How far such a development of organic forms as I have supposed is consistent with design is a difficult question. It is apparent that when nature is conceived of as forming an organic whole, the universe becomes identified with the Absolute, of whose being relative nature is merely an expression. But is not the possession by relative existences of intellectual faculties, and of the marvellous power of insight or reflection, evidence that the same powers belong also to the absolute Being? The possession by man of intelligence is, in fact, proof that organic nature is intelligent. Still, however, the need of design is not apparent. Granting that relative nature has been evolved out of the absolute existence, such evolution can have taken only one course—that which led to man, who could appear only when the conditions of nature were fitted for him, and who must appear when those conditions were so fitted. Moreover, as man was from the beginning the object of organic evolution, this must have taken place along the line which led to him, without any actually preconceived design or intention other than that which is implied in the preknowledge of man’s appearance. It does not follow, however, that other branches of organic nature besides that which ended in man may not have reached a stage of structural perfection. No doubt they have so done, and thus we can understand how it is that certain animals seem to have been, as Professor Owen asserts, “predestined and prepared for man.” The fitness pointed out by our great anatomist “of the organisation of the horse and ass for the needs of mankind, and the coincidence of the origin of the Ungulates having equine modifications of the perissodactyle structure with the period immediately preceding, or coincident with, the earliest evidence of the human race,” is certainly remarkable.[399] I cannot see in these facts, however, anything more than a necessary coincidence arising from the progress of evolution along different planes. It is possible, however, that Professor Owen may mean little more than this, and that he would be satisfied to admit the identity between the “predetermining” agent and organic nature, acting by virtue of the laws of its own evolutional impulse. So at least may be supposed from the fact that he rejects “the principle of direct or miraculous creation,” and recognises “a ‘natural law or secondary cause’ as operative in the production of species in orderly succession and progression.”[400] It is difficult to understand how otherwise there could be an “innate tendency to deviate from the parental type.”

Before concluding, reference should be made to certain facts connected with the development of the brain and the human organism generally, which at first sight seem to be quite irreconcilable with the notion of man’s derivation from the ape, even under the conditions I have proposed. Thus, M. Pruner Bey has shown that in man and the anthropomorphous apes there exists “an inverse order of the final term of development in the sensitive and vegetative apparatus, and in the systems of locomotion and reproduction.” The same inverse order is exhibited in the development of individual organs. Thus it is, says Pruner Bey, with a portion of the permanent teeth; Welcher makes a similar remark as to the modifications of the base of the skull in relation to the sphenoidal angle of Virchow; and Gratiolet points out an analogous fact in the development of the brain. The language of the great French anatomist is very precise. He says: “With man and the adult anthropormorphous apes there exists a certain resemblance in the mode of arrangement in the cerebral folds which has imposed on some persons and on which they have strongly insisted. But this result is attained by an inverse process (marche inverse). In the monkey the temporosphenoidal convolutions which form the middle lobe appear and perfect themselves before the anterior convolutions which form the frontal lobe. With man, on the contrary, the frontal convolutions appear the first, and those of the middle lobe show themselves the last.” In referring to these facts, M. de Quatrefages declares that “when two organised beings follow an inverse course in their development, the more highly developed of the two cannot have descended from the other by means of evolution.”[401] If by evolution is meant simple descent under the influence of natural selection and modification of external conditions, this conclusion is certainly correct. It is true that, contrary to the opinion expressed by Gratiolet, that “the human brain differs the more from that of the monkey the less it is developed, and an arrest of development can only exaggerate this natural difference.”[402] M. Carl Vogt declares that the human brain may, under certain conditions, not only externally resemble that of the higher apes, but also that the superior portion of it (parties voûtées) in microcephalic idiots is really developed after the simian type,[403] the skull itself having both simian and human elements.[404] But does not the fact that the lower part of the microcephalic skull, and the portion of the brain which is the earliest developed, are formed on the human type, amply justify the assertion of Gratiolet that “the microcephale, however degraded, is not a brute, but only a modified man?” Is it not evident, moreover, that however highly an ape brain may be developed, it could not become like that of a man, at least by descent with natural selection? It is different, however, if we view man as the necessary product of the evolution of organic nature. We may well believe that when the sudden advance from the ape structure to that of man was made, under the conditions above proposed, the great increase in the size of the brain and the change in the position of the foramen magnum were accompanied by an alteration in the order of development, not only of the different parts of the brain, but also of the internal apparatus as pointed out by M. Pruner Bey. But the advance having once taken place, the human type can no more be lost; and although the approach to the simian type which appears in the abnormal microcephalic brain evidences the intimate connection between man and the ape, yet it furnishes no disproof of derivation, one from the other, by the agency of internal evolutional impulse.

In conclusion, I would again refer to the fact, so strongly insisted on by M. Broca, that the truth of the theory of evolution is not dependent on that of the hypothesis of natural selection. The great defect of “natural selection” as an agent in organic evolution, is that it cannot do more than perpetuate certain structural peculiarities, the appearance of which it is powerless to explain. The hypothesis is properly defined as “natural selection among spontaneous variations;” and it is the appearance of these variations which constitutes the most important part of the problem. They can be explained only on the assumption of “an internal tendency to deviate from the parental type;” and granting that this tendency results from a necessary evolution of nature viewed as an organic whole, there is no difficulty in accounting for all the facts dwelt on by Mr. Darwin without supposing the derivation of man from the ape by simple descent, although not without identifying the universe with Deity, and viewing its various manifestations as His organs.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] Eng. Trans., vol. ii., p. 647.

[2] “The History of India,” vol. i., p. 8.

[3] Ditto, p. 13.