Man's Place In Nature

( Originally Published 1909 )

Man's Zoological Position and His Distinctive Peculiarities.—Science speaks with no uncertain voice regarding man's position among other living creatures. Zoologically regarded, Man belongs to a special family in that order of Mammals which we call Primates, which includes marmosets, American Monkeys, Old World Monkeys, and Anthropoid Apes. Of his structural resemblance to the Anthropoid Apes in particular there is not a shadow of doubt. It is long since Sir Richard Owen, who was conservative on the subject, admitted the "all-pervading similitude of structure." On the other hand, man is a very distinctive type. He alone, after his infancy is past, walks thoroughly erect. His head is weighted with a heavy brain, but it does not droop forward. With his upright attitude, his command of vocal mechanism is perhaps in part connected. He plants the soles of his feet flat on the ground and he has a better heel than the monkeys have. Comparing his head with that of the anthropoid apes, we notice the bigger fore-head, the less protrusive face, the smaller cheek-bones and eye-brow ridges, the absence of cranial crests, the early disappearance of the junction between premaxilla and maxilla, the well-marked chin, the more uniform teeth forming an uninterrupted horseshoe-shaped series without prominent canines, and above all the massive brain which may be three times the weight of a gorilla's. There is no need to go into details, which have been authoritatively stated so often. The point is, that while man is distinctive from his heel to his chin, from his big toe to his forehead, there is, as far as structure is concerned, much less difference between man and gorilla than there is between gorilla and marmoset. Every one now admits that the distinctiveness of man from his nearest allies depends not on anatomical peculiarities, important as they are, but on his powers, especially on his powers of rational discourse, of building up general ideas, and of guiding his conduct by ideals. Some other creatures have words, but man alone has language the power of expressing a judgment which is Logos. Many other creatures have intelligence, which we can give a plausible account of in terms of perceptual inference, but man seems to stand alone in having reason or the power of conceptual inference. Many other creatures exhibit intelligent behaviour, which in a few cases may be controlled with reference to an objective end, as when the beavers dig a canal through an island in the river; but, so far as we know, it is only in man that behaviour rises into ethical conduct. Many animals are delightfully good, but only man is moral.

Does Resemblance Mean Relationship ?—But admitting that man, distinctive as he is, must be regarded as anatomically akin to the anthropoid apes, is it necessary to go further and admit that the homologies spell blood-relationship ? Does the "all-pervading similitude" imply affiliation ? Has there been an ascent of Man from a Simian stock? The practically unanimous scientific answer is " Yes." Before considering this answer, let us ask what other interpretations are in the field.

It has been suggested that Man is "The Great Exception," that while all other creatures have had a natural evolution, Man was specially created, that is to say, that he arose in a manner beyond the ken of science. If this answer thoroughly satisfies any one and is really useful to him, he should stick to it. It is not for science to say that it is impossible, for the only kind of impossibility which science has to protest against is a contra-diction in terms. The strength of the position that Man is the great exception, with a peculiarly supernatural origin, lies positively in the fact that Man at his best is a very wonderful creature, and that even at his worst he is considerably different from an animal. It is also strengthened negatively by the fact that Man's origin is wrapped in obscurity, and that the provisional hypothetical history, which zoologists and anthropologists have tried to construct, leaves much to be desired. On the other hand, the drawbacks to the theory are, that it dogmatically sets a limit to the unravelling power of science, that it insinuates a dualism into our scientific conception of history, and that it leaves us with the puzzle of the "all-pervading similitude" between Man and the anthropoids. In trying to save Man's dignity, it makes him a conundrum.

A somewhat subtler view, which finds favour with many, suggests that while Man as an animal organism was evolved, he received in addition to his natural inheritance a special supernatural endowment. As an organism he sprang from the very dust, but he also received a breath of divine life which nature could not give, which nature can-not take away. "There is surely," said Sir Thomas Browne, "a piece of divinity in us; some-thing that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun." According to Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, the doyen of evolutionists, the Nestor of the Darwinian camp, the facts of Man's higher nature compel us to postulate a special "spiritual influx," comparable to that which intervened when living organisms first appeared and when consciousness began. If any one finds this view thoroughly satisfactory and really useful, he should stick to it. From our point of view it seems premature and unnecessary. It abandons the scientific mode of procedure while the inquiry is still young, and the idea of spiritual influxes intervening now and again to help natural evolution over difficult stiles suggests that we have to do with two worlds and not with only one.

Ascent of Man.—But let us now turn to the scientific outlook. The arguments by which Darwin and others have sought to show that Man arose from an ancestral type common to him and to the higher apes, are logically the same as those used to substantiate the general doctrine of descent that the present is the child of the past and the parent of the future. The "Descent of Man" is an expansion of a chapter in the "Origin of Species." The arguments may be briefly summarized :

(1) Physiological.—The bodily life of Man is very like that of his presumed allies. Men and monkeys are subject to similar diseases. Various human traits of gesture and expression are paralleled among the brutes. Friedenthal's curious physiological method of demonstrating blood-relationship by similarity in the blood reactions holds good.

(2) Morphological.—The structure of Man is very like that of the anthropoid apes. He is distinctive, but none of his anatomical distinctions, except that of a large and heavy brain, are very momentous. There are about eighty vestigial structures in his muscular, skeletal, and other systems a large museum of relics which he carries about with him, enigmatical except in the light of the past.

(3) Historical.—Certainties in regard to remains of primitive man are few, but some of the early skulls are nearer the Simian type than those normal to-day. Connecting links are missing, but fragments like those of Pithecanthropus are suggestive if not convincing. Sometimes, more-over, an abnormal type is born which seems to hark back in some of its features to a pre-human stage. And again we find in Man's individual development stages which may be interpreted as in a general way recapitulative of presumed ancestral history.

It goes almost without saying that we cannot regard these evidences of Man's pedigree as demonstrative. The evidences of evolution never are. We accept the doctrine of descent because it is our only scientific modal interpretation of the past, because it makes both past and present luminous and coherent, because all the facts point to it as a rational formula, and because we know of nothing that can be said to contradict it. If the doctrine of descent is true for other organisms, it is likely to be true for Man as well.

The Difficulty of the Problem of the Ascent of Man.

It must be admitted that the problem remains full of difficulties. We do not know how Man arose, or whence he came, or when he began, or where his first home was; in short we are in a deplorable state of ignorance on the whole subject. But consider for a little each of these points, taking them in reverse order.

The Garden of Eden is not yet known to geographers. We have only speculations as to the cradle of the human race. We may venture on negative statements, such as that it could not have been in the New World, but the fewer positive statements we make, the better.

As to the antiquity of the human race, it is certain that men lived in Europe at a time when mammoth and rhinoceros, hyaena and lion, frequented these parts. From the situations in which palaeolithic implements have been found, it is inferred that these must have dropped from their makers' hands at least 150,000 years ago. And these implements were not the work of novices; in their well-finished form they compare favourably with some of the results of twentieth-century handicraft. But ever so much older than those palaeoliths are the eoliths. They probably take us back to 300,000 years ago.

Another line of argument is this. It is certain that Man could not have arisen from any of the existing anthropoid apes; it is a vulgar error to sup-pose that scientific interpreters ever made any such suggestion. It is likely, however, that Man arose from an ancestral stock common to the anthropoid apes and to him. It therefore seems justifiable to date the antiquity of the human race not later than the time when the anthropoid apes are known to have been established as a distinct family. This takes us back to Miocene ages, and that means many hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Is there not something extraordinarily impressive in this antiquity of our race, all the more impressive when we see that it is lost against the background of the immensely greater antiquity of the animal world, just as that is lost against the unthinkable antiquity of the earth ? To those who are always in a hurry for results, as they put their shoulders to the wheel of the cumbrous wagon of our civilization, is there not some lesson simply in the time the past journey has taken ? As Lowell said, we must "Learn by each discovery how to wait."

Man. as a Mutation.—As to the actual origin of Man, we can only say that facts point to his natural evolution from an ancestral stock common to him and to the anthropoid apes. He probably arose by a mutation, that is to say, by a discontinuous variation of considerable magnitude. From the researches of De Vries, Bateson, and others, we know that discontinuous (or as Galton called them "transilient") variations often occur. They represent sudden and brusque emergences of new constitutional patterns, and they often show great stability, i. e., they tend to breed true. The birth of a genius gives us a hint of what a mutation may mean, but, unfortunately, geniuses do not usually beget geniuses. They do not breed true like De Vries' evening primroses! In suggesting that Man arose as a mutation, we do not mean, of course, that he sprang suddenly to the height of his dignity. It was perhaps more like what we see every day in the growth of a child. Probably his origin was like that of life itself, a great step was suddenly taken, but it was a long time before it began to tell. It may seem to some that there is not much to choose between a theory of Man's origin by a hypothetical mutation, which one would not understand even if one knew it had occurred, and a theory of Man's origin by special creation in which one does not believe. But the point is really, whether we do or do not regard Man as a natural and predetermined product of the antecedent order of nature.

Possible Factors in the Evolution of Man.—In regard to the conditions of Man's emergence as an anthropoid genius, we can only speculate. From what we know of men and monkeys, it seems likely that, in the struggle of primitive man, wits were of more avail than strength. His bodily frame-work admitted of little more perfecting, and evolution "ever climbing after some ideal good" began, metaphorically speaking, to experiment with the brain. Sir E. Ray Lankester has called attention to the interesting fact that in the early Miocene times there was great increase in brain-growth in several animal types, perhaps for the same reason, that anatomical differentiation of the rest of the system could not profitably go much further. One of the first types to shoot ahead in brain-development was the elephant, which was already sagacious in Eocene times.

Now the possession of a big brain seems to mean great "educability," i. e., power of storing and profiting by experience.1 And man's enormous brain, which does not seem to have increased greatly in bulk since Paleolithic times, marked a new departure. It removed him head and shoulders above the rest of creation, enabling him to pit himself against Nature in a degree impossible to less endowed organisms. It raised him, to his own risk, from under the inexorable sway of Natural Selection.

When the habits of walking erect, of using sticks and stones, of building shelters, of living in families, began and they have begun among monkeys it is likely that wits would grow apace. The prolonged gestation would perhaps help the development of the brain and the prolonged in-fancy, characteristic of human offspring, would help the growth of gentleness. But even more important is the fact that among monkeys there are distinct societies. Families combine for protection, and the combination favours the development of emotional and intellectual strength. Nothing seems more certain, especially in the light of recent investigations, than that our mind is a social product. "Man did not make society; society made Man."

It behooves us to be extremely careful in speaking of the factors in early human evolution. We know so little. " In the case of mankind," Huxley wrote, "the self-assertion, the unscrupulous seizing upon all that can be grasped, the tenacious holding of all that can be kept, which constitute the essence of the struggle for existence, have answered. For his successful progress, as far as the savage state, man has been largely indebted to those qualities which he shares with the ape and the tiger; his exceptional physical organization, his cunning, his sociability, his curiosity, and his imitativeness, his ruthless and ferocious destructiveness when his anger is roused by opposition." There is doubtless some truth in this, but it under-appreciates what is also a plain fact of life that the success of the Mammalian type depends in great part on maternal care, that as Henry Drummond said, the "struggle for the life of others" is as important as the struggle for personal subsistence.

Repugnance to the Scientific Interpretation.—Many who are not unwilling to admit that there is a certain grandeur in the doctrine of descent as applied to plants and animals, express a strong repugnance to the whole idea of the Descent of Man. It may be useful to inquire into this repugnance, which is expressed by many clear-headed and noble-minded men and[ women. To some extent, it is due to misunderstanding. People run off with the mistaken idea that evolutionists try to prove that the chimpanzee is their second cousin or something of that sort; or they fancy that Man, according to biology, is no more than a freak, a strangely fortunate ending of a chapter of accidents. Or the reasons for the repugnance may have an aesthetic basis, since some people dislike anything in the nature of embryos, preferring to picture their ancestors always with gray hairs. They will not look on the rock whence they were hewn or into the pit whence they were digged.

This is a question of taste, and cannot be argued about. To most naturalists development is the most beautiful thing in the world, and the Hebrew psalmist was not averse to reminding himself how his members were fashioned when as yet there was none of them. More serious, however, is the idea that if Darwin's Descent of Man be true, then Man loses dignity, sanctity, and ethical value. In the first place, perhaps, it should be noted that the scientific interpretation discloses man as a pre-determined masterpiece of nature, as a creature whose making meant ages of patience, whose birth came about after long travail. Is there loss of dignity and sanctity in this ? And again, the more Man is seen as of a piece with nature, as her finest flower, the more meaning does nature come to have for him. She becomes indeed his Alma Mater.

A simple consideration, which is always useful, is that the value of any product is independent of its far-off origin. Our appreciation of things is usually based on what they are, and on what they seem likely to become; it is not affected by their remote pedigree. A bird is not less a bird because the avian stock arose from among the reptiles. It is true, of course, that breeding counts, but that is quite another matter; immediate ancestry is always important because the individual inheritance is a living mosaic of parental and ancestral contributions. But when a great step in evolution has been taken--such as the origin of Vertebrates, or of any of the great classes of Vertebrates Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds, or Mammals our estimate of the advance made is not affected by our knowledge of the origin. To depreciate man because he had non-human ancestors is like judging a statue by the quarry. Is it a poor genealogy that the naturalists give man ? But man may always say "Je suis un ancêtre."

Perhaps the deepest repugnance is due to the misunderstanding to which we have already alluded, that according to science Man was a happy accident. But whatever careless writers may have said, this is not the scientific view. Take a sentence rather from one of the foremost exponents Professor E. Ray Lankester: "Man is held to be a part of Nature, a product of the definite and orderly evolution which is universal; a being resulting from and driven by the one great nexus of mechanism which we call Nature." This may not be the whole truth about Man, but here at any rate there is no suggestion of fortuity. Again he writes, "Man forms a new departure in the gradual unfolding of Nature's predestined scheme." Mr. Balfour writes in the "Foundations of Belief" (p. 75) : "An irrational universe which accidentally turns out a few reasoning animals at one corner of it, as a rich man may experiment at one end of his park with some curious "sport" accidentally produced among his flocks and herds, is a Universe which we might well despise, if we did not ourselves share its degradation." This is hard hitting; but the rational Universe which admits of scientific formulation, does not turn out its masterpieces accidentally.

It is not necessary to enter into a discussion of Naturalism' which is a particular scientific philosophy with a name that one cannot but grudge to it. But when Mr. Balfour says that Man, ac-cording to Naturalism, is "no more than a phenomenon among phenomena, a natural object among other natural objects, his very existence an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets," we must submit that there is more in such a statement than science warrants. "His very existence is an accident," is not a scientific statement; we do not know of any great step in Nature that has been taken by accident. We may use a word like "episode" if we choose, but whatever be our view of man, it must include the fact that he has given a scientific interpretation of nature and of his place in it.

Naturalism finds the permanent reality of the Universe simply in the world as revealed to us through perception or through the spectacles of Natural Science. But the whole hierarchy of the sciences speaks of another reality which cannot be sense-perceived, and even with scientific spectacles we cannot but be aware of the fundamental mysteriousness of Nature, though we may not therewith be able to discern that "higher nature in nature which makes us men." Naturalism denies any real causality to the personal agent and makes consciousness no more than inactive control. . But it is difficult to doubt the genuine conscious activity of the subject. It seems the surest of all scientific facts. Ideas have hands and feet, as Hegel said, and move the world. One may ask, indeed, whether the existence of a material world per se—a system of unconscious forces—a self-acting machine is a thinkable idea at all.

Human Conduct and Animal Behaviour. In the ordinary man's daily activity we can readily distinguish various grades. There is usually a good deal of habitual routine, the determination of which does not rise to the focus of consciousness at all. Lower than this is some instinctive behaviour, and there are reflex activities often of considerable complexity. On the other hand, the man often passes beyond habitual routine to do something which is positively intelligent. Now and again we must describe his activity as rational conduct. It almost goes without saying that the greater part of his activity is non-ethical, that is to say, it is not consciously determined in reference to general ideas or ideals, with their attendant feelings as impulses. Some highly moralized men and women are able to give an ethical note to a great part of their daily activity, but this is not the way with most, though at almost any turn a commonplace act may acquire ethical value. By ethical conduct we do not necessarily mean good conduct, but conduct deliberately controlled in relation to some ideal in most cases, doubtless, one that makes for progressive righteousness.

When a man is hungry he usually leaves his work or his play and goes to dine obedient to an organic signal which sounds in the philosopher as well as in his dog. Instinctively or by force of habit, he neither hurries nor eats more than is customary at the time. Ethically, he may refrain from something which he is fond of, which interferes with his effectiveness as a workman.

Moreover, an action which was ethical to one generation or time of life need not remain so. We live in the hope of this. It was an ethical act on our forefather's part not to overeat himself, and to refrain from killing his enemy, but it costs none of us much ethical effort to avoid gluttony in solids and to abstain from rapid murder. Thus, in a sense, we become happier and better as we become less ethical as our virtues become more instinctive.

Among animals we find the same inclined plane of activities as in man, with this difference that there is no convincing evidence of ethical conduct. Instinctive activities which depend on inborn capacities and require neither education or experience for their performance, though they may be improved thereby often bulk largely; intelligent behaviour, up to the limits of what can be redescribed in terms of perceptual inference is wide-spread, but in the strict sense there is no evidence of reason or of morals. Animals may be most loving mates, most careful parents, faithful to their friends, brave to the death for their near kin, but poor creatures they are not moral agents. As Nietzsche said, "their virtue is free from any moralic acid." Animal behaviour differs from human conduct for lack of a conceived purpose. Not that animals are automata or wholly instruments in Nature's hand, but their purposefulness is at most perceptual.

It seems, then, that the whole range of activity, which is non-rational and non-ethical, is in a very real sense common ground for man and beast, al-ways allowing that in man's case the activity may be at any moment rationalized or moralized. A day of routine work, performed without definite pleasure or pain, without definite effort or control, but just "gone through with," is often lived by man, but it is hardly human, not to speak of ethical. Yet we all know of many who can transform their dreary "day's darg" into a discipline of nobility thus raising it higher than its own poor merits do above the daily activity of that exemplar of our childhood the busy bee. On the other hand, the bees are perhaps happier, till the winter of their discontent draws near; they may be troubled with parasites, but not with ideals. As Walt Whitman said so truly of animals in general "They do not sweat and whine about their condition; they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins; they do not make me sick discussing their duty not one is respectable or unhappy in the whole world."

As we study animal life we see a gradual emergence of the fundamental springs of conduct which we find transmuted of course in ourselves. Starting with the simple protoplasts, responsive to oxygen, warmth, food, and one another, and also exhibiting in some cases a selective behaviour which we cannot redescribe in physical and chemical terms, we can hypothetically trace the evolution of behaviour. Very important steps were the formation of a "body" of which death was the price, the beginning of bilateral symmetry, the consequent acquisition of head brains, the differentiation of the sexes. From the stages now persistent at different grades of the animal kingdom, we infer that from a primary hunger there arose that other prime-mover Love which almost alone disputes hunger's claims with success. The originally simple attraction between the sexes becomes gradually associated with aesthetic attractions, psychical sympathies, and practical co-operation in work, and fondness is sublimed into Love. This expands till it laps the family in its folds, returns enhanced to the pair, and broadens out again to the kindred. Along another line the primary hunger becomes differentiated into desire to avoid pain, to increase comfort and well-being, to realize the self. As in mankind, the egoistic and altruistic, the self-preserving and other-regarding impulses intertwine, so that at the end they are no more distinguishable than at the beginning.

Has Human Conduct Evolved from Animal Behaviour ?—A study of animal behaviour seems to indicate that while we may not be justified in crediting animals with reason or with morals in the strict sense, we must credit them with what may be called the raw materials of morality--with affection, gentleness, and self-sacrifice, with jealousy, vanity, self-assertiveness, and so on through a long list. The fundamental motives are all there.

But in what sense, if any, may it be said that human conduct has evolved from "animal behaviour" ? It appears to us that the true answer is, that man inherited from his pre-human ancestry what may be called a set of primary impulses, which he immediately proceeded to raise to a higher power by virtue of his peculiarly in-creased cerebral complexity. What we mean may be illustrated by considering the case of language.

It seems certain that not a few animals have definite words, expressive of particular emotional states or with particular significance of some sort. Even the chick has some half-dozen words and the dog perhaps more, both excelling in vocabulary the infant who has no language but a cry. But no animal is known to have the power of expressing a judgment, however simple, which is the essence of language. It may be, as John Oliver Hobbes says, that "a dog can put more soul into á look than a kind friend can talk in an hour," but we have no warrant for supposing that the dog's sympathy, even when expressed in a welcoming bark, has any general idea behind it.

Now, while we cannot doubt that Man has inherited his brains and the centre of speech and his vocal cords from simpler non-human ancestors, we cannot say that his language was directly evolved from their speech. What was evolved was the Man, with a more complex cerebral structure; and language is a human product. The potentiality of it, the raw materials of it, were pre-human, but so far as we know, language is solely human. Even if we knew precisely what cerebral differentiations and integrations are conditionally associated with Man's higher powers, even if we could place these in line with a series of progressive changes in animals, we should still have to say "The Man arose, an organism at length rational; to him all things became new he spoke, and he was moral." In other words, while we need not despair of finding among animals the analogues, the rudiments, the Anlagen of language and conscience, we need not hope to discover the phyletic history of these powers by studying animals. In-creasing cerebral complexity made a higher intelligence possible, and both language and con-science date from that dawn.

When we consider how it stands with our feelings and those of animals, we find a certain degree of common ground such as fear of enemies, dislike of pain, sexual passion, jealousy of rival mates, parental affection and the like. On a second plane are those feelings which though shared with animals are peculiarly modified in the case of Man, through association with ideas rather than sense-experiences. On a third plane are those feelings of which Man seems to be sole possessor, such as modesty, remorse, reverence, and religious emotion. The "moral feelings" closely associated with our ethical judgments and entering into the composition of what we call conscience, such as "shame for evil done," remorse for injury inflicted, "pleasure in good as such," are unique in man, with only dim analogues in the beast, and hardly recognizable buds in the young child.

The two opposed errors which we have to avoid are, too absolute separation, and too complete identification. In regard to the first it is obvious that we cannot prove that any given emotion in the dog is closely akin to one in man; there is no secretion to be analyzed, and the expressions in gesture and physiognomy, though very valuable indices of what is passing within, afford insufficient basis for identification. Notwithstanding, our faith in the unity of nature leads us to suppose two apparently similar emotions in man and beast to be in general nature alike except where there is good reason to believe them different, e. g., when the human form of the feeling in question has obviously been influenced by general ideas. It is easy to see some difference between the jealousy of a stag and the jealousy of a man; but it is equally easy to see differences between the jealousy of two men. One man's jealousy is comforted by a £50 note, another's is cruel as the grave.

On the other hand, we have to avoid the error of hasty identification. By experience, definitized in some sort of social convention, rooks recognize the eighth commandment in the rookery; perhaps men began to recognize it in a similar way. But as things are, rooks obey the convention by a necessity of a somewhat lower order than that which moves the virtuous man, who is moved by a thought of racial and social consequences, or by a conception of what is fit for conduct universal. In man's case, moreover, the matter is complicated theoretically though simplified practically by the high development of what might be called the external conscience, embodied in social traditions, institutions, and laws. In short, just as we find in animals perceptual inferences but not conceptual inferences, so we find no feelings born of general ideas. Animals may be kind, gentle, devoted, and rich in good feelings, but they have no moral feelings or conscience.

At the same time, one cannot doubt that animals have the power of controlling present conduct in reference to an end more or less distant. Apart from the habitual inhibitory powers of trained animals, there are many such cases; thus it is difficult to believe that beavers, who cut a canal across an island or across the bend of a river, have not a perception of the end to be gained. The labor hardly justifies itself until the work is done. But at the most this is a concrete ideal. It would be an error, however, to exaggerate this distinction as if it were quite absolute. It seems more likely that intelligence and reason, the powers of perception and conception, will merge, for just as species are only arcs of curves, marked off for our convenience, so is it with many other distinctions equally legitimate and useful.

In the history of the cosmos, the emergence of the first living animals marked a new era. There was a new synthesis of matter and energy, the secret of which is hidden.

In the history of animals the establishment of a centralized nervous system and the associated beginning of a unified experience marked another new era.

Similarly, the origin of Man implied a new series of differentiations and integrations of which we get some hint from a study of the child. With Man all things became new.

Thus it seems that to look for morals in the beast is like looking for a backbone in a worm. What we may look for is an Anlage, a primordium, a rudiment of that tissue, so to speak, from which reason, conscience, and language, and other distinctively human qualities had their origin. But the real crossing of the Rubicon was due to cerebral mutation. In so saying, it must be remembered that no scientific formula-word lessens the magnitude of the step which was taken. We agree with the philosopher who says that "the breach between ethical man and pre-human nature constitutes, without exception, the most important fact which the universe has to show."

Huxley's Thesis as Regards Human and Cosmic Evolution.—We must now return to the argument expounded by Huxley in his "Romanes Lecture on Evolution and Ethics." The argument was that the mechanism of organic evolution is natural selection in an inexorable struggle for existence, in which there is nothing but ruthless self-assertion, a treading down of rivals, a gladiatorial show, more or less enduring suffering, and the result of which is merely the survival of the most suitable, not of the best in any sense. If this be so, then "the practice of that which is ethically best what we call goodness or virtue involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence." "Social progress means the checking of the cosmic process at every step, and the substitution for it of the ethical process, the end of which is not the survival of the fittest, but the survival of those ethically the best." Man must pit his microcosm against the macrocosm, and he must not be discouraged. "Man alone," as Goethe said, "can achieve the impossible." The dwarf by his intelligence can bend the Titan to his will in matters practical, so may it be in the domain of morals.

"The intelligence which has converted the brother of the wolf into the faithful guardian of the flock ought to be able to do something toward curbing the instincts of savagery in civilized men." But, "let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it." "The practice of that which is ethically best what we call goodness or virtue involves a course of conduct, which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence." Nature has many voices, but Huxley could hear no helpful word for man in his endeavor after better-being. Similarly, so far as we understand, Professor James, of Harvard, in his lecture, "Is Life Worth Living?" also gives Nature up, finding no "universe," but a "multiverse"; "all plasticity and indifference," a "harlot" and "mere weather."

In Huxley's thesis we recognize several truths, but not the whole truth. It is useful inasmuch as it emphasizes the difference between man and pre-human nature, between the'îpov Xoyucóv iroXi'rcicóv c4tXaXXiiXov (the rational, social, and altruistic organism of the Stoics) and the rest of creation. It is useful, since it hints at the fact that we can-not find any ethical conduct in the strict sense in even the most loving of animals, though it perhaps exaggerates this difference. It is useful inasmuch as it presses home the truth that man as a personal agent has emerged from the drastic rule of Natural Selection; he is Nature's rebellious child and must continue to rebel if he is to continue to hold his own, still more if he is to make progress. It is useful inasmuch as it emphasizes the fact that ethical progress must always be a struggle, an endeavor, a fight as St. Paul said. On the other hand, we would dissent from Huxley's reasoning on the following grounds:

(1) Huxley does not appear to us to have given a just picture of the cosmic process. He used far too much red. Is it not the case that, while the logic of organic evolution always remains the same, the significance of the process changes when we observe that the milk of animal kindness is selected as well as teeth and claws, that maternal care is selected as well as paternal belligerence, that the world is not merely the battlefield of the strong, but the home of the loving ? According to Huxley, life has been and is a continual free fight, and beyond the limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all has been and is the normal state of existence. But, as Kropotkin observes, this has as little claim to be taken as a scientific deduction as the opposite view of Rousseau, who saw in nature nothing but love, peace, and harmony (disturbed by the accession of man).

Almost every critic has pointed out that Huxley could not himself adhere to his gladiatorial show picture. Somewhat contradictorily and some-what grudgingly he added in the appendix a note to the following effect: "Of course, strictly speaking, social life and the ethical process in virtue of which it advances toward perfection, are part and parcel of the general process of Evolution, just as the gregarious habit of innumerable plants and animals, which has been of much service to them, is." "Among birds and mammals, societies are formed, of which the bond in many cases seems to be purely psychological; that is to say, it appears to depend upon the liking of the individuals for one anther's company. The tendency of individuals to over-self-assertion is kept down by fighting. Even in these rudimentary forms of society, love and fear come into play, and enforce a greater or less renunciation of self-will. To this extent the general cosmic process begins to be checked by a rudimentary ethical process, which is, strictly speaking, part of the former, just as the "governor" in a steam engine is part of the mechanism of the engine."

It may be pointed out that the sentence, "The tendency of individuals to over-self-assertion is kept down by fighting," is, for many cases, a quite unverifiable statement, but let that pass. It is more to the point to notice that to admit a rudimentary ethical process to a role like that of the "governor" is admitting much; in fact, it rather takes the edge off his previous argument. But in spite of his appendix, Huxley leaves the reader with the impression that the self-assertion of the strong at the expense of the weak is the universal law of nature.

(2) Moreover, while it is quite true that the cosmic process leads to the survival of the fittest for given conditions, not necessarily to the survival of the noblest or the most beautiful or, in any way but one, the best; that the parasite is the result of selection just as much as the paragon of creation; that if the northern hemisphere became glacial again, the fittest creatures would be lichens and snow plants; does not Huxley's argument tend to obscure the fact that, after all, there has been a progressive evolution of finer and freer types in the course of the ages ? The cosmic process may have "no sort of relation to moral ends," but it has led up to most marvellous masterpieces, along any line you choose to follow, and notably along that line which leads to man. Has it "no sort of relation to moral ends,' when it has led up along many lines to extraordinary exhibitions of parental sacrifice and altruistic devotion ? Has it "no sort of relation to moral ends," if it puts a premium on health, vigor, self-control, temperance ?

(3) Speaking of the more or less sound arguments in favor of the theory that the moral sentiments have arisen in the same way as other natural phenomena, by a process of evolution, Huxley said, "but as immoral sentiments have no less been evolved, there is, so far, as much natural sanction for the one as the other. The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist." "Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason,' why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil, than we had before."

Is this really so ? On the contrary, it seems that the naturalists are right who point out that what we may call "crime" does not flourish in Nature, except in a few rare cases such as that of the cuckoo; that it is the law of the forest that certain conventions of mutual regard be observed (during hunting at least even the wolves of the pack must forget their private quarrels); and that the reward of great success attends those creatures that excel in sociality, such as the ants and the bees, the rooks and the cranes, the beavers and the monkeys. That man has almost exterminated the beaver does not affect this argument.

Besides, we should remember that what corresponds to virtue in Man is in great measure necessarily represented simply by vigor among animals, and that here Nature's verdict is clear. Disease is very rare unless man interferes. To say that well-doing has only as much natural sanction as ill-doing seems like saying that disease has as much natural sanction as health. On the contrary, it has so little that in extra-human conditions1 diseased organisms are in most cases rapidly eliminated. Nature's verdict is quite clear.

(4) In general terms, Nature's method of organic evolution is the elimination of unfit variations, the selection of fit variations, and this as a formula remains for us perhaps the greatest lesson that Nature teaches. As we have seen, the modes of selection differ widely, though the logic of the process is always the same. We submit, therefore, that in social progress we have not to combat Nature's method, but to follow it, and that we do so every time that we favor the virtuous and thwart the vicious, every time that we reject an ugly product and choose a beautiful one, every time that we vote against militarism and make for peace. It is our prerogative to select those forms of struggle which seem most likely to favor the survival of our human ideals.

(5) Finally, another consideration may be suggested. Is it not generally admitted that the moral ideal is one of self-realization through social service, a self-realization which implies a willingness to be immersed and even lost in the good of the whole ? And is this not also the deeper aspect of Nature's strategy, that the individual organism realizes itself in its interrelations, and has to submit to being lost that the larger welfare of the whole may be served? To sum up, our general conclusion may be stated thus: "We see that it is possible to interpret the ideals of ethical progress through love and sociality, cooperation and sacrifice not as mere utopias contradicted by experience, but as the highest expressions of the central evolutionary process of the natural world. As evolutionary biologists we are thus practically with moralist and theologian, even with poet and sentimentalist, if you will, against the 'vulgar economist' of Ruskin, or the self-styled 'practical politician' of today."

Retrospect.—So far, we have considered man as an organism, the long result of time, the predestined outcome of a long-drawn-out orderly process, the heir of all the ages. We see him emerging, to use Walt Whitman's quaint phrase, "stuccoed all over with quadrupeds."

We then saw, however, that man, because he is man, has freed himself from passive subordination to the cosmic mechanism in a much greater degree than any other creature. He will not be tied to his mother's apron strings, though he often returns, to her wearied. He will make a kingdom for himself an imperium in imperio; he pits him-self against the cosmic processes.

We have thus simply hinted at another chapter how man actively uses Nature for his own advancement, for fuller self-realization, for the development of his spirit. The servant becomes a master, the searcher an interpreter, and the product of evolution furnishes a key to the whole.

Value of the Evolutionary Conception of Man.—In accordance with the philosophical temper of the time, we must now ask what the evolutionary interpretation of man is good for. What is the value of the view that science takes of man's place in Nature ? Nietzsche said that history has three great uses a monumental use, perpetuating the memory of great deeds and great men; an antiquarian use, showing the living hand of the past in the present; and a critical use, enabling us to estimate the present provisional order of things by comparing it with what has been before. So the evolution-doctrine has a monumental use, re-minding us of great events in the past; an antiquarian use, showing the solidarity of what is and what has been; and a critical use, enabling us to judge of the present trend of things in the light of past history.

In the first place, is it not of great significance that, while science does not pretend to deal at all with ultimate realities or with the purpose of evolution, it can give a provisional intelligible history of things and living creatures and man himself intelligible in the sense that it is a genetic description of what has occurred. This, it seems to us, is the greatest contribution which science makes to human thought. As Professor Pringle-Pattison says: "The postulate which underlies every scientific induction is the intelligibility of the universe the belief, in other words, that we are living in a cosmos, not a chaos, the belief that the Power at work in the Universe will not put us to permanent intellectual confusion. This is an ultimate trust, which is not capable of demonstration, though progressively verified and justified by every step we take in the intellectual conquest of the world."

Again, looking at the Evolution-idea quite generally as the largest contribution which Natural Science has made to human thought, may we not argue to some purpose in this fashion ? Science looks backward to a beginning, and says there is nothing in the end which is not also in the beginning. Philosophy looks forward to an end which illustrates the significance of the whole. Science uses the amoeba in its interpretation of man, philosophy uses man in its interpretation of the amoeba. There are doubtless difficulties in both interpretations; we have seen that the scientific one is far from easy. But they are not opposed to one another and they seem equally natural to all of us, though we may not be expert in following up either of them. We cannot mix them up together, but neither can we hold them in insulation in our thinking. They are complementary out-looks on the world.

The embryologist describes the development of an individual bird, he uses the fertilized egg-cell as his starting-point, he believes that this in some way contains the potentiality of all that is to follow —intelligent behavior included, always admitting, of course, that the organism, as it develops, trades with its legacy of talents, using time to gather into itself the influences of environmental nurture. In his science the biologist tries to take the developing egg just for what it seems to him to be a growing mass of protoplasmic units self-differentiating, self-regulating, autonomous. He does not use the intelligence of the adult as a factor in embryonic development, for he can describe the sequences without using psychological terms, and he must keep to that method. Yet, for the life of him, he cannot forget that the egg becomes an intelligent creature, and in his whole thought of the egg he must see it in relation to its end.

Similarly, the evolutionist describes the history of the race of birds, using a reptilian stock, and long before that a Protist stock as his starting-point. He believes that his beginning in some way includes the potentiality of all that follows, but in his method he tries to take each stage just for what it seems to him to be. He cannot credit the Protists with a central nervous system, though he believes that they have the remote potentiality of it. Yet, for the life of him, he cannot forget that the original Protists must have had in them the promise and potency of all that follows, always remembering that each stage gathers the results of time into itself. In his whole thought of the evolution, he must see it in relation to the end. In short, in philosophical language, "If the lower carries in it the promise and potency of the higher, then how can we substantiate the lower as out of relation to the higher in which we read the meaning of the whole development ?" (A. S. Pringle-Pattison.)

"Every one of us bears upon him obvious marks of his parentage, perhaps of remoter relationships. More particularly, the sum of tendencies to act in a certain way, which we call 'character,' is often to be traced through a long series of progenitors and collaterals. So we may justly say that this ' character ' this moral and intellectual essence of a man does veritably pass over from one fleshly tabernacle to another and does really transmigrate from generation to generation. In the new-born infant, the character of the stock lies latent and the Ego is little more than a bundle of potentialities. But, very early, these become actualities; from childhood to age they manifest themselves in dullness or brightness, weakness or strength, viciousness or uprightness; and with each feature modified by confluence with another character, if by nothing else, the character passes on to its incarnation in new bodies."

Now let us extend this conception a little. From the scientific outlook man is seen as the child of nature. He is the "last inheritor and the last result" of a pedigree which goes back for millions of years, the last manifestation of a Karma which has been gradually modified since the time when life appeared upon the earth. More immediately the paragon of animals is a scion of a Simian stock. Thus, perhaps, we can better understand the beast in the man. Much of the inherent sinfulness which vexes the righteous soul, is the outcrop the recrudescence of ancestral habits. We need no elaborate theory of it. We have to let the ape and tiger die, and they often die hard. We rise on stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things, but the grave clothes hang about us, as about Lazarus, hampering our steps.

Huxley goes on to say:

"After the manner of successful persons, civilized man would gladly kick down the ladder by which he has climbed. He would be only too pleased to see 'the ape and tiger die.' But they decline to suit his convenience; and the unwelcome intrusion of these boon companions of his hot youth into the ranged existence of civilized life adds pains and griefs, innumerable and immeasurably great, to those which the cosmic process necessarily brings on the mere animal. In fact, civilized man brands all these ape and tiger promptings with the name of sins; he punishes many of the acts which flow from them as crimes; and, in extreme cases, he does his best to put an end to the survival of the fittest of former days by axe and rope."

"Return to Nature."—Another corollary drives home a consideration which often seems so impracticable that we wriggle away from it. It is the value of "a return to nature" in one sense of that much-abused phrase. Biologists are familiar with the fact that, if an inheritance is to find appropriate expression, the organism must develop in an appropriate environment. Otherwise, potentialities will not be realized, the legacy cannot be cashed. Now, if our natural inheritance has been determined in the distant past under conditions that imply close contact with nature emotional as well as practical it seems common sense that we and our children will always be handicapped unless we can renew the contact. This is part of the true inwardness of the "Nature-study" movement, the rus in urbe, and the garden-city. This is, in part, the gospel according to Wordsworth, and according to Thoreau.

There is, however, another side to this. There were conditions of life in ancient days which man-kind can never seriously wish to know again. A struggle around the platter of bare subsistence, as of pigs around the feeding-trough, should be an impossible phenomenon among men. Yet, through our selfishness and folly, we often sink back into vital conditions which are horrible anachronisms, which are inhuman and brutal, and then we wonder at a recrudescence of hooliganism, licentiousness, and savagery. There is no cause for wonder. By restoring the undesirable stimuli we have reawakened the beast in the man, the ape once more gibbers folly and the tiger whets his teeth. We have given new life to the latent germs of brutality, which, otherwise, would gradually die away.

The Yoke of Natural Selection.—A third corollary is not less important. There is one sense, at least, in which we can never "return to nature," unless we cease to be human. We can never resume the yoke of natural selection which even early man began to wriggle out of, which man has been more and more effectively throwing off as the ages have passed. Professor Ray Lankester has put this point with splendid clearness.:

"The mental qualities which have developed in Man, though traceable in a vague and rudimentary condition in some of his animal associates, are of such an unprecedented power and so far dominate everything else in his activities as a living organism, that they have to a very large extent, if not entirely, cut him off from the general operation of that process of Natural Selection and survival of the fittest which up to their appearance has been the law of the living world. They justify the view that man forms a new departure in the gradual unfolding of Nature's predestined scheme. Knowledge, reason, self-consciousness, will, are the attributes of Man.

"Nature's inexorable discipline of death to those who do not rise to her standard survival and parentage for those alone who do has been from the earliest times more and more definitely resisted by the will of Man. If we may, for the purpose of analysis, as it were, extract man from the rest of Nature of which he is truly a product and part, then we may say that Man is Nature's rebel. Where Nature says 'Die!' Man says 'I will live.'

"Civilized man has proceeded so far in his interference with extra-human nature, has produced for himself and the living organisms associated with him such a special state of things by his rebellion against natural selection, and his defiance of Nature's pre-human dispositions, that he must either go on and acquire firmer control of the conditions, or perish miserably by the vengeance certain to fall on the half-hearted meddler in great affairs. We may indeed compare civilized man to a successful rebel against Nature, who by every step forward renders him-self liable to greater and greater penalties, and so cannot afford to pause or fail in one single step. . . . Man, whilst emancipating himself from the destructive methods of natural selection, has accumulated a new series of dangers and difficulties with which he must incessantly contend."

The Hopefulness of the Evolutionist Outlook.—In general, it seems to us that the evolutionary view is one that inspires and encourages. It is an as-cent, not a descent, that is behind us, and there are no limits to set to our advance. Perhaps, indeed, we shall advance more quickly as we become more vividly conscious that our fates are in our own hands. We are no longer as those who look back to a Paradise in which man fell; we are rather as those "who rowing hard against the stream, see distant gates of Eden gleam and do not dream it is a dream." We have spoken of our heritage from pre-human ancestry whose recrudescence in evil passions sometimes amazes and perplexes even the godly; but we must remember the other side, that we have a heritage of good impulses which are much older than our race; the springs of good conduct of kin-sympathy, of family affection, of gentleness which have been welling forth almost since life began.

Riddles of the Universe.—We cannot look back on the story we have outlined without a sense of the riddles of the universe.

Even when we keep to things as they are, we find ourselves surrounded by unsolved problems. We see the swallows flying south across the river; how much patient inquiry has there been over this problem of migration; how far are we from a clear understanding of it! This may serve as an in-stance of the kind of problem that fascinates the naturalist, which he hopes some day to solve.

We move our arm to turn a page, and we pause to reflect upon all that this involves. With some pains we could perhaps give a long account of the motor impulses, muscular movements, chemical explosions, and what not that have occurred; but how far are we from having a clear view of the whole chain of events. We know much, for in-stance, in regard to the electrical change associated with the muscular contraction, but how little we understand as to its precise significance. How far we are from understanding what turning the page really means.

It is part of the scientific business to describe happenings in the simplest terms, to connect particular results with particular conditions, to make formula which sum up often repeated chains of sequence how much of this there is still to do in every department of inquiry. Many of the unsolved problems of things as they are will doubtless be cleared up if science goes on developing, and will be then replaced by other unsolved problems. So it will go on perhaps asymptotically. But even supposing all problems of this sort were cleared up, we should not have explained the world. Why not ? Because the terms used are not self-explanatory.

There are many different forms of energy in the world, powers of changing the state of motion or of doing work. Science measures these different "energies," studies their transferences and transformations, and demonstrates their in-destructibility, or, at any rate, our inability to increase or decrease their amount by the slightest. What energy ultimately is, science does not pre-tend to tell us.

There are many different kinds of matter in the world occupying space and possessing weight. Science studies the properties of the different kinds of matter, and forms theories of the constitution of matter, e. g., that it consists of molecules which consist of atoms, which consist of corpuscles surrounded by positive electricity, which are themselves units of negative electricity. We know that we cannot add to or take from the sum-total of matter in the world. As far as we are concerned it is quite indestructible. 'What matter ultimately is, science does not pretend to tell us, unless it ex-plains it away altogether in terms of electricity. The "Ding an sich" is not a subject of scientific inquiry.

It has apparently become necessary to postulate besides matter and energy a third something the ether. This is a hypothetical "medium of extreme tenuity and elasticity diffused throughout all space, the medium for the transmission of radiant energy." What it is, whether matter or non-matter, we do not know; nor, in the strict sense, do we know that it is at all. It is a necessary fiction in the scientific redescription of occurrences, and corresponds to something real.

Riddles of History.—To understand things as they are, we must throw upon them the light of past history. This is a familar dictum, and it is, of course, in a measure true. But we must not forget how far from complete this genetic knowledge is. How far we are from any security as to the history of the solar system, of the earth, of its plants and animals, or of prehistoric man. Louis Agassiz spoke of the gap between the unicellular Protists and multicellular organisms with "bodies" as "the greatest gulf in organic nature"; how was that gulf bridged ? Every zoologist believes that is the proper word to use that backboned animals were evolved from backboneless ancestors, but who shall say from what kind of backboneless animal, or by what steps, or under what conditions? Most anthropologists believe that man was, like other organisms, the long result of time, that he sprang from an ape-like stock, but no one knows from which, or where, or when, or how.

Riddles as to Origins.—Greatest of all perhaps are the riddles as to origins. There is always a good deal of difficulty in starting the triumphant chariot of evolution. "Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte."

Given the consolidated earth we can account for its sculpturing, but how did the earth begin? Was it from a condensed nebula, how did the nebula begin ? Was the nebula a swarm of colliding meteorites, whence came they? Have the different kinds of matter been evolved, what was the raw material? Is matter explained away as "nothing but electricity," had this an origin ?

Given living organisms to start with, we can in some measure redescribe the evolution of our present-day fauna and flora, but whence came living organisms ? Did they first arise from the dust of the earth ? By what steps did this come about ? And if the living arose from the not-living, what was the origin of this marvellous raw material which had the potentiality of livingness in it ?

Given simple behaviour and (inferred) simple psychical processes, we can, with much hesitancy and hypothesis at present, sketch out a series of stages leading on to intricate behaviour and intricate mental processes, but what were the conditions antecedent to mind ? Is it coextensive with life, or does it mysteriously emerge when a sufficient number of nerve-cells become integrated into a tiny brain? And if the primitive protoplasts from which the biologist starts had in them the potentiality of mind, then how is that rudiment related to the not-living if the protoplasts came from that ?

"Let us admit, as scientific men, that of real origin, even of the simplest thing, we know nothing; not even of a pebble."

It is well, surely, that this perennial difficulty as to origins should be frankly faced, even at the risk of misunderstanding on the part of those who, being unaware of what scientific method is, make apologetic capital out of every such admission, proclaiming that science has confessed herself bankrupt. Three notes are here necessary.

(a) In the first place, these difficulties as to origins are not all on the same plane. The conditions of the origin of birds are unknown, but we cannot doubt that birds sprang from a reptilian stock, and this problem is much more soluble than that of the origin of Vertebrates. The origin of Vertebrates or the origin of multicellular organisms is almost certain to be much less obscure fifty years hence than it is now; but it is possible that the origin of living organisms will be no nearer solution a century hence. The question of the origin of mind is again of a different order, and it may be that the question as we have put it is quite illegitimate. To ask where the first raw material of the Kosmos came from is to ask how the be-ginning began.

(b) In the second place, sound science can begin at any point without necessarily accounting for—i. e., describing the genesis of its data. There are few biologists who trouble their heads about the origin of living creatures. They take the origin of organisms for granted, and proceed to study the structure and activities, the development and racial history of particular forms. Similarly there is thoroughly sound anthropology and psychology, starting from man and mind as "given."

(c) In the third place, while science aims at redescribing in the simplest available terms what has taken place in the past and goes on taking place now, it does not pretend to explain anything.' It shows painstakingly that a certain collocation of antecedents will result in a certain collocation of consequents; it can often analyze the sequence of events into a series of simple movements; but except in this sense of reducing to a common denominator, it does not explain anything. Under certain conditions hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water, and some analysis of the probable succession of events is possible, but in the long run the chemist does not tell us how it is that the two gases form water. Not to be too pedantic, there is a sense in which the physicist can explain the path of a projectile or the course of a comet, but it is always in terms, such as gravitation, which are not self-explanatory. In most cases, moreover, he works with symbols, such as molecules, atoms, and corpuscles, which are representative of the unknown real things, so representative of them that prediction is possible, but which are none the less fictions of his own creation. Science tells us that when counters A, B, C move in such and such a way, counters D, E, F move in an equally definite way. But what makes the moves, or how is it exactly that A, B, C lead to D, E, F, what combines the tactics into a strategy, why should there be a strategy at all ? Science cannot tell us.

Professor Ray Lankester1 puts the position clearly.

"The whole order of nature, including living and life-less matter from man to gas is a network of mechanism,2 the main features and many details of which have been made more or less obvious to the wondering intelligence of mankind by the labor and ingenuity of scientific investigators. But no sane man has ever pretended, since science became a definite body of doctrine, that we know or ever can hope to know or conceive of the possibility of knowing, whence this mechanism has come, why it is there, whither it is going, and what there may or may not be beyond and beside it which our senses are incapable of appreciating. These things are not 'explained' by science, and never can be."

The Death of the Earth.—Another riddle that gives us pause is the suggestion that comes from various quarters that this fair earth of ours and all that it contains will some day die, as the moon for in-stance has died. "For millions of years," Huxley said, "our globe has taken the upward road, yet, sometime, the summit will be reached and the downward route will be commenced." The indestructible matter and energy will doubtless pass into a different expression, but a particular thought will have completed itself.

The Riddle of Suffering.—Another riddle which can never be far from the thoughts of those who are not extraordinarily light-hearted is the riddle of suffering and sorrow and evil.

Let us consider for a little what is called "the cruelty of nature." We probably make the riddle more difficult by our anthropomorphic way of looking at things, exaggerating the pain that animals feel, but there is a large residuum. Some insects may be cut in two without showing any reaction at all, but it requires an optimist to believe that it can be pleasant to be eaten alive. Let us hope that the oysters which often glide very much alive down our gullets, like so many "gustatory flashes of summer lightning," are speedily paralyzed. But this aspect of the problem of "cruelty" does not seem to press heavily on the souls of carnivorous mankind.

Concerning "the cruelty of Nature" Alfred Russel Wallace writes: "There is good reason to believe that the supposed torments and miseries of animals have little real existence that the amount of actual suffering caused by the struggle for existence is altogether insignificant." . .. "Animals are spared from the pain of anticipating death; violent deaths, if not too prolonged, are painless and easy; neither do those which die of cold or hunger suffer much; the popular idea of the struggle for existence en-tailing misery and pain on the animal world is the very reverse of the truth." This is cheerful optimism, yet even Darwin, who confessed that he found in the world "too much misery," concludes his chapter on the struggle for Existence with the sentence, "When we reflect on the struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply."

If we say that it is not so much the cruelty that repels us, but the rank egoism of it all, then we are raising a different problem, which was considered in connection with Huxley's contrast of human and cosmic evolution.

Or if we allow ourselves to think of the wastage of individual life, we raise another problem. "Admirable doubtless," Prof. D. G. Ritchie wrote, " this scheme of salvation for the elect by the damnation of the vast majority, but pray, do not let us hear anything more about its beneficence." There is no end to self-made problems of this sort made by introducing irrelevant concepts.

In regard to human affairs, without any affectation of callousness, the scientific inquirer is bound to recognize a number of facts.

(a) There are what may be called "growing pains," the tax on progress, the troubles incident on new adjustments and new adaptations. "A heavy tax is levied on all forms of success," as Huxley said. In mankind, as in nature, it holds good that

"Life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipped in baths of hissing tears
And battered by the shocks of doom
To shape and use."

This is surely better than what Nietzsche called "the universal green-grazing happiness of the herd."

(b) Secondly, as we have already indicated, a considerable part of human evil is due to our ancestral inheritance, especially to the beast in the man. We can only set against this the still stronger assets of our inheritance, and the means that are at our disposal for improving our inherited nature by nurture in the widest and highest sense.

(c) Thirdly, from the biological point of view, a good many of our troubles and disharmonies are due to the fact that we tend to continue habits, e. g., of eating, which are anachronisms, from which we have both organically and socially evolved away. If we persist in wearing an arctic explorer's dress in the Tropics we should not complain of the heat. The problem becomes complicated for man because he has created around himself an intricate social environment which evolves regardless of the individual. Thus there comes about, for instance, a continual clashing of biological and sociological ideals.

(d) Fourthly, we must recognize with Huxley that "there is a terrible amount of needless suffering amongst us, part of the awfulness of which is that it means piling up pain and sorrow for generations yet unborn." We must not blame the system of things for this; we are ourselves to blame. And of all futile exercises of the human intelligence perhaps that is worst which seeks to find some apologetic interpretation of needless suffering. We should never seek to apologize for the preventible, we should seek to prevent it. Better than any philosophical consolation over spilt milk is the invention of an unupsettable pitcher.

The Philosophical and the Scientific Outlook.—Our general position may be made clearer if we try to indicate how the philosophical outlook differs from that of science. It is the work of science to reduce things to a common denominator or to a simple beginning, such as Matter, Energy, and Ether, or the life of a protoplast. This sort of analysis and genetic description clears up obscurities, affords a basis for action, and is in any case forced upon us by our desire to unravel things, to refund phenomena into their antecedent conditions. But it does not satisfy the human spirit, partly because the common denominator is in itself mysterious, partly because science never tells us why so much should come out of apparently little. It gives an account of the tactics of Nature, but never explains the strategy. It is unsatisfying.

For this reason every one has some philosophy, which is based on his own experience. He feels, for instance, that the surest reality to him is his own personal agency, particularly his moral activity, and he projects this upon Nature, saying that there must be a First Cause, some real power, giving substance to all the metaphorical causes, the secondary or caused causes, that Natural Science deals with. Thus he finds God as the ever-present real power in the world, operating in and through natural laws. He sees in "natural causes only the connections of phenomena established by an ever-active divine will"; he believes in God as "the real agent in Nature and in all natural evolution."

Or again, he feels that "the purpose of his life is the most intimate and fundamental reality of which he has any knowledge," and he projects on Nature this explanatory unifying idea of purpose, believing that the causal reality of which Nature is an expression is also Purpose a wider and richer Purpose.

Again, amid the ceaseless flux of things, the endless making and unmaking, Werden und Vergehen, Man makes a demand for an end in itself " that is, for a fact of such a nature that its existence justifies itself." He cannot find this in extra-human nature; he can find it only in his own spiritual development. There he finds an end in itself worthy of attainment, and he reads this back into nature as the end of existence as such, as "the open secret of the universe." To many "the moral and spiritual life remains unintelligible unless on the supposition that it is in reality the key to the world's meaning, the fact in the light of which all other phenomena must be read." "Man's personal agency the one perpetual miracle is nevertheless our sure datum and our only clue to the mystery of existence." (A. Pringle Pattison.)

Limitations of Science.—There have been some who have not hesitated to publish abroad what they regard as a scientific clearing up of the riddles of the universe, leaving their gullible readers with the impression that everything has been explained. It would be more accurate to say that, as far as science is concerned, nothing has been explained. Of course immediate explanations are continually being given, but they are never more than statements of fact, or accurate descriptions of happenings, or unravellings of an intricate series of sequences into their component more familiar sequences, or comparisons of what seems a novel succession of events with previously well-known successions, or tracing back a development through its phases, or making a general formula which unifies a whole series of occurrences, and so on. These interpretations leave the fundamental mysteriousness of the universe untouched.

Perhaps the greatest service that we can do in this course is simply to emphasize these limitations of science, thus clearing the way for ideal constructions which each of us must make after his own fashion, which will not be true for us unless we make them ourselves. Thus while it may seem at first discouraging to say that "all our physical experience is rounded with mystery," further reflection will show that "this final margin of mystery becomes the light of life." In face of these riddles, we feel that the scientific outlook alone is unsatisfying. Many scientific workers, who can find no resting-place in science alone, agree with the author of the "Foundations of Belief," when he says:

"I do not believe that any escape from these perplexities is possible, unless we are prepared to bring to the study of the world the presupposition that it was the work of a rational Being, who made it intelligible, and at the same time made us, in however feeble a fashion, able to understand it." (Page 301.)

Anima Animas.—We have tried to indicate what we believe to be the modern scientific position in regard to the genesis of the Earth, Living Creatures, and Man. How, it may be asked, is the idealistic outlook' affected ? As far as we can understand, not in the slightest.

(1) It is open to the idealist to give a name to the scientific x which lies behind energy, matter, and ether, and to call it Spirit, the Logos, the Absolute, God.

(2) It is legitimate to use the familiar epistemological argument which points out that the scientific categories are mental concepts of our own making. If we interpret nature in terms of our own thoughts, we cannot use scientific formulae to explain away our thoughts, as by-products of nervous matter. Those who are fond of talking of the bankruptcy of science we do not know why often begin by pointing out that this bankruptcy is a foregone conclusion because of the debts with which science starts. But to make apologetic capital of this is again to fail to under-stand what the aim of science is.

(3) It is legitimate, at present at least, to maintain that, when we pass from inanimate to animate nature, we cannot redescribe vital phenomena in terms of mechanical categories. In life there is something new in any case there is new synthesis of matter and energy with new properties more wonderful than those of radium. Nothing perhaps is gained by postulating a vital principle or a vital force, but the mechanical categories, as at present formulated, do not enable us to read the secret of the organism. If the animate world has emerged from the bosom of the inanimate, then the common denominator of Matter, Energy, Ether must include the potentiality of giving rise in appropriate conditions to what we call life. This invests the common denominator with even more significance than before.

(4) It is legitimate to point out that the most real thing in the world to us is our own conscious experience. In thinking about ourselves, mind is as necessary a postulate as ether is to the physicist. When we pass from ourselves to the behaviour of other living creatures, we cannot leave mind out, if we are not to give a false simplicity to the facts. We do not in any way understand how the bodily life comes to have this inner aspect which we call conscious experience. Nor do we under-stand radio-activity. We know that our mind, as far as we know it, is bound up with matter; we know that it cannot give rise to matter; we cannot think of any way in which matter say, units of negative electricity could give rise to it. Mind comes into potency under certain conditions. This is true in individual development as well as in racial history. We cannot think of its being interpolated from without into instruments pre-pared for its reception. This invests the common denominator with even more significance than be-fore. In fact, it merges into the greatest common measure.

We observe the every-day life of, let us say, a clever bird, such as a parrot or a rook. It seems impossible to give an intelligible account of it without crediting the bird with an intelligence as real as our own. Its power of intelligent behaviour is wrapped up with its highly evolved nervous system. We cannot separate the objective and the subjective aspects, or interpret the one in terms of the other. But this mental life of the bird was implicit in the egg just as the nerve elements were. The power of intelligent behaviour becomes patent at a certain stage in development just as the power of flight does. Thus mind or something analogous to mind may be latent in a material basis which in itself shows no trace of mind. No trace, except indeed this, that it develops after a fashion that we cannot redescribe in terms of the movements of corpuscles. May it not be that mind lies in the egg not inactive like a sleeping bud but doing for the egg what the mind does for the body, unifying, regulating, in a sense directing it, not insinuating itself into the sequences of metabolism, but, so to speak, informing them and expressing itself through them ? We mean that the regulative principle, the entelechy, which many embryologists find it necessary to postulate in giving a more than merely chronological account of an individual development, is that resident quality of a living organism which in its full expression we call mind. May not the same conception be extended to the amoeba ? And why stop there ? Why not extend it also to the crystal, the jewel, the mineral, the mountain, the meteorites and the nebula in short, to the Cosmos in general ? It may be said, how-ever, that though man materializes an idea when he makes a clever machine, there is no mind in the machine, and may not the bird be a materialized idea in which likewise there is no mind ? But it must not be forgotten that the bird is a creative machine.

Conclusion.—We have given to these studies, which must in the meantime end, a large title "The Bible of Nature" intending to suggest that Nature is a book we can read and ought to read, a book from which we may learn much that concerns our mortal well-being. In fact, as Goethe said, Nature is the only book with a great lesson on every page. It will be evident, however, that we have hardly done more than touch on one aspect of Nature, namely, its history or Genesis. These studies must, therefore, be regarded simply as the first book of the "Bible of Nature." It should be followed up by other books, such as the book of the Law, the book of Psalms, and the book of Wisdom!

After our preliminary outlook of wonder at Nature's immensity and magnificent abundance of power, her manifoldness, intricacy, and beauty, we considered the history of the earth as a cooling planet, the advent of life, the evolution of animals, and the ascent of Man. It has all been a story of genesis. Have we read this so that to the concept of an order established from everlasting there has been added the concept of progress, and to that the concept of an evolution which suggests purpose ? Have we told the story so as to suggest, as one of our foremost investigators has said, that " men of Science seek, in all reverence, to discover the Almighty, the Everlasting. They claim sympathy and friendship with those who, like themselves, have turned away from the more material struggles of human life, and have set their hearts and minds on the knowledge of the Eternal" ?

Have we told the story so as to make plain that to the healthy-minded the world is as full of wonder now as it was in the ancient days when Job marvelled at the coming and going of Mazzaroth and the sons of Arcturus ? Have we made it plain that even when physical science succeeds in reducing a whole order of facts to a common denominator, it cannot explain its nature or origin ? That even when biological science discerns great chains of sequence, it remains unaware of what life really is; and that even when science, as a whole, traces out for its own purposes a network of mechanism embracing all, "no sane man has ever pretended, since science became a definite body of doctrine, that we know or ever can hope to know or conceive of the possibility of knowing, whence this mechanism has come, why it is there, whither it is going, and what may or may not be beyond and beside it which our senses are incapable of appreciating. These things are not 'explained' by science, and never can be" ? These are things of the spirit, and must be spiritually discerned.

If we have succeeded in some measure with our task, the meaning of our ambitious title will be clear. It was expressed long ago by Sir Thomas Browne in his "Religio Medici" :

"Thus there are two books from whence I collect my divinity; besides that written one of God, another of his servant nature, that universal and public manuscript that lies expansed unto the eyes of all, those that never saw him in the one, have discovered him in the other: this was the scripture and theology of the heathens: the natural motion of the sun made them more admire him than its supernatural station did the children of Israel; the ordinary effects of nature wrought more admiration in them than in the other all his miracles; surely the heathens knew better how to joyn and read these mystical letters than we Christians, who cast a more careless eye on these common hieroglyphics, and disdain to suck divinity from the flowers of nature." (Sect. 16.)

Hear, indeed, in Bacon's words the conclusion of the whole matter.

"This I dare affirm in knowledge of Nature, that a little natural philosophy, and the first entrance into it, doth dispose the opinion to atheism, but on the other side, much natural philosophy, and wading deep into it, will bring about men's minds to religion."—(Bacon, "Meditations Sacrae X.")