Now there is not the slightest reason to believe that animals have any idea of qualities, as such. Even the taste for the beautiful, which Mr. Darwin tells us is not unknown to various animals—especially birds, has relation to the object which attracts by its colour, &c., and not to the colour itself. But it is just this perception of the qualities of objects which is at the foundation, and forms the starting point, of all human progress. The essential instrument of intellectual development, articulate language, was first prompted by such a perception, and it was in the recognition of the qualities of actions, by reflection on their consequences, that the moral sense was gradually evolved. It can hardly be that a power which has had so wonderful an effect, and one which is so different from anything met with among the lower animals, can be referred to any of the ordinary faculties which these possess. If not, we must ascribe it to a new faculty altogether, a kind of spiritual insight, which can be explained only as resulting from the addition of a principle of activity superior to that which is the seat of the animal life. If we were to trace the beginning of every single branch of human culture, it would be found to have originated in the exercise of such a faculty of reflection as that here described. The elements of knowledge man possesses in common with the animals around him; but these have not built up any superstructure, because they have no spiritual insight such as will enable them to analyse those elements, and thus to fit them for re-combination into that wonderful series of forms which they have taken in the human mind.
It is hardly necessary to discuss here the nature of the principle which thus shows its energy in the mind of man. Whether it is the cause or the effect of the refined organisation exhibited by the human body need not now be considered. If the latter, however, it may be objected that—assuming the human bodily organism to have been derived by descent from a lower animal form, according to the principles of natural selection—the intellectual faculty peculiar to man must have had analogous origin. To this it might be answered that man’s special faculty could not have been derived from an animal organism which does not itself possess it; but it is advisable rather to test that conclusion by a consideration of the physical data, and to see how far the argument for natural descent can be supported. According to this view, the tendency to the bipedal character was the first to become operative in the gradual development of man out of the ape. The erect form is supposed, however, to have been assumed that the arms and hands might have full play,[377] and it is evident that the free use of these would not have been of any special advantage without an increased brain-activity to guide them. Probably the changes required in the physical structure would be concomitant, but if they had a starting point it would surely be in the brain rather than in the extremities.
The great development of the encephalon in man as compared with the monkey tribe would, in fact, require all the other supposed changes. Thus the greatly increased size and weight of the brain and its bony case, combined with the position of the foramen magnum at the base of the skull, would necessitate the erect position of the body, and this would supply the arms and upper part of the trunk with the required freedom of movement. These changes would be accompanied by the modification of the pelvis and lower limbs, while the increased sensitiveness of the skin, resulting from man’s more refined nervous structure, will sufficiently account for its general nakedness,[378] without supposing, with Mr. Darwin, the influence of sexual selection.[379] It is therefore in reality only the large size of the human brain that has to be accounted for, and this is by no means easy on the principle of natural selection. No doubt, with the increased activity of the mental powers, the brain would become more voluminous. But what was to determine that increased activity? It can only have been an improvement in the conditions of existence, to which man’s supposed ape progenitors were subjected, for which no sufficient reason can be given. Moreover, those progenitors would be subjected to the inevitable struggle for existence—a struggle which, even with man, in an uncivilised state, has a tendency to brutalise rather than to humanise. Under these conditions it would seem to be impossible for man to have raised himself to so great a superiority over his nearest allies as even the lowest savage exhibits. “His absolute erectness of posture, the completeness of his nudity, the harmonious perfection of his hands, the almost infinite capacities of his brain, constitute,” says Mr. Wallace, “a series of correlated advances too great to be accounted for by the struggle for existence of an isolated group of apes in a limited area,”[380] as Mr. Darwin’s hypothesis supposes.
While firmly convinced, on the grounds already stated, that man cannot have been derived from the ape by descent with natural selection, I am by no means prepared to admit that he may not have been so derived under other conditions. Although man undoubtedly has a mental faculty of the utmost importance which the animals do not possess, agreeing with his superiority of physical structure, there can be no question that, both physically and mentally, he is most intimately allied to the members of the animal kingdom. Before endeavouring to furnish a solution of the difficult question of the origin of man under these conditions, I would point out, what is so ably insisted on by M. Broca,[381] that transformism, to use the continental term, is wholly distinct from “natural selection,” or any other mode by which the transformation may be originated or effected. This is a most important consideration, and one which Mr. Darwin has incidentally referred to.[382] That man is the final term in a process of evolution, the beginning of which we cannot yet trace, appears to me to be a firmly established truth. The descent of man from the ape under the influence of external conditions is, however, a totally different proposition, and one of which no actual proof has yet been furnished, the argument really amounting to this, that the correspondences between man and the higher mammals render it more likely that he has descended from the ape than that he has been specially created. This may be true, and yet those correspondences be owing to a very different cause from the one thus supposed for them.
Mr. Herbert Spencer affirms that “successive changes of conditions would produce divergent varieties or species” of the organisms subject to them, apart from the influence of “natural selection,” which, in the absence of such successive changes of conditions, would effect “comparatively little.”[383] It is to the latter especially Mr. Spencer traces the gradual evolution of nature, on the process of which he has thrown so much light. Thus, when treating elsewhere of that evolution, he says, “While we are not called on to suppose that there exists in organisms any primordial impulse which makes them continually unfold into more heterogeneous forms; we see that a liability to be unfolded arises from the actions and reactions between organisms and their fluctuating environments. And we see that the existence of such a cause of development pre-supposes the non-occurrence of development where this fluctuation of actions and reactions does not come into play.”[384] It is evident that this theory, like that of Mr. Darwin, supposes the occurrence of slight structural changes which, in the absence of knowledge as to their exciting causes, may be described as “spontaneous,” and the perpetuation of which is the establishment of new forms or species. But among domestic animals, and by analogy we may assume, therefore, among wild animals, variation in the way supposed is not the only mode by which the physical structure may be modified. Various instances of sudden change have been collected which are very difficult to deal with, and they have led Mr. Huxley to remark that Mr. Darwin’s position “might have been even stronger than it is if he had not embarrassed himself with the aphorism ‘natura non facit saltum,’ which turns up so often in his pages.” Mr. Huxley adds “that nature does make jumps now and then, and a recognition of the fact is of no small importance in disposing of many minor objections to the doctrine of transmutation.”[385] Minor objections may certainly be thus removed, but only by introducing one of much greater moment. If, as Mr. Spencer says, “natural selection is capable of producing fitness between organisms and their circumstances,”[386] it must be by the perpetuation of slight changes, and there does not, indeed, appear to be any room in the hypothesis of natural selection for the saltatory movements which it is so necessary to explain.
The changes which organisms undergo, whether sudden or gradual, and whatever their approximate exciting cause, take place in pursuance of the evolution of organic nature, and there can be no doubt that this proceeds under the guidance of law. Professor Owen expresses this fact in saying that “generations do not vary accidentally in any and every direction, but in preordained, definite, and correlated courses.”[387] This may be accepted as expressing a general truth, subject to some qualification of the word “preordained.” It is not exactly true, however, for variations are not always regular and orderly. Within certain limits, indeed, they would seem to take place in any direction, but there is always a tendency for them to accumulate in that course along which they meet with the least resistance. This is in accordance with the principle laid down by Mr. Herbert Spencer, that everything tends towards equilibration, the state being one not of absolute but of moving equilibrium, while “throughout evolution of all kinds there is a continual approximation, and more or less complete maintenance of this moving equilibrium.”[388] The ultimate result is that, “when through a change of habit or circumstance an organism is permanently subject to some new influence, or different amount of an old influence, there arises, after more or less disturbance of the old rhythms, a balancing of them around the new average conditions produced by this additional influence.”[389] It is evident that the variations which have been originated before the attainment of the state of temporary stability thus established would have little chance of being perpetuated; and we have probably here the explanation of the fact that the progress of evolution reveals itself so often by sudden movements. In these cases, where the disturbing influence has rendered the equilibrium of the organism affected more or less unstable, a new centre of equilibrium will be formed, and the appearance of a fresh specific form be the result.
However fitted this explanation may be to account for the gaps which so often present themselves in developmental series of animal structures, it is far from sufficient to account for the origin of man, at least on the assumption of evolution governed merely by mechanical principles. Neither man nor animals, in fact, could have come into being at all unless there had been an organic necessity, quite independent even of the general average effects of the relations of living bodies to their environments, insisted on by Mr. Spencer. That these agencies have been very influential in the evolution of organic nature is undoubtedly true. But their influence in this respect depends altogether on the organism on which they act being in a condition of unstable equilibrium. Mr. Spencer declares, when speaking of the condition of homogeneity being a condition of unstable equilibrium, that this instability is “consequent on the fact that the several parts of any homogeneous aggregation are necessarily exposed to different forces—forces that differ either in kind or amount.”[390] This may be true in relation to animal and vegetable forms, whose germs are supposed not to show the slightest trace of the future organism, although even as to these Mr. Spencer can say that “doubtless we are still in the dark respecting those mysterious properties which make the germ, when subject to fit influences, undergo the special changes beginning this series of transformations.”[391] But the unstable condition of the primeval homogeneous substance of nature could not be due to the cause assigned. For it requires the impossible case of certain forces, the action of which is supposed to result in the condition of instability, existing outside of that substance which, as being identified with the Absolute, we must assume to be present throughout all space. The notion of an universally diffused homogeneous substance, acted on by external forces, appears to be contrary to reason; and the proper explanation of the original condition of instability would seem to be that it is natural to the primeval substance as the result of an innate energy, the internal force which constitutes its vitality. But this substance cannot have been merely “material.” There is just as little room for transition from the inorganic to the organic as from the animal to man; there is but one satisfactory starting-point—nature itself viewed as organic.
If such is the case when the changes observable in nature are viewed as strictly evolutional, much more so is it when they are traced to the lower activity of natural selection. Mr. J. J. Murphy well remarks that “the facts of variability being the greatest in the lowest organisms, while progress has been most rapid among the higher ones, shows that there is something in organic progress which mere natural selection among spontaneous variations will not account for.”[392] Elsewhere the same writer declares that “no solution of the questions of the origin of organisation and the origin of organic species can be adequate which does not recognise an organising intelligence over and above the common laws of matter”—i.e., the laws of self-adaptation to circumstances and natural selection.[393] This organising intelligence is supposed to have been bestowed once for all on vitalised matter by the Creator, so as to prevent the necessity of separately organising each particular structure,[394] although it is suggested that man’s spiritual nature may be a direct result of creative power.[395] Mr. Wallace objects to the law of “unconscious intelligence,” that “it has the double disadvantage of being both unintelligible and incapable of any kind of proof.”[396] This is true enough, but it has the equally serious defect of reintroducing the notion of special “creation,” with all the difficulties attendant on the origin of matter, and the separate existence of independent spiritual and material substances.
Mr. Wallace himself is so much struck with the imposing position occupied by man that he thinks that “a superior intelligence has guided the development of man in a definite direction and for a special purpose, just as man guides the development of many animal and vegetable forms.”[397] He supposes, moreover, that “the whole universe is not merely dependent on, but actually is, the WILL of higher intelligences, or of one supreme intelligence.”[398] It seems to me, although Mr. Wallace thinks otherwise, that this notion completely undermines the hypothesis of natural selection. If not only the whole universe, but also a particular portion of it—man—has been divinely “willed,” analogy will lead us to believe that every other portion of the whole has thus originated.
The difficulties attendant on theories such as those of Mr. Murphy and Mr. Wallace, and the unsatisfactory explanation afforded by the theory of evolution, as usually understood, of the origin of man, have led me to the opinion that nature as a whole is organic, and that man is the necessary result of its evolution. Not only so, however; man must be viewed as the real object of the evolution of nature viewed as a living organism. Without him nature itself would be imperfect, and all lower animal forms must, therefore, be considered as subsidiary to the human organism, and as so many stages only towards its attainment. But if living nature is an organic whole, its several parts must be intimately connected. Hence the numerous correspondences between man and the higher mammals cannot be accidental or even merely designed similarities. They betoken an actual and intimate connection between the organisms presenting them, and such an one as is consistent only with a derivation of one from the other. This view differs from that of Mr. Darwin, not in the fact of man’s derivation from the ape, but in the mode and conditions under which it has taken place. Derivation, by virtue of an inherent evolutional impulse, is totally different from simple descent, aided by natural selection. In the latter case the appearance of man may be described as in some sense accidental; in the former, not only is it necessary, but it is that for which all evolution has taken place, the only condition, in fact, under which evolution was possible.