course competent to an Omnipotent God. The question is, Which mode has

the highest amount of probability on which to challenge our belief?

If the one, as it is described, leads to the conclusion that the mind

can not survive the body, and the other leads to the conclusion that

it can, we are left to choose between them: and our choice must be

determined by what we can discover of satisfactory proof that the mind

of man was destined to become immortal. What, then, is the Darwinian

theory of the origin of man as an animal, and to what does it lead

respecting the origin and nature of the human soul?

Whoever will carefully examine Mr. Darwin's hypothesis of the

descent of man as an animal, will find that commencing at a point

opposite to that at which Plato began his speculations, the modern

naturalist assumes the existence of a very low form of animated and

organized matter, destitute of anything in the nature of reason,

even if acting under what may be called instinctive and unconscious

impulses, imposed upon it by the preordained laws by which animated

matter is to act. By some process of generation, either bi-sexual or

uni-sexual or non-sexual, this very low type of animal is endowed with

a power of reproducing other individuals of the same structure and

habits. In process of time, for which we must allow periods very much

longer than those of which we are accustomed to think in relation to

recorded history, the individuals of this species become enormously

multiplied. A struggle for existence takes place between these very

numerous individuals; and in this struggle there comes into operation

the law to which Mr. Darwin has given the name of "natural selection,"

which is but another name for a series of events. He does not mean

by this term to imply a conscious choice on the part of the animals,

nor an active power or interfering deity. He employs it to express

a constantly occurring series of events or actions, by which, in

certain circumstances, animals secure themselves against the tendency

to destruction which is caused by the great disparity between their

numbers and the amount of food that is accessible to them, or by the

unfavorable influences of a change of climate upon so great a body

of individuals. He calls this series of events or actions _natural_

selection, in order, as I understand, to compare what takes place

in nature with what takes place when a breeder of animals purposely

selects the most favorable individuals for the purpose of improving

or varying the breed. In nature, the selection is supposed to operate

as follows: The strongest and most active individuals of a species

of animals have the best chance of securing the requisite amount of

food from the supply that is insufficient for all. They do this by

their greater fleetness in overtaking the common prey, or by making

war upon the more feeble or inactive of their fellows; and numerous

individuals are either directly destroyed by this warfare, or are

driven off from the feeding-ground and perish for want of nourishment.

Thus the best specimens of the race survive; and to this occurrence is

given the name of the "survival of the fittest," meaning the survival

of those individuals best fitted to continue their own existence and

to continue their species. A physical change in the country inhabited

by a great multitude of individuals of a certain species, or by

different species--for example, a change of climate--operates to make

this struggle for existence still more severe, and the result would

be that those individuals of the same species which could best adapt

themselves to their new condition would tend to be preserved, as

would the different species inhabiting the same country which could

best maintain the struggle against other species. The improvement

in the structure of the animals takes place, under this process of

natural selection, in the following manner: The best individuals being

preserved, the organs of which they make most use in the struggle for

existence undergo development and slight modifications, favorable

to the preservation of the individual, and these modifications are

transmitted to their offspring. Here there comes in play a kind of

collateral aid to which is given the name of "sexual selection,"

which is defined as a form of selection depending "not on a struggle

for existence in relation to other organic beings or to external

conditions, but on a struggle between individuals of one sex, generally

the males, for the possession of the other sex."[23] "The result,"

continues Mr. Darwin, "is not death to the unsuccessful competitor,

but few or no offspring. Sexual selection is, therefore, less rigorous

than natural selection. Generally, the most vigorous males, those which

are best fitted for their place in nature, will leave most progeny.

But, in many cases, victory depends not so much on general vigor, as

on having special weapons, confined to the male sex." As, by means of

this warfare of sexual selection, the victor would always be allowed

to breed, his courage and his special weapons of offense or defense,

in their increased development, would descend to his offspring. Thus

the improvement and modification induced by natural selection would be

enhanced and transmitted by the sexual selection.[24]

In regard to the operation of the two kinds of selection in the

evolution of man from a lower form of animal, we find the theory

to be this: That organic beings with peculiar habits and structure

have passed through transitions which have converted the primordial

animal into one of totally different habits and structure; that,

in these transitions, organs adapted to one condition and mode

of life have become adapted to another; that such organs are

homologous, and that in their widely varied uses they have been

formed by transitional gradations, so that, for example, a floating

apparatus, or swim-bladder, existing in a water-animal for one

purpose--flotation--has become converted in the vertebrate animals into

true lungs for the very different purpose of respiration. Thus, by

ordinary generation, from an ancient and unknown prototype, not only

have organs, by minute and successive transitions, become adapted to

changed conditions of life, but the whole organism has become changed,

and this has resulted in the production of an animal vastly superior

to his ancient and unknown prototype; and yet to that prototype, of

which we have no specimen and no record, are to be traced the germs

of all the peculiarities of structure which we find in the perfect

animals of different kinds that we thoroughly know, until we come to

man, these successive results being brought about by the two kinds of

selection--natural and sexual.

There can be no better illustration of the character of Mr. Darwin's

theory than that to which he resorts when he means to carry it to its

most startling length, while he candidly admits that he has felt the

difficulty of this application of it far too keenly to be surprised

at the hesitation of others. This illustration is the eye. Here he

very justly says it is indispensable that reason should conquer

imagination; but on which side of the question reason or imagination

is most employed might, perhaps, be doubtful. Mr. Darwin's hypothesis

concerning the eye begins with the fact that in the highest division

of the animal kingdom, the vertebrata, we can start from an eye so

simple that it consists, as in the lancelet,[25] of a little sack of

transparent skin, furnished with a nerve, and lined with pigment, but

destitute of any other apparatus. From this prototype of a visual

organ, up to the marvelous construction of the eye of man or of the

eagle, he supposes that extremely slight and gradual modifications

have led, by the operation of natural and sexual selection; and by

way of illustrating this development, he compares the formation of

the eye to the formation of the telescope. "It is scarcely possible

to avoid comparing the eye with a telescope. We know that this

instrument has been perfected by the long-continued efforts of the

highest human intellects, and we naturally infer that the eye has been

formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this inference

be presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator works

by intellectual powers like those of man? If we must compare the eye

to an optical instrument, we ought, in imagination, to take a thick

layer of transparent tissue, with spaces filled with fluid, and with a

nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose every part of this

layer to be continually changing slowly in density, so as to separate

into layers of different densities and thickness, placed at different

distances from each other, and with the surface of each layer slowly

changing in form. Further, we must suppose that there is a power,

represented by natural selection or the survival of the fittest,

always watching each slight alteration in the transparent layers, and

carefully preserving each which, under varied circumstances, in any way

or in any degree, tends to produce a distincter image. We must suppose

each new state of the instrument to be multiplied by the million, each

to be preserved until a better one is produced, and then the old ones

to be all destroyed. In living bodies variations will cause the slight

alterations, generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and

natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement.

Let this process go on for millions of years, and during each year on

millions of individuals of many kinds, and may we not believe that a

living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of

glass as the works of the Creator are to those of man?"[26]

It might have occurred to the very learned naturalist that the

formation of a mechanical instrument by the hand of man, guided by

his intellect, admits of varieties of that instrument for different

purposes, as products of an intelligent will. Different kinds of

telescopes for different uses have been produced, not by destroying

the poorer ones and preserving the better ones, but by a special

and intentional adaptation of the structure to special uses, until

an instrument is made which will dissolve the nebulæ of the milky

way, and bring within the reach of our vision heavenly bodies of the

existence of which we had no previous knowledge. Why may not the same

intelligent and intentional formation of the human eye, as a special

structure adapted to the special conditions of such an animal as man,

have been the direct work of the Creator, just as the lowest visual

organ--that of such a creature as the lancelet--was specially made

for the conditions of its existence? Why resort to the theory that

all the intermediate varieties of the eye have grown successively out

of the lowest form of such an organ by transitional grades of which

we can not trace the series, when the probabilities concerning the

varieties of this organ of which we have any knowledge are so strongly

on the side of a special and intentional adaptation of each one to the

circumstances of the animal to which it has been given? As a question

of power in the Creator, either method of action was of course just as

competent as the other. As a question of which was his probable method,

the case is very different; for we know comparatively very little of

the modifications produced by such causes as natural or even sexual

selection, while we may, without presumption, assume that we know much

more about the purposes of special adaptation to special conditions,

which an omnipotent Creator may have designed and effected. But this is

a digression, and also an anticipation of the argument.

To state the pedigree of man according to the Darwinian theory, we

must begin with an aquatic animal as the early progenitor of all the

vertebrata. This animal existing, it is assumed, "in the dim obscurity

of the past," was provided with branchiæ or gills, or organs for

respiration in water, with the two sexes united in the same individual,

but with the most important organs of the body, such as the brain and

heart, imperfectly or not at all developed. From this fish-like animal,

or from some of its fish descendants, there was developed an amphibious

creature, with the sexes distinct. Rising from the amphibians, through

a long line of diversified forms, we come to an ancient marsupial

animal, an order in which the young are born in a very incomplete state

of development, and carried by the mother, while sucking, in a ventral

pouch.[27] From the marsupials came the quadrumana[28] and all the

higher mammals.[29] Among these mammals there was, it is supposed, a

hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits, from which

man is descended. It was an inhabitant of the Old World. It branched

into the lemuridæ, a group of four-handed animals, distinct from the

monkeys, and resembling the insectivorous quadrupeds in some of their

characters and habits;[30] and from these came the simiadæ, of which

there were two great stems--the New World and Old World monkeys. "From

the latter, at a remote period, man, the wonder and glory of the

universe, proceeded."[31]

The reader must now, in order to do justice to this theory, imagine

a lapse of time, from the period of the existence of the aquatic

progenitor of all the vertebrata, to be counted by millions of years,

or by any figures that will represent to the mind the most conceivable

distance between a past and a present epoch. Through this enormous

stretch of centuries, in order to give scope to the operation of the

laws of natural and sexual selection, we must suppose the struggle for

existence to be going on among the individuals of the same species, and

among different species inhabiting the same country, and the sexual

selection among the individuals of the same species to be perpetually

transmitting to offspring the improved and more developed organs and

powers induced by natural selection; so that in the countless sequence

of generations there are evolved animals that are so widely different

from their remote progenitors that in classifying them we find them to

be new species, endowed with a power of reproducing their own type, and

similarly capable, it would seem, of still further development into

even higher types in the long-distant future.

I know not how it may appear to others, but to me the parallelism

between the Platonic and the Darwinian theory is very striking. Both

speculators assume the existence of a Supreme Intelligence and Power,

presiding over the creation of animals which are to inhabit this earth.

Behind the celestial or primitive gods the Greek philosopher places

the Demiurgus, to whom the gods stand in the relation of ministers

or servants to execute his will. The modern naturalist assumes the

existence of the Omnipotent God; and although he does not directly

personify the laws of natural and sexual selection which the Omnipotent

power has made to operate in nature, they perform an office in the

transitional gradations through which the animals are successively

developed, that very closely resembles the office performed by the

gods of Plato's system in providing the modifications of structure

which the animals undergo. In the two processes the one is the reversed

complement of the other. Plato begins with the formation of an animal

of a very exalted type, and by successive degradations, induced by the

failure of the animal to live up to the high standard of its rational

existence, he supposes a descent into lower and still lower forms, the

gods all the while providing a new structure for each successive lower

form, until we reach the shell-fish fixed on the earth beneath the

water. Darwin begins with the lowest form of animated organization,

and by successive gradations induced by the struggle of the animal to

maintain its existence, he supposes an ascent into higher and still

higher forms, the laws of natural and sexual selection operating to

develop a new structure for each successive higher form, until we reach

man, "the wonder and glory of the universe," an animal whose immediate

ancestor was the same as the monkey's, and whose remote progenitor was

an aquatic creature breathing by gills and floating by a swim-bladder.

Nor had Plato less of probability to support his theory than Darwin

had to support his. The Greek philosopher might have adduced the

constant spectacle of men debasing their habits and even their physical

appearance into a resemblance to the brutes. He might have suggested,

and he does suggest, how the degrading tendencies of the lower

appetites and the ravages of disease drag down the human frame from its

erect carriage and its commanding power over matter to an approximation

with the condition of the inferior animals. He might have adduced

innumerable proofs of the loss of reason, or rationality, through

successive generations of men, brought about by the transmission of

both appetites and physical malformation from parents to children.

He might have compared one of his Athenian fellow-citizens of the

higher class with the lowest savage known throughout all the regions

accessible to an observer of his day and country. He might have

portrayed the one as a being preserving his physical organization

in the highest state of perfection by gymnastic exercises, by a

well-chosen diet, by observance of all the conditions of health, by the

aid of the highest medical skill known to the age; cultivating his mind

by philosophy, practicing every public and private virtue as they were

understood among a people of rare refinement, and adorning his race by

an exhibition of the highest qualities that were then attainable. All

these qualities, physical, mental, and moral, Plato might have shown

were transmissible in some degree, and in a good degree were actually

transmitted from sire to son. Turning to the other picture, and

comparing "Hyperion to the satyr," he might have shown that the lowest

savage, in those physical points of structure which were best adapted

to his animal preservation as an inhabitant of the wildest portion of

the earth, had retained those which made him more nearly resemble the

brute inhabitants of the same region, and that in his intellectual

and moral qualities the resemblance between him and his Athenian

contemporary was almost wholly lost. Intermediate between these extreme

specimens of the human race, why could not Plato have found with great

probability, and often with actual proof, successive degradations of

structure and uses of organs, just as well supported by facts, or

analogies, or hypotheses, as are Mr. Darwin's successive elevations

from a lower to a higher animal? If Plato had known as much about the

animal kingdom as is now known, he could have arrayed the same facts

in support of his theory, by an argument as powerful as that which now

supports the doctrine of evolution.

Nay, it is certain that Plato's attention was drawn to some of these

facts, and that he makes use of them in a way that is as legitimately

a probable occurrence as any use that is made of them at the present

day. For example, he was struck with the existence of what in

scientific parlance are called "rudiments," a term that is employed

to describe an organ or part which appears to have no special use

where it is found in one animal, but which, in a more developed or

in a diversified condition, has an obvious use in another animal.

Thus, he tells us that the gods, with a long-sighted providence,

introduced a sketch or rudiment of nails into the earliest organization

of man, foreseeing that the lower animals would be produced from

the degeneration of man, and that to them claws and nails would be

absolutely indispensable.[32] In the same way, he seems to regard hair

as a rudiment, relatively speaking; for while its use on different

parts of the body of man, or even on the head, is not very apparent,

its use to the lower animals is very obvious. Why, then, is it not just

as rational, and just as much in accordance with proper scientific

reasoning, to suppose those parts of animal structure which are

called "rudiments" to have been introduced as mere sketches in the

organization of a very high animal, and then to have been developed

into special uses in lower animals produced by the degeneration of the

higher, as it is to suppose that they were developed in full activity

and use in the lower animals, but sank into the condition of useless

or comparatively useless appendages as the higher animal was evolved

out of the lower by a process of elevation? The modern naturalist of

the evolution school will doubtless say that "rudiments" in the human

structure, for which there is no assignable use that can be observed,

are not to be accounted for as sketches from which Nature was to work,

in finding for them a use in some other animal in a developed and

practically important condition; that, to the extent to which such

things are found in man, they are proofs of his cognate relations to

the lower animals, in which they have a palpable use; and that the

gradations by which they have proceeded from practical and important

uses in the lower animals, until they have become mere useless or

comparatively useless sketches in the human structure, are among the

proofs of the descent of man from the lower animals which had a use for

such things. I shall endeavor hereafter to examine the argument that

is derived from "rudiments" more closely. At present, the point which

I suggest to the mind of the reader arises in the parallel between

the Platonic and the Darwinian theory of the origin of the different

species of animals. I ask, why is it not just as probably a true

hypothesis to suppose that man was first created with these rudimentary

sketches in his organization, and that they became useful appendages

in the lower animals, into which man became degenerated, as it is to

suppose that these parts existed in full development, activity, and

practical use in the lower animals, out of whom man was generated,

and that in man they lost their utility and became relatively mere

rudiments? To my mind, neither theory has the requisite amount of

probability in its favor compared with the probability of special

creations; but I can see as much probability in the Platonic as in the

Darwinian explanation, and a strong parallelism between them.

I will pursue this parallel somewhat further by again adverting to

Plato's idea of the origin of the human soul. He supposes it to have

been an immortal being, formed out of the eternal essence of Ideas

by the Demiurgus. He manifestly makes it an existence distinct from

matter, because he places its first abode in a heavenly mansion, where

it is in unison with the celestial harmonies and perfections of the

outer circle. This heavenly sphere is again to be its abode, after it

shall have been released from its temporary abode on earth, which has

been appointed to it for purposes of discipline and trial. At a fixed

time of birth it is brought down from its celestial abode and united

with a mortal body, that it may assert and prove its power to preside

over and govern that body according to the eternal laws of reason and

rectitude. If it fulfills this high duty, when the fastenings, which

have bound it to the mortal frame, are dissolved with the dissolution

of those which hold together the material structure, the soul flies

away with delight to its own peculiar star. If it fails in this high

duty, it is on the death of the first body transferred by a second

birth into a more degraded body, resembling that to which it has

allowed the first one to be debased. At length, somewhere in the

series of transmigrations, the lower and bestial tendencies cease to

have power over the immortal soul; the animal with which it was last

united remains an animal bereft of reason, and the soul, released from

further captivity, escapes to its original abode in the heavens, more

or less contaminated by what it has undergone, but still immortal,

indestructible, spiritual, and capable of purification.

Here, then, we have a conception of the origin and nature of the human

soul as a spiritual existence, quite as distinctly presented as it can

be by human reason. Stripped of the machinery by which Plato supposes

the soul to have come into existence, his conception of its origin and

nature is the most remarkable contribution which philosophy, apart

from the aid of what is called inspiration, has made to our means of

speculating upon this great theme. Of course, it affords, with all the

machinery of which Plato makes use, no explanation of the point or the

time of junction between the soul and the body. But, as a conception

of what in the poverty of language must be called the substance of

the soul, of its spiritual and immortal nature, of its distinctive

existence separate from what we know as matter, whether Plato borrowed

more or less from other philosophers who preceded him, it is a very

distinct presentation of the nature of the human mind.

Turn now to what can be extracted from the Darwinian theory of the

origin and nature of the human mind, and observe where it holds with

and where it breaks from the parallelism between it and the Platonic

theory. The doctrine of evolution, so called, presents to us no

distinct suggestion that the mind of man is a separate and special

creation. Rejecting, and very properly rejecting, the Platonic idea of

an existence of the human soul anterior to the birth of the individual,

the Darwinian theory supposes that in the long course of time, during

which natural and sexual selection were operating to produce higher and

still higher animals, there came about, in the earlier and primitive

organizations, a habit of the animal to act in a certain way; that this

habit descended to offspring; that it became developed into what is now

called instinct; and that instinct became developed into what we now

call mind. I know not how otherwise to interpret Mr. Darwin's repeated

affirmations that, in comparing the mental powers of man and those of

the lower animals, there can be detected no difference in kind, but

that the difference is one of degree only; that there is no fundamental

difference, or difference in nature, between the mental powers of

an ape and a man, or between the mental power of one of the lowest

fishes, as a lamprey or lancelet, and that of one of the higher apes;

that both of these intervals, that between the ape and man, and that

between the lancelet and the ape, which are much wider in the latter

case than in the former, are filled up by numberless gradations.[33] If

this be true, it must be because the lancelet, supposing that animal to

be the progenitor, formed a habit of acting by an implanted impulse,

which became, under the operation of natural and sexual selection,

confirmed, developed, and increased in its descendants, until it not

only amounted to what is called instinct, but took on more complex

habits until something akin to reason was developed. As the higher

animals continued to be evolved out of the lower, this approach to

a reasoning power became in the ape a true mental faculty; and, at

length, in the numberless gradations of structure intermediate between

the ape and the man, we reach those intellectual faculties which

distinguish the latter by an enormous interval from all the other

animals. "If," says Mr. Darwin, "no organic being, excepting man, had

possessed any mental power, or if his powers had been of a wholly

different nature from those of the lower animals, then we never should

have been able to convince ourselves that our high faculties had been

gradually developed. But it can be shown that there is no fundamental

difference of this kind."[34]

I will not here ask how far this is theoretical assumption. I shall

endeavor to examine in another place the evidence which is supposed

to show that the mental powers of man are in no respect fundamentally

different, or different in kind, from the powers in the other animals

to which the distinguished naturalist gives the name of "mental"

powers. At present I am still concerned with the parallelism between

the Platonic and the Darwinian theory; and I again ask whether the

latter is not the former reversed, in respect to the process by which

reason in the one case becomes lost, and that by which in the other

case it becomes developed out of something to which it bears no

resemblance? Plato supposes the creation of pure reason, or mental

power, in the shape--to use the counterpart of a physical term--of

a non-physical, spiritual intelligence, or mind. It remains always

of this nature, but the successive animals which it is required to

inhabit on earth undergo such degradations that the immortal reason

loses in them the power to control their actions; nothing is left to

govern in them but mere instinct, and this at last sinks into its

lowest manifestations. Darwin, on the other hand, supposes the first

creation to have been a very low animal of a fish-like structure, with

the lowest capacity for voluntary action of any kind, but impelled to

act in a certain way by superimposed laws of self-preservation; that

in the infinitude of successive generations these laws have operated

to produce numberless gradations of structure, in the growth of which

fixed habits have become complex instincts; that further gradations

have developed these instincts into something of mental power, as the

successive higher animals have become evolved out of the lower ones,

until at length the intellect of man has been "gradually developed" by

a purely physical process of the action of organized matter.

This materialistic way of accounting for the origin of the human

mind necessarily excludes the idea of its separate creation or its

distinctive character. The theory is perfectly consistent with itself,

in supposing that the mind of man does not differ in kind, or differ

fundamentally, from those exhibitions which in the lower animals lead

us to attribute to them some mental power. But whether the theory is

consistent with what we know of our own minds, as compared with what

we can observe in the other animals, is the real question. In the

first place, it is to be remembered that we can read our own minds, by

the power of consciousness and reflection. In the next place, it is

conceded that we can know nothing of the minds of the other animals,

excepting by their outward actions. They can not speak, to tell us

of their emotions, their memories, their fears, their hopes, their

desires, what they think, or whether they think at all. They do acts

which wonderfully resemble the acts of man, in outward appearance,

as if they were acts which proceeded from the same power of reason

but in a less perfect degree; yet they can tell us nothing of their

mental processes, if they have such processes, and the utmost that we

can do is to argue from their acts that they have mental faculties

akin to those of men. It is in the ordained nature of things that we

know and can know, by introspection, what our own minds are. We can

know the mind of no other animal excepting from his outward acts. How

far these will justify us in assuming that his mind is of the same

nature as ours, or that ours is an advanced development of his, is the

fundamental question.

Plato was evidently led, by that study of the human mind which is open

to all cultivated intellects through the process of consciousness

and reflection, to conceive of the soul as a created intelligence of

a spiritual nature. The fanciful materials out of which he supposes

it to have been composed were the mere machinery employed to express

his conception of its spiritual nature and its indestructible

existence. He was led to employ such machinery by his highly

speculative and constructive tendencies, and because it was the habit

of Greek philosophy to account for everything. Some machinery he was

irresistibly impelled to employ, in order to give due consistency to

his theory. But his machinery in no way obscures his conception of

the nature of the soul, and we may disregard it altogether and still

have left the conception of a spiritual and immortal being, formed for

separate existence from matter, but united to matter for a temporary

purpose of discipline and trial.

The modern naturalist, on the other hand, although assuming the

existence of the Omnipotent God, supposes the human mind to have become

what it is by the action of organized matter beginning at the lowest

point of animal life, and going on through successive gradations of

animal structure, until habits are formed which become instincts, and

instincts are gradually developed into mind. Take away the machinery

that is employed, and you have left no conception of the immortal and

indestructible nature of the human soul. The material out of which it

is constructed is all of the earth earthy, and the twofold question

arises: first, whether this was the probable method employed by the

Omnipotent Creator; and, secondly, whether it will account for such an

existence as we have reason to believe the mind of man to be.

There is another point in the parallel between the Platonic and the

Darwinian systems which is worthy of note. We have seen that, according

to Plato, when the Demiurgus had completed the construction of the

Kosmos and that of the human soul, he retired and left to the gods the

construction of a mortal body for man and of bodies of the inferior

animals into which man would become degraded. According to Darwin,

the Omnipotent God constructs some very low form of animal, and then,

retiring from the work of direct creation, he leaves the laws of

natural and sexual selection to operate in the production of higher

animals through the process that is called evolution. Perhaps it may be

unscientific to ask why the Omnipotent God should cease to exercise,

or refrain from exercising, his power of special creation, after he

has once exerted it. Perhaps there is some view of the nature and

purposes of that infinite being which would render such an abstention

from his powers a probable occurrence. But it is difficult to conceive

what this view can be. If we take a comprehensive survey of all the

facts concerning the animal kingdom that are within the reach of our

observation; and if, then, in cases where we know of no intermediate

or transitional states, we assume that they must have existed; if we

array the whole in support of a certain theory which undertakes to

account both for what we see and for what we do not see, we very easily

reach the conclusion that the Omnipotent God performed but one act of

special creation, or at most performed but a very few of such acts,

and those of the rudest and simplest types, and then left all the

subsequent and splendid exhibitions of animal structure to be worked

out by natural selection. This is the scientific method adopted by the

evolution school to account for the existence of all the higher animals

of which we have knowledge, man included. It may be very startling, but

we must acknowledge it as the method of action of the Omnipotent God,

because it is said there is no logical impossibility in it.

There is a passage in Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species" which I must now

quote, because it shows how strongly the supposed action and abstention

of the infinite Creator, according to the Darwinian theory, resembles

the action and abstention of Plato's Demiurgus: "Although the belief

that an organ so perfect as the eye could have been formed by natural

selection, is enough to stagger any one; yet in the case of any organ,

if we know of a long series of gradations in complexity, each good for

its possessor; then, under changing conditions of life, there is no

logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of

perfection through natural selection. In the cases in which we know of

no intermediate or transitional states, we should be extremely cautious

in concluding that none can have existed, for the metamorphoses of many

organs show what wonderful changes in function are at least possible.

For instance, a swim-bladder has apparently been converted into an

air-breathing lung. The same organ having performed simultaneously

very different functions, and then having been in part or in whole

specialized for one function; and two distinct organs having performed

at the same time the same function, the one having been perfected while

aided by the other, must often have largely facilitated transitions."

Here, then, we have it propounded that after the creation of the

rudest and simplest form of a visual organ, the infinite God abstains

from direct and special creation of such a perfect and elaborate

organ as the human eye, and leaves it to be worked out by natural

selection; there being no logical impossibility, it is said, in this

hypothesis. We are cautioned not to conclude, because we can not find

the intermediate and transitional states of the visual organs, that

they never existed; we are told that they are at least possible, and

that analogies show they must have existed; and from the possibility of

their existence and from the assumption that they happened, we are to

believe that the Omnipotent God, refraining from the exercise of his

power to create the human eye, with its wondrously perfect structure,

left it to be evolved by natural selection out of the rudest and

simplest visual organ which he directly fashioned.

All things are possible to an infinite Creator. He who made the visual

organ of the lowest aquatic creature that ever floated could make the

human eye as we know it, or could make one that would do more than

the eye of man ever was capable of. He could by a direct exercise of

his power of creation form the eye of man, or he could leave it to be

evolved out of the only type of a visual organ on which he saw fit

to exercise his creative power. He could create in the land-animals

a true air-breathing lung as a special production of his will, or

could permit it to be formed by transitional gradations out of the

swim-bladder of an aquatic creature. But why should he abstain from the

one method and employ the other? This question brings us at once to

the probabilities of the case; and, in estimating those probabilities,

we must take into the account all that reason permits us to believe

of the attributes of the Almighty. We can not, it is true, penetrate

into his counsels without the aid of revelation. But if we confine

ourselves to the domain of science, or to the mere observation of

nature, we shall find reason for believing that the Omnipotent God

had purposes in his infinite wisdom that render the acts of special

creation vastly more probable than the theory of evolution. A study of

the animal kingdom and of all the phenomena of the universe leads us

rationally and inevitably to one of two conclusions: either that there

is no God, and that all things came by chance; or to the belief that

there is a God, and that he is a being of infinite benevolence as well

as infinite wisdom and power. Now, why should such a being, proposing

to himself the existence on earth of such an animal as man, to be

inhabited for a time by a soul destined to be immortal, abstain from

the direct creation of both soul and body, and leave the latter to be

evolved out of the lowest form of animal life, and the former to become

a mere manifestation or exhibition of phenomena, resulting from the

improved and more elaborate structures of successive types of animals?

Is there no conceivable reason why an infinitely wise, benevolent, and

omnipotent being should have chosen to exercise the direct power of

creation in forming the soul of man for an immortal existence, and also

to exercise his direct power of creation in so fashioning the body as

to fit it with the utmost exactness to be serviceable and subservient

to the mind which is to inhabit it for a season? Why depict the

infinite God as a quiescent and retired spectator of the operation of

certain laws which he has imposed upon organized matter, when there are

discoverable so many manifest reasons for the special creation of such

a being as man? It is hardly in accordance with any rational theory of

God's providence, after we have attained a conception of such a being,

to liken him intentionally or unintentionally to the Demiurgus of the

acute and ingenious Greek philosopher. We must conclude that human

society, with all that it has done or is capable of doing for man on

earth, was in the contemplation of the Almighty; and if we adopt this

conclusion, we must account for the moral sense, for moral obligation,

and for the idea of law and duty. We can not account for these things

upon any probable theory of their origin, if we reject the idea that

they were specially implanted in the structure of the human soul, and

suppose that both the intellectual faculties and the moral sense were

evolved out of the struggle of lower animals for their existence,

resulting in the formation of higher animals and in the development

of their social instincts into more complex, refined, and consciously

calculating instincts of the same nature.

I have not drawn this parallel between the Platonic and the Darwinian

theories of the origin of different animals for any purpose of

suggesting that the one was in any sense borrowed from the other.

Plagiarism, in any form, is not, so far as I know, to be detected in

the writings of the evolution school. But the speculations of Plato in

regard to the origin and nature of the human soul, fanciful as they

are, afford great assistance in grasping the conception of a spiritual

existence; and the parallel between his process of degradation and

Darwin's process of elevation shows to my mind as great probability in

the one theory as there is in the other.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Rotation was considered the movement most conformable to reason

and intelligence, and it is impracticable to any figure but the

spherical. Grote, iii, 253.

[13] The primitive gods of Plato's conception (in the "Timæus") are

not to be confounded with the gods of the poetic and popular faith.

As Mr. Grote has pointed out, there is nothing more remarkable in

Plato's writings than the subtilty and skill with which he contrived

to elude the charge of impiety and infidelity toward the gods of

tradition and of the popular faith. In a passage of the "Timæus,"

on which Mr. Grote seems to be in doubt whether it was ironical or

sincere, Plato boldly confronts the difficulty by saying that we

must believe competent witnesses whose testimony we have, respecting

the genesis of the remaining gods who have personal names and were

believed in by his contemporaries. For his own part, he says, he does

not pretend to account for their generation. The sons of the gods,

the heroic and sacred families, who must have known their own fathers

and all about their own family affairs, have given us their family

traditions, and we must obey the law and believe. But concerning

the primitive gods, the first progenitors of the remaining gods,

we are at liberty to speculate. The ingenuity of this admission of

authority where authority has spoken, reconcilable with speculation

upon matters on which authority has not spoken, is admirable. Plato,

as Mr. Grote has observed, was willing to incur the risk of one count

of the indictment which was brought against his master Socrates,

that of introducing new divine persons. In legal parlance he might

have demurred to this count, as not charging any offense against the

established religion. But the other count, for not acknowledging the

gods whom the city acknowledged, he did not choose to encounter. As to

them, he prudently, and perhaps sarcastically, accepts the testimony

of witnesses who speak by inspiration and authority. But as to the

primitive gods, the progenitors of the gods from whom were descended

the heroic and sacred families of men, he expresses in the "Timæus"

his own convictions, without appealing to authority and without

intimating that he is speaking of mysteries beyond the comprehension

of his reason. The boldness of this flight beyond all authority into

the realms of pure reason is very striking, even if it does end in

nothing but probability, which is all that Plato claims for his theory.

[14] It must be remembered that, in the formation of the cosmical

soul, the ingredients were the eternal Ideas; of these there could be

a remnant after the cosmical soul was formed. But the cosmical body,

which was formed out of the material elements, comprehended the whole

of them, and there could be no remnant or surplus of them remaining

outside. But portions of them could be borrowed for a limited period

of mortal existence, and would return to their place in the Kosmos

when that existence terminated. If this distinction be carried along,

Plato will not be found to be inconsistent with himself.

[15] It does not distinctly appear what was to become of the rational

soul if it finally failed in the conflict with evil, at the lowest end

of the transmigration. Being immortal, it could not perish. But in

providing for it an opportunity of final success through all the forms

of animal life to which it might be condemned, it would seem that

Plato was pressed by a reluctance to encounter the idea of endless

misery. This point, however, does not obscure his explanation of the

process by which species of animals, and a succession of inferior

animals, came to exist.

[16] Mr. Grote has pointed out that in his other writings, notably

in the "Republic" and in the "Leges", Plato is not consistent with

this idea that the gods are responsible for the evil that man causes

to himself; and that in the "Timæus" he plainly makes the Demiurgus

responsible, because he brings, or allows to be brought, an immortal

soul down from its star, where it was living pure, intelligent, and in

harmony with reason, and makes it incur corruption, disturbance, and

stupidity, by junction with a mortal body and two mortal and inferior

souls.

[17] I have omitted the description of the influence of disease

induced by an over-indulgence of appetite, etc., in aiding the process

of debasement from the primitive type. The reader can find this

influence developed in Grote, or can consult the original Greek of

the "Timæus." It would appear that Plato considered the effect of all

the appetites, when too much indulged, as tending in the primitive

non-sexual type toward the development of that lower kind of animal

which the gods saw fit to treat as fit only to become woman.

[18] Grote.

[19] Grote's "Plato," iii, 282.

[20] See, as to the reception of the Platonic Demiurgus by the

Alexandrian Jews, first chapter.

[21] "Origin of Species," p. 428, American edition, from the sixth

English. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1882.

[22] Mr. Darwin refers to Mr. Herbert Spencer's theory of "the

necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation";

and indeed it is apparent that this class of philosophers have

constructed a theory which denies the creation of the human mind as a

spiritual essence, independent of matter, although some of them may

adhere to the idea that it was God who caused matter to evolve out of

its own action the substance or existence that we call mind.

[23] "Origin of Species," p. 69.

[24] For the illustrations of both kinds of selection I must refer the

reader to Mr. Darwin's works. In regard to birds, he makes the sexual

selection operate less by the "law of battle" among the males, or by

fighting, and more by the attractions of plumage and voice, by which

the males carry on their rivalry for the choice of the females in

pairing. But he attributes the same effect to the sexual selection in

birds as in the other animals, namely, the transmission to offspring,

and chiefly to the male offspring, of those peculiarities of structure

which have given to the male parent the victory over his competitors.

[25] A very low form of fish, without brain, vertebral column, or

heart, classed by the older naturalists among the worms. ("Descent of

Man," p. 159.) The technical name of the lancelet is _Amphioxus_.

[26] "Origin of Species," p. 146.

[27] The kangaroos and opossums are of this group.

[28] Animals with four hands.

[29] Animals which produce living young, and nourish them after birth

by milk from the teats of the mother.

[30] The lemur is one of a genus of four-handed mammals, allied to

the apes, baboons, and monkeys, but with a form approaching that of

quadrupeds.

[31] "Descent of Man," p. 165.--The reader will need to observe that

monkey is the popular name of the ape and the baboon. In zoölogy,

monkey designates the animals of the genus _Simia_, which have long

tails. The three classes are apes, without tails; monkeys, with long

tails; baboons, with short tails.

[32] Grote, iii, p. 276.

[33] "Descent of Man," p. 65.

[34] "Descent of Man," p. 65.