Part 4

There is indeed one animal, whose powers of contrivance would account for its distribution over the globe, even supposing it to have begun with a single family, not more than 4300 years ago, and to have ranged from a single centre. Man is that animal. Yet, if all the other facts that bear on the universality of the Noachian Deluge were in an agreement with it as entire as their irreconcileability is utter and complete, still the circumstances of the human race alone would disable us from believing that the Flood of Noah’s epoch extended over all the globe. With other animals it might be advanced that the different species and main varieties had been represented in the ark and were thence disseminated; but in the case of man we are precluded from such an explanatory device by the express terms of the diluvian record. If the Noachian Flood was universal, then from Noah alone must be descended all the races of man now upon the earth: all the great and curious variations they display must have been evolved, not in countless generations as Darwinism supposes, but in some two or three hundred or less. From Noah alone must have sprung within a mere handful of centuries races so widely unlike one another as Greeks and Negroes, Jews and Egyptians, Saxons and Ojibbeways, Caffirs and Hottentots, Fuegians and Patagonians, Californians and Chinese, Arabs and Esquimaux. In the same archipelago we have the Malay, the Papuan, and the dwarf snub-nosed Negrito. To give the contrast between the two former in the words of Mr. Wallace:--‘The Malay is of short stature, brown-skinned, straight-haired, beardless, and smooth-bodied. The Papuan is taller, is black-skinned, frizzly-haired, bearded, and hairy-bodied. The former is broad-faced, has a small nose, and flat eyebrows; the latter is long-faced, has a large and prominent nose, and projecting eyebrows. The Malay is bashful, cold, undemonstrative, and quiet; the Papuan is bold, impetuous, excitable, and noisy. The former is grave, and seldom laughs; the latter is joyous and laughter-loving,--the one conceals his emotions, the other displays them.’ Such is the description and contrast of two types of mankind geographically separated from one another by an interval of not more than 300 miles; yet the line which separates these two races of the human family is almost exactly coincident with that deep-sea line which forms the boundary between two great zoological provinces. Either, then, in these two distinct but neighbouring localities, the whole multitude of species, man included, must have been undergoing variation simultaneously for tens of thousands of years, or else the differences in the whole multitude, man included, must have been already established, or nearly so, when first they stepped forth in singular procession from the door of the ark. But the former alternative, which is the Darwinian, is consistent with the record of the Noachian Flood in implying that the inundation was only partial; while the latter alternative contradicts the record in an essential point on which it is perfectly explicit, by necessitating the presence in the ark of more than one human family.

As long as we are content to speak of 4000 years or so, some one might be tempted to fancy, however erroneously, that such a period would be adequate to produce the existing varieties of mankind, because there is some evidence of comparatively rapid changes of colour having taken place under the influence of climate, and because a new type of features appears to be forming itself with a noticeable progress under the absolutely unique circumstances which have governed the recent colonization of North America. Unique those circumstances are, because never before has there been so much mingling of the blood of different nations and races in a new and unoccupied field, with much to stimulate and nothing to curb or repress variation. Never before have men’s minds and bodies in every faculty been so taxed and strained to activity by the very superabundance of their resources, the virgin soil of a new country, an inherited civilization, enormous and ever-enlarging facilities for doing, for living, moving, and learning--facilities sometimes that cannot be declined or escaped from, though they ‘fret the pigmy body to decay, and o’er-inform the tenement of clay.’

But, in truth, there is no question of 4000 years in the matter; for there were black people in the time of Herodotus and in the time of Solomon. Already in the time of Moses there existed a race in Palestine so different from the Israelites, that the first Hebrew explorers were daunted by the sight of them, although, in fact, they were looking on a race no longer in its prime, but one that was dying out. Egyptian monuments, dating back to the same period and earlier, give representations of Africans, Asiatics, and Europeans, with their physical characteristics then as now unmistakeably distinct; they portray the Negro as the Negro still is both in colour and in features.

If it took only 800 years, then, which is the interval between the Flood and the birth of Moses, to originate and establish types so distinct as Jews, Egyptians, Negroes, and Anakim, all gathered together in a little corner of the world, might not Nature, having done so much in so short a time for the highest animal, do a little more in a longer time for lower animals, and so supply that origin of species by variation for which Mr. Darwin contends? Would not the obvious inference be that Nature had done so, if it were not fancied that such an origin of species was still more repugnant to the Book of Genesis than even a limitation of the area covered by the Flood? But the Darwinian theory, happily for itself, is not dependent upon any supposition so incredible as one which would warrant us in expecting among the descendants, for example, of William the Conqueror, people as little like one another as John Bull and John Chinaman, Uncle Sambo and the last of the Mohicans. There are circumstances of immense weight to convince us that certain marked divisions of mankind originated in the regions which they are now occupying. There are other circumstances preponderating for the common origin of mankind. Darwinism has at length shown how these phenomena can be reconciled, by simply connecting the history of man with that vast duration of life upon the globe which geological science has unveiled. The likenesses among races of men demand a common parentage for all those races; the unlikenesses can only be accounted for on the view of an isolation immensely protracted of one race from another. Thus the primary origin is common to all; the secondary origin is peculiar to each: but now that the primary origin has been proved to be so vastly more remote than was once supposed, the secondary origin recedes of itself into a far distant past, to give time for differences to arise and develope, since, if the actually existing unlikenesses were only skin-deep, instead of affecting, as they do, the bones of the skeleton and the whole fibre of the mind, they would still be too great to admit a common derivation of the whole human family from the patriarch Noah.

What Geology teaches to demonstration is, that all parts of the dry land have been not once only but many times under the waters of the ocean; but it teaches likewise to demonstration that at least for many and many an age, almost beyond our powers of conceiving duration of time, there has been no total submergence of the land. That interchange of lake and sea with isle and continent which is now going on under our eyes, has been going on for ages innumerable. By this and kindred means human beings, like all kinds of animals and all kinds of plants, have at intervals experienced severance into groups and isolation. Thus has mankind been broken up into distinct families, at first with no line of demarcation except the geographical, but gradually in successive generations becoming more and more unlike in manners, morals, language, features, intelligence, and civilization. But since the era of the Noachian Deluge neither has there been time for Nature, with her slow though certain processes, to effect so great a reconstruction of barriers as to break up the human family, if till then continuous and united; nor, if there had been time for the geographical severance, would there have been time for the constitutional changes.

Among the ancients some believed that the sun, moon, and stars were in reality about the size which they appear to the unassisted eyesight; others supposed the vault of the sky to be a revolving dome of solid crystal pierced with little holes through which men saw in starry shapes the fire of the ethereal region beyond it. Persons with such ideas of space and physical science might not readily have accepted on the moment the Copernican system of astronomy. In the same way persons with a narrow and limited view of the duration of time may find a difficulty in receiving arguments based on or implying the enormous extent of it, which all sciences are now combining to demonstrate. But this mental incapacity, the result of false education and early prejudice, may be defied to resist any real investigation of the facts or study of what has been written upon them. Let any man of mature mind and average intellect read through Sir John Lubbock’s ‘Prehistoric Times,’ Mr. Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species,’ and Sir Charles Lyell’s ‘Principles of Geology,’ and retain if he can the opinion that our globe was first peopled about 6000 years ago, and subsequently all but depopulated by an universal Flood. Let him see, indeed, whether he can read Sir Charles Lyell’s account of the progress of opinion and controversy on these subjects and refrain from blushing. He will recognize in that account a turmoil and clamour of fools and philosophers, of laymen and divines. He will have to set to the credit of intelligent humanity and enlightened Christendom a long tissue of pious frauds, jesuitical defences, arguments based on imaginary facts, and facts perverted by imagination, till he comes down to the present time and finds a great multitude of all classes at length agreed in affirming that life has endured on the globe with unbroken continuity through a past as yet unfathomable. His own mind, he will perceive, has actually reached maturity without having admitted the voice of this multitude, although, to apply almost literally the words of his great Master, ‘If these should hold their peace, the stones would cry out.’

The world and its wonders are of no mushroom growth, although even the mushroom, which is commonly supposed to spring up in a single night, requires a much longer period, often many weeks, for its production. The Book of Genesis itself most clearly warns any careful reader against attempting to build a chronology upon the brief memoranda of names and dates which for other reasons are inserted in it. For, taking them simply as they stand, Shem, the son of Noah, is represented as long surviving the birth of Isaac, while Abraham, the father of Isaac, appears as the contemporary of a vast number of different and strange tribes and nations--Egyptians, Philistines, Canaanites, Syrians, and many more, besides the Chaldeans from among whom he came. To find a parallel to all this, we should imagine our own Edward III, instead of dying in 1377 as he did, living on and on to the present day, a forgotten old man, not noticed in the page of history throughout 500 eventful years, during which the whole of Europe was becoming peopled with descendants of himself and his father, men speaking languages mutually unintelligible, holding creeds mutually abhorrent, with strange diversities in dress, manners and government, and some prevented by national custom from even eating at the same table with guests of another neighbouring and kindred tribe. In vain should we search through history for any actual parallel, for any instance of developments so extraordinary, and estrangements so complete, occurring within a space of only 500 years. If all the nations spoken of as contemporary with Abraham were only 500 years distant from the Flood, as the Book of Genesis shows them to have been, we may be certain that they could trace back their lineage, independently of Noah and his family, far beyond the era of the Deluge. The monumental evidence of Egyptian chronology carries us back to a Pharaoh reigning some three or four hundred years before that date. The Book of Genesis introduces us to another Pharaoh reigning some 400 years after it. Are we to set aside the monumental evidence, and make this later Pharaoh a descendant of Noah, reigning as a powerful monarch, while Abraham, the rightful heir of a patriarchal monarchy over all the earth, was nothing but a wandering shepherd? Religion, morals, civilization, as far as we know anything about them in those ages, whether we regard their advancement in some quarters or their decay in others, all protest against having their progress cramped into those four or five hundred years. They protest against being ascribed with all their conspicuous diversities to the offspring of one man, whose son, grandson, great-grandson and great-great-grandson, Shem, Arphaxad, Salah, and Eber, were actually still living during all these supposed revolutions.

Indeed, if we go back from our 400 to our 4000 years, the protests on these points are almost equally forcible. In the matter of language, estimate how many generations must have passed away before the children of a common parent came to vary in speech as much as Chinese, Russians, Englishmen, and clucking Hottentots. Form some estimate of the time required for the rise and growth of civilization, not only in the old-world centres of Nineveh and Babylon and Egyptian Thebes, but in the separate and independent centres of Mexico and Peru. Explain, moreover, what, on the hypothesis of a common Noachian descent, must be called the rise and growth of barbarism. Show, if it be possible, how, amidst the rapid strides of civilization, side by side with the advancement of taste, literature, and science, the descendants of Noah in some cases degenerated from all culture, sank away from all morality, lost all religion, forgot all useful arts, even those most essential to the lowest degree of comfort, the kindling of fire, the use of metals, the construction of dwellings, while they learned the habits and acquired something more than the innocent shamelessness of brutes--learned to prefer the flesh of their own species to any other, learned to make a duty in some regions of putting their parents to death, in others, of eating their dead bodies. Such customs we have on record four centuries before Christ, such customs on record as existing nineteen centuries after. Will any one attempt to persuade us that the savages of Andaman and the Feejee Islands are cousins, through an ancestor no more remote than Noah, of Chatham and Wilberforce, and Lesseps and Brunel?

Traditions of a Deluge, it is true, are found almost everywhere. The reason doubtless is that almost everywhere some tremendous calamity of this description has at one time or another occurred. Inundations on a small scale are common and frequent, but on a scale great enough to surprise the imagination and become traditional in the memories of a people, they would naturally be rare and infrequent in the extreme, so that the fact of such an experience belonging to the history of so many different races, is but another proof, or at least another indication, of the antiquity of man. If stress is to be laid on the points of similarity between the traditions, as proving that every land has been ravaged by the waters of a flood, equal stress may in fairness be laid on the points of difference, as proving that not one common universal Deluge is spoken of, but many separate and partial floods, distinct in time, in place, and in results. If stress again is to be laid on the tradition because it is common to so many tribes, let equal importance be granted to the traditions of time among the Chaldeans and the Egyptians, the Chinese and the Hindus, who reckon the years of their uninterrupted histories by tens of thousands.

Finally, we may ask, where are the traces of so tremendous and unparalleled a convulsion as one that could wrap the whole world in water, and hold all its dædal beauty for many months in that drowned condition, till a tempest still more furious and unparalleled drave heaven and earth, the clouds and ocean, once more asunder? We know how the little trilobite in the Devonian seas behaved in its hour of peril millions of years back; we know what food men ate long ages before the Flood, what weapons they used, what houses they built, what animals they tamed; but what became of man and beast and bird and forest in the supposed universal Deluge, no one knows. The signs and natural monuments of the catastrophe, which should have been visible or discoverable on every side, can nowhere be ascertained,--things that the waters should have swept away or torn down they have left undisturbed, shell-mounds and glacier moraines and boulderstones on the mountain-side; while the great museum of the dead which they should have formed, one would think, over all the earth, to constitute one striking and indisputable geological date, as well as a world-wide monument of religion, is nowhere to be found.

What became of flower and herb, of creatures that live between the zones of high and low water, of mollusk and coral and fish that require an appropriate depth and a fitting temperature in their liquid homes, it will be useless to speculate, if, after all that has been urged upon other points, there are some who still think that the description in Genesis is the description of a Flood that prevailed over all the world, and intend still to believe in such a Flood, and to teach it as a part of religious doctrine, notwithstanding any argument or scientific proof to the contrary. For them we can do no more than commend to their daily reflection a few lines from the lives of two famous men:--‘In spite,’ says Dr. Wilson, ‘alike of the science and the devout religious spirit of Columbus, the Salamanca divines pronounced the idea of the earth’s spherical form heterodox, and a belief in antipodes incompatible with the historical traditions of our faith: since to assert that there were inhabited lands on the opposite side of the globe would be to maintain that there were nations not descended from Adam, it being impossible for them to have passed the intervening ocean. This would therefore be to discredit the Bible, which expressly declares that all men are descended from one common parent.’ And thus another author describes a well-known incident in the life of Galileo:--‘Clad in a penitent’s sackcloth, the mighty, self-relying philosopher and genius fell upon his knees, and, with his hands laid on the Holy Evangelists, declared that he abjured, detested, and would never again teach, the doctrine of the sun’s stability and the earth’s motion. Having confirmed his oath in writing, and promised to perform the enjoined penance, he rose from his knees a pardoned man; and turning about to one of his friends, stamped on the ground, and pronounced in an emphatic whisper, “Eppure si muove,”--but still it does move.’

As the antipodes exist, as the earth goes round the sun, and as the Bible continues to be true, in spite of the theologians and inquisitors at Salamanca and at Rome, so will it continue to be true and full of truth, when at length it shall be acknowledged, as it will be, that there is nothing universal about the Noachian Deluge except the disbelief in its universality.

INSTINCT AND REASON.

An initial probability has been established by Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace that the reason or mind of man, as well as his body, has attained its present complete excellence through gradual development. No one denies that, between a man’s birth and his prime of life, time is required for the intellectual powers to unfold; but it demands an effort which few have as yet made to see in this progression of the individual mind a compendious history of the indefinitely slow process by which the human mind itself has been formed, passing upward, step by step, from simple vitality, dawning consciousness, the various grades of so-called instinct, to the full capacities of the most enlightened reason.

The theory of development or evolution has excited immense opposition and distrust, because of its obvious application to the human body. Its application to the human mind, which, though less obvious at the first glance, almost inevitably follows, seems to have inspired Mr. Wallace himself with alarm. He winds up the admirable series of essays in which he supports the theory under discussion with one that earnestly propounds ‘the limits of natural selection as applied to man.’ His arguments on this subject are drawn from physical science, though his mind is evidently, and even confessedly, swayed throughout by other than physical considerations. He represents, in fact, and endeavours to reconcile to his own scientific views, the weight of popular prejudice which has hitherto condemned those views with some vehemence of opposition.

The sentiment in question amounts to this, that certain powers or faculties of the human mind are so wonderful and so unique, that they could not have originated in the ordinary processes of nature without some special intervention. Antecedents conforming to the usual observed order in other living productions are not sufficiently magnificent for the soul of man. Something sudden, something mysterious, is demanded in the agency of its creation. It must be like Pallas Athene, springing from the brain of Zeus, a goddess fully armed from her birth in the panoply of wisdom and virtue. Yet the whole feeling thus to be described of what is fit and worthy must be accredited, as we desire to show, simply to prejudice. Nothing can really depend for its intrinsic grandeur upon our knowledge or ignorance of its origin. A single cause instantaneously producing its effect does not make the result in any way more admirable or magnificent than the like result coming at the close of an indefinitely extended chain of causation. Feelings of surprise and wonder are excited when we find that ten thousand copies of the Times newspaper can be printed within a single hour; but the same feelings move us in the granite-yards of Scotland, when we learn that many months are required for cutting through a single block. At the first proposal of railways, a pace of twenty or five-and-twenty miles an hour was thought too wonderful for belief; while now, from familiarity with far higher rates of speed, we think it miserably slow. A child is surprised to learn that the light of the sun requires time to reach the eye; but a new and even greater surprise is aroused by the information that the time so required is only a few minutes for ninety millions of miles. The swiftness of thought is proverbial. A single act of thought is commonly supposed to be absolutely instantaneous; and yet presence of mind, which depends on rapidity of thought, is fully recognized as an uncommon quality, while it has now been ascertained by experiment that every thought requires a definite, and in many cases measurable, length of time for its production and exercise. Following the analogy of these illustrations, we may expect that the popular opinion or prejudice as to the instantaneous creation of the human mind will vanish and subside when men become familiar with the idea of its slow development. It will at least be seen that there is no special dignity and grandeur in the supposed suddenness of its introduction into the universe. The general scheme of nature, so far as we can penetrate its working, seems to show that there is some proportion observed between the time spent in producing and the perfection of the thing produced. Religion itself is an unquestionable witness to this method of procedure. There is no great religion of which the adherents claim to have had it revealed to them from the first in its full perfection. What is true of religion, is true of all arts and sciences. Their progress has been gradual. The greatness of nations, even when it seems to blaze forth in history most suddenly, ever finds its true origin in numerous steps of slow preparation. A hardy, frugal tribe of warriors is nursed in some obscure mountain cradle. The struggle for existence fosters their preservative virtues. A line of rulers is evoked, forced by the circumstances of their tenure to acquire, as their leading qualities, cunning, prudence, self-control, fertility of resource, promptitude of action, till at length the hour and the man coincide, and a handful of barbarians give their name to a great empire. The same rule prevails with languages, and the literatures that adorn them. So fully is this established in regard to literature, that men who examine the subject deeply are almost led to disbelieve in originality of genius altogether, from the invariable indebtedness of the noblest authors to the thoughts and imaginings of earlier minds. There is, therefore, no antecedent improbability that can fairly be pleaded against the gradual development of the human mind. On the contrary, every possible analogy is in its favour. A supposition so favoured becomes at least a lawful and reasonable subject of enquiry. If it be true that the theory of evolution applies to the mind of man, we should expect to find in that mind itself traces of the earlier steps, or grades of development, through which it has passed, and also in the world around creatures lower than humanity in some sort representing those earlier stages of slowly unfolding reason. In other words, we should expect to find in human nature itself those very inequalities, that very conflict of the higher and the lower elements on which moralists so urgently insist, and we should expect to find affinities and resemblances, more or less close, pervading the whole animal creation, and exhibiting human reason and brute intelligence as, upon a broad view, one in kind, however different in degree.

The first requisite for intelligence is the possession of memory. Without this faculty, intelligence is impossible; but, on the other hand, memory that does not subserve some sort of intelligence, is a useless faculty; and in this the old theory of creation agrees with the new, that nothing obtains a footing in the world without a use. It may be urged, that the human memory is incomparably superior to that of the lower animals; but there are surprising differences in the powers of memory among human beings, and the effects of cultivation, with the facilities for that cultivation supplied by language, should be taken into account. It is important to observe also, that with brutes, as with men, some individuals are quicker than others; that the memory of brutes, like our own, can be improved by training; and that its powers are not equally distributed to all classes. The dog, the horse, the parrot, the elephant, are probably not further below mankind in the faculty of memory, than they are superior in it to the oyster and the jelly-fish.

To make the most of humanity, without introducing the question of man’s material form and structure, one would naturally insist upon his docility or power of being taught; upon his versatility or power of adapting various means to the same or various ends; upon his moral nature, embracing the different passions and affections, and the knowledge of good and evil; and, lastly, no doubt, one would be inclined and one would have a right to insist on the grandeur of his aspirations. A crafty rhetorician would perhaps dwell on the collective value of these endowments, and then exhibit them, separately, rising to their height and fulness in men like Archimedes, and Chrysostom, and Dante. He would dare us to trace back the mental ancestry of these true heroes to apes and fishes. Yet the reason, piety, and imagination of such men, are themselves developed between childhood and maturity; their very pre-eminence shows that improvement in such qualities is possible from one generation to another, and that therefore meanness of origin needs only to be coupled with remoteness in time to reconcile the supremacy of man’s intelligence with its ultimate derivation from the lowest powers of consciousness.

Mr. Wallace has pointed out very clearly and conclusively the fallacious character of the evidence on which the old theory of instinct was founded. Starting with the notion that wild animals had none of that docility and versatility which man possesses through his reasoning powers, yet seeing them produce effects like those which man produces by the help of teachers or his own choice of means, we inferred the existence of as many separate faculties as there are kinds of animals. Each of these faculties was thought to resemble reason about as much as a jack-in-the-box resembles a man. The faculty came into exercise in one invariable way without any choice on its owner’s part, just as the jack starts up, whether he will or no, when his lid is taken off. We wondered at the admirable contrivance and design by which these very limited faculties were adapted in each case to the wants and preservation of the species to which they belonged. At times, it is true, with some inconsistency, we permitted ourselves to upbraid the goose with its stupidity; to speak of the sheep as silly, and the ostrich as wanting intelligence; we even expunged the dodo, with its self-preserving instinct, from the face of the earth; but in spite of these slips and mischances, we still kept gaping and wondering at our own explanation of things, and calling it an excessively wise and ingenious contrivance that every species of animal should have a separate faculty to itself, when one and the same faculty for them all would not only do just as well, but a great deal better. We were far from perceiving how strong a support to Materialism our theory involved, since if the lower animals without reason produce effects like those of reason, then effects like those of reason in a number of cases beyond calculation must be the result of bodily structure. It might not follow that the effects of reason itself were the results of bodily structure, but it would become startlingly probable.

The history of domesticated animals is a continuous proof that some at least of the lower creatures are capable of learning, and how learning can be achieved without intelligence has never yet been explained, and is never likely to be. But Mr. Wallace points out that we have made a gratuitous assumption, unsupported by evidence, in supposing birds, for example, to build their nests by instinct rather than by following the example and instruction of their parents. Many things, he remarks, which we ourselves are said to do instinctively, such as putting out our hands to save ourselves from falling, are acquired habits, not instinctive actions, and in fact not possessed by infants. Mr. Darwin tells us of a species of ant which behaves differently towards its slaves in England and in Switzerland respectively. In his memorable account of the busy bee, he shows that some species of bees are less clever at their work than others, and that the accuracy even of the most advanced cell-makers has been overrated. This is the more worthy to be noted, because the same persons who are extremely zealous to set forth reason as superior in kind to what they call instinct, are yet often eager to extol the effects of the lower faculty above those of the higher. An interesting account has recently been given of baboons in the neighbourhood of the Cape of Good Hope combining to pursue, and after a chase of two days and a night, successfully destroying a leopard which had invaded their haunts. Two tribes of baboons in the same locality, the occupants of separate rocky strongholds, are described as upon one occasion meeting in battle, the result being, that nearly a hundred were afterwards found dead or dying on the scene of action. The shape of the creature, and the combination for warlike purposes, which carries with it such a tinge of humanity, can scarcely fail to affect the imagination. Yet these isolated instances must be far less telling than the comparison which Mr. Wallace has so ingeniously instituted between man as a builder and birds in the same capacity. The shelter of the savage is in many cases a less finished contrivance than the nest which the bird prepares for its young. The featherless biped, like the feathered one, takes the materials readiest to its digits. Generations upon generations follow one another without improvement or signs of inventive skill. Even in the days of enlightenment, and in nations which pride themselves most upon it, the human nest is repeatedly constructed without the smallest attention to comfort, health, or beauty. Men, whose fathers before them have built long rows of red-brick boxes to live in, build, by instinct if you will, for it can scarcely be by reason, more lengthening chains of red-brick boxes. There is no reason, indeed, for supposing that the bird consults any principle of beauty in the construction of its nest, but a principle of expedience some birds certainly do consult; the orchard oriole, for example, building its nest shallow or deep, according as it is placed among firm and stiff branches, or suspended from the slender wind-swayed twigs of the weeping-willow. The fact that birds build in human habitations, and make use of human manufactures, is a proof that they are capable of choice both as to locality and materials. The often-observed circumstance, that animals in a newly-discovered country are without fear of man,--a fear which they speedily acquire from experience of his mischievous propensities,--is a clear proof that they are capable of learning caution. It cannot be pretended that a caution which thus only comes in conjunction with experience is instinctive, or anything else than the result of observation, and therefore a sign of intelligent judgment. The lower animals, then, can learn prudence; can profit by experience. In the training of domesticated animals, the same motives of pleasure and pain are applied, and applied effectually, as are used in the education of human beings by parents and schoolmasters and lawgivers. This could not be if the groundwork of the moral nature were not the same in man and the lower animals. Addison was inclined to hold the old opinion, that ‘God himself is the soul of brutes,’ Deus est anima brutorum. ‘One would wonder,’ he says, ‘to hear sceptical men disputing for the reason of animals, and telling us it is only our pride and prejudices that will not allow them the use of that faculty.’ And yet his charming essays upon the natural history of animals, in which he took so keen a personal pleasure, with very little alteration, might be read as arguments in defence of the opinion he thus condemns. He remarks that birds, which ordinarily drive away their young as soon as they are able to get their own livelihood, nevertheless continue to feed them if they are tied to the nest, or confined within a cage, or by any other means appear to be out of a condition of supplying their own necessities. He observes, that the brood-hen will leave her eggs longer in summer than in winter, because in summer they will cool less speedily. But apart from the ingenuity necessary for the propagation of the species, he considers the same bird to be a very idiot, without the least glimmering of thought or common sense, mistaking a piece of chalk for an egg, and sitting upon it as though it were one, insensible of an increase or diminution in the number of those she lays, not distinguishing between her own and those of another species; and when the birth appears of never so different a bird, cherishing it for her own.

It is curious that we should abuse the hen for being now and then deceived by our impostures, considering the immense quantities of counterfeit coin we ourselves accept as currency, and the strange compounds of chalk and mud and alum and poisonous herbs and minerals which, according to the analysts, we contentedly swallow down as milk and butter, bread and beer. But the hen in a wild state is not subject to our impositions, and possibly the domestic hen finds it better for herself to overlook them. At any rate, as the mistakes concern her progeny, if her conduct is other than beneficial, it is an argument against the perfection of instinct, which it tends to bring down to the level of imperfect human reason. It is commonly supposed that ducklings take to the water by instinct. And Addison tells us that on one occasion, as he was walking in the yard of his friend’s country-house, he ‘was wonderfully pleased to see the different workings of instinct in a hen followed by a brood of ducks. The young, upon the sight of a pond, immediately ran into it; while the step-mother, with all imaginable anxiety, hovered about the borders of it, to call them out of an element that appeared to her so dangerous and destructive.’ In order to test the real force of nature in this matter, as distinct from experience and education, I ventured on the experiment of placing some little orphan ducklings, which had been reared away from any pond, in a shallow bath of water just deep enough for them to swim in. The experiment was two or three times repeated, but in each case with a sort of impiety, or, at any rate, gross disrespect towards the grand principle of instinct, the ducklings, instead of enjoying themselves in their appropriate element, made the most violent and unceasing efforts to escape from it. The whole theory of instinct, indeed, probably rests on a multitude of evidences which have themselves been taken for granted. At every point minute observation, or actual questioning of the facts asserted, undermines it. Addison himself must have begun to waver, before he inserted in the numbers of the ‘Guardian’ the French philosopher’s account of the ant, and its wonderful ingenuity and perseverance. Nor are passages wanting in his works, which might have been expressly written in support of the theory of development. After commenting on the various insensible gradations of perceptive being, ‘If we look,’ he says, ‘into the several inward perfections of cunning and sagacity, or what we generally call instinct, we find them rising after the same manner, imperceptibly one above another, and receiving additional improvements, according to the species in which they are implanted. This progress in nature is so very gradual, that the most perfect of an inferior species comes very near to the most imperfect of that which is immediately above it.’ Again: ‘The whole chasm in nature, from a plant to a man, is filled up with divers kinds of creatures, rising one over another, by such a gentle and easy ascent, that the little transitions and deviations from one species to another are almost insensible;’ and he quotes with approbation a passage from Locke, in which we read, ‘There are some brutes that seem to have as much knowledge and reason as some that are called men.’ Pope, who pursues much the same track in his ‘Essay on Man,’ permits himself to speak of ‘the half-reasoning elephant.’ Any one who doubts the appropriateness of such an epithet, not only to the elephant but to many other animals, should begin to study the ways and doings of the lower creatures with an eye to this very question,--at every turn asking himself how the action observed can be accounted for by a blind irrational instinct. A stumbling horse, for example, that is generally beaten for stumbling, starts after a false step before the lash is applied. How ridiculous will it be to ascribe to horses an instinct of starting after stumbling--a conditional instinct, that appears only in those horses that have been previously beaten when they stumbled! We need not suppose, as Lord Bacon appears to have done, that ‘dogs know the dog-killer’ by a kind of power of divination. By their watchful habits, and quick inference from acute observation of the few particulars they are able to comprehend, it can scarcely be doubted that dogs learn something of the dispositions and intentions of mankind, recognize their humours, and distinguish those who are friendly to themselves from those who are hostile.

Numberless writers have noticed the different dispositions of the lower animals, differing not merely in separate species, but in various individuals of the same. There has been no scruple in taking the brutes themselves as types and emblems of moral qualities. Almost every vice and virtue has been unsparingly assigned to one or other of the brute creation. They are brave or cowardly, savage and treacherous, gentle and generous, industrious, idle, obedient, wayward, affectionate, malicious, working always for the common good, or full of rapacity and selfishness. It is likely enough that we often misapply these epithets, and call that courage which is only consciousness of strength, and that malignant ferocity which is really a hungry stomach and a badly-furnished larder; for such mistakes we commit also in judging of our fellow-men. But there are many beautiful instances on record in which dumb creatures have shown themselves capable beyond question of faithful friendship, and therefore as possessing at least the beginnings, if not any high advancement, of a moral nature. None perhaps is more beautiful than that told by Henry Brookes, a writer of the last century, about one of the lions in the Tower of London. A little spaniel picked up in the streets was thrown into the cage of the largest of these beasts, called for his size the king’s lion. ‘Immediately the little animal trembled, and shivered, and crouched, and threw itself on its back, and put forth its tongue, and held up its paws, in supplicatory attitudes, as an acknowledgment of superior power, and praying for mercy. In the meantime the lordly brute, instead of devouring it, beheld it with an eye of philosophic inspection. He turned it over with one paw, and then turned it over with the other, and smelled to it, and seemed desirous of courting a further acquaintance. From this day the strictest friendship commenced between them, a friendship consisting of all possible affection and tenderness on the part of the lion, and of the utmost confidence and boldness on the part of the dog, insomuch that he would lay himself down to sleep, within the fangs and under the jaws of his terrible patron.’

The sequel of the story is pathetic. To tell it briefly, in twelve months the little spaniel sickened and died. The lion at first supposed him to be asleep, but finding that all his efforts to awaken him were in vain, he was filled with intense anguish, would not allow the dead body to be removed, refused all sustenance or comfort, spending his time between rage and grief, till after five days of such an existence, one morning he was found dead, with his head lovingly reclined on the carcase of his little friend.

Were this only a fable instead of an actual incident, there is nothing in it revolting to our sense of probability, because we are perfectly aware that the lower animals constantly give indications of what in ourselves we call the moral feelings. We continually see them behaving as we ourselves behave when we submit to self-sacrifice for the sake of those we love.

We see many animals in possession of laws and constitutions answering to our own in all but one particular, namely, that theirs appear to be fixed while ours are continually changing. But most likely we overrate both the fixed character of theirs, and the instability of our own. Changes in the politics of an oyster may easily escape the notice of a man in the midst of some vast revolution (as he thinks it) of human affairs, some vast revolution which proves in the end to be nothing more than a change of names. For mankind the acquisition of language has indefinitely quickened the movement of ideas, but where language is without the aids of writing and printing, as among savage tribes, and where the language itself is an imperfect instrument of thought, the same routine seems to prevail from generation to generation. Fashion in dress changes but slowly when the dress itself is nothing but a girdle; and the fashions of the mind change with as little facility when ideas and wants, and the means of expressing the one and gratifying the other, are all alike few and extremely simple.

So simple are the wants and ideas of the savage, so little above those of the elephant and the ape, that Mr. Wallace finds himself driven to the conclusion that the savage ‘in his large and well-developed brain possesses an organ quite disproportionate to his actual requirements--an organ that seems prepared in advance, only to be fully utilized as he progresses in civilization.’ But anything quite disproportionate to its actual place in nature cannot have been produced according to the theory of development. This theory therefore Mr. Wallace deems and declares inapplicable to the brain and mind of man. In support of his view he adduces several circumstances both of man’s bodily and mental constitution, which he considers this theory incapable of explaining. He maintains that natural selection will not account for those rudiments of logical, moral, and æsthetic faculties which are to be found in uncivilized man; for the nakedness of the human skin, though hair upon the back would be of essential service to the unclad savage; for the absence of prehensile power from the human foot, a power which he thinks would be useful, or for those perfections of hand and voice which he thinks would be useless, to uncultivated human beings. The inference he draws ‘from this class of phenomena is, that a superior intelligence has guided the development of man in a definite direction and for a special purpose, just as man guides the development of many animal and vegetable forms.’

In this illustration he overlooks the circumstance that man’s selection is after all nothing more nor less than part and parcel of natural selection. In his argument from the various uses and powers of the hand and brain, which could have been of no service to men in a wild state, he neglects the consideration that what is selected through being useful in one direction may incidentally become useful in another. Had he employed his usual ingenuity on the question of man’s hairless skin, he might have seen the possibility of its ‘selection’ through its superior beauty or the health attaching to superior cleanliness. At any rate it is surprising that he should picture to himself a superior intelligence plucking the hair from the backs of savage men, (to whom according to his own account it would have been useful and beneficial) in order that the descendants of the poor shorn wretches might, after many deaths from cold and damp, in the course of many generations take to tailoring and dabbling in bricks and mortar. In regard to the voice he makes an assertion which is surely impossible for himself or any one else to prove, namely, that ‘savages certainly never choose their wives for fine voices.’ But upon this assertion the whole of his argument about the voice depends. And as for the stress which he lays upon the rudimentary moral and æsthetic faculties of savages, we have shown that numbers of other animals likewise have rudimentary moral faculties, while Mr. Wallace himself makes it probable that many have a taste for colour, and that ‘their powers of vision and their faculties of perception and emotion must be essentially of the same nature as our own.’

Truly in one sense every variation is prepared in advance, only to be fully utilized in the future progress of the creature that varies. Every variation, I doubt not, is so prepared in advance by a superior intelligence, but under the general laws which that intelligence has ordained, and not by a special interference. The real progress of each creature, within the spheres at least of consciousness and intelligence, would seem to consist in its growing capacity for perceiving and understanding, for entering into fellowship with, beings superior to itself. In mental powers the dog and the horse become more and more like man, the closer and the more continuous the intercourse. Could they learn our language or we theirs, the progress might be indefinitely hastened. In the general progress onwards and upwards, man, it may be believed, then first became the indisputable lord and chief over his fellow animals, when his reason had so far advanced that he could comprehend the idea of God, when his reason had grown into a capacity of hearing the divine voice, which since then, not by interference with physical conditions, but by intercourse of mind with mind, has led him forward step by step from darkness into twilight, from the twilight is still leading him forward, as his eyes become able to bear it, towards the beauty of the rosy-fingered dawn; and just as those of the lower animals are considered the most intelligent which make the most successful efforts at intercourse with man and at serving him, so, by a true analogy, may the philosopher deem those men and those races of men to be furthest on the path of enlightenment who know most of God and serve Him best.