At the same time, he was equally certain that life must have had an inorganic origin and that Science bids us so to believe. His various utterances are not, it is true, very easily reconciled. On the one hand he lays it down that "Without verification a theoretic conception is a mere figment of the intellect." On the other hand in his Belfast Address he thus expressed himself:

Far, however, from being a mere figment, his{56} mental vision is represented as the most unalloyed product of reason. He writes:[85]

The conclusion of pure intellect, however, having nothing to show for itself in the way of evidence, we are again referred to a condition of things concerning which we know, and can know, nothing.

It is no doubt interesting to know to what opinion the Professor inclined, but is this sort of thing Science?

In the same manner Mr. Herbert Spencer, the philosopher of evolution par excellence, thus reports:[87]

Mr. Darwin himself, who is constantly supposed to have upheld, or even to have demonstrated, the fact of spontaneous generation, is amongst the strongest witnesses against it. He was indeed disposed to believe that the living will some day be found to be producible from the lifeless, the ground of his expectation being the "Law of Continuity,"[90] or the assumption that from the beginning of nature to the end one only kind of law uniformly operates, namely the same as we now experience. But this is to assume the whole{58} question at issue, for unless it can be shewn that there has been spontaneous generation, we cannot be assured that there is such a Law of Continuity. And despite his expectation Darwin always denied that the origin of life has been—sometimes even that it can be—explained. Thus he wrote on various occasions:

Here we may conveniently pause and take stock of our results. On the one hand, we are bidden in the name of Science to learn the past from the present, and the present from observation and experiment alone. On the other, we are invited to believe in an occurrence which observation and experiment negative in the present, on the ground that the circumstances must once have been entirely different from any with which we are acquainted. Obviously, the real motive of belief is that naïvely expressed by Professor Haeckel, who tells us that spontaneous generation is proved by the doctrine{59} of Evolution;[94] which then in its turn is proved by spontaneous generation.

Two points must however be noticed in which it is attempted to find present evidence in favour of spontaneous generation.

First, there is Protoplasm—the "Physical Basis of Life," or Living Matter, being that form of matter by which life is always accompanied. In this no chemical element unknown elsewhere, is to be found; the cells of which it consists are compounded of Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and Carbon; and it has been argued, especially by Huxley, that it is therefore not different in kind from other compounds; that as Oxygen and Hydrogen form water, Oxygen and Carbon, Carbonic Acid, Hydrogen and Nitrogen, Ammonia,—so the four combined, in proper circumstances and proportions, make Living Matter, without the aid of any vital force or principle. And Haeckel with his habitual audacity foretells the artificial production of Protoplasm for purposes of commerce. But, as Mr. Stirling observes,[95] man has always known that he is made of dust, and that the only part of him perceptible to sense is substantially the same as the earth beneath his feet. All that he now learns in addition is that when such matter is wedded to life it undergoes marvellous transformations which in part at least we are able to recognize, but are wholly unable to comprehend. This Professor Huxley himself admits:{60}

Not only that: the subject is full of complexities of which Professor Huxley gives no hint, and which it would even seem he did not himself perceive. In his celebrated lecture on the Physical Basis of Life[97] he gives his hearers to understand that all Protoplasm is the same, that its particles are as the bricks with which any sort of edifice may be constructed, a cathedral or a gin-shop, a palace or a hovel. The protoplasm of a mushroom, for instance, he declares to be essentially identical with that of him who eats it, into which it is most readily convertible. He also speaks of the effect of eating mutton being to "transubstantiate sheep into man." But, positive as are these statements, they are far from representing scientific truths, and we are told by Sir William Thiselton-Dyer that he himself would not know what to do with a candidate who should advance such views in an examination.[98] As to the mushroom and the mutton, Sir William adds, that except the definition of a crab, as a red fish that runs backwards, attributed to the French Academy, he can call to mind no statement "so compact of error."{61}

In reality, instead of all Protoplasm being the same, the differences are infinite. Particles from different sources may be indistinguishable by the microscope or by any test that chemistry can apply, but this only increases the mystery of their nature, for each has its own functions and will perform no others. The Protoplasm of a plant will do what that of an animal, seemingly identical, cannot do. That of a fish will convert the same nutriment into quite a different formation from that of a man.

As Mr. Stirling sums up the matter:[100]

{62}

It thus appears that the character of Protoplasm, far from making it easier to conceive the mechanical production of living things, does but immensely aggravate the difficulty. As Sir William Thiselton-Dyer avows: "I do not see even the beginning of a materialistic theory of protoplasm." And Haeckel's idea that we shall succeed in creating organic life does not commend itself to such an authority as Sir Henry Roscoe:

And M. de Quatrefages thus sums up the conclusions at which he arrives from minute study of the lowest forms of life:[102]{63}

The other point requiring notice is crystallization. Inorganic matter, as we know, can build up crystals, the wonderful structure of which results from the molecular properties of the substance crystallized. Why then, some would ask, may not matter in the same manner produce Protoplasm?

But, in the first place, this, as we have heard, is what it is never found to do. Crystals we can produce at pleasure, in what quantity we will. But all efforts have not yet succeeded in obtaining the most minute speck of living matter. Moreover, nothing can be more widely different from organic structures than crystals. The latter are always mathematical, the former never: the latter grow by outside accretion, of the one kind of particles whereof they consist: the former by absorption and assimilation of various foreign substances: the latter are wholly independent of anything like an ancestor: for the former an ancestor is in our experience indispensable: crystals can be dissolved and recrystallized: living matter once destroyed can never be reconstituted. Above all, the particles incorporated in the crystal are absolutely quiescent, so far as any portion of matter can be said to be so, no more able to change their position without external force than the bricks in a wall, while those{64} in living tissue at once become subject to "the whirlwind of life," involving constant change the cessation of which is death.

To the same effect speaks Mr. A. R. Wallace, Mr. Darwin's associate in the discovery of the Darwinian theory. In a work expressly devoted to the vindication of that theory, Mr. Wallace declares that far from the way of evolution being made clear by Science from end to end—"there are at least three stages in the development of the organic world where some new cause or power must necessarily have come into action." And at the head of them he places that which we are now considering, writing thus:[104]

{65}

Such testimonies are sufficient for our present purpose. In face of them it cannot be pretended that Science knows anything of spontaneous generation or gives her verdict in its favour. On the contrary, as Professor Tait declares:[106]

Yet it is precisely in the name of Science that we have been told to accept the spontaneous origin of life from inorganic matter, as a clearly demonstrated truth, and no riddle at all.

But as Professor Virchow, Evolutionist and Materialist as he was, well said in regard of this very point in the Munich Congress of 1877:

{67}

X

(a) Simple sensation and consciousness. As regards the actual origin of the higher form of life which distinguishes the animal from the vegetable, we are obviously no better informed than we have found ourselves to be concerning the first beginnings of life in any form,—no evidence as to the actual facts being{68} available, or even possible, for our enlightenment. Once more we can only argue from the present to the past, and enquire whether the progress of science has made it more reasonable to suppose than it seemed in pre-scientific days that animal life has been spontaneously evolved, either from inanimate matter or from the vegetative life of plants. This enquiry so much resembles that which we have just concluded as to make it unnecessary to pursue it at any length.

We find, in fact, that men of Science who have no prepossessions whatever against Evolution, and would willingly accept the Law of Continuity at all points, if only evidence were forthcoming, find here not only an unsolved problem, but one even more difficult than the Origin of Life itself. Du Bois-Reymond for example places this amongst his "transcendental" enigmas, to which an answer will never be found, whereas he thinks that the origin of vegetable life, although at present a mystery, may one day be explained. The expression of his opinion,—that by no possibility can we ever understand how consciousness could be evolved from matter—has, he tells us[107] been vehemently contradicted, but, he adds, nothing in the way of argument, or beyond mere assumptions, has been brought against him. Of these assumptions he notices only that of Professor Haeckel, "the Prophet of Jena," who protests against such limitations of our possibilities as treason to the sacred cause of Evolution.{69} The progress we have made in intellect, says Haeckel, beyond our barbarous progenitors, is sufficient to show that we are on the high road of development towards a stage as far in advance of the present, as this is of the past; and when that is attained, our knowledge will be full and will embrace all this. But, asks Du Bois-Reymond in reply, is this mighty progress of ours so very evident within the period concerning which we have any information? Has the mental capacity of our race notably improved since Homer?[108] or its faculty of thinking since Plato and Aristotle? At our present rate of progress, long before the high-water mark prophesied by Haeckel is reached, the earth will have become uninhabitable. And, were it otherwise, the highest point of intellect to which conceivably man could attain, would be that of the "sufficient intelligence" whereof we have been told, which, from an inspection of the cosmic nebula could foretell all that was to issue from it. And, adds Du Bois-Reymond, even could we do this, we should still be unable to understand the origin of consciousness, which would require intelligence of another order than ours, however magnified.

So again Mr. Wallace tells us,[109] after speaking of the beginning of life as we have already heard,{70}

Unquestionably, there is no lack of speakers and writers who flatly contradict such views, and assert that animal life, equally with vegetable, could be, and must have been, naturally evolved from inorganic nature. The above testimonies, however, amply suffice for our present purpose, and with them we may be satisfied; for at least they make it plain that Science has found no evidence as to the origin of sensation and consciousness{71} conclusive enough to compel belief. And where there is no scientific evidence even alleged, such as might require the training of a specialist for its due appreciation, one man of ordinary intelligence is as competent a judge as another, and scientific experts are on a level with the rest of us.

(b) Rational thought and speech. What has just been said applies with equal force to this matter likewise. Unless Science have some positive evidence to bring, demonstrating how the gulf can be bridged which separates the intelligence of the most degraded races of men from the highest of the brutes, and how articulate language can spontaneously have arisen, which is the necessary appanage of reason, we have all equally the means of forming our conclusions on the subject.

That the gulf between man and the lower animals is here immense we have the evidence of Mr. Darwin.

Mr. Darwin goes on to argue, however, that the difference between man and beast is one of degree only and not of kind; that this can be "clearly shewn"; and that there is unquestionably

from which he concludes that by a like series of steps, of which, however, no trace is left, our progenitors have been able to mount from the simian to the human level.

Clear however as Mr. Darwin pronounces the evidence to be, it is very far from being so considered by other eminent naturalists. So convinced an Evolutionist as Mr. Mivart, for example, declared on various occasions that his reason abundantly sufficed to convince him that there was a wider break in nature between man and the highest ape, than between the highest ape and an oyster or even a mushroom.

It is evident that the evidence which permits judgments so diverse as these cannot be said conclusively{73} to prove the former existence of a bridge every vestige of which has, by the acknowledgment of all parties, entirely disappeared. We are therefore left to determine for ourselves, whether the powers of our own mind, as each knows them in himself, are of a totally different nature from those of dogs and horses, and chimpanzees such as the late lamented "Consul," or whether we are superior only in degree, as a sheep-dog is more intelligent than a sheep, or a fox than a goose.

If in any respect such an enquiry can be made definite and therefore profitable, it is clearly in regard of Language. This, as said above, is an essential adjunct of reason such as ours, and on the other hand it forms the plainest boundary between the domain of the human race and that of the brutes. It is, says Professor Max Müller, our Rubicon on the hither side of which men alone are found. Given reason such as ours, whatever mode of communication might be open to them, we cannot suppose its possessors failing to establish a medium of intercourse. In existing conditions, man can make an alphabet out of the clicks of a needle or the flashes of a mirror, and if his vocal organs were no better than those of a baboon, we cannot imagine him content generation after generation with inarticulate howls and yells. But this is just the case of the animals. They are never found to make the smallest progress in the direction of a code of signals. Dogs indeed, as Mr. Darwin says,[111] having{74} developed in captivity the new art of barking, have further learnt to vary this accomplishment according to the circumstances that provoke it, and have distinct tones to express the diversity of their feelings, as when hunting, or angry, or setting out for a walk, or shut up in a kennel or out of a house. Some dogs, he might have added, refine still further, and will betray by their style of bark not only that they are hunting something, but what it is that they have come upon, whether a rabbit, a cat, or a hedgehog. But, as the Chevalier Bunsen observes,[112] and his observation includes such manifestations as the above:

By rational language, on the other hand, is signified, to quote Mr. Mivart:[113]

Consequently, as Bunsen declares:

Bunsen's words were echoed even more forcibly by professor Max Müller, speaking as President of the Anthropological Section of the British Association at Cardiff in 1889.

It is moreover evident that, far from speech having generated reason, as some have preposterously maintained, it is reason which generates speech, no less inevitably than sunlight produces the spectrum when it passes through a prism. The seeming paradox of Wilhelm von Humboldt is in fact a sober truth: "Man is man only through speech, but in order to invent it he must already be man." We have plain evidence that before means for the internal expression of it are found, the mental word (verbum mentale) is awaiting them, and that without this it would be as impossible for any sort of rational speech to be produced as for an apple to be grown without an apple-tree.

Evidence to this effect is furnished by recorded instances of persons who from early childhood, or{77} even from birth, were deaf, dumb, and blind, and appeared to be cut off from all possibility of human converse, the "gates of Mansoul" being thus almost entirely closed. Such are the well-known cases of Laura Bridgman, Miss Keller, and Martha Obrecht, who had been thus afflicted since their earliest childhood, the two first named from the age of two, and the last from that of three years.[114] Also the more recent instance of Marie Heurtin, who was so born, and consequently could not have even the faintest glimmer of any knowledge these senses could convey.[115] Yet, by the exercise of ingenious and unwearied charity, a means of communication was elaborated through the sense of touch, and the souls which had seemingly been buried alive, shewed themselves responsive to such advances,—often astonishingly so,—and revealed their possession of faculties identical with those of their rescuers. We are told, for example, of Marie Heurtin that her intelligence proved to be quick, that she was even "unusually clever, evidently eager for knowledge, and, as sometimes happens, her faculties being prevented by her infirmity from wasting their powers on external objects, were all the more fresh and vigorous." Even more wonderful is the case of Miss Keller, who attained a degree of culture and accomplishment far beyond the common level of those possessing the use of all their senses.{78}

Somewhat akin to such instances is that of the savages from Tierra del Fuego mentioned above by Mr. Darwin. In their case likewise, when they were brought into communication with people possessed of higher culture than their own degraded race, it was found that the corresponding faculties within them were not dead, or as yet non-existent, but only starved into lethargy; and, the opportunity being given, they speedily caused surprise by unmistakable proofs how closely they resemble ourselves.

Thus we find that in this branch of our enquiry there is one broad fact, which all must recognize and none can deny. No race of men has ever been known which could not speak, nor any race of animals which could, or which had made the first beginnings of intelligent language. Facts being the only groundwork of Science here is undoubtedly something whereon she may build an inference, and this inference will certainly not be that the faculties of men and animals are radically identical. And if we are told, as we constantly are, that it is more truly scientific to admit such identity, should there not be some other facts, still more significant and equally well established, to exhibit on the other side?

But of what character are the arguments actually adduced? It will be sufficient to quote a few which come with the highest authority.

We may start with the almost classical specimen contributed by Mr. Darwin himself.{79}

Similarly Professor Whitney writes of some supposed "pithecoid"[117] men:

And so again Professor Romanes:[119]

Of course, as Mr. Mivart replies,[120] there is no difficulty in supposing anything we choose, or in seeing animals in imagination performing feats{80} which never yet have they been known to achieve in fact. But no amount of such suppositions or imaginations will furnish Science with the scantiest apology for a foothold, nor can the germs of language attributed to pithecoid communities or the sagest of their patriarchs, be considered as of any greater value than the speeches put into the mouths of the animals by Æsop or "Uncle Remus."

It is also to be noticed that in these accounts of the origin of language, the essential element of reason is always quietly smuggled in as a matter of course. Thus Mr. Darwin's wisest of the pithecoids was able to "think of" a device for the information of his fellows. There is not the smallest doubt that any creature which had got so far as that would find what he wanted. It is but the old case of the man who was sure he could have written Hamlet had he had a mind to do so. Like him, the ape might have made the invention, if he had a mind to make it;—only he had not got the mind. So too, Professor Romanes' missing links use tones and signs which acquire "more and more" the character of true speech: which could not be unless they contained some measure of that character already. But it is just the first step thus ignored which spans the gulf between man and brute.

There is another factor upon which, in conjunction with these suppositions, great stress is wont to be laid, namely that of time; it being apparently taken for granted that if only time enough be given anything whatever may come about. Thus Professor{81} Romanes tells us[121] that his imaginary Homo alalus, or speechless man, must probably have lived for an "inconceivably long time," before getting far enough on the road towards speech to give him such an advantage as enabled him to crush out his less accomplished congeners; and that even after this point was reached, another "inconceivable lapse of time" must have been required to turn him into Homo sapiens, or man as he actually is. Immense intervals, he further tells us, must have been consumed in the passage through various grades of mental evolution; "The epoch during which sentence-words prevailed was probably immense"; "It was not until æons of ages had elapsed that any pronouns arose."

Meanwhile, there is no scrap of evidence that as a matter of fact any thing of all this ever happened at all, and as Bunsen has observed no millions of years, even were millions available at discretion, could ever supply the want of the faculty without which nothing in the way of language could ever be accomplished.

(c) Free-will.—Here is another human faculty which Du Bois-Reymond declares never to have been accounted for by natural causation, and he greatly doubts whether it should not be classed among the problems that must be for ever insoluble.

Professor Haeckel, as we have seen, gets rid of all difficulties on this score by laying it down that "the freedom of the will is not an object for critical{82} scientific inquiry at all, for it is a pure dogma, based on an illusion, and has no real existence."

It is plain that for his purpose this is the only course possible. If the will be really free, there can be no question of finding a mechanical explanation of it. There is therefore no alternative but to cut the Gordian knot, and to declare that the liberty which the vast majority of men believe themselves to exercise every instant, is proved by Science to be no better than a pure dogma, that is to say, a mere figment.

When we seek for his indication of the line of argument whereby this position is made good, the information supplied is less full than might be desired. He begins[122] with a rather lengthy sketch of the history of controversy in this regard,—which contains the remarkable statement that "Some of the first teachers of the Christian Churches—such as St. Augustine and Calvin—rejected the freedom of the will as decidedly as the famous leaders of pure Materialism, Holbach in the eighteenth, and Büchner in the nineteenth century." Then he proceeds:

That is all. It is needless to observe that jargon like this proves nothing. Of anything approaching to evidence there is here, manifestly, no vestige, and there is consequently nothing which can avail to win our assent as rational men.

It is likewise obvious that we have here a question{84} as to which every human being has the means of judging equally with the most eminent man of Science, and modern improvement of the methods and instruments of research leaves us just where we always were. The final evidence on the subject every man has within himself, in the most vital facts of his own experience. Into the philosophy of the matter it is neither necessary nor advisable at present to go. In dealing with profound yet elementary questions, regarding which our means of knowledge are thus simple and direct, men are apt to bewilder themselves when they begin to philosophize, and to persuade themselves that they cannot be sure precisely of those things that are most certain. George Borrow is by no means the only one who has tormented himself with doubts as to his own existence.[124] A still larger number have professed to believe themselves mere machines compelled to go like clocks, and to do only what has been predetermined for them. But such beliefs are for the lecture-room or the study only, and in practical life every one behaves as if both he himself and others—especially others—were responsible for their conduct. So common-sense teaches, than which we shall not find a safer guide. "Sir," said the eminently common-sense Dr. Johnson, "we know our will is free; and there's an end on't. All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.... But, Sir, as to the doctrine of necessity, no{85} man believes it. If a man should give me arguments that I cannot answer to prove that I cannot see; because I cannot answer his arguments, do I believe that I have no eyes?"

Thus we find once again that the doctrines which some would force upon us in the name of Science, on whatever they are founded, have no basis of fact, and cannot therefore rightly call themselves scientific.{86}

XI

THAT the world which we inhabit is a Cosmos, ruled by law and order, no one has ever attempted to deny. Only because laws are everywhere found awaiting discovery, is natural science a possibility. What such laws really are, we have already considered. They are, as Mr. Lewes puts it, the paths along which the forces of nature travel to their results; and it is only because these forces keep invariably each to its proper path, that we are able to follow them with our minds, either to learn anything concerning them, or to turn our knowledge to practical account. In something of the same manner, it is because we are assured that our railway trains will run on their appointed lines, that we can learn from Bradshaw how to get to Exeter or to Edinburgh;—but the forces of Nature are never derailed. It is, in fact, as we have heard, the first principle of Science, that "the reign of law is universal, the principle of continuity ubiquitous,"—and upon this the validity of all her methods and conclusions wholly depends. It is taken for granted, with absolute confidence, that what is once found to happen{87} will be exactly repeated in like circumstances,—that the laws experimentally observed, regarding motion, heat, light, sound, chemical combination, electricity, magnetism, and the rest, will be faithfully obeyed, in every minutest particular, as certainly as suns will rise and set, or moons wax and wane. Were it not so, were the forces of Nature to act spasmodically and at random, and did not their common action so result as to establish or subserve other laws of bewildering complexity,—as in molecular dynamics, the mechanism of the heavens, and the processes of organic life,—we could learn no more from the study of nature than from a page of type which had been set up by an idiot, or an anthropoid ape.

Here is another factor in our problem, and one which has from the first attracted the attention of thinking men. No feature of nature impressed them more than this same reign of law and order, apparent everywhere; and on this account they called the world Cosmos, instead of Chaos. And, since it is self-evident that everything must have a reason for its being, that whatever is not self-existent must have a cause other than itself, they felt compelled to enquire what manner of cause would account for law and order. The like enquiry we have still to pursue, and by methods radically the same as ever; for amid all her discoveries Science has found nothing which does anything whatever to furnish an answer. All that has been done is enormously to multiply the aspects under which the problem presents itself.{88}

It is now not merely in the larger and more obvious operations of Nature that we can trace this marvellous ubiquity of law, but in her most hidden processes and inmost constitution. At every point, we are forced to ask why things should be as they actually are, and how they came to be subject to conditions which they cannot be supposed to have created for themselves. Why, for example, should the ultimate elements of matter,—be they atoms, or electrons, or whatever else,—always and everywhere observe the same rules of the great game in which they serve as counters? Why, to take a concrete instance, should atoms of Hydrogen in Sirius, or in a star of the Milky Way, obey just the same laws as do those with which we make coal-gas or spirit of salt? These various atoms, as Lord Grimthorpe reminds us, have never been within billions of miles of one another. What is the mysterious influence which links them together across the depths of space? That they are so linked is obvious; for if we can ascertain the existence of such a substance in other spheres, it is only because the light it emits, exactly agrees when analyzed in the spectroscope with that of hydrogen flames in our own laboratories. How comes it, again, that the seventy different kinds of atoms, (to speak in round numbers)—are distributed—according to Mendeléeff's periodic law,—among some seven groups or families, the members of each group resembling one another in various particulars, wherein they differ from the rest? Or, to pass from atoms to molecules, (in which atoms of the same or{89} of different kinds combine, to build up simple or compound substances respectively,)—how is it that molecules of the same kind are always constructed upon exactly the same model, resembling one another far more closely than sovereigns struck from the same die, or different copies of this morning's Times? It was in this uniformity of type, character and behaviour, repeated always and everywhere, in instances multiplied "beyond the power of imagination to conceive," that Sir John Herschel[125] saw a feature stamping atoms and molecules as "manufactured articles, and subordinate agents," which, no less than a line of spinning-jennies, or a regiment of soldiers clad in the same uniform, and going through the same evolutions, imply a controlling force directing things according to a definite system.

These and innumerable other particulars of detail has Science added to the problem: but of anything which can supply an answer, she knows no more than did the first man who ever mooted the question within his own soul.

And if in the inorganic world we find food for such considerations, with immensely greater instance are they forced upon us by a study of the organic. Here we enter a new realm of mystery, for the laws we encounter actively energizing at every point, are altogether different from those with which hitherto we have had to deal. The matter which enters into the constitution of living things,—animals or{90} plants—is precisely the same as that of which the inorganic world is constituted. No single atom or molecule is found in the one which has not been drawn from the other;—nor when incorporated in a living structure do atoms or molecules suffer any alteration, or change their nature in any respect, for, says Clerk-Maxwell,[126] throughout all changes and catastrophes these remain "unbroken and unworn." Nevertheless, they fall at once under the spell of a force which introduces into their operations an order altogether new, for it somehow strikes across all the laws of dead matter, setting up a new code of its own, which endures just so long as life lasts, and is never met with apart from life. And these organic laws issue in marvellous results. Professor Haeckel himself, after endeavouring to show that from the inorganic world no arguments can be drawn to favour the supposition of design in Nature, thus continues:[127]