VOLUME X SLICE I Evangelical Church Conference to Fairbairn, Sir William (continued 4)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. The observation of the facts of geographical distribution.

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

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

The following passage is especially instructive:—

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

If we read between the lines of this singular exhibition of force of one kind and weakness of another, it is clear that Descartes believed that he had divined the mode in which the physical universe had been evolved; and the Traité de l’homme and the essay Sur les passions afford abundant additional evidence that he sought for, and thought he had found, an explanation of the phenomena of physical life by deduction from purely physical laws.

Spinoza abounds in the same sense, and is as usual perfectly candid—

“Naturae leges et regulae, secundum quas omnia fiunt et ex unis formis in alias mutantur, sunt ubique et semper eadem.”31

Leibnitz’s doctrine of continuity necessarily led him in the same direction; and, of the infinite multitude of monads with which he peopled the world, each is supposed to be the focus of an endless process of evolution and involution. In the Protogaea, xxvi., Leibnitz distinctly suggests the mutability of species—

“Alii mirantur in saxis passim species videri quas vel in orbe cognito, vel saltem in vicinis locis frustra quaeras. Ita Cornua Ammonis, quae ex nautilorum numero habeantur, passim et forma et magnitudine (nam et pedali diametro aliquando reperiuntur) ab omnibus illis naturis discrepare dicunt, quas praebet mare. Sed quis absconditos ejus recessus aut subterraneas abyssos pervestigavit? quam multa nobis animalia antea ignota offert novus orbis? Et credibile est per magnas illas conversiones etiam animalium species plurimum immutatas.”

Thus in the end of the 17th century the seed was sown which has at intervals brought forth recurrent crops of evolutional hypotheses, based, more or less completely, on general reasonings.

Among the earliest of these speculations is that put forward by Benoît de Maillet in his Telliamed, which, though printed in 1735, was not published until twenty-three years later. Considering that this book was written before the time of Haller, or Bonnet, or Linnaeus, or Hutton, it surely deserves more respectful consideration than it usually receives. For De Maillet not only has a definite conception of the plasticity of living things, and of the production of existing species by the modification of their predecessors, but he clearly apprehends the cardinal maxim of modern geological science, that the explanation of the structure of the globe is to be sought in the deductive application to geological phenomena of the principles established inductively by the study of the present course of nature. Somewhat later, P.L.M. de Maupertuis32 suggested a curious hypothesis as to the causes of variation, which he thinks may be sufficient to account for the origin of all animals from a single pair. Jean Baptiste René Robinet33 followed out much the same line of thought as De Maillet, but less soberly; and Bonnet’s speculations in the Palingénésie, which appeared in 1769, have already been mentioned. Buffon (1753-1778), at first a partisan of the absolute immutability of species, subsequently appears to have believed that larger or smaller groups of species have been produced by the modification of a primitive stock; but he contributed nothing to the general doctrine of evolution.

Erasmus Darwin (Zoonomia, 1794), though a zealous evolutionist, can hardly be said to have made any real advance on his predecessors; and, notwithstanding the fact that Goethe had the advantage of a wide knowledge of morphological facts, and a true insight into their signification, while he threw all the power of a great poet into the expression of his conceptions, it may be questioned whether he supplied the doctrine of evolution with a firmer scientific basis than it already possessed. Moreover, whatever the value of Goethe’s labours in that field, they were not published before 1820, long after evolutionism had taken a new departure from the works of Treviranus and Lamarck—the first of its advocates who were equipped for their task with the needful large and accurate knowledge of the phenomena of life as a whole. It is remarkable that each of these writers seems to have been led, independently and contemporaneously, to invent the same name of “biology” for the science of the phenomena of life; and thus, following Buffon, to have recognized the essential unity of these phenomena, and their contradistinction from those of inanimate nature. And it is hard to say whether Lamarck or Treviranus has the priority in propounding the main thesis of the doctrine of evolution; for though the first volume of Treviranus’s Biologie appeared only in 1802, he says, in the preface to his later work, the Erscheinungen und Gesetze des organischen Lebens, dated 1831, that he wrote the first volume of the Biologie “nearly five-and-thirty years ago,” or about 1796.

Now, in 1794, there is evidence that Lamarck held doctrines which present a striking contrast to those which are to be found in the Philosophie zoologique, as the following passages show:—

“685. Quoique mon unique objet dans cet article n’ait été que de traiter de la cause physique de l’entretien de la vie des êtres organiques, malgré cela j’ai osé avancer en débutant, que l’existence de ces êtres étonnants n’appartiennent nullement à la nature; que tout ce qu’on peut entendre par le mot nature, ne pouvoit donner la vie, c’est-à-dire, que toutes les qualités de la matière, jointes à toutes les circonstances possibles, et même à l’activité répandue dans l’univers, ne pouvaient point produire un être muni du mouvement organique, capable de reproduire son semblable, et sujet à la mort.

“686. Tous les individus de cette nature, qui existent, proviennent d’individus semblables qui tous ensemble constituent l’espèce entière. Or, je crois qu’il est aussi impossible à l’homme de connoître la cause physique du premier individu de chaque espèce, que d’assigner aussi physiquement la cause de l’existence de la matière ou de l’univers entier. C’est au moins ce que le résultat de mes connaissances et de mes réflexions me portent à penser. S’il existe beaucoup de variétés produites par l’effet des circonstances, ces variétés ne dénaturent point les espèces; mais on se trompe, sans doute souvent, en indiquant comme espèce, ce qui n’est que variété; et alors je sens que cette erreur peut tirer à conséquence dans les raisonnements que l’on fait sur cette matière.”34

The first three volumes of Treviranus’s Biologie, which contains his general views of evolution, appeared between 1802 and 1805. The Recherches sur l’organisation des corps vivants, which sketches out Lamarck’s doctrines, was published in 1802; but the full development of his views in the Philosophie zoologique did not take place until 1809.

The Biologie and the Philosophie zoologique are both very remarkable productions, and are still worthy of attentive study, but they fell upon evil times. The vast authority of Cuvier was employed in support of the traditionally respectable hypotheses of special creation and of catastrophism; and the wild speculations of the Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe were held to be models of sound scientific thinking, while the really much more sober and philosophical hypotheses of the Hydrogéologie were scouted. For many years it was the fashion to speak of Lamarck with ridicule, while Treviranus was altogether ignored.

Nevertheless, the work had been done. The conception of evolution was henceforward irrepressible, and it incessantly reappears, in one shape or another,35 up to the year 1858, when Charles Darwin and A.R. Wallace published their Theory of Natural Selection. The Origin of Species appeared in 1859; and thenceforward the doctrine of evolution assumed a position and acquired an importance which it never before possessed. In the Origin of Species, and in his other numerous and important contributions to the solution of the problem of biological evolution, Darwin confined himself to the discussion of the causes which have brought about the present condition of living matter, assuming such matter to have once come into existence. On the other hand, Spencer36 and E. Haeckel37 dealt with the whole problem of evolution. The profound and vigorous writings of Spencer embody the spirit of Descartes in the knowledge of our own day, and may be regarded as the Principes de la philosophie of the 19th century; while, whatever hesitation may not unfrequently be felt by less daring minds in following Haeckel in many of his speculations, his attempt to systematize the doctrine of evolution and to exhibit its influence as the central thought of modern biology, cannot fail to have a far-reaching influence on the progress of science.

If we seek for the reason of the difference between the scientific position of the doctrine of evolution in the days of Lamarck and that which it occupies now, we shall find it in the great accumulation of facts, the several classes of which have been enumerated above, under the second to the eighth heads. For those which are grouped under the second to the seventh of these classes, respectively, have a clear significance on the hypothesis of evolution, while they are unintelligible if that hypothesis be denied. And those of the eighth group are not only unintelligible without the assumption of evolution, but can be proved never to be discordant with that hypothesis, while, in some cases, they are exactly such as the hypothesis requires. The demonstration of these assertions would require a volume, but the general nature of the evidence on which they rest may be briefly indicated.

2. The accurate investigation of the lowest forms of animal life, commenced by Leeuwenhoek and Swammerdam, and continued by the remarkable labours of Réaumur, Abraham Trembley, Bonnet, and a host of other observers in the latter part of the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries, drew the attention of biologists to the gradation in the complexity of organization which is presented by living beings, and culminated in the doctrine of the échelle des êtres, so powerfully and clearly stated by Bonnet, and, before him, adumbrated by Locke and by Leibnitz. In the then state of knowledge, it appeared that all the species of animals and plants could be arranged in one series, in such a manner that, by insensible gradations, the mineral passed into the plant, the plant into the polype, the polype into the worm, and so, through gradually higher forms of life, to man, at the summit of the animated world.

But, as knowledge advanced, this conception ceased to be tenable in the crude form in which it was first put forward. Taking into account existing animals and plants alone, it became obvious that they fell into groups which were more or less sharply separated from one another; and, moreover, that even the species of a genus can hardly ever be arranged in linear series. Their natural resemblances and differences are only to be expressed by disposing them as if they were branches springing from a common hypothetical centre.

Lamarck, while affirming the verbal proposition that animals form a single series, was forced by his vast acquaintance with the details of zoology to limit the assertion to such a series as may be formed out of the abstractions constituted by the common characters of each group.38

Cuvier on anatomical, and Von Baer on embryological grounds, made the further step of proving that, even in this limited sense, animals cannot be arranged in a single series, but that there are several distinct plans of organization to be observed among them, no one of which, in its highest and most complicated modification, leads to any of the others.

The conclusions enunciated by Cuvier and Von Baer have been confirmed in principle by all subsequent research into the structure of animals and plants. But the effect of the adoption of these conclusions has been rather to substitute a new metaphor for that of Bonnet than to abolish the conception expressed by it. Instead of regarding living things as capable of arrangement in one series like the steps of a ladder, the results of modern investigation compel us to dispose them as if they were the twigs and branches of a tree. The ends of the twigs represent individuals, the smallest groups of twigs species, larger groups genera, and so on, until we arrive at the source of all these ramifications of the main branch, which is represented by a common plan of structure. At the present moment it is impossible to draw up any definition, based on broad anatomical or developmental characters, by which any one of Cuvier’s great groups shall be separated from all the rest. On the contrary, the lower members of each tend to converge towards the lower members of all the others. The same may be said of the vegetable world. The apparently clear distinction between flowering and flowerless plants has been broken down by the series of gradations between the two exhibited by the Lycopodiaceae, Rhizocarpeae, and Gymnospermeae. The groups of Fungi, Licheneae and Algae have completely run into one another, and, when the lowest forms of each are alone considered, even the animal and vegetable kingdoms cease to have a definite frontier.

If it is permissible to speak of the relations of living forms to one another metaphorically, the similitude chosen must undoubtedly be that of a common root, whence two main trunks, one representing the vegetable and one the animal world, spring; and, each dividing into a few main branches, these subdivide into multitudes of branchlets and these into smaller groups of twigs.

As Lamarck has well said:—39

“Il n’y a que ceux qui se sont longtemps et fortement occupés de la détermination des espèces, et qui ont consulté de riches collections, qui peuvent savoir jusqu’à quel point les espèces, parmi les corps vivants, se fondent les unes dans les autres, et qui ont pu se convaincre que, dans les parties où nous voyons des espèces isolées, cela n’est ainsi que parcequ’il nous en manque d’autres qui en sont plus voisines et que nous n’avons pas encore recueillies.

“Je ne veux pas dire pour cela que les animaux qui existent forment une série très-simple et partout également nuancée; mais je dis qu’ils forment une série rameuse, irrégulièrement graduée et qui n’a point de discontinuité dans ses parties, ou qui, du moins, n’en a toujours pas eu, s’il est vrai que, par suite de quelques espèces perdues, il s’en trouve quelque part. Il en résulte que les espèces qui terminent chaque rameau de la série générale tiennent, au moins d’un côté, à d’autres espèces voisines qui se nuancent avec elles. Voilà ce que l’état bien connu des choses me met maintenant à portée de démontrer. Je n’ai besoin d’aucune hypothèse ni d’aucune supposition pour cela: j’en atteste tous les naturalistes observateurs.”

3. In a remarkable essay40 Meckel remarks:—

“There is no good physiologist who has not been struck by the observation that the original form of all organisms is one and the same, and that out of this one form, all, the lowest as well as the highest, are developed in such a manner that the latter pass through the permanent forms of the former as transitory stages. Aristotle, Haller, Harvey, Kielmeyer, Autenrieth, and many others have either made this observation incidentally, or, especially the latter, have drawn particular attention to it, and drawn therefrom results of permanent importance for physiology.”

Meckel proceeds to exemplify the thesis, that the lower forms of animals represent stages in the course of the development of the higher, with a large series of illustrations.

After comparing the salamanders and the perenni-branchiate Urodela with the tadpoles and the frogs, and enunciating the law that the more highly any animal is organized the more quickly does it pass through the lower stages, Meckel goes on to say:—

“From these lowest Vertebrata to the highest, and to the highest forms among these, the comparison between the embryonic conditions of the higher animals and the adult states of the lower can be more completely and thoroughly instituted than if the survey is extended to the Invertebrata, inasmuch as the latter are in many respects constructed upon an altogether too dissimilar type; indeed they often differ from one another far more than the lowest vertebrate does from the highest mammal; yet the following pages will show that the comparison may be also extended to them with interest. In fact, there is a period when, as Aristotle long ago said, the embryo of the highest animal has the form of a mere worm, and, devoid of internal and external organization, is merely an almost structureless lump of polype-substance. Notwithstanding the origin of organs, it still for a certain time, by reason of its want of an internal bony skeleton, remains worm and mollusk, and only later enters into the series of the Vertebrata, although traces of the vertebral column even in the earliest periods testify its claim to a place in that series.”—Op. cit. pp. 4, 5.

If Meckel’s proposition is so far qualified, that the comparison of adult with embryonic forms is restricted within the limits of one type of organization; and if it is further recollected, that the resemblance between the permanent lower form and the embryonic stage of a higher form is not special but general, it is in entire accordance with modern embryology; although there is no branch of biology which has grown so largely, and improved its methods so much since Meckel’s time, as this. In its original form, the doctrine of “arrest of development,” as advocated by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Serres, was no doubt an over-statement of the case. It is not true, for example, that a fish is a reptile arrested in its development, or that a reptile was ever a fish; but it is true that the reptile embryo, at one stage of its development, is an organism which, if it had an independent existence, must be classified among fishes; and all the organs of the reptile pass, in the course of their development, through conditions which are closely analogous to those which are permanent in some fishes.

4. That branch of biology which is termed morphology is a commentary upon, and expansion of, the proposition that widely different animals or plants, and widely different parts of animals or plants, are constructed upon the same plan. From the rough comparison of the skeleton of a bird with that of a man by Pierre Delon, in the 16th century (to go no further back), down to the theory of the limbs and the theory of the skull at the present day; or, from the first demonstration of the homologies of the parts of a flower by C.F. Wolff, to the present elaborate analysis of the floral organs, morphology exhibits a continual advance towards the demonstration of a fundamental unity among the seeming diversities of living structures. And this demonstration has been completed by the final establishment of the cell theory (see Cytology), which involves the admission of a primitive conformity, not only of all the elementary structures in animals and plants respectively, but of those in the one of these great divisions of living things with those in the other. No a priori difficulty can be said to stand in the way of evolution, when it can be shown that all animals and all plants proceed by modes of development, which are similar in principle, from a fundamental protoplasmic material.

5. The innumerable cases of structures, which are rudimentary and apparently useless, in species, the close allies of which possess well-developed and functionally important homologous structures, are readily intelligible on the theory of evolution, while it is hard to conceive their raison d’être on any other hypothesis. However, a cautious reasoner will probably rather explain such cases deductively from the doctrine of evolution than endeavour to support the doctrine of evolution by them. For it is almost impossible to prove that any structure, however rudimentary, is useless—that is to say, that it plays no part whatever in the economy; and, if it is in the slightest degree useful, there is no reason why, on the hypothesis of direct creation, it should not have been created. Nevertheless; double-edged as is the argument from rudimentary organs, there is probably none which has produced a greater effect in promoting the general acceptance of the theory of evolution.

6. The older advocates of evolution sought for the causes of the process exclusively in the influence of varying conditions, such as climate and station, or hybridization, upon living forms. Even Treviranus has got no further than this point. Lamarck introduced the conception of the action of an animal on itself as a factor in producing modification. Starting from the well-known fact that the habitual use of a limb tends to develop the muscles of the limb, and to produce a greater and greater facility in using it, he made the general assumption that the effort of an animal to exert an organ in a given direction tends to develop the organ in that direction. But a little consideration showed that, though Lamarck had seized what, as far as it goes, is a true cause of modification, it is a cause the actual effects of which are wholly inadequate to account for any considerable modification in animals, and which can have no influence at all in the vegetable world; and probably nothing contributed so much to discredit evolution, in the early part of the 19th century, as the floods of easy ridicule which were poured upon this part of Lamarck’s speculation. The theory of natural selection, or survival of the fittest, was suggested by William Charles Wells in 1813, and further elaborated by Patrick Matthew in 1831. But the pregnant suggestions of these writers remained practically unnoticed and forgotten, until the theory was independently devised and promulgated by Charles Robert Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace in 1858, and the effect of its publication was immediate and profound.

Those who were unwilling to accept evolution, without better grounds than such as are offered by Lamarck, and who therefore preferred to suspend their judgment on the question, found in the principle of selective breeding, pursued in all its applications with marvellous knowledge and skill by Darwin, a valid explanation of the occurrence of varieties and races; and they saw clearly that, if the explanation would apply to species, it would not only solve the problem of their evolution, but that it would account for the facts of teleology, as well as for those of morphology; and for the persistence of some forms of life unchanged through long epochs of time, while others undergo comparatively rapid metamorphosis.

How far “natural selection” suffices for the production of species remains to be seen. Few can doubt that, if not the whole cause, it is a very important factor in that operation; and that it must play a great part in the sorting out of varieties into those which are transitory and those which are permanent.

But the causes and conditions of variation have yet to be thoroughly explored; and the importance of natural selection will not be impaired, even if further inquiries should prove that variability is definite, and is determined in certain directions rather than in others, by conditions inherent in that which varies. It is quite conceivable that every species tends to produce varieties of a limited number and kind, and that the effect of natural selection is to favour the development of some of these, while it opposes the development of others along their predetermined lines of modification.

7. No truths brought to light by biological investigation were better calculated to inspire distrust of the dogmas intruded upon science in the name of theology than those which relate to the distribution of animals and plants on the surface of the earth. Very skilful accommodation was needful, if the limitation of sloths to South America, and of the Ornithorhynchus to Australia, was to be reconciled with the literal interpretation of the history of the Deluge; and, with the establishment of the existence of distinct provinces of distribution, any serious belief in the peopling of the world by migration from Mount Ararat came to an end.

Under these circumstances, only one alternative was left for those who denied the occurrence of evolution; namely, the supposition that the characteristic animals and plants of each great province were created, as such, within the limits in which, we find them. And as the hypothesis of “specific centres,” thus formulated, was heterodox from the theological point of view, and unintelligible under its scientific aspect, it may be passed over without further notice, as a phase of transition from the creational to the evolutional hypothesis.

8. In fact, the strongest and most conclusive arguments in favour of evolution are those which are based upon the facts of geographical, taken in conjunction with those of geological, distribution.

Both Darwin and Wallace lay great stress on the close relation which obtains between the existing fauna of any region and that of the immediately antecedent geological epoch in the same region; and rightly, for it is in truth inconceivable that there should be no genetic connexion between the two. It is possible to put into words the proposition, that all the animals and plants of each geological epoch were annihilated, and that a new set of very similar forms was created for the next epoch, but it may be doubted if any one who ever tried to form a distinct mental image of this process of spontaneous generation on the grandest scale ever really succeeded in realizing it.

In later years the attention of the best palaeontologists has been withdrawn from the hodman’s work of making “new species” of fossils, to the scientific task of completing our knowledge of individual species, and tracing out the succession of the forms presented by any given type in time.

Evolution at the Beginning of the 20th century.—Since Huxley and Sully wrote their masterly essays in the 9th edition of this encyclopaedia, the doctrine of evolution has outgrown the trammels of controversy and has been accepted as a fundamental principle. Writers on biological subjects no longer have to waste space in weighing evolution against this or that philosophical theory or religious tradition; philosophical writers have frankly accepted it, and the supporters of religious tradition have made broad their phylacteries to write on them the new words. A closer scrutiny of the writers of all ages who preceded Charles Darwin, and, in particular, the light thrown back from Darwin on the earlier writings of Herbert Spencer, have made plain that without Darwin the world by this time might have come to a general acceptance of evolution; but it seems established as a historical fact that the world has come to accept evolution, first, because of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, and second, because of Darwin’s exposition of the evidence for the actual occurrence of organic evolution. The evidence as set out by Darwin has been added to enormously; new knowledge has in many cases altered our conceptions of the mode of the actual process of evolution, and from time to time a varying stress has been laid on what are known as the purely Darwinian factors in the theory. The balance of these tendencies has been against the attachment of great importance to sexual selection, and in favour of attaching a great importance to natural selection; but the dominant feature in the recent history of the theory has been its universal acceptance and the recognition that this general acceptance has come from the stimulus given by Darwin.

A change has taken place in the use of the word evolution. Huxley, following historical custom, devoted one section of his article to the “Evolution of the Individual.” The facts and theories respecting this are now discussed Ontogeny. under such headings as Embryology; Heredity; Variation and Selection; under these headings must be sought information on the important recent modifications with regard to the theory of the relation between the development of the individual and the development of the race, the part played by the environment on the individual, and the modern developments of the old quarrel between evolution and epigenesis. The most striking general change has been against seeing in the facts of ontogeny any direct evidence as to phylogeny. The general proposition as to a parallelism between individual and ancestral development is no doubt indisputable, but extended knowledge of the very different ontogenetic histories of closely allied forms has led us to a much fuller conception of the mode in which stages in embryonic and larval history have been modified in relation to their surroundings, and to a consequent reluctance to attach detailed importance to the embryological argument for evolution.

The vast bulk of botanical and zoological work on living and extinct forms published during the last quarter of the 19th century increased almost beyond all expectation the evidence for the fact of evolution. The discovery of Phylogeny. a single fossil creature in a geological stratum of a wrong period, the detection of a single anatomical or physiological fact irreconcilable with origin by descent with modification, would have been destructive of the theory and would have made the reputation of the observer. But in the prodigious number of supporting discoveries that have been made no single negative factor has appeared, and the evolution from their predecessors of the forms of life existing now or at any other period must be taken as proved. It is necessary to notice, however, that although the general course of the stream of life is certain, there is not the same certainty as to the actual individual pedigrees of the existing forms. In the attempts to place existing creatures in approximately phylogenetic order, a striking change, due to a more logical consideration of the process of evolution, has become established and is already resolving many of the earlier difficulties and banishing from the more recent tables the numerous hypothetical intermediate forms so familiar in the older phylogenetic trees. The older method was to attempt the comparison between the highest member of a lower group and the lowest member of a higher group—to suppose, for example, that the gorilla and the chimpanzee, the highest members of the apes, were the existing representatives of the ancestors of man and to compare these forms with the lowest members of the human race. Such a comparison is necessarily illogical, as the existing apes are separated from the common ancestor by at least as large a number of generations as separate it from any of the forms of existing man. In the natural process of growth, the gap must necessarily be wider between the summits of the twigs than lower down, and, instead of imagining “missing links,” it is necessary to trace each separate branch as low down as possible, and to institute the comparisons between the lowest points that can be reached. The method is simply the logical result of the fact that every existing form of life stands at the summit of a long branch of the whole tree of life. A due consideration of it leads to the curious paradox that if any two animals be compared, the zoologically lower will be separated from the common ancestor by a larger number of generations, since, on the average, sexual maturity is reached more quickly by the lower form. Naturally very many other factors have to be considered, but this alone is a sufficient reason to restrain attempts to place existing forms in linear phylogenetic series. In embryology the method finds its expression in the limitation of comparisons to the corresponding stages of low and high forms and the exclusion of the comparisons between the adult stages of low forms and the embryonic stages of higher forms. Another expression of the same method, due to Cope, and specially valuable to the taxonomist, is that when the relationship between orders is being considered, characters of subordinal rank must be neglected. It must not be supposed that earlier writers all neglected this method, or still less that all writers now employ it, but merely that formerly it was frequently overlooked by the best writers, and now is neglected only by the worst. The result is, on the one hand, a clearing away of much fantastic phylogeny, on the other, an enormous reduction of the supposed gaps between groups.

There has been a renewed activity in the study of existing forms from the point of view of obtaining evidence as to the nature and origin of species. Comparative anatomists have been learning to refrain from basing the diagnosis of a species, or the Comparative anatomy. description of the condition of an organ, on the evidence of a single specimen. Naturalists who deal specially with museum collections have been compelled, it is true, for other reasons to attach an increasing importance to what is called the type specimen, but they find that this insistence on the individual, although invaluable from the point of view of recording species, is unsatisfactory from the point of view of scientific zoology; and propositions for the amelioration of this condition of affairs range from a refusal of Linnaean nomenclature in such cases, to the institution of a division between master species for such species as have been properly revised by the comparative morphologist, and provisional species for such species as have been provisionally registered by those working at collections. Those who work with living forms of which it is possible to obtain a large number of specimens, and those who make revisions of the provisional species of palaeontologists, are slowly coming to some such conception as that a species is the abstract central point around which a group of variations oscillate, and that the peripheral oscillations of one species may even overlap those of an allied species. It is plain that we have moved far from the connotation and denotation of the word species at the time when Darwin began to discuss the origin of species, and that the movement, on the one hand, tends to simplify the problem philosophically, and, on the other, to make it difficult for the amateur theorist.

The conception of evolution is being applied more rigidly to the comparative anatomy of organs and systems of organs. When a series of the modifications of an anatomical structure has been sufficiently examined, it is frequently possible to decide that one particular condition is primitive, ancestral or central, and that the other conditions have been derived from it. Such a condition has been termed, with regard to the group of animals or plants the organs of which are being studied, archecentric. The possession of the character in the archecentric condition in (say) two of the members of the group does not indicate that these two members are more nearly related to one another than they are to other members of the group; the archecentric condition is part of the common heritage of all the members of the group, and may be retained by any. On the other hand, when the ancestral condition is modified, it may be regarded as having moved outwards along some radius from the archecentric condition. Such modified conditions have been termed apocentric. It is obvious that the mere apocentricity of a character can be no guide to the affinities of its possessor. It is necessary to determine if the modification be a simple change that might have occurred in independent cases, in fact if it be a multiradial apocentricity, or if it involved intricate and precisely combined anatomical changes that we could not expect to occur twice independently; that is to say, if it be a uniradial apocentricity. Multiradial apocentricities lie at the root of many of the phenomena that have been grouped under the designation convergence. Especially in the case of manifest adaptations, organs possessed by creatures far apart genealogically may be moulded into conditions that are extremely alike. Sir E. Ray Lankester’s term, homoplasy, has passed into currency as designating such cases where different genetic material has been pressed by similar conditions into similar moulds. These may be called heterogeneous homoplasies, but it is necessary to recognize the existence of homogeneous homoplasies, here called multiradial apocentricities. A complex apocentric modification of a kind which we cannot imagine to have been repeated independently, and which is to be designated as uniradial, frequently forms a new centre around which new diverging modifications are produced. With reference to any particular group of forms such a new centre of modification may be termed a metacentre, and it is plain that the archecentre of the whole group is a metacentre of the larger group of which the group under consideration is a branch. Thus, for instance, the archecentric condition of any Avian structure is a metacentre of the Sauropsidan stem. A form of apocentricity extremely common and often perplexing may be termed pseudocentric; in such a condition there is an apparent simplicity that reveals its secondary nature by some small and apparently meaningless complexity.

Another group of investigations that seems to play an important part in the future development of the theory of evolution relates to the study of what is known as organic symmetry. The differentiations of structure that characterize Bionomics. animals and plants are being shown to be orderly and definite in many respects; the relations of the various parts to one another and to the whole, the modes of repetition of parts, and the series of changes that occur in groups of repeated parts appear to be to a certain extent inevitable, to depend on the nature of the living material itself and on the necessary conditions of its growth. Closely allied to the study of symmetry is the study of the direct effect of the circumambient media on embryonic young and adult stages of living beings (see Embryology: Physiology; Heredity; and Variation and Selection), and a still larger number of observers have added to our knowledge of these. It is impossible here to give even a list of the names of the many observers who in recent times have made empirical study of the effects of growth-forces and of the symmetrical limitations and definitions of growth. It is to be noticed, however, that, even after such phenomena have been properly grouped and designated under Greek names as laws of organic growth, they have not become explanations of the series of facts they correlate. Their importance in the theory of evolution is none the less very great. In the first place, they lessen the number of separate facts to be explained; in the second, they limit the field within which explanation must be sought, since, for instance, if a particular mode of repetition of parts occur in mosses, in flowering-plants, in beetles and in elephants, the seeker of ultimate explanations may exclude from the field of his inquiry all the conditions individual to these different organic forms, and confine himself only to what is common to all of them; that is to say, practically only the living material and its environment. The prosecution of such inquiries is beginning to make unnecessary much ingenious speculation of a kind that was prominent from 1880 to 1900; much futile effort has been wasted in the endeavour to find on Darwinian principles special “selection-values” for phenomena the universality of which places them outside the possibility of having relations with the particular conditions of particular organisms. On the other hand, many of those who have been specially successful in grouping diverse phenomena under empirical generalizations have erred logically in posing their generalizations against such a vera causa as the preservation of favoured individuals and races. The thirty years which followed the publication of the Origin of Species were characterized chiefly by anatomical and embryological work; since then there has been no diminution in anatomical and embryological enthusiasm, but many of the continually increasing body of investigators have turned again to bionomical work. Inasmuch as Lamarck attempted to frame a theory of evolution in which the principle of natural selection had no part, the interpretation placed on their work by many bionomical investigators recalls the theories of Lamarck, and the name Neo-Lamarckism has been used of such a school of biologists, particularly active in America. The weakness of the Neo-Lamarckian view lies in its interpretation of heredity; its strength lies in its zealous study of the living world and the detection therein of proximate empirical laws, a strength shared by very many bionomical investigations, the authors of which would prefer to call themselves Darwinians, or to leave themselves without sectarian designation.

Statistical inquiry into the facts of life has long been employed, and in particular Francis Galton, within the Darwinian period, has advocated its employment and developed its methods. Within quite recent years, however, a special school Biometrics. has arisen with the main object of treating the processes of evolution quantitatively. Here it is right to speak of Karl Pearson as a pioneer of notable importance. It has been the habit of biologists to use the terms variation, selection, elimination, correlation and so forth, vaguely; the new school, which has been strongly reinforced from the side of physical science, insists on quantitative measurements of the terms. When the anatomist says that one race is characterized by long heads, another by round heads, the biometricist demands numbers and percentages. When an organ is stated to be variable, the biometricist demands statistics to show the range of the variations and the mode of their distribution. When a character is said to be favoured by natural selection, the biometricist demands investigation of the death-rate of individuals with or without the character. When a character is said to be transmitted, or to be correlated with another character, the biometricist declares the statement valueless without numerical estimations of the inheritance or correlation. The subject is still so new, and its technical methods (see Variation and Selection) have as yet spread so little beyond the group which is formulating and defining them, that it is difficult to do more than guess at the importance of the results likely to be gained. Enough, however, has already been done to show the vast importance of the method in grouping and codifying the empirical facts of life, and in so preparing the way for the investigation of ultimate “causes.” The chief pitfall appears to be the tendency to attach more meaning to the results than from their nature they can bear. The ultimate value of numerical inquiries must depend on the equivalence of the units on which they are based. Many of the characters that up to the present have been dealt with by biometrical inquiry are obviously composite. The height or length of the arm of a human being, for instance, is the result of many factors, some inherent, some due to environment, and until these have been sifted out, numerical laws of inheritance or of correlation can have no more than an empirical value. The analysis of composite characters into their indivisible units and statistical inquiry into the behaviour of the units would seem to be a necessary part of biometric investigation, and one to which much further attention will have to be paid.

It is well known that Darwin was deeply impressed by differences in flora and fauna, which seemed to be functions of locality, and not the result of obvious dissimilarities of environment. A.R. Wallace’s studies of island life, Segregation. and the work of many different observers on local races of animals and plants, marine, fluviatile and terrestrial, have brought about a conception of segregation as apart from differences of environment as being one of the factors in the differentiation of living forms. The segregation may be geographical, or may be the result of preferential mating, or of seasonal mating, and its effects plainly can be made no more of than proximate or empirical laws of differentiation, of great importance in codifying and simplifying the facts to be explained. The minute attention paid by modern systematists to the exact localities of subspecies and races is bringing together a vast store of facts which will throw further light on the problem of segregation, but the difficulty of utilizing these facts is increased by an unfortunate tendency to make locality itself one of the diagnostic characters.

Consideration of phylogenetic series, especially from the palaeontological side, has led many writers to the conception that there is something of the nature of a growth-force inherent in organisms and tending inevitably towards Bathmism. divergent evolution. It is suggested that even in the absence of modification produced by any possible Darwinian or Lamarckian factors, that even in a neutral environment, divergent evolution of some kind would have occurred. The conception is necessarily somewhat hazy, but the words bathmism and bathmic Evolution have been employed by a number of writers for some such conception. Closely connected with it, and probably underlying many of the facts which have led to it, is a more definite group of ideas that may be brought together under the phrase “phylogenetic limitation of variation.” In its simplest form, this phrase implies such an obvious fact as that whatever be the future development of, say, existing cockroaches, it will be on lines determined by the present structure of these creatures. In a more general way, the phrase implies that at each successive branching of the tree of life, the branches become more specialized, more defined, and, in a sense, more limited. The full implications of the group of ideas require, and are likely to receive, much attention in the immediate future of biological investigation, but it is enough at present to point out that until the more obvious lines of inquiry have been opened out much more fully, we cannot be in a position to guess at the existence of a residuum, for which such a metaphysical conception as bathmism would serve even as a convenient disguise for ignorance.

Almost every side of zoology has contributed to the theory of evolution, but of special importance are the facts and theories associated with the names of Gregor Mendel, A. Weismann and Hugo de Vries. These are discussed under the headings Heredity; Mendelism; and Variation and Selection. It has been a feature of great promise in recent contributions to the theory of evolution, that such contributions have received attention almost directly in proportion to the new methods of observation and the new series of facts with which they have come. Those have found little favour who brought to the debate only formal criticisms or amplifications of the Darwinian arguments, or re-marshallings of the Darwinian facts, however ably conducted. The time has not yet come for the attempt to synthesize the results of the many different and often apparently antagonistic groups of workers. The great work that is going on is the simplification of the facts to be explained by grouping them under empirical laws; and the most general statement relating to these that can yet be made is that no single one of these laws has as yet shown signs of taking rank as a vera causa comparable with the Darwinian principle of natural selection.

For evolution in relation to society see Sociology.

References.—Practically, every botanical and zoological publication of recent date has its bearing on evolution. The following are a few of the more general works: Bateson, Materials for the Study of Variation; Bunge, Vitalismus und Mechanismus; Cope, Origin of the Fittest, Primary Factors of Organic Evolution, Darwin’s Life and Letters; H. de Vries, Species and Varieties and their Origin by Mutation; Eimer, Organic Evolution; Gulick, “Divergent Evolution through Cumulative Segregation,” Jour. Linn. Soc. xx.; Haacke, Schöpfung des Menschen; Mitchell, “Valuation of Zoological Characters,” Trans. Linn. Soc. viii. pt. 7; Pearson, Grammar of Science; Romanes, Darwin and after Darwin; Sedgwick, Presidential Address to Section Zoology, Brit. Ass. Rep. 1899; Wallace, Darwinism; Weismann, The Germ-Plasm. Further references of great value will be found in the works of Bateson and Pearson referred to above, and in the annual volumes of the Zoological Record, particularly under the head “General Subject.”

(P. C. M.)

1 This is brought out by F. Lassalle, Die Philosophie Herakleitos, p. 126.

2 Zeller says that through this distinction Aristotle first made possible the idea of development.

3 See this well brought out in G.H. Lewes’s Aristotle, p. 187.

4 Grote calls attention to the contrast between Plato’s and Aristotle’s way of conceiving the gradations of mind (Aristotle, ii. 171).

5 Zeller observes that this scale of decreasing perfection is a necessary consequence of the idea of a transcendent deity.

6 Mélanges de philosophie juive et arabe, p. 225.

7 Yet he leaves open the question whether the Deity has annexed thought to matter as a faculty, or whether it rests on a distinct spiritual principle.

8 Locke half playfully touches on certain monsters, with respect to which it is difficult to determine whether they ought to be called men. (Essay, book iii. ch. vi. sect. 26, 27.)

9 A similar coincidence between the teleological and the modern evolutional way of viewing things is to be met with in Locke’s account of the use of pain in relation to the preservation of our being (bk. ii. ch. vii. sect. 4).

10 Philosophy of History (1893), p. 103, where an interesting sketch of the growth of the idea of progress is to be found.

11 G.H. Lewes points out that Leibnitz is inconsistent in his account of the intelligence of man in relation to that of lower animals, since when answering Locke he no longer regards these as differing in degree only.

12 Both Lewes and du Bois Reymond have brought out the points of contact between Leibnitz’s theory of monads and modern biological speculations (Hist. of Phil. ii. 287, and Leibnitzsche Gedanken in der modernen Naturwissenschaft, p. 23 seq.).

13 For Herder’s position in relation to the modern doctrine of evolution see F. von Bärenbach’s Herder als Vorgänger Darwins, a work which tends to exaggerate the proximity of the two writers.

14 Kant held it probable that other planets besides our earth are inhabited, and that their inhabitants form a scale of beings, their perfection increasing with the distance of the planet which they inhabit from the sun.

15 Kant calls the doctrine of the transmutation of species “a hazardous fancy of the reason.” Yet, as Strauss and others have shown, Kant’s mind betrayed a decided leaning at times to a more mechanical conception of organic forms as related by descent.

16 Hegel somewhere says that the question of the eternal duration of the world is unanswerable: time as well as space can be predicated of finitudes only.

17 The Exercitationes de generatione animalium, which Dr George Ent extracted from him and published in 1651.

18 De generatione animalium, lib. ii. cap. x.

19 De generatione animalium, lib. ii. cap. iv.

20 “Cependant, pour revenir aux formes ordinaires ou aux âmes matérielles, cette durée qu’il leur faut attribuer, à la place de celle qu’on avoit attribuée aux atomes pourroit faire douter si elles ne vont pas de corps en corps; ce qui seroit la métempsychose, à peu près comme quelques philosophes ont cru la transmission du mouvement et celle des espèces. Mais cette imagination est bien éloignée de la nature des choses. Il n’y a point de tel passage; et c’est ici où les transformations de Messieurs Swammerdam, Malpighi, et Leewenhoek, qui sont des plus excellens observateurs de notre tems, sont venues à mon secours et m’ont fait admettre plus aisément, que l’animal, et toute autre substance organisée ne commence point lorsque nous le croyons, et que sa génération apparente n’est qu’un développement et une espèce d’augmentation. Aussi ai-je remarqué que l’auteur de la Recherche de la vérité, M. Regis, M. Hartsœker, et d’autres habiles hommes n’ont pas été fort éloignés de ce sentiment.” Leibnitz, Système nouveau de la nature (1695). The doctrine of “Emboîtement” is contained in the Considérations sur le principe de vie (1705); the preface to the Théodicée (1710); and the Principes de la nature et de la grâce (§ 6) (1718).

21 “Il est vrai que la pensée la plus raisonnable et la plus conforme à l’expérience sur cette question très difficile de la formation du fœtus; c’est que les enfans sont déjà presque tout formés avant même l’action par laquelle ils sont conçus; et que leurs mères ne font que leur donner l’accroissement ordinaire dans le temps de la grossesse.” De la recherche de la vérité, livre ii. chap. vii. p. 334 (7th ed., 1721).

22 Considérations sur les corps organisés, chap. x.

23 Bonnet had the courage of his opinions, and in the Palingénésie philosophique, part vi. chap, iv., he develops a hypothesis which he terms “évolution naturelle”; and which, making allowance for his peculiar views of the nature of generation, bears no small resemblance to what is understood by “evolution” at the present day:—

“Si la volonté divine a créé par un seul Acte l’Universalité des êtres, d’où venoient ces plantes et ces animaux dont Moyse nous décrit la Production au troisième et au cinquième jour du renouvellement de notre monde?

“Abuserois-je de la liberté de conjectures si je disois, que les Plantes et les Animaux qui existent aujourd’hui sont parvenus par une sorte d’évolution naturelle des Êtres organisés qui peuplaient ce premier Monde, sorti immédiatement des Mains du Créateur?...

“Ne supposons que trois révolutions. La Terre vient de sortir des Mains du Créateur. Des causes préparées par sa Sagesse font développer de toutes parts les Germes. Les Êtres organisés commencent à jouir de l’existence. Ils étoient probablement alors bien différens de ce qu’ils sont aujourd’hui. Ils l’étoient autant que ce premier Monde différoit de celui que nous habitons. Nous manquons de moyens pour juger de ces dissemblances, et peut-être que le plus habile Naturaliste qui auroit été placé dans ce premier Monde y auroit entièrement méconnu nos Plantes et nos Animaux.”

24 “Ce mot (germe) ne désignera pas seulement un corps organisé réduit en petit; il désignera encore toute espèce de préformation originelle dont un Tout organique peut résulter comme de son principe immédiat.”—Palingénésie philosophique, part. x. chap. ii.

25 “M. Cuvier considérant que tous les êtres organisés sont dérivés de parens, et ne voyant dans la nature aucune force capable de produire l’organisation, croyait à la pré-existence des germes; non pas à la pré-existence d’un être tout formé, puisqu’il est bien évident que ce n’est que par des développemens successifs que l’être acquiert sa forme; mais, si l’on peut s’exprimer ainsi, à la pré-existence du radical de l’être, radical qui existe avant que la série des évolutions ne commence, et qui remonte certainement, suivant la belle observation de Bonnet, à plusieurs générations.”—Laurillard, Éloge de Cuvier, note 12.

26 Histoire naturelle, tom. ii. ed. ii. (1750), p. 350.

27 Ibid. p. 351.

28 See particularly Buffon, l.c. p. 41.

29 As Buffon has well said:—“L’idée de ramener l’explication de tous les phénomènes à des principes mécaniques est assurément grande et belle, ce pas est le plus hardi qu’on peut faire en philosophie, et c’est Descartes qui l’a fait.”—l.c. p. 50.

30 Principes de la philosophie, Troisième partie, § 45.

31 Ethices, Pars tertia, Praefatio.

32 Système de la Nature. Essai sur la formation des corps organisés, 1751, xiv.

33 Considérations philosophiques sur la gradation naturelle des formes de l’être; ou les essais de la nature qui apprend à faire l’homme (1768).

34 Recherches sur les causes des principaux faits physiques, par J.B. Lamarck. Paris. Seconde année de la République. In the preface, Lamarck says that the work was written in 1776, and presented to the Academy in 1780; but it was not published before 1794, and at that time it presumably expressed Lamarck’s mature views. It would be interesting to know what brought about the change of opinion manifested in the Recherches sur l’organisation des corps vivants, published only seven years later.

35 See the “Historical Sketch” prefixed to the last edition of the Origin of Species.

36 First Principles and Principles of Biology (1860-1864).

37 Generelle Morphologie (1866).

38 “Il s’agit donc de prouver que la série qui constitute l’échelle animale réside essentiellement dans la distribution des masses principals qui la composent et non dans celle des espèces ni même toujours dans celle des genres.”—Phil. zoologique, chap. v.

39 Philosophie zoologique, première partie, chap. iii.

40 “Entwurf einer Darstellung der zwischen dem Embryozustände der höheren Thiere und dem per manenten der niederen stattfindenden Parallele,” Beyträge zur vergleichenden Anatomie, Bd. ii. 1811.

EVORA, the capital of an administrative district in the province of Alemtejo, Portugal; 72 m. E. by S. of Lisbon, on the Casa Branca-Evora-Elvas railway. Pop. (1900) 16,020. Evora occupies a fertile valley enclosed by low hills. It is surrounded by ramparts flanked with towers, and is further defended by two forts; but the neglected condition of these, combined with the narrow arcaded streets and crumbling walls of Roman or Moorish masonry, gives the city an appearance corresponding with its real antiquity. Evora is the see of an archbishop, and has several churches, convents and hospitals, barracks, a diocesan school and a museum. A university, founded in 1550, was abolished on the expulsion of the Jesuits in the 18th century. The cathedral, originally a Romanesque building erected 1186-1204, was restored in Gothic style about 1400; its richly decorated chancel was added in 1761. The church of São Francisco (1507-1525) is a good example of the blended Moorish and Gothic architecture known as Manoellian. The art gallery, formerly the archbishop’s palace, contains a collection of Portuguese and early Flemish paintings. An ancient tower, and the so-called aqueduct of Sertorius, 9 m. long, have been partly demolished to make room for the market-square, in which one of the largest fairs in Portugal is held at midsummer. Both tower and aqueduct were long believed to have been of Roman origin, but are now known to have been constructed about 1540-1555 in the reign of John III., at the instance of an antiquary named Resende. The aqueduct was probably constructed on the site of the old Roman one. A small Roman temple is used as a public library; it is usually known as the temple of Diana, a name for which no valid authority exists. Evora is of little commercial importance, except as an agricultural centre, but its neighbourhood is famous for its mules and abounds in cork-woods; there are also mines of iron, copper, and asbestos and marble quarries.

Under its original name of Ebora, the city was from 80 to 72 B.C. the headquarters of Sertorius, and it long remained an important Roman military station. It was called Liberalitas Juliae on account of certain municipal privileges bestowed on it by Julius Caesar (c. 100-44 B.C.). Its bishopric, founded in the 5th century, was raised to an archbishopric in the 16th. In 712 Evora was conquered by the Moors, who named it Jabura; and it was only retaken in 1166. From 1663 to 1665 it was held by the Spaniards. In 1832 Dom Miguel, retreating before Dom Pedro, took refuge in Evora; and here was signed the convention of Evora, by which he was banished. (See Portugal.)

The administrative district of Evora coincides with the central part of Alemtejo (q.v.); pop. (1900) 128,062; area, 2856 sq. m.

ÉVREUX, a town of north-western France, capital of the department of Eure, 67 m. W.N.W. of Paris on the Western railway to Cherbourg. Pop. (1906) town, 13,773; commune, 18,971. Situated in the pleasant valley of the Iton, arms of which traverse it, the town, on the south, slopes up toward the public gardens and the railway station. It is the seat of a bishop, and its cathedral is one of the largest and finest in France. Part of the lower portion of the nave dates from the 11th century; the west façade with its two ungainly towers is, for the most part, the work of the late Renaissance, and various styles of the intervening period are represented in the rest of the church. A thorough restoration was completed in 1896. The elaborate north transept and portal are in the flamboyant Gothic; the choir, the finest part of the interior, is in an earlier Gothic style. Cardinal de la Balue, bishop of Évreux in the latter half of the 15th century, constructed the octagonal central tower, with its elegant spire; to him is also due the Lady chapel, which is remarkable for some finely preserved stained glass. Two rose windows in the transepts and the carved wooden screens of the side chapels are masterpieces of 16th-century workmanship. The episcopal palace, a building of the 15th century, adjoins the south side of the cathedral. An interesting belfry, facing the handsome modern town hall, dates from the 15th century. The church of St Taurin, in part Romanesque, has a choir of the 14th century and other portions of later date; it contains the shrine of St Taurin, a work of the 13th century. At Vieil Évreux, 3½ m. south-east of the town, the remains of a Roman theatre, a palace, baths and an aqueduct have been discovered, as well as various relics which are now deposited in the museum of Évreux. Évreux is the seat of a prefect, a court of assizes, of tribunals of first instance and commerce, a chamber of commerce and a board of trade arbitrators, and has a branch of the Bank of France, a lycée and training colleges for teachers. The making of ticking, boots and shoes, agricultural implements and gas motors, and metal-founding and bleaching are carried on.

Vieil-Évreux (Mediolanum Aulercorum) was the capital of the Gallic tribe of the Aulerci Eburovices and a flourishing city during the Gallo-Roman period. Its bishopric dates from the 4th century.

The first family of the counts of Évreux which is known was descended from an illegitimate son of Richard I., duke of Normandy, and became extinct in the male line with the death of Count William in 1118. The countship passed in right of Agnes, William’s sister, wife of Simon de Montfort-l’Amaury (d. 1087) to the house of the lords of Montfort-l’Amaury. Amaury III. of Montfort ceded it in 1200 to King Philip Augustus. Philip the Fair presented it (1307) to his brother Louis, for whose benefit Philip the Long raised the countship of Évreux into a peerage of France (1317). Philip of Évreux, son of Louis, became king of Navarre by his marriage with Jeanne, daughter of Louis the Headstrong (Hutin), and their son Charles the Bad and their grandson Charles the Noble were also kings of Navarre. The latter ceded his countships of Évreux, Champagne and Brie to King Charles VI. (1404). In 1427 the countship of Évreux was bestowed by King Charles VII. on Sir John Stuart of Darnley (c. 1365-1429), the commander of his Scottish bodyguard, who in 1423 had received the seigniory of Aubigny and in February 1427/8 was granted the right to quarter the royal arms of France for his victories over the English (see Lady Elizabeth Cust, Account of the Stuarts of Aubigny in France, 1422-1672, 1891). On Stuart’s death (before Orleans during an attack on an English convoy) the countship reverted to the crown. It was again temporarily alienated (1569-1584) as an appanage for Francis, duke of Anjou, and in 1651 was finally made over to Frédéric Maurice de la Tour d’Auvergne, duke of Bouillon, in exchange for the principality of Sedan.

EWALD, GEORG HEINRICH AUGUST VON (1803-1875), German Orientalist and theologian, was born on the 16th of November 1803 at Göttingen, where his father was a linen-weaver. In 1815 he was sent to the gymnasium, and in 1820 he entered the university of his native town, where under J.G. Eichhorn and T.C. Tychsen he devoted himself specially to the study of Oriental languages. At the close of his academical career in 1823 he was appointed to a mastership in the gymnasium at Wolfenbüttel, and made a study of the Oriental manuscripts in the Wolfenbüttel library. But in the spring of 1824 he was recalled to Göttingen as repetent, or theological tutor, and in 1827 (the year of Eichhorn’s death) he became professor extraordinarius in philosophy and lecturer in Old Testament exegesis. In 1831 he was promoted to the position of professor ordinarius in philosophy; in 1833 he became a member of the Royal Scientific Society, and in 1835, after Tychsen’s death, he entered the faculty of theology, taking the chair of Oriental languages.

Two years later occurred the first important episode in his studious life. In 1837, on the 18th of November, along with six of his colleagues he signed a formal protest against the action of King Ernst August (duke of Cumberland) in abolishing the liberal constitution of 1833, which had been granted to the Hanoverians by his predecessor William IV. This bold procedure of the seven professors led to their speedy expulsion from the university (14th December). Early in 1838 Ewald received a call to Tübingen, and there for upwards of ten years he held a chair as professor ordinarius, first in philosophy and afterwards, from 1841, in theology. To this period belong some of his most important works, and also the commencement of his bitter feud with F.C. Baur and the Tübingen school. In 1847, “the great shipwreck-year in Germany,” as he has called it, he was invited back to Göttingen on honourable terms—the liberal constitution having been restored. He gladly accepted the invitation. In 1862-1863 he took an active part in a movement for reform within the Hanoverian Church, and he was a member of the synod which passed the new constitution. He had an important share also in the formation of the Protestantenverein, or Protestant association, in September 1863. But the chief crisis in his life arose out of the political events of 1866. His loyalty to King George (son of Ernst August) would not permit him to take the oath of allegiance to the victorious king of Prussia, and he was therefore placed on the retired list, though with the full amount of his salary as pension. Perhaps even this degree of severity might have been held by the Prussian authorities to be unnecessary, had Ewald been less exasperating in his language. The violent tone of some of his printed manifestoes about this time, especially of his Lob des Königs u. des Volkes, led to his being deprived of the venia legendi (1868) and also to a criminal process, which, however, resulted in his acquittal (May 1869). Then, and on two subsequent occasions, he was returned by the city of Hanover as a member of the North German and German parliaments. In June 1874 he was found guilty of a libel on Prince Bismarck, whom he had compared to Frederick II. in “his unrighteous war with Austria and his ruination of religion and morality,” to Napoleon III. in his way of “picking out the best time possible for robbery and plunder.” For this offence he was sentenced to undergo three weeks’ imprisonment. He died in his 72nd year of heart disease on the 4th of May 1875.

Ewald was no common man. In his public life he displayed many noble characteristics,—perfect simplicity and sincerity, intense moral earnestness, sturdy independence, absolute fearlessness. As a teacher he had a remarkable power of kindling enthusiasm; and he sent out many distinguished pupils, among whom may be mentioned Hitzig, Schrader, Nöldeke, Diestel and Dillmann. His disciples were not all of one school, but many eminent scholars who apparently have been untouched by his influence have in fact developed some of the many ideas which he suggested. His numerous writings, from 1823 onwards, were the reservoirs in which the entire energy of a life was stored. His Hebrew Grammar inaugurated a new era in biblical philology. All subsequent works in that department have been avowedly based on his, and to him will always belong the honour of having been, as Hitzig has called him, “the second founder of the science of the Hebrew language.” As an exegete and biblical critic no less than as a grammarian he has left his abiding mark. His Geschichte des Volkes Israël, the result of thirty years’ labour, was epoch-making in that branch of research. While in every line it bears the marks of intense individuality, it is at the same time a product highly characteristic of the age, and even of the decade, in which it appeared. If it is obviously the outcome of immense learning on the part of its author, it is no less manifestly the result of the speculations and researches of many laborious predecessors in all departments of history, theology and philosophy. Taking up the idea of a divine education of the human race, which Lessing and Herder had made so familiar to the modern mind, and firmly believing that to each of the leading nations of antiquity a special task had been providentially assigned, Ewald felt no difficulty about Israel’s place in universal history, or about the problem which that race had been called upon to solve. The history of Israel, according to him, is simply the history of the manner in which the one true religion really and truly came into the possession of mankind. Other nations, indeed, had attempted the highest problems in religion; but Israel alone, in the providence of God, had succeeded, for Israel alone had been inspired. Such is the supreme meaning of that national history which began with the exodus and culminated (at the same time virtually terminating) in the appearing of Christ. The historical interval that separated these two events is treated as naturally dividing itself into three great periods,—those of Moses, David and Ezra. The periods are externally indicated by the successive names by which the chosen people were called—Hebrews, Israelites, Jews. The events prior to the exodus are relegated by Ewald to a preliminary chapter of primitive history; and the events of the apostolic and post-apostolic age are treated as a kind of appendix. The entire construction of the history is based, as has already been said, on a critical examination and chronological arrangement of the available documents. So far as the results of criticism are still uncertain with regard to the age and authorship of any of these, Ewald’s conclusions must of course be regarded as unsatisfactory. But his work remains a storehouse of learning and is increasingly recognized as a work of rare genius.

Of his works the more important are:—Die Composition der Genesis kritisch untersucht (1823), an acute and able attempt to account for the use of the two names of God without recourse to the document-hypothesis; he was not himself, however, permanently convinced by it; De metris carminum Arabicorum (1825); Das Hohelied Salomo’s übersetzt u. erklärt (1826; 3rd ed., 1866); Kritische Grammatik der hebr. Sprache (1827)—this afterwards became the Ausführliches Lehrbuch der hebr. Sprache (8th ed., 1870); and it was followed by the Hebr. Sprachlehre für Anfänger (4th ed., 1874); Über einige ältere Sanskritmetra (1827); Liber Vakedii de Mesopotamiae expugnatae historia (1827); Commentarius in Apocalypsin Johannis (1828); Abhandlungen zur biblischen u. orientalischen Literatur (1832); Grammatica critica linguae Arabicae (1831-1833); Die poetischen Bücher des alten Bundes (1835-1837, 3rd ed., 1866-1867); Die Propheten des alten Bundes (1840-1841, 2nd ed., 1867-1868); Geschichte des Volkes Israël (1843-1859, 3rd ed., 1864-1868); Alterthümer Israels (1848); Die drei ersten Evangelien übersetzt u. erklärt (1850); Über das äthiopische Buch Henoch (1854); Die Sendschreiben des Apostels Paulus übersetzt u. erklärt (1857); Die Johanneischen Schriften übersetzt u. erklärt (1861-1862); Über das vierte Esrabuch (1863); Sieben Sendschreiben des neuen Bundes (1870); Das Sendschreiben an die Hebräer u. Jakobos’ Rundschreiben (1870); Die Lehre der Bibel von Gott, oder Theologie des alten u. neuen Bundes (1871-1875). The Jahrbücher der biblischen Wissenschaft (1849-1865) were edited, and for the most part written, by him. He was the chief promoter of the Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, begun in 1837; and he frequently contributed on various subjects to the Götting. gelehrte Anzeigen. He was also the author of many pamphlets of an occasional character.

The following have been translated into English:—Hebrew Grammar, by John Nicholson (from 2nd German edition) (London 1836); Introductory Hebrew Grammar (from 3rd German edition) (London, 1870); History of Israel, 5 vols. (corresponding to vols. i.-iv. of the German), by Russell Martineau and J. Estlin Carpenter (London, 1867-1874); Antiquities of Israel, by H.S. Solly (London, 1876); Commentary on the Prophets of the Old Testament, by J. Frederick Smith (2 vols., London, 1876-1877); Isaiah the Prophet, chaps. i.-xxxiii., by O. Glover (London, 1869); Life of Jesus Christ, also by O. Glover (London, 1865).

See the article in Herzog-Hauck; T. Witton Davies, Heinrich Ewald (1903); and cf. T.K. Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism (1893); F. Lichtenberger, History of German Theology in the Nineteenth Century (1889).

EWALD, JOHANNES (1743-1781), the greatest lyrical poet of Denmark, was the son of a melancholy and sickly chaplain at Copenhagen, where he was born on the 18th of November 1743. At the age of eleven he was sent to school at Schleswig, his father’s birthplace, and returned to the capital only to enter the university in 1758. His father was by that time dead, and in his mother, a frivolous and foolish woman, he found neither sympathy nor moral support. At fifteen he fell passionately in love with Arense Hulegaard, a girl whose father afterwards married the poet’s mother; and the romantic boy resolved on various modes of making himself admired by the young lady. He began to learn Abyssinian, for the purpose of going out as a missionary to Africa, but this scheme was soon given up, and he persuaded a brother, four years older than himself, to run away that they might enlist as hussars in the Prussian army. They managed to reach Hamburg just when the Seven Years’ War was commencing and were allowed to enter a regiment. But the elder brother soon got tired and ran away, while the poet, after a series of extraordinary adventures, deserted to the Austrian army, where from being drummer he rose to being sergeant, and was only not made an officer because he was a Protestant. In 1760 he was weary of a soldier’s life and deserted again, getting safe back to Denmark. For the next two years he worked with great diligence at the university, but the Arense for whom he had gone through so much hardship and taken so much pains married another man almost immediately after Ewald’s final and very successful examination. The disappointment was one from which he never recovered, but his own weakness of will was largely to blame for it. He plunged into dissipation of every kind, and gave his serious thoughts only to poetry.

In 1763 his first work, a perfunctory dissertation, De pyrologia sacra, first saw the light. In 1764 he made a considerable success with a short prose story in the popular manner of Sneedorf, Lykkens Tempel (The Temple of Fortune), which was translated into German and Icelandic. On the death of Frederick V., however, Ewald first appeared prominently as a poet; he published in 1766 three Elegies over the dead king, which were received with universal acclamation, and of which one, at least, is a veritable masterpiece. But his dramatic poem Adam og Eva (Adam and Eve), by far the finest imaginative work produced in Denmark up to that time, was rejected by the Society of Arts in 1767 and was not published until 1769. At the latter date, however, its merits were perceived. In 1770 Ewald attained success with Philet, a narrative and lyrical poem, and still more with his splendid Rolf Krage, the first original Danish tragedy. For the next ten years Ewald was occupied in producing one brilliant poetical work after another, in rapid succession. In 1771 he published De brutale Klappers (The Brutal Clappers), a tragi-comedy or parody satirizing the dispute then raging between the critics and the manager of the Royal Theatre; in 1772 he translated from the German the lyrical drama of Philemon and Baucis, and brought out his versified comedy of Harlequin Patriot, a satire on the passion for political scribbling created by Struensee’s introduction of the liberty of the press. In 1773 he published Pebersvendene (Old Bachelors), a prose comedy. In 1771 he had already collected some of his lyrical poems under the title of Adskilligt af Johannes Ewald (Miscellanies). In 1774 appeared the heroic opera of Balder’s Död (Balder’s Death), and in 1779 the finest of his works, the lyrical drama Fiskerne (The Fishers), which contains the Danish National Song, “King Christian stood by the high Mast,” his most famous lyric. In the two poems last mentioned, however, Ewald passed beyond contemporary taste, and these great works, the pride of Danish literature, were coldly received. But while the new poetry was slowly winning its way into popular esteem, the poet did not lack admirers, and at the head of these he founded in 1775 the Danish Literary Society, a body which became influential, and which made the study of Ewald a cultus. But the poet’s health had broken; when he was writing Rolf Krage he was already an inmate of the consumptive hospital, and when he seemed to be recovering, his health was shattered again by a night spent in the frosty streets. He embittered his existence by the recklessness of his private life, and finally, through a fall from a horse, he ended by becoming a complete invalid. His last ten years were full of acute suffering; his mother treated him with cruelty, his family with neglect, and but few even of his friends showed any manliness or generosity towards him. In 1774 he was placed in the house of an inspector of fisheries at Rungsted, where Anna Hedevig Jacobsen, the daughter of the house, tended the wasted poet with infinite tenderness and skill. He stayed in this house for three years, and wrote there some of his finest later lyrics. Meanwhile he had fallen deeply in love with the charming solace of his sufferings and won her consent to a marriage. This step, however, was prevented by his family, who roughly removed him to their own keeping near Kronborg. Here he was treated so infamously that he insisted on being taken back to Copenhagen in 1777, where he found an older, but no less tender nurse, in Ane Kirstine Skou. Here he wrote Fiskerne with his imagination full of the familiar shore at Hornbaek, near Rungsted. In 1780 he was a little better, and managed to be present at the theatre at the first performance of his poem. But this excitement hastened his end, and after months of extreme agony he died on the 17th of March 1781, and was carried to the grave by a large assembly of his admirers, since he was now just recognized by the public for the first time as the greatest national poet. Among his papers were found fragments of three dramas, two on old Scandinavian subjects, entitled Frode and Helgo, and the third a tragedy on the story of Hamlet, which he meant to treat in a way wholly distinct from Shakespeare’s.

Ewald belongs to the race of poetical reformers who appeared in all countries of Europe at the end of the 18th century; but it is interesting to observe that in point of time he preceded all of them. He was born six years earlier than Goethe and Alfieri, sixteen years before Schiller, nine years before André Chénier, and twenty-seven years earlier than Wordsworth, but he did for Denmark what each of these poets did for his own country. Ewald found Danish literature given over to tasteless rhetoric, and without art or vigour. He introduced vivacity of style, freshness and brevity of form, and an imaginative study of nature which was then unprecedented. But perhaps his greatest claim to notice is the fact that he was the first person to call the attention of the Scandinavian peoples to the treasuries of their ancient history and mythology, and to suggest the use of these in imaginative writing. With a colouring more distinctly modern than that of Collins and Gray, his lyrics yet resemble the odes of these his English contemporaries more closely than those of any continental poet; from another point of view his ballads remind us of those of Schiller, which they preceded. His dramas, which had an immense influence on the Danish stage, are now chiefly of antiquarian interest, with the exception of “The Fishers,” a work that must always live as a great national poem. In personal character and in fate Ewald seems to have been not unlike Heinrich Heine.

The first collected edition of Ewald’s works began to appear in his lifetime. It is in four volumes, 1780-1784. His works have constantly been reprinted, but the standard edition is that by Liebenberg, in 8 vols., 1850-1855. The best biographies of him are those by C. Molbech (1831), Hammerich (1860) and Andreas Dolleris (1900).

(E. G.)

EWART, WILLIAM (1798-1869), English politician, was born in Liverpool on the 1st of May 1798. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, gaining the Newdigate prize for English verse. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1827, and the next year entered parliament for the borough of Bletchingley in Surrey. He subsequently sat for Liverpool from 1830 to 1837, for Wigan in 1839, and for Dumfries Burghs from 1841 until his retirement from public life in 1868. He died at Broadleas, near Devizes, on the 23rd of January 1869, Ewart, who was an advanced liberal in politics, was responsible during his long political career for many useful measures. In 1834 he carried a bill for the abolition of hanging in chains, and in 1837 he was successful in getting an act passed for abolishing capital punishment for cattle-stealing and other offences. In 1850 he carried a bill for establishing free libraries supported out of the rates, and in 1864 he was instrumental in getting an act passed for legalizing the use of the metric system of weights and measures. He was always a strong advocate for the abolition of capital punishment, and on his motion in 1864 a select committee was appointed to consider the subject. Other reforms which he advocated and which have since been carried out were an annual statement on education, and the examination of candidates for the civil service and army.

EẂE, a group of Negro peoples of the Slave Coast, West Africa. By the natives their country is called Eẃe-me, “Land of the Eẃe.” The Eẃe family forms five linguistic groups: the Anlo or Anglawa on the Gold Coast frontier, the Krepi of Anfueh speech, the Jeji, the Dahomeyans and the Mahi.

See further Dahomey, and A.B. Ellis, The Eẃe-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast ... (London, 1890).

EWELL, RICHARD STODDERT (1817-1872), American soldier, lieutenant-general in the Confederate army, was born in Georgetown, now a part of Washington, D.C., on the 2nd of February 1817, and graduated at West Point in 1840. As a cavalry officer he saw much active service in the Mexican War and later in Indian warfare in New Mexico. He resigned his commission at the outbreak of the Civil War, and entered the Confederate service. He commanded a brigade in the first Bull Run campaign, and a division in the famous Valley Campaign of “Stonewall” Jackson, to whom he was next in rank. At Cross Keys he was in command of the forces which defeated General Frémont. Ewell’s division served with Jackson in the Seven Days and in the campaign of Second Bull Run. At the action of Groveton Ewell lost a leg, but did not on that account retire from active service, though other generals led his men in the sanguinary battles of Antietam (where they lost 47% of their numbers) and Fredericksburg. After the death of “Stonewall” Jackson, Ewell was promoted lieutenant-general and appointed to command the 2nd Corps, with which he had served from the beginning of the Valley Campaign. His promotion set aside General J.E.B. Stuart, the temporary commander of Jackson’s corps; that Ewell, crippled as he was, was preferred to the brilliant cavalry leader was a marked testimony to his sterling qualities as a soldier. The invasion of Pennsylvania soon followed, Ewell’s corps leading the advance of Lee’s army. A federal force was skilfully cut off and destroyed near Winchester, Va., and Ewell’s corps then raided Maryland and southern Pennsylvania unchecked. At the battle of Gettysburg, the 2nd Corps decided the fighting of the first day in favour of the Confederates, driving the enemy before them; on the second day it fought a desperate action on Lee’s left wing. Ewell took part in the closing operations of 1863 and in all the battles of the Wilderness and Petersburg campaigns. In the final campaign of 1865 he and the remnant of his corps were cut off and forced to surrender at Sailor’s Creek, a few days before his chief capitulated to Grant at Appomattox. After the war General Ewell lived in retirement. He died near Spring Hill, Maury County, Tennessee, on the 25th of January 1872.

EWING, ALEXANDER (1814-1873), Scottish divine, was born of an old Highland family in Aberdeen on the 25th of March 1814. In October 1838 he was admitted to deacon’s orders, and after his return from Italy he took charge of the episcopal congregation at Forres, and was ordained a presbyter in the autumn of 1841. In 1846 he was elected first bishop of the newly restored diocese of Argyll and the Isles, the duties of which position he discharged till his death on the 22nd of May 1873. In 1851 he received the degree of D.C.L. from the university of Oxford. Though hampered by a delicate bodily constitution, he worked in a spirit of buoyant cheerfulness. By the charm of his personal manner and his catholic sympathies he gradually attained a prominent position. In theological discussion he contended for the exercise of a wide tolerance, and attached little importance to ecclesiastical authority and organization. His own theological position had close affinity with that of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen and Frederick Denison Maurice; but his opinions were the fruit of his own meditation, and were coloured by his own individuality. The trend of his teaching is only to be gathered from fragmentary publications—letters to the newspapers, pamphlets, special sermons, essays contributed to the series of Present Day Papers, of which he was the editor, and a volume of sermons entitled Revelation considered as Light.

Besides his strictly theological writings, Ewing was the author of the Cathedral or Abbey Church of Iona (1865), the first part of which contains drawings and descriptive letterpress of the ruins, and the second a history of the early Celtic church and the mission of St Columba. See Memoir of Alexander Ewing, D.C.L., by A.J. Ross (1877).