ne me aN 
 a , ey oi 
 ¥ a : ae 
 7 ore eve 
 ae ¥ 
 
 wre 
 
 Py 
 
 mae ys Remi ay 
 . sein ae +P DE 
 OCA Ae AR eo 
 + fy Se 
 tree 
 
 iat 
 
 a 
 os 
 
 ee 
 
 eae eee 
 
 vee 
 ae m7 i 
 
 Pax Lad 
 
 A. verity ys 
 es Bs . Pettis ee ms Hratty ay 
 
 > Ag * 
 ES oie 
 ee af +e * 
 
 vy 
 
 eer 
 bP 
 
 ah 
 
 ‘ is Mee Aah oe 
 Te nae a Ph 
 Bhatt 
 
 fA rey ¥ 
 
 * tt * S ied 
 7h he > y 
 ia Ree 
 
 ee 
 Sennen 
 
 +e 
 * * 
 oe seers 
 
 ~ 4 
 
 fi 58 wee ey Sate as 
 
 rrr. a a Mates 
 Oe 
 
 ities 
 
 a Fy Die 
 
 Pee 
 inenenrnnt 
 
 Beat fais das 
 Pee sees 
 CERERE ee tela ety 
 
 eas A x A mee asians Lea sos 4 
 Soe ’ me 
 
 as 
 
 ane A Lees 
 
 Gee 
 
 ‘?é 
 fey 
 eee 
 
 By ee 
 
 Mire 
 
 oe 
 Cont as 
 
 sa 
 
 sis 
 oY, eh +? (3 
 Ags 8 ae 
 
 oy 
 
 7 
 
 ie eee ics 
 
 peas : _ 
 ee te f oe 
 
 ayy anes ny ee 
 
 aces 
 #7, + 
 
 +P. 
 
 Se? 
 
 ees 
 
 nahh 
 
 ne a 
 
 fe LA 
 oe ae oe 
 os 
 
 Opt 
 ree ae 
 ry ae 
 Dy 
 
 A ee 
 2 a 
 
 4 ys yh 
 
 COC. 
 ex 
 SAA 
 
 eae ey 
 37 vote 
 Beans 
 
 Ads 
 
 ke 
 ee EES 
 ‘Vek 
 
 aa’ 
 
 raion 
 
 nae Rees 
 +448. ee 
 
 ee ¥, 
 mvp PPR ae RE RE SD 
 > eee 44% etc a 
 
 He 
 
 Reta xe! E * 
 
 Pe 
 ee 
 
 re rs nen 
 ey ayy ” oe 
 oie ia se i ie 
 
 ae 
 Pidiaig 
 Sint 
 
 oe 
 CAS 
 
 fe 
 
 a2 
 
 Oe 
 
 ‘i Syke 
 Be ies 
 
 = o2 
 ee A 
 EE oe 
 
 ones es 
 
 ie 
 
 ee 
 
 mee 
 
 Sn a? 
 
 ; es 
 uF Pests 
 
 nee é 2 
 
 aye areearensrs 
 
 LAY 
 SOO 
 Renee 
 Pe see 
 eee 
 eG 
 ‘Oey 
 
 Phos 
 
 eS 
 
 Ny *; 
 one sg a tee 
 
 BEY oa vy 
 
 Hy ase 
 ait 
 
 5. ea 
 
 oe ae 
 
 a_».%. 
 
 Se eas * 
 sacha? 
 
 ‘ 
 
 ee 
 he Se 
 
 Ke ase 
 
 ane Pe 
 # > 
 Ye oe ne ¥, 
 y a 
 She 
 OO 
 
 eee epee 
 
 LA 
 
 Panes hd 
 » erst 
 
 Rate 
 eae 
 
 & km 
 
 ss Perini 
 EK 
 
 4,4 
 
 ee tes 
 yay 
 
 seus a ve metas 
 he 
 
 EAS 
 
 it eee 
 
 MNT AYR SED RASA 
 ¢ eae a a a are ts: 
 * 
 
 Bae PON ve 
 
 s LAA tate 
 
 OOO 
 2. 
 
 LX. + 
 
 LOX 6 vey 
 
 +>. 
 aes oe 
 CORR 
 ey 
 
 eee ety 
 
 . 
 <A ¥e LARA 
 * SA sete 
 a Ne S Sox ye a 
 > * 
 oe + ROU *# a See ek 
 
 ers. 
 ey ats: SO 
 
 ght eS 
 
 * » 
 eee ay 
 
 s tee bs 
 . Py 
 ve te A AS, 
 . 
 
 * 
 
 Lv & 
 Sattar tahay ts! 
 aot ve 
 
 2 
 ee ‘ eh 
 
 PRA 
 
 be > ’ .* a4 
 * 
 ate Shy aes hs 
 
 se tatet 
 
 Se 1h} a 
 as Re i vee Aes 
 Re by a +5 ces > 5 
 44 th > * i by >> 
 
 Koby by, LAA? 
 awreeyey Sanat AAS 
 
 ebre 
 
 oy 
 ene yyy 
 
 \ * 
 » AY ite SO ‘ 
 
 * * 
 Pere ere ys 
 
 AARC aay 
 
 Nahe ee ete 
 
 sata 
 vit ate a> 
 
 es 
 a8 
 
 ee 
 se 
 
 Paice 
 
 ree 
 Sie ae * at ce ne 
 ee 
 *S 
 Mase 
 
 see 
 A eRe 
 
 oS f&e 
 es aoe 
 
 ae 
 
 3 ees 
 manne 
 eG 
 
 3st 
 > ocx 
 ee SOON mete 
 
 st Ono me ans ey 
 pone 
 eo. MANE see 
 Sah *s x es < " ¥_*. 
 
 Sa a 
 Soe 
 ‘A 
 
 > * :, ee 
 a . 
 eS? 
 
 es Gex i, 
 
 SS 
 
 AA 
 YP re 
 ts eae o oF > . 
 Sane Aa) ae = 
 as Pee 
 at Cs ae 
 
 AX 
 are 
 Rese stte x a 
 rsa ata hts 2 ae ees wee 
 at ear eb G ey > Keres 
 cs CASES COS 
 eee ROee < ty 
 Py KAS eee Sats 
 LS ERS, eS 
 a hg Rt See 
 
 . 
 
 RRR 
 
 ay 
 
 . 
 
 ~ 
 Se 
 tty 
 eet eae 
 SOOO 
 ty Rake 
 
 Gonx 
 * 
 
 aN ae 
 am Oc 
 Si aR ie ax 
 ee a6 
 » Ay a Da ‘> ss vt Aa a 
 acne es Satahahy Se > vy 
 
 > 
 RSC K OE cakes 
 
 siatetets 
 
 ate UREN 
 
 SONS 
 
 vs “yee 
 sh AEN watts a 
 aetna ROCK mtahehatye 
 ese SE = Soa So 
 s a a 
 *>h> SU > 
 
 * 
 8 on Sat te en 
 
 se 7 
 
 SESS SoS 
 Sore 
 “> 
 
 ae - 
 
 i eae eee ee 
 
 ieee 
 
 as 
 
 nen > 
 oe 
 
 me eer 
 
 ee 
 
 SS 
 
 a Bes 
 
 eS 
 
 a 
 aS 
 
 . ct 
 +s ee 
 eee ouG 
 
 is 
 
 ne, 
 oS 
 
 vee 
 Ney 
 Ke Rene 
 
 Jy eas Ree 
 
 x, Reet 
 
 a 
 ae 2, Rice 
 
 et 
 
 _ 
 
 Reena 
 vee Roe 
 
 a “ > +> mA 
 
 Oe a Ries nes — 
 
 SS 
 ie aa . 
 
 - 
 Scene 
 . 
 eer ee Bat en 
 Fees ry atats rts ’ ea see 
 
 Oi: 
 ieee 
 
 Sererens 
 
 uh 
 ae 
 
 Lat 8 
 conte 
 
 — 
 
 ES 
 oe 
 
 
 
‘¢ heologi 
 gf the GMologing gs ie | 
 
 ae 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 Go P ear? | Ws [Co IS Le 
 OH 367 .F54 1886 _ 
 Fiske, John, 1842-1901. 
 
 Excursions of an 
 evolutionist 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 
EXCURSIONS OF AN 
 EVOLUTIONIST 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN “FISKE 
 
 Willst du ins Unendliche schreiten 
 Geh nur im Endlichen nach allen Seiten 
 GoETHE 
 
 SEVENTH EDITION 
 
 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 New York : 11 East Seventeenth Street 
 Che Vitversibe Press, Cambridge 
 18386 
 
Copyright, 1883, 
 By JOHN FISKE, 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 
 
To 
 REV. JOHN LANGDON DUDLEY. 
 
 DraR AND Honovurep FRIEND: 
 
 Quarter of a century has passed since I used to listen 
 with delight to your preaching and come to you for sym- 
 pathy and counsel in my studies. In these later days, 
 while we meet too seldom, my memory of that wise and 
 cordial sympathy grows ever brighter and sweeter; and 
 to-day, in writing upon my title-page the words of the 
 great German seer, my thoughts naturally revert to you. 
 For I know of no one who understands more thoroughly 
 or feels more keenly how it is that if we would fain learn 
 something of the Infinite, we must not sit idly repeating 
 the formulas of other men and other days, but must gird 
 up our loins anew, and diligently explore on every side 
 that finite realm through which still shines the glory of 
 an ever-present God for those that have eyes to see and 
 ears tohear. Pray accept this little book from one who is 
 
 Ever gratefully yours, 
 
 JOHN FISKE. 
 CAMBRIDGE, October 23, 1883. 
 
 2 
 
baetite ea rie | ae is 
 
 * 
 A tp 
 
 tame: aininea as ase 
 ie 
 
 Bah Hie Bis jie Be sca Fisaesttt vos . angie - er jal Chae sie 
 Bes Ste Eurex ti gts ey gab bert mee Gh Th ae 
 not Vie AES v é 
 a i digash hope ha yen 
 wees Bik a: Ae te sae ga sites 
 F. ‘ . > ns) aa a 2 nS ares 
 i vies cou Pots 
 
 : he 
 ‘ 
 7 
 
 ki. ‘¥ Pe ey 
 
 1a of 4 ce 
 
 MS ee ies $ Iai 
 be 
 
 a eter es 
 
 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ed et ennai 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Europe BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF Man. : 7 
 
 Tl. Tue ArrivaL oF Man IN EUROPE . : ; a ok 
 TII. Our ARYAN FOREFATHERS . : : : : 78 
 IV. Wuar WE LEARN FROM OLD ARYAN WORDS . . 109 
 V. Was THERE A PRIMEVAL MotuEeR-TONGuUE ? sey ag 
 VI. Socrotogy aND Hero-WoRSsHIP . : : . 175 
 VIL Heroses or INDUSTRY . : : ; : “e200 
 VIII. Tue Causes OF PERSECUTION . é ; : 211 
 IX. THE Orn1Gins OF PROTESTANTISM. .- ee an ake 
 X. Tue True Lesson OF PROTESTANTISM . : . 268 
 XI. EvonuTIon AND RELIGION . ; = : : 294 
 XII. Tur Meanine or Inrancy : F : F . 806 
 XITl. A Untverse or Minp-STUFF_. ~ P ey 
 
 XIV. In MemorraM: CHARLES DARWIN . ; , - 837 
 
wa tapktee: re 
 1. tk ara? we 
 Py Ces 
 
 mr + es = ‘ 
 aes ial me % tue 
 
 ‘ AB ae he 
 : A att 5 rs Ny ’ i ‘ a ar ™ 
 eae Ae vets 
 ig AU iby ae 
 ' 4 a . 
 
 
 
EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST. 
 
 
 
 I. 
 EUROPE BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF MAN. 
 
 IN looking over any modern historical narrative 
 —such, for example, as Knight’s “ History of Eng- 
 land”? — one cannot fail to be struck by the dis- 
 proportion between the amounts of space devoted 
 respectively to ancient and to modern events. Of 
 the eight bulky volumes of Knight, the first covers 
 a period of 1432 years, from Czsar’s invasion of 
 Britain to the death of Edward III.; the second, 
 bringing us down to the death of Henry VIII, 
 covers 170 years; the third takes us 95 years fur- 
 ther, to the beginning of the Great Rebellion; 
 while five volumes are required to do justice to 
 the two centuries intervening between the over- 
 throw of Strafford and the repeal of the corn-laws. 
 This is due partly to the greater complexity of 
 modern life, and partly to the increasing abun- 
 dance of our sources of information. It is true, 
 
8 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 we have to go back a long way before we en- 
 counter an absolute scarcity of information; there 
 was a great deal more literature in the Middle 
 Ages than is commonly supposed, and it is pos- 
 sible to.describe many long past events with great 
 minuteness and accuracy. Mr. Freeman devotes 
 the greater part of a volume of 768 pages to the 
 political and military history of England during 
 the single year 1066. But the history during the 
 spring of 1815, if treated with equal thoroughness, 
 would fill a good many volumes as big as this; 
 and this is owing largely to our increased wealth 
 of materials). When we go back far enough and 
 encounter a positive dearth of material, we can 
 devote but afew pages to the history of a century, 
 as in the case of the earliest ‘Teutonic invasions 
 of Britain; or, as in the case of the long ages 
 before Cesar’s invasion, we can barely say that 
 such and such races of men inhabited the island, 
 and we can give little or no account of what they 
 did. ‘This is one reason why we find it so hard to 
 form and preserve an accurate mental picture of 
 the duration of past time. It requires a deliber- 
 ate effort of the mind to realize, for example, that 
 the interval between the proclamation of Con- 
 stantine the Great by the Roman legions at York 
 and the invasion of William the Conqueror was 
 
Europe before the Arrival of Man. 9 
 
 exactly equal to the interval between the latter 
 event and the accession of George IV., or the 
 adoption of the Missouri Compromise. We may 
 know that it is so, but in order to make it seem so, 
 most people will have to stop and think. 
 
 The case is somewhat similar when we try to 
 realize the relative duration of the successive geo- 
 logical epochs in the history of the earth’s crust. 
 We are naturally inclined to overrate the relative 
 duration of the later epochs. Familiar as we 
 are with the established classification of periods 
 as Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary, we fall natu- 
 rally into a habit of regarding these three great 
 groups of epochs as substantially equal in value, 
 so that the beginning of the Tertiary period is 
 apt to seem one third of the way back toward the 
 first beginnings of fossil-bearing strata. Proba- 
 bly in our every-day thinking the Tertiary period 
 occupies more than a third of the space that is 
 occupied by the whole recorded life history of the 
 earth, — mainly for the reason that it is so much 
 more completely filled for us with familiar and 
 well-ascertained facts. This may be partly be- 
 cause organic life has really been more complex 
 and multiform since the beginning of the Tertiary 
 period than it was in earlier ages ; but it is also, 
 no doubt, because our sources of information are 
 
10 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 far more abundant. On the whole, the geologic 
 record of the Tertiary period is much more com- 
 pletely preserved than that of the two earlier 
 periods; we see more clearly into the details of 
 life at that time, and consequently have a more 
 vivid picture of it before us; and this more vivid 
 picture, as is natural, usurps an undue place in 
 our minds. : 
 
 The force of these remarks will be obvious 
 when it is stated that, in point of fact, the begin- 
 ning of the Tertiary period carries us back barely 
 one twentieth part of the way toward the first 
 beginnings of fossil-bearing strata. In the table 
 that follows, I have tried to give something like 
 a just idea of the relative lengths of geological 
 epochs, in accordance with the views now gener- 
 ally adopted by geologists. Let us first suppose 
 the entire lapse of time since the oldest Lauren- 
 tian strata began to be deposited, down to the 
 present day, to be divided into ten equal periods, 
 or zeons, such as I have marked off on the table 
 with dotted lines. Then the Laurentian epoch fills 
 three of these great sons, to begin with. Here 
 we find (with the exception of the Canadian 
 eozoon, the organic nature of which has been dis- 
 puted) only indirect traces of life, such as lime- 
 stone, which probably came from shells. But, 
 
Europe before the Arrival of Man. 11 
 
 remembering how soft and.perishable are all the 
 lowest organisms, and remembering how consid- 
 erably these oldest rocks have been affected by 
 volcanic heat, we need not be surprised at finding 
 the records of life in them very scanty and ob- 
 scure Next, the Cambrian epoch extends into 
 the sixth won, and then comes the Silurian, which 
 takes us half-way through the seventh. Mollusks 
 and crustaceans swarmed in the seas of the Cam- 
 brian epoch, but there are as yet no traces of fish 
 before the upper Silurian. That is to say, three 
 fifths of the whole duration of geological time had 
 elapsed before the lowest vertebrate forms had 
 begun to leave plentiful traces of themselves in 
 the rocks. The Devonian epoch, in which we 
 find the first record of insects, carries us half-way 
 through the eighth won; and we are brought 
 well on into the ninth by the Carboniferous age, 
 in which appear the earliest air-breathing verte- 
 brates in the shape of frog-like amphibians. The 
 vegetation of this period consisted chiefly of ferns, 
 club-mosses, and horse-tails with araucarian pines. 
 Nearly nine tenths of the past life history of our 
 globe accomplished, and as yet no birds or mam- 
 mals, perhaps no true reptiles, nor any tree save 
 the araucaria or the arborescent fern! With the 
 Permian epoch we reach the end of the Primary 
 
12 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 period, and nearly complete our ninth zon, leay- 
 ing for the whole of the Secondary and Tertiary 
 periods only a little more than one zon to be di- 
 vided between them. The oldest mammals and 
 reptiles yet found belong to the Trias, or earliest 
 Secondary epoch; yet so many small mammalia, 
 inferior in type to the marsupials, have been found 
 by Professor Marsh far down in the Trias as to 
 warrant the belief that mammals had appeared 
 on the scene toward the close of the Permian 
 age; and no doubt the same will prove true of 
 reptiles. Some of the footsteps on the Triassic 
 rocks of the Connecticut Valley are probably 
 footsteps of great struthious birds ; but the oldest 
 bird actually known belongs to the upper Juras- 
 sic strata. ‘Throughout the Secondary period the 
 real lords of the creation were the giant reptiles, 
 stalking over the earth, splashing through the sea, 
 and flying on swift bat-like wing overhead. Of 
 these innumerable ‘dragons of the prime,” the 
 iguanodon, from fifty to seventy feet in length, 
 used to be supposed the largest; but Professor 
 Marsh has lately discovered the atlantosaurus of 
 Colorado, nearly one hundred feet in length and 
 thirty feet in height, — the largest land animal as 
 yet known. The mammals contemporary with 
 these monsters seem to have been mostly small 
 
Europe before 
 
 the Arrival of Man. 13 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 by Recent 
 a Pleistocene. 
 = | Pliocene. Mammals dominant. 
 | Miocene. 
 <3} ri 
 gs | Eocene. 
 10. : 
 % | Cretaceous. Reptiles dominant. 
 q | Jurassic. 
 a oe, e* @e ee ee ee @®@eeoeeveeereeereeeervrveeeeen ee @ eoeeore err eoereeeeae ee eee 
 2 Triassic. Earliest birds. 
 Nn 
 Earliest mammals and reptiles. 
 9 Permian. 
 Earliest batrachians. 
 fad | bad Carboniferous. ‘ 
 8. ba 
 Bee bre le Devonian. ; Earliest insects. aa 
 7. | = rats 
 : Earliest fishes. 
 6. | < Silurian. 
 5. 1,5 
 Cambrian. 
 4 = Earliest mollusks and crustaceans. 
 3. | Aa Eozo6n ? 
 2. | & | Laurentian. | Indirect traces of life. 
 
 
 
14 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 insect-eating marsupials; and the forests through 
 which they roamed consisted mainly of palms, 
 tree-ferns, and pines. In the Cretaceous epoch 
 such deciduous trees as the oak and walnut had 
 appeared on the scene, and the great reptiles had 
 become less numerous. But it is not until we 
 enter the Tertiary period, half-way through our 
 tenth zon of geological time, that the face of the 
 earth, with deciduous trees and flowering herbs, 
 and mammals dominant in the animal world, 
 could have begun to assume anything even dis- 
 tantly resembling the aspect under which we 
 know it. Yet if we could be suddenly taken 
 back, and permitted to inspect a landscape of the 
 earliest Tertiary epoch, we should probably be far 
 more forcibly struck with the differences than 
 with the points of resemblance. 
 
 In this succinct view I have supposed the whole 
 of the life history of our planet to be arbitrarily 
 divided into ten equal periods. What, it may be 
 asked, is supposed to have been the actual du- 
 ration of one of these eons? I am well aware 
 that to such a question no definite answer can 
 be given. The geologist deals only with relative, 
 not with absolute, quantities of time: he can 
 only say that the time has been long enough for 
 a certain enormous amount of work to be per- 
 
Europe before the Arrival of Man. 15 
 
 formed, but he has nothing with which to meas- 
 ure its duration in years. Nevertheless, while 
 fully admitting all this, one may perhaps venture 
 to give a provisional answer for a provisional pur- 
 pose. For the present it will be enough to recall 
 Sir William Thomson’s ingenious speculations as 
 to the limits of the antiquity of life upon the 
 earth. Reasoning from the sources of the sun’s 
 heat, and from the length of time which it would 
 take a body like the earth to cool so as to pro- 
 duce the present increment of temperature as we 
 go beneath the surface, Sir William Thomson 
 concludes that the crust of the earth cannot pos- 
 sibly have existed in the solid state for more than 
 400,000,000 years, and in all probability has not 
 been solidified and in fit condition for the sup- 
 port of vegetable and animal life for more than 
 100,000,000 or 200,000,000 years. This conclu- 
 sion is largely speculative, including several data 
 of which our knowledge is far from complete, and 
 it is of course extremely indefinite. It makes a 
 good deal of difference whether life has existed 
 on the earth for one hundred million years or 
 for two hundred millions, since one period is just 
 twice as long as the other. Still, in spite of 
 this indefiniteness, there is a growing disposition 
 among geologists to accept Sir William Thom- 
 
16 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 son’s estimate, as showing at least the order of 
 magnitudes with which the geological chronol- 
 oger must deal. That is to say, while it may not 
 be clear whether life has existed for one or for 
 two hundred millions of years, it is not at all 
 probable that it has existed for a thousand mill- 
 ions or for any greater period. Even this amount 
 of limitation is of some value as giving definite 
 shape to our ideas, and as reminding us that ge- 
 ologists who have habitually reasoned as if there 
 were an infinite fund of past time at their dis- 
 posal have probably been in error. Provided we 
 do not forget that Sir William Thomson’s con- 
 clusion contains more or less that is hypothet- 
 ical, it is well enough to adopt it provisionally ; 
 and I shall do so here. Of the ten sons, then, 
 into which I have supposed geological time to be 
 divided, we will suppose that each is about ten 
 million years in duration; bearing in mind that, 
 while it is highly improbable that the lapse of 
 time has been very much less than this, it may 
 not improbably have been considerably greater. 
 According to this, the minimum antiquity for the 
 beginning of the Eocene period would be about 
 five million years. 
 
 If these periods seem short in comparison with 
 the enormous quantity of work that has been done, 
 
Europe before the Arrival of Man. cy} 
 
 both in the tearing down and rebuilding of the 
 earth’s crust and in the modification of the forms 
 of animals and vegetables, it is no doubt largely 
 due —as both Mr. Darwin and Mr. Croll have 
 reminded us—to the fact that it is almost im- 
 possible for us to frame an adequate conception of 
 what is meant by a million years. We are wont 
 to use these great arithmetical figures glibly, and 
 without comprehending their import. Mr. Croll 
 has done something to help us in this matter. 
 “Here is one way,” he says, “‘of conveying to 
 - the mind some idea of what a million of years 
 really is. Take a narrow strip of paper, an inch 
 broad or more, and 83 feet 4 inches in length, and 
 stretch it along the wall of a large hall, or round 
 the walls of an apartment somewhat over 20 feet 
 square. Recall to memory the days of your boy- 
 hood, so as to get some adequate conception of 
 what a period of a hundred years is. Then mark 
 off from one of the ends of the strip yy of an 
 inch. The ~; of the inch will then represent 
 one hundred years, and the entire length of the 
 strip a million of years. It is well worth making 
 the experiment, just in order to feel the striking 
 impression that it produces on the mind.” Mr. 
 Croll further reminds us that if we could see side 
 
 by side a million of years as represented in figures 
 2 
 
18 Exeursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 and a million of years as represented in geological 
 work, our respect for a unit with six ciphers after 
 it would be notably increased. ‘Could we stand 
 upon the edge of a gorge a mile and a half in 
 depth, that had been cut out of the solid rock by 
 a tiny stream, scarcely visible at the bottom of 
 this fearful abyss, and were we informed that this 
 little streamlet was able to wear off annually only 
 zy of an inch from its rocky bed, what would our 
 conceptions be of the prodigious length of time 
 that this stream must have taken to excavate the 
 gorge? We should certainly feel startled when, 
 on making the necessary calculations, we found 
 that the stream had performed this enormous 
 amount of work in something less than a million 
 of years.” } 
 
 Now all the fossil-bearing rocks on the globe 
 have been formed from the sediment brought 
 down by rivers to the sea, and this sediment has 
 been worn off from the hills and valleys and 
 plains of ancient continents. In recent years it 
 has been attempted to calculate the amounts of 
 sediment worn off by various great rivers from 
 the surface of the regions drained by them; and 
 the results are very interesting and instructive. 
 The Mississippi, for example, draining a country 
 
 1 Croll, Climate and Time, page 327. 
 
Europe before the Arrival of Man. 19 
 
 with scanty rainfall, and having its sources in the 
 Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, where 
 there are no glaciers, performs its work of denuda- 
 tion slowly. The Mississippi wears off from the 
 whole immense area drained by it about one foot 
 in 6,000 years. While the Po, on the other 
 hand, having its sources in the glaciers of the 
 Alps, works with great rapidity, and lowers the 
 area drained by it at the rate of one foot in 729 
 years. The mean rate of denudation over the 
 globe seems to be not far from one foot in 3,000 
 years. Now at this rate, and from the action of 
 rivers alone, it would take only two million years 
 to wear the whole existing continent of Europe, 
 with all its huge mountain masses, down to the 
 sea-level, while North America, in similar wise, 
 would be washed away in less than three millions. 
 
 But while the raindrops, rushing in rivers to 
 the sea, are thus with tireless industry working 
 to obliterate existing continents, their efforts are 
 counteracted, here and there, and with more or 
 less success, by slow upward thrusts or pulsations 
 from the earth’s interior, which gradually raise 
 the floors of continents. The general result of 
 the struggle has been that, ever since the earliest 
 geological periods, the surfaces of the great con- 
 tinents now existing have been subject to irregular 
 
20 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 oscillations ; now partially or almost entirely dis- 
 appearing beneath the sea, now recovering ground 
 as archipelagoes, or rising high and dry to great 
 elevations, as in the case of Africa. The oscilla- 
 tions have not ordinarily exceeded from 6,000 to 
 10,000 feet in vertical extent. There is no reason 
 for supposing that the general relative positions 
 of the great continents and great oceans have 
 altered at all since the beginning of the Lauren- 
 tian period. Since life began on the earth there 
 is no reason for supposing that the bottoms of the 
 stupendous abysses which hold the waters of the 
 Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian oceans have 
 ever been raised up so as to become dry land. 
 Once geologists thought otherwise, and land was 
 turned into sea and sea into land, by facile the- 
 orizers, as often as it was supposed to be neces- 
 sary to account for the distribution of certain liz- 
 ards or squirrels, or for changes in climate, such 
 as have left marks behind in many parts of the 
 earth. The greatest physical geologists now liy- 
 ing, however, — such as Mr. Croll and the brothers 
 Geikie, — are convinced that there has been no 
 considerable change in the positions of the great 
 oceans from the very beginning; and this view is 
 ably sustained by Mr. Wallace — who is probably 
 the highest living authority on the distribution of 
 
Europe before the Arrival of Man. 21 
 
 plants and animals — in his profound and fascinat- 
 ing treatise on “Island Life,” lately published. 
 Though the general relative positions of deep 
 sea and continent have not altered, however, there 
 have been frequent and striking changes in the 
 superficial contour of land and sea. Every con- 
 tinent has been several times wholly or in part 
 submerged, while shallow portions of what is now 
 sea-bottom have been thrust up high and dry ; and 
 in this way the climate and the mutual relations 
 of floras and faunas have been variously and vast- 
 ly affected. Thus, during the Silurian period, the 
 dry land of Europe lay mostly in the north, over 
 Finland, Scandinavia, and the German Ocean, 
 coyering also the British Islands, and stretching 
 more than two hundred miles out into the Atlan- 
 tic. The central and southern parts of Europe 
 were then covered by a shallow sea, with islands 
 on the sites of Bavaria and Bohemia. The dura- 
 tion of this state of things may be dimly imag- 
 ined when we consider the enormous quantity of 
 sediment worn off from this northern continent, 
 and now constituting the Silurian rocks of Europe. 
 If all this sediment were to be arranged in a lon- 
 gitudinal pile, according to Professor Archibald 
 Geikie, it would make a mountain ridge 1,800 
 miles long, 83 miles wide, and somewhat higher 
 
22 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 than Mont Blane. At the close of this long period 
 ridges of land had begun to appear on the sites of 
 Spain and Switzerland. By the Carboniferous 
 period the central parts of Europe had risen so as 
 to form an archipelago of low islands, surrounded 
 by lagoons and salt marshes, covered with dense 
 jungles of ferns and club-mosses. On the islets 
 grew thick forests of pine, and as repeated epochs 
 of submergence brought all this teeming vegeta- 
 tion under water, it became covered with detritus 
 of mud and sand from the northern highlands, 
 and in this way was preserved to form the coal- 
 beds of Europe. By the Triassic period we find 
 the general elevation of Europe increased, so that 
 instead of an archipelago lying amid lagoons we 
 have a continent thickly dotted over with salt 
 lakes ; but in the next or Jurassic period the 
 whole centre of the continent was laid under 
 water again. The extent and shape of the Euro- 
 pean sea of the Cretaceous period are indicated 
 by the extent of the chalk which was formed on 
 its floor, and of which Professor Huxley has given 
 such a graphic account in his lecture **On a Piece 
 of Chalk.”! The greater part of Europe might 
 then have been called a ‘ Mediterranean Sea,” 
 extending from England far into central Asia. 
 
 1 Huxley, Lay Sermons, pp. 192-222. 
 
Europe before the Arrival of Man. 23 
 
 The western highlands of Scotland remained 
 above water, but Bohemia, Switzerland, Spain, 
 and the Caucasus seem to have been submerged, 
 or reduced to islands. Still further submergence 
 occurred during the Eocene period, and this in 
 turn was followed by a long series of elevations, 
 resulting in something like the configuration of 
 Europe as we know it. Late in the Eocene period 
 the Pyrenees, Apennines, Alps, Carpathians, and 
 Caucasus had risen to their present or even to 
 higher altitudes. While an inland sea flowed 
 over the Netherlands and Normandy, the rest of 
 Gaul was dry land, and at its northwestern ex- 
 tremity was joined to Britain. The British Isl- 
 ands, in turn, were joined to each other and to 
 Scandinavia and Spitzbergen, as also to Iceland 
 and Greenland. If Columbus had lived in those 
 days, he could thus have walked on solid land all 
 the way from Spain to the New World. 
 
 Two immediate consequences of this great up- | 
 raising of land made the Eocene period an era of 
 singular interest in the history of the European 
 continent. The first was the invasion of Europe 
 by placental mammals, which speedily supplanted 
 the lower forms that had preceded them. The 
 second was the immigration of deciduous trees 
 from the polar regions. Before the Cretaceous 
 
24 Hxeursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 period no such trees had been known in any 
 part of the earth, and it is the opinion of Count 
 Saporta that the habit of dropping the leaves 
 was evolved in adaptation to the extreme differ- 
 ences between summer and winter temperatures 
 which characterized the polar regions. However 
 that may be, it is certain that during the Eocene 
 and Miocene periods deciduous trees and shrubs 
 advanced from Greenland and Spitzbergen into 
 Kurope, and rapidly covered the face of the 
 country, evolving gradually a great diversity of 
 forms. By the middle Eocene, along with cy- 
 presses, pines and yews, fan-palms and pandanus 
 and cactus of giant size, the oak and the elm, the 
 maple, willow, beech, and chestnut, as well as the 
 gum and bread-fruit trees, flourished in Britain. 
 The climate of western and central Europe was 
 tropical, as is shown both by the abundance of 
 palms and by the presence of crocodiles and 
 alligators in large numbers, while the mollusks 
 were such as are now found only in tropical 
 waters. 
 
 But the most interesting feature of Eocene 
 Europe was the peculiar character of its mamma- 
 lian fauna. At first we find marsupials, and ear- 
 nivora with marsupial affinities, showing that 
 the order of carnivora was then only beginning to 
 
Europe before the Arrival of Man. 25 
 
 be evolved. Afterward came such creatures as 
 the anchitheriwm, the ancestor of the horse, in 
 general aspect somewhere between a Shetland 
 pony and a pig, and with three separate hoofs on 
 each foot. There were also the anoplotheria, or 
 common ancestral forms of antelopes and deer, as 
 yet without horns or antlers. The highest order 
 of mammals, the Primates, — including man, ape, 
 and lemur, — was then represented by the adapzs 
 of the Paris basin, the necrolemur of southern 
 France, and the cenopithecus of Switzerland. 
 Now none of these Eocene primates answered to 
 any living genus of lemur, though the lemurs are 
 the least specialized of primates now existing ; 
 but all these Eocene primates showed signs of 
 relationship, in one way or another, to the hoofed 
 quadrupeds living at that time, which, as we 
 must not forget, were only on the way toward 
 becoming hoofed quadrupeds such as we know. 
 Cousinship, however remote, between such ex- 
 tremely specialized creatures as the horse and his 
 rider seems odd to think of; yet the lemuroids 
 of the Eocene furnish the link. And it is inter- 
 esting to remember that, owing to the closeness 
 of relationship, the lemuroid adapis was actually 
 mistaken by Cuvier for an anoplotherium, or 
 primitive antelope-deer. Of all anatomical con- 
 
26 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 trasts, what can be greater than the contrast be- 
 tween a solid hoof and the flexible five-fingered 
 hand of a Rubinstein? Yet the Eocene great- 
 uncle of our modern pianists could be mistaken 
 for his contemporary great-uncle or great grand- 
 father of our hoofed quadrupeds! And this in- 
 stance 1s but one fair sample out of many of the 
 changes which the last five or six million years 
 have wrought. Speaking generally, it may be 
 said that in the Eocene age there were carniv- 
 ora, and there were ungulata, and there were 
 primates ; but these orders were not so clearly 
 distinguished from each other as they are to-day, 
 and they were not so clearly distinguished from 
 other orders, such as the rodents and insectivora, 
 while in many cases they had not ceased to bear 
 the marks of their marsupial ancestry. Or, to 
 put the case in another way, in the Eocene period 
 you have an instance of hoofed quadruped, but 
 you find no instance of any such special form 
 as horse or deer or camel; you find carnivora, 
 but you do not find a clear instance of felis or 
 canis or ursus, — not even of hyena, an earlier 
 type than either of the others; and you find 
 primates, but among these there is nothing yet so 
 clearly distinguished as a monkey. In short, the 
 present species or genera of mammals had not 
 
Europe before the Arrival of Man. 27 
 
 come into existence in the Eocene period, but only 
 the present orders and some of the present fam- 
 ilies ; and even the orders were not clearly dis- 
 tinct from one another, as they are at present ; 
 but they were closely interlocked, very much as 
 species are at present. In other words, the whole 
 class of mammals in the Eocene age was far less 
 highly specialized than it is at the present time. 
 From these premises Mr. Boyd Dawkins ar- 
 gues, with convincing force, that man could not 
 possibly have existed in Europe, and probably 
 nowhere on the earth, during the Eocene period. 
 Ata time when the order of ungulates had not 
 clearly dev _.oped the distinction between camels 
 and pigs and horses, and when the order of pri- 
 mates was only just beginning to be distinguished 
 from other orders, so that Cuvier could even mis- 
 take a primate for an ungulate, — at such a time 
 was it at all likely that man, the most highly spe- 
 cialized of all primates, or of all animals, could 
 have existed? Obviously, he could not have ex- 
 isted at such atime. The supposition is absurd 
 on the face of it. As Mr. Boyd Dawkins says, 
 “to seek for highly specialized man in a fauna 
 where no living genus of placental mammal was 
 present would be an idle and hopeless quest.” 
 Coming to the Miocene age, we find traces of 
 
28 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 extensive submergences of parts of the European 
 continent, followed by reélevations. Consider- 
 able portions of Gaul and Italy were laid under 
 water, and at one time the whole basin of the 
 Danube was covered by a sea which connected 
 with the Mediterranean near Berne, thug reduc- 
 ing Switzerland and Italy to an archipelago. The 
 Alps, however, seem to have maintained a rela- 
 tive height as great as that of to-day, in compari- 
 son with the lands about them. The elevated 
 position which Britain had occupied in the Eocene 
 age seems to have been kept up during the Mio- 
 eene. The whole of Britain and Ireland, with 
 the English and Irish channels, the German 
 Ocean, and the Atlantic ridge between Scotland 
 and Greenland, stood at an average of nearly 
 3,000 feet higher than they do to-day, so that 
 the whole region remained dry land, and Gaul 
 was still joined in this way to Scandinavia and 
 North America. Above this high level the Scot- 
 tish Highlands and the Welsh peaks rose to a 
 height of some 7,000 feet, having since been worn 
 down to half that height by rain and ice. Many 
 of these great mountains, thus standing nearly 
 as high above sea-level as the Alps, were active 
 volcanoes; and this chain of volcanoes, of which 
 Hecla is now the most famous remnant, extended 
 
Europe before the Arrival of Man. 29 
 
 across the Atlantic ridge, all the way from Wales 
 to Greenland, which was then covered with a 
 _ luxuriant vegetation of oaks and chestnuts, vines 
 and magnolias. In the earlier part of the Mio- 
 cene age the general climate of Europe resembled 
 that of Algiers or Louisiana at the present day, 
 but at the close of the period it had become some- 
 what cooler, though still sub-tropical. Gigantic 
 conifers, like the famous trees of California, 400 
 feet in height and 25 or more in thickness, flour- 
 ished all over Europe, from Italy to Norway. 
 Along with these there were cycads, fan-palms, 
 palmettos, figs, laurels and myrtles, poplars, 
 oaks, lindens and maples, acacias and elms, cam- 
 phors and cinnamons and sandalwood; while ivies 
 and bignonias grew in great luxuriance. Cranes, 
 flamingos, and pelicans were common, as also 
 geese, herons, pheasants, paroquets, and eagles. 
 But the mammals, in this as in the preceding 
 epoch, present the most instructive subject of 
 study. Opossums were still present, but had 
 vanished before the middle of the period; anda 
 few existing genera of placental mammals had 
 come upon the scene. ‘There were tapirs and 
 small rhinoceroses, as well as squirrels, moles, and 
 hedgehogs, and carnivores similar to the weasels 
 and civets. Collateral ancestors of the deer and 
 
30 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 antelope roamed about in large herds, and by the 
 middle of the period had begun to acquire small 
 horns and antlers. In mid-Miocene times the an- 
 chitheres disappeared, and were succeeded by the 
 hipparion, much nearer in structure to the horse. 
 The mastodon came in about the same time, and 
 with him another elephant-like creature, the dein- 
 otherium, who lived in the water like a hippo- 
 potamus. Carnivores of the cat family reached 
 their highest point of development as regards size 
 and power in the middle and upper Miocene: the 
 machairodus, or sabre - toothed lion, was much 
 larger and more formidable than any lion or tiger 
 now existing. The same period witnessed the 
 arrival in Europe of true apes and baboons, and 
 even of two species of anthropoid ape, allied to 
 the gibbons, one of which, the dryopithecus, was 
 as large as a man, and has been regarded as in 
 Some respects superior to any modern anthropoid 
 ape. 
 
 Mr. Boyd Dawkins — to whose admirable trea- 
 tise on “ Karly Man in Britain ” this essay is un- 
 der great obligations — argues forcibly against the 
 probability that man occupied Europe during any 
 part of the Miocene period. All the species of 
 Miocene land mammals, and several of the gen- 
 era, are now extinct; and Mr. Dawkins urges 
 
Europe before the Arrival of Man. 31 
 
 that if man existed at that remote period it is 
 ‘ncredible that he alone should have subsisted un- 
 changed amid the destruction or metamorphosis 
 of all other species. But it seems to me that 
 Mr. Dawkins partly answers this argument him- 
 self when he observes that, “ were any man-like 
 animal living in the Miocene age, he might rea- 
 sonably be expected to be not man, but interme- 
 diate between man and something else, and to 
 bear the same relation to ourselves as the Mio- 
 cene apes, such as the mesopithecus, bear to those 
 now living, such as the semnopithecus.” Why 
 may not such a semi-human man have existed in 
 the Miocene age, the race having undergone since 
 then changes parallel to those which have affected 
 the apes, or to those which have affected generally 
 such Miocene genera as have survived down to 
 our times? No remains of any such creature 
 have been found, but it is indisputable that arti- 
 ficially chipped flints and the artificially cut rib 
 of an extinct species of manatee have been dis- 
 covered in mid-Miocene strata in France. Mr. 
 Dawkins is inclined to adopt M. Gaudry’s sug- 
 gestion that the flints may have been chipped and 
 the rib cut by the great man-like ape, the dryopi- 
 thecus; for although it is not known that any 
 existing apes are in the habit of chipping flints 
 
32 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 or cutting bones, yet it is not impossible that the 
 dryopithecus may have somewhat surpassed the 
 present apes in intelligence. On the other hand, 
 M. de Mortillet regards these relics as conclusive 
 proof of the existence of man in mid-Miocene 
 Gaul. The question can hardly be decided at 
 present ; but it does not seem to me that Mr. 
 Dawkins’s line of argument, which is so conclu- 
 sive when applied to the Eocene age, is equally 
 conclusive when applied to the Miocene. At an 
 epoch when there were no true apes as yet to be 
 found, when even the lemurs bore marks of kin- 
 ship with the ancestors of ruminants and pachy- 
 derms, and when the carnivorous type was but 
 half developed, it would clearly be idle to expect 
 to find traces of man. But an epoch when many 
 modern genera had come into existence in all the 
 principal orders, and when in particular there ex- 
 isted an ape as high, or higher, in organization 
 than the modern chimpanzee or gorilla, I can see 
 no such overwhelming improbability of the exist- 
 ence of man himself. No doubt, however, if the 
 remains of Miocene man are ever to be found, 
 they will disclose a type of humanity quite differ- 
 ent from, and very likely much lower than, any 
 that we now know. It is not at all improbable 
 that such remains will by and by be discovered in 
 
Europe before the Arrival of Man. 33 
 
 some part of the earth, if not in Europe. By the 
 time the strata of Africa have been explored with 
 anything like the minuteness with which those 
 of France and England have been examined, we 
 shall be very likely to meet with clear indications 
 of the former presence of half-human man, and it 
 will not be strange if such indications lead us far 
 back into the Miocene epoch. 
 
 In the Pliocene period the geographical struct- 
 ure of Europe began to be much more like what 
 it is to-day. Hitherto, during the greater part of 
 the Tertiary epoch, large portions of Russia and 
 Siberia had been submerged, so that the continent 
 of Asia did not extend nearly so far north as at 
 present. A belt of sea appears to have stretched 
 from the eastern Baltic across to the Persian Gulf, 
 including the areas of the Black and Caspian seas ; 
 and another wide channel seems to have run west 
 of the Ural Mountains, connecting the Caspian 
 area with the Arctic Ocean, so that the warm wa- 
 ters of the Indian Ocean found a free passage to 
 the very shores of Finland and Scandinavia. Ac- 
 cording to Professor Archibald Geikie, these shal- 
 low seas disappeared early in Pliocene times, leav- 
 ing the Aral, Caspian, and Black seas in some- 
 thing like their present isolation. While eastern 
 
 Europe thus began to acquire its present contour, 
 3 
 
34 Hezeursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 equally remarkable changes occurred at the same 
 time in the west. The Atlantic ridge between 
 Britain and Greenland was submerged, thus sep- 
 arating Europe from America, and the connec- 
 tions of Norway with Spitzbergen on the one 
 hand and Scotland on the other were also severed 
 by the encroachments of the North Sea. But the 
 British Islands were still joined to each other and 
 to the Gaulish mainland; the whole of Britain 
 jutting out from the continent as a great trian- 
 gular peninsula, with the Shetlands in the apex. 
 The volcanoes of northwest Britain gradually lost 
 their fires during the Pliocene age. Icebergs ap- 
 peared in the North Sea, and the general climate 
 of Europe, though still milder than to-day, was 
 much colder than it had been during the Eocene 
 and Miocene epochs. The vegetation began to 
 lose its sub-tropical aspect. Bamboos, evergreen 
 oaks, and magnolias still mingled with maples, 
 willows, and poplars in the latitude of Lyons, but 
 the cinnamon-trees and palms became restricted 
 to Italy. Among mammalia, the first species that 
 has continued to live down to the present time, 
 namely, the African hippopotamus, appears in the 
 upper Pliocene strata of Auvergne. The earliest 
 true elephant, though of a species now extinct, ap- 
 pears at about the same time; and contemporary 
 
Europe before the Arrival of Man. 35 
 
 with him were two species of mastodon, of enor- 
 mous size, a rhinoceros, a tapir, two or more 
 bears, the giant sabre-toothed lion, an ancestor of 
 the panthers and lynxes, and two kinds of hyena. 
 There were many species of deer, with antlers, 
 but for the most part unlike modern deer. The 
 ox appears first in the upper Pliocene, but with- 
 out horns. There were also wolves, and swine, 
 and two kinds of ape. The hipparion still lived, 
 but was becoming scarce, and along with him 
 existed a horse, less specialized in teeth and feet 
 than the modern horse. 
 
 Now from the fact that of these Pliocene mam- 
 mals every one has long since become extinct ex- 
 cept the hippopotamus, Mr. Dawkins again pro- 
 ceeds to argue that it is not likely that man 
 inhabited Europe at that period. The alleged 
 instances, three in number, of the recurrence of 
 human remains in Pliocene strata of France and 
 Italy he pronounces unsatisfactory ; and he does 
 not even mention the brilliant investigations of 
 the Geological Survey of Portugal, which have 
 brought to light flint implements of undoubted 
 human workmanship, in great abundance in the 
 Pliocene strata of that country, buried under 1,200 
 feet of superincumbent rock. These discoveries, 
 
 set forth by M. Ribeiro in 1871, are cited by 
 
36 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Professor Whitney as furnishing conclusive evi- 
 dence of the presence of man in Portugal during 
 the Pliocene period. In his admirable memoir on 
 “The Auriferous Gravels of the Sierra Nevada,” 
 Professor Whitney has collected a great amount 
 of evidence which seems to prove that man ex- 
 isted in California at an equally remote date. 
 Now it is perfectly clear that the human race 
 must have been in existence for a very long time 
 before it could have become so widely dispersed 
 over the earth as to occupy countries so distant 
 from each other as California and Portugal. For 
 the first appearance of man on the earth we must, 
 therefore, go far back in the Pliocene period at 
 any rate; and if we are to find traces of the 
 ‘missing link,” or primordial stock of primates 
 from which man has been derived, we must un- 
 doubtedly look for it in the Miocene. 
 
 Of the three stages of the Tertiary period here 
 passed in review, we have seen that the Eocene 
 was characterized by the entire absence of genera 
 and species of mammals identical with those now 
 living; in the Miocene there were genera, but no 
 species, identical with those now living; in the 
 Pliocene there was at least one species in Europe 
 that has survived to the present day. When we 
 come to the Pleistocene age, we find a majority of 
 
Europe before the Arrival of Man. 37 
 
 the species identical with such as still exist. But 
 in regard to this Pleistocene fauna there are 
 some curious circumstances, which show that the 
 climate of Europe had begun to be subject to 
 vicissitudes such as it had not known in the earlier 
 Tertiary epochs. Among the Pleistocene mam- 
 mals of Europe we find such as are characteristic 
 of warm climates, — as the lion, leopard, hyzena, 
 elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus ; and along 
 with these we find such as characterize sub-arctic 
 climates, —as the musk-sheep, reindeer, glutton, 
 arctic fox, ibex, and chamois; and yet again we 
 find such denizens of the temperate zone as the 
 bison, horse, deer, wild boar, brown and grizzly 
 bears, wolf, and rabbit, to which may be added 
 the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros. Now, as 
 Mr. James Geikie has ably shown, this singular 
 juxtaposition of northern, southern, and temper- 
 ate forms points directly to great vicissitudes of 
 climate. It is quite clear that when the reindeer 
 came down as far as southern France, the climate 
 must have been very different from what it was 
 when the hippopotamus bathed in the Thames. 
 We know otherwise, from purely geologic evl- 
 dence, that the Pleistocene climate was very eX- 
 traordinary. Hitherto, during the Tertiary period, 
 the temperature of Europe seems to have been 
 
38 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 steadily but slowly decreasing, from the Eocene 
 epoch, when it was sub-tropical, to the end of the 
 Pliocene, when it was temperate, though warmer 
 than at present. But in the Pleistocene epoch 
 there were at least four or five, and probably 
 several more, extreme changes from a warm to a 
 cold climate, and back again. This period, or the 
 greater part of it, has been known as the “ Glacial 
 Epoch” or the “ Great Ice Age;”’ but recent re- 
 searches have shown that over Britain and cen- 
 tral Europe there were several glacial epochs, al- 
 ternating with warm inter-glacial periods of long 
 duration. When the cold was at its maximum, 
 the whole area of Finland, Scandinavia, and Scot- 
 land, with the North and Baltic seas, was buried 
 under a stupendous sheet of ice, varying from 
 1,000 to 2,000 feet in thickness ; and this ice-sheet 
 sent off glaciers as far east as Moscow, and as far 
 south as Dresden, while the Alps, the Pyrenees, 
 and the mountains of Auvergne became centres 
 of glaciation, inferior, indeed, to the great north- 
 ern ice-sheet, but still immense in extent. While 
 the climate of Pleistocene Europe thus came to 
 be similar to that of modern Greenland, parallel 
 phenomena were occurring all over the northern 
 hemisphere. The continent of North America 
 was deeply swathed in ice as far south as the 
 
Europe before the Arrival of Man. 39 
 
 latitude of Philadelphia, while glaciers descended 
 into North Carolina. The valleys of the Rocky 
 Mountains supported enormous glaciers, and the 
 same was the case in Asia with the Himalayas. 
 It was during these recurrent periods of arctic 
 cold that the reindeer and musk-sheep found their 
 way to the south of France, while over land- 
 bridges at Gibraltar and Malta the leopard and 
 elephant retreated to Africa. In the intervals 
 between these glacial periods, when the climate 
 became milder than it is at the present day, the 
 arctic mammals traveled northward again, while 
 the lion returned to chase the bison and elk in the 
 forests of Yorkshire. 
 
 As the result of these prolonged and repeated 
 climatic vicissitudes, and of the complicated mi- 
 grations entailed by them, many of the Pliocene 
 mammals still living in Europe at that time have 
 become extinct, — such as the gigantic beaver, the 
 cave-bear, the sabre-toothed lion, five species of 
 deer, three species of elephant, and two of 
 rhinoceros. One race of men— known as the 
 “men of the river drift” —had taken up their 
 abode in Europe when these great changes were 
 beginning, and struggled with the extremes of 
 climate like their enemies, the bears and hyznas. 
 The discovery of flint knives has abundantly 
 
40 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 proved that man was living near the site of Lon- 
 don before the big-nosed rhinoceros had become 
 extinct, and before the arrival of the musk-sheep 
 and the marmot in the valley of the Thames 
 heralded the slow approach of the northern ice- 
 sheet. But the fact that human remains of a date 
 even more remote than this have also been found 
 in Portugal and California shows, as I have said 
 already, that man was then no new-comer upon 
 the face of the earth, but must certainly have 
 been in existence for many thousands of years, 
 though as yet we are unable to assign either his 
 primeval habitat or the precise epoch of his first 
 appearance. 
 
 January, 1882. 
 
Il. 
 THE ARRIVAL OF MAN IN EUROPE. 
 
 TowAkpD the close of the Pleistocene age the 
 general outlines of the European continent had 
 assumed very much their present appearance 
 everywhere except in the northwest. The British 
 Islands still remained joined to one another and 
 to the Gaulish mainland, and occupied the greater 
 part of the area of the German Ocean. Accord- 
 ing to Mr. James Geikie, the connection with 
 Norway again became complete, and the Atlantic 
 ridge was again so far elevated as to bring Scot- 
 land into connection with Greenland through 
 the Faroe Islands and Iceland. The whole of 
 Britain stood at an average elevation of from 
 600 to 1,000 feet above its present level. The 
 Thames, Humber, Tyne, and Forth must all have’ 
 flowed into the Rhine, which emptied itself into 
 the North Sea beyond the latitude of the Shet- 
 lands. The glaciers of Europe had retreated 
 within the Arctic Circle, or up to the higher val- 
 leys of the great mountain ranges ; and the cli- 
 
42 Hecursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 mate was beginning to assume its present temper- 
 ate and equable character. 
 
 At this remote epoch Europe had already been 
 inhabited by human beings during several thou- 
 sand years. How long before the beginning of 
 the Pleistocene period man had arrived in Europe 
 is still open to question; but there is no doubt 
 whatever that he lived in Gaul and Britain as a 
 contemporary of the big-nosed rhinoceros, and be- 
 fore the arrival of the arctic mammalia which 
 were driven from the north as the glacial cold set 
 in. This race of man—described by Mr. Boyd 
 Dawkins as the “ River-drift Man” —is probably 
 now as extinct as the cave-bear or the mammoth. 
 Late in the Pleistocene period it disappeared 
 from Europe, and was replaced by a new race, 
 _ coming from the northeast, along with the musk- 
 sheep and reindeer, and called by the same emi- 
 nent writer the “ Cave-Man.’’ Both the Cave- 
 men and River-drift men were in the stage of 
 culture known as the Paleolithic, or Old Stone 
 Age; that is, they used only stone implements, 
 and these implements were never polished or 
 ground to a fine edge, but were only roughly 
 chipped into shape, and were very rude and irreg- 
 ular in contour. The Paleolithic Age, referring 
 as the phrase does to a stage of culture, and not 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. 43 
 
 to any chronological period, 1s something which 
 has come and gone at very different dates in dif- 
 ferent parts of the world. It may be convenient 
 to remember that in northwestern Europe it 
 seems to have very nearly coincided with the 
 Pleistocene period, provided we also bear in mind 
 that the coincidence is purely fortuitous. The 
 implements of the River-drift men, found in 
 Pleistocene river-beds, are very rude, and imply a 
 social condition at least as low as that of the Aus- 
 tralian savages of the present day. ‘* They con- 
 sist,” says Mr. Dawkins, “of the flake; the 
 chopper or pebble roughly chipped to an edge on 
 one side; the Adche or oval-pointed implement, 
 intended for use without a handle; an oval or 
 rounded form with a cutting edge all round, which 
 may have been used in a handle; a scraper for 
 preparing skins ; and pointed flints used for bor- 
 ms 
 
 out of which to make these weapons or tools, but 
 
 9? 
 
 Man did not then seek for the materials 
 
 “merely fashioned the stones which happened to 
 be within his reach — flint, quartzite, or chert — 
 in the shallows of the rivers, as they were wanted, 
 throwing them away after they had been used.” 
 No pottery of any sort has been found in associa- 
 tion with these implements, nor were there at that 
 period any domesticated animals. The River- 
 
44 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 drift men were evidently no tillers of the ground, 
 neither were they herdsmen or shepherds; but 
 they gained a precarious subsistence by hunting 
 the great elk and other deer, and contended with 
 packs of hyzenas for the caves which might serve 
 for a shelter against the storm. As to what may 
 have been the social organization of these pri- 
 meval savages, nothing whatever is known. They 
 were a wide-spread race. ‘Their implements have 
 been found, in more or less abundance, in Britain, 
 Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, northern 
 Africa, Palestine, and Hindustan. Their bones 
 have been found in the valleys of the Rhine, the 
 Seine, the Somme, and the Vezére, in sufficient 
 numbers to show that they were a dolicocephalic 
 or long-headed race, with prominent jaws, but 
 no complete skeleton has as yet been discovered. 
 These River-drift men, as already observed, 
 belonged to the southern fauna which inhabited 
 Europe before the approach of the glacial cold. 
 As the climate of Europe became arctic and tem- 
 perate by turns, the River-drift men appear to 
 have by turns retreated southward to Italy and 
 Africa, and advanced northward into Britain, 
 along with the leopards, hyzenas, and elephants, 
 with which they were contemporary. But after 
 several such migrations they returned no more, 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. 45 
 
 but instead of them we find plentiful traces of the 
 Cave-men, — a race apparently more limited in 
 its range, and clearly belonging to a sub-arctic 
 fauna. The bones and implements of the Cave- 
 men are found in association with remains of the 
 reindeer and bison, the arctic fox, the mammoth, 
 and the woolly rhinoceros. They are found in 
 great abundance in southern and central England, 
 in Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland, and in 
 every part of France ; but nowhere as yet have 
 their remains been discovered south of the Alps 
 and Pyrenees. A diligent exploration of the 
 Pleistocene caves of England and France, during 
 the past twenty years, has thrown some light 
 upon their mode of life. Not a trace of pottery 
 has been found anywhere associated with their 
 remains, so that it is quite clear that the Cave- 
 men did not make earthenware vessels. Burnt 
 clay is a peculiarly indestructible material, and 
 where it has once been in existence it is sure to 
 leave plentiful traces of itself. Meat was baked 
 in the caves by contact with hot stones, or 
 roasted before the blazing fire. Fire may have 
 been obtained by friction between two pieces of 
 wood, or between bits of flint and iron pyrites. 
 Clothes were made of the furs of bisons, reindeer, 
 bears, and other animals, rudely sewn together 
 
46 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 with threads of reindeer sinew. Even long fur 
 gloves were used, and necklaces of shells and of 
 bear’s and lion’s teeth. The stone tools and 
 Weapons were far finer in appearance than those 
 of the River-drift men, though they were still 
 chipped, and not ground. They made borers and 
 Saws as well as spears and arrowheads; and be- 
 sides these stone implements they used spears and 
 arrows headed with bone, and daggers of reindeer 
 antler. The reindeer, which thus supplied them 
 with clothes and weapons, was also slain for food ; 
 and, besides, they slew whales and seals on the 
 coast of the Bay of Biscay, and in the rivers they 
 speared salmon, trout, and pike. They also ap- 
 pear to have eaten, as well as to have been eaten 
 by, the cave-lion and cave-bear. Many details of 
 their life are preserved to us through their ex- 
 traordinary taste for engraving and carving. 
 Sketches of reindeer, mammoths, horses, cave- 
 bears, pike, and seals, and hunting scenes have 
 been found by the hundred, incised upon antlers 
 or bones, or sometimes upon stone; and the ar- 
 tistic skill which they show is really astonishing, 
 Most savages can make rude drawings of objects 
 in which they feel a familiar interest, but such 
 drawings are usually excessively grotesque, like a 
 child’s attempt to depict a man as a sort of figure 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. AT 
 
 eight, with four straight lines standing forth from 
 the lower half to represent the arms and legs. 
 But the Cave-men, with a piece of sharp-pointed 
 flint, would engrave, on a reindeer antler, an out- 
 line of a urus so accurately that it can be clearly 
 distinguished from an ox or a bison. And their 
 drawings are remarkable not only for their ac- 
 curacy, but often equally so for the taste and 
 vigour with which the subject is treated. 
 
 Among uncivilized races of men now living, 
 there are none which possess this remarkable ar- 
 tistic talent save the Eskimos; and in this respect 
 there is complete similarity between the Eskimos 
 and the Cave-men. But this is by no means the 
 only point of agreement between the Eskimos 
 and the Cave-men. Between the sets of tools 
 and weapons used by the one and by the other 
 the agreement is also complete. The stone spears 
 and arrow-heads, the sewing-needles and skin- 
 scrapers, used by the Eskimos are exactly like 
 the similar implements found in the Pleistocene 
 caves of France and England. The necklaces and 
 amulets of cut teeth and the daggers made from 
 antler, show an equally close correspondence. The 
 resemblances are not merely general, but extend 
 so far into details that if modern Eskimo remains 
 were to be put into European caves they would 
 
48 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 be indistinguishable in appearance from the re- 
 mains of the Cave-men which are now found 
 there. Now, when these facts are taken in con- 
 nection with the facts that the Cave-men were an 
 arctic race, and especially that the musk-sheep, 
 which accompanied the advance of the Cave-men 
 into Europe, is now found only in the country of 
 the Eskimos, though its fossil remains are scat- 
 tered in abundance all along a line stretching 
 from the Pyrenees through Germany, Russia, and 
 Siberia, — when these facts are taken in connec- 
 tion, the opinion of Mr. Dawkins, that the Cave- 
 men were actually identical with the Eskimos, 
 seems highly plausible. Nothing can be more 
 probable than that, in early or middle Pleistocene 
 times, the Eskimos lived all about the Arctic Cir- 
 cle, in Siberia and northern Europe as well as in 
 North America; that during the coldest portions 
 of the Glacial period they found their way as far 
 south as the Pyrenees, along with the rest of the 
 sub-arctic mammalian fauna to which they be- 
 longed; and that, as the climate grew warmer 
 again, and vigorous enemies from the south began 
 to press into Europe and compete with them, they 
 gradually fell back to the northward, leaving be- 
 hind them the innumerable relics of their former 
 presence, which we find in the late Pleistocene 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. 49 
 
 caves of France and England. The Eskimos, 
 then, are probably the sole survivors of the Cave- 
 men of the Pleistocene period: among the pres- 
 ent people of Europe the Cave-men have left no 
 representatives whatever. 
 
 With the passing away of Pleistocene times, 
 further considerable changes occurred in the geog- 
 raphy of Europe and in its population. Early 
 in the Recent period the British Islands had be- 
 come detached from each other and from the con- 
 tinent, and the North Sea and the English and 
 Irish channels had assumed very nearly their 
 present sizes and shapes. The contour of the 
 Mediterranean, also, had become nearly what it 
 is now ; and in general such changes as have oc- 
 curred in the physical structure of Europe during 
 the Recent period have been comparatively slight. 
 Of the mammalia living at the beginning of this 
 period, only one species, the Irish elk, has become 
 extinct. The gigantic cave-bear, the cave-lion, 
 the mammoth, and the woolly rhinoceros had all 
 become extinct at the close of the Pleistocene pe- 
 riod, and the elephants and hyznas had finally 
 retreated into Africa. In Europe were now to 
 be found the brown and grizzly bearc, the elk and 
 reindeer, the wild boar, the urus or wild ox, the 
 
 wolf and fox, the rabbit and hare, and the badger; 
 4 
 
50 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 and along with these there came those harbingers 
 of the dawn of civilization, — the dog and horse, 
 the domestic ox and pig, with the sheep and goat. 
 A new race of men, also, the tamers and owners 
 of these domestic animals, had appeared on the 
 scene. ‘hese new men could build rude huts of 
 oak logs and rough planks, made by splitting the 
 tree-trunks with wedges. Such work was not 
 done with chipped flint-flakes. The men of the 
 early Recent period had the grindstone, and used 
 it to put a fine edge on their stone hatchets and 
 adzes ; so that their appearance marks the begin- 
 ning of a new era in culture. The sharp and 
 accurate edge of the axe, unattainable save by 
 grinding, is the symbol of this new era, which is 
 known to archeologists as the Neolithic, or New 
 Stone Age. The huts of the Neolithic farmers 
 and shepherds were built in clusters, and de- 
 fended bystockades. Wheat and flax were raised, 
 and linen garments were added to those of fur. 
 The distaff and loom, in rude shape, were in use, 
 and grain was pounded in the mortar with a pes- 
 tle. Rude earthenware vessels were made, some- 
 times ornamented with patterns. Canoes were 
 also in use. The dead were buried in long bar- 
 rows, and from the almost constant presence of 
 arrow-heads, pottery, or trinkets in these tombs 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. 51 
 
 it has been inferred that the Neolithic men had 
 some idea of a future life, and buried these ob- 
 jects for the use of the departed spirits, as is the 
 custom among most savage races at the present 
 time. 
 
 The celebrated lake-villages of Switzerland be- 
 long to the Neolithic or early Recent period ; and 
 the remains of their cattle and of their cultivated 
 seeds and fruits have thrown light upon the or- 
 igin of the Neolithic civilization. It is certain 
 that the domestic animals did not originate in 
 Europe, but were domesticated in central Asia, 
 which was the home of their wild ancestors; and, 
 moreover, they were not introduced into Europe 
 gradually and one by one, but suddenly and en 
 masse. It is clear, therefore, that they must have 
 been brought in from Asia by the Neolithic men ; 
 and the same is true of the four kinds of wheat, 
 two of barley, the millet, peas, poppies, apples, 
 pears, plums, and flax, which grew in the gardens 
 and orchards of Neolithic Switzerland. 
 
 This rudimentary Neolithic civilization was 
 spread all over Europe, with the exception of the 
 northern parts of Russia and Scandinavia; and 
 there can be no doubt that it lasted for a great 
 many centuries. It certainly lingered in Gaul 
 and Britain long after the valley of the Nile had 
 
52 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 become the seat of a mighty empire; perhaps 
 even after the Akkadian power had established 
 ‘itself at the mouth of the Euphrates, and ‘“ Ur 
 of the Chaldees ” had become a name famous in 
 the world. Still more, it is clear that the Neo- 
 lithic population has never been swept out of 
 Europe, like the Cave-men and the River-drift 
 men who had preceded it, but has remained there, 
 in a certain sense, to this day, and constitutes a 
 very important portion of our own ancestry. 
 
 So many skeletons have been obtained of the 
 men and women of the Neolithic period that we 
 can say, with some confidence, that the whole of 
 Europe was inhabited by one homogeneous popu- 
 lation, uniform in physical appearance. The stat- 
 ure was small, averaging 5 feet 4 inches for the 
 men, and 4 feet 11 inches for the women; and 
 the figure was slight. The skulls were ‘ dolico- 
 cephalic,” or long and narrow; but the jaws were 
 small, the eyebrows and cheek-bones were not 
 very prominent, the nose was aquiline, and the 
 general outline of the face oval and probably 
 handsome. In all these points the men of the 
 Neolithic age agree exactly with the Basks of 
 northern Spain, the remnant of a population 
 which at the dawn of history still maintained an 
 independent existence in many parts of Europe. 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. 58 
 
 By their conquerors, the Kelts, who led the van 
 of the great Aryan invasion of Europe, these 
 small-statured Basks were known as ‘ Iberians ” 
 or “ westerners” (Gael. iver, Sanskr. avara, “ west- 
 ern”), and “Iberian ” is now generally adopted 
 as the name of the race which possessed the whole 
 of Europe in the Neolithic age and until the 
 Aryan inyasions, and which still preserves its in- 
 tegrity in the little territory between the Pyre- 
 nees and the Bay of Biscay. The Iberian com- 
 plexion is a dark olive, with black eyes and black 
 hair; so that we may figure to ourselves with 
 some completeness how the prehistoric inhabi- 
 tants of Europe looked. 
 
 It is probable that in Neolithic times this Ibe- 
 rian population was spread not only all over Eu- 
 rope, but also over Africa north of the Desert of 
 Sahara; so that the Moorish and Berber peoples 
 are simply Iberians, with more or less infusion of 
 blood from the Arabs, who conquered them at the 
 end of the seventh century after Christ. And it 
 is also probable that the Silures of ancient Brit- 
 ain, the Ligurians of southern Gaul and northern 
 Italy, and the rich and powerful Etruskans all 
 belonged to the Iberian race. 
 
 In very recent times — probably not more than 
 twenty centuries before Christ — Europe was in- 
 
54 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 vaded by a new race of men, coming from central 
 Asia. These were the Aryans, a race tall and 
 massive in stature (the men averaging at least 5 
 feet 8 inches, and the women 5 feet 3 inches), 
 with “ brachycephalic ” or round and broad skulls, 
 with powerful jaws and prominent eyebrows, with 
 faces rather square or angular than oval, with 
 fair, ruddy complexions and blue eyes, and red 
 or flaxen hair. Of these, the earliest that came 
 may perhaps have been the Latin tribes, with the 
 Dorians and Jonians; but the first that made their 
 way through western Europe to the shores of the 
 Atlantic were the Gael, or true Kelts. After 
 these came the Kymry; then the Teutons; and 
 finally — in very recent times, near the beginning 
 of the Christian era—the Slavs. These Aryan 
 invaders were further advanced in civilization 
 than the Iberians, who had so long inhabited 
 Europe. They understood the arts which the 
 latter understood, and, besides all this, they had 
 learned how to work metals; and their invasion 
 of Europe marks the beginning of what archzeol- 
 ogists call the Bronze Age, when tools and weap- 
 ons were no longer made of polished stones, but 
 were wrought from an alloy of copper and tin. 
 The great blonde Aryans everywhere overcame 
 the small brunette Iberians, but, instead of one 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. 55 
 
 race exterminating or expelling the other, the 
 two races everywhere became commingled in 
 various proportions. In Greece, southern Italy, 
 Spain, and southern France, where the Iberians 
 were most numerous as compared with the Aryan 
 invaders, the people are still mainly small in stat- 
 ure and dark in complexion. In Russia and Scan- 
 dinavia, where there were very few Iberians, the 
 people show the purity of their Aryan descent in - 
 their fair complexion and large stature. While in 
 northern Italy and northern France, in Germany 
 and the British Islands, the Iberian and Aryan 
 statures and complexions are intermingled in end- 
 less variety. 
 
 We have now carried this brief account of the 
 arrival of man in Europe as far as is requisite for 
 our present purpose. Starting from ages of which 
 only a paleontological record is preserved, we 
 have gradually come down to a period almost 
 within the ken of history. We have seen Europe 
 inhabited in succession by four distinct races of 
 men: first, the men of the River-drift, who be- 
 longed to a warm climate, and who during the 
 Glacial period became extinct, along with many 
 of the sub-tropical mammals with which they 
 were contemporary ; secondly, the Cave-men, ‘who 
 belonged to a cold climate, and of whom the Es- 
 
56 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 kimos are now probably a surviving remnant; 
 thirdly, the swarthy Iberians ; and, Fourthly, the 
 fair-skinned Aryans, — these two latest races hay- 
 ing by intermarriage given rise to the present 
 mixed population of Europe. 
 
 Our next problem is to see how far it may be 
 possible to introduce anything like chronology 
 into this series of events. How long is it since 
 the River-drift men inhabited Europe? Or when 
 did the first Iberians, with their polished stone 
 axes and their herds of cattle, begin to build their 
 rude villages in Switzerland and Gaul? To such 
 questions no very positive answers can be re- 
 turned. But still we are not left wholly in the 
 dark. A method of inquiry can be pointed out, 
 by following which we may at least come to un- 
 derstand the “orders of magnitudes” in time 
 with which we have to deal. We can substitute 
 partially definite conceptions for wholly vague 
 ones. And we can see how, by following the 
 same line of inquiry with more ample data, it 
 may be possible by and by to introduce some- 
 thing like chronology into the geologic history of 
 the earth’s surface. 
 
 The so-called ‘* Glacial epoch” here all at once 
 acquires a wonderful interest for us. We have 
 seen that it is certain that men inhabited Britain 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. 57 
 
 contemporaneously with the big-nosed rhinoceros, 
 which became extinct about the beginning of the 
 Glacial period. How long men lived upon the 
 earth before that time we do not know; but it is 
 clearly established that there were men in Britain 
 then. It would accordingly be very interesting to 
 know when the Glacial period began to come on 
 in Europe. But on this point it has already be- 
 come possible to form something like a definite 
 opinion. 
 
 To understand how we can arrive at a date for 
 the Glacial period, it is necessary first to under- 
 stand the cause of that wonderful change of 
 climate which allowed all Europe as far south as 
 Dresden, and all America as far south as Phila- 
 delphia, to become swathed in an ice-sheet like 
 that which now covers Greenland. The causes 
 of this event were many and complicated, but the 
 arch-cause — the cause which unlocked all the 
 others and set them going— was an astronom- 
 ical cause. It has been proved by Mr. Croll that 
 the primary cause of the glaciation of the north- 
 ern hemisphere was a change in the shape of the 
 earth’s orbit, such as had occurred before and will 
 occur again ; and the dates of these changes in the 
 orbit, whether past or future, can be determined 
 by astronomical methods with great accuracy. 
 
58 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 The reason why the weather is warmer in 
 summer than in winter is that in summer the days 
 are longer than the nights, so that the surface of 
 the earth receives more heat in the day-time than 
 it can lose by radiation during the night; while in 
 winter the case is exactly the reverse. Another 
 circumstance tends to make the earth warmer at 
 one time than another, — namely, the fact that 
 the earth’s orbit is not quite circular, but slightly 
 elliptical or eccentric, so that at one season of the 
 year the earth is nearer to or farther from the 
 sun than at another season. At present the north- 
 ern hemisphere is nearest the sun in winter and 
 farthest from it in summer, but the difference is 
 only about 3,000,000 miles. It must also be re- 
 membered that when the earth is near perihelion 
 it moves faster than when it is near aphelion, so 
 that the season when it is nearer the sun is always 
 a little shorter than the season when it is farther 
 from the sun. Thus in our northern hemisphere 
 at present the winter half of the year, or the in- 
 terval from the autumnal to the vernal equinox, 
 is nearly 8 days shorter than the summer half of 
 the year. Thus the difference in length between 
 our summer and winter seasons, and the differ- 
 ence between our distances from the sun at the 
 two extremes of the year, are not great differ. 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. 69 
 
 ences, but the advantage, such as it is, is on the 
 side of summer. 
 
 But these relations between the earth and the 
 sun are perpetually altering. First, owing to the 
 great revolution known as the “precession of 
 the equinoxes,” the earth’s perihelion 10,500 years 
 ago came in midsummer in the northern hemi- 
 sphere, and it will come so again 10,500 years 
 hence. In this state of things the winter half of 
 the year was and will be 8 days longer than the 
 summer half. Secondly, the shape of the earth’s 
 orbit changes from time to time, under the in- 
 fluence of the variously-compounded. attractions 
 exerted upon it by its companion planets. These 
 changes occur at irregular intervals, but they 
 admit of accurate calculation, and have been 
 computed for 38,000,000 years in the past and 
 1,000,000 years in the future by Mr. Croll, from 
 formulas furnished by Leverrier. It has thus been 
 ascertained that at three several times within the 
 past 3,000,000 years the earth’s orbit has become 
 very much elongated, so that the difference be- 
 tween its greatest and least distances from the 
 sun has been between four and five times as great 
 as at present, — that is, it has been from 12,000,- 
 000 to 14,000,000 miles. The first. of these pe- 
 riods of high eccentricity began 2,650,000 years 
 
60 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 ago and lasted 200,000 years; the second began 
 880,000 years ago, and lasted 180,000 years; the 
 third began 240,000 years ago, and lasted 160,000 
 years. For the last 50,000 years, the departure 
 of the earth’s orbit from the circular form has 
 been exceptionally small. 
 
 Now let us suppose one of these long periods of 
 high eccentricity to coincide with one of the short 
 periods of 10,500 years, when the northern hemi- 
 sphere has its aphelion in winter; and this, of 
 course, has happened not once only, but a great 
 many times. Under such circumstances, the 
 northern hemisphere is 98,000,000 miles distant 
 from the sun at midwinter instead of 91,000,000, 
 as at present, and the winter is 26 days longer 
 than the summer instead of 8 days shorter, as at 
 present. On the other hand, at midsummer the 
 sun’s distance is only 86,000,000 miles instead of 
 94,000,000, as at present. Now how must this 
 state of things affect the climate of the northern 
 hemisphere ? 
 
 In the first place, the diminution in the quantity 
 of heat received daily from the sun in winter 
 would be such as to lower the average temperature 
 of the whole northern hemisphere by about 35° 
 F., so that for example the average January 
 temperature of England, which is now 89°, would’ 
 
 D. 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. 61 
 fall to 4°. And, conversely, heat enough would 
 
 be received to raise the mean summer temper- 
 ature by about 60° above what it now is. 
 
 So far very good, as concerns the amount of 
 heat actually received from the sun. But would 
 the summer temperature be raised like this? It 
 would not; and this is because our earth has a 
 means of storing up cold, so to speak, which gives 
 winter the advantage over summer in such a con- 
 test. With the mean January temperature of 
 England at 4° F. instead of 39°, all the moisture 
 which now falls as rain would fall as snow, and 
 would accumulate on the ground. At the coming 
 of summer, all the snow and ice would have to be 
 melted, and it takes a great deal of heat to melt 
 snow and ice. As Mr. Wallace graphically puts 
 it, “to melt a layer of ice only one and a half 
 inch thick would require as much heat as would 
 raise a stratum of air 800 feet thick from the 
 freezing-point to the tropical heat of 88° F.!” 
 Until the snow is all melted, no amount of solar 
 heat can raise the temperature much above the 
 freezing-point; and this is the reason why, in 
 regions where much moisture is condensed as 
 snow, as in Greenland, and at the summits of the 
 Andes, Alps, and Himalayas, snow is perpetual. 
 So that, in the case we have supposed, the extra 
 
62 EHzxeursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 heat received from the sun in the short summer 
 would largely be exhausted in melting the snow, 
 and, instead of raising the mean temperature 60°, 
 it is doubtful if it would raise it at all above the 
 point which it attains at the present time. Be- 
 sides all this, it must be remembered that the 
 rapid melting of great masses of snow produces 
 fog, and thus not only obscures the sun’s heat, 
 but leads to further heavy condensation in the 
 shape of cold rains. Now bear in mind that this 
 state of things goes on for at least half of the 
 period of 10,500 years, when the aphelion of the 
 northern hemisphere occurs between September 
 and March, and it is easy to see how the snow 
 and ice must so far gain the upper hand that the 
 intense summer heat cannot produce any consid- 
 erable impression on them, but the region of 
 “eternal snow,” no longer confined to the tops of 
 lofty mountains, descends to the sea-level through- 
 out a large part of the northern hemisphere. 
 Thus we get far toward an explanation of the 
 causes of the Glacial epoch. But still other 
 causes have conspired with those here pointed out 
 to enhance the general effect. 
 
 While the northern hemisphere was situated 
 as just described, the state of things in the south- 
 ern hemisphere must have been entirely different, 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. 63 
 
 There the perihelion occurring in winter and the 
 aphelion in summer, with the same high eccen- 
 tricity, the summer would be 26 days longer than 
 the winter, and the climatic result would be per- 
 petual spring. And this would affect the flow of 
 ocean-currents in such a way as to deprive the 
 northern hemisphere of its only possible chance of 
 escaping the glaciation we have just depicted. Let 
 us notice this point carefully, for it is one of great 
 importance. 
 
 We have supposed the lowering of the average 
 winter temperature of England, for example, due 
 to the great aphelion distance of the sun, to be 
 380° F. There is one way in which this effect 
 might be partially modified, and that is by the 
 equalizing influence of the Gulf Stream. But in 
 the case we have supposed, this influence would 
 almost certainly be cut off. The direction of the 
 main ocean-currents is determined by the trade- 
 winds, and the trade-winds are caused by the dif- 
 ference of temperature between the poles and the ~ 
 equator. As the heated air at the equator rises, 
 the cooler air from north and south flows in to 
 take its place, and these atmospheric currents 
 flowing from the north and south poles toward 
 the equator are what are called the trade-winds. 
 The strength of the trade-winds depends entirely 
 
64 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 upon the difference in temperature between the 
 equator and the pole; the greater the difference, 
 the stronger the wind. Now, at the present time, 
 the south pole is much colder than the north pole, 
 and the southern trades are consequently much 
 stronger than the northern, so that the neutral 
 zone in which they meet lies some five degrees 
 north of the equator. The trade-winds, pushing 
 stupendous masses of surface ocean-water, produce 
 the main ocean-currents ; and accordingly these 
 currents now tend chiefly from south to north, so 
 that most of the heated water of the central At- 
 lantic, both north and south of the equator, gets 
 carried into the northern temperate zone. In this 
 way the Gulf Stream, coming northward up the 
 west coast of Africa, sweeps across the Atlantic 
 to the easternmost point of Brazil, where part of 
 it gets deflected southward toward the Antarctic 
 Ocean, but most of it flows northwesterly into the 
 Gulf of Mexico, whence it is deflected northeast- 
 erly toward the European coast, giving to Eng- 
 land its climate of perpetual spring in the latitude 
 of Labrador, and tempering the cold of the North 
 Sea even beyond the Arctic Circle. According 
 to Mr. Croll, the quantity of extra heat which 
 the northern hemisphere receives from this source, 
 over and above that which it would get simply 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. 65 
 
 from direct solar radiation, amounts to fully one 
 fourth of the latter quantity. But when the 
 aphelion of the northern hemisphere occurred in 
 midwinter, along with a very high eccentricity, 
 all this must have been changed. The tendency 
 of these circumstances, as we have seen, was to 
 make the northern hemisphere very cold, while 
 producing a perpetual spring in the southern 
 hemisphere. Now, when once the north pole 
 had become colder than the south pole, the north- 
 ern trades would begin to blow with greater force 
 than the southern, until after a while the neutral 
 line between the two would be shifted south of 
 the equator, and, instead of the warm waters of 
 the southern tropical ocean being carried into the 
 northern seas, the case would be just the reverse. 
 The great ocean-currents, instead of all tending 
 northward, as they do to-day, would all tend 
 southward. A very little deflection of this sort 
 would, at the easternmost point of Brazil, turn 
 the whole of the Gulf Stream southward down 
 the coast of South America, and prevent any part 
 of it from flowing up into the North Atlantic, 
 and in this way the progressing refrigeration of 
 Europe and North America would be most pow- 
 erfully enhanced. 
 
 Thus, when the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit 
 D 
 
66 Hxcursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 was three or four times as great as at present, and 
 during the period when aphelion in the northern 
 hemisphere oceurred in the winter season between 
 September and March, the tendency must have 
 been toward perpetual snow and ice over a large 
 part of the northern hemisphere, and toward 
 perpetual spring throughout the southern hemi- 
 sphere. But when winter aphelion occurred in 
 the southern hemisphere, then everything was re- 
 versed; then the tendency south of the equator 
 was toward glaciation, and north of the equator 
 it was toward perpetual spring. In Europe you 
 would have, for 10,500 years, a period during 
 which the climate would gradually become more 
 and more arctic for 5,250 years, thenceforward 
 gradually becoming less severe; and upon this 
 would ensue another period of 10,500 years, dur- 
 ing which the climate would grow more and more 
 equable for 5,250 years, thenceforward gradually 
 increasing again the differences between summer 
 and winter ; and in a period of 160,000 years such 
 21,000-year cycles would naturally occur nearly 
 eight times. So that, upon a geological survey of 
 what is called the Glacial epoch, we might expect 
 to find an alternation of severe and mild climates 
 in Europe, —an alternation of epochs in which 
 Britain was inhabited by the hippopotamus with 
 
The Arrival of Man in Hurope. 67 
 
 epochs in which the reindeer roamed to the south 
 of France. And this is, in fact, what we do find. 
 It is not long since the Glacial period in Europe 
 was supposed to have been one long monotonous 
 period of extreme cold; but now the foremost 
 geologists — such as Mr. James Geikie, who has 
 more than any one else illustrated this subject — 
 have discovered at least four or five alternations 
 of warm and cold periods in Europe during the 
 Glacial epoch; and with further and more mi- 
 nute research we may expect the agreement be- 
 tween observation and deduction to become still 
 more convincing. 
 
 Enough has now been said to give the reader 
 some idea of the magnificent line of reasoning by 
 which Mr. Croll has unfolded the causes of the 
 Glacial period. And it also becomes apparent at 
 once why we must probably select the latest pe- 
 riod of high eccentricity in the earth’s orbit as 
 the period for which we have been seeking. For 
 that period — which began 240,000 years ago, and 
 terminated 80,000 years ago — presented such a 
 set of astronomical circumstances as must have 
 resulted in the repeated glaciation of the northern 
 hemisphere, after the manner above described. 
 And the antiquity of that period seems to be suf- 
 ficiently great to allow for the geological changes 
 
68 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 which have occurred since the Pleistocene age. 
 If we were to assign an earlier epoch of high ec- 
 centricity for the Glacial period, it would then 
 become necessary to show why, with the present 
 relations of land and sea on the globe, the latest 
 epoch of high eccentricity should not have pro- 
 duced a subsequent glacial period. But the Gla- 
 cial period which Agassiz first taught us to under- 
 stand, and which in recent years has been made 
 the subject of such minute study, is clearly the 
 latest glacial period that has occurred in the 
 northern hemisphere ; for it is the one of which 
 the traces are now everywhere around us; it is 
 the one which has carved the mountains of Scot- 
 land and New England in their present beautiful 
 outlines, and covered their sides with boulders, 
 and filled the valleys with romantic tarns or mag- 
 nificent lakes. If we adopt Mr. Croll’s theory of 
 the causes of glaciation, we are clearly bound to 
 look to the latest rather than to any earlier mani- 
 festation of those causes, in order to account for 
 that glacial period the effects of which are still 
 visible all around us. Accordingly, among the 
 foremost geologists who have adopted Mr. Croll’s 
 conclusions, there has been a general agreement 
 that the period of high eccentricity which began 
 240,000 years ago and ended 80,000 years ago 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. 69 
 
 must have been coincident with the great period 
 of glaciation which occurred during the Pleisto- 
 cene age in Europe and America. 
 
 The most serious objection that has been urged 
 against Mr. Croll’s theory is that it seems to re- 
 quire us tosuppose that there have been recurrent 
 glacial epochs, at irregular intervals, during the 
 whole past duration of the earth’s history. And 
 in particular it would seem to be implied that 
 there must have been a great glacial period from 
 880,000 to 700,000 years ago, and another one 
 from 2,650,000 to 2,450,000 years ago, both of 
 these dates being long subsequent to the begin- 
 ning of the Tertiary period. Mr. Croll has sought 
 to meet these objections by showing that such 
 must really have been the case. He alleges evi- 
 dence of glaciation in every one of the geological 
 periods back to the Cambrian, with the single 
 exception of the Triassic. And he argues, in 
 particular, that the epoch of high eccentricity 
 which began 880,000 years ago corresponded with 
 a glacial epoch in the Miocene period, and that in 
 like manner the date of 2,650,000 years ago wit- 
 nessed the beginning of a great glacial epoch in 
 the Eocene period. But these conclusions are 
 not generally adopted by geologists. There are 
 some evidences of local glaciation in the Miocene 
 
70 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 period in the neighbourhood of the Alps, which 
 were probably higher then than they are at pres- 
 ent, but the weight of evidence is entirely in fa- 
 vour of the conclusion that the general climate of 
 Europe throughout the Eocene and Miocene pe- 
 riods was much warmer than it has been at any 
 later date. From the Eocene period down to the 
 Pleistocene, there can be little doubt that there 
 was a slow but steady lowering of the mean tem- 
 perature of Europe, until in the latter period there 
 occurred that comparatively rapid refrigeration 
 which brought about a glacial epoch. In earlier 
 than Tertiary times, on the other hand, Mr. Croll 
 seems to have been more successful. There are 
 distinct and numerous evidences of extensive gla- 
 ciation in Europe during the remote Permian 
 period ; and it is not improbable that similar phe- 
 nomena may have taken place in Silurian times. 
 On the whole, however, it does not seem likely 
 that there have been many periods of extreme ola- 
 ciation, like that which we suppose to have ended 
 about 80,000 years ago; and it is quite unlikely 
 that there has been any other such period since 
 the beginning of Tertiary times. How, then, shall 
 we explain the occurrence of two periods of high — 
 eccentricity, one lasting 200,000 and the other 
 180,000 years, without an accompanying glacia- 
 tion of the northern hemisphere ? 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. 71 
 
 This difficulty has been sometimes cited as fatal 
 to Mr. Croll’s theory; but when we fully consider 
 all the conditions of the ease, we shall see that it 
 is not so. Jor we must remember that it is not 
 simply the cold, but it is the snow of the glacial 
 winter, that chills the summers and renders pos- 
 sible the accumulation of ice. To produce a gla- 
 cial epoch, according to Mr. Croll’s theory, it is 
 not enough that the mean winter temperature of 
 the northern hemisphere should be lowered 35° F., 
 unless there is enough condensation of moisture 
 going on to produce an abundant snowfall. Under 
 such geographical conditions as exist to-day, and 
 as existed during the Pleistocene period, there 
 would be such a condensation and such a snow- 
 fall; but in the Eocene and Miocene periods it 
 was probably otherwise. The explanation is not 
 difficult. 
 
 The most efficient promoters of condensation 
 are mountains, which, thrusting their cold sum- 
 mits high into the air, precipitate the surrounding 
 moisture. It is a familiar fact that mountainous 
 districts are apt to be rainy, and that very high 
 mountains are usually covered with snow in mid- 
 summer, even while oranges and palms are flour- 
 ishing a few thousand feet below. It is not quite 
 so familiar a fact that no intensity of arctic celd 
 
72 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 will suffice to prevent a warm or mild summer 
 unless there is an extensive deposit of snow in 
 the winter. Now, nowhere on the earth do we 
 find any lowlands of great extent covered with 
 perpetual snow. The coldest winters on the 
 globe occur in eastern Siberia, where the temper- 
 ature often averages —40° F. for several weeks 
 in succession, and, according to Professor Pum- 
 pelly, sometimes sinks to —120° F.! Yet so dry 
 is the atmosphere that but little snow falls, and 
 after this has been melted in the spring the 
 weather rapidly grows warm. ‘At Yakutsk, in 
 62 degrees N. latitude, the thermometer stands 
 often at 77° in the shade, and wheat and rye pro- 
 duce from fifteen to forty fold,” while the prairies 
 are covered with grass and flowers. As Mr. Wal- 
 lace observes, ‘it is only where there are lofty 
 mountains or plateaus —as in Greenland, Spitz- 
 bergen, and Grinnell Land — that glaciers, accom- 
 panied by perpetual snow, cover the country, and 
 descend in places to the level of the sea.” The 
 coast of the Antarctic Continent is girded with 
 lofty mountains, which effect such condensation 
 in the damp sea-air about them that the continent 
 is buried under a mass of ice more than a mile in 
 thickness. The antarctic islands South Georgia 
 and South Shetland “ are very mountainous, and 
 
 - 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. 73 
 
 send down glaciers into the sea; and as they are 
 exposed to moist sea-air on every side, the precipi- 
 tation, almost all of which takes the form of snow 
 even in summer, is of course unusually large.” 
 
 In order, therefore, to get a centre from which 
 to start an accumulation of snow and ice sufficient 
 to bring on a glacial epoch in the northern hemi- 
 sphere, it would seem absolutely necessary that 
 there should be a considerable amount of high 
 land within the Arctic Cirele. But in the Eocene 
 and Miocene periods this condition does not seem 
 to have been satisfied. Throughout the greater 
 part of these two periods the area within the 
 Arctic Circle was less elevated than it has been 
 ever since the beginning of the Pliocene age. 
 Greenland stood lower than at present, and the 
 greater part of Siberia was submerged. More- 
 over, as already stated in the preceding paper, the 
 continents of Europe and Asia did not become 
 “ united into one unbroken mass”’ until the Plio- 
 cene period. In the earlier Tertiary times the 
 warm waters of the Indian Ocean flowed north- 
 westward between Asia and Europe even into the 
 Arctic Ocean, the mountains of Armenia and the 
 Caucasus protruding as islands from this vast sea 
 surface. Again, Mr. Wallace has pointed out a 
 number of peculiarities in the distribution of 
 
T4 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 plants and animals in the southern hemisphere 
 . which “render it almost certain” that in the 
 early Tertiary times the antarctic land was much 
 more extensive than at present. Now an eleva- 
 tion in the antarctic region, increasing the deposit 
 of snow and ice about the south pole, and thus 
 increasing the difference of temperature between 
 the south pole and the equator, would be just 
 what was needed to convert the fickle monsoons 
 of the Indian Ocean into a steady and powerful 
 trade-wind, that would drive the warm water 
 northward through the channel between Europe 
 and Asia, even as far as the north pole. This 
 current from the Indian Ocean must have been 
 more than equal to the Gulf Stream in heating 
 power, and its effect would be to prevent any ac- 
 cumulation of ice within the Arctic Circle, and 
 to produce in Greenland such a climate as it is 
 known to have enjoyed in the Miocene period, 
 when it was covered with a vegetation as luxuri- 
 ant as that of Virginia at the present day. 
 
 This question is discussed at considerable length 
 and with great ability by Mr. Wallace, in his 
 treatise on “Island Life.” His argument is in 
 some respects the most valuable contribution that 
 has ever been made to our understanding of past 
 climatic changes. He makes it perfectly clear 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. 75 
 
 that while Mr. Croll’s astronomical interpretation 
 of the Glacial period is perfectly correct in prin- 
 ciple, nevertheless extensive glaciation cannot 
 take place unless the geographical conditions are 
 such as to enable a great accumulation of ice to 
 begin. We are not, therefore, obliged, on Mr. 
 Croll’s view, to suppose that every epoch of high 
 eccentricity has inaugurated a glacial period ; and 
 we see, in particular, why such a result was not 
 likely to follow 2,650,000 years ago or 800,000 
 years ago, supposing the latter date to have oc- 
 curred before the beginning of the Pliocene age; 
 and thus the only serious objection to Mr. Croll’s 
 theory is effectually disposed of. 
 
 We have every reason to believe, then, that 
 the great Glacial period of the Pleistocene age 
 began 240,000 years ago, and came to an end 
 80,000 years ago. But at the beginning of this 
 period men were living in the valley of the 
 Thames; at the end of it the men of the River- 
 drift had probably become extinct, and their 
 place in Europe had been taken and held for ages 
 by the boreal Cave-men, who now in turn were 
 about starting on their long retreat to the arctic 
 regions. How long a time may have elapsed be- 
 fore the swarthy Iberian settled in Europe, with 
 his dogs and cattle, we have no means of decid- 
 
76 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 ing ; nor can we say when the blue-eyed Aryan 
 began his invasions, though we know that this 
 last event must have been very recent, — not 
 very long before the dawn of history. Nor can 
 we tell how long there had been human beings on 
 the earth before the Glacial epoch began. But, 
 as I have said already, it must have been a great 
 while, because, even before the close of the Plio- 
 cene age, they had had time to spread over the 
 earth as far as Portugal in one direction, and as 
 far as California in the other. And if we are to 
 take the date of 240,000 years ago for the begin- 
 ning of the Glacial epoch, we can hardly allow 
 for the close of the Pliocene age an antiquity of 
 less than 400,000 years. 
 
 It only remains to add that the enormous 
 length of time during which the human race has 
 existed is of itself a powerful argument in favour 
 of the opinion — now generally accepted — that 
 the human race was originated, by a slow process 
 of development, from a race of non-human pri- 
 mates, similar to the anthropoid apes. We see 
 man living on the earth for perhaps half a mill- 
 ion years, to all intents and purposes dumb, leay- 
 ing none but a geological record of his existence, 
 progressing with infinite slowness and difficulty, 
 making no history. Yet his geologic record is not 
 
The Arrival of Man in Europe. TT 
 
 quite like that of the dog or the ape, who could 
 not chip a flint, and in the incised antlers of the 
 Cave-men we see the first faint gleams of the 
 divine intelligence that was by and by to shine 
 forth with the glories of a Michael Angelo. We 
 cannot but suppose that during those long dumb 
 ages, through infinite hardship and through the 
 stern regimen of deadly competition and natural 
 selection, man was slowly but surely acquiring 
 that intellectual life which was at last to bloom 
 forth in history, and which has made him “the 
 crown and glory of the universe.” 
 
 January, 1882. 
 
Til. 
 OUR ARYAN FOREFATHERS. 
 
 In the beginning of the Vendidad, or first of 
 the Parsi collection of sacred books known as the 
 Zendavesta, we are told that the supreme deity 
 Ahura-Mazda created a country full of delights, 
 but difficult of access, and the name of this coun- 
 try was Aryana Vaéjo. So charming was this 
 primitive country that, had it not been made 
 difficult of approach, the whole animate creation 
 would have flocked thither and quite overwhelmed 
 it. But this state of things did not long con- 
 tinue; for Ahriman, or Anramainyus, the spirit 
 of darkness, was the implacable adversary of Or- 
 muzd, or Ahura- Mazda, the spirit of light, and 
 took pleasure in spoiling all his creations. So 
 this death-dealing enemy, with the aid of his 
 daévas, or demons, created a great serpent and 
 brought ten months of winter cold upon the land, 
 so that Aryana Vaéjo was no longer a comfortable 
 dwelling-place. The good spirit then created a 
 new home for his people, called Sugdha; but the 
 
Our Aryan Forefathers. 79 
 
 adversary spoiled this by creating a kind of wasp 
 which devastated the fields and brought death 
 to the cattle. Then Ahura-Mazda made a third 
 habitat, which was called the high and _ holy 
 Muru; but the dark demon now whispered evil 
 reports and stirred up strife, until here, too, life 
 became unendurable, and the beautiful land of 
 Bakhdhi, or Baktria, was created as a fourth 
 home for the children of light. So the warfare 
 went on, until no less than sixteen countries are 
 enumerated as successively created and made un- 
 comfortable. In the last region of all the com- 
 plaint is again of cold weather and hoar-frost ; 
 but perhaps in comparison with all the other 
 plagues this now seemed endurable. At all 
 events, the account here ends, with the admission 
 that there are also other regions and places be- 
 sides those described; as much as to say that 
 we are not here concerned with the history of 
 all mankind, but only with the worshippers of 
 Ahura-Mazda. 
 
 The book from which this legend is cited is one 
 of the oldest in the literature of the world. It 
 belongs to a more primitive age than the Homeric 
 poems, and may probably be regarded as con- 
 temporary with the oldest hymns of the Veda. 
 Written not in the court language of ancient 
 
80 Exeursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Persia, but in the closely-related archaic dialect 
 of Baktria, — very much as the ecclesiastical 
 services of Russia to-day are written in Old Bul- 
 garlan, — the Zendavesta was, in the time of 
 Darius Hystaspes, the sacred book of the most 
 prominent nation in the world. For eleven hun- 
 dred years afterward the worship of Ahura-Mazda 
 retained its ascendency in the countries between 
 Euphrates and the Indus, until in the seventh 
 century after Christ this whole region was over- 
 run by Mohammedans, and converted -to their 
 faith. For a long time, no doubt, the Magian 
 religion continued to survive alongside of Islam, 
 as we see from the frequent allusions to “ fire- 
 worshippers”? in the ‘“ Arabian Nights,” where 
 they are indeed most abominably slandered. But 
 after a while the good Abhura-Mazda, yielding to 
 this last and gravest mischief wrought by the ad- 
 versary, devised yet another abode for the rem- 
 nant of his people, and led them to Bombay and 
 its neighbourhood, where, under the name of 
 “ Parsis,” or “ Persians,” they still keep up their 
 old ceremonies and their old faith. 
 
 The legend of the sixteen countries created by 
 the good spirit was regarded by Bunsen as a 
 historical tradition of the migrations by which 
 the ancestors of the Indo-Persians reached the 
 
Our Aryan Forefathers. 81 
 
 countries where, at the beginning of authentic 
 history, we find their descendants. But it will 
 not do to attach too much historical value to 
 legends like this. For, however venerable may 
 be the record, the very mist of antiquity which 
 shrouds it prevents us from knowing how or 
 whence it got the information which it imparts. 
 The story before us, indeed, has neither the pre- 
 tensions nor the credentials of an authentic his- 
 torical narrative. It relates long-past events as 
 ascertained not through the sifting of previous 
 human testimony, but by direct revelation from 
 the good spirit to his prophet Zarathustra or 
 Zoroaster. Nevertheless, the geographical succes- 
 sion of the various places mentioned in this le- 
 gend is very suggestive. With the exception of 
 Aryana Vaéjo, every one of the sixteen abodes 
 seems to be described by a genuine geographical 
 name, though two or three haye not yet been satis- 
 factorily determined, Thus Sugdha, the second 
 country, is what the ancients knew as Sogdiana ; 
 Muru appears to be the modern Merv, or Mar- 
 giana; and Baktria, the next in order, has been 
 already mentioned. And so, curiously enough, by 
 stringing together the whole series of names, there 
 is indicated a continuous migration from the region 
 
 beyond the Oxus, at first southwesterly, and then 
 6 
 
82 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 southeasterly, down to what we now call the Pun- 
 jab, or “ country of five rivers,” but which in the 
 Vedic hymns is somewhat more comprehensively 
 termed the Sapta-Sindhavas, or “Seven Rivers,” 
 and which in our Zend legend is described in iden- 
 tical language as the Hapta Hendu. This larger 
 designation is reached by including, along with the 
 five rivers of the Punjab, the Sarasvati and the 
 Indus, or “ The River,” par excellence. Having 
 thus reached the northwestern confines of Hindu- 
 stan, in the fifteenth country created by Ahura- 
 Mazda, the legend here informs us that Anramain- 
 yus devised “ untimely evils and unbearable heat ;” 
 and thereupon we are abruptly transported, in the 
 sixteenth region, to the cool neighbourhood of the 
 Caspian Sea, perhaps the country of the Medes. 
 Now, however difficult it may be to accept such 
 an account as properly historical, the course of 
 migration here indicated is so thoroughly in ac- 
 cordance with all that we know of the relations 
 between the peoples of the Persian Empire and 
 the dominant race of Hindus in India that it is 
 hard not to grant to it some traditionary value. 
 It would appear, at least, that when the Vendidad 
 was composed the worshippers of Ahura-Mazda 
 must have believed that their ancestors came from 
 somewhere beyond the Oxus, and travelled in the 
 
Our Aryan Forefathers. 83 
 
 direction of Hindustan, until something occurred 
 which turned them westward again. This would 
 seem to be the only sound meaning that can be 
 extracted from the legend. But this is in wonder- 
 ful accordance with the results of modern critical 
 inquiry. From a minute survey of the languages 
 and legends of this whole region, it has been well 
 established that the dominant race in ancient 
 Persia and in ancient India was one and the 
 same; that it approached India from the north- 
 west; and that a great religious schism was ac- 
 companied by the westward migration of a large 
 part of the community, while the other part pro- 
 ceeded onward, and established itself in Hindu- 
 stan. A comparison of the Zendavesta with the 
 Veda—so strongly alike as they are, both in 
 thought and in expression — shows clearly that 
 the occasion of this schism must have been the 
 promulgation of the worship of Ahura-Mazda. 
 
 In illustration of this community of origin be- 
 tween the Vedic and Zendavestan peoples, let us 
 refer to the name of the first country which the 
 supreme deity created,—the name of Aryana 
 Vaéjo. This, as already hinted, is not a geo- 
 graphical name. There is no identifiable locality 
 which has ever been called Aryana Vaejo. The 
 name means simply “the starting-place of the 
 
84 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Aryans.” In later Persian mythology, as repre- 
 sented in the Minokhired, the name came to stand 
 for a terrestrial paradise, where men live for three 
 hundred years, without pain or sickness, where no 
 lies are told, and where ten men eat of one loaf 
 and grow fat thereon. In the Vendidad, however, 
 Aryana Vaéjo is simply the primeval dwelling- 
 place, whatever it may have been, from which the 
 Aryans passed into Sogdiana. Now “ Aryan of 
 was the name by which the ancient Persians and 
 the ancient Hindus alike described themselves, 
 In the Vedic hymns the dominant people of India 
 habitually speak of themselves as Aryans, in con- 
 trast with the Dasyus, or inferior races of Hindu- 
 stan, whom they had subdued. Just in the same 
 way Darius Hystaspes, in the inscription upon his 
 tomb, declares himself to be an Aryan, of Aryan 
 descent. The Medes are always called Aryans 
 by Armenian writers ; and Herodotos was also 
 familiar with this appellation. In a more special 
 sense the countries between India and Persia, now 
 known as Afghanistan and Cabul, were known 
 throughout classic antiquity as Ariana. Along 
 with this community of name there was close 
 community of speech among these peoples. The 
 court language of the Medes and Persians, as pre- 
 served in the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius, the 
 
Our Aryan Forefathers. 85 
 
 Zend or Baktrian language, in which the sacred 
 books of Zarathustra are written, and the San- 
 skrit of the Vedic hymns are as clearly dialects of 
 the same parental language as French, Spanish, 
 and Italian are dialects of Latin. These outline 
 facts are all that we need for the present to show 
 how Aryan was the common name for a race 
 which, advancing from the north, acquired su- 
 premacy over all the country between the Hu- 
 phrates and the mouth of the Ganges. W hence 
 these people originally came it would be idle to 
 inquire, but we may fairly conclude that they first 
 attained to something like world-historic impor- 
 tance in the highlands of central Asia, somewhere 
 about the sources of the Oxus and the Jaxartes ; 
 and this region we regard as “ Aryana Vaéjo,”’ or 
 the most aboriginal spot to which we are able to 
 trace the Aryan people. 
 
 We have next to inquire into the meaning of 
 the word Aryan ; and this is not a difficult matter, 
 or one about which there is much question, in 
 Sanskrit the word arya, with a short initial a, is 
 applied to cultivators of the soil, and it would 
 seem to be connected etymologically with the 
 Latin arare and the archaic English ear, ‘‘to 
 plow.” As men who had risen to an agricultural 
 stage of civilization, the Aryans might no doubt 
 
86 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 fairly contrast themselves with their nomadic Tu- 
 ranian neighbours, who —as Huns, Tatars, and 
 Turks — have at different times disturbed the 
 Indo-European world. But for the real source 
 of the word, as applied to the race, we must look 
 further. This word arya, “a cultivator of the 
 soil,” came naturally enough in Sanskrit to mean 
 a householder or land-owner, and henee it is not 
 strange that we find it re-occurring, with a long 
 initial a, as an adjective, meaning “ noble” or 
 “of good family.” As a national appellative, 
 whether in Sanskrit or Zend, this initial a is al- 
 ways long, and there can be no doubt that the 
 Aryans gave themselves this title as being the 
 noble, aristocratic, or ruling race, in contradistine- 
 tion to the aboriginal races which they brought 
 into servitude. In this sense of noble, the word 
 frequently occurs in the composition of Persian 
 proper names, such as Ariobarzanes, Ariaramnes, 
 and Ariarathes; just as in old English we have 
 the equivalent word ethel, or noble, in such names 
 as Ethelwolf and Ethelred. As an ethnic name, 
 therefore, the word Aryan seems to have a tinge 
 of patriotic or clannish self-satisfaction about it. 
 But we shall find, I think, that such a shade of 
 meaning has been more than justified by history ; 
 for we have now reached a point where we may 
 
Our Aryan Forefathers. 87 
 
 profitably enlarge the scope of our discussion, and 
 show how the term Aryan is properly applicable, 
 not merely over an Indo-Persian, but over an 
 Indo-European area, comprehending the most 
 dominant races known to history, —the Greeks 
 and Romans, Slavs and Teutons, with the highly- 
 composite English, whose language and civiliza- 
 tion are now spreading themselves with unex- 
 ampled rapidity over all the hitherto unoccupied 
 regions of the earth, which the Vendidad did not 
 care or did not know how to specify. In order 
 to explain in what sense we may all properly be 
 called Aryans, we must consider for a moment 
 some of the striking results which have been 
 obtained, within the present century, from the 
 comparative study of languages. 
 
 No event of modern times has exerted a more 
 profound and manifold influence upon the intel- 
 lectual culture of mankind than the English con- 
 quest of India. The enlargement of our mental 
 horizon which has resulted therefrom is not less 
 remarkable than that which attended the revival 
 of Greek studies in the fifteenth century. It is 
 not simply that observation of India is making us 
 acquainted with an enormous multitude of prim- 
 itive social, linguistic, and religious phenomena 
 which formerly were hidden from our notice. In 
 
88 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 contemplating these phenomena, we have become 
 possessed of a method of study which has already 
 wrought such wonders as to vie with the oint- 
 ment of the Arabian dervise, that enabled its 
 owner to detect all the buried treasures of the 
 earth. This mighty talisman is the Comparative 
 Method, or the attempt to interpret a fact by 
 comparing it with a series of similar facts, which 
 different circumstances have caused to vary in dif- 
 ferent degrees. I do not mean to imply that man- 
 kind have not always used this method more or 
 less, both in matters of science and in matters of 
 every-day life. Nor do I mean to claim for mod- 
 ern philology any exclusive title to the honour of 
 having shown what can be done by studying 
 phenomena in this way. I do not forget that 
 the classification of living and extinct animals by 
 Cuvier, with reference to paleontological epochs, 
 was a gigantic act of comparison, which first 
 made it possible for us to understand the past 
 history of life on our globe. It is none the less 
 true not only that systematic employment of the 
 comparative method on an extensive scale is the 
 most notable philosophic achievement of the nine- 
 teenth century, but also that its first great tri- 
 umph was the establishment of the Aryan, or 
 Indo-European, family of languages. This tri- 
 
Our Aryan Forefathers. 89 
 
 umph was prepared by the study of Sanskrit, 
 which ensued upon the English conquest of In- 
 dia. Previous to this, indeed, the close resem- 
 blance between Greek and Latin had been often 
 enough remarked, and theories had been enter- 
 tained concerning a primeval kinship between the 
 peoples of Greece and Italy. But in the case of 
 peoples so similar in aspect and so closely con- 
 nected with one another from time immemorial, 
 this similarity of speech did not provoke much 
 curiosity. It was quite otherwise when a lan- 
 guage unmistakably akin to Greek and Latin, 
 both in grammar and vocabulary, was discovered 
 in such an out-of-the-way country as Hindustan, 
 and among a people who had hitherto been gen- 
 erally supposed to be barbarians. The discovery 
 was emphasized by the fact that no such obvious 
 resemblances existed in Hebrew, a language much 
 nearer geographically and historically, and from 
 which there had been no end of futile attempts 
 to derive Latin and Greek. Further interest was 
 excited when it became known that this newly- 
 found language contained an enormous mass of 
 literature alleged to be the oldest in the world. 
 All things thus combined to stimulate specula- 
 tion as to the true character of the relationship 
 between Sanskrit and the languages of Greece 
 
90 Hecursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 and Rome. This relationship was not one of par- 
 entage. It has been a common popular error 
 to suppose that Latin and Greek are derived 
 from Sanskrit; but from the first no such view 
 was countenanced by competent scholars. About 
 1790, Sir William Jones declared his opinion that 
 the three languages were sprung from “some 
 common source, which perhaps no longer exists.” 
 Persian also he was inclined to attribute to the 
 same source, and he hinted at the possibility 
 that Gothic and Keltic might be included in the 
 group. This was coming very near to the con- 
 ception of an Indo-European family of languages. 
 But that conception was not clearly formed until 
 nearly twenty years later, and then it was reached 
 not by a great philological scholar, but by a poet 
 and literary critic. In 1808, Friedrich Schlegel 
 maintained that the languages of India, Persia, 
 Greece, Italy, and Germany were connected by 
 common descent from an extinct language, just 
 as the modern Romanic languages are connected 
 by common descent from Latin; and for the whole 
 family he proposed the name Indo-Germanic. 
 The correctness of this view was demonstrated by 
 Bopp, in his “ Comparative Grammar,” published 
 from 1833 to 1852, in which the Zend, Armenian, 
 Slavonic, and Lithuanian languages also were 
 
Our Aryan Forefathers. 91 
 
 added to the group. The Keltic languages were 
 included about the same time, and the name 
 Indo-Germanic was extended to Indo-European. 
 Within the last fifteen years — mainly through 
 the influence of Max Miller’s writings — the 
 name Aryan has come into general use as the 
 most convenient designation of the whole family. 
 The use of the word in this extensive sense has 
 indeed been objected to by Professor Whitney 
 and others, who urge that it is properly applica- 
 ble only to the Indo-Persian branch of the fam- 
 ily ; and in strictness their argument seems to be 
 sound enough. There is no evidence that any of 
 the European peoples have ever called themselves 
 Aryans, and the traces of the name which Miiller 
 has sought to point out in Europe are very scanty 
 and obscure. According to Stephanus of Byzan- 
 tium, Aria was an old name for Thrace, and 
 among the ancient Germans we find a tribe of 
 Arii and such proper names as Ariovistus ; but it 
 is by no means certain that these names are in 
 any way connected with the original Arya. Nor 
 did Pictet meet with any better success in his at- 
 tempt to find Arya in the name of Erin or Ire- 
 land, the home of the Eri, or Irish. This modern 
 name is a contracted form. Its root in old Keltic 
 seems to have been Jver, which is the same as the 
 
92 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Sanskrit avara, “western.” It appears in the 
 Latin Avernus, a famous lake on the west coast 
 of Italy, as well as in IJvernia, or Hibernia, the 
 western island. This old word Iver has been 
 shortened to Jr or Hr, and out of this, by putting 
 on their own terminations, the English have made 
 Ire-land, the home of the Iv-ish, or “ Westerners.” 
 But in spite of the fact that we find no certain 
 traces of the name Aryan in the European lan- 
 guages, I believe that the modern use of the word, 
 as descriptive of the whole family, is likely to 
 prevail. It is a much less cumbrous term than 
 “ Indo-European,” and, while it is advantageously 
 free from geographical restrictions, it emphasizes, 
 at the same time, the fundamental fact that the 
 Aryana Vaéjo, or prehistoric starting-point of the 
 eastern members of the family, was also the start- 
 ing-point of the western members. It implies — 
 what every one admits to be true —that the 
 dominant race in Europe came from central Asia. 
 And, still further, it serves admirably as a name 
 for the extinct mother tongue from which all the 
 Indo-European languages have descended. By 
 many scholars this primitive tongue is itself called 
 Indo-European; but I am unable to see any pro- 
 priety in giving such a name to a language which, 
 as being confessedly spoken north of the Oxus 
 
Our Aryan Forefathers. 93 
 
 and east of the Caspian, was certainly neither In- 
 dian nor European in any sense. It seems to me 
 much better, and more in conformity to the gen- 
 eral style of philologists, to call this ancestral 
 language “Old Aryan,” just as we say “ Old 
 Norse” for the primitive form of Danish, Swed- 
 ish, and Norwegian. 
 
 As we now proceed to take a brief survey of the 
 Aryan domain, I think we shall realize the ad- 
 vantage of having a word that is independent of 
 geographical limits. The Aryana of the present 
 day is much more than an Indo-European region. 
 Its eastern boundaries have altered but little for 
 many centuries; but on the west it has extended 
 to the Pacific coast of America, and on the other 
 side of the world it has begun to annex territory 
 in South Africa and Australia. Indeed, if we are 
 to judge from what has been going on since the 
 times of Drake and Frobisher, it seems in every 
 way likely that men of English speech will by 
 and by have seized upon every part of the earth’s 
 surface not already covered by a well-established 
 civilization, and will have converted them all into 
 Aryan countries. But our linguistic term Aryan 
 is independent of such changes. Since prehistoric 
 times eight principal divisions of Aryan speech 
 have existed, but these groups of languages have 
 
94 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 had very different careers, and some of them are 
 rapidly becoming extinct. The first great separa- 
 tion of Aryan tribes was the separation between 
 the invaders of Indo-Persia and the invaders of 
 Europe. We have already observed how the 
 language of the Indo-Persians became divided in 
 twain. In the Indic class of languages, compris- 
 ing the classical Sanskrit, the Prakrit of later 
 dramatic writers, the Pali, or sacred language of 
 the Buddhists in Ceylon, and some twenty mod- 
 ern dialects spoken chiefly in the northern half 
 of Hindustan, we have the first grand division of 
 Aryan speech. The second or Iranie class com- 
 prehends the Zend, the ancient Persian of the 
 cuneiform inscriptions, the Parsi of Bombay, the 
 Pushtu of Afghanistan, modern Persian, Ar- 
 menian, Kurdish, and the Ossetian spoken in the 
 Caucasus. Concerning these two grand divisions, 
 we need only observe that the extremely close 
 resemblance between Sanskrit and Zend would 
 seem to indicate that the separation of the two 
 occurred at a comparatively late date, though it 
 would perhaps be difficult to suppose it later than 
 two thousand years before Christ. It may have 
 been a little before this that the western tribes of 
 Aryans crossed the Volga and began the conquest 
 of Europe. First appear to have come the Kelts, 
 
Our Aryan Forefathers. 95 
 
 whose languages constitute the third great divis- 
 ion. These languages diverge considerably from 
 the common type, and were the latest to be recog- 
 nized as Aryan in character,—a fact which is 
 quite in harmony with the opinion that they were 
 the first to branch off from the original stock. 
 The Kelts have always been an important race, 
 but their languages have not thriven in the 
 world. Keltic geographical names are scattered 
 all over Europe, and in the eastern part such 
 words as Dnieper, Don, and Danube testify to the 
 former presence of the language in which don 
 was a common name for water or river. The 
 Kelts formed a large part of the populations of 
 Spain and northern Italy, and a principal part of 
 the populations of Gaul and Britain, when these 
 countries were subjected to Roman dominion; and 
 as late as the Christian era they were to be found 
 in large numbers as far east as Bohemia. Since 
 then they have been partly conquered and partly 
 driven westward by Romans and Teutons, without 
 ceasing to be conspicuous as a race; but their 
 languages have sunk into comparative obscurity, 
 and are fast disappearing. The Gauls, who showed 
 such a remarkable aptitude for taking on the 
 manners of their conquerors that by the fourth 
 century their country was almost as thoroughly 
 
96 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Romanized as Italy itself, forgot their own lan- 
 guage with wonderful ease. It was so completely 
 trampled out by Latin that very scanty vestiges 
 remain to show what it was, if we except geo- 
 graphical names. At the present day two groups 
 of Keltic languages remain: the Gaelic, still 
 spoken in Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man; 
 and the Kymrie, or old British, which survives in 
 Welsh and in the dialect of Brittany. A third 
 dialect of Kymric was formerly spoken in Corn- 
 wall, but it died in 1770 with Dame Dolly Dent- 
 reath. 
 
 Concerning the fourth and fifth grand divisions 
 of Aryan speech —the Italic and Hellenic — but 
 little need be said. These languages are too il- 
 lustrious to stand in need of much description. 
 The relationship between them is closer than in 
 the case of any other Aryan languages of differ- 
 ent class, save the Zend and Sanskrit; and this 
 close resemblance justifies the inference that the 
 separation between Greeks and Italians was com- 
 paratively recent. They would appear to have 
 entered Europe somewhat later than the Kelts, 
 but everything connected with their prehistoric 
 career is extremely problematical. To the Hel- 
 lenic class belong only two languages, — the un- 
 cultivated Albanian and the Greek, which was ste- 
 
Our Aryan Forefathers. 97 
 
 reotyped so early and so thoroughly by literary cul- 
 ture that to the Athenian school-boy of to-day the 
 history of Herodotos can hardly seem written in 
 a foreign tongue. To the Italic class belong the 
 ancient Umbrian and Oscan and the Latin, which 
 still survives under the variously modified forms 
 of Italian, French, Provengal, Spanish, Portuguese, 
 Rumansch, and Wallachian. To the linguist the 
 history of these Romanic dialects is peculiarly val- 
 uable, as illustrating, with the aid of plentiful 
 documents, a process of divergence somewhat 
 similar to that which previously broke up the Old 
 Aryan into different languages. 
 
 The Teutons, whose languages form our sixth 
 grand division, seem to have entered Europe after 
 the tribes already mentioned. About Ceesar’s time 
 we find Teutons driving Kelts out of Germany, 
 and threatening to overrun Gaul; but during 
 most of classic antiquity the centre of Teutonism 
 seems to have been farther east than Germany. 
 The greater part of what is now European Turkey 
 was occupied by Goths in the time of Herodotos, 
 and for eight centuries afterwards. The ancient 
 Thracians were Goths, according to Grimm, and 
 so were the Getz. And since the Christian era 
 Teutonic tribes appeared in what is now south- 
 
 ern Russia. The terrible irruption of non-Aryan 
 7 
 
98 Hzcursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Huns from Asia, in the fifth century, drove these 
 tribes westward, and brought them into collision 
 with the Empire. Of the Gothic language noth- 
 ing remains save a portion of a translation of the 
 Bible, made by Ulfilas in the fourth century. 
 The other branches of Teutonic speech — Scan- 
 dinavian, High German, and Low German, of 
 which our own English is the most important 
 dialect — are too well known to require comment. 
 The seventh and eighth grand divisions of Ar- 
 yan language are the closely- related Lettic and 
 Slavonic. The Lettie languages, like the Keltie, 
 are fast dying out. Of Old Prussian, which has 
 been dead for two centuries, nothing is now left 
 save the Catechism of Albert of Brandenburg. 
 Lettish and Lithuanian, of which the latter is re- 
 markable for its strong resemblance to Sanskrit, 
 are still spoken in the Baltic provinces of Russia. 
 As for the Slavs, they appear in history north of 
 the Black Sea about the time of Trajan, and be- 
 gin to be frequently mentioned in the sixth cen- 
 tury. Since then they have pushed westward far 
 into the Teutonic domain, but have nowhere, save 
 in Russia, retained political independence. Of the 
 fifteen or more Slavonic languages, the old Bul- 
 garian and the modern Russian, Polish, Bohemian, 
 Croatian, and Serbian are of most importance. 
 
Our Aryan Forefathers. 99 
 
 Looking thus over our modern linguistic Ar- 
 yana, we see that in the Old World it pretty 
 nearly covers the geographical area included be- 
 tween the Ganges and the Atlantic Ocean. Small 
 regions of non-Aryan speech, however, occur here 
 and there within this area, and a brief glance at 
 these will serve to increase the definiteness of our 
 knowledge. 
 
 Wherever non- Aryan languages are spoken 
 within this Indo-European domain, it is for either 
 one of two reasons. Such languages are spoken 
 either by descendants of the aboriginal tribes, 
 whom the invading Aryans overcame, or by de- 
 scendants of non-Aryan invaders, who have pushed 
 in at a later date, and secured for themselves a 
 lodgment upon Aryan soil. Of the first class we 
 find a few sporadic instances. The language vari- 
 ously called the Bask, Euskarian, or Iberian, now 
 spoken in the Asturias and about the Pyrenees, 
 has no similarity whatever to the Aryan lan- 
 guages. It is spoken by the scanty remnant of a 
 people who in immemorial antiquity seem to have 
 been spread all over western Europe, but who 
 _were for the most part conquered and absorbed 
 by the Keltic van of the Aryan invasion. The 
 case may have been similar with the Iapygian 
 and Etruskan, which were long ago trampled out 
 
100 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 in Italy by the Latin; but on this obscure point 
 I would hardly venture an opinion. In northern 
 Europe, Finnish, Esthonian, and Lappish are still 
 spoken by races pushed into the corner by Teu- 
 tons and Slavs. A perfect Babel of aboriginal 
 dialects still exists in the inaccessible fastnesses 
 of the Caucasus; and many of the highlands of 
 India similarly shelter primitive non-Aryan tribes, 
 whose forefathers refused to submit to Brahmanic 
 oppression. It is a characteristic of such rem- 
 nants of conquered speech to subsist only in out- 
 of-the-way or undesirable corners. On the other 
 hand, Turkish and Hungarian are foreign tongues 
 brought into the Indo-European area by recent 
 intruders. Both these languages belong to the 
 Altaic, Turanian, or Tataric family, spoken by 
 nomadic tribes all over northern Asia, and in- 
 cluding in Europe the Finnish and its congeners 
 above mentioned. The Hungarian has especially 
 strong affinities with the Finnish, while the near- 
 est relatives to Turkish are to be found about 
 Khiva and Bokhara, in the Tataric region which 
 Russia is so rapidly subjugating. 
 
 We have now arrived at a tolerably correct 
 idea of what is meant by the word Aryan. But 
 one important point must not be overlooked. In 
 its modern sense we have seen that the word isa 
 
Our Aryan Forefathers. 101 
 
 linguistic term. It describes community of lan- 
 guage. As we now use the word, Aryans are — 
 people who speak Aryan, or Indo-European, lan- 
 guages. It is only in a secondary way that this 
 word can be used as an ethnological term, describ- 
 ing community of race. We are so accustomed 
 to consider language a mark of race that it is dif- 
 ficult to avoid using linguistic epithets in an eth- 
 nological sense, and a good deal of confused think- 
 ing sometimes results from this. We have above 
 alluded to the Aryans as a dominant, race, which 
 long since overran Europe and is now spreading 
 over America; yet it is easy to see that we have 
 no means of determining how far the various 
 peoples who speak Aryan languages are of com- 
 mon descent. It is never safe to use language as 
 a direct criterion of race, for speech and blood 
 depend on different sets of circumstances, which 
 do not always vary together. We of the English 
 race have much Keltic blood in our veins, but very 
 few Keltisms in our speech ; while, on the other 
 hand, with a vocabulary nearly half made up of 
 Latin words, we have either no Roman blood in 
 our veins, or so little as not to be worth mention- 
 ing. During the past twenty-five years French- 
 men have had a good deal to say about the “ Latin 
 race.’ There could hardly be a more flagrant 
 
102 Heeursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 instance of the perversion of a linguistic name to 
 ethnological purposes. In reality, even in Cx- 
 sar’s time, the dominant tribes of Latium had be- 
 come well-nigh absorbed in the non-Latin, though 
 kindred, Italic races which had succumbed to 
 them. After Gaul had been conquered, it learned ~ 
 Roman manners, but without receiving any very 
 large infusion of Roman blood. In point of race 
 the French are Kelts, with a considerable sub- 
 stratum of Iberian and superstratum of Teutonic 
 blood, — the former chiefly in the south, the lat- 
 ter chiefly in the north. Between Frenchmen, 
 Spaniards, and northern Italians there is, indeed, 
 a close ethnic affinity ; but this is because they 
 are all to a great extent Kelts, not because they 
 have all learned to speak dialects of Latin. 
 
 Now if we pursue the matter a little farther, 
 and inquire what we mean by saying that these 
 three peoples are in great part Keltic, we shall 
 find that a similar qualification is needed. Ob- 
 viously, we mean that they are Keltic in so far 
 as they are descended from people who formerly 
 spoke Keltic languages. Our knowledge of the 
 prehistoric career of the Kelts is too small to ad- 
 mit of our meaning more than this. In just the 
 same way, when we say that Spaniards and Eng- 
 lishmen and Russians are akin to each other as 
 
Our Aryan Forefathers. 103 
 
 being Aryans, we can only mean that they are 
 in great part descended from people who spoke 
 Aryan languages. 
 
 There can be little doubt, however, that all 
 races which have long wandered and fought have 
 become composite to a degree past deciphering. 
 And, however mixed may have been the blood of 
 the Aryan-speaking invaders of Europe, it re- 
 mains undeniable that the possession of a common 
 language by such great multitudes of people im- 
 plies a very long period of time, during which 
 their careers must have been moulded by circum- 
 stances in common. It implies common habits 
 of thought and a common civilization, such as it 
 was. And this inference is fully confirmed by a 
 comparative study of the myths and superstitions, 
 as well as of the primitive legal ideas and social 
 customs of the various parts of the Indo-European 
 world. For this reason I think we are justified 
 in speaking of the Aryan race just as we speak, 
 without error, of the English race, though we 
 know that many race elements have combined 
 their energies in the great work of English civil- 
 ization. I do not say, either, that we may not 
 fairly speak of a Latin race, provided we bear in 
 mind the limitations of the phrase; the objection 
 is not so much to the phrase as to the loose way 
 
yn 
 
 104 Kxeursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 in which it is customarily used and the absurd in- 
 ferences which are often grounded on it. 
 
 The ethnologist, who deals with skulls and stat- 
 ures and complexions, may venture much farther, 
 sometimes, than the linguist, — though perhaps 
 the greater length of his excursions may not al- 
 ways compensate for their comparative insecurity. 
 It is quite open to the ethnologist to hold that 
 the successive Aryan swarms which colonized Eu- 
 rope were like each other in physiological char- 
 acteristics, as well as in language and general 
 culture. Differences of complexion, when well 
 marked, are among the most conspicuous differ- 
 ences which distinguish individuals, groups, or 
 races from one another; and they are, moreover, 
 apt to be correlated with deep-seated physiologi- 
 cal differences of temperament. In all countries 
 peopled by Europeans there are to be found two 
 contrasted complexions, the blonde and brunette ; 
 endlessly complicated and varied by intermar- 
 riage, but nevertheless in their extreme examples 
 so strikingly different that a stranger might well 
 be excused for considering them as marks of dif- 
 ference in race.* In populations that have long 
 been stationary and isolated from foreign intru- 
 sion we do not find such differences of complexion. 
 We do not find them in China or Japan, or among 
 
Pd 
 
 Our Aryan Forefathers. 105 
 
 the Samoyeds, or Kafirs, or Pacific islanders, or 
 among the Arabs. It appears to be only among ~ 
 the Indo-European nations that they occur side 
 by side in the same community, as an every-day 
 matter. Now we may account for this coexist- 
 ence and intermingling of contrasted complexions 
 by supposing that the various peoples of Europe 
 have arisen from the intermixing in various pro- 
 portions of a race that was entirely blonde with a 
 race that was entirely brunette. We know that 
 the Bask or Iberian race, which once seems to 
 have possessed a great part of Europe, was, and 
 still is, uniformly dark complexioned. We may, 
 accordingly, suppose that the Aryan-speaking in- 
 vaders were uniformly light. The effect of the 
 earlier invasions of Kelts, Italians, and Greeks 
 would be to crowd the dark-skinned Iberians into 
 the three southern peninsulas, into western Gaul, 
 and into the British Isles. The next step would 
 be the conquest of all these regions, followed by 
 extensive intermarriage and the general adoption 
 of Aryan speech. In the remotest corner of all, 
 cooped up between the Pyrenees and the Bay of 
 Biscay, — here, if anywhere, a remnant of the 
 aboriginal population might preserve its purity 
 of race and its primitive speech. As a result of 
 these proceedings, the Aryan-speaking peoples of 
 
106 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Greece, Italy, Spain, Gaul, and Britain would 
 show a mixture of light and dark complexions, 
 and wherever the invaders had been much less 
 numerous than the aborigines the brunettes would 
 predominate. But now, where the later swarms 
 of Teutons and Slavs came pouring in, the case 
 would have been somewhat altered for them. 
 Their conquerings and interminglings would take 
 place not with a pure-blooded race of dark abo- 
 rigines, but with the mixed race which had re- 
 sulted from the foregoing events. One conse- 
 quence would be an increased percentage of fair 
 complexions in western countries overrun by Teu- 
 tons, especially in England, northern France, and 
 northern Italy. Another consequence would be 
 the partial darkening of Teutons and Slavs by 
 intermixture with Kelto-Iberian predecessors in 
 southern Germany and Austria. Wherever, on 
 the other hand, the new-comers were left pretty 
 much to themselves, as in northern Germany, 
 central Russia, and Scandinavia, we should find 
 the auburn hair and blue eyes of the old Aryan 
 still in the ascendant. 
 
 This very ingenious hypothesis, which is de- 
 fended by such a cautious ethnologist as Pro- 
 fessor Huxley,! accounts remarkably well for the 
 
 1 On Some Fixed Points. British Ethnology, Critiques and Ad- 
 dresses, London, 1873, pp. 167-180. 
 
Our Aryan Forefathers. 107 
 
 actual distribution of light and dark complexions } 
 throughout Europe. It agrees so well with the 
 facts before us that we can hardly do better than 
 adopt it as a provisional explanation, subject to 
 such revision and ainendment as may turn out to 
 be necessary. But if we thus admit the existence 
 of a primitive Aryan race that was physically ho- 
 mogeneous, it must be remembered that we admit 
 it on very different grounds from those on which 
 were based the demonstration of a primitive ho- 
 mogeneous Aryan language. The original com- 
 munity of language is a point on which we have 
 reached absolute certainty ; the community of 
 race, in any other sense than that of long-contin- 
 ued community of language and culture, is largely 
 a matter of speculation. 
 
 Concerning the people and the series of historic 
 events of which Aryana Vaéjo was the legendary 
 starting-point, we have thus obtained much inter- 
 esting and trustworthy information by the aid of 
 the comparative method of inquiry. For be it 
 
 1 We may go still farther in our discrimination between the abo- 
 riginal Iberians and the invading Aryans. It is probable that, along 
 with black hair, black eyes, and brunette skins, the Iberians were 
 distinguished by short stature, slight and compact frames, and long 
 heads; while, on the other hand, along with their yellow hair, blue 
 eyes, and blonde skins, the Aryans would seem to have been distin- 
 guished by tall stature, massive frames, and broad heads. See the 
 preceding paper. erat Ss } ee 
 
108 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 observed that the results so far set down have 
 been reached, for the most part, by a mere com- 
 parative survey of the various regions of the lin- 
 guistic and ethnical field with which we have been 
 called upon to deal. We have in this way ob- 
 tained quite an accurate conception of what is 
 meant when we speak of the Aryans. But as 
 yet we have dealt only with the veriest rudiments 
 of the subject. Nor have we as yet gone far to- 
 ward illustrating the vast and rich resources of 
 the comparative method. To be able to depict 
 the prehistoric culture of the Aryan-speaking 
 people, to interpret their mythical conceptions, 
 and to unfold the other remarkable truths that 
 lie latent in the variety of their speechy— this is 
 indeed a fruitful achievement. But to show how 
 this has been brought about requires a separate 
 and more detailed form of exposition. 
 
 July, 1876. 
 
1 A's 
 WHAT WE LEARN FROM OLD ARYAN WORDS. 
 
 THE discovery of the Aryan family of lan- 
 guages, as elucidated in the preceding paper, was 
 the first and most conspicuous consequence of the 
 zeal for Sanskrit studies which ensued upon the 
 English conquest of India. Surely, this in itself 
 was no small thing. It was in every way stimu- 
 lating and suggestive to have detected a specific 
 bond of relationship, in speech and in culture, be- 
 tween such different peoples as the English and 
 the Hindus, who had not previously been sus- 
 pected of possessing anything in common save 
 their common humanity. It had indeed been 
 long ago maintained that languages the most 
 diverse in superficial aspect were descended from 
 a@ common source, but such views were based 
 merely on a languid assent to an ill-understood 
 tradition, and no one had the least conception of 
 the proper method of tracing linguistic affinity. 
 Down to the beginning of the present century the 
 labours of etymologists had all the crudeness of 
 
110 Hxrcursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 astrological speculations, or of barbarian theories 
 of the universe. And no wonder, since attention 
 had been chiefly directed toward Hebrew, a lan- 
 guage entirely unrelated to those of Europe, so 
 that any attempt to explain the latter by a ref-_ 
 erence to the former could end only in mental 
 confusion. It was a very striking discovery that 
 was made when it was proved that though no 
 likeness whatever exists between the European 
 tongues and Hebrew, yet the closest similarity is 
 manifest between these tongues and a much more 
 remote Asiatic language. The completion of this 
 discovery was no less striking when it was shown 
 that while linguistic relationship can be clearly 
 traced, according to fixed rules of inference, 
 among all the various members of the Indo-Euro- 
 pean group, yet the moment we step outside of 
 this group we can neither detect relationship nor 
 establish rules of inference, but have before us a 
 new set of facts, quite incongruous with the old 
 ones. Such a contrast was just what was needed 
 in order to indicate what the true signs of lin- 
 guistic relationship are, and thus our whole men- 
 tal horizon was shifted, as far as concerns the 
 study of language. In the act of establishing the 
 existence of our own great family of speech, scien- 
 tific methods of comparison were gradually worked 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 111 
 
 out, and the results of this have been far-reaching 
 enough. 
 
 In the present paper I propose briefly to notice 
 two departments of study which have been actu- 
 ally created by the comparative investigation of 
 Aryan languages. Under the first head I shall 
 call attention to some characteristics of scientific 
 etymology ; under the second, we shall get a 
 glimpse of the prehistoric culture of the Aryans. 
 
 First, as regards etymology, we need consider 
 only a few facts which show how systematic and 
 orderly inference has been substituted for what 
 once was mere random guess-work. In compar- 
 ing different languages, similarity and dissimilar- 
 ity are still, as formerly, the principal tests of re- 
 lationship ; but in applying these tests we are 
 strictly limited by rules which formerly were 
 ignored. Once a vague resemblance between the 
 vocabularies of two languages was considered 
 sufficient ground for assigning them to the same 
 class ; now even a close and sustained likeness in 
 vocabulary is not enough, unless it be accom- 
 panied by likeness in grammatical forms. Thus, 
 the possession of innumerable Latin words, such as 
 opinion, reflect, admire, umbrella, honour, colour, 
 contemplate, criminal, etc., does not make Eng- 
 lish a language of the Italic class, nor does it 
 
112 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 even show any original kinship between English 
 and Latin. Such words have simply been adopted 
 from Latin, just as ennut and naiveté have been 
 adopted from modern French, and such borrow- 
 ing and lending as this can go on between any 
 two languages. It is just as easy for us to use 
 Arabic words like alcohol and cipher as if Arabic 
 were a kindred language. Nearly half the vo- 
 cabulary of modern Persian has in this way come 
 to be made up of Arabic words, yet there is no 
 kinship whatever between Persian and Arabic. 
 But while mere vocabulary does not determine 
 the place of a language, the peculiar style of mak- 
 ing sentences does determine it. Though more 
 than half the words we use are Latin, English is 
 not an Italic language, because we cannot make 
 a single sentence out of Latin materials alone. 
 English, on the other hand, is a Teutonic lan- 
 guage, because we cannot make a single sentence 
 without introducing some Teutonic shibboleth. 
 Suppose we say, ‘ Pantheism desecrates Deity : ” 
 here we seem to have simply one Greek word fol- 
 lowed by two Latin words; but the Teutonic 
 shibboleth comes out in the terminal s of ‘ des- 
 ecrates,” which is the peculiar shape in which 
 English has retained the old Teutonic verb-end- 
 ing th, as it would appear in ‘“desecrateth.” 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 118 
 
 Again, if I say, “I can go to Boston,” my phra- _ 
 seology is purely Teutonic; but if, like Dr. John- 
 son, I have a weakness for big words, and say, 
 “Tt is possible for this individual to traverse the 
 vast area intervening between this locality and 
 Boston,” I have not yet escaped the boundary of 
 Teutonic speech ; for although I have introduced 
 seven Latin words of secondary importance, yet 
 the little words which enable me to knit the sen- 
 tence together are still Teutonic, as before. So 
 when we say, “I have, thou havest or hast, he 
 haveth, hath, or has,’ the Teutonic shibboleth 
 comes out in this style of inflection. In short, it 
 is easy enough for us to acquire new words, but 
 we cannot abandon our habits of sentence-making 
 without giving up our language altogether. Now 
 the demonstrated community of the Aryan lan- 
 guages rests not merely on their possession of a 
 common vocabulary, but on their retention, in 
 various degrees, of grammatical forms originally 
 common to all. We can hardly find a better in- 
 stance than in the conjugation of the verb just 
 alluded to: 1 — 
 
 ‘““TO HAVE.”’ 
 Gothic, haba, habai-s, habai-th; haba-m, habai-th, haba-nd. 
 Pers. -m, -d; -m, -d, -nd. 
 Kelt. -m, -d; -m, -d, +t. 
 
 1 Whitney, Study of Language, p. 199. 
 8 
 
114 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Lith. -mi, -si, -ti; -me, -te, -ti. 
 Slav. -mi, -si, -ti; -mu, -te, -uti. 
 Lat. habeo, habe-s, habe-t; habe-mus, habe-tis, habe-nt. 
 Gr. -mi, -si, -ti; -mes, -te, nti. 
 Ske. -mi, -si, -ti; -masi, -tha, -nti. 
 
 Community of vocabulary is, however, a very 
 important matter, when rightly considered. I¢ is 
 true that any language may borrow a large pro- 
 portion of its words from an en tirely alien source, 
 as Persian has borrowed from Arabic. But in 
 comparing the various forms of Aryan speech we 
 have found a criterion which enables us to dis- 
 tinguish between the words that are alike in two 
 languages because one has borrowed them from 
 the other, and words that are alike because they 
 are simply modified forms of the same aboriginal 
 word. This supremely important point can be 
 here treated but roughly; yet I hope that, with a 
 few illustrations, it may be rendered intelligible. 
 
 One of the chief reasons for the divergence of 
 a language, originally uniform, into two or more 
 distinct dialects is to be found in those differences 
 of pronunciation which arise, one hardly knows 
 how, in different localities. The most curious 
 feature of these differences is that they are often 
 so extremely systematic. Every one has heard of 
 the Englishman who inquired, “If a haitch and a 
 ho and a har and a hess and a he don’t spell ’orse, 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 115 
 
 what in thunder does it spell, you know?” The 
 infallible accuracy with which the cockney omits 
 his h where it belongs, and supplies it where it 
 does not belong, has always excited my wonder- 
 ing admiration. Were there any caprice in the 
 usage, it would seem less marvellous. But so un- 
 erring is the instinct that when a friend of mine 
 once purposely spelled his name out as U-t-t-o-n 
 he was correctly announced by the waiter as Mr. 
 Hutton! Is not this what our High German 
 friends, with equal felicity, and in illustration of 
 a similar point, would call a very eggsdraorti- 
 nary zirgumsdance? Yet after all, so far from be- 
 ing extraordinary, such phenomena occur so regu- 
 larly in a comparison of the Aryan languages that 
 they have been reduced to a systematic form of 
 expression in what is known as “Grimm’s law.” 
 Take, for example, the word “father.” This is 
 the same in all the Aryan languages, save for 
 the differences in pronunciation which make the 
 German say vater, while in Latin, Greek, and 
 Sanskrit we have pater. On the other hand, 
 brother, in German bruder, appears in Latin and 
 Sanskrit as frater or bhratar, in Greek as ¢paryp, 
 the member of a brotherhood or fraternity. That 
 is, where we pronounce an f the Greeks, Romans, 
 and Hindus pronounced a p, but where we pro- 
 
116 Exeursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 nounce a b they pronounce an f, or something like 
 it. Similarly, where we say gard-en the Greek 
 sald xdpros and the Latin hort-us ; and our goose, 
 which appears more fully in the German gans, is 
 found in Greek as xyv, in Sanskrit as hansa, in 
 Bohemian as hus, the name of the celebrated 
 martyr. But conversely, where we say heart the 
 Greek said xap} and the old Roman cord, and 
 where the German says haupt the Roman said 
 caput. ‘That is, a Teutonic g answers to a Greek, 
 Latin, Sanskrit, or Slavonic h, but a Teutonic h 
 answers to a & in the latter languages. Now this 
 group of facts is not precisely analogous to the 
 cockney’s transposition of his aspirates, but it is 
 certainly very similar, and it is equally myste- 
 rious. Why this curious alteration of sounds 
 should have occurred so systematically, and on so 
 great a scale, no one has ever succeeded in ex- 
 plaining. It is none the less to the purpose, how- 
 ever, that it has occurred. Although an empirical 
 rule, Grimm’s law is nevertheless a well-estab- 
 lished rule, and in the study of Aryan etymology 
 it has to be taken into account at every step. It 
 is easy to see what a revolution the establishment 
 of this law has worked in our methods of com- 
 paring words. Formerly the etymologist looked, 
 though in a vague, indiscriminate way, for mere 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 117 
 
 resemblances; and this was natural enough. But 
 now a too strict resemblance sometimes becomes 
 a suspicious circumstance. The Greek word for 
 ‘whole ” is dos, and what could be more plausi- 
 ble than to suppose it identical with the English 
 word? But here Grimm’s law makes us sus- 
 picious. We ought not to expect a Greek to pro- 
 nounce “whole” like an Englishman, any more 
 than we ought to expect to hear a cockney say 
 “horse.” What the cockney says is “ orse,” 
 and what the Greek would naturally say is not 
 Sdos, but KoAos; and in point of fact it has been 
 otherwise proved that our suspicion is here well 
 grounded, —the resemblance between the English 
 and Greek words is purely accidental. Mere re- 
 semblance is thus a very treacherous guide in ety- 
 mology. In French we have lower, “to hire,” and 
 louer, *‘to praise.” Some philological dreamer 
 tried to show that these words might be con- 
 nected, because you praise your lodgings or horses 
 when you wish to induce some one to hire them! 
 In fact, the one word has been clipped down from 
 Latin locare, ‘to hire,” and the other from Latin 
 laudare, ‘to praise.” In striking contrast to this, 
 let us observe how two English words, pen and 
 feather, are closely connected in origin, in spite 
 of their entire dissimilarity. There was an Old 
 
118 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Aryan verb pat, “to fly,” which still appears in the 
 Greek wérouot. There were also such suffixes as 
 tra and na, denoting the instrument with which 
 an act is accomplished. Pat-tra thus meant “a 
 wing,” and a Hindu might perhaps thus under- 
 stand it; but in Gothic we find fath-thra, and in 
 English feather, just as Grimm’s law has taught 
 us to expect. Pat-na had the same meaning, and 
 passed into old Latin as pes-na, which later Latin 
 clipped down to penna, a wing or feather, and 
 finally the quill-feather with which you write. In 
 these days we have applied the word to little im- 
 plements of gold or steel which have nothing to 
 do with flying, unless the soaring of Pegasus be 
 supposed to keep up the association of ideas. 
 This example of pen and feather is a very trite 
 one, but I have cited it because it further illus- 
 trates a very important point, toward which the 
 argument has been for some time tending. Look- 
 ing at these two words, with reference to the 
 whole extant Aryan vocabulary, we find that 
 their very forms disclose their past history. We 
 see that the word feather, which has undergone 
 the change of pronunciation indicated in Grimm’s 
 law, in common with Teutonic words in general, 
 is a genuine Teutonic word, and appears in the 
 English language to-day because it has always be 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 119 
 
 longed to English speech. But the word pen, 
 which has not undergone this change, shows thus 
 on its very face that it has not grown up in com- 
 pany with Teutonic words, but has been adopted 
 at a recent date from another branch of the Aryan 
 family. The changes formulated in Grimm’s law 
 took place in early times, long before people had 
 begun to think critically about their pronuncia- 
 
 tion or their diction. When we adopt Latin words 
 in modern times, we do not refashion them in ac- 
 cordance with the twisted pronunciation of our 
 barbaric ancestors, but we take them as they are. 
 From pater we take paternal, without trying to 
 make it sound like its equivalent, fatherly. Thus 
 we arrive at a safe criterion for distinguishing be- 
 tween words which have been passed about from 
 one Aryan language to another, in the course of 
 recent intercommunication of culture, and words 
 wh’ :h have descended, with divers modifications, 
 from a common original. Words of the latter 
 sort, where they exist in different classes of Aryan 
 speech, have obviously been handed down from 
 primeval times; they must have formed part of 
 the vocabulary employed in Aryana Vaéjo, and 
 the most convincing proof of their genuineness is 
 to be found in the peculiar nature of the wear and 
 tear they have undergone. To recur to an ex- 
 
120 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 ample previously cited, the existence of such Eng- 
 lish words as colour, opinion, admire, ete., not only 
 fails to prove kinship between English and Latin, 
 but it does not even prove that English is an 
 Aryan language, since these words are manifest 
 importations, and the case of Persian and Arabic 
 shows that nothing is easier than for one lan- 
 guage to adopt half its current words from an- 
 other that has no relationship with it. But on 
 the other hand, when we compare such words as 
 corn with Lat. granum ; horn with Lat. cornu; 
 who and what with Lat. quis and quid, Skr. kas 
 and kad; queen with Gr. yu; beech with Lat. 
 Fagus ; doom with Gr. @¢us; tear with Skr. dar; 
 bear with Skr. bhar, Gr. and Lat. fero ; tooth 
 (Goth. tunthus) with Zend and Skr. dant, Lat. 
 dens, — when we find a thousand such cases of 
 systematic divergence, we get clear proof of the 
 original identity of the English vocabulary with 
 the others brought into the comparison. For the 
 divergences in themselves are incompatible with 
 any theory of modern borrowing and lending, 
 while the extreme regularity of their recurrence is 
 explicable only as the result of common processes 
 operating on common materials. 
 
 The symmetry of consonant-changes throughout 
 the Aryan languages is at first sight a wonderful 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 121 
 
 phenomenon, and the tracing of correlated words 
 in accordance with such laws as Grimm’s never 
 ceases to be a fascinating study. The laws of 
 vowel-change — whereby, for example, the Skr. 
 matar corresponds to Lat. mater, Gr. pyre, Gaelic 
 mathair, Germ. mutter, and Eng. mother — are 
 hardly less interesting. But to do justice to such 
 a subject as etymology would require much more 
 time than we have at our disposal. In the pres- 
 ent paper I have not attempted to make anything 
 like a full statement even of Grimm’s law, but 
 have given only such scanty illustrations as may 
 serve to render the outline of the argument in- 
 telligible while I go on to point out one of the 
 largest of the results that have come from this 
 minute study of consonants and vowels. From 
 this minute study the laws of the permutation of 
 words have been wrought into such a complete 
 and harmonious system that it has become pos- 
 sible to reconstruct large portions of the common 
 Aryan mother-tongue by comparing together the 
 curiously modified forms of its modern descend- 
 ants. The problem is quite similar to what it 
 would be if classical Latin were extinct, and we 
 were required to reproduce as much as possible of 
 it from an elaborate comparison of the vocabula- 
 ries and grammatical forms of French, Spanish, 
 
122 Excursions of an Hvolutionist. 
 
 Italian, and their allied modern dialects. Such a 
 task would no doubt be delicate and difficult; but 
 there is also no doubt that a great deal of good 
 Latin could be reconstructed in this way. The 
 restoration of the Aryan mother-tongue seems at 
 first sight a still more formidable task; but it is 
 a task for which we have also more abundant 
 materials in the wider variation among Aryan 
 words as compared with Romanic words. Thus 
 by a comparison of French mois with Span. mes 
 and Ital. mese, knowing besides the general hab- 
 its of the Romanic languages, we might proba- 
 bly infer the Lat. menszs as the common original 
 of the three; but on looking over the whole 
 Aryan field, and comparing Lat. mensis with 
 English month, Gr. pv, Lith. menesis, O. H. G. 
 manot, and Skr. masa, we arrive with even 
 stronger probability at the Old Aryan mansa as 
 the only form which could have given rise to all 
 these. ) 
 
 During the last twenty years it may almost be 
 said that the great work of Aryan philology has 
 been the reconstruction of the Old Aryan mother- 
 tongue. At least the comparative researches that 
 have been made have owed their chief interest to 
 their bearing on this“problem. In philology, as 
 in zodlogy and botany, questions of classification 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 1238 
 
 have become irretrievably implicated with ques- 
 tions of genealogical kinship. Whether we are 
 considering consonants and vowels, or the case- 
 endings of nouns, or the syntax of moods and 
 tenses, it is impossible to describe accurately the 
 relations of the several Aryan languages to one 
 another without involving a perpetual reference 
 to the common original from which these lan- 
 guages sprang. The first noteworthy attempts 
 at reconstructing the mother-tongue were made 
 by the great philologist August Schleicher, who 
 by way of giving a popular illustration of his 
 abstruse results, once wrote a little fable in Old 
 Aryan. This jew d’esprit of Schleicher’s has been 
 so often alluded to that I am tempted to quote it 
 here, with an English translation. To any clas- 
 sical scholar, who has also a slight acquaintance 
 with Sanskrit and Gothic, the sense must shine 
 so clearly through the Old Aryan words that the 
 translation will hardly be needed. 
 
 Avis akvasas ka. 
 
 Avis, yasmin varna na a ast, dadarka akvams, 
 tam, vagham garum vaghantam, tam, bharam 
 magham, tam, manum aku bharantam. Avis 
 akvabhyams a vavakat: kard aghnutai mai vr 
 danti manum akvams agantam. 
 
124 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Akvasas a vavakant: krudhi avai, kard 
 aghnutai vividvant-svas: manus patis varnam 
 avisams karnauti svabhyam gharmam vastram 
 avibhyams ka varna na asti. 
 
 Tat kukruvants avis agram a bhugat.' 
 
 The Sheep and the Horses. 
 
 A sheep, whose wool had been shorn, looked 
 upon the horses as they drew a heavy wagon, 
 bore a great load, or swiftly carried a man. 
 The sheep said to the horses, “It grieves my 
 heart to see Man driving horses.” 
 
 The horses said, ‘¢ Listen, sheep; it grieves our 
 hearts to think how the despot Man makes his 
 warm garment of sheep’s wool, while the sheep 
 goes woolless.”’ 
 
 On hearing this, the sheep quit the field. 
 
 In the simple diction of this little apologue, 
 there can be no doubt that we have a very close 
 approach to the words that our Aryan forefathers 
 would have understood in the days before they 
 had as yet invaded Europe and mixed with the 
 swart Iberian, whom — physically though not 
 linguistically — we also reckon as our ancestor. 
 
 1 Kuhn and Schleicher, Beitrdge zur vergleichenden Sprachfor- 
 schung, v. 207. 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 125 
 
 But with respect to such attempts at reproduc- 
 ing the Aryan mother-tongue in its concrete real- 
 ity, there is one thing which we must always bear 
 in mind. Granting that a word A and a word B 
 both existed in Old Aryan, in the time of the 
 Spracheinheit, we do not know but A may have 
 become obsolete before B came into general use. 
 So that, if we were to try to write out a long 
 story after Schleicher’s example, though each in- 
 dividual word might be correctly reproduced, we 
 should run great risk of writing an Old Aryan 
 style as anomalous as would be the style of a 
 writer of hypothetical English who should mix 
 up in one and the same sentence the diction of 
 Chaucer, of Dryden, and of Longfellow. It is 
 difficult, at present, to see how chronological con- 
 siderations can be applied to the vocabulary of 
 Old Aryan, in the absence of that kind of historic 
 evidence which written records or inscriptions 
 alone can furnish. In the last resort, compara- 
 tive philology is an historical science. Though it 
 ean, within a limited range, perform wonderful 
 feats of inference, quite comparable with such as 
 are achieved by the physical sciences, yet after 
 all, the tether by which it may stray from its his- 
 toric base is not a long one. The science of lan- 
 guage must always be studied mainly by the help 
 of documentary evidence. 
 
126 Excursions of an Hvolutionist. 
 
 Yet while this chronological difficulty would 
 seem to render hopeless the accurate restitution 
 of the Aryan mother-tongue as a whole, we can 
 none the less restore or reconstruct individual Old 
 Aryan words with a fair approach to accuracy. 
 And a very extensive Old Aryan vocabulary has 
 already been thus obtained, as we may see in the 
 three goodly octavos of Fick’s great dictionary, 
 in which a primitive Aryan warrior — if we could 
 first resuscitate him and then teach him to read 
 — would no doubt find himself more or less at 
 home.! 
 
 In no respect do these philological inquiries 
 appear more interesting than in the light which 
 they throw upon the prehistoric civilization of 
 our Aryan-speaking forefathers. No historic rec- 
 ord, not even a vague tradition, is preserved of 
 the time when the blue-eyed ancestors of Kelt, 
 Greek, Roman, and Teuton dwelt in a single 
 community with the ancestors of Persian and 
 Hindu. We have no clue even to the date of this 
 epoch of common Aryanism, though we may very 
 fairly allow for it perhaps three or four thousand 
 years before the Christian era. Even the oldest 
 Aryan legends, as those of the Vendidad, pre- 
 
 1 Fick, Vergleichendes Worterbuch der Indogermanischen Spra- 
 chen. 3d edition, Goettingen, 1874-76. 3 vols. 8vo. 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 127 
 
 serve only a dim reference to a time when the 
 Indo-Persian branch of the family had not yet 
 become divided. Yet concerning the degree of 
 culture reached in those remote times, so far 
 antedating all conscious historic tradition, the un- 
 conscious record of language has given us some 
 trustworthy information. From the seemingly 
 dry study of consonants and vowels an easy pro- 
 cess of inference opens up to us, as with a magi- 
 cian’s wand, a fascinating picture of the life and 
 pursuits and habits of thought of the people from 
 whose long-perished form of speech our vowels 
 and consonants are derived. 
 
 Wonderful as this may seem, what is simpler, 
 when we have once ascertained that a certain 
 word belonged to the Old Aryan language, than 
 the inference that the word was used to describe 
 some object or express some thought? And 
 where the meaning of the word has remained 
 uniform throughout all the vicissitudes of pro- 
 nunciation and inflection to which it has been 
 subjected, what better guarantee do we need that 
 the word was used with the same meaning in the 
 mother-tongue? It requires no extraordinary in- 
 sight, when one has mastered the rules of com- 
 parative grammar, to see that the primitive Aryan 
 called his nearest relatives by the names patar, 
 
128 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 matar, bhratar, svasar, sunu, and dhugatar; or 
 that when he learned to count up to ten he said 
 something like aina, dva, tri, katvar, pankan, 
 ksvaks, saptan, aktan, navan, dakan. 
 
 Proceeding in this way, we find abundant evi- 
 dence that the early Aryans had outgrown the 
 nomad stage of civilization and acquired settled 
 habitations, not merely in villages, but even in 
 fortified towns. The Lat. domus reappears, with 
 hardly any change, in Gr. ddnos, Skr. dama, Ar- 
 men. dohm, Irish daimh, and Russ. domu, always 
 with the meaning of ‘‘ house.” In the Teutonic 
 class we do not find this word in precisely the 
 same sense; but we have the Germ. zimmer, “a 
 room,” connected with Goth. timrjan, ‘ to build,” 
 and Eng. timber, or ‘building material ;” and 
 these words, compared with Gr. dévew, carry us 
 back to Old Aryan dam, “to build,” s» that the 
 domus of our forefathers was not a mere hole in 
 the rocks, but a dwelling-place put together by 
 the art of the carpenter. In Greek the more 
 common word for house is ofkos, originally Fotkos, 
 ‘a place that one goes into.” ‘This word runs 
 through all the Aryan languages, but the original 
 sense of “entering” is forgotten, and it only 
 means ‘ a place where one lives,’’ — sometimes a 
 house, but more generally a village. Thus we 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 129 
 have Skr. vega, Zend vig, Russ. vest and Polish 
 
 wies, Lat. vicus (whence the diminutive vicula, 
 villa, village), Irish fich, Kymric qwic, Goth. weths, 
 Eng. wick. The Old Norse language shows a 
 curious deviation from this general agreement in 
 meaning; for whereas the word generally de- 
 scribes an abode on the land, to the sea-roving 
 Norseman a wick was a creek or sheltered bay 
 serving as a station for ships, and hence their fa- 
 mous name of Vikings or “men of the fjord.” So, 
 while the ending wick or wich is very common 
 in old English names of inland towns, it occurs 
 frequently also on the British coasts in the Norse 
 sense, as in Sandwich and Berwick, favourite sta- 
 tions for pirates. But with this characteristic 
 divergence, the generally uniform significance of 
 the word, in languages so widely scattered, points 
 clearly to the existence of village communities 
 among the prehistoric Aryans. The various forms 
 of the English word town are equally instructive, 
 though not quite so numerous. The Old English 
 form tun has its counterpart in Old German zun, 
 “an inclosed or fortified place,” with which the 
 
 > is connected. 
 
 modern German zaun, ‘a hedge,’ 
 Now, in accordance with Grimm’s law, we find 
 Armenian dun, “a house,” Kymric din, “a for- 
 
 tress,” Irish dun, a “fortress” or “camp” or 
 9 
 
130 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 “ walled town.” This Keltic form appears in 
 many geographical names, such as Thun, in 
 Switzerland; Zug-dun-wm on the Rhone, now 
 Lyons ; Lug-dun-um in Holland, now Leyden ; 
 Dun-keld, the ‘fort of the Kelts;” Dum-barton, 
 the “fort of the Britons;” Dundee, London, Clar- 
 endon, etc. In the remote Himalayas the same 
 word reoccurs in the names of hill fortresses, such 
 as Kjarda Dhun, Dehra Dhun, etc. ; and again 
 it is a fair inference that where a word turns up 
 in so many parts of the Aryan domain with the 
 very same determinations of meaning, it must 
 have belonged to the primitive vocabulary of the 
 race. So that our forefathers would appear to 
 have been acquainted not only with houses and 
 villages, but also with some kind of walled towns. 
 
 The name of the rampart with which such forti- 
 fied inclosures were surrounded was also contained 
 in the Old Aryan vocabulary. From the old root 
 val or var, to ** protect” or “ surround,” we have 
 Skr. varana, Old Germ. wari, Pol. warownia, Lat. 
 vallum, Lith. wolas, Irish fal, Kymric gwal, Eng. 
 wall. The partition wall of a house, on the other 
 hand, is more properly described by a root which 
 in Sanskrit seems to be applied to wicker-work, 
 but which in the European tongues appears, with 
 hardly any variation either in sound or sense, 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 181 
 
 as Lat. murus, Lith. muras, Old Germ. mura, 
 modern Germ. mauer, Irish, Kymric, Old Eng., 
 and Pol. mur. The name for “ roof” is similarly 
 ubiquitous: in Skr. we have sthag, ‘‘ to cover,” in 
 Lith. stogas,“ a roof,” in Gr. oréyos, a “roof” or 
 “house,” and créyw, “to cover;” but the word 
 appears about as often in Greek as réyos, with the 
 initial letter dropped ; and so in Irish we find teg, 
 ‘6a house,” in Lat. tego and tectum, in Old Eng. 
 thecan, in Eng. deck and thatch. In door there 
 has been even less variation than this: Skr. has 
 dvar, and also dur in the Vedas; Zend dvara, 
 Pers. dar, Gr. Ovpo,O. H. G. tura, Goth. daur, 
 Old Eng durw, Irish and Welsh dor; the Lithu- 
 anian has lost the singular, but retains the plu- 
 ral durrys for folding-doors. The word meant 
 originally “that which obstructs or keeps out.” 
 Another old name for the door, which appears in 
 Skr. as arara, has been preserved in Europe only 
 in the Irish orair, a “ porch” or “ vestibule,” and 
 Welsh ortel. This latter is one of the very few 
 Keltic words to be found in English, where it has 
 become the name of a kind of bay-window. 
 Among the Aryan words for “ window ” there 
 is no such identity, though there is a mast cu- 
 rious similarity in the metaphors by which they 
 have been constructed. In Sanskrit the window 
 
182 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 is grhaksha, or “ the eye of the house,” and a big 
 round window is called gavaksha, a compound of 
 
 ? 
 
 gau, “cow,” and aksha, “ eye,’ which is about 
 equivalent to our expression ‘bull’s-eye.” The 
 Slavonic languages have okno, from oko, ‘an eye,” 
 while Gothic has augadauro and O. H. G. auga- 
 tora, or * eye-door.” The meaning of our English 
 word is not so immediately apparent, but in one of 
 our nearest relatives, the Danish, it occurs as vin- 
 due, and in Old Norse this was vindauga, that is, 
 “an eye or hole for the wind to blow through.” 
 These coincidences are interesting as showing how 
 easily and naturally the same association of ideas 
 may occur to different people, for these words have 
 been independently formed. Whether we are en- 
 titled to infer from this that the Aryan mother- 
 tongue had no word for window, and that there- 
 fore the people who spoke it lighted and aired 
 their houses only through the door-way, it is not 
 easy to decide. It is very unsafe to rest a con- 
 clusion upon negative evidence. The Old Aryans 
 certainly might have had a name for window 
 which among various tribes came to be supplanted 
 by various other expressions. Accordingly we can 
 only say that, while we are perfectly sure that 
 they had doors, it is quite uncertain, so far as phi- 
 lology goes, whether they had windows or not. 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 188 
 
 And in general, while the occurrence of the same 
 indigenous name for any object, throughout the 
 different classes of Indo-European speech, is suffi- 
 cient proof that the primitive Aryans knew and 
 named the object, on the other hand, the non- 
 existence of such a common name raises only a 
 negative presumption, which we have seldom any 
 further means for testing. 
 
 The ancient Aryan gained a livelihood chiefly 
 from rearing cattle and tilling the ground. The 
 names of our principal domestic animals are found 
 in all parts of the Indo-European territory. The 
 various Teutonic terms, cow, ku, chwo, reappear 
 with the proper change of guttural in Lettish géws, 
 Pers. g@w, Armen. gov, Zend gao and gava, Skr. 
 gaus, gava, and gu. A peculiar twist, by which 
 a labial was pronounced, instead of an original 
 guttural, may be observed quite frequently in the 
 Greco-Roman and Keltic languages, and here we 
 have Gr. Bots, Lat. bos, Irish bo, and Welsh bu. 
 The meaning of the word has been variously ex- 
 plained, but, as we have beside it the Skr. gu, 
 Gr. yodw and Bodo, ‘Lat. boao, to “ bellow,” it is 
 most likely an imitative sound, like our moo and 
 mooley. In the dialect of the Vedas a bull is 
 called vdksha, in later Skr. and Zend uksha ; in 
 Gothic this appears as auhsa, and in Old Eng. 
 
134 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 as oxa, whence our oz. Sthira, again, is a Skr. 
 name for bull, meaning the “ powerful” animal. 
 In Zend ¢taora means a strong beast of burden; in 
 English we have kept the full word steer, but the 
 initial s has generally been dropped, so that we 
 have Dan. tyr, Gr. and Lat. taurus, Russ. turu, 
 Irish tor. The word bull itself is descriptive of 
 the strength of the animal, and appears in Skr. 
 balin, Irish bulan, Lith. bullus, and in many other 
 languages. There are a great many other Aryan 
 names for these animals, but without spending 
 time on them we may note that several of the 
 words just cited have been borrowed by non- 
 Aryan languages, such as those of the Finno-Ta- 
 taric class, and even the Japanese and Chinese ; 
 from which it would seem probable either that 
 the primitive Aryans were the first to domesticate 
 cattle, or at least that they were very preéminent 
 as a pastoral race, and furnished to their neigh- 
 bours great numbers of these most useful animals. 
 The prominence of the cow in early Aryan 
 thought is shown both by the multitude of syn- 
 onyms for the creature, and by the frequency of 
 similes, metaphors, and myths in the Vedic hymns 
 in which the cow plays a part. In those days, 
 moreover, which were before the days of “soft” 
 or “hard” money, wealth was reckoned in cows, 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 135 
 
 and cows were the circulating medium, with sheep 
 and pigs for small change. Every one knows that 
 Lat. peeunia is derived from pecus, ‘‘a herd ;” 
 the same is true of peculium, ‘‘a man’s private 
 property,” from which we have obtained peculiar- 
 ity, or “ that which especially pertains to an indi- 
 vidual.” Pecus, Lith. pekus, Skr. and Zend pacu, 
 “the animal that is tied or penned up,” reappears 
 with the regular changé in Goth. fazhu, Old Eng. 
 Ffeoh, modern Germ. Vieh; in modern English 
 the word has become fee, a “ pecuniary reward.” 
 In Irish we have bosluaiged, “ riches,” from bos- 
 luag, “a herd of cows.” When you go to a tav- 
 ern to dine you pay your shot or scot before leav- 
 ing; or you sometimes, perhaps, get into a very 
 ticklish situation, and still escape scot-free. In 
 Old Eng. sceat was ‘ money,” and the Old Norse 
 skattr and Goth. skatts had the same meaning ; 
 but the Irish scath means ‘a herd,’ and Old Bul- 
 garian skotu was one of the many Aryan words 
 for cow. Another of these words in Skr. is rupa, 
 whence are derived réipya, “money,” and the 
 modern rupee of Bengal. 
 
 More than a hundred different names for the 
 horse have been counted in Sanskrit, but most of 
 these are comparatively modern in origin. The 
 only one we need notice is agva, from an Old 
 
1386 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Aryan akva, meaning “the swift.” In Lith. the 
 same word asgwa is the name of the mare only, 
 but the Lat. eguws preserves the old meaning. 
 The classic Greek imros does not sound so much 
 like equus as one might expect, but we find the 
 requisite transitions in the Aiolic txxos and Old 
 Aiolic txFos. In Irish nothing is left but the first 
 syllable, ech. In Gothic the word reappears quite 
 regularly as aihva, and in Old Eng. this is clipped 
 down into eoh. Modern English, however, and 
 the other Teutonic languages have lost this word 
 and replaced it by another, which goes back to 
 the times of Teutonic unity, but does not seem to 
 have been known to the primitive Aryans. The 
 Old High Germans and the Norsemen pronounced 
 this word hross, but the oldest Teutonic form was 
 probably horsa, from a root hor, identical with 
 Lat. currere, “to run.” Horse is accordingly 
 connected by bonds of etymological kinship with 
 its descriptive synonym courser. Modern High 
 German, in turn, though it has not lost the word 
 ross, has adopted a new name, pferd, which is in 
 more frequent use, and the history of which is 
 extremely curious. 
 
 One of the few Keltic words which the Roman 
 conquerors adopted from their Gaulish subjects 
 was the word rheda, used to describe a light four- 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 187 
 
 wheeled carriage. Such carriages were used for 
 posting, and the light, swift animal which drew 
 them received a special name, made by compound- 
 ing the root of veho, to “ draw” or “ carry,” with 
 the name of this kind of carriage. Thus arose 
 the word verédus, “ the drawer of the rheda,” the 
 post-horse, or courier’s horse; and so veredarius 
 was a post-classic Latin word for “ courier ;” but 
 the name veredus was not long in becoming gen- 
 eralized, for in Martial we find it used for a hight, 
 fleet hunting horse. At the same time there came 
 into general use the curiously hybrid word para- 
 veredus, made by prefixing the Greek preposition 
 mapa, meaning “ beyond,” to veredus, to denote an 
 extra post-horse for extraordinary occasions. This 
 mongrel word paraveredus, thus oddly made up 
 out of Greek, Latin, and Keltic elements, seems 
 to have been a favourite name for the horse in the 
 Middle Ages. In Ducange’s great dictionary of 
 medixeval Latin we find parvaredus, parafredus, 
 and palafredus, along with many other forms. 
 From palafredus came the French palefrot and 
 the English palfrey ; while the simple contraction 
 and abbreviation of the older paraveredus re- 
 sulted in the form pferd adopted by the modern 
 German. 
 
 As the Teutonic languages have thus adopted 
 
138 Hacursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 new words to designate the horse, so the modern 
 Romanic languages have generally forgotten equus 
 and substituted for it the name which appears in 
 French as cheval and in Italian as caballo, and 
 from which we have obtained such words as cav- 
 alry, chevalier, and chivalry. Ancient Greek and 
 Latin both had this word caballus, which, as ko- 
 byla, is the common name for a horse in the Sla- 
 vonic languages, and appears also in Irish as capall 
 and in Welsh as ceffyi. We do not find any such 
 name in Sanskrit, but in the Kawi of the island of 
 Java, which is a non-Aryan Malay language, as 
 full of Sanskrit words as English is of Latin 
 words, we find the horse called capala, and side by 
 side with this we have in Sanskrit the adjective 
 capala, “swift.” The Sanskrit quite generally 
 corrupted Old Aryan &-sounds in this way, as we 
 corrupt Latin sounds in Haglish when we say sere- 
 brum and Sisero instead of kerebrum and Kikero ; 
 and I have no doubt that in this word for “swift” 
 we have the explanation of caballus. Curiously 
 enough, the modern Greek lias also dropped the 
 classical name for the fleet-footed beast, and sub- 
 stituted ddoyor, which means. “ unreasoning,” and 
 in former times was applied to brutes in general. 
 It is quite remarkable that there should have 
 been such vicissitudes in the career of the words 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 139 
 
 which describe so familiar an animal, and we 
 need no better illustration to convince us of the 
 danger, above pointed out, of relying too confi- 
 dently upon negative evidence in such inquiries as 
 we are here making. Looking at the contempo- 
 rary names only, we find the English and French 
 saying horse and cheval, “the swift runner,” 
 while High German and Greek say pferd, “the 
 extra drawer of a post-carriage,” and aAoyor, * the 
 brute,” — names quite distinct both in sound and 
 in meaning. If all the other forms had been lost 
 and replaced by new words, —as might easily be 
 the case where there are so many synonyms for 
 the same object, —we might perhaps have in- 
 ferred that there was no common Aryan name 
 for the horse, and that hence the animal was not 
 known until after the separation of Aryan tribes 
 had begun; but this would have been very plainly 
 a mistake. 
 
 Besides the horse and cow, the primitive Ar- 
 yans had domesticated sheep, goats, and pigs, as 
 well as dogs. With regard to the cat, the case is 
 less clear. That wild species of the cat family 
 were known seems probable, and the word puss 
 has some claim to an Old Aryan pedigree, for we 
 find pushak in modern Persian, puizé in Lithuan- 
 ian, pusag and puss in Irish, whence we have 
 
140 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 adopted the word; but whether the primitive 
 form of these names was applied to a wild or to a 
 domesticated cat is uncertain. With this excep- 
 tion, the Indo-European names are all different. 
 In Latin we have felis, in Greek aidonpos; but we 
 know otherwise that the Greeks and Romans had 
 no domestic cats, but kept a kind of weasel to 
 destroy their rats and mice. In our own and 
 most other modern European languages the prin- 
 cipal name of the animal is borrowed from Latin ; 
 but the Latin catus is itself an imported word 
 from a non-Aryan source. It is the Syriac kato, 
 Arabic kitt, indicating that the cat was intro- 
 duced into Europe from the Levant, at a compar- 
 atively recent period. 
 
 But whether the Old Aryans had domestic cats 
 or not, they certainly needed them, for the word 
 mouse occurs, with hardly any variation, in near- 
 ly all the Indo-European languages. In Latin, 
 Greek, Old Norse, Old German, and Old English 
 it is mus; in Russian we have myshi, in Bohe- 
 mian mysh, in Persian mush, in Sanskrit musha, 
 the “‘ pilfering creature,” the “ little thief.” 
 
 Flies are also to be numbered among the house- 
 hold pests of Aryana Vaéjo; the old name was 
 makshi, the “ buzzing creature,” and is preserved 
 in Zend and the modern Indian languages. In 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 141 
 
 Europe we have Lith. musse, Bohem. musska, 
 Lat. musca, O. H. G. muccha, Swed. and Old 
 Eng. mygge, Eng. midge, of which the diminu~ 
 tive midget, or “little fly,” has been applied as 
 a caressing epithet to children. The meaning of 
 the more common Teutonic name “ fly ” is too ob- 
 vious to require mention. 
 
 The ordinary Aryan name for “ bee ” __ Skr. 
 bha, O. H. G. pia, Old Eng. be0, Eng. bee — re- 
 fers to the bright colour of the insect, but the 
 Lat. apis is the “ thrifty creature ” and the Greek 
 néuooa. ig the “maker of honey.” The Old Ar- 
 yans not only kept bees for their honey, but out of 
 the honey they made an intoxicating drink called 
 madhu, from which we have the Zend madhu and 
 Greek p46, “ wine,” Russ. médii, Irish meadh, Old 
 Eng. medu, Eng. mead. Wine and must are Old 
 Aryan words, and the same is probably true of 
 ale ; but in this latter instance we cannot safely 
 infer that what we call ale was brewed, for the 
 meaning of the word has varied considerably. 
 Lith. alus, Old Norse 6/, Old Eng. eala, mean 
 “beer,” but the Skr. ali means a spirituous 
 liquor, and the Irish of is applied to any kind of 
 drink. As for the word beer itself, it is doubtful 
 if it can be traced outside of the Teutonic lan- 
 guages ; for although it occurs in Irish, Welsh, 
 
142 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 and modern Persian, it does not conform to 
 Grimm’s law, and has thus most likely been bor- 
 rowed from English or some other Teutonic 
 source. 
 
 Whether our Aryan forefathers brewed ale or 
 not, they certainly cultivated barley and prob- 
 ably wheat, and ground them into meal in mills. 
 They were familiar with the plow, the yoke, and 
 the spade. Their harvests were reaped with a 
 sickle, and the grain was duly threshed and win- 
 nowed, and carried to mill in wagons fitted with 
 wheels and axle-trees. The blacksmith’s work 
 with hammer and anvil, forge and bellows, was 
 also carried on. Sewing and spinning were fem- 
 inine occupations, and garments were woven out 
 of sheep’s wool. The art of tanning was also 
 practised, and leather shoes were worn. The 
 entire career of the Aryans has been that of a 
 warlike people. In the primitive times of which 
 we are treating, their principal weapons were the 
 lance, the bow and arrow, the sword and dagger 
 and mace, with helmet and buckler for defence. 
 
 That the early Aryans were acquainted with 
 the sea seems unquestionable, for the name oc- 
 curs, with very little change in sound and hardly 
 any in meaning, in nearly all the Indo-European 
 languages. The Lat. mare, whence our adjec- 
 

 
 What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 143 
 
 tive marine, appears in Skr. mira, Russ. moru, 
 Lith. mares, Irish muir, Welsh mor, Goth. maret, 
 O. H. G. mari, Old Norse mar, Old Eng. mere. 
 In English meer is an archaic word, still used in 
 poetry in the-sense of “lake,” and it appears in 
 many well-known names of English lakes, as 
 Grasmere and Windermere. ‘The original sense 
 of the word has something poetic in it, for it 
 means the barren, desolate waste, just as we find 
 it commonly described in Homer. The Teutonic 
 languages, however, have generally adopted an- 
 other name. In Skr. sava means simply “water,” 
 but the more specific sense appears in Goth. savvs, 
 O. H. G. seo, Old Eng. sew, Eng. sea. It is 
 noticeable that while modern English applies this 
 name to great bodies of water, and keeps meer 
 only in the sense of lake, in modern German the 
 case is just the reverse, — in German meer is the 
 sea, but see is a lake. The only other conspic- 
 uous deviation from the general Aryan usage is a 
 very characteristic one. The Greeks, who were 
 the most maritime of all peoples that have ex- 
 isted, save the English, had three names for the 
 sea, of which the later 6dAacca and wéAayos re- 
 ferred to the boisterous, white-crested waves, but 
 the earlier zéyros meant a “ pathway for travel.” 
 What large bodies of water the primitive Aryans 
 
144 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 could have known is not fully ascertained, but 
 they were perhaps the Caspian and the Sea of 
 Aral. On these inland seas, or along the great 
 rivers which flowed through their country, the 
 Aryans would seem to have plied in boats rowed 
 with oars: but whether they had advanced far- 
 ther than this is uncertain. At all events, there 
 is a singular lack of agreement among all the com- 
 mon words indicative of a higher acquaintance 
 with the art of navigation. 
 
 With these illustrations we must bring our ex- 
 position too abruptly to a close. By the course 
 of inquiry we have followed, something might be 
 brought out concerning the political organization 
 of the primitive Aryans, which appears to have 
 been extremely simple. ‘The people,” says Pro- 
 fessor Whitney, “was doubtless a congeries of 
 petty tribes, under chiefs and leaders rather than 
 kings, and with institutions of a patriarchal cast, 
 among which the reduction to servitude of prison- 
 ers taken in war appears not to have been want- 
 ing.” This inquiry, however, would take us far 
 beyond our limits, and might be more advanta- 
 yeously conducted in another connection, where 
 we might avail ourselves of the harmonious results 
 which Sir Henry Maine, Mr. Freeman, and others 
 have elicited from a comparative survey of Indo- 
 
What we Learn from Old Aryan Words. 145 
 
 European politics and jurisprudence. But this 
 most interesting and profitable study must be 
 postponed to another occasion. In the present 
 paper, confining myself chiefly to the material 
 circumstances of the primitive Aryans, I have 
 endeavoured only to give some idea of the method 
 by which sound conclusions are reached, through 
 the study of words, concerning the civilization of 
 an age of which the historic tradition has been 
 utterly lost. More than this could not well be 
 attempted in so brief an exposition. The ex- 
 amples have been scanty, and from the nature of 
 the subject they may perhaps have seemed rather 
 dry. It is not ina moment that one can become 
 fully possessed with the rare fascination which 
 surrounds the study of the historic lessons con- 
 veyed in words. Yet possibly to some reader it 
 may have come as a novel and striking thought 
 that out of mere grammars and dictionaries a 
 trustworthy picture of the long-forgotten past 
 may be reconstructed. Inadequate as our illus- 
 trations have been, none can fail to perceive the 
 historic interest and value of the information 
 which has been gained in this way. Inquiries of 
 this sort need, no doubt, much caution and sa- 
 gacity to be conducted successfully; but when 
 
 properly sifted there is no more unimpeachable 
 10 
 
146 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 testimony to the past than that which the aspect 
 of words gives us. For the changes of vowel 
 and consonant proceed according to general laws 
 which observation may detect, but with which no 
 individual will is able to tamper. And thus it is 
 that in the winged word which seems to perish 
 in its flight through the air we have nevertheless 
 the most abiding record, though unwittingly pre- 
 served, of the knowledge and achievements of 
 mankind. 
 
 August, 1876. 
 
Ne: 
 WAS THERE A PRIMEVAL MOTHER-TONGUE? 
 
 OF all the great changes in thought which the 
 present century has witnessed, perhaps none is 
 more striking than that which has occurred in 
 our methods of studying the beginnings of human 
 culture. The discoveries of Grimm and Bopp in 
 comparative philology, the decipherment of mys- 
 terious inscriptions in Egypt and Assyria, the 
 study of legal archeology illustrated by Sir Henry 
 Maine, the doctrine of survivals so ably expounded 
 by Mr. Tylor, and especially the geologic proof 
 of the enormous antiquity of the human race, to- 
 gether with the wide-reaching and powerful spec- 
 ulations of Mr. Darwin, have all contributed to 
 bring about this change. So completely has our 
 point of view been shifted by these various theo- 
 ries and discoveries that many speculations which 
 _ at the beginning of the present century possessed 
 an absorbing interest have now come to seem friv- 
 olous or irrelevant; and nothing can better il- 
 lustrate the extent of the change than the fate of 
 
148 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 some of these speculations. It is not many years 
 since ethnologists were racking their brains to 
 show how the North American Indians might 
 have come over from Asia; and there was felt to 
 be a sort of speculative necessity for discovering 
 points of resemblance between American lan- 
 guages, myths, and social observances and those 
 of the Oriental world. Now the Aborigines of 
 this continent were made out to be Kamtchat- 
 kans, and now Chinamen, and again they were 
 shown, with quaint erudition, to be remnants of 
 the ten tribes of Israel. Perhaps none of these 
 theories have been exactly disproved, but they 
 have all been superseded, and have lost their in- 
 terest. We now know that in the earliest post- 
 Pliocene times, if not in the Pliocene age itself, 
 at least four hundred thousand years ago, the 
 American continent was inhabited by human be- 
 ings. The primeval Californian skull, moreover, 
 resembles the modern American Indian type, and 
 is not to be confounded with Old World skulls. 
 It is probable, therefore, that far back in post- 
 Pliocene times, before the great glacial period, 
 the ancestors of the American Indians had al- 
 ready become distinguished from the races of 
 Asia. Now both before and since that time the 
 eastern and western continents have been repeat- 
 
Was there a Primeval Mother-Tongue? 149 
 
 edly joined together at their northern extremities. 
 In view of such facts, whatever opinion we may 
 ultimately adopt, we feel that all theories of the 
 recent colonization of America by Kamtchatkans, 
 or Chinamen, or the ten tribes of Israel, are su- 
 perseded and laid on the shelf. That recent 
 migrations may have occurred is quite another 
 affair. Theories like,those of Brasseur de Bour. 
 bourg are still to be treated on their own merits, 
 independently of general considerations. But one 
 now perceives, in reading them, that they were 
 dictated by a kind of speculative necessity which 
 we no longer feel, because our whole point of 
 view has been shifted. 
 
 In similar wise have fared the innumerable 
 plans which formerly occupied the attention of 
 scholars for colonizing the whole world from the 
 highlands of Armenia. The ethnological infor- 
 mation contained in the book of Genesis is of 
 great interest and value, but so far from relating 
 to the whole human race, it totally ignores the 
 larger part of the world, and is concerned only 
 with the peoples of which an inhabitant of Syria 
 might be expected to know something. Long be- 
 fore any possible date for the diffusion from Ar- 
 menia there described, we know that populous 
 and stationary communities flourished on the 
 
150 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 banks of the Nile and the Euphrates; while say- 
 age or barbarous tribes, using stone hatchets and 
 flint-headed arrows, wandered through the prime- 
 val forests of Europe and America. Armenia re- 
 tains its interest, to some extent, as a possible 
 starting point, but only in connection with the 
 Semitic race and its neighbours, — so thoroughly 
 have our notions been remodelled. 
 
 Old-fashioned speculations concerning the prim- 
 itive unity of human speech have similarly fallen 
 into discredit. Previous to the detection of the 
 kinship between the various forms of Aryan 
 speech, no end of books were written to prove 
 that all known languages were in some way de- 
 scended from Hebrew; not that there was any 
 warrant for such an opinion, either in Scripture or 
 in the general probabilities of the case, but that 
 the preéminence of Hebrew as the language of 
 Jehovah’s chosen people and the vehicle of divine 
 revelation created a speculative need for proving 
 it to be the original uncorrupted dialect of man- 
 kind. Since the establishment of the Aryan fam- 
 ily of languages, it has still been felt necessary to 
 prove that all existing varieties of speech have 
 had a common origin, and as a step toward this 
 end great learning and ingenuity have been ex- 
 pended in the attempt to detect some primordial 
 
Was there a Primeval Mother-Tongue? 151 
 
 similarity between the Semitic languages and lan- 
 guages of Aryan descent. 
 
 It is not too much to say that all this learning 
 and ingenuity have been utterly wasted. Apart 
 from a few casual coincidences, as in the Hebrew 
 and Sanskrit words for siz, there is not a trace of 
 similarity between the Semitic and the Aryan vo- 
 cabularies ; while as regards both inflection and 
 syntax, the entire structure of these two families 
 of speech is so radically unlike, that only the most 
 desperate feeling of speculative necessity could 
 ever have induced any one to seek a common orig- 
 inal for the two. But after getting irretrievably 
 worsted in the encounter with facts, this specu- 
 lative craving is now outgrown and laid aside with 
 the others. The antiquity of the human race 
 again comes in to alter entirely our stand-point. 
 Considering how multifariously language varies 
 from age to age, and considering that mankind 
 has doubtless possessed the power of articulate 
 speech for some thousands of centuries, it no 
 longer seems worth while to seek immediate con- 
 clusions about primitive speech from linguistic 
 records which do not carry us back more than four 
 or five thousand years. 
 
 From the vantage-ground which we now oc- 
 cupy, it is not difficult to see that the hypothesis 
 
ity 
 
 152 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 of a single primeval language, from which all ex- 
 isting languages have descended, involves an ab- 
 surd assumption. ‘Those who maintain such an 
 hypothesis, in so far as their statements have any 
 definite and tangible meaning, must mean that all 
 existing languages stand in relation to the hypo- 
 thetical primitive language very much as French 
 and Italian stand in relation to Latin, or English 
 and German to Old Teutonic, or Latin and Old 
 Teutonic to Old Aryan. But in point of fact the 
 case is very different from this. We know that 
 French and Italian are differently modified forms 
 of Latin, because we can trace the modern words 
 directly back to their ancient prototypes, and ver- 
 ify by the aid of written documents their various 
 changes of form and meaning. After carrying 
 on for a while this process of comparison, we find 
 that the modern words vary from the ancient ac- 
 cording to certain well-defined rules, which are 
 different for French and Italian, but are singu- 
 larly uniform for each language. So unmistak- 
 able is the regularity of the system of changes, 
 that if all record of Latin were to be swept away 
 we might still reconstruct the language from a 
 comparative study of its modern descendants. 
 Mois and mese, for example, the French and Ital- 
 ian words for “ month,” would give us the Latin 
 
Was there a Primeval Mother-Tongue ? 158 
 
 mensis, and nothing else; and so on throughout. 
 In similar wise, although the Old Aryan lan- 
 guage has left no written documents to tell us of 
 its grammar and vocabulary, we have neverthe- 
 less detected such a regular system of phonetic 
 changes among the languages which have de- 
 scended from it that we have been already ena- 
 bled to go some way toward reconstructing this 
 extinct tongue. Month and mensis, for example, 
 carry us back, with little less than absolute cer- 
 tainty, to an Old Aryan mansa; and so on as 
 before, though here the inquiry is an abstruse one, 
 requiring patience and sound judgment, and there 
 is room enough for doubt in many cases. The 
 general relationship of the Aryan languages to 
 their common ancestor is, however, no less clearly 
 manifest than that of the modern Romanic lan- 
 guages to the Latin. After fifty years of such 
 comparative study, in a cautious and prudent way, 
 we have succeeded in making out some few cases 
 of demonstrable genetic kinship among groups of 
 languages. Beside the Aryan family, in the study 
 of which such profound knowledge has been ob- 
 tained, we have clearly made out the existence of 
 the Dravidian family in Southern India, and of 
 the Altaic family, —to which the Finnish, Hun- 
 garian, and Turkish belong, — to say nothing of 
 
154 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 the long-established Semitic family. Other fami- 
 lies of speech no doubt exist, and will by and by 
 have their relationships definitely marked out. 
 But the moment we try to compare these families 
 with each other, in order to detect some definable 
 link of relationship between them, we are in- 
 stantly baffled. Any true family of languages 
 will show a community of structure as conspicu- 
 ous as that which is seen among vertebrate ani- 
 mals. The next family you study will be as dis- 
 tinctly marked in its characteristics as is the 
 group of articulated insects, spiders, and crusta- 
 ceans. But to compare the two families with 
 each other will prove as futile as to compare a 
 reindeer with a lobster. The only conclusion to 
 which you can logically come is that while cer- 
 tain languages, here and there, have become vari- 
 ously modified, so as to give rise to well-defined 
 families of speech, the like process has not taken 
 place universally. In other words, the derivation 
 of a dozen languages from a common ancestor is 
 not a permanent and universal, but a temporary 
 and local phenomenon in the history of human 
 speech, and we need not expect to come across 
 any such fact of derivation, except where it can 
 be duly accounted for by the peculiar circum- 
 stances of the case. 
 
Was there a Primeval Mother-Tongue? 155 
 
 This conclusion is reinforced when we consider 
 the circumstances under which a single language 
 gives rise to several mutually resembling descend- 
 ants. Obviously such a language must have a 
 high degree of permanence and a wide extension. 
 It must be spoken for a long time by large bodies 
 of men spread over a wide territorial area. Take, 
 for example, the rise of the modern Romanic 
 languages from the Latin. In the fourth century 
 after Christ the Latin language was spoken all 
 over the Italian and Spanish peninsulas, through- 
 out most of Gaul and Switzerland, along the 
 banks of the Upper Danube, and in what are 
 now called the Rumanian principalities. In all 
 these countries Latin was the speech in which 
 the ordinary affairs of life were transacted, and 
 this had come to be so mainly because the native 
 dialects of these countries were numerous and 
 uncultivated; and as all were in close political 
 and social connection with Rome, it was a much 
 simpler matter for all to learn Latin than for the 
 Romans and their subjects alike to learn a score 
 of barbarous tongues. The business of life got 
 more easily transacted in this way. No such re- 
 sult followed the conquest of the Eastern world, 
 because Greek was spoken all over the East, and 
 every educated Roman knew Greek already ; so 
 
156 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 that in this case it was a simpler matter for the 
 conquerors to talk Greek than for their subjects 
 to learn Latin. Practical convenience is the final 
 arbiter in pretty much all such cases. Now it 
 must not be supposed that the Latin talked all 
 over the West was quite like the elegant language 
 of Cesar and Virgil. It was only educated people 
 in Rome or Milan, and perhaps in such cities as 
 Nismes or Lyons, that talked like this. Colloquial 
 Latin always had plenty of dialectic peculiarities. 
 Even in Italy the Latin had supplanted, in former 
 times, a number of kindred Umbrian and Sabine 
 dialects, and we may be sure that all these left 
 their mark upon the common speech. In getting 
 diffused over Europe, this impure colloquial Latin 
 could not fail to pick up here and there some pe- 
 culiar word or phrase, while now and then some 
 other word or phrase would be lost from its old 
 stock and forgotten, so that people did not talk 
 just alike throughout the empire. A Spaniard’s 
 local peculiarities of utterance and phraseology 
 were distinguishable from those of a Rheetian, 
 though both talked Latin and could understand 
 each other. 
 
 Now as every language changes more or less 
 from age to age, so the speech of the Romans in 
 the fourth century after Christ had come to differ 
 
Was there a Primeval Mother-Tongue ? 157 
 
 in many respects from the speech of their fore- 
 fathers who, six hundred years earlier, had fought 
 against Hannibal. But up to this time the inter- 
 course between the various parts of the Roman 
 world had been so close and continuous that the 
 capital still furnished the standard of discourse 
 for the whole empire. During the next six cen- 
 turies a different set of circumstances was at 
 work. Fora second time the Latin language was 
 learned by scores of barbarous tribes, but this 
 time it was no longer Rome that set the fashion 
 and maintained the standard. In innumerable 
 provincial towns and barbaric assemblies new 
 standards of speaking were gradually established. 
 The lines of connection, administrative and com- 
 mercial, which had formerly been kept up, were 
 in many cases severed, and each little tract of 
 country led a more sequestered life than before. 
 Many new expressions came into use, — Teutonic 
 in Gaul and Italy, Arabic in Spain, Slavic in 
 Rumania; and local idioms and peculiarities of 
 accent multiplied, in the absence of a uniform 
 standard. In this way the vulgar Latin insensi- 
 bly diverged into a host of provincial dialects, or 
 patois, the divergence being great or little accord- 
 ing to the frequency of intercourse between dif- 
 ferent localities. ‘Thus the Tuscan and the Sa- 
 
158 Excursions of an Hvolutionist. 
 
 voyard could both understand the Milanese, the 
 inhabitant of Lyons could talk with the Savoyard 
 and with the citizen of Orleans, and the Orleanese 
 would be intelligible to the Parisian; while, on 
 the other hand, the Parisian could hardly carry 
 on a conversation with the Savoyard, and would 
 be quite incapable of understanding the Tuscan. 
 Some such slowly-graded transition may still be 
 noticed by the traveller from France to Italy who 
 takes pains to observe the speech of the common 
 people. At Nice, for instance, local newspapers 
 are published in a dialect which one hardly knows 
 whether to call French, Provengal, or Italian. 
 After this process of divergence had gone on 
 for some time, a new start was taken toward uni- 
 formity, but in such a way as to enhance and 
 complete the divergence already begun. When 
 literary men gave up trying to write classical 
 Latin, and began to clothe their thoughts in the 
 colloquial Romance or vulgar tongue of the times, 
 new centres of political and intellectual life had 
 begun to be formed at Paris, Toulouse, and Flor- 
 ence ; and the dialects of these cities began to 
 assume preéminence as literary and fashionable 
 dialects. As southern France came more and 
 more under the sway of Paris, the second of these 
 centres indeed lost its relative importance, and 
 
Was there a Primeval Mother-Tongue? 159 
 
 the Provengal tongue gradually sank into an un- 
 fashionable patois ; but Parisian and Tuscan, on 
 the other hand, came to be so generally read and 
 spoken that after a while they quite crowded 
 their intermediate sister dialects out of sight, and 
 to-day they are the sole recognized representatives 
 of good French and good Italian speech, although 
 there is still a great deal of French spoken that is 
 not Parisian, and a great deal of Italian that is 
 not Tuscan. This predominance of the two cen- 
 tral dialects is in our day increasing more rapidly 
 and decisively than ever before, and the process 
 will unquestionably go on until all Frenchmen 
 speak Parisian, and all Italians speak Tuscan. 
 Railroads and telegraphs, newspapers and novels, 
 have already sealed the death-warrant of all patois, 
 and the execution is only a question of time. It is 
 because of the wide diffusion in our own country 
 of these powerful agencies for keeping men in 
 contact with each other that we have no varieties 
 of dialect here worth speaking of. It is not at 
 all likely that in this country such dialectic va- 
 riations will ever spring up. And for the same 
 reason it is not likely that any essential divergence 
 will ever arise between the English language as 
 spoken in England and the same language as 
 spoken in America. In the Middle Ages, wolves, 
 
160 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 brute and human, tax-gatherers and robber bar- 
 ons, as well as bad roads and imperfect vehi- 
 cles, made a few miles of wood or mountain a 
 greater barrier to intercourse than the wide 
 ocean is to-day. For the language of the thriv- 
 ing people to whom, as to the ancient Greeks, 
 the ocean has become (7évros) a common “ path- 
 way ;’’ who have taught mankind how to drive 
 ships with steam, and how to send electric flashes 
 of intelligence through the watery abyss, — for 
 this language a future of unprecedented glory 
 is in store. By the end of the twentieth century, 
 English will no doubt be spoken by something 
 like eight hundred million people, crowding all 
 over North America and Australia, as well as 
 over a good part of Africa and India, with island 
 colonies in every sea and naval stations on every 
 cape. By that time so large a proportion of the 
 business of the world will be transacted by people 
 of English descent that, as a mere matter of con- 
 venience, the whole world will have to learn Eng- 
 lish. Whatever other language any one may have 
 learned in childhood, he will find it necessary to 
 speak English also. In this way our language 
 will become more and more cosmopolitan, while 
 all others become more and more provincial, until 
 after a great length of time they will probably 
 
Was there a Primeval Mother-Tongue? 161 
 
 one after another assume the character and incur 
 the fate of local patois. One by one they will be- 
 come extinct, leaving English as the universal lan- 
 guage of mankind. 
 
 There is, I think, a considerable probability 
 that things will come to pass in this way, though 
 the process must of course be a very slow one, 
 and the result here prefigured will very likely 
 come so far down in the future as to coincide with 
 the disappearance of barbarism from the earth, 
 and with the inauguration of that pacific ** parlia- 
 ment of man” of which the philosophic poet has 
 told us. But, however the actual result may 
 shape itself in its details, the considerations here 
 brought forward would seem to indicate that com- 
 plete community of speech belongs rather to the 
 later than to the earlier stages of human progress. 
 What we may regard as certain is that community 
 of speech on a wide scale requires prolonged and 
 continuous business communication among large 
 bodies of men. Where communication is seriously 
 interrupted for a long period of time, as in the 
 Dark Ages of Europe, the tendency is for the com- 
 - mon language to break up into a number of more 
 or less similar dialects; and in proportion as fre- 
 quent communication is resumed there is mani- 
 
 fested an opposite tendency of a few central dia- 
 11 
 
162 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 lects to crush out their neighbours, and to grow 
 into wide-spread languages. This is, in brief, the 
 way in which languages grow, and diverge, and 
 supplant one another. There is nothing that is 
 mysterious or metaphysical in the process ; it is 
 purely a matter of practical convenience. In the 
 long run the actions of man are determined by 
 what we may call the “law of least effort:” the 
 easiest way of doing things is the one which, 
 sooner or later, is sure to be adopted; and to this 
 general law the myriad little actions involved in 
 speech form no exception. 
 
 Carrying back to ancient times the lessons we 
 have learned from the career of Latin, we find that 
 the facts, so far as known, sustain our conclusion. 
 Among the Semitic peoples there was undoubtedly 
 a time when all were of one blood and one speech. 
 No one doubts that Arabs, Jews, and Syrians are 
 as closely related by descent as Germans, Swedes, 
 and Englishmen. The social condition of these 
 Semitic races, shortly before the historic period, 
 is best represented by the wandering Arabs of the 
 present day. In this patriarchal stage of society 
 there is no such close political cohesion as there is 
 among nations of modern type, but there is fre- 
 quent intercourse for business purposes, and even 
 sometimes for purely literary objects, as in the 
 
 + 
 
Was there a Primeval Mother-Tongue? 163 
 
 old competitions of bards at Mecca before the 
 time of Mohammed; and this intercourse has 
 sufficed to preserve the main features of the lan- 
 guage. In early times there was sufficient com- 
 munication between the patriarchal tribes of 
 Arabia and Palestine and the adjacent civilized 
 nations of Assyria, Babylonia, and Phoenicia to 
 prevent any very wide divergence of speech. 
 The differences between Hebrew, Syriac, and 
 Assyrian are not greater than the differences 
 between French, Spanish, and Italian. 
 
 So, too, in the direct line of our own ancestry, 
 we find that the primitive Aryans were a race 
 partly agricultural and partly pastoral in pursuits, 
 living in durable houses, grouped together into 
 large villages, surrounded by defensible walls. 
 The structure of the family was somewhat cruder 
 than among the patriarchal Arabs and Hebrews ; 
 the social and political system may have been in 
 some respects such as we see vestiges of to-day 
 in the village communities of Russia and Hindus- 
 tan. Preéminent among all early races in the 
 rearing of flocks and herds, the old Aryans re- 
 quired immense grazing grounds, and would seem 
 to have occupied all the wide grassy plains which 
 lie between the mountains of central Tartary and 
 the southern slopes of European Russia. At the 
 
164 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 same time their agricultural pursuits and their 
 durable villages imply a considerable amount of 
 political stability, and there is good evidence that 
 for a long time a common language was spoken 
 throughout this vast territory. As we follow 
 these Aryan tribes in their great career of perma- 
 nent conquest and settlement, one branch into 
 Persia and India, and other branches into Greece, 
 Italy, Germany, Gaul, and Britain, we come upon 
 the same linguistic phenomena which we observed 
 above in the medieval history of Latin. With 
 the isolation of the various tribes, separated from 
 each other by wide distances, we see the Aryan 
 mother-tongue break up into innumerable dialec- 
 tic forms; until, by and by, with the rise of new 
 and distinct centres of social life, new and dis- 
 tinct languages come upon the scene, and acquire 
 literary immortality in the Vedas, in the Avesta, 
 in the epics of Homer and Virgil, in the novels of 
 Cervantes and Turgenief, in the sermons of Bos- 
 suet and Taylor, in the dramas of Shakespeare 
 and Goethe, and in that palladium of linguistic 
 stability in the future, — the English version of 
 the Bible. 
 
 In such cases as these, where a single durable 
 mother -language has produced several durable 
 offspring, the signs of kinship, whether in gram- 
 
Was there a Primeval Mother-Tongue? 165 
 
 mar or in vocabulary, are never obliterated. 
 After an independent career of more than ten 
 centuries, the genetic relationship of French and 
 Italian is a perfectly patent fact, about which 
 there could be no question whatever, even if all 
 memory of the Roman Empire had lapsed from 
 men’s minds, even if some fanatical Cardinal 
 Ximenes had burned in a bonfire every scrap of 
 French and Italian literature that ever existed. 
 After an independent career of not less than forty 
 centuries, the kinship of Latin and Sanskrit is 
 equally unmistakable. It is not an occult fact, 
 which discloses itself only after a subtle philologi- 
 cal analysis; it is a fact so plain that no one who 
 -reads Sanskrit and Latin books can possibly over- 
 look it, and it forced itself upon the attention of 
 the first European scholars who studied Sanskrit 
 in the seventeenth century, though they knew 
 nothing of philological analysis as we understand 
 it. The similarity between the long-known He- 
 brew and the lately-deciphered Assyrian is no less 
 conspicuous; and the same may be said of the 
 Dravidian languages of southern India when com- 
 pared with one another. 
 
 But as we leave this circle of studies, and ven- 
 ture out into the wilderness of barbaric speech, 
 we find a very different state of things. The 
 
166 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 northern portions of Asia have been inhabited, 
 within the period of history, by three different 
 races, all of whom still survive, — the Finno- 
 Tataric, the Mongolian, and the Samoyedic races. 
 The linguistic relationships of these peoples are 
 very instructive. In the first place, the Finno- 
 Tataric peoples appear to belong to the same 
 white race from which the Aryans and the Semites 
 have diverged, although there is nothing remotely 
 resembling Aryan or Semitic in Finno-Tataric 
 speech. This family of languages is represented 
 in Europe by the Finnish and its neighbouring 
 dialects, by the Hungarian, and by the Turkish. 
 In Asia it is represented by a great number of 
 languages, spoken in the Caucasus, in Turkistan, 
 and in Siberia. Eastward of this vast region 
 comes the Mongolian or yellow race, with which 
 we should be very careful not to confound the 
 Tatars. There has always been a great deal of 
 confusion of nomenclature in speaking of these 
 races, but the lines of distinction are really simple 
 enough when we have once learned them. The 
 ambiguous word which is responsible for most of 
 the confusion is the epithet Tatar, which did 
 originally belong to the Mongols, but has come to 
 be applied by preference to the Turkish family. 
 When Jinghis Khan, in the thirteenth century, 
 
Was there a Primeval Mother-Tongue? 167 
 
 made the name Tatar a sign of terror and humil- 
 iation to all Asia and Europe, it became cus- 
 tomary to apply this dreaded epithet to all the 
 hordes that were subject to the Mongolian ruler, 
 —changing the word slightly to “ Tartar,” so as 
 to add to it a mild flavour of the bottomless pit, 
 in allusion to the general behaviour of those ugly 
 customers. As most of these hordes with which 
 Europeans came into contact were really of white 
 or Turkish race, the name Tatar became gradu- 
 ally appropriated to these, and thus became unfit 
 for distinguishing the yellow Mongolians. All 
 ambiguity would be avoided if we were to drop 
 the name Tatar altogether, and substitute the 
 name Turk for the whole group of peoples of 
 which the Ottomans are the most conspicuous. 
 Our school atlases already have “ Turkistan ” in- 
 stead of the old-fashioned “ Independent Tar- 
 tary.” 
 
 The Mongolian race comprises the yellow tribes 
 of central Asia, from whom came Jinghis Khan, 
 Timur, and the whole line of Mogul sovereigns of 
 India; and also the Tungusians, or Mandshus, 
 who for the last two centuries have ruled over 
 China. The Chinese themselves, as well as the 
 Japanese, must also be considered as branches of 
 the Mongolian race. On the other hand, the 
 
168 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Samoyeds of northern Siberia seem to be allied 
 to our Eskimos, but not very obviously to the 
 Mongolians. 
 
 The race divisions of the northern half of Asie 
 are thus clear enough. First, we have the Finno- 
 Tatars, or Finno-Turks, belonging to the dark 
 haired portion of the great white race; secondly, 
 we have the Mongolians ; thirdly, the arctic 
 Samoyeds. But the languages spoken by these 
 peoples cannot be classified in any such simple 
 way. The languages of the Finns and Turks 
 carry us back to two mother-tongues, and these 
 are possibly reducible to one. It is otherwise 
 when we come to Mongolian speech. On the one 
 hand, the Mongolian dialects of central Asia are 
 strikingly similar in structure to the Tungusian 
 languages, and also to the Japanese ; and in these 
 structural peculiarities they agree also with the 
 Finno- Turkic. On the other hand, when we 
 study the vocabularies, we do not find any simi- 
 larity, such as to suggest a primitive identity, 
 between Japanese, Tungusian, and Mongolian 
 proper. We are still further baffled when we 
 come to Chinese. The people of Japan obtained 
 their written character from China, modifying it 
 to suit the needs of their own language; and so 
 a Japanese printed page looks very like a printed 
 
Was there a Primeval Mother-Tongue? 169 
 
 page in Chinese. If you were just to look at 
 these printed pages, you would imagine that the 
 two languages are very similar, just as a China- 
 man, on seeing Hungarian printed in the Roman 
 character, would fancy that Hungarian must be 
 similar to English or Latin. In reality no kin- 
 ship has yet been detected between the languages 
 of China and Japan. Not only in vocabulary 
 does Chinese differ from all the other languages 
 spoken by the Mongolian race, but it even pre- 
 sents a fundamentally distinct type of linguistic 
 structure. Age after age, from the remotest antiq- 
 uity to which historic or philologic inference can 
 guide us, the Chinese have talked with different 
 words and after a different grammatical fashion 
 from their yellow neighbours; and these in turn 
 have maintained each their distinct varieties of 
 speech ; although all these peoples — the in- 
 habitants of Japan and China, the Tungusians, 
 and the Mongols of central Asia — are undoubt- 
 edly united by physical bonds of descent from one 
 and the same primeval yellow race. 
 
 The inference from this is that there never was 
 a primitive Mongolian mother-tongue in the sense 
 in which there was a primitive Aryan mother- 
 tongue. The common ancestors of Japanese, 
 Chinese, Tungusian, and Mongol never at any 
 
170 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 time lived together in one great society, welded 
 into a unit by community of language, traditions, 
 and customs, as was the case with the common 
 ancestors of Roman, Teuton, and Hindu. On the 
 contrary, the aboriginal yellow men must have 
 roamed about in detached tribes, like the blacks 
 of Australia or the red men of America, with 
 hali-formed languages fluctuating from generation 
 to generation, diverging with great rapidity, and 
 speedily losing all traces of their origin. En- 
 sconced within convenient mountain barriers, one 
 series of these yellow tribes worked out its pecul- 
 lar language and civilization in the rich hill- 
 country and along the great navigable rivers of 
 China. A second series of tribes, moving with- 
 out reference to these, and at a very much later 
 date, formed a permanent community in the isl- 
 ands of Japan. While the remainder of the race 
 have led a nomadic life down to the present day ; 
 now and then engaging in combined activity for a 
 generation or two, under the guidance of such ad- 
 venturers as Attila, or Jinghis, or Timur, to be- 
 come for a brief season the “scourge of God” and 
 the terror of mankind, but ever, as now, inca- 
 pable of stable political union. With such diver- 
 gent careers as these, we need not expect to find 
 evidence of linguistic community among the dif- 
 
Was there a Primeval Mother-Tongue? 171 
 
 ferent branches of the yellow race. If we find 
 one set of linguistic phenomena in China, and a 
 totally different set in Japan, and yet another set 
 among the barbarous Mongols and Tunguses, this 
 is no more than we might have expected. We 
 need not expect to find such phenomena as the 
 codrdinate divergence of French and Italian from 
 a common Latin mother-tongue, or of Latin and 
 Sanskrit from a common Aryan mother-tongue, 
 except where we can find historical conditions 
 similar to those under which these phenomena 
 were manifested. Outside of that broad stream 
 of history which includes the Aryan and Semitic 
 worlds we do not find such conditions, save in a 
 few sporadic cases. On the contrary, we find just 
 such a state of things as would follow from the 
 isolated independent development of a number of 
 langugges, either without any original kinship, or 
 with the original kinship blurred and destroyed 
 almost from the very beginning. 
 
 The last clause introduces us to a consideration 
 concerning barbarous languages which is of the 
 first importance. ‘There is a certain sense in 
 which we may admit community of origin for 
 languages that are now quite dissimilar; but the 
 sense is one that is foreign to philological usage, 
 and has no real philological significance. No 
 
172 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 doubt all the yellow races of Asia are descended 
 from some small group of yellow progenitors, and 
 no doubt this ancestral group possessed the 
 faculty of articulate speech. Most likely the 
 group was at the outset small enough to use but 
 one language, and as the group increased in size 
 and became subdivided into a number of tribes, 
 the common language would soon get broken up 
 into dialects. So far very good; but what we 
 have to notice is that under such circumstances 
 the breaking up of the common language would 
 not in any way resemble the breaking up of 
 Latin into the dialects of France and Italy. On 
 the contrary, the several dialects would change so 
 rapidly as to lose their identity: within a couple 
 of centuries it would be impossible to detect any 
 resemblance to the language of the primitive 
 tribe. The speech of uncivilized tribes, when not 
 subject to the powerful conservative force of 
 widespread custom or permanent literary tradi- 
 tion, changes with astonishing rapidity. Such 
 languages usually contain but a few hundred 
 words, and these are often forgotten by the dozen 
 and replaced by new ones even in the course of a 
 single generation. Among many South American 
 Indians, as Azara tells us, the language changes 
 from clan to clan, and almost from hut to hut, so 
 
Was there a Primeval Mother-Tongue? 1738 
 
 that members of different families are obliged to 
 have recourse to gestures to eke out the scanty 
 pittance of oral discourse that is mutually intel- 
 ligible. In the northern part of Celebes, “in a 
 district about one hundred miles long by thirty 
 miles wide, not less than ten distinct languages 
 are spoken.” ! In civilized speech no words stick 
 like the simple numerals: we use the same words 
 to-day, in counting from one to ten, that our an- 
 cestors used in central Asia ages before the 
 winged bulls of Nineveh were sculptured ; and 
 the change in pronunciation has been barely 
 sufficient to disguise the identity. But in the 
 language of Tahiti four of the ten simple nu- 
 merals used in Captain Cook’s time have already 
 become extinet : — 
 “Two was rua ; itis now pitti. 
 
 Four was ha ; it is now maha. 
 
 Five was rima ; it is now pae. 
 
 Six was ono ; it is now fene.” ? 
 Out of many facts that might be cited, these 
 must suffice. The facility with which savage 
 tongues abandon old expressions for new has no 
 parallel in civilized languages, unless it be in 
 some of the more ephemeral kinds of slang. It is 
 
 1 Miiller, Science of Language, Gih ed. ii. 36. 
 2 Op. cit. 28. 
 
174 Ezxeursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 sufficiently clear, I think, that under such cir- 
 cumstances a language will seldom or never ac- 
 quire sufficient stability to give rise to mutually 
 resembling derivative dialects. If the habits of 
 ‘ primitive men were in general similar to those of 
 modern savages, we need not be surprised that 
 philologists are unable to trace all existing lan- 
 guages back to a common origin. In order to get 
 back to.a universal mother-tongue, it would al- 
 most seem requisite that the history of mankind 
 should have begun with universal empire. 
 
 We shall conclude, I think, after a survey of 
 the whole matter, that in speech, as in other as- 
 pects of social life, the progress of mankind is 
 from fragmentariness to solidarity: at the be- 
 ginning, a multitude of feeble, mutually hostile 
 tribes, incapable of much combined action, with 
 hundreds of half-formed dialects, each intelligible 
 to a few score of people; at the end, an organized 
 system of mighty nations, pacific in disposition, 
 with unlimited reciprocity of intercourse, with 
 very few languages, rich and precise in structure 
 and vocabulary, and understood by all men. 
 
 December, 1877. 
 
Ge 
 SOCIOLOGY AND HERO-WORSHIP. 
 
 In his interesting article entitled “ Great Men, 
 Great Thoughts, and the Environment,” pub- 
 lished in “ The Atlantic Monthly ” for October, 
 1880, Dr. William James calls attention to the 
 
 > and what 
 
 striking analogy between “ geniuses’ 
 are known to modern zodlogists as ‘“ spontaneous 
 variations.” Nothing could be more satisfactory 
 than the manner in which (on pages 444-447) 
 Dr. James expounds the nature of this analogy, 
 and emphasizes the truly philosophic character of 
 Mr. Darwin’s method of dealing with so-called 
 spontaneous variations. ‘The analogy between 
 those variations, on the one hand, of which the 
 zoologist takes cognizance, and on the other hand 
 those ‘ sociological variations” known as gen- 
 iuses or “ great men,” consists essentially in the 
 similarity of causal relations in the two cases. 
 Both kinds of variations may be described as de- 
 viations from an average which are severally un- 
 accountable. Every species of animals or plants 
 
176 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 consists of a great number of individuals, which 
 are nearly but not exactly alike. Each individual 
 varies slightly in one characteristic or another 
 from a certain type which expresses the average 
 among all the individuals of the species. Thus, 
 if one inch be the average length of the proboscis 
 of a certain species of moth, it may well be that 
 of the million individuals which make up the spe- 
 cies the great majority have the proboscis a little 
 shorter or a little longer than an inch: in most 
 instances the deviation may not exceed a hun- 
 dredth or a thousandth part of an inch; but there 
 may be half a dozen individuals in the species 
 which have the proboscis as long as two inches or 
 as short as half an inch. So, the average height 
 of men in the United States may be about five 
 feet and eight inches, very few men being shorter 
 than five feet and four inches, or taller than six 
 feet; yet in the side-tents which accompany that 
 “great moral exhibition,” the circus, one may, 
 for a quarter of a dollar, see giants eight feet in 
 height, or dwarfs like General Tom Thumb. It 
 is Just the same with men’s intellectual capacities 
 as with their physical dimensions, though the one 
 cannot exactly, like the other, be measured with 
 a foot-rule. In every community of men and 
 women there is a certain average standard of 
 
Sociology and Hero- Worship. 17 
 
 mental capacity ; which, in the case of a progres- 
 sive race like ours, may be roughly described as 
 that degree of ability to meet the complicated ex- 
 igencies of civilized life which will leave the next 
 generation somewhat better equipped than their 
 parents for meeting these exigencies. Those men 
 whom we regard as conspicuously successful in 
 life — using the term “successful” in no narrow 
 and mercantile, but in the broadest possible sense 
 — are the men, more or less numerous, whose 
 mental capacity rises somewhat above this aver- 
 age standard. A like number of men, through 
 various kinds and degrees of ill-success, reveal a 
 mental capacity that is more or less below the 
 average. And along with these numerous mod- 
 erate variations from the common level we meet 
 in every age with a few extreme variations, — 
 men of giant intelligence, such as Darwin or 
 Helmholtz, who rise as far above the average of 
 the race as idiots and cretins sink below it. 
 
 Now the moth with his proboscis twice as long 
 as the average, or the man eight feet in height, 
 is what we call a spontaneous variation, and 
 the Darwin or the Helmholtz is what we call 
 
 a ‘¢genius;”’ and the analogy between the two 
 kinds of deviation is obvious enough. But obvi- 
 
 ously, too, the individual which we single out as a 
 12 
 
178 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 spontaneous variation is in no wise essentially dif- 
 ferent from his fellow-individuals. If five feet 
 and eight inches be the normal height of a race 
 of men, the man who measures six feet is a vari- 
 ation as much as he who measures eight, — only 
 the one instance does not attract our attention, 
 and the other does. In any species whatever, the 
 greater number of individuals are no doubt va- 
 riations, either in one respect or in another. 
 Throughout nature, where a great number of 
 mutually-balancing forces codperate to produce a 
 set of results, we are likely to find the results dis- 
 tributed about a certain average, very much like 
 the shots at a target. A little way from the 
 centre there is a spot where the shots are thickly 
 gathered ; some few have hit the bull’s-eye ; some 
 have been caught away out on the rim; some 
 have perhaps flown by without hitting at all. It 
 is just the same with the distribution of sizes, 
 strengths, forms, or any attributes, physical or 
 mental, in a species of animals, or in a race of 
 men. These things all differ, according to the 
 general laws of deviation from an average; and 
 the forces concerned in the result are so hope- 
 lessly complicated —it is so utterly beyond our 
 power to unravel them — that this is all we know 
 about the matter. We cannot tell why a given 
 
Sociology and Hero- Worship. 179 
 
 moth has a proboscis exactly an inch and a quar- 
 ter in length any more than we can tell why 
 Shakespeare was a great dramatist. ) 
 
 I agree, therefore, with Dr. James, that “ the 
 causes of production of great men lie in a sphere 
 wholly inaccessible to the social philosopher. He 
 must simply accept geniuses as data, just as Dar- 
 win accepts his spontaneous variations.” The 
 problem of the social philosopher, undoubtedly, 
 so far as he speculates about the influence of 
 great men, is to take them for granted, and in- 
 quire how far they affect the environment, and 
 how far or in what ways the environment affects 
 them. Dr. James goes on to assert, with entire 
 justice, that the relation of the environment to 
 the genius in sociology is strictly analogous to the 
 relation of the environment to the variation in 
 biology: ‘it chiefly adopts or rejects, preserves or 
 destroys, in short selects him.” If environing 
 circumstances are such as to render an extra quar- 
 ter of an inch of proboscis advantageous to our 
 species of moths, then the tendency will be for 
 the variations in excess of length of proboscis to 
 survive and leave offspring, while the variations 
 in the opposite direction are starved out; so that 
 by and by theaverage in the length of proboscis 
 will have been shifted by a quarter of an inch. 
 
 : 
 
180 Excursions ‘of an Evolutionist. 
 
 It may be truly said, in a certain sense, that these 
 moths which have varied in the right direction 
 have, by being preserved, changed the character 
 of the moth society to which they belong. Simi- 
 larly with the preservation of the great man, save 
 that, in the immensely greater complexity of the 
 social problem, the effects are immeasurably more 
 multifarious. For the great man, says Dr. James, 
 acts as a powerful ferment, unlocking vast reser- 
 voirs of force in various directions, and thus alters 
 the whole character of his environment, very 
 much as the introduction of a new species may 
 alter the characters and relations of the fauna and 
 flora throughout a whole neighbourhood. Dr. 
 James concludes, then, that “the mutations of 
 societies from generation to generation are in the 
 main due directly or indirectly to the acts or the 
 example of individuals whose genius was so 
 adapted to the receptivities of the moment, or 
 whose accidental position of authority was so crit- 
 ical, that they became ferments, initiators of 
 movement, setters of precedent or fashion, cen- 
 tres of corruption, or destroyers of other persons, 
 whose gifts, had they had free play, would have 
 led society in another direction.” 
 
 I am careful to emphasize these conclusions of 
 Dr. James, because, as far as they go, they are 
 
Sociology and Hero- Worship. 181 
 
 my own, and, I believe, are in general the views 
 of that ‘“‘Spencerian or evolutionist school” to- 
 ward which Dr. James seems to cherish such an 
 intense antipathy. Perhaps I may not be quite 
 clear as to what the Spencerian “school” may 
 be. One characteristic of thinkers of such eali- 
 bre as Mr. Spencer is that they do not so much 
 found schools as bring about a shifting of the in- 
 tellectual stand-point and an enlarging of the 
 intellectual horizon for the whole contemporary 
 world. The ideas of which Mr. Spencer is the 
 greatest living exponent are to-day running like 
 the weft through all the warp of modern thought, 
 and out from their abundant suggestiveness have 
 come the opinions of many who do not profess any 
 especial “allegiance” to Mr. Spencer, — of many, 
 even, who are inclined to scoff at the teacher, 
 while all unconscious of the debt they owe him. 
 But while I cannot undertake to make confident 
 assertions as to the views of a Spencerian school, 
 I think I may venture to speak with some con- 
 fidence as to the attitude of Mr. Spencer himself 
 toward the present question. 
 
 So far is Dr. James from realizing how closely 
 he has been following in Mr. Spencer’s own line 
 of thought that he begins his paper by seeking to 
 use a certain alleged opinion of Mr. Spencer as a 
 
182 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 “foil” whereby to set off and illustrate the truth 
 of his own statements. The problem before us is, 
 “What are the causes that make communities 
 change from generation to generation, — that 
 make the England of Queen Anne so different 
 from the England of Elizabeth, the Harvard 
 College of to-day so different from that of thirty 
 years ago?” Dr. James replies, “ The difference 
 is due to the accumulated influences of individuals, 
 of their examples, their initiatives, their decisions.” 
 Very good. When taken with the proper quali- 
 fication — which [ shall presently specify — there 
 is nothing in this reply to which Mr. Spencer need 
 offer an objection. But according to Dr. James 
 the Spencerian school holds that ‘‘the changes go 
 on irrespective of persons, and are independent of 
 individual control. They are due to the environ- 
 ment, to the circumstances, the physical geog- 
 raphy, the ancestral conditions, the increasing 
 experience of outer relations; to everything, in 
 fact, except the Grants and the Bismarcks, the 
 Joneses and the Smiths.” 
 
 Now if “Mr. Herbert Spencer and his disci- 
 ples” really maintain any such astonishing prop- 
 osition as this, it must be difficult to acquit them 
 of the charge of over-hasty theorizing, to say the 
 least; if they do not hold any such view, it will 
 
Sociology and Hero- Worship. 183 
 
 be difficult to avoid the conclusion that somebody 
 has been guilty of over-hasty assertion. To ascer- 
 tain Mr. Spencer’s own opinion, one cannot do 
 better than to read carefully the third chapter 
 of the little book on the ‘Study of Sociology.” 
 The subject of this chapter is the *“‘ Nature of the 
 
 ? 
 
 Social Science,” and the first general conclusion 
 arrived at is that this science “has in every case 
 for its subject-matter the growth, development, 
 structure, and functions of the social aggregate, 
 as brought about by the mutual actions of individu- 
 als, whose natures are partly like those of all men, 
 partly like those of kindred races, partly distinct- 
 ive.’ After this lucid statement, which in its 
 triple specification seems comprehensive enough 
 to include the Grants and Bismarcks, as well as 
 the Joneses and Smiths, Mr. Spencer goes on to 
 say, “ These phenomena of social evolution have 
 of course to be explained with due reference to 
 the conditions each society is exposed to, — the 
 conditions furnished by its locality, and by its re- 
 lations to neighbouring societies. Noting this 
 merely to prevent possible misapprehensions, the 
 fact which here concerns us is that... given 
 men having certain properties, and an aggregate 
 of such men must have certain derivative proper- 
 ties which form the subject-matter of a science.” 
 
184 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 A deliberate and methodical statement like this, 
 forming the burden of half the chapter in which 
 Mr. Spencer lays out the ground for his work, 
 must of course be received as an authoritative 
 expression of his opinion. It will be observed 
 that Mr. Spencer takes precisely the same posi- 
 tion as that which is taken by Dr. James when 
 he says that the changes which go on in society 
 are ‘“‘due to the accumulated influences of indi- 
 viduals, of their examples, their initiatives, their 
 decisions.” So decidedly does Mr. Spencer put 
 himself in this position that it occurs to him that 
 he may possibly be misinterpreted as ignoring the 
 influence of environing conditions, and he there- 
 fore adds the qualification that in interpreting 
 social changes we must make “ due reference ’”’ to 
 the outward conditions to which society is ex- 
 posed. Not even Mr. Spencer’s wide experience 
 of the infinite possibilities of misconception could 
 have led him to suspect that in this instance he 
 might be charged with ignoring the individual 
 Smiths and Joneses of whom society is composed ! 
 
 This due reference to surrounding conditions is 
 the qualification to which I alluded a moment 
 ago as necessary to give completeness to Dr. 
 James’s statement. When we say that the differ- 
 ence between the England of Queen Anne and 
 
Sociology and Hero- Worship. 185 
 
 the England of Queen Elizabeth is due to the 
 accumulated influence of the initiatives and de- 
 cisions of individuals, to what initiatives and de- 
 cisions do we refer? Certainly not to the abortive 
 ones; not to those initiatives and decisions that 
 had been promptly crushed out or held in check, 
 but to those that had been allowed to develop and 
 fructify in the great events which make up the 
 English history of the seventeenth century. In 
 other words, we refer to those individual initi- 
 atives and decisions which had been selected for 
 preservation by the aggregate of the conditions in 
 which English society at that time was placed. 
 So that, even in stating the case as Dr. James 
 states it, we find ourselves unable to get along 
 without tacit reference to the environment. 
 
 It is true that in regarding the changes of soci- 
 ety from age to age as due to the cumulative effect 
 of individual actions in relation to environing con- 
 ditions, one may nevertheless deal with the sub- 
 ject practically in more than one way. One 
 writer may turn his attention chiefly to the con- 
 sideration of those individual variations in opinion 
 and conduct which, in our ignorance concerning 
 their complex modes of genesis, we call spon- 
 taneous variations. Another writer may be more 
 deeply interested in pointing out such circum- 
 
186 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 stances as those of geographical position, of com- 
 mercial intercourse, of political cohesiveness, by 
 which the broad outlines of history have been 
 more or less determined. The two points of view 
 seem to me complementary rather than opposed 
 to each other, though it is a common fault among 
 speculative writers to ignore the existence of all 
 the doors that cannot be unlocked with their 
 own particular little key. Mr. Bagehot — in that 
 ‘golden little book” which I admire as much as 
 Dr. James does —deals more especially with the 
 interior or psychical aspects of the causes of 
 changes in society. Mr. Grant Allen, on the other 
 hand, is deeply impressed with the manifold and 
 remarkable ways in which the histories of nations 
 have been affected by their geographical position ; 
 though by “geographical position” he means 
 something far more considerable than that house- 
 hold drudge of superficial writers, the climate: he 
 means the entire situation of a nation, strategic, 
 industrial, commercial, and literary, in relation to 
 other nations. Mr. Allen attaches so much value 
 to considerations of this kind that he is led to 
 stigmatize Mr. Bagehot’s method as unscientific 
 and unfruitful in good result. Mr. Bagehot, as a 
 thinker of more catholic mind, would hardly, I 
 believe, have been equally ready to undervalue 
 
Sociology and Hero- Worship. 187 
 
 Mr. Allen’s work. As explanations after the fact 
 — which are pretty much the only kind of expla- 
 nations we can expect to have where the concrete 
 events of history are concerned — speculations like 
 those of Mr. Allen are extremely interesting and 
 suggestive. I agree in the main, however, with 
 Dr. James in his views as to the inadequacy of 
 Mr. Allen’s method. It is no doubt true that 
 “no geographical environment can produce a 
 given type of mind; it can only foster and fur- 
 ther certain types, . . . and thwart and frustrate 
 others.” No doubt, too, Mr. Allen makes a very 
 extravagant statement when he says that “if the 
 people who went to Hamburg had gone to Tim- 
 buctoo they would now be indistinguishable from 
 the semi-barbarian negroes who inhabit that cen- 
 tral African metropolis; and if the people who 
 went to Timbuctoo had gone to Hamburg they 
 would now have been white-skinned merchants 
 driving aroaring trade in imitation sherry and in- 
 digestible port.” In reading such a statement as 
 this, one seems, indeed, to have fallen upon pre- 
 Darwinian days ; nay, more, one wonders whether 
 Mr. Allen has ever studied as carefully as he 
 ought to have done the biological teachings of 
 Mr. Spencer, whose opinions Dr. James quotes 
 him as representing! 
 
188 Excursions of an Evolutionst. 
 
 Mr. Allen has brilliantly illustrated several 
 points in connection with the doctrine of evolu- 
 tion, more especially in the department of psy- 
 chology; but there is no good reason why he 
 should be selected for quotation as the represen- 
 tative of all Spencerian evolutionists, or why all 
 Spencerian evolutionists should be held respon- 
 sible for Mr. Allen’s peculiar opinions. The only 
 connected outline of Spencerian sociology as yet 
 in existence (save what has been published by 
 Mr. Spencer himself) is that which is contained 
 in the second volume of my “ Outlines of Cosmic 
 Philosophy.” That the opinions therein expressed 
 harmonize in the main with Mr. Spencer’s I have 
 the strongest possible reasons for asserting. Yet 
 the line of thought followed in this part of my 
 work, and especially in the chapter on ‘“ Condi- 
 tions of Progress,” is far more closely parallel 
 with Mr. Bagehot’s line of thought than with 
 Mr. Allen’s. Separate passages might be cited 
 to the same effect; as, for example, where it is 
 said (vol. ii. p. 199) that the ecclesiastical re- 
 forms of ‘Gregory VII. have — in their remote re- 
 sults, of course — had more influence upon Amer- 
 ican history than the direction of the Rocky 
 Mountains or the position of the Great Lakes, 
 On the next page, alluding to Mr. Buckle’s theory 
 
Sociology and Hero- Worship. 189 
 
 that the difference in Arabian civilization before 
 and after the time of Mohammed was due to the 
 difference between the soi? of Arabia and that of 
 Spain, Persia, and India, I say, “To exhibit the 
 utter superficiality of this explanation, we have 
 only to ask two questions: First, if the Arabs 
 became civilized only because they exchanged 
 their native deserts for Spain, Persia, and India, 
 why did not the same hold true of the Turks 
 when they exchanged their barren steppes for the 
 rich empire of Constantinople ? Though they 
 have held for four centuries what is perhaps the 
 finest geographical position on the earth’s sur- 
 face, the Turks have never directly aided the 
 progress of civilization. Secondly, how was it 
 that the Arabs ever came to leave their native 
 deserts, and to conquer the region between the 
 Pyrenees and the Ganges? Was it because of a 
 geologic convulsion? Was it because the soil, the 
 climate, the food, or the general aspect of nature 
 * had undergone any sudden change? One need 
 not be a profound student of history to see the 
 absurdity of such a suggestion. It was because 
 their minds had been greatly wrought upon by 
 new ideas; because their conceptions of life, its 
 duties, its aims, its possibilities, had been revo- 
 lutionized by the genius of Mohammed. The 
 
190 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 whole phenomenon requires a psychological, not 
 a physical, explanation.” And again (vol. ii. p. 
 a writer whose 
 
 
 
 237), in speaking of Comte, 
 views of history were sometimes profound, though 
 his philosophic position was diametrically oppo- 
 site to that of Mr. Spencer and the evolutionists, 
 — I say, ‘ He did not fall into the error that in- 
 dividual genius and exertion are of little or no 
 account in modifying the course of history. He 
 did not forget that history is made by individual 
 men, as much as a coral reef is made by indi- 
 vidual polyps. Each contributes his infinitesimal 
 share of effort; nor is the share of effort always so 
 trifling. Considering the course of history merely 
 as the resultant of the play of moral forces, is 
 there not in a Julius Cesar or a Themistokles as 
 large a manifestation of the forces which go to 
 make history as in thousands of common men?” 
 
 These views of mine, as being the opinions of 
 a “disciple” of Mr. Spencer, may perhaps be set 
 off against those which Dr. James quotes from 
 Mr. Allen. They seem to me to be quite in har- 
 mony with the whole spirit of Mr. Spencer’s phi- 
 losophy,! but it would be very difficult to find, 
 anywhere in Mr. Spencer’s writings, anything 
 
 1 T have since been assured by Mr. Spencer that I have throughout 
 this argument correctly represented his position. 
 
Sociology and Hero- Worship. 191 
 
 that would serve as a justification for Mr. Allen’s 
 extraordinary statement about the Timbuctoo ne- 
 groes and the merchants of Hamburg. 
 
 Dr. James, however, does quote from Mr. Spen- 
 cer one passage which seems to him to ignore or 
 to underrate the importance of individual initi- 
 ative as an agent in the production of social 
 changes. But when carefully considered in con- 
 nection with its context, this passage does not ap- 
 pear to be responsible for the direful corollaries 
 which Dr. James has deduced from it. Com- 
 
 ? 
 
 menting on the “great-man theory” of history, 
 especially as held by Carlyle, Mr. Spencer reit- 
 erates in his peculiar language the familiar criti- 
 cism that after all the great man is a “ product of 
 the age.” ‘The genesis of the great man,” says 
 he, “depends on the long series of complex in- 
 fluences which has produced the race in which he 
 appears, and the social state into which that race 
 has slowly groavn. ... All those changes of which 
 he is the proximate initiator have their chief 
 causes in the generations he descended from.” 
 In saying this, Mr. Spencer does not imply that 
 the individual initiative of the great man is of no 
 account; nor does he imply that in order to in- 
 terpret the social phenomena of a given epoch it 
 is needful to seek for the causes of the produc- 
 
192 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 tion of its great men in that physiological sphere 
 “which is wholly inaccessible to the social phi- 
 losopher;” nor does he imply that it was owing 
 to any “convergence of sociological pressures ” 
 in the England of 1564 that a “ W. Shakespeare, 
 with all his mental peculiarities,” happened to be 
 born at Stratford-on-Avon, in that year. In some 
 of those omitted sentences of the passage cited 
 which Dr. James represents by dots, Mr. Spencer 
 indicates very clearly what he means. He re- 
 minds us that by no possibility could a Newton 
 be born of Hottentot parents, or an Aristotle 
 “come from a father and mother with facial 
 angles of fifty degrees;”” and further that, even 
 supposing it possible for a Watt to be born in a 
 tribe unacquainted with the use of iron, his in- 
 ventive genius would be likely to effect but little. 
 Dr. James himself alleges parallel truths: as that 
 after a Voltaire you cannot have a Peter the Her- 
 mit, or that under the social conditions of the 
 tenth century a John Stuart Mill would have 
 been impossible. 
 
 Now the bearing of these considerations upon 
 the question which Mr. Spencer is discussing is 
 obvious. If it be true that a genius of a given 
 kind can appear under certain social conditions, 
 and not under others, as a Newton among civilized 
 
Sociology and Hero- Worship. 193 
 
 Englishmen, but not among Hottentots; or if it be 
 true that a given genius can work out its results 
 under certain social conditions, and not under 
 others, as a Mill in the nineteenth century, but 
 not in the tenth; then it follows that in order to 
 understand the course of history from age to age 
 the mere study of the personal characteristics and 
 achievements of great men is not sufficient. Car- 
 lyle’s method of dealing with history, making it 
 a mere series of prose epics, has many merits, 
 but it is nevertheless, from a scientific point of 
 view, inadequate; it does not explain the course 
 of events. History is something more than biog- 
 raphy. Without the least disrespect to the mem- 
 ories of the great statesmen of Greece and Rome, 
 it may safely be said that one might learn all of 
 *¢ Plutarch’s Lives” by heart, and still have made 
 very little progress toward comprehending the 
 reasons why the Greek states were never able to 
 form a coherent political aggregate, or why the 
 establishment of despotism at Rome was involved 
 in the conquest of the Mediterranean world. 
 The true way to approach such historical prob- 
 lems as these is not to speculate about the per- 
 sonal characieristics of Lysander or C. Gracchus, 
 but to consider tle popular assemblies of the 
 
 Greeks and Romans in their points of likeness 
 18 
 
194 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 and unlikeness to the folkmotes and parliaments 
 of England and the town-meetings of Massachu- 
 setts. Since the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury the revolution which has taken place in the 
 study of history is as great and as thorough as 
 the similar revolution which, under Mr. Darwin’s 
 guidance, has been effected in the study of bi- 
 ology. The interval in knowledge which sepa- 
 rates a Freeman in 1880 from a Macaulay in 1850 
 is as great as the interval which separated Dalton 
 and Davy from the believers in phlogiston. Yet 
 in the principal works by which this immense 
 change has been brought about — such as the 
 works of Maine and Stubbs, Coulanges and Mau- 
 rer — biography plays either an utterly subordi- 
 nate part or no part at all. 
 
 Now the passage on the great-man theory, 
 which Dr. James quotes from Mr. Spencer, is a 
 protest against the alleged adequacy of the 
 method of Carlyle. Important as the “great 
 man” may be, it is not his individual thoughts 
 and actions which primarily concern the sociolo- 
 gist. The truths with which sociology primarily 
 concerns itself are general truths relating to the 
 structure of society and the functions of its vari- 
 ous parts; and they are obtained from a com- 
 parative and analytical survey of the actions of 
 
Sociology and Hero- Worship. 195 
 
 great masses of men, considered on a scale where 
 all matters of individual idiosyncrasy are aver- 
 aged, and for the purposes of the inquiry elimi- 
 nated. Such questions as relate to the structure 
 of the family in different stages of civilization, to 
 the relations of the various classes of society to 
 the governing body, to the circumstances which 
 hinder or favour the aggregation of tribes into na- 
 tions, — it is such problems as these that mainly 
 concern the student of sociology ; and into such 
 problems biographical considerations do not enter, 
 any more than they enter into the study of politi- 
 cal economy. Political economy deals with the 
 actions of men in great masses in so far solely as 
 the production and distribution of wealth are con- 
 cerned, and its conclusions remain equally true, 
 no matter whether a genius or a dunce presides 
 over the national finances. That a protective 
 tariff is an indirect tax levied upon an entire com- 
 munity, for the personal benefit of a few mem- 
 bers of the community, is an economical truth 
 that is quite independent of the particular finan- 
 cial schemes or legislative acts of particular great 
 men. So—to take one from that class of facts 
 in political history with which the student of 
 sociology is especially concerned — it is very clear 
 
 that if a primary assembly, like the New England 
 
196 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 town-meeting, is confined within narrow geo- 
 graphical limits, so that people can easily attend 
 to it, it will be likely to remain a folkmote, or 
 ‘primary assembly ; but if it is spread over a wide 
 area, so that people cannot conveniently come to 
 the meetings, it will tend either to shrink into a 
 witanagemote, or assembly of notables, or to de- 
 velop into a representative assembly. This is a 
 proposition derived from our general experience 
 of the way in which people behave under given 
 conditions, and confirmed by a wide historical in- 
 duction. Yet the implications of this simple prop- 
 osition, when once fully unfolded, will go farther 
 toward explaining the differences between Greek 
 and Roman political history, on the one hand, and 
 English political history, on the other, than would 
 the exhaustive biography of all the Greek and 
 Roman and English statesmen that have ever 
 lived, from Lykurgos and Servius Tullius to 
 Gladstone. The study of sociology, in short, is 
 primarily concerned with institutions rather than 
 with individuals. The sociologist does not need 
 to undervalue in any way the efficiency of individ- 
 ual initiative in determining the concrete course 
 of history; but the kind of propositions which 
 he seeks to establish are general propositions, re- 
 lating to the way in which masses of men act 
 under given conditions. 
 
Sociology and Hero- Worship. 197 
 
 Here, in conclusion, we may call attention to a 
 broad distinction between the study of sociology 
 and the study of history, which, when duly con- 
 sidered, will throw much light upon the points 
 in Mr. Spencer’s doctrine by which Dr. James 
 seems to have been puzzled. The distinction to 
 which I allude is one which may be most fitly 
 illustrated by a reference to the study of geology. 
 The philosophical geologist assumes as data the 
 various physical and chemical properties of the 
 substances of which the earth’s surface is com- 
 posed, and by reasoning from these data, with the 
 aid of all the concrete facts which observation 
 can gather, he constructs his theory of the actual 
 changes which the earth’s surface has undergone, 
 or will undergo, under given conditions. In so 
 far as his knowledge of the physical and chemical 
 properties of matter is exhaustive, and in so far 
 as his judgment is sound, his conclusions with re- 
 gard to the general course of geological events 
 will be correct. He can even foretell, in outline, 
 what kind of effects will be likely to be produced 
 by a given set of geological causes. But when it 
 comes to predicting, with minute and exhaustive 
 accuracy, the geological future of any particular 
 spot on the earth’s surface, he is foiled, through 
 inability to compass all the conditions of the 
 
198 Hxeursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 concrete case. And likewise, if he is asked to 
 give the precise physical history of any particular 
 spot on the earth, his conclusions, though sound 
 in principle, may be inadequate, because he may 
 not have gained control of all the special facts 
 required for this individual case. So, although 
 geology is unquestionably a legitimate science, it 
 is nevertheless a science which must deal chiefly 
 with explanations after the fact; it can seldom 
 or never be possible for the geologist to lay down 
 general principles which will be sure to fit every 
 case that may arise. 
 
 Just so with sociology. The philosophical stu- 
 dent of sociology assumes as data the general and 
 undisputed facts of human nature, and with the 
 aid of all such concrete facts as he can get from 
 history he constructs his theory of the general 
 course of social evolution, — of the changes which 
 societies have undergone, or will undergo, under 
 given conditions. If his work has been properly 
 done, he can go so far as to foretell what kind of 
 result is likely to be produced by a given course 
 of political action. But when it comes to pre- 
 dicting the future of any particular society for 
 the next ten years, he is sure to be foiled, through 
 inability to take in the infinitely complex condi- 
 tions of the concrete case. And in like manner, 
 
Sociology and Hero- Worship. 199 
 
 when he is called upon to interpret the past his- 
 tory of society, he cannot expect to do more than 
 to render explanations after the fact. In order to 
 gain control, moreover, of all the special facts re- 
 quired for the interpretation of each particular 
 case, he must take into account the personal 
 idiosyncrasies of the great men by whom the con- 
 crete course of history has been determined. For 
 example, given the political constitution of Rome 
 in the third century before Christ, and the trans- 
 formation of that constitution into an imperial 
 despotism can be shown to have been an inevit- 
 able consequence of the conquest of a large num- 
 ber of surrounding nations by a society so con- 
 stituted. It was a consequence which not even 
 the practical genius of Cesar — the greatest, no 
 doubt, that has ever been seen on the earth — 
 could have possibly averted, had all its unrivalled 
 power been thrown in that direction. But grant- 
 ing that this general course of development was 
 inevitable, the future course of European history 
 was certainly very different, as initiated by 
 Cesar, from what it would have been if initiated 
 by Sulla or Pompeius. When once this distine- 
 tion between the stand -point of the sociologist 
 and the stand-point of the historian is thoroughly 
 grasped, one can find no difficulty in comprehend- 
 
200 Excursions of an Hvolutionist. 
 
 ing Mr. Spencer’s attitude toward the great-man 
 theory. If the purpose of the sociologist were to 
 construct conerete history from an a priori point 
 of view, then he would undoubtedly need to in- 
 quire into the mode of genesis of each individual 
 genius, and to take every one of its peculiarities 
 into the account. No such science as this is pos- 
 sible to-day, and it is not likely that any such 
 science will ever be possible; nothing short of 
 omniscience could compass its problems. As it is, 
 the task of the sociologist is confined to the ascer- 
 tainment of truths relating to the actions of men 
 in aggregates. It is for the historian to make use 
 of such general truths in interpreting the actions 
 of particular men; and it is the greater extent to 
 which recent historians have been able to employ 
 sociological generalization that is making the his- 
 torical writing of to-day so much more satisfac- 
 tory and profound than the historical writing of a 
 generation ago. ‘This increased use of sociology, 
 this more frequent and conscious reference to the 
 “conditions,” the * environment,” and all that 
 sort of thing, does not make the modern historian 
 less mindful of the reverence due to great men. 
 On the contrary, it enhances his appreciation of 
 them through his more profound knowledge of 
 the conditions under which they have worked. 
 
Sociology and Hero- Worship. 201 
 
 As an example I may refer to the way in which 
 the life of Caesar has been treated respectively by 
 Froude and by Mommsen. To both these writers 
 Cesar is the greatest hero that has ever lived, 
 and both do their best to illustrate his career. 
 Both, too, have done their work well. But Mr. 
 Froude has profited very little by the modern 
 scientific study of social phenomena, and his 
 method is in the main the method of Carlyle. 
 Mommsen, on the other hand, is saturated in 
 every fibre with “science,” with “ sociology,” 
 with the “ comparative method,”’ with the “ study 
 of institutions.” As a result of this difference, 
 we find that Mr. Froude quite fails to do justice 
 to the very greatest part of all Czesar’s work, 
 namely, the reconstructive measures of the last 
 years of his life, which Mommsen has so ad- 
 mirably characterized in his profound chapter on 
 the Old Republic and the New Monarchy. Or, 
 if still more striking proof be needed that the 
 scientific study of the evolution of society. 1s not 
 incompatible with the highest possible estimate 
 of the value of individual initiative, I may cite 
 the illustrious example of Mr. Freeman. Of all 
 the historians now living, Mr. Freeman is the 
 most thoroughly filled with the scientific spirit, 
 and he has done more than any other to raise the 
 
202 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 study of history on to a higher level than it has 
 ever before occupied. His writings in great part 
 read like an elaborate commentary on the doc- 
 trine of evolution, — a commentary the more 
 valuable, in one sense, in that Mr. Freeman owns 
 no especial allegiance to Mr. Spencer or to any 
 general evolutionary philosophy. Yet this great 
 historian, whose opinions are determined every- 
 where by the sociological study of institutions, 
 turns out to be at the same time as ardent a 
 hero-worshipper as Carlyle himself, — and vastly 
 more intelligent. 
 
 October, 1880. 
 
VII. 
 HEROES OF INDUSTRY.! 
 
 Last of all, in our gallery of heroes, come 
 the heroes of industrial civilization, — the bold 
 explorers who have enlarged the area of the civil- 
 ized world, and the men who by inventive genius 
 have added to the number and complexity of the 
 processes whereby human wants are satisfied. In 
 one sense it was doubtless well to place this group 
 of heroes last; for, while the groups of greatest 
 poets and founders of religions carry us back into 
 an almost mythical antiquity ; and while art, phi- 
 losophy, history, science, and politics have each 
 and all of them their illustrious representatives 
 in ancient as well as in modern times; on the 
 other hand, we find that all the discoverers and 
 inventors who have been thought worthy to be 
 
 1 Preface to the eighth volume of The Hundred Greatest Men; 
 Portraits reproduced from Fine and Rare Engravings, London, 1880. 
 8 vols. 4to. The eighth volume contains ‘‘ Inventors and Discoverers.”’ 
 
 I reprint this ‘‘ preface ’’ in this connection, because it affords a good 
 illustration of some of the points in the preceding essay on Sociology 
 and Hero-Worship. 
 
204 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 included among the hundred greatest men of his- 
 tory belong to modern times. Nor is this curious 
 circumstance merely an accident ; on the contrary, 
 it affords an apt illustration of one of the most 
 striking and important of all the general aspects 
 of the history of civilization. It is not true that 
 industrial art-is later in its beginnings than the 
 arts of warfare and statesmanship, or than the in- 
 clination toward scientific inquiry. In their most 
 rudimentary beginnings all these things were, no 
 doubt, nearly simultaneous with each other, as 
 well as with art, religion, and poetry. Pre-gla- 
 cial men scratched outline pictures of reindeer on 
 their crude stone hammers; the first man who ex- 
 plained an eclipse as the swallowing of the sun 
 by a dragon, propounded an hypothesis of the 
 kind by which the beginnings of science and of 
 theology are alike characterized ; and poetry and 
 music had their humble origin in tales about the 
 dead hero, and rhythmical chants and dances in 
 propitiation of his ghost. And in like manner 
 the ingenious savage of primeval times who first 
 discovered that it was easier and safer to float 
 across a river on a log, if you hollowed out the 
 log, was the legitimate precursor of Fulton and 
 Ericsson. But the names of the clever men who 
 invented canoes and bows and arrows are as ut- 
 
Heroes of Industry. 205 
 
 terly unknown to tradition as the names of the 
 earliest myth-makers, or of those pre-Homeric 
 heroes who won for the Aryan people the rich 
 heritage of the southern peninsulas of Europe. It 
 was only after civilization had already made con- 
 siderable progress, after tribes of men had become 
 united into large and stable political aggregates, 
 and after the business of society had acquired a 
 rather high degree of complexity, that individual 
 men could achieve work of any sort on a suff- 
 ciently grand scale to arrest the attention of suc- 
 ceeding generations through thousands of years. 
 Granting that some pre-Homeric hero may have 
 had the native powers of a Hannibal, the fact 
 that his achievements did not visibly affect great 
 ‘masses of society, but only the movements of a 
 few petty tribes, would be enough to prevent his 
 fame surviving, save, perhaps, in some vague 
 half-intelligible legends about giants and demi- 
 gods. But after the historical period, in the long 
 career of nascent humanity, had fairly begun — 
 after great societies had been formed, with gen- 
 erals and, statesmen, poets and artists, and even 
 philosophers — a long time had still to elapse be- 
 fore anything was heard of inventors of giant 
 calibre and wonderful achievements like Ark- 
 wright and Watt. And this fact has in history a 
 marked significance. 
 
206 EKacursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Before inventors of this sort were possible, it 
 was necessary, in the first place, that society 
 should have reached a state of comparative sta- 
 bility politically. The ages which witnessed the 
 exploits of a Belisarius, a Pepin, or a Godfrey de 
 Bouillon, were ages in which neither a Columbus 
 nor « Gutenberg was possible. Amid such chronic 
 political turmoil, there was no surplus energy 
 which could be devoted to the exploration and 
 colonization of remote countries, nor was there 
 enough security for industry at home to permit 
 the adoption of new devices for facilitating indus- 
 trial processes. In the second place, it was nec- 
 essary both that commercial operations should 
 have begun to cover a wide geographical range, 
 and that the physical sciences should have made 
 considerable progress. The application of both 
 these considerations to the case of a discoverer 
 like Columbus is obvious enough ; but both are 
 equally applicable to the case of such an inventor 
 as Arkwright. Supposing that such a man could 
 have been produced, and cquld have invented his 
 spinning machine in the age of Augustus or of 
 Trajan, no such results would have followed as 
 were brought about a hundred years ago in Eng- 
 land. The general knowledge of machinery was 
 insufficient, and the general extension of com- 
 
Heroes of Industry. 207 
 
 merce was also insufficient. And so it follows, in 
 the third place, that when men of the intellectual 
 calibre of Watt and Arkwright were born in such 
 a state of society as that of ancient Rome, their 
 attention was turned to other things, and not to 
 the mechanical arts ; they became statesmen or 
 lawyers, poets or philosophers, but not inventors 
 on a grand scale. There was no lack of inven- 
 tive talent on the part of the ancients, especially 
 as applied to processes of warfare, as was illus- 
 trated by the skilful devices with which the Ro- 
 mans, in the first Punic war, wrought such whole- 
 sale destruction on the Carthaginian fleets. But 
 the men who devised these remarkable engines, 
 though they effected an important temporary pur- 
 pose, accomplished nothing toward extending per- 
 manently the control of mankind over the forces 
 of nature, or toward modifying the career of in- 
 dustry ; and so they are not remembered among 
 the great inventors. The explanation of the non- 
 appearance of Watts and Arkwrights in ancient 
 times is not to be found, therefore, in any assumed 
 lack of inventive talent, but in the social condi- 
 tions which prevailed in antiquity and down to 
 the close of the Middle Ages. 
 
 But there is a still more striking historic sig- 
 nificance in the relatively late appearance of the 
 
208 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 heroes of industry. The paucity of inventors in 
 antiquity, and their increasing frequency in mod- 
 ern times, serves as the index of a great change 
 that has been slowly taking place in the prevail- 
 ing character of human activity. Whereas the 
 basis of civilization was once mainly military, it 
 has now become mainly industrial. Whereas the 
 occupation of the greater part of mankind was 
 once fighting and pillage, it is now the peaceful 
 cultivation of the earth and the transformation 
 of the earth’s various productions into endlessly 
 complex instruments for satisfying human wants, 
 both physical and esthetic. Warfare has long 
 been necessary for the purpose of securing and 
 maintaining the political stability of great masses 
 of men, without which industry itself could not 
 attain to any high development. From this point 
 of view, warfare has not yet ceased to be neces- 
 sary, especially where civilized societies are mo- 
 lested or threatened by barbarous societies, and 
 no doubt it will be a long time before warfare be- 
 comes extinct; but, in spite of this, the sphere of 
 warfare in modern life has become very much re- 
 stricted. In such countries as England and the 
 United States, it takes up the time and attention 
 of only a very small part of the community, and 
 only at considerable intervals acts as a real dis- 
 
Heroes of Industry. 209 
 
 turbance to the prevailing occupations, which are 
 almost entirely concerned, directly or indirectly, 
 with industry. The enormous complication of 
 modern society, which has been mainly brought 
 about by the labours of industrial discoverers and 
 inventors, in codperation with scientific inquirers, 
 has brought things to such a pass that men are 
 more and more unwilling to engage in warfare. 
 The disturbance which it works, though slight 
 compared with the chronic misery which it in- 
 flicted in earlier times, is now beginning to be 
 regarded as unendurable. And along with the 
 diminution of the quantity of warfare, and the 
 restriction of its sphere, there has gone on a grad- 
 ual alteration in the feelings and in the manners 
 of civilized men. ‘This change has been shown in 
 increased regard for domestic comfort, in the ab- 
 olition of judicial torture and of cruel modes of 
 punishment, in prison reforms, and generally in 
 increased softness of temper and mildness of man- 
 ner. That this change is due to the general sub- 
 stitution of industrial for military activity, is too 
 obvious to require detailed argument; yet, when 
 duly considered in all its bearings, the connection 
 of this change with human happiness will be 
 found to be so close that, even had nothing else 
 
 been accomplished by the inauguration of the in- 
 14 
 
210 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 dustrial era, we should still have ample ground 
 for regarding the great discoverers and inven- 
 tors as among the chief benefactors of mankind. 
 Though last in order, we can in no wise rank 
 them as least in noble desert. 
 
 November, 1880. 
 
VIII. 
 THE CAUSES OF PERSECUTION. 
 
 In the first series of his admirable essays on 
 contemporary literature, M. Scherer reminds us 
 that in 1841 Lacordaire wrote a biography of 
 Saint Dominic, in order to prove that he was not 
 the founder of the Inquisition. “Strange are the 
 vicissitudes of opinion,”’ observes the critic. “The 
 Bollandists saw a title of honour where the mod- 
 ern Dominican sees a blemish which he would fain 
 wipe away. While the former scornfully asked 
 what there can be criminal or shameful in deliver- 
 ing heretics to the torture, Lacordaire complains 
 of the calumnies which have injured, in the eyes 
 of posterity, the reputation of the chief of his 
 order.”1 The case is indeed a striking one; but 
 the vicissitudes of opinion which it illustrates are 
 in no way temporary or accidental, but are symp- 
 tomatic of a general and progressive change in the 
 tempers and opinions of civilized men. The inter- 
 val of a century or more between the earlier Bol- 
 
 1 £tudes sur la littérature contemporaine, i. 159. 
 
212 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 landists and Lacordaire marked a new.era in this 
 change of temper, in so far as persecution, while 
 iosing much of its old cruel intensity, became also 
 discredited and disavowed. It was during this 
 interval that Lessing’s theory of the relative truth 
 of opinions, which destroyed the logical basis of 
 persecution, began to make its way among culti- 
 vated minds. Though the persecuting spirit has 
 not yet ceased to influence men’s actions, it is no 
 longer regarded asa trait to be proud of, but seeks 
 to hide itself, under specious disguises. Its mani- 
 festations, too, have become correspondingly fee- 
 ble. The heretic who once would have been 
 racked, thumb-screwed, and burned for writing an 
 obnoxious life of Jesus is now only requested to 
 resign his professorship in the Collége de France, 
 while nobody thinks of such a thing as confiscat- 
 ‘ing the book or cutting off from the author his 
 share of the proceeds of its immense sale. The 
 decline of persecution is in these respects anal- 
 ogous to the simultaneous decline in the warlike 
 spirit. Warfare, once regarded as the only fitting 
 occupation for well-bred men, has come to be re- 
 garded not only as an intolerable nuisance, but 
 even as a criminal business, save when justified 
 on the ground of self-defence. And along with 
 this change in the moral estimate of warfare, we 
 
The Causes of Persecution. 213 
 
 observe that whereas the capture of a town not 
 long ago was invariably followed by a carnival 
 of red-handed slaughter and bestial lust, it is now 
 thought unfair to kill the pigs or chickens of a 
 non-combatant enemy without at least professing 
 to pay for them. These phenomena are happy 
 symptoms of a general improvement in the way 
 men think and feel; and they give one some rea- 
 son for hoping that in due course of time such 
 ugly things as war and persecution will cease to 
 be numbered among the actual difficulties which 
 beset human life. 
 
 This general improvement in opinion and tem- 
 per, when stated with proper limitations as to 
 time and place, is admitted by every one; and it 
 has become an interesting task to analyze it and 
 determine the various circumstances to which it is 
 due. How does it happen that while the repre- 
 sentatives of the current orthodoxy would once 
 have roasted you with pious exultation, they are 
 now fain to content themselves with turning you 
 out of an office, and with an apologetic air at that? 
 
 This question was incidentally treated by the 
 late Mr. Buckle, in the book which, twenty years 
 ago, was so stimulating to many youthful minds. 
 Mr. Buckle laid it down as one of the cardinal 
 points of his theory of history that civilized men 
 
214 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 have not improved morally but only intellectually. 
 That on the whole civilized men manage to live 
 in a more peaceable and becoming manner than 
 barbarians, he did not deny; but he thought it 
 necessary for the general purposes of his theory to 
 maintain that this progress has been due entirely 
 to increase in knowledge, and not at all to im- 
 provement in ethical feeling. His principal argu- 
 ment in support of this thesis is taken from the 
 history of persecution. He calls attention to the — 
 curious circumstance that, in the early struggle 
 between Christianity and Paganism, it was not 
 the infamous Commodus and Elagabalus, but the 
 pure and upright Marcus and Julian who perse- 
 cuted the new religion. And so, in modern times, 
 many of the extremest bigots have been distin- 
 guished for integrity of character and elevation 
 of purpose, — as St. Dominic, Isabella of Castile, 
 Carlo Borromeo, Calvin, and Caraffa. Mr. Buckle 
 accordingly argues that religious persecution has 
 been the product of some of the best impulses 
 of human nature when guided by an erroneous 
 theory of duty. The wretched Commodus cared 
 nothing for religion or for anything else save his 
 sensual pleasures; and so Christian and Pagan 
 were all one to him. But his noble father, Mar- 
 cus, had the interests of religion uppermost in his 
 
The Causes of Persecution. 215 
 
 heart ; and so, in spite of his humane disposition, 
 he felt it necessary to use violent means in put- 
 ting down such an aggressive heresy as Chris- 
 tianity was then regarded. So, in later times, 
 when persecution was prevalent among Christian 
 sects, the general rule was that those who believed 
 in the dogma of exclusive salvation were perse- 
 cutors, no matter to what sect they belonged. Of 
 this belief, persecution is, no doubt, under any 
 circumstances, the natural outcome. He who be- 
 lieves that his neighbor’s heresy is destined to be 
 punished after death by excruciating tortures of 
 infinite duration, will not scruple to use the most 
 violent means for rescuing him from his perilous 
 condition. Obviously, such a conclusion may be 
 entertained without sophistry. Once admit that 
 salvation is possible only within the limits of your 
 own sect, and it may well be argued that you are 
 bound, in benevolence if not in justice, to compel 
 all dissenters to “ enter in” to that sect. If perse- 
 cution be needful to obtain such an object, then, 
 on this view of the case, it would really be hard- 
 hearted to refrain from using it. If pulleys and 
 thumb-screws can substitute eternal happiness for 
 future torments like those described by Dante, 
 then pulleys and thumb-screws are instruments of 
 charity and kindness. On this view of the case, 
 
216 Excursions of an Evolutioncst. 
 
 the typical religious persecutor is a man in whom 
 unselfish philanthropy has become such an un- 
 controllable impulse that, no matter how great the 
 violence to his natural feelings of humanity, he 
 will not hesitate to employ the most rigorous and 
 appalling measures to restrain his fellow-creatures 
 from incurring the risk of endless misery. Such 
 men exist to-day, as formerly, mankind having 
 remained substantially unchanged in their moral 
 condition. But they no longer use such rigorous 
 and appalling means of constraining the opinions 
 of their fellow-creatures, because —for one thing 
 — they have not the power to do so. And they 
 have lost the power to do so, because such a gen- 
 eral scepticism has come to pervade the commu- 
 nity that the dogma of exclusive salvation has 
 become discredited. The decline of persecution 
 has therefore — according to Mr. Buckle — been 
 determined solely by intellectual causes, and does 
 not indicate any improvement in the average char- 
 acter or advance in the ethical knowledge of man- 
 kind. 
 
 In this view there is some truth, but it is so 
 mixed up with error that the total statement is of 
 little worth. That the growth of scepticism, or 
 increasing lack of certainty about transcendental 
 opinions, has had much to do with diminishing 
 
The Causes of Persecution. 217 
 
 religious persecution, is not to be denied. But 
 that the average persecutor is a man whose horrid 
 actions are dictated by an unselfish interest in the 
 welfare of his fellow-men, is a much more ques- 
 tionable proposition. It has not been customary 
 to credit religious bigotry with such lofty mo- 
 tives, — if motives prompting such atrocious ac- 
 tions can at all properly be called lofty, — and 
 we do not find Mr. Buckle disposed to be par- 
 ticularly lenient in his judgment of individual 
 persecutors, whatever general statements the sup- 
 posed exigencies of his theory may have led him 
 to make. When he comes to treat of the bigoted 
 Scotch divines of the seventeenth century, he is 
 only too ready to charge them with moral per- 
 versity as well as with intellectual ignorance and 
 obtuseness. This is very inconsistent; but in- 
 consistency can hardly be avoided when one starts 
 with such a singularly half-true theory as that 
 which Mr. Buckle propounded. 
 
 Mr. Buckle’s fundamental error lay in the at- 
 tempt to assign distinct parts to elements of hu- 
 man nature that in reality cannot be separated. 
 For didactic or school-room purposes it is well 
 enough to consider separately the intellectual and 
 moral faculties of man. But when we come to 
 examine concretely any actual group of human 
 
218 Ezxeursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 phenomena, it is hopelessly futile to try to con- 
 sider intelligence and moral disposition as work- 
 ing separately, or to assign to each its kind and 
 amount of effects. In point of fact they never 
 do work separately, but their combinations are so 
 manifold and intricate that the disentangling of 
 effects becomes impossible. When we look at 
 things rather than words, we see that every 
 complex question of morals is largely also a ques- 
 tion of intelligence, and conversely. For ex- 
 ample, let us consider what political economists 
 call the “ effective desire of accumulation.” Asa 
 rule all men desire to make money, or to increase 
 their general control over the circumstances which 
 make life comfortable or pleasurable; but the 
 effectiveness of this desire is very different with 
 different individuals, and it is immeasurably more 
 effective in the case of civilized men than in the 
 case of barbarians. The savage cannot be made 
 to work to-day in anticipation of wants that are 
 not actually felt at present ; but the civilized man 
 will even devote a hundred or a thousand dol- 
 lars’ worth of labour every year to ward off the 
 mere possibility of a loss by fire which is by no 
 means likely to occur. This tendency to provide 
 for future contingencies is at the root of what is 
 called the ‘‘ effective desire of accumulation,” and 
 
The Causes of Persecution. 219 
 
 it furnishes one of the most conspicuous of all the 
 distinctions between civilized men and savages. 
 The progress of mankind in civilization has been 
 to a large extent identical with the growth of this 
 tendency. But, now, how far has this been an in- 
 tellectual, and how far a moral progress? On the 
 one hand, it may be argued that the ability to 
 labour and to economize to-day in anticipation of 
 future contingencies is an index of self-control or 
 of power to resist momentary temptations ; and 
 in so far as this is true, the increase of the ‘ ef- 
 fective desire of accumulation ” is an index of the 
 degree to which civilized men have risen morally 
 above the dead level of savagery. But, on the 
 other hand, it is undeniable that such a purely in- 
 tellectual faculty as imagination has a great deal 
 to do with this ability to anticipate future emer- 
 gencies. A savage does not work to-day in order 
 to keep the wolf from his door next winter, be- 
 cause he cannot frame in his mind an adequate 
 picture of what next winter is going to be. T he 
 temptations of to-day he vividly realizes; but of 
 the needs of next winter he can form no mental 
 image distinct or vivid enough to determine his 
 actions. So with the careless, improvident man 
 — who is to that extent a barbarian — in civilized 
 society. No honest man would ever voluntarily 
 
220 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 run up a bill, to be paid on the uncertain chances 
 of his income six months hence, if he could ad- 
 equately represent to himself, in imagination, 
 the discomfort or even misery which after six 
 months the bill is lable to produce. I am not 
 speaking now of such pecuniary obligations as are 
 sometimes thrust upon persons by circumstances 
 over which they have no discoverable means of 
 control. I refer only to such obligations as are 
 commonly incurred in civilized society through 
 excess of unproductive expenditure, or what is 
 currently known and stigmatized as ‘“ extrava- 
 gance.” The results of extravagant expenditure, 
 especially as connected with the system of “ liv- 
 ing upon credit,” form a very large proportion of 
 the miseries by which modern society is afflicted : 
 if all the secrets of society could be laid open for 
 inspection, we should perhaps marvel at the 
 amount of unhappiness which is traceable directly 
 or indirectly to this cause. Yet the reckless as- 
 sumption of pecuniary obligations does not or- 
 dinarily originate in dishonesty of intention. 
 There can be no doubt that it ordinarily orig- 
 inates in mental incapacity to form a distinct 
 and accurate conception of the future results of 
 to-day’s actions, codperating with that comfort- 
 able assurance that things will somehow or other 
 
The Causes of Persecution. 221 
 
 come out right, which nearly all men persist in 
 cherishing. The lazy belief that in some un- 
 specified way things will so adjust themselves as 
 to prevent the natural consequences of a wrong 
 or foolish act, is a very common fallacy, upon 
 which George Eliot is especially fond of comment- 
 ing. This belief, which is responsible for so 
 much imprudence and for so much crime, is itself 
 the product of defects that are partly intellectual 
 and partly moral. It arises partly from a slothful- 
 ness of temper which shrinks from the discomfort 
 of dealing with unpleasant facts, and partly from 
 inability to think out complicated relations of 
 cause and effect. Thus deeply and widely in- 
 wrought with every phase of the moral power of 
 resisting temptation, is that purely intellectual 
 power which we may call “ representativeness ” 
 — that is, the power of forming distinct and vivid 
 mental pictures of circumstances which have not 
 yet begun to exist, or are at any rate remote from 
 us at the present moment. Other things equal, 
 the man who has this power of “representative- 
 ness” most fully developed is most likely to ex- 
 hibit self-control amid the myriad temptations of 
 life. Yet in spite of the highly composite char- 
 acter of the process by which the habit of self- 
 control is reached, the result is a purely ethical 
 
222 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 result — a result which we estimate solely with 
 reference to its bearing upon the welfare of soci- 
 ety. And accordingly, when we praise a man 
 for prudence and self-control, we rightly feel that 
 we are paying tribute rather to his moral char- 
 acter than to his intellectual capacity. 
 
 Such being the inextricable complication of in- 
 tellectual and moral processes, even in such a 
 comparatively simple case as that of “the effect- 
 ive desire of accumulation,” we need not expect 
 to be able to deal satisfactorily with such a com-_ 
 plex affair as the persecuting spirit without tak- 
 ing into the account both intellectual and moral 
 factors. And in taking both into the account, it 
 must be borne#in mind that what we have to say 
 about the one is necessarily incomplete until men- 
 tally supplemented by what we have to say about 
 the other. 
 
 The diminution in the intensity of the perse- 
 cuting spirit and the diminution in the atrocity of 
 its manifestations, alike furnish, when duly ana- 
 lyzed, an excellent illustration of the intellectual 
 and moral advance of mankind from a state of 
 bestial savagery toward a state of refined civiliza- 
 tion. Let us consider first, for a moment, the dim- 
 inution in the atrociousness of the overt acts by 
 which the persecuting spirit has manifested itself; 
 
The Causes of Persecution. 223 
 
 and afterward let us proceed more thoroughly into 
 the consideration of the underlying causes of the 
 temper of mind which has led men to persecute 
 one another. 
 
 In the lowest stages of human progress which 
 the comparative study of institutions has revealed 
 to us, there are no great political aggregates of 
 men covering large areas of country, supporting 
 themselves by complex and multifarious kinds of 
 industrial activity, and bound together by varied 
 community of interests, guaranteed by laws based 
 on the common consent of all. Viewed in rela- 
 tion to what we now know about the antiquity of 
 the human race, a society like this must be re- 
 garded as quite a late and elaborate result of the 
 slow process of civilization. In broad contrast to 
 anything of this sort, we find mankind in their 
 primitive condition — such as we may still find 
 it partially exemplified in the institutions of sav- 
 age races — existing only in little tribes, support- 
 ing themselves almost entirely by predatory occu- 
 pations quite like those by which bears and tigers 
 support themselves, and perpetually fighting with 
 each other for the possession of the hunting- 
 grounds that insure their means of subsistence. 
 In this primitive bestial state of society, there is 
 nothing like a normal state of peace. The near- 
 
224 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 est approach to peace is a state of armed truce. 
 Warfare between tribes goes on chronically, the 
 injury which one inflicts upon another being com- 
 pensated only by some equivalent injury inflicted 
 in revenge. As all the foreign policy of a given 
 tribe may be thus summed up in perpetual mur- 
 der of men, so its internal industries may be 
 mainly summed up in the perpetual slaughter of 
 animals that serve for food. Every man is pri- 
 marily a butcher. To kill something is the prime 
 necessity of life. The direct infliction of death 
 or of physical suffering is the principal daily oc- 
 cupation of all the members of the community ; 
 and, as a correlative effect of all this, the ability 
 to meet death or to endure physical suffering 
 without flinching is one of the attributes of a 
 hero that society prizes most highly. The most 
 complete instance of a society of this sort that has 
 acquired historic fame is that of the Iroquois of 
 New York, in the seventeenth century. But there 
 is no doubt that, in all the respects we are now 
 considering, our own Aryan ancestors who con- 
 quered and settled Europe were substantially like 
 the Iroquois. 
 
 Now, in such a state of society as this, it is ob- 
 vious that men will inflict pain without the small- 
 est compunctions and upon very small provocation. 
 
The Causes of Persecution. 225 
 
 The feelings with which we regard to-day the 
 needless infliction of physical suffering would be 
 utterly unintelligible to them. To such men 
 murder and torture are common incidents of life, 
 which no more interrupt the even tenor of their 
 ways than ours are interrupted by railway acci- 
 dents. A man born in such a state of society 
 expects to meet a violent death, as is shown by 
 our own Norse progenitors, who regarded it as dis- 
 graceful to die in one’s bed, —and an end which 
 a man was willing to encounter himself he might 
 readily be supposed to be willing to inflict upon 
 others. In this way, I think, the excessive cruelty 
 which characterized the persecutions of the Middle 
 Ages is completely explained. When we read of 
 the frightful tortures inflicted upon Arabs, Jews, 
 and Protestants by the Inquisition ; when we re- 
 member the fiendish outrages perpetrated by the 
 Spanish armies in Holland and by the Imperial 
 _ armies at Magdeburg ; when we recollect that in 
 Spain an auto-de-fe was one of the most imposing 
 ceremonies of the Church, and that, on the mar- 
 riage of Philip II., burning heretics served as 
 nuptial torches, we are at first inclined to exclaim 
 that such cruelties could never have been. In 
 human nature, as we know it to-day, mean and 
 
 bad as it too often is, we do not seem to find any- 
 15 
 
226 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 thing like a parallel to such horrible cruelty as 
 this. It has been said that we need but to imag- 
 ine the state of mind which attributed a similar 
 course of action to Eternal Justice, and conceived 
 it as part and parcel of the essential order of the 
 universe, to render all this explicable. No doubt 
 the self-same ingenuity which men displayed spec- 
 ulatively in theological descriptions of the next 
 world was also displayed practically in such in- 
 ventions as the rack and the boot, the Virgin 
 armed with knives, or the cell whose walls grad- 
 ually approached each other and crushed the 
 wretched prisoner into a jelly. It is signifi- 
 cant, too, that execution by fire was openly de- 
 fended as being symbolical of the everlasting pun- 
 ishment destined for the heretic hereafter. At 
 the execution of the lad William Hunter, in 1555, 
 as the fagots were set on fire one of the attendant 
 priests exclaimed, ‘* Behold, as thou burnest here, 
 so shalt thou burn in hell!” 
 
 To cite the atrocious theology, however, as the 
 sufficient explanation of the atrocious behaviour, 
 would be, I think, to invert the relations of cause 
 and effect, — in homely phrase, to get the cart be- 
 fore the horse. It was only in a cruel age that 
 the doctrine of hell-fire could have acquired that 
 hold upon men’s minds which it had acquired in 
 
The Causes of Persecution. 227 
 
 the Middle Ages. In recent times the doctrine 
 has become almost universally discredited through- 
 out the more enlightened portions of Christendom. 
 Even those who maintain a belief in some kind 
 of endless punishment, no longer insist literally 
 upon the lake of brimstone and the fire that is 
 never quenched. Now, the doctrine of hell-fire 
 has become thus universally discredited, not be- 
 cause it has been scientifically disproved, for 
 science has neither data nor methods whereby to 
 disprove such a doctrine; nor because it has been 
 exegetically shown to be unsupported by Scrip- 
 ture, for the ingenuity of orthodox exegesis has 
 always been equal to the task of making Scripture 
 mean whatever is required; it has been discred- 
 ited simply because people have become milder in 
 their manners and less used to enduring and in- 
 flicting physical pain. The doctrine shocks peo- 
 ple’s feelings, and so they refuse to believe it, no 
 matter how the logic of the case may stand. The 
 sermons of Theodore Parker on the popular the- 
 ology well illustrate the change of mood that has 
 come over men’s minds with reference to the jus- 
 tice of God: the whole burden of these discourses 
 is the argument that the infliction of endless suf- 
 fering on the creature is incompatible with infi- 
 nite justice on the part of the Creator, That 
 
228 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 such an argument appears sound to-day, whereas 
 it would have seemed absurd to the contempora- 
 ries of Luther, is due to the self-same widening 
 and deepening of human sympathies that have 
 put an end to slavery and to judicial torture, that 
 have done away with the horrors of Bedlam and 
 the “ stone-hold” of Newgate, and that have em- 
 bodied in the Constitution of the United States 
 the injunction that “cruel and unusual punish- 
 ment” must not be inflicted upon criminals. 
 Now, this general increase in humanity which 
 is discernible throughout the most advanced re- 
 gions of Christendom during the past three centu- 
 ries, and which has become especially conspicuous 
 in our own time, is undoubtedly consequent upon 
 the vast increase of industrial at the expense of 
 military activity which has characterized the same 
 period. With the gradual aggregation of men 
 into great and stable communities, and with the 
 accompanying increase in the complexity of social 
 life and in the number of wants which labour is 
 required to satisfy, the sphere of industry has be- 
 come immensely enlarged and the sphere of war- 
 fare has become correspondingly restricted. I do 
 not forget that great and terrible wars still occur, 
 but it remains none the less true that fighting has 
 ceased to be recognized as the principal, or even as 
 
The Causes of Persecution. 229 
 
 a very considerable, part of the business of society. 
 Private warfare, once universal and incessant 
 throughout western Europe, has become extinct, 
 and in the Northern States of the American Union 
 it has never existed. Brigandage survives only in 
 out-of-the-way corners of the most backward coun- 
 tries of Christendom, such as Spain and Sicily, or 
 else in localities where civilization comes into geo- 
 graphical contact with barbarism, as in Thessaly 
 and Albania, or on the extreme western frontiers 
 of our own country. Duelling has become nearly 
 obsolete, and is dealt with as a crime, while the 
 so-called code of honour upon which it thrived has 
 become an object of general derision. The sword 
 is no longer a part of a gentleman’s wardrobe, 
 and laws are framed to prevent the carrying of 
 daggers and pistols. Only soldiers on parade and 
 sportsmen nowadays carry deadly weapons openly. 
 While the sportsmanship, moreover, which sim- 
 ply inflicts death on bird or beast is still held in 
 esteem, emphatic protests are made against the 
 sportsmanship which wantonly inflicts pain, as we 
 have seen in the controversy about fox-hunting 
 between Mr. Freeman and Mr. Trollope. Organ- 
 ized societies exist for the protection of domestic 
 animals against cruel treatment. Even where it 
 is necessary to inflict pain for the purpose of pre- 
 
230 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 serving life, as in the profession of the surgeon, 
 we do all in our power, by the use of anzsthetics, 
 to reduce the pain to a minimum. And even 
 where it is necessary to inflict death as a means of 
 protection to life, as in the execution of murderers, 
 the dreadful work is done as gently as possible, 
 and is kept hidden from the gaze of the public. 
 
 It has thus come to pass that, in such commu- 
 nities as England and our own Northern States, 
 the majority of individuals may live all their lives 
 without ever being called upon to take part in 
 putting a fellow-creature to death. Most of us, I 
 presume, have never witnessed a violent death, 
 and know of such things only by hearsay — only 
 by reading the newspapers and books of history. 
 The consequence is that a kind of feminine soft- 
 ness has come over our tempers —a tenderness 
 which shrinks from the very thought of death 
 and suffering purposely inflicted as intolerable. 
 In military ages any approach to such softness of 
 temper was stigmatized as unmanly, and such a 
 type of character could not flourish, because it 
 was unsuited to the conditions of life in a per- 
 petually belligerent community; but in our own 
 industrial age this mild type of character is fos- 
 tered by all the potency of public approval. But 
 it is not only by restricting the sphere of warfare 
 
The Causes of Persecution. 231 
 
 that our complex industrial civilization has nour- 
 ished a temper that shrinks from the infliction of 
 pain. Productive activity has operated in this 
 way directly, as well as indirectly through re- 
 straining destructive activity. Social life has lost 
 the half-brutal, half-ascetic aspect befitting ages 
 when life was for high and low little more than a 
 struggle for existence. It is a trite remark that 
 the American labourer to-day possesses many phys- 
 ical comforts which a medieval king was unable 
 to secure. ‘Throughout the greater part of civil- 
 ized society, the struggle nowadays is not for the 
 bare means of subsistence, but for the attainment 
 of a certain amount of elegance and luxury. The 
 contrast is great between the medieval baron 
 who, in time of peace, had no resources but in 
 hunting or in tournaments, or in getting drunk, 
 and the modern citizen with his theatre and 
 opera, his lectures and concerts, his novels and 
 magazines lying on the table, his household pic- 
 tures and bric-a-brac, his hours of work at his 
 office or in the stock-exchange, relieved by the 
 quiet domestic enjoyment of the evening. Ac- 
 customed to all this complicated comfort, our 
 growing tendency to shrink from needlessly en- 
 countering with what is disagreeable is still fur- 
 ther enhanced, and this tendency produces a vis- 
 
232 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 ible effect upon our manners. Whatever savours 
 of personal contention, whatever is liable to wound 
 the feelings or disgust the senses, is peremptorily 
 proscribed in the usages of polite society. Com- 
 pared with English and American gentlemen of 
 to-day, the gentlemen of Shakespeare’s plays often 
 talked like boors or ruffians. 
 
 The diminution in the atrociousness of perse- 
 cution, then, is simply one among a hundred il- 
 lustrations of the change in men’s tempers that . 
 has been wrought by the change in men’s occu- 
 pations which has characterized the growth of 
 modern society. From being predominantly war- 
 like and predatory, human activity has come to 
 be predominantly pacific and industrial, and out 
 of this change have grown our milder beliefs as 
 _ well as our milder manners. 
 
 We have not yet, however, got to the bottom 
 of the matter. We have accounted for the de- 
 crease in the cruelty with which the persecuting 
 spirit has manifested itself, but we have now to 
 consider the underlying causes of the temper of 
 mind which has led men to persecute one another ; 
 we have to show, in particular, how it is that, so 
 far as all matters of religious belief are concerned, 
 the persecuting spirit has already greatly dimin- 
 ished in intensity, and will no doubt eventually 
 
The Causes of Persecution. 233 
 
 become extinct among civilized men. We shall 
 find that the change is deeply inwrought with the 
 progress of mankind, both morally and intellect- 
 ually. | 
 The persecuting spirit has its origin morally in 
 the disposition of man to domineer over his fel- 
 low-creatures, intellectually in the assumption that 
 one’s own opinions are infallibly correct. We 
 know very well how children are apt to behave 
 when arguing some question of no great conse- 
 quence. Their little passions warming with the 
 discussion, they pass from argument to abuse, 
 they call each other hard names, and, at last, 
 they begin to pound each other. Most people, I 
 Imagine, must have had experiences of this sort 
 in their childhood. I recollect, when quite a lit- 
 tle boy, coming to blows with a school-mate over 
 the question whether Napoleon really won the 
 battle of Eylau. Now the spirit which prompts 
 a child to pound his companion who resists him 
 in argument is identical with the spirit which 
 prompts a man to calumniate, torture, burn, or 
 otherwise put down and injure his neighbour who 
 refuses to reverence the things which he himself 
 deems sacred. The more we reflect upon it the 
 more we shall be convinced that at bottom the 
 feeling is the same in the two cases, though in the 
 
234. Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 latter it is accompanied and disguised by other 
 feelings. Now, what is this feeling but the dis- 
 position to domineer, to assert one’s own person- 
 ality at the expense of neighbouring personalities, 
 —a disposition eminently characteristic of the 
 brute and of the savage, but less and less charac- 
 teristic of man as he becomes more and more civ- 
 ilized ? Bearing this in mind, and remembering 
 the fable of the wolf and the lamb — remember- 
 ing that a strong passion is never at a loss for 
 reasons, and that no one is more thoroughly the 
 dupe of the false reasons than the man himself 
 who is under the control of the strong passion — 
 remembering this, one has the key to a large part 
 of the history of persecution. The paradox, as 
 regards the “benevolent persecutors,” is a para- 
 dox no longer. It becomes explicable how a man 
 may sincerely believe himself to be doing God’s 
 service, while he is in reality obeying an impulse 
 which, in an ultimate analysis, is neither moré 
 nor less than the impulse to domineer over one’s 
 fellow-creatures. Thus, though the plea of mis- 
 taken benevolence may now and then be properly 
 urged in extenuation of certain special acts of per- 
 secution, it eannot excuse persecution, or obscure 
 the fact that its diminution is largely due to a 
 slow moral progress, — to a decrease in self-asser- 
 
The Causes of Persecution. 235 
 
 tion, and a concomitant increase in respect for the 
 rights of other people. 
 
 Very closely connected with this moral root of 
 the persecuting spirit in mere arrogant self-asser- 
 tion is its intellectual root, in the assumption that 
 one’s own opinions are infallible. That persecu- 
 tion can have no theoretical basis or justification, 
 save on the assumption that somebody’s opinions 
 are infallibly true, has been so thoroughly illus- 
 trated by Mr. Mill in his beautiful essay on ‘ Lib- 
 erty,” that I need not dwell here upon this part 
 of the subject. It behooves us, however, to con- 
 sider in what ways the progress of civilization 
 has contributed to weaken the spirit of self-asser- 
 tion and the assumption of infallibility. 
 
 Obviously, the disposition to domineer over 
 others, to assert one’s own personality at the ex- 
 pense of others, is simply one particular phase of 
 the disposition to kill one’s enemies which char- 
 acterizes human society in its primeval stages of 
 development. It is a temper of mind which was 
 favoured by the general condition of things when 
 there were no political aggregates larger than 
 simple tribes which were chronically at war with 
 one another. What I have said above, in con- 
 sidering the effects upon the atrocity of persecu- 
 tion of the substitution of a normal state of peace 
 
236 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 for a normal state of warfare, will also apply to 
 the present case. The disposition to domineer 
 over your fellow-man— to make him obey you or 
 assent to your opinions, whether he will or no— 
 is only an evanescent phase of the disposition to 
 lull him if he interferes in any way with the ac- 
 complishment of your purposes in life. The very 
 same diminution in the sphere of military activ- 
 ity, attendant upon the aggregation of men into 
 great and complex political societies, which we 
 found to explain the decreasing atrocity of per- 
 secution, explains also the decreasing vitality of 
 its moral foundation in the disposition to dom- 
 ineer over one’s fellow-men. 
 
 The weakening of the assumption of infalli- 
 bility in one’s own opinions is manifestly a con- 
 sequence of the same set of codperating causes. 
 When one’s life is extremely simple and monoto- 
 nous, consisting of very few experiences that are 
 perpetually repeated ; when one is not often com- 
 pelled to test the validity of one’s own conclu- 
 sions by comparing them with the different con- 
 clusions which other people draw from the same 
 data; when one lives amid a certain group of be- 
 liefs, customs, and observances that are never 
 brought into comparison (save, perhaps, in exter- 
 minating warfare) with other differing groups ;— 
 
The Causes of Persecution. 237 
 
 under such conditions as these it is noticeable that 
 one’s opinions are formed with great promptness, 
 and when once formed are unchangeable. These 
 are the conditions under which the opinions of 
 savages are formed, and the chief characteristic in 
 the opinions of savages is their wonderful rigid- 
 ity; you can no more change them than you 
 could teach a fox, when chased by the hunter, to 
 climb a tree like a cat. Or, consider the case of 
 an ignorant woman, in the lower classes otf Civ- 
 ilized society. Her opinions about men and 
 things are formed in an instant, by some mental 
 process of which she can render no account, and 
 when once formed are utterly impervious to fact 
 or to argument. She acts on the tacit assumption 
 that she is infallible, precisely as the savage acts. 
 To think of hesitating for a moment and ques- 
 tioning the validity of their opinions, is some- 
 thing which never happens to either of them. 
 This is the obstinate fashion in which men 
 used to cling to their opinions in that crude state 
 of social development in which each little society 
 was at war with every other, and in which, ac- 
 cordingly, it was impossible to bring a given set 
 of opinions into free contact with another set, 
 within the limits of one and the same society. 
 As men have gradually been brought together 
 
238 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 into great and complex societies, as their opinions 
 have been brought more and more into the focus 
 of a common point of comparison, this rigidity of 
 the mental processes—so like the rigidity of 
 the mental processes of the lower animals — has 
 gradually yielded to circumstances such as favour 
 flexibility. With the case of the savage or the 
 woman who comes to scrub the floor, contrast the 
 case of the scientific philosopher, whose opinions 
 are slowly formed after a long and careful weigh- 
 ing of conflicting evidences, and when once formed 
 are held subject to perpetual revision and mod- 
 ification. On considering these two contrasted 
 cases, it becomes obvious how the aggregation of 
 men into great and complex societies, bringing 
 with it increased variety of experience and in- 
 creased knowledge of the manifold liability to er- 
 ror, has operated to destroy the confident assump- 
 tion of infallibility which characterizes the bigot 
 and the savage. } 
 
 We have now made out, I think, a very fair 
 explanation of the way in which the persecuting 
 spirit has been affected by the general progress 
 of human society. But one of the deepest con- 
 siderations of all still remains to be treated. 
 
 In the early stages of society, as illustrated by 
 such writers as Sir Henry Maine, the unit of 
 
The Causes of Persecution. 239 
 
 society is not the individual, but the family or 
 clan. Ina tribe of primitive savages there is no 
 such thing as individual rights or individual ob- 
 ligations, in the modern sense. It is the clan as 
 a whole that incurs obligations and asserts its 
 rights as far as it is concerned with adjacent 
 clans. Amid the pressing interests of the tribe, 
 in the fierce struggle for existence, the individual 
 has no chance whatever for especial consideration. 
 The traces of this state of things confront us con- 
 tinually as we study ancient history, where no 
 fact is more conspicuous than the utterly ruthless 
 way in which the individual is sacrificed to the 
 state. The bearing of this state of things upon 
 the history of persecution goes farther than any- 
 thing else toward explaining that dreadful his- 
 tory. In the early stages of society, when only 
 small political aggregates have been formed, and 
 when each little aggregate is perpetually strug- 
 gling for its life with adjacent aggregates, the 
 only kind of responsibility known to the tribe is 
 corporate responsibility. The tribe, as a whole, 
 is held to be responsible corporately for the acts 
 of each of its members, and hence it is neces- 
 sary that the acts and beliefs of every one of the 
 members should be subject to the approval of the 
 tribe. If any one individual does something that 
 
240 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 is displeasing to the gods, the whole tribe is liable 
 to be punished for the misdeed of this one per- 
 son. This feeling was universal in ancient so- 
 ciety, and, until we realize how intense it was, we 
 shall be unable to understand some of the most 
 remarkable scenes of ancient history. Take, for 
 example, the frantic excitement which was stirred 
 up in Athens, just before the expedition against 
 Syracuse, by the mutilation of the rude way-side 
 statues of Hermes. It is impossible for a modern 
 man to understand this furious excitement unless 
 he duly considers the fact that, in the minds of 
 the Athenians, the whole community — and not 
 merely the individual criminals concerned — was 
 responsible to the gods for this outrage. The 
 whole community might be visited by the angry 
 gods with famine and plague because of the mis- 
 deeds of a few of its graceless members. 
 
 This intense feeling of corporate responsibility 
 pervades all the life of ancient society, and by 
 keeping it in mind we shall understand many oc- 
 currences which without this key we should find 
 incomprehensible. When we bethink ourselves 
 how far such deeply rooted feelings propagate 
 themselves in history, we shall be inclined, I 
 think, to find in this sense of corporate responsi- 
 bility the weightiest cause of those deeds of per- 
 
The Causes of Persecution. 241 
 
 secution which have made history hideous. To 
 remove the heretic, lest God curse us all for his 
 sake, —this no doubt has been the feeling that, 
 more than any other, has justified the use of racks 
 and thumb-screws. 
 
 But with the progress of society toward wider 
 and wider political aggregation, and toward greater 
 and greater political stability, — along with the 
 growing complexity of industrial processes, and 
 along with the partial elimination of warfare, — 
 there has slowly grown up a feeling that it is the 
 individual, and not the tribe or the society, that 
 is ultimately responsible for the individual’s opin- 
 ions on matters of religion. Whatever we may 
 think to-day about the results or the method of 
 Mr. Robert Ingersoll, we certainly do not enter- 
 tain the dread that because of Mr. Ingersoll’s 
 crude opinions, or his intrusive manner of ex- 
 pressing them, we are in danger of a famine, a 
 plague, or a civil war next year. The aggrega- 
 tion of small communities into great nations, and 
 the growing complexity of the industrial proc- 
 esses by which great nations are sustained, have 
 entirely obliterated in our minds the recollection 
 of the kinds of belief and the kinds of moral ob- 
 ligation which characterized the primitive tribal 
 
 communities. The phase of feeling characteris- 
 16 
 
242 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 tic of the primitive community showed itself all 
 through the Middle Ages. In the following pa- 
 per I shall show how the beginnings of modern 
 history were signalized by the revolt of Luther 
 against the doctrine of corporate responsibility 
 for opinion, and against the assumption of infalli- 
 bility on the part of a special body of men. 
 
 November, 1880. 
 
EX; 
 THE ORIGINS OF PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 In the year 1609 one of the most atrocious 
 crimes of which history preserves the record was 
 perpetrated by the Spanish government. The 
 Moriscoes, or Christianized descendants of the 
 conquered Moors, had long been objects of sus- 
 picion and hatred to the Spaniards, and especially 
 to the Spanish clergy. During the sixteenth cen- 
 tury they had been so cruelly treated that in 1568 
 they had risen in rebellion among the mountains 
 of Granada, and it had taken three years of ob- 
 stinate fighting to bring them to terms. Their de- 
 feat was so crushing that it was no longer possible 
 to regard them as politically dangerous, but their 
 orthodoxy was strongly suspected, inasmuch as 
 the grandparents of the present generation had 
 been converted to Christianity only by brute force. 
 In 1602 the Archbishop of Valencia proposed that 
 ‘all the Moriscoes in the kingdom, with the excep- 
 tion of children under seven years of age, should 
 be forthwith driven into exile, that the nation 
 
244 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 might no longer be polluted by the slightest sus- 
 picion of unbelief. The Archbishop of Toledo, 
 primate of Spain, heartily agreed with his rever- 
 end brother, save as far as concerned the little 
 children, whom he thought should be included in 
 the general banishment. ‘To Bleda, the famous 
 Dominican, even these measures seemed insuf- 
 ficient, and he argued that all the Moriscoes in 
 Spain — men, women, and children even to the 
 new-born babe — should be ruthlessly murdered, 
 ‘‘ because it was impossible to tell which of them 
 were Christians at heart, and it was enough to 
 leave the matter to God, who knew his own, and 
 who would reward in the next world those who 
 were really Catholics.” The views of the Arch- 
 bishop of Toledo finally prevailed, and in 1609, as 
 Mr. Buckle puts it, “about one million of the 
 most industrious inhabitants of Spain were hunted 
 out like beasts, because the sincerity of their re- 
 ligious opinions was doubtful.” Their deportation 
 to Morocco was attended by characteristic bar- 
 barities. The number of those massacred on the 
 way seems to have exceeded the number of the 
 victims of Saint Bartholomew; while of those 
 who reached Africa, thousands were enslaved by 
 Mohammedan Moors, or slain by robbers, or 
 starved in the desert. 
 
The Vrigins of Protestantism. 245 
 
 Now these Moriscoes, thus driven from the land 
 by ecclesiastical bigotry, were the most skilful 
 labourers Spain possessed. By their expulsion 
 the manufacture of silk and paper was destroyed, 
 the cultivation of sugar, rice, and cotton came to 
 an end, the wool-trade stopped, and irrigation of 
 the soil was discontinued. The disturbance of 
 industry, and the consequent distress, were so 
 great and so far-reaching that by the end of the 
 seventeenth century the population of Madrid had 
 decreased by one half, and that of Seville by three 
 quarters; whole villages were deserted, large por- 
 tions of the arable land went out of cultivation, 
 and brigandage gained a foot-hold which it has 
 ever since kept. In short, the economic ruin of 
 Spain may be said to date from the expulsion of 
 the Moriscoes: after nearly three hundred years 
 the country has not yet recovered from the dis- 
 astrous effects of that unparalleled crime and 
 blunder. 
 
 Yet this atrocious deed was done with the unan- 
 imous approval of the Spanish people. Even the 
 gentle-hearted and high-minded Cervantes ap- 
 plauded it, while Davila characterized it as the 
 most glorious event in all Spanish history. Nay, 
 even in recent times, the eminent historian La- 
 fuente, while recognizing the terrible economic 
 
246 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 results of the measure, maintains that it was 
 nevertheless productive of immense benefit by se- 
 curing the ‘religious unity” of the whole peo- 
 ple. Here we have the true Spanish idea —or 
 to speak more accurately, the true ecclesiastical 
 idea, which, through an unfortunate combination 
 of circumstances, has always dominated the Span- 
 iards more completely than any other European 
 people, but which has wrought mischief enough 
 in other countries than Spain. To insure absolute 
 “religious unity,” to insure that from the Pyre- 
 nees to Gibraltar all people should think exactly 
 alike about questions which are confessedly un- 
 fathomable by the human mind, — this seemed to 
 the Spaniard an end of such supreme importance 
 as to justify the destruction of two hundred thou- 
 sand lives, and the overthrow of some of the chief 
 industries of the kingdom. The annals of perse- 
 cution in other countries serve but to point the 
 same moral. Measured by the quantity of suf- 
 fering it has entailed, as well as by the whole- 
 sale disregard of moral rectitude it has involved, 
 the history of the attempt to enforce “ religious 
 unity ” is, no doubt, the blackest of all the black 
 chapters in the awful career of mankind upon 
 the earth. 
 
 Yet, no doubt, the object for which all this 
 
The Origins of Protestantism. 247 
 
 agony has been inflicted, and all this villainy per- 
 petrated, is an utterly worthless object, when con- 
 sidered with reference to the conditions of life in a 
 civilized society. Not only is it not desirable that 
 all the members of the community should hold 
 the same opinions about religious matters, but it is 
 far better that they should not all hold the same 
 opinions. To the Frenchman’s sneer about the 
 English, who have twenty religions and only one 
 sauce, I should answer: By all means let us have 
 twenty religions, even if we can have but one 
 sauce. In comparison with the inscrutable reali- 
 ties which religion postulates, our most elaborate 
 attempts at theology are so feeble that it is not 
 likely that any given set of opinions can represent 
 more than the tiniest segment of the truth : 
 ‘‘ Our little systems have their day; 
 They have their day and cease to be; 
 
 They are but broken lights of Thee, 
 And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.” 
 
 In view of this weakness of reason, when con- 
 fronted with the mighty problems of religion, it 
 behooves each one of us to greet his neighbour’s 
 opinions as, perhaps, containing a glimpse of truth 
 which his own have lacked; not to scoff or frown 
 at them as “different”? from his own. If ‘re- 
 ligious unity” is ever to have any value, it can 
 
248 Kzxeursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 only be when it is reached as the outcome of the 
 free untrammelled working of countless individual 
 minds. Until it is reached in this way, “ religious 
 unity” can mean nothing but “ intellectual tor- 
 pidity where religious questions are concerned; ” 
 and, meanwhile, diversity of opinion is the best 
 guarantee we can have that a healthy intellectual 
 activity is going on. 
 
 In the present paper, however, I propose to ex- 
 amine the desire to enforce “ religious unity ” by 
 the light of the comparative method ; let us see 
 if there has not existed a state of society in which 
 it may have been desirable that all the members 
 of the community should think alike, on religious 
 as well as on other subjects. 
 
 Toward the close of my paper on “The Causes 
 of Persecution,” I called attention to the intense 
 feeling of corporate responsibility which pervaded 
 all the life of ancient society, and which, no doubt, 
 goes farther than anything else toward explaining 
 the genesis of persecution. To understand the 
 origin and meaning of this notion of corporate re- 
 sponsibility, we must carry our thoughts back to 
 that primitive state of society when there are no 
 political aggregates more extensive than the clan, 
 or, at any rate, than the tribe, formed by the co- 
 alescence of kindred clans. In this lowest stage 
 
The Origins of Protestantism. 249 
 
 of human progress, blood-relationship furnishes 
 the only possible bond by which any concert of 
 action among men can be secured. The ideas of 
 right and duty, in so far as recognized at all by 
 the dim intelligence of nascent humanity, are rec- 
 ognized only within the limits of ascertainable 
 blood-relationship. The comparative study of in- 
 stitutions, among civilized people and among sav- 
 ages, has established beyond doubt that this was 
 the social condition of mankind at the beginning 
 of its distinctively human career. I have myself 
 shown that the very same codperating processes 
 which originated the family, originated, also, those 
 intellectual and moral differences by which hu- 
 manity was first raised above the common level of 
 apehood.t Had the infancy of man been com- 
 pleted within a period of three or four months, 
 as is the case with other mammals, man would 
 never have become human: there would have 
 been no social aggregation, and there could not 
 have been originated that long-enduring process 
 of intellectual and moral development which was 
 rendered possible only through social aggregation, 
 and which went on so far during prehistoric times 
 as to raise the human brain to nearly twice the 
 
 1 See below, the paper on the ‘Meaning of Infancy.’’ See also 
 Darwinism and other Essays, pp. 42-47. 
 
250 Hecursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 dimensions of the brain of the highest ape. But 
 the prolonging of the period of helpless infancy 
 brought with it the genesis of the family, and 
 thus inaugurated the first enduring principle of 
 concerted action among human beings. 
 
 By simple expansion, the family grew into the 
 clan, and by expansion and coalescence small 
 groups of clans grew into the tribe ; and through- 
 out these earliest stages of social organization the 
 principle of concerted action remains the same 
 that was first inaugurated by the genesis of the 
 family. In the tribal stage the ideas of right and 
 wrong are recognized, but their application is 
 strictly determined by the necessities of the tribe. 
 Right actions are those which help, or are sup- 
 posed to help, the tribe in its perpetual struggle 
 for existence with surrounding tribes; wrong ac- 
 tions are those which hurt, or are supposed to 
 hurt, the tribe’s chances of success. It is wrong 
 to murder a fellow-tribesman, though human sac- 
 rifices or female infanticide may be sanctioned 
 from motives of general policy ; it is praiseworthy 
 to murder a stranger, unless perhaps when he be- 
 longs to some powerful tribe which it is impru- 
 dent to offend. Above all things, the prime social 
 and political necessity is social cohesion within 
 the tribal limits, for unless such social cohesion 
 
The Origins of Protestantism. 251 
 
 be maintained, the very existence of the tribe is 
 likely to be extinguished in bloodshed. Such was 
 doubtless in general the state of things which 
 lasted for more than four thousand centuries, dur- 
 ing which men lived and died upon the earth 
 before they had acquired enough intelligence or 
 enough political stability to leave anywhere a 
 written record of their thoughts and deeds. Ten 
 or twelve thousand generations of ruthless mili- 
 tary discipline! ten or twelve thousand genera- 
 tions of rigorous conformity to tribal require- 
 ments, enforced under the perpetual threat of 
 tribal extinction! Such was the terrible school- 
 ing that was needed to fit men for aggregation 
 into great and complex societies. Included in this 
 military discipline, as part and parcel of it, was 
 an incipient ecclesiastical discipline. Long before 
 the dawn of history, ancestor-worship had begun. 
 The ghosts of dead chieftains, in this primitive 
 philosophy, survived as the tutelar deities of the 
 tribe, ready now, as of old in their life-time, to 
 punish misdemeanours, but clothed with a power 
 all the more vast and awful, as its nature and 
 limits were but vaguely and incoherently imag- 
 ined. To offend in any particular against the 
 ethical and ceremonial code established from time 
 immemorial under the pressure of tribal necessi- 
 
252 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 ties, would be to invite the vengeance of the tute: 
 lar deities. The offender must be curtailed of his 
 liberty, or maimed, or killed, or else by an easy 
 inference the fellow-tribesmen would be liable to 
 be held as participators in the offence, and dire 
 calamity might thus befall the whole tribe. Tem- 
 pest or famine or pestilence or defeat in battle 
 might be expected by the tribe which should fail 
 to punish an offence on the part of one of its 
 members against the tutelar deities. This feel- 
 ing of corporate responsibility is always to be 
 found among tribally organized barbarians; it 
 existed among our own barbaric ancestors; ex- 
 amples of it are numerous in Greco-Roman antigq- 
 uity ; and there can be no doubt that in primitive 
 society the feeling was universally prevalent and 
 ferociously intense withal, since no other human 
 passion is so cruel as fear, and no other kind of 
 fear is so cruel as the vague dread of the super- 
 natural. And obviously there is no kind of con- 
 duct which would so surely awaken the dread of 
 supernatural vengeance as any neglect of the 
 time-honoured rites due to the tutelar deities, or 
 any expression of opinion, whether serious or flip- 
 pant, which might be interpreted as derogatory 
 to their awful dignity. 
 
 The feeling of corporate responsibility, there 
 
The Origins of Protestantism. 253 
 
 fore, grew out of the necessities of that primeval 
 society in which the highest known order of polit- 
 ical organization was the tribe, and in which 
 neighbouring tribes were perpetually at war with 
 each other. Under such circumstances, those 
 tribes in which the feeling of corporate respon- 
 sibility was most intense must in general have 
 shown the highest capacity for coherent organiza- 
 tion, and must have subjugated or extinguished 
 those tribes in which the feeling was more feebly 
 developed. The feeling must have grown by nat- 
 ural selection until it became, as it were, part and 
 parcel of the mental constitution of mankind. No 
 wonder that we find the feeling so strongly devel- 
 oped among the highly cultured Greeks and Ro- 
 mans and Jews. A feeling so deeply rooted in 
 men’s ancestral experiences must needs survive 
 long after the establishment of social conditions 
 totally different from the conditions which im- 
 planted it. If we wish for evidence that this 
 sense of corporate responsibility has lain at the 
 bottom of a great part of the persecution which 
 has made ecclesiastical history so abominable, we 
 may find it, ready to hand, in the tale of wicked- 
 ness with which I began the present discussion. 
 One of the arguments for the banishment of 
 the Moriscoes, upon which the Archbishop of 
 
254 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Valencia mainly relied, was the argument that 
 the whole Spanish people were in the sight of 
 Heaven responsible for the doubtful orthodoxy of 
 these converts from Islam. ‘ He declared that 
 the Armada, which Philip IT. sent against Eng- 
 land in 1588, had been destroyed because God 
 would not allow even that pious enterprise to suc- 
 ceed while those who undertook it left heretics 
 undisturbed at home. For the same reason, the 
 late expedition to Algiers had failed; it being 
 evidently the will of Heaven that nothing should 
 prosper while Spain was inhabited by apostates.”’ ! 
 This argument, which produced a powerful effect 
 upon both king and people, was conceived pre- 
 cisely in the spirit of the primeval savage. And 
 so when Mary Tudor, being afflicted with dropsy, 
 supposed that she was about to give birth to a 
 prince who should exclude from the succession 
 the heretical Elizabeth, when the Ze Deum was 
 sung in St. Paul’s, and vessels on the Thames 
 fired salutes, and merry bells were set ringing in 
 
 ~ all the churches, and still the expected prince did 
 
 not make his appearance; when, after the keen 
 
 disappointment, the queen began to reason with 
 
 herself, “she could not doubt that her hopes had 
 
 been at one time well founded ; but for some fault, 
 1 Buckle, vol. ii. p. 47. 
 
The Origins of Protestantism. 209 
 
 some error in herself, God had delayed the fulfil- 
 ment of His promise. And what could that crime 
 be? The accursed thing was still in the realm. 
 She had been raised up, like the judges in Israel, 
 for the extermination of God’s enemies; and she 
 had smitten but a few here and there, when, like 
 the evil spirits, their name was legion.” ! As the 
 practical result of these pious meditations, some 
 fifty Protestants — one of my own ancestors 
 among them — were forthwith burned at the 
 stake. Obviously, Mary’s reasoning, like that of 
 the Spanish archbishop, had no validity or sig- 
 nificance whatever, except as it appealed to that 
 terrible sense of corporate responsibility which 
 they had inherited as a tradition from prehistoric 
 times. 
 
 Now, although the feeling of corporate respon- 
 sibility for opinions was still so powerful as re- 
 cently as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 
 although plentiful traces of it may still be found 
 at the present day, nevertheless the state of things 
 by which the feeling was logically justified has 
 long since passed away. And it has passed away, 
 no doubt, never to return. It began to pass away 
 so soon as men began to become organized into 
 great nations, covering a vast extent of territory, 
 
 1 Froude, History of England, vi. 330. 
 
256 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 and secured by their concentrated military strength 
 against the gravest dangers of barbaric attack. 
 In European history, the first conspicuous ap- 
 proach to this new state of things was made by 
 the tremendous conquests of Rome. For a period 
 of five centuries after the overthrow of Carthage 
 and Macedonia, the Roman government held to- 
 gether a greater number of men of different races, 
 tongues, and faiths than had ever before been so 
 long held together since the world began; and, 
 throughout the vast territory over which it held 
 sway, it succeeded in maintaining a state of peace 
 which, imperfect and fitful as it seems from the 
 point of view which we moderns have reached, 
 still presented a striking contrast to the perpetual 
 and universal warfare of primitive peoples. Under 
 this condition of things, the old ideas and feelings 
 began to be modified in many ways. The pas- 
 sage from ancient to modern ideas of social obli- 
 gation can be largely traced in the wonderfully 
 suggestive history of the Roman jurisprudence. 
 In the early ages of the Republic we find the legal 
 existence of the individual well-nigh merged in 
 that of his family, and we find his duties and ob- 
 ligations defined entirely by the status in which 
 he is born. But, by the time of the great codifi- 
 cation which went on under the Empire we find 
 
The Origins of Protestantism. 257 
 
 the legal existence of the individual distinctly 
 acknowledged, and his duties and obligations 
 largely determined by contract, as is the case in 
 modern society. Manifestly, the relations sus- 
 tained by the individual toward so great a whole 
 as the Empire could not be like the relations sus- 
 tained by the individual toward so small a whole 
 as the tribe. Through the sheer breaking up of 
 tribal ideas of obligation which the Empire every- 
 where effected, the ideas of individual obligation 
 characteristic of modern society began to emerge 
 into the foreground. The most fundamental and 
 far-reaching effect of Roman conquest was the de- 
 composition of primitive ideas, political and social, 
 legal and religious. The world of separate tribes 
 and separate cities, each with its peculiar laws, 
 and each with its local deities and rites, came to 
 an end, and was replaced by an organized Euro- 
 pean world, with its Roman law, based on ethical 
 principles acknowledged by vast masses of men, 
 and with its Christian religion, based on the as- 
 sertion of the universal brotherhood of men and 
 the universal fatherhood of God. 
 
 As in the Roman law, so also in Christianity, 
 the innumerable new relations into which men 
 were thrown resulted in a great deal of abstrac- 
 
 tion and generalization concerning the scope of 
 17 
 
258 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 men’s rights and duties. In the one case as in 
 the other, the liberation of the individual from 
 the old tribal bonds was effected by the process 
 which brought him into immediate relations with 
 a state possessing a dominion that was practically 
 universal, and with Deity regarded as eternally 
 ruling the whole created world. The individual 
 salvation of each human being, as dependent 
 upon his spiritual attitude toward his heavenly 
 Father, is an idea distinctly present in Christian- 
 ity as first enunciated, and in the prominence 
 assumed by this grand idea the old notion of 
 tribal allegiance to a tutelar deity fades entirely 
 out of sight. The idea that salvation is to be 
 attained through conformity to a certain pre- 
 scribed set of opinions or of ritual observances, 
 or through obedience to a certain ordained priest- 
 hood, finds no support whatever in the teachings 
 of Jesus as reported in the Gospels. So far from 
 lending support to this primitive idea of religions 
 obligation, Gospel Christianity is in itself a most 
 emphatic protest against it; and it was through 
 this wholesale discarding of primitive ideas that 
 Christianity secured from the outset an element 
 of permanence such as no other scheme of re- 
 ligion has ever possessed. Miraculous legend, 
 impressive ceremonial, priestly devotion, doctrines 
 
The Origins of Protestantism. 259 
 
 awful or consoling, — these things have at times 
 been potent influences in maintaining the sway 
 of Christianity over the human mind; but the 
 potency of such influences as these is limited 
 in extent and in duration, — it is dependent 
 upon transient states of society and transient 
 phases of opinion. The permanent element in 
 Christianity — the feature whereby it may still 
 claim the allegiance of modern thinkers who re- 
 ject the supernatural theology and the symbolic 
 ritual — is the fact of its placing the conditions 
 of salvation, not in doctrine or in ceremonial, 
 but in right conduct as flowing from the impulse 
 toward a higher life in which religion most es- 
 sentially consists. Not they that say unto me, 
 “Lord, Lord,” but they that do the will of our 
 Father in heaven, — such was the first authorita- 
 tive definition of the aspect of human life with 
 which Christianity primarily concerns itself. 
 Thus, Christianity in its earliest form may be 
 regarded as a kind of Protestantism, in which old 
 heathen ideas of conformity to tribal require- 
 ments as to doctrine and ritual were utterly dis- 
 carded, and in which religion was presented as 
 something which concerns the individual alone in 
 the presence of the infinite God. But so lofty a 
 conception as this could not be realized so long as 
 
260 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Christianity had to make its way as a militant 
 force among peoples who were still largely under 
 the influence of primeval ideas of corporate re- 
 sponsibility for opinion. Already, in their strug- 
 gle with the pagan society of the Empire, the 
 preachers of the new ideas found it necessary to 
 become organized as a “church militant,” and to 
 have certain recognized dogmas, or — to use the 
 old and expressive term — symbols, as a sort of 
 banner around which to rally their adherents. 
 This militant character of the early church ex- 
 plains the persistency with which all gnostic or 
 rationalizing interpretations of sacred mysteries 
 were condemned and set aside; they were liable 
 to the charge of offering some possible ground of 
 compromise with pagan philosophic ideas. The 
 most rigid and uncompromising symbol — the 
 one which involved the most complete self-sur- 
 render to the interests of the common struggle — 
 was the one which worked the best; and hence 
 there lay a certain sort of rude practical logic 
 beneath the much-derided and often misquoted 
 phrase of Tertullian, Credo quia impossibile.1 To 
 rationalize the new dogma of the Trinity was in 
 itself to make a quasi-concession to the Neo- 
 
 1 This point is well brought out in the Rev. J. H. Allen’s excellent 
 little book, Christian History in its Three Great Periods. 
 
The Origins of Protestantism. 261 
 
 Platonists; and herein was reason enough why 
 the Athanasian interpretation should supplant 
 the Arian. An organized priesthood was neces- 
 sary, too, in order to preserve the liberty of the 
 Church at a time when the political structure of 
 society was such that there was no other avail- 
 able check upon the autocratic power of the em- 
 perors. In its attitude as a “church militant,” 
 therefore, Christianity was compelled to enforce 
 conformity to dogma, and obedience to priestly 
 authority ; and in doing these things, the feeling, 
 still rife among men, to which it appealed, was 
 the old feeling of corporate responsibility for 
 opinion. 
 
 The old feeling, thus strongly appealed to at a 
 time when its basis in the conditions of primeval 
 society had been destroyed, received still stronger 
 reinforcement when the Church took upon itself 
 the tremendous task — to which the political 
 forces of the Empire were no longer competent — 
 of civilizing the barbaric world. From the time 
 of Ulfilas to the time of Anschar there were five 
 centuries of militancy, during which all the 
 power of the spiritual as well as of the secular 
 arm was taxed to the utmost in the work of 
 making the Teutonic barbarians adopt the re- 
 sults of Graeco-Roman civilization. In warfare of 
 
262 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 this sort, the Church could do nothing less than 
 appeal to the only available religious conceptions 
 with which the past experience of its converts 
 had made them familiar. As in the political 
 system of these ages of transition between an- 
 cient and modern civilization we observe a partial 
 and temporary retrogression toward a pre-Roman 
 tribal and local polity, — as exemplified in some 
 of the aspects of feudalism, — so too in religious 
 conceptions we may observe a partial and tem- 
 porary renascence of primitive pagan ideas. To 
 say that the Church adopted many pagan sym- 
 bols is only to say that the great men who shaped 
 its missionary policy talked to their pagan con- 
 verts in the language which they were best capa- 
 ble of understanding. The Church thus adopted 
 the doctrine of corporate responsibility for opin- 
 ion, very much as it adopted Yule-tide and 
 Easter feasts, and the worship, under a scriptural 
 name, of the Berecynthian Mother. The outcome 
 of all this was that in the process of Christianiz- 
 ing the pagan world Christianity itself became 
 more or less deeply paganized. Hence those ter- 
 rible persecutions, of Albigensian and other here- 
 tics, which marked the epoch of the Church’s 
 greatest supremacy, and which no one thought of 
 justifying from the teachings of Jesus, but only 
 
The Origins of Protestantism. 263 
 
 from Old Testament texts expressing the crude 
 primitive notions of the Jews in their semi-bar- 
 barous period. 
 
 But now, after the Teutonic and Slavic bar- 
 barians had become pretty nearly all converted ; 
 after Eutope had come to feel itself reasonably 
 secure against being overrun by Saracens or 
 Mongols; after the principal European kingdoms 
 had arrived at something like political stability ; 
 after the Crusades had shaken up men’s ideas by 
 bringing the civilizations of the East and West in 
 contact with each other; and after the partly 
 paganized Church had begun to put forth such 
 pretensions as, if successful, would have con- 
 verted Europe into a caliphate, and would thus 
 have inflicted upon it the doom of stagnation like 
 that which has overtaken the Mohammedan 
 world; after this state of things had been reached, 
 in the course of the thirteenth century, then 
 symptoms of dissent began to manifest them- 
 selves, — vague murmurs, which heralded the 
 great Protestant storm that was gathering. It 
 was in the thirteenth century that the Church 
 thought it necessary to desecrate the noble en- 
 thusiasm which had inspired the Crusades, by 
 employing it to crush out heresy with fire and 
 sword in the southern parts of France, — thus 
 
264 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 beginning that detestable scheme of robbing the 
 French nation of its nimblest minds and strongest 
 characters, which was continued in scenes like 
 the St. Bartholomew, and was consummated in 
 the infamous dragonnades of 1685. It was in 
 the thirteenth century, too, that the Spanish 
 mind hit upon that ingenious device of the In- 
 quisition, whereby all speculative originality was 
 to be effectually extinguished in so-called “ acts- 
 of-faith,” to the proper performance of which an 
 abundant supply of fire-wood was the principal 
 requisite. These new developments of the per- 
 secuting spirit show how formidable the spirit of 
 dissent was then becoming. This spirit of dis- 
 sent, both at that time and in later days, was 
 fond of assuming the form of a protest against 
 the pagan corruptions of the Church, and in be- 
 half of a return to the simplicity of organization, 
 of doctrine, and of ritual, and to the purity of 
 life, which characterized the Christianity of the 
 apostolic age. This common element is discern- 
 ible alike in the Bogomilians of the East, and in 
 the Albigensians, Hussites, and Lollards of the 
 West; and in the Puritanism of later times it is 
 conspicuous. The majestic revolt of Luther — 
 an event which did more for true religion than 
 anything which had happened in the world since 
 
The Origins of Protestantism. 265 
 
 the days of Jesus and Paul — can in nowise 
 be likened to the innumerable schisms which 
 have divided the Church on special points of doc- 
 trine, organization, and ritual. Its scope and im- 
 portance were far greater than any of these, im- 
 portant as many of these have been. It took 
 issue with the fundamental assumption upon 
 which the Church had come, by slow degrees, to 
 take its stand — the assumption of corporate re- 
 sponsibility for opinion and ceremonial. Its de- 
 nial, though not explicit in every instance, was 
 nevertheless couched in such wise as to cover im- 
 plicitly the whole ground upon which the Church 
 assumed the right to interfere with individual 
 freedom. ‘The protest of Luther, when its logical 
 implications are unfolded, involves the assertion 
 of the right of each individual to decide for him- 
 self what theological doctrines he can or can not 
 accept, what ecclesiastical observances he shall 
 or shall not adopt, and generally in what way he 
 is to worship God. It has, indeed, required three 
 centuries of discussion, since Luther’s time, to un- 
 fold all the logical implications of Protestantism. 
 The theory of life which it contained was too 
 lofty to be thoroughly and consistently under- 
 stood, even by those who first conceived it dis- 
 tinctly enough to be willing to fight for it; and 
 
266 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 most Protestant churches have practically re- 
 tained fragments here and there of the old Ro- 
 manist and quasi-pagan assumption of corporate 
 responsibility. The struggle of the Protestant 
 world, however, has, in the main, been a struggle 
 in behalf of the principle of individual respon- 
 sibility, and in general the most energetic Prot- 
 estants have been found on the side of absolute 
 freedom in politics, which always means absolute 
 freedom in religion sooner or later. It was the 
 intensely Protestant Puritans who overthrew the 
 last attempts at tyranny on the part of English 
 kings, both in England and in America. 
 
 It would not be correct, therefore, to describe 
 Protestantism — any more than it would be cor- 
 rect to describe Christianity —as a system of 
 doctrines. To point to any particular doctrines 
 held in common by all Protestants would be as 
 difficult as to point to any particular doctrines 
 held in common by all Christians. Viewed in 
 the light of its own historic genesis, Protest- 
 antism may be described as that kind of religious 
 polity which is based upon the conception of in- 
 dividual responsibility for opinion. The antago- 
 nist conception — of corporate responsibility for 
 opinion —had its origin and justification in the 
 military necessities of primeval society, when 
 
The Origins of Protestantism. | 267 
 
 there were no political aggregates larger than the 
 tribe. With the aggregation of men into great, 
 complex, and stable political aggregates, — in 
 other words, with the passing away of the cir- 
 cumstances by which the notion of corporate re- 
 sponsibility was historically justified, —the notion 
 began to lose its hold upon men’s minds. As 
 men in the ordinary affairs of life began to pro- 
 ceed upon the notion of individual responsibility, 
 they began to apply the same principle to relig- 
 ious matters; and great religious teachers began 
 to protest against the various implications of the 
 primeval notion. Such a protest was implicitly 
 made by the Founder of Christianity, who in- 
 sisted upon the importance of conduct and the 
 worthlessness of ceremonial and formula; and 
 fifteen centuries later, after Europe had emerged 
 from a life-and-death struggle with barbarism, in 
 which primitive notions had been partially re- 
 vived and the Church had become partially pa- 
 ganized, a similar protest, in the name of Christ, 
 was explicitly made by Martin Luther. 
 
 January, 1881. 
 
>. & 
 THE TRUE LESSON OF PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 SrincE the day when Martin Luther posted his 
 audacious heresies on the church-door at Witten- 
 berg, a great change has come over men’s minds, 
 the full significance cf which is even yet but 
 rarely comprehended. To inquire into the na- 
 ture of this change, and into what we may per- 
 haps call its ultimate tendency, is well worth 
 our while, whether as students of history or as 
 students of philosophy. In outward aspect, the 
 results of Protestantism have come to be very 
 different to-day from what they were at first. 
 The immediate consequence of Luther’s successful 
 revolt was the formation of a great number of lit- 
 tle churches, each with its creed as clean-cut and 
 as thoroughly dried as the creed of the great 
 church from which they had separated, each mak- 
 ing practically the same assumption of absolute 
 infallibility, each laying down an intellectual as- 
 
 1 An address delivered before a Convention of Unitarian clergy- 
 men at Princeton, Mass., October 4, 1881. 
 
The True Lesson of Protestantism. 269 
 
 sent to sundry transcendental dogmas as an ex- 
 clusive condition of salvation. This formation of 
 new sects has gone on down to the present time, 
 and there is no reason why it should not continue 
 in future; but the period when educated men, 
 of great and original powers, could take part in 
 work of this sort has gone by forever. ‘The fore- 
 most men are no longer heresiarchs; they are 
 free-thinkers, each on his own account; and the 
 formation of new sects is something which in the 
 future is likely to be more and more confined to 
 ignorant or half-educated classes of people. At 
 the present day it is not the formation of new 
 sects, but the decomposition of the old ones, that 
 is the conspicuous phenomenon inviting our atten- 
 tion. The latter half of the nineteenth century 
 will be known to the future historian as espe- 
 cially the era of the decomposition of orthodoxies. 
 People, as a rule, do not now pass over from one 
 church into another, but they remain in their 
 own churches while modifying their theological 
 opinions, and in this way the orthodoxy of every 
 church is gradually but surely losing its con- 
 sistency. Nor is it only the laymen of whom 
 this can be said; for the clergy every now and 
 then set the example. An eminent Congregation- 
 alist minister in Connecticut, some few years 
 
270 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 since, was asked why he did not go over to the 
 Unitarians, inasmuch as he not only kept Strauss 
 and Renan in his library, but even loaned them 
 to young men, and publicly eulogized Herbert 
 Spencer, and went so far one day as to take part 
 in the dedication of a Jewish synagogue. The 
 quaint and shrewd reply was: “I don’t see why 
 the Unitarians should monopolize all the free- 
 thinking ; I prefer to carry my candle where it 
 is darkest!” It is only four or five years since a 
 learned English bishop completed his voluminous 
 commentary on the Pentateuch, in which the 
 sacred text is handled with as much freedom as 
 Mr. Paley shows in dealing with the Homeric 
 poems, or Mr. Grote in expounding the dialogues 
 of Plato. And the history of this, as of other 
 less conspicuous acts of heresy, has been held to 
 show that practically an Anglican divine may 
 preach whatever doctrine he likes — provided, 
 doubtless, that he avoid certain obnoxious catch- 
 words. Among Unitarians this doctrinal latitude 
 is too well known to require any illustration. 
 Yet it is well not to forget that, forty years ago, 
 Theodore Parker was virtually driven out of the 
 Unitarian Church for saying the same sort of 
 things which may be heard to-day from half the 
 Unitarian pulpits in New England. 
 
The True Lesson of Protestantism. 271 
 
 In view of all this, it is not strange if we are 
 sometimes led to ask, What is to be the final out- 
 come of this decomposition of orthodoxies? The 
 total destruction of religious creeds was long ago 
 predicted by Catholic controversialists as an in- 
 evitable result of the exercise of that right of 
 private judgment which is the fundamental prin- 
 ciple of Protestantism ; and now it begins to look 
 as if the Catholic prediction were likely to be ful- 
 filled, although Protestant churches have warmly 
 resented the imputation, and have too often taken 
 pains to show that in strait and uncompromising 
 bigotry they could vie with their great antago- 
 nist. While Catholics, on the one hand, have 
 foretold this result by way of warning and op- 
 probrium, on the other hand it has been no less 
 confidently predicted by atheists, materialists, 
 and positivists by way of encouragement and ap- 
 proval. To Comte the chaos of opinion which 
 prevails in modern society afforded proof that the 
 time was ripe for discarding theology and meta- 
 physics altogether, and for confining the opera- 
 tions of the human mind hereafter to the simple 
 content of observed facts. To Dr. Biichner and 
 his friends it presages the speedy advent of that 
 glorious millennium when all men shall felicitate 
 themselves upon the prospect of dying like the 
 
272 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 beasts of the field. On the one side and on the 
 other we hear it maintained, with equal emphasis, 
 that any system of Protestantism — any system 
 which seeks to combine absolute freedom of spec- 
 ulation with an essentially religious attitude of 
 mind — is logically absurd, and is destined to be 
 superseded. The only question is as to what al- 
 ternative is to survive the inevitable fate of all 
 such misguided attempts; and here Dr, Biichner 
 and the Pope will be found to disagree. While 
 on the one hand it is held that the course of 
 modern philosophic thought is so distinctly to- 
 ward materialism that every one who is not a 
 materialist is behind the age, on the other hand it 
 is prophesied that, out of sheer weariness of the 
 scepticism that is the perpetual outcome of free 
 inquiry, there will eventually be brought about a 
 renaissance of the ages of faith. I do not know 
 that it can be said precisely how far these expec- 
 tations go. Probably it is not expected that cru- 
 sades or pilgrimages to Compostella will again 
 become fashionable in the complex industrial 
 society of the future; perhaps it is not ex- 
 pected that leaders of scientific thought will ac- 
 cept the miracle of St. Januarius, for the Catholic 
 Church has oftentimes known how to be judi- 
 ciously lax about such matters; but there is no 
 
The True Lesson of Protestantism. 273 
 
 doubt a vague expectation that, in spite of the in- 
 dependence of thought which scientific studies 
 are fostering, a line will somehow be drawn be- 
 yond which men shall agree to submit their judg- 
 ment to that of the Church. It is not Catholics 
 only who make this tacit assumption : it is made, 
 in one form or another, by every one who argues 
 that his own particular orthodoxy is destined to 
 survive the shocks of scientific scepticism ; and it 
 underlies the remark which we sometimes hear, 
 that all would be well if men of science would 
 only keep their place.and not encroach upon the 
 province of the theologian. The alternative, then, 
 is, when stated as broadly as possible, Will the 
 present decomposition of beliefs be succeeded by 
 a period of reconstruction in which the teachings 
 of some church shall be accepted as authoritative 
 concerning questions of a purely religious nature, 
 or will the decomposition go on until the last ves- 
 tige of recognition of religious questions shall have 
 vanished, and all educated men shall have become 
 atheistic materialists? It is my object on the 
 present occasion to show that no such alternative 
 really confronts us; that the very propounding 
 of such a question involves grave philosophical 
 and historical errors; that neither materialism on 
 
 the one hand, nor any species of ecclesiastical 
 18 
 
274 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 orthodoxy on the other hand, is likely to become 
 prevalent in the future; and that the mainte- 
 nance of an essentially religious attitude of mind 
 is compatible with absolute freedom of specula- 
 tion on all subjects, whether scientific or meta- 
 physical. 
 
 In my apprehension it is a very serious mistake, 
 though a very common one, to suppose that the 
 tendency of modern philosophic thought is toward 
 materialism. On this subject there is a great con- 
 fusion of ideas, which is aggravated by a general 
 uncertainty as to just what materialism really is. 
 The word ‘ materialism” has been so commonly 
 used in a vituperative rather than a descriptive 
 sense, that it has become somewhat damaged 
 for philosophical purposes. Whenever Auguste 
 Comte had to deal with some opinion which he 
 did not like, — it made little or no difference what 
 it was about, — he used to get rid of it without 
 delay by calling it “ metaphysical.” And in like 
 manner the word “ materialism” has come to be 
 with some orthodox people a general term of 
 abuse for anything which they do not happen to 
 like. I was once called (in print) a materialist, 
 for saying that there are no trustworthy dates in 
 Greek history prior to the first Olympiad! Some 
 wiseacre — whose lectures I have lately seen re- 
 
hi 
 
 7 
 Lit 
 
 ve True Lesson of Protestantism. 275 
 
 ported in the newspapers — solemnly states that 
 he shall call all persons materialists who do not 
 believe in the freedom of the will; which, of 
 course, would include Jonathan Edwards. ‘Then, 
 besides this silly use of language, the word has 
 undergone some legitimate historical changes of 
 meaning. The great Dr. Priestley, whose theism 
 was quite unimpeachable, avowed himself a ma- 
 terialist, because he did not regard it as beyond 
 the power of an omnipotent Creator to endow 
 matter with the capacity for feeling and think- 
 ing. It seems to me that this was a mental atti- 
 tude much more devout, if not more philosoph- 
 ical, than that of those modern theologians who 
 vie with the ancient Gnostics in heaping abuse 
 upon poor blind, brute, senseless, inert ‘“‘ matter.” 
 But Priestley was by no means a materialist in 
 the sense in which that word is correctly used in 
 philosophic discussion to-day. It is not merely 
 in the vocabulary of theological abuse that the 
 terms materialism and atheism are closely asso- 
 ciated; the opinions which they connote are really 
 linked together in many ways. In former times 
 it was customary to stigmatize the colossal gener- 
 alizations of astronomers and geologists as ‘“ athe- 
 istical,” because they substituted divine action 
 through natural law for divine action through 
 
276 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 supernatural fiat, which had hitherto been com- 
 monly regarded as the only conceivable kind of 
 divine action. Nowadays as cultivated minds are 
 beginning to surmount this old difficulty, the 
 bugbear springs up in a new quarter. Now that 
 we have begun to study psychology after a sci- 
 entific method, and to derive valuable assistance 
 from the investigation of nerve-cells and nerve- 
 fibres, and now that we have begun to apply to 
 these studies the profoundest generalizations of 
 physics and chemistry concerning the behaviour 
 of molecules of matter, we hear so much talk 
 about undulations and discharges and nervous 
 connections that many worthy people seem to be 
 afraid of seeing it proved that we have really no 
 psychical life at all. They are afraid that the 
 human soul will by and by be wholly resolved 
 into an affair of molecules and undulations and 
 unstable equilibria, and so*forth ; and accordingly 
 all speculations even remotely savouring of phys- 
 iological psychology, or of the correlation of vital 
 with inorganic motions, are forthwith stigmatized 
 as “ materialistic.” Even the Darwinian theory 
 of the origin of species is said to be materialistic 
 by implication, inasmuch as it is supposed at some 
 point to derive the human soul from the psychi- 
 eal part of a brute animal, and at some other 
 
The True Lesson of Protestantism. 277 
 
 point to derive the psychical part of the brute an- 
 imal from something that is not psychical. The 
 common reproach aimed at all such speculations 
 is that in one way or another, either directly or 
 by implication, they all tend toward the interpre- 
 tation of psychical life as a temporary or evanes- 
 cent condition of matter, and thus in reality ban- 
 ish soul from the universe. The association in 
 the popular mind between materialism and athe- 
 ism is here obvious enough, and is easily justified. 
 Philosophical materialism holds that matter and 
 the motions of matter make up the sum total of 
 existence, and that what we know as psychical 
 phenomena in man and other animals are to be 
 interpreted in an ultimate analysis as simply the 
 peculiar aspect which is assumed by certain enor- 
 mously complicated motions of matter. This 1s, 
 I believe, a strictly correct description of mate- 
 rialism, as it was held in the eighteenth century 
 by La Mettrie, and as it is held by Buchner to- 
 day. Whoever holds such views as these con- 
 cerning the relations of matter and spirit may. be 
 properly called a materialist, and no doubt there 
 are many educated people who hold such views, 
 but that the general tendency of modern philo- 
 sophic thought is toward the adoption of material- 
 ism as thus defined, I emphatically deny. On the 
 
278 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 contrary, it seems to me that the course of modern 
 philosophy is distinctly in the opposite direction, 
 and that materialism is hopelessly behind the age, 
 s0 that it argues a much more superficial mind 
 and a much more imperfect education to agree 
 with Biichner to-day than to have agreed with La 
 Mettrie a hundred years ago. 
 
 Bear in mind that, before a philosopher can be 
 correctly charged with materialism, it is absolutely 
 necessary that he should hold that psychical phe- 
 nomena — such as love and hate, or the sensation 
 of redness, or the idea of virtue — are interpret- 
 able in terms of matter and motion. Nothing 
 short of this will do. It is not enough that ke 
 should hold that, along with every emotion or 
 sensation or idea, there goes on a change in 
 nerve-tissue which is probably resolvable into 
 some form of undulatory motion; for this is but 
 an amplification of what we all begin by admit- 
 ting when we admit that during the present life 
 there is no consciousness except where there is 
 nerve-tissue. If it is materialism to say that for 
 every association of ideas there is established a 
 system of paths for discharges between two or 
 more groups of nerve-cells, it is equally material- 
 ism to say that a pint of Scotch whiskey will 
 make a man drunk. The former stntement enters 
 
The True Lesson of Protestantism. 279 
 
 very much more into detail than the latter, but 
 there is no other essential difference between 
 them. I do not wonder, however, that people’s 
 minds are often vague and confused on these 
 points, for our every-day talk is full of materi- 
 alistic implications. We say, for example, that 
 grief makes us weep, and the statement is true 
 enough for ordinary purposes ; but, in reality, it is 
 not the grief that acts upon the tear-glands. The 
 grief is something absolutely immaterial, some- 
 thing absolutely outside the circuit of physical 
 causation. How do we know this? How do we 
 reach such a conclusion? We reach it by apply- 
 ing to the subject the conception of the correla- 
 tion of forces, and the conception of the atomic 
 constitution of matter, — twin conceptions which 
 lie at the bottom of all our modern scientific 
 reasoning. The material world is all made up of 
 systems of atoms that are perpetually moving in 
 relation to one another. In an ultimate analysis, 
 every material object is such a system of moving 
 atoms. Every living organism is a system of 
 systems of such atoms, in myriad-fold orders of 
 composition, and with movements definitely co- 
 ordinated in myriad-fold degrees of complexity. 
 Now, all the motion that goes into any organism, 
 latent in the air which it breathes and the food 
 
280 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 which it assimilates, must come out again as mo- 
 tion, and what comes out must be the exact 
 equivalent of what goes in. This is what the 
 doctrine of the correlation of forces means when 
 applied to the living organism and to the nervous 
 system. It means, too, that if we were able to 
 trace in detail the career of any given quantity 
 of atomic motion between the times of its enter- 
 ing and its leaving the organism, we should find 
 through all its innumerable transformations an 
 exact equivalence preserved. But this means that. 
 the motion must always be a motion of material 
 particles, — something that can be quantitatively 
 measured. Once introduce into the circuit some- 
 thing that does not admit of material measure- 
 ment, such as a sensation of colour, or an emo- 
 tion of grief, and the whole theory falls to the 
 ground at once. 
 
 When a given quantity of atomic motion in the 
 gray surface of the brain is used up, its equiva- 
 lent must appear in the form of some other 
 atomic motion, and cannot have been a subject- 
 ive feeling; otherwise it is idle to talk about 
 any correlation and equivalence of forces in the 
 case. There can be no relation of equivalence 
 between a sorrowful feeling and a motion of 
 matter that can be expressed in terms of foot- 
 
The True Lesson of Protestantism. 281 
 
 pounds. You might as well talk about a crimson 
 taste or an acid sound. When you weep, there- 
 fore, it is not grief, but the cerebrum, that acts 
 upon the tear-glands. You say that the grief 
 causes the tears, because you are conscious of the 
 relation of sequence between the subjective emo- 
 tion and the objective flow of tears, while you 
 are totally unconscious of the molecular move- 
 ments going on in the brain. But, in reality, 
 the subjective emotion is something purely im- 
 material, or, if you choose to say so, spiritual, 
 and its relation to what goes on in the brain is 
 merely a relation of concomitance. 
 
 I have illustrated this point at disproportionate 
 length, because it is both important and difficult. 
 Until this point is perfectly clear in one’s mind, 
 any discussion of the alleged materialistic ten- 
 dencies of modern philosophy is simply a waste 
 of words. It is very clear that modern philos- 
 ophy does show a decided tendency toward in- 
 vestigating what goes on in the nervous system 
 when we think and feel; and it is also clear 
 that modern philosophy considers itself bound to 
 study the nervous system as a material aggregate, 
 with an atomic constitution, and subject to the 
 same physical laws with other matter. I hope I 
 have now made it equally clear that these ten- 
 
282 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 dencies of modern philosophy are just the reverse 
 of materialistic. So far from maintaining, as 
 materialism does, that psychical phenomena are 
 interpretable in terms of matter and motion, 
 this modern philosophy maintains that such phe- 
 nomena are absolutely immaterial, — that they 
 stand, as I said before, quite outside the circuit 
 of physical causation. If the world were peopled 
 with automata, if men had gone on from the be- 
 ginning like puppets, eating, and drinking, and 
 marrying, working and fighting, exactly as they 
 have done, producing human history in all its de- 
 tails exactly as it has been produced, only with- 
 out any consciousness, without any sentient life 
 whatever, then materialism perhaps would afford 
 a satisfactory explanation of the world. But the 
 moment the first trace of conscious intelligence is 
 introduced, we have a set of phenomena which 
 materialism can in no wise account for. The 
 latest and ripest philosophic speculation, there- 
 fore, leaves the gulf between mind and matter 
 quite as wide and impassable as it appeared in 
 the time of Descartes. 
 
 But while materialism is thus more than ever 
 discredited by the dominant philosophy of our 
 time, and while it will no doubt continue to be 
 more and more discredited with each future ad- 
 
The True Lesson of Protestantism. 283 
 
 vance in philosophic speculation, I see no reason 
 why there should not always be a certain amount 
 of materialism current in the world. Very likely 
 there will always be people who are colour-blind, 
 and people without an ear for music. So, doubt- 
 less, there will always be a class of excellent peo- 
 ple with a fair capacity for understanding scien- 
 tific generalizations, but without any head for 
 philosophy ; and this class will produce the Biich- 
 ners and La Mettries of the future, as it has 
 produced them in the past and present. Thus, 
 one part of my question is disposed of. The phi- 
 losophy of the future will not be materialistic, 
 and there is nothing in the dominant philosophy 
 of to-day to indicate that religious problems will 
 not continue to be made the subjects of specula- 
 tion. I recollect once asking Mr. Spencer’s opin- 
 ion on some question of pure ontology. He re- 
 plied that he had no opinion; not because his 
 mind was necessarily hostile to entertaining such 
 questions, but simply because he was so entirely 
 occupied in working out the theory of evolution, 
 in its innumerable applications to the world of 
 phenomena, that he had not time and strength 
 left to expend on problems that are confessedly 
 insoluble. This was the answer of a true man of 
 science ; and it is worth repeating for the benefit 
 
284. Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 of those silly people who think it is not enough 
 that Mr. Spencer should have made greater ad- 
 ditions to the sum of human knowledge than 
 have ever been made by any other man since the 
 beginning of the world, and complain of him be- 
 cause he has not given us a complete and final 
 system of theology into the bargain. But Mr. 
 Spencer’s answer further illustrates very well the 
 philosophic attitude of the present age. The 
 present age is occupied, above all things, in in- 
 vestigating the intimate constitution of the ma- 
 terial universe, and tracing therefrom its past 
 history and its future career. The conception of 
 evolution is everywhere being substituted for that 
 of special creation ; and this involves the most ex- 
 tensive and thorough change that has ever taken 
 place in men’s thoughts about the world they live 
 in. For the present, this business absorbs all the 
 most active and original minds, so that no time 
 is left for metaphysical speculations. We are 
 becoming wrapt in the study of origins, as the 
 men of the thirteenth century were wrapt in the 
 study of particulars and universals. But there is 
 no likelihood that this will always be so. By and 
 by all educated people will be evolutionists, and 
 then it will be seen, more clearly than it is now, 
 that while the doctrine of evolution has enor. 
 
The True Lesson of Protestantism. 285 
 
 mously increased our knowledge of the phenome- 
 nal universe, it really leaves all ultimate questions 
 as much open for discussion as they ever were. It 
 is Mr. Spencer himself who has said that every 
 new physical problem leads at once to a meta- 
 physical problem that we can neither solve nor 
 elude. Solve it doubtless we cannot, elude it we 
 also cannot, and so discuss it we will. Such, I 
 presume, will be the course which philosophy will 
 take where religious questions are concerned. 
 And now we are brought to the other part of 
 my question. Will the time ever come again 
 when men will be absorbed in questions of a 
 transcendental or ontological character, as Aqui- 
 nas and other great mediaeval thinkers were ab- 
 sorbed? It seems to me quite possible that the 
 interest in such matters may again become as in- 
 tense, though not so exclusive, as it was in the 
 Middle Ages. But if it be asked whether there 
 can ever again be a theological renaissance of 
 such a character that men shall agree to sur- 
 render their right of private Judgment on purely 
 religious questions, and accept the teachings of 
 any church, the reply must be that any renais- 
 sance of this sort is utterly impossible. The 
 further question, whether unity of belief can ever 
 be secured in any other way, is to be met by the 
 
286 Hzeursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 assertion that unity of belief is no longer either 
 possible or desirable. Such a statement as this is 
 very startling, and more or less puzzling, to many 
 people, as I have often had occasion to observe ; 
 and when the truth of it has come to be gener- 
 ally and thoroughly realized, it will probably be 
 the greatest step in religious progress that has 
 ever been accomplished. Once, we know, unity 
 of belief was held to be of such supreme impor- 
 tance that the faintest whisper of dissent must 
 be punished with torture and death. I have else- 
 where sought to account, on historical grounds, 
 for the existence of this persecuting spirit, as 
 well as for its decline in modern times. In a 
 paper on ‘‘ The Causes of Persecution,” I showed 
 how ancient society was pervaded by an intense 
 feeling of corporate responsibility, — a feeling 
 that the whole community was liable to be pun- 
 ished by the gods for the misdeeds of any one of 
 its individual members. In early times this feel- 
 ing of corporate responsibility, taken in connec- 
 tion with the barbaric theories of the universe 
 then current, was the mainstay and support of 
 priesthoods. And it was to the persistence of this 
 feeling down through the Middle Ages that the 
 horrors of religious persecution were chiefly due. 
 In a second paper, on “ The Origins of Protest: 
 
The True Lesson of Protestantism. 287 
 
 antism,”’ I showed that the feeling of corporate 
 responsibility had its legitimate origin in the 
 military necessities of primitive societies. In 
 ages when there were no political aggregations 
 of men larger than tribes, and when the relations 
 between tribes were chiefly those of chronic war- 
 fare, arude and savage discipline, in which the 
 legal existence of the individual was virtually 
 submerged in the interests of the tribe, was ab- 
 solutely necessary. The feeling that the whole 
 tribe was liable to be visited with defeat or fam- 
 ine or pestilence, on account of sacrilege com- 
 mitted by one of its members, was part and 
 parcel of such a state of society. This feeling 
 of corporate responsibility must have grown in 
 strength through many ages by natural selection, 
 as those tribes in which it was most effectively 
 developed must in general have shown the high- 
 est capacity for social organization, and must have 
 exterminated or enslaved their neighbours. Hav- 
 ing so long been favoured by natural selection, 
 the feeling of corporate responsibility for conduct 
 and opinion became so deeply grounded in men’s 
 minds that it long survived the stage of social 
 development in which it had its origin. Most 
 conspicuous and terrible of the consequences of 
 this deeply rooted feeling has been that fanatical 
 
288 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 craving for unity of belief in religious matters 
 which has been the source of some of the worst 
 evils that have afflicted mankind. But among 
 the many changes which have affected the rela- 
 tions of the individual to the community, with 
 the growth of great and complex modern soci- 
 eties, there has come the gradual substitution of 
 the idea of individual responsibility for that of 
 corporate responsibility. From this point of view, 
 the Protestantism of Luther is significant mainly 
 as a revolt against primeval notions of the rela- 
 tions of the individual to the community, which 
 have long since survived their usefulness. Obvi- 
 ously, the disintegration of orthodoxies which 
 characterizes the present age is simply the further 
 development of the same protest in behalf of in- 
 dividual responsibility for opinion. And to those 
 who take any interest in the present discussion, 
 I hardly need argue that any revival of the meth- 
 ods of Catholicism could never occur, except as 
 the concomitant of a wholly improbable retrogres- 
 sion of society toward the barbaric type. The 
 very conception of an infallible church is so 
 clearly a survival from primitive religious ideas, 
 that to imagine such an institution presiding over 
 the society of the future involves a most gro- 
 tesque anachronism. Nevertheless, the uses of 
 
The True Lesson of Protestantism. 289 
 
 the Catholic Church are such that it is likely still 
 to survive for a very long time, though with di- 
 minishing influence; and as it affords a refuge 
 for such earnest and thoughtful souls as find the 
 atmosphere of free discussion too bracing, it will 
 probably long continue to receive accessions from 
 the ranks of the various Protestant orthodoxies 
 that are now so rapidly disintegrating. 
 
 With the fading away of the old notion of cor- 
 porate responsibility for opinion, the value at- 
 tached to unity of belief has greatly diminished, 
 and attempts to-secure such unity by violent 
 means have become generally discredited. It is 
 at last beginning to be apprehended that if unity 
 of belief is to have any real value, it can only be 
 when it is the result of the free working of differ- 
 ent minds. But unity of belief in religious mat- 
 ters is not very likely to be reached in any such 
 way, for the conditions of the case are totally 
 different from those of scientific discussion. The 
 difference may be best appreciated by recalling 
 the useful distinction drawn by positivism between 
 science and metaphysics. According to positivism, 
 the essential distinction between a scientific hy- 
 pothesis, such as the undulatory theory of light, 
 and a metaphysical hypothesis, such as the Leib- 
 
 nitzian theory of preéstablished harmony, is that 
 19 
 
290 Exeursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 the one admits of verification — whether by obser- 
 vation, experiment, or deduction — while the other 
 does not. Or, from another point of view, the one 
 may be made a working hypothesis from which 
 independent inquirers will arrive at mutually con- 
 gruous results, while the other cannot. This dis- 
 tinction is one of the very few points made by 
 positivism which have been generally adopted 
 into modern philosophy ; but the use which posi- 
 tivists have made of it is by no means philosophi- 
 cal. Comte himself set an inordinate value upon 
 unity of belief, and in this his disciples have gen- 
 erally followed him; and the way in which they 
 propose to secure such unity is simply to ignore 
 all problems whatever in which scientific methods 
 of demonstration are not accessible. This seems 
 like paying an exorbitant price for a privilege of 
 very doubtful value. But without following the 
 positivists in this, we may admit the usefulness of 
 their distinction between problems that transcend 
 the limits of scientific demonstration and prob- 
 lems that lie within those limits. Clearly, if I 
 hold one opinion concerning the passage of light 
 through certain crystals, and my neighbour holds 
 a different or contrary opinion, I am entitled to 
 expect either that he can be brought to adopt my 
 opinion, or that I can be brought to adopt his. 
 
The True Lesson of Protestantism. 291 
 
 Means of verification must exist ; and even if the 
 question cannot be settled to-day, we have no 
 doubt that it can be settled by and by. But if I 
 hold one opinion concerning the conscious exist- 
 ence of the soul after death, while my neighbour 
 holds a contrary opinion, I am not entitled to ex- 
 pect that we can ever be brought to an agree- 
 ment. For the question confessedly transcends 
 the limits of scientific demonstration. Yet in 
 spite of all that, one of our contrary opinions, 
 and possibly both, may contain some adumbra- 
 tion of a truth. And more than a faint glimmer- 
 ing of truth we can hardly expect to be contained 
 in any of our opinions on religious matters, for 
 the problems are too vast when compared with 
 our means of dealing with them. Hence, instead 
 of condemning variety of belief on such subjects, 
 we should rather welcome each fresh suggestion 
 as possibly containing some adumbration of a 
 truth which we have hitherto overlooked. 
 
 And thus we arrive at last at the true lesson of 
 Protestantism, which is simply this : that religious 
 belief is something which in no way concerns so- 
 _ ciety, but which concerns only the individual. In 
 all other relations the individual is more or less 
 responsible to society ; but, as for his religious be- 
 lief and his religious life, these are mattors which 
 
292 Excursions 0° an Evolutionist. 
 
 vy 
 
 lie solely between himself and his God. On such 
 subjects no man may rightfully chide his neigh- 
 bour, or call him fooli~h ; for, in presence of the 
 transcendent Reality, the foolishness of one man 
 differs not much from the wisdom of another. 
 When this lesson sha'l have been duly compre- 
 hended and taken to heart, I make no doubt that 
 religious speculation will continue to go on: but 
 
 9 
 
 such words as “ infidelity ” and “heresy,” the 
 present currency of which serves only to show 
 how the remnants of primitive barbaric thought 
 still cling to us and hamper our progress — such 
 words will have become obsolete, and perhaps un- 
 intelligible, save to the philosophic student of his- 
 tory. In discussion conducted in such a mood, 
 there will, no doubt, be a great lack of finality. 
 But the craving for finality is itself, in various de- 
 grees, an instinct of the uneducated man, of the 
 child, of the savage, and perhaps of the brute. 
 To feel that the last word has been said on any 
 subject is not a desideratum with the true philos- 
 opker, who knows full well that the truth he an- 
 nounces to-day will open half a dozen questions 
 where it settles one, and will presently be vari- 
 ously qualified, and at last absorbed in some wider 
 and deeper truth. When all this shall have come 
 to be realized, and shall have been made part 
 
The True Lesson of Protestantism. 298 
 
 and parcel of the daily mental habit of men, then 
 our human treatment of religion will no longer 
 be what it has too often been in the past,—a 
 wretched squabble, fit only for the demons of 
 Malebolge, — but it will have come to be like 
 the sweet discourse of saints in Dante’s “ Para- 
 dise.” 
 
 September, 1881. 
 
XI. 
 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION.1 
 
 Mr. PRESIDENT:* The thought which you 
 have uttered suggests so many and such fruitful 
 themes of discussion that a whole evening would 
 not suffice to enumerate them, while to illustrate 
 them properly would seem to require an octavo 
 volume rather than a talk of six or eight minutes, 
 especially when such a talk comes just after 
 dinner. The Amazulu saying which you have 
 cited, that those who have ‘ stuffed bodies ” can- 
 not see hidden things, seems peculiarly applicable 
 to any attempt to discuss the mysteries of re- 
 ligion at the present moment; and, after the 
 additional warning we have just had from our 
 good friend Mr. Schurz, I hardly know whether I 
 ought to venture to approach so vast a theme. 
 There are one or two points of signal importance, 
 however, to which I may at least call attention 
 
 1 Speech at the farewell dinner given to Herbert Spencer, in New 
 York, November 9, 1882. 
 
 2 Hon. W. M. Evarts. 
 
Evolution and Religion. 295 
 
 for a moment. It is a matter which has long 
 since taken deep hold of my mind, and I am glad 
 to have a chance to say something about it on so 
 fitting an occasion. We have met here this even- 
 ing to do homage to a dear and noble teacher and. 
 friend, and it is well that we should choose this 
 time to recall the various aspects of the immor- 
 tal work by which he has earned the gratitude of 
 a world. The work which Herbert Spencer has 
 done in organizing the different departments of 
 human knowledge, so as to present the widest 
 generalizations of all the sciences in a new and 
 wonderful light, as flowing out of still deeper and 
 wider truths concerning the universe as a whole ; 
 the great number of profound generalizations 
 which he has established incidentally to the pur- 
 suit of this main object; the endlessly rich and 
 suggestive thoughts which he has thrown out in 
 such profusion by the wayside all along the course 
 all this 
 work is so manifest that none can fail to recognize 
 it. It is work of the calibre of that which Aris- 
 
 
 
 of this great philosophical enterprise, 
 
 . 
 
 totle and Newton did. Though coming in this 
 latter age, it as far surpasses their work in its 
 vastness of performance as the railway surpasses 
 the sedan-chair, or as the telegraph surpasses the 
 carrier-pigeon. 
 
296 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 But it is not of this side of our teacher’s work 
 that I wish to speak, but of a side of it that has 
 hitherto met with less general recognition. There 
 are some people who seem to think that it is not 
 enough that Mr. Spencer should have made all 
 these priceless contributions to human knowledge, 
 but actually complain of him for not giving us a 
 complete and exhaustive system of theology into 
 the bargain. What I wish, therefore, to point out 
 is that Mr. Spencer’s work on the side of religion 
 will be seen to be no less important than his work 
 on the side of science, when once its religious im- 
 plications shall have been fully and consistently 
 unfolded. 
 
 If we look at all the systems or forms of relig- 
 ion of which we have any knowledge, we shall 
 find that they differ in many superficial features. 
 They differ in many of the transcendental doc- 
 trines which they respectively preach, and in 
 many of the rules of conduct which they respec- 
 tively lay down for men’s guidance. They assert 
 different things about the universe, and they en- 
 join or prohibit different kinds of behaviour on 
 , the part of their followers. The doctrine of the 
 | Trinity, which to many Christians is the most 
 sacred of mysteries, is to all Mohammedans the 
 foulest of blasphemies. The Brahman’s conscience 
 
Evolution and Religion. 297 
 
 would be more troubled if he were to kill a cow 
 by accident than if he were to swear to a lie or 
 steal a purse. The Turk, who sees no wrong in 
 bigamy, would shrink from the sin of eating pork. 
 But, amid all such surface differences we find 
 throughout all known religions two points of 
 substantial agreement. And these two points of 
 agreement will be admitted by modern civilized 
 men to be of far greater importance than the 
 innumerable differences of detail. All religions 
 agree in the two following assertions, one of which 
 is of speculative and one of which is of ethical 
 import. One of them serves to sustain and har- 
 monize our thoughts about the world we live in 
 and our place in that world; the other serves to 
 uphold us in our efforts to do each what we can 
 to make human life more sweet, more full of good- 
 ness and beauty, than we find it. The first of 
 these assertions is the proposition that the things 
 and events of the world do not exist or occur 
 blindly or irrelevantly, but that all, from the 
 beginning to the end of time, and throughout the 
 farthest sweep of illimitable space, are connected 
 together as the orderly manifestations of a divine 
 Power, and that this divine Power is something 
 outside of ourselves, and upon it our own exist- 
 ence from moment to moment depends. The 
 
298 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 second of these assertions is the proposition that 
 men ought to do certain things, and ought to re- 
 frain from doing certain other things ; and that the 
 reason why some things are wrong to do and other 
 things are right to do is in some mysterious but 
 very real way connected with the existence and 
 nature of this divine Power, which reveals itself 
 in every great and every tiny thing, without 
 which not a star courses in its mighty orbit, and 
 not a sparrow falls to the ground. Matthew 
 Arnold once summed up these two propositions 
 very well, when he defined God as “an eternal 
 Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteous- 
 ness.” This twofold assertion, that there is an 
 eternal Power that is not ourselves, and that this - 
 Power makes for righteousness, is to be found, 
 either in a rudimentary or in a highly developed 
 state, in all known religions. In such religions 
 as those of the Eskimos or of your friends, the 
 Amazulus, Mr. President, this assertion is found 
 in a rudimentary shape on each of its two sides, — 
 the speculative side and the ethical side; in such 
 religions as Buddhism or Judaism, it is found in 
 a highly developed shape on both its sides. But 
 the main point is that in all religions you find it 
 in some shape or other. 
 
 I said, a moment ago, that modern civilized men 
 
Evolution and Religion. 299 
 
 will all acknowledge that this two-sided assertion 
 in which all religions agree is of far greater im- 
 portance than any of the superficial points in 
 which religions differ. It is really of much more 
 concern to us that there is an eternal Power, not 
 ourselves, that makes for righteousness, than that 
 such a Power is onefold or threefold in its meta- 
 physical nature, or that we ought not to play cards 
 on Sunday or to eat meat on Friday. No one, I 
 believe, will deny so simple and clear a statement 
 as this. But it is not only we modern men, who 
 call ourselves enlightened, that will agree to this. 
 I doubt not even the narrow-minded bigots of 
 days now happily gone by would have been made 
 _ to agree to it, if they could have had some dog- 
 gedly persistent Sokrates to cross-question them. 
 Calvin was willing to burn Servetus for doubting 
 the doctrine of the Trinity, but I do not suppose 
 that even Calvin would have argued that the 
 belief in God’s threefold nature was more funda- 
 mental than the belief in his existence and his 
 goodness. The philosophical error with him was 
 that he could not dissociate the less important 
 doctrine from the more important doctrine, and 
 the fate of the latter seemed to him wrapped up 
 with the fate of the former. I cite this merely as 
 a typical example. What men in past times have 
 
300 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 really valued in their religion has been the uni- 
 versal twofold assertion that there is a God who is 
 pleased by the sight of the just man and is angry 
 with the wicked every day; and when men have 
 fought with one another, and murdered or calum- 
 niated one another for heresy about the Trin- 
 ity or about eating meat on Friday, it has been 
 because they have supposed belief in the non- 
 essential doctrines to be inseparably connected 
 with belief in the essential doctrine. In spite of 
 all this, however, it is true that in the mind of 
 the uncivilized man the great central truths of re- 
 ligion are so densely overlaid with hundreds of 
 trivial notions respecting dogma and ritual that 
 his perception of the great central truths is ob- 
 scure. These great central truths, indeed, need 
 to be clothed in a dress of little rites and supersti- 
 tions, in order to take hold of his dull and un- 
 trained intelligence. But, in proportion as men 
 become more civilized, and learn to think more 
 accurately, and to take wider views of life, just 
 so do they come to value the essential truths of 
 religion more highly, while they attach less and 
 less importance to superficial details. 
 
 Having thus seen what is meant by the essen- 
 tial truths of religion, it is very easy to see what 
 the attitude of the doctrine of evolution is toward 
 
Evolution and Religion. 301 
 
 these essential truths. It asserts and reiterates 
 them both; and it asserts them not as dogmas 
 handed down to us by priestly tradition, not as 
 mysterious intuitive convictions of which we can 
 render no intelligible account to ourselves, but as 
 scientific truths concerning the innermost consti- 
 tution of the universe, truths that have been dis- 
 closed by observation and reflection, like other 
 scientific truths, and that accordingly harmonize 
 naturally and easily with the whole body of our 
 knowledge. The doctrine of evolution asserts, as 
 the widest and deepest truth which the study of 
 nature can disclose to us, that there exists a 
 Power to which no limit in time or space is con- 
 ceivable, and that all the phenomena of the uni- 
 verse, whether they be what we call material or 
 what we call spiritual phenomena, are manifesta- 
 tions of this infinite and eternal Power. Now, 
 this assertion, which Mr. Spencer has so elabo- 
 rately set forth as a scientific truth, — nay, as the 
 ultimate truth of science, as the truth upon which 
 the whole structure of human knowledge philo- 
 sophically rests, — this assertion is identical with 
 the assertion of an eternal Power, not ourselves, 
 that forms the speculative basis of all religions. 
 When Carlyle speaks of the universe as in very 
 truth the star-domed city of God, and reminds us 
 
302 Exeursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 that through every crystal and through every 
 grass-blade, but most through every living soul, 
 the glory of a present God still beams, he means 
 pretty much the same thing that Mr. Spencer 
 means, save that he speaks with the language of 
 poetry, with language coloured by emotion, and 
 not with the precise, formal, and colourless lam 
 guage of science. By many critics who forget that 
 names are but the counters rather than the hard 
 money of thought, objections have been raised to 
 the use of such a phrase as the Unknowable 
 whereby to describe the power that is manifested 
 in every event of the universe. Yet, when the 
 Hebrew prophet declared that “by Him were 
 laid the foundations of the deep,” but reminded 
 us, “* Who by searching can find Him out?” he 
 meant pretty much what Mr. Spencer means when 
 he speaks of a Power that is inscrutable in itself, 
 yet is revealed from moment to moment in every 
 throb of the mighty rhythmic life of the uni- 
 verse. | 
 
 And this brings me to the last and most im- 
 portant point of all. What says the doctrine of 
 evolution with regard to the ethical side of this 
 twofold assertion that lies at the bottom of all re- 
 ligion? ‘Though we cannot fathom the nature of 
 the inscrutable Power that animates the world, we 
 
Evolution and Religion. 303 
 
 know, nevertheless, a great many things that it 
 does. Does this eternal Power, then, work for 
 righteousness ?_ Is there a divine sanction for ho- 
 liness and a divine condemnation for sin? Are 
 the principles of right living really connected with 
 the intimate constitution of the universe? If the 
 answer of science to these questions be affirma- 
 tive, then the agreement with religion. is com- 
 plete, both on the speculative and on the practi- 
 cal sides; and that phantom which has been the 
 abiding terror of timid and superficial minds — 
 that phantom of the hostility between religion 
 and science — is exorcised now and for ever. 
 Now science began to return a decisively affirm- 
 ative answer to such questions as these, when it 
 began, with Mr. Spencer, to explain moral beliefs 
 and moral sentiments as products of evolution. 
 For clearly, when you say of a moral belief or a 
 moral sentiment that it is a product of evolution, 
 you imply that it is something which the universe 
 through untold ages has been labouring to bring 
 forth, and you ascribe to it a value proportionate 
 to the enormous effort that it has cost to produce 
 it. Still more, when with Mr. Spencer we study 
 the principles of right living as part and parcel 
 of the whole doctrine of the development of life 
 upon the earth; when we see that, in an ultimate 
 
304 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 analysis, that is right which tends to enhance ful- 
 ness of life, and that is wrong which tends to de- 
 tract from fulness of life, — we then see that the 
 distinction between right and wrong is rooted in 
 the deepest foundations of the universe; we see 
 that the very same forces, subtle and exquisite and 
 profound, which brought upon the scene the primal 
 germs of life and caused them to unfold, which 
 through countless ages of struggle and death have 
 cherished the life that could live more perfectly 
 and destroyed the life that could only live less per- 
 fectly, until Humanity, with all its hopes and fears 
 and aspirations, has come into being as the crown 
 of all this stupendous work, —we see that these 
 very same subtle and exquisite forces have wrought 
 into the very fibres of the universe those princi- 
 ples of right living which it is man’s highest func- 
 tion to put into practice. The theoretical sanc- 
 tion thus given to right living is incomparably the 
 most powerful that has ever been assigned in any 
 philosophy of ethics. Human responsibility is 
 made more strict and solemn than ever, when the 
 eternal Power that lives in every event of the 
 universe is thus seen to be in the deepest possible 
 sense the author of the moral law that should 
 guide our lives, and in obedience to which lies our 
 only guarantee of the happiness which is incor- 
 
. 
 
 Evolution and Religion. 305 
 
 ruptible, — which neither inevitable misfortune 
 nor unmerited obloquy can ever take away. 
 
 I have here but barely touched upon a rich and 
 suggestive topic. When this subject shall once 
 have been expounded and illustrated with due 
 thoroughness, —as I: earnestly hope it will be 
 within the next few years, — then I am sure it 
 will be generally acknowledged that our great 
 teacher’s services to religion have been no less 
 signal than his services to science, unparalleled 
 as these have been in all the history of the world. 
 
 November, 1882. 
 20 
 
XII. 
 
 THE MEANING OF INFANCY! 
 
 WHat is the Meaning of Infancy? What is 
 the meaning of the fact that man is born into the 
 world more helpless than any other creature, and 
 needs for a much longer season than any other 
 living thing the tender care and wise counsel of 
 his elders? It is one of the most familiar of 
 facts that man, alone among animals, exhibits a 
 capacity for progress. That man is widely differ- 
 ent from other animals in the length of his ado- 
 lescence and the utter helplessness of his baby- 
 hood, is an equally familiar fact. Now between 
 these two commonplace facts is there any con- 
 nection? Is it a mere accident that the creature 
 which is distinguished as progressive should also 
 be distinguished as coming slowly to maturity, 
 or is there a reason lying deep down in the na- 
 ture of things why this should be so? I think 
 
 1 A very brief restatement, in simple language, of the main points 
 of the theory of man’s origin first suggested in my lectures at Har- 
 vard University in 1871, and worked out in Outlines of Cosmic Phi- 
 losophy, part I., chapters xvi., xxi., and xxii. 
 
The Meaning of Infancy. 307 
 
 it can be shown, with very few words, that be- 
 tween these two facts there is a connection that 
 is deeply inwrought with the processes by which 
 life has been evolved upon the earth. It can be 
 shown that man’s progressiveness and the length 
 of his infancy are but two sides of one and the 
 same fact; and in showing this, still more will 
 appear. It will appear that it was the lengthen- 
 ing of infancy which ages ago gradually converted 
 our forefathers from brute creatures into human 
 creatures. It is babyhood that has made man 
 what he is. The simple unaided operation of 
 natural selection could never have resulted in the 
 origination of the human race. Natural selection 
 might have gone on forever improving the breed 
 of the highest animal in many ways, but it could 
 never unaided have started the process of civiliza- 
 tion or have given to man those peculiar attri- 
 butes in virtue of which it has been well said that 
 the difference between him and the highest of 
 apes immeasurably transcends in value the differ- 
 ence between an ape and a blade of grass. In 
 order to bring about that wonderful event, the 
 Creation of Man, natural selection had to call in 
 the aid of other agencies, and the chief of these 
 agencies was the gradual lengthening of baby- 
 hood. 
 
308 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Such is the point which I wish to illustrate in 
 few words, and to indicate some of its bearings on 
 the history of human progress. Let us first ob- 
 serve what it was that lengthened the infancy of 
 the highest animal, for then we shall be the bet- 
 ter able to understand the character of the pro- 
 digious ‘effects which this infancy has wrought. 
 A few familiar facts concerning the method in 
 which men learn how to do things will help us 
 here. 
 
 When we begin to learn to play the piano, we 
 have to devote much time and thought to the ad- 
 justment and movement of our fingers and to the 
 interpretation of the vast and complicated mul- 
 titude of symbols which make up the printed 
 page of music that stands before us. For a long 
 time, therefore, our attempts are feeble and stam- 
 mering and they require the full concentrated 
 power of the mind. Yet a trained pianist will 
 play a new piece of music at sight, and perhaps 
 have so much attention to spare that he can talk 
 with you at the same time. What an enormous 
 number of mental acquisitions have in this case 
 become almost instinctive or automatic! It is 
 just so in learning a foreign language, and it was 
 just the same when in childhood we learned to 
 walk, to talk, and to write. It is just the same, 
 
The Meaning of Infancy. 809 
 
 too, in learning to think about abstruse subjects. 
 What at first strains the attention to the utmost, 
 and often wearies us, comes at last to be done 
 without effort and almost unconsciously. Great 
 minds thus travel over vast fields of thought with 
 an ease of which they are themselves unaware. 
 Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch once said that in trans- 
 lating the “Mécanique Céleste,” he had come 
 upon formulas which Laplace introduced with the 
 word “obviously,” where it took nevertheless 
 many days of hard study to supply the interme- 
 diate steps through which that transcendent mind 
 had passed with one huge leap of inference. At 
 some time in his youth no doubt Laplace had to 
 think of these things, just as Rubinstein had 
 once to think how his fingers should be placed on 
 the keys of the piano; but what was once the ob- 
 ject of conscious attention comes at last to be 
 wellnigh automatic, while the flight of the con- 
 scious mind goes on ever to higher and vaster 
 themes. 
 
 Let us now take a long leap from the highest 
 level of human intelligence to the mental life of 
 a turtle or a codfish. In what does the mental 
 life of such creatures consist ? It consists of a 
 few simple acts mostly concerned with the secur- 
 ing of food and the avoiding of danger, and these 
 
310 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 few simple acts are repeated with unvarying mo- 
 notony during the whole lifetime of these crea- 
 tures. Consequently these acts are performed 
 with great ease and are attended with very little 
 consciousness, and moreover the capacity to per- 
 form them is transmitted from parent to offspring 
 as completely as the capacity of the stomach to di- 
 gest food is transmitted. In all animals the new- 
 born stomach needs but the contact with food in 
 order to begin digesting, and the new-born lungs 
 need but the contact with air in order to begin to 
 breathe. The capacity for performing these per- 
 petually-repeated visceral actions is transmitted in 
 perfection. All the requisite nervous connections 
 are fully established during the brief embryonic 
 existence of each creature. In the case of lower 
 animals it is almost as much so with the few sim- 
 ple actions which make up the creature’s mental 
 life. The bird known as the fly-catcher no sooner 
 breaks the egg than it will snap at and catch a 
 fly. This action is not so very simple, but be- 
 cause it is something the bird is always doing, 
 being indeed one out of the very few things that 
 this bird ever does, the nervous connections need- 
 ful for doing it are all established before birth, 
 and nothing but the presence of the fly is required 
 to set the operation going. 
 
The Meaning of Infancy. 311 
 
 With such creatures as the codfish, the turtle, 
 or the fly-catcher, there is accordingly nothing 
 that can properly be called infancy. With them 
 the sphere of education is extremely limited. 
 They get their education before they are born. 
 In other words, heredity does everything for 
 them, education nothing. The career of the in- 
 dividual is predetermined by the careers of his an- 
 cestors, and he can do almost nothing to vary it. 
 The life of such creatures is conservatism cut and 
 dried, and there is nothing progressive about 
 them. 
 
 In what I just said I left an “almost.” There 
 is a great deal of saving virtue in that little ad- 
 verb, Doubtless even animals low in the scale 
 possess some faint traces of educability ; but they 
 are so very slight that it takes geologic ages to 
 produce an appreciable result. In all the innu- 
 merable wanderings, fights, upturnings and cata- 
 clysms of the earth’s stupendous career, each 
 creature has been summoned under penalty of 
 death to use what little wit he may have had, 
 and the slightest trace of mental flexibility is of 
 such priceless value in the struggle for existence 
 that natural selection must always have seized 
 upon it, and sedulously hoarded and transmitted 
 it for coming generations to strengthen and in- 
 
312 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 crease. With the lapse of geologic time the up- 
 per grades of animal intelligence have doubtless 
 been raised higher and higher through natural 
 selection. The warm-blooded mammals and birds 
 of to-day no doubt surpass the cold-blooded di- 
 nosaurs of the Jurassic age in mental qualities as 
 they surpass them in physical structure. From 
 the codfish and turtle of ancient family to the 
 modern lion, dog, and monkey, it is a very long 
 step upward. The mental life of a warm-blooded 
 animal is a very different affair from that of rep- 
 tiles and fishes. A squirrel or a bear does a good 
 many things in the course of his life. He meets 
 various vicissitudes in various ways; he has ad- 
 ventures. The actions he performs are so com- 
 plex and so numerous that they are severally per- 
 formed with less frequency than the few actions 
 performed by the codfish. The requisite nervous 
 connections are accordingly not fully established 
 before birth. There is not time enough. The 
 - nervous connections needed for the visceral move- 
 ments and for the few simple instinctive actions 
 get organized, and then the creature is born be- 
 fore he has learned how to do all the things his 
 parents could do. A good many of his ner- 
 vous connections are not yet formed, they are 
 only formable. Accordingly he is not quite able 
 
The Meaning of Infancy. 313 
 
 to take care of himself; he must for a time be 
 watched and nursed. All mammals and most 
 birds have thus a period of babyhood that is not 
 very long, but is on the whole longest with the 
 most intelligent creatures. It is especially long 
 with the higher monkeys, and among the man- 
 like apes it becomes so long as to be strikingly 
 suggestive. An infant orang-outang, captured by 
 Mr. Wallace, was still a helpless baby at the age 
 of three months, unable to feed itself, to walk 
 without aid, or to grasp objects with precision. 
 
 But this period of helplessness has to be viewed 
 under another aspect. It isa period of plasticity. 
 The creature’s career is no longer exclusively 
 determined by heredity. There is a period after 
 birth when its character can be slightly modified 
 by what happens to it after birth, that is, by its 
 experience as an individual. It becomes edu- 
 cable. It is no longer necessary for each genera- 
 tion to be exactly like that which has preceded. 
 A door is opened through which the capacity for 
 progress can enter. Horses and dogs, bears and 
 elephants, parrots and monkeys, are all teachable 
 to some extent, and we have even heard of a 
 learned pig. Of learned asses there has been no 
 lack in the world. 
 
 But this educability of the higher mammals 
 
314 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 and birds is after all quite limited. By the be- 
 ginnings of infancy the door for progressiveness 
 was set ajar, but it was not all at once thrown 
 wide open. Conservatism still continued in fash- 
 jon. One generation of cattle is much like an- 
 other. It would be easy for foxes to learn to 
 climb trees, and many a fox might have saved 
 his life by doing so; yet quickwitted as he is, 
 this obvious device never seems to have occurred 
 to Reynard. Among slightly teachable mammals, 
 however, there is one group more teachable than 
 the rest. Monkeys, with their greater power of 
 handling things, have also more inquisitiveness 
 and more capacity for sustained attention than 
 any other mammals; and the higher apes are 
 fertile in varied resources. The orang-outang 
 and gorilla are for this reason dreaded by other 
 animals, and roam the undisputed lords of their 
 native forests. ‘They have probably approached 
 the critical point where variations in intelligence, 
 always important, have come to be supremely 
 important, so as to be seized by natural selection 
 in preference to variations in physical constitu- 
 tion. At some remote epoch of the past — we 
 cannot say just when or how — our half-human 
 forefathers reached and passed this critical point, 
 and forthwith their varied struggles began age 
 
The Meaning of Infancy. 315 
 
 after age to result in the preservation of bigger 
 and better brains, while the rest of their bodies 
 changed but little. This particular work of nat- 
 ural selection must have gone on for an enor- 
 mous length of time, and as its result we see that 
 while man remains anatomically much like an 
 ape, he has acquired a vastly greater brain with 
 all that this implies. Zodlogically the distance is 
 small between man and the chimpanzee; psycho- 
 logically it has become so great as to be im- 
 measurable. 
 
 But this steady increase of intelligence, as our 
 forefathers began to become human, carried with 
 it a steady prolongation of infancy. As mental 
 life became more complex and various, as the 
 things to be learned kept ever multiplying, less 
 and less could be done before birth, more and 
 more must be left to be done in the earlier years 
 of life. So instead of being born with a few 
 simple capacities thoroughly organized, man came 
 at last to be born with the germs of many com- 
 plex capacities which were reserved to be un- 
 folded and enhanced or checked and stifled by 
 the incidents of personal experience in each in- 
 dividual. In this simple yet wonderful way there 
 has been provided for man a long period during 
 which his mind is plastic and malleable, and 
 
316 Exeursions q° an Evolutionist. 
 
 the length of this per?od has increased with civil- 
 ization until it now covers nearly one third of our 
 lives. It is not that or inherited tendencies and 
 aptitudes are not still the main thing. It is only 
 that we have at last acquired great power to mod- 
 ify them by training, s>) that progress may go on 
 with ever-increasing sureness and rapidity. 
 
 In thus pointing ou’ the causes of infancy, we 
 have at the same time witnessed some of its ef- 
 fects. One effect, of stupendous importance, re- 
 mains to be pointed cat. As helpless babyhood 
 came more and more to depend on parental care, 
 the correlated feelings were developed on the 
 part of parents, and the fleeting sexual relations 
 established among mammals in general were 
 gradually exchanged for permanent relations. A 
 cow feels strong maternal affection for her nurs- 
 ing calf, but after the calf is fully grown, though 
 doubtless she distinguishes it. from other mem- 
 bers of the herd, it is not clear that she enter- 
 tains for it any parental feeling. But with our 
 half-human forefathers it is not difficult to see 
 how infancy extending over several years must 
 have tended gradually to strengthen the relations 
 of the children to the mother, and eventually to 
 both parents, and thus give rise to the permanent 
 organization of the family. When this step was 
 
The Meaning of Infancy. 317 
 
 accomplished we may say that the Creation of 
 Man had been achieved. For through the organ- 
 ization of the family has arisen that of the clan 
 or tribe, which has formed, as it were, the cellu- 
 lar tissue out of which the most complex human 
 society has come to be constructed. And out of 
 that subordination of individual desires to the 
 common interest, which first received a definite 
 direction when the family was formed, there grew 
 ‘the rude beginnings of human morality. 
 
 It was thus through the lengthening of his in- 
 fancy that the highest of animals came to be 
 Man, — a creature with definite social relation- 
 ships and with an element of plasticity in his or- 
 ganization such as has come at last to make his 
 difference from all other animals a difference in 
 kind. Here at last there had come upon the 
 scene a creature endowed with the capacity for 
 progress, and a new chapter was thus opened in 
 the history of creation. But it was not to be 
 expected that man should all at once learn how 
 to take advantage of this capacity. Nature, 
 which is said to make no jumps, surely did not 
 jump here. The whole history of civilization, 
 indeed, is largely the history of man’s awkward 
 and stumbling efforts to avail himself of this 
 flexibility of mental constitution with which God 
 
318 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 has endowed him. For many a weary age the 
 progress men achieved was feeble and halting. 
 Though it had ceased to be physically necessary 
 for each generation to tread exactly in the steps 
 of its predecessor, yet the circumstances of prim- 
 itive society long made it very difficult for any 
 deviation to be effected. For the tribes of prim- 
 itive men were perpetually at war with each 
 other, and their methods of tribal discipline were 
 military methods. To allow much freedom of 
 thought would be perilous, and the whole tribe 
 was supposed to be responsible for the words and 
 deeds of each of its members. The tribes most 
 rigorous in this stern discipline were those which 
 killed ont tribes more loosely organized, and thus 
 survived to hand down to coming generations 
 their ideas and their methods. From this state 
 of things an intense social conservatism was be- 
 gotten, — a strong disposition on the part of soci- 
 ety to destroy the flexible-minded individual who 
 dares to think and behave differently from his 
 fellows. During the past three thousand years 
 much has been done to weaken this conservatism 
 by putting an end to the state of things which 
 produced it. As great and strong societies have 
 arisen, as the sphere of warfare has diminished 
 while the sphere of industry has enlarged, the 
 
The Meaning of Infancy. 319 
 
 need for absolute conformity has ceased to be felt, 
 while the advantages of freedom and variety 
 come to be ever more clearly apparent. At a late 
 stage of civilization, the flexible or plastic society 
 acquires even a military advantage over the soci- 
 ety that is more rigid, as in the struggle between 
 French and English civilization for primacy in 
 the world. In our own country, the political 
 birth of which dates from the triumph of Eng- 
 land in that mighty struggle, the element of plas- 
 ticity in man’s nature is more thoroughly heeded, 
 more fully taken account of, than in any other 
 community known to history ; and herein lies the 
 chief potency of our promise for the future. We 
 have come to the point where we are beginning 
 to see that we may safely depart from unreason- 
 ing routine, and, with perfect freedom of think- 
 ing in science and in religion, with new methods 
 of education that shall train our children to 
 think for themselves while they interrogate Na- 
 ture with a courage and an insight that shall 
 grow ever bolder and keener, we may ere long be 
 able fully to avail ourselves of the fact that we 
 come into the world as little children with unde- 
 veloped powers wherein lie latent all the bound- 
 less possibilities of a higher and grander Human- 
 ity than has yet been seen upon the earth. 
 October, 1883. 
 
XIII. 
 A UNIVERSE OF MIND-STUFF. 
 
 THE author of these two remarkable volumes ! 
 died last March in the island of Madeira, at the 
 early age of thirty-three, the victim, apparently, 
 of what is called “ overwork,” —that is, of work 
 long pursued in utter disregard of the necessary 
 limitations and imperative requirements of the 
 human system. Never, perhaps, has the demon 
 of overwork carried off a more illustrious victim. 
 Never, perhaps, has it been more strikingly shown 
 of how little avail is the mere knowledge of hy- 
 giene in insuring obedience to its precepts. No 
 one understood better than Clifford what are pop- 
 ularly known as the laws of health; no one had 
 fathomed more deeply or discussed more lucidly 
 the dependence of the mind upon the body; no 
 one in our time has been better able to apply in 
 the physiological domain the most accurate and 
 definite conceptions of the relations of energy to 
 
 1 Lectures and Essays. By the late William Kingdon Clifford, 
 F. R. S. Edited by Leslie Stephen and Frederick Pollock. 2 vols. 
 8vo. London: Macmillan & Co. 1879. 
 
A Universe of Mind-Stuff: 521 
 
 work. Yet from all I have been able to learn re- 
 garding Clifford’s intellectual life, it would seem 
 to have been at all times carried on with an in- 
 tensely passionate, irrepressible zeal, as regard- 
 less of all physical laws as if the mind were not 
 merely a distinct but an independent entity, un- 
 hampered even during the present life by physical 
 conditions. 
 
 I cite this singular discrepancy between knowl- 
 edge and practice on account of its intrinsic in- 
 terest, not in reproof of the course of a friend 
 whose loss I must ever mourn. Admitting, with 
 Mr. Spencer, that one is morally bound so to 
 treat the body as not “in any way to diminish the 
 fulness or vigour of its vitality,” one sees at the 
 same time that, as the world is now constituted, 
 emergencies often arise which subordinate to 
 higher duties the duty of keeping oneself well. 
 To save human life I may jump into a freezing 
 river, though an ice-water bath be not recom- 
 mended by hygienic advisers. So one sympa- 
 thizes with the heroic sense of duty which often 
 leads the scholar to toil early and late, and long 
 after weariness has set in, in the performance of 
 work which is expected of him, — though in 
 many cases the work itself may be obscure in 
 
 fame and the taskmaster thankless and treacher- 
 21 
 
322 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 ous. For my own part I sympathize keenly, too, 
 with a very different feeling, — with that glorious 
 exuberance of vital energy which in youthful days 
 leads one far on into the night, working with a 
 kind of sacred fury to seize and secure the sud- 
 den glimpses of the fairyland of scientific truth 
 or literary beauty ere drowsy memory shall let 
 them slip and fade away. I think it very likely 
 that in many such cases a systematic self-repres- 
 sion, in deference to hygienic considerations, 
 might be just enough to clip down the brilliant 
 discoverer or original thinker into a mere scien- 
 tific or literary prig. The secrets of Nature and 
 of Art are not to be won without struggles; and 
 in the serene regions of philosophic meditation, 
 no less than in the turmoil of practical life, the 
 highest results are often accomplished by those 
 who work with desperate energy quite regardless 
 of self. Generous feelings of this sort have no 
 doubt frequently urged great thinkers, like Clif- 
 ford, fatally to overtask their physical resources ; 
 and such mistakes are peculiarly facilitated by the 
 accommodating disposition of that faithful servant 
 the brain, which in men of highly-strung nervous 
 temperament is but too ready to keep at its work 
 without protest, as a thoroughbred horse will run 
 till it drops. 
 
A Universe of Mind-Stuff. 823 
 
 In Clifford’s case this prodigious enthusiasm for 
 work, joined with an inherited weakness of con- 
 stitution, has robbed the world of one of its most 
 valuable lives. But though his life was brief, it 
 was wonderfully rich in achievement no less than 
 in promise. He had discerned more, and dis- 
 cerned it more clearly, in his score and a half of 
 years than most men discern in fourscore. In 
 pure mathematics he was admitted, at the age of 
 twenty-five, to be one of the first five or six orig- 
 inal thinkers of Europe. I say this from hear- 
 say, for my own knowledge of the subject is not 
 sufficient to enable me to comprehend his mathe- 
 matical achievements or to appreciate their bear- 
 ing. But the power and acuteness with which he 
 treated questions in physics and in general philos- 
 ophy were very marvellous, and his suggestiveness 
 was so great as already to have entitled him toa 
 high rank among contemporary philosophers. It 
 was impossible for him to touch upon any subject 
 without throwing some new light upon it, for the 
 mere restatement of an old truth in his powerful 
 and luminous language was sure to invest 1¢ with 
 fresh and beautiful significance. His skill in sci- 
 entific exposition was, accordingly, very remark- 
 able. For taking the most hopelessly complicated 
 and abstruse subjects and making them seem per- 
 
324 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 fectly simple and almost self-evident to ordinary 
 minds, I do not know who could be found to com- 
 pare with him. This rare power he owed largely 
 to the extreme vividness of his imagination. 
 What he saw ‘“ with his mind’s eye,” he saw as 
 accurately and distinctly as only keen observers 
 see things when they look with the physical eye. 
 This is well illustrated in his lecture on “ Atoms,” 
 and in various passages where he has occasion to 
 allude to the intimate constitution of matter, to 
 solidity, liquidity, quantivalence, and so on. Peo- 
 ple generally, when they talk about atoms, think 
 only of very little particles, without having in 
 mind anything about their various shapes and 
 modes of behaviour. Even scientific men, who 
 get on well enough by the aid of established for- 
 mulas, now and then betray a similar barrenness 
 of conception when some novel point comes up 
 for discussion. But Clifford would describe a 
 cluster of atoms with as much minuteness and as 
 much animation as a fashionable lady would dis- 
 play in describing the gorgeous costumes of last 
 night’s ball. Take the air of this room, for ex- 
 ample, which does not fill up all the space in the 
 room, but is composed of a prodigious number of 
 discrete particles of two sorts, — one sort called 
 molecules of oxygen, the other sort called mole- 
 
A Universe of Mind-Stuff. 325 
 
 cules of nitrogen. ‘ These small molecules,” says 
 Clifford, ‘are not at rest in the room, but are fly- 
 ing about in all directions with a mean velocity of 
 seventeen miles a minute. They do not fly far in 
 one direction; but any particular molecule, after 
 going over an incredibly short distance — the 
 measure of which has been made — meets an- 
 other, not exactly plump, but a little on one side; 
 so that they behave to one another somewhat in 
 the same way as two people do who are dancing 
 Sir Roger de Coverley, — they join hands, swing 
 around, and then fly away in different directions. 
 All these molecules are constantly changing the 
 direction of each other’s motion; they are flying 
 about with very different velocities, although, as 
 I have said, their mean velocity is about seventeen 
 miles a minute. If the velocities were all marked 
 off on a scale, they would be found distributed 
 about the mean velocity just as shots are distrib- 
 uted about a mark. If a great many shots are 
 fired at a target, the hits will be found thickest at 
 the bull’s-eye, and they will gradually diminish as 
 we go away from that, according to a certain law 
 which is called the law of error. It was first 
 stated clearly by Laplace; and it is one of the 
 most remarkable consequences of theory that the 
 molecules of a gas have their velocities distributed 
 
326 Excursions of an Hvolutionist. 
 
 among them precisely according to this law of 
 error. In the case of a liquid, it is believed that 
 the state of things is quite different. We said that 
 in the gas the molecules are moved in straight 
 lines, and that it is only during a small portion of 
 their motion that they are deflected by other 
 molecules; but in a liquid we may say that the 
 molecules go about as if they were dancing the 
 grand chain in the Lancers. Every molecule after 
 parting company with one finds another, and so 
 is constantly going about in a curved path, and 
 never sent quite clear away from the sphere of 
 action of the surrounding molecules. But, not- 
 withstanding that, all molecules in a liquid are 
 constantly changing their places, and it is for that 
 reason that diffusion takes place in the liquid... . 
 In the case of a solid, quite a different thing takes 
 place. In a solid every molecule has a place 
 which it keeps; thatis to say, it is not at rest any 
 more than a molecule of a liquid or a gas, but it 
 has a certain mean position which it is always 
 vibrating about and keeping fairly near to, and 
 it is kept from losing that position by the action 
 of the surrounding molecules.” } 
 
 Such scientific exposition as this is as beautiful 
 as poetry. In reading it one feels how the glory 
 
 1 Vol. i. p. 194. 
 
A Universe of Mind-Stuff. 327 
 
 and beauty of Nature are immeasurably enhanced 
 for the philosopher who can thus with inward 
 vision distinctly grasp objects and relations too 
 subtile for the eye of sense in any wise to discern. 
 
 This same remarkable lucidity is exhibited by 
 Clifford in the treatment of metaphysical prob- 
 lems. In some respects the most striking dis- 
 cussion in the present volume is contained in the 
 essay on “The Nature of Things-in-themselves,”’ 
 where some of the latest suggestions of anti- 
 materialistic philosophy are very forcibly pre- 
 sented. Starting from the impregnable Berkeleian 
 position that the material world of which I am 
 conscious exists only as an organized series of 
 changes in my consciousness, Clifford introduces 
 a very interesting and suggestive distinction be- 
 tween the objective and the ejective elements in 
 cognition. Our inferences concerning the material 
 world are all inferences concerning either some 
 actual or some potential states of consciousness. 
 When I describe the moon at which I am looking, 
 I am describing merely a plexus of optical sensa- 
 tions with sundry revived states of mind linked 
 by various laws of association with the optical 
 sensations. When I say that the moon existed 
 before I was born, I only mean that if I had been 
 alive a century ago and stood here and looked up 
 
328 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 as I am now doing, I should have had a similar 
 plexus of optical sensations and revived states of 
 mind to describe. Obviously there is nothing else 
 which I can mean; in any statement which I may 
 make concerning the world of matter, I can refer 
 only to things which either are, or may be, or 
 might have been, objects in my consciousness. 
 But it is quite otherwise when I make statements 
 regarding the existence of minds other than my 
 own. ‘“ When I come to the conclusion,” says 
 Clifford, “that yow are conscious, and that there 
 are objects in your consciousness similar to those 
 in mine, I am not inferring any actual or possible 
 feelings of my own, but your feelings, which are 
 not, and cannot by any possibility become, objects 
 in my consciousness.’”’ In the very act of inferring 
 that you have feelings like mine, some of which 
 you class as objective, and call the outer world, 
 while others you class as subjective, —in the very 
 act of inferring this I recognize these inferred 
 feelings of yours as something outside of myself, 
 as something which is not a part of myself and 
 never could be. These inferred existences Clifford 
 calls eects, ‘things thrown out of my conscious- 
 ness, to distinguish them from objects, things 
 presented in my consciousness, — phenomena.” 
 My conception of you is ‘a rough picture of 
 
A Universe of Mind- Stuff. 329 
 
 the whole aggregate of my consciousness, under 
 
 ? and this con- 
 
 imagined circumstances like yours ;’ 
 ception — unlike my conception of the moon, or 
 of your face — implies the existence of something 
 that can never in any way become a part of my 
 consciousness. Your face, while I am looking at 
 you, is an object in my consciousness; but your 
 consciousness can never be an object in mine, — it 
 is an eject, something entirely outside of my con- 
 sciousness. And so, too, your thoughts and feel- 
 ings, the objects in your mind, are to me ejects. 
 Now my belief in the existence of ejects affects 
 essentially my conception of objects. As a simple 
 object, the table is but a group of my states of 
 consciousness; but when I speak to you of the 
 table, I infer the existence in you of a similar 
 group of states of consciousness, — and this group 
 is an eject. When I think or speak of the table, 
 I bind up together the individual -object as it 
 exists in my mind with an indefinite number of 
 ejects assumed to resemble it; and thus is formed 
 the complex conception which Clifford calls the 
 social object, — that is, the conception of the table 
 as an object in human consciousness in general. 
 There now ensues an ingenious and interesting 
 series of inferences. Before our ancestors had 
 become men, or were endowed with anything like 
 
330 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 a human consciousness, there is every reason for 
 supposing them to have been gregarious in their 
 habits. They were gregarious primates of high 
 sagacity. But gregarious action, among animals 
 endowed with any sort of consciousness, is plainly 
 impossible unless the individual animal recognizes 
 his fellow’s consciousness as similar to or kindred 
 with his own. Above all, the first beginnings of 
 speech necessarily involved a belief in the eject. 
 But now, says Clifford, “if not only this concep- 
 tion of the particular social object, but ali those 
 that have been built up out of it, have been 
 formed at the same time with, and under the in- 
 fluence of, language, it seems to follow that the 
 belief in the existence of other men’s minds like 
 our own, but not part of us, must be inseparably 
 associated with every process whereby discrete im- 
 pressions are built together into an object.” To 
 vary the quaint expression of Ferrier, the minvi- 
 mum scibile per se is not exactly ego plus object, 
 but itis ego plus eject. Along with what we call 
 the objective element in every piece of our know!l- 
 edge there is not only a reference to self, but 
 there is also a sub-conscious reference to other 
 selves outside of us. “ And this sub-conscious 
 reference to supposed ejects,” continues Clifford, 
 *¢is what constitutes the impression of externality 
 
A Universe of Mind-Stuff. 331 
 
 in the object, whereby it is described as not-me. 
 At any rate, the formation of the social object 
 supplies an account of this impression of outness, 
 without requiring me to assume any ejects or 
 things outside my consciousness except the minds 
 of other men. Consequently it cannot be argued 
 from the impression of outness that there is any- 
 thing outside of my consciousness except the 
 minds of other men.” 
 
 By this beautiful method of presentation, so 
 much fresh light is thrown upon some philosoph- 
 ical truths as to make them appear self-evident. 
 See what havoc it makes, at the outset, with the 
 crude notion of the materialists —a notion sup- 
 ported by loose popular language and loose popu- 
 lar thinking —that changes of consciousness are 
 caused. by physical actions on or within the organ- 
 ism. Materialists talk about “ideas” as “ origi- 
 nating” in the brain; and people generally have 
 become so far impressed with the notion that 
 mental states are caused by physical actions on 
 the nervous system, that when you begin to ex- 
 plain to them the wonderfully minute correlations 
 between psychical action and brain-action which 
 modern psychology is disclosing, they immedi- 
 ately take fright and think you are ‘ explaining 
 away” the mind altogether. They think that 
 
332 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 in order to refute materialism it is necessary to 
 deny that associations of ideas occur simulta- 
 neously with the passage of waves of molecular 
 motion from one cell to another in the gray sur- 
 face of the brain. I wonder it never occurs to 
 them that they might more summarily effect their 
 purpose by denying, once for all, that the brain 
 has anything whatever to do with mind, or has 
 any further function than that of a balance wheel 
 or “governor” for regulating the motions of the 
 viscera! But in point of fact their alarm is al- 
 together groundless. Those who have mastered 
 the doctrine of the conservation of energy in its 
 bearings upon the facts of psychology will see, 
 as I demonstrated some years ago in ‘“ Cosmic 
 Philosophy,” that it is utterly impossible that ac- 
 tions in the nervous system should ever, under 
 any circumstances, stand in the relation of cause 
 to psychical actions going on in the mind. A 
 wave of molecular motion in the brain cannot 
 produce a feeling or a state of consciousness. It 
 can do nothing whatever but set up other waves 
 of molecular motion, either in the gray matter of 
 ganglia or in the white matter of nerve-fibres. 
 Whatever goes in any way into the organism as 
 physical force must come out again as physical 
 force, and every phase of every transformation 
 
A Universe of Mind-Stuff. 333° 
 
 that it may undergo in the mean time must be 
 rigorously accounted for in terms of physical force, 
 or else the law of the conservation of energy 
 will not be satisfied. To introduce conscious- 
 ness or feeling anywhere in the series, as either 
 caused by or causing actions in the brain or 
 nerves, is “not to state what is untrue, but is to 
 talk nonsense,” as Clifford would say. These con- 
 siderations — which must forever shut out scio- © 
 lists like Biichner from intruding with their self- 
 satisfied explanations into the great primordial 
 mystery of Nature, the relationship of body and 
 soul — would seem to have been clearly appre- 
 ciated by Clifford ; and he states the point in his 
 psychological language with elegant succinctness. 
 “The word Cause, 7o\Aaxas Acydpevoy and mislead- 
 ing as it is, having no legitimate place in science 
 or philosophy [Chauncey Wright would have said 
 a hearty Amen to that!], may yet be of some use 
 in conversation or literature, if it is kept to de- 
 note a relation between objective facts, to de- 
 scribe certain parts of the phenomenal order. But 
 only confusion can arise, if it is used to express 
 the relation between certain objective facts in my 
 consciousness and the ejective facts which are in- 
 ferred as corresponding in some way to them and 
 running parallel with them. . . . The distinction 
 
334 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 between eject and object, properly grasped, for. 
 bids us to regard the eject, another man’s mind, 
 as coming into the world of objects in any way, 
 or as standing in the relation of cause or effect to 
 any changes in that world. I need hardly add 
 that the facts do very strongly lead us to regard 
 our bodies as merely complicated examples of 
 practically universal physical rules, and their mo- 
 tions as determined in the same way as those of 
 the sun and the sea. There is no evidence which 
 amounts toa prima facie case against the dynami- 
 cal uniformity of Nature; and I make no excep- 
 tion in favour of that slykick force which fills ex- 
 isting lunatic asylums and makes private houses 
 into new ones.” 
 
 The doctrine of evolution, as applied by Mr. 
 Spencer to the study of psychical phenomena, 
 nowhere undertakes to interpret Mind as evolved 
 from Matter, but it shows a wonderfully minute 
 and instructive parallelism between the modes 
 of evolution of the total series of objective facts 
 and the total series of ejective facts. Pushing 
 the analysis, both of physical and of psychical 
 phenomena, to its farthest possible limits with 
 the data now at command, Mr. Spencer has 
 shown how all the phenomena constituting a con- 
 sciousness are compounded of elementary sub- 
 
A Universe of Mind-Stuff. 335 
 
 conscious feelings or “psychical shocks.” Physi- 
 cal phenomena, likewise, in an ultimate analysis, 
 are resolved into simple pulsations or rhythmical 
 movements of ether-atoms; and the question 
 arises as to the relation between the elementary 
 physical pulsation and the elementary psychical 
 shock. Reasoning most ingeniously from the 
 essential continuity in Nature which the doctrine 
 of evolution supposes, and recognizing the im- 
 possibility of deriving the psychical element from 
 the physical, Clifford reaches the conclusion that 
 “every motion of matter is simultaneous with 
 some ejective fact or event which might be part 
 of a consciousness.” This simple ejective fact or 
 event may be regarded as a molecule, so to speak, 
 of mind-stuff ; and we reach the startling conclu- 
 sion that “the universe consists entirely of mind- 
 stuff. Some of this is woven into the complex 
 form of human minds containing imperfect rep- 
 resentations of the mind-stuff outside them, and 
 of themselves also, as a mirror reflects its own 
 image in another mirror ad infinitum. Such an 
 imperfect representation is called a material uni- 
 verse. It is a picture in a man’s mind of the 
 real universe of mind-stuff.”’ 
 
 Clifford recognizes that this doctrine seems to 
 have been independently arrived at by many per- 
 
336 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 sons, and he instances the statements of Wundt 
 in his ‘“ Physiologische Psychologie.” The the- 
 ory harmonizes well with that which I have en? 
 deavoured to elucidate in the chapter on Matter 
 and Spirit in my “‘ Cosmic Philosophy,” though 
 the result was reached by different processes of 
 inference in the two cases. With Clifford’s 
 further conclusion, that the complex web of hu- 
 man consciousness cannot survive the disintegra- 
 tion of the organic structure with which we in- 
 variably find it associated, I do not agree. It is 
 a conclusion not involved in the premises, and is 
 one which no scientific philosopher, as such, has 
 a right to draw. It necessitates as complete a 
 transgression of the bounds of experience as any 
 theologian is ever called upon to make. Least of 
 all would one expect to see Clifford drawing such 
 a conclusion and announcing it with a tinge of 
 dogmatic emphasis withal, after reading his admi- 
 -rable remarks on Lobatchevski, where he shows 
 how strictly the modern thinker must limit his 
 generalizations to the region covered by experi- 
 ence. Were it not for a trifle too much of what 
 Mr. Spencer would call the “anti - theological 
 bias,” Clifford’s way of reasoning about the unt- 
 verse would have left little to be desired. 
 
 November, 1879. 
 
XIV. 
 IN MEMORIAM: CHARLES DARWIN. 
 
 To-pAY, while all that was mortal of Charles 
 Darwin is borne to its last resting-place in West- 
 minster Abbey, by the side of Sir Isaac Newton, 
 it seems a fitting occasion to utter a few words 
 of tribute to the memory of the beautiful and 
 glorious life that has just passed away from us. 
 Though Mr. Darwin had more than completed 
 his threescore and ten years, and though his life 
 had been rich in achievement and crowned with 
 success such as is but seldom vouchsafed to man, 
 yet the news of his death has none the less im- 
 pressed us with a sense of sudden and. premature 
 bereavement. For on the one hand the time 
 would never have come when those of us who had 
 learned the inestimable worth of such a teacher 
 and friend could have felt ready to part with 
 him; and on the other hand Mr. Darwin was one 
 whom the gods, for love of him, had endowed 
 with perpetual youth, so that his death could 
 
 never seem otherwise than premature. As Mr. 
 29 
 
338 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Galton has well said, the period of physical youth 
 —say from the fifteenth to the twenty-second 
 year — is, with most men, the only available 
 period for acquiring the intellectual habits and 
 amassing the stores of knowledge that are to form 
 their equipment for the work of a life-time; but 
 in the case of men of the highest order this period 
 is simply a period of seven years, neither more 
 nor less valuable than any other seven years. 
 There is, now and then, a mind — perhaps one 
 in four or five millions — which in early youth 
 thinks the thoughts of mature manhood, and 
 which in old age retains the flexibility, the re- — 
 ceptiveness, the keen appetite for new impres- 
 sions, that are characteristic of the fresh season of 
 youth. Such a mind as this was Mr. Darwin’s. 
 To the last he was eager for new facts and sug- 
 gestions, to the last he held his judgments in 
 readiness for revision ; and to this unfailing fresh- 
 ness of spirit was joined a sagacity which, natu- 
 rally great, had been refined and strengthened by 
 half a century most fruitful in experiences, till 
 it had come to be almost superhuman. When 
 we remember how Alexander von Humboldt 
 began at the age of seventy-five to write his 
 ‘* Kosmos,” and how he lived to turn off in his 
 ninetieth year the fifth bulky volume of that pro- 
 
In Memoriam: Charles Darwin. 339 
 
 digiously learned book, — when we remember 
 this, and consider the great scientific value of the 
 monographs which Mr. Darwin has lately been 
 publishing almost every year, we must feel that 
 it is in a measure right to speak of his death as 
 premature. 
 
 After all, however, no one can fail to recognize 
 in the career of Mr. Darwin the interest that be- 
 longs to a complete and well-rounded tale. When 
 the extent of his work is properly estimated, it is 
 not too much to say that among all the great 
 leaders of human thought that have ever lived 
 there are not half a dozen who have achieved so 
 much as he. In an age that has been richer than 
 any preceding age in great scientific names, his 
 name is indisputably the foremost. He has al- 
 ready found his place in the history of science 
 by the side of Aristotle, Descartes, and Newton. 
 And among thinkers of the first order of original- 
 ity, he has been peculiarly fortunate in having 
 lived to see all the fresh and powerful minds of a 
 new generation adopting his fundamental con- 
 ceptions, and pursuing their inquiries along the 
 path which he was the first to break. 
 
 When Mr. Darwin was born, in 1809, the name 
 which he inherited was already a famous name. 
 Dr. Erasmus Darwin, the friend of Priestley and 
 
340 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Watt, and author of the “ Botanic Garden,” was 
 deservedly ranked among the most ingenious and 
 original thinkers of the eighteenth century in 
 England. His brother, Robert Waring Darwin, 
 was the author of a work on botany which for 
 many years enjoyed high repute. Of the sons of 
 Erasmus, one, Sir Francis Darwin, was noted as 
 a keen observer of animals; another, Charles, 
 who died at the age of twenty-one from a dissec- 
 tion wound, had already written a medical essay 
 of such importance as to give his name a place in 
 biographical dictionaries ; a third, Robert War- 
 ing, who achieved great distinction as a physi- 
 cian, married a daughter of the celebrated Josiah 
 Wedgwood, and became the father of the im- 
 mortal discoverer who has just been taken away 
 from us. While citing these remarkable in- 
 stances of inherited ability, it may be of interest 
 to mention also that among the cousins of Mr. 
 Darwin who have become more or less distin- 
 guished in our own time are Mr. Hensleigh 
 Wedgwood, the philologist, the late Sir Henry 
 Holland, and Mr. Francis Galton, whose excel- 
 lent treatise on “ Hereditary Genius ” is known to 
 every one. Nor can it be irrelevant to add that 
 one of Mr. Darwin’s sons has already, through 
 his study of the tides, achieved some remarkable 
 
In Memoriam: Charles Darwin. 341 
 
 results, which seem likely to give him a high 
 place among the astronomers of the present day. 
 There is one thing which a man of original 
 scientific or philosophical genius in a rightly or- 
 dered world should never be called upon to do. 
 He should never be called upon to “ earn a liv- 
 ing ;” for that is a wretched waste of energy, in 
 which the highest intellectual power is sure to 
 suffer serious detriment, andruns the risk of be- 
 ing frittered away. into hopeless ruin. Like his 
 great predecessor and ally, Sir Charles Lyell, Mr. 
 Darwin was so favoured by fortune as to be free 
 from this odious necessity. He was able to devote 
 his whole life with a single mind to the pursuit of 
 scientific truth, and to ministering in the most 
 exalted way to the welfare of his fellow-creatures. 
 After taking his Master’s degree at Cambridge in 
 1831, at the age of twenty-two, an opportunity 
 was offered Mr. Darwin for studying natural his- 
 tory on a grand scale. The Beagle, a ten-gun 
 brig under the command of Captain Fitzroy, was 
 then about to start on a long voyage, ‘*to com- 
 plete the survey of Patagonia and Tierra del 
 Fuego, . . . to survey the shores of Chili, Peru, 
 and of some islands in the Pacific, and to carry a 
 chain of chronometrical measurements round the 
 world.” As Captain Fitzroy had expressed a 
 
342 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 wish to have a naturalist accompany the expedi- 
 tion, Mr. Darwin volunteered his services, which 
 the Lords of the Admiralty readily accepted, — 
 a fact which in itself is sufficient evidence of the 
 reputation for scientific attainments which Mr. 
 Darwin had already gained at that youthful age. 
 This memorable voyage, which lasted five years, 
 was very fruitful in results. The general his- 
 tory of the voyage, with an account of such obser- 
 vations in natural history as seemed likely to in- 
 terest the ordinary reader, is to be found in the 
 “¢ Journal of Researches ”’ published by Mr. Dar- 
 win some three years after his return to England. 
 This book immediately acquired a great popular- 
 ity, which it has retained to this day, having 
 gone through at least thirteen editions; and it is 
 certainly one of the most fascinating books of 
 travel that was ever written. ‘The author,” 
 said the “ Quarterly Review,” in December, 1859, 
 “is a first-rate landscape painter with the pen, 
 and the dreariest solitudes are made to teem with 
 interest.” An abridgment of this charming jour- 
 nal, lately published with illustrations, under the 
 title «* What Mr. Darwin saw in his Voyage round 
 the World,” has become a favourite book for boys 
 and girls. ) 
 
 The scientific results of Mr. Darwin’s voyage 
 
In Memoriam: Charles Darwin. 343 
 
 in the Beagle were so voluminous that it required 
 several years and the assistance of many able 
 hands to record them all. Owen, Hooker, Water- 
 house, Berkeley, Bell, and other eminent nat- 
 uralists took part in the publication of these re- 
 sults, which formed a very important contribution 
 to the zodlogy and botany, and to the palzontol- 
 ogy, of the countries visited in the course of the 
 voyage. To this great series of volumes, which ap- 
 peared between 1840 and 1846, Mr. Darwin con- 
 tributed three from his own hand, — the work on 
 “ Volcanic Islands,” the “« Geological Observations 
 on South America,” and the famous essay on 
 ‘Coral Reefs.” In this latter work Mr. Darwin 
 proved that through gradual submergence fring- 
 ing-reefs are developed into barrier-reefs, and 
 these again into atolls or lagoon-islands; and thus 
 _ he not only for the first time rendered comprehen- 
 sible the work of coral-building, but threw a new 
 and wonderful light upon the movements of ele- 
 vation and of subsidence in all parts of the globe. 
 By thus bringing the work of the corals into its 
 direct relationship with volcanic phenomena, Mr. 
 Darwin succeeded in presenting “a grand and 
 harmonious picture of the movements which the 
 crust of the earth has undergone within a late 
 period ;” and the result was undoubtedly one of — 
 
344 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 the most brilliant contributions to geology that 
 has been made since the first publication of the 
 great work of Sir Charles Lyell. In 1851-53 Mr. 
 Darwin published a “ Monograph of the Cirri- 
 pedia,” in two volumes octavo, and accompanied 
 this, about the same time, with monographs of the 
 various fossil genera of cirripeds (or barnacle fam- 
 ily) in Great Britain. In recognition of his solid 
 and brilliant achievements, Mr. Darwin in 1853 
 received the royal medal from the Royal Society, 
 and in 1859 the Wollaston medal from the Geo- 
 logical Society. By this time his name had come 
 to be known in all parts of the civilized world, 
 and he was already ranked among the foremost 
 living naturalists, so that when, in the year 1859, 
 the * Origin of Species ” was published, it at once 
 attracted universal attention by reason of the 
 eminence of its author. I well remember how, 
 in the first few weeks after the book was pub- 
 lished, every one at all instructed in the biologi- 
 cal sciences was eager to ascertain the views of so 
 distinguished a naturalist with regard to a ques- 
 tion which for several years had agitated the 
 scientific world. 
 
 Like the great works which had preceded it, 
 the “ Origin of Species”” must be regarded as one 
 of the results of the ever memorable voyage of 
 
In Memoriam: Charles Darwin. 345 
 
 the Beagle. In the course of this voyage Mr. Dar- 
 win visited the Galapagos Islands, and was struck 
 by the peculiar relations which the floras and fau- 
 nas of this archipelago sustained to one another, 
 and to the flora and fauna of the nearest mainland 
 of Ecuador, distant some five hundred miles. 
 These islands are purely volcanic in formation, 
 and have never at any time been joined to the 
 South American continent. They possess no ba- 
 trachians and no mammals, save a mouse, which 
 was no doubt introduced by some ship. The only 
 insects are coleoptera, which possess peculiar fa- 
 cilities for transportation across salt water upon 
 floating logs or branches; and along with these 
 are two or three species of land shells. There are 
 also two snakes, one land tortoise, and four kinds 
 of lizard; and in striking contrast with all this 
 general extreme paucity of animal forms, there 
 are at least fifty-five species of birds. Now these 
 insects, mollusks, reptiles, and birds are like the 
 insects, mollusks, reptiles, and birds of the west- 
 ern coast of South America, and not like the cor- 
 responding animals in other parts of the world. 
 But this is not all; for the Galapagos animals, 
 while very like the animals of Ecuador, Peru, and 
 Chili, are not quite like them. While the fami- 
 lies are identical, the differences are always at 
 
346 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 least specific, sometimes generic, in value. Pre- 
 cisely the same sort of relationship is sustained by 
 the Galapagos flora toward the flora of the main- - 
 land. And, to crown all, the differences between 
 forms that are generic when the archipelago as a 
 whole is compared with the continent sink into 
 specific differences when the several islands of the 
 archipelago are compared with one another. Such 
 a group of facts as these leads irresistibly to the 
 conclusion that the specific forms of plants and 
 animals have been originated, not by “ special 
 creations,” but by “descent with modifications.” 
 If species have been separately created, there is 
 of course no reason why the population of such an 
 archipelago should be strictly limited to such or- 
 ganisms as can fly or get floated across the water ; 
 nor is there any reason why these organisms should 
 resemble those of the nearest mainland rather 
 than those of any other tropical mainland, such as 
 Africa or India. One might indeed object that 
 organisms have been created in such wise as most 
 completely to harmonize with the physical condi- 
 tions by which they are surrounded, and that it is 
 to be presumed that the physical conditions of the 
 Galapagos Islands are more like those of Ecuador 
 and Peru than they are like those of any other 
 countries ; so that in this way the general simi 
 
In Memoriam: Charles Darwin. 347 
 
 larity between the floras and faunas may be ac- 
 counted for. But such an explanation is very 
 weak, for it rests upon an assumption which has 
 been proved to be untrue. It is not always true 
 that the organisms in any given part of the world 
 are such as harmonize best with the physical con- 
 ditions by which they are surrounded. It is approx- 
 imately true only where the competition among 
 organisms is practically unlimited ; in protected 
 areas it is not at all true. In Australia and New 
 Zealand, for example, the plants and animals 
 which have been introduced by Europeans are 
 exterminating and supplanting the native plants 
 and animals quite as rapidly as the Englishman is 
 supplanting the native human population of these 
 countries. And to state this fact is only to say, 
 in other words, that the plants and animals of 
 Europe are better adapted to the physical condi- 
 tions which prevail in Australia and New Zealand 
 than the plants and animals which are indigenous 
 there. A comprehensive survey of the distribu- 
 tion of life all over the globe confirms this conclu- 
 sion, and shows that by no assumption of a special 
 act of creation can the peculiar features of the 
 Galapagos flora and fauna be explained. ‘The 
 only way in which to account for these features is 
 to suppose that the archipelago has been peopled 
 
348 Excursions of an Hvolutionist. 
 
 by migrations from the nearest mainland. This 
 explains why the creatures there are most like the 
 creatures of Ecuador and Peru, and it also ex- 
 plains why the only indigenous animals to be 
 found there are such as could have flown or been 
 blown thither, or such as could have been ferried 
 thither on floating vegetation. 
 
 But if all this be true —and to-day no compe- 
 tent naturalist doubts it —a conclusion of vast 
 importance immediately follows. If the Galapa- 
 gos plants and animals are descended from ances- 
 tors that migrated thither from the continent, they 
 have been modified during ages of residence in the 
 islands, until they have come to differ specifically, 
 and in many cases generically, from their collat- 
 eral relations on the mainland. And this amounts 
 to saying that species are not fixed, but mutable, 
 —that every distinct form of plant and animal 
 was not originally created with its present attri- 
 butes, but that some forms have arisen from the 
 modification of ancestral forms. 
 
 In this way, from the study of the inhabitants 
 of a single well-defined area, Mr. Darwin was led 
 into a series of most grand and startling consid- 
 erations relating to the past history of life upon 
 our globe. The conclusions thus succinctly stated 
 were amply confirmed by a survey of the distri- 
 
In Memoriam: Charles Darwin. 349 
 
 bution of organisms all over the earth, and thus 
 was inaugurated the study of zodlogical and bo- 
 tanical geography, —a study which in half a cen- 
 tury has reached such magnificent proportions in 
 the great works of Hooker and Wallace, and which 
 owes its wonderful progress mainly to the saga- 
 cious impulse communicated at the outset by Mr. 
 Darwin. It has now become well established that 
 in very few cases, if any, have animals and 
 plants originated exactly in the places where we 
 now find them, but that they are almost always 
 the offspring of immigrants; and the study of 
 the ancient migrations of the progenitors of liv- 
 ing plants and animals has begun to throw a 
 flood of light upon the history of the changes 
 that have taken place in the physical geography 
 of the earth. 
 
 The conception of the origin of species through 
 “descent with modifications”’ having been thus 
 forcibly suggested to Mr. Darwin by the facts of 
 geographical distribution, it was still further 
 strengthened by a study of the geological succes- 
 sion of extinct organisms and their relations to 
 living organisms in the same areas. Such broad 
 facts as the successive appearance of various sloth- 
 like and armadillo-like animals in South America, 
 or of various marsupials and monotremes in Aus- 
 
300 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 tralia, forcibly suggest the descent of the later 
 forms from the earlier ones that lived in the same 
 countries. Of like import is the general fact that 
 in the course of geological succession any given 
 organism is sure to be intermediate in character 
 between those that have preceded and those that 
 have followed it. But still more powerfully sug- 
 gestive even than this is the fact that, in propor- 
 tion as we go back in geologic time, we find the 
 characteristics of plants and animals to be less 
 and less distinctly specialized: so that, for ex- 
 ample, in the Eocene period, instead of horses 
 and tapirs such as now exist we find an animal 
 something like a tapir and something like a horse; 
 and instead of leopards and wolves and bears we 
 find carnivorous animals, not specialized as of fe- 
 line or canine or ursine family, but with some 
 points of resemblance to all three, and with some 
 points like opossums and wombats into the bar- 
 gain. In conformity with this general principle, 
 the arrangement of organisms according to their 
 succession in geologic time would be like the 
 branches and branchlets of a tree, which is the 
 typical form of arrangement where the link that 
 connects the facts arranged is the link of parent- 
 age. 
 
 But just here the facts of geological succession 
 
In Memoriam: Charles Darwin. 301 
 
 are reinforced, with truly overwhelming conclu- 
 siveness, by the great facts of classification in the 
 animal and vegetable kingdoms. This branching 
 tree-like arrangement, which alone correctly rep- 
 resents the relationships of organisms in their ge- 
 ological succession, is at the same time the only 
 possible arrangement by which the likenesses and 
 affinities among existing organisms can be repre- 
 sented with anything like an approach to correct- 
 ness. The facts of paleontology exactly dovetail 
 in with those of taxonomy, and serve to elucidate 
 and emphasize them. Many eminent naturalists 
 before Cuvier attempted to classify all animals in 
 a linear series, but Cuvier proved once for all that 
 no such arrangement is possible. The only fea- 
 sible arrangement is that of groups within groups, 
 diverging like the branches and twigs of what we 
 aptly term a “family-tree;” and this fact not 
 only strongly suggests the theory of ‘descent 
 with modifications,” but is indeed utterly incom- 
 patible with any other theory. 
 
 Further powerful evidence in favour of the same 
 view is furnished by countless familiar facts of 
 morphology and embryology. On the theory of 
 *‘ descent with modifications,” it is intelligible that 
 all the classes and orders of the vertebrate sub- 
 kingdom, for example, should be constructed on 
 
352 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 exactly the same fundamental plan, —that the 
 arms of men, the fore-legs of quadrupeds, the 
 paddles of cetacea, the wings of birds, and the pec- 
 toral fins of fishes should be structurally identical 
 with one another. It is intelligible that a horse’s 
 hoof should be, as it is, made up of toes that 
 have grown together. It is intelligible that every 
 mammalian embryo should begin, as it does, to 
 develop as if it were going to become a fish, cir- 
 culating its blood through gills and a two-cham- 
 bered heart, and then, changing its course, should 
 behave as if it were going to become a reptile or 
 bird, and only after long delay should assume the 
 distinctive characteristics of mammality. It is in- 
 telligible that many snakes should possess beneath 
 their skin the rudiments of limbs; that sundry 
 insects, which never fly, should have wings firmly 
 fastened down to their sides; and that the em- 
 bryos of many birds, while developing in the egg, 
 should grow temporary teeth within their little 
 beaks. But it is only on the theory of ‘descent 
 with modifications”’ that such facts, which are in 
 no wise exceptional, but common throughout the 
 entire animal kingdom, have any meaning what- 
 ever. 
 
 Many of these facts had been noticed by em- 
 inent naturalists before Mr. Darwin, and their in- 
 
In Memoriam: Charles Darwin. 3538 
 
 compatibility with any theory of special creations 
 had also been observed; but it was Mr. Darwin 
 who first marshalled them into one mighty argu- 
 ment, of which the cumulative result was that the 
 phenomena of the organic world are unintelligible 
 from beginning to end save on the theory of “ de- 
 scent with modifications.” Had Mr. Darwin done 
 nothing but this, it would have given him a pe- 
 culiar right to associate his name with the devel- 
 opment theory, it would have established that 
 theory on a basis of “convincing probability,” 
 and it would have entitled him to a high place in 
 the history of scientific thought in the nineteenth 
 century. But Mr. Darwin did not stop here. 
 Convinced by such considerations as those just 
 presented that the specific characters of plants 
 and animals are not constant, but variable, he 
 sought for some grand all-pervading cause of vari- 
 ation in organisms, and his search was crowned 
 with success. This was the achievement which 
 in his hands raised the development theory from 
 the rank of a brilliant philosophical speculation 
 into the rank of an irrefragable scientific dis- 
 covery. ‘This was the achievement which gave 
 to mankind a new implement of research and a 
 new insight into the workings of Nature, and it 
 
 was this which justifies us in placing Mr. Dar- 
 23 
 
354 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 win’s name beside those of Newton and Des- 
 cartes. 
 
 The method by which Mr. Darwin succeeded 
 in discovering the cause of variation in organisms 
 was the thoroughly scientific method of advancing 
 tentatively from the known to the unknown. 
 Are there any instances in which the forms of 
 plants and animals have actually been seen to 
 vary, and, if there are, what seems to have been 
 the principal cause of variation in these instances? 
 The answer is not far to seek. The instances are 
 very numerous indeed in which variations — and 
 very marked ones, too— have been wrought in the 
 characteristics of plants and animals through the 
 agency of man. The phenomena of variation 
 presented by animals and plants under domesti- 
 eation are so numerous and so complex that it 
 would require many volumes to describe them. 
 Dogs, horses, pigs, cattle, sheep, rabbits, pigeons, 
 poultry, silk-moths, cereal and culinary plants, 
 fruits and flowers innumerable, have been reared 
 and bred by man for many long ages, — some of 
 them from time immemorial. These domesti- 
 cated organisms man has caused to vary, in one 
 direction or another, to suit his natural or arti- 
 ficial needs, or even the mere whim of his fancy. 
 The variations, moreover, which have thus been 
 
In Memoriam: Charles Darwin. 355 
 
 produced have been neither slight nor unim- 
 portant, and have been by no means confined to 
 superficial characteristics. Compare the thor- 
 ough-bred race-horse with the gigantic London 
 dray-horse on the one hand, and the Shetland 
 pony on the other; or, among pigeons, contrast 
 the pouter with the fan-tail, the barb, the short- 
 faced tumbler, or the jacobin, all of which are 
 historically known to have descended from one 
 and the same ancestral form. The differences ex- 
 tend throughout the whole bony framework as 
 well as throughout the muscular and nervous 
 systems, and exceed in amount the differences by 
 which naturalists often adjudge species to be dis- 
 tinct. Through what agency has man produced 
 such results as these? He has produced them 
 simply by taking advantage of a slight tendency 
 to variation which exists perpetually in all plants 
 and animals, and which exhibits itself in the sim- 
 ple fact that nowhere do we ever find any two indi- 
 viduals exactly alike. Taking advantage of these 
 individual variations, the breeder simply selects 
 the individuals which best suit his purpose, and 
 breeds them apart by themselves. The qualities 
 for which they are selected are propagated and 
 enhanced through inheritance and renewed selec- 
 tion in each succeeding generation, until by the 
 
356 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 slow accumulation of small differences a new race 
 is formed. And thus we have peaches and al- 
 monds from a common source, grapes to eat and 
 grapes to make wine of, pointer-dogs and mastiffs, 
 and so on throughout the list of cultivated plants 
 and domesticated animals. 
 
 These facts about variation under domestica- 
 tion are for the most part well known, and the 
 alleged cause of variation, in selection by man, is 
 not an occult cause, but is a phenomenon per- 
 fectly familiar to every one. Starting from this 
 point, Mr. Darwin made a very elaborate study 
 of all that farmers, horticulturists, and breeders 
 could impart concerning “artificial selection ;” 
 and more especially with regard to pigeons his 
 own observations were so extensive and minute 
 that, when the “ Origin of Species” was published, 
 I recollect reading one silly review, in which we 
 were gravely informed that here was a new theory 
 of development, —not by a naturalist, but by a 
 mere pigeon-fancier, and probably worthy of very 
 little consideration ! 
 
 Such being the wonders which man has wrought 
 within a comparatively short time through “ arti- 
 ficial selection” in the breeding of animals and 
 plants, the question next arises whether any selec- 
 tive process like this has been going on through 
 
In Memoriam: Charles Darwin. B57 
 
 countless ages without the intervention of man. 
 Can it be that there is a “natural selection ” of 
 individual variations, whereby new species are 
 produced in just the same way that breeders pro- 
 duce new races of pigeons? There is such a 
 “natural selection’? forever going on as one of 
 the inseparable concomitants of organic life; and 
 it was just in the detection of this great truth 
 that the very kernel of Mr. Darwin’s stupendous 
 discovery consisted. It was here that the poetic 
 or creative act of genius came into play, just as 
 it did in Newton’s discovery, when the fall of the 
 moon was likened to the fall of the apple, and 
 the tangential force of the moon to the tangential 
 force of a stone whirled at the end of a string. 
 The case is simple enough, when creative genius 
 has once explained it. So great is the destruction 
 of organic life that out of hundreds of seeds, or 
 spawn, or ova, but one or two ever live to come to 
 maturity and reproduce themselves in offspring. 
 Such is the result of the universal and unrelent- 
 ing competition between organisms for the means 
 of subsistence. Any creature that lives to repro- 
 duce its kind is selected from out of a thousand 
 that perish prematurely, and its selection is evi- 
 dence of its better adaptation to the conditions 
 amid which it is placed. And so stern and so 
 
858 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 ubiquitous is the competition that there is no in- 
 dividual variation, however slight or apparently 
 trivial, that is not liable to be seized upon and 
 enhanced if it tend in any way to promote the 
 survival of the species. Thus it is natural selec- 
 tion that at every moment preserves the stability 
 of a species, and keeps it in harmony with its en- 
 vironment, by cutting off all individual variations 
 that oscillate too far on either side of a prescribed 
 mean. ‘The stability of a species depends, there- 
 fore, upon the stability of the environment; and 
 the only condition under which a species could 
 remain unchanged would be, that it should re- 
 main forever exposed to the action of changeless 
 groups of circumstances. But this has never been 
 the case with any species, and never will be. The 
 habitable surface of the earth has been perpet- 
 ually changing for a hundred million years, and 
 the relations between the countless groups of or- 
 ganisms that have covered its surface have been 
 perpetually changing in endless degrees of com- 
 plexity ; and in such a world, under the working 
 of natural selection, there can be no such thing as 
 ‘¢ fixity of species.” 
 
 Having arrived at these grand conclusions, it 
 became comparatively easy for Mr. Darwin to go 
 on and trace the workings of natural selection in 
 
In Memoriam; Charles Darwin. 359 
 
 many special instances. In these inquiries, upon 
 which he brought to bear a knowledge of the de- 
 tails of organic life more vast and multifarious 
 than has ever been possessed by any other man, 
 he occupied nearly a quarter of a century before 
 it seemed to him that the time had come for mak- 
 ing his discovery known to the world. In 1844, 
 he wrote out a brief sketch of the conclusions 
 which, as he modestly says, “then seemed to me 
 probable ;”’ and this sketch he showed to his 
 friend Hooker, perhaps also to Lyell. But fifteen 
 years more, rich in observation and reflection, 
 passed away, and still the world had heard noth- 
 ing about the origin of species by means of nat- 
 ural selection. How much longer this silence 
 might have lasted, had not an unforeseen circum- 
 stance come in to break it, one cannot say. But 
 no doubt it would have lasted some time longer, 
 for Mr. Darwin did not wish to publish his con 
 clusions until he had given due attention to every 
 fact and every argument which might in any way 
 bear upon them; and it is quite evident that 
 when he wrote the “ Origin of Species” he did not 
 realize either the wonderful maturity which his 
 argument had attained, or the overwhelming co- 
 gency with which he was then actually presenting 
 it to the world. It was very characteristic of Mr. 
 
360 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Darwin — into the fibre of whose mind there en- 
 tered not the smallest shred of egotism or of the 
 pride of knowledge — to make so many allow- 
 ances for the inevitable incompleteness of his 
 work, when judged by that standard of ideal per- 
 fection which he alone among men was able to 
 apply to it, as to nave rendered himself incapable 
 for the time being of appreciating its real mag- 
 nitude. In writing the “ Origin of Species,” he 
 regarded the book as merely a preliminary outline 
 of his theory, which would serve to prevent his 
 being forestalled by any one else in the announce- 
 ment of it, and he made frequent allusions to the 
 larger and more elaborate treatise in which he 
 intended presently to follow up the exposition and 
 to reinforce the argument. When I first met Mr. 
 Darwin in London, in 1878, he told me that he 
 was surprised at the great fame which his book 
 instantly won, and at the quickness with which it 
 carried conviction to the minds of all the men on 
 whose opinions he set the most value. The suc- 
 cess of his theory was, indeed, wonderfully rapid 
 and complete. To understand him was to agree 
 with him, and before ten years more had passed 
 by, so many able men had become expounders 
 and illustrators of the theory of natural selection 
 that -—as he told me —it seemed no longer so 
 
In Memoriam: Charles Darwin. 361 
 
 necessary as it had once seemed for him to write 
 the larger and more elaborate treatise. The 
 learned work on the “ Variation of Animals and 
 Plants under Domestication,” which appeared in 
 1868 in two octavo volumes, formed the first in- 
 stallment of this long-projected treatise. The 
 second part was to have treated of the variation 
 of animals and plants through natural selection ; 
 and a third part would have dealt at length with 
 the phenomena of morphology, of classification, 
 and of distribution in space and time. But these 
 second and third parts were never published. 
 
 I alluded, just now, to the “ unforeseen circum- 
 stance’? which led Mr. Darwin in 1859 to break 
 his long silence, and to write and publish the 
 “Origin of Species.” This circumstance served, 
 no less than the extraordinary success of his book, 
 to show how ripe the minds of men had become 
 for entertaining such views as those which Mr. 
 Darwin propounded. In 1858 Mr. Wallace, who 
 was then engaged in studying the natural history 
 of the Malay Archipelago, sent to Mr. Darwin 
 (as to the man most likely to understand him) a 
 paper, in which he sketched the outlines of a the- 
 ory identical with that upon which Mr. Darwin 
 had so long been at work. The same sequence 
 of observed facts and inferences that had led Mr. 
 
362 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Darwin to the discovery of natural selection and 
 its consequences had led Mr. Wallace to the very 
 threshold of the same discovery; but in Mr. Wal- 
 lace’s mind the theory had by no means been 
 wrought out to the same degree of completeness 
 to which it had been wrought in the mind of Mr. 
 Darwin. In the preface to his charming book on 
 “ Natural Selection,” Mr. Wallace, with rare mod- 
 esty and eandour, acknowledges that, whatever 
 value his speculations may have had, they have 
 been utterly surpassed in richness and cogency 
 of proof by those of Mr. Darwin. This is no 
 doubt true, and Mr. Wallace has done such good 
 work in further illustration of the theory that he 
 can well afford to rest content with the second 
 place in the first announcement of it. 
 
 The coincidence, however, between Mr. Wal- 
 lace’s conclusions and those of Mr. Darwin was 
 very remarkable. But, after all, coincidences of 
 this sort have not been uncommon in the history 
 of scientific inquiry. Nor is it at all surprising 
 that they should occur now and then, when we 
 remember that a great and pregnant discovery 
 must always be concerned with some question 
 wltich many of the foremost minds in the world 
 are busy in thinking about. It was so with the 
 
 discovery of the differential calculus, and again 
 me 
 
In Memoriam: Charles Darwin. 363 
 
 with the discovery of the planet Neptune. It was 
 so with the interpretation of the Egyptian hiero- 
 glyphics, and with the establishment of the un- 
 dulatory theory of light. It was so, to a consid- 
 erable extent, with the introduction of the new 
 chemistry, with the discovery of the mechanical 
 equivalent of heat, and the whole doctrine of the 
 correlation of forces. It was so with the invention 
 of the electric telegraph and with the discovery 
 of spectrum analysis. And it is not at all strange 
 that it should have been so with the doctrine of 
 the origin of species through natural selection. 
 The belief that all species have originated through 
 derivation from other species, and not through 
 special creation, had been held by part of the 
 scientific world ever since the time of Mr. Dar- 
 win’s grandfather, who was one of its earliest and 
 most eminent advocates. Even those naturalists 
 who did not hold this belief can hardly be said to 
 have held any antagonistic belief, inasmuch as the 
 so-called ‘‘ doctrine of special creations” is not a 
 positive doctrine at all, but a mere confession of 
 ignorance, and was so regarded by scientific nat- 
 uralists, such as Owen, for example, before 1859. 
 The truth is that before the publication of the 
 * Origin of Species”. there was no opinion what- 
 ever current respecting the subject that deserved 
 
364 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 to be called a scientific hypothesis. That the 
 more complex forms of life must have come into 
 existence through some process of development — 
 from simpler forms was no doubt the only sensl- 
 ble and rational view to take of the subject; but 
 in a vague and general opinion of this sort there 
 is nothing that is properly scientific. A scientific 
 hypothesis must connect the phenomena with 
 which it deals by alleging a “true cause ;” and 
 before 1859 no one had suggested a “true cause” 
 for the origination of new species, although the 
 problem was one over which every philosophical 
 naturalist had puzzled since the beginning of the 
 ceitury. This explains why Mr. Darwin’s suc- 
 cess was so rapid and complete, and it also ex- 
 plains why he came so near being anticipated. 
 His long delay, however, in bringing forward his 
 theory had one good result. The work was so 
 thoroughly done that, although Darwinism has 
 now for twenty-three years been one of the chief 
 subjects of popular discussion in all the civilized 
 countries of the world, no one as yet seems to 
 have discovered any argument against the theory 
 of natural selection which Mr. Darwin had not 
 himself already foreseen and considered in the 
 first edition of the * Origin of Species.” 
 
 After an interval of twelve years Mr. Darwin 
 
In Memoriam: Charles Darwin. 3865 
 
 followed up the first announcement of his general 
 theory with his treatise on the ‘*‘ Descent of Man,” 
 a book which deals with a subject in one respect 
 even more difficult than the origin of species. In 
 his earlier book Mr. Darwin, with masterly skill, 
 brought together huge masses of facts, and showed 
 their bearings upon a few general propositions re- 
 lating to the whole organic world. In the “ De- 
 scent of Man” the problem was different. Prop- 
 ositions of great generality, such as had been 
 established in the “ Origin of Species,” served 
 here as fundamental principles; but they had to 
 be supplemented by a consideration of the enor- 
 mously complex and heterogeneous circumstances 
 which attended the origination of a particular 
 genus. It is enough to say that in the treatment 
 of this arduous problem Mr. Darwin showed no 
 less acuteness and grasp than had been displayed 
 in his earlier work. 
 
 In connection with this problem of the origin of 
 the human race, Mr. Darwin announced the results 
 of his extensive researches into the subject of sex- 
 ual selection in the animal kingdom. Some time 
 before this, in his treatise on the “ Fertilization 
 of Orchids,” published in 1862, he had called at- 
 tention to the interdependence between the insect 
 world and the world of flowers. Further research 
 
366 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 in this direction has made it clear that the beau- 
 tiful colours and sweet odours of flowers are due to 
 selection on the part of insects. The bright colours 
 and delicious perfumes attract insects, who come 
 to sip the nectar, and carry away on their backs 
 the pollen with which to fertilize the next plant 
 they visit. Thus the fairest and sweetest flowers 
 are continually selected to perpetuate their race, 
 and thus have insects and flowering plants been 
 developed in close correlation with one another. 
 
 It was Mr. Darwin’s good fortune to live long 
 enough to see his theory not only adopted by all 
 competent naturalists, but demonstrated by crucial 
 evidence in the case of at least one genus. The 
 researches of Professor Marsh into the palzon- 
 tology of the horse have established beyond ques- 
 tion the descent of the genus equus from a five- 
 toed mammal not larger than a pig, and somewhat 
 resembling a tapir. All the ‘missing links” in 
 this case have been found; and thus the primitive 
 barbaric hypothesis of “special creations” may 
 be said to have disappeared forever from the field 
 of natural history. It has taken its place by the 
 side of the Ptolemaic astronomy and the dreams 
 of the alchemists. 
 
 Mr. Darwin’s latest books belong to a period 
 in which, having lived to witness the complete 
 
In Memoriam: Charles Darwin. 367 
 
 success of his great work, he has employed his 
 time in recording the results of his researches on 
 many subsidiary points, of no little interest and 
 importance. The treatises on the Expression of 
 the Emotions in Man and Animals, on the Move- 
 ments and Habits of Climbing Plants, on Insec- 
 tivorous Plants, on Cross and Self Fertilization, 
 on the Different Forms of Flowers, and on the 
 Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Ac- 
 tion of Worms, should be read as models of sound 
 scientific method by every one who cares to learn 
 what scientific method is. They may be counted, 
 too, among the most entertaining books of science 
 that have ever been written ; and the points that 
 have been established in them, taken in connec- 
 tion with Mr. Darwin’s previous works, make up 
 an aggregate of scientific achievement such as has 
 rarely been equalled. 
 
 It is fitting that in the great Abbey, where 
 rest the ashes of England’s noblest heroes, the 
 place of the discoverer of natural selection should 
 be near that of Sir Isaac Newton. Since the pub- 
 lication of the immortal “ Principia,” no single 
 scientific book has so widened the mental horizon 
 of mankind as the “ Origin of Species.” Mr. Dar- 
 win, like Newton, was a very young man when 
 his great discovery suggested itself to him. Like 
 
368 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
 
 Newton, he waited many years before publishing 
 it to the world. Like Newton, he lived to see it 
 become part and parcel of the mental equipment 
 of all men of science. The theological objection 
 urged against the Newtonian theory by Leibnitz, 
 that it substituted the action of natural causes for 
 the immediate action of the Deity, was also urged 
 against the Darwinian theory by Agassiz; and the 
 same objection will doubtless continue to be urged 
 against scientific explanations of natural phenom- 
 ena so long as there are men who fail to compre- 
 hend the profoundly theistic and religious truth 
 that the action of natural causes is in itself the 
 immediate action of the Deity. It is interesting, 
 however, to see that, as theologians are no longer 
 frightened by the doctrine of gravitation, so they 
 are already beginning to outgrow their dread of 
 the doctrine of natural selection. On the Sunday 
 following Mr. Darwim’s death, Canon Liddon, at 
 St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Canons Barry and Pro- 
 thero, at Westminster Abbey, agreed in referring 
 to the Darwinian theory as “ not necessarily 
 hostile to the fundamental truths of religion.” 
 The effect of Mr. Darwin’s work has been, how- 
 ever, to remodel the theological conceptions of 
 the origin and destiny of man which were current 
 in former times. In this respect it has wrought 
 
In Memoriam: Charles Darwin. 369 
 
 a revolution as great as that which Copernicus in- 
 augurated and Newton completed, and of very 
 much the same kind. Again has man _ been 
 rudely unseated from his imaginary throne in the 
 centre of the universe, but only that he may learn 
 to see in the universe and in human life a richer 
 and deeper meaning than he had before sus- 
 pected. Truly, he who unfolds to us the way in 
 which God works through the world of phenom- 
 ena may well be called the best of religious 
 teachers. In the study of the organic world, no 
 less than in the study of the starry heavens, is it 
 true that “day unto day uttereth speech, and 
 night unto night showeth knowledge.” 
 
 April, 1882. 
 24 
 
aon 
 
 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ABORIGINES 
 thought to be Mongols or ten tribes 
 of Israel, 148. 
 
 Acacia, 29. 
 
 Accumulation, effective desire of, 218. 
 
 Adapis, 25, 
 
 Afghanistan, 84. 
 
 Africa, 20; not yet explored geologi- 
 cally, 33. 
 
 Agassiz, L., 68, 369. 
 
 Age of the earth, 15. 
 
 Ahriman, 78. 
 
 Ahura-Mazda, 78, 82. 
 
 Akkadian empire, 52. 
 
 Albania, 229. 
 
 Albanian language, 96. 
 
 Albert of Brandenburg, 98. 
 
 Albigenses, 262. 
 
 Ale, Aryan names for, 141. 
 
 Alleghanies, 19. 
 
 Allen, Grant, 186. 
 
 Alligators, 24. 
 
 Almond and peach, 357. 
 
 Alps, 19, 23, 28, 38, 69. 
 
 Altaic languages, 100, 153, 166. 
 
 Alternation of climates in Pleistocene 
 Europe, 37-40, 66. 
 
 Amazulus, 294, 298. 
 
 American civilization, 319. 
 
 Americans, average height of, 176. 
 
 Anesthetics, 230. 
 
 Ancestor-worship, 251. 
 
 Anchitherium, 25, 30. 
 
 Anoplotherium, 25. 
 
 Anramainyus, 78, 82. 
 
 Anschar, 261. 
 
 Antarctic continent, 72. 
 
 Antelope, 25, 29. 
 
 Antiquity of life on the earth, 15. 
 
 Antlers, 30, 35 
 
 Apennines, 23. 
 
 Apes, 30, 35, 313, 315. 
 
 Aphelion, 58. 
 
 Apples, 51. 
 
 Aquinas, 285. 
 
 Arabian civilization, 189. 
 
 of America formerly | ‘‘ Arabian Nights,” fire-worshippers 
 
 slandered in, 80. 
 
 Arabic words in Persian, 112. 
 
 Arabs, 53. 
 
 Araucarian pine, 11. 
 
 Arctic circle in Eocene and Miocene 
 periods, 73. 
 
 Arctic Ocean, 33. 
 
 Aria, a name for Thrace, 91. 
 
 Ariana, 84. 
 
 Arians, 261. 
 
 Ariaramnes, 86. 
 
 Ariarathes, 86. 
 
 Arii, a German tribe, 91. 
 
 Ariobarzanes, 86. 
 
 Ariovistus, 91. 
 
 Arkwright, Sir R., 205, 207. 
 
 Armenia once supposed to be cradle 
 of human race, 149. 
 
 Armenian language, 94, 
 
 Armenian mountains, 73, 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 298. 
 
 Arrows of Cave-men, 46, 
 
 Artistic talent of Cave-men, 46. 
 
 Arya, arare, and ear, 85. 
 
 Aryan, properly a linguistic term, 
 how far applicable in an ethnologi- 
 cal sense, 101-103; Professor Whit- 
 ney’s objection to the name, 91. 
 
 Aryan mother-tongue, reconstruction 
 of, 122, 152. 
 
 Aryan names for nearest relatives, 
 127 ; house, 128; village and town, 
 129; wall, 180; roof and door, 131; 
 window, 132; cows, 133; horse, 
 136; cat, 139; mouse and fly, 140; 
 bee, honey, and ale, 141; sea, 143. 
 
 Aryan numerals, 128. 
 
 Aryana Vaéjo, 78-85. _ 
 
 Aryans, 53-55, 75, 78-146, 163; com- 
 pared with Iroquois, 224. 
 
 Asia, ethnology of, 166. 
 
 Assyrian language, 165. 
 
 Athanasians, 260. 
 
 Atlantic Ocean, 20, 21. 
 
 Atlantic ridge, 23, 28, 34, 41. 
 
372 
 
 Atlantosaurus, 12. 
 
 Atomic theory, 279. 
 
 Atoms and molecules, 325. 
 
 Attila, 170. 
 
 Augustus, 206. 
 
 Australia, 348. 
 
 Automatic character of often-repeated 
 actions, 308-310. 
 
 Auvergne, 34, 38. 
 
 Avara, 53, 92. 
 
 Average, deviations from, 178. 
 
 Avernus, 92. 
 
 Axe, 50. 
 
 Azara, 172. 
 
 Baszoon, 30. 
 
 Badger, 49. 
 
 Bagehot, W., 186. 
 
 Bakhdhi, 79. 
 
 Baktria, 79, 81. 
 
 Baltic Sea, 33, 33. 
 
 Bamboo, 34. 
 
 Barbarians, conversion of, 261. 
 
 Barbarous languages, 171. 
 
 Barley, 51. 
 
 Barrows of pee age, 50. 
 
 Basks, 52, 99, 1 
 
 Batrachians, Pachee: 1g 
 
 Bavaria, 21. 
 
 Beagle, Voyage of the, 342-346. 
 
 Bears, 26, 35, 37, 39, 49. 
 
 Beaver, 39. 
 
 Bedlam, 228. 
 
 Bee, Aryan names for, 141. 
 
 Beech, 24. 
 
 Belief in things coming out right of 
 themselves, 221. 
 
 Belisarius, 206. 
 
 Bell, Sir C., 344. 
 
 Benevolent ‘bigots, 214, 234. 
 
 Berbers, 53. 
 
 Berecynthian mother, 262. 
 
 Berkeleian errs 328. 
 
 Berkeley, M 
 
 Berwick, 129. 
 
 Bignonia, 29. 
 
 Bigotry coexisting with elevation of 
 character, 214. 
 
 Biography, how far useful in sociol- 
 ogy, 193-196. 
 
 Birds, earliest, 12. 
 
 Bison, 37, 39, 45. 
 
 Black Sea, 33 
 
 Bleda, 244. 
 
 Blondes, 54, 104. 
 
 Boar, 37, 49. 
 
 Bogomilians, 262. 
 
 Bohemia, 21, 23. 
 
 Bohemian language, 98. 
 
 Bokhara, 100. 
 
 Bollandists, 211. 
 
 Bopp, F., 
 
 Index. 
 
 Borromeo, C., 214. 
 
 Bowditch, N., 309. 
 
 Brain and mind, 278-281, 332-334. 
 
 Brains of man and ape, 315. 
 
 Brasseur de Bourbourg, 149. 
 
 Bread-fruit tree, 24. 
 
 Breton language, 96. 
 
 Brigandage, 229. 
 
 Britain, early ages of, 8, 51. 
 
 British’ islands formerly joined to 
 Gaul and Scandinavia, 23, 28, 34, 
 41, 49. 
 
 Bronze age, 54. 
 
 robipeelg. 53, 104. 
 
 aah LOT 1, 277, 283, 334. 
 
 Buckle, H. 7. 188, 213-217, 244, 254. 
 
 Bull, Aryan names for, 134. 
 
 Bull’s-eye window, 132. 
 
 Bunsen, C. C. J., 80. 
 
 Burning of Protestants by Mary Tu- 
 dor, 255. 
 
 Caballus, the runner, 138. 
 
 Cabul, 84 
 
 Cactus, 24. 
 
 Ceesar, J., 199, 201. 
 
 Sonne antiquity of man in, 36, 40, 
 7 
 
 Calvin, 214, 299. 
 
 Cambrian period, 11, 69. 
 
 Camel, 26. 
 
 Camphor tree, 29. 
 
 Causes, 50, 204. 
 
 Canoes, 214. 
 
 Carboniferous period, 11, 22. 
 
 Carlyle, T., 191, 202, 301. 
 
 Carnivora, 24, 351; reached their 
 highest point in Miocene age, 30. 
 
 Carpathians, 23. 
 
 Carthagenian fleets destroyed in first 
 Punic war, 207 
 
 Caspian Sea, 33. 
 
 Cat, 26; Aryan names for, 139; 
 Greeks’ and Romans had none do- 
 mesticated, 140. 
 
 Catholic Church in the future, 288. 
 
 wegen 23, 73, 166; languages of, 
 
 Cause, 334. 
 
 Causes of glaciation, 57-76. 
 
 Cave-bear, 39, 46, 49. 
 
 Cave-men, 42-49, 75; compared with 
 Eskimos, 47. 
 
 Cave-lion, 46, 49. 
 
 Celebes, 173. 
 
 Cervantes, 245. 
 
 Chalk, 22. 
 
 Chamois, 37. 
 
 Chert, 43. 
 
 Chestnut trees, 24. 
 
 Chinese race and speech, 168. 
 
 Christianity, persecuted by good em- 
 
Index. 
 
 perors, 214; its origin, 258; per- 
 manent and transient features of, 
 259; partly paganized through 
 struggle with barbarism, 262; puri- 
 fied by Luther, 265, 288-293. 
 
 Christmas, 262. 
 
 Church militant, 260. 
 
 Cinnamon tree, 29, 34. 
 
 Cirripeds, 345. 
 
 Civet, 29. 
 
 Piet stage of social organization, 239, 
 248. 
 
 Clarendon, 130. 
 
 Classification of animals, 352. 
 
 Clifford, W. K., 321-337. 
 
 Climate of Eocene period, 24; of Mio- 
 cene, 29 ; of Pliocene, 34; of Pleisto- 
 cene, 37-40, 57-76 ; of England, 64, 
 
 Clothes of Cave- -men, 45 ; of Neolithic 
 men, 50. 
 
 Club-mosses, 11, 22. 
 
 Cockney misuse of /, 115. 
 
 Code of honour, 229. 
 
 Codfish, mental life of, 309. 
 
 Coenopithecus, 25. 
 
 Coldest weather on the earth in east- 
 ern Siberia, 72. 
 
 Colenso, J. W., 270 
 
 Colours of flowers, 367. 
 
 Columbus, 23, 206. 
 
 Comfort, growth of the taste for, 231. 
 
 Commodus, 214. 
 
 Comparative method, 88. 
 
 Competition between organisms, 358. 
 
 Complexion of European races, why 
 various, 53-55, 104-106. 
 
 Comte, A., 190, oT 1, 274, 289. 
 
 Conifers, gigantic, in Miocene age, 29. 
 
 Connecticut Valley, footprints in, 12. 
 
 Constantine the Great, 8. 
 
 Continents and oceans, 20. , 
 
 Contract and status, 257. 
 
 Cook, Captain, 173. 
 
 Coral reefs, 344. 
 
 Corporate ’ responsibility, notion of, 
 239-242, 248, 286, 318; its origin in 
 the military necessities of primitive 
 society, 252 ; causes of its decline, 
 256-258. 
 
 Correlation of forces, 280, 364. 
 
 Coulanges, F., 194. 
 
 Cow, Aryan names for, 133. 
 
 Cow and calf, 316. 
 
 Cows as money, 134. 
 
 Crane, 29. 
 
 Creation of man, 306-320. 
 
 Credit, living on, 220. 
 
 Credo ‘quia impossibile, 260. 
 
 Cretaceous period, 14, 22, 23. 
 
 Croatian ve ides 98. 
 
 Crocodile, 
 
 Croll, J. iT, 7,30, 57, 76. 
 
 373 
 
 Cruel punishments forbidden in Con- 
 stitution of the United States, 228. 
 Cruelty connected with primitive war- 
 fare, 223-225; diminished by in- 
 dustrialism, 225-231 ; its relation to 
 fear, 252. , 
 
 Crusades, 263. 
 
 Crustaceans in Cambrian epoch, 11. 
 
 Cuneiform inscriptions, 84. 
 
 Cuvier, G., 25, 88, 352. 
 
 Cycads, 29. 
 
 Cypress, 24. 
 
 Daaeerrs of Cave-men, 46. 
 
 Daévas, 78. 
 
 Dante, 215, 293. 
 
 Danube in Miocene period, 28; mean- 
 ing of the name, 95. 
 
 Darius Hystaspes, 80, 84. 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 17, 147, Iti, LYNG 
 194, 338-370. 
 
 Darwin, Erasmus, 340, 364. 
 
 Darwin family, 341. 
 
 Dasyus, 84. 
 
 Date of glacial period, 57-76. 
 
 Davila, G. G., 245. 
 
 Dawkins, W. B., 27, 30, 35, 42, 43, 48, 
 
 Deciduous trees, 14, 23, 
 
 Deer, 25, 29, 35, ST, 39, 43. 
 
 Dehra Dhun, 130. 
 
 Deinotherium, 30. 
 
 Dentreath, Dolly,.last speaker of the 
 Cornish language, 96 
 
 Denudation, rate of, 19. 
 
 Descartes, 282. 
 
 Devonian period, 11. 
 
 Differential calculus, 363. 
 
 Distaff, 50. 
 
 Distribution of plants and animals, 
 
 Dnieper, 95. 
 
 Dog, 26, 50, 356. 
 
 Domestic animals, 50, 51, 355. 
 
 Domineer, disposition to, 233-236. 
 
 Dominic, Saint, 211, 214. 
 
 Don, Keltic name for water, 95. 
 
 Dorians, 54. 
 
 Drake, Sir F., 93. 
 
 Dravidian languages, 153, 165. 
 
 Drawing of Cave-men, 46. 
 
 Dresden, 38. 
 
 Dryopithecus, 30-32. 
 
 Duelling, 229. 
 
 Dumbarton, 1380. 
 
 Dundee, 130. 
 
 Dunkeld, 130. 
 
 Duration of geologic epochs, 14, 
 
 EaAcie, 29. 
 
 Earth’s crust, oscillations of, 20. 
 Earth’s orbit, ellipticity of, 68. 
 Easter, 262. 
 
374 
 
 Educability of lower animals, 311-314. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 265. 
 
 Effective desire of accumulation, 218. 
 
 Egypt, 51. 
 
 Egyptian hieroglyphics, 364. 
 
 Eject and object, 328-336. 
 
 Elagabalus, 214. 
 
 Elephant, 34, 37, 39, 43, 49. 
 
 Eliot, George, 221. 
 
 Elk, 39, 43, 49. 
 
 Elm, 24, 29. 
 
 Embryology, 253. 
 
 English Channel, 49. 
 
 English conquest of India, 87. 
 
 English language, future of, 93, 160. 
 
 Engraving of Cave-men, 46. 
 
 Eocene period, 16, 23-27, 36, 69, 351. 
 
 Eozo6n, 10. 
 
 Equinoxes, precession of, 59. 
 
 Ericsson, J., 204 
 
 Erin, 91. 
 
 Error, Laplace’s law of, 326. 
 
 Eskimos and Cave-men, 47. 
 
 Esthonian language, 100. 
 
 Ethelred, 86. 
 
 Ethelwolf, 86. 
 
 Ethics and evolution, 303. 
 
 Etruskans, 53, 99. 
 
 Etymology, former unscientific char- 
 acter of, 110. 
 
 Euphrates, 52. 
 
 Europe, succession of races in, 56, 
 104. 
 
 Euskarian language, 99. 
 
 Evarts, W. M., 294. 
 
 Exclusive salvation, 215. 
 
 Executions, private, 230. 
 
 Externality, 332. 
 
 Extravagance, 220. 
 
 oe of the Sheep and the Horses, 
 
 24, 
 
 Family the unit of primitive society, 
 238 ; origin of, 249, 316. 
 
 Family tree, 352. 
 
 Fan-palms, 24, 29. 
 
 Faroe Islands, 41. 
 
 Fear connected with cruelty, 252. 
 
 Feather and pen, 118. 
 
 Fee and pecus, 135. 
 
 Ferns, 22. 
 
 Ferrier, J. F., 331. 
 
 Fick, A., 126. 
 
 Figs, 29. 
 
 Finality, craving for, 292. 
 
 Finland, 21, 38. 
 
 Finnish language, 100, 166. 
 
 Finno-Tataric race, 166. 
 
 Fire, how obtained by Cave-men, 45. 
 
 Fire-worshippers, 80. 
 
 Fish, earliest, 11. 
 
 Fitzroy, Captain, 342. 
 
 Index. 
 
 Flamingo, 29. 
 
 Flax, 51. 
 
 Flint flakes of river-drift, 43. 
 
 Flints, chipped, in Miocene age, 31; 
 in Pleistocene age in valley of 
 Thames, 40. 
 
 Flowers and insects, 366. 
 
 Fly, Aryan names for, 141. 
 
 Fly-catcher, 310. 
 
 Folkmotes, 190. : 
 
 Footprints in Connecticut sandstone, 
 
 Forces, correlation of, 280, 364. 
 
 ¥orth, river, 41. 
 
 Fox, 37, 45, 49; cannot climb trees, 
 237, 314. 
 
 Fox-hunting, 229. 
 
 France, 35, 37, 45; her rivalry with 
 England, 319. 
 
 Freeman, E. A., 8,144, 194, 201, 229. 
 
 French character injured by persecu- 
 tion, 263. 
 
 French language, 97. 
 
 Frenchmen, race-composition of, 102. 
 
 Frobisher, Martin, 93. 
 
 Froude, J. A., 201. 
 
 Fulton, 204. 
 
 Future life, 291, 337. 
 
 GAEL, 54. 
 
 Gaelic language, 96. 
 
 Galapagos Islands, 346. 
 
 Galton, F., on physical youth, 339. 
 Gases, liquids, and solids, 326. 
 Gaudry on Miocene man, 31. 
 
 Gaul, 28, 51. 
 
 Gauls, 95. 
 
 Geese, 29. 
 
 Geikie, A., 20, 33. 
 
 Geikie, J., 20, 37, 41, 67. 
 
 Genesis, book of, 149. 
 
 Geniuses, 175. 
 
 Geologic epochs, 9, 13. 
 
 Geology-as a historical science, 197. 
 George IV., 9. 
 
 German language, 98. 
 
 German Ocean, 21, 28, 34, 38, 41, 49. 
 Getz, 97. 
 
 Gibraltar, 39. 
 
 Glacial epoch, 38-40, 48, 56-76. 
 Beg in early geologic periods, 
 
 Gloves of Cave-men, 46. 
 
 Glutton, 37. 
 
 Goat, 50. 
 
 Godfrey de Bouillon, 206. 
 
 Gorilla dreaded by lower animals, 314. 
 Gothic language, 98. 
 
 Goths, 97. 
 
 Gracchus, C., 193. 
 
 Grasmere, 143. 
 
 Great men, 175-210. 
 
Index. 
 
 Greek and Latin, 89, 96. 3 
 Greenland, 23, 24, 29, 41, 72, 74. 
 Gregariousness, 331. 
 
 Gregory VII., 188. 
 
 Grief and tears, 279. 
 
 Grimm’s law, 115. 
 
 Grinnell Land, 72. 
 
 Grote, G., 270. 
 
 Gulf stream, 63-65. 
 
 Gum-tree, 24. 
 
 Gutenberg, 206. 
 
 Hache, 43. 
 
 Hamburg and Timbuctoo, 187. 
 
 Hapta Hendu, 82. 
 
 Hare, 49. 
 
 Have, conjugated, 113. 
 
 Heat, carried by Gulf Stream, 64; 
 mechanical equivalent of, 364. 
 
 Hebrew, attempts to derive Aryan 
 languages from it, 89, 110, 150. 
 
 Hecla, 28. 
 
 Hedgehog, 29. 
 
 Hell-fire, doctrine of, 226-228. 
 
 Helmholtz, 177. 
 
 Heresiarchs, no longer found anong 
 eminent men, 269. 
 
 Heresy, 292. 
 
 Hermes, mutilation of his wayside 
 statues at Athens, 240. 
 
 Herodotos, 84, 97. 
 
 Hero-worship, 175-210. 
 
 Heroes, prehist6ric, 205. 
 
 Heron, 29. 
 
 Hibernia, 92. 
 
 Himalayas, 39. 
 
 Hipparion, 30, 35. 
 
 Hippotamus, 34, 37, 66. 
 
 Holland, Spanish atrocities in, 225. 
 
 Holland, Sir H., 341. 
 
 Honey, Aryan names for, 141. 
 
 Hooker, Sir J., 344, 350, 360. 
 
 Horns, 30, 35. 
 
 Horse, 25, 35, 37, 50, 351, 356, 367; 
 Aryan names for, 136. 
 
 Horse-tails, 11. 
 
 House, Aryan names for, 128. 
 
 Houses of Neolithic age, 50. 
 
 Humane feelings favoured by industri- 
 alism, 209, 228-231. 
 
 Humber, 41. 
 
 Humboldt, A., 339. 
 
 Hungarian language, 100, 166. 
 
 Huns, 98. 
 
 Hunter, William, burning of, 226. 
 
 Huss, John, name of, 116. 
 
 Hussites, 262. 
 
 Hutton, 115. 
 
 Huxley, T. H., 22, 106. 
 
 Hyena, 26, 35, 37, 43, 49. 
 
 Hygiene, 322. 
 
 375 
 
 TAPYGIAN language, 99. 
 
 Iberians, 53, 75, 99, 105. 
 
 Ibex, 37. 
 
 Icebergs in Pliocene age, 34. 
 
 Iceland, 23, 24, 41. 
 
 Iguanodon, 12. 
 
 urs center its effect upon conduct, 
 
 Improvidence of savages, 218. 
 
 India, what we are learning from it, 
 87, 109; non-Aryan tribes in, 100. 
 
 Indian Ocean, 20, 33, 73. 
 
 Indic class of languages, 94. 
 
 Individual rights ignored in early so- 
 ciety, 238. 
 
 Indo-European, 90. 
 
 Indo-Germanic, 91. 
 
 Indo-Persians, 94. 
 
 Indus, 82. 
 
 Industrial civilization, 202-210. 
 
 Infallibility, assumption of, 235-238, 
 
 Infancy of apes, 313. 
 
 Infancy of man, its meaning, 247, 306- 
 320. 
 
 Infanticide, 250. 
 
 Infidelity, 292. 
 
 Ingersoll, R., 241. 
 
 Inquisition, 211, 225, 264. 
 
 Inscriptions of Darius, 84. 
 
 Insectivora, 26. 
 
 Insects, earliest, 11; relations to flow- 
 ers, 366 
 
 Insurance against fire, 218. 
 
 Tonians, 54. 
 
 Tranic class of languages, 94. 
 
 Treland, 92. 
 
 Trish Channel, 49, 
 
 Trish elk, 49. 
 
 Irish, name of, 91. 
 
 Troquois, 224. 
 
 Isabella of Castile, 214, 
 
 Italian language, 97. 
 
 Italy, 28, 34, 35. 
 
 Iver, 58, 91. 
 
 Ivernia, 92. 
 
 Ivy, 29. 
 
 JAMES, W., 175-202. 
 Japanese language, 168, 
 Jinghis Khan, 166, 170. 
 Jones, Sir W., 90. 
 
 Julian the Apostate, 214. 
 Jurassic period, 12, 22, 312. 
 
 Kettic languages, 91, 95, 96. 
 Kelts, 53, 54, 95, 102. 
 Khiva, 100. 
 
 Kjarda Dhun, 130. 
 
 Knight, C., 7. 
 
 Kurdish language, 94. 
 Kymry, 54. 
 
376 
 
 LAcORDAIRE, 211. 
 
 Lafuente, 245. 
 
 Lake-villages of Switzerland, 51. 
 
 La Mettrie, 277, 283. 
 
 Lancers, 327. 
 
 Language not a sure index of race, 
 101; of savages, changes quickly, 
 172. 
 
 Laplace, 309, 326. 
 
 Lappish language, 100. 
 
 Latin language, 89, 96; spread of, over 
 western Europe, 155. 
 
 ‘* Latin race,’’ 101. 
 
 Latin tribes, 54. 
 
 Laurels, 29. 
 
 Laurentian period, 10, 20. 
 
 Leibnitz, 369. 
 
 Lemurs, 25. 
 
 Leopard, 37, 39, 43. 
 
 Lessing, G. E., on relative truth of 
 opinions, 212, 
 
 Lettish language, 98. 
 
 Leverrier, 59. 
 
 Leyden, 130. 
 
 Ligurians, 53. 
 
 Lindens, 29. 
 
 Linear classification of animals im- 
 practicable, 352. 
 
 ee 37, 39; sabre-toothed, 30, 35, 
 
 Liquids, gases, and solids, 327. 
 
 Lithuanian language, 98. 
 
 Lobatchevsky, 337. 
 
 Lollards, 264. 
 
 London, 130. 
 
 Loom, 50. 
 
 Louer, 117. 
 
 Lowest organisms especially perisha- 
 ble, 11 
 
 Lugdunum, 130. 
 
 Luther, M., 242, 264, 267. 
 
 Lyell, Sir C., 342, 345, 360. 
 
 Lynx, 35. 
 
 Lyons, 34, 130. 
 
 Lysander, 193. 
 
 Macaunay, T. B., 194. 
 
 Machairodus, 30, 35, 39. 
 
 Madrid, 245. 
 
 Magdeburg, 225. 
 
 Magian religion, 80. 
 
 Magnolia, 29, 34. 
 
 Maine, Sir H. 8., 144, 147, 194, 238. 
 
 Malta, 39. 
 
 Mammals, earliest, 12; in Eocene, 24- 
 27; in Miocene, 29; in Pliocene, 
 34; in Pleistocene, 37. 
 
 Mammoth, 45, 49. 
 
 Man, not found in Eocene, 27 ; doubt- 
 ful in Miocene, 30-33 ; found in Pli- 
 ocene in Portugal and California, 
 36; in river-drift, 39-44; in caves, 
 
 
 
 Index. 
 
 42-48; significance of his great an- 
 tiquity, 76; origin of, 306-320, 366. 
 
 Manatee, 31. 
 
 Mandshus, 167. 
 
 Maple, 24, 29, 34. 
 
 Marcus Antoninus, 214. 
 
 Margiana, 81. 
 
 Marmot, 40. 
 
 Marsh, O. C., 12, 368. 
 
 Marsupials, 14, 24. 
 
 Mary Tudor, 254. 
 
 Mastodon, 30, 35. 
 
 Materialism, 272-283, 332-336. 
 
 Maurer, 194. 
 
 Mead, 141. 
 
 Meat, how cooked by Cave-men, 45. 
 
 Mecca, competition of bards at, 162. 
 
 Medes, 84. 
 
 ‘¢ Mediterranean Sea’’ of Cretaceous 
 period, 22. 
 
 Mental life of warm-blooded animals, 
 312. 
 
 Merv, 81. 
 
 Mesopithecus, 31. 
 
 Midget, 141. 
 
 Mildness of modern manners, 209. 
 
 Military discipline of primitive soci- 
 ety, 251. 
 
 Mill, J. S., 192, 235. 
 
 Millet, 51. 
 
 Million, how to frame a conception 
 of, 17. 
 
 Mind-stuff, 336. ad 
 
 Minokhired, 84. 
 
 Miocene period, 24, 27-33, 36, 69. 
 
 Mississippi valley, drainage of, 18. 
 
 Missouri Compromise, 8. 
 
 Mole, 29. 
 
 Molecules and atoms, 325. 
 
 Mollusks in Cambrian period, 11; in 
 Eocene, 24. 
 
 Mommsen, T., 201. 
 
 Mongols, 166, 263. 
 
 Monkeys, infancy of, 313; teachable- 
 ness of, 314. 
 
 Monsoons, 74. 
 
 Moors, 53. 
 
 Moral progress, 214-222. 
 
 Morals and evolution, 303. 
 
 Moriscoes expelled from Spain, 243- 
 246, 254. 
 
 Morphology, 353. 
 
 Mortar and pestle, 50. 
 
 Mortillet on Miocene man, 32. 
 
 Moscow, 38. 
 
 Mountains as condensers, 71. 
 
 Mouse, Aryan names for, 140. 
 
 Miiller, Max, 91. 
 
 Muru, 79, 81. 
 
 Musk-sheep, 37, 39, 40, 42, 48. 
 
 Mussulman civilization, 189. 
 
 Myrtle, 29. 
 
: Index. 
 
 NATURAL selection could not wnaided 
 have originated mankind, 307. 
 Necklaces of Cave-men, 46. 
 Necrolemur, 25. 
 Neolithic men identical with Iberians, 
 9 
 
 Neptune, discovery of, 364. 
 
 New chemistry, 364. 
 
 New England scenery due to glaciers, 
 68 
 
 New Zealand, 348. 
 
 Newgate prison, 228. 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 192, 338, 368. 
 
 Nice, dialect of, 158. 
 
 Nineveh, winged bulls of, 173. 
 
 Norsemen thought it shameful to die 
 in one’s bed, 225. 
 
 North America formerly joined to 
 Europe, 23, 28, 41, 148. 
 
 North and south poles, 64. 
 
 Norway, 34, 41, 
 
 Oaks, 14, 24, 29, 34. 
 
 Object and eject, 328-336. 
 
 Object, social, 330. 
 
 Ocean-beds permanent, 20. 
 
 Ocean currents, 63-65, 
 
 Old Aryan language, reconstruction 
 of, 122, 152. 
 
 Old Stone age, 42-49, - 
 
 Opossum, 29. 
 
 Orang-outang, infancy of, 313. 
 
 Orbit of the earth, 58. 
 
 Orchards of Neolithic Switzerland, 
 51 
 
 Oriel window, 131. 
 
 Origins, present age wrapped in the 
 study of, 284. 
 
 Ormuzd, 78. 
 
 Orthodoxies, decomposition of, 269. 
 
 Oscan language, 97. 
 
 Oscillations of earth’s crust, 20. 
 
 Ossetian language, 94. 
 
 Owen, R., 344, 364. 
 
 Ox, 35, 50. 
 
 Oxus, 81. 
 
 Paciric Ocean, 20. 
 Paleolithic age, 42-49. . 
 Paley on Homeric poems, 270. 
 Palfrey, 137. 
 
 Pali, 94. 
 
 Palnetto, 29. 
 
 Palms, 14, 24, 34, 
 Pandanus, 24. 
 
 Panther, 35. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 227, 270. 
 Paroquet, 29. 
 
 Parsis of Bombay, 80, 94. 
 Peach and almond, 357. 
 Pears, 51. 
 
 Peas, 51. 
 
 3877 
 
 Pecunia and pecus, 135. 
 
 Pelican, 29. 
 
 Pen and feather, 118. 
 
 Pepin, 206. 
 
 Perfume of flowers, 367. 
 
 Perihelion, 58. 
 
 Permian period, 11, 70. 
 
 Perpetual snow, 61. 
 
 Persecution, 211-267, 286, 318. 
 
 Persian Gulf, 33. 
 
 Persian language, 94; full of Arabic 
 words, 112. 
 
 Persians and Hindus, 83-85. 
 
 Peter the Hermit, 192. 
 
 Pferd, strange history of, 137. 
 
 Pheasant, 29. 
 
 Philadelphia, 39. 
 
 Philip I. burns heretics to celebrate 
 his nuptials, 225. 
 
 Philology a historical science, 125, 
 
 Piano, learning to play the, 308. 
 
 Pigs, 35, 50. 
 
 Pigeons, 356. 
 
 Pike, 46. 
 
 Pines, 14, 22, 24. 
 
 Plasticity of infancy, 313. 
 
 Pleistocene period, 37-49. 
 
 Pliocene period, 33-36. 
 
 Plums, 51. 
 
 Plutarch, 193. 
 
 Font: 
 
 Polish language, 98. 
 
 Polished stone tools, 50-53. 
 
 Political economy, 195. 
 
 Poplar, 29, 34. 
 
 poe nest antiquity of man in, 35, 40, 
 
 Portuguese language, 97. 
 
 Positivism, 289. 
 
 Pottery, 43, 45. 
 
 Prakrit, 94. 
 
 Precession of equinoxes, 59. 
 
 Priesthood, need of, in early ages of 
 Christianity, 261. 
 
 Priestley, Joseph, 275, 340. 
 
 Primary period, 9, 11. 
 
 Primates, 25. 
 
 Primitive society, ferocity of, 223- 
 225. 
 
 Progressiveness, human, 306-320. 
 
 Pronunciation, differences of, 114. 
 
 Protective tariffs, 195 
 
 Protestantism, its full meaning, 265, 
 288, 293. 
 
 Provencal language, 97. 
 
 Pumpelly, R., 72. 
 
 Punjab, 82. 
 
 Puppets, a world of, 282, 
 
 Puritans, 266. 
 
 Pushtu language, 94. 
 
 QUARTZITE, 43. 
 
378 
 
 Raspit, 37, 49. 
 
 Recent period, 49. 
 
 Reindeer, 37, 39, 42, 45, 46, 49, 66. 
 
 Religions, wherein they agree and 
 differ, 296; essential truths of, 299. 
 
 Renan, £., alluded to, 212. 
 
 Representativeness, 221. 
 
 Reptiles, 12. 
 
 Rhine, 41. 
 
 Rhinoceros, 29, 35, 37, 39; big-nosed, 
 40, 42, 57 ; woolly, 37, 45, 49. 
 
 Ribeiro’s discovery of Pliocene man in 
 Portugal, 35. 
 
 Rigidity of mind, 236. 
 
 River-drift men, 39. 42-44, 75. 
 
 Rocky Mountains, 19, 39. 
 
 Rodents, 26. 
 
 Roman Empire, 199. 
 
 Roman jurisprudence, 256. 
 
 Romanic languages, 97 ; how they grew 
 from Latin, 157. 
 
 Rome, significance of its conquests, 
 256 
 
 Rubinstein, A., 26, 309. 
 
 Rudimentary organs, 353. 
 
 Rumansch language, 97. 
 
 Rupee of Bengal, 135. 
 
 Russia, 33, 51. 
 
 Russian ecclesiastical services con- 
 ducted in Old Bulgarian language, 
 80. 
 
 Sasre-toothed lion, 30, 35, 39. 
 
 Salmon, 46. 
 
 Samoyedic race, 166. 
 
 Sandalwood, 29. 
 
 Sandwich, 129. 
 
 Sanskrit, 85, 96. 
 
 Saporta, Count, 24. 
 
 Sapta Sindhavas, 82. 
 
 Saracens, 263. 
 
 Sarasvati, 82. 
 
 Savages, their want of forethought, 
 218; their rigidity of mind, 237. 
 
 Spel a 241, 23, 38, 51; languages 
 of, 98. 
 
 Scepticism, its effect in diminishing 
 persecution, 216. 
 
 Ssherer, K., 211. 
 
 Schism of Zoroastrians, 83. 
 
 Schlegel, F., 90. 
 
 Schleicher, A., 123. 
 
 ** School” of Spencerians, 181. 
 
 Schurz, C., 294. 
 
 Scot and scot-free, 135. 
 
 Scotch divines of sevenfeenth con- 
 tury, 216. 
 
 Scotland, 23, 28, 34, 38. 
 
 Scottish scenery due to glaciers, 68. 
 
 Sea, Aryan names for, 143. 
 
 test between Europe and Asia, 33, 
 
 Index. 
 
 Seal, 46. 
 
 Secondary period, 9, 12. 
 
 Sedimentary rocks, 18. 
 
 Selection of variations, 356. 
 
 Semi-human man, 31. 
 
 Semitic languages, 153, 162 
 
 Semnopithecus, 31. 
 
 Serbian language, 98. 
 
 Servetus, Michael, 299. 
 
 Seville, f 
 
 Sexual selection, 366. 
 
 Shakespeare, 179, 192, 232. 
 
 Sheep and the Horses, fable of, 124. 
 
 Shetlands, 34, 41. 
 
 Siberia, 33, 72, 166. 
 
 Silures, 53. 
 
 Silurian period, 11, 21, 70. 
 
 Simultaneous discoveries, 363. 
 
 Six in Hebrew and Sanskrit, 151. 
 
 Skin-scraper, 43. 
 
 Slavs, 54, 93. 
 
 Slykick force, 335. 
 
 Snow, difficulty of melting, 61, 71. 
 
 Social object, 330. 
 
 Sociology and history, 197-200. 
 
 Sogdiana, 81, 84. 
 
 Solids, liquids, and gases, 327. 
 
 Soul, conscious existence of, after 
 death, 291, 337. 
 
 South Georgia, 72. 
 
 South Shetland, 72. 
 
 goaa pole colder than northern, 
 
 Spain, 22; ruinous effects of expul- 
 sion of Moriscoes, 245. 
 
 | Spanish language, 97. 
 
 Spectrum analysis, 364. 
 
 Speech no sure index of race, 101. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, on nature of social 
 science, 183; on the influence of 
 great men, 183-198; on ontology, 
 283; immensity of his work, 295; 
 on mind and matter, 335. 
 
 Spitzbergen, 23, 24, 34, 72. 
 
 Spontaneous variations, 175. 
 
 Sportsmen, 229. 
 
 Squirrel, 29. 
 
 Status and contract, 257. 
 
 Stephanus of Byzantium, 91. 
 
 Stone age, Old, 42-49; New, 50-53. 
 
 Stone hoid of Newgate, 228. 
 
 Stone tools of Cave-men, 46. 
 
 Stubbs, W., 194. 
 
 Submergence in Eocene period, 23 ; in 
 Miocene, 28. 
 
 Sugdha, 78, 81. 
 
 ee, why warmer than winter, 
 
 Survivals, doctrine of, 147. 
 Switzerland, 22, 28, 51. 
 Swords no longer worn, 229. 
 Symbols of faith, 260. 
 
Index. 
 
 mith he language, rapid changes in, 
 
 Tapir, 29, 35, 351. 
 
 Target, distribution of shots at, 178. 
 Tartar and Tatar, 167. 
 
 Tataric languages, 100, 166. 
 
 Tears and grief, 279. 
 
 Telegraph, 364. 
 
 Tennyson, A., quoted, 247. 
 
 Tertiary period, 9, 10, 12, 14, 36, 69. 
 Tertullian, 260. 
 
 ape y rae character of English speech, 
 Teutons, 54, 97. 
 
 Thames, 37, 41. 
 
 Theological renaissance, 285. 
 Thessaly, 229. 
 
 ps Sir W., on age of the earth, 
 
 Thumb, Tom, 176. 
 
 Thun, 130. 
 
 Timbuctoo and Hamburg, 187. 
 
 Time, geologic, 14, 16. 
 
 Timur, 167, 170. 
 
 Torture, 226. 
 
 Town, Aryan names for, 129. 
 
 Town-meetings, 194. 
 
 Trade-winds, how caused, 63. 
 
 Trajan, 206. 
 
 Tree-ferns, 14. 
 
 Triassic period, 12, 22, 69. 
 
 Se Vee stage of social organization, 239, 
 48 
 
 Trinity, 260, 299. 
 
 Trollope, A., 229. 
 
 Trout, 46. 
 
 Tungusians, 167. 
 Turanians, 86, 100. 
 Turkish language, 100, 166. 
 Turkish race, 167. 
 
 Turtle, mental life of, 309. 
 Tutelar deities, 251. 
 
 Tylor, E. B., 147. 
 
 Tyne, 41. 
 
 Utritas, 198, 261. 
 
 Umbrian language, 97. 
 
 Uncivilized tribes, change their speech 
 quickly, 172. 
 
 Undulatory theory of light, 364. 
 
 Ungulata, 26. 
 
 Unitarians, 270. 
 
 Unity, religious, 246, 286, 289-293. 
 
 Unknowable, 302. 
 
 Upheavals, 19. 
 
 Ur of the Chaldees, 52. 
 
 Ural Mountains, 33. 
 
 Urus, 47, 49. 
 
 Variations in intelligence, 314. 
 
 Veda, 79. 
 
 Velocities of molecules, 326. 
 
 
 
 
 
 379 
 
 Vendidad, 78, 82, 84. 
 
 Veredus, the Low-Latin post-horse, 
 137. 
 
 Verification, 290. 
 
 Viking, meaning of the word, 129. 
 
 Village, Aryan names for, 129. 
 
 Vines of Greenland in Miocene age, 29, 
 74. 
 
 Virgin armed with knives, 226. 
 
 Virgin, worship of, 262. 
 
 Visceral movements organized before 
 birth, 310. 
 
 Volcanic heat, action of, on oldest 
 rocks, 11; islands, 344. 
 
 Volcanoes in Scotland and Wales, 28, 
 34. 
 
 Voltaire, 192. 
 
 Vowel-change in Aryan speech, 121. 
 
 WALES, 28. 
 
 Wall, Aryan names for, 130. 
 
 Wallace, A.R., 20, 61, 72, 73, 313, 350, 
 362. 
 
 Wallachian language, 97. 
 
 Walnut, 14. 
 
 Warfare, diminution of, 208, 212, 228- 
 231, 319. 
 
 Watt, James, 205-207, 341. 
 
 Weapons, carrying of, forbidden by 
 law, 229. 
 
 Weasel, 29. 
 
 Wedgwood, Hensleigh, 341. 
 
 Wedgwood, Josiah, 341. 
 
 Welsh language, 96. 
 
 Whale, 46. 
 
 Wheat, 51. 
 
 Whitney, J. D., 36. 
 
 Whitney, W. D., 91, 144. 
 
 William the Conqueror, 8. 
 
 Willows, 24, 34. 
 
 Windermere, 143. 
 
 Window, Aryan names for, 132. 
 
 Witanagemot, 196. 
 
 Wolf, 35, 37, 49. 
 
 Wright, C., 334. 
 
 Wundt, W., 337. 
 
 Ximenes, Cardinal, his bonfire of 
 books alluded to, 165. 
 
 YAKUTSK, summer temperature of, 72. 
 Yellow race in Asia, 169-171. 
 Yew-trees, 24. 
 
 You. my conception of, 329. 
 Yule-tide, 262. 
 
 ZARATHUSTRA, 81. 
 
 Zend language, 85, 94, 96. 
 Zendavesta, 78, 80, 82. 
 Zoroaster, 81, 
 

 
IMPORTANT BOOKS 
 
 JOHN FISKE. 
 
 
 
 OUTLINES OF COSMIC PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 Based on the Doctrine of Evolution. With Criticisms on the Positive 
 Philosophy. In two volumes, 8vo, gilt top, $6.00. 
 
 You must allow me to thank you for the very great interest with which I have 
 at last slowly read the whole of your work. .. . I never in my life read so lucid 
 an expositor (and therefore thinker) as you are; and I think that I understand 
 nearly the whole, though perhaps less clearly about cosmic theism and causation 
 than other parts. It is hopeless to attempt out of so much to specify what has in- 
 terested me most, and probably you would not care to hear. It pleased me to find 
 that here and there I had arrived, from my own crude thoughts, at some of the 
 same conclusions with you, though I could seldom or never have given my reasons 
 for such conclusions. — CHARLES DARWIN. 
 
 This work of Mr. Fiske’s may not be unfairly designated the most important 
 contribution yet made by America to philosophical literature. . . , His theory of 
 the influence of prolonged infancy upon social development (Part II., chap. xxii.) 
 entitles Mr. Fiske’s work to be considered a distinctly important contribution to 
 the theory of the origin of species, and of the origin of man in particular. — 
 Academy (London). — 
 
 His most important suggestion, that of the influence of the long period of feeble 
 adolescence upon man’s social development, is, we think, a permanent contribu- 
 tion to the development theory. — Nation (New York). 
 
 He recognizes Mr. Spencer as his teacher and guide ; but he has moulded the 
 doctrines of his master into a popular form, surrounded them with fresh and vivid 
 illustrations, pointed out their bearing upon great practical questions of the day, 
 and amply supplied the reader with materials for forming an intelligent judgment 
 with respect to their merits. Mr. Fiske is himself a thinker of rare acuteness and 
 depth ; his affluent store of knowledge is exhibited on every page; and his mas- 
 tery of expression is equal to his subtlety of speculation. —GroRGE RIPLEY, in 
 Tribune (New York). 
 
 Mr. Fiske’s work .. . is the first important contribution made by America to 
 the evolution philosophy, . . . and is well worth the study of all who wish to see 
 at once the entire scope and purport of the scientific dogmatism of the day. — Sat- 
 urday Review (London). 
 
 
 
 DARWINISM AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 New Edition, enlarged. 12mo, gilt top, $2.00. 
 
 Contents: Darwinism Verified; Mr. Mivart on Darwinism; Dr. 
 Bateman on Darwinism; Dr. Biichner on Darwinism ; A Crumb for 
 the “Modern Symposium ;” Chauncey Wright; What is Inspira- 
 tion? Modern Witchcraft ; Comte’s Positive Philosophy ; Mr. Buckle’s 
 Fallacies ; Postscript on Mr. Buckle; The Races of the Danube; Lib- 
 eral Education; University Reform; A Librarian’s Work. 
 
If ever there was a spirit thoroughly invigorated by the “ joy of right under- 
 standing”? it is that of the author of these pieces. Even the reader catches some- 
 thing of his intellectual buoyancy, and is thus carried almost lightly through dis- 
 cussions which would be hard and dry in the hands of a less animated writer. 
 - . - No less confident and serene than his acceptance of the utmost logical results 
 of recent scientific discovery is Mr. Fiske’s assurance that the foundations of spir- 
 itual truths, so called, cannot possibly be shaken thereby. .. . The article on 
 Mr. Buckle’s Fallacies has one aspect more remarkable than all the rest. It was 
 written and published when the “ History of Civilization ’’ was new, — that is to 
 say, when the writer was nineteen years of age; and the years—almost nineteen 
 more — which have elapsed since then have rather confirmed than detracted from 
 its value as a piece of criticism, The judgment of posterity on the most ambitious 
 book of its generation, and one of the most bewildering, was actually anticipated 
 by a stripling, and its final rank assigned with singular fairness and precision. 
 Scarcely even in the style is there a trace of immaturity. — Atlantic Monthly. 
 
 The article on the Races of the Danube shows that Mr. Fiske has a special talent 
 for history. — Nation (New York). 
 
 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS: 
 
 Old Tales and Superstitions interpreted by Comparative Mythology. 
 12mo, gilt top, $2.00. 
 
 Contents: The Origins of Folk-Lore; The Descent of Fire; 
 Werewolves and Swan-Maidens; Light and Darkness; Myths of the 
 Barbaric World ; Juventus Mundi; The Primeval Ghost- World. 
 
 He has, as we must admit, one qualification for attaining his object, in being 
 completely master of his subject, and in knowing also how to treat it in an attrac- 
 tive manner. — FELIx LIEBRECHT, in Academy (London). 
 
 Its weight of sense and its lucidity will extend Mr. Fiske’s reputation as one of 
 the clearest-minded, most conscientiously laborious and well-trained students in 
 this country. —- Nation (New York). 
 
 Mr. Fiske has given us a book which is at once sensible and attractive, on a sub- 
 ject about which much is written that is crotchety or tedious. — W. K. 8. RALSTON, 
 in Atheneum (London). 
 
 A perusal of this thorough work cannot be too strongly recommended to all who 
 are interested in comparative mythology. — Revue Critique (Paris). 
 
 THE UNSEEN WORLD, AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 12mo, gilt top, $2.00. 
 
 Contents: The Unseen World ; The To-morrow of Death; The 
 Jesus of History; The Christ of Dogma; A Word about Miracles; 
 Draper on Science and Religion ; Nathan the Wise; Historical Diffi- 
 culties; The Famine of 1770 in Bengal; Spain and the Netherlands ; 
 Longfellow’s Dante ; Paine’s St. Peter; A Philosophy of Art ; Athe- 
 nian and American Life. 
 
 To each study the writer seems to have brought, besides an excellent quality of 
 discriminating judgment, full and fresh special knowledge, that enables him to 
 supply much information on the subject, whatever it may be, that is not to be 
 found in the volume he is noticing. To the knowledge, analytical power, and fac- 
 ulty of clear statement, that appear in all these papers, Mr. Fiske adds a just inde- 
 pendence of thought that conciliates respectful consideration of his views, even 
 when they are most at variance with the commonly accepted ones. — Boston Ad- 
 vertiser. 
 
The vigor, the earnestness, the honesty, and the freedom from cant and subtlety 
 in his writing are exceedingly refreshing. He is a scholar, a critic, and a thinker 
 of the first order. — Christian Register. 
 
 The book has a unity and charm in the clearness of the thought and the beauty 
 of such a style as was perhaps never before brought to the illustration of the 
 topics with which Mr. Fiske habitually deals. There is something better still in 
 the admirable spirit of his writing; it is of all writing of its sort, probably, the 
 most humane. . . . He has already achieved a place as wholly his own as it is em- 
 inent. — Atlantic Monthly. 
 
 EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST. 
 12mo, gilt top, $2.00. 
 
 Contents: Europe before the Arrival of Man; The Arrival of 
 Man in Europe; Our Aryan Forefathers; What we learn from Old 
 Aryan Words; Was there a Primeval Mother-Tongue ? Sociology 
 and Hero-Worship ; Heroes of Industry ; The Causes of Persecution ; 
 The Origins of Protestantism; The True Lesson of Protestantism ; 
 Evolution and Religion; The Meaning of Infancy; A Universe of 
 
 Mind-Stuff; In Memoriam: Charles Darwin. 
 
 Among our thoughtful essayists there are none more brilliant than Mr. John 
 Fiske. His pure style suits his clear thought. Ie does not write unless he has 
 something to say; and when he does write he shows not only that he has thor- 
 oughly acquainted himself with the subject, but that he has to a rare degree the 
 art of so massing his matter as to bring out the true value of the leading points in 
 artistic relief. 1t is this perspective which makes his work such agreeable reading 
 even on abtruse subjects, and has enabled him to play the same part in populariz- 
 ing Spencer in this country that Littré performed for Comte in France, and Dumont 
 for Bentham in England. The same qualities appear to good advantage in his 
 new volume, which contains his later essays on his favorite subject of evolution. 
 e - - They are well worth reperusal. — The Nation (New York). 
 
 These essays are all full of thought and worthy of preservation, while several of 
 them are entitled to rank among the very best essays of American writers. For 
 depth of thought, scholarship, literary taste, critical ability, and the power of 
 clear and vigorous exposition combined, Mr. Fiske has no equal in this country 
 and but few equals among European writers, —— Index (Boston ). 
 
 THE DESTINY OF MAN, 
 Viewed in the Light of his Origin. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00. 
 
 Contents: Man’s Place in Nature as affected by the Copernican 
 Theory; As affected by Darwinism; On the Earth there will never 
 be a Higher Creature than Man ; The Origin of Infancy ; The Dawn- 
 ing of Consciousness ; Lengthening of Infancy and Concomitant In- 
 crease of Brain Surface; Change in the Direction of the Working of 
 Natural Selection; Growing Predominance of the Psychical Life ; 
 The Origins of Society and Morality ; Improveableness of Man; Uni- 
 versal Warfare of Primeval Men; First checked by the Beginnings 
 of Industrial Civilization; Methods of Political Development and 
 Elimination of Warfare; End of the Working of Natural Selection 
 upon Man; Throwing off the Brute-Inheritance; The Message of 
 Christianity ; The Question as to a Future Life. 
 
Mr. Fiske has long held rank as one of the most profound and exact of Ameri- 
 can thinkers, and his little monograph will serve to extend that deserved fame 
 among a class of readers who are not ordinarily interested in the literature of sci- 
 ence. Mr. Fiske’s book is, in a word, a plea for faith in the immortality of man, 
 based on the doctrine of evolution. — Boston Traveller. 
 
 Mr. Fiske has given us in his ‘‘ Destiny of Man ”’ a most attractive condensation 
 of his views as expressed in his various other works. One is charmed by the di- 
 rectness and clearness of his style, his simple and pure English, and his evident 
 knowledge of his subject. . . . Of one thing we may be sure, that none are lead- 
 ing us more surely or rapidly to the full truth than men like the author of this 
 little book, who reverently study the works of God for the lessons which he would 
 teach his children. — Christian Union (New York). . 
 
 It is a remarkable contribution to the literature of religious thought. ... Té 
 will prove that evolution is at least not irreverent. . .. It is packed full of learn- 
 ing and suggestion, in a style at once simple and beautiful, and is worth a dozen 
 volumes of ordinary sermons. — Philadelphia Press. 
 
 
 
 THE IDEA OF GOD AS AFFECTED BY MODERN 
 KNOWLEDGE. 
 16mo, gilt top, $1.00. 
 
 ConTENTSs: Difficulty of expressing the Idea of God so that it can 
 be readily understood; The Rapid Growth of Modern Knowledge; 
 Sources of the Theistic Idea ; Development of Monotheism; The Idea 
 of God as immanent in the World; The Idea of God as remote from 
 the World; Conflict between the Two Ideas, commonly misunder- 
 stood as a Conflict between Religion and Science; Anthropomorphie 
 Conceptions of God; The Argument from Design; Simile of tho 
 Watch replaced by Simile of the Flower; The Craving for a Final 
 Cause; Symbolic Conceptions ; The Eternal Source of Phenomena : 
 The Power that makes for Righteousness; Notes. 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., PUBLISHERS, 
 
 Boston aAnp NEw York. 
 

 

 

 
Ni iT 
 11012 01249 4417 
 
 
 
ee 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Uae WR R AAA AS 
 aa 4 EN heh AAAS 
 MA acts \ setae 
 
 
 
 
 int RAS 
 Aaa S sa 
 Ses 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 Pens SOAS 
 
 SO SSS se s SS SR Se sa PS SS SS eee 
 Soa SSK trees as SRAM Ata 
 
 
 
 Py ‘ > * oe ws ae ars <M as 2 +m sh ¥ Ss 
 SE SORES SSS 
 Seas ie Sis Sue SN ite se ey sa ee < ae Sa ha sn! ey 4 ee 
 a see et kee ht ne 
 
 Sa en fa 
 A ay Se 
 
 Se a < ‘ ) 
 a a > 8 y Ss Seat Seta Oe ae oe cs 4448 ce Ny 
 
 
 
 eh en ad 
 eS 
 ee ¥, SN a Sy oy se Bats ax ‘= SS vy ere SS oe eis sa) a Oats 
 ey Ss ae es Sees Py y we mune Pea 
 SAtyy Se oS Bee eee, eye =e 
 
 
 
 ane s*; 4 
 ec aS coe < 
 
 es Reais on 
 we Q3 
 
 oy 
 ee 
 eat 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 y haat 
 Ata 
 eee vA ¥ sey US 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ae 
 Pata a 
 Shy Mates ate SAAN TA TAA ae AS APC ANS « 
 ae nee Preys = es 4% a er Pi sty Py oye 1+ Sie haces 
 SE Py Reales sete See ee OS Rt SRAUP AN 43 4% 
 ye KR ye Ey Soe sc ‘ At, PI 2 et Naa ate Rca! 
 
 REARS A 4 = we 
 
 eee eee ARRAS Sa ee aa 
 4 of 
 
 Sects eee Rt, Sates ele 
 
 o% ae xe) 
 
 *) 
 Pay” 7 Pe) SN Py ah Kae 
 
 Span 
 
 Sate 
 eee reve 
 SES 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ae eG ee 
 = ¢ 
 ae fe Bete Bees ‘A 
 ae ar ie edat, 
 Hie ok ee ae pete 
 ’ " +4 vy SR LSA a 
 “es Pe + 
 iy ss ya yy as 
 Seat ca +e mee sonia a¥ 
 tb Ae ke ee Saas eas 
 y. seston we aided 
 Se ee Sees 
 
 Sanne 
 eee 
 ae 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ’ ae cy 
 FS <e Hae 
 
 a 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 can 
 ee 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 se 
 eae ie * 
 a A, te eeeaee 
 + 33 Dey RRO 
 Hy it Ae te “eae 
 - xy te ee ee See eed eas 
 ey, Been wee “de eee SF 
 yi ee Rianne 
 “se 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ie 
 “ea 
 ier ha sakes am 
 
 
 
 
 es Pty 3 t 7“ * a) ‘ Arta 
 » Scene 
 Py et tie: SAS 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ! 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 eee 
 
 ene 
 
 
 
 pes oo 
 ae fous 
 
 
 
 
 
 “8 
 Pre. I Pe Ane 
 
 seals aes -4e ees x 
 
 ¢ a4 it tet € 
 
 if OH tie nate eee es nay 
 
 ** 
 Lee EYP RT Se 
 
 
 
 
 
 PPT, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * vtddey 
 + iS RIO e iy ‘3 
 RFF e FS SP yy aes 3 
 hate eee. tra Pers ey 
 2 Pree 
 oe PEER REE 
 aa’. ‘ c PP Ae t <% 
 oe CP Ar ao ht RO ETS Poy 
 a eeeuaeed f LET yy 
 it # © tf 46a 
 af # ae sce Seed 
 PP yy <4 Mets 
 Sets ae PPP I SS: 
 F a 
 
 
 
 * ” 
 Pree Ae 
 Lm oa Sut ae 
 ede a Dane BALES 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ie a a 
 ee MASALA ES ORES es 
 ate 
 
 
 
 
 
 - oh I 
 see ta ry Nib Lat, 
 Snes i AAPL ERE LES fet