Chapter XVIII: To Sum Up (2)

There has been [says Virchow][64] a beginning of life, since
geology points to epochs in the formation of the earth when life
was impossible, and when no vestige of it is to be found.

If the evolution hypothesis is true, [says Huxley][65] living
matter must have arisen from not-living matter; for by the
hypothesis the condition of the globe was at one time such that
living matter could not have existed in it, life being entirely
incompatible with the gaseous state.

There was a time [says Tyndall][66] when the earth was a red-hot
molten globe, on which no life could exist.

Accordingly, as Professor Huxley acknowledges, spontaneous generation is an evolutionary necessity. Unless such generation can be shown to have taken place, or at the very least unless it can be shown to be naturally possible, the theory which requires it cannot be an established truth. But it is precisely as a scientifically established truth that the doctrine of Evolution is presented to us, so firmly established indeed that we are warned "to doubt it is to doubt science."[67] It presents itself, moreover, as the most precious result of modern research, the appearance of which is as a sunrise illuminating the field of knowledge.[68]

This being so, and it being the first principle of Science that we should take nothing on faith and accept only what can be proved, it is our plain duty to satisfy ourselves, as scientific methods alone can rightly satisfy us, that a doctrine of such paramount importance is entitled to demand our acceptance.

What methods can claim to be scientific, all are agreed. Advances in science, Professor Tait warns us,[69]

come or not, as we remember or forget that our Science is to be
based entirely upon experiment, or mathematical deduction from
experiment.

Men of science [says Tyndall] prolong the method of nature from the
present into the past. The observed uniformity of nature is their
only guide.[70]

The man of science [says Huxley] has learned to believe in
justification, not by faith, but by verification.[71]

In this manner must we test the Evolution theory, and spontaneous generation as an essential element thereof. We will begin with Professor Huxley's statement of what he styles "the fundamental proposition of Evolution."[72]

That proposition is [he writes] that the whole world, living and
not-living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to
definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which
the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed. If this be
true, it is no less certain that the existing world lay,
potentially, in the cosmic vapour; and that a sufficient
intelligence could, from a knowledge of that vapour, have
predicted, say the state of the Fauna of Britain in 1869[73] with
as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the breath in
a cold winter's day.

That is to say, the supposed nebula was a vast piece of mechanism, of unimaginable complexity, the component parts of which under the influence of such forces as gravitation, heat, chemical affinity, electricity and magnetism, have produced everything that has since appeared on earth, vegetable and animal life amongst the rest. How are we to assure ourselves that such was really the case?

Professor Tyndall has told us that the only scientific method is to prolong the method of nature from the present into the past, taking her observed uniformity for our only guide, and in like manner we have heard it laid down by Professor Romanes, that we must assume as a first principle that the laws of nature are always and everywhere the same, and that by their uniform operation everything is done. It is therefore quite clear that as no man was present when life first made its appearance, to observe and record whence it came, the only way in which we can possibly proceed, without violating every scientific canon, is to argue from what happens now, to what must have happened then,--to show that inorganic matter can in fact generate organic life, and to conclude that the same laws must have worked the same results in the past as they do in the present.

But this is precisely what cannot be done, for one of the most conclusive results of modern research has been to show that in the present world spontaneous generation never occurs, that living things come only from living parents, and that from organic matter alone can the smallest particle of organic matter be derived. _Omne vivum e vivo, omnis cellula e cellula, omnis nucleus e nucleo._ Upon this point there is now complete agreement amongst scientific authorities, and what is most remarkable, none are more strenuous in upholding the doctrine of _Biogenesis_,[74] than some of those who with equal vehemence proclaim the doctrine of Evolution for which the occurrence of spontaneous generation is a necessity.

Never, for example, were there Evolutionists more pronounced than Professors Huxley and Tyndall, and they both saw clearly that without spontaneous generation there could not have been evolution such as they maintained. Yet when the occurrence of spontaneous generation, here and now, was asserted by Bastian and Burdon Sanderson, they, following in the wake of Pasteur, repudiated the notion, and Tyndall in particular conclusively disproved the experiments by which it was supported.[75] As Huxley wrote to Charles Kingsley:[76]

I am glad you appreciate the rich absurdities of spontogenesis.
Against the doctrine of spontaneous generation in the abstract I
have nothing to say. Indeed it is a necessary corollary from
Darwin's views if legitimately carried out.

A few years later, writing to Dr. Dohrn[77] upon the same subject, he made use of a phrase--which in his mouth expressed the uttermost limit of disbelief: "Transubstantiation will be nothing to this if it turns out true."

In the same year as President of the British Association he chose for the subject of his inaugural address, "Biogenesis and Abiogenesis," and, after a careful examination of the case for each, pronounced the former "to be victorious all along the line."

In spite of all this, however, he assured himself as an Evolutionist that spontaneous generation must once have been not only a possibility but a fact. In the same Presidential address, after piling up evidence against it--he thus continued:[78]

But though I cannot express this conviction of mine too strongly, I
must carefully guard myself against the supposition that I intend
to suggest that no such thing as Abiogenesis has ever taken place
in the past, or ever will take place in the future. With organic
chemistry, molecular physics and physiology yet in their infancy,
and every day making prodigious strides, I think it would be the
height of presumption for any man to say that the conditions under
which matter assumes the properties we call "vital" may not, some
day, be artificially brought together. All I feel justified in
affirming is that I see no reason for affirming that the feat has
been performed yet.

And looking back through the prodigious vista of the past, I find
no record of the commencement of life, and therefore I am devoid of
any means of forming a definite conclusion as to the conditions of
its appearance. Belief, in the scientific sense of the word, is a
serious matter, and needs strong foundations. To say, therefore, in
the admitted absence of evidence, that I have any belief as to the
mode in which the existing forms of life have originated, would be
using words in a wrong sense. But expectation is permissible where
belief is not; and if it were given me to look beyond the abyss of
geologically recorded time to the still more remote period when the
earth was passing through physical and dynamical conditions, which
it can no more see again than a man can recall his infancy, I
should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm
from not living matter.... That is the expectation to which
analogical reasoning leads me; but I beg you once more to recollect
that I have no right to call my opinion anything but an act of
philosophical faith.

Here we have the whole state of the case put for us in a nutshell. On the one hand, all known facts are against the idea of spontaneous generation, and therefore, so far as she can at present go, the verdict of Science must condemn that supposition. But, on the other hand, the fundamental principle of Evolution cannot be justified unless spontaneous generation has taken place, and accordingly, although Evolution is the very thing which we should be engaged in establishing by the evidence of facts, it is held to be reasonable and scientific to infer that facts which we cannot verify must exist because they are wanted. It is admitted that the requisite evidence is lacking, and therefore we must not go so far as to express belief in the facts: but we may indulge in expectations,--which seem, however, to imply belief in the thing expected,--and meanwhile we may go on believing firmly in the Evolution theory itself, which includes belief in the missing facts. This, we are told, is "philosophical faith." But, to say nothing of what we have heard from others, Professor Huxley elsewhere[79] warns us against faith as the one unpardonable sin: and as we have heard him declare the man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

And as to the expectation which he avowed, there appears to be no slight force in the response of his adversary Dr. Bastian:[80]

What reason [he asks] does Professor Huxley give in explanation of
his supposition?... The only reason distinctly implied is because
the physical and chemical conditions of the earth's surface were
different in the past from what they are now. And yet, concerning
the exact nature of their differences, or the degree in which the
different sets of conditions would respectively favour the
occurrence or arrest of an evolution of living matter, Professor
Huxley cannot possess even the vaguest knowledge. He chooses to
assume that the unknown conditions existing in the past were more
favourable to _Archebiosis_ (life-evolution) than those now in
operation. This, however, is an assumption which may be entirely
opposed to the facts.

It is thus hard to understand how Professor Huxley could profess to justify his expectations by verification, for that the above account of the matter is no-wise overstated we have his own acknowledgment:[81]

Of the causes which have led to the origination of living matter,
it may be said that we know absolutely nothing.... Science has no
means to form an opinion on the commencement of life; we can only
make conjectures without any scientific value.

Such a witness as Huxley might well suffice, but the question is so important as to make it advisable to call some others, though only a few amongst many who testify to the same effect.

Like his friend and ally Huxley, Professor Tyndall believed that spontaneous generation had once occurred, and denied that it occurs now. As to the former article of his creed he was even more pronounced in his materialism. We have already heard him proclaim that in matter is to be discerned the promise and potency of all terrestrial life. He likewise inclined to believe that not only life but consciousness is immanent everywhere, in the vegetable and mineral no less than in the animal world,[82] and that not merely life and consciousness, but:

All our philosophy, all our poetry, all our science, and all our
art--Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Raphael--are potential in the
fires of the sun.[83]

Beliefs such as these might be thought to imply that the genesis of life is a simple affair, but Tyndall was no less convinced than Huxley that, as things are, it cannot be obtained without antecedent life on which to draw. Having described the experiments devised to test the matter, he thus concludes:[84]

Here, as in all other cases, the evidence in favour of spontaneous
generation crumbles in the grasp of the competent enquirer.

At the same time, he was equally certain that life must have had an inorganic origin and that Science bids us so to believe. His various utterances are not, it is true, very easily reconciled. On the one hand he lays it down that "Without verification a theoretic conception is a mere figment of the intellect." On the other hand in his Belfast Address he thus expressed himself:

Believing, as I do, in the continuity of nature, I cannot stop
abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of use. Here the vision
of the mind authoritatively supplements the vision of the eye. By a
necessity engendered and justified by Science I cross the boundary
of the experimental evidence.... If you ask me whether there exists
the least evidence to prove that any form of life can be developed
out of matter, without demonstrable antecedent life.... [men of
science] will frankly admit their inability to point to any
satisfactory experimental proof that life can be developed, save
from demonstrable antecedent life.

Far, however, from being a mere figment, his mental vision is represented as the most unalloyed product of reason. He writes:[85]

Were not man's origin implicated, we should accept without a murmur
the derivation of animal and vegetable life from what we call
inorganic nature. The conclusion of pure intellect points this way
and no other.

The conclusion of pure intellect, however, having nothing to show for itself in the way of evidence, we are again referred to a condition of things concerning which we know, and can know, nothing.

Supposing [writes the Professor][86] a planet carved from the sun,
set spinning round an axis, and revolving round the sun at a
distance from him equal to that of our earth, would one of the
consequences of its refrigeration be the development of organic
forms? I lean to the affirmative.

It is no doubt interesting to know to what opinion the Professor inclined, but is this sort of thing Science?

In the same manner Mr. Herbert Spencer, the philosopher of evolution _par excellence_, thus reports:[87]

Biologists in general agree that in the present state of the world
no such thing happens as the rise of a living creature out of
non-living matter. They do not deny, however, that at a remote
period in the past, when the temperature of the surface of the
earth was much higher than at present, and other physical
conditions were _unlike those we know_,[88] inorganic matter,
through successive complications, gave origin to organic
matter.[89]

Mr. Darwin himself, who is constantly supposed to have upheld, or even to have demonstrated, the fact of spontaneous generation, is amongst the strongest witnesses against it. He was indeed disposed to believe that the living will some day be found to be producible from the lifeless, the ground of his expectation being the "Law of Continuity,"[90] or the assumption that from the beginning of nature to the end one only kind of law uniformly operates, namely the same as we now experience. But this is to assume the whole question at issue, for unless it can be shewn that there has been spontaneous generation, we cannot be assured that there is such a Law of Continuity. And despite his expectation Darwin always denied that the origin of life has been--sometimes even that it can be--explained. Thus he wrote on various occasions:

It is mere rubbish thinking at present of the origin of life; one
might as well think of the origin of matter.[91]

As for myself I cannot believe in spontaneous generation, and
though I expect that at some future time the principle of life will
be rendered intelligible, at present it seems to me beyond the
confines of Science.[92]

No evidence worth anything has as yet, in my opinion, been advanced
in favour of a living being, being developed from inorganic
matter.[93]

Here we may conveniently pause and take stock of our results. On the one hand, we are bidden in the name of Science to learn the past from the present, and the present from observation and experiment alone. On the other, we are invited to believe in an occurrence which observation and experiment negative in the present, on the ground that the circumstances must once have been entirely different from any with which we are acquainted. Obviously, the real motive of belief is that naïvely expressed by Professor Haeckel, who tells us that spontaneous generation is proved by the doctrine of Evolution;[94] which then in its turn is proved by spontaneous generation.

Two points must however be noticed in which it is attempted to find present evidence in favour of spontaneous generation.

First, there is Protoplasm--the "Physical Basis of Life," or Living Matter, being that form of matter by which life is always accompanied. In this no chemical element unknown elsewhere, is to be found; the cells of which it consists are compounded of Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and Carbon; and it has been argued, especially by Huxley, that it is therefore not different in kind from other compounds; that as Oxygen and Hydrogen form water, Oxygen and Carbon, Carbonic Acid, Hydrogen and Nitrogen, Ammonia,--so the four combined, in proper circumstances and proportions, make Living Matter, without the aid of any vital force or principle. And Haeckel with his habitual audacity foretells the artificial production of Protoplasm for purposes of commerce. But, as Mr. Stirling observes,[95] man has always known that he is made of dust, and that the only part of him perceptible to sense is substantially the same as the earth beneath his feet. All that he now learns in addition is that when such matter is wedded to life it undergoes marvellous transformations which in part at least we are able to recognize, but are wholly unable to comprehend. This Professor Huxley himself admits:

The properties of living matter [he writes][96] distinguish it
absolutely from all other kinds of things, and the present state of
knowledge furnishes us with no link between the living and the
not-living.

Not only that: the subject is full of complexities of which Professor Huxley gives no hint, and which it would even seem he did not himself perceive. In his celebrated lecture on the Physical Basis of Life[97] he gives his hearers to understand that all Protoplasm is the same, that its particles are as the bricks with which any sort of edifice may be constructed, a cathedral or a gin-shop, a palace or a hovel. The protoplasm of a mushroom, for instance, he declares to be essentially identical with that of him who eats it, into which it is most readily convertible. He also speaks of the effect of eating mutton being to "transubstantiate sheep into man." But, positive as are these statements, they are far from representing scientific truths, and we are told by Sir William Thiselton-Dyer that he himself would not know what to do with a candidate who should advance such views in an examination.[98] As to the mushroom and the mutton, Sir William adds, that except the definition of a crab, as a red fish that runs backwards, attributed to the French Academy, he can call to mind no statement "so compact of error."

In reality, instead of all Protoplasm being the same, the differences are infinite. Particles from different sources may be indistinguishable by the microscope or by any test that chemistry can apply, but this only increases the mystery of their nature, for each has its own functions and will perform no others. The Protoplasm of a plant will do what that of an animal, seemingly identical, cannot do. That of a fish will convert the same nutriment into quite a different formation from that of a man.

It is no doubt true that a particle of fungoid differs in no
appreciable physical respect from one of human protoplasm, yet the
former will never emerge from the fate of the humble mushroom,
while the other may be instinct with the thoughts of a Prime
Minister.[99]

As Mr. Stirling sums up the matter:[100]

There is nerve-protoplasm, brain-protoplasm, bone-protoplasm,
muscle-protoplasm, and protoplasm of all the other tissues, no one
of which but produces only its own kind, and is uninterchangeable
with the rest. Lastly, we have the overwhelming fact that there is
the infinitely different protoplasm of the various infinitely
different plants and animals, in each of which its own protoplasm,
as in the case of the various tissues, but produces its own kind,
and is uninterchangeable with that of the rest.

It thus appears that the character of Protoplasm, far from making it easier to conceive the mechanical production of living things, does but immensely aggravate the difficulty. As Sir William Thiselton-Dyer avows: "I do not see even the beginning of a materialistic theory of protoplasm." And Haeckel's idea that we shall succeed in creating organic life does not commend itself to such an authority as Sir Henry Roscoe:

It is true [he says][101] that there are those who profess to
foresee that the day will arise when the chemist, by a succession
of constructive efforts may pass beyond albumen, and gather the
elements of lifeless matter into a living structure. Whatever may
be said of this from other standpoints, the chemist can only say
that at present no such problem lies within his province.
Protoplasm, with which the simplest manifestations of life are
associated, is not a compound, but a structure built up of
compounds. The chemist may successfully synthesize any of its
component compounds, but he has no more reason to look forward to
the synthetic production of the structure than to imagine that the
synthesis of gallic acid leads to the artificial production of
gall-nuts.

And M. de Quatrefages thus sums up the conclusions at which he arrives from minute study of the lowest forms of life:[102]

I make bold to affirm that the deeper Science penetrates into the
secrets of organization and phenomena, the more does she
demonstrate how wide and how profound is the abyss which separates
brute matter from living things.

The other point requiring notice is crystallization. Inorganic matter, as we know, can build up crystals, the wonderful structure of which results from the molecular properties of the substance crystallized. Why then, some would ask, may not matter in the same manner produce Protoplasm?

But, in the first place, this, as we have heard, is what it is never found to do. Crystals we can produce at pleasure, in what quantity we will. But all efforts have not yet succeeded in obtaining the most minute speck of living matter. Moreover, nothing can be more widely different from organic structures than crystals. The latter are always mathematical, the former never: the latter grow by outside accretion, of the one kind of particles whereof they consist: the former by absorption and assimilation of various foreign substances: the latter are wholly independent of anything like an ancestor: for the former an ancestor is in our experience indispensable: crystals can be dissolved and recrystallized: living matter once destroyed can never be reconstituted. Above all, the particles incorporated in the crystal are absolutely quiescent, so far as any portion of matter can be said to be so, no more able to change their position without external force than the bricks in a wall, while those in living tissue at once become subject to "the whirlwind of life," involving constant change the cessation of which is death.

It is inexplicable to me [says M. de Quatrefages][103] that some
men whose merits I otherwise acknowledge, should have compared
crystals to the simplest living forms.... These forms are the
antipodes of the crystal from every point of view.

To the same effect speaks Mr. A. R. Wallace, Mr. Darwin's associate in the discovery of the Darwinian theory. In a work expressly devoted to the vindication of that theory, Mr. Wallace declares that far from the way of evolution being made clear by Science from end to end--"there are at least three stages in the development of the organic world where some new cause or power must necessarily have come into action." And at the head of them he places that which we are now considering, writing thus:[104]

The first stage is the change from inorganic to organic, when the
earliest vegetable cell, or the living protoplasm out of which it
arose, first appeared.... There is in this something quite beyond
and apart from chemical changes however complex; and it has been
well said that the first vegetable cell was a new thing in the
world, possessing altogether new powers....[105]

Such testimonies are sufficient for our present purpose. In face of them it cannot be pretended that Science _knows_ anything of spontaneous generation or gives her verdict in its favour. On the contrary, as Professor Tait declares:[106]

To say that even the very lowest form of life, not to speak of its
higher forms, still less of volition and consciousness, can be
fully _explained_ on physical principles alone, ... is simply
unscientific. There is absolutely nothing known in physical science
which can lend the slightest support to such an idea.... To suppose
that life, even in its lowest form, is wholly material, involves
either a denial of the truth of Newton's laws of motion, or an
erroneous use of the term "Matter." Both are alike unscientific.

Yet it is precisely in the name of Science that we have been told to accept the spontaneous origin of life from inorganic matter, as a clearly demonstrated truth, and no riddle at all.

But as Professor Virchow, Evolutionist and Materialist as he was, well said in regard of this very point in the Munich Congress of 1877:

If we would speak frankly, we must admit that naturalists may well
have some little sympathy for the _generatio aequivoca_
[spontaneous generation]. If it were capable of proof, it would
indeed be beautiful! But, we must acknowledge, it has not yet been
proved. The proofs of it are still wanting.... Whoever recalls to
mind the lamentable failure of all the attempts to discover a
decided support for the _generatio aequivoca_ in the lower forms of
transition from the inorganic to the organic world, will feel it
doubly serious to demand that this theory, so utterly discredited,
should be in any way accepted as the basis of all our views of
life.

X

ANIMAL AND MAN

Leaving for later consideration the fourth of Du Bois-Reymond's Unsolved Enigmas, namely the seemingly pre-ordained order of the universe, we may conveniently group together the three which follow it, as much resembling that which has just occupied our attention. These problems, it will be remembered, are (_a_) the origin of simple sensation and consciousness, or, in other words, of the faculties possessed by animals; (_b_) that of rational thought and speech; (_c_) Free-will.--Here again we are bound to ask, in the name of right reason and common-sense, what light has really been thrown on such questions by Science, and how far she has changed their aspect,--that so we may guard against the delusion of imagining ourselves to be in possession of more knowledge than we actually possess.

(_a_) _Simple sensation and consciousness._ As regards the actual origin of the higher form of life which distinguishes the animal from the vegetable, we are obviously no better informed than we have found ourselves to be concerning the first beginnings of life in any form,--no evidence as to the actual facts being available, or even possible, for our enlightenment. Once more we can only argue from the present to the past, and enquire whether the progress of science has made it more reasonable to suppose than it seemed in pre-scientific days that animal life has been spontaneously evolved, either from inanimate matter or from the vegetative life of plants. This enquiry so much resembles that which we have just concluded as to make it unnecessary to pursue it at any length.

We find, in fact, that men of Science who have no prepossessions whatever against Evolution, and would willingly accept the Law of Continuity at all points, if only evidence were forthcoming, find here not only an unsolved problem, but one even more difficult than the Origin of Life itself. Du Bois-Reymond for example places this amongst his "transcendental" enigmas, to which an answer will never be found, whereas he thinks that the origin of vegetable life, although at present a mystery, may one day be explained. The expression of his opinion,--that by no possibility can we ever understand how consciousness could be evolved from matter--has, he tells us[107] been vehemently contradicted, but, he adds, nothing in the way of argument, or beyond mere assumptions, has been brought against him. Of these assumptions he notices only that of Professor Haeckel, "the Prophet of Jena," who protests against such limitations of our possibilities as treason to the sacred cause of Evolution. The progress we have made in intellect, says Haeckel, beyond our barbarous progenitors, is sufficient to show that we are on the high road of development towards a stage as far in advance of the present, as this is of the past; and when that is attained, our knowledge will be full and will embrace all this. But, asks Du Bois-Reymond in reply, is this mighty progress of ours so very evident within the period concerning which we have any information? Has the mental capacity of our race notably improved since Homer?[108] or its faculty of thinking since Plato and Aristotle? At our present rate of progress, long before the high-water mark prophesied by Haeckel is reached, the earth will have become uninhabitable. And, were it otherwise, the highest point of intellect to which conceivably man could attain, would be that of the "sufficient intelligence" whereof we have been told, which, from an inspection of the cosmic nebula could foretell all that was to issue from it. And, adds Du Bois-Reymond, even could we do this, we should still be unable to understand the origin of consciousness, which would require intelligence of another order than ours, however magnified.

So again Mr. Wallace tells us,[109] after speaking of the beginning of life as we have already heard,

The next stage is still more marvellous, still more completely
beyond all possibility of explanation by matter, its laws and
forces. It is the introduction of sensation or consciousness,
constituting the fundamental distinction between the animal and
vegetable kingdoms. Here all idea of mere complication of structure
producing the result is out of the question. We feel it to be
altogether preposterous to assume that at a certain stage of
complexity of atomic constitution, and as a necessary result of
that complexity alone, an _ego_ should start into existence, a
thing that _feels_, that is conscious of its own existence. Here we
have the certainty that something new has arisen, a being whose
nascent consciousness has gone on increasing in power and
definiteness till it has culminated in the higher animals. No
verbal explanation or attempt at explanation--such as the statement
that life is the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm,
or that the whole existing organic universe from the amoeba up to
man was latent in the fire-mist from which the solar system was
developed--can afford any mental satisfaction, or help us in any
way to a solution of the mystery.

Unquestionably, there is no lack of speakers and writers who flatly contradict such views, and assert that animal life, equally with vegetable, could be, and must have been, naturally evolved from inorganic nature. The above testimonies, however, amply suffice for our present purpose, and with them we may be satisfied; for at least they make it plain that Science has found no evidence as to the origin of sensation and consciousness conclusive enough to compel belief. And where there is no scientific evidence even alleged, such as might require the training of a specialist for its due appreciation, one man of ordinary intelligence is as competent a judge as another, and scientific experts are on a level with the rest of us.

(_b_) _Rational thought and speech._ What has just been said applies with equal force to this matter likewise. Unless Science have some positive evidence to bring, demonstrating how the gulf can be bridged which separates the intelligence of the most degraded races of men from the highest of the brutes, and how articulate language can spontaneously have arisen, which is the necessary appanage of reason, we have all equally the means of forming our conclusions on the subject.

That the gulf between man and the lower animals is here immense we have the evidence of Mr. Darwin.

No doubt [he writes][110] the difference is in this respect
enormous, even if we compare the mind of one of the lowest savages,
who has no words to express any number higher than four, and who
uses no abstract terms for the commonest objects or affections,
with that of the most highly organized ape. The difference would,
no doubt, still remain immense, even if one of the highest apes had
been improved and civilized as much as a dog has been in comparison
with its parent form, the wolf or jackal. The Fuegians rank
amongst the lowest barbarians; but I was continually struck with
surprise how closely the three natives on board H.M.S. _Beagle_,
who had lived some years in England and could talk a little
English, resembled us in disposition and in most of our mental
faculties.

Mr. Darwin goes on to argue, however, that the difference between man and beast is one of degree only and not of kind; that this can be "clearly shewn"; and that there is unquestionably

a much wider interval in mental power between one of the lowest
fishes, as a lamprey or lancelet, and one of the higher apes, than
between an ape and a man; yet this immense interval is filled up by
numberless gradations,

from which he concludes that by a like series of steps, of which, however, no trace is left, our progenitors have been able to mount from the simian to the human level.

Clear however as Mr. Darwin pronounces the evidence to be, it is very far from being so considered by other eminent naturalists. So convinced an Evolutionist as Mr. Mivart, for example, declared on various occasions that his reason abundantly sufficed to convince him that there was a wider break in nature between man and the highest ape, than between the highest ape and an oyster or even a mushroom.

It is evident that the evidence which permits judgments so diverse as these cannot be said conclusively to prove the former existence of a bridge every vestige of which has, by the acknowledgment of all parties, entirely disappeared. We are therefore left to determine for ourselves, whether the powers of our own mind, as each knows them in himself, are of a totally different nature from those of dogs and horses, and chimpanzees such as the late lamented "Consul," or whether we are superior only in degree, as a sheep-dog is more intelligent than a sheep, or a fox than a goose.

If in any respect such an enquiry can be made definite and therefore profitable, it is clearly in regard of Language. This, as said above, is an essential adjunct of reason such as ours, and on the other hand it forms the plainest boundary between the domain of the human race and that of the brutes. It is, says Professor Max Müller, our Rubicon on the hither side of which men alone are found. Given reason such as ours, whatever mode of communication might be open to them, we cannot suppose its possessors failing to establish a medium of intercourse. In existing conditions, man can make an alphabet out of the clicks of a needle or the flashes of a mirror, and if his vocal organs were no better than those of a baboon, we cannot imagine him content generation after generation with inarticulate howls and yells. But this is just the case of the animals. They are _never_ found to make the smallest progress in the direction of a code of signals. Dogs indeed, as Mr. Darwin says,[111] having developed in captivity the new art of barking, have further learnt to vary this accomplishment according to the circumstances that provoke it, and have distinct tones to express the diversity of their feelings, as when hunting, or angry, or setting out for a walk, or shut up in a kennel or out of a house. Some dogs, he might have added, refine still further, and will betray by their style of bark not only that they are hunting something, but what it is that they have come upon, whether a rabbit, a cat, or a hedgehog. But, as the Chevalier Bunsen observes,[112] and his observation includes such manifestations as the above:

Animal sounds are the echoes of blind instincts within, or of the
phenomena of the outward world, uttered by suffering or satisfied
animal nature, and in all cases resulting from mere passiveness.

By rational language, on the other hand, is signified, to quote Mr. Mivart:[113]

The external manifestation, whether by sound or gesture, of general
conceptions:--not emotional expressions or the manifestations of
sensible impressions, but enunciations of distinct judgments as to
"the what," "the how," and "the why."

Consequently, as Bunsen declares:

The theories about the origin of language have followed those
about the origin of thought, and have shared their fate. The
materialists have never been able to show the possibility of the
first step. They attempt to veil their inability by the easy but
fruitless assumption of an infinite space of time, destined to
explain the gradual development of animals into men; as if millions
of years could supply the want of the agent necessary for the first
movement, for the first step in the line of progress! No numbers
can effect a logical impossibility. How indeed could reason spring
out of a state which is destitute of reason? How can speech, the
expression of thought, develop itself in a year or in millions of
years, out of unarticulated sounds which express feelings of
pleasure, pain, and appetite? The common-sense of mankind will
always shrink from such theories.

Bunsen's words were echoed even more forcibly by professor Max Müller, speaking as President of the Anthropological Section of the British Association at Cardiff in 1889.

What [he asked] does Bunsen consider the real barrier between man
and beast? It is language, which is unattainable, or at least
unattained, by any animal except man.

You know [he continued] how for a time, and chiefly owing to
Darwin's predominating influence, every conceivable effort was made
to reduce the distance which language places between man and beast,
and to treat language as a vanishing line in the mental evolution
of animal and man. It required some courage at times to stand up
against the authority of Darwin, but at present all serious
thinkers agree, I believe, with Bunsen, that no animal has ever
developed what we mean by rational language, as distinct from mere
utterances of pleasure or pain, a subject lately treated with great
fulness by Professor Romanes. Still, if all true science is based
on facts, the fact remains that no animal has ever found what we
mean by a language; and we are fully justified, therefore, in
holding with Bunsen and Humboldt, as against Darwin and Romanes,
that there _is_ a specific difference between the human animal and
all other animals, and that that difference consists in language as
the outward manifestation of what the Greeks meant by _Logos_.

It is moreover evident that, far from speech having generated reason, as some have preposterously maintained, it is reason which generates speech, no less inevitably than sunlight produces the spectrum when it passes through a prism. The seeming paradox of Wilhelm von Humboldt is in fact a sober truth: "Man is man only through speech, but in order to invent it he must already be man." We have plain evidence that before means for the internal expression of it are found, the mental word (_verbum mentale_) is awaiting them, and that without this it would be as impossible for any sort of rational speech to be produced as for an apple to be grown without an apple-tree.

Evidence to this effect is furnished by recorded instances of persons who from early childhood, or even from birth, were deaf, dumb, and blind, and appeared to be cut off from all possibility of human converse, the "gates of Mansoul" being thus almost entirely closed. Such are the well-known cases of Laura Bridgman, Miss Keller, and Martha Obrecht, who had been thus afflicted since their earliest childhood, the two first named from the age of two, and the last from that of three years.[114] Also the more recent instance of Marie Heurtin, who was so born, and consequently could not have even the faintest glimmer of any knowledge these senses could convey.[115] Yet, by the exercise of ingenious and unwearied charity, a means of communication was elaborated through the sense of touch, and the souls which had seemingly been buried alive, shewed themselves responsive to such advances,--often astonishingly so,--and revealed their possession of faculties identical with those of their rescuers. We are told, for example, of Marie Heurtin that her intelligence proved to be quick, that she was even "unusually clever, evidently eager for knowledge, and, as sometimes happens, her faculties being prevented by her infirmity from wasting their powers on external objects, were all the more fresh and vigorous." Even more wonderful is the case of Miss Keller, who attained a degree of culture and accomplishment far beyond the common level of those possessing the use of all their senses.

Somewhat akin to such instances is that of the savages from Tierra del Fuego mentioned above by Mr. Darwin. In their case likewise, when they were brought into communication with people possessed of higher culture than their own degraded race, it was found that the corresponding faculties within them were not dead, or as yet non-existent, but only starved into lethargy; and, the opportunity being given, they speedily caused surprise by unmistakable proofs how closely they resemble ourselves.

Thus we find that in this branch of our enquiry there is one broad fact, which all must recognize and none can deny. No race of men has ever been known which could not speak, nor any race of animals which could, or which had made the first beginnings of intelligent language. Facts being the only groundwork of Science here is undoubtedly something whereon she may build an inference, and this inference will certainly not be that the faculties of men and animals are radically identical. And if we are told, as we constantly are, that it is more truly scientific to admit such identity, should there not be some other facts, still more significant and equally well established, to exhibit on the other side?

But of what character are the arguments actually adduced? It will be sufficient to quote a few which come with the highest authority.

We may start with the almost classical specimen contributed by Mr. Darwin himself.

It does not [he says][116] appear altogether incredible that some
unusually wise ape-like animal should have thought of imitating the
growl of a beast of prey, so as to indicate to his fellow monkeys
the nature of the expected danger. And this would have been a first
step in the formation of a language.

Similarly Professor Whitney writes of some supposed "pithecoid"[117] men:

There is no difficulty in supposing them to have possessed forms of
speech, more rudimentary and imperfect than ours.[118]

And so again Professor Romanes:[119]

Let us try to imagine a community considerably more intelligent
than the existing anthropoid apes, although still considerably
below the intellectual level of existing savages. It is certain
that in such a community natural signs of voice, gesture, and
grimace would be in vogue to a greater or less extent. As their
numbers increased ... such signs would require to become more and
more conventional, or acquire more and more the character of
sentence-words.

Of course, as Mr. Mivart replies,[120] there is no difficulty in supposing anything we choose, or in seeing animals in imagination performing feats which never yet have they been known to achieve in fact. But no amount of such suppositions or imaginations will furnish Science with the scantiest apology for a foothold, nor can the germs of language attributed to pithecoid communities or the sagest of their patriarchs, be considered as of any greater value than the speeches put into the mouths of the animals by Æsop or "Uncle Remus."

It is also to be noticed that in these accounts of the origin of language, the essential element of reason is always quietly smuggled in as a matter of course. Thus Mr. Darwin's wisest of the pithecoids was able to "think of" a device for the information of his fellows. There is not the smallest doubt that any creature which had got so far as _that_ would find what he wanted. It is but the old case of the man who was sure he could have written Hamlet had he had a mind to do so. Like him, the ape might have made the invention, if he had a mind to make it;--only he had not got the mind. So too, Professor Romanes' missing links use tones and signs which acquire "more and more" the character of true speech: which could not be unless they contained some measure of that character already. But it is just the first step thus ignored which spans the gulf between man and brute.

There is another factor upon which, in conjunction with these suppositions, great stress is wont to be laid, namely that of time; it being apparently taken for granted that if only time enough be given anything whatever may come about. Thus Professor Romanes tells us[121] that his imaginary _Homo alalus_, or speechless man, must probably have lived for an "inconceivably long time," before getting far enough on the road towards speech to give him such an advantage as enabled him to crush out his less accomplished congeners; and that even after this point was reached, another "inconceivable lapse of time" must have been required to turn him into _Homo sapiens_, or man as he actually is. Immense intervals, he further tells us, must have been consumed in the passage through various grades of mental evolution; "The epoch during which sentence-words prevailed was probably immense"; "It was not until æons of ages had elapsed that any pronouns arose."

Meanwhile, there is no scrap of evidence that as a matter of fact any thing of all this ever happened at all, and as Bunsen has observed no millions of years, even were millions available at discretion, could ever supply the want of the faculty without which nothing in the way of language could ever be accomplished.

(_c_) _Free-will._--Here is another human faculty which Du Bois-Reymond declares never to have been accounted for by natural causation, and he greatly doubts whether it should not be classed among the problems that must be for ever insoluble.

Professor Haeckel, as we have seen, gets rid of all difficulties on this score by laying it down that "the freedom of the will is not an object for critical scientific inquiry at all, for it is a pure dogma, based on an illusion, and has no real existence."

It is plain that for his purpose this is the only course possible. If the will be really free, there can be no question of finding a mechanical explanation of it. There is therefore no alternative but to cut the Gordian knot, and to declare that the liberty which the vast majority of men believe themselves to exercise every instant, is proved by Science to be no better than a pure dogma, that is to say, a mere figment.

When we seek for his indication of the line of argument whereby this position is made good, the information supplied is less full than might be desired. He begins[122] with a rather lengthy sketch of the history of controversy in this regard,--which contains the remarkable statement that "Some of the first teachers of the Christian Churches--such as St. Augustine and Calvin--rejected the freedom of the will as decidedly as the famous leaders of pure Materialism, Holbach in the eighteenth, and Büchner in the nineteenth century." Then he proceeds:

The great struggle between the determinist and the indeterminist,
between the opponent and the sustainer of the freedom of the will,
has ended to-day after more than 2,000 years, completely in favour
of the determinist. The human will has no more freedom than that of
the higher animals, from which it differs only in degree, not in
kind. In the last [i.e. the eighteenth] century the doctrine of
liberty was fought with general philosophic and cosmological
arguments. The nineteenth century has given us very different
weapons for its definitive destruction--the powerful weapons which
we find in the arsenal of comparative physiology and evolution. We
now know that each act of the will is as fatally determined by the
organization of the individual, and as dependent on the momentary
condition of his environment, as every other psychic activity. The
character of the inclination was determined long ago by _heredity_
from parents and ancestors; the determination to each particular
act is an instance of _adaptation_ to the circumstances of the
moment wherein the strongest motive prevails, according to the laws
which govern the statics of emotion. Ontogeny teaches us to
understand the evolution of the will in the individual child.
Phylogeny reveals to us the historical development of the will
within the ranks of our vertebrate ancestors.[123]

That is all. It is needless to observe that jargon like this proves nothing. Of anything approaching to evidence there is here, manifestly, no vestige, and there is consequently nothing which can avail to win our assent as rational men.

It is likewise obvious that we have here a question as to which every human being has the means of judging equally with the most eminent man of Science, and modern improvement of the methods and instruments of research leaves us just where we always were. The final evidence on the subject every man has within himself, in the most vital facts of his own experience. Into the philosophy of the matter it is neither necessary nor advisable at present to go. In dealing with profound yet elementary questions, regarding which our means of knowledge are thus simple and direct, men are apt to bewilder themselves when they begin to philosophize, and to persuade themselves that they cannot be sure precisely of those things that are most certain. George Borrow is by no means the only one who has tormented himself with doubts as to his own existence.[124] A still larger number have professed to believe themselves mere machines compelled to go like clocks, and to do only what has been predetermined for them. But such beliefs are for the lecture-room or the study only, and in practical life every one behaves as if both he himself and others--especially others--were responsible for their conduct. So common-sense teaches, than which we shall not find a safer guide. "Sir," said the eminently common-sense Dr. Johnson, "we _know_ our will is free; and _there's_ an end on't. All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.... But, Sir, as to the doctrine of necessity, no man believes it. If a man should give me arguments that I cannot answer to prove that I cannot see; because I cannot answer his arguments, do I believe that I have no eyes?"

Thus we find once again that the doctrines which some would force upon us in the name of Science, on whatever they are founded, have no basis of fact, and cannot therefore rightly call themselves scientific.

XI

THE ORDER OF NATURE