_The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex._ By _Charles
Darwin_, M.A., F.R.S. John Murray.
The pleasure of reading Mr. Darwin's long-promised volumes, which has
been keenly anticipated, is at length gratified. Both the subject and
the man exercise a strange fascination upon the public mind. As an
experienced naturalist, a speculative philosopher, and a keen logician,
Mr. Darwin would command the attention of men of science under any
circumstances, but he has the secret of personal power and popularity
quite apart from the accomplishments which allow him to be classed with
other naturalists and philosophers. It is not the lucid clearness of his
style, nor his power of collecting, selecting, and grouping facts, nor
the shrewdness and breadth of his generalizations, alone, which give his
readers their exquisite sense of delight as they follow him through his
descriptions, his arguments, and his speculations. Beyond all this, he
has that sensuous delight in the real, the beautiful, and the
truthful--that appreciation of the grandeur of universal law, visible in
the minutest details, and that union of the receptive and active
faculties which constitute the artist and the genius who owes more to
Nature than to culture. If an argument may be derived from what man is,
and from the mental excellence which he is capable of exhibiting, to
rebuff the theory that he is of so humble a parentage as Mr. Darwin
represents, the author himself would be a refutation of his own theory.
In contemplation of his own powers he might say with Hamlet, 'What a
piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In
form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an
angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world, the
paragon of animals! and yet, what to me is this quintessence of dust!'
The lineal descendant proximately of 'a hairy quadruped, furnished with
a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits and an
inhabitant of the old world; remotely, of an animal more like the larvæ
of existing ascidians (lining sacks), than any other known form!'
Mr. Darwin's volumes treat of two subjects of profound but not of equal
interest. The difference in the interest felt in _man's descent_ and in
_sexual selection_ is well shown in the numerous reviews and notices of
this work which have already appeared. More than two-thirds of the work
is devoted to sexual selection, and this subject is treated, not
exhaustively, it is true, for that is quite impossible in the present
state of our knowledge, but methodically and comprehensively. A vast
number of fresh facts are presented; a great array of old ones are
marshalled in due order; the phenomena are traced as they appear
throughout the whole animal kingdom, and historians and travellers are
adduced in evidence to elucidate problems physical and metaphysical. Yet
reviewers have not taken notice of this, which is really the most
valuable part of the work; guided by a popular instinct they revert to
the subject of man's descent. They do this although there is not nearly
so much freshness, either in the facts or arguments presented in this
portion of his work. 'The proper study of mankind is man,' is a dictum
which men who are no students will readily adopt, because the subject is
not far to seek. That man, the orang, and the gorilla, have a common
ancestor is so fascinating an idea that none can resist its weird
influence. The clergy repeat it from their pulpits in scornful
utterance, as though the simple statement carried its own refutation.
Transcendental philosophers like Vogt assume it as a demonstrated fact.
Wits joke about it. The ears of ladies blush, not at the praise of their
own loveliness, but because of the pointed and telltale evidence these
bear of their own origin. The fascination of this idea was evident from
the first appearance of 'The Origin of Species.' The public insisted on
seeing in it nothing but evidence that man had sprung from a lower form.
Yet in that work it was evident that Mr. Darwin purposely avoided the
discussion of this point. No one will be surprised to learn, from the
introduction of the present work, that during many years the author had
collected notes on the origin and descent of man without any intention
of publishing on the subject--but rather with the determination not to
publish--that he might not add to the prejudice against his views. Yet
the multitudes who talk about the book they have never read, as if they
had done so, have all along supposed and assumed that the one question
thus designedly avoided was the subject of the whole treatise. No doubt
most of the arguments in favour of the derivation and origin of species,
told with equal force as proofs of the like derivation and origin of
man, but there was yet room for a supplemental theory, founded on the
vast elevation of man's moral and mental capacity, which would make man
an exceptional species with an exceptional origin. That such a view was
possible, may be inferred from the concluding chapter in Mr. Wallace's
book on the same subject, in which a peculiar Providence is made to
preside over the evolution of man. There can, however, be no mistake now
about Mr. Darwin's view of the question. His assertions about the origin
of man from a lower form are not only confident, but he has become
dogmatic upon the subject. The attitude of dogmatism is new to him, and
we must say does not become him so well as the cautious candour of his
earlier work. Mr. Darwin writes:--'The main conclusion arrived at in
this work, and now held by many naturalists who are competent to form a
sound judgment, is that man is descended from some less highly-organized
form. The ground upon which this conclusion rests _will never be
shaken_.... It is incredible that all these facts should speak falsely.
He who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of Nature
as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a
separate act of creation.'
In his speculations as to the genealogical descent of man and the way in
which it emerges from the ancestral tree of the animal creation, Mr.
Darwin is almost wholly guided by the rudimentary organs found in man.
Mr. Darwin is quite consistent in this method. No doubt rudimentary
organs which are functionless in our species and have dwindled almost to
nothing, but are developed and have a palpable use in other allied
forms, present the greatest difficulties to those who do not believe in
a derivative origin of species, and also afford the strongest support to
the _selection_ theory. After enumerating the aborted organs, the
transient and foetal structures, and the often-recurring abnormalities
found in man, which are some seventeen or eighteen in number, the author
works out his theory of origin almost strictly in accordance with the
plan of associating the ancestors of man proximately with those species
which possess the most of these analogous structures, and so on to the
larger divisions in which a fewer number of them have a wider
distribution. This plan is, no doubt, philosophical, but it leads the
author into some strange speculations. By similar reasoning it is
demonstrable that our ancestors were hermaphrodite, and thus long after
they had ceased to be so both sexes yielded milk to nourish their young,
and perhaps carried them in marsupial sacks.
A doctrine thus dogmatically stated, of course involves problems and
theories hard to solve and demonstrate, but this arises, in the opinion
of the author, from the fact that the solutions and demonstrations are
hard to find, and not from the doctrines which involve them being in
the least doubtful. The existence of the moral sense in man is one of
these problems, and one of the most interesting chapters in this portion
of the work is devoted to an explanation of the evolution of human
conscience. The moral sense is traced to those social instincts which
man has in common with all gregarious animals. The strengthening and
growth of the memory and judgment would enable man to compare his past
actions, and the mere abiding satisfaction of the process would create
that distinction between the higher and lower law or motive which is all
that modern moralists require. 'Ultimately a highly complex sentiment
having its first origin in the social instincts, largely guided by the
approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in
the latter times by deep religious feeling, confirmed by instruction and
habit, all combined, constitute our moral sense in conscience.'
The second portion of the work is a valuable contribution to science. It
is far more philosophical in its tone. It is a repertory of facts. The
theories to which these facts point are indeed discussed, but the method
is inductive, while the method of the first portion appears to us to be
deductive. Beauty as distinguished from use has always been a
stumbling-block to the disciples of the natural selection school. That
which, in any species, pleases our minds by immediate agency of the
senses, as distinguished from that which is of service to that species
in adapting it to external conditions, is quite unaccounted for by the
survival of the fittest, at least so far as wild and untamed species are
concerned. Some evolutionists would cut the knot by denying the evidence
of beauty apart from fitness. Suitability, symmetry, conspicuousness,
and an imposing appearance are, no doubt, desiderata which natural
selection may seize upon and secure, and these may incidentally and
necessarily involve that which is beautiful in our eyes. But after all
these have been eliminated or satisfied, there yet remains in a large
number of species an element of beauty the contemplation of which brings
pleasure to all human beings, whether educated or uneducated, refined or
unrefined. This is especially the case throughout those large,
numerously represented and dominant classes taken from two separate
sub-kingdoms and called insects and birds. These two classes occupy a
great deal of the attention of Mr. Darwin. If we assume any evolutionary
theory, and abjure the doctrine of final causes, all the varied beauty
of butterflies and humming-birds has but one probable explanation,
namely, that of sexual selection. To make even this explanation
possible, we must assume a keen, discriminating æsthetic faculty in
animals which is like in quality with our own, as that faculty is
possessed by the most refined of our species. Moreover, this faculty
must be intimately connected with the sexual appetency in each species.
Such a connection is, judging from analogy, not improbable. In forming
an opinion how far these views are correct, it is important to isolate
the operation of sexual selection from that of natural selection.
Nature has throughout almost the whole animal kingdom afforded to us
the means of isolation. For, as a general rule, the sexes in species are
not absolutely alike, and often there is great difference between them.
All sexual peculiarities therefore which cannot be explained on the
principle of division of labour, throw light upon the æsthetic faculty
of animals as a selective, and therefore by the theory of a creative
agency. Mr. Darwin has collected a vast mass of facts about sexual
peculiarities, which being in no way connected with the sexual function,
he calls _secondary sexual characters_. Of course, sexual secondary
characters so limited point to a difference in the modification of the
sexual desire by æsthetic appetite in the two sexes. Generally speaking,
the adorned sex is the male. Have, then, the females a greater
appreciation of beauty than their males? Mr. Darwin thinks the ardour of
the male destroys his discrimination. Some facts produced, however, seem
to run directly counter to this supposition. On all hands the peacock is
considered the most splendid of birds, and the difference between the
sexes in this species is carried to an extreme point. Yet, one of Mr.
Darwin's best authenticated facts is, that the pea-hen differs from most
birds in being the ardent wooer.
One of the happiest and most satisfactory episodes in the book is the
account of the genesis of the eye-spot in the plumage of birds, and
specially of that of the ball and socket ornament in the secondary
wing-feathers of the Argus pheasant. The treatment of this subject
reminds us, by its clearness and beauty, of the author's treatises on
coral islands and the fertilization of orchids. How simple a phenomenon
may disclose a world of interest and wonder when in the hands of a man
of genius! It seems to us, however, that that wonderfully faithful
representation of a round ball lying in a hollow socket, expressed on
the flat of the web of a feather, offers a striking example of the
inadequacy of either natural or sexual selections to explain such
phenomena. 'That these ornaments,' says Mr. Darwin, 'should have been
formed through the selection of many successive generations, not one of
which was originally intended to produce the ball and socket effect,
seems as incredible as that one of Raphael's Madonnas should have been
formed by the selection of chance daubs of paint made by a long
succession of artists, not one of whom intended to draw the human
figure.' Exactly so! We must attribute to the hen Argus pheasant the
æsthetic powers of a Raphael in order to account for the decorations of
her mate, or, more properly, we must assign to a succession of
multitudes of generations of birds a correctness of appreciation of the
draughtsman's art, such as is a rare excellence among men. This may be a
fact, but if so, it opens up a new realm to our imagination. It must be
admitted that the tendency of modern thought is to obliterate the fast
line drawn by old authors between reason and instinct, and to assign the
former less exclusively to man, and the latter less exclusively to
animals. This tendency and the incidental light thrown by these
considerations on these interesting questions are well exemplified in
Mr. Darwin's work.
A curious disagreement in opinion between Messrs. Darwin and Wallace is
brought out and treated of lengthily in the chapters on birds. Mr.
Wallace thinks that in the case of splendid cock-birds who have plain
hens, who sit on open nests, the tendency for both sexes to become
brilliant has been checked by natural selection. On the other hand, Mr.
Darwin thinks that secondary sexual splendour was from the first
developed only in the male; and in the converse case, where the female
is also gay, natural selection causes her to build a covered nest for
protection. We think Mr. Darwin has the best of the argument. The
question of whether the standard of beauty among men is uniform in its
essentials or not is ably discussed, but no conclusion is arrived at; so
contradictory is the evidence of travellers and observers.
We heartily endorse Mr. Darwin's dictum that false facts are highly
injurious to the progress of science; but false views, if supported by
some evidence, do little harm. We are therefore content to
'Let him, the wiser man, who springs
Hereafter, up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape.'
'But we are born to other things.'
_Thoughts on Health and some of its Conditions._ By JAMES HINTON. Smith,
Elder, and Co.
This volume contains by no means a dry discussion of the conditions of
health. It hardly professes to be methodical or exhaustive in its
treatment of the subject. It is rather the production of a man who is
full of original ideas such as lie around the subject of health and
life, and who has adopted this title in order to give them to the
public. The details of the subject have evidently no charms for the
author; nevertheless, those which are given or referred to show him to
be quite abreast of the foremost file of the army of science. He is
quite poetical in his similes, and is fascinated by sublime ideas, yet
his chapter on 'Nursing as a Profession' shows him to be a practical
reformer. The book will be read with interest by those whose mental bias
leads them in that direction, while it gives vivid conceptions of
abstruse ideas. The one fault of the book is, that the author allows his
imagination to build up speculations upon a basis of known facts, which
fresh facts yet unknown may very possibly show to be mere speculations.
Thus the speculations about the functions of nitrogen, carbon, and
phosphorus, when forming complex compounds in the organism derived and
built up upon our knowledge of their properties as elements, are
doubtless interesting, but they are not backed by chemical knowledge,
and are opposed to the analogies of that science. This fault, however,
is so allied to the virtues of freshness and force of thought which are
everywhere found in the volume, that it ought not to prejudice the
reader against the author, though he certainly ought to be on his guard
against the seduction of that author's enthusiasm.
_The American Colleges and the American Public._ By NOAH PORTER, D.D.,
Professor in Yale College. New Haven, Conn. 1870.
This volume would be invaluable to us if we had a system of high-school
and university education at all corresponding to that of the United
States. No one is more competent than Dr. Noah Porter to describe the
operation of the American system, to detect some of its weaknesses, to
contrast it with English and German tuition, and to point out where
America might learn something from England, and in what respect England
might be benefited by following transatlantic customs. Far away from the
circumstances and experimental innovations which have excited so much
general interest in America, we can hardly enter into any minute
criticism of the old customs or the recent changes. Some of the
discussions--such, for instance, as that on the relative advantage of
college lectures and text-book-recitations, on the system of private
tutoring, on the propriety or otherwise of very frequent examinations,
on the dormitory system, on the advantage of the resident and
non-resident systems, and on the extent to which laws and supervision on
the part of the college authorities should extend--will interest the
supporters and professors of English colleges for the ministry, though
many of the conditions under which we should have to apply them are so
profoundly different that not much light would be attained for our
guidance. The calm, candid, lucid manner in which our author has
investigated the whole subject, and held the balances in all these
discussions, is worthy of all respect. In advocating greater freedom
from clerical influence, and more breadth in the relations between the
authorities and the graduates in the government of the colleges, we
presume that he is treading on delicate ground. In our smaller
institutions we have long since adopted the principle he recommends. Our
national universities will become before long the property of the
nation, and not of a sect, and be governed in deference to law, by their
own _alumni_, without any privilege but that which is earned by
distinguished ability. This, however, is not the place to discuss a
question like this.
_The Ancient Geography of India; the Buddhist Period, including the
Campaigns of Alexander and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang._ By ALEXANDER
CUNNINGHAM, Major-General, Royal Engineers (Bengal, retired). With
thirteen Maps. Trübner and Co. 1871.
The author of 'The Bhilsa Topes' has once more brought his great
learning, and his rare advantages of travel and of residence to bear on
the elucidation of the Buddhist period of Indian history and thought. On
this occasion he has, however, shown his antiquarian, topographical,
and etymological skill in deciphering and harmonizing the geography of
the Greek historians and the Chinese pilgrims. Few things are more
important to the comprehension of any history--sacred, classic, modern,
or contemporary--than a clear exhibition of the physical features of the
country on which the destinies of generations have been determined, and
a sound identification of the sites of famous cities, fortresses,
temples, and battle-fields. When the history of great nations covers
thousands of years, the physical features may be recovered by personal
inspection of sites that are distinctly described by early writers; but
the confusing resemblance of neglected and buried cities to each other
has been the fruitful source of false identifications, and when once on
a wrong scent, the geography of large districts of country has often
been thrown into hopeless entanglement. The geography of India, with its
history, maybe conveniently divided into three periods. The Vedic or
Brahmanic period would cover the entire prehistoric section of the
history, and trace the extension of the Aryan race from their first
occupation of the Punjab to the rise of Buddhism. The Buddhist period
would extend from the era of Buddha--whensoever that may be determined,
say between the fourth and sixth century B.C.--to Mahmoud of Ghizni; and
the Mohammedan period will extend from the rise of the Mohammedan power
to the battle of Plassy. Major-General Cunningham has devoted a volume
of nearly six hundred pages to the investigation of the geography of
India during the Buddhist period, which may be said to cover from
fourteen to sixteen hundred years. He has personally travelled over the
entire country, and carefully scanned its features with a curious,
archæological eye, and has thus succeeded in fixing the line of
Alexander's campaigns, and in bringing into geographical completeness
and unity the itineraries and allusions of the Chinese pilgrims,
Fah-pian, Chung-yun, and Hwen-Thsang. Though the campaigns of Alexander
were confined to the valley of the Indus and its tributaries, yet the
information collected by his companions, and the records of subsequent
embassies between the Seleucidæ and the Maurya and other princes,
include abundant references to the whole valley of the Ganges. We think
we may confidently assert that no student of the works of Rémusat and
Lassen, Stanislas Julien, or Vivien de St. Martin, will now be content
without having General Cunningham's maps and expositions at his side. It
would be difficult to do justice to such a work in a brief notice;
still, some of the identifications are of general interest. The merest
tyro in Buddhist lore knows something of the legend of Kunâla, the
beautiful-eyed son of Asoka, the great Buddhist king, who was sent in
his youth and unsuspecting innocence to quell a revolt in the great city
of _Taxasila_, and who there suffered the loss of his lustrous eyes in
consequence of the malicious designs of his stepmother. Everyone has
heard that in the neighbourhood of this city, Buddha is fabled in a
previous state of existence to have made the sacrifice of his head in
alms, and to have offered himself in another existence to a dying
tigress, having first fed her with his blood that she might be strong
enough to devour him more effectually. The city was admired by Alexander
himself; it was described by Pliny and Arrian; it was visited by
Apollonius of Tyana, and referred to by his celebrated biographer,
Philostratus. It was visited with enthusiasm by Fah-Hian 400 A.D., and
by Hwen-Thsang in 630 and 643 A.D.; and a variety of particulars are
mentioned which have enabled our author by personal inspection to
identify the exact spot, to make out the ruins, the lines of walls and
roads, and the site of the stupa placed by the great King Asoka over the
scene of the act of self-sacrifice to which we have referred.
Our author identifies the celebrated city _Srâvasti_ with the ruined
city of _Sâhet-Mâhet_, where he discovered a colossal figure of Buddha,
with an inscription having on it the name of this city, immortalized by
Buddha's most successful preaching. He has shown that when Hwen-Thsang
visited Srâvasti it must have been in utter decay, and that he mistook
the ruins of the city for those of the palace; but Cunningham has
brought the divergent statements of the Chinese pilgrims as to the
distance of _Srâvasti_ from other points into sufficient accord to be
satisfactory, and he draws by a clever etymological manoeuvre the
modern name _Sâhet-Mâhet_ into harmony with the Pali form _Sâwatthi_ and
the Chinese name She-wei. We have, moreover, in the volume strong
reasons given for fixing the site of Kapilavastu, the birthplace of
Buddha, at _Nagar_, in the northern division of Oude; and the site of
_Nalanda_, the monster Buddhist monastery, at _Baragaon_ near Gaza; and
so with hundreds of other places which are interesting from their
mention in Buddhist legend or authentic Buddhist biography. We heartily
thank General Cunningham for his elaborate work.
_Walks in Rome._ Two vols. By AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE. Strahan and Co.
This is only a guide-book, but it is one of a very superior description.
As Rome is to all cities, so is this guide-book to all other
guide-books. Fully informed with the spirit of the past, and yet not
wanting in the facts of the present, it is at once an historical monitor
and a topographical companion. The poetry and sentiment and delicate
observation of various writers, bred of cultured gazing upon the ruins
which almost make twenty centuries synchronous, have been carefully
gathered together; but the requirements of the mere sightseer have not
been forgotten. The volumes are full of useful information. We should
think that only those to whom Rome is familiar with more than the
familiarity of a natal city could afford to dispense with them.