CHAPTER III.

The Darwinian pedigree of man--The evolution of organisms out of other

organisms, according to the theory of Darwin.

It is doubtless an interesting speculation to go back in imagination to

a period to be counted by any number of millions of years, or covered

by an immeasurable lapse of time, and to conceive of slowly-moving

causes by which the present or the past inhabitants of this globe

became developed out of some primordial type, through successive

generations, resulting in different species, which became final

products and distinct organisms. But what the imagination can do in the

formation of a theory when acting upon a certain range of facts is,

as a matter of belief, to be tested by the inquiry whether the weight

of evidence shows that theory to be, in a supreme degree, a probable

truth, when compared with any other hypothesis. It is in this way that

I propose to examine and test the Darwinian pedigree of man. The whole

of Mr. Darwin's theory of the descent of man as an animal consists in

assigning to him a certain pedigree, which traces his organism through

a long series of other animals back to the lowest and crudest form of

animal life; and it must be remembered that this mode of accounting for

the origin of man of necessity supposes an unbroken connection of lives

with lives, back through the whole series of organisms which constitute

the pedigree, and that, according to the Darwinian theory, there was

no aboriginal creation of any of these organisms, save the very first

and lowest form with which the series commences. Not only must this

connection of lives with lives be shown, but the theory must be able

to show how it has come about that there are now distinct species of

animals which never reproduce any type but their own.

Two great agencies, according to the Darwinian theory, have operated

to develop the different species of animals from some low primordial

type, through a long series which has culminated in man, who can not

lay claim to be a special creation, but must trace his pedigree to

some ape-like creature, and so on to the remote progenitor of all the

_Vertebrata_. It is now needful to grasp, with as much precision as

such a theory admits of, the nature and operation of these agencies,

and to note the strength or weakness of the proof which they afford of

the main hypothesis. First, we have what is called "the struggle for

existence," which may be conceded as a fact, and to which more or less

may be attributed. The term is used by Mr. Darwin in a metaphorical

sense, to include all that any being has to encounter in maintaining

its individual existence, and in leaving progeny, or perpetuating its

kind. In the animal kingdom, the struggle for individual existence

is chiefly a struggle for food among the different individuals which

depend on the same food, or against a dearth of one kind of food which

compels a resort to some other kind. The struggle for a continuation

of its species is dependent on the success with which the individual

animal maintains the contest for its own existence. Now, it is

argued that in this great and complex battle for life it would occur

that infinitely varied diversities of structure would be useful to

the animals in helping them to carry on the battle under changing

conditions. These useful diversities, consisting of the development

of new organs and powers, would be preserved and perpetuated in the

offspring, through many successive generations, while the variations

that were injurious would be rigidly destroyed. The animals in whom

these favorable individual differences and variations of structure

were preserved would have the best chance of surviving and of

procreating their kind. So that, by this "survival of the fittest,"

Nature is continually selecting those variations of structure which

are useful, and continually rejecting or eliminating those which are

injurious; the result being the gradual evolution of successive higher

types of animals out of the lower ones, until we reach man, the highest

animal organism that exists on this earth. In the next place, we have,

as an auxiliary agency, in aid of natural selection, what is called

"the sexual selection," by which the best endowed and most powerful

males of a given species appropriate the females, and thus the progeny

become possessed of those variations of structure and the superior

qualities which have given to the male parent the victory over his

competitors.

The proofs that are relied upon to establish the operation and effect

of these agencies in producing the results that are claimed for them,

ought to show that, in one or more instances, an animal of a superior

organization which, when left to the natural course of its reproduction

by the union of its two sexes, always produces its own distinct type

and no other, has, in fact, been itself evolved out of some lower and

different organism by the agencies of natural and sexual selection

operating among the individuals of that lower type. One of the proofs,

on which great stress is laid by Mr. Darwin, may be disposed of without

difficulty. It is that which is said to take place in the breeding of

domestic animals, or of animals the breeding of which man undertakes to

improve for his own practical benefit, or to please his fancy, or to

try experiments. In all that has been done in this kind of selection,

in breeding from the best specimens of any class of animals, there

is not one instance of the production of an animal varying from its

near or its remote known progenitors in anything but adventitious

peculiarities which will not warrant us in regarding it as a new or

different animal. No breeder of horses has ever produced an animal

that was not a horse. He may have brought about great and important

improvements in the qualities of fleetness, or strength, or weight,

or endurance, by careful selection of the sire and the dam; but the

race-horse or the hunter, or the draught-horse or the war-horse, is

but a horse of different qualities and powers, with the same skeleton,

viscera, organs, muscles, which mark this species of animal, and with

no other variations of structure than such as follow from the limited

development of different parts for different uses. No breeder of cows

ever produced a female animal that was not a cow, although he may have

greatly improved the quality and quantity of the milk peculiar to this

animal by careful selection of the individuals which he permits or

encourages to breed. No breeder of sheep ever produced an animal that

was not a sheep, although the quality of the fleece or of the mutton

may have been greatly improved or varied. Among the domestic fowls, no

animal that was not a bird was ever bred by any crossing of breeds,

although great varieties of plumage, structure of beak, formation of

foot, development of wing, habits of life, adaptation to changes of

situation, and many minor peculiarities, have been the consequences

of careful and intelligent breeding from different varieties of the

same fowl. In the case of the pigeon, of which Mr. Darwin has given

a great many curious facts from his own experience as a breeder, the

most remarkable variations are perhaps to be observed as the results

of intentional breeding from different races of that bird; but with

all these variations nothing that was not a bird was ever produced.

In the case of the dog, whatever was his origin, or supposing him to

have been derived from the wolf, or to belong to the same family as

the wolf, it is, of course, impossible to produce, by any crossing of

different breeds of dogs, an animal that would not belong to the class

of the _Canidæ_. Indeed, it is conceded by Darwin, with all the array

of facts which he adduces in regard to the domesticated animals, that

by crossing we can only get forms in some degree intermediate between

the parents; and that although a race may be modified by occasional

crosses, if aided by careful selection of the individuals which present

the desired character, yet to obtain a race intermediate between two

distinct races would be very difficult, if not impossible. If this is

so, how much more remote must be the possibility, by any selection, or

by any crossing to which Nature will allow the different animals to

submit, to produce an animal of so distinct a type that it would amount

to a different species from its known progenitors!

From all that has been brought about in the efforts of man to improve

or to vary the breeds of domestic animals--a kind of selection that is

supposed to be analogous to what takes place in Nature, although under

different conditions--it is apparent that there are limitations to the

power of selection in regard to the effects that are to be attributed

to it. A line must be drawn somewhere. It will not do in scientific

reasoning, or in any other reasoning, to ignore the limitations to

which all experience and observation point with unerring certainty, so

far as experience and observation furnish us with facts. It is true

that the lapse of time during which there has been, with more or less

success, an intentional improvement in the breeds of domestic animals

carried on with recorded results has been very short when compared

with the enormous period that has elapsed since the first creation

of an animal organization, whenever or whatever that creation was.

But history furnishes us with a pretty long stretch of time through

which civilized, half-civilized, and savage nations have had to do

with various animals in first taming them from a wild state and then

in domesticating so as to make them subservient to human wants, and

finally in improving their breeds. But there is no recorded or known

instance in which there has been produced under domestication an animal

which can be said to be of a different species from its immediate known

progenitors, or one that differed from its remote known progenitors

in any but minor and adventitious peculiarities of structure. If in

passing from what has been done by human selection in the breeding of

animals to what has taken place in Nature in a much longer space of

time and on a far greater scale, we find that in Nature, too, there

are limitations to the power of that agency which is called natural

selection--that there is an impassable barrier which Nature never

crosses, an invincible division between the different species of

animals--we must conclude that there is a line between what selection

can and what it can not do. We must conclude, with all the scope and

power that can be given to natural selection, that Nature has not

developed a higher and differently organized animal out of a lower

and inferior type--has not made new species by the process called

evolution, because the infinite God has not commissioned Nature to do

that thing, but has reserved it unto himself to make special creations.

Do not all that we know of the animal kingdom--all that naturalists

have accumulated of facts and all that they concede to be the absence

of facts--show that there is a clear and well-defined limitation to

the power of natural selection, as well as to the power of that other

agency which is called sexual selection? Grant that this agency of

natural selection began to operate at a period, the commencement of

which is as remote as figures can describe; that the struggle for life

began as soon as there was an organized being existing in numbers

sufficiently large to be out of proportion to the supply of food; that

the sexual selection began at the same time, and that both together

have been operating ever since among the different species of animals

that have successively arisen and successively displaced each other

throughout the earth. The longer we imagine this period to have

been, the stronger is the argument against the theory of evolution,

because the more numerous will be the absences of the gradations and

transitions necessary to prove an unbroken descent from the remote

prototype which is assumed to have been the first progenitor of the

whole animal kingdom. Upon the hypothesis that evolution is a true

account of the origin of the different animals, we ought practically

to find no missing links in the chain. The fact is that the missing

links are both extremely numerous and important; and the longer the

period assumed--the further we get from the probability that these two

agencies of natural and sexual selection were capable of producing the

results that are claimed for them--the stronger is the proof that a

barrier has been set to their operation, and the more necessary is it

to recognize the line which separates what they can from what they can

not do.

Let us now see what is the state of the proof. It may assist the

reader to understand the Darwinian pedigree of man if I present it in

a tabulated form, such as we are accustomed to use in exhibiting to

the eye the pedigree of a single animal. Stated in this manner, the

Darwinian pedigree of man may be traced as follows:

I. A marine animal of the maggot form.

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II. Group of lowly-organized fishes.

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III. Ganoids and other fishes.

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IV. The Amphibians.

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V. The ancient Marsupials.

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VI. The Quadrumana and all the higher mammals.

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VII. The Lemuridæ.

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VIII. The Simiadæ.

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+-------------------+

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IX. Old World Monkeys. New World Monkeys.

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X. Man.

These ten classes or groups of animals are supposed to be connected

together by intermediate diversified forms, which constitute the

transitions from one of the classes or groups to the other; and in

reading the table downward it must be remembered that we are reading

in fact through an ascending scale of beings, from the very lowest

organized creature to the highest. The whole, taken together, forms a

chain of evidence; and, according to the rational rules of evidence,

each distinct fact ought to be proved to have existed at some time

before our belief in the main hypothesis can be challenged. I know of

no reason why the probable truth of a scientific hypothesis should

be judged by any other rules of determination than those which are

applied to any other subject of inquiry; and, while I am ready to

concede that in matters of physical science it is allowable to employ

analogy in constructing a theory, it nevertheless remains, and must

remain, true that where there are numerous links in a supposed chain

of proofs that are established by nothing but an inference drawn from

an analogous fact, the collection of supposed proofs does not exclude

the probable truth of every other hypothesis but that which is sought

to be established, as it also does not establish the theory in favor of

which the supposed facts are adduced. Upon these principles of evidence

I propose now to examine the Darwinian pedigree of man.

I. The group of marine animals described as resembling the larvæ of

existing Ascidians; that is to say, an aquatic animal in the form

of a grub, caterpillar, or worm, which is the first condition of an

insect at its issuing from the egg. These assumed progenitors of the

Vertebrata are reached, according to Mr. Darwin, by "an obscure glance

into a remote antiquity," and they are described as "apparently"

existing, and as "resembling" the larvæ of existing Ascidians. We are

told that these animals were provided with branchiæ, or gills, for

respiration in water, but with the most important organs of the body,

such as the brain and heart, imperfectly or not at all developed. This

simple and crude animal "we can see," it is said, "in the dim obscurity

of the past," and that it "must have been the early progenitor of

all the Vertebrata."[35] It is manifest that this creature is a mere

hypothesis, constructed, no doubt, by the aid of analogy, but existing

only in the eye of scientific imagination. Why is it placed in the

water? For no reason, apparently, but that its supposed construction

is made to resemble that of some creatures which have been found in

the water, and because it was necessary to make it the progenitor of

the next group, the lowly-organized fishes, in order to carry out the

theory of the subsequent derivations. It might have existed on the

land, unless at the period of its assumed existence the whole globe was

covered with water. If it had existed on the land, the four subsequent

forms, up to and including the Marsupials, might have been varied to

suit the exigencies of the pedigree without tracing the descent of the

Marsupials through fishes and the Amphibians.

II. The group of lowly-organized fishes. These are said to have been

"probably" derived from the aquatic worm (I), and they are described

to have been as lowly organized as the lancelet, which is a known fish

of negative characters, without brain, vertebral column, or heart,

presenting some affinities with the Ascidians, which are invertebrate,

hermaphrodite marine creatures, permanently attached to a support,

and consisting of a simple, tough, leathery sack, with two small

projecting orifices. The larvæ of these creatures somewhat resemble

tadpoles, and have the power of swimming freely about. These larvæ of

the Ascidians are said to be, in their manner of development, related

to the Vertebrata in the relative position of the nervous system,

and in possessing a structure closely like the _chorda dorsalis_ of

vertebrate animals.[36] Here, again, it is apparent that a group of

lowly-organized fish-like animals, of which there are no remains,

have been constructed by a process of scientific reasoning from a

certain class of marine creatures that are known. As a matter of pure

theory, there can be no serious objection to this kind of construction,

especially if it is supported by strong probabilities furnished by

known facts. But when a theory requires this kind of reasoning in order

to establish an important link in a chain of proofs, it is perfectly

legitimate and necessary criticism that we are called upon to assume

the former existence of such a link; and, indeed, the theorists

themselves, with true candor and accuracy, tell us that they are

arguing upon probabilities from the known to the unknown, or that a

thing "must have existed" because analogies warrant the assumption that

it did exist. In a matter so interesting, and in many senses important,

as the evolution theory of man's descent, it is certainly none too

rigid to insist on the application of the ordinary rules of belief.

III. The Ganoids and other fishes like the Lepidosiren. These, we

are told, "must have been developed" from the preceding (II). The

Ganoids, it is said, were fishes covered with peculiar enameled bony

scales. Most of them are said to be extinct, but enough is known about

them to lay the foundation for their "probable" development from the

first fishes that are supposed to have been derived from the aquatic

worm (I). There is a reason for arguing the existence of these first

fishes as a true fish with the power of locomotion, because the next

ascending group of animals is to be the Amphibians. In a fish, the

swim-bladder is an important organ; and it is an organ that plays an

important part in the Darwinian theory, furnishing, it is claimed,

a very remarkable illustration that an organ constructed originally

for one purpose, flotation, may be converted into one for a widely

different purpose, namely, respiration. As the Amphibians, which as

a distinct group were to come next after the fishes in the order of

development, must be furnished with a true air-breathing lung, their

progenitors, which inhabited the water only, must be provided with an

organ that would undergo, by transitional gradations, conversion into

a lung. But what is to be chiefly noted here is that it is admitted

that the prototype, which was furnished with a swim-bladder, was "an

ancient and unknown prototype"; and it is a mere inference that the

true lungs of vertebrate animals are the swim-bladder of a fish so

converted, by ordinary generation, from the unknown prototype because

the swim-bladder is "homologous or 'ideally similar' in position and

structure with the lungs of the higher vertebrate animals."[37] One

might ask here without presumption, why the Omnipotent God should not

have created in the vertebrate animals a lung for respiration, as well

as have created or permitted the formation of a swim-bladder in a fish;

and looking to the probabilities of the case, it is altogether too

strong for the learned naturalist to assert that "there is no reason

to doubt that the swim-bladder has actually been converted into lungs

or an organ used exclusively for respiration"; especially as we are

furnished with nothing but speculation to show the intermediate and

transitionary modifications between the swim-bladder and the lung.

While we may not assume "that the Creator works by intellectual powers

like those of man," in all respects, it is surely not presumptuous to

suppose that an Omnipotent and All-wise Being works by powers that are

competent to produce anything that in his infinite purposes he may see

fit specially to create.

IV. The Amphibians. Here we come to what is now a very numerous group,

of which it is said that the first specimens received, among other

modifications, the transformation of the swim-bladder of their fish

progenitors into an air-breathing lung. We are told that from the

fishes of the last preceding group (III) "a very small advance would

carry us on to the Amphibians."[38] But whether the advance from an

animal living in the water and incapable of existing out of that

element, to an animal capable of living on the land as well as in the

water, was small or large, we look in vain, at present, for the facts

that constitute that advance.

V. The Ancient Marsupials. These were an order of mammals such as

the existing kangaroos, opossums, etc., of which the young, born in

a very incomplete state of development, are carried by the mother,

while sucking, in a ventral pouch. They are supposed to have been

the predecessors, at an earlier geological period, of the placental

mammals, namely, the highest class of mammals, in which the embryo,

after it has attained a certain stage, is united to the mother by a

vascular connection called the _placenta_, which secures nourishment

that enables the young to be born in a more complete state. There is a

third and still lower division of the great mammalian series, called

the Montremata, and said to be allied to the Marsupials. But the

early progenitors of the existing Marsupials, classed as the Ancient

Marsupials, are supposed to constitute the connection between the

Amphibians and the placental mammals; that is to say, an animal which

produced its young by bringing forth an egg, from which the young is

hatched, became converted into an animal which produced its young from

a womb and nourished it after birth from the milk supplied by its

teats, the young being born in a very incomplete state of development

and carried by the mother in a ventral pouch while it is sucking. The

steps of variation and development by which this extraordinary change

of structure, of modes of reproduction and formation of organs, as well

as habits of life, took place, are certainly not yet discovered; and

it is admitted, in respect to forms "now so utterly unlike," that the

production of the higher forms by the process of evolution "implies

the former existence of links binding closely together all these

forms."[39] In other words, we are called upon to supply by general

reasoning links of which we have as yet no proof.

VI. The Quadrumana and all the higher (or Placental) Mammals. These are

supposed to stand between the implacental mammals (V) and the Lemuridæ

(VII). The latter were a group of four-handed animals, distinct from

the monkeys, and "resembling the insectivorous quadrupeds." But the

gradations which would show the transformation from the implacental

Marsupials to the placental Quadrumana are wanting.

VII. The Lemuridæ. This branch of the placental mammals is now actually

represented by only a few varieties. The early progenitors of those

which still exist are placed by Darwin in the series intermediate

between the Quadrumana and the Simiadæ; and according to Huxley they

were derived from the lowest, smallest, and least intelligent of the

placental mammalia.

VIII. The Simiadæ. This is the general term given by naturalists to the

whole group of monkeys. From the Lemuridæ to the Simiadæ we are told by

Darwin that "the interval is not very wide." Be it wider or narrower,

it would be satisfactory to know whether the gradations by which the

former became the latter are established by anything more than general

speculation.

IX. The Catarrhine, or Old-World Monkeys. These are the great stem

or branch of the Simiadæ which became the progenitors of man. His

immediate progenitors were "probably" a group of monkeys called by

naturalists the Anthropomorphous Apes, being a group without tails or

callosities, and in other respects resembling man. While this origin of

man is gravely put forward and maintained with much ingenuity, we are

told that "we must not fall into the error of supposing that the early

progenitor of the whole Simian stock, including man, was identical

with, or even closely resembled, any existing ape or monkey."[40] So

that somewhere between the early progenitor of the whole Simian stock

and all that we know of the monkey tribe, there were transitions and

gradations and modifications produced by natural and sexual selection

which we must supply as well as we can.

X. Man. We have now arrived at "the wonder and glory of the universe,"

and have traced his pedigree from a low form of animal, in the shape

of an aquatic worm, through successive higher forms, each developed

out of its predecessor by the operation of fixed laws, and without the

intervention of any special act of creation anywhere in the series,

whatever may have been the power and purpose by and for which existence

was given to the first organized and living creature, the aquatic worm.

Speaking of man as belonging, from a genealogical point of view, to the

Catarrhine, or Old-World stock of monkeys, Mr. Darwin observes that "we

must conclude, however much the conclusion may revolt our pride, that

our early progenitors would have been properly thus designated."[41]

I have already said that our pride may be wholly laid out of

consideration. The question of the probable truth of this hypothesis

of man's descent should not be affected by anything but correct

reasoning and the application of proper principles of belief. Treating

it with absolute indifference in regard to the dignity of our race,

I shall request my readers to examine the argument by which it is

supported, without the smallest influence of prejudice. I am aware

that it is asking a good deal to desire the reader to divest himself

of all that nature and education and history and poetry and religion

have contributed to produce in our feelings respecting our rank in the

scale of being. When I come to treat of that which, for want of a more

suitable term, must be called the substance of the human mind, and to

suggest how it bears upon this question of the origin of man, I shall,

as I trust, give the true, and no more than the true, scope to those

considerations which lead to the comparative dignity of the race. But

this dignity, as I have before observed, should follow and should not

precede or accompany the discussion of the scientific problem.

What has chiefly struck me in studying the theory of evolution as an

account of the origin of man is the extent to which the theory itself

has influenced the array of proofs, the inconsequential character of

the reasoning, and the amount of assumption which marks the whole

argument. This is not said with any purpose of giving offense. What is

meant by it will be fully explained and justified, and one of the chief

means for its justification will be found in what I have here more than

once adverted to--Mr. Darwin's own candor and accuracy in pointing out

the particulars in which important proofs are wanting. Another thing

by which I have been much impressed has been the repetition of what is

"probable," without a sufficient weighing of the opposite probability;

and sometimes this reliance on the "probable" has been carried to the

verge, and even beyond the verge, of all probability. Doubtless the

whole question of special creations on the one hand and of gradual

evolution on the other is a question of probability. But I now refer

to a habit among naturalists of asserting the probability of a fact or

an occurrence, and then, without proof, placing that fact or occurrence

in a chain of evidence from which the truth of their main hypothesis is

to be inferred. It is creditable to them as witnesses, that they tell

us that the particular fact or occurrence is only probably true, and

that we are to look for proof of it hereafter. But the whole theory

thus becomes an expectant one. We are to give up our belief that God

made man in his own image--that he fashioned our minds and bodies after

an image which he had conceived in his infinite wisdom--because we

are to expect at some future time to discover the proof that he did

something very different; that he formed some very lowly-organized

creature, and then sat as a retired spectator of the struggle for

existence, through which another and then another higher form of being

would be evolved, until the mind and the body of man would both have

grown out of the successive developments of organic structure. We can

not see this now; we can not prove it; but we may expect to be able to

see it and to prove it hereafter.

The present state of the argument does not furnish very strong

grounds for the expectation of what the future is to show. As far as

I can discover, the main ground on which the principle of evolution

is accepted by those who believe in it, is general reasoning. It is

admitted that there are breaks in the organic chain between man and his

nearest supposed allies which can not be bridged over by any extinct or

living species. The answer that is made to this objection seems to me

a very singular specimen of reasoning. It is said that the objection

will not appear of much weight to those who believe in the principle

of evolution from general reasons. But how is it with those who are

inquiring, and who, failing to feel the force of the "general reasons,"

seek to know what the facts are? When we are told that the breaks in

the organic chain "depend merely on the number of related forms which

have become extinct," is it asking too much to inquire how it is known

that there were such forms and that they have become extinct? Geology,

it is fully conceded on its highest authorities, affords us very little

aid in arriving at these extinct forms which would connect man with

his ape-like progenitors; for, according to Lyell, the discovery of

fossil remains of all the vertebrate classes has been a very slow and

fortuitous process, and this process has as yet reached no remains

connecting man with some extinct ape-like creature.[42] The regions

where such remains would be most likely to be found have not yet been

searched by geologists. This shows the expectant character of the

theory, and how much remains for the future in supplying the facts

which are to take the place of "general reasons."

But perhaps the most remarkable part of the argument remains to be

stated. The breaks in the organic chain of man's supposed descent are

admitted to be of frequent occurrence in all parts of the series, "some

being wide, sharp, and defined, others less so in various degrees."[43]

But these breaks depend merely, it is said, upon the number of related

forms that have become extinct, there being as yet no proof, even by

fossil remains, that they once existed. Now, the prediction is that

at some future time such breaks will be found still more numerous and

wider, by a process of extinction that will be observed and recorded;

and hence we are not to be disturbed, in looking back into the past,

by finding breaks that can not be filled by anything but general

reasoning. The passage in which this singular kind of reasoning is

expressed by Mr. Darwin deserves to be quoted:

"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries,

the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and

replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the

anthropomorphous apes, as Prof. Schaafhausen has remarked, will no

doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies

will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more

civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape

as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian

and the gorilla."[44]

I do not quite comprehend how the "more civilized state of man" in the

more or less remote future is to lead to this wider break. One can

understand how the whole of mankind may become more civilized, and

how the savage races will disappear by extermination or otherwise. It

may be, and probably will be, that the anthropomorphous apes will be

exterminated at the same time. But the question here is not in regard

to a more perfect and widely diffused civilization--a higher and

universal elevation of the intellectual and moral condition of mankind,

a more improved physical and moral well-being--but it is in regard to

a change in the physical and organic structure of the human animal, so

marked and pronounced as to produce a wider break between man and his

nearest supposed allies than that which now exists between the negro

or the Australian and the gorilla. The anthropomorphous ape existing

now will have disappeared; but it will be a well-known and recorded

animal of the past. But what reason is there to expect that natural and

sexual selection, or the advance of civilization, or the extermination

of the savage races of mankind, or all such causes combined, are going

to change essentially the structure of the human body to something

superior to or fundamentally different from the Caucasian individual?

We have had a tolerably long recorded history of the human body as it

has existed in all states of civilization or barbarism. And although

in the progress from barbarism to civilization--if utter barbarism

preceded civilization--the development of its parts has been varied,

and the brain especially has undergone a large increase in volume and

in the activity of its functions, we do not find that the plan on which

the human animal was constructed, however we may suppose him to have

originated, has undergone any material change.

The most splendid specimen of the Caucasian race that the civilized

world can show to-day has no more organs, bones, muscles, arteries,

veins, or nerves than those which are found in the lowest savage.

He makes a different use of them, and that use has changed their

development, and to some extent has modified stature, physical,

intellectual, and moral, and many other attributes; as climate and

habits of life have modified complexion, the diseases to which the

human frame is liable, and many other peculiarities. But if we take

historic man, we find that in all the physical features of his animal

construction that constitute him a species, he has been essentially

the same animal in all states of civilization or barbarism; and unless

we boldly assume that the prehistoric man was an animal born with a

coat of hair all over his body, and that clothing was resorted to as

the hair in successive generations disappeared, we can have no very

strong reason for believing that the human body has been at any time an

essentially different structure from what it is now. Even in regard to

longevity or power of continued life, if we set aside the exceptional

cases of what is related of the patriarchs in the biblical records,

we do not find that the average duration of human life has been much

greater or much less than the threescore and ten or the fourscore years

that are said to have been the divinely appointed term. As to what may

have been the average duration of life among prehistoric men, we are

altogether in the dark.

I must now revert to one of the most prominent of the admitted breaks

in the Darwinian pedigree, namely, that which occurs at the supposed

transition from the amphibians to the mammalia. There is a term which

is used in mechanics to mark the characteristic and fundamental

distinction between one complex machine and another. We speak of the

"principle" on which a mechanical structure operates, meaning the

essential construction and mode of operation which distinguish it from

other machines of the same general class. Although we are not to forget

that an animal organization, to which is given that mysterious essence

that is called life, may come into being by very different processes

from those which are employed by man in dealing with dead matter and

the forces which reside in it, yet there is no danger of being misled

into false analogies, if we borrow from mechanics a convenient term,

and speak of the "principle" on which an animal is constructed and on

which its animal organization operates. We find, then, that in the

animal kingdom there is a perfectly clear and pronounced division

between the modes in which the reproductive system is constructed and

by which it operates in the continuation of the species. The principle

of construction and operation of the reproductive system, by which an

individual animal is produced from an egg brought forth by the female

parent, and is thereafter nourished without anything derived from the

parental body, is as widely different from that by which the young

animal is born from a womb and nourished for a time from the milk of

the mother, as any two constructions, animate or inanimate, that can be

conceived of. Whatever may be the analogy or resemblance between the

embryo that is in the egg of one animal and the embryo that remains in

the womb of another animal, at the point at which the egg is expelled

from the parental system the analogy or resemblance ceases. In certain

animals a body that is called an egg is formed in the female parent,

containing an embryo, or fœtus, of the same species, or the substance

from which a like animal is produced. This substance is inclosed in an

air-tight vessel or shell; when this has been expelled from the parent

the growth of the embryo goes on to the stage of development at which

the young animal is to emerge from the inclosure, and, whatever may

have been the process or means of nourishment surrounding the embryo

within the shell and brought in that inclosure from the body of the

parent, the young animal never derives, at any subsequent stage of its

existence, either before or after it has left the shell, anything more

from the parental system. It may be "hatched" by parental incubation

or by heat from another source, but for nourishment, after it leaves

the shell, the young animal is dependent on substances that are not

supplied from the parental body, although they may be gathered or put

within its reach by the parental care.

The transition from this system of reproduction to that by which the

fœtus is formed into a greater or less degree of development within the

body of the parent, and then brought forth to be nourished into further

development by the parental milk, is enormous. The principle of the

organic construction and mode of perpetuating the species, in the two

cases, is absolutely unlike after we pass the point at which the ovule

is formed by the union of the male and the female vesicles that are

supposed to constitute its substance. When we pass from the implacental

to the placental mammals we arrive at the crowning distinction between

the two great systems of reproduction which separates them by a line

that seems to forbid the idea that the one has grown out of the

other by such causes as natural selection, and without a special and

intentional creation of a new and different mode of operation. On

the one hand, we have a system of reproduction by which the ovule is

brought forth from the body of the parent in an inclosed vessel, and

thereafter derives nothing from the parental body. In the other, we

have the ovule developed into the fœtus within the body of the parent,

and the young animal is then brought forth in a more or less complete

state of development, to be nourished by the parental secretion called

milk. The intervention of the placental connection between the fœtus

and the mother, whereby nourishment is kept up so that the young animal

may be born in a more complete state of development, is a contrivance

of marvelous skill, which natural selection, or anything that can be

supposed to take place in the struggle for existence, or the result

of the sexual battle, seems to be entirely inadequate to account for.

If two such very diverse systems could be supposed to have been the

product of human contrivance, we should not hesitate to say that the

principle of the one was entirely different from that of the other, and

that the change evinced the highest constructive skill and a special

design.

The Darwinian hypothesis is that this great transition from the one

system of reproduction to the other took place between the amphibians

and the ancient marsupials, by the operation of the influences

of natural and sexual selection. That is to say, the system of

reproduction through an egg, which is the characteristic of the

amphibians, became changed by gradations and modifications into the

system of the lowest mammals, the distinction between the former and

the latter being an obvious and palpable one. Then we are to suppose a

further change from the marsupials, or the implacental mammals, to that

wonderful contrivance, the _placenta_, by which the mother nourishes

the fœtus into a more complete state of development before the young

animal is born. This enormous change of system is supposed to have

been brought about by a struggle among the individuals of one species

for food, aided by a struggle between the males of that species for

the possession of the females, by the growth and development of organs

useful to the animal in the two battles, and by the transmission of

these enhanced powers and improved weapons to offspring, and possibly

by the crossing of different varieties of the new animals thus

produced. But what potency there could be in such causes to bring about

this great change it is extremely difficult to imagine, and we must

draw largely on our imaginations to reach it. It would seem that if

there is any one part of animal economy that is beyond the influence of

such causes as the "survival of the fittest," it is the reproductive

system, by which the great divisions of the animal kingdom continue

their respective forms. Give all the play that you can to the operation

of the successful battle for individual life, and to the victory of

the best-appointed males over their competitors for the possession

of the females, and to the transmission of acquired peculiarities to

offspring--when you come to such a change as that between the two

systems of reproduction and perpetuation, you have to account for

something which needs far more proof of the transitional gradations of

structure and habits of life than can now be found between the highest

of the amphibians and the lowest of the mammalia. I know not how there

could be higher or stronger evidence of design, of a specially planned

and intentionally elaborated construction, than is afforded by this

great interval between the one reproductive system and the other. But

it is time now to pass to those points of resemblance between man and

the other mammals which are asserted as the decisive proofs of his and

their descent from some pre-existing form, their common progenitor.

These points of resemblance may be considered in the following order:

1. _The Bodily Structure of Man._--He is notoriously constructed on

the same general type or model as other mammals. "All the bones in his

skeleton can be compared with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or

seal. So it is with his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, and internal

viscera. The brain, the most important of all the organs, follows the

same law."[45]

2. _The Liability of Man to certain Diseases to which the Lower

Animals are liable._--These diseases, such as hydrophobia, variola,

the glanders, syphilis, cholera, etc., man both communicates to and

receives from some of the lower animals. "This fact proves the close

similarity of their tissues and blood, both in minute structure

and composition, far more plainly than does their comparison under

the best microscope or by the aid of the best chemical analysis."

Monkeys are liable to many of the same non-contagious diseases as

we are, such as catarrh and consumption. They suffer from apoplexy,

inflammation of the bowels, and cataract in the eye. Their young die

from fever when shedding their milk-teeth. Medicines produce the

same effect on them as on us, and they have a strong taste for tea,

coffee, spirituous liquors, and even tobacco. Man is infested with

both internal and external parasites of the same genera or families as

those infesting other mammals; in the case of scabies, he is infested

with the same species of parasites. He is subject to the same law of

lunar periods, in the process of gestation, and in the maturation and

duration of certain diseases. His wounds are repaired by the same

process of healing, and, after the amputation of his limbs, the stumps

occasionally possess some power of regeneration, as in the lowest

animals.[46]

3. _The Reproductive Process._--This is strikingly the same, it is

said, in all mammals, from the first act of courtship by the male to

the birth and nurturing of the young.[47] The closeness of the parallel

here, however, is obviously between man and the other placental

mammalia, if we regard the whole process of reproduction of the

different species.

4. _Embryonic Development._--From the human ovule, which is said to

differ in no respect from the ovule of other animals, into and through

the early embryonic period, we are told that the embryo of man can

hardly be distinguished from that of other members of the vertebrate

kingdom. It is not necessary to repeat the details of the resemblance,

which are undoubtedly striking, because they show a remarkable

similarity between the embryo of man and that of the dog and the ape,

in the earlier stage of the development, and that it is not until quite

in the later stages of development that the three depart from each

other, the difference between the young human being and the ape being

not so great as that between the ape and the dog. We may, of course,

accept Prof. Huxley's testimony that "the mode of origin [conception?]

and the early stages of the development of man are identical with those

of the animals immediately below him in the scale; without a doubt, in

these respects, he is far nearer to the apes than the apes are to the

dog."[48]

5. _Rudiments._--This is a somewhat obscure branch of the proofs, which

requires a more detailed examination in order to appreciate its bearing

on the general theory of evolution. A distinction is made between

rudimentary and nascent organs. The former are absolutely useless to

their possessor--such as the mammæ of male quadrupeds, or the incisor

teeth of ruminants, which never cut through the gums--or else they are

of such slight service to their present possessors that they can not be

supposed to have been developed under the conditions which now exist.

These useless, or very slightly useful, organs in the human frame,

are supposed to have been organs which had an important utility in

the lower animals from which man is descended, but, by disuse at that

period of life when the organ is chiefly used, and by inheritance at a

corresponding period of life, they became of less and less utility in

the successive animals that were evolved out of the preceding forms,

until they sank into the condition of useless appendages, although

perpetuated by force of the derivation of one species of animal from

another, caused by the operation of the laws of natural and sexual

selection. Nascent organs, on the other hand, are those which, though

not fully developed to their entire capability, are of high service to

their possessor, and may be carried to a higher degree of utility. One

of the characteristics, as it is said, of rudimentary organs, is that

they often become wholly suppressed in individuals, and then reappear

occasionally in other individuals, through what is called reversion,

or a return to ancestral peculiarities.[49] We are told that "not one

of the higher animals can be named which does not bear some part in a

rudimentary condition; and man forms no exception to the rule."[50]

Among the rudiments that are peculiar to man, and which are supposed

to be proofs of his cognate relations to the lower animals, we are

referred to certain muscles in a reduced condition, which in the other

animals are used to move, twitch, or contract the skin, and remnants

of which, in an efficient state, are found in various parts of our

bodies; for instance, the muscles which raise the eyebrows, those which

contract the scalp, those which, in some individuals, move the external

ear, and similar muscular powers in different parts of the body. These

are adduced as illustrations of the persistent transmission of an

absolutely useless, or almost useless, faculty, "probably" derived from

our remote semi-human progenitors. There is also another rudiment in

man, found in the covering of the eye, and called by anatomists the

"semi-lunar fold," which in birds is of great functional importance,

as it can be rapidly drawn across the whole eyeball. In those animals

in which, with its accessory muscles and other structures, it is well

developed, as in some reptiles and amphibians, and in sharks, it is a

third eyelid. In the two lower divisions of the mammalian series, the

monotremata and the marsupials, and in some few of the higher mammals,

as in the walrus, it is said to be fairly well developed. But in

man, in the quadrumana, and most other mammals, it has become a mere

rudiment.

The sense of smell in man is also classed by Darwin and other

naturalists among the rudiments. It is argued that it was not

originally acquired by man as he now exists, but that he has inherited

this power, in an enfeebled and so far rudimentary condition, from some

early progenitor, to whom it was highly serviceable, and by whom it was

continually used.

Then we have the rudiment of hair, which, so far as it now exists on

different parts of our body, is regarded as a mere remnant of the

uniform hairy coat of the lower animals. Man, as he is now born,

"differs conspicuously from all the other primates in being almost

naked." But this nearly nude condition was not, it is said, the

condition of his progenitors, and it is not the condition of his

co-descendants from the same progenitors. At some time the progenitors

of man and his co-descendants became covered all over with a coat of

hair. What remains upon our bodies of this peculiar growth, that is

called hair, is what was left after the agency of natural selection

had worked off what was useless to the successive animals, and sexual

selection had operated to transmit to offspring the absence of hair

that had accrued in the nearer progenitors and the immediate parents.

The illustrations which render this view "probable" do not need to

be repeated, nor is it necessary to follow out the speculations

concerning the mode in which our progenitors, near or remote, became

varied in respect to the quantity, position, or direction of the hairs

on various parts of their bodies.

There are several other alleged homologues or rudiments which are

supposed to connect man with the lower animals, but which, whatever may

be the resemblances, it is not necessary to discuss in detail, because

there is one consideration at least which applies to the whole of

this class of proofs, and to that I now pass. The three great classes

of facts on which the whole argument rests, viewing man as an animal

and omitting all reference to his intellect, are the resemblances of

his bodily structure to that of the other mammals, the similarity

between his embryonic development and theirs, and the rudiments. I

reserve for separate discussion the counter-proof which may be derived

from the nature of the human mind, and the special adaptation of the

human structure to become the temporary residence and instrument of a

spiritual and immortal being.

"It is," says Mr. Darwin, "no scientific explanation to assert that

they have all [man and the other animals of the mammalian class] been

formed on the same ideal plan."[51] The similarity of pattern is

pronounced "utterly inexplicable" upon any other hypothesis than that

all these animals are descended from a common progenitor, and that

they have become what they are by subsequent adaptation to diversified

conditions. I may incur some risk in undertaking to suggest what is

a "scientific" explanation. Certainly I do not propose to "assert"

anything. But I will endeavor to keep within the bounds of what I

suppose to be science. I take that to be a scientific explanation

which, embracing the important facts of natural history as the

groundwork of the reasoning, undertakes to show the rationality of one

hypothesis that differs from another, when the question is, Which has

the greater amount of probability in its favor?

All correct reasoning on this subject of man's descent as an animal

begins, I presume, with the postulate of an Infinite Creator, having

under his power all the elements and forms of matter, organized and

unorganized, animate and inanimate. There is no fundamental difference

of opinion on this point, as I understand, between some of the

evolutionists and their opponents.[52] Omnipotence, boundless choice of

means and ends, illimitable wisdom, a benevolence that can not fail and

can not err, are the conceded attributes of the being who is supposed

to preside over the universe; and, however difficult it may be for us

to express a conception of infinite power and infinite wisdom, as it

is to describe infinite space and duration, we know what we mean to

assume when we speak or think of faculties that are without limit, and

of moral qualities that are subject to no imperfection. It is true that

we have no means of forming an idea of superhuman and infinite power

but by a comparison of our own limited faculties with those which we

assume to belong to an eternal and infinite God. But the nature of our

own limited powers teaches us that there may be powers that are as far

above ours as the heavens are above the earth, as the endless realms

of space stretch beyond and forever beyond any measurable distance,

as eternity stretches beyond and forever beyond all measurable time.

At all events, the postulate of an infinite God is the one common

starting-point for the scientists of the evolution school and those

who accept their doctrine, and for those who dissent from it. If I

did not assume this, I could not go one step further, for without it

there could not be a basis for any reasoning on the subject that would

lead anywhere but to the conclusion that all that exists came by blind

chance. This conclusion is rejected alike by the scientists, whose

views I am now examining, and by those who differ from them.

In the economy of Nature, which is but another term for the economy

of the Omnipotent Creator, there is no waste of power, as there is no

abstention from the exercise of power, where its exertions are needed

to accomplish an end. By this I mean that when a general plan of

construction is found carried out through a variety of organizations,

the rational inference is that so much power has been exerted as was

needful to accomplish in each organization the objects that are common

to all of them, and that no more power has been used in that direction.

But where a special adaptation in some one variety of the same class

of constructions is needful to accomplish an object peculiar to a new

variety, the necessary amount of power never fails to be exerted. A

study of the animal kingdom reveals this great truth, as palpably as a

study of the products of human skill reveals the fact that man, from

the imperfection of his faculties, is constantly exerting more or less

power than was needful in his efforts to produce a new variety in his

mechanical constructions. Experience and accumulated knowledge enable

us to carry a general plan of construction through a considerable group

of mechanical forms; but it is when we endeavor to vary the principle

of construction so as to produce a new and special mode of operation,

that we either waste power in repeating the general plan or fail to

exercise the amount of power necessary to adapt the general plan to the

introduction of the special object at which we are aiming. Our success

in making such adaptations is often wonderful, but our failures evince

that our imperfect faculties do not always enable us to accomplish

the necessary adaptations of the general plan of construction to the

special objects which we wish to attain. To the Infinite Creator, all

such difficulties are unknown. He neither wastes power by new plans

that are unnecessary, nor makes "vain repetitions," nor fails to exert

the requisite amount of power and wisdom in the introduction of new

and special contrivances which he ingrafts upon or superadds to the

general plan, and which he has devised for the accomplishment of a

new object. With a boundless choice of means and ends, with a skill

that can not err, with a prescience that sees the end from the first

conception of the design, he can repeat the general plan throughout

any variety of constructions without any waste of power, and can

introduce the new adaptations or contrivances which are to constitute

a new construction, by the exercise of all the power that is required

to accomplish a special object. Whether we are to suppose that he does

this by the establishment of certain laws which he leaves to operate

within prescribed limits, or does it by special creations proceeding

from direct and specific exertions of his will, the question of his

power to employ the one method or the other remains always the same.

The question of which was his probable method depends upon the force of

evidence; and upon this question we must allow great weight to the fact

which all Nature discloses, namely, that the Creator does not waste

power by making new plans of construction where an existing plan may be

usefully repeated, and that he does not fail to exercise the necessary

power when he wishes to add to the general plan of construction a new

and special organism for a particular purpose.

Is there anything presumptuous in thus speaking of the determination

and purposes of the Omnipotent Creator? We have his existence and

infinite attributes conceded as the basis of all sound reasoning on his

works. Why then should we not infer his purposes and his acts from his

works? Why should we not attribute to him a special design, when we

can not examine his works without inferring such special design, unless

we conclude that the most amazing and peculiar constructions grew up

under the operation of causes of which we have no sufficient proof, and

in the supposed result of which there are admitted chasms that can not

be bridged over?

To return now to the resemblance between the bodily structure of

man and that of his supposed progenitors. The assertion is that a

repetition of the same general plan of construction throughout a class

of animals can only be explained upon the hypothesis of their descent

from a common progenitor. They are, it is claimed, co-descendants

from some one ancient animal; and however they may differ from each

other, in all these co-descendants from that animal we find the same

general plan of construction, the same ideal model repeated. Among the

whole class of the higher mammals, we have skeletons, muscles, nerves,

blood-vessels, internal viscera, organs, that closely correspond. What

does this prove but that there was no waste of power, because there

was no necessity in making man, for the formation of a general plan

of construction different in these particulars from that which was

employed in making the monkey, the bat, or the seal? The similarity

of pattern between the hand of a man or a monkey, the foot of a

horse, the flipper of a seal, or the wing of a bat, is pronounced

"utterly inexplicable" upon any hypothesis but that of descent from a

common progenitor. But why is not this sameness of ideal plan just as

consistent with the hypothesis that the same ideal plan would answer

for the human hand or the hand of an ape, the foot of the horse, the

flipper of the seal, or the wing of the bat?[53] It is when you pass

from such resemblances and come to the special contrivances which

separate one animal from another by a broad line of demarkation,

that you are to look for the adaptation of special contrivances to

repetitions of the same ideal model through the varying species. Take,

for example, the introduction among the mammals of the placental system

of reproduction, parturition, and subsequent nourishment of the young,

combined with the nourishment of the fœtus while it continues in the

body of the mother. This system would require no material variation

from the general plan of construction that is common to the different

mammals of this class in respect to the parts where the resemblances

are kept up throughout the series, such as those of the skeleton,

muscles, nerves, viscera, and other organs that are found in all of

them. But for the introduction of this peculiar system of reproduction

and continuation of the species, there was needful a special and

most extraordinary contrivance. If such a contrivance or anything

like it had been produced by human skill, and been introduced into a

mechanical structure, we should not hesitate to say that there had

been an invention of a most special character. When you follow this

system through the different animals in which it is found operating,

and find that the period of gestation and of suckling is varied for

each of them, that for each there is the necessary modification of

trunk, situation of the organs, assimilation of food and formation

of milk, and many other peculiarities, what are you to conclude but

that there has been an adaptation of a new system to a general plan

of construction, and that while the latter remains substantially the

same, it has had ingrafted upon or incorporated with it a most singular

contrivance, so original, comprehensive, and flexible, that its

characteristic principle admits of the most exact working in animals

that are as far asunder as man and the horse, or as the horse and the

seal, or as the seal and the bat?

The resemblances between the embryonic development of man and the

other mammals present another instance of the constantly occurring

fact that there has been no waste of power on the one hand, and on the

other no failure to exert the amount of power requisite to produce a

new variation of the general principle. There is no more logical force

in the hypothesis of a common progenitor, in order to account for

these resemblances, than there is in the hypothesis that the general

system of embryonic development was first devised, and that it was

then varied in each distinct animal according to the requirements of

its special construction. Upon the latter supposition, there would

be resemblances to a certain stage, and then there would follow the

departures which we have no difficulty in tracing. Upon the former

supposition we should expect to find, what we actually do find, that

it is very difficult, if not impossible, to assign any reason for

the departures, or to suggest how it has happened that one animal is

so absolutely distinct from another. Thus, to begin with the embryo

itself, and to trace it through its stages of development, we find

that in man it can hardly be distinguished from that of other members

of the vertebrate kingdom. This we should expect to be the case after

we have learned the great fact that Nature operates upon a uniform

principle up to the point where variations and departures are to

supervene. The system of embryonic development being devised to operate

in parallel lines through all the placental mammals until the lines

should begin to depart from each other so as to result in animals

of different species, would necessarily show strong resemblances of

structure until the departures supervened. There would be, in other

words, a strong illustration of the truth that in the Divine economy

there is no waste of power. But when the stage is reached at which the

departures may be noted, and the lines diverge into the production of

organized beings differing widely from each other, we reach an equally

striking illustration of the corresponding truth that the amount of

power necessary to produce very different results never fails to be

put forth. There is no good reason why this latter exertion of power

should not be attributed to special design just as logically and

rationally as we must attribute to intentional purpose and infinite

skill the general system of embryonic development which has been made

for the whole class of the placental mammals. While, therefore, we may

accept as a fact Prof. Huxley's statement on this branch of comparative

anatomy, we are under no necessity to accept his conclusion. To the

question whether man originates in a different way from a dog, bird,

frog, or fish, this anatomist answers, as already quoted: "The reply

is not doubtful for a moment; without question, the mode of origin and

the early stages of the development of man are identical with those

of the animals immediately below him in the scale; without a doubt,

in these respects he is far nearer to apes than apes are to the dog."

This refers, of course, to the parallelism that obtains in the early

stages of the embryonic development. It necessarily implies, at later

stages, diverging lines, which depart more or less from each other, and

thus we have between the ape and the man a nearer approach than we have

between the ape and the dog. But how does this displace, or tend to

displace, the hypothesis of a general system of embryonic development

for all animals of a certain class, and an intentional and special

variation of that system so as to produce different species of animals?

The identity between the mode of origin and the early stages of the

development of man and those of the animals immediately below him in

the scale, is strong proof of the applicability of the same general

principle of development throughout all the animals of a certain class.

The cessation of the parallelism at the diverging lines is equally

strong proof of a design to create an animal differing as man does from

the ape, or as the ape does from the dog. The argument that these three

species are co-descendants from a common progenitor, viewing man simply

as an animal, is at least no stronger than the argument which leads to

the conclusion of special creations.

The same thing may be said of the liability of man to certain

contagious or non-contagious diseases in common with some of the lower

animals. That there is a similarity in the chemical composition of

the blood of an entire class of animals, in the structure of their

tissues and blood-vessels, so that they are subject to the same causes

of inflammation or to the same parasites, is proof of a uniform plan

of the fluids and the vascular system, or, in other words, it evinces

that here, too, there has been in these respects no waste of power in

forming the different animals of the same class. But trace back the

supposed pedigree of the animals sharing this chemical composition

of the blood, character of tissues, and vascular system, until you

have passed through the amphibians and reached their supposed fish

progenitors. Somewhere between the fishes and the higher mammals,

you have not only a great change in the chemical composition of the

blood-vessels and tissues, but an equally great change in the apparatus

by which the blood is oxygenated.[54] How can these changes have

been brought about without a new and intentional structure of the

vessels and the apparatus for supplying the oxygen demanded for the

continuation of life? How can we explain these changes by such agencies

as the natural selection which is supposed to lead to the "survival

of the fittest," and the sexual selection which is supposed to give

to the best-appointed males of a given species the power to transmit

to their offspring the new peculiarities which they have acquired

through successive generations? Do not these changes show that there

is a line of division which such agencies alone can not cross? Do they

not clearly point to the exercise of the creative power in a special

manner, and for special purposes? That power being once exercised, the

new chemical composition and mechanical appliances being devised, the

same "ideal plan" could be carried through a new class of animals by

a repetition which is in accordance with the economy of Nature, and

which an infinite power could adapt to the formation of animals, each

of which was designed to perpetuate its own species and no other. Hence

we should expect to find in the animals sharing in the same formation

of the blood and the vascular system a corresponding process of healing

the parts severed by a wound, and a continuous secretion from such

vessels as have not been cut away; but we should not expect to find the

stumps growing into a new and perfect part, to take the place of what

has been removed by amputation.[55] We should expect to find the same

drugs affecting different animals of the same class alike; and when the

nervous system of a class of animals is upon the same general plan,

we should expect to find them similarly affected by stimulants. But

these resemblances do not militate very strongly against the hypothesis

of special creations, when we consider that it is according to the

universal economy of the Omnipotent Creator to employ the necessary,

and no more than the necessary, power in originating a plan that may

be applied to the formation of a distinct class of beings, and that

his adaptations of this plan to further and specific constructions of

beings belonging to a general class, but differing widely from each

other, are among the strongest and plainest proofs of his infinite

power and the nature of his methods.

In regard to the "rudiments" that are found in man, the theory of Mr.

Darwin can be best stated in his own words: "In order to understand the

existence of rudimentary organs, we have only to suppose that a former

progenitor possessed the parts in question in a perfect state, and that

under changed habits of life they became greatly reduced, either from

simple disuse or through the natural selection of those individuals

which were least encumbered with a superfluous part, aided by the

other means previously indicated."[56] But, in order to do justice to

this theory, it is necessary to repeat the description and operation

of the supposed agencies of natural and sexual selection. Natural

selection is an occurrence which takes place among the individuals

of a certain species in the struggle for existence, whereby those

who are best appointed secure the necessary supply of food, and the

weaker or less active are either directly destroyed in the contest or

perish for want of nourishment. The "fittest" having survived, they

have the best chance of procreating their kind, and are likely to have

the most progeny. To these individuals there comes in aid the sexual

selection, which means chiefly the victory of the fittest males over

their less fit competitors for the possession of the females. Whatever

peculiarities of structure or development, or diminution of structure

or development, these fittest males possess, they would transmit

to their offspring. This tendency would be enhanced by the varying

conditions of life through which the successive generations might have

to pass; so that if the former progenitor possessed naturally an organ

in a perfect state, but ceased to make use of it, and for thousands

of generations its use went on diminishing, it would sink into the

condition of a mere rudiment. Supposing this to be a partially true

explanation of the modes in which organs become rudimentary, how does

it militate against the idea of separate creations? We have "only

to suppose" that the first men possessed, for example, the power of

moving the skin all over their bodies by the contraction of certain

muscles, and that their remote descendants lost it everywhere excepting

in a few parts, where it remains in an efficient state, and that it

has become varied in different individuals. The process by which

organs become rudimentary is an hypothesis just as consistent with

the separate creation of man as it is with his being a co-descendant

from some lower animal whose descendants branched into men, apes,

horses, seals, bats, etc.; for, on the supposition of the separate

creation of all these different animals, each species might have been

originally endowed with this power of muscular contraction of the

skin, and in their descendants it might have been retained or varied

or have become more or less rudimentary, according to its utility

to the particular species. The truth is, that our own faculties of

creation or construction, when we undertake to deal with matter and

its properties, are so imperfect, and that which constitutes living

organisms is so utterly beyond our reach, that we do not sufficiently

remember how entirely it is within the compass of the infinite Power,

which has given to matter all the properties that it possesses and

has living organisms under its absolute control, to form a system of

construction and operation for beings of entirely distinct characters,

carrying it through each of them in parallel lines, or causing it to

diverge into varying results with an economy that neither wastes the

constructive power nor fails to exert it where it is needed. To argue

that the presence of rudiments in different animals, in different

comparative states of development or efficiency, or in a purely useless

condition, can only be explained by a descent from some remote common

progenitor, is what the logicians call a _non sequitur_. It overlooks

the illimitable faculty of the creating Power, and disregards the

great fact that such a power acts by an economy that is saving where

uniformity will accomplish what is intended, that is profuse where

variation is needful, and that can guide its own exertions of power,

or its abstention from such exertions, by unerring wisdom, to the most

varied and exact results.

I trust that by the use of the term "economy" in speaking of what

is observable in the works of the Creator, I shall be understood as

comprehending both the avoidance of unnecessary and the exertion of

all necessary power. Of the degree of necessity in any exercise of a

power which we suppose to be infinite, we can only judge by what we

can see. If omnipotence and omniscience are to be predicated of the

being who is supposed to preside over the universe, it is rational to

conclude, from all that we can discover, that, in applying a uniform

system of construction to different animals of a certain general class,

he acted upon a principle that his unerring faculties enabled him to

see was a comprehensive one; and that in producing variations of that

system of construction that would result in adapting its uniformity

to the varying conditions of the different species, he acted by the

same boundless wisdom and power. If these postulates of the Divine

attributes are conceded, rudiments do not by any means necessarily

lead to the conclusion that all the animals of a certain class are

co-descendants from some remote common progenitor, for they do not

exclude the hypothesis that each distinct animal was formed upon a

general plan of construction that could be applied throughout the

class, but that it was varied according to the special conditions of

its intended being. Organs or parts may thus have become more or less

rudimentary without resorting to the supposition of a common progenitor

for the whole class. That supposition, indeed, makes it necessary

to assume that the infinite Creator fashioned some one animal, and

then, abstaining from all work of further direct creation, left all

the other animals to be evolved out of that one by the operation of

secondary causes that fail even as a theory to account for what we

see, and that can not be traced through any results that have yet been

discovered. Wherever we pause in the ascending scale of the Darwinian

descent of man, wherever we place the first special act of creative

power, whether we put it at the fish-like animal of the most remote

antiquity, and call that creature the original progenitor of all the

vertebrata, or whether we suppose a special creation to have occurred

at the introduction of the mammalian series, or anywhere else, we

have to account for changes of system, new constructions, elaborately

diversified forms, by the operation of agencies that were incapable of

producing the results, if we are to judge of their capacity by anything

that we have seen or known of their effects.

I will conclude this chapter by expressing as accurately as I can

what has struck me as the excessive tendency of modern science to

resolve everything into the operation of general laws, or into what

we call secondary causes. I may be able to suggest nothing new upon

this part of the subject, but I shall at least be able, I hope, to

put my own mind in contact with that of the reader by explaining what

has impressed me in the speculations of those who lay so much stress

upon the potency of general laws to produce the results which we

see in Nature. Of course, I do not question the great fact that the

infinite Power acts by and through the uniform methods from which we

are accustomed to infer what we call laws; which in physics is nothing

but a deduction of regularity and system from that which we see to

be perpetually and invariably happening. Now, I do not enter here

into the question of the tendency of modern science to displace our

religious ideas of a special Providence, by attributing everything

in Nature to the operation of fixed laws of matter; or its tendency,

in other words, to remove the infinite Being at a greater distance

from us than that in which our religious feelings like to contemplate

him. I am perfectly sensible that in truth the infinite God is just

as near to us, when we regard him as acting by general laws and

secondary causes, as when we believe him to be exercising a direct and

special power. I am equally sensible that it is in the very nature

of infinite power, wisdom, and benevolence to be able and willing to

ordain uniform and fixed principles of action. That Power which gives

to matter all its properties may well be supposed to have established

uniformity and regularity of movements, forces, combinations, and

qualities. How supremely consistent this uniformity and regularity

are, with what stupendous accuracy they are kept forever in operation,

we are more or less able to discern; and that benevolence which is

believed to accompany the power may well be supposed to have intended

that its intelligent and rational creatures should be able in some

degree to discover and to avail themselves of these unvarying laws of

the physical world. But are these laws to be supposed to be the only

methods by which the infinite Will has ever acted? Is it to be assumed

that, having settled and established these perpetual principles, on

which matter, organized or unorganized, is to act, he leaves everything

to their operation and abstains from all further exertion of his

creative power for any special purpose? Has he given to these general

laws a potency to produce, in and of themselves, all the results? In

other words, has he affixed to their operation no limitations, or has

he set bounds to them, and reserved to himself, by direct, specific,

and occasional exercise of his will and power, for new purposes, to

produce results for which the general laws were not ordained?

It is not necessary here to enter into the consideration of what

are called "miracles." These, in their true meaning, are special

interpositions, which the Divine Power is supposed to make, by a

suspension or interruption of the established laws of Nature; and,

whatever may be the grounds of our belief or our unbelief in such

occurrences, they are not exercises of power such as those which are

supposed to take place in special creations of new beings. That the

hypothesis of special creations of new beings involves no interruption

or displacement of the fixed laws of Nature, is quite manifest.

NOTE A.

NOTE ON AMPUTATION, OR SEVERANCE OF PARTS.--As Mr. Darwin

attached some importance to a fact which he asserted respecting the

efforts of Nature to restore a part of an organism which has been

severed by amputation, I think it well to quote his statement, and to

point out what I believe to be an inaccuracy. His statement is this:

"His [man's] wounds are repaired by the same process of healing,

and the stumps left after the amputation of his limbs, especially

during an early embryonic period, occasionally possess some power of

regeneration, as in the lowest animals." It is not quite apparent

what he means by amputation during an early embryonic period. If he

is to be understood as referring to a case of complete severance of

any part of an embryo before birth, it has not been demonstrated

that such a severance has been followed by a successful effort of

Nature to replace the severed part; and it is difficult to understand

how there could be such an amputation during embryonic life without

destroying the life of the embryo; or, if the severed part were one

of the extremities, how there could be a new extremity formed. In

such a case, if life continued and birth were to take place, the

animal must be born in an imperfect state. In regard to amputations

taking place at any time after birth, if the expression "some power

of regeneration" means to imply a new formation to take the place

of the severed part, the assertion is not correct. What occurs in

such cases may be illustrated by the very common accident of the

severance of the end of a human finger at the root of the nail. If

the incision is far enough back to remove the whole of the vessels

which secrete the horny substance that forms the nail, there will

be no after growth of anything resembling a nail. If some of those

vessels are left in the stump, there will be continuous secretion

and deposit of the horny substance, which may go so far as to form a

crude resemblance to a nail. But if all the vessels which constitute

the means of perpetuating a perfect nail are not left in their normal

number and action, there can be no such thing as the formation of a

new nail. Whether it is correct to speak of the imperfect continuation

of a few of the vessels to secrete the substance which it is their

normal function to secrete, as a "power of regeneration," is more

than doubtful, if by such a power is meant a power to make a new

and complete structure to take the place of the structure that has

been cut away. It is nothing more than the continued action of a

few vessels, less in number than the normal system required for the

continued growth and renewal of the part in question. The abortive

product in such cases looks like an unsuccessful effort of Nature

to make a new structure in place of the old one; but it is not in

reality such an effort. The fact that the same thing occurs, in just

the same way and to a corresponding extent, in different animals, has

no tendency to prove anything excepting that these different animals

share the same general system of secreting vessels for the formation

and perpetuation of the several parts of their structures. It has no

tendency to prove that they are co-descendants from a common ancestral

stock, for on the hypothesis of their special and independent creation

a common system of secreting vessels would be entirely consistent with

their peculiar and special constructions.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] "Descent of Man," pp. 164, 609.

[36] "Descent of Man," p. 159.

[37] "Origin of Species," p. 148.

[38] "Descent of Man," p. 165.

[39] "Descent of Man," p. 158.

[40] "Descent of Man," p. 155.

[41] Ibid.

[42] "Descent of Man," pp. 156, 157.

[43] Ibid., p. 156.

[44] "Descent of Man," p. 156.

[45] "Descent of Man," p. 6.

[46] Ibid., p. 8.

[47] Ibid.

[48] "Descent of Man," pp. 9, 10, quoting Huxley, "Man's Place in

Nature," p. 65.

[49] "Descent of Man," p. 11 _et seq._

[50] Ibid.

[51] "Descent of Man," p. 24. Consult Mr. Darwin's note on Prof.

Bianconi's explanation of homologous structures upon mechanical

principles, in accordance with their uses.

[52] Mr. Herbert Spencer's peculiar views are not here included in the

discussion, but they will be considered hereafter.

[53] It is immaterial, of course, in this discussion, whether the

formation of man preceded that of the other animals, according to

the Platonic idea, or whether, as in the account given in the book

of Genesis, the other animals were first formed. So far as an ideal

plan entered into all of them, that plan may have been devised for and

first applied to any part of the series, and then varied accordingly.

[54] The popular terms--"fish" and "flesh"--present to the mind the

most vivid idea of this change from the characteristic substance of

one of these animals to that of another.

[55] See the note on amputation, or severance of parts, at the end of

this chapter.

[56] "Descent of Man," p. 25.