The brains of man and ape being fundamentally the same in structure, it

follows that the functions which they perform are fundamentally the

same. The large array of facts mustered by a series of careful observers

prove how futile is the argument which, in his pride of birth, man

advances against psychical continuity. Vain is the search after boundary

lines between reflex action and instinct, and between instinct and

reason. Barriers there are between man and brute, for articulate speech

and the consequent power to transmit experiences has set up these, and

they remain impassable. "The potentialities of language, as the vocal

symbol of thought, lay in the faculty of modulating and articulating the

voice. The potentialities of writing, as the visual symbol of thought,

lay in the hand that could draw, and in the mimetic tendency which we

know was gratified by drawing as far back as the days of Quaternary man"

(Huxley's Essays on Controverted Questions, p. 47). But these specially

human characteristics are no sufficing warrant for denying that the

sensations, emotions, thoughts, and volitions of man vary in kind from

those of the lower creation. "The essential resemblances in all points

of structure and function, so far as they can be studied, between the

nervous system of man and that of the dog, leave no reasonable doubt

that the processes which go on in the one are just like those which take

place in the other. In the dog, there can be no doubt that the nervous

matter which lies between the retina and the muscles undergoes a series

of changes, precisely analogous to those which, in the man, give rise

to sensation, a train of thought, and volition." This passage occurs

in Huxley's Reply to Mr. Darwin's Critics, which appeared in the

Contemporary Review, 1871, and it may be supplemented by a quotation

from the chapter on The Mental Phenomena of Animals in his Hume. "It

seems hard to assign any good reason for denying to the higher animals

any mental state or process in which the employment of the vocal or

visual symbols of which language is composed is not involved; and

comparative psychology confirms the position in relation to the rest of

the animal world assigned to man by comparative anatomy. As comparative

anatomy is easily able to show that, physically, man is but the last

term of a long series of forms, which lead, by slow gradations, from the

highest mammal to the almost formless speck of living protoplasm, which

lies on the shadowy boundary between animal and vegetable life; so,

comparative psychology, though but a young science, and far short of her

elder sister's growth, points to the same conclusion."

Within recent years the psychologists are doing remarkable work in

attacking the problem of the mechanics of mental operations, and already

in Europe and America some thirty laboratories have been started for

experimental work. The subject is somewhat abstruse for detailed

reference here, and it must suffice to say that the psychologist,

beginning with observations upon himself, measuring, for example, "the

degree of sensibility of his own eye to luminous irritations, or of his

own skin to pricking, passes on to like inquiry into the numerical

relations between the energy of the stimuli of light, sound, and so

forth, and the energy of the sensations which they arouse in the

nerve-channels." An excellent summary, with references to the newest

authorities on the subject, is given by Prince Kropotkin in the

Nineteenth Century of August, 1896.

All this, to the superficial onlooker, seems rank materialism. But we

cannot think without a brain any more than we can see without eyes, and

any inquiry into the operation of the organ of thought must run on the

same lines as inquiry into the operations of any other organ of the

body. And the inquiry leaves us at the point whence we began in so

far as any light is thrown on the connection between the molecular

vibrations in nerve-tissue and the mental processes of which they are

the indispensable accompaniment. Changes take place in some of the

thousands of millions of brain-cells in every thought that we think, and

in every emotion that we feel, but the nexus remains an impenetrable

mystery. Nevertheless, if we may not say that the brain secretes thought

as we say that the liver secretes bile, we may also not say that the

mind is detachable from the nervous system, and that it is an entity

independent of it. Were it this, not only would it stand outside the

ordinary conditions of development, but it would also maintain the

equilibrium which a dose of narcotics or of alcohol, or which starvation

and gorging alike rapidly upset.

In his posthumous essay On the Immortality of the Soul, Hume says:

"Matter and spirit are at bottom equally unknown, and we cannot

determine what qualities inhere in the one or in the other." That is the

conclusion to which the wisest come. And in the ultimate correlation of

the physical and psychical lies the hope of arrival at that terminus

of unity which was the dream of the ancient Greeks, and to which all

inquiry makes approach. How, in these matters, philosophy is at one, is

again seen in Huxley's admission that "in respect of the great problems

of philosophy, the post-Darwinian generation is, in one sense, exactly

where the præ-Darwinian generations were. They remain insoluble. But the

present generation has the advantage of being better provided with the

means of freeing itself from the tyranny of certain sham solutions."

Science explains, and, in explaining, dissipates the pseudo-mysteries by

which man, in his myth-making stage, when conception of the order of the

universe was yet unborn, accounted for everything. But she may borrow

the Apostle's words, "Behold! I show you a mystery," and give to them a

profounder meaning as she confesses that the origin and ultimate destiny

of matter and motion; the causes which determine the behaviour of atoms,

whether they are arranged in the lovely and varying forms which mark

their crystals, or whether they are quivering with the life which is

common to the amoeba and the man; the conversion of the inorganic into

the organic by the green plant, and the relation between nerve-changes

and consciousness; are all impenetrable mysteries.

In his speech on the commemoration of the jubilee of his Professorship

in the University of Glasgow last year, Lord Kelvin said, "I know no

more of electric and magnetic force, or of the relation between ether,

electricity, and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity than I knew

and tried to teach my students of natural philosophy fifty years ago in

my first session as professor."

This recognition of limitations will content those who seek not "after a

sign". For others, that search will continue to have encouragement not

only from the theologian, but from the pseudo-scientific who have

travelled some distance with the Pioneers of Evolution, but who refuse

to follow them further. In each of these there is present the

"theological bias" whose varied forms are skilfully analyzed by Mr.

Spencer in his chapter under that heading in the Study of Sociology.

This explains the attitude of various groups which are severally

represented by Mr. St. George Mivart, and the late Dr. W. B. Carpenter;

by Professor Sir Geo. G. Stokes, and Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace. The

first-named is a Roman Catholic; the second was a Unitarian; the third

is an orthodox Churchman, and the fourth, as already seen, is a

Spiritualist. In his Genesis of Species, Mr. Mivart contends that "man's

body was evolved from pre-existing material (symbolised by the term

'dust of the earth'), and was therefore only derivatively created,

i. e., by the operation of secondary laws," but that "his soul, on the

other hand, was created in quite a different way ... by the direct

action of the Almighty (symbolised by the term breathing)," p. 325. In

his Mental Physiology, Dr. Carpenter postulates an Ego or Will which

presides over, without sharing in, the causally determined action of the

other mental functions and their correlated bodily processes; "an entity

which does not depend for its existence on any play of physical or vital

forces, but which makes these forces subservient to its determinations"

(p. 27). Professor Mivart actually cites St. Augustine and Cardinal

Newman as authorities in support of his theory of the special creation

of the soul. He might with equal effect subpoena Dr. Joseph Parker or

General Booth as authorities. Dr. Carpenter argued as became a good

Unitarian. In his Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology, Professor Stokes

asserts, drawing "on sources of information which lie beyond man's

natural powers," in other words, appealing to the Bible, that God made

man immortal and upright, and endowed him with freedom of the will. As,

without the exercise of this, man would have been as a mere automaton,

he was exposed to the temptation of the devil, and fell. Thereby he

became "subject to death like the lower animals," and by the "natural

effect of heredity," transmitted the taint of sin to his offspring. The

eternal life thus forfeited was restored by the voluntary sacrifice of

Christ, but can be secured only to those who have faith in him. This

doctrine, which is no novel one, is known as "conditional immortality."

Professor Stokes attaches "no value to the belief in a future life by

metaphysical arguments founded on the supposed nature of the soul

itself," and he admits that the purely psychic theory which would

discard the body altogether in regard to the process of thought is beset

by very great difficulties. So he once more has recourse to "sources of

information which lie beyond man's natural powers." Following up certain

distinctions between "soul" and "spirit" drawn by the Apostle Paul in

his tripartite division of man, Professor Stokes, somewhat in keeping

with Dr. Carpenter, assumes an "Ego, which, on the one hand, is not

to be identified with thought, which may exist while thought is in

abeyance, and which may, with the future body of which the Christian

religion speaks, be the medium of continuity of thought.... What

the nature of this body might be we do not know; but we are pretty

distinctly informed that it would be something very different from that

of our present body, very different in its properties and functions, and

yet no less our own than our present body." "Words, words, words," as

Hamlet says.

Reference has been made in some fulness to Mr. Wallace's limitations of

the theory of natural selection in the case of man's mental faculties.

We must now pursue this somewhat in detail, reminding the reader of Mr.

Wallace's admission that, "provisionally, the laws of variation and

natural selection ... may have brought about, first, that perfection of

bodily structure in which man is so far above all other animals, and, in

co-ordination with it, the larger and more developed brain by means of

which he has been able to subject the whole animal and vegetable

kingdoms to his service." But, although Mr. Wallace rejects the theory

of man's special creation as "being entirely unsupported by facts, as

well as in the highest degree improbable," he contends that it does not

necessarily follow that "his mental nature, even though developed _pari

passu_ with his physical structure, has been developed by the same

agencies." Then, by the introduction of a physical analogy which is no

analogy at all, he suggests that the agent by which man was upraised

into a kingdom apart bears like relation to natural selection as the

glacial epoch bears to the ordinary agents of denudation and other

changes in producing new effects which, though continuous with preceding

effects, were not due to the same causes.

Applying this "argument" (drawn from natural causes), as Mr. Wallace

names it, "to the case of man's intellectual and moral nature," he

contends that such special faculties as the mathematical, musical, and

artistic (is this faculty to be denied the nest-decorating bower bird?),

and the high moral qualities which have given the martyr his constancy,

the patriot his devotion, and the philanthropist his unselfishness, are

due to a "spiritual essence or nature, superadded to the animal nature

of man." We are not told at what stage in man's development this was

inserted; whether, once and for all, in "primitive" man, with

potentiality of transmission through Palæolithic folk to all succeeding

generations; or whether there is special infusion of a "spiritual

essence" into every human being at birth.

Any perplexity that might arise at the line thus taken by Mr. Wallace

vanishes before the fact, already enlarged upon, that the author of the

Malay Archipelago and Island Life has written a book on Miracles and

Modern Spiritualism in defence of both. The explanation lies in that

duality of mind which, in one compartment, ranks Mr. Wallace foremost

among naturalists, and, in the other compartment, places him among the

most credulous of Spiritualists.

Despite this, Mr. Wallace has claims to a respectful hearing and to

serious reply. Fortunately, he would appear to furnish the refutation to

his own argument in the following paragraph from his delightful

Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection:

"From the time when the social and sympathetic feelings came into

operation and the intellectual and moral faculties became fairly

developed, man would cease to be influenced by natural selection in

his physical form and structure. As an animal he would remain almost

stationary, the changes in the surrounding universe ceasing to produce

in him that powerful modifying effect which they exercise on other

parts of the organic world. But, from the moment that the form of his

body became stationary, his mind would become subject to those very

influences from which his body had escaped; every slight variation in

his mental and moral nature which should enable him better to guard

against adverse circumstances and combine for mutual comfort and

protection would be preserved and accumulated; the better and higher

specimens of our race would therefore increase and spread, the lower and

more brutal would give way and successively die out, and that rapid

advancement of mental organisation would occur which has raised the very

lowest races of man so far above the brutes (although differing so

little from some of them in physical structure), and, in conjunction

with scarcely perceptible modifications of form, has developed the

wonderful intellect of the European races" (pp. 316, 317, Second

Edition, 1871).

This argument has suggestive illustration in the fifth chapter of the

Origin of Species. Mr. Darwin there refers to a remark to the following

effect made by Mr. Waterhouse: "_A part developed in any species in an

extraordinary degree or manner in comparison with the same part in

allied species tends to be highly variable._" This applies only where

there is unusual development. "Thus, the wing of a bat is a most

abnormal structure in the class of mammals; but the rule would not apply

here, because the whole group of bats possesses wings; it would apply

only if some one species had wings developed in a remarkable manner in

comparison with the other species of the same genus." And when this

exceptional development of any part or organ occurs, we may conclude

that the modification has arisen since the period when the several

species branched off from the common progenitor of the genus; and this

period will seldom be very remote, as species rarely endure for more

than one geological period.

How completely this applies to man, the latest product of organic

evolution. The brain is that part or organ in him which has been

developed "in an extraordinary degree, in comparison with the same part"

in other Primates, and which has become _highly variable_. Whatever may

have been the favouring causes which secured his immediate progenitors

such modification of brain as advanced him in intelligence over "allied

species," the fact abides that in this lies the explanation of their

after-history; the arrest of the one, the unlimited progress of the

other. Increasing intelligence at work through vast periods of time

originated and developed those social conditions which alone made

possible that progress which, in its most advanced degree, but a small

proportion of the race has reached. For in this question of mental

differences the contrast is not between man and ape, but between man

savage and civilized; between the incapacity of the one to count beyond

his fingers, and the capacity of the other to calculate an eclipse of

the sun or a transit of Venus. It would therefore seem that Mr.

Wallace should introduce his "spiritual essence, or nature," in the

intermediate, and not in the initial stage.

As answer to Mr. Wallace's argument that in their large and

well-developed brains, savages "possess an organ quite disproportioned

to their requirements," Huxley cites Wallace's own remarks in his paper

on Instinct in Man and Animals as to the considerable demands made by

the needs of the lower races on their observing faculties which call

into play no mean exercise of brain function.

"Add to this," Huxley says, "the knowledge which a savage is obliged to

gain of the properties of plants, of the characters and habits of

animals, and of the minute indications by which their course is

discoverable; consider that even an Australian can make excellent

baskets and nets, and neatly fitted and beautifully balanced spears;

that he learns to use these so as to be able to transfix a quartern loaf

at sixty yards; and that very often, as in the case of the American

Indians, the language of a savage exhibits complexities which a

well-trained European finds it difficult to master; consider that every

time a savage tracks his game, he employs a minuteness of observation,

and an accuracy of inductive and deductive reasoning which, applied to

other matters, would assure some reputation, and I think one need ask no

further why he possesses such a fair supply of brains."... But Mr.

Wallace's objection "applies quite as strongly to the lower animals.

Surely a wolf must have too much brain, or else how is it that a dog,

with only the same quantity and form of brain, is able to develop such

singular intelligence? The wolf stands to the dog in the same relation

as the savage to the man; and therefore, if Mr. Wallace's doctrine holds

good, a higher power must have superintended the breeding up of wolves

from some inferior stock, in order to prepare them to become dogs"

(Critiques and Addresses, p. 293).

After all is said, perhaps the effective refutation of the belief in a

spiritual entity superadded in man is found in the explanation of the

origin of that belief which anthropology supplies.

The theory of the origin and growth of the belief in souls and spiritual

beings generally, and in a future life, which has been put into coherent

form by Spencer and Tylor, is based upon an enormous mass of evidence

gathered by travellers among existing barbaric peoples; evidence

agreeing in character with that which results from investigations into

beliefs of past races in varying stages of culture. Only brief reference

to it here is necessary, but the merest outline suffices to show

from what obvious phenomena the conception of a soul was derived, a

conception of which all subsequent forms are but elaborated copies. As

in other matters, crude analogies have guided the barbaric mind in its

ideas about spirits and their behaviour. A man falls asleep and dreams

certain things; on waking, he believes that these things actually

happened; and he therefore concludes that the dead who came to him or to

whom he went in his dreams, are alive; that the friend or foe whom he

knows to be far away, but with whom he feasted or fought in dreamland,

came to him. He sees another man fall into a swoon or trance that may

lay him seemingly lifeless for hours or even days; he himself may be

attacked by deranging fevers and see visions stranger than those which

a healthy person sees; shadows of himself and of objects, both living

and not living, follow or precede him and lengthen or shorten in the

withdrawing or advancing light; the still water throws back images of

himself; the hillsides resound with mocking echoes of his words and of

sounds around him; and it is these and allied phenomena which have given

rise to the notion of "another self," to use Mr. Spencer's convenient

term, or of a number of selves that are sometimes outside the man and

sometimes inside him, as to which the barbaric mind is never sure.

Outside him, however, when the man is sleeping, so that he must not be

awakened, lest this "other self" be hindered from returning; or when he

is sick, or in the toils of the medicine-man, who may hold the "other

self" in his power, as in the curious soul-trap of the Polynesians--a

series of cocoa-nut rings--in which the sorcerer makes believe to catch

and detain the soul of an offender or sick person. When Dr. Catat and

his companions, MM. Maistre and Foucart were exploring the "Bara"

country on the west coast of Madagascar the people suddenly became

hostile. On the previous day the travellers, not without difficulty,

had photographed the royal family, and now found themselves accused of

taking the souls of the natives with the object of selling them when

they returned to France. Denial was of no avail; following the custom of

the Malagasays, they were compelled to catch the souls, which were then

put into a casket, and ordered by Dr. Catat to return to their

respective owners (Times, 24th March, 1891).

Although the difference presented by such phenomena and by death is

that it is abiding, while they are temporary, to the barbaric mind the

difference is in degree, and not in kind. True, the "other self" has

left the body, and will never return to it; but it exists, for it

appears in dreams and hallucinations, and therefore is believed to

revisit its ancient haunts, as well as to tarry often near the exposed

or buried body. The nebulous theories which identified the soul with

breath, and shadow, and reflection, slowly condensed into theories of

semi-substantiality still charged with ethereal conceptions, resulting

in the curious amalgam which, in the minds of cultivated persons,

whenever they strive to envisage the idea, represents the disembodied

soul.

Therefore, in vain may we seek for points of difference in our

comparison of primitive ideas of the origin and nature of the soul with

the later ideas. The copious literature to which these have given birth

is represented in the bibliography appended to Mr. Alger's work on

Theories of a Future Life, by 4977 books, exclusive of many published

since his list was compiled. Save in refinement of detail such as a

higher culture secures, what is there to choose between the four souls

of the Hidatsa Indians, the two souls of the Gold Coast natives, and the

tripartite division of man by Rabbis, Platonists, and Paulinists, which

are but the savage other-self "writ large"? Their common source is in

man's general animistic interpretation of Nature, which is a _vera

causa_, superseding the need for the assumptions of which Mr. Wallace's

is a type. As an excellent illustration of what is meant by animism, we

may cite what Mr. Everard im Thurn has to say about the Indians of

Guiana, who are, presumably, a good many steps removed from so-called

"primitive" man. "The Indian does not see any sharp line of distinction

such as we see between man and other animals, between one kind of animal

and another, or between animals--man included--and inanimate objects. On

the contrary, to the Indian all objects, animate and inanimate, seem

exactly of the same nature, except that they differ in the accident of

bodily form. Every object in the whole world is a being, consisting of

a body and spirit, and differs from every other object in no respect

except that of bodily form, and in the greater or lesser degree of brute

power and brute cunning consequent on the difference of bodily form and

bodily habits. Our next step, therefore, is to note that animals, other

than men, and even inanimate objects, have spirits which differ not at

all in kind from those of men."

The importance of the evidence gathered by anthropology in support of

man's inclusion in the general theory of evolution is ever becoming

more manifest. For it has brought witness to continuity in organic

development at the point where a break has been assumed, and driven home

the fact that if Evolution operates anywhere, it operates everywhere.

And operates, too, in such a way that every part co-operates in the

discharge of a universal process. Hence it meets the divisions which

mark opposition to it by the transcendent power of unity.

Until the past half-century, man excepted himself, save in crude and

superficial fashion, from that investigation which, for long periods,

he has made into the earth beneath him and the heavens above him. This

tardy inquiry into the history of his own kind, and its place in the

order and succession of life, as well as its relation to the lower

animals, between whom and itself, as has been shown, the barbaric mind

sees much in common, is due, so far as Christendom is concerned (and

the like cause applies, _mutatis mutandis_, in non-Christian civilized

communities), to the subjection of the intellect to pre-conceived

theories based on the authority accorded to ancient legends about man.

These legends, invested with the sanctity with which time endows the

past, finally became integral parts of sacred literatures, to question

which was as superfluous as it was impious. Thus it has come to pass

that the only being competent to inquire into his own antecedents has

looked at his history through the distorting prism of a mythopoeic past!

Perhaps, in the long run, the gain has exceeded the loss. For, in the

precedence of study of other sciences more remote from man's "business

and bosom," there has been rendered possible a more dispassionate

treatment of matters charged with profounder issues. Since the Church,

however she may conveniently ignore the fact as concession after

concession is wrung from her, has never slackened in jealousy of the

advance of secular knowledge, it was well for human progress that those

subjects of inquiry which affected orthodox views only indirectly were

first prosecuted. The brilliant discoveries in astronomy, to which the

Copernican theory gave impetus, although they displaced the earth from

its assumed supremacy among the bodies in space, did not apparently

affect the doctrine of the supremacy of man as the centre of Divine

intervention, as the creature for whom the great scheme of redemption

had been formulated "in the counsels of the Trinity," and the tragedy of

the self-sacrifice of God the Son enacted on earth. The surrender or

negation of any fundamental dogma of Christian theology was not involved

in the abandonment of the statement in the Bible as to the dominant

position of the earth in relation to the sun and other self-luminous

stars. To our own time the increase of knowledge concerning the myriads

of sidereal systems which revolve through space is not held to be

destructive of those dogmas, but held, rather, to supply material for

speculation as to the probable extension of Divine paternal government

throughout the universe. And, although, as coming nearer home, with

consequent greater chance of intrusion of elements of friction, the like

applies to the discoveries of geology. Apart from intellectual apathy,

which explains much, the impact of these discoveries on traditional

beliefs was softened by the buffers which a moderating spirit of

criticism interposed in the shape of superficial "reconciliations"

emptying the old cosmogony of all its poetry, and therefore of its value

as a key to primitive ideas, and converting it into bastard science.

Thus a temporary, because artificial, unity, was set up. But with the

evidence supplied by study of the ancient life whose remains are

imbedded in the fossil-yielding strata, that unity is shivered. In a

Scripture that "cannot be broken" there was read the story of conflict

and death æons before man appeared. Between this record, and that which

spoke of pain and death as the consequences of man's disobedience to the

frivolous prohibition of an anthropomorphic God, there is no possible

reconciliation.

To the evidence from fossiliferous beds was added evidence from old

river-gravels and limestone caverns. The relics extracted from the

stalagmitic deposits in Kent's Hole, near Torquay, had lain unheeded

for some years save as "curios," when M. Boucher des Perthes saw in the

worked flints of a somewhat rougher type which he found mingled with the

bones of rhinoceroses, cave-bears, mammoths, or woolly-haired elephants,

and other mammals in the "drift" or gravel-pits of Abbeville, in

Picardy, the proofs of man's primitive savagery, so far as Western

Europe was concerned. The presence of these rudely-chipped flints had

been noticed by M. de Perthes in 1839, but he could not persuade savants

to admit that human hands had shaped them, until these doubting Thomases

saw for themselves like implements _in situ_ at a depth of seventeen

feet from the original surface of the ground. That was in 1858: a year

before the publication of the Origin of Species. Similar materials have

been unearthed from every part of the globe habitable once or inhabited

now. They confirm the speculations of Lucretius as to a universal

makeshift with stone, bone, horn, and such-like accessible or pliable

substances during the ages that preceded the discovery of metals.

Therefore, the existence of a Stone Age at one period or another where

now an Age of Iron (following an Age of Bronze) prevails, is an

established canon of archæological science. From this follows the

inference that man's primitive condition was that which corresponds to

the lowest type extant, the Australian and Papuan; that the further back

inquiry is pushed such culture as exists is found to have been preceded

by barbarism; and that the savage races of to-day represent not a

degradation to which man, as the result of a fall from primeval purity

and Eden-like ease, has sunk, but a condition out of which all races

above the savage have emerged.

While Prehistoric Archæology, with its enormous mass of _material_

remains gathered from "dens and caves of the earth," from primitive

work-shops, from rude tombs and temples, thus adds its testimony to the

"great cloud of witnesses"; _immaterial_ remains, potent as embodying

the thought of man, are brought by the twin sciences of Comparative

Mythology and Folklore, and Comparative Theology--remains of paramount

value, because existing to this day in hitherto unsuspected form, as

survivals in beliefs and rites and customs. Readers of Tylor's Primitive

Culture, with its wealth of facts and their significance; and of Lyall's

Asiatic Studies, wherein is described the making of myths to this day in

the heart of India; need not be told how the slow zigzag advance of man

in material things has its parallel in the stages of his intellectual

and spiritual advance all the world over; from the lower animism to

the higher conception of deity; from bewildering guesses to assuring

certainties. To this mode of progress no civilized people has been the

exception, as notably in the case of the Hebrews, was once thought--"the

correspondence between the old Israelitic and other archaic forms of

theology extending to details."

While, therefore, the discoveries of astronomers and geologists have

been disintegrating agencies upon old beliefs, the discoveries classed

under the general term Anthropological are acting as more powerful

solvents on every opinion of the past. Showing on what mythical

foundation the story of the fall of man rests, Anthropology has utterly

demolished the _raison d'être_ of the doctrine of his redemption--the

keystone of the fabric. It has penetrated the mists of antiquity, and

traced the myth of a forfeited Paradise, of the Creation, the Deluge,

and other legends, to their birthplaces in the valley of the Euphrates

or the uplands of Persia; legends whose earliest inscribed records are

on Accadian tablets, or in the scriptures of Zarathustra. It has in the

spirit of the commended Bereans, "searched" those and other scriptures,

finding therein legends of founders of ancient faiths cognate to those

which in the course of the centuries gathered round Jesus of Nazareth;

it has collated the rites and ceremonies of many a barbaric theology

with those of old-world religions--Brahmanic, Buddhistic, Christian--and

found only such differences between them as are referable to the higher

or the lower culture. For the history of superstitions is included in

the history of beliefs; the superstitions being the germ-plasm of

which all beliefs above the lowest are the modified products. Belief

incarnates itself in word or act. In the one we have the charm, the

invocation, and the dogma; in the other the ritual and ceremony. "A

ritual system," Professor Robertson Smith remarks, "must always remain

materialistic, even if its materialism is disguised under the cloak of

mysticism." And it is with the incarnated ideas, uninfluenced by

the particular creed in connection with which it finds them, that

anthropology deals. Its method is that of biology. Without bias, without

assumptions of relative truth or falsity, the anthropologist searches

into origins, traces variations, compares and classifies, and relates

the several families to one ordinal group. He must be what was said of

Dante, "a theologian to whom no dogma is foreign." Unfortunately, this

method, whose application to the physical sciences is unchallenged, is,

when applied to beliefs, regarded as one of attack, instead of being one

of explanation. But this should not deter; and if in analyzing a belief

we kill a superstition, this does but show what mortality lay at its

core. For error cannot survive dissection. Moreover, as John Morley puts

it, "to tamper with veracity is to tamper with the vital force of human

progress." Therefore, delivering impartial judgment, the verdict of

anthropology upon the whole matter is that the claims of Christian

theologians to a special and divine origin of their religion are refuted

by the accordant evidence of the latest utterances of a science whose

main concern is with the origin, nature, and destiny of man.

The extension of the comparative method to the various products of

man's intellectual and spiritual nature is the logical sequence to the

adoption of that method throughout every department of the universe. Of

course it starts with the assumption of differences in things, else it

would be superfluous. But it equally starts with the assumption of

resemblances, and in every case it has brought out the fact that the

differences are superficial, and that the resemblances are fundamental.

All this bears closely on Huxley's work. The impulse thereto has come

largely from the evidence focussed in Man's Place in Nature, evidence of

which the material of the writings of his later years is the expansion.

The cultivation of intellect and character had always been a favourite

theme with him, and the interest was widened when the passing of Mr.

Forster's Elementary Education Act in 1870 brought the problem of

popular culture to the front. The wave of enthusiasm carried a group of

distinguished liberal candidates to the polls, and Huxley was elected a

member of the School Board for London. Then, although in not so acute a

form as now, the religious difficulty was the sole cause of any serious

division, and Huxley's attitude therein puzzled a good many people

because he advocated the retention of the Bible in the schools. Those

who should have known him better thought that he was (to quote from one

of his letters to the writer) "a hypocrite, or simply a fool." "But," he

adds, "my meaning was that the mass of the people should not be deprived

of the one great literature which is open to them, nor shut out from

the perception of its place in the whole past history of civilised

mankind." He lamented, as every thoughtful person must lament, the

decay of Bible reading in this generation, while, at the same time, he

advocated the more strenuously its detachment from the glosses and

theological inferences which do irreparable injury to a literature whose

value cannot be overrated.

For Huxley was well read in history, and therefore he would not trust

the clergy as interpreters of the Bible. After repeating in the Prologue

to his Essays on Controverted Questions what he had said about the book

in his article on the School Boards in Critiques and Addresses, he adds,

"I laid stress on the necessity of placing such instruction in lay

hands; in the hope and belief that it would thus gradually accommodate

itself to the coming changes of opinion; that the theology and the

legend would drop more and more out of sight, while the perennially

interesting historical, literary, and ethical contents would come more

and more into view."

Subsequent events have justified neither the hope nor the belief. Had

Huxley lived to see that all the sectaries, while quarrelling as to the

particular dogmas which may be deduced from the Bible, agree in refusing

to use it other than as an instrument for the teaching of dogma, he

would probably have come to see that the only solution in the interests

of the young, is its exclusion from the schools. Never has any

collection of writings, whose miscellaneous, unequal, and often

disconnected character is obscured by the common title "Bible" which

covers them, had such need for deliverance from the so-called

"believers" in it. Its value is only to be realized in the degree that

theories of its inspiration are abandoned. Then only is it possible to

treat it like any other literature of the kind; to discriminate between

the coarse and barbaric features which evidence the humanness of its

origin, and the loftier features of its later portions which also

evidence how it falls into line with other witnesses of man's gradual

ethical and spiritual development.

Huxley's breadth of view, his sympathy with every branch of culture, his

advocacy of literary in unison with scientific training, fitted him

supremely for the work of the School Board, but its demands were too

severe on a man never physically strong, and he was forced to resign.

However, he was thereby set free for other work, which could be only

effectively done by exchanging the arena for the study. The earliest

important outcome of that relief was the monograph on Hume, published in

1879, and the latest was the Romanes lecture on Evolution and Ethics,

which was delivered in the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford on the 18th of

May, 1893. Between the two lie a valuable series of papers dealing with

the Evolution of Theology and cognate subjects. In all these we have the

application of the theory of Evolution to the explanation of the origin

of beliefs and of the basis of morals. To quote the saying attributed to

Leibnitz, both Spencer and Huxley, and all who follow them, care for

"science only because it enables them to speak with authority in

philosophy and religion." In a letter to the writer, wherein Huxley

refers to his retirement from official life, he says:--

I was so ill that I thought with Hamlet, "the rest is silence." But

my wiry constitution has unexpectedly weathered the storm, and I

have every reason to believe that with renunciation of the devil and

all his works (i. e., public speaking, dining, and being dined,

etc.) my faculties may be unimpaired for a good spell yet. And

whether my lease is long or short, I mean to devote them to the work

I began in the paper on the Evolution of Theology.

That essay was first published in two sections in the Nineteenth

Century, 1886, and was the sequel to the eighth chapter of his Hume. The

Romanes Lecture supplemented the last chapter of that book. All these

are accessible enough to render superfluous any abstract of their

contents. But the tribute due to David Hume, who may well-nigh claim

place among the few but fit company of Pioneers, warrants reference

to his anticipation of accepted theories of the origin of belief in

spiritual beings in his Natural History of Religion, published in 1757.

He says: "There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all

beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object those qualities

with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are

intimately conscious.... The _unknown causes_ which continually employ

their thought, appearing always in the same aspect, are all apprehended

to be of the same kind or species. Nor is it long before we ascribe to

them thought, and reason, and passion, and sometimes even the limbs and

figures of men, in order to bring them nearer to a resemblance with

ourselves." In his address to the Sorbonne on The Successive Advances of

the Human Mind, delivered in 1750, Turgot expresses the same idea,

touching, as John Morley says in his essay on that statesman, "the root

of most of the wrong thinking that has been as a manacle to science."

The foregoing, and passages of a like order, are made by Huxley the text

of his elaborations of the several stages of theological evolution, the

one note of all of which is the continuity of belief in supernatural

intervention. But more important than the decay of that belief which is

the prelude to decay of belief in deity itself as commonly defined, is

the resulting transfer of the foundation of morals, in other words, of

motives to conduct, from a theological to a social base. Theology is not

morality; indeed, it is, too often, immorality. It is concerned with

man's relations to the gods in whom he believes; while morals are

concerned with man's relations to his fellows. The one looks heavenward,

wondering what dues shall be paid the gods to win their smiles or ward

off their frowns. In old Rome _sanctitas_ or holiness, was, according to

Cicero, "the knowledge of the rites which had to be performed." These

done, the gods were expected to do their part. So in new Rome, when the

Catholic has attended mass, his share in the contract is ended. Worship

and sacrifice, as mere acts toward supernatural beings, may be

consonant with any number of lapses in conduct. Morality, on the other

hand, looks earthward, and is prompted to action solely by what is

due from a man to his fellow-men, or from his fellow-men to him. Its

foundation therefore is not in supernatural beliefs, but in social

instincts. All sin is thus resolved into an anti-social act: a wrong

done by man to man.

This is not merely readjustment; it is revolution. For it is the

rejection of theology with its appeals to human obligation to deity, and

to man's hopes of future reward or fears of future punishment; and it is

the acceptance of wholly secular motives as incentives to right action.

Those motives, having their foundation in the physical, mental, and

moral results of our deeds, rest on a stable basis. No longer interlaced

with the unstable theological, they neither abide nor perish with it.

And one redeeming feature of our time is that the churches are beginning

to see this, and to be effected by it. John Morley caustically remarks

that "the efforts of the heterodox have taught them to be better

Christians than they were a hundred years ago." Certain extremists

excepted, they are keeping dogma in the background, and are laying

stress on the socialism which it is contended was at the heart of the

teaching of Jesus. Wisely, if not very consistently, they are seeking

alliance with the liberal movements whose aim is the "abolition of

privilege." The liberal theologians, in the face of the varying ethical

standards which mark the Old Testament and the New, no longer insist on

the absoluteness of moral codes, and so fall into line with the

evolutionist in his theory of their relativeness. For society in its

advance from lower to higher conceptions of duty, completely reverses

its ethics, looking back with horror on that which was once permitted

and unquestioned.

It is with this checking of "the ape and tiger," and this fostering of

the "angel" in man, that Huxley dealt in his Romanes Lecture. There was

much unintelligent, and some wilful, misunderstanding of his argument,

else a prominent Catholic biologist would hardly have welcomed it as a

possible prelude to Huxley's submission to the Church. Yet the reasoning

was clear enough, and in no wise contravened the application of

Evolution to morals. Huxley showed that Evolution is both _cosmical_ and

_ethical_. _Cosmic Evolution_ has resulted in the universe with its

non-living and living contents, and since, dealing with the conditions

which obtain on our planet, there is not sufficient elbow-room or food

for all the offspring of living things, the result is a furious

struggle in which the strong win and transmit their advantages to their

descendants. Nature is wholly selfish; the race is to the swift, and the

battle to the strong.

But there are limits set to that struggle by man in the substitution,

also within limits, of social progress for cosmic progress. In this

_Ethical Evolution_ selfishness is so far checked as to permit groups

of human beings to live together in amity, recognising certain common

rights, which restrain the self-regarding impulses. For, in the words of

Marcus Aurelius, "that which is not good for the swarm is not good for

the bee" (Med., vi, 54). Huxley aptly likens this counter-process to the

action of a gardener in dealing with a piece of waste ground. He stamps

out the weeds, and plants fragrant flowers and useful fruits. But he

must not relax his efforts, otherwise the weeds will return, and the

untended plants will be choked and perish. So in conduct. For the common

weal, in which the unit shares, thus blending the selfish and the

unselfish motives, men check their natural impulses. The emotions and

affections which they share with the lower social animals, only in

higher degree, are co-operative, and largely help the development of

family, tribal, and national life. But once we let these be weakened,

and society becomes a bear-garden. Force being the dominant factor in

life, the struggle for existence revives in all its primitive violence,

and atavism asserts its power. Therefore, although he do the best that

in him lies, man can only set limits to that struggle, for the ethical

process is an integral part of the cosmic powers, "just as the

'governor' in a steam-engine is part of the mechanism of the engine."

As with society, so with its units: there is no truce in the contest.

Dr. Plimmer, an eminent bacteriologist, describes to the writer the

action of a kind of yeast upon a species of Daphnia, or water-flea.

Metschnikoff observed that these yeast-cells, which enter with the

animal's food, penetrate the intestines, and get into the tissues. They

are there seized upon by the leukocytes, which gather round the invaders

in larger fashion, as if seemingly endowed with consciousness, so

marvellous is the strategy. If they win, the Daphnia recovers; if they

lose, it dies. "In a similar manner in ourselves certain leukocytes

(phagocytes) accumulate at any point of invasion, and pick up the living

bacteria," and in the success or failure of their attack lies the fate

of man. Which things are fact as well as allegory; and time is on the

side of the bacteria. For as our life is but a temporary arrest of the

universal movement toward dissolution, so naught in our actions can

arrest the destiny of our kind. Huxley thus puts it in the concluding

sentences of his Preface--written in July, 1894, one year before his

death--to the reissue of Evolution and Ethics:

"That man, as a 'political animal,' is susceptible of a vast amount of

improvement, by education, by instruction, and by the application of his

intelligence to the adaptation of the conditions of life to his higher

needs, I entertain not the slightest doubt. But, so long as he remains

liable to error, intellectual or moral; so long as he is compelled to

be perpetually on guard against the cosmic forces, whose ends are not

his ends, without and within himself; so long as he is haunted by

inexpugnable memories and hopeless aspirations; so long as the

recognition of his intellectual limitations forces him to acknowledge

his incapacity to penetrate the mystery of existence; the prospect of

attaining untroubled happiness, or of a state which can, even remotely,

deserve the title of perfection, appears to me to be as misleading an

illusion as ever was dangled before the eyes of poor humanity. And there

have been many of them. That which lies before the human race is a

constant struggle to maintain and improve, in opposition to the State of

Nature, the State of Art of an organised polity; in which, and by which,

man may develop a worthy civilisation, capable of maintaining and

constantly improving itself, until the evolution of our globe shall have

entered so far upon its downward course that the cosmic process resumes

its sway; and, once more, the State of Nature prevails over the surface

of our planet."

But only those of low ideals would seek in this impermanence of things

excuse for inaction; or worse, for self-indulgence. The world will last

a very long time yet, and afford scope for battle against the wrongs

done by man to man. Even were it and ourselves to perish to-morrow, our

duty is clear while the chance of doing it may be ours. Clifford,--dead

before his prime, before the rich promise of his genius had its full

fruitage,--speaking of the inevitable end of the earth "and all the

consciousness of men" reminds us, in his essay on The First and Last

Catastrophe, that we are helped in facing the fact "by the words of

Spinoza: 'The free man thinks of nothing so little as of death, and his

wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.'" "Our interest,"

Clifford adds, "lies with so much of the past as may serve to guide our

actions in the present, and to intensify our pious allegiance to the

fathers who have gone before us and the brethren who are with us; and

our interest lies with so much of the future as we may hope will be

appreciably affected by our good actions now. Do I seem to say, 'Let us

eat and drink, for to-morrow we die?' Far from it; on the contrary I

say, 'Let us take hands and help, for this day we are alive together.'"

Evolution and Ethics was Huxley's last important deliverance, since the

completion of his reply to Mr. Balfour's "quaintly entitled" Foundations

of Belief was arrested by his death on the 30th of June, 1895.

In looking through the Collected Essays, which represent his

non-technical contributions to knowledge, there may be regret that

throughout his life circumstances were against his doing any piece of

long-sustained work, such as that which, for example, the affluence and

patience of Darwin permitted him to do. But until Huxley's later years,

and, indeed, through broken health to the end, his work outside

official demands had to be done fitfully and piecemeal, or not at all.

Notwithstanding this, it has the unity which is inspired by a central

idea. The application of the theory of evolution all round imparts a

quality of relation to subjects seemingly diverse. And this comes out

clearly and strongly in the more orderly arrangement of the material in

the new issue of Collected Essays.

These show what an omnivorous reader he was; how well equipped in

classics, theology, and general literature, in addition to subjects

distinctly his own. He sympathized with every branch of culture. As

contrasted with physical science, he said, "Nothing would grieve me more

than to see literary training other than a very prominent branch of

education." One corner of his library was filled with a strange company

of antiquated books of orthodox type; this he called "the condemned

cell." When looking at the "strange bedfellows" that slept on the

shelves, the writer asked Huxley what author had most influenced a style

whose clearness and vigour, nevertheless, seems unborrowed; and he at

once named the masculine and pellucid Leviathan of Hobbes. He had the

happy faculty of rapidly assimilating what he read; of clearly grasping

an opponent's standpoint; and what is a man's salvation nowadays,

freedom from that curse of specialism which kills all sense of

proportion, and reduces its slave to the level of the machine-hand

that spends his life in making the heads of screws. He believed in

"scepticism as the highest duty, and in blind faith as the one

unpardonable sin." "And," he adds, "it cannot be otherwise, for every

great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection

of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation

of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of science

holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates

holds them; not because their verity is testified by portents and

wonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses

to bring these convictions into contact with their primary source,

Nature--whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment

and to observation--Nature will confirm them. The man of science has

learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification."

Therefore he nursed no illusions; would not say that he knew when he did

not or could not know, and bidding us follow the evidence whithersoever

it leads us, remains the surest-footed guide of our time. Such

leadership is his, since he has gone on "from strength to strength." The

changes in the attitude of man toward momentous questions which new

evidence and the _zeit-geist_ have effected, have been approaches to the

position taken by Huxley since he first caught the public ear. His deep

religious feeling kept him in sympathetic touch with his fellows. Ever

present to him was "that consciousness of the limitation of man, that

sense of an open secret which he cannot penetrate, in which lies the

essence of all religion." In one of his replies to a prominent exponent

of the Comtian philosophy, that "incongruous mixture of bad science with

eviscerated papistry," as he calls it, Huxley protests against the idea

that the teaching of science is wholly negative.

I venture, he says, to count it an improbable suggestion that any

one who has graduated in all the faculties of human relationships;

who has taken his share in all the deep joys and deeper anxieties

which cling about them, who has felt the burden of young lives

entrusted to his care, and has stood alone with his dead before the

abyss of the Eternal--has never had a thought beyond negative

criticism.

That is the Agnostic position as he defined it; an attitude, not a

creed; and if he refused to affirm, he equally refused to deny.

* * * * *

Thus have the Pioneers of Evolution, clear-sighted and sure-footed, led

us by ways undreamed-of at the start to a goal undreamed-of by the

earliest among them. To have halted on the route when the graver

difficulties of the road began would have made the journey futile, and

have left their followers in the wilds. Evolution, applied to everything

up to man, but stopping at the stage when he appears, would have

remained a fascinating study, but would not have become a guiding

philosophy of life. It is in the extension of its processes as

explanation of all that appertains to mankind that its abiding value

consists. That extension was inevitable. The old theologies of civilized

races, useful in their day, because answering, however imperfectly, to

permanent needs of human nature, no longer suffice. Their dogmas are

traced as the lineal descendants of barbaric conceptions; their ritual

is becoming an archæological curiosity. They have no answer to the

questions propounded by the growing intelligence of our time; neither

can they satisfy the emotions which they but feebly discipline. Their

place is being slowly, but surely, and more effectively, filled by a

theory which, interpreting the "mighty sum of things," substitutes clear

conceptions of unbroken order and relation between phenomena, in place

of hazy conceptions of intermittent interferences; a theory which gives

more than it takes away. For if men are deprived of belief in the

pseudo-mysteries coined in a pre-scientific age, their wonder is

fed, and their inquiry is stimulated, by the consciousness of the

impenetrable mysteries of the Universe.

INDEX

Abdera, 16.

Abiogenesis, 216.

Abraham, 54.

Adam, fall of, 104.

---- stature of, 107.

Advent, the Second, 50, 70.

Ægean, the, 3.

Agassiz, 162.

Agrigentum, 13.

Air as primary substance, 13.

Alexander the Great, 17.

Alexandria, conquest of, 77.

---- philosophical schools of, 77.

Allegorical method, 75.

Allen, Grant, 2, 113, 167.

Amazons, river, 136.

America, discovery of, 84.

Amoeba, the, 224.

Anatomy, comparative, 230.

---- human, 90.

Anaxagoras, 14.

Anaximander, 7, 20.

Ancestor-worship, 70.

Andromeda, nebula in, 178.

Angels, belief in, 69.

Animism, 69, 97, 244, 255.

Anthropology and belief in the soul, 241.

---- and dogmas of the Fall and the Redemption, 247, 250.

---- and man's place in Evolution, 245.

Antioch, 47.

Ape and man, brain of, 227.

---- general relation of, 228.

Aquinas, Thomas, 20, 75.

Arab conquest, 76.

---- philosophy, 79.

Arch-fiend, 54.

Aristotle, 17-19, 20, 32, 35, 36, 74, 80, 81, 87, 163.

Arnold, Matthew, 13, 213.

Ascent of Man, Drummond's, 219.

Asklepios, 29.

Astruc, Dr., 103.

Athens, intellectual decay in, 35, 77.

---- persecution in, 14.

---- religious revival in, 11.

Atomic theory, 16.

Atonement, doctrine of the, and

Anthropology, 250.

Augurs, 31.

Augustine, St., 20, 55, 74.

Augustus, Cæsar, 42, 48.

Aurelius, Marcus, 51, 259.

Averroes, 80.

Avicenna, 101.

Bacon, Lord, 93, 108.

Bacon, Roger, 82.

Bacteria and leukocytes, 260.

Bagehot, Mr., 2.

Baghdad, 79.

Balfour, A. J., 262.

Baptism, origin of rite of, 66.

Bates, H. W., 134, 136, 162, 167, 208.

Beagle, voyage of the, 131.

Benn, A. W., 9, 19.

Bible, Dictionary of the, 107.

Biology, advance in study of, 108.

Black magic, 83.

Body and mind, mystery of connection between, 231.

Bone, resurrection, 90.

Bonnet, Charles, 21.

"Boundless," the, 7.

Breathing, symbolism of, 69.

Bruno, Giordano, 89.

Buddha, 64.

Buffon, place of, in theory of Evolution, 110.

---- submission to the Sorbonne, 104.

Burnet, Prof., 5, 7, 16.

Burton's Anatomy, 60.

Butcher, Prof., 4.

Caesalpino, 91.

Cairo, 80.

Canon of the Bible, 58, 88.

Carpenter, Dr., 150, 233.

Carthage, 78.

---- Council of, 58.

Casalis, Mr., 1.

Catat, Dr., 242.

Celtic religion, 70.

Chaldæa, 4.

Chambers, Robert, 119.

Charles Martel, 78.

Chosroes, 77, 79.

Christianity and Anthropology, 251.

---- anti-social nature of, 50.

---- causes of success of, 48, 56.

---- opposition to inquiry, 40.

---- origin of, 37.

---- pagan elements in, 59-73.

---- philosophic elements in, 57.

---- polytheism of, 69.

---- varying fortunes of, 38.

Christians, persecution of, 49.

Church Congress and Evolution, 159, 219.

Circumnavigation of the globe, 85.

Clifford, Prof., 261.

Collings, 41.

Colophon, 9.

Columbus, Christopher, 84.

Communion at Hawarden Church, 68.

Comtism, 264.

Conduct, bases of, 186, 254.

Consciousness, evolution of, 187, 224.

---- self-, 187.

Conservation of energy, 33, 120, 149, 177.

Copernicus, 20, 86.

Cordova, 80.

Correlation of forces, 189.

Cosmic Evolution, 258.

Councils, general, 220.

Courthope, W. J., 164.

Creation, days of, 103, 106.

Credulity of the learned, 148.

Creeds, 52, 220.

Criticism of religions, features of modern, 40.

Cronus, myth of, 56.

Crooke, Mr., 30.

Cross, relics of the, 72.

Crown of thorns, 72.

Cuvier, 114, 117, 163.

---- and Geoffroy St. Hilaire, 214.

Cybele, 29.

Dalton, John, 16, 125.

Daphnia, Dr. Plimmer on, 260.

Darwin, Charles, 126-134, 157-175.

---- Life and Letters of, 127, 157.

---- religious belief of, 173.

---- Erasmus, 21, 111.

Days of creation, 102, 106.

De Gama, Vasco, 85.

Deluge, 104, 107, 250.

Demeter, 29, 67.

Democritus, 16, 22, 33.

Demons, 55, 75, 87.

De Perthes, Boucher, 120, 248.

De Rerum Natura, 24.

Descartes, 91, 94, 216.

Descent into Hell, 88.

Descent of Man, 167, 172, 218.

Development, law of, 189.

Devil, 54, 83.

De Vinci, Leonardo, 102.

Diagoras, 63.

Dictionary of the Bible, 107.

Dionysus, 67.

Dispersion of the Jews, 56, 77.

Dogma and Evolution, 220.

Driver, Rev. Canon, 53, 107.

Dubois, Dr., 222.

Dunér, Professor, 179.

Earth as "element," 13.

---- Greek notions about the, 6, 8.

Education and dogma, 253.

Egypt, 4, 6, 7.

---- conquest of, 77.

Eleatic school, 10.

Elviri, Synod of, 62.

Embryology, 118, 218.

Empedocles, 13, 22, 27.

Ephesus, 11.

Epictetus, 51.

Epicurus, 22, 27.

Epigenesis, 21.

Ethical Evolution, 259.

Etruscan haruspices, 31.

Eve, stature of, 107.

Evil eye, 69.

Evolution and dogma, 220.

---- cosmic, 258.

---- ethical, 258.

---- inclusion of man in, 245.

---- inorganic, 175.

---- organic, 200.

Evolution and Ethics, Huxley on, 219, 254.

Fall, doctrine of the, and anthropology, 247.

Fire, as primary substance, 12.

First Principles, 167, 188.

Fiske, Professor, 8.

Flint implements, 248.

Folk-lore, value of study of, 249.

Fontenelle, 2.

Fossils, theories about, 104.

Frazer, J. G., 66, 220.

Galen, 90.

Galileo, discoveries and persecution of, 91.

Geology, effect of study of, 100.

---- revival of study of, 100.

---- principles of, 117.

Gesner, 91.

Gibbon, 57, 58, 72, 219.

Gladstone, Mr., 68.

Gnosticism, 48.

Gods in Rome, 29.

Golden Bough, The, 66, 220.

Gospels, origin of, 46.

Gosse, P. H., 104.

Gower, Dr., 155.

Granada, 80.

Greece, 3.

---- conquest and intellectual decline of, 23.

Greek philosophers, Table of, 36.

Greeks, early conception of earth by, 6, 8.

---- search of, for the primary substance, 6.

Grote, 15.

Haeckel, 115, 164.

Hallucinations, 153.

Haroun al-Raschid, 79.

Hartley, 124.

Haruspices, 31.

Harvey, William, 21, 93.

Hawarden Church, Communion at, 68.

Heine's Travel-Pictures, 153.

Hellenized Jews, 56, 77.

Helmholtz, 125.

Henrion, 107.

Heraclitus, 11.

Herakles, 29.

Herodotus, 62.

Herschel, Sir William, 95, 177.

Hesiod, 10.

Hippocampus minor, 227.

Hobbes' Leviathan, 60, 263.

Holy Communion, barbaric origin of rite of, 66, 68.

Homer, 8, 10, 12, 75.

Hooker, Sir Joseph, 141, 162.

---- Sir William, 119.

Horace, 63, 75.

Huggins, Dr. Wm., 178.

Humanity and Evolution, 192.

Humboldt, 121, 135.

Hume, 97, 192, 216, 255.

Hutton, 115.

Huxley, 94, 157, 159, 201-266.

Indigitamenta, 30.

Inductive philosophy, the, 93.

Inquisition, the, 89, 91.

Instinct, 229.

Ionia, 3, 4, 6, 32.

Isis, 29, 62.

Jerome, St., 24, 105.

Jerusalem, early disciples of Jesus at, 47.

---- fall of, 77.

---- Jesus at, 44.

Jesus, summary of life of, 42-46.

---- superstition shared by, 53-56.

Jews, Hellenized, or of the Dispersion, 56, 77.

Kant, 94, 175, 200.

Kelvin, Lord, 233.

Kent's Hole, 248.

Khalifs, 76.

Kirchoff, 178.

Kropotkin, Prince, 231.

Lamarck, 114.

Language, 229.

La Peyrère, 102.

Laplace, 95, 176.

Leading Men of Science, Table of, 123-125.

Leibnitz, 124, 254.

Leo III., 78.

L'Etui de Nacre, 45.

Leucippus, 16, 23, 33, 36.

Leukocytes, 260.

Life and Letters, Darwin's, 127, 157, 173.

Lightfoot, Dr., 103, 120.

Linnaeus, 108.

Linnæan Society, famous meeting at, 141, 181.

Living and non-living matter, connection between, 34, 216.

Locke, 94.

Lodge, Prof. Oliver, 147.

Love as an "element," 14.

Lubbock, Sir John, 168.

Lucretius, 17, 23, 24-29, 41, 248.

Luther, 87.

Lyall, Sir Alfred, 30, 38, 249.

Lyell, Sir Charles, 117, 134, 162.

Madonna, 64.

Magellan, 85.

Maine, Sir Henry, 5.

Malay Archipelago, 138.

Malpighi, 21.

Malthus on Population, 119, 133, 139.

Man and Evolution, 97, 143, 218, 227, 236.

---- and ape, brain of, 227.

---- and ape, general structure of, 143.

---- antiquity of, 222.

---- inclusion of, in Evolution, 233.

---- lower animals and, 218, 227.

---- primitive state of, 248.

---- suckling, period of, 8.

Manning, Cardinal, 160.

Man's Place in Nature, 164, 167, 213, 218, 252.

Marcus Aurelius, 51, 259.

Martin, R. B., 169.

Martyr, Peter, 87.

Maskelyne, Mr., 148.

Matter, indestructibility of, 33.

---- living and non-living, 34, 217.

---- mystery of, 180, 188, 216, 232.

Matthew, Patrick, 118, 165.

Maudsley, Dr., 156.

Meckel, 118.

Messiah, Jewish belief in, 44, 46.

Metals, age of, 28, 35, 248.

Middleton, Conyers, 60.

Miletus, 6.

Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, 145, 237.

Mithra worship, 42, 50, 71.

Mivart, Prof. St. George, 233.

Mohammed, 76.

Montaigne, 38, 62.

Morality, essential nature of, 256.

Morals and Evolution, 254.

---- scientific base of, 256.

Morley, John, 39, 170, 251, 257.

Motion, concept of, 178.

---- indestructibility of, 33.

---- mystery of, 180, 187, 216, 232.

Mummius, 23.

Munro, Mr., 24.

Mysteries, Greek, 49.

Mystery of matter, 231.

---- motion, 186, 187, 216, 232.

Myth, primitive, features of, 2.

Nebula in Andromeda, 178.

Nebular theory, 94, 180.

Nero, 48.

Nervous system, disorders of the, 153.

---- origin of the, 225.

New Testament, canon of, 58, 88.

---- origin of, 51.

Nicene Creed, 52, 220.

Nous of Anaxagoras, 16.

Numbers, in primitive thought, 9.

---- Pythagorean theory of, 9, 36.

Organic Evolution, 200.

Origin of species, 142, 168, 211.

---- publication of, 157.

---- reception of, 157, 162.

Osborn, Prof., 102, 119.

Ovid, 219.

Owen, Sir Richard, attitude of, towards Darwin's theory, 162, 214.

---- review of the Origin of Species, 162.

Pagan elements in Christianity, 59-73.

Paladino, Eusapia, 148.

Palæontology, 218.

Palissy, Bernard, 102.

Pantheon, Roman, 29.

Papacy, origin of the, 58.

Paul, St., 47.

Pausanias, 13.

Pentateuch, 103.

Pericles, 14.

Persia, intellectual activity in, 79.

Perthes, Boucher de, 120, 125, 248.

Petrie, Prof. Flinders, 201.

Philo, 58.

Philosophy, synthetic, 181, 195, 199.

Photography in Science, 178.

Physical Basis of Life, Huxley on, 215.

Pineal gland, theory of soul in, 91.

Plato, 5, 52, 212.

Polytheism, feature of, 49.

---- in Christianity, 71.

Pontius Pilate, 44, 48.

Poppaea, Sabina, 48.

Preformation theory, 21.

Primary substance, 33.

---- search after, 6.

Protoplasm, 119.

Psychical Research, Society for, 148.

Psychology, experimental, 230.

---- Principles of, 187, 189.

Ptolemaic System, 20, 88.

Punch, 206.

Pythagoras, 9.

Pythagorean theory of numbers, 9, 36.

Redi, experiments of, 216.

Reformation, non-intellectual, 88.

---- character of the, 86.

Relics, collection of, 71.

---- worship of, 70.

Revelations, condition of, 223.

Rhys, Professor, 64.

Rodd, Rennell, 29.

Roman doctrine of transubstantiation, 67.

Rome, bishop of, 58.

---- fire in, 48.

---- gods in, 29.

---- polytheism of, 49.

Royal Society, 99.

Sacraments, barbaric origin of, 65-68.

Saints, fictitious, 64.

Salisbury, Lord, Presidential Address of, 179, 215.

Samos, 22, 36.

Sanctitas, 256.

Saracens, 78.

Savages, brain of, 240.

Scheiner, Professor, 179.

School Boards, 252.

Schwann, Theodor, 125.

Science, Leading men of, 123-125.

Second Coming of Jesus, 50, 70.

Sedgwick, 162.

Selden, 47, 220.

Serapis, 71.

Sin, essence of, 257.

Sizzi, 92.

Smith, Professor Robertson, 250.

---- William (geologist), 118.

Social Statics, 184.

Society, evolution of, 184, 193.

---- modification of struggle in, 259.

Sociology, Principles of, 186, 199.

---- study of, 233.

Socrates, 15.

Solar spectrum, lines in, 178.

Sorbonne, the, 104, 256.

Soul, origin of belief in, 241-245.

---- location of, 91.

---- Lucretius on location of, 25.

Spain, intellectual advance in, 80.

Spectroscope, the, 178.

Spencer, Herbert, 31, 118, 121, 162, 175-201, 233, 241, 254.

Spinoza, 94.

Spiritualism, 145, 156.

Spontaneous generation, 20, 74.

Sprengel, 119, 125.

St. Hilaire, 107, 114.

Stagira, 17.

Stokes, Sir G. G., 234.

Stone, ages of, 28, 35, 248.

Strabo, 101.

Strife as an "element," 14.

Struggle for life, 131, 140, 258.

Suarez, Francisco, 222.

Synthetic philosophy, 182.

---- abstract of the, 195, 199.

---- first draft of, 199.

Table of Greek Philosophers, 36.

---- of leading men of science, 123-125.

Tacitus, 48.

Thales, 6, 8, 17.

Theology and Evolution, final issue between, 223.

Theophrastus, 7, 16.

Theosophy, 9.

Tozer, Mr., 30.

Transubstantiation, origin of belief in, 67.

Turgot, 39, 256.

Tylor, Dr., 168, 241, 246.

Tyndall, Professor, 205, 207, 216.

Usher, Archbishop, 103.

Van Helmont, 20.

Vatican Council on Creation, 33.

Vesalius, 90.

Vestiges of Creation, 119, 135, 209.

Virgin Mary, 60.

Virgins, Black, 64.

Visual sensations, subjective, 154.

Von Baer, 118, 125, 189, 194, 200.

Von Mohl, 119, 125.

Votive offerings, 62.

Wallace, Alfred Russel, 134-157.

---- as biologist, 143.

---- as spiritualist, 145-157.

---- limitation of natural selection to man's physical structure, 144,

235-241.

---- theory of origin of species identical with Darwin's, 140.

"Wallace's Line," 139.

Water as primary substance, 7.

Water-worship, 61, 63.

Weismann, 117.

Wells, Dr. W. C., 166.

Wesley, John, 55, 105.

Whewell, Dr., 159.

White, Dr., 103.

Wilberforce, Bishop, and the Origin of Species, 160.

---- and Huxley, 213.

Wilson, Archdeacon, 161, 219.

Winifred's Well, St., 63.

Witchcraft, belief in, 55.

---- causes of decay of belief in, 98.

Worms, Darwin on the Action of, 168.

Xenophanes, 9, 19.

Zahm, Professor, 222.

Zeller, 9.

Zeno, 10.

THE END.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY'S PUBLICATIONS.

THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SERIES.

NOW READY.

_THE BEGINNINGS OF ART._ By ERNST GROSSE, Professor of Philosophy in

the University of Freiburg. A new volume in the Anthropological

Series, edited by Professor FREDERICK STARR. Illustrated. 12mo.

Cloth. $1.75.

This is an inquiry into the laws which control the life and development

of art, and into the relations existing between it and certain forms of

civilization. The origin of an artistic activity should be sought among

the most primitive peoples, like the native Australians, the Mincopies

of the Andaman Islands, the Botocudos of South America, and the Eskimos;

and with these alone the author studies his subject. Their arts are

regarded as a social phenomenon and a social function, and are

classified as arts of rest and arts of motion. The arts of rest comprise

decoration, first of the body by scarification, painting, tattooing, and

dress; and then of implements--painting and sculpture; while the arts of

motion are the dance (a living sculpture), poetry or song, with rhythm,

and music.

_WOMAN'S SHARE IN PRIMITIVE CULTURE._ By OTIS TUFTON MASON, A. M.,

Curator of the Department of Ethnology in the United States National

Museum. With numerous Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75.

"A most interesting _résumé_ of the revelations which science has made

concerning the habits of human beings in primitive times, and especially

as to the place, the duties, and the customs of women."--_Philadelphia

Inquirer._

_THE PYGMIES._ By A. DE QUATREFAGES, late Professor of Anthropology

at the Museum of Natural History, Paris. With numerous

Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75.

"Probably no one was better equipped to illustrate the general subject

than Quatrefages. While constantly occupied upon the anatomical and

osseous phases of his subject, he was none the less well acquainted with

what literature and history had to say concerning the pygmies.... This

book ought to be in every divinity school in which man as well as God is

studied, and from which missionaries go out to convert the human being

of reality and not the man of rhetoric and text-books."--_Boston

Literary World._

_THE BEGINNINGS OF WRITING._ By W. J. HOFFMAN, M. D. With numerous

Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75.

This interesting book gives a most attractive account of the rude

methods employed by primitive man for recording his deeds. The earliest

writing consists of pictographs which were traced on stone, wood, bone,

skins, and various paperlike substances. Dr. Hoffman shows how the

several classes of symbols used in these records are to be interpreted,

and traces the growth of conventional signs up to syllabaries and

alphabets--the two classes of signs employed by modern peoples.

IN PREPARATION.

_THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDERS._ By DR. SCHMELTZ.

_THE ZUÑI._ By FRANK HAMILTON CUSHING.

_THE AZTECS._ By Mrs. ZELIA NUTTALL.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.

_NEW EDITION OF PROF. HUXLEY'S ESSAYS._

_COLLECTED ESSAYS._ By THOMAS H. HUXLEY. New complete edition, with

revisions, the Essays being grouped according to general subject. In

nine volumes, a new Introduction accompanying each volume. 12mo.

Cloth, $1.25 per volume.

VOL. I.--METHOD AND RESULTS.

VOL. II.--DARWINIANA.

VOL. III.--SCIENCE AND EDUCATION.

VOL. IV.--SCIENCE AND HEBREW TRADITION.

VOL. V.--SCIENCE AND CHRISTIAN TRADITION.

VOL. VI.--HUME.

VOL. VII.--MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE.

VOL. VIII.--DISCOURSES, BIOLOGICAL AND GEOLOGICAL.

VOL. IX.--EVOLUTION AND ETHICS, AND OTHER ESSAYS.

"Mr. Huxley has covered a vast variety of topics during the last quarter

of a century. It gives one an agreeable surprise to look over the tables

of contents and note the immense territory which he has explored. To

read these books carefully and studiously is to become thoroughly

acquainted with the most advanced thought on a large number of

topics."--_New York Herald._

"The series will be a welcome one. There are few writings on the more

abstruse problems of science better adapted to reading by the general

public, and in this form the books will be well in the reach of the

investigator.... The revisions are the last expected to be made by the

author, and his introductions are none of earlier date than a few months

ago [1893], so they may be considered his final and most authoritative

utterances."--_Chicago Times._

"It was inevitable that his essays should be called for in a completed

form, and they will be a source of delight and profit to all who read

them. He has always commanded a hearing, and as a master of the literary

style in writing scientific essays he is worthy of a place among the

great English essayists of the day. This edition of his essays will be

widely read, and gives his scientific work a permanent form."--_Boston

Herald._

"A man whose brilliancy is so constant as that of Prof. Huxley will

always command readers; and the utterances which are here collected are

not the least in weight and luminous beauty of those with which the

author has long delighted the reading world."--_Philadelphia Press._

"The connected arrangement of the essays which their reissue permits

brings into fuller relief Mr. Huxley's masterly powers of exposition.

Sweeping the subject-matter clear of all logomachies, he lets the light

of common day fall upon it. He shows that the place of hypothesis in

science, as the starting point of verification of the phenomena to be

explained, is but an extension of the assumptions which underlie actions

in everyday affairs; and that the method of scientific investigation is

only the method which rules the ordinary business of life."--_London

Chronicle._

_THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY OF HERBERT SPENCER_. In nine volumes.

12mo. Cloth, $2.00 per volume. The titles of the several volumes are

as follows:

(1.) FIRST PRINCIPLES.

I. The Unknowable.

II. Laws of the Knowable.

(2.) THE PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY. Vol. I.

I. The Data of Biology.

II. The Inductions of Biology.

III. The Evolution of Life.

(3.) THE PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY. Vol. II.

IV. Morphological Development.

V. Physiological Development.

VI. Laws of Multiplication.

(4.) THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. Vol. I.

I. The Data of Psychology.

II. The Inductions of Psychology.

III. General Synthesis.

IV. Special Synthesis.

V. Physical Synthesis.

(5.) THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. Vol. II.

VI. Special Analysis.

VII. General Analysis.

VIII. Congruities.

IX. Corollaries.

(6.) THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY. Vol. I.

I. The Data of Sociology.

II. The Inductions of Sociology.

III. The Domestic Relations.

(7.) THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY. Vol. II.

IV. Ceremonial Institutions.

V. Political Institutions.

(8.) THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY. Vol. III.

VI. Ecclesiastical Institutions.

VII. Professional Institutions.

VIII. Industrial Institutions.

(9.) THE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. Vol. I.

I. The Data of Ethics.

II. The Inductions of Ethics.

III. The Ethics of Individual Life.

(10.) THE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. Vol. II.

IV. The Ethics of Social Life: Justice.

V. The Ethics of Social Life: Negative Beneficence.

VI. The Ethics of Social Life: Positive Beneficence.

_DESCRIPTIVE SOCIOLOGY. A Cyclopædia of Social Facts_. Representing

the Constitution of Every Type and Grade of Human Society, Past and

Present, Stationary and Progressive. By HERBERT SPENCER. Eight Nos.,

Royal Folio.

No. I. ENGLISH $4 00

No. II. MEXICANS, CENTRAL AMERICANS, CHIBCHAS, and PERUVIANS 4 00

No. III. LOWEST RACES, NEGRITO RACES, and MALAYO-POLYNESIAN

RACES 4 00

No. IV. AFRICAN RACES 4 00

No. V. ASIATIC RACES 4 00

No. VI. AMERICAN RACES 4 00

No. VII. HEBREWS and PHOENICIANS 4 00

No. VIII. FRENCH (Double Number) 7 00

_THE STRUGGLE OF THE NATIONS_: Egypt, Syria, and Assyria. By

Professor MASPERO. Edited by the Rev. Professor SAYCE. Translated by

M. L. MCCLURE. With Map, 3 Colored Plates, and over 400

Illustrations. Uniform with "The Dawn of Civilization." Quarto.

Cloth, $7.50.

This important work is a companion volume to "The Dawn of Civilization,"

and carries the history of the ancient peoples of the East from the

twenty-fourth to the ninth century before our era. It embraces the

sojourn of the Children of Israel in Egypt, and shows the historic

connection between Egypt and Syria during the centuries immediately

following the exodus. The book embodies the latest discoveries in the

Field of Egyptian and Oriental archæology, and there is no other work

dealing so exhaustively with the period covered.

_THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION._ (EGYPT AND CHALDÆA.) By Prof. G.

MASPERO. Edited by Rev. Prof. A. H. SAYCE. Translated by M. L.

MCCLURE. Revised and brought up to date by the Author. With Map and

over 470 Illustrations. Quarto. Cloth, $7.50.

"The most sumptuous and elaborate work which has yet appeared on this

theme.... The book should be in every well-equipped Oriental library, as

the most complete work on the dawn of civilization. Its careful reading

and studying will open a world of thought to any diligent student, and

very largely broaden and enlarge his views of the grandeur, the

stability, and the positive contributions of the civilization of that

early day to the life and culture of our own times."--_Chicago

Standard._

"By all odds the best account of Egyptian and Assyrian theology, or,

more properly speaking, theosophy, with which we are acquainted.... The

book will arouse many enthusiasms. Its solid learning will enchant the

scholar--its brilliancy will charm the general reader and tempt him into

a region which he may have hesitated to enter."--_The Outlook._

"The most complete reconstruction of that ancient life which has yet

appeared in print. Maspero's great book will remain the standard work

for a long time to come."--_London Daily News._

_LIFE IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ASSYRIA._ By G. MASPERO, late Director of

Archæology in Egypt, and Member of the Institute of France.

Translated by ALICE MORTON. With 188 Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth,

$1.50.

"A lucid sketch, at once popular and learned, of daily life in Egypt at

the time of Rameses II, and of Assyria in that of Assurbanipal.... As an

Orientalist, M. Maspero stands in the front rank, and his learning is so

well digested and so admirably subdued to the service of popular

exposition, that it nowhere overwhelms and always interests the

reader."--_London Times._

"Only a writer who had distinguished himself as a student of Egyptian

and Assyrian antiquities could have produced this work, which has none

of the features of a modern book of travels in the East, but is an

attempt to deal with ancient life as if one had been a contemporary with

the people whose civilization and social usages are very largely

restored."--_Boston Herald._

_PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA._ Sketches of their Lives and

Scientific Work. Edited and revised by WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS, M.D.

With Portraits. 8vo. Cloth, $4.00.

Impelled solely by an enthusiastic love of Nature, and neither

asking nor receiving outside aid, these early workers opened the way

and initiated the movement through which American science has

reached its present commanding position. This book gives some

account of these men, their early struggles, their scientific

labors, and, whenever possible, something of their personal

characteristics. This information, often very difficult to obtain,

has been collected from a great variety of sources, with the utmost

care to secure accuracy. It is presented in a series of sketches,

some fifty in all, each with a single exception accompanied with a

well-authenticated portrait.

"Fills a place that needed filling, and is likely to be widely

read."--_N. Y. Sun._

"It is certainly a useful and convenient volume, and readable too, if we

judge correctly of the degree of accuracy of the whole by critical

examination of those cases in which our own knowledge enables us to form

an opinion.... In general, it seems to us that the handy volume is

specially to be commended for setting in just historical perspective

many of the earlier scientists who are neither very generally nor very

well known."--_New York Evening Post._

"A wonderfully interesting volume. Many a young man will find it

fascinating. The compilation of the book is a work well done, well worth

the doing."--_Philadelphia Press._

"One of the most valuable books which we have received."--_Boston

Advertiser._

"A book of no little educational value.... An extremely valuable work of

reference."--_Boston Beacon._

"A valuable handbook for those whose work runs on these same lines, and

is likely to prove of lasting interest to those for whom '_les documents

humain_' are second only to history in importance--nay, are a vital part

of history."--_Boston Transcript._

"A biographical history of science in America, noteworthy for its

completeness and scope.... All of the sketches are excellently prepared

and unusually interesting."--_Chicago Record._

"One of the most valuable contributions to American literature recently

made.... The pleasing style in which these sketches are written, the

plans taken to secure accuracy, and the information conveyed, combine to

give them great value and interest. No better or more inspiring reading

could be placed in the hands of an intelligent and aspiring young

man."--_New York Christian Work._

"A book whose interest and value are not for to-day or to-morrow, but

for indefinite time."--_Rochester Herald._

"It is difficult to imagine a reader of ordinary intelligence who would

not be entertained by the book.... Conciseness, exactness, urbanity of

tone, and interestingness are the four qualities which chiefly impress

the reader of these sketches."--_Buffalo Express._

"Full of interesting and valuable matter."--_The Churchman._

_THE RISE AND GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH NATION._ With Special Reference

to Epochs and Crises. A History of and for the People. By W. H. S.

AUBREY, LL.D. In Three Volumes. 12mo. Cloth, $4.50.

"The merit of this work is intrinsic. It rests on the broad intelligence

and true philosophy of the method employed, and the coherency and

accuracy of the results reached. The scope of the work is marvelous.

Never was there more crowded into three small volumes. But the saving of

space is not by the sacrifice of substance or of style. The broadest

view of the facts and forces embraced by the subject is exhibited with a

clearness of arrangement and a definiteness of application that render

it perceptible to the simplest apprehension."--_New York Mail and

Express._

"A useful and thorough piece of work. One of the best treatises which

the general reader can use."--_London Daily Chronicle._

"Conceived in a popular spirit, yet with strict regard to the modern

standards. The title is fully borne out. No want of color in the

descriptions."--_London Daily News._

"The plan laid down results in an admirable English history."--_London

Morning Post._

"Dr. Aubrey has supplied a want. His method is undoubtedly the right

one."--_Pall Mall Gazette._

"It is a distinct step forward in history writing; as far ahead of Green

as he was of Macaulay, though on a different line. Green gives the

picture of England at different times--Aubrey goes deeper, showing the

causes which led to the changes."--_New York World._

"A work that will commend itself to the student of history, and as a

comprehensive and convenient reference book."--_The Argonaut._

"Contains much that the ordinary reader can with difficulty find

elsewhere unless he has access to a library of special works."--_Chicago

Dial._

"Up to date in its narration of fact, and in its elucidation of those

great principles that underlie all vital and worthy history.... The

painstaking division, along with the admirably complete index, will make

it easy work for any student to get definite views of any era, or any

particular feature of it.... The work strikes one as being more

comprehensive than many that cover far more space."--_The Christian

Intelligencer._

"One of the most elaborate and noteworthy of recent contributions to

historical literature."--_New Haven Register._

"As a popular history it possesses great merits, and in many particulars

is excelled by none. It is full, careful as to dates, maintains a

generally praiseworthy impartiality, and it is interesting to

read."--_Buffalo Express._

"These volumes are a surprise and in their way a marvel.... They

constitute an almost encylopædia of English history, condensing in a

marvelous manner the facts and principles developed in the history

of the English nation.... The work is one of unsurpassed value to

the historical student or even the general reader, and when more

widely known will no doubt be appreciated as one of the remarkable

contributions to English history published in the century."--_Chicago

Universalist._

"In every page Dr. Aubrey writes with the far-reaching relation of

contemporary incidents to the whole subject. The amount of matter

these three volumes contain is marvelous. The style in which they are

written is more than satisfactory.... The work is one of unusual

importance."--_Hartford Post._

New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

A few punctuation errors have been corrected silently.

The following corrections were made on the page indicated:

10 "Then" changed to "The" (The tendency of that school)

15 "news" changed to "new" (introducing new ones)

36 "Anaximender" changed to "Anaximander" (TABLE)

120 "95" changed to "103" (see p. 103)

124 "Renè" changed to "René" (René Descartes)

191 "Cermonies" changed to "Ceremonies" (Master of the Ceremonies)

239 "genius" changed to "genus" (of the same genus)

254 "Liebnitz" changed to "Leibnitz" (attributed to Leibnitz)

259 "we" added and "we" changed to "be" (once we let these be

weakened)

263 "pelluccid" changed to "pellucid" (the masculine and pellucid

Leviathan)

271 "Linnean" changed to "Linnæan" in the index (Linnæan Society,

famous)

278 "enthusiams" changed to "enthusiasms" (will arouse many

enthusiasms).

Otherwise this text has been preserved as in the original, including

archaic and inconsistent spelling and hyphenation.