PART II.—Do Species wear out, and, if not, why not?—Implication of the Darwinian Theory that Species are unlimited in Existence.—Examination of an Opposite Doctrine maintained by Naudin.—Evidence that Species may die out from Inherent Causes only indirect and inferential from Arrangements to secure Wide Breeding—Physiological Import of Sexes—Doubtful whether Sexual Reproduction with Wide Breeding is a Preventive or only a Palliative of Decrepitude in Species.— Darwinian Hypothesis must suppose the Former (continued 5)

This is droll reading, when one considers that the "evolutionist" is the only sort of naturalist who has much occasion to employ his "capacity for generalization" upon "the accumulated facts" in their bearing upon the problem of the origin of species; since the "special creationist," who maintains that they were supernaturally originated just as they are, by the very terms of his doctrine places them out of the reach of scientific explanation. Again, when one reflects upon the new impetus which the derivative hypothesis has given to systematic natural history, and reads the declaration of a master in this department (the President of the Linnean Society) that Mr. Darwin "has in this nineteenth century brought about as great a revolution in the philosophic study of organic Nature as that which was effected in the previous century by the immortal Swede," it sounds oddly to hear from Dr. Dawson that "it obliterates the fine perception of differences from the mind of the naturalist, . . . . destroys the possibility of a philosophical classification, reducing all things to a mere series, and leads to a rapid decay in systematic zoology and botany, which is already very manifest among the disciples of Spencer and Darwin in England." So, also, "it removes from the study of Nature the ideas of final cause and purpose"—a sentence which reads curiously in the light of Darwin's special investigations, such as those upon the climbing of plants, the agency of insects in the fertilization of blossoms, and the like, which have brought back teleology to natural science, wedded to morphology and already fruitful of discoveries. The difficulty with Dr. Dawson here is (and it need not be underrated) that apparently he cannot as yet believe an adaptation, act, or result, to be purposed the apparatus of which is perfected or evolved in the course of Nature—a common but a crude state of mind on the part of those who believe that there is any originating purpose in the universe, and one which, we are sure, Dr. Dawson does not share as respects the material world until he reaches the organic kingdoms, and there, possibly, because he sees man at the head of them—of them, while above them. However that may be, the position which Dr. Dawson chooses to occupy is not left uncertain. After concluding, substantially, that those "evolutionists" who exclude design from Nature thereby exclude theism, which nobody will deny, he proceeds (on page 348) to give his opinion that the "evolutionism which professes to have a creator somewhere behind it . . . . is practically atheistic," and, "if possible, more unphilosophical than that which professes to set out from absolute and eternal nonentity," etc.

There are some sentences which might lead one to suppose that Dr. Dawson himself admitted of an evolution "with a creator somewhere behind it." He offers it (page 320) as a permissible alternative that even man "has been created mediately by the operation of forces also concerned in the production of other animals;" concedes that a just theory "does not even exclude evolution or derivation, to a certain extent" (page 341); and that "a modern man of science" may safely hold "that all things have been produced by the Supreme Creative Will, acting either directly or through the agency of the forces and materials of his own production." Well, if this be so, why denounce the modern man of science so severely upon the other page merely for accepting the permission? At first sight, it might be thought that our author is exposing himself in one paragraph to a share of the condemnation which he deals out in the other. But the permitted views are nowhere adopted as his own; the evolution is elsewhere restricted within specific limits; and as to "mediate creation," although we cannot divine what is here meant by the term, there is reason to think it does not imply that the several species of a genus were mediately created, in a natural way, through the supernatural creation of a remote common ancestor. So that his own judgment in the matter is probably more correctly gathered from the extract above referred to and other similar deliverances, such as that in which he warns those who "endeavor to steer a middle course, and to maintain that the Creator has proceeded by way of evolution," that "the bare, hard logic of Spencer, the greatest English authority on evolution, leaves no place for this compromise, and shows that the theory, carried out to its legitimate consequences, excludes the knowledge of a Creator and the possibility of his work."

Now, this is a dangerous line to take. Those defenders of the faith are more zealous than wise who must needs fire away in their catapults the very bastions of the citadel, in the defense of outposts that have become untenable. It has been and always will be possible to take an atheistic view of Nature, but far more reasonable from science and philosophy only to take a theistic view. Voltaire's saying here holds true: that if there were no God known, it would be necessary to invent one. It is the best, if not the only, hypothesis for the explanation of the facts. Whether the philosophy of Herbert Spencer (which is not to our liking) is here fairly presented, we have little occasion and no time to consider. In this regard, the close of his article No. 12 in the Contemporary Review shows, at least, his expectation of the entire permanence of our ideas of cause, origin, and religion, and predicts the futility of the expectation that the "religion of humanity" will be the religion of the future, or "can ever more than temporarily shut out the thought of a Power, of which humanity is but a small and fugitive product, which was in its course of ever-changing manifestation before humanity was, and will continue through other manifestations when humanity has ceased to be." If, on the one hand, the philosophy of the unknowable of the Infinite may be held in a merely quasi-theistic or even atheistic way, were not its ablest expounders and defenders Hamilton and Dean Mansel? One would sup-pose that Dr. Dawson might discern at least as much of a divine foundation to Nature as Herbert Spencer and Matthew Arnold; might recognize in this power that "something not ourselves that makes" for order as well as "for righteousness," and which he fitly terms supreme creative will; and, resting in this, endure with more complacency and faith the inevitable prevalence of evolutionary views which he is powerless to hinder. Although he cannot arrest the stream, he might do something toward keeping it in safe channels.

We wished to say something about the way in which scientific men, worthy of the name, hold hypotheses and theories, using them for the purpose of investigation and the collocation of facts, yielding or withholding assent in degrees or provisionally, according to the amount of verification or likelihood, or holding it long in suspense; which is quite in contrast to that of amateurs and general speculators (not that we reckon Dr. Dawson in this class), whose assent or denial seldom waits, or endures qualification. With them it must on all occasions be yea or nay only, according to the letter of the Scriptural injunction, and whatsoever is less than this, or between the two, cometh of evil.

VII

EVOLUTION AND

THEOLOGY [VII-1]

(The Nation, January 15, 1874)

The attitude of theologians toward doctrines of evolution, from the nebular hypothesis down to "Darwinism," is no less worthy of consideration, and hardly less diverse, than that of naturalists. But the topic, if pursued far, leads to questions too wide and deep for our handling here, except incidentally, in the brief notice which it falls in our way to take of the Rev. George Henslow's recent volume on "The Theory of Evolution of Living Things." This treatise is on the side of evolution, "considered as illustrative of the wisdom and beneficence of the Almighty." It was submitted for and received one of the Actonian prizes recently awarded by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. We gather that the staple of a part of it is worked up anew from some earlier discourses of the author upon "Genesis and Geology," "Science and Scripture not antagonistic," etc.

In coupling with it a chapter of the second volume of Dr. Hodge's "Systematic Theology (Part II, Anthropology)," we call attention to a recent essay, by an able and veteran writer, on the other side of the question. As the two fairly enough represent the extremes of Christian thought upon the subject, it is convenient to review them in connection. Theologians have a short and easy, if not wholly satisfactory, way of refuting scientific doctrines which they object to, by pitting the authority or opinion of one savant against another. Already, amid the currents and eddies of modern opinion, the savants may enjoy the same advantage at the expense of the divines— we mean, of course, on the scientific arena; for the mutual refutation of conflicting theologians on their own ground is no novelty. It is not by way of offset, however, that these divergent or contradictory views are here referred to, but only as an illustration of the fact that the divines are by no means all arrayed upon one side of the question in hand. And indeed, in the present transition period, until some one goes much deeper into the heart of the subject, as respects the relations of modern science to the foundations of religious belief, than either of these writers has done, it is as well that the weight of opinion should be distributed, even if only according to prepossessions, rather than that the whole stress should bear upon a single point, and that perhaps the authority of an interpretation of Scripture. A consensus of opinion upon Dr. Hodge's ground, for instance (although better guarded than that of Dr. Dawson), if it were still possible, would—to say the least—probably not at all help to reconcile science and religion. Therefore, it is not to be regretted that the diversities of view among accredited theologians and theological naturalists are about as wide and as equably distributed between the extremes (and we may add that the views themselves are quite as hypothetical) as those which prevail among the various naturalists and natural philosophers of the day.

As a theologian, Mr. Henslow doubtless is not to be compared with the veteran professor at Princeton. On the other hand, he has the advantage of being a naturalist, and the son of a naturalist, as well as a clergyman: consequently he feels the full force of an array of facts in nature, and of the natural inferences from them, which the theological professor, from his Biblical standpoint, and on his implicit assumption that the Old Testament must needs teach true science, can hardly be expected to appreciate. Accordingly, a naturalist would be apt to say of Dr. Hodge's exposition of "theories of the universe" and kindred topics—and in no captious spirit— that whether right or wrong on particular points, he is not often right or wrong in the way of a man of science.

Probably from the lack of familiarity with prevalent ideas and their history, the theologians are apt to suppose that scientific men of the present day are taking up theories of evolution in pure wantonness or mere superfluity of naughtiness; that it would have been quite possible, as well as more proper, to leave all such matters alone. Quieta non movere is doubtless a wise rule upon such subjects, so long as it is fairly applicable. But the time for its application in respect to questions of the origin and relations of existing species has gone by. To ignore them is to imitate the foolish bird that seeks security by hiding its head in the sand. Moreover, the naturalists did not force these questions upon the world; but the world they study forced them upon the naturalists. How these questions of derivation came naturally and inevitably to be revived, how the cumulative probability that the existing are derived from preexisting forms impressed itself upon the minds of many naturalists and thinkers, Mr. Henslow has briefly explained in the introduction and illustrated in the succeeding chapters of the first part of his book. Science, he declares, has been compelled to take up the hypothesis of the evolution of living things as better explaining all the phenomena. In his opinion, it has become "infinitely more probable that all living and extinct beings have been developed or evolved by natural laws of generation from preexisting forms, than that they, with all their innumerable races and varieties, should owe their existences severally to Creative fiats." This doctrine, which even Dr. Hodge allows may possibly be held in a theistic sense, and which, as we suppose, is so held or viewed by a great proportion of the naturalists of our day, Mr. Henslow maintains is fully compatible with dogmatic as well as natural theology; that it explains moral anomalies, and accounts for the mixture of good and evil in the world, as well as for the merely relative perfection of things; and, finally, that "the whole scheme which God has framed for man's existence, from the first that was created to all eternity, collapses if the great law of evolution be suppressed." The second part of his book is occupied with a development of this line of argument. By this doctrine of evolution he does not mean the Darwinian hypothesis, although he accepts and includes this, looking upon natural selection as playing an important though not an unlimited part. He would be an evolutionist with Mivart and Owen and Argyll, even if he had not the vera causa which Darwin contributed to help him on. And, on rising to man, he takes ground with Wallace, saying:

"I would wish to state distinctly that I do not at present see any evidence for believing in a gradual development of man from the lower animals by ordinary natural laws; that is, without some special interference, or, if it be preferred, some exceptional conditions which have thereby separated him from all other creatures, and placed him decidedly in advance of them all. On the other hand, it would be absurd to regard him as totally severed from them. It is the great degree of difference I would insist upon, bodily, mental, and spiritual, which precludes the idea of his having been evolved by exactly the same processes, and with the same limitations, as, for example, the horse from the palaeotherium."

In illustrating this view, he reproduces Wallace's well-known points, and adds one or two of his own. We need not follow up his lines of argument. The essay, indeed, adds nothing material to the discussion of evolution, although it states one side of the case moderately well, as far as it goes.

Dr. Hodge approaches the subject from the side of systematic theology, and considers it mainly in its bearing upon the origin and original state of man. Under each head he first lays down "the Scriptural doctrine," and then discusses "anti-Scriptural theories," which latter, under the first head, are the heathen doctrine of spontaneous generation, the modern doctrine of spontaneous generation, theories of development, specially that of Darwin, the atheistic character of the theory, etc. Although he admits "that there is a theistic and an atheistic form of the nebular hypothesis as to the origin of the universe, so there may be a theistic interpretation of the Darwinian theory," yet he contends that "the system is thoroughly atheistic," notwithstanding that the author "expressly acknowledges the existence of God." Curiously enough, the atheistic form of evolutionary hypotheses, or what he takes for such, is the only one which Dr. Hodge cares to examine. Even the "Reign of Law" theory, Owen's "purposive route of development and chance . . . . by virtue of inherent tendencies thereto," as well as other expositions of the general doctrine on a theistic basis, are barely mentioned without a word of comment, except, perhaps, a general "protest against the arraying of probabilities against the teachings of Scripture."

Now, all former experience shows that it is neither safe nor wise to pronounce a whole system "thoroughly atheistic" which it is conceded may be held theistically, and which is likely to be largely held, if not to prevail, on scientific grounds. It may be well to remember that, "of the two great minds of the seventeenth century, Newton and Leibnitz, both profoundly religious as well as philosophical, one produced the theory of gravitation, the other objected to that theory that it was subversive of natural religion; also that the nebular hypothesis—a natural consequence of the theory of gravitation and of the subsequent progress of physical and astronomical discovery—has been denounced as atheistical even down to our day." It has now outlived anathema.

It is undeniable that Mr. Darwin lays himself open to this kind of attack. The propounder of natural selection might be expected to make the most of the principle, and to overwork the law of parsimony in its behalf. And a system in which exquisite adaptation of means to ends, complicated inter-dependencies, and orderly sequences, appear as results instead of being introduced as factors, and in which special design is ignored in the particulars, must needs be obnoxious, unless guarded as we suppose Mr. Darwin might have guarded his. ground if he had chosen to do so. Our own opinion, after long consideration, is, that Mr. Darwin has no atheistical intent; and that, as respects the test question of design in Nature, his view may be made clear to the theological mind by likening it to that of the "believer in general but not in particular Providence." There is no need to cull passages in support of this interpretation from his various works while the author—the most candid of men—retains through all the editions of the "Origin of Species" the two mottoes from Whewell and Bishop Butler.[VII-2]

The gist of the matter lies in the answer that should be rendered to the questions—1. Do order and useful-working collocation, pervading a system throughout all its parts, prove design? and, 2. Is such evidence negatived or invalidated by the probability that these particular collocations belong to lineal series of such in time, and diversified in the course of Nature—grown up, so to say, step by step? We do not use the terms "adaptation, "arrangement of means to ends," and the like, because they beg the question in stating it.

Finally, ought not theologians to consider whether they have not already, in principle, conceded to the geologists and physicists all that they are asked to concede to the evolutionists; whether, indeed, the main natural theological difficulties which attend the doctrine of evolution—serious as they may be—are not virtually contained in the admission that there is a system of Nature with fixed laws. This, at least, we may say, that, under a system in which so much is done "by the establishment of general laws," it is legitimate for any one to prove, if he can, that any particular thing in the natural world is so done; and it is the proper business of scientific men to push their enquiries in this direction.

It is beside the point for Dr. Hodge to object that, "from the nature of the case, what concerns the origin of things cannot be known except by a supernatural revelation;" that "science has to do with the facts and laws of Nature: here the question concerns the origin of such facts." For the very object of the evolutionists, and of Mr. Darwin in particular, is to remove these subjects from the category of origination, and to bring them under the domain of science by treating them as questions about how things go on, not how they began. Whether the succession of living forms on the earth is or is not among the facts and laws of Nature, is the very matter in controversy.

Moreover, adds Dr. Hodge, it has been conceded that in this matter "proofs, in the proper sense of the word, are not to be had; we are beyond the region of demonstration, and have only probabilities to consider." Wherefore "Christians have a right to protest against the arraying of probabilities against the clear teachings of Scripture." The word is italicized, as if to intimate that probabilities have no claims which a theologian is bound to respect. As to arraying them against Scripture, there is nothing whatever in the essay referred to that justifies the statement. Indeed, no occasion offered; for the writer was discussing evolution in its relations to theism, not to Biblical theology, and probably would not be disposed to intermix arguments so different in kind as those from natural science and those from revelation. To pursue each independently, according to its own method, and then to compare the results, is thought to be the better mode of proceeding. The weighing of probabilities we had regarded as a proper exercise of the mind preparatory to forming an opinion. Probabilities, hypotheses, and even surmises, whatever they may be worth, are just what, as it seems to us, theologians ought not to be foremost in decrying, particularly those who deal with the reconciliation of science with Scripture, Genesis with geology, and the like. As soon as they go beyond the literal statements even of the English text, and enter into the details of the subject, they find ample occasion and display a special aptitude for producing and using them, not always with very satisfactory results. It is not, perhaps, for us to suggest that the theological army in the past has been too much encumbered with impedimenta for effective aggression in the conflict against atheistic tendencies in modern science; and that in resisting attack it has endeavored to hold too much ground, so wasting strength in the obstinate defense of positions which have become unimportant as well as untenable. Some of the arguments, as well as the guns, which well served a former generation, need to be replaced by others of longer range and greater penetration.

If the theologians are slow to discern the signs and exigencies of the times, the religious philosophical naturalists must be looked to. Since the above remarks were written, Prof. Le Conte's "Religion and Science," just issued, has come to our hands. It is a series of nineteen Sunday lectures on the relation of natural and revealed religion, prepared in the first instance for a Bible-class of young men, his pupils in the University of South Carolina, repeated to similar classes at the University of California, and finally delivered to a larger and general audience. They are printed, the preface states, from a verbatim report, with only verbal alterations and corrections of some redundancies consequent upon extemporaneous delivery. They are not, we find, lectures on science under a religious aspect, but discourses upon Christian theology and its foundations from a scientific layman's point of view, with illustrations from his own lines of study. As the headings show, they cover, or, more correctly speaking, range over, almost the whole field of theological thought, beginning with the personality of Deity as revealed in Nature, the spiritual nature and attributes of Deity, and the incarnation; discussing by the way the general relations of theology to science, man, and his place in Nature; and ending with a discussion of predestination and free-will, and of prayer in relation to invariable law—all in a volume of three hundred and twenty-four duodecimo pages! And yet the author remarks that many important subjects have been omitted because he felt unable to present them in a satisfactory manner from a scientific point of view. We note, indeed, that one or two topics which would naturally come in his way—such, especially, as the relation of evolution to the human race—are somewhat conspicuously absent. That most of the momentous subjects which he takes up are treated discursively, and not exhaustively, is all the better for his readers. What they and we most want to know is, how these serious matters are viewed by an honest, enlightened, and devout scientific man. To solve the mysteries of the universe, as the French lady required a philosopher to explain his new system, "dans un mot," is beyond rational expectation.

All that we have time and need to say of this little book upon great subjects relates to its spirit and to the view it takes of evolution. Its theology is wholly orthodox; its tone devotional, charitable, and hopeful; its confidence in religious truth, as taught both in Nature and revelation, complete; the illustrations often happy, but often too rhetorical; the science, as might be expected from this author, unimpeachable as regards matters of fact, discreet as to matters of opinion. The argument from design in the first lecture brings up the subject of the introduction of species. Of this, considered "as a question of history, there is no witness on the stand except geology."

"The present condition of geological evidence is undoubtedly in favor of some degree of suddenness—is against infinite gradations. The evidence may be meagre . . . but whether meagre or not, it is all the evidence we have. . . . Now, the evidence of geology to-day is, that species seem to come in suddenly and in full perfection, remain substantially unchanged during the term of their existence, and pass away in full perfection. Other species take their place apparently by substitution, not by transmutation. But you will ask me, 'Do you, then, reject the doctrine of evolution? Do you accept the creation of species directly and without secondary agencies and processes?' I answer, No! Science knows nothing of phenomena which do not take place by secondary causes and processes. She does not deny such occurrence, for true Science is not dogmatic, and she knows full well that, tracing up the phenomena from cause to cause, we must somewhere reach the more direct agency of a First Cause. . . . It is evident that, however species were introduced, whether suddenly or gradually, it is the duty of Science ever to strive to understand the means and processes by which species originated. . . . Now, of the various conceivable secondary causes and processes, by some of which we must believe species originated, by far the most probable is certainly that of evolution from other species."

(We might interpose the remark that the witness on the stand, if subjected to cross-examination by a biologist, might be made to give a good deal of testimony in favor of transmutation rather than substitution.) After referring to different ideas as to the cause or mode of evolution, he concludes that it can make no difference, so far as the argument of design in Nature is concerned, whether there be evolution or not, or whether, in the case of evolution, the change be paroxysmal or uniform. We may infer even that he accepts the idea that "physical and chemical forces are changed into vital force, and vice versa." Physicists incline more readily to this than physiologists; and if what is called vital force be a force in the physicists' sense, then it is almost certainly so. But the illustration on page 275 touches this point only seemingly. It really concerns only the storing and the using of physical force in a living organism. If, for want of a special expression, we continue to use the term vital force to designate that intangible something which directs and governs the accumulation and expenditure of physical force in organisms, then there is as yet no proof and little likelihood that this is correlate with physical force.

"A few words upon the first chapter of Genesis and the Mosaic cosmogony, and I am done," says Prof. Le Conte, and so are we:

"It might be expected by many that, after speaking of schemes of reconciliation, I should give mine also. My Christian friends, these schemes of reconciliation become daily more and more distasteful to me. I have used them in times past; but now the deliberate construction of such schemes seems to me almost like trifling with the words of Scripture and the teachings of Nature. They seem to me almost irreverent, and quite foreign to the true, humble, liberal spirit of Christianity; they are so evidently artificial, so evidently mere ingenious human devices. It seems to me that if we will only regard the two books in the philosophical spirit which I have endeavored to describe, and then simply wait and possess our souls in patience, the questions in dispute will soon adjust themselves as other similar questions have already done."

VIII

WHAT IS DARWINISM? [VIII-1]

The Nation, May 28, 1874)

The question which Dr. Hodge asks he promptly and decisively answers: "What is Darwinism? it is atheism."

Leaving aside all subsidiary and incidental matters, let us consider—1. What the Darwinian doctrine is, and 2. How it is proved to be atheistic. Dr. Hodge's own statement of it cannot be very much bettered:

"His [Darwin's] work on the 'Origin of Species' does not purport to be philosophical. In this aspect it is very different from the cognate works of Mr. Spencer. Darwin does not speculate on the origin of the universe, on the nature of matter or of force. He is simply a naturalist, a careful and laborious observer, skillful in his descriptions, and singularly candid in dealing with the difficulties in the way of his peculiar doctrine. He set before himself a single problem—namely, How are the fauna and flora of our earth to be accounted for? . . . To account for the existence of matter and life, Mr. Darwin admits a Creator. This is done explicitly and repeatedly. . . . He assumes the efficiency of physical causes, showing no disposition to resolve them into mind-force or into the efficiency of the First Cause. . . . He assumes, also, the existence of life in the form of one or more primordial germs. . . . How all living things on earth, including the endless variety of plants and all the diversity of animals, . . . have descended from the primordial animalcule, he thinks, may be accounted for by the operation of the following natural laws, viz.: First, the law of Heredity, or that by which like begets like—the offspring are like the parent. Second, the law of Variation; that is, while the offspring are in all essential characteristics like their immediate progenitor, they nevertheless vary more or less within narrow limits from their parent and from each other. Some of these variations are indifferent, some deteriorations, some improvements—that is, such as enable the plant or animal to exercise its functions to greater advantage. Third, the law of Over-Production. All plants and animals tend to increase in a geometrical ratio, and therefore tend to overrun enormously the means of support. If all the seeds of a plant, all the spawn of a fish, were to arrive at maturity, in a very short time the world could not contain them. Hence, of necessity, arises a struggle for life. Only a few of the myriads born can possibly live. Fourth, here comes in the law of Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest; that is, if any individual of a given species of plant or animal happens to have a slight deviation from the normal type favorable to its success in the struggle for life, it will survive. This variation, by the law of heredity, will be transmitted to its offspring, and by them again to theirs. Soon these favored ones gain the ascendency, and the less favored perish, and the modification becomes established in the species. After a time, another and another of such favorable variations occur, with like results. Thus, very gradually, great changes of structure are introduced, and not only species, but genera, families, and orders, in the vegetable and animal world, are produced" (pp. 26-29).

Now, the truth or the probability of Darwin's hypothesis is not here the question, but only its congruity or incongruity with theism. We need take only one exception to this abstract of it, but that is an important one for the present investigation. It is to the sentence which we have italicized in the earlier part of Dr. Hodge's own statement of what Darwinism is. With it begins our inquiry as to how he proves the doctrine to be atheistic.

First, if we rightly apprehend it, a suggestion of atheism is infused into the premises in a negative form: Mr. Darwin shows no disposition to resolve the efficiency of physical causes into the efficiency of the First Cause. Next (on page 48) comes the positive charge that "Mr. Darwin, although himself a theist," maintains that "the contrivances manifested in the organs of plants and animals . . . are not due to the continued cooperation and control of the divine mind, nor to the original purpose of God in the constitution of the universe." As to the negative statement, it might suffice to recall Dr. Hodge's truthful remark that Darwin "is simply a naturalist," and that "his work on the origin of species does not purport to be philosophical." In physical and physiological treatises, the most religious men rarely think it necessary to postulate the First Cause, nor are they misjudged by the omission. But surely Mr. Darwin does show the disposition which our author denies him, not only by implication in many instances, but most explicitly where one would naturally look for it, namely—at the close of the volume in question: "To my mind, it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator," etc. If that does not refer the efficiency of physical causes to the First Cause, what form of words could do so? The positive charge appears to be equally gratuitous. In both Dr. Hodge must have overlooked the beginning as well as the end of the volume which he judges so hardly. Just as mathematicians and physicists, in their systems, are wont to postulate the fundamental and undeniable truths they are concerned with, or what they take for such and require to be taken for granted, so Mr. Darwin postulates, upon the first page of his notable work, and in the words of Whewell and Bishop Butler: 1. The establishment by divine power of general laws, according to which, rather than by insulated interpositions in each particular case, events are brought about in the material world; and 2. That by the word ':natural" is meant "stated, fixed, or settled," by this same power, "since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so—i.e., to effect it continually or at stated times—as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for once.[VIII-2] So when Mr. Darwin makes such large and free use of "natural as antithetical to supernatural" causes, we are left in no doubt as to the ultimate source which he refers them to. Rather let us say there ought to be no doubt, unless there are other grounds for it to rest upon.

Such ground there must be, or seem to be, to justify or excuse a veteran divine and scholar like Dr. Hodge in his deduction of pure atheism from a system produced by a confessed theist, and based, as we have seen, upon thoroughly orthodox fundamental conceptions. Even if we may not hope to reconcile the difference between the theologian and the naturalist, it may be well to ascertain where their real divergence begins, or ought to begin, and what it amounts to. Seemingly, it is in their proximate, not in their ultimate, principles, as Dr. Hodge insists when he declares that the whole drift of Darwinism is to prove that everything "may be accounted for by the blind operation of natural causes, without any intention, purpose, or cooperation of God." "Why don't he say," cries the theologian, "that the complicated organs of plants and animals are the product of the divine intelligence? If God made them, it makes no difference, so far as the question of design is concerned, how he made them, whether at once or by process of evolution." But, as we have seen, Mr. Darwin does say that, and he over and over implies it when he refers the production of species "to secondary causes," and likens their origination to the origination of individuals; species being series of individuals with greater difference. It is not for the theologian to object that the power which made individual men and other animals, and all the differences which the races of mankind exhibit, through secondary causes, could not have originated congeries of more or less greatly differing individuals through the same causes.

Clearly, then, the difference between the theologian and the naturalist is not fundamental, and evolution may be as profoundly and as particularly theistic as it is increasingly probable. The taint of atheism which, in Dr. Hodge's view, leavens the whole lump, is not inherent in the original grain of Darwinism—in the principles posited—but has somehow been introduced in the subsequent treatment. Possibly, when found, it may be eliminated. Perhaps there is mutual misapprehension growing out of some ambiguity in the use of terms. "Without any intention, purpose, or cooperation of God."- These are sweeping and effectual words. How came they to be applied to natural selection by a divine who professes that God ordained whatsoever cometh to pass? In this wise: "The point to be proved is, that it is the distinctive doctrine of Mr. Darwin that species owe their origin—1. Not to the original intention of the divine mind; 2. Not to special acts of creation calling new forms into existence at certain epochs; 3. Not to the constant and everywhere operative efficiency of God guiding physical causes in the production of intended effects; but 4. To the gradual accumulation of unintended variations of structure and instinct securing some advantage to their subjects." Then Dr. Hodge adduces "Darwin's own testimony," to the purport that natural selection denotes the totality of natural causes and their interactions, physical and physiological, reproduction, variation, birth, struggle, extinction—in short, all that is going on in Nature; that the variations which in this interplay are picked out for survival are not intentionally guided; that "nothing can be more hopeless than the attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in members of the same class by utility or the doctrine of final causes" (which Dr. Hodge takes to be the denial of any such thing as final causes); and that the interactions and processes going on which constitute natural selection may suffice to account for the present diversity of animals and plants (primordial organisms being postulated and time enough given) with all their structures and adaptations—that is, to account for them scientifically, as science accounts for other things.

A good deal may be made of this, but does it sustain the indictment? Moreover, the counts of the indictment may be demurred to. It seems to us that only one of the three points which Darwin is said to deny is really opposed to the fourth, which he is said to maintain, except as concerns the perhaps ambiguous word unintended. Otherwise, the origin of species through the gradual accumulation of variations—i.e., by the addition of a series of small differences—is surely not incongruous with their origin through "the original intention of the divine mind" or through "the constant and everywhere operative efficiency of God."- One or both of these Mr. Darwin (being, as Dr. Hodge says, a theist) must needs hold to in some form or other; wherefore he may be presumed to hold the fourth proposition in such wise as not really to contradict the first or the third. The proper antithesis is with the second proposition only, and the issue comes to this: Have the multitudinous forms of living creatures, past and present, been produced by as many special and independent acts of creation at very numerous epochs? Or have they originated under causes as natural as reproduction and birth, and no more so, by the variation and change of preceding into succeeding species?

Those who accept the latter alternative are evolutionists. And Dr. Hodge fairly allows that their views, although clearly wrong, may be genuinely theistic. Surely they need not become the less so by the discovery or by the conjecture of natural operations through which this diversification and continued adaptation of species to conditions is brought about. Now, Mr. Darwin thinks—and by this he is distinguished. from most evolutionists—that he can assign actual natural causes, adequate to the production of the present out of the preceding state of the animal and vegetable world, and so on backward—thus uniting, not indeed the beginning but the far past with the present in one coherent system of Nature. But in assigning actual natural causes and processes, and applying them to the explanation of the whole case, Mr. Dar-win assumes the obligation of maintaining their general sufficiency—a task from which the numerous advocates and acceptors of evolution on the general concurrence of probabilities and its usefulness as a working hypothesis (with or without much conception of the manner how) are happily free. Having hit upon a modus operandi which all who understand it admit will explain something, and many that it will explain very much, it is to be expected that Mr. Darwin will make the most of it. Doubtless he is far from pretending to know all the causes and operations at work; he has already added some and restricted the range of others; he probably looks for additions to their number and new illustrations of their efficiency; but he is bound to expect them all to fall within the category of what he calls natural selection (a most expansible principle), or to be congruous with it—that is, that they shall be natural causes. Also—and this is the critical point—he is bound to maintain their sufficiency without intervention.

Here, at length, we reach the essential difference between Darwin, as we understand him, and Dr. Hodge. The terms which Darwin sometimes uses, and doubtless some of the ideas they represent, are not such as we should adopt or like to defend; and we may say once for all—aside though it be from the present issue—that, in our opinion, the adequacy of the assigned causes to the explanation of the phenomena has not been made out. But we do not understand him to deny "purpose, intention, or the cooperation of God" in Nature. This would be as gratuitous as unphilosophical, not to say unscientific. When he speaks of this or that particular or phase in the course of events or the procession of organic forms as not intended, he seems to mean not specially and disjunctively intended and not brought about by intervention. Purpose in the whole, as we suppose, is not denied but implied. And when one considers how, under whatever view of the case, the designed and the contingent lie inextricably commingled in this world of ours, past man's disentanglement, and into what metaphysical dilemmas the attempt at unraveling them leads, we cannot greatly blame the naturalist for relegating such problems to the philosopher and the theologian. If charitable, these will place the most favorable construction upon attempts to extend and unify the operation of known secondary causes, this being the proper business of the naturalist and physicist; if wise, they will be careful not to predicate or suggest the absence of intention from what comes about by degrees through the continuous operation of physical causes, even in the organic world, lest, in their endeavor to retain a probable excess of supernaturalism in that realm of Nature, they cut away the grounds for recognizing it at all in inorganic Nature, and so fall into the same condemnation that some of them award to the Darwinian.

Moreover, it is not certain that Mr. Darwin would very much better his case, Dr. Hodge being judge, if he did propound some theory of the nexus of divine causation and natural laws, or even if he explicitly adopted the one or the other of the views which he is charged with rejecting. Either way he might meet a procrustean fate; and, although a saving amount of theism might remain, he would not be sound or comfortable. For, if he predicates "the constant and everywhere operative efficiency of God," he may "lapse into the same doctrine" that the Duke of Argyll and Sir John Herschel "seem inclined to," the latter of whom is blamed for thinking "it but reasonable to regard the force of gravitation as the direct or indirect result of a consciousness or will existing somewhere," and the former for regarding "it unphilosophical 'to think or speak as if the forces of Nature were either independent of or even separate from the Creator's power' ": while if he falls back upon an "original intention of the divine mind," endowing matter with forces which he foresaw and intended should produce such results as these contrivances in Nature, he is told that this banishes God from the world, and is inconsistent with obvious facts. And that because of its implying that "He never interferes to guide the operation of physical causes. We italicize the word, for interference proves to be the keynote of Dr. Hodge's system. Interference with a divinely ordained physical Nature for the accomplishment of natural results! An unorthodox friend has just imparted to us, with much misgiving and solicitude lest he should be thought irreverent, his tentative hypothesis, which is, that even the Creator may be conceived to have improved with time and experience! Never before was this theory so plainly and barely put before us. We were obliged to say that, in principle and by implication, it was not wholly original.

But in such matters, which are far too high for us, no one is justly to be held responsible for the conclusions which another may draw from his principles or assumptions. Dr. Hodge's particular view should be gathered from his own statement of it:

"In the external world there is always and everywhere indisputable evidence of the activity of two kinds of force, the one physical, the other mental. The physical belongs to matter, and is due to the properties with which it has been endowed; the other is the everywhere present and ever-acting mind of God. To the latter are to be referred all the manifestations of design in Nature, and the ordering of events in Providence. This doctrine does not ignore the efficiency of second causes; it simply asserts that God overrules and controls them. Thus the Psalmist says: 'I am fearfully and wonderfully made. My substance was not hid from Thee when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought (or embroidered) in the lower parts of the earth. . . . God makes the grass to grow, and herbs for the children of men.'- He sends rain, frost, and snow. He controls the winds and the waves. He determines the casting of the lot, the flight of an arrow, and the falling of a sparrow."

Far be it from us to object to this mode of conceiving divine causation, although, like the two other theistic conceptions referred to, it has its difficulties, and perhaps the difficulties of both. But, if we understand it, it draws an unusually hard and fast line between causation in organic and inorganic Nature, seems to look for no manifestation of design in the latter except as "God overrules and controls" second causes, and, finally, refers to this overruling and controlling (rather than to a normal action through endowment) all embryonic development, the growth of vegetables, and the like. He even adds, without break or distinction, the sending of rain, frost, and snow, the flight of an arrow, and the falling of a sparrow. Somehow we must have misconceived the bearing of the statement; but so it stands as one of "the three ways," and the right way, of "accounting for contrivances in Nature; the other two being—1. Their reference to the blind operation of natural causes; and, 2. That they were foreseen and purposed by God, who endowed matter with forces which he foresaw and intended should produce such results, but never interferes to guide their operation.

In animadverting upon this latter view, Dr. Hodge brings forward an argument against evolution, with the examination of which our remarks must close:

"Paley, indeed, says that if the construction of a watch be an undeniable evidence of design, it would be a still more wonderful manifestation of skill if a watch could be made to produce other watches, and, it may be added, not only other watches, but all kinds of timepieces, in endless variety. So it has been asked, If a man can make a telescope, why cannot God make a telescope which produces others like itself? This is simply asking whether matter can be made to do the work of mind. The idea involves a contradiction. For a telescope to make a telescope supposes it to select copper and zinc in due proportions, and fuse them into brass; to fashion that brass into inter-entering tubes; to collect and combine the requisite materials for the different kinds of glass needed; to melt them, grind, fashion, and polish them, adjust their densities, focal distances, etc., etc. A man who can believe that brass can do all this might as well believe in God" (pp. 45, 46).

If Dr. Hodge's meaning is, that matter unconstructed cannot do the work of mind, he misses the point altogether; for original construction by an intelligent mind is given in the premises. If he means that the machine cannot originate the power that operates it, this is conceded by all except believers in perpetual motion, and it equally misses the point; for the operating power is given in the case of the watch, and implied in that of the reproductive telescope. But if he means that matter cannot be made to do the work of mind in constructions, machines, or organisms, he is surely wrong. "Sovitur ambulando," vel scribendo; he confuted his argument in the act of writing the sentence. That is just what machines and organisms are for; and a consistent Christian theist should maintain that is what all matter is for. Finally, if, as we freely suppose, he means none of these, he must mean (unless we are much mistaken) that organisms originated by the Almighty Creator could not be endowed with the power of producing similar organisms, or slightly dissimilar organisms, without successive interventions. Then he begs the very question in dispute, and that, too, in the face of the primal command, "Be fruitful and multiply," and its consequences in every natural birth. If the actual facts could be ignored, how nicely the parallel would run! "The idea involves a contradiction." For an animal to make an animal, or a plant to make a plant, supposes it to select carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, to combine these into cellulose and protoplasm, to join with these some phosphorus, lime, etc., to build them into structures and usefully-adjusted organs. A man who can believe that plants and animals can do this (not, indeed, in the crude way suggested, but in the appointed way) "might as well believe in God." Yes, verily, and so he probably will, in spite of all that atheistical philosophers have to offer, if not harassed and confused by such arguments and statements as these.

There is a long line of gradually-increasing divergence from the ultra-orthodox view of Dr. Hodge through those of such men as Sir William Thomson, Herschel, Argyll, Owen, Mivart, Wallace, and Darwin, down to those of Strauss, Vogt, and Buchner. To strike the line with telling power and good effect, it is necessary to aim at the right place. Excellent as the present volume is in motive and clearly as it shows that Darwinism may bear an atheistic as well as a theistic interpretation, we fear that it will not contribute much to the reconcilement of science and religion.

The length of the analysis of the first book on our list precludes the notices which we intended to take of the three others. They are all the production of men who are both scientific and religious, one of them a celebrated divine and writer unusually versed in natural history. They all look upon theories of evolution either as in the way of being established or as not unlikely to prevail, and they confidently expect to lose thereby no solid ground for theism or religion. Mr. St. Clair, a new writer, in his "Darwinism and Design; or, Creation by Evolution," takes his ground in the following succinct statement of his preface:

"It is being assumed by our scientific guides that the design-argument has been driven out of the field by the doctrine of evolution. It seems to be thought by our theological teachers that the best defense of the faith is to deny evolution in toto, and denounce it as anti-Biblical. My volume endeavors to show that, if evolution be true, all is not lost; but, on the contrary, something is gained: the design-argument remains unshaken, and the wisdom and beneficence of God receive new illustration."

Of his closing remark, that, so far as he knows, the subject has never before been handled in the same way for the same purpose, we will only say that the handling strikes us as mainly sensible rather than as substantially novel. He traverses the whole ground of evolution, from that of the solar system to "the origin of moral species." He is clearly a theistic Darwinian without misgiving, and the arguments for that hypothesis and for its religious aspects obtain from him their most favorable presentation, while he combats the dysteleology of Hackel, Buchner, etc., not, however, with any remarkable strength.

Dr. Winchell, chancellor of the new university at Syracuse, in his volume just issued upon the "Doctrine of Evolution," adopts it in the abstract as "clearly as the law of universal intelligence under which complex results are brought into existence" (whatever that may mean), accepts it practically for the inorganic world as a geologist should, hesitates as to the organic world, and sums up the arguments for the origin of species by diversification unfavorably for the Darwinians, regarding it mainly from the geological side. As some of our zoologists and palaeontologists may have somewhat to say upon this matter, we leave it for their consideration. We are tempted to develop a point which Dr. Winchell incidentally refers to—viz., how very modern the idea of the independent creation and fixity of species is, and how well the old divines got on without it. Dr. Winchell reminds us that St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas were model evolutionists; and, where authority is deferred to, this should count for something.

Mr. Kingsley's eloquent and suggestive "Westminster Sermons," in which he touches here and there upon many of the topics which evolution brings up, has incorporated into the preface a paper which he read in 187i to a meeting of London clergy at Sion College, upon certain problems of natural theology as affected by modern theories in science. We may hereafter have occasion to refer to this volume. Meanwhile, perhaps we may usefully conclude this article with two or three short extracts from it:

"The God who satisfies our conscience ought more or less to satisfy our reason also. To teach that was Butler's mission; and he fulfilled it well. But it is a mission which has to be refulfilled again and again, as human thought changes, and human science develops, For if, in any age or country, the God who seems to be revealed by Nature seems also different from the God who is revealed by the then-popular religion, then that God and the religion which tells of that God will gradually cease to be believed in.

"For the demands of reason—as none knew better than good Bishop Butler—must be and ought to be satisfied. And, therefore, when a popular war arises between the reason of any generation and its theology, then it behooves the ministers of religion to inquire, with all humility and godly fear, on whose side lies the fault; whether the theology which they expound is all that it should be, or whether the reason of those who impugn it is all that it should be."

Pronouncing it to be the duty of the naturalist to find out the how of things, and of the natural theologian to find out the why, Mr. Kingsley continues:

"But if it be said, 'After all, there is no why; the doctrine of evolution, by doing away with the theory of creation, does away with that of final causes,' let us answer boldly, 'Not in the least.' We might accept all that Mr. Darwin, all that Prof. Huxley, all that other most able men have so learnedly and acutely written on physical science, and yet preserve our natural theology on the same basis as that on which Butler and Paley left it. That we should have to develop it I do not deny.

"Let us rather look with calmness, and even with hope and good-will, on these new theories; they surely mark a tendency toward a more, not a less, Scriptural view of Nature.

"Of old it was said by Him, without whom nothing is made, 'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.' Shall we quarrel with Science if she should show how these words are true? What, in one word, should we have to say but this: 'We know of old that God was so wise that he could make all things; but, behold, he is so much wiser than even that, that he can make all things make themselves?' "

CHARLES DARWIN: A SKETCH

(Nature, June 4, 1874, accompanying a portrait)

Two British naturalists, Robert Brown and Charles Darwin, have, more than any others, impressed their influence upon science in this nineteenth century. Unlike as these men and their works were and are, we may most readily subserve the present purpose in what we are called upon to say of the latter by briefly comparing and contrasting the two.

Robert Brown died sixteen years ago, full of years and scientific honors, and he seems to have finished, several years earlier, all the scientific work that he had undertaken. To the other, Charles Darwin, a fair number of productive years may yet remain, and are earnestly hoped for. Both enjoyed the great advantage of being all their lives long free from exacting professional duties or cares, and so were able in the main to apply themselves to research without distraction and according to their bent. Both, at the beginning of their career, were attached to expeditions of exploration in the southern hemisphere, where they amassed rich stores of observation and materials, and probably struck out, while in the field, some of the best ideas which they subsequently developed. They worked in different fields and upon different methods; only in a single instance, so far as we know, have they handled the same topic; and in this the more penetrating insight of the younger naturalist into an interesting general problem may be appealed to in justification of a comparison which some will deem presumptuous. Be this as it may, there will probably be little dissent from the opinion that the characteristic trait common to the two is an unrivaled scientific sagacity. In this these two naturalists seem to us, each in his way, preeminent. There is a characteristic likeness, too—underlying much difference—in their admirable manner of dealing with facts closely, and at first hand, without the interposition of the formal laws, vague ideal conceptions, or "glittering generalities" which some philosophical naturalists make large use of.

A likeness may also be discerned in the way in which the work or contributions of predecessors and contemporaries are referred to. The brief historical summaries prefixed to many of Mr. Brown's papers are models of judicial conscientiousness. And Mr. Darwin's evident delight at discovering that some one else has "said his good things before him," or has been on the verge of uttering them, seemingly equals that of making the discovery himself. It reminds one of Goethe's insisting that his views in morphology must have been held before him and must be somewhere on record, so obvious did they appear to him.

Considering the quiet and retired lives led by both these men, and the prominent place they are likely to occupy in the history of science, the contrast between them as to contemporary and popular fame is very remarkable. While Mr. Brown was looked up to with the greatest reverence by all the learned botanists, he was scarcely heard of by any one else; and out of botany he was unknown to science except as the discoverer of the Brownian motion of minute particles, which discovery was promulgated in a privately-printed pamphlet that few have ever seen. Although Mr. Darwin had been for twenty years well and widely known for his "Naturalist's Journal," his works on "Coral Islands," on "Volcanic Islands, and especially for his researches on the Barnacles, it was not till about fifteen years ago that his name became popularly famous. Ever since no scientific name has been so widely spoken. Many others have had hypotheses or systems named after them, but no one else that we know of a department of bibliography. The nature of his latest researches accounts for most of the difference, but not for all, The Origin of Species is a fascinating topic, having interests and connections with every branch of science, natural and moral. The investigation of recondite affinities is very dry and special; its questions, processes, and results alike—although in part generally presentable in the shape of morphology—are mainly, like the higher mathematics, unintelligible except to those who make them a subject of serious study. They are especially so when presented in Mr. Brown's manner. Perhaps no naturalist ever recorded the results of his investigations in fewer words and with greater precision than Robert Brown: certainly no one ever took more pains to state nothing beyond the precise point in question. Indeed, we have sometimes fancied that he preferred to enwrap rather than to explain his meaning; to put it into such a form that, unless you follow Solomon's injunction and dig for the wisdom as for hid treasure, you may hardly apprehend it until you have found it all out for yourself, when you will have the satisfaction of perceiving that Mr. Brown not only knew all about it, but had put it upon record. Very different from this is the way in which Mr. Darwin takes his readers into his confidence, freely displays to them the sources of his information, and the working of his mind, and even shares with them all his doubts and misgivings, while in a clear exposition he sets forth the reasons which have guided him to his conclusions. These you may hesitate or decline to adopt, but you feel sure that they have been presented with perfect fairness; and if you think of arguments against them you may be confident that they have all been duly considered before.

The sagacity which characterizes these two naturalists is seen in their success in finding decisive instances, and their sure insight into the meaning of things. As an instance of the latter on Mr. Darwin's part, and a justification of our venture to compare him with the facile princeps botanicorum, we will, in conclusion, allude to the single instance in which they took the same subject in hand. In his papers on the organs and modes of fecundation in Orchideae and Asclepiadeae, Mr. Brown refers more than once to C.K. Sprengel's almost forgotten work, shows how the structure of the flowers in these orders largely requires the agency of insects for their fecundation, and is aware that "in Asclepiadeae . . . the insect so readily passes from one corolla to another that it not unfrequently visits every flower of the umbel." He must also have contemplated the transport of pollen from plant to plant by wind and insects; and we know from another source that he looked upon Sprengel's ideas as far from fantastic. Yet, instead of taking the single forward step which now seems so obvious, he even hazarded the conjecture that the insect-forms of some orchideous flowers are intended to deter rather than to attract insects. And so the explanation of all these and other extraordinary structures, as well as of the arrangement of blossoms in general, and even the very meaning and need of sexual propagation, were left to be supplied by Mr. Darwin. The aphorism "Nature abhors a vacuum" is a characteristic specimen of the science of the middle ages. The aphorism "Nature abhors close fertilization," and the demonstration of the principle, belong to our age, and to Mr. Darwin. To have originated this, and also the principle of natural selection—the truthfulness and importance of which are evident the moment it is apprehended—and to have applied these principles to the system of Nature in such a manner as to make, within a dozen years, a deeper impression upon natural history than has been made since Linnaeus, is ample title for one man's fame.

There is no need of our giving any account or of estimating the importance of such works as the "Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection," the "Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," the "Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex," and the "Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals"—a series to which we may hope other volumes may in due time be added. We would rather, if space permitted, attempt an analysis of the less known, but not less masterly, subsidiary essays, upon the various arrangements for insuring cross-fertilization in flowers, for the climbing of plants, and the like. These, as we have heard, may before long be reprinted in a volume, and supplemented by some long-pending but still unfinished investigations upon the action of Dionaea and Drosera—a capital subject for Mr. Darwin's handling.

A propos to these papers, which furnish excellent illustrations of it, let us recognize Darwin's great service to natural science in bringing back to it Teleology; so that, instead of Morphology versus Teleology, we shall have Morphology wedded to Teleology. To many, no doubt, evolutionary Teleology comes in such a questionable shape as to seem shorn of all its goodness; but they will think better of it in time, when their ideas become adjusted, and they see what an impetus the new doctrines have given to investigation. They are much mistaken who suppose that Darwinism is only of speculative importance, and perhaps transient interest. In its working applications it has proved to be a new power, eminently practical and fruitful.

And here, again, we are bound to note a striking contrast to Mr. Brown, greatly as we revere his memory. He did far less work than was justly to be expected from him. Mr. Darwin not only points out the road, but labors upon it indefatigably and unceasingly. A most commendable noblesse oblige assures us that he will go on while strength (would we could add health) remains. The vast amount of such work he has already accomplished might overtax the powers of the strongest. That it could have been done at all under constant infirm health is most wonderful.

X

INSECTIVOROUS PLANTS

(The Nation, April 2 and 9, 1874)

That animals should feed upon plants is natural and normal, and the reverse seems impossible. But the adage, "Natura non agit saltatim," has its application even here. It is the naturalist, rather than Nature, that draws hard and fast lines everywhere, and marks out abrupt boundaries where she shades off with gradations. However opposite the parts which animals and vegetables play in the economy of the world as the two opposed kingdoms of organic Nature, it is becoming more and more obvious that they are not only two contiguous kingdoms, but are parts of one whole—antithetical and complementary to each other, indeed; but such "thin partitions do the bounds divide" that no definitions yet framed hold good without exception. This is a world of transition in more senses than is commonly thought; and one of the lessons which the philosophical naturalist learns, or has to learn, is, that differences the most wide and real in the main, and the most essential, may nevertheless be here and there connected or bridged over by gradations. There is a limbo filled with organisms which never rise high enough in the scale to be manifestly either animal or plant, unless it may be said of some of them that they are each in turn and neither long. There are undoubted animals which produce the essential material of vegetable fabric, or build up a part of their structure of it, or elaborate the characteristic leaf-green which, under solar light, assimilates inorganic into organic matter, the most distinguishing function of vegetation. On the other hand, there are plants—microscopic, indeed, but unquestionable—which move spontaneously and freely around and among animals that are fixed and rooted. And, to come without further parley to the matter in hand, while the majority of animals feed directly upon plants, "for 'tis their nature to," there are plants which turn the tables and feed upon them. Some, being parasitic upon living animals, feed insidiously and furtively; these, although really cases in point, are not so extraordinary, and, as they belong to the lower orders, they are not much regarded, except for the harm they do. There are others, and those of the highest orders, which lure or entrap animals in ways which may well excite our special wonder—all the more so since we are now led to conclude that they not only capture but consume their prey.

As respects the two or three most notable instances, the conclusions which have been reached are among the very recent acquisitions of physiological science. Curiously enough, however, now that they are made out, it appears that they were in good part long ago attained, recorded, and mainly forgotten. The earlier observations and surmises shared the common fate of discoveries made before the time, or by those who were not sagacious enough to bring out their full meaning or importance. Vegetable morphology, dimly apprehended by Linnaeus, initiated by Casper Frederick Wolff, and again, independently in successive generations, by Goethe and by De Candolle, offers a parallel instance. The botanists of Goethe's day could not see any sense, advantage, or practical application, to be made of the proposition that the parts of a blossom answer to leaves; and so the study of homologies had long to wait. Until lately it appeared to be of no consequence whatever (except, perhaps, to the insects) whether Drosera and Sarracenia caught flies or not; and even Dionaea excited only unreflecting wonder as a vegetable anomaly. As if there were real anomalies in Nature, and some one plant possessed extraordinary powers denied to all others, and (as was supposed) of no importance to itself!

That most expert of fly-catchers, Dionaea, of which so much has been written and so little known until lately, came very near revealing its secret to Solander and Ellis a hundred years ago, and doubtless to John Bartram, our botanical pioneer, its C probable discoverer, who sent it to Europe. Ellis, in his published letter to Linnaeus, with which the history begins, described the structure and action of the living trap correctly; noticed that the irritability which called forth the quick movement closing the trap, entirely resided in the few small bristles of its upper face; that this whole surface was studded C with glands, which probably secreted a liquid; and that the trap did not open again when an insect was captured, even upon the death of the captive, although it opened very soon when nothing was caught, or when the irritation was caused by a bit of straw, or any such substance. It was Linnaeus who originated the contrary and erroneous statement, which has long prevailed in the books, that the trap reopened when the fatigued captive became quiet, and let it go; as if the plant caught flies in mere play and pastime! Linnaeus also omitted all allusion to a secreted liquid—which was justifiable, as. Ellis does not state that he had actually seen any; and, if he did see it, quite mistook its use, supposing it to be, like the nectar of flowers, a lure for insects, a bait for the trap. Whereas, in fact, the lure, if there be any, must be an odor (although nothing is perceptible to the human olfactories); for the liquid secreted by the glands never appears until the trap has closed upon some insect, and held it at least for some hours a prisoner. Within twenty-four or forty-eight hours this glairy liquid is abundant, bathing and macerating the body of the perished insect. Its analogue is not the nectar of flowers, but the saliva or the gastric juice!

The observations which compel such an inference are re-cent, and the substance of them may be briefly stated. The late Rev. Dr. M. A. Curtis (by whose death, two years ago, we lost one of our best botanists, and the master in his especial line, mycology), forty years and more ago resided at Wilmington, North Carolina, in the midst of the only district to which the Dionaea is native; and he published, in 1834, in the first volume of the "Journal of the Boston Society of Natural History," by far the best account of this singular plant which had then appeared. He remarks that "the little prisoner is not crushed and suddenly destroyed, as is sometimes supposed," for he had often liberated "captive flies and spiders, which sped away as fast as fear or joy could hasten them." But he neglected to state, although he must have noticed the fact, that the two sides of the trap, at first concave to the contained insect, at length flatten and close down firmly upon the prey, exerting no inconsiderable pressure, and insuring the death of any soft-bodied insect, if it had not already succumbed to the confinement and salivation. This last Dr. Curtis noticed, and first discerned its import, although he hesitated to pronounce upon its universality. That the captured insects were in some way "made subservient to the nourishment of the plant" had been conjectured from the first. Dr. Curtis "at times (and he might have always at the proper time) found them enveloped in a fluid of mucilaginous consistence, which seems to act as a solvent, the insects being more or less consumed in it." This was verified and the digestive character of the liquid well-nigh demonstrated six or seven years ago by Mr. Canby, of Wilmington, Delaware, who, upon a visit to the sister-town of North Carolina, and afterward at his home, followed up Dr. Curtis's suggestions with some capital observations and experiments. These were published at Philadelphia in the tenth volume of Meehan's Gardeners' Monthly, August, i868; but they do not appear to have attracted the attention which they merited.

The points which Mr. Canby made out are, that this fluid is always poured out around the captured insect in due time, "if the leaf is in good condition and the prey suitable;" that it comes from the leaf itself, and not from the decomposing insect (for, when the trap caught a plum-curculio, the fluid was poured out while he was still alive, though very weak, and endeavoring, ineffectively, to eat his way out); that bits of raw beef, although sometimes rejected after a while, were generally acted upon in the same manner—i.e., closed down upon tightly, salvered with the liquid, dissolved mainly, and absorbed; so that, in fine, the fluid may well be said to be analogous to the gastric juice of animals, dissolving the prey and rendering it fit for absorption by the leaf. Many leaves remain inactive or slowly die away after one meal; others reopen for a second and perhaps even a third capture, and are at least capable of digesting a second meal.

Before Mr. Canby's experiments had been made, we were aware that a similar series had been made in England by Mr. Darwin, with the same results, and with a small but highly-curious additional one—namely, that the fluid secreted in the trap of Dionaea, like the gastric juice, has an acid reaction. Having begun to mention unpublished results (too long allowed to remain so), it may be well, under the circumstances, to refer to a still more remarkable experiment by the same most sagacious investigator. By a prick with a sharp lancet at a certain point, he has been able to paralyze one-half of the leaf-trap, so that it remained motionless under the stimulus to which the other half responded. Such high and sensitive organization entails corresponding ailments. Mr. Canby tells us that he gave to one of his Dionaea-subjects a fatal dyspepsia by feeding it with cheese; and under Mr. Darwin's hands another suffers from paraplegia.

Finally, Dr. Burdon-Sanderson's experiments, detailed at the last meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, show that the same electrical currents are developed upon the closing of the Dionaea-trap as in the contraction of a muscle.

If the Venus's Fly-trap stood alone, it would be doubly marvelous—first, on account of its carnivorous propensities, and then as constituting a real anomaly in organic Nature, to which nothing leads up. Before acquiescing in such a conclusion, the modern naturalist would scrutinize its relatives. Now, the nearest relatives of our vegetable wonder are the sundews.

While Dionaea is as local in habitation as it is singular in structure and habits, the Droseras or sundews are widely diffused over the world and numerous in species. The two whose captivating habits have attracted attention abound in bogs all around the northern hemisphere. That flies are caught by them is a matter of common observation; but this was thought to be purely accidental. They spread out from the root a circle of small leaves, the upper face of which especially is beset and the margin fringed with stout bristles (or what seem to be such, although the structure is more complex), tipped by a secreting gland, which produces, while in vigorous state, a globule of clear liquid like a drop of dew— whence the name, both Greek and English. One expects these seeming dew-drops to be dissipated by the morning sun; but they remain unaffected. A touch shows that the glistening drops are glutinous and extremely tenacious, as flies learn to their cost on alighting, perhaps to sip the tempting liquid, which acts first as a decoy and then like birdlime. A small fly is held so fast, and in its struggles comes in contact with so many of these glutinous globules, that it seldom escapes.

The result is much the same to the insect, whether captured in the trap of Dionaea or stuck fast to the limed bristles of Drosera. As there are various plants upon whose glandular hairs or glutinous surfaces small insects are habitually caught and perish, it might be pure coincidence that the most effectual arrangement of the kind happens to occur in the nearest relatives of Dionaea. Roth, a keen German botanist of the eighteenth century, was the first to detect, or at least to record, some evidence of intention in Drosera, and to compare its action with that of Dionaea, which, through Ellis's account, had shortly before been made known in Europe. He noticed the telling fact that not only the bristles which the unfortunate insect had come in contact with, but also the surrounding rows, before widely spreading, curved inward one by one, although they had not been touched, so as within a few hours to press their glutinous tips likewise against the body of the captive insect—thus doubling or quadrupling the bonds of the victim and (as we may now suspect) the surfaces through which some part of the animal substance may be imbibed. For Roth surmised that both these plants were, in their way, predaceous. He even observed that the disk of the Drosera-leaf itself often became concave and enveloped the prey. These facts, although mentioned now and then in some succeeding works, were generally forgotten, except that of the adhesion of small insects to the leaves of sundews, which must have been observed in every generation. Up to and even within a few years past, if any reference was made to these asserted movements (as by such eminent physiologists as Meyen and Treviranus) it was to discredit them. Not because they are difficult to verify, but because, being naturally thought improbable, it was easier to deny or ignore them. So completely had the knowledge of almost a century ago died out in later years that, when the subject was taken up anew in our days by Mr. Darwin, he had, as we remember, to advertise for it, by sending a "note and query" to the magazines, asking where any account of the fly-catching of the leaves of sundew was recorded.

When Mr. Darwin takes a matter of this sort in hand, he is not likely to leave it where he found it. He not only confirmed all Roth's observations as to the incurving of the bristles toward and upon an insect entangled on any part of the disk of the leaf, but also found that they responded similarly to a bit of muscle or other animal substance, while to any particles of inorganic matter they were nearly indifferent. To minute fragments of carbonate of ammonia, however, they were more responsive. As these remarkable results, attained (as we are able to attest) half a dozen years ago, remained unpublished (being portions of an investigation not yet completed), it would have been hardly proper to mention them, were it not that independent observers were beginning to bring out the same or similar facts. Mrs. Treat, of New Jersey, noticed the habitual infolding of the leaf in the longer-leaved species of sundew (American Journal of Science for November, 1871), as was then thought for the first time—Roth's and Withering's observations not having been looked up. In recording this, the next year, in a very little book, entitled "How Plants Behave," the opportunity was taken to mention, in the briefest way, the capital discovery of Mr. Darwin that the leaves of Drosera act differently when different objects are placed upon them, the bristles closing upon a particle of raw meat as upon a living insect, while to a particle of chalk or wood they are nearly inactive. The same facts were independently brought out by Mr. A. W. Bennett at the last year's meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and have been mentioned in the journals.

If to these statements, which we may certify, were added some far more extraordinary ones, communicated to the French Academy of Science in May last by M. Zeigler, a stranger story of discrimination on the part of sundew-bristles would be told. But it is safer to wait for the report of the committee to which these marvels were referred, and conclude this sufficiently "strange eventful history" with some details of experiments made last summer by Mrs. Treat, of New Jersey, and published in the December number of the American Naturalist. It is well to note that Mrs. Treat selects for publication the observations of one particular day in July, when the sundew-leaves were unusually active; for their moods vary with the weather, and also in other unaccountable ways, although in general the sultrier days are the most appetizing:

"At fifteen minutes past ten of the same day I placed bits of raw beef on some of the most vigorous leaves of Drosera longifolia. Ten minutes past twelve, two of the leaves had folded around the beef, hiding it from sight. Half-past eleven of the same day, I placed living flies on the leaves of D. longifolia. At 12 and 48 minutes one of the leaves had folded entirely around its victim, the other leaves had partially folded, and the flies had ceased to struggle. By 2 and 30 minutes four leaves had each folded around a fly. . . . I tried mineral substances—bits of dry chalk, magnesia, and pebbles. In twenty-four hours, neither the leaves nor their bristles had made any move like clasping these articles. I wet a piece of chalk in water, and in less than an hour the bristles were curving about it, but soon unfolded again, leaving the chalk free on the blade of the leaf. Parallel experiments made on D. rotundifolia, with bits of beef and of chalk, gave the same results as to the action of the bristles; while with a piece of raw apple, after eleven hours, "part of the bristles were clasping it, but not so closely as the beef," and in twenty-four hours "nearly all the bristles were curved toward it, but not many of the glands were touching it."

To make such observations is as easy as it is interesting. Throughout the summer one has only to transfer plants of Drosera from the bogs into pots or pans filled with wet moss—if need be, allowing them to become established in the somewhat changed conditions, or even to put out fresh leaves—and to watch their action or expedite it by placing small flies upon the disk of the leaves. The more common round-leaved sundew acts as well as the other by its bristles, and the leaf itself is sometimes almost equally prehensile, although in a different way, infolding the whole border instead of the summit only. Very curious, and even somewhat painful, is the sight when a fly, alighting upon the central dew-tipped bristles, is held as fast as by a spider's web; while the efforts to escape not only entangle the insect more hopelessly as they exhaust its strength, but call into action the surrounding bristles, which, one by one, add to the number of the bonds, each by itself apparently feeble, but in their combination so effectual that the fly may be likened to the sleeping Gulliver made fast in the tiny but multitudinous toils of the Liliputians. Anybody who can believe that such an apparatus was not intended to capture flies might say the same of a spider's web.

Is the intention here to be thought any the less real because there are other species of Drosera which are not so perfectly adapted for fly-catching, owing to the form of their leaves and the partial or total want of cooperation of their scattered bristles? One such species, D. filiformis, the thread-leaved sundew, is not uncommon in this country, both north and south of the district that Dionaea locally inhabits. Its leaves are long and thread-shaped, beset throughout with glutinous gland-tipped bristles, but wholly destitute of a blade. Flies, even large ones, and even moths and butterflies, as Mrs. Treat and Mr. Canby affirm (in the American Naturalist), get stuck fast to these bristles, whence they seldom escape. Accidental as such captures are, even these thread-shaped leaves respond more or less to the contact, somewhat in the manner of their brethren. In Mr. Canby's recent and simple experiment, made at Mr. Darwin's suggestion, when a small fly alights upon a leaf a little below its slender apex, or when a bit of crushed fly is there affixed, within a few hours the tip of the leaf bends at the point of contact, and curls over or around the body in question; and Mrs. Treat even found that when living flies were pinned at half an inch in distance from the leaves, these in forty minutes had bent their tips perceptibly toward the flies, and in less than two hours reached them! If this be confirmed—and such a statement needs ample confirmation—then it may be suspected that these slender leaves not only incurve after prolonged contact, just as do the leaf-stalks of many climbers, but also make free and independent circular sweeps, in the manner of twining stems and of many tendrils.

Correlated movements like these indicate purpose. When performed by climbing plants, the object and the advantage are obvious. That the apparatus and the actions of Dionaea and Drosera are purposeless and without advantage to the plants themselves, many have been believed in former days, when it was likewise conceived that abortive and functionless organs were specially created "for the sake of symmetry" and to display a plan; but this is not according to the genius of modern science.

In the cases of insecticide next to be considered, such evidence of intent is wanting, but other and circumstantial evidence may be had, sufficient to warrant convictions. Sarracenias have hollow leaves in the form of pitchers or trumpet-shaped tubes, containing water, in which flies and other insects are habitually drowned. They are all natives of the eastern side of North America, growing in bogs or low ground, so that they cannot be supposed to need the water as such. Indeed, they secrete a part if not all of it. The commonest species, and the only one at the North, which ranges from Newfoundland to Florida, has a broad-mouthed pitcher with an upright lid, into which rain must needs fall more or less. The yellow Sarracenia, with long tubular leaves, called "trumpets in the Southern States, has an arching or partly upright lid, raised well above the orifice, so that some water may rain in; but a portion is certainly secreted there, and may be seen bedewing the sides and collected at the bottom before the mouth opens. In other species, the orifice is so completely overarched as essentially to prevent the access of water from without. In these tubes, mainly in the water, flies and other insects accumulate, perish, and decompose. Flies thrown into the open-mouthed tube of the yellow Sarracenia, even when free from water, are unable to get out—one hardly sees why, except that they cannot fly directly upward; and microscopic chevaux-de-frise of fine, sharp-pointed bristles which line most of the interior, pointing strictly downward, may be a more effectual obstacle to crawling up the sides than one would think possible. On the inside of the lid or hood of the purple Northern species, the bristles are much stronger; but an insect might escape by the front without encountering these. In this species, the pitchers, however, are so well supplied with water that the insects which somehow are most abundantly attracted thither are effectually drowned, and the contents all summer long are in the condition of a rich liquid manure.

That the tubes or pitchers of the Southern species are equally attractive and fatal to flies is well known. Indeed, they are said to be taken into houses and used as fly-traps. There is no perceptible odor to draw insects, except what arises from the decomposition of macerated victims; nor is any kind of lure to be detected at the mouth of the pitcher of the common purple-flowered species. Some incredulity was therefore natural when it was stated by a Carolinian correspondent (Mr. B.F. Grady) that in the long-leaved, yellow-flowered species the lid just above the mouth of the tubular pitcher habitually secretes drops of a sweet and viscid liquid, which attracts flies and apparently intoxicates them, since those that sip it soon become unsteady in gait and mostly fall irretrievably into the well beneath. But upon cultivating plants of this species, obtained for the purpose, the existence of this lure was abundantly verified; and, although we cannot vouch for its inebriating quality, we can no longer regard it as unlikely.

No sooner was it thus ascertained that at least one species of Sarracenia allures flies to their ruin than it began to appear that—just as in the case of Drosera—most of this was a mere revival of obsolete knowledge. The "insect-destroying process" was known and well described sixty years ago, the part played by the sweet exudation indicated, and even the intoxication perhaps hinted at, although evidently little thought of in those ante-temperance days. Dr. James Macbride, of South Carolina—the early associate of Elliott in his "Botany of South Carolina and Georgia," and to whose death, at the age of thirty-three, cutting short a life of remarkable promise, the latter touchingly alludes in the preface to his second volume—sent to Sir James Edward Smith an account of his observations upon this subject, made in 1810 and the following years. This was read to the Linnaean Society in 1815, and published in the twelfth volume of its "Transactions." From this forgotten paper (to which attention has lately been recalled) we cull the following extracts, premising that the observations mostly relate to a third species, Sarracenia adunca, alias variolaris, which is said to be the most efficient fly-catcher of the kind:

"If, in the months of May, June, or July, when the leaves of those plants perform their extraordinary functions in the greatest perfection, some of them be removed to a house and fixed in an erect position, it will soon be perceived that flies are attracted by them. These insects immediately approach the fauces of the leaves, and, leaning over their edges, appear to sip with eagerness something from their internal surfaces. In this position they linger; but at length, allured as it would seem by the pleasure of taste, they enter the tubes. The fly which has thus changed its situation will be seen to stand unsteadily; it totters for a few seconds, slips, and falls to the bottom of the tube, where it is either drowned or attempts in vain to ascend against the points of the hairs. The fly seldom takes wing in its fall and escapes. . . . in a house much infested with flies, this entrapment goes on so rapidly that a tube is filled in a few hours, and it becomes necessary to add water, the natural quantity being insufficient to drown the imprisoned insects. The leaves of S. adunca and rubra might well be employed as fly-catchers; indeed, I am credibly informed they are in some neighborhoods. The leaves of the S. flava [the species to which our foregoing remarks mainly relate], although they are very capacious, and often grow to the height of three feet or more, are never found to contain so many insects as those of the species above mentioned.

"The cause which attracts flies is evidently a sweet, viscid substance resembling honey, secreted by or exuding from the internal surface of the tube . . . From the margin, where it commences, it does not extend lower than one-fourth of an inch.

"The falling of the insect as soon as it enters the tube is wholly attributable to the downward or inverted position of the hairs of the internal surface of the leaf. At the bottom of a tube split open, the hairs are plainly discernible pointing downward; as the eye ranges upward, they gradually become shorter and attenuated, till at or just below the surface covered by the bait they are no longer perceptible to the naked eye nor to the most delicate touch. It is here that the fly cannot take a hold sufficiently strong to support itself, but falls. The in. ability of insects to crawl up against the points of the hairs I have often tested in the most satisfactory manner."

From the last paragraph it may be inferred that Dr. Macbride did not suspect any inebriating property in the nectar, and in a closing note there is a conjecture of an impalpable loose powder in S. flava, at the place where the fly stands so unsteadily, and from which it is supposed to slide. We incline to take Mr. Grady's view of the case.