Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry

by George Ticknor Curtis

"GENERAL SCHOLIUM.

"The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties. That every planet by a radius drawn to the sun may describe areas proportional to the times of description, the periodic times of the several parts of the vortices should observe the duplicate proportion of their distances from the sun; but that the periodic times of the planets may obtain the sesquiplicate proportion of their distances from the sun, the periodic times of the parts of the vortex ought to be in the sesquiplicate proportion of their distances. That the smaller vortices may maintain their lesser revolutions about Saturn, Jupiter, and other planets, and swim quietly and undisturbed in the greater vortex of the sun, the periodic times of the parts of the sun's vortex should be equal; but the rotation of the sun and planets about their axes, which ought to correspond with the motions of their vortices, recede far from all these proportions. The motions of the comets are exceedingly regular, are governed by the same laws with the motions of the planets, and can by no means be accounted for by the hypothesis of vortices; for comets are carried with very eccentric motions through all parts of the heavens indifferently, with a freedom that is incompatible with the notion of a vortex. Bodies projected in our air suffer no resistance but from the air. Withdraw the air, as is done in Mr. Boyle's vacuum, and the resistance ceases; for in this void a bit of fine down and a piece of solid gold descend with equal velocity. And the parity of reason must take place in the celestial spaces above the earth's atmosphere; in which spaces, where there is no air to resist their motions, all bodies will move with the greatest freedom; and the planets and comets will constantly pursue their revolutions in orbits given in kind and position, according to the laws above explained; but though these bodies may, indeed, persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have at first derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws.

"The six primary planets are revolved about the sun in circles concentric with the sun, and with motions directed toward the same parts, and almost in the same plane. Ten moons are revolved about the earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, in circles concentric with them, with the same direction of motion, and nearly in the planes of the orbits of those planets; but it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions, since the comets range over all parts of the heavens in very eccentric orbits; for by that kind of motion they pass easily through the orbits of the planets, and with great rapidity; and in their aphelions, where they move the slowest, and are detained the longest, they recede to the greatest distances from each other, and thence suffer the least disturbance from their mutual attractions. This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centers of other like systems, these being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of the sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems; and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those systems at immense distances one from another."

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[CHAPTER IX.]

Does evolution account for the phenomena of society and of nature?—Necessity for a conception of a personal actor—Mr. Spencer's protoplasmic origin of all organic life—The Mosaic account of creation treated as a hypothesis which may be scientifically contrasted with evolution.

A long interval has elapsed since the conference described in the last chapter, between the searcher after wisdom and his scientific friend. At their next interview they take up the subject of a First Cause where they left it at the conclusion of their debate on the solar system.

Kosmicos. Well, Sophereus, what have you been studying since we last met?

Sophereus. Many things. I have been studying what is commonly called Nature, and I have been studying society. With regard to society, I have been endeavoring to discover to what the phenomena of social life are to be attributed as their producing cause or causes; whether they can be said to owe their existence to the direct action or influence of intelligent wills, or are to be considered as effects produced in the course of an ungoverned development, wrought by incidental forces in varying conditions of human existence. The latter, I find, is one of the theories now prevailing.

Kosmicos. And what is your conclusion?

Sophereus. My general conclusion in regard to the phenomena of human society is the same as that which I formed from a study of the phenomena of the solar system. I find a great many things which I can not explain without the hypothesis of a direct creating power exerted by an intelligent being. I know that you object to the idea of creation, but I explained to you in our last discussion that I understood it to mean the causing something to exist which did not exist before, and the doing it by an intentional and direct act of production.

Kosmicos. No matter about your definition. What are the facts that you propose to discuss?

Sophereus. In the social phenomena I find many acts of creation. I do not find that buildings spring out of the ground without human intervention, or that machinery is formed by the spontaneous arrangement of matter in certain forms and relations, or by the tendencies that are implanted in matter as its inherent properties. I find an enormous multitude of concrete objects, formed out of dead matter, by human intervention, availing itself of those properties of matter, which without such active intervention would have remained quiescent, and would not have resulted in the production of these objects. It is a common form of expression to speak of the "growth" of cities, but no one understands by this form of speech that a city has become what it is without the action of numerous individuals projecting and building their separate structures, or without the combined action of the whole body of the inhabitants in determining and executing a general plan to which individuals are to conform, more or less exactly, their particular erections. Again, I find that there are rules of social life, which take the form of what are called "laws," and these are imposed by the will of some governing authority; they are always the product of some one human will, or of the collective will of a greater number of persons. I have looked into history and have found many instances of military conquest, invasions of the territory inhabited by one race of men by another race, domination of different dynasties, overthrow of one governing power, and substitution of another. Although the changes thus produced are often very complex, sometimes rapid and sometimes slow in reaching the consequences, I do not find that they have ever taken place without the direct action of some one human will, or of the aggregate force of many human wills. The conquests of Alexander and Napoleon are instances of what a single human will can do in changing the condition of nations; and I have not been able to read history by the interpretation that makes such men mere instruments in the hands of their age, which would, without their special existences and characters, have brought about the same or something like the same results. The invasions of the Roman Empire by the Northern barbarians are instances of the pressure of one population upon another, not attributable, perhaps, to the will and leadership of any one individual, but produced by the united force of a great horde of individuals determined to enjoy the plunder which a superior civilization spread before them. Then, with regard to the phenomena of what are called constitutions of government, or the political systems of exercising public authority, I find numerous cases in which the force of an individual will and intelligence has been not only a great factor, but by far the largest factor in the production of particular institutions. The genius of Cæsar, and his extraordinary constructive faculties, molded the institutions of Rome in the most direct manner, and created an imperial system that lasted for a thousand years, and that even out of its ruins affected all subsequent European civilization. In such cases, more than once repeated in modern times, the particular circumstances of the age and the co-operation of many other individuals have helped on the result, but the conception, the plan, the purpose, and the execution, have had their origin in some one mind. But for the individual character, the ambition, the force, and the mental resources of the first Napoleon, can one believe that the first French Empire of modern times would have grown out of the condition of France? Suppose that Oliver Cromwell had never lived. The protectorate, the system of government which he gave to England, was the most absolute product of the will and intellect of one man that the world in that kind of product had ever seen; for, although the people of England were ready for and needed that system, and although the antecedent and the surrounding circumstances furnished to Cromwell many materials for a political structure that was not the old monarchy, and yet had while it lasted all the vigor, and more than the vigor, of the old monarchy, still, without his personal characteristics, his ambition to found a dynasty on the wants of his country, and his personal capacity to devise and execute such a system, one can not believe that England would have had what he gave her. What he could not give her was a son capable of wielding the scepter which he had fashioned. Here is this America of yours—a country in which, to a certain extent, the political institutions have been influenced by the circumstances that followed the separation of your colonies from the English crown. Undoubtedly, your ancestors of the Revolutionary epoch could not construct a monarchy for the group of thirteen newly existing States, each with its right and enjoyment of an actual autonomy. The habits and genius of the people forbade the experiment of monarchical or aristocratic institutions; no materials for either existed. But within the range of republican institutions there was a choice open, and the people exercised that choice. They made one system of confederated States, and found it would not answer. They then deliberately assembled their wisest and greatest men. They gave to them a commission that was restricted by nothing but the practical necessity of framing a government that would unite the requirements of power with the requirements of liberty. The result was the Constitution of the United States—a system of government that was, within the limitations of certain practical necessities, both in its fundamental principles and in many of its details, the deliberate choice and product of certain leading minds, aided by the public consent, to a degree that is almost unparalleled in the formation of political institutions. After it had gone into operation, it was believed that the requirements of liberty had not been sufficiently regarded, and it was directly and purposely modified by the intervention of the collective will of the whole people. And when I turn to the history of philosophies, of religions, of the fine arts, or of the mechanical arts, I find everywhere traces of the force of individual genius, of the direct intervention of individual wills, and of the power of men to cause new systems of thought and action to come into existence, and to create new objects of admiration or utility. In regard to languages, I have read a good deal about the controversy concerning their origin, but I have observed one thing to be very apparent: whether the gift of articulate speech was bestowed on man, when he had become a distinct being, in a manner and for a purpose which would distinguish him from all the other animals, or whether it became a developed faculty akin to that by which other animals utter vocal sounds intelligible to those of their species, it is certain that in man there is a power of varying his vocal utterances at pleasure, which is possessed by no other creature on this earth. The expansion of languages, therefore, the coinage of new words, the addition of new inflections, the introduction of new shades of meaning, the method of utterance which is called pronunciation, and the different dialects of the same tongue, are all matters which have been under the control of individuals dwelling together, and have all resulted from the arbitrary determination of more or less numerous persons, followed by the great mass of their nation, their race, or their tribe. Even when a new and third language has been formed by the contact of two peoples speaking separate tongues, we may trace the same arbitrary adoption of parts of each separate tongue, in the first beginning of the fusion, and the new language consequently exhibits a greater or a less predominance of the characteristics of one of its parent tongues, according as the one population has compelled the other to adopt the greater part of its peculiar modes of speech.

Kosmicos. You have gone over a good deal of ground, but now what do you infer from all this, supposing that you have taken a right view of the facts?

Sophereus. I infer that, as in the social phenomena there are products and effects which have owed their existence to human will and direct human action, so, in other departments, for example, in the domain which is called Nature, and which is out of the sphere of human agency and human force, it is reasonable to conclude that there are products and effects which must have owed their existence to a will and a power capable of conceiving and producing them. And this is what leads me, as I was led in the examination of the solar system, to the idea of a Supreme Being, capable of producing those objects in nature which are so varied, so complex, so marvelously constructed, so nicely adapted to the conditions of each separate organism, that if we attribute their existence to any intelligent power, it must be to a power of infinite capacities, since nothing short of such capacities could have conceived and executed them.

Kosmicos. You have now come to the very point at which I have been expecting to see you arrive, and at which I will put to you this question: Why do you personify the power to which you trace these products in the natural world? Substitute for the term God, or the Creator, the power of Nature. You then have a force that is not only immense, but is in truth without any limit—a force that embraces everything, gives life to everything, is at once cause and effect, is incessantly active and inexhaustible. It commands all methods, accomplishes all objects, and uses time, space, and matter as its means. Why do you personify this all-pervading and sufficient power of Nature? Why make it a being, a deity, when all you know is that it is a power? "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the world?" is a question that God is supposed to have asked of Job; and it simply shows that Job had been traditionally taught to believe that there is such a being as God, and that that being laid the foundations of the world. Substitute Nature in the question, let Nature ask the question, and it is just as pertinent, and involves the same problem of human existence. Where was man when Nature began to exhibit that power which has evolved all things that we see out of the primeval nothingness?

Sophereus. Well, here I must say that you have left out certain ideas that are essential to all true reasoning on this subject. Power without a guide, power without control, power without a determining will, power that acts without a volition which determines the how and the when, is a thing that I can not conceive. I thought that in our former conversation, when we were considering the solar system, you conceded that power, as something abstracted from substance or its properties, was a logically necessary conception.

Kosmicos. I did. But I did not concede that power must be converted into a person. You must not misunderstand me. It certainly is my idea that power is a thing to be contemplated by itself; and we are surrounded everywhere by its manifestations. But it is not my idea that it is held and exercised by the being called God, or by any being. We only know of it by its effects; and these show that Nature is, after all, both cause and effect, manner and execution, design and product. You can go no farther. You can not go behind Nature and find a being who sat in the heavens and laid the foundations of the world, unless you mean to accept a story which wise men have at last abandoned along with many kindred beliefs which came from the ages of the greatest ignorance.

Sophereus. Pardon me: the question that was put to Job has more than one aspect. But I have considered the narrative that is found in the first chapter of Genesis only as a hypothesis to be weighed with other hypotheses of the origin of the world and its inhabitants. I have studied the phenomena to which you give the name of Nature, and I will tell you what seems to me to be a postulate necessary to be carried into that study. I have observed that in the works of man two things are apparent: One is, that power is exercised; the other is, that the exercise of the power is always accompanied by a determining will, which decides that the power shall be exerted, or that it shall be deferred, or that it shall be applied variously as respects the mode and the time. In human hands, power is not illimitable, but within certain limitations it may be exercised, and it is always under the guidance of a will. A man determines to build a house; he decides on its dimensions, and when he will begin to erect it. A general determines to attack the enemy on a certain day, and he marshals his forces accordingly. A people determine to change their government, and they decide what their new government shall be. An artist determines to paint a certain picture, and he paints it. Whenever we see human power exercised, so that we can connect product and power, the power itself is put in motion by an intelligent will. I say, therefore, that the idea of power without a controlling will, without a determining design, is inconceivable: for I am obliged to draw my conclusions from what I observe, and certainly the phenomena of society do not present any instances of a product resulting from an exercise of power without a determination to exercise it. Power diffused, power without guidance, power moving by its own volition and without the volition of any intelligent being, is not exhibited in the works of man.

Kosmicos. But we are now dealing with the works of Nature; and the question is, whether the power that is manifest in Nature is, to adopt your language, under the control or guidance of a being who is something other than the power itself. You must remember that this is a domain in which you can see nothing but products and effects. You must also remember that if the immensity and variety of those products and effects lead to the conclusion that the power transcends all human faculty, is superhuman, and, so far as we can tell, boundless, all that we can know is that the power itself is illimitable. The quality of an infinite and illimitable capacity may be imputed to the power of Nature, because a power without limit seems necessary to the production of such effects as we see. But here we must stop. We have no warrant for believing that the power which we trace in the phenomena of Nature is held and controlled by a person, as man holds and controls the power which he exercises with his hands. What we see in Nature is the exercise of an immense and apparently boundless power. But the imputation of that power to a being distinct from the power itself, is a mere exercise of the human imagination, without any proof whatever. See how this imagination has worked at different periods. Monotheism and polytheism are alike in their origin. The one has imputed to different beings all the phenomena in the different departments of Nature, one being having the charge and superintendence of one department and another being having another department. Good and evil have thus been parceled out to different deities or demons. On the other hand, monotheism attributes all to some one being, and his existence is no more rational than the existence of the whole catalogue of the mythologies of all antiquity, or the stupid beliefs of the present barbarous tribes. But Nature is a great fact, or rather a vast store-house of facts, which we can study; and what we learn from it is that there is a power which Nature is constantly exerting, which is without any assignable limit, which is itself both cause and effect, and beyond this we can not go.

Sophereus. Let us see if you are correct. In the first place, do you not observe that the tendency of mankind to personify the powers of Nature is one of the strongest proofs of the logical necessity for an interpretation which seeks for an intelligent being of some kind as the actor in the production of the phenomena? It is the fashion, I find, among a certain class of philosophers, to impute this propensity to the proneness of the human mind toward superstitious beliefs; to the mere effect of poetical or imaginary temperament in certain races of men, or to fear in other races; or to a vague longing for some superior being who can sympathize with human sorrows or assist human efforts. Something of all these influences has, no doubt, in different degrees and in various ways, worked itself into the religious beliefs of mankind. But neither any one of them, nor the whole of them, will satisfactorily account for either polytheism or monotheism. We must go deeper. There has been an unconscious reasoning at work, more or less unconscious, which has led to the conclusion that power, the manifestation of power, necessarily implies that the power is held and wielded by some intelligent being. The beliefs of mankind, whether embracing one such being or many, have not been the mere results of superstition, or fear, or longing for divine sympathy, or for superhuman companionship or protection. Those beliefs owe as much to the reasoning powers of mankind as they do to the influence of imagination. In many ages there have been powerful intellects, which have been free from the influence of superstition or fancy, and which have recognized the logical necessity for a conception of power as a force that must be under the guidance and control of intellect. While the popular belief has not attained this conviction by the same conscious and logically conducted process of reasoning, it has been unconsciously led through the same process, by what is open to the observation of human faculties, even in the less civilized portions of the human race. The savage who is sufficiently raised above the brute creation to exercise his own will and intelligence in the pursuit of his game, or in building his wigwam, or in fighting his enemy, knows that he exercises a power that is under his own control; and, as soon as he begins to observe the phenomena of Nature, he conceives of some being who holds a like power over the material universe, and whom he begins to personify, to propitiate, and to worship. This is the result of reasoning: feeble in some cases, but in all cases the intellectual process is the same. Now let us see whether this process is a sound one. Are you sure that you are correct in saying that the power of Nature is without limit? Is there a single force in Nature, a single property of matter, or any sequence of natural events, that is not circumscribed? Do not the very regularity and uniformity of the phenomena of Nature imply that some authority has said, from the beginning, Thus far shalt thou go and no farther? You surely do not imagine that the law of universal gravitation made itself, or that it settled itself into an exact and invariable method of action by the mere force of habit, beginning without prescribed and superimposed limits, and finally resulting in a fixed rule which never changes. You do not imagine that the mysterious, impalpable motion to which is now given the name of electricity, created for itself, as a matter of habit, the perpetual tendency to seek an equilibration of the quantity accumulated in one body with the quantity that is contained in another, by transmission through intermediate bodies; or that it established for itself the conditions which make one substance a better conducting medium than another. You do not suppose, I take it, that certain particles of matter adopted for themselves a capacity to arrange themselves in crystals of certain fixed combinations and shapes, and that other particles of matter did not choose to take on this habit. All these forces, powers, and tendencies are of very great extent, much beyond any that man can exercise; but they all have their limitations, their prescribed and invariable methods of action; they all act as if they have been commanded to act in a certain way and to a certain extent, and not as if they have chosen for themselves both method and scope. Now, is it not a rational deduction that what is really illimitable is not the power of Nature, but the power which made Nature what it is? Is it not a necessary conclusion that, inasmuch as all Nature acts within certain limits, stupendous and minute and varied as the products or effects may be, there must have been behind Nature a power that could and did prescribe the methods, the limitations, the lines within which Nature was to move and act? You can not put into the mouth of Nature the question, Where wast thou (Man) when I laid the foundations of the world? without suggesting the retort, "Where wast thou (Nature) when the foundations of the world were laid?" And this question Nature can no more answer, for itself, than man can answer for himself when the question is put to him. Each must answer, I was nowhere—I did not exist. Each must answer, There was a power which called me into being, which prescribed the conditions of my existence, which gave me the capacities that I possess, which ordained the limitations within which I was to act.

Kosmicos. And all this you derive from the fact that a being whom we call Man has some power over matter; that he has an intelligent faculty by which he can do certain things with matter, and that he actually does produce certain concrete forms of new things that he did not find made to his hand. Is this the basis of your reasoning about the origin of Nature?

Sophereus. It is, and I will tell you why. Man is the one being on this earth in whom we find an intelligent will and constructive faculty united, to a degree which shows a power of variation and execution superior to that of all other beings of whose actions we have the direct evidence of our senses. We might select one or more of the inferior animals, and find in them a strong constructive faculty; but we do not find it accompanied by a power of variation and adaptation that is equal to that of man in degree, or that is probably the same in kind. I will not insist on the distinction between reason and instinct, but I presume you will admit that, when we compare the constructive faculty of man and that of the most ingenious and wonderfully endowed animal or insect, the latter acts always under an implanted impulse, which we have no good ground for regarding as of the same nature as man's reasoning power, however striking may be the products. When, therefore, we select the human power of construction or creation as the basis of reasoning upon the works of Nature, we resort to a being in whom that power is the highest of which we have direct evidence. In the works of man we have direct and palpable proof that the phenomena—the products of human skill and human force—are brought about by the faculties of an intelligent and reasoning being. If we dig into the earth and find there a statue, an implement, or a weapon, we do not hesitate to conclude that the spot was once inhabited by men, just as surely as we should conclude the same thing if we found there human bones. The world, above-ground and below-ground, is full of concrete objects that we know must have been fashioned by human skill, guided by human intelligence. This intelligence, this intellect, is not matter; it is a being; it is a person. It is not a force, acting without consciousness; it is a being wielding a force which is under the control of volition. The force and the volition are both limited, but within the limitations they constitute the power of man. Pass, then, to the works of Nature, or to what you call the power of Nature. As, in the case of man, you can not conclude that he created for himself his own faculties, that he prescribed for himself the limitations of his power over matter, or that he formed those limitations as mere matters of habit, or that it was from habit alone that he derived his great constructive powers, so, in studying the works of Nature, you must conclude that some intelligent being made the laws of matter and motion, prescribed the unvarying order and method of action, laid down the limitations, originated the properties, and, in so doing, acted by volition, choice, and design. The distinction, as I conceive, between man and Nature is, that there has been bestowed on man, in a very inferior degree, a part of the original power of creation. On Nature there has been bestowed none of this power. As we find that the existence of man as an intelligent being, endowed with certain high faculties, among which is a certain degree of the power of creating new objects, can not be accounted for without the hypothesis of a creator, still less can we account for the existence and phenomena of Nature, which has in itself no degree of the creating power, without the same hypothesis.

Kosmicos. Stop where you are. Why do you separate man from Nature? Have you yet to learn that man is a part of Nature? I suspect you have, after all, been reading the book of Genesis for something more than a hypothesis, and that you have adopted the notion that God made Adam a living soul. Put away all the nursery-stories, and come down to the "hard-pan" of actual facts, which show by an overwhelming array of evidence that man had a very different origin.

Sophereus. You know, my friend, that I never learned any nursery-stories, and therefore I have none to unlearn. It may be my misfortune, but I find myself here in the world in mature years, studying the phenomena of life, without having had any early teaching, but with such reasoning as I can apply to what I observe, and to what science, history, and philosophy can furnish to me. I belong to no church, to no sect, to no party, and I have not even a country. I am a citizen of the world, on my travels through it, learning what I can. Now, what are your facts? Let us get down, as you say, upon the "hard-pan," and make it as hard as you please.

Kosmicos. First answer my question: Why do you separate man from Nature?

Sophereus. I know very well that in a certain sense man is a part of Nature. But it is necessary to contemplate man apart from all the rest of Nature, because we find that he is endowed with intellect, and we have very good and direct evidence that his intellect is an actor; and we know that he is endowed with consciousness, and we have very good and direct evidence that, by introspection, he becomes aware of his own consciousness, and what it is.

Kosmicos. Very well, assume all that if you choose. Now let me show you an origin of man, with his intellect and consciousness, which will entirely overthrow the idea that he was a special creation in the sense to which you seem to be drifting, namely, that of miraculous interposition by a being called God. You must be aware, as you have read so much, that modern science has made great discoveries, and that there are certain conclusions on this subject which are drawn from very numerous and important data. Those data involve the origin of all the different animals, man included. They are all to be accounted for in the same way and by the same reasoning. Now, if we go back to a period when none of them existed, we find a method of accounting for them that is infinitely superior as a hypothesis to any idea of their special creation as an act or as a series of acts of divine and direct interposition. I will take this method as it is given by Herbert Spencer, because, as he has reasoned it, it accounts for both intellect and consciousness; and Mr. Spencer is allowed to be one of the leading minds of this age. Mark the starting-point of his whole philosophy on this subject of organic life. Darwin, as you know, supposes some one very low form of organic life, an aquatic grub, and out of it he evolves all the other animal organisms, by the process of natural and sexual selection, through successive generations, ending in man. This hypothesis leaves the original organism to be accounted for, and, although Darwin does not expressly assert that it was the Creator who fashioned the first organism, he leaves it to be implied. Spencer, on the other hand, explicitly denies the absolute commencement of organic life on the globe. Observe that the terms of his theory of evolution are much more complete than Darwin's, for he says that "the affirmation of universal evolution is in itself a negation of an absolute commencement of anything. Construed in terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived as a product of modifications wrought by insensible gradations on a pre-existing being; and this holds as fully of the supposed commencement of organic life, or a first organism, as of all subsequent developments of organic life."[106]

You will see, therefore, that the idea of a Creator, fashioning a type of animal organism, or making a commencement of organic life, is excluded by this great philosopher, although he does concur in the main in Darwin's general explanation of the mode in which one organism is evolved out of a pre-existing organism. He goes much farther, because his system of universal evolution embraces the elements out of which any organic life whatever has been developed, and negatives the idea of any absolute commencement of anything whatever. He begins with the original molecules of organizable matter. By modifications induced upon modifications these become formed, by their inherent tendencies, into higher types of organic molecules, as we see in the artificial evolution effected by chemists in their laboratories; who, although they are unable to form the complex combinations directly from their elements, can form them indirectly through successive modifications of simpler combinations, by the use of equivalents. In Nature, the more complex combinations are formed by modifications directly from the elements, and each modification is a change of the molecule into equilibrium with its environment, subjecting it, that is to say, to new conditions. Then, larger aggregates, compound molecules, are successively generated; more complex or heterogeneous aggregates arise out of one another, and there results a geometrically increasing multitude of these larger and more complex aggregates. So that by the action of the successive higher forms on one another, joined with the action of the environing conditions, the highest forms of organic molecules are reached. Thus in the early world, as in the modern laboratory, inferior types of organic substances, by their mutual actions under fit conditions, evolved the superior types of organic substances, and at length ended in organizable protoplasm. Now, let me read to you Mr. Spencer's description of the mode in which the substance called "protein" becomes developed into organic life. "And it can hardly be doubted," he says, "that the shaping of organizable protoplasm, which is a substance modifiable in multitudinous ways with extreme facility, went on after the same manner. As I learn from one of our first chemists, Prof. Frankland, protein is capable of existing under probably at least a thousand isomeric forms; and, as we shall presently see, it is capable of forming, with itself and other elements, substances yet more intricate in composition, that are practically intricate in their varieties of kind. Exposed to those innumerable modifications of conditions which the earth's surface afforded, here in amount of light, there in amount of heat, and elsewhere in the mineral quality of its aqueous medium, this extremely changeable substance must have undergone, now one, now another, of its countless metamorphoses. And to the mutual influences of its metamorphic forms, under favoring conditions, we may ascribe the production of the still more composite, still more sensitive, still more variously-changeable portions of organic matter, which, in masses more minute and simpler than existing protozoa, displayed actions varying little by little into those called vital actions, which protein itself exhibits in a certain degree, and which the lowest known living things exhibit only in a greater degree. Thus, setting out with inductions from the experiences of organic chemists at the one extreme, and with inductions from the observations of biologists at the other extreme, we are enabled to deductively bridge the interval—are enabled to conceive how organic compounds were evolved, and how, by a continuance of the process, the nascent life displayed in these becomes gradually more pronounced."[107]

It is in this way that Spencer accounts for the formation of the cell which becomes developed into a living organism, out of which are successively evolved all the higher forms of animal organisms, until we reach man.

Sophereus. And is this put forward as something which rational people are to believe?

Kosmicos. Undoubtedly it is put forward as something that is to be believed, because it is supported by a vast array of evidence; and let me tell you that this conception of Nature as a whole is the consummate flower of this nineteenth century in the domain of philosophic speculation.

Sophereus. Perhaps it is. But although this nineteenth century has witnessed many great scientific discoveries, and has produced extraordinary inventions, I do not find that among the speculative philosophers of this age there are such very superior powers of reasoning displayed that we ought to regard them as authorities entitled to challenge our acceptance of their theories without examination. I must say that among your scientific people of the present day, and especially among the philosophers of the class of which Mr. Spencer is the leading representative, there are certain tendencies and defects which surprise me. One of their defects is that they do not obviate remote difficulties, perhaps because they have not been trained, as other men have, to foresee where such difficulties must arise. This is sometimes apparent even when the difficulties are not very remote, but are quite obvious. One of their tendencies is to arrive at a theory from some of the phenomena, and then to strain the remaining phenomena to suit the theory; and sometimes they proceed to the invention or imagination of phenomena which are necessary to the completion of a chain of proof. This last process is called bridging the interval. I will now apply this criticism to Mr. Spencer's philosophy of the origin of man. In the first place he has not obviated a fundamental difficulty, whether it be a near or a remote one. Where did the molecules get their tendency or capacity to arrange themselves into higher and more complex forms? Whence came the auxiliary or additional force of their surrounding environment? What endowed protein with its capacity to assume a thousand isomeric forms? What made the favoring conditions which have helped on the influence of its metamorphic tendencies, so as to produce still more sensitive and variously-changeable portions of organic matter? These questions must have an answer; and, when we ask them, we see the significance of the inquiry, "Where wast thou (man) when I laid the foundations of the world?" For these things, on the evolution theory, are the foundations of the world. It is no answer to say, as Mr. Spencer does, that these tendencies, or capacities of matter, and these laws of the favoring conditions, came from the Unknown Cause. Known or unknown, did they have a cause, or did they make themselves? Did these, the foundations of the world, have an origin, or were they without any origin? If they had an origin, was it from the will and power of a being capable of giving existence to them and prescribing their modes of action? If they had no origin, if they existed from all eternity, how came it that they formed this extraordinary habit of invariable action in a certain method, which amid all its multiformity shows an astonishing persistency? If we deny, with Mr. Spencer, the absolute commencement of organic life on the globe, we must still go back of all the traces of organic life, and inquire whence matter, molecules, organized or unorganized, derived the capacities or tendencies to become organized, and how the favoring conditions became established as auxiliary or subsidiary forces. And therefore it is that this difficulty, whether remote or near at hand, is not met by Mr. Spencer: for whether we call the cause an unknown or a known cause, the question is, Was there a cause, or did the foundations of the world lay themselves? The reasoning powers of mankind, exercised by daily observation of cause and effect, of creative power and created product, are equal to the conception of a First Cause as a being who could have laid the foundations of the world, but they are utterly unequal to the conception that they had no origin whatever. Again, consider how numerous are the missing links in the chain of evolution, how many gaps are filled up by pure inventions or assumptions. The evolution of one distinct and perfect animal, or being, out of a pre-existing animal or being of a different type, has never been proved as a fact. Yet whole pedigrees of such generation of species have been constructed upon the same principles as we should construct the pedigree of an individual. Furthermore, if we regard the facts about which there can be no controversy, we find not only distinct species of animals, but we find the same species divided into male and female, with a system of procreation and gestation established for the multiplication of individuals of that species. Now go back to the imaginary period when protein began to form itself into something verging toward organic life, and then there became evolved the nascent life of an organized being. How did the division of the sexes originate? Did some of the molecules or their progressive forms, or their aggregates, or masses, under some conditions, tend to the production of the male, and others under certain conditions tend to the development of the female, so that the sexes were formed by a mere habit of arrangement without any special intervention? Here is one of the most serious difficulties which the doctrine of evolution, whether it be the Darwinian or the Spencerian theory, has to encounter. There is a division into male and female: there is a law of procreation by the union of the two sexes. This is a fact about which there can be no dispute. It is one of the most remarkable facts in Nature. It is the means by which species are continued, and the world is peopled with individuals of each species. Is it conceivable that this occurred without any design, that it had no origin in a formative will, that it had, properly speaking, no origin at all, but that it grew out of the tendencies of organized matter to take on such a diversity in varying conditions? And if the latter was all the origin that it had, whence came the tendencies and whence the favoring conditions that helped them on toward the result? It seems to me that the Spencerian theory, so far as it suggests a mode in which the two sexes of animals came to exist, is hardly less fanciful than what Plato has given us in his "Timæus." I have studied them both.

If you will hand me Mr. Spencer's work from which you have just quoted, I will point out a passage which fully justifies my criticism. It is this: "Before it can be ascertained how organized beings have been gradually evolved, there must be reached the conviction that they have been gradually evolved." He says this in praise of De Maillet, one of the earliest of the modern speculators who reached this conviction, and whose "wild notions" as to the way should not make us, says Mr. Spencer, "forget the merit of his intuition that animals and plants were produced by natural causes."[108] That is to say, first form to yourself a theory, and have a thorough conviction of it. Then investigate, and shape the facts so as to support the theory. Is it not plain that an inquiry into the mode in which organized beings have been gradually evolved must precede any conclusion or conviction on the subject? It is one of those cases in which the how a thing has been done lies at the basis of the inquiry whether it has probably been done at all. If a suggested mode turns out to be wild and visionary, what is the value of any "intuition" of the main fact? But, what is still more extraordinary in this kind of deduction, which is no deduction, is the way in which, according to Mr. Spencer, the first conviction is to be reached before one looks for the facts. The process of the evolution of organisms, according to Mr. Spencer's philosophy, is contained as a part in the great whole of evolution in general. We first convince ourselves that evolution obtains in all the other departments of Nature, and is the interpretation of all their phenomena. Then we conclude that it has obtained in the animal kingdom, and so we have the conviction necessary to be acquired before we examine the phenomena; and then we make that investigation so as to reconcile the facts with the supposed universal laws of matter and motion. I do not exaggerate in the least. Here is what he says: "Only when the process of evolution of organisms is affiliated on the process of evolution in general can it be truly said to be explained. The thing required is to show that its various results are corollaries from first principles. We have to reconcile the facts with the universal laws of the redistribution of matter and motion."[109] What would Bacon have thought of this method of establishing the probable truth of a theory? It leaves out of consideration a multitude of facts, and one of them at least is of the utmost importance. It is that in the domain of animated matter, in organized beings, and most signally in the animal kingdom, there is a principle of life; and, whatever may be the universal laws of the redistribution of matter and motion, in their operation upon or among the products which are not endowed with this principle, when we come to reason about products that are endowed with it we are not entitled to conclude that this principle of animal life is itself a product of the operation of those laws because they have resulted in products which do not possess life, or life of the same kind. In order to reach the conviction that animal organisms have resulted solely from the operation of the laws of matter and motion, we must not undertake to reconcile the facts with those laws, but we must have some evidence that those laws have produced living beings with complex and diversified organisms, and this evidence must at least tend to exclude every other hypothesis. It is not enough to flout at all other hypotheses, or to pronounce them ex cathedra to be idle tales.

Kosmicos. You must not catch at single expressions and make yourself a captious critic. That would be unworthy of such an inquirer as you profess to be, and as I believe you are. Mr. Spencer did not mean, by reconciling the facts with the laws of matter and motion, that we are to distort the facts. He meant that we are to discover the correspondence between the facts and the operation of those laws. Now, let me show you more explicitly that he is quite right. There are certain laws of matter and motion, discoverable and discovered by scientific investigation, which prevail throughout all Nature. The phenomena which they produce, although not yet fully understood, justify the assumption of their universality and their modes of operation. It is perfectly legitimate, therefore, to reason that the same laws which have produced the observable phenomena in other departments of Nature have had a like potency as causes by which the phenomena in the animal kingdom have been produced. Using this legitimate mode of reasoning, Mr. Spencer traces the operation of those laws upon the primal molecules, which are peculiarly sensitive to their effects. He follows them through the successive aggregations of higher combinations until he arrives at the protoplasmic substance, out of which, from its capability of assuming an infinity of forms, aided by the environing conditions, the simplest organic forms become evolved, and thus what you call the principle of life gradually arose through a vast extent of time. He is therefore perfectly consistent with himself in denying the absolute commencement of organic life on the globe; for you must understand that he means by this to deny that there was any point of time, or any particular organism, at or in which animal life can be said to have had its first commencement, without having been preceded by some other kind of being, out of which the more highly organized being has been produced by modifications wrought by insensible gradations. If you will attend closely to his reasoning, you will see that you have small cause for criticising it as you have; and, if you will look at one of his illustrations, you will see the strength of his position. Hear what he says: "It is no more needful to suppose an absolute commencement of organic life or a 'first organism' than it is needful to suppose an absolute commencement of social life and a first social organism. The assumption of such a necessity in this last case, made by early speculators with their theories of 'social contracts' and the like, is disproved by the facts; and the facts, so far as they are ascertained, disprove the assumption of such a necessity in the first case."[110] That is to say, as the social facts, the social phenomena, disprove the "social contract" as an occurrence taking place by human design and intention, so the phenomena of animal life disprove the assumption of such an occurrence as its commencement by divine intervention, or its commencement at all.

Sophereus. I think I understood all this before, just as you put it, but I am not the less obliged to you for the restatement. In regard to society, I know not why the family, the institution of marriage, is not to be regarded as the first social organism, and the union of two or more families in some kind of mutual league is certainly the first society in a more comprehensive sense. I care very little about the theory of the social contract, as applied to more complex societies, although, as a kind of legal fiction, it is well enough for all the uses which sound reasoners nowadays make of it. But the institution of marriage, the family, is no fiction at all; it is a fact, however it was first established, and it was the absolute commencement of social life. But I do not hold to this sort of analogies, or to this mode of reasoning from what happens in a department, in which the actions of men have largely or exclusively influenced the complex phenomena, to a department in which human influence has had nothing to do with the phenomena. But now let us come back to the proposition that there never was any absolute commencement of organic life on the globe. I will take Mr. Spencer's meaning—his denial, as you put it—and will test it by one or two observations upon his own explanation, as given in the elaborate paper in which he replied to a critic in the "North American Review" a little more than four years ago.[111] In the first place, then, as to time. It will not do to say that there never was a time when such a product as life, animated or organized life, had its first existence. To whatever it owed its existence, it must at some time have begun to exist. It matters not how far back in the ages of the globe you place it: you must contemplate a time when it did not exist, and a point of time at which it began to exist. It matters not that you can not fix this time. There was such a time, whether you can fix it chronologically or not. In the next place, however minute the supposed gradations which you trace backward from a recognizable organism to the primal protoplasmic substance, out of which you suppose it to have been gradually evolved, and through whatever extent of time you imagine these gradations to have been worked out by the operation of the forces of Nature, modifying successive beings, you must find an organism to which you can attribute life. Whatever that organism was, it was the commencement of organic life; for, when you go back of it in the series, you come to something that was not organic life, but was merely a collection of molecules or a product of aggregated molecules, that had a capacity to be developed into an animated organism under favorable conditions. "It is," says Mr. Spencer, "by the action of the successively higher forms on one another, joined with the action of environing conditions, that the highest forms are reached." Some one, then, of those highest forms, something that can be called an animal organism, some being endowed with life, was the commencement of organic life on the globe; and it is just as correct and necessary to speak of it as the "absolute" commencement as it is when we speak of Darwin's aquatic grub, or of the Mosaic account of the creation of the different animals by the hand and will of God. Neither Mr. Spencer nor any other man can construct a chain of animated existence back into the region of its non-existence without showing that it began to have an existence. He can say that the affirmation of universal evolution is in itself a negation of an absolute commencement of anything. And so it is theoretically. But this does not get over the difficulty. On his own explanation of the mode in which organisms have been evolved, there must have been a first organism, and in that first organism life began. So that I am not yet prepared to yield my criticism, or to yield my convictions to a writer who is so much carried away by his theory.

Kosmicos. But you will allow that the theory is perfect in itself; and why, then, do you say that he is carried away by it? You ought either to give up your criticism, or to show that there is a superior hypothesis by which to account for the origin of organisms, and one that is supported by stronger proofs and better reasoning. You have nothing to oppose to Mr. Spencer's explanation of the origin of organic life, excepting the fable which you find in the book of Genesis.

Sophereus. Undoubtedly the opposite hypothesis is that which attributes to a Creator the production of organic life; and whether the Mosaic account, as it stands, be a fable or a true narrative of an actual occurrence, what we have to do is to ascertain, upon correct principles of reasoning, whether the creating power can be dispensed with. Mr. Spencer dispenses with it altogether. He gives it a direct negative in the most absolute manner. But the perfection of his theory depends upon its ability to sustain itself as an explanation of the existence of organisms without the intervention of a creating power anywhere at any time. I have already suggested the serious defect of his whole philosophic scheme as applied to the existence of organisms, namely, that the foundation of the theory, the existence of the molecules with their properties and capacities tending to rearrangement under the laws of matter and motion, those laws themselves, and the environing conditions which assist the process of adjustment and combination, must all have had an origin, or a cause. If we can get along without that origin, without any cause, without any actor laying the foundations of the world, we can make a theory. But that theory can not sustain itself by such a negation if all experience, observation, and reflection amount to anything; for these all point in one direction. They all tend to show that every existing thing must have had a cause, that every product must have had an origin, and, if we place that origin in the operation of certain laws of matter and motion upon and among the primal molecules of matter, we still have to look for the origin of those laws and of the molecules on which they have operated. If we say that these things had no origin, that they existed without having been caused to exist, we end in a negation at which reason at once rebels. If, on the other hand, we reject, as we must reject, this negation, then the same power which could establish the laws of matter and motion, and give origin to the molecules and the favoring conditions by which their aggregated higher forms are supposed to have been developed, was alike capable of the direct production of species, the creation of the sexes, and the establishment of the laws of procreation and gestation. So that it becomes a question of probability, of the weight of evidence, as to whether we can explain the phenomena of species, of the sexual division and the sexual union, with all that they involve, without the hypothesis of direct intervention, design, and formative skill of a boundless character. I have seen no explanation of the origin of species and of the sexual distinction, with its concomitant methods of reproduction, that does not end in an utter blank, whenever it undertakes to dispense with that kind of direct design to which is derisively given the name of "miraculous interposition," but which in truth implies no miracle at all.

Kosmicos. I have to be perpetually recalling you to the first principles of Mr. Spencer's philosophy. You seem to think it enough to point to the existence of species and the sexual division, as if his philosophy did not afford the means of accounting for them by the operation of natural causes. Let me put to you, then, this question: If natural causes have produced a crystal, by successive new combinations of molecules of matter through gradations rising successively into higher forms, why should not natural causes, acting upon other molecules in a corresponding way, have produced organic life, or animated organisms? If natural causes have evolved out of certain molecules the substance known as organizable protein, why should not the continued operation of the same or similar causes have modified organizable protein into some distinct and recognizable animated organism? If you admit this as a possible or highly probable result, why should not natural causes have produced, in the course of millions of years, the division of the sexes and the methods of procreation and multiplication?

Sophereus. I will assign the reasons for not adopting the conclusions to which you expect me to arrive, in a certain order. In the first place, the capacity of certain molecules to result in the formation of a crystal, under the operation of what you call natural causes, requires that the molecules, their capacity, and the natural causes should all have had an origin, call it known or unknown. The cause was of equal potency to produce the crystal directly, or anything else that exists in Nature. The same thing is true of certain other molecules which, under the operation of the so-called natural causes, have resulted in organizable protein. There must have been an origin to the molecules, to their capacity, and to the laws which effect their combinations; and this cause could equally fashion an organism and fashion it in the related forms of male and female by direct intervention, for to such a power there is no assignable limit. In the next place, the distinction between inanimate and animated matter, between beings endowed and beings not endowed with animal life, is a distinction that can not be overlooked; for, although we find this distinction to be a fact that has resulted after the operation of whatever causes may have produced it, we must still note that there is a distinction, and a very important one. It may be that the dividing line is very difficult of detection; that it is impossible to determine in all cases just where organizable matter passes from dead matter into a living organism. But that at some point there has arisen a living organism, however produced, is certain. Now, suppose that what you call natural causes have operated to bring organizable matter up to this dividing line, the question is, whether we can conclude that they have had the potency to pass that line, and to lead of themselves to all the varying and manifold results of species, the division of the sexes, and all that follows that division. Certain great facts seem to me to negative this conclusion. The first is, that we have species, which differ absolutely from each other as organisms, in their modes of life, and their destinies, however strong may be the resemblances which obtain among them in certain respects. The second fact is, that each of the true species is divided into the related forms of male and female, and is placed under a law of procreation, by the sexual union, for the multiplication of individuals of that species. The third fact is, that no crosses take place in Nature between different species of animals—between the true species—resulting in a third species, or a third animal. It is true that multiplication of individuals of some of the lowest organisms takes place without the bisexual process of procreation, as where, in the severance of a part of an organism the severed part grows, under favorable conditions, into a perfect organism of the same kind, as in the analogous phenomenon of a plant propagated by a branch or a slip from the parent stem. But this occurrence does not take place among the animals which are placed for their multiplication under the law of the sexual union and the sexual procreation. The sexual division, therefore, the law of sexual procreation, and all that they involve, have to be accounted for. Can they be accounted for by the theory of evolution? Wherever you place their first occurrence, you have to find a process adequate to their production. What, then, entitles you to say that the hypothesis of their production, by the capacity and tendency of organizable substances, when they have reached certain combinations, is superior to the hypothesis of a direct interposition and a formative will? At the outset, you must begin with some interposition and some formative will; you must account for the existence of the very capacities of matter to become organized under the laws of the redistribution of matter and motion, or you will end nowhere whatever. If you assume, as you must, that, in laying "the foundations of the world," there was exercised some interposition and some formative will, you have a power which was just as adequate to the production of species, and their sexual division, as it was to the endowment of matter with certain properties and capacities, and the establishment of any laws for the redistribution of matter and motion. If you deny the existence and potency of the original power in the one production you must deny them in the other. If you concede them in the one case, you must concede them in the other. Now, although the original power was equal to the endowment of organizable matter with its capacities for and tendencies to organization, and may be theoretically assumed to have made that endowment, the question is, whether these capacities and tendencies, without special formative interposition, and by the mere force of what you call natural causes, were equal to the production of such phenomena as the division of the sexes and all that follows that division. Can it with any truth he said that the so-called natural causes have produced any phenomena which can be compared, on the question of special design, to the phenomena of the sexual division, the law of sexual procreation, and the whole system of the multiplication of individuals of distinct and true species? When I can see any facts which will warrant the belief that the origin of the sexes is to be attributed to the capacity of organizable protein to form itself into new compounds, to the capacity of these new compounds to become living organisms, and to the capacity of these living organisms, without the intervention of any formative will specially designing the result, to divide themselves into related forms of male and female, to establish for themselves the law of procreation, and to limit that procreation to the same species, I shall, perhaps, begin to see some ground for the superior claims of the evolution hypothesis. I should like, by-the-by, to see a system of classification of animal organisms, based exclusively on the distinction between the bisexual and the unisexual, or the non-sexual, methods of reproduction, and without running it out into the analogies of the vegetable world. I fancy that it would be found extremely difficult to account for the bisexual division without reaching the conclusion that it required and was effected by a special interposition. At all events, I should like to see it explained how the asexual and the unisexual construction passed into the bisexual by the mere operation of what you call natural causes.

Kosmicos. You said, a while ago, that you had never learned any nursery-stories. Yet, all along, you seem to me to have been under the influence of the Mosaic account of the creation. Of course you have read it, and, although you did not learn anything about it in childhood, and now try to treat it solely as a hypothesis, without any regard to its claims as a divinely inspired narrative, it is certainly worth your while to see how completely it becomes an idle tale of the nursery when scientific tests are applied to it. Hear what Spencer says about the creation of man, as given by Moses: "The old Hebrew idea that God takes clay and molds a new creature, as a potter might mold a vessel, is probably too grossly anthropomorphic to be accepted by any modern defender of special creations."

Sophereus. Let us see about this. Let us discard all idea of the source from which Moses received his information of the occurrences which he relates, and put his account upon the same level with Plato's description of the origin of animals, and with the Darwinian or Spencerian theory of that origin; regarding all three of them, that is to say, as mere hypotheses. Whatever may be the supposed conflict between the Mosaic account of the creation and the conclusions of geologists concerning the periods during which the earth may have become formed as we now find it, the question is, on the one hand, whether the Hebrew historian's account of the process of creation is a conception substantially the same as that at which we should have arrived from a study of Nature if we had never had that account transmitted to us from a period when the traditions of mankind were taking the shapes in which they have reached us from different sources; or whether, on the other hand, it is so "grossly anthropomorphic" and absurd that it is not worthy of any consideration as an occurrence that it will bear the slightest test of scientific scrutiny. Let any one take the Mosaic narrative, and, divesting himself of all influence of supposed inspiration or divine authority speaking through the chosen servant of God, and disregarding the meaning of those obscure statements which divide the stages of the work into the first and the second "day," etc., let him follow out the order in which the Creator is said by Moses to have acted. He will find in the narrative an immense condensation, highly figurative expressions, and many elliptical passages. But he will also find that the Creator is described as proceeding in the exertion of his omnipotent power in a manner which we should be very likely to deduce from a study of his works without this narrative. We have, first, the reduction of the earth from its chaotic condition—"without form and void"—to the separation of its elemental substances; then the creation of light; the separation of earth and water; the productive capacity of the dry land; the establishment of the vegetable kingdom, each product "after its kind"; the formation of the heavenly bodies as lights in the firmament, to make the division of day and night, seasons and years. It is obviously immaterial, so far as this order of the work is concerned, down to the stage when the formation of the first animals took place, in what length of time this first stage of the work was accomplished; whether it was done by an Omnipotence that could speak things into existence by a word, or whether the process was carried on through periods of time of which we can have no measure, and by the operation of infinitely slow-moving agencies selected and employed for the accomplishment of a certain result. Confining our attention to the first stage of the work as we find it described, we have the formation of the earth, light, air, the heavenly bodies, alternations of day and night, seasons and years, and the vegetable kingdom, before any animal creation. We then come to the formation of animals which are to inhabit this convenient abode, and which are described as taking place in the following order: first the water animals, the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the field, "each after its kind"; then, and finally, the creation of man. Respecting his creation, we are told that it was the purpose of the Almighty to make a being after a very different "image" from that of any other creature on the earth; and whatever may be the true interpretation of the language employed, whether man was created literally "in our image, after our likeness," or according to an image and a likeness of which his Creator had conceived, there can be no doubt that what Moses described as the purpose of God was to make a being differing absolutely from all the other animals by a broad line of demarkation which is perfectly discoverable through all the resemblances that obtain between him and all the other living creatures. To this new being there was given, we are told, dominion over all the other animals, and the fruits of the earth were assigned to him for food; he was formed out of the dust of the earth, the breath of life was breathed into his nostrils, and he became "a living soul." Let us now see if this statement of the creation of man is so "grossly anthropomorphic" as is supposed. You are aware that Buffon, who was certainly no mean naturalist or philosopher, and who was uninfluenced by the idea that the book of Genesis was an inspired production, reached the conclusion that a study of nature renders the order of man's creation as described by Moses a substantially true hypothesis. "We are persuaded," said Buffon, "independently of the authority of the sacred books, that man was created last, and that he only came to wield the scepter of the earth when that earth was found worthy of his sway."[112] You evolutionists will say that this may be very true upon your hypothesis of his gradual development out of other animals, through untold periods of time. But now let us see whether Moses was so grossly unscientific, upon the supposition that God created man as he describes. If man was created, or molded, by the Deity, he was formed, in his physical structure, out of matter; and all matter may be figuratively and even scientifically described as "the dust of the earth," or as "clay," or by any other term that will give an idea of a substance that was not spirit. If Moses had said that man's body was formed out of the constituent elements of matter, or some of them, he would have said nothing that a modern believer in special creations need shrink from, for he would have stated an indisputable fact. He stated in one form of expression the very same fact that a modern scientist would have to state in another form, whatever might have been the mode, or the power, or the time in or by which the constituent elements were brought together and molded into the human body. So that the derisive figure of God taking clay and molding it into the human form, as a potter would mold a vessel, does not strike me as presenting any proof that the account given by Moses is so destitute of scientific accuracy, or as rendering his statements a ridiculous hypothesis.

Kosmicos. Well, then, it comes at last to this: that you consider the substance of the Mosaic account of the creation, independent of its authority as an inspired statement, to be entitled to stand as a hypothesis against the explanations given to us by the scientists of the great modern school of evolution, notwithstanding those explanations are in one form or another now accepted by the most advanced scientific thinkers and explorers?

Sophereus. I certainly do. But understand me explicitly. As, after my study of the probable origin of the solar system, and our discussion of that subject, I expressed my conclusion that the phenomena called for and manifested the exercise of a formative will by some acts of special creation, so now, in reference to the animal kingdom, I have reached the same conclusion, for reasons which I have endeavored to assign. I can see that the operation of the process which you call evolution may have caused certain limited modifications in the structure and habits of life of different animals; or rather, that limited modifications of structure and habits of life have occurred, and hence you deduce what you call the process of evolution. But to me this entirely fails to account for, or to suggest a rational explanation of, the distinct existence of species, their division into male and female, and the establishment of the laws of procreation by which individuals of a species are multiplied—a process which does not admit of the production of individuals of an essentially different type from the parents, and which, so far as we have any means of knowledge, has never commenced in one species and ended in another, in any length of time that can be imagined, or through any series of modifications.

Kosmicos. Let us postpone the farther discussion of the origin of species to some future time, when I will endeavor to convince you that both Darwin and Spencer have satisfactorily accounted for them.

Sophereus. Very well; I shall be glad to be enlightened.

THE SINGLE-CELL HYPOTHESIS.

Note.—It will readily occur to the reader that Sophereus might most pertinently have asked: Whence did the primal cell originate? It is conceived of as the ultimate unit of organizable matter; invisible to the naked eye, perhaps incapable of being reached by the microscope, but consisting of an infinitesimally small portion of matter, more or less organized in itself, and possessing a capacity to unite with itself other minute particles of matter, and so to form larger aggregates of molecules. The hypothesis is, that this single cell has given origin to all animated organisms, and, through an indefinite series of such organisms, to the human race. The single cell, then, having this capacity and this extraordinary destiny, was either the first and only one of its kind, or it was one of many of the same kind. If we select any supposed point of time in the far antecedent history of matter, the question may be asked whether there existed at first but one such cell, or many. If there were many of such cells, how came they to exist? If one only was selected out of many, for this extraordinary destiny of giving origin to all the animated organisms, who or what made the selection for this transcendent office of the one cell? If there never was but one such cell, how did it come to exist? As these questions are clearly pertinent, the effort to answer them inevitably conducts us to the idea of creation, or else to the conclusion that the numerous cells and the selected one had no origin; that the selection was not made, but was accidental; or that the one cell, if there never was but one, was not a created thing. Human reason can not accept this conclusion.

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[CHAPTER X.]

"Species," "races," and "varieties"—Sexual division—Causation.

The two friendly disputants have again met. Sophereus begins their further colloquy, in an effort to reach a common understanding of certain terms, so that they may not be speaking of different things.

Sophereus. I have more than once referred to the fact that Nature does not permit crosses between the true species of animals, in breeding, and that we have no reason to suppose it ever did. This is a very important fact to be considered in weighing the claims of your theory of evolution. I have been looking into Darwin, and I find it somewhat uncertain in what sense he uses the terms "species," "races," and "varieties." In his "Descent of Man," he devotes a good deal of space to the discussion of the various classifications made by different naturalists under these respective terms; and there is no small danger of confusion arising from the use of these terms unless they are defined. The possibility of the process of evolution, as a means of accounting for the existence of any known animal, depends in some degree upon the animals among which, by sexual generation, the supposed transition from one kind of animal to another kind has taken place. Darwin speaks of the difficulty of defining "species"; and yet it is obvious (is it not?) that the theory of the graduation of different forms into one another depends for its possibility upon the forms which have admitted of interbreeding. While, therefore, the term "species" is in one sense arbitrary, as used by different naturalists, and there is no definition of it common to them all, it is still necessary to have a clear idea of the limits within which crosses can take place in breeding, because there are such limits in nature. Thus, in the case of man, as known to us in history and by observation, there are different families, which are classed as "races." Darwin speaks of the weighty arguments which naturalists have, or may have, for "raising the races of man to the dignity of species." Whether this would be anything more than a matter of scientific nomenclature, is perhaps unnecessary to consider. Whether we call the "races" of men "species," or speak of them as families of one race, we know as a fact that interbreeding can take place among them all, and that between man and any other animal it can not take place. The same thing is true of the equine and the bovine races and their several varieties. Whether, in speaking of the different families or races of men, we consider them all as one "species," or as different species—and so of the varieties of the equine or the bovine races—the important fact is, that there are limits within which interbreeding can take place, and out of which it can not take place. Do you admit or deny that the barriers against sexual generation between animals of essentially different types, which are established in nature, are important facts in judging of the hypothesis of animal evolution?

Kosmicos. Take care that you have an accurate idea of what the theory of evolution is. Apply it, for example, to the origin of man, as an animal, proceeding "by a series of forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like creature to man as he now exists." This expresses the whole theory as applied to one animal, man, without going behind his ape-like progenitors. It does not suppose a crossing between the ape-like creature and some other creature that was not an ape. It supposes a gradual development of the ape-like creature into the man as he now exists; and, of course, the interbreeding took place between the males and the females of that ape-like race and their descendants—the descendants, through a long series of forms, being gradually modified into men, by the operation of the laws of natural and sexual selection, which I need not again explain to you.

Sophereus. Very well, I have always so understood the theory. But then I have also understood it to be a part of the same theory that there is important auxiliary proof of the supposed process of evolution to be derived from what is known to take place in the interbreeding of different races or families of the same animal. Whatever value there may be in this last fact, as auxiliary evidence of the supposed process of evolution, there must have been a time, in the development of the long series of forms proceeding from the ape-like progenitor, when an animal had been produced which could propagate nothing but its own type, and between which and the surrounding other animals no propagation could take place, if we are to judge by what all nature teaches us. You may say that the laws of natural and sexual selection would still go on operating among the numerous individuals of this animal which had become in itself a completed product, and that to their descendants would be transmitted newly acquired organs and powers, new habits of life, and all else that natural and sexual selection can be imagined to have brought about. But at some time, somewhere in the series, you reach an animal of a distinct character, in which natural and sexual selection have done all that they can do; in which there can be no propagation of offspring but those of a distinct and peculiar type, and the invincible barrier against a sexual union with any other type becomes established. For this reason, we must recognize the limits of possible interbreeding. It is best for us, therefore, to come to some understanding of the sense in which we shall use the term "species." For I shall press upon you this consideration—that animals differ absolutely from each other; that there can be no interbreeding between animals which so differ; and yet that, without interbreeding between animals having distinct organizations, natural and sexual selection had not the force necessary to produce, in any length of time, such a being as man out of such a being as the ape.

Kosmicos. I will let Darwin answer you, in a passage which I will read. "Whether primeval man," he observes, "when he possessed but few arts, and those of the rudest kind, and when his power of language was extremely imperfect, would have deserved to be called man, must depend on the definition which we employ. In a long series of forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like creature to man as he now exists, it would be impossible to fix on any definite time when the term 'man' ought to be used. But this is a matter of very little importance." That is to say, in the long series of forms descending from the ape-like creature, we can not fix on any one of the modified descendants which we can pronounce to be separated from the family of apes, and to have become the new family, man, because to do this requires a definition of man. Man as he now exists we know, but the primeval man we do not know. He may have been an animal capable of sexual union with some of his kindred who stood nearest to him, but yet remained apes, or he may not. It is not important what he was, or whether we can find the time when he ceased to belong to the family of apes and became the primeval man. The hypothesis of his descent remains good, notwithstanding we can not find that time, because it is supported by a great multitude of facts.

Sophereus. I have never seen any facts which I can regard as giving direct support to the theory. But, waiving this want of evidence, doubtless it is not important to find the time, chronologically, when the modified descendants, supposed to have proceeded from the ape-like creature, became the primeval man; but it is of the utmost importance to have some satisfactory grounds for believing that there ever was such an occurrence as the development of the animal man, primeval or modern man, out of such an animal as the ape. And therefore, without reference to the sense in which naturalists use the term "species," I shall give you the sense in which I use it. I use it to designate the animals which are distinct from each other, as the man, the horse, the ape, and the dog are all distinct from each other. Speaking of man as one true species, I include all the races of men. Speaking of the apes as another species, I include all the families of apes. Speaking of the bovine, the equine, or the canine species, I include in each their respective varieties. Now, as crosses in interbreeding can take place between the different varieties or families of these several species, and can not take place between the species themselves—between those which I thus class as species—the limits of such crosses become important facts in considering the theory of evolution, because they narrow the inquiry to the possibility of effecting a propagation of one species out of another species. Take any animal which has become a completed and final product—a peculiar and distinct creature—whether made so by aboriginal creation or produced by what you call evolution. The reproductive faculty of the males and the females of this distinct and peculiar animal is limited to the generative reproduction of individuals of the same type, by a sexual union of two individuals of that type. Their progeny, in successive generations, may be marked by adventitious and slowly acquired peculiarities; but unless there can be found some instance or instances in which the process of modification has resulted in an animal which we must regard as an 'essentially new creature—a new species—what becomes of the auxiliary evidence which is supposed to be derived from the effects of interbreeding between those individuals which can interbreed? I lose all hold upon the theory of evolution, unless I can have some proof that natural and sexual selection have overcome the barriers against a sexual union among animals which are divided into males and females of the several species, each of which is placed under a law of procreation and gestation peculiar to itself, and never produces any type but its own.

Kosmicos. You wander from the principle of evolution. I have to be perpetually restating it. Observe, then, that there are multitudes of facts which warrant the belief that, starting with any one kind of animal organism, however peculiar and distinct, the struggle for existence among the enormous number of individuals of that animal becomes most intense, and a furious battle is constantly going on. The best-appointed males, in the fierceness of the strife for possession of the females, develop new organs and powers, or their original organs and powers are greatly enhanced. Their descendants share in these modifications; and the modifications go on in a geometrical ratio of increase through millions of years, until at some time there is developed an animal which differs absolutely from its remote progenitors which were away back in the remote past, and which began the struggle for individual life and the continuation of their species or their race in a condition of things which left the fittest survivors the sole or nearly the sole propagators of new individuals. This struggle for existence may have begun—probably it did begin—before the separation of the sexes, when the organism was unisexual or even asexual. That is to say, there may have been, and there probably was, an organism which multiplied with enormous rapidity, without the bisexual method of reproduction. The vast multitude of such individuals would lead to the destruction of the weakest; the strong survivors would continue to give rise to other individuals, modified from the original type, until at length, by force of this perpetual exertion and struggle and the survival of the fittest, modifications of the method of reproduction would ensue, and the bisexual division would be developed and perpetuated.

Sophereus. I confess I did not expect to hear you go quite so far. I will yield all the potency to natural and sexual selection that can be fairly claimed for them as modifying agencies operating after the sexual division has come about; but I have, I repeat, seen no facts which justify the hypothesis that they have led to distinct organisms between which no propagation can take place. But now you expect me to accept the startling conclusion that at some time the asexual or the unisexual method of reproduction passed into the bisexual, without any formative will or design of a creating power, and without any act of direct creation. We know what Plato imagined as the origin of the sexual division, and that he could not get along without the intervention of the gods. What modern naturalist has done any better? I have examined Darwin's works pretty diligently, and I can not get from them any solution of the origin of the bisexual division. I am left to reason upon it as I best can. We know, then, that in the higher animal organisms the individuals of each species are divided into the related forms of male and female, and that for each species there exists the one invariable method of the sexual union, and a law of gestation peculiar to itself. One hypothesis is that this system was produced by the operation of natural causes, like those which are supposed to have differentiated the various kinds of organisms; the other hypothesis is that it was introduced with special design, by an act of some creative will. If we view the phenomena of the sexual division and the sexual genesis in the highest animal in which they obtain, we find that they lead to certain social results, which plainly indicate that in this animal they exist for a great and comprehensive moral purpose, which far transcends all that can be imagined as the moral purpose for which they exist in the other animals. To a comparatively very limited extent, certain social consequences flow from the law of sexual division and genesis among the other animals. But there is no animal in which the moral and social effects of this law are to be compared to those which it produces in the human race. Not only does the same law of multiplication obtain among the human race; not only does it lead to love of the offspring far more durable and powerful than in the case of any other animal; not only is it the origin of a society far more complex, more lasting, and more varied in its conditions than any that can be discovered in the associations of other animals which appear to have some social habits and to form themselves into communities, but in the human race alone, so far as we have any means of knowledge, has the passion of sexual love become refined into a sentiment. You may remember the passage in the "Paradise Lost" in which Raphael, in his conversation with Adam, touches so finely the distinction between sexual love in the human race and in all the other animals. The angel reminds Adam that he shares with the brutes the physical enjoyment which leads to propagation; and then tells him that there was implanted in his nature a higher and different capacity of enjoyment in love. The conclusion is:—

"... for this cause

Among the beasts no mate for thee was found."

In the human being alone, even when there is not much else to distinguish the savage from the beasts around him, the passion of love is often something more nearly akin to what might be looked for in an elevated nature, than it can be among the brutes. What do the poetry and romance of the ruder nations show, but that this passion of sexual love in the human being is one in which physical appetite and sentimental feeling are so "well commingled" that their union marks the compound nature of an animal and a spiritual being? How human society has resulted from this passion, how in the great aggregate of its forces it moves the world, how in its highest development it gives rise to the social virtues, and in its baser manifestations leads to vice, misery, and degradation, I do not need to remind you. How, then, is it possible to avoid the conclusion that in man the sexual passion was implanted by special design and for a special purpose, which extends far beyond the immediate end of a continuation of the race?

Kosmicos. Why do you resort to a special purpose in the constitution of one animal, and to the absence of a similar purpose from the constitution of another animal? In both, the consequences make a case of the post hoc just as plainly as they make a case of the propter hoc. It is just as rational to conclude that they only show the former as it is to conclude that they establish the latter. In man, we have the physical fact of the sexual division, and all you can say is that it is followed by certain great and varied moral phenomena. In the other animals, we have the same physical fact, followed by moral phenomena less complex and varied, and not so lasting. In neither case can you say that there was a special and separate design, according to which the same physical fact was intended to produce the special consequences which we observe in each. Why, as the species called man became developed into beings of a higher order than the primates of the race or than their remote progenitors, should not this passion of sexual love have become elevated into a sentiment and been followed by the effects of that elevation, just as the gratification of another appetite, that for food, par exemple, has been refined by the intellectual pleasures of the social banquet and the interchange of social courtesies? Is there anything to be proved by the institution or the practice of marriage, beyond this—that it has been found by experience to be of great social utility, and is therefore regulated by human laws and customs, which vary in the different races of mankind? Monogamy is the rule among some nations, polygamy is at least allowed in others. You can predicate nothing of either excepting that each society deems its own practice to be upon the whole the most advantageous. You can not say that there is any fixed law of nature which renders it unnatural for one man to have more than one wife. In many ages of the world there have been states of society in which the family has had as good a foundation in polygamous as it has had in monogamous unions. Looking, then, at these undeniable facts, and also at the fact that marriage, whether monogamous or polygamous, is an institution regulated by human law and custom, we have to inquire for the reason why human law and custom take any cognizance of the relation. We find that, among some of the other animals, the sexes do not pair excepting for a single birth. The connection lasts no longer than for a certain period during which the protection of both parents is needed by the offspring, and not always so long even as that. It has become the experience of mankind that the connection of the parents ought to be formed for more than one birth; shall be of indefinite duration; and this because of the physical and social benefits which flow from such a permanency of the union. This has given rise to certain moral feelings concerning the relation of husband and wife. But we have no more warrant, from anything that we can discover in nature, for regarding the permanency of marriage among the human race as a divine institution than we have for regarding its temporary continuance among the other animals as a divinely appointed temporary arrangement. In the one case, the permanency of the union has resulted from experience of its utility. In the other case, the animal perceives no such utility, and therefore does not follow the practice. Upon the hypothesis that all the animals, man included, had a common origin, it is very easy to account for the difference which prevails between man and the other animals in this matter of marriage, or the pairing of the sexes. As man became by insensible gradations evolved out of some pre-existing organism, and as moral sentiments became evolved out of his superior and more complex relations with his fellows, from his experience of the practical utility of certain kinds of conduct and practice, the sentiments became insensibly interwoven with his feelings about the most important of his social relations, the union of the sexes in marriage. This is quite sufficient to account for the difference between man and the other animals in regard to the duration of such unions, without resorting to any intentional or divine or superhuman origin of that difference.

Sophereus. For the purpose of the argument, I concede that this is a case of either the post hoc or the propter hoc. I have been pretty careful, however, in all my investigations, not to lose sight of this distinction in reasoning on the phenomena of nature or those of society. I think I can perceive when there is a connection between cause and effect, when that connection evinces an intelligent design, and when the phenomena bear no relation to a certain fact beyond that of sequence in time. What, then, have we to begin with? We have the fact that the human race is divided into the two forms of male and female, and that the passion or appetite of sexual love exists in both sexes, and that its gratification is the immediate cause of a production of other individuals of the same species. We next have the fact that this union of the sexes is followed by an extraordinary amount of moral and social phenomena that are peculiar to the human race. This sequence proves to me an intentional design that the moral and social phenomena shall flow from the occurrence of the sexual union, for it establishes not only a possibility, but an immensely strong probability, that the phenomena were designed to flow from this one occurrence among this particular species of animal. If this connection between the original physiological fact and the moral and social phenomena be established to our reasonable satisfaction, it is the highest kind of moral evidence of a special design in the existence of the sexual division and the sexual passion among the human race. You remember old Sir Thomas Browne's suggestion, that men might have been propagated as trees are. But they are not so propagated. If they were, no such consequences would have followed as those which do follow from the mode in which they are in fact propagated. These consequences are most numerous and complex, and they are capable of being assigned to nothing but the sexual division and the sexual union as the means of continuing the race. Turn now to some of the other animals among whom there prevail the same bisexual division and the same method of procreation and multiplication. You find they result in sexual unions of very short duration, and that, if it is followed by phenomena that in some feeble degree resemble those which are found in human society, they bear no comparison in point of complexity and character to those which in the human race mark the family, the tribe, and the nation. And here there occurs something which is closely analogous to what I pointed out to you in considering the supposed development of the first animal organism. I said that although you may theoretically suppose that the first animal organism was formed by the spontaneous union of molecular aggregates, and that the higher organisms were evolved out of the lower solely by the operation of causes which you call "natural," yet that when you come to account for the existence of true and distinct species, each with its sexual division and its law of procreation and gestation, you must infer a special design and a formative will, because there has never been suggested any method by which the so-called natural causes could have produced this division of the sexes and this invariable law of the sexual procreation among individuals of the same species. Here, then, we arrive at a distinct moral purpose; for, when we compare the different social phenomena which follow the operation of the sexual division and procreation in man with the social phenomena which follow in the case of the other animals, we find a difference that is not simply one of degree, but is one of kind. We find the origin of the family, the tribe, and the nation: the source of the complex phenomena of human society. We may therefore rationally conclude that in man the sexual division and the sexual passion were designed to have effects that they were not designed to have in the other animals. To suppose that these vastly superior consequences in the case of man are the mere results of his perception of their utility will not account for the fact that when he does not recognize the utility—when he departs from the law of his human existence—human society can not be formed and continued. Although it is possible for human society to exist with polygamous marriages, and even to have some strength and duration, yet human society without the family, with promiscuous sexual intercourse, with no marriages and no ties between parents and children, never has existed or can exist. Compare Plato's curious constitution of the body of "guardians," in his "Republic," and the strange method of unions, the offspring of which were not allowed to know their parents or the parents to know their own children. This was not imagined as a form of human society, but was entirely like a breeding-stud. Among the brutes, permanent marriages, families, do not exist, not because the animals do not perceive their social utility, but because the purposes of their lives, their manifest destinies, show that there was no reason for endowing them with any higher capacity for the sexual enjoyment than that which leads to the very limited consequences for which the division of the sexes was in their cases ordained. But in the case of man there is a further and higher capacity for the sexual enjoyment, which becomes the root of his social happiness, and which distinguishes him from the brute creation quite as palpably as the superiority of his intellectual faculties. In all this we must recognize a moral purpose.

Kosmicos. Pray tell me why it is not just as rational to conclude that these moral phenomena, as results of the human passion of love, have become, in all their complex and diversified aspects, the consequences of a progressive elevation of the human animal to a higher plane of existence than that occupied by the inferior species, or than that occupied by the primeval man. When man had become developed into an animal in whom the intellect could become what it is, he could begin to perceive the social utility of certain modes of life, and from this idea of their utility would result certain maxims of conduct which would be acted on as moral obligations. Thus, commencing with a consciousness that the race exists with the sexual division into male and female, there would begin to be formed some ideas of the superior social utility of a regulated sexual union of individuals and of permanent marriages. These ideas would become refined as the progressive elevation of the race went on, and that which we recognize as the sentimental element in the passion of love would become developed out of the perceptions of a superior utility in the permanent devotion and consecration of two individuals to each other. If, then, by a moral purpose in the establishment of the bisexual division you mean that all these social phenomena of the family, the tribe, and the nation were designed in the human race to follow from that division, I see no necessity for resorting to any such moral purpose on the part of a creator, because they might just as well have followed from the progressive elevation and development of the human animal, supposing him to be descended from some pre-existing type of animal of another and inferior organization. The philosophy which you seem to be cultivating closely resembles that which ascribes everything to the action of mind as its cause. This, you must be aware, it is the tendency of modern science to antagonize by a different view of causation. What have you been reading, that you adhere so pertinaciously to the idea of a moral purpose adopted by some being, overlooking those physical causes which may have produced all the results without that hypothesis?

Sophereus. I have been reading a good deal, but I have reflected more. I may not be able to reconcile the metaphysical speculations of the different schools of philosophy by explanations that will satisfy others, but I can satisfy myself on one point. This is, that power, force, energy, causation, are all attributes of mind, and can exist in a mind only. Let us pass for a moment from abstract reasoning to an illustration drawn from familiar objects. A ton of coal contains a certain amount of what is scientifically called energy. This energy becomes developed by combustion, which liberates heat. The heat, when applied to water, converts the water into a vapor called steam—a highly elastic substance. The expansion of the steam against a mechanical instrument called a piston produces motion, and an engine is driven. The force thus obtained represents the energy that was latent in the coal. If we inquire whence the coal obtained this latent energy, there is a hypothesis which assigns its origin to the sun, which laid up a certain quantity of it in the vegetable substances that became converted into coal in one of the geological periods of the earth's formation. But in order to find the ultimate and original cause—the causa causans of the whole process—we must go behind the steam and its expansive quality, behind the heat which converts the water into steam, behind the coal and its combustible quality, and behind the sun and its indwelling heat, a portion of which was imparted to and left latent in the vegetable substances that became coal. We must inquire whence they all originated. If they did not create themselves—an inconceivable and inadmissible hypothesis—they must have originated in some creating power, which commanded them to exist and established their connections. Without a mental energy and its exertions, matter and all its properties, substance and all its qualities, the sun's indwelling heat and its capacity to be stored up in vegetable fiber in a latent condition, could not have existed, and the forces of nature of which we avail ourselves would never have emerged from the non-existent state that we conceive of as "chaos." I know very well that we are accustomed to associate with inanimate matter the ideas of power, force, energy, and causation. But if we rest in the conception of these as acting of themselves, and without being under the control of an originating mind or a determining will, we may think that we have arrived at ultimate causes, but we have not. We have arrived at subsidiary causes—the instruments, so to speak, in the control of an intellect which has ordained and uses them. Whether we look at the physical causes by which the early Greek philosophers endeavored to explain the phenomena of the universe, or at one of Plato's conceptions of a designing and volitional agency in the formation of the Kosmos, or to another of his conceptions, the sovereignty of universal ideas or metaphysical abstractions, we are everywhere confronted with the necessity for assigning an origin to the physical causes, or to the universal ideas; and the result is that the idea of a supreme, designing, and volitional agency is forced upon us—it is upon me—by an irresistible process of reasoning, an invincible necessity of my mental constitution. I can not agree with Auguste Comte, who regards it as the natural progress of the human mind to explain phenomena at first by reference to some personal agency, and to pass from this mode of explanation to that by metaphysical abstractions. Nor can I agree with you scientists, who not only rest satisfied yourselves with the explanation of the ultimate cause of phenomena by mere physical agencies, but who insist that others shall not deduce a personal and volitional agency from the existence of those physical agencies. To me it seems indispensable, in the study of phenomena, to recognize moral purposes for which they have been made to be what they are: and of course a moral purpose is not assignable to the physical agencies of matter, or to metaphysical abstractions. Hence it is that in reasoning on the phenomena of human society, I am obliged to recognize a moral purpose in the sexual division, of far greater scope and far more varied consequences than can be found in the case of the same division among the other animals.

Kosmicos. I put to you this question: What do you mean by a moral purpose? In teleology, or the science of the final causes of things, you must find out the producing agencies. Let me give you a theory of causation, which will show you that your notion of a moral purpose is altogether out of place. The only true causes are phenomenal ones, or what is certified by experience. There are uniform and unconditional antecedents, and uniform and unconditional sequences. Something goes before, uniformly and invariably; something uniformly and invariably follows. The first are causes; the last are effects. We can not go farther back than the antecedent cause; we can not go farther forward than the effect. We can not connect the effect with anything but the antecedent cause. When, therefore, you speak of a moral purpose, what do you mean? Where do you get the evidence of the moral purpose? What is the purpose, and what is the evidence of it?

Sophereus. I answer you as I have before—that the agencies which you call phenomenal causes could not have established themselves; could not have originated their own uniformity; could not have made the invariable connection between themselves and the effects. If we discard the idea of a moral and sentient being, a mind originating and ordaining the physical agencies, we have nothing left but those agencies; and in this the human mind can not rest. It is not enough to say that it ought to rest there. It does not, will not, and can not. Science—what you call science—may rest there, but philosophy can not. It is unphilosophical to speak of the Unknown Cause, or the Unknown Power, underlying all manifestations, as something of which we can not conceive and must not personify. The ultimate power which underlies all phenomena necessarily implies a will, an intellectual origin, and a mental energy. That it is something whose mental operations we can not trace, is no argument against its personality, and no reason why we should not conceive of it as a mental energy.

Kosmicos. You have more than once referred to the constitution of the human mind as if it had been constructed with an irresistible necessity to attribute everything to the action of a being, an intelligence, and a will. You should rather say that some minds have trained themselves to this mode of reasoning, because they have first received the idea of such a being as the final cause, as a matter of dogmatic teaching, and they have tried to reason it out so as to attain a conviction that what they have been taught is true. It is in this way that they have found what they consider as evidence of a moral purpose. But you have no warrant for the assumption that the human intellect has been put together in such a way that it can not avoid reaching the conclusion that all phenomena are to be imputed to the volition of a mind as their producing cause.

Sophereus. In speaking of the human mind and its incapacity to rest satisfied with what science can discover of immediate physical agencies in the production of phenomena, I have not overlooked the fact that the idea of a Creator has been dogmatically inculcated as a matter of belief. But I form my conception of the construction of the human mind from the operations of my own mind. I have not trained myself into any mode of reasoning. I have somehow been so placed in this world that, as I have frequently told you and as I am perfectly conscious, I am uninfluenced by any early teaching, and can judge for myself of the force of evidence. When I say, therefore, that the human intellect is so constituted that it is obliged to regard mind as the source of power, I exclude all teaching but the teaching of experience. There can not be two courses of reasoning that are alike correct. If you uncover a portion of the earth's surface, and find there structures, implements, and various objects which you are convinced that the forces of nature did not produce, you must conclude that they were the productions of mind availing itself of the capabilities of matter to be molded and arranged by the force of an intelligent will. You do not see that mind, you do not see the work in progress, but you are irresistibly led to the conclusion that there was a mind which produced what you have found. You can not reason on the phenomena at all, without having the conviction forced upon you that the ultimate cause was an intelligent being. You can not explain the phenomena without this conclusion. How, then, can you explain the more various and extraordinary phenomena of nature without attributing their production to mind? You have no more direct evidence that the Pyramids of Egypt, or an obelisk which has lain buried in the earth for thousands of years, were made by human hands, than you have for believing that an animal organism, or the solar system, was planned and executed by an intelligent being. In both cases, you have only indirect evidence; but in both cases that evidence addresses itself to your intellect upon the same principles of belief. In the case of the pyramid or the obelisk, you refer the construction to mind, because you see that mind alone could have been the real cause of its existence. In the case of the animal organism, or the mechanism of the heavenly bodies, you are obliged to reason in the same way. Hence I say that our minds are so constituted that there is but one method of correct reasoning, whether the phenomena are those which can be attributed only to human intellect, or are those which must be attributed to superhuman power and intelligence. Hence, too, I speak of a moral purpose as indicated by the phenomena. The pyramid and the obelisk were built with a moral purpose. The animal organism and all that follows from it, the structure of the solar system and all that follows from it, were made to be what they are with a moral purpose. When you ask me for the evidence of this purpose, I point to the fact that the phenomenal causes, as you denominate the mere physical agencies employed in the production of certain objects, were incapable of any volitional action, and that without volition the connection between the physical agencies and their effects could not have been established. The stone and the chisel were the immediate physical agencies which produced the obelisk. But who selected the stone and wielded the chisel? And who designed the moral uses of the obelisk? Procreation, by the sexual union, is the immediate physical cause of the existence of an individual animal. But who designed its structure, appointed for it a law of its being, and established the physical agencies which brought the individual into existence and the moral consequences that those agencies produce?

Kosmicos. We are no nearer to an agreement than we have been in our former discussions. And the reason is that you do not perceive the mission and the method of science. Science undertakes to discover those causes of phenomena which can be verified by experience; so that we can truly say that our knowledge has been advanced, and that we really do know something of the things which we talk about. This is the domain of science. Its conclusions do not extend into the region of that which is unknown and unknowable. Inasmuch as its conclusions are strictly positive, because they are demonstrated by experience, they negative, as matter of knowledge, anything beyond. You may speculate about what lies beyond, but you have no reason for saying that you know anything about it; whereas men who reason as you do, and yet who do not accept dogmas simply as matters of faith, are constantly trying to persuade themselves that they know something about that of which they have no means of knowledge. If you accept that something as a matter of faith, because you are satisfied with the evidence which establishes, or is supposed to establish, a divine revelation, you have a ground for belief with which science does not undertake to interfere. But you have no ground for maintaining that, from the phenomena of nature alone, you can derive any knowledge beyond that which you can demonstrate as a scientific fact.

Sophereus. I accept your definition of the aims and methods of science. But what I find fault with is the assumption that we are not entitled to say that we know or believe a thing which can not be demonstrated as a scientific fact, when we are all the time grounding such knowledge or belief upon reasoning that convinces us of the truth and reality of other things which in like manner are not demonstrable as scientific facts. You may say that this is not the knowledge which we derive from scientific facts, and therefore it is not to be dignified by the name of knowledge. But we are always acting and must act upon proofs which are not scientific demonstrations; and whether we call this knowledge, or call it belief, we govern our lives according to it. We accept the proof that a buried city was the habitation and work of intelligent human beings, because we know that the forces of nature, not guided and applied by intelligent wills, never constructed a city. We accept the proof that men are just, merciful, courageous, truthful, or the reverse of all this, because their actions prove it, although we can not look into their hearts. What does all the estimate of the characters of men rest upon, but upon their actions? And is not this entitled to be ranked as knowledge of the characters of individual men?

Kosmicos. We must each retain his conclusions. Let our next discussion relate to the origin of the human mind, and then we shall see whether you will be able to resist the origin which evolution assigns to it.

Sophereus. I shall be glad to meet you again.

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[CHAPTER XI.]

Origin of the human mind—Mr. Spencer's theory of the composition of mind—His system of morality.

According to their appointment, our two disputants have met to discuss the origin of mind.

Sophereus. Will you begin this conference by stating the evolution theory of the origin of the human mind?

Kosmicos. Most willingly. I have thus far spoken of the hypothesis of evolution as affording an explanation of the origin of distinct animals, regarded simply as living organisms, differentiated from each other by the slow process of development from a common stock, by the operation of certain physical causes. I am now to account to you for the origin of the human mind, upon the same hypothesis, namely, that man is a development from some previous and lower organism. I acknowledge that what we call mind, or intellect, has to be accounted for; and that we who hold the evolution theory of the origin of man as an animal must be able to suggest how his intellect became developed by the operation of the same natural causes which produced his physical organization. It is not material, in this inquiry, whether we agree with Darwin in assuming some one distinct living organism of a very low type, as the original stock from which all the other animal organisms have been derived, or whether we go with Spencer back to the primal molecules of organizable matter, and suppose that from a single cell have been developed all the organisms possessing life, in a regular order of succession. Upon either supposition, the doctrine of evolution explains the origin of the human mind. For, upon either supposition, there was a point in the long series of new forms, each descending from a pre-existing form, at which the manifestations of what we call mind may be said to have begun. This link in the connected chain of organisms occurred where nervous organization began to act with some spontaneous movement, with some power of voluntary exertion, as distinguished from the involuntary exertions of a substance that acted only in a certain and fixed way, although that substance was endowed with life. The substance of nervous organization is alike in all animals. In some it acts in a limited manner, and without volitional control; in others, it acts in more varied modes, and it manifests some power of volitional control and volitional rest, as well as of involuntary movement. But in all animals the substance of which nervous organization is composed—the substance which acts in producing movement, whether voluntary or involuntary—is the same kind of physical structure. In the higher animals, the great nerve-center is the organ called the brain. To this organ proceed the impressions produced upon one set of nerves by external objects, or by light or heat. From the same organ proceed, by another set of nerves, those movements which the animal is endowed with the power of making from within. Contemplating, then, the whole animal kingdom as one great connected family, but divided into different species, all of which have a nervous organization, we find that each species is endowed with the power of generating other individuals of the same species and of the same nervous organization. In the long course of development of the several species, or forms of animal life, there comes about a nervous organization which acts freely within certain limits, but in a fixed and invariable mode, so that the movements are uniformly the same, and not in any proper sense volitional. To such an animal we should not attribute any mind, for mind implies some power of comparison and variation, some ability to act in more than a prescribed way. This animal, which I have just supposed to possess a very limited power of nervous action, transmits that power to its descendants; and in some of the successive generations the power remains always at the same fixed point. But the laws of natural and sexual selection are perpetually operating among those descendants. In progress of time there comes to be developed another organism, which has a wider range of nervous action; and, as this ceaseless process of modification and improvement goes on, there is developed still another nervous organization which acts with still more varied movements. As the different species of animals become evolved out of those that have gone before, the expansion of nervous organization goes on; and as each new and higher and more complex stage is gained, individuals of the species have the power to transmit it to their descendants by ordinary generation. At length, as in some of the mammalia, a nervous organization is attained, whose action exhibits manifestations of what we call mind. There appears to be a power of something like reasoning and volition, because the nervous actions are so various and so much adapted to outward circumstances. Thus, before we reach the human animal, we find nervous organizations widely separated from those of the remote progenitor species, because they can do so much more, and can do it with an apparent power of voluntary variation. At last, this process of modifications accumulating upon modifications culminates in an animal in whose nervous organization we find the freest, the most complex, and the most various power of receiving into his brain the impressions derived from the external world, and of transmitting from his brain to the different organs of his body those movements which the external circumstances of his life, or his internal efforts, cause him to strive for and to effect. This animal was the primeval man.[113]

Looking back, then, to the primal source of all nervous organization, in the remote animal in which the nervous structure and action were at the crudest state of development, and remembering that there was a power of transmitting it to offspring, and that natural and sexual selection were unceasingly operating to expand and perfect it, we may trace the successive stages of its modification and growth, from the lowest to the highest, until we reach in the primeval man the highest development that it had yet attained. But throughout all its stages, from the lowest to the highest, the system of nervous organization and action is the same in kind. We do not call its manifestations or action mind, or speak of them as indicating mind, until we find it developed into a condition of some voluntary activity and power of variation, as it is in many of the animals inferior to man. But in all the animals, man included, mind is the action of the nervous organization when it evinces a superior power of variation; and we speak of the brain of such animals as the seat of mind because that organ is the source to and from which nervous action proceeds.

Let me now illustrate this view by the acquisition of articulate speech and the formation of language. In many of the lower animals with which we are acquainted there is a power of uttering vocal sounds, and of understanding them when uttered by their fellows. It must have been a power possessed by those animals which were the progenitors of man in the long line of descent of one species from another. But in them it was a very limited power. It increased as the nervous organization and the vocal organs became in the successive species capable of a more varied action. The sounds of the external world impressed themselves upon the brains of the primeval men more forcibly than they did upon the brains of the other animals, and excited the nervous organization to reproduce or imitate them. Those emotions and desires which originated in the brain itself—the impressions of pain or the sensations of pleasure experienced in the nervous system—sought expression through the vocal organs. Certain sounds repeated alike by the same individual, or by numerous individuals, for a long time, became associated in their brains with certain feelings or sensations. What are called words were thus formed; which, at first, could have been nothing but the utterance of certain sounds by the vocal organs, expressing the sensations felt by the nervous organization, or the imitations of external noises. At length these vocal sounds are gathered in the memory, multiplied and systematized, and a rude language is formed. But, all the while, the first crude human language was nothing but the result of nervous action excited to greater activity than in the other animals, accompanied by nicer and more capable vocal organs and a greater power of using them. This acquisition, obtained by the primeval men, was transmitted to their descendants as an improved physical organization, and in those descendants it finally reached the marvelous development of the most perfect languages of antiquity.

Let us now retrace our steps back to the time when nervous organization, in the successive generations of the whole animal series regarded as one great family of kindred animals successively developed out of a common stock, began to act in such a way as to evince the presence of what we call mind. Once attained, this improved nervous organization would be transmitted by the parents to new individuals; and so on through countless generations, just as the offspring would inherit the same physical structure as the parents in other respects.

Mental phenomena are the products of nervous organization. We have no means of knowing that mind is an organism or an entity. If it is an existence capable of surviving the death of the body, which evolution neither affirms nor denies, you must go to revelation for the grounds of belief in its immortality. There is no conflict between the evolution theory of the nature of mind and the doctrine of immortality as taught by revealed religion.

Sophereus. I am not disposed to constitute myself a champion of revealed religion. I have lately read in the writings of some well-meaning persons, whose positions and convictions made them anxious about the truths of revelation, expressions of the opinion that there is no necessary conflict between the hypothesis of a revelation and the teachings of evolution. I have been rather surprised by such concessions. But through all our discussions, and throughout all my reflections and inquiries, I have excluded revealed religion from the number of proofs of our immortality. But it seems to me that, as to the possibility of a survival of the mind after the death of the body, you have stated yourself out of court, not because you have propounded something that is inconsistent with revelation, although it certainly is, but because you have made mind to consist in nothing but the action of nervous organization, and when that has perished what can remain? You may say that science does not undertake to determine that mind is or is not a special existence capable of surviving the body. But, observe that you attribute to nervous action the production of phenomena to which you give the name of mind, when the nervous action evinces some power of volitional variation and control. Now, when and where did this begin, in the long series of animal organisms which you assume have been successively evolved out of one another? Remember that, according to the system of evolution, there are supposed to have been countless forms of animal organisms, graduating by slow improvements into higher and higher organisms. Where and when and what was the first animal that possessed a nervous organization which would manifest the power of variation in so marked a degree as to render it proper to speak of the animal as possessing or evincing mind? Are not the works of naturalists of the evolution school filled with comparisons of the minds of different animals, and do they not contend that in many of them there are manifestations of mental power, of the exercise of reason and comparison, and a volitional action according to varying circumstances? Did, then, these manifestations of something like mental power begin in the anthropomorphous ape from whom we are supposed to be descended, or who is supposed to be of kin to us? Or did it begin in any one and which of the innumerable intermediate forms between that ape-like creature and the primeval man? And when once this improved and improving nervous organization had been developed and put into a condition to be transmitted to descendants, until in the primeval man it had attained its highest development, what was it but a more sensitive, more various, and complex condition of the substance of which all nervous tissues are composed? And when these tissues are decomposed and resolved into their original material elements, where and what is the mind, whether of man or beast? It is nowhere and nothing, unless you suppose that the improved and improving action of the nervous organization at last developed an existence which is not in itself material or physical, and which may be imperishable and indestructible, while the material and physical organs by and through which it acts for a time perish daily in our sight. If this is a possible, it is a very improbable hypothesis, because the nature of the human mind points to a very different origin.

I surely do not need to tell you that like produces like. If the mind of man is now a spiritual essence, it is a wild conjecture to suppose that it was generated out of the action of a material substance, in whatever animal, or supposed species of animal, its genesis is imagined to have begun. We must therefore determine, from all the evidence within our reach, whether the mind is a spiritual existence. If it is, it is not difficult to reach a rational conclusion that its Creator contrived a means of connecting it for a season with the bodily organs, and made the generative production of each new individual body at the same time give birth to a new individual mind, whenever a new child is born into the world. We can not discover the nature of the connection, or the process by which generative production of a new body becomes also generative production of a new mind. These are mysteries that are hidden from us. But the fact of the connection—the simultaneous production of the new body and the new mind—is a fact that the birth of every child demonstrates. Whether the union takes place at any time before birth, or whether it is only at birth that the mind, the spiritual essence, comes into existence, and so may become capable of an endless life, we can not know. But that this occurs at some time in the history of every human being, we are justified in saying that we know.

I shall now contrast your hypothesis of the origin of the human mind with another and a very different one; and, in stating it, I shall borrow nothing from the Mosaic account of the creation of Adam and Eve. I shall not assert, on the authority of Moses, that God breathed into Adam a living soul, for that would be to resort to a kind of evidence which, for the present, I mean to avoid, and which would bring into consideration the nature of the means by which the Hebrew historian was informed of the fact which he relates, and which he could have known in no other way. It would also give rise to a question of what was meant by "a living soul." But I shall assume that there is a spiritual and a material world; that a spiritual existence is one thing and a material existence is another. I shall assume that there is a spiritual world, because all our commonest experience, our introspection and consciousness, our observation of what the human mind can do, its operations and its productions, its capacity to originate thought and to send it down the course of ages, its power to recognize and obey a moral law as a divine command, the monuments of every kind which attest that it is something which is not matter or material substance, prove to us that the human mind is essentially a spiritual existence; and that while it acts and must act by and through bodily organs, so long as it acts in this world, it is a being quite distinct from all the physical substance and physical organism with which it is connected for a time. Physiology alone can teach us this much at least, that mind is not matter; and experience, consciousness, and observation teach us that while the action of the mind may be suspended for a time when the nervous organization can not normally act, from disease or injury, the mind itself is not destroyed, but its action may be restored with the restoration of the brain to its normal condition.

I am going to assume another thing—the existence of the Creator, the Supreme Governor of the universe, having under his control the whole realms of the spiritual and the material world; alike capable of giving existence to spiritual entities and to material organisms, and capable of uniting them by any connection and for any purpose that might seem to him good. I shall assume this, because some of you evolutionists concede, if I understand rightly, the existence and capacities of the Supreme Being, since you assume, and rightly, that the whole question relates to his methods; and you believe that he chose the method of evolution instead of the method of special creation for all the types of animal life excepting the aboriginal and created lowest form, out of which all the others have been evolved. With these two assumptions, then, the nature of a spiritual existence, and the existence and capacities of the Creator, I now state to you the opposite hypothesis of the origin and nature of the human mind.

A pair of human beings, male and female, is created by the hand and will of the Almighty; and to each is given a physical organism, and a spiritual, intellectual self, or mind, which is endowed with consciousness and capable of thought. Why is this a rational supposition, aside from any evidence of the fact derived from its assertion by an inspired or a divinely instructed witness? It is so, because, when this aboriginal pair of human creatures fulfill the law of their being, by the procreation of other creatures of the same kind, the offspring must be supposed to possess whatever the parents possessed of peculiar and characteristic organization. This law of transmission is stamped upon all the forms of organic life; and we may well apply it to the first pair of human beings. Its operation must have begun in them and their offspring. Every law that proceeded from the will of the Supreme Being began to operate at some time; and this law, like all others, must have been put in operation by the Creator at some definite period. He created in the first pair a bodily organization, and he created in each of them the spiritual entity that we now call mind, and established its connection with their bodily organs. He established in them also the power of procreating offspring; and this included the production of a new individual of the same species, in whom would be united, by the same mysterious bond, the same kind of physical organization and the same kind of spiritual or intellectual existence, which is not matter, and could not have been generated out of matter alone. The beginning of this connection of body and mind in the first parents was an occasional and special exercise of the divine power. It was not a miraculous exercise of power, because a miracle, in the proper sense, implies some action aside from a previously established course of things. It was simply a first exercise of the power in the case of the creation of the first human pair; that is, it was the establishment in them, specially, of the union of the body and soul. Its repetition in the offspring, for all time, and through successive generations, was left to the operation of the laws of procreation and heredity. The nature and operation of those laws are wrapped in mystery; but about the fact of their existence, and of the compound procreation of a new body and a new mind at every new birth, there can be no doubt whatever.

It seems to me that this hypothesis has in its favor a vast preponderance of probability, because—

1. The generation of mind or spirit out of matter is inconceivable.

2. The creation of mind by the Almighty is just as conceivable as his creation of a material organism; and the latter is conceded by all naturalists who admit that there was a first animal organism; and even some of the evolutionists hold that the first animal organism was directly fashioned by the Creator, although all the succeeding organisms were formed, as they contend, by natural and sexual selection.

3. The nature of mind—of the human mind—is the same in all individuals of the race. They may differ in mental power, but they all possess an intellectual principle that is the same in kind. To the production of mind, or its formation, the process of evolution was not necessary. Not only was it unnecessary, but in the nature of things it was not adapted to do what it is supposed to have done in the production of physical organisms. To suppose that the Creator, instead of the direct exercise of his power of creation, left it to the material laws of natural and sexual selection to produce a mind, is to suppose him to have resorted to a method that was both unnecessary and indirect, and was furthermore incapable of effecting that kind of product. In reasoning about the methods of the Creator, it is certainly irrational to suppose him to have resorted to one that was so ill adapted to the accomplishment of his object. In the accomplishment of some physical objects, we may well suppose that they have been brought about by physical agencies that have operated very slowly and indirectly; and we can see that this has often been the case in regard to many material products. But for the production of mind, for the accomplishment of a spiritual existence, there can be imagined no secondary agencies, no gradual growth out of antecedent existences or substances, no evolution out of some other and that other a material organism. The first mind, the first human soul, must have come direct from the hand and will of God. The succeeding minds may well have been left to owe their existence to the laws of procreation, by a process which we can not understand, but of which we have proof in the birth of every child that has been born of woman.

Kosmicos. We now have the two hypotheses of the origin and nature of the human mind fairly before us; and here I must point out to you wherein you do injustice to my side of the question. In the first place, your assumption of one pair of progenitors of the human race from whom have diverged all the varieties of the race, does not encounter the evolution process of man's descent as an animal. It is either an arbitrary assumption, or it is derived from the Mosaic account of the creation, which, in a scientific point of view, and aside from the supposed authority of that story, is just as arbitrary an assumption as if the book of Genesis had never existed. Take, therefore, Darwin's hypothesis of the zoölogical series: First, a fish-like animal, of course inhabiting the water; next, the amphibians, capable of living in the water and on the land; next, the ancient marsupials; next, the quadrumana and all the higher mammals, among whom are to be classed the Simiadæ or monkeys; and out of these came the hairy, tailed quadruped, arboreal in its habits, from which man is descended. This long line of descent is filled with diversified forms, intermediate between the several principal forms which are known to us, and which were successively the progenitors of man. Now, hear Darwin on the subject of one pair of progenitors:

"But since he [man] attained to the rank of manhood he has diverged into distinct races, or, as they may be more fitly called, sub-species. Some of these, such as the negro and European, are so distinct that, if specimens had been brought to a naturalist without any further information, they would undoubtedly have been considered by him as good and true species. Nevertheless, all the races agree in so many unimportant details of structure and in so many mental peculiarities, that these can be accounted for only by inheritance from a common progenitor; and a progenitor thus characterized would probably deserve to rank as man. It must not be supposed that the divergence of each race from the other races, and of all from a common stock, can be traced back to any one pair of progenitors. On the contrary, at every stage in the process of modification all the individuals which were in any way better fitted for their conditions of life, though in different degrees, would have survived in greater numbers than the less well fitted. The process would have been like that followed by man, when he does not intentionally select particular individuals, but breeds from all the superior individuals and neglects the inferior. He thus slowly but surely modifies his stock, and unconsciously forms a new strain. So with respect to modifications acquired independently of selection, and due to variations arising from the nature of the organism and the action of the surrounding conditions, or from changed habits of life, no single pair will have been modified much more than the other pairs inhabiting the same country, for all will have been continually blended through free intercrossing."[114]

The meaning of this is that if you go back to the period when an animal, by the slow process of modification which was continually operating among the preceding organisms, had been raised to the present state of man, and then follow out the divergencies into the distinct races of men, those divergencies would not have occurred in consequence of any one pair having been modified much more than the other pairs inhabiting the same country, but all the individuals would have undergone a continually blending process through unrestrained intercrossing; and those individuals of both sexes, who became in a superior degree fitted for their conditions of life, would have survived in greater numbers than the less well fitted, and would have transmitted to their posterity those peculiarities which tended at last to produce different races of the human family. So that the notion of a single pair of the negro variety, or of a single pair of the Caucasian variety, formed and completed as an independent stock, is not necessary to account for these varieties.

To apply this, now, to the slow production of man's intellectual faculties, we must, if we would do justice to Darwin's hypothesis of the method in which he was developed as an animal, bear in mind that his mental powers, like his animal structure, have been the necessary acquirement of new powers and capacities by gradation, through the perpetual process of modification, and retention and transmission of the new acquisitions. Darwin, indeed, does not professedly undertake the genealogy of the human mind; but he appears to hold the opinion that in future psychology will be based on the gradual acquisition of each mental power and capacity, as distinguished from their complete production in any one pair, or in any one being; and he refers to Herbert Spencer as having already securely laid the foundation for this new psychology.[115]

I take, therefore, the great English naturalist as the person who has most satisfactorily explained the origin of man as an animal, and the great English philosopher as the person who has propounded the most satisfactory theory of the origin of the human mind. The two hypotheses run parallel to and support each other. Man, as respects his mere animal structure, is an organism developed by a slow process of modification out of preceding organisms. His mental faculties have one by one grown out of the operation of the same physical agencies that have formed his animal structure, and they have not been bestowed at once upon any one pair, or upon any one individual of the race. After they have all been acquired, as we now know and recognize them, they have descended to the successive generations of the race.

Sophereus. I have studied Mr. Spencer's "System of Psychology," but I do not know whether we understand it alike. You say that he has propounded the most satisfactory theory of the origin of mind. Assuming that mind was evolved as an aggregate of powers and capacities, slowly acquired, pari passu with the evolution of the animal organism, be good enough to tell me whether Mr. Spencer does or does not conclude that mind is anything more than an aggregate of powers and capacities of the nervous organization. I am quite aware of the mode in which he meets the charge of materialism; but waiving for the present the question of materialism, I should be glad to know, according to your understanding of his philosophy, what he considers mind to be.

Kosmicos. To answer your question requires an analysis of Spencer's "Principles of Psychology." You have here on your table the third edition of that work, which received his latest corrections and additions.[116] If you look at the preface of this edition, you will see that, as between Realism and Idealism, he enunciates a view which recognizes an element of truth in each, but rejects the rest. By this "Transfigured Realism" he aims to conciliate what is true in Realism with what is true in Idealism; and it is by this conciliation that he answers the partisans of both systems, who will not sacrifice any part of their respective doctrines. It is important for you to remember this in judging of his psychological system. He begins by a description of the structure and functions of the nervous system, and the nature of nervous actions. Without repeating in all its minute details the structure which he describes, it is enough to say that in all animals, from the lowest to the highest, this peculiar part of the organism which we call the nervous system is composed of two tissues which differ considerably from those composing the rest of the organism. In color they are distinguished from one another as gray and white, and in their minute structures as vesicular and fibrous. In the gray tissue, the vesicles or corpuscles contain a soft protein substance, with granules imbedded in it, consisting of fatty matter. The more developed of these nerve-corpuscles give off branching processes, and the terminations of nerve-fibers are distributed among them. The white tissue is composed of minute tubes containing a medullary substance or pulp, viscid like oil. Imbedded in this pulp, which fills the tubes, there lies a delicate fiber or axis-cylinder, which is uniform and continuous instead of having its continuity broken by fat-granules. This central thread is the essential nerve; and the sheath of medullary matter, and its surrounding membranous sheath, are only its accessories. While, therefore, the matter of nerve-fiber has much in common with the matter of nerve-vesicle, in the latter the protein substance contains more water, is mingled with fat-granules, and forms part of an unstable mass; whereas in the former, the nerve-tube, the protein substance, is denser, is distinct from the fatty compounds that surround it, and so presents an arrangement that is relatively stable.

Conceive, then, of this interlaced physical structure extending throughout the whole organism as a kind of circular mechanism, having its periphery at the surface of the body and limbs, ramifying among and into the internal organs, with various nerve-centers distributed through the interior mechanism, and the one great nerve-center in the brain. Conceive of this structure, further, as fed continually by the blood-vessels, which repair its waste of tissue and keep it in proper tone and activity. Then imagine it as first put in operation in some animal in whom it has become developed as we now know it in ourselves, and let that animal stand as the primeval man, who has become, by inherited transmission of gradual accumulations, possessed of this consummate development of nervous organization. You can then observe the method of its action, and can perceive how mind became developed, and what it is.

What I have now given you is only a general description of the structure of the nervous mechanism, and in order to understand its functions, we may take it up, in an individual, at a point of time when it had not experienced a single movement or change from a state of rest, but when it was completely fitted to act. Observe, then, that its action will consist in the origination and accomplishment of motion; or, in other words, in molecular change of the substance composing the nerves, which, for illustration only, may be likened to the conductor through which the molecular disturbance passes which is popularly, but not scientifically, called the electric fluid. At the surface of the body and limbs, the external termini of the nerves are exposed to disturbance by contact with an external object. Along the highly sensitive and minute conductor, the nerve which has by contact with an external object at its outer extremity received a slight shock, there passes through the fluid or semi-fluid substance of the nerve a wave of disturbance, or a succession of such waves. This disturbance reaches the brain, the great nerve-center, where it becomes a feeling. In this way is generated the feeling of contact with an external object, and this is what is commonly called the sense of touch, which is simply a feeling produced in the great nerve-center of the brain. Now, to reverse the process, let us suppose that this feeling, caused by touching an external object, provokes or excites a desire to remove that object, or to get rid of the continuance of the feeling, and to be without the irritation or pain which it is causing. From the central seat of nervous action, the brain, along another nerve, there proceeds a wave, or a series of waves, in the fluid or semi-fluid substance of which the conductor of that nerve is composed, and motion is communicated to some muscle or set of muscles, which need to be put in motion in order to break the contact with the external object. In like manner, all internal organs of the body, the viscera, are supplied with a system of nerves connected with the great nerve-center. If a disturbance arises in one of the viscera, some action that is abnormal, a sensation that is called pain is produced. So, too, in regard to the normal action of the viscera, kept up by involuntary movements—those movements originate in and are transmitted from the nerve-center, by waves in the fluid or semi-fluid substance of which the special nerves are composed, whose office it is to cause the necessary movements in the muscular substance, or the tissue, of the particular organ.

In this way began, in the supposed individual, those simpler states of feeling which pain or irritation produced in the nervous system, and those other involuntary movements which were essential to the normal and unconscious action of the viscera. These varying conditions of the highly sensitive nervous system, which constitute and are rightly denominated feelings, were constantly repeated; and, so far as they are capable of becoming a part of consciousness, that consciousness is a repetition of the same nervous actions many times over. Pass, then, from the feelings called sensations to the feelings called emotions, and it will be found that while both are states of nervous action, the former are peripherally initiated and the latter are centrally initiated. The meaning of this is that a sensation is an effect produced at the nerve-center by the transmission, from the outer terminus of a particular nerve, of the waves in the fluid or semi-fluid substance of the nerve. The strong forms of feeling called sensations are peripherally initiated, and the feelings called emotions are centrally initiated. Now, any feeling of any kind is directly known by each person in no other place than his own consciousness; and the question is, Of what is consciousness composed? In order to afford an answer to this question, Mr. Spencer proceeds to examine the substance of mind, and then passes to a consideration of the composition of mind. These are not the same thing; for, if there be no such thing, properly speaking, as the substance of mind, its composition, or its nature, must be looked for in another way. The expression "substance of mind," if used in any way but that in which we use the x of an algebraic equation, has no meaning. If we undertake to interpret mind in the terms of matter, as crude materialism does, we are at once brought to this result, that we know, and can know, nothing of the ultimate substance of either. We know matter only as forms of certain units; but the ultimate unit, of which the ultimate homogeneous units are probably composed, must remain absolutely unknown. In like manner, if mind consists of homogeneous units of feeling, the ultimate unit, as a substance, must remain unknown. When, therefore, we think of the substance of mind, the simplest form under which we can think of it is nothing but a symbol of something that can never be rendered into thought, just as the concept we form to ourselves of matter is but the symbol of some form of power absolutely and forever unknown to us, as the representation of all objective activities in terms of motion is only a symbolic representation, and not a knowledge of them. Symbols of unknown forms of existence, whether in the case of matter, motion, or mind, are mere representations which do not determine anything about the ultimate substance of either. "Our only course is constantly to recognize our symbols as symbols only, and to rest content with that duality of them which our constitution necessitates. The unknowable as manifested to us within the limits of consciousness in the shape of feeling, being no less inscrutable than the unknowable as manifested beyond the limits of consciousness in other shapes, we approach no nearer to understanding the last by rendering it into the first."[117]

Discarding, then, the expression "substance of mind," excepting as a mere symbol, Mr. Spencer passes to the "composition of mind"; and here we reach his explanation of mind as an evolution traceable through ascending stages of composition, conformably to the laws of evolution in general, so that the composition of mind, as something evolved out of simple elements, does not need or involve a symbolical representation in the terms of matter.

The method of composition, by which the whole fabric of mind is constituted, from the formation of its simplest feelings up to the formation of the complex aggregates of feelings which are its highest developments, can now be sketched. A sensation is formed by the consolidation of successive units of feeling; but the feelings called sensations can not of themselves constitute mind, even when many of different kinds are present together. When, however, each sensation, as it occurs, is linked in association with the faint forms of previous sensations of the same kind, mind is constituted; for, by the consolidation of successive sensations, there is formed a knowledge of the particular sensation as a distinct subject of what we call thought, or the smallest separable portion of thought as distinguished from mere confused sentiency. Thus, as the primitive units of feeling are compounded into sensations, by the same method simple sensations, and the relations among them, are compounded into states of definite consciousness. The next highest stage of mental composition is a repetition of the same process. Take a special object, which produces in us a vivid cluster of related sensations. When these are united with the faint forms of like clusters that have been before produced by such objects, we know the object. Knowledge of it is the assimilation of the combined group of real feelings which it excites, with one or more preceding ideal groups which were once excited by objects of the same kind; and, when the series of ideal groups is large, the knowledge is clear. In the same way, by the connections between each special cluster of related sensations produced by one object, and the special clusters generated by other objects, a wider knowledge is obtained. By assimilating the more or less complex relations exhibited in the actions of things in space and time, with other such complex relations, knowledge of the powers and habits of things is constituted. If we can not so assimilate them, or parts of them, we have no knowledge of their actions. So it is, without definite limit, through those tracts of higher consciousness which are formed of clusters of clusters of feelings held together by extremely involved relations. This law of the composition of mind is, therefore, the assimilation of real feelings and groups of real feelings with the ideal feelings or ideal groups of feelings which objects of the same kind once produced. You can follow out, without my assistance, the correspondence which Mr. Spencer exhibits between the views of mental composition and the general truths respecting nervous structure and nervous functions with which he began the treatment of mind, which consists largely, and in one sense entirely, of feelings. The inferior tracts of consciousness are constituted by feelings; and the feelings are the materials out of which are constituted the superior tracts of consciousness, and thus intellect is evolved by structural combination. "Everywhere feeling is the substance of which, when it is present, intellect is the form. And where intellect is not present, or but little present, mind consists of feelings that are unformed or but little formed."[118] Does not this statement, which in substance is Mr. Spencer's explanation of the formation of mind, explain to you why he denominates it "transfigured realism"?

Sophereus. I have attentively and carefully read Mr. Spencer's book from which you have made this partial analysis of his view of the nature of mind, but whether it is realism "transfigured," or whatever is, I think it must be admitted that its basis is a truly realistic one; for it comes back at last to just what I suggested to you at the beginning of this discussion, that mind, according to his view, is constituted by the action of the nervous system, or, in other words, that mind consists of the phenomena of movements which take place in a physical structure. If this is all that can be predicated of mind, it is not something that can have an independent and continuous existence after the dissolution of the physical structure called the nervous system. That structure is one that is analogous in its action to the other part of the organism by which digestion, or the assimilation of food, is carried on. We might as well suppose that by the action of the digestive system there has been constituted a something which will remain as a digestive function after the organs of digestion have perished, as to suppose that the action of the nervous system has constituted a something which will remain mind, a conscious and independent existence, after the nervous system has been resolved into its original material elements. Indeed, I do not understand Mr. Spencer's philosophy as including, providing for, or leading to, any possible continued existence of the mind after the death of the body. He seems to exclude it altogether. There is a passage at the end of one of his chapters which appears to be a summary of his whole philosophic scheme, and which is one of the dreariest conclusions I have ever met with. "Once more," he says, "we are brought round to the conclusion repeatedly reached by other routes, that behind all manifestations, inner and outer, there is a Power manifested. Here, as before, it has become clear that while the nature of this Power can not be known, while we lack the faculty of forming even the dimmest conception of it, yet its universal presence is the absolute fact without which there can be no relative facts. Every feeling and thought being but transitory, an entire life made up of such feelings and thoughts being also but transitory, nay, the objects amid which life is passed, though less transitory, being severally in course of losing their individualities quickly or slowly; we learn that the one thing permanent is the Unknowable Reality hidden under all these changing shapes."[119]

I will not say that the mournful character of this hopelessness of human destiny is proof of its unsoundness. I have accustomed myself to accept results, whatever may be the gloom in which they involve us, provided they are deductions of sound reasoning; and our wishes or hopes can not change the constitution of the universe or become important evidence for or against any view of what that constitution is. But let me ask, what does this philosopher mean by the transitory character of an entire life made up of transitory feelings and thoughts, occupied throughout their continuance with transitory objects, or objects which are quickly or slowly losing their individualities? What possible room does he leave for the development and discipline of an immortal being, supposing that man is an immortal being, by an entire life passed in feelings, thoughts, and action about objects which, relatively to the individual, may, quickly or slowly, pass away from him? Or, what room does he allow for the effect on such a being of an entire life spent in the pursuit of objects or the enjoyment of pleasures which develop only his baser nature and unfit him for anything else? In any scheme of philosophy which omits to regard this life as a preparatory school for some other life, it seems to me that something is left out which ought to be included, and which ought to be included for the very reason that the evidence which tends to show that mind is not constituted as Mr. Spencer supposes, but that it is an existence of a special character, not generated by the action of a physical structure, but deriving its existence from the direct action of the creating Power, is so strong that, if we leave this conclusion out of the hypothesis, we shall have left out the strongest probabilities of the case. It is no answer to the necessity for including this conclusion to say that there is a power which we can not know, or an Unknowable Reality hidden under all changing manifestations, among which are those of mind. A study of those manifestations leads rightly to some conclusions respecting the Power which underlies all manifestations. It is necessary, therefore, to subject Mr. Spencer's philosophy of mind to the further inquiry, How does he account for the moral sense? How does he explain that part of consciousness which recognizes moral obligations—the recognition of moral law and duty? We may easily dispense with the phrase "substance of the mind," if we wish to avoid a term of matter; but if mind is constituted by the perception of feelings excited in the nervous system, what is it that perceives? Is there a something that is reached by the feelings which constitute sensations in the great nerve-center, which takes cognizance of them, which combines them into portions of consciousness, or is consciousness nothing but a succession of sensations, and if so, what is "thought"? And what is that portion of thought which takes cognizance of moral duty, and which shows man to be capable of recognizing and obeying or breaking a moral law? I have somewhere read a suggestion that the polity which is said to have been given to the Hebrew people on the Mount of Sinai, and which is described as ten statutes written on two tablets of stone, consisted of five laws on one tablet and five on the other; one set of them expressing the relations of the Hebrews to the Deity, and the other being the fundamental laws of the social life which the Hebrews were commanded to lead. This division is not accurate, because the commandments which express the relations of the Hebrews to the Deity are four in number, and the commandments which were to constitute their social law are six. But that there is a line of demarkation between the two kinds of laws is obvious, and how they were written on the tablets, or whether they were written at all, is immaterial. Looking, then, first at the social law, whether there was more or less of the same ethical character in the codes of other ancient peoples, or whether the social law which is said to have been delivered to Moses and by him communicated to his nation stands as an embodiment of morality unequaled by anything that had preceded it, it is certain that it found the Hebrew people capable of the idea of law as a divine command. It is true that the corner-stone of the whole superstructure is to be found in the fact that the several commands which constituted this social code—"Honor thy father and thy mother," "Thou shalt do no murder," "Thou shalt not commit adultery," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor," "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house," etc.—were addressed to a people to whose representatives the Almighty is supposed to have revealed himself amid "thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud, and all the people that were in the camp [below] trembled." It is also true that the first of these awful annunciations was said to have been, "I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before [or beside] me."[120] So that the source whence all the following commands proceeded was the one and only God, who is described as having thus revealed himself in fire and cloud and earthquake, and thus to have secured instant and implicit faith in what he spoke. But what he is asserted to have said was addressed to human minds. This is in one aspect the most important fact in the whole Hebrew history. It makes no difference whether Moses performed a piece of jugglery, or whether he actually went within the fire and the cloud, and actually spoke with God and received his commands. The indisputable truth remains that the individual minds of the Hebrew people, whom Moses had led out of Egypt, received and obeyed, as divine commands, an original and unique moral code, because they were so constituted that they could embrace and act upon the idea of law emanating from another than an earthly or a human source. What, then, was this constitution of the human mind, that could thus receive and act upon a divine command; and what is it now? It matters not, in the view in which I ask this question, whether there was any deceit practiced or not, or whether there is any practiced now in respect to the authority giving the command. What is to be accounted for is the capacity of the human mind to embrace and accept the idea of a moral law, be it that of Moses, or of Christ, or of Mohammed.

Kosmicos. I am glad that you put this matter of the ten commandments hypothetically, because otherwise we might have been led aside into an argument about the authenticity of the narrative. I recognize, however, the bearing of the question which you have put, and shall endeavor to answer it. Your question implies that the essential constitution of the human mind has been the same in all ages; that it was the same in this race of nomads, who had been, they and their fathers for ages, serfs of the Egyptian kings, that it is in us. Perhaps this assumption may be allowed; and, at all events, the real question is, How did the idea of a moral law originate, and what is the sense of moral obligation? Like all things else, it is a product of the process of evolution. I shall not argue this by any elaborate reasoning, but will proceed to state the grounds on which it rests. I will first give you what I understand to be Darwin's view of the origin of the habit of thinking and feeling, which we call the moral sense. Primeval man must have existed in a state of barbarism. When he had become developed out of some pre-existing animal, he was a mere savage, distinguishable from his predecessors only by the possession of some superior degree of mental power. Savages, like some other animals, form themselves into tribes or bands. Certain social instincts arise, out of which spring what are regarded as virtues. Individuals of the tribe begin to desire the sympathy and approbation of their fellows. They perceive that certain actions, such as protection of other and weaker individuals against danger, gain for them the sympathy and approbation of the tribe. There are thus formed some ideas of the common advantage to the tribe of certain actions, and of the common disadvantage of the opposite actions. Man is eminently a social animal, and this desire for the sympathy and approbation of his tribe, and this fear of their disapprobation, is so strong that the individual savage is led to perceive that the common good of the tribe is the object at which he must aim to conform. The first social instincts, therefore, are those which perceive the relations between certain kinds of conduct and the common good of the tribe; and out of these relations, with the aid of increasing intellectual powers, is developed the golden rule, "As ye would that men should do to you, do ye to them likewise," which lies at the foundation of morality. These social instincts, thus leading at last to the great rule of social morality, are developed very slowly. They are at first confined to the benefit of the same tribe, and they have no force in the relations of that tribe to the members of any other. To a savage it is a highly meritorious action to save the life of another member of his own tribe, and if he loses his own life in the effort it is so much the more meritorious. But he does not extend this idea of doing a good action to the members of a different tribe, and, whether his own tribe is or is not at war with the other tribe, he and his own community will think it no harm if he murders a member of that other tribe. But as the approach to civilization goes on—as man advances in intellectual power, and can trace the more remote consequences of his actions, and as he rejects baneful customs and superstitions, he begins to regard more and more not only the welfare but the happiness of his fellow-men. Habit, resulting from beneficial experiences, instruction and example, renders his sympathies more tender and widely diffused, until at last he extends them to men of all races, to the imbecile, maimed, and other useless members of society, and to the inferior animals. Thus the standard of morality rises higher and higher; but its origin is in the social instincts, which spring out of the love of approbation and the fear of disapprobation.[121]

But morality comprehends also the self-regarding virtues, those which directly affect the individual, and which affect society but remotely and incidentally. How did the idea of these originate? There is a very wide difference between the morality of savages, in respect to the self-regarding virtues, and the morality of civilized nations. Among the former, the greatest intemperance, utter licentiousness, and unnatural crimes are very common. But as soon as marriage was introduced, whether monogamous or polygamous, jealousy led to the inculcation of female virtue; and this, being honored, spread to the unmarried females. Chastity, the hatred of indecency, temperance, and many other self-regarding virtues, originating first in the social instincts, have come to be highly prized by civilized nations as affecting, first, the welfare of the community, and, secondly, the welfare of the individual. This was the origin of the so-called "moral sense." It rejects the intuitive theory of morality, and bases its origin on the increasing perception of the advantage of certain conduct to the community and the individual.[122]

Sophereus. And in this origin of the social and the self-regarding virtues, which I understand you to say is the theory of Darwin, is the idea of a divine command to practice certain things, and to avoid doing certain other things, left out?

Kosmicos. The idea of a divine command, as the source of morality, is not necessary to the explanation of the mode in which the social or the self-regarding virtues were gradually developed. In the progress from barbarism to civilization, what is called the moral sense has been slowly developed as an increasing perception of what is beneficial, and this has become an inherited faculty. We thus have a sure scientific basis for the moral intuitions which we do not individually stay to analyze when we are called upon to determine the morality or the immorality of certain actions. The supposed divine command is something that is aside from the process by which the idea of morality or immorality became developed.

Sophereus. And is this also Mr. Spencer's philosophy of the moral sense?

Kosmicos. Let me read you what Spencer says: "I believe that the experience of utility, organized and consolidated through all past generations of the human race, has been producing corresponding modifications which, by continued transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition—certain emotions responding to right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility."[123] I have emphasized certain words in this passage in order to make its meaning distinct. Mr. Spencer's theory is that we have certain faculties of moral intuition, which have become such by transmission and accumulation; that the original ideas of right and wrong sprang from perceptions of utility; and that when to the individual the question of a good or a bad action in others or himself is now presented, he feels an emotion which responds to right or wrong conduct, and feels it in the faculty which he has inherited from ancestors, without referring it to his individual experience of the utility or inutility of certain conduct.

Now, in regard to the divine command as the origin of our ideas of right and wrong, if you turn to Mr. Spencer's "Principles of Sociology," you will find an immense collection of evidence which shows the genesis of deities of all kinds. Beginning with the ideas formed by the primitive men of souls, ghosts, spirits, and demons, the ideas of another life and of another world, there came about the ideas of supernatural beings, aided in their development by ancestor-worship, idol-worship, fetich-worship, animal-worship, plant-worship, and nature-worship. Hence came the ideas of deities of various kinds, one class of which is that of the human personality greatly disguised, and the other is the class which has arisen by simple idealization and expansion of the human personality. The last class, although always coexisting with the other, at length becomes predominant, and finally there is developed the idea of one chief or supreme deity. Having traced the origin of this idea of a supreme deity, Mr. Spencer puts and answers this question: "While among all races and all regions, from the earliest times down to the most recent, the conceptions of deities have been naturally evolved in the way shown, must we conclude that a small clan of the Semitic race had given to it, supernaturally, a conception which, though superficially like the rest, was in substance absolutely unlike them?"[124] He then proceeds to show that the Hebrew Jehovah, or God, was a conception that had a kindred genesis with all the other conceptions of a deity or deities. "Here," he says, "pursuing the methods of science, and disregarding foregone conclusions, we must deal with the Hebrew conception in the same manner as with all the others." Dealing with it by the scientific method, he shows that behind the supernatural being of the order of the Hebrew God, as behind the supernatural beings of all other orders, there has in every case been a human personality. Thus, taking the narrative as it has come down to us of God's dealing with Abraham, he shows that what Abraham thought, or is described as thinking by those who preserved the tradition, was of a terrestrial ruler who could, like any other earthly potentate, make a covenant with him about land or anything else, or that he was the maker of all things, and that Abraham believed the earth and the heavens were produced by one who eats and drinks, and feels weary after walking. Upon either idea, Abraham's conception of a Deity remains identical with that of his modern Semitic representative, and with that of the uncivilized in general. But the ideas of Deity entertained by cultivated people, instead of being innate, arise only at a comparatively advanced stage, as results of accumulated knowledge, greater intellectual grasp, and higher sentiment.[125]

To return now to the supposed divine command as the origin of morality, it is obvious that the conception of the being who has uttered the command makes the nature of the command partake of the attributes ascribed to that being. Accordingly, the grossest superstitions, the most revolting practices, the most immoral actions, have found their sanction in what the particular deity who is believed in is supposed to have inculcated or required. I do not need to enumerate to you the proofs of this, or to tell you that the Hebrew God is no exception to it. One illustration of it, however, is worth repeating. Speaking of the ceremony by which the covenant between God and Abraham is said to have been established, Mr. Spencer says: "Abraham and each of his male descendants, and each of his slaves, is circumcised. The mark of the covenant, observe, is to be borne not only by Abraham and those of his blood, but also by those of other blood whom he has bought. The mark is a strange one, and the extension of it is a strange one, if we assume it to be imposed by the Creator of the universe, as a mark on a favored man and his descendants; and on this assumption it is no less strange that the one transgression for which every 'soul shall be cut off' is, not any crime, but the neglect of this rite. But such a ceremony insisted on by a living potentate, under penalty of death, is not strange, for, as we shall hereafter see, circumcision is one of various mutilations imposed as marks on subject persons by terrestrial superiors."[126]

So that the Hebrew God who made the covenant with Abraham was not, in Abraham's own conception, the First Cause of all things, or a supernatural being, but he was a powerful human ruler, making an agreement with a shepherd chief. In all religions, the things required or commanded by the supposed deified person have been marked by the characteristics of human rulers; and as a source of morality, or as a standard of morality, the requirements or commands of the deified person, however they are supposed to have been communicated, fail to answer the indispensable condition of a fixed and innate system of morality, which is that it must have proceeded from the Creator of the universe, and not from a being who partakes of human passions, infirmities, and desires, and is merely a deified human potentate.

Pass, now, to Mr. Spencer's "Principles of Morality"; and although but one volume of this work has been as yet published, we may see that he is entirely consistent with what he has said in his "Sociology" and his other writings.[127] He does not leave us in any doubt as to his theory of morals. It appears, from the preface to his "Data of Ethics," that he has been compelled by ill-health to deviate from the plan which he had mapped out for himself, and to publish one volume of his "Principles of Morality" before completing his "Principles of Sociology." But while we have reason for his sake and for the sake of the world to regret this, we can easily understand his system of morality. He means to rest the rules of right conduct on a scientific basis, and he shows that this is a pressing need. In his preface, he says:

I am the more anxious to indicate in outline, if I can not complete, this final proof, because the establishment of rules of right conduct on a scientific basis is a pressing need. Now that moral injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred origin, the secularization of morals is becoming imperative. Few things can happen more disastrous than the decay and death of a regulative system no longer fit, before another and fitter regulative system has grown up to replace it. Most of those who reject the current creed appear to assume that the controlling agency furnished by it may be safely thrown aside, and the vacancy left unfilled by any other controlling agency. Meanwhile, those who defend the current creed allege that, in the absence of the guidance it yields, no guidance can exist; divine commandments they think the only possible guides. Thus, between these extreme opponents there is a certain community. The one holds that the gap left by disappearance of the code of supernatural ethics need not be filled by a code of natural ethics; and the other holds that it can not be so filled. Both contemplate a vacuum, which the one wishes and the other fears. As the change which promises or threatens to bring about this state, desired or dreaded, is rapidly progressing, those who believe that the vacuum can be filled are called upon to do something in pursuance of their belief.

The code of natural ethics which Mr. Spencer propounds, and which is a product of the process of evolution, may be summarized as follows: Conduct is an aggregate of actions which are not purposeless, but which include all acts that are adjusted to ends, from the simplest to the most complex. The division or aspect of conduct with which ethics deals, the behavior we call good or bad, is a part of an organic whole; but, although inextricably bound up with acts which are neither good nor bad, it is distinguishable as comprehending those acts with which morality is concerned. The evolution of conduct, from the simplest and most indifferent actions up to those on which ethical judgments are passed, is what Mr. Spencer means by the scientific method of investigating the origin of morality. We must begin with the conduct of all living creatures, because the complete comprehension of conduct is not to be obtained by contemplating the conduct of human beings only. "The conduct of the higher animals as compared with that of man, and the conduct of the lower animals as compared with that of the higher, mainly differ in this, that the adjustments of acts to ends are relatively simple and relatively incomplete. And as in other cases, so in this case, we must interpret the more developed by the less developed. Just as, fully to understand the part of conduct which ethics deals with, we must study human conduct as a whole, so, fully to understand human conduct as a whole, we must study it as a part of that larger whole constituted by the conduct of animate beings in general."[128]

Begin, for example, with an infusorium swimming about at random, determined in its course not by an object which it perceives and which is to be pursued or escaped, but apparently by varying stimuli in its medium, the water. Its acts, unadjusted in any appreciable way to ends, lead it now into contact with some nutritive substance which it absorbs, and now into the neighborhood of some creature by which it is swallowed and digested. Pass on to another aquatic creature, which, although of a low type, is much higher than the infusorium, such as a rotifer. With larger size, more developed structures, and greater power of combining functions, there comes an advance in conduct. It preserves itself for a longer period by better adjusting its own actions, so that, it is less dependent on the actions going on around. Again, compare a low mollusk, such as a floating ascidian, with a high mollusk, such as a cephalopod, and it is apparent how greater organic evolution is accompanied by more evolved conduct. And if you pass then to the vertebrate animals, you see how, along with advance in structure and functions, there is evolved an advance in conduct, until at length, when you reach the doings of the highest of mammals, mankind, you not only find that the adjustments of acts to ends are both more numerous and better than among the lower mammals, but you find the same thing on comparing the doings of the higher races of men with those of the lower races. There is a greater completeness of achievement by civilized men than by savages, and there is also an achievement of relatively numerous minor ends subserving major ends.

Recollecting, then, what conduct is—namely, the adjustment of acts to ends—and observing how this adjustment becomes more and more complete as the organism becomes more developed, we have to note the order of the ends to which the acts are adjusted. The first end, the first stage of evolving conduct, is the further prolongation of life. The next is that adjustment of acts to ends which furthers an increased amount of life. Thus far the ends are complete individual life. Then come those adjustments which have for their final purpose the life of the species. Then there is a third kind of conduct, which results from the fact that the multitudinous creatures which fill the earth can not live wholly apart from one another, but are more or less in presence of one another, are interfered with by one another. No one species can so act as to secure the greatest amount of life to its individuals and the preservation of the species—can make a successful adjustment of its acts to these ends—without interfering with the corresponding adjustments by other creatures of their acts to their ends. That some may live, others must die. Finally, when we contemplate those adjustments of acts to ends which miss completeness, because they can not be made by one creature without other creatures being prevented from making them, we reach the thought of adjustments such that each creature may make them without preventing them from being made by other creatures. Let me now quote Mr. Spencer's concrete illustrations of these abstract statements:

"Recognizing men as the beings whose conduct is most evolved, let us ask under what conditions their conduct, in all three aspects of its evolution, reaches its limit. Clearly while the lives led are entirely predatory, as those of savages, the adjustments of acts to ends fall short of this highest form of conduct in every way. Individual life, ill carried on from hour to hour, is prematurely cut short; the fostering of offspring often fails, and is incomplete when it does not fail; and in so far as the ends of self-maintenance and race-maintenance are met, they are met by destruction of other beings, of different kind, or of like kind. In social groups formed by compounding and recompounding primitive hordes, conduct remains imperfectly evolved in proportion as there continue antagonisms between the groups and antagonisms between members of the same group—two traits necessarily associated; since the nature which prompts international aggression prompts aggression of individuals on one another. Hence, the limit of evolution can be reached by conduct only in permanently peaceful societies. That perfect adjustment of acts to ends in maintaining individual life and rearing new individuals, which is effected by each without hindering others from effecting like perfect adjustments, is, in its very definition, shown to constitute a kind of conduct that can be approached only as war decreases and dies out.

"A gap in this outline must now be filled up. There remains a further advance not yet even hinted. For beyond so behaving that each achieves his ends without preventing others from achieving their ends, the members of a society may give mutual help in the achievement of ends. And if, either indirectly by industrial co-operation, or directly by volunteered aid, fellow-citizens can make easier for one another the adjustments of acts to ends, then their conduct assumes a still higher phase of evolution; since whatever facilitates the making of adjustments by each, increases the totality of the adjustments made, and serves to render the lives of all more complete."

In the outline which I have now given you of the evolution of conduct, you will perceive the foundation of Spencer's system of ethics. Actions begin to assume an ethical character—conduct becomes good or bad—when the acts tend to promote or to prevent the general well-being of the community. But how is the perception or recognition of this quality in an action reached? What is the determining reason for considering an action good or bad? Obviously, conduct is considered by us as good or bad according as its aggregate results to self, or others, or both, are pleasurable or painful. Mr. Spencer shows that every other proposed standard of conduct derives its authority from this standard: "No school can avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim a desirable state of feeling called by whatever name—gratification, enjoyment, happiness. Pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some being or beings, is an inexpugnable element of the conception. It is as much a necessary form of moral intuition as space is a necessary form of intellectual intuition."[129]

On this fundamental basis, Mr. Spencer rests his system of absolute ethics and relative ethics. Relative ethics are those by which, allowing for the friction of an incomplete life and the imperfections of existing natures, we may ascertain with approximate correctness what is the relatively right. This is often exceedingly difficult, because two cases are rarely the same in all their circumstances. But absolute ethics are the ideal ethical truths, expressing the absolutely right. Such a system of ideal ethical truths, which must have precedence over relative ethics, is reached only when there has been, in conformity with the laws of evolution in general, and in conformity with the laws of organization in particular, an adaptation of humanity to the social state, changing it in the direction of an ideal congruity. But, as in relative ethics, the production of happiness or pleasure is the aim, however imperfectly accomplished, so in the ideal state the aim is the same, the difference being that in the latter the accomplishment of happiness or pleasure and the exclusion or prevention of pain are complete.

Sophereus. And do I understand you that in this system of ethics the idea of a moral law proceeding from and consisting of the command of a Supreme Lawgiver is left out?

Kosmicos. Certainly it is. Did I not just now read to you from Mr. Spencer's preface his complete rejection of the supposed sacred origin of moral injunctions, and what he says of the necessity for the secularization of morals to take the place of that system which is losing its authority?

Sophereus. And this philosopher is the same writer who negatives the idea of any creation of organic life, and who also negatives the idea that the human mind is an existence of a spiritual nature, owing its existence to a Creator?

Kosmicos. Undoubtedly; we have gone over all that ground.

Sophereus. And he is the same philosopher who denies the existence of a Supreme Being, Creator, and Governor of the universe?

Kosmicos. Perhaps you may call it denial, although what he maintains is that we know, and can know, nothing on the subject of a personal God.

Sophereus. Very well. I will reflect upon all this until we meet again.

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[CHAPTER XII.]

Mr. Spencer's philosophy as a whole—His psychology, and his system of ethics—The sacred origin of moral injunctions, and the secularization of morals.

A certain honesty and directness of mind prevent Sophereus from being bewildered by the Spencerian philosophy. Before his next meeting with the scientist, he has reviewed the main features of this philosophy as developed in Mr. Spencer's published works; and he has taken notice of the warning which Mr. Spencer has given to his readers in the preface to his "Data of Ethics," that "there will probably be singled out for reprobation from this volume, doctrines which, taken by themselves, may readily be made to seem utterly wrong." There is not much likelihood that Sophereus will be able, if he is willing, to avail himself of this "opportunity for misrepresentation" in a discussion with such a champion of Mr. Spencer's philosophy as the scientist who explains and defends it, especially as they have the works before them to refer to. Being thus respectively equipped for the discussion, the conference between them proceeds:

Sophereus. Before I give you my convictions respecting Mr. Spencer's philosophy as a whole, I wish to say something about the passage which you read from the preface to his "Data of Ethics," because it is the key to his ethical system. In the first place, to what does he refer when he speaks of "the current creed"? When I undertake to investigate a system of morality, the only "creed" that I care about—the only one that is of any importance—is that which accepts, as a matter of belief, the existence of the Creator and Supreme Governor of the universe, from whose infinite will and purposes have proceeded certain moral as well as physical laws. This, I take it, is the "creed" of which Mr. Spencer speaks; the one which assigns moral injunctions to the will of a Supreme Lawgiver as "their supposed sacred origin." It is to this creed that he opposes his "secularization of morals," which must take the place of their supposed sacred origin, because the authority of the latter is rapidly dying out of the world. It is this "creed" which is rejected by those who "assume that the controlling agency furnished by it may be safely thrown aside, and the vacancy left unfilled by any other agency."

Undoubtedly there are and always have been numerous persons who appear practically to think that the sacred origin of morality can be safely rejected, and that the vacancy may be left unfilled by any other restraining agency. The deliberate and willful murderer, the burglar, the adulterer, and many of the other criminal classes, not only appear to reject "the current creed," but they would be very glad to have it assumed that there is no other restraining agency to take its place. So, too, there are persons who break no moral law, whose lives are pure, but who, having theoretically persuaded themselves that there is no sacred origin of moral injunctions, omit to provide, for themselves or others, any other controlling agency to fill the vacuum. But this latter class is not very numerous; and if, without meaning any offense to them, their number is added to that of the criminal classes, to make up the aggregate of those who reject "the current creed," we have not a very large body compared with the whole body of persons in civilized communities who adhere to "the current creed," who live by it, and who think that others should live by it too, as the ultimate foundation of those social laws which take cognizance of men's conduct toward one another. So that I do not quite understand the assertion that "moral injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred origin"; connected as it is with the other assertion that society is "rapidly progressing" to that vacuum which is to follow the complete rejection of the one guide without the substitution of another in its place. I am quite aware that there has been of late years an increasing amount of what is called infidelity, or unbelief, or atheism. But I am quite sure that there has not been a general theoretical or practical rejection of so much of the religious creed of mankind as assigns to the will of a supreme and supernatural lawgiver certain moral injunctions. If we confine our view to Christendom alone, it is certain that the growth, activity, and influence of the various religious bodies are not materially checked, and that religious beliefs are not by any means losing their hold upon great multitudes of people. If we survey the regions where the Mohammedan faith prevails, the same general result is found, whatever Christians may think of the beliefs or practices of that vast body of the human race. And, even when we penetrate among the races which are less civilized, we find very few races or tribes in which there does not prevail some idea of some kind of command proceeding from some deity or other, whatever we may think of the character of that deity or of the nature of the command.

But I presume that Mr. Spencer meant to confine his assertion of the necessity for a secularization of morals, and his assumption that their sacred origin is rapidly passing away from men's beliefs, to the state of society as it exists now in Western civilization; and my observation of this portion of the world is, that those who reject what I presume he means by "the current creed" are, first, a class of theorizers: and, secondly, the criminal classes; and that the aggregate of the two is not, after all, so formidable that we ought to conclude that the regulative system of the sacred origin of moral injunctions is "no longer fit" for any practical purpose. I do not, therefore, recognize what he considers the supreme practical necessity for "the secularization of morals" to take the place of a system which is worn out.

Kosmicos. You have left out of the case a very important element. Mr. Spencer antagonizes those who reject the current creed against those who defend it. The former, while they reject the current creed, do not recognize the necessity for any other controlling agency. The latter, while they defend the current creed, maintain that nothing can take its place as a regulating agency. Between them they create a vacuum, which one class wishes for and the other fears. This is the vacuum which he says can be and must be filled by the secularization of morals. It is a vacuum in philosophical speculation about the origin of morality, and, when the conclusion is reached, it becomes a practical and pressing question how it is to be carried out.

Sophereus. Precisely; and, when the conclusion is reached, it is to be carried out in legislation and government, or else the conduct of men toward one another in society is not to be regulated by public authority at all, but is to be left to each man's perception of what will produce the greatest amount of pleasure and happiness, or the least amount of pain and misery. Now, it is pretty important to settle at the outset whether those who defend the current creed are right or wrong when they say that nothing which will answer the same purpose can be found to take its place. They constitute one of the classes who will be responsible for the supposed vacuum; and their share in that vacuum, their contribution to it, if I may use such an expression, consists in their assertion that nothing of any value can take the place of the sacred origin of moral injunctions. The practical test of whether they are right or wrong is to be found in legislation. Let us suppose, then, a legislative assembly in which there is a proposal to change the law of murder, or to do away with it altogether. A member who does not believe in any sacred origin of the command "Thou shalt do no murder," moves not only to abolish the death-penalty, but to abolish all legal definition of the crime, and leave every man to be restrained by the consciousness that, if he takes the life of another, he will cause a great deal of pain and misery to the relations and friends of that person. The mover argues that "the current creed" of morality is worn out; is "no longer fit," as a regulator; and that the safest and best regulator is the perception of the beneficial effects of actions of kindness and good-will, and of the disastrous effects of cruelty and malice. He is answered by one who defends the current creed, and who maintains that, as human nature is constituted, the utilitarian system of morals can not take the place of the sacred origin as the ultimate foundation of social relations. But the majority of the assembly think that the mover of the proposition has the best of the argument, and they proceed to "secularize" morals by passing his bill doing away with the law of murder altogether. I am not obliged to extend my travels anywhere, where I do not care to go, and I confess I should not like to visit that country after it had thus "secularized" morality.

Kosmicos. Now just be careful to note that this whole science of conduct—the science of ethics—the foundation of right and wrong, is a product of evolution. As in the development of organisms the higher and more elaborate are reached after a great length of time, as in mechanics knowledge of the empirical sort evolves into mechanical science by first omitting all qualifying circumstances and generalizing in absolute ways the fundamental laws of forces, so empirical ethics evolve into rational ethics by first neglecting all complicating incidents and formulating the laws of right action apart from the obscuring effects of special conditions. There are thus reached, after a great lapse of time, those ideal ethical truths which express the absolutely right. Mr. Spencer treats of the ideal man among ideal men; the ideal man existing in the ideal social state. "On the evolution hypothesis," he says, "the two presuppose one another; and only when they coexist can there exist that ideal conduct which absolute ethics has to formulate, and which relative ethics has to take as the standard by which to estimate divergences from right, or degrees of wrong."[130] But, again, observe that society is now in a transition state; the ultimate man has not yet been reached; the evolution of ethics is, however, going on, retarded as it may be by various frictions arising from imperfect natures. But there is in progress an adaptation of humanity to the social state, and the ultimate man will be one in whom this process has gone so far as to produce a correspondence between all the promptings of his nature and all the requirements of his life, as carried on in society; so that there is an ideal code of conduct formulating the behavior of the completely adapted man in the completely evolved society.[131]

Sophereus. But I understand that we have already reached, or are very soon to reach, a condition of things in which the supposed sacred origin of moral injunctions is now, or very shortly will become, no guide. We are to fill the vacuum which is caused, or is about to be caused, by its disappearance, by substituting as the standard of right and wrong the perceptions which we can have of the effects of actions upon the sum total of happiness, because this will be the sole standard in the ideal state of society in which the ideal man will ultimately find himself. I will not insist on the total depravity of man's nature, because I never borrow an argument from theologians. But it has been one of the conclusions that I have drawn from some study of human nature, that it requires very strong restraints. Not only must some of the restraints be of the strongest kind, but they must be simple, positive, and adapted to the varying dispositions and intelligence of men. There can not well be imagined any restraining moral force so efficacious as that which is derived from a belief that the Creator of the universe has ordained some moral laws; has specialized certain conduct as right and certain conduct as wrong, without regard to varying circumstances. As the foundation of all that part of legislation that takes cognizance of the simpler relations of men to one another—those relations which are always the same—the sacred origin of moral injunctions is of far greater force than the perception of the greatest-happiness principle can possibly be. If a man is tempted to commit murder, is he not far more likely to be restrained by a law which he knows will punish him without regard to the misery he would cause to the friends and relatives of the person whom he is tempted to kill, than he would be if the law were based on the latter consideration alone? Do away with all legislation which punishes the simpler crimes first and foremost because they break the laws of God, and substitute as the restraining agency individual recognition of the effect of actions upon the sum total of happiness, and you would soon see that one of two consequences would follow: either you would have no criminal code at all, or it would be one that would be governed by the most fluctuating and uncertain standards. Moreover, how is the transition from the sacred source of the simpler moral injunctions to the secularization of morals to be effected? I once heard a wise person say that if a thing is to be done, an ingenious man ought to be able to show how it is to be done. I suppose the secularization of morals means the complete renovation of our ideas of right and wrong, by taking as the sole standard the pleasure or pain, the happiness or unhappiness, which actions will produce. How are you going to reach this ideal state? The vacuum is rapidly coming about. How are you going to take the first step in filling it? Before the vacuum is complete, you must do something. You have waited until the evolution of conduct of the purely utilitarian type has made some great advances; but the ideal state is not yet reached by all men. You wish to hasten its approach, and you must begin to act. There is nothing for you to do but to formulate the new moral code and put it in operation. You must make your laws—if you continue to have laws—so that murder and lying and theft will not be punished because the Almighty has prohibited them, but they will be punished simply because they produce misery. Do you think you would ever see every individual of such a community brought to an ideal congruity between all the promptings of his nature and all the requirements of his life, as carried on in society? That you would have nothing but "the completely adapted man in the completely evolved society"? I fancy that you would often have to fall back upon the sacred origin of moral injunctions, and to punish some conduct because it breaks a law of divine authority. I may have been too much in the habit of looking at things practically; but I have not yet discovered that the feeling of obligation, the sense of duty, what is recognized as moral obligation, having its origin in some command, and enforced by some kind of compulsion, can be dispensed with.

Kosmicos. I must refer you to Mr. Spencer's explanation of the fact that the sense of duty or moral obligation fades away as the moral motive emerges from all the political, religious, and social motives, and frees itself from the consciousness of subordination to some external agency. He does not shrink from the conclusion because it will be startling. He tells us that it will be to most very startling to be informed that "the sense of duty or moral obligation is transitory, and will diminish as fast as moralization increases." He fortifies his position thus:

Startling though it is, this conclusion may be satisfactorily defended. Even now progress toward the implied ultimate state is traceable. The observation is not infrequent that persistence in performing a duty ends in making it a pleasure, and this amounts to the admission that, while at first the motive contains an element of coercion, at last this element of coercion dies out, and the act is performed without any consciousness of being obliged to perform it. The contrast between the youth on whom diligence is enjoined, and the man of business so absorbed in affairs that he can not be induced to relax, shows us how the doing of work, originally under the consciousness that it ought to be done, may eventually cease to have any such accompanying consciousness. Sometimes, indeed, the relation comes to be reversed; and the man of business persists in work from pure love of it when told that he ought not. Nor is it thus with self-regarding feelings only. That the maintaining and protecting of wife by husband often result solely from feelings directly gratified by these actions, without any thought of must; and that the fostering of children by parents is in many cases made an absorbing occupation without any coercive feeling of ought; are obvious truths which show us that even now, with some of the fundamental other-regarding duties, the sense of obligation has retreated into the background of the mind. And it is in some degree so with other-regarding duties of a higher kind. Conscientiousness has in many outgrown that stage in which the sense of a compelling power is joined with rectitude of action. The truly honest man, here and there to be found, is not only without thought of legal, religious, or social compulsion, when he discharges an equitable claim on him; but he is without thought of self-compulsion. He does the right thing with a simple feeling of satisfaction in doing it; and is, indeed, impatient if anything prevents him from having the satisfaction of doing it.

Evidently, then, with complete adaptation to the social state, that element in the moral consciousness which is expressed by the word obligation will disappear. The higher actions required for the harmonious carrying on of life will be as much matters of course as are those lower actions which the simple desires prompt. In their proper times and places and proportions, the moral sentiments will guide men just as spontaneously and adequately as now do the sensations. And though, joined with their regulating influence when this is called for, will exist latent ideas of the evils which non-conformity would bring, these will occupy the mind no more than do ideas of the evils of starvation at the time when a healthy appetite is being satisfied by a meal.

Sophereus. There is a religion in the world called Christianity, with which we are tolerably familiar. It comprehends a system of morality which, when completely observed, develops the truly good man, the man who does the right thing with a feeling of satisfaction in doing it, and brings about those higher actions which are required for the harmonious carrying on of life, as matters of course, just as surely as the same result can be brought about by the most ideal secularization of morals that any philosophical theories can accomplish. Whatever may be the evidences by which the sacred origin of Christianity is supposed to be established, it is certain that this religion does not omit, but on the contrary it presupposes and asserts, as the foundation of its moral code, that the sense of obligation to which it appeals is the consciousness of obligation to obey divine commands. It proceeds upon the idea that human nature stands in need of some coercion; that the sense of obligation is not to be allowed to retreat into the background of the mind, but that a sense of the compelling power must be kept joined with rectitude of action, otherwise there will be a failure of rectitude. It is considered, I believe, that the adaptation of the Christian morality to the whole nature of man, by means of the compelling power, the consciousness of which is not to be transitory, but is to be universal and perpetual, is very strong proof that this religion came from a being who understood human nature better than we can understand it. However this may be, it is, at all events, certain that the scheme of Christian morality proceeds upon the necessity for a more efficacious regulator of human conduct than the simple feeling of satisfaction in doing right, or the feeling of dissatisfaction in doing wrong; and, although the true Christian is, in completeness of moral character, like Mr. Spencer's ideal man, and although a society completely Christian would be that ideal social state in which there would be perfect congruity between the lives of men and the welfare of that society, yet the Christian religion, if I understand it rightly, does not assume that there will be more than an approximation to that universal state of perfection while the human race remains on earth. The proof of this is to be found in the fact that this religion does not contemplate a time when divine command is to cease as the restraining agency on earth; but, on the contrary, it appears to assume that obedience to the divine will is to continue in another life to be a perpetual motive, as it has been in this life. All this may be without such proof as "science" demands, but it is certain that the scheme of Christian morality is based upon the idea that the Creator has made obedience to his laws, because they are his laws, the great regulator of human conduct. If the Creator had so made men that the consciousness of the effect of conduct on the happiness or misery of our fellow-men would be sufficient as a regulator, it is rational to conclude that he would not have imposed commands which were to be obeyed because they are commands. However great may be the approximation to a complete adaptation of the social state, I do not look forward to the disappearance of that element in the moral consciousness which is expressed by the word obligation, because obligation, in its ultimate sense, is obedience to a higher power. Obedience for its own sake, obedience because there is a command, irrespective of all the reasons for the command, is a law which is illustrated in very many of the relations of life. A wise parent will sometimes explain to his child why he commands some things and prohibits others; but if he means to train that child in the way he should go, he will sometimes require him to obey for the mere purpose of teaching him that obedience without question or inquiry is a law of his nature. A master of a vessel, which is in peril at sea, gives an order to the sailors. They may or may not understand the reasons for it. But what sort of sailors would they be if they did not act upon the consciousness that unquestioning obedience is the law of their relation to the ship?

In the earliest traditions that we have of the human race, as those traditions are accepted by the Western nations, we find a pretty striking and very simple instance of this law of obedience. The first pair of human beings are placed in a garden where they are at liberty to eat of the fruit of every tree save one, but of that one their Creator absolutely forbids them to partake. He assigns to them no reason for the prohibition, but he lays upon them his absolute command, on the penalty of death if they are disobedient. One of them begins to reason about the matter—an allegorical creature or being, called the serpent, tempting her with certain advantages that she will get from eating this particular fruit. She yields, disobeys, and persuades her husband to do the same. The consequences follow, as their Creator told them they would. The law of obedience which this story illustrates has been in operation through all the ages, and society can no more dispense with it than it can dispense with any of the physical laws that govern the universe.

Kosmicos. Are you going back to the fables for the sacred origin of moral injunctions? I thought you had got beyond that.

Sophereus. I use an illustration wherever I find it. I am perfectly content that you should call the story of Adam and Eve a fable, but the law of obedience which it illustrates is a tremendous fact. The incident, fable or no fable, is eminently human, and it is occurring every day in human experience. It is not strange that the first Hebrew tradition should have been one that illustrates in so simple a manner the existence of the law of obedience. In like manner, it is not strange that the Christian system of ethics should have been based on the existence of this same law of obedience to commands. This Christian system of ethics has dispensed with a great many minute observances which one branch of the Semitic race believed were imposed upon them as commands by their Creator; but it has not displaced the law of obedience, or dispensed with certain moral injunctions as divine commands, for it proceeds upon the great truth that human nature requires that kind of restraint, and that there are certain actions which can not be left without it.

Kosmicos. Mr. Spencer has anticipated you. Your reference to Christianity is not happy. Having gone through with the explanation of the evolution process in the development of the highest conception of morals, and having shown that what now characterizes the exceptionally highest natures will eventually characterize all, he has something to say about the reception of his conclusions, to which, as you have referred to the Christian system of morals, you would do well to attend:

§ 98. That these conclusions will meet with any considerable acceptance is improbable. Neither with current ideas nor with current sentiments are they sufficiently congruous.

Such a view will not be agreeable to those who lament the spreading disbelief in eternal damnation, nor to those who follow the apostle of brute force in thinking that because the rule of the strong hand was once good it is good for all time; nor to those whose reverence for one who told them to put up the sword is shown by using the sword to spread his doctrine among heathens. From the ten thousand priests of the religion of love, who are silent when the nation is moved by the religion of hate, will come no sign of assent; nor from their bishops who, far from urging the extreme precept of the Master they pretend to follow, to turn the other cheek when one is smitten, vote for acting on the principle—strike lest ye be struck. Nor will any approval be felt by legislators who, after praying to be forgiven their trespasses as they forgive the trespasses of others, forthwith decide to attack those who have not trespassed against them; and who, after a Queen's speech has invoked "the blessing of Almighty God" on their councils, immediately provide means for committing political burglary.

But though men who profess Christianity and practice paganism can feel no sympathy with such a view, there are some, classed as antagonists to the current creed, who may not think it absurd to believe that a rationalized version of its ethical principles will eventually be acted upon.

Sophereus. "Our withers are unwrung." I am not a believer in eternal damnation; I am not an apostle of brute force; I am not in favor of using the sword to spread a religion of love; I am not a priest or a bishop, nor am I a member of Parliament or of any other legislative body. I am a simple inquirer, endeavoring to ascertain the soundness of certain systems of philosophy. If there are men who profess Christianity and practice paganism, I do not see that this fact should deter me from estimating the nature of the Christian religion, as I would endeavor to estimate the character of any other religion. It is no concern of mine whether men who profess Christianity and practice paganism can feel any sympathy with Mr. Spencer's views. The question for me is whether I can feel any sympathy with his views. I will, therefore, go on to tell you why I do not believe that a merely "rationalized version" of the ethical principles of Christianity will take the place of those divine injunctions on which the ethics of Christianity are primarily based. Observe, now, that I do not enter upon the proofs of the divine authority or the divine nature of Christ. I point to nothing but the fact that the Christian ethics presuppose a divine and superhuman origin of moral injunctions. About the fact that they presuppose and assume the sacred origin of moral injunctions, there can be no controversy. We read that the question was put to Jesus, "What commandment is first of all?" and the answer was, "The first is, Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength. The second is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these."[132] The person who made this answer may or may not have been a divinely commissioned teacher, but, whatever he was, the question that was put to him was a very searching one, and both question and answer assume two things: first, that there is a being, man, to whom commands are addressed; secondly, that there is a being, God, by whom commands are given. Jesus undertakes to inform those who questioned him, what are the two commandments than which there are none greater addressed to human beings; and in this answer he covers the existence of man as one being and the existence of God as another being. In any scheme of philosophy which ignores the existence of these two beings—ignores the existence of man as a being capable of receiving and acting upon a command, and the existence of a being capable of addressing a command to man—there must necessarily be a great defect; not because Jesus, a supposed divinely commissioned teacher, assumed that there are two such beings, but because without the hypothesis of their existence there can be no ethical system whatever. The crucial test of the soundness of Mr. Spencer's philosophy is, therefore, whether he negatives the existence of man and the existence of God.

Undoubtedly, there is a certain kind of consistency and completeness in Mr. Spencer's whole philosophy. Beginning with biology, he traces all organized life back to the original molecules of organizable matter, and he makes man, in his physical structure, a product of successive modifications of organisms out of one another, by simple generation. This ignores the Creator as a being specially fashioning the human animal, which Mr. Spencer thinks is a conception too grossly anthropomorphic to stand the slightest scientific scrutiny. He then takes up what he calls "psychology," and deals with what he considers the origin and nature of the human mind. He makes consciousness to consist in tracts of feeling in the nervous organization. He denies that mind is an entity, a being, perceiving and recognizing ideas suggested by the impressions produced upon the nervous organization by external objects. According to his psychological system, there is no ego, no person, no thinking being, behind the sensations and feelings in the nerve-center, and to whom the nerve-center suggests ideas. Rejecting the hypothesis of such a being, Mr. Spencer treats of the composition of mind; and he makes it consist, not in a being, but in components of feelings produced by the molecular changes of which nerve-corpuscles are the seats, and the molecular changes transmitted through fibers. He does not regard the ultimate fabric of mind as a thing admitting of any inquiry. He says that its proximate components can be investigated, and that these are feelings and the relations between feelings. This "method of composition remains the same throughout the entire composition of mind, from the formation of its simplest feelings up to the formation of those immense and complex aggregates of feelings which characterize its highest development." Here, then, we must stop. We are not to conceive of mind as an organized entity, or as an organism; or as a something in which certain powers inhere, and which affords a field for their action. We may talk of a "thread of consciousness," meaning aggregates of feelings produced by successive waves of molecular change in the nerve-corpuscles, but we may not talk of "consciousness" as perception by a conscious subject. We may talk of feelings, but not of a subject that feels. Mind, then, is not an existence apart from physical organization. Its phenomena are products of our corporeal organization. Man is not a person; and, if he is not, how he is to have a sense of obligation, how there is to be any intuitional idea of right and wrong, in the sense of a command or an injunction addressed by one being to another, I do not understand. Mr. Spencer does not help me to understand this, and obviously he does not intend to, because he denies it absolutely. His system of ethics plainly ignores it; and to that I now pass.

He makes conduct consist in the adjustment of actions to ends. Good conduct is when the actions are adjusted to the ends of producing all the pleasure and happiness that they can be made to bring about. Bad conduct is when the actions produce only pain or misery to some one, or there is not a proper adjustment of them to the end of happiness. Beginning, as you described it in our last conference, with the lowest orders of animals, the conduct of man is the same adjustment of actions to ends that it is in them; the difference being, in the case of man, that as an animal he has a greater and more varied power of complete adjustment of his actions to wider and more comprehensive ends than any other animal. These wider and more comprehensive ends consist in the full accomplishment of happiness and pleasure to other beings. This, according to Mr. Spencer, is impliedly admitted by those who assert the sacred origin of moral injunctions; for, when pressed for the reason why moral injunctions have been given, all moralists, he says, admit that the ultimate moral aim is a desirable state of feeling, gratification, enjoyment, happiness to some being or beings. That the welfare of society is one of the moral aims which moral injunctions of the sacred order were designed to accomplish, so far as special injunctions are believed to have been given, is plain enough. But that this congruity between the divine commands and the happiness of others—the useful effect of such commands—comprehends the whole purpose of such commands, is the ultimate and sole reason for their being given, so far as they are believed to have been given, may be disproved without difficulty. For example, an individual may be an utterly worthless person, a curse to his relatives and friends and to society, irreclaimably sunk in vice and misery, a mere cumberer of the ground. To kill him will produce no unhappiness to any one, but will be a positive relief and benefit. According to "the current creed," there stands a sacred injunction, "Thou shalt do NO murder." This is accepted as an absolute, fixed, eternal canon of the divine will. You are not to take upon yourself individually to determine, by any standard of utility applied to a particular case, that you can rightfully kill a human being. A miser is alone in the world. I can steal his hoarded gold, and apply it to good objects. There stands the command, "Thou shalt not steal." For no purpose, for no object whatever, for no end whatever, shall you commit a theft. "Society," to borrow a phrase of one of the strongest men of our time, "would go all to pieces in an hour" if it were to adopt only the utilitarian standard of morality, and to reject the sacred origin of moral injunctions.[133] The reception of that sacred origin—the belief in it—implies that man is a being capable of receiving and obeying a divine command. The existence of such a being is negatived by Mr. Spencer's psychological system. That he equally negatives the existence of God as a being capable of giving, and who has given, moral injunctions to man, is apparent throughout his whole scheme of philosophy. According to that philosophy, there is nothing in the universe but an Omnipotent Power, which underlies all manifestations. To ascribe a personality to that Power is a relic of the primitive beliefs of barbarians, and it is one that is rapidly dying out of the conceptions of educated men.

There is, therefore, no room in Mr. Spencer's philosophy for any moral intuitions, such as are implied in the hypothesis that man was placed under an obligation to obey his Creator, and made capable of recognizing that obligation. I can perceive no other ultimate foundation for a system of ethics. As to the idea that we can make a system of ethics which is to relegate to individual judgment the adaptability of actions to produce complete happiness, and to have no other standard of right and wrong, we might as well at once act upon the maxim that the end justifies the means, and leave every man to determine that the end is a good one; and, therefore, the action is good.

Kosmicos. How do you justify the death-penalty which is inflicted by society? Have you any justification for it, excepting the claim that it is a useful restraint?

Sophereus. When society acts judicially in the punishment of crime, it inflicts such punishments as experience shows will prevent, or tend to prevent, others from committing that crime. Its authority to punish with death or some other penalty is founded, primarily, in regard to the simpler crimes, such as murder, theft, adultery, false testimony, etc., on the divine prohibition, which a belief in the sacred origin of certain special moral injunctions leads it to accept; and, secondly, on the general welfare of mankind.[134] Eliminate from the ethical code all belief in the sacred origin of moral injunctions, and confine the judicial action of society to the merely utilitarian effect of individual conduct, and you will surrender the whole criminal code to the doctrine that the individual who does a certain act is to be punished or not to be punished, according to the effect of his act on the person or persons who are immediately or remotely affected by it. It is because of Mr. Spencer's negation of man's intuitive sense of obligation to obey divine commands, because of his peculiar system of "psychology," that I can not accept the system to which he gives the name of "ethics." He ought to have invented a new term for his science of mind. "Psychology," according to its derivation, and as it is used in the English language, means discourse or treatise on the human soul, or the doctrine of man's spiritual nature. If he has no spiritual nature, no soul, what does this philosopher mean by entitling his work "The Principles of Psychology"? It seems to me that in this use of a term which implies something that he labors to show does not exist, he is not quite consistent, for he certainly does not mean to admit that man has a soul, in the sense in which the learned world have generally used the term "psychology." But, not to stickle for verbal criticisms, I will endeavor to give you my conception of his "scientific" analysis of the mind, and to contrast it with the other analysis, which seems to me to be better supported.

Kosmicos. Take care that you do not misrepresent him.

Sophereus. I shall take the utmost care to represent him in the only sense in which I can understand him; and, if I do not represent him accurately, you will correct me. Take, in the first place, the following passage, in which he defines the only ego that has any existence:

That the ego is something more than the passing group of feelings and ideas is true or untrue according to the degree of comprehension we give to the word. It is true if we include the body and its functions; but it is untrue if we include only what is given in consciousness.

Physically considered, the ego is the entire organism, including its nervous system; and the nature of this ego is predetermined: the infant had no more to do with the structure of its brain than with the color of its eyes. Further, the ego, considered physically, includes all the functions carried on by these structures when supplied with the requisite materials. These functions have for their net result to liberate from the food, etc., certain latent forces. And that distribution of these forces shown by the activities of the organism, is from moment to moment caused partly by the existing arrangement of its parts and partly by the environing conditions.

The physical structures thus pervaded by the forces thus obtained, constitute that substantial ego which lies behind and determines those ever-changing states of consciousness we call mind. And while this substantial ego, unknowable in ultimate nature, is phenomenally known to us under its statical form as the organism, it is phenomenally known under its dynamical form as the energy diffusing itself through the organism, and, among other parts, through the nervous system. Given the external stimuli, and the nervous changes with their correlative mental states depend partly on the nervous structures and partly on the amount of this diffused energy, each of which factors is determined by causes not in consciousness but beneath consciousness. The aggregate of feelings and ideas constituting the mental I, have not in themselves the principle of cohesion holding them together as a whole; but the I which continually survives as the subject of these changing states is that portion of the Unknowable Power which is statically conditioned in special nervous structures pervaded by a dynamically-conditioned portion of the Unknowable Power called energy.[135]

It is now necessary to translate this; and in translating it, it is necessary to attend to the meaning of words. Let us begin with the first proposition comprehended in this statement: "That the ego is something more than the passing group of feelings and ideas, is true or untrue according to the degree of comprehensiveness we give to the word. It is true if we include the body and its functions; but it is untrue if we include only what is given in consciousness." The natural antithesis would have been to contrast what is included in the body with what is included in the mind. But as he does not admit that the mind is an existence, as there is nothing but a passing group of feelings and ideas, not a person who perceives feelings and has ideas, he speaks of what is given in consciousness, consciousness being nothing but that passing group, an ever-changing series, never the same, and never laid hold of and appropriated by a conscious subject. We do, indeed, call these ever-changing states of consciousness mind, but this is a misnomer, if we mean it in the sense of a being. What is to be considered, therefore, when the analysis seeks to ascertain the real and only ego, is the body and its functions, and the passing group of feelings and ideas which is given in consciousness.

Let us pass on: The body is the physical structure and its functions. It is pervaded by the forces which its functions liberate from the latent condition in which they exist in food and other environment. This physical structure, thus pervaded by certain forces, is the substantial ego which lies behind and determines the ever-changing states of consciousness which we call mind. There is no other ego than the body. It is phenomenally known to us under its statical form as the organism; that is to say, when the body is contemplated as an organism which is not acting, or as a mere structure. But it is phenomenally known to us also under its dynamical form, which is when the energy derived from the pervading forces is diffusing itself through the organism. Statical,[136] I understand, refers to a body at rest, or in equilibrium, not acting; dynamical refers to bodies in motion, or acted on by force, in movement. The human body is phenomenally known to us in both of these conditions or states. When it is in the dynamical state, that is, when it is acted on by external stimuli, there will be nervous changes; these nervous changes have correlative mental states, which depend partly on the nervous structure and partly on the amount of the diffused energy which pervades the organism. But these two factors, the nervous changes and the diffused energy, are each determined by causes that are not in consciousness, but beneath consciousness. This I understand to mean that when there are nervous changes from a state of rest or non-action, produced by external stimuli, and a certain amount of diffused energy pervades the organism, there will be correlative mental states, which are determined by factors that are not in consciousness but beneath consciousness. Consciousness, therefore, is not a perception by a conscious subject, or a consciousness of a self experienced by a being, but it is a passing group of feelings and ideas, which have no cohesion, are never the same, but are ever-changing successions of impressions produced in the physical organism.

I come now to the summary and conclusion of the whole matter as expressed in the last sentence of the paragraph which I have read. There is a mental I, but it is not a person, an existence, an independent ego. It is constituted of an aggregate of feelings and ideas, which have not in themselves a principle of cohesion that holds them together as a whole. They are merely passing groups of feelings and ideas which are never the same, but which succeed one another without connection or cohesion. There is an I which continually survives as the subject of these changing states, but it is that portion of the Unknowable Power which is statically conditioned in special nervous structures pervaded by a dynamically conditioned portion of the Unknowable Power called energy.

So that each individual of the human race is to be contemplated, not as a dual existence, composed of a body and a mind, united for a certain period, but as a subject which is continuously undergoing certain physical changes by the action through it of a portion of the energy exerted by the Unknowable Power. The Unknowable Power pulsates through my bodily organism a certain portion of its energy, and that of which continuous existence can alone be predicated is this portion of the Unknowable Power which is statically conditioned in my nervous structure, pervaded by a dynamically conditioned portion of that Unknown Power.

I trust, now, it will not be said that I misrepresent Mr. Spencer when I assert that he ignores, denies, and endeavors to disprove the existence of the mind of man as a spiritual entity, capable of surviving his body. Have you any fault to find with my paraphrase of the passage on which I have commented?

Kosmicos. You have paraphrased that passage fairly enough, but you ought to attend to the proof which he adduces in support of his position in the subsequent passage to which he refers you in the one that you have quoted. Let me read it:

§ 469. And now, before closing the chapter, let me parenthetically remark on a striking parallelism between the conception of the Object thus built up, and that which we shall find to be the proper conception of the Subject. For just in the same way that the Object is the unknown permanent nexus which is never itself a phenomenon, but is that which holds phenomena together; so is the Subject the unknown permanent nexus which is never itself a state of consciousness, but which holds states of consciousness together. Limiting himself to self-analysis, the Subject can never learn anything about this nexus, further than that it forms part of the nexus to that peculiar vivid aggregate he distinguishes as his body. If, however, he makes a vicarious examination, the facts of nervous structure and function, as exhibited in other bodies like his own, enable him to see how, for each changing cluster of ideas, there exists a permanent nexus which, in a sense, corresponds to the permanent nexus holding together the changing cluster of appearances referable to the external body.

For, as shown in earlier parts of this work, an idea is the psychical side of what on its physical side is an involved set of molecular changes propagated through an involved set of nervous plexuses. That which makes possible this idea is the pre-existence of these plexuses, so organized that a wave of molecular motion diffused through them will produce, as its psychical correlative, the components of the conception, in due order and degree. This idea lasts while the waves of molecular motion last, ceasing when they cease; but that which remains is the set of plexuses. These constitute the potentiality of the idea, and make possible future ideas like it. Each such set of plexuses, perpetually modified in detail by perpetual new actions; capable of entering into countless combinations with others, just as the objects thought of entered into countless combinations; and capable of having its several parts variously excited, just as the external object presents its combined attributes in various ways—is thus the permanent internal nexus for ideas, answering to the permanent external nexus for phenomena. And just as the external nexus is that which continues to exist amid transitory appearances, so the internal nexus is that which continues to exist amid transitory ideas. The ideas have no more a continued existence than we have found the impressions to have. They are like the successive chords and cadences brought out from a piano, which successively die away as other ones are sounded. And it would be as proper to say that these passing chords and cadences thereafter exist in the piano, as it is proper to say that passing ideas thereafter exist in the brain. In the one case, as in the other, the actual existence is the structure which, under like conditions, again evolves like combinations.

It is true that we seem to have somewhere within us these sets of faint states answering to sets of vivid states which once occurred. It is true that in common life ideas are spoken of as being treasured up, forming a store of knowledge; the implied notion being that they are duly arranged and, as it were, pigeon-holed for future use. It is true that in psychological explanations, ideas are often referred to as thus having a continued existence. It is true that our forms of expression are such as to make this implication unavoidable; and that in many places throughout this work the phrases used apparently countenance it; though, I believe, they are always transformable into their scientific equivalents, as above expressed. But here, as in metaphysical discussions at large, where our express object is to make a final analysis, and to disentangle facts from hypotheses, it behooves us to recognize the truth that this popular conception, habitually adopted into psychological and metaphysical discussions, is not simply gratuitous, but absolutely at variance with experience. All which introspection shows us is that under certain conditions there occurs a state of consciousness more or less like that which previously occurred under more or less like conditions. Not only are we without proof that during the interval this state of consciousness existed under some form; but, so far as observation reaches, it gives positive evidence to the contrary. For the new state is never the same—is never more than an approximate likeness of that which went before. It has not that identity of structure which it would have were it a pre-existing thing presenting itself afresh. Nay, more; even during its presence its identity of structure is not preserved—it is not literally the same for two seconds together. No idea, even of the most familiar object, preserves its stability while in consciousness. To carry further the foregoing simile, its temporary existence is like that of a continuously-sounded chord, of which the components severally vary from instant to instant in pitch and loudness. Quite apart, however, from any interpretation of ideas as not substantive things but psychical changes, corresponding to physical changes wrought in a physical structure, it suffices to insist upon the obvious truth that the existence in the Subject of any other ideas than those which are passing, is pure hypothesis absolutely without any evidence whatever.

And here we come upon yet another phase of that contradiction which the anti-realistic conception everywhere presents. For setting out from the data embodied in the popular speech, which asserts both the continued existence of ideas and the continued existence of objects, it accepts the fiction as a fact, and on the strength of it tries to show that the fact is a fiction. Continued existence being claimed for that which has it not, is thereupon denied to that which has it.[137]

Sophereus. The writings of Mr. Spencer, more than those of any other person of equal reputation that I have met with, require close examination in order to test the soundness of his propositions and assertions. Such a passage as the one which you have now quoted appears, on a first reading, to be quite plausible. When it is read carefully two or three times, and analyzed, it is found to be untenable in its reasoning, and largely made up of dogmatic assumptions. I shall now give you my reasons for this criticism. In the first place, let us go through the passage and fix the meanings of words. "Nexus," although not a term adopted into the English language, means, I presume, bond or ligament. "Plexus" is a word that we find in English dictionaries as a scientific term, and it means a union of vessels, nerves, or fibers, in the form of net-work.[138] Taking along these meanings, we find that the subject, the only thing of which a subjective existence can be predicated, is the ligament which holds states of consciousness together, and this permanent ligament is unknown. It is not itself a state of consciousness, but it is the bond which holds states of consciousness together. These states of consciousness are the ideas which are passing in the subject, which are never the same, which are not a permanent possession, and therefore there is in the subject no other existence than the passing ideas of the moment. Ideas, then, are not substantive things, but psychical changes, corresponding to physical changes wrought in a physical structure. The proof which is supposed to make this a tenable hypothesis consists of, first, what can be learned by self-analysis, or by my introspection of myself; next by vicarious examination, or by observing the facts of nervous structure and function exhibited in other bodies like my own. These examinations enable us to discover, what? Not a conscious person, learning, appropriating, and holding ideas, but that there exists only, for each changing cluster of ideas, a permanent nexus, corresponding to the permanent nexus which holds together the changing cluster of appearances referable to the external body. We next have the assertion that ideas have no more a continued existence than the impressions made in the external body. Both are transitory, and in both the only continued existence is the nexus, or ligament which binds together the changing impressions and the changing clusters of ideas. This Mr. Spencer illustrates by the successive chords and cadences brought out from a piano. These have no existence in the piano, which is nothing but a mechanical structure, giving forth sounds, when they are struck, which sounds are merely passing chords and cadences; and he concludes that it would be just as proper to say that the passing chords and cadences, after they have died away, exist in the piano, as it is to say that passing ideas, after the nervous impressions have ceased, exist in the brain. Let us now go back and examine this kind of psychology in detail. Mr. Spencer speaks of self-analysis, and of the analysis of other minds and bodies like our own. He uses the terms self, others, me, mine, him, his. Who or what is this thing which examines himself or another? Who and what are "you" or "I," who sit here talking to each other? Are these mere forms of expression, always transformable into their scientific equivalents? What is the scientific equivalent for he, his, me, mine, you, yours? Mr. Spencer says that, under certain conditions, there occurs a state of consciousness more or less like other states of consciousness that have existed before, but that the only permanent thing is the nexus which holds these states of consciousness together. His illustration of the piano fails. If the piano were a structure that could of its own volition give forth such sounds as it chose to utter, it might be correct to speak of it as an existence having a store of sounds which it could make reach our ears when and as it saw fit. But it does not happen to be an automatic machine. It is a mere collection of strings, of different sizes and tensions, which, when struck by an instrument called a hammer, cause certain vibrations in the air. But a human being is an automatic organism; one that can at pleasure give utterance to ideas through the vocal organs, so that they are communicated to you. When I give utterance to an idea, through my vocal organs, in speaking to you, do I draw on a stock of permanent ideas, some of which I express, or do I express nothing but a passing state of consciousness, more or less like other states of consciousness that have before passed through my nervous organization? Mr. Spencer asserts that the notion of the continued existence of ideas is absolutely at variance with experience. On the contrary, experience proves it every moment of our lives.

For example: Years ago a person related to me a fact very interesting and important to me, but I have not until now had occasion to make use of it. I have a perfect recollection of what he told me. It bears no resemblance to any other fact of which I ever heard. It concerns me alone. I have a perfect recollection of it. I stored it up for future use whenever I should need to use it. Is it a self-delusion that I have stored up and treasured this information? When I recollect and repeat it, just as it was told me, am I doing nothing but giving expression to a passing idea, more or less like the original idea? This would be a rather dangerous doctrine to adopt as the interpretation of experience. Human testimony respecting things that we have been told, or have seen, would be a pretty uncertain reliance if the memory had no other power than to assimilate a passing idea, more or less, to a former state of consciousness which more or less resembled the present consciousness. Men deviate from the truth rather frequently, now; but, teach them that memory is nothing but the assimilation, more or less, of a passing idea to some other idea that formerly passed through their heads, and I should be rather afraid of their testimony. I should fear that the "psychological changes" would be a little too frequent, and that the story would not have "that identity of structure which it would have were it a pre-existing thing presenting itself afresh."

What is all the learning of the scholar? Has he treasured up nothing? Has he nothing in the pigeon-holes of his mind? Has he no mind in which to store his acquisitions? Is the sole actual existence "the structure which, under like conditions, again evolves like combinations"? Must he find himself under like conditions which will again evolve like combinations of ideas in passing trains of consciousness, before he can bring forth from the store-house of his mind the pre-existing thing that lies within it?

Kosmicos. I must here interject a question in my turn. What is the proof that ideas have a continued existence? Speaking of the brain as the nerve-center, in which impressions are produced by molecular changes transmitted along the nerve-fibers, what proof is there that an idea which is now passing through the brain continues to exist there, any more than the passing chord or cadence continues to exist in the piano?

Sophereus. Do you not see that the very power of discrimination which we possess, whereby we distinguish between present and former conditions, and present and former combinations, proves that there is a permanent existing thing in an idea which presents itself afresh, and with which we compare the passing idea, so as to determine whether they are the same? If we did not possess this power, all thinking, all expression of ideas, all memory, all that part of consciousness which is not made up of mere bodily feelings and sensations, would be nothing but the repetition of the passing idea; and all learning, information, knowledge, and experience, would be utterly useless. If there did not exist something with which to compare the passing idea of the present moment, we should be always floating on the surface of the passing idea. There would be no continuity in our intellectual existence. We should be reduced to the condition of the piano, and could only give forth such chords and cadences as are produced by successive blows of the hammer upon the strings of the instrument. And how could anything originate in ourselves? What is the faculty which produces ideas that are not only new to ourselves, not only not suggested by passing ideas, but new to all other human intellects, and never embraced in their experience until we put them within their apprehension? What did Dante do when he produced the "Inferno"? or Milton, when he composed the "Paradise Lost"? or Shakespeare, when he composed his "Hamlet"? or Goethe, when he produced his "Faust"? Does the poet, when he gives us ideas that we never possessed before, originate nothing? If he is a maker, a creator, in the realm of ideas, are those original ideas, which neither he nor any one else ever had before, the mere result of like combinations evolved out of like conditions, when neither the old conditions nor the combinations have anything to do with the new ideas which he has produced? Surely, in reference to the great productions of human genius, we must contemplate the mind as an existence, having the power to do something more than to produce the transitory ideas that are passing through the brain from the impressions on it, communicated through the nervous structure. Surely there is some other structure than that which can be likened to the piano. Surely there is something more than a set of plexuses "which constitute the potentiality of an idea, and make possible future ideas like it"; for there are possible future ideas which are not like any former ideas, which do not depend on any set of plexuses, and do not cease to be possible when the waves of molecular motion cease. These possible future ideas are the conceptions which the mind originates in itself; which are unlike anything that has gone before, or that is passing now. So that there are two kinds of ideas: the kind that has a continued existence, and that consists in knowledge, and is drawn upon by memory; and the other, the kind of which continued existence is not to be predicated until it has been formulated by the faculty of original production, not produced by an exercise of memory, but produced by original creation.

Kosmicos. Has not Mr. Spencer allowed for and accounted for all that you claim as the power of originating new ideas? Does he not say that "each set of plexuses"—each set of the net-work of ideas—is "perpetually modified in detail by perpetual new actions"; is "capable of entering into countless combinations with others, just as the objects thought of entered into countless combinations; and capable of having its several parts variously excited, just as the external object presents its combined attributes in various ways"? Is not this the whole matter, in regard to what you call the power of originating new ideas?

Sophereus. No, it is not. In the first place, I do not believe that he was here intentionally speaking of any ideas but those which are suggested by, or involve external objects. But, if he did mean to include the production of new and original ideas through the countless combinations into which old ones may be made to enter, his theory does not fit the case of poetical invention of new ideas, or the invention of imaginary characters, or lives; for these are creations which are not mere combinations of old ideas, and the more they depart from everything suggested by, or resembling, former ideas, the more we are obliged to recognize as a faculty of the mind the power to originate and formulate new ideas that did not previously exist.

Kosmicos. Well, you have criticised Mr. Spencer's mental philosophy from your point of view. Now let me hear your hypothesis of the origin and nature of mind, with which you promised to contrast his psychology, and which you think is better supported.

Sophereus. I think I had better put my views in writing, and read them to you at our next meeting. You can then have them before you to examine at your leisure. Let me say in advance, however, that I shall not rely on any of the metaphysicians, but shall endeavor to give you my conception of the nature of mind from my own reflections, and from common experience. I shall make my examination of the nature of mind precede any suggestion of its probable origin, just as I think we should examine the structure of any organism before we undertake to deduce its probable origin.

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Here, then, closes the debate between these two persons, from whom, at the end of the next chapter, I shall part with a reluctance which I hope the reader will share. Not for victory do I allow Sophereus to explain his analysis of mind, without describing how his scientific friend receives it.

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[CHAPTER XIII.]

Sophereus discourses on the Nature and Origin of the Human Mind.

Sophereus, in fulfillment of his intention expressed at their last meeting, reads to the scientist the following

DISCOURSE ON THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN MIND.

I regard the mind as an organism, capable of anatomical examination, as the body is, but of course by very different means. In the anatomical examination of an animal organism we use our eye-sight to acquire a knowledge of its component parts, its organs, and its structure, by dissection of a dead or inspection of a living subject. But, in studying the anatomy of mind, we have a subject that is beyond our visual perception. It is not, however, beyond our examination. We carry on that examination by means of the introspection which consciousness enables us to have of our own minds, and by observing and comparing the phenomena of mind as manifested in other persons. If these respective means of investigation enable us to reach the conviction that in each individual of the human race there is an existence of a spiritual nature and another existence of a corporeal or physical nature, we shall have attained this conclusion by observing the difference between the two organisms. The fact that we can not detect the bond that unites them while they are united should not lead us to doubt their distinct existence as organisms of different natures, but made for a temporary period to act on and with each other.

Before entering further into the subject, I will refer to some of the terms which we are obliged to use in speaking of the nature of mind as an organism, when contrasted with the nature of the physical organism. We speak, for example, and from the want of another term we are obliged to speak, of the substance of mind. But, while we thus speak of mind in a term of matter, there is no implication that the subject of which we speak is of the same nature as that which constitutes the physical organism; nor is there any danger of the incorporation of materialistic ideas with our ideas of the fabric of mind. On the contrary, the very nature of the inquiry is whether that which constitutes mind is something different from that which constitutes body; and, although in speaking of both we use the term substance, we mean in the one case organized matter, and in the other case organized spirit. There is a very notable instance of a corresponding use of terms in the passage of one of St. Paul's epistles, where he discourses on the doctrine of the resurrection. According to my universal custom when I refer to any of the writings regarded by the Christian world as sacred, or inspired, I lay aside altogether the idea of a person speaking by divine or any other authority. I cite the statement of St. Paul, in its philosophical aspect, as an instance of the use of the term body applied to each of the distinct organisms. His statement, or assertion, or assumption—call it what you please—is, "If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body";[139] he uses the term body in speaking of that which is natural, or of the earth, earthy, and of that which is spiritual, or heavenly. Without following him into the nature of the occurrence which he affirms is to take place in the resurrection, the question is whether he was or was not philosophically correct, in speaking of two kinds of organisms, one composed of matter, and liable to corruption and dissolution, and the other composed of spirit, indestructible and imperishable.

In order to be understood, he was obliged to use the term body in reference to both of these organisms, just as we are obliged to use the term substance when we speak of the subject of contemplation as a physical or as a spiritual organism. Can this distinctness of nature be predicated of the body and the mind of man before what we call death?

The peculiar occurrence which St. Paul so vigorously and vividly describes as what is to happen at the resurrection, is a prophecy in which he mingles with great force philosophical illustrations and the information which he claims to have received from inspiration; or things revealed to him by the Almighty through the Holy Spirit. He expresses himself in terms level to the apprehension of those whom he is addressing; and in this use of terms he does just what we do when we speak of a natural body and a spiritual body. He puts the existence of the natural body hypothetically:

"If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body."[140] Paraphrased as the whole passage may be, he says, "You well know that there is a natural body, and I tell you that there is also a spiritual body." Laying aside the mode in which the spiritual body is to be manifested at and after the resurrection, we have to consider whether, during this life, there is a bodily organism and a mental organism, distinct in their natures, but united for a time by a bond which is hidden from our detection.

I have used the term anatomy of the mind, from the same necessity which compels me to speak of the substance of mind. You will understand that, when I speak of anatomical examination of the mind, I mean that analysis of its structure which we can make by the use of the appropriate means, and which enables us to conceive that it is an organized structure of a peculiar character.

The grand difficulty with Mr. Spencer's "Psychology" is, that after he has made what he calls "the proximate components of mind" to consist of "two broadly contrasted kinds—feelings and the relations between feelings," which are mere impressions produced on the nerve-center by molecular changes in the fluid or semi-fluid substance of the nerves, he has not approached to a solution of the question whether there is or is not a something to which these feelings and the relations between them suggest ideas, and which holds ideas continuously for future use.

Thus he makes consciousness to consist in passing groups of feelings and their relations, and not in a conscious subject. He denies that there is any ego, in the sense in which every person is conscious of a self, and maintains that the only substantive existence is the unknown ligament which holds together the ever-changing states of feelings and impressions produced in the nerve-center. There is a far better method of investigation. It is to inquire into the fabric of the mind as an organism, by determining whether mental phenomena justify us in the conclusion that it is an organism. In this way we may reach a satisfactory conclusion that the mind is a substantive existence, possessing a uniform structure, of a character, however, fundamentally different from the bodily structure; and in this way we may be able to explain, wholly or in part, how the mind and the body act on and with each other so long as the connection is maintained.

I am entirely free to acknowledge that, when I speak of the substance of mind, or speak of it as an organism, I am and must remain ignorant of the nature of its substance beyond the point where its self-manifestations cease. But the question is, whether we are not under an irresistible necessity of adopting as a postulate the existence of a something which has certain inherent powers, and whether the mental phenomena, the self-manifestations of those powers, do not necessarily lead us to the conception and conviction that mind is a substantive existence. I can not talk or think of consciousness apart from a conscious subject, or of feelings without a subject that feels. A thread of consciousness, or a series of feelings, conveys no meaning to me, apart from a being who has the consciousness and perceives the feelings.[141]

One very important question to be considered in all such investigations is, Whether our experience does not teach us that we are mentally so constituted that certain conceptions are necessary to us? Our mental nature is placed under certain laws, as our physical or corporeal nature is placed under certain other laws. One of these necessary conceptions, which are imposed on us, as it seems to me, by a law of our mental constitution, is a conception of the fundamental difference between matter and spirit. In what way is it forced upon us that there is a natural world and a spiritual world? The phenomena of matter and the phenomena of mind are essentially different. In ourselves they occur in conjunction, and they occur in disjunction. They are manifested synchronously, and they are manifested separately in point of time. The normal action of all the functions of the body is not necessary to the action of the mind. The body may be prostrated by disease, and the moment of its death may be at hand; yet the mind, to the last moment of the physical life, may be unclouded, and its manifestations may be as perfect as they ever were in the full health and activity of the vital functions of the body. No one who stands at a death-bed where this phenomenon occurs, and observes how completely the mind is master of itself; how it holds in consciousness the past and the present; how it essays to grasp the future for those whom it is to leave and for itself, can easily escape the conviction that death is nothing but the dissolution of the bond which has hitherto held together the two existences that constituted the human being, one of which is to be dissolved into its elemental and material substances, and the other of which is to go elsewhere, intact and indestructible.

Let me now refer to what is taking place while I am writing this essay. I have said that the phenomena of our bodily organism and the phenomena of our mental organism may occur synchronously in the same individual. The act of writing an original composition is an instance of this. The action of certain organs of the body and the action of the mind are simultaneous. In time, they can not be separated. In themselves, they are separable and separate. The thought springing up in the mind may be retained there, or may flow into language and be written by the hand upon the page. No one can detect in himself any instant of time when the mental formation of a sentence, or any clause of a sentence, as he writes, is separable from the physical act of writing. In that not very common, but still possible, feat of dictating to two amanuenses, at what appears to be the same time, on two distinct subjects, there is undoubtedly an appreciable interval, in which the mind passes from one subject to the other, and then back again, with great rapidity. But, when one is one's own amanuensis, when the act of thinking and formulating the thought, and the act of writing it down in words, is performed by the same person, there is a simultaneous action of that which originates the thought and clothes it in words, and the act of the bodily organ which inscribes the words upon paper. How is this phenomenon to be explained? And to what does it lead? Is there anything in the whole range of Mr. Spencer's "Psychology" that will interpret this familiar experience? May it not be interpreted by an anatomical examination of the mind as an organism?

I do not now refer to cases where a thought is completely formulated before the pen begins to be moved over the paper, and is then recalled by an effort of the memory and written down. I am referring to what I suppose is the habit of many persons in writing, namely, the origination and formulation of the thought as the hand moves the pen, a habit of which most practiced writers are perfectly conscious. The same thing occurs in what is truly called extemporaneous speaking,[142] when oral discourse is not a mere repetition, memoriter, of thoughts and sentences which had been previously formulated, but, as the word extemporaneous implies, when the thought and the language flow from the vocal organs eo instanti with their conception. In these and the similar cases of improvisation and animated conversation, in which there is a synchronous action of the mind and the bodily organs, it would be impossible for us to have that action if mind were constituted as Mr. Spencer supposes it to be. If there were no mind in the sense of an organized entity, conceiving a thought and clothing it in the language needful to give it written or oral expression, "if the ego were nothing more than the passing group of feelings and ideas"—if an "idea lasts (only) while the nerves of molecular motion last, ceasing when they cease"—if that which remains is (only) the "set of plexuses"—how could we originate any new thought? The very illustration to which Mr. Spencer resorts, when he likens the automatic human being to the non-automatic piano, and makes them analogous in their action, in order to show that passing ideas do not have a continual existence in the mind, but that the actual existence is the physical structure which, under like conditions, again evolves like combinations, reduces us at once to the level of the piano, and precludes the potentiality of a new and original idea which is not a combination of former ideas, and is produced under different conditions. The assertion or argument that each set of plexuses is capable of entering into countless combinations with others, and so renders possible future ideas, does not advance us one step to the solution of what takes place when we conceive a new thought, clothe it in language, and write it down on paper, or give it oral expression.

In justification of this criticism, let me now refer to that intellectual process which is called "invention," in its application to the mechanic arts. I do not mean to suggest or to claim that this kind of invention is an act which is to be referred to a distinct and peculiar faculty of certain minds, in the possession of which one man may differ from another. But I shall endeavor to describe what takes place when one conceives the intellectual plan of a certain new combination of mechanical devices, and embodies that plan in a machine which differs from all other previous machines in its characteristic method of operation. For convenience, I shall speak of the person who produces such a machine as the inventor, which is the same as speaking of him as the maker, as the poet is the maker of a poem. This act of invention, or the making of some concrete new thing, is an act of creation. The inventor, then, may be supposed to have learned all that empirical and all that scientific mechanics could teach him; to have had any quantity of passing groups of ideas pass through his consciousness; to be possessed of any number of plexuses capable of entering into countless combinations with others. These plexuses, or networks of transitory ideas, consisting of former impressions in the nerve-center, must, it is said, be recalled under the like conditions which produced them. But the conditions for the inventor are not the same. Something is to be produced into which the old ideas do not enter. There is to be a new arrangement of old mechanical devices; a new combination is to be made, which will possess a method of operation and accomplish a result never before seen or obtained. A new concrete thing, a new machine, is to be created. That the conception must be formed, that the objective point, to which the whole intellectual effort is to aim, must be seen, is manifest. A tentative intellectual process may have to be gone through before the full conception is reached, just as a tentative experimental process may be necessary in finding out how the practical embodiment of the conception is to be reached in building the structure. These processes may go on simultaneously or separately; but, when they are both completed, when the new machine stands before us, we see at once that the plan is an intellectual conception, perfectly original, and the physical structure is a new arrangement of matter effected by the hand of the inventor or by the hands of others, which he uses as his instruments in doing the physical work. I do not know, therefore, how this phenomenon is to be explained upon the theory that the only ego is the body and its functions, which lies behind and determines ever-changing states of consciousness. I know not how else to interpret the phenomenon of invention, excepting to adopt the postulate that there is a mind, a substantive existence, which, while its consciousness holds ideas suggested by former conditions, has the inherent power to originate ideas that did not form a part of any previous state of consciousness.

I have spoken of mind as an organism and as a substantive existence. This is a deduction to be drawn from the manifestations of mental phenomena. In order to guard against an objection that may possibly be interposed in the way of this method of investigation, I will anticipate and answer it. It will be said that we can not define or describe the substance of mind; can not tell whether it is a unit, in itself, or an aggregate of units; we know and can know nothing more than its approximate components, and all that we know of these does not justify us in assuming to speak of the substance of mind. I have more than once suggested, in our former conferences, that our inability to define and to describe the substance of any supposed existence is no proper objection to the hypothesis that there is such an existence. When we undertake to define matter, or to describe the substance of that which we call matter, we find that we soon reach a point where precise definition or description ceases. Yet we do not for that reason refrain from deducing the existence of matter from the manifestations of certain phenomena and from our experience with them. It is perfectly true that we know matter only by the manifestations of certain physical phenomena; that we can not define the nature of its substance. All we can do, by the most minute analysis, is to arrive at the perception of the ultimate particles or units of matter; and the nature of the substance of which these units are composed is incapable of any further description. "Matter"[143] is one of the words in the English language which are used in a great variety of senses, exact and inexact, literal and figurative. In its philosophical sense, meaning the substance of which all physical bodies are composed, the efforts of lexicographers to give a definition, descriptive of the nature of what is defined, show that definition is, strictly speaking, impossible. All that can be said is that matter is "substance extended"; or that which is visible or tangible, as "earth, wood, stone, air, vapor, water"; or "the substance of which all bodies are composed." But these efforts at definition express only what is needful to be expressed in contrasting matter with that other existence which is called "spirit." This is another word which is used in very different senses, but of which no more exact definition can be given, when it is used in its philosophical sense, than can be given of "matter." Lexicographers have defined "spirit," in one of its meanings, as "the soul of man; the intelligent, immaterial, and immortal part of human beings"; and in another of its meanings, more broadly, as "an immaterial, intelligent substance." In these definitions they have followed the metaphysicians, and the uses of the word in the English translation of the Bible. When we turn to the definition of "soul," we find it given as "the spiritual and immortal substance in man, which distinguishes him from brutes; that part of man which enables him to think and reason, and which renders him a subject of moral government." We also have it defined as "the understanding, the intellectual principle." Undoubtedly these definitions involve certain assumptions, such as the existence of a substance called spirit, and the existence of an intellectual principle, of which "soul," "spirit," and "intellect" are mere names. But there is no difficulty in the way of our knowing what is meant when these terms are used. The difficulty of giving a definition without a circuitous use of terms, explaining the one by the other, and then explaining the last by the first, does not prevent us from having a definite conception of the thing spoken of. When we speak of mind, soul, or intellect, what we think of is the something in ourselves of which we are conscious, and whose manifestations we observe in other beings like ourselves; and what we have to do is to examine the evidence which may bring home to our convictions the existence of this something that perceives, thinks, acts, originates new ideas; holds former ideas in consciousness, is connected with and acts upon and is acted on by bodily organs, and is at the same time more than and different from those organs.

I have referred to some of the mental phenomena which have the strongest tendency to prove the existence of the mind as an organized entity. These are the phenomena which occur in our waking hours, when the intellectual faculties and the bodily organs are in the full exercise of their normal functions respectively. There is another class of mental phenomena which may be said to be abnormal, in this, that the intellectual faculties and the bodily organs do not preserve the same relations to each other in all respects that they do when we are fully awake. These are the phenomena that occur during sleep—a class of mental phenomena of great consequence to be observed and analyzed in any study of psychology. They are of an extraordinary variety, complex in the highest degree, and dependent on numerous causes of mental and physical disturbance; but it is quite possible to extract from some of them certain definite conclusions.

Sleep, properly regarded, when it is perfect, is a state of absolute rest and inactivity of all the organs and functions of the body save the digestion of food and the circulation of the blood, and of all the mental faculties. Perfect sleep, sleep in which there is absolutely no consciousness, is more rare than those states in which there is more or less consciousness. But it is often an actual state of both body and mind, and it was evidently designed to renew the vigor of both, and to prevent the wear and tear of unbroken activity. Between absolute unconsciousness induced by perfect sleep and the full consciousness of our waking moments, there are many intermediate states; and the phenomena of these intermediate states present very strong proofs of the existence of the mind as a special and spiritual entity, capable in greater or less degree of acting without the aid of the physical organs. I do not except even the organ of the brain from this suspension of action during certain states when the mind is in more or less of activity; for I am convinced that in some of the mental phenomena to which I shall advert and which I shall endeavor to describe, the brain is in a state of perfect sleep, and that in the production of those phenomena it takes no part. In other mental phenomena, which occur during sleep, the brain or some part of it is evidently acted upon by the mind, as in the somnambulistic condition, when the nerves of motion, responding to the action of the mind, communicate action to the muscles, and the body walks about and performs other external acts.

There are other mental phenomena occurring during very profound sleep of the body and its organs, when the mind does not appear to derive its action from the brain, or to be dependent on the brain for its activity; when it is exceedingly active, and when it communicates action to none of the bodily organs; when, for example, it carries on long trains of thought, composes sentences, invents conversations, makes poetry and prose, and performs other intellectual processes. Distributed into classes, the most important mental phenomena occurring during sleep are the following:

First, and presenting perhaps the strongest proof of the mind's independence of all the bodily organs, is that whole class of mental phenomena in which, during profound sleep of the body, we carry on conversations, compose original matter in the form of oral or written discourse, which we seem to ourselves to be producing, and solve intellectual difficulties which have baffled us when awake, or imagine that we receive from an unexpected source important information that we are not conscious of having previously received.

The phenomena of conversations, to which we appear to ourselves to be listening during sleep, or in which we appear to ourselves to be taking part, are, when analyzed, most remarkable occurrences, for it is the mind of the sleeper which originates the whole of what appears to be said by different persons. These conversations are as vivid, as much marked by different intellectual and personal characteristics, sudden and unexpected turns, apt repartee, interchange of ideas between two or more persons, as are the real conversations which we overhear, or in which we take part, when we are awake. Yet the whole of what is said, or appears to us to be said, is the invention of the one mind, which appears to itself to be listening to or talking with other minds, and all the while the body is wrapped in profound sleep. This extraordinary intellectual feat, so familiar to us that it scarcely attracts our attention unless we undertake to analyze it, is closely akin to the action of the mind when the body and the mind are neither of them asleep, and when we invent a conversation between different persons. But this occurrence is marked by another extraordinary peculiarity: for it happens, during sleep, to persons who could not, when awake, invent and write such conversations at will, and who in their waking hours have very little of the imaginative faculty needed for such productions. I account for this phenomenon by the hypothesis that when the mind is free from the necessity of depending on the bodily organs for its action, as it is during profound sleep of the body, when its normal relations with the body are completely suspended and it is left to its independent action, it has a power of separate action. This, I think, accounts for a kind of mental action which, when compared with that which occurs in conjunction with the action of the bodily organs, may be called abnormal. Under the impulse of its own unrestrained and uncorrected activity, the mind goes through processes of invention, the products of which are sometimes wild and incoherent, sometimes exceedingly coherent, sensible, and apt. Let the person to whom this occurs be thoroughly awakened out of one of these states, and the mind becomes immediately again subjected to the necessity of acting along with, and under the conditions of its normal relations to the body.

Akin to this mental feat of inventing conversations, during a sleep of the body, is the power of composing, during such sleep, oral discourse of one's own, or the power of composing something which we appear to ourselves to be writing. I suppose this is an occurrence which happens to most persons who are much accustomed to writing or to public speaking. It is often an involuntary action of the mind; that is to say, it is sometimes accompanied with a distinct consciousness that it is a process that ought to be arrested because it is a dangerous one, and yet it can not be arrested before full waking consciousness returns. On goes the flow of thought and language, apparently with great success; we seem to be speaking or writing with even more than our usual power, and all the while in the style that belongs to us; but, until we are fully restored to the normal relation of the mind and the body, we can not at will arrest this independent action of the mind, but must wait until our bodily senses are again in full activity. I do not suppose that this phenomenon ought to be explained by the hypothesis that there are certain parts or organs of the brain which are specially concerned in the work of original composition of intellectual matter, and that these organs are not affected by the sleep that is prevailing in other parts of the brain. While it is doubtless true that there are special systems of nerves which proceed from or conduct to special parts of the brain, and by which action is imparted to or received from the other organs of the body, and while some of these special parts of the brain may be in the state of absolute inactivity called sleep, and others are not, I know of no warrant for the hypothesis that the intellectual operations or processes are dependent upon any particular organ or organs of the brain, as distinguished from those from and to which proceed special systems of nerves. If any person, who is much accustomed to that kind of intellectual activity which consists in original composition of intellectual matter, will attend to his own consciousness, and probe it as far as he may, he will not find reason, I apprehend, to conclude that the power of thought and of clothing thought in language resides in any special part of the brain. His experience and introspection will be more likely to lead him to the conclusion that this power, whether it is exerted when he is asleep or awake bodily, is a power that inheres in the mind itself regarded as a spiritual existence and organism, and that the action of the brain, or of any part of it, is necessary to the exercise of this power only when it is necessary, as it is in our waking moments, to use some of the bodily organs in order to give the thought oral or written expression by giving it utterance through the vocal organs or by writing it down on paper. Certain it is that we conceive thoughts in more or less of connected sequence, and clothe them intellectually in language of which we have entire consciousness while the process is going on, without the action of any part of the body.

It may be objected to this view that the intellectual products which we seem to ourselves to be making when we are asleep would, if they could be repeated by an effort of the memory, word for word, just as they seem to have occurred, be found to be of the same incoherent, senseless stuff of which all dreams are made; and that this test would show that the brain is at such times not absolutely and completely in the condition which is called sleep, but that it is only partially in that condition; that it is performing its function feebly, imperfectly, and not as it performs that function when the whole body is awake. In reference to this hypothesis, I will repeat an anecdote which I have somewhere read, which is equally valuable whether it was an imaginary or a real occurrence.

A gentleman of literary pursuits, who was a very respectable poet, was subject to this habit of composition during sleep. One night he awoke his wife and informed her that he had composed in his dream some of the best and most original verses that he had ever written. He begged her at once to get a candle, pen, ink, and paper, and let him dictate to her the new composition that appeared to him so striking. When they read together the new poem on the next morning, it turned out to be nonsensically puerile. But occurrences of this kind, if they could be multiplied, would prove only that we are liable to illusions in sleep, in regard to the comparative merits of our intellectual products, which we imagine ourselves to be creating when we are in that state, as we are in regard to other things. We are under a delusion when we imagine in our dreams that we encounter and converse with another person, living or dead. We are perhaps deluding ourselves when in sleep we compose or seem to compose an original poem. But what is it that deludes itself, either in respect to the interview with another person, or in respect to the new composition? Is it the brain, or is it the mind? Is it a person, or a bodily organ that has the false impression, in the one case or the other? There must be a something that is subject to an illusion, before there can be an illusion. If both brain and mind are in profound sleep, absolute suspension of all action, there can be no illusion about anything. If the brain is absolutely asleep and the mind is not, the illusion is in the mind and not in the brain. That the latter is what often occurs, the experience of the illiterate and uncultivated makes them aware, as well as the experience of the lettered scholar and the practiced writer.[144]

Under the same head, I will now refer to those strange but familiar occurrences which take place when there come to us, in sleep, solutions of difficulties which we had not overcome by all our efforts while awake, and which appeared to us utterly dark when we lay down to rest. These mental phenomena are almost innumerably various. They take place in regard to all kinds of subjects, to lines of conduct and action, to everything about which our thoughts are employed; and they are a class of phenomena within everybody's experience. There is scarcely any one to whom it has not happened to lie down at night with a mind distressed and perplexed about some problem that requires a definite solution, and to rise in the morning, usually after a night of undisturbed rest, with his mind perfectly clear on the subject, and with just the solution that did not come to him when he devoted to it all his waking thoughts. What is the explanation of this phenomenon? If the mind is an independent entity, a spiritual organism, capable of its own action without the aid of the body under certain circumstances, this phenomenon can be explained. If the mind is not a spiritual organism, capable, under any circumstances, of acting without the aid of the bodily organs, this phenomenon can not be explained.

The most probable explanation is this: When we are awake, and devote our thoughts to a particular subject that is attended with great difficulties, we go over the same ground repeatedly—the mind travels and toils in the same ruts. Nothing new occurs, because we look at the subject in the same way every time we think of it. We are liable to be kept in the same beaten path by the associations between our thoughts and the bodily states in which we have those thoughts—associations which are exceedingly powerful. But let these associations be dissolved as they are during perfect sleep—let the mind be in a condition to act without being dependent on the brain or any other bodily organ for aid, or exposed to be hampered by the conditions of the body, and there will be a mental activity in which ideas will be wrought out that did not occur to us while we were awake. The memory, too, may recall a fact which we had learned while awake, and yet we may be unable to recollect how it came to our knowledge. At such times, the fact is recalled; but as the mind is acting in a condition which is abnormal when compared with the waking condition, and is liable to delusions about some things, we imagine that the fact is revealed to us in some wild and supernatural way, as by a person who is dead and who has come to us to communicate it. There is a well-authenticated account of an occurrence of this kind, given by Sir Walter Scott in one of the notes to his "Antiquary," and on which he founds an incident related by one of the personages in his story. The real occurrence was this: A gentleman in Scotland was involved in a litigation about a claim asserted upon his landed estate. He had a strong conviction that his father had bargained and paid for a release of the claim, but he could find no such paper. Without it he was sure to be defeated in the suit. Distressed by this prospect, but utterly unable to see any way out of his misfortune, he lay down to sleep, on the night before he was to go into Edinburgh to attend the trial of the cause. He dreamed that his father appeared to him, and told him that the claim had been released, and that the paper was in the hands of a lawyer in a neighboring town, whose name the paternal shade mentioned.

Before going into Edinburgh on the next day, the gentleman rode to the place which his father had indicated, and found the lawyer, of whose name he had been previously unconscious. This person turned out to be an old man, who had forgotten the fact that he had transacted this piece of business for the gentleman's father; but on being told of the fact that his client had paid his fee in a foreign coin of a peculiar character—which was one part of the story which the father's apparition related to the son—he recalled the whole of the circumstances, searched for the paper, and found it. The gentleman's estate was saved to him; but he became very superstitious about dreams, and suffered much from that cause, as was quite natural. Sir Walter's solution of the whole affair is of course the correct one: "The dream was only the recapitulation of information which Mr. R—— had really received from his father while in life, but which at first he merely recalled as a general impression that the claim was settled. It is not uncommon for persons to recover, during sleep, the thread of ideas which they have lost during their waking hours."[145] Sir Walter makes another observation which is worthy of being repeated—that in dreams men are not surprised by apparitions. Why are we not? Because the mind is in a state of abnormal activity, in which everything that occurs to it seems perfectly natural. The delusion in regard to the mode in which the very important fact was communicated to Mr. R—— in his dream, was substituted in the place of the actual communication made to him by his father during life. The latter he had wholly forgotten, and he had forgotten the circumstance of payment of the lawyer's fee in a peculiar coin, which had also been mentioned to him by his father when living. This remarkable incident, which might doubtless be paralleled by many similar occurrences, proves one of two things: either that the exercise of the memory is wholly dependent upon a waking condition of the brain, or that there may be an abnormal and imperfect act of memory while the brain is in profound sleep, in the course of which a fact becomes mixed with a delusion about the mode in which we are told of the fact. What happened to Mr. R—— was that his mind recalled the fact, but imagined that he then learned it for the first time from an apparition. I do not know how such a phenomenon can be explained, excepting by the hypothesis that the mind is a special existence, which acts during sleep of the body upon facts that are lodged in the memory, but mixes them with imaginary and delusive appearances, so that the mode in which the fact was actually learned is obliterated from the memory, and some supernatural mode of communication takes its place. On the return of waking consciousness, the mode in which the fact was actually learned is still shut out from recollection, and, if the person to whom this kind of delusion has occurred is of a superstitious turn, he will act on what he has imagined was told him by the apparition, because he has no other means of rescuing himself from an evil.

In regard to the mental phenomena which occur without delusions or apparitions, where the thoughts on a difficult subject become clearer and more satisfactory to us when we awake from sleep than they ever were during our waking hours, I suppose the explanation is this: During profound sleep of the body, including the brain, there is an entire suspension of every bodily function excepting the digestion of food and the circulation of the blood. If there is excited in some of the other organs an action of a peculiar kind, by an excitation of the nerves connected with those organs, it is proof that the condition of perfect sleep is not prevailing in all parts of the brain. The state to which I now refer supposes a complete inactivity of the whole bodily organism save in the digestive function and the circulation of the blood. In such a state, the mind, that which thinks and reasons, does not act upon the brain, and is not acted upon by it. It is capable of thinking on any subject which has employed its thoughts during the waking hours; and while, in some cases, it is visited by apparitions and subject to delusions, it is in other cases engaged in ideas that involve no delusive appearances. Freed from all the associations of these ideas with the feelings prevailing in the body when we think of the subject during our waking hours, we are able to perceive relations of the subject which have not before occurred to us. When we pass from the condition of sleep to the full consciousness of our bodily and mental organism, we are intellectually possessed of these new relations of the subject, which we have brought with us out of the state in which we acquired them, and they furnish us with new materials for the solution of the problem that we had not solved when we lay down to rest. It is not, I am persuaded, because the mind was at rest during sleep, and when we become awake is by reason of that rest better able to grapple with the difficulties of the subject, that we do grapple with them successfully; for in the case supposed, which is a very common experience, the thoughts are actually employed on the subject, while the body and the brain are in the absolute rest and inactivity of all the organic functions excepting those of digestion and circulation of the blood. I do not know that it is possible to detect, in a person sleeping, an increased circulation of the blood to any part of the brain which may be supposed to be concerned in the act of thinking, and at the same time to know that thinking is going on, unless such an observation could be made of a person in the state called somnambulism, which is not the state of which I am now speaking. But reasoning upon the phenomenon which I have now described, according to all that we can learn from our own experience or from observation of others, I reach the conclusion that the mind, the thinking and reasoning entity, can and does, in profound sleep of the body and the brain, employ itself upon a subject that has occupied us when awake, and can perceive new relations of that subject, which had not before occurred to us, without the activity of any portion of the nerve-center which is called the brain. Does this hypothesis assume that our thoughts when asleep are more valuable than our waking thoughts? It does, to a certain extent and under certain circumstances, for experience proves that in sleep we acquire ideas which we did not have before we fell asleep, and which we bring with us out of that condition.

That I have now given the true explanation of this familiar experience will appear, I think, from this consideration: There are very few nights when we do not in sleep have many thoughts. The states of perfect unconsciousness are comparatively rare. If the brain were never entirely asleep, if it were always engaged in the physical work of thinking—whatever that work may be—it would be worn out prematurely. But if the brain is perfectly at rest, while the mind is actively employed, the brain undergoes no strain and suffers no exhaustion; and the mind suffers no strain or exhaustion because it is in its nature incapable of wear and tear. It is only when the mind acts on the brain that exhaustion takes place. I speak now of what happens in states of ordinarily good health.[146]

I shall now refer to some of the very peculiar phenomena of somnambulism; and in illustration of their various phases I shall resort to Shakespeare's picture of the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth, which, although purely imaginary, is a most accurate exhibition of nature. Treating it, as we are entitled to treat it, as if it were a real occurrence at which we ourselves were witnesses, with a knowledge of her character and history, an analysis of the situation in which she was placed when the habit of somnambulism came upon her, and of the mode in which her mind acted upon her body, will enable us to see the phenomena in their true philosophical aspect. We may suppose ourselves present, with the doctor and the gentlewoman of her bedchamber, when she comes forth in her night-dress and with a candle in her hand, and we witness the impressive scene of a disturbed mind overmastering the body while the body is asleep. It seems that, after the murder of Duncan, when she imbrued her own hands with his blood in smearing the faces of his sleeping grooms, the habit of sleep-walking had come over her. As we stand by the side of the awe-stricken witnesses, and hear their whispered conversation, we get the first description of her actions since the new king, Macbeth, her husband, whom she had instigated to murder the old king, went into the field. These first actions of hers, as described by the gentlewoman to the doctor, do not necessarily exhibit the working of a guilty conscience. They exhibit a mind oppressed and disturbed by cares of business and of state; and they are a distinct class of the phenomena of somnambulism. The gentlewoman tells the doctor that "since his Majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her night-gown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon it, read it, afterward seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep." This is merely a description of what the witness has seen, and it might occur to any person of strong intellectual faculties, disturbed by great cares, without the action of a guilty conscience. It makes the situation real when the doctor recognizes the fact of this "great perturbation in nature! to receive at once the benefit of sleep, and do the effects of watching." As they are whispering together, the doctor trying to make the gentlewoman tell him what at such times she has heard her say, which the loyal servant refuses to tell, Lady Macbeth moves forward, with the taper in her hand.

Here we may pause upon the first exhibition of the phenomenon called sleep-walking, which we get by description only, and analyze the nature of the action. It is perfectly apparent that what the poet accepted as true, is the power of the mind to move the body while the body is asleep, so as to make it perform many acts. Experience makes this assumption perfectly correct. I presume it will not be questioned that this phenomenon is described by Shakespeare with entire accuracy, and it is explicable only upon the hypothesis that the mind has some control over the body while the body is asleep. Actions as minute and as much premeditated as those performed by Lady Macbeth "in a most fast sleep," have been witnessed in persons who were undoubtedly asleep, and whose eyes were open for some purposes, but, as in her case, their sense was shut for other purposes.

We now pass to the more awful exhibition of a mind worked upon by a guilty conscience. Lady Macbeth comes out of her bedroom fast asleep, but with a light in her hand. The gentlewoman who interprets her state to the doctor informs him that she has a light by her bedside continuously; and we thus learn that her nights are so disturbed that she can not bear darkness. They notice that her eyes are open, but "their sense is shut." Then begin the terrific manifestations of the control of a guilty conscience over both mind and body, when the memory, alive to certain terrible facts, plays fantastic tricks with itself, and mingles delusions with realities. As she approaches, with the taper in her hand, she performs an action which the gentlewoman says she has repeatedly seen her go through, for a quarter of an hour at a time, endeavoring to rub a spot of blood off from one of her hands. Her hands have been clean, physically, since the time when she first washed them on the fatal night; but the delusion that is upon her is that there is blood on them still. She goes on rubbing them, and her first exclamation is, "Out, damned spot! out, I say!" Yet it will not out. That little hand wears what she imagines to be an indelible stain. After her first exclamation, the memory rushes back to the moment before the murder. She thinks she hears, perhaps does hear, the clock strike—"one, two"; and then, as if speaking to her husband, she says, "Why, then 'tis time to do't." Then there is a pause, and out comes the reflection, "Hell is murky!" This seems to indicate that darkness, in which she and her husband are whispering together just before the murder, is a hell, and so very fit for what is about to be done. Hell is murky, as this chamber is. Then she remembers her husband's reluctance, and fancying that she is still talking with him and bracing him up to the deed, she says: "Fye, my lord, fye! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?" Presently she is looking back upon the deed, and exclaims, "Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him!" Then she recurs to herself as if she were another: "The thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?" Again she thinks of her stained hands: "What, will these hands ne'er be clean?" Are they to wear this horrible stain forever? Instantly she is again at the door of Duncan's chamber, speaking to her husband: "No more o' that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with this starting!" Then her hands again, her poor hands; they smell of the blood: "Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand! Oh, oh, oh!" Then, after another pause, she is speaking to her husband, when the deed has been done: "Wash your hands, put on your night-gown; look not so pale!" In another instant she is thinking of Banquo's murder, which occurred after Duncan's, and she says to her husband: "I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he can not come out of his grave!" Once more she is back at the door of Duncan's chamber, in the darkness, and the murder has been committed. Speaking to her husband, she says: "To bed, to bed; there's knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What's done can not be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed!" Then she goes quickly toward her chamber and to bed, believing that Macbeth is with her and that she is holding his hand.

How mixed, how wild, how fantastic, how coherent and incoherent are these phantoms of the imagination! If she were awake, things would not thus present themselves to her. Every event in the dreadful story would stand in its true relations, and, however she might be suffering the pangs of a guilty conscience, she would not mix up the scenes through which she had passed, but every fact would stand in its due order. She would be conscious that there was no blood upon her hands, and that they did not need the perfumes of Arabia to sweeten them. She would know that Duncan had been murdered, and would not enact the murder over again. She would remember that Banquo's murder had not been distinctly made known to her, and that she had only surmised it, when at the banquet Macbeth fancied that the ghost of Banquo rose and sat at the table—an apparition which neither she nor any one else saw. But, in that strange scene, it flashed across her mind that Banquo was dead, and to herself she interpreted truly what was passing in her husband's mind, and instantly explained his conduct to the company as the recurrence of an old malady to which he was subject.

If we go back to what had actually happened before the banquet, and then go forward to the condition in which she is seen by the doctor and her attendant, we shall understand how her mind was working, not upon a fact that she knew, but upon a fact which she had truly surmised. In her somnambulistic state, she says to her husband: "I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he can not come out of his grave." Had she said this to him before? According to the course of the story, as the text of the play gives it to us, she had not. In the second scene of the third act, where, after Duncan had been murdered and Macbeth had become king, they are preparing for the banquet, to which Banquo was expected as one of the guests, Macbeth and his wife are talking together, and she is trying to get him out of the contemplative and conscience-stricken mood in which he looks back upon what they have done. He concludes one of his mixed and melancholy reflections with these words:

Duncan is in his grave;

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well;

Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,

Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing

Can touch him further!

Then she says to him:

Lady Macbeth. Come on;

Gentle my lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks;

Be bright and jovial 'mong your guests to-night.

Macbeth. So shall I, love; and so, I pray, be you;

Let your remembrance apply to Banquo;

Present him eminence,[147] both with eye and tongue:

Unsafe the while, that we

Must lave our honors in these flattering streams;

And make our faces vizards to our hearts,

Disguising what they are.

Just at this moment, therefore, he is not thinking of killing Banquo, but wishes him to be received with all honor. But, in answer to his last reflection on the hypocritical part that they must act, she says to him:

You must leave this.

Then bursts forth the terrific oppression of his soul:

Macb. Oh, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!

Thou know'st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives.

Lady M. But in them nature's copy's not eterne.[148]

Macb. There's comfort yet; they are assailable;

Then be thou jocund: ere the bat hath flown

His cloistered flight; ere, to black Hecate's summons,

The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums,

Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done

A deed of dreadful note!

She affects not to understand him—perhaps does not—and she asks:

What's to be done?

Macb. Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,

Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night,

Skarf up the tender eye of pitiful day;

And, with thy bloody and invisible hand,

Cancel, and tear to pieces, that great bond

Which keeps me pale!—Light thickens; and the crow

Makes wing to the rooky wood;

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;

While night's black agents to their prey do rouse.

Thou marvel'st at my words: but hold thee still;

Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill:

So, prithee, go with me. [Exeunt.

In the next scene, the murderers, previously engaged by Macbeth, waylay Banquo in the park as he is approaching the castle, and kill him, his son Fleance and a servant escaping. Then follows the banquet, Macbeth himself moving about at first, and then he takes a seat at the table lower down. One of the murderers comes in and whispers to him what has been done. The stage direction is, "The ghost of Banquo rises and sits in Macbeth's place." As no one at the table but Macbeth sees this apparition, it might be inferred that it is the force of his imagination which presents the spectacle to him, as Lady Macbeth supposes, when she says to him:

O proper stuff!

This is the very painting of your fear:

This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said,

Led you to Duncan.

But the stage direction must be taken as a literal appearance of the ghost, so as to make it visible to the audience, while it is invisible to all at the table excepting Macbeth himself.

If, now, we go forward to the night when Lady Macbeth is walking in her sleep, and remember what had occurred previous to and at the banquet, we see how, without any actual previous knowledge that her husband intended to have Banquo killed, and with only the surmise that he had been killed, which comes to her at the banquet, she came to say to her husband, in her dream:

I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he can not come out of his grave.

Here we have a fact lodged in the mind during the waking hours, and in sleep wrought into a strange mixture with the killing of Duncan, with which it had in reality no connection, having transpired afterward. This is very strong proof of the capacity of the mind to act during sleep without the action of the brain. The mind of the guilty sleep-walker is filled with horrible memories, which it can not shut out, but with which it can not deal in their actual order and true relations, because the sequences of thought, during sleep, are abnormal. Those whose experience has never involved any such workings of conscience are perfectly aware of the fact that in dreams ideas that are separately lodged in the consciousness become entangled with each other in the most fantastic manner. Lady Macbeth at one moment even thinks of herself as if she were some one else, and asks, Where is the woman now who was the wife of the thane of Fife? Every one has experienced in sleep the same projection of one's self out of one's own consciousness; so that we seem to be contemplating ourselves as if we were a different person.

The phenomena that occur during the delirium of fever, where the normal consciousness is lost for the time being, are in some respects analogous to and in some respects different from those which occur during the somnambulistic condition. Delirium occurs when the body and the brain are not in the condition of sleep; but the senses of perception convey false impressions to the mind, and the mind itself has temporarily lost its power of correcting its own action by its former experience. The nearest friends who are around the bedside are not recognized by the sufferer; they appear to be strangers, and the patient talks to them as if both they and he were not their real selves. It would seem that we can safely infer from the state of delirium a suspension of the direct and normal connection between the brain and the mind; that neither of them can act, in relation to the other, as they both act when there is no such disturbance: but that this condition, so far from proving or tending to prove that the mind is not an independent spiritual existence, has a strong tendency to prove that it is. Insanity, on the other hand, is probably a derangement of the mental organism akin to derangement of the physical organism, but not necessarily connected with or induced by the latter, for the bodily health of the insane is often entirely sound while the mind is in an entirely unsound and irrational condition. But the phenomena of insanity are too various and multiform, and too much dependent on both physical and moral causes, to afford any satisfactory proofs of the postulate which I propound in this essay. The safest line of investigation is that which I suggested in the first instance, namely, to regard the mind as an organism, and to ascertain whether it is susceptible of anatomical examination in a sense analogous to anatomical examination of the bodily organism. All that I have hitherto said is useful by way of preliminary illustration of my main hypothesis. It has a strong tendency to show that the mind, instead of consisting, as some philosophers now suppose, of the products of a material organism, is itself an organized being with a definite structure and capable of living a life of its own, although at present dwelling in a corporeal organism which affects it in various ways while the connection lasts. The theory that all mental phenomena are products of our corporeal organism is one that appears to derive great support from examinations of the structure of the brain and of the whole nervous system. The physical anatomy of man exhibits very striking illustrations of the influence of corporeal changes upon the mental state, as the mental changes show corresponding influences upon the corporeal state. But, then, there are undoubtedly phenomena that are purely and exclusively mental; and therefore when we undertake to solve these mental phenomena by the materialistic hypothesis we find a sense of inadequate causation confronting us so directly that we are compelled to look for a solution elsewhere. It is certain that things take place in the inner recesses of our minds, in the production of which the bodily senses not only render no aid, but in which they have no part whatever. It is necessary, therefore, to carry our investigations into a class of mental phenomena in which all physical causation ceases to afford an adequate guide to a conclusion.

It will not be denied that the products of material organisms can be proved to consist of matter and of nothing else. Their presence can be detected by some physical test. For example, if it be true that all animals have been evolved from protoplasm, the organisms are simply changes in the form of a certain portion of matter. If, in an individual organism having a highly developed nervous structure, there are actions produced by an excitation of the nerves of sensation, those actions are simply molecular changes in the matter comprising the sensitive and easily moved substance of the nerve-fibers. However far and into whatever minutiæ we carry our investigations into organized matter, we find that its products remain material, and that they consist only of changes in the material substance of a material organization. But, when we pass from such material products into the domain of purely mental phenomena, are we warranted in saying that, although the latter are not, properly speaking, products of the material organization, they are effects corresponding to and dependent upon the excitation of the nerves of sensation? This last hypothesis must assume one of two things: either that there is a distinction between those corporeal feelings which do not and those which do produce mental changes or mental effects, or, if there are corporeal feelings which produce corresponding mental states and mental action, there must be a something on which the effects can be wrought, and this something must be an independent organism. It is doubtless true that there are many corporeal feelings which are followed by no very important mental effects, especially during a sound state of bodily health. But it is equally true that, if there are corporeal feelings which influence our mental action, there must be an organism which is capable of being so influenced; and our experience and consciousness teach us that there is such a difference between corporeal feelings and mental phenomena that the probability of a difference in the originating causes becomes very great. We know that the mind can and does act with great force when bodily suffering is extreme; that it has an energy of its own which enables it to rise above all the power of physical pain to restrain or influence it. I must therefore follow out, as I had originally projected, my anatomical analysis of the mind as an independent spiritual organism.

In order to arrive at a correct conclusion concerning the structure of mind, we must first observe that there are four special corporeal organs by which the capability of the mind to receive impressions from matter is acted upon. It is through these means that the properties of matter, or those properties which can make themselves known to us, become known to us. The senses, as they are usually called, are sight, hearing, smell, and taste. The external organ of each of these senses is furnished with a set of nerves, the function of which is to transmit from that organ a wave of molecular motion along the fluid or semi-fluid substance inclosed in the nerve-tubes to the great nerve-center the brain, the central recipient of all such motions. Such, at least, is the theory, which may be accepted as a fact. But, then, the question remains, What is the intellectual perception or mental cognition of the idea suggested by one of these supposed transmissions of a wave of molecular motion? Is there a being, a person, a spiritual entity, conceiving the idea or having an intellectual perception of it? Or is there no such being, and while we attribute to the office of the nervous system the function of producing certain feelings or sensations in the brain, do these sensations or feelings constitute all that there is of consciousness?

It is impossible for me to conceive of consciousness as anything but an intuitive sense of his own existence, experienced by a being capable of such an experience, because endowed with such a faculty. It is certain that when we so regard consciousness we are not deceiving ourselves; for if any one will consider what would happen to him if he should lose this faculty of being sensible of his own existence, he will see that in the event of that loss he could neither distinguish himself from other persons, nor have any control over his own actions, or any cognition whatever. For this reason, the theory on which I made some criticisms in one of our late conversations is the one with which I contrast my conception of mind. If that theory fails to satisfy a reflecting person in regard to the nature of consciousness, as certified to him by his own experience, the hypothesis that the mind is an extended and organized being, of which a conception can be formed, and not an unextended and unorganized something of which no conception can be formed, must be accepted as the alternative.

I explained in our former discussion my understanding of Mr. Spencer's theory of the only ego that can be scientifically recognized; and, in order to encounter it by my own hypothesis, I will here restate its substantial position in a condensed form.

By the ego of which he treats, I understand him to mean all that we can arrive at by an analysis of what takes place in the body and its functions, and of "what is given in consciousness." This phrase—"what is given in consciousness"—reveals to us his purpose to reduce consciousness from a self-conviction and cognition of one's own existence to a mere passing group of feelings, which constitute "the ever-changing states of consciousness" that we "call mind." So that, when we speak of mind, we mean and can mean nothing more than certain states of feeling produced in our brains by perpetually changing impressions. We do not and can not mean that there is a person who perceives and holds ideas suggested by external objects through the action of his nervous system. All that we know about any ego, any mental I, is that there is a physical structure, pervaded by certain physical forces, that produce "consecutive states," which Mr. Spencer calls "mental states"; and the aggregate of the feelings and ideas which thus constitute the mental states is the only ego of which any continued existence can be predicated. But even these aggregates of feelings and ideas have, according to this philosopher, no principle of cohesion holding them together as a whole; and, therefore, all that we can assume as having any continuously surviving and durable existence is the changing states produced by the action through us of a certain unknowable power, statically conditioned in our nervous organism, which is pervaded by a dynamically conditioned portion of that unknowable power which is operating everywhere in nature, and is called "energy."[149]

So far as this theory is based upon the existence of a physical organism, whose functions liberate from the food supplied to it certain forces, which are distributed by the activities of the organism, we may accept it as a statement of what actually takes place in the form of physical phenomena. But when we follow the physical phenomena of the diffused energy into its action upon the brain, by the transmission of an impulse, we must stop with the effect of that impulse upon a corporeal organ, or we must go further and find a something which receives into itself and appropriates to itself the idea the elements of which the impulse has transmitted. The presence of that something in ourselves may be illustrated by its absence from a mechanism in which we know that it does not exist, but which appears superficially to be animated by an intelligent principle possessing volition. We stand, for example, before one of those automatic machines which perform actions that seem to be guided by a living spirit. They are mere physical organisms, constructed without the principle of life that inhabits animal organisms, but they are so admirably contrived for the production of certain limited but complex movements that they suggest the presence of a spiritual being acting as we ourselves act. But the least reflection upon what we see makes us aware that there is nothing before us but a mechanical organism, in which the artisan who made it has availed himself of certain forces of nature and properties of matter, whereby he uses a portion of the energy that pervades the universe. There is nothing within the machine to which this energy communicates ideas that are to be the subject of its future voluntary operation. All is comprehended in a fixed mechanical operation of certain machinery, and, when we have analyzed and understood the physical phenomena, we can follow them no further, because there is no translation of the physical energy into mental phenomena. But in ourselves there is such a translation, and we must follow it into the mental phenomena. So following it, we find ourselves in the presence of a something which has a self-conscious individuality, and which, by a mysterious bond of connection, is so united with a physical organism that it is capable of receiving, appropriating, and preserving the ideas which the physical organism was designed to produce in it.

My objection to Mr. Spencer's system of psychology may be summed up in what I shall now say upon his chief position, which is that "an idea is the psychical side of what, on its physical side, is an involved set of molecular changes, propagated through an involved set of nervous plexuses." Translated into what I take to be his meaning, the assertion, or hypothesis, is this: An idea is the mental cognition of an external object, as, for example, a tree. When we are looking at or thinking of a tree, we have a mental cognition of a tree; and this idea of a tree is said to be the psychical side of that which on its physical side has been transmitted to our brain by molecular changes through our visual nerves. The idea of the tree is the psychical correlative of a wave of molecular motion diffused through our organs of vision; and the conception of a tree thus becomes a possible conception. But why did not the learned philosopher follow the wave of molecular motion until he found the impression of the object which the visual organs have transmitted to the brain, or the nerve-center, translated into a thought by an intelligent being, capable, by its own organization, of having that thought? Why does he speak of an idea as the psychical side of what, on its physical side, is one and the same thing? Obviously, because he meant to ignore the psychical or mental existence as an independent existence, or as any existence at all. Now, there is no way in which the psychical side and the physical side can be bridged over, excepting by the hypothesis that the mind is an entity of a peculiar nature, different in structure from the bodily organism, but capable, by the connection between them, of receiving and transmuting into thought the impressions which the waves of molecular motion transmit to the brain from the external object. To say that the set of plexuses, or networks, which hold together the waves of molecular motion, constitute the potentiality of the idea and make possible future ideas like it, explains nothing. The potentiality of the idea, or the possibility of ideas like it, depends upon the existence of a something which is capable of conceiving the idea, holding it, and reproducing it to itself, after the waves of molecular motion cease. I call this a process of translation, or transmutation, because there is no other convenient term for it. It is a process analogous to the physical assimilation of food by the organs of physical digestion, with this difference, however, that the action of the mental organism in the assimilation of ideas is the action of a spiritual and intellectual organism upon materials that are brought within its reach by the means of communication with the external world afforded by the physical senses and the nervous system. The image of the tree produced upon the retina of the eye by the lines of light that proceed from every point of that object is the food which the mind assimilates and transmutes into the idea of the tree; and this may remain as a permanent mental perception or cognition, although the object itself may have been seen but once. If seen many times, the various aspects in which it has been seen are transmuted into so many distinct ideas. If many kinds of trees, of different shapes and dimensions, have been seen, the varieties become a part of our consciousness in the several degrees of their precise resemblances and differences which we happen to have observed, when the different impressions were produced upon the retina. Can there be any doubt that this is the process by which the infant begins to acquire ideas of external objects, and that, as adolescence goes on and the powers of sense expand with the growth and exercise of the physical organs, there is a corresponding growth and expansion of the mental powers?

This hypothesis of the progress of mental growth, paris passibus with the growth of the physical organism, brings me to the consideration of one of those specimens of Mr. Spencer's peculiar logic, in a passage in which he undertakes to disprove the existence of mind as anything more than what he calls the psychical side of physical impressions. He is treating of the impossibility of our "knowing" anything about the substance of mind; and he propounds this impossibility in the following logical formula:

...To know anything is to distinguish it as such or such—to class it as of this or that order. An object is said to be but little known when it is alien to objects of which we have had experience; and it is said to be well known when there is great community of attributes between it and objects of which we have had experience. Hence, by implication, an object is completely known when this recognized community is complete; and completely unknown when there is no recognized community at all. Manifestly, then, the smallest conceivable degree of knowledge implies at least two things between which some community is recognized. But, if so, how can we know the substance of mind? To know the substance of mind is to be conscious of some community between it and some other substance. If, with the idealist, we say that there exists no other substance, then, necessarily, as there is nothing with which the substance of mind can be even compared, much less assimilated, it remains unknown; while, if we hold with the realist that being is fundamentally divisible into that which is present to us as mind, and that which, lying outside of it, is not mind, then, as this proposition itself asserts a difference and not a likeness, it is equally clear that mind remains unclassable and therefore unknowable.

The answer to this supposed insuperable dilemma may be made by determining what we mean when we speak of knowing a thing. Definition of knowing is here essential, and the first inquiry we have to make is whether, in order to know mind, it is necessary to find and recognize some community between the substance of mind and some other substance? The statement is, on the one hand, that there exists no other substance with which the substance of mind can be compared, much less assimilated, and therefore there is no aid to be derived from resemblance; or, on the other hand, that, if being is fundamentally divisible into something which is mind and something which is not mind, we depend for a knowledge of mind on a difference, and not on a likeness, and we have no means of knowing that difference. Upon either proposition, mind remains unclassable and therefore unknowable.

It may be conceded that our knowledge of the properties and forms of matter consists in recognizing a community or a difference between things which belong to the same class, so that there is a comparison between things which are of the same substance. But what is to prevent us from classifying the substance of mind, when the fundamental idea of its substance is that it is something which resembles no other substance, but constitutes a class or description of being that stands entirely by itself, and in which, for a knowledge of its properties we distinguish its properties from those of any other substance? The only difficulty that arises here springs from the fact that we have but one word—substance—by which to speak of the two existences that we call mind and matter; just as we can only speak of an organism when we speak of the natural body and the spiritual body. But this use of the same term to express things which in our consciousness stand fundamentally opposed to each other does not prevent us from discriminating between the means by which we become conscious of the two things, or from classifying the knowledge which we have of mind as something distinct from the knowledge which we have of matter.

We must discriminate between the means by which the properties of matter become known to us and the means by which the properties of mind become known to us. In both cases there is knowledge, but it is knowledge of a different kind; it is obtained by different means; and we must therefore recognize a fundamental difference between the substance of mind and the substance of matter. It is true that our knowledge of the properties of matter and our knowledge of the properties of mind are alike in this, that in both cases it is knowledge by one and the same person; but the distinction is that, in the one case, I have knowledge of objects external to myself, and, in the other case, I have knowledge of myself as the person possessing knowledge of external objects. The knowledge that we have of ourselves is what most persons mean by consciousness, and it is what we should scientifically understand by that term, although consciousness is often used as synonymous with mental cognition of things external to ourselves, and as cognition of ourselves also.

I shall now quote from the chapter in which Mr. Spencer makes a special synthesis of reason, and in which he denies the existence of the commonly assumed hiatus between reason and instinct, maintaining that the former is the continuation of the latter, because, as he thinks, the highest forms of psychical activity arise little by little out of the lowest and can not be separated from them. The passage which I shall now analyze is this:

"Here seems to be the fittest place for pointing out how the general doctrine that has been developed supplies a reconciliation between the experience-hypothesis as commonly interpreted and the hypothesis which the transcendentalists oppose to it.

"The universal law, that, other things equal, the cohesion of psychical states is proportionate to the frequency with which they have followed one another in experience, supplies an explanation of the so-called 'forms of thought,' as soon as it is supplemented by the law that habitual psychical successions entail some hereditary tendency to such successions, which, under persistent conditions, will become cumulative in generation after generation. We saw that the establishment of those compound reflex actions called instincts is comprehensible on the principle that inner relations are, by perpetual repetition, organized into correspondence with outer relations. We have now to observe that the establishment of those consolidated, those indissoluble, those instinctive mental relations constituting our ideas of space and time, is comprehensible on the same principle.

"For, if, even to external relations that are often experienced during the life of a single organism, answering internal relations are established that become next to automatic—if such a combination of psychical changes as that which guides a savage in hitting a bird with an arrow becomes, by constant repetition, so organized as to be performed almost without thought of the processes of adjustment gone through—and if skill of this kind is so far transmissible that particular races of men become characterized by particular aptitudes, which are nothing else than partially organized psychical connections; then, if there exist certain external relations which are experienced by all organisms at all instants of their waking lives—relations which are absolutely constant, absolutely universal—there will be established answering internal relations that are absolutely constant, absolutely universal. Such relations we have in those of space and time. The organization of subjective relations adjusted to these objective relations has been cumulative, not in each race of creatures only, but throughout successive races of creatures; and such subjective relations have, therefore, become more consolidated than all others. Being experienced in every perception and every action of each creature, these connections among outer existences must, for this reason, too, be responded to by connections among inner feelings that are, above all others, indissoluble. As the substrata of all other relations in the non-ego, they must be responded to by conceptions that are the substrata of all other relations in the ego. Being the constant and infinitely repeated elements of thought, they must become the automatic elements of thought—the elements of thought which it is impossible to get rid of—the 'forms of intuition.'

"Such, it seems to me, is the only possible reconciliation between the experience-hypothesis and the hypothesis of the transcendentalists, neither of which is tenable by itself. Insurmountable difficulties are presented by the Kantian doctrine (as we shall hereafter see); and the antagonist doctrine, taken alone, presents difficulties that are equally insurmountable. To rest with the unqualified assertion that, antecedent to experience, the mind is a blank, is to ignore the questions: Whence comes the power of organizing experiences? Whence arise the different degrees of that power possessed by different races of organisms, and different individuals of the same race? If, at birth, there exists nothing but a passive receptivity of impressions, why is not a horse as educable as a man? Should it be said that language makes the difference, then why do not the cat and the dog, reared in the same household, arrive at equal degrees and kinds of intelligence? Understood in its current form, the experience-hypothesis implies that the presence of a definitely organized nervous system is a circumstance of no moment—a fact not needing to be taken into account! Yet it is the all-important fact—the fact to which, in one sense, the criticisms of Leibnitz and others pointed—the fact without which an assimilation of experiences is inexplicable.

"Throughout the animal kingdom in general the actions are dependent on the nervous structure. The physiologist shows us that each reflex movement implies the agency of certain nerves and ganglia; that a development of complicated instincts is accompanied by complication of the nervous centers and their commissural connections; that the same creature in different stages, as larva and imago, for example, changes its instincts as its nervous structure changes; and that, as we advance to creatures of high intelligence, a vast increase in the size and in the complexity of the nervous system takes place. What is the obvious inference? It is that the ability to co-ordinate impressions and to perform the appropriate actions always implies the pre-existence of certain nerves arranged in a certain way. What is the meaning of the human brain? It is that the many established relations among its parts stand for so many established relations among the psychical changes. Each of the constant connections among the fibers of the cerebral masses answers to some constant connection of phenomena in the experiences of the race. Just as the organized arrangement subsisting between the sensory nerves of the nostrils and the motor nerves of the respiratory muscles not only makes possible a sneeze, but also, in the newly born infant, implies sneezings to be hereafter performed, so, all the organized arrangements subsisting among the nerves of the infant's brain not only make possible certain combinations of impressions, but also imply that such combinations will hereafter be made, imply that there are answering combinations in the outer world, imply a preparedness to cognize these combinations, imply faculties of comprehending them. It is true that the resulting compound psychical changes do not take place with the same readiness and automatic precision as the simple reflex action instanced; it is true that some individual experiences seem required to establish them. But, while this is partly due to the fact that these combinations are highly involved, extremely varied in their modes of occurrence, made up, therefore, of psychical relations less completely coherent, and hence need further repetitions to perfect them, it is in a much greater degree due to the fact that at birth the organization of the brain is incomplete, and does not cease its spontaneous progress for twenty or thirty years afterward. Those who contend that knowledge results wholly from the experiences of the individual, ignoring as they do the mental evolution which accompanies the autogenous development of the nervous system, fall into an error as great as if they were to ascribe all bodily growth and structure to exercise, forgetting the innate tendency to assume the adult form. Were the infant born with a full-sized and completely constructed brain, their position would be less untenable. But, as the case stands, the gradually increasing intelligence displayed throughout childhood and youth is more attributable to the completion of the cerebral organization than to the individual experiences—a truth proved by the fact that in adult life there is sometimes displayed a high endowment of some faculty which, during education, was never brought into play. Doubtless, experiences received by the individual furnish the concrete materials for all thought. Doubtless, the organized and semi-organized arrangements existing among the cerebral nerves can give no knowledge until there has been a presentation of the external relations to which they correspond. And, doubtless, the child's daily observations and reasonings aid the formation of those involved nervous connections that are in process of spontaneous evolution, just as its daily gambols aid the development of its limbs. But saying this is quite a different thing from saying that its intelligence is wholly produced by its experiences. That is an utterly inadmissible doctrine—a doctrine which makes the presence of a brain meaningless—a doctrine which makes idiocy unaccountable.

"In the sense, then, that there exist in the nervous system certain pre-established relations answering to relations in the environment, there is truth in the doctrine of 'forms of intuition'—not the truth which its defenders suppose, but a parallel truth. Corresponding to absolute external relations, there are established in the structure of the nervous system absolute internal relations—relations that are potentially present before birth in the shape of definite nervous connections, that are antecedent to, and independent of, individual experiences, and that are automatically disclosed along with the first cognitions. And, as here understood, it is not only these fundamental relations which are thus predetermined, but also hosts of other relations of a more or less constant kind, which are congenitally represented by more or less complete nervous connections. But these predetermined internal relations, though independent of the experiences of the individual, are not independent of experiences in general: they have been determined by the experiences of preceding organisms. The corollary here drawn from the general argument is that the human brain is an organized register of infinitely numerous experiences received during the evolution of life, or, rather, during the evolution of that series of organisms through which the human organism has been reached. The effects of the most uniform and frequent of these experiences have been successively bequeathed, principal and interest; and have slowly amounted to that high intelligence which lies latent in the brain of the infant—which the infant in after-life exercises and perhaps strengthens or further complicates, and which, with minute additions, it bequeaths to future generations; and thus it happens that the European inherits from twenty to thirty cubic inches more brain than the Papuan. Thus it happens that faculties, as of music, which scarcely exist in some inferior human races, become congenital in superior ones. Thus it happens that out of savages unable to count up to the number of their fingers, and speaking a language containing only nouns and verbs, arise at length our Newtons and Shakespeares."[150]

The learned philosopher has here dealt with two hypotheses, neither of which he considers tenable by itself. The first is that the individual mind, anterior to experience, is a blank; that at birth there exists nothing but a passive receptivity of impressions, which become organized into intelligence by experience. The other hypothesis is that of the transcendental school, which attributes the growth of intelligence wholly to implanted intuitions, which become expanded by the increase of mental power. His argument is put thus: If at birth the mind of the individual is a blank, and it becomes capable of thought or possessed of intelligence by experience, beginning with a passive receptivity of impressions, and going on to their organization into intelligence by the repetition of experiences and their increasing complexity—why, he asks, is not a horse as educable as a man? Why do not the cat and the dog, reared in the same household and hearing human beings use language every moment of their lives, arrive at equal degrees and kinds of intelligence? In the first place, as a matter of fact, many animals are educable beyond their natural capacity of intelligence, or beyond the point at which they would arrive without such education, to a very remarkable degree. I have heard a credible description of a dog which would ascend to a chamber and bring down an article that he had been told to bring. Many repetitions of the command and the performance had taught the animal to associate the name of the article which he was to bring down with the act which he was to perform. While I am writing, a bear beneath my window is going through performances, at the word of command, of very considerable varieties; actions which he would not do if he had not been trained to do them. The trained war-horse knows the meaning of the different airs played on the bugle upon the battle-field or the parade-ground, and instantly charges or wheels about, without waiting to be prompted by the bit or the spur. Insects can be trained, to some extent, in the same way; birds to a much greater extent. Is the explanation of these capacities to be found in a definitely organized nervous system as the all-important fact without which an assimilation of experiences is inexplicable? Grant that, as we advance from creatures of very low to creatures of very high intelligence, we find a vast increase in the size and complexity of the nervous system taking place through the series, until we arrive at its highest and most complex development in man. What is the hypothesis which explains the difference in mental power between man and all the other creatures below him in the capability of co-ordinating impressions and performing the appropriate actions? It is, according to Mr. Spencer, that the capability implies the existence of certain nerves arranged in a certain way; that where this arrangement does not exist the capability is not found; and where it exists in only a low degree the capability exists only in the same degree. As two parallel and concurring facts these may be conceded. But why are not these facts entirely consistent with another hypothesis, namely, that to each creature, along with its specially organized nervous system, there has been given by divine appointment a certain degree of innate mental power, to explain which we must follow the impressions produced in the nervous system into their transmutation into intelligence, until we arrive at the limit of that intelligence? Mr. Spencer's answer to this inquiry is twofold: first, that the experience-hypothesis, in the case of the individual creature, or the constant repetition of the impressions and the appropriate actions, is insufficient to account for what takes place, without recognizing the fact that the actions are dependent on the nervous structure, without which the impressions would not be followed by the actions; second, that the nervous structure in the different races of animals has come to be what it is in each race by gradual modifications and increments through the process of evolution of organisms out of one another, and that these accumulations have resulted in the human brain, which has the highest power of co-ordinating the impressions and performing the appropriate actions. Then he puts, with an air of final solution, the question, "What is the human brain?" which he answers in his own way.

His mode of answering this question is that the brain is an organ with established relations among its parts, which stand for so many established relations among the psychical changes. I understand this to mean, that as the human brain, in the process of animal evolution, has come to have certain constant connections among the fibers of the cerebral masses, each of these connections answers to some constant connection of phenomena in the experiences of the race. His corollary is that the human brain is an organized register of infinitely numerous experiences received by the race during the evolution of life, or during the evolution of that series of organisms through which the human organism has been reached. Each infant of the human race, to whom has descended this improved and perfect brain, has latent in that organ a high capacity for intelligence. This it begins to exercise and strengthen and further complicate as life goes on, and at the end of twenty or thirty years the individual brain is fully developed, and this development, or capacity for development, the individual bequeaths with minute additions, principal and interest, to future generations. In different races of men the cubic bulk of the brain varies greatly, according to the size transmitted from ancestors; and so certain faculties which scarcely exist in some races become congenital in others; and whereas the remote ancestors of all of us were savages, incapable even of conceiving of numbers, and possessing but the rudest elements of language, there have at length arisen our Newtons and Shakespeares.

This hypothesis leads me to ask a question and to state a fact. The question is, What is it in the infant of the most developed and cultivated race that constitutes the high intelligence which is said to lie latent in his brain? In other words, is there nothing in that infant, or in the adult which he becomes, but a brain and a nervous system of a highly organized and complex physical structure adapted to receive impressions on itself from without? Are the experiences which have been enjoyed by the progenitors of the human infant or by preceding organisms registered in his brain, and is his capacity of intelligence dependent on his having inherited the same or nearly the same volume of brain as that which was possessed by his progenitors? And does the intelligence consist, in degree or in kind, in nothing but a repetition of the same experiences as those through which his progenitors were carried, or is there a something in him to which his individual experiences contribute the mental food by which the mind is nourished and by the assimilation of which its individual intellectual growth becomes possible?

It is not necessary to question the fact that individuals of great intellect, the Newtons and the Shakespeares, have had or may have had large brains; or the fact that, as between races of men, the most intelligent have brains of greater cubic measure than the less intelligent. But it has not always been found that individuals of superior intellect have had comparatively larger brains than other individuals, nor that those who have had very large brains have transmitted them to their children. The important fact to which I meant to advert is that, since we have known much about the human brain and the nervous system connected with it, it has not been found that, in its several parts and in the action of the nerves connected with it, it has been differently organized and acted upon in the lowest savages from what we know of it in the European and the most civilized races. There is a difference in volume, but not in the organization or the office of the brain in different races of men, as there is in different individuals of the same race. The fact that all men, since they became a completed type of animal, however they originated and became men, have possessed a capacity to become in different degrees intelligent and thinking beings, points strongly to the conclusion that while in each individual there is a nervous system so organized as to transmit impressions from external objects to the central physical organ called the brain, there must be another existence in that individual, of a spiritual and intellectual nature, of a substance that is not physical, to which the brain supplies the materials of thought, thought being mental cognition of an idea. If I am asked for the proof of such an existence, I answer that the proof is consciousness, as I define it, and this I conceive is the highest kind of proof.

One may appeal to the convictions of mankind for an answer to the question, What is the highest and most satisfactory kind of knowledge that any of us possess? The most intelligent man may be mistaken in that part of self-knowledge that relates to his own character or motives. Others may see him very differently from the light in which he sees himself, and they may be right and he may be wrong. He may think, too, that he knows a great deal that he does not know; but no intelligent man is mistaken or in any way deluded when he believes in his own existence. No man in his waking moments and in his right mind ever confounded his own identity, as we have seen that Lady Macbeth did when she was walking in her sleep, with the identity of another person. No man in his right mind loses the constant, ever-present sense of himself as a being and as one distinct from all other beings. The reason is that his own existence is certified to him by the most unerring of witnesses, one who can not lie, because the fact of one's own existence is the fact of which that witness must speak. Of all other facts the witness may speak falsely. The mind can not speak falsely when it speaks to us of our own existence, for the witness who speaks and the person spoken to are one and the same. The falsehood, if there could be a falsehood, would be instantly detected.

As the mind certifies to itself its own existence by the most direct and the highest kind of proof, so it certifies to itself the powers with which it is endowed; and this brings me to the anatomical examination of the structure of the mind. I shall not make this analysis a very minute one, but shall confine it to those distinct elementary powers which are constituted by systems, as the powers of the bodily organism are constituted by systems distinguishable by the functions which they perform. In the bodily organism we recognize the digestive system, the system of circulation of the blood, the muscular system, the nervous system, the sensory system, which is distributed into the different organs of sense, the male and female systems of sexual generation, and the female system of gestation. These several systems, acting together as one complex mechanism endowed with the mysterious principle of life, form in each human being of either sex the physical existence of the individual. Acting in each individual of either sex simultaneously and with mutual involved interdependencies, they form a whole which, in its several parts and their functions, may be likened to the several parts and functions in one of those machines which we ourselves construct—with this difference, however, that in one life is present and in the other it is not. The fundamental question is whether this complex animal mechanism, thus constituted of certain physical systems, also constitutes during this life the entire individual. If so, the individual existence is a unit, and, when the physical organism perishes by what we call death, the individual existence ceases. If, on the contrary, we have satisfactory proof that there is, during this life, in each individual an organized and extended entity, composed, like the systems of the bodily organisms, of certain systems of its own but of a substance that is not material, then the existence of each individual is a dual existence; and one of the two existences now associated and acting together may be dissolved into its original material elements, while the other, composed of a different substance, may be indissoluble and have an endless life. There is no middle ground that I can perceive between these two hypotheses. One or the other of them is absolutely true, independent of the inquiry as to the mode in which mind came to exist; for after going through with all the reasoning and all the proofs that are supposed to show its origin by the process called evolution, we must still come back to the question of what mind is after it has come into existence; must determine on which side lies the preponderating probability of its continuance after the death of the body; and must accept the conclusion of its destruction or cessation when the body dies, or the other conclusion that it is unlike the body in its substance, and therefore indestructible by the means which destroy the body. For this reason we must examine the mind for proof that it is an organism of a special nature because composed of a special substance, and this proof is to be reached by an analysis of the systems of which the mind is composed. I select, of course, for the purposes of this analysis, any individual whose physical and mental faculties have had the average development into the condition that is called a sound mind in a sound body—mens sana in corpore sano. I shall treat incidentally of the condition of idiocy.

We may classify the distinct systems of the mind, with their several functions, as easily as we can classify the distinct systems of our physical structure and their functions. I have seen the systems of the mind distributed into five; and although I do not adopt the whole analysis made by the writer to whom I refer, or make use of the same terminology, I shall follow his classification because it is one which any thinking person must recognize as a description of mental powers of which he is conscious.[151] We are all aware that we possess the following mental systems in which inhere certain elementary powers that are mental powers:

1. A sensory system, by which the mind takes impressions from matter.

2. A system of intellectual faculties, such as reason, imagination, reflection, combination of ideas, discrimination between different ideas.

3. A system of emotions, or susceptibilities to pleasure or pain, of a moral and intellectual nature as distinguished from the pleasurable or painful excitation of our nerves.

4. A system of desires, which prompt us to wish for and acquire some good, or to avoid some evil.

5. A system of affections, which prompt us to like or dislike persons, things, situations, and whatever is attractive or unattractive, as the case may be.

A little further analysis of each of these systems will explain why they are respectively to be thus classified as distinguishable organic powers or functions of the human mind:

First. The mind is placed as a recipient in correspondence with the material universe through the nerves of sensation and the special corporeal organs, whereby the properties of matter become to some extent known to us. As the power of the physical senses to obtain for us a knowledge of the properties of matter is limited, even when our senses are in the utmost state of their normal capacity, there may be properties of matter which will never become known to us in our present existence. But certain of its properties do become known to us, and we are perfectly aware that this takes place through our physical organs of sense, which convey to our mental reception certain impressions. This power of the mind, therefore, to receive such impressions, to retain and transmute them into thought, is to be recognized as a power exerted by means of an organic physical contrivance and an organic mental structure, the two acting together, the resultant being the mind's faculty for receiving ideas from the external world. Let us suppose, then, that the bodily senses are impaired by the partial destruction of their organs. It does not follow that the knowledge which has been derived from them, when they were in full activity, is destroyed; all that happens is that we acquire no more of such knowledge by the same means, or do not acquire it so readily and completely. If the destruction of the physical senses is so complete as it becomes when death of the whole body takes place, the materials derived from the impressions conveyed to the mind from external objects during life have been transmuted into ideas and thoughts, and, as that which holds the ideas and the thoughts is of a substance unlike in nature to the substance of the physical organs which conveyed the impressions, the rational conclusion is that the ideas and thoughts will continue to be held by it, after the dissolution of the body, as they were held while the body was in full life.

Second. I recognize in the mind a system of intellectual faculties. Of intellect, I should say that the ascertainment of truth is its primary function; and hence I should say that the power of retaining permanent possession of truth already ascertained is the means by which we maintain continued ascertainment, or the utilization of truth already ascertained.[152] For the exercise of this power of ascertaining, holding, applying, and expressing truth—the processes of intellect—we have three recognized faculties. These are the intuitive faculty; the faculty of association or combination; and the introspective faculty, or the capacity to look inward upon the processes of our own minds. The philosophers who maintain that all our knowledge is derived from experience admit neither the intuitive faculty nor the fact of intuition. On the other hand, the philosophers who maintain, as Mr. Spencer does, that the brain of every infant is an organized register of the experiences of his ancestors, do not allow of the existence of any intuitions as facts in the individual life of the infant, because they regard the individual experiences of the infant as mere repetitions of former experiences that took place in its progenitors. But rightly regarded the true meaning of the intuitive faculty is this: that at the instant when a new sensory impression is received by the infant, or the adult, there is an innate and implanted power which comes into play, by which is asserted the reality of that from which the sensory impression is received. This power, the intuitive faculty, is infallible. It was ordained as the means by which a sensory impression becomes to us a reality. We are so constructed, mentally, that we must believe those primary facts which the sensory impressions certify to us to be facts. On the veracity of this certification we are absolutely dependent, because we can not contradict the affirmations of reality which causation makes to our intuitive mental perceptions. On this veracity we risk our lives; we could not be safe if we were not subjected to this belief. Intuition, therefore, is something anterior to experience; it is that power by which the first experience and the last become to us the means of belief in a reality. This is a power that can belong to and inhere in a spiritual organism alone. We must, therefore, recognize in the infant this original implanted endowment, the capacity to be mentally convinced of realities; and while, in order to meet the first exercise of this capacity there must be a physical organism which will conduct the sensory impressions to the brain and a brain that will receive them, the capacity of the infant to have its first conviction of the reality certified to it by the sensory impression is at once the capacity of an intellectual being, and a necessity imposed upon him by the law of his existence. Idiocy, when complete, is the absence of this capacity, by reason of some failure of connection between the brain, as the central recipient of sensory impressions, and the mind which should receive and transmute those impressions into thought. We are scarcely warranted in regarding the idiot as a human animal possessed of no mind whatever. The absolute idiot should be defined as a human creature whom we can not educate at all—in whom we can awaken no intelligence; but we are not therefore authorized in believing that there is no provision whatever for the development of intelligence after the mere physical life of the body is ended. Absolute idiocy, or what, from our as yet imperfect means of developing intelligence in such unfortunate persons we must regard as at present absolute, is probably very rare. Between human creatures so born and those vast multitudes in whom average intelligence is developed by surrounding influences, whatever they may be, there are various degrees of the capacity for development; and what happens in these intermediate cases proves that there are different degrees in which the connection between the physical and the mental organism is established at birth, so that in some the connection may be said to be abnormal and imperfect, while in the enormous majority it is at least so nearly normal and complete that intelligence may be developed.

Here, then, is the place to advert to Mr. Spencer's assertion that the doctrine that intelligence in the human being is wholly produced by experience is utterly inadmissible; that it makes the presence of a brain meaningless, and idiocy unaccountable. A doctrine which imputes the development of intelligence wholly to the experience of the individual is of course untenable. There must be a brain and a nervous system; but we are not warranted, in the case of the idiot, in assuming that he has a differently organized brain and nervous system from those of his parents or others of the human race, as Mr. Spencer appears to me to assume. What we are warranted in believing is that while the brain and nervous system of the idiot child may be just as complete in his structure as in those of the parents, there has somehow occurred, from some cause, antecedent in some cases to birth, but operating after birth in other cases, a failure of the adequate connection between the brain and the mind, so that intelligence can not be developed at all, or can be developed but partially. The individual may have inherited just as good an "organized register" of the experience of his ancestors—just as good a natural brain as his brothers and sisters who are perhaps highly intelligent from their birth, or capable of becoming intelligent. Yet he lacks the ability to co-ordinate impressions and to perform the actions appropriate to those impressions, because there has failed to be established in him the necessary connection between the impressions and the sensory intellectual system which constitutes one organic part of the mind. The experiences, however often repeated, of the impressions produced by his physical senses on his brain, remain there as corporeal feelings. They reach no further. They do not become transmuted into ideas, and so intelligence can not be developed, or is developed but to a very feeble extent. Instead of saying that "the gradually increasing intelligence displayed throughout childhood is more attributable to the completion of the cerebral organization than to the individual experiences," I should say that it is most attributable to the presence of an established connection between the function of the cerebral organization and the mental receptivity of impressions, which is not merely passive, but is incessantly active because incessantly receiving, and that, where this connection is wanting, the receptivity, although it may exist, can not become active, and so intelligence can not be developed in this life. But there may be another state of existence, in which the mind of the idiot, no longer dependent on a physical organization of brain and nervous system for the reception of ideas and for intellectual growth, but retaining its capacity for mental development, may begin and carry on such development by other means; whereas, if the brain and the nervous system constitute all there is of any human being, whether born an idiot or born capable of intellectual growth through his individual experiences, he can have no future after that brain and nervous system are destroyed, unless we suppose that mind is something that has been developed out of matter into a spiritual existence—a supposition which is to me inconceivable.

The second of the intellectual faculties is the associative, or that intuitive power by which ideas are combined and associated or held in disjunction and separation. I regard this as an intuitive faculty, because, as our observation teaches us, its presence and power, manifested at the first dawning of infantile intelligence, are attested by every exercise of the organs through which the external world reaches our minds, to the last moment of our mortal existence. Experience is, of course, necessary to the first action of this intuitive faculty. This is only another way of saying that there must occur a sensory impression upon the brain which becomes transmuted into the idea of the external object, and then a repetition of that impression produces a repetition of the idea, and the associative faculty combines or disjoins them. But unless there exists an intuitive power, inherent in the intellective system, whereby the first idea and the second can be associated and compared, there can be no knowledge, no acquisition of truth, because the sensory impressions will stop in the brain as so many feelings excited through the nervous system, instead of being transmuted into thought.

The introspective faculty, on the other hand, does not deal solely with sensory impressions, or with the ideas which they have suggested. It is that power of the mind by which it can look inward upon itself. This is seemingly a paradox; but nevertheless, the existence of such a faculty is a necessary hypothesis, not only because we are conscious of it, but because without it we could have no means of analyzing our own mental structure, although we could make some very partial analysis of the mind of another individual by studying his actions. As regards ourselves, it is as if our visual organs possessed the power of looking at the process by which an image of an external object is impressed upon the retina and is thence transmitted to the brain, where the sensory impression is produced. This, of course, is a physical impossibility. All we can do is to examine the physical structure of the eye, with its wonderful provision of lenses and other means for the reception and the effect of light, and to reason upon what we can discover that the process of what is called seeing must be thus or thus. But that process itself we can not see by the same organs by which it is carried on. In the case of the mind, however—and herein is one of the remarkable proofs of its unlikeness as an organism to the bodily organism—there is a power to witness, to observe, to be sensible of its own operations. This power, like all the other mental powers, may be very feeble in some individuals, for want of exercise, but in others, from long and frequent exercise, it may become exceedingly vigorous, and be the means of advancing mental philosophy if its observations are preserved and recorded. It is one of the systems which, as a whole, constitute the spiritual organism to which we give the name of mind. Such a capacity can not be predicated of a physical organism. It is impossible for us to conceive of a machine standing and looking upon its own operations, speculating upon their improvement, or thinking of the relation of its mechanism to the human author of its being. It is equally impossible for us to think of the body of man contemplating its own existence, or being sensible of it; but it is perfectly easy to conceive of its being known to the mind that inhabits it, which takes cognizance both of its own operations and of the operations of the physical organism, reflects upon them separately or in their action upon one another, and spontaneously refers both to an author.

Third. I have placed third in the category of mental systems the system of emotions or susceptibilities to mental pleasure or pain, as distinguished from the pleasurable or painful excitation of our nervous system. No one can doubt that, however powerful may be the influence upon our mental states of physical pain or physical sensations that are pleasurable, there is such a thing as mental pain and mental pleasure, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, wholly unconnected with and in no way dependent upon our corporeal feelings, present or past. It is from this susceptibility to mental pain or pleasure that we come to have the idea of goodness or badness, which is originally a classification of the qualities of external things as good or bad; the good being those which affect us pleasurably, and the bad those which affect us painfully. By our mental organization we are placed in such correspondence with the material universe, that things apart from ourselves affect us agreeably or disagreeably; sights, sounds, odors, and tastes give us pleasure or pain. We are also placed in correspondence with the spiritual universe, and thereby certain acts, relations, and traits of character give us pleasure, or the reverse. In process of time, the youth whose mental systems are in the course of expansion comes to perceive that his own acts give him pleasure or pain, and hence he derives the perception of good or bad qualities in himself. Moral goodness in ourselves—goodness of disposition, of intention, of volition, of habit—is found to be distinct from physical and intellectual goodness; and thus the consciousness of moral goodness becomes the intellectual faculty to which moral commands can be addressed, with a prospect that the connection between obedience and happiness will be perceived. This susceptibility to mental pain or pleasure, from the qualities of external things, from the acts and dispositions of other persons, and from our own, is one that can inhere in a mental organization, but it can not possibly inhere in a physical organism. The physical organism is undoubtedly the means by which the mental susceptibility to pleasure or pain is reached from the external universe; but, unless there is a mental organism to feel the pleasure or the pain, the action of the physical organization is nothing but the excitation of the nervous system. I, therefore, make a distinct class among the mental systems, and assign to it the faculty of experiencing mental pleasure or mental pain as a capacity distinct from the pleasurable or painful excitation of our nerves.

Fourth. In the category of mental systems may be placed those desires which lead us to wish for and strive to obtain some good or to avoid some evil. This, surely, is not to be regarded as anything but an intellectual perception of what is to us a good or an evil. It is a structural capacity of the soul which, after an experience of that which we learn to be good for us, or the reverse of good, is always prompting us to take the steps or to perform the acts which will insure a repetition of that experience, in the acquisition of further good or the avoidance of further evil. Its operations may be perverted. We may, from bad habits or erroneous ideas of good and evil, pursue objects that are pernicious. But whether we strive for that which is truly good, or is deceptively regarded as a good, we are perpetually acting under the impulse of a desire that is implanted in us, and that operates as a desire whether its objects are worthy or unworthy, beneficial or injurious, noxious or innoxious to our moral health.

Fifth, and lastly, we may classify the affections as one of the structural systems of our spiritual existence. It is that part of our natures that makes us like or dislike both persons and things; and, in regard to the former, it is the capacity for love in its high distinction from the physical appetite of sexual passion. The range of its operation is most various and multiform, but throughout all of its operations it is a spiritual capacity, implanted in us for our happiness as spiritual beings.

If it is objected that this is an arbitrary classification—that as an analysis of structural systems in our mental organization it bears no analogy to the anatomical exploration and classification of the structural systems of our physical organism—the answer is, that in regard to the latter we make the examination by the exercise of our corporeal senses, chiefly by the visual organs, as we do in the case of all other organized matter. In analyzing the structural organization of our minds, we are examining a subject that is not laid bare to the inspection of any of our corporeal organs; the scalpel in the hand of the dissector can afford us no aid in this investigation, but the inspection must be carried on by turning the eye of the mind inward upon itself. This we are mentally constituted to do. While, therefore, it may be true that the classification which I have made, or which may have been made by others, of the structural mental systems, is in one sense arbitrary, and while in any method of describing them they may run into or overlap one another in a complex organism, it will always remain true that the mind is capable of such examinations, and that the analysis, however given, is useful to the comprehension of the mind as an organized and extended entity. No one can carry on this mental examination without perceiving that he is examining a something which has an independent existence and a life of its own, whether he supposes it to have been evolved out of organized matter, or embraces the idea of its distinct and special creation by an exercise of the Divine Will.

The two main hypotheses concerning the origin of mind may now be contrasted. In the long process of development of animal organisms out of one another there come to be, it is said, higher and higher degrees of intelligence, as the nervous system becomes more and more capable of complex impressions, until we arrive at the consummate physical organization and the supreme intelligence of the human race. The physical organization is open to our examination, and we find the human brain divided into cerebral masses, with ganglia of sensory nerves extending to the external sensory organs. Intelligence is the faculty of comprehending by previous preparation the combinations of impressions made on the brain through the sensory nerves. The brain being an organized register in which the experiences of progenitors have accumulated a high degree of this faculty, each human infant born into the world comes into it with a prepared capacity to acquire the combinations of impressions produced in his individual experience. Transmitted from generation to generation, this inherited capacity becomes the means by which each individual manifests and enjoys what we call intelligence; and the resulting aggregate of all the faculties thus called into exercise is what we denominate mind. It must be observed, however, that this theory or explanation of the origin of mind, rejecting the hypothesis of its special creation as a being of a spiritual nature, assumes it to be a something which has been developed out of the growth and improvement of a physical organism. When you inquire whether the nature of this something is supposed to be a product of a different substance from matter, although developed out of matter, you are left without an answer; and when you press the inquiry whether a spiritual existence can be conceived as having grown out of the action of a physical organism, you are told that there are no means of determining what a spiritual existence is, because there is nothing with which you can compare it so as to ascertain what it resembles or what it does not resemble. Or if there are some who accept the evolution theory of the origin of mind, and who think it possible that a spiritual existence can owe its origin to the action of matter without any intervention of a creating power purposely giving existence to a spiritual essence, you have to ask a question to which you can only get this answer: that it has pleased the Almighty Being to establish a system by which a spiritual in contradistinction to a physical existence has been developed in countless ages out of the action of material substances organized into definite systems and endowed with the principle of life. Those who assume this hypothesis must necessarily assume also that the spiritual existence is, after it has come into being, an existence distinct from the physical organism, although generated out of it, and then they must encounter the further inquiry as to the probability of the supposed method of production resorted to by the Supreme Being.

More than once in the course of our colloquies I have had occasion to say that, in all our inquiries of this nature, whether in regard to the origin of our physical organism or that of our mental existence, we must constantly bear in mind the unbounded capacity of the Creator to adopt any method of production whatever; that it is just as much within his power to call things of the most opposite natures into existence by a single word as it is to establish methods by which they shall be developed through innumerable ages of what we call time. That the Being who is supposed to preside over the universe and to hold this unlimited power is an hypothesis I readily admit; but I affirm that his existence and attributes are necessary postulates, without which there can be no reasoning concerning the origin of anything. Whether that Being exists and possesses the attributes which we impute to him I have all along said is a matter of which we must be satisfied by independent proofs before we undertake to investigate his probable methods.

The hypothesis of the origin of mind which I now mean to contrast with that of the evolutionists may be stated as follows: It is a rational deduction, from all that we know of our physical organism, that procreation of new individuals of that organism by the sexual union of male and female was established as the means of continuing the species of animal known as man. When or how established is not a material part of the inquiry that I now make. It may have been that the division of the sexes came about by a very slow process, or it may have been by the aboriginal creation of a completed pair, male and female. However or whenever it came to exist, there came to be one uniform method of bringing into existence new individuals of a peculiar and perfectly distinguishable animal type. If we confine our attention to the physical organism of man, it is perfectly apparent that when procreation and gestation take place they happen because of the established law that a new individual of this species of animal shall be produced by the sexual union of two other individuals, male and female, and that the new individual shall have the same physical organism as the parents. A new physical life thus springs out of two other physical lives by a process the secret of which we can not detect, although we can trace it through some of its stages so far as to see that there is a secret process by which two physical organisms give existence to another physical organism of the same type and having the same principle of life.

As the new individual animal grows into further development, we find that along with his animal organism and united with it by a tie which we can not see, but about which we can reason, there is apparently present a kind of life that is something more than the life of the body. The further we carry our investigations of the phenomena which indicate the existence of this mental life, the more we become convinced that it is the life of a spiritual organism. As the Creator had the power to give existence to the corporeal organism, why had he not an equal power to give existence to a spiritual organism? If he established the law of sexual union between a male and a female in order to perpetuate the type of animal to which they belong—the law which gives existence to a new individual of that animal type every time that a new conception and a new birth take place—why should he not have established the collateral law that every time there is a new birth of an infant there shall come into existence a spiritual entity which shall be united to the corporeal organism for a time, thus constituting in that infant a dual existence which makes his whole individuality during this life? If we suppose that the physical organism of our double natures was left to be worked out by a very slow process, by which physical organisms are developed out of one another—or by which we theoretically suppose them to have been so developed—why is it necessary to suppose that our spirits or souls have been developed in the same way or by an analogous method? What reason have we to believe that the Creator works by the same methods in the spiritual world, or by methods that are of the same nature as those which we think we can discover to be his methods in giving existence to corporeal organisms? The two realms of spirit and matter are so completely unlike that we are not compelled to believe that the methods by which creation of organisms of the two kinds are effected by the Almighty are necessarily or probably the same.

In order to be clearly understood I will now repeat my hypothesis in a distinct form. I assume the existence of a pair of animals of the human type, male and female, endowed with the power of producing new individuals of the same type. In their physical organisms is established the law of procreation, and in the female counterpart of that organism is established the concomitant law of conception and parturition. Thus far provision is made for the production of a new individual physically organized like the parents. In those parents there is also established another law, by the operation of which the same process which results in the production of the new individual animal organism brings into existence a spiritual organism, which is united with and becomes the companion of the physical organism so long as the latter shall continue to live. These laws established in the first pair and in every succeeding pair continue to operate through every succeeding generation. Perhaps it will be said that this attributes the production of a spiritual organism to a physical process; but, in truth, it does no more than to assert the simultaneous production of the two existences. It is not necessary to assume that the fœtus which becomes at birth the human infant is before birth animated by a soul; for it is not necessary to suppose, nor is it apparently true, that the physical organism is complete until birth takes place and the breath of life enters the lungs, thus constituting a new life other than that of the fœtus or the unborn child, although the one is a continuation of the other. At whatever point of time the complete animal organism is in a condition to be observed so that we can say here is a living child, at that point we begin to perceive a capacity to receive impressions from the external world without the connection that has theretofore existed between the unborn child and the maternal system. This capacity must either be attributed to the individual experience of the infant, so that without experience of his own he can not begin to be possessed of a growing intelligence, or it must be imputed to an innate and implanted power resident in a spiritual organism that comes into exercise whenever the physical organism has begun to draw the breath of life.

The evolution hypothesis of the origin of the human mind necessarily leaves its nature in an indeterminate state that will not satisfy the requirements of sound reasoning. In one mode of stating and reasoning upon this hypothesis it is assumed that there is not now and never was a mental existence that was created in each individual of the race at his birth; but that at some very remote period in the history of successive animal organisms there was produced an animal of a highly developed nervous structure, capable of intelligence by reason of a superior power of receiving physical impressions and co-ordinating them into states of consciousness which correspond to the physical feelings; and to the perpetually recurring series of these states of consciousness we give the name of mind. This capacity of intelligence is transmitted from parents to offspring, the experiences of the former being registered in the brain of the latter; but however complete may be the inherited nervous structure, and however great the capacity for intelligence, mind in each individual of the race is evidenced by nothing but a constant succession and variation of certain states of feelings produced in the nervous structure.

Against this view we may place what we know from constant observation. We know that it has been ordained, as a consequence of the sexual union of two individuals of opposite sex, there shall come into existence a new individual of the same physical organism as the parents. Of the interior process by which this product is effected we must remain ignorant, but about the fact there can be no doubt. That fact is, that by the union of certain vesicles contributed by each of the parents there results a new individual organism. We know further that simultaneously with the complete production of the new physical organism, there comes into being, and is incorporated with it, an existence that we are compelled by the phenomena which it manifests to regard as a non-physical and a spiritual organism. Of the process by which this distinct existence is effected, we must remain as ignorant as we are of the process by which the physical organism was made to result from the sexual union of the parents. But of the fact there can be no more doubt in the one case than in the other. In every instance of a new birth of a perfect infant, we know that there results a dual existence in the same individual; the one manifested by physical, the other by mental phenomena. To argue that the mental and spiritual existence grew out of an improved and improving physical organism in long-past ages, and became an adjunct to that organism after it had attained a certain development, without any intervention of the creating power at each new birth of an individual infant, is to limit the power of the Creator in a realm wherein the subject of his creating power is essentially unlike the subject with which he deals when he deals with physical organisms. In all reasoning upon the origin and nature of the human mind, the boundless power of the Creator must be assumed. In judging of the probabilities of his methods of action, it is the safest course to be guided by what we can see takes place at every new birth of a human infant. The physical organism results from the operation of a certain law. The mental organism results, it is alike rational to presume, from the operation of a certain other law. How either of these laws operates we are not permitted to know, but we can as safely infer the one as the other, from what is open to our observation.

I shall now touch briefly upon another argument, the foundation of which is to be tested by historical facts into the truth of which I shall not here inquire, because they must, for the purposes for which I use them, be assumed. The immortality of the human soul is said to have been proved by a Divine revelation. This great fact is supposed to be established by evidence of a character quite different from that which convinces us of the existence and attributes of the Almighty. But, assuming revelation to be a fact, it has an important bearing upon the subject of this essay, because the question arises, for what conceivable reason the Almighty should have made to us a revelation of our immortality, through the direct testimony of a competent witness, if we are not spiritual beings. Information of a fact supposes that there was a person to be informed. Concurrently with the consciousness which assures us of our personality, we have the assurance of our immortality certified to us by a messenger expressly authorized to give us the information. If the mind, or that part of our individuality which we call the soul, is in its origin and nature nothing but what the evolution theory supposes, what was there to be informed of immortality, or of anything else? The possibility and certainty of an existence after the death of the body is a conviction that must exercise great influence over the conduct of men in this life. It is consistent with the whole apparent scheme of the revelation to suppose that it was made for a twofold purpose: first, to cause men to lead better lives in this world than they might have led without this information and conviction; and, secondly, to form them for greater happiness in another world. The first of these purposes might have been effectuated by causing men to believe in their own immortality, notwithstanding the belief might be a delusion because there is no being capable, in fact, of any existence after the life of the body is ended. But such a method of action is hardly to be imputed to the Creator and Supreme Governor of the universe, according to the ideas of his character which natural religion alone will give us. It is not in accordance with rational conceptions of his attributes to suppose that he deludes his rational creatures with assurances or apparent proofs of something that is not true for the sake of making them act as if it were true. When we find ourselves running into a hypothesis of this kind, we may be pretty sure that we are departing from correct principles of reasoning. In regard to the second of the supposed purposes for which the revelation of immortality was made—to form men for greater happiness in another state of existence—it is quite obvious that the supposed scheme of the revelation is a mere delusion, if we are not beings capable of a continued spiritual existence after the death of our bodies. It is therefore a matter of great consequence to determine what the evolution theory of the origin and nature of the human mind makes us out to be.

I have never seen any statement of that theory that does not lead to the conclusion that man is a highly developed animal organism, whose mental existence is not something created in each individual of the race, and of a substance and organized structure different from the physical organism, but whose mental phenomena are merely exhibitions and effects of occurrences taking place in the physical system, and assuming the shape of what for distinctness is called thought. In whatever form this theory has been stated by its most distinguished professors, it leaves only an interval of degree, and not an interval of kind, between the mind of man and that which, in some of the other animals, is supposed to be mind. The evolution doctrine, taken in one of its aspects, supposes one grand chain of animal organisms, rising higher and higher in the scale of animal life, but connected together by ordinary generation, so that they are of one kindred throughout; but that, as each distinct species grows out of predecessors, by gradual improvements and increments, forming more and more elaborate organisms, man is the consummate product of the whole process. But when we ask at what point or stage in the series of developing animal organisms the mind of man was produced, or what it was when produced, we get no satisfactory answer. To the first question, it can only be answered, as Darwin himself answers, that there must be a definition of man before we can determine at what time he came to exist. To the second question, we have answers which differ materially from each other. First, we have whatever we can extract from such a system of psychology as Mr. Spencer's, which ignores the capability of the mind to exist independent of the nervous structure and the brain, because it excludes the idea of any ego, any me, any person, and makes consciousness to consist of a connected series of physical feelings, to which there are corresponding psychical equivalents that he calls mental states. It would seem to follow, therefore, that when there is no longer remaining for the individual any nervous structure and any brain, the mental states, or psychical side of the physical impressions, must cease; or, in other words, that the only existing ego has come to an end.

On the other hand, I have seen an ingenious hypothesis which it is well to refer to, because it illustrates the efforts that are often made to reconcile the doctrines of evolution with a belief in immortality. This hypothesis by no means ignores the possibility of a spiritual existence, or the spiritual as distinguished from the material world. But it assumes that man was produced under the operation of physical laws; and that after he had become a completed product—the consummate and finished end of the whole process of evolution—he passed under the dominion and operation of other and different laws, and is saved from annihilation by the intervention of a change from the physical to the spiritual laws of his Creator. Put into a condensed form, this theory has been thus stated: Having spent countless æons in forming man, by the slow process of animal evolution, God will not suffer him to fall back into elemental flames, and be consumed by the further operation of physical laws, but will transfer him into the dominion of the spiritual laws that are held in reserve for his salvation.

One of the first questions to be asked, in reference to this hypothesis, is, Who or what is it that God is supposed to have spent countless æons in creating by the slow process of animal evolution? If we contemplate a single specimen of the human race, we find a bodily organism, endowed with life like that of other animals, and acted upon by physical laws throughout the whole period of its existence. We also find present in the same individual a mental existence, which is certified to us by evidence entirely different from that by which we obtain a knowledge of the physical organism. As the methods employed by the Creator in the production of the physical organism, whatever we may suppose them to have been, were physical laws operating upon matter, so the methods employed by him in the production of a spiritual existence must have operated in a domain that was wholly aside from the physical world. Each of these distinct realms is equally under the government of an Omnipotent Being; and while we may suppose that in the one he employed a very slow process, such as the evolution of animal organisms out of one another is imagined to have been, there is no conceivable reason why he should not, in the other and very different realm, have resorted to the direct creation of a spiritual existence, which can not, in the nature of things, have required to be produced by the action of physical laws. When, at the birth of each individual of the human race, the two existences become united, when, in consequence of the operation of that sexual union of the parents which has been ordained for the production of a new individual, the physical and the spiritual existence become incorporated in the one being, the fact that they remain for a certain time mutually dependent and mutually useful, co-operating in the purposes of their temporary connection, does not change their essential nature. The one may be destructible because the operation of physical laws may dissolve the ligaments that hold it together; the other may be indestructible, because the operation of spiritual laws will hold together the spiritual organism that is in its nature independent of the laws of matter.

I can therefore see no necessary connection between the methods employed by the Almighty in the production of an animal and the methods employed by him in the production of a soul. That in the birth of the individual the two come into existence simultaneously, and are temporarily united in one and the same being, only proves that the two existences are contemporaneous in their joint inception. It does not prove that they are of the same nature, or the same substance, or that the physical organism is the only ego, or that the psychical existence is nothing but certain states of the material structure, to whose aggregate manifestations certain philosophers give the name of mind, while denying to them personal individuality and the consciousness of a distinct being.

And now, in bringing this discussion to a close, I will only add that the great want of this age is the prosecution of inquiry into the nature of the human mind as an organic structure, regarded as such. It seems to me that the whole mission of Science is now perverted by a wrong aim, which is to find out the external to the neglect of the internal—to make all exploration terminate in the laws of the physical universe, and go aside from the examination of the spiritual world. It is no reproach to those who essay the latter inquiry that they are scoffed at as "the metaphysicians." It matters not what they are called, so long as they pursue the right path. It is now in regard to the pursuit of science as it was formerly in regard to the writing of history. That philosophical French historian, M. Taine, has luminously marked the change which has come over the methods and objects of historical studies in the following passage:

"When you consider with your eyes the visible man, what do you look for? The man invisible. The words which salute your ears, the gestures, the motions of his head, the clothes he wears, visible acts and deeds of every kind, are expressions merely; somewhat is revealed beneath them, and that is a soul—an inner man is concealed beneath the outer man; the second does not reveal the first; ... all the externals are but avenues converging toward a center; you enter them simply to reach that center, and that center is the genuine man—I mean that mass of faculties and feelings which are the inner man. We have reached a new world, which is infinite, because every action which we see involves an infinite association of reasonings, emotions, sensations new and old, which have served to bring it to light, and which, like great rocks deep-seated in the ground, find in it their end and their level. This under-world is a new subject-matter proper to the historian.... This precise and proved interpretation of past sensations has given to history, in our days, a second birth; hardly anything of the sort was known to the preceding century. They thought men of every race and country were all but identical—the Greek, the barbarian, the Hindoo, the man of the Renaissance, and the man of the eighteenth century—as if they had all been turned out of a common mold, and all in conformity to a certain abstract conception which served for the whole human race. They knew man, but not men; they had not penetrated to the soul; they had not seen the infinite diversity and complexity of souls; they did not know that the moral constitution of a people or an age is as particular and distinct as the physical structure of a family of plants or an order of animals."[153]

In the same way psychology needs a new birth, like the new birth of history. If we would know the mind, we must reach the conviction that there is a mind: and this conviction can be reached only by penetrating through all the externals, through the physical organism, through the diversities of race, through the environment of matter, until we have found the soul. If history, like zoölogy, has found its anatomy, mental science must, in like manner, be prosecuted as an anatomical study. So long as we allow the anatomy of zoölogy to be the predominant and only explanation, the beginning and the end of the mental manifestations, so long we shall fail to comprehend the nature of man, and to see the reason for his immortality.

---

[GLOSSARY]

OF

SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL TERMS USED IN THIS WORK.

[The following definitions marked with an asterisk are borrowed from the glossary annexed to Darwin's "Origin of Species." The remainder of the definitions are taken from Webster's Dictionary.]

*Aberrant. Forms or groups of animals or plants which deviate in important characters from their nearest allies, so as not to be easily included in the same group with them, are said to be aberrant.

*Abnormal. Contrary to the general rule.

*Aborted. An organ is said to be aborted when its development has been arrested at a very early stage.

Aërate (Zoöl.). To subject to the influence of the air by the natural organs of respiration; to arterialize; especially used of animals not having lungs.

Agnostic (a.). Professing ignorance; involving no dogmatic assertion; leaving a question or problem still in doubt; pertaining to or involving agnosticism.

Agnostic (n.). One who professes ignorance, or refrains from dogmatic assertion; one who supports agnosticism, neither affirming nor denying the existence of a personal Deity.

Agnosticism. That doctrine which, professing ignorance, neither asserts nor denies; specifically, in theology, the doctrine that the existence of a personal Deity can be neither asserted nor denied, neither proved nor disproved, because of the necessary limits of the human mind (as sometimes charged upon Hamilton and Mansel), or because of the insufficiency of the evidence furnished by psychical and physical data, to warrant a positive conclusion (as taught by the school of Herbert Spencer); opposed alike to dogmatic skepticism and to dogmatic theism.

Allantois, Allantoid. A thin membrane, situated between the chorion and amnion, and forming one of the membranes which invest the fœtus.

*Analogy. That resemblance of structures which depends upon similarity of function, as in the wings of insects and birds. Such structures are said to be analogous, and to be analogues of each other.

Anthropomorphism. The representation of the Deity under a human form, or with human attributes.

*Articulata. A great division of the animal kingdom, characterized generally by having the surface of the body divided into rings, called segments, a greater or less number of which are furnished with jointed legs (such as insects, crustaceans, and centipeds).

Articulation (Anat.). The joining or juncture of the bones of a skeleton.

Ascidians. A class of acephalous mollusks, having often a leathery exterior.

Biology. The science of life; that part of physiology which treats of life in general, or of the different forces of life.

Brain. The upper part of the head. 1. (Anat.) The whitish, soft mass which constitutes the anterior or cephalic extremity of the nervous system in man and other vertebrates, occupying the upper cavity of the skull; and (b) the anterior or cephalic ganglion in insects and other invertebrates.

2. The organ or seat of intellect; hence, the understanding.

3. The affections; fancy; imagination.

*Branchiæ. Gills, or organs for respiration in water.

*Branchial. Pertaining to gills or branchiæ.

*Canidæ. The dog family, including the dog, wolf, fox, jackal, etc.

Cell. A minute, inclosed space or sac, filled with fluid, making up the cellular tissue of plants, and of many parts of animals, and originating the parts by their growth and reproduction; the constituent element of all plants and animals (though not universal for all parts of such structure), much as a crystalline molecule is the element of a crystal. In the simplest plants and animals (as the infusoria), one single cell constitutes the complete individual, such species being called unicellular plants or animals.

Cephalopod (Fr. céphalopode, from Gr., head and foot). (Zoöl.) An animal of the sub-kingdom Mollusca, characterized by a distinct head, surrounded by a circle of long arms or tentacles, which they use for crawling and for seizing objects. See Mollusk.

*Cetacea. An order of Mammalia, including the whales, dolphins, etc., having the form of the body fish-like, the skin naked, and only the fore-limbs developed.

Chaos. 1. An empty, infinite space; a yawning chasm.

2. The rude, confused state, or unorganized condition, of matter before the creation of the universe.

Consciousness. 1. The knowledge of sensations and mental operations, or of what passes in one's own mind; the act of the mind which makes known an internal object.

2. Immediate knowledge of any object whatever.

*Crustaceans. A class of articulated animals having the skin of the body generally more or less hardened by the deposition of calcareous matter, breathing by means of gills. (Examples, crab, lobster, shrimp, etc.)

Dynamically. In accordance with the principles of dynamics or moving forces.

*Embryo. The young animal undergoing development within the egg or womb.

*Embryology. The study of the development of the embryo.

Ethics. The science of human duty; the body of rules of duty drawn from this science; a particular system of principles and rules concerning duty, whether true or false; rules of practice in respect to a single class of human actions; as political or social ethics.

*Fauna. The totality of the animals naturally inhabiting a certain country or region, or which have lived during a given geological period.

Fetichism, Feticism. One of the lowest and grossest forms of superstition, consisting in the worship of some material object, as a stone, a tree, or an animal, often casually selected; practiced among tribes of lowest mental endowment, as certain races of negroes.

*Flora. The totality of the plants growing naturally in a country or during a given geological period.

*Fœtal. Of or belonging to the fœtus, or embryo in course of development.

Fœtus, same as Fetus. The young of viviparous animals in the womb, and of oviparous animals in the egg, after it is perfectly formed, before which time it is called embryo.

*Ganoid Fishes. Fishes covered with peculiar enameled bony scales. Most of them are extinct.

Genus (Science). An assemblage of species possessing certain characters in common, by which they are distinguished from all others. It is subordinate to tribe and sub-tribe; hence, a single species having distinctive characters that seem of more than specific value may constitute a genus.

*Germinal Vesicle. A minute vesicle in the eggs of animals, from which the development of the embryo proceeds.

Gravitation (Physics). That species of attraction or force by which all bodies or particles of matter in the universe tend toward each other; called also attraction of gravitation, universal gravitation, and universal gravity.

Gravity (Physics). The tendency of a mass of matter toward a center of attraction; especially the tendency of a body toward the center of the earth, terrestrial gravitation.

Gyrus, pl. Gyri (Anat.). A convolution of the brain.

*Habitat. The locality in which a plant or animal naturally lives.

Heredity. The transmission of the physical and psychical qualities of parents to their offspring; the biological law by which living beings tend to repeat themselves in their descendants.

Homologous. Having the same relative proportion, position, value, or structure; especially—(a) (Geom.) Corresponding in relative position and proportion. (b) (Alg.) Having the same relative proportion or value, as the two antecedents or the two consequents of a proportion. (c) (Chem.) Being of the same chemical type or series; differing by a multiple or arithmetical ratio in certain constituents, while the physical qualities are wholly analogous, with small relative differences, as if corresponding to a series of parallels; as, the species in the group of alcohols are said to be homologous. (d) (Zoöl.) Being of the same typical structure; having like relations to a fundamental type of structure; as, those bones in the hand of man and the fore-foot of a horse are homologous that correspond in their structural relations—that is, in their relations to the type-structure of the fore-limb in vertebrates.

Homology. That relation between parts which results from their development from corresponding embryonic parts, either in different animals, as in the case of the arm of a man, the fore-leg of a quadruped, and the wing of a bird; or in the same individual, as in the case of the fore and hind legs in quadrupeds, and the segments or rings and their appendages of which the body of a worm, a centiped, etc., is composed. The latter is called serial homology. The parts which stand in such a relation to each other are said to be homologous, and one such part or organ is called the homologue of the other. In different plants the parts of the flower are homologous, and in general these parts are regarded as homologous with leaves.

Hypothesis. 1. A supposition; a proposition or principle which is supposed or taken for granted, in order to draw a conclusion or inference for proof of the point in question; something not proved, but assumed for the purpose of argument.

2. A system or theory imagined or assumed to account for known facts or phenomena.

Imago. The perfect (generally winged) reproductive state of an insect.

Implacenta (n.). A mammal having no placenta. (a.) Without a placenta, as certain marsupial animals.

Insectivorous. Feeding on insects.

Instinct (n.). Inward impulse; unconscious, involuntary, or unreasoning prompting to action; a disposition to any mode of action, whether bodily or spiritual, without a distinct apprehension of the end or object which Nature has designed should be accomplished thereby; specifically, the natural, unreasoning impulse in an animal, by which it is guided to the performance of any action, without thought of improvement in the method.

Invertebrata, or Invertebrate Animals. Those animals which do not possess a backbone or spinal column.

Isomeric (from Gr., equal and part). (Chem.) Having the quality of isomerism; as isomeric compounds.

Isomerism (Chem.). An identity of elements and of atomic proportions with a difference in the amount combined in the compound molecule, and of its essential qualities; as in the case of the physically unlike compounds of carbon and hydrogen, consisting one of one part of each, another of two parts of each, and a third of four of each.

Kangaroo. A ruminating marsupial animal of the genus Macropus, found in Australia and the neighboring islands.

Larva (plural Larvæ). The first condition of an insect at its issuing from the egg, when it is usually in the form of a grub, caterpillar, or maggot.

Lemuridæ. A group of four-handed animals, distinct from the monkeys, and approaching the insectivorous quadrupeds in some of their characters and habits. Its members have the nostrils curved or twisted, and a claw instead of a nail upon the first finger of the hind hands.

Lepidosiren. An eel-shaped animal covered with rounded scales, having four rod-like members, and breathing water like a fish. It is found in ponds and rivers of intertropical Africa and South America. By some it is regarded as a fish, and by others as a batrachian.

Mammal. Belonging to the breast; from mamma, the breast or pap. An animal of the highest class of vertebrates, characterized by the female suckling its young.

Mammalia. The highest class of animals, including the ordinary hairy quadrupeds, the whales, and man, and characterized by the production of living young, which are nourished after birth by milk from the teats (mammæ, mammary glands) of the mother. A striking difference in embryonic development has led to the division of this class into two great groups: in one of these, when the embryo has attained a certain stage, a vascular connection, called the placenta, is formed between the embryo and the mother; in the other this is wanting, and the young are produced in a very incomplete state. The former, including the greater part of the class, are called placental mammals; the latter, or aplacental mammals, include the marsupials and monotremes (ornithorhynchus).

Marsupials. An order of Mammalia in which the young are born in a very incomplete state of development, and carried by the mother, while sucking, in a ventral pouch (marsupium), such as the kangaroos, opossums, etc. (see Mammalia).

Molecule. A mass; one of the invisible particles supposed to constitute matter of any kind.

Mollusk. An invertebrate animal, having a soft, fleshy body (whence the name), which is inarticulate, and not radiate internally.

Monkey. See Simia.

Monogamy. A marriage to one wife only, or the state of such as are restricted to a single wife, or may not marry again after the death of a first wife.

Monotheism. The doctrine or belief that there is but one God.

Morphology. The law of form or structure independent of function.

Nascent. Commencing development.

Nexus. Connection; tie.

Nictitating Membrane. A semi-transparent membrane, which can be drawn across the eye in birds and reptiles, either to moderate the effects of a strong light or to sweep particles of dust, etc., from the surface of the eye.

Noumenon (Metaph.). The of itself unknown and unknowable rational object, or thing in itself, which is distinguished from the phenomenon in which it occurs to apprehension, and by which it is interpreted and understood; so used in the philosophy of Kant and his followers.

Opossum. An animal of several species of marsupial quadrupeds of the genus Didelphys. The common species of the United States is the D. Virginiana. Another species, common in Texas and California, is D. Californica, and other species are found in South America.

Organism. An organized being, whether plant or animal.

Ovule. An egg. (Bot.) The rudimentary state of a seed. It consists essentially of a nucleus developed directly from the placenta.

Parasite. An animal or plant living upon or in, and at the expense of, another organism.

Pelvis. The bony arch to which the hind-limbs of vertebrate animals are articulated.

Placentalia, Placentata, or Placental Mammals. See Mammalia.

Protozoa. The lowest great division of the Animal Kingdom. These animals are composed of a gelatinous material, and show scarcely any trace of distinct organs. The infusoria, foraminifera, and sponges, with some other forms, belong to this division.

Phenomenon. 1. An appearance; anything visible; whatever is presented to the eye; whatever, in matter or spirit, is apparent to, or is apprehended by, observation, as distinguished from its ground, substance, or unknown constitution; as phenomena of heat or electricity; phenomena of imagination or memory.

2. Sometimes a remarkable or unusual appearance whose cause is not immediately obvious.

Plexus. Any net-work of vessels, nerves, or fibers.

Polygamy. A plurality of wives or husbands at the same time, or the having of such plurality; usually the condition of a man having more than one wife.

Polytheism. The doctrine of a plurality of gods or invisible beings superior to man, and having an agency in the government of the world.

Proteine (n. Lat., proteinum, from Gr., first—to be the first—the first place, chief rank, because it occupies the first place in relation to the albuminous principles). (Chem.) A substance claimed by Mulder to be obtained as a distinct substance from albumen, fibrine, or caseine, and considered by him to be the basis of animal tissue and of some substances of vegetable origin.

The theory of proteine can not be maintained.—Gregory.

The theory of Mulder is doubted and denied by many chemists, and also the existence of proteine as a distinct substance.

Psychology. A discourse or treatise on the human soul; the science of the human soul; specifically, the systematic or scientific knowledge of the powers and functions of the human soul, so far as they are known by consciousness.

Quadrumane. An animal having four feet that correspond to the hands of a man, as a monkey.

Race. 1. The descendants of a common ancestor; a family, tribe, people, or nation, believed or presumed to belong to the same stock; a lineage; a breed.

2. A root.

Retina. The delicate inner coat of the eye, formed by nervous filaments spreading from the optic nerve, and serving for the perception of the impressions produced by light.

Rotifer (n. Lat. rotifer, from Lat. rota, a wheel, and ferro, to bear. Fr. rotifère). (Zoöl.) One of a group of microscopic crustaceans, having no limbs, and moving by means of rows of cilia about the head or the anterior extremity.

Rudiment (Nat. Hist.). An imperfect organ, or one which is never fully formed.

Sacral. Belonging to the sacrum, or the bone composed usually of two or more united vertebræ to which the sides of the pelvis in vertebrate animals are attached.

Sacrum. The bone which forms the posterior part of the pelvis. It is triangular in form.

Secularize. To convert from spiritual to secular or common use; as to secularize a church, or church property.

Segments. The transverse rings of which the body of an articulate animal or annelid is composed.

Simia (plural Simiadæ) (Lat., an ape, from simus, flat-nosed, snub-nosed). (Zoöl.) A Linnæan genus of animals, including the ape, monkey, and the like; a general name of the various tribes of monkeys.

Species (Nat. Hist.). A permanent class of existing things or beings, associated according to attributes or properties which are determined by scientific observation.

Spinal Cord. The central portion of the nervous system in the vertebrata, which descends from the brain through the arches of the vertebræ, and gives off nearly all the nerves to the various organs of the body.

Statical. To stand. 1. Pertaining to bodies at rest, or in equilibrium.

2. Resting; acting by mere weight without motion; as statical pressure.

Sulcus. A fissure of the brain, separating two convolutions, or gyri.

Teleology (Fr., téléologie, from Gr., the end or issue, and discourse). The science or doctrine of the final causes of things; the philosophical consideration of final causes in general.

Variety (Nat. Hist., Bot., and Zoöl.). Any form or condition of structure under a species which differs in its characteristics from those typical to the species, as in color, shape, size, and the like, and which is capable either of perpetuating itself for a period, or of being perpetuated by artificial means; also, any of the various forms under a species meeting the conditions mentioned. A form characterized by an abnormity of structure, or any difference from the type that is not capable of being perpetuated through two or more generations, is not called a variety.

Vascular. Containing blood-vessels.

Vertebrata; or Vertebrate Animals. The highest division of the animal kingdom, so called from the presence in most cases of a back-bone composed of numerous joints or vertebræ, which constitutes the center of the skeleton, and at the same time supports and protects the central parts of the nervous system.

Vesicle. A bladder-like vessel; a membranous cavity; a cyst; a cell; especially (a) (Bot.) a small bladder-like body in the substance of a vegetable, or upon the surface of a leaf.—Gray. (b) (Med.) A small orbicular elevation of the cuticle containing lymph, and succeeded by a scurf or laminated scab; also, any small cavity or sac in the human body; as the umbilical vesicle.

Vortices (verto, to turn). 1. A whirling or circular motion of any fluid, usually of water, forming a kind of cavity in the center of the circle, and in some instances drawing in water or absorbing other things; a whirlpool.

2. A whirling of the air; a whirlwind.

3. (Cartesian system.) A supposed collection of particles of very subtile matter, endowed with a rapid rotary motion around an axis. By means of these vortices Descartes attempted to account for the formation of the universe.

[INDEX.]

• Advocacy, maxim of, [132].
• Affections, structural system of, [532].
• Agnosticism, as defined by Huxley, [274].
• Allantois, the, office of, [236] et seq., [245].
• Almagest. See Ptolemaic System.
• Amphibians in the Darwinian pedigree of man, [71], [96], [98].
• Amphioxus. See Lancelet.
• Amputation before or after birth, [129], [130].
• Anatomy, modern, great advance of, [40], [41].
• Plato's knowledge of, [38].
• Anatomy of the mind, [470].
• Animals, origin of, according to Plato, [57] et seq.
• origin of, according to Darwin, [60] et seq.
• Anthropomorphic attributes not necessary to the conception of God, [293] et seq.
• Anthropomorphism, meaning, [293].
• Antichthon, or counter-earth, invented by the Pythagoreans, [36].
• Apes, varieties of, [71].
• anthropomorphous, [100].
• Apparitions, facts communicated by, [486]-488.
• Aquatic worm, [94].
• Areas, effect of change of, [248].
• Articulata, likeness of structure in, [205] et seq.
• Ascidians, larvæ of, [94].
• Assassination, once employed with impunity, [165].
• Associative faculty, what it is, [528].
• Athenian, the, compared with a savage, [73], [74].
• Authority, as affecting belief, [3].
• ecclesiastic and scientific, [22], [23].
• in science, [21].
• Automatic machines, analysis of, [505].
• Baboons, how different from monkeys, [71], note.
• Belief, foundations of, [1]-3.
• antiquity of, how to be regarded, [132] et seq.
• grounds of, [274]-277.
• Birds, origin of, according to Plato, [57].
• sexual selection among, [67], note.
• Bishop, P. P., "The Heart of Man," [471], note.
• Blood, similarity in the composition of, [122].
• great change in, [122].
• Body, natural and spiritual, [468].
• Brain of men and apes compared, [191].
• human, [518].
• office of, [196].
• Breaks in the organic chain, [103]-106.
• Buffon, accepted Mosaic account of creation, [368], [369].
• Causation, ultimate, [386].
• Cell, hypothesis of the single, [371], note.
• Chaos, Plato's conception of, [45].
• Classification, how it supports evolution, [200], [203].
• Common stock, hypothesis of descent from, [209].
• Composition, what occurs in, [473], [474].
• Comte, Auguste, one of his suggestions, [387], [388].
• Conduct, Spencer's view of, [427] et seq.
• Consciousness, what it is, [470], [471], [503].
• Constitutions, political, supposed growth of, [168].
• Conversations invented during sleep, [480], [481].
• Conversion of organs, [67].
• Copernicus, system of, [32].
• Creation, special, contrasted with evolution, [1] et seq.
• absolute, unknown to the Greeks, [45].
• influence of the belief in, [164], [165].
• man's power of, [144].
• Mosaic account of, [23].
• poetical, [140], [141].
• what it is, [136] et seq., [139], [140], [223].
• Creator, the, postulate of, [115].
• honoring or dishonoring the, not the question, [160] et seq.
• method of, [207].
• Creator, methods of, in the two realms of spirit and matter, [537].
• power of, boundless, [224], [232], [535].
• Crosses not permissible between distinct species, [372].
• Darwin, Charles, his theory of evolution, [7].
• bearing of his theory on man's immortality, [12], [13].
• candor and accuracy of, [101].
• difference of, from Spencer, [43], [225].
• his pedigree of man, [70]-72, [87].
• his view of human dignity, [10].
• on primeval man, [375].
• on the belief in God, [60], [61].
• rejects an aboriginal pair, [406].
• tabulated form of his pedigree of man, [93].
• Dekad, the perfect number of the Pythagoreans, [35].
• Delirium, explanation of, [499], [500].
• Demiurgus, the, constructor of Plato's Kosmos, [46].
• Descartes, his theory of vortices, [33].
• Descent, must be unbroken, [211].
• Design, when hypothesis of, necessary, [214].
• Desires, mental system of, [532].
• Domestic animals, breeding of, [89].
• Distribution in space, how it affects evolution, [203], [247].
• in time, [251].
• Dreams, phenomena of, [479]-490.
• Earth. See Solar System.
• Economy of Nature, meaning of, [116], [126].
• Elements, the four, in the Platonic Kosmos, [45], [46].
• Eliphaz and Zophar. See Job.
• Embryonic development, resemblances in, [111], [120].
• Embryology, cautions respecting, [241].
• how it supports evolution, [229].
• Emotions, system of, [530]-532.
• Energy. See Power, Causation.
• Evidence, rules of circumstantial, [14]-17.
• applicable to scientific investigation, [17], [18].
• missing links in chain of, [18]-20.
• process of, [67], [68].
• Evil, rational explanation of, [148] et seq.
• Evolution, assumptions in the theory of, [18]-20.
• general reasons for, [102].
• law of, limited, [210].
• of man, [373].
• principle of, [377].
• process reversed, [252]-256.
• Experts, true office of, [21], [22].
• Extemporaneous speaking, what is, [474].
• Eye, the, formation of, [68]-70, [83], [84].
• Faunas of different areas, [247].
• Fetichism. See Spencer.
• Fishes, origin of, according to Plato, [58].
• most lowly organized, [95].
• shell, the lowest form of, [58].
• Fœtus, growth of the, [234] et seq.
• Galen, mistakes of, in anatomy, [39], [40].
• how he differed from Plato, [39].
• Galileo, confirms and rectifies Kepler's laws, [32].
• Papal condemnation of, [20], [21], note.
• Ganoids, description of, [96].
• Genealogical trees of no value in zoölogy, [202], note.
• General laws and special creations, [127], [128].
• Germ, ante-fœtal, how formed, [234].
• Gladiatorial shows, part of Roman civilization, [164].
• God, existence of, how proved, [11], [12].
• a necessary postulate, [402].
• a personal, denied by Spencer, [433].
• consciousness of, how to be lost, according to Spencer, [285] et seq.
• existence and attributes of, how deduced, [300] et seq.
• his dealing with Abraham, [425].
• probable methods of, [63], [64], [82]-85, [102].
• unlike Plato's Demiurgus, [85].
• Gods, the, origin of, among the Greeks, [50].
• genesis of, according to Plato, [46], [48]-50, note.
• office of, in the formation of Plato's Kosmos, [49].
• Gravitation, law of, how deduced, [20].
• Greek philosophy, account of, [24] et seq.
• encounters monotheism at Alexandria, [287].
• how hampered by the mythology, [138].
• schools of, before Plato, [28].
• Grote, his Plato cited and followed, [27]-40, [287], [288], [290].
• Harvey discovers the circulation of the blood, [40].
• Heat, origin of, [386], [387].
• Hebrews receive divine commands, [418].
• Heredity, law of, limited, [225].
• Homologous organs, meaning of, [97].
• See Swim-bladder and Lung.
• meaning of, [215], note.
• Human life, peculiar sacredness of, [164]-166.
• Huxley, Professor, on the brain of man and apes, [192].
• Huxley, Professor, quoted, [121].
• Ideal persons, are creations, [140], [141].
• Ideal plan, objection to, [114], [118].
• Ideas in Plato's system, coeval with primordial matter, [45], [46].
• how acquired, [506]-508.
• Idiocy, absolute, probably does not exist, [526].
• what it is, [526]-528.
• Idiot. See Idiocy.
• Immortality, what is proof of, [41], [540].
• belief in, [61], [62].
• fanciful explanation of, [543].
• Improvisation, what is, [474].
• Infinite goodness consistent with the existence of suffering, [156].
• Instinct, genesis of, according to Plato, [60].
• genesis of, according to Darwin, ib.
• Intellectual faculties, system of, [525].
• Interbreeding. See Species.
• Introspective faculty, power of the, [529].
• Intuitive faculty, office of, [525], [526].
• Invention in mechanics, [475].
• Invention is creation, [142].
• Job and his friends, [25] et seq.
• Kangaroos, structure of, [98].
• Kepler, his laws of the planetary motions, [32].
• Knowledge not limited to scientific demonstration, [392].
• of ourselves, [520], [521].
• Kosmos, the. See Plato.
• Lancelet, visual organ of the, [68].
• Languages, origin of, [168], [397], [398].
• Lemuridæ in the Darwinian pedigree of man, [71].
• characteristics of, [99].
• Logic, abuse of, [136] et seq.
• right use of, [220].
• use and misuse of its forms, [145].
• Lung in vertebrates, supposed homologue with a swim-bladder, [67].
• conversion of, from swim-bladder, [97].
• Macaulay, Lord, his depreciation of natural theology, [24] et seq.
• Macbeth, Lady, her sleep-walking analyzed, [491]-499.
• Man, dignity of, how to be treated, [9], [10].
• bodily structure of, [109].
• common ancestor of, and the apes, [71], [100].
• constructive faculty of, [346].
• immortality of, [12], [13].
• liability to certain diseases, [110].
• moral accountability of, [9], [10].
• origin of, [348].
• pedigree of, according to Darwin, [70]-72.
• rank of, in scale of being, [101].
• Marriage, scientific view of, [381].
• Marsupials in the Darwinian pedigree of man, [71].
• ancient, [98].
• Matter, primordial, according to Plato, [45].
• Matter and spirit contrasted, [477].
• Medium, effect of change of, [248], [249].
• Mind, origin of, [8], [9].
• a created being, [407] et seq.
• a spiritual creation, [401]-404.
• contrasted theories of, [533] et seq.
• evolution origin of the, [538].
• evolution theory of origin of, [394] et seq.
• is an organism, [476].
• of animals below man, [80], [81].
• origin and nature of, [467]-546.
• origin of, according to Darwin, [78].
• origin of, according to Plato, [79], [80].
• structure of, [502].
• substance of, [509].
• systems of, [523] et seq.
• the human, placed under certain laws, [389], [390].
• Miracles, meaning of, [129].
• Miraculous interposition not necessary, [163].
• Modern civilization, what it owes to belief in special creation, [164]-166.
• Monkeys, two great stems of, [71].
• Catarrhine, or Old-World, [100].
• Monotheism, its influence on philosophy, [138].
• origin of, [342].
• Monotremata, division of the mammalian series, [98].
• Moral injunctions, sacred origin of, [418].
• Moral injunctions, Spencer's denial of, [427] et seq., [433].
• Moral law, capacity of human beings to receive, [420].
• scientific view of the, [420] et seq.
• Moral purposes in the phenomena of nature, [387], [388].
• Moral sense, origin of, [86].
• Morphology, how it supports evolution, [202].
• Mosaic account of creation, rationality of, [366] et seq.
• Murder, punishment of, moral foundation for, [166].
• "Music of the spheres," origin of the phrase, [37].
• Nascent organs, meaning of, [111], [112].
• "Natural," meaning of, [214].
• Natural theology, progress of, from Thales to Plato and Aristotle, [28], [29].
• importance of, [43].
• Nervous organization, Spencer's view of, [409] et seq.
• Newton, Sir Isaac, discovers the law of universal gravitation, [33].
• deduces a personal God from nature, [331], note.
• his General Scholium, [332].
• Noumenon, an invented word, [269].
• Number. See Dekad, and Pythagoras.
• Opossums, structure of, [98].
• Orthodoxy, Plato's idea of, as suggested in his "Republic," [296], [297].
• Oviparous animals, [98].
• Pairs, of animals, opposite views of, [405].
• Pairs, assumed existence of, [537].
• Parasites, how to be viewed, [151] et seq.
• Pattern of structure, argument concerning, [204].
• Pedigree, rule for tracing, [185]-187.
• Pedigree of man, Darwinian, [70] et seq.
• Phenomenon and noumenon, [268].
• Philolaus as quoted by Grote, [35].
• Philosophy, modern and ancient compared, [24] et seq.
• Physicians in Plato's time, [40].
• Placental mammals, [99].
• Plato, period of, [28], note.
• as given in "Timæus," [298].
• his Demiurgus, [287], [288].
• his genealogy of the gods, [298], note.
• his Kosmos and Darwin's hypothesis compared, [44]-86.
• his origin of religious beliefs as given in "Republic," [296].
• his triplicity of souls, [39].
• his view of rudiments, [74], [75].
• originality of, [289], [290].
• Polytheism, origin of, [342].
• Power, distinct from substance, [226], [233], note; [339] et seq.
• an attribute of mind, [386].
• of nature, limited, [343]-345.
• Primitive beliefs, not necessarily wrong, [132] et seq.
• "Principle" of construction, [106], [107].
• Probability, force of, in reasoning, [7].
• Psychology, needs a new birth, [546].
• Ptolemaic system, description of, [31].
• Pyramids, why referable to mind, [390], [391].
• Pythagoras, school of, [34] et seq.
• Quadrumana, in the Darwinian pedigree of man, [71].
• and other mammals, [99].
• Races, what are, [372].
• Raphael, created images, [143].
• Religion, what is, [11], [12].
• natural, [23].
• when in conflict with science, [11]-13, [399].
• Religious consciousness, Spencer's origin of, [284].
• Reproduction, two grand systems of, [107], [108].
• Reproductive process, parallel in the, [110].
• Reptiles, Plato's origin of, [58].
• Resurrection, St. Paul's doctrine of the, [468].
• Revelation, how treated in this work, [23].
• purpose of, [540].
• Roman civilization, lacked belief in creation, [164].
• law, slavery under, [165].
• Rudiments, Plato's view of, [74], [75].
• instances of, [111]-114, [124], [125].
• Sacrum, analysis of the human, [215].
• structure of the female, [220].
• Savages, beliefs of, [60], [61].
• Science, domain of, [391], [392].
• present tendency of, [352].
• tendencies of, [127].
• values of, [291].
• when in conflict with religion, meaning of, [11], [12].
• wrong aims of, [545].
• Scott, Sir Walter, his reliance on thoughts obtained during sleep, [490], note.
• Secularization of morals discussed, [434] et seq.
• Segments. See Articulata; Vertebrates.
• Selection, natural, [65], [72], [89].
• limitations to, [91].
• office of, [72].
• sexual, [66], [72], [89].
• Senses, the corporeal, [503].
• Sexes, origin of, in Plato's Kosmos, [55].
• in Nature, [221], [354] et seq., [378].
• Sexual love, in men and brutes, [379].
• moral and social phenomena of, [382].
• Sexual union, operation of, [234] et seq.
• Sexual unions, purpose of, [384], [385].
• Shakespeare, created imaginary persons, [140], [141].
• Simiadæ, general term for monkeys, [99].
• Simonides, poetical theologies of, [24] et seq.
• Sixteenth century, intellectual habits in the, [21].
• Sin, how to be viewed, [148], note.
• Slavery, under the Roman law, [165].
• Sleep, phenomena of, [479] et seq.
• better thoughts during, [489].
• Society, phenomena of, [334] et seq.
• Solar system, how viewed by the Greeks, [31] et seq.
• origin of, [168], [172], [301].
• Somnambulism, phenomena of, [491].
• Soul, meaning of, [478].
• Souls, of men, genesis of, in Plato's Kosmos, [51], [76], [77].
• transmigration of, [78].
• triplicity of, [51], [76], [77].
• Space, illimitable, concepts of, [260] et seq.
• Species, finality of, [157] et seq.
• meaning of, [372] et seq.
• Spencer, Herbert, his theory of animal evolution, [7], [8].
• answers to his objections, [145] et seq.
• attacks "the current creed," [434].
• creation is something made out of nothing, [136].
• creation incapable of being conceived, [136].
• creation not supported by any proof, [135].
• his agnosticism examined, [257] et seq.
• his argument from parasites, [151] et seq.
• his denial of the possibility of knowing mind, [508].
• his doctrine of evolution, [131].
• his ethical system, [427] et seq.
• his ghost-theory, [284] et seq.
• his origin of man, [348]-351, [357].
• his psychological system, [408] et seq.
• his psychology criticised, [470], [504].
• his theory of mind, [510]-516.
• his theory of the moral sense, [418], [423].
• his treatment of the divine attributes, [293].
• his "unknown cause," [163], [166].
• how his theory differs from Darwin's, [225].
• on the evolution of mind, [64].
• on the evolution of animals, [179].
• on universal law of evolution, [167].
• special creations presumptively absurd, [132] et seq.
• St. Paul, his doctrine of the resurrection, [468].
• Struggle for existence, meaning of, [88].
• Substance, distinct from power, [233].
• of mind, [469].
• Substitution and suppression of organs, [236] et seq.
• "Supernatural," meaning of, [214].
• "Survival of the fittest," meaning of, [65], [66].
• Swim-bladder, supposed homologue of a lung, [67].
• conversion of, [96].
• Taine, M., his views of the objects of history, [545].
• Telescope, formation of the, [68]-70.
• Thales, philosophy of, [24], [27], [28].
• period of, [28], note.
• Theology, the current, not to be considered, [145].
• Time, beginning of, in Plato's Kosmos, [48].
• conception of endless, [262] et seq.
• Transmigration, from animal to animal, [54]-59.
• Typical plan, concealed in the ante-fœtal germ, [238].
• Uniformity. See Pattern.
• Varieties, what are, [372].
• Vertebral column, analysis of, [215].
• Voltaire, saying of, [25].
• Von Baer, his embryologic law, [229].
• Vortices. See Descartes.
• Women, origin of, in Plato's Kosmos, [55].

THE END.

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BY GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS.

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LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. By George Ticknor Curtis. Illustrated with Steel Portrait and Woodcuts. Two vols., 8vo. Cloth, $4.00; sheep, $6.00; half morocco, $10.00.

A most valuable and important contribution to the history of American parties and politics, and to the best class of our literature. It is a model biography of a most gifted man, wherein the intermingling of the statesman and lawyer with the husband, father, and friend, is painted so that we feel the reality of the picture.

"We believe the present work to be a most valuable and important contribution to the history of American parties and politics."—London Saturday Review.

"Of Mr. Curtis's labor we wish to record our opinion, in addition to what we have already said, that, in the writing of this book, he has made a most valuable contribution to the best class of our literature."—New York Tribune.

"This 'Life of Webster' is a monument to both subject and author, and one that will stand well the wear of time."—Boston Post.

"Mr. Curtis, it will be remembered, was one of the literary executors named by Mr. Webster, in his will, to do this work; and owing to the death of two of the others, Mr. Everett and President Felton, and the advanced age of Mr. Ticknor, Mr. Curtis has prepared the biography himself, and it has passed under Mr. Ticknor's revision. We believe the work will satisfy the wishes of Mr. Webster's most devoted friends."—Boston Journal.

THE LAST YEARS OF DANIEL WEBSTER. A MONOGRAPH. By George Ticknor Curtis. 8vo. Paper, 50 cents.

"Laying aside, so far as I may be able, the partiality of a friend and biographer, I shall subject to the scrutiny of reason and good sense the accusation that, in Mr. Webster's later years, for the sake of attaining the Presidency, by bidding for the political support of the Southern States, he renounced the principles which he had professed all his life on the subject of slavery."—The Author.

McCLELLAN'S LAST SERVICE TO THE REPUBLIC, together with a Tribute to his Memory. By George Ticknor Curtis. With a Map showing the Position of the Union and Confederate Forces on the Night of November 7, 1862. 12mo. Paper, 30 cents.

"Every statement of a fact, contained in these pages, which was not founded on General McClellan's official report of his campaigns, or derived from some other public source, was given to me by the General in the spring of 1880, and was written down by me at the time. At my request he superintended the preparation of the map which shows his position and that of the Confederate troops on the 7th and 8th of November, 1862, and compared it with the military maps issued by the Government after the close of the civil war."—From the Author's Prefatory Note.

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