Chapter II: MODERN, or Period of Man and Modern Mammals, including (1)

(_a_) _Post-Glacial_, or Second Continental Period, in which
the land was again very extensive, and palæocosmic man was
contemporary with some great mammals--as the mammoth, now
extinct--and the area of land in the northern hemisphere was
greater than at present. (This represents the Late
Pleistocene of Dawkins.) It was terminated by a great and
very general subsidence, accompanied by the disappearance of
palæocosmic man and some large Mammalia, and which may be
identical with the historical deluge.[11]

(_b_) _Recent_, when the continents attained their present
levels, existing races of men colonized Europe, and living
species of mammals. This includes both the Prehistoric and
the Historic Period.

The palæocosmic men of the above table are the oldest certainly known to us, and it has been truly said of them that they are so closely related to modern races that, on any hypothesis of gradual evolution, we must look for the transition from apes to men not merely in the Eocene Tertiary, but even in the Mesozoic--that is, in formations vastly older than any containing any remains so far as known either of man or of apes. That these most ancient men were in truth most truly human, and that they presented no transition to lower animals, will appear from the following notices, which I condense from a work of my own in which these subjects are more fully treated:

The beautiful work of Lartet and Christy has vividly portrayed to us the antiquities of the limestone plateau of the Dordogne--the ancient Aquitania--remains which recall to us a population of Horites, or cave-dwellers, of a time anterior to the dawn of history in France, living much like the modern hunter-tribes of America, and, as already stated, possibly contemporary--in their early history, at least--with the mammoth and its extinct companions of the later Post-Pliocene forests. We have already noticed the arts and implements of these people, but what manner of people were they in themselves? The answer is given to us by the skeletons found in the cave of Cro-magnon. This cavern is a shelter or hollow under an overhanging ledge of limestone, and excavated originally by the action of the weather on a softer bed. It fronts the south-west and the little river Vezère; and, having originally been about eight feet high and nearly twenty deep, must have formed a cosey shelter from rain or cold or summer sun, and with a pleasant outlook from its front. All rude races have much sagacity in making selections of this sort. Being nearly fifty feet wide, it was capacious enough to accommodate several families, and when in use it no doubt had trees or shrubs in front, and may have been further completed by stones, poles, or bark placed across the opening. It seems, however, in the first instance to have been used only at intervals, and to have been left vacant for considerable portions of time. Perhaps it was visited only by hunting-or war-parties. But subsequently it was permanently occupied, and this for so long a time that in some places ashes and carbonaceous matter a foot and a half deep, with bones, implements, etc., were accumulated. By this time the height of the cavern had been much diminished, and, instead of clearing it out for future use, it was made a place of burial, in which four or five individuals were interred. Of these, two were men, one of great age, the other probably in the prime of life. A third was a woman of about thirty or forty years of age. The other remains were too fragmentary to give very certain results.

These bones, with others to be mentioned in connection with them, unquestionably belong to the oldest human inhabitants known in Western Europe. They have been most carefully examined by several competent anatomists and archæologists, and the results have been published with excellent figures in the _Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ_. They are, therefore, of the utmost interest for our present purpose, and I shall try so to divest the descriptions of anatomical details as to give a clear notion of their character. The 'Old Man of Cro-magnon' was of great stature, being nearly six feet high. More than this, his bones show that he was of the strongest and most athletic muscular development--a Samson in strength; and the bones of the limbs have the peculiar form which is characteristic of athletic men habituated to rough walking, climbing, and running, for this is, I believe, the real meaning of the enormous strength of the thigh-bone and the flattened condition of the leg in this and other old skeletons. It occurs to some extent, though much less than in this old man, in American skeletons. His skull presents all the characters of advanced age, though the teeth had been worn down to the sockets without being lost; which, again, is the character of some, though not of all, aged Indian skulls. The skull proper, or brain-case, is very long--more so than in ordinary modern skulls--and this length is accompanied with a great breadth; so that the brain was of greater size than in average modern men, and the frontal region was largely and well developed. In this respect this most ancient skull fails utterly to vindicate the expectations of those who would regard prehistoric men as approaching to the apes. It is at the opposite extreme. The face, however, presented very peculiar characters. It was extremely broad, with projecting cheek-bones and heavy jaw, in this resembling the coarse types of the American face, and the eye-orbits were square and elongated laterally. The nose was large and prominent, and the jaws projected somewhat forward. This man, therefore, had, as to his features, some resemblance to the harsher type of American physiognomy, with overhanging brows, small and transverse eyes, high cheek-bones, and coarse mouth. He had not lived to so great an age without some rubs, for his thigh-bone showed a depression which must have resulted from a severe wound--perhaps from the horn of some wild animal or the spear of an enemy.

The woman presented similar characters of stature and cranial form modified by her sex, and must in form and visage have been a veritable squaw, who, if her hair and complexion were suitable, would have passed at once for an American Indian woman, of unusual size and development. Her head bears sad testimony to the violence of her age and people. She died from the effects of a blow from a stone-headed pogamogan or spear, which has penetrated the right side of the forehead with so clean a fracture as to indicate the extreme rapidity and force of its blow. It is inferred from the condition of the edges of this wound that she may have survived its infliction for two weeks or more. If, as is most likely, the wound was received in some sudden attack by a hostile tribe, they must have been driven off or have retired, leaving the wounded woman in the hands of her friends to be tended for a time, and then buried, either with other members of her family or with others who had perished in the same skirmish. Unless the wound was inflicted in sleep, during a night-attack, she must have fallen, not in flight, but with her face to the foe, perhaps aiding the resistance of her friends or shielding her little ones from destruction. With the people of Cro-magnon, as with the American Indians, the care of the wounded was probably a sacred duty, not to be neglected without incurring the greatest disgrace and the vengeance of the guardian spirits of the sufferers.

The skulls of these people have been compared to those of the modern Esthonians or Lithuanians; but on the authority of M. Quatrefages it is stated that, while this applies to the probably later race of small men found in some of the Belgian caves, it does not apply so well to the people of Cro-magnon. Are, then, these people the types of any ancient, or of the most ancient, European race? One answer is given by the remarkable skeleton of Mentone, in the South of France, found under circumstances equally suggestive of great antiquity (Figure 8). Dr. Rivière, in a memoir on this skeleton illustrated by two beautiful photographs, shows that the characters of the skull and of the bones of the limbs are precisely similar to those of the Cro-magnon skeleton, indicating a perfect identity of race, while the objects found with the skeleton are similar in character.

The ornaments of Cro-magnon were perforated shells from the Atlantic and pieces of ivory. Those at Mentone were perforated Neritinæ from the Mediterranean and canine-teeth of the deer. In both cases there was evidence that these ancient people painted themselves with red oxide of iron; and, as if to complete the similarity, the Mentone man had an old healed-up fracture of the radius of the left arm, the effect of a violent blow or of a fall. Skulls found at Clichy and Grenelle in 1868 and 1869 are described by Professor Broca and Mr. Fleurens as of the same general type, and the remains found at Gibraltar and in the cave of Paviland, in England, seem also to have belonged to the same race. The celebrated Engis skull, believed to have belonged to a contemporary of the mammoth, is also precisely of the same type, though less massive than that of Cro-magnon; and, lastly, even the somewhat degraded Neanderthal skull, found in a cave near Dusseldorf, though, like that of Clichy, inferior in frontal development, is referable to the same peculiar long-headed style of man, in so far as can be judged from the portion that remains.

Portion of the skeleton of the fossil man of Mentone. This
skeleton was discovered by Dr. Rivière under about twenty feet
of accumulated débris. It belongs to the palæocosmic age, and
illustrates the high type, physically, of the man of that
period. The skeleton, like others of that age, indicates a man
of great stature and muscular vigor, and with brain above the
average size. (_After Rivière._)]

Let it be observed, then, that these skulls are probably the oldest known in the world, and they are all referable to one race of men; and let us ask what they tell as to the position and character of palæolithic man. The testimony is here fortunately wellnigh unanimous. Huxley, who well compares some of the peculiar features of these ancient skulls and skeletons to those of Australians and other rude tribes, and of the ancient Danes of Borroby--a people not improbably allied to the Esthonians and Fins--remarks that the manner in which the individual heads of the most homogeneous rude races differ from each other "in the same characters, though perhaps not to the same extent with the Engis and Neanderthal skulls, seems to prohibit any cautious reasoner from affirming the latter to have necessarily been of distinct races." My own experience in American skulls, and the still larger experience of Dr. Wilson, fully confirm the wisdom of this caution.... He adds: "Finally, the comparatively large cranial capacity of the Neanderthal skull, overlaid though it may be by pithecoid, bony walls, and the completely human proportions of the accompanying limb-bones, together with the very fair development of the Engis skull, clearly indicate that the first traces of the primordial stock whence man has been derived need no longer be sought by those who entertain any form of the doctrine of progressive development in the newest Tertiaries, but that they may be looked for in an epoch more distant from that of the _Elephas primigenius_ than that is from us." If he had possessed the Cro-magnon and Mentone skulls at the time when this was written, he might well have said immeasurably distant from the time of the _Elephas primigenius_. Professor Broca, who seems by no means disinclined to favor a simian origin for men, has the following general conclusions, which refer to the Cro-magnon skulls: "The great volume of the brain, the development of the frontal region, the fine elliptical profile of the anterior portion of the skull, and the orthognathous form of the upper facial region, are incontestably evidence of superiority which are met with usually only in the civilized races. On the other hand, the great breadth of face, the alveolar prognathism, the enormous development of the ascending ramus of the lower jaw, the extent and roughness of the muscular insertions, especially of the masticatory muscles, give rise to the idea of a violent and brutal race."

Three bone harpoons. The upper is from Kent's Cavern, Torquay,
and perhaps the oldest known, being of the mammoth age. The
second is from Denmark, and is neocosmic, though prehistoric.
The third is modern, from Tierra del Fuego. They show the
similarity of bone implements in all ages of the world. The
earliest had already attained as much perfection as the
material permitted with reference to the use intended.]

He adds that this apparent antithesis, seen also in the limbs as well as in the skull, accords with the evidence furnished by the associated weapons and implements of a rude hunter-life, and at the same time of no mean degree of taste and skill in carving and other arts (see Fig. 9). He might have added that this is precisely the antithesis seen in the American tribes, among whom art and taste of various kinds, and much that is high and spiritual even in thought, coexisted with barbarous modes of life and intense ferocity and cruelty. The god and the devil were combined in these races, but there was nothing of the mere brute.

Rivière remarks, with expressions of surprise, the same contradictory points in the Mentone skeleton. Its grand development of brain-case and high facial angle--even higher, apparently, than in most of these ancient skulls--combined with other characters which indicate a low type and barbarous modes of life.

Another point which strikes us in reading the descriptions, and which deserves the attention of those who have access to the skeletons, is the indication which they seem to present of an extreme longevity. The massive proportions of the body, the great development of the muscular processes, the extreme wearing of the teeth among a people who predominantly lived on flesh and not on grain, the obliteration of the sutures of the skull, along with indications of slow ossification of the ends of the long bones, point in this direction, and seem to indicate a slow maturity and great length of life in this most primitive race.

The picture would be incomplete did we not add that in France and Belgium, in the immediately succeeding or reindeer age, these gigantic and magnificent men seem to have been superseded by a feebler race of smaller stature and with shorter heads; so that we have, even in these oldest days, the same contrasts so plainly perceptible in the races of the North of Europe and the North of America in historical times (Figure 10).

Section of the cave of Frontal, in Belgium. (_After Dupont._)
_a_, limestone; _b_, deposit of mud of the mammoth age, on
which rests a bed of gravel, _c_, and above this there was, in
modern times, a mass of fallen débris, _d_, up to the dotted
line. On removing this, a hearth was found at _e_, on which
were numerous bones of modern animals, the remains of funeral
feasts. The cave was closed with a flat stone, and within were
skeletons, stone implements, ornaments, and pottery of the
"neolithic" age. Under these was undisturbed earth of the
palæolithic, or mammoth age. The facts show the succession, in
Belgium, of palæocosmic or antediluvian men and of neocosmic
men allied to the Basques or to the Laps, and all this
previous to the advent of the modern races.]

It is further significant that there are some indications to show that the larger and nobler race was that which inhabited Europe at the time of its greatest elevation above the sea and greatest horizontal extent, and when its fauna included many large quadrupeds now extinct. This race of giants was thus in the possession of a greater continental area than that now existing, and had to contend with gigantic brute rivals for the possession of the world. It is also not improbable that this early race became extinct in Europe in consequence of the physical changes which occurred in connection with the subsidence which reduced the land to its present limits, and that the dwarfish race which succeeded came in as the appropriate accompaniment of a diminished land-surface and a less genial climate in the early modern period. Both of these races are properly palæolithic, and are supposed to antedate the period of polished stone; but this may, to a great extent, be a prejudice of collectors, who have arrived at a foregone conclusion as to the distinctness of these periods (Figure 11). Judging from the great cranial capacity of the older race and the small number of their skeletons found, it would be fair to suppose that they represent rude outlying tribes belonging to races which elsewhere had attained to greater culture.

Flint arrow-heads found together in a modern Indian deposit in
Canada, and showing the coincidence in time of rude and
finished flint weapons, or that among all savages using
chipped flint, the palæolithic and neolithic ages are
contemporaneous.]

Lastly, both of these old European races were Turanian, Mongolian, or American in their head-forms and features, as well as in their habits, implements, and arts. To illustrate this, in so far as the older of the two races is concerned, I have carefully compared collections of American Indian skulls with casts and figures representing the form and dimensions of some of the oldest European crania above referred to. Some of the American skulls may fairly be compared in their characters with the Mentone skull, and others with those of Cro-magnon, Engis, and Neanderthal; and so like are some of the Huron, Iroquois, and other northern American skulls to these ancient European relics and others of their type, that it would be difficult to affirm that they might not have belonged to near relatives. On the other hand, the smaller and shorter heads of the race of the reindeer age in Europe may be compared with the Laps, and with some of the more delicately formed Algonquin and Chippewayan skulls in America. If, therefore, the reader desires to realize the probable aspect of the men of Cro-magnon, of Mentone, or of Engis, I may refer him to modern American heads. So permanent is this great Turanian race, out of which all the other races now extant seem to have been developed, in the milder and more hospitable regions of the Old World, while in northern Asia and in America it has retained to this day its primitive characters.

The reader, reflecting on what he has learned from history, may be disposed here to ask, Must we suppose Adam to have been one of these Turanian men, like old men of Cro-magnon? In answer, I would say that there is no good reason to regard the first man as having resembled a Greek Apollo or an Adonis. He was probably of sterner and more muscular mould. But the gigantic palæolithic men of the European caves are more probably representatives of that fearful and powerful race who filled the antediluvian world with violence, and who reappear in postdiluvian times as the Anakim and traditional giants, who constitute a feature in the early history of so many countries. Perhaps nothing is more curious in the revelations as to the most ancient cave-men than that they confirm the old belief that there were 'giants in those days.'

And now let us pause for a moment to picture these so-called palæolithic men. What could the old man of Cro-magnon have told us had we been able to sit by his hearth and listen understandingly to his speech?--which, if we may judge from the form of his palate-bones, must have resembled more that of the Americans or Mongolians than of any modern European people. He had, no doubt, travelled far, for to his stalwart limbs a long journey through forests and over plains and mountains would be a mere pastime. He may have bestridden the wild horse, which seems to have abounded at the time in France, and he may have launched his canoe on the waters of the Atlantic. His experience and memory might extend back a century or more, and his traditional lore might go back to the times of the first mother of our race. Did he live in that wide Post-Pliocene continent which extended westward through Ireland? Did he know and had he visited the nations that lived in the valley of the great Gihon, that ran down the Mediterranean Valley, or on that nameless river which flowed through the Dover Straits? Had he visited or seen from afar the great island Atlantis, whose inhabitants could almost see in the sunset sky the islands of the blest? Or did he live at a later time, after the Post-Pliocene subsidence, and when the land had assumed its present form? In that case he could have told us of the great deluge, of the huge animals of the antediluvian World--known to him only by tradition--and of the diminished strength and longevity of men in his comparatively modern days. We can but conjecture all this. But, mute though they may be as to the details of their lives, the man of Cro-magnon and his contemporaries are eloquent of one great truth, in which they coincide with the Americans and with the primitive men of all the early ages. They tell us that primitive man had the same high cerebral organization which he possesses now, and, we may infer, the same high intellectual and moral nature, fitting him for communion with God and headship over the lower world. They indicate, also, like the Mound-builders, who preceded the North American Indian, that man's earlier state was the best--that he had been a high and noble creature before he became a savage. It is not conceivable that their high development of brain and mind could have spontaneously engrafted itself on a mere brutal and savage life. These gifts must be remnants of a noble organization degraded by moral evil. They thus justify the tradition of a Golden and Edenic Age, and mutely protest against the philosophy of progressive development as applied to man, while they bear witness to the identity in all important characters of the oldest prehistoric men with that variety of our species which is at the present day at once the most widely extended and the most primitive in its manners and usages.

Thus it would appear that these earliest known men are not specifically distinct from ourselves, but are a distinct race, most nearly allied to that great Turanian stock which is at the present day, and has apparently from the earliest historic times been, the most widely spread of all. Though rude and uncultured, they were not either physically or mentally inferior to the average men of to-day, and were indeed in several respects men of high type, whose great cranial capacity might lead us to suppose that their ancestors had recently been in a higher state of civilization than themselves. It is, however, possible that this characteristic was rather connected with great energy and physical development than with high mental activity.

To the hypothesis of evolution, as applied to man, these facts evidently oppose great difficulties. They show that such modern degraded races as the Fuegians or the Tasmanians cannot present to us the types of our earlier ancestors, since the latter were men of a different and higher style. Nor do these oldest known men present any approximation in physical characters to the lower animals. Further, we may infer from their works, and from what we know of their beliefs and habits, that they were not creatures of instinct, but of thought like ourselves, and that materialistic doctrines of automatism and brain-force without mind would be quite as absurd in their application to them as to their modern representatives.

It is not too much to say that, in presence of these facts, the spontaneous origin of man from inferior animals cannot be held as a scientific conclusion. It may be an article of faith in authority, or a superstition or an hypothesis, but is in no respect a result of scientific investigation into the fossil remains of man. But if man is not such a product of spontaneous evolution, he must have been created by a Being having a higher reason and a greater power than his own; and the ancestry of the agnostic, and the rational powers which he exercises, constitute the best refutation of his own doctrine.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] The Ceylon elephant is by some believed to be distinct, but is probably a variety of the Indian species.

[9] _Fossil Men_ (London, 1880), Appendix.

[10] The first continental period was that of the earlier Pliocene.

[11] The precise date in years assignable to this event geology cannot determine; but I have elsewhere shown that the actual antiquity of the palæocosmic or antediluvian man has been greatly exaggerated.

LECTURE V.

NATURE AS A MANIFESTATION OF MIND.

The subjects already discussed should have prepared us to regard nature as not a merely fortuitous congeries of matter and forces, but as embodying plan, design, and contrivance; and we may now inquire as to the character of these, considered as possible manifestations of mind in nature. The idea that nature is a manifestation of mind, is ancient, and probably universal. It proceeds naturally from the analogy between the operations of nature and those which originate in our own will and contrivance. When men begin to think more accurately, this idea acquires a deeper foundation in the conclusion that nature, in all its varied manifestations, is one vast machine too great and complex for us to comprehend, and implying a primary energy infinitely beyond that of man; and thus the unity of nature points to one Creative Mind.

Even to savage peoples, in whose minds the idea of unity has not germinated, or from whose traditions it has been lost, a spiritual essence appears to underlie all natural phenomena, though they may regard this as consisting of a separate spirit or manitou for every material thing. In all the more cultivated races the ideas of natural religion have taken more definite forms in their theology and philosophy. Dugald Stewart has well expressed the more scientific form of this idea in two short statements:

"1. Every effect implies a cause.

"2. Every combination of means to an end implies intelligence."

The theistic aspect of the doctrine had, as we have seen in a previous lecture, been already admirably expressed by Paul in his Epistle to the Romans. Writing of what every heathen must know of mind in nature, he says: "The invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his eternal power and divinity." The two things which, according to him, every intelligent man must perceive in nature are, first, power above and beyond that of man, and, secondly, superhuman intelligence. Even Agnostic Evolution cannot wholly divest itself of the idea of mind in nature. Its advocates continually use terms implying contrivance and plan when speaking of nature; and Spencer appears explicitly to admit that we cannot divest ourselves of the notion of a First Cause. Even those writers who seek to shelter themselves under such vague and unmeaning statements as that human intelligence must be potentially present in atoms or in the solar energy, are merely attributing superhuman power and divinity to atoms and forces.

Nor can they escape by the magisterial denunciation of such ideas as "anthropomorphic" fancies. All science must in this sense be anthropomorphic, for it consists of what nature appears to us to be when viewed through the medium of our senses, and of what we think of nature as so presented to us. The only difference is this--that if Agnostic Evolution is true, Science itself only represents a certain stage of the development, and can have no actual or permanent truth; while, if the theistic view is correct, then the fact that man himself belongs to the unity of nature and is in harmony with its other parts gives us some guarantee for the absolute truth of scientific facts and principles.

We may now consider more in detail some of the aspects under which mind presents itself in nature.

1. It may be maintained that nature is an exhibition of regulated and determined power. The first impression of nature presented to a mind uninitiated in its mysteries is that it is a mere conflict of opposing forces; but so soon as we study any natural phenomena in detail, we see that this is an error, and that everything is balanced in the nicest way by the most subtle interactions of matter and force. We find also that, while forces are mutually convertible and atoms susceptible of vast varieties of arrangement, all this is determined by fixed law and carried out with invariable regularity and constancy.

The vapor of water, for example, diffused in the atmosphere, is condensed by extreme cold and falls to the ground in snowflakes. In these, particles of water previously kept asunder by heat are united by cohesive force; and the heat has gone on other missions. But these particles do not merely unite: they geometrize. Like well-drilled soldiers arranging themselves in ranks, they form themselves, according to regular axes of attraction, in lines diverging at an angle of sixty degrees; and thus the snowflakes are hexagonal plates and six-rayed stars, the latter often growing into very complex shapes, but all based on the law of attraction under angles of sixty degrees (see Fig. 12). The frost on the window-panes observes the same law, and so does every crystallization of water where it has scope to arrange itself in accordance with its own geometry. But this law of crystallization gives to snow and ice their mechanical properties, and is connected with a multitude of adjustments of water in the solid state to its place in nature. The same law, varied in a vast number of ways in every distinct substance, builds up crystals of all kinds and crystalline rocks, and is connected with countless adaptations of different kinds of matter to mechanical and chemical uses in the arts. It is easy to see that all this might have been otherwise--nay, that it must have been otherwise--but for the institution of many and complex laws.

Snowflakes copied from nature under the microscope, and
serving to illustrate the geometrical arrangement of molecules
of water in crystallizing. _a_, _b_, simple stars; _c_, _d_,
hexagonal plates; _e_, _f_, rays of large and complex
star-shaped flakes. The law of arrangement of the molecules is
that of attraction in the lines of three axes at angles of
sixty degrees, and the varieties are produced by differences
in temperature and rate of supply of material.]

A lump of coal at first suggests little to excite interest or imagination; but the student of its composition and microscopic structure finds that it is an accumulation of vegetable matter representing the action of the solar light on the leaves of trees of the Palæozoic Age. It thus calls up images of these perished forests and of the causes concerned in their production and growth, and in the accumulation and preservation of their buried remains. It further suggests the many ways in which this solar energy, so long sealed up, can be recalled to activity in heat, gaslight, steam, and electric light, and how remarkably these things have been related to the wealth and the civilization of modern nations. An able writer of the agnostic school, in a popular lecture on coal, has his imagination so stimulated by these thoughts that he apostrophizes "Nature" as the cunning contriver who stored up this buried sunlight by her strange and mysterious alchemy, kept it quietly to herself through all the long geological periods when reptiles and brute mammals were lords of creation, and through those centuries of barbarism when savage men roamed over the productive coal-districts in ignorance of their treasures, and then revealed her long-hidden stores of wealth and comfort to the admiring study of science and civilization, and for the benefit of the millions belonging to densely-peopled and progressive nations; It is plain that "Nature" in such a connection represents either a poetical fiction, a superstitious fancy, or an intelligent Creative Mind. It is further evident that such Creative Mind must be in harmony with that of man, though vastly greater in its scope and grasp in time and space.

Even the numerical relations observed in nature teach the same lesson. The leaves of plants are not arranged at random, but in a series of curiously-related spirals, differing in different plants, but always the same in the same species and regulated by definite laws. Similar definiteness regulates the ramification of plants, which depends primarily on the arrangement of the leaves. The angle of ramification of the veins of the leaf is settled for each species of plant; so are the numbers of parts in the flower and the angular arrangement of these parts. It is the same in the animal kingdom, such numbers as 5, 6, 8, 10 being selected to determine the parts in particular animals and portions of animals. Once settled, these numbers are wonderfully permanent in geological time. The first known land reptiles appear in the Carboniferous period, and they have normally five toes; these appear in the earliest known species in the lowest beds of the Carboniferous. Their predecessors, the fishes, had numerous fin-rays; but when limbs for locomotion on land were contrived, the number five was adopted as the typical one. It still persists in the five toes and fingers of man himself. From these, as is well known, our decimal notation is derived. It did not originate in any special fitness of the number ten, but in the fact that men began to reckon by counting their ten fingers. Thus the decimal system of arithmetic, with all that follows from it, was settled millions of years ago, in the Carboniferous period, either by certain low-browed and unintelligent batrachians or by their Maker.

2. Nature presents to us very remarkable revelations of dissimilar and widely-separated matters and forces. I have referred to the numerical arrangement of the leaves of plants; but the leaf itself, in its structure and functions, is one of the most remarkable things in nature. Composed of layers of loosely-placed living cells with air-spaces between them; enclosed above and below with a transparent epidermis, the spaces between the cells communicating with the atmosphere without by means of microscopic pores guarded by cunningly-contrived valves opening or closing according to the hygrometric state of the air; connected with the stem of the plant by a system of tubes strengthened with spiral fibres within,--the structure of the leaf is, mechanically considered, of extreme beauty and complexity. But its living functions are still more wonderful. Receiving the water from the soil with such materials as it brings thence in solution, and absorbing carbonic dioxide and ammonia from the air, the living protoplasm of the leaf-cells has the power of chemically changing all these substances, and of producing from them those complicated and otherwise inimitable organic compounds of which the tissues of the plant are built up. The force by which this is done is that of the solar heat and light, both admitted freely into the interior of the leaf through the transparent epidermis, and therein imprisoned, so as to constitute a powerful storehouse of evaporation and chemical energy. In this way all the materials available for the maintenance of life, whether vegetable or animal, are produced, and no other structure than the living vegetable cell, as it exists in the leaf, has the power to effect these miracles of transmutation. Here, let it be observed, we have the vegetable cell placed in relation with the system of the plant, with the soil, with the atmosphere and its waters, with the distant sun itself and the properties of its emitted energies. Let it further be observed that, on the one hand, the chemistry involved in this is of a character altogether different from that which applies to inorganic matter, and, on the other, the products derived from a very few elements embrace all that vast variety of compounds which we observe in plants and animals, and which constitute the material of one of the most complex of sciences--that of organic chemistry. Finally, these complicated structures were produced and all their relations set up at a very early geological period. In so far as we can judge from their remains and the results effected, the leaves of the Palæozoic period were functionally as perfect as their modern successors (see Figs. 13, 14). Of course, the agnostic evolutionist may, if he pleases, attribute all this to fortuitous interactions of the sun, the atmosphere, and the earth, and may provide for what these fail to explain by the assumption of potentialities equivalent to the things produced. But the probability of such an hypothesis becomes infinitely small when we consider the variety and the diversity of things and forces which must have conspired to produce the results observed, and to maintain them so constantly, and yet with so much difference in circumstances and details. It is a relief to turn from such bewildering and gratuitous suppositions to the theory which supposes a designing Creative Mind.

Section of the leaf of a Cycad, being one of the most ancient
styles of leaf of which the structure is known. _a_, upper
epidermis; _b_, upper layer of cells, with grains of
chlorophyll; _c_, lower layer of cells, with chlorophyll; _d_,
lower epidermis; _e_, stomata, or breathing-pores, with
contractile cells for opening and closing.]

Foliage from the coal-formation, showing some of the forms of
leaves instrumental in accumulating the carbon of our
coal-beds, by their action on the atmosphere under the
influence of sunlight.]

From the boundless variety of illustrations which the animal kingdom presents I may select one--the contrivances by means of which marine animals are enabled to float or balance themselves in the waters. The _Pearly Nautilus_ (see Fig. 15) is one of the most familiar, and also one of the most curious. Its coiled shell is divided by partitions into air-chambers so proportioned that the buoyancy of the air is sufficient to counterpoise in sea-water the weight of the animal. There are also contrivances by which the density of the contained air and of the body of the animal can be so modified as slightly to disturb this equilibrium, and to enable the creature to rise or sink in the waters. It would be tedious to describe, without adequate illustrations, all the machinery connected with these adjustments. It is sufficient for our purpose to know that they are provided in such a manner that the animal is practically exempted from the operation of the force of gravity. In the modern seas these provisions are enjoyed by only a few species of the genera _Nautilus_ and _Spirula_; but in former geological ages, more numerous, as well as larger and more complex, forms existed. Further, this contrivance is very old. We find in the _Orthoceratites_ and their allies of the earliest Silurian formations these arrangements in their full perfection, and in some forms[12] even more complex than in later types.

Section of the Pearly Nautilus and its shell, showing that the
animal occupies only the outer chamber, the others being
filled with air and acting as a float whose buoyancy can be
modified by the action of the tube, or siphuncle, passing
through the chambers.]

The peculiar contrivances observed in the nautilus and its allies are possessed by no other mollusks, but there is another group of somewhat lower grade, that of the _Ianthinæ_, or violet snails, in which flotation is provided for in another way (see Fig. 16). In these animals the shell is perfectly simple, though light, and the floating apparatus consists in a series of horny air-vesicles attached to what is termed the "foot" of the animal, and which are increased in number to suit its increasing weight as it grows in size. There are some reasons to believe that this entirely different contrivance is as old in geological time as the chambered shell of the nautiloid animals. It was, indeed, in all probability, more common and adapted to larger animals in the Silurian period than at present.

_Ianthina_, or Violet Snail, attached to a float composed of
horny hollow vesicles, to the under side of which its eggs are
attached. When hatched, each young animal develops a small
float similar to that of the parent.]

Another curious instance--not, so far as yet known, existing at all in the modern world--is that of the remarkable stalked star-fish described by Professor Hall under the name _Camerocrinus_, and whose remains are found in the Upper Silurian rocks. The Crinoids, or feather-stars, are well-known inhabitants of the seas, in both ancient and modern times; but previous to Professor Hall's discovery they were known only as animals attached by flexible stems to the sea-bottom or creeping slowly by means of their radiating arms. It was not suspected that any of them had committed themselves to the mercy of the currents, suspended from floats. It appears, however, that this was actually realized in the Upper Silurian period, when certain animals of this group developed a hollow calcareous vesicle forming a balloon-shaped float, from which they could hang suspended in the water and float freely (see Fig. 17). So far as known, this remarkable contrivance was temporary, and probably adapted to some peculiarities of the habits and food of these animals occurring only in the geological period in which they existed.

_Camerocrinus_, reduced in size (as restored by Hall). This is
a crinoid, or feather-star, of the Upper Silurian period,
floating by means of a hollow balloon-shaped structure divided
into chambers and formed of calcareous plates.]

Examples of this sort of adjustment are found in other types of animal life. In the beautiful Portuguese man-of-war (_Physalia_) and its allies flotation is provided for by membranous or cartilaginous sacs or vesicles filled with air, and which are the common support of numerous individuals which hang from them (see Fig. 18). In some allied creatures the buoyancy required is secured by little vesicles filled with oil secreted by the animals themselves.

In each of these cases we have a skilful adaptation of means to ends. The float is so constructed as to avail itself of the properties of gases and liquids, and the apparatus is framed on the most scientific principles and in the most artistic manner. That this apparatus grows and is not mechanically put together, and that in each case the instincts and the habits of the animal have been correlated with it, can scarcely be held by the most obtuse intellect to invalidate the evidence of intelligent design.

The _Physalia_, or "Portuguese man-of-war" of the Atlantic,
being a colony of animals provided with long tentacles used as
fishing-lines, and hanging from a membranous float with a
crest, or "sail," on the top, and a pointed end which, being
turned from side to side, serves as a rudder.]

3. Structures apparently the most simple, and often heedlessly spoken of as if they involved no complexity, prove, on examination, to be intricate and complex almost beyond conception. In nothing, perhaps, is this better seen than in that much-abused protoplasm which has been made to do duty for God in the origination of life, but which is itself a most laboriously manufactured material. Albumen, or white of egg--which is otherwise named "protoplasm"--is a very complicated substance both chemically and in its molecular arrangements, and when endowed with life it presents properties altogether inscrutable. It is easy to say that the protoplasm of an egg or of some humble animalcule or microscopic embryo is little more than a mass of structureless jelly; yet, in the case of the embryo, a microscopic dot of this apparently structureless jelly must contain all the parts of the future animal, however complex; but how we may never know, and certainly cannot yet comprehend.

There are minute animalcules belonging to the group of flagellate Infusoria, some of which, under ordinary microscopic powers, appear merely as moving specks, and show their actual structures only under powers of two thousand diameters, or more; yet these animals can be seen to have an outer skin and an inner mass, to have pulsating sacs and reproductive organs, and threadlike flagella wherewith to swim. Their eggs are, of course, much smaller than themselves--so much so that some of them are probably invisible under the highest powers yet employed. Each of them, however, is potentially an animal, with all its parts represented structurally in some way. Nor need we wonder at this. It has been calculated that a speck scarcely visible under the most powerful microscope may contain two million four hundred thousand molecules of protoplasm.[13] If each of these molecules were a brick, there would be enough of them to build a terrace of twenty-five good dwelling-houses. But this is supposing them to be all alike; whereas we know that the molecules of albumen are capable of being of very various kinds. Each of these molecules really contains eight hundred and eighty-two ultimate atoms--namely, four hundred of carbon, three hundred and ten of hydrogen, one hundred and twenty of oxygen, fifty of nitrogen, and two of sulphur and phosphorus. Now, we know that these atoms may be differently arranged in different molecules, producing considerable difference of properties. Let us try, then, to calculate of how many differences of arrangement the atoms of one molecule of protoplasm are susceptible, and then to calculate of how many changes these different assemblages are capable in a microscopic dot composed of two million four hundred thousand of them. It is scarcely necessary to say that such a calculation, in the multitudes of possibilities involved, transcends human powers of imagination; yet it answers questions of mechanical and chemical grouping merely, without any reference to the additional mystery of life. Let it be observed that this vastly complex material is assumed as if there were nothing remarkable in it, by many of those theorists who plausibly explain to us the spontaneous origin of living things. But nature, in arranging all the parts of a complicated animal beforehand in an apparently structureless microscopic ovum, has all these vast numbers to deal with in working out the exact result; and this not in one case merely, but in multitudes of cases involving the most varied combinations. We can scarcely suppose the atoms themselves to have the power of thus unerringly marshalling themselves to work out the structures of organisms infinitely varied, yet all alike after their kinds. If not, then "Nature" must be a goddess gifted with superhuman powers of calculation and marvellous deftness in arranging invisible atoms.

4. The beauty of form, proportion, and coloring that abounds in nature affords evidence of mind. Herculean efforts have been made by modern evolutionists to eliminate altogether the idea of beauty from nature, by theories of sexual selection and the like, and to persuade us that beauty is merely utility in disguise, and even then only an accidental coincidence between our perceptions and certain external things. But in no part of their argument have they more signally failed in accounting for the observed facts, and in no part have they more seriously outraged the common sense and natural taste of men. In point of fact, we have here one of those great correlations belonging to the unity of nature--that indissoluble connection which has been established between the senses and the æsthetic sentiments of man and certain things in the external world. But there is more in beauty than this merely anthropological relation. Certain forms, for example, adopted in the skeletons of the lower animals are necessarily beautiful because of their geometrical proportions. Certain styles of coloring are necessarily beautiful because of harmonies and contrasts which depend on the essential properties of the waves of light. Beauty is thus in a great measure independent of the taste of the spectator. It is also independent of mere utility, since, even if we admit that all these combinations of forms, motions, and colors which we call beautiful are also useful, it is easy to perceive that the end could often be attained without the beauty.

It is a curious fact that some of the simplest animals--as, for example, sponges and Foraminifera,--are furnished with the most beautiful skeletons. Nothing can exceed the beauty of form and proportions in the shells of some Foraminifera and Polycistina, or in the skeletons of some silicious sponges (see Fig. 19), while it is obvious that these humble creatures, without brains and external senses, can neither contrive nor appreciate the beauty with which they are clothed. Further, some of these structures are very old geologically. The sponge whose skeleton his known as "Venus's flower-basket" produces a structure of interwoven silicious threads exquisite in its beauty and perfect in its mechanical arrangements for strength (Figure 20). Even in the old Cambrian rocks there are remains of sponges which seem already to have practically solved the geometrical problems involved in the production of these wonderful skeletons; and with a Chinese-like persistency, having attained to perfection, they have adhered to it throughout geological time. Nor is there anything of mere inorganic crystallization in this. The silica of which the skeletons are made is colloidal, not crystalline, and the forms themselves have no relations to the crystalline axes of silica. Such illustrations might be multiplied to any extent, and apply to all the beauties of form, structure, and coloring which abound around us and far excel our artificial imitations of them.

Magnified portion of a silicious sponge, showing the principle
of construction of the hexactinellid sponges, with six-rayed
spicules joined together and strengthened with diagonal
braces. (_After Zittel._)]

_Euplectella_, or "Venus's flower-basket," a silicious sponge,
showing its general form. (Reduced, from _Am. Naturalist_,
vol. iv.)]

5. The instincts of the lower animals imply a Higher Intelligence. Instinct, in the theistic view of nature, can be nothing less than a divine inspiration placing the animal in relation with other things and processes, often of the most complex character, and which it could by no means have devised for itself. Further, instinct is in its very essence a thing unimprovable. Like the laws of nature, it operates invariably; and if diminished or changed, it would prove useless for its purpose. It is not, like human inventions, slowly perfected under the influence of thought and imagination, and laboriously taught by each generation to its successors: it is inherited by each generation in all its perfection, and from the first goes directly to its end as if it were a merely physical cause.

The favorite explanation of instinct from the side of Agnostic Evolution is that it originated in the struggle for existence of some previous generation, and was then perpetuated as an inheritance. But, like most of the other explanations of this school, this quietly takes for granted what should be proved. That instinct is hereditary is evident; but the question is, How did it begin? and to say simply that it did begin at some former period is to tell us nothing. From a scientific point of view, the invariable operation of any natural law affords no evidence of any gradual or sudden origination of it at any point of past time; and when such law is connected with a complicated organism and various other laws and processes of the external world, the supposition of its slowly arising from nothing through many generations of animals becomes too intricate to be credible. Instinct must have originated in a perfect condition, and with the organism and its environment already established. I may borrow here an apposite illustration from recent papers on the unity of nature by the Duke of Argyll, which deserve careful study by any one who values common-sense views of this subject. The example which I select is that of the action of a young merganser in its effort to elude pursuit: