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ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME X

EVANGELICAL CHURCH to FRANCIS JOSEPH

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VOLUME X SLICE I
Evangelical Church Conference to Fairbairn, Sir William

Articles in This Slice

INITIALS USED IN VOLUME X. TO IDENTIFY INDIVIDUAL
CONTRIBUTORS,[1] WITH THE HEADINGS OF THE
ARTICLES IN THIS VOLUME SO SIGNED.

[1] A complete list, showing all individual contributors, appears in the final volume.

PRINCIPAL UNSIGNED ARTICLES

EVANGELICAL CHURCH CONFERENCE, a convention of delegates from the different Protestant churches of Germany. The conference originated in 1848, when the general desire for political unity made itself felt in the ecclesiastical sphere as well. A preliminary meeting was held at Sandhof near Frankfort in June of that year, and on the 21st of September some five hundred delegates representing the Lutheran, the Reformed, the United and the Moravian churches assembled at Wittenberg. The gathering was known as Kirchentag (church diet), and, while leaving each denomination free in respect of constitution, ritual, doctrine and attitude towards the state, agreed to act unitedly in bearing witness against the non-evangelical churches and in defending the rights and liberties of the churches in the federation. The organization thus closely resembles that of the Free Church Federation in England. The movement exercised considerable influence during the middle of the 19th century. Though no Kirchentag, as such, has been convened since 1871, its place has been taken by the Kongress für innere Mission, which holds annual meetings in different towns. There is also a biennial conference of the evangelical churches held at Eisenach to discuss matters of general interest. Its decisions have no legislative force.

EVANGELICAL UNION, a religious denomination which originated in the suspension of the Rev. James Morison (1816-1893), minister of a United Secession congregation in Kilmarnock, Scotland, for certain views regarding faith, the work of the Holy Spirit in salvation, and the extent of the atonement, which were regarded by the supreme court of his church as anti-Calvinistic and heretical. Morison was suspended by the presbytery in 1841 and thereupon definitely withdrew from the Secession Church. His father, who was minister at Bathgate, and two other ministers, being deposed not long afterwards for similar opinions, the four met at Kilmarnock on the 16th of May 1843 (two days before the “Disruption” of the Free Church), and, on the basis of certain doctrinal principles, formed themselves into an association under the name of the Evangelical Union, “for the purpose of countenancing, counselling and otherwise aiding one another, and also for the purpose of training up spiritual and devoted young men to carry forward the work and ‘pleasure of the Lord.’” The doctrinal views of the new denomination gradually assumed a more decidedly anti-Calvinistic form, and they began also to find many sympathizers among the Congregationalists of Scotland. Nine students were expelled from the Congregational Academy for holding “Morisonian” doctrines, and in 1845 eight churches were disjoined from the Congregational Union of Scotland and formed a connexion with the Evangelical Union. The Union exercised no jurisdiction over the individual churches connected with it, and in this respect adhered to the Independent or Congregational form of church government; but those congregations which originally were Presbyterian vested their government in a body of elders. In 1889 the denomination numbered 93 churches; and in 1896, after prolonged negotiation, the Evangelical Union was incorporated with the Congregational Union of Scotland.

See The Evangelical Union Annual; History of the Evangelical Union, by F. Ferguson (Glasgow, 1876); The Worthies of the E. U. (1883); W. Adamson, Life of Dr James Morison (1898).

EVANS, CHRISTMAS (1766-1838), Welsh Nonconformist divine, was born near the village of Llandyssul, Cardiganshire, on the 25th of December 1766. His father, a shoemaker, died early, and the boy grew up as an illiterate farm labourer. At the age of seventeen, becoming servant to a Presbyterian minister, David Davies, he was affected by a religious revival and learned to read and write in English and Welsh. The itinerant Calvinistic Methodist preachers and the members of the Baptist church at Llandyssul further influenced him, and he soon joined the latter denomination. In 1789 he went into North Wales as a preacher and settled for two years in the desolate peninsula of Lleyn, Carnarvonshire, whence he removed to Llangefni in Anglesey. Here, on a stipend of £17 a year, supplemented by a little tract-selling, he built up a strong Baptist community, modelling his organization to some extent on that of the Calvinistic Methodists. Many new chapels were built, the money being collected on preaching tours which Evans undertook in South Wales.

In 1826 Evans accepted an invitation to Caerphilly, where he remained for two years, removing in 1828 to Cardiff. In 1832, in response to urgent calls from the north, he settled in Carnarvon and again undertook the old work of building and collecting. He was taken ill on a tour in South Wales, and died at Swansea on the 19th of July 1838. In spite of his early disadvantages and personal disfigurement (he had lost an eye in a youthful brawl), Christmas Evans was a remarkably powerful preacher. To a natural aptitude for this calling he united a nimble mind and an inquiring spirit; his character was simple, his piety humble and his faith fervently evangelical. For a time he came under Sandemanian influence, and when the Wesleyans entered Wales he took the Calvinist side in the bitter controversies that were frequent from 1800 to 1810. His chief characteristic was a vivid and affluent imagination, which absorbed and controlled all his other powers, and earned for him the name of “the Bunyan of Wales.”

His works were edited by Owen Davies in 3 vols. (Carnarvon, 1895-1897). See the Lives by D.R. Stephens (1847) and Paxton Hood (1883).

EVANS, EVAN HERBER (1836-1896), Welsh Nonconformist divine, was born on the 5th of July 1836, at Pant yr Onen near Newcastle Emlyn, Cardiganshire. As a boy he saw something of the “Rebecca Riots,” and went to school at the neighbouring village of Llechryd. In 1853 he went into business, first at Pontypridd and then at Merthyr, but next year made his way to Liverpool. He decided to enter the ministry, and studied arts and theology respectively at the Normal College, Swansea, and the Memorial College, Brecon, his convictions being deepened by the religious revival of 1858-1859. In 1862 he succeeded Thomas Jones as minister of the Congregational church at Morriston near Swansea. In 1865 he became pastor of Salem church, Carnarvon, a charge which he occupied for nearly thirty years despite many invitations to English pastorates. In 1894 he became principal of the Congregational college at Bangor. He died on the 30th of December 1896. He was chairman of the Welsh Congregational Union in 1886 and of the Congregational Union of England and Wales in 1892; and by his earnest ministry, his eloquence and his literary work, especially in the denominational paper Y Dysgedydd, he achieved a position of great influence in his country.

See Life by H. Elvet Lewis.

EVANS, SIR GEORGE DE LACY (1787-1870), British soldier, was born at Moig, Limerick, in 1787. He was educated at Woolwich Academy, and entered the army in 1806 as a volunteer, obtaining an ensigncy in the 22nd regiment in 1807. His early service was spent in India, but he exchanged into the 3rd Light Dragoons in order to take part in the Peninsular War, and was present in the retreat from Burgos in 1812. In 1813 he was at Vittoria, and was afterwards employed in making a military survey of the passes of the Pyrenees. He took part in the campaign of 1814, and was present at Pampeluna, the Nive and Toulouse; and later in the year he served with great distinction on the staff in General Ross’s Bladensburg campaign, and took part in the capture of Washington and of Baltimore and the operations before New Orleans. He returned to England in the spring of 1815, in time to take part in the Waterloo campaign as assistant quartermaster-general on Sir T. Picton’s staff. As a member of the staff of the duke of Wellington he accompanied the English army to Paris, and remained there during the occupation of the city by the allies. He was still a substantive captain in the 5th West India regiment, though a lieutenant-colonel by brevet, when he went on half-pay in 1818. In 1830 he was elected M.P. for Rye in the Liberal interest; but in the election of 1832 he was an unsuccessful candidate both for that borough and for Westminster. For the latter constituency he was, however, returned in 1833, and, except in the parliament of 1841-1846, he continued to represent it till 1865, when he retired from political life. His parliamentary duties did not, however, interfere with his career as a soldier. In 1835 he went out to Spain in command of the Spanish Legion, recruited in England, and 9600 strong, which served for two years in the Carlist War on the side of the queen of Spain. In spite of great difficulties the legion won great distinction on the battlefields of northern Spain, and Evans was able to say that no prisoners had been taken from it in action, that it had never lost a gun or an equipage, and that it had taken 27 guns and 1100 prisoners from the enemy. He received several Spanish orders, and on his return in 1839 was made a colonel and K.C.B. In 1846 he became major-general; and in 1854, on the breaking-out of the Crimean War, he was made lieutenant-general and appointed to command the 2nd division of the Army of the East. At the battle of the Alma, where he received a severe wound, his quick comprehension of the features of the combat largely contributed to the victory. On the 26th of October he defeated a large Russian force which attacked his position on Mount Inkerman. Illness and fatigue compelled him a few days after this to leave the command of his division in the hands of General Pennefather; but he rose from his sick-bed on the day of the battle of Inkerman, the 5th of November, and, declining to take the command of his division from Pennefather, aided him in the long-protracted struggle by his advice. On his return invalided to England in the following February, Evans received the thanks of the House of Commons. He was made a G.C.B., and the university of Oxford conferred on him the degree of D.C.L. In 1861 he was promoted to the full rank of general. He died in London on the 9th of January 1870.

EVANS, SIR JOHN (1823-1908), English archaeologist and geologist, son of the Rev. Dr A.B. Evans, head master of Market Bosworth grammar school, was born at Britwell Court, Bucks, on the 17th of November 1823. He was for many years head of the extensive paper manufactory of Messrs John Dickinson at Nash Mills, Hemel Hempstead, but was especially distinguished as an antiquary and numismatist. He was the author of three books, standard in their respective departments: The Coins of the Ancient Britons (1864); The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain (1872, 2nd ed. 1897); and The Ancient Bronze Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain and Ireland (1881). He also wrote a number of separate papers on archaeological and geological subjects—notably the papers on “Flint Implements in the Drift” communicated in 1860 and 1862 to Archaeologia, the organ of the Society of Antiquaries. Of that society he was president from 1885 to 1892, and he was president of the Numismatic Society from 1874 to the time of his death. He also presided over the Geological Society, 1874-1876; the Anthropological Institute, 1877-1879; the Society of Chemical Industry, 1892-1893; the British Association, 1897-1898; and for twenty years (1878-1898) he was treasurer of the Royal Society. As president of the Society of Antiquaries he was an ex officio trustee of the British Museum, and subsequently he became a permanent trustee. His academic honours included honorary degrees from several universities, and he was a corresponding member of the Institut de France. He was created a K.C.B. in 1892. He died at Berkhamsted on the 31st of May 1908.

His eldest son, Arthur John Evans, born in 1851, was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, and Göttingen. He became fellow of Brasenose and in 1884 keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. He travelled in Finland and Lapland in 1873-1874, and in 1875 made a special study of archaeology and ethnology in the Balkan States. In 1893 he began his investigations in Crete, which have resulted in discoveries of the utmost importance concerning the early history of Greece and the eastern Mediterranean (see [Aegean Civilization and Crete]). He is a member of all the chief archaeological societies in Europe, holds honorary degrees at Oxford, Edinburgh and Dublin, and is a fellow of the Royal Society. His chief publications are: Cretan Pictographs and Prae-Phoenician Script (1896); Further Discoveries of Cretan and Aegean Script (1898); The Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult (1901); Scripta Minoa (1909 foll.); and reports on the excavations. He also edited with additions Freeman’s History of Sicily, vol. iv.

EVANS, OLIVER (1755-1819), American mechanician, was born at Newport, Delaware, in 1755. He was apprenticed to a wheelwright, and at the age of twenty-two he invented a machine for making the card-teeth used in carding wool and cotton. In 1780 he became partner with his brothers, who were practical millers, and soon introduced various labour-saving appliances which both cheapened and improved the processes of flour-milling. Turning his attention to the steam engine, he employed steam at a relatively high pressure, and the plans of his invention which he sent over to England in 1787 and in 1794-1795 are said to have been seen by R. Trevithick, whom in that case he anticipated in the adoption of the high-pressure principle. He made use of his engine for driving mill machinery; and in 1803 he constructed a steam dredging machine, which also propelled itself on land. In 1819 a disastrous fire broke out in his factory at Pittsburg, and he did not long survive it, dying at New York on the 21st of April 1819.

EVANSON, EDWARD (1731-1805), English divine, was born on the 21st of April 1731 at Warrington, Lancashire. After graduating at Cambridge (Emmanuel College) and taking holy orders, he officiated for several years as curate at Mitcham. In 1768 he became vicar of South Mimms near Barnet; and in November 1769 he was presented to the rectory of Tewkesbury, with which he held also the vicarage of Longdon in Worcestershire. In the course of his studies he discovered what he thought important variance between the teaching of the Church of England and that of the Bible, and he did not conceal his convictions. In reading the service he altered or omitted phrases which seemed to him untrue, and in reading the Scriptures pointed out errors in the translation. A crisis was brought on by his sermon on the resurrection, preached at Easter 1771; and in November 1773 a prosecution was instituted against him in the consistory court of Gloucester. He was charged with “depraving the public worship of God contained in the liturgy of the Church of England, asserting the same to be superstitious and unchristian, preaching, writing and conversing against the creeds and the divinity of our Saviour, and assuming to himself the power of making arbitrary alterations in his performance of the public worship.” A protest was at once signed and published by a large number of his parishioners against the prosecution. The case was dismissed on technical grounds, but appeals were made to the court of arches and the court of delegates. Meanwhile Evanson had made his views generally known by several publications. In 1772 appeared anonymously his Doctrines of a Trinity and the Incarnation of God, examined upon the Principles of Reason and Common Sense. This was followed in 1777 by A Letter to Dr Hurd, Bishop of Worcester, wherein the Importance of the Prophecies of the New Testament and the Nature of the Grand Apostasy predicted in them are particularly and impartially considered. He also wrote some papers on the Sabbath, which brought him into controversy with Joseph Priestley, who published the whole discussion (1792). In the same year appeared Evanson’s work entitled The Dissonance of the four generally received Evangelists, to which replies were published by Priestley and David Simpson (1793). Evanson rejected most of the books of the New Testament as forgeries, and of the four gospels he accepted only that of St Luke. In his later years he ministered to a Unitarian congregation at Lympston, Devonshire. In 1802 he published Reflections upon the State of Religion in Christendom, in which he attempted to explain and illustrate the mysterious foreshadowings of the Apocalypse. This he considered the most important of his writings. Shortly before his death at Colford, near Crediton, Devonshire, on the 25th of September 1805, he completed his Second Thoughts on the Trinity, in reply to a work of the bishop of Gloucester.

His sermons (prefaced by a Life by G. Rogers) were published in two volumes in 1807, and were the occasion of T. Falconer’s Bampton Lectures in 1811. A narrative of the circumstances which led to the prosecution of Evanson was published by N. Havard, the town-clerk of Tewkesbury, in 1778.

EVANSTON, a city of Cook county, Illinois, U.S.A., on the shore of Lake Michigan, 12 m. N. of Chicago. Pop. (1900) 19,259, of whom 4441 were foreign-born; (1910 U.S. census) 24,978. It is served by the Chicago & North-Western, and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways, and by two electric lines. The city is an important residential suburb of Chicago. In 1908 the Evanston public library had 41,430 volumes. In the city are the College of Liberal Arts (1855), the Academy (1860), and the schools of music (1895) and engineering (1908) of Northwestern University, co-educational, chartered in 1851, opened in 1855, the largest school of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America. In 1909-1910 it had productive funds amounting to about $7,500,000, and, including all the allied schools, a faculty of 418 instructors and 4487 students; its schools of medicine (1869), law (1859), pharmacy (1886), commerce (1908) and dentistry (1887) are in Chicago. In 1909 its library had 114,869 volumes and 79,000 pamphlets (exclusive of the libraries of the professional schools in Chicago); and the Garrett Biblical Institute had a library of 25,671 volumes and 4500 pamphlets. The university maintains the Grand Prairie Seminary at Onarga, Iroquois county, and the Elgin Academy at Elgin, Kane county. Enjoying the privileges of the university, though actually independent of it, are the Garrett Biblical Institute (Evanston Theological Seminary), founded in 1855, situated on the university campus, and probably the best-endowed Methodist Episcopal theological seminary in the United States, and affiliated with the Institute, the Norwegian Danish Theological school; and the Swedish Theological Seminary, founded at Galesburg in 1870, removed to Evanston in 1882, and occupying buildings on the university campus until 1907, when it removed to Orrington Avenue and Noyes Street. The Cumnock School of Oratory, at Evanston, also co-operates with the university. By the charter of the university the sale of intoxicating liquors is forbidden within 4 m. of the university campus. The manufacturing importance of the city is slight, but is rapidly increasing. The principal manufactures are wrought iron and steel pipe, bakers’ machinery and bricks. In 1905 the value of the factory products was $2,550,529, being an increase of 207.3% since 1900. In Evanston are the publishing offices of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Evanston was incorporated as a town in 1863 and as a village in 1872, and was chartered as a city in 1892. The villages of North Evanston and South Evanston were annexed to Evanston in 1874 and 1892 respectively.

EVANSVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Vanderburg county, Indiana, U.S.A., and a port of entry, on the N. bank of the Ohio river, 200 m. below Louisville, Kentucky—measuring by the windings of the river, which double the direct distance. Pop. (1890) 50,756; (1900) 59,007; (1910 census) 69,647. Of the total population in 1900, 5518 were negroes, 5626 were foreign-born (including 4380 from Germany and 384 from England), and 17,419 were of foreign parentage (both parents foreign-born), and of these 13,910 were of German parentage. Evansville is served by the Evansville & Terre Haute, the Evansville & Indianapolis, the Illinois Central, the Louisville & Nashville, the Louisville, Henderson & St Louis, and the Southern railways, by several interurban electric lines, and by river steamboats. The city is situated on a plateau above the river, and has a number of fine business and public buildings, including the court house and city hall, the Southern Indiana hospital for the insane, the United States marine hospital, and the Willard library and art gallery, containing in 1908 about 30,000 volumes. The city’s numerous railway connexions and its situation in a coal-producing region (there are five mines within the city limits) and on the Ohio river, which is navigable nearly all the year, combine to make it the principal commercial and manufacturing centre of Southern Indiana. It is in a tobacco-growing region, is one of the largest hardwood lumber markets in the country, and has an important shipping trade in pork, agricultural products, dried fruits, lime and limestone, flour and tobacco. Among its manufactures in 1905 were flour and grist mill products (value, $2,638,914), furniture ($1,655,246), lumber and timber products ($1,229,533), railway cars ($1,118,376), packed meats ($998,428), woollen and cotton goods, cigars and cigarettes, malt liquors, carriages and wagons, leather and canned goods. The value of the factory products increased from $12,167,524 in 1900 to $19,201,716 in 1905, or 57.8%, and in the latter year Evansville ranked third among the manufacturing cities in the state. The waterworks are owned and operated by the city. First settled about 1812, Evansville was laid out in 1817, and was named in honour of Robert Morgan Evans (1783-1844), one of its founders, who was an officer under General W.H. Harrison in the war of 1812. It soon became a thriving commercial town with an extensive river trade, was incorporated in 1819, and received a city charter in 1847. The completion of the Wabash & Erie Canal, in 1853, from Evansville to Toledo, Ohio, a distance of 400 m., greatly accelerated the city’s growth.

EVARISTUS, fourth pope (c. 98-105), was the immediate successor of Clement.

EVARTS, WILLIAM MAXWELL (1818-1901), American lawyer, was born in Boston on the 6th of February 1818. He graduated at Yale in 1837, was admitted to the bar in New York in 1841, and soon took high rank in his profession. In 1860 he was chairman of the New York delegation to the Republican national convention. In 1861 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States senatorship from New York. He was chief counsel for President Johnson during the impeachment trial, and from July 1868 until March 1869 he was attorney-general of the United States. In 1872 he was counsel for the United States in the “Alabama” arbitration. During President Hayes’s administration (1877-1881) he was secretary of state; and from 1885 to 1891 he was one of the senators from New York. As an orator Senator Evarts stood in the foremost rank, and some of his best speeches were published. He died in New York on the 28th of February 1901.

EVE, the English transcription, through Lat. Eva and Gr. Εὔα, of the Hebrew name חוה Ḥavvah, given by Adam to his wife because she was “mother of all living,” or perhaps more strictly, “of every group of those connected by female kinship” (see W.R. Smith, Kinship, 2nd ed., p. 208), as if Eve were the personification of mother-kinship, just as Adam (“man”) is the personification of mankind.

[The abstract meaning “life” (LXX. Ζωή), once favoured by Robertson Smith, is at any rate unsuitable in a popular story. Wellhausen and Nöldeke would compare the Ar. ḥayyatun, “serpent,” and the former remarks that, if this is right, the Israelites received their first ancestress from the Ḥivvites (Hivites), who were originally the serpent-tribe (Composition des Hexateuchs, p. 343; cf. Reste arabischen Heidentums, 2nd ed., p. 154). Cheyne, too, assumes a common origin for Ḥavvah and the Ḥivvites.]

[The account of the origin of Eve (Gen. iii. 21-23) runs thus: “And Yahweh-Elohim caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept. And he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its stead, and the rib which Yahweh-Elohim Creation of Eve. had taken from the man he built up into a woman, and he brought her to the man.” Enchanted at the sight, the man now burst out into elevated, rhythmic speech: “This one,” he said, “at length is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” &c. ; to which the narrator adds the comment, “Therefore doth a man forsake his father and his mother, and cleave to his wife, and they become one flesh (body).” Whether this comment implies the existence of the custom of beena, marriage (W.R. Smith, Kinship, 2nd ed., p. 208), seems doubtful. It is at least equally possible that the expression “his wife” simply reflects the fact that among ordinary Israelites circumstances had quite naturally brought about the prevalence of monogamy.[1] What the narrator gives is not a doctrine of marriage, much less a precept, but an explanation of a simple and natural phenomenon. How is it, he asks, that a man is so irresistibly drawn towards a woman? And he answers: Because the first woman was built up out of a rib of the first man. At the same time it is plain that the already existing tendency towards monogamy must have been powerfully assisted by this presentation of Eve’s story as well as by the prophetic descriptions of Yahweh’s relation to Israel under the figure of a monogamous union.]

[The narrator is no rhetorician, and spares us a description of the ideal woman. But we know that, for Adam, his strangely produced wife was a “help (or helper) matching or corresponding to him”; or, as the Authorized Version New Testament application. puts it, “a help meet for him” (ii. 18b). This does not, of course, exclude subordination on the part of the woman; what is excluded is that exaggeration of natural subordination which the narrator may have found both in his own and in the neighbouring countries, and which he may have regarded as (together with the pains of parturition) the punishment of the woman’s transgression (Gen. iii. 16). His own ideal of woman seems to have made its way in Palestine by slow degrees. An apocryphal book (Tobit viii. 6, 7) seems to contain the only reference to the section till we come to the time of Christ, to whom the comment in Gen. ii. 24 supplies the text for an authoritative prohibition of divorce, which presupposes and sanctifies monogamy (Matt. x. 7, 8; Matt. xix. 5). For other New Testament applications of the story of Eve see 1 Cor. xi. 8, 9 (especially); 2 Cor. xi. 3; 1 Tim. ii. 13, 14; and in general cf. [Adam], and Ency. Biblica, “Adam and Eve.”]

[The seeming omissions in the Biblical narrative have been filled up by imaginative Jewish writers.] The earliest source which remains to us is the Book of Jubilees, or Leptogenesis, a Palestinian work (referred by R.H. Charles Imaginative or legendary developments. to the century immediately preceding the Christian era; see [Apocalyptic Literature]). In this book, which was largely used by Christian writers, we find a chronology of the lives of Adam and Eve and the names of their daughters—Avan and Azura.[2] The Targum of Jonathan informs us that Eve was created from the thirteenth rib of Adam’s right side, thus taking the view that Adam had a rib more than his descendants. Some of the Jewish legends show clear marks of foreign influence. Thus the notion that the first man was a double being, afterwards separated into the two persons of Adam and Eve (Berachot, 61; Erubin, 18), may be traced back to Philo (De mundi opif. §53; cf. Quaest. in Gen. lib. i. §25), who borrows the idea, and almost the words, of the myth related by Aristophanes in the Platonic Symposium (189 D, 190 A), which, in extravagant form, explains the passion of love by the legend that male and female originally formed one body.

[A recent critic[3] (F. Schwally) even holds that this notion was originally expressed in the account of the creation of man in Gen. i. 27. This involves a textual emendation, and one must at least admit that the present text is not without difficulty, and that Berossus refers to the existence of primeval monstrous androgynous beings according to Babylonian mythology.] There is an analogous Iranian legend of the true man, which parted into man and woman in the Bundahish[4] (the Parsí Genesis), and an Indian legend, which, according to Spiegel, has presumably an Iranian source.[5]

[It has been remarked elsewhere ([Adam], §16) that though the later Jews gathered material for thought very widely, such guidance as they required in theological reflection was mainly derived from Greek culture. What, for instance, Course of Jewish and Christian interpretation. was to be made of such a story as that in Gen. ii.-iv.? To “minds trained under the influence of the Jewish Haggada, in which the whole Biblical history is freely intermixed with legendary and parabolic matter,” the question as to the literal truth of that story could hardly be formulated. It is otherwise when the Greek leaven begins to work.]

Josephus, in the prologue to his Archaeology, reserves the problem of the true meaning of the Mosaic narrative, but does not regard everything as strictly literal. Philo, the great representative of Alexandrian allegory, expressly argues that in the nature of things the trees of life and knowledge cannot be taken otherwise than symbolically. His interpretation of the creation of Eve is, as has been already observed, plainly suggested by a Platonic myth. The longing for reunion which love implants in the divided halves of the original dual man is the source of sensual pleasure (symbolized by the serpent), which in turn is the beginning of all transgression. Eve represents the sensuous or perceptive part of man’s nature, Adam the reason. The serpent, therefore, does not venture to attack Adam directly. It is sense which yields to pleasure, and in turn enslaves the reason and destroys its immortal virtue. This exposition, in which the elements of the Bible narrative become mere symbols of the abstract notions of Greek philosophy, and are adapted to Greek conceptions of the origin of evil in the material and sensuous part of man, was adopted into Christian theology by Clement and Origen, notwithstanding its obvious inconsistency with the Pauline anthropology, and the difficulty which its supporters felt in reconciling it with the Christian doctrine of the excellence of the married state (Clemens Alex. Stromata, p. 174). These difficulties had more weight with the Western church, which, less devoted to speculative abstractions and more deeply influenced by the Pauline anthropology, refused, especially since Augustine, to reduce Paradise and the fall to the region of pure intelligibilia; though a spiritual sense was admitted along with the literal (Aug. Civ. Dei, xiii. 21).[6]

The history of Adam and Eve became the basis of anthropological discussions which acquired more than speculative importance from their connexion with the doctrine of original sin and the meaning of the sacrament of baptism. One or two points in Augustinian teaching may be here mentioned as having to do particularly with Eve. The question whether the soul of Eve was derived from Adam or directly infused by the Creator is raised as an element in the great problem of traducianism and creationism (De Gen. ad lit. lib. x.). And it is from Augustine that Milton derives the idea that Adam sinned, not from desire for the forbidden fruit, but because love forbade him to dissociate his fate from Eve’s (ibid. lib. xi. sub fin.). Medieval discussion moved mainly in the lines laid down by Augustine. A sufficient sample of the way in which the subject was treated by the schoolmen may be found in the Summa of Thomas, pars i. qu. xcii. De productione mulieris.

The Reformers, always hostile to allegory, and in this matter especially influenced by the Augustinian anthropology, adhered strictly to the literal interpretation of the history of the Protoplasts, which has continued to be generally identified with Protestant orthodoxy. The disintegration of the confessional doctrine of sin in last century was naturally associated with new theories of the meaning of the biblical narrative; but neither renewed forms of the allegorical interpretation, in which everything is reduced to abstract ideas about reason and sensuality, nor the attempts of Eichhorn and others to extract a kernel of simple history by allowing largely for the influence of poetical form in so early a narrative, have found lasting acceptance. On the other hand, the strict historical interpretation is beset with difficulties which modern interpreters have felt with increasing force, and which there is a growing disposition to solve by adopting in one or other form what is called the mythical theory of the narrative. But interpretations pass under this now popular title which have no real claim to be so designated. What is common to the “mythical” interpretations is to find the real value of the narrative, not in the form of the story, but in the thoughts which it embodies. But the story cannot be called a myth in the strict sense of the word, unless we are prepared to place it on one line with the myths of heathenism, produced by the unconscious play of plastic fancy, giving shape to the impressions of natural phenomena on primitive observers. Such a theory does no justice to a narrative which embodies profound truths peculiar to the religion of revelation. Other forms of the so-called mythical interpretation are little more than abstract allegory in a new guise, ignoring the fact that the biblical story does not teach general truths which repeat themselves in every individual, but gives a view of the purpose of man’s creation, and of the origin of sin, in connexion with the divine plan of redemption. Among his other services in refutation of the unhistorical rationalism of last century, Kant has the merit of having forcibly recalled attention to the fact that the narrative of Genesis, even if we do not take it literally, must be regarded as presenting a view of the beginnings of the history of the human race (Muthmasslicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte, 1786) Those who recognize this fact ought not to call themselves or be called by others adherents of the mythical theory, although they also recognize that in the nature of things the divine truths brought out in the history of the creation and fall could not have been expressed either in the form of literal history or in the shape of abstract metaphysical doctrine; or even although they may hold—as is done by many who accept the narrative as a part of supernatural revelation—that the specific biblical truths which the narrative conveys are presented through the vehicle of a story which, at least in some of its parts, may possibly be shaped by the influence of legends common to the Hebrews with their heathen neighbours.

(W. R. S.; [T. K. C.])

[1] That polygamy had not become morally objectionable is shown by the stories of Lamech, Abraham and Jacob.

[2] See West’s authoritative translation in Pahlavi Texts (Sacred Books of the East).

[3] “Die bibl. Schöpfungsberichte” (Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, ix. 171 ff.).

[4] Spiegel, Erânische Alterthumskunde, i. 511.

[5] Muir, Sanscrit Texts, vol. i. p. 25; cf. Spiegel, vol. i. p. 458.

[6] Thus in medieval theology Eve is a type of the church, and her formation from the rib has a mystic reason, inasmuch as blood and water (the sacraments of the church) flowed from the side of Christ on the cross (Thomas, Summa, par. i. qu. xcii.).

EVECTION (Latin for “carrying away”), in astronomy, the largest inequality produced by the action of the sun in the monthly revolution of the moon around the earth. The deviation expressed by it has a maximum amount of about 1° 15′ in either direction. It may be considered as arising from a semi-annual variation in the eccentricity of the moon’s orbit and the position of its perigee. It was discovered by Ptolemy.

EVELETH, a city of St Louis county, Minnesota, U.S.A., about 71 m. N.N.W. of Duluth. Pop. (1900) 2752; (1905, state census) 5332, of whom 2975 were foreign-born (1145 Finns, 676 Austrians and 325 Swedes); (1910) 7036. Eveleth is served by the Duluth, Missabe & Northern and the Duluth & Iron Range railways. It lies in the midst of the great red and brown hematite iron-ore deposits of the Mesabi Range—the richest in the Lake Superior district—and the mining and shipping of this ore are its principal industries. The municipality owns and operates the water-works, the water being obtained from Lake Saint Mary, one of a chain of small lakes lying S. of the city. Eveleth was first chartered as a city in 1902.

EVELYN, JOHN (1620-1706), English diarist, was born at Wotton House, near Dorking, Surrey, on the 31st of October 1620. He was the younger son of Richard Evelyn, who owned large estates in the county, and was in 1633 high sheriff of Surrey and Sussex. When John Evelyn was five years old he went to live with his mother’s parents at Cliffe, near Lewes. He refused to leave his “too indulgent” grandmother for Eton, and when on her husband’s death she married again, the boy went with her to Southover, where he attended the free school of the place. He was admitted to the Middle Temple in February 1637, and in May he became a fellow commoner of Balliol College, Oxford. He left the university without taking a degree, and in 1640 was residing in the Middle Temple. In that year his father died, and in July 1641 he crossed to Holland. He was enrolled as a volunteer in Apsley’s company, then encamped before Genep on the Waal, but his commission was apparently complimentary, his military experience being limited to six days of camp life, during which, however, he took his turn at “trailing a pike.” He returned in the autumn to find England on the verge of civil war. Evelyn’s part in the conflict is best told in his own words:—

“12th November was the battle of Brentford, surprisingly fought.... I came in with my horse and arms just at the retreat; but was not permitted to stay longer than the 15th by reason of the army marching to Gloucester; which would have left both me and my brothers exposed to ruin, without any advantage to his Majesty ... and on the 10th [December] returned to Wotton, nobody knowing of my having been in his Majesty’s army.”

At Wotton he employed himself in improving his brother’s property, making a fishpond, an island and other alterations in the gardens. But he found it difficult to avoid taking a side; he was importuned to sign the Covenant, and “finding it impossible to evade doing very unhandsome things,” he obtained leave in October 1643 from the king to travel abroad. From this date his Diary becomes full and interesting. He travelled in France and visited the cities of Italy, returning in the autumn of 1646 to Paris, where he became intimate with Sir Richard Browne, the English resident at the court of France. In June of the following year he married Browne’s daughter and heiress, Mary, then a child of not more than twelve years of age. Leaving his wife in the care of her parents, he returned to England to settle his affairs. He visited Charles I. at Hampton Court in 1647, and during the next two years maintained a cipher correspondence with his father-in-law in the royal interest. In 1649 he obtained a pass to return to Paris, but in 1650 paid a short visit to England. The defeat of Charles II. at Worcester in 1651 convinced him that the royalist cause was hopeless, and he decided to return to England. He went in 1652 to Sayes Court at Deptford, a house which Sir Richard Browne had held on a lease from the crown. This had been seized by the parliament, but Evelyn was able to compound with the occupiers for £3500, and after the Restoration his possession was secured. Here his wife joined him, their eldest son, Richard, being born in August 1652. Under the Commonwealth Evelyn amused himself with his favourite occupation of gardening, and made many friends among the scientific inquirers of the time. He was one of the promoters of the scheme for the Royal Society, and in the king’s charter in 1662 was nominated a member of its directing council. Meanwhile he had refused employment from the government of the Commonwealth, and had maintained a cipher correspondence with Charles. In 1659 he published an Apology for the Royal Party, and in December of that year he vainly tried to persuade Colonel Herbert Morley, then lieutenant of the Tower, to forestall General Monk by declaring for the king. From the Restoration onwards Evelyn enjoyed unbroken court favour till his death in 1706; but he never held any important political office, although he filled many useful and often laborious minor posts. He was commissioner for improving the streets and buildings of London, for examining into the affairs of charitable foundations, commissioner of the Mint, and of foreign plantations. In 1664 he accepted the responsibility for the care of the sick and wounded and the prisoners in the Dutch war. He stuck to his post throughout the plague year, contenting himself with sending his family away to Wotton. He found it impossible to secure sufficient money for the proper discharge of his functions, and in 1688 he was still petitioning for payment of his accounts in this business. Evelyn was secretary of the Royal Society in 1672, and as an enthusiastic promoter of its interests was twice (in 1682 and 1691) offered the presidency. Through his influence Henry Howard, duke of Norfolk, was induced to present the Arundel marbles to the university of Oxford (1667) and the valuable Arundel library to Gresham College (1678). In the reign of James II., during the earl of Clarendon’s absence in Ireland, he acted as one of the commissioners of the privy seal. He was seriously alarmed by the king’s attacks on the English Church, and refused on two occasions to license the illegal sale of Roman Catholic literature. He concurred in the revolution of 1688, in 1695 was entrusted with the office of treasurer of Greenwich hospital for old sailors, and laid the first stone of the new building on the 30th of June 1696. In 1694 he left Sayes Court to live at Wotton with his brother, whose heir he had become, and whom he actually succeeded in 1699. He spent the rest of his life there, dying on the 27th of February 1706. Evelyn’s house at Sayes Court had been let to Captain, afterwards Admiral John Benbow, who was not a “polite” tenant. He sublet it to Peter the Great, who was then visiting the dockyard at Deptford. The tsar did great damage to Evelyn’s beautiful gardens, and, it is said, made it one of his amusements to ride in a wheelbarrow along a thick holly hedge planted especially by the owner. The house was subsequently used as a workhouse, and is now alms-houses, the grounds having been converted into public gardens by Mr Evelyn in 1886.

It will be seen that Evelyn’s politics were not of the heroic order. But he was honourable and consistent in his adherence to the monarchical principle throughout his life. With the court of Charles II. he could have had no sympathy, his dignified domestic life and his serious attention to religion standing in the strongest contrast with the profligacy of the royal surroundings. His Diary is therefore a valuable chronicle of contemporary events from the standpoint of a moderate politician and a devout adherent of the Church of England. He had none of Pepys’s love of gossip, and was devoid of his all-embracing curiosity, as of his diverting frankness of self-revelation. Both were admirable civil servants, and they had a mutual admiration for each other’s sterling qualities. Evelyn’s Diary covers more than half a century (1640-1706) crowded with remarkable events, while Pepys only deals with a few years of Charles II.’s reign.

Evelyn was a generous art patron, and Grinling Gibbons was introduced by him to the notice of Charles II. His domestic affections were very strong. He had six sons, of whom John (1655-1699), the author of some translations, alone reached manhood. He has left a pathetic account of the extraordinary accomplishments of his son Richard, who died before he was six years old, and of a daughter Mary, who lived to be twenty, and probably wrote most of her father’s Mundus muliebris (1690). Of his two other daughters, Susannah, who married William Draper of Addiscombe, Surrey, survived him.

Evelyn’s Diary remained in MS. until 1818. It is in a quarto volume containing 700 pages, covering the years between 1641 and 1697, and is continued in a smaller book which brings the narrative down to within three weeks of its author’s death. A selection from this was edited by William Bray, with the permission of the Evelyn family, in 1818, under the title of Memoirs illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn, comprising his Diary from 1641 to 1705/6, and a Selection of his Familiar Letters. Other editions followed, the most notable being those of Mr H.B. Wheatley (1879) and Mr Austin Dobson (3 vols., 1906). Evelyn’s active mind produced many other works, and although these have been overshadowed by the famous Diary they are of considerable interest. They include: Of Liberty and Servitude ... (1649), a translation from the French of Francois de la Mothe le Vayer, Evelyn’s own copy of which contains a note that he was “like to be call’d in question by the Rebells for this booke”; The State of France, as it stood in the IXth year of ... Louis XIII. (1652); An Essay on the First Book of T. Lucretius Carus de Rerum Natura. Interpreted and made English verse by J. Evelyn (1656); The Golden Book of St John Chrysostom, concerning the Education of Children. Translated out of the Greek by J.E. (printed 1658, dated 1659); The French Gardener: instructing how to cultivate all sorts of Fruit-trees ... (1658), translated from the French of N. de Bonnefons; A Character of England ... (1659), describing the customs of the country as they would appear to a foreign observer, reprinted in Somers’ Tracts (ed. Scott, 1812), and in the Harleian Miscellany (ed. Park, 1813); The Late News from Brussels unmasked ... (1660), in answer to a libellous pamphlet on Charles I. by Marchmont Needham; Fumifugium, or the inconvenience of the Aer and Smoak of London dissipated (1661), in which he suggested that sweet-smelling trees should be planted in London to purify the air; Instructions concerning erecting of a Library ... (1661), from the French of Gabriel Naudé; Tyrannus or the Mode, in a Discourse of Sumptuary Laws (1661); Sculptura: or the History and Art of Chalcography and Engraving in Copper ... (1662); Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees ... to which is annexed Pomona ... Also Kalendarium Hortense ... (1664); A Parallel of the Ancient Architecture with the Modern ... (1664), from the French of Roland Fréart; The History of the three late famous Imposters, viz. Padre Ottomano, Mahomed Bei, and Sabatei Sevi ... (1669); Navigation and Commerce ... in which his Majesties title to the Dominion of the Sea is asserted against the Novel and later Pretenders (1674), which is a preface to a projected history of the Dutch wars undertaken at the request of Charles II., but countermanded on the conclusion of peace; A Philosophical Discourse of Earth ... (1676), a treatise on horticulture, better known by its later title of Terra; The Compleat Gardener ... (1693), from the French of J. de la Quintinie; Numismata ... (1697). Some of these were reprinted in The Miscellaneous Writings of John Evelyn, edited (1825) by William Upcott. Evelyn’s friendship with Mary Blagge, afterwards Mrs Godolphin, is recorded in the diary, when he says he designed “to consecrate her worthy life to posterity.” This he effectually did in a little masterpiece of religious biography which remained in MS. in the possession of the Harcourt family until it was edited by Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of Oxford, as the Life of Mrs Godolphin (1847), reprinted in the “King’s Classics” (1904). The picture of Mistress Blagge’s saintly life at court is heightened in interest when read in connexion with the scandalous memoirs of the comte de Gramont, or contemporary political satires on the court. Numerous other papers and letters of Evelyn on scientific subjects and matters of public interest are preserved, a collection of private and official letters and papers (1642-1712) by, or addressed to, Sir Richard Browne and his son-in-law being in the British Museum (Add. MSS. 15857 and 15858).

Next to the Diary Evelyn’s most valuable work is Sylva. By the glass factories and iron furnaces the country was being rapidly depleted of wood, while no attempt was being made to replace the damage by planting. Evelyn put in a plea for afforestation, and besides producing a valuable work on arboriculture, he was able to assert in his preface to the king that he had really induced landowners to plant many millions of trees.

EVERDINGEN, ALLART VAN (1621-?1675), Dutch painter and engraver, the son of a government clerk at Alkmaar, was born, it is said, in 1621, and educated, if we believe an old tradition, under Roeland Savery at Utrecht. He wandered in 1645 to Haarlem, where he studied under Peter de Molyn, and finally settled about 1657 at Amsterdam, where he remained till his death. It would be difficult to find a greater contrast than that which is presented by the works of Savery and Everdingen. Savery inherited the gaudy style of the Breughels, which he carried into the 17th century; whilst Everdingen realized the large and effective system of coloured and powerfully shaded landscape which marks the precursors of Rembrandt. It is not easy on this account to believe that Savery was Everdingen’s master, while it is quite within the range of probability that he acquired the elements of landscape painting from de Molyn. Pieter de Molyn, by birth a Londoner, lived from 1624 till 1661 in Haarlem. He went periodically on visits to Norway, and his works, though scarce, exhibit a broad and sweeping mode of execution, differing but slightly from that transferred at the opening of the 17th century from Jan van Goyen to Solomon Ruysdael. His etchings have nearly the breadth and effect of those of Everdingen. It is still an open question when de Molyn wielded influence on his clever disciple. Alkmaar, a busy trading place near the Texel, had little of the picturesque for an artist except polders and downs or waves and sky. Accordingly we find Allart at first a painter of coast scenery. But on one of his expeditions he is said to have been cast ashore in Norway, and during the repairs of his ship he visited the inland valleys, and thus gave a new course to his art. In early pieces he cleverly represents the sea in motion under varied, but mostly clouded, aspects of sky. Their general intonation is strong and brown, and effects are rendered in a powerful key, but the execution is much more uniform than that of Jacob Ruysdael. A dark scud lowering on a rolling sea near the walls of Flushing characterizes Everdingen’s “Mouth of the Schelde” in the Hermitage at St Petersburg. Storm is the marked feature of sea-pieces in the Staedel or Robartes collections; and a strand with wreckers at the foot of a cliff in the Munich Pinakothek may be a reminiscence of personal adventure in Norway. But the Norwegian coast was studied in calms as well as in gales; and a fine canvas at Munich shows fishermen on a still and sunny day taking herrings to a smoking hut at the foot of a Norwegian crag. The earliest of Everdingen’s sea-pieces bears the date of 1640. After 1645 we meet with nothing but representations of inland scenery, and particularly of Norwegian valleys, remarkable alike for wildness and a decisive depth of tone. The master’s favourite theme is a fall in a glen, with mournful fringes of pines interspersed with birch, and log-huts at the base of rocks and craggy slopes. The water tumbles over the foreground, so as to entitle the painter to the name of “inventor of cascades.” It gives Everdingen his character as a precursor of Jacob Ruysdael in a certain form of landscape composition; but though very skilful in arrangement and clever in effects, Everdingen remains much more simple in execution; he is much less subtle in feeling or varied in touch than his great and incomparable countryman. Five of Everdingen’s cascades are in the museum of Copenhagen alone: of these, one is dated 1647, another 1649. In the Hermitage at St Petersburg is a fine example of 1647; another in the Pinakothek at Munich was finished in 1656. English public galleries ignore Everdingen; but one of his best-known masterpieces is the Norwegian glen belonging to Lord Listowel. Of his etchings and drawings there are much larger and more numerous specimens in England than elsewhere. Being a collector as well as an engraver and painter, he brought together a large number of works of all kinds and masters; and the sale of these by his heirs at Amsterdam on the 11th of March 1676 gives an approximate clue to the date of the painter’s death.

His two brothers, Jan and Caesar, were both painters. Caesar van Everdingen (1606-1679), mainly known as a portrait painter, enjoyed some vogue during his life, and many of his pictures are to be seen in the museums and private houses of Holland. They show a certain cleverness, but are far from entitling him to rank as a master.

EVEREST, SIR GEORGE (1790-1866), British surveyor and geographer, was the son of Tristram Everest of Gwerndale, Brecknockshire, and was born there on the 4th of July 1790. From school at Marlow he proceeded to the military academy at Woolwich, where he attracted the special notice of the mathematical master, and passed so well in his examinations that he was declared fit for a commission before attaining the necessary age. Having gone to India in 1806 as a cadet in the Bengal Artillery, he was selected by Sir Stamford Raffles to take part in the reconnaissance of Java (1814-1816); and after being employed in various engineering works throughout India, he was appointed in 1818 assistant to Colonel Lambton, the founder of the great trigonometrical survey of that country. In 1823, on Colonel Lambton’s death, he succeeded to the post of superintendent of the survey; in 1830 he was appointed by the court of directors of the East India Company surveyor-general of India; and from that date till his retirement from the service in 1843 he continued to discharge the laborious duties of both offices. During the rest of his life he resided in England, where he became fellow of the Royal Society and an active member of several other scientific associations. In 1861 he was made a C.B. and received the honour of knighthood, and in 1862 he was chosen vice-president of the Royal Geographical Society. He died at Greenwich on the 1st of December 1866. The geodetical labours of Sir George Everest rank among the finest achievements of their kind; and more especially his measurement of the meridional arc of India, 11½° in length, is accounted as unrivalled in the annals of the science. In great part the Indian survey is what he made it.

His works are purely professional:—A paper in vol. i. of the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, pointing out a mistake in La Caille’s measurement of an arc of the meridian which he had discovered during sick-leave at the Cape of Good Hope; An account of the measurement of the arc of the meridian between the parallels of 18° 3′ and 24° 7′, being a continuation of the Grand Meridional Arc of India, as detailed by Lieut.-Col. Lambton in the volumes of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta (London, 1830); An account of the measurement of two sections of the Meridional Arc of India bounded by the parallels of 18° 3′ 15″, 24° 7′ 11″, and 20° 30′ 48″ (London, 1847).

EVEREST, MOUNT, the highest mountain in the world. It is a peak of the Himalayas situated in Nepal almost precisely on the intersection of the meridian 87 E. long. with the parallel 28 N. lat. Its elevation as at present determined by trigonometrical observation is 29,002 ft., but it is possible that further investigation into the value of refraction at such altitudes will result in placing the summit even higher. It has been confused with a peak to the west of it called Gaurisankar (by Schlagintweit), which is more than 5000 ft. lower; but the observations of Captain Wood from peaks near Khatmandu, in Nepal, and those of the same officer, and of Major Ryder, from the route between Lhasa and the sources of the Brahmaputra in 1904, have definitely fixed the relative position of the two mountain masses, and conclusively proved that there is no higher peak than Everest in the Himalayan system. The peak possesses no distinctive native name and has been called Everest after Sir George Everest (q.v.), who completed the trigonometrical survey of the Himalayas in 1841 and first fixed its position and altitude.

(T. H. H.*)

EVERETT, ALEXANDER HILL (1790-1847), American author and diplomatist, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 19th of March 1790. He was the son of Rev. Oliver Everett (1753-1802), a Congregational minister in Boston, and the brother of Edward Everett. He graduated at Harvard in 1806, taking the highest honours of his year, though the youngest member of his class. He spent one year as a teacher in Phillips Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, and then began the study of law in the office of John Quincy Adams. In 1809 Adams was appointed minister to Russia, and Everett accompanied him as his private secretary, remaining attached to the American legation in Russia until 1811. He was secretary of the American legation at The Hague in 1815-1816, and chargé d’affaires there from 1818 to 1824. From 1825 to 1829, during the presidency of John Quincy Adams, he was the United States minister to Spain. At that time Spain recognized none of the governments established by her revolted colonies, and Everett became the medium of all communications between the Spanish government and the several nations of Spanish origin which had been established, by successful revolutions, on the other side of the ocean. Everett was a member of the Massachusetts legislature in 1830-1835, was president of Jefferson College in Louisiana in 1842-1844, and was appointed commissioner of the United States to China in 1845, but did not go to that country until the following year, and died on the 29th of May 1847 at Canton, China. Everett, however, is known rather as a man of letters than as a diplomat. In addition to numerous articles, published chiefly in the North American Review, of which he was the editor from 1829 to 1835, he wrote: Europe, or a General Survey of the Political Situation of the Principal Powers, with Conjectures on their Future Prospects (1822), which attracted considerable attention in Europe and was translated into German, French and Spanish; New Ideas on Population (1822); America, or a General Survey of the Political Situation of the Several Powers of the Western Continent, with Conjectures on their Future Prospects (1827), which was translated into several European languages; a volume of Poems (1845); and Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (first series, 1845; second series, 1847).

EVERETT, CHARLES CARROLL (1829-1900), American divine and philosopher, was born on the 19th of June 1829, at Brunswick, Maine. He studied at Bowdoin College, where he graduated in 1850, after which he proceeded to Berlin. Subsequently he took a degree in divinity at the Harvard Divinity School. From 1859 to 1869 he was pastor of the Independent Congregational (Unitarian) church at Bangor, Maine. This charge he resigned to take the Bussey professorship of theology at Harvard University, and, in 1878, became dean of the faculty of theology. Interested in a variety of subjects, he devoted himself chiefly to the philosophy of religion, and published The Science of Thought (Boston, 1869; revised 1891). He also wrote Fichte’s Science of Knowledge (1884); Poetry, Comedy and Duty (1888); Religions before Christianity (1883); Ethics for Young People (1891); The Gospel of Paul (1892). He died at Cambridge on the 16th of October 1900.

EVERETT, EDWARD (1794-1865), American statesman and orator, was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, on the 11th of April 1794. He was the son of Rev. Oliver Everett and the brother of Alexander Hill Everett (q.v.). His father died in 1802, and his mother removed to Boston with her family after her husband’s death. At seventeen Edward Everett graduated from Harvard College, taking first honours in his class. While at college he was the chief editor of The Lyceum, the earliest in the series of college journals published at the American Cambridge. His earlier predilections were for the study of law, but the advice of Joseph Stevens Buckminster, a distinguished preacher in Boston, led him to prepare for the pulpit, and as a preacher he at once distinguished himself. He was called to the ministry of the Brattle Street church (Unitarian) in Boston before he was twenty years old. His sermons attracted wide attention in that community, and he gained a considerable reputation as a theologian and a controversialist by his publication in 1814 of a volume entitled Defence of Christianity, written in answer to a work, The Grounds of Christianity Examined (1813), by George Bethune English (1787-1828), an adventurer, who, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was in turn a student of law and of theology, an editor of a newspaper, and a soldier of fortune in Egypt. Everett’s tastes, however, were then, as always, those of a scholar; and in 1815, after a service of little more than a year in the pulpit, he resigned his charge to accept a professorship of Greek literature in Harvard College.

After nearly five years spent in Europe in preparation, he entered with enthusiasm on his duties, and, for five years more, gave a vigorous impulse, not only to the study of Greek, but to all the work of the college. In January 1820 he assumed the charge of the North American Review, which now became a quarterly; and he was indefatigable during the four years of his editorship in contributing on a great variety of subjects. From 1825 to 1835 he was a member of the National House of Representatives, supporting generally the administration of President J.Q. Adams and opposing that of Jackson, which succeeded it. He bore a part in almost every important debate, and was a member of the committee of foreign affairs during the whole time of his service in Congress. Everett was a member of nearly all the most important select committees, such as those on the Indian relations of the state of Georgia, the Apportionment Bill, and the Bank of the United States, and drew the report either of the majority or the minority. The report on the congress of Panama, the leading measure of the first session of the Nineteenth Congress, was drawn up by Everett, although he was the youngest member of the committee and had just entered Congress. He led the unsuccessful opposition to the Indian policy of General Jackson (the removal of the Cherokee and other Indians, without their consent, from lands guaranteed to them by treaty).

In 1835 he was elected governor of Massachusetts. He brought to the duties of the office the untiring diligence which was the characteristic of his public life. We can only allude to a few of the measures which received his efficient support, e.g. the establishment of the board of education (the first of such boards in the United States), the scientific surveys of the state (the first of such public surveys), the criminal law commission, and the preservation of a sound currency during the panic of 1837.

Everett filled the office of governor for four years, and was then defeated by a single vote, out of more than one hundred thousand. The election is of interest historically as being the first important American election where the issue turned on the question of the prohibition of the retail sale of intoxicating liquors. In the following spring he made a visit with his family to Europe. In 1841, while residing in Florence, he was named United States minister to Great Britain, and arrived in London to enter upon the duties of his mission at the close of that year. Great questions were at that time open between the two countries—the north-eastern boundary, the affair of M‘Leod, the seizure of American vessels on the coast of Africa, in the course of a few months the affair of the “Creole,” to which was soon added the Oregon question. His position was more difficult by reason of the frequent changes that took place in the department at home, which, in the course of four years, was occupied successively by Messrs Webster, Legaré, Upshur, Calhoun and Buchanan. From all these gentlemen Everett received marks of approbation and confidence.

By the institution of the special mission of Lord Ashburton, however, the direct negotiations between the two governments were, about the time of Everett’s arrival in London, transferred to Washington, though much business was transacted at the American legation in London.

Immediately after the accession of Polk to the presidency Everett was recalled. From January 1846 to 1849, as the successor of Josiah Quincy, he was president of Harvard College. On the death, in October 1852, of his friend Daniel Webster, to whom he had always been closely attached, and of whom he was always a confidential adviser, he succeeded him as secretary of state, which post he held for the remaining months of Fillmore’s administration, leaving it to go into the Senate in 1853, as one of the representatives of Massachusetts. Under the work of the long session of 1853-1854 his health gave way. In May 1854 he resigned his seat, on the orders of his physician, and retired to what was called private life.

But, as it proved, the remaining ten years of his life most widely established his reputation and influence throughout America. As early as 1820 he had established a reputation as an orator, such as few men in later days have enjoyed. He was frequently invited to deliver an “oration” on some topic of historical or other interest. With him these “orations,” instead of being the ephemeral entertainments of an hour, became careful studies of some important theme. Eager to avert, if possible, the impending conflict of arms between the North and South, Everett prepared an “oration” on George Washington, which he delivered in every part of America. In this way, too, he raised more than one hundred thousand dollars, for the purchase of the old home of Washington at Mount Vernon. Everett also prepared for the Encyclopaedia Britannica a biographical sketch of Washington, which was published separately in 1860. In 1860 Everett was the candidate of the short-lived Constitutional-Union party for the vice-presidency, on the ticket with John Bell (q.v.), but received only 39 electoral votes. During the Civil War he zealously supported the national government and was called upon in every quarter to speak at public meetings. He delivered the last of his great orations at Gettysburg, after the battle, on the consecration of the national cemetery there. On the 9th of January 1865 he spoke at a public meeting in Boston to raise funds for the southern poor in Savannah. At that meeting he caught cold, and the immediate result was his death on the 15th of January 1865.

In Everett’s life and career was a combination of the results of diligent training, unflinching industry, delicate literary tastes and unequalled acquaintance with modern international politics. This combination made him in America an entirely exceptional person. He was never loved by the political managers; he was always enthusiastically received by assemblies of the people. He would have said himself that the most eager wish of his life had been for the higher education of his countrymen. His orations have been collected in four volumes (1850-1859). A work on international law, on which he was engaged at his death, was never finished. Allibone records 84 titles of his books and published addresses.

(E. E. H.)

EVERETT, a city of Middlesex county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., adjoining Chelsea and 3 m. N. of Boston, of which it is a residential suburb. Pop. (1880) 4159; (1890) 11,068; (1900) 24,336, of whom 6882 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 33,484. It covers an area of about 3 sq. m. and is served by the Boston & Maine railway and by interurban electric lines. Everett has the Frederick E. Parlin memorial library (1878), the Shute memorial library (1898), the Whidden memorial hospital and Woodlawn cemetery (176 acres). The principal manufactures are coke, chemicals and boots and shoes; among others are iron and structural steel. According to the U.S. Census of Manufactures (1905), “the coke industry in Everett is unique, inasmuch as illuminating gas is the primary product and coke really a by-product, while the coal used is brought from mines located in Nova Scotia.” The value of the city’s total factory product increased from $4,437,180 in 1900 to $6,135,650 in 1905 or 38.3%. Everett was first settled about 1630, remaining a part of Malden (and being known as South Malden) until 1870, when it was incorporated as a township. It was chartered as a city in 1892.

EVERETT, a city, a sub-port of entry, and the county-seat of Snohomish county, Washington, U.S.A., on Puget Sound, at the mouth of the Snohomish river, about 35 m. N. of Seattle. Pop. (1900) 7838; (1910 U.S. census) 24,814. The city is served by the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern railways, being the western terminus of the latter’s main transcontinental line, by interurban electric railway, and by several lines of Sound and coasting freight and passenger steamboats. Everett has a fine harbour with several large iron piers. Among its principal buildings are a Carnegie library, a Y.M.C.A. building and two hospitals. The buildings of the Pacific College were erected here by the United Norwegian Lutheran Church in 1908. The city is in a rich lumbering, gardening, farming, and copper-, gold- and silver-mining district. There is a U.S. assayer’s office here, and there are extensive shipyards, a large paper mill, iron works, and, just outside the city limits, the smelters of the American Smelters Securities Company, in connexion with which is one of the two plants in the United States for saving arsenic from smelter fumes. Lumber interests, however, are of most importance, and here are some of the largest lumber plants in the Pacific Northwest. Red-cedar shingles are an important product. Everett was settled in 1891 and was incorporated in 1893. Its rapid growth is due to its favourable situation as a commercial port, its transportation facilities, and its nearness to extensive forests whence the material for its chief industries is obtained.

EVERGLADES, an American lake, about 8000 sq. m. in area, in which are numerous half-submerged islands; situated in the southern part of Florida, U.S.A., in Lee, De Soto, Dade and St Lucie counties. West of it is the Big Cypress Swamp. The floor of the lake is a limestone basin, extending from Lake Okechobee in the N. to the extreme S. part of the state, and the lake varies in depth from 1 to 12 ft., its water being pure and clear. The surface is above tide level, and the lake is enclosed, probably on all sides, within an outcropping limestone rim, averaging about 10 ft. above mean low tide, and approaching much nearer to the Atlantic on the E. than to the gulf on the W. There are several small outlets, such as the Miami river and the New river on the E. and the Shark river on the S.W., but no streams empty into the Everglades, and the water-supply is furnished by springs and precipitation. There is a general south-easterly movement of the water. The soil of the islands is very fertile and is subject to frequent inundations, but gradually the water area is being replaced by land. The vegetation is luxuriant, the live oak, wild lemon, wild orange, cucumber, papaw, custard apple and wild rubber trees being among the indigenous species; there are, besides, many varieties of wild flowers, the orchids being especially noteworthy. The fauna is also varied; the otter, alligator and crocodile are found, also the deer and panther, and among the native birds are the ibis, egret, heron and limpkin. There are two seasons, wet and dry, but the climate is equable.

Systematic exploration has been prevented by the dense growth of saw grass (Cladium effusum), a kind of sedge, with sharp, saw-toothed leaves, which grows everywhere on the muck-covered rock basin and extends several feet above the shallow water. The first white man to enter the region was Escalente de Fontenada, a Spanish captive of an Indian chief, who named the lake Laguno del Espiritu Santo and the islands Cayos del Espiritu Santo. Between 1841 and 1856 various United States military forces penetrated the Everglades for the purpose of attacking and driving out the Seminoles, who took refuge here. The most important explorations during the later years of the 19th century were those of Major Archie P. Williams in 1883, James E. Ingraham in 1892 and Hugh L. Willoughby in 1897. The Seminole Indians were in 1909 practically the only inhabitants. In 1850 under the “Arkansas Bill,” or Swamp and Overflow Act, practically all of the Everglades, which the state had been urging the federal government to drain and reclaim, were turned over to the state for that purpose, with the provision that all proceeds from such lands be applied to their reclamation. A board of trustees for the Internal Improvement Fund, created in 1855 and having as members ex officio the governor, comptroller, treasurer, attorney-general and commissioner-general, sold and allowed to railway companies much of the grant. Between 1881 and 1896 a private company owning 4,000,000 acres of the Everglades attempted to dig a canal from Lake Okechobee through Lake Hicpochee and along the Caloosahatchee river to the Gulf of Mexico; the canal was closed in 1902 by overflows. Six canals were begun under state control in 1905 from the lake to the Atlantic, the northernmost at Jensen, the southernmost at Ft. Lauderdale; the total cost, estimated at $1,035,000 for the reclamation of 12,500 sq. m., is raised by a drainage tax (not to exceed 10 cents per acre) levied by the trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund and Board of Drainage commissioners. The small area reclaimed prior to that year (1905) was found very fertile and particularly adapted to raising sugar-cane, oranges and garden truck.

See Hugh L. Willoughby’s Across the Everglades (Philadelphia, 1898), and especially an article “The Everglades of Florida” by Edwin A. Dix and John M. MacGonigle, in the Century Magazine for February 1905.

EVERGREEN, a general term applied to plants which are always in leaf, as contrasted with deciduous trees which are bare for some part of the year (see [Horticulture]). In temperate or colder zones where a season favourable to vegetation is succeeded by an unfavourable or winter season, leaves of evergreens must be protected from the frost and cold drying winds, and are therefore tougher or more leathery in texture than those of deciduous trees, and frequently, as in pines, firs and other conifers, are needle-like, thus exposing a much smaller surface to the drying action of cold winds. The number of seasons for which the leaves last varies in different plants; every season some of the older leaves fall, while new ones are regularly produced. The common English bramble is practically evergreen, the leaves lasting through winter and until the new leaves are developed next spring. In privet also the leaves fall after the production of new ones in the next year. In other cases the leaves last several years, as in conifers, and may sometimes be found on eleven-year-old shoots.

EVERLASTING, or Immortelle, a plant belonging to the division Tubuliflorae of the natural order Compositae, known botanically as Helichrysum orientale. It is a native of North Africa, Crete, and the parts of Asia bordering on the Mediterranean; and it is cultivated in many parts of Europe. It first became known in Europe about the year 1629, and has been cultivated since 1815. In common with several other plants of the same group, known as “everlastings,” the immortelle plant possesses a large involucre of dry scale-like or scarious bracts, which preserve their appearance when dried, provided the plant be gathered in proper condition. The chief supplies of Helichrysum orientale come from lower Provence, where it is cultivated in large quantities on the ground sloping to the Mediterranean, in positions well exposed to the sun, and usually in plots surrounded by dry stone walls. The finest flowers are grown on the slopes of Bandols and Ciotat, where the plant begins to flower in June. It requires a light sandy or stony soil, and is very readily injured by rain or heavy dews. It can be propagated in quantity by means of offsets from the older stems. The flowering stems are gathered in June, when the bracts are fully developed, all the fully-expanded and immature flowers being pulled off and rejected. A well-managed plantation is productive for eight or ten years. The plant is tufted in its growth, each plant producing 60 or 70 stems, while each stem produces an average of 20 flowers. About 400 such stems weigh a kilogramme. A hectare of ground will produce 40,000 plants, bearing from 2,400,000 to 2,800,000 stems, and weighing from 5½ to 6½ tons, or from 2 to 3 tons per acre. The colour of the bracts is a deep yellow. The natural flowers are commonly used for garlands for the dead, or plants dyed black are mixed with the yellow ones. The plant is also dyed green or orange-red, and thus employed for bouquets or other ornamental purposes.

Other species of Helichrysum and species of allied genera with scarious heads of flowers are also known as “everlastings.” One of the best known is the Australian species H. bracteatum, with several varieties, including double forms, of different colours; H. vestitum (Cape of Good Hope) has white satiny heads. Others are species of Helipterum (West Australia and South Africa), Ammobium and Waitzia (Australia) and Xeranthemum (south Europe). Several members of the natural order Amarantaceae have also “everlasting” flowers; such are Gomphrena globosa, with rounded or oval heads of white, orange, rose or violet, scarious bracts, and Celosia pyramidalis, with its elegant, loose, pyramidal inflorescences. Frequently these everlastings are mixed with bleached grasses, as Lagurus ovatus, Briza maxima, Bromus brizaeformis, or with the leaves of the Cape silver tree (Leucadendron argenteum), to form bouquets or ornamental groups.

EVERSLEY, CHARLES SHAW LEFEVRE, Viscount (1794-1888), speaker of the British House of Commons, eldest son of Mr Charles Shaw (who assumed his wife’s name of Lefevre in addition to his own on his marriage), was born in London on the 22nd of February 1794, and educated at Winchester and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was called to the bar in 1819, and though a diligent student was also a keen sportsman. Marrying a daughter of Mr Samuel Whitbread, whose wife was the sister of Earl Grey, afterwards premier, he thus became connected with two influential political families, and in 1830 he entered the House of Commons as member for Downton, in the Liberal interest. In 1831 he was returned, after a severe contest, as one of the county members for Hampshire, in which he resided; and after the passing of the Reform Act of 1832 he was elected for the Northern Division of the county. For some years Mr Shaw Lefevre was chairman of a committee on petitions for private bills. In 1835 he was chairman of a committee on agricultural distress, but as his report was not accepted by the House, he published it as a pamphlet addressed to his constituents. He acquired a high reputation in the House of Commons for his judicial fairness, combined with singular tact and courtesy, and when Mr James Abercromby retired in 1839, he was nominated as the Liberal candidate for the chair. The Conservatives put forward Henry Goulburn, but Mr Shaw Lefevre was elected by 317 votes to 299. The period was one of fierce party conflict, and the debates were frequently very acrimonious; but the dignity, temper and firmness of the new speaker were never at fault. In 1857 he had served longer than any of his predecessors, except the celebrated Arthur Onslow (1691-1768), who was speaker for more than 33 years in five successive parliaments. Retiring on a pension, he was raised to the peerage as Viscount Eversley of Heckfield, in the county of Southampton. His appearances in the House of Lords were very infrequent, but in his own county he was active in the public service. From 1859 he was an ecclesiastical commissioner, and he was also appointed a trustee of the British Museum. He died on the 28th of December 1888, the viscountcy becoming extinct.

His younger brother, Sir John George Shaw Lefevre (1797-1879), who was senior wrangler at Cambridge in 1818, had a long and distinguished career as a public official. He was under-secretary for the colonies, and had much to do with the introduction of the new poor law in 1834, and with the foundation of the colony of South Australia; then having served on several important commissions he was made clerk of the parliaments in 1855, and in the same year became one of the first civil service commissioners. He helped to found the university of London, of which he was vice-chancellor for twenty years, and also the Athenaeum Club. He died on the 20th of August 1879.

The latter’s son, George John Shaw Lefevre (b. 1832), was created Baron Eversley in 1906, in recognition of long and prominent services to the Liberal party. He had filled the following offices:—civil lord of the admiralty, 1856; secretary to the board of trade, 1869-1871; under-secretary, home office, 1871; secretary to the admiralty, 1871-1874; first commissioner of works, 1881-1883; postmaster-general, 1883-1884; first commissioner of works, 1892-1893; president of local government board, 1894-1895; chairman of royal commission on agriculture, 1893-1896.

EVESHAM, a market-town and municipal borough in the Evesham parliamentary division of Worcestershire, England, 107 m. W.N.W. of London by the Great Western railway, and 15 m. S.E. by E. of Worcester, with a station on the Redditch-Ashchurch branch of the Midland railway. Pop. (1901) 7101. It lies on the right (north) bank of the Avon, in the rich and beautiful Vale of Evesham. The district is devoted to market-gardening and orchards, and the trade of the town is mainly agricultural. Evesham is a place of considerable antiquity, a Benedictine house having been founded here by St Egwin in the 8th century. It became a wealthy abbey, but was almost wholly destroyed at the Dissolution. The churchyard, however, is entered by a Norman gateway, and there survives also a magnificent isolated bell-tower dating from 1533, of the best ornate Perpendicular workmanship. The abbey walls surround the churchyard, but almost the only other remnant is a single Decorated arch. Close to the bell-tower, however, are the two parish churches of St Lawrence and of All Saints, the former of the 16th century, the latter containing Early English work, and the ornate chapel of Abbot Lichfield, who erected the bell-tower. Other buildings include an Elizabethan town hall, the grammar school, founded by Abbot Lichfield, and the picturesque almonry. The borough includes the parish of Bengeworth St Peter, on the left bank of the river. Evesham is governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 2265 acres.

Evesham (Homme, Ethomme) grew up around the Benedictine abbey, and had evidently become of some importance as a trading centre in 1055, when Edward the Confessor gave it a market and the privileges of a commercial town. It is uncertain when the town first became a borough, but the Domesday statement that the men paid 20s. may indicate the existence of a more or less organized body of tradesmen. Before 1482 the burgesses were holding the town at a fee farm rent of twenty marks, but the abbot still had practical control of the town, and his steward presided over the court at which the bailiffs were chosen. After the Dissolution the manor with the markets and fairs and other privileges was granted to Sir Philip Hoby, who increased his power over the town by persuading the burgesses to agree that, after they had nominated six candidates for the office of bailiff, the steward of the court instructed by him should indicate the two to be chosen. This privilege was contested by Queen Elizabeth, but when the case was taken before the court of the exchequer it was decided in favour of Sir Philip’s heir, Sir Edward Hoby. In 1604 James I. granted the burgesses their first charter, but in the following year, by a second charter, he incorporated Evesham with the village of Bengeworth, and granted that the borough should be governed by a mayor and seven aldermen, to whom he gave the power of holding markets and fairs and several other privileges which had formerly belonged to the lord of the manor. Evesham received two later charters, but in 1688 that of 1605 was restored and still remains the governing charter of the borough. Evesham returned two members to parliament in 1295 and again in 1337, after which date the privilege lapsed until 1604. Its two members were reduced to one by the act of 1867, and the borough was disfranchised in 1885.

Evesham gave its name to the famous battle, fought on the 4th of August 1265, between the forces of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, and the royalist army under Prince Edward. After a masterly campaign, in which the prince had succeeded in defeating Leicester in the valleys of the Severn and Usk, and had destroyed the forces of the younger Montfort at Kenilworth before he could effect a junction with the main body, the royalist forces approached Evesham in the morning of the 4th of August in time to intercept Leicester’s march towards Kenilworth. Caught in the bend of the river Avon by the converging columns, and surrounded on all sides, the old earl attempted to cut his way out of the town to the northward. At first the fury of his assault forced back the superior numbers of the prince; but Simon’s Welsh levies melted away and his enemies closed the last avenue of escape. The final struggle took place on Green Hill, a little to the north-west of the town, where the devoted friends of de Montfort formed a ring round their leader, and died with him. The spot is marked with an obelisk.

EVIDENCE (Lat. evidentia, evideri, to appear clearly), a term which may be defined briefly as denoting the facts presented to the mind of a person for the purpose of enabling him to decide a disputed question. Evidence in the widest sense includes all such facts, and reference may be made to the article [Logic] for the science or art of dealing with the proper way of drawing correct conclusions and the nature of proof. In a narrower sense, however, evidence includes in English law only such facts as are allowed to be so presented in the course of judicial proceedings. Thus we say that a fact is not evidence, meaning thereby that it is not admissible as evidence in accordance with the rules of English law. The law of legal evidence is part of the law of procedure. It determines the kinds of evidence which may be produced in judicial proceedings, and regulates the mode in which, and the conditions under which, evidence may be produced and tested.

The English law of evidence is of comparatively modern growth. It enshrines certain maxims, some derived from Roman law, some invented by Coke, who, as J.B. Thayer says, “spawned Latin maxims freely.” But for the most History. part it was built up by English judges in the course of the 18th century, and consists of this judge-made law, as modified by statutory enactments of the 19th century. Early Teutonic procedure knew nothing of evidence in the modern sense, just as it knew nothing of trials in the modern sense. What it knew was “proofs.” There were two modes of proof, ordeals and oaths. Both were appeals to the supernatural. The judicial combat was a bilateral ordeal. Proof followed, instead of preceding, judgment. A judgment of the court, called by German writers the Beweisurteil, and by M.M. Bigelow the “medial judgment,” awarded that one of the two litigants must prove his case, by his body in battle, or by a one-sided ordeal, or by an oath with oath-helpers, or by the oaths of witnesses. The court had no desire to hear or weigh conflicting testimony. To do so would have been to exercise critical faculties, which the court did not possess, and the exercise of which would have been foreign to the whole spirit of the age. The litigant upon whom the burden of furnishing proof was imposed had a certain task to perform. If he performed it, he won; if he failed, he lost. The number of oath-helpers varied in different cases, and was determined by the law or by the court. They were probably, at the outset, kinsmen, who would have had to take up the blood-feud. At a later stage they became witnesses to character. In the cases, comparatively rare, where the oaths of witnesses were admitted as proof, their oaths differed materially from the sworn testimony of modern courts. As a rule no one could testify to a fact unless, when the fact happened, he was solemnly “taken to witness.” Then, when the witness was adduced, he came merely to swear to a set formula. He did not make a promissory oath to answer questions truly. He merely made an assertory oath in a prescribed form.

In the course of the 12th and 13th centuries the old formal accusatory procedure began to break down, and to be superseded by another form of procedure known as inquisitio, inquest, or enquête. Its decay was hastened by the decree of the fourth Lateran Council in 1215, which forbade ecclesiastics to take part in ordeals. The Norman administrative system introduced into England by the Conquest was familiar with a method of ascertaining and determining facts by means of a verdict, return or finding made on oath by a body of men drawn from the locality. The system may be traced to Carolingian, and even earlier, sources. Henry II., by instituting the grand assize and the four petty assizes, placed at the disposal of litigants in certain actions the opportunity of giving proof by the verdict of a sworn inquest of neighbours, proof “by the country.” The system was gradually extended to other cases, criminal as well as civil. The verdict given was that of persons having a general, but not necessarily a particular, acquaintance with the persons, places and facts to which the inquiry related. It was, in fact, a finding by local popular opinion. Had the finding of such an inquest been treated as final and conclusive in criminal cases, English criminal procedure might, like the continental inquisition, the French enquête, have taken the path which, in the forcible language of Fortescue (De laudibus, &c. ) “leads to hell” (semita ipsa est ad gehennam). Fortunately English criminal procedure took a different course. The spirit of the old accusatory procedure was applied to the new procedure by inquest. In serious cases the words of the jurors, the accusing jurors, were treated not as testimony, but as accusation, the new indictment was treated as corresponding to the old appeal, and the preliminary finding by the accusing jury had to be supplemented by the verdict of another jury. In course of time the second jury were required to base their findings not on their own knowledge, but on evidence submitted to them. Thus the modern system of inquiry by grand jury and trial by petty jury was gradually developed.

A few words may here be said about the parallel development of criminal procedure on the continent of Europe. The tendency in the 12th and 13th centuries to abolish the old formal methods of procedure, and to give the new procedure the name of inquisition or inquest, was not peculiar to England. Elsewhere the old procedure was breaking down at the same time, and for similar reasons. It was the great pope Innocent III., the pope of the fourth Lateran Council, who introduced the new inquisitorial procedure into the canon law. The procedure was applied to cases of heresy, and, as so applied, especially by the Dominicans, speedily assumed the features which made it infamous. “Every safeguard of innocence was abolished or disregarded; torture was freely used. Everything seems to have been done to secure a conviction.” Yet, in spite of its monstrous defects, the inquisitorial procedure of the ecclesiastical courts, secret in its methods, unfair to the accused, having torture as an integral element, gradually forced its way into the temporal courts, and may almost be said to have been adopted by the common law of western Europe. In connexion with this inquisitorial procedure continental jurists elaborated a theory of evidence, or judicial proofs, which formed the subject of an extensive literature. Under the rules thus evolved full proof (plena probatio) was essential for conviction, in the absence of confession, and the standard of full proof was fixed so high that it was in most cases unattainable. It therefore became material to obtain confession by some means or other. The most effective means was torture, and thus torture became an essential feature in criminal procedure. The rules of evidence attempted to graduate the weight to be attached to different kinds of testimony and almost to estimate that weight in numerical terms. “Le parlement de Toulouse,” said Voltaire, “a un usage très singulier dans les preuves par témoins. On admet ailleurs des demi-preuves, ... mais à Toulouse on admet des quarts et des huitièmes de preuves.” Modern continental procedure, as embodied in the most recent codes, has removed the worst features of inquisitorial procedure, and has shaken itself free from the trammels imposed by the old theory and technical rules of proof. But in this, as in other branches of law, France seems to have paid the penalty for having been first in the field with codification by lagging behind in material reforms. The French Code of Criminal Procedure was largely based on Colbert’s Ordonnance of 1670, and though embodying some reforms, and since amended on certain points, still retains some of the features of the unreformed procedure which was condemned in the 18th century by Voltaire and the philosophes. Military procedure is in the rear of civil procedure, and the trial of Captain Dreyfus at Rennes in 1899 presented some interesting archaisms. Among these were the weight attached to the rank and position of witnesses as compared with the intrinsic character of their evidence, and the extraordinary importance attributed to confession even when made under suspicious circumstances and supported by flimsy evidence.

The history of criminal procedure in England has been traced by Sir James Stephen. The modern rules and practice as to evidence and witnesses in the common law courts, both in civil and in criminal cases, appear to have taken shape in the course of the 18th century. The first systematic treatise on the English law of evidence appears to have been written by Chief Baron Gilbert, who died in 1726, but whose Law of Evidence was not published until 1761. In writing it he is said to have been much influenced by Locke.[1] It is highly praised by Blackstone as “a work which it is impossible to abstract or abridge without losing some beauty and destroying the charm of the whole”; but Bentham, who rarely agrees with Blackstone, speaks of it as running throughout “in the same strain of anility, garrulity, narrow-mindedness, absurdity, perpetual misrepresentation and indefatigable self-contradiction.” In any case it remained the standard authority on the law of evidence throughout the remainder of the 18th century. Bentham wrote his Rationale of Judicial Evidence, specially applied to English Practice, at various times between the years 1802 and 1812. By this time he had lost the nervous and simple style of his youth, and required an editor to make him readable. His great interpreter, Dumont, condensed his views on evidence into the Traité des preuves judiciaires, which was published in 1823. The manuscript of the Rationale was edited for English reading, and to a great extent rewritten, by J.S. Mill, and was published in five volumes in 1827. The book had a great effect both in England and on the continent. The English version, though crabbed and artificial in style, and unmeasured in its invective, is a storehouse of comments and criticisms on the principles of evidence and the practice of the courts, which are always shrewd and often profound. Bentham examined the practice of the courts by the light of practical utility. Starting from the principle that the object of judicial evidence is the discovery of truth, he condemned the rules which excluded some of the best sources of evidence. The most characteristic feature of the common-law rules of evidence was, as Bentham pointed out, and, indeed, still is, their exclusionary character. They excluded and prohibited the use of certain kinds of evidence which would be used in ordinary inquiries. In particular, they disqualified certain classes of witnesses on the ground of interest in the subject-matter of the inquiry, instead of treating the interest of the witness as a matter affecting his credibility. It was against this confusion between competency and credibility that Bentham directed his principal attack. He also attacked the system of paper evidence, evidence by means of affidavits instead of by oral testimony in court, which prevailed in the court of chancery, and in ecclesiastical courts. Subsequent legislation has endorsed his criticisms. The Judicature Acts have reduced the use of affidavits in chancery proceedings within reasonable limits. A series of acts of parliament have removed, step by step, almost all the disqualifications which formerly made certain witnesses incompetent to testify.

Before Bentham’s work appeared, an act of 1814 had removed the incompetency of ratepayers as witnesses in certain cases relating to parishes. The Civil Procedure Act 1833 enacted that a witness should not be objected to as incompetent, solely on the ground that the verdict or judgment would be admissible in evidence for or against him. An act of 1840 removed some doubts as to the competency of ratepayers to give evidence in matters relating to their parish. The Evidence Act 1843 enacted broadly that witnesses should not be excluded from giving evidence by reason of incapacity from crime or interest. The Evidence Act 1851 made parties to legal proceedings admissible witnesses subject to a proviso that “nothing herein contained shall render any person who in any criminal proceeding is charged with the commission of any indictable offence, or any offence punishable on summary conviction, competent or compellable to give evidence for or against himself or herself, or shall render any person compellable to answer any question tending to criminate himself or herself, or shall in any criminal proceeding render any husband competent or compellable to give evidence for or against his wife, or any wife competent or compellable to give evidence for or against her husband.” The Evidence (Scotland) Act 1853 made a similar provision for Scotland. The Evidence Amendment Act 1853 made the husbands and wives of parties admissible witnesses, except that husbands and wives could not give evidence for or against each other in criminal proceedings or in proceedings for adultery, and could not be compelled to disclose communications made to each other during marriage. Under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 the petitioner can be examined and cross-examined on oath at the hearing, but is not bound to answer any question tending to show that he or she has been guilty of adultery. Under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1859, on a wife’s petition for dissolution of marriage on the ground of adultery coupled with cruelty or desertion, husband and wife are competent and compellable to give evidence as to the cruelty or desertion. The Crown Suits &c. Act 1865 declared that revenue proceedings were not to be treated as criminal proceedings for the purposes of the acts of 1851 and 1853. The Evidence Further Amendment Act 1869 declared that parties to actions for breach of promise of marriage were competent to give evidence in the action, subject to a proviso that the plaintiff should not recover unless his or her testimony was corroborated by some other material evidence. It also made the parties to proceedings instituted in consequence of adultery, and their husbands and wives, competent to give evidence, but a witness in any such proceeding, whether a party or not, is not to be liable to be asked or bound to answer any question tending to show that he or she has been guilty of adultery, unless the witness has already given evidence in the same proceeding in disproof of the alleged adultery. There are similar provisions applying to Scotland in the Conjugal Rights (Scotland) Amendment Act 1861, and the Evidence Further Amendment (Scotland) Act 1874. The Evidence Act 1877 enacts that “on the trial of any indictment or other proceeding for the non-repair of any public highway or bridge, or for a nuisance to any public highway, river, or bridge, and of any other indictment or proceeding instituted for the purpose of trying or enforcing a civil right only, every defendant to such indictment or proceeding, and the wife or husband of any such defendant shall be admissible witnesses and compellable to give evidence.” From 1872 onwards numerous enactments were passed making persons charged with particular offences, and their husbands and wives, competent witnesses. The language and effect of these enactments were not always the same, but the insertion of some provision to this effect in an act creating a new offence, especially if it was punishable by summary proceedings, gradually became almost a common form in legislation. In the year 1874 a bill to generalize these particular provisions, and to make the evidence of persons charged with criminal offences admissible in all cases was introduced by Mr Gladstone’s government, and was passed by the standing committee of the House of Commons. During the next fourteen years bills for the same purpose were repeatedly introduced, either by the government of the day, or by Lord Bramwell as an independent member of the House of Lords. Finally the Criminal Evidence Act 1898, introduced by Lord Halsbury, has enacted in general terms that “every person charged with an offence, and the wife or husband, as the case may be, of the person so charged, shall be a competent witness for the defence at every stage of the proceedings, whether the person so charged is charged solely or jointly with any other person.” But this general enactment is qualified by some special restrictions, the nature of which will be noticed below. The act applies to Scotland but not to Ireland. It was not to apply to proceedings in courts-martial unless so applied by general orders or rules made under statutory authority. The provisions of the act have been applied by rules to military courts-martial, but have not yet been applied to naval courts-martial. The removal of disqualifications for want of religious belief is referred to below under the head of “Witnesses.”

The act of 1898 finishes for the present the history of English legislation on evidence. For a view of the legal literature on the subject it is necessary to take a step backwards. Early in the 19th century Chief Baron Gilbert was superseded Literature. as an authority on the English law of evidence by the books of Phillips (1814) and Starkie (1824), who were followed by Roscoe (Nisi Prius, 1827; Criminal Cases, 1835), Greenleaf (American, 1842), Taylor (based on Greenleaf, 1848), and Best (1849). In 1876 Sir James FitzJames Stephen brought out his Digest of the Law of Evidence, based upon the Indian Evidence Act 1872, which he had prepared and passed as law member of the council of the governor-general of India. This Digest obtained a rapid and well-deserved success, and has materially influenced the form of subsequent writings on the English law of evidence. It sifted out what Stephen conceived to be the main rules of evidence from the mass of extraneous matter in which they had been embedded. Roscoe’s Digests told the lawyer what things must be proved in order to sustain particular actions or criminal charges, and related as much to pleadings and to substantive law as to evidence proper. Taylor’s two large volumes were a vast storehouse of useful information, but his book was one to consult, not to master. Stephen eliminated much of this extraneous matter, and summed up his rules in a series of succinct propositions, supplemented by apt illustrations, and couched in such a form that they could be easily read and remembered. Hence the English Digest, like the Indian Act, has been of much educational value. Its most original feature, but unfortunately also its weakest point, is its theory of relevancy. Pondering the multitude of “exclusionary” rules which had been laid down by the English courts, Stephen thought that he had discovered the general principle on which those rules reposed, and could devise a formula by which the principle could be expressed. “My study of the subject,” he says, “both practically and in books has convinced me that the doctrine that all facts in issue and relevant to the issue, and no others, may be proved, is the unexpressed principle which forms the centre of and gives unity to all the express negative rules which form the great mass of the law.” The result was the chapter on the relevancy of facts in the Indian Evidence Act, and the definition of relevancy in s. 7 of that act. This definition was based on the view that a distinction could be drawn between things which were and things which were not causally connected with each other, and that relevancy depended on causal connexion. Subsequent criticism convinced Stephen that his definition was in some respects too narrow and in others too wide, and eventually he adopted a definition out of which all reference to causality was dropped. But even in their amended form the provisions about relevancy are open to serious criticism. The doctrine of relevancy, i.e. of the probative effect of facts, is a branch of logic, not of law, and is out of place both in an enactment of the legislature and in a compendium of legal rules. The necessity under which Stephen found himself of extending the range of relevant facts by making it include facts “deemed to be relevant,” and then narrowing it by enabling the judge to exclude evidence of facts which are relevant, illustrates the difference between the rules of logic and the rules of law. Relevancy is one thing; admissibility is another; and the confusion between them, which is much older than Stephen, is to be regretted. Rightly or wrongly English judges have, on practical grounds, declared inadmissible evidence of facts, which are relevant in the ordinary sense of the term, and which are so treated in non-judicial inquiries. Under these circumstances the attempt so to define relevancy as to make it conterminous with admissibility is misleading, and most readers of Stephen’s Act and Digest would find them more intelligible and more useful if “admissible” were substituted for “relevant” throughout. Indeed it is hardly too much to say that Stephen’s doctrine of relevancy is theoretically unsound and practically useless. The other parts of the work contain terse and vigorous statements of the law, but a Procrustean attempt to make legal rules square with a preconceived theory has often made the language and arrangement artificial, and the work, in spite of its compression, still contains rules which, under a more scientific treatment, would find their appropriate place in other branches of the law. These defects are characteristic of a strong and able man, who saw clearly, and expressed forcibly what he did see, but was apt to ignore or to deny the existence of what he did not see, whose mind was vigorous rather than subtle or accurate, and who, in spite of his learning, was somewhat deficient in the historical sense. But notwithstanding these defects, the conspicuous ability of the author, his learning, and his practical experience, especially in criminal cases, attach greater weight to FitzJames Stephen’s statements than to those of any other English writer on the law of evidence.

The object of every trial is, or may be, to determine two classes of questions or issues, which are usually distinguished as questions of law, and questions of fact, although the distinction between them is not so clear as might Rules. appear on a superficial view. In a trial by jury these two classes of questions are answered by different persons. The judge lays down the law. The jury, under the guidance of the judge, find the facts. It was with reference to trial by jury that the English rules of evidence were originally framed; it is by the peculiarities of this form of trial that many of them are to be explained; it is to this form of trial alone that some of the most important of them are exclusively applicable. The negative, exclusive, or exclusionary rules which form the characteristic features of the English law of evidence, are the rules in accordance with which the judge guides the jury. There is no difference of principle between the method of inquiry in judicial and in non-judicial proceedings. In either case a person who wishes to find out whether a particular event did or did not happen, tries, in the first place, to obtain information from persons who were present and saw what happened (direct evidence), and, failing this, to obtain information from persons who can tell him about facts from which he can draw an inference as to whether the event did or did not happen (indirect evidence). But in judicial inquiries the information given must be given on oath, and be liable to be tested by cross-examination. And there are rules of law which exclude from the consideration of the jury certain classes of facts which, in an ordinary inquiry, would, or might, be taken into consideration. Facts so excluded are said to be “not admissible as evidence,” or “not evidence,” according as the word is used in the wider or in the narrower sense. And the easiest way of determining whether a fact is or is not evidence in the narrower sense, is first to consider whether it has any bearing on the question to be tried, and, if it has, to consider whether it falls within any one or more of the rules of exclusion laid down by English law. These rules of exclusion are peculiar to English law and to systems derived from English law. They have been much criticized, and some of them have been repealed or materially modified by legislation. Most of them may be traced to directions given by a judge in the course of trying a particular case, given with special reference to the circumstances of that case, but expressed in general language, and, partly through the influence of text-writers, eventually hardened into general rules. In some cases their origin is only intelligible by reference to obsolete forms of pleading or practice. But in most cases they were originally rules of convenience laid down by the judge for the assistance of the jury. The judge is a man of trained experience, who has to arrive at a conclusion with the help of twelve untrained men, and who is naturally anxious to keep them straight, and give them every assistance in his power. The exclusion of certain forms of evidence assists the jury by concentrating their attention on the questions immediately before them, and by preventing them from being distracted or bewildered by facts which either have no bearing on the question before them, or have so remote a bearing on those questions as to be practically useless as guides to the truth. It also prevents a jury from being misled by statements the effect of which, through the prejudice they excite, is out of all proportion to their true weight. In this respect the rules of exclusion may be compared to blinkers, which keep a horse’s eyes on the road before him. In criminal cases the rules of exclusion secure fair play to the accused, because he comes to the trial prepared to meet a specific charge, and ought not to be suddenly confronted by statements which he had no reason to expect would be made against him. They protect absent persons against statements affecting their character. And lastly they prevent the infinite waste of time which would ensue in the discussion of a question of fact if an inquiry were allowed to branch out into all the subjects with which that fact is more or less connected. The purely practical grounds on which the rules are based, according to the view of a great judge, may be illustrated by some remarks of Mr Justice Willes (1814-1872). In discussing the question whether evidence of the plaintiff’s conduct on other occasions ought to be admitted, he said:—

“It is not easy in all cases to draw the line and to define with accuracy where probability ceases and speculation begins; but we are bound to lay down the rule to the best of our ability. No doubt the rule as to confining the evidence to that which is relevant and pertinent to the issue is one of great importance, not only as regards the particular case, but also with reference to saving the time of the court, and preventing the minds of the jury from being drawn away from the real point they have to decide.... Now it appears to me that the evidence proposed to be given in this case, if admitted, would not have shown that it was more probable that the contract was subject to the condition insisted upon by the defendant. The question may be put thus, Does the fact of a person having once or many times in his life done a particular act in a particular way make it more probable that he has done the same thing in the same way upon another and different occasion? To admit such speculative evidence would, I think, be fraught with great danger.... If such evidence were held admissible it would be difficult to say that the defendant might not in any case, where the question was whether or not there had been a sale of goods on credit, call witnesses to prove that the plaintiff had dealt with other persons upon a certain credit; or, in an action for an assault, that the plaintiff might not give evidence of former assaults committed by the defendant upon other persons, or upon other persons of a particular class, for the purpose of showing that he was a quarrelsome individual, and therefore that it was highly probable that the particular charge of assault was well founded. The extent to which this sort of thing might be carried is inconceivable.... To obviate the prejudices, the injustice, and the waste of time to which the admission of such evidence would lead, and bearing in mind the extent to which it might be carried, and that litigants are mortal, it is necessary not only to adhere to the rule, but to lay it down strictly. I think, therefore, the fact that the plaintiff had entered into contracts of a particular kind with other persons on other occasions could not be properly admitted in evidence where no custom of trade to make such contracts, and no connexion between such and the one in question, was shown to exist” (Hollingham v. Head, 1858, 4 C.B. N.S. 388).

There is no difference between the principles of evidence in civil and in criminal cases, although there are a few special rules, such as those relating to confessions and to dying declarations, which are only applicable to criminal proceedings. But in civil proceedings the issues are narrowed by mutual admissions of the parties, more use is made of evidence taken out of court, such as affidavits, and, generally, the rules of evidence are less strictly applied. It is often impolitic to object to the admission of evidence, even when the objection may be sustained by previous rulings. The general tendency of modern procedure is to place a more liberal and less technical construction on rules of evidence, especially in civil cases. In recent volumes of law reports cases turning on the admissibility of evidence are conspicuous by their rarity. Various causes have operated in this direction. One of them has been the change in the system of pleading, under which each party now knows before the actual trial the main facts on which his opponent relies. Another is the interaction of chancery and common-law practice and traditions since the Judicature Acts. In the chancery courts the rules of evidence were always less carefully observed, or, as Westminster would have said, less understood, than in the courts of common law. A judge trying questions of fact alone might naturally think that blinkers, though useful for a jury, are unnecessary for a judge. And the chancery judge was apt to read his affidavits first, and to determine their admissibility afterwards. In the meantime they had affected his mind.

The tendency of modern text-writers, among whom Professor J.B. Thayer (1831-1902), of Harvard, was perhaps the most independent, instructive and suggestive, is to restrict materially the field occupied by the law of evidence, and to relegate to other branches of the law topics traditionally treated under the head of evidence. Thus in every way the law of evidence, though still embodying some principles of great importance, is of less comparative importance as a branch of English law than it was half a century ago. Legal rules, like dogmas, have their growth and decay. First comes the judge who gives a ruling in a particular case. Then comes the text-writer who collects the scattered rulings, throws them into the form of general propositions, connects them together by some theory, sound or unsound, and often ignores or obscures their historical origin. After him comes the legislator who crystallizes the propositions into enactments, not always to the advantage of mankind. So also with decay. Legal rules fall into the background, are explained away, are ignored, are denied, are overruled. Much of the English law of evidence is in a stage of decay.

The subject-matter of the law of evidence may be arranged differently according to the taste or point of view of the writer. It will be arranged here under the following heads:—I. Preliminary Matter; II. Classes of Evidence; III. Rules of Exclusion; IV. Documentary Evidence; V. Witnesses.

I. Preliminary Matter

Under this head may be grouped certain principles and considerations which limit the range of matters to which evidence relates.

1. Law and Fact.—Evidence relates only to facts. It is therefore necessary to touch on the distinction between law and facts. Ad quaestionem facti non respondent judices; ad quaestionem juris non respondent juratores. Thus Coke, attributing, after his wont, to Bracton a maxim which may have been invented by himself. The maxim became the subject of political controversy, and the two rival views are represented by Pulteney’s lines—

and by Lord Mansfield’s variant—

“Who are judges of facts, but not judges of laws.”

The particular question raised with respect to the law of libel was settled by Fox’s Libel Act 1792. Coke’s maxim describes in a broad general way the distinction between the functions of the judge and of the jury, but is only true subject to important qualifications. Judges in jury cases constantly decide what may be properly called questions of fact, though their action is often disguised by the language applied or the procedure employed. Juries, in giving a general verdict, often practically take the law into their own hands. The border-line between the two classes of questions is indicated by the “mixed questions of law and fact,” to use a common phrase, which arise in such cases as those relating to “necessaries,” “due diligence,” “negligence,” “reasonableness,” “reasonable and probable cause.” In the treatment of these cases the line has been drawn differently at different times, and two conflicting tendencies are discernible. On the one hand, there is the natural tendency to generalize common inferences into legal rules, and to fix legal standards of duty. On the other hand, there is the sound instinct that it is a mistake to define and refine too much in these cases, and that the better course is to leave broadly to the jury, under the general guidance of the judge, the question what would be done by the “reasonable” or “prudent” man in particular cases. The latter tendency predominates in modern English law, and is reflected by the enactments in the recent acts codifying the law on bills of exchange and sale of goods, that certain questions of reasonableness are to be treated as questions of fact. On the same ground rests the dislike to limit the right of a jury to give a general verdict in criminal cases. Questions of custom begin by being questions of fact, but as the custom obtains general recognition it becomes law. Many of the rules of the English mercantile law were “found” as customs by Lord Mansfield’s special juries. Generally, it must be remembered that the jury act in subordinate co-operation with the judge, and that the extent to which the judge limits or encroaches on the province of the jury is apt to depend on the personal idiosyncrasy of the judge.

2. Judicial Notice.—It may be doubted whether the subject of judicial notice belongs properly to the law of evidence, and whether it does not belong rather to the general topic of legal or judicial reasoning. Matters which are the subject of judicial notice are part of the equipment of the judicial mind. It would be absurd to require evidence of every fact; many facts must be assumed to be known. The judge, like the juryman, is supposed to bring with him to the consideration of the question which he has to try common sense, a general knowledge of human nature and the ways of the world, and also knowledge of things that “everybody is supposed to know.” Of such matters judicial notice is said to be taken. But the range of general knowledge is indefinite, and the range of judicial notice has, for reasons of convenience, been fixed or extended, both by rulings of the judges and by numerous enactments of the legislature. It would be impossible to enumerate here the matters of which judicial notice must or may be taken. These are to be found in the text-books. For present purposes it must suffice to say that they include not only matters of fact of common and certain knowledge, but the law and practice of the courts, and many matters connected with the government of the country.

3. Presumptions.—A presumption in the ordinary sense is an inference. It is an argument, based on observation, that what has happened in some cases will probably happen in others of the like nature. The subject of presumptions, so far as they are mere inferences or arguments, belongs, not to the law of evidence, or to law at all, but to rules of reasoning. But a legal presumption, or, as it is sometimes called, a presumption of law, as distinguished from a presumption of fact, is something more. It may be described, in Stephen’s language, as “a rule of law that courts and judges shall draw a particular inference from a particular fact, or from particular evidence, unless and until the truth” (perhaps it would be better to say ‘soundness’) “of the inference is disproved.” Courts and legislatures have laid down such rules on grounds of public policy or general convenience, and the rules have then to be observed as rules of positive law, not merely used as part of the ordinary process of reasoning or argument. Some so-called presumptions are rules of substantive law under a disguise. To this class appear to belong “conclusive presumptions of law,” such as the common-law presumption that a child under seven years of age cannot commit a felony. So again the presumption that every one knows the law is merely an awkward way of saying that ignorance of the law is not a legal excuse for breaking it. Of true legal presumptions, the majority may be dealt with most appropriately under different branches of the substantive law, such as the law of crime, of property, or of contract, and accordingly Stephen has included in his Digest of the Law of Evidence only some which are common to more than one branch of the law. The effect of a presumption is to impute to certain facts or groups of facts a prima facie significance or operation, and thus, in legal proceedings, to throw upon the party against whom it works the duty of bringing forward evidence to meet it. Accordingly the subject of presumptions is intimately connected with the subject of the burden of proof, and the same legal rule may be expressed in different forms, either as throwing the advantage of a presumption on one side, or as throwing the burden of proof on the other. Thus the rule in Stephen’s Digest, which says that the burden of proving that any person has been guilty of a crime or wrongful act is on the person who asserts it, appears in the article entitled “Presumption of Innocence.” Among the more ordinary and more important legal presumptions are the presumption of regularity in proceedings, described generally as a presumption omnia esse rite acta, and including the presumption that the holder of a public office has been duly appointed, and has duly performed his official duties, the presumption of the legitimacy of a child born during the mother’s marriage, or within the period of gestation after her husband’s death, and the presumptions as to life and death. “A person shown not to have been heard of for seven years by those (if any) who, if he had been alive, would naturally have heard of him, is presumed to be dead unless the circumstances of the case are such as to account for his not being heard of without assuming his death; but there is no presumption as to the time when he died, and the burden of proving his death at any particular time is upon the person who asserts it. There is no presumption” (i.e. legal presumption) “as to the age at which a person died who is shown to have been alive at a given time, or as to the order in which two or more persons died who are shown to have died in the same accident, shipwreck or battle” (Stephen, Dig., art. 99). A document proved or purporting to be thirty years old is presumed to be genuine, and to have been properly executed and (if necessary) attested if produced from the proper custody. And the legal presumption of a “lost grant,” i.e. the presumption that a right or alleged right which has been long enjoyed without interruption had a legal origin, still survives in addition to the common law and statutory rules of prescription.

4. Burden of Proof.—The expression onus probandi has come down from the classical Roman law, and both it and the Roman maxims, Agenti incumbit probatio, Necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui dicit non ei qui negat, and Reus excipiendo fit actor, must be read with reference to the Roman system of actions, under which nothing was admitted, but the plaintiff’s case was tried first; then, unless that failed, the defendant’s on his exceptio; then, unless that failed, the plaintiff’s on his replicatio, and so on. Under such a system the burden was always on the “actor.” In modern law the phrase “burden of proof” may mean one of two things, which are often confused—the burden of establishing the proposition or issue on which the case depends, and the burden of producing evidence on any particular point either at the beginning or at a later stage of the case. The burden in the former sense ordinarily rests on the plaintiff or prosecutor. The burden in the latter sense, that of going forward with evidence on a particular point, may shift from side to side as the case proceeds. The general rule is that he who alleges a fact must prove it, whether the allegation is couched in affirmative or negative terms. But this rule is subject to the effect of presumptions in particular cases, to the principle that in considering the amount of evidence necessary to shift the burden of proof regard must be had to the opportunities of knowledge possessed by the parties respectively, and to the express provisions of statutes directing where the burden of proof is to lie in particular cases. Thus many statutes expressly direct that the proof of lawful excuse or authority, or the absence of fraudulent intent, is to lie on the person charged with an offence. And the Summary Jurisdiction Act 1848 provides that if the information or complaint in summary proceedings negatives any exemption, exception, proviso, or condition in the statute on which it is founded, the prosecutor or complainant need not prove the negative, but the defendant may prove the affirmative in his defence.

II. Classes of Evidence

Evidence is often described as being either oral or documentary. To these two classes should be added a third, called by Bentham real evidence, and consisting of things presented immediately to the senses of the judge or the jury. Thus the judge or jury may go to view any place the sight of which may help to an understanding of the evidence, and may inspect anything sufficiently identified and produced in court as material to the decision. Weapons, clothes and things alleged to have been stolen or damaged are often brought into court for this purpose. Oral evidence consists of the statements of witnesses. Documentary evidence consists of documents submitted to the judge or jury by way of proof. The distinction between primary and secondary evidence relates only to documentary evidence, and will be noticed in the section under that head. A division of evidence from another point of view is that into direct and indirect, or, as it is sometimes called, circumstantial evidence. By direct evidence is meant the statement of a person who saw, or otherwise observed with his senses, the fact in question. By indirect or circumstantial evidence is meant evidence of facts from which the fact in question may be inferred. The difference between direct and indirect evidence is a difference of kind, not of degree, and therefore the rule or maxim as to “best evidence” has no application to it. Juries naturally attach more weight to direct evidence, and in some legal systems it is only this class of evidence which is allowed to have full probative force. In some respects indirect evidence is superior to direct evidence, because, as Paley puts it, “facts cannot lie,” whilst witnesses can and do. On the other hand facts often deceive; that is to say, the inferences drawn from them are often erroneous. The circumstances in which crimes are ordinarily committed are such that direct evidence of their commission is usually not obtainable, and when criminality depends on a state of mind, such as intention, that state must necessarily be inferred by means of indirect evidence.

III. Rules of Exclusion

It seems desirable to state the leading rules of exclusion in their crude form instead of obscuring their historical origin by attempting to force them into the shape of precise technical propositions forming parts of a logically connected system. The judges who laid the foundations of our modern law of evidence, like those who first discoursed on the duties of trustees, little dreamt of the elaborate and artificial system which was to be based upon their remarks. The rules will be found, as might be expected, to be vague, to overlap each other, to require much explanation, and to be subject to many exceptions. They may be stated as follows:—(1) Facts not relevant to the issue cannot be admitted as evidence. (2) The evidence produced must be the best obtainable under the circumstances. (3) Hearsay is not evidence. (4) Opinion is not evidence.

1. Rule of Relevancy.—The so-called rule of relevancy is sometimes stated by text-writers in the form in which it was laid down by Baron Parke in 1837 (Wright v. Doe and Tatham, 7 A. and E. 384), when he described “one great principle” in the law of evidence as being that “all facts which are relevant to the issue may be proved.” Stated in different forms, the rule has been made by FitzJames Stephen the central point of his theory of evidence. But relevancy, in the proper and natural sense, as we have said, is a matter not of law, but of logic. If Baron Parke’s dictum relates to relevancy in its natural sense it is not true; if it relates to relevancy in a narrow and artificial sense, as equivalent to admissible, it is tautological. Such practical importance as the rule of relevancy possesses consists, not in what it includes, but in what it excludes, and for that reason it seems better to state the rule in a negative or exclusive form. But whether the rule is stated in a positive or in a negative form its vagueness is apparent. No precise line can be drawn between “relevant” and “irrelevant” facts. The two classes shade into each other by imperceptible degrees. The broad truth is that the courts have excluded from consideration certain matters which have some bearing on the question to be decided, and which, in that sense, are relevant, and that they have done so on grounds of policy and convenience. Among the matters so excluded are matters which are likely to mislead the jury, or to complicate the case unnecessarily, or which are of slight, remote, or merely conjectural importance. Instances of the classes of matters so excluded can be given, but it seems difficult to refer their exclusion to any more general principle than this. Rules as to evidence of character and conduct appear to fall under this principle. Evidence is not admissible to show that the person who is alleged to have done a thing was of a disposition or character which makes it probable that he would or would not have done it. This rule excludes the biographical accounts of the prisoner which are so familiar in French trials, and is an important principle in English trials. It is subject to three exceptions: first, that evidence of good character is admissible in favour of the prisoner in all criminal cases; secondly, that a prisoner indicted for rape is entitled to call evidence as to the immoral character of the prosecutrix; and thirdly, that a witness may be called to say that he would not believe a previous witness on his oath. The exception allowing the good character of a prisoner to influence the verdict, as distinguished from the sentence, is more humane than logical, and seems to have been at first admitted in capital cases only. The exception in rape cases does not allow evidence to be given of specific acts of immorality with persons other than the prisoner, doubtless on the ground that such evidence would affect the reputations of third parties. Where the character of a person is expressly in issue, as in actions of libel and slander, the rule of exclusion, as stated above, does not apply. Nor does it prevent evidence of bad character from being given in mitigation of damages, where the amount of damages virtually depends on character, as in cases of defamation and seduction. As to conduct there is a similar general rule, that evidence of the conduct of a person on other occasions is not to be used merely for the purpose of showing the likelihood of his having acted in a similar way on a particular occasion. Thus, on a charge of murder, the prosecutor cannot give evidence of the prisoner’s conduct to other persons for the purpose of proving a bloodthirsty and murderous disposition. And in a civil case a defendant was not allowed to show that the plaintiff had sold goods on particular terms to other persons for the purpose of proving that he had sold similar goods on the same terms to the defendant. But this general rule must be carefully construed. Where several offences are so connected with each other as to form parts of an entire transaction, evidence of one is admissible as proof of another. Thus, where a prisoner is charged with stealing particular goods from a particular place, evidence may be given that other goods, taken from the same place at the same time, were found in his possession. And where it is proved or admitted that a person did a particular act, and the question is as to his state of mind, that is to say, whether he did the act knowingly, intentionally, fraudulently, or the like, evidence may be given of the commission by him of similar acts on other occasions for the purpose of proving his state of mind on the occasion. This principle is most commonly applied in charges for uttering false documents or base coin, and not uncommonly in charges for false pretences, embezzlement or murder. In proceedings for the receipt or possession of stolen property, the legislature has expressly authorized evidence to be given of the possession by the prisoner of other stolen property, or of his previous conviction of an offence involving fraud or dishonesty (Prevention of Crimes Act 1871). Again, where there is a question whether a person committed an offence, evidence may be given of any fact supplying a motive or constituting preparation for the offence, of any subsequent conduct of the person accused, which is apparently influenced by the commission of the offence, and of any act done by him, or by his authority, in consequence of the offence. Thus, evidence may be given that, after the commission of the alleged offence, the prisoner absconded, or was in possession of the property, or the proceeds of the property, acquired by the offence, or that he attempted to conceal things which were or might have been used in committing the offence, or as to the manner in which he conducted himself when statements were made in his presence and hearing. Statements made to or in the presence of a person charged with an offence are admitted as evidence, not of the facts stated, but of the conduct or demeanour of the person to whom or in whose presence they are made, or of the general character of the transaction of which they form part (under the res gestae rule mentioned below).

2. Best Evidence Rule.—Statements to the effect of the best evidence rule were often made by Chief Justice Holt about the beginning of the 18th century, and became familiar in the courts. Chief Baron Gilbert, in his book on evidence, which must have been written before 1726, says that “the first and most signal rule in relation to evidence is this, that a man must have the utmost evidence the nature of the fact is capable of.” And in the great case of Omichund v. Barker (1744), Lord Hardwicke went so far as to say, “The judges and sages of the law have laid down that there is but one general rule of evidence, the best that the nature of the case will admit” (1 Atkyns 49). It is no wonder that a rule thus solemnly stated should have found a prominent place in text-books on the law of evidence. But, apart from its application to documentary evidence, it does not seem to be more than a useful guiding principle which underlies, or may be used in support of, several rules.

It is to documentary evidence that the principle is usually applied, in the form of the narrower rule excluding, subject to exceptions, secondary evidence of the contents of a document where primary evidence is obtainable. In this form the rule is a rule of exclusion, but may be most conveniently dealt with in connexion with the special subject of documentary evidence. As noticed above, the general rule does not apply to the difference between direct and indirect evidence. And, doubtless on account of its vague character, it finds no place in Stephen’s Digest.

3. Hearsay.—The term “hearsay” primarily applies to what a witness has heard another person say in respect to a fact in dispute. But it is extended to any statement, whether reduced to writing or not, which is brought before the court, not by the author of the statement, but by a person to whose knowledge the statement has been brought. Thus the hearsay rule excludes statements, oral or written, made in the first instance by a person who is not called as a witness in the case. Historically this rule may be traced to the time when the functions of the witnesses were first distinguished from the functions of the jury, and when the witnesses were required by their formula to testify de visu suo et auditu, to state what they knew about facts from the direct evidence of their senses, not from the information of others. The rule excludes statements the effect of which is liable to be altered by the narrator, and which purport to have been made by persons who did not necessarily speak under the sanction of an oath, and whose accuracy or veracity is not tested by cross-examination. It is therefore of practical utility in shutting out many loose statements and much irresponsible gossip. On the other hand, it excludes statements which are of some value as evidence, and may indeed be the only available evidence. Thus, a statement has been excluded as hearsay, even though it can be proved that the author of the statement made it on oath, or that it was against his interest when he made it, or that he is prevented by insanity or other illness from giving evidence himself, or that he has left the country and disappeared, or that he is dead.

Owing to the inconveniences which would be caused by a strict application of the rule, it has been so much eaten into by exceptions that some persons doubt whether the rule and the exceptions ought not to change places. Among the exceptions the following may be noticed: (a) Certain sworn statements.—In many cases statements made by a person whose evidence is material, but who cannot come before the court, or could not come before it without serious difficulty, delay or expense, may be admitted as evidence under proper safeguards. Under the Indictable Offences Act 1848, where a person has made a deposition before a justice at a preliminary inquiry into an offence, his deposition may be read in evidence on proof that the deponent is dead, or too ill to travel, that the deposition was taken in the presence of the accused person, and that the accused then had a full opportunity of cross-examining the deponent. The deposition must appear to be signed by the justice before whom it purports to have been taken. Depositions taken before a coroner are admissible under the same principle. And the principle probably extends to cases where the deponent is insane, or kept away by the person accused. There are other statutory provisions for the admission of depositions, as in the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1867; the Foreign Jurisdiction Act 1890; and the Children Act 1908, incorporating an act of 1894. In civil cases the rule excluding statements not made in court at the trial is much less strictly applied. Frequent use is made of evidence taken before an examiner, or under a commission. Affidavits are freely used for subordinate issues or under an arrangement between the parties, and leave may be given to use evidence taken in other proceedings. The old chancery practice, under which evidence, both at the trial and at other stages of a proceeding, was normally taken by affidavit, irrespectively of consent, was altered by the Judicature Acts. Under the existing rules of the supreme court evidence may be given by affidavit upon any motion, petition or summons, but the court or a judge may, on the application of either party, order the attendance for cross-examination of the person making the affidavit. (b) Dying declarations.—In a trial for murder or manslaughter a declaration by the person killed as to the cause of his death, or as to any of the circumstances of the transaction which resulted in his death, is admissible as evidence. But this exception is very strictly construed. It must be proved that the declarant, at the time of making the declaration, was in actual danger of death, and had given up all hope of recovery. (c) Statements in pedigree cases.—On a question of pedigree the statement of a deceased person, whether based on his own personal knowledge or on family tradition, is admissible as evidence, if it is proved that the person who made the statement was related to the person about whose family relations the statement was made, and that the statement was made before the question with respect to which the evidence is required had arisen. (d) Statements as to matters of public or general interest.—Statements by deceased persons are admissible as evidence of reputation or general belief in questions relating to the existence of any public or general right or custom, or matter of public and general interest. Statements of this kind are constantly admitted in questions relating to right of way, or rights of common, or manorial or other local customs. Maps, copies of court rolls, leases and other deeds, and verdicts, judgments, and orders of court fall within the exception in cases of this kind. (e) Statements in course of duty or business.—A statement with respect to a particular fact made by a deceased person in pursuance of his duty in connexion with any office, employment or business, whether public or private, is admissible as evidence of that fact, if the statement appears to have been made from personal knowledge, and at or about the time when the fact occurred. This exception covers entries by clerks and other employees. (f) Statements against interest.—A statement made by a deceased person against his pecuniary or proprietary interest is admissible as evidence, without reference to the time at which it was made. Where such a statement is admissible the whole of it becomes admissible, though it may contain matters not against the interest of the person who made it, and though the total effect may be in his favour. Thus, where there was a question whether a particular sum was a gift or a loan, entries in an account book of receipt of interest on the sum were admitted, and a statement in the book that the alleged debtor had on a particular date acknowledged the loan was also admitted. (g) Public documents.—Under this head may be placed recitals in public acts of parliament, notices in the London, Edinburgh, or Dublin Gazette (which are made evidence by statute in a large number of cases), and entries made in the performance of duty in official registers or records, such as registers of births, deaths or marriages, registers of companies, records in judicial proceedings, and the like. An entry in a public document may be treated as a statement made in the course of duty, but it is admissible whether the person who made the statement is alive or dead, and without any evidence as to personal knowledge, or the time at which the statement is made. (h) Admissions.—By the term “admission,” as here used, is meant a statement made out of the witness-box by a party to the proceedings, whether civil or criminal, or by some person whose statements are binding on that party, against the interest of that party. The term includes admissions made in answer to interrogatories, or to a notice to admit facts, but not admissions made on the pleadings. Admissions, in this sense of the term, are admissible as evidence against the person by whom they are made, or on whom they are binding, without reference to the life or death of the person who made them. A person is bound by the statements of his agent, acting within the scope of his authority, and barristers and solicitors are agents for their clients in the conduct of legal proceedings. Conversely, a person suing or defending on behalf of another, e.g. as agent or trustee, is bound by the statements of the person whom he represents. Statements respecting property made by a predecessor in title bind the successor. Where a statement is put in evidence as an admission by, or binding on, any person, that person is entitled to have the whole statement given in evidence. The principle of this rule is obviously sound, because it would be unfair to pick out from a man’s statement what tells against him, and to suppress what is in his favour. But the application of the rule is sometimes attended with difficulty. An admission will not be allowed to be used as evidence if it was made under a stipulation, express or implied, that it should not be so used. Such admissions are said to be made “without prejudice.” (i) Confessions.—A confession is an admission by a person accused of an offence that he has committed the offence of which he is accused. But the rules about admitting as evidence confessions in criminal proceedings are much more strict than the rules about admissions in civil proceedings. The general rule is, that a confession is not admissible as evidence against any person except the person who makes it. But a confession made by one accomplice in the presence of another is admissible against the latter to this extent, that, if it implicates him, his silence under the charge may be used against him, whilst on the other hand his prompt repudiation of the charge might tell in his favour. In other words, the confession may be used as evidence of the conduct of the person in whose presence it was made. A confession cannot be admitted as evidence unless proved to be voluntary. A confession is not treated as being voluntary if it appears to the court to have been caused by any inducement, threat or promise which proceeded from a magistrate or other person in authority concerned in the charge, and which, in the opinion of the court, gave the accused person reasonable ground for supposing that by making a confession he would gain some advantage or avoid some evil in reference to the proceedings against him. This applies to any inducement, threat or promise having reference to the charge, whether it is addressed directly to the accused person or is brought to his knowledge indirectly. But a confession is not involuntary merely because it appears to have been caused by the exhortations of a person in authority to make it as a matter of religious duty, or by an inducement collateral to the proceedings, or by an inducement held out by a person having nothing to do with the apprehension, prosecution or examination of the prisoner. Thus, a confession made to a gaol chaplain in consequence of religious exhortation has been admitted as evidence. So also has a confession made by a prisoner to a gaoler in consequence of a promise by the gaoler, that if the prisoner confessed he should be allowed to see his wife. To make a confession involuntary, the inducement must have reference to the prisoner’s escape from the charge against him, and must be made by some person having power to relieve him, wholly or partially, from the consequences of the charge. A confession is treated as voluntary if, in the opinion of the court, it was made after the complete removal of the impression produced by any inducement, threat or promise which would have made it involuntary. Where a confession was made under an inducement which makes the confession involuntary, evidence may be given of facts discovered in consequence of the confession, and of so much of the confession as distinctly relates to those facts. Thus, A. under circumstances which make the confession involuntary, tells a policeman that he, A., had thrown a lantern into the pond. Evidence may be given that the lantern was found in the pond, and that A. said he had thrown it there. It is of course improper to try to extort a confession by fraud or under the promise of secrecy. But if a confession is otherwise admissible as evidence, it does not become inadmissible merely because it was made under a promise of secrecy, or in consequence of a deception practised on the accused person for the purpose of obtaining it, or when he was drunk, or because it was made in answer to questions, whether put by a magistrate or by a private person, or because he was not warned that he was not bound to make the confession, and that it might be used against him. If a confession is given in evidence, the whole of it must be given, and not merely the parts disadvantageous to the accused person. Evidence amounting to a confession may be used as such against the person who gave it, though it was given on oath, and though the proceeding in which it was given had reference to the same subject-matter as the proceeding in which it is to be used, and though the witness might have refused to answer the questions put to him. But if, after refusing to answer such questions, the witness is improperly compelled to answer, his answers are not a voluntary confession. The grave jealousy and suspicion with which the English law regards confessions offer a marked contrast to the importance attached to this form of evidence in other systems of procedure, such as the inquisitorial system which long prevailed, and still to some extent prevails, on the continent. (j) Res gestae.—Statements are often admitted as evidence on the ground that they form part of what is called the “transaction,” or res gestae, the occurrence or nature of which is in question. For instance, where an act may be proved, statements accompanying and explaining the act made by or to the person doing it, may be given in evidence. There is no difficulty in understanding the principle on which this exception from the hearsay rule rests, but there is often practical difficulty in applying it, and the practice has varied. How long is the “transaction” to be treated as lasting? What ought to be treated as “the immediate and natural effect of continuing action,” and, for that reason, as part of the res gestae? When an act of violence is committed, to what extent are the terms of the complaint made by the sufferer, as distinguished from the fact of a complaint having been made, admissible as evidence? These are some of the questions raised. The cases in which statements by a person as to his bodily or mental condition may be put in evidence may perhaps be treated as falling under the same principle. In the Rugeley poisoning case, statements by the deceased person before his illness as to his state of health, and as to his symptoms during illness, were admitted as evidence for the prosecution. Under the same principle may also be brought the rule as to statements in conspiracy cases. In charges of conspiracy, after evidence has been given of the existence of the plot, and of the connexion of the accused with it, the charge against one conspirator may be supported by evidence of anything done, written, or said, not only by him, but by any other of the conspirators, in furtherance of the common purpose. On the other hand, a statement made by one conspirator, not in execution of the common purpose, but in narration of some event forming part of the conspiracy, would be treated, not as part of the “transaction,” but as a statement excluded by the hearsay rule. Thus the admissibility of writings in conspiracy cases may depend on the time when they can be shown to have been in the possession of a fellow-conspirator, whether before or after the prisoner’s apprehension. (k) Complaints in rape cases, &c. —In trials for rape and similar offences, the fact that shortly after the commission of the alleged offence a complaint was made by the person against whom the offence was committed, and also the terms of the complaint, have been admitted as evidence, not of the facts complained of, but of the consistency of the complainant’s conduct with the story told by her in the witness-box, and as negativing consent on her part.

4. Opinion.—The rule excluding expressions of opinion also dates from the first distinction between the functions of witnesses and jury. It was for the witnesses to state facts, for the jury to form conclusions. Of course every statement of fact involves inference, and implies a judgment on phenomena observed by the senses. And the inference is often erroneous, as in the answer to the question, “Was he drunk?” A prudent witness will often guard himself, and is allowed to guard himself, by answering to the best of his belief. But, for practical purposes, it is possible to draw a distinction between a statement of facts observed and an expression of opinion as to the inference to be drawn from these facts, and the rule telling witnesses to state facts and not express opinions is of great value in keeping their statements out of the region of argument and conjecture. The evidence of “experts,” that is to say, of persons having a special knowledge of some particular subject, is generally described as constituting the chief exception to the rule. But perhaps it would be more accurate to say that experts are allowed a much wider range than ordinary witnesses in the expression of their opinions, and in the statement of facts on which their opinions are based. Thus, in a poisoning case, a doctor may be asked as an expert whether, in his opinion, a particular poison produces particular symptoms. And, where lunacy is set up as a defence, an expert may be asked whether, in his opinion, the symptoms exhibited by the alleged lunatic commonly show unsoundness of mind, and whether such unsoundness of mind usually renders persons incapable of knowing the nature of their acts, or of knowing that what they do is either wrong or contrary to the law. Similar principles are applied to the evidence of engineers, and in numerous other cases. In cases of disputed handwriting the evidence of experts in handwriting is expressly recognized by statute (Evidence and Practice on Criminal Trials 1865).

IV. Documentary Evidence

Charters and other writings were exhibited to the jury at a very early date, and it is to writings so exhibited that the term “evidence” or “evidences” seems to have been originally applied par excellence. The oral evidence of witnesses came later. Where a document is to be used as evidence the first question is how its contents are to be proved. To this question the principle of “best evidence” applies, in the form of the rule that primary evidence must be given except in the cases where secondary evidence is allowed. By primary evidence is meant the document itself produced for inspection. By secondary evidence is meant a copy of the document, or verbal accounts of its contents.

The rule as to the inadmissibility of a copy of a document is applied much more strictly to private than to public or official documents. Secondary evidence may be given of the contents of a private document in the following cases:

(a) Where the original is shown or appears to be in the possession of the adverse party, and he, after having been served with reasonable notice to produce it, does not do so.

(b) Where the original is shown or appears to be in the possession or power of a stranger not legally bound to produce it, and he, after having been served with a writ of subpoena duces tecum, or after having been sworn as a witness and asked for the document, and having admitted that it is in court, refuses to produce it.

(c) Where it is shown that proper search has been made for the original, and there is reason for believing that it is destroyed or lost.

(d) Where the original is of such a nature as not to be easily movable, as in the case of a placard posted on a wall, or of a tombstone, or is in a country from which it is not permitted to be removed.

(e) Where the original is a document for the proof of which special provision is made by any act of parliament, or any law in force for the time being. Documents of that kind are practically treated on the same footing as private documents.

(f) Where the document is an entry in a banker’s book, provable according to the special provisions of the Bankers’ Books Evidence Act 1879.

Secondary evidence of a private document is usually given either by producing a copy and calling a witness who can prove the copy to be correct, or, when there is no copy obtainable, by calling a witness who has seen the document, and can give an account of its contents. No general definition of public document is possible, but the rules of evidence applicable to public documents are expressly applied by statute to many classes of documents. Primary evidence of any public document may be given by producing the document from proper custody, and by a witness identifying it as being what it professes to be. Public documents may always be proved by secondary evidence, but the particular kind of secondary evidence required is in many cases defined by statute. Where a document is of such a public nature as to be admissible in evidence on its mere production from the proper custody, and no statute exists which renders its contents provable by means of a copy, any copy thereof or extract therefrom is admissible as proof of its contents, if it is proved to be an examined copy or extract, or purports to be signed or certified as a true copy or extract by the officer to whose custody the original is entrusted. Many statutes provide that various certificates, official and public documents, documents and proceedings of corporations and of joint stock and other companies, and certified copies of documents, by-laws, entries in registers and other books, shall be receivable as evidence of certain particulars in courts of justice, if they are authenticated in the manner prescribed by the statutes. Whenever, by virtue of any such provision, any such certificate or certified copy is receivable as proof of any particular in any court of justice, it is admissible as evidence, if it purports to be authenticated in the manner prescribed by law, without calling any witness to prove any stamp, seal, or signature required for its authentication, or the official character of the person who appears to have signed it. The Documentary Evidence Acts 1868, 1882 and 1895, provide modes of proving the contents of several classes of proclamations, orders and regulations.

If a document is of a kind which is required by law to be attested, but not otherwise, an attesting witness must be called to prove its due execution. But this rule is subject to the following exceptions:

(a) If it is proved that there is no attesting witness alive, and capable of giving evidence, then it is sufficient to prove that the attestation of at least one attesting witness is in his handwriting, and that the signature of the person executing the document is in the handwriting of that person.

(b) If the document is proved, or purports to be, more than thirty years old, and is produced from what the court considers to be its proper custody, an attesting witness need not be called, and it will be presumed without evidence that the instrument was duly executed and attested.

Where a document embodies a judgment, a contract, a grant, or disposition of property, or any other legal transaction or “act in the law,” on which rights depend, the validity of the transaction may be impugned on the ground of fraud, incapacity, want of consideration, or other legal ground. But this seems outside the law of evidence. In this class of cases a question often arises whether extrinsic evidence can be produced to vary the nature of the transaction embodied in the document. The answer to this question seems to depend on whether the document was or was not intended to be a complete and final statement of the transaction which it embodies. If it was, you cannot go outside the document for the purpose of ascertaining the nature of the transaction. If it was not, you may. But the mere statement of this test shows the difficulty of formulating precise rules, and of applying them when formulated. FitzJames Stephen mentions, among the facts which may be proved in these cases, the existence of separate and consistent oral agreements as to matters on which the document is silent, if there is reason to believe that the document is not a complete and final statement of the transaction, and the existence of any usage or custom with reference to which a contract may be presumed to have been made. But he admits that the rules on the subject are “by no means easy to apply, inasmuch as from the nature of the case an enormous number of transactions fall close on one side or the other of most of them.” The underlying principle appears to be a rule of substantive law rather than of evidence. When parties to an arrangement have reduced the terms of the arrangement to a definite, complete, and final written form, they should be bound exclusively by the terms embodied in that form. The question in each case is under what circumstances they ought to be treated as having done so.

The expression “parol evidence,” which includes written as well as verbal evidence, has often been applied to the extrinsic evidence produced for the purpose of varying the nature of the transaction embodied in a document. It is also applied to extrinsic evidence used for another purpose, namely, that of explaining the meaning of the terms used in a document. The two questions, What is the real nature of the transaction referred to in a document? and, What is the meaning of a document? are often confused, but are really distinct from each other. The rules bearing on the latter question are rules of construction or interpretation rather than of evidence, but are ordinarily treated as part of the law of evidence, and are for that reason included by FitzJames Stephen in his Digest. In stating these rules he adopts, with verbal modifications, the six propositions laid down by Vice-Chancellor Wigram in his Examinations of the Rules of Law respecting the admission of Extrinsic Evidence in Aid of the Interpretation of Wills. The substance of these propositions appears to be this, that wherever the meaning of a document cannot be satisfactorily ascertained from the document itself, use may be made of any other evidence for the purpose of elucidating the meaning, subject to one restriction, that, except in cases of equivocation, i.e. where a person or thing is described in terms applicable equally to more than one, resort cannot be had to extrinsic expressions of the author’s intention.

V. Witnesses

1. Attendance.—If a witness does not attend voluntarily he can be required to attend by a writ of subpoena.

2. Competency.—As a general rule every person is a competent witness. Formerly persons were disqualified by crime or interest, or by being parties to the proceedings, but these disqualifications have now been removed by statute, and the circumstances which formerly created them do not affect the competency, though they may often affect the credibility, of a witness.

Under the general law as it stood before the Criminal Evidence Act 1898 came into force, a person charged with an offence was not competent to give evidence on his own behalf. But many exceptions had been made to this rule by legislation, and the rule itself was finally abolished by the act of 1898. Under that law a person charged is a competent witness, but he can only give evidence for the defence, and can only give evidence if he himself applies to do so. Under the law as it stood before 1898, persons jointly charged and being tried together were not competent to give evidence either for or against each other. Under the act of 1898 a person charged jointly with another is a competent witness, but only for the defence, and not for the prosecution. If, therefore, one of the persons charged applies to give evidence his cross-examination must not be conducted with a view to establish the guilt of the other. Consequently, if it is thought desirable to use against one prisoner the evidence of another who is being tried with him, the latter should be released, or a separate verdict of not guilty taken against him. A prisoner so giving evidence is popularly said to turn king’s evidence. It follows that, subject to what has been said above as to persons tried together, the evidence of an accomplice is admissible against his principal, and vice versa. The evidence of an accomplice is, however, always received with great jealousy and caution. A conviction on the unsupported testimony of an accomplice may, in some cases, be strictly legal, but the practice is to require it to be confirmed by unimpeachable testimony in some material part, and more especially as to his identification of the person or persons against whom his evidence may be received. The wife of a person charged is now a competent witness, but, except in certain special cases, she can only give evidence for the defence, and can only give evidence if her husband applies that she should do so. The special cases in which a wife can be called as a witness either for the prosecution or for the defence, and without the consent of the person charged, are cases arising under particular enactments scheduled to the act of 1898, and relating mainly to offences against wives and children, and cases in which the wife is by common law a competent witness against her husband, i.e. where the proceeding is against the husband for bodily injury or violence inflicted on his wife. The rule of exclusion extends only to a lawful wife. There is no ground for supposing that the wife of a prosecutor is an incompetent witness. A witness is incompetent if, in the opinion of the court, he is prevented by extreme youth, disease affecting his mind, or any other cause of the same kind, from recollecting the matter on which he is to testify, from understanding the questions put to him, from giving rational answers to those questions, or from knowing that he ought to speak the truth. A witness unable to speak or hear is not incompetent, but may give his evidence by writing or by signs, or in any other manner in which he can make it intelligible. The particular form of the religious belief of a witness, or his want of religious belief, does not affect his competency. This ground of incompetency has now been finally removed by the Oaths Act 1888. It will be seen that the effect of the successive enactments which have gradually removed the disqualifications attaching to various classes of witnesses has been to draw a distinction between the competency of a witness and his credibility. No person is disqualified on moral or religious grounds, but his character may be such as to throw grave doubts on the value of his evidence. No relationship, except to a limited extent that of husband and wife, excludes from giving evidence. The parent may be examined on the trial of the child, the child on that of the parent, master for or against servant, and servant for or against master. The relationship of the witness to the prosecutor or the prisoner in such cases may affect the credibility of the witness, but does not exclude his evidence.

3. Privilege.—It does not follow that, because a person is competent to give evidence, he can therefore be compelled to do so.

No one, except a person charged with an offence when giving evidence on his own application, and as to the offence wherewith he is charged, is bound to answer a question if the answer would, in the opinion of the court, have a tendency to expose the witness, or the wife or husband of the witness, to any criminal charge, penalty, or forfeiture, which the court regards as reasonably likely to be preferred or sued for. Accordingly, an accomplice cannot be examined without his consent, but if an accomplice who has come forward to give evidence on a promise of pardon, or favourable consideration, refuses to give full and fair information, he renders himself liable to be convicted on his own confession. However, even accomplices in such circumstances are not required to answer on their cross-examination as to other offences. Where, under the new law, a person charged with an offence offers himself as a witness, he may be asked any question in cross-examination, notwithstanding that it would tend to criminate him as to the offence charged. But he may not be asked, and if he is asked must not be required to answer, any question tending to show that he has committed, or been convicted of, or been charged with, any other offence, or is of bad character, unless:—

(i.) The proof that he has committed, or been convicted of, the other offence is admissible evidence to show that he is guilty of the offence with which he is then charged; or,

(ii.) He has personally, or by his advocate, asked questions of the witnesses for the prosecution, with a view to establish his own good character, or has given evidence of his good character, or the nature or conduct of the defence is such as to involve imputations on the character of the prosecutor or the witnesses for the prosecution; or,

(iii.) He has given evidence against any other person charged with the same offence.

He may not be asked questions tending to criminate his wife.

The privilege as to criminating answers does not cover answers merely tending to establish a civil liability. No one is excused from answering a question or producing a document only because the answer or document may establish or tend to establish that he owes a debt, or is otherwise liable to any civil proceeding. It is a privilege for the protection of the witness, and therefore may be waived by him. But there are other privileges which cannot be so waived. Thus, on grounds of public policy, no one can be compelled, or is allowed, to give evidence relating to any affairs of state, or as to official communications between public officers upon public affairs, except with the consent of the head of the department concerned, and this consent is refused if the production of the information asked for is considered detrimental to the public service.

Again, in cases in which the government is immediately concerned, no witness can be compelled to answer any question the answer to which would tend to discover the names of persons by or to whom information was given as to the commission of offences. It is, as a rule, for the court to decide whether the permission of any such question would or would not, under the circumstances of the particular case, be injurious to the administration of justice.

A husband is not compellable to disclose any communication made to him by his wife during the marriage; and a wife is not compellable to disclose any communication made to her by her husband during the marriage.

A legal adviser is not permitted, whether during or after the termination of his employment as such, unless with his client’s express consent, to disclose any communication, oral or documentary, made to him as such legal adviser, by or on behalf of his client, during, in the course of, and for the purpose of his employment, or to disclose any advice given by him to his client during, in the course of, and for the purpose of such employment. But this protection does not extend to—

(a) Any such communication if made in furtherance of any criminal purpose; nor

(b) Any fact observed by a legal adviser in the course of his employment as such, showing that any crime or fraud has been committed since the commencement of his employment, whether his attention was directed to such fact by or on behalf of his client or not; nor

(c) Any fact with which the legal adviser became acquainted otherwise than in his character as such.

Medical men and clergymen are not privileged from the disclosure of communications made to them in professional confidence, but it is not usual to press for the disclosures of communications made to clergymen.

4. Oaths.—A witness must give his evidence under the sanction of an oath, or of what is equivalent to an oath, that is to say, of a solemn promise to speak the truth. The ordinary form of oath is adapted to Christians, but a person belonging to a non-Christian religion may be sworn in any form prescribed or recognized by the custom of his religion. (See the article [Oath].)

5. Publicity.—The evidence of a witness at a trial must, as a general rule, be given in open court in the course of the trial. The secrecy which was such a characteristic feature of the “inquisition” procedure is abhorrent to English law, and, even where publicity conflicts with decency, English courts are very reluctant to dispense with or relax the safeguards for justice which publicity involves.

6. Examination.—The normal course of procedure is this. The party who begins, i.e. ordinarily the plaintiff or prosecutor, calls his witnesses in order. Each witness is first examined on behalf of the party for whom he is called. This is called the examination in chief. Then he is liable to be cross-examined on behalf of the other side. And, finally, he may be re-examined on behalf of his own side. After the case for the other side has been opened, the same procedure is adopted with the witnesses for that side. In some cases the party who began is allowed to adduce further evidence in reply to his opponent’s evidence. The examination is conducted, not by the court, but by or on behalf of the contending parties. It will be seen that the principle underlying this procedure is that of the duel, or conflict between two contending parties, each relying on and using his own evidence, and trying to break down the evidence of his opponent. It differs from the principle of the “inquisition” procedure, in which the court takes a more active part, and in which the cases for the two sides are not so sharply distinguished. In a continental trial it is often difficult to determine whether the case for the prosecution or the case for the defence is proceeding. Conflicting witnesses stand up together and are “confronted” with each other. In the examination in chief questions must be confined to matters bearing on the main question at issue, and a witness must not be asked leading questions, i.e. questions suggesting the answer which the person putting the question wishes or expects to receive, or suggesting disputed facts about which the witness is to testify. But the rule about leading questions is not applied where the questions asked are simply introductory, and form no part of the real substance of the inquiry, or where they relate to matters which, though material, are not disputed. And if the witness called by a person appears to be directly hostile to him, or interested on the other side, or unwilling to reply, the reason for the rules applying to examination in chief breaks down, and the witness may be asked leading questions and cross-examined, and treated in every respect as though he was a witness called on the other side, except that a party producing a witness must not impeach his credit by general evidence of bad character (Evidence and Practice on Criminal Trials Act 1865). In cross-examination questions not bearing on the main issue and leading questions may be put and (subject to the rules as to privilege) must be answered, as the cross-examiner is entitled to test the examination in chief by every means in his power. Questions not bearing on the main issue are often asked in cross-examination merely for the purpose of putting off his guard a witness who is supposed to have learnt up his story. In cross-examination questions may also be asked which tend either to test the accuracy or credibility of the witness, or to shake his credit by impeaching his motives or injuring his character. The licence allowed in cross-examination has often been seriously abused, and the power of the court to check it is recognized by one of the rules of the supreme court (R.S.C. xxxvi. 39, added in 1883). It is considered wrong to put questions which assume that facts have been proved which have not been proved, or that answers have been given contrary to the fact. A witness ought not to be pressed in cross-examination as to any facts which, if admitted, would not affect the question at issue or the credibility of the witness. If the cross-examiner intends to adduce evidence contrary to the evidence given by the witness, he ought to put to the witness in cross-examination the substance of the evidence which he proposes to adduce, in order to give the witness an opportunity of retracting or explaining. Where a witness has answered a question which only tends to affect his credibility by injuring his character, it is only in a limited number of cases that evidence can be given to contradict his answer. Where he is asked whether he has ever been convicted of any felony or misdemeanour, and denies or refuses to answer, proof may be given of the truth of the facts suggested (28 & 29 Vict. c. 15, s. 6). The same rule is observed where he is asked a question tending to show that he is not impartial. Where a witness has previously made a statement inconsistent with his evidence, proof may be given that he did in fact make it. But before such proof is given the circumstances of the alleged statement, sufficient to designate the particular occasion, must be mentioned to the witness, and he must be asked whether he did or did not make the statement. And if the statement was made in, or has been reduced to, writing, the attention of the witness must, before the writing is used against him, be called to those parts of the writing which are to be used for the purpose of contradicting him (Evidence and Practice on Criminal Trials Act 1865, ss. 4, 5). The credibility of a witness may be impeached by the evidence of persons who swear that they, from their knowledge of the witness, believe him to be unworthy of credit on his oath. These persons may not on their examination in chief give reasons for their belief, but they may be asked their reasons in cross-examination, and their answers cannot be contradicted. When the credit of a witness is so impeached, the party who called the witness may give evidence in reply to show that the witness is worthy of credit. Re-examination must be directed exclusively to the explanation of matters referred to in cross-examination, and if new matter is, by the permission of the court, introduced in re-examination, the other side may further cross-examine upon it. A witness under examination may refresh his memory by referring to any writing made by himself at or about the time of the occurrence to which the writing relates, or made by any other person, and read and found accurate by the witness at or about the time. An expert may refresh his memory by reference to professional treatises.

For the history of the English law of evidence, see Brunner, Entstehung der Schwurgerichte; Bigelow, History of Procedure in England; Stephen (Sir J.F.), History of the Criminal Law of England; Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, bk. ii. ch. ix.; Thayer, Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law. The principal text-books now in use are—Roscoe, Digest of the Law of Evidence on the Trial of Actions at Nisi Prius (18th ed., 1907); Roscoe, Digest of the Law of Evidence in Criminal Cases (13th ed., 1908); Taylor, Treatise on the Law of Evidence (10th ed., 1906); Best, Principles of the Law of Evidence (10th ed., 1906); Powell, Principles and Practice of the Law of Evidence (8th ed., 1904); Stephen, Digest of the Law of Evidence (8th ed., 1907); Wills, Theory and Practice of the Law of Evidence (1907). For the history of the law of criminal evidence in France, see Esmein, Hist. de la procédure criminelle en France. For Germany, see Holtzendorff, Encyclopädie der Rechtswissenschaft (passages indexed under head “Beweis”); Holtzendorff, Rechtslexikon (“Beweis”).

(C. P. I.)

[1] Reference may be made to a well-known passage in the Essay concerning Human Understanding (Book iv. ch. xv.): “The grounds of probability are—First, the conformity of anything with our own knowledge, observation and experience. Second, the testimony of others touching their observation and experience. In the testimony of others is to be considered (1) the number, (2) the integrity, (3) the skill of the witnesses. (4) The design of the author, where it is a testimony out of a book cited. (5) The consistency of the parts and circumstances of the relation. (6) Contrary testimonies.”

EVIL EYE. The terror of the arts of “fascination,” i.e. that certain persons can bewitch, injure and even kill with a glance, has been and is still very widely spread. The power was not thought to be always maliciously cultivated. It was as often supposed to be involuntary (cf. Deuteronomy xxviii. 54); and a story is told of a Slav who, afflicted with the evil eye, at last blinded himself in order that he might not be the means of injuring his children (Woyciki, Polish Folklore, trans. by Lewenstein, p. 25). Few of the old classic writers fail to refer to the dread power. In Rome the “evil eye” was so well recognized that Pliny states that special laws were enacted against injury to crops by incantation, excantation or fascination. The power was styled βασκανία by the Greeks and fascinatio by the Latins. Children and young animals of all kinds were thought to be specially susceptible. Charms were worn against the evil eye both by man and beast, and in Judges viii. 21 it is thought there is a reference to this custom in the allusion to the “ornaments” on the necks of camels. In classic times the wearing of amulets was universal. They were of three classes: (1) those the intention of which was to attract on to themselves, as the lightning-rod the lightning, the malignant glance; (2) charms hidden in the bosom of the dress; (3) written words from sacred writings. Of these three types the first was most numerous. They were oftenest of a grotesque and generally grossly obscene nature. They were also made in the form of frogs, beetles and so on. But the ancients did not wholly rely on amulets. Spitting was among the Greeks and Romans a most common antidote to the poison of the evil eye. According to Theocritus it is necessary to spit three times into the breast of the person who fears fascination. Gestures, too, often intentionally obscene, were regarded as prophylactics on meeting the dreaded individual. The evil eye was believed to have its impulse in envy, and thus it came to be regarded as unlucky to have any of your possessions praised. Among the Romans, therefore, it was customary when praising anything to add Praefiscini dixerim (Fain Evil! I should say). This custom survives in modern Italy, where in like circumstances is said Si mal occhio non ci fosse (May the evil eye not strike it). The object of these conventional phrases was to prove that the speaker was sincere and had no evil designs in his praise. Though there is no set formula, traces of the custom are found in English rural sayings, e.g. the Somersetshire “I don’t wish ee no harm, so I on’t zay no more.” This is what the Scots call “fore-speaking,” when praise beyond measure is likely to be followed by disease or accident. A Manxman will never say he is very well: he usually admits that he is “middling,” or qualifies his admission of good health by adding “now” or “just now.” The belief led in many countries to the saying, when one heard anybody or anything praised superabundantly, “God preserve him or it.” So in Ireland, to avoid being suspected of having the evil eye, it is advisable when looking at a child to say “God bless it”; and when passing a farm-yard where cows are collected at milking time it is usual for the peasant to say, “The blessing of God be on you and all your labour.” Bacon writes: “It seems some have been so curious as to note that the times when the stroke ... of an envious eye does most hurt are particularly when the party envied is beheld in glory and triumph.”

The powers of the evil eye seem indeed to have been most feared by the prosperous. Its powers are often quoted as almost limitless. Thus one record solemnly declares that in a town of Africa a fascinator called Elzanar killed by his evil art no less than 80 people in two years (W.W. Story, Castle St Angelo, 1877, p. 149). The belief as affecting cattle was universal in the Scottish Highlands as late as the 18th century and still lingers. Thus if a stranger looks admiringly on a cow the peasants still think she will waste away, and they offer the visitor some of her milk to drink in the belief that in this manner the spell is broken. The modern Turks and Arabs also think that their horses and camels are subject to the evil eye. But the people of Italy, especially the Neapolitans, are the best modern instances of implicit believers. The jettatore, as the owner of the evil eye is called, is so feared that at his approach it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that a street will clear: everybody will rush into doorways or up alleys to avoid the dreaded glance. The jettatore di bambini (fascinator of children) is the most dreaded of all. The evil eye is still much feared for horses in India, China, Turkey, Greece and almost everywhere where horses are found. In rural England the pig is of all animals oftenest “overlooked.” While the Italians are perhaps the greatest believers in the evil eye as affecting persons, the superstition is rife in the East. In India the belief is universal. In Bombay the blast of the evil eye is supposed to be a form of spirit-possession. In western India all witches and wizards are said to be evil-eyed. Modern Egyptian mothers thus account for the sickly appearance of their babies. In Turkey passages from the Koran are painted on the outside of houses to save the inmates, and texts as amulets are worn upon the person, or hung upon camels and horses by Arabs, Abyssinians and other peoples. The superstition is universal among savage races.

For a full discussion see Evil Eye by F.T. Elworthy (London, 1895); also W.W. Story, Castle St Angelo and the Evil Eye (1877); E.N. Rolfe and H. Ingleby, Naples in 1888 (1888); Johannes Christian Frommann, Tractatus de fascinatione novus et singularis, &c. , &c. (Nuremburg, 1675); R.C. Maclagan, Evil Eye in the Western Highlands (1902).

EVOLUTION. The modern doctrine of evolution or “evolving,” as opposed to that of simple creation, has been defined by Prof. James Sully in the 9th edition of this encyclopaedia as a “natural history of the cosmos including organic beings, expressed in physical terms as a mechanical process.” The following exposition of the historical development of the doctrine is taken from Sully’s article, and for the most part is in his own words.

In the modern doctrine of evolution the cosmic system appears as a natural product of elementary matter and its laws. The various grades of life on our planet are the natural consequences of certain physical processes involved in the gradual transformations of the earth. Conscious life is viewed as conditioned by physical (organic and more especially nervous) processes, and as evolving itself in close correlation with organic evolution. Finally, human development, as exhibited in historical and prehistorical records, is regarded as the highest and most complex result of organic and physical evolution. This modern doctrine of evolution is but an expansion and completion of those physical theories (see below) which opened the history of speculation. It differs from them in being grounded on exact and verified research. As such, moreover, it is a much more limited theory of evolution than the ancient. It does not necessarily concern itself about the question of the infinitude of worlds in space and in time. It is content to explain the origin and course of development of the world, the solar or, at most, the sidereal system which falls under our own observation. It would be difficult to say what branches of science had done most towards the establishment of this doctrine. We must content ourselves by referring to the progress of physical (including chemical) theory, which has led to the great generalization of the conservation of energy; to the discovery of the fundamental chemical identity of the matter of our planet and of other celestial bodies, and of the chemical relations of organic and inorganic bodies; to the advance of astronomical speculation respecting the origin of the solar system, &c. ; to the growth of the science of geology which has necessitated the conception of vast and unimaginable periods of time in the past history of our globe, and to the rapid march of the biological sciences which has made us familiar with the simplest types and elements of organism; finally, to the development of the science of anthropology (including comparative psychology, philology, &c. ), and to the vast extension and improvement of all branches of historical study.

History of the Idea of Evolution.—The doctrine of evolution in its finished and definite form is a modern product. It required for its formation an amount of scientific knowledge which could only be very gradually acquired. It is vain, therefore, to look for clearly defined and systematic presentations of the idea among ancient writers. On the other hand, nearly all systems of philosophy have discussed the underlying problems. Such questions as the origin of the cosmos as a whole, the production of organic beings and of conscious minds, and the meaning of the observable grades of creation, have from the dawn of speculation occupied men’s minds; and the answers to these questions often imply a vague recognition of the idea of a gradual evolution of things. Accordingly, in tracing the antecedents of the modern philosophic doctrine we shall have to glance at most of the principal systems of cosmology, ancient and modern. Yet since in these systems inquiries into the esse and fieri of the world are rarely distinguished with any precision, it will be necessary to indicate very briefly the general outlines of the system so far as they are necessary for understanding their bearing on the problems of evolution.

Mythological Interpretation.—The problem of the origin of the world was the first to engage man’s speculative activity. Nor was this line of inquiry pursued simply as a step in the more practical problem of man’s final destiny. The order of ideas observable in children suggests the reflection that man began to discuss the “whence” of existence before the “whither.” At first, as in the case of the child, the problem of the genesis of things was conceived anthropomorphically: the question “How did the world arise?” first shaped itself to the human mind under the form “Who made the world?” As long as the problem was conceived in this simple manner there was, of course, no room for the idea of a necessary self-conditioned evolution. Yet the first indistinct germ of such an idea appears to emerge in combination with that of creation in some of the ancient systems of theogony. Thus, for example, in the myth of the ancient Parsees, the gods Ormuzd and Ahriman are said to evolve themselves out of a primordial matter. It may be supposed that these crude fancies embody a dim recognition of the physical forces and objects personified under the forms of deities, and a rude attempt to account for their genesis as a natural process. These first unscientific ideas of a genesis of the permanent objects of nature took as their pattern the process of organic reproduction and development, and this, not only because these objects were regarded as personalities, but also because this particular mode of becoming would most impress these early observers. This same way of looking at the origin of the material world is illustrated in the Egyptian notion of a cosmic egg out of which issues the god (Phta) who creates the world.

Indian Philosophy.—Passing from mythology to speculation properly so called, we find in the early systems of philosophy of India theories of emanation which approach in some respects the idea of evolution. Brahma is conceived as the eternal self-existent being, which on its material side unfolds itself to the world by gradually condensing itself to material objects through the gradations of ether, fire, water, earth and the elements. At the same time this eternal being is conceived as the all-embracing world-soul from which emanates the hierarchy of individual souls. In the later system of emanation of Sankhya there is a more marked approach to a materialistic doctrine of evolution. If, we are told, we follow the chain of causes far enough back we reach unlimited eternal creative nature or matter. Out of this “principal thing” or “original nature” all material and spiritual existence issues, and into it will return. Yet this primordial creative nature is endowed with volition with regard to its own development. Its first emanation as plastic nature contains the original soul or deity out of which all individual souls issue.

Early Greek Physicists.—Passing by Buddhism, which, though teaching the periodic destruction of our world by fire, &c. , does not seek to determine the ultimate origin of the cosmos, we come to those early Greek physical philosophers who distinctly set themselves to eliminate the idea of divine interference with the world by representing its origin and changes as a natural process. The early Ionian physicists, including Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, seek to explain the world as generated out of a primordial matter (Gr. ὕλη; hence the name “Hylozoists”), which is at the same time the universal support of things. This substance is endowed with a generative or transmutative force by virtue of which it passes into a succession of forms. They thus resemble modern evolutionists, since they regard the world with its infinite variety of forms as issuing from a simple mode of matter. More especially the cosmology of Anaximander resembles the modern doctrine of evolution in its conception of the indeterminate (τὸ ἄπειρον) out of which the particular forms of the cosmos are differentiated. Again, Anaximander may be said to prepare the way for more modern conceptions of material evolution by regarding his primordial substance as eternal, and by looking on all generation as alternating with destruction, each step of the process being of course simply a transformation of the indestructible substance. Once more, the notion that this indeterminate body contains potentially in itself the fundamental contraries—hot, cold, &c. —by the excretion or evolution of which definite substances were generated, is clearly a forecasting of that antithesis of potentiality and actuality which from Aristotle downwards has been made the basis of so many theories of development. In conclusion, it is noteworthy that though resorting to utterly fanciful hypotheses respecting the order of the development of the world, Anaximander agrees with modern evolutionists in conceiving the heavenly bodies as arising out of an aggregation of diffused matter, and in assigning to organic life an origin in the inorganic materials of the primitive earth (pristine mud). The doctrine of Anaximenes, who unites the conceptions of a determinate and indeterminate original substance adopted by Thales and Anaximander in the hypothesis of a primordial and all-generating air, is a clear advance on these theories, inasmuch as it introduces the scientific idea of condensation and rarefaction as the great generating or transforming agencies. For the rest, his theory is chiefly important as emphasizing the vital character of the original substance. The primordial air is conceived as animated. Anaximenes seems to have inclined to a view of cosmic evolution as throughout involving a quasi-spiritual factor. This idea of the air as the original principle and source of life and intelligence is much more clearly expressed by a later writer, Diogenes of Apollonia. Diogenes made this conception of a vital and intelligent air the ground of a teleological view of climatic and atmospheric phenomena. It is noteworthy that he sought to establish the identity of organic and inorganic matter by help of the facts of vegetal and animal nutrition. Diogenes distinctly taught that the world is of finite duration, and will be renewed out of the primitive substance.

Heraclitus again deserves a prominent place in a history of the idea of evolution. Heraclitus conceives of the incessant process of flux in which all things are involved as consisting of two sides or moments—generation and decay—which are regarded as a confluence of opposite streams. In thus making transition or change, viewed as the identity of existence and non-existence, the leading idea of his system, Heraclitus anticipated in some measure Hegel’s peculiar doctrine of evolution as a dialectic process.[1] At the same time we may find expressed in figurative language the germs of thoughts which enter into still newer doctrines of evolution. For example, the notion of conflict (πόλεμος) as the father of all things and of harmony as arising out of a union of discords, and again of an endeavour by individual things to maintain themselves in permanence against the universal process of destruction and renovation, cannot but remind one of certain fundamental ideas in Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Empedocles.—Empedocles took an important step in the direction of modern conceptions of physical evolution by teaching that all things arise, not by transformations of some primitive form of matter, but by various combinations of a number of permanent elements. Further, by maintaining that the elements are continually being combined and separated by the two forces love and hatred, which appear to represent in a figurative way the physical forces of attraction and repulsion, Empedocles may be said to have made a considerable advance in the construction of the idea of evolution as a strictly mechanical process. It may be observed, too, that the hypothesis of a primitive compact mass (sphaerus), in which love (attraction) is supreme, has some curious points of similarity to, and contrast with, that notion of a primitive nebulous matter with which the modern doctrine of cosmic evolution usually sets out. Empedocles tries to explain the genesis of organic beings, and, according to Lange, anticipates the idea of Darwin that adaptations abound, because it is their nature to perpetuate themselves. He further recognizes a progress in the production of vegetable and animal forms, though this part of his theory is essentially crude and unscientific. More important in relation to the modern problems of evolution is his thoroughly materialistic way of explaining the origin of sensation and knowledge by help of his peculiar hypothesis of effluvia and pores. The supposition that sensation thus rests on a material process of absorption from external bodies naturally led up to the idea that plants and even inorganic substances are precipient, and so to an indistinct recognition of organic life as a scale of intelligence.

Atomists.—In the theory of Atomism taught by Leucippus and Democritus we have the basis of the modern mechanical conceptions of cosmic evolution. Here the endless harmonious diversity of our cosmos, as well as of other worlds supposed to coexist with our own, is said to arise through the various combination of indivisible material elements differing in figure and magnitude only. The force which brings the atoms together in the forms of objects is inherent in the elements, and all their motions are necessary. The origin of things, which is also their substance, is thus laid in the simplest and most homogeneous elements or principles. The real world thus arising consists only of diverse combinations of atoms, having the properties of magnitude, figure, weight and hardness, all other qualities being relative only to the sentient organism. The problem of the genesis of mind is practically solved by identifying the soul, or vital principle, with heat or fire which pervades in unequal proportions, not only man and animals, but plants and nature as a whole, and through the agitation of which by incoming effluvia all sensation arises.

Aristotle.—Aristotle is much nearer a conception of evolution than his master Plato. It is true he sets out with a transcendent Deity, and follows Plato in viewing the creation of the cosmos as a process of descent from the more to the less perfect according to the distance from the original self-moving agency. Yet on the whole Aristotle leans to a teleological theory of evolution, which he interprets dualistually by means of certain metaphysical distinctions. Thus even his idea of the relation of the divine activity to the world shows a tendency to a pantheistic notion of a divine thought which gradually realizes itself in the process of becoming. Aristotle’s distinction of form and matter, and his conception of becoming as a transition from actuality to potentiality, provides a new ontological way of conceiving the process of material and organic evolution.[2] To Aristotle the whole of nature is instinct with a vital impulse towards some higher manifestation. Organic life presents itself to him as a progressive scale of complexity determined by its final end, namely, man.[3] In some respects Aristotle approaches the modern view of evolution. Thus, though he looked on species as fixed, being the realization of an unchanging formative principle (φύσις), he seems, as Ueberweg observes, to have inclined to entertain the possibility of a spontaneous generation in the case of the lowest organisms. Aristotle’s teleological conception of organic evolution often approaches modern mechanical conceptions. Thus he says that nature fashions organs in the order of their necessity, the first being those essential to life. So, too, in his psychology he speaks of the several degrees of mind as arising according to a progressive necessity.[4] In his view of touch and taste, as the two fundamental and essential senses, he may remind one of Herbert Spencer’s doctrine. At the same time Aristotle precludes the idea of a natural development of the mental series by the supposition that man contains, over and above a natural finite soul inseparable from the body, a substantial and eternal principle (νοῦς) which enters into the individual from without. Aristotle’s brief suggestions respecting the origin of society and governments in the Politics show a leaning to a naturalistic interpretation of human history as a development conditioned by growing necessities.

Strato.—Of Aristotle’s immediate successors one deserves to be noticed here, namely, Strato of Lampsacus, who developed his master’s cosmology into a system of naturalism. Strato appears to reject Aristotle’s idea of an original source of movement and life extraneous to the world in favour of an immanent principle. All parts of matter have an inward plastic life whereby they can fashion themselves to the best advantage, according to their capability, though not with consciousness.

The Stoics.—In the cosmology of the Stoics we have the germ of a monistic and pantheistic conception of evolution. All things are said to be developed out of an original being, which is at once material (fire) and spiritual (the Deity), and in turn they will dissolve back into this primordial source. At the same time the world as a developed whole is regarded as an organism which is permeated with the divine Spirit, and so we may say that the world-process is a self-realization of the divine Being. The formative principle or force of the world is said to contain the several rational germinal forms of things. Individual things are supposed to arise out of the original being, as animals and plants out of seeds. Individual souls are an efflux from the all-compassing world-soul. The necessity in the world’s order is regarded by the Stoics as identical with the divine reason, and this idea is used as the basis of a teleological and optimistic view of nature. Very curious, in relation to modern evolutional ideas, is the Stoical doctrine that our world is but one of a series of exactly identical ones, all of which are destined to be burnt up and destroyed.

The Epicureans—Lucretius.—The Epicureans differed from the Stoics by adopting a purely mechanical view of the world-process. Their fundamental conception is that of Democritus; they seek to account for the formation of the cosmos, with its order and regularity, by setting out with the idea of an original (vertical) motion of the atoms, which somehow or other results in movements towards and from one another. Our world is but one of an infinite number of others, and all the harmonies and adaptations of the universe are regarded as a special case of the infinite possibilities of mechanical events. Lucretius regards the primitive atoms (first beginnings or first bodies) as seeds out of which individual things are developed. All living and sentient things are formed out of insentient atoms (e.g. worms spring out of dung). The peculiarity of organic and sentient bodies is due to the minuteness and shape of their particles, and to their special motions and combinations. So, too, mind consists but of extremely fine particles of matter, and dissolves into air when the body dies. Lucretius traces, in the fifth book of his poem, the progressive genesis of vegetal and animal forms out of the mother-earth. He vaguely anticipates the modern idea of the world as a survival of the fittest when he says that many races may have lived and died out, and that those which still exist have been protected either by craft, courage or speed. Lucretius touches on the development of man out of a primitive, hardy, beast-like condition. Pregnant hints are given respecting a natural development of language which has its germs in sounds of quadrupeds and birds, of religious ideas out of dreams and waking hallucinations, and of the art of music by help of the suggestion of natural sounds. Lucretius thus recognizes the whole range of existence to which the doctrine of evolution may be applied.

Neoplatonists.—In the doctrines of the Neoplatonists, of whom Plotinus is the most important, we have the world-process represented after the example of Plato as a series of descending steps, each being less perfect than its predecessors, since it is further removed from the first cause.[5] The system of Plotinus, Zellar remarks, is not strictly speaking one of emanation, since there is no communication of the divine essence to the created world; yet it resembles emanation inasmuch as the genesis of the world is conceived as a necessary physical effect, and not as the result of volition. In Proclus we find this conception of an emanation of the world out of the Deity, or the absolute, made more exact, the process being regarded as threefold—(1) persistence of cause in effect, (2) the departure of effect from cause, and (3) the tendency of effect to revert to its cause.

The Fathers.—The speculations of the fathers respecting the origin and course of the world seek to combine Christian ideas of the Deity with doctrines of Greek philosophy. The common idea of the origin of things is that of an absolute creation of matter and mind alike. The course of human history is regarded by those writers who are most concerned to refute Judaism as a progressive divine education. Among the Gnostics we meet with the hypothesis of emanation, as, for example, in the curious cosmic theory of Valentinus.

Middle Ages—Early Schoolmen.—In the speculative writings of the middle ages, including those of the schoolmen, we find no progress towards a more accurate and scientific view of nature. The cosmology of this period consists for the most part of the Aristotelian teleological view of nature combined with the Christian idea of the Deity and His relation to the world. In certain writers, however, there appears a more elaborate transformation of the doctrine of creation into a system of emanation. According to John Scotus Erigena, the nothing out of which the world is created is the divine essence. Creation is the act by which God passes through the primordial causes, or universal ideas, into the region of particular things (processio), in order finally to return to himself (reversio). The transition from the universal to the particular is of course conceived as a descent or degradation. A similar doctrine of emanation is to be found in the writings of Bernhard of Chartres, who conceives the process of the unfolding of the world as a movement in a circle from the most general to the individual, and from this back to the most general. This movement is said to go forth from God to the animated heaven, stars, visible world and man, which represent decreasing degrees of cognition.

Arab Philosophers.—Elaborate doctrines of emanation, largely based on Neoplatonic ideas, are also propounded by some of the Arabic philosophers, as by Fārābī and Avicenna. The leading thought is that of a descending series of intelligences, each emanating from its predecessor, and having its appropriate region in the universe.

Jewish Philosophy.—In the Jewish speculations of the middle ages may be found curious forms of the doctrine of emanations uniting the Biblical idea of creation with elements drawn from the Persians and the Greeks. In the later and developed form of the Kabbala, the origin of the world is represented as a gradually descending emanation of the lower out of the higher. Among the philosophic Jews, the Spanish Avicebron, in his Fons Vitae, expounds a curious doctrine of emanation. Here the divine will is viewed as an efflux from the divine wisdom, as the intermediate link between God, the first substance, and all things, and as the fountain out of which all forms emanate. At the same time all forms, including the higher intelligible ones, are said to have their existence only in matter. Matter is the one universal substance, body and mind being merely specifications of this. Thus Avicebron approaches, as Salomon Munk observes,[6] a pantheistic conception of the world, though he distinctly denies both matter and form to God.

Later Scholastics.—Passing now to the later schoolmen, a bare mention must be made of Thomas Aquinas, who elaborately argues for the absolute creation of the world out of nothing, and of Albertus Magnus, who reasons against the Aristotelian idea of the past eternity of the world. More importance attaches to Duns Scotus, who brings prominently forward the idea of a progressive development in nature by means of a process of determination. The original substance of the world is the materia primo-prima, which is the immediate creation of the Deity. This serves Duns Scotus as the most universal basis of existence, all angels having material bodies. This matter is differentiated into particular things (which are not privations but perfections) through the addition of an individualizing principle (haecceitas) to the universal (quidditas). The whole world is represented by the figure of a tree, of which the seeds and roots are the first indeterminate matter, the leaves the accidents, the twigs and branches corruptible creatures, the blossoms the rational soul, and the fruit pure spirits or angels. It is also described as a bifurcation of two twigs, mental and bodily creation out of a common root. One might almost say that Duns Scotus recognizes the principle of a gradual physical evolution, only that he chooses to represent the mechanism by which the process is brought about by means of quaint scholastic fictions.

Revival of Learning.—The period of the revival of learning, which was also that of a renewed study of nature, is marked by a considerable amount of speculation respecting the origin of the universe. In some of these we see a return to Greek theories, though the influence of physical discoveries, more especially those of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, is distinctly traceable.

Telesio.—An example of a return to early Greek speculation is to be met with in Bernardino Telesio. By this writer the world is explained as a product of three principles—dead matter, and two active forces, heat and cold. Terrestrial things arise through a confluence of heat, which issues from the heavens, and cold, which comes from the earth. Both principles have sensibility, and thus all products of their collision are sentient, that is, feel pleasure and pain. The superiority of animals to plants and metals in the possession of special organs of sense is connected with the greater complexity and heterogeneity of their structure.

Giordano Bruno.—In the system of Giordano Bruno, who sought to construct a philosophy of nature on the basis of new scientific ideas, more particularly the doctrine of Copernicus, we find the outlines of a theory of cosmic evolution conceived as an essentially vital process. Matter and form are here identified, and the evolution of the world is presented as the unfolding of the world-spirit to its perfect forms according to the plastic substratum (matter) which is but one of its sides. This process of change is conceived as a transformation, in appearance only, of the real unchanging substance (matter and form). All parts of matter are capable of developing into all forms; thus the materials of the table and chair may under proper circumstances be developed to the life of the plant or of the animal. The elementary parts of existence are the minima, or monads, which are at once material and mental. On their material side they are not absolutely unextended, but spherical. Bruno looked on our solar system as but one out of an infinite number of worlds. His theory of evolution is essentially pantheistic, and he does not employ his hypothesis of monads in order to work out a more mechanical conception.

Campanella.—A word must be given to one of Bruno’s contemporary compatriots, namely Campanella, who gave poetic expression to that system of universal vitalism which Bruno developed. He argues, from the principle quicquid est in effectibus esse et in causis, that the elements and the whole world have sensation, and thus he appears to derive the organic part of nature out of the so-called “inorganic.”

Boehme.—Another writer of this transition period deserves a passing reference here, namely, Jacob Boehme the mystic, who by his conception of a process of inner diremption as the essential character of all mind, and so of God, prepared the way for later German theories of the origin of the world as the self-differentiation and self-externalization of the absolute spirit.

Hobbes and Gassendi.—The influence of an advancing study of nature, which was stimulated if not guided by Bacon’s writings, is seen in the more careful doctrines of materialism worked out almost simultaneously by Hobbes and Gassendi. These theories, however, contain little that bears directly on the hypothesis of a natural evolution of things. In the view of Hobbes, the difficulty of the genesis of conscious minds is solved by saying that sensation and thought are part of the reaction of the organism on external movement. Yet Hobbes appears (as Clarke points out) to have vaguely felt the difficulty; and in a passage of his Physics (chap. 25, sect. 5) he says that the universal existence of sensation in matter cannot be disproved, though he shows that when there are no organic arrangements the mental side of the movement (phantasma) is evanescent. The theory of the origin of society put forth by Hobbes, though directly opposed in most respects to modern ideas of social evolution, deserves mention here by reason of its enforcing that principle of struggle (bellum omnium contra omnes) which has played so conspicuous a part in the modern doctrine of evolution. Gassendi, with some deviations, follows Epicurus in his theory of the formation of the world. The world consists of a finite number of atoms, which have in their own nature a self-moving force or principle. These atoms, which are the seeds of all things, are, however, not eternal but created by God. Gassendi distinctly argues against the existence of a world-soul or a principle of life in nature.

Descartes.—In the philosophy of Descartes we meet with a dualism of mind and matter which does not easily lend itself to the conception of evolution. His doctrine that consciousness is confined to man, the lower animals being unconscious machines (automata), excludes all idea of a progressive development of mind. Yet Descartes, in his Principia Philosophiae, laid the foundation of the modern mechanical conception of nature and of physical evolution. In the third part of this work he inclines to a thoroughly natural hypothesis respecting the genesis of the physical world, and adds in the fourth part that the same kind of explanation might be applied to the nature and formation of plants and animals. He is indeed careful to keep right with the orthodox doctrine of creation by saying that he does not believe the world actually arose in this mechanical way out of the three kinds of elements which he here supposes, but that he simply puts out his hypothesis as a mode of conceiving how it might have arisen. Descartes’s account of the mind and its passions is thoroughly materialistic, and to this extent he works in the direction of a materialistic explanation of the origin of mental life.

Spinoza.—In Spinoza’s pantheistic theory of the world, which regards thought and extension as but two sides of one substance, the problem of becoming is submerged in that of being. Although Spinoza’s theory attributes a mental side to all physical events, he rejects all teleological conceptions and explains the order of things as the result of an inherent necessity. He recognizes gradations of things according to the degree of complexity of their movements and that of their conceptions. To Spinoza (as Kuno Fischer observes) man differs from the rest of nature in the degree only and not in the kind of his powers. So far Spinoza approaches the conception of evolution. He may be said to furnish a further contribution to a metaphysical conception of evolution in his view of all finite individual things as the infinite variety to which the unlimited productive power of the universal substance gives birth. Sir F. Pollock has taken pains to show how nearly Spinoza approaches certain ideas contained in the modern doctrine of evolution, as for example that of self-preservation as the determining force in things.

Locke.—In Locke we find, with a retention of certain anti-evolutionist ideas, a marked tendency to this mode of viewing the world. To Locke the universe is the result of a direct act of creation, even matter being limited in duration and created. Even if matter were eternal it would, he thinks, be incapable of producing motion; and if motion is itself conceived as eternal, thought can never begin to be. The first eternal being is thus spiritual or “cogitative,” and contains in itself all the perfections that can ever after exist. He repeatedly insists on the impossibility of senseless matter putting on sense.[7] Yet while thus placing himself at a point of view opposed to that of a gradual evolution of the organic world, Locke prepared the way for this doctrine in more ways than one. First of all, his genetic method as applied to the mind’s ideas—which laid the foundations of English analytical psychology—was a step in the direction of a conception of mental life as a gradual evolution. Again he works towards the same end in his celebrated refutation of the scholastic theory of real specific essences. In this argument he emphasizes the vagueness of the boundaries which mark off organic species with a view to show that these do not correspond to absolutely fixed divisions in the objective world, that they are made by the mind, not by nature.[8] This idea of the continuity of species is developed more fully in a remarkable passage (Essay, bk. iii. ch. vi. § 12), where he is arguing in favour of the hypothesis, afterwards elaborated by Leibnitz, of a graduated series of minds (species of spirits) from the Deity down to the lowest animal intelligence. He here observes that “all quite down from us the descent is by easy steps, and a continued series of things, that in each remove differ very little from one another.” Thus man approaches the beasts, and the animal kingdom is nearly joined with the vegetable, and so on down to the lowest and “most inorganical parts of matter.” Finally, it is to be observed that Locke had a singularly clear view of organic arrangements (which of course he explained according to a theistic teleology) as an adaptation to the circumstances of the environment or to “the neighbourhood of the bodies that surround us.” Thus he suggests that man has not eyes of a microscopic delicacy, because he would receive no great advantage from such acute organs, since though adding indefinitely to his speculative knowledge of the physical world they would not practically benefit their possessor (e.g. by enabling him to avoid things at a convenient distance).[9]

Idea of Progress in History.—Before leaving the 17th century we must just refer to the writers who laid the foundations of the essentially modern conception of human history as a gradual upward progress. According to Flint,[10] there were four men who in this and the preceding century seized and made prominent this idea, namely, Bodin, Bacon, Descartes and Pascal. The former distinctly argues against the idea of a deterioration of man in the past. In this way we see that just as advancing natural science was preparing the way for a doctrine of physical evolution, so advancing historical research was leading to the application of a similar idea to the collective human life.

English Writers of the 18th Century—Hume.—The theological discussions which make up so large a part of the English speculation of the 18th century cannot detain us here. There is, however, one writer who sets forth so clearly the alternative suppositions respecting the origin of the world that he claims a brief notice. We refer to David Hume. In his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion he puts forward tentatively, in the person of one of his interlocutors, the ancient hypothesis that since the world resembles an animal or vegetal organism rather than a machine, it might more easily be accounted for by a process of generation than by an act of creation. Later on he develops the materialistic view of Epicurus, only modifying it so far as to conceive of matter as finite. Since a finite number of particles is only susceptible of finite transpositions, it must happen (he says), in an eternal duration that every possible order or position will be tried an infinite number of times, and hence this world is to be regarded (as the Stoics maintained) as an exact reproduction of previous worlds. The speaker seeks to make intelligible the appearance of art and contrivance in the world as a result of a natural settlement of the universe (which passes through a succession of chaotic conditions) into a stable condition, having a constancy in its forms, yet without its several parts losing their motion and fluctuation.

French Writers of the 18th Century.—Let us now pass to the French writers of the 18th century. Here we are first struck by the results of advancing physical speculation in their bearing on the conception of the world. Careful attempts, based on new scientific truths, are made to explain the genesis of the world as a natural process. Maupertuis, who, together with Voltaire, introduced the new idea of the universe as based on Newton’s discoveries, sought to account for the origin of organic things by the hypothesis of sentient atoms. Buffon the naturalist speculated, not only on the structure and genesis of organic beings, but also on the course of formation of the earth and solar system, which he conceived after the analogy of the development of organic beings out of seed. Diderot, too, in his varied intellectual activity, found time to speculate on the genesis of sensation and thought out of a combination of matter endowed with an elementary kind of sentience. De la Mettrie worked out a materialistic doctrine of the origin of things, according to which sensation and consciousness are nothing but a development out of matter. He sought (L’Homme-machine) to connect man in his original condition with the lower animals, and emphasized (L’Homme-plante) the essential unity of plan of all living things. Helvétius, in his work on man, referred all differences between our species and the lower animals to certain peculiarities of organization, and so prepared the way for a conception of human development out of lower forms as a process of physical evolution. Charles Bonnet met the difficulty of the origin of conscious beings much in the same way as Leibnitz, by the supposition of eternal minute organic bodies to which are attached immortal souls. Yet though in this way opposing himself to the method of the modern doctrine of evolution, he aided the development of this doctrine by his view of the organic world as an ascending scale from the simple to the complex. Robinet, in his treatise De la nature, worked out the same conception of a gradation in organic existence, connecting this with a general view of nature as a progress from the lowest inorganic forms of matter up to man. The process is conceived as an infinite series of variations or specifications of one primitive and common type. Man is the chef-d’œuvre of nature, which the gradual progression of beings was to have as its last term, and all lower creations are regarded as pre-conditions of man’s existence, since nature “could only realize the human form by combining in all imaginable ways each of the traits which was to enter into it.” The formative force in this process of evolution (or “metamorphosis”) is conceived as an intellectual principle (idée génératrice). Robinet thus laid the foundation of that view of the world as wholly vital, and as a progressive unfolding of a spiritual formative principle, which was afterwards worked out by Schelling. It is to be added that Robinet adopted a thorough-going materialistic view of the dependence of mind on body, going even to the length of assigning special nerve-fibres to the moral sense. The system of Holbach seeks to provide a consistent materialistic view of the world and its processes. Mental operations are identified with physical movements, the three conditions of physical movement, inertia, attraction and repulsion, being in the moral world self-love, love and hate. He left open the question whether the capability of sensation belongs to all matter, or is confined to the combinations of certain materials. He looked on the actions of the individual organism and of society as determined by the needs of self-preservation. He conceived of man as a product of nature that had gradually developed itself from a low condition, though he relinquished the problem of the exact mode of his first genesis and advance as not soluble by data of experience. Holbach thus worked out the basis of a rigorously materialistic conception of evolution.

The question of human development which Holbach touched on was one which occupied many minds both in and out of France during the 18th century, and more especially towards its close. The foundations of this theory of history as an upward progress of man out of a barbaric and animal condition were laid by Vico in his celebrated work Principii di scienza nuova. In France the doctrine was represented by Turgot and Condorcet.

German Writers of the 18th Century—Leibnitz.—In Leibnitz we find, if not a doctrine of evolution in the strict sense, a theory of the world which is curiously related to the modern doctrine. The chief aim of Leibnitz is no doubt to account for the world in its static aspect as a co-existent whole, to conceive the ultimate reality of things in such a way as to solve the mystery of mind and matter. Yet by his very mode of solving the problem he is led on to consider the nature of the world-process. By placing substantial reality in an infinite number of monads whose essential nature is force or activity, which is conceived as mental (representation), Leibnitz was carried on to the explanation of the successive order of the world. He prepares the way, too, for a doctrine of evolution by his monistic idea of the substantial similarity of all things, inorganic and organic, bodily and spiritual, and still more by his conception of a perfect gradation of existence from the lowest “inanimate” objects, whose essential activity is confused representation, up to the highest organized being—man—with his clear intelligence.[11] Turning now to Leibnitz’s conception of the world as a process, we see first that he supplies, in his notion of the underlying reality as force which is represented as spiritual (quelque chose d’analogique au sentiment et à l’appétit), both a mechanical and a teleological explanation of its order. More than this, Leibnitz supposes that the activity of the monads takes the form of a self-evolution. It is the following out of an inherent tendency or impulse to a series of changes, all of which were virtually pre-existent, and this process cannot be interfered with from without. As the individual monad, so the whole system which makes up the world is a gradual development. In this case, however, we cannot say that each step goes out of the other as in that of individual development. Each monad is an original independent being, and is determined to take this particular point in the universe, this place in the scale of beings. We see how different this metaphysical conception is from that scientific notion of cosmic evolution in which the lower stages are the antecedents and conditions of the higher. It is probable that Leibnitz’s notion of time and space, which approaches Kant’s theory, led him to attach but little importance to the successive order of the world. Leibnitz, in fact, presents to us an infinite system of perfectly distinct though parallel developments, which on their mental side assume the aspect of a scale, not through any mutual action, but solely through the determination of the Deity. Even this idea, however, is incomplete, for Leibnitz fails to explain the physical aspect of development. Thus he does not account for the fact that organic beings—which have always existed as preformations (in the case of animals as animaux spermatiques)—come to be developed under given conditions. Yet Leibnitz prepared the way for a new conception of organic evolution. The modern monistic doctrine, that all material things consist of sentient elements, and that consciousness arises through a combination of these, was a natural transformation of Leibnitz’s theory.[12]

Lessing.—Of Leibnitz’s immediate followers we may mention Lessing, who in his Education of the Human Race brought out the truth of the process of gradual development underlying human history, even though he expressed this in a form inconsistent with the idea of a spontaneous evolution.

Herder.—Herder, on the other hand, Lessing’s contemporary, treated the subject of man’s development in a thoroughly naturalistic spirit. In his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte, Herder adopts Leibnitz’s idea of a graduated scale of beings, at the same time conceiving of the lower stages as the conditions of the higher. Thus man is said to be the highest product of nature, and as such to be dependent on all lower products. All material things are assimilated to one another as organic, the vitalizing principle being inherent in all matter. The development of man is explained in connexion with that of the earth, and in relation to climatic variations, &c. Man’s mental faculties are viewed as related to his organization, and as developed under the pressure of the necessities of life.[13]

Kant.—Kant’s relation to the doctrine of evolution is a many-sided one. In the first place, his peculiar system of subjective idealism, involving the idea that time is but a mental form to which there corresponds nothing in the sphere of noümenal reality, serves to give a peculiar philosophical interpretation to every doctrine of cosmic evolution. Kant, like Leibnitz, seeks to reconcile the mechanical and teleological views of nature, only he assigns to these different spheres. The order of the inorganic world is explained by properly physical causes. In his Naturgeschichte des Himmels, in which he anticipated the nebular theory afterwards more fully developed by Laplace, Kant sought to explain the genesis of the cosmos as a product of physical forces and laws. The worlds, or systems of worlds, which fill infinite space are continually being formed and destroyed. Chaos passes by a process of evolution into a cosmos, and this again into chaos. So far as the evolution of the solar system is concerned, Kant held these mechanical causes as adequate. For the world as a whole, however, he postulated a beginning in time (whence his use of the word creation), and further supposed that the impulse of organization which was conveyed to chaotic matter by the Creator issued from a central point in the infinite space spreading gradually outwards.[14] While in his cosmology Kant thus relies on mechanical conceptions, in his treatment of organic life his mind is, on the contrary, dominated by teleological ideas. An organism was to him something controlled by a formative organizing principle. It was natural, therefore, that he rejected the idea of a spontaneous generation of organisms (which was just then being advocated by his friend Forster), not only as unsupported by experience but as an inadequate hypothesis. Experience forbids our excluding organic activity from natural causes, also our excluding intelligence from purposeful (zwecktätigen) causes; hence experience forbids our defining the fundamental force or first cause out of which living creatures arose.[15] Just as Kant thus sharply marks off the regions of the inorganic and the organic, so he sets man in strong opposition to the lower animals. His ascription to man of a unique faculty, free-will, forbade his conceiving our species as a link in a graduated series of organic developments. In his doctrine of human development he does indeed recognize an early stage of existence in which our species was dominated by sensuous enjoyment and instinct. He further conceives of this stage as itself a process of (natural) development, namely, of the natural disposition of the species to vary in the greatest possible manner so as to preserve its unity through a process of self-adaptation (Anarten) to climate. This, he says, must not be conceived as resulting from the action of external causes, but is due to a natural disposition (Anlage). From this capability of natural development (which already involves a teleological idea) Kant distinguishes the power of moral self-development or self-liberation from the dominion of nature, the gradual realization of which constitutes human history or progress. This moral development is regarded as a gradual approach to that rational, social and political state in which will be realized the greatest possible quantity of liberty. Thus Kant, though he appropriated and gave new form to the idea of human progress, conceived of this as wholly distinct from a natural (mechanical) process. In this particular, as in his view of organic actions, Kant distinctly opposed the idea of evolution as one universal process swaying alike the physical and the moral world.

Schelling.—In the earlier writings of Schelling, containing the philosophy of identity, existence is represented as a becoming, or process of evolution. Nature and mind (which are the two sides, or polar directions, of the one absolute) are each viewed as an activity advancing by an uninterrupted succession of stages. The side of this process which Schelling worked out most completely is the negative side, that is, nature. Nature is essentially a process of organic self-evolution. It can only be understood by subordinating the mechanical conception to the vital, by conceiving the world as one organism animated by a spiritual principle or intelligence (Weltseele). From this point of view the processes of nature from the inorganic up to the most complex of the organic become stages in the self-realization of nature. All organic forms are at bottom but one organization, and the inorganic world shows the same formative activity in various degrees or potences. Schelling conceives of the gradual self-evolution of nature in a succession of higher and higher forms as brought about by a limitation of her infinite productivity, showing itself in a series of points of arrest. The detailed exhibition of the organizing activity of nature in the several processes of the organic and inorganic world rests on a number of fanciful and unscientific ideas. Schelling’s theory is a bold attempt to revitalize nature in the light of growing physical and physiological science, and by so doing to comprehend the unity of the world under the idea of one principle of organic development. His highly figurative language might leave us in doubt how far he conceived the higher stages of this evolution of nature as following the lower in time. In the introduction to his work Von der Weltseele, however, he argues in favour of the possibility of a transmutation of species in periods incommensurable with ours. The evolution of mind (the positive pole) proceeds by way of three stages—theoretic, practical and aesthetical activity. Schelling’s later theosophic speculations do not specially concern us here.

Followers of Schelling.—Of the followers of Schelling a word or two must be said. Heinrich Steffens, in his Anthropologie, seeks to trace out the origin and history of man in connexion with a general theory of the development of the earth, and this again as related to the formation of the solar system. All these processes are regarded as a series of manifestations of a vital principle in higher and higher forms. Oken, again, who carries Schelling’s ideas into the region of biological science, seeks to reconstruct the gradual evolution of the material world out of original matter, which is the first immediate appearance of God, or the absolute. This process is an upward one, through the formation of the solar system and of our earth with its inorganic bodies, up to the production of man. The process is essentially a polar linear action, or differentiation from a common centre. By means of this process the bodies of the solar system separate themselves, and the order of cosmic evolution is repeated in that of terrestrial evolution. The organic world (like the world as a whole) arises out of a primitive chaos, namely, the infusorial slime. A somewhat similar working out of Schelling’s idea is to be found in H.C. Oersted’s work entitled The Soul in Nature (Eng. trans.). Of later works based on Schelling’s doctrine of evolution mention may be made of the volume entitled Natur und Idee, by G.F. Carus. According to this writer, existence is nothing but a becoming, and matter is simply the momentary product of the process of becoming, while force is this process constantly revealing itself in these products.

Hegel.—Like Schelling, Hegel conceives the problem of existence as one of becoming. He differs from him with respect to the ultimate motive of that process of gradual evolution which reveals itself alike in nature and in mind. With Hegel the absolute is itself a dialectic process which contains within itself a principle of progress from difference to difference and from unity to unity. “This process (W. Wallace remarks) knows nothing of the distinctions between past and future, because it implies an eternal present.” This conception of an immanent spontaneous evolution is applied alike both to nature and to mind and history. Nature to Hegel is the idea in the form of hetereity; and finding itself here it has to remove this exteriority in a progressive evolution towards an existence for itself in life and mind. Nature (says Zeller) is to Hegel a system of gradations, of which one arises necessarily out of the other, and is the proximate truth of that out of which it results. There are three stadia, or moments, in this process of nature—(1) the mechanical moment, or matter devoid of individuality; (2) the physical moment, or matter which has particularized itself in bodies—the solar system; and (3) the organic moment, or organic beings, beginning with the geological organism—or the mineral kingdom, plants and animals. Yet this process of development is not to be conceived as if one stage is naturally produced out of the other, and not even as if the one followed the other in time. Only spirit has a history; in nature all forms are contemporaneous.[16] Hegel’s interpretation of mind and history as a process of evolution has more scientific interest than his conception of nature. His theory of the development of free-will (the objective spirit), which takes its start from Kant’s conception of history, with its three stages of legal right, morality as determined by motive and instinctive goodness (Sittlichkeit), might almost as well be expressed in terms of a thoroughly naturalistic doctrine of human development. So, too, some of his conceptions respecting the development of art and religion (the absolute spirit) lend themselves to a similar interpretation. Yet while, in its application to history, Hegel’s theory of evolution has points of resemblance with those doctrines which seek to explain the world-process as one unbroken progress occurring in time, it constitutes on the whole a theory apart and sui generis. It does not conceive of the organic as succeeding on the inorganic, or of conscious life as conditioned in time by lower forms. In this respect it resembles Leibnitz’s idea of the world as a development; the idea of evolution is in each case a metaphysical as distinguished from a scientific one. Hegel gives a place in his metaphysical system to the mechanical and the teleological views; yet in his treatment of the world as an evolution the idea of end or purpose is the predominant one.

Of the followers of Hegel who have worked out his peculiar idea of evolution it is hardly necessary to speak. A bare reference may be made to J.K. F. Rosenkranz, who in his work Hegel’s Naturphilosophie seeks to develop Hegel’s idea of an earth-organism in the light of modern science, recognizing in crystallization the morphological element.

Schopenhauer.—Of the other German philosophers immediately following Kant, there is only one who calls for notice here, namely, Arthur Schopenhauer. This writer, by his conception of the world as will which objectifies itself in a series of gradations from the lowest manifestations of matter up to conscious man, gives a slightly new shape to the evolutional view of Schelling, though he deprives this view of its optimistic character by denying any co-operation of intelligence in the world-process. In truth, Schopenhauer’s conception of the world as the activity of a blind force is at bottom a materialistic and mechanical rather than a spiritualistic and teleological theory. Moreover, Schopenhauer’s subjective idealism, and his view of time as something illusory, hindered him from viewing this process as a sequence of events in time. Thus he ascribes eternity of existence to species under the form of the “Platonic ideas.” As Ludwig Noiré observes, Schopenhauer has no feeling for the problem of the origin of organic beings. He says Lamarck’s original animal is something metaphysical, not physical, namely, the will to live. “Every species (according to Schopenhauer) has of its own will, and according to the circumstances under which it would live, determined its form and organization,—yet not as something physical in time, but as something metaphysical out of time.”

Von Baer.—Before leaving the German speculation of the first half of the century, a word must be said of von Baer, to whose biological contributions we shall refer later in this article, who recognized in the law of development the law of the universe as a whole. In his Entwickelungsgeschichte der Thiere (p. 264) he distinctly tells us that the law of growing individuality is “the fundamental thought which goes through all forms and degrees of animal development and all single relations. It is the same thought which collected in the cosmic space the divided masses into spheres, and combined these to solar systems; the same which caused the weather-beaten dust on the surface of our metallic planet to spring forth into living forms.” Von Baer thus prepared the way for Herbert Spencer’s generalization of the law of organic evolution as the law of all evolution.

Comte.—As we arrive at the 19th century, though yet before the days of Darwin, biology is already beginning to affect the general aspect of thought. It might suffice to single out the influence of Auguste Comte, as the last great thinker who wrote before Darwinism began to permeate philosophic speculation. Though Comte did not actually contribute to a theory of cosmic organic evolution, he helped to lay the foundations of a scientific conception of human history as a natural process of development determined by general laws of human nature together with the accumulating influences of the past. Comte does not recognize that this process is aided by any increase of innate capacity; on the contrary, progress is to him the unfolding of fundamental faculties of human nature which always pre-existed in a latent condition; yet he may perhaps be said to have prepared the way for the new conception of human progress by his inclusion of mental laws under biology.

Development of the Biological Doctrine.—In the 19th century the doctrine of evolution received new biological contents and became transformed from a vague, partly metaphysical theory to the dominant modern conception. At this point it is convenient to leave the guidance of Professor J. Sully and to follow closely T.H. Huxley, who in the 9th edition of this encyclopaedia traced the history of the growth of the biological idea of evolution from its philosophical beginnings to its efflorescence in Charles Darwin.

In the earlier half of the 18th century the term “evolution” was introduced into biological writings in order to denote the mode in which some of the most eminent physiologists of that time conceived that the generation of living things took place; in opposition to the hypothesis advocated, in the preceding century, by W. Harvey in that remarkable work[17] which would give him a claim to rank among the founders of biological science, even had he not been the discoverer of the circulation of the blood.

One of Harvey’s prime objects is to defend and establish, on the basis of direct observation, the opinion already held by Aristotle, that, in the higher animals at any rate, the formation of the new organism by the process of generation takes place, not suddenly, by simultaneous accretion of rudiments of all or the most important of the organs of the adult, nor by sudden metamorphosis of a formative substance into a miniature of the whole, which subsequently grows, but by epigenesis, or successive differentiation of a relatively homogeneous rudiment into the parts and structures which are characteristic of the adult.

“Et primo, quidem, quoniam per epigenesin sive partium superexorientium additamentum pullum fabricari certum est: quaenam pars ante alias omnes exstruatur, et quid de illa ejusque generandi modo observandum veniat, dispiciemus. Ratum sane est et in ovo manifeste apparet quod Aristoteles de perfectorum animalium generatione enuntiat: nimirum, non omnes partes simul fieri, sed ordine aliam post aliam; primumque existere particulam genitalem, cujus virtute postea (tanquam ex principio quodam) reliquae omnes partes prosiliant. Qualem in plantarum seminibus (fabis, puta, aut glandibus) gemmam sive apicem protuberantem cernimus, totius futurae arboris principium. Estque haec particula velut filius emancipatus seorsumque collocatus, et principium per se vivens; unde postea membrorum ordo describitur; et quaecunque ad absolvendum animal pertinent, disponuntur.[18] Quoniam enim nulla pars se ipsam generat; sed postquam generata est, se ipsam jam auget; ideo eam primum oriri necesse est, quae principium augendi contineat (sive enim planta, sive animal est, aeque omnibus inest quod vim habeat vegetandi, sive nutriendi),[19] simulque reliquas omnes partes suo quamque ordine distinguat et formet; proindeque in eadem primogenita particula anima primario inest, sensus, motusque, et totius vitae auctor et principium.” (Exercitatio 51.)

Harvey proceeds to contrast this view with that of the “Medici,” or followers of Hippocrates and Galen, who, “badly philosophizing,” imagined that the brain, the heart, and the liver were simultaneously first generated in the form of vesicles; and, at the same time, while expressing his agreement with Aristotle in the principle of epigenesis, he maintains that it is the blood which is the primal generative part, and not, as Aristotle thought, the heart.

In the latter part of the 17th century the doctrine of epigenesis thus advocated by Harvey was controverted on the ground of direct observation by M. Malpighi, who affirmed that the body of the chick is to be seen in the egg before the punctum sanguineum makes it appearance. But from this perfectly correct observation a conclusion which is by no means warranted was drawn, namely, that the chick as a whole really exists in the egg antecedently to incubation; and that what happens in the course of the latter process is no addition of new parts, “alias post alias natas,” as Harvey puts it, but a simple expansion or unfolding of the organs which already exist, though they are too small and inconspicuous to be discovered. The weight of Malpighi’s observations therefore fell into the scale of that doctrine which Harvey terms metamorphosis, in contradistinction to epigenesis.

The views of Malpighi were warmly welcomed on philosophical grounds by Leibnitz,[20] who found in them a support to his hypothesis of monads, and by Nicholas Malebranche;[21] while, in the middle of the 18th century, not only speculative considerations, but a great number of new and interesting observations on the phenomena of generation, led the ingenious Charles Bonnet and A. von Haller, the first physiologist of the age, to adopt, advocate and extend them.

Bonnet affirms that, before fecundation, the hen’s egg contains an excessively minute but complete chick; and that fecundation and incubation simply cause this germ to absorb nutritious matters, which are deposited in the interstices of the elementary structures of which the miniature chick, or germ, is made up. The consequence of this intussusceptive growth is the “development” or “evolution” of the germ into the visible bird. Thus an organized individual (tout organisé) “is a composite body consisting of the original, or elementary, parts and of the matters which have been associated with them by the aid of nutrition”; so that, if these matters could be extracted from the individual (tout), it would, so to speak, become concentrated in a point, and would thus be restored to its primitive condition of a germ; “just as, by extracting from a bone the calcareous substance which is the source of its hardness, it is reduced to its primitive state of gristle or membrane.”[22]

“Evolution” and “development” are, for Bonnet, synonymous terms; and since by “evolution” he means simply the expansion of that which was invisible into visibility, he was naturally led to the conclusion, at which Leibnitz had arrived by a different line of reasoning, that no such thing as generation, in the proper sense of the word exists in nature. The growth of an organic being is simply a process of enlargement, as a particle of dry gelatine may be swelled up by the intussusception of water; its death is a shrinkage, such as the swelled jelly might undergo on desiccation. Nothing really new is produced in the living world, but the germs which develop have existed since the beginning of things; and nothing really dies, but, when what we call death takes place, the living thing shrinks back into its germ state.[23]

The two parts of Bonnet’s hypothesis, namely, the doctrine that all living things proceed from pre-existing germs, and that these contain, one enclosed within the other, the germs of all future living things, which is the hypothesis of “emboîtement,” and the doctrine that every germ contains in miniature all the organs of the adult, which is the hypothesis of evolution or development, in the primary senses of these words, must be carefully distinguished. In fact, while holding firmly by the former, Bonnet more or less modified the latter in his later writings, and, at length, he admits that a “germ” need not be an actual miniature of the organism, but that it may be merely an “original preformation” capable of producing the latter.[24]

But, thus defined, the germ is neither more nor less than the “particula genitalis” of Aristotle, or the “primordium vegetale” or “ovum” of Harvey; and the “evolution” of such a germ would not be distinguishable from “epigenesis.”

Supported by the great authority of Haller, the doctrine of evolution, or development, prevailed throughout the whole of the 18th century, and Cuvier appears to have substantially adopted Bonnet’s later views, though probably he would not have gone all lengths in the direction of “emboîtement.” In a well-known note to Charles Leopold Laurillard’s Éloge, prefixed to the last edition of the Ossemens fossiles, the “radical de l’être” is much the same thing as Aristotle’s “particula genitalis” and Harvey’s “ovum.”[25]

Bonnet’s eminent contemporary, Buffon, held nearly the same views with respect to the nature of the germ, and expresses them even more confidently.

“Ceux qui ont cru que le cœur étoit le premier formé, se sont trompés; ceux qui disent que c’est le sang se trompent aussi: tout est formé en même temps. Si l’on ne consulte que l’observation, le poulet se voit dans l’œuf avant qu’il ait été couvé.”[26]

“J’ai ouvert une grande quantité d’œufs à differens temps avant et après l’incubation, et je me suis convaincu par mes yeux que le poulet existe en entier dans le milieu de la cicatrule au moment qu’il sort du corps de la poule.”[27]

The “moule intérieur” of Buffon is the aggregate of elementary parts which constitute the individual, and is thus the equivalent of Bonnet’s germ,[28] as defined in the passage cited above. But Buffon further imagined that innumerable “molécules organiques” are dispersed throughout the world, and that alimentation consists in the appropriation by the parts of an organism of those molecules which are analogous to them. Growth, therefore, was, on this hypothesis, partly a process of simple evolution, and partly of what has been termed syngenesis. Buffon’s opinion is, in fact, a sort of combination of views, essentially similar to those of Bonnet, with others, somewhat similar to those of the “Medici” whom Harvey condemns. The “molécules organiques” are physical equivalents of Leibnitz’s “monads.”

It is a striking example of the difficulty of getting people to use their own powers of investigation accurately, that this form of the doctrine of evolution should have held its ground so long; for it was thoroughly and completely exploded, not long after its enunciation, by Caspar Frederick Wolff, who in his Theoria generatìonis, published in 1759, placed the opposite theory of epigenesis upon the secure foundation of fact, from which it has never been displaced. But Wolff had no immediate successors. The school of Cuvier was lamentably deficient in embryologists; and it was only in the course of the first thirty years of the 19th century that Prévost and Dumas in France, and, later on, Döllinger, Pander, von Bär, Rathke, and Remak in Germany, founded modern embryology; and, at the same time, proved the utter incompatibility of the hypothesis of evolution as formulated by Bonnet and Haller with easily demonstrable facts.

Nevertheless, though the conceptions originally denoted by “evolution” and “development” were shown to be untenable, the words retained their application to the process by which the embryos of living beings gradually make their appearance; and the terms “development,” “Entwickelung,” and “evolutio” are now indiscriminately used for the series of genetic changes exhibited by living beings, by writers who would emphatically deny that “development” or “Entwickelung” or “evolutio,” in the sense in which these words were usually employed by Bonnet or Haller, ever occurs.

Evolution, or development, is, in fact, at present employed in biology as a general name for the history of the steps by which any living being has acquired the morphological and the physiological characters which distinguish it. As civil history may be divided into biography, which is the history of individuals, and universal history, which is the history of the human race, so evolution falls naturally into two categories—the evolution of the individual (see [Embryology]) and the evolution of the sum of living beings.

The Evolution of the Sum of Living Beings.—The notion that all the kinds of animals and plants may have come into existence by the growth and modification of primordial germs is as old as speculative thought; but the modern scientific form of the doctrine can be traced historically to the influence of several converging lines of philosophical speculation and of physical observation, none of which go further back than the 17th century. These are:—

1. The enunciation by Descartes of the conception that the physical universe, whether living or not living, is a mechanism, and that, as such, it is explicable on physical principles.

2. The observation of the gradations of structure, from extreme simplicity to very great complexity, presented by living things, and of the relation of these graduated forms to one another.

3. The observation of the existence of an analogy between the series of gradations presented by the species which compose any great group of animals or plants, and the series of embryonic conditions of the highest members of that group.

4. The observation that large groups of species of widely different habits present the same fundamental plan of structure; and that parts of the same animal or plant, the functions of which are very different, likewise exhibit modifications of a common plan.

5. The observation of the existence of structures, in a rudimentary and apparently useless condition, in one species of a group, which are fully developed and have definite functions in other species of the same group.

6. The observation of the effects of varying conditions in modifying living organisms.

7. The observation of the facts of geographical distribution.

8. The observation of the facts of the geological succession of the forms of life.

1. Notwithstanding the elaborate disguise which fear of the powers that were led Descartes to throw over his real opinions, it is impossible to read the Principes de la philosophie without acquiring the conviction that this great philosopher held that the physical world and all things in it, whether living or not living, have originated by a process of evolution, due to the continuous operation of purely physical causes, out of a primitive relatively formless matter.[29]

The following passage is especially instructive:—

“Et tant s’en faut que je veuille que l’on croie toutes les choses que j’écrirai, que même je prétends en proposer ici quelques-unes que je crois absolument être fausses; à savoir, je ne doute point que le monde n’ait été créé au commencement avec autant de perfection qu’il en a; en sorte que le soleil, la terre, la lune, et les étoiles ont été dès lors; et que la terre n’a pas eu seulement en soi les semences des plantes, mais que les plantes même en ont couvert une partie; et qu’Adam et Ève n’ont pas été créés enfans mais en âge d’hommes parfaits. La religion chrétienne veut que nous le croyons ainsi, et la raison naturelle nous persuade entièrement cette vérité; car si nous considérons la toute puissance de Dieu, nous devons juger que tout ce qu’il a fait a eu dès le commencement toute la perfection qu’il devoit avoir. Mais néanmoins, comme on connoîtroit beaucoup mieux quelle a été la nature d’Adam et celle des arbres de Paradis si on avoit examiné comment les enfants se forment peu à peu dans le ventre de leurs mères et comment les plantes sortent de leurs semences, que si on avoit seulement considéré quels ils ont été quand Dieu les a créés: tout de même, nous ferons mieux entendre quelle est généralement la nature de toutes les choses qui sont au monde si nous pouvons imaginer quelques principes qui soient fort intelligibles et fort simples, desquels nous puissions voir clairement que les astres et la terre et enfin tout ce monde visible auroit pu être produit ainsi que de quelques semences (bien que nous sachions qu’il n’a pas été produit en cette façon) que si nous la décrivions seulement comme il est, ou bien comme nous croyons qu’il a été créé. Et parceque je pense avoir trouvé des principes qui sont tels, je tâcherai ici de les expliquer.”[30]